| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ThePunisher28_00.JPG]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:[[SociopathicHero Frank]] studying up on ways to inflict ColdBloodedTorture on an AssholeVictim. Don't worry, [[PayEvilUntoEvil he really deserves it]].]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ->''"It's [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo Omaha Beach.]] [[TheWildWest Wounded Knee.]] [[UsefulNotes/AngloZuluWar Rorke's Drift,]] Film/TheKillingFields, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne the first day on The Somme]]. World War Three in North Jersey. And only now, pouring automatic fire into a human wall -- do I feel something like peace."'' |
| 5 | -->-- '''Frank Castle''', ''The Punisher'' #1 (2004) |
| 6 | |
| 7 | When you take a DarkerAndEdgier Creator/MarvelComics character like ComicBook/ThePunisher, and make him even [[ExaggeratedTrope Darker and Edgier]]''[[ExaggeratedTrope er]]'', you get what is collectively called "The Punisher MAX". |
| 8 | |
| 9 | Much like the original comics, the [[Creator/MarvelMAX MAX]] imprint version of Frank Castle became [[VigilanteMan a vigilante]] when his family was gunned down by mobsters in 1976. What sets him apart from his mainstream counterpart is that this version, written almost exclusively by Creator/GarthEnnis for four years, features no superheroes and is deeply rooted in [[Creator/QuentinTarantino Tarantino]][[{{Gorn}} -esque violence]] and more "mundane" crime and events — including but not limited to: TheMafia, [[WesternTerrorists Irish terrorist organizations]], [[HumanTraffickers Eastern European slavers]], [[CorruptCorporateExecutive corporate tycoons]] and UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror. It is also considerably less funny than the mainstream Marvel series, though there are touches of BlackComedy and {{satire}} here and there. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | The Max series is written much more consistently than the mainstream version, due to being almost entirely shaped by Garth Ennis' vision of the character. This series is also notorious for its moral absolutism, which readers either loved or hated. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Beginning in February 2016, to coincide with the character's resurgence in popularity (thanks in no small part to the character being [[ColbertBump featured]] in season two of Creator/{{Netflix}}'s ''Series/{{Daredevil|2015}}'' TV show), the series is now being released in Complete Collection format, making it the perfect way for new readers to discover the series. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | [[AC:Main Series]] |
| 16 | * ''The Punisher'' (later renamed ''The Punisher: Frank Castle'') -- Running from 2004 to 2008 with 75 Issues, it was written by Garth Ennis, then Gregg Hurwitz, Duane Swierczynski, and Victor Gischler. The final issue was an anthology written (in order) by Tom Piccirilli, Gregg Hurwitz, Duane Swierczynski, Creator/PeterMilligan, and Charlie Huston. |
| 17 | * ''Punisher MAX'' -- Ran from from 2010 to 2012 for twenty-two issues. Written by Jason Aaron, artwork by Creator/SteveDillon, it introduced ComicBook/TheKingpin, Bullseye and ComicBook/{{Elektra}} into the MAX Universe. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | [[AC:Miniseries]] |
| 20 | * ''[[ComicBook/ThePunisherBorn Born]]'' #1-4 (2003) by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson |
| 21 | * ''ComicBook/ThePunisherPresentsBarracuda'' #1-5 (2007) by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov |
| 22 | * ''Untold Tales of the Punisher MAX'' #1-5 (2012) by (in order) Jason Starr, Jason Latour, Megan Abbott, Nathan Edmondson, and Skottie Young |
| 23 | * ''[[ComicBook/PunisherThePlatoon Punisher: The Platoon]]'' #1-6 (2017) by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov |
| 24 | * ''Punisher: Soviet'' #1-6 (2019-2020) by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows |
| 25 | * ''Punisher: Get Fury'' (TBA) by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov |
| 26 | |
| 27 | [[AC:One-Shots]] |
| 28 | * ''ComicBook/ThePunisherTheEnd'' (June 2004) by Garth Ennis and Richard Corben |
| 29 | * ''The Punisher: The Cell'' (July 2005) by Garth Ennis and Lewis [=LaRosa=] |
| 30 | * ''The Punisher: The Tyger'' (February 2006) by Garth Ennis and John Severin |
| 31 | * ''The Punisher Annual'' (November 2007) by Mike Benson and Laurence Campbell |
| 32 | * ''The Punisher: Force of Nature'' (April 2008) by Duane Swierczynski and Michel Lacombe |
| 33 | * ''The Punisher MAX Special: Little Black Book'' (August 2008) by Victor Gischler and Jefte Palo |
| 34 | * ''The Punisher MAX: X-Mas Special'' (February 2009) by Jason Aaron and Roland Boschi |
| 35 | * ''Punisher MAX: Naked Kill'' (August 2009) by Jonathan Maberry and Laurence Campbell |
| 36 | * ''Punisher MAX: Get Castle'' (March 2010) by Rob Williams and Laurence Campbell |
| 37 | * ''Punisher MAX: Butterfly'' (May 2010) by Valerie D'Orazio and Laurence Campbell |
| 38 | * ''Punisher MAX: Happy Ending'' (October 2010) by Peter Milligan and Juan Jose Ryp |
| 39 | * ''Punisher MAX: Hot Rods of Death'' (November 2010) by Charlie Huston and Shawn Martinbrough |
| 40 | * ''Punisher MAX: Tiny Ugly World'' (December 2010) by David Lapham and Dalibor Talajic |
| 41 | |
| 42 | [[AC:Related Comics]] |
| 43 | * ''ComicBook/{{Foolkiller}}: White Angels'' (2008) -- Frank guest stars in half of this miniseries, helping Foolkiller deal with a supremacist group called the White Angels. |
| 44 | * ''ComicBook/FuryMyWarGoneBy'' (2012-2013) -- Frank appears in the arc set in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, and Barracuda appears in the one set in Nicaragua. |
| 45 | * ''ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} MAX'' (2012-2014) -- Set in a gritty and realistic world that obviously isn't the main Marvel Universe, the final issue reveals that Wolverine's claws were provided by a crime family that wanted him to take out the Punisher. |
| 46 | ---- |
| 47 | !!These comics contain examples of: |
| 48 | |
| 49 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 50 | |
| 51 | [[folder:A to C]] |
| 52 | * ActionGirl: |
| 53 | ** Deconstructed in the Ennis issues. There are a couple of sympathetic pop-feminist "strong ass-kicking female character" violent women, but they are deeply screwed-up individuals and die violently. Not that the male characters are any better. |
| 54 | ** In ''The Platoon'', Viet Cong assassin Ly Quang seems to fit the bill. Though she's not shown doing anything but conversing in her introductory scene, she has a reputation for killing "black rifles" that even a senior NVA official like Letrong Giap has heard of. She also swore that she would kill Castle after he called an airstrike on her cadre, so there's that... |
| 55 | * AdaptationDistillation: The series as a whole can be considered one for Frank Castle's entire mythos. Most of the story arcs are just a set of ''"hardboiled"'' crime stories with only Frank Castle (and an Ennis take on Castle's backstory) to make it "Punisher," which works very well. (In "The Slavers", though, it works ''too'' well, especially when you can see the DownerEnding coming a mile away.) |
| 56 | * AdaptationalSexuality: ComicBook/{{Elektra}} (the old flame of ComicBook/{{Daredevil}} in the mainstream universe) and ComicBook/TheKingpin's wife, Vanessa Fisk, are a couple. |
| 57 | * AdaptationalVillainy: Seeing as how this is a DarkerAndEdgier take on the Punisher and the Marvel universe as a whole, this is to be expected. |
| 58 | ** The most obvious would be Frank Castle. Here, he is presented as a glorified serial killer who uses the deaths of his family as an excuse to satisfy his bloodlust. It gets to the point that he is only a "hero" on the grounds that the men he hunts happen to be worse than he is. |
| 59 | ** Elektra. In the main MU, she was at best a morally ambiguous assassin who took a wide variety of jobs for the right price, but always upheld some sort of code. Here, she is far more amoral - she kills on a whim, and at one point hog-ties a man and brings his family along so they can watch him be beaten to death. |
| 60 | * AffablyEvil: Barracuda, despite being a treacherous PsychoForHire and even a self-admitted cannibal, managed to reach this status through being the ever-optimistic, constantly cheerful source of BlackComedy. |
| 61 | * AgonizingStomachWound: This is how [[spoiler:Nicky Cavella]] goes out [[spoiler:after he makes the mistake of digging up Frank Castle's family and pissing on their remains]]. Castle was not happy about this asshole doing this, and did not want to make his end a quick one, leaving him in the wilderness to die of infection or blood loss after gut-shooting him. |
| 62 | * AllAmazonsWantHercules: O'Brien explicitly states that this is the reason she has the hots for Frank: she loves men who share her passion for killing the fuck out of those who deserve it. |
| 63 | * AllBikersAreHellsAngels: One of the many factions present in New York's criminal underworld. They make a brief appearance at the beginning of "Up is Down and Black is White", where Frank uses them as bait to wipe out the second half of their coke dealing operation. |
| 64 | * AlternateContinuity: A separate and vastly different continuity from the mainstream one, completely devoid of superheroes and filled to the brim with more "conventional" bad-guys. It took a bit (around the release of ''The Cell'' comic or "Mother Russia" arc) for this to be concretely established, though, resulting in oddities like events from early stories such as ''Born'' and "In the Beginning" being brought up in things like ''ComicBook/{{Civil War|2006}} Files'' and ''ComicBook/OfficialHandbookOfTheMarvelUniverse''. |
| 65 | ** Some overlap remains in the actual comics - "Yorkie" Mitchell is first introduced in the Northern Ireland-related issue #18 of Ennis's Marvel Knights ''Punisher'' series, the Russian is seen in a flashback in the final arc, and the social worker Jen Cooke plays a prominent role in both the Marvel Knights story "The Hidden" and the MAX story "The Slavers". |
| 66 | * AmalgamatedIndividual: The Broad Street Killaz are a small hit squad with a terrifying reputation. It turns out a lot of contract killings committed by them are actually performed (for free) by unaffiliated gang members hoping to join them. |
| 67 | * AmazonBrigade: Averted by the five Mafiosi wives in "Widowmaker". With the exception of Shauna, none of the other wives have any combat experience. |
| 68 | * AndroclesLion: |
| 69 | ** [[spoiler:George Howe]] in "Valley Forge, Valley Forge", or at least what his hapless "minder" ends up thinking he is. When [[spoiler:the colonel]] was a regular soldier in Vietnam, [[spoiler:he was rescued by a Special Forces raid that inspired him to enter Special Forces himself]]; the lieutenant realizes at the end that one of the participants was none other than Frank Castle himself. |
| 70 | ** In the penultimate issue of "Widowmaker" arc, Castle is rescued by a woman who explains that she saved Castle because Castle [[spoiler:killed her brutal mobster husband, who frequently beat and raped her alongside his friends.]] |
| 71 | * AntiAir: "Mother Russia" has an interesting variation on this. At one point, when Frank needs to deal with some Russian conscripts guarding a nuclear silo, he dispenses them by using an ''[[{{BFG}} anti-air]]'' gun. [[https://ctmworks.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/cm_f1-3.jpeg Major carnage ensues]]. |
| 72 | * AntiClimax: The Punisher's fight with The Heavy/[[spoiler:Jigsaw]] in "Girls in White Dresses". After all the buildup regarding their enmity, they have a three-page fight scene that ends with Frank just sorta knocking him out a window and onto a passing freight train. |
| 73 | * AnyoneCanDie: Although not readily apparent at first, after [[spoiler:Microchip, one of the most well established characters in the Punisher mythos, gets his cranium blown off]], this trope is milked for all its worth. No character, regardless of plot significance or character history, is safe from death. Not even [[spoiler:''Castle himself'']]. |
| 74 | * ArcWords: The series has a habit of doing this quite often. On several occasions, they'll even name the arc after the words in question. |
| 75 | ** First ''The Tyger'', where Frank reminisces about his youth as he prepares to make his first kills in his war on crime. He muses that after his identity comes out, ''"they'll blame it on the war, and they'll be right, and they'll be wrong"''. Most of the comic then divulges a scarring childhood event in which a close friend of his is raped and then commits suicide. As Frank prepares to take revenge himself, he sees the older brother of his friend viciously beat the perpetrator before setting him on fire. A later part of the comic has two all-black pages filled with speech bubbles, detailing the paramedics' arrival on the scene of his family's shooting and the horror of it all, and the doctors talking to him later in the hospital and telling him that none of his family survived. Returning to the present, Frank coldly snipes a group of mobsters and thinks ''"They'll blame it on Vietnam. And they'll be right, and they'll be wrong."'' |
| 76 | ** "Up is Down and Black is White", Frank and O'Brien's saying that helps them cope with the insane world they live in. |
| 77 | ** The "Barracuda" arc gives us: ''"What's the only thing more dangerous than a Barracuda?"'' |
| 78 | * ArmchairMilitary: An ''extremely'' prevalent trope employed during Garth Ennis' run. Expect to see any high ranking military officer not named Nick Fury to be depicted as a clueless, inept buffoon who, despite their rank, has never seen any real action. |
| 79 | * ArmoredClosetGay: Invoked in the most disturbing way in "Up is Down and Black is White". One scene shows us just ''how'' close Nicky Cavella and Rawlins really are when the latter attempts to "persuade" the other by ''[[{{Squick}} going down on him]]''. After the deviant act is done, Cavella warns Rawlins not to tell a single soul about what took place between them. |
| 80 | * ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Thanks to a great deal of research on the writer's part, this series is one of the ''rare'' comic books that actually manages to avoid this trope... for the most part, as there are a couple of details that somewhat lapse into this. |
| 81 | ** The ranks of Nick Fury and George Howe are a bit unrealistic. Despite the years of service that both men have put in, they only hold the rank of Colonel, even though in real-life thirty years is typically long enough for a real world officer to reach the rank of General. In Howe's case it's possible that he was an enlisted man who gained an officer's commission later in his career, thus explaining why he doesn't hold a higher rank. Nick Fury's case is an especially egregious example, as he is mentioned as having been the director of SHIELD at some point, when in reality he would have to hold the rank of General to command an organization that large. |
| 82 | ** Frank Castle's military rank is another curious example. The Valley Forge arc identifies Frank as a "''21 year old Captain in April 1971''" during his final tour in Vietnam. It's later revealed in ComicBook/FuryMyWarGoneBy (also written by Ennis) that Nick Fury himself put Frank up for Captain the year before; considering how much authority and respect Fury had in the military even back then, Frank reaching this rank at such a young age isn't too out of the question. |
| 83 | * AssholeVictim: In one case, a man actually manages to get the drop on Frank and drugs him into a stupor, then kicks the shit out of him while he's helpless. If that wasn't enough, he also talked down to the Punisher like he was a pet or a small child. Finally, when he's ready to untie Frank, he explains that he's also given him a slow-acting poison that will kill him in six hours, and that he wants Frank to kill some people for him. "I don't have the antidote. I don't know where it is. My associates do. You'll get it when the job is done. Kill me, you're just killing yourself. Understand?" The Punisher nods, and the man is too stupid to realize that Frank is just confirming that he understands, nothing more. Once he is untied, the Punisher immediately ''breaks the man's neck'' with the internal monologue of "Won't waste time looking for the antidote. Probably doesn't exist." Asshole Victim, indeed. The guy was practically begging for what he got. |
| 84 | ** It's safe to say that ''every'' individual who Frank gets his hands on had it coming. |
| 85 | * TheAtoner: |
| 86 | ** Frank's mission against criminals is partially motivated by his failure to protect his family from being gunned down. [[spoiler: It's especially worse once you know that he was about to divorce his wife and leave his children right before they were gunned down.]] |
| 87 | ** The second MAX series reveals Frank to be this in a bigger, more disturbing way than ever thought. [[spoiler:Frank continues to wage his war on crime in order to punish himself with a life of endless suffering. He feels he deserves this because shortly before his family was killed, he decided to divorce his wife and leave his kids with her because his time in Vietnam had [[BloodKnight made life outside the battlefield unbearable for him]]. The fact that he was willing to toss aside his family in favor of his bloodlust sticks with him.]] |
| 88 | * AxCrazy: Oh, ''so many''. Fun game: Take a drink every time you see a villain who is frighteningly {{sadist}}ic, violent, twisted, and willing to kill many people without a single trace of guilt. To say that they are violent {{sociopath}}s could be a '''huge''' {{Understatement}}. This also, naturally, applies to Castle himself. |
| 89 | * BadBoss: Nicky Cavella. He treats his mafia goons as cannon fodder whenever he goes after Frank, which eventually leads to his capos abandoning him. |
| 90 | * BadassArmy: |
| 91 | ** In stark contrast to the amoral Marine unit that Frank Castle was stationed with at Valley Forge Firebase, his previous [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous Force Recon Marine]] Unit plays this trope perfectly straight: they're depicted as a clandestine team of elite and efficient [[ConsummateProfessional consummate professionals]], diligently carrying out covert operations behind enemy lines. |
| 92 | ** In "Man Of Stone", the squad of SAS operatives stationed at Afghanistan exemplify this trope. They're so hardcore that they nearly wipe out an entire squad of [[GeneralRipper Nikolai Zakharov]]'s [[EvilCounterpart Black Sea Marines]] without suffering a single casualty on their end. |
| 93 | * BadassBoast: |
| 94 | ** Yorkie Mitchell, answering a captured Irish terrorist (who murdered a friend of Yorkie, the father of the kid Yorkie brought over) as to whether he's [=MI6=]: |
| 95 | --> "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast By way of the SAS, by way of the Parachute Regiment]]. Feel free to start screaming your head off." |
| 96 | ** At one point Microchip has to deal with Roth, a surly associate of his in the CIA who is giving him all sorts of grief and questioning his ability to take down the Punisher, doing so in front of all of his colleagues. How does Microchip respond to this? By ''literally'' taking him by the balls and telling him this: |
| 97 | -->'''Microchip:''' I think you've gotten the wrong idea about me, Roth. First of all, I'm not what I look like. But that must be all too apparent right now. Second of all, my name is Micro, not Fat Boy. The third thing is that I worked with Frank Castle for ten years. I helped him kill over ''800'' people. Anyone who knows him better than I do is long dead. I hacked computers to help find him targets. I customized his guns and ammunition. I put him in the right place at the right time to kill the maximum number of people; without me the body count for those ten years would be a fourth of what it is. I turned a lone gunman into a killing machine that runs at optimum efficiency. Because of me, what he does can truly be defined as ''war''. So when you watch him rack up a 42 dead and 7 wounded--that ratio pretty much tells you all you need to know. |
| 98 | * BadassLongcoat: |
| 99 | ** Frank wears one quite nicely. |
| 100 | ** Nick Fury wears a buttoned up version. |
| 101 | ** Subverted with Rawlins; though the coat he wears ''is'' badass, he himself is not [[DirtyCoward so]] [[SmugSnake much.]] |
| 102 | * BaitTheDog: In General Zakharov's first appearance, while there's some whispering of his reputation and he does use the WeHaveReserves trope (though he was trying to dislodge terrorists from a nuclear silo), Zakharov in the end did stop a nuclear confrontation and showed '''way''' more patience with TheStarscream than he had a right to. Later, when we see him again, we find out [[MoralEventHorizon just how]] he fought [[SubvertedTrope in Afghanistan]]. |
| 103 | * BarBrawl: In "Mother Russia", while at a bar in Siberia, Frank and a Delta Force operative need to kidnap a pair of Russian guards with the intent of stealing their uniforms. They decide the best course of action is to start a good old-fashioned bar brawl as a cover for their kidnapping. It works, and the ensuing brawl sends seven men to the hospital and another one to the ''morgue''. |
| 104 | * BerserkButton: Frank has several. His family is one, [[spoiler:his illegitimate daughter]] is another, and '''God help you''' if he finds out you're a human trafficker. In general, [[TheDulcineaEffect violence against women]] tends to be this for him, and at one point a group of widows (of gangsters killed by Frank) attempt to use this against him, by luring him into an ambush under the guise of a fake human-trafficking operation... it ''almost'' works. |
| 105 | ** It's even called out in "Up is Down, Black is White". A mobster digs up the graves of his family and [[TooDumbToLive pisses on them]]. When it's shown on the news, a diner patron says simply "That... that guy is gonna go fucking berserk..." Cut to Frank sitting in the same diner. TranquilFury doesn't even '''begin''' to describe it. |
| 106 | * BigBadDuumvirate: The Bulats and Vera from "The Slavers", the leaders of an eastern European HumanTrafficking ring. Cristu Bulat and Vera get along well because they are both heartless ''business men'', while Tiberiu, Cristu's father, is starting to annoy them and [[PragmaticVillainy damage their business]] with his [[TheSociopath unnecessary cruelty]] and [[AxCrazy craziness]]. All of them barely qualify as human beings. |
| 107 | * BigDamnHeroes: In a flashback it is revealed that a young [[spoiler: Colonel Howe]] was imprisoned by a cadre of ruthless Viet Cong troops that planed on killing him, only for a squad of [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous Force Recon]] [[SemperFi Marines]] to spring into action, completely vaporizing the Viet Cong and rescuing [[spoiler:Howe]] in the process. |
| 108 | * TheBigRottenApple: |
| 109 | ** Perhaps ''the'' definitive example of this trope in popular media. New York as a whole is depicted as a rancid squalor, filled with Pimps, hookers, [[TheMafia Mafiosi]] (and organized crime of other ethnicities), [[DirtyCop crooked cops]] and just about every other vice imaginable. |
| 110 | ** In "Kitchen Irish", Frank mocks the idea of gentrifying Hell's Kitchen - calling it "Clinton" and making it trendy to yuppies hasn't done anything to make it safer. |
| 111 | * BittersweetEnding: |
| 112 | ** At best, when it doesn't go full-on DownerEnding (see below) |
| 113 | ** ''Punisher MAX'' ended with [[spoiler:Frank dead and laid to rest with his family, [[TogetherInDeath finally reuniting with them in death.]] Fury says that despite all of Frank's work, crime will return sooner or later. However, it's not a complete DownerEnding. Bullseye, Elektra, Vanessa Fisk, and Wilson Fisk are all dead, and many vigilante mobs are fighting back and taking charge of their lives, wearing Frank's skull as their sign. The Punisher may be gone, but his legacy will live on]]. |
| 114 | -->'''Fury:''' [[spoiler: (''smiles'') Well, I'll be goddamned, Frank... I guess you got your eulogy after all]]. |
| 115 | * BlackAndGreyMorality: Just like the rest of Garth Ennis' adult-oriented work. The bad guys are usually the epitome of psychotic evil, but morally speaking the good guys aren't anything to write home about either, as they generally tend to be a bunch of murderous sociopaths themselves. |
| 116 | * BlackComedy: Not as prevalent as it is in some of Ennis's other works like ComicBook/{{Preacher}} and ComicBook/TheBoys, but it pops up every now and then, largely on the part of Frank's victims. |
| 117 | * BlandNameProduct: Played with. |
| 118 | ** In "Kitchen Irish", Maginty is seen with a "Ped Ef" box, but oddly enough, they have no problem mentioning other brands such as UPS by name. |
| 119 | ** Many of the cars in the series greatly avert this trope, with the logos for TOYOTA, JEEP and others all being clearly displayed. |
| 120 | ** Also averted in the case for many of the Firearm manufacturers. In fact, the Springfield Armory logo on Frank's M911 is very visible in one panel. |
| 121 | * BlastingItOutOfTheirHands: In Frank's climactic confrontation with [[spoiler:Elektra]], he keeps her from using her sai by shooting it out of her hand, blowing several fingers off her hand in the process. |
| 122 | * BloodKnight: Deconstructed to hell and back with Frank Castle. In the ''Born'' mini-series, it's explained that he was born Frank Castiglione, and changed his name to Castle because there was a limit on how many tours a solder could serve in Vietnam, and he wanted to go back for a third. During this third tour, Frank starts hearing a voice in his head egging him on to greater and greater feats of violence against his enemies, and taunting him with the fact that wars end, and eventually he would have to stop. The voice is never specifically explained, but it offers Frank a "war without end, for a price. All you have to do is say yes." Frank ignores the voice until it goes away, and goes about his mission. Later, his camp is overrun by the North Vietnamese Army while another soldier has ordered a napalm air-strike on the camp itself. As the bombs fall and incinerate the camp, Frank finally yells "YES". After the battle, all the NVA troops ''and'' Americans are dead, Frank's skin is covered in third degree burns, and he is standing in the middle of the bombed out camp, wielding a M16 with the butt smashed after bludgeoning several soldiers. The next scene is him coming out of the gate at an airport stateside, months after he has healed from his injuries. As he goes to hug his family, the voice returns for the first time since he gave into it and reveals [[spoiler:Frank's family will be the price he pays for his endless war]]. |
| 123 | * BloodierAndGorier: Unrestrained by the standards of previous runs, this series takes ''full'' advantage of the possibilities granted to them by the MAX label. |
| 124 | * BoisterousWeakling: The vast majority of criminals seen throughout the series are tough-talking, gun-happy street hoods... but when they go up against [[TheDreaded Frank Castle]], a trained and battle-hardened soldier with military experience, they're in ''way over their heads''. It's even lampshaded in the first issue. |
| 125 | --> '''Frank:''' Most wiseguys are one part street-smarts to two parts muscle. Enough to terrify the mooks that owe them money, not much more. Out of their element, they're children. Little children, groping in the dark. |
| 126 | * BookEnds: The series begins with a panel of Frank looking at the tombstone where his dead family lay. The final panel of the very last issue shows [[spoiler:the Castle family grave with a new tombstone featuring Frank's name alongside his family]]. |
| 127 | * BoomHeadshot: The series has a ''real'' affinity for these. In fact, Frank's first target of the series is a hundred-year old Mafia Don [[DiedOnTheirBirthday whose brains he blows out at his birthday party]]. |
| 128 | * BreakoutCharacter: Barracuda, whose popularity eventually gave him his own mini series. |
| 129 | * BrickJoke: In one issue, Nick Fury, who had previously gone on a rant about how smoking had been banned in public areas, says that he is going to "fuck every hooker I can find before some cocksucker bans that too." An issue or two later, he's seen in a large bed with three women sleeping next to him. |
| 130 | * BriefAccentImitation: In the first arc, capo Larry Barucci tries to endear himself to Nicky Cavella, Pittsy, and Ink by impersonating a Boston accent. The response? |
| 131 | --> '''Pittsy:''' What're you, some kinda fuck? |
| 132 | --> '''Ink:''' Huh. |
| 133 | * BringMyBrownPants: In "Kitchen Irish", Finn Cooley and his crew are laying low in a local Irish pub, trying not to draw attention to themselves, when suddenly a drunken boor blows their cover and has the entire bar give a toast to them for fighting for their "dear Ireland"...which inadvertently [[OhCrap attracts the attention of the Punisher]], who gets them at gun point. Then in the middle of all this, the [[RuthlessModernPirates River Rats]] show up and all hell breaks loose... which conveniently provides Finn and his crew a chance to escape out the back kitchen. Once in the back kitchen, they find the drunken idiot who caused the whole ordeal and see that he has shat his pants. |
| 134 | * BroadStrokes: |
| 135 | ** The first Punisher MAX series in relation to the Garth Ennis' Marvel Knights series. The MAX series started immediately after the Knights series ended and though it takes place in its own continuity, characters from the Knights series like Jen Cooke, Yorkie, and the Russian (in a one-panel flashback) make appearances in the MAX series with events from the Knights series referenced, while superheroes who were in the Knights series (Spider-Man, Wolverine and Daredevil particularly) presumably don't exist. |
| 136 | ** The presence of Microchip and the Heavy[=/=][[spoiler:Jigsaw]] imply that even earlier stories may be quasi-canonical, as Micro mentions working with the Punisher for nearly ten years, and it's clear that the Punisher and the Heavy have had previous run-ins, going by their statements about and reactions to each other. |
| 137 | * ButForMeItWasTuesday: In the final issue of Ennis' run, Castle is outmaneuvered and captured by a Special Forces unit. Turns out that its commander, [[FictionalCounterpart Colonel]] [[Creator/MorganFreeman Howe]], [[spoiler:''owes Frank his life'' - he rescued a teenage Howe from a Viet Cong camp during the war. To Castle, it was just another of his countless deniable operations. To Howe, it was the most important moment in his life - the reason he joined Special Forces in the first place.]] This is why he volunteered to take Castle [[spoiler:alive[[note]]he had every intention of stopping Castle's rampage... by capture, trial, conviction, and sentencing, ''not'' by extrajudicial killing[[/note]], and upon discovering that the generals who ordered the takedown were bastards, he freed Castle and let him kill them all]], which led to a moment where Howe [[spoiler:only left him a single handgun and eight bullets to do it. Castle simply gave the eight generals one [[PrettyLittleHeadshots headshot]] each and walked away.]] |
| 138 | * CallBack: In the "Kingpin" arc, we first see Rigoletto slamming his fist down on a table and yelling "Goddamn Punisher!". In the "Homeless" arc, after Frank begins his final rampage, we see Kingpin doing the same thing. |
| 139 | * CallForward: The final story arc shows a flashback dealing with Frank's difficulty of adjusting to civilian life, including a fellow Marine saying he couldn't imagine Castle taking his kids on a family picnic. |
| 140 | * CannibalClan: The Geautreauxs; the insane inbred hillbilly family that Frank has the unfortunate chance of running into during the "Welcome to the Bayou" arc. |
| 141 | * TheCartel: In ''Punisher: Little Black Book'', Frank uses a HighClassCallGirl to help him get close to Carlos Ramirez, an [[FromCamouflageToCriminal ex-Cuban commando]] who decided to flee to Miami where he promptly killed the leaders of two rival gangs and took over their drug operations. |
| 142 | * CharactersDroppingLikeFlies: Given the basic premise, no one is safe from death. Recurring characters like [[spoiler:Barracuda]] and [[spoiler:Yorkie Mitchell]] are safe for maybe three arcs. |
| 143 | * CharlesAtlasSuperpower: For a man who claims to hate superpowered heroes, Garth Ennis certainly has a knack for writing human characters who are capable of feats that are ''well'' beyond what any normal human is capable of. Notable examples include: |
| 144 | ** Frank himself obviously; the man is pushing sixty, and he's still the most dangerous human to ever walk God's green earth, able to tolerate ludicrous amounts of punishment that would have killed a lesser man. During the final arc of Ennis's run, he manages to successfully fend off Delta Force operatives half his age, and at one point, he even single-handedly holds off ''the Russian Army''. |
| 145 | ** His enemies are every bit as superhuman as he is. Especially Pittsy, the pint-sized, fat, balding, wife-beater-wearing goon who takes Castle to his limits. In their first encounter he manages to get his hands around Castle's neck, and like a rabid pitbull, refuses to let go no matter how badly Frank tries to shake him off. Had it not been for Microchip intervening, then Frank very likely would have been choked to death. PintSizedPowerhouse indeed. |
| 146 | ** Barracuda is even more freakishly superhuman. Not only can he take ungodly amounts of punishment, but he can dish it out as well. He's also the only villain in the whole MAX series who managed to pull your typical comic book BackFromTheDead return, even though his first appearance ended with Frank shooting him almost point-blank and ''throwing his body to a shark!'' In his own miniseries, Barracuda just gives a HandWave about letting Frank think he hit him, then hiding under the boat until they reached land. |
| 147 | ** In the "Welcome to the Bayou" arc, we have Earl, the enormous PsychopathicManchild who easily thrashes Frank in their first one-on-one encounter, and is later seen ''wrestling an alligator for fun''. |
| 148 | ** Wilson Fisk, AKA The Kingpin, is almost as strong as he is in the mainstream universe, and on several occasions just smashes right through walls like an evil Kool-Aid Man. Likewise, while this version of Bullseye doesn't have his superhuman marksman abilities (and even mocks the concept of killing someone with a toothpick), he has an insane amount of pain tolerance and endurance, easily on the same level as Frank, and they end up in a bloody, drawn-out brawl that almost kills both of them. |
| 149 | ** Basically, if a goon is able to go Mano-A-Mano with Frank and ''not'' end up a red smear, they fall into this trope. |
| 150 | * ChristmasEpisode: Are you surprised to see this here? Yes, as dark and edgy as the series may be, The Punisher MAX X-Mas Special written by Jason Aaron serves as one of these. In it, Frank Castle [[AnAssKickingChristmas decimates the Chicago mob]] during the titular holiday. Made more notable by the fact that this one-shot story predates Jason Aaron's "official" run on the Punisher. |
| 151 | * CigarChomper: Much like his mainstream counterpart, the MAX version of Nick Fury is never seen without smoking one his signature cigars. Although his peers at the military base would wish [[NoSmoking that he wouldn't.]] |
| 152 | -->'''Unknown Military Officer:''' Colonel, there's no smoking in-- |
| 153 | -->'''Fury:''' Fuck off and run the film, sonny. |
| 154 | * ClusterFBomb: As is the case with ''most'' of Garth Ennis' adult oriented work, the swearing in this series really is something to behold. At times, the gratuitousness of the vulgarities veers into the realm of self parody. Case in point: |
| 155 | -->'''Russian Thug''': '''''FUCKING COCKSUCKER. Fucking faggot, fucking pig shit, get up and fuck with me some more.''''' |
| 156 | * ColdBloodedTorture: |
| 157 | ** Frank often resorts to nasty torture of those working for his current target or otherwise connected to them. |
| 158 | ** [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in the Kitchen Irish arc. Frank goes to interrogate a member of the I.R.A., and the reader is treated to pained screams... which were caused by Frank ripping the other man's bandages off. The threat of "real pain" is more than enough to get him talking. |
| 159 | * ColdSniper: Castle himself. His second tour of duty in 'Nam was spent performing sniper work and recon. It's never said exactly what went on (and the men he led on his third tour only knew rumors too "ghoulish" to be true), but Microchip knows about it, and apparently it was when he first started [[BloodKnight to love violence]]. |
| 160 | * ComicBookFantasyCasting: The MAX line has a lot of characters looking like famous "cool" actors in real life. |
| 161 | ** Frank himself is a beefy Creator/ClintEastwood in the first arc; this is particularly evident [[spoiler: when he's held prisoner by Microchip]]. |
| 162 | ** Paul Budiansky is Creator/SamuelLJackson. |
| 163 | ** Budiansky's CSI friend is Creator/TommyLeeJones (and he hates ''Series/{{CSI}}''.) |
| 164 | ** Colonel George Howe is Creator/MorganFreeman. |
| 165 | ** From ''The Punisher Presents: Barracuda'', Big Chris Angelone is Creator/ChristopherWalken. |
| 166 | ** Castle's CO in ''Born'' is Creator/WilliamHMacy. |
| 167 | ** According to Garth Ennis's script for issue #37 (which has since been taken down from its original spot in the Comic Book Script Archive by Marvel), Nicky Cavella's physical appearance was based on Andy Garcia, and John James Toomey was based on Puff Daddy. |
| 168 | ** The "Valley Forge" story arc features one Delta Force commando who's a clear dead ringer for Creator/TomSelleck. Hell, they even share the same first name! |
| 169 | ** The Germaine twins from ''The Cell'' are based on Creator/DannyTrejo. |
| 170 | * ComicBookTime: Explicitly averted. Frank fought in and is described as a product of the Vietnam War. In the MAX series, he ages appropriately, and is drawn as a beefy 50/60 year old man... while the main continuity just tries not draw your attention to it too much. |
| 171 | * ContemptCrossfire: |
| 172 | ** During the Slavers arc, a weaselly little DirtyCop is one of the titular slavers' informants in the police, looked down on by other cops for his brown-nosing. His employers have nothing but contempt for him, referring to him solely as "the little shit" to his face. Frank lets him live to send a message to the slavers' European suppliers, secure in the knowledge that he won't make it back: "The Moldovans won't even leave fingerprints". |
| 173 | ** During the Man of Stone arc, Rawlins' DirtyCoward, SmugSnake and ChronicBackstabbingDisorder tendencies are so exacerbated he ends up making General Zakharov look good, and Zakharov's strategy for luring mujaheddin out of cover involved pushing their families (babies included) off a cliff in front of them. By contrast, Zakharov has the greatest respect for Frank, deeming him a Russian born in the wrong country by mistake, and whatever feelings Frank had, he at least gives Zakharov [[spoiler:a MercyKill. Rawlins' death]] is considerably messier. |
| 174 | ** From the Cell one shot we have the hopelessly corrupt chief warden Leonard reports to Don Drago, saying that they tried to intimidate Frank by showing him the scariest inmate they had (Frank killed him in maybe ten seconds), but they can't kill him without prompting a huge investigation that would reveal just how many guards are on the take or blackmailed. The don says he has a point, then tells him to fuck off: the made men have plans to make. Frank later plants Leonard's name tag on a black drug lord he murdered (and carved a swastika on his face), because Leonard's alibi is that he was having sex with the leader of the neo-Nazi gang. |
| 175 | * ContrivedCoincidence: |
| 176 | ** Rawlins (the [=CIA=] agent who was responsible for putting together the false flag terror cell that was deployed during the Punisher's mission in "Mother Russia") is blackmailed into dealing with the Punisher at the same time Nicky Cavella returns to also deal with the Punisher. The two happen know each other and team up to kill Frank, only to have their plan botched by Kathryn O'Brien, who happens to be Rawlins's ex-wife who had coincidentally escaped from prison at the same time her ex-husband was assigned to kill the man who she and her team had attempted to recruit during an operation that was crashed by her ex's ex-lover[=/=]accomplice Cavella. [[OneDegreeOfSeparation Whew]]. |
| 177 | ** A line of dialogue in "Barracuda" reveals that literally everyone--including, somehow, the waiting staff--who was aboard the Dynaco yacht at the end of the story was aware of and complicit in the company's illegal activities, which makes it okay when the Punisher blows up the boat and lets everyone on it be eaten by {{Threatening Shark}}s. |
| 178 | * CorruptCorporateExecutive: Garth Ennis really has it in for these guys. A pair of these serve as the main antagonist in the "Barracuda" arc. |
| 179 | * CountryMatters: Garth Ennis has absolutely no problems using the word, employing it as frequently as possible, in what has to be the most liberal use of the word you will ever find in any mainstream comic out there. In fact, the "Kitchen Irish" arc features an aging Irish gangster who throws the word around like it's confetti. |
| 180 | * CoversAlwaysLie: The cover for the ''Force of Nature'' one-shot shows the Punisher fighting a monstrous sperm whale in the middle of the ocean. While he does kill a whale in the comic, it is an offhanded accident. The cover for the ChristmasSpecial is even worse, depicting Frank and a [[LadyNotAppearingInThisGame Lady Not Appearing in This Comic]] combating an army of evil ChristmasElves. |
| 181 | * CowboyCop: Deconstructed with Detective Budiansky in "Widowmaker". He disobeys orders and kills a teenaged school shooter to save a gym full of kids, but while the media loves it, the department does their best to punish him for it, sending him to therapy where a condescending therapist implies that he sees himself as this trope, which he denies. He himself feels no remorse for what he did, but wonders if that makes him similar to Frank. Near the end of the story, his wife is attacked and he tries to take the law into his own hands, but rather than being a Film/DirtyHarry-esque badass, he is simply acting out of rage and helplessness. In the end, a brief encounter with Frank proves to him that they are nothing alike. |
| 182 | * CrapsackWorld: The series is a good example (put it this way: the ending involves [[spoiler:lynch mobs arming themselves and dressing up in Punisher gear to kill whatever organized criminals they can find]] and this is still treated like a good thing), with even the hero being a decidedly dark gray in a [[BlackAndGrayMorality black and gray world]]. Of course, it helps that it's basically ''our'' world with a few vigilantes in it. |
| 183 | * {{Crossover}}: With ''ComicBook/{{Foolkiller}}'' of all people, where Frank shows up to team up with the titular mercenary and help him take care of a white supremacist group. |
| 184 | ** Tommy Monaghan, the titular character from Ennis' previous series ''ComicBook/Hitman1993'', is mentioned by O'Brien, who herself is something of a transplant from that series as well. |
| 185 | * CruelAndUnusualDeath: Frank himself was probably at his most brutal in "The Slavers". With the monstrous slavers smuggling women into the US to be sex slaves, including an hours-long gang rape on each slave to start out, you don't really feel for them at all when Frank, among other punishments, [[spoiler:throws a woman who oversaw this horror into shatterproof glass enough times that finally ''the frame bends enough'' for the pane to fall out and for her to plummet to her death. Or when Frank gets information from a slaver by [[https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/9/98479/2063788-thepunisher28_22.jpg disemboweling him and wrapping his intestines around a tree]] ''while they're still attached to him''; the interrogation is implied to begin at sunrise, which makes things worse when Frank casually mentions in the next issue that it took him until '''''NOON''''' to bleed out.]] |
| 186 | * CrusadingWidow: Garth Ennis took this concept in an interesting direction during "Widowmaker", where the widows of several high-level mafiosos Frank had brutally murdered come together to take vengeance on him. However, before Frank can come up against the potentially morally interesting decision of how to deal with them, they are interrupted by another Mafia widow, who is thankful to Frank for killing her husband, an abusive bastard who beat her nearly to death and had his friends rape her, and has nothing but contempt for the other widows (the leader of whom is her own ''sister'') who cruelly abused her. Despite the other widows trying to garner sympathy with the horror of their husbands' deaths, the story points out how selfish and self-centered they are with how the lavish lifestyles they enjoyed were funded by violent crime perpetrated by their vicious husbands. |
| 187 | * CurbStompBattle: Unsurprisingly, [[OneManArmy Frank]] tends to hand these out to whoever is [[TooDumbToLive dumb enough]] to think that they stand a chance against him. |
| 188 | ** The first issue sees Frank vs the [[TheMafia Cesare Crime Family]]. The end result? ''42 gangsters dead, and seven more in critical condition.'' While Frank is left completely unscathed. |
| 189 | ** Later on in "Kitchen Irish", we have Frank vs. the [[RuthlessModernPirates River Rats.]] Although the River Rats do manage to temporarily gain the upper hand on Frank, all it takes is for Frank to chuck a grenade their way, and pretty soon the River Rats cease to exist. |
| 190 | ** Amusingly at one point, ''Frank himself'' is on the receiving end of one of these, when he goes toe-to-toe with a Mongolian super-agent who thrashes him with ease...until Frank is roused by the memory of his dying daughter upon witnessing the Mongolian slapping the little girl he is protecting. He methodically stands back up, grabs the agent by his leg, and smashes him into various surfaces in the room until his leg ''comes off completely''. |
| 191 | ** He's on the end of another during the "The Slavers" arc. Frank attempts to ambush the eponymous slavers the same way he would his normal gangbangers, forgetting that these aren't the normal skittish drug dealers he's used to. They are hardcore survivors of the Yugoslavian wars and just as well-versed as him in the tactics of battle. |
| 192 | [[/folder]] |
| 193 | |
| 194 | [[folder:D To G]] |
| 195 | * DarkActionGirl: On the rare occasion that Frank encounters a female adversary, odds are she will likely be this trope. Notable examples include: |
| 196 | ** Polly of the [[RuthlessModernPirates River Rats]] and Brenda Toner of the [[TheIrishMob Westies]]. |
| 197 | ** Elektra, the Kingpin's most lethal enforcer and an extremely formidable fighter who manages to beat Frank half to death. |
| 198 | ** Arguably Jennifer Cesare qualifies as a rare heroic example. thanks to her dark past and sociopathic nature. |
| 199 | ** Viet Cong assassin Ly Quang in ''Punisher: The Platoon'', who has a vendetta against Castle for ordering the airstrike that wiped out her cadre. |
| 200 | * DarkerAndEdgier: Obviously. The Punisher was already one of Marvel's more mature and adult oriented characters, and this series takes that basic idea and pushes it as [[ExaggeratedTrope far as humanly possible]], taking full advantage of the "adults only" nature of the Max label. |
| 201 | * DeadpanSnarker: It's rare for him to make a joke, but when he does, Frank shows he's got a very dark and cynical sense of humor. |
| 202 | -->'''Cop''': Any time you wanna finish that, big man: you an' me, wherever the fuck you like...\ |
| 203 | '''Frank''': I'm not really dating right now. |
| 204 | * DeathByIrony: Used for dramatic effect in the conclusion of "Barracuda", where a yacht carrying a group of morally bankrupt ''"pool sharks"'' (i.e. people who use deceit and manipulation to con others out of their money) [[spoiler:end up getting devoured in a literal pool of sharks]]. |
| 205 | * DeathOfAChild: |
| 206 | ** Frank Castle's children, Lisa and Frank David Castle. The former was shot in the belly, while the latter was shot through the mouth. |
| 207 | ** In "The Slavers", one escaped victim recounts the time when a pair of slavers sent her an email... that included an image of '''''her baby's lifeless corpse'''''. |
| 208 | ** Wilson Fisk's 8-year old son has his throat slit by Don Rigoletto. Fisk realizes that he doesn't really care that his son is dead. Unfortunately for him, the death of their son also set his wife Vanessa against him, which would eventually result in his downfall and gruesome death. |
| 209 | * {{Deconstruction}}: The entire series is a deconstruction of the entire Punisher mythos, as well as the "avenging vigilante" archetype as a whole. Frank, while still sympathetic, [[spoiler: is not really out to avenge his family but is instead driven by a combination of bloodlust and guilt]]. The concept of a badass PsychoForHire is thoroughly debunked: the majority of them are just repulsive sadists, and the ones who aren't are ''genuinely insane'' and not the least bit appealing. The majority of the OldSoldier types have been driven psychotic by their experiences, and there most certainly is no such thing as a NobleDemon. |
| 210 | * DeepSouth: "Welcome to the Bayou" sees the Punisher going on a cross-country road trip from Brooklyn to New Orleans to deliver some "cargo". On his way there, he stops by a local gas station, run by some hicks, to refuel. Once there, he quickly realizes that something seems ''off'' about the place, and so decides to investigate. What follows is a series of bizarre and unfortunate events involving cannibal clans, alligator-wrestling hillbillies, and a sexy crazy chick in daisy dukes. |
| 211 | * DefconFive: In "Mother Russia", the moment "Operation Barbarossa" starts going south and the resulting massive Russian casualties (courtesy of [[OneManArmy The Punisher]]) threaten to cause an international incident that could possibly kick start ''World War 3'', the Generals behind the operation are understandably shitting themselves in fear. [[NervesOfSteel Fury]], on the other hand, casually tells them to go to Defcon Four if it makes them feel any better. |
| 212 | * DeliberateValuesDissonance: The one-shot special ''The Tyger'', set in 1960, very much reflects the attitudes that were commonplace during that period in time, such as the townsfolks' callous indifference to a rape victim's suicide; many of them attribute it to insanity as opposed to trauma, with Frank's father even rudely stating that rape victims "should learn to keep their legs closed," which greatly angers Frank's mother. |
| 213 | * DentedIron: Becomes a plot point in the second MAX series, in which the physical and sometimes emotional toll of waging a 30+ year war on crime has on Frank is explored. Frank goes through an increasingly ruthless RoguesGallery including [[RealMenLoveJesus The Mennonite]], [[ComicBook/{{Daredevil}} MAX!Bullseye]], MAX!ComicBook/{{Elektra}}, and finally, [[KingpinInHisGym MAX!Kingpin]], getting more and more irrevocably battered after dispatching each one, [[spoiler: with the last one culminating in a long, drawn out, excruciating MutualKill]]. |
| 214 | * DependingOnTheArtist: Although Frank is consistently drawn to resemble a man in his sixties, a few of the later artists took some liberties with this design aesthetic. This is most noticeable in "Six Hours to Kill", where Frank suddenly looks ''thirty years younger''. |
| 215 | * DependingOnTheWriter: |
| 216 | ** In mainstream comics, it varies how much Frank fights to help innocents and how much because he likes killing, as well as how sane he is in general. This gets downright meta in the "Bullseye" arc, where the already insane Bullseye nearly drives himself ''crazier'' trying to figure out Frank's exact motivation. |
| 217 | ** ''Born'' puts a stunning twist on Frank's origin: Not only was it never about vengeance for his family, he (unwittingly) ''caused their deaths''. What happened was that in Vietnam, he'd grown to love war because he was ''really'' [[BloodKnight good at killing]] and he liked being able to punish wrongdoers. He made a deal with a mysterious entity (the Grim Reaper according to the author's notes) that once the war in Vietnam ended, he could have his own war which would never end... for an unspecified price. It was only after he returned that he learned that the price was his family. |
| 218 | ** The last four Max arcs muddle things even further. It turns out that the aforementioned deal with the Grim Reaper was just a possibility, and that avenging his family was still on the table (although that too was only a possibility). Then in the story arc "Frank", Castle himself denies both explanations and gives the "punishing himself" rationale given by previous authors (which at the time was mostly an attempt to keep the moral guardians at bay). |
| 219 | * DestinationDefenestration: In "The Slavers", when Frank goes after the second ringleader of the sex slave operation, he corners her in her office. Since the windows are made out of reinforced glass, he proceeds to repeatedly throw the woman face-first into the window until the frame gives and she plummets to her death. |
| 220 | * DiedOnTheirBirthday: In the first issue, Frank Castle walks inside the mansion of "Don" Massimo Cesare, who is celebrating his 100th birthday with every family member and associate in attendance. Frank shoots the old Don [[BoomHeadshot between the eyes]], killing him, then leaves. By the time the mobsters get over the shock of the Punisher killing Don Cesare to come outside and swarm him, he's set up an [[MoreDakka M-60 machine gun]] to kill the rest of them, too. |
| 221 | * DirtyCommies: General Zakharov and his men were this in the worst kind of way during the Soviet-Afghan War were, having [[spoiler:gathered up entire villages and forced them off the edge of a cliff (in order to draw the Afghan soldiers out of hiding), with Zakharov himself callously murdering an infant while her mother watched in horror.]] |
| 222 | * DirtyCop: Given the [[CrapsackWorld nature of the series]], it was inevitable that one of these would show up sooner or later. |
| 223 | ** The slavers from the arc of the same name have one of these on their payroll who helps them keep tabs on the affairs of the NYPD ([[ContemptCrossfire and even they don't like him]]). However, they aren't as common as one might expect. In fact, the majority of the cops in the series aren't "dirty" so much as they are... well... [[{{Jerkass}} assholes]]. |
| 224 | ** Larry Lacarda, from the "Barracuda" arc, is a particularly slimy example. |
| 225 | * DisposableSexWorker: |
| 226 | ** In "Barracuda", one of the whistleblowers behind an illegal corporate scheme reveals that this happened at one of his boss's festive "parties". |
| 227 | --> '''Si:''' There was a hooker OD'ed at a party, but we never heard anything more about it. |
| 228 | ** "The Slavers" deals with the subject and all of its terrible implications. |
| 229 | * TheDogBitesBack: Zakharov and Dolnovich get bitten back in the worst way by SmugSnake Rawlins after attacking his groin several times, wiping blood on his shirt, and generally kicking him around. Granted, Rawlins is such a bastard that they probably would've gotten a knife in the back ''regardless'' (and Zakharov actully cites this as the reason he doesn't want Rawlins on the payroll), but their treatment of him didn't help. |
| 230 | * DontMakeMeDestroyYou: Inverted in "Mother Russia". Frank catches his partner doing something he shouldn't be doing. His partner shouts "Back off! Don't make me fuck you up!" Frank just kicks him in the face and knocks half his teeth out. |
| 231 | * DoomAsTestPrize: In the "Kitchen Irish" arc, a very misanthropic elderly [[TheIrishMob Irish-American gangster]] leaves what is rumored to be a hoard of treasure to various separate Irish gangs in his neighborhood, giving each of them part of the geographical location in the hope that they'll kill each other over it. After much violence and death, the survivors finally decide to get together and go to split the hoard peacefully...[[spoiler:only for it to end up being a huge bomb with the word [[RunningGag "CUNTS"]] scratched into it that explodes and kills them all]]. This is hinted at earlier in the arc, with Frank noting that the gangster in question didn't seem like the type to leave an inheritance for future generations. |
| 232 | * DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: |
| 233 | ** Averted: [[spoiler: Nicky Cavella]] was raped by his aunt when he was very young, and it's presented as a serious issue instead of a point of humor. |
| 234 | ** Teresa (Pittsy's sister) also tries it, but is violently scorned (possibly because of [[spoiler:Nicky]]'s previous experience). |
| 235 | ** Jenny Cesare ends up screwing Frank while he's handcuffed and immediately after beating her sister to death with a baseball bat, highlighting just how far gone she is ([[spoiler:she shoots herself right after]]). |
| 236 | * DownerEnding: Let's just keep this short by saying that there ''are no happy endings in this series''. |
| 237 | ** "The Slavers" is the perfect example of this trope. All Frank really achieved is a few more corpses and a little bit more of his own humanity chipped away. The horror still continues, no one is redeemed, and just to [[ShootTheShaggyDog rub it in]], the few girls that Frank did manage to save either went back to prostitution, died, or are stuck as psychological train wrecks. But you wanna know what the worst part is? It's based on ''real-world crimes''. |
| 238 | * TheDreaded: |
| 239 | ** Frank, obviously. For [[BloodKnight every reason]] [[SociopathicHero you might]] [[OneManArmy imagine.]] Once, during a meeting involving all of the major crime families in the city, the very ''mention'' of him is enough to have the entire room go "arctic". |
| 240 | *** At one point in "The Slavers", a hardened mercenary from the Balkans immediately drops to his knees and starts sobbing and praying at the mere sight of the white skull. |
| 241 | ** General Zakharov seems to have earned this reputation thanks to the many atrocities he committed during his tour in Afghanistan. The mere sight of him is enough to elicit an OhCrap look from [[SmugSnake Rawlins.]] |
| 242 | ** Subverted with Nicky Cavella. Though he certainly seems to ''think'' that he is this because the other capos in his gang don't want him around, in reality, they just find him and his tactics ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards revolting.]]'' |
| 243 | * DrugsAreBad: A recurring theme throughout the series is the self-destructive effects of narcotics, not to mention that anything involving drugs is a ''very'' good way to [[BerserkButton piss Frank off]]. In the miniseries ''Born'', half of the Marines at Frank's base are strung out on heroin. In the first arc, Microchip reveals that the UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} sells narcotics on the side to help fund their covert operations. This is the info that more or less seals [[spoiler:Micro's fate.]] And in "The Slavers", the Romanian gangsters keep their girls doped up to help make them more "manageable". |
| 244 | * DueToTheDead: After being tasked to take down the Punisher, Nicky Cavella digs up the remains of Frank Castle's family, urinates on them and sends the proof of the deed to the news so that Frank will come after him. |
| 245 | * DullEyesOfUnhappiness: The eyes of the children who were used in an illegal pornography ring. The sight of it is enough to send a shiver down Frank's spine. |
| 246 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: S.H.I.E.L.D. is mentioned early on in "Mother Russia," with Frank being surprised that Fury is working for the U.S. military, and Fury being promised permanent control of the organization should Operation Barbarossa succeed. While this is consistent with the status quo shown in the much more comedic ''ComicBook/FuryMax'', it stands at odds with this series' otherwise total exclusion of mainstream Marvel Universe elements. In ''ComicBook/FuryMyWarGoneBy'', which is tonally identical to ''ComicBook/ThePunisherMAX'', S.H.I.E.L.D. is nowhere to be found and Fury is portrayed as having worked for the C.I.A. instead. |
| 247 | * ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: Quite prevalent in this series actually. |
| 248 | ** Frank was a Vietnam-era Force Recon Marine, while his old British friend, Yorkie Mitchell, is [=MI6=], by way of the SAS, by way of the Parachute Regiment. |
| 249 | ** Nick Fury was a US Army Ranger, who, according to Frank, had "set fire to half of Asia long before I had boarded a plane to Da Nang". |
| 250 | ** Frank's arch-nemesis Barracuda, is an ex-Green Beret who worked with the CIA in various black ops missions in Latin America during the 1980's. |
| 251 | ** Later on in "Valley Forge", when a cabal of crooked military Generals want Frank out of the picture for good, they have to send ''Delta Force'' operatives to get the job done. |
| 252 | ** ''Punisher: The Platoon'' briefly features a group of Green Berets who everyone in the room shows respect/aversion for, and who made an effort to evacuate a village of friendly civilians but were prevented from doing so by some Marines (which nearly causes them to pick a fight with Castle's men). |
| 253 | * EliteMooks: Frank spends the majority of the series running rough-shod all over the usual rank-and-file mooks. But when he comes up against [[BadassCrew Tiberiu and his boys.]], a group of hardened war veterans from the Yugoslav Wars who use effective squad tactics, hold their guns properly, and maintain discipline during a firefight, he's quickly outgunned and forced to ''run for his life''. |
| 254 | * EmpoweredBadassNormal: In ''Punisher: Born'', Garth Ennis makes his own supernatural upgrade to part of Frank's backstory: During the battle of Valley Forge, an enigmatic voice gave him the choice to either die in battle or be its agent on Earth. This entity is implied to be Death itself, and it apparently guides The Punisher's hand. |
| 255 | * EnemyCivilWar: The basic premise behind "Kitchen Irish". Four different criminal groups come to New York in order for them to get their hands on an inheritance of $10,000,000, and each of them tries to kill the others to secure their claim. |
| 256 | * EpicFail: During "The Slavers", Frank attempts to ambush the hired guns for the slavery ring. However, he realized that they were hardened soldiers from the Yugoslav wars, not the usual street punks with poor aim and no tactics, and was nearly killed. |
| 257 | * EqualOpportunityEvil: Italian mafiosi, Russian mobsters, South American drug lords, Eastern European human-traffickers, Chinese triads, street gangs of every ethnicity, terrorists both foreign and domestic, mercenaries and assassins from all over the world...Frank's bullets don't discriminate. |
| 258 | * EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Played perfectly straight with Leon Rastovich, the convicted ringleader behind a child pornography ring that was busted. He betrayed a lot of his partners for a lighter sentence, but no matter what the prosecution offered him, he never turned on his mama, who was actually suspected of ''providing Rastovich with the children for his operation''. And when Leon is released way ahead of parole, the first thing he does is stop by his mama's place for some dumplings. Thankfully, in an act of LaserGuidedKarma, [[spoiler:the Punisher eventually gives both of them a shotgun slug to the face]]. |
| 259 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: |
| 260 | ** Frank sees himself as a monster but has a strict code against harming innocents and doesn't want to drag other people in his crusade. |
| 261 | ** During the "Widowmaker" arc, one of the widows brings up the way Frank dealt with the slavers, including throwing a woman against a reinforced glass window for half an hour, and admits that she herself might have gone at it for an hour. |
| 262 | ** This is the reason behind why Nicky and his crew were exiled to Boston. The moment the Mob learned of the methods that Nicky and his enforcers used to "send a message" to the Triads, they immediately had Nicky and his boys kicked outta New York. |
| 263 | ** While Konstantin Pronchenko from the ''Soviet'' miniseries is fine with ''ordering'' atrocities, he is ''not'' fine with actually committing them himself, so the Punisher punishes him by [[spoiler:forcing him to skin a man alive. Pronchenko cries, begs, vomits, urinates, and defecates the entire time, and by the end is left so traumatized by the ordeal that he becomes a mute wreck who gets dumped in an insane asylum]]. |
| 264 | ** The series actually deconstructs this trope quite a bit, showing that for all their self-proclaimed morals, what the characters are actually doing is trying to convince themselves that ''their'' actions are justified and that they can't be all that bad because there's someone worse out there. For example, General Zakharov views Rawlins as a complete and utter scumbag. He's right, but he's still a war criminal guilty of mass murder and throwing a ''baby'' off a cliff. |
| 265 | ** Tiberiu Bulat notes that if someone desecrated ''his'' late wife's corpse as Nicky Cavella did Frank's, he would have gone even farther in a bloody rampage than the Punisher did. Then again, may be less an example of "standards" than [[AxCrazy Tiberiu]] relishing any excuse to murder people. |
| 266 | ** This is specifically why Fury recruited Castle for Operation Barbarossa. He says outright that Frank is the only person he knows who could complete the job ''and'' would never, ever kill a child. ''ComicBook/FuryMyWarGoneBy'' shows how Fury knows this: He and Frank were spotted by a child in Vietnam while on their very illegal mission, and neither man was willing to kill the kid to stay undetected, which led to their discovery and capture. |
| 267 | * EveryHelicopterIsAHuey: Played perfectly straight with all of Frank's flashbacks to Vietnam, in which every helicopter shown happens to be a Huey. Later on in "Kitchen Irish", Castle even boards a stationary Huey as he lies in wait for some Irish hoods to show up, musing to himself about how "''it's been a long time since I've killed someone from a Huey''". |
| 268 | * EveryManHasHisPrice: Completely averted with Frank. No amount of money will deter him from killing someone who is on his list. Everyone in the mafia and all other organized crime syndicates know this, which is why trying to buy Frank off is never discussed. Offer him a bribe and he'll just kill you and take the money anyway, using it to fund his war on crime. |
| 269 | * EveryoneHasStandards: |
| 270 | ** Averted with Martin Vanheim, who was about to give a little girl a poison to stabilize the supervirus in her blood. A few arcs later, his squadmates refuse to believe he'd go with it. |
| 271 | ** Played straight in the "Barracuda" story arc, where an honest cop refuses to take a bribe from [[DirtyCop Larry Lacarda]]. |
| 272 | * EvilOldFolks: A few, most notably [[AxCrazy Tiberiu]] [[BloodKnight Bulat]]. |
| 273 | * EvilVersusEvil: This is more or less what the conflict between the Russian and US military in "Mother Russia" comes down to. One side is depicted as a nefarious institution that is secretly harboring an experimental super virus, and the other side is depicted as a greedy institution who want to get their hands on said super virus. Naturally, neither outcome is good for the world. |
| 274 | * EyepatchOfPower: |
| 275 | ** Nick Fury, obviously. |
| 276 | ** Later on, after [[spoiler:having had his eye ripped out by the Punisher]], Rawlins begins wearing one. |
| 277 | * ExactWords: After being apprehended and poisoned by a criminal, the poisoner tells Frank "I don't have the antidote. I don't know where it is. My associates do. You'll get it when the job is done. Kill me, you're just killing yourself. Understand?" Frank nods, seemingly indicating he understands. Once he is untied, however, Frank immediately breaks the man's neck with the internal monologue of "Won't waste time looking for the antidote. Probably doesn't exist." Frank did indeed understand the criminal's ultimatum, he just didn't care. |
| 278 | * ExcrementStatement: Nicky Cavella digs up and pisses on Frank's dead family in order to anger him. This puts Punisher in an ''extreme'' TranquilFury, and he starts what is basically a world war against the New York crime families, even worse than his normal behavior. It gets so bad that the civilian authorities are crippled about what to do - they can't comply with Frank's demands because it would be akin to negotiating with a terrorist, but they can't just do nothing and let Frank carry out ''genocide''. |
| 279 | * ExtremeMeleeRevenge: Delivered with frightening results in "The Slavers", which sees Frank Castle violently flinging a woman against a shatter-proof window over and over until the panel pops out of its frame, causing the woman to fall to her death. The woman in question, in case you were beginning to feel sorry for her, was one of three ringleaders behind a sex trafficking ring, responsible for [[spoiler:murdering an infant to torment its mother]] and coming up with the concept of "rape them to break them" to keep the girls her outfit kidnaps compliant. |
| 280 | ** In "Mother Russia", we have Frank taking a vicious [[CurbStompBattle beatdown]] from a tiny Mongolian super agent. When the Mongolian smacks a six year old girl that Frank is intent on rescuing, [[PapaWolf he finds the strength to get back to his feet]] and grabs the Mongolian by his leg, using it to swing his head and upper body into desks and walls until there isn't much left, only stopping once he realizes that he's scaring the poor girl. |
| 281 | --> '''Frank''': I'm twisting his leg off like a drumstick when I realize I'm frightening the poor kid. |
| 282 | * EyeScream: |
| 283 | ** The series is ''rife'' with this trope, with Frank usually being the one to dish it out. Standout examples include: Frank gouging out [[PintSizedPowerhouse Pittsy]]'s eye during a fight, ripping out [[spoiler:[[DirtyCoward Rawlin]]]]'s eye during a [[ColdBloodedTorture torture session]], and stabbing [[ScaryBlackMan Barracuda]] in the eye with a penknife. |
| 284 | ** In Jason Aaron's first arc, an unfortunate mook winds up having his skull squeezed until his eyes pop out of their sockets. If that wasn't nauseating enough, readers are treated to several panels of him fumbling around with his eyes dangling by their optic nerves. He eventually manages to get them back into his head...just in time to run into [[TheDreaded Frank]]. |
| 285 | * FaceDeathWithDignity: Almost completely averted. No matter how tough and cold-blooded they've been portrayed as being throughout the story, almost all the villains break down and cry and beg for their pathetic lives when the chips are down, even the Kingpin! The only characters to avert this are [[spoiler:Pittsy]] (who pretty much kept going after he should have died), [[spoiler:Zakharov]] (who just told Frank to finish it), [[spoiler:Ink]] (who rarely spoke at all), and [[spoiler:Bullseye]] (who went out with a smile while in a coma, no less!) |
| 286 | * FakeFaint: After Barracuda is (finally) knocked out, Frank breaks one of his fingers to make sure it's not a feint. He still wakes up a few minutes later, until Frank kills him for good. |
| 287 | * FailureIsTheOnlyOption: The second series applies this trope to Frank's war on crime in general, with a common theme in the series being Frank's inability to effect any lasting change on New York's crime scene, where there is never an end to the criminals no matter how many Frank offs. MAX!ComicBook/NickFury, who is revealed to have shadowed Frank for much of his war, laments at the end of the series that Frank murdered, suffered [[spoiler:and ultimately, died]] all for nothing...[[SubvertedTrope only for the next page to show that Frank inspired hordes of people to stand up for themselves and kick criminals out of their neighborhood]]. |
| 288 | * FalseFlagOperation: A truly horrific example occurs in the "Mother Russia" arc. [[spoiler:When a cabal of crooked generals devise a plan to keep the Russian government from discovering the US military's involvement in an illegal operation that involves stealing a biochemical agent from a Russian nuclear silo base, they have a team of homegrown Arab terrorist they secretly trained for taking out targets inside enemy countries hijack a passenger plan and attempt a suicide bombing in Moscow. All in an effort to fool the Russians into believing that Al-Qaeda is behind the operation.]] |
| 289 | * FanDisservice: |
| 290 | ** Mamma Cesare is at least eighty years old. [[{{Squick}} Both Fisk and the reader are given a view of her naked body. Fisk's reaction probably mirrors that of the readers]]. |
| 291 | ** Jenny Cesare gets several panels of her nude torso... because her breasts were removed due to cancer. |
| 292 | * FarmersDaughter: In the "Welcome to the Bayou" story, Frank runs into one of these (on a gas station in the middle of nowhere, but the idea is the same), who is a) dressed in far-too-revealing clothes and b) "crazy as a shithouse rat". Turns out her family are inbred cannibals, and her role in the group is to serve as a distraction. |
| 293 | * FastRoping: The "Mother Russia" arc depicts a squadron of Russian commandos using this tactic to enter a missile silo base via an empty elevator shaft, with the goal of eliminating a terrorist unit that has infiltrated the base. Unfortunately for them, the "terrorist" waiting for them happens to be ''[[TheDreaded Frank]] [[OneManArmy Castle]].'' Who just happens to have rigged the aforementioned shaft with ''[[OhCrap a shit-ton of explosives]]''. |
| 294 | * AFatherToHisMen: In the in-universe book titled "Valley Forge", John Chadwick from the US Army tank battalion is a perfect example of this, along with being one of the better representations of a military figure in a Garth Ennis story. |
| 295 | --> '''John Chadwick''': If I'm proud of anything, it's that my men all made it home. That was more Walt Mayne's doing than mine, but of what I did do, I'm proud. Because the war wasn't worth it, you see. Not one life. Not your brother's nor anyone else's. Not ours, not theirs. It wasn't worth a single human life. |
| 296 | ** A villanous example occurs with Harry Ebbing. The life of luxury and excess he provides his employees is so appealing that one of his lieutenants, after being kidnapped and gangraped over whistleblower threats, apologizes to him and ''begs'' to be allowed back into the fold. |
| 297 | * FightingIrish: The "Kitchen Irish" arc centers around a [[EnemyCivilWar gang war]] between various Irish criminals, all of whom are trying to knock each other off in order to get their hands on an inheritance of $10,000,000. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]], as all of the Irish gangsters are depicted as [[DirtyCoward cowardly]], [[TooDumbToLive brainless]], morally depraved individuals. Not to mentioned [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain extremely racist.]] |
| 298 | * FingerInTheMail: The tactic used by hardcore gangster Maginty. He has Tommy Toner, leader of [[TheIrishMob Irish mob outfit the Westies]] kidnapped, and has bits and pieces of his body mailed back to his wife Brenda, in an effort to intimidate his gang. It works for the most part... except on his stone-cold bitch of a wife [[IronLady Brenda]], who is ''[[NervesOfSteel unimpressed]]'' by this. |
| 299 | --> '''Brenda:''' For anyone doesn't know what's in those boxes, it's bits of Tommy Toner's body. ... Now I know what you're all thinkin': Whoa, sendin' someone's scalp an' dick an' arm same-day delivery, that's fucked up. ''That's scary''. Whoever's doin' this, it ain't someone we ever wanna fuck with. ''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis Bull. Shit.]]'' '''''Bull fuckin' shit'''''. ''Anyone'' could do this, absolutely anyone, an' getting you all spooked like this is ''exactly what they wanna fuckin' do''... |
| 300 | * {{Fingore}}: |
| 301 | ** In the "In the Beginning" arc, villain Nicky Cavella puts a gun to the Punisher's head when the Punisher is tied up and pulls the trigger. The Punisher dodges the shot and bites off several of Cavella's fingers. |
| 302 | ** Big Jesus in the ''Homeless'' arc smuggles [[spoiler:a razor blade]] under his ''fingernail''. |
| 303 | * FireBreathingWeapon: In "Widowmaker", a mob widow recounts the time that Frank used a flamethrower to burn her husband alive. |
| 304 | --> "Him an' all the guys, he just burned 'em right up -- I mean what sort of person ''does that'' to someone...?" |
| 305 | * FirstRuleOfTheYard: Inverted in "The Cell". As Frank is escorted to his cell, the wardens (who aren't even hiding that they're on the take) stop to introduce him to the most dangerous guy in Riker's, a ScaryBlackMan nicknamed Squeaky Pete ([[PrisonRape "he don't like usin' lube"]]), and promise that Frank will face him very soon. Frank's response is to take out his wardens and then kill Pete in the next few seconds before telling them to send the next most dangerous. |
| 306 | * FramingDevice: In "Valley Forge, Valley Forge", the last arc written by Garth Ennis, the brother of one of the marines who fought alongside Frank during his last tour in [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Vietnam]] has written a book about what happened to his brother under Castle's command. Excerpts of the book and of interviews with other soldiers, including the guys who picked up the SoleSurvivor, are interspersed throughout the main story. |
| 307 | * FriendToAllChildren: The one truly [[PetTheDog redeeming trait]] about Frank is his affinity for children and his paternal instinct to ensure their safety, no matter the cost. The shining example of this is in "Mother Russia". where Frank is tasked with retrieving a little Russian girl whose blood contains an experimental supervirus and is being held captive in a nuclear silo base. While stuck in the base, Frank does his best to ensure the little girl doesn't see any violence or gore, at one point fetching her ice cream from another room because the hallway is covered in blood and corpses. [[spoiler:After they escape (in a nuclear missile no less), he boards the pickup submarine and refuses to let anyone approach her, resulting in the virus decaying until it's unusable.]] |
| 308 | * FromCamouflageToCriminal: More often than not, the more dangerous and savvy criminals that Frank faces off against have some sort of military background that make them a force to be reckoned with. |
| 309 | ** The slavers from the arc of the same name are hardened soldiers/war criminals from the Bosnian war. |
| 310 | ** Barracuda, the badass hitman and Frank's arch-nemesis, is a former Green Beret. |
| 311 | ** Interestingly, Frank himself qualifies. He went from being a Force Recon Marine to a cutthroat VigilanteMan within a matter of years. |
| 312 | * FullFrontalAssault: In one particularly creepy moment, three prison slags prepare to gang up on O'Brien while she is showering with the intention of [[PrisonRape raping her.]] Luckily, O'Brien manages to successfully fend them off, doing so while soaking wet and completely nude. |
| 313 | * FunnyBackgroundEvent: In ''Platoon'', one of Frank's squad is falling asleep in his chair, with a squadmate sticking a cigarette in the sleeping man's ear and lighting it. |
| 314 | * FuryFueledFoolishness: The arc "Up is Down, Black is White" revolves around the attempted invocation of this trope by a Mafia lieutenant - he hopes that, by pissing off Frank Castle more than anybody has ever done, he will be too damn angry to think straight and he will be easy to lead into a trap. He performs this angering by desecrating the defunct Castles' bodies and sending the videotape of this act to the news. Let us just say that the part where Frank got pissed [[GoneHorriblyRight worked perfectly]], to the lieutenant's [[TooDumbToLive peril]]. |
| 315 | * GagPenis: Horribly, horribly subverted in ''Naked Kill'': Eleventhree, the "star" of the SnuffFilm industry he's working for, is known only by the dimensions of his member when he's ''not'' aroused, and his employers use it to the fullest extent in their SnuffFilm enterprise (he ''splits the girls open''). |
| 316 | * {{Gangbangers}}: Along with the mob, they are shown as one of Frank's most common adversaries, depicted as uncouth and undisciplined hooligans who pose very little threat to Frank and are more often than not on the receiving end of a CurbStompBattle. |
| 317 | * GangstaStyle: Subverted. A gang member fires at Castle like this multiple times, but misses every shot. Frank calmly says "[[PreMortemOneLiner They put the sights on top for a reason]]" before killing the gangster with pinpoint accuracy. |
| 318 | * {{Gangsterland}}: New York City's overall depiction. Just about every major crime syndicate imaginable has some sort of foothold in New York's criminal underworld. From the Italians, the Triads, Russians, Irish, to even the Armenian Mafia. Basically, if you can think of any sort of real world crime organization, odds are they will inevitably make an appearance at some point. |
| 319 | * GasStationOfDoom: In ''Welcome To the Bayou'', Frank runs into one of these during a cross-country "road trip" to Louisiana that turns out to be a front for an inbred CannibalClan. |
| 320 | * GeneralFailure: The over-arching of crooked Generals take this to an [[ExaggeratedTrope entirely new level]], being a group of incompetent idiots who have ''never seen any real combat'', having ascended through the ranks entirely through mundane service. By the time the final arc takes place, the Generals end up opposing Frank Castle for the sole purpose of saving their own asses from the massively bad decisions they've made throughout their careers. There's even a scene where Nick Fury whips the head general half to death with his belt for his stupidity during one military operation. The entire group is eventually [[spoiler:slaughtered by Castle]]. |
| 321 | * GeneralRipper: General Nikolai Zakharov ''built his reputation on this''. He was at his worst during the Soviet-Afghan War, where his monstrous actions earned him the nickname "The Man Of Stone". His various atrocities include [[spoiler:gathering up entire villages and forcing them off the ledge of a cliff, as well as callously murdering an infant while her mother screamed in horror]]. In fact, his actions were so bad that the [[EvenEvilHasStandards Soviets had him fired]]. One Russian even says that if they'd kept him, they'd have kept Afghanistan... it's just that there'd be nothing left of Afghanistan worth keeping. |
| 322 | * GeniusBruiser: |
| 323 | ** Frank is this both in the regular Marvel universe and in the MAX universe, but in the MAX universe his internal dialogue really highlights how carefully he plans, both before and ''during'' a fight. He's always planning for contingencies and keeping an eye on escape routes, and has back-up plans for his back-up plans. When things go really south and he's forced to go hand-to-hand, even then he's cool and collected. Several incidents of him being very outnumbered in unarmed combat show him planning everything ''even while fighting''; attacking the strongest people first, keeping everyone in front of him so they get in each other's way, inflicting very painful injuries rather than simply killing because he knows several people laying on the ground screaming in pain will distract and intimidate the ones he hasn't gotten to yet, dealing with female attackers just as harshly as males, etc. |
| 324 | ** His arch-nemesis Barracuda is an even better example. Trained as a Green Beret, the tough bastard is every bit as intelligent and resourceful as he is strong and durable, able to make his way out of numerous tight spots. He even successfully masterminds a plan that leads to the capture of [[spoiler:''the Punisher'']]. |
| 325 | * GenreBlind: |
| 326 | ** Maginty, who is otherwise one of the most clever villains in the comics, cheerfully walks into his hideout ''without'' an armed escort after mentally torturing a RetiredMonster and leaving him in the room by himself. It's a good thing his {{Mook}}s came back to check on him--of course getting his fingers sliced off by said murderer didn't do much to dissuade him from walking into Nesbitt's BatmanGambit, making him doubly Genre Blind. |
| 327 | ** Notably, Nicky Cavella is told in no uncertain terms that his plan[[note]]to enrage the Punisher so that he drops his guard[[/note]] is fundamentally flawed without killers actually capable of exploiting this supposed opening. |
| 328 | * GenreShift: Although the series consistently remains a vigilante action story for the most part, there are a few arcs that briefly delve into other genres. Most noticeably, "Mother Russia" is essentially an R-Rated James Bond thriller that happens to star Frank Castle, and ''Welcome to the Bayou'' is a hillbilly horror flick, complete with a GasStationOfDoom and a lonely cabin in the woods. |
| 329 | * GildedCage: After Wilson Fisk becomes the Kingpin, he refuses to leave his tower out of fear of the Punisher. In the last arc, he reflects on the fact that even though he supposedly owns the city, he's basically become a prisoner in his own home. |
| 330 | * GilliganCut: Barracuda starts threatening [[spoiler:Frank and O'Brien's daughter]] by nicking her skin with a knife. The next page shows Frank in a hospital, plaster casts and bandages everywhere, noting that he can't remember what happened, so he starts putting together what happened from his wounds. |
| 331 | * {{Gorn}}: One of the advantages of being on the MAX label is that the artist gets to detail every bit of blood and gore throughout the series in extremely graphic detail. Every [[OffWithHisHead severed head]], every [[BoomHeadshot headshot wound]], every charred carcass is illustrated with glorious and at times nauseating levels of detail. [[https://deathdetective.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/punisher-heart-in-mouth-2.jpg?w=736 Case in point]]. |
| 332 | * GoryDiscretionShot: Unsurprisingly averted in the Max comics, in [[{{Gorn}} many, many glorious ways]]. |
| 333 | * GreaterScopeVillain: In "The Slavers", there's the Moldovans, the people who supplied the girls for the Bulats' sex trafficking ring. Although Frank sends them a video of him killing Tiberiu Bulat with a warning to never come back to New York City and has it delivered by the CorruptCop working with them (who disappears afterwards), Frank never goes after them personally. |
| 334 | * GrenadeLauncher: Frank's signature [=M16=] is commonly seen outfitted with a [=M203=] grenade launcher attachment. |
| 335 | * GunAccessories: Frank's many weapons, particularly his signature [=M16=] assault rifle, are commonly depicted with all manner of accessories, such as scopes, suppressors, flashlights, underslung grenade launchers, etc. |
| 336 | * GunPorn: Not only are there plenty of different guns depicted throughout the series, but Frank knows weapons like no one's business. He practically makes it a sub-genre, as evidenced in the Christmas special: |
| 337 | -->''[A single shot is heard way off in the distance]''\ |
| 338 | '''Man:''' What was that?\ |
| 339 | '''Frank:''' M-25 sniper rifle with a .303 Winchester cartridge. |
| 340 | * GuttedLikeAFish: |
| 341 | ** One of the ringleaders from "The Slavers" [[https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/9/98479/2063788-thepunisher28_22.jpg ends up with his abdomen slashed open and his guts wrapped around a nearby tree]]. |
| 342 | ** A similar fate befell [[spoiler:Nicolas Cavella]] when he thought pissing Frank off (by digging up and desecrating his family's bodies) was a good idea. He takes a bullet to the gut for his troubles, and is left in the wilderness to die of infection or blood loss, whichever comes first. |
| 343 | [[/folder]] |
| 344 | |
| 345 | [[folder:H To M]] |
| 346 | * HannibalLecture: |
| 347 | ** Frank doesn't do this often, being TheStoic, but he completely destroys the last shreds of dignity Nicky Cavella has with one. |
| 348 | ---> '''Cavella''': Either I walk outta here or I blow the little fuck all over you. It's your call.\ |
| 349 | '''Castle''': You won't shoot him. You're a coward. ...Psycho rep only takes you so far. After that, you've nothing. [[PapaWolf Hurt the boy and you die bad.]] You know that. But there's a part of you that still thinks that if you let him go, you've got a chance. And that part of you just won't shut up. |
| 350 | ** Frank's S.A.S. pal Yorkie is the master of these. In a DoubleSubversion, Barracuda [[ShutUpHannibal laughs off one of these]] after killing Yorkie, but true to form his dying speech echoes in his head at a most inopportune moment and gets under his skin -- allowing the Brit to punk him from the grave. (It's possible that Yorkie did it in the hopes that this would actually happen.) |
| 351 | --->'''Yorkie''': He's going to kill you. Not over me. You're going up against him, so he'll kill you. Because you're a ''joke'', in spite of it all... and he's the most dangerous man who ever walked this Earth. |
| 352 | * HeelFaceTown: Subverted. While the character first started operating in TheBigRottenApple (with turf wars and gang violence aplenty) after returning from Vietnam, the MAX version (who is still a Vietnam veteran) says that you can rename the worst parts of town and gentrify it and clean it up but it won't change anything about the people in there. He says this just before a bomb goes off in the bar across the street to reignite a war between TheMafia and TheIrishMob. The very first arc involves him killing the centenarian mafia don Cesare, which has recurring effects for the rest of the series. |
| 353 | * HellishCopter: The series generally averts this whenever a police helicopter is involved but the two Soviet choppers that appear in ''Mother Russia'' aren't as lucky. The first one gets blasted out of the sky via stinger missile courtesy of resident ActionGirl Kathryn O'Brien, the other one comes crashing down after its two pilots are shot and killed courtesy of a certain skull shirt wearing vigilante. |
| 354 | * HellIsThatNoise: In the initial arc of the series, when the CIA team assisted by Micro captures Frank, the female operative listens outside the door of his interrogation for a chance to hear him speak, admitting she is extremely turned on by deep gravelly voices. When Frank does finally speak, she backs away from the door in visible horror and immediately asks where the suite minibar is. |
| 355 | * HeWhoFightsMonsters: This is the central theme of the series. All throughout the comic, we watch Frank operate as an uncompromising engine of vengeance in a CrapsackWorld. He's fully aware that his "war on crime" has damned him to hell and there's no hope of redemption. ''He just doesn't care''. |
| 356 | * HeroAntagonist: The role played by Colonel Howe and his Delta Force commandos in Garth Ennis' final story. In it, Howe and his men are tasked by a cabal of crooked Generals with taking down the Punisher. However, Howe is depicted in a far more sympathetic light than his corrupt superiors. |
| 357 | * TheHeroDies: In the second MAX series, [[spoiler:Castle himself]] is killed. Even then, though, he manages to finish what he started...[[spoiler:and inspires ''hordes'' of vigilantes to continue his work]]. |
| 358 | * HighAltitudeInterrogation: Dolnovich used this trope on Rawlins to give him a last-minute attempt to come up with the BatmanGambit of his life. Notably, he didn't even want to let Rawlins live in the first place and tried to shoot down the latter's attempt to save his life. |
| 359 | * HighClassCallGirl: In the ''Little Black Book'' one-shot story, Frank uses one of these as an accomplice to help him get close to a Cuban drug lord so he can, well... do what he does best. |
| 360 | * HillbillyHorrors: |
| 361 | ** This is pretty much what the "Welcome to the Bayou" arc is all about. In it, we get to see Frank Castle going up against the Geautreauxs, a CannibalClan full of gator-raising, racist hillbillies. |
| 362 | ** The second issue of ''Untold Tales of the Punisher MAX'' starred a slightly deformed family of redneck drug traffickers who gradually turn on each other as they debate what to do (kill him, sell him, keep him as a bartering chip, etc.) with the captive Punisher. |
| 363 | * HillbillyMoonshiner: In "Welcome to the Bayou", when the Geautreauxs decide to have a good ol' fashion redneck hoedown, they all get shit-faced on some homegrown moonshine. Which, incidentally, gives Frank and his accomplice Nigel some cover to try and escape. |
| 364 | * HiredByTheOppressor: Already established as armchair generals with zero combat experience or morals (introduced as having thought up a plan to unleash their own terrorists-in-airliners on other countries), the generals are also shown to be racist by barely hiding their contempt for the black Colonel Howe they're using to capture Frank (and then not hiding it at all when he mentions Frank got away). It's part of the reason [[spoiler:Howe lets Frank go free and kill the generals]]. |
| 365 | * HitlerAteSugar: When Alice is describing her unfulfilling sex life to Dermot: |
| 366 | -->''Harry doesn't fuck me. He just has me bend over on the bed while he stares up my ass and jerks off. Before we were married, he used to shake my hand afterwards and say "Thank you for a wonderful evening." You know who else was into that? Hitler.'' |
| 367 | * HollywoodSilencer: Played perfectly straight in "Man Of Stone". When Kathryn O'Brien goes to execute one of the Taliban leaders responsible for [[RapeAndRevenge gang-raping her]], she shoots him dead with a silenced pistol while he's out on his balcony. The gunshot is so quiet that it fails to alarm anyone, not even waking up the [[{{Squick}} underage bride]] sleeping in the Taliban leader's bed. |
| 368 | * HookersAndBlow: In the "Barracuda" story arc, Whistler-blower Si reveals that the moment his company Dynaco broke big, these sort of parties became the norm. |
| 369 | --> '''Si:''' The parties, man. The parties we had were the stuff of '''''legend'''''. |
| 370 | * HopelessWar: What Frank's one-man war on crime unfortunately comes down to. He knows that he will never be able to have any long-lasting effect on crime, no matter how many capos or drug dealers he kills. Best exemplified at the end of "The Slavers", where even after dealing with the heads of the human trafficking operation, the slavery ring in New York doesn't stop, it just gets more "sophisticated". |
| 371 | * HowTheMightyHaveFallen: |
| 372 | ** According to Nick Fury, SHIELD has gone from being one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world into a joke of an agency filled with rank and file amateurs. As Fury puts it: |
| 373 | --> '''Fury:''' Whole agency's been a fucking joke for years. They put the fucking accountants in charge--then they wonder why the UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} beats us to the punch everywhere from Indonesia to Iraq. |
| 374 | ** Russia in general is depicted this way. They went from being a world superpower to a second rate federation within a matter of years, with an out-of-control crime rate and a laughably ineffectual military run by inept commanders who are incapable of defending even a nuclear missile base, let alone from a pair of covert para-military operatives. |
| 375 | -->'''Vanheim:''' This is a ''nuclear missile base'', don't these people follow any sort of procedure? |
| 376 | -->'''Frank:''' [[TakeThat This is Russia. Not the USSR]]. |
| 377 | ** The fate of the [[TheIrishMob Westies]]. At one point, they were one of the most powerful and influential crime families in all of New York... until the [[TheMafia Cesare Family]] moved in, shortly after which they went to pieces, with half of them either moving out of Hell's Kitchen or snorting their sorrows away on coke. |
| 378 | * HowWeGotHere: "Barracuda" begins with Frank aboard a boat, looking over what has to be hundreds of people being eaten alive by sharks. The story then flashes back to detail how he ended up there. |
| 379 | * HumanTraffickers: |
| 380 | ** The Punisher goes after a trafficking ring in "The Slavers." Their treatment of women and children sets off Frank's BerserkButton, and his defeat of them is considered one of the most violent parts of the comic. |
| 381 | ** "The Naked Kill" is another Punisher arc where the villains own a maximum-security apartment and use it to make snuff movies (the BigBad's nephew has a GagPenis with which he rips the women apart), importing women from all over the world to keep up their numbers. Frank disguises himself as a janitor and makes his way through the floors in a masterclass demonstration on using an ImprovisedWeapon, but the murder of the star is left to the victims after Frank kneecaps him. |
| 382 | * HurricaneOfEuphemisms: Half of the dialogue of a supporting character in "Girls in White Dresses" consists of different terms for methamphetamine. |
| 383 | * {{Hypocrite}}: Frank himself, but it's not revealed until issue 16 of ''Punisher MAX'', where it's revealed that [[spoiler:his last words to his wife were "I want a divorce"]] so that he could satisfy his own bloodlust. Way back, in the fourth issue of the original MAX series, Frank had told Microchip how he had almost killed his neighbor because said neighbor had left his wife for another woman. Ultimately, Frank proved to be no different from his victim, with [[spoiler:both of them willing to abandon their spouses to satisfy their own lusts]]. Doubles as an one–sentence HannibalLecture since [[spoiler:this sentence is enough for Bullseye to kill Frank Castle from beyond the grave. For the short amount of time that he has left, Frank ''never'' recovers from hearing those words, and his last words are a scrawled "I'm sorry" on his family's old house as he lays dying in the street.]] |
| 384 | * IHaveAFamily: Every now and then a crook will try this on the Punisher. At best? Just buys a few more seconds for their hourglass. |
| 385 | * IconicSequelCharacter: General Zakharov and Barracuda, two of the most infamous Punisher foes in recent memory, debut in the third and fifth arcs. |
| 386 | * ImAHumanitarian: Hardcore mobster Nicolas Cavella earned his reputation in the [[TheMafia Cesare Family]] during a sit-down in a Chinese restaurant with an overconfident [[TheTriadsAndTheTongs Triad boss]] named Joseph Kai. Kai was eating a dish and arrogantly telling Cavella that he and his crew wouldn't back down in the face of the Cesare Family, claiming he had three strong sons backing him up...only for Cavella to retort "two strong sons" and inform him that he and his two henchmen had arrived early and replaced the kitchen staff, and that the boss' youngest son "never made it home from school". Upon learning what happened to his son's body, Kai is visibly horrified as he [[IAteWhat realizes what he just ate]]. |
| 387 | * ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: Averted in "The Slavers", when [[spoiler:Frank loses his self-discipline and breaks his cover by attacking a 'straggling' gunman, alerting his fellows]]... who ''are'' infantry veterans, aim down their weapons' sights, and use small unit tactics such as (effective) suppressing fire and flanking. End result: although he's able to swim away, non-powered gunmen ''actually defeat Frank Castle in combat and force'' '''him''' ''to flee for his life''. |
| 388 | -->'''Frank's monologue''': ''I saw straightaway it had been a mistake. These boys weren't ghetto trash like I was used to, the kind whose will you break in the first ten-seconds of a firefight... They were soldiers... ''[splash page of Frank being hit]'' The end came even faster than I'd figured.'' |
| 389 | * ImplacableMan: Pittsy, Barracuda, and the Mennonite all manage to nearly kill Frank by virtue of the fact that they're really, really, '''really''' tough. See MadeOfIron down below in case you need any examples of just ''how'' durable these three are. |
| 390 | * ImprovisedWeaponUser: ''Naked Kill'' involves Castle assaulting an office building that's being used to direct snuff films. Security is ultra-tight, so he can't bring guns inside. Instead, he ends up killing the guards one by one with increasingly bizarre and brutal uses of office equipment. He starts with [[ThePenIsMightier pens and pencils]], works his way up to computer monitors as blunt instruments, [[EyeScream staplers to the eyes]], smashing a man's head to pulp in a copier machine... |
| 391 | * InLoveWithYourCarnage: |
| 392 | ** Bullseye to Frank; just take a look at this internal monologue as he watches Frank slaughter his men. |
| 393 | --->'''Bullseye:''' You do not kill like any man I have ever seen, Frank. You're more like a force of nature. An earthquake or a tidal wave. A tornado. Watching you kill is like watching Rembrandt paint, or hear Mozart conduct his 9th symphony. You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, Frank Castle. I think I'm going to cry. Thank you, Frank. Thank you for being ''you''. |
| 394 | *** Then later when talking to Kingpin about the encounter: |
| 395 | --->'''Bullseye:''' I saw him in action. Let me tell you, it was... it was something to ''behold''. I do apologize, [[IllBeInMyBunk but it appears I'm going to pleasure myself now.]] |
| 396 | ** Apparently this extends to O'Brien as well. In one scene after they have successfully slaughtered half of Zakharov's men, the two of them stand over the carnage and have this exchange. |
| 397 | -->'''O'Brien:''' I'd like to fuck you right here and now, you know that? |
| 398 | -->'''Castle:''' Everything in moderation. |
| 399 | * InexplicablyAwesome: General Zakharov's right-hand man, The Mongolian, is pretty much this trope personified. Of all the characters in the series, he gets zero backstory, name, or any sort of explanation behind how he and Zakharov met or how he became his henchmen. Nor how this diminutive super agent possess immense fighting prowess, great enough to thrash both a Delta Force operative and ''[[DefeatingTheUndefeatable The Punisher]]''. |
| 400 | * InstantDeathBullet: Subverted in the finale to the story arc "Up is Down and Black is White", where Frank gives [[spoiler:Nicky Cavella]] a slow and agonizing death by shooting him in the stomach and [[LeftForDead leaving him]] in the middle of a forest. |
| 401 | * InternalDeconstruction: A big emphasis is placed throughout the series on how the Punisher's success rate is at least partly owing to the fact that the majority of his targets are just low-level gangsters - intimidating to the average Joe, but completely out of their depth when it comes to actual combat. So in "The Slavers", where he attempts to attack what he later realizes are a group of battle-hardened Bosnian war vets who ''do'' know what they're doing, he quickly realizes he's made a huge mistake and is forced to flee for his life. See ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy above for more details. |
| 402 | * InterserviceRivalry: In "Long Cold Dark", during a ferocious firefight between Frank Castle (a former Marine Force Recon officer) and Barracuda (ex-Army special forces) [[spoiler:who had abducted Castle's infant daughter]], the latter chides Frank's marksman abilities and ask where Frank learned to shoot, which Frank calmly replies to 'as he shoots Barracuda through a car) with: "''That would be Khe Sanh. Spring of sixty eight. You fucking Army puke''". |
| 403 | ** This came up even earlier during the ''Mother Russia'' arc. Towards the end of the arc, Frank and Galina are picked up by a Navy SEAL team and extracted to a submarine, the U.S.S. ''Silverfish''. The submarine has specialists aboard waiting to take a blood sample from Galina so they can secure the virus she has in her bloodstream, but Frank refuses to let them touch her, even if it means the virus dies and the mission becomes a bust. The ''Silverfish'''s captain elects not to press the issue, deciding he and his crew have done their part and whether or not this joint Army/Air Force operation is ultimately a success or failure is not the Navy's problem. |
| 404 | * TheIrishMob: Seeing how this is a comic book dealing with crime, set in New York, and written by Garth Ennis (who is Irish-'''Irish''' mind you), an appearance by the Irish Mob was pretty much inevitable. More specifically, they show up in "Kitchen Irish", which deals with the last remnants of the Irish Mob duking it out in the newly-gentrified Hell's Kitchen. |
| 405 | * ItsRainingMen: When Frank and a Delta Force operative need to sneak into Siberia, they do so by HALO jumping out of a commercial plane. Later on they [[ExaggeratedTrope up the ante]] [[spoiler:by HALO jumping out of a launched nuclear missile]]. |
| 406 | -->'''Frank:''' If the thought of it seems crazy, [[BadassBoast you weren't crazy enough to begin with.]] |
| 407 | * JackBauerInterrogationTechnique: |
| 408 | ** This was already a staple in most of The Punisher's incarnations, but this version is much more overt about him committing it. For example, ''The Punisher: Force of Nature'' one-shot had a page with Frank monologuing about torture as well as the threat: for some the threat is enough, some ''[[NervesOfSteel never]]'' break, and some just pass out. One of the villains even says that he figures that the Punisher would simply "shut down" if he were tortured. |
| 409 | ** In "The Slavers", Frank needs to get information from one of the titular Romanian slavers and realizes that, hard as they are, "what I would need to do to such men would be...extreme." [[spoiler:So he drugs the guy, cut a hole in his belly, pulls out about two feet of his intestines and drapes them on a tree branch in front of him. And that's where he ''starts'']]. |
| 410 | * JokerImmunity: Averted with ''extreme prejudice''. Most villains are lucky if they make it through a single story arc alive, let alone two. The only antagonist who comes closest to playing this trope straight is the Kingpin, who manages to survive the most arcs. |
| 411 | * JustFollowingOrders: Nick Fury asks Frank to participate in "Operation Barbarossa" because he ''won't'' do this. His partner Martin Vanheim ''tries'' to use this excuse for trying to kill Galina, but Frank kicks the shit out of him and is able to shame him into better behavior. Frank himself qualifies in a strange way; in becoming The Punisher, he assigned himself a mission and justifies his vigilante activity through that. In "Mother Russia", he is assigned a different mission and does things he wouldn't ordinarily do, like beat people up unprovoked and kill soldiers who are just doing their jobs. |
| 412 | * JustShootHim: After Frank goes on a rampage that kills fifty-nine criminals, the mayor of New York City and his advisors come to the conclusion that arresting the Punisher won't work, as he'll just kill as many people as he can in prison. (Something that, the advisors note, will just look bad.) Killing him won't work either, the commissioner points out, as the possibility for civilian casualties is too high if they go gunning for Frank. |
| 413 | * KarmicThief: Frank takes all weapons and money he finds on his raids for himself. When the cops bust all of his safehouses in ''Punisher MAX'', it is revealed that he had over eight million dollars in cash and enough guns to arm a small country. |
| 414 | * KickTheDog: |
| 415 | ** Frank's murder of Microchip, his former sidekick. Microchip was killed because he was turning a blind eye to government-funded drug operations to get his dough, making it a KickTheDog moment for himself as well. He was also given the chance to escape: they were holed up in a warehouse awaiting an attack from the mob and Frank told Micro to run, but Micro decided to stay. Apparently, he didn't quite understand what Frank meant. |
| 416 | ** After rescuing a not-so-corrupt corporate executive from retaliatory gang rape for threatening to blow the whistle on a scheme, Frank shows an alarming amount of callousness towards the victim, telling him "I bought you eggs and bacon--two days is more than enough to get over this"; unusual since [[DoubleStandard he's usually more sympathetic to female rape victims]]... although his indifference later comes back to bite him in the ass. |
| 417 | ** Dolnovich, a loyal, level-headed hardass... who kills a reporter who wrote an unflattering book about his boss. Even then, he probably didn't deserve to die believing that his only son was going to be raped to death by his SmugSnake killer. |
| 418 | * KillThePoor: This is more or less what Dynaco's scheme comes down to. They plan on blacking out Florida in order to increase their stock, not caring for the destruction it will most likely cause, and it's implied that the lower class will be the ones who will suffer the most from their plan. This quote just about sums it up: |
| 419 | --> '''Dermot:''' If we really had blacked out Florida, do you think anyone here would give a shit? About street lights in Tallahassee, or [[KickTheDog granny's life support]]? We do it quietly and carefully, the stock goes sky-high, they get a return on their investment. They are business people: [[{{Greed}} what they care about is doing business.]] |
| 420 | * KnightTemplar: The question is not "How far?" The question is "How fast will Frank get there?" In the MAX series, for example, Barracuda [[spoiler:kidnaps the daughter Frank had with O'Brien.]] He reacts...'''[[UnstoppableRage viol]][[PapaWolf ently]]'''. Later, he wakes up in the hospital with no idea of what happened, but the skin doctors found under his fingernails and the flesh between his teeth jog his memory. |
| 421 | * LaserSight: The cover of #2 depicts Frank being targeted by hundreds of these. Naturally, Frank is completely unfazed by this. |
| 422 | * LeaveNoSurvivors: One of Frank's most common tactics during his multiple tours of duty in Vietnam. Ultimately subverted, as it's strongly hinted that Frank's aggressive patrolling tactics actually provoked the NVA assault on the Valley Forge Firebase. |
| 423 | * LeftForDead: In the MAX continuity, you CANNOT count on this trope to save your bacon. One particularly noteworthy example was when Castle drove Cavella out to some abandoned woods and shot him low in the gut with the intention of slowly killing him over several days, then walked away. Perfect setup for Cavella to come back, right? Well, just to shoot down any ideas of him returning, some mooks talk about how they found his corpse with the eyes eaten out. Just as well, as VillainDecay had wrung out any threat he had to begin with. |
| 424 | * LetThePastBurn: In the final ''Punisher Max'' arc, "Homeless", after [[spoiler: the death of Frank]], Nick Fury takes a flamethrower to the house where the Castle family used to live and [[spoiler: where Frank had been staying during the events of the arc. By doing so, he hopes to put an end to the tragedy that made The Punisher once and for all.]] |
| 425 | * LikeYouWouldReallyDoIt: Zigzagged InUniverse: When Barracuda and Frank's third confrontation begins with Barracuda shooting [[spoiler:Frank's daughter]] in the head, Frank freezes up for a fraction of a second but just as quickly figures out it's completely stupid as what Barracuda wants is to hurt Frank and make him beg for mercy (it was in fact [[spoiler:a child-sized doll]]). However, there is zero chance Barracuda would have left her alive after killing Frank, having already murdered children before. |
| 426 | * LittleNo: Frank is pretty much made up of these due to his taciturn nature, along with BluntYes and FlatWhat. One example does stand out from his Vietnam days, when his team attacked an enemy camp to rescue some downed pilots. By the time they got there, there was only one pilot left alive. This exchange immediately followed: |
| 427 | -->'''Soldier:''' Just the one, Captain. |
| 428 | -->'''Castle:''' Bring him. |
| 429 | -->'''Soldier:''' Prisoners? |
| 430 | -->'''Castle:''' No. |
| 431 | * LockAndLoadMontage: Commonly done whenever the artist wants to get across that Frank is getting ready to kick some ''serious ass''. |
| 432 | --> '''O'Brien''': That's an ''[=M60=]''. That was an [=M60=] that he just put in the trunk of that Subaru... |
| 433 | * LoonyFan: Jenny Cesare from the "Widowmaker" arc definitely comes across as this. After seeing Frank shot by the women she is targeting, she saves him and takes him to her apartment. Even though she tends to his wounds, Frank can't help but feel a little bit like her prisoner, but Jenny does nothing to stop him from leaving, and he cannot leave because of his gunshot injuries. So he patiently listens as she describes what was done to her, as well as her sympathy for what was done to him and how she believes she and Frank are kindred spirits. Jenny then requests that Frank give her his shirt and jacket so she can become the She-Punisher and kill the women responsible for her pain, and that Frank stay until she finishes what she started. Frank begins to feel more and more like a prisoner, and notes Jenny would stop him even if he could leave, before passing out and ending up handcuffed. She later [[spoiler:beats her abusive sister to death with a baseball bat, has sex with Frank, and blows her brains out on climax]]. |
| 434 | * LousyLoversAreLosers: |
| 435 | ** Barracuda has an ExtremeLibido and often has sex with prostitutes. It's never shown to be satisfying for them, and he doesn't care one bit about anything other than them getting him off, often getting violent and demanding. The only person who's ever shown to enjoy sex with him is Wanda from the ''Barracuda'' miniseries, who's a former hardcore pornstar and who's so jaded from her career that Barracuda's roughness (not to mention his massive endowment) just registers as satisfying sex to her. |
| 436 | ** CorruptCorporateExecutive Harry Ebbing has a TrophyWife named Alice who is much younger than him. Predictably she states he's awful in bed, describing that he just "bends her over, stares at her ass and jerks off", which leads her to cheat on him with other men, including his NumberTwo. But while at first she just seems like a poor MalMariee BrainlessBeauty, it's soon revealed she's actually a FemmeFatale who's manipulating said NumberTwo into [[ManipulativeBitch betraying her husband for her own gain]]. The first hint at this is that the NumberTwo is ''also'' bad in bed, having a TeenyWeenie and [[SpeedSex climaxing too fast]], and she only pretends he's better to manipulate him. |
| 437 | * LudicrousGibs: The results of Frank using an ''anti aircraft'' [[https://ctmworks.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/cm_f1-3.jpeg gun on some very unfortunate Russian soldiers.]] |
| 438 | -->'''Frank''': Pure overkill. [[{{BFG}} Twelve-point-seven millimeter Soviet Dushka]]'s just like our fifty cal. Really designed to be used on aircraft. You use it on people-- You turn them into ''[[LudicrousGibs paint]]''. |
| 439 | * MacGuffinSuperPerson: In "Mother Russia", we have Galina Stenkov, a six year old Russian girl who caries an experimental flesh-eating supervirus in her blood stream, remaining unaffected by it due to being pumped full of antidotes by her now-deceased father. Currently, she is being held in Russian captivity, with the Russians intending to use the virus in her blood as a potential biological weapon. However, the Americans have similar plans for her in mind and kick off a daring rescue mission called ''"Operation Barbarossa"''. |
| 440 | * MadeOfIron: |
| 441 | ** Castle is one ''seriously'' tough bastard, so much so that his ability to take almost superhuman levels of punishment lapses into another [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower trope]] altogether. |
| 442 | ---> '''Frank:''' [after taking by a shotgun slug to the chest while wearing a bulletproof vest] That's a rib gone. Not broken. ''Gone.'' |
| 443 | *** In the finale to ''Punisher Max'', [[spoiler: Frank]] gets stabbed, shot, and beaten half to death by Elektra (to the point where his face is described as looking like "a swollen wad of hamburger" by Nick Fury), shot multiple times by The Kingpin's goons, and endures a savage beating from Fisk himself, and ''still'' [[spoiler: manages to kill him in the end, only succumbing to his wounds much later]]. |
| 444 | ** The Menonnite from ''Punisher MAX'' [[spoiler: took a knife boot right to his crotch]] and still kept coming. It took [[spoiler: an electrified security system and a falling safe to kill him.]] |
| 445 | ** Barracuda and Pittsy (''especially'' Pittsy) all take enormous amounts of damage that would leave normal people nothing more than a greasy smear on the pavement. |
| 446 | ** For example, Pittsy ends up getting stabbed, shot at, and beaten, his eyes are gouged, his fingers are broken, and he ends up getting [[spoiler: impaled on a ''goddamn steel fence''. But does this faze him? ''Fuck no!'' Through sheer hatred and incredible strength of will, the little bastard '''''[[TheDeterminator keeps on going.]]''''' It's only after he gets his face ''blown off by a shotgun slug'' that he finally succumbs to his wounds, but not before freaking Frank the hell out by taking a few more steps in his direction.]] |
| 447 | -->'''Frank:''' His next step's a reflex action.\ |
| 448 | ''[Pittsy keeps walking towards Frank]''\ |
| 449 | '''Frank:''' So's the next one. ''Got to be''. |
| 450 | ** Barracuda may be the most extreme example of this trope in the entire series. [[spoiler:In his first fight with Frank, he has most of his fingers on one hand cut off, takes a blade to the eye, gets garroted with '''barbed wire''', and he ''still'' manages to overpower Frank. Later on in the story, he ends up getting shot at point-blank with a ''shotgun'', and he ''still'' somehow survives. In their final encounter together, Frank has to empty an entire AK-47 clip into Barracuda just to make ''sure'' that he's dead for good. What's more, we later learn that as a child his hand was burned on a grill by his alcoholic father, who told him to be "as hard as the motherfucking earth itself". Seeing as how Barracuda went on to become a nigh-invulnerable giant, we can guess that he followed his old man's word to the letter.]] |
| 451 | -->'''Frank:''' Barracuda was dead when you shot him to bits and shot the bits and burned them. Anything less just left that nagging doubt. |
| 452 | * TheMafia: Ever since a mob hit was responsible for the deaths of his family, the mafia has remained one of Frank's most constant and hated enemies. The very first arc opens up with Frank crashing the birthday of a 100-year old Don Cesare and [[DiedOnTheirBirthday promptly blowing his brains out]] before calmly walking out onto the patio. The mafiosi rush out after him for revenge...only to discover that Frank is waiting for them with his [=M60=] in hand. Carnage ensues. |
| 453 | * TheMafiya: Elements of the Russian mafia make appearances every now and then, most notably in the beginning of the "Mother Russia" arc, which starts with Frank tailing a convicted felon from the Russian mob who, for some unfathomable reason (which we later learn about), was let out way ahead of his parole date. |
| 454 | * MalMariee: The Barracuda arc has Harry's TrophyWife who gleefully sleeps with her CorruptCorporateExecutive husband's NumberTwo. Oddly enough, the husband is apparently impotent so he forgives her (although the jealousy manifests when he has her one-night-stands murdered), he's completely oblivious to her latest affair, and actually commits suicide when he finds out. The wife and her lover are eaten by sharks. |
| 455 | * MeleeATrois: The climax of "In The Beginning" essentially boils down to a giant, all-out war between the UsefulNotes/{{CIA}}, and [[TheMafia the Cesare Family]], both of whom are trying to get their hands on Frank with the intention of either killing him or recruiting him. |
| 456 | * MenAreTheExpendableGender: |
| 457 | ** It's stated that the first time Punisher killed a woman, he lost a lot of his supporters (that she was already tried and imprisoned and no threat to anybody may have had something to do with it. It's not specified.) |
| 458 | ** Averted for the rest of the series, Frank Castle doesn't give a damn what your gender is. If he has you in his sights, you're pretty much screwed. |
| 459 | *** For example, in "Kitchen Irish", the first of the River Rats to die is a woman. |
| 460 | * MenOfSherwood: In the ''Man of Stone'' arc, Yorkie Mitchell's four SAS subordinates are (unhappily and under orders) acting as bodyguards for some unsavory ex-terrorists who are being targeted by some far more dangerous people. Two of the four aren't even named. When they first show up, they capture tough-as-nails CIA agent Kathryn O'Brien and shoot up some Russian special forces {{Mook}}s. They later hang around, observing their boss's unsanctioned interactions with Frank and Kathryn without trying to intervene. The only reason their bodyguard charges later end up dead is because Yorkie withdraws the bodyguards due to what big scumbags the men are. |
| 461 | * MercyKill: In Frank's third and final tour in Vietnam, his squad captures a female Viet Cong soldier and begin wondering aloud what to do with her. One Marine takes it upon himself to start a rape-train on her, only to be stopped halfway when Frank shows up and shoots the girl in the head. Later on, Frank sneaks up on the [[SociopathicSoldier Marine]] who had the sick idea and drowns him as he's washing the blood off his face. After another Marine who witnessed both events asks him why he did it, Frank justifies the former by saying that if he'd kept the girl alive, she would have been put on a helicopter and interrogated by intelligence officers, who would've raped and killed her anyway, not to mention that if he had shown mercy to the enemy then he would have lost the trust and respect of his platoon. As for the latter event involving him drowning the Marine responsible, he justifies that in five words: |
| 462 | -->'''Frank''': [[PayEvilUntoEvil I wanted to punish him.]] |
| 463 | * MildlyMilitary: |
| 464 | ** As with most depictions of the US military during the Vietnam War, Frank's Marine Firebase suffered from a seriously bad case of this. Most of the Marines stationed there are unwilling conscripts, commonly seen out of uniform and failing to salute senior officers, and half of them are stated to be addicted to heroin. As such, when a US General inspects the base, he is ''not'' impressed by what he sees. Frank arranges for the general's death so the base stays open. |
| 465 | ** Justified later on with the Delta Force commandos, as all of them are self-disciplined soldiers who don't need to worry about NCO's telling them to bathe and shave. |
| 466 | * MilitaryMaverick: He may be getting old, but Nick Fury certainly hasn't lost a step. The man is at an Air Force base for less than a week and he already has the place running just how he likes it, "no smoking" rules be damned. Not to mention he is shown constantly telling a cabal of Generals where they can stick it and receiving no repercussions for doing so. In fact, at one point, he even [[spoiler:delivers a nasty beating to a particularly slimy General with his belt and threatens anyone who tries to intervene, warning one of them who tries to call for help "Touch that phone and you're next, pissant!"]] Oh, and he gets away with that ''too''. |
| 467 | * MissileLockOn: When Frank [[PlayAlongPrisoner allows himself to be taken hostage]] aboard an enemy Mil Mi-24 gunship in order to get closer to General Zakharov. His Russian captors experience a rude awakening when they hear the familiar sounds of sirens alerting them that they [[OhCrap are in missile lock]]... |
| 468 | --> '''Russian Pilot''': Jesus Christ! ''[[OhCrap We're in missile lock!]]'' |
| 469 | * MobWar: |
| 470 | ** The birth of The Punisher came when his family was killed in a botched mob hit during one of these. We also learn that the men involved in the mob hit are all long dead, courtesy of Frank. |
| 471 | ** In "Up is Down and Black is White", we learn that Nicky Cavella's banishment to Boston came when his attempts at "intimidating" the local Triad boss backfired spectacularly. Instead of frightening the Triad boss into submission, all he really did was piss him off and kick off a war between the Cesare family and the Chinese Triads. |
| 472 | * MonkeyMoralityPose: When Fisk has Elektra kill his board of directors, she cuts three of them in a way that corresponds to the pose. |
| 473 | * MookHorrorShow: |
| 474 | ** The annual follows the POV of an arsonist being pursued by the Punisher through Manhattan. It never once shows the Punisher's perspective; he is instead presented as an unstoppable force that the criminal just can't get away from. |
| 475 | ** Earlier than that, the CIA was treated to a very literal horror show when they witnessed Frank massacre dozens of mobsters via satellite. Even Frank's old buddy Microchip is shaken up by what he's seen. |
| 476 | * {{Mooks}}: [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Mobsters, slavers, gang-bangers, drug dealers, Irish hoods, bikers, terrorist, contract killers, insane hillbilly cannibals, corporate business tycoons,]] and other types of bad guys tend to die in droves whenever the Punisher swings into action. |
| 477 | * MoralityChain: |
| 478 | ** Frank's family was this to him. In his origin story ''Born'', set in 'Nam, he says to a fellow soldier that they might be his "''last chance''" to be something other than a [[BloodKnight killer]]. |
| 479 | ** The Mennonite's terminally ill wife appears to be this for him. |
| 480 | * MoralMyopia: The five widows who band together to kill the Punisher can't seem to fathom why the vile, murderous criminals they married deserved their deaths. At one point, they even acknowledge that the Punisher targets monsters and psychos, approving of his [[ColdBloodedTorture treatment]] of the sex slavers and even thinking he went easy on them, but refer to his murder of their husbands in terms of innocent victims targeted for no reason by an amoral killer. |
| 481 | * MoreDakka: |
| 482 | ** In the event that Frank wishes to completely and utterly ''annihilate'' his enemies, you can rest assured that he will bring along his trusty [=M60=]/[=M249=] to help him get the job done. Most notably demonstrated in the very first issue, when Frank uses a [=M60=] attached to a tripod to ''[[LudicrousGibs disintegrate]]'' a gang of capos. |
| 483 | ** Barracuda one-ups Frank in this department. In the beginning of "Long Cold Dark", when he lures dozens of gangsters from dozens of different gangs into one hotel room, Barracuda annihilates them with his [=M60=]. Every last one of them. |
| 484 | * MotivationalLie: The "Widowmaker" arc, sees a group of widowed mafiosi wives using an elaborate scheme to trick The Punisher into believing a young woman has been kidnapped by a prostitution ring. Naturally, [[spoiler:both groups end up slaughtered by the end.]] |
| 485 | * MustNotDieAVirgin: There's an in-universe book called "Valley Forge, Valley Forge" written by the brother of Stevie Goodwin, the young Marine who served and eventually died under the command of Frank Castle back in Vietnam. At one point, the author states that he was reasonably certain that his brother lost his virginity before he left for Vietnam, stating that he was grateful that his brother hadn't died a virgin; if he had, it would have hurt him that much more. |
| 486 | * MutualKill: In the penultimate issue #22 of Jason Aaron's run, both [[spoiler:Frank Castle]] and [[spoiler:Wilson Fisk]] mortally wound each other, though both keep going for a disturbingly long time, with [[spoiler:Fisk making it to his tower before being locked out and finished off]], while [[spoiler:Castle makes it part of the way back to his family's abandoned house/his last hideout before expiring]]. |
| 487 | * MysteriousPast: In the MAX continuity, Frank's military history starts out as a mystery, with only the events of his third and final tour being detailed (in ''Born'') and the rest being {{Noodle Incident}}s. However, as he kept writing for MAX, both on Punisher and other series, Garth Ennis gradually began filling in the blanks. |
| 488 | [[/folder]] |
| 489 | |
| 490 | [[folder:N To R]] |
| 491 | * NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Writer Garth Ennis seems to have a knack for coming up with these - for example, Barracuda and The Man of Stone. |
| 492 | * {{Ninja}}: In Jason Aaron's final run, we are introduced to this continuity's version of the Hand, the shadowy cabal of assassins whom Fisk employs to help him get rid of the Punisher. Although we don't get to see that much of them, what we do know is that they have been around for over ''17 centuries''. |
| 493 | * NoNameGiven: The Mongolian, Zakharov's creepy, mute right hand man is never given a proper name. In fact, ''[[TheVoiceless he never says a single word at all.]]'' |
| 494 | ** Ditto for Ink, Nicky Cavella's equally creepy henchmen. |
| 495 | * NominalHero: Frank's only interest is in killing people he thinks are bad. He'll save innocent lives when he can, but he doesn't care about what happens to them afterwards. The only time he is actually interested in saving people are when children are involved and in "The Slavers", where the alternative is to let the police handle the girls he rescues, which would result in them being deported and enslaved or killed. |
| 496 | * NonLethalWarfare: At one point, corrupt generals tried siccing special forces soldiers on him, figuring that Frank Castle couldn't bring himself to kill American soldiers... [[TechnicalPacifist he sure didn't, but he didn't go quietly.]][[note]]Unbeknownst to the generals, they were ''also'' practicing this trope on their commander's orders, and eventually do manage to bring him down.[[/note]] |
| 497 | * NormalFishInATinyPond: Comes up when Frank gets overzealous and attacks some slavers he knows have been professional soldiers in the Balkans. His gunfire doesn't spook them, they immediately take cover and begin returning fire in orderly fashion, and he realizes that he's been a trained soldier fighting street toughs with no skill for too long. |
| 498 | * NormallyIWouldBeDeadNow: |
| 499 | ** Frank Castle simply WILL. NOT. DIE. The tough old bastard gets shot in the side of his chest, point-blank, with a shotgun. After acknowledging that one of his ribs is completely '''gone''', he gets into an extended fistfight with the man who shot him, tosses him out of a window, and carries on. Not a single story arc concludes without Castle experiencing some near-fatal damage. |
| 500 | ** The Punisher's nemesis, Barracuda, is the same. Shortly after meeting the Punisher, Barracuda gets the fingers on his right hand chopped off, his eye stabbed out, and his teeth broken, not to mention later being shot in the chest and hurled off a boat into shark-infested waters. Barracuda survives (he claims he grabbed onto the back of the boat and got towed to shore) and comes after the Punisher again, and is later [[spoiler:tortured by having his nutsack clipped to a car battery, shot several times, blown up, and his nose ripped off before the Punisher finally kills him by chopping his hands off with an axe and shooting his head to bits with an AK-47]]. Per Frank himself: |
| 501 | -->[[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill Barracuda was dead when you shot him to bits and shot the bits and burned them. Anything less just left that nagging doubt]]. |
| 502 | * NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity: Invoked in-universe by CorruptCorporateExecutive Harry Ebbing; he uses the exact line on learning there's a bunch of journalists waiting outside the building to talk to him [[spoiler:(unaware that his entire strategy, which involved falsifying accounts and sending Barracuda in anyone who figured him out to monopolize the energy market, had been leaked to them).]] Cut to him running back inside frantically calling for security to get them out as they continue to bombard him with ArmorPiercingQuestion after Armor-Piercing Question. |
| 503 | * NotInFrontOfTheKid: During "Mother Russia", Frank and Delta Force commando Martin Vanheim are attempting to covertly flee from a nuclear silo base with a six year old girl in tow when they are met by a pair of unsuspecting guards. Vanheim, in a state of panic, preemptively opens fire on them, swearing up a storm all the while. Frank quickly chews out his overtly anxious comrade for jeopardizing the mission and swearing in front of a child. |
| 504 | * NotWearingTights: Unlike his mainstream Marvel counterpart, this version of Frank Castle is never once seen wearing his iconic black and white tights. Instead, he opts for a more practical leather outfit complete with a BadassLongcoat as his choice of attire (his trademark skull is a T-shirt over Kevlar) in order to better fit the series' more "realistic" aesthetic. |
| 505 | * OhCrap: |
| 506 | ** The closest Castle has ever gotten to experiencing one of these was when he was fighting Pittsy, a balding fatso who was at least 60 years old. Halfway into the fight, he tore off Pittsy's bandage where he received an EyeScream and [[{{fingore}} broke his fingers]]. Pittsy gave him a ClusterFBomb in defiance and ''popped all of his fingers back in place'', ready to fight. Frank could only look on in disbelief. |
| 507 | ---> '''Frank''': Asshole's been eating his spinach. |
| 508 | ** Happens again when at the end of the arc, where Pittsy comes walking toward him [[spoiler:with part of the fence he was impaled on before Frank landed on him after a two-story leap out a window still sticking through him. Frank shoots him in the face with a shotgun, and the man falls ''after'' following a few more steps. Frank is left staring at the corpse, trying to convince himself the man is actually dead and those last few steps were reflexive.]] |
| 509 | ** Happens in "The Slavers" when Frank is ambushed by the Slavers' soldiers and he realizes he's sorely outgunned. They're not using HollywoodTactics or MookChivalry either. They're a trained army of killers and he's only got a pistol on him. All he can do for now is run. |
| 510 | ** Other than the usual reactions of villains to realizing the Punisher is here, one guy in "Six Hours to Kill" gets one when his sister's message (Frank has their geeky mook's phone, meaning he can find them) finally gets through. |
| 511 | * OmniscientMoralityLicense: Frank seems to know without fail whether any given person is a criminal who deserves death or not... or he's just extremely good at self-justification. [[spoiler: This could be a trait he has as Death's avatar, an aspect of his character Ennis introduced.]] |
| 512 | * OnceDoneNeverForgotten: Invoked with the general who'd come up with the terrorist plot after getting his face wrecked by Nick Fury. Characters in the story repeatedly bring up his humiliating beating and he reacts predictably in each case (i.e. sniveling). |
| 513 | * OneManArmy: Frank, obviously. When General Zakharov is preparing for their rematch, he acquires ''two'' military choppers and an incendiary bomb and can only hope it's enough to take him down. [[spoiler:It's not.]] |
| 514 | ** Barracuda is every bit as unstoppable and strategically brilliant as Frank. In one scenario, he masterminds a meeting in a hotel between all of New York's major underworld players in a ploy to goad The Punisher into showing up, knowing that Frank would never miss this kind of opportunity. Once Barracuda has everyone in place, he makes his grand entrance into the hotel room floor, armed with an M60 and a sneering SlasherSmile, and proceeds to ''annihilate'' every living thing in the hotel room until only he and Frank remain. |
| 515 | * OnlyAFleshWound: Averted; since MAX is set in a more realistic universe than most Marvel books, Frank is noticeably impaired by severe injuries. Of course, in such situations he doesn't stop fighting, he just starts fighting ''dirty''. The less strength he has to call on, the more creative he gets in his combat and interrogation methods. For example, Barracuda succeeds in putting him in traction - less than three days later, Frank's got Barracuda's nuts ''wired to a car battery''. |
| 516 | * OohMeAccentsSlipping: Lampshaded in a conversation between disfigured IRA bomber Finn Cooley and his partner in crime, Michael Morrison, an American gun runner of Irish descent (who fakes an Irish accent when talking to Finn). At one point Finn literally has to tape what's left of his face to keep it in place. When Michael asks if it slips, Finn casually replies "Like your accent?" |
| 517 | * PapaWolf: |
| 518 | ** In "Long Cold Dark", Castle's vengeful nemesis Barracuda targets Frank by [[spoiler:kidnapping the daughter he unknowingly had with Kathryn O'Brien.]] When Frank finds out, he is '''''pissed''''', to say the least, and at one point he spends an hour [[spoiler:running electricity from a car battery through Barracuda's genitals in retaliation]]. |
| 519 | ** Let's not forget the beginning of the arc, when Barracuda actually gets the drop on Frank and handcuffs him to a chair, then reveals his [[spoiler:daughter]] and holds a knife to her. Frank goes into full-on UnstoppableRage and has to piece together the subsequent events by examining his injuries in a ''hospital bed''. |
| 520 | ** In the first arc, Castle is conversing with one of his hooker informants while glaring at a pimp, who's guarding over a young girl. He asks his informant how old the girl is and whether she's been hooked on anything. Even though the hooker doesn't have an answer for either question, Castle walks over to the pimp, grabs him by the hair, pulls him into an alley, and emerges from the alley alone. |
| 521 | --> '''Frank:''' Tell the new guy to watch himself. [''walks off''] |
| 522 | --> '''Old Hooker:''' That was not my fuckin' fault... |
| 523 | ** In "Mother Russia", Castle is given the task of rescuing a six year old girl from Russian captivity. Upon entering the complex where she is held and meeting her, he says to her in broken Russian: "My name is Frank. If anyone tries to be mean to you, I will be much meaner to them. I promise." Soon after, a skinny, half-naked Mongolian super agent comes and [[CurbStompBattle kicks the shit out of Frank with ease.]] In a daze, he sees the agent [[BerserkButton slap the girl]], which triggers memories of his dying daughter. Roused by the memory of his late daughter, Frank gets back up, grabs the agent by his ankle, and proceeds to swing him around the room, [[UnstoppableRage slamming him against the floor, walls, and ceiling until the agent is a pulpy mess, and twisting his leg off "like a drumstick".]] He only stops when he realizes that he's scaring the poor girl. |
| 524 | ** "Kitchen Irish" has a ''[[PapaWolf Grandpapa Wolf]]'' in Napper French, a retired mob "cleaner" and the best of his kind. Napper was legendary for his ability to pull a "Houdini" on a body, meaning he made it disappear ''completely''. Ruthless gangster [[ScaryBlackMan Maginty]] kidnaps Napper's grandson in order to force him to pull one last Houdini... on a live man. Napper has no choice to comply, but near the end of the job, Maginty, [[ForTheEvulz for his own amusement,]] [[KickTheDog shows Napper's grandson what his grandpa had been doing, traumatizing the young child.]] So later on, Napper decides to give Maginty a [[PayEvilUntoEvil demonstration of how one pulls a Houdini...]] |
| 525 | ** And let's not forget, the whole reason the Punisher has embarked on his war against crime is one bad day in the park with his wife and kids... |
| 526 | ** "The Slavers" is another PapaWolf moment for Frank. Encountering some human traffickers, Castle is so enraged with what these scum do to their victims that by the end of the arc, he's shocked at what he has done. Including [[spoiler:carving up one of the ringleaders, wrapping his intestines around a tree, and then waking the man up.]] |
| 527 | * PaperThinDisguise: If you could even call it a disguise... but as long as Frank isn't wearing his skull insignia shirt (and even sometimes when he is), apparently nobody can recognize him despite being an infamous global mass murderer whose mugshot has been plastered across the world. |
| 528 | ** Subverted when Barracuda recognizes him, without even particularly looking for him (or ever having met him face-to-face), in a crowded airport. |
| 529 | * TheParagon: At the end of the second MAX series, Frank becomes this in a dark kind of way. [[spoiler: His conflict with Kingpin has proven [[MutualKill fatal for both of them]], and after over 30 years, Frank Castle's war is finally over. As Nick Fury cleans up the carnage left by Frank's last battle, he muses that Frank's war was [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife ultimately pointless in the long run]]. Cue news reports of citizens across New York banding together in Punisher-themed gear and exacting vigilante justice on local criminals. Even Fury has to crack a smile.]] |
| 530 | * ParentalSubstitute: During the events of "Mother Russia", Frank acts as a father figure to Galina, the six year old Russian girl who he is tasked with returning to the States. Although he tries to keep his emotions at bay, you can tell that Frank grows close to the child, going out of his way to [[PapaWolf protect her]] and even [[PetTheDog getting her some ice cream!]] Which makes their eventual break up all the more [[TearJerker heartbreaking]]. |
| 531 | * PayEvilUntoEvil: Ever since Castle's family was slain in a mob hit, this has become Castle's entire MO. Exactly ''how'' far he is willing to go with it depends on the situation. |
| 532 | ** "The Slavers" contains one of the more infamous examples of this trope. In it, Castle is battling a group of [[FromCamouflageToCriminal war criminals turned human traffickers]] who do horrible, ''horrible'' things to their captives. When Frank gets his hands on one of the three ring leaders behind the operation, as part of his interrogation of the man, [[spoiler:he pulls out two feet of the man's intestines and wraps them around a tree ''while he's still alive''.]] |
| 533 | ** The other two ringleaders were also disposed of in very graphic ways. [[spoiler:The woman who came up with the trafficking ring's way of breaking their captives was thrown against a shatterproof window face-first multiple times until the ''window frame broke'' and she fell multiple stories to her death. Later, in order to scare off the other cells of the trafficking ring, Frank ties the AxCrazy father of the other two ringleaders to a chair, douses him in gasoline, and ''lights him on fire'' while recording the whole thing.]] |
| 534 | * ThePenIsMightier: Nicky Cavella's cross-eyed henchman, Ink, got his nickname when he killed a guy by shoving a pen in his eye and into his brain. |
| 535 | --> '''Larry:''' Stabbed him in the neck? |
| 536 | --> '''Nicky:''' Stabbed him in the eye. Just kept goin' till he hit brain. |
| 537 | * PetTheDog: |
| 538 | ** Frank's BerserkButton is smashed when he discovers women smuggled into sex slavery. He rescues them, and as they speed off he hands a detonator to one of the captives, telling her to blow up the ship and the slavers. |
| 539 | ** In his final appearance, ComicBook/NickFury [[spoiler: finds Frank had written ''I'm sorry'' on the walls of his old house (for failing to save his family.)]] Fury proceeds to [[spoiler: use Frank's flamethrower to burn the house down and drive away the police raking over old wounds.]] |
| 540 | ** ''Bullseye'', of all people, has one of these moments when he pulls Vanessa Fisk aside (after she had just been kicked out of her home by her husband) and advises her to abandon her plans for revenge and try to move on, lest she become a monster like him. This leads to Bullseye going off on a tangent about how his life has devolved into nothing but severe neurosis that he keeps at bay through killing, which is the only thing that makes him feel functional and alive. |
| 541 | -->'''Bullseye:''' I'm glad we had this talk. |
| 542 | * PintSizedPowerhouse: '''''Pittsy'''''. The tough little bastard punches ''well'' beyond his weight and is one of the few characters in the entire series to give Frank a run for his money - he comes damn close to actually ''killing'' Frank on more than one occasion. Not only that, but the little guy is every bit as [[MadeOfIron durable]] as he is strong. |
| 543 | * PlotPoweredStamina: After shrugging off shotgun shells and sniper rifle bullets for years, in "Widowmaker" Frank takes a ''nine millimeter bullet'' from a ''suppressed'' [=MP5=] at considerable distance, and apparently it went right ''through his chest'', creating a hole in his back that, according to Jenny, "was too big for sutures" - all she could do was pack it full of gauze. He spends the rest of the story arc bed-ridden, allowing Jenny to become the "She-Punisher" for a short while. |
| 544 | * PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Nicky Cavella, Rawlins, the Bulats, the Generals, and Finn Cooley all drop ethnic slurs like it's going out of style. This gets Finn in deep shit when he loudly proclaims he'll ''"never be anyone's nigger again"'' in a bar full of black guys. The Heavy/[[spoiler:Jigsaw]] is pretty racist as well as ''very'' misogynistic, referring to Hispanic women as "''spic bitches''", "''coozes''", and "''whores''" nearly every time he opens his mouth. |
| 545 | * PowCamp: In "Valley Forge, Valley Forge", Colonel Howe recalls his nightmarish experience of being held in a Viet Cong P.O.W. camp, where the Viet Cong would take each prisoner to a secluded area and then bring back their ''[[NightmareFuel severed hands and feet]]''. |
| 546 | * PragmaticVillainy: Cristu Bulat from "The Slavers" arc, in total contrast to his [[AxCrazy father]]. The relationship between the two is rather strained because Cristu views human trafficking as a business and raping girls as just part of the business. He also berates his father for using his bare hands instead of a gun to kill a gang member, as well as for shooting the whole gang. As you could guess from his profession, though, he's still a heartless, raping bastard. His pragmatism is best demonstrated by his [[spoiler:willingness to kill his own father. It doesn't work out, both because he underestimated his father and because he gets disemboweled.]] |
| 547 | * PrivateEyeMonologue: The series is typically narrated by The Punisher, who's every bit as gritty and cynical as one would expect. |
| 548 | * PsychoForHire: |
| 549 | ** Finn Cooley used to be this until he decided that this lifestyle was for the birds and that he was going to get him some sweet inheritance money so he could ride Creator/AngelinaJolie if she'd have him, apparently. Didn't last long, unfortunately. |
| 550 | ** Bullseye takes this to a whole new level, with his psychotic side being even ''less'' picky about the death and destruction caused in carrying out his contracts than in his other incarnations. |
| 551 | * PunchClockVillain: The Russian soldiers guarding the nuclear silo base in "Mother Russia". Most of whom are just conscripts who aren't even aware of what it is they're ''really'' guarding and are only following orders until they're shipped out and stationed somewhere else. |
| 552 | * QuirkyMinibossSquad: Nicky Cavella and his crew from the first arc. His crew consist of himself, a near-mute enforcer who can only say "Huh," and a [[TheNapoleon Napoleon-esque]] creep in a track suit. |
| 553 | * RRatedOpening: The series opens up with Frank recounting the fateful day in Central Park where his family was slain in a mob shootout, complete with graphic depictions of Frank's dead family. Shortly afterwards, we see Frank laying waste to dozens of capos with his signature [=M60=], along with copious amounts of [[{{Gorn}} blood and gore flying everywhere]] that is equal parts nauseating and awesome. It's important to note that all of this happens before the first issue is even ''finished''. |
| 554 | * RaceLift: Rather than being a Greek woman who happens to dress like a ninja and use martial arts, Elektra is a Japanese woman in this continuity. |
| 555 | * RankScalesWithAsskicking: Zig-zagged. |
| 556 | ** Played straight with Frank Castle and Wilson Fisk; the former was a Captain in the USMC during his final tour of duty in 'Nam, the latter is a Mafia Don, and both are definitely among the most lethal characters in the series. |
| 557 | ** Subverted, with the eight Generals. Despite their ranks, not a single one of [[ArmchairMilitary them has ever seen any real combat before]], and they all immediately cower in the presence of someone like [[TheSpymaster Nick Fury]]. |
| 558 | ** Barracuda was a Sergeant Major in the US Army and is every bit as hardcore as Frank Castle. |
| 559 | * RapeAndRevenge: An extremely ruthless example occurs in Jason Aaron's first arc. Wilson Fisk is gang-raped by five men and spends three weeks in the infirmary as a result of the vicious assault. However, instead of retaliating immediately, Fisk slowly bides his time, saving his revenge until he is released. Once he gets out of jail, he tracks down the perpetrator's wife and has her gang-raped by the filthiest bums and crackheads he could find, taking pictures all the while, which he sends to the perp. The perp predictably goes ballistic upon seeing the photos, escapes from prison, and races back home...only to find Fisk [[TranquilFury calmly waiting for him]]. |
| 560 | * RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil: The darkest story arc of ''ComicBook/ThePunisherMAX'', "The Slavers", includes a lot of information -- including a lecture, with slides -- about the sex slave trade. It's also the story wherein Frank is shown to be absolutely brutal and unrelenting, well beyond his normal extremes, exemplified with the line "It had been a long time since I had hated anyone as much as I hated them." |
| 561 | * RasputinianDeath: Given the [[DarkerAndEdgier nature]] [[BloodierAndGorier of]] [[{{Gorn}} the]] [[BlackAndGrayMorality series]], it's no surprise that this trope tends to come up every now and then. |
| 562 | ** The first arc has Frank fighting Cavella's insanely tough and durable lackey [[PintSizedPowerhouse Pittsy]]. After trading punches (and shivs) with him, Frank tosses the little guy out the window, where he lands several stories down onto a [[spoiler:spiked iron fence, impaling him through the torso, after which Frank jumps from the window and lands on the poor bastard, further impaling him]]. Later, Pittsy ([[spoiler:fence still jutting through him]]) stumbles towards Frank, who promptly [[spoiler:blasts his face off with a shotgun]]. Even then, Frank has to mentally reassure himself that the next few steps the guy takes are purely reflexive. |
| 563 | ** Later, when Frank encounters Pittsy's sister Theresa, he quickly discovers that she's every bit as durable as her brother, and eventually [[spoiler:empties an entire 9mm clip into her]] just to make sure she's [[spoiler:dead]]. |
| 564 | ** {{Exaggerated|Trope}} with [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower Barracuda]]. Over the course of several fights Frank stabs him, [[EyeScream gouges his right eye out]], knocks out some of his teeth, cuts several digits off his right hand, strangles him with '''''barbed wire''''', shoots him point-blank in the [[GroinAttack groin]], chest, and face, and finally tosses him into shark-infested waters... [[MadeOfIron which he somehow survives]]. When the two meet up for the last time, Frank [[spoiler:blows him up with a claymore, fractures his skull with a wrench, bites off another one of his fingers, breaks his arm, [[ManBitesMan bites off part of his cheek]], stabs him ''again'', wires his testicles to a car battery ad leaves it running '''''for an hour''''', shoots him with an M-60, tears off his nose with some pliers, cuts off his arms with an ax, shoots his head to bits with an AK...[[KillItWithFire then incinerates his remains]] [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill just to be sure]].]] |
| 565 | ** [[spoiler:Frank]] himself is a victim of this trope, as he spends the latter half of ''Homeless'' dying a slow, painful death. In issue #21, still bloody and battered from his fight with [[spoiler:Elektra]], [[spoiler:Frank]] journeys over to his old house where the [[spoiler:Kingpin (AKA: Wilson Fisk)]] and half a dozen of his goons are waiting for him. Once there, the goons quickly surround [[spoiler:Frank]] and proceed to open fire on him...but [[spoiler:Frank]] [[TheDeterminator won't]] [[MadeOfIron go down]]. Fighting through the pain, [[spoiler:Frank]] manages to kill all the goons and engages [[spoiler:Fisk]] in a vicious street fight. The [[GilliganCut next page cuts to]] [[spoiler:Fisk]] just outside his tower, begging the guards to let him in. Unfortunately for [[spoiler:Fisk, Frank]] kills him before he can retreat inside. Having killed the [[spoiler:Kingpin]], [[spoiler:Frank walks all the way back to his old home before finally succumbing to his wounds and dying on the streets]]. |
| 566 | --> '''Nick Fury:''' Autopsy's taking forever. I asked the coroner for a cause of death and he just laughs. He's up to [[MadeOfIron eight pages of injuries]] with no end in sight. |
| 567 | * RatedMForManly: It should came as no surprise that an adults-only comic book about one of the most gritty, violent, and overly-masculine vigilantes in all of fiction falls into this trope. At times, the obscene levels of machismo (such as that one time when Frank HALO jumped '''''out of a nuke''''') border on self-parody. |
| 568 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: In the final issue of the series, we have Nick Fury and a pair of detectives examining the corpse of [[spoiler:Frank Castle]] as it lays on an autopsy table. After one detective makes a callous off-handed remark about the deceased, Fury chews the guy out with this: |
| 569 | --> '''Nick Fury:''' He was still out there... every ''night''... doing for free what you guys get ''paid'' to do. Waging a fucking '''''war''''', all on his goddamn lonesome, taking on the absolute ''worst'' this city had to offer... While you shitbirds were busy ass-raping immigrants and pepper spraying college girls and calling it fucking police work, whining all the while about overtime and your goddamn pension like a bunch of fucking candy-ass pogues. |
| 570 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: In contrast to the cabal of crooked generals who hired him, Colonel Howe is presented as such, to the point where even the informant that the generals sent to go meet with him was surprised to see just how formal and polite Howe was. |
| 571 | * RecruitingTheCriminal: The plot of the first arc involves corrupt CIA honcho Robert Bethell, trying to recruit The Punisher into his highly secretive, highly illegal CIA black ops unit, even though everyone around him is trying to warn him about how much of a poorly thought out plan this is. |
| 572 | * RedshirtArmy: The CIA's elite Alpha squad unit spends the first few issues being hyped up by their handler as being the best the military has to offer, with a few of them even being [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous ex-Delta Force]]. Despite this, all it takes is for Ink to sneak on top of the elevator that they are in, [[ElevatorFailure tamper with the cables a little bit, and ''presto'']]: Alpha Squad is on their way down to a [[LudicrousGibs gruesome fate]]. |
| 573 | * ReedRichardsIsUseless: Subverted and discussed. In one interview, writer Garth Ennis says that one of the advantages of writing The Punisher for the MAX line is that when you have incredibly powerful super-beings present in the world, it makes many of the wars and events of the real world look unnecessary. |
| 574 | * RefugeInAudacity: What the entirety of the "Mother Russia" arc can best be described as,. The absurdity of the story (Frank fighting off the Russian army pretty much by himself and escaping via HALO jumping out of a '''''nuclear missile''''') clashes with the overall realistic tone of the rest of the series. |
| 575 | * RippedFromTheHeadlines: A number of stories will occasionally make use of current events, such as corporate fraud, to slavery, and even the then-ongoing War on Terror. Usually so [[WriterOnBoard writer Garth Ennis can give us his opinion on the matter.]] |
| 576 | ** In particular, "The Slavers" appears to be based on The Guardian article [[https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2004/oct/03/features.magazine27 "Streets of Despair"]], with Garth Ennis even basing scenes off of real-life moments transcribed in the article, including direct quotes, and even using the same names of the interviewees (which, as the article notes, were changed for their protection). |
| 577 | * RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Frank regularly goes on one in nearly every story arc, terrorizing whoever was stupid enough to mess with him or someone he cares about. |
| 578 | ** In "Up is Down and Black is White", [[SmugSnake Nicky Cavella]] has the brilliant idea of desecrating the remains of Frank's family and releases the footage to the news media. Frank [[TranquilFury did not take this well]]. [[PayEvilUntoEvil Let's just say Nicky got what he deserved]] and the crime rate went down ''significantly''. |
| 579 | ** For another example of what happens when you ''really'' piss off Frank Castle, look at "The Slavers", where he finds a sex slavery ring that tried to intimidate a woman into silence by [[spoiler:'''''killing her baby''''']]. Frank's path of destruction is something to behold. He tracks down one ringleader, knocks him out, and wakes him so that he can see he's been [[spoiler:disemboweled, with his intestines tied to tree branches.]] Once he rats out his buddies, Frank leaves him there and moves on to the next ringleader, [[spoiler:whom he hurls against a shatterproof window face-first multiple times until it pops out of its frame, causing the ringleader to fall to her death. Once he finds the last ringleader, their father, he ties him to a chair, sets him on fire, and films the whole thing, later mailing it to the slavers' associates as a warning.]] |
| 580 | * RoguesGallery: Frank Castle doesn't have much of a rogues gallery for obvious reasons. However, there are a ''few'' villains who prove clever and tenacious to come back for a couple more arcs. Chief among them are: Nicky Cavella (who's in two story arcs), the Man of Stone (two story arcs as well), Barracuda (also two story arcs) and lastly the Kingpin, who appears in the most arcs (four of them to be exact), including the last one. |
| 581 | * RoguesGalleryTransplant: |
| 582 | ** Jason Aaron's continuation of the main series introduced MAX versions of numerous Spider-Man and Daredevil-related characters and organizations like the Fisks, Don Rigoletto, Bullseye, the Hand and the Enforcers. |
| 583 | ** The GreaterScopeVillain of the one-shot ''Hot Rods of Death'' turns out to be the Roxxon Energy Corporation. |
| 584 | * RuleOfSymbolism: A mook starts crying, falls to his knees and starts babbling something in Albanian after Frank effortlessly kills his comrades. Frank recognizes it as the Lord's Prayer and waits for him to get just before the line about forgiveness to kill him. |
| 585 | * RuthlessForeignGangsters: The slavers exemplify this. A lot of emphasis is placed on their wartime experience, and Frank has trouble digging up information on them because every other pimp in the city is terrified of them. |
| 586 | * RuthlessModernPirates: The River Rats from "Kitchen Irish". The River Rats are a group of pirates out of Hell's Kitchen in New York City who primarily rob rich people on yachts. Unfortunately for them, their "ruthless" reputation doesn't do them much good when they end up running into the Punisher, [[spoiler:as he manages to kill the majority of them with ease.]] |
| 587 | [[/folder]] |
| 588 | |
| 589 | [[folder:S To Z]] |
| 590 | * ScaryBlackMan: |
| 591 | ** Barracuda. The guy loses all the fingers on one hand and simply reacts with a laugh and a smile. |
| 592 | ** Maginty; the self-professed "Baddest nigger who ever came outta Dublin", from "Kitchen Irish": Kidnaps a RetiredMonster's grandson to make him do his work (cutting up bodies so they can't be found) on a live man, then brings said grandson in to watch. |
| 593 | ** Also PlayedForLaughs in "Kitchen Irish" when Finn Cooley [[INeedAFreakingDrink Needs a Freaking Drink]] after a confrontation and starts grumbling about how he's done "being people's nigger". He's white. The GangBangers whose bar he walked into are not. Cue ThisIsGonnaSuck, [[BattleDiscretionShot and cut to next scene]]. |
| 594 | * SchmuckBait: Amazingly enough, despite being a seasoned Marine veteran with 30+ years of vigilante experience, The Punisher of all people falls victim to one of these. In "Up is Down and Black is White", when Frank comes after Nicky Cavella for desecrating the remains of his family, Rawlins sets up an incredibly obvious trap for Frank, under the belief that he would be so [[UnstoppableRage blinded by seething rage]] that he [[RevengeBeforeReason wouldn't care about the obvious trap and try to kill Cavella anyway.]] Even Frank acknowledges this trope as he moves in for the kill. |
| 595 | --> '''Frank''': Already feel the crosshairs on me. I know that shithole'll explode with wiseguys, the instant I point the gun. But I drive on. [[LampshadeHanging Exactly what's expected of me.]] |
| 596 | * ScrewThisImOutOfHere: At the climax of "Up is Down and Black is White", Nicky Cavella's mooks abandon him en masse when he orders them to attack the Punisher after a particularity bloody shootout. |
| 597 | * SeanConneryIsAboutToShootYou: Many covers depict Frank menacingly pointing a gun at the reader. |
| 598 | * SemperFi: |
| 599 | ** During his time in Vietnam, Frank was a Force Recon Marine. What's more, in his final tour of duty he was the Captain of a Marine Outpost. |
| 600 | ** Given as the reason for Howe's involvement in Frank's capture: the U.S. Armed Forces trained the guy, [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge and look what he did with that training]]. |
| 601 | ** When General Zakharov returns in "Man of Stone", he brings along his squad of Soviet ''Black Sea'' Marines to help him deal with The Punisher. |
| 602 | * SerialKiller: Frank tries to present himself as the Mission-Based type, but in later stories, he's shown to be more of the Hedonistic type; subconsciously obsessed with the idea of a never-ending war to sate [[ColonelKilgore the bloodlust he developed in Vietnam]]. |
| 603 | * SexSlave: "The Slavers" sees Frank taking on a sex trafficking ring. The horrible, '''''horrible''''' things that the slavers do to the people they've enslaved hits every one of Castle's [[BerserkButton berserk buttons]] concerning violence of women and children in general, resulting in one of his most [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge brutal killing sprees]] in the entire series. |
| 604 | * ShellShockedVeteran: With the ''Born'' miniseries, Garth Ennis has suggested that in Vietnam, Frank started to [[BloodKnight love combat and killing people]], with the death of his family possibly being only the final incident that led to his killing sprees. |
| 605 | * ShotgunWedding: "Welcome to the Bayou" has an absolutely psychotic woman suggesting this as Frank's fate. He thinks he'd prefer being eaten by cannibals. |
| 606 | * ShoutOut: |
| 607 | ** "Up is Down and Black is White" has O'Brien reading a book by [[Series/HapAndLeonard Joe R. Lansdale]] while in prison. |
| 608 | ** At one point in "Mother Russia", we have Frank giving us his best ''Franchise/{{Rambo}}'' impression when he jumps in the back of a Dushka and proceeds to lay waste to some ''very'' unfortunate Russian soldiers. |
| 609 | ** A subtle one appears on the cover of issue #5; Frank can be seen wielding a custom M1911 that is identical to the one that Thomas Jane used in ''Film/ThePunisher2004''. |
| 610 | ** One of the SAS commandos from "Man of Stone" is named ''"Gaz"''. Hmm... now [[VideoGame/CallOfDuty4ModernWarfare where else have we heard that name before?]] |
| 611 | ** ''The Tyger'' features numerous references to famous poems. A few of them include: |
| 612 | *** Creator/RudyardKipling's "Mandalay". |
| 613 | *** ''The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám''. |
| 614 | *** Creator/SamuelTaylorColeridge's "Literature/KublaKhan". |
| 615 | *** And of course, the poem that the one-shot is named after is from ''Literature/SongsOfInnocenceAndOfExperience''. |
| 616 | ** During the ''Man of Stone'' arc, the SAS men guarding the ex-Taliban leader derogatorily refer to his Afghan close protection detail as [[Series/TheTwoRonnies "The Ronnies"]] |
| 617 | * ShownTheirWork: |
| 618 | ** Garth Ennis is notable for being one of the ''very few'' comic book writers who actually gets their military history and terminology right. |
| 619 | ** In the "Mother Russia" arc, when Frank has to go and deal with some Russian commandos, he correctly tells Galina to cover her ears and keep her mouth open so the noise from all the gunshots won't hurt her. The ears part is self-explanatory, but you want to keep your mouth open because the pressure wave from the shots will cause your lungs to burst if you don't. |
| 620 | ** The British Troops in Afghanistan are correctly shown using L85 bullpups, which is the standardized rifle for most British soldiers. |
| 621 | * ShowyInvincibleHero: It's pretty much a given that Frank is going to annihilate any bad guy unfortunate enough to find himself on Frank's shit list. The fun comes in watching ''how'' Frank annihilates said bad guy. |
| 622 | * SilentWhisper: As he fights with Frank, Bullseye whispers what he believes was the last thing Frank ever said to his wife. Frank's reaction implies Bullseye's guess was ''spot on''. In addition, we also see in a flashback how Frank's wife reacts to what he said, even though what he said isn't shown. Eventually, we get a full flashback to that fateful day, as well as what Frank said: [[spoiler:''"I want a divorce."'']] |
| 623 | * SirSwearsALot: As expected from an adults-only series written by Garth Ennis, just about every character speaks with a very colorful vocabulary that would make a trucker blush. Nick Fury in particular laces just about every sentence with profanity and vulgarity. |
| 624 | * SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil: "The Slavers" is the most notorious arc of the entire run. It details just how horrific human trafficking is, and the leaders of the trafficking ring suffer far slower and more graphic deaths and than any other character does during the series. |
| 625 | * SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Much like the rest of Garth Ennis' work, the series is on the deep, ''deep'', '''''deep''''' end of the cynicism spectrum. Quite possibly one the darkest most cynical comics ever published by Marvel. |
| 626 | * SmallTownBigHell: "Little Girls In White Dresses" has Frank get called to the rescue of a tiny backwater near the Mexican border that's been converted to the mass production of drugs, holding their children hostage if they don't cooperate. He even ends up facing Jigsaw again, although they don't speak or even identify each other. It ends with Frank shooting up the place, and the BigBad getting ripped apart by the mob of freed villagers. |
| 627 | * SmugSnake: |
| 628 | ** The conspiracy of generals in "Valley Forge, Valley Forge" is perhaps the best example, as it consists of eight incompetent [[SmugSnake Smug Snakes]] (who cause a great deal of death and suffering nevertheless), but it is far from the only example... the Punisher's opponents in general are no criminal masterminds. |
| 629 | ** Nicky Cavella was downgraded to this as the start of his VillainDecay. |
| 630 | ** Rawlins is so much of a smug snake that he can't help but crack wise even when he's getting his eye pulled out by the Punisher. It'd actually make him pretty badass if he wasn't such a DirtyCoward. |
| 631 | * SociopathicSoldier: Frank is interpreted as this to the point where he cannot even smile at what he does. He has essentially taken his war to the streets while showing no pity, remorse, or fear against gangsters, psychos, killers, rapists, criminals or hired guns. Some suggest it was his experience in Vietnam that made him this way, and ComicBook/ThePunisherBorn implies he made a DealWithTheDevil for an endless war to fight at the cost of his family. Whatever the case he is a broken type 2 and 4, to the point where he regrets not having someone to kill, or even having a wife and kids in the first place. |
| 632 | * SpannerInTheWorks: This sort of thing tends to happen ''a lot'' in this series. |
| 633 | ** In the very first arc, the CIA successfully manages to apprehend Frank Castle and plans on recruiting him so he can once again work for the government...until [[TheMafia Nicolas Cavella]] and his [[BadassCrew crew]] barge into their base of operations and all hell breaks loose, which inadvertently helps Frank get away. |
| 634 | ** In "Up is Down and Black is White", Kathryn O'Brien's unforeseen intervention succeeds in derailing Rawlins' plans of assassinating the Punisher. |
| 635 | ** Happens once again in "Widowmaker", this time with Jenny Cesare being the one to save Frank from an assassination attempt by a group of pissed-off mafia widows. |
| 636 | * SpinOff: The [[ComicBook/ThePunisherPresentsBarracuda 2007 five-issue miniseries]] starring everyone's favorite PsychoForHire, Barracuda. |
| 637 | * StaticStunGun: The Delta Force commandos sent to apprehend Frank are all armed with one of these. Unfortunately for them, the tasers have ''no'' effect. In the end, the Deltas are only able to finally bring Frank down after they have shot, beaten and tased him multiple times. |
| 638 | * SuddenNameChange: Microchip's real name is changed from "Linus Lieberman" to "David L. Lieberman". Frank's wife is also given the name Lisa when previously she had been referred to as either Barbara or Christie. |
| 639 | * SuicideMission: This is more or less what "''Operation Barbarossa''" is: a high-risk covert mission that involves sneaking into a Russian missile base, stealing a biochemical super weapon, and getting out undetected. It's no wonder why Nick Fury hand-picked Frank for this job. |
| 640 | --> '''Nick Fury:''' One job. High risk. Just about impossible. You fuck up, no one's ever heard of you. |
| 641 | * SympathyForTheDevil: Averted or subverted repeatedly. |
| 642 | ** When [[spoiler:General Zakharov]] gives a MotiveRant detailing why he [[IDidWhatIHadToDo did all of those horrible things]] during the Afghan-Soviet War, Frank ''doesn't'' smash his face in mid-sentence, but instead waits until the end and even asks if he is ready. It was a MercyKill, but after hearing what Frank did about the general's actions, it's doubtful that he would've spared him even if he wasn't dying. However, Zakharov's final words ''do'' seem to touch a nerve in Frank, given how he's a veteran of UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, in which he did more than a few horrible things himself. |
| 643 | --->'''Zakharov''': Kill ([[SmugSnake Rawlins]]), Castle. Our world is bad, but we are soldiers. He is a '''parasite'''; he would make the world this way '''forever'''. |
| 644 | ** The ONLY person Frank feels sorry for when he guns down a cadre of swamp-dwelling cannibals is the PsychopathicManchild banished to the edge of the community, kinda-sorta blaming himself for pissing the poor bastard off. |
| 645 | ** Despite having ample opportunity to kill him, Frank merely non-fatally wounds TheBrute in "Six Hours to Kill" after realizing that he is a borderline-psychotic ShellShockedVeteran of the Vietnam War who is more than likely being manipulated by the rest of Room 101. |
| 646 | * TheSyndicate: Although the five crime families in New York initially start off as separate entities, over the course of Jason Aaron's first arc, Don Rigoletto has Wilson Fisk go from family to family, slowly but surely earning the trust and respect of each family, until they finally agree to join Don Rigoletto's newly proposed syndicate. Once the syndicate has been formed, Fisk then [[spoiler:kills Don Rigoletto and usurps his position, taking over his newfound crime syndicate]]. |
| 647 | * TakeThat: During Garth Ennis' run, these were ''very'' common. |
| 648 | ** "Kitchen Irish" is basically one [[AuthorTract long tract]] of Ennis venting out his hatred of the IRA by having characters talk about how stupid and cowardly the group really is, as well as bashing Irish-Americans who unquestionably support the IRA without knowing all the facts behind the Troubles. |
| 649 | ** "Barracuda" may as well be one giant middle finger to Enron and [[CorruptCorporateExecutive crooked corporations]] in general. |
| 650 | * ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: A common tactic used by Frank whenever he wants to be absolutely sure that his target won't get back up again, such as when he's laying waste to a gang of mobsters. |
| 651 | --> '''Frank:''' Fresh belt to finish off the wounded. To make sure no one's faking. Fire at moans. At movement. [[MoreDakka Give them the whole two hundred rounds.]] Just to be absolutely sure. |
| 652 | ** In the second issue he explains this strategy in depth. |
| 653 | --> '''Frank:''' You get the other guy on the ropes. You keep him there. You mangle his ears. [[EyeScream Fill his eyes up with blood.]] Pulp his kidneys, grind his ribs. Don't let up. And if he still won't hit the canvas, you go on and bleed him to death. |
| 654 | * ThreateningShark: This is one of Barracuda's favorite ways of disposing of his victims. In his first fight with Frank, he overpowers him and wins the fight. Instead of, say, shooting Frank there and then and not having to worry about him later, Barracuda simply throws him into the ocean to be eaten by a great white shark. This doesn't work. |
| 655 | ** Later on in an act of poetic justice, it's [[spoiler:Barracuda who finds himself being fed to the sharks]]. |
| 656 | * ToKnowHimIMustBecomeHim: When the Kingpin hires Bullseye to kill Frank Castle in Jason Aaron's second arc, Bullseye first fails to kill Frank when the latter shows up and tries to snipe the Kingpin. With his first attempt a failure, Bullseye embarks on a quest to get inside Frank's head. This involves wearing Frank's old clothes, eating his food, [[CloudCuckooLander sleeping in his old hideouts so he may look into his dreams]], and finally recreate what created the Punisher in the first place -- by [[spoiler:kidnapping a family, then having them ''murdered in the park while pretending he's the father''. He repeats this '''''three times''''']], but still doesn't get any closer to understanding what drove Frank to become the Punisher...until he spends a week isolated in a room while staring at old family photos of Frank and his family, and finally realizes what Frank's last words to his wife before she and the kids were killed were -- [[spoiler:"''I want a divorce.''"]]. |
| 657 | * TooDumbToLive: Many of Frank's targets, but there are some notable examples: |
| 658 | ** Special mention goes to Nicky Cavella, a jackass of a mafioso who got the astoundingly ''bright'' idea to dig up the remains of Frank's family and record himself ''urinating on them'', then release the footage to the news media in the hopes of getting Castle [[{{Pun}} pissed off]] and go berserk. Yeah. It's been nice knowing you, Nicky. Notably, it ''doesn't even work'': Instead of murdering the hell out of Nicky, Frank instead murders the hell out of everyone ''but'' Nicky, demanding that the city re-bury his family's remains, or he'll keep murder-spreeing until they do. When they finally do bury the remains, ''then'' Frank goes after Nicky, [[TranquilFury completely calm]] and ''[[RoaringRampageOfRevenge utterly vindictive]]''. Nicky spent the intervening time oscillating between gloating that the Punisher was terrified of him ''and'' doing his work of taking out other gangs, and batshit paranoid that Frank was going to kill him at any second. |
| 659 | *** As [[SmugSnake Rawlins]] pointed out, Nicky didn't spend any of that time getting mooks that could have taken advantage of Frank's dropped guard! (Frank's ''still'' pissed off enough that when he goes after Nicky, he goes along with [[SchmuckBait an obvious setup]] ''despite'' recognizing the setup for one, but [[SpannerInTheWorks he's bailed out of that one]].) |
| 660 | ** Another special mention goes to the [=Westies/Maginty/River Rats/Cooley=] for actually believing that their RetiredMonster boss actually wanted to give them his fortune. Frank and Yorkie couldn't help but think that this was odd and they didn't even know him. |
| 661 | * TortureAlwaysWorks: Zigzagged. Usually Frank can get whatever information he needs through torture, but in ''Force of Nature'', Frank describes how some people will keep their mouths shut even when threatened with death and how others will shut down before revealing anything useful. He has to come up with an elaborate plot to get information from a trio of low-level crooks. Barracuda also dismisses torture as a way to get his revenge, reasoning that someone like Castle will eventually disconnect. |
| 662 | * TortureTechnician: Used to ''great'' effect by Frank, whenever he finds a criminal who won't break easily. Perfectly demonstrated in "The Slavers" where Frank knows that his usual torture techniques won't work on a group of [[EliteMooks battle-hardened slavers]] and realizes that in order to break these men, he will have to go to ''much'' greater lengths. |
| 663 | ** He gets one slaver to snitch on his buddies by [[spoiler:'''''disemboweling him and wrapping his intestines around a pair of tree branches''''']], then patiently sitting back and waiting for him to talk. |
| 664 | * TranquilFury: Frank varies between this and UnstoppableRage, depending on the situation. He was really pushed over the edge when Nicky Cavella had the brilliant idea of desecrating his family's remains in an effort to piss him off. It worked: he ''snapped even more than usual'' from his default UnstoppableRage to full-on TranquilFury and proceeded to methodically go from bar to bar, slaughtering unconnected criminals until the city officials reburied his family. ''Then'' he went after the scumbag who did it. |
| 665 | ** After seeing what Cavella did on the news, a random patron even calls it out. |
| 666 | -->'''Random Patron:''' That... that guy is gonna go fucking ''[[UnstoppableRage berserk]]''... |
| 667 | * TranslationConvention: All the Russian characters in "Mother Russia" speak among themselves in English for some reason, though we can assume that they are actually speaking in Russian and it's only written in English for the benefit of the reader. |
| 668 | * TheTriadsAndTheTongs: Another one of the ''many'' criminal organizations operating in New York. They have a brief but memorable appearance when Nicky pays them a visit and teaches them ''why'' you don't fuck with the Cesare Crime Family by tricking the Triad leader into [[spoiler:eating food that had been cooked with meat from his ''dead son'']]. |
| 669 | * TrophyWife: The role played by the sexually promiscuous Mrs. Alice Ebbing, wife of Harry Ebbing. What's more, she's well aware of this fact and ''sick and tired of it'', so she decides to get back at her stuffy husband by screwing his most trusted associate. |
| 670 | * TwoferTokenMinority: One of the cops in "The Slavers" is black and gay, which gets him no shortage of crap from his fellow officers. |
| 671 | * TheUnfettered: Given the [[DarkerAndEdgier dark nature]] of this series, it's no surprise that this character archetype shows up frequently, with various degrees of decadence. |
| 672 | ** Frank Castle is a rare protagonist example. While his mainstream incarnations usually depict him as a brutal yet vindictive individual who "does what needs to be done", here, he is depicted as ''completely unfettered''. |
| 673 | ** General Nikolai Zakharov is a truly monstrous example. During the Soviet-Afghan War, he would routinely gather up [[spoiler:entire villages and have them ''forcibly pushed off of cliffs''. And that's not even getting into the part about the baby...]] |
| 674 | ** Bullseye takes this further than all the other examples combined. '''''He never had any fetters to begin with.''''' |
| 675 | * UnfriendlyFire: Frank gets rid of a general threatening to shut down his base by drawing him in range of a Viet Cong sniper and standing in front of the warning sign. |
| 676 | * UnfulfilledPurposeMisery: A cabal of American generals had the bright idea of funding their own Islamist terrorist cell so they could make entirely deniable attacks on other countries. It nearly failed because it didn't occur to them that fanatic {{Death Seeker}}s might not be willing to wait a year or ten for the order to destroy their hated enemies. In the end, they're used to hijack a plane to Moscow (despite having no chance of evading the anti-air defenses) to divert attention from Frank rescuing a little girl with a deadly virus in her blood from a nuclear missile silo. |
| 677 | * UnstoppableRage: Despite being something of an [[OneManArmy unstoppable killing machine]], Frank Castle is typically a very calm, methodical man...until [[SmugSnake Nicky]] [[DirtyCoward Cavella]] digs up his family's remains and '''''[[MoralEventHorizon pisses on them]]'''''. This does not go down well. A livid Frank proceeded to pack up his [[MoreDakka M-249]] and consecutively attack various criminal hideouts, racking up ''68 kills''... '''''in one night'''''. It was so bad that he wasn't even really aware of what he was doing each time until the recoil from his gun kicked in; he was in a sort of perpetual hallucination until his family was returned to their graves. |
| 678 | * VasquezAlwaysDies: [[spoiler:The fate of O'Brien, the tough, sexy, badass CIA chick who's skilled in violence and mayhem. Along with Frank, she manages to successfully kill off most of Zakharov's crew...only to step on a landmine mere moments later.]] Fulfilling this trope, [[spoiler:O'Brian's]] more demure, domesticated sister survives and goes on to raise her child. |
| 679 | * VengeanceFeelsEmpty: Yorkie Mitchell meets with Frank, bringing with him the son of a fellow soldier murdered by an Irish terrorist now hiding in New York. In the end, the kid kills his father's murderer, but states he doesn't feel any better for it. |
| 680 | * VigilanteMan: The Punisher obviously. However, unlike other incarnations of the character, this series ''thoroughly'' analyses and deconstructs the concept, showing how this character archetype would fare in a real-world setting. |
| 681 | * VillainEpisode: |
| 682 | ** Issue #20 focuses entirely on Nicky Cavella, and details his StartOfDarkness. |
| 683 | ** The gist behind Barracuda's mini-series, where we get to see a day in the life of the AxCrazy merc. |
| 684 | ** The Annual was basically a [[SlasherMovie slasher]] story in which the silent, unstoppable killer happens to be the Punisher. Other villain-centric yarns include the first two issues of ''Untold Tales of the Punisher'' and the one-shot ''Tiny Ugly World''. |
| 685 | * VillainousBreakdown: Cavella and Barracuda break down spectacularly, the former turning into a simpering pants-wetter and the latter turning into a raving lunatic. Finn Cooley's breakdown is more physical than mental, as his face continues rotting with each appearance. Surprisingly averted with Rawlins, though, because even as things repeatedly go to hell for him he can't help but act like the smug little weasel he is, and [[spoiler:a simple "Oh no" -- with an OhCrap expression -- suffices for his ultimate downfall]]. |
| 686 | * VillainousValor: Although the criminals that Frank fights are usually the lowest form of human trash, this trope pops up every now and then. |
| 687 | ** First, with [[PintSizedPowerhouse Pittsy]]. The mean, vicious little bastard who gives Frank his first real challenge and even gets him reeling on two separate occasions. |
| 688 | ** Once more with Tiberiu and his henchmen. ''Yes'', they are a group of amoral slave traffickers, but their combat prowess cannot be ignored. After all, it takes a very special group of individuals to force a man like [[TheDreaded Frank Castle]] to run for his life. |
| 689 | ** Becomes a major problem for Frank in the final arc, where after having his reputation tarnished by a number of setbacks, the thugs who once feared him are now beginning to fight back more ferociously than ever, standing their ground instead of running, and even ''giving chase'' when Frank attempts to run away. |
| 690 | ** Kingpin's hired goons show a surprising amount of loyalty for a group of crooks. Best demonstrated in the second-to-last issue where they finally have Frank surrounded, and begin opening fire on him from all sides... Except [[MadeOfIron Frank]] [[TheDeterminator won't go down]]. Amazed by this show of resiliency, Kingpin's goons continue firing back, not letting up for even a second. One of them even tells Fisk to run for his life while [[UndyingLoyalty they hold him off.]] |
| 691 | * VillainWithGoodPublicity: Frank is functionally this, no one is under the assumption that he doesn't do it just because he is a crazy serial killer but as long as he kills people that stretches the definition of human being, keep the civilian casualty to zero and disarm the police in his way with little to no injury it's hard to convince a manhunt on him. |
| 692 | -->'''Chief of police:''' Tonight, I'm on the fence, but most days "Hi I'm Frank Castle's number one fan". |
| 693 | * VillainsWantMercy: A lot of the criminals Punisher faces off against fall into this once they get cornered by him, pathetically begging for their lives. Punisher outright ignores them and gives them a painful death instead. |
| 694 | ** Nick Cavella gets special mentions as he was an arrogant mobster who had the ‘’bright idea’’ of digging up Frank’s family and pissing on the remains then sending a recording on TV, confident he could take him on. Once Punisher responds violently by killing off all the mobsters Cavella’s basically been using as meat shields, he goes after him next. Punisher then drags a tied up Cavella in the middle of the wilderness, who immediately began pleading for his life. He gets a bullet in the gut and stranded in the woods to die slowly and painfully from severe blood loss. |
| 695 | ** In “The Slavers”, Punisher goes after Vera, the one behind the human trafficking ring. She was the one who had unlucky women lifted from the streets gang-raped repeatedly by groups of her men in order to break them, show them they are powerless to do anything. Once Punisher catches up to her, she pleads for mercy, saying she was just “running a business”. This doesn’t fly with Frank, who bodily smashes her against shatterproof glass before busting her out the window of her skyscraper office. |
| 696 | ** In “Welcome to the Bayou”, the father of a hillbilly family hunts down Frank. They thought they had the advantage in numbers and firepower, but Frank dispatched them all regardless. Once he disarms the father, he immediately pleads for Frank not to kill him. Frank answers with a BoomHeadshot. |
| 697 | * TheVoiceless: The Mongolian is never heard uttering a single word. Appropriately enough, his [[NoNameGiven real name is never revealed either.]] |
| 698 | * VomitDiscretionShot: Like many other discretion shot tropes, this one is averted with extreme prejudice. |
| 699 | * WarIsHell: A running theme throughout the series is showing just about every armed conflict in the past century, such as the Vietnam War (Frank), Yugoslav wars (the slavers), and the Soviet-Afghan war (General Zakharov) as pointless and senselessly violent wastes of life that accomplish nothing in the long run and only leaves all those involved in said conflicts scarred for life, as is tragically the case for many of the characters in the series. |
| 700 | * WeHardlyKnewYe Due to the [[AnyoneCanDie nature]] of the series, its not uncommon to see side characters get little in the way of characterization before getting unceremoniously killed off. |
| 701 | ** Poor old Massimo Cesare, the old man gets only ''two panels'' before getting his [[BoomHeadshot brain ventilated]] by the Punisher. |
| 702 | ** The Mennonite is a curious example. He shows up fairly late in the first arc, yet is given a fairly deep backstory, complete with a loving family and even a compelling reason to go after the Punisher, making us believe that he will play a major role in what's to come. Despite this, he appears in all of only 3 issues before finally being [[spoiler:killed by the Punisher]]. Granted, he did put up one hell of a fight before he [[spoiler:went down]], but still. |
| 703 | * WeHaveReserves: Subverted spectacularly at one point; Nicky Cavella, desperate to finish off the Punisher, attempts to bully his ''capo'' underlings into giving him their men. Not only do they tell him to get bent, they also rant at how they're not going to serve as cannon fodder for an obvious GeneralFailure, complete with his mooks giving him a HannibalLecture on how much of a fuckup he is. This took major brass on their end, since Nicky was known for, among other things, chopping up a preteen and serving him to his father. Though it helped that Cavella no longer had any soldiers left (the Punisher had killed them all) and his enforcers Pittsy and Ink were also dead, hence he no longer had any power whatsoever over his ''capos''. |
| 704 | ** Played perfectly straight in the "Mother Russia" arc, which sees the Punisher having to fight his way out of a nuclear silo base in Siberia. The Russian military seems to have no problem sending wave after wave of conscript soldiers to go and stop him as he keeps slaughtering them. |
| 705 | --> '''Frank:''' Russian military never was too sentimental about spending lives.\ |
| 706 | [''Frank finishes slaughtering the current wave of Russian troops'']\ |
| 707 | '''Frank:''' I'm not too sentimental either. |
| 708 | * WesternTerrorists: Before he had his face blown the fuck off, Finn Cooley was once a fanatical member of the IRA before becoming disillusioned. His nephew has since followed in his footsteps and joined the IRA. |
| 709 | * WhatTheHellHero: Frank gets one of these when he confronts the host of a right-wing radio program with a very anti-immigration agenda. The radio host's response to Frank edges into BullyingADragon and DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu, since he clearly knows who Frank is and what he's capable of, and isn't intimidated in the slightest. He asks Frank what he is planning on killing him for since every word he says on his show is true, then challenges Frank to find one thing that he's said that ''isn't'' true. While Frank merely intended to confront him and had no plans to kill him, it's notable that he doesn't have a reply to the host's arguments and leaves without saying anything. |
| 710 | * WhiteCollarCrime: "Barracuda" sees Frank going up against a thinly-veiled Enron {{Expy}} called Dynaco. The arc culminates with Frank [[spoiler:blowing up a boat that held their major stockholders]]. |
| 711 | * WholePlotReference: The "Welcome to the Bayou" arc is pretty much one long homage to ''Film/{{Deliverance}}''. The movie even gets ''name-dropped'' at one point: |
| 712 | -->'''Nigel''': Oh shit. I'm at some kind of fucked-up ''Film/{{Deliverance}}''-style hoedown from hell. |
| 713 | * WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Lampshaded in the "Widowmaker" arc, where several villains comment how every time the Punisher is captured, the villain doesn't just shoot him. |
| 714 | * WhyWontYouDie: Frank to Pittsy after [[RasputinianDeath dishing out incredible amounts of punishment to the latter]]. |
| 715 | * WideEyedIdealist: Finn Cooley's nephew, Peter Cooley, from "Kitchen Irish" is a rare villainous example. The young man genuinely believes in the IRA, to an almost pitiful extent. |
| 716 | * WifeBasherBasher: An unintentional example: Frank starts the series by conducting a massacre of assembled Mafiosi. During "Widowmaker" (where the widows unite to get revenge on him), a young widow who used to be married to one of them ([[AssholeVictim a rapist, wifebeater, murderer and all-around asshole]]) thanks Frank for taking out her husband (the flashback panel shows Frank casually shotgunning the bastard's head off as he lies on the ground) and [[spoiler:kills the rest of the widows for him]]. |
| 717 | * WorldOfBadass: Subverted. Although it takes place in a crime ridden setting filled with corruption, crime, and general mayhem that's populated with AxCrazy hitmen, sadistic Femme fatales, and grizzled vigilantes hardcore enough to [[OneManArmy single-handedly take out entire armies all by themselves]], the vast majority of cast members are just ordinary [[RedShirt people]] or by-the-numbers mooks who have a [[AnyoneCanDie fairly low survival rate]]. |
| 718 | * WorthyOpponent: Frank Castle to General Zakharov in "Mother Russia", as he explains after Frank [[spoiler:successfully escapes the nuclear missile silo by setting one of the missiles to defuse at 8000 feet, stowing away inside, launching it, and parachuting to safety.]] Especially notable because it came after spending the whole arc insisting to his disbelieving inferiors that they were under attack from Americans and not Arab terrorists. |
| 719 | --> ''"That was no American. It was a Russian who was born there by mistake."'' |
| 720 | ** Frank begrudgingly begins viewing Bullseye like this after he realizes the latter is the closet thing that he's ever had to an equal. |
| 721 | --> '''Frank:''' Someday, there may very well be a man much like this standing over me as I die. |
| 722 | * WouldHitAGirl: |
| 723 | ** When Punisher finds out that [[spoiler:Vera]] was actually the brains behind the human trafficking operation (i.e. the one who told the mooks to "break" their victims with gang-rape) in "The Slavers", he repeatedly throws her face-first against a shatterproof window, reasoning correctly that the frame would give before the windowpane did. |
| 724 | ** In the "Welcome to the Bayou" arc, he has no problem [[spoiler:making short work of the psychotic woman who had been giving him plenty of trouble up until that point.]] |
| 725 | ** In "Six Hours To Kill", after the CloudCuckooLander woman part of the group that poisoned him to begin with kills the Vietnam veteran working for her and injects Frank with the cure so they can work together, with a clear and dangerous lust for the Punisher himself, Frank just [[spoiler:breaks her neck with his legs]]. |
| 726 | * WouldHurtAChild: In "Mother Russia", when Frank and Vanheim's plan to rescue a six year old girl from a nuclear silo base goes south, Vanheim has no problem [[spoiler:trying to inject Galina (the little girl whose blood contains an experimental supervirus) with a lethal poison that will kill her while also stabilizing her blood.]] Thankfully, Frank is there to stop him before he can go through with it. |
| 727 | * WouldNotShootAGoodGuy: A cabal of corrupt US Army generals use their connections to send a group of honest US soldiers after The Punisher. Frank doesn't kill them, but the soldiers learn the hard way that [[ThouShaltNotKill non-lethal force]] [[GoodIsNotNice doesn't mean gentle force.]] [[spoiler:Thanks to the orders of their commander, who deliberately accepted the task to cover for [[AndroclesLion his own agenda]], they return the "''favor''".]] However, he has no problems shooting up Russian conscripts in a missile base. |
| 728 | * WritersCannotDoMath: It's said that in thirty years Frank has killed about 2,000 people. Given the rate at which we see him kill that number seems improbably low. In the Ennis run alone, excluding ''Born'', he kills over 400 people in a five year span. |
| 729 | ** Of course, that 2,000 dead figure may only be counting deaths that can be definitely traced back to Frank. It’s possible that many of the criminals he’s killed were dealt with in a way that ensured their bodies were never found and/or identified. Also, keep in mind that Frank rarely leaves survivors behind and he doesn’t exactly broadcast his killings; for example, if he were to kill a group of gangbangers, who is to say that a rival gang doesn’t claim responsibility for it and Frank receives no credit for it? |
| 730 | * WriterOnBoard: |
| 731 | ** Ennis tends to alternate between general "organized crime" targets and villains [[TakeThat modeled after]] real groups, including Film/{{Enron|TheSmartestGuysInTheRoom}} and even contemporary U.S. military personnel. |
| 732 | ** "The Slavers", probably the bleakest, most visceral ''Punisher'' story ever written, was based on Ennis's opinion of human traffickers. Hint: He doesn't like them. |
| 733 | *** Frank himself notes that he hates the HumanTraffickers in "The Slavers" more than he's hated someone in a long time. In the MAX continuity, Frank's been The Punisher for at least a couple of decades. |
| 734 | ** Some of Ennis' political thoughts are chilling. The first line of "The End", where the war on terror goes nuclear? "Soon." |
| 735 | ** Judging from the "Kitchen Irish" arc, we can guess that Garth Ennis, really, ''really'' '''hates''' the IRA. Not only that, but he also seems to have no love for Irish-Americans who unquestionably support the IRA without knowing all the facts behind UsefulNotes/TheTroubles, and who think that they are celebrating their heritage when really all they're doing is indulging in the worst stereotypes. |
| 736 | * XanatosGambit: Overlapping with ThanatosGambit, Old Man Nesbitt gave each of his PsychoForHire {{Inadequate Inheritor}}s a piece of a code that they would have to put together in order to get at his inheritance. After they almost kill each other trying to steal the other pieces of the code, they decide to call a truce. [[spoiler: When they all come together to collect, it's revealed that the secret location for his funds has no money in it at all, just an extremely powerful explosive with an expletive scrawled on it]]. That'll get 'em. |
| 737 | * TheYardies: Another one of the many criminal groups active in New York. However, unlike the [[TheMafia Italians]] and the [[TheMafiya Russians]], they don't get much screen time. |
| 738 | * ZergRush: A tactic commonly used by the mooks that the Punisher faces off against, though it seldom ever works. |
| 739 | ** In "Mother Russia", when ''"Operation Barbarossa"'' goes south and the Punisher is forced to fight his way out of a nuclear missile base in Siberia, the Russians' method of handling this situation amounts to little more than sending wave after of conscripts to charge at him at once in the vain hope that it will work. It doesn't. |
| 740 | ** When the CannibalClan from "Welcome to the Bayou" try using this, Frank acknowledges and discusses this trope, stating that he'd rather face an unruly mob than a truly formidable adversary. |
| 741 | --> '''Frank''': Mobs fight sloppy. They rely on the numbers, get overconfident. I'd rather fight an [[RedShirtArmy amateur mob]] than one [[OneManArmy tough customer]] that really knows what he's doing. |
| 742 | [[/folder]] |
| 743 | |
| 744 | ---- |
| 745 | |
| 746 | ->''"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."'' |
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