Characters / The Karate Kid: Cobra Kai and Associates

The Karate Kid Main Character Index
Daniel LaRusso | Johnny Lawrence | John Kreese | Terry Silver | Miguel Diaz | Robby Keene | Samantha LaRusso | Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz | Tory Nichols | Demetri Alexopoulos | Kyler Park
Dojos and Others
Miyagi-Do and Associates | Cobra Kai and Associates | Eagle Fang and Associates | The LaRusso Family | Other Characters

Cobra Kai Dojo

Cobra Kai

"Cobra Kai builds winners, because we're willing to do whatever it takes to come out on top."

"Cobra Kai is not a hobby, it's not a club. Cobra Kai is your brothers and your sisters. You're all Cobra Kai for life because Cobra Kai never dies."

— John Kreese

A notorious karate dojo founded by John Kreese and Terry Silver training under the "Strike First, Strike Hard, No-Mercy" through the art of Tang Soo Do. After Mike Barnes' defeat in the 1985 All-Valley, the dojo closed for almost 30 years, until it experienced an unexpected revival under former top-student, Johnny Lawrence with Miguel Diaz as its champion. Said revival eventually leads to the return of John Kreese and Terry Silver, both of whom take over the dojo in the process.

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• Academy of Evil: Was this in The Karate Kid and again after Kreese steals the dojo from Johnny in Cobra Kai.
• Antagonist Title: Played with; Cobra Kai was the villainous foil to Daniel and Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid movies, but much like Johnny Lawrence himself, the new Cobra Kai is shown in a more sympathetic light, emphasizing it's blunt badassery to help disenfranchised kids stand up for themselves. Unfortunately, without tempering his students with proper restraint, Johnny's pupils end up going from victims to aggressors themselves. Once Kreese gets involved and steals back the dojo, this trope is played brutally straight as the remaining Cobra Kai students become overt thugs and antagonists to the rest of the cast, including to former members still loyal to Johnny, such as Miguel.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • For dojos as a whole, Cobra Kai is the arch-enemy of Miyagi-Do. The two dojos have polar opposite Opposing Combat Philosophies, with Cobra Kai as the Thug Dojo that shows no mercy and is based around attacking your opponent until they are decisively beaten, while Miyagi-Do is a Pacifist Dojo that preaches karate for defense only and avoiding fights wherever possible. Season 5 reveals that this enmity even extends to the Asian originators of each style, as Sato, who upheld the legacy of Miyagi-Do in Okinawa, despised Kim Sun-Yung, whose style of Korean Tang Soo Do was eventually passed down to Cobra Kai founders John Kreese and Terry Silver, for his philosophy of "no mercy and no honor", and it's implied the two had their own rivalry when they both taught their opposing styles to soldiers in the United States Military.
  • Cobra Kai is also the arch-enemy of Eagle Fang, the latter being a dojo started by Johnny after Kreese steals Cobra Kai from him, made up of former Cobra Kai members out to take down their former dojo for its out-of-control criminal behavior, and forming an Anti-Hero Team as they balance some of Cobra Kai's badass fighting style with Johnny's strict sense of honor. Eventually, Eagle Fang and Miyagi-Do team up due to their mutual hatred for Cobra Kai.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The motto for the school is "Strike First, Strike Hard, No Mercy". And when beginning defense, Johnny tells Miguel that the best defense is more offense.
• Back from the Brink: The residents of the San Fernando Valley have all but forgotten the old karate dojo, and the few who do remember Cobra Kai only have bad memories of them. However, thanks to Johnny's efforts, the dojo has been restored and by the end of Season 1, Cobra Kai has become the most popular karate dojo in the Valley due to several of the students becoming an Instant Web Hit and Miguel winning the All Valley Under 18 Karate Tournament.
• Badass Creed: They have two main ones, both of which sum up the dojo's Determinator attitude and Thug Dojo fighting spirit:
  • The most famous involves some back-and-forth between sensei and students, and includes the famous Cobra Kai motto on the dojo's wall and crest.
    Sensei: What do we study here?
    Students: The Way of the Fist, sir!
    Sensei: And what is that way?
    Students: Strike first, strike hard, no mercy, sir!
  • Their secondary motto is "Cobra Kai never dies."
• Badass Crew: Consistent regardless of ownership; Johnny's dojo in particular goes from a pack of bullied kids to badass martial arts fighters.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: To gain the upper hand against Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang, Robby passes down his knowledge of Miyagi-Do karate to the rest of the dojo in preparation for the 2019 All-Valley Tournament.
• Became Their Own Anti Thesis: Johnny revives the dojo in Season 1 to help Miguel and others learn how to fight back against bullies. By Season 2, the students veer into He Who Fights Monsters territory and begin to exhibit the same bullying behavior and Season 3 sees Kreese actively recruiting established bullies, including the ones who bullied the original students in the first place, to the dojo.
• Begin with a Finisher: Cobra Kai builds itself around the concept of "strike first, strike hard, no mercy". Based on Tang Soo Do and incorporating elements of Shotokan, Judo, Jiu Jitsu, and even American CQC, it focuses almost entirely on hard-hitting overwhelming attacks to brutally and mercilessly take your opponent down before they even have the chance to fight back.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio: In Season 2, this would be Mitch, Hawk, and Bert — right down to being foils for Miyagi-do's Chris, Demetri, and Nathaniel respectively.
• Blood Knight: Most of them are pretty much at home with fighting.
• Break the Haughty: After spending Season 5 bragging about their All-Valley win and how they're the best around, the entire dojo is rocked when they see the video proving Silver bribed the refs to let them win, so their "victory" was a sham. And that's before Silver goes on a rant where he makes it clear he considered them just pathetic losers he was using for his own means.
• Defector from Decadence: Cobra Kai becomes a local legend that attracted several youths for its Dare To Be Bad Ass creed and gained immense popularity with the high school. While most of the pupils were fine when Kreese came along and corrupted them, Miguel wanted nothing to do with it and after recovering from his paralysis, leaves Cobra Kai for good. He's joined by Bert and Mitch halfway through Season 3 due to Kreese's abuse, and later Hawk in the finale when he realizes how far he and the Dojo have fallen.
• Determinator: Considering the Training from Hell the Dojo goes through, the rough backgrounds they tend to share, and how much the dojo has to go through just to get into the All Valley Under 18 tournament, they count as this. And once Kreese comes on board in Season 2, he makes being a Determinator mandatory for students.
  Kreese: I will never let my students lose... even if they have to learn the hard way.
• The Empire: Effectively becomes this in Season 5, with Terry Silver's grand ambition in opening a franchise of Cobra Kai dojos in the San Fernando Valley.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Despite Kreese and Silver's Politically Incorrect Villain status in the original films, which Kreese, at least, shows signs of having retained to the present day, Cobra Kai still has a fairly diverse set of students. Kreese shows no problem with allowing female members in a previously all-male dojo, which even Johnny initially struggled to accept, and clearly considers Tory one of his best students. Kreese and Silver also show no problems with Kenny, Kyler (which is in stark contrast to the anti-Asian racism they displayed towards Mr. Miyagi in the movies) and even Piper, who, as a lesbian or bisexual girl with strong views in favor of feminism and genderfluidity, would seem to be the antithesis of everything Kreese stands for. Whether this is inspired by genuine Character Development or mere Pragmatic Villainy in avoiding turning away potential recruits remains to be seen.
• Evil Costume Switch: Eviler Costume Switch. When Silver usurps Cobra Kai from Kreese, the students switch out their white training gis for Black gis with red Cobra Kai insignias on the back. The Topanga Karate kids also trade in their blue gis for the red and black when Topanga is bought out by Silver. They even wear these gis in place of the classic black and yellow sleeveless competition gis during the Sekai Taikai qualifier competition against Miyagi Fang. This all coincides with Cobra Kai becoming bigger and worse than it ever was before.
• Evil Counterpart: To Miyagi-Do, being the complete antithesis, as well as Eagle Fang, sharing the same emphasis on offense, but with little to no honor. Individually speaking by season 4, all of the major characters in the Miyagi-Do & Eagle Fang have an Evil Counterpart in Cobra Kai.
  • Terry Silver to Daniel LaRusso: Trained karate masters who are also rich influential businessmen (with the former being the latter's former Evil Mentor) that worked their way up to a lifetime of luxury before going back to karate to run their dojos (Daniel to Miyagi-Do, Terry to Cobra Kai).
  • John Kreese to Johnny Lawrence: Two Johns who are the co-senseis to their wealthier counterparts (with the former also being the latter's former Evil Mentor). Both men's lives spiraled downward after losing in the All-Valley (Johnny losing to Daniel in the 1984 tournament, Kreese losing his revenge plan against Daniel after the latter defeats Mike Barnes), before getting back up thanks to karate.
  • Tory Nichols to Samantha LaRusso: The Action Girls, both of whom have a history with Miguel and Robby. Which leads to...
  • Robby Keene to Miguel Diaz: The top male student, both of whom have a history with Sam, Tory, and Johnny (Robby being the son that Johnny failed, Miguel being the son-figure that Johnny is succeeding).
  • Kyler Park to Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz. The Brute and The Berserker. While both were The Bully, especially toward Demetri, Hawk is a bully trying to mask his insecurity as a former bullied victim, whereas Kyler is a bully just For the Evulz. Hawk eventually reforms and defects from Cobra Kai, whereas Kyler is still a bully and remains loyal.
  • Kenny Payne to Demetri Alexopolous. Both are bullied for being nerds (they're even fans of the exact same fictional franchise, Dungeon Lord) and turn to karate to defend themselves, both initially struggle to commit to training due to being Lovable Cowards who are afraid of getting hit, both join the same dojo as Robby Keene, who becomes fiercely protective of them, and both have to use other qualities to overcome their lack of physical strength in a fight (speed for Kenny, analyzing his opponents' attacks for Demetri).
  • Piper Elswith to Devon Lee. Both are the newest members of their respective dojos (Cobra Kai and Eagle Fang respectively) who joined after Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang split. However, while Piper was already athletic prior to doing karate, Devon was a geek who joined karate after Johnny was impressed by her aggressive demeanor.
• Evil Wears Black: Downplayed. To showcase their aggression, not only do they wear black gi in Season 1, but come Season 2 (especially the big school fight), the majority of their leading members wear red and black clothes.
  • Played straight in Season 3... because the loyalists to Kreese tend to wear black, while the Eagle Fang offshoot loyal to Johnny starts to wear reds, yellows and oranges. This actually foreshadows Hawk's defection from Cobra Kai in the scene where Kreese meets up with his 4 core students, in which three of them (Robby, Tory, Kyler) wore darker clothes, whereas Hawk wears yellow and red and joins Eagle Fang after the house fight.
• Face–Heel Turn: The dojo as a whole heads this way by the end of Season 2, as Kreese has essentially usurped ownership of Cobra Kai from Johnny with the majority of the students (most of which Took a Level in Jerkass) accepting him as their new sensei. It gets even worse when Kreese begins actively recruiting new students who are already thugs, like Kyler.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Wrath happens to be one of the most common reactions and demeanor a Cobra Kai student or sensei exhibits whenever things aren't going their way...
    • Johnny starts bullying Daniel when he sees him flirting with Ali, and continues to escalate their rivalry, reacting with massive Disproportionate Retribution to the fairly petty and harmless prank Daniel pulls on him in response. Not only does this drive Ali further away from Johnny and into Daniel's arms, it pretty much forces Daniel to learn karate from Mr. Miyagi to defend himself, which costs Johnny his third successive All Valley title when Daniel beats him in the final.
    • If Kreese and Silver had just ignored Daniel and Miyagi in 1985, Mike Barnes would have easily won the All Valley and put Cobra Kai back on top, since Daniel had no intention of even competing. Instead, they have Barnes harass and bully Daniel to make him compete because they want to humiliate him for daring to defeat Johnny the previous year, which of course leads to Daniel beating Barnes, costing Terry a lot of money on his planned franchising of Cobra Kai and getting the dojo blacklisted from tournament participation for the next 33 years.
    • Miguel gets agitated by Sam not responding to his text messages (due to her mom confiscating her phone) and by the time they do meet up at what was supposed to be Yasmine's birthday party, he begins to shout out on how he was texting Sam all day and her hanging out with Robby. It also does not help in that he got himself drunk due to thinking about this situation too much, which results in him trying to attack Robby... and instead end up hitting Sam.
    • Hawk takes what is taught to him and his reputation very seriously due to his experience in getting relentlessly bullied for his lip. As a result, he doesn't take it very well if he thinks he's getting insulted in some way. He breaks tournament rules by kicking Robby and spraining his shoulder because Robby mocked his hairstyle. This promptly gets Hawk disqualified and he reacts by shouting "Bullshit!" the moment he is told of his disqualification. Then he sees a Yelp review by Demetri which slams Cobra Kai and his response is to stalk and attack his former friend for it, which only ends with him getting defeated by Sam and Robby and Moon breaking up with him.
    • Tory doesn't take it well by simply seeing Sam and Miguel talking and decides to simply trip her to which Sam retaliates by tripping Tory too. Then, upon seeing her boyfriend cheat on her with Sam, rather than do the sensible thing and either break up with Miguel or have a serious discussion with him, she decides to instigate a fight against Sam using the public address system on the first day of high school, and goes as far as to use a spiked bracelet to slash her arm. Predictably, Tory gets expelled from school, but she is simply unable to let go of her grudge against Sam, going as far as to violate her probation by committing crimes and prioritizing antagonizing and attacking her rival over looking after her sick mother and younger brother.
    • This is the very reason why Terry stepped away from the dojo for decades of peace and clarity. So when Kreese brings him back into the picture, Terry further embracing the Cobra Kai creed has devolved him back into the madman in Part III, as shown with his beating of Johnny Lawrence as a means to "prove his loyalty to Kreese," and then framing the latter for his beating of Stingray when Kreese doesn't comply with Silver's desire.
  • Arrogance is another major one. As a result of the dojo's indoctrination and wins at the All-Valley Tournament, all of the students are convinced that they are the best karatekas in the Valley and can take on anyone in a fight, even if they previously lost to those they challenge in previous bouts and even if they weren't the ones who were actually responsible for the dojo's accomplishments. This all comes to a head in Season 5 where, despite outnumbering the Miyagi-Fangs 3-1, they are unable to defeat them in combat because the Miyagi-Fangs faction consists of all of the teens who are truly the best fighters, including Cobra Kai's former top students Miguel, Robby, Hawk, and Tory.
• From Bad to Worse: Gradually becomes this in the tv show. When Johnny first opens Cobra Kai, it's a safe haven for bullied students to come and defend themselves. However the nature of Cobra Kai's creed influences said students to become vicious brutes—something that Johnny tries to stay away from. It gets much worse with Kreese entering into the picture, given how much he embraces that mindset and desire to implant that in his students—especially once he takes over the dojo at the end of Season 2. But surely just one merciless dojo in the valley can't be that bad, right? Enter Terry Silver who had the same mindset as Kreese (worse actually, given his much more pragmatic approach), coupled with his ambition to take over the valley with a franchise of these dojos.
• Gendered Insult: Their members are fond of using these to antagonize their detractors, the most common one being "pussy", thanks to Johnny's influence.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil:
  • While originally the "Bad" to Miyagi-Do's "Good", Cobra Kai moves right into the "Evil" category once Kreese takes over, Johnny's new Eagle Fang School taking on the role of "Bad". While Miyagi-Do is a Pacifist Dojo with an emphasis in self-defense (Good) and Eagle Fang is a Martial Pacifist dojo that uses Cobra Kai's brutality for honorable purposes, Kreese's Cobra Kai is a Thug Dojo ran less like a martial arts school and more like a street gang acting out vendettas with unrestrained violence.
  • As a matter of fact, The Good, the Bad, and the Evil also applies to each sensei and their tenure as lead instructor in the dojo. Johnny Lawrence's Cobra Kai is easily the "Good," with his open desire for his students, of all backgrounds, to be "badass," while still maintaining a sense of honor (considering Johnny himself as a Reformed Bully and an Internal Reformist). John Kreese's Cobra Kai is the "Bad"; he's all about picking bullies and indoctrinating them into their "No Mercy" mindset, and eventually has standards when he doesn't mind Robby and Tory fighting their own way (which sort of reflects Kreese being vicious and cruel, while still a broken man inside). Terry Silver's Cobra Kai is arguably the "Evil," with ambitions to expand it as a worldwide empire consisting of everyone indoctrinated with the "No Mercy" mindset, and has no morals whatsoever (considering Terry's actions eclipses Kreese to a wider scale, as well as his tendency to bribe his way out of situations).
• He Who Fights Monsters: The majority of the students are bullied kids that just want to defend themselves but by the end of Season 1 most of them become almost just as bad as their tormentors. Especially Hawk. The entire dojo as a whole becomes this by the end of Season 3 when all of its initial members during Johnny's tutelage were forced to leave the dojo for one reason or another. The remaining members include the very same bullies who tormented Cobra Kai's former students, and those that want to acquire new skills to hurt others instead of those that just want to learn how to defend themselves. As Demetri would put it, Cobra Kai has become "the worst collection of assholes in the valley".
• Informed Ability: Edwin, Big Red and Dieter are all still in Cobra Kai after Kreese’s purge, implying they were skilled enough to defend their spots against athletic possible recruits. Unlike Mikey and Rickenberger however, they are never shown displaying these skills. They don’t participate in any fights against Miyagi Do or Eagle Fang. They also never even place in the All-Valley Tournament either year. In fact, Kenny surpasses them in that respect despite being in Cobra Kai a year less than any of them. Downplayed with Big Red and Edwin. Edwin briefly fights Abe during the school fight, but it ends in a tie and they stop very quickly. Big Red is the first student knocked out by Robby when he challenges all of Cobra Kai to hit him. The duo also shows up during the laser tag fight, but their arrival causes the other students to flee in response, showing they have enough skill to be feared by Miyagi-Do. However, the Season 5 final fight has both Big Red and Edwin be on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle, Big Red getting taken down by Stingray and Edwin briefly knocked out by Hawk.
• Instant Web Hit: In-universe, many of the students' actions become this over the course of Season 1, the most significant one being Miguel's cafeteria fight with Kyler and his gang in Episode 5, which provided the dojo the advertising it needed to attract more students.
• Karma Houdini:
  • In Season 2, the other students who are briefly seen helping Hawk to trash the Miyagi-Do dojo don't get their comeuppance like the latter did (Mitch being one of them). In fact, the show treats it as though Hawk was the only one who did the whole thing.
  • At the end of Season 5, while Silver is finally arrested for all of his crimes and the dojo itself is shut down when all of the students quit, all of the students get off scot free for the numerous criminal actions they participated in during their time as members of Cobra Kai. Kyler even has the audacity to try to make himself out to be a hero who saved everyone from Cobra Kai even though he had absolutely no problems with the dojo's creed and only quit when he and the others learned Silver fixed the All Valley Tournament in their favor.
• Kick the Dog: The Cobra Kai dojo as a whole when they convince Hawk to break Demetri's arm. Then, Tory and the other Cobra Kai loyalists invade the LaRusso house and assault Sam, Miguel and all of the Miyagi-Do and former Cobra Kai students as they’re hanging out.
• Logical Weakness:
  • It's subtle, but because the Cobra Kai style focuses so much on using speed, power, and ferocity to overwhelm an opponent, it's shown that their students can exhaust themselves when fighting someone with strong defensive skills or are often unable to mount a good defense when faced with an enemy who possesses superior offensive skills (in fact, Kreese' only two students who are shown to have a good defense are Robby, who was formerly part of Miyagi-Do, and Tory, who learned the most from him).
  • Because the philosophy encourages tapping into one's anger to fuel the Attack! Attack! Attack! style, it often leads to the students' technique becoming sloppy when they let their emotions get the best of them.
  • Their "survival of the fittest" mentality means that they quick to turn on or abandon one another, despite having a few genuine Villainous Friendships.
  • Even the above mentality begins to work against them as it becomes more like a cult belief that anyone questioning their system is to be attacked. Even though Cobra Kai in the Season 5 final fight is almost all Mooks with their best fighters being Kenny, Kyler and Devon (who defects anyway after seeing how cruel Kim Da-Eun really is), they still attack Tory who is undeniably Cobra Kai's best current fighter because she wants to expose Silver as a fraud.
• Mirroring Factions:
  • Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do are this to each other throughout Season 2, with everyone having a direct counterpart on the other team (except Stingray).
    • Miguel and Robby are both The Ace of their respective dojos, who have a romantic relationship with Sam and are Foils through their relationships with Johnny, with Miguel being his surrogate son and seeing him as a positive father-figure, while Robby is his biological son but has a very poor relationship with him.
    • Aisha and Tory are both Foils to different aspects of Sam's personality. Aisha represents who Sam could be if she had embraced her Closet Geek side instead of rejecting it, while Tory is more of an Evil Counterpart who takes Sam's hot-headedness up to eleven and resents her privileged lifestyle, having grown up in a poorer family. The three also form a Freudian Trio, with Tory as the Id, Sam as the Ego and Aisha as the Superego.
    • Hawk and Demetri were both previously nerds who were bullied at school. While Demetri was generally accepting of his lot in life and happy with the few friends he had, Eli completely rejects his nerdy interests and cultivates his "Hawk" persona to bury his past as a victim. They also represent their dojos mantras taken to a logical extreme, with Hawk being completely merciless and aggressive while Demetri is almost purely defensive.
    • Mitch and Chris are both The Big Guy and have a We Used to Be Friends dynamic.
    • Bert and Nathaniel are the smallest members of their respective dojos. Bert is a Nice Guy and a Butt-Monkey who serves as something of a Token Good Teammate to Cobra Kai, while Nathaniel is very aggressive and a Token Evil Teammate to Miyagi-Do.
  • Anthony and Kenny, who both joined their respective dojos due to being bullied by the other. Anthony bullied Kenny due to peer pressure, eventually causing Kenny to become a vicious bully himself to Anthony in retaliation. They also share a close relationship with Robby Keene by being his Morality Pet; Kenny was Robby's protégé while the latter was in Cobra Kai and his brutal beatdown of Anthony was Robby's reason for leaving the dojo and rejoining Miyagi-Do. Robby then became a mentor to Anthony, having always been fond of him.
  • In Season 4, as Johnny and Daniel are having huge difficulties adapting to and embracing each others' training styles and philosophies, Terry Silver and John Kreese are having differences founded in the lessons they've learned (or not learned) from the events in the 80s. Ultimately, while Johnny and Daniel's differences prove at first irreconcilable, Kreese and Silver successfully come to an accord—which is then subverted at the end of the season when Silver has Kreese arrested, but Johnny and Daniel come to an accord.
  • In general, their combat philosophies are completely opposed as well, with Miyagi-Do, especially as taught by Daniel, being a primarily defensive style designed to use an opponent's strengths against them, and Cobra Kai being almost entirely offensive and designed to batter down and take advantage of an opponent's weaknesses.
• Motive Decay: At the start of Season 3, they justify their continued antagonism of Miyagi-Do after the school brawl as being revenge for Miguel's injuries, despite the fact that Miguel himself would not approve of this and Robby, the actual culprit, is already in juvie. It becomes very clear to Miguel himself that the Cobra Kais are just using him as an excuse to settle their own personal grudges with members of Miyagi-Do, and eventually the motive loses all validity when Miguel himself gets added to their list of enemies for joining Johnny's new Eagle Fang dojo and Robby, the person who put him in the hospital in the first place, is allowed to join Cobra Kai. By the end of the finale, even Hawk has to accept that Cobra Kai's only real motivation for their actions is For the Evulz and Kreese's desire for revenge against Daniel LaRusso, and defects to the Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang alliance.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: By the time Kreese takes over, Cobra Kai starts to draw parallels to the Nazis. While they've always been Red and Black and Evil All Over and they aren't deliberately persecuting people of different races or religions (though they aren't a bastion of tolerance, either), Kreese is a Politically Incorrect Villain who believes that Might Makes Right, the "strong" should surpass the "weak", and orders his students to attack and harm anyone he believes is inferior.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: By the end of Season 3, Johnny, Miguel, Hawk, Aisha, Stingray, Mitch, Bert, and just about everyone else who was part of the dojo under Johnny's solo reign has left Cobra Kai, leaving it to be run by Kreese with delinquents like Tory, Kyler, and Robby under his thumb as a true Thug Dojo with no redeeming qualities.
• Opinion Override: At the end of Season 2, Hawk, Tory, Mitch, Stingray, and several others decide to abandon Johnny for Kreese, considering Miguel's injuries in the school brawl to be Johnny's fault. Miguel, on the other hand, doesn't blame Johnny for what happened to him at all. They also take it upon themselves to get revenge on Miyagi-Do for Miguel's injuries by doing things like attacking Nate, stealing the money Miyagi-Do raised to pay for Miguel's surgery with their car wash and breaking Demetri's arm, despite the fact that Miguel holds no animosity against Miyagi-Do either. Miguel calls out both Hawk and Tory for this when he gets out of the hospital.
• Order Reborn: After the events of The Karate Kid Part III, the Cobra Kai dojo was banned from the All Valley Tournament and, presumably, collapsed due to its reputation as a Thug Dojo. Johnny decides to start it up again to teach Miguel how to stand up for himself and Miguel's fight against Kyler and his gang inspires a new generation to want to learn how to do the same. By the end of the first season, they've become strong enough to win the All Valley Tournament again.
• The Psycho Rangers: Very much established in Season 4 with their core fighters.
  • The Big Bad: Or rather the Big Bad Wannabe for John Kreese, being the original sensei of Cobra Kai by the start of Season 4, and uses his past status as Silver's captain to assert himself as the dojo's supreme commander. Which bites him in the ass when Silver betrays him in the season finale.
  • The Dragon: Or rather the Dragon-in-Chief for Terry Silver, being Kreese's co-sensei who possess greater skill, far more resources (given his wealth and status), and a much more pragmatic approach against the Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang alliance. However, Kreese considers him as a subordinate, given his previous status as Kreese's lieutenant which Silver takes it to personal offense, and later becomes The Starscream by betraying Kreese via framing.
  • The Evil Genius: Robby Keene, being a Combat Pragmatist who teaches the class the Miyagi-Do moves he previously learned to Cobra Kai's advantage, as well as successfully recruiting Kenny Payne to the class and utilizing clever tactics on retaliating against the Miyagi-Do & Eagle Fang alliance, such as leading a shaving on Hawk's mohawk, and undermining Miguel's confidence by using Johnny's insecure relationship with him. He's also possibly the only Cobra Kai that doesn't completely buy into Kreese and Silver's teachings, training in the dojo as a means to his end.
  • The Brute: Kyler Park, being the dojo's resident Sadist and dumb muscle who mainly uses athleticism and intimidation as his skill set.
  • The Sixth Ranger: Kenny Payne and Piper Elswith, being two of the newest core members of the dojos. Kenny in particular being the dojo's Tag Along Kid (given his status as the dojo's youngest member, as well as his history as a bullying victim), and Piper being the newest core recruit and second to Tory when it comes to female fighters.
• Quality over Quantity: In Season 5, Cobra Kai has more students than ever before but despite having very promising potentials like Kenny and Devon and brutish thugs like Kyler, Big Red and Edwin, most (and by the final episode of Season 5, all) of the Dojo’s best fighters have defected and teamed up. This means that the Miyagi-Fang alliance along with Tory are able to put up a good fight against the Cobra Kai students despite the latter having almost 3 times their numbers.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits:
  • Almost everyone who showed up at the dojo following the lunchroom episode (see Instant Web Hit) cited a lack of resources to deal with the rampant bullying epidemic in the area. They were of all sizes (between small Bert and heavyset Aisha), conditions (Eli's cleft palate), and backgrounds, all looking for nothing more than to be able to fight back. Not exactly what Johnny was expecting, but he rolls with it and turns them into formidable fighters.
  • Viciously subverted come Season 3, when Kreese turns Cobra Kai back into the exact (actually worse, given students like Tory and Kyler are far more cruel and sadistic than Johnny's gang was in the 80s) kind of Thug Dojo it was during his original ownership, and kicks out students he deems too weak or ineffectual. Most of the people kicked out are those who fit firmly into the 'misfits' category—such as Mitch and Bert—which is only pushed home when he brings in thugs like Kyler who were the original reason those kids joined.
• Reconstruction: In-universe attempt. Even before he understood how inherently flawed Cobra Kai was, Johnny had always tried to focus on and exemplify the few virtuous aspects of its philosophy: confidence, taking initiative, inner strength, giving a full effort, and perseverance. Unfortunately, Kreese undermines all his attempts until Johnny loses his dojo to him.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang, the former to a greater extent.
• Redemption Promotion: This was Johnny's original intent for its Order Reborn, claiming that unlike Kreese's (and Silver's) nefarious ways Johnny plans to make his Cobra Kai more welcoming and a sanctuary for outcasts. Unfortunately, the dojo returns to its Thug Dojo roots (arguably even worse) when Kreese retakes it.
• Rival Dojos: With Miyagi-Do Dojo in Season 2, of course. Season 3 adds Johnny's new dojo Eagle Fang to their enemies list before that dojo and Miyagi-do combine forces.
• Rule of Two: Throughout the series, the lone Cobra Kai sensei eventually gains a co-sensei, and just like the Sith, it's always a race to see which one will stab their partner in the back first.
  • In Season 2, Johnny reluctantly accepts Kreese back into Cobra Kai under the mistaken belief that Kreese has changed his ways. Kreese repays him by stealing his students and his dojo lease in the Season 2 finale after the school brawl.
  • Kreese recruits Silver to counter Johnny and Daniel's alliance in Season 4. Silver then pulls a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal on Kreese after the latter pokes his Trauma Button one too many times, and has him framed for assault and arrested so he can take over Cobra Kai for himself.
  • Averted in Season 5, as Silver employs many new senseis, including Kim Da-Eun and the Fist, to help run the expanded Cobra Kai franchise.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Several of the dojo’s fighters decide to quit after the house fight in season 3, with Doug Rickenberger and Mikey as the most notable.
• The Spartan Way: They train with a strong soldier/military mentality; Kreese explicitly sees his students as an army or a regiment. Kim Da-Eun takes this trope to its purest archaic form, indoctrining students to fight as if each one was life-or-death and brutally punish students for any transgression^note For reference, Kreese will usually just make a student do sixty knuckle push-ups; Kim will make a student punch through solid stone.
• The Team:
  • They come close to being a Five-Man Band in Season 1 and the first half of Season 2. Johnny is The Leader, as the dojo's sensei who guides their combat philosophy and recruitment strategy. Miguel is The Lancer, as Johnny's best student and idealistic foil who contrasts his Disco Dan tendencies by being more in touch with modern society. Hawk is The Big Guy, as the most aggressive fighter. Aisha plays the dual role of The Smart Guy and The Heart, planning the canyon party and helping film their new commercial while also acting as emotional support to Miguel in his relationship with Sam. Bert is the Tagalong Kid, a Butt-Monkey who loses every fight and mostly exists for comic relief.
  • Season 2 adds Tory as a subversion of The Heart. She's Miguel's new Love Interest and tries to help him get over his breakup with Sam, but she's also an Ax-Crazy Clingy Jealous Girl, so it's no surprise that the dojo starts to go down a darker path with her as its new emotional center. It also adds Mitch as a second Big Guy, Raymond/Stingray as comic relief and Kreese as the Evil Mentor.
  • Kreese's Cobra Kai form an evil variation towards the end of Season 3, as the collective Evil Counterpart to Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang. Kreese is the Big Bad, as the show's main villain who directly opposes Johnny and Daniel. Robby is The Dragon after he becomes Kreese's new star pupil. Kyler is The Brute, as a vicious Sadist and Dumb Muscle. Hawk before his Heel–Face Turn becomes The Evil Genius after letting go of his Leeroy Jenkins mindset and becoming a Manipulative Bastard, while Tory is a downright ruthless Dark Action Girl with a manipulative Lady Macbeth streak.
• Team Title: The Distant Sequel TV series of The Karate Kid films is named after them.
• Theseus' Ship Paradox: An organizational case; by the end of Season 3, all the original members of Johnny's reborn Cobra Kai (Miguel, Hawk, Mitch, Bert) have gone with Johnny to Eagle Fang. All the remaining members of Cobra Kai (with the exception of Dieter, Edwin and Mikey. However, Mikey ends up leaving off-screen between the end of Season 3 and the start of Season 4) are people who were brought in after Kreese had joined (Tory) or taken over (Kyler, Robby, etc.), making but nothing like the original Ragtag Group Of Misfits it started. Of course, Cobra Kai was originally Kreese's brainchild - Johnny simply took the name and creed - so there's a fair case to be made the trope has been done twice with the same dojo.
• Thug Dojo: The Cobra Kai style emphasizes extreme aggression and heavy offense, in contrast to the more defensive Miyagi-do. In a deconstruction, Johnny turns his students into bullies by accident, only wanting to give them the courage to stand up to their tormentors. Once he realizes what he did, he takes active steps to remedy this error. Unfortunately, Kreese promptly undermines everything he does and goes even further by actively recruiting bullies and thugs to take the places of Johnny's original students.
• Training from Hell: In stark contrast to Miyagi-do Cobra Kai's training methods are direct and brutal but also honest and purposeful. Johnny may work his students to the bone but he always makes sure they know exactly why they're doing that particular exercise and how it'll benefit them. Students who tough out the Cobra's conditioning find that the results more than justify all the suffering.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • One of the dojo's biggest redeeming traits, even after He Who Fights Monsters sets in, is that the members of Cobra Kai are genuine friends to one another. Johnny often acts like a Drill Sergeant Nasty, but he cares about the kids he teaches and has enough redeeming traits that his students clearly look up to him. The top students still regularly hang out with Demetri despite him quitting Cobra Kai. All the students, including the unnamed members of the dojo, attend Aisha's canyon party to help her get back at Yasmine. Also, during the All Valley Under 18 Karate Tournament, all of them cheer on their teammates, even Bert, the dojo's smallest and weakest member.
  • This is complicated in the second season when Hawk begins to resent Demetri for not fully committing to Cobra Kai, which culminates in Demetri writing a bad Yelp review of the dojo after he is slugged by Kreese and then joining Miyagi-Do, causing the two to become sworn enemies. Soon thereafter, even more students defect from Cobra Kai to Miyagi-Do, leading to the disintegration of other friendships (such as that between Chris and Mitch). Later, the absence of some Cobra Kai members such as Aisha after Kreese takes over the dojo completely may indicate that the group is fracturing even further.
  • It becomes even more complicated in the third season. Without Johnny around, Kreese, dissatisfied with the students' performance in the school brawl, decides to go even further in weeding out the weaker students and actively recruiting more athletic ones. The dismissal of loyalists like Bert and Mitch and adversaries such as Kyler and Robby being welcomed into the fold causes several more of the students, including Miguel and Hawk, to leave. The group's membership now is barely reminiscent of how it was in the first season.
  • Season 4 shows that while not as strong as before, the new crew is still amiable between each other, going to movies and chatting after sessions. Kyler, despite being the least sympathetic member, is often inviting the others for parties at his house or to buy shoes.
• Villainous Valor: Cobra Kai has many problems, but cowardice is not one of them. As a group, they will never back down from a fight or the harshest lessons. However it's Subverted in Deleted Scene in Season 3. After the group launches their attack on the Eagle Fang and Miyagi-do students at the LaRusso house, the Cobra Kai students, led by Kyler, are quick to flee the fight after the tide turns against them.

Founders

In General

Silver: Say it! Cobra Kai...
Kreese: ...Never dies.

Silver: What about Vietnam, huh? How many times did you save my ass?
Kreese: I don't know. I lost count.

Two Vietnam war veterans and masters of Tang Soo Do taught by Captain George Turner and Master Kim Sun-Yung who established Cobra Kai in the 70s (with Kreese as the main sensei and Silver as the financial backer) upon their return to the United States. Unfortunately, with their PTSD combined with adopting Kim Sun-Yung's controversial "no honor, no mercy" style, both men become ruthless individuals who poison their students to become merciless bullies (Johnny Lawrence, Eli Moskowitz, Tory Nichols, Kenny Payne being a few prime examples). They become the biggest threats to Daniel LaRusso and Miyagi-Do through the entire The Karate Kid franchise as a whole.

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• Arch-Enemy: They've certainly made plenty of enemies throughout the entire The Karate Kid franchise (Even to each other!), but none more signifiant than Mr. Miyagi, Daniel, and eventually Johnny. Mr. Miyagi clearly comes off as a Good Counterpart to Kreese and Silver, being the good pacifist mentor to Daniel contrasting both men's no-mercy mindset to Daniel's direct Cobra Kai rivals, Johnny (for Kreese) and Mike (for Silver). Daniel's biggest trauma from his bullying in The Karate Kid film series leading up to Cobra Kai can be traced back to them — especially Silver, given he directly tortured Daniel with his "training"; Cobra Kai amps it up with Daniel clashing with them again and facing both evil mentors off in Season 3 (for Kreese) and Season 5 (for Silver). For Johnny, it's more prevalent with Kreese given that he was Johnny's Evil Mentor and the one arguably responsible for his downfall, but Johnny's conflict with Silver shouldn't also be overlooked (Silver resenting Johnny for getting in the way of his grand plan in spreading Cobra Kai worldwide dates way before the events of The Karate Kid (1984)).
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Of the entire The Karate Kid franchise as a whole, being the ones who founded the dojo causing all problems for Daniel, Mr. Miyagi, and eventually Johnny and the next generation of karate students. This eventually becomes a Big Bad Ensemble when Silver betrays Kreese to the police and takes over Cobra Kai to himself.
• Big Bad Friend: Become this to each other after Silver betrays Kreese during the Season 4 finale. Though the trope fits more with Silver in Season 5, given that he is arguably the much bigger threat unlike Kreese, who is more-or-less an anti-hero reluctantly helping Johnny and Daniel take down his former war buddy by revealing his grand plan.
• The Big Guy: Both men are over 6 ft. tall and well-built, even at an advanced age. Silver in particular, arguably being the tallest character in the series at 6' 5''.
• Evil Mentor: Well duh, they teach a ruthless, controversial form of karate that indoctrinates students into vicious brutes. Johnny, Daniel, and Mike can attend to that in the '80s; Hawk, Tory, and Kenny can attend to that in the present-day.
• Evil Old Folks: While they were already ruthless individuals throughout their younger years in The Karate Kid films, the Cobra Kai TV series continues to present them as sociopathic nightmares in the San Fernando Valley even as they age considerably.
• Faux Affably Evil: Both of them, considering their indoctrination of the younger generation to adopting their "No Mercy" mindset. It's more prevalent with Silver, certainly helps that he is a wealthy businessman with a high level of influence all over the San Fernando Valley.
• Foil: Partners in crime, co-senseis and old war buddies they may be, but John Kreese and Terry Silver have very different lives and more importantly, approaches to running Cobra Kai. Also doubles as Contrasting Sequel Antagonist.
  • Kreese is implied to have come from a less well-off background, having to work as a busboy after his mother's suicide, while Silver comes from a wealthy family, given his talk about taking over his father's business and the fact that he is very rich in the present day.
  • Kreese's only mentioned relative is his mother, whom it is implied he remembers fondly. Silver's only mentioned relative is his father, with whom he doesn't appear to have a good relationship, given that the man casually threatened to cut him off financially if he didn't come home to help run his business.
  • Kreese leaves his girlfriend to go to war, and is devastated by her death, which is a painful memory for him decades later. Silver abandons his girlfriend for a petty karate rivalry, and pretty much forgets about her the moment she's out of the picture, ignoring the many text messages she sends asking where he's gone.
  • Kreese generally remains outwardly calm, even when acting with murderous intent. Silver becomes almost cartoonishly excited and animated when the opportunity for a fight arises.
  • Kreese is a poor long-term strategist, always preferring to strike back immediately at his opponents for even the most petty of slights with no regard for the consequences of his actions. Silver favors Pragmatic Villainy, encouraging his students to focus on the All Valley as it's the only fight that truly matters.
  • Kreese believes fighters are born, not made, favoring "natural athletes" like Robby (because of his relationship to Johnny), Tory (because of her rough upbringing) and Kyler (because of his wrestling training). Silver thinks a champion can come from anywhere, and supports unorthodox fighters like Kenny, Piper, and Devon (he also is more than willing to welcome back Mitch and Stingray despite Kreese kicking both of them out). This fits with their respective backgrounds, as Kreese is an accomplished brawler long before receiving any formal training, telling David he's "been fighting [his] whole life", while Silver doesn't appear to have been much of a fighter before or even during his time in Vietnam, being mocked by his squadmates and nicknamed "Twig" due to his lack of muscles.
    • It's even displayed in their favorite student, champion, Morality Pet, and Junior Counterpart (Kreese to Tory, Silver to Kenny). Tory was a natural-born kickboxer coming from a poor family (with a sickly mother as well) who's been "fighting for her life," much like Kreese; she instantly displays her worth to Kreese upon joining the dojo. Kenny on the other hand was a Cowardly Lion and far from a natural fighter, coming from a well-off family and is mocked by his peers, much like Silver; he starts out as absolutely pathetic before evolving into a more ruthless and pragmatic fighter.
  • Kreese favors a strong core team and spends more time cutting students than recruiting them. Silver wants Cobra Kai to be as expansive as possible, spending huge amounts of money on merchandise to appeal to the mainstream and making plans to open dojos all over the Valley.
• Nature Versus Nurture: Despite their friendship, Kreese and Silver adhere to the complete opposite ends of this spectrum when it comes to running Cobra Kai. Kreese is a Social Darwinist that is only interested in training people with an established "killer instinct", whereas Silver believes anyone can be a great fighter and will actually take the time to hone potential, no matter how meager it seems.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: It's no surprise that both men are racists to a certain degree, given their tendency to use the derogatory "slope" nickname to Mr. Miyagi, not to mention Kreese using gendered insults on Daniel and Silver using racially-insensitive Funny Bruce Lee Noises in his bout against Miyagi himself. While Kreese doesn't shy way from openly expressing disdain on today's society becoming more progressive (not to mention clearly not caring about misnaming Miguel's ethnicity or getting into conflict with Latinos), Silver has shown to be more open-minded given his desire to spread Cobra Kai without any limitations and his somewhat-obsession of Asian culture (though whether or not this is an act is up for debate).
• Quantity vs. Quality: Kreese is the 'Quality' to Silver's 'Quantity'; Kreese focuses on a strong core team, and improving the already good skills of current fighters, but Silver wants the dojo to be as expansive as possible, and made plans to expand the dojo into a franchise.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Zigzagged throughout the entire franchise.
  • When it comes to their approach on karate, Silver is definitely the Blue Oni to Kreese's Red. Kreese is more confrontational and uses more of his fists than his brains. Silver on the other hand is more methodical and relies on Combat Pragmatism first before using fists. Their clashing approaches are even displayed when they become co-senseis in the 21st-century Cobra Kai throughout Season 4.
  • However when it comes to personality, Silver definitely starts out as the Red Oni to Kreese's Blue in The Karate Kid Part III, mainly because the former was on cocaine. Silver is boisterous and comes off as a cartoon character with his Large Ham mannerisms; Kreese is a bit more reserved even though he has his moments. At the start of Cobra Kai though, Silver becomes the more peaceful Blue Oni to Kreese's vicious Red due to decades-long of therapy that shedded Silver's PTSD mindset. However as Silver's sanity begins to slip, he eventually becomes the Red Oni to Kreese's Blue as he goes all the way to abuse Johnny Lawrence, bribe the ref in the tournament for an advantage behind everyone's back, and encourage Tory to viciously abuse Sam under the benefit of Silver's "insurance policy." The first and third situations both of which Kreese's restrains him for.
  • Their approach to establishing their student body in the dojo also fits this trope too well. Kreese is definitely the Blue Oni, preferring one dojo of a quality line-up of already established fighters, or at least those who are able to establish a "killer instinct" — otherwise he'll kick them out. Silver on the other had is the Red Oni, preferring a franchise of dojos with a large quantity of fighters who are more than willing to learn the art, no matter what background they're a part of.
• Still Got It: Even at an advanced age (and who knows how many years away from practice), they're still dangerous practitioners of Tang Soo Do who are more than capable of putting up a good fight. Especially Silver, who was able to pull out a clean win against Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso (something Kreese can't even do), and even give Chozen Toguchi one heck of a battle.
• Tragic Villain: Sure, they're ruthless individuals who are a menace to the San Fernando Valley. But at the end of the day, they're nothing more than Vietnam War veterans struggling with trauma (combined with their indoctrination of the "No Mercy" mindset from Captain Turner and Kim Sun-Yung) as they move back to the states. For Kreese, he was (of all people) another victim of bullying who lost his mentally ill mother to suicide, and when overseas in the Vietnam War, loses his girlfriend in a car accident, one of his comrades (Ponytail) at the hands of the Viet Cong, and turns completely ruthless when Captain Turner betrays him in a fight to the death. For Silver, he started out as a meek, skinny kid who completely fucked up a mission that led to the death of Ponytail, and would've died in his battle against Captain Turner had Kreese not stepped in to save him. It didn't help that upon returning to the states, he was under pressure from his father to inherit the company and later became a cocaine addict to suppress his PTSD.

John Kreese

See Kreese's character page here.

Terry Silver

See Silver’s character page here.

The Fist

In General

From left to right: Min-Jun, Morozov, Odell, Kim Da-Eun, Suk-Chin, Bacaria and Hyan-Woo.

A group of elite senseis, trained in Kim Sun-Yung's "The Way of the Fist" style of Tang Soo Do and lead by his granddaughter, Kim Da-Eun, recruited by Terry Silver as part of Cobra Kai's expansion.

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• All There in the Script: The group is never named in the series, but has been referred to as "The Fist" by the show's creators.
• Elite Mooks: The Fist are a lot tougher than the average sensei, as demonstrated by the fact that just one of them is able to give Johnny and Chozen combined a decent fight after Chozen had defeated six of the Valley's top senseis alone in a Curb-Stomp Battle. In the Season 5 finale, it takes the combined efforts of Johnny, Chozen and Mike Barnes to take them down, along with an epic Heroic Second Wind from Johnny when they have him dead to rights.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: They're a pretty diverse bunch, lead by a woman and featuring Asian, white and black members, although their leader sneers at the idea of American students being capable of learning Master Kim's Tang Soo Do.
• Flat Character: Excluding Kim Da-Eun, there's little to be said about them outside of the fact that they all trained under Kim Sun-Yung and his Way of the Fist teachings.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Johnny takes the fight to the entire group by himself when he (along with Chozen and Barnes) storms Silver's residence. He does well against them at first, but they quickly overwhelm and beat him into a bloody mess.
• Satellite Character: Not much can be said about them, collectively and individually, outside of their role as a group of elite senseis scouted and brought on board by Kim Da-Eun as part of Cobra Kai's expansion.
• Villainous Legacy: They carry on the legacy of Kim Sun-Yung, lead by his granddaughter, Kim Da-Eun, and their mission is to continue that legacy for the next generation.
• Visionary Villain: They don't fight for money, only to spread the controversial teachings of notorious Tang Soo Do Master Kim Sun-Yung throughout the world.
• Would Hurt a Child: They have no problem with using Corporal Punishment on children in their lessons, including forcing Tory to break her own hand by punching through solid stone.

Kim Da-Eun

Kim Da-Eun

"We do not accept defeat. We do not accept surrender. Fight as if today is your last!"

Played By: Alicia Hannah-Kim (present day), Sarah Anne (1980 flashback)

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"The Way of the First means you do not hold back. You do not go easy. Or is this what it means in America to become a champion?"

A master sensei of "The Way of the Fist" and the granddaughter of Kim Sun-Yung who becomes Terry Silver's business partner as part of Cobra Kai's expansion. She easily rivals Silver himself in her ruthlessness, sadism, and fighting skill.

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• Allegorical Character: She serves as a societal critique for tiger parenting, an authoritarian form of strict parenting to ensure the success of their children, which is common in East Asian countries. Being raised by a ruthless Tang Soo Do teacher, Da Eun also inherits all of her grandfather's ruthlessness. Her treatment of Tory, a Westerner, borders on from emotional and psychological abuse to full-on maltreatment.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Very aloof, very rigid, very cruel, and very, very strict.
• Arch-Enemy: Replaces Sam as this to Tory, showing that the rivalry between the two girls is nothing compared to what Kim puts Tory through. Kim is almost immediately skeptical of Tory's commitment and ability to represent the dojo, challenging her in ways that make could make Kreese and Silver blush and looking to replace her with Devon. Kim also gets to Tory far more than Sam ever did, both emotionally and physically, and is able to keep her at bay through intimidation. To drive it home, the teacher-student relationship between the two mirrors that of Silver and Daniel, as Silver also physically and emotionally tormented Daniel under the guise of teaching him, all the while grooming another young student that he felt was superior to replace him as champion (Mike Barnes).
• Asian Rudeness: A South Korean sensei who doesn't hide her rigidness, ruthlessness, or intolerance for anything that contradicts her agenda.
• Attack the Injury: In the battle of the Cobra Kai Dojo, she joins the fight between the teens, specifically targeting Tory and inflicting further pain by stepping on Tory’s fist, which she technically broke in the first place. This is especially reprehensible considering she has no need to do so, being a far superior fighter and an adult while Tory is a kid.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Like Chozen, Kim was raised with a traditionally Eastern view of honor and her teaching methods are reminiscent of the unforgiving, virtually Spartan-like training of ancient fighting disciplines.
• Braids of Action: Kim wears her hair in a high braid that reaches down to her waist and even uses it as a weapon by whipping Sam in the face with it in the fight at the Cobra Kai dojo.
• Corporal Punishment: In one exercise, she hits Tory's legs with a stick for being too "soft" on Devon. Later, after Tory has gone AWOL during Cobra Kai's Sekai Taikai tryout (allowing Miyagi-Do to win the female match against the weaker Devon), she forces Tory to assault a stone dummy until the latter's hand is wrecked.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Kim wholeheartedly carries on her grandfather's ruthless martial arts teachings.
• Dark Action Girl: A female master of martial arts training under a notorious dojo. She even helps bring Cobra Kai to a new level of ruthlessness.
• Distaff Counterpart: She is this to both Kreese and Silver in terms of being Tang Soo Do teachers. Kim is just as cruel, callous, and rigid as Kreese, but her tormenting of Tory mirrors that of how Silver did towards Daniel in The Karate Kid Part III. The only main difference is that unlike Kreese and/or Silver, Da-Eun has little to no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
• The Dragon: She is Silver's right-hand woman, leading a group of senseis under his regime, and is Cobra Kai's second most formidable fighter after Silver himself.
• Dragon Lady: A Sexpot with traits of Rosa Klebb that checks all the boxes: cruel, domineering, rigid, and sadistic yet sophisticated for a South Korean Tang Soo Do master.
• The Dreaded: Being the granddaughter of a notorious Tang Soo Do master, she espouses the teachings of her grandfather's ways ruthlessly. Tory has every reason to be fearful of her for what she put her through.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • She is this for Chozen, as they both teach aggressive martial arts passed down by their families (though "The Way of the Fist" is inherently aggressive whereas Sato and Chozen apply a more forceful approach to the otherwise pacifistic Miyagi-Do), are the Asian contemporaries to their respective American business associates, possess a traditional view of honor, and regularly express a desire to escalate things beyond what those associates originally had in mind (though Kim's excesses delight Silver, while Chozen's ideas usually prompt a What the Hell, Hero? reaction from Daniel). Both are also implied to be victims of "tiger-parenting", which likely contributed to their ruthless personalities (even after Chozen overcame his he still maintained an austere approach to training students). Their respective treatment of Sam and Tory is a strong display of the contrast between them; Chozen is a demanding yet well-meaning mentor to Sam and even towards Tory in their first interaction together, while Kim is nothing but cruel and abusive towards Tory, whose training borders on slave-driving.
  • To Julie Pierce. Both are Action Girls who were Raised by Grandparents, both of their grandfathers were important figures in their respective dojos' history (Kim Sun-Yung being the man who trained Kreese and Silver's karate master and eventually the two men themselves, Jack Pierce being Mr. Miyagi's first American student).
• Evil Is Petty: During the standoff at the flagship dojo, she spends most of the brawl physically torturing Tory rather than help the rest of the Cobra Kai students actually block the Miyagi-Fangs from their goal. This ultimately became her undoing, which compels Devon to take Tory's side and defect from Cobra Kai. To further rub salt to the wound, the Miyagi-Fangs succeeded uploading Silver's incriminating video. As a result, all of the students are stunned by the truth about Silver's bribery, and the consequent mass exodus of students in the aftermath.
• Evil Mentor: To Tory, at first, before devolving into a straight up Sadist Teacher when she realizes that Tory no longer has her heart into Cobra Kai. Also to Devon, whom she saw as a potential replacement for Tory and, being slightly younger and less experienced, easier to indoctrinate into her grandfather's ruthless philosophy.
• Faux Affably Evil: She's refined, classy, and formal on the surface, but in her heart, she's a sadist whose ruthlessness sometimes gives even Silver pause.
• Glory Seeker: She cares nothing about Silver's wealth, but sides with him out of a desire to spread the legacy of her grandfather's martial art.
  Kim: Your offer is very tempting, but I did not get on the plane for money.
  Silver: 50% is just a number. What I'm offering you is legacy.
• Hate Sink: Sensei Kim exists solely for two reasons: to escalate the ruthlessness and threat of Cobra Kai (in Kreese's absence), and to make Tory's life a living hell all because she does not live up to the Way of The Fist's merciless philosophy. While Kreese and Silver have their own redeeming moments that fleshed out their character arcs (yet allowed them to remain villains), Da-Eun stands out as one of the worst senseis in the series with nothing positive about her and her failure-intolerant mindset, coupled with Corporal Punishment (through physical and emotional abuse) as a means to discipline students which is akin to that of tiger parenting.
• Irrational Hatred: She seems to have it out for Tory from day one, seeing her as an inadequate representative of the Dojo despite clearly being its best fighter. Her contempt only grows more pronounced as she begins putting Tory through harsh tortuous training practices despite already deciding to replace her with Devon.
• It's Personal: Following Tory's absence from the Sekai Taikai tryouts, Kim goes the extra mile to make her suffer for her defiance and non-commitment to Cobra Kai.
• Jerkass: In addition to being a horrible Sadist Teacher and Evil Mentor, Kim is a very rude and unpleasant person. She verbally mocks her students and opponents, shows no patience towards Silver despite him voluntarily offering her 50% of his business, and is hinted to be racist towards all non-Koreans.
• Legacy Character: She’s a sensei of “The Way of the Fist” type karate, just like her grandfather, Kim Sun-Yung.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Rather than help the students corner the Miyagi-Fangs during the dojo brawl, she takes her time trying to injure Tory again until Devon steps in to intervene. The fact that the video of Silver's confession of his bribery is successfully uploaded and immediately went viral didn't help matters either.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: She has no interest in being a part of Silver's rivalry with Daniel LaRusso and Miyagi-Do, seeing it as a distraction to expanding Cobra Kai's footprint and her grandfather's legacy. She calls Silver out on his fixation towards said rivalry multiple times, but he asserts that his rivals are acting out of desperation and bringing it upon themselves for going to great lengths to take down his dojo.
  Kim: I agreed to train your students under the condition that you would pave the way for my family teachings to emerge from the shadows. And yet, your petty rivalry is standing in the way.
  Silver: I have no rivalry. They're beaten. This is a last, desperate gasp of breath.
• Pet the Dog: She's not overtly nice about it, but Kim does take a shine to Devon, possibly due to their commonality as fellow Asians. When Devon loses to Sam during the Sekai Taikai tryouts, Kim assures her that her loss wasn't her fault; it was Tory's because she bailed on the match against Sam and forced Devon to fight in her place. She later exalts Devon's potential to Silver when he doubts a fighter as inexperienced as her could possess the potential to become Cobra Kai's star student, and tries dissuading her from siding with Tory in the final fight.
  • A Season 5 deleted scene expands on this trope a little where Kim even gives Devon a new training regimen after the Sekai Taikai qualifiers to further improve her skills and tap into her potential. Unlike Tory's punishment "training" (read as torture) and Devon being just fine in her next appearance, it is implied that Kim Da-Eun gave Devon more supportive training rather than her usual brutal training methods.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Downplayed given that her actress Alicia Hannah-Kim is average height (165cm) but compared to the other senseis and even her own students such as Tory and Devon, Kim Da-Eun is easily this as she demonstrates extreme skill in the Way of the Fist that she can take on multiple students at once without getting hit. It also does not help that she is consistently seen side by side with Terry Silver throughout Season 5. In fact, if it weren't for Tory and Sam and later, Tory and Devon teaming up to distract Kim Da-Eun in the Season 5 finale fight, it is very likely her appearance would have given Cobra Kai the victory, despite the Miyagi-Fang alliance having all the best students on their side.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Kim is just as driven as Silver to bring global recognition to her grandfather's "Way of the Fist," but she is contemptible to practically any and all non-Koreans. She is heavily skeptical that Silver's "American" students are able to carry the Cobra Kai legacy and she also looks down on Chozen for being from Okinawa, calling his home a "pathetic little island." There are also hints that she favors (or is at least less cynical of) Devon mostly for being a fellow Asian. Played for Laughs in one scene where she assumes the first American male that opposes Cobra Kai to be Daniel LaRusso when it was actually Johnny Lawrence.
• Pragmatic Villainy: When Silver's bribery and cheating in the All-Valley Tournament are revealed to everyone including the Cobra Kai students and they turn against him, she stands aside while Daniel defeats her partner, likely due to having grown fed up with Silver's persistent prioritization of his rivalry with Daniel and wanting to cut her losses.
• Raised by Grandparents: Flashbacks imply that Sun-Yung himself raised her.
• Remember the New Guy?: She is the aforementioned granddaughter of Kim Sun-Yung — the Tang Soo Do master that Silver and Captain Turner mention.
• Sadist Teacher: When it comes to instructing Cobra Kai's students, she excels even Kreese and Silver in her utter callousness. In particular, she outright tortures Tory by forcing her to break her own hand punching through solid stone before targeting that same hand in the Final Battle at the flagship dojo.
• Training from Hell: She's arguably more austere than even Johnny, Kreese, or Silver, enforcing the kind of draconian training of Eastern martial arts schools of ancient days. She herself experienced this growing up, which might explain why she becomes the person she is upon her introduction.
• Villain Ball: In the Season 5 finale, she wastes time torturing Tory by stepping on her injured hand instead of helping the other Cobra Kais Zerg Rush Anthony and prevent him from uploading the video of Silver admitting to cheating at the All Valley, which gives Sam and Devon enough time to help delay her and allows the upload to be completed.
• Villainous Friendship: In a flashback, it is shown that Da-Eun was fond of Kreese when she was a child. When she meets with Silver in the present, she asks about Kreese, and seems disappointed upon learning that he is no longer with Silver. While she never actually encounters Kreese again, these two moments are about the only hints that she would ever view another human being as a friend.
• Would Hurt a Child: She has no problem using every ounce of her strength when fighting Tory, Sam, and Devon during Miyagi-Fang's all-out assault on Silver's dojo.
• You Have Failed Me: Her brutal stone dummy exercise is implied to be a punishment for Tory's desertion during the Sekai Taikai tryout.

Sensei Odell

Sensei Odell

Played By: Tyron Woodley

Appearances: Cobra Kai

One of many senseis recruited by Silver after he usurps and expands Cobra Kai.

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• Fingore: Loses a pinkie in the fight at Silver's when a fellow CK sensei accidentally cuts it off on an attack meant for Johnny.
• Scary Black Man: He's a large black man who Silver uses mainly as a means to intimidate enemies and students alike. He can back it up too as he's able to take on both Kenny and Kyler. Being played by MMA talent Tyron Woodley certainly helps.
• The Unfettered: He’s one of the Senseis who watches Silver and Kim force Tory, a teenage girl to break her hand. He even stops her from leaving.

Sensei Min-Jun

Sensei Min-Jun

Played By: Dante Ha

Appearances: Cobra Kai

• Katanas Are Just Better: Pulls a Katanna on Johnny in the fight at Silver’s house. Unfortunately he misses and ends up cutting off Odell’s pinky.
• Made of Iron: Min-Jun arguably suffers the most hits by Johnny during the fight at Silver's estate which includes getting thrown into a table, multiple punches to the face and a painful body slam (not even counting the beatdown received by Mike Barnes at the start). Even a Heroic Second Wind was not enough to take him down as he still got up from the beating and managed to subdue Johnny and would have killed him with Hyan-Woo if it weren't for a recovered Mike Barnes showing up at the end to take them down.

Sensei Bacaria

Sensei Bacaria

Played By: Craig Henningsen

Appearances: Cobra Kai

• Back Stab: Has no qualms about hitting Mike Barnes from behind when the latter is already fighting Sensei Min-Jun. This takes Mike out of the battle for most of the fight at Silver’s house.
• The Unfettered: He’s one of the Senseis who watches Silver and Kim force Tory, a teenage girl to break her hand. He even stops her from leaving.

Sensei Hyan-Woo

"I'm sorry sir, the adult classes are on Wednesday."

Played By: Jake Huang

Appearances: Cobra Kai

• Ascended Extra: Out-of-universe example. Hyan-Woo's actor Jake Huang played a Cobra Kai extra in Season 4 named Jake who is most notable for holding down Hawk with Kyler and Paul so that Robby can shave his mohawk, his impressive weapons display at the All-Valley and using Miyagi-Do's own techniques against them in the All-Valley. In Season 5, Jake Huang plays Hyan-Woo who is arguably the most notable member of The Fist (aside from Kim Dau-Eun), having the most spoken lines, assisting with the training at Topanga Karate, showing off his kata in Silver's attempt to impress the Sekai Taikai representatives and most notably, fighting Johnny and Chozen at the same time.
• Badass Boast: Claims to Johnny that he couldn’t beat him. And he backs it up when he holds his own against both Johnny and Chozen.
• Combat Pragmatist: He has no problem pulling a katana against a helpless, unarmed Johnny, who is restrained by Min-Jun so Hyan-Woo can deliver the finishing blow. Unfortunately for him and Min-Jun, Barnes recovers and arrives in the nick of time to knock them both out.
• Elite Mook: This also applies to the other senseis of “The Fist” as well, but him being shown to make Johnny and Chozen work to some degree (in stark contrast to Chozen easily taking on multiple senseis from the valley) is enough to give all the characters (and the audience) the impression that they are NOT to be taken lightly as pushovers.
• The Unfettered: He’s one of the Senseis who watches Silver and Kim force Tory, a teenage girl to break her hand. He even stops her from leaving.
• Villainous Valour: Despite an impressive showing, there's a point in his fight with Johnny and Chozen when it's clear he doesn't actually have a chance of beating two of them at once. He just gives them a Death Glare and assumes a fighting stance, fully intent on fighting to the end.

Sensei Suk-Chin

Sensei Suk-Chin

Played By:

Appearances: Cobra Kai

• Eye Patch Of Power: Has an eyepatch and is just as skilled as his fellow Senseis.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Pulls off a spinning body slam against Johnny in the Season 5 finale fight at Silver's estate.

Sensei Morozov

Sensei Morozov

Played By: Stephen Thompson

Appearances: Cobra Kai

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: He completely disappears after the Sekai Taikai tryouts and doesn't show up to fight Johnny and Chozen in Silver's mansion. In real life, the filming of the fight at Silver's estate clashed with Stephen Thompson's match against Belal Muhammad, meaning that he was unable to be present in the scene.

Current Students

Tory Nichols

See Tory's character page here

Kyler Park

See his page

Kenny Payne

Kenny Payne

"I want another shot."

Played By: Dallas Dupree Young

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"Before Cobra Kai, I used to get picked on. Now I'm stronger than I've ever been. I'm never quitting. Because I'm not a quitter."

A new student at West Valley Middle School and the brother of Shawn Payne who joins Cobra Kai after he is bullied by his peers. He develops a mentee-mentor relationship with Robby Keene and later becomes Terry Silver's top male student.

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• Anti-Villain: He's completely detached from the main conflict and simply joined Cobra Kai because he was being bullied at school by Anthony LaRusso and his friends and Cobra Kai happened to be the dojo Robby was currently training at. This trope eventually gets lost by the Season 4 finale where Kenny fully embraces Cobra Kai’s teachings and becomes an outright villain after giving Anthony a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that appalls even Robby.
• Arch-Enemy: Kenny eventually becomes this to Anthony LaRusso. The latter bullies the former relentlessly to gain standing with his peers, which leads to Kenny joining Cobra Kai. But by the time Anthony has a Heel–Face Turn and tries to make peace with Kenny, Kenny himself fully embraces the Cobra Kai creed and becomes the bully to Anthony. Kenny escalates the rivalry significantly in Season 5, with his bullying of Anthony even extending to potentially dangerous and life-threatening actions like giving him a swirly in an unflushed toilet.
• Ax-Crazy: Goes fully into this territory in season 5 under Silver and Kim’s tutelage. Whether it’s the serious, life-threatening retribution he inflicts on Anthony or the dirty tactics he uses in fights with Eli and Robby, Kenny now tries to inflict as much damage on his target as possible.
• Ascended Extra: He plays a larger role in the series starting from Season 5 after debuting in Season 4 as a recurring character.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: A key part of Season 5 is his refusal to realize he's become just the same kind of bully as the kids who picked on him.
• Big Brother Worship: Even after Shawn was sent to juvie, Kenny still looks up to him and seeks his advice.
• Black and Nerdy: His hobbies include playing video games, drawing anime, and cosplaying.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Starts to develop this in Season 5, seeing anyone who aligns with people he hates, even indirectly and even if they'd formerly been his friends, as his enemies and believing everyone on his side, even Kyler who also bullied him, is good.
• Break the Haughty: After getting a bigger ego in Season 5 thanks to Silver and Cobra Kai's indoctrination and his growing skills, he comes crashing back down to Earth HARD after he learns that Silver bribed the judges at the All-Valley and realizes he likely did the same at the Sekai Taikai qualifier (which he did), meaning the victories weren't legitimate. Getting easily beaten by Miguel likely didn't help.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Towards Robby at first after leaving Cobra Kai and made even worse when Kenny catches him coaching Anthony during the Sekai Taikai tryouts. Because of his growing anger and sadism towards Anthony coupled with Silver's indoctrination, Kenny shortsightedly deems Robby a traitor and his enemy, while Robby tries in vain to reason with him. Luckily, learning the truth of Silver's bribery made Kenny return to his senses.
  • More than anyone in Cobra Kai, Kenny saw Silver as a great guy helping him become a better person. He's rocked when he sees the evidence of Silver having bribed judges to let Cobra Kai win and then the man as a raged-up mess trying to attack Daniel with a trophy. Thus, Kenny is the first one to tear off his Cobra Kai jacket and throw it at Silver's feet as it finally sinks in what he let this man turn him into.
• Combat Pragmatist: In "Minefields", Anthony and his friends chase Kenny into the library. In a sequence that Rambo would be proud of, Kenny defeats Anthony's group by switching off the lights and using the darkness and the environment to pick them off one by one. This is later Deconstructed in Season 5 as it's shown that, thanks to Silver's indoctrination, Kenny's attempts to be this have crossed the line from simply being pragmatic to flat out cheating, as he's willing to break any agreed upon competition rules to secure wins for himself and Cobra Kai.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Kenny's quickness serves him well in sparring matches where all he needs to do is land hits on his opponents to score points. However, his lack of strength proves to be a problem in actual street fights where he needs to be able to inflict physical pain on his opponents to win, as shown when he takes on Hawk at the water park. Notably, both his non-sparring fights in Season 5 have him rely on his speed by pretending to give up so that he can give his opponent a swift sucker punch. While learning the "Silver Bullet" technique from Silver helps, the windup and precise aiming the move requires makes it difficult to execute in such a scenario. His attempt to use it on Robby only temporarily stuns him since it missed and Miguel proves to be too fast for the move.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Besides Silver himself, Kenny is the only known fighter (especially among the current generation) to have mastered the dreaded "Silver Bullet" technique, which was used to knock Hawk out of commission and temporarily stun Robby.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In Season 5, Kenny has not only taken to bullying Anthony himself, but he also does it in ways that are not just humiliating to him, but genuinely dangerous and could result in real physical harm. Plus, he's never shown going after any of the other members of Anthony's gang, even though they were just as guilty and never apologized or attempted to make amends like Anthony did. Robby calls him out on this when Kenny expresses disgust that Robby is helping Anthony.
• Et Tu, Brute?: He's NOT happy that Robby quit Cobra Kai to rejoin Miyagi-Do and train Anthony against him in Season 5.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • It should be noted that Kenny only targets and attacks the people who have previously wronged or threatened him and leaves those who haven't done so alone. He doesn't even attack Miguel until he backs up Robby, who Kenny has come to really hate. On that note, Kenny is seen visibly scared whenever the prospect of fighting Miguel arises, knowing that someone who can definitively challenge Robby will not be an opponent he can defeat.
  • See Broken Pedestal above, Kenny is visibly devastated when he finds out the painful truth about Silver's bribery. He came to Cobra Kai to learn karate to fend off his tormentors, then found common ground with Sensei Silver because of their respective upbringings and looked up to him as a father figure. But still like his fellow students, he doesn't like the idea of being made a false champion through bribery.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He thinks that Robby betrayed him by rejoining Miyagi-Do, failing to understand the fact that his own ferocity, ruthlessness, and refusal to listen to Robby's warnings about Silver and Cobra Kai alienated him from the person who was like a brother to him.
• Eviler than Thou: By Season 5, he becomes a far worse bully than Anthony ever was to him, going from Jerkass to straight-up Ax-Crazy, Sadist, and (at one point) even Politically Incorrect Villain status. How is this compared in practice? Anthony relies on public humiliation and cruel pranks, but is most of the time a Peer-Pressured Bully who doesn't fully agree with some of his friends' malicious acts. Kenny on the other hand is more than willing to utilize physical harm towards Anthony, whether it'd be giving him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in the locker room, kicking him into the lazy river, or giving him a swirly in a diarrhea-filled toilet. Kenny's bullying also extends beyond his main victim (Anthony), as shown by his deadly "Silver-Bullet" punch towards Hawk, followed by a Kick the Dog moment. Kenny shows absolutely no remorse for his actions and in fact clearly enjoys inflicting pain on others, and has become far more dangerous than the likes of Kyler and his bullies.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Anger. As a former bullying victim, Kenny has a lot of pent-up anger and not unjustifiably, but it quickly overtakes his entire being and morphs into bullying and sadism, making him even worse than Anthony was to him and lashing out at anyone he feels hurt or let him down, such as Robby, and unable to see what he's become.
  • Arrogance. As he grows in confidence, he equally grows more arrogant and full of himself. In spite of lacking experience, he was quick to mock Hawk, even though the latter is now an All-Valley Champ. It shows up various times, the most notable being after he cheats using the Silver Bullet technique, and is quick to mock Hawk once again. It's so bad to the point where during the Final Battle, he dares to take on another All-Valley champ (Miguel), only for him to be beaten down rather quickly.
• Faux Affably Evil: In season 5, his interactions with Anthony show signs of this. Kenny is able to project a casual and friendly attitude to lull Anthony in a false sense of security. Then he quickly drops the act when he's about to make Anthony suffer in life-threatening ways. He also uses this attitude to falsely surrender against opponents... only to follow up with a quick sucker punch.
• Fragile Speedster: Kenny is able to use his speed to great advantage, but he's far from the toughest guy on the mat and struggles with pain whenever he takes a direct hit from an opponent.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Starts off as a bullied student before he is recruited into Cobra Kai as one of the core members and fully embraces the Cobra Kai creed, with his vicious beatdown of Anthony LaRusso, becoming possibly the worst antagonist the show has seen so far.].
• Gendered Insult: When Anthony approaches Kenny and attempts to talk things out with him, Kenny, distrustful of Anthony, calls him by his Embarrassing Nickname, "LaPusso".
• Give Me a Reason: In Season 5, while it's true that he avoids targeting anyone who hasn't wronged or come into conflict with him, Kenny will look for any excuse to attack someone and justify his actions. Miguel becomes one of his targets simply because he's on the same side as Robby and tried to calmly explain to Kenny that Silver has been lying to him.
• Glass Cannon: After learning the Silver Bullet, Kenny's offensive style of fighting becomes this combined with his quickness. The Silver Bullet helped him take down Hawk and Robby, but his defense and durability due to his small size is low as he is easily taken out in one or two hits courtesy of Miguel.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: After Silver is exposed as fixing the tournament and promptly defeated by Daniel, Kenny is convinced to abandon Cobra Kai alongside the rest of the students, but simply tells Robby he's not ready to discuss things right now, preferring to do some soul-searching and gather his thoughts first.
• The Heavy: Arguably becomes this to the younger generation of students in Season 5. Even though Tory Nichols is their champion, Kenny is by far the most corrupted student and Terry Silver's clear favorite — certainly helps that he eventually becomes their best male fighter and usurps Kyler's position. He leads his bullying antics toward Anthony LaRusso and the brawl against the Miyagi-Fangs at the Cobra Kai dojo.
• Hidden Depths: In the second episode of Season 4, he is shown to be pretty good at basketball.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He hangs around with Kyler despite the guy making no effort to hide what an asshole he is, including to Kenny himself. Kenny doesn't even pick up on the fact that both Robby and Tory clearly don't like Kyler and prefer to keep to keep their distance from him.
• Hourglass Plot: Upon his introduction and throughout the majority of Season 4, he's the main bully victim of Anthony LaRusso during their time in middle school. After giving him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and fully embracing Kreese's and Silver's Cobra Kai teachings, he's shaped up to be Anthony's main bully in high school.
• Hypocrite:
  • Kenny's pissed off that Robby is training the person (Anthony) who bullied him in the past. Robby's response sums up this trope pretty well. Kenny also has no issue being friends with Kyler, who's a far worse bully than Anthony was, including to Kenny.
  Robby: Heard you're the one doing all the bullying.
  • Kenny also mockingly calls Hawk a fraud after he wins their Sekai Taikai tryout match, despite the fact that he only won because he knowingly used an illegal move to injure him and force him to forfeit.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Inverted. Kenny does this twice in Season 5 but notably does it to start a fight. He does this to Hawk at the water park and to Miguel at the start of the flagship dojo fight. Played straight against Robby Keene in Season 4, although slightly downplayed as this was during a sparring session with the move being on Silver's orders on his lesson about weakness.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Inverted in Season 5. When Robby leaves Cobra Kai, Kenny quickly becomes the best male fighter in the dojo when he proves himself to be Kyler's superior with Silver even acknowledging Kenny's potential that he assigns him to represent Cobra Kai in the Sekai Taikai qualifying match. However, the status as the best male fighter is mostly because Cobra Kai at this point is mainly Mooks and Kenny himself even acknowledges before the Sekai Taikai qualifiers that he won't stand a chance against whoever he is put against.
• Instant Expert: Once fully resolved, Kenny takes to learning karate at a speed that would make even Daniel blush with envy. He makes the Top 8 of the All-Valley despite being the youngest of the principal cast, and having the shortest amount of time to actually learn the discipline (Devon had an even shorter turn around but it's clear that the Girls' Karate pool is significantly more diluted). Silver even teaches him a personal technique of his to attack the space between the ribs to collapse the diaphragm and force a forfeit (something legitimately possible in real life, though very hard to consistently do without a stationary opponent). He learns it in less than 24 hours.
• It's All My Fault: The reason Shawn was sent to juvie was because he gave a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to a former friend who attacked Kenny after the latter caught said friend stealing from the Paynes. Kenny blames himself for his brother being sent away since he was only trying to protect him.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Deconstructed. His anger and hatred towards Anthony aren't unjustified, Anthony having been an awful bully to him, but Kenny goes way too far in his retribution by regularly going out of his way to torment Anthony in far crueler ways, making him come across as even worse.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Kenny gets introduced to Cobra Kai courtesy of Robby per Shawn's suggestion to defend himself from his tormentors. As the series progresses, Kenny becomes more vicious thanks to Kreese and Silver's teachings while Anthony is on the path of making things right. Unfortunately, Anthony finds out the hard way as Kenny beats Anthony to a pulp while he's alone until Robby intervenes. He doesn't stop there in the next season, as the bullying he puts Anthony through goes to borderline murderous intent, from kicking him down to the lazy river while being trapped in inflatable tubes to a swirly in a diarrhea-filled toilet.
• Junior Counterpart: To Terry Silver while arguably being his Mirror Character.
  • Much like how Silver started out, Kenny was a meek, skinny kid who looked to others for guidance and protection; this is emphasized when Terry cites this to Kenny, believing in his own potential as a fighter and a leader. As a matter of fact, both men did not start out as natural fighters before growing more obsessed with karate.
  • Over the course of Seasons 4 and 5, Kenny slowly begins to adopt Silver's fighting style as he grows more into a Cobra Kai fighter. Him taking Silver's advice in exploiting Robby's weakness is what grants him the victory in their lesson — solidifying himself as a pragmatic fighter. Besides Silver himself (and possibly Kim Sun-Yung), Kenny is the only character to know The Dreaded "Silver Bullet" technique, which he uses against Hawk and Robby in practice.
  • Beneath all the anger he has bottled up from the bullying he's endured from Anthony and Hawk (to a lesser extent) along with Robby "betraying" him, he is capable of displaying a Faux Affably Evil persona, as shown when he's recruiting potential new Cobra Kai students and bullying Anthony at the waterpark. Terry would be proud.
  • And finally, Silver's rivalry with Daniel LaRusso is easily passed down to Kenny's rivalry with Daniel's son, Anthony. Even more jarring is that their Slasher Smiles toward each LaRusso are eerily similar (Silver revealing his plan and true nature to Daniel, Kenny vowing to make Anthony's life a living hell in high school).
  • On a purely karate perspective, Silver acknowledges in-universe that Kenny has the potential to exceed Miguel, Robby and Hawk if he had enough training. Kenny has the ambition and eagerness to learn of Miguel, the Miyagi-Do defense (to an extent) and leadership of Robby and the confidence of Hawk. Unfortunately, the last part gets too out of hand where in Season 5, it eventually becomes the arrogance of not Hawk, but Kyler which holds him back from being a greater fighter.
• Kick the Dog:
  • To Anthony, who he never fails to brutally beat up or humiliate. While Anthony's former bullying would normally make this another trope, the fact that Anthony did genuinely try to apologize and make amends while Kenny refuses to let up and goes way further than Anthony did makes it this trope.
  • To Hawk as well, giving him an uncalled-for insult after using the “Silver Bullet” on him during the Sekai-Taikai qualifier — something the former could have actually been hospitalized for.
• Lonely Rich Kid: While his family is well-off, his dad is in the military and deployed, his mom works long hours, his older brother is in juvie, and he just moved to West Valley Middle School and hasn't made any friends. That all changes when he is recruited by Robby to join Cobra Kai, and even then most of the students (particularly Kyler) treat him like a glorified servant.
• Mask of Sanity: In season 5, Kenny is able to pretend to be his meek old self underneath his pent-up anger, hatred, and sadism as a result of Cobra Kai's indoctrination. He lets the mask slip at the drop of a hat the instant he runs into Anthony, where he'll assault him when the opportunity arises.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Promises Anthony that he would be in a world of "pain" during his No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in the locker room. And he sure backs it up with his hostile antics alongside the other Cobra Kais.
  • Also counts as Foreshadowing, but early in Season 4, Kenny is introduced with his Dungeon Lord username being KennyTheJet. Obviously, jets are known to be really fast, and Kenny just so happens to be a speedster who learns very quickly (examples being making it into the All-Valley quarterfinals despite his youth and limited karate experience, and learning the deadly "Silver Bullet" technique in less than 24 hours).
• Mirror Character:
  • Kenny is one to Daniel LaRusso circa the original film. He's a new transfer student who's quickly bullied by his new classmates (with a Love Triangle being involved) and turns to learning karate as a method to fight back.
  • Much like Miguel and Hawk, Kenny was a victim of bullying at his school before turning to Cobra Kai as a means to gain confidence, and ultimately goes too far.
  • And, like young Johnny Lawrence, he's a Lonely Rich Kid with a very poor family life who joins Cobra Kai to find acceptance (although the details differ significantly: in Kenny's case, his family is an absentee one, who does care for him despite everything, while in Johnny's, his father abandoned him during his childhood and his stepfather was emotionally abusive, leaving only his mom to love him).
  • As he becomes more and more ruthless, he winds up become one to Terry Silver (see Junior Counterpart).
  • Also to Anthony. Both are middle-school kids with "nerdy" tastes. However, while Kenny is more-or-less open about them, Anthony is a Closet Geek who (uncomfortably) bullies Kenny to make himself look cool to his friends, driving the latter straight into Cobra Kai's hands.
  • In terms of female characters in the series, he is definitely this to Devon. Both are nerds who turn to a Tang Soo Do style of karate and are Like a Duck Takes to Water when it comes to learning the art, both happen to be mentored by a designated All-Valley champion from Cobra Kai (Robby to Kenny, Tory to Devon) whom they lost to in the quarterfinals, both have rough family situations which serve as their motivation to train, and both become Cobra Kai's designated champions in the Sekai Taikai qualifier. Interestingly, both Dallas Young and O'ona O'Brien were announced as new cast members at the exact same time, making their similarities all the more jarring.
  • Also to Tory, given that they are both vicious fighters who are top Cobra Kai students (particularly in Silver's Cobra Kai) and also act as a Morality Pet to a Cobra Kai founder (Tory to Kreese, Kenny to Silver). Speaking of Morality Pet, both become The Heavy for the current generation of karatekas for their respective seasons when their Evil Mentor takes over Cobra Kai (Tory for Season 3 under Kreese's Cobra Kai, Kenny for Season 5 under Silver's Cobra Kai), and both lead the charge against the Miyagi-Fangs in the Final Battle. Not to mention, both are the Arch-Enemy of a LaRusso sibling (Tory to Sam, Kenny to Anthony), given the latter's shitty treatment of them (Sam's disdain for Tory's criminality and stealing Miguel away from her; Anthony's bullying of Kenny).
  • He eventually becomes this to his brother, Shawn, as he embraces more of the Cobra Kai creed and turns into an outright villain at the end of Season 4 going on to Season 5. Both are juveniles with a Dark and Troubled Past that led to their ruthlessness (Shawn being sent to juvie for protecting his brother, Kenny turning to Cobra Kai are being bullied in middle school), eventually becoming the leader of a Gang of Bullies and The Bully to the son of an original Karate Kid character (Shawn to Johnny's son: Robby, Kenny to Daniel's son: Anthony). Interestingly, both boys have a Suddenly Shouting moment that fully establishes their character as a vicious bully to the audience — albeit under different circumstance. And finally, both become vicious fighters in their own right (Shawn, despite lacking formal karate training, is able to give Robby one heck of a fight; Kenny being a fast-learner able to master complicated Tang Soo Do techniques, including Terry's "Silver Bullet"), and both oppose Robby Keene (albeit for different reasons).
• Morality Pet:
  • For his brother, Shawn. He may have been The Bully in juvie, but he genuinely loves his brother and was only sent to juvie in the first place because he defended Kenny from being assaulted by a friend of his who stole from their home.
  • To Robby. Even after he's turned to the dark side by joining Cobra Kai, Robby takes Kenny under his wing and teaches him karate to deal with his bullies, and wants nothing more than to be a good mentor to him. It's quite telling that Robby is much more upset about feeling that he has failed in this goal than the fact that he lost the final of the tournament. In Season 5, after he fails to convince Kenny to leave Cobra Kai, Robby rejoins Miyagi-do and tells Daniel they need to take down the dojo so they can save Kenny from Silver.
  • To Terry whose sincere concern and affection for Kenny are among his few redeeming traits. Terry genuinely wants to help Kenny grow and become more assertive and confident, and provide him with the guidance to help him do so.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Once he sees Silver's true colors and realizes Robby was right about him all along, Kenny can only look to the floor in shame.
• The Napoleon: He’s the shortest student in all the dojos and he has a temper that can compete with Hawk’s.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: In Season 5, his skills have developed rapidly and it's clear he's now Cobra Kai's flagship dojo's best male fighter. However, this says more about Cobra Kai's current talent pool than his own skills, as it's made clear he's still far behind the true teenage karate aces of the Valley: Eli, Robby, and Miguel. Eli beats him rather handily at the waterpark (and only loses to Kenny at the Sekai Taikai tryout because Kenny cheated and Terry bribed the referee), Robby only doesn't kick his ass in the finale brawl because he doesn't want to fight him and only uses defensive moves, and Miguel wipes the floor with him after he steps in to defend Robby.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Season 5, Kenny acts very arrogant and self-assured thanks to his new position in the dojo hierarchy from co-leader with Kyler to full-on leader of the students who now calls the shots. He doesn't hesitate to pick fights or intimidate the likes of Robby and Hawk, but every time Miguel steps in, Kenny is visibly scared of facing him, with all hints of his arrogance wiping away in a flash. This prompts Kenny to either tread carefully or only fight if he knows he has a large enough number advantage if Miguel is around.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Regards Anthony as "looking pretty pasty" before further assaulting him at the waterpark. Whether or not he intended to is unclear, but "pasty" is a derogatory slang for white people.
• Rebuilt Pedestal: It's ambiguous, but he slowly begins to respect Robby again and repair their friendship after he sees Terry Silver's true colors (which Robby warned him about earlier). While he decides to do some soul-searching first, Tory is confident he's eventually going to come around.
• Sadist: A tragic example, considering he was a meek, bullied kid who wanted to defend himself before he becomes corrupted by Kreese's and especially Silver's teachings. As if his Slasher Smile in the Season 4 finale isn't enough, his antics toward Anthony are just downright dangerous, and it only gets much worse when he's more than willing to learn Terry's deadly "Silver Bullet" technique—which he uses against Hawk and Robby.
• Sanity Slippage: His sanity begins to start going downhill in Season 5 where he puts Anthony (his ex-bully) through borderline murderous humiliating acts and he almost becomes fully insane in the season finale when he promises to give a brutal beatdown to all of the Miyagi-Fangs even after Miguel and Robby give him several chances to back down. Fortunately, Anthony shows Kenny the truth about Terry Silver and demoralizes him to the core, stopping him from becoming completely insane.
• Shadow Archetype: He becomes this to Robby by the end of the season. It's only in witnessing how far Kenny has been corrupted by Cobra Kai's teachings that Robby realizes how far he too has fallen.
  Robby: But when I saw him today, it was like looking in a mirror, and I realised I screwed everything up.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Kenny's personality starts off as the exact opposite of his brother Shawn's, which Robby even lampshades. Unlike Shawn, who's a very vocal and intimidating bully, Kenny is a quiet and laid-back kid who is content to mind his own business and play on his computer. Unfortunately, this winds up being viciously subverted by the end of the season as Cobra Kai has warped Kenny into being a bully very similar to his brother. It's also noticeably chilling that like Shawn, Kenny also has a Suddenly Shouting moment that firmly establishes his character as a vicious bully.
• Skilled, but Naive: Kenny no doubt has a lot of potential in karate that he was able to make it to the quarter-finals at his age and learn the Silver Bullet technique overnight. However, he does not have the raw fighting experience that the older students have. Character-wise, Kenny's young age and lack of a present role model in his life makes him susceptible to blindly believing in people who are on his side. This made Kenny follow the leadership of Silver and even Kyler at one point, not knowing the kind of people the two are.
• Slasher Smile: Gives a pretty epic one to Anthony that signifies that he's become fully corrupted into a bully by Kreese and Silver's philosophy.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Becomes this in Season 5 where he begins flaunting his new skills and influence towards those he perceives as his enemies. He even tries downplaying Hawk's title as All Valley champion, despite only making it to the quarterfinals himself and his own mentor Robby being defeated by Hawk. This arrogance even has him try to challenge Miguel of all people. Naturally, Miguel gives him a reality check.
• So Last Season: Kenny trying to justify his vengeance throughout Season 5 for Anthony bullying him in the previous season comes off as a shallow excuse when he becomes much worse than his former tormentor, who was more or less a Peer-Pressured Bully and has made strides to reform himself.
• Suddenly Shouting: Has this as part of a Rejected Apology with Anthony after he finally goes off the deep end and fully embraces the Cobra Kai creed.
  Kenny: Then you wouldn't know. Because no one's ever been such as piece of SHIT TO YOU!!!
• Tag Along Kid: Since he has no friends his own age, he hangs out with Robby and the other high school-aged Cobra Kai students.
• Tautological Templar: Kenny seems to believe that since he was wronged first by Anthony, it justifies the unending series of dangerous and even life-threatening acts that he inflicts on him.
• Teacher's Pet: He’s Silver’s star pupil. Silver sees a lot of himself in Kenny as they were both once weak kids who were molded into deadly combatants.
• Those Two Guys: He's rarely seen without Kyler in Season 5, especially when they bully Anthony.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Over the course of Season 4, Kenny becomes an overly ruthless and rage-filled bully to seek revenge on Anthony. Robby is not happy about this in the slightest. It gets worse in Season 5, as he now leads his gang of Cobra Kai thugs in bullying Anthony in far more cruel and harmful ways than Anthony ever did to him, despite Anthony genuinely feeling guilty about his past behavior and honestly wanting to make amends.
• Tragic Villain: At the start of the season, there's absolutely nothing villainous about him; he's just your typical middle school boy who plays video games, likes anime, and is quite athletic. That all changes when he becomes bullied by his peers, joins a notorious dojo known for its vicious creed, and is mentored by deranged, PTSD-ridden war vets in John Kreese and Terry Silver.
• Tranquil Fury: Anthony's constant bullying of Kenny causes Kenny to internalize his anger over the season. When Anthony finally tries to apologize, Kenny's response is chilling:
  Kenny: What do you want?
  Anthony: Um, I guess I just wanted to say that... I'm sorry, okay? For all the... for all the shit I did. Y-You know, it wasn't cool. And I guess I was trying—
  Kenny: (coldly) To impress your friends by picking on the new kid who didn't have any.
  Anthony: Yeah. Yeah, okay, I'm sorry. I just... I can... I can... I can imagine what it must have felt like.
  Kenny: Oh, you can imagine? Okay, go ahead.
  Anthony: (bewildered) Uh, go ahead and?
  Kenny: Tell me how it felt.
  Anthony: (nervously) Well, like, not, uh, great?
  Kenny: Then you wouldn't know. Because no one's ever been such a piece of SHIT TO YOU! Well, maybe it's time you found out.
• Ungrateful Bastard: To Robby. Robby took a chance on him when Kreese refused to let him join the dojo and showed him how to defend and stand up for himself. Kenny's response later is to turn on Robby when Robby finally sees through Kreese and Silver's manipulations, to the point that being near him sets Kenny off.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Kenny is the latest in the long line of nice but geeky kids who turned to Cobra Kai to learn how to stand up to their bullies. But their methodologies morphed them into being overly aggressive.
• Unknown Rival:
  • In Season 5, Kenny considers himself to be a rival to Eli on his level and is eager to prove himself against him. Eli, on the other hand, doesn't think very highly of Kenny and considers him just another Cobra Kai punk who talks a big game but can't actually back it up.
  • Also to Robby. Kenny clearly hates Robby for leaving Cobra Kai, and, in his words, "lying" to him. Robby can only feel nothing but sorrow and heartbreak that Kenny has been completely brainwashed by Cobra Kai's philosophy and Terry Silver himself. When the brawl breaks out in Cobra Kai's Encino dojo, Kenny declares Robby as his target, even though the latter doesn't want to fight him.
• Unstoppable Rage: He is completely out to kill Robby for "betraying" him, Anthony for his bullying (which he genuinely feels remorseful for) and the rest of the Miyagi-Fangs in the Season 5 finale, and only snaps out of this thanks to Anthony showing him the footage that Silver bribed the ref to help Cobra Kai win the All-Valley tournament.
• Villain Respect: He has hints of this towards Miguel in Season 5. Kenny disputes Hawk's title of All-Valley Champion because in his words, Hawk's only the champion because Diaz got hurt. His acknowledgement of Miguel's skills is best shown where even with Robby or a whole gang of Cobra Kai students by his side, Kenny is visibly scared at the prospect of fighting Miguel.
• Villainous Underdog: In Season 5, Kenny is Cobra Kai's top male student, but he's far below the likes of Miguel, Hawk, and Robby in terms of age, size, and experience. He's only able to beat Hawk at the Sekai Taikai qualifier by fighting dirty and having a bought off referee on his side and he can only take on Robby in the flagship dojo fight by taking advantage of the fact that Robby really doesn't want to fight him and having two Mooks backing him up, allowing him to hit Robby with the Silver Bullet while he's distracted. When he finally comes up against Miguel, who is an ace fighter and has no reason to hold back against Kenny, Miguel kicks his ass in seconds without taking a single hit.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Has sort of this dynamic with Kyler. Even after Kenny proves himself to be worthy of the dojo (and that was after punching Kyler in the face after the latter mocks him for his cowardice), Kyler continues to haze him by using him as a bus boy at the drive-in theater. However, they do act civil to each other at the dojo, and upon Cobra Kai's victory, are seen celebrating together when Terry Silver makes his speech.
• Weak, but Skilled: Kenny lacks in physical strength, especially compared to the other fighters. However, he has excellent speed and is a very fast learner.

Devon Lee

Devon Lee

"I'm not afraid of getting my ass kicked if that's what it takes to get better."

Played By: Oona O'Brien

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"Oh, I don't feel bad. I only trained for six weeks. I'm gonna be stomping all of these weak ass bitches next year."

A member of Bert's debate team, whom Johnny recruits as Eagle Fang's female representative for the upcoming 51st All-Valley. After Eagle Fang closes down, she joins Topanga Karate, and later's Terry Silver's Cobra Kai after the latter two dojos merge.

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• All Asians Know Martial Arts: There's nothing currently to suggest that Devon has any fighting background before joining Eagle Fang and yet she takes up Johnny's karate style almost right away.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Devon is an Asian and Nerdy girl who has a tendency to be a snob.
• Asian and Nerdy: She's as bright as she is temperamental.
• Ascended Extra: Downplayed as she isn't promoted to series regular, but there is more time devoted to Devon in Season 5, including her motivations for wanting to be a karate practitioner and a small arc of her own about her conflicting loyalty with Tory and Cobra Kai upon being forced to join the latter.
• Badass Bookworm: She's very nerdy and can rattle off rapid-fire facts and figures from the top of her head. She's also talented enough at karate to reach the All Valley quarter-finals after just six weeks of training.
• Birds of a Feather: She's a pugnacious and fervorous go-getter with an obsession for old school martial arts and action flicks. Devon is practically the daughter Johnny never knew he wanted.
  Devon: Cynthia Rothrock is a beast.
  Johnny: Hell yeah, she is!
• Commonality Connection:
  • She is a huge fan of the kinds of movies that Johnny loves^note Bloodsport (and its sequels), The Delta Force, Billy Jack, The Octagon, and Lady Dragon. As a result, he very quickly starts to like her.
  • In season 5, Tory first begins to bond with her over having a terminally ill mother (though Devon has already lost hers) who is partially why they chose to train in karate.
• Determinator: Devon never gives up easily when facing any challenge, because she still remembers her mother's words.
  "The only way you really lose is by giving up."
• Excellent Judge of Character: She joins Topanga Karate and sticks around when it is taken over by Cobra Kai out of pragmatic reasons of wanting to continue her karate training. However, Kim continuing to physically abuse Tory during the dojo brawl is enough for Devon to realize how fucked up Cobra Kai is and switch sides.
• Face–Heel Turn: Played with. She joins Cobra Kai in Season 5, albeit not wholeheartedly; she joined a different dojo when Eagle Fang and Miyagi-Do shut down, only for said dojo to be turned into a Cobra Kai branch. While Devon does fight under its banner against Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang during the Taikai tryouts, she mainly wanted to learn more from Tory and later reveals in the finale that she has no interest in following Silver's teachings and quickly re-defects, turning face once more.
• Foil: To Mitch in Season 5. Both were originally part of Eagle Fang who defect to Cobra Kai for self-centered reason. However, Mitch's reasons for betraying his friends are much more selfish and petty, citing nicer perks, more girls, and overall swag. Devon, on the other hand, wanted to keep personally growing as a martial artist and ultimately defects back to her old Eagle Fang cohorts during the climatic fight at the flagship Cobra Kai dojo.
• Genius Bruiser: She's an excellent student and takes to karate extremely quickly, progressing to the quarter finals of the All Valley tournament with only six weeks of training.
• Go-Getter Girl: She's already implied to be an honor-roll level student, but after finding a niche in karate, Devon becomes just as committed to excelling in this as well. After Johnny closed Eagle Fang, Devon goes to join Topanga Karate and eventually Cobra Kai after they buy out the latter.
• Graceful Loser: Devon is eliminated in the quarter-finals of the All Valley tournament, but she takes this in relative stride and was nonetheless proud of herself for getting as far as she did with only six weeks of training.
• Grammar Nazi: Devon points out that "sensei" and "student" are nouns in response to Johnny asserting that those two words are the only acceptable pronouns in his dojo. She also points out that "QUIET!" with an exclamation is an imperative.
  Devon: My pronouns are she/her.
  Johnny: The only pronouns we accept in this dojo are "sensei" and "student."
  Devon: Those are nouns.
  Johnny: Oh, I'm sorry. I think what I meant to say, is "QUIET!"
  Devon: (flinches) That's an imperative.
• Groin Attack: Played for Laughs. Part of her Eagle Fang training was to kick all of the other Eagle Fang students, except Miguel, in the balls. This is allowed because Johnny wrongly assumes the male students are all wearing athletic cups. The intention of the training was to prepare the students for their opponents' dirty tricks.
• Hot-Blooded: Her outburst at the debate club was enough for Johnny to declare her the “most badass girl in the Valley” and recruit her for Eagle Fang. When she gets eliminated in the All Valley quarter-finals, she boldly states that next year, she'll be "stomping all of these weak ass bitches."
• Informed Ability: Her debate performance seems to leave the judges very impressed, even though she didn't defend her position or really attack her opponent's stance, but rather just hectored her opponent a little, threw a tantrum, and stormed off; none of which are traits indicative of an expert debater. On the flip side, it's obviously not hard to see why Johnny would've been impressed with that kind of chutzpah.
• Instant Expert: A fairly realistic version as she only has six weeks of training prior to the All Valley tournament but makes it fairly far in the contest anyway. While she loses to the more experienced Tory, Johnny makes a point of telling her that she should be proud she made it as far as she did with such limited training. She credits her quick learning to the fact that she makes sure never to make the same mistake twice.
• Like a Duck Takes to Water: She takes to karate and Johnny's particular style and teaching methods almost instantly.
• Mirror Character:
  • When all is said and done, she's basically a female version of Kenny (albeit far less vicious). Both are nerds who turn to a Tang Soo Do style of karate and are Like a Duck Takes to Water when it comes to learning the sport, both happen to be mentored by a designated All-Valley champion from Cobra Kai (Robby to Kenny, Tory to Devon) whom they lose to in the quarterfinals, both have rough family situations which serve as their motivation to train, and both become Cobra Kai's designated champions in the Sekai Taikai qualifier. Interestingly, both Dallas Young and O'ona O'Brien were announced as new cast members at the exact same time, making their similarities all the more jarring.
  • Also Robby Keene. Both were originally a part of a rival dojo before joining Cobra Kai (Robby in Miyagi-Do, Devon in Eagle Fang), where they had been the respective male and female ace of that school. Both had a natural talent for martial arts and made it far in their first All Valley tournament with not even a year's worth of training. Both ended up joining Cobra Kai for pragmatic reasons and became the favorite student of one of their teachers (Kreese for Robby, Kim for Devon), who believed they had their respective pupils thoroughly wrapped around their fingers. However, Robby and Devon were in fact well aware of how twisted their senseis were and avoided being corrupted by them.
• Missing Mom: It's revealed in Season 5 that Devon's mom passed sometime ago from cancer.
• Morality Pet: She becomes this to Tory, who doesn’t want her to join Cobra Kai because she sympathizes with Devon's sick (well, dead) mom and knows how the dojo can use that to indoctrinate her.
• Nominal Villain: The only villainous thing about her in Season 5 is that she happens to be a member of Cobra Kai, which she only joined because her own dojo was bought out by them. She never fully buys in to their aggressive mantra and is ultimately easily convinced to defect to Miyagi-Fang by Tory after seeing first-hand what kind of psycho Kim Da-Eun is.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: She joins Silver's Cobra Kai in Season 5, not because she likes or agrees with them, but because a) they absorbed her new dojo anyway, and b) she wants to continue growing as a fighter.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Not an especially big girl but her fighting style is very hard-hitting and aggressive. Doesn’t apply in season 5 when Devon's still slim, but now as tall as Tory.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: Like Johnny, she punctuates her fights with references to cheesy '80s action movies.
• Punch-Clock Villain: As mentioned in Not in This for Your Revolution above, she only joins Cobra Kai for pragmatic reasons. When she has to face her former Eagle Fang teammates (well, technically not since Sam is from Miyagi-Do, but Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang are allies by that point), she clearly looks reluctant.
• The Smart Girl: She's the most academically-inclined member of Eagle Fang, and is the one keeping track of their point totals in the All Valley tournament standings.
  Devon: Gold medals are ten points, silver...
  Johnny: I don't give a shit about the math. What do we need to beat Cobra Kai?
  Devon: Uh, math.
• The Smurfette Principle: She's the only female student in Eagle Fang. This is actually used as a plot point; Johnny specifically recruits her to compete in the girls bracket because Eagle Fang had no female students at the time.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Devon is both very intelligent and very temperamental, and has a tendency to mix crass and complex language.
  Devon: The further we get as a team, the tighter the vise is around Cobra Kai's metaphorical balls.
  Johnny: Okay. Good. Now you're speaking my language.
• Red Herring: Media outlets off-universe advertise a traitor looming among the Miyagi-Fangs, and Devon looks the part since promotional material has her in a Cobra Kai gi training in their dojo. However, she mainly joins Cobra Kai out of a pragmatic need of continuing her karate training, and doesn't have much connection with the rest of the Miyagi-Fangs enough for them to feel betrayed by her decision. As a matter of fact, she ends up defecting BACK to the Miyagi-Fangs when she finds out just how evil the dojo is after witnessing Kim Da-Eun continuously abusing Tory. Prior to that, another Miyagi-Fang does turn traitor for spiteful reasons and remains with the dojo in the Final Battle: Mitch AKA "Penis Breath".
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For Aisha — an intellectual and Johnny's sole female student that he is dismissive of at first before she shows her aggressive streak.
• Teacher's Pet: Not as much as Miguel but Johnny does take a shine to her for her smarts, hot-bloodedness, and knowledge of martial arts movies. Unlike with his male recruits, Johnny is never seen insulting her or assigning her an Embarrassing Nickname. And he’s so pissed when he sees she joined Cobra Kai via her dojo, Topanga Karate, being absorbed by them, that his instincts kick in and he tries to get her out. Devon also has strong shades of this with Sensei Kim, who seemed set on grooming her as Tory's replacement and as the one to carry on the Cobra Kai legacy.
• Token Good Teammate: By the time she joins the Cobra Kai dojo, compared to most of the students. Devon didn't even necessarily join Cobra Kai on her own accord but rather because her new dojo was absorbed by them, and takes no part in the bullying other Cobras commit nor gets corrupted by their philosophy. She even quickly sympathizes with Tory and befriends her, and she's a Graceful Loser whenever she gets beaten, in contrast with Silver and all the other students. Said traits, however, mean that Devon quickly goes back to the heroes' side because she never was that loyal to Cobra Kai to begin with and after witnessing Kim's abuse of Tory, she quickly discovers the dojo is a terrible place to be.
• Twofer Token Minority: She’s East Asian and the only girl in Eagle Fang.
• Unskilled, but Strong: She manages to make it to the quarter-finals thanks to raw talent but the fact she's only had a few weeks of training means she's outmatched by the far more experienced and skilled Tory.

Piper Elswith

Piper Elswith

"We should do that again sometime."

Played By: Selah Austria

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"Y’know, Robby says that Miyagi-Do is for defense only. Without your defense, you have nothing!"

An athletic student at West Valley High School who is first introduced as Moon's new girlfriend. She later joins Cobra Kai despite Johnny's efforts to recruit her.

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• Ascended Extra: Appeared only as Moon’s new girlfriend in one episode in Season 2. Then she returned to join Cobra Kai as it expanded its ranks to fill the All Valley's new female championship division.
• Birds of a Feather: It's no wonder she dated Moon, as the two are both cheerful, friendly girls who care deeply about social issues and want everyone to get along, while occasionally being a Horrible Judge of Character and not realizing that their friends are bullies.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Zig-Zagged. She's completely absent and not mentioned in Season 3 after her introduction at the end of Season 2, despite only two weeks having passed In-Universe, which would probably lead viewers to assume she was nothing more than a Girl of the Week for Moon. Then, she returns in Season 4 and plays a much more important role. She’s gone again in Season 5 even though Cobra Kai has expanded, although a Freeze-Frame Bonus indicates she was the one who posted the video of the Cobra Kais bullying Anthony at the waterpark on Instagram. Word of God has implied she was at gymnastics camp for the summer.
• Climax Boss: Becomes this to Sam during the All-Valley Girls' tournament quarterfinals. It's Piper putting up a legitimately tough start to Sam's bout with her that leads to Sam recognizing the importance of combining both Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang styles to her advantage.
• Dance Battler: She utilizes her gymnastics skills in battle to dodge attacks and move around her opponents.
  Tory: You just gonna dance around or are you going to throw something?
  Piper: Why not both?
• Defeat Means Friendship: Doesn’t take Tory’s aggression personally and even mildly flirts with her after losing their sparring match, saying they should do that again sometime. Even though Tory told her not to count on it, they are later seen hanging together at school.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Doesn’t actually seem to be a bad person herself but she joins Cobra Kai, looks up to Terry Silver, and pals around with Kyler. The video she shared on Instagram in Season 5 has her say that Cobra Kai shows no mercy to bullies... Despite clearly showing an outnumbered Anthony getting attacked at the pool.
• Informed Attribute: When pitching her as a possible Eagle Fang recruit to Miguel and Johnny, Moon describes her as aggressive in order to foreshadow her eventually joining Cobra Kai. But said aggression is never really seen apart from some light Trash Talk about Miyagi-Do to Sam during their tournament match.
• Instant Expert: She had roughly the same amount of time to train as Devon Lee and yet was able to make it to the quarter-finals at the All-Valley and give Sam (who probably has more karate experience than any other student between the dojos) a good fight. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Piper was already quite athletic and a skilled gymnast before joining Cobra Kai.
• Irony:
  • Despite being a woke feminist, she joins a dojo under two politically incorrect senseis. And this is after Johnny tries to persuade her to join Eagle Fang by presenting himself as woke supporter.
  • Even more ironic is that when she first meets Hawk, she had no affiliation to any dojo—whereas Hawk on the other hand was a Cobra Kai top student. Come Season 4, Eli has long-defected from Cobra Kai, Piper on the other hand joins the dojo and fights for them in the All-Valley.
• Nice Girl: Much like Moon, she's always got a smile on her face and wants everyone to get along. Even after joining Cobra Kai, any jeering or taunting she does seems more out of hard competitiveness (as expected of a gymnast) than outright maliciousness.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: She taunts Sam about how her defense-only Miyagi-Do style makes her too predictable in their match at the All-Valley, which inspires Sam to break out some moves she learned from Johnny and defeat her.
• Obliviously Evil: She only joins Cobra Kai because of their cool merchandise and remains as nice as she ever was after joining, being blissfully unaware of how corrupt the philosophy is, and how unhinged her senseis are. Her Instagram post in Season 5 shows that she still believes Cobra Kai are in the right when she shares a video of Kenny bullying Anthony at the waterpark, as she describes Anthony as a bully and considers Kenny's actions justified based on Anthony's previous treatment of him.
• Oblivious to Their Own Description: Her Instagram post sharing a video of Kenny and Kyler attacking Anthony at the waterpark reads "This is how we take care of BULLIES at Cobra Kai!" She seems unaware that Cobra Kai is nothing more than a Gang of Bullies and that the bully-victim dynamic between Kenny and Anthony has been completely reversed.
• She-Fu: Piper's an accomplished gymnast and following her transition into martial arts, she becomes a proficient fighter after just a few weeks of training.
• Token Good Teammate: She’s one of the few members of Cobra Kai who isn’t driven by vengeance or sadism. The worst thing she does is a bit of light Trash Talk with Sam during their match and compared to everyone else (including Sam herself), that’s basically nothing.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Season 5, she shares a video of Kenny and Kyler bullying Anthony at the waterpark and shows No Sympathy for Anthony's situation.
• Trash Talk: When she fights Sam in the All Valley, Piper disses her karate style for (supposedly) being all-defense. This backfires though as it inspires Sam to switch up her style with some of Eagle Fang offense she learned from Johnny.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Even though she emerges as one of the top fighters and celebrates with Cobra Kai in Season 4, she is neither seen, nor heard from in Season 5, with the only possibility being an Instagram reel that she posts of Anthony being kicked into the lazy river by Kenny. Even then, she isn't even present when the Cobra Kais see Silver for what a cheating megalomaniac he truly is.

Edwin

Edwin

"Do it, Hawk!"

Played By: A.J. Hicks

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"What a loser!"

A long-time Cobra Kai student who joined after Miguel's beatdown of Kyler. Even under new management, he still remains loyal to the dojo.

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• The Generic Guy: He's basically just an extra who serves as a Mook for Cobra Kai.
• Hidden Depths: He looks to be a very skilled hip-hop dancer, given the moves that he shows off during Moon's party.
• Motive Decay: He was one of the many kids who were inspired to join Cobra Kai after watching Miguel beat up Kyler in season 1. Come season 3, he’s fully aligned with Kyler himself and against Miguel as part of Kreese's Cobra Kai. In later seasons, he is rarely seen without Kyler around too.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: He helps Hawk trash the Miyagi dojo, which inspires a bunch of people to leave Cobra Kai for Miyagi-Do.
• Number Two: Seemingly serves as a Yes-Man to Kyler.
• Scary Black Man: Downplayed, but he can be intimating.
• Sycophantic Servant: Especially pathetic since he’s this to Kyler who is at best the Brute in any circumstance. He’s constantly following Kyler around and backing up his weak insults. He even does this when Cobra Kai is dismantled and Kyler lies about being the one who saved everyone from the Dojo.
• Those Two Guys: He's rarely seen without his friend, Big Red. In later seasons, he hangs around Kyler just as much as he does with Big Red, being with him during the Season 5 final fight and its aftermath.
• Undying Loyalty: To the Cobra Kai dojo itself. Him and Dieter are the only students that were part of Johnny's original batch of students in Season 1 still left at Cobra Kai by the end of Season 4 after Kreese and Silver had taken over. Unbelievably, after everything that's gone down, they still haven't called it quits and left yet.

Big Red

Big Red

'"We’re not the ones who broke in!"

Played By: Christopher Ryan Lewis

Appearances: Cobra Kai

A veteran Cobra Kai student who joined after the dojo wins the All-Valley. Even under new management, he still remains loyal.

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• Big Brother Bully: To Little Red. Downplayed as he is never seen tormenting his brother, but is bullying his club.
• Bullying a Dragon: During the Final Battle at Terry’s flagship Cobra Kai dojo, he has the balls to give a Bring It attitude to both Stingray and Daniel LaRusso. Even if Stingray’s the one providing the Curb-Stomp Battle, it’s not like a Mook like Big Red can even stand close to a chance against a sensei who’s light years ahead of him in terms of skill.
• Cain and Abel: After Cobra Kai's Face–Heel Turn, he becomes the Cain to Lil' Red's Abel.
• Defeat Means Friendship: After Silver is exposed, he reconciles with his little brother and offers him a ride home.
• Evil Redhead: More edgy than evil, but he is a redhead who is part of a group of bullies that are loyal to a deranged, violent sensei. In Season 5, it is safe to say that Big Red is more evil than edgy as he was involved in the swirly incident to Anthony and was the one in charge of stopping anyone from entering the Cobra Kai flagship dojo so that Miyagi-Fang is trapped inside and cut off from outside help.
• Friendly Enemy: The prom after-party at Stingray's showed Big Red hanging out with Dirk, despite the latter having left Cobra Kai for Eagle Fang.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: He helps Hawk trash the Miyagi dojo, which inspires a bunch of people (his own brother included) to leave Cobra Kai for Miyagi-Do.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Everyone calls him Big Red, in and out of universe, and his real name has not been revealed. However as revealed by Counselor Blatt during the aftermath of the soccer fight, his last name could be Caldwell or Johnson. Although shown on his Cobra Kai gi's name tag rather than official credits or scripts, his first name is Douge.
• Pet the Dog: After Terry Silver is exposed, he offers his little brother (who was in Miyagi-Do) a car ride home, seemingly ending their rivalry.
• Sibling Rivalry: The dojo rivalry sets him and his brother Lil' Red against each other when Lil' Red abandons Cobra Kai for Miyagi-Do after Hawk, with Big Red's help, trashes the Miyagi dojo. Of course, you probably wouldn't know this just from watching the show. Subverted as of Season 5, as the two brothers reconcile after Silver is exposed as a fraud.
• Suddenly Voiced: Downplayed as he can frequently be heard talking in the background, but during the finale of season 5, he is finally given actual dialogue.
• Those Two Guys: He's rarely seen without his friend, Edwin.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: He is seen shaking his head after his younger brother defects to Miyagi-Do.

Dieter

Dieter

Played By: Craig Borduin

Appearances: Cobra Kai

A long-time Cobra Kai student who joined after Miguel's beatdown of Kyler. Even under new management, he still remains loyal to the dojo.

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• Death Glare: Has this as his normal expression.
• The Generic Guy: He's basically just an extra who serves as a Mook for Cobra Kai. Unlike Edwin, Big Red and Lil Red who all receive individual lines in Season 5, Dieter has yet to have any significant lines or scenes.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He happily welcomes Stingray back into Cobra Kai and is shocked when Kreese immediately kicks him out.
  • The hint on Stingray asking Dieter about his mom and saying the former "could've been a really cool stepdad" suggests his parents are either divorced, or his mom is widowed.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Adds to his general creepiness.
• Irony:
  • Also counts as Motive Decay and Took a Level in Jerkass. He was one of the many kids who were inspired to join Cobra Kai after watching Miguel beat up Kyler in season 1. Come season 3, he’s palling around with Kyler while he bullies Demetri.
  • He's also seen cheering on Hawk and Miguel against Robby in the All-Valley tournament. By the end of Season 3, Dieter remains in Cobra Kai after Miguel and Hawk defect, with Robby to root for in the All-Valley. Furthermore in Season 4 at the All-Valley tournament, Dieter along with Edwin and Big Red pal around Kyler to bully Hawk, despite their friendship in Seasons 1 to 3.
• Lean and Mean: Unlike other Cobras, who are mostly bulky.
• No Name Given: Downplayed; he is never referred to by his first name at any point in the series, in-universe. That changes in Season 4 when Stingray says it out loud.
• Token Good Teammate: Downplayed; Dieter is definitely on the lower end of the spectrum with Cobra Kai's aggression where he would be better described as a Token Neutral Teammate. Aside from hanging around Kyler to humiliate Demetri in Season 3 and Eli in Season 4, Dieter does not participate in the major bullying and vandalism incidents that the other Cobra Kai Mooks like Big Red and Edwin do, particularly the Miyagi-Do dojo trashing incident and giving Anthony a swirly in an unflushed toilet. Even in the Season 5 flagship dojo fight, Dieter is more or less a background fighter whereas even Edwin and Big Red get their own fight scenes.
• Undying Loyalty: To the Cobra Kai dojo itself. Him and Edwin are the only students that were part of Johnny's original batch of students in Season 1 still left at Cobra Kai by the end of Season 4 after Kreese and Silver had taken over. Unbelievably, after everything that's gone down, they still haven't called it quits and left yet.

Paul

Paul

Played By: Thomas Patrick Ryan Watson

Appearances: Cobra Kai

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• Broken Pedestal: He’s shown throwing his Cobra Kai shirt at Silver when the latter is beaten by Daniel.
• Elite Mook: Becomes this in Season 3 onwards. In the house fight, he can be seen fighting and even defeating Mitch who was able to easily defeat Mikey. In Season 4, he took part in shaving Hawk's mohawk off along with Jake and the top 3 Cobra Kai students Robby, Tory and Kyler. As of Season 5, he along with an unnamed Mook and Kenny were enough to give Robby a bit of trouble during the fight in the finale.
• The Generic Guy: He's basically just an extra who serves as a Mook for Cobra Kai.
• Would Hit a Girl: In the Season 3 house fight, Paul has no qualms in going all out against Sam and even managed to land a hit on her.

Rob

Rob

Played By: Chance Dollard

Appearances: Cobra Kai

One of Kreese’s more athletic recruits that joined in season 3.

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• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: He supposedly won his spot from fighting and defeating a trained Cobra Kai student.

Jake

Jake

Played By: Jake Huang

Appearances: Cobra Kai

One of Kreese's more athletic recruits who first appears in season 4.

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• Elite Mooks: Jake accompanies Robby, Kyler, Tory and Paul to shave Hawk's hair as revenge for bullying Kenny, indicating that he is one of the stronger Cobra Kai background members. He is also the only Cobra Kai background member to win a match during the All-Valley karate tournament.
• Fighting With Chucks: Jake does an impressive weapons display with two pairs of nunchucks for the skills competition in the All-Valley karate tournament.
• No Name Given: Jake's name is only known from the name tag on his gi.
• Put on a Bus: Disappears in Season 5. The out-of-universe reason is that the actor goes on to play another Elite Mook in a bigger role as Hyan-Woo, one of Kim Da-Eun's senseis. Interestingly, Jake appears in a Cobra Kai commercial at the start of Season 5.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: An Elite Mook of Cobra Kai who is also used as a glorified training dummy to show how much stronger the main Cobra Kai fighters are? Jake is probably a replacement for Mikey who left after the house fight in Season 3.
• The Worf Effect: When Robby challenges the dojo for leadership and against Kyler in a sparring match, Jake is easily taken out to demonstrate how much more skilled Robby and even Kyler are compared to the rest of the dojo. On the other hand, Jake easily defeats an unnamed Miyagi-Do student at the All-Valley to demonstrate the advantage Cobra Kai has from learning Miyagi-Do karate.

Charlotte

Charlotte

Played By: Phoebe French

Appearances:: Cobra Kai

One of the female recruits that joins along with Piper.

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• Bullying a Dragon: During the flagship dojo fight, she tries to ambush Miguel and Sam. Naturally, it doesn't work thanks to Sam.
• Dark Action Girl: Well, she is a karateka who trains under a psychopathic sensei.
• The Generic Girl: She’s basically just an extra who bolsters Cobra Kai’s female ranks and serves as a Mook.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Like Piper, she joined Cobra Kai for fun and to compete, and seemed unconcerned with the dojo rivalry. Unlike Piper, she stays when the dojo expands and on Silver's prompting, declares that she’ll show no mercy to Robby if he ever sets foot in a Cobra Kai dojo again.

Lindsey

Lindsey

Played By: Gianna Graziano

Appearances: Cobra Kai

One of the female recruits that joins along with Piper.

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• Broken Pedestal: While Silver is giving his speech to her and her fellow students after being exposed as a fraud, she seems to be on the verge of tears.
• Dark Action Girl: Well, she is a karateka who trains under a psychopathic sensei.
• The Generic Girl: She’s basically just an extra who bolsters Cobra Kai’s female ranks and serves as a Mook.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Like Piper, she joined Cobra Kai for fun and to compete, and seemed unconcerned with the dojo rivalry. Unlike Piper, she stays when the dojo expands and on Silver's prompting, declares that she’ll show no mercy to Robby if he ever sets foot in a Cobra Kai dojo again.

Former Sensei in the 21st Century

Johnny Lawrence

See Johnny's character page here.

Former Students in the 21st Century

Aisha Robinson

Aisha Robinson

"No mercy, bitch!"

Played By: Nichole La'net Brown

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"I set my own terms. Set yours."

Aisha is Sam's oldest friend and a victim of the lowest kinds of cyberbullying at her high school. She decides to fight back against her tormentors, becoming Johnny's second student.

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• Acrofatic: Despite appearances, Aisha is deceptively quick and tends to floor people who underestimate her. It should be noted that she's swift for her size—against someone significantly smaller and focused on maximizing their speed and agility, she struggles.
• Action Girl: Aisha was already somewhat physically capable even before training, and she quickly takes to Cobra Kai training.
• Badass Bookworm: A smart girl with a love of chemistry and robotics and a vicious fighter with a natural inclination for violence.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She starts out a meek geek who is rather shy and pretty amiable to everyone; her first day at Cobra Kai sees her effortlessly flooring Miguel.
  Johnny: The girl's a natural Cobra.
• Black and Nerdy: Daniel said she attended Robotics Camp over the summer, and she wants to go as sodium chloride for Halloween.
• Boring, but Practical: Her fighting style in the tournament is all about patiently absorbing strikes and waiting for her opponent to open up or tire out, at which point she'll end the match in one or two quick, decisive blows.
• The Bus Came Back: Aisha briefly returns in season 4, episode 6, when Sam visits her to discuss the situation with Tory.
• The Dog Bites Back: Aisha is the target for Yasmine's bullying, and she ends up getting some pretty powerful revenge, hijacking her beach party with a preemptive party of her own, and unleashing a wedgie on her.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Subverted. Aisha initially brushes off Sam's compliments after the former loses in the All Valley Under-18 Karate Championship, but the two quickly make up after Sam apologizes for associating herself with the likes of Yasmine in the first place.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Season 4 reveals that Aisha has become the first character to exit the series on a happy note. She's used the confidence she learned from Johnny to make a new life for herself away from all the karate drama, manages to make friends with her new school's Alpha Bitch rather than be a bullying victim again, and even finally reconciles with Sam.
• Embarrassing Nickname: After Yasmine posts a pig meme of Aisha during the Halloween dance, many students at school mock her with not only pig snorting, but also condescending pig nicknames, such as "Ms. Piggy".
• For Want Of A Nail: Aisha's participation in the 50th All-Valley tournament became this in its own way. Footage of her match against Xander Stone where he hits her is what prompted the All-Valley committee to create separate gender divisions for the tournament in Season 4. This ends up affecting the performance of Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang as Miyagi-Do does not have a boys fighter on par with Miguel, Hawk and Robby while Eagle Fang has no female fighters, let alone one that is on the same level as Sam and Tory.
• Formerly Fat: Zigzagged. She's noticeably thinner in Season 2 due to her training in Cobra Kai, but in Season 4, she appears to have gained her old weight back since she's no longer doing karate.
• Genius Bruiser: Of all the Cobra Kai students, Aisha's fighting approach is the most technically-inclined and composed: she maintains a steady defense while patiently observing and waiting for her opponent to falter or open themselves up before swiftly going in full force and end the fight in one or two strikes.
• The Heart: For Cobra Kai in the first two seasons. She gives Miguel advice on his relationship with Sam and comforts him when it doesn't work out, tries to maintain a Friendly Enemy dynamic with Sam in the midst of the dojo rivalry and is generally a Token Good Teammate to Cobra Kai when they start to succumb to He Who Fights Monsters. She's also the only person in the dojo who tries to break up the school brawl in the Season 2 finale instead of egging it on.
• Last-Name Basis: As opposed to the other students and as a Call-Back to the original Cobra Kai, Johnny exclusively calls her "Miss Robinson". This appears to be a sign of respect, as Johnny tends to give the students demeaning nicknames at first (and "badass" nicknames if they earn them, like Hawk) — unless he's being completely formal (chewing his students out for dirty tricks after the tournament, for example), the only two he routinely addresses this way are Miss Robinson... and Mr. Diaz. Although it could just be that while Johnny is fine offhandedly demeaning women, he isn't really comfortable doing it on an everyday face-to-face basis.
• Like Parent, Like Child: Her father's a powerful professional football player, and Aisha takes after him in terms of her size and strength.
• Mighty Glacier: She is quite resilient and can lay down a world of hurt. However, she prefers a more technical and pragmatic approach to fighting (see Stone Wall below). That said, Aisha is surprisingly swift for her size, but again chooses to reserve her speed for quick strikes rather than outpacing her opponent.
• Morality Pet: Downplayed. Aisha is one of the few people Tory treats decently, and the two establish a genuine friendship. However, Aisha is powerless to prevent any of Tory's most destructive actions like attacking Sam and starting the school brawl.
• Not So Above It All: Aisha attempts to break up Tory and Sam's fight when it escalates into a school-wide brawl. However, when a Miyagi-Do student interferes by mistake, she gets enraged and joins in the fight.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Implied. During the Coyote Creek: Red VS Black challenge in Season 2, Aisha was in the red team and got eliminated when it was only Miguel (black team) and Hawk (who was also on the red team) left. This meant that out of all the students on the black team (including Mitch, Tory and Doug Rickenberger), only Miguel was able to eliminate her and that Aisha lasted longer than even Tory.
• Out of Focus: Aisha has less to do in Season 2 and is absent in Season 3 partially because the writers "couldn't find a place" for her in the story.
• Put on a Bus: Aisha does not appear in Season 3, as her parents decided to move away and send her to a private school after the brawl. In season 4, episode 6, it's revealed she and her family moved to Santa Barbara, which had a lot to do with the brawl, but also because her father took a new job at the local university.
• Shadow Archetype: Aisha represents the old, nerdy interests that Sam is rejecting in her attempts to join the popular crowd. Although Sam ultimately realizes her mistake in associating with the likes of Yasmine and apologizes to Aisha for pushing her away, the two don't fully reconcile, indicating that Sam will never quite be the same person she once was.
• Shipper on Deck: Downplayed. Her resentment towards Sam for associating with Yasmine prevents her from fully being this for Miguel and Sam. However, she still gives Miguel advice about Sam's interests, and seems genuinely disappointed when things don't work out for them.
• The Smart Guy: Most academically-inclined of Cobra Kai's star students. She's also the one who Johnny puts in charge of filming and uploading the dojo's new commercial.
• The Smurfette Principle: She's the only girl in Johnny's Cobra Kai and suggests Sam join so she wouldn't be alone. In Season 2, she is no longer the only girl in the dojo after Tory joins, and they become fast friends.
• Sore Loser: Aisha tells Xander to go "eat shit" after she is defeated by him.
  Xander: Sorry.
  Aisha: Eat shit, asshole.
• Stone Wall: Despite being part of the hyper offensive Cobra Kai, Aisha is primarily a defensive fighter, who lets her opponents wear themselves down on her expertly executed defenses. When her opponent slows down, overextends, or makes a mistake, she strikes swiftly and decisively, often ending fights in one or two blows. It's quite telling that the only time she is seen losing a fight is during the All-Valley Tournament, when Johnny pushes her towards a more aggressive moveset.
• Stout Strength: Although Aisha is often bullied for her overweight appearance (most often thanks to Yasmine), she is arguably Cobra Kai's second-best student after Miguel. She made it into the top 8 of the All Valley Under-18 Karate Championship and was narrowly defeated by Stone, All Valley's current karate champ. The rawest example of Aisha's strength was during the canyon party, where she is shown to be perfectly capable of lifting her longtime tormentor Yasmine off her feet, one-handed, by her panties.
• Tell Me How You Fight: Aisha deals with her opponents on the mat in the same way she handles bullies at school: She turtles and soaks hits until her opponent slips up, then she pounces on that mistake and deals one or two swift, decisive blows. Victory by Endurance at its finest!
• Took a Level in Badass: She went from a meek, overweight girl to becoming an assertive (and toned) powerhouse. However, this also leads her to...
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After joining Cobra Kai, Aisha becomes more aggressive, vulgar, and spiteful overall. However, she still remains Cobra Kai’s Token Good Teammate, and upon her re-introduction in Season 4, becomes an overall better person after moving to a new school.
• Token Good Teammate: Zig-zagged throughout the series.
  • Season 1: Even if she can be quite ruthless when dealing with her opponents and bullies (as Yasmine found out the hard way), she serves as this for the Cobra Kai dojo. Aisha is the one who attempts to put the brakes on Miguel's Crazy Jealous Guy tendencies with Sam, and even speaks highly of her sensei's nemesis, Daniel LaRusso, encouraging Miguel to talk to him. Aisha also shows nervousness with how much Miguel is drinking during the party. She forgives Moon after the girl gives a simple, yet sincere, apology to Aisha for teasing her in the past. She even manages to rebuild her relationship with Sam, saying, "We could definitely use another girl out there".
  • Season 2: By the end of Season 2, Aisha has become more accepting of Cobra Kai's aggressive principles. She hazes Chris and Mitch when they join Cobra Kai, threatens Chris (who has defected to Miyagi-Do) and Robby at Moon's party, and when the final brawl breaks out at school, while she at least tries to break up the fight between Tory and Sam, she doesn't hesitate to wade into the brawl herself when a Miyagi-Do fighter blocks her. With that said, when Kreese takes over Cobra Kai, Aisha is not among the students practicing, nor does she ever behave violently towards Sam despite how their Rival Dojos are widening the rift between them.
• We Used to Be Friends: Towards Sam, to the point Aisha spitefully refers to her alleged promiscuity. Though they finally reconciled in the Season 1 finale, Season 2 shows that there may be conflicts in their friendship again now that their alliances are clear. This is subverted in Season 4 when it shows they are finally on good terms after reuniting.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The last we see of her, she's brawling with one of the Miyagi-do students after he stops her from breaking up the fight between Sam and Tory. Thus, the audience never learns how she reacts to Miguel's injury and why she didn't join the others in pledging their allegiance to Kreese when he takes over Cobra Kai.
  • Discussed in Season 3 when we find out her parents sold their house, moved away, and enrolled Aisha in private school partly due to the aftermath of the brawl.
  • However, subverted in Season 4 where she finally catches up with Sam after the latter seeks her for advice.

Raymond "Stingray" Porter

Raymond "Stingray" Porter

"You know, the thing about stingrays is, they lie in wait for the perfect opportunity to strike!"

Played By: Paul Walter Hauser

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"I think the monk just... The monk just wanted reentry into the guild because he thought that he could be like a... like a proud and noble warrior. Just like you, Hawk, Samantha, all you guys. But he's neither proud nor noble. Definitely not a warrior."

A former home improvement worker who joins Cobra Kai as one of their older students after seeing their demonstration in the All-Valley fest. While he goes on probation for attacking the Miyagi-Do students in the All-Valley School Brawl, he attempts to re-join Cobra Kai only for Terry Silver to give him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and use him as a pawn to usurp the dojo from John Kreese.

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• Acrofatic: After months of training, he displays some pretty solid moves in the final brawl, using his weight to his advantage in manhandling the Miyagi-Do kids who get in his way. During his prom afterparty in Season 4, Stingray does the same to his irate neighbor when he tries to call the cops.
• Animal Motif:
  • He adopts the motif of a stingray at Coyote Creek, underscoring how they lie and wait for an opportune moment to attack.
  • In Season 5, Chozen compares Stingray to a turtle in how he would retreat further into his shell when confronted by a real threat.
• Basement-Dweller: Still lives with his mother (and later sister) and has no intention of changing that. He eventually has an apartment of his own after Terry Silver rewards him for being used as a pawn to frame Kreese.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Sure, he may be the show's comic relief, but when in combat, he actually a very formidable fighter capable enough to bring a Curb-Stomp Battle on his own (even though he's nowhere near the level of Miguel, Sam, Robby, Tory, Hawk, and Demetri). The extras from Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai learn the hard way, and even in the Coyote Creek Challenge, he's the one bringing his team to victory with his sneak attack on Miguel.
• Big Fun: Zig-Zagged. He tries to present himself as youthful, happy-go-lucky, and energetic (often quite desperately so) and the younger students go back-and-forth between lauding Stingray and being annoyed by him.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He shows a surprising capability in a lot of aspects of his life. After flipping the script, he manages to beat Miguel in the Coyote Creek exercise and prove himself to be a very formidable fighter (as shown in the high school brawl where he beats up the Miyagi-Do students without getting a single hit). He also won the attention of a very attractive girl. He can at least maintain a professional attitude when he was interviewing for the security guard position. His main problem (indeed, his Fatal Flaw) is he tries to live like he's in his teens or early 20's rather than take more responsibility in his life which prevents him from reaching his full potential.
• Character Development:
  • Negative development, mind you. He's at his most annoying in his first appearance, but after that, he's much more tolerable. When he wins the Red vs Black challenge as Stingray, the other Cobras seem to accept him as one of their own, and no one seems annoyed by him anymore. Season 4 however shows that if anything, his time in Cobra Kai had made him even worse of an individual; his assault on the Miyagi-Do students in the school brawl had gotten him arrested and put on probation, yet this experience did nothing to humble him. In Stingray's mind, that showed how much he's willing to endure for Cobra Kai and that Kreese should be thanking him for "defending" the dojo's honor. When Kreese completely rejects him from rejoining Cobra Kai, a distraught Stingray still clung to his place with the dojo and goes to incredibly desperate lengths to return to it – including willingly getting beaten into a coma, and getting the man that rejected him falsely imprisoned for the beating.
  • He finally gets some positive development in Season 5 through a combination of guilt and several people confronting him about his involvement in Terry Silver's takeover of Cobra Kai; by the end of the Season 5, Stingray finally does right in helping Daniel and the Miyagi-Fangs take down Silver and Cobra Kai, and possibly vindicates Kreese by revising his testimony about who assaulted him.
• Comic Relief: After Season 2's Darker and Edgier tone, most of Raymond's appearances are funny... at first.
• Confusion Fu: He's able to defeat Big Red and the other Cobra Kai guards by making some ridiculous looking gestures that catch them off guard before he strikes them with traditional moves.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: During the Coyote Creek exercise, he manages to get the drop on Miguel by hiding in the leaves, and wins the competition for his team. In Season 5, he effortlessly takes out four Cobra Kai students in succession without getting hit once. Technically, Stingray has not lost any fights that he has been involved in.
• Deal with the Devil: He makes a symbolic one with Terry Silver, who exploits his desperation to rejoin Cobra Kai by brutally assaulting him and having him frame Kreese for the crime. Season 5 makes it clear that while he enjoys the perks Silver gives him, he's largely aligned with the man out of fear of what will happen to him if he attempts to back out of their deal.
• Dirty Coward: When confronted by somebody legitimately threatening (i.e. anybody who isn't smaller or younger than him) and he can't fast-talk his way out, Stingray can only cower in fear. Chozen even likens Raymond to a turtle with how he would retreat into his shell. Part of the reason he initially refuses to tell the authorities that Silver, not Kreese, was the one who brutally assaulted him is because he's deeply frightened of Silver's wrath and wants to stay clear of it at all cost, regardless of increasing collateral damage and more people getting hurt. When Sam dismisses Stingray as this upon discovering the truth with the Miyagi-Fangs, he shamefully admits he's one. Thankfully, he redeems himself by helping them expose Silver's true colors.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The other Cobra Kais, especially Kreese and Johnny, call him "Chubs" until he rebrands himself as Stingray. His neighbor Greg later gives him the nickname "Stinkray".
• Fat Idiot: Somehow, he believed he can land a position as a security guard at West Valley High without the proper certification or any relevant experience (the fact that he brags about his potential yellow belt status says something) and that the job gave him free rein to assault the students rather than actually restrain them (not to mention that he only specifically targeted Miyagi-Do students during the Season 2 school brawl). Season 4 reveals that this experience and his subsequent arrest had done nothing to humble him. When he later tries to rejoin Cobra Kai, Kreese makes it unabashedly clear that he was no longer welcome but Raymond deludes himself that this was a Secret Test of Character.
• Foil:
  • To Louie LaRusso, from Seasons 2-4. Both were immature Manchilds who were leeching off their well-off relatives and blew it big-time. Unlike Louie, who used that time to better himself and earn himself his job back and be a valued employee, Stingray continued to be an immature loser who only cared for himself, learning nothing from his probation. Louie is who Stingray would have been if he had grown up.
  • To Mitch in Season 5. Both were expelled from Cobra Kai by Kreese, but both revealed their true allegiance in regards to the dojo by the end of the season. Stingray was allowed back by Terry Silver and provided with a plethora of high-end amenities, but he still lived in constant fear of the man that coerced him into framing Kreese. Eventually, Stingray's lingering guilt motivates him to do the right thing and join the Miyagi-Fangs in taking down Cobra Kai. Mitch was allied with the Miyagi-Fangs for the majority of Season 5 but betrays them near the end despite the genuine friendship they held for him because he wanted to indulge in all of Cobra Kai's extravagance.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Although we don't see her, it is suggested that Stingray's sister is more sensible than he is given that she's well-off and has a house of her own. Stingray, meanwhile, just seems to settle with squatting at said house while continuing to act as a disruptive nuisance and refusing to get a job.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: At first, nobody in the main cast really likes him — the students due to the age gap, Johnny and Kreese due to his immaturity and excessive fanboying. When he announces he's "flipping the script" and now answers to "Stingray", even Hawk looks embarrassed for him. This changes after he wins the Coyote Creek challenge for his team. After that, both Bert and Hawk are happy to see him in the following episodes. However...
• Hated by All: Stingray's Manchild antics are not thought highly of by many. While some of the Cobra Kai students come around to him, it's also apparent that he's not exactly missed either after he gets arrested for taking part in the Season 2 brawl. Doubly so when he finally does return in Season 4 and he's hated by his neighbors for being a leech who mooches off his family and refuses to get a job. When Stingray tries to rejoin the dojo, Kreese refuses to let him back in and calls him a joke, in which none of the students (not even the few that were cool with seeing him again) come to his defense or vouch for him to return. The teens only tolerate him because he lent them his family's house for their prom afterparty. In fact, the only one who seems to consider him a friend is Bert.
• Heel–Face Turn: After spending most of Season 5 in fear of retribution from Silver and people calling him out for helping him take over Cobra Kai, Stingray finally decides to man up and help Daniel and the Miyagi-Fangs expose Silver for the madman he is.
• Hollywood Restraining Order: According to the school's principals, after the school brawl, he was forbidden by the court from coming within 500 feet of any child, or from participating in any activity involving children. He's off it by Season 4.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Stingray admits to the Miyagi-Fangs when they confront him over his deal with Silver, that the reason he was so insistent on being a part of Cobra Kai was because he just wanted to be a proud and honorable karateka, like they are.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Stingray borders on a This Loser Is You type of character, being an adult who "grew up" watching the original tournaments and desperately wants to project himself into the story. Rather than taking responsibility for his failing personal life, Stingray is convinced that being part of Cobra Kai will make up for all of his shortcomings.
• Ignored Aesop: Season 4 makes it clear Stingray has learned absolutely nothing from his experiences, as he brushes off every adult who tells him what a pathetic loser he is for being jobless and hanging out with teenagers and his first move after his probation ends is to try to rejoin Cobra Kai.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Deconstructed. As Greg tells the teenagers, the reason Stingray hangs out with them is because he's a loser who can't make any friends his own age because they all recognize him as such. As part of his Character Development in Season 5, he's started to try to make friends with other adults.
• Karma Houdini Warranty:
  • He doesn't get any repercussions for his actions in the school brawl... until the beginning of Season 3 reveals that he was arrested for assaulting minors.
  • Karma comes back to bite him again in Season 4 when he receives a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown at the hands of Terry Silver which puts him in the hospital.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • His actions in the school brawl led to him being arrested for assaulting minors and forbidden to be near any children, costing him his membership in Cobra Kai.
  • When Raymond throws a big house party for the West Valley High prom-goers, he confronted by his neighbor Greg for this legitimate disturbance and he assaults him when he attempts to call the police. Thinking this had won back the favor of the Cobra Kai students, Raymond arrogantly returns to the dojo for another chance at rejoining, which leads him to receiving a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from a drunken Silver.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: When he reveals his new identity as "Stingray", there's an epic rock tune in the background. When Johnny shrugs him off, the song flattens.
• Manchild: Despite being an adult, he lives with his mom and is utterly unashamed of that. He also has no issues with hanging out solely with a bunch of teenagers. Deconstructed when he participates in the school brawl with his teammates and winds up in big trouble for attacking a bunch of minors.
• Mirror Character: To Johnny Lawrence. Like Johnny, Stingray is a Disco Dan stuck in the 80s with an obsession with karate who mooches off a rich parent (step-parent in Johnny's case). However, while Johnny is able to channel these qualities into something worthwhile by becoming a sensei, Stingray is a Manchild with nothing better to do than take karate lessons with a bunch of teenagers (and even they think he's a loser). Johnny hated having to rely on Sid and happily broke ties once he had a stable living with Cobra Kai, Stingray is content to remain a deadbeat and panics at the idea of his privilege being put at risk. Both are also guilty of assaulting minors, but while Johnny had the excuse of having had a very bad day and being provoked, Raymond clearly just wanted to get in on the school fight.
• NEET: By Season 4, now out of jail, Stingray seems to have settled for squatting at his family's home while refusing to get a job. His only goal seemed to be to get back in Cobra Kai.
• No Social Skills: Played with. From his first appearance onward, his mannerisms and uncontrollable enthusiasm are very "fanboyish". But in the last episode of Season 2, he smooth-talks his way into a security job at the school despite the principal's awareness that he has no relevant experience. Season 5 has him struggling to form a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in front of older adults.
• Never My Fault: Even when he's recounting his motivations for making a deal with Silver, he blames political correctness for his fall from grace instead of the fact that he attacked multiple teenagers on school grounds.
• One of the Kids: Before he joined Cobra Kai, Raymond was already quite immature but he had at least been willing to work a job and seemed to be putting some effort (albeit rather feeble) to make his life better. By Season 4, he's now a complete deadbeat (not to mention a complete nuisance of a neighbor) with no aspirations beyond rejoining Cobra Kai and being with his "peers".
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Enforced by Raymond, insisting that his name is actually "Stingray" after adopting the motif. He apparently even put it down on his application for a security position at West Valley High rather than his legal name.
• Put on a Bus: Is nowhere to be seen in Season 3. Justified, as after assaulting minors in the school fight, he landed himself in trouble with the law and is no longer allowed within 500 feet of any minor. He later reappears in Season 4.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: He is the only adult in the Cobra Kai teen classes, but Johnny lets that slide as living with his parents leaves him with tons of cash to burn on lessons and dojo swag.
• Selective Obliviousness: He is completely unable to comprehend that no one at Cobra Kai actually likes him and they're fine with him not being around. Even when Kreese tells him to his face that he's a joke, has no value to the dojo, and isn't allowed to rejoin, Stingray decides that this is some Secret Test of Character.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He spends his entire job interview at West Valley talking up his karate prowess and achievements to the principal, such as winning the Coyote Creek challenge (which is something that any person in the community can't care less about), in which he defeated a single teenager by sneak attacking him from behind, and the fact that he has almost reached yellow belt status, which makes him barely better than a complete beginner.
  Stingray: I don't have any actual experience per say, but I just recently won the Black vs. Red Challenge at Coyote Creek, no big deal...except for the karate community, it's a very big deal. My sensei's been very pleased with my progress and I think in time you will see a yellow belt strapped around my mid-section.
• Spanner in the Works: Him being the victim of Terry Silver’s No-Holds-Barred Beatdown is what leads to the events of Kreese being arrested and Silver taking over as the show’s Big Bad after the latter manipulates Stingray into having Kreese take the blame for it.
• Straw Loser: Stingray gets introduced into the series around the time that Johnny is taking more measures to repair his personal life and he shows just how bad Johnny could have actually gotten.
• Token Adult: Raymond was Cobra Kai's sole adult student, but his interactions with his younger cohorts really only further worsen his Manchild disposition and he himself doesn't offer them any insight on the responsibilities or expectations of adulthood.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He singles out and assaults younger Miyagi-Do students as a security guard for West Valley (hi-fiving Hawk and generally ignoring the Cobra Kai students while doing so) and stays with Kreese after he takes over Cobra Kai. Season 4 further shows that he's content with just freeloading off his sister when back in Season 2, Raymond was at least willing to work while living with his mother. However, he undergoes positive character development when he finally accepts the truth of Silver's attack on him. Which thankfully leads to...
• Took a Level in Kindness: He allies with the Miyagi-Fangs in the Final Battle against Cobra Kai, first by rescuing a stranded Daniel (with help from Amanda and Carmen), then by taking out the Cobra Kai students to give the trio a path to the dojo, and finally having the balls to admit the truth to the police after Silver's beatdown.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Stingray goes along with Terry Silver's plot to overthrow Kreese, despite being beaten so bad by Silver that he ended up in the Hospital. All because he was promised by Silver that he would be allowed back in Cobra Kai.
• Unwitting Pawn: Becomes this to Terry Silver after the latter beats him to a pulp and convinces him to have Kreese take the blame for it.
• Was It Really Worth It?: After getting beaten into a coma in order to rejoin a dojo where no one wants him around and being locked under Silver's heel, Stingray realizes it all wasn't worth it, and begins to make amends in the second half of season 5.
• What You Are in the Dark: The end of Season 5 does a good job at showing Stingray's true colors. As part of a deal with Terry Silver, Stingray received everything he ever wanted: A luxury apartment, high-end gear such as a Playstation 4 and gaming set-up, his very own muscle car featuring the Cobra Kai insignia and most of all, membership back into the now prestigious Cobra Kai dojo, including a gi with his nickname on it! Despite receiving all these gifts and being in a position to hide the truth from everyone in order to keep them, Stingray admits to the Miyagi-Fangs that he would be more than happy to give all his benefits up if he could and only accepted them out of fear of what Silver would do to him if he went against him. The finale of Season 5 even has him come to Daniel's aid to save the kids from Cobra Kai, even if it meant fighting against his former teammates and a potential confrontation with Silver himself.
• Would Hurt a Child: Zig-zagged. He doesn't hesitate to beat up kids from Miyagi-Do during the school brawl, but consider that those kids are trained martial artists, so it would make sense for another trained martial artist to subdue them. However, even security guards actually trained to handle large riots use grapples, joint locks, and pins (not strikes) to subdue violent or uncooperative people, and Stingray only targets the Miyagi-Do kids, and specifically leaves the Cobra Kai kids alone. Then in the Season 5 finale, he takes care of the Cobra Kai students who try to block the adults from coming inside the dojo to rescue the Miyagi-Fangs, since they can't call the cops and Daniel doesn't want to fight a bunch of kids.

Doug Rickenberger

Doug Rickenberger

"Yo, Hawk, free shot!"

Played By: John Cihangir

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"Come on, bitch! Let's go!"

One of two guys who accompany Hawk and his gang.

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• Ascended Extra: Alongside Mikey, he was simply a nameless Mook in season two, before being given a name and some characterisation in season three.
• Ax-Crazy: Despite being a minor character, his limited screen time shows that he's just as bloodthirsty as Tory. During group fights, he’s constantly sporting a Slasher Smile. He assaults a teacher who was trying to break up the school brawl, even shocking Hawk. He takes a frying pan to the face at the LaRussos’ house and only wants more violence. Finally, as he’s beating on Demetri with the help of another student, he even laughs as he says, “Free shots", to urge Hawk into re-breaking Demetri’s arm.
• Blood Knight: His reaction to Chris hitting him with a frying pan is to laugh and tell Chris to Bring It.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Doug might come across as just another Cobra Kai Mook among the students, but if you actually keep track of him during his fights, he is shown to be a very formidable martial artist. During the big school brawl in the Season 2 finale, he usually had the advantage over most of the Miyagi-Do students he fought, and ultimately had to be taken down by Robby. In Season 3, he was able to best Chris during the laser tag fight and in the Season 3 finale, granted with help from Mitch and Tory, respectively. The guy would later subdue Demetri with an arm-lock. He clearly would have been able to beat Demetri had Hawk not come to his friend's rescue.
• The Brute: To Cobra Kai and Hawk’s Gang of Bullies.
• Combat Sadomasochist: When he gets hit on the head with a Frying Pan of Doom, his first instinct is to laugh, before continuing to fight as if nothing’s happened.
• Dumb Jock: In contrast to Hawk, Rickenberger completely fails to understand the purpose of Kreese's lesson on "fighting smart", and even accuses Hawk of cheating when he takes the exact outside-the-box approach Kreese was hoping for.
• Elite Mooks: He is mostly just there to serve as Hawk's and/or Tory's henchman and is usually defeated by one of Miyagi-Do's top students, Robby or Sam, throughout Season 2. However, he is able to dominate in a fight against Miyagi-Do's more intermediate-level students, the likes of Demetri and Chris, in Season 3. His performance indicates that he is stronger than the average Cobra Kai student, but still weaker than the "top students".
• Hidden Depths: Though he may seem like just an Ax-Crazy maniac, Rickenberger shows a surprising amount of loyalty to his teammates, and is a clear team player in brawls. In the school brawl, he attempts to help Tory by going after Robby, and actually shows concern for her safety, as he can be heard saying, "Hey, let her go!" before he's kicked back. He also helps Miguel get to the fighting Tory and Sam by trying to stop Robby alongside Mikey, even though he knows Miguel is most likely trying to break the fight up rather than egg it on. In Season 3, he comes to the aid of Mitch when he's in trouble against Chris in the laser tag fight, and offers Hawk a "free shot" on Demetri in the home invasion, showing an awareness of their personal rivalry. At the start of the laser tag fight, he was briefly seen trying to defuse the situation when Sam attacked him rather than actively fight back.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Offers Hawk a free shot at Demetri in the Season 3 finale. Hawk ends up taking his free shot at Doug instead.
• Karma Houdini: He’s the one who assaults a teacher during the brawl but only got off with being suspended.
  • Since he left Cobra Kai at the end of season 3 and the LaRussos refused to press charges, he'll never be punished for the home invasion either. This means he gets away with everything he did.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Downplayed in the home invasion. While he keeps fighting after Hawk tosses him into a table, he knows he has no chance against him and resolves to fight against Mitch instead. He then quits Cobra Kai after the fight is over.
• Made of Iron: Doug can actually take some serious punishment and still keep fighting. During the Season 3 finale, he laughs off Chris striking him over the head with a frying pan. Afterward, he is thrown into a glass table by Hawk, but gets back up to attack Mitch, and it takes a tag-team effort by Mitch and Chris to put him down^note according to a deleted scene from the house fight posted by Rickenberger's actor John Cihangir on Instagram.
• More Despicable Minion: To Hawk. It's telling that Hawk, even at his worst, is still shocked by Rickenberger’s bloodlust (such as attacking a teacher during the school brawl). In fact, it's not only Kyler’s approval, but Rickenberger encouraging him to break Demitri's arm again that makes Hawk pull a Heel–Face Turn.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Throughout Season 2, he would frequently lose to Miyagi-Do's top students, like Robby and Sam, whenever the rivaling dojos get into a fight, giving the audience the impression that he is just another Cobra Kai Mook. Although during the Season 2 finale, he brazenly assaults a teacher. Throughout Season 3, he actually proves himself to be a Boss in Mook Clothing.
• Put on a Bus: He's implied to be one of the Cobra Kai members who quit the dojo after their embarrassing defeat in the fight at the LaRusso house.
• Sadist: Moreso then most Cobras, as he seems to be fighting For the Evulz and simply targets anyone who happens to be in his way. He also happily encourages Hawk to break Demitri’s arm, twice.
• Slasher Smile: Even in background shots, he pretty much has one stamped on his face until he gets trounced.
• Terrible Trio: Forms one with Hawk and Mikey.
• Those Two Guys: In Season 2, he was always seen standing side-by-side with Mikey as part of Hawk's posse. Most visible in the mall and school brawl against Robby.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Rickenberger, for all his Blood Knight tendencies, deliberately avoids fighting Sam during every fight, and starts to get angry when Robby seemingly attacks Tory.

Mikey Miller

Mikey Miller

"Do it, pussy!"

Played By: Chris Schmidt Jr.

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"What the hell?"

One of two guys who accompany Hawk and his gang.

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• Alliterative Name: As revealed in the script, his full name is Mikey Miller.
• All There in the Manual: Unlike Doug Rickenberger, who’s frequently referred to by his last name, Mikey’s last name is only mentioned in the script of episode 4 from season 3, where Counselor Blatt refers to Hawk, Rickenberger and Mikey by their last names.
• Ascended Extra: Alongside Rickenberger, Mikey was originally a nameless Cobra Kai Mook in season two before getting a name and more screen time in season three.
• Butt-Monkey: He's always shown having some misfortune happen to him whenever he's on screen. Normally getting beaten in a fight, and once having dirt kicked into his face by Johnny when kicking a pot in the commercial he was making in Season 2. Most recently being slammed headfirst into the table by Miguel in the Season 3 finale.
• The Chew Toy: He’s just there as a punching bag for other characters, even when he’s fighting other Mooks, he seems to be either evenly matched or losing.
• Elite Mooks: Like Doug, he is mostly just there to serve as Hawk's and/or Tory's henchman, but he can actually put up a pretty evenly matched fight against one of Miyagi-Do's more intermediate-level students, making him stand out more than the average student. However, he would still repeatedly lose to one of the "top students".
• The Generic Guy: Much like Jimmy from the OG Cobra Kai, he isn't given any significant lines or actions.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: He’s constantly taking hits and seems to never get a win against any character.
• Iron Butt Monkey: He may get beaten a lot but he always gets back up and gives a good fight to whoever ends up beating him. He may go down but he never goes down easy.
• Irony: He attacks Miguel alongside Kyler without hesitation during the house brawl even though Miguel defeating Kyler in the cafeteria back in Season 1 is what inspired him to join Cobra Kai in the first place.
• Lazy Bum: According to his actor, the reason why Mikey is never shown training is because he’s too lazy to show up. Apparently he’s only in it for the action.
• Motive Decay: He was one of the many kids who were inspired to join Cobra Kai after watching Miguel beat up Kyler in season 1. Come season 3, he’s fully aligned with Kyler himself and against Miguel as part of Kreese's Cobra Kai. Heck, he even incredulously attacks Miguel without hesitation alongside Kyler during the house fight.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While not exactly awesome, he was able to successfully defend his spot in CK by defeating a potential new recruit.
• Oh, Crap!: Has a brief reaction like this when he encounters Miguel and Tory during the Coyote Creek challenge. Despite trying to put up a fight, it does not end well for him.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: He's the shortest of the Cobra Kais, but just as strong as them.
• Put on a Bus: He's implied to be one of the Cobra Kai members who quit the dojo after their embarrassing defeat in the fight at the LaRusso house.
• Terrible Trio: Forms one alongside Hawk and Rickenberger.
• Those Two Guys: In Season 2, he was mostly seen side-by-side with Doug.

Tim

Tim

Played By: Gabe Bowles

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"Did you just flinch, Virgin?"

— Johnny Lawrence

A Cobra Kai student in the first two seasons, nicknamed "Virgin" by Johnny.

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• Butt-Monkey: He's given an Embarrassing Nickname and constantly made fun of by Johnny, and is the first Cobra Kai student to get punched in the face by Aisha.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: He's one of the more memorable background Cobra Kai members in the first season, but vanishes without a trace about halfway through Season 2. It's unclear if he left Cobra Kai, was kicked out or disappeared for some other reason.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Johnny nicknames him "Virgin" when he joins Cobra Kai.
• This Is Gonna Suck: He has a very weary look on his face when Aisha prepares to punch him in the face on Johnny's instructions.

Miguel Diaz

See Miguel's character page here

Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz

See Eli's character page here

Robby Keene

See Robby's character page here

Mitch

See Eagle Fang and Associates.

Bert

See Eagle Fang and Associates.

Dirk

See Eagle Fang and Associates.

Chris

See Miyagi-Do and Associates.

Nathaniel

See Miyagi-Do and Associates.

Abe

See Miyagi-Do and Associates.

Lil' Red

See Miyagi-Do and Associates.

Frank

See Miyagi-Do and Associates.

Kreese's Students in the 1980s

Johnny Lawrence

See Johnny's character page here.

Bobby Brown

Bobby Brown

"How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not a priest."

^{Click here to see him in 1984}
"Johnny, leave him alone, man! He’s had enough!"

Played By: Ron Thomas

Appearances: The Karate Kid (1984) | The Karate Kid Part II | Cobra Kai

"You gotta remember, you don't do the right thing because it always works out, you do the right thing because it's the right thing to do."

The least vicious of Johnny's original Cobra Kai gang, Bobby was the only one who ever expressed concern that their harassment of Daniel was going too far. Now he is a Christian pastor who has left the Cobra Kai way far behind.

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• Alliterative Name: Bobby Brown.
• Always Second Best: Zigzagged. Many supplementary material have shown that while he remained Johnny's inferior for most of his time in Cobra Kai under Kreese, Bobby was still possibly stronger and there was a chance that he could have surpassed his fellow student.
• Apologetic Attacker:
  • After injuring Daniel’s leg during their match on Kreese’s orders, he profusely apologizes, never having wanted to do it in the first place.
  • He prays to God for forgiveness before leg sweeping a drunken Johnny for making a scene in church mid-sermon.
  "Forgive me, Father."
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Averted and it makes him the odd man out in the dojo.
• Badass Preacher: He may be a pastor now (and who knows how long out of training), but the bar brawl shows he can still use his Cobra Kai training to kick ass when necessary.
• Break the Cutie: In the novelization of the first film, he becomes increasingly distraught as Johnny and his friends become more violent towards Daniel. This culminates in him quitting the dojo after injuring Daniel and he stops hanging out with his former friends as a result.
• Brutal Honesty: He's not afraid to call bullshit on Johnny's claims that Kreese has genuinely turned his ways around for the better.
• Cassandra Truth: He and Jimmy attempt to warn Johnny of the threat Kreese poses now that he's involved with the new Cobra Kai. Johnny ignores their warnings, however, adamantly believing that his former sensei can get out of his old ways and change for the better. Tragically, the OG Cobras turn out to be right.
  Bobby: John Kreese is bad news. All that crap we dealt with after high school, taking that "no mercy" bullshit out into the world.
• Christianity is Catholic: Subverted and lampshaded. He reminds the others that he's a pastor, not a priest.
• Former Teen Rebel: Much to his embarrassment, a drunk Johnny tells Bobby's congregation about some of his exploits in their younger years such as drinking, partying, and sexual conquests.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Zig-Zagged. He's right on the money when he tells Johnny that Kreese is bad news. However, when Johnny later comes to him after the school brawl has left Miguel paralyzed, Bobby suggests Johnny ask Sid for some money to help the kid out. Johnny is understandably skeptical of the idea and is later proven right. Justified, however, since Bobby has first hand knowledge of just how bad Kreese is but doesn't have the same kind of knowledge about Sid.
• Innocent Beta Bitch: A bastard version. While he did terrorize Daniel with the other Cobra Kai students, he had limits. He tried to dissuade Johnny from continuing his beating on Daniel at the Halloween party. He was also against attacking Daniel's leg and desperately apologized when he did it.
• Kid Has a Point: Bobby says he can beat Daniel in a fair fight at the tournament without breaking the rules and probably could have. He's bigger, stronger, and has more experience with karate. Kreese, instead, orders him to cheat so Lawrence can fight Daniel in the finale for an easy victory. Despite the fact if Bobby won, his dojo would win either way.
• Minion with an F in Evil: When Johnny first gets jealous of Daniel with Ali, Bobby tells him to forget it. The third time Johnny beats up Daniel, Bobby tells him to leave Daniel alone, despite Johnny's insistence that an enemy deserves no mercy. During a sparring session, he hesitates to hit Robertson while he's down. And when Kreese tells him to injure Daniel in the tournament, he does not want to at first, and frantically apologizes to Daniel when he does.
• Nice Guy: Even after Johnny stumbles into one of his services wasted and reveals some of Bobby's less savory acts as a youth to the congregation, Bobby still takes the time to listen to Johnny's problems after he sobers up, feeds him coffee cake and hugs him, and offers all the help he can.
• Only Sane Man: Tells Johnny to get over Ali when they see her with Daniel at the beginning of the film, doesn't want to beat Daniel to death, doesn't want to injure his friend Robertson during a sparring session, and doesn't want to injure Daniel in the tournament when ordered to by Kreese. Bobby repeatedly comes across as this amongst his friends.
• Spell My Name With An S: The DVD subtitles call him "Bobby Butterman."
• Took a Level in Badass: In the 1983 All Valley Tournament, he defeats Vidal, who won the 1981 karate championship over Cobra Kai, in the third place match.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Granted, he was the Token Good Teammate in the original film, but rather than reluctantly supporting his friends' actions, he now regrets everything their gang did as teenagers and is wary of Johnny's students being influenced by Kreese.
• Token Good Teammate: Bobby's the only Cobra Kai member who shows any kind of moral restraint and calls out Johnny whenever he goes too far. The fact that he becomes a church minister by the time of Cobra Kai reaffirms this.
• True Companions: It's Bobby that Johnny comes to at a crashingly low point and that — after kicking his ass for making a drunken scene — Bobby immediately offers him the kind of equal, grown-up affection no one else has says a lot.

Dutch

Dutch

"That don't mean squat!"

Played By: Chad McQueen (1984-86)

Appearances: The Karate Kid (1984) | The Karate Kid Part II

"Point or no points...you're dead meat."

Another top student of Cobra Kai and a member of Johnny's gang, who might be more vicious than Johnny himself.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Did Dutch leave Cobra Kai in a case of Even Evil Has Standards where not even he would stick with Kreese after seeing his reaction to Cobra Kai not winning the 1984 All Valley tournament? Or did he leave because the rest of his friends left and no longer had any reason to stick around? While the latter is the most likely, given that he was okay with Kreese ordering Bobby to injure Daniel and even Kreese choking Johnny, no official explanation has been given on why Dutch left.
• The Berserker: Out of all the Cobra Kai students, he's the most aggressive and ready to get violent. Cobra Kai even later reveals he's been in and out of prison for most of his life, in no small part thanks to his violent disposition.
• Gendered Insult: He mockingly refers to Daniel as "Danielle".
• Last-Name Basis: Implied. Every other competitor at the All-Valley has their last name displayed on the tournament ladder, while his is still shown to be "Dutch".
• The Sociopath: Unlike the others, he's okay with Kreese's orders to injure Daniel. Also, he makes no attempt whatsoever to help Johnny when Kreese is choking him, unlike the rest of the Cobras who all either call out Kreese on his cruelty or try to stop him.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Dutch's violent nature enables Johnny's anger and aggressiveness when the group is beating up Daniel after the Halloween dance. It's also subtly implied by Cobra Kai that this influence also went out to haunt Johnny for a long time in his life.
• Would Hit a Girl: When Ali steps in to stop the fight between Johnny and Daniel at the beach, Dutch eagerly asks Johnny if he's gonna hit her too.
• Written-In Absence: He's in prison during the events of Season 2, which is why he doesn't join Johnny and his old Cobra Kai friends for their road trip with Tommy.

Tommy

Tommy

"Well, that’s her loss, huh?"

^{Click here to see him in 1984}
"Get him a body bag! Yeah!!!"

Played By: Rob Garrison

Appearances: The Karate Kid (1984) | The Karate Kid Part II | Cobra Kai

"You'll do it, Johnny. You're the champ."

One of Johnny’s friends from high school and a former Cobra Kai student. He’s since been stricken with a terminal illness, prompting most of their old gang to reunite for One Last Field Trip before he passes.

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• All Love Is Unrequited: During the campout, he reveals to Johnny that he actually had feelings of his own for Ali back in high school as well. He was going to ask her out, but Johnny "struck first".
• Always Second Best: Tommy and Johnny were the finalists of the 1983 All Valley Tournament. While Tommy clearly surpassed 1981 champion Darryl Vidal, he was still no match for Johnny and ended up in second place.
• Determinator: He can be seen throwing jab punches with a broken right arm during the class that Miyagi and Daniel interrupt.
• Everyone Has Standards: As much as he wants his friends to win, he's shocked when Kreese orders Bobby to injure Daniel. In the second film, he even agrees with Mr. Miyagi that Kreese should let Johnny go from his chokehold.
• Face Death with Dignity: When Johnny and Jimmy show some concern about going on a road trip with him in his state, Tommy just rips out the wires connecting him to the machinery and tells the others he's ready to roll.
• Flatline: One is heard briefly when Tommy gets out of the hospital bed for his road trip. As Johnny and Bobby were in the next room at that moment, their reaction suggests that they feared Tommy had already died.
• Ironic Death: He was the one who told Johnny to get Daniel a body bag ("YEAH!") during their final fight in The Karate Kid. When Tommy dies, he's the one who is put into a body bag.
• Jerkass: He takes part in pushing Daniel off a hill and sarcastically tells him to learn karate.
• No Indoor Voice: He's by far the loudest when cheering on Johnny during the tournament final.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Along with Bobby, he gets assaulted by Kreese when he tries to stop him from choking Johnny after losing the tournament.
• Pet the Dog: The second film shows that he has some respect for Mr. Miyagi, as he tells Kreese to listen to the man and stop choking Johnny.
• Reformed Bully: In contrast to the bloodlust he displayed in the first film, he's become a mature, well-adjusted adult who regrets how he acted as a teenager.
• Self-Deprecation: Mingling with Foul First Drink. When the gang is reminiscing about their teenage antics at the bar, one of the things mentioned is the time that a bartender saw right through their fake IDs and served them dishwater, with Tommy drinking his entire mug because he didn't know what beer tastes like. It's Tommy himself who tells that story, laughing at his own folly as he narrates it.
• The Stoic: Unlike Bobby and Jimmy who flip out when they learn Johnny has gotten Kreese involved in his dojo, Tommy just listens to Johnny's reasons for doing so, then calmly asks him if he really trusts Kreese.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: He's reintroduced dying of a terminal illness and passes at the end of the episode. (Tragically became a meta example a few months later, when Garrison himself passed away.)
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The entire conflict between Daniel and Johnny, as well as every event across the franchise that is in turn caused by that, only occurs because Tommy happened to notice Ali flirting with Daniel on the beach and directed Johnny's attention to it.
• Worf Effect: He got second place in the 1983 tournament, outfighting Vidal in the semifinals and losing to Johnny in the finals. However, in the 1984 tournament, Daniel defeats him in the preliminary rounds.

Jimmy

Jimmy

"Jenny and the kids send their love."

^{Click here to see him in 1984}
"Give him a front kick, Johnny!"

Played By: Tony O’Dell

Appearances: The Karate Kid (1984) | The Karate Kid Part II | Cobra Kai

"This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

One of Johnny’s friends from high school and a former Cobra Kai student, now a Happily Married father with multiple sons.

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• Ascended Extra: While he was part of the Cobra Kai gang in the first two films, he didn't get any memorable scenes or lines, nor was even referred to by name. Here, he shares the spotlight with Bobby and Tommy and even gets a spectacular fight scene.
• Brutal Honesty: He flat out tells Johnny letting Kreese back in the fold is a stupid idea and he doesn't believe the man has changed a bit.
• Cassandra Truth: He and Bobby attempt to warn Johnny of the threat Kreese poses now that he's involved with the new Cobra Kai. Johnny ignores their warnings, however, adamantly believing that his former sensei can get out of his old ways and change for the better. Tragically, the OG Cobras turn out to be right.
• Chairman of the Brawl: During the Bar Brawl scene, he cracks Bobby's opponent over the back with a chair.
• The Generic Guy: In his original appearance in The Karate Kid, he doesn't say or do anything noteworthy and has no characterisation compared to the other Cobras. He's fleshed out more when he returns in Cobra Kai.
• Happily Married: He's first seen speaking with his wife on a headset. While we only see this interaction for a few moments, it suggests that he has a loving relationship with his family, and even that Tommy is something of an honorary uncle to his children.
• Reformed Bully: Just like the others, he's become a decent man who has rejected the old Cobra Kai philosophy.

Jerry Robertson

Jerry Robertson

Played By: Larry B. Scott

Appearances: The Karate Kid (1984)

A Cobra Kai student and one of the first foes that Daniel faces in the All-Valley.

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• Last-Name Basis: Kreese mainly refers to him by his last name.
• The Generic Guy: He's mainly a background Cobra Kai student, not even a part of Johnny's gang! However, he's easily the most recognizable given that he's Cobra Kai's Token Minority, Bobby's main opponent during a sparring exercise (the scene where Daniel and Mr. Miyagi confront Kreese), and was Daniel's first opponent in the All-Valley.
• Token Minority: He's the lone African-American student in a largely white-dominated dojo.
• Warm-Up Boss: He's the first opponent that Daniel faces (and defeats) in the All-Valley.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He's not seen after his defeat, but it's implied he also quit Cobra Kai after Kreese goes mad and reveals his true colors.

Silver's Students in the 1980s

Mike Barnes

Mike Barnes

"That’s what happens when someone burns your life to the ground!"

^{Click here to see him in 1985 as a young man}
"There's nothing you got I can't counter, your karate's a joke!"

Played By: Sean Kanan

Appearances: The Karate Kid Part III | Cobra Kai

"After the All-Valley tournament, my life was ruined. I mean, I was lost. I was banned from karate, which was all I knew. So I found myself working odd jobs. One day I'm moving furniture and I meet my future father-in-law. He showed me I could do something with these hands other than fight."

A notorious karate champion hired as a mercenary by Terry Silver to be Daniel's biggest and toughest rival. He is dubbed "Karate's Bad Boy" and "Tournament Terror" due to a lack of regard for his opponents' well-being. 35 years later, he has since reformed and is now the owner of a furniture store...at least until Daniel and Silver show up again.

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• 11th-Hour Ranger: Joins the fight against Silver and Cobra Kai literally moments before the final battle. In fact, the assault on Terry’s house was his idea just after he decides not to enact vengeance on Daniel.
• The Ace: He's nicknamed "Karate's Bad Boy," "Tournament Terror," and "Dynamite" for a very good reason. And not counting Mr. Miyagi, Sato, Kreese, and Silver, he may as well be the trilogy's strongest fighter since Daniel had so much trouble making even a dent on him (as opposed to Johnny and Chozen). The only time Barnes lost to LaRusso was the fact that he was distracted by the latter's kata. Take away that (as well as Silver being too sadistic) and Mike may as well easily beat Daniel to a pulp in front of hundreds.
• Anti-Hero: Though he has genuinely become a better person when he reappears on Cobra Kai, he's still very capable of unleashing "Karate's Bad Boy" when pushed too far, though his ruthlessness is now exclusively aimed towards people who deserve it. It's his idea to lead a violent assault on Silver in his own home in the Season 5 finale, and his only motivation for teaming up with the good guys against him is revenge for Silver burning down his business. He's also willing to steal a valuable painting from Silver's house to recoup his losses.
• Beard of Sorrow: Facial hair has definitely grown on him after Silver burns down his business.
• Beware the Nice Ones: 34 years after his defeat, he’s become a genuinely good man ashamed of his past and only not apologizing to Daniel out of fear of pushing a Trauma Button. When he meets Daniel again, he’s elated to apologize. Then Silver burns down his store and Barnes proves to be, if anything, even more dangerous. Not only does he go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, he convinces Johnny and Chozen to go with him. Together, they beat all of Silver’s senseis, minus Kim.
• Butt-Monkey: In contrast to his portrayal in The Karate Kid Part III, his appearance in season 5 of Cobra Kai has no one taking him seriously. Even his "Bad Boy of Karate" title is dismissed by both Chozen and Johnny on different occasions with a "Doesn't look that bad" scoff. At one point when he is fighting Chozen, Daniel incapacitates them both in a manner similar to an exasperated father disciplining his children.
• The Bus Came Back: He returns 34 years later (in Season 5 of Cobra Kai) after his 1985 All-Valley defeat, now a changed person and owner of a furniture store.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Johnny's motivation to defeat Daniel was out of jealousy and self-worth. Chozen's motivation to defeat Daniel was out of his twisted sense of honor. Mike's motivation to defeat Daniel was out of greed. And unlike Johnny and Chozen (who were long-time champions of their Evil Mentor), Mike's simply a mercenary picked up by Silver for a revenge plot.
• The Dreaded: It really speaks volumes when Daniel LaRusso doesn't want to mention his name to Amanda in Season 4, especially considering everything that Barnes has done to him en route to his '85 championship. Even when Mike has fully reformed, Daniel is still wary of him, something that the former himself is well aware of.
• Drugs Are Bad: Lampshaded by Daniel when he takes notice of the size of Mike's pupils.
• Final Boss: Daniel LaRusso's last and toughest rival in the trilogy.
• Foil: To both of Daniel's (former) rivals before him.
  • He and Johnny were both arrogant karatekas whose lives had hit rock-bottom after their respective losses at the All Valley Tournament against Daniel. Except whereas Johnny had been in a drunken slump for the past three decades without a suitable mentor to keep him on track and clung to his status as a former karate champion while resenting Daniel's success, Mike found a new purpose in the furniture trade thanks to the guidance of his boss/father-in-law and has since put his "Karate's Bad Boy" days behind him and was glad that Daniel was doing well for himself. Along with having a wife and a healthy family dynamic, Mike represents how Johnny's life could have been moving forward from the night of his All Valley defeat if Johnny hadn't taken his loss so deeply and had someone to guide him. That said, as the Season 5 finale shows, both are still prone to making hotheaded decisions and fight with the same Cobra Kai ferocity they had in their youth despite renouncement of the dojo. Both also have misappropriated valuable art pieces that they intend on pawning or auctioning off for handsome sums.
  • Chozen was similarly an arrogant martial artist and also hit the nadir after his defeat against Daniel, but as with Mike, he reformed offscreen and is much more well-adjusted and amicable upon his reunion with Daniel. However, having dedicated his whole life to his craft, Chozen missed out on things like finding true love and starting a family, and Season 5 shows that he's starting to regret having forsaken such pursuits. In contrast, Mike has put karate behind him and is content with his furniture business and family, having absolutely no regrets besides wishing to apologize to Daniel for tormenting him (which he finally does get to do). While Chozen has truly reformed, he is not above playing a prank on Daniel for his own amusement, whereas Barnes had wanted to make amends with Daniel for years, but specifically avoided meeting him because having traumatized Daniel in his youth, he didn't want to reopen old wounds.
• Freudian Trio: Among Daniel's former rivals he's the Ego. He gets involved out of a convenience contract with Silver at first but could be really boisterous about it. Post redemption he's notably balanced in his life and can be pretty reasonable. Although the moment Silver crosses the line he demonstrates why he's still not to be messed with.
• Gendered Insult:
  • When Daniel and Barnes get into a fight at Mr. Miyagi's backyard, Silver's arrival to "rescue" Daniel results in Barnes questioning whether or not Silver is Daniel's mother.
    Silver: Let him up, punk!
    Barnes: Who're you, his mother?
  • He mockingly addresses Daniel as "sweetheart" at one point during their fight in the tournament.
    "What's the matter, sweetheart? You having trouble breathing?"
• Glass Cannon: He's an incredibly hard hitter, but his defense is quite weak; one of Silver's senseis brutally knocks him out when his guard is down during the brawl at Silver's mansion, leaving him out cold for most of the brawl until he regains consciousness to save Johnny from being brutally murdered by the remaining two senseis in time. Averted in his youth where anything Daniel threw, Mike easily brushed off including a direct punch to the face.
• Good All Along: Given his history with Daniel LaRusso, one would expect Barnes to still be in league with Terry Silver, considering he looks like a made man, and Silver is trying to expand Cobra Kai's influence and size. Despite Daniel's fears and eavesdropping on a phone call, that's supposedly about Barnes cutting down piles of Japanese wood indifferently, the truth comes out that Barnes has distanced himself from Silver since the events of the third film and simply works as a furniture store owner. He also feels ashamed for bullying Daniel, much to the latter's surprise.
• Happily Married: Upon reconnecting with Daniel, Barnes often mentions his wife and how he wants to uphold her father's legacy as the new owner of his furniture store and provide for her, indicating that he deeply loves and values his wife, much like how Daniel has a strong relationship with Amanda.
• Hate Sink: Trashing a bonsai shop because your target didn't sign up for a tournament? Still harassing Daniel even when he signs the paper? Yeah...he's nothing but a bullying thuggish asshole with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. By the time Cobra Kai rolls around, he's actually fully averted from this, being much more humble and considerate than Daniel would have expected.
• The Heavy: Silver's champion and Daniel's main rival for the 1985 All-Valley Tournament.
• Heel–Face Turn: After the events of The Karate Kid: Part III, Barnes ended up regretting his time bullying Daniel and being a lackey for Silver and opted to change himself for the better, which he accomplished when he met the owner of a furniture store, learned to use his physical talents for a more creative trade and eventually got to marry the owner's daughter. He also considered apologizing to Daniel for what he did, but was afraid that he would end up reopening old wounds and unintentionally antagonize Daniel if they met again.
• I Hate Past Me: He's legitimately ashamed of what he put Daniel through by his appearance in Cobra Kai and has actually been wanting to apologize for years but decided against it because he (correctly) assumed he's made himself Daniel's Trauma Button.
• It's Personal: Subverted. He swears to make life hell for Daniel every day for the rest of his life if he refuses to participate in the 1985 All-Valley Tournament. However, Cobra Kai reveals that this was never really the case and he only made the threat because it was actually a part of his contract with Silver. Then it becomes personal with Silver when the mogul burns down his furniture store, leaving him desolate. The fact it had originally belonged to his mentor and father-in-law whose legacy he wanted to uphold definitely played a factor as well.
• Karmic Jackpot: Following the attack on the Cobra Kai dojo at the climax of Season 5 which sees Silver arrested, Barnes swipes a Rembrandt painting to bring himself back on his feet financially after losing his furniture store early on.
• Knight of Cerebus: Sort of. While he's not as murderous as Chozen, he is much more skilled than him, and the only one out of Daniel's three rivals to actually incite fear within the latter.
• Large Ham: He really likes to flanderize his tough-guy persona (which certainly helps that he is a karate expert). Even as a middle-aged adult, especially when someone like Chozen, Daniel, or Silver ticks him off.
• Leeroy Jenkins: He, along with Johnny and Chozen, are eager to storm Silver's estate on a whim in retaliation for the hell he put everyone through, never mind that they're in no condition to fight at the time.
• Mirror Character: When all is said and done, he's basically Johnny Lawrence if he were a brunette. An All-Valley opponent fighting for Cobra Kai training under one of the dojo's founders (Lawrence to Kreese, Barnes to Silver — both of whom they also resent heavily as they grew up) who ultimately loses to Daniel LaRusso in the final match. Both are also very offense-oriented and, as the Season 5 finale shows, are still prone to making hotheaded decisions and fight with the same Cobra Kai ferocity they had in their youth despite renouncement of the dojo.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: There's no rainbows and sunshine when your rival is known to the community as "Karate's Bad Boy," "Tournament Terror," and "Dynamite," the latter of which (by Word of God) was inspired by Mike Tyson.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Of Daniel's three Karate rivals, he's the Nice to Chozen's Mean and Johnny's In-Between. Losing the All-Valley tournament to Daniel ended up being the best thing that ever happened to him because it set him on the path to being a Nice Guy and a Happily Married successful businessman in his adult years. Zigzagged, though since he still has his Reformed But Tamed moments, as he is not only capable of unleashing the "Bad Boy of Karate" whenever he feels threatened, in the season 5 finale, he acts as a Toxic Friend Influence to the now reformed Johnny and Chozen, unleashing their darker sides as well.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The next time we see Barnes after Silver burns down his furniture store? He's unshaven, looks to be high on some sort of substance (as Daniel remarks), and is back to his Blood Knight tendencies (first on Daniel, and later Silver after the former reveals the latter's actions).
• Pay Evil unto Evil: He steals a Rembrandt painting from Silver's mansion to get his finances back in order after the brawl, after Silver burnt down his furniture shop.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: As if using gendered insults isn't enough, he also calls Miyagi a slope.
• Psycho for Hire: An aggressive bully who Terry Silver hired to harass and demoralize Daniel, and then trained to even more so during the competition. Mike even remarks that it's all part of his contract.
• Red Herring: Silver remarks on the Season 4 finale of Cobra Kai that he knew people who would help him on expanding the titular dojo, and Mike being one of them becomes the most obvious speculation. Sean Kanan is then confirmed for Season 5. In the actual show, Mike becomes a Good All Along Reformed Bully like Johnny and Chozen before him, and Silver's acquaintances turn out to be Kim Da-Eun (his Old Master's granddaughter) and her Elite Mooks.
• Reformed Bully: Even more so than Chozen, who, despite regret over his past behaviour, is willing to play a prank on Daniel to mess with him. Barnes has sincerely wanted to apologise to Daniel for decades, but ultimately didn’t reach out in fear of reopening old wounds.
• Riches to Rags:
  • His deal with Silver out the window after losing to Daniel in the 1985 All-Valley Tournament, his life hit a low point and he had little to live for outside of karate. It isn't until a meeting with the owner of a furniture store while working odd jobs that he regains a sense of direction and pieces his life back together financially.
  • Happens again on Season 5, when Silver has his furniture store burned down to the ground and Barnes and his family go from successful to broke.
• Running Gag: In the fifth season of Cobra Kai, anytime someone mentions his nickname “Karate's Bad boy”, one of Daniel’s other former rivals (Chozen and Johnny) would remark how he “doesn't look that bad”.
• Sore Loser: He throws a fit after losing to Daniel in the 1985 All Valley Tournament.
• Spanner in the Works: His plan to attack Silver where he lives ends up helping the heroes take down Silver in unexpected ways. Had he not convinced Johnny and Chozen to storm his mansion, he would’ve foiled the Miyagi-Fang students' plan by arriving at the flagship dojo quickly. Instead the attack not only delays his arrival, he is also in no condition to fight Daniel, who defeats him very easily.
• Still Got It: Although uninvolved with karate for over three decades since putting behind him his history with Cobra Kai and Silver, Season 5 shows he can still hold his own in a physical altercation.
• These Hands Have Killed: Not necessarily killed per se, but Barnes is clearly distraught over his time as a bully and seeks to live a better life after his father-in-law gave him a new profession and a new direction.
• Threw My Bike on the Roof: He and his gang vandalize Miyagi's bonsai shop in retaliation to Daniel's repeated refusals to enter the 1985 All-Valley Tournament.
• Took a Level in Kindness: By the late 2010s, he has long left behind his history with Cobra Kai and contempt towards Daniel, and is a much better person than he was during his teen years.
• Unknown Rival: Mike clearly hates Silver, not just for everything that has happened in 1985, but also the latter going as far as to burn down his furniture store 35 years later. However when Mike does show up in Silver's mansion, Silver doesn't take him seriously and sees him more as a casualty, while preserving more of his hatred to Daniel (as well as Chozen and Johnny to a lesser extent).
• Would Harm a Senior:
  • He doesn't hesitate to attack Miyagi every time he defends Daniel. Like with Kreese and Silver, it doesn't end well for Barnes.
  • Also to his former Evil Mentor, Silver, now that the latter has aged. Justified on so many levels, as Silver is an Ax-Crazy megalomaniac who traumatized Barnes by going as far as to burn down his furniture store.
• Would Hit a Girl: He has no problem with kicking Jessica in her chest when harassing Daniel.

Daniel LaRusso

See Daniel's character page here

Associates

Present Day

James Payne

James Payne

"You’re the man of the house now, Kenny. You shouldn’t have to be, but you are."

Played By: Paul B. Johnson

Appearances: Cobra Kai

A major in the U.S. Army stationed in Qatar, and the father of Shawn and Kenny Payne.

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• Dad's Off Fighting in the War: He's mostly absent from his sons' lives due to being deployed overseas for the U.S. Army. Unfortunately, this leaves Kenny looking for a male role model, and he eventually finds one in Terry Silver.
• Good Parents: From what little we see of him, he seems to be a very loving and capable, if somewhat authoritative, father towards Kenny, although we don't see what, if any, part he had to play in Shawn turning out the way he did.
• Ironic Name: He's Major Payne (not to be confused with the titular character from the film Major Payne), but as stated, he's a very caring father.

Shawn Payne

Shawn Payne

"What are you looking at, newbie?"

Played By: Okea Eme-Akwari

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"I'll give you a free shot before I use your teeth for dice."

An inmate at Sylmar Juvenile Corrections (SJDC) whose gang torment Robby Keene. He's revealed to be the brother of Kenny Payne who leads him to Cobra Kai after the latter shares to him about his bullying problems.

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• Accidental Truth: While he's only doing this to harass Robby, he is (in a way) correct that Sam has been moving on from him (for Miguel) during Robby's time in juvie. Robby only finds out about the harsh truth as soon as he sees Sam and Miguel back together again.
• Arc Villain: He is the main antagonist of Robby's juvie arc, being his main tormentor at the Sylmar Juvenile Corrections Center. This reaches its climax in Episode 5 where he faces off Robby one-on-one after Kreese suggests the latter to "strike first."
• Big Brother Instinct: For all of his faults, he genuinely loves his younger brother Kenny and is very protective of him. It's even how he wound up in juvie in the first place, as he was arrested for assaulting a friend who tried to harm him.
• Blatant Lies: He outright states that Robby's girlfriend left him, his dad hates him, and he has nobody around to support him. He's only doing this to continue harassing Robby, as Sam and Johnny still do care for him, even though Robby eventually spurns their affections out of Revenge Before Reason (with Poor Communication Kills playing a factor). This does lead to Robby turning to Kreese, who is more than welcome to bring him in to Cobra Kai (even though Kreese is only doing this to get a new champion).
  "'[Mimicking Johnny] But Robby you're my son! '[Mimicking Robby] But I hate you dad!' Your girl left you...your dad hates you...you got nobody. And now you got nothing."
• The Bully: Basically the juvie counterpart to Kyler. Unlike Kyler who is a Small Name, Big Ego and is on the losing end of fights, Shawn can actually back up his threats given that he fought Robby on even terms.
• Defeat Means Friendship: After he loses his fight to Robby, he starts to respect him even going as far as to to cover for him and not snitch when asked who started the fight. This comes full circle in Season 4 when it turns out his younger brother is getting bullied and Shawn's solution is to have him seek out Robby and Cobra Kai to learn how to fight back. Robby, for his part, welcomes Kenny with open arms and asks for updates on Shawn.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Well, not exactly evil so much as he's a vicious man in juvie, but despite his reputation and role in the story, Shawn does have a positive relationship with his younger brother, Kenny, and was open to the idea of helping him out when Kenny visited Shawn to tell him of how he's being bullied in school.
• Everyone Has Standards: He's a complete Jerkass who bullies and physically assaults Robby for absolutely no reason, but he refuses to snitch on Robby for starting their last fight and develops a begrudging respect for him when he discovers Robby did the same.
• Hidden Depths: His mentioning of empanadas, horchata, and dark roast (coffee) suggest he does have (to some degree) extensive knowledge of cultural dishes. Season 4 reveals his dad is in the military so he definitely learned a few things from him.
• The Juggernaut: He's an immense young man with an impressive combat skill that is enough to give a trained karateka like Robby one hell of a fight. Even then, it took Kreese's advice for the latter to actually make this a fair matchup.
• Kick the Dog: He makes Robby's time in juvie hell every opportunity he gets. Prior to that, he slams a fellow inmate to the table just because the latter was minding his own business.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Shawn tormenting Robby countless times was enough for Robby to nearly kick his ass, had the guards not rushed in to intervene. He finally leaves Robby alone after realizing that the latter did not snitch as well.
• Meaningful Name: He sure caused Robby a lot of "pain" in juvie.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: A confrontation between his gang and Robby shortly after the latter's admission to juvie ends with Robby writhing on the floor. The reason Shawn is in juvie to begin with was because he dished out this trope to a former friend who stole from his home and tried to assault Kenny for catching him stealing.
• No Name Given: Downplayed; he is never referred to by his first name at any point in the series, in-universe. His full name is said by Robby in Season 4.
• Scary Black Man: He's a vicious bully who verbally AND physically torments fellow inmates just for the hell of it, not to mention his size and combat skill that could potentially give trained karatekas like Hawk and Tory, and did give Robby a run for their money.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Unlike Kenny, who is a quiet and meek kid who has nerdy interests and is bullied a lot in school, Shawn is a very vocal and intimidating young man who happens to be the resident bully in juvie. However, the emotional effect the bullying had on Kenny, as well as fully embracing the Cobra Kai creed leads to Kenny becoming the bully, exactly like Shawn himself.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Shawn only has one appearance in season 4, where he is visited by his younger brother Kenny who is dealing with bullies at school. Shawn points him in the direction of Cobra Kai, hoping Robby can help him.
• Suddenly Shouting: His reaction after a fellow inmate refuses to leave the table. This marks the beginning of his character moment.
  "Still...empanadas, no empanadas...this our table homie...(laughs after inmate minds his own business) Shit, kid must be deaf...I SAID THAT'S OUR TABLE, HOMIE!!!!!!!"
• Unskilled, but Strong: He is a brawler but thanks to his size alone, he can just tackle through Robby's karate. This is why Robby has to start on the offensive to have a chance fighting him and his flunkies.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: After learning about his brother's problems with bullying, he directs Kenny to Robby so he can get some karate instruction from him. He's completely unaware that Robby is training at Cobra Kai and the dojo winds up sending Kenny down a dark path.
• Villain Respect: After Robby's fight with Shawn is broken up, both of them gain respect for each other when they learn that neither of them snitched afterwards. This marks the end of Shawn and his gang hassling Robby. By Season 4, Shawn even trusts Robby enough that he has his younger brother Kenny seek him out for help on dealing with his school bullies.

Cheyenne Hamadi

Cheyenne Hamadi

Played By: Salome Azizi

Appearances: Cobra Kai

Terry Silver's girlfriend during the former's time away from Kreese.

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• Age-Gap Romance: Silver is a man in his 70s, while Cheyenne is definitely much younger.
• Flat Character: She's only introduced as Silver's much-younger girlfriend who is into mindfulness and thinks Terry should keep his distance from his toxic friend and former army buddy. That's pretty much all we know.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The last we see of her is a series of worried texts when Silver ties his hair into a ponytail. After Silver re-joins Cobra Kai, she is never seen or mentioned again. This becomes particularly glaring in season 5, where there is a country club charity auction that Cheyenne probably would have been all over, as well as several scenes at Silver's house, yet she is still nowhere to be seen.

Kandace

Kandace

Played By: Rebecca Lines

Appearances: Cobra Kai

Tory's selfish maternal aunt who is waiting for her sister to die so she can try to get custody of her nephew, forcing Tory to go to Amanda for help.

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• Evil Aunt: She's a criminal who cheats the system and tries to skim off of her sister's disability checks, which Tory depends on to take care of her mom and her brother. She even threatens Tory by holding custody of her brother over her head in the eventuality that her mom dies.
• Hate Sink: Like Tory’s landlord, she exists solely to show what kind of predatory adults Tory has to deal with in her life.
• Hypocrite: She calls out Tory for being a high school dropout and a criminal; Tory immediately retorts that Kandace is both of those too. While Kandace concedes the point, she also says she knows how to play the system, unlike her niece.
• It's All About Me: She mooches off her sister's disability checks and is waiting for her to die and gain custody of her nephew, holding these motivations with no one but herself in mind.
• Jacob Marley Warning: An evil version, in that Kandace doesn't care if Tory ends up like her. Nonetheless, she clearly represents what Tory will become if the latter continues down the path of selfishness and petty grudges.
• Jerkass: She couldn't care less about her sister dying, and only sees her as a mean to earn easy money, the money Tory needs, and has no problem pushing her niece's buttons.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Even though she has her own selfish reasons for wanting to take custody of Tory and her brother, Kandace is correct that the judge will not trust a 17-year-old with a criminal record to take care of a child over an adult, no matter how uncaring the adult is.
• Kick the Dog: Kandace doesn't stop at asking if Tory's mother had died yet. She also makes snide remarks about Tory's Disappeared Dad, saying he won't ever come back and that Tory has nowhere to go with her brother without her. As a capper, she tries to pretend that she's always been there for Tory's brother Brandon, but can't even get the boy's name or age right.
• Shadow Archetype: Kandace is what Tory would have been if she had given in to her anger and petty grudges. Seeing Aunt Kandace and realizing that this is what she will become is the kick in the ass Tory needs to start taking Amanda’s advice and asking for real help. She still messes up along the way, but by the end of season 4, Tory no longer wants revenge on Sam and indeed has become significantly less violence-prone in general.

Tory's family

Tory's family

Played By: Kellan Trawny (Brandon)

Appearances: Cobra Kai

Tory's ill mother, whose illness left her unable to take care of her children and younger brother Brandon.

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• Cain and Abel: Mrs. Nichols is the Abel to her sister Kandance's Cain. Kandance tries to skim off her own sister's disability paychecks and is waiting for her to die so she can take custody of her nephew and get her hands on his welfare paychecks.
• Children Are Innocent: From his sole appearance, Brandon seems to be a normal child with none of his sister's psychopatic tendencies.
• Disappeared Dad: Mr. Nichols has long left the family and Mrs. Nichols had to struggle alone before falling ill.
• The Faceless: Mrs. Nichols is only seen from behind and later when she's on a hospital bed and using a ventilator, showing that her condition has worsened.
• Morality Pet: To Tory, who despite often neglecting their needs in behalf of her petty grudges, does care about them and is genuinely haunted by the chance that her mother dies and her brother is taken away by their selfish aunt Kandance. The threat her aunt Kandance makes to steal their disability paychecks and take over custody of Brandon is what pushes Tory to accept Amanda's offer to make a truce and seek psychiatric help, putting her on her path to a Heel–Face Turn.
• Struggling Single Mother: Mrs. Nichols had to work as a waitress to provide for two kids, and one time had to take leftovers from the restaurant she worked at to feed them. Unfortunately, she was caught and, because of the restaurant policy, she was fired. This incident had a big impact on Tory's mentality.
• Unnamed Parent: Mrs. Nichols' first name is yet to be revealed.

1980s

Snake

Snake

Played By: Jonathan Avildsen

Appearances: The Karate Kid Part III

A henchman and sparring partner of Terry Silver during the events of Part III who also operates as as lackey of Mike Barnes.

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• Co-Dragons: He and Dennis share the role of top henchman to Barnes and Silver.
• Ironic Name: Despite his name, Snake is not an official Cobra Kai member and exists only to be a henchman to Barnes and Silver to further their agenda.
• Jerkass: Snake is an arrogant loudmouth who delights in helping Barnes gang up on Daniel in three on one fights.
• Kick the Dog: He mocks Daniel during his final fight with Barnes while Daniel is writhing in pain after being hit with a low blow.
  "Hey, Danny Boy, how are the family jewels?"
• Meaningful Name: A guy named Snake acts as a minion for Cobra Kai.
• Smug Snake: He mocks Daniel for getting beaten up by Barnes, but it's clear he has no fighting skills of his own to speak of. Jessica, a diminutive teenage girl with no fighting experience whatsoever, manages to knock him down with a plant pot, and Daniel pretty easily dispatches him even while he's recovering from being hit with a low blow by Barnes.
• Stunned Silence: He just stares in shock after Barnes loses to Daniel.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: His fate after Barnes's loss in the 1985 All-Valley Tournament is not known.

Dennis

Dennis

Played By: William Christopher Ford

Appearances: The Karate Kid Part III

A henchman and sparring partner of Terry Silver during the events of Part III who also operates as as lackey of Mike Barnes.

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• Co-Dragons: He and Snake share the role of top henchman to Barnes and Silver.
• The Generic Guy: Compared to Snake, who gets ample opportunities to demonstrate how much of a Jerkass he is, Dennis mostly hangs around in the background and acts as an extra gang member for Barnes.
• The Voiceless: He only has two lines of dialogue throughout the entire movie.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: As with Snake, his fate after the 1985 All-Valley Tournament is not known.

Milos

Milos

Played By: Jan Tříska

Appearances: The Karate Kid Part III

Silver's butler in the 1980s.

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• The Generic Guy: He's mainly just around to show how filthy rich Terry Silver is, but doesn't really do anything to contribute to the plot.
• Hidden Depths: Considering Kreese is the Best Friend to Silver, Milos knows Kreese very well, to the point of being surprised by his presence and willing to offer him coffee.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He isn't shown after Silver loses the 1985 All-Valley by proxy, especially as Silver himself ages in Cobra Kai. But considering his age compared to Silver in the 1980s, coupled by his actor's death in 2017 at the age of 80, it's possible he may have passed as well.

Mrs. Milo

Mrs. Milo

Played By: Frances Bay

Appearances: The Karate Kid Part III

Silver's secretary in the 1980s.

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• Number Two: Of all of Terry Silver's staff, she's the most personal to him, as she reports to him of his business dealings, does all the work negotiating lawyers, and assists him in his revenge plan.
• Secretary of Evil: While it's ambiguous regard her morality, the fact that she works as a secretary for a crazed businessman with psychopathic issues fits this trope well.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: She isn't shown after Silver loses the 1985 All-Valley by proxy, especially as Silver himself ages in Cobra Kai. But considering her age compared to Silver in the 1980s, coupled by her actresses's death in 2011 at the age of 92, it's possible she may have passed as well.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: She expresses displeasure of Mike Barnes, referring to him as "obnoxious."

Vietnam

Captain George Turner

Captain George Turner

"You wanna defeat your enemy, you gotta learn to fight like your enemy."

Played By: Terry Serpico

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"I tried to tell you that it was kill or be killed out here. But you couldn't shed your humanity!"

The captain of a Green Beret squadron in Vietnam who recruits Kreese.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He begs Kreese to pull him back up at the end of their fight over the snake pit.
• Asshole Victim: Kreese stills drops him into the pit even after fellow US forces arrive to drive off the Viet Cong. Given his nonchalant attitude to killing his own men, it's hard to feel sorry for him.
• Bad Boss: Upon the mission going south, he abruptly abandons any responsibility to his men and has no problem letting them die (or even killing them himself) to secure his own survival.
• Bait the Dog: His decision to hide Betsy's death from Kreese initially seems sympathetic, as they are about to go on a dangerous mission and Kreese's grief could put himself and the rest of the team in danger. This goes out the window when he shamelessly brings it up to break Kreese's spirit when forced to kill each other by their Viet Cong captors.
• Caught Monologuing: Turner was initially dominating and winning his fight against Kreese while they were fighting above the Snake Pit, and had Kreese totally at his mercy and on the edge of the bridge. However, instead of tossing Kreese into the pit and ending the fight right there, he decided to start monologuing about how Kreese was a failure because he couldn't adopt Turner's views of not showing mercy and shedding his humanity, and was distracted long enough for Kreese to catch him off guard and turn the fight around.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Falling into a pit of venomous snakes is not a nice way to go.
• Devoured by the Horde: Implied when Kreese kicks him into the Snake Pit. We hear only an impact and then a menacing dissonance of hissing.
• Dirty Coward: He has the temerity to demand that Kreese lift him back up. It doesn't work.
• Evil Mentor: He's the one who set the kindly, chivalrous busboy-turned-soldier John Kreese on the path to becoming the nightmare we know him as today.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Captain Turner belittles Kreese for failing to grasp his Social Darwinist, kill or be killed teachings when in the POW camp. During the death battle staged by their captors, which ends right as the camp is being liberated, Kreese internalizes this lesson and kills Turner.
• Kick the Dog: He hides the information about the death of Kreese's girlfriend so that Kreese won't lose focus in the war from grief. Later, when the two of them have become POWs, not only does Turner rub the mission's failure in Kreese's face, but when Kreese volunteers to fight him in Silver's place, Turner bluntly reveals Betsy's death to him to screw with his head.
• Meaningful Name: Captain Turner was indeed the start of Kreese's "turn" into a monstrous sociopath.
• The Neidermeyer: When the squad gets captured and imprisoned by the Viet Cong, he refuses to support his men as their ranking officer even after Kreese calls him out on it.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Implied. He espouses the mindset of 'No Mercy' even if the enemy should surrender and tells Kreese to forget the "peace and love" notions preached by college protestors back in America. He also believes the Tang Soo Do he learned during the Korean War will help in fighting the Vietnamese — as he believes in learning to fight like the enemy, he seems to generalize that learning one particular Asian martial art will be just as effective in fighting the rest.
  "Never trust your enemy. You can leave all that peace and love crap for the college sissies back home."
• Predecessor Villain: He has been dead for over half a century and only Kreese and Silver remember him, but he plays a significant role for most, if not all of the conflict in the series. He is the one who turned Kreese (and Silver to an extent) into the amoral sociopath he is today and trained him in Tang Soo Do, both knowledges being what Kreese and Silver would use to open the Cobra Kai dojo.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears in flashbacks of Kreese's time as a Vietnam War soldier, but if it weren't for him abusing Kreese, the latter would have never become the sociopath he is, Cobra Kai would not have existed, and Daniel might not have formed his strong bond with Mr. Miyagi.
• The Social Darwinist: When he, Kreese, and the rest of their platoon are taken as POWs, Turner abandons his responsibilities as a CO and simply does what he has to in order to survive. There are some elements of I Did What I Had to Do in his thinking as he does actually seem somewhat regretful (if still disappointed) that he would have to kill Kreese when they're selected next to fight above a Snake Pit.
• Sociopathic Soldier: Turner espouses the "No Mercy" code that Cobra Kai will one day adopt and believes soldiers must shed their humanity if they wish to survive. When captured and forced into death matches, he almost seems eager to kill his own men.
• Stout Strength: He's heavyset but very strong and surprisingly agile, and might have actually defeated Kreese in their final fight if he hadn't insisted on lecturing the latter about his failings.
• Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: He started out as a fairly standard Army captain who was a little rough around the edges. Each appearance reveals more of his true colors until at last we see him as the callous, self-serving, sociopath he truly is.

Ponytail

Ponytail

"Get a little muscle on those tree branches, we'll talk."

Played By: Seth Kemp

Appearances: Cobra Kai

"Yeah, that's the smell of America. Tell her to send one for me, would ya?"

A Green Beret squadmate who served alongside John Kreese and Terry Silver.

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• Boom, Headshot!: He spends his final moments at a Vietnamese soldier's mercy before he is shot in the head.
• Morality Chain: His death inadvertently turned both Kreese and Sliver into villainy.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His real name is never revealed.
• Red Herring: The audience initially believes him to be the young Terry Silver because of his ponytail (which Silver would eventually don in Part III) and loudmouth personality. However, it's only after Ponytail dies that it's revealed that Silver is actually the one nicknamed "Twig".
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He teases Kreese and Silver, but the three do still seem to be close friends, with Kreese still keeping a picture of the trio together in his office many years after the war.

South Korea

Kim Sun-Yung

Kim Sun-Yung

Played By: Don L. Lee (1980 flashback)

Appearances: Cobra Kai

A master of Tang Soo Do and the grandfather of sensei Kim Da-Eun, who taught Captain Turner his ways during the Korean War. His legacy is what led to John Kreese's and Terry Silver's foundation of Cobra Kai.

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• Ambiguously Evil: As the founder of "The Way Of The Fist" and advocate of "no mercy" and "no honor", it'd be easy to assume Master Kim wasn't the most upstanding guy. However, it's also not exactly known if Master Kim's beliefs are rooted in ruthlessness or at the very least a jaded sense of morality. Further muddying the waters is that his style was designed for wartime and may have been brutal out of necessity. Also, he taught his style to American soldiers, the same country that Mr. Miyagi also fought for. Chozen's comments to Daniel describe Master Kim's philosophy as controversial rather than outright condemned.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Mentioned by Silver in The Karate Kid Part III and Daniel assumed he was made up when Silver is revealed to be Evil All Along. Cobra Kai Season 5 then reveals he is Real After All and is retroactively made the entire franchise's Greater-Scope Villain.
• Combat Pragmatist: According to Chozen, the style Kim Sun-Yung passed down to his students was not that of Tang Soo Do, but deception, no honor, and no mercy.
  Chozen: Kim Sun-Yung's style is based on deception. No honor. No mercy.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Kim Sun-Yang is this to the entire The Karate Kid franchise. Everything regarding Cobra Kai and "The Way of the Fist" can be traced back to his controversial style of Tang Soo Do which centered around "no mercy" and "no honor", and was passed down to Captain Turner, Kreese and Silver, both of the latter two embracing his methods wholeheartedly (Silver to a greater extent, given his higher emphasis on combat pragmatism and deception). He is also the grandfather of Kim Da-Eun, another ruthless karate sensei who also embraces his methods, bringing it to the current generation of American karatekas by joining Terry Silver's Cobra Kai.
• Mysterious Past: There's little to be said about his early history, and the details behind what drove him to espouse a controversial style of martial arts are not known. Sato also harbored a bitter rivalry towards him, but the series does not expand on their relationship.
• Old Master: Considering he taught American soldiers in the Korean War. By the time Kreese and Silver become his students in 1980, he's clearly aged and has a granddaughter.
• Ordered Apology: Subverted. Kim Sun-Yung supposedly demanded that Silver apologize to Mr. Miyagi for Kreese's actions during the 1984 All-Valley Tournament, but this claim was part of a hoax fabricated by Silver to damage Miyagi-Do Karate's image and drive a wedge between Daniel and Mr. Miyagi.
• Posthumous Character: By the events of Cobra Kai, he has long since passed away, leaving behind his former students (his granddaughter included) to carry on his legacy.
• Real After All: He was never seen in the films, only mentioned by Silver in Part III and after Silver revealed his true colors, Daniel assumed he was made up. He was first mentioned in Season 3 by Captain Turner and Season 5 of Cobra Kai reveals he was a very much real and infamous martial artist, with Chozen confirming to Daniel that Silver wasn't lying about his existence and Sato harbored a grudge towards him.
• The Rival: He was notorious for his controversial teachings which espoused showing no honor or mercy to an opponent via deception, both in and out of a war zone. His reputation earned him the ire of other members in the martial arts world, particularly Sato. As Sato was a heel himself at this juncture, this made their grudge something of an Evil Versus Evil scenario.
• Satellite Character: Little is known about his character outside of him teaching Captain Turner, Kreese and Silver "The Way of the Fist", and he appears only in one brief flashback in Season 5.
• Small Role, Big Impact: His knowledge passing on to Kreese and Silver via Turner, along with Kreese and Silver training under Kim Sun-Yung himself after Turner's death, would eventually kickstart the creation of Cobra Kai in The '80s.
• Uncertain Doom: While certainly deceased by the time of Cobra Kai season 5, it's unknown if he is alive during The Karate Kid Part III in which Silver mentions him as part of a scheme.
• Unseen No More: Prior to Season 5, he doesn't appear physically and his presence is only known by Silver and Turner name-dropping him earlier in the franchise. Daniel was quite surprised (and dismayed) to learn Kim Sun-Yung was very much a real person and not another one of Silver's fabrications.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He taught Tang Soo Do to Captain Turner, who in turn passed it on to John Kreese and Terry Silver, who later started Cobra Kai. The rest is history.
• World's Best Warrior: According to the series co-creator Hayden Schlossberg, Kim Sun-Yung is on the same level as that of Mr. Miyagi.

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