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Memetic Badass
A specific form of Memetic Mutation when the fandom of a series exaggerates a character that is simply badass, and sometimes not at all impressive to preposterously epic god-like levels. Despite the name, it doesn't necessarily have to be a widely known Internet meme, and is sometimes just an in-joke among the fan-base. In some cases, the writers agree.

Often overlaps with Fan Wank.

In-universe, this can be the result of being Shrouded In Myth.
Examples:

Chuck Norris
  • Chuck Norris is the most prominent example, and it also applies to those celebrities, both real and fictional, that also have the "Chuck Norris Facts" attached to them:
    • Bruce Campbell as evidenced by his own Facts site.
    • Tim Tebow
    • Samoa Joe
    • Vin Diesel
    • Mr. T
    • Barack Obama, though more accurately a Memetic Nice Guy.
      • His Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, also has his own site. And every fact on it is true. I'm not kidding. They actually cite their sources!
    • Sarah Palin
    • Vladimir Putin (his KGB background and his habit of saving cameramen from tigers make people Putin a good word for him).
    • Cryptography guru Bruce Schneier
    • When Jack Bauer was told he was played by Kiefer Sutherland, Bauer killed Sutherland. Jack Bauer gets played by no man.
    • xkcd creator Randall Munroe, here.
    • Daniel Craig, based on his performance as James Bond in Casino Royale.
    • Antonin Dolohov
      • What? Where?
    • Mark Motherfucking Musashi is the toku equivalent, apparently◊.
    • Charles Bronson, although many of these aren't actually exaggerations. He worked as a coal miner at ten.
    • I once saw Colm Wilkinson tear a steel telephone book in half with his bare hands, and then sing at it, reducing it to its component atoms.
    • Alton Brown, as shown here.
    • ESPN even had an "Interesting Facts About Cliff Lee" segment when the Indians Pitcher got out to a hot start in 2008.
    • Hockey player Gary Roberts, thanks to the fannish devotion he received from Pittsburgh Penguins fans in his season and a half with the team.
    • A Song Of Ice And Fire: When Randyll Tarly weds a Frey girl, the musicians kill themselves.
    • Stephen Colbert doesn't fear the truth, the truth fears Stephen Colbert.
    • These, in turn, were originally inspired by the Bill Brasky sketches of Saturday Night Live. Chuck Norris has not, in fact, punched a hole in a cow just to see who was coming up the road. That was Brasky.
    • Alan Moore. Although his 'facts' tend to be a little more grounded in fantasy (see also, Neil Gaiman's 'True Things about Alan Moore'.
    • Many of the original Chuck Norris facts fit well for Cthulhu, but become rather creepy. This is partly because Cthulhu is canonically that badass. Nothing earthly can harm him in any way.
      • Also it's revealed in the story In The Mountains Of Madness Cthulhu and it's spawn defeated The Great Old Ones, who both had and used nuclear weapons-making Cthulhu not a Memetic Badass, but a true one.
    • The Norwegian Lars Monsen. Like Chuck Norris is the god of roundhouse kicks, he is a "god" of winter and cold. (Lars Monsen can cross the Milky Way on foot — in the winter)
    • The World Of Warcraft orc NPC High Overlord Saurfang.
    • When Michael Phelps swims, he doesn't pull himself forward, he pushes the Earth backward.
    • Velimir "Bata" Zivojinovic◊ (Yes, that's a beer bottle wrapper), A star of old Yugoslav WWII movies, most prominently Valter brani Sarajevo (Valter defends Sarajevo) which apparently became hilariously popular in China, had a series of similar memmes attached to him, such as:" The bogyman checks under his bed for Chuck Norris. Chuck checks for Bata Zivoinovic"
    • An early form of this trope can be found in the tall tales told about giant mythological lumberjack Paul Bunyan, who, among other mighty feats, was said to have dug the Grand Canyon by dragging his ax behind him, and single-handedly cutting down the Sahara Forest.
    • Georg Prime from Suikoden II and V frequently has old Chuck Norris jokes attached to his name.

Live Action TV

Anime
  • From Bleach we have Aizen's truly gigantic couch, which has been theorized to be The Man Couch Behind The Man Behind The Man and the strongest character in the series. To a lesser degree, this applies to the rest of Aizen's furniture, as well, all of which is over the top.
  • The servant Archer from Fate/Stay Night had such a badass final fight, it spawned the creation of the word/concept of GAR. (Note: this one is actually true.)
  • Char Aznable from Mobile Suit Gundam is stated to make anything three times faster (from a statement that Char's custom red Zaku was three times faster than a normal Zaku). This is also expanded to just mention the word "three times" in some way, like Char Aznable is three times as badass as Chuck Norris.
    • Additionally, it became a common meme that everything painted red in Gundam is three times faster that its counterparts. Gundam 00 recently lampshaded it with Trans-Am system which, when activated, actually paints an otherwise traditionally colored Gundam red and makes it exactly three times faster than before.
    • Master Asia could solo the Gundam universe.
    • Bright Noa: slapping wimps and turning them into MEN OF DESTINY since UC 0060.
  • There is a joke among Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fans that anyone who puts on Kamina's orange sunglasses will suddenly become incredibly manly.
    • Of course, most statements about Kamina himself can not be exaggerations, because the universe he lives is pretty run by the Rule Of Cool, and the Humongous Mecha are powered by Hot Blood.
    • Fact. Ash's Squirtle had those shades a good decade earlier
  • Exodia from Yu-Gi-Oh, noted as the only being capable of frightening Anonymous.
  • Makoto from School Days is dubbed Man-koto and jokingly worshiped on a certain image board for attracting and banging pretty much anything female in the cast without hesitation or mercy. If you count the games, this includes the mothers, sisters, and several threesomes. He doesn't get away with this in the end and is hardly an admirable character, but that's why this is Memetic Badass.
  • Fanon commonly elevates Gendo Ikari from The Chessmaster to literally omniscient, because, hell, he might as well be.
  • Naruto: Due in large part to him starting a chain of events that ultimately caused Sasuke to defect from Konoha by letting it slip that Itachi came by, thus bringing the story to where it is now, Aoba Yamashiro has been hailed as a Bad Ass Xanatos Gilligan and/or Chess Master by the fans. Recently, his legend grew when he showed up again with a team of reinforcements after two major villains succeeded in killing a major secondary character. The villains were ordered to retreat shortly thereafter, but that didn't stop the fans from claiming that they had, in reality, ran in terror at the sight of Aoba and his Murder of Crows no Jutsu.
  • Speed Racer: Inspector Detector is a demon on foot. And he's insane.
  • Fictional example: Much of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex is about Laughing Man imitators. His already godlike hacking abilities are exaggerated by the media and greedy corporations.
  • Takamachi Nanoha in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: mostly justified, though her tendency to shoot first (because magic damage can't kill people) extended by fans into outright battle lust to use maximum power rather than a last resort.
  • Sir Jeremiah Gottwald is THE ULTIMATE SYMBOL OF CHIVALRY AND LOYALTY.

Literature
  • Neville Longbottom uses Nagini's blood as soy sauce.
    • Molly Weasley can kick your ass and still have time to bake a pie. Bitch.
  • Levels of Victor Cachat worship on Honorverse page make him one of the TV Tropes-specific examples.

Real Life

Comic Books
  • Batman has famously said to be able to beat anyone with enough "Prep Time".
  • Wolverine is the best at what he does. And what he does isn't very nice.
    • And what he does...is so terribly pretty!
    • Only by having power over adamantium (Magneto) can you really stop Wolverine for a long while, which reminds him why he hangs out with the X-men at all... it's to gain even more badass aura without having to every kill villain once the villain's stamina runs out and wolverine's regeneration doesn't!
  • Karate Kid is the Memetic Badass of the thirtieth century.
  • Sgt. Frank Rock is more badass than Batman. Seriously, there was voting and everything.

Western Animation
  • An example from this can be seen in the South Park movie, where the kids say that professional ice-skater Brian Boitano won a gold medal while blind-folded, fought a grizzly bear with fire-breath, traveled into the year 3010 to save the earth from the evil Robot King, and built the pyramids while beating up Kublai Khan.
    • In case of life imitating art, Brian Boitano actually does skate to "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" on occasion.
  • Avatar fandom gets this with two characters. Toph, who is not blind, but merely incapable of seeing anyone less awesome than she is, and Iroh, who was not pulling himself up while training in prison, he was pushing the Fire Nation down.
    • Three characters, if you include the incredible paragon of manliness that is Wang Fire. Don't you even dare suggest that he is the bearded alter ego of Sokka.
      • Which is acknowledged in a mini-comic about Sokka infiltrating the Fire Nation military using that name. It ended with him pretending to be killed while taking out a waterbender and earthbender, and being remembered as a hero.
    • Sokka himself often has fans exaggerate his intelligence from "competent strategist and inventor" to "rivals Ozymandias".
  • Transformers: Bonecrusher hates this page. The only reason he hasn't killed everyone who's edited it is he'd hate not having a list of people he needs to kill even more.
    • ME GRIMLOCK BADASS!
    • Soundwave superior.
  • Gaston from Beauty And The Beast. Because no one fights like Gaston, and no one hunts like Gaston, etc.
    • In a spitting contest no one spits like Gaston!
      • He's especially good at expectorating.
      • He eats desu for breakfast.

Film
  • Samuel L Jackson and any character played by him.
    • This troper saw an article in which it was claimed that Mace Windu getting killed by the Sith proved that Star Wars was pure fantasy, because nobody could kill Samuel L. Jackson in any realistic situation.
    • And, of course, the idea that Mace Windu is still alive at the bottom of Coruscant, fighting whatever is down there.
  • Boba Fett went out like a punk on screen, taken out by a blind man and a pole. But he looked so gosh-damn mysterious in his cool body armour that fans assumed that he must in all essences be the Galaxy Far, Far Away's version of Batman. And so, in the Expanded Universe, that is indeed what he became. As of now, he is in his eighties seventies and dying of recovering from a terminal illness, but still manages to beat the stuffing out of anyone who gets in his way.
  • The version of Van Helsing of the self-titled movie — at least in Tycho's book.
  • Captain Nascimento from the Brazilian movie Tropa de Elite (a.k.a. The Elite Squad). When Bruce Banner gets mad, he becomes The Hulk. When Hulk gets mad, he becomes Capt. Nascimento.
  • All of this may be true, but nobody fucks with the Jesus.

Video Games
  • F-Zero's Captain Falcon, amongst Nintendo fans. To be more specific, his Falcon Punch is said to match Chuck Norris' roundhouse kick, thanks to a YouTube video of a clip from the anime adaptation F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu that makes it look like it creates an explosion that can be seen from outside the galaxy.
    • Arguably justified in the first Super Smash Bros., since Captain Falcon was one of if not the most dominating characters in the game, and in the right hands could be absolutely devastating against any other character, or even multiple characters at once. So much so that he was greatly de-powered in the sequels, reducing him to merely a formidable opponent.
  • According to a disturbing number of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney fans, Damon Gant can and will rape anything. Others prefer to think of him as a more traditional Memetic Badass.
    • That, and his stare will ravage your soul.
    • The same sort of popularity has been applied to Manfred von Karma, Edgeworth's Control Freak mentor. Do not let him get within a foot of a taser.
    • At the other end of the spectrum, a group of members from the Court Records forum has elevated Klavier Gavin to the status of a rock/sex god, complete with commandments. Said commandments (numbering 55 as of this edit) include paying to see Klavier shower and losing one's virginity simply by looking at him.
    • More recently, there has been a push towards Luke Atmey getting this treatment. To wit, he is able to stop Manfred von Karma's soul-devouring gaze by hurling his Ace Detective badge directly into the prosecutor's face.
  • Under no circumstances should anyone entertain the notion of pursuing Lu Bu.
  • If you can play Metal Gear Solid 3 without wanting Big Boss to have tender sex with you — whether you're male, female, straight, gay or whatever — you're simply not a correctly functioning human being. He's the Bridget of the new generation.
    • And in this, as in all other things, Solid Snake is an exact clone of Big Boss.
      • Also, CRAB BATTLE!
  • Blue Steel, an otherwise minor NPC hero character in City Of Heroes, has been used for so many offscreen Deus Ex Machina conclusions to superhero capture in villainous story arcs that he has gained a game-specific list of Chuck Norris-esque alleged accomplishments. It is even lampshaded by another NPC.
    • He is also one of the very few NPC heroes that you are never given the chance to fight in the game, so there is no telling just how tough he really is.
  • Star Wars fans have, in addition to Mace Windu as played by the aforementioned Samuel L Jackson, Kyle Katarn. There was No Endor Holocaust because Katarn said so. The shockwaves from the explosion of the second Death Star knew to not screw with him.
  • TV Tropes's own Grand Unifying Guesses page makes Altair of Assassins Creed into the biggest Kill-Stealer in history.
  • Saurfang, an NPC on the Horde side, characterized by his glowing equipment, is a target of this, to the extent that a massive list of Saurfang "Facts" exists. This Troper's favorite example: "Area-effect target caps were implemented after Saurfang used Cleave on Stormwind and it shattered Draenor."
    • Also, Hogger.
    • At the same time the Saurfang fad was really hitting its stride, the Alliance attempted to elevate Bolvar Fordragon to a similar memetic position. It never quite caught on.
  • Sanger Zonvolt and Elzam von Branstein/Ratsel Feinschmecker of the Super Robot Wars games. The latter is for much the same reason as Char Aznable, with the added bonus of his theme song overwriting all others. The former may have a bit more truth to the claims, due to nearly destroying an impenetrable base from the outside while fighting himself from an alternate universe in some sort of Chuck Norris joke Gone Horribly Wrong.
  • A Word Of God-approved version of this is Master Chief in Halo. In the original games, Master Chief was relatively slow and weak (at least compared to FPS heroes like the Doom guy, who can run at 60mph while carrying a metric ton of equipment and can soak up hundreds of bullet hits before dying), with only his regenerating energy shield allowing the player to make it through a level long after the standard allied Mooks have all perished. In the novels based on the Halo universe, Master Chief and all his fellow SPARTA Ns have been drastically upgraded to Space Marine level Super Soldiers who see in bullet-time, can punch out Powered Armor while naked, can run at vehicular highway speeds, can flip armored jeeps over with their hands, and can soak bucketloads of small-arms fire without much concern.
    • His Memetic Badassness has carried over to fansites as well, as eh kills aleins and doesn't afraid of anything.
    • If you want to go strictly by game mechanics, then his standard allied Mooks have energy shields too. And flip tanks without touching them.
  • Admiral Dane from Metroid Prime 3. Impressive, since he shares a universe with a woman that has (to date) blown up three planets, one which was a sentient parasite, and caused the near extinction of at least two major-threat species.
    • Samus Aran needs no fandom to exaggerate her badassery. She is the intergalactic Queen of Badass.
  • Segata Sanshiro, the "mascot" for the Sega Saturn, though he was portrayed this way in the ads even before the Internet got to them. Really, how else can you describe a man who threw one person into another, causing both to explode?! The fact that he's played by Rider-1's actor just adds to the badassery.
    • It takes a nuke aimed at SEGA HQ to get him off the planet. He wasn't affected by the vacuum of space, and I'm sure the explosion tossed him to another galaxy where he's too busy introducing the natives to the Saturn to come back to Earth.
  • Gaenor, from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has recently become a Memetic Badass among the community, as seen here. Interestingly, he's also The Scrappy...
    • No, the Scrappy is Fargoth, Gaenor was the devolopers answer to Fargoth haters
  • In the Dwarf Fortress forums, Captain Ironblood from Nist Akath (A Community Fortress, which is kinda-sorta-not-really a fanfiction).
  • Gilgamesh in Final Fantasy V. An entertaining, Affably Evil Dragon at best? Not to his fans! He's the ultimate Badass of the FF series, and nobody should dare suggest he's a cowardly boastful goofball who brags about his abilities and flees at the drop of a hat.
  • People shouldn't have been surprised that Link, Cloud, and Snake lost the way they did during The Great GameFAQs Character Battle of 2007. After all, the L-Block is shaped like a boot to kick your ass!
  • Devil May Cry's Dante. Badass mutha 101. Wrote the book "My Life As A Badass With A Cool Jacket". Invented the line, "I'm too cool for stairs!"
  • Simon Belmont, who can cause Galamoth to run away like a wuss. He once appeared on the cover of Nintendo Power magazine, waving around the severed head of Dracula.
    • This thread on the GameFAQs Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles board started off as a questioning of why Richter Belmont is so "average." Eventually, it turned into a pages-long thread about Richter's awesomeness that would go on to hit the capacity of 500 posts.
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn has a faceless, nameless NPC that the fandom calls the 3-13 Archer. Has been called the best character in the game. Has had fanfics devoted to him. Is known for having had entire strategies revolving around him.
    • Statistically, he is considerably worse than your player characters, being only midway through his second tier, with average stats at best for said tier. This does not explain how he manages to instantly kill a tiger laguz every turn whilst taking no damage. It is the great mystery of Radiant Dawn.
  • There was a green-armoured Redshirt who appeared in the first stage of Mega Man X 2 and exploded in the game's opening. Nevertheless, the Green Biker Dude, as he became nicknamed, has gained something of a reputation.

Webcomics
  • A piece of fan art for Narbonic made the distinctly non-Bad Ass Dave Davenport out like Bruce Willis. The non-canonical Sunday comics, which were used to have the characters show off fan art, fan fiction, and side stories, meant Dave got to directly see himself rendered as a Bad Ass, began demanding the comic change artists, and gave him a (somewhat implied, but outright mentioned once) canonical man-crush on Willis. Coincidentally, the comic's artist eventually married this fan artist. And Dave ultimately went on to become amazingly Bad Ass in a completely different, somewhat nerdy way.
  • O-Chul from The Order Of The Stick has become one of these, along with a list of "O-Chul facts". To be fair, he did survive being tossed into a spiked tank with an acid-breathing shark in it, and (off-screen) won a staring contest against a basilisk...
  • Something Positive had this strip featuring Alan Moore that portrayed him as one of these.

Tabletop Games
  • Some Warhammer 40000 fans make Commissar Yarrick out to be the series' answer to Chuck Norris. Two of their claims:
  1. The God-Emperor of Mankind is merely warming Yarrick's seat.
  2. The Tyranid extra-galactic Horde Of Alien Locusts encroaching on human-controlled space was a set of splinter groups fleeing from Yarrick's own extra-galactic adventuring, which had previously destroyed the majority of their forces. Or, should they say, "fleeing".
    • Within the W40K 'verse itself, we also have Commissar Ciaphas Cain, whose reputation for heroism has grown to the point that one Imperial cult has actually proclaimed him "a physical manifestation of the God-Emperor's Will". Of course, because Cain is an Accidental Hero who is actually a Dirty Coward, the whole thing is played for laughs.
    • The Oot S forum is attempting to turn Eldrad Ulthran into the man who caused everything in the universe, along the lines of "God created Earth, Chuck Norris created God, Rick Wakeman composed Chuck Norris, and Eldrad Ulthran gave Rick piano lessons."
    • Sounds more like a memetic dick to me.
  • Bliss Stage: Keenan Caine once got his Anchor pregnant just by kissing her.
  • Exalted's Michael Goodwin, aka Nephilpal, is the true designer of the system, who died in the First Age but will return to save us all from crappy quality control.

Web Sites

Other
  • This troper's high school Spanish class took a liking to one of the running characters featured in our textbook, Don Francisco. Despite him being an old man who mainly drinks coffee and comments on the young people traveling with him, everyone though everything he did was made of awesome. Come to think of it, I guess you could say we thought of him as sort of an Ecuadorian Uncle Iroh.
    • This troper used that book, and we thought the same thing! Creepy...
    • At first, this troper thought the previous tropers were referring to this Don Francisco, who is no less legendary.
    • We did the same with Kuldip, in our German text book. Mostly because despite maintaining the same name and T-shirt and telling us haw to ask for a bus or order pizza in German, the photos in the text book showed him to change sex from male to female and back again and change race three times seemingly at will!
  • God created Earth. Chuck Norris created God. Rick Wakeman composed Chuck Norris while drunk out of his skull. His website has a number of good Rick Wakeman facts. (Got everyone in the studio to drink all day, barricaded the bathroom, then mic'd a echo chamber and got people to piss in it at the same time.)
    • Of course, Don Francisco taught Rick Wakeman everything he knew...
  • In Cardiff University graffiti started appearing on the desks a few years ago bearing the name Dan Towers. who he was we had no idea, but the fact he had so much graffiti in several different people handwriting lead us to add our own such as "Dan Towers stole my sandwich." "an Towers got me pregnant just by looking at me" "Dan Towers is watching Big Brother watching you" and "Dan Towers is the Stig." In the end they had to re-furnish the lecture theater to kill the meame.
Memetic Mutation
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