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- Dark Is Not Evil: The Hulk is a terrifying green rage monster, feared and hated by most of the MU for being a Person of Mass Destruction. In actuality, Hulk is a big Bruiser with a Soft Center and has helped saved the world from multiple massive threats like Onslaught and Xemnu.
- Grey Hulk aka Joe Fixit (a persona of Hulk's Split Personality). A malcious, scummy, tommy gun totting professional Las Vegas mob enforcer and who while smart is pretty much The Brute. Except Joe has served on the second Fantastic Four and in Immortal Hulk series Took a Level in Kindness and helps saves the day from General Ripper Fortean and the One Below All while still being somewhat of a sleazy mobster. The same comic expains Joe comes from Bruce watching a Film Noir as a kid after getting beaten by his father and created Joe as his idea of an adult, someone talks tough and cracks wise but will kick the ass of anyone who deserves it.
- Devil Hulk is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. A demonic creepy Hulk persona that only comes out at night, has creepy glowing eyes, weaponised Body Horror and does plan to end the entire world. Though it's shown he's really a Terror Hero who does care about innocent life, growling at a bystander woman during his fight with Abomination "Well what are you waiting for? A third monster move it lady!". Devil Hulk also genuinely loves Bruce and Green Savage Hulk and is fiercly protective of them, being the subconscious caring father figure Bruce always wanted.
- Betty Ross has become this of late, namely in her Red She-Hulk and Red Harpy forms. She has red skin, wears black, has a cruel and violent temperament. When she first appeared as Red She-Hulk and her idenity was a mystery she was a straight up Dark Action Girl, in later comics Betty becomes an Anti-Hero and as Red Harpy she's a Creepy Good Humanoid Abomination like Devil Hulk who protects her husband from Conflict Ball Avengers.
- Downplayed with Red Hulk aka Thaddeus Ross, he's a big red bully with a chip on his shoulder but redgardless he still fufills The Big Guy postion among the Avengers during Bendis's run and at his best becomes a case of Affably Evil. Even he's Red Venom Ghost Rider, Ross is still technically a hero since his opponent at the time was Blackheart.
- Skaar, Hulk's son has long black mattered hair, black jagged torso markings and wields a nasty looking sword. He even starts off as a villain before reconciling with his father Bruce and becomes The Mole and Token Good Teammate of the Dark Avengers.
- Amazingly both Carl “Crusher” Creel Absorbing Man and his wife Mary MacPherran aka Titania become this Gamma Flight, despite spending the previous decades as major thorns in the sides of Marvel’s heroes and working for Doctor Doom. They turn over a new leaf in Immortal Hulk upon coming to the conclusion being Good Feels Good and actually help Hulk fight against his father Brian Banner who is the avatar of One Below All as well as save world from Dario Agger’s Eldritch Abominations. They’re still brutish and jerky, but firmly on the side on the angels.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: One of the best-known cases in the Marvel Universe is Bruce Banner and his long-time love interest Betty Ross. Her father, General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, didn't approve of the relationship when Banner was just a nebbish scientist. Then the Hulk happened and Ross went General Ripper, determined to either kill the Hulk or use his power for his own benefit. He blames everyone except himself for what this did to his relationship with his daughter.
- Dead Man's Switch: When Bruce Banner starts working for S.H.I.E.L.D., he first sets up one of these in case they decide to just kill him to neutralize the threat presented by the Hulk. Prior to his initial meeting with Maria Hill, he steals highly classified information — implied to be damning enough to bring down the whole organization if released — and gives it to a contact (who turns out to be Daredevil) along with instructions to release it if Banner doesn't check in with him on a regular basis.
- Dead Sidekick: In the early 90s, the Hulk had a sidekick named Jim Wilson, a homeless kid with HIV. Eventually he died of AIDS in a Very Special Episode.
- Death Is Cheap:
- General Ross died from fighting Zzzax, but his body was stolen by The Leader and resurrected by the Troyjan.
- Death Is Cheap: Betty Ross died of radiation poisoning, but she didn't really die. She washed up on a beach, was experimented on by Thaddeus Ross, became Red She-Hulk, lost her She-Hulk powers, got shot & died again and came back with her Harpy powers.
- And lampshaded again in another issue during Nick Fury's funeral, where his friends laugh and crack jokes, saying things like "What d'ya think it is this time, aliens?" By the end of the story they realize that he's not coming back, and look genuinely mournful. Of course, as we all know, he did come back anyway.
- Someone even called Marvel out on their frequent use of comic book death in the letters pages of that very same issue, to which the response was "Okay, okay, we won't kill Nick Fur—Oops."
- This is explained in the Immortal Hulk series when it comes to Gamma Beasts as there is a strange green door that can be crossed, bringing Gamma Beasts back from the dead. For Banner, he's more than happy to just die, but it's suggested one of his Hulk identities charges back through.
- One story in She-Hulk's run had her move to have a dead man's ghost testify in his wrongful death case against the company he worked for. When the other side objected, Shulkie called Ben Grimm to testify about how he came back from the dead. When counsel objected the dead person in this case was an ordinary human and not a super-being, she then asked by a show of hands how many people in the courtroom had been resurrected from some cataclysmic event. About half the people in the room (including one of the other defense attorneys) raised their hand.
- Debate and Switch:
- Thus far, every attempt to separate Hulk and Banner into different entities has ended disastrously. On one occasion, it was determined that the physical split made Banner physically ill and that he couldn't live unless he combined with the Hulk again. On another, Doctor Doom performed surgery on his brain and cloned a body allowing Banner to exist as a separate physical person, which failed when the cloned Banner died. But far more often, it's argued that for all its faults, the Hulk and Banner make each other "better" people than either would be separately. In either case, the concept of whether or not separating the two would ever "free" Banner is almost always rendered moot.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Bruce Banner was introduced without a family. Eventually it was revealed that his mental troubles partly derive from his mother being killed by his abusive father. Bruce's longtime love-interest (and, for a time, wife) Betty Ross was introduced having lost her mother. The Hulk's occasional side-kick Rick Jones has been an orphan from the start.
- Deconstruction: Bruce Banner turned into the super strong Hulk thanks to a gamma bomb explosion, endowing him with the strength and stamina to battle threats that even some other super strong heroes may struggle with, but Bruce has little to no control over the Hulk, which often results in a lot of property damage and turning Bruce into a fugitive hunted all over the world by the army.
- Immortal Hulk: The series deconstructs several elements of the Hulk mythos as well as some from super-hero comics in general. Since this is a horror series, many of these tread into
Nightmare Fuel territory.- Death Is Cheap is horrifically deconstructed when it's learned that the reason the Hulk and gamma mutates keep coming back is because death has a metaphorical revolving door for them to keep walking out of. Made worse is the fact that it's due to an Eldritch Abomination that is The Anti-God, which is only bringing them back so it has pawns it can use to enact its own plans. There's also the trauma of having to experience death in all of it's pain and terror only to come back repeatedly and realize it's going to keep happening again and again and that you may end up surviving thousands of years past the ends of your friends, loved ones and everything you ever held to be important.
- I Did What I Had to Do is also given a harsh look from various angles and sides. The Avengers try to bring in Bruce and end up tangling with the Hulk. They can ultimately only win when they use a Kill Sat to hit him with a superbeam of solar energy which ends up not only killing Bruce (again), but destroys what's left of the town they were fighting in. Later, the opposite side is looked at with General Fortean, who believes he is absolutely justified in doing anything to fight the Hulk, while acting like a Knight Templar. However, it turns out that Reggie is actually mentally disturbed and everything he says it just an excuse to bring order to his world at any cost. It's only at the end when he's in the Below-Place that he realize the horrible mistake he made in pursuing Gamma-based weapon research, which ends up damning himself for all time.
- Immortal Hulk: The series deconstructs several elements of the Hulk mythos as well as some from super-hero comics in general. Since this is a horror series, many of these tread into
- Depending on the Artist: Of all the Marvel characters, the Hulk has probably the greatest variety of appearances. He started out looking like an 8-foot beefed up version of Frankenstein's monster (probably not accidentally, as Universal's Frankenstein film was one of the inspirations for the character), but now varies tremendously from artist to artist: facial features resembling anything from a human brute through to a full-on caveman, how muscular he is, how big he is, his hairstyle, the amount of veins visible,the length of his limbs in relation to each other, the length and color of his shredded pants, etc. And that's just the Savage (green) Hulk, never mind his other personas...
- What's more, the Hulk's appearance will vary with the same artist. Each artist will usually keep the face consistant, but his overall size and proportions will vary from panel to panel.
- Other variables; Hulk's eyes. Green or red? Blood; green or red? His third wife Caiera and their son Skaar also have variable eye colors, from blue to green.
- Of course, since the Peter David years, it's been established that the Hulk's appearance and personality are a direct reflection of Banner's subconscious mental state, so many of the artists' different approaches to him could probably be put down to Banner's frequently-shifting psychological troubles.
- In the early Silver Age, the Hulk didn't even need different artists to get inconsistent. Jack Kirby was particularly variable on how many toes the Hulk had, drawing him with three, four, or five toes per foot virtually at random. Contemporary artists use this as a Shout-Out opportunity, and flashbacks to the early Silver Age (like Hulk's brief tenure on the Avengers) often show him with three toes.
- There’s also Bruce Banner himself as artists make him a beanpole nerd so that the Hulking Out is more visually effective. While other artists give Bruce a rugged look which is fitting given his drifter-like lifestyle.
- Depending on the Writer: The Hulk has numerous factors of his character that vary between writers; Whether he's a dumb brute that can only speak in Hulk Speak, a completely mindless monster who can't talk at all, or someone with a fairly average intellect with a somewhat odd speech pattern. Also depending on the writer is the Hulk's power level; while it is in a state of flux depending on his emotional state, some writers have him being knocked out by an average python choking him for less than a minute, and dying from being impaled by a trident when he's previously survived wounds that make that seem like a papercut by comparison. Another significantly variable thing is how goodnatured the Hulk is; he can be basically heroic but bad-tempered, amoral and mostly wanting to be left alone, or a monster ruled by pure id who has done far worse than kill people. Greg Pak's Hulk, for a particular outlier, is a flat-out Technical Pacifist who subconsciously avoids killing people even in the midst of a rampage. This is somewhat justified by Banner having multiple personality syndrome and there being thousands of Hulks in his mind, but many of these traits have been ascribed to the iconic "Savage" Hulk personality alone.
- Destructive Saviour:
- His sons are also this. In fact, they may well be more dangerous than their father, because while the Hulk typically tries not to kill other people, his sons have no such compunction.
- Determinator: This is the Hulk to a T, especially when his loved ones are in danger. Regular Bruce Banner as well, he tries to save the day even when he can't turn into the Hulk. With just his brain and his wits.
- Deus Angst Machina: The series evetually got to the point where it more or less became a parody of itself for half a decade during the Dark Age because the writers were sick of the endless angst (probably).
- Devil, but No God:
- A good example is when an old flame allows Bruce Banner to see all his inner personalities (each a different Hulk), one of whom takes the form of a monstrous reptilian devil. Devil Hulk tells Bruce "There's a little bit of God and the Devil in everyone", but the comics have yet to get around to that God part. We do get to see that an incarnation of the Beast lives in Bruce's head as well.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The Hulk often invokes this trope, whether he's smacking around Thor and Hercules, or smashing some multiversal threat with the Defenders.
- In the 1970s, veteran scribes Marv Wolfman and Len Wein wrote The Incredible Hulk: Stalker From the Stars, wherein the Hulk crosses paths with an Eldritch Abomination attempting to escape its prison beneath the Earth so it could conquer and enslave humanity. In this case, the Hulk doesn't punch Cthulhu out so much as rip him to pieces and burn him alive. Ouch.
- One early foe of his was the Galaxy Master, whose most common form was a huge gaping maw hanging in the middle of space and destroys planets to consume them as food. Hulk's answer? Jump inside it and smash it from within.
- Then there is the time he blew out the mystical flames composing Dormammu's head by smacking his palms together. Dormammu wasn't out for the 10-count though.
- He also on one occasion nearly cancelled out the power of the Order-Half of the In-Betweener, who can give Galactus a fight.
- Other feats include the Hulk handling the infinite power from the singularity of the core of a black hole and ripping apart a weapon designed to withstand and kill the Celestials.
- Onslaught was a powerful fusion of Professor X and Magneto's conscious into a Psychic Entity who had the power of other Omega-Level mutants such as Franklin Richards and Nate Gray and could create a sun from nothing. A Invincible Villain for Marvel's heroes... until Jean Grey removed Bruce Banner's conscious from Hulk - que one very, very, very angry Megaton Punch and Onslaught's physical form is destroyed. Unfortunatly, this also had the side effect of opening a dimensional rift.
- In one Hulk book, Red Hulk punched The Watcher, then went on to punch an Elder of the Universe to death. Justified in that Red Hulk's energy-absorbing powers basically mean that the stronger his opponent is, the stronger he is.
- In the Immortal Hulk, the Jolly Green Giant is up against The One Below All the exact opposite of The Above All aka God basically an Eldritch Abomination so powerful even Mephisto (who’s fought Galactus) is scared of it. But after a Heroic Second Wind Hulk does a Shockwave Clap that literally blows the One Below All away
. Hulk admits afterward he only bought them a minute breathing room to escape the Lovecraftian nightmare, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Made even more awesome retrospective with the revelation that One Below All is really the Superpowered Evil Side of the One Above All, but Hulk still clapped him anyway. Justified though since Hulk is apparently the child of One Above All and the counterbalance to creation by being a force of destruction itself.
- Disability-Negating Superpower: In one storyline, Bruce Banner is shot in the head while turning into the Hulk. With the Hulk's Healing Factor, he survives (and even manages to remain in control of it) but, since the bullet remains lodged in his brain, has to refrain from turning back into Banner at all costs or die immediately. This continues until the Leader manages to remove the bullet.
- Disappeared Dad: Bruce Banner had once realized that he himself became one, as two or more of his Hulk personas have made children under contrived situations; Bruce in one self-introspecting moment felt he should be responsible for them, awkwardly attempting to connect with his estranged children. It didn’t quite work as none of them felt a connection to Bruce Banner and he didn’t try to push things much further, just accepting it as one of the many things that never works out in his life.
- Distaff Counterpart: Bruce Banner inadvertently created the She-Hulk when he provided a blood transfusion for his cousin Jennifer. Partly due to not having multiple personalities she handles the transition much better than he did. There's also his daughter Lyra.
- Distant Finale: Peter David set the final issue of his 12-year-run 10 years after the previous issue. A Daily Bugle interview with Rick Jones serves as a fitting end to both David's tenure on the title and the Hulk mythos in general.
- Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe:
- Bruce Banner smoked a pipe in his first appearance, in The Incredible Hulk #1. In The '90s when Hulk had Bruce Banner's brain he also smoked a normal sized pipe, which for him was very tiny.
- A one-shot character in the Hulk series was a brainy college student based very loosely on Richard Loeb; he smoked a pipe as part of his "smartest guy in the room" persona.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": This seems to be a recurring theme with Gamma mutates.
- Calling The Hulk "Bruce" is a good way to end up on the receiving end of the worst beat down of your life. Justified, though, as they really are separate personalities inhabiting the same body. And they do not like each other.
- In the same vein, Joe Fixit doesn't like to be called "Hulk", and neither does the Doc Omega personality, who sees the name Hulk as something pushed on him. And the Maestro hates to called Hulk or Banner.Maestro: I'm sorry, Banner can't hear you right now. Please leave your message at the sound of a thousand cracking femurs.
- Just narrowly averted in Immortal Hulk, when someone calls that Hulk Banner and he just asks "are you trying to piss me off?"
- Double Jump: In a very early issue, the Hulk somehow does this by flexing to avoid face planting into the side of a bridge.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Averted. In Hulk: Future Imperfect, one of the Maestro's slave girls has sex with the temporarily paralyzed (and unwilling) Merged Hulk. It's not made a big deal, and the word "rape" is never used, but Banner regards it very seriously, and mentions how helpless and out of control it made him feel. When talking about it with Doc Samson, he has trouble even articulating what happened, and it's not because he's embarrassed.
- The Dragon: The Leader also sometimes used Rock and Redeemer as Dragons.
- The Dreaded: The Hulk scares the hell out of the rest of the Marvel Universe. The most powerful heroes - even knowing full well that he's Not Evil, Just Misunderstood - take his arrival as seriously as that of someone like Doctor Doom, if not more. Given what a rampaging Hulk can do, it's not without reason. He could get angry, you see. And you wouldn't like him when he's angry. In everything from trading cards to the actual comic books, other heroes are shown to be very reluctant to confront him.
- In Greg Pak's run, people start to wonder if Banner is actually the more dangerous one. He is.
- Deadpool had a memorable meltdown when he found out that he had to get a blood sample from the big green galoot in an attempt to cure his currently-failing Healing Factor. His reaction was to talk him up using the lyrics of his old cartoon theme song ("Ain't he unglamorous").
- Subverted with Captain America. He not only holds immense respect for Hulk in either form (he bitched out the Illuminati for sending Hulk into space) but it has been said by numerous characters that the only thing Cap would need to do to stop a rampaging Hulk would be to stand in front of him.
- The new Hulk personality introduced in Immortal Hulk terrifies even Thor, he refers to him as a Devil.
- Dumb Is Good: The Hulk is usually The Hero or at least an Anti-Hero. However, Depending on the Writer, he is near mindless or at least has a childlike mentality. Many of the times Hulk clashes with the heroes is due to some misunderstanding or someone fooling him into thinking one of the good guys did him wrong. His main villain is an Evil Genius named The Leader who has super intelligence. Likewise in Ultimate Marvel, Hulk defeats Abomination because the latter "thinks too much."
- Dynamic Akimbo: Hulk himself rarely does this, but the Merged "Professor" Hulk took the pose often, and was one of the more confident, handsome and intelligent forms of the character.
E
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- The day-one Hulk wasn't just different from the Savage Hulk, he wasn't even much like the Gray Hulk is portrayed these days. He was Banner by day and Hulk by night regardless of his anger level - no Hulking Out at noon no matter how angry, no staying himself past dusk no matter how calm. As the Hulk he was similar to Frankenstein's Monster, whom he more closely resembled in the old days — he could be outright malevolent, though you could see how he was driven to it. He once nearly deployed a doomsday device he invented just because he'd had it with puny humans. (Yes, invented, as Hulk. Loss of intelligence meant things got harder, but he was still brilliant. With this Hulk's misanthropy, that's very bad.) Thankfully, Rick Jones, being close to the site of the disaster, gained a mental link with Banner that allows him to influence the Hulk. The world would literally have ended by issue three at Hulk's hands otherwise. He was less the hero and more Banner's Enemy Within, with tremendous (but not at current levels) strength, most of his intelligence, and a belief that those rotten humans did not deserve to exist. It was all Rick Jones could do to keep him aimed at the people chasing Banner, and bad guys they encountered, instead of... everyone. It takes them awhile before the character is associated with anger, around his first visit with The Inhumans where they establish that his strength increases with his rage.
- The situation with the Hulk's intelligence was lampshaded in an issue of Mark Waid's The Avengers run, where the Silver Age Hulk doesn't understand why the present-day Spider-Man keeps trying to use Hulk Speak to communicate with him.
- The Hulk was also originally gray. According to Stan Lee, "Well, my first choice was gray 'cause he was a monster, he was supposed to be scary and I figured gray might be a scary color. But there was a problem. When the book was printed, the printer had trouble keeping the color consistent. So I had to use a different color and I figured green, no superhero I knew wore green at the time. So I said, 'Okay, let's color him green.' It was as casual as that."
- The jump to Tales to Astonish changed the transformation trigger to extreme stress or elevated heartrate, not specifically anger. Also different early on was the trigger worked both ways. Hulk getting too emotionally worked-up would make him transform back into Banner.
- The later Immortal Hulk series intentionally went back to the character's roots, with the Hulk depicted as a far more intelligent and overtly malicious figure than most fans were generally used to. The series also revives some of the Hulk's original mechanics, with "the night is his time" being a repeated theme-phrase. The way the "Immortal" part works is that if Bruce Banner is killed, the Hulk will rise as soon as night falls on his corpse.
- Hulk also had an ever-changing number of toes. When he first appeared, he had five toes. When his book was cancelled and he resurfaced in Fantastic Four, he now had three. When he joined the Avengers, he then had four, but went back to three by the second issue, only for this number to vary wildly in each subsequent appearance before the artists finally settled on five in Tales to Astonish. This was the subject in a Mythology Gag in Ultron Forever, where the Hulk transported from the past still had three toes.
- Originally, the Hulk could also fly, but this ability was quickly dropped (retconned into super jumps that could be mistaken for flight by witnesses).
- The Hulk being a founding member of The Avengers. It didn't take Stan Lee long to figure out that the Hulk wasn't exactly a team player, such that by the third issue of the series he's actually fighting against the others in full-on supervillain mode. Later comics have dealt with his on-again, off-again membership in all manner of ways as his intelligence has fluctuated.
- The day-one Hulk wasn't just different from the Savage Hulk, he wasn't even much like the Gray Hulk is portrayed these days. He was Banner by day and Hulk by night regardless of his anger level - no Hulking Out at noon no matter how angry, no staying himself past dusk no matter how calm. As the Hulk he was similar to Frankenstein's Monster, whom he more closely resembled in the old days — he could be outright malevolent, though you could see how he was driven to it. He once nearly deployed a doomsday device he invented just because he'd had it with puny humans. (Yes, invented, as Hulk. Loss of intelligence meant things got harder, but he was still brilliant. With this Hulk's misanthropy, that's very bad.) Thankfully, Rick Jones, being close to the site of the disaster, gained a mental link with Banner that allows him to influence the Hulk. The world would literally have ended by issue three at Hulk's hands otherwise. He was less the hero and more Banner's Enemy Within, with tremendous (but not at current levels) strength, most of his intelligence, and a belief that those rotten humans did not deserve to exist. It was all Rick Jones could do to keep him aimed at the people chasing Banner, and bad guys they encountered, instead of... everyone. It takes them awhile before the character is associated with anger, around his first visit with The Inhumans where they establish that his strength increases with his rage.
- Eat Me: The Hulk let the Galaxy Master eat him, so that he can smash it from the inside.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The Hulk has defeated some of his opponents this way, such as by spraying the villainess Vapor with oxygen when she had transformed herself into hydrogen, effectively turning her into water (which should have required burning it), or by beating X-Ray (a living field of radiation) with a lead pipe, which disrupts his radioactive body.
- This is much more more fun if you realize that pure oxygen and pure hydrogen tend to explode when combined.
- Vapor and X-Ray were both members of the U-Foes, a group of villains who tried to get superpowers by copying Reed Richards' flawed space flight. They ended up as direct analogues of the Fantastic Four (but evil, and therefore punchable), making them Elementals twice removed.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: The Hulk's "Worldbreaker" form basically counts as this. Hulk's basic power is that the angrier he gets, the stronger he gets, seemingly without an upper limit. The "Worldbreaker" form is when he gets so angry that his strength is enough to break a planet.
- Embodiment of Vice:
- The Hulk himself is wrath, of course, but there are more subtle examples in his various personalities - Banner classically dealing with issues of self-loathing and fatalism, for instance.
- Peter David characterized the savage Green Hulk like a child prone to tantrums. Grey Hulk on the other hand would be the embodiment of pubescent desires. As Joe Fixit he worked as mafia muscle and led a hedonist lifestyle in Las Vegas: snappy dresses, fine meals, parties and booze, sleeping with beautiful women...
- The Hulk himself is wrath, of course, but there are more subtle examples in his various personalities - Banner classically dealing with issues of self-loathing and fatalism, for instance.
- Emerald Power: Most victims of gamma radiation turn green on top of gaining superpowers - Hulk himself, She-Hulk, The Leader...
- Emotional Bruiser: Naturally, the Hulk has this going for him a good deal. While he's mostly associated with anger, he often displays other intense emotions in combat; such as extreme sadness or fear. Hulk in most versions represents raw, unfettered emotion free from intellect or reason, so it's expected.
- Emotions vs. Stoicism: This is a central core of the franchise. Bruce Banner lived much of his life as a stoic scientist who avoided clear display of emotion. When exposed to gamma rays though, he tends to transform into The Hulk, who's basically raw, unprocessed emotion in its purest form. Writers will play around with the concept; Banner is a scientist and helpful, but some writers will point out he was building weapons of mass destruction before being transformed, or otherwise portray him like an asshole. The Hulk is a Gentle Giant who ultimately doesn't go out and start fights, but at the same time is incredibly destructive and impossible to control once he gets going. Neither personality particularly likes the other.
- Evil Counterpart:
- Oddly enough, Hulk's Rogues Gallery also includes someone else's Evil Counterparts. The U-Foes are a group of four villains whose origin, powers, and personalities are all extremely similar to those of the Fantastic Four. Strangely, they have never faced the FF despite all of the characters being Marvel Comics characters.
- Brian Banner is the evil counterpart to Bruce both are nuclear scientists with hidden rage inside them, difference is Bruce as a man or The Hulk always at least has some conscience and innate goodness (thanks to his mom) while Brian is immoral, horrifically abusive and serves an Eldritch Abomination. In Bruce's mind Brian is represented as a giant demonic snake-like hulk.
- The Maestro, an evil future version of the Hulk who acts as the ruler of a Bad Future caused by nuclear wars.
- The Red Hulk, who is even more violent, almost sociopathic, and trigger-happy then the Hulk.
- Evil Overlord: The Hulk's evil alternate self the Maestro in The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect who ruled as a brutal despot in a post-apocalyptic society with an iron fist and lives off as a hedonist that surrounds himself with concubines. He is still a dangerous foe, since he has Banner's intellect, the Hulk's strength augmented several times and absolutely no moral inhibitions.
- Expy: Bruce Banner and Hulk began as expies of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, respectively.
- Expecting Someone Taller: The Hulk's son, Skaar, said this when he first met his father on Earth.
- Expository Theme Tune: from the 1960s cartoon, "Doc Bruce Banner, belted by gam-ma rays, turned into the Hulk..." As opposed to the Opening Narration to the live action TV series.
- Extra-ore-dinary:
- Michael Steel aka Ironclad of the U-Foes was transformed into a creature of organic metal when he and his associates attempted to replicate the accident that gave the Fantastic Four their powers.
F
- Fallen Hero: Among one of the Hulk's most dangerous foes is a future version of himself, the Maestro, an insane, hedonistic, sadistic tyrant.
- False Utopia: In one of the comics, Bruce Banner has a dream where all his biggest wishes are true: married to Betty, friend to her father and other former enemies... This is an illusion from his inner monster, the Devil Hulk, in which Bruce could be trapped if he let the devil take over his body. Bruce turned down the offer.
- Fantastic Measurement System: When Amadeus Cho studies magical phenomena, he measures the reality-warping field strength in "hercs", one herc being equal to the field strength of his friend Hercules. It sounds like "hertz" so it's pretty natural to tack on SI prefixes like megahercs or gigahercs, but most of the measurements he gives are between zero and five hercs.
- Fanservice Pack: Hulk met Rick Jones and Jim Wilson while they were in their teens, but more than a decade passed and they grew into handsome, ripped young men.
- Fashion Dissonance: The comics of course started off with plenty of this with Rick Jones’s checkered jacket, Betty Ross’s Jacqueline Kennedy outfit and Bruce Banner’s iconic purple pants which wouldn’t have been seen as so garish back then as it is today. Interestingly later Hulk comics such as Immortal Hulk when flashing back to early days unlike other comics deliberately don’t bother modernizing the outfits, no matter how much it jars with the modern characterization of the cast, such as Betty who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a pillow box nowadays.
- Faster Than They Look: Characters often assume that the giant mass of muscle would move rather slowly. They have a tendency to be surprised and terrified when they see just how quickly he can carry all that bulk.
- Fearsome Foot: The series and its adaptations often emphasize the Hulk's massive size and strength by showing his feet tear apart Banner's footwear, or stomp on something.
- The Fettered: Hulk's full power is as good as always greatly restrained by Banner, as otherwise his slightest movement would destroy the world around him. This nearly happened at the end of World War Hulk, and he is constantly trying to manage the destructive potential within him, so nobody comes to harm. In contrast, the Ultimate Marvel version of the Hulk is a downright scary version of The Unfettered. In every way that Ultimate Banner restrains or represses himself (which is every way), the Hulk cuts loose. For instance, Ultimate Banner is a vegetarian. Ultimate Hulk is a humanitarian.
- Finger Poke of Doom:
- During the Mr. Fixit storyline, the Grey Hulk (almost as strong as green, as smart as Banner, and totally amoral) gave a human opponent (Doctor Octopus, see below) "da Finger". A finger thump to the forehead, knocking him out.
- While it happened off-panel, later during the Merged Hulk period he says to the Punisher, "If I had used two fingers instead of one, you'd still be out cold."
- Flanderization: The Hulk's raw power has been greatly exaggerated. In his first appearance, Hulk was perfectly capable of fluent speech and clear-minded reasoning. Over the years the "dumb" part of Dumb Muscle got amplified along with the "muscle", until we reach the iconic "HULK SMASH!" levels. Then, Peter David got the idea of explaining this as two different facets of Bruce Banner's fractured mind manifesting in different types of Hulk. How his level of strength tends to be inversely proportional to his intelligence has been explained by that his ability to reason tends to put limits to how much pure rage he can build up. An alternate universe supervillain, the Maestro, was even created out of the idea of "what if the Hulk stopped caring about holding back, then lived for a hundred years?"
- Contemporary Marvel writers have some fun with this when time-travel shenanigans bring later characters in contact with early Silver Age Hulk. Heroes (and villains) expecting the monosyllabic rage-monster are shocked to meet a gruff, clever Hulk who is functionally equivalent to a stronger, tougher, more devious Ben Grimm.
- Fleeting Demographic Rule: The relationship between Bruce Banner and The Hulk is permanently changed. Maybe Hulk is the one in charge now. Maybe it's Banner. Maybe they're separate. Maybe one side is Darker and Edgier, and one side is completely gone.
- Flight, Strength, Heart: The Hulk has super-strength and durability... and the ability to see astral forms. Which is more useful than you might think, but not that much more useful. To be even more obscure, he can also always sense his location relative to the place he was "born" in the gamma bomb.
- Foil:
- The Hulk and She-Hulk
- Bruce is rarely the one in control of his Hulk form, which is more often than not being used by one of his many, many split personalities. Jennifer is almost always in control of her She-Hulk form.
- Bruce wants more than anything to be normal. Jennifer has in the past done whatever it takes to remain She-Hulk permanently.
- Hulk represents everything Bruce represses about himself. She-Hulk is everything that Jennifer ever wanted to let out.
- The Hulk and She-Hulk
- Formula with a Twist: Hulk was the first major attempt to create a flawed costumed superhero. After learning that the monstrous The Thing was the most popular member of the Fantastic Four, Stan Lee decided to take the idea up to eleven and make a monster and less than a perfect hero.
- Four-Fingered Hands: The Hulk has had an ever-changing number of toes. When he first appeared, he had five toes. When his book was cancelled and he resurfaced in Fantastic Four, he now had three. When he joined the Avengers, he then had four, but went back to three by the second issue, only for this number to vary wildly in each subsequent appearance before the artists finally settled on five in Tales to Astonish. This was the subject in a Mythology Gag in Ultron Forever, where the Hulk transported from the past still had three toes.
- Four-Star Badass: General Thaddeus E. "Thunderbolt" Ross.
- Fourth-Wall Observer: The Hulk used to pal around with a group of super-powered do-gooders called The Pantheon. Except Paris wasn't quite the do-gooder they thought. In addition to causing outright chaos, he speaks to the reader, is aware when the end of the book is coming up and at one point, turns the book OFF. Creepy.
- Freudian Trio: In the early 90s, writer Peter David had psychologist Doc Samson use hypnosis to the integrate the Hulk's different personalities which he described as:
- Id: The savage, green Hulk,
- Ego: The cunning grey Hulk aka "Joe Fixit", and
- Superego: Bruce Banner, and combine them into one new Hulk.
- Friend to All Living Things: The Savage Hulk. No, really. We've seen him get along with children and small animals and such. You won't like him when he's angry, but bad guys (and General Ross) just keep insisting on making him angry. Convince him you're not like them, or failing that, listen when he says "leave Hulk alone," and nothing has to get smashed.
- From a Single Cell: The Hulk's future incarnation, the Maestro, was capable of regenerating from dust.
- Fugitive Arc: Given his penchant for massive destruction and poor publicity, a frequent story arc is Banner Walking the Earth on the run from authorities who want to capture the Hulk.
- Full-Circle Revolution: One story has Professor Hulk taken to a planet where a green race was enslaved by a red race. Professor Hulk helped the green people overthrow the rulers and before leaving asked them to live peacefully together. Looking through a telescope as he was getting far off he saw the red people enslaved by the green ones and wept.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Occasionally his Magic Pants fail him and he's forced to battle in the nude; this is generally reserved for the more savage incarnations of the Hulk, especially when he's the threat, not one of the protagonists.
- One comic from the 90's, where right after beating the hell out of Captain America, the savage Hulk had a particularly brutal fight with Thor, all while completely naked. The Hulk won.
- Future Me Scares Me: The Hulk once had to overthrow his tyrannical future self, the Maestro. Ever since then, Bruce has had a fear of becoming the Maestro, one way or another.
G
- Galactic Conqueror: Arm'Chedon, also known as Armageddon, leader of the Troyjan Empire and foe of the Hulk during his days with the Pantheon. Arm'Chedon was so busy conquering planets that he literally did not notice that he had two sons until one of them died on earth harassing the Pantheon, and the other was later killed in trial by combat with the Hulk. He swore vengeance, but got all of one appearance until well over a decade later. Interestingly, his relative obscureness might have worked in his favor, as there's no sign that his empire suffered the massive amounts of destruction that Marvel's other galactic empires (The Kree, Skrulls, and Shi'ar) have in recent years.
- Gathering Steam: Bruce Banner is an ordinary human and needs to be pissed off to even trigger his transformation into the Hulk, but even once he has transformed, the Hulk is unable to bring his full strength to bear right away, as it is directly correlated to his anger. The angrier he gets, the stronger he gets, and thus with every injury he takes, he gathers more and more steam.
- General Ripper:
- General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross is obsessed with stopping the Hulk at any cost, often interfering with Bruce Banner's attempts to cure himself in the process. Which one he actually hates can get blurry — he once tried to shoot a de-Hulked Bruce Banner on the day Bruce married his daughter. He's even willing to Hulkify himself (and his daughter, in addition to brainwashing her) if it means stopping the Hulk (he became the Red one).
- There's also Ross's expy General Ryker.
- The Red Hulk has his own General Ripper nemesis in General Fortean, Ross's former apprentice, who blames him for Ross's death. Of course, Red Hulk is Ross. The irony is not lost on him. Fortean returns in Immortal Hulk, which showcases some of the differences between them - Ross has some humanizing elements, and the occasional standard. Fortean does not, and will do absolutely anything to destroy his enemies, including ignoring the chain of command, forcing everyone under him to go along with his insane vendetta.
- Part of it is due to Ross' secret envy of Banner's power. Deep down Ross wanted to be the Hulk.
- General Failure: General Ross' lifelong goal (some would say obsession) with bringing the Hulk to justice has obviously caused more casualties and property damage than he ever could have prevented, and cost the U.S. Army a fortune, all without results. This probably has something to do with the fact he keeps insisting on taking on the guy who turns into a giant, super-strong, bulletproof monster when under stress... by shooting him on sight. And it only gets worse; Ross proves himself the worst hypocrite imaginable when he becomes the Red Hulk, becoming just as much a menace as the one he tries to bring down.
- Generational Saga: Interestingly, generation is a bit of a fluid thing here. The first generation is Bruce Banner, Jen Walters, and their supporting casts, then we get the second generation with Skaar and Lyra, the Hulk's son and daughter, as well as members of the first generation becoming Hulks themselves.
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: In Ultimate Marvel, the Hulk is created as a result of Banner's attempts to replicate the effects of the Super Serum that created Captain America, rather than radiation. It almost works perfectly; beyond the fact Ultimate Hulk is uncontrollable and, as Banner describes him in the Ultimate Hulk/Ultimate Iron Man crossover, a moron (he was supposed to have been as smart as he is strong), Ultimate Hulk is everything Banner set out to make him. He has Super-Strength, a Healing Factor, Nigh-Invulnerability, and he can even subconsciously mutate to match requirements of his environment — this is most dramatically portrayed in the aforementioned Hulk/Iron Man crossover, where in the span of seconds he transforms himself to be capable of surviving on Venus.
- Genius Bruiser: The amount of genius varies on which personality is in control, although they have been known to borrow one another's skills if necessary. Even the Savage Hulk is a Combat Pragmatist who can use the environment to his advantage, and despite declarations, he is not just "HULK SMASH!"
- He started out as brilliant physicist Dr. Bruce Banner, before the radiation accident that turned him into the Hulk. Different personalities, including that of Dr. Banner himself, took control of the Hulk's body at different points and showed varying levels of brains and brawn, depending on which one was currently running things. They would occasionally borrow each others' skills, with Banner lending Joe Fixit his memories and computer skills when Fixit needed to figure out who had poisoned the Hulk and who was about to kill them. It Makes Sense in Context.
- At the start of the "Secret Wars" arc, the heroes are teleported to a remote corner of the universe, Reed Richards immediately announced what has happened and how it must have been done, and Hulk, who currently possesses Banner's mind, only snarls "That's obvious, Richards!" while The Thing and Johnny Storm are still trying to catch up with what Reed just said.
- Merged Hulk, A.K.A "The Professor," is a Split-Personality Merge of the three main personas that retains Banner's intelligence. This form is perhaps best remembered as the one used in the early Marvel vs. Capcom games.
- In Ultimate Marvel, The Abomination is just as strong as Hulk, but retains his genius IQ.
- Also, numerous writers have taken note that innocents are never hurt during Hulk's violent rampage, and have since implied that even when he's a neanderthal-like monster, Bruce Banner's mind is constantly doing calculations to ensure that his actions never cause anything but collateral damage to buildings. Somewhat confirmed in Greg Pak's Hulk run, in which while fighting his son Skaar, the Hulk slammed the ground as if to attack, but was really aiming to pile up sand to shore up a collapsing building.
- Ultimate Hulk reveals that he retains his genius-level intellect in his fight with Abomination.
- Also demonstrated in Ultimate Hulk vs Wolverine (which took place before that fight but due to delays wasn't finished until considerably afterward) where Ultimate Hulk is shown relaxing casually, offering Logan some hot cocoa.
- Hulk's cousin, Jennifer Walters, aka She-Hulk, is both a super-strong super-heroine and a practicing lawyer.
- The Doc Green state is unique in which the Hulk is actually smarter Bruce!
- Gentle Giant: Sorta. In the regular comic stories, he's shown to (at times) be at least a Bruiser with a Soft Center. However, in many of the cartoons, especially the ones aimed toward the pre-teen or younger demographic, he's usually this.
- George Lucas Altered Version: Reprints of earlier stories would change the Hulk from gray to green, but this is no longer necessary as the gray Hulk form is now established in continuity.
- The Glasses Come Off: When Bruce Banner gets angry, the glasses come off. If he plans on getting angry, he'll take the glasses off ahead of time.
- A Girl in Every Port: Hulk has had many different lovers and wives, and he's fathered children with some of them. The main reason why he's had so many is Bruce Banner's constant need to stay on the run and find a place where he and the Hulk won't cause trouble or hurt anyone, but he still cannot avoid falling in love with a local. Also, a lot of Hulk's separate personalities consider themselves entirely different people, often disagreeing on which woman they consider their One True Love (if any). Gray Hulk, for instance, moved to Las Vegas and worked as a pimp and a bouncer, acquiring a harem of women in the process. On another occasion, Savage Hulk entered the sub-atomic kingdom K'ai and, after magically having the Bruce Banner personality become dominant in Hulk's mind, fell in love with princess Jarella, The Green Scar was forced off-world by The Illuminati and found a happy life on the planet Sakaar, along with his new wife, Caiera. On yet another occasion, an otherworldly deity named Umar took an enraged Hulk back to her dimension to make him her consort. Feeling there was nothing left for him back on Earth, Hulk allowed her to, although his ex-wife, Betty Ross, resented it and eventually followed Hulk to that world.
- Godzilla Threshold: On a scale of one to ten, things have to be... really, really bad for "send in the Hulk" to be the plan you're down to. Sometimes in other characters' series or team comics, he's brought in because things are just that bad.
- Good Bad Girl: Marlo Chandler, spouse of Rick Jones and former lover of Mister Fixit (aka the Hulk).
- Good Is Not Nice: Depending on the Writer, the Hulk can be this; he causes a lot of collateral damage and can be an out and out Jerkass at times, but he'll go out of his way to save innocent lives and make sure no one dies during his rampages, and he's got one of the higher "save the world" count among the Marvel heroes.
- Even Hulk's more recent “Devil Hulk” transformation in spite of his world conquering ideas, still cares for innocents. Growling a bystander during his fight with Abomination “Well you waiting for a third monster? MOVE IT LADY!”
- Joe Fixit aka Grey Hulk is definitely a Jerkass and mobster compared to his mild manner alter ego Bruce. But he’s still willingly to save others and in Immortal Hulk journey into hell to save Bruce from the Leader.
- The Good King:
- After becoming king of the Planet Sakaar in Planet Hulk, the Hulk actively worked to rebuild his new kingdom, maintain peace with the resident Starfish Aliens, and was more than willing to spend the rest of his life ruling Sakaar peacefully. Unfortunately it didn’t take long for Sakaar to be destroyed by an outside source.
- Hulk in House of M, where he becomes ruler of Australia after overthrowing the mutant government there, turning it into one of the last free bastions of human society in Magneto's mutant dominated world.
- Good with Numbers: Teen Genius Amadeus Cho can do advanced physics in his head, complete with glowing diagrams around him. He's claimed to be good enough that he can use math to stop a charging rhino with a grape seed, and proved it when he fought the freaking Hulk.
- Grandfather Clause: As the Hulk's origin involves exposure to gamma radiation, gamma radiation is always going to be the cause of his transformation, even though the trope has been disproven.
- The 2003 movie averts this somewhat by combining radiation with several other factors — the gamma rays only break down his cells, the Nanomachines try to repair them, and his genes weren't really normal to begin with.
- Immortal Hulk have explicitly attached a mystical element to the Marvel universe's gamma radiation to explain its unscientific effects.
- Green Rocks: Gamma radiation often has a completely random effect on the individual exposed, usually something to do with their psychological makeup, although this effect is often completely arbitrary. This is the way they explained gamma radiation turning Hulk into a id-like monster, She-Hulk into a fun-loving Amazon, Doc Samson into a musclebound superhero type, and the Abomination into what you'd expect.
- It's also been revealed that most people would just die horribly when exposed to such large amounts of gamma radiation (which is a rather more plausible result), and the people who got superpowers from it did so because the radiation interacted in some pseudoscientific way with random genetic anomalies they already had. It was explained once that everyone who got a positive mutation from gamma exposure had a single common genetic ancestor somewhere back in the mists of history. No one else has that funny genetic quirk. This was demonstrated when the Leader dropped a gamma bomb on a town of about ten thousand people or so; everyone died, except five individuals who mutated. One of the Leader's main goals is perfecting gene therapy to allow anyone to achieve powers from gamma radiation.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: Bruce Banner's little Recordasphere assistant fell in love with him, up to the point of feeling bitter jealousy over the human woman Banner himself was falling for. When Banner realizes this, he says in amazement, "You've exceeded your programming!"
- Ground Pound: The Hulk uses this a lot, to the point that not only is this a staple of his in the comics, animations, and the most recent movie, but every game adaptation has him able to do it.
- Ground Punch: This was in Hulk's arsenal of moves for quite a long time, but hasn't been seen in several years.
- Ground-Shattering Landing: The Hulk often uses this as an attack.
- Growing Muscles Sequence: The Hulk in all his incarnations. He is, after all, the Trope Namer of the related trope Hulking Out.
- Likewise, but to a lesser extent, his cousin Jennifer. Whether or not she goes from mousy and unassuming to tall and athletic to flat-out ripped depends on who's drawing her (the same applies to the other She-Hulks, Lyra and Red She-Hulk).
- Guns Are Worthless: The Hulk is impervious to most forms of damage, including gunfire.
- Gutted Like a Fish: Minor slasher villain Speed Freek tries this on the Hulk once. The Hulk has no problem holding his guts in, but then his skin heals over his hand...
