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The Bad Future has happened, meaning the Evil Overlord has won, it's The End of the World as We Know It and they are unquestionably in charge and making questionable fashion choices. There is hope in this bleak Dystopia however; some brave people have formed La Résistance.
Notably, these include most of the former Sidekicks, the Plucky Comic Relief, and even The Scrappy, with an occasional "main" character survivor; basically everyone you'd expect to be a loser in the future. But they're not the same characters we knew and loved (or hated), they're Darker and Edgier.
It seems living under an iron fisted despot is a great personal motivator to get buff, and all those bombed out HotTopic stores are just begging to be used by actual punk freedom fighters. Effectively everyone's gotten a Badass Makeover and turned into fashionably scarred, goatee-sporting, longcoat-wearing, Shell Shocked Seniors and Genius Bruisers.
Even the mousiest, ditzyiest, flabbiest, slacker-iest characters straighten out and become deadly serious professionals. Even if we grow to like these new interpretations of the same characters more than the originals, the status quo and attachment for the originals is sure to undo this harsh future.
At the very least it becomes somewhat ominous to know that, under the right (or wrong) circumstances the lovable Woobie or Goofball can become a cold killing machine. They might make a future reappearance (if the future gets unfixed again) or return in the much more disturbing event that the character suffers a Heroic BSOD, or worse, gets pushed too far.
If they're lucky, the reappearance of the hero can set things right before the Big Bad is too entrenched to be removed. In some cases it can be All Just a Dream, a Time Travel made Alternate Universe, or a Mirror Universe with a tiny difference.
See also Future Me Scares Me, Bad Future and Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome. Compare with Ridiculously Successful Future Self.
Subtrope of Took a Level in Badass.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann seems to begin with Simon leading the Dai-Gurren Brigade through a war with all the stars in the heavens which is theorized to be what would have happened if the Anti-Spirals were right and the Spiral races went on to abuse Spiral power. This Simon, while similar in appearance, is a lot cockier and violent then his kinder canon self.
- Tsukihime: According to several released small stories, in the future Tohno[/Nanaya] Shiki will become the Dead Apostle-slaying assassin Satsujinki, who has surpassed his past limits. One such story begins with him wiping out one of the 27 Dead Apostles, without him even noticing he was dead until it was far too late.
- Katekyo Hitman Reborn!: Most notably Lambo, going from crybaby incompetent toddler to crybaby slightly more-competent bishonen in 10 years, and turning into an overpowered beefy stud in 20 years.
- Yes. Lambo and... everyone else.
- Dragon Ball Z's Android Saga features Future Trunks, who wiped out both Frieza and his father King Cold, who up until that time were considered the supreme Big Bads of the universe, on his first appearance. He traveled through time to get Goku and the gang ready to fight the Androids, which had all but destroyed the Earth in Trunks's future, as well as give Goku the cure for the heart disease that he got back on Planet Yadrat, which had killed him in Trunks's timeline before the Androids arrived. Note that "normal" Trunks only shows up after this, ironically turning out to be mostly useless in a fight and having horrible taste in clothing.
- Don't forget Future Gohan. He takes this trope to extremes compared to his present day child counterpart. Even when he loses his arm to the Androids and eventually gets killed.
- Noein had the Dragon Knights Karasu and Fukuro as Future Badasses for Yuu and Isami respectively. Karasu got into fights with almost all the other Dragon Knights, and became a Determinator, singlehandidly invading Shangri'la the timespace that had nearly destroyed La'Cryma to rescue Yuu(then Haruka) from Noein.
- Shirou Emiya of Fate/stay night turns into the man they created the word "GAR" for.
- Tekkaman Blade has Aki Kisaragi, who for the first season serves as the supportive figure of Takaya aka D-Boy, and eventually his Love Interest, who sometimes DO help him fight in piloting the not-quite-so-powerful ship. In the second season, after several years of Time Skip, she became a Tekkaman herself, and while lacking natural Tekkaman powers like flight or Voltekka, she still manages to be a Badass fighter on her own, and goes on tutoring Tekkamen blessed with natural Tekkaman powers.
- The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi has Asahina Mikuru's future self. She's clearly more self-confident, wiser (and bustier) than her present self, not to mention that she's actually her own superior.
- The ending of Mahoromatic has the main character become this, much to the consternation of many fans.
- Reversed, somewhat, in Violinist of Hameln with Clari Net. Clari has yet to demonstrate any real prowess—only talk—when Trom and Flute come across a mirror that shows the past, and a scene with a pathetic-looking crying boy. The end of the flashback reveals the boy to be Clari. Cue adult!Clari taking out an army of dragons. Singlehandedly.
- While the cast of Getter Robo were already supreme badasses, the After the End OVA Armageddon has the characters appear older and more rugged than before and ditch the old Space Clothes in favour of something more badass. Most notable is Ryoma, who gains a huge red Scarf Of Ass Kicking, a Badass Longcoat, chain belt and hand wrappings, and his sideburns go from "huge" to "have their own gravitational field."
- In Psyren, the Elmore Wood kids, after dying repeatedly in the future, come back with a vengeance, all kicking ass and taking names.
- In Claymore, after the Time Skip, a previously useless and weak character, Raki, gets powered up.
- Otcho from 20th Century Boys goes from an average Joe to an enlightened mercenary to a Bare Fisted Monk who goes by the name of Shogun.
- And Yoshitsune goes from a timid, ineffectual Woobie to a competent resistance leader, though he's still plagued with self-doubt and his major character development is learning his own worth.
- Actually EVERYONE becomes a future badass, good or bad - Kenji started out as a loser who run a store, and by the epilogue, he had became a symbol for hope, a rock star, and ultimately Messiah.
Comic Books
- The X-Men story "Days of Future Past" had several of these, starting with Kitty Pryde—who is now called "Katherine", thank you.
- The same future has Franklin Richards as a mutant freedom fighter, even though in comics set in the present day he's been 8 years old (or so) for decades.
- In a 2004 arc in the Teen Titans comic, the Titans get warped to a Bad Future where the Justice League have all died and been replaced by their sidekicks, who are now uniformly deadly vigilantes: Robin has become Batman (and now uses a gun), Superboy has become Superman (and has no compunctions about ripping peoples' arms off), Beast Boy is the feral Animal Man, and so on. And they're all working for Lex Luthor. Overlaps with Future Me Scares Me.
- Three Ultimate Marvel-examples: In a recent X-Men/FF crossover, future Cyclops lost his powers, but is still badass enough to be the new, 616-esque Captain America. Future Shadowcat (still caled Kitty though) develops the ability to become super-dense in addition to her intangibility, which allows her to bitch-slap Ben Grimm around; also, she has a copy of Spiderman's web-slingers. In another, earlier UXM-arc, future Wolverine lost his Healing Factor and an arm, no less, which forced him to become even more badass as a result— cue Ultimate Cable.
- Seemingly normal high school student Victor joined the cast of Runaways after Gert came back from the future to warn the kids that he would someday kill every super hero on the planet. And not only was Future!Gert leading the Avengers, but she looked so different that the fifteen-year-old Gert didn't recognize herself.
- A late arc of Impulse called "Dark Tomorrow" had Bart and his present-day then-girlfriend Carol transported to the 30th century after Bart's mentor Max Merucry "died." They discover that their future selves, living in a very Bad Future run by Bart's evil grampa, are quite Badass... and also fighting on opposite sides, with Carol working for President Thawne. Even though he's on the good side, Future!Bart is much more savage than the kid we all know and love.
- Jack Knight went to the future and saw that Stargirl will eventually be a great hero.
- Her younger sister is also destined to become a Starwoman in the future.
- Bratty Damian Wayne from Batman becomes one of these in Batman 666, taking place in the future (or perhaps a possible future). He stretches the no-kill rule to the limits, more than willing to brutally injure and kill his opponents, although he does mention that he promised his father not to kill. He "cheats" by rigging the entire city of Gotham with booby traps and bombs, acknowledging that he won't match his predecessors. And he has made a Deal with the Devil, able to survive and heal immediately when he was shot with bullets, his soul in exchange for his need to protect Gotham.
- Sort of example in Hack/Slash; in the Murder Messiah Annual, it's revealed the previously thought dead Liberty Lochs cast a spell at the last minute that saved her from dying, but flung her into a post-apocalyptic future, where she was forced to become a badass, complete with cool hoverbike.
Fan Fiction
- In the Star Wars Expanded Universe Fan Fic Love Ignites the Galaxy: Star by Star by polgarawolf, the Tahiri Veila from Legacy Of The Force uses Darth Caedus' flow-walking technique to travel back to the events of Star by Star and save the Jedi strike force from the disaster ahead. She proceeds to rig the Yuuzhan Vong's voxyn grove to explode, get the drop on the entire Myrkr strike force, neutralize Lomi Plo and Welk, all the while evading the Yuuzhan Vong, and generally makes it clear that she's seen the future of this timeline, and nothing is going to stop her from insuring that future Does. Not. Happen.
- In the Star Fox fanfiction Krazoa Legends by Wolf E. Urameshi, more than one character is an example of this: Falco Lombardi's life is shown when he has to escape with his sister after his parents are killed. Both of them. Also, Wolf O'Donnell goes through the same thing, though his story is more mommy dearest fare. But the original character Janus is probably the most accurate example of this. I mean, the guy starts his life abandoned by his own father, General Scales because he was apparently not muscled enough in the non-literal sense. The events that followed traumatized him- plus Scales killed Janus's mom a year after the latter was born. He was rescued by an obligatory smart guy, turned into a genius badass nice guy, and is even a hot, muscled Sharpclaw with a toned bod, avenges his family and guards ancient ruins with just a spear. He even scores. Yeah.
- This story shows an alternate timeline where Nightmare Moon conquered the world (apparently because Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash never met and the Sonic Rainboom never happened). While Rainbow Dash is The Dragon and Rarity ended up making statues instead of fashion designs, Fluttershy of all ponies is leading the mythical creatures of Everfree Forest against Nightmare Moon's forces. And winning.
- In the Pony POV Series, Twilight Sparkle is revealed to be this is the Bad Future ruled by Discord and at least possible future. In this Bad Future, she's Discord's brainwashed Dragon, Twilight Tragedy. However, Applejack's view of that future implies she actually manages to Out Gambit Discord during one of the moments he unbrainwashes her for his own amusement by hiding a letter to herself, which allows her to restore her memories without his knowledge and plan his downfall. Which is arguably more badass. In another possible future, she's an extremely powerful magician who fights tirelessly to defend Equestria. It's even hinted she's the one to defeat death. Oh, and she's immortal as well.
Film
- Future John Connor in the Terminator franchise is referred to as a brilliant, Bad Ass military leader of the human resistance. The first film shows him in action, as part of Kyle's description of him to Sarah, then we see him as a child in the second movie and TV show.
- Kyle Reese himself. Among other things, he makes pipe bombs out of mothballs and a few other sundry household items. Bad Ass. What makes it apply to this trope is that then The Sarah Connor Chronicles shows us him as a young child before the war.
- Reese also spends a lot of the first film telling Sarah Connor she's one of these, much to her disbelief, bewilderment and frustration, and his eventual disappointment. She is by the second film, though.
- Time Chasers gives us a downplayed version of this with Nick, who is certainly hardened by his experiences throughout the film compared to his former self. He's still kind of a Non-Action Guy, though.
Literature
- One of the Animorphs books concerned Jake waking up in the future, where all his friends were battle-scarred screw-ups
- Paul Carpenter encounters a badass swordsman version of himself in Earth, Fire, Air and Custard - the end of the plot of that book was so convoluted it's hard to tell, and he never finds out for sure, but there's a good chance said version of Paul existed because a Canadian bank tried to change history to make Canada a major world power.
- In the final book of The Pendragon Adventure Mark and Courtney, formerly fairly average high school students, have become grizzled leaders of the surviving human population on Earth.
Live Action TV
- When Cordelia wished an Alternate Universe into being in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, random classmates and Giles are forced to fight the vampires sans Slayer. Xander and Willow get a Gothic Punk makeover as The Dragons of the Big Bad. Even Buffy is scarred.
- Willow's creepy alternate was also alluded to when she snapped following Tara's death, using the alternate's creepy "Bored now" line, with the same delivery, right before using her powers to flay Warren, Tara's killer, alive.
- In the novel The Lost Slayer, Giles becomes a vampire king, and the Scoobies become a battle-hardened almost military group trying to fight him. Younger!Buffy-in-Older!Buffy's-body is suprised when she breaks out of where Giles was holding her and sees how they've all changed.
- Sideways example: the Slayer's Handbook supplement to the RPG describes an alternate setting called Hellworld, in which Glory's portal wasn't closed, unleashing a demonic apocalypse on Earth. One of the last remaining enclaves of humanity is defended by a group of grizzled demon fighters led by a horrifically scarred, nearly psychotic Alexander 'Call me Xander and die' Harris.
- In the same scenario, there are rumours filtering in from the wasteland about someone called "Ripper" who hunts down demons with a combination of magic and mundane weapons...
- Heroes has its own alternate future, with various side-switching and bad-ass-ifications. The most jarring one is Hiro, who goes from scruffy-looking, broken-English-speaking comicbook nerd to Badass Longcoat-wearing, hair-slicked-back, contemplative-yet-badass street samurai. And is pissed about it.
- What's really amusing about Badass!Hiro is that he's so exactly what Original!Hiro would have thought of as a Badass—it's unclear that he did it consciously, but he's the perfect incarnation of what Original!Hiro wanted to be. And is pissed about it nonetheless.
- This was actually requested by the actor as a nod to Future Trunks from DBZ.
- Let's not forget about mild mannered Peter Petrelli either, who turns into a jaded, bitter Badass Longcoat with a huge scary scar and "hasn't had a good fight in years."
- Matt Parkman goes from an unlucky police officer who Bennett is easily able to screw over into a Badass FBI Agent who takes out both Bennett and Future!Hiro.
- Claire Bennett gets this in Season 3, with a large helping of Face Heel Turn or Knights Templar
- Humorously inverted in Season 3 with Sylar, who ends up the only person in the Dark Future version 2.0 who's pleasant, well-adjusted, and not wearing black leather.
- At least until his son gets killed, at which point he promptly and literally goes nuclear.
- This happened in It's a Very Muppet Christmas Story. During their It's a Wonderful Life segment, Beaker — normally Dr. Bunsen Honeydew's hapless assistant — is a buffed bouncer. With a tattoo.
- A lot of people couldn't stand Captain Kathryn Janeway's moralistic hand-wringing and rule stickling in Star Trek: Voyager. Her alternate future counterpart, Admiral Kathryn Janeway stomped the rule book and then blasted it with a torpedo for good measure. She willingly violated all kind of regulations and swindled the Klingons, and then laughed it off. Badass Grandma if there ever was one.
- Trance from Andromeda actually switched places with her future badass self in one episode. The change was permanent, but we also got a brief look at badass future Becca.
- Supernatural: In the Season 5 episode "The End," which is one giant homage to 28 Days Later (though also a great episode in its own right), Dean has become even more badass and left all of his Woobie-ness behind (and he's highly reminiscent of Major Henry West, Christopher Eccleston's character in 28DL), and Sam is possessed by Lucifer. Slightly inverted in that Castiel has become a relaxed, stoned hippie/love guru, but even that is just a cover for his transformation into a Nietzsche Wannabe.
- An interesting twist on this in Stargate SG-1, the episode Moebius. Although it was really an alternate timeline, when the DifferentTimeline!SG-1 encounters RegularTimeline!Daniel, it's implied that they see him sort of as a Future Badass, since in their world, SG-1 had never existed and Daniel was somewhat of a wimp. But for the audience, that's Daniel as we know him, so we're not surprised.
Original Daniel: Where am I?
Alt O'Neill (of course): Ancient Egypt.
Original Daniel: No I mean the other me.
Alt Teal'c: I killed him.
Original Daniel: Why????
- A less extreme example to be sure, but Sun, of Lost, in the flashforwards is shown to essentially perform a stock market based hostile takeover of her father's company before he can blink.
- In the Doctor Who episode "The Girl Who Waited", Amy gets trapped in an alternate timeline. When Rory manages to find her, she's 36 years older, dressed in armour made out of the robots she's killed, and armed with a sword and a home-made sonic screwdriver. Oh, and she's kind of pissed off.
- Related to the film entry above, John Connor in The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a Deconstruction of this. He knows, and has always known that he's going to become one of these, like his movie incarnations, and a TV series allows for more time to deconstruct that and show him living with that knowledge and suffering the traumas that would turn someone into that. He's even shown asking people from the future who've met him what his future self would do in certain situations.
- In "Pavor Nocturnus", a confused Magnus encounters a battle-scarred and extremely jaded Will. That's what happens when you're one of very few survivors of a zombie-type epidemic.
- In Misfits, Superhoodie, who has been helping out the heroes, is revealed to be Simon.
- Inverted in the Distant Finale of Dollhouse. We follow Bad Ass Action Survivors Zone and Mag through two episodes of apocalyptic madness, during which they survive all kinds of crazy madness, only to finally decide to part ways after their side has finally won. The two of them, having until then been too busy surviving to dwell on the past, decide to tell each other what they where doing before the end.
Zone: Mag... what did you do... you know, before?
Mag: I was... at Brooklyn College. Sociology. You?
Zone: ... Landscape Architect.
Mag: [Cracks up] ... I wouldn't have called that one.
Zone: [raises an eyebrow and swaggers off] People are such a mystery!
Tabletop Games
- Critical Shifts brought about by bad guys in Feng Shui are the game's version of the Bad Future. Usually, people who the characters have met do much the same thing they did in the original timeline, but sometimes, the people go through changes as a result of the timeline. In one fan-written Feng Shui adventure, a Distressed Damsel that the PCs rescued from a Serial Killer in a previous adventure goes Sarah Connor as a result of a Critical Shift where the demons of the Underworld have overrun the mortal world and leads La Résistance against the demons.
- One Dragon Magazine Forum letter came from a DM who'd cured his players of wanting to switch to an Evil campaign with this trope. Sent to a parallel world, the PCs found that the goblinoids had taken over the planet using sci-fi technology, the good-guy demihumans were virtually extinct, and the Future Badass versions of the players' own retired PCs were practically the only heroes left outside of a graveyard. A few sessions of living like fugitives (and fleeing from monster-race adventurers!) convinced them that's what they were really looking for in a campaign, not Evil player characters per se.
Video Games
- In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness/Time, the player character, as a human, was a future badass! And to up the ante, his or her partner in the future was GROVYLE.
- In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, a tragedy occurs in the first half of the game. Fast forward 17 years later, two former Tagalong Kids eventually evolve into two Badasses:
- Shanan, who was formerly Ayra's Morality Pet and even started out as a Distressed Dude, evolved into an ass-kicking Sword Master, and when combined with the Balmunk Sword, which grants him crazy dodge rates... he's one of the game's Game Breaker.
- Fin can also count, After the time skip he's much more competent and experianced then his younger self.
- Oifaye, though his significance wasn't as big as Shanan and seemed to be a Crutch Character but proved not to be. He manages to hold on his own, protecting Celice through years of hardships. Within the Fire Emblem community Oifaye is synonymous with initially powerful characters that remain useful.
- City of Heroes has a few examples. The final goal of Operation: DESTINY is to prevent your villain from turning into a Future Badass capable of taking down both the Freedom Phalanx and Arachnos single-handedly (as killing Lord Recluse in this future literally costs your right arm). Mender Silos may be another example, what violating the underlying laws governing time travel and generally being an mysterious benefactor with hidden, layered plots, and certainly commanding a more impressive set of capabilities and army than that modern-day brozned poser Lord Nemesis.
- The players themselves as of Issue 19. You are shown a glimpse of a possible future version of you effortlessly defeating groups of the strongest bosses in the game, before breaking the laws of the universe to send Mender Ramiel further back in time than should be possible. Possibly not applicable, since you're already a superhero, but your future, fully powered incarnate version is to a superhero what a superhero is to a normal person. And then some.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is an example of this, with emphasis on Link, Zelda, and the Sages.
- Chrono Trigger inverts this with Magus (also known as Janus back in his own past). A full arc after crossing blades with the Fiendlord, you come upon a Creepy Child who informs you that one of your own (Crono) will die. It's after the Kingdom of Zeal crumbles that Magus lets them know of his past, and the party makes the connection at that point; a savvy player should see this much sooner.
- Half-Life 2 features Barney Calhoun, former underachieving security guard at Black Mesa, turned leader of the human resistance and undercover spy who has infiltrated the ranks of the alien security forces.
- Edward, yes that Edward, in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.
- "I am the white void. I am the cold steel. I Am the just sword. With blade in hand shall I reap the sins of this world, and cleanse it in the fires of destruction! I am Hakumen! The end has come!" — A major improvement over his previous life as the Ambiguously Gay Yandere Jin Kisaragi.
- In inFamous, all-powerful Big Bad Kessler is revealed at the end to be an Alternate Universe version of Cole who traveled back in time to prepare his past self to deal with a Complete Monster destined to destroy the world. Depending on the Karma Meter, he either succeeds or he becomes something worse.
- There's an interesting variation in the second Jak and Daxter game: Our gun-toting Anti-Hero Jak meets his adorable younger self in the future before he's sent back into the past to grow up safe from harm.
- Not a story-based example, but Strange Journey has an example in an early bonus mission, where you're tasked by three Dises to calm down the raging Yggdrassil. This doesn't turn out so well, as not only does he outstrip your team at that point stat-wise, he can also stop time. Before he can kill you, though, the hero blacks out and is saved by a mysterious figure. A few Sectors later, it turns out that figure was him.
- In the fan created game Touhou Mother, Cirno is a laughably easy recurring boss for the first half of the game. Then you're sent forward in time and you encounter her again, and she puts up one heck of a fight.
- Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has Isaac, hero from the previous game that saved the world 30 years ago. He is now 47 years old, but is more buff, boasts a Badass Beard AND a Badass Longcoat, and he still kicks major ass as he helps his son, Matthew, (the player) and Karis find their friend as he uses a BFS and retains most of the powerful Djinn and summons he used on his last adventure.
- In the same game, there's Eoleo, who is the son of the famous pirate, Briggs. In the previous game, he was just a baby with some powers. 30 years later? He's now pirate like his dad before him with a mastery of Fire Pysnergy and he joins your party later on!
- Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days has Hanako, Adell's younger, nine year old sister. Ten years later, as the DLC reveals, she becomes Demon Lord Hanako, evidently fulfilling her dream of becoming as "sexy and powerful" as her idol, Etna.
- Bayonetta one similar to the Jak And Daxter example: Cereza turns out to be Bayonetta as a child who by the end is sent back in time.
Web Comics
- 8-bit Theater recently revealed that Sarda is the Future Badass version of Onion Kid, Black Mage's serial victim.
- Narbonic, during the Unstuck in Time arc. The world sucks, Helen is a Brain in a Jar, Mell IS Vice President and is planning to become President, and Dave is in charge of Narbonic Labs.
- Dave in Homestuck, which is pretty impressive considering that his present self is already one of the most Bad Ass characters of the series. He's also a bit more emotional than his present counterpart (thanks to being stuck in an Unwinnable by Mistake situation with two of your closest friends dead for months on end) and gets pissed off if you refer to him as "Other Dave".
- A different variation with endgame!John, when Karkat first trolls him. Not exactly badass, but with a lot of cool gear and clothes and sounding remarkably secure and confident despite the uncertain future.
- According to Dave, John is even stronger than him in the future.
- Parodied in The Way of the Metagamer, in which everyone from the future is badass, no matter how far from the future they are. Even characters from five minutes in the future are incredibly badass.
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Dark Smoke Puncher. Battling jetpacking dinosaurs with his ninja wizard skills. The main thing thats different about him is the trademark Future Badass scar. He was already a ninja in the present working on his technomage gear.
Web Original
Western Animation
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