Comic Book / Mega Man (Archie Comics)

A Comic Book series based on the Mega Man (Classic) series, produced by Archie Comics and written by Ian Flynn, writer of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). Unlike the Sonic adaptation, this one largely sticks to the source material when adapting the series, including elements from the obscure Game Boy titles and No Export for You titles like Super Adventure Rockman. The first issue was released in May 2011. In a similar vein to Sonic's Off Panel, this series features Short Circuits in the back, which is a short, comic strip style gag based on the events on the issue.

In 2013, it crossed over with Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide, and again, titled Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite, in 2015.

Not to be confused with the Brazilian Mega Man comic, Novas Aventuras De Megaman. Nor would you want to confuse it with the Manga, Mega Man Megamix. Nor should you even confuse it with the short-lived Mega Man comic from Dreamwave.

With issue #55, Archie put the series on hiatus. With the cancellation of Sonic the Hedgehog, that license moving to IDW Publishing and taking many of the staff from the Archie Action line with it, and Boom! Studios getting the rights for Mega Man: Fully Charged comics, it meant that the comic never came back from that hiatus.

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Tropes exclusive to the comic:

• Action Girl:
  • Splash Woman in her brief appearance.
  • Roll has her moments as well, especially in Issue 19 when she leads relief efforts after a cruise ship crashes into a submerged rock.
  • Tempo helps to disable the bombs and rescue the doctors after one goes off in the Spiritus Ex Machina story arc. She also helps Roll in Issue 19.
  • Agent Roslyn Krantz is this just about every time she appears.
• Actually a Doombot: After Time Man and Oil Man are dealt with and Dr. Wily is cornered, Roslyn reveals that the latter is really a hologram placed by the real one.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • The Wily Walker. The original version from the games looks like this◊. The comic version looks like this. The actual Pinbot does show up in issue 47, though.
  • And Roll as well.
  • Gamma was a relatively stationary boss in its debut. The comic has it go on a rampage.
  • Kind of with Blues/Break Man/Proto Man. While he's usually depicted as badass or at least generally tough in-story, in Mega Man 3 he's really easy to defeat when you face him in gameplay. Here, Mega Man can't beat him in a straight duel until their climactic battle in front of Wily's space fortress, with the comic making it explicitly clear that he hadn't been able to defeat Blues before and that Blues was generally the better fighter of the two.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: While the series never got around to showing it in full, the glimpses of the Mega Man: The Wily Wars adaptation seen in issues #20 and #55 indicate it would have squeezed the plots of the first four Game Boy games (primarily Mega Man II) into the story via the Mega Man Killers and Quint, instead of those games getting their own adaptations.
• Adaptation Expansion: Given that the original games were largely Excuse Plots, this was inevitable.
• Adaptation Name Change: Super Adventure Rockman's final boss, originally named "New Yellow Devil", is instead called "Ra Devil" when it appears in the comic.
• Adapted Out:
  • CWU-01P is absent from the arc adapting Mega Man. It does, however, appear in the next arc when the characters revisit the fortress.
  • The Picopico-kun is the only Mega Man 2 boss that doesn't appear in the comic's adaptation of it.
• Afraid of Needles: Needle Man, ironically enough. Justified, since almost all of the Mega Man 3 Robot Masters are weak to their own weapons.
• After-Action Healing Drama: Issue 33 is dedicated to Mega Man being repaired after nearly dying from overloading himself.
• Aliens Are Bastards:
  • Wily attempted to invoked this in the third story arc with a hologram.
  • Ra Moon is a real case of this trope, as are the Stardroids and Shadow Man (as well as Trio).
  • Duo is an aversion. He's a very nice fellow and space law officer.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Discussed at length, but almost completely averted, since all rogue actions by robots are the result of human tampering or murderous alien supercomputers.
• Alternate History: Up to Issue #21, the comic is set in the year 200X like the first game. The comic began in 2011.
• And the Adventure Continues: Done three times. Issue #53 sets up the plot of Mega Man 4, encouraging the reader to buy Mega Man Legacy Collection to find out more. Issue #54 sets up Break Man's part of 4, explaining that he's now going to walk the path to redemption. Issue #55 has this on a far grander scale, showing how Mega Man continues to fight for eight more games, and becomes a serial concept.
• Androids Are People, Too: Mega Man and the other Robot Masters are treated as people by Light and his companions. Rosie likewise treats Rock and Roll like people, but Gil just finds Light's behavior towards his creations ridiculous.
  • The series also shows subtly that Robot Master thinking is different from that of humans, such as Rock inquiring if Dr. Wily will be reprogrammed in prison (and expressing regret when told it's not possible), and Guts Man and Concrete Man discussing what they want done with them after they are decommissioned. Some of the Robot Masters choosing decommissioning over change would also count.
• Androids and Detectives: Mega Man ends up working with Agents Krantz and Stern on several occasions. Rosie is able to get along just fine with Rock. Gil, being old-fashioned, not so much.
• Animesque: Given the source material, this isn't a surprise.
• Anti-Hero: Blues. He has a good heart and does want to do the right thing, but his issues with Dr. Light leads him to make terrible decisions like attacking his own brother on his birthday. Not to mention he does not know how bad Wily is until Issue 54, where after Wily instructs that Blues kidnaps Kalinka, Blues loses it.
• Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better:
  • Wily took this mantra when building the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters. They are all direct upgrades from the Light Robots.
  • As Dr. Wily made Ra Thor from Ra Moon's technology, Ra Moon made the Ra Devil from Dr. Wily's design of the Yellow Devil. It's much stronger than Ra Thor.
• Arc Welding: Shadow Man's backstory and the alien threats from Super Adventure Rockman, Mega Man V and Mega Man 8 are now all related. In addition. Time Man's existence is now linked to the plots of Mega Man II and the Japan-only game Challenger from the Future.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Quick Man qualifies, given that he spent the entirety of the third story arc trolling Mega Man and mocking him for being weak. When Mega Man confronts him for the final time, Quick Man is defeated without even knowing what happened.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Dr. LaLinde gives one to Blues during his tirade against Doctor Light for replacing him with Rock and Roll.
  LaLinde: Blues, did you stop to consider that he built a brother and sister for you? So that when you came home, as he always hoped you would, you'd never be alone again?
• Artistic Age: All the Robot Masters run into this given that the oldest of them is at most a couple of years old and the youngest being a month at the most, yet they act like young adults to children.
• Art Shift: Happens when Chad Thomas or Ryan Jampole (to a lesser extent) pen the artwork, as their art styles are noticeably different from Spaz's, Bates's and Hill's in some ways.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Air Man's line "You can't beat me."
  • In "Prototype", Blues refers to a biker as "Green Biker Dude" in reference to a nickname for a memetically popular background extra in Mega Man X2's intro stage.
  • The gag of Metal Man's weapon being overpowered gets a nod in an early arc when Mega Man realizes he'd have had an easier time if he'd done Metal Man first.
• As You Know: The first issue uses this.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Mega Man shows increasing signs of this as he absorbs more pieces of Wily's malware.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Gamma's weak point wasn't supposed to be incredibly obvious, but due to a disconnect between writer and artist his one weakness is very easy to spot.
• Avenging the Villain: As of issue 32, the Stardroids are on their way to Earth to avenge Ra Moon. They don't arrive before the series ends.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Short Circuits 3. Roll, if you decide to use the Fire Storm to clean the place, you only need one cannon, not both.
• Backdoor Pilot: The pseudo-crossover with the X series was meant to jumpstart a comic based on X, which didn't take due to this comic's already-waning sales at the time.
• Back from the Dead: The Mega Man 2 Robot Masters initially had their I.C. chips destroyed (stopping them from being rebuilt), but Ra Moon later used backups to revive them.
• Bad Boss:
  • Wily borders on this. Although Cossack claims that even a monster like Wily loves his robots, he had no problem sending the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters out to get slaughtered by Mega Man so he would download his malware program along with their weapon data.
  • Needle Man thinks Wily is a terrible boss by making them fight Mega Man and not really caring if they get killed or not since Wily wins either way. He also seems to resent being merely a weapon without a choice but to obey Wily.
  • Earlier in the same story arc, all of the first-generation Wily Numbers had to give up their I.C. chips to fulfill Wily's latest plan. Quick Man was not pleased by this.
  • None of the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters are happy about being stuffed into one robot, since they can barely function with all the conflicting personalities. In Doc Robot's last moments, he begs Mega Man to stop Wily (who he calls an idiot).
  • Xander becomes so obsessed with destroying robots that he was willing to blow up his own men during the Spiritus Ex Machina story arc.
• Bag of Spilling: Justified. After his power corruption in issue #3, Mega Man avoids holding onto weapons longer than needed to prevent it from happening again.
• Beach Episode: Issue 19, which takes place on a beach. It starts off as usual, but then a storm blows in and a shipwreck happens...
• Becoming the Mask: Played with. Wily fakes a Heel–Face Turn as part of his newest plan after Ra Moon is defeated, but his inner monologue reveals that he's starting to doubt himself and is considering calling it all off. Ultimately he subverts it completely and just goes through with the plan.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: Issue 31 has a great big splash page with Rock, Break Man, three of the MM 1 robot masters, and all of the MM 2 robot masters versus the MM 3 robot masters mind-controlled by Ra Moon and Ra Moon itself.
• Big Bad Friend: Dr. Light's relationship with Wily can best be described as this trope. Even after Wily reprogrammed his Robot Masters and tried to kill his son, he still wanted to work things out with Wily before he went to prison. He also tells old stories about the good times Wily and him had and how he missed his friend. When Wily told his story about Ra Moon controlling him, Dr. Light is more than willing to believe him and lets Wily live at his house during probation.
• Big Blackout: Global thanks to Ra Moon.
• Big Damn Heroes: The first Robot Masters arrive to help Mega Man defeat his copy.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • In the Mega Man 3 story arc, Wily has been defeated again and Gamma cannot be used for evil. However, Mega Man had no choice but to destroy Gamma and Dr. Light does not have the funds to rebuild it. Light also has to rebuild his home and lab after Wily destroyed it and Blues is still not on the best terms with his family, although he's finally getting better.
  • The final issue has Doctor Light witnessing all the things Dr. Wily will do, and the suffering that will happen long after both of their deaths, but also the hope of seeing the various future Mega Men, all fighting for peace, just like Rock.
  • Chronologically speaking, the series as a whole ends on Dr. Cossack's announcement for world domination and Kalinka's kidnapping and Dr. Wily already putting his future evil plans into motion including getting started on his next wave of Robot Masters, but this is counterbalanced by Break Man finally resolving to oppose Dr. Wily (right after being blackmailed by him to perform said kidnapping) and becoming Proto Man, Rock suiting up (again) to oppose Cossack, and in accordance with the game canon, the Foregone Conclusion that Mega Man will bring peace to the world once and forever more.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • The original Robot Masters after being reprogrammed by Dr. Wily.
  • Mega Man slowly becomes this as he downloads pieces of Wily's malware.
  • The Mega Man 3 Robot Masters in the Ra Moon story arc.
  • Following said arc, Wily wants everyone to believe that he was brainwashed by Ra Moon.
• Break the Haughty: Ra Moon betrayed Wily and took his Robot Masters. To add even more insult to injury, he takes control of Wily's ace, Ra Thor, and made an improved version of the Yellow Devil. By the end of the story arc, Wily was begging Mega Man for help and apologizing for allowing all of this to happen.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: In order to defeat Ra Moon, Mega Man fires a double charged buster shot, which nearly destroys him as well.
• Blatant Lies: Wily claimed that Ra Moon was controlling him the entire time, forcing him to start his first two evil plots.
• Blob Monster: The Yellow Devil and Ra Devil.
• Blood Knight:
  • Most of Wily's Robot Masters fall into this, especially Quick Man.
  • In "Dawn of X", Vile fits this trope perfectly.
  • Zero too, to a degree.
• Blow You Away: Air Man.
• Brick Joke:
  • Crash Man and Needle Man's lack of hands, which goes several issues before being brought up again.
  • In Issue #2, Mega Man asks why Wily couldn't make Robot Masters like "Origami Man". In Issue #17's Short Circuits, he does indeed.
• Brother–Sister Incest: This is Ice Man towards Roll if you follow the "creator=parent" logic.
• Call-Back: The ceremony where Doctors Light and Wily unveil Gamma is very similar to the ceremony where Dr. Light unveiled the first Robot Masters.
• Call-Forward: By the truckload:
  • During Dawn of X, Sigma utilises a beam-blade, and casually suggests at one point that maybe Zero should get one.
  • In issue 49, Roll suggests that if some of Wily's Robot Masters don't want to be reprogrammed, maybe they can make a robot museum to live in. A few issues later, the museum is in the process of being built...and Concrete Man is one of the ones building it.
  • During "Spiritus Ex Machina'', Pharaoh Man mentions how he dreads to think of what he'd do if he were under Wily's control.
  • While exploring the Temple of the Moon in Issue 34, Cossack decides to create a Robot Master with drills once he returns.
  • Issue 54 has parts of the under-construction Mega Man 5 and Mega Man 7 Robot Masters scattered around Wily's lab, alongside blueprints for various Wily Castles and fortresses seen in between Mega Man 4 and Mega Man 6.
  • Issue 53 has Concrete Man and Guts Man discussing their futures after being decommissioned - Guts Man wishing to be on display and telling Concrete Man that he'd change his mind about being recycled instead when his time comes.
• The Cameo:
  • The two soldiers that Mega Man encounters in Issue 2 after the very first Robot Master attack are the same player characters from the arcade game Forgotten Worlds.
  • In Issue 19, one of the people on the life rafts looks a lot like Archie.
  • Phoenix Wright is Wily's defense attorney in issue 36. The detective taking Wily to jail in the same issue bears a resemblance to Dick Gumshoe from the same series.
• The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires: Plant Man, a Brazilian robot, greets Mega Man by saying "Hola" (Spanish for "Hi" - not Portuguese, the language actually spoken in Brazil). If it was meant to be him greeting Rock in his native language, it should have been "Olá".
• Character Filibuster: Defied in issue 30. Bubble Man nearly starts an Evil Gloating-filled rant towards Mega Man and his allies but gets shut up by an annoyed Metal Man.
  "Do. Not. Tell. Them. ANYTHING."
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: All of Light's Robot Masters seemed to be built with this trope in mind. Justified since they were built to serve humanity.
• Clue from Ed.: This came into effect starting with #issue 5, once the story got some continuity behind it.
• Coincidental Broadcast: Dr. Light hears one about robots attacking the city just after discovering his new Robot Master line was stolen.
• Comic-Book Adaptation: Yup.
• Comm Links: The Robot Masters seem to have these built in to communicate with each other. It also allows Dr. Light to stay in contact with Mega Man on his missions.
• Composite Character:
  • Issue 20 depicts Quint leading an attack at a point after King's rebellion, in a similar manner to Rockman Shadow from Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousensha. We know it's not Rockman Shadow himself as Ian Flynn stated characters from Mirai Kara no Chousensha were off-limits for the comic.
  • The Wily Walker is a cross between Wily Machine 3 from Mega Man 3 and the berserk construction machine X fights in the Batman Cold Open to The Day of Sigma.
• Continuity Cameo:
  • Along with the robot reporters from Battle and Chase, Neige is present at Dr. Light's speech.
  • Likewise, the Kattelox police and KTOX news reporter from Mega Man Legends show up in issues #5 and #1 respectively.
  • As Mega Man downloads Heat Man's weapon data, there's a picture of circuitry in the shape of Mr. Match's emblem, HeatMan.EXE's operator.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In "Spiritus Ex Machina" Flash Man is shown to still hold resentment towards Quick Man after he stabbed Flash Man in the back of the head so he could fight Mega Man back in "The Return Of Dr. Wily".
  • In the short "Cold Feat", Guts Man tries to impede the movement of, or otherwise destroy, an entire glacier after Ice Man had asked him for help (which of course did NOT involve either one of those actions). Later in "For the Bot Who Has Everything," Guts Man mentions that Ice Man has been blocking his calls.
  • In issue #38, while traveling through time, Xander sees Mega Man under attack by a mysterious robot and aided by a talking animal as he's going back in time.
• Continuity Reboot: Has nothing to do with the previous Mega Man comic series.
• Cool Key: Mega Man is awarded the key to the city up until Break Man blasts it to pieces. Like everything else Break Man damaged, it was restored post-crossover.
• Cool Big Sis: Roll definitely qualifies.
• Cool Old Guy: Dr. Light. Even Wily has his moments.
• Cool Shades: Blues at all times.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: All of the Light robot masters except for Rock and Blues are programmed to be okay with the fact that they will eventually die, and to not consider themselves as life, only life-like.
• Cosmic Retcon: In the aftermath of the Worlds Collide Crossover, all the damage from Break Man's attack is undone.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Crash Man has drills instead of hands, Needle Man has guns in place of his hands and Spark Man has spikes in place of arms. The problems of this quickly become apparent. Crash Man and Magnet Man even bring up this trope as their motivation for being shut down following Wily's supposed death.
• Crocodile Tears: Wily pulled these after the second-generation Wily Numbers stole the energy crystals needed for Gamma.
• Crossover: Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide, the 12-part crossover with Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Universe.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite, the second 12-part crossover with Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Universe and Sonic Boom.
  • And then there was a psuedo-one with the Mega Man X series!
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • The Robot Masters in the first few issues are taken out in one hit each, as is Wily. This continues on into the Mega Man 2 arc, even though the Robot Masters (mostly) get hits in on Mega Man.
  • Any time the Emerald Spears attempt a direct fight against Mega Man.
  • Mega Man versus Ra Devil. He was so unstoppable that Mega Man couldn't directly beat him.
• Cut Short: The series was put on hiatus after the fifty-fifth issue (whose Flash Forward plot can be summarized as, "Look at all these cool adaptations we'll never get the chance to do!"), right before the events of Mega Man 4 were about to begin, and no-one (not even the staff) is sure how long it'll stay that way (if it ever comes out of hiatus at all). It doesn't help that the setup for 4's adaptation was delayed by the Worlds Collide and Worlds Unite crossovers.
• Cutting the Knot: Instead of trying to fight Alien Wily, Mega Man immediately blows up the projector once he realizes that it's all just a hologram.
• Cyber Cyclops: Several:
  • Big Eyes appear on the first page of the first issue and the iconic Yellow Devil shows up soon after on page five.
  • The equally iconic Sniper Joe appears on page four of issue 2.
  • Ra Devil counts since he is an upgrade of the Yellow Devil.
  • The Chaos Devil in the Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide crossover.
• The Cynic:
  • Gil's core personality, especially when it comes to robots and humans living in harmony.
  • Blues to an extent, about the bonds of family and forgiveness.
• Damsel in Distress: Roll in the second story arc.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • The Curse of Ra Moon arc. The global blackout at the end of the prelude causes, among other things, ships to become stranded at sea, motor vehicles and planes to crash, and hospital power to fail in the middle of surgery. And then there's the backstory of Ra Moon coming to Earth and manipulating a primitive society to worship and even kill for him before destroying said civilization when it wasn't suiting his needs fast enough. As well as the flashback of Dr. Light's friend who was exploring the ruins where Ra Moon was with other explorers. The EMP field crashed their helicopter resorting in many deaths and said friend losing an arm.
  • The second half of the Mega Man 3 adaption starts with Dr. Wily's betrayal, Break Man and Mega Man fighting, Wily stealing Gamma, and finally Doc Robot destroying Light Labs.
• Darkest Hour: The entire Ra Moon arc. First Roll is mortally injured by Blues and all the world's power is shut down by Ra Moon. Slowly, the world is collapsing and the EMP field is becoming strong enough to fry human brains. When Ra Moon is finally killed, Mega Man is on the verge of death.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Wily pins all his previous crimes on Ra Moon by claiming to have been under his influence, using Ra Moon's alien nature and his fight against him to support his claim.
• Decomposite Character: In the games, Mr. X was simply a Paper-Thin Disguise used by Dr. Wily. In the comics, he's a separate supervillain who forces Wily into his employment and is revealed to be Xander Payne, having been affected by Time Travel and taking The Slow Path.
• Deconstruction: This adaptation takes a more realistic approach to the Classic series' events and shows its consequences.
  • In the first game adaptation and his first combat situation, Mega Man grows proud, power-hungry, and insists that That Man Is Dead when asked to show leniency.
  • Dr. Lalinde removing Tempo's emotions after feeling empathy for her shows how someone might think seeing robots as children is terrifying.
  • The second arc follows up what would happen in the aftermath of a robot rampage, with a Federal agency investigating Dr. Light.
  • In the arc covering the events of Mega Man 3, the point-of-view of the Robot Masters is covered in a more cynical light by Needle Man, who laments that they are nothing more than soldiers being marched to their deaths by a Bad Boss, and can do nothing about it.
• Decon-Recon Switch: The comic deconstructs the plot, characters, and ideas of the Mega Man series, examining the morality of machines having sentience and of using robots as weapons, the stress/bigotry between humans and robots, and the dangers inherent in Mega Man's powers. However it's also a reconstruction; In the end Mega Man and his allies are still heroes whose courage, idealism, and friendship carry them through the day, Wily and his minions are still the wacky bad guys trying (and failing) to Take Over the World, and the comic makes a point of showing that even if there are hardships, humans and robots can still coexist as equals and overcome problems through their cooperation.
• Defeat Means Respect:
  • Quick Man is much more respectful towards Mega Man after he was defeated.
  • Wily too to an extent. He went from seeing Mega Man as a mere annoyance in the first two story arcs, to making plans specially to take Mega Man out.
  • Shadow Man gained a lot of respect towards Mega Man after being defeated.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Happens in the end of the Return of Dr. Wily arc. During the battle, Wily says he's using technology from beyond the stars. After his craft is destroyed, Wily reveals he's really an alien, plotting the invasion of Earth! Ultimately subverted, as it turned out to be a hologram that the mad doctor was controlling on the sidelines.
• "Die Hard" on an X: The plot of the Spiritus ex Machina arc.
• Desperately Seeking A Purpose In Life: Blues wasn't built with any purpose other than to simply be, and isn't sure what that means. The word "function" comes up a lot.
• Do Androids Dream?: The Spiritus Ex Machina arc is all about this, including a fairly straw-free debate on the morality of machine sentience. Issue #22 features a Symposium-like discussion, with Dr. Light and Agent Stern debating if robots can feel love and deal with the consequences. It's heavily debated and various characters feel differently about it. Dr. Light, Agent Krantz, and LaLinde think it's fine. Agent Stern and Emerald Spears think it isn't right. Dr. Wily views the robots as tools with quirky personalities but little to no form of sentience.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set:
  • Dr. Wily, demanding for the world's leaders to surrender and to be recognized as the genius he is.
  • The Emerald Spears make their debut by interrupting the robotics debate, and having Harvey appear on the massive auditorium screen.
• Don't Explain the Joke: Issue #1's Short Circuits explains the origins of Mega Man's "upgrade" in a footnote. This footnote was removed from the paperback editions of the first arc.
• Doting Parent: Dr. Light is very much this to his robot children, Rock and Roll.
• Downer Ending: The series ends chronologically with Kalinka Cossack abducted by a reluctant Blues on Wily's orders, forcing her father to pretend to be a villain for him and meaning Rock cannot give up fighting.
• The Dragon:
  • Quick Man fills this role in the third story arc.
  • Blues as Break Man took this role. As of part two of the Mega Man 3 adaptation, he is a co-dragon along with Doc Robot. His bat-shit reaction at Wily's request to kidnap Kalinka causes Blues to avert this trope later, however.
• Driven by Envy:
  • The primary reason why Wily turned to villainy.
  • Also the reason why Blues is driven to fight Mega Man. According to him, Rock took his purpose.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: In the first arc as Mega Man continues on to Elec Man, Ice Man and Fire Man. He begins to grow overconfident, thinking no robot can oppose him, and he mercilessly fights the remaining three robot masters. When he sees how upset this has made Roll, Mega Man breaks down in tears.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Though Harvey comes off as kind of a stoned hippie, pretty much everything that happens from the X through Legends series vindicates nearly everything he's saying. This point was even raised by Gil Stern in issue #22.
  Gil Stern: I'm not sayin' the Spears' methods were right. They're criminals, wackos and morons. I'm glad you two [Dr. Light and Dr. LaLinde] came out okay and that those mooks are behind the bars...But they weren't wrong about the dangers of science advancin' too fast. What happens when the line between robots and humans get fuzzy? Like that "love" thing we were talking earlier. What if some virus turns 'em crazy and makes them run wild?
• Dungeon Bypass: Rock uses Rush to skip past Top Man's large array of traps, much to Top Man's increasing distress and aggravation.
• Dying as Yourself:
  • Blues runs away from Dr. Light even though if his core isn't fixed he will die.
  Blues: I would rather die tomorrow as Blues rather than live forever as someone else.
  • Several of Wily's Robot Masters, after being offered a second chance at life, decide to go offline rather than life with a forced normal life upon them. Quick Man in particular invokes this trope as why he decided this.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Mega Man has access to the Charge Shot in the comic, even though he canonically gets it in Mega Man 4.
  • Short Circuits #4 has Bass, Treble, Rush, and Proto Man demanding their turn in the comic.
  • In issue 2, Dr Light mentions a name, "Blues", when he sees a Sniper Joe. We later see Blues' face during Light's "story" in issue 3.
  • Pharaoh Man, Dr. Cossack, and Kalinka are major players in the "Spiritus Ex Machina" storyline, which is set even before the events of Mega Man 3, much less 4.
  • Concrete Man appears in issue #17, and Splash Woman in #19. Justified, since the Mega Man 9 Robot Masters have to be around early enough to warrant their decommissioning later.
  • In the 1st issue, Neige is present in the crowd that came to see Dr. Light's presentation of the Robot Masters, a whole two hundred years before she even existed.
  • Plant Man from Mega Man 6 is seen in issues #28 and #29. At that point, the comic had yet to reach the Mega Man 3 storyline. Centaur Man, from the same game, is seen in issue #31.
  • Pump Man from Mega Man 10 is seen in issue #32, helping out after the blackout.
• Easily Forgiven: Played with. Dr. Light forgives Wily for everything he has done (partly because he believed Wily's story about being controlled by Ra Moon), but the citizens of Mega City have not. Mega Man and Roll are split down the middle. Roll doesn't trust Wily despite believing in his story and Mega Man is weary of Wily despite defending him in court.
  • Doctor Light forgives Mega Man for letting Wily die at the end of the Mega Man 3 arc, his reasoning being that "Wily brought it upon himself".
• Egopolis: Subverted. Mega City was renamed after Mega Man, but it wasn't his idea. In fact, he's rather embarrassed by the whole proceeding.
• Eldritch Abomination: Pretty much what Ra Moon is.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Sniper Joes are shown to be a relatively more serious threat in the comics than they often are in the games, which makes sense as they were developed for military purposes. The implication is that the primary difference between them and the robot masters in terms of threat level is the fact that the Joes have much less complex AIs.
  • We find out in Shadow Man's flashback that he was one of these to Ra Moon.
• Emotionless Girl: Quake Woman is emotionless at first because after she was injured in a cave-in, Lalinde was terrified by the fact that she was starting to consider a robot a daughter so while making repairs she destroyed Tempo's personality. This failed to remove her empathy towards Tempo and only caused her to become plagued with guilt. After "Spiritus Ex Machina" she restores Tempo's emotions, though she wasn't the same Tempo compared to what she previously was as revealed in issue 35. It's softened with the later reveal that Tempo's IC chip was damaged in the cave-in so it wasn't entirely Lalinde's fault.
• Empty Eyes: The fate of all the world's robots after Ra Moon does his worldwide Big Blackout.
• The End of the World as We Know It: The premise of the "Curse of Ra Moon" story arc.
• Enemy Mine: Rock manages to talk the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters into a temporary alliance when he mentions what Ra Moon is really doing. The MM 3 robot masters might have joined him too, but they're susceptible to Mind Control by Ra Moon. Flash Man lampshades it.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Wily and his Robot Masters are horrified when they learn Ra Moon wants to kill everything on the planet through his black-out.
  • In the crossover, Wily is beyond pissed when Eggman attempts to murder Dr. Light.
  • After Doc Robot destroyed Light's Lab, Break Man contacts Wily asking if he killed everyone inside. Wily actually gets mad, saying that he's vengeful, but not a monster.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Issue 20. Even though Light himself confirms that Mega Man has just had several sectors of his memory go poof for some unknown reason.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Ice Man to Roll.
• Everything Sensor: The Robot Masters seem to be equipped with these, mostly linked to their purpose but seems to have a wide range of uses.
  • Blues expresses surprise that Quake Woman has a built in Geiger counter. She notes that it's useful for her purposes of geological excavation.
• Evil Former Friend: Wily and Dr. Light were friends and colleagues before Wily's envy got the best of him.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Something Wily learned the hard way with Ra Moon.
• Evil Is Petty: In Mega Man 4, Dr. Wily used Dr. Cossack because he needed someone else to hide his scheme. In issue #54, covering part of the events before it, an additional reason is because Wily didn't like how Cossack treated him back during their time together.
• Evil Learns of Outside Context: The crossovers "Worlds Collide" and "Worlds Unite" begin with the respective main antagonists learning about worlds other than their own. In the former case, Dr. Wily and Dr. Eggman join forces to eliminate their hated foes while secretly planning to doublecross the other, while Sigma forces both doctors to help him take over the multiverse and become a god in the process.
• Eye Beams: Ra Devil's primary form of attack.
• Eye Scream: Ra Moon is killed by a double charged shot striking his eyes.
• Exact Words: The Robot Masters taking down the Copy Robot instead of the real Mega Man in issue #4, with Elec Man explaining that they were "ordered to destroy one Mega Man".
• Exponential Plot Delay: The arcs of the first and second games happen almost one after another, with only two short interludes in between. Meanwhile, a significant amount of time passes before even the backstory of the third game takes place. In addition, the Robot Masters in the first and second games take two/three issues, while the third game uses four issues to go through the Robot Masters.
• Expy:
  • Hey, Detective Gumshoe's in 200X! Well, maybe his dad, he's looking a little old.
  • Along those lines, a lawyer similar to Phoenix shows up for Dr. Wily's trial in issue #36.
  • Issue 54 introduces Vesper Woman, a bee robot made because they couldn't use the scrapped RM Honey Woman's◊ design.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Mega Man encounters this in issues #11-12, thanks to a Computer Virus. He snaps back thanks to his brothers uploading him with an anti-virus.
  • Trio has a deliberate one due to his discovery of Ra Moon's power.
• The Faceless: Blues as Break Man.
• Fatherly Scientist: Dr. Light is so emotionally attached to his creations that he sees them as his own children. Dr. Wily (during their early years as partners) sees this as a distraction/hindrance to their work and so after the Blues fiasco happened he convinced Light to create less human-like robots (the robot masters line) so he'll be able to continue their work without the "distractions".
• Flash Step:
  • Quick Man's specialty.
  • Flash Man appears at first to do this, but he is really stopping time.
• Flawed Prototype: Because of a malfunction in his power core, Blues was slowly shutting down and would eventually die if his core wasn't replaced. Because he feared he would lose his personality if his core was repaired, Blues ran away and spent several years slowly dying before Wily found him and repaired him.
• First-Name Basis: Dr. Light and Dr. Wily remain on this even after they become enemies.
• Foreshadowing:
  • As Dr Light explains to Mega Man how the prison system works, he tells him that, unfortunately, neither Mega Man nor any other robots from his generation have true free will. He hopes to one day capture that X Factor. On top of that, as he says this, his reflection in the window beside him is seen. One day, a transparent image will be all that remains of him.
  • Pharaoh Man comments in issue #13 that he's not sure what he'd do if Wily reprogrammed him.
  • Similarly, in issue 22 while he's explaining why he worries about robots advancing too fast, Stern wonders what would happen if a computer virus of some sort made the robots go crazy.
  • Issue #19 has a pretty awesome moment of this as Oil Man checks out a box. This box contains Splash Woman who mentions that Oil Man "broke the street date."
  • Issue #20 is basically a whole issue of Foreshadowing showing future events and characters that haven't shown up yet. The first page indicates the death of Time Man at some point in the future.
  • The Wily Walker refused to attack Zero at first.
  • Xander's time travel also foreshadows many events, including him being the reason behind all the weirdness in Issue 20.
  • Toward the end of issue #40, Sigma admits he agrees that Reploids are superior to humans in many ways. While he says it's why they need to protect humans, it darkly hints at his destiny as the leader of the Mavericks later on.
• Foregone Conclusion: The crossover, as well as the two time travel arcs, makes any reader damn sure of many future events, even if they've never played the original games or even the X games. Any reader of either story will already know that Cossack doesn't really turn evil, Bass was working for Wily, Splash Woman pulls a Face–Heel Turn, Sigma turns evil, and Mega Man never achieves everlasting peace.
• Force Shield: The Magnet Beam generates these. Dr. Light uses it to contain Mega Man when he's gone power mad from absorbing the six original master weapons and it holds up without so much as a flicker. It is also capable of supporting Mega Man's weight in mid-air with no trouble.
• For the Evulz/It Amused Me: The reason why Ra Moon wanted to wiped out all life on the planet.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Until the second half of the Mega Man 3 story arc, Wily isn't liked by anyone except Dr. Light, who unquestionably trusts him. Though of course, he was never anyone's friend to begin with.
• From Bad to Worse: The entire Ra Moon story arc in a nutshell:
  • Ra Moon makes the EMP wave so strong that it would start frying human brains, takes control of Wily's trump card, Ra Thor, shuts down the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters, and creates Ra Devil, an advanced version of the Yellow Devil that leaves Mega Man critically injured when he defeats it. Even the ending isn't safe, as [after his defeat, Ra Moon sends a final message to his "children," Sunstar and the Stardroids.
  • The codes that Wily gives Mega Man to stop the Wily Walker only made their situation worse. Of course, this is on purpose.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: Roll uses this on her brother in issue 5 when he's horsing around with the other Robot Masters during clean-up.
  Fwoosh!
  KA-BOOM!
  Roll: "Rock Light! I'll tear you down to your servos!"
  Dr. Light: *Facepalm*
• Gainax Ending: Issue #20.
• Girl's Night Out Episode: Issue #19 focuses on Roll, Quake Woman, and Splash Woman, though Oil Man gets his fair share of time as well.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: All the Robot Masters at the end of issue #3. Roll also gets these when Mega Man thinks that she'll go crazy with the Fire Storm.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: After his trip through time and seeing a Reploid-filled future, Xander appears to have gone even further around the bend and willing to go farther in his plans.
• Guns Akimbo: Fire Man, Crash Man, and Needle Man have Arm Cannons where the hands should be. This becomes a running gag so the latter two start a club that handless Robot Masters can join. Crash Man later attempts to use this as his reason to go offline when Quick Man decides to protect his sense of self by going offline.
  • For some reason, in the third Short Circuits, Roll (at least in Mega Man's thoughts) chooses this this of all things with the Fire Storm when she decides that fire is the best cleaning tool.
• Happiness Is Mandatory: The 8 robot masters that choose to abandon Wily and become useful to society become reprogrammed to enjoy their new purpose in life. Quick Man is disturbed by this, saying that if he has to be reprogrammed to enjoy his new life, it's not really his life anymore.
• Having a Blast: Bomb Man and Crash Man's powers.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Wily fakes one of these after the ordeal with Ra Moon, seeing it as a chance to drum up sympathy while he plots.
  • Blues has a real one in issue #54.
  • Some of the Robot Masters redirect their lives to helping others: Air Man predicts the weather, Bubble Man studies nature, Hard Man levels the land with his weight, Heat Man helps Fire Man with waste disposal, Spark Man and Magnet Man generate power, Wood Man protects a town park, Snake Man and his Search Snake minions survey the land, etc. the other half of the Wily Robot Masters and Shadow Man are exceptions, though: the former chooses decommission, while Shadow Man continues serving Wily.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Dr. Light has two:
    • In the first issue, after he sees not only was his Robot Masters stolen and wrecking the city, but his partner and friend Wily was behind it. He broke down in tears from the revelation.
    • He has another complete breakdown after Wily revealed his true colors and stole Gamma. He's so disheartened that he questions his belief that everyone has good in them and just needs a chance. It takes both Roll and Rock's encouragement to snap him out of it.
  • Mega Man has three:
    • The first happens after he makes Roll cry during a tantrum where he unleashes all his acquired powers inside the box that Doctor Light puts him in.
    • Mega Man suffers another one following his fight with Needle Man, who lamented the fact that he's nothing but a weapon given no choice from his Bad Boss of a master but to fight.
    • His third one triggers when half of the Wily Robot Masters decided to go offline to preserve their identities.
• Heroic RRoD:
  • Blues had a prolonged version of this as a result of his flawed power core.
  • What Mega Man experiences after using two Mega Busters to destroy Ra Moon.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Mega Man at the end of the Ra Moon arc. Thankfully, Wily was there to keep him alive until he was brought back to Dr. Light for repairs.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Issue 55 suggests, and Ian Flynn later confirmed, that had the series continued Dr. Wily would have done something to Mister X, and taken his identity.
• Hilarious Outtakes: The Short Circuits sections are meant to invoke this.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Metal Man is owned by his own weapon, twice.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • Hard Man gives Mega Man an E-tank before they fight.
  • Blues allows Mega Man to get repaired and gives him the location of Wily's new fortress so he can settle the score once and for all fairly.
• How We Got Here: The first issue opens with Mega Man about to storm Dr. Wily's fortress, then goes into a flashback on how it happened.
• Humongous Mecha: Wily loves these.
• Hurricane of Puns: Cut Man is the most frequent offender, but hardly the only one.
• Hypocritical Humor: Dr. Wily calls Mr. X campy and tacky. This from a guy who builds giant fortresses with huge skull decorations and bizarre colorful robots.
• I Can Still Fight!:
  • Mega Man kept fighting through the third story arc despite taking massive damage and his family trying to get him to come home for repairs.
  • Again in the Mega Man 3 story arc, Mega Man wants to keep fighting despite how injured he gets.
• An Ice Person: Ice Man.
• The Idealist:
  • Dr. Light's core personality.
  • Like their father, Mega Man and Roll also shares this characteristic.
• Identical Panel Gag: Played for drama. A flashback that ends with a younger Dr. Light telling Wily that he has faith that Dr. Wily can still achieve greatness in the robotics world, given a second chance. Cut to present day, and Dr. Light is depressed the Wily rejected his second, and third, chances.
• I Have This Friend: Break Man's conversation with Tempo in issue #35 plays out like this, insisting he's questioning her choice of trusting Dr. LaLinde rather than fishing for justifications regarding his own actions towards Dr. Light and his siblings. She sees through it completely, which only serves to aggravate Break Man.
• Ignored Epiphany: In the final issue, Dr. Light looks upon the events of the X and Zero series, and he starts to seriously consider if the progress of robotics is worth it...but with looking at the ZX and Legends series, he realizes that the world always has a Mega Man to protect it.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight:
  • Mega Man versus the first Robot Masters. It works on half of them, who begin fighting the other half. Then they all get free thanks to some Loophole Abuse.
  • They return the favor in a role reversal when Mega Man's Brainwashed and Crazy, until they finally get to upload the anti-virus.
• Imagine Spot: Short Circuits issue #3.
• Implacable Man: It took all of Mega Man's weapon energy to take Ra Thor down.
• Improvised Weapon: The original Robot Masters were meant to aid research and resource management. With a few tweaks by Dr. Wily, they became tools of world conquest overnight. Wood Man references this in the "Return of Dr. Wily" arc. Mega Man may have defeated "tools", but Wood Man notes he was designed for combat.
  • Referenced again by one of the MM3 Robot Masters, who comments on how Mega Man brought "industrial-grade robots" along for the fight.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Despite Wily going on about how much of a genius he is, he always feels the need to prove it, especially after Doctor Light shows him up.
• Informed Flaw: The series states that X and other Reploids are the first robots with true free will, yet Rock, Roll, and especially Blues can think, reason, feel emotions to the point of having tear ducts, and even bend the laws of robotics. It's even noted by Light that while they don't have true free will, they do come very close to it.
• In Medias Res: Several of the story arcs start this way, including the first one.
• Insecure Protagonist, Arrogant Antagonist: Mega Man wasn't originally made for fighting and is uncomfortable with the idea of destroying his fellow robots even though he volunteered to be turned into a combat robot. He spends his first few battles trying to reason with his brothers before reluctantly disabling them. Dr. Wily on the other hand is an Insufferable Genius who is tired of being Always Second Best to Dr. Light, with his robotic rampage being one long tirade to prove himself the most brilliant mind on Earth. Rock gradually becomes more confident and resolute as he continues to battle Wily, but remains naturally humble outside of handful of times he lets the power goes to his head or is forcibly reprogrammed.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Thoroughly averted. Despite the level of complexity the various robots show in their personalities, all of the A.I.s depicted were deliberately developed to possess and/or develop the intelligence and emotional range they show in the comic.
• Insufferable Genius: Wily to a 'T'. He is a genius and he will rub it in people's faces.
• Invincible Hero: Mega Man was this when he fought the original six Robot Masters, as fans complained about him not being scratched at all given how the source games were difficult to beat. This got subverted as the comic went on, particularly in the Ra Moon arc.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Pulled by Gemini Man; after Mega Man seemingly defeated him, he attempted to shoot Mega Man in the back. Luckily, Mega Man was able to dodge at the last second, making the shot only graze his shoulder.
• It's All About Me: Easily Wily's biggest flaw. He had the chance to turn away from evil and live a peaceful life when Dr. Light forgave him and entrusted him with the knowledge of Gamma, but his jealousy and his constant need to prove himself ruined that. In issue 49 he even acknowledges this when he thinks about all the bridges he burned.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Though he was being a jerk about it (and really just trying to justify himself), Dr. LaLinde feels that Break Man has a point about what she did to Tempo being unforgivable (despite the fact that Tempo has forgiven her).
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Gil may be brass and cynical, but his heart is always in the right place. Best seen when he took Rosie out to dinner after her date cancelled on her.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Xander. In a span of a story arc, he went from someone who wanted to protect humans from robots, to being willing to kill innocent people to advance his cause. He goes even more downhill from there.
• Just Friends: Mega Man and Quake Woman decide this at the end of issue 22.
• Just Toying with Them: Quick Man's first two fights with Mega Man.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Rush gets shot a lot to show how evil villains are.
  • In issue #45 Wily rubs in Dr. Light's face that he was lying the entire time, he was never controlled by Ra Moon, and Blues was no longer Dr. Light's son. As a final kick, he has Doc Robot blow up Light's Labs.
• Kick Them While They Are Down:
  • After defeating Heat Man and taking his weapon, Mega Man shoots him point-blank in the face. This clued Dr. Light and the others in that something was very wrong with Mega Man.
  • In the same issue, he blew up the building where Crash Man lay defeated.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • Ra Moon is utterly destroyed.
  • The Genesis Unit had their IC chips destroyed during the alternate timeline in the Worlds Collide crossover, though they get a brief revival by being time-cloned by Ra Moon. They die again for good later in the crossover.
  • In the Worlds Unite crossover Iris and Colonel are not among the Reploids Sigma revives.
• Knight Templar: Xander and many members of the Emerald-Spears. They might have the best intentions for humanity at heart, but their methods make them terrorists willing to put innocent people at risk.
  • Vile comes across as this given that he is more than willing to sacrifice humans to protect the larger population.
• Last Episode, New Character: Issue 55 (both the main story and the Short Circuits strip) introduces Signas, Lifesaver, Douglas, Palette, Layer, Dr. Doppler, Lumine, Dr. Weil, Neige, Copy X, the Four Guardians, the Resistance, Ciel, Vent, Aile, Grey, Ashe, Prometheus, Pandora, Master Albert, Master Thomas, Master Mikhail, the Biometals, Atlas, Aeolus, Siarnaq, Thetis, Mega Man Volnutt, Roll Caskett, Barrell Caskett, Data, Tron Bonne, Tiesel Bonne, Bon Bonne, the Servbots, Juno, Over-1, Nero L, Geo Stelar, MegaMan.EXE (though both as silhouettes), Ruby-Spears Dr. Light, Dr Wily, Roll and Tar, Bad Box Art Roll, Bad European Box Art Mega Man, Intentionally Bad Box Art 9 Mega Man and Dr. Wily, and Intentionally Bad Box Art 10 Mega Man and Proto Man. Whew!
• Last Request: Before Mega Man pulls his Heroic Sacrifice against Ra Moon, he asks Dr. Wily to take whatever remains of him back to Dr. Light. Wily fulfills that request.
• Last Villain Stand: Xander attempts this against Mega Man in Issue #21.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The comic assumes you're a fan of the games already, with several Early Bird Cameos in the Short Circuits comics. The Worlds Collide crossover especially dumps a lot of future characters on you and assumes you'll know them. Issue #20 has several flash forwards, referencing several games that haven't happened yet.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo:
  • As the publishing rights to Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force print material are held by Viz Media, issue 55's Short Circuits features MegaMan.EXE and Geo Stellar as silhouettes.
  • Compass Man appears in Worlds Collide despite elements from Rockman & Forte: Mirai kara no Chōsensha being off-limits to Archie.
  • One issue of Dawn of X has Xander Payne witnessing an event from Worlds Collide, specifically, Mega Man and Sonic battling Tailsman. Tailsman is only shown in silhouette, while Sonic appears mid-spindash (a featureless spiked ball, in other words).
• Let's You and Him Fight:
  • In the crossover, Eggman and Wily conspire to use Metal Sonic and Copy Robot to trick Mega Man and Sonic into each thinking that the other is the villain.
  • Enforced and lampshaded in one of the Short Circuits strips when Mega Man and Sonic introduce each other amicably, but are informed that crossover by-laws require them to start out fighting each other.
• Lighter and Softer: When compared to previous Mega Man comics released before Archie's.
• Lightning Glare: Roll gives one to Wily when the latter goes to call his assistant Blues.
• Literally Shattered Lives: A certain blue speedy hedgehog rips right through Junk Man's body, tearing him apart, in the Worlds Collide crossover.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • The first Robot Masters manage to overcome Wily's programming to "Destroy Mega Man" by following it...by destroying the Mega Man Copy Robot.
  • During the Emerald Spears' assault on the convention center, Mega Man and the other Robot Masters can't fight back because they're programmed to be Three Laws-Compliant. When Emerald Spears soldiers start shooting at them while innocent humans are in the vicinity, though, they are allowed to subdue the terrorists in order to keep other humans from being harmed.
  • An unintentional one. When Light learned of Wily's betrayal he locked down the lab so only Light family members could move around, trapping Dr. Wily. Wily thinks he has been sunk until Break Man (a.k.a. Blues, who Dr. Light still considers as a son) teleports in. Dr. Light never blocked or disabled his personal teleport signal.
• Love Makes You Evil:
  • While discussing the topics of love and robots, Gil points out the ugly side of the emotion. Over his years in law enforcement, Gil has seen plenty of people do stupid stuff because of it.
  • During the New Year's incident, it's revealed that Theo is the only reason one woman is still in the Emerald Spears, and it's revealed that Xander is the only reason Theo is still in the Emerald Spears.
• Mad Bomber: Crash Man to a 'T'. In his first fight against Mega Man, the guy blew himself up along with the building he was fighting on.
• Mad Scientist: Wily, of course.
• Making a Splash: Bubble Man and Splash Woman.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • By blaming Ra Moon for all his previous evil actions, Wily managed to manipulate Mega Man and Dr. Light into helping him stay out of prison.
  • Ra Moon counts since he used Wily to create an army of robots and prepare his plan to wipe out humanity.
  • Wily throughout the Mega Man 3 story arc. He staged the theft of the energy crystals that power Gamma, making it look like he was the victim to drum up more sympathy from the public. Then he sent Mega Man and a couple of Cossack's Robot Masters on a wild goose chase that nearly got them killed by the Wily Walker. Finally, after sending Mega Man all over the place to retrieve the crystals, he reprogrammed Doc Robot, put the IC chips of the MM 2 Robot Masters in him, and stole Gamma.
• Man Versus Machine:
  • Gil is worried that this will result as robotics will advance too fast for humanity to cope. Dr. Light counters that the conflict is not inevitable, and that he's working so both man and machine could live together.
  • In a straight fight, the Emerald Spears versus the Robot Masters. The Spears get defeated easily.
• Matter Replicator: A rather large number of the Robot Master weapons are shown to be some variation of this, differing only by material and shape.
• Mechanical Monster: The Yellow Devil, which confronts Rock in the "Let the Games Begin!" arc.
• Mecha-Mooks:
  • Through the Robot Masters, Dr. Wily is able to control and weaponize vast amounts of everyday robots. They make up the bulk of his army.
  • The Sniper Joe series were originally designed to be robot soldiers for the military. However, unlike other examples of this trope, the Joes are quite durable and dangerous.
• Merging the Branches: Issue 55's preview of Mega Man ZX provides a rather clear indication that Flynn had plans to include all four protagonists in the same timeline, instead of the split-timeline approach the actual games took.
• Mission Control:
  • Dr. Light in the first and third story arcs.
  • Roll takes over when Dr. Light is busy.
  • In the Mega Man 3 story arc, Wily also briefly acts as mission control along with Dr. Light.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Wily in the Dawn of X story arc. He does more-and-more stuff that would get Mega Man and his allies killed. He does eventually help them, if only to maintain his cover story of being reformed, and seemed to put Mega Man through all of that for his own amusement.
• Missing Time:
  • The aftereffects of issue 20 where Mega Man time travels. Although he loses his memory of the event, little thought is given to the problem since the real time loss was negligible (just enough for a short circuit) and didn't match the memory loss.
  • The whole world after the Crossover due to undoing the Cosmic Retcon. Mega Man has several hours of blank memory and his first thought is whether or not the world is okay, but otherwise he has no memory of the events that just took place. Dr. Wily feels like he's lost at least a month of memory and has a strange desire to stomp on eggs, but quickly drops the matter.
• Mirrored Confrontation Shot: one of the covers to Issue 25,◊ part of the World's Collide crossover with the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), features a variation with all of the Mega Man characters on the left, and all the Sonic characters on the right.
• Motherly Scientist: Dr. LaLinde has emotional attachment towards her own creation Tempo/Quake Woman. It was this emotional attachment that led her to disable Tempo's personality and emotions when Tempo was almost destroyed in an accident.
• Mr. Exposition: During first and third arc, Dr. Light explains to Mega Man what all the robots do.
  • Dr. Astil is the one who gives the backstory on Lanfront Ruins and the EMP field.
• Morality Chain: Roll is this to all of Light's Robot Masters, especially Rock and Blues.
• Mugged for Disguise: The Emerald-Spears group manages to infiltrate the A.R.T.S. by replacing the security guards.
• Mundane Made Awesome: A rather large portion of anything Dr. Light builds or Dr. Wily weaponizes. CWU-01P, which takes the combined powers of Cut Man, Ice Man, and Mega Man to destroy, is basically a water filter.
• Mundane Utility: Parodied in the Short Circuits sections:
  • Issue 2's has Dr. Wily using Cut Man for various unimpressive purposes, to his annoyance.
  • Issue 3: Roll uses two Fire Storm cannons to clean the basement in a dream Mega Man has.
  Roll: Fire is the ultimate cleanser!!!
  • Issue 7: Time Man as an alarm clock and Guts Man as the snooze button.
  • Issue 10: Air Man as a fan and Wood Man as a post to tie his hammock to.
  • In the comic proper, the weapons of the robot masters built by Dr. Light, Dr. LaLinde, and Dr. Cossack are shown/implied to be an inversion, since their mundane utilities were weaponized.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Break Man's reaction when he inadvertently shoots Roll when she got in the way during his fight with Mega Man.
  • Dr. Lalinde is racked with guilt over basically lobotomizing Tempo and destroying her emotions, not for Tempo's sake but to make herself feel better. After "Spiritus Ex Machina" she realizes the full extent of her actions and restores Tempo's personality as best as she can anyway.
  • Wily had a major one when he realized that Ra Moon was going to wipe out humanity using his technology.
• My Greatest Failure: Dr. Light views Blues as his greatest success and his greatest failure.
• Mythology Gag: Plenty, which is to be expected given the series' history.
  • The first Short Circuits has Mega Man being upgraded into the infamous image from the cover of the first game.
    • He also asks if he's now a super fighting robot.
  • A news reporter covering the Robot Masters' attack wears blue and part of her name is Li.
  • In the first arc, the 8-bit version of Mega Man plus the Stage select for the first game could be seen on Dr. Light's status screen.
  • Oil Man and Time Man are described by Wily as "rather powered-up compared to the other six", while explaining to Roll why she had never seen them before.
  • When fighting Dr. Wily in the third arc, Mega Man wishes aloud that he'd gotten Metal Man's weapon first.
  • When the robot masters celebrate after Wily's second castle is destroyed, Guts Man is seen singing at the party, and Cut Man tells him to sing "that one about the wind blowing" and Roll says that she loves that song.
  • The anti-robot terrorists in the fourth arc are called the Emerald Spears. The name of the studio who made the American Mega Man cartoon: Ruby-Spears.
  • Cut Man's use of puns was also adapted from the Ruby-Spears animated series.
  • While explaining his time-machine scheme in issue 20, Wily mentions that it's "almost like I've done it before" - which he did, in the "Future Shock" episode of the cartoon. This could also have been an in-universe Call-Back/in-comic Call-Forward to the Worlds Collide Crossover where Dr. Wily also manipulates the fabric of space-time with the help of Dr. Eggman.
  • The Short Circuits in issue 20 has Police Man, a dead ringer for Fake Man from Mega Man 9 (save for the lack of a blaster). Police Man also appears in the main story, where he tries to defend Mega City and his people, but Sonic Man owns him.
  • Merely trying to install a leg upgrade to give Mega Man the ability to slide caused Dr. Light much frustration. He just couldn't figure out why it stopped working at modes nine and ten.
  • Any time Roll is seen in a different outfit than usual, it's probably one of her unlockable outfits from Mega Man Powered Up.
  • Some regarding Rush and the Ruby-Spears cartoon: his preferred attack method is biting an opponent (and unlike in the show, he's been quite effective with it); and his nose doubles as a powerful flashlight.
  • In the Worlds Collide arc, Dr. Light mentions that he's building a robot named Bond Man who he put off since the original robot masters. Bond Man was a robot master cut from the first game.
  • Vesper Woman is based on an unused concept design for a female robot master for Mega Man 9.
  • The city that X lives in is Arcadia, a reference to Neo Arcadia.
  • Issue 55's Short Circuits page calls Bad Box Art Mega Man a "coal miner", a reference to a miscellaneous Monster Compendium entry in Mega Man ZX Advent that also calls him that.
• Named by the Adaptation: The evil robot from Mega Man 8 is named Trio, finally giving the otherwise unnamed character something to be referred by.
• Near-Villain Victory:
  • Despite losing his Robot Masters in the third story arc, Wily came very close to winning. He only lost because he underestimated Dr. Light's quick-thinking and didn't take the original Robot Masters into account.
  • Ra Moon came very close to wiping out humanity. His big mistake was lowering his defenses to make Ra Devil invincible.
• Neon Sign Hideout: Wily's Skull Fortresses come pretty dang close to this. And he seems to have a pathological need to personalize his other hideouts even when a low profile would serve him better. Elec Man says it best.
  Elec Man: "The man is as subtle as a blown transformer."
  • Although in the above case, he wanted to be found by Light's robots so he could reprogram them again.
• Never Say "Die":
  • Averted in regards to human death as of the Spiritus Ex Machina arc, though thinly veiled euphemisms are still used at times.
  • Also averted in Dawn of X #3 when Vile blows up the highways to trap the Wily Walker. We actually see the shadowed corpse of a human hanging upside-down in his overturned car.
  • Averted again, hard, during issue 28, the prelude to the "Blackout-The Curse of Ra Moon" arc. As Ra Moon's EMP field blankets the earth we see cars crashing, power failing during surgery, even planes falling from the sky. In the final issue of the arc it was even said on a news broadcast countless lives were lost, even a panel depicting people surviving a plane crash doesn't soften the gravity of the situation.
• Not His Sled: Mr. X isn't Wily this time. At least for now...
• No OSHA Compliance: At Wily's Skull Castle, one can see a Blader speeding through the background. The robot is carrying a load of unsecured blocks on a unstable platform, with some of the load falling off.
• No-Sell:
  • Ra Devil didn't even flinch when Mega Man shot it with a fully charged buster shot. This clued Wily in that Ra Moon had left itself vulnerable.
  • Before then, Mega Man's buster had no effect on Ra Thor.
• Not Me This Time: Played with. When Mega Man and the other Light robots saw Wily's Robot Masters, they assumed that he was behind the black-out. They are right that Wily did want to cause a black-out, but on a much smaller scale and not one that would wipe out humanity.
• Obviously Evil:
  • Even if you knew nothing about the Mega Man series, Wily is obviously bad news just by looking at him in issue one.
  • Xander also counts. He wears an eye-patch, of all things.
  • Ra Moon was trouble by the first page of its introduction.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Played with. The first two arcs had Dr. Wily reprogramming local robots and reusing old factories for his fortresses. By the third arc, he's got his own fortress, robot minions and Robot Masters. The fourth arc has him acquire supplies by using Ra Moon, and following the Mega Man 3 adaptation he receives support from the X Corporation.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Mega Man's reaction to teleporting into the first game's Boss Rush.
  • Wily after Ra Moon takes control of Ra Thor.
  • Everyone's reaction when Ra Moon shut down the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters, leaving only the Light robots to fight.
  • Dr. Light has this reaction when he finally realizes beyond doubt that Wily is still evil.
• One-Man Army:
  • Mega Man can tear through hordes of robots even before he starts copying powers.
  • Near the end of the third story arc, Wily invoked this trope once he had gained control of Mega Man.
• One-Hit Kill: The only way Ra Moon could be killed after he dropped his shield.
• Only in It for the Money: Dr. Light mentions he designed several combat robots strictly for the money and notoriety to start Light Labs.
• Original Character: Gil and Krantz, Tempo/Quake Woman, Dr. LaLinde, and the Emerald Spears.
• Origins Chapter: The "Prototype" arc for Proto Man.
• Out of Focus: Of the original eight Light Masters, Fire Man had the least amount of page time and dialogue, and never had a major focus. Lampshaded in Issue #53, where Mega Man admits that he should visit him more.
• Overclocking Attack: What Mega Man nearly succumbs to after using two Mega Busters at once to defeat Ra Moon.
• Override Command: The Robot Masters can issue these to other robots as part of their function.
• Permadeath: Made possible for the robot characters due to their IC Chips, which contain the robot's memories and personality. If the IC chip is destroyed than the robot's personality is essentially gone and the robot is, for all intents and purposes, dead. It won't matter if the robot's body is repaired and given a new chip, since it will just be a new robot's mind inside the body. For this reason Mega Man makes sure to hold back when fighting Robot Masters so that he doesn't inadvertently destroy one of their IC chips and thus kill them.
• Personality Chip: IC (Integrated Circuit) Chips are the source of a Robot's personality. When confronted by Break Man in Issue #23 Mega Man begs him not to destroy the IC, lest he breaks Dr. Light's heart.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Wily saving Blues after his Robot Masters found him unconscious outside the ruins. He even managed to repair Blues without wiping his personality.
  • Even if it was self-serving, Wily taking Mega Man back to Dr. Light, fulfilling Mega Man's Last Request.
  • Wily putting his grudge for Dr. Light aside and working day and night trying to repair Mega Man.
  • Before he turned evil, Wily cheering Dr. Light up after Blues ran away from home.
• Playing with Fire: Fire Man and Heat Man.
• Police Are Useless: Bless their hearts, they try, but they just weren't prepared to fight off killer robots. In regular situations, like handling the situation at the A.R.T.S., they do just fine.
  • Police Man is another downplayed example. He tries his best to defeat Sonic Man, but the latter owns him.
• Post-Victory Collapse: Mega Man shuts down after Wily confirms that Ra Moon has been defeated.
• Power Outage Plot: The Curse of Ra Moon arc focuses on the alien supercomputer Ra Moon unleashing a planet-wide EMP that shuts down everything save for the robots it built or rebuilt, causing a global blackout.
• Pragmatic Adaptation:
  • With only four issues to work with, the video game-based arcs don't have much time to focus on all the boss battles.
  • Even with the Mega Man 3 adaptation being eight issues, a lot of boss battles were streamlined.
• Pungeon Master: Cut Man. After all of Cut Man's puns, Mega Man makes one himself, then immediately notes it was lame.
• Punny Name/Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Roslyn Krantz and Gil D. Stern. Issue #22 even has Agent Stern quote Shakespeare, and mentions he's read "Hamlet".
• Puzzle Boss: Subverted with the Boobeam Trap. Mega Man and Bomb Man simply demolish the whole room.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The victory over Ra Moon. The good guys won, but Mega Man is mortally wounded, Blues is still on Wily's side, and the Stardroids are on their way to Earth.
• Race Against the Clock: Pretty much the entire Curse of Ra Moon arc until Ra Moon's death.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Though a cold and distant, the military brass are quite reasonable with Dr. Light. With a few conditions (a simpler combat model), they're still willing to fund Light's research even after Blues malfunctions during a demonstration. The fact that Blues was effectively dominating the test as a One-Man Army until his power core malfunctioned probably helped the decision.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Wily attempts to give one to Mega Man in issue 4. Mega Man responds by shooting another one back at Wily.
• Redemption Quest: What Wily wants the public to believe after pulling his fake Heel–Face Turn.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • The iconic Yellow Devil has a red pupil in its one eye.
  • The Copy Robot and Mega Man during issues #9-#10.
  • The real Mega Man after downloading weapons data from Wily's Robot Masters.
  • Inverted with Auto whose eyes, while more red than any other, just look goofy on him. He's also a pretty goofy and generally harmless individual.
  • Metal Man and Air Man also have these.
  • Pharaoh Man subverts this due to having menacing red eyes, but being a good guy.
  • Xander has a cybernetic one.
  • Ra Moon. It's also a Glowing Eye of Doom.
• Related in the Adaptation: Ra Moon, the Stardroids, Sunstar, and Shadow Man are all related to each other here. In the games, no connection is made to any of them (possibly barring the Stardroids and Sunstar).
• Replacement Goldfish: Proto Man thinks that Rock and Roll are this. While he does have something of a point, it's clear that his accusations are born from his resentment and jealousy rather than how Dr. Light treats his surrogate-children.
• Retcon: In Issue #20, a future Mega Man is sent into several points of his past and future via time-travel whilst in pursuit of Dr. Wily trying to control time, including the times he was pitted up against Gamma and Dr. Cossack. He is explicitly caught off-guard by seeing the latter in the cockpit of the machine he just destroyed, while confused as to why he was fighting Gamma again, meaning that Wily's time heist would've occurred between Mega Man 3 and 4. In Issues #53-54, the Cut Short adaptation of Mega Man 4 chronologically starts not long after Mega Man 3^note After the events of Worlds Unite got reset, with no acknowledgment of the events of Issue #20 (as well as the fact that Mega Man and Dr. Light know that Wily is still alive)^note Issue #55 further supports this, as Dr. Light's vision of the robots present in Issue #20 occurs after his vision of 4.
• Revenge Through Corruption: Wily infected Mega Man with a Computer Virus, turning Mega Man into his servant. After several panels of gloating, he yelled, "How do you like that, Thomas!"
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Rock and Roll are so human-like that they fooled several members of the Emerald Spears.
• The Rival:
  • Quick Man sees himself as Mega Man's rival.
  • Wily always saw himself as Dr. Light's rival. The feeling wasn't mutual.
  • To an lesser extent, Blues to Rock. Blues sees Rock as his replacement and therefore took his purpose. Rock returns some of these feelings, given all Blues has done and being the only robot he couldn't beat until Issue 49.
• Robo Family: In several flavors. Rock, Roll, and Blues were designed to be Dr. Light's children, and so it is only natural that they see each other as genuine siblings. The other Robot Masters apparently refer to each other as 'brothers' to others of the same series or made by the same creator, but their bond is apparently more camaraderie and close friendship than actual family ties. As such, Ice Man sees nothing wrong with crushing on Roll despite both being built by Dr. Light.
• Robot Cargo: As human as the robot masters act, they are still seen being stored and shipped in crates. None of them seem to view this as unusual.
  • Comically deconstructed in the Short Circuit for the fifteenth issue: the Robot Masters might get swapped for various other things, though it's unlikely. In that Short Circuit, Pharaoh Man gets trapped in a museum when the movers swap his sarcophagus out for another, much to Doctor Mikhail Cossack's disgust.
• Robot Dog: Rush, naturally
• Robot Hair: Rock's hair gets commented upon occasionally. In the first arc, Dr. Light affectionately notes with a bit of a chuckle that he gave his robot creation hair. Later, Flash Man is shocked by and intensely envious of Mega Man's hair, leading to his demise in the Mega Man 2 storyline.
• Robot Kids: So far, four of the robots in the series have been shown or implied to have been explicitly designed to act as their creators' children. Rock, Roll, and Blues for Dr. Light and Tempo/Quake Woman for Dr. Lalinde.
• Robot Maid: Roll is built to do household chores.
• Robot Masters: In addition to Dr. Light and Dr. Wily, who are arguably two of the most well known examples of this trope ever, there's enough people who fit this description for them to have their own convention. It's effectively an entire world full of Robot Masters! ^note And we still don't mean the mechanical ones!
• Robot War: Played with - while the robots are the ones doing most of the fighting, it's Dr. Wily who programs the robots to conquer the world. Mega Man (and later, the rest of Light's Robot Masters) are often the only ones who could fight back. Played straight in the Mega Man X era.
• Robotic Reveal: Dr. Wily's hologram gets one, but otherwise this has been effectively averted so far. Blues actually subverts the trope by displaying his robotic abilities in front of humans who have never seen a Ridiculously Human Robot before without any of them seeming to catch on to the fact that he's not really human (because lifelike robots were not yet known to the public).
• Running Gag: Crash Man's lack of hands. Crash Man tries to use this for his reason to be decomissioned. He also cries over it in the nineteenth issue's Short Circuit.
• Saving the World: What Mega Man and the other Light Robots set off to do in the "Curse of Ra Moon" arc.
• Scenery Censor: In issue 17, Proto Man's Anime Hair conveniently censors Michelangelo Buonarroti's "The Creation of Adam" when he and Dr. Light are in the art museum.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Xander's goal in the "Dawn of X" story arc when he breaks into the Chronos Institute.
• Shipper on Deck: Roll for Mega Man and Quake Woman in issue 22 to Ice Man's annoyance.
  • Now Vesper Woman seems to be one for Protoman and Quake Woman.
• Shock and Awe: Elec Man and Spark Man's power.
• Shout-Out: Quite a few. Check out the subpage for details.
• Shown Their Work: In an interview, Ian Flynn said that he did plenty of research on the Mega Man series, from reading the wiki to seeing gameplays. He even manages to insert Fire Man's southern accent from Powered Up.
• Shows Damage: The comic artists have put forth quite a bit of effort to display damage on characters consistently with how much they are injured.
• Sibling Murder: Quick Man killing Flash Man when the latter's attention was elsewhere.
  Flash Man: So...much...hair!! Why didn't Wily give ME any!? (Gets attacked In the Back by Quick Man.)
• Single-Stroke Battle: Due to the limited number of issues when adapting the games, this happens a lot.
• The Singularity: X being uncovered by Dr. Cain in the future results in humanity hitting a major tech boom, resulting in the creation of the Reploids. X fears that things may be advancing too fast for everyone's own good.
• Single Tear: As Rock was being repaired after his battle with Ra Moon, he hears Roll wishing that she was the one who had volunteered to be weaponized so Rock wouldn't have to suffer. This made Rock shed a single tear, unbeknownst to anyone.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Inverted, twice.
  • Issue #1 has Rush on the cover. He doesn't appear officially until the end of the second arc.
  • Issue #11. Agents Stern and Krantz appear on the cover battling Metal Man. Neither appear in the main story at all, though Gil makes a cameo in the Short Circuits strip.
• The Slow Path: Following the end of Worlds Unite, Xander is thrown thirty years into the past. By the time he "returns" to the present, he has set up the X Corporation and adopted the identity of Mr. X.
• Slouch of Villainy: Wily near the end of the third issue.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The comic does a good job showing both the benefits and the dangers of having thinking robots. In the spirit of the Classic series, however, the tone remains largely idealistic.
• The Smurfette Principle: Possibly why Quake Woman, an OC Robot Master, was introduced, as the only classic female characters are Roll, Splash Woman, Kalinka, and Plum. The latter is from an obscure title that wasn't released in English until fairly recently and the former two are Megaman's siblings; Kalinka is a human eight-year-old.
• Something We Forgot: Played for laughs in the Short Circuits for #55. Mega Man Volnutt complains that he's still stuck on the moon, despite the comic not even coming close to covering the events of Mega Man Legends 2.
• So Much for Stealth: Once the Spears report that Rock is using his civilian form to trick them after he traps two of them, Mega Man changes into his armor right away.
  Rockman: Looks like this trick isn't going to work anymore.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • In Super Adventure Rockman, Shadow Man was implicitly Killed Off for Real following his fight, with Wood Man unable to repair him, and his absence from the finale implying even Ra Moon couldn't bring him back. But since that game's adaptation happens before Mega Man 3, Shadow Man can't be permanently destroyed. Similarly, Quick Man doesn't (temporarily) die in this turn of events protecting Mega Man.
  • In Mega Man 7, Snake Man is one of the Robot Masters on display in the Robot Museum. Here, he's one of the eight Wily robots who decide to find a new purpose and not be shut down for said museum (though it is unclear if the Robot Masters in 7 are some sort of copies or not).
• Space Police: The Star Marshals, a group of alien law enforcement robots. Duo is revealed to be a member of the group, and so was Trio/Evil Robot before his Face–Heel Turn.
• Start X to Stop X: Mr. X eventually "recruits" Wily for this purpose, hoping that by having his robots continue to cause havoc, it will drive humanity away from robotics and prevent even worse robotic destruction.
• Stealth Insult: Dr. Light referring to Harvey as an "intellectual".
• Storming the Castle:
  • Mega Man storms Wily's hideout in the first issue before a flashback is given to show how everything happened.
  • In the third story arc the original Robot Masters stormed Wily's fortress to save Mega Man.
• Story-Breaker Power: It is implied that Mega Man could keep all of the Robot Masters' powers; he simply chooses not to.
  • Averted in the third arc; Mega Man couldn't keep his powers gathered from that set of Robot Masters because Dr. Wily had installed segments of a trojan virus into the weapon data; once Mega Man had all eight weapons, the virus would activate and grant Wily total control over Mega Man.
• Strictly Formula: The usual Mega Man game format is lampshaded in issue #43 when Magnet Man wonders why Wily keeps using the usual tactic of an enemy-filled stage with a Robot Master boss when it didn't work with any of the twenty bosses previously.
• Suddenly Shouting: Blues is prone to this as Breakman.
  • First during his "talk" with Tempo, when she keeps prodding him what he even has against Doctor Light, he finally responds with smashing the wall beside her head and screaming "HE REPLACED ME!"
  • During his final battle with Megaman, he asks Rock if he's a creation, a weapon, or a son. Rock responds that he is all of those things, which makes Breakman open fire.
  Breakman: Then what am I supposed to be?!
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Justified, since robots typically don't need to breathe, even if they can't swim. It's highly likely their systems are water-proofed. Discussed between Roll and Tempo/Quake Woman in Issue 19 when an ocean liner is wrecked and they need to rescue the passengers.
  Tempo: "But what...what if we fall in the ocean and sink to the bottom?"
  Roll: "We'll walk to shore, why?"
• Super Prototype: Blues is a super prototype compared to the Sniper Joes who were built based on his design.
• Super-Strength: All robots are stronger than a human, but Gutsman stands head-and-shoulders above most of the Robot Masters.
• Super-Toughness: They are robots. They can take a lot of punishment.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • The second arc has Dr. Light being investigated by the government after Wily's first rampage. As it turns out, someone using robots you built to destroy half the city and the person in question is a well-known colleague and friend of yours, it doesn't exactly make you look innocent.
  • Without his Leaf Shield, Wood Man is taken out by a single charged shot from the Mega Buster. Seriously, what did Wily expect when he made him out of wood?
  • Unlike the game Super Adventure Rockman that it was adapted from, the result of the Explosive Overclocking at the end of the Curse of Ra Moon arc happens exactly how one would expect.
• Surveillance Drone:
  • Blader-type robots serve this purpose.
  • Also Snake Man's Search Snakes.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Mega Man's buster arm can reproduce any projectile gained from the Robot Masters. This includes, but is not limited to, fire, ice, lightning, bubbles, leaves, whirlwinds, missiles, bombs, boomerangs...
• Swiss-Cheese Security:
  • Dr. Wily manages to break into Light Labs and reprogram the Robot Masters pretty easily. Justified, seeing as how Light and Wily were coworkers and friends at the time. In addition Wily could also disarm the security anyway; it is partially his lab, after all.
  • Later, Blues breaks into Dr. Light's lab without having to input security codes and whatnot since he is technically Dr. Light's son. Blues ends up getting to his master Wily quickly due to this.
• Sympathy for the Devil:
  • Despite being an evil genocidal supercomputer, Mega Man felt regret about killing Ra Moon.
  • Mega Man also empathizes with the Mega Man 3 Robot Masters after he kills Needle Man with a Geminī Laser, giving him a Heroic BSoD.
• Take Over the World: Wily's primary goal.
• Talking to Themself: Gamma
• Tame His Anger: In Issue 46, Mega Man attempts this on Blues, giving him a new purpose of being his big brother. Blues rejects the offer, saying this was who he was.
• Tap on the Head: Xander knocks out Harvey with a kick to the head when he gets fed up with him being a hippie. It wask such a severe blow, it leaves Harvey on the ground for the rest of the arc (Hell, with the accompanying "KRACK!", the way Harvey's head was twisted by the kick, and being out for the rest of the arc, many readers thought Harvey was dead).
• Technical Pacifist:
  • Mega Man utterly despises fighting and tries his hardest to avoid it, but is perfectly willing to fight if need be (like if a Robot Master is threatening innocent people).
  • Dr. Light is much the same. He hates fighting and calls himself a man of peace. But he will fight and build weapons if he believes that it needs to be done to save people.
  • X is very much like his older brother. He hates fighting, but he also want to protect people.
• Teleporters and Transporters: Dr. Light has one to rapidly transport Rock from location to location. While robots can use the device, humans are unable to. Sonic is able to in the crossover, albeit feeling ill afterward, indicating the process will be usable for living beings later on.
• Temple of Doom: The Lanfront Ruins have a few Death Traps. And a highly intelligent Artifact of Doom in residence.
• That Man Is Dead:
  • Rock starts to refuse to go by his real name after having to blow up the other bots. Fortunately, Roll manages to snap him out of it.
  • Later, Break Man angrily declares that "Blues" is gone and forgotten.
• Three Laws-Compliant:
  • Dr. Light has these programmed into his robots, with a slight twist: in accordance with the "Zeroth Law", it's acceptable for robots to attack humans if not doing so would put more humans in danger. When the Emerald-Spears start attacking people along with the robots, that allows Mega Man and the others to start fighting back.
  • Lampshaded when Elec Man voices his concerns for the Emerald-Spears' attacks and says he actually wants Dr. Wily's programming back because it would let him attack them. He's a three laws compliant robot wishing he wasn't.
• Theme Naming: Mega Man's real name is Rock, his sister's name is Roll, and Proto Man's real name is Blues. Rock and Roll earned their names from the genre Rock and Roll, and Blues got his from the Blues genre.
• Time Bomb: In one of the one-shots, Xander planted a bomb that would go off at midnight on New Years.
• Time Master: Time Man and to a much greater extent Flash Man who can outright stop time.
• Time Stands Still: This ability makes Flash Man one of the most dangerous Robot Masters. He nearly kills Mega Man as Doc Robot by stopping time and aiming his Buster at Mega Man's head. He only fails because of a power overload.
• Time Travel:
  • In "Rock of Ages" this is foreshadowed as one of Wily's future plans.
  • Xander breaks into the Chronos Institute in an effort to change the past, preventing the creation of robots. He instead ends up in the future of 21XX.
• Tragic Villain: Proto Man, though he eventually develops into a Tragic Anti-Hero instead.
• Truer to the Text: This series, which actually tries to adapt the games it's based on, is significantly more faithful than the last Western-made comic book adaptation, which was pretty much an adaptation In Name Only.
• Truly Single Parent:
  • This is Dr. Light towards his robot creations and especially towards Rock, Roll and Blues. He sees them as his "children" and even calls them "son" or "daughter".
  • The same could also apply to some of the other scientists who have created robot masters of their own. Most prominently Dr. LaLinde, who sees her creation Tempo/Quake Woman as her daughter.
• Underestimating Badassery: Throughout the first and second story arcs Wily never took Mega Man seriously, even after he defeated all of the reprogrammed Robot Masters.
• Undisclosed Funds: The suitably impressive research grant Dr. Light received to make Sniper Joes for the military.
  A younger Dr. Wily: "Egad! Is this check for your research grant?!"
• The Unfought: Due to the allocated space, not only are many bosses from the games given shorter battle scenes, some are not shown at all. The first fortress boss to be skipped over entirely was PicoPico-Kun.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • Mega Man saves Wily from the wreckage of his machine in issue #4. The moment he sees the Robot Masters, he orders them to kill Mega Man.
  • Subverted when Mega Man resorts to Explosive Overclocking to save the world from Ra Moon, Wily pushes his genius to its limits to keep Mega Man alive and get him home. And it wasn't just a plan to look good either - he had no idea what to do when the police finally showed up. It's double subverted when a later issue reveals that it was actually part of a plan. While he was trying to make himself look good and pin all of his villainy on the now-deceased Ra Moon, he actually did feel gratitude towards Rock and later found himself questioning if he should go through with his newest scheme.
  • Played Straight when Wily rubs in Dr. Light's face that he was never brainwashed and that Light was a fool for trusting him. This was after Dr. Light and Rock defended him in court and Light allowed Wily to live with him as he served his five year probation.
  • Xander towards X. When X saves him from death-by-falling, Xander's first reaction is to mistake X for Mega Man and accuse him of starting a robot revolution.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: When Mega Man fights his older brother Blues.
• Villainous Breakdown: Wily suffers one after Ra Moon betrays him.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left:
  • Subverted. Wily attempts this in issue 4, but Mega Man's too quick for him.
  • Averted in issue 8. Wily simply stands on top of his saucer with confidence, even as Mega Man shoots at it before he can use it. But then, it turns out that he's a hologram and not the real Wily, who had already left.
  • At the end of the Spiritus Ex Machina arc, Xander, Theo, and Simone escape from the authorities.
  • Meanwhile, at the end of the Mega Man 2 story arc, Wily jumps into an escape chute.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: A large reason why the villains keep getting away with stage one of their plans.
• Villainous Rescue: It was Wily who kept Mega Man alive long enough to get him back to Dr. Light. He also helped with the repairs.
• Villain Respect: Wily is honestly surprised that Mega Man is willing to sacrifice himself to save humanity from Ra Moon. He is so impressed that he grants Mega Man's Last Request.
• Villains Out Shopping: Issue 2's Short Circuits features Dr. Wily lounging by the pool and getting a haircut.
• Violence is the Only Option: Dr. Light made it clear from the start that there was no reasoning with Wily once he started the first robot rebellion.
• Virtue Is Weakness: What Xander believes after Mega Man refused to kill him.
• Visual Pun: Issue 10's Short Circuits shows Crash Man having crashed a go-kart into a tree, and working at a computer whose server just crashed. The last panel shows him walking into a stock-exchange building...
• Waxing Lyrical:
  • An unusual example, as Dr. Light does this in issue 3...to a song by The Megas that's supposed to be sung by him.
  • Blues does this in issue 46 when he questions what Rock is to Dr. Light, and then paraphrases part of "I'm Not The Break Man" also by The Megas.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Emerald-Spears. They make several good points about robots advancing too far and may become a threat to humanity. They also have a point about humans becoming too depended on robots. However, they were willing to kill innocents to advance their cause along with robots who did no wrong, including those robots who fought to protect humans.
• We Will Use Lasers in the Future: Almost everyone, human and robot, seems to prefer high-tech energy weapons.
• Wham Episode:
  • Ra Moon initiating a world wide EMP wave that shuts down everything save for the robots it built or rebuilt, having Break Man watch as the entire world goes into complete chaos as his younger brother and sister are functionally dead. This happens right after Break Man accidentally shot Roll in the gut.
  • The finale of "Blackout". Mega Man is mortally wounded and near death after the battle with Ra Moon and Wily and his Robot Masters seem to have pulled a Heel–Face Turn. But before it was destroyed, Ra Moon sent out a signal into space to call the Stardroids to Earth.
  • Xander's time-travelling shenanigans during "Dawn of X" reveals not only was his time warping at least partially to blame for the bizarre events of Rock of Ages, but the Worlds Collide crossover is part of the comic's canon future. Even worse, after his arrest, we see a quite clearly unhinged Xander carving several symbols into his prison wall...including an X, an infinity sign (representing Zero's DWN designation), as well as the faces of Mega Man, Bass...and Sonic.
• Wham Shot: Roll getting shot by Break Man, along with the immediate aftermath of Ra Moon's world-devastating EMP.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Proto Man tracks down Quake Woman to inquire about the nature of family due to his difficulty understanding the relationship Light has with Rock and Roll as well as his own feelings.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Mega Man plans to give one to Dr. Light for programming him with nausea when Magnet Man is defeated.
  Mega Man: [groans] "Remind me why to ask Dr. Light why I was programmed for nausea..."
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Gil firmly believes that Dr. Light is this.
• Wingding Eyes: Rock gets stars in his eyes when Hard Man strikes his cheeks.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • After a tense battle, Shadow Man views Mega Man as this.
  • The same with Magnet Man after he was defeated.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • Played for laughs in Short Circuits #5, which has Proto Man believing that he's making his debut in the current issues, only to have his hopes repeatedly crushed.
• You Are What You Hate: Xander, member of an anti-robot group, has a cybernetic implant to replace his lost eye. He then uses knowledge of the future to create a giant, shadowy organization with seemingly unlimited funds that secretly controls dozens of shell companies around the world to actively finance robot terrorism.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Completely justified, since the heroes don't learn about most of the evil plots until stage one is already complete.
• You Fight Like a Cow: In the third story arc, Quick Man was very fond of given these kinds of insults towards Mega Man.
• Zeerust: In the comic's version of the world of 200X, the overall look and technology is more based off the games than the real world Turn of the Millennium.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: More of a loophole - during the A.R.T.S. Arc, when the Emerald Spears start shooting, thereby putting other humans still in the convention hall in danger, Mega Man and the other Robots now have reason needed to fight back. Xander attempts to use their counterattack to prove his point of A.I. Is a Crapshoot, which Dr. Light counters by stating the robots are trying to save others and standing around will result in Murder by Inaction.

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