History ComicBook / ThePunisherBorn

* CampingACrapper: Averted. Castle intends to frag Col. Ottman, the apathetic commander of the base, while the guy is in the crapper, but changes his mind at the last moment.

* CampingACrapper: Averted. Castle intends to frag the apathetic commander of the base while the guy is in the crapper, but changes his mind at the last moment.

* ComicbookFantasyCasting: The appearance of Valley Forge's commander Col. Ottman is based on Creator/WilliamHMacy. Frank Castle bears a heavily strong resemblance to Creator/MarlonBrando.

* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: We get a decent amount of characterization for Castle's squad mates, even though they're all going to die before the series is over. Goodwin and Angel arguably gets the most, since they're at least referenced in [[ComicBook/ThePunisherMax Valley Forge, Valley Forge]].
* DoomedByCanon: Given that this is a story from Frank Castle's days in Vietnam, his survival is guaranteed. But all bets are off on pretty much everyone else, particularly Goodwin and Angel, who were referenced in the above story.

* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: Zig-zagged. Frank has served in special operations (Force Recon to be specific), carried out black ops and has even worked alongside the CIA. As a result, he has extensive combat experience and is far more lethal than any of the Marines under his command. However, his experience doesn't make him so much respected as he is feared by his men.

* ForegoneConclusion: The reader already knows that Frank was the only survivor of Valley Forge.
* TheGrimReaper: The mysterious voice that Frank keeps hearing is strongly hinted (and later confirmed in the liner notes) to be Death himself.

** Col. Ottman, the commander of the Valley Forge base may be an incompetent [[TheAlcoholic drunkard]] and a DirtyCoward, but he is right on one thing. [[spoiler: Had the marines simply stayed put and given up on interfering with the NVA’s lines of communication, the enemy might have decided that taking the base out was not worth the trouble (and the predictable heavy losses).]]

* KillEmAll: Aside from Frank, there were no survivors at Valley Forge, ally ''OR'' enemy.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: [[WordOfGod Writer Garth Ennis]] states that there is a possibility that the the mysterious voice in Frank's head never existed. And that his so called DealWithTheDevil was a manifestation of Frank's delusions. He even leaves it open for interpretation.

* NearDeathExperience: [[spoiler:At the end, during the big battle, Frank Castle makes a deal with the entity that has been talking to him throughout the series. He is given the option of dying there in Nam or having supernatural protection and thusly, a guarantee to see his family again. But the latter option will have a price..]].
* NormallyIWouldBeDeadNow: Captain Frank Castle survives the obliteration of Firebase Valley Forge by attacking Viet Cong and NVA, surviving being shot seven times. It freaks the hell out of the reinforcements that come to see who survived.
* ObligatoryWarCrimeScene: Marines execute incapacitated enemy combatants, using overtly cruel attack methods, and one of the Marines, [=McDonald=], actually has a bag full of human scalps that he keeps as "souvenirs". And that's not even getting in to the part where they try to gang rape a female enemy... And this is still ''mild'' by Vietnam fiction standards, had Valley Forge been anywhere near a civilian settlement it would have been far worse.
* OffWithHisHead: Angel gets his head blown clean off by the enemy just after he yells at Goodwin about how "there ain't no muthafuckin' god".

** Just as Coltrane is trying to get payback on Stevie for disrupting his drug business (in the middle of the base being overrun by the NVA, no less), Castle brains him with a shovel.

* WhamLine: [[spoiler:"Yes", which marks Castle giving in to the voice he has been hearing throughout the series, and accepting its offer to give him the war unending]].

* SerialKiller: This is arguably the story that goes the farthest in showing the Punisher as nothing more than a brutal murderer. Not only it depicts Castle as a SociopathicSoldier in love with war to the point of not being able to cope with the fact that the American involvement in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar is coming to an end (on March 10,1972, five months after the events of ''Born'', the last US ground combat division, the 101st Airborne Division, left South Vietnam). [[spoiler:It also reveals that Castle was committing (more or less) random murders way before his family's massacre.]] Oh, and if the voices Frank hears in his head are just his own InnerMonologue, he is also borderline psychotic.

* ObligatoryWarCrimeScene: Marines execute incapacitated enemy combatants, using overtly cruel attack methods, and one of the Marines, [=McDonald=] actually has a bag full of human scalps that he keeps as "souvenirs". And that's not even getting in to the part where they try to gang rape a female enemy... And this is still ''mild'' by Vietnam fiction standards, had Valley Forge been anywhere near a civilian settlement it would have been far worse.

* OverrankedSoldier: Frank Castle is a Captain in the United States Marine Corps at 21. It wasn't impossible to find an officer that young in the U.S. military, but a ''Captain''? [[spoiler: It's later revealed in the miniseries ''Fury: My War Gone By'' that Colonel Nick Fury recommended Castle for an early promotion to Captain after tagging along with him on a mission to assassinate NVA general Letrong Giap and proving his talent as a soldier.]] Still, though, one has to wonder how Frank became an officer in his late teens (as he is shown to be commanding a platoon as a lieutenant at Khe Sanh in 1968 in ''Punisher: The Platoon''... when he's ''18''.

* OverrankedSoldier: Frank Castle is a Captain in the United States Marine Corps at 21. It wasn't impossible to find an officer that young in the U.S. military, but a ''Captain''? [[spoiler: It's later revealed in the miniseries ''Fury: My War Gone By'' that Colonel Nick Fury recommended Castle for an early promotion to Captain after tagging along with him on a mission to assassinate NVA general Letrong Giap and proving his talent as a soldier.]] Still, though, one has to wonder how Frank became an officer in his late teens.

* YoungerThanTheyLook: Given his stature, rank and world-weary attitude you could easily mistake Captain Frank Castle for a man in his thirties/forties, and probably never guess that he is only ''21 years old''.

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Frank Castle's military rank is a curious example. He is identified as a "21 year old Captain". The idea of someone so young holding an officer rank of that caliber is quite hard to believe. [[spoiler:It turns out that ComicBook/NickFury recommended he be promoted to Captain early after Frank proved himself on a mission to kill a North Vietnamese general.]]

* BattleInTheRain: The final battle of Valley Forge in Issue #4. The rain prevents air support from coming to assist the defenders of the base.

* DarkestHour: In the final issue, the [[spoiler:NVA makes a daring all out assault on the base, killing just about every Marine stationed there, save for Captain Castle and Private Goodwin. The US air strike isn't coming anytime soon and TheCavalry is nowhere in sight. Then Castle starts hearing that mysterious voice in his head again]]...

* MoreDakka: When the Marines of Valley Forge see just how much NVA soldiers are approaching at the end of Issue 3, Castle's reaction is a simple one.

* OverrankedSoldier: Frank Castle is a Captain in the United States Marine Corps at 21. It wasn't impossible to find an officer that young in the U.S. military, but a ''Captain''? [[spoiler: It's later revealed in the miniseries ''Fury: My War Gone By'' that Colonel Nick Fury recommended Castle for an early promotion to Captain after tagging along with him on a mission to assassinate an NVA general and proving his talent as a soldier.]] Still, though, one has to wonder how Frank became an officer in his late teens.
* PistolWhipping: After seeing his friend Angel going to the bunker that's a hotspot for drug-use, Stevie hits its boss Coltrane in the face with a butt of a rifle, and drags Angel away from the place.
* ReassignedToAntarctica: Valley Forge is a place where all kinds of screwups are send to.
* SemperFi: Subverted. The story takes place in a base filled with Marines who are amoral washouts, depicted as either apathetic or cruel, run by incompetent commanding officers. As a Marine Frank Castle is shown to be addicted to combat, willing to indirectly kill a General in order to keep his firebase (and therefore his, war) going. Overall this depiction certainly doesn't sit well with the brave, heroic image the USMC typically has.

** Just as Coltrane is trying to get payback on Stevie for disrupting his drug business, Castle brains him with a shovel.
** When Castle runs out of ammo during the final battle, this is how he starts defending himself. With lethal effects.

* SociopathicSoldier: Valley Forge is rife with these. The vast majority of the Marines are depicted as either clear cut psychopaths, amoral conscripts, or jingoistic sociopaths— half of whom are implied to be addicted to heroin— with a commanding officer who is alcoholic, broken, and knows full well that the war is a lost cause. With the young narrator of the story Stevie Goodwin explicitly stated as an unwilling conscript who wanted nothing to do with the war and whose only desire is to return home safely, but at the same time realizes that sticking with Frank Castle and his platoon is his best bet at getting home in one piece.

* StrawNihilist: Pretty much everyone at Valley Forge aside from Goodwin. Angel gets the most development; he constantly uses heroin and is extremely bitter about having been drafted into a meatgrinder war, and he knows that even if he does survive, all he has waiting for him is an urban ghetto full of crime and death.

* WideEyedIdealist: The young Marine Stevie Goodwin. The NaiveNewcomer of Frank's platoon who had the misfortune of being stationed at the Valley Forge firebase, for his first tour of duty in 'Nam. Throughout the mini series the young Marine desperately tries to hold on to his moral fiber, believing that as long as he keeps a positive outlook, he will eventually return home to the "true America", that he holds so dear to his heart. [[spoiler:Tragically, he doesn't live long enough to get the chance, being the last of Castle's platoon to die]].
* YoungAndInCharge: Captain Frank Castle is only 21 years old and already in charge of an entire Marine Firebase. Justified in that the rest of the officers in the base are either incompetent morons, or apathetic idiots, not fit to run a base of this size.
* YoungerThanTheyLook: Given his stature, rank and world-weary attitude you could easily mistake Captain Frank Castle for a man in his thirties/forties, and probably never guess that he is only ''21 years old''

The story depicts Frank Castle's last days in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, where he leads a platoon of soldiers that operate from Firebase Valley Forge. While everyone else waits for US troops to be pulled out from the unpopular conflict, Castle clings to the war, willing to do anything to keep on fighting.

* HopeSpot: [[spoiler: At the end of the story, the NVA has completely overwhelmed the defenses of the Valley Forge Fire Base and only Castle and Goodwin are still standing. When all seems lost, an F-4 Phantom suddenly roars over Goodwin, releasing napalm on the attackers. Other American planes follow the first one and, for a brief moment, Goodwin thinks that they have been saved as nothing could have survived the air attack. Then, a Vietnamese infantryman charges towards him through the flames, with a bayonet nested on the rifle]].

** The commander of the Valley Forge base may be an incompetent [[TheAlcoholic drunkard]] and a DirtyCoward, but he is right on one thing. [[spoiler: Had the marines simply stayed put and given up on interfering with the NVA’s lines of communication, the enemy might have decided that taking the base out was not worth the trouble (and the predictable heavy losses).]]
** The general who carries on an inspection on Valley Forge is shown as an arrogant martinet and it is implied that he decided to recommend giving a dishonorable discharge to all the personnel of the base out of spite for not having been properly given a salute from the marines. However, closing down an isolated and ineffective outpost in a remote border area is the only sensible action to take, especially considering that the Americans are drastically scaling down their involvement in the Vietnam War, and getting ready to pull out entirely.
* KillEmAll: Aside from Frank, there were no survivors at Valley Forge, ally OR enemy.

* SerialKiller: This is arguably the story that goes the farthest in showing the Punisher as nothing more than a brutal murderer. Not only it depicts Castle as a SociopathicSoldier in love with war to the point of not being able to cope with the fact that the American involvement in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar is coming to an end. [[spoiler:It also reveals that Castle was committing (more or less) random murders way before his family's massacre.]] Oh, and if the voices Frank hears in his head are just his own InnerMonologue, he is also borderline psychotic.

* WideEyedIdealist: The young Marine Stevie Goodwin. The NaiveNewcomer of Frank's platoon who had the misfortune of being stationed at the Valley Forge firebase, for his first tour of duty in 'Nam. Throughout the mini series the young Marine desperately tries to hold on to his moral fiber, believing that as long as he keeps a positive outlook, he will eventually return home to the "true America", that he holds so dear to his heart. [[spoiler:Tragically, he doesn't live long enough to get the chance]].

* UnfriendlyFire: When a General threatens to close down Firebase Valley Forge and have Frank sent back home (and thus deprive [[BloodKnight him of his war]]). Frank conjures up an elaborate way of eliminating the General in question by recommending the view from a hilltop while standing in front of a sniper warning sign. In the next issue, he directly punishes [=McDonald=], the most sociopathic of his platoon, for his rape of the sniper by drowning him in the river with his boot.

* BringMyBrownPants: In the third issue, Goodwin theorizes that one of the Marines may have shit his pants during the surprise Viet Cong attack. Given the Marines pissed off demeanor after the attack, he may be right.

** The general who carries on an inspection on Valley Forge is shown as an arrogant martinet and it is implied that he decided to recommend giving a dishonorable discharge to all the personnel of the base out of spite for not having been properly given a salute from the marines. However, closing down an isolated and ineffective outpost in a remote border area is the only sensible action to take, especially considering that the American are drastically scaling down their involvement in the Vietnam War.

->''This war has bred a saying, oft-repeated: "Payback is a motherfucker". At Valley Forge we have another. "If you think '''payback's''' bad-- You haven't met Frank Castle."''

* DarkestHour: In the final issue, the [[spoiler:NVA makes a daring all out assault on the base, killing just about every Marine stationed there, save for Captain Castle and Private Goodwin. The US air strike isn't coming anytime soon and the TheCavalry is nowhere in sight. Then Castle starts hearing that mysterious voice in his head again]]...

** Just as Coltrane tries to get payback on Stevie for disrupting his drug business, Castle knocks him out with a shovel.

* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: We get a decent amount of characterization for Castle's squad mates, even though they're all going to die before the series is over. Goodwin and Angel arguably gets the most, since they're at least referenced in [[ComicBook/ThePunisherMax Valley Forge, Valley Forge]] .

* MoreDakka: When the Marines of Valley Forge see just how much NVA soldiers are approaching, Castle's reaction is a simple one.
-->'''Capt. Castle:''' Give me the Sixty.

* MercyKill: Frank's platoon captures a Viet Cong sniper who turns out to be a woman. They then have the idea to take turns gang raping her, only to be stopped by Frank, who shoots the woman in the head before they can get the chance. We later learn that Frank executed the woman not out of cruelty, but because giving her a quick death was his idea of "helping her out" - after sneaking up on [=McDonald=], the SociopathicSoldier who had the idea, and drowning him with his boot, Frank explains to Goodwin, who witnessed both of these things, that if he'd kept the girl alive, she'd have been put on a helicopter and interrogated by intelligence, who'd rape and kill her anyway, not to mention losing him the trust of the rest of the squad.

* ObligatoryWarCrimeScene: Marines execute incapacitated enemy combatants, using overtly cruel attack methods, and one of the Marines actually has a bag full of human scalps that he keeps as "souvenirs". And that's not even getting in to the part where they try to gang rape a female enemy... And this is still ''mild'' by Vietnam fiction standards, had Valley Forge been anywhere near a civilian settlement it would have been far worse.

* UnfriendlyFire: When a General threatens to close down Firebase Valley Forge and have Frank sent back home (and thus deprive [[BloodKnight him of his war]]). Frank conjures up an elaborate way of eliminating the General in question by recommending the view from a hilltop while standing in front of a sniper warning sign.

* ColonelKilgore: Captain Frank Castle is really dedicated on warfare, and is both feared and respected by the Marines of Valley Forge.

* MercyKill: Frank's platoon captures a Viet Cong sniper who turns out to be a woman. They then have the idea to take turns gang raping her, only to be stopped by Frank, who shoots the woman in the head before they can get the chance. We later learn that Frank executed the woman not out of cruelty, but because giving her a quick death was his idea of "helping her out" - after sneaking up on [=McDonald=], the SociopathicSoldier who had the idea, and drowning him with his boot, Frank explains to another soldier who witnessed both of these things that if he'd kept the girl alive, she'd have been put on a helicopter and interrogated by intelligence, who'd rape and kill her anyway, not to mention losing the rest of the squad's trust.

* OffWithHisHead: Angel gets his head blown clean off by the enemy just after he yells at Goodman about how "there ain't no muthafuckin' god".

* StrawNihilist: Pretty much everyone at Valley Forge aside from Goodwin. Angel gets the most development, he constantly uses heroin and is extremely bitter about having been drafted into a meatgrinder war that even if he does survive, all he has waiting for him is an urban ghetto full of crime and death.

* SerialKiller: This is arguably the story that goes the farthest in showing the Punisher as nothing more than a brutal murderer. Not only it depicts Castle as a SociopathicSoldier in love with war to the point of not being able to cope with the fact that the American involvement in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar is coming to an end. [[spoiler:It also reveals that Castle was committing (more or less) random murders way before his family's massacre.]] Oh, and if the voices Frank hears in his head are just his own InnerMonologue, he is also borderline psycothic.

* OffWithHisHead: Angel gets his head clean blown off by the enemy just after how "there ain't no muthafuckin' god".

* MercyKill: Frank's platoon captures a Viet Cong sniper who turns out to be a woman. They then have the idea to take turns gang raping her, only to be stopped by Frank, who shoots the woman in the head before they can get the chance. We later learn that Frank executed the woman not out of cruelty, but because giving her a quick death was his idea of "helping her out" - not only was he sparing her from the obvious, but from torture, rape and death at the hands of Intel and the ARVN interpreters.

* TheLastTitle: The final issue, which depicts the fall of Valley Forge, is appropiately named "The Last Day".

* MercyKill: Frank's platoon captures a Viet Cong soldier who turns out to be a woman. They then have the idea to take turns gang raping her, only to be stopped by Frank, who shoots the woman in the head before they can get the chance. We later learn that Frank executed the woman not out of cruelty, but because giving her a quick death was his idea of "helping her out".

* ObligatoryWarCrimeScene: Marines execute incapacitated enemy combatants, using overtly cruel attack methods, and one of the Marines actually has a bag full of human scalps that he keeps as "souvenirs". And that's not even getting in to the part were they try to gang rape a female enemy... And this is still ''mild'' by Vietnam fiction standards, had Valley Forge been anywhere near a civilian settlement it would have been far worse.

* ComicbookFantasyCasting: The appearance of Valley Forge's commander Col. Ottman is based on Creator/WilliamHMacy.
* CoolGuns: One of Frank's squadmates can be seen using a M79 break action GrenadeLauncher to obliterate an unfortunate cow and a few VC/NVA soldiers. Frank Castle bears a heavily strong resemblance to Creator/MarlonBrando.

* CoolGuns: One of Frank's squadmates can be seen using a M79 break action GrenadeLauncher to obliterate an unfortunate cow and a few VC/NVA soldiers.