Mary Sue makes great Snark Bait. Who doesn't love to pick apart these paragons of failed attractiveness? But wouldn't it be even more fun to create an intentional Sue and play it for comedy?
A Parody Sue intentionally evokes a generic Mary Sue storyline with one of the following resolutions:
The character succeeds and the whole universe ends up falling to her buxom charms, usually being made into her all-encompassing harem, except for maybe one snarky guy who knows exactly how stupid this is.
The character fails, either because there's just too manyotherstock Mary Sues competing for that position or because the other characters see how genuinely shallow and uninteresting the character really is.
The character is perfect in ALMOST every way. The ways she's not perfect affect her life the most.
This character can overlap with any of the other Mary Sue types, so long as it's fairly obvious the story is basically a big Take That at Mary Sue. One good sign of a Parody Sue is when the story points out the Canon Defilement caused by the Sue's presence and actions.
However, it takes the steady hand of a skilled writer to make this kind of character work, even if they're playing it for laughs. Don't be fooled if somebody claims this is what they were aiming for once they suffer the backlash of their storyline. And of course, just because somebody intends to make their story a hilarious parody doesn't mean they'll actually succeed — sometimes Parody Sue can end up just as tedious as the original. After all, a character that is intentionally written poorly is still a poorly written character.
See also The Ace, which does much the same thing but with a supporting character. The author may choose to create a Parody Sue by having their fictional character create a very obvious Mary Sue character for themselves — if so, this will be a case of Her Codename Was Mary Sue.
If you come across a piece of blatant Sueishness in fanfiction and feel the need for some justified cruelty, it can be wiser (or at very least, a whole lot more fun!) to assume that it's a parody. If you're right, you're right, and if you're wrong, you've insulted the author far more than any accusation of poor writing ever could.
Examples
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Fan Works
The Abridged Series
Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Seriesturned Shogo Aoyama, the one-shot movie character in the first Yu-Gi-Oh! movie, into a straight parody of this named "Gary Stu". In practice, he was more like the Only Sane Man when it came to everyone's obsession with card games ("I just don't see the appeal").
He learned.
Lelouch from Code MENT. He's a prince who's also related toDeath the Kid and Alucard with incredible power and influence over others, gets away with stuff that can only be described as batshit insane... and yet he spends most of his time just being a Jerkass, scoring drugs, blowing stuff up, and contributing nothing but menace to society.
His solution to C.C. holding him at gunpoint is to attempt suicide, since a dead body can't be harmed by being shot. And it gets worse from there. The best bit? He did it in canon, Code MENT just made it look far sillier.
The main characters of anything by Squirrelking of Half Life Full Life Consequences fame. They are always the brother or son of the canonical protagonist and usually ridiculously overpowered. But please don't be fooled — they were intended to be about as serious as a duck glued to a lemon used to fight crime.
The Game Of The Gods has not one but thirtyLord of the Rings Parody Sues, all of whom meet their end via the invoking of Logic. And it's pretty darn funny.
Don't Let A Mary Sue Into Titans' Tower A Teen Titans fic that hilariously parodies traditional Mary Sues, with the titular Mary Sue (who has the required super-long, super-stupid name) being incredibly lame and all the Titans trying to get rid of her but being unable to.
Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores, a parody of Transformers fanfiction with all the usual: twins of opposite factions with awe-inspiring powers who refuse to fight, forcing (almost) everyone to fall in love with them, freaking out and accusing others of being sexist for little remarks, and even making characters that don't fit right into "their" world vanish. Followed by Return of the 50 Foot Eyesores, which revives them and adds a mysterious long-lost sibling with a mysterious dark lover, and also turns Megatron into a Canon Sue on purpose who immediately makes Starscream fall in love with him.
The whole point of the Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society is to get rid of such Parody Sues (because none of the authors want to pick on a real life Sue and incur wrath of the Sue's author). Some of the Society agents themselves are Parody Sues.
Just The Best Mary Sue Ever is possibly the jewel of this trope in the fandom for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The author, Bamfwriter, deliberately set out to create a character about whom she could answer "yes" to every question on the LXG Mary Sue Litmus Test. The entire first chapter is little more than a description of her improbable beauty. The rest of the story includes a lot of sex (including a five-way), some swearing, two characters coming back from the dead, and a cameo by Harry Potter.note This is now Hilarious in Hindsight given what Harry turns out to be in Century...
There exists a tiny sub-genre of stories wherein the characters of a series find and read a Suefic. Results vary by author, but are usually hilarious as the canon characters attempt to explain what the hell is happening.
At World's End is not a comedy, but it does have the character Don James, who is introduced in chapter eight and appears to be a Marty Stu, until he dies at the end of the chapter, and then at the very beginning of the next chapter it's revealed that he's been a traitor the entire time, and later on it is revealed that the reason for this is that he was actually driven to madness by his own Marty-Stuness! Though it doesn't say that last bit in as many words, obviously.
More specifically: they are, during the Tournament Arc, revealed to be another hideous result of the Big Bad residual evil; a Team Rocket experiment with human and Pokemon psychics that involved a piece of the shattered crystal core of the Big Bad backfired, killing the psychics horribly, and in their dying moments, the psychic backlash was pulled together by the crystal and created Mariah Susanson, who became a Reality Warper and was influenced by her combined psyche's desires and wish fulfillment fantasies. Barry Stu was a random guy she tore the soul out of and remade to fit her desires; when the first Stu was defeated in a battle, she destroyed him and turned his opponent into her next Stu, and so and so forth. In other words, a more twisted take on the Sue problem.
And she still comes back later on, becoming a recurring villain onwards to the end of the story. In one chapter, Zim uses some of her DNA to create a date for the school dance, for some reason mixing it with Dib's DNA. Said date has huge "tracts of land", and it's pointed out that Zim is so enamored with her that he starts acting completely out of character in order to impress her. Then she becomes so obsessed with him that she tries to kill him in order to keep him, at which point Zim begs Gaz and White for help in dealing with her, which leads to her being killed by Gaz and flushed down a toilet.
Never Leave Fanfiction Lying Around features two Parody-Sues, Starr and Celeste. It uses the real characters reading the fiction the parody-sues are in as a framing device. Hilarity and pain ensue.
Mary Mary? Quite Contrary! starts off as an advice guide to avoid making a Mary Sue. Then in Chapter 14, it becomes an actual story featuring a rather blatant Mary Sue, who is even aware that she is a Mary Sue (named Christiana Sophia Maysalee Thomas). More recently, there's Dark, who is a parody of the kind of Villain Sue commonly found in Fullmetal Alchemist fanfiction.
ĄQuiero ser una Mary Sue! (I want to be a Mary Sue!) is a Naruto Spanish fanfiction about a real world girl who is suddenly teleported into Naruto's world. As she has been reading a lot of fanfiction she thinks she can manage this new world and become a Sue pretty easy. She quickly sees she's wrong, Hilarity Ensues. It also plays a lot with the Common Mary Sue Traits as the main character aspiration. Sadly, it's incomplete and we don't know if the author is going to continue it. Really funny and sarcastic.
Author ShakespeareHemmingway has written a series of stories in which an over the top Marty Stu comes to the aid of the British royal family, fights Nazis, and seduces the ladies. His name: Garfield.
this fic shows us what happens when a character thinks themselves to a smart, beautiful half ghost, princess of The Ghost Zone in love with Danny Phantom and envied by all of his classmates with an overly long Sue name, but is actually a plain looking, plain name having, bat crap insane girl that literally makes Danny sick.
This fanfic gives us Raven Tw'light-Moon, who is the best at everything and everypony loves her the moment they see her...except Twilight, who is protected by her cynical personality. In the end its revealed that she's an Eldritch Abomination called a Mare E. Sue who grows stronger by carrying out the general Mary Sue role and her goal is to become strong enough to Take Over the World. Her one weakness is criticism, so Pinkie takes Twilight beyond the Fourth Wall to do a MST of the fanfic, criticizing and deconstructing every way in which Raven is a Mary Sue until she finally loses it, destroying her in the process. Unfortunately, a Mare T. Stu shows up in the end.
The prototypical My Little Pony Mary Sue is a black-and-red alicorn with great magical powers. The Saga of Dark Demon King Ravenblood Nightblade, Interior Design Alicorn features a super-powered black-and-red alicorn who is always distracted from the crisis at hand by his delusion that he is a master interior decorator, while his unremarkable gay lover solves the crisis.
The Pony POV Series has a variant. According to Word Of God, General-Admiral Makarov — the Big Bad of Shining Armor's side story — is a parody of the Villain Sue. It kind of shows in his full name (Supreme Marshal of the Imperial Armed Forces, General-Admiral Solomon Azure Raven Makarov) and some of histraits, as well as his tendency to claim his back up plans were his plan on all along so he can act like he didn't really lose at all. He turns out to be an Equineoid Abomination called the Shadow of Chernobull, which was created by Pandora (the Draconequi of Imagination) sealed away in her Box until a Hooviet experiment set it loose.
The Harry Potter fanfic Stranger than Mary Sue Fiction is a comedy story from the POV of Draco Malfoy with Blaise as his best friend in which he's haunted by the voice of a narrator, a la Stranger than fiction, but his narrator is a Mary Sue. It deconstructs some of the common traits of Harry Potter Sues, but without being an out and out parody.
Happy Endings is a Harry Potter fanfic that pits a newly resurrected Severus Snape against Andromeda Merlina Francesca Tiffany Morningstar Brighteyes, a Sue who undid many of the tragic events of books 6 and 7 in order to write her own happy ending.
In Perfection Is Overrated, the cast goes up against the SUEs, a group of girls with powers similar to the Himes, who represent various Mary Sue archetypes and effects on the plot. In the former, Mariko Suou is a girl with the ability to make everyone fall in love with her immediately after meeting them. In the latter, Shizune's powers make those of everyone in the vicinity much weaker, in reference to how Mary Sues are typically overpowered and overshadow the canon characters. The fic explores whether the SUEs can win against the Himes without Plot Armor. They ultimately don't, for a variety of reasons.
In Harry Potter and the Something Something the most perfect girl ever appears in Voldemort's lair offering him a shot at redemption. Voldemort is entranced by her pretty eyes... the Sue ends up dead like all the other sues that keep showing up on Voldemort's doorstep but Voldemort kept her pretty eyes to play with.
In The Sue Rules, a Mortal Kombat fanfic, a Mary Sue was created in order to eliminate Scorpion with his own elements. The Mary Sue is basically poked at, and Kitana and Kung Lao set out to find her, only to have several Mary Sues fall for the latter, including Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way.
It also teaches you (step by step) how to make a Mary Sue and how to obliterate canon with them.
The trope image is from Ensign SueMust Die, where Ensign Mary Amethyst Star Enoby Aiko ArcherPicardJaneway Sue has been unleashed on the Star Trek universe. But her life isn't all perfect, she suffers from a horrible case of Pedal Transient Paresthesia.
The Fire Emblem Online Comics, a series of comics on a site called "Fire Emblem Online" used the Type 2 version. Half the cast of Author Avatars attempted to put themselves across as flawless protagonists while the other half were Deadpan Snarkers who saw right through it and lampshaded how their greed, lust and laziness was condemning the entire planet. Which half was which depended largely on who was carrying the Idiot Ball and who hadn't previously been reduced to Ludicrous Gibs by it.
A Take That comic at fan-made Sues in the Harry PotterVerse written by one who calls himself Pirate Monkeys Inc: it starts as Type 2 (and is, in fact, the Trope Image for Thirty Sue Pileup)— then flips around to become Type 1 and shows us why, if she does succeed, she's still utterly revolting.
"And order is restored to the Sue-niverse..."
Dragon Ball Multiverse gave us this. She ends up as a mix of Type 1 and Type 2, as while her mere presence forces all the canon characters to fawn over her, the alternate Arale she's up against knocks her into orbit while she's waxing Sue-ish before the fight.
Meimu as depicted in Touhou Nekokayou (the original concept was a more straight example of a Mary Sue) is type 2 in her first appearance, although in her case she only thinks she's particularly powerful/special/interesting/etc. She was intentionally given a signature ability which superficially resembled that of Yukari(her mother), but which is considerably less useful or applicable.
Ophiuchus The Great claims to be a rainbow drinker with three blood types and two hearts, who is also the "secret leader" of "The Main Twelve" (i.e. the canon trolls). In reality, he's an insane yellow-blooded hacker who's amazingly good at stalking people, but hilariously bad at figuring out what's actually going on.
Copycat is one of Ophiuchus' disciples, who dresses (and acts) like some sort of weird mish-mash of The Main Twelve.
Vamuin is an indigo-blooded surfer dude who's amazing at everything who has a game-breaking superpower. He ends up screwing the entire session even worse than in canon by awakening all the Denizens at once, and ends up a Broken Ace.
Web Original
The web-novella Under the Moons of Riadorf takes on the softest of soft SF to ludicrous effect. The authors' whole site follows the theme, complete with fake author biographies. There's also a Choose Your Own Adventure Sue.
Trope-Tan and the Stealer of the Spotlight is a deliberate attempt to invoke this and as many other bad fanfiction/other tropes as possible in half a page.
Seireitou Hyuga, from a Naruto RP, not only rips off every mainstream character (even managing to rip off Code Geass despite the other rip offs being a whole other genre), but makes a God-Mod Sue who would make every other one wet their pants if they ever saw him. However he's apparently a spoof of God Mode Sue to show how not to make a fanfiction character for the website. The author simply uses his user name, blatantly steals from other series, and the pictures he uses are simply screen shots (sometimes badly photoshopped usually not) from the series he ripped off from.
The author later revamps him, but he still serves as good example.
Never mind, he's right back to being a borderline God Mode Sue. So much for improvements.
Ditto Hinagiku Katsura, the 15-years-old Student Council President and fencing expert, who's also fallen in love with the hero and in later manga chapters, is revealed to have a home life and past that's almost as screwed up as Hayate's. Some tropers have once remarked that Hina "has Mary Sue written all over her, in several languages, with glowy marker". Even her character description in the manga is extra-flowery compared to the other characters. She israther popular in the real world, though, so...
She gets an ending theme all to herself, too. Hinagiku is definitely a Parody Sue... And is loved because of it!
Punie from Dai Mahou Touge would most certainly be a normal Mary Sue under most circumstances: she's cute, strong, has magical powers, and everyone loves her. It's just that little bit about being truly and disturbingly evil, complete with a Stepford smile, to the point where even her adorable mascot Paya-tan is out to kill her.
Then again, Paya-tan is a dick too, not to mention a Vietnam veteran and a Yakuza boss.
Miko Shirogane/Shirogane Z from Powerpuff Girls Z is a Villain Sue parody, being multi-talented in many areas and forms a plan that successfully humiliates the Powerpuff Girls. And she does this all in an over-the-top fashion.
Mr. Satan/Hercule kind of falls into the second type in Dragon Ball Z, especially as far as Earth's normal populace is concerned.
Medaka from Medaka Box. As a freshman in high school, she becomes the Student Council President with 98% of the vote... and single-handedly executes the duties of the entire student council, with some help from her childhood friend. She's absurdly rich, trained to near-Naruto levels of martial arts (everyone else is pretty much normal), is a master of deductive reasoning, and that's just for starters. She's also completely out of touch with normal people: she once ran a tutoring session for an entire class that consisted of tips on how to make sure your handwriting was clear enough, because she couldn't conceive of actually getting a wrong answer that wasn't because of a handwriting mistake. (Things like this cause her childhood friend to remark, at one point, "She's so smart that she's come back around to stupid.")
The series actually takes this to 11 — being a Sue is a genuine superpower (called being an abnormal), and the school is part of a government program to artificially create Mary Sues. The way they test if someone's an Abnormal? They have them roll a cup of dice — Abnormals get all 6s. When they have Medaka do it her dice make a tower on the table. Medaka is so Sueish that she's more sueish than the sues.
This continues to be played with as the series goes forward — dealing with the "Minuses" takes up the biggest arc so far, which are God Mode Anti-Sue characters with psychotic (negative, or minus) personality traits. (The standard Mary Sue characters are called "Pluses.") The most recent arc has two "Not Equal" characters show up, which are heavily insinuated to be so far beyond human mentalities that they're actually of Eldritch Abomination level of psychosis and power — the main one shown so far has been clocked at having over 13 quadrillion various superpowers (normal Abnormals get one). Worse, they're Medium Aware — they're waiting out the main character and her True Companions, as they'll graduate in a few years and thus not be there to stop their plans; they know to do this because they know they're in a Shonen Jump manga and the hero always wins in Shonen Jump, even against impossible odds.
Haruhi Suzumiya has probably become the definitive deconstruction/parody of the God Mode Sue in Anime. She's brilliant (though prone to doing stupid things regularly), she's in great shape (having been in, but gotten bored with, every school athletic club), and an entire organization exists with the sole intention of keeping her happy and making sure that she never loses at anything (because they are afraid of her). In fact, the only reason she doesn't count is that she's totally disillusioned with reality due to her childhood and faced with a completely unflappable Deadpan Snarker. She is a literal God Mode Sue. There's also the fact that her "literal" God Mode is a direct obstacle to one of her main goals — to experience the supernatural. Much of the series involves the others running around trying to keep her in the dark. Her presence also makes their lives harder instead of better, with no actual upside. It also really complicates her relationship with Kyon. She'd probably be mortified if she knew that Kyon can effectively read her mind at times based on what her reality warping powers do.
The most powerful weapon in Soul Eater is Excalibur, a sword that can turn any Meister into one of the greatest meisters of all time (a loser meister uses it to defeat three of the top students). He's also really obnoxious, has 1,000 provisions that a person must follow, calls everyone a fool, and constantly talks about how awesome he is. The result is that no one can actually stand him enough to use him.
Comic Books
Squirrel Girl is canonically the most powerful character in the Marvel Universe. The fact that her powers relate to talking to squirrels makes the parody aspects of this all the more obvious.
Ultimate X-Men had the character of Elliot Boggs, a.k.a. the Magician, who was brought to Professor X after accidentally killing his parents when his powers manifested, at which point he is promptly invited to join the X-Men, defeats the Blob in front of reporters causing the media to embrace the X-Men for the first time ever, and even singlehandedly takes down a group of attackers that had already beaten the rest of the X-Men. Eventually it is revealed that he actually has vaguely-defined reality-altering powers that he'd used to manipulate the team into accepting him and to create villains for himself to defeat and reporters to praise him. The plotline was not largely well-received, as many readers gave up in disgust during the opening issues of the arc where Elliot appeared to be a traditional Mary Sue; others were put off by the fact that the reveal basically boiled down to "He's not really as great as he seemed... he's just omnipotent," and that he just walked off at the end.
The DC Comics universe has the legendary Rex the Wonder Dog. He's a decorated veteran World War II experimental supersoldier. He's an investigative journalist. He can drive vehicles. He can speak every language that exists, has eternal youth, and has ill-defined magical powers. He once nuked a T. rex. He almost certainly knows more than Batman and Mr. Terrific combined. He's also a dog, who gained the ability to talk after he had already accomplished most of his impressive stuff.
Henrietta Hunter in X-Statix, a world-renowned mutant popstar and philanthropist with a tragic past and a constantly-chipper demeanor, who due to her fame is instantly made leader of the team once she joins despite having absolutely no qualifications. She's so annoyingly-perfect that the other team members actively start trying to get her killed on missions.
Comic Strips
The infamous "His Code Name Was The Fox" arc in Fox Trot, where Roger Fox wrote an abominable novel that cast himself as a generic Tuxedo and Martini superspy. You can read it starting at page 20 here (although the arc it's a part of starts earlier). Created its own trope.
Films — Animation
Metroman from Megamind is seen as a cocky, handsome, and powerful Expy of Superman. Everyone in the world loves him and there are shrines for pretty much anywhere. However, the subversion is that he believes that being a Boring Invincible Hero is what's expected of him, and his true passion is to be a musician.
Films — Live-Action
You Don't Mess with the Zohan has a main character who can do impossible wire-fu martial arts, feels absolutely zero pain, has a massive budgie stuffed down his trousersnote that bulge is revealed about a third into the movie as not his penis, but just a veritable jungle of pubic hair. "The bush! It's like a cushion for them.". All this is played for laughs. Also, he is shown to be attracted mainly to (besides the main romantic interest) old and/or fat women, whom he very loudly bangs after giving them a haircut.
Didier, the French exchange student from Son of Rambow is a sexy, young Johnny Depp-lookalike who is so cool that he has two unwanted harems, one of girls, and one of boys. Yet underneath his cool and bored exterior he is just another sweet and innocent pre-teen boy who wants to have fun and make believe with other children his age. It also becomes evident at the end of the film that he's not even remotely popular back home.
The title character of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Neurosurgeon, particle physicist, race car driver, multi-instrumental rock star and comic book hero — and that's the "real" one. In the film, he also saves the human race from an alien invasion effortlessly. And then there are all the Shrouded in Myth moments such as references to his former wife. All of this is very intentionally over-the-top and meant as comedy.
The character was originally not intended as so much of a parody, described as more of a renaissance man by the actor who played him.
According to the movie materials, everything in the movie is a dramatization of real events.
The film Her Alibi is an overlooked gem for parodying this concept. The main character writes almost nothing but books featuring his Author Avatar, and rewrites events in his life to fit this character, making him look like an over-the-top James Bond.
The film American Dreamer was about a woman who has a concussion, and wakes up believing she's a character in her favorite pulp novels, and an over-the-top female James Bond.
Rushmore begins with Max Fischer dreaming he's popular and can solve an unsolvable math problem.
Pleasantville took a subtle jab at this. When the main characters, a brother and sister are transported into a fictional 1950s-era sitcom in which everything is (apparently) perfect, the sister is forced to assume the role of the daughter in the fictional sitcom family, who is, of course, loved by everyone. The name of the character she is forced to become? Mary Sue.
Furthermore, it was her who took the initiative in messing up the SugarbowlUtopia, by introducing them to sex.
Austin Powers is, like Derek Flint, a Parody Sue of secret agents.
Similarly, Dr. Neil Connery (played by Sean Connery's brother) of Operation Double 007.
Rustlers' Rhapsody, itself a parody of western films, features the protagonist Rex O'Houlihan, a heroic cowboy with impressive gunslinging skills and an absurd amount of Genre Savvy.
Gary from The Muppets. He's basically your most cliched feel-good movie hero, but Played for Laughs. The fact that he's played by Jason Segel, the director, helps.
He also has a Parody Sue girlfriend named Mary.
Th Disney Channel made for TV movie Read it and Weep had Iz, the wish-fulfillment Mary Sue from the main character's diary who seems to just be a Sue doing Sue things: winning the guy the author wants, humiliating expys of people the girl dislikes and so on. Then the diary gets published...and becomes a best seller with Iz coming to life in the author's mind to supposedly help her through he new-found fame. Only for the deconstruction to seriously set in, especially once people find out the diary's characters are based off actual other students when the author slips and calls the villain by her rival's name. Iz is then revealed to be self-centered, vain, and a total sociopath who doesn't care who gets hurt to get what she wants, and the author realizes that acting like a Sue in Real Life turns you into a total jerk and loses you all your friends.
Oh, and Iz also has superpowers for no reason other than to abuse people she dislikes. Also causing problems when people realize the book's characters are based off real people since, well, you're writing about "zapping" people just for being mean in a normal, high school way.
Dearly Devoted Dexter pulls this on a God Mode Sue in typically vicious fashion. When a Mad Doctor inflicts terrible revenge on one of his former Special Forces coworkers, the feds send in Agent Kyle Chutsky. He's an Adonis, physically fit, expert at most everything, swiftly gets into a Slap-Slap-Kiss relationship with Dexter's sister Deborah, and has a personal history with the villain. So is our Villain Protagonist about to be pushed out of the book? Not quite. Remember that personal history? The mad doctor grabs Chutsky, and by the time Dexter finds him he's lost two of his limbs and all of his composure.
Donald Ogden Stewart's short story "How Love Came to General Grant", a parody of novelist Harold Bell Wright, establishes in this paragraph the purely pure pureness of Miss Ella Flowers:
A hush fell on the crowd as they caught sight of her face — a hush of silent tribute to the clear sweet womanhood of that pure countenance. A young man on the edge of the crowd who was on the verge of becoming a drunkard burst into tears and walked rapidly away to join the nearest church. A pr-st---te, who had been plying her nefarious trade on the avenue, sank to her knees to pray for strength to go back to her aged parents on the farm. Another young man, catching sight of Ella's pure face, vowed to write home to his old mother and send her the money he had been expending in the city on drinks and dissipation.
The character Donna Inez in Lord Byron's Narrative PoemDon Juan may well be an early example. The Lemony Narrator spends many verses praising her beauty and accomplishments in an overblown manner, describing her as so morally perfect that "her guardian angel had given up his garrison". She is also an Insufferable Genius and has absurdly high moral standards.
Jerzy Kosinski's Being There has most everyone becoming fascinated by and even in awe of Chauncey Gardiner, a brilliant-yet-humble socio-political thinker who brings hope and clarity to a complex world with his simple sayings, looks described as a cross between Cary Grant and Ted Kennedy's, and elegant manners. No one can dig up a single bad thing about his past; he's a man with nothing to hide...of course, the audience knows that his real name is Chance the Gardener, who is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, mentally challenged, was isolated from the world until middle-age, picked up what little he knew of it from TV, and happens to look like someone intelligent because of his nice clothes and manners. The poor guy is passive by nature and while he's a good person at heart, the things the other characters love about him are all based on their preconceptions and misinterpretations of what he says and does, which he is virtually incapable of correcting due to his mental shortcomings.
Major de Coverley from Catch Twenty Two does almost nothing at the Air Force squadron but play horseshoes and rent apartments, and his few lines of dialogue paint him as very simply minded, but everyone in the book holds him in godlike reverence. In a novel full of Deadpan Snarkers, no one dares turn a bit of snark his way; in fact, they're all so terrified of him that no one's ever even asked his first name; that's why he's Major de Coverley.
Aliera in the Dragaera series has been seen by fans as one of these. While she has a number of Sue-ish traits, being a strikingly beautiful Action Girl, but she is very far from being a Sue, instead presented as a hot head with morally questionable beliefs (admittedly this is her House's hat).
Discworld's Captain Carrot. (Presumably) Royal blood? Relentless charisma? Godlike physique? Check, Check and Squeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!! It can be said that Carrot would have been a blatant Mary Sue character, were he not a gentle parody of the "Action hero" archetype.
Carrot's Sue-ness is more apparent in his reality-bending powers than in any superficial trait. He has the inexplicable ability to turn bad people — or at least, ordinary people in bad moments — into good people, because he believes so earnestly that all people are good at heart that nobody can bear to disappoint him. People are aware of this reality-warping ability, and it's commented on several times in the text, but somehow it still keeps on working. It's temporary, though; enough to quell a riot but not to so enthral that underlying conflicts won't reappear unless Vimes and others remove the cause.
Indeed in one book it's implied had Vimes not left to address the problem at its source the entire watch, Carrot included, would have died in the rising turmoil.
Laddie from Moving Pictures is a Parody Dog Sue. Gorgeous, athletic, iconogenic, instantly admired and trusted by any humanoid he meets, and a brain the size of a flea.
Stanislaw Lem's Ijon Tichy character, hero of The Star Diaries, strays into Parody Sue territory at times; typically with sharply satirical results.
In short, Captain Avery was the young Errol Flynn, only more so, with a dash of Power and Redford thrown in; the answer to a maiden's prayer, and between ourselves, rather a pain in the neck.
James Meyer in the Torchwood novel Border Princes by Dan Abnett. He's Torchwood's best agent, the team's banter and social life all revolves around him, and Gwen dumps Rhys for him. It turns out that he's a victim of his own Reality Warper powers; he can't help changing the world into the one he wants, and the realisation this isn't the way things should be terrifies him.
Brilliantly done in Frasier episode "The Show Where Diane Comes Back", in which Diane's play Rhapsody and Requiem is a thinly veiled reproduction of Cheers, with "Mary Ann" as the Author Avatar. Everyone loves her in the bar (even delivering an ode to her), which drives Frasier nuts, particularly since everyone also downplays the time that "Mary Ann" abandoned her fiance at the altar — which, since Frasier was the fiancé who got stiffed in real life, he has some alternative perspectives and objections towards. When the actor "Franklin" openly asks why his character would forgive Mary Ann so easily for leaving him at the altar, it causes Frasier to explode in a famous speech:
Frasier: What you are feeling is that this woman has reached into your chest, plucked out your heart, and thrown it to her hellhounds for a chew toy! And it's not the last time either! Because that's what this woman is! She is the Devil! There's no use running away from her, because no matter how far you go, no matter how many years you let pass, you will never be completely out of reach of those bony fingers! So drink hearty, Franklin, and laugh! Because you have made a pact with Beelzebub! And her name is Mary Anne!
In Garth Marenghi's Darkplace Garth casts himself as Rick Dagless, MD, described by his priest as "the most sensitive man I know, and I know God."
One episode of My Wife and Kids has Betty White guest-star as a Mary Poppins-like housekeeper who can do anything perfectly, and in doing so elicits an awed "... Wow..." from everyone around her...except for wife Jay, who feels put out by the attention she's getting. At the end of the episode, the Kyles' neighbor runs into the house, saying that he just saw her flying through the sky with an umbrella, garnering one final "...Wow..."
Tek Jansen, hero of Stephen Colbert's (fictional) novel Stephen Colbert's Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure, and the related comics and animated adventures that have been seen. He is super awesome spectacular ultra-spy who has obviously had hundreds of girlfriends, and the fact that he physically resembles and is voiced by Colbert is surely a matter of coincidence.
Monk seems to have envisioned himself as one of these as a child as an insert to his favorite show. It's actually incredibly disturbing.
On an episode of Yes Dear, Jimmy (Mike O'Malley) was a contestant on Big Brother, and within days became the most popular member of the household, prompting everyone (except poor Ashley) to use him as a decoy to get Ashley eliminated in the first ceremony (using something of a Batman Gambit, no less). Jimmy ended up disqualified when Greg snuck onto the set to try and warn him of treachery from the others (though it turned out that it was just part of the gambit, the revelation footage not having been televised on the episode they were watching).
After watching "The Antwon Walker Story", Dave Chappelle wrote "The Dave Chappelle Story". He is portrayed as being born with a huge penis, is on first name basis with Richard Pryor & Eddie Murphy and had had sex with Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, some of the girls from the "Big Pimpin'" video, and Halle Berry. But he always kept it real.
"Did I tell you sell drugs? No! Hov' did that. so hopefully you won't have to go through that."
The Red Green Show had, in the later seasons, a segment featuring Ranger Gord's 'Educational Films', featuring him as almost everything the real Gord isn't. (Well, Gord and the cartoon-Gord are both male Canadian forest rangers.)
Jool in Farscape possibly. Hot young student who accidentally finds herself dumped on the existing cast? Check. Kaleidoscope Hair? Check. Remarkable voice? Check. Hot Topic Goth dresssense? Check. The crew, however, spectacularly fail to fall in love with her, or even give the faintest crap about her for quite a while. Unfortunately the writers overdid it and made her a full-blown Scrappy to many of the audience.
Dr. Angela Hunter on Green Wing. She's stunning, brilliant, great at her job, (almost) everyone loves her, she's one of the few competent people at the hospital and seemingly kind and generous. In actuality she's very bitchy and just fakes a lot of her kindness in order to get ahead.To top it off she becomes the star of a documentary that comes to film at the office and manages to leave with a great acting job. And then she gets murdered by a moose.
Jason on The George Lopez Show is probably meant to be a parody. He plays baseball, is on the debate team, spends his free time wheeling around his disabled brother, and has daddy issues.
The Alice Cooper song "You're a Movie" is about an overconfident soldier who embodies this trope.
Bullets repel off my medals And my men are in awe when I speak All chaos my strategy settles My mere presence gives strength to the weak For me it seems really alarming I'm really just only a man With five million sheep in this army I seem to be the only one fit to command
The wizard rock band House of Black made a song called "Mary Sue" poking fun at, well, Mary Sues.
Tabletop Games
Vampire The Requiem parodies the Villain Sue of its previous series, Caine, with Vampire-As-Jesus Longinus and Vampire-As-L. Ron Hubbard Dracula. Both are mythic founders of magically inclined covenants, both are dead convinced they are the Best Vampires Ever and both are hilariously deluded as to the universality of their creations. Caine would swat both of them with a pinkie toe, but their advantage is that Caine doesn't exist in this scenario.
That doesn't stop the Lancea Sanctum from INVENTING the Cainite Heresy in the Camarilla Fan Club supplements, just to add a level of meta on top that nobody seems to really be "getting".
Dracula's "Rites of the Dragon" is a supplement prop book specifically designed to parody "The Book of Nod".
White Wolf released a "new translation" of The Testament of Longinus on PDF, which reads like other holy scriptures if the narrator (of the first part) were a raving egomaniac. Including repetitions, contradictions, and historical inaccuracies... and translator notes which argue with each other about the significance and authorship of various verses. It's a hoot.
Witch Girls Adventures includes a "Mary Sue" trait specifically intended for playing a Parody Sue.
Theater
Princess Winnifred the Woebegone in Once Upon a Mattress has one defining character trait: she's spunky! Luckily, the play is a madcap comedy, so we're not asked to take her (or anybody else) too seriously. And a good actress can make the character fairly endearing.
Arguably, Johanna in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. She's set up as The Ingenue to a ridiculous degree, the shrinking maiden figure who the plot revolves around, and who is fancied by every man who sets eyes on her. Hilariously subverted when she grabs a pistol and proceeds to blow the head off someone at point-blank range.
Since Urinetown is a parody of musical theater, it makes The Ingenue, Hope Cladwell, one of the most over the top parody Sues ever, bordering on a Deconstruction. One could also say that The Hero, Bobby Strong, is also a Parody Sue.
In the PS3 version of the game, Flynn from Tales Of Vesperia is a Type 3 that is played for drama. His best friend and eternal rival, the protagonist Yuri constantly snarks about how he gets the treatment of a God Mode Sue in-universe when it comes to fighting and politics. However, Yuri is also aware that Flynn is the single most Lawful Stupid human being in existence. When his devotion to the rules cause him to screw up, Yuri really lets him have it... and Flynn reluctantly realises that he's in the wrong for once when he does.
Zed from Wild ARMs, moreso in the remake Wild Arms Alter Code F. He is a demon who sees himself as the incredibly awesome protagonist of the story and claims that the main characters are villainous, until he finally ditched Ziekfried and, in the remake, can eventually join the party. In the original game he also dropped the "Doom Bringer" sword which was very powerful but reduces Jack's luck the the worst possible value when he uses it - which sort of explains Zed's comic ineptitude throughout the game.
The Disgaea games give us Kurtis. He's handsome, he's badass, he is a genius, a cyborg, has a quite tragic backstory and is The Rival... And then he does a Heroic Sacrifice and ends up transformed into a Prinny. Hilarity Ensues.
Duke Nukem, though the "parody" part was subverted in Forever. Word Of God has said that in that game he's meant to be taken completely seriously, and that he is supposed to be the coolest thing and center of his world. Most people who played the game seem to have thought it was a parody regardless of the intent.
Erika Furudo in Umineko No Naku Koro Ni is a Black HoleFixer Sue of an Amateur Sleuth who just so happens to wash up on Rokkenjima so Bernkastel has her own piece when she takes over the anti-fantasy side of the game. She proceeds to wander around being an insufferable Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, attempts to supplant the protagonist, helps Battler find the gold just to make the chaos worse, and frames Natsuhi for the murders. She's basically Bern's self-insertSue, and she's virulently loathed by both the fanbase and the other characters. In short, Parody Sue Played for Drama = messy Deconstruction.
Web Animation
Strong Sad's fanfiction character, Twelve Times A Day Man, from Homestar Runner.
Shadowleggy is very aware of playing this trope when she appears in her videos.
See the quote on the quote page. Shaenon Garrity, the creator of Narbonic, Skin Horse, and Smithson, wrote this for the Foglios.
The story ends up playing the Sue author pretty sympathetically — her brothers whine that she's telling the story wrong, but her mother comforts her by telling her she made her own Mary Sue stories when she was a girl.
Lewis Powell of Terror Island took that idea even further, claiming in this strip that his Mary Sue character was a fake magic cube. Ben wrote Lewis's commentary that day, for what it's worth.
Mary Sue Academy is about a school for Mary Sues, and is appropriately full of these. It's right here.
Shadow and Chug of Powerup Comics are (stealth) parodies of the Jerkass Stu model. Since they represent all of the authors' viewpoints, it's deemed acceptable for them to dismiss the recurring strawman character with a bullet to the forehead simply because he has the "wrong" opinions.
Dave Anez has admitted (and lampshaded) the fact that Bob is Bob and George's Marty Stu. He dresses like Proto Man (easily the coolest Mega Man character), he's able to beat the main cast in combat and able to out-program Dr. Wily. He's the mastermind behind the events of 5 and 6 parodies, and a demi-god to boot. Since Bob And George was a Gag Series, he ends up as the butt of jokes a bit more often than your average Marty Stu. Given the often ridiculously exaggerated things he's done (like killing a ghost/hologram), he may even qualify as The Ace.
There's still some debate among fans as to whether Jade from the MS Paint Adventures series Homestuck was intended to be one of these or not. She does have a ludicrous number of quirky hobbies, skills, and "cute" flaws (narcolepsy and general ditziness). Jade also has a magical pet, crazy supernatural powers, future technology, a grasp on the unfolding plot, and she lives under the wing of her equally talented and rich Grandfather who is deceased, making her Conveniently an Orphan in addition to everything else. What makes her seem like a Parody Sue instead of a straight example is the fact that her Sue-ness (like every other trope used in the series) is exaggerated to the point that it becomes funny. Then she loses her powers, her gear and her pet, and spends so much time dozing that all the other main characters zoom past her. Time to start earning your keep, miss.
The troll Kanaya Maryam, being essentially Jade's gothy friend Rose raised in Jade's circumstances, is the wannabe vampire to Jade's magic princess. Just count how many times the phrase "one of the few of your kind" recurs in her introductory bio.
Andrew has confirmed that Vriska herself is a metafictional commentary on the Mary Sue, although she might be better said to be a Deconstruction Sue. She thinks she is prettier, smarter, and stronger than everyone else, inserts herself in major plot events simply to make herself important, and never suffers any negative consequences for her actions untill she dies. The result of this is everyone who speaks to her (except John) thinking she is either a psychotic bitch or simply a Jerk Ass, with a similar effect on the fandom.
Feferi's status is ambiguous due to her Mary Sue traits, such as having the highest possible blood color in a hematocracy and being heir apparent to the Empire while being very nonchalant about it. She's incredibly nice (remember that the trolls are a bunch of murderous bastards), has a guardian that can kill every single person in her species excluding herself, the Troll Empress, and possibly other sea trolls at the drop of a hat (compared to the other guardians of the trolls who can't really do much at all by comparison), and wears bright clothes and gold accessories where almost everyone else is decked out in blacks and greys. She's dead too, by the way.
And he went above and beyond with Calliope, AKA uranianUmbra. She's critical to almost everything about the Alpha universe session, having given the kids their special chat client, introduced them, and told them about and encouraged them to play the game. She's a Sailor Earth character as well, since an Ophiuchus-themed troll has long been speculated (especially one with the initials UU), and she fills in the gap in the hemospectrumwhere Karkat would be if he wasn't a mutant. Oh, and she's apparently the Last of Her Kind, since the Empress exterminated the limebloods because they had much stronger Psychic Powers than the other castes and posed a threat to her reign. As it turns out, UU is not, in fact, a troll. She's an entirely different species and is cosplaying as her fantroll.
She's also the smarter, more talented sister of the Big Bad, and several sources believe that she's going to be instrumental in stopping Lord English. Which would all be very Sueish except for the fact that she's currently dead because he Out-Gambitted her and killed her dreamself, leaving him permanently in control of their shared body and Calliope's ghost hiding from him in a secluded corner of the Furthest Ring, with no idea what she's actually supposed to do.
Living with Insanity features a parody on bad writing as a whole, starring a character actually named Marty Stu who can convince nazis to stop being evil just because he is sexy.
Tsukiko from The Order of the Stick is this to an extend. She has several Common Mary Sue Traits — heterochromatic eyes, great beauty, skimpy clothing, unusualy skilled for her young age, oppressed by a stuck-up society not understanding her greatness.... Parody comes in two aspects. First, she is terribly Wrong Genre Savvy, acting like she is in her own self-insert romantic fanfic and can do whatever she wants to get Xykon to fall in love with her and others are just obstacles for her to dispose without consequences — which gets her killed once she tries to get rid of Redcloak. Second, that "oppressed by a stuck-up society not understanding her greatness" part? She was jailed for necrophilia and her entire reasoning for that behavior is based on Insane Troll Logic.
Pokémon-X has an April Fools Day comic where the author shows why he doesn't allow fanmade characters, introducing a Marty Stu (allegedly based on actual suggested characters) who saves the world with his oddly-colored and decorated Mewtwo, effortlessly saves the day, and becomes May's immediate boyfriend for instant sex (which May's in-comic semi-love-interest Brendan has no problem with, in this scenario.)
The Mary Sue concept in general, as well as Always Someone Better, is parodied in the Recess episode "Here Comes Mr. Perfect", in which a Marty Stu from out of town shows up whose sympathetic character flaw is that he's Marty Stu — his perfection always makes everyone immediately hate him because he's so much better at the stuff everyone else is known for, and he actively tries to avoid showing it off for this reason.
He also gives a speech in his own defense that, in a meta sense, can be taken as a sort of defense of the Mary Sue — not that they're good characters, per se, or not annoying, but that it isn't the character's fault — they didn't decide to be perfect.
An episode of the The Little Mermaid cartoon has an old acquaintance of Sebastian who has the same problem. In a last-ditch effort to beat him at something, Sebastian challenges him to pretty much tell Sebastian's life story. The old acquaintance not only does so, in perfect detail, (which, in itself is pretty damn creepy) but also manages to mix a heaping helping of The Reason Sebastian Sucks while doing so. Cue the Flat "What." from everyone. Including the viewers.
The Venture Brothers: Brock Sampson is a parody of over-the-top Sociopathic Hero characters. While he does get plenty of asskicking scenes, he is also shown doing less adventurous things with the Ventures (such as helping effeminate Dean put on his plays and/or dressing up for costume competitions), whom he sees as a family unit. In fact, when Femme Fatale Molotov Cocktease invites him to abandon them and join her as a mercenary, he happily tells her that he prefers the Ventures to the moral ambiguity and weirdness of spy work.
In Code Lyoko episode "Kadic Bombshell", Brynja Heringsdötir is an obvious parody of the Relationship Sues so prevalent in the show's Fan Work. This one-shot character has every trapping of a Mary Sue and Odd (and Ulrich, and Jérémie, and every other boy in the school) falls for her, but she's quickly revealed too shallow to be a serious love interest. She leaves at the end of the episode without having any lasting effect on the status quo (the heroes not even bothering with a Return to the Past).
If you think about it, Azula from Avatar The Last Airbender is a Type 3 Parody/Deconstruction of the Villain Sue archetype; she's insanely powerful and skilled; related to major characters but appeared out of nowhere at the end of the first season, much like the standard Copycat Sue character; a fourteen year old girl who looks about nineteen, and not a bad nineteen at that; and she can Magnificent Bitch with the best of them. However, by constantly pushing herself to reach a Mary Sue-like level of impossible perfection, she eventually suffers a total mental and emotional breakdown, having first lost the approval of her father and the friendship of the only two people who genuinely cared about her. At the end of said breakdown, she's just had her ass handed to her by a Water Tribe peasant, on the day of Sozin's Comet when her Firebending should have been at her very strongest no less; the official website caps it off by explaining that she was hauled off to a mental institution soon afterwards.
One episode cast Dib as a God Mode Sue. After throwing a muffin at Zim in school, he's visited by Energy Beings that sought him out to be their champion against the Irken Invaders. They give him superpowers that allow him to do pretty much anything he wants, which he proceeds to use to talk Zim into turning himself in to the authorities, expose every single paranormal mystery, singlehandedly fought and defeated the Irken Armada, and "even got to ride a moose". As it turned out, it was all a virtual reality simulation orchestrated by Zim to get him to admit he threw the bran muffin.
In the episode of Futurama parodying Star Trek fandom, they produce an episode of Star Trek based on an alien energy cloud's fanscript, wherein members of the regular cast fall in love with and are overwhelmed with admiration for the alien energy cloud.
There's also Barbados Slim, who won Olympic gold medals in both Limboing and Sex. His pecs also wiggle by themselves. He has been described as both an adonis, and a 'mahogany god'.
He gets some minor comeuppance in Bender's Big Score, when after Hermes steals back his wife from him, Slim tries to storm out of the room, being forced to limbo underneath a malfunctioning automatic door...which then shuts on him partway through.
Family Guy: The Griffins bring in a new dog after Lois points out that Brian's getting old. "New Brian" is polite, perfect, multi-talented and instantly befriends everyone (sans Stewie), who rightly realizes that he's Brian's "replacement". New Brian goes on to improve everyone's lives and supplant Brian completely. However, he makes his fatal mistake when he... gets a little intimate with Rupert the teddy bear. Stewie is not pleased...
Don't forget Derek, Jillian's late husband. He's depicted as a parody of a Relationship Sue .
An episode of The Fairly OddParents has Timmy wishing up a big brother named Tommy. He was so perfect that he actually got Tootie to lose her crush on Timmy. This, of course, backfires when Tommy wants to take Timmy on a long charity trip to a third world country.
Home Movies: You let Fenton play in your movies at your peril.
"You're the dirty villain, and I'm the hero, and you suck. A-and you're really stupid and I'm really smart. OK? And you're fat and have bad skin, and I'm thin and I have small pores."
The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee. One episode features a guest character with many Common Mary Sue Traits, including taking main character burden. Then she turns out to be very incompetent in the terms of fighting monsters.
Johnny Test brings us Mary and Susan Test. It's only played with though.
Poochie on The Simpsons is a good example of a Stu character played as a parody of new characters who are just stuck into stories and then they annoy the fans. But the reason Poochie annoys the fans isn't just because he's new, it's because of his Gary Stu traits. He comes in with a whole rap song about why he's so cool, Itchy and Scratchy's usually violently comedic characters are changed into oohing and ahhing over him, and he throws the story off course to show off how cool he is (cue Milhouse moaning "When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?!"). Also, like with many Gary Stu type characters, the fans are annoyed by him, except for his voice actor, Homer, who acts like a fan who is overly protective of their Mary Sue character. Homer's idea of how to improve the show is to make Poochie louder, angrier, have access to a time machine, and to make the other characters say "Where's Poochie?" when he's not on-screen, which could also go under the Creator's Pet trope.
Darkwing Duck plays with this in the episode "Comic Book Capers." When Megavolt discovers Darkwing's manuscript for a licensed comic book based on his exploits, he completely rewrites the plot to make himself the star and now has the ability to turn into a 50 ft. giant, which sends Darkwing fleeing for his life.
