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Kung-Fu Jesus

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And starring Jim Ca— ...Cazivill. Caviv— Caviziel? Is that it? The guy from the first one.

"Kung Fu Action Jesus!
He's fighting the bad guys!
And making them pay!
With magic Kung Fu!
He'll save the day!
It's Kung Fu Action Jesus (Aw yeah!)!"
— "Kung Fu Action Jesus", from Avatar: The Abridged Series

A New Media and comedy trope in which Jesus (or any other similar Messianic Archetype or Crystal Dragon Jesus figure) is depicted doing very, very awesome deeds that somehow were never recorded in the Bible. May involve Jesus being a badass, or just generally doing something really cool. Has a certain degree of Truth in Television, if you believe in the Bible.

Another use for this trope is when a messianic figure (not historical) has extreme martial ability as one of his defining traits. He may be a man of peace, but he'll kick your ass six ways to Sunday if you dare to do bad in front of him.

Name based on the Exalted fandom and on Avatar: The Abridged Series description of Aang as a "Kung Fu Action Jesus". Not to Be Confused with Something Awful goon and Let's Play aficionado Kung-Fu Jesus.

A Sub-Trope of Jesus Was Way Cool, and also Historical Badass Upgrade.

See also Church Militant and Pals with Jesus. Might go on adventures with Badass Santa, or Gandhi II. Push it to the extreme and you got Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting. If it's one of His followers doing the ass-kicking, that's a Badass Preacher or Religious Bruiser; of course, Real Men Love Jesus for this reason.

If you're looking for the Something Awful Lets Player, his page is here.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga  
  • In Shaman King, God is also known as the Great Spirit, the ultimate spirit who can only be channeled by the victor of the Shaman Fight. This being the case, it's implied that Jesus was the victor of his era's Shaman Fight. And the fact that the shaman fight occurs "Every 500 Years" infers that, so was Mohammad (and so was Buddha, if you work it backwards).
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid sees the resident Clone Jesus Vivio practicing the local version of kung fu ("Strike Arts"). It is also unambiguously said that the "original Jesus", the Saint King Olivie, was the strongest fighter in the multiverse during her lifetime.
  • Jesus from the Steel Ball Run continuity of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was a user of the same psychic powers as the rest of the main characters and grants the heroes most of their abilities.
  • In One Piece, (former) Fleet Admiral Sengoku has a Zoan Devil Fruit that turns him into Buddha. This naturally gives him super strength and allows him to launch shockwaves from his palms.
  • Toki of Fist of the North Star is by far the most messianic of the three Hokuto Brothers, and unlike warriors like Kenshiro and Rei who use their martial arts to mete out justice against the wicked, Toki primarily uses the Hokuto Shinken arts to heal people. When he does use his skills to attack opponents, he makes sure that they deal no pain. To top it off, the guy even Looks Like Jesus.
  • In Naruto, the titular character gains the power of Rikudo Sennin, Hagoromo ÅŒtsutsuki, now having god-like powers to counter the now god-like Madara Uchiha. One of his new powers include Healing Hands, but it's power is beyond any healing-type jutsu in the whole world. For example, Naruto stops the killing side effect of Guy's Hachimon and later he gives Kakashi his original left eye back after Madara has ripped it off.
  • The ultimate plan of the villain Altena in Noir is to make, or more accurately remake, a version of this where the titular Noir is a pair of maidens who help the downtrodden and slay the wicked.
  • In A Certain Magical Index, Saints with a capital "S" are people who are born with bodies possessing properties close to that of Jesus himself, which grants them incredible physical and magical powers, to the point they can fight actual angels. One side-story light novel makes the comment that Saints are usually never called in unless the threat in question is capable of causing mountain-range levels of devastation at least. The chances of actually being born with such a body, however, are very slim, as there are only 20 known people in the world who can qualify. Known Saints include the female Master Swordsman and former head of the Amakusa Christians, Kaori Kanzaki; the member of God's Right Seat of the Roman Catholic Church, Acqua of the Back; the strongest maid in Britain and currently the travelling companion of Ollerus, Silvia; and the Valkyrie (which also gives her the powers of Norse mythological beings), Brunhild Eiktobel.
  • Subverted in Record of Ragnarok, where Jesus is presented as a normal human (albeit an influential peer of the Buddha, who is portrayed as a Deity of Human Origin) and is simply a spectator of the fights.

    Comic Books  
  • The comic book Loaded Bible, in which Jesus returns to earth to fight vampires. There's a scene where Jesus spits in a vampire's face and its head explodes. The Bible is some good stuff, but that's right on up there. Well it was holy spit. That's mostly holy water, right?
  • The Godyssey. "Jésus Wins: Theology!"
  • National Lampoon's short-lived Son-O'-God comics
  • The comic book, Jesus Hates Zombies; Jesus Christ was resurrected to save the world from zombies. He kinda lacks his normal powers since his powers is based off of faith so right now, he's Badass Normal.
  • In the Planet Hulk story line, the people of the planet Sakaar fully believe that their Crystal Dragon Jesus, the Sakaarson, will be a complete and utter badass, to the point that at different points in the story, both Hulk and Silver Surfer are thought to be the Sakaarson come at last.

    Fan Fic  

    Film 

    Literature 
  • Paradise Lost has Jesus (referred to as the "Son of God", because He hasn't been born as a human yet) take part in the third day of the war in heaven. After two days of deadlock between the two angel armies, the Son takes the field and single-handedly drives Satan and his entire army into Hell.
  • Left Behind: At the end of the series, Jesus comes to Earth and kills all of the bad-guys by reciting Bible verses that cause them to explode into Ludicrous Gibs. Apparently there was some discussion/debate between the authors as to how literal this should be. The slacktivist Deconstruction of the novels has coined the term Turbo Jesus (Short for Turbo Robo Killer Jesus-2000 with his deathly deathrays of deathlyness) for this version of Jesus, while the deconstruction of the kids-books prefers to call him Zod. Neither is very pleased with this interpretation of Jesus, especially since the Left Behind authors insist that they are only writing what Jesus really will do soon.
  • The absurdist comedy Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff spends a long time devoted to the time span where the story of Jesus' life is missing from the Bible (roughly from about age 12 to his early 30s). In Lamb Jesus (and Biff) spend most of this time wandering the east, learning alchemy, science, and Kung Fu, (literally) among other things.
    • Jesus develops a form that does not cause great physical harm or death. It's called "The Way of the Jew"— or "Jew Do". This is by no means the worst pun in the book.
    • The author even lampshaded in the book's afterword. He writes about how he was going to leave the Kung Fu part out because it didn't fit the timeline... until he spent a couple of minutes thinking "But what if Jesus knew Kung Fu?" He had to throw it in.
  • Older Than Print: In Dante's The Divine Comedy, Jesus has stormed the gates of Hell during the three days he was dead, tore them down, summoned a massive earthquake that was felt down at its eighth circle, and then whisked away the Old Testament saints (who weren't technically Christian and thus went to Limbo). Now, there's a busy fella... This legend can be traced back to the Gospel of Nicodemus, so Dante wasn't actually the codifier per se.
  • Aslan is Narnia's resident Jesus Expy/allegory, and HE. IS. BAD. ASS. Jesus Christ is a lion, get in the wardrobe! He seems to be part-Jesus and part-God, given that he actually displays world-creator powers. Trinitarian theology holds that all Three Persons had/have a role in Creation. The Prologue to the Gospel According to John says of the Word that "all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made."
  • Polish writer Jacek Piekara did a sort of a deconstruction of the idea in his stories about Inquisitor Mordimer Madderdin. Madderdin lives In a World… where Jesus decided "eh, screw you all!", descended from the cross, ordered his Apostles to slaughter all of Jerusalem, and conquered the Roman Empire. Since the dominant religion is far from even pretending to preach mercy, and alternate-Jesus obviously didn't die for anybody's sins, it's one hell (close to literal) of a Crapsack World.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Real-life Jesus stunts in Montreal.
  • Ronald D. Moore commented that the story of Moses was one of the inspirations for Benjamin Sisko's character arc on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In this case, a group of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens stand in for the burning bush. He doesn't get into much hand-to-hand asskicking (at least, no more than any other Starfleet captain), but he is a key figure planning Starfleet's overall strategy during the Dominion War and kicks a fair amount of ass as captain of the series premier Cool Starship, and in the finale he does tackle a Pah-wraith-possessed Gul Dukat off a cliff.
  • Saturday Night Live took this to its logical extreme with a trailer for a mock Quentin Tarantino movie called Djesus Uncrossed where Jesus seeks revenge on the Romans who killed him.

    Music 

    New Media  

    Professional Wrestling  
  • In WWE's ECW revival, John Morrison was once asked what his opponents had in store at the upcoming Pay-Per-View. His response was, "Imagine if Jesus knew kung-fu. That's what everybody else is dealing with."
  • During the road to WrestleMania XXV, Shawn Michaels portrayed a stripping Kung-Fu Jesus parallel to the satanic counterpart that The Undertaker has portrayed for most of his career for their feud.

    Religion 
  • There's an apocryphal legend (one might say Biblical Fanon) that Jesus as a child in exile in Egypt killed another child in the "playground" equivalent by the power of his mind, then had a Heroic BSoD, brought him back to life, and resolved never to use his power lightly again. Although he did do it to a fig tree (God hates figs?) in the Gospels.
    • In the (apocryphal) Infancy Gospel of Thomas he killed a couple of kids for getting in his way, and then drove his teacher insane, and then took away people's voices when they got upset about it. Joseph convinced him to fix everything, but it wasn't until some kid accidentally died near him and he got unfairly blamed for it that he apparently started to realize what a social nightmare it is to make everyone hate you with your superpowers, and started ingratiating himself. When he brought the kid (Zeno) back to life, he was really annoyed.
  • The Gospel of Matthew has a canon moment where Jesus clears the temple in Jerusalem. With a whip. That he made himself for that very occasion (meaning that it wasn't a moment of blind rage, but rather a very deliberate thing he put time and effort into while the Apostles watched him do it). It's worth emphasizing pacifists are not usually known for wandering into public meeting places with weapons to beat eight tons of crap out of everyone making a quick buck off of religion. Or flipping a table made of marble. Yet that is exactly what Jesus did.
  • Some Christian faiths tell of the "Harrowing of Hell" where during his 3-days being dead, Jesus went to hell, kicked satanic ass there, and rescued all the good souls who couldn't go to Heaven until then because he hadn't yet died for their sins.
    • The Book of Revelation, in which the Word of God (generally identified with Jesus) descends from heaven wearing a blood-soaked robe, wielding a double edged sword, leading the armies of heaven in the battle of Armageddon. It goes to show that even a softie who just wants people to be nice to each other can only be pushed by evil so far.
      • And proceeds to one-shot the entire enemy army single-handedly.
    • This is very common in old Anglo-Saxon Christianity. Dream of the Rood is all about portraying Jesus as a young warrior prince who is crucified not because he knew he had to and so he let it happen, but rather wanted to be crucified because he knew how important it was. No Roman soldiers nailed him to any cross, He climbed up on that cross himself, like the badass He is.
    • Not to mention that He spent a good part of his youth doing manual labour as an apprentice carpenter with his earthly father, and walked the entire length of the Holy Land more than once. Dude would've been fit.
      • Based on the Shroud of Turin, it was estimated that He weighed 185 lbs with a muscular build at the Last Supper (He lost a lot of water during the Passion to the point that the dehydration made Him appear emaciated, but the Passion itself was an amazing display of strength).
  • According to Islam, two of the major signs that the Day of Judgment (Yawm ad-Din) is fast approaching are 1) the appearance of an Antichrist or false messiah (ad-Dajjal), followed by 2) the return of Jesus, who will then kill the Antichrist, end all wars, and preside over a period of total peace and prosperity... until God knocks down the wall that confines the tribes of ''yahjuj'' (Gog) and ''mahjuj'' (Magog) and they ravage the Earth and even (successfully) attack "the people who live in the sky." Really. That was probably inspired by Revelation, which has a similar prediction. In some interpretations of the Bible, after the Tribulation Period (which begins with the Rapture and ends at Armageddon, mentioned above), there will be a seven-year period in which God Himself will reign on Earth. After that period, He will loose the forces of Hell for one last hoorah before finally and permanently banishing them and what followers still remain on Earth to the Lake of Fire. He'll then merge Heaven with Earth, creating a perfect paradise free of eternal damnation, with New Jerusalem as its capital.

    Tabletop Games  
  • Abel, the Crystal Dragon Jesus of Anima: Beyond Fantasy. Not only he went elsewhere fighting the supernatural (evil wizards and even a god) but also forged weapons of great power against supernatural entities enchanted with his blood.

    Video Games  
  • Playable character in the [adult swim] web game, Bible Fight.
  • God Hand is based almost entirely around this concept. In the game's backstory, demons invaded the world but were defeated by a man (the God Hand) wielding the power of God in his fists. The player character, Gene, inherits some of the God Hand's powers and has to beat the tar out of demons to save the day.
  • I-Mockery's Santa-Fu features a literal example as well as a Kung-Fu Raptor Jesus.
  • The most powerful Persona of the Judgment Arcana from Persona 3 is Jesus. Well, okay, it's never outright stated to be Jesus, instead going by the name 'Messiah', but the description given pretty firmly implies exactly which Messiah it is meant to be. Especially since, at level 95, he gets the skill Absorb Pierce.
    • In the parent series, Aleph of Shin Megami Tensei II is an amnesiac gladiator who is declared to be the Messiah. His first tasks as Messiah involve fighting demons attacking the populace, and he is only publicly declared to be the Messiah after defeating the other claimant in a tournament-like match. His actual status as the Messiah is up for debate, because he's an artificial human created by science, but under the supervision of the four archangels.
  • Chaos from Xenosaga. He's implied to be the literal Jesus Christ and fights with his fists and legs. And he destroyed Gnosis by touching it with bare hand.
  • The Last Resurrection contains a fireball-hurling Jesus as its Big Bad.
  • The Dragonborn in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Naturally, the Nordic equivalent of their messiah is the ultimate Dragonslayer, capable of Shouting at reality so loud that reality listens via the Thu'um. Depending on character build, it's not uncommon for him to be an armor-clad, BFS-wielding badass either.
  • Jesus Strikes Back: Judgment Day, a controversial third-person shooter where you play as "J.C.", "Tromp", or "Mussolino" fighting back against the left-wing political groups that are gathered en masse.
  • Jesus is a playable fighter in Fight of Gods.
  • There's a video game literally titled "Kung Fu Jesus", though instead of the Lord himself, the player character is an ex-fighter dealing with schizophrenia and believing himself to be the new Christ. Yes, such a thing exists.

    Web Animation  

    Web Comics  

    Web Video 

    Western Animation  
  • Family Guy
    "This summer, let he who is without sin... KICK THE FIRST ASS."
    • And one of their other random cutaways made him even more awesome. "For my next miracle, I'm going to turn water... into FUNK."
    • Did you know Jesus and Moses used guns to defeat the Romans?
    • Robot Chicken did a similar joke, except it was a parody of Kill Bill that replaced the Bride and Bill with Jesus and the Easter Bunny.
  • South Park has done this right from the beginning—before they had a TV show, the "Spirit of Christmas" short depicted a Kung Fu battle between Jesus and Santa Claus.
    • Jesus stormed an Iraqi prison to rescue Santa Claus but was killed by an Iraqi later in the episode. The boys and Santa escaped to South Park, at which point Santa gave a speech to the assembled townspeople, urging them, from this point on, to remember Jesus on Christmas.
      There's a man named Jesus who gave his life to save me. And so I declare that every year on Christmas Day. we should remember Jesus for what he did, and thank him for it. From now on, Christmas will be a day for remembering a brave man named Jesus.
    • Then taking down the head of the Catholic League with the Glaive from Krull, complete with an epic Glasses Pull, and leading the forces of Imagination in the final battle Aragorn style. Jesus is a badass in South Park.
    • He Took a Level in Badass, since his initial appearances had him a little meek, and got his ass handed to him by Satan in a boxing match (before Satan threw the fight).
  • In an episode of American Dad!, Jesus arrives to take control of the forces of good at Armageddon and becomes known as Commander Jesus. His counterpart, the Anti-Christ, however, is not nearly so badass. Well, Jesus said that the Anti-Christ was the opposite of him in every sense, so if Jesus was badass, it's obvious that the Anti was not.
  • Brickleberry: JESUS! He killed all the dinosaurs!
  • This is essentially what the Avatar is in Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series, The Legend of Korra:
    • For the current living avatar to fully realize their power, they have to become highly spiritual, and this full realization entails unlocking a Super Mode that can potentially alter plate tectonics. Considering that the Avatar idea comes from Hinduism and Buddhism, this would technically make Aang and Korra examples of Kung Fu Rama/Krishna, by way of the Dalai Lama.
    • The man who established the Avatar Cycle, Wan qualifies as this. He is an All-Loving Hero, with long hair reminiscent of Jesus. He is also the creator and the first practitioner of the firebending martial arts based on the movements of a dragon. His peaceful nature didn't stop him from becoming the First Avatar and kicking Vaatu's butt. It is implied that Wan continued to fight in wars for the rest of his life.

    Other 
  • The Church of the Subgenius take on the mythos, the Fightin' Jesus. The badass that chased out the moneylenders. In the war against the Elder Gods, he pilots the starship Blood of Christ.
  • The most popular depiction of his physical appearance actually is somewhat similar to Chuck Norris.
  • There is a Norse version of the Bible that portrays Jesus as a righteous warrior in a very literal sense.
    • One of the kenning namesnote  for Jesus was 'the white Thor.' Given that Thor was the God of Fighting and Survivingnote ...
  • The sketch by the French Humorists "Les Inconnus" Jesus II, the Return imagines Jesus as a Rambo-like badass (In-Universe, it's a fake trailer for a fictional movie where the role is played by Sylvester Stallone).
  • According to a bit of 40K fluff, Jesus was highly likely one of the many pseudonyms of The Emperor of Mankind. Jesus must have been feeling incredibly merciful when He only used a bullwhip at the temple. But it's probably just because bolters hadn't been invented yet..
  • One illustration in GURPS Powers has been called Fire Breathing Kung-Fu Jesus.
  • Indie action figure company 3A created Fighting JC, who has been released with different colored robes, and different tattoos. Some people have described it as Jesus Christ, reborn to kick some Zombie ass, given that Fighting JC was released as part of a line dealing with the survivors of a Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Fist of Jesus is a 2012 short action film where Jesus brings Lazarus Back from the Dead, but since it's his first time something goes wrong... cue Jesus and Judas fighting the zombie horde armed with multiplied fish.
  • A horrifying example of this trope can be found in Positive Christianity, a version of the faith that was briefly promoted by the Nazis shortly after taking power in Germany. Instead of focusing on the "passive" parts of Jesus' life (his birth, his miracles, his crucifixion), which the Nazis felt turned Christianity into a religion of weakness and submission, it recast Jesus as an Aryan warrior who rebelled against the Jewish authority of his day — in other words, something that could motivate the Germans to go to war in a quest to do the same.


 
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Video Example(s):

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Hokuto Ujou Hagan Ken (EP 43)

Toki, the messianic archetype of the show, uses the Juu no Ken (Fist of Gentleness) technique known as the Hokuto Ujou Hagan Ken (The Humane Face Breaking Fist of the North Star), which causes the victim to feel intense pleasure before they die.

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4.85 (20 votes)

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Main / KungFuJesus

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