Film / The Toxic Avenger

He's a hideously deformed creature of super-human size and strength!

"Hohoho, no ticky, no washy!"

— Toxie, after shoving an old lady into a washing machine.

Meet Melvin the Mop Boy, a 98-pound wimp living in Tromaville. When Melvin runs afoul of a local gang of hoodlums, he ends up falling out of a second-story window at the Tromaville Gym - straight into a vat of toxic waste.

The resulting mutation transforms Melvin into the Toxic Avenger, a Hideously Deformed Creature Of Superhuman Size And Strength. After hooking up with a blind, blonde female accordion player, he proceeds to beat up baddies (and boy, are they bad!) in the most gore-tastic ways possible.

Followed by three sequels and an animated series. There's also a musical. A reboot, starring Peter Dinklage and Jacob Tremblay, directed by Macon Blair, and developed by Legendary Pictures, made its world debut at Fantastic Fest on September 21st, 2023.

---

The series includes examples of:

The entire series

• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Any time the villains threaten Toxie's girlfriend, it means he's going to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Animated Adaptation: The kid-friendly Toxic Crusaders.
• Arch-Enemy: Toxie has Bozo, the violent thug who dunked him in the waste in the first place.
• Asshole Victim: Pretty much everyone the Toxic Avenger kills is a depraved son of a bitch that's done something horrible enough that they deserve their demise. The most notable examples include the three robbers who shot Sara's seeing eye dog in the first movie.
• Badass Adorable: Toxie is a badass superhero but he is an absolute sweetheart to people in need of help.
• Badass Santa: The A Very Troma Christmas short has Toxie dressed as Santa, teaming up with various historical figures to fight corporations and save Christmas.
• Bald Head of Toughness: Toxie is bald because the exposure to the toxic waste that mutated him caused his hair to fall out.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Inverted. Toxie's very badly deformed as a result of the toxic waste, but he's the good guy.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Toxie's one of the nicest mutants you could ever meet, but pissing him off is definitely not a good idea.
• Blind and the Beast:
  • Sara is nonplussed after finding out that Melvin is a mutant. Strangely, when she can see again, she thinks Toxie is the sexiest man alive, and that normal people are hideous.
  • In the animated series, she puts on her glasses, and screams in terror... at the awful tie Toxie was wearing!
• Card-Carrying Villain: Nearly every bad guy that Toxie beats up (with the sole exception being the old lady Toxie kills in the first film, who was actually a member of the White-Slave trade) are so cartoonishly villainous, they may as well eat kittens in front of their little girl-owners while wearing "I'm Evil" t-shirts. Examples include a group of dude-bros and their girlfriends running over a kid on a bicycle (and backing up just to crush his head under a bike and take pictures of it), drug-dealers, street gangs, diapered terrorists, a MegaCorp whose sole purpose is to spread pollution, and Satan himself.
• Comic-Book Adaptation:
  • Doug Moench wrote an 11 issue series in 1991 for Marvel Comics.
  • Marvel also had an 8 issue Toxic Crusaders comic in 1992.
  • DevilsDuePublishing had Lloyd Kauffman Presents: The Toxic Avenger and Other Tromatic Tales in 2008.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Toxic Avenger tends to dish this out to his victims. Even though they're monstrous people who have it coming, Toxie is so brutal that the people he just saved often react in horror.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: For most of the part every criminal Toxie takes on in all four movies, he easily kills with no real struggle with some occasional exceptions like evil Kabukiman, and Noxie.
• Deus Exit Machina: The Dolphinman vs Turkeyman short has Toxie in vacation in Hawaii, so he to call Dolphinman in to save Tromaville from Turkeyman.
• Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: A lot of random mooks like to throw karate kicks at Toxie.
• Evil, Inc.: Apocalypse Inc. from movies two and three. Literally, since it is run by Satan himself.
• Expository Theme Tune: The theme song for the second and third movie lay out the events of the first.
• Friend to All Children: Both the movies and the animated adaptation show that Toxie has a soft spot for kids.
  • In the original film, Toxie murders a man for trying to sell him a 12-year-old prostitute and is also shown rescuing children from getting killed.
  • He returns a blind baby to the mother in The Toxic Avenger: Part II.
  • Satan tries to use this against Toxie in the third film by threatening to kill a busload of children if he doesn't give up.
  • In the Toxic Crusaders animated series, the first episode alone has him put a stop to Apocalypse, Inc. tearing down an orphanage, rescue a little girl's cat, and save the same girl from getting run over by Bonehead.
  • In Citizen Toxie, he and Sarah are currently trying to start a family, and when he reads Sarah's positive pregnancy test he is excited that he's going to be a daddy, while dancing with Sweetie Honey. Speaking of Sweetie Honey, Toxie saves her from being raped by the Amortvile version of the Diaper Mafia. After killing them, he goes to comfort Sweetie, telling her the men are gone and that everything is okay. He then holds her hand while walking her to his shack to call her parents.
• Good Is Not Soft: Toxie himself. Kind, heroic, and an all-around good guy, but still perfectly willing to kill.
• Groin Attack: Happens multiple times throughout the series to various villains (and even Toxie himself).
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: The Dolphinman vs Turkeyman shirt has him wearing one in Hawaii.
• Heel–Face Town: At the start of the first film, Tromaville was a Wretched Hive full of thugs, psychopaths, crooked cops and corrupt politicians. By the time the first sequel came out, Tromaville ended up becoming a safe (and eco-friendly) place to live, with evil corporate goons, diapered terrorists and anybody else who tries turning Tromaville into the hellhole it once was quickly massacred by the Monster Hero.
  Melvin Junko/The Toxic Avenger: Several years ago, I and the little people of Tromaville succeeded in crushing all criminals and ridding Tromaville once and for all of evil and corruption. Tromaville actually became a nice place to live. With no criminals or oppressive politicians around, the people of Tromaville were once again happy. Once again they were free to devote themselves to their principle activities of dancing in the streets, tattooing, manufacturing orange juice, exterminating vermin, watching excellent movies and dancing in the streets.
• Horrifying Hero: Pretty much sums up Toxie.
• I Hate Past Me: It is made apparent by Toxie's nightmare of his pre-mutation self taunting him and wanting to screw his girlfriend in the third film and his fight with the negative Melvin emerging from the remains of the Noxious Offender in the fourth film that he doesn't think highly of himself when he was Melvin Ferd/Junko.
• Joisey: The series takes place in New Jersey, just across the water from New York City.
• Large Ham: Some of the characters in the series. Bozo in the first movie is probably the most infamous example.
• Laser-Guided Karma: If any jerk ass makes an appearance, expect Toxie to give him a bad day.
• Laughably Evil: All the villainous characters are so goofy and over-the-top that it's hard to take them seriously even when they do really horrible things.
• Lighter and Softer: II and III were deliberately less graphic than the first film, yet the MPAA still removed a bit of stuff compared to the director's cuts.
• Mutants: Toxie is of the "mutate" variety, his grotesque deformities and superhuman abilities being the result of a fall into toxic waste.
• Nice Guy: The Toxic Avenger himself is a very amiable person and always helps people out and protects them from criminals.
• No Fourth Wall: The sequels constantly reference the fact they are in a movie. In the second film, Toxie says that if he does not stop the dark rider, "There will not be a Toxic Avenger 3." In Citizen Toxie, Sgt Kabukiman looks at everyone when the scene ends on a freeze frame, and they are still frozen.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: A lot of villains in the series are bigots.
  • The Toxic Avenger
    • When Julie reminds Bozo of the targets they like to run over, she uses racial slurs such as "niggers" and "chinks".
    • The gang leader Cigar Face refers to the police as "faggots" and calls Toxie a "monster faggot".
  • Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV
    • Toxie's evil double the Noxious Offender kills two men while referring to them as "Faggot #1" and "Faggot #2".
    • In Amortville, Toxie at one point encounters a pair of racist rednecks dragging a black man across the road until he's just a head.
    • Sgt. Kazinski and the Diaper Mafia conspire to bomb the Tromaville School for the Very Special out of extreme intolerance for the mentally disabled. They even say several ableist statements such as "Fuck the fucking tards".
• Protagonist Title: The Toxic Avenger is the main character of these movies and his name is in the title of all of them.
• Reaction Shot: Every major fight scene throughout the series has at least one participant (usually a hostage or victim) looking on in shock, screaming, and/or making disgusted faces as Toxie takes down the criminals.
• Right Through His Pants: Whenever Toxie and Sara / Claire have sex, Toxie's still in his tutu.
• Sequel Hook: Three of the four films feature a hint towards a sequel.
  • In The Toxic Avenger: Part II, Toxie states that if Tromaville is destroyed, there won't be a Toxic Avenger: Part III.
  • In The Toxic Avenger Part III, Toxie goes back to the right side after realizing Apocalypse, Inc. is evil and remarks that he has to clean up Tromaville in time for Toxic Avenger: Part IV.
  • After the evil Melvin who rose from the remains of the Noxious Offender falls into toxic waste in Citizen Toxie, he runs away while shouting that he'll be back if there's a sequel.
• Showy Invincible Hero: There's not much that harms Toxie, but he's so creative at killing bad guys you don't really mind.
• Shout-Out: One of the villains' for Apocycalse Inc is clearly based off Robert Deniro's character in Angel Heart. Not only is is his name Lou Sipher, he also looks just like him including the long claw like fingernails and mole on his face and they even at one point show him eating a hard boiled egg like De Niro did in Angel Heart.
• Sudden Name Change: Toxie's girlfriend was named "Sarah" in the first movie, but was changed to "Claire" in the next two. She's back to "Sarah" in the fourth part, but her alternate universe counterpart is named "Claire" (and unlike alternate universe counterpart, she's deaf instead of being blind).
• Took a Level in Dumbass: This happens to Sara. In the first film she was more an innocent Girl Next Door type -and she could sometimes be clumsy. But all the sequels took numerous points off of her IQ. To the point that Noxie could get her to have sex with another woman, claiming that it's good for the baby. Prior to that, Noxie speaks to Sarah, while another woman feels her up, and Sarah thinks the woman is her Toxie and that's he's somehow grown a vagina.
• Two-Part Trilogy:
  • The second and third films were originally shot together all as one film. It was so freakishly long that they divided the movie in half during post production.
  • Averted with the fourth movie, which was thrown in a decade or so after the previous films.
• Weapon Twirling: Toxie loves twirling his mop.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Toxie in the sequels. Taken to extreme lengths when, in II, he gets the jump on an Amazon Brigade while they torture his girlfriend, and simply chases them off.

The Toxic Avenger (1984)

• An Arm and a Leg: Toxie rips a guy's arm off when he tries to throw him over his shoulder. The actor only had one arm to begin with (you can tell because he never uses his right arm).
• Attempted Rape: Frank, the leader of the Mexican restaurant robber trio, attempts to rape Sarah, but a timely arrival by Toxie puts a stop to that.
• Bait the Dog: Bozo and Slug act polite and help out an old lady with her groceries, only to then beat her up and steal her car.
• Big Bad: Mayor Peter Belgoody, the Corrupt Politician who is responsible for Tromaville being ridden with crime.
• Bloody Hilarious: The film made its name on absurdly-violent fight scenes and deaths that cross over from being disgusting to hilarious because of the cheap effects, a staple of Troma films.
• Body Horror: Melvin turning into Toxie. He manages to get into a bathtub before boils begin to form on his arms, his hair falls out and his face and chest begin pulsing. Then it's Played for Laughs when Melvin's mother seems pleased to know that her son has "finally reached puberty".
• Bring My Brown Pants: One of the flunkies of the pimp who tried to sell Toxie a twelve-year-old prostitute wets his pants after seeing Toxie go to town on everyone.
• Calling Card: Toxie shoves mops into the faces of his victims after he is done with them.
• Camp Gay: The gym regulars include two camp gay hairdressers with lisps, one older and the other young.
• Creepy Crossdresser: Nipples is a man in drag and also part of Cigar Face's gang.
• Detect Evil: Toxie has an innate ability to sense evildoers and is compelled to attack them, even if he himself doesn't know what they've done wrong. That's why he attacks the old lady in the dry cleaning store without knowing why, which makes him think he's started killing innocent people, without knowing that she was actually the head of a white slavery ring.
• Diner Brawl: Toxie takes out of gang of robbers in a Mexican restaurant and even uses the kitchen's appliances to kill two of them.
• Dirty Coward: If his choice of victims is anything to go by, Bozo is one to a T.
  • Mayor Belgoody turns into a sniveling coward when he realizes he can't kill Toxie and turn begs for his life.
• Eye Scream: Some of the criminals killed by Toxie suffer ocular mutilation.
• Fan Disservice: Toxie having sex with a beautiful (albeit blind) woman.
• Fanservice: Lots. The film opens up with a montage of people working out, with plenty of close-ups on women's breasts. There's also a scene where Slug and his girlfriend have sex.
• Fat Bastard: The corrupt Mayor Belgoody. In several scenes, he is shown having a massage at the health club while stuffing his face. He also has a team of women who wipe his perpetually sweaty brow.
• Flipping the Bird: Toxie gives Cigar Face and his men the finger after tricking them into gunning themselves down when Cigar Face attempts his revenge on the monster hero.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Toxie himself went from a cartoonishly wimpy nerd to the mutant superhero we all know and love via a prank that went awry.
• Funny Background Event: In one early scene of the film, while Melvin is getting bullied in the foreground, in the background the overweight women at the gym is flirting with an athletic man by adopting the traditionally masculine pose of leaning against the wall with the man standing between her arms.
• Gone Horribly Right: The setup: humiliate Melvin for being annoying. The result: Melvin is humiliated, and he ends up falling into a barrel of toxic waste accidentally. Before Melvin was thrown into the barrel, he was a frail, perverted, socially-awkward janitor who wasn't very good at his job. Afterward, he gained super human strength, got more intelligent, becomes a hero to the city for cleaning up criminals and helping the innocent, and even got a beautiful girlfriend who likes him for what he is (even though she's blind, she stays with him). Other than a ugly face, his life has certainly gotten better.
• Good Is Not Soft: Toxie brutally kills, tortures and cripples a number of bad guys. Highlights include him ramming a milkshake stirrer through a thug's throat, shoving another thug's hands into a deep fryer, crushing a drug dealer's face with a weight-lifting machine, and disemboweling the Big Bad.
• Gorn: Calling it Gorn doesn't even begin to describe it. Then again, what do you expect from a Troma film?
• Hate Sink: Bozo is a bully who leads a bunch of his friends in tormenting Melvin, eventually terrorizing him and inadvertently causing the accident that makes him into the Toxic Avenger. While many other villains are too laughable or badass to fully hate, Bozo is just a Dirty Coward who specifically targets the elderly and children for his killing sprees when he's not tormenting mentally disabled janitors.
• Head Crushing: After running over a kid with his car for kicks, Melvin's bullies turn their car around and kill the boy by crushing his head under the car's wheels. They then take a picture of his corpse.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Subverted. Although initially horrified by his appearance and violent mannerisms, the citizens of Tromaville quickly realize Toxie only attacks evildoers and despite the corrupt Mayor's efforts to turn public opinion against him after he seemingly kills a defenseless old woman (who was actually the leader of a white slavery ring), still side with him in the end.
• Humiliation Conga: One of these ends with Melvin going out the window and taking a swan dive into the barrel of toxic waste.
• Hypocritical Humor: Her getting off on photos of brutally murdered children aside, Bozo's girlfriend Julie makes clear her displeasure at seeing Melvin writhe in agony after falling into toxic waste.
• In Love with Your Carnage: The female villains are sexually excited by blood and carnage by their boyfriends' turning pedestrians into roadkill... and taking photos of it afterward! Yeah, it's that kind of movie.
• Instant Soprano: Cigar Face curses Toxie in a high voice after suffering a blow to the nads.
• Jerkass: The mayor of Tromaville. He wants to have Toxie killed just because he's a hero to Tromaville. Justified as he happens to lead a drug cartel, and thus, would be considered a criminal (which Toxie holds a record in capturing/killing to that point). At the end of the movie, the mayor attempts to kill Toxie, despite everyone choosing not to. The crowd cheers when the mayor gets disemboweled for his own selfishness.
• Karma Houdini: Most of the gym regulars who chased after Melvin leading up to his mutation have nothing bad happen to them. They've apparently come around to celebrating him as "the monster" by the end. Ditto the police chief, who isn't killed along with the mayor.
• Kick the Dog: Various villains are "evil" For the Evulz like in some cartoons that are over the top.
  • The gym bullies persecute Melvin for no reason, then reveal that they're actually serial killers.
  • The Mexican Place robbers shoot a blind girl's seeing-eye dog. This one remains the most complained-about scenes in Troma history.
• Lack of Empathy: Between all four gym bullies not a single ounce of compassion for their victims can be found.
• Mood Whiplash: The movie moves from a romance scene between Toxie and Sarah straight into a dark horror scene, where Toxie is the one pursuing of maiming one of the gang member's girlfriends.
• Mook Horror Show: Any fight with Toxie turns into one of these pretty quickly, complete with ominous background music.
• Ms. Fanservice: All the women, really, but Wanda gets a special mention for spending pretty much every one of her scenes either naked or in a bikini.
• Novelization: Lloyd Kaufman and Adam Jahnke wrote The Toxic Avenger: The Novel in 2006.
• Obviously Evil: Most of the villains in the film are crazed thugs who wear outlandish outfits, bugs their eyes out and screech when they talk. Slug and Bozo also have their kill tally helpfully drawn on the side of the car they use for hit-and-run murders.
• Painful Transformation: Melvin's metamorphosis into Toxie is nothing short of sheer, hellish agony.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Toxie is one of the all time masters of the bon mot.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: Toxie's leitmotif is "Night on Bald Mountain".
• Put Their Heads Together: Toxie kills Knuckles and Nipples by slamming their heads together.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Zig-zagged. Melvin is tricked into wearing a pink tutu as a prank, but he continues to wear the now-blackened tutu after becoming the Toxic Avenger.
• Right Through His Pants: Slug and his crazy girlfriend are apparently having sex, but when Melvin interrupts them, it's clear that Slug is still wearing a pair of black underpants.
• Sadist: Bozo and his gang run children over with their cars for fun. One even masturbates to pictures of the bodies.
• Share the Male Pain: When Toxie beats Cigar Face's balls like a speed bag, the policeman Toxie is saving covers his own crotch.
• Smoking Hot Sex: Toxie and his blind girlfriend have a smoke after their first night of sex.
• The Sociopath: Bozo, Slug and their girlfriends live solely for stimulation, be it sexual or sadistic with utter disregard for human life unless it's themselves.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Muffled 80's pop plays while the Bozo and Slug run down an innocent young boy for fun and back the car up over his head, crushing it completely. Then their girlfriends proceed to get out of the car take pictures of the incident for future use.
• Stylistic Suck: Toxie's resonant and cultured voice is so obviously overdubbed and incongruent with his guttural moans and growls that it becomes absolutely hilarious when he speaks.
• Those Wacky Nazis: The corrupt local mayor's chief of police, who speaks with a cornball fake German accent and occasionally betrays Nazi mannerisms. In his first scene, he accidentally gives a Nazi salute and has to lower his arm with his other hand. In the climax, he clicks his heels and gives a Nazi salute when ordered to kill the Toxic Avenger.
• Too Dumb to Live: As sorry as you feel for the bicycling kid, it can't be overlooked that bike riding at night isn't a smart move. Especially in a horrible, crime ridden town like Tromaville.
  • His older sister also counts for encouraging him to do it!
• Toxic Waste Can Do Anything: The Toxic Avenger, of course. While it does make the titular character very ugly and the transformation is painful, it also grants him superhuman size and strength and once he has fully transformed, he seems quite capable of living a normal life with no side effects.
• Villains Out Shopping: Toxie kills a little old lady who was dropping off some pants at a dry cleaners. It turns out she was the head of an international slavery ring.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility:
  • What is the first thing Melvin does when he becomes Toxie? Beat the crap out of criminals (killing most in the process), cleans up, and helps an abused officer on his feet and gives his equipment back. He has been a dedicated crime fighter since.
  • He also has the ability to detect the evil in a person. He questioned his humanity when he believed he killed an innocent old woman uncontrollably, even though she turned out to be a leader of a white slave ring (not that he knew).
• Who Murdered the Asshole: After Toxie beats Cigar Face and murders his goons Nipples and Knuckles, Mayor Belgoody and his cronies try to figure out who killed the two criminals. One of them notes that identifying their murderer isn't easy because Knuckles and Nipples were hated by everyone in town.
• Would Harm a Child: Bozo and his entourage of punks. Early in the film, they hit a child on a bicycle and run over his head as he attempts to drag his broken body across the road. What's worse is that there was no reason for this other than the thrill of the kill, and a points game as initiated by Bozo's girlfriend. They also attempt to run over children playing in the street twice further into the movie. Luckily, Toxie carries them out of harm's way each time.
• Would Hit a Girl / Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Zig-zagged; one of the girls who's part of the gang that came up with the prank that lead to birth of Toxie gets cooked over hot coals in a sauna, and Toxie goes after the other with scissors, but the extended and director's cuts reveal that they survived with Amusing Injuries, making them some of the only villains in the films to not get brutally murdered. The old lady at the end isn't as lucky. Thus, Toxie is definitely willing to hit any sufficiently evil girl, but will merely maim instead of kill her if and only if she's hot.

The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)

• Agitated Item Stomping: Toxie stomps on one of the Apocalypse Inc's signs after ripping it off.
• Amusing Injuries: Toxie crushes a midget henchman into a ball and uses him as a basketball.
• Ass Shove: Toxie at one point beats a cross-dressing crook by shoving a ball-and-cup game up his ass.
• Baguette Beatdown: A random goon beats on an old lady with a loaf of bread.
• Big Bad: The chairman of Apocalypse Inc., who wants to take over Tromaville.
• Brought Down to Normal: The Devil turns Toxie back into non-powered Melvin.
• The Cameo: Manga artist Go Nagai makes a brief appearance in one scene being interviewed.
• Chainsaw Good: Toxie uses a fish like one during a fight with some thugs.
• Clothing Damage: A female ninja attacks Toxie with a kusarigama (which is a sickle and chain). Toxie, after catching the chain, pulls the ninja girl closer, and starts slashing her with the sickle. A good yank afterwards strips all of her clothes off.
• Clown Car: The limo during the opening fight scene.
• Creepy Crossdresser: One of the crooks Toxie fights in Japan is a man in drag.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Two cars slam into each other in a front-end collision. They explode violently. TWICE.

• I Should Have Been Better: Toxie feels a lot of guilt for not being able to stop the center for the blind from being blown up from the start of the movie.
• Instant Chucks: Toxie counters a mooks nunchucks by grabbing a pair of fish tied together.
• Instant Convertible: This happens to the taxi Toxie is using during the chase scene at the end of the movie. The cabbie is pissed until Toxie points out that he now has a convertable.
• Instant Soprano: Parodied in that the one to speak in a higher voice after getting kicked down there is a woman.
• Numbered Sequels: The movie is called "Part Two" to indicate that this is the first sequel to the original film.
• Put Their Heads Together: Toxie does this so hard to two mooks that their heads explode.
• Quote-to-Quote Combat: Between the Apocalypse Inc. chairman and a homeless woman.
  Chairman: "Neither a lender nor borrower be." Shakespeare.
  Woman: "Fuck you." David Mamet.
• Reactive Continuous Scream: When Toxie attempts to ask a Japanese reporter about the whereabouts of his father, the reporter screams at him, causing Toxie to scream as well.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Toxie battles a pair of henchmen dressed up like two Oni, complete with tiger-pattern loin clothes (though one is more green than blue).
• Sequel Goes Foreign: Half of the film takes place in Tokyo, Japan, when Toxie is searching for his lost father. Turns out his father isn't even in Japan, and all he finds is a crime boss with a similar name. Due to the way the movies were split, this plot point isn't resolved until the third film.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: An arrangement of Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" is used during the first fight scene and during the climax.
• Sudden Name Change:
  • Melvin's last name has gone from Ferd to Junko out of fear of a possible lawsuit from MAD, who had used the name Melvin Ferd frequently.
  • Sarah is now called Claire.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Claire pulls some bills out from her cleavage at one point.
• Victory Is Boring: At the start of the film, Toxie is bored and depressed because there isn't anymore evil to fight in Tromaville. The same thing happens to him in the third film.

The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (1989)

• All-Natural Fire Extinguisher: The Devil is set on fire, so Toxie puts him out by urinating on him.

  The Devil: Now I'm pissed!

• Amusing Injuries: One of the video store robbers gets his face erased (sans his eyes) by having his face shoved into a video tape eraser.
• Author Filibuster: The film is pretty much entirely an anti-corporation Author Filibuster. The head of the Apocalypse Corporation is literally The Devil.
• Big Bad: The chairman of Apocalypse Inc., who in this film is revealed to be the Devil himself.
• Body Horror: Toxie turning back into Melvin has his body burst into exploding blisters, melt, and then reassemble itself.
• Deus ex Machina: God helps restore Toxie back to himself after the devil had previously had reverted Toxie back to Melvin. He also gives Claire her eyesight back after, The devil made her blind again.
• Forgot About His Powers: Toxie's power of subconsciously detecting evil is ignored completely, as he not only doesn't realize that Apocalypse Inc. is evil, but he's not compelled to attack them like he was in the first two films.
• Elemental Powers: The first four levels of "Five Levels Of Doom" are based on the classical elements (Respectively: Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water), though the Devil's interpretation of them is rather loose.
  • Element No. 5: The fifth level is The Mind, which sees Melvin - not Toxie - and his friends having to outwit the Devil rather than fight him directly.
• Excrement Statement: When Toxie has to put out the devil in the "Fire" challenge, he sees that there's no water nearby... so he just puts him out by pissing on him.
• Fictional Video Game: The arcade game "Five Levels of Doom" that Toxie is shown playing briefly. Satan decides to model his and Toxie's fight after it.
• Flaying Alive: Toxie tears off Satan's skin at the end of the film.
• He's Back!: When Toxie realizes that he's been working for the bad guys, he breaks out of his funk and goes to town on them.
• I Call Him "Mister Happy": Toxie refers to his penis as "John Henry" before he prepares to urinate on Satan to put out the flames he's engulfed himself with.
• The Last Title: Used as a subtitle.
• Now That's Using Your Teeth!: When the Devil tries to kill Toxie by having one of his guys run a lawnmower over him, Toxie stops the blade with his teeth. He spits it into the mouth of another goon, which makes him lose his teeth.
• Numbered Sequels: In case you didn't already figure it out, the third film is titled "Part Three".
• Stealth Pun: A mutated duck-frog shows up, and Toxie wonders what you would even call it. More likely than not, a fuck.
• William Telling: The chairman makes one of his henchman put on apple on his head, so that he can shoot it off. Unfortunately for the henchman, the chairman is using a shotgun, and he's pointing straight down.

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000)

• The Alcoholic: Sgt. Kabukiman is constantly drunk.
• And You Were There: When Toxie finally makes it back to his own world, he tells Sergeant Kabukiman NYPD that he was there, but he was evil and he kicked Toxie's ass. He notices the two guys next to Kabukiman, and says they weren't there.
• Ass Shove: Toxie shoves the head of a member of the Diaper Mafia up said member's own ass.
• Attempted Rape: Sweetie Honey is almost raped by the alternate universe equivelants of the Diaper Mafia, but Toxie intervenes in a timely fashion.
• Big Bad: Noxious Offender, Toxie's evil alternate self, is the main source of conflict since he takes over Tromaville with Toxie stuck in Amortville.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Toxie fights Noxie in the Tromaville Hospital while the unborn fetuses of both men duke it out in Sarah's stomach. Toxie rips apart Noxie as his unborn son strangles the Noxie fetus...and then an evil doppelganger of Melvin emerges from Noxie's stomach.
• Black Comedy Rape: Kabukiman, was incredibly drunk and taking a piss in Toxie's laundry basket. In the middle of said piss, he turned his head and saw Sara tied up. This caused him to became aroused, and, forgetting to zip up, he went over to the bed and tried to untie her. In his highly inebriated state, he passed out on top of her, and literally fell inside her. It Makes Sense in Context...kind of.
• Bring My Brown Pants: The movie begins with Toxie fighting a band of terrorists calling themselves "The Diaper Mafia". And yes, those diapers do get used for their intended purposes.
• The Cameo: A ton of them; including Stan Lee, Ron Jeremy, Lemmy, Corey Feldman and Mark Torgl reprising his role as Melvin.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • As a nod to this, a formal apology is given for the previous two sequels.
  • Melvin's last name is still Ferd (it was Ferd in the original, and changed to Junko in the sequels out of fear of a possible lawsuit from MAD, who had used the name Melvin Ferd frequently during the Kurtzman era of the publication), and his mother is only shown in a picture on Toxie's bedpost, but is never seen. Melvin may have acquired his last name through Sarah, but this is never confirmed.
  • Toxie's wife is named Sarah, while her alternate self is named Claire.
• Character Overlap:
  • Kabukiman comes from the Troma movie, Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D..
  • Warren from Class of Nuke 'Em High.
• Child by Rape: Sarah has two cases of these. She is raped by Noxie, and his baby's fetus does battle with the fetus of Toxie's baby. The Noxie fetus is killed. However, Sara still gives birth to two babies. One is Toxie's, and the other belongs to Sgt. Kabukiman. Toxie is less than thrilled when he discovers it.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The leader of the Diaper Mafia orders the students to "drop your tacos or I'll blow your brains out!" This is the exact same line that Leroy says in the original film during the Mexican restaurant holdup scene.
  • The climax has Toxie throw the Melvin doppelganger out of the second-story window of the Tromaville Hospital into a vat of toxic waste, just like the original film. It even uses the same footage!
• Creator Cameo: Lloyd Kaufman appears as himself in the newsreel about the alternate universe accidents at the end of the film.
• Depraved Bisexual: The Noxious Offender is a textbook example of this keeping both a woman and a man at his house which he sexually exploits. He also attempts to rape Toxie during their final fight with each other which is made even creepier by Noxie's very expectant tone of voice.
• Deus ex Machina: Near the end of the film, Chester finally finds a way to send Toxie back to Tromaville. That solution? A pair of ruby slippers.
• The Dragon: Evil Kabukiman. He refers to Toxie (whom he thinks is Noxie) as "boss." When he finds out that Toxie is not the real Noxie, the two do battle.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Both Toxie and Sara go through incredibly traumatic circumstances. Toxie loses his sidekick, gets shot at by cops in Amortville, fails to save a man being lynched by a pair of rednecks, almost gets killed by multiple assailants, discovers that his wife is pregnant, and finally triumphs over an alternate universe version of himself. Sara gets groped by a member of Noxie's posse, raped by Noxie himself, groped and raped by Sgt. Kabukiman, freaked out by a gynecologist and writhes in pain as her unborn fetuses duke it out in her stomach. Luckily, everything works out well at the end.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Lampshaded:
  "This is an American-made car: every time they flip 25 feet into the air and crash down, they blow up. Let's get out of here!"
• Evil Twin: The Noxious Offender a.k.a. Noxie and Evil Kabukiman.
• Fallen Hero: Sgt. Kabukiman. Once one of the most renowned heroes, he's since become a pathetic, drunken has-been.
• Fan Disservice:
  • A very buxom chick with blue hair making out with Toxie's wife while Noxie masturbates to a photograph of a nuclear explosion.
  • There's also a topless member of the Diaper Mafia making out with a special needs student, while Lardass smears peanut butter on a bomb, eats it and farts loudly.
• Gang of Hats: The Diaper Mafia, a terrifying gang of adult babies who, again, don't just wear the diapers for show.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: A doctor examining Sarah shows her two vials of natal fluid, with the green one representing Toxie's baby, and the red one representing Noxie's. He helpfully clarifies that you can tell Noxie's is evil because it's red.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted. Lardass eats the bomb in order to save Toxie and the two surviving students, except that there was no real reason to (Toxie and the others escape in time), and his intended sacrifice ends up making things worse when it rips open a dimensional tear and brings Noxie into Tromaville.
• Jerkass: Tito tries to sell his classmate Sweetie Honey off to the alternate universe version of the Diaper Mafia in exchange for drugs, then acts utterly unrepentant when Toxie calls him on it after saving both of them.
• King of All Cosmos: God makes a brief appearance as a hairy midget (played by Howard Stern show regular, the late Henry Nasiff, Jr., aka Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf). We see him deciding how certain people are going to die, and he needs to be informed that Polio now has a cure. When he sends Toxie on his way he asks him for two favors; the first is to keep killing all of the murderers and child rapists. The second is to tell the pope to stop talking about him. He doesn't know him, he's an asshole, and his hat looks fucking stupid.
• Losing Your Head: Toxie tries (and fails) to rescue a black man who's being dragged behind a pickup truck by his head. However, he befriends the man's (Pompe's) head, and carries it around with him for the rest of the film.
• Mirror Universe: Amortville is an evil opposite version of Tromaville.
• Numbered Sequels: The title numbers this film as the fourth film even though the opening more or less disavows the first two sequels.
• Overly Long Gag: The 5-second bomb. Not only does the bomb announce what second it is at multiple times, but Toxie has enough time to go to the janitor's closet, have a short conversation with Tito, go home, have sex with Sara, speak with her about her pregnancy, get a bagged lunch, run back to the school and pull the surviving students out before the bomb blows.
• Population: X, and Counting: When Noxie goes on a killing spree when he first arrives in Tromatown, a worker has to keep placing new numbers over the town's sign.
• Rousing Speech: Mad Cowboy gives one when Kabukiman is considering running away. It works, even though it's entirely in moos.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Practically Tito's catchphrase, tho he uses the more colorful variant "Fuck This Shit, Man, I'm Outta Here!".
• Sequel: The Original Title: It's called Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV.
• Shout-Out:
  • There are several references to The Wizard of Oz.
    Toxie: I don't think we're in Tromaville anymore, Toto.
    Tito: Tito! My name is Tito!
  • At one point, the Noxious Offender gets a nosebleed. Cue him muttering "noseblood" and dropping a snowglobe. Then again, since the movie is titled "Citizen Toxie", it would be odd NOT to have a Citizen Kane reference.
• Smoking Hot Sex: One of the special needs students and member of the Diaper Gang have a smoke after having sex. This results in tragedy because Lardass had just let out a huge fart after eating a bomb which result in an explosion.

The Musical (2008)

• Adaptational Early Appearance: Sarah is now a librarian that Melvin knows since before the start of the play.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Melvin is now an Earth Scientist instead of an idiot mop boy.
• Babies Ever After: The musical ends with Toxie and Sarah having a blind green baby named Toxie, Jr.
• Big Bad: Mayor Babs Belgoody, who is allowing Tromaville to be polluted because of her corrupt ways.
• Distant Finale: The end is set a year after the rest of the play.
• Experimented in College: Comes up in the song "Evil is Hot".
  Mayor: I'm straight.
  Professor Ken: Me, too, except for that one time in college.
• Freudian Excuse: During the song "Get the Geek", the town bullies Bozo and Sluggo give the excuse that one of them was abused as a child and the other was molested.
• Gender Flip: Mayor Belgoody is a woman in this version.
• Healing Shiv: Water from the polluted Hudson River is the only thing that can heal Toxie if he dies.
• Kryptonite Factor: Bleach is the only thing that can kill Toxie.
• Villain Song: Mayor Belgoody gets a few.
  • "Jersey Girl", where she sings about her plan to become Governor.
  • "Get the Geek", which she sings with Sluggo and Bozo.
  • "Evil is Hot", where she seduces Professor Ken to get him to tell her how she can kill the Toxic Avenger.
  • Her part of "Bitch/Slut/Liar/Whore", where she hurls insults at Toxie's mother.
• "The Villain Sucks" Song: The parts of "Bitch/Slut/Liar/Whore" sung by Toxie's mother, where she insults Mayor Belgoody.
• Villain Team-Up: Bozo and Sluggo now work for the mayor, instead of being in an unrelated gang like in the movie.

---