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Bill Heterodyne: Ah, Marietta! You're as bold and beautiful as you were the day we rescued you from the bandits who kidnapped you after your mysterious yet famously powerful Spark tribe was completely wiped out, leaving you the only heir to its secrets! Maria Antonia Fantasia Philomel: Oh, enough about my traumatic past! (I was also a princess.) — Girl Genius, "Fan Fiction" (guestwritten by Shaenon Garrity)
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 Thirty Sue Pileup and play it for comedy?
A Parody Sue intentionally evokes a generic Mary Sue storyline with one of two resolutions:
- The character succeeds and the whole universe ends up falling to her buxom charms, usually being made into her all-encompassing harem.
- The character fails, either because there's just too many other stock Mary Sues competing for that position or because the other characters see how genuinely shallow and uninteresting the character really is.
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. 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.
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 least, 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.
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Fan Works Examples
The Abridged Series
- Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series turned Shogo Aoyama, the one-shot movie character in the first Yu-Gi-Oh movie, into a straight parody of this named "Gary Stu".
- Having watched both the original movie and the Abridged version, I assumed that neither Shogo nor 'Gary-Stu' really qualify for a Gary Stu or a Parody Sue (or, at least, Shogo isn't the regular breed of Gary Stu). Shogo is bullied by his peers because despite having decent cards in his deck (the best being Red Eyes Black Dragon, which back in the day was considered ridiculously powerful) he's meek and he has almost zero understanding of the game. Meanwhile, 'Gary-Stu' was a normal, no-card-playing child who was slowly hypnotised into liking Duel Monsters via several hours of Yami dueling Kaiba. The Gag Dub name was likely just a Shout Out, but what do I know?
- Actually, I suspect that name was chosen because it does fit, at least a little. At least in the abridged version, he just comes out of nowhere as a member of the gang of friends. Getting introduced as part of the main character's gang is somewhat Gary Stu-ish.
Close The Abridged Series
Fan Fictions
- The term Mary Sue actually comes from a parody of Sues
 in Star Trek.
- This Harry Potter fan comic famously parodies the Mary Sue trope as well as introducing the nickname of "House Sparklypoo" for such characters within the Harry Potter fandom.
- DJ Croft from the infamous Neon Exodus Evangelion. He's the bastard son of Lara Croft and Agent Mulder; has had more adventuring under his belt than Indiana Jones... and is an Evangelion pilot, but not just any Eva: He's the pilot of Unit 01, after Shinji wussed out. He also bangs Asuka, helps hook Rei up with a boyfriend, and gets everyone to love and adore him; eventually including the likes of Gendo Ikari, who only hated him because he was possessed by demons/aliens. Oh, and he's the reincarnation of the immortal soldier Longinus. Yes, that Longinus. He also is Lucifer's buddy. (They have a little blues band, Lucifer plays guitar, DJ plays Harmonica.) The author admitted that he is meant as a parody/deconstruction of the Marty Stu archetype. Pretty much everyone suspects this was a desperate Parody Retcon, but some people back him.
- The main characters of anything by Squirrelking of Half Life Full Life Consquences 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.
- This Knights Of The Old Republic fic neatly skewers the tendency for fanfic writers to make female!Revan into a Mary Sue. (Note the character's first name.)
- Arwen, the Warrior Babe takes to a ludicrous extreme the Action Girl Character Derailment that some feared the movie version of The Lord Of The Rings would bring.
- "The Game of the Gods" has not one but thirty Lord of the Rings Parody Sues, all of whom meet their end via the invoking of Logic. And it's pretty darn funny.
- This troper isn't sure if Shinji And Warhammer 40 K turns Shinji Ikari into a Parody Stu, or if it plays Studom so straight it subverts it. Whatever it is, it's highly recommended.
- Many wonder whether the infamous My Immortal is a Stealth Parody or not.
- Sakura-Rose Sunblossom Orange Juice Annie-Marie McFate.
- Maridah Sumaya, a parody of bad Aladdin series fanfic.
- 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 Human Whose Name Is Written In This Fanfiction, a Death Note Mary Sue parody.
- The whole point of the Anti-Cliche 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 incure wrath of the Sue's author). Some of the Society agents themselves are Parody Sues.
Web Animation
Web Comics
- The Sonic The Hedgehog Sprite Comic Power Rings has the character Generic The Hedgehog.
- Brawl In The Family has King Dedede draw a comic for #164, turning himself into a fifty-foot-tall pro wrestling chick magnet with at least 18 abs that can shoot lasers out of his eyes, all while portraying Kirby as a fat slob who only cares about eating food and turning into "stupid things".
Web Original
Canon Examples
Anime & Manga
- Nabeshin, the Author Avatar of director Shinichi Watanabe from Excel Saga, Puni Puni Poemi, and Nerima Daikon Brothers who even has his own ongoing B-Plot in the former. Not that these shows take themselves seriously anyway....
- The eponymous character from Hayate the Combat Butler skirts this. He's smart, fast, near-perfect in all regards, liked by almost every major female character who meets them (though he doesn't really understand how to return their love), but is counterbalanced by the fact that the universe loves to screw around with him.
- 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 is rather 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 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 was a Villain Sue parody, being multi-talented in many areas and forms a plan that sucessfully 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.")
- 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.
Comics
- 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.
- 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).
Films
- 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 trousers. All this is played for laughs.
- To be fair, 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."
- 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.
- I seem to recall him making some remark about finding all women equally beautiful, without bias or prejudice. This allows it to be an actual plot point when he discovers that he can no longer get a boner unless he thinks about the movie's designated love interest. He goes to a doctor about it, even.
- 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.
- 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.
- Kung Fu Panda begins with a dream in which Po is the "awesome" and "handsome" Dragon Warrior and the Furious Five thinks he's superneat and want to "hang out" with him. Three guesses as to how things REALLY work out when Po starts his training.
- 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 Sugarbowl Utopia, by introducing them to sex.
- Secret agent Derek Flint of Our Man Flint and In Like Flint.
- Austin Powers is, like Derek Flint, a Parody Sue of secret agents.
- Rustler's Rhapsody, itself a parody of western films, features the protagonist Rex O'Houlihan, a heroic cowboy with Beyond The Impossible gunslinging skills and an absurd amount of Genre Savvy.
Literature
- 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 Poem Don 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.
- Ditto Major —— de Coverley from Catch22. Through a weird set of circumstances, this lowly officer's duties within the bomber group is exaggerated.
- 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 with Kaleidoscopic Eyes, but she is very far from being a Sue, instead presented as a hot head with morally questionable beliefs (admitedly this is her House's hat).
- Salacia Delorisista Amanita Trigestrata Zeldana Malifee et cetera et cetera von Humpeding from the Discworld series, better known as Sally. She's practically perfect in every way — but she's a vampire, making the whole thing seem like a jab at certain tropes.
Live Action TV
Music
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".
- To elaborate on why Caine's on this page, the rules for fighting him boil down to "You lose." This is in spite of the fact that there a few creautres in the Wo D who are both stronger than Caine in canon and have been given statistics by White Wolf. Just screams Mary Sue right there. What turns him into a parody (if that wasn't enough) is that one of the Gehenna scenarios reveals that Lilith is the real BigBad and Caine is simply just a scared, ambivalent guy with no idea what to do in this world. That's why he hasn't done anything of note while his descendants have.
- What books were you guys reading? Dracula certainly didn't believe he was the first of his kind; Rites of the Dragon explains his encounters with elder vampires of the Moroi bloodline when he himself was a fledgeling. The book wasn't a parody, either, but a shout-out. As for Longinus... well, okay, you're right about him.
- Somewhat averted in that the Lancea splat overrides what's written in core. Longinus actually was granted a quest by God, though interpretations of this have changed with each faction that's heard his tale. This means, no, Caine cannot actually defeat Longinus with his pinkie toe unless he actually wants to try God's mercy again.
Video Games
Web Animation
- Strong Sad's fanfiction character, Twelve Times A Day Man, from Homestar Runner.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- The Mary Sue concept in general is parodied in an episode of Recess, in which a Marty Stu shows up whose sympathetic character flaw is that he's Marty Stu — his perfection always makes everyone immediately hate him.
- Given that he came from out of town, he kinda sounds more like a parody/deconstruction of The Minnesota Fats.
- He fills a Minnesota Fats role, but the fact that he is literally better than everyone at everything, and leaves when he's called by the Secret Service to help the President pushes him out of the realm of a mundane Minnesota Fats and into Marty Stu territory.
- An episode of The Little Mermaid cartoon has an old acquaintance of Sebastien who has the same problem.
- Appears in Doug. When Skeeter helps with one of Doug's Quailman comic, his character is a blatant God Mode Stu, gaining whatever power most quickly solves the situation at hand. This is heavily lampshaded in Doug's dislike of the character.
- Brock Sampson is a parody of over-the-top Heroic Sociopath 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).
- In Invader Zim, Tak has Sue tendencies: arrives at the Skool out of nowhere on an incredibly cool and expensive-looking jet, gets Dib's attention (while shooting down Zim's futile courtship attempts), turns out to be another rogue "Invader" like Zim — only incredibly more competent, and so on. And yet, she's still so Genre Blind as to put a Big Red Button to disable her master plan and gets defeated by the very people she denounced as worthless.
- Interesting argument, but this troper personally disagrees about Tak being a Sue; she was just really competant (except for the button thing), and seemed even more so because Zim is so incompetant. (Now, every female Irken Invader that appears in fanfiction, on the other hand...)
- Tak's competence just stands out due to the overwhelming incompetence of everyone else on the show. Were the series not filled with idiots she'd probably be in Smug Snake territory.
- 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.
- Lila from Hey Arnold is effectively a sickingly sweet parody of a Mary Sue.
- One-shot character "New Brian" deconstructs a Purity Stu in 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 makes his fatal mistake when he... gets a little intimate with Rupbert the teddy bear. Stewie is not pleased...
- An episode of The Fairly Oddparents had 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."
- Mary and Susan from Johnny Test are parodies of this, as you can tell from their names.
- The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee - one episode featured 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.
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