Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Awesome / The Punisher MAX

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/punisher_max_awesome.png
This is why you do not wanna fuck with a Papa Wolf.

Due to the sheer of amount of badassery that takes place in this series, we've broken up the examples into folders that each cover a single arc of the story.

Be forewarned, however - a majority of spoilers are left completely unmarked, so view at your own risk.

    open/close all folders 

    In the Beginning 
  • Frank's badass credentials are established in the very first pages of The Punisher MAX, which has him wiping out scores upon scores of mooks gathered to celebrate a mafia boss's hundredth birthday (in addition to offing the birthday boy). Castle begins by walking in through the front door, shooting the don through the head, then walking right back out. By the time the mooks have broken out of their shock and are coming after him for payback, Castle has already set up his trusted M-60 and let loose.
  • This speech by Microchip, where he declares that he's in a way The Man Behind the Man:
    Microchip: I worked with Frank Castle for over ten years. I helped him kill over eight hundred people. I hacked computers to find him targets. I customized guns and ammunition. I put him in the right place at the right time to kill the maximum number of people. Without me, the body count for those ten years would be a third of what it is. I turned a lone gunman into a machine that runs at optimum efficiency. Because of me, what he does can truly be defined as war.
  • Castle's refusal of Microchip's offer to be recruited into the War on Terror:
    Frank: Fighting for the people who run the world gets you stabbed in the back. You fight the wars they start and feed. You kill the monsters they create. You die from handling depleted uranium while they get rich on oil. I'm not going back to war so Colt can sell another million M-16s. I had enough of that in Vietnam.
    Microchip: That's not the way it is...!
    Frank: There are sixty thousand guys in D.C. who'd say different. Except they can't say anything, because they're nothing but names on a black wall.
  • This doubles as a CMOA for both Frank and the villain: The psychotic mobster Pittsy grazes Frank's side with a close-range blast from a 12-gauge shotgun, completely disintegrating a rib, and Frank responds by lighting into Pittsy's face with everything he's got. He can tell it doesn't even hurt him, and as soon as he slows down, Pittsy punches him once, leaving him Frank seeing double. When Pittsy starts slashing him up with a nasty shard of glass, the Punisher decides he's had enough, catches the glass in his palm and snaps it in half, then picks up Pittsy, hauls him to the nearest window and throws him out...onto a spiked iron fence, where Frank lands on him shortly afterward to soften his own landing.
    • And does having several wrought iron spikes sticking through his chest slow Pittsy down? Fuck no, he just keeps going with the damn fence sticking out of him. Frank finally shoots him in the head with a shotgun, and he takes a few more steps. He collapses a second later, but he had Frank legitimately rattled by the idea that he still wasn't dead.
  • While not as notable as Pittsy, his partner Ink is also pretty formidable. He kills a whole squad of Special Forces by himself by sneaking into the elevator with a tool kit and tampering with the elevator cables, causing the Special Forces group to fall to their gruesome deaths.
    • And the way he got his nickname...
      Larry Barrucci: Your guy Ink over there. How come he's called that?
      Nicky Cavella: First guy he killed was with a pen.
      Larry Barrucci: Stabbed him inna neck?
      Nicky Cavella: Stabbed him inna eye. Just kept pushin' 'till brain an' beyond.

    Kitchen Irish 
  • "Anyone not wanting to die for Ireland -- Better clear on out the back."
  • Frank singlehandedly destroys the River Rats in a brief yet exciting firefight. All it takes is a single hand grenade and a few follow-up shotgun blasts, and bang! The River Rats cease to exist.
  • Frank and Yorkie's absolute decimation of The Westies. To better clarify, Frank successfully sets up a false meeting aboard a Marine Aircraft Carrier, with he and Yorkie each hiding in vantage points, armed to the teeth, waiting for the Irish gangsters to arrive. Once the Westies climb aboard the Carrier, Frank and Yorkie proceed to unload a hail of bullets upon the poor criminals with unrelenting tenacity. One of the onlookers below says it sounds like World War III.
  • Napper French gets payback on Maginty by giving him a firsthand demonstration of how one pulls a Houdini. He doesn't get to finish the job before Maginty's mooks arrive, but he still costs Maginty a hand and scares him half to death.
  • Finn gets to have his very own CMOA when Frank uses a stun grenade - Finn is the only one to see it coming and responds with a frag grenade of his own that successfully knocks down Frank, allowing Finn to mount him and deliver a severe beating.
    • Luckily, Frank deals with the situation with a solid display of combat pragmatism by biting off one of Finn's cheeks!
  • Pop Nesbitt's final "Fuck You" from beyond the grave.
    • To clarify, Pop Nesbitt hated all of the Irish gangs when he was in power, and constantly called them all a "shower of cunts" to their faces. Before he died, he supposedly decided that he wants to make peace between the gangs and left them pieces of a code that would lead to the remainder of his fortune, hoping that they'd set aside their differences. After failed attempts to wipe each other out, the survivors do join forces and find it - only to find a block of C4, wired to go off three seconds after the container has opened, with the word "cunts" stenciled into it.
    "Oh, you sadistic old..." KRAKOOM!!!!!.

    Mother Russia 

    Up is Down, Black is White 
  • "They put the sights on the top for a reason."
  • A mobster desecrates the graves of Castle's family, trying to goad him into going on a roaring rampage of revenge and act stupid. Castle's response? He attacks every gang BESIDES the mobster's, and in higher numbers than usual, to force the city to rebury the remains. Only then does Castle make a move against the mobster.
    • "That...that guy is gonna go fucking berserk." Frank was behind the guy who said this. He gets a little CMOA for just staring at the screen rather than kill everybody there in a murderous rage.
    • Just how effective was his rampage? City Hall is discussing what can be done: they can't capture or kill him, nor bow to his demands, and even with criminals thinking they are just being fed to the Punisher the mayor and his aides know he just will not stop until he gets what he wants.
      Mayor: "And the good news?"
      Johnathan: "Crime's down."
      Mayor: "Fuck you, Johnathan."
    • When said mobster comes across Castle, he grabs a passing child out of fear for his life and holds a gun to the kid's head, threatening to kill him if The Punisher doesn't leave. Castle calls his bluff, and calmly points out that beyond his veneer of psychopathy, he really is a coward, and that killing the child will result in a long, agonizing death, while letting him go gives him a chance (in the mind of the mobster). The mobster promptly backs down - and Frank drives him to the wilderness, death marching him through the woods, and eventually shooting him in the gut; the mobster suffers for days as the contents of his bowels poison his blood.
      Punisher: "You made it personal, Cavella, but all that buys you is a little more pain than most."
  • Punisher gets one off-screen as Nicky Cavella's men leave him when he needs them the most. When Cavella tells them they're disrespecting their boss and will all get whacked for it, they reply that there is no one left for him to boss around because the Punisher already killed them all, starting with the massacre that opened In The Beginning.note 

    The Slavers 
  • Best summed up by this monologue from Frank:
    The Punisher: It was in that moment that I realized something. A dull, blurred feeling that I'd had since this whole mess began, all of a sudden crystal clear. It had been a long, long time since I hated anyone the way I hated them.
    • This quote was said soon after he'd disemboweled a man and wrapped his intestines around a tree, then threw another woman out a building and was followed by Frank capturing & binding the leader to a chair and setting him on fire. They're all Human Traffickers and Sex Slavers though, so it's really hard to muster any pity for them.
  • In the first big action scene of the arc, Frank puts an end to a rape attempt, but one of the guys is still alive.
    Frank: "Whatever he was jabbering, it wasn't English. Pavla was Albanian, maybe he was too. But I'd know the Lord's Prayer in any language. Gave him a moment. Just before the line about forgiveness." *BLAM*
  • There's this house, see? It's owned by a sex slave ring and has both a bunch of Eastern European criminals (that Castle wants to kill) and a bunch of Eastern European prostitutes (that Castle wants to save). The usual tacticsnote  are not an viable option this time around. So what does he do? Dump a whole lot of drugs in a cooking pot through a window while the cook isn't looking. Later, when they're all passed out, he breaks in and shoots almost all of the criminals as they lienote . He keeps the ringleader alive only so he can cut him open, pulls his guts out and drape them over a nearby branch.
  • Another of the ringleaders, a woman, advised the previous ringleader to have his men rape the women they abducted over and over just to drive home the idea that they could do it because they couldn't be stopped. She meets a fate just as bad: Frank tosses her against a plate glass window over and over as she begs for her life, the glass eventually breaking - but not before getting absolutely caked in the woman's blood.
    "All that counts is that you can't stop me. I'm stronger than you, so I can do what I want. Isn't that the way it works?"
  • When it comes to the boss of the whole operation, a war criminal of the Balkan wars, he perhaps gets it worst: Frank ties him to a chair, covers him in gasoline, then puts a camera in front of him and offers a warning to his friends:
    "Don't come back here." *tosses the match*
    • And for the rest of the series, Frank never has trouble with human traffickers again. It worked!

    Barracuda 
  • How Frank escapes from the man eating shark, after confirming the other man thrown in with him was a drug dealer.
    Frank: What's your name?
    Horace: It's Horace man, Horace!
    Frank: Pleased to meet you, Horace. I'm the Punisher. [gives the shark a snack]
  • The fight between Frank and Barracuda is a CMOA for both of them but especially for Frank who shows a good use for barbed wire.
  • Frank blowing up the yacht filled with crooked executives allowing the nearby sharks to feast on the survivors. Made especially satisfying by the fact that one of the executives was egotistically boasting to Frank via headset about how he couldn't do anything to them because they we're a "corporate institution", not a tangible enemy that Frank could harm. Of course Castle quickly dispels that thought.

    Man Of Stone 
  • Frank taking on the Russian general who he fought in "Mother Russia," who brings a Hind gunship, two squads of Russian Black Sea Marines, and a fuel-air bomb in an attempt to take the Punisher down. Frank not only kills the Hind and the Marines, but brings down the Russian general's helicopter by faking a claymore mine injury and concealing a razor shiv inside of it, letting himself be captured, and working the razor blade out of his wound without even flinching.'
    • The scene where the general unloads his arsenal is a CMOA for Frank even though he doesn't appear in it at all. "This is all for one man, General...?" "One man, Major. Let us hope it proves sufficient to the task." Whatever else you want to say about Zakharov, he knows what he's up against.
      • The best part? It doesn't.
  • General Zakharov gets one after his Moral Event Horizon. After forcing the whole population of an Afghan village off a cliff nearby Mujahideen fighters hiding in the cliff across him open fire on him. Zakharov stands there calmly as bullets and RPGs slam around him and his men scatter for cover (earning his Red Baron "Man of Stone"). He then stands triumphant as Hind gunships come and destroy the, now exposed, Mujahideen fighters and his Moral Event Horizon is revealed to be part of a cruel Batman Gambit.
  • Frank's simple statement to Depraved Bisexual Smug Snake Rawlins at the end, when Rawlins is trying to use Kathryn O'Brien as a get out of jail free card:
    The Punisher: She's dead Rawlins... right when I was starting to like her...

    Widowmaker 

    Long Cold Dark 
  • Frank has briefly managed to defeat Barracuda. He needs to find out where Barracuda hid his daughter, so Castle proceeds to whip out the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on him by connecting Barracuda's genitals to a car battery:
    Frank Castle: A half hour's drive later I had the jump leads clamped to the skin of his balls and I'd been turning the key in the ignition for fifteen minutes and he'd shit all over himself and the world was a beautiful place. It was too bad he had a rag in his mouth, or he could've told me was ready to talk. As it was, I gave him another forty-five minutes.
  • Frank's suitable reply to Barracuda's endless talking:
    Frank: Shut the FUCK up. (Empties an AK-47 into his head)

    Valley Forge, Valley Forge 
  • The Marine Corps itself gets to have it's very own CMOA early on in the story. In a flashback dating back to the Vietnam War, it's revealed that a young Colonel Howe was rescued from a POW camp by an elite squad of Force Recon Marines who proceeded to methodically and swiftly annihilate the unfortunate Viet Cong troops who held Howe captive. The sight of these Marines doing what they do best was so awe inspiring that it convinced Howe to join the Green Berets and later Delta Force. Colonel Howe says it best:
    Before I knew what had happened I had a Viet Congs brains all over me. There was very little drama to what followed.
    [The squad of Marines spring into action as an imprisoned Howe watches in amazement]
    No shouts, no posturing, no flares or grenades. The whole thing — flowed. These men, quite clearly, knew more than I did.
  • Castle, now pushing sixty, absolutely trounces a team of eight highly skilled Delta Force operatives half his age. As a bonus, he does this with non-lethal tactics to boot.note  The following day, the soldiers are dejected and one describes the feelings he has as being like those of a civilian against a special forces hardcase such as himself.
    • Ironically the above 'dejected' conversation is itself an understated CMOA for how it's handled: unlike all of the prior groups that survived encounters with the Punishernote , the Delta team and their commander simply overview what went wrong and how to proceed, even taking personal responsibility... and in the end, they're the only group in Ennis' entire run to bring the Punisher down, although their commander orders that Frank be tased repeatedly before he's satisfied that Frank is incapacitated enough to be taken away.
  • After a long series of fights culminating in a lot of tasing, the Delta Force commander Colonel George Howe (a Morgan Freeman Expy) finally has the Punisher captured, and has recovered the evidence he had on the cabal of generals who launch terrorist attacks for their own ends. He won't allow the armed forces' reputation to be sulliednote , but nor can he forget Castle rescuing him in Vietnamnote . His solution: he leaves Frank with a loaded handgun, then he simply walks outside and up to the corrupt generals gunning for Frank, who he politely informs that Frank's inside... and that he's through with them.
    • It turns out that Colonel Howe's credo is why he recovered the evidence: Frank trusted him enoughnote  to willingly give itnote  up to Howe and to decide its fate.
    • At one point before the finale, when Howe informs the generals that he has Castle but not yet the evidence their ringleader blows up at Howe, calling Howe the N-word. Howe calmly asks the general whether he'd care to say that again, while turning the phone enough that if the general did so, all of the Delta Force operatives would hear itnote .
    • Finally, at the end of the arc the lieutenant that the generals had sent to be their liaison with the Delta Force team phones them in a panic, revealing his newfound information about Colonel Howe's secret history with Frank, his belief that Howe had all along intended to protect Frank from assassination, and that Howe had played the lieutenant like a fiddle from their very first meeting.
  • At the end of Ennis' run, Castle is left in a safehouse with nothing in the way of ordnance but a single 1911 with a full magazine and a round in the chamber - eight bullets. Eight Army and Air Force Generals walk in, intent on killing him to protect their careers and their lives, each one armed with more ammo than Castle himself. We don't see how it all goes down, but the final page has Castle walking away, smoking gun in hand, and all eight generals in a pile on the floor, each with a bullet hole right between the eyes. It is all made better by an excerpt from a book that Nick Fury is reading about the Vietnam war and the role it played in Castle's eventual fate.
    "In the end, the war in Vietnam was like any other. There were those who profited. Those it devoured. And then there were those for whom there are no words."

    The Cell 
  • Having surrendered himself to the law, Frank is shipped to Riker's where the guards gleefully points out the most dangerous in the joint, "Squeaky Pete", an enormous Scary Black Man who's nickname comes from his hobby of raping his cellmates to death, and tells him that's the guy they're sending after him. Frank breaks one guard's nose, steals the other guard's nightstick and beats Pete's head in, then tells the guards to send him the next most dangerous man.
  • Two men enter his cell and start stabbing at the person sleeping in his bunk. Frank saw this coming and "convinced" his cellmate to switch bunks (he broke the guy's neck and put him in the bunk). While his cellmate was being stabbed he slid off the top bunk and walked out of his cell unnoticed.
  • After cornering the five men he got himself imprisoned to get to, he explains to them why he's after them: They're the ones who killed his family. They promptly shit their pants and he tells them what exactly is going to happen next: "I'm going to start the killing now."
    • There's five men in the cell; an enforcer, twin brothers who served as hitmen, a mob lieutenant and The Don himself who once ruled New York. Special mention goes to why the lieutenant is in prison - he was once second in command of the mob, enjoyed all the comforts, luxuries and women the position offered... only for his long-suffering wife to finally set him up to the feds, while she fled with the money he laundered.
    You know, I really got to hand it to the cunt!

    Kingpin 
  • The first confrontation between Wilson Fisk and Frank Castle. Throughout the fight, both men are depicted as being each others equal in terms of strength, combat prowess, and on the spot combat pragmatism. Made all the more awesome in that Fisk manages to survive the encounter. Highlights include Fisk tackling Frank down some stairs after dodging a shotgun blast and a shot to the face from Frank. And Fisk launching Frank across the room and straight through the front door.
  • The bloody drag out street-fight between The Punisher and The Mennonite.

    Bullseye 
  • Bullseye shits out a gun and shoots the Russian mob with it.
  • Castle, killing several thugs on a rooftop after being shot in the neck by Bullseye.
  • Bullseye gets another as after weeks of trying to get into the mind of Frank Castle, he finally figures out how to "kill him." and tries it while in the middle of fighting Castle. While we can't tell what he says, till the next arc "Frank", whatever he said, it worked. For a short while mind you, but the fact it still worked earns Bullseye his ultimate CMOA.

    Frank 
  • Big Jesus' entire plan to get revenge against The Kingpin for the murder and rape of his brother and his brother's girlfriend, all by getting into Solitary Confinement by stabbing a guard in his crotch, hiding a blade under his fingernail and inciting a prison riot, just so he could break out Frank-fucking-Castle himself and hope to use him to strike back at Kingpin. It worked...till Frank snapped his neck.

    Homeless 
  • Frank finally killing The Kingpin. He does so after death marching all the way from Queens to his building in Manhattan, before blowing his brains all over the glass front door.
    Frank: Your city. My world.

    War's End 
  • Frank's dead, but the citizens of NYC decide to stand up for themselves.

    Fury: My War Gone By 
  • Frank's mysterious second tour in 'Nam, partially featured in this story. Frank and Nick Fury are on an intelligence mission in Laos. They're captured and Frank is recognized and respected for being the sniper who has killed forty people inside of two months. After a day of torture they escape, with Frank killing two guards with his hands tied behind his back. While Fury heads off to complete his end of the mission, Frank hunkers down on a hill with a rifle and shoots at least two dozen incoming enemy soldiers. On Fury's recommendation he made Captain.

    Get Castle 
  • A bunch of drug-smuggling SAS kill Yorkie's son for nearly blowing the whistle on them. Frank learns of it (after Yorkie's death, who died before his son did), so he shows up at the village where Dan was killed, proclaims his intent to kill their murderers, and leaves. The SAS goons are of course confident they can take some American wanker who's seen too many cowboy movies. Then they meet Frank's unique approach to home security.
    Colonel: A claymore! A fucking claymore! This is sheep shagging country, not the bastard Mekong cunting delta!
    • Later Frank tells them when and where to show up. They do so in a Chinook... which Frank already knew about, so he showed up with a rocket launcher.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top