Webcomic / MS Paint Masterpieces

The first battle with Dr. Wily (short version)

Dr. Wily: Mega Man... Astonishing! Quite astonishing. I would have never guessed that Thomas knew how to make such a battle robot. Though like the lumber robot and the lab assistant, you too were built using the Proto body... perhaps Thomas used a spare body, just as I did to program my own Mega Man? You've surpassed my expectations, Mega Man... As of right now, you are the second-most dangerous robot-
Mega Man: Dr. Wily, you know what? Be quiet. I wasn't given any combat AI. I've been making it up as I go. And you're really BORING. Now, get out of that machine or I'll tear it apart and get you myself! (Dr. Wily begins to fire) HARD WAY IT IS!!

— The first battle between Mega Man & Dr. Wily.

A Sprite Comic on the Bob and George Web site that retells the Mega Man (Classic) storyline, incorporating obscure characters from the Game Boy, PC and WonderSwan games as well as original characters. It starts from the beginning collaboration between Wily and Light, details the creation of two prototypes (only one of which is Super) and Mega Man's battles to bring down Wily.

It features various flash forwards to possible futures, and Reset Man, the un-super prototype's Split Personality, may be a Stardroid from one such future. The series is memorable for showing an Alternate Alternate Character Interpretation of Mega Man as a rapidly learning robot, rather than the ice cream-loving dumb-bot he is in Bob & George and most other sprite comics to sprout up in B&G's heyday. It's also notable for showing all sides in the conflict as having a rather good learning curve. The second storyline likewise has a worldlier feel as various factions of Red Shirts and world governments try to take steps to reverse engineer and use the robot technology, all while Wily gains some impressive technological advantages of his own and Mega Man and Dr. Light struggle to keep pace.

The humor is based on the character's idiosyncrasies: be it Heat Man's laziness, Ice Man's playful ditziness, or the Red Shirt Army's utter (and Genre Blind) expendability. It also lapses into author commentary by DisgruntledFerret (no space), and POV pieces of minor bit characters like "Brave Core", an awakened Sniper Joe who thinks he's Brave Heart... for robots!

Has absolutely no relation to MS Paint Adventures.

Can be found here

The character sheet can be found here.

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This web comic has examples of the following tropes:

• Achilles' Heel: Enker's spear.
  • The Harmony Support Units (And the robots they take over) are weak to Cut Man. He fires the Rolling Cutter and gets blasted by Mega Man, but uses the Rolling Cutter's Boomerang Comeback effect to hit Mega Man anyway and break him free of the Harmonies.

• Adaptational Jerkass: Mega Man, kind of. He's not a jerkass, but while in most canon or officially-licensed iterations he's extremely compassionate and hates having to fight, here he doesn't feel very bad when he ends up permanently killing Fire Man, being a bit dismissive about it and saying he was used to the idea of destroying Fire Man before.

• Added Alliterative Appeal: Big Bad Blue Boss.
• A God Am I:
  • Electric Man. Good thing he's a good guy.
  • Dr. Wily goes insane enough to think that he should rule as a god because he's smarter than everyone else. The fact that Light is smarter than him doesn't sit well with him at all.
• Affably Evil: Wily and Quintet which is not really surprising, considering who Quintet used to be.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Parodied in the commentary for Metal Man's death.
  DisgruntledFerret: His only regret was that he wasn't MORE dastardly.
• Alternate Universe: A number of alternate timelines are shown as side-stories. As X explains in filler, there's only one actual timeline, and when you mess with time travel, you destroy the projected one, which is what Wily's up to between the first and second games.
• Alt Text: Well, sorta. There was never text to begin with (he used filler for that), but then Dave set up DisgruntledFerret's comic with a text function starting on #958 (it is only viewable if the comics are displayed one at a time).
• Anachronic Order: A few climactic fight sequences (Mega Man Vs. Dr. Wily, Mega Man Vs. Spike Man, Atlas VS. Crash Man) are skipped over to be recapped later.
• And I Must Scream: Played for laughs for a few strips in the second game adaptation when Reset Man's AI is placed in a storage device.
  • Played horribly straight with two scientists that Wily captured. He turned their bodies into machines and forced their brains to run computations for him based on their expertise. Dr. Mason begs to be killed.
• Animated Actors: Used in Fourth Wall breaking fillers with DisgruntledFerret interacting with the cast. Hilariously done with Metal Man taking over the strip from DisgruntledFerret in a massive show of hubris.
• Anyone Can Die: And does. Even Mega Man. Though to quote the author, robots can just kind of get over death like a bad hangover as long as they have a robotics scientist handy.
• Arc Welding:
  • The NES and Game Boy games' stories are combined and expanded, mainly with the Mega Man Killers being added to the story and time travel (including Quint/Quintet) from Mega Man II and Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousensha playing a large part on the comic's version of Mega Man 2.
  • Ra Moon, the Stardroids, Duo and the Mega Man 3 Robot Masters are tied together. The Archie comics also did this, but bear in mind that MS Paint Masterpieces started foreshadowing this since the first arc, way before the Archie comic even started.
• Arc Words: The phrase "happy ending" makes multiple appearances throughout No Future.
  • It's used here◊, here◊, here◊, and here◊.
• Art Evolution: It started like this.◊ Now, it kind of looks like this.◊ Later it looks like this◊.
  • Took a minor back step thanks to DisgruntledFerret's hard drive crash. But still head and shoulders above most sprite comics based on Mega Man.
  DisgruntledFerret: That isn't my best explosion, but I've lost most of my ready explosion graphics. That's the worst tragedy of all, I think.
• Ascended Extra: Most of the Robot Masters get bigger roles than they did in the original games, but Electric Man got this the most.
• Badass Boast: Heat Man.
  "Now, you die. Soon, everyone dies. Bummer. You shouldn't have gotten me mad, dude, HA HA HA! I'm Chernobyl in a box!"
• Badass in Distress: Small and temporary example when Flash Man tries to kidnap Dr. Light. Being a squishy human, Dr. Light still needs help, but is still able to contribute to his escape.
• Back from the Dead: Fodder Force Redheaded Guy, Cut Man, and Enker; due to Doctor Light's attempt at changing the timeline.
• Bag of Spilling: Subverted everywhere. Mega Man, realizing this might happen, attempts to keep his weapons from the first game by saving them on a computer, but Dr. Light finds out and deletes them just before Wily attacks. Then Mega Man loses some more of his abilities when he dies.
• Beware the Nice Ones: "Don't threaten Dr. Light!!"
  • Bears noting that that is one of many instances. Mega Man is the nicest guy you could meet, but if you threaten any innocent people, or worse, actually kill people, he will fuck you up.
• Big Damn Heroes: Ice Man and Electric Man, after Mega Man gets nearly killed by Quintet. Ferret's Commentary notes Electric Man would have arrived sooner, but was waiting for the proper dramatic moment.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Mega Man in this strip.
• Blatant Lies: All of Dr. Wily's machines are for mining. Really.
  • Semi-Subverted? Wily's bots ARE for mining, to Quote the evil doctor "Yes, Mining...ALL MINE-ING."
• Bond One-Liner: Many.
  • Subverted on one occasion, when a badly-damaged Mega Man tries to do one after delivering the fatal blow, but passes out before he can finish.
• Boring, but Practical
  Electric Man: Yeah, turned out I couldn't use the Thunder Beam to escape, so I just punched the glass.
• Blood Knight: Quick Man.
  Reader: Excited when we lose, grumpy when we win. That's Quick Man.
  • Allegro, the eponymous Greatest Killer, also falls into this.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Wily snuck in virus type programming into all the original robot master's to get them to defect. The POV comics with Cut Man's desperate struggles to remain himself are... disturbing and heartbreaking. Then you have the likes of Ice Man jumping headfirst into it and helping to spread the Mind Control.
  • Also, anyone under Quintet's Mind Control or using one of his support units.
• Brick Joke: Quintet asks Enker if he'd like some popcorn as they watch Mega Man fight his way through a building. Weeks worth of comics later, Enker decides to see if its even possible for him to eat popcorn, being a robot.
• Buffy Speak: DisgruntledFerret likes to play around with grammar and tenses. The page picture is an example.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Dr. Lowe was apparently close to this trope. He is regarded as one of the top robot scientists in the world, but his ideas are often... odd, like wanting to replace a robot's brain with a gold fish. It is unknown if he means the brain of a gold fish or just literally the whole fish (spoilers, it's the whole fish). However his designs were apparently good enough to allow him the leeway to work on the Time Skimmer and he was wasn't fired until his nativity let him bring Enker to the operational center of the project and got any where from 5 to all 7 of the leading scientists captured. ^note The other two, Iodine and Jhang, were killed by Wily according to the maniac himself with Dr. Rely being killed later and Otto and Mason being robotisized. Lowe and Neville seemed to be the only two who survived, but Neville is MIA. None of which could have been predicted by Lowe and he doesn't know their fates, but he is at least partially responsible for it. He seems to be obsessed with fish and fish robots, but his ideas for AI are... lackluster and shortsighted (the goldfish idea, though goldfish are smart, they aren't THAT smart). To be fair to him, Enker would have killed him had he not complied, but Neville was suitably angry and sick of his antics any ways.
• Butt-Monkey: Reset Man and Dr. Lowe as well as anyone unfortunate enough to be part of the Fodder Force or Redshirt Brigade.
• Call-Forward: Dr. Wily utilizes custom microchips to reprogram robots and bring them under his control, warping their personalities along the way; this is a precursor to his eventual Maverick Virus as seen in the X series.
  • A few future Lightbots showed the ability to "Dark Morph" and gain the abilities/appearance of other Robot Master models; some have speculated this to be a reference to the Doc Robot (of Mega Man 3) and Dark Man (of Mega Man 5).
• The Cameo: Some of the characters in the comics are direct cameos from the Bob and George forums. A filler page shows which ones are borrowed sprites. Allegro was the main villain of another comic and Dr. Lowe starred in his own (short) comic called Dr. Lowe's Lab.
• Cerebus Retcon: The events of the first game are presented humorously in comparison to the rest of the comic, and this is justified by Rock, in his childlike state of mind, not taking the stakes at hand seriously. He grows up by the second game and the comic is more dramatic as a result, though he still acts like a child.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The early strips were Denser and Wackier (see Early-Installment Weirdness below), but the story got gradually more serious by the time Mega Man gets to fight the Robot Masters. "Too Serious" was decidedly Darker and Edgier and the comic stayed so (although in a more restrained way) throughout the following arc, No Future.
• Characterization Marches On: One tends to forget that the wise and badass Dr. Light started the comic as somewhat incompetent, inattentive and alcoholic, and that Reset Man was a Deadpan Snarker in his first appearances before becoming the Lovable Coward and Butt-Monkey we know and love.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Guts Man was stated, several hundred comics ago, to have been kidnapped with Electric Man and Fire Man, and hasn't been seen since he was destroyed several years before that. He finally shows up in comic #1001.
• The Chew Toy: Metal Man. He deserves it, though, considering his trash-talking.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Ice Man, most definitely. Bubble Man, too.
  • Harmony-infected robots are rather like this as well. Blade Man is like this in spades, as he will alternate between Hot-Blooded and Non Sequitur at the drop of a hat.
  • This seems to be true of Harmonized robots in general. As observed in the comic:
  Heat Man, regarding Harmonized Fire Man: Wow. On the retard scale of 1 to 10, this guy's a J.

  • Fridge Brilliance on that quote; J is the 10th letter of the alphabet.
  • DisgruntledFerret himself offers this little insight into Harmony's effect on robots:
  I like to think of the Harmonized robots' attitude as around the same range as someone that donates corpses to charity. Sure it's technically for a good cause, but you're being stupid and terrifying.
• Cool Old Guy: Dr. Light. Chessmaster in the making, practices martial arts to stay fit, and shot Enker in the face.
• Cool Shades: Employed by Quintet, Reader, Writer, Allegro and Dr. Wily.
• Combining Mecha: The Harmony worms can fuse with their hosts, overhauling their appearance and increasing their power. Multiple Harmonies can transform a robot into a huge, monstrous version of themselves. The former happens to Fire Man, Cut Man, Metal Man, Flash Man, Mega Man himself and Roll, when she combines with Reader, one of the original, intelligent Harmonies. The latter happens to Guts Man, turning him into the Gutsdozer from Mega Man 2, and then Ice Man, turning him into a... big, jolly, fridge-on-wheels thing that shoots penguin missiles.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: While Mega Man didn't have that hard of a time with some of them the first time around, when Wily creates an army of the first-generation robot masters, he cuts through them like butter.
  • When most of the second-generation robots and Enker attempt to dog pile Mega Man, he manages to fend them off, while later on, Quick Man and Crash Man manage to give him a lot more trouble individually. Justified, since Quick Man didn't care enough to try at first, and Crash Man is geared toward just annihilating everything in his vicinity, but had to hold back to keep from destroying his partners. Meanwhile, everyone was else accidently engaging in Unfriendly Fire, even Wood Man and ESPECIALLY Crash Man.
• Cosmic Plaything: Reset Man. Perhaps literally if his alternate personality is a Stardroid.
  DisgruntledFerret: Reset Man looks so happy that the creepy robot is getting what's coming to him. I don't like Reset Man being happy.
  • Mega Man, too.
  DisgruntledFerret: It's kind of irritating that at this point I can blow off Mega Man's arm and he's barely even annoyed. I like torturing characters, and he's taking away my fun here.
• Cranial Processing Unit: Averted. At one point, Crash Man and Heat Man discuss this trope when it's revealed that Crash Man's CPU is in a different location than the head (which was reserved for More Explosives). Guess what happens, or rather, doesn't happen when Mega Man slices off Crash Man's head.
  • Played straight earlier, where a future Rock kills Allegro by stabbing him in the face. He then Lampshades it, saying if he made robots, he'd put the brain someplace else, like in the butt.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Several, usually when the Robot Masters fight humans, but Electric Man versus Metal Man stands out.
• Defiant to the End: Cut Man.
  Cut Man: Pointless? That's some bad choice, log guy. I, Cut Man, am never ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER pointless!
• Determinator: Crash Man is able to continue fighting without his head or arm.
  • Atlas can shrug off being buried under tons of rubble and take Crash Man's weapon barrage until his energy shield is broken.
    • His minions don't give up either. They have self-preservation with their basic combat instincts, but will keep fighting if they think they can save Atlas or just purely out of spite.
    E1: (while fighting and failing to wound Spike Man) Conclusion: cannot retreat. Keep firing out of spite.
  • Subverted with Mega Man's first fight against Metal Man and Quick Man.
  Mega Man: Yahoo! I died and I still won!
  • Quintet's weakness is that, compared to Mega Man, he isn't this.
  • The human soldiers, Factor G especially, do not quit. Even when suffering heavy casualties, they will send in everything to try and take down everything up to and including Master series bots. To be fair, it doesn't usually go well for them, but they rather give civilians the time to escape than call for a general retreat.
• Dumb Muscle: According to Gate in a filler comic, "protoreploids" were strong enough to replace armies, but were also incredibly stupid.
  Guts Man: I are the dumb protoreploid.
  Mega Man: Me are also that.
• Early-Bird Cameo: During Heat Man's fight with the Guts Dozer we see Wily working on what looks like Punk, the second Mega Man Killer.
  • It's implied he's been around a lot longer.◊
  • The Greatest Killer side-story saw the brief appearance of Rush, albeit an orange version. Allegro severely damages him.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first 100 strips are very different from the rest of the comic, having more in common with the Bob and George off-shoots of its time. They're more focused on goofy gag humor than storytelling, characters were pretty different from what they'd be later on (especially Dr. Light and Reset Man, as mentioned above), and backgrounds were simple straight lines and flat colors. The comic gradually evolved from that throughout those first strips, but it's arguably starting with "Silly Surge" that it's more recognizable to what it is now, with the more serious and deeper storytelling and the humor being derived from character interactions instead of silly gags. The early strips are later explained as being a "Ferret Vision" of what happened, and are only canon in Broad Strokes.
• Elite Mooks: The Red Sniper Joes. Mega Man almost gets killed the first time he fights them.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Quintet refuses to attack his creator Dr. Light.
• Evil Is Petty: Allegro. Discussed and lampshaded here.
• Failure Knight: Enker, in the second major arc.
• Filler: DF likes to take this trope to Serial Escalation levels. Notably "Full Metal Recolor".
• Flat "What": The response Dr. Light initially gives Mega Man when he asks if humans can transform into slime.
• Forever War: The future according to Quintet.
• Foreshadowing: Oodles of it. Proper list forthcoming.
• For Great Justice: A side effect of Harmony infection. The affected robot not only changes in appearance (sometimes dramatically) but starts to ramble in disjointed non-sequiturs about their their intentions and how Justice Will Prevail.
• Future Me Scares Me: Quintet.
• Gambit Roulette: Quintet's plans. This is rather fitting, considering his counterpart’s approach to things.
• General Ripper: Captain Fodder.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Played with. Mega Man is so good that he has two good angels on either side in his internal monologue. Lampshades it by asking 'Aren't one of you supposed to be an evil conscience?'
• Gratuitous Ninja: There are Wild Ninja Colonies in Ferret-verse with the enemy ninja sprites from Live A Live. Don't forget your Ninja Repellent.
• Gretzky Has the Ball: Intentionally used when Mega Man and Ice Man start goofing off. Mega Man claims Ice Man almost got a hole in one - while they were hitting a basketball with a baseball bat.
• Groin Attack: Mega Man to Quick Man.
  Quick Man: "Damage to my last name aside, that was pathetically easy."
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: The battle between Electric Man and Air Man. Both literal and figurative combat.
• Handsome Lech: Zero, as a running gag in the Filler strips.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Electric Man.
  • Cut Man.
• Heroic Wannabe: Cut Man.
• High-Class Glass: Referenced by Electric Man.
  "If I were any classier I'd need a monocle."
• Hot-Blooded: A side effect of using Quintet's support units.
  • Lampshaded in this title. Doctor Light shows us how it’s done old school.
• How Did You Know? I Didn't: The Red-Haired Fodder Member tried activating Atlas after Crash Man blew his door open (the remote only worked if the door to the charging station was open). His teammate leader asked him later how he knew Atlas wasn't destroyed in the explosion. He didn't.
• Humongous Mecha: Daidigger D. is a memento from Dr. Light's youth. Unsurprisingly, he went for intelligent robots instead of giant ones because of how he wanted to help society, not make war weapons.
  • The Mecha Dragon of Mega Man 2 fame has arrived on the scene.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: One of the Fodder Force: Uber Team claims to have "Stormtrooper Syndrome," and says it's the reason he isn't out fighting. It's given a Call-Back in the next story arc when the same redhead states that he's "a lousy shot." We never actually see him try to shoot anything, though.
• Indy Ploy: Mega Man's plan for everything. The fact that one robot decimated his armies with this tactic is the final nail in the coffin for Wily's Villainous Breakdown.
• Informed Ability: Reader states that Quick Man is the strongest of Wily's 8, but we only ever see him fight Mega Man (not counting the soldiers he massacres, as well as the last member of the Fodder Force). We do, however, see Crash Man leveling entire military bases and buildings due to the sheer volume of his firepower, not to mention the fact that he manages to defeat Atlas twice.
• Insane Troll Logic
  Mega Man: When I fight, the ones who take damage are me and the enemy. If I've already taken damage, that means the enemy has to take more for things to balance out.
  Dr. Light: I... that... Just go back to the lab, Mega Man.
• Jedi Mind Trick: A secondary function of the Thunder Beam.
  • Quintet is also capable of doing this to the Robot Masters of the Wily 8. It's possibly a sign that he helped Wily construct them, using his knowledge of more advanced future robotics.
• Jerkass: Colonel Fodder. The cast page even lists him as Lawful Evil.
  • Metal Man and Flash Man are arrogant douches as well, as evidenced by the fact that they're the only ones who swear on a regular basis.
  • Ferret has shades of this too, along with Smug Snake. Odd, seeing as he's the Author Avatar.
  • Mega Man is fond of calling Enker a "big, dumb jerk", which is a pretty apt description of the guy.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Dr. Rely and Dr. Jeff Mason are both assholes to each other, but Rely was really upset that Jeff was imprisoned like he was.
• The Bus Came Back: The entire plot surronding Sunstar and Atendragon returned in full force as a conflict of the current arc so far with Ra Moon as well.
• The Juggernaut: Atlas.
• Just a Machine: Dr. Wily subscribes to this school of thought.
• Kick the Dog: A number, most notably Wily berating Enker for asking Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?, Allegro killing an alternate version of Rush, and Quick Man casually killing the last of the Fodder Force Uber Team.
• Killed Off for Real: Fire Man, after being defeated in Harmony Mode and short-circuiting in water.
• Large Ham: It's easier to mention who isn't this in this comic. Everyone gets their moments of this. Even Dr. Light.
• Laser Blade: Allegro.
• Lazy Bum: Heat Man is the personification of this trope.
  "A job where I do nothing all day long? I approve."
  • Quintet's hostile takeover of his brothers Wood Man and Flash Man in Comic #1003◊, he may no longer be as lazy.
  Heat Man: It's just too much work to do stuff for Quintet's personal agenda.

  • It's established that The reason for his laziness is an unstable power core that, upon over-exertion, sets himself and anything nearby on fire.
  • Not just any old power core - he's powered by an unstable nuclear bomb.
• Lovable Coward: Reset Man.
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Albert Wily
  • DisgruntledFerret also considers Dr. Light to be a "good Mad Scientist".
• Mauve Shirt: All members of the Fodder Force Uber Team.
• May I Speak Freely: "Nah."
• Mind Screw: Polka Reset Man's corrupted data, and the mini-arc "Dumb Nonsense."
• Mistaken for Badass: Needle Man vastly overestimates Reset Man, believing him to have taken down Spike Man, Metal Man, and Bubble Man (actually the first one was pure accident, and the second two were someone else's fault). To this end he oscillates between making judgements based on what would happen is Reset Man was actually a powerful assassin, and when those assumptions prove to be false, continues to believe he is in fact being outplayed by said powerful assassin.
  • This turns out of be a general problem for all second-generation Wily robots, since Top Man, Magnet Man, and Needle Man treat Ice Man as dangerously powerful, yet are confused by the fact that his spec sheets indicate that he's too weak for his apparent track record.
• Mood Whiplash: The sorry state of Enker in the "Too Serious" side-story is just depressing.
• More Dakka:
  • Crash Man's entire Modus Operandi.
  • Mega Man becomes a force to be reckoned with once he gains several Robot Master weapons.
  • Quick Man's boomerangs are even accompanied by a "dakka" sound.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Crash Man is called "the Destroyer", and for good reason.
• Never Say That Again: The chief scientist working on the ATLAS project does not like the term "bootleg AI".
• New Era Speech: Also counts as Incredibly Lame Pun, considering he was fooling Light at first by passing off his original plans as mining robots. Even the Wily Machine.
  Wily: Everything will be Mined. All Mined.
• Noodle Implements: Did you know you could build a Death Ray with little more than a cell phone and a paper clip◊?
  • To be fair, while Dr. Light is pretty badass in this story, and IS probably smart enough to scrap something together, this is probably exaggeration to get the point of Taking Dr. Light Seriously across.
• Non-Action Guy: Polka Reset Man
• No Name Given: The fourth member of The Fodder Force: Uber Squad
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Completely averted. After the first major arc, several other organizations are reverse engineering their own robots, including their own Robot Masters.
• Not Worth Killing: Quick Man lets a deactivated Mega Man live under these reasons. When he finds out the Blue Bomber is worth killing, his reaction is quite positive.
• Nuking the Fourth Wall: The Atomic Dragon's attack in this comic is so powerful it vaporizes the comic's boundary frame between the third and fourth panel.
• Off with His Head!: Crash Man in "Live and Learn"^note It doesn't stick, and more fatally, Roll in "Too Serious".
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Rock teases Roll about the incident with Ice Man a few times, to Roll's increasing annoyance.
• One-Man Army: Mega Man fits this until the second game kicks in. Crash Man is a definite example, reminding Wood Man that he had enough ammunition to level the city in a blind and deaf rage. Blind and deaf due to missing his head at the time.
• Only Mostly Dead: When a robot is destroyed, it can be rebuilt without much trouble, so long as the memory chip is intact.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: When sending robots into the field, the military just gives them a hat for disguise or in Atlas' case, a hat and a Badass Longcoat.
• Pet the Dog: Wood Man's guilt over killing humans, and Quintet coming to Enker's defense.
• Psycho for Hire: Allegro.
• Psycho Serum: The Harmony support units.
• Puppeteer Parasite: Again, the Harmony support units. Robotic worms that typically attach to the back of a robot's head, convert them to Quintet's agenda, turn them crazy and make their skin a sickly green color. The connection can deepen, in which case the Harmony and its host become Combining Mecha.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Thanks to a fatal computer crash, Ferret lost much of his sprite work and ended up having to speed-up and change much of Story 2's final act.
• Recurring Character: A somewhat Hot-Blooded Sniper Joe that Mega Man reprogrammed with Thunder Beam by the nickname of "Bravecore" occasionally shows up.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Column and Row, with colors to match.
• Red Shirt: Oh so many, but the thing is all the characters start off with the same characterization curve, so it's hard to identify them until they die, unless they are named "Fodder Force" (Captain/Colonial Fodder and "red haired guy" not included) or "Red Shirt Brigade". This is not helped by having most characters having unique sprites.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted. Early "Ferret-vision" comics aside, Dr. Light's genius and affinity with robotics are very obvious and beneficial to the heroes. He first helped out the US army during the first major finale (the siege on Skull Castle), which would later come round to bite him in the arse. Since then he's been an even bigger asset to Mega Man, re-building him more than once, inventing his new Support Unit, revamping and bringing in a good-old giant mecha into battle and rewinding time.
• Resistance Is Futile: Said by Quintet here.
  • And by Robot Maker 1.0's BSOD as early as this.
• Retcon: In Ferret vision, there was Polka. Now that DisgruntledFerret is paying attention, there is Reset Man. Proto Man also no longer goes by the name Blues anymore.
  • More generally, everything involving Light and Wily from the early, silly strips was seemingly dropped from canon once the comic got serious and flashbacks now reveal rising tensions between the two (and Light's idiocy is completely dropped).
    • Interestingly, Dr. Wily mentions that Light made Wily Machine 1 for him in strip number 972.
• The Reveal: The Harmony support units are created by Future Roll, who has become Mother Harmony after Red Mega Man killed her and she was inexpertly repaired by Quintet via Reader and Writer, the bases for the rest of the Harmony worms.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: General Spearcarrier initially mistakes Roll for a human girl, much as Lieutenant Gunnady mistakes Mega Man for a little boy. Also, the robots bleed. In Electric Man's case, they bleed a lot.
• Rule of Cool: Another favorite of DisgruntledFerret. Quote from commentary below:
  DisgruntledFerret: (Regarding this comic◊) In the Game Boy game where Mega Man uses it, I think Mirror Buster is just a shield that can bounce shots, but instead I made it this thing that absorbs attacks and fires them back as some kind of converted blast. Why? Because explosions.
  DisgruntledFerret: These things are not about practicality. I daresay it might be exactly the opposite.◊
• Sanity Slippage: Dr. Wily goes a little mad when he is completely unable to see a future where he achieves victory in the Time Skimmer.
• Sapient Ship: Rather then being a alien supercomputer, Ra Moon is now a entire living space station.
• Scary Black Man: Colonel Fodder
• Schedule Slip: Combined with loads and loads of Filler, and long story arcs. It'll probably be awhile before we get to Mega Man 3... but we're getting there.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Being the epitome of laziness, Heat Man says something along these lines.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Air Man, but piss him off and he defaults to a much cruder way off speaking, meaning that he probably invokes this trope intentionally.
• Shooting Superman: The military with regular weapons or the E1s against any of the Robot Masters.
  "Targets sustain no damage from shot. Calculating..."
  "Conclusion: cannot retreat. Keep firing out of spite."
• Shoryuken: Mega Man, err, Mega Mans Doctor Light's Shotokan Karate against The Wily Machine.
• Shout-Out: To Gundam about once every 150 strips.
  Mega Man: Whoa. My hand is glowing with an awesome power.
  Mega Man: Take this! Your ammo, your energy, and all of your stupid hate!
  • And the title of this comic.
  • Also, the comic titles for the "Too Serious" arc reference other fan comics set in 21XX from the Bob and George Forums.
    • 'Randomocity' is shouting out to Randomness. 'A Misadventure' is from Plague’s Misadventures.
  • A recurring filler character is the Author Avatar the Randomness's author, iX.
  • The resemblance is very loose, but Dr. Light's Humongous Mecha seems very drill happy...
    • That might not be, but this definitely is:
  Air Man: Even if Heaven itself forgives your shenanigans, I, Air Man, will not!
  • Daidigger D is a Super Robot reference bonanza, like the Name Letter nomenclature on top of this commentary
  With Daidigger D, you can become a god or a devil... of mining and construction.
  • Castlevania gets one, too:
  Enker: What is Electric Man? A miserable pile of circuits.
  • DisgruntledFerret made a filler comic that shows everyone from the Bob and George forums who have made a cameo appearance.
  • Cut Man's viral/Harmony form appears to be directly lifted from Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch creator CutmanMike's avatar character.◊
  • I AM ERROR.
  • Instead of being referred to as a "Mega Man Killer", Enker instead goes by the title of "Mega Man Hunter"◊. Possibly as a nod to the X-Hunters and Maverick Hunters, possibly just to sound less silly.
  • In good anime fan tradition, there's one for Fist of the North Star, complete with the classic 'You Are Already Dead' catchphrase.
  • A subtle one to Quick Man's unique stage select portrait, as mentioned below.
  • Full Metal Jacket in this comic.
  Compass Man: What's your major malfunction, anyway!?
  • Robot Master Leader 117, aka Column, from the short story "Greatest Killer" looks a lot like Deathstroke/Slade.
• Shown Their Work/Mythology Gag: Ferret clearly knows his classic series Mega Man. Although the majority of humans are (probably) original, startlingly few of the robots aren't from an actual source.
  • This innocuous fellow is Dyna Man from the awful Mega Man DOS game. Likewise, the belligerent, electricity-spewing robot is Volt Man. The third Robot Master of the game (Sonic Man) is given a brief cameo and it's implied that Bubble Man is created from his technology.
  • That Air Man lookalike that everyone believes turns into Air Man? Wave Man (Not THAT Wave Man) of the equally bad Mega Man 3 DOS.
  • That bizarre robot Metal Man turns into? Blade Man from the same game.
    • Hey there Oil Ma-, I mean, Flash Man.
  • These two guys? Compass Man and Konro Man from the Wonderswan game.
  • This guy in the last panel is Aircon Man, also from Challengers of the Future.
  • This Robot Master◊ may or may not be Torch Man. He's seen doing some welding later on◊. His appearance seems based on the PC version's in-game sprite rather than the mug shot.
  • Enker and Quint(et) from the Gameboy games could also qualify. Although significantly better known than the previous robots, they are still quite obscure.
    • Let it be known that Enker showed up in this comic long before(years before even) he was revealed to appear in Mega Man 10. Enker, who showed up in 1 GB, is introduced in the 1 NES arc, and Quintet, who showed up in 2 GB, shows up in the 2 NES arc. We may yet see Punk in the MM 3 arc. Check the official character page.
    • He's made his official debut.
  • The flying surfboard has a 2 on it for a reason. It's Ferret's interpretation of Item 2 from MM 2.
    • Ferret also depicts all three "Items" as a single device that can switch between multiple modes.◊ It's also referred to as a Support Unit.
  • The Ruby Spears show certainly gets attention as well.
  Mega Man: I'm a super fighting robot. I'm here to super fight.
  • Heat Man being lazy? Yeah that's canon to the games.
  • Crash Man's Mega Man and Bass quote:
  "I am the Destroyer!"
  • Quick Man's physique is a blatant reference to how Hitoshi Ariga drew the character, rather than the official MM 2 art or sprite.
    • His status as Rock's rival (of sorts) harkens back to the character's original role as envisioned by Inafune:
  Ariga: When I was playing 2, I always felt like Quick Man got some preferential treatment. On the stage select screen, his horns were allowed to go beyond the actual frame of the portrait and, when he appeared in-game, his horns would shine.
  Inafune: All of those things were intentional. We were trying to give him a special role in the game, as Mega Man's main rival. I guess you could compare him to Bass and Proto Man in the more recent games.
  • The Stardroids have been hinted at for the longest time via flashbacks◊. Or rather, the ancient alien race that Sunstar belonged to has been hinted at. They seem◊ to demonstrate◊ Blue-and-Orange Morality.
    • It's obvious that Reset Man's alternate personality is somehow one of these advanced alien robots, but no one knows quite how that works...
    • Dr. Wily's alien visage, Ra Moon and the space borne Evil Energy first seen in MM8 are also somehow involved◊. Previously none of these elements have ever been associated with one another.
    • As of the latest string of comics, Ra Moon makes reference to the Megamix Stardroids opening boast of "Anything with Life...anything with Shape...We end it."
    Ra Moon: All that has life, and all that has shape...it is not necessary. You will be eliminated by my perfect machines.
    • Not to mention, the Stardroids are shown engaging a species of psychic, feline aliens that are strangely reminiscent of a certain species of Lion-Men.
    • The sword used by the Stardroid Atendragon◊ is the same sword used by the Mega Man 8 robot master Sword Man. Sword Man's sword is canonically an ancient sword stolen by Dr Wily, so Atendragon's existence explains its origin.
  • Metal Man, who is often mocked for being hilariously vulnerable to his own round, bladed weapon, is depicted as being weak to the Rolling Cutter, a round, bladed weapon.
  • Cut Man's defeat to Wood Man makes sense as he was (ironically) weak to his power in Mega Man: The Power Battle.
  • An easy one to miss at first glance: in the Greatest Killer storyline, Rock refers to the Light Labs computer as "Crorkyputer", which is very similar to "CRORQ", the supercomputer from the PC games.
  • The instant death lasers from Quick Man's stage appear in his fight against Mega Man◊. In the comic, they are fired by Factor G's T.A. guns, the only weapons the human military have that reliably damage Wily's robots.
• Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: Played straight, and a major source of insults between robots and by their controllers.

• Smug Super: Electric Man and Air Man, which has made the battle between their egos almost as fun to watch as their actual battle.

• Start of Darkness: Greatest Killer turns out to be one of these for Quintet.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Reset Man's 'other' consciousness.
  • Sort of. While much more competent then Reset Man, he's so handicapped by his poorly-designed body that he struggles to beat a Sniper Joe.
    • Speaking of the "other" guy, what happened to him? Will we see him again? What about those scenes we saw while he was around?
    • If Ferret ever covers 8 or 5 GB, we will. This comic alone is proof of that. In it, you can see what is clearly supposed to be Sunstar talking to Atendragon, who also makes a clear reference to Duo. Furthermore, said dragon guy is later seen in another flashback with what is clearly supposed to be Evil Energy. The real question is whether or not the comic will ever get to that point. Fast-foward years later, it did.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maid: Rock and Roll were created to help Dr. Light in the lab and clean the house, respectively.
• Super Prototype: Averted with Polka Reset Man, who's barely able to defeat a Sniper Joe.
  • Later played straight with Atlas.
• Super Robot: More as tribute. Daidigger D is a remnant of Doctor Light's misspent well spent youth.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Played straight in the first arc.
  • Subverted in the second, where Wily's new minions are competent, but Wily still treats them like this.
  • Showing that the abused always kick downwards, Enker treats his fellow Robot Masters like this.
  • In the fillers where he appears, X is definitely this. Zero, iX, and Harpuia all manage to be not all there in some way or other.
  X: Oh hell, he raided the women's locker room for 'prizes' again. * Runs off-screen* You choose strange ways to die, Zero!
• Taking You with Me:
  • Crash Man shows why he's called The Destroyer.
  • Cut Man does this with Wood Man.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Wily 8 do not really cooperate well with one another in battle, often getting in each others' way. Their general personalities also seem to clash.
  • Likewise, Enker doesn't get along with any Robot Masters seen so far.
• Telescoping Robot: Reset Man.
• Temporal Mutability: Of the 'Temporal Chaos Theory' type. Time travel itself is an act which changes the future. If you go forwards in time, you vanish from the timeline while travelling and so arrive in a world shaped by your absence. If you go backwards in time, your appearance in the past changes causality and erases the future you returned from. The future of 'Too Serious', wherein Wily attacks again and again until his capture and execution, is erased when Wily travels 37 years into the future and so simply vanishes one day. The new timeline created is the one seen in 'Greatest Killer' and is the home timeline of Quintet. When Wily returns to the present he once again creates a timeline wherein he exists, erasing the world of 'Greatest Killer' and continuing the familiar timeline that progresses through the Mega Man Classic series.
• Theme Naming: Aside from the obvious musical-themed names (Rock n' Roll, Enker, Quintet, Allegro and Bass), there's also the support duo known as "Reader" and "Writer".
• Time and Relative Dimensions in Space: Time travel does not change your position, so anyone who tries to time travel will end up in deep space. Captured scientists following this logic create a time machine for Dr Wily... except that, because this is a Mega Man story, Dr Wily has access to teleportation and so can simply teleport to Earth's new position.
• Title Drop: Of Story 2, by Quintet.
  Quintet: It sounds like you (Dr. Light) know more about it than me, but how about a more convenient way to put it? "This is a robot with no past and no future."
• The Dragon: Enker to Dr. Wily. Despite his rank, battle prowess and intellect, he still takes severe flak from Wily.

• Unsound Effect: Telprot!
  • Boom-shatter!
  • Drill-grapple! A whole lot of it!
  • What's the sound of history changing? CHRONOOOOM!
• Villainous Breakdown: Wily suffered one at the end of the first major arc. He's gotten worse.

• We Are "Team Cannon Fodder": Parodied with the Fodder Force.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Quintet has an... interesting interpretation of the phrase, "everlasting peace".
• Who Dares?: Almost a given at some point.
• Worthy Opponent: Quick Man considers Mega Man to be one of these. Mega Man doesn't really care.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: When Mega Man's more heroic nature comes into play, Quintet's had to pull some rather dodgy maneuvers. Lampshaded by Ferret himself:
  DisgruntedFerret: You ever get the feeling Quintet's flying by the seat of his robotic pants?

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