Memetic Badass / Video Games

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They see me rollin'...
they hatin'...
Image by SHARK-E. Used with permission.

"Now, I know what you're thinking - that's not a spoon, it's a fork! No one can eat soup with a fork. Well, my friend, you did not know Ysgramor!"

— Calixto Corrium on Ysgramor's soup spoon, Skyrim

The following have their own pages:

• Capcom
• Nintendo
• Square Enix

Dark Souls

• Iron Knight Tarkus, a summoned character that you can call to help you with an area boss, can easily solo the boss on his own. The boss in question is the Iron Golem of Sen's Fortress, one of the most physically imposing and powerful bosses in the game, and one with impressive physical defense. Tarkus fights this gigantic beast in physical combat, and bests him easily. Odds are, at this point in the game, you can't, and wouldn't be able to for some time. In short, Tarkus is better at the game than you. Except when it comes to balancing on the ceiling-beams of a cathedral - his corpse can be found on the floor near the painting. This also means he survived the fall itself, which the player can't do, but couldn't continue on in that state.
• The Mushroom People also have a reputation for this in the game's fandom. They look kind of silly and they're quite slow... but they hit like a freight train and can easily One-Hit Kill an unsuspecting player. They also have a huge amount of health, making fighting them a battle of attrition in which one mistake can end it all for you (which isn't all that unusual in Dark Souls to be honest, but nobody expected it from giant walking mushrooms)!
• In the same vein as Tarkus, in Dark Souls II, Jester Thomas is an NPC summon you can call to help with a boss, and while he looks goofy with his clown get-up, he's a master Pyromancer who can easily kill the boss on his own with repeated high-level pyromancies. From Software noticed the fan reaction and made Thomas an NPC Invader in one of the DLC's, and he is indeed one of the toughest Invaders you will have to deal with. He's also one of the few NPC Invaders who will taunt and brag at you through gestures as you fight (but generally not when it will give you a free hit).
• Picking up the mantle in Dark Souls III is Knight Slayer Tsorig, who wears Tarkus's gear but with one major difference: he wields the Fume Ultra Greatsword, one of the single heaviest and most powerful weapons in the game. He's also got a ring on that increases his attacks' ability to wear down endurance, making it extremely easy for him to break an opponent's guard. He's hostile, and his combination of stats and gear means he can pretty much two-shot just about any player who comes his way, especially those foolish enough to try to block his attacks rather than dodge them. Seems that old joke about the nightmare of having to fight Tarkus has become a reality.
• The franchise as a whole has Giantdad, aka "The Legend", which is a fan-created "character" that is also a Fountain of Memes. It's based on a particularly annoying Min-Maxing build for PvP that has tons of health and hits extremely hard, and is very popular among Invaders. As the meme says, "The Legend never dies".
• Havel the Rock is a recurring character in all three games, wearing the single heaviest and toughest suit of armor in the game and carrying an enormous club carved out of a dragon's tooth.(Which In-Universe is likely how he earned his nickname of "The Rock") He is known for No Selling almost all players' attacks and crushing his enemies in one or two blows. You can get his equipment, but you had better have heavily invested in your character's strength and vitality, or else just wearing it will render your character unable to do so much as walk. He's also a Religious Bruiser, as a few in game "Miracle" (holy) spells are said to have been made by him, and he is a Bishop.
• The series itself is notorious for its level of difficulty, being treated by many as the gold standard for modern Nintendo Hard games.

Touhou

Touhou Project has them in spades. It's probably easier to count the characters who are NOT Memetic Badasses.

• Cirno: the Strongest of Gensokyo!
  • She is also a genius.
  • It is notable that as of Yousei Daisensou ~ Touhou Sangetsusei, while she is still a Small Name, Big Ego, some of what fanonically made Cirno idiotic has been disproved (she has been shown to have knowledge of maths, including fractions), along with an admission by Marisa herself that she is growing strong or skilled enough to pose an actual challenge. At this rate, she may well become a canonical Badass as well!
• But can she compare to CAPTAIN MINAMITSU MOTHERFUCKING MURASA?
• Bah. Neither can hold a candle to MANnosuke. Or his blazing glory of manliness.
  • Mannosuke pales before Cho-Marisa.
  • How about Marisa herself? Badass Normal Extraordinaire, fires gianormous lazors!
• No, no, the strongest is clearly Yuugi, her sake NOT EVEN DROP.
• Rumia, or rather EX-Rumia (without her hair ribbon).
• Everything in Gensokyo is exactly how Yukari wishes it. Even while sleeping for most of the time, everything continues to be Just As Planned. Even think of messing with her plans, and she will hurl a train at you.
• Unzan and his Brofist.
  • Not to mention that Ichirin is just his hitbox.
• Flandre Scarlet and Yuka Kazami. If you see either of them, run away. Screaming.
• In Touhou Soccer, forgotten character Mima has the Twilight Spark, which has led many to believe that when she returns (and it will be when) there will be explosions.
• Speaking of PC-98, what time is it? Why, it's Gengetsu Rape Time, of course!
• Let's not forget about Hong Meiling. She may be feeble at danmaku, but she can and WILL kick the asses of every martial artist in the universe, simultaneously.
• Then there's EX Keine. She has the power to "create and change history", which is the kind of vague power which could mean anything and everything, but of course the fans took it as an indication of omnipotent and godlike power and ran with it.
• Mokou wears the pants in Gensokyo. (She also possesses strong phoenix vibes, which helps.)
• Wriggle may be a stage 1 boss, but she can still (literally) kick your ass.
• Also in Touhou Soccer, that Soccer Ball. It has been sliced 10,000 times in one second, rapid-kicked so hard it burst into flames, propelled from space and back into earth by the explosion of a Space Station, slashed by the scythe of a Grim Reaper, a several-kilometer long energy sword, and a katana that can cut the moon in half, Beam Spammed to hell and back, blasted by something that can cause an Earth Shattering Kaboom... and it has has survived all of that and more without a single scratch. Just what is that ball made of?
  • The only time the ball is ever compromised is during Ran's Shikigami: Heavenly God's Descent where it briefly becomes too radiant to see clearly and splits in two when Ran kicks it. And then it merges back together.
  • Some postulate that the ball has been imbued with the Hourai Elixir.
• HAX SIGN [YOU JUST PLAIN F*CKING LOSE] . That is all.
  • Reimu's Fantasy Heaven in Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe really is a beast. Land seven hits, and they have already lost.
    • Unless it's Youmu. Youmu laughs at your pitiful Fantasy Heaven.
• Clownpiece, by virtue of being both Crazy Is Cool and one of the hardest bosses in the franchise. The inevitable fanmade song about her is primarily about how brutal the battle with her is. Her power to induce insanity must extend to the player, as you'll probably go mad before you get through her frustrating boss battle.
• Kogasa Tatara has the power to surprise people. She uses this to surprise the player by showing up as an Extra stage midboss. Naturally, Kogasa has acquired a reputation of basically being able to do just about anything, as long as it's surprising enough.
• And then there's ZUN, who apparently can finish the games at the hardest difficulty setting with closed eyes without getting hit once, depending on how drunk he is.
• The games themselves, for those not accustomed to Bullet Hell games. While harder shmups certainly exist, Touhou games often get a reputation of being "hardest games ever", even on Easy. Conversely, Touhou players are often described as being capable of dodging rainfall. The high bullet counts of these games also give the impression that Touhou games are much, much harder than "classical"/non-danmaku shmups, despite the fact that Touhou games (and bullet hell games in general, Touhou simply being one of the most visible examples) usually have many design choices in favor of the player to keep from getting too frustrating. Furthermore, most skilled Touhou (and bullet hell in general) players will tell you that fast reflexes aren't as important as analyzing patterns and recognizing where it's safe to stand. In fact, a player who actually makes the effort to dodge complex and tight patterns instead of trying to maneuver around them altogether may either be accused by other shmup players of cheating, or they may make self-deprecating comments about having gained magical TAS^note tool-assisted speedrun; that is, a replay of the game that utilizes savestates and slowdown to make theoretical runs that would be impossible for a human in real time powers in the moment as most shmup players agree that such dodges are usually luck rather than actual superhuman reflexes.

World of Warcraft

• World of Warcraft: High Overlord Saurfang, an NPC on the Horde side, characterized by his glowing equipment, ridiculously high critical attacks, and Badass Boast, is a target of this, to the extent that a massive list of Saurfang Facts exists. "Area-effect target caps were implemented after Saurfang used Cleave on Stormwind and it shattered Draenor."^ContextThis reputation started way back in vanilla, where Saurfang, located very closely to the main entrance of the orcish capital Orgrimmar, would retaliate to any critical hit made against him with a charge and a vicious Counter-Attack that would kill most characters instantaneously. This turned the use of most attacks other than damage over time effects hazardous and meant that many would-be attacks on Orgrimmar ended before they could get much past the gates.
  • Amusingly, Word of God apparently approved of this, and Saurfang is now a bona-fide badass as exhibited by his actions in Northrend. Among other items he's storywise now the boss of the players and shows up to save them from time to time. In the upcoming civil war, popular support is on his side versus the actual other factions that exist.
  • Now fully ascended as of Legion. Now that Saurfang is the de facto leader in Orgrimmar, he's now the prime PvP target in the city. The achievement for taking him down goes as follows:
  Damage High Overlord Saurfang until he humors you by pretending to die.
• Also, Hogger.^ContextBack in vanilla, Hogger was an "elite" mob, making him very powerful for a monster of his level and requiring a small group of similarly-leveled player characters (or cheesy tactics) to take down. His location in the human starting zone also meant that he would be many players' first experience with an elite mob, prompting them to approach him like any other enemy and fail miserably.
  • Which, to an extent, became an Ascended Meme in Cataclysm, where he now has a posse, a hill named after him, and a reappearance at level 25 in the Stockade, complete with disbelief from a nearby NPC that killing him was even possible.
• At the same time the Saurfang fad was really hitting its stride, the Alliance attempted to elevate Bolvar Fordragon to a similar memetic position. It never quite caught on.
  • Its now being attempted on Genn Greymane, whose hatred of the orcs was so fierce that he actually left the Alliance because they didn't hate them enough.
    • Note that the Alliance was putting orcs in internment camps at the time...
  • Also being attempted on Darius Crowley, a NPC in the Gilneas starting area. He Cleaves oncoming hostile Worgen mobs WITH HIS BARE HANDS; this attack has subsequently become known as the "fistcleave". Of note was that his model in Silverpine Forest originally carried a sword and gun as weapons; Blizzard changed it to fist weapons as a response to the fistcleaving meme. Also associated with the meme surrounding this NPC is the song "Mr. Crowley" by Ozzy Osbourne, first started by its prominent usage whenever mentioning Crowley in Jesse Cox's Cataclysm beta videos.
    • They succeeded.
• The Devilsaurs of Un'goro Crater also count, as any players who have suffered through their stealth Ninja attacks while leveling in that zone can attest. Seriously, a 50-foot tall dinosaur should not be able to sneak up on you like that!
  • Fel Reaver, otherwise known as Mister Squishyfeet and The Outlands Welcoming Committee. The roaring sound it makes when it gets close to you is not a warning, but a taunt.
  • Mor'ladim was the original. A level 35 elite with more HP than most level 60s, wandering around a level 25-30 questing area. He was silent and deadly.
  • There's also the Whale Shark Which is a shark that literally outsizes some villages, and one hit kills anything.
    All whaleshark did was blink. It was that blink that hit me so hard it disbanded my guild and deleted my account.
  • Gentlemen I present what might be the greatest badass (besides Saurfang) in Warcraft, Rhonin. ^note * This is about 120+ pages long, but it is full of /brofist's and win.
  • Yes, but in Hellfire Peninsula, the Horde and Alliance resistance could tell that the Fel Reaver coming by the extremely loud footsteps, and managed to fight it with relatively few casualties. The very next day, a Devilsaur stealthed through the Dark portal, and wiped out every Ally and Horde in the region.
  • Gentlemen, behold! I have turned the Fel Reaver into a bear!◊
    • Welcome Bear made it to Outland!
• Many people in MMO-champion have grown fond of Bolvar being the ultimate badass hero of the Alliance, where anything can apply to the Lich King Cutscene.
• Algalon The Observer in the Hard Mode of Ulduar. His JOB is to assess Azeroth and determine whether the Titans need to hit the planetary "reset button". Two of his attacks are called "Black Hole Explosion" and "Big Bang". In a topic on the forums about Hard Mode, this is what a LEAD WORLD DESIGNER said:

  Hard mode rewards will be the best in the game.
  With that said, I want to be sure that everyone understands: Hard mode is hard. Some hard modes are harder than others. Then there's Algalon the Raid Destroyer. He feeds off of your tears.

  • In the same vain as Algalon: You! The player! Well, assuming you beat him. Assuming a player beats Algalon, he attributes your raid PERSONALLY as showing him that Azeroth has a fighting chance if the Old Gods DO awaken. Beings so powerful the only solution was to ANNIHILATE THE WORLD, and he basically says "Yeah, you can take 'em".
  • Gamon, a neutral tauren NPC in Orgrimmar whose purpose is to be pickpocketed for a rogue quest. After spending 6 years as essentially a Memetic Woobie, being repeatedly killed to the point where many horde players had honed it to a reflex, with Cataclysm he has been buffed to a level 85 elite, capable of two or three shotting anyone who would dare mess with him
    • Blizzard approved of this. Gamon became a hero of the Horde during the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, assisting the players in the fight against General Nazgrim. There's even an achievement for letting Gamon strike the final blow! As of Warlords of Draenor, he happily sits in the tavern with the title "Hero of Orgrimmar".
• Kuros is a BAMF. This is why.
• Murlocs. Yes, I said Murlocs. They've got their own badass anthem.
• Theldurin the Lost."It was a bright, shiny day, when all of the sudden, Deathwing appeared! I said to myself, "IM GONNA PUNCH THAT DRAGON IN THE FACE!"
• JOHN! J! KEESHAN!
• Shandris Feathermoon, leader of the night elf military, has an ability that brings down dozens of super-powered moon beams (like the Druid spell Moonfire but up to eleven). For a time, players could kite her - she could kill Garrosh and all the players trying to defend him in mere seconds.
• Captain Mustache, the Alliance sailor from the Mists of Pandaria cinematic, has ascended to meme status as well despite the fact that Chen Stormstout whoops both his ass and the ass of an Orc at the same time, due to his rather large and heroic looking chin, grizzly chest hair, and iconic mustache.
  • A specific scene in the cinematic with Captain Mustache arose as a meme in its own right when people took a screenshot of the funny moment when Mustache hands the Orc his spear after seeing Chen fight◊, and added text◊ or other things to make it even funnier.
• Zappy Boi (real name Zekhan), the troll shaman in the Battle for Azeroth's trailer quickly ascended to this status by zapping Genn Greymane who just finished knocking off Varok Saurfang, ^note  Yes, the Saurfang mentioned above and blasting the Alliance with lava.

Others:

• The Rock is the deadliest enemy you will encounter in Agarest Senki. It's so deadly, that the Big Bad of the game couldn't win against the party without the help of one Boulder itself.
  • As far as player characters go, the Raglen family is made of pure badass, with Rex in particular reigning supreme. Vashtor has reached this status due to his amazing strategies, mixed with his lack of moral compass. And then there's Reverie. A young girl, relatively unimportant when compared to the rest of the cast, and yet she's the only one who can wield the spear that belonged to the freaking god of war (not that God of War mind you).
  • Usually, when you're on the receiving end of a Limit Break Combination Attack, you cower with fear. The "Fairy" Mook (and its different kinds) however eat an apple before getting all clobbered up like it was just a random encounter! Take note, the attack is formed up by an elf who has the protection of the highest light god and the three protagonists who are the Reincarnation of the dark god!
• After the game was reviewed by the Hungarian 'Bad PC Games' webseries, the Featureless Protagonist of Airborne Hero became the legendary Dick Assman (not related to the gas station owner of the same name).
• The Gelato Man is behind everything. Killing him was all part of the plan.
• Nine Ball from Armored Core (no relation to that other one), to both fans and in-game. The title given to those that get to the spot of "Number 1 Raven" is "Ninebreaker" simply because he actually, "it" was that much of a Badass and held the spot of Number 1 for so long. And pretty much the mantra for every new AC title in the works is "Is Nine Ball gonna be in it?" This is despite, or rather because of, the fact that Nine Ball personifies Nintendo Hard in AC.
  • Think that's badassed enough for him? Well, he appears in Another Century's Episode R as a second to last boss fight! That's right! He's so badass that he fights with damn near any known badass from countless mecha animes without needing the immense sizes or wave motion guns of other bosses in this game! To top it off, YOU even get to experience the power of Nineball yourself!
• TV Tropes's own Grand Unifying Guesses page makes Altaïr of Assassin's Creed into the biggest Kill-Stealer in history.
  • To elaborate, Altaïr apparently has killed every SINGLE person who has ever lived. Ever.
    • Amended with Ezio rising up to a Greater God in the same house. The Great Eagle is pleased with this development, returning to his former position as teacher.
  • He is only seen when he wants to be seen.
  • Perhaps unintentionally, the game gives him an implied But for Me, It Was Tuesday attitude toward killing Templars. To wit, the synch bar increases as Desmond grows closer to Altair by doing things that Altair remembers doing. However, it does not increase if he kills a Templar, nor even if he kills all sixty of them. In other words, Altair may have killed every single Templar in the Holy Land, and he doesn't even remember it.
  • Being hit also calls Desynchronization. Meaning Altaïr never got hit.
  • Malik also gets this treatment, being as he still manages to be a competant fighter and badass after losing an arm.
    • He still somehow manages to get in and out of the bureau despite it not having a door. To do that with just one freaking arm you gotta have more than perfect control of your body.
  • For further information of Altair's badassness, please visit Grand Unifying Guesses Assassins Creed as listing it all here would just take too damn long. Also, be aware that this might change your outlook on reality. Good night.
• Pablo Sanchez of Backyard Baseball. If you look on YouTube for the comments on any video about the best player in the game (the video makers' opinions range from Maria Luna to Nomar), there will always be comments about Pablo as a Badass, mostly because he speaks Spanish. Though he really doesn't.
• To continue the BioWare tradition of having protagonists be this, there's the Bhaalspawn from Baldur's Gate, whose reaction to having their soul ripped out by the Big Bad is to basically chase him down to Hell and kill him, over and over, until he gives it back. Then there is of course Minsc (and his hamster Boo), who started as a Lethal Joke Character with awesome insane banters and could potentially follow the main character to Hell as well.
• Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean gives us The Great Mizuti. How badass is Mizuti? She's a fourteen year old girl. Who fights gods by tackling them.
• Bayonetta punches A UNIVERSE-DESTROYING GODDESS in the soul from Pluto to the Sun.
• From the BEMANI series:
  • DJ Mass MAD Izm*, whose songs in beatmania IIDX are notorious for being so scratch-heavy that they easily escalate into That One Boss territory. It's a wonder there have been no reports of players' turntables catching fire from friction...yet.
  • IIDX player DOLCE. is seen not just as a kaiden player but a god of IIDX.
  • Amongst pop'n players, vTATSUv is the IIDX equivalent of DOLCE., infamous for his Vines of advanced pop'n techniques.
  • DanceDanceRevolution player CHRS4LIFE, on account of being among the first three American players to ever participate in Konami Arcade Championship and being the first such player to claim the DDR championship title. "USA! USA! USA! USA!"
• The player in Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, due to a combination of the opponent truck not being able to win (it doesn't move^note there is a patch to make it actually move, but it still stops short of the finish line and it cannot be pushed), Faster-Than-Light Travel achieved simply by driving backwards, and the infamous congratulatory "YOU'RE WINNER !" message.
• The Binding of Isaac:
  • Abel is often joked about as being some kind of overpowered item that can single-handedly save runs. In reality, he's near useless, as his gimmick^note he is always on the opposite side of the room from the player character, moving alongside them makes it hard to hit enemies, and he's one of the several familiars that deals base damage at a low firing rate.
  • Bumbo is a decent item in his own right, but the fandom elevates him to an indestructible badass who can take out anything and everything in his path (up to and including the Superboss added in Afterbirth), and always pays out with great stuff. Bumbo want coin, and there's nothing that can stop him from getting coin.
• BlazBlue:
  • Hailed by the heavens, Earth, and people, the one and only BANG SHISHIGAMI is now here!
  • BANG BANG BANG BAAAAAANG!
  • God-Tier George XIII.
  • Hazama has become this in some circles of the internet.
  • Also, Valkenhayn.
  • A rare female Memetic Badass in the form of Makoto.
• There's a meme among Bloodborne players that people in wheelchairs deserve no mercy. That's because the old men in wheelchairs you encounter as enemies tend to pack powerful blunderbusses that can inflict massive damage, or they just settle for swiping at you with a torch. To say nothing of Gehrman, the game's final That One Boss.
• Thanks to the Kickstarter pitch video for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, lead developer and Metroidvania pioneer Koji Igarashi has become a Memetic Badass in his own right, said video portraying him as a Japanese Dracula.
• For that matter, the Bullet Hell genre itself; games falling under the genre are often cited as the "hardest ever" or like "dodging rain", even if the game is considerably easier than many games with fewer bullets. A lot of people forget that even before the age of curtain-fire bullet patterns, many arcade shmups were still punishing enough to demand coin after coin to keep playing.
• On GameFAQs, it seems Captain MacMillan of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Sergeant Reznov of Call of Duty: World at War are Memetic Badasses, the former despite being present for two missions, spending half the second one with a leg injury. Captain Price in all his porn-stache glory isn't one.
  • Captain Price isn't a Memetic Badass, he's a canonical Badass. As for MacMillan, spending half of the mission with a leg injury just makes it more badass that he still lays down covering fire for you.
    • The same goes for Reznov, seeing as he not only survived and fought his hardest all the way from Stalingrad to Berlin, but did it with half a trigger finger. All of his deliciously sadistic dialogue and his saving Petrenko (the player character) at the very end of the last mission certainly helped, too. Hell, he even has an article on Uncyclopedia that calls him the "alpha male of the human race"!
    • The same website has an article on the Red Shirt Carmine from Gears of War. To best sum up their opinion of him, their link to a more professional version of the article is God on That Other Wiki.
  • RAMIREZ, DO EVERYTHING!
    • RAMIREZ! STOP THAT NUKE WITH YOUR RIOT SHIELD!
    • RAMIREZ! DESTROY THE RUSSIAN ARMY WITH THIS FRENCH FRY!
    • RAMIREZ! TAKE OUT THAT HIND WITH A THROWING KNIFE!
  • To elaborate, Ramirez, a US Ranger and Player Character for half of the campaign, constantly gets ordered around by his superior Foley into literally doing everything. A bunch of Infantry Fighting Vehicles are attacking your position? Ramirez operates a Predator drone and destroys them. Enemy snipers? Ramirez can counter snipe them. Column of enemy armor? Ramirez can take that Javelin and wipe out every last tank. A platoon of soldiers in the Burger Town? Ramirez has already killed them. It's gotten to the point where Ramirez is basically the USA's entire army.
• Carmen Sandiego, an agent gone thief because No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction. She's Sophisticated as Hell, and you're probably rooting for her honestly. She can swipe the Mason-Dixion Line without much trouble.
• Simon Belmont, who can cause Galamoth to run away like a wuss. He once appeared on the cover of Nintendo Power magazine, waving around the severed head of Dracula.
  • He killed Dracula twice. He was dying the second time, and yet Dracula's curse did nothing to deter him. Nothing.
  • This thread on the GameFAQs Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles board started off as a questioning of why Richter Belmont is so "average." Eventually, it turned into a pages-long thread about Richter's awesomeness that would go on to hit the capacity of 500 posts.
    • And lest we forget about The Belmont (Pimp) Walk. Richter's own variant is so pimpin', it's divine.
    • Richter is so badass that his memory imprinted into the Vampire Killer itself can kick ass without trying. Not the real Richter, a mere shadow of him.
    • His Bible can fire holy rainbows beams of concentrated testosterone able to kill anything within a 20-mile radius. Eat your fucking heart out, Joshua. (How Alucard survived is up in the air; he should bless his lucky stars.)
    • Most of the other characters do a simple Double Jump and call it a day; Richter backflips in midair. It has also been theorized that Richter's super jump was the progenitor of the Shoryuken.
    • Last, but not least, he defeated Dracula with a key. WITH A KEY.
    • On the other hand, Maria completely outshines Richter.
    • Richter's chops were recognized by Dracula himself, who's fought against numerous generations of the Belmont clan and, aside of Leon, dismisses all of them rather impersonally. Richter is the only Belmont Dracula wanted on his side, going as far as having Shaft possess Richter one year prior to SotN. That has to count for something.
  • Julius Belmont gained this status for being an old geezer who still kicks all kinds of ass. He got his own set of jokes, though they were nothing more than transplanted Chuck Norris jokes.
    • Sorta justified by plot and extrapolation, though. That guy, Dracula, that confirmed memetic badasses Richter and Simon could only keep down for a couple of years, a decade or two at best? Julius killed him permanently, in something that has been referred to as a war. And then met Drac's reincarnation, and whupped his ass too, until said reincarnation either followed orders or disobeyed. In the latter case he killed him permanently a second time.
    • Going by the manual for Aria of Sorrow, Julius is simultaneously the youngest (19) and the oldest (55/56) canon Belmont to have kicked Dracula's ass.
    • Soma (said reincarnation of Drac) has to use Magic Seals in Dawn of Sorrow to permanently seal away the bosses, lest they regenerate and start the battle anew. Julius had no such problems; he was whipping their asses so hard that they had no chance to regenerate.
    • You need two theme songs to make his, because no single theme is enough.
    • It could be argued that leaving the Battle of 1999 not shown is a good thing, because no depiction of the ultimate Belmont victory would do it justice.
  • The family's forefather deserves a mention here. Rushing into a vampire's stronghold unarmed? Stupid. Inadvertently providing Mathias with the means to gain immortality and begin his war against God as Dracula? Regrettable. Most androgynous protagonist in series history? Probably. But only one man has the gall to vow to kill an entire time of day, hand the Grim Reaper's skeletal ass to him on a silver platter (and then explain to him just how he did so), and raise a clan of badasses for the sole purpose of (bears repeating) killing an entire time of day and every single stinking hellish fiend that tries to get in their way. That man, ladies and gentlemen, is Leon Belmont.
  • And on the evil side, we have Slogra, aka Berigan, aka THE MAN!!! As the old adage goes, "Where you stand, he's gonna land!"
• CAVE's True Final Bosses are notorious for their sheer bullet count and inhuman difficulty. Hibachi from DonPachi is the most infamous of them, as being a boss so tough you practically have to be cheesing the game just to survive. They're to danmaku games as SNK's final bosses are to fighting games. One particular viral video of Mushihime-sama Futari's Ultra Mode True Final Boss fight against Larsa gave her the memetic title of "THE HARDEST VIDEO GAME BOSS EVER!"
• King from Cave Story. Not only is he technically everyone's favorite Mimiga, he also defeats and nearly destroys Balrog in one hit and has without a doubt one of the manliest faces in video game history...all while being a nice big daddy and making a valiant effort to protect his little sister.
  • Not only that, but after he dies, his MOTHERFUCKING SPIRIT is still able to leap out of his sword at will, slashing away wildly at enemies while looking like one of the stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Hell, yes.
• People shouldn't have been surprised that Link, Cloud, and Snake lost the way they did during The Great GameFAQs Character Battle of 2007. After all, the L-Block is shaped like a boot to kick your ass!
• Blue Steel, an otherwise minor NPC hero character in City of Heroes, has been used for so many offscreen Deus ex Machina conclusions to superhero capture in villainous story arcs that he has gained a game-specific list of Chuck Norris-esque alleged accomplishments. It is even lampshaded by another NPC.
  • He is also one of the very few NPC heroes that you are never given the chance to fight in the game, so there was no telling just how tough he really was. Until the Dark Astoria arcs, that is. These arcs are intended for demigod-level Incarnate Characters.
• Gabriel Angelos, aka Cap'n Gabe, in Dawn of War II. It doesn't hurt that his arrival lets you turn the final boss fight into a f***ing Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Dead Space's Isaac Clarke: curb stomping legions of alien zombies and cutting up monsters with his mighty power tool is all part of the job (also to save his girlfriend).
  • Oh, and he fought Zeus and won.
• Deep Rock Galactic: Karl, the presumably posthumous predecessor to the dwarves the player controls, is elevated to this state by these same dwarves, and as such by the fanbase. Whatever it is he did that made him a legend in death is never elaborated on, but he's universally acknowledged to have been a badass who was the best miner DRG could ask for, could guzzle booze like a Dreadnought tanks bullets, and met his end after an absolute fuckton of Skull Crusher Ale, which means he likely went down tearing truly humongous hordes apart with only a pickaxe.
• Deus Ex has J.C. Denton. J.C., of course, stands for "Jesus Christ", if you didn't know. Do you know why it's always night in Deus Ex? Because the Sun is afraid of J.C.
  • Adam Jensen never asked for this. But he'll kick your ass with it anyway.
• Pleinair from Disgaea doesn't float; she dodges the ground.
• If you find yourself in a fight with Corvo Attano of Dishonored, an NPC guard advises his junior colleague in-game, just try to make a lot of noise when you die to give the rest of the squad plenty of warning. And that was before a deity gave him magic powers.
• While Doomguy always had a certain fame for badassery, it wasn't until his surprisingly colorful characterization in Doom (2016) that it really hit its peak, as he's established as an utterly terrifying and unstoppable force who took on Hell and every last one of its demons alone, trashed them, got the Sealed Good in a Can treatment because only that could stop him, and once uncanned is back in action and too pissed to hear complaints. While it's hard to portray him as any more badass than he already is in the base game, whenever a crossover happens people will always bet on the Doom Slayer, even in such Crapsack Worlds as Warhammer 40,000 (where it's generally believed he'd be fighting Daemon Primarchs and winning within the week).
  • You know how badass he is? Well when you get to Hell for the first time, only three words are spoken:
  "HE IS HERE."
  • By Doom Eternal, when the army of demons are besieging Earth and are close to winning, it takes the Doom Slayer alone to rout them and turn the favor for the struggling humanity.
  • In fact, it is revealed that the Dark Lord of the timeline of modern Doom games is Doomguy himself, meaning Doomguy is so strong he took over the legion of Always Chaotic Evil Demons and also the one decimating the demons in the hundreds.
  • And on top of that, it turns out that the Dark Lord is the real Father. Solving the age-old question of "can God create someone even more badass than them?" The answer is yes, and their name is Doomguy.
• Dota 2's Axe can kill people with his beard. It does not matter how many ways you are immune to death, you die anyway.
• Duncan (or more specifically, his beard) of Dragon Age: Origins gets this treatment, being considered unkillable due to the great power given to him by his beard. Bann Teagan also gets this treatment.
  • All of them, however, pale before Sandal, who can make hearts explode with his terrifying battlecry of "ENCHANTMENT!"
    • Which may just be canon. How do you explain all the darkspawn he killed just by saying "Enchantment!" repeatedly?
  • In-universe, Hawke in Dragon Age II is an example.
    Random guy in the bar: I hear the Champion of Kirkwall sleeps on a bed made of the bones of a High Dragon. And he uses the Arishok's skull as a gravy boat.
    • Aveline is often summed up as a woman-shaped battering ram. One of her moments that cements her memetic badassery is being able to ignore the Final Boss's paralysis ability and pound on them while they're trying to give their Motive Rant!
  • Cassandra Pentaghast had this reputation even before being Promotedto Playable in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
• Caim of Drakengard fame is so badass that by second game he is The Dreaded to anything living and a sane in the setting. The guy can murder entire army by himself and nuking him from the space is just a mild inconvenience for him. In the second game, he murdered the Grim Reaper. And that's without his dragon partner. In fact, he is so badass that when the second game's protagonist is presented with an option to kill Caim or his Dragon, he goes for the dragon because killing her is actually easier.
• Duke Nukem is an intentional example. His character is supposed to be seen as a Memetic Badass.
  • This is the reason Duke Nukem Forever was in Development Hell for a good 12 or so years. The devs had to keep on scrapping the project because they knew that the chickenscratch they kept coming up with wouldn't do him any justice. When you bet on the Duke, you do it right.
  • Land Of The Babes leads to him repopulating the entire world by himself. This means that afterwards, Duke became the father of every living man in existence!
• Dungeon Fighter Online has GSD. He is the first character the player has to escort, though it's more like GSD is escorting you. The various theories for his blindness include God getting Scared, GSD believing that being sighted was too easy, and that he witnessed his own pwnage.
• In the Dwarf Fortress forums, Captain Ironblood from Nist Akath (A Community Fortress, which is kinda-sorta-not-really a fanfiction).
  • Also, the Elven king of dwarves Cacame surfs zombie wyverns into battle, fights carp and wins.
    • And as a merely "Competent" Hammerman, he made mincemeat of a dragon. No, seriously.
    • His (in-game) backstory: He was a common elf child born in a kingdom that was under constant war with the dwarves. He lost his mother when he was only 1, and his father when he was 2. When he was 5 years old, the dwarves conquered his city, and installed a new government there. At the young age of 12 he joined the army, and married the elf Nemo. Two years later, an elven attack injured his lower body and killed his wife (who was then eaten by the elf that killed her). Two years after that, in 99, the dwarven king was killed in battle and, somehow, Cacame became the leader of the civilization at the age of 16. It can only be assumed that his hatred of his other elves at eating his wife was so great that it impressed even the dwarves, who then granted him the title of King. He is also the only elf to be beloved by most of the fanbase.
  • Queen/King Sankis, depending on whether you're going by the game or the narrative, from Boatmurdered. They are the only person to emerge unscathed from the sheer clusterfuck that arose from this succession LP. Most notable of all their feats was one of their last: going mad from despair and slaughtering most of their remaining fellows while on fire.
• Elden Ring:
  • The first "boss" the game has you face is a Soldier of Godrick, basically identical to the other Lordsworn Soldiers you can find wandering around everywhere. The community has taken to hyping this one up as the strongest person in the Lands Between, dubbing him 'Soldier of God, Rick'.
  • Starscourge Radahn fairly quickly got this reputation for real, due to his difficult and cinematic boss fight (you get infinite summon signs, and you will need them), his amazingly over-the-top attacks with both his giant swords and gravity magic (this guy turns himself into a meteor when he switches to Phase 2), and his badass and heartwarming lore. This guy held meteors back' from the lands between, and was such a Father to His Men that they keep protecting his fief of Caelid even after it's been devastated by the Scarlet Rot. Oh, and he learned gravity magic just so he could keep riding his childhood steed despite growing to 27 feet tall.
  • Godfrey, the First Elden Lord. He's one of the greatest fighter in the world despite being a human while the others were gods or demigods, to the point where he grafted the spirit lion Serosh to himself to hold himself back. In-universe, his reputation has clearly overshadowed that of his successor Radagon, despite the latter actually having divine power.
  • Malekith, the Black Blade. He's Marika's "shadowbound beast" (divine wolf-man bodyguard), and in the backstory defeated an Empyrean who held the power of death itself, binding the Rune of Death into his black sword. Lore has it that all the demigods are terrified of him, and pitting them against him boss vs. boss backs that up as he has the second-best win rate after Malenia. The only ones who can beat him are the Godskin Duo, Godfrey, and Malenia, and that's only if they're outside of his arena. In his arena, where he gets to use his more acrobatic moves, he almost always wins, with only Malenia still being able to sometimes beat him.
  • Speaking of Malenia, Blade of Miquella, she has a reputation as Elden Ring's biggest badass due to her in-universe reputation as the World's Best Warrior crossed with her infamously difficult boss fight. And it's not an exaggeration; she is said to be a prodigy swordswoman who has "never known defeat", with Radahn (above) only being able to fight her to a tie. She's also an incredible general, able to maintain a campaign to the other side of the continent (not an easy feat) and inspire loyalty from her knights despite all parties knowing that just being near Malenia was enough to infect them with Scarlet Rot. When (or if) you fight her as a boss, you'll have to deal with not only the standard insane damage and health pool, but large moveset that includes multiple attacks meant to trip up complacent players... and on top of that, she heals every time she hits you, even if you block. And all this as a blind triple amputee ravaged by Scarlet Rot. Boss vs boss videos have backed up her reputation as her first phase alone is enough to curb-stomp practically every other entity in the game short of Malekith, who she trades about 50/50 with given both phases.
  • The playerbase has Let Me Solo Her, a kind player wielding dual katanas and wearing nothing but a Jar Helmet, who sets his summon sign down by Malenia's boss arena- and then, well, solos her for his summoner. Flawlessly. Also keep in mind that bosses get a significant health boost for each summoned phantom, and it's not uncommon for hosts to summon the maximum number of phantoms just so that more people can watch Let Me Solo Her work his magic...
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Morrowind:
    • The Nerevarine kills at least two gods (and the aspect of a third), is The Ageless, and bad stuff doesn't start happening to Morrowind until after the Nerevarine was rumored to have gone away to another continent. However, the game itself pretty much acknowledges it by having the Nerevarine declared Hortator (war-leader) of three Great Houses, with the armies you are intended to lead consisting of yourself and maybe a companion.
    • Gaenor, from the Tribunal expansion has become a Memetic Badass among the community, as seen here.
  • Skyrim:
    • The ancient Nord hero Ysgramor is one of these in-universe. In Windhelm, there's a museum of oddities which includes Ysgramor's soup spoon. It's a fork. You think no-one could eat soup with a fork? You, my friend, did not know Ysgramor.
    • Lydia, the Whiterun Huskarl.
    • Giants get this treatment due to a Good Bad Bug that sends the player flying hundreds of feet into the air if they get killed by one.^note  This happens because any damage that is left over after something is killed is translated into velocity. When a giant swings his hammer downwards onto a level 2 Dragonborn with light armor, the Dragonborn accelerates into the ground so hard they bounce off the ground into space.
    • Not to mention the Dragonborn him/herself. Not surprising considering that he/she kills dragons on a regular basis, fuckstomps armies, sends people flying by shouting at them, and can potentially flip off and rip off not just one, but several Daedric Princes over the course of the game.
    • Miraak, another Dragonborn. When he says he could've taken on Alduin, the Nordic God of Destruction, World-Eater, Devourer of Souls and Harbinger of the Apocalypse, he isn't exaggerating.
    • Vahlok is one of these in-universe as well. Miraak has a lot of badass traits, but Vahlok is the one who beat him; Miraak only escaped death at his hands because Herma-Mora snatched him out of Nirn. The Skaal remember him as a heroic figure called "The Guardian" because of it.
    • Any character who looks down on the Dragonborn tends to be considered a Scrappy. Telvanni Master Neloth, however, can easily back any claims he makes. When he claims that an Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold can act as his apprentice, many will not argue the point.
    • The courier, who will brave swamps, oceans, vampires and dragons just to deliver the Dragonborn some inheritance.
  • Online:
    • The Ascendant Lord who was able to hold his own against three of Tamriels greatest champions and almost win. With fans calling him Chad Knight.
• From Fallout 3, Old Lady Palmer and Deputy Weld have both been given "badass" status by various communities.
  • In-universe, The Lone Wanderer is this according to Three Dog, for good or bad.
  • Two words, LIBERTY PRIME.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • Craige Boone headshots the Sun five seconds before it appears over the horizon.
    • Thumbs down, you son of a bitch.
    • All the player's skills are hard capped at 100, nothing can make them go higher. Boone's Guns skill reaches 106.
  • And then there's Joshua Graham, who is this in-universe for being possibly the one man that not even Boone could kill. If five confirmed shots from 1st Recon, getting blown up at Boulder City and finally getting covered in pitch, set on fire and tossed into the Grand Canyon couldn't kill him, then what can? Asides from the Courier? all with a .45 caliber pistol and nothing else.
  • The Courier is one as well. In-universe. The Powder Gangers call him/her the Grim Fucking Reaper and every faction wants them to help them win the war. The plot in significant part revolves around proper acknowledgement that your standard RPG protagonist accomplishments are realistically insane.
  • This also applies to Ulysses: he went through literally everything the Courier went through: the first three DLCs are just tests by him of the Courier.
    • Also, he survived where even the greatest of Caesar's Legion and the NCR became monstrous ghouls wearing nothing more than a filtration mask and a sleeveless jacket.
    • Did we forget to mention his massive nuclear stockpile?
  • Legate Lanius is an in-universe example: He is specifically built up by Caesar as The Dreaded for someone that both the Legion and the NCR fears. His most dangerous aspect isn't his skill in combat (though that itself is certainly impressive) but his reputation as a legendary and unstoppable butcher. However, as Ulysses points out, this can be used against him. He cannot afford to damage his reputation with defeat, so if the player can convince him that he cannot win the war, he can be convinced to retreat.
  • Easy Pete is a minor character in Goodsprings (as well as one of the first NPCs the player can talk to) who can be convinced into giving you free dynamite to fight the Powder Gangers. He's gained popularity among fans for seemingly.. no reason at all? But it's resulted in tons of jokes among fans that Easy Pete is actually the most powerful character in the game or secretly a god/the Lone Wanderer as well as memes about a Hard or Difficult Pete.
  • There seems to be a trend in the community where people will hype up random one-off characters for the sake of comedy (bonus points if said character is completely incompetent in canon). This includes characters such as Mr. Fantastic, Private Kowalski, and Driver Nephi.
• Far Cry 2 gives the player character a chance to become this. At reputation level five your journal will note circulating rumors that you are literally Satan himself and never kill your enemies before extensively torturing them.
• Not even driving simulators are safe from Memetic Badassery. In Forza Motorsport 2 (and Forza Motorsport 3), the AI Driver M. Rossi has been elevated to this status (although "Memetic Bastard" would be a better way of putting it for him).
• The Fraxy Community has a notable member named Eboshidori, A.K.A. Creator of the Best Bosses Ever A.K.A the most awesome Fraxian in existence A.K.A. Your Lord And Savior. And as if to solidify his status, he would eventually go on to make his own Shmup from scratch called ZeroRanger.
• From FreeSpace: Alpha 1 (aka the player character). A fighter pilot so amazing that he can take down entire fleets of enemy ships on his own, and is The Alliance's greatest weapon.
  • Also the Empire's.
  • Parodied relentlessly in the Just Another Day joke campaigns, in which the universe ends if Alpha 1 ever dies (because he's the player character), and everyone is aware of this!
• Not everyone has played or even heard of Fuga: Melodies of Steel, but everyone who has knows damn well what Boron Brioche is. On the outside, he's a big cheerful chubby kitty cat that wouldn't hurt a fly. And then he gets behind the cannon. Every foe in sight is soon blasted to bits. Any who decide to strike him back barely leave a dent. Even when close to death on his terms, he manages to come back as strong as ever. And when he reaches Hero Mode, you'd best get on your knees and beg for mercy. The Berman Army isn't dealing with a super-powered tank. They're dealing with a super-powered tank and the god that made it His chariot.^note It should be noted that this was done on purpose by the game's director; as CyberConnect2 CEO Hiroshi Matsuyama and multiple other game testers frequently sacrificed Boron to the Soul Cannon early in development (due to assuming his Big Eater traits would make him The Load of the team) the director chose to make Boron— his favorite character, mind you— as Purposefully Overpowered as possible as a way of getting back at them. Needless to say, it worked.
  • Sean Chiplock can also be credited for boosting Boron's godly reputation among the Western fanbase for Fuga, as shown by his Bad Ending playthrough for the first game where he portrays Boron as a "God of Destruction" that turns the crew of the Taranis into sacrifices for his own personal death cult.
  • Boron's status among the fanbase has become an Ascended Meme as of the sequel: Wappa's Link Events with Boron have her inform him that she told stories of the Taranis crew's first adventure to the kids in her village, and that out of everyone else she talked about, Boron was so beloved that some of them began worshipping him outright. In the end, she outright bestows upon Boron the title of "God of Destruction". Watch Sean's reaction to it here.
• Gaia Online has, in its 'casual' MMO zOMG, the Superboss Landshark. Players roughly describe it as "what would happen if Chuck Norris used a Shark Attack spell".
• Mors' dog in the Game of Thrones RPG can one-hit kill anyone he sneaks up behind. No warning, no chance to resist, no matter the strength of your armor, if the dog gets behind you, you die.
• Global Champion has the General, who is often regarded as the hardest fighting game boss ever. Not even the greatest fighting game players in the world stand a chance. "I am a perfect soldier" indeed.
• Kratos, Villain Protagonist of the God of War series. Given that he fought his way out of Hell on three separate occasions, and killed the Three Fates, even after they decided he wouldn't, it's entirely justified.
  • Pit, Kid Icarus himself, did it seventeen years before him, though.
    • Pit did it once, and his hell was a bit more family friendly than any time Kratos saw it. Also, Pit defeated Medusa using three sacred relics. Kratos ripped her head off and used it as a weapon... while it was still alive.
    • That's Kratos's response to anything immortal when he doesn't have an ultimate weapon handy. So far, he did it to Medusa, Eurayle, and according to the demo, Helios.
    • And what did he do with the head of Helios? He used it as a flashlight.
  • Come God of War III, Kratos has gained a reputation as a walking apocalypse.
  • Listing everything badass Kratos did would be a category in and of itself. Hell, he can even score instant threesomes.
    • The ultimate sign. Kratos managed to, by sheer badassery, score a place in Mortal Kombat. That's not the impressive part. Every other character then said this was unfair. Wizard gods, machines built for fighting, karate masters and the lord of the dead all thought being pitted against Kratos was just too much.
  • Kratos is so badass, he put the smackdown on Thanatos in Ghost of Sparta. For those unaware, Thanatos was a god that the Titans and that GODS THEMSELVES feared. While Hades is the god of the underworld, Thanatos was the God of DEATH. Yes, Kratos BEAT DEATH to DEATH.
• Every single Player Character in Grand Theft Auto is this. It's always because of the sheer range of completely batshit insane stuff the games allow them to do in their respective cities. They get even better when Game Mods are applied.
  • Carl ''CJ'' Johnson is by far the poster boy for the franchise (only rivaled and possibly surpassed by the GTA V trio). After all, he canonically breached the Area 69 's defenses in order to steal a jetpack, using it without previous instructions, then flying out of the base to give it to a 'hippie'. He's also capable of stealing various vehicles from the military forces, own half the state of San Andreas and completely anhilating the drug empire in Los Santos/San Fierro. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
• Gordon Freeman receives this treatment inside and outside of the games. By the second game he has become so legendary due to his actions in the first that the interdimensional alien empire collectively crap their pants at the mere sight of him, and La Résistance members and Vortigaunts especially are constantly in awe of him. The fandom meanwhile considers him to be an unstoppable killing machine equivalent to planet-destroying superweapons (with is technically true). Also, the reason he never speaks is because doing so would cause peoples' heads to explode.
  • How badass is Gordon Freeman? Drop him in the 41st Millenium, where there is only war, and he hardly bats an eyelid.
    • No love for Adrian Shepard? Drop him in the same place and he will be extremely close to catching Gordon, but he will never quite reach him. He is The Shepard to Gordon's The One Free Man.
  • Lets see... the combine defeated the earth forces in seven hours, yet they have trouble dealing with Gordon Freeman. He lives in an Orwellian Police State, and he survives by killing the shit out of anybody who messes with him. Also, when he's attacked by combine, his friend Barney throws his signature crowbar to him, seemingly thinking that all he needs for beating a mighty, orwellian space empire to oblivion is a crowbar, and he's RIGHT!
    • Barney himself is almost on the same level as Freeman, which caused the fans to worry when he didn't appear anywhere in the second episode despite having escaped the city before Freeman and Alyx.
  • Male_07, an incidental character from Half-Life 2, has become a symbol of Garry's Mod after his role as Gordon Frohman and John Freeman.
• A Word of God-approved version of this is Master Chief in Halo. Gameplay-wise, Master Chief in the original games was relatively slow and weak (at least compared to FPS heroes like the Doom guy, who can run at 60mph while carrying a metric ton of equipment and can soak up hundreds of bullet hits before dying), with only his regenerating energy shield allowing the player to make it through a level long after the standard allied Redshirts have all perished. In the novels based on the Halo universe, Master Chief and all his fellow Spartans were been drastically upgraded to Space Marine level Super Soldiers who see in bullet-time, can punch out Powered Armor while naked, can run at vehicular highway speeds, can flip armored jeeps over with their hands, and can soak bucketloads of small-arms fire without much concern.
  • His Memetic Badassness has carried over to fansites as well, as eh kills aleins and doesn't afraid of anything.
  • If you want to go strictly by game mechanics, then his standard allied Redshirts have energy shields too. And flip tanks without touching them.
  • And some of that power increase is formalized from Halo 3 onward, where Master Chief is now superhumanly athletic — able to outrun or outjump the friendly NPCs by quite a wide margin — and is strong enough to tear turrets from their moorings and carry them around with him.
  • Sgt. Johnson has more or less the same amount Memetic Badass as the Chief. Same could be argued for the other Spartans, like Fred and Linda. Controversial_Argument But this is controversial for some lame reason.
    • Sgt. Johnson is so badass, he even has laser eyes.
    • Also, he canonically has the one form of cancer that makes him immune to the Flood, but at the same time he is so badass that there's no indication that he has it. However, that's a cover-up. The real reason he's immune to the Flood is that he's a SPARTAN-I.
    • Johnson was there for every point in the Human-Covenant War: he started it and he ended it. The only reason that Master Chief was needed is because Johnson was too awesome to need Cortana.
  • The ODSTs have also picked up this reputation:
  "Master Chief only managed to kill three ODSTs because they were just in a firefight and went to the gym to cool down."
  "They are so badass that they can do a headshot. Using a Shotguns. With buckshot. At 100 meters."
  "A ODST squad could have done Master Chief's job, in one quarter of the time. They just let Master Chief have fun."
  "If an ODST and a SPARTAN had children, the offspring would reach Johnson badassery."
  "ODSTs can defeat chieftains using ball pens."
  "ODSTs can Dual Wield Gravity Hammers. They don't do it because that way is too easy."
  "ODSTs use Pods, because if they didn't, the energy released upon impact would be enough to destroy a city."
  "Spartans never die. ODSTs never lose."
  • The JackalSnipers. They'll always kill you, when you least expect it. See here.
• Agent 47 will hunt you down if someone pays him enough. Nobody will even notice it while he does it, and he could be anywhere, adjusting his sniper scope or taking your food order; You won't outrun the Hitman.
• Homeworld's Salvage Corvette (really).
  • Just from a gameplay example: imagine a Tiidani heavy cruiser merrily laying waste to your capital ship fleet. Ambush it with a small contingent of 'vettes and, if you're lucky, you'll be the proud new owner of a free cruiser.
• Chin, Bruce Lee's relative, from Hong Kong '97. He is a One-Man Army powerful enough to take on the assignment of executing the entire population of China (1.2 billion people!) and saving Hong Kong from the dangers of a herd of fuckin' ugly reds and the mainland's ultimate weapon.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia gives us Cave, inspired by the video game company mentioned above. In a world where the goddesses are surprisingly underwhelming, Cave stands out as an unparalleled force of destruction. As fitting of a Bullet Hell character, Frickin' Laser Beams and pure, over the top explosions are dished out by her aplenty, all the while she stands out as a cool and collected character respected by her peers and feared by her enemies.
  • Gargoyle in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory has become this for Neptunia fans just because of its sheer difficulty even at higher levels, to the point that most players even compare Gargoyle to Matador up above. Even more so because it's only classified as a Risky Foe, yet people have been complaining at how difficult this guy is considering there are a lot of Optional Bosses in this game.
• The Kid doesn't stay dead. Besides, are you willing to argue against someone who killed a demonic dragon, a technological genius, a dream-manipulating toad, a brain capable of ending your lives without a second thought, two of the greatest warriors who ever lived, a vampire, two sacred guardians, as well as his own father?
• Jebediah "Jeb" Kerman, of the Kerbal Space Program, the 2'5"" green child of Chucks Norris and Yeager, laughs in the face of danger. Literally and figuratively. Possibly half dorf, but the jury's still out on that one.
  • "Jeb still gives no fucks even when he can see the rear of the spaceship out the front windows."
  • Kicks spaceship parts, and they explode.
  • And who could forget his requested device: the BFE-5000. And in his own words:
    Jebediah: "I want it huge, unstable, prone to overheating and a good chance it will blow up if you look at it from the wrong angle. I didn't become a kerbonaut for an easy ride, dammit!"
• Colonel. Mael. Radec. Awesome incarnate, so badass he makes other Helghast look like ISA pussies. You think you beat him at the end of Killzone 2? Ha! Radec got so bored fighting you, that he killed himself so he could respawn somewhere more interesting.
• Sylvia, of all people, is one now too. Yes, the girlfriend that was kidnapped in Spartan X, known to us US people as Kung Fu Master. Check out the Natraps X videos on YouTube to witness her true unadulterated badassery.
• Left 4 Dead: NO ZOMBIE IS SAFE FROM CHICAGO TED.
  • I have a Steam friend by the name of Chicago Ted. When I met him, he mentioned something about getting bored of Left 4 Dead...
  • Search urbandictionary for Chicago Ted. Go on, We'll wait.
  • It gets worse.
  • Ellis' buddy Keith. For someone who is never once shown onscreen and may or may not be real, he's quite the badass. He has suffered from third degree burns over 95% of his body twice (once making fireworks, once deep-frying turkey), lost two fingers and a toe to frostbite, broke both of his legs after driving his car off a cliff, built a shack out of mud, been stabbed by a homeless man, got tear gassed by the police, snuck a paintball gun on a roller coaster, got attacked by an alligator, bombed by the military (among the bombs, Ellis claims, were nerve gas and cluster bombs), drowned in the Tunnel of Love, got cut up by his own "bumper-car" lawn mower leaving him with wounds over 90% of his body, got cement paved over him in a sewer after falling down an open manhole, lived in a graveyard for a year after getting kicked out of his house, hung spit on the overhang in the Tunnel of Love, fell off a roller coaster onto the tracks with the ride still going, got a tattoo on his forehead saying "I'm a moron" for having ate three pounds of raw chicken (The in game subtitles say catfish), turned a recreation of colonial times into a raccoon fight in his backyard, drove across a river without using the bridge, married a couple, and would have even gotten married himself, had he not ran away from his own wedding.
  • That's the result of Gmod community in action. What they've done to Left 4 Dead is especially interesting.
    • Ellis in game is a playful survivor who has a fondness for adrenaline, but the community has turned this up to eleven. Any problem in the Gmod world can be apparently solved by giving Ellis an adrenaline shot, turning him into an unstoppable weapon. Three are even better.
    • Same thing with Louis, his peelz and the feats he is able to perform to get them.
• Japanese fans of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel firmly believe that Aurelia Le Guin is the most badass character of the entire Trails Series and can win against characters who can cause massive amounts of destruction. And considering the number of people in the series who can do that, that's saying something. It's telling that her boss fight in her Ace Custom requires that Rean Schwarzer needs to use his Super Robot and his fellow colleague Randy Orlando needing to pilot his own stock mecha, fully buffed up, and Rean still muses that they only have a 30% chance to win against her (and the player will agree).
  • Cassius Bright is considered to be one of the biggest badasses in-universe and he shows off his chops at the end of the Final Boss fight in Sky First Chapter where he smacks the final boss and destroys it with nothing but a simple staff. And he's supposed to be a Master Swordsman. That's not even counting on his own intelligence. He's so popular that everyone else in the world knows of his prowess (except hilariously enough, his daughter till she finally sees him in action).
• Legend of Mana: In-Universe, Mr. Moti the Dancing Turban Man. His Encyclopedia entry reads: "He is everywhere. He sees all."
• SIR ISAAC NEWTON IS THE DEADLIEST SONOVABITCH IN SPACE!
  • More appropriately for that game...Shepard is this both out-universe AND in-universe. S/he became well-known in the first game for being the first human SPECTRE. By the time the second game rolls around, he/she is such a living legend that even though it's well known that Shepard died two years before, hardly anybody mentions that except in passing and no one is freaked out with talking to someone who should be a corpse. Because it's Shepard: death is merely an inconvenience.
    • Not to mention that as far as we know, the only reason Shepard was resurrected in the first place was because of his/her memetic badassitude in the fight against the Reapers.
    • Also remember: The Collectors killed him/her once, and all they did was piss him/her off.
    • Along with the fact that Shepard can use the Widow (normally a vehicle-mounted weapon modified to be a handheld sniper rifle; its recoil capable of breaking a man's arm), the Claymore (a shotgun tailored for Krogans), the Revenant machine gun, and the Cain. Shepard is a goddamn Devastator.
    • Fighting the Shadow Broker involves quite a bit of punching him. Yes. SHEPARD PAWNCH is effective against people four times the Commander's size.
      Shepard: I expected [the interrogation] to be more difficult.
      Thane: Shepard, he was just a common criminal. You killed a Reaper.
• Keep something in mind: as of "The Arrival", the Reapers have acknowledged Shepard as a threat to his/her face. A race of multi-million year old semi-invincible machines, who consider organic life forms lower than dirt and nothing but a curious accident, consider this single human being to be the biggest threat they've had to deal with for millenia. That is badass-cred.
  • In the Leviathan DLC for Mass Effect 3, the Leviathan state that Shepard is the only thing that the Reapers have ever shown fear towards. This is coming from the "Apex Race" who were the accidental creators of the Reapers to begin with! Their reaction to Shepard essentially boils down to "What the Hell Are You?!"
    • S\he is a Memetic Badass in game. Samantha has a riddle for you: what's the difference between a Krogan and Shepard? One's a headbutting Person of Mass Destruction, the other has four testicles...well only has four testicles.
    • Shepard personally kills four Reapers: Sovereign, the Human-Reaper, and about two Destroyers. ^NoteThe first time s/he fought a Destroyer-class reaper, s/he had to summon a Thresher Maw to help, so that does not count. And for all of these, s/he was on foot.
    • "No matter what scars you bear... whatever uniform you wear... you can fight like a krogan, run like a leopard, but you'll never be better than Commander Shepard!"
  • Niftu Cal, who is a '''GREAT BIOTIC GOD!''' He ''thinks things''....and they '''happen.''' He is a great wind that will sweep all before him like...a ''great wind!'' He'll destroy the universe after getting a nap.
    Shepard: "Charge."
  • In certain corners of the internet, multiple characters get this. In no particular order...
  • Garrus, who is Space Batman. In the second game he takes on Frank Castle levels of badassitude. "How'd you manage to piss off every mercenary group in the Terminus Systems?" "It wasn't easy. I had to really work at it."
  • Zaeed Massani, who can't even go and get a drink at a bar without everyone around him dying horribly. The reason why Zaeed is the only survivor is because he is literally unkillable. He walks into a bar, gets set on fire, shot in the head multiple times, and has a bomb explode beneath him. He says "Give me a goddamn drink." Then everyone around him dies. He tells them "Suck it up, I've seen worse." Because he has. Zaeed even got an entire thread dedicated to documenting his badassery on the Bioware forums, to the point that he's even being considered as the Chuck Norris of the franchise. According to the thread, he:
    • Is Sean Connery's grandson.
    • Is actually spacer!Shepard's father.
    • Once had sex with a Krogan female, and lived to tell about it. But he doesn't, because he's a gentleman.
    • Was scheduled to catch a bullet between his teeth, but the whole thing had to be called off because the bullet got scared.
    • And can interrupt a Renegade Interrupt.
  • Kal'Reegar, who held the line against a entire squad of geth and a Colossus before Shepard got there, and is evidently the quarian Rambo.
  • Speaking of "holding the line," Captain Kirrahe, basically the Salarian version of Shepard. Bit of a cloaca though.
  • Blasto, the first hanar Spectre, with a girl in every port and a gun in every tentacle. He's one big Shout-Out to Dirty Harry. He was actually created as a memetic badass in the first place on the forums before even appearing.
  • Counting the third game, we have Javik, the last living Prothean, known to fans as "The Oldest Troll in the Galaxy", and memetically speaking, better than anyone at anything.◊
    • Deal with it, primitive.◊
• Solid Snake. Acknowledged in-universe, as he's known as "The man who makes the impossible possible." And consider this guy has taken on a tank with only a bunch of hand grenades, literally punched out a cyborg ninja fast enough to deflect bullets, took down multiple gunships of varied calibers and three of the eponymous Metal Gears on foot. He also took on countless of superpowered freaks, as well as his own brothers, who are equally as tough as him, without any special powers of his own, despite being stated he was, in fact, the inferior copy of Big Boss!
  • His father, Big Boss, is just as much. Back during his days as Naked Snake, he took on The COBRA Unit, defeated his mentor, who helped win WWII with the aforementioned COBRA Unit, fought as many Superweapons as his son, also on foot!
    • Not to mention the fact that he's able to aim with his blind eye. How? Because fuck you, he's Big Boss!
  • Raiden was, at first, the exact opposite of this trope. Once he got his cybernetics however, he gave us such feats such as fighting off GEKKO bots by break dancing, holding up Outer Haven, and taking on a room full of soldiers with no arms while delivering this line:
  Raiden: I am lightning. The rain transformed.
  • The final boss of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Senator Armstrong, reached this level soon after the game's release. As it turns out, Nanomachines and playing college ball for the University of Texas are the best superpowers in the Metal Gear universe.
• Allen sends you home to mama! Not only can he take more bullets than any tank, weapon or enemy machine, but he also wanders around below freezing temperature with nothing but a machine gun and a pair of shorts. He has been swallowed by a killer whale which spit his bones out, and returned later to fight you again! And he can kill you with a casual whip of his ammo. Nothing can stop his resolve to return to his wife and son at the end of the day.
• Steve?, the player character of Minecraft. Beating animals to death with his bare hands. Fitting approximately 44.5 thousand metric tonnes ^note a packed inventory of gold blocks into his pockets. Swimming up waterfalls. Going for days without sleep. Yes, truly an average day in the life.
• Modern Warfare has MacMillan. CoD fans have made countless Chuck Norris-esque facts about him and begged for his return in MW2 and 3. They got their wish: Modern Warfare 3 reveals that codename Baseplate, the SAS commander, is MacMillan.
• Sub-Zero (the original, although it's frequently overlapped with his younger and more popular brother as well) is something of a meta example, as he and his infamous "Spine Rip" Fatality are responsible for the creation of the ESRB. That's right, he's more or less the father of the ESRB.
• Marnid in the Mount & Blade mod Blood and Steel cost an eye of the face, and isn't very good at fighting, however, when you contract him, it's worth because he can construct the Aleph, which is basically an Humongous Mecha that shoot grenades at people and do a vast damage, and this mech is near impossible to destroy, cost too much but, hey, it's still worth, EAT YOUR HEART OUT, ARTIMENNER. Also, King Harlaus tend to be this when it comes to steal all butter from a village or from a recently sieged castle, oh and don't forget the feasts, parodied in this comic which he used butter in his armor to enharden it.
• Played for Laughs in Multi Versus, where famed Ironic Badass Shaggy Rogers serves as a Fighting Clown, having gained superpowers from radioactive rock candy.
• Ninja Kiwi made a perfect god among bloon popping towers: The Super Monkey. He fires faster than a machine gun & can target enemies from a big distance. When the going gets tough, he can switch to laser vision & gain more range. When the going gets tougher, he can switch to plasma & gain Epically huge range. He's so amazing that he can turn into a Physical God who kills his foes with the energy of the sun or a robot who can target 2 different enemies at once.
  • That last paragraph was just for his Bloons Tower Defense appearances. Bloons Super Monkey makes him out to be Ninja Kiwi's most badass character. His powers include spiked balls that turn into bursts of darts when they strike bloons, whips made of plasma, a beam of pure bloon destruction, an octuplet of glaives that rotate around him & an entire fiesta-full of others.
  • Not even the depths of space or the bottom of the ocean can stop him from ripping the bloons several new ones.
• Professor Layton has no equal in his universe. If he wanted to rule the world, he could do so over a weekend, and that's even taking time out for tea. He is the greatest puzzle-solving, sword-fighting, car-driving, bullet-dodging, device-making, detective/archaeologist in existence. He is also very modest. Also, his level of epic exponentially increases between games.
• ALEX FUCKING MERCER.
• Raidou Kuzunoha's sideburns.
• Mr. Zurkon requires no nanotech to survive, Mr. Zurkon lives on fear!
  • Mr. Zurkon shall spare your life, puny alien. PSYCH! Mr. Zurkon lives only to kill!
• Red Dead Redemption gives us Herbert Moon. Sorry, Herbert MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!!
  • "YOU EAT BABIES!!!"
• Red Dead Redemption 2's main protagonist, Arthur Morgan. Intelligent, ruggedly handsome, tougher than a bucket of iron nails, and able to kick tons of ass and give the treacherous Micah the fight of his life even while he's dying of tuberculosis.
• In Resistance: Fall of Man, whenever you played co-op, the second player was an unnamed African-American soldier with no relation to the plot and no spoken lines (and coincidentally the only black guy in the game). He's actually a representation of a real-life QA tester whose hard work was awarded by the game designers putting his likeness into the game. That doesn't stop some of the fans from calling him "the greatest video game character of all time", and jokingly point out how Hale is wrongfully credited for the random black dude's epic heroism.
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms / Dynasty Warriors Under no circumstances should anyone entertain the notion of pursuing Lu Bu.
  • Also Honda Tadakatsu in Samurai Warriors and Sengoku Basara. Not only was a dragonfly split in half by simply landing on Tadakatsu's spear, his drill spear will pierce the heavens!
    • The drill spear part only applies to his appearance in Sengoku Basara where he also happens to be a ginormous robot samurai.
• Rosenkreuz Stilette gives us Grolla Seyfarth. From the level select screen alone, she sticks out, among a cast of Moe girls with cute dresses and suggestive outfits, she's seen glaring at the player in a suit of blood-spattered armor. While every other member of the RKS are some flavor of Magical Girl with projectile attacks, Grolla put her talent into augmenting her body to become a Lightning Bruiser that can wield her ancestral demon sword, Grollshwert. In a game that's already Nintendo Hard even by Mega Man standards, her gameplay just makes things tougher. Her health takes double damage, at the cost of making her sword more powerful the more damage she takes. She doesn't need powerups to win the game, she can demolish bosses with just her trusty sword on her last sliver of health. Let's see Zero kill expies of the Yellow Devil, the Mecha Dragon on crack, the Bosspider, the incarnations of Death and Dracula from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and her equivalent X fight that uses strategy and isn't a complete pushover. As she says to the final boss after her A God Am I rant: "Is that all? My blade is telling me to spill your blood, and I am inclined to obey. I don't care if you're a god, a human, or even an insect; I will rip you apart just the same!"
• In Saints Row IV, Keith David (yes, THE Keith David) is respected by everyone, such that he became the Boss's running mate (and eventual Vice President) and Kinzie rescued him before rescuing you.
• Flint Paper can kill ''anything''!
• Segata Sanshiro, the "mascot" for the Sega Saturn, though he was portrayed this way in the ads even before the Internet got to them. Really, how else can you describe a man who threw one person into another, causing both to explode?! The fact that he's played by Kamen Rider 1's actor just adds to the badassery. That said, if he shows up and you're not playing Sega Saturn, you're going to get wrecked.
  • It took a nuke aimed at SEGA HQ to get him off the planet. He wasn't affected by the vacuum of space, and the explosion gave him an awesome sendoff tossed him to another galaxy where he's too busy introducing the natives to the Saturn to come back to Earth.
    • He resurfaced briefly in 2008 in person, advertising the game of Rambo IV, with a much younger girl by his side.
  • Let's face it. Segata is the Katanas Are Just Better version of Chuck Norris.
    • Segata Sanshiro isn't Japan's Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris is America's Segata Sanshiro.
  • If that wasn't enough, Segata Sanshiro has also been confirmed for Project X Zone 2!
• Yuri Hyuga tends to be rated as one of if not THE Bad Ass of all time by nearly everyone who has played Shadow Hearts — sadly a smaller crowd than most as the game flew mostly under the radar. Aside from a fully rounded character which tends to work to endear him to players, Yuri's Establishing Character Moment is to punch a diabolical warlock in the face mid-kidnapping — to the point you can see bone, he takes on Lovecraftian monsters like Mario takes on Goombas, can turn into a demon at the cost of possibly going crazy — which he constantly needs to roll-Will-saves-for, oh and there was that time he kicked God in the face so hard He turned around and went home — and it should be noted on that last one it was not a-god, or a God-like-entity but THE God. Remaining flippant despite the Trauma Conga Line that is his life also tends to help re-enforce his badassery to players.
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne brings us Matador, who swears by his sword and capote that he will prove victorious, then proceed to dance around your party and murder you if you didn't think to bring on the buffs. On TV Tropes, he serves as the page image for Atlus's ThatOneBoss page.
  • From the same game: Mot. He can spam Beast Eye until there are Press Turn icons going across the entire width of the screen, and then smash you to pieces with Megidolaon. Before you can even move. In Japan, this phenomenon is known as モト劇場 (Mot's Drama).
  • Digital Devil Saga elevates the Demi-fiend, the protagonist of Nocturne, into this by making him a brutal SNK Boss who can kill your entire party ten times over. While not as memetic as the Demi-fiend, Satan from Shin Megami Tensei II appears as another notorious SNK Boss appearing in the sequel.
  • If you're struggling with Atlus games in general, a common response is because it's Atlus.
• The only reason the Order was able to kill Harry Mason is because they must have caught him enjoying a little "me-time." He's indestructible otherwise.
  • Harry Mason told Heather he was the strongest man in the world. Both her and gamers thought so until ''Silent Hill 3''...
  • And he's not even the king of this trope within the series. That title can only belong to Pyramid Head, whose memetic... badassery became so enormous that future Silent Hill developers just had to find a way to include him in almost every game. And, of course, the movie.
    • Harry Mason could kill Pyramid Head, but not before asking it if he's seen a little girl.
• SNK's fighting game bosses will kick your ass and your wallet's ass too with their blatant disregard for the game's established rules, and inspired the term and trope SNK Boss Syndrome.
  • Among many The King of Fighters fans, Ryuji Yamazaki. He's gained his own set of Chuck Norris facts, only replacing roundhouse kicks with bitch slaps (actually snake punches).
• The Tails Doll of Sonic R infamy was an innocuous, debatably unsettling bonus character. From there, it escalated to a Bloody Mary-like figure.
  • Does Shadow count? He even had his own presidential campaign website back in 2008. (Quaker and Bowen hosted it, and have since taken it down, although the link remains on the Tails Doll site.)
  • Sonic himself certainly has quite a bit of fan exaggeration at how fast he can go. Then again...
    • His status as a badass is no exaggeration. In the span of 30 years, he's taken down countless robotic armies, government military forces, an evil genie, an evil version of King Arthur, extra terrestrial Eldritch Abominations, extra dimensional Eldritch Abominations, living weapons of mass destruction, dimension-traveling antagonists, (twice), giant ancient colossal robotic abominations that outmatch him in size, and Physical Gods. One of which, the God of Destruction, he took out WITHOUT his super mode. To many protagonists, this would be a lifetime adventure. To Sonic, this is just another day for him.
    • The ultimate proof of Sonic's badassery: If Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) couldn't stop him, what chance does anything else have?
  • Super Sonic can only be played with a console that has Blast Processing. Using him on anything else will cause it to crash because it cannot process that much awesomeness.
  • To say nothing of Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik. Oh, you destroyed his doom ship? He has another one as back-up. Planning to pull one over him with a fake Mineral MacGuffin? He'll trap you in a capsule rigged with explosives, because you told him. Going Super Mode to stop his latest ploy? He already set a trap just to take the Chaos Emeralds from you, turn you into a furry Werehog, and then send you plummeting into the Earth's atmosphere. No matter what your counter-plan is, he's always two steps ahead of you. Defeating him? All part of his plan. All Of It.
    • Even moreso once Sonic Colors (and to a lesser extent Sonic Unleashed) finally stopped his Villain Decay to that point that he teams up with an alternate version of himself in Sonic Generations to take control of an Eldritch Abomination and fuck with the space-time continuum...and manages to stay in control of it the entire time.
    • And in Sonic Lost World, he still remains badass after yet again having his Big Bad status usurped only to come from behind and take it back at the very end of the game.
  • Knuckles' Boom self has started to become one due to the extreme amount of glitches that he enables in Rise of Lyric, even after the game was patched.
  • Cream, Game-Breaker extraordinaire in nearly every game where she's playable. She runs like Sonic, she can fly while carrying a 600-pound cat, and she and her pet critter can ruin everyone that gets in her way. And she's only six. Players like to believe that she was omitted from Sonic Forces because she would've defeated Infinite in seconds, and then we wouldn't have a game.
• Luke from SOS. A Good Bad Translation / Good Bad Bug causes his name to appear amongst the survivors on playthroughs even when he's not the player character. So people interpret him as making his own way out independent of you — or if you recruit him only to kill him, he comes Back from the Dead.
• Mr. Blank. You can send him out to space, force him to dance, stick him inside a TV and he WILL NOT DIE. Hell, he was wearing the Kamina shades BEFORE Kamina did. And they were PINK.
• In StarCraft II, we have General Horace Warfield, who even before acquiring his Memetic Badass status beats a hydralisk to death with his bare, well Power Armored hands, takes terrible, terrible damage, survives enough poison to kill an Ultralisk, then gets his arm amputated and replaced with an Arm Cannon.
  • The proper phrasing is that he punched a Hydralisk INNA FACE. TO DEATH.
• Thanks to Linkara's Let's Play, Ensign Munro of Star Trek: Elite Force.
• The Starfleet Captain in Star Trek Online rapidly reaches this status in-universe.
• Star Wars fans have, in addition to Mace Windu as played by the aforementioned Samuel L. Jackson, Kyle Katarn. There was No Endor Holocaust because Katarn said so. The shockwaves from the explosion of the second Death Star knew to not screw with him.
  • A joke idle animation showing him shaving with his saber elevated Kyle Katarn's beard to its own, independent status as the toughest material in existence.
    • But behind Kyle Katarn's beard, there isn't a chin. It's just another pistol.
  • When Kyle Katarn does pushups, he doesn't push himself up. He pushes Nar Shaddaa down.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard in Jedi Academy because otherwise Kyle would beat the entire game for you in five minutes.
    • It gets to the point that no-one protests that Kyle is quite a bit more difficult final boss than a resurrected ancient Sith Lord, because, well, it's Kyle freakin' Katarn.
  • And they get Darth Revan as well. Who is so badass in-game that he can't be killed by a full turbolaser barrage from a Knights of the Old Republic Star Destroyer. And can kill three terentateks all by himself, normally the work of nine Jedi. And can out-swoop-race, out-lightsaber-duel, and out-shoot everyone in existence.
    • It doesn't hurt that his d20 game stats have six levels on Kyle Katarn.
  • As of their recent appearance in Star Wars: The Old Republic, it appears that HK-series droids are starting to acquire this reputation, though mostly through comparisons to Chuck Norris in in-game chat.
  • Here is what the Expanded Universe says about the Katarn Commandos (whom he was a member of): "Around this time the unit changed its name to the Katarn Commandos — some say as a tribute to Commander Katarn, though Wookiee member Frorral insisted the name referred to her homeworld's jungle predator. No team member dared mention Frorral's crush on Katarn as a possible contributing factor."
• In the Suikoden series, Georg Prime is this for the good side and Luca Blight is this for the bad side. Unfortunately, there's no way these two can clash swords together and find out who would win. Though they debuted in the same game, Georg arrives well after Luca's Rasputinian Death, and despite being a Star of Destiny he shows up so late as to be of little importance; it's not until 3 games later (though chronologically 8 years earlier) that players are made fully aware that Georg is more than just your average badass.
• Sanger Zonvolt and Elzam von Branstein/Ratsel Feinschmecker are the headliners of this for Super Robot Wars. The former frequently states his Badass Boast of "There is nothing my Colossal Blade cannot cut!", which has more truth to the claim, due to one instance of him breaking apart the roof of an underground fortress designed to withstand an Apocalypse How from the outside, while fighting his Alternate Universe Evil Twin, who also shares the same claim as he does. The latter is for much the same reasons as Char Aznable, with the added bonus of his Leitmotif overriding all other Leitmotifs in the games.
  • Additionally, Sanger and Ratsel form the infamous "Real men ride each other" meme via their respective Humongous Mecha, the Samurai-like Dygenguard, which mounts the Transforming Mecha Aussenseiter that can take on the appearance of a stallion.
  • Russel Bagman is so good at being The Generic Guy, he's the most generic badass to ever live. Points goes to him for slapping his Hot-Blooded superior when she got too Hot-Blooded for her own good.
  • You want a man who can use a run-of-the-mill, grunt-level Mecha-Mook to destroy a unique, rampaging Super Robot, using manual controls, WITHOUT PRESET COMMANDS, look to Kai Kitamura. As per his own quote, "I won't say that one fist is enough to destroy the world...But it can certainly destroy you!!"
• What, the other Kratos gets no mention? His sexy voice, Cool Sword, roguish alignment, angel wings, theme song, hot (but dead) wife and BETRAYAL OF HEAVEN ought to qualify to be as good or better than the Kratos that most people know.
• Yuri Lowell. How Badass is this man? He has fourteen Badass tropes on his character page. Surely that lets him qualify.
• Team Fortress 2: SAXTON HALE, Australian CEO. If you're not satisfied with his fine line of spy articles, you can take it up with him!
  • Some people think they can outsmart Heavy Weapons Guy. Maybe. Maybe. But we've yet to meet one that can outsmart boolit.
  • Saxton Hale is a badass in canon, having fought off a lion while simultaneously having a haircut, casually being able to punch over 2000 Psi, sleeping with an actual bear at night that he tamed while in the brazilian jungles and inventing the high-five. He also hunted the Yeti to extinction, literally punching them so hard they exploded.
  • Saxton Hale can capture points whilst ubercharged. And cloaked. And disguised. With his bare damn hands!
  • He even has his own facts site.
  • Sun Tzu, at least according to the Soldier, invented fighting and then perfected it, and later beat up two of every type of animal on earth.
  • Demopan◊ is becoming this.
• In the genre of sports games, there has never been, or never will be, a greater athlete than Tecmo Bowl's Bo Jackson.
  • Brazilians would think that's Allejo, from International Superstar Soccer Deluxe.
• Garrett: the greatest thief the world has never seen.
• Time Crisis brings us Wild Dog, who is infamous for seeming to die in one game, only to come back in the next ("Wild Dog!" "Don't you EVER die?!"). It's to the point where fans don't expect any defeat of his to finally result in his death anymore, and instead simply expect him to come back perfectly intact in the next game with an Arm Cannon upgrade or two.
• In Total War: Warhammer the minor Norscan lord Surtha Ek became known throughout the fandom as an invincible chariot commander due to the AI's tendency to recruit huge numbers of chariots and its ability to apply perfect micromanagement to all of them, erasing the unit's only real weakness. Indeed Surtha Ek became so associated with this meme that when Creative Assembly created the Norsca DLC Surtha Ek was given access to a chariot mount at level 1 and a pair of chariots in his starting army even though he's not a playable character.
  • "BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION!"
• Undertale:
  • Sans the Skeleton, due to being the most powerful monster in the underground despite his laziness, and REALLY showing it on the No Mercy path. "You're gonna have a bad time" indeed.
  • Undyne, a powerful, hammy, and relentless fighter who suplexes boulders because she can. She falls even more into this in the No Mercy run as Undyne the Undying, where she is the only boss that can take more than a couple hits from you; not even Sans can do that.
• Thanks to Winnie The Pooh's Home Run Derby, Redditors and 4channers everywhere have declared Christopher Robin to be a sadistic, condescending Eldritch Abomination.
  • Owl and Tigger sometimes get this treatment too, but it's usually Christopher who shows up in the edits as something akin to Giygas.
• B.J Blazkowicz of Wolfenstein. The current main page quote is one long Badass Boast to his name.
• The Xbox and PlayStation 3 are so large, they are visible from orbit and warp gravity around their frames.
• Kazuma Kiryu from Like a Dragon is a fine example. He Curb-Stomp Battle his way through everything, punches humans and tigers alike, survives wounds that would kill normal humans. His infamous Tiger Drop can counter anything that his thrown his way, regardless of his foe's strength or method of attack. In Yakuza 5, his manly Death Glare was enough to make two missiles targeting him change their course and explode behind him. He's up there with Jotaro, Kenshiro and Big Boss.
• Geralt of Rivia had to use both steel and silver when he killed Chuck Norris.
• According to Daniel Remar, Youtube user Reallyjoel's dad is the best gamer to have ever lived. There used to be a difficulty level suited to his skill, but he beat it so hard it ceased to exist.
  • Iji has a hidden Reallyjoel's dad difficulty level with an impossible time limit, no stat increases (and thus 2 HP), no health items, and a barrier at the end of the first level falsely telling you it will open if you kill all enemies. It is patently impossible.
  • Hero Core has a hidden Reallyjoel's dad difficulty level which IS possible, in theory—you are just dumped in a room with every boss in the game at the same time. Both, however, treat you to humorously modified intro scenes.
    After untying his blindfold, he stood up from the vat of burning coals and said: "That was a tough game. I almost had to use two toes!"
  • In Hyper Princess Pitch the equivalent difficulty level is called "Reallyjoel's Mom", as all difficulties in the game are named something feminine (Combat Lady, War Queen, Goddess of Explosions, etc). The enemies are powered up to the point that the first ones you encounter (which normally die in one hit and slowly walk towards you to inflict Collision Damage) move super fast, take a ridiculous number of hits to destroy, and rapidly fire fast moving projectiles. You will not make it past the first room unless you're playing tool-assisted.
• Meta-example: Likely because the old arcade tradition of 3-letter nicknames is still well and alive in some gaming circles in Japan, the acronym of "TAS" for "Tool-Assisted Speedrun" has spawned tongue-in-cheek references to a supposedly godly gamer who goes by the nickname of "TAS". "Playaround" TAS videos are often tagged with "TASさんの休日", which translates to "TAS's Day Off".
  • Likewise, Uncyclopedia has an article for the enigmatic AAA, the greatest gamer who ever lived.
• Zeke and Julie. Killing hordes of monsters with water guns, popsicles and soda? Check! Surviving a chainsaw across the belly and getting flattened by a Giant Baby? Check! Your neighborhood is safe if they are still alive!
• Europa Universalis:
  • France is semi-jokingly called the true Final Boss of IV. With its large population, high development and strong military ideas (averting Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys), France is known to often form a Big Blue Blob in the middle of Europe if England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire or some other nation doesn't neuter it in the opening years of the game.
  • Prussia, and its larvae form Brandenburg. Combining French morale, Swedish infantry combat bonuses and Japanese discipline with the army-enhancing ideas of the Quality tree, Prussia might not actually have access to Space Marines but with the utterly lopsided victories you can achieve with them, you would be easily forgiven for thinking they did.
  • Exaggerated for comedy with Ulm. Ulm is a tiny one-province republic in Germany that is posed... no, destined to conquer the world, and the wider galaxy too.^note Speaking seriously for a moment, Ulm does have the advantage of being a rather profitable free trade city within Austria's protective umbrella, it's a republic so you won't be saddled with a bad ruler for too long, and it can form the nation of Swabia with the right cores (in the process gaining fairly decent Swabian national ideas, prestige, new missions, and permanent claims to unowned territories in Switzerland, northern Italy and southern Germany).
  • Skanderbeg, the God-Emperor of Albania, is easily the best ruler in the world by the 1444 start date. With near-perfect 6/5/6 stats and generalship to put Napoleon and Wellington to shame, a skilled player can easily turn Albania into an Ottoman death trap; burying Mehmed's dream of conquering Europe in the treacherous mountains of the tiny one-province nation.

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