Literature / World Domination in Retrospect

Sweet Expletive Deleted, Not Meant for Children's Eyes!

World Domination in Retrospect is a First Person Web Serial Novel about the Affably Evil Super-Villain Protagonist Psychopomp Gecko, aka Psycho Gecko, aka Gex.

The story is a comedy, primary relying of Rule of Funny, as the Psycho Gecko... Mostly just does whatever he finds amusing at the time, whether that’s stealing inter-dimensional blogging technology, fighting Space Marines, Stuffing Sidekicks in the Fridge, helping old friends, destroying Reality TV shows, or taking over Elvis’ House.

...At least until he gets caught up as the main villain opposing a superhero team-up. Then winds up on the bad side of other villains who want to conquer the world and don't care if they kill Gecko in the process. Or an alien invasion is under way and Gecko really doesn't feel like being killed by aliens. Not to mention that time he conquered the world. He's also occasionally called upon by personifications of holidays to do favors, ever since he made the mistake of saving Christmas that time. Suffice it to say, it's a crazy world he lives in, and that's partially his doing.

Readers are advised to cover their eyes, blare classical music loudly, and shout repeatedly while reading it to avoid mental scarring.

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This series provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: Gecko is entertaining and friendly, at least to the readers of the story, and prone to harmless (or at least non lethal antics) like unleashing drugged up chickens in a fried chicken establishment. He’s also a violent psychopath, and is one of the few supervillains to kill superheroes and get away with it.
• The Alcatraz: The Rubiks Cube. Stolen from a supervillain by the government, it holds a number of extremely dangerous people and has had no escapes. Until of course they try to hold Gecko for a length of time and subsequently get blown up for their trouble.
• Alien Invasion: The end of Year 3 and the start of Year 4 are about Gecko preparing for and dealing with one of these.
  • A second one follows soon after. Specifically, the Cercophagis Lysis, who sent the first alien invasion so that he could then free humanity and become a Villain with Good Publicity.
• An Ice Person: The supervillain Snowblower.
• Animate Inanimate Object: Moai, a Moai and Gecko's longest serving minion.
• Anti-Hero: Lone Gunman. Apparently being cudgeled with salami, becoming a Body in a Breadbox (albeit surviving) and having your mentor killed can ruin an impressionable young teenager's idealism.
• Another Dimension: Gecko is from one, and traveled to the one he currently occupies during an attempt to blow his up. Additionally, the serial is about him blogging to our dimension.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: So far Gecko has saved Santa Claus and Baby New Year from those attempting to ruin their holidays for various reasons. He has also beaten up Father Time for attempting to ruin one of the aforementioned holidays.
• Apocalypse How: Gecko arrived in his current dimension while trying to cause a Class X on his own planet.
• Appropriated Appelation: The mutated Rejects Gecko freed from Hephastus' nuclear facility are trying to take the term back.
• Armor Is Useless: Very, very much averted. Gecko's armor is proof against most blades, bullets and blunt trauma and saves his life almost as frequently as he engages in violence.
  • Later played straight by Oligarch, in the very specific sense that Power Armor is worse than useless when the person out to get you is a Technopath.
• Asshole Victim: Gecko goes through a lot of these, in all senses of the term.
• Ass Shove: Inserting large objects into rectums with much force is practically Gecko's signature move. In a specific example, there is the attack known as “63ing Your Ass”
  First, insert hand into enemy ass. If your hand is a hook, this is even less pleasant for the other person. Then, you rotate them 63 degrees along a random axis... Then you release.”
• Attack Its Weak Point: The Good Doctor does this with the aid of his X-Ray Vision. If the asshole counts as a weak point, Gecko is also a fan of this strategy.
  • The only way to kill the Fluidics is to break their crystalline core.
• Ax-Crazy: Gecko is addicted to murder. He suffers withdrawal without it.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Gecko, Mix'n'Max and the Good Doctor engage in this during the Alien Invasion.
• Badass Normal: Venus. There are very few people who have beaten Gecko at all, and she's the only one to do so without powers.
• Beam Spam: The final fate of the Claw, overlapping with More Dakka.
• Being Good Sucks: Gecko has occasional flashes of what could be called a conscience. These are always a pain to deal with.
• Big Applesauce: Empyreal City. A regular stomping ground of every American/international hero and villain under the sun.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Fluidics are comprised of a crystalline core floating in black goop.
• Bloody Hilarious: The Gorn that Gecko causes in the story is all Played for Laughs.
• Black Comedy: All over the place, but it also has a rare torture scene played for comedy.
• Bodyguard Babes: The President (for life) of Isla Tropica has some of these hired from the Athena Academy.
• Booby Trap: Gecko has a tendency to come up with creative ones, ranging from regular bear traps, to extending bear traps, to a squid in a shower stall, to reverse punji pits, to staking people in the flank, to acid-spitting clown statues, to using crows as lethal projectiles, to frozen turkeys.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The fourth wall is practically nonexistent. The premise of the serial is that Psycho Gecko is blogging all this to our dimension with the help of stolen technology and a person in our dimension referred to only as Optimal Outer Control.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Gecko keeps a supply of delicious chocolate pudding in the back of his armor, mentioned almost every time he suffers an injury that probably should be fatal.
• Brought Down to Normal: Gecko has been converted into a member of Homo Sapiens as of Fallen Devil 1
• Bus Crash: Crash, ironically, did not survive the alien invasion.
• Calling Your Attacks: Averted by the Nature Rangers, much to Gecko's surprise.
• The Cape: Venus is a classic hero of this school.
  • As is Captain Lightning, fitting considering that he's an Expy of Comic Book/Shazam.
• Captain Patriotic: The Missile Patriot fights on behalf of the glorious United States of America!
  • Leah considered being this for a time, but decided against it.
• CatGirl/PlantPerson: Wildflower is a catgirl with thorns on her tail, plant control, and a need for sunlight to keep going.
• Cellphones Are Useless: Gecko fries most of the tech in Empyreal City with an EMP. Later, Spinetingler also messes with phones on the basis that it's not a good horror story if you can just call for help.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The serial has moved from a series of almost unconnected short stories to longer story arcs. Over the course of this, there has been zero reduction of comedy.
• Chainsaw Good: Well, Gecko clearly thinks so, as he's armed with a hidden chainsaw blade, but the Space Marines take it up to eleven and stick chainsaws on everything, with chainsaw swords, chainsaw axes, chainsaw maces, chainsaw whips, chainsaw codpieces, chainsaw nightsticks, chainsaw-chuks, chainsaw shillelaghs, chainsaw Swiss army knife attachments, chainsaw tridents, chainsaw kunai, and even a chainsaw chainsaw, a chainsaw sword with a second set of chainsaw teeth rotating in the opposite direction.
  • Following an incident involving a faux-eldritch horror infesting his plumbing, Gecko installs a chainsaw in the rim of his toilet.
• Chekhov's Gun: Gecko is a frequent builder of these, with just about everything he makes except the laser potato peeler will come in handy later
  • Gecko intentionally sets one of these up when he tampers with Long Life's nanites. Come The Trial 4, he uses them to Take Over the World.
  • The receivers embedded in Gecko's neck to stave off the effects of a Neck Snap come in handy later on when Gecko needs to deal with being Paralysed on an operating table in the Rubiks Cube.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Gecko gives Leah a list of the most notable heroes and villains. By late Year 4, all of them except Polydeus have had their influence felt, either through a physical appearance or through minions.
  • Holdout comes back with a vengeance as Primus, leader of Hephastus
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Gecko does this when he has a lightbulb moment, overlapping with Slasher Smile and Psychotic Smirk.
  “I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re smiling like the fucking Grinch and I wonder if I need an adult.”
• Combat Pragmatist: Gecko regards fighting fairly as a desperate last resort, for when there are absolutely no other options.
  • When fighting Gecko, Venus' first port of call is usually to set up an electromagnetic field to tamper with his armor.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Gecko kills and mains a lot of people for very little reason. And it's always funny.
• Confusion Fu: Gecko's strategy. He's a successful supervillain because the heroes just can't predict what he's going to do next.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: On founding his own corporation, Gecko becomes this in the time it takes to frame a competitor for human trafficking.
• The Cowl: Lone Gunman becomes this, hunting down and executing criminals under cover of night.
• Create Your Own Villain: The government program in charge of making Child Soldiers from Gecko's species resulted in Gecko. Fast forward several years, and he came within minutes of initiating a Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: These are sprinkled throughout the serial, but a standout is what Gecko did to Amplitude. Having previously severed his spinal column, Gecko decided to finish the job by filling a dump truck with angry ants and using a gigantic set of rubber bands to slingshot the truck into Amplitude's hospital room.
  • Subverted in that Hephastus was able to salvage Amplitude's head.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Many people have realised that the technology in Gecko's head could make him one of the richest people on the planet if he were to market it. He has declined such offers on the basis that a) he would still be a homicidal maniac and b) it would just give the people hunting him down better gear to do it with.
• Cyborg: Gecko’s tactile technoempathy power allows him to become a cyborg simply by touching advanced technology. He uses this ability to upgrade himself as well. An example are his cybernetic eyes.
  • Other cyborgs exist as well. Man-Opener has neural control rods to control his armour, and Girl Robot is both a girl and a robot.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Gecko was raised as part of a government Child Soldier program, of which he was the only survivor. He took the name Gecko from the only other remaining candidate after killing him.
• Death Seeker: Gecko. He thinks he deserves to die for the things he's done, but his self-preservation instincts get in the way.
  • When a duplicate of him is made, the two of them immediately drop everything to try to kill each other.
• Death Trap: In Bananarama part 7, Gecko improvises a trap for a hero that involves slowly lowering her into a pool of water, ketchup, spaghetti and meatballs, with the light constantly flickering to make her believe she’s being lowered into a pit of ooze inhabited by a mutant squid thing.
• Depraved Bisexual: Psycho Gecko. His capacity to hit on and make innuendo towards anyone of any gender is impressive.
• Dirty Coward: Gecko's greatest fear is explicitly mentioned to be death on multiple occasions, and he goes to considerable lengths to avoid it.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Gecko, but he has no problem with killing people. It's only because he sees guns as unimaginative.
  "Give someone a gun and they think they’re so big and bad right up until I take a spatula and spatulate them to death."
• The Dreaded: There are supervillain ghost stories about the things Gecko gets up to.
  "One time, I heard he destroyed a helicopter with a banana."
  "I heard he used a walnut. He threw it at the correct angle to ricochet into the pilot's mouth, thus choking him and making him crash."
• Empowered Badass Normal: Venus. Or not, technically. As Gecko said,
  “Congratulations. You went from an unpowered member of one species to an unpowered member of another species.
• Enemy Mine: Any time Gecko allies with anybody other than Mix'N'Max is likely to be one of these.
  • Gecko works with Venus and her team to get back to normal after being shrunk by Amplitude.
  • Gecko joins with the heroes of Empyreal City (including Venus) to deal with Spinetingler.
  • Fortune Cookie agrees to work with Gecko to deal with an imminent Alien Invasion.
  • She then persuades Gecko to work with Technolutionary for the same reason.
  • Everyone not mind controlled by aliens work with each other with the goal of a spot of xenocide.
  • The Master Academy team up with Spinetinger and Technolutionary against Emperor Gecko.
• Energy Beings: The interaction between his power core and an intangibility bracelet resulted in Gecko becoming this for a short time.
• Evil Overlord: Gecko, when he uses his backdoor into Long Life's nanites to Take Over the World
• Even Evil Has Standards: Well, it’s more about Evil having Standards for Normal People, but Gecko hates Reality TV enough to destroy every TV that he can.
  ”You would expect a person like me, who will literally murder you for looking at me funny, to enjoy all that same stuff. Laughing at idiots and victims just because a screen separates us. Fine, but that’s because good people don’t do that. Good people don’t put human trash on a screen for their own enjoyment. You can hardly call yourselves better than me when you and nineteen of your best friends tune in all the more because I bent a guy over and took a kayak down his brown river rapids.”
• Evilutionary Biologist: Technolutionary believes that Gecko's species is the next step in human evolution. He is also evil and highly annoying.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: To be expected in a world of superhumans with codenames like The Human Sloth and Gorilla Awesome, but not the case with Psycho Gecko. The Psycho part is arguable in its appropriateness, but is really short for Psychopomp. Gecko is just a random animal name assigned to him.
• Expy: The Mobian is the Doctor and Captain Lightning is a 90 year old Comic Book/Shazam.
• Eye Beams: Amplitude has eye beams that change the size of whatever they hit.
  • Gecko's laser eye gives him this, scaling in intensity from 'laser pointer' to 'you no longer have a frontal lobe.'
• Faking the Dead: Gecko does this a lot. Some of his allies have placed bets on whether his death will stick this time. Thus far, those who bet on his death have been disappointed.
• Femme Fatalons: While female, Gecko alters himself to have fingernails made of black zirconium, which are very hard and very sharp.
• Flying Brick: A moderately common powerset in the setting. Examples include Honky Tonk Hero, Forcelight, Pink Pixie, Captain Lightning and Titan.
• Flying Firepower: Captain Lightning and Forcelight possess significant firepower in addition to their brickiness.
• For the Evulz: Gecko's motivation for his career in supervillainy.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Gecko denies this is the case with Holdout. Invoked with Venus as well. You would think he was dating her, not putting her in a deathtrap.
• Freudian Excuse: Gecko, oh so very much. His experiences as part of a Child Soldier program have, among other things, left him with a psychological addiction to murder.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Gecko has blueprints for an entire world's worth of advanced technology in his head, and almost constantly uses devices that are technologically far ahead of everything else.
• Gender Bender: Gecko can do this to himself with nanites, and spends most of late Year 3 and early Year 4 as a woman.
• Grey Goo: In a pinch, Gecko's nanites can do this. It's... quite unpleasant for anyone on the receiving end.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: When she first met Gecko, Leah wasn't very impressed with her ability to alter colours. Within a few chapters, she's inflicting terrifying psychological warfare and hiding among 2D duplicates.
  • Later, during the alien invasion, she reacts to a Fluidic firing lasers at her by changing the colour of the lens and causing it to blow up.
• Healing Factor: Gecko can heal easily, but only because of his Nano Machines.
  • The Claw possesses a natural healing factor strong enough to shrug off being decapitated.
• Healing Shiv: Gecko usually applies his nanites through a syringe or just dumping them on the relevant wound. Venus, using the nanites stolen early on, applies them with a big spike.
• Heel–Face Turn: The Good Doctor turns away from murdering people and taking their organs approximately the second that the person blackmailing him into doing so died in a tragic helicopter explosion.
  • Following the Fluidic invasion, an offer of amnesty is made to any villains that want it. Villains who take the deal include Good Doctor and Elita the warrior woman.
• Hellhole Prison: The Rubiks Cube. When Gecko is imprisoned there, he is blinded, drugged constantly has the layout of his cell constantly changed, and is either hit with a paralytic gas or a sound that causes him to collapse whenever someone wants to enter his cell.
  • This was lenient treatment because he had valuable information. Spinetingler, in the same prison, was locked in a coffin with his only connection to the outside world being food and waste tubes. He was told this via a single use television screen in the coffin with him.
  "They say hell is other people. I disagree. Hell is yourself, alone, for years."
• Heroic Sacrifice: In an alternate future, Gecko of all people, makes one of these to save Empyreal City.
• Hero Killer: An informal agreement dating back to World War 2 states that there is to be no murdering of heroes or villains by other heroes or villains. Gecko, the Good Doctor, and Mix'N'Max don't really care about this.
• Hero of Another Story: The arc A New Boss in Kingscrow has Gecko helping out the villains of another story.
  • Many of the big-name heroes in the setting keep themselves busy. Captain Lightning is frequently aiding the military, Titan and his group give aid to those who need it internationally, and presumably notable heroes like Eschaton and Warman do something to justify their reputation.
• Hidden Weapons: The aptly named "Nasty Surprise", Gecko's hidden chainsaw blade.
• Hilarity Sues: Space Marines travel from the future... to prevent people from “misusing” the term Space Marine and so ensuring that their future come to pass, although their version of copyright protection does involve a lot of violence...
• Humongous Mecha: Gecko and Mecha Gecko square off in these.
  • In one of the archived stories, Gecko uses one of these made out of wood.
• Hyper-Awareness: Gecko's Power Armor has a 360 degree display, a fact he takes full advantage of.
• Identity Amnesia: Many of the Rejects have this.
  • Later, Wildflower is in similar circumstances.
• Improbable Weapon User: Between rubber chicken grenades, his laser potato peeler (not that he ever uses it) and his knack for using anything as an Improvised Weapon Gecko only uses things that a normal person would consider dangerous when he's desperate.
• In a Single Bound: Gecko used to have this ability, due to his armour, but stopped including it in more recent versions, because of its tendency to break his legs whenever he landed.
  • He has reinstalled the feature in newer armors. It still breaks his legs with some frequency.
• Intangible Man: There's an awkward moment where the loveably evil supervillain ends up handcuffed to a criminal with this power... It Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.
• Invisibility: Gecko can do this with his armor.
• Kaiju: There is a hero who goes by the name of Kelly Kaiju. His gimmick is that he's about 50 feet tall.
  • Later, Gecko makes his own for The battle with Cercophagus Lysis.
• Knight of Cerebus: Amusingly enough, it is the formation of a group of heroes that signals the shift from smaller chapters to multi-chapter story arcs.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Gecko induces these, both in the story itself and in the comments.
• Large Ham: Gecko feels that if you are not one of these, you aren't having nearly enough fun with being a supervillain.
  • The Missile Patriot WILL give long speeches on the glory of 'Merica at every conceivable opportunity. Even when it's holding up the police from arresting people.
• Laughably Evil: You probably wouldn't want to meet Psycho Gecko, but he knows how to make you crack up.
• Legacy Character: After Sixgun’s death, Holdout becomes Sixgun.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Gecko making a plan or fully applying himself to a problem is inevitably a harbinger for something magnificent. Usually involving a Curb-Stomp Battle or at least holding his own against a person or group who should be far out of his weight class.
• Love Is in the Air: Sexahol, which creates indiscriminate feelings of love, goodwill and physical lust, can be applied via pink mist.
• Love Potion: Sexahol, similar to alcohol except with a better taste and resulting in generalised love and happiness.
• Mad Scientist: Gecko appears as one of these, however he has the benefit of blueprints for everything of value from his old universe in his head. Straighter examples include Dr Unity, Technolutionary, the Mad Developer and Dr Creeper.
• Master of Illusion: Gecko’s armor can create Holograms that allow him to do everything from disguise his armor as normal clothing to creating illusionary duplicates of himself.
• Monochromatic Eyes: By default, Gecko's cybernetic eyes are a blank white.
• Most Common Superpower: Elita the Warrior Woman. From the website’s character dossiers: “Powers: Super-Strength, Enhanced Physique, Increased Durability, Most Common”
  • Forcelight is at one point described as having an "epic battle to keep her bust inside of her clothing."
• Mugging the Monster: People have, on a few occasions, attempted to mug Gecko. Gecko shows them the folly of their ways, then introduces them to their friend Mr Dumpster. Mr Dumpster is a good home for unconscious bodies/mutilated corpses!
• Natural Weapon: Gecko comes to the realisation that his nanites can be used to give him these, and promptly installs a set of fangs and some nice shiny black zirconium nails.
• Neck Snap: Other than ass trauma, this is one of Gecko's major murder methods.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Captain Lightning. It took Gecko ripping out his power core and stuffing it down Cap's throat before detonating it to affect him.
  • Titan also has this. He has apparently taken a nuke to the face without flinching.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Gecko saves the world from an Alien Invasion that wanted to mind control humanity into becoming soldiers in an interstellar war. As soon as possible, he is put on trial for it (among other things).
• Nothing Is Scarier: The stated point of his deathtrap in Bananarama 7, as he was working with limited money and limited time.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Gecko was never considered harmless, but certainly small-scale. It's unlikely anyone would have suspected that Gecko would go on to fight off entire teams of heroes, burn down large portions of cities, fight off entire teams of villains, single-handedly commit genocide (or come damn close) and Take Over the World.
• Once for Yes, Twice for No: Gecko attempts this with Moai over the phone. Moai responds in Morse Code,
  "You. Didn’t. Say. Anything. About. Maybe.”
• Paralysed On An Operating Table: The staff of the Rubiks Cube inflict this on Gecko. As it turned out, he wasn't nearly paralysed enough for their safety.
• Patrick Stewart Speech: The Mobian tries to give one to a villain, which is interrupted by Gecko breaking the man's neck.
  • He tries to do it again, this time to the Fludics and this time Gecko interrupts him again, this time with genocide.
• Pedophile Priest: None have appeared in the series thus far, however jokes about them are present.
  "You would live like a king in Russia, or a Pope if you like them young."
• People's Republic of Tyranny: Discussed in response to the names of Ricca's various institutions, rather than the country itself.
• Pirate: Flamebeard can imbue objects with fire and is captain of a crew of pirate supervillains, who fight with flaming cutlasses and sail a pirate ship with blazing sails!
• Playing with Fire: Both Flamebeard and Flamethrower in Bananarama.
• Powered Armour: Gecko wears this pretty much all the time, as the technology in it gives very useful abilities. Unlike most versions, it only gives him limited super strength, it can be shot through with enough dakka, and it isn't brimming with weapons.
  • Venus gets a set of her own, that can apply electric current on touch, fire grappling hooks, and grant mildly increased strength.
  • Technolutionary has a suit of flying power armour with the ability to project forcefields.
  • Oligarch has a set, loaded with boot rockets, mini rockets, other forms of micro-munitions, and a self-destruct capability that could be exploited by a homicidal Homo Machina.
• Pungeon Master: Gecko's mastery of paronomasia is glorious, no matter how weak-minded fools may cringe. The puns are everywhere and they are beautiful.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Anybody who manages to utterly defeat Gecko (except for Venus in close combat) probably experienced one of these. The sheer scale of the damage Gecko can do in a corner is sufficient to qualify for this trope.
• Reality Warper: Spinetingler may be this.
• Retired Monster: The Good Doctor becomes this immediately after he is no longer blackmailed into monsterhood.
  • Inverted by Dr Creeper, who only became a villainous Mad Scientist after he retired from being the usual kind.
• Required Secondary Powers: These are a large part of why Gecko considers Super-Speed one of the most broken powers out there.
• Roof Hopping: Since reinstalling his leg muscle enhancers Gecko has been using this as a major means of mobility, occasionally to the detriment of his legs.
• Rule 34: A guest chapter has Gecko create a manifestation of this. It immediately goes rogue and has to be eliminated by Gecko's other project, Creepy Pasta.
• Running Gag: Gecko's poor laser potato peeler never gets a chance to shine. It is either broken, forgotten about or otherwise thwarted at every possible opportunity.
  • Crash is lucky to have a car that isn't broken by the end of the page. And is then unlucky because it will be broken on the next page.
  • Gecko's lower armour has a hidden supply of delicious chocolate pudding
• Sanity Slippage: Gecko's sanity can be described as a game of Snakes and Ladders, with him ranging from 'dangerous to be around unless you're a friend,' to 'don't set him off and you might live.'
• Self-Surgery: As far as the reader can tell, the majority of Gecko's cybernetics were installed by him. This certainly occurs when he needs another power core.
• Sentai: In his old reality, Gecko had to deal with a group of these Called the Phenomenal Fighting Justice Rangers. In his new one, he encountered the Nature Rangers during a trip to Japan.
  • After Gecko accidentally reveals to his old dimension that he is still alive during tests on the D bomb, the Justice Rangers cross the universal divide to hunt him down.
• Serial Escalation: If you keep pressuring him, Gecko will pull this on you. His grudge with Shieldwall started with a little bit of violence and a murder or two. It ended several months later with Gecko burning down a large tract of Empyreal City and collapsing the Empire State Building.
  • The serial as a whole is this as well, with the Sorting Algorithm Of Villain Threat in full effect.
• Shout-Out: Gecko usually makes several of these per page, which cumulatively is far beyond the ability of this troper to understand or record.
  • Except for the archives, the story is Gecko blogging to another dimension. He won't blog to his own dimension because then someone might stop him like they did Neil Patrick Harris.
  • All over the place in the Oppenheimer chapters, with various Space Marine characters making appearances. It was inspired by Games Workshop attempting to claim the term "Space Marine" when Spots the Space Marine went to print.
  • Gecko murders a group of people on what turns out to be the birthday of one of them, then sings along to a song on the radio. The lyrics are from a song by The Birthday Massacre.
  • Gecko is prone to making references to music, such as singing "Dancing with Myself" after attacking Memphis or hacking a PA system to blast Iron Maiden while charging enemy Space Marines.
  • He faces an enemy named Venus in a chapter named Bananarama.
  • At the end of Bananarama, he faces a very unusual group of Tennessee National Guardsmen.
  • In the Petty Crimes chapter, he goes by the alias Adenoid Hynkel.
• Sizeshifter: Amplitude is one of these, and can induce it in others via Eye Beams.
• Slave to PR: Shieldwall is broken up over PR damage. Specifically, a news camera recording most of the members engaged in a discussion on whether or not to execute Gecko.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: Superheroes such as Captain Lightning and of course the Missile Patriot wear capes. Those heroes who can't fly, not so much.
• Super Serum: Hephastus and the FBI have these. The FBI's are temporary, while Hephastus works on producing reliable, permanent ones.
• Take Over the World: Implied in the title, and completed as of the end of The Trial
• Technopath: Gecko’s superpower is “Tactile Techempathy”, the ability to control and understand technology that stays in physical contact with his body.
  • This ability is genetic in Gecko's species As of Av PG: FUBAR FTW 3, Technolutionary this consists of at least 200 people, including Venus.
• Temporary Blindness: When imprisoned, Gecko has his eyes confiscated, and is left blind until he gets his hands on something with a camera he can use.
• Terrible Trio: Gecko, The Good Doctor and Mix'N'Max used to form one of these. They reform it for a short time during the Alien Invasion.
• The Spark of Genius: Mad Scientist and ally of Gecko, Mix N’Max, has the ability to create mind altering chemicals that only work because he creates them.
  "Where I know some conventional chemical weapons, he can somehow throw together pollen, spit, and crushed rose petals to make napalm. Near as I can tell, that’s his power."
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Many of the heroes ascribe to this philosophy, but notably Venus. She has had multiple opportunities to off Gecko, some of which were set up by Gecko himself, and yet he is still kicking.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Averted for Gecko, who can't throw a knife lethally if someone else's death depended on it. So when he uses throwing knives, he duct tapes grenades to the handles.
• Unexplained Recovery: At the beginning of his final confrontation with Shieldwall, Gecko forced Honky Tonk Hero into intangibility. Given what nearly happened to Dame, this should have thrown him off the planet. Later, however, he shows up none the worse for wear.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Gecko occasionally does this, and doesn't tell what the plans are mainly for dramatic effect.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Dr Unity's reason for drugging the population of Empyreal City with a generalised Love Potion.
• Villain Protagonist: The blogger of the serial, The Great and Devious Psychopomp Gecko.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Gecko can use his Nano Machines to alter his appearance and disguise himself.
  • Later, it turns out that the Claw can shapeshift into whoever he wants on a whim
• What the Hell, Hero?: Shieldwall is officially disbanded after the public asks this in response to the members of the team being caught on camera having a debate over whether to finish off Gecko.
• Would Hit a Girl: Except the women he fights are easily a match for him.
• X-Ray Vision: The Good Doctor uses this ability to help him stab enemies in their weak points and to assist in his surgery.
• Your Head Asplode: Having enhanced durability may save you from Gecko punching your head off. It does not, however, save you from Gecko putting his hand in your mouth and charging his gauntlets until everything above the shoulder ruptures in a fine red mist. Pink Pixie discovered this the hard way.

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