One benefit of doing things your way is that, for the more laughable characters, you can give them some much-needed powering-up.
- Socrates, normally the Cloudcuckoolander and Jerk with a Heart of Gold among the heroes of Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, still has his moments of seriousness. Probably the most jarring moment he's had is the entirety of "Have You Seen This Tiger?", wherein he becomes extremely angry for the first half.
- Final Stand of Death
: In Episode 7, three of the henchmen of Marilyn Manson finally gives to see Fusion Gundam up close. They assume they weren’t as much as a threat as they thought. However, back in Episode 2, Spur, ALL BY HERSELF, almost killed members of blink-182 after Mark makes the sounds of a chainsaw, which ended her former life as Emma "Baby" Bunton. Same with the other Spice Girls.
- The Boys: Real Justice (The Boys (2019) & Justice League):
- The DC villains are seen by the Boys as fruitcakes in silly costumes but are still dangerous villains who shouldn't be underestimated.
- Homelander sees the Joker as a powerless clown with silly makeup. Still, he succeeds in killing dozens of people and savagely humiliating Homelander, severely damaging his reputation as a crime fighter.
- A Discordant Note (Harry Potter & A Song of Ice and Fire): Luna Lovegood is extremely friendly and nurturing as well as prone to odd actions like swimming in a fountain and asking Harry to make sure her new body lactates chocolate milk. But from time to time, she casually reminds the rest of Westeros that she's a six century old Sorcerer-Queen and if she decides to do something, such as replacing the stained glass window behind the Iron Throne with one affiliated with the Old Gods, there's literally nothing anyone (besides her husband Harry) can do besides politely ask her not to.
- Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls (Bleach & My Little Pony: Equestria Girls):
- Pinkie Pie is the same bubbly self that she is in canon... With power that manifest as a semi-separate being made out of her suppressed negative thoughts with ability to infinitely create jaws filled with razor-sharp teeth on every part of her body. And that's just the beginning of myriad of freaky powers.
- Bount Trixie is just as silly and hammy as her pony counterpart, but she can back up her ego with her power being just below Captain-level and is able to fight Princess Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Flash Sentry to a near standstill.
- Cheese Sandwich is a powerful, competent, and intelligent Soul Reaper captain. ...Who acts exactly like his pony self. (that is to say, a male Pinkie Pie)
- Medley of the Zero Division is rather quirky, but she's still a member of, again, the Zero Division, and is thus insanely strong, with a Zanpakuto that can obscure and confuse the senses, but she makes it clear that the Humane Seven will die if they challenge the Soul Palace.
- Harry Potter and the Lord of Sevii (Harry Potter & Pokémon): Luna Lovegood. When she learns Neville was killed she unleashes a pulse of Veela magic that nearly kills the heroes and villains alike.
- Child of the Storm: Albus Dumbledore, Bunny-Ears Lawyer and Cool Old Guy, is also a very knowledgeable and dangerous wizard, even more so than his canon counterpart. When attacked by four wizards, trained by HYDRA specifically to take him down, he casually defeats them with two absent-minded spells, and later goes up against god-eating Reality Warper that's also possessing an Omega Class Reality Warper. He doesn't just beat it - he mops the floor with it. All in all, there is a reason why he is Respected by the Respected.
- Tony Stark, meanwhile, is so eccentric that his antics are a Running Gag in and out of universe, and is incredibly scatterbrained, especially when he's focused on a project. But he's also the Iron Man, once built a suit that - even incomplete - was described by a flabbergasted Director Wisdom as "a planetary scale emergency all by itself", and repeatedly flies rings around people in replicas of his armour with nonchalant ease. Accordingly, everyone, friend or foe, treats him with at least grudging respect.
- Doctor Strange, however, arguably takes the cake. He rarely seems to take anything seriously, often making pop-culture references at the most inappropriate moments, dresses in strange and colourful clothes, and has a thoroughly mischievous sense of humour, which often involves stealing small (and not so small) objects that are supposedly under the very highest security, mostly for the hell of it (examples so far include Mad-Eye Moody's wooden leg from its owner, a phoenix feather containing Harry's mind from Maddie Grey's back pocket, and Loki's detached head from the most secure part of Asgard's palace). All of which serves to cover for an epic amount of personal tragedy. However, he's also the most dangerous mortal mage alive and one of the most powerful, has centuries actually, 500 millennia of experience fighting Eldritch Abominations, and makes a policy of knowing (almost) everything. He has an exceptionally well-earned reputation as The Dreaded, and if the jokes have stopped, he's about to show why. Even Skyfathers are unwilling to cross him, and for good reason - if nothing else, the crazy bastard is more than happy to swipe the Tesseract and threaten them with it. He's best known, however, for being a Magnificent Bastard whose mastery of the Xanatos Gambit means that ultimately people (by which we mean everyone from Badass Normals to the freakin' Endless) do what he wants them to, even when they know he's manipulating them.
- Harry and the Shipgirls has the Abyssal Re-Class Revina. An Expy of Pinkie Pie, she's normally a fun-loving, wise-cracking goofball. That being said, she's also an Abyssal Re-Class, and one of the strongest subordinates of Harbor Princess Wanko. If she ever drops the goofball act, someone's about to get brutalized.
- Ibuki Mioda on The Pre Despair Kids, having been manipulated into becoming a remnant of despair.
- C Listers: Focuses on Batman's lesser rogues in various comedic slice of life shenanigans, portraying them as a group of lovable, goofy True Companions. Every so often, however, you're reminded that they're hardened criminals who are extremely ruthless, and all of them have countless murders under their belt. Even the seemingly harmless Killer Moth and Polka-Dot Man won't even blink when circumstances require them to kill someone.
- It's Always The Quiet Ones: Luna the lovable Cloud Cuckoolander turns out to be capable of summoning mind-destroying, human-eating alien jellyfish.
- Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: Enduring a day of tension between Germany and Japan, Italy reached his Rage Breaking Point after Germany pulled a Browning Hi Power on Japan while Japan pulled out his katana on Germany.
- Izuku Midoriya the Rabbit: Izuku may be a rather naïve rabbit who frequently suffers from Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! and Comically Missing the Point, but don't think that makes him harmless. He's a 75 pound Killer Rabbit with Super-Strength, Super-Speed, and a willingness to rip out the throat of anyone he believes is an enemy, as Aizawa almost found out.
- The Saint and the Sinner: Mineta is pretty goofy and hard to take seriously due to his small stature and comical nature, but he's also highly intelligent and has proven his cunning in multiple situations, not to mention he can be genuinely intimidating when the situation calls for it. When Mina called Todoroki Mineta's minion, he gave her a Death Glare and calmly told her to leave, even frightening her with how serious he was.
- Good Trooper Gilda: Pinkie Pie acts pretty much like her canon counterpart, barely graduated at the military academy, she's an intelligence officer trying to end the rebellion in the Griff Isles, and Gilda refers to her as "the scary pink mare who likes to talk about mass murder and partying with survivors" because she has seen her doing just that right after finding out enough information to realize she had planned the mass murder.
- According to major Bureau, head of the personnel in the Griffin Isles, half the officer corps and the entire intelligence corps of the Isles want to get rid of Pinkie but they can't, in part because any objection levied against her is without evidence or exposed as malfeasance from the accuser, and in the one exception the accuser was hit by a bale of hay fallen from an air delivery van a thousand feet in the air. Hence why Bureau turned from obstructionist to extremely helpful once Gleaming Shield (formerly Twilight Sparkle) showed up with an objection from Princess Cadance, as he had hope they could finally get rid of "that pronking disaster area".She's a menace, but she's an arrowproof menace!
- According to major Bureau, head of the personnel in the Griffin Isles, half the officer corps and the entire intelligence corps of the Isles want to get rid of Pinkie but they can't, in part because any objection levied against her is without evidence or exposed as malfeasance from the accuser, and in the one exception the accuser was hit by a bale of hay fallen from an air delivery van a thousand feet in the air. Hence why Bureau turned from obstructionist to extremely helpful once Gleaming Shield (formerly Twilight Sparkle) showed up with an objection from Princess Cadance, as he had hope they could finally get rid of "that pronking disaster area".
- Discord's New Business: Discord's inner Lord of Chaos comes out when he berates Rainbow for her vague request for "something cool" and manages to properly intimidate her. A reminder that chaos isn't always just "for fun."
- Just Another Day : Pinkie Pie used to be the most dangerous assassin in Equestria who'd use her unique abilities to kill people. When someone threatens to expose her past to her friends, he's found drowned in the middle of the lake the next day.
- The Pony POV Series:
- Discord, even more so than in canon.
- General-Admiral Makarov, the Big Bad of the Shining Armor Arc, is a Large Ham Psychopathic Manchild who flies off the handle for the smallest things. However, he's also the leader of one of the largest militaries on the planet, with advanced (for the setting) technology that he's not adverse to using, will kill anyone for the pettiest reasons, and is strong enough to deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Shining. And then, its revealed that he's an Equineoid Abomination with Reality Warper powers, and that his endgame involves a war to take over the world and multiple acts of genocide.
- Ahuizotl in The Two Sides of Daring Do. He's a Large Ham who's just as over the top always...and also a sadistic psychopath and Knight of Cerebus who's plots are less about conquest and more about destruction For the Evulz. He's also a frighteningly powerful physical opponent with Super-Strength and a straight up Lightning Bruiser when in the water. In a straight up physical fight, he beats the hell out of both Daring Do and Yearling and leaves them both with broken bones. He still puts Daring Do in death traps...because he wants to leave her Dying Alone in a slow, horrible fashion. AK Yearling outright says that he's such a monster that she had to play him for laughs so her producers would let her keep him in.
- Vapors: Aiko Uzumaki, the main character of the fic, is very much this. In her downtime off of missions, she writes fantasy stories, uses glittery vanilla shampoos, and happily goofs around with her friends while she can. She is also the personal apprentice of Hatake Kakashi, responsible for foiling several of Akatsuki's plans, on first name terms with three kages and three jinchuriki, and was labeled an S-class threat before her sixteenth birthday.
- Love at First Sight (Once Upon a Time): Emma is kind and quirky, constantly making dorky jokes and dancing everywhere she goes. She even takes to wearing a clown nose later in the story. However, she is also a former assassin and able to take multiple groups sent to kill her without breaking a sweat. She also kills her clients who hire to kill people. She even reveals that part of the reason that she retired was as much her boredom as it was her being tired of killing innocent people.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: Misty's Psyduck is an even bigger example than in the anime, since he's portrayed as being a bit of a Cowardly Lion and Brilliant, but Lazy. Case in point, he'll intentionally trip over to hit his head so as to trigger his psychic attacks if needed, and if his trainer is in danger, he'll do anything it takes to protect her.
- Coeur Al'Aran:
- Knight of Salem: As silly as this fic's take on Salem is — being a naive, entitled and childish Know-Nothing Know-It-All who's out of date with the times — she's still a powerful witch from the original iteration of humanity, who, even when stripped of her Grimm powers, is in possession of magical powers that are considered immense by contemporary standards, and she was personally trained by Ozma, and she's still a former queen with a dangerous political acumen. Her silly-seeming demeanor and the fact that she doesn't look like a humanoid Grimm monster anymore make it all the more shocking for anyone who doesn't know who Salem is when she shows them what she's really capable of, in the rare event where she does deign to lift a finger instead of leaving all the dirty work to Jaune and Tyrian.
- Not this time, Fate: How Jaune, who has been stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop of trying and failing to save all his friends from grizzly ends for millennia, appears In-Universe during the loop iteration which the story covers. Jaune puts on the appearance of being a lazy, unmotivated, dickish and mischievous sex maniac, but others catch on at varying rates to the facts that he's nowhere near as inept, unskilled or harmless as he pretends to be, and that anyone who threatens his teammates or family or pushes him to his mental breaking point should be very afraid, as after the unimaginable suffering he's endured, Jaune is all but unrecognizable as his canon self to the reader, and he's capable of killing anyone who crosses him as easily as he breathes.
- White Sheep:
- Salem is a Doting Parent who spends most of her time talking about her sex life and trying to get her children to produce grandchildren. However, she is still the all-powerful Queen of the Grimm; early on, Salem wants to destroy Vale to get Jaune back, and Cinder barely manages to convince her it's a bad idea. She could and would do it—the problem is that Jaune would resent her for it.
- Related, part of the reason Cinder talked Salem down was because it would threaten the existing plan, where Cinder gets the rest of the Fall Maiden's power. Cinder thinks she's tricked Salem, but Salem is well aware of her ambitions. She doesn't particularly care, but she still considers murdering Cinder for even trying to trick her.
- Early on, it seems like Salem's plot to set Cinder up with Jaune by having her be his babysitter was just a silly plan caused by not understanding humans (children who grow up together usually end up Like Brother and Sister, not in a Childhood Friend Romance). However, that was merely the best possible outcome, in Salem's mind. Lavender mentions that the actual plan, to imprint Jaune on Cinder so that Cinder would care for him and be tied more closely to the family, worked perfectly—despite Cinder's protests to the contrary.
- Sonic X: Dark Chaos, Eric the Hedgehog is definitely this. Sure, he seems like a harmless crazy version of Sonic at first glance... until he unleashes his machines. And his starships. And his Super form -which allows him to create huge guns from thin air. Oh, and it's implied he's far more than just a loony on top of that.
- Old Man Henderson is one of the better known examples, and quite intentionally so by part of his player; he intended to make him as ridiculous as possible to both minimize the amount of questioning of how and why he's doing things (coupled with the Backstory of Doom) and maximize the amount of damage to the DM's campaign. The end result is a schizophrenic, pot-smoking lunatic who wears combat boots with heelies, has a stuffed parrot on his shoulder he takes advice from, randomly lapses in and out of a thick Scottish accent despite not being Scottish, can shrug off witnessing horrors from beyond like it's nothing by dismissing them as merely hallucinations caused by the schizophrenia/weed/both, and is only fighting the cultists because he thinks they stole his lawn gnomes (he actually donated them to charity while high and then forgot about it). He is also an experienced gunman who can level a church full of cultists "with the speed and brutality of the fucking Spetsnaz", has access and know-how to operate massive amounts of explosives, and is willing to cause any amount of collateral damage to end his enemies, even if it means crashing a flaming tanker truck into a cult meeting with two of his teammates still inside.
Unsorted
- Obsidian from The Hunger Games fanfiction Some Semblance of Meaning. When heroine Vale first meets him in the Training Center, he comes off as rather silly, with his friendly, if a bit superior, attitude toward Vale and his comment about being like a magpie and liking shiny things. He isn't seen exhibiting any skills with a weapon... and then, he gets the highest training score of all twenty-four tributes. To say nothing of the serious and competent skill he displays in the bloodbath.
- This and O.O.C. Is Serious Business are used horribly effectively in The Measure of a Titan with Starfire. When she is upset enough to go out looking for criminals to brutally beat each night until she passes out from exhaustion, so much so that the crime rate drops as all the baddies try to stay under the radar, it cannot be a good thing.
- Wolfang Richler does not seem like a very imposing villain at first, despite using his magic to blast off a statue's head. He babbles to himself, he seems to not believe people let themselves age, and his interactions with Jonahs paint the picture of a very lonely, immensely bored immortal. When Jonahs joins back up with his friends, we learn Wolfang turned two guards to stone, simply for getting in his way, and later in the same chapter seems to teleport all over the place, kills people with absurd ease and nonchalance, and during his conversation with Sarasho, we see he wants to set up a universe wide civil war.
- Heroic example from Poké Wars. Mew is an immature, childish and just plain silly Pokémon. However, he is a Legendary and one of the more powerful ones too. His powers include changing into any Pokémon he desires, command of all known Pokémon attacks and at will teleportation.
- In Hope for the Heartless, two of the invisible creations of the Fates are described this way. They're nearly all the time fun-loving and optimistic prankster sidekicks who squeeze enjoyment out of nearly every situation, no matter how bad it might be. However, if you touch something they care about, they instantly turn into something Mother Nature herself couldn't rival in vindictiveness and malice.
- Dante's Night at Freddy's is a crossover fic that features Dante having to do a stint as a night watchman at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza after taking his young daughter there for her birthday and subsequently putting his fist through an arcade machine. Even in his fifties and deprived of his weapons, the haunted animatronics are absolutely no match for Dante, who ends up killing all four of them in incredibly silly and ironic ways. Such as killing Bonnie by repeatedly crushing her head with the door and punctuating each impact with a sarcastic "Whoops", killing Chica by frying her with electric wiring, and killing Foxy by gouging out Foxy's eye with his own hook hand and then carving him up with his own teeth, all the while taunting him in pirate speak.
- In A Brighter Dark, the main character Corrin can be a bit hard to take seriously at times. She drinks, sleeps with pretty much any man who asks, has trouble with her studies, and has never heard a curse word she didn't like. Nonetheless, get on her bad side, and she will utterly annihilate you with her sword skills.
- Princess Cadence in The God Squad. Silly, goofy, constantly talks about sex... but threaten Shining Armor and she won't kill you. That is too quick. She'll just sterilize your entire race so you can watch your entire culture slowly die.
- Clopin, Kaylie's Touceet, in Pokemon Opal And Garnet is just like his namesake: he is hilarious, fun-loving, and silly most of the time, but if you ever think about hurting his friends... WELCOME TO THE COURT OF MIRACLES! (In other words, he will annihilate you with Guillotine. So watch out.)
- The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Sweet Surprise, the Full Moon of the Luna Guard, may seem like a ditz, but she holds her rank for a reason.
- In the Power Rangers in Space/Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series crossover "Lost and Found", when Cassie Chan finds herself facing Chameleon in battle, his constant shapeshifting leaves her so frustrated that she finally decides to ignore the Rangers' rule against escalating a battle and starts shooting at Chameleon rather than trying to fight him hand-to-hand.
- Ash's Duskull (Spectre) in Challenger is a mischievous spirit who likes to hide in shadows to spook people and wear Ash's hat. According to Agatha, he's also been around since she was a child and the only reason he's not a match for her entire team is because he hadn't found a trainer to bond with yet. When one of Agatha's Gengar provokes him by trying to bond with Ash, Spectre tackles it into the Distortion World and utterly kicks its ass.
- Pierre LaPorte from Maim de Maim as we find out. He's weird and borders on Cloudcuckoolander but we find out that, under his weirdness, he's a pedophile and its implied that he's probably committed some crimes against children before finding his way to Japan.
- Nejire Hado in What's in a Hoard? is a bubbly woman who's shorter than most of class of 1A and prone to skipping. When she fights 1A, she beats all of them in under thirty seconds and most of that time is spent fighting Izuku and Bakugo.
- The Ouroboros: Mikey presents himself as Fun Personified, always ready to joke around even in the worst situations. However, when he learns that their alternate selves lied to them in order to steal their identities back on Earth, he flashes back to popping the heads off of bug-like aliens, and idly wonders if they'll have to do the same to their alternates in order to reclaim their lives.Mikey: [to Leo] "How similar d'you think carapace is to exoskeleton? Asking for a friend."
- The MLP Loops:
- Pinkie Pie is... well, she's Pinkie Pie. However, she's more Pinkie Pie than she's ever been in baseline, has a pink lantern ring, has replaced Slaanesh and given Ciaphas Cain a trauma worse than Slaanesh ever could, and is quite happy to extract the punishment for breaking a Pinkie Promise no matter how many loops it takes. Beware.
- Pinkie specifically warns Berry and Sweetie, fellow Element of Laughter bearers, that theirs is actually the most dangerous Element. Pinkie's Laughter manifests as parties; she could have a knife party or worse. Berry's Laughter manifests as mixing drinks, and she spends a lot of time mixing drinks for immortals; mixing more dangerous variants would be easy. Sweetie's Laughter manifests as music; she once helped sing a world into existence, she could easily sing a song of destruction instead.
- Most of the time, we only see people's reactions to Pinkie's really high-level craziness. In the Sombra War Bad Future variant, we finally see it first-hand. After Pinkie gets permission from Twilight, she goes full Chaos Goddess of Parties, bringing a galaxy-level party straight on Sombra's head.Normally, Pinkie's smiles were filled with cheer and endless joy. But just this once... just this once, she allowed herself a grin as grim and dark as the world she was in.
"iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT'S PARTY TIIIIIIIIIIME!"
The creature that exploded out of the barracks was nephrotic, glimmering, cackling, and dusky dusky pink.
Across the battlefield it charged and danced, smacking soldiers away from each other, long curling arms taking darkened helms and throwing them into the massive maw. Mad laughter spun about, the confused armies finding themselves wearing colorful conical hats that oh so incidentally kept them shielded from any assault. Even Celestia paused as the monstrosity whisked past her, blinking in shock when five eyes seemed to wink eagerly.
Sombra quickly rose up on his crystal, but it was no use. The thing crawled up and curled around it like a tower, sharp teeth exposed. "OH HO HO HO! SOMBRA, DEAR KING SOMBRA. Are you afraid?" Its voice suddenly dropped to velvet. "You're the guest of honor here, Sombra. You shouldn't be afraid... no, I have something special planned for you. You... should be... COMPLETELY TERRIFIED!"
- Invoked in With This Ring when Paul confronts a troublemaker at a restaurant in Gotham, and when questioned, introduces himself as "the Cake Man". The youth is unimpressed, but his bodyguards, who have more experience and know what it means to have a silly name in Gotham, are immediately on alert.Paul (internally): Would he..? Yes, he'd be just old enough to have been professionally active when the old crime families started losing out to the 'freaks'. Someone introduces themselves by a silly name in Gotham, you assume that they should be taken completely seriously if you know what's good for you.
- In Harry and the Shipgirls, the destroyer Yuudachi normally is prone to acting like a goofball. But in battle, she shows just why she was dubbed The Nightmare of Solomon to her enemies.
- Touhou Galaxy: In Odyssey, Akame is a food-obsessed Cloud Cuckoolander that weirds out Lysithea with her antics. However, she contributes to the defeats of the Ruined Dragon and Esdeath and for the latter, Akame slashes Esdeath with her sword and inflicts the sword's curse on Esdeath.
- Felsi Rollo from The Morrigan, is mostly comic relief for the first two books, being playfully irreverent even in combat and going on lengthy rambles about the oppression of Earth to anyone who doesn't listen. Even the author describes her as a Genre Refugee from a more comedic story. Then a series of events in book 3 result in her and a civilian friend being trapped on a lunar base full of people who want them dead, and Felsi turns deadly serious. The first trio of assassins she encounters, she takes out in the space of three paragraphs, without even using weapons while they were all armed with guns. She then proceeds to take control over the situation, acting as one would expect by a military commander in a warzone (which she is), and getting the civilian to the nearest meeting, where they're confronted by the fic's Dragon Ascendant, whom Felsi fights to a standstill, all without cracking a single joke.
