Misused: Lethal Joke Character

Most listings of this trope are usually about the person looking silly when fighting, or being bad in some areas. rather than being an intentionally character with a few reliable moves.

Examples in the trope page:

• Villager from smash is a lot more of Difficult but Awesome case, he's clearly meant for competitive use rather than Jigglypuff, who is an actual example, who at a glance seems to have nothing good going for him until you practice.

• Although it might be useful to list him as part of "character history" per se, Dan in SVC Chaos wan't a joke character, since Capcom made him a Mockery of SNK, when SNK ported him to their game they made him decent.

• Phoenix Wright and Rocket Raccoon are really Difficult but Awesome cases, definetly not joke characters, don't know much about M.O.D.O.K.

A lot of these are characters being kind of bad with some saving grace, but not INTENTIONALLY bad, as a joke character would be, and while the listings in the trope page aren't that bad, if you go to character pages you see people listing Lethal Joke Character just because a character looks silly while playing like a regular character, which is much more akin to Fighting Clown.

Edit: Sorry I haven't learned how to pothole yet.

edited 19th Apr '16 1:01:22 AM by CrazyTheFox

Use CamelCase to create the link to the trope pages. For example DifficultButAwesome would appear as Difficult, but Awesome.

As for the misuse, this trope seems to be frequently confused with Fighting Clown, which describes characters who look weak/silly, but is actually quite powerful.

edited 23rd Apr '16 5:38:27 PM by Adept

I wonder if renaming this to something like Joke Character Made Useful or Useful Joke Character Trick or something along those lines, as you gotta do some kind of method to make the Joke Character not a joke anymore, instead they are now more useful than the others.

the misuse looks like you can just cut it and put it under Fighting Clown.

Fighting Clown - looks silly, but just as good as any of the serious looking guys

Joke Character - has few reliable strategies

Lethal Joke Character - has few reliable traditional strategies, but has a gimmick that makes them useful if you know how to use it the right way

edited 24th Apr '16 9:29:10 AM by acrobox

Okay, I'm worried this will get closed because OP didn't do appropriate research...

This absolutely sees a ton of misuse (along with Lethal Joke Item) for "silly character, but lethal." The image for Lethal Joke Item was put there seemingly under the idea the trope is "Joke-looking item is lethal," not "item is useless except if used a certain way."

Going to do a wick check when I get a chance, but I am thinking this may have to turn into a disambig for Fighting Clown and a renamed version of this trope.

Though honestly, is "Difficult, but Awesome Fighting Clown" its own trope?

edited 11th May '16 1:54:04 PM by Larkmarn

Many are not difficult though. There are many ways a joke character can become actually good. Plot advancement, a certain piece of equipment, the blessing or manipulation of the Random Number God, teamwork with another character etc. They suck ass but there is something makes them viable, eventually.

Just a plain High / Expert Difficultly Character in a fighting or action game shouldn't be in this though, that is my issue with it and I see a lot of that on the page. The only way one can be this with a fighting game is the character must suck in every possible way but some kind of cheesy exploitable move.

Fighting Clown and this one really do not seem to be overlapping after looking at them.

edited 11th May '16 11:15:06 PM by Memers

As in they don't overlap in descriptions or usage? Because they definitely overlap in usage, which is misuse because they don't overlap in descriptions at all.

Joke Character and Lethal Joke Character do not have to be Fighting Clown.

The first two tropes are about utility. The last one is about appearance.

They can both be in the same character, but they are two totally separate ideas and two separate aspects of the character.

If you see one when it should be the other, just change it. Or if its a guy thats both, then have two separate entries.

edited 12th May '16 7:40:42 AM by acrobox

The problem with LJC is that you can't really set in stone what counts as "powerful gimmick" that makes a joke character lethal. It's kinda vague.

Yeah, you got stuff like say, Magikarp who is definitely a JC, but then because it can evolve into Gyarados, it is an LJC, but then because it can evolve, wouldn't that mean it isn't a JC to begin with and instead is more apt for Magikarp Power?

Honestly shouldn't LJC really be Magikarp Power?

not all cases of LJC are about someone/thing evolving into something better like Magikarp.

Magikarp isn't a LJC anyway. Just because it turns into something lethal does not make Magikarp itself lethal.

Yeah, but at the same time that's the whole point of the line anyway.

But yeah, I guess LJC just needs a clean-up especially with OP's examples.

So all we can do is just cleaning bad examples, yeah?

Looking at the trope image, the image doesn't look fitting for "a game character who's weak but has some certain powerful gimmick". It looks closer to Fighting Clown.

The page says "one obscure, impossible-to-master, but incredibly rewarding technique for this character, and using it, you'll win every time... if you can get it down. But doing so requires skill, practice, and the ability to see the potential in the seemingly-useless." Why isn't this Difficult, but Awesome? (Because it's actually not awesome enough?)

According to the Lethal Joke Character page: "See also Difficult, but Awesome, whose deadly potential is more obvious, but still requires effort to unleash". And "Unlike a Magikarp Power, the Lethal Joke Character always had this ability to kick ass; it just requires a lot of skill to use him".

According to the Difficult, but Awesome page: "Compare and contrast Lethal Joke Character, who requires a specific trick or exploit to be awesome, rather than requiring the player to master the character over time".

The trope image is fine and one of the best examples of the trope I can think of.

If the trope is about "exploiting a certain trait of an otherwise joke character that makes it strong", then the picture isn't showing it. Get what I mean?

The caption for the image is even more about describing Fighting Clown than this.

edited 9th Jan '17 9:56:01 PM by Getta

For a rename or for anything more drastic than a simple cleaning, we'd need a proper wick check, to verify the problem is significant. Merely saying "there's a ton of misuse", sadly, is not considered sufficient.

If you do a cleanup before the wick check, though, then the wick check won't reveal any problems. (Curiously enough.)

So, if anyone is seriously concerned about misuse, they should probably get started on that wick check ASAP.

EDIT: Hello ibe stoopid ignore.

edited 10th Jan '17 12:42:57 PM by Larkmarn

Actually, nothing in the description for Lethal Joke Character (or Joke Character, for that matter) mention the character's physical appearance, so whether or not the joke character looks stupid is irrelevant. As far as the trope distinction goes, this is what I got from the trope descriptions:

• Lethal Joke Character: The character's skills are mostly useless, but they have one hidden gimmick that makes them more powerful than they first seem.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The character's skills are legitimately powerful, but they are very hard to use (e.g. the combos required to unleash them are very complicated and/or requires highly precise timing on the player's part)
• Magikarp Power: The character starts off very weak, but if the player stick around with them for long enough, they will eventually gain additional power-ups that makes them very useful later on.

@16: I think the distinction mentioned in LJC should be changed, because that makes no sense.

edited 10th Jan '17 8:00:16 AM by Adept

The image is fine because the puffball character is a Lethal Joke Character. If you're not good with it, you'll wonder why it's a good character; if you've practiced with it a bunch, everyone else will be cursing you the entire game for killing them yet again...

My apologies, I was thinking the image for Lethal Joke Item. Which has one of two problems: Either Lethal Joke Item is nothing like Lethal Joke Character or the image is misuse since it just looks like "strong item that looks silly."

Jigglypuff is a proper example of Lethal Joke Character, yes, it's just that the image isn't really adequate in "showing that one gimmick of an otherwise joke character". Just A Face And A Caption, in other words.

Right, it demonstrates that Jigglypuff is as powerful as a normal character, but not that she plays oddly or has joke mechanics. So it's closer to illustrating Fighting Clown again.

edited 10th Jan '17 2:31:14 PM by Larkmarn