"World's Best" Character

Kate: Some people have actually called me the world's greatest archer.
Clint: Are you one of those people?
Kate: Well, one of them is, yes.

— Hawkeye (2021)

Someone who's the "best in the world" at something. The child of This Index Is The Best and Master of the Index. May face The Perils of Being the Best, and if so, they go there instead, as this would be a pre-requisite. Also related to Ultimate Life Form, The Ace, and Always Someone Better. They may also use The Greatest Style.

Overly Narrow Superlative can make a character this, that they wouldn't be otherwise.

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Sub Tropes:

• Dream Team: For a team full of such characters.
• Fastest Gun in the West
• Fastest Thing Alive
• Godlike Gamer: The best player of a Video Game.
• King of Games: The best player of multiple games, beyond Video Games.
• The Perils of Being the Best: There can be negative consequences to being the best; everyone wants your expertise, or they're all jealous.
• UltimateGamer386: The player known as the best in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.
• World's Best Warrior
• World's Most Beautiful Woman
• World's Smartest Man
• World's Strongest Man

Examples:

Advertising

• Carlsberg lager describes itself as probably the best lager in the world. This has been its advertising slogan for probably four decades.

Anime & Manga

• Naruto:
  • Gaara of the Desert, as part of his control over sand, has an automatic sand shield that moves at supersonic speed to protect him, is harder than diamond, and due to not relying on Elemental Baggage is immune to most forms of Anti-Magic and Energy Absorption. This, combined with the sand armour he wears in case the shield is breached, has lead him to become known as the greatest Stone Wall of the ninja world, with his sand powers being known as "The Absolute Defence".
  • Sakura becomes the best medic nin in the world by the time she is in her late teens, surpassing Tsunade.
• One Piece:
  • Dracule Mihawk is universally acknowledged as the greatest swordsman in the world. While there are a few other characters with swords that are just as strong as him, he is still more skilled than all of them. Shanks used to be his rival in the past, but after he lost his left arm, Mihawk seems to have lost interest in fighting him as well, leaving him Lonely at the Top.

Comic Books

• Batman (Bruce Wayne) is the World's Greatest Detective ... despite constantly showing quite amateurish investigative skills .

Fanfic

• Changeling Space Program & The Maretian: The Maretian: By way of an Overly Narrow Superlative. After the ponies spent a sol, on Mars, grooming for photos sent to NASA, Mark proudly claims, "I am, after all, the most popular and exclusive spa host on the whole planet."
• Destiny Intertwined: Commander Lynerius is an elemental, a title given to dragons who have achieved the absolute highest possible level of power in and mastery of their element. Elementals are vanishingly rare, and Lynerius consequently has a good claim towards being the most powerful and skilled user of Electricity currently alive.
• Elementals of Harmony: My Little Praetor: In "Immune Response", by Discord, says to a trapped Celestia about Twilight being the best at "power", after a few events:
  Your so-called 'faithful student' will wipe the floor with Princess Scary Butt Fun.
  "After that, with you imprisoned and your mother and me as we are, young Twilight will be, without exaggeration, the most powerful being in the universe. Worse, she will be free of the twin shackles that normally keep her in check: her own humility and the thought of your disapproval.
• Fate Revelation Online: Despite normally being a melee-focused warrior with minimal magic, Ilya has a reputation for knowing everything about the [Thaumaturgy] system despite never visiting a trainer. That's interesting, but not a huge deal. What really makes people sit up and take notice is when she decides to finally use magic for real, and proceeds to curb-stomp a floor boss. The truth, of course, is that she's a homunculus purpose-built for the Holy Grail War; her being in SAO is like dropping a fully operational stealth bomber in the middle of a LARP session. Diabel is shocked when he finally sees her with his Aura Vision.
  In every way, her Circuits were better than anyone else. Compared to the rubber hoses that people awkwardly squeezed to slosh prana around inside, hers were more like huge steel pipes that hummed as high-pressure prana was rapidly and smoothly circulated by a powerful pump. Compared to the garden hoses that most people could water plants with like an amateur gardener, she was more like an entire water treatment plant under the direction of a skilled engineer. It was like her charstats were dialed all the way up to the system maximums.
  Ilya wasn't just stronger than other [Players]. She was stronger by a vast gulf, her prana capacity was better in orders of magnitude. That had been unequivocally demonstrated to everyone against the Fifth Floor Boss.
• Oversaturated World: Group Precipitation: "Pre-Patch Exploit, by Masterweaver": Due to a comment by Flurry Heart on Cinch's grumpiness:
  Author's Notes:
  
  When Abacus Cinch learned why she'd found herself wearing a hideous sweater that read "World's Grumpiest Gran" and drinking from a similarly captioned mug, her only response was, "You are all tremendously fortunate that my great-granddaughter is as adorable as she is."
• Story Shuffle 2: Double Masters: Along with Great Detective, as the "Table of Contents" says about "Finding Evil by Moonlight", along with a reference to Batman:
  Twilight calls in Equestria's greatest detective. No, not that bat.
• Tales of the Canterlot Deportation Agency: Luna Vs. The Law Machine: "Cleaning Up The Town": Describing the creator of a dystopian law enforcement machine:
  Luna:"And the entity who created these devices?"
  Tess: "Was the universe's biggest jerk."

Films — Live Action

• Avengers: Age of Ultron: When Steve Rogers is being a Shipper on Deck between Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff, he calls himself "the world's leading authority on waiting too long":
  Steve Rogers: That's nice.
  Bruce Banner: What...what is?
  Steve: You and Romanoff.
  Bruce: No, we haven't...that wasn't-
  Steve: (chuckling) It's okay. Nobody's breaking any by-laws. It's just she's not the most... open person in the world. But with you, she seems very relaxed.
  Bruce: No, Natasha, she... she likes to flirt.
  Steve: I've seen her flirt. Up close. This ain't that. Look, as maybe the world's leading authority on waiting too long, don't. You both deserve a win.
• Pink Flamingos: Divine is very proud of her title of "filthiest person alive". The plot revolves around her rivalry with two other degenerates, Raymond and Connie, who want to take that title for themselves.

Literature

• Accel World: In the Accelerated World, all duel avatars are granted a unique colour as part of their name, reflecting their abilities (e.g. the closer an avatar's shade is to red, the better its attack range). While some of these can get pretty esoteric (the protagonist's group once had subcommanders with the colours of Sky, Aqua, Graphite and Ardor) the leaders of the seven main factions are the Kings of Pure Colour (Red Rider, Yellow Radio, Green Grandee, Blue Knight, Purple Thorn, Black Lotus, and White Cosmos) each of whom takes a single colour affinity to its Logical Extreme.^note Though given the existence of low-level Orange and Cyan avatars, metallic and transparent avatars which exist outside the colour spectrum, as well as Purple's apparent lack of a specialisation, it's implied that the grouping is ultimately pretty arbitrary After Red Rider's death, he was succeeded by Scarlet Rain, who is mocked for not fitting the convention.
• DFZ: Opal Yong-ae, the protagonist, was genetically engineered to be the strongest mage alive. It almost worked—in pure strength, she is literal orders of magnitude stronger than the average mage, and in fact is a good bit stronger than what was previously thought to be the human limit. Unfortunately, she has no head for thaumaturgy, and even when using pre-made spells off the internet, everything inevitably explodes in her face. She mostly just grabs huge amounts of magic and throws it at her problems. Her strength turns out to be the problem; thaumaturgy is designed for the average mage. While it can of course handle people quite a bit weaker or stronger than average, she's so far off baseline that her power blows straight through any spellwork that might contain it.
• Mistborn: The Lost Metal: Bendalloy lets an allomancer put up a bubble of speed time, effectively slowing the rest of the world. Common wisdom is that it's impossible to change the shape of the bubble except in the most minor of ways; you can make it a little bigger or smaller, but you can't selectively exclude spots. Wayne discovers that this is simply because bendalloy is too expensive to really practice with. After years of being Secretly Wealthy and having little else to do with himself, he's gotten good enough that he can change the bubble's shape, push the time acceleration, and do all sorts of other neat tricks. Harmony, God Himself, tells him at the end of the book that Wayne is literally the best in the world. He's able to speed time enough to outrun electricity, allowing him to beat a deadman switch on a bomb.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: The Most Boringest Gnome in the World of the titular episode.
• Yumi and the Nightmare Painter: Thanks to seventeen centuries of practice, Yumi is the best rock-stacker ever to exist, and almost certainly the best who ever will exist.

Live-Action Television

• In the 1960s Doctor Who serial "The War Machines", one of the scientists developing WOTAN insists it's the most advanced computer in the world despite it not being the biggest.
• Gekisou Sentai Carranger: Each Monster of the Week claims to be "the universe's best" at what they do. This ranges from "universe's best mechanic" to "universe's best beautician".
• Hawkeye (2021): Kate Bishop claims that some people have called her "the world's greatest archer". Clint (who has also been called "the world's greatest archer") flatly asks if she is one of those people. She sheepishly nods. Although, once Clint sees her in action, he says that she honestly deserves the title.

Music

• The Charlie Daniels Band song "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" is about a fiddle playing duel between the Devil and a boy named Johnny who boasts that he's "the best that's ever been." Johnny pretty much proves it by winning the contest.

Podcasts

• Mission to Zyxx: There a Running Gag of the C.L.I.N.T.s each declaring themselves to be the best at whatever that particular C.L.I.N.T. has just done such as making Mother's Day Cards, arguing, pushups, asking for FAICs, etc.

Professional Wrestling

• Since The '80s, Bret Hart has this gimmick, being "The Best There Is, the Best There Was and the Best There Ever Will Be". Bret also has the Red Baron of being "The Excellence of Execution".
• CM Punk's main gimmick is also being the "Best in the World", quote also included in his t-shirt (in the back) and in his titantron.

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering: Dragons are Stronger with Age. The last Elder Dragon, Nicol Bolas, is an incredibly dangerous villain described as "Dominaria's most ancient evil".

Video Games

• Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden: The doctor Man, after receiving 70 Kidneys to practice on:
  Man: Hehehe. Just you watch. I'll become the best surgeon in the world!
  Irene: ...Maybe I should stop him now?
• In Pokémon Gold and Silver and its remakes, Clair arrogantly declares herself to be the "Worlds best Dragon-Type master". This adds more emphasis to her general ego and refusal to treat the player respectfully, as once you beat her she refuses to accept that it was possible and still doesn't think you're worthy of the badge. At the same time, it's made clear that her cousin Lance, another Dragon user, generally outclasses her and is supposedly the only other trainer who defeated her at that point, making her claim dubious at best.
• Princess Maker: In Refine, the first time the daughter tries working as a Lumberjack, she's greeted by her supervisor with this:
  Yo, I'm the world's best lumberjack, Satomichi!
• Puck OFF: Dominator is totally this. He's the man, the myth, the legend. Best hockey player the world has ever known.

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa: The characters have Ultimate Talents, meaning they are the absolute best there is in a specific area, although, that's the official English translation. In Japanese, it's just "Super High School-Level" Talents. The talents themselves can range from understandable to entirely nonsensical. For example, compare Ultimate Artist, Ultimate Detective, Ultimate Cook and Ultimate Swimmer to Ultimate Lucky Student, Ultimate Despair, Ultimate Supreme Leader and Ultimate Affluent Progeny.

Webcomics

• Not a Villain: From page 229: Bandit presumably "the best [programmer] in the world". Which Kat is angry at, because she's secretly truly the best.
• Oglaf: There's a guy who is "cursed" to be the best ever at blowjobs. This serves him well, as he is able to use his blowjob skills to defeat an invading army, which promotes him from a low-level soldier into a king.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Xin Fu mockingly calls Toph "the greatest Earthbender in the world," but says that won't be enough to get her out of the metal box she's trapped in; Earthbenders explicitly cannot bend metal. She then turns it back on him and claims the title when she bends the metal anyway.
  Xin Fu: You might think you're the greatest Earthbender in the world, but even you can't bend metal!
  [...]
  Toph: I AM THE GREATEST EARTHBENDER IN THE WORLD!!! And don't you two dunderheads ever forget it!
• South Park: The episode "More Crap" depicts Bono as a competitive asshole who wants to be "number-one" at everything and can't stand being "number-two", because he's actually a number-two.
• Cars:
  • Cars: Mater describes himself as "the World's Best Back-Wards Driver."
  • In Cars 2 when Mater is on the racetrack trying to warn Lightning about the bomb, announcer Darrell Cartrip says he doesn't know who that is, "but he's got to be the world's best backwards driver."

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