Fighting Clown

Yes, you are indeed seeing an obese princess fighting the God of War himself. We don't see anything wrong with that.

"I was a rodeo clown for six years. You're gonna hafta step it up, shorty!"

— Jan, Mr. Deeds

They look wacky. They utilize slapstick in their attacks. They have a goofy voice. They run on Rule of Funny while their peers run on Rule of Cool. In spite of all this, they play just as well as the other fighters in the game. They aren't a Joke Character, they're a Fighting Clown, and they'll have you knock-knocked out cold before you can ask "who's there?"

Basically, Fighting Clowns are those Fighting Game characters who stand out because they're sillier than the rest of the cast, not because they're worse. Many fighting games have at least one Fighting Clown, and although the two can coexist, sometimes a Joke Character will occupy the "goofy character" niche instead. Make no mistake, however; a character can only be one or the other, as while Joke Characters may border on unplayable, Fighting Clowns are just as viable as anyone else.

Mind that a Fighting Clown does not necessarily need to be a literal clown; that said, this is not unheard of.

Many a Fighting Clown uses the art of Confusion Fu, and/or is an Improbable Weapon User.

Compare Lethal Joke Character, who seems mechanically weak but can deliver a thrashing. Similarly, compare Mechanically Unusual Fighter, whose gameplay mechanics tend to be their silly aspects as opposed to their appearances (although the two overlap nicely). Compare Campy Combat, whose fighting style is flamboyant but not necessarily comedic. See Beware the Silly Ones. Nothing to do with Monster Clown.

Not to be confused with Magical Clown, which is always about literal clowns.

---

Examples:

• Tekken has tons of these, and then some. Starting with the first game:
  • Yoshimitsu. Both of them. Eccentric Robin Hood-esque Ninja/samurai/something who is almost always clad in odd getups. A master of Confusion Fu who will destroy you if you don't take him seriously. Also, Kuma, Heihachi's pet, a fighting bear, and Wang Jinrei, with his Noblewoman's Laugh and Dirty Old Man tendencies.
  • The second game introduces the Roger family (and Alex), a genetically engineered Boxing Kangaroo, his wife, and her son and a boxing utaharaptor respectively.
  • Tekken 3 adds Ling Xiaoyu, a childish Genki Girl, a Cute Bruiser, and a Cloudcuckoolander, and her pet, a panda called Panda who is a Palette Swap of Kuma, with the only difference being the species (Kuma is a grizzly) and the fact that Panda is female. There is also Mokujin, a living wooden training dummy who awakens when it senses a great evil and communicates through wood noises, and Gon, a little orange dinosaur and the main character of a manga of the same name, who breaths fire and uses farts as a weapon. Dr. Bosconovitch, meanwhile, is more of a Lethal Joke Character.
  • Surprisingly, Tekken 4 doesn't have one, with the possible exception of Combot, a Ditto Fighter with a Punny Name who replaces Mokujin.
  • Then, in Tekken 6 there's Bob, a morbidly obese yet acrobatic American.
• Voldo and Dampierre in Soul Calibur.
  • Voldo is equal parts creepy and silly. After having spent so long in complete darkness, his eyes no longer function properly and his skin is pale-white. He also dresses in what can only be described as "some sort of bondage gear" and is the only character in which crab-walking (crawling face-up on one's hands and feet) is a large part of their fighting technique. Apparently he's gotten so good at it that he can easily and rapidly cover ground with it.
  • Practically all of Dampierre's moveset places him squarely in this trope. Some attacks cause him to land face first into his "Poker Bluff" stance and a particular kick can put him into the "Fake Pain" stance - both at random. To the uninitiated, this makes him seem like a throwaway character as it puts him in undesirable situations - until one finds out that's how he launches his most powerful attacks. If he wasn't silly enough, he has a throw were he spanks the opponent (regardless of gender), a Russian kick dance that causes him and the opponent to go up in the air, and moonwalks whenever you move back with him. And his One-Hit Kill involves him conning the opponent. In Soulcalibur V, his One-Hit Kill is replaced with a super move where he gives his opponent a kancho.
• Faust (formerly Dr. Baldhead) from Guilty Gear is an eccentric, 9-foot tall doctor that fights with a giant scalpel and gives surprise rectal exams. He is otherwise a very technical and effective Faux-Mighty Glacier. Also in the series are May, the resident Genki Girl who fights with an anchor and various cute sea life; and Zappa, a man possessed by ghosts that fights with bizarre movements a la The Exorcist. Despite all of these eccentricities, Guilty Gear is not known for having any joke characters.
  • Xrd would later introduce the wedding-obsessed Elphelt Valentine who, other than being The Gunslinger, also uses bouquets, strawberry grenades and other wedding-themed objects as weapons.
• A really bizarre case is BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle including Blitztank as a character. In a game where everyone is at least humanoid, we have a HUGE tank with a Skull for a Head and can do things like "punch" with its front tracks and jump. On one hand, it looks incredibly silly to see a tank as a fighting game character, but on the other... it's a tank. It appropriately trades mobility for huge damage and HP.
• Super Smash Bros. has several:
  • Luigi started out as a Moveset Clone of Mario, but through Divergent Character Evolution several of his attacks were redesigned or replaced to represent his status as The Klutz of the Mario series. For instance, both Mario and Luigi have a jumping punch attack, but Luigi now lands on his head afterward, and his dash attack involves him flailing about like a child.
  • Several others have just plain weird movesets. Mr. Game & Watch fights by pulling out random equipment from his own games, pulling out things like turtles, flags, buckets, keys and other mundane things. Wario is a Combat Pragmatist who fights using a random assortment of wacky attacks and odd abilities, such as biting his opponent, punching them in the groin and farting on them. Bowser Jr. fights in a literal clown car that's equipped with weapons like drills, wrecking balls, a cannon, a fork, and the clown face sticking its tongue out. And then there's Duck Hunt, a trio composed of the dog, a duck, and the unseen hunter from Duck Hunt who use exploding tin cans and clay pigeons, can summon 8-bit mobsters and gunmen from thin air to fire at their opponents, and whose Final Smash involves their opponents getting caught in the middle of an 8-bit shoot-out between cowboys and gangsters.
  • The Villagers, Isabelle, and the Wii Fit Trainers come from completely nonviolent games and manage to weaponize what they can do. The former uses a variety of tools and actions from their source game to do battle, such as planting/growing trees, digging holes, and picking weeds, and their ability to store virtually anything in their Hammerspace pockets allows them to Catch and Return items and energy projectiles. The latter's moveset consists entirely of exercise routines and yoga poses used to beat opponents into submission, one of which has inexplicably gained the ability to gather the energy of the sun into a deadly projectile.
  • For a DLC bonus character, they chose a Piranha Plant. Yes, they made a potted plant a playable character. It borrows several traits from other pre-existing Piranha Plant subspecies to fight, and can even summon Petey Piranha as its Final Smash. Just the fact that this creature exists as a fighter is enough to make it this trope.
  • Another unexpected character was Steve. Not only does he have one of the most unique design, being completely made of cubes, having a face that is completely static and very stiff movements, he also has a rather unique playstyle where you have to mine materials from the floor and walls and use them to upgrade your weapons, place blocks as temporary platforms and barriers or placing dynamite that can be remotely detonated if you build a redstone trail behind you.
• Fan game Super Smash Bros. Crusade has Weegee. His sole reason for being in the game is due to a gag during development. His entire moveset is one big memefest. The dev team claims that they were intending to remove Weegee from the roster, but he stuck, making him the only exception (besides Goku) to the "characters featured on Nintendo consoles only" rule when deciding the character roster.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: This was a constant of Amy in multiplayer games of the Classic Era:
  • In Sonic Drift, while she is the easy mode character, as her car is the slowest but controls the best, her special move is the silliest. Unlike Sonic's Dash, Metal's Super Dash or Eggman's Mines, Amy has the Heart Attack... a magic kiss which disrupts her opponents' controls and slow them down.
  • Sonic the Fighters is the first game where Amy uses her Piko Piko Hammer (then designed as its real life counterpart) as her weapon of choice. She can also make horse kicks and ass kicks, and she can distract her enemies simply by pointing the finger.
• In Baldur's Gate, Minsc. He's a badass ranger wielding a two-handed sword who believs that his hamster Boo is a miniaturized giant space hamster who talks to him and is obsessed with kicking in the butt anything evil in all its forms (justified in the lore as he suffered a head hit that left his brain a little damaged). His insane and memorable banters are like "taste hamster justice!", "butt-kicking for goodness!", "GO FOR THE EYES BOO RrraaaAAGHGHH!", "magic is impressive but now Minsc leads: SWORDS FOR EVERYONE!" and the most epic "Evil, meet my sword! SWORD! MEET! EVIL!" There isn't a dialogue with him in the entire franchise which has not some kind of humourous tones. And he kicks asses for true. He's so popular and memetic that, while initially intended as a funny yet competent character among dozen of others, he became an Ascended Meme, he was one of the few characters returning in the sequel, it was established as canon that he traveled with the main character in the first game, and even after 15 years he got his own (well, at least he's one of the main characters) comics series, Legends of Baldur's Gate. Obviously, there's Boo too.
• Street Fighter:
  • While most of the Street Fighter II characters have deeper motivation for fighting, Zangief is a bear wrestler in a speedo who dances with Gorbachev in his ending.
  • By the time of Street Fighter Alpha, Blanka solidly takes this role. Among other things, he has become The Unintelligible in the storyline, he befriended de facto Joke Character Dan Hibiki, and one of his super moves is shaking fruit from a tree.
  • In Street Fighter IV adds El Fuerte, a Chef of Iron/Masked Luchador, and Rufus, a loudmouthed, obese American with surprising acrobatic abilities who may be a Shout-Out to Beverly Hills Ninja.
  • Dan Hibiki started out as a Joke Character, with occasional hints of Lethal Joke Character showing up in some games, but since he was made more balanced in Street Fighter IV he's been leaning between either an effective Lethal Joke Character or this trope.
  • Street Fighter V makes Birdie into one, by giving him the ability to throw banana peels and soda cans to attack, which is a sharp departure from the series' usual mix of realistic, but slightly embellished martial arts with mild supernatural elements. His Critical Art has him capture the opponent with his chain and playing jump rope with it.
  • Unusually for a Shadaloo elite officer, F.A.N.G. has a goofy style of fighting that looks lanky and uncoordinated (accentuated by his over-sized sleeves and unusually narrow facial profile). His Critical Art even has him take to the skies and flap his arms like a bird to spread poison around himself.
• In Tatsunoko vs. Capcom there are four of these characters, one on the Tatsunoko side, and three on the Capcom side. The Tatsunoko side has Hakushon Daimaō, a fat, comical genie that comes from a comedy anime instead of an action/mecha one, looks much more cartoony than his other fellow Tatsunoko characters, fights with a hand on a stick, and one of his supers involves farting on the enemy. The Capcom side has Viewtiful Joe, Roll, a robot modeled after a little girl who fights with a broom, and Frank West, a photographer whose attacks involve baseball bats, supermarket carts and zombies, among many other things.
  • Marvel vs. Capcom 3 brings Deadpool into the mix. Most moves are only slightly unorthodox, but his level 3 Hyper Combo is probably one of the weirdest as he pummels the opponent with his lifebar. Ultimate brings back Frank West, and introduces Phoenix Wright, who doesn't do anything one would expect from a fighting game character. All of his attack animations are of lawyer-y stuff, like reading documents. Even his level 3 hyper is merely accusing the opponent of a crime. They still do damage, though, and in the case of the latter, it's the single most damaging move in the game.
• The Joker in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Literal example and a good match. He fights using all kind of weird gadgetry, like boxing-glove-in-a-box-es and BANG Flag Guns.
  • He keeps this up in Injustice: Gods Among Us. He has silly weapons and deadly weapons, and uses his deadly weapons in a silly manner. His super move even starts by throwing a pie at the opponent's face. Despite his Monster Clown tendencies, it seems to be a completely ordinary pie, with the super animation, if it lands, having him clean it off... with a crowbar. And when it's completely off and the opponent can see clearly, then he pulls out his gun, but waits a second before they realize what it is before firing. Then he finishes with a point-blank bazooka that he pulled out of nowhere to the face that ends up sending him flying as well. And if he wins, he douses his opponent with gasoline and watches them burn, but not before making a pun on the word fire. His partner-in-crime-and-maybe-love-interest Harley Quinn is arguably even sillier, with much more of an emphasis on silly weapons and pulls out a giant mallet with no problem for several moves. There's also much less Black Comedy to go with her, she's one of the few villains who doesn't kill the opponent and just opts for a kick in the face and telling them to "lighten up".
  • Joker returns once more as a guest character in Mortal Kombat 11, once again armed with an arsenal of bizarre weapons, from boxing gloves to booby-trapped bodies and a Batman puppet with a gun on its mouth. He caps it off by having some twisted, yet funny Fatalities and Brutalities to finish his opponents with.
  • Another literal example comes from the obscure Fu'un Series by SNK. This guy is also named Joker as he's pretty much an Expy of DC's Joker, also using weird gadgetry such as huge playing cards and a top hat that spins around like a buzzsaw. His fighting style is the most comical and wackiest of the entire series, yet he can fight on equal ground with the rest of the cast, all while riding on roller skates.
• From the Mortal Kombat series, there's Bo' Rai Cho (a pun on the Spanish word "borracho", which means "drunkard"), a pudgy Old Master who gets drunk in order to fight well and is Toilet Humour personified. He has an attack where he vomits on the enemy, and a fatality where he, yup, you guessed it, farts, only this time he lights his fart, which is so massive it engulfs the opponent in fire.
  • There's also Mokap, a guy in a motion capture suit who attacks by throwing little white balls at people.
  • Johnny Cage becomes this in MK11. While he retains most of his fighting style and shadow powers from the previous titles, his gameplay now includes him miming invisible walls as a counter, using his Oscar statue to bludgeon and stab his opponent and playing with an action figure of himself after winning a match. His fatalities are even more ridiculous, such as using the top half of his opponent's dismembered body as a dummy in a comedy routine, or flipping the bird to their severed head after several failed takes (complete with film crew) of him killing them with an uppercut.
• MultiVersus has the Ascended Meme of "Ultra Instinct Shaggy", with Shaggy Rogers having gained superpowers from radioactive rock candy.
• Pokkén Tournament is a Fighting Game using Pokémon, so this would be expected: The first one to fill this role is probably the biggest Unexpected Character: Chandelure, the Luring Pokémon. It's not that strange (by Pokémon standards mind you), but it's still a living chandelier in a Fighting Game that isn't even a "unorthodox" type of game like Super Smash Bros.. Said 'mon is also considered one of the best characters in the roster, and in the hands of a skilled player veers on Game-Breaker status.
• The Dancing Banana from M.U.G.E.N. It looks and sounds like a joke character, but actually plays like a normal one. He does use bananas as weapons while spouting "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" noises, though.
  • There's also Dee Bee Kaw, who looks funny and utilizes some really silly attacks, but he also plays like a normal character and a pretty powerful one at that.
• Maria was a Lethal Joke Character in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and she also fits this trope in Castlevania: Judgment.
• Akari in The Last Blade, a young girl onmyōji who fights with a gohei, often trips as a part of her attacks, summons various yokai as a part of her moveset and is the only character able to escape being bisected at the end of a match by revealing that the Akari they had been fighting was an enchanted paper charm, with the real Akari peeking from a portal to taunt her opponent.
• Goblins in World of Warcraft have always been a wisecracking race of mad bombers and mad scientists who are relatively weak in combat, full of AI characters who offer you fetch quests while being liberal with jokes. As playable characters, they can now be as capable and hardcore as any other race, and are now parts of Horde raid groups taking down every Big Bad that has ever threatened Azeroth.
• Heroes of the Storm:
  • Murky is a baby murloc. He has only a little more health than a lane creep, but his trait cuts his respawn down to just a few seconds and lets him respawn from an egg he can lay anywhere. He's a character based on dying a lot, and outside of that he attacks with things like slime and exploding fish. Nonetheless, he can put up a fight like the rest of the heroes if he's given the chance.
  • The Lost Vikings come from a puzzle game, and are a group of overt cartoons and Fourth Wall Observers. They have abilities like "Norse Force" and "Spin To Win".
  • Probius is based on the Protoss Worker Unit from StarCraft. His skillset isn't as out-there as the above, but just the fact that a Protoss Probe is fighting in a MOBA is ridiculous.
  • Hogger, being an Ascended Meme, was made about as absurd as possible. His skills include throwing a boot full of dynamite, eating Cartoon Meat out of a pile of garbage, flinging said pile of garbage across the battlefield with him attached, and turning into a Tasmanian Devil-esque tornado and bouncing around while making pinball noises.
• Shannon from Umineko: Golden Fantasia (Spin-off Fighting Game of Umineko: When They Cry) is half this and half Barrier Warrior, with her basic attacks involving attacking with cleaning implements, or doing things like dropping a tea-set on the enemy after tripping, and girly slaps and pushes, going so far as to even call seagulls to help her in combat. She's still as effective as any other character, and doesn't have any problem in going against the witches or their familiars.
• From the Touhou Project fighting games:
  • Suika Ibuki: A young-looking oni who is, at any given time, completely drunk. Her idle animation is swaying back and forth. Her crouch has her lying on the ground. Her dial-a-combo is a series of friendly pats. And so forth.
  • Suwako Moriya: What appears to be a little girl with a weird hat and a frog obsession (actually an ancient god). She crouches on the ground by default, grows a lillypad under herself, making herself taller, when she "crouches" and moves by hopping. Her dash has her move underground. She flies through the air by flapping her arms. Relatively normal attacks, though.
  • Mamizou Futatsuiwa: She's a tanuki boss, so most of her attacks involve hitting the enemy with her minions shapeshifted into various youkai or objects. Possibly an example in the shmup games as well; her patterns are bizarre.
  • Koishi Komeiji: Attacks include bizarre nonsense such as hatching an Idea Bulb and sneezing... and you cannot spam the sneeze attack, either; try, and Koishi will catch her nose, stifling the sneeze and intercepting her own attack. Her dash animation is also quite silly, as it has her prancing. Might also count in the shmup games, considering the Freudian imagery of one of her patterns.
  • Doremy Sweet, the Ruler of Dreams, who made her playable debut in Touhou Hyouibana ~ Antinomy of Common Flowers. Her primary weapon is shooting dream bubbles, which look like bright pink bubblegums. In addition, her other attacks include shooting mini-sheeps, blowing a trumpet, use exploding balloons, or drawing the enemy closer with a vacuum cleaner. Then there's her Nightmare of Chimera spellcard, where she turns into a giant mecha sheep and shoots dozens of sheep missiles. Oh, and she has a smug grin the entire time she's fighting.
• League of Legends has over a hundred champions, ranging from the serious Blood Knight or The Atoner, to silly and goofy champions. Generally, the silliness is usually portrayed in their dialogue, with very few examples of 'silly' attacks.
  • Shaco is basically a demonic Serial Killer Clown. His fighting style and dialogue are mostly serious, except for his Jack In The Box, which lays a stealthed trap that stuns and attacks the first enemy (or group of enemies) to come across it and is shaped like... well... a jack in the box.
  • Lulu was raised by The Fair Folk and seems to have a somewhat tenuous grasp on reality. Her dialogue is pretty far out there, randomly proclaiming things such as, "Yup! That tasted purple!"
  • Kog'Maw is a creature from The Void, which is exactly as pleasant a place as it sounds. Despite being an Eldritch Abomination, however, he was basically designed to look like a big (acid-spewing) puppy dog.
• Bonker, of Clayfighter, is both a literal clown, and is the wackiest character in the game. From Balloon Dogs to Teeter Tots, he'll make you laugh and cry.
• Peacock, from Skullgirls. She's a young, violent Living Weapon girl who looks like a Golden Age-era Toon character with a wicked sense of humor. Her movements are funny and exaggerated and she drops jokes and references left and right, but her attacks are nothing to be sniffed at. Peacock utilizes a moveset chock-full of deadly keepaway toys designed to make the opponent pull their hair out in frustration.
  • To a lesser extent, due to the nature of the game, many of the characters are fighting clowns. For example, we have a pieced-together catgirl that regularly sprouts cat puns, ^note Ms. Fortune a sadistic nurse-ninja that uses medical tools as weapons, ^note Valentine a circus acrobat with gigantic muscular arms in her hat, ^note Cerebella and a large man in a trenchcoat that beats his opponents with various band instruments (including a fully playable trumpet)^note Big Band.
• Setzer of Final Fantasy VI is a flamboyant gambler with a flair for theatrics, joins the party seemingly on a whim after they foil his scheme to abduct a romantic interest, and is a definite oddball among the playable cast. In a game of characters known for wielding swords, spears, daggers and several flavors of magic... he fights with cards, dice and darts and can get several powerful (if unreliable) special attacks by spinning slot machine reels. Still, he is definitely capable of holding his own, particularly late in the game - his Fixed Dice does flat damage (ignoring the negative effect of the Master's Scroll^note Offering in the original english translation) and ignore defense, while his Viper Darts^note Trump Card in the english translation and Death Tarot^note Doom Darts in the original english translation can both inflict instant death to many minor foes.
• Cait Sith from Final Fantasy VII is a robotic cat riding a robotic obese moogle. Though considered The Scrappy by many, his stats are nonetheless competent and he's the best permanent mage on the party shy of Cloud himself. He only has two Limit Breaks, but his initial Dice Limit is something of a Disc-One Nuke... sometimes.
• Quina Quen in Final Fantasy IX; looks like a Chef with his tongue sticking out and wields a giant dinner fork as a weapon. S/he also has one of the best attack stats in the game as well as Blue magic.
• The Mascot Dreesphere from Final Fantasy X-2 may look silly, but it will kick ass. It offers unique abilities to each girl: Yuna (Moogle) has recovery magic and party buffs, Rikku (Cait Sith) has offensive magic and debuffs, and Paine (Tonberry) has Knife attacks and status ailments. Rikku has a multi-target Eject which targets all enemies and removes them from the battlefield to end the fight (as long as they're not immune to Eject anyways). Plus they all come with abilities based off two of the other jobs, and they all have Ribbon as an auto-ability. Ribbon is normally one of the rarest accessories in Final Fantasy.
• The portly Duane in Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is the only character who has no achievement for beating the game, has no real story quests to speak of, has comical dream sequences and foppish costumery, and tends to fall over when Dashing. His ranged attacks, though, are some of the strongest.
• In My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic, Pinkie Pie's attacks seen include waving a giant foam finger, inflating her body, licking her opponent and raining cupcakes on her opponent for her super attack.
  • In the show's episode "A Canterlot Wedding Part 2", the main characters get into a large fight against hordes of Changelings, who are called by their queen, Chrysalis to feed off love. Pinkie Pie starts off by blasting them off with her Party Cannon, which is basically a cannon designed to fire out and set up a party on short notice. Assuming she hasn't changed the ammunition, she's basically blasting ponies with cakes and balloons. While work on the game began before the show, the episode made Pinkie Pie's Fighting Clown style canon.
• Paprika's moveset and animations in Them's Fightin' Herds are pretty bizarre, including her use of toon physics with her fleece, uses of apples and broccoli as projectiles, unintentional Confusion Fu, and attacking by being dangerously over-affectionate. Due to her being an Expy of Pinkie Pie above, this trope was to be expected for her, though.
• Kefka conforms to this role in the Dissidia Final Fantasy games. Most of his moveset Robotechs unpredictably upon attacking, his walk animation is exaggeratedly silly enough to gain access to the Ministry of Silly Walks, and, in the first game, he would sometimes hum the game's victory music to himself! Hell, his character title is "Mad Mage."
• Mad Clown in Super Punch-Out!! starts out being a clownish expy of Bear Hugger, but come his second knockdown and "Show Time," he quickly proves himself to be one of the most aggravating opponents in the game.
  • Punch Out Wii makes Bear Hugger into a big goofball who jokes around in the ring, mostly by making fun of hilarious Canadian stereotypes, but he still throws a mean hook.
• The Blacker Baron of Anarchy Reigns is funny and prone to being the Butt-Monkey, and likes to work in Michael Jackson dancing for some of his attacks. He also possesses one of the most damaging attacks in the entire game.
• The Sengoku Basara series features several competent warriors, each of which can decimate small armies without much effort, all while looking absurdly cool. And then, there's Yoshiaki Mogami, Hideaki Kobayakawa, and Sorin Otomo (as seen in gameplay videos of Sengoku Basara 3 UTAGE). In the case of Hideaki, he isn't even trying to attack his enemies! He's just really, really clumsy... and hungry.
• Playstation All Stars Battle Royale has some pretty goofy cast members along side all the badasses. Fat Princess (seen above smacking Kratos around) is an obese Dance Battler that runs people down in her search for cake, PaRappa deflects projectiles by swinging his skateboard at them and raps for his ultimate attack, Sackboy controls space by imagining a fan into existence, which he then uses to blow cake and jam at his enemies and Toro copies half the Fighting Game pantheon's moves while replacing their Ki Manipulation with mochi rice cakes.
• Teddie in Persona 4: Arena. All other characters are either humans or things that look like humans. He's a colorful walking cartoon teddy bear, who makes funny cartoonish expressions while doing comical looking attacks. He does have a human form, but only shows it in win animations.
• Coyori in Battle Fantasia: The game is set in a pretty standard medieval fantasy world and even characters that look a bit silly have a believable fighting style (Watson is a small rabbit, but also a powerful mage and Marco is a young kid who wields his dad's sword pretty well). Coyori, on the other hand is a Cat Girl who runs a Maid Cafe... and her weapon is her tea tray.
• Super Punch Patrol have a literal version, the "Jolly" enemies which are dressed as clowns, and actually one of the game's most intimidating Elite Mook enemies. Besides having a stronger life bar than most mooks, the "Jolly" enemies also have the ability to execute a hard-to-dodge Spin Attack on you frequently.
• Meepo in his DOTA 2 incarnation is a short guy with nets that beats you up with a shovel and the help of his clone, also wielding shovel. Rubick's possibly this given the oft-improbable animations for his stolen spells.
• J-Stars Victory VS has Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, with Gintoki Sakata and Taro Yamada having some properties of this as well.
• Disgaea and other Role Playing Games by Nippon Ichi usually have one or two each. Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, for instance, had Tink, a perverted French frog whose specials include a Sonic-style Rolling Attack (complete with sound effects!) and blowing himself up.
  • Beginning with Makai Kingdom, almost every NIS strategy game has Asagi, a refugee from a cancelled Nippon Ichi title known as Makai Wars. This fact is generally played for laughs as she attempts to defeat the main character of each game she visits and take over their role. Her appearance in Disgaea 2 had her reusing her Makai Kingdom sprites (making her much smaller than the rest of the cast, not to mention out of step with the game's art style) and Soul Nomad allowed you to recruit multiple copies of her by repeatedly winning her story event, allowing you to build an entire army of Asagis (not possible with any other unique character). Oh, and her idle animation in most of her later appearances? Enthusiastic air-guitaring.
• One recurring joke in Warcraft III is the inclusion of pandas in many parts of the game. One such joke is the Pandaren Brewmaster, a neutral hero who is a big, fluffy panda with beer-related abilities. Despite this he is considered a pretty good hero, his Drunken Haze / Breath of Fire combo can be devastating when used on a cluster of units, and as a result he is often picked up in competitive plays.
  • Immortalized as of Mists of Pandaria in World Of Warcraft, the Brewmaster is the tank spec of the Monk class, and fights with various beer-related attacks like chucking a keg at a group to both stun and taunt them.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has the party member Riki. He may be a member of a Ridiculously Cute Critter race with a cheerful attitude and attacks with silly names to go along with the theme, but he's just as capable of a fighter as his humanoid friends, being a Pint-Sized Powerhouse with the highest HP in the party, a steal ability, the best healing ability besides dedicated Combat Medic Sharla's, and several effective enemy debuffs at his disposal.
• Xenogears features Maria, a little girl with terrible stats who cannot fight to save her life, and has pathetic attacking animations to match. But when you also have a tremendously powerful 400-foot Gear available to help you anywhere, anytime, that's not much of a problem! While most of the Humongous Mecha in the game require a pilot in the cockpit and thus characters on foot must fight using marital arts or handheld weapons, Maria's Seibzehn simply responds to her commanders wherever she is and will punch human-sized enemies on command. even in locations where the robot shouldn't actually fit and having it break down the walls to enter would be detrimental.
• Hyrule Warriors:
  • Agitha and Tingle. The former is a self-proclaimed "insect princess" who collects bugs and lives in her little insect-loving fantasy world, while the latter is a 35-year-old manchild who thinks he's a fairy and whose attacks involve Amusing Injuries. Lana can also count with her Summoning Gate, as her attacks with that weapon are styled after Idol Singer dance moves. Hyrule Warriors is a game based on Dynasty Warriors, so they can easily mow through hordes of enemies and even defeat all kinds of powerful villains without too much problem.
  • The Cuccos exist in this game for the sole purpose of providing comic relief related to their "revenge squad" tendencies. True to the source game, they're some of the strongest enemies in the game. This time, however, they're beatable.
• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity has Master Kohga, whose moveset includes riding on Yiga clan members while guiding them with a banana on a stick, an energy beam that causes him to get stuck in the ground if not unleashed in time, and a finisher that's a literal circus jump.
• Mega Man Powered Up lets you unlock Robot Maid Roll as a playable character. She fights using a broom, which can be swapped out for even sillier melee weapons via Downloadable Content. Despite her silly weapons, the net results is that she plays very much like Zero does from Mega Man X4 onwards.
• Body Blows: This obscure fighting game series features one of these named Mike. This guy, in contrast to all the street brawlers, martial artists, robots, and aliens that make up the rosters of the games, is an unassuming business executive who can fight on equal footing all while giving out snarky quips during battle. He several wind based attacks and even has a move involving him spinning around like Looney Tunes' Taz the Tasmanian Devil.
• Skullomania from Street Fighter Ex and later Fighting EX Layer fits the bill quite well. His backstory reveals him to be a low-tier salaryman who decided to become a superhero out of the blue. However, despite his inauspicious origins and a silly moveset that has him dive head-first into his opponent and launch a projectile upward to fall on the enemy's head later (all complete with hammy voice clips), he is capable of holding his own against a cast of characters that project energy from their fists, defy the laws of physics and wrestle bears for fun. Oh, and he gets a silly take on Akuma's Raging Demon where he drinks tea with his opponent between pummeling them with flashy tokusatsu poses (with colorful cartoon flourishes added to each hit in some games).
• Kirby Battle Royale has Sleep Kirby, usually a useless ability, as a playable character. Here, he smacks his opponents with a pillow, blows snot bubbles, and puts nightcaps on his opponents to put them to sleep. All the while, he's half asleep, even for the victory dance.
• Zote the Mighty from Hollow Knight is a straight up Joke Character who wields a wooden nail that does no damage and can't even jump without pratfalling. His dream boss version, Grey Prince Zote, is just as silly, but since the Grey Prince is a figment of Bretta's imagination and Zote has convinced her that he really is a mighty knight, all of his flailing around becomes seriously dangerous, with every jump, slam and even pratfall producing damaging shockwaves, and even maneuvers like canceling attacks (i.e. beginning his ground rush attack, only to fall over - shockwave and all - right at the start instead of at the end) and falling through the ground and wrapping around to slam into you from the ceiling. And just to add to the fun, he'll also summon Zoteling minions and his nail can now hurt you normally. This unpredictability takes him from a Zero-Effort Boss to a real challenge.
• Fate/Grand Order: Many Servants fall under this category. They either have some comedic elements to their skills or combat abilities or are really, really quirky. The best examples, however, are the Summer and Santa Servants who are all parody versions of already existing characters. Elisabeth Báthory and her various Halloween versions are also quite good.
  • Santa Servants are posing as (mostly) female Santas in a comedic Christmas story. The Santa Servants are very solid, and since they are all 4* Servants, their stats are no joke, and furthermore, they are free.
  • The Summer Servants are generally swimsuit-themed females with summer/beach-related abilities. Many of them are actually as good or even better than their originals. Additionally, since all Summer Servants are gold Servants, those who were originally silver Servants will have much higher stats in their Summer form than in their original form. Only a few Summer Servants are inferior than their original forms, but are still decent, solid or good.
    • Artoria's Summer version is an outstanding example. Despite having a watergun as a weapon, Artoria Summer is not only her best offensive-oriented version in terms of gameplay, but also one of the best Archers and Arts-attackers in the game.
    • Nero's Summer version is also summoned in a class where Nero is canonically much more capable of than any of her Saber variants.
  • Mysterious Heroine X Alter is a soft-spoken Sith parody of Artoria in a Sailor Fuku, whose weapons, moves and skills are direct homages to various Sith characters and Comic Book/Thanos, and she still retains Artoria's enormous appetite, but for sweets instead and she's also a slacker. That said, thanks to her numerous upgrades on her skills and Noble Phantasm, she is one of the best Berserkers in the game, as she has very high damage output and has a high looping potential thanks to her high NP Gain and Quick-oriented deck. On top of that, her damage output increases when facing against Saber-class Servants and Good-aligned enemies, an alignment where most Saber-class Servants fall under.
  • Mesoamerican deity Jaguar Warrior has a very effective Buster Critical Hit build capable of outpowering 4* and 5* Servants for the cost of a 3*. Jaguar Warrior's current human avatar is Fujimura Taiga in a silly-looking cat costume◊ who can't stop spouting cat puns.
  • Jason, leader of the Argonauts, was originally introduced as an extremely unlikable villain whose main role in the story was to hide behind his crew until eventually getting backstabbed. When he was finally added to the game several years later as a playable character, he was turned into a lowest-rarity joke character whose "ultimate move" involves him summoning his crew to barrage the enemy, only for one to kick him into the frey as he runs around like an idiot trying not to be killed by his own ultimate move (and failing miserably). He was also one of the strongest characters in his class and element for a while.
  • Paul Bunyan is a Canon Immigrant from an official gag comic, Learning with Manga! FGO, a Gender Flip loli with a risque final ascension for no other reason than her creator being a pervert and a parody of the franchise's frequent Gender Flip heroes with Stripperiffic outfits. She's also the perfect Servant for manga Gudako's complaints about tedious material farming and unskippable Noble Phantasm animations: a Berserker with low cost to raise or run, great support skills, and an area-affecting, nearly instantaneous Phantasm attack.
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker: Nok-Nok is a Laughably Evil goblin best summed up as Baldrick’s more stupid, less hygienic cousin. However, he is well-optimized for his class and can work well in either an evasion tank or melee DPS role. His only real weakness is his pathetically low Will save.
• Alien Challenge: In obscure 1994 fighting game, one of the fighters is a literal clown named Drew. His fighting style consist of juggling and throwing pins and using Fartillery.
• Fighters Destiny has two literal examples: Pierre, a French clown who fights using a style based heavily around misdirection and can power up his attacks by spinning to inflate his nose (up to five times for a 50% boost), and an evil jester named Joker who cackles like a lunatic the entire match and dances on his hands when he scores a point (and is the best character in the game, far and away). Seeing them in an otherwise relatively realistic game is a bit odd, to say the least.
  • To say nothing of Ushi, a martial artist cow with some very goofy win animations. Returns for the sequel under the name "Mou".
  • The sequel features Cherry, a buff yet flamboyant drag queen who replaces Joker as the badass hidden character.
• Another literal example occurs in Fighter's History, simply named 'Clown'. He fights by throwing playing cards and doing what appears to be a Sonic Spin attack.
• Indie Pogo has two good examples: Zorbie and Diogenes. The former has really goofy and expressive attacking animations and some comical moves, like doing a Dash Attack with his farts or using his mustache to fly. Diogenes is also nearly as expressive as Zorbie, suprisingly enough, such as making the Rage Face as one of his specials, being able to hide in his pot to avoid damage, and has Rubber Man tendencies. Both have great damage output and are as viable as any other fighter.
• Clown Man from Mega Man 8 is a literal example, as he was built to work as a clown at an amusement park, then stolen and modified by Dr. Wily for combat purposes.
• Yakuza 0 has a fairly substantial minigame that involves managing a cabaret club, hiring various women you meet through sidequests as hostesses. One woman you hire is Etsuko, an elderly woman with a leopard-print sweater and dyed purple hair who repeatedly inconvenienced and then tried to hit on Majima. Based on all this, you'd think she'd make a terrible hostess (Majima himself outright calls her an "anti-boner"), but she's actually one of the best hostesses in the game, boasting impressive HP, talk (having the highest possible score even at level 1,) and party stats that make her almost vital when going against Club Mercury and Club Venus.
• A literal example shows up in Slaps and Beans, where an Acrofatic overweight mook dressed like a clown will appear and attack the players. Said clown puts up one hell of a fight before going down.
• While everyone in Slap City is pretty weird, Business Casual Man takes the crown thanks to his moveset including a comical biting animation, Swivel-Chair Antics and assorted office supplies, and using his own stretchy legs and tie/belt as a bow to launch himself in any direction.
• ARMS has a literal example in Lola Pop, who manages to look even wackier than the other spring-limbed ARMS fighters. From acrobatics to nunchaku to puffing up like a balloon, she fights as aptly as she can put on a show.
• Zero Divide: Every other character in the series have robotic appearances and some come armed with all sorts of weapons, and then there is Neco. In contrast to these fighters, Neco is basically a cartoony looking cat who has an Eyes Always Shut face and whose arcade endings always involves him doing comething juvenile (such as in the case of Zero Divide 2 where he doodles a mustache and exaggerated eye brows on Eve). Regardless of his silly appearance, he hits just as hard as any other character in the series.
• MADNESS: Project Nexus 2 features Tricky, a giggling sociopathic zombified murder-clown. His antics are as unpredictable as his mood, not helped by his ability to bend Nevada to his insane whims, including one memorable incident in the mainline animations where he tried to run over the protagonist with a spontaneously manifested train. He's not much better in Project Nexus where his combat style alternates between summoning zombie hordes to do his bidding, slapping you around with a stop sign, or turning random parts of the arena into various hazards.

• In SNK Gals Fighters (a.k.a. The Queen of Fighters) for the Neo Geo Pocket, you can unlock Kyo Kusanagi's non-martial artist girlfriend, Yuki. She looks like a defenseless schoolgirl, and she's often surprised whenever she wins, but her attacks can be deadly. She can fight by swinging her school bag around, advancing from one end of the screen to the other. She screams out a Big "NO!" to stop air attacks cold. And best (or worst, depending on your point of view) of all, she has a 12-hit slap move that is dangerous all by itself, but can be easily chained to her scrambling super attack for up to 33 hits, the highest in the game!

---