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"Whoever he is, he is one tough badass."
Stan, South Parknote 

With the rise in popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games comes the occasional episode where the main character(s) play one. In these MMORPGs, there is often one and only one player who has surpassed all others. Only the newbiest of newbs have yet to hear of him, and all others fear and respect him. He also usually has an exceedingly generic Online Alias that reflects being a serious gamer rather than, say, The Roleplayer.

Bonus points if this character is someone the main character(s) already know. They'll likely be a Basement-Dweller nerd and this will surprise those who were Expecting Someone Taller.

As far as actual MMORPGs go, this is rarely Truth in Television. Though it may take longer than your free trial period to reach the level cap in an MMORPG, reaching it does not grant you instant fame and legendary status. Granted, it can be quite the accomplishment, but many players have reached this plateau. When fame does happen, it takes more than reaching the level cap and acquiring the best gear; uncanny skill and a YouTube account to show it off on are called for too.

Sub-trope to Godlike Gamer, which encompasses all genres of video games.

Named after a character from TMNT: Back to the Sewer's "Super Quest" MMORPG, Ultimate Gamer, the "Class-80 Warrior."


Examples

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    Advertising 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Summer Wars: King Kazma, who is the reigning world champion of OZ's combat minigame. When things all go to hell, he's the one the rest of the online community is looking to as a savior (even though Love Machine isn't something that can be taken down in an online duel).
  • Gintama: During the Alien Screwdriver Arc, when Gin and the gang join a MMORPG called MonHun, they hear about a Legendary Player called M and set out to find him. Of course, it turns out to be Hasegawa, who's a bum in real life. One can only wonder how he affords a monthly subscription(or even a PC)while being a penniless hobo.
  • Sword Art Online: As the series mostly takes place inside of MMORPGs, Kirito both becomes and meets several of these across games. In the first game, he becomes famous for being a solo player on the assault team (the single most dangerous role in the game, which most consider to be suicide without a large group to back you up). While it's implied there are others like him, he's the one everybody recognizes. This gets downplayed in later stories; most of the people who recognize the name "Kirito" instantly are fellow SAO survivors, and most other player bases don't really have any idea who he is. That being said, Kirito has a knack for quickly making a reputation for himself in any game he tries and rapidly became famous in both ALO and GGO after only a few days spent in each game.
  • No Game No Life: The series is about two NEET siblings who together form "Blank", who is this in every game they play.
  • Played a bit more realistically in Log Horizon, in which over half the Adventurers, even the bit characters, are at or near the level cap and just about everyone has at least one legendary item. Shiroe, the protagonist, is very well-known among the upper tiers of players, but for his strategy and leadership, not his character's abilities (as an Enchanter, he's actually a support player, and is very weak in one-on-one fights). In fact, most of the former members of "Debauchery Tea Party" have this status, as do the Guildmasters of particularly large or well-known guilds.
  • Codename: Sailor V gives one before the trope (or MMORPGs) was born with "Taku", the absolute ace at the arcade game Lovely Fighter. Being this an Unbuilt Trope take, this is deconstructed: he's a loner who treats it as a personal insult that anyone but the most dedicated gamers could dare to enter an arcade, especially if the 'invaders' are girls, and when Minako (who actually has a life outside of video games and is a girl to boot) beats his record he flips out and accuses her of being a crossdresser. In the end his own craziness and Minako playing with her transformation ability leads him to lift Minako's skirt while she's transformed in Sailor V, resulting in a much deserved kick in the face (from Sailor V).
  • Saki: Nodocchi, aka Nodoka Haramura, is the Ultimate Gamer 386 of online mahjong. She has the reputation of being an unbeatable player who has even defeated a few professional mahjong players and there are forum threads suspecting that Nodocchi might be a pro in real life or is actually a bot. Few people know that she is just a high-school girl.
  • Both averted and played more realistically in Overlord (2012). Our main protagonist Momonga was not one these back in the game YGGDRASIL — his build was Awesome, but Impractical for player versus player combat, and despite his heavy investment of both time and money into the game and consequently above-average skill, he was only middling among high-level players and mostly served as a utility caster due to his massive selection of spells. The guild Ainz Ooal Gown, while widely renowned, feared and reviled by the playerbase, was not actually the top-ranked guild in the game (although that was mostly due to very stringent entry requirements that left it with only 41 members at its peak). However, one of the guild members — Touch Me, holder of the Purposely Overpowered World Champion class — could be considered as an Ultimate Gamer 386. The class was only ever awarded to nine players (one for each region or "realm" in the game) through a tournament, making it very likely that Touch Me was somewhere among the top 10 players of YGGDRASIL. Even more so in the web novel version, where he is outright stated to be in the top three players and capable of taking on every Floor Guardian at once (most of them being powerful level 100 NPCs) and winning.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Live-Action TV 
  • The main character of Aaron Stone is the most legendary player of a MMORPG called Hero Rising.
  • In an episode of NCIS, a suspect of the week is this in every major MMORPG. While also being an attractive woman. Cue incredulous response from McGee.

    Manhwa 
  • Averted in Id_Entity/Yureka. There are several master level characters, although it is generally acknowledged that Basara is the strongest.

    Video Games 
  • The Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC for Borderlands 2 features this in two of its sidequests. The first involves killing three players to prevent them from killing a monster that drops some loot, and the second (as an homage to Dark Souls) has a player named "xX_n00b_k1ller_Xx" invade the game.
  • .hack plays this straight with the games, where the main character Kite knows Orca, who, along with Balmung, are the two most powerful characters in the game, and the only ones to defeat a legendary event, earning the name of the Descendants of Fianna: Orca of the Azure Sea, and Balmung of the Azure Sky. After the games, apparently Kite becomes a Descendant as well for his heroism: Kite of the Azure Flame.
    • Played straight again in the sequel series, G.U. In Roots, Haseo is eventually feared by every player killer in the game and most other players know who he is. After he gets dropped down to level 1 in the games, he works his way back up and eventually an army of players helps him in his hour of need based solely on his reputation. He invoked this trope. He was the 2nd of two people to beat the legendary Forest of Pain event, and he asked for a unique appearance and made sure that everyone knew he beat it. The only other person to beat the event was much more humble and simply asked for a powerful sword as a reward. What makes this example even more incredible is that the level cap in "The World R:2" is 150. Haseo already had his fame as the notorious "Player Killer Killer" and was only level 133 before he was brought back down to level 1. The game had already existed for quite a few months by that point, but apparently anyone higher level than him was completely unheard of.
  • Takumi in Chaos;Head is an avid player of Empire Sweeper Online who hit the max level a long time before the story begins. He's also well-respected by other players and can live comfortably off of real money trading, or letting other players buy his unneeded in-game items.
  • Legion of Mass Effect 2, since the revealing dossier about their gamer profile in Lair of the Shadow Broker. Their score on the in-game "N7 Code of Honor: Medal of Duty" is 15,999,999,999...the maximum limit. They're also a Level 612 Ardat-Yakshi Necromancer in "Galaxy of Fantasy." (As for Dating Sims, however…)

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • Noob plays with the trope due to Fantöm, the game's top player, seeming to be that at first. Over the course of the story, we find out that his rival Amaras is his predecessor in the number one position, and before that was said predecessor's mentor Spectre, who himself had a predecessor in Mist. In addition, the reality isn't as much Ultimate Gamer as Ultimate Player Party in terms of fame; for the bonus points, one of the members of Fantöm's party is the younger brother of one of the protagonists. Season 3/the third novel/the seventh comic reveals that Fantöm had been getting illegal boosting for some time. Spectre's secret, on the other hand, is a neurological condition that makes him very good at playing, but also completely addicted to gaming.
  • 4chan, specifically /v/, has been known to share tales of their encounters with a legendary FPS player known only as "Gregor". He never says a single word in either voice or text chat. His profile is completely blank and he never accepts friend requests or replies to messages. He utterly dominates all opponents with his amazing skill. In team games, he's the best teammate you could ever ask for, always extremely well-coordinated with the rest of the team whether anyone bothers to tell him what to do or not, and if he picks a support class, you can always count on him to act in a completely selfless manner. note 

    Western Animation 
  • As stated above, TMNT: Back to the Sewer, with "Class-80 Warrior" Ultimate Gamer. Not someone the Turtles already know, however.
    • However, the Jerkass imp player who later assisted the turtles against said Ultimate Gamer was actually Hun.
  • Kim Possible, where this character was played by Rufus the naked mole rat.
  • The Simpsons, when Marge joins an MMORPG, finds out that this player, the "Shadow Knight", is actually Bart. She then humiliates and emasculates him in her usual motherly way. When her actions indirectly lead to Bart's character being temporarily weakened and nearly immediately killed by an angry mob, she decides to avenge him by becoming the new Shadow Knight.
  • South Park, in its World of Warcraft episode, had this guy as an antagonist of such a high level and so powerful that he broke not only the rules of the game but the laws of physics. In a game played by millions of people in a virtual area spanning two continents, not to mention several separate servers that don't even share player-characters, one fat dude at his computer was player-killing enough people to threaten the game's profitability. Next to that, the idea that they can't just delete his character because he doesn't stop playing and kills off admins before they can kick him off the server sounds downright plausible.
  • Danny Phantom has, among other elements that make little sense, a player named Chaos who Danny and Tucker treat as unbeatable and godlike who turns out to be Sam. Subverted in that Chaos isn't completely unbeatable - Danny and Tucker just act as if that's the case because they can't beat Chaos.
  • Steve became one on American Dad! to his friends, at least.
  • An episode of ¡Mucha Lucha! revolves around a video game. The most famous and skilled player has the avatar of "Rutebega". It's Snowpea.
  • In the Arthur episode "Sue Ellen Gets Her Goose Cooked", Arthur and his friends have become hooked on an online game called Virtual Goose. A mysterious player named FourHand451 appears and turns out to be almost unbeatable, until D.W. manages to beat them thanks to her skills at the original board game version of the game. At the end of the episode, it's revealed that FourHand451 is D.W.'s friend Emily, who had been making excuses not to play with D.W. the entire episode.
  • Averted in Glitch Techs, which has the supporting character Mitch as a realistic example of this trope. He isn't so much the greatest video game player in the world, but rather the best and most well-known player within the regional community due to having a slew of popular gameplay livestreams and Let's Plays, hence Five's initial reaction to him being the usual awe associated with this trope. Five and Miko are actually better, but simply lack his level of online presence.

    Real Life 
  • Games which require extra charges for all the content, or those which allow direct conversion of currency to in-game potency, can lend themselves to creating these (nicknamed "whales") when ego matches personal finances and balance is not a major concern on the developer's part.
  • Zezima in Runescape. Had about a couple of thousand people following him whenever he played the game, has an Encyclopedia Dramatica article, and was once at the top of the high scores list. Then he stopped trying to maintain his status as #1 but the Divination skill still shows him as one of the top people. He is so important that Jagex made sure to put a screenshot of the scores page with him as #5 along with "Look who's back" on Facebook.
    • Also from Runescape is Suomi, the first player to reach 200 million experience (the maximum) in all skills. He actually did quit a few months prior to the release of Divination.
    • Durial321 is a name we'll never forget. His mass-murder during the Falador Massacre was legendary.
  • Planetside 2 has quite a few of these, usually one or two per server, one of the more famous is the player Archcraig of the execution outfit (also known as EXE), who runs a group known as drunk division that are famous for winning using absolutely absurd strategies. (Strategies such as everyone going medic and then taking down an area using only knives)
  • EVE Online has a number of well-known and/or infamous players due to the reliance the game places on personal interactions. Most notably, Chribba has built an unimpeachable reputation as a broker on large deals and the leaders of large alliances such as SirMolle, head of the now-defunct Band Of Brothers. There's also "The Mittani", who, at least prior to his 2012 fall from grace as a result of insensitive public comments toward a suicidal fellow player, had parlayed a long-term membership and a certain degree of ruthlessness into the leadership of the second-largest player alliance and the chairmanship of the council representing EVE's players to its developers.
  • Star Pirates has Mr. Awesome, the hands-down strongest player in the game at level 251. For reference, there are only seven players in the entire game who are level 100 or higher... and other than Mr. Awesome, only one of them is over 200 (at level 227). He's also one of the only four players to receive the AI Advanced Scout medal, which requires that each of the player's three stats be above 250,000.
  • In the Halo series. The players from Ogre clan were/are famous within Halo circles for their skill.
  • On osu!, a player named "osuplayer111" is ranked 7th in the entire game, has Lv. 100 status, and thanks from over one thousand people.
    • He has changed his name to a less generic "Andrea", is now a member of the BAT (Beatmap Appreciation Team), is one of the most well known player, modder, and mapper in osu!, has almost 200 ranked mapsets near the end of October 2013, is the only person to have over two thousand kudosu points so far, and still has many, MANY other achievements.
    • Back in 2012, the player everyone knew was cookiezi. He has since stopped playing, but many of his achievements are still remembered years later.
  • Back in the early days of MapleStory when the game had some of the most stupendous Level Grinding in the history of the genre, the first character to hit the initial Cap of Level 120 in the SEA version became something of a legend despite the lack of available info on him other than his in-game name and character class. The most common speculation was that he was actually played by more than one person at different times. Nexon eventually decided to immortalize Capped characters as Non Player Characters.
  • PAYDAY 2 has General McBadass. If it exists, he has done it on the hardest difficulty, and stealthed it even if the heist is impossible to stealth by programming.
  • Popular streamer Beaglerush is this to the playerbase of the notorious exercise in masochism masquerading as a Game Mod known as XCOM: Long War, mostly for being one of the very few people to actually win it.
  • Elden Ring has Let Me Solo Her. "Her" in this case refers to the Superboss Malenia, Blade of Miquella, and Let Me Solo Her became a legend for setting his summon sign near her boss chamber and then defeating her singlehandedly for the host, while Dual Wielding katanas and wearing nothing except a jar on his head. By his own admission, he simply likes to help other people deal with a unbelievably hard boss, which only adds to his reputation. He was even recognized by Bandai Namco for his accomplishments.


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