McNinja

J.M.R., Germany: Are there Ninjas in Germany?
The Ninja: That forest didn't get black by itself.

— Ask a Ninja: Episode 60, Omniworld

Ninjas are cool. It's a simple, straightforward fact that, unless you are a pirate, seems to be universally recognized. They're also very, very Japanese. However, just as McDonald's came out of the United States and conquered the world, so the ninja have set up local branches all over the globe.

The McNinja takes advantage of the comedy potential inherent in the non-Japanese ninja. Imposing the "ninja" template on a different culture can result in anything from ninja-waiters to ninja-doctors... especially if you invoke a national stereotype or two.

It's also a convenient visible shorthand. Ninjas have a reputation for being killing machines with nearly supernatural stealth. Showing someone like this conveys the idea without the need to explain it. Plus, people tend to think a ninja suit is quite suited to sneaking about, unless you stand in plain sight. In real life... not so much. The traditional black suit of ninjas is actually horribly conspicuous, even at night. You want mottled grays for night stealth, solid black just silhouettes you. The "traditional" ninja outfit isn't even the traditional garb of actual ninjas, who would actually have worn the everyday clothing of some low-ranking nobody who had business being where they needed to go. It's the traditional garb of Japanese stage hands and signaled to theatre audiences that they were supposed to ignore them. In some plays, one of the "stage hands" would suddenly jump out and shank someone — thus revealing themselves to be an actual ninja actually there to shank someone.

Sometimes it's implied or stated outright that ninja started in Japan, but have since secretly branched out; after all, what do a group based around infiltration and stealth care about national borders? This can be justified, however, if the ninja have moved to another country and then passed ninjitsu on to the locals; it's not as unfeasible as you might think. Something similar has happened before in real life: Japanese Judo was brought to Brazil in 1914, and developed into the style of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Can also be justified if the McNinja learned ninjitsu from actual ninja manuals which they have (somehow) obtained.

Characters who are non-Japanese but explicitly were trained in ninjitsu by real Japanese ninja usually don't count as McNinja.

Fantasy worlds that have McNinjas might also be a case of Culture Chop Suey. McNinjas may also find a near-future home in Americasia.

Named after Doctor McNinja, the Irish-American Ninja Doctor of webcomic fame.

A.K.A. Gaijinja, as a portmanteau of gaijin (meaning foreigner) and ''ninja'.

Compare and contrast Western Samurai in all aspects: also being a non-Japanese character as the McNinja; being a samurai, historical counterpart of ninjas; and being portrayed seriously instead of just for the Rule of Cool.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Mobile Fighter G Gundam had Schwarz Bruder, a German ninja. He even has a mask composed of the colours of the German flag. Well, okay, he was really a clone of a Japanese guy, Kyoji Kasshu, the main character's brother ("Schwarz Bruder" meaning "Black brother"... more or less). But he took the identity from the original Schwarz Bruder, who is a proper example.
  • Schwarz isn't even the first example, either; the prequel manga Gundam Fight 7th introduces us to Wolf Heinrich, suggesting that Germany has a long-standing tradition of ninja.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has a variation with Graham Aker in his "Mr. Bushido" persona- a blond, green-eyed samurai.
  • The infamous Moon Moon arc of Gundam ZZ included Aztec Space Ninjas!
  • And then there's half-Japanese/half-(African-)American Nils Nilsen from Gundam Build Fighters, who dons a black ninja garb, with katana and everything, whenever he's spying on someone/something.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers has the "America Ninja" sketch. Who looks a little bit like a cowboy.
• Tiger & Bunny has Ivan Karelin/Origami Cyclone, a Russian superhero ninja working in the U.S. (or the fictional equivalent of).
• Lupin III has had several adversaries employ ninja-esque Mooks, usually wearing full-body black catsuits, although some wore more "traditional" garb.
  • The Castle of Cagliostro had people with armor underneath their black catsuits that protected them form small arms fire. But not against an anti-tank rifle or Zantetsugan.
  • Lupin III: The Last Job inverted this trope. It declared that the ninja clan Fuma (who had existed as antagonists to Lupin since the manga), came from Italy.
• Tsubame Tsubakura from Battle B-Daman. He is called by his original name in the Japanese anime and manga, and is implied (judging from this image of his parents)◊, to be Indo-Japanese. For the English dub however, he was inexplicably changed to now being Scottish; with his name then becoming ''Terry McScotty'', with a Scottish voice actor to boot. And so, he was a Scottish Ninja. As a result though, it could be said that he is probably one of the best and most literal examples of this trope to have ever been created.
  • As a Ninja, he thus is able to perform both the Ninja Run and Ninja Log - as only a Scottish Ninja can.
  • As a Mcninja, he thus claims to be a Scottish "Highlander" - yet who somehow "came from Japan".
• Wolfsmund: Although there's no indication she was trained in actual ninjutsu, Johanna is basically what you get by transferring the idea of a female ninja or kunoichi to 14th century Europe. She disguises herself flawlessly as an old woman in her attempt to pass the St. Gotthard Pass checkpoint, uses her wiles to break out of her cell and infiltrate the castle, and dispatches multiple guards using her deadly martial arts skills. The inclusion of such a character in this setting is simply justified by Rule of Cool.
• Hitoribocchi no OO Seikatsu: Sotoka is a foreigner who has come to Japan because she's obsessed with Ninjas. She mistakes Bocchi's furtive people-avoidance for ninjutsu, and refuses to take no for an answer. Bocchi ends up 'training' her in entirely fake Ninja techniques, mostly involving origami shurikens.

Comics

• Ignoring the whole "stealth" idea, Deadpool is quite the ninja.
  • The funny part is that he's actually perfectly capable of ninja-grade stealth. It's just that, depending on the writer, he finds it more fun to do it the other way instead.
• In Empowered, the ninja clan Ninjette escaped from is actually from New Jersey. "Hey, New Jersey's not all concrete and commuters, y'know... It has hidden forests and everything!"
  • It really does, with its very own semi-mythical monster and various mysterious goings-on...
• Batman has the tools, the clothes, the attitude, the moves, even the backstory of training in Japan for it!
  • The ironic part about this is that Bob Kane, Batman's creator, claimed that he had never heard of ninja!
  • Virtually all the Robins count as well due to their training under Batman. Jason Todd and Damian Wayne take it even further by having actually been assassins at one point in their lives.
• For that matter, there are other characters that qualify in comics, far too many to list, but some include Deathstroke, Ravager, Elektra, Psylocke, etc.
  • Daredevil himself learned his moves from a ninja master, and was the leader of the diabolical Hand ninja clan for a short period (he was Brainwashed and Crazy at the time).
    • His villainous Earth-65 counterpart goes a step farther as he was actually raised by the Hand after they killed his previous mentor, Stick.
  • Deathstroke, while looking very ninja-like, really isn't a ninja at all, getting all his training from the US Army, combat in Vietnam, and his powers from a serum designed to enhance his abilities.
• G.I. Joe features actual Japanese and non-Japanese ninja fighting side by side on both sides. Larry Hama has stated that he specifically sought to avoid All Asians Know Martial Arts in his writing and establish that personal investment is what matters most. One's ancestry does not automatically make anyone better or worse suited for learning martial arts.
  • Snake-Eyes, the Joe's most famous ninja, actually has a great deal of detail put into how a blonde-haired Caucasian could get ninja training, and he's actually a fairly practical sort for a Mcninja (moreso then most ninjas in Japanese media these days), wearing black commando gear, using whatever weapons are effective (including guns and explosives), and remaining perfectly silent at all times.
  • A few bonus points go to Bushido, real name Lloyd Goldfine from Hollis, Queens. Also known as "the Snow Ninja" because he learned his moves in Iceland. Oh, and, according to his filecard, his grandfather was a samurai, and that's his helmet he wears as part of his outfit. In any case, one of the few Jewish New Yorker ninjas you'll ever run across.
  • Budo is a samurai from Sacramento named Kyle. He's an infantryman and hand-to-hand combat instructor in GI Joe, and he serves wearing full samurai armor wielding a katana and wakizashi. He does have legit samurai ancestry (those swords were his great-great-grandfather's!), but it might be on his mother's side; his surname isnt Japanese at all.
    • Budo's filecard does have some fun with the concept (after all, Hasbro makes the toys, and Larry Hama has to make sense of them in the filecards), portraying him as a Harley-riding metalhead when he's off-duty.
• Four words: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Four turtles born and raised in New York city, trained in ninjitsu by their master and adoptive father Splinter, who learned the craft from his Japanese owner Hamato Yoshi.
  • In the IDW continuity, Alopex also counts. An arctic fox born in Alaska, she was uplifted and trained in ninjitsu by her own master (but not a father figure), the Japanese Oroku Saki (Shredder).
• Diabolik, the eponymous Villain Protagonist of a long-running Italian comic, wears a skin-tight black suit that leaves only his eyes exposed.
  • In a recent story we learn that Diabolik was taught martial arts and stealth in a ninja-like school in a fictional East-Asian country, and had to wear an Hollywood ninja suit during the lessons to keep his face a secret from the external students (the ones who were there to learn martial arts and not how to be better criminals). After being accidentally unmasked during a lesson, he crafted his trademark black suit because it makes him more difficult to unmask and makes grappling his clothes more difficult, as he explains when the teacher chastise him.
• Definitely a few from Ninja High School. In fact the mother of the main character isn't even Japanese, she's technically German.
  • Wait, wasn't she Russian?
• In the first issue of the Immortal Iron Fist spinoff miniseries Immortal Weapons, a tale is spun of Fat Cobra's life, including the time he and a bunch of kung-fu commandos faced off against Hitler's private SS Ninja squadron, led by the nefarious Herr Samurai.
• Oedipus from The Tick.
• After her Race Lift (in which she bodyswitched accidentally with a fellow telepath), The once-English now-Japanese X-Man Psylocke does her best to be a psychic ninja. Unfortunately, it rarely works out that way, for one reason or another.
  • Until she joined Wolverine and Angel's unofficial X-Force, where she shows just how deadly a psychic ninja can be.
  • In 2018, she ended up back in her original Caucasian body, and while she's retained her combat skills, she's shifted her psychic weapons to suit - more triangular shield and longsword than katana.
• Roxanne Richter, one of Ramona's evil exes (yeah, really) in Scott Pilgrim, alhough she keeps reminding people that she's only "half-ninja". Ramona herself gets captioned as an "American Ninja", and Roxie boasts that she was the one that taught her. Knives may qualify too, being a Chinese girl who is also a ninja.
• While Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja plays its ninjas realistically, notice must be given to Dr. Irving Yagyu, the ninja dentist, and John Doe, his blond-haired all-American ninja protege.
• In the Marvel universe, the ninjaesque superhero identity Ronin has been used by a bunch of characters, none of whom are Japanese.
• Kitty Pryde: Aside from being possessed by Ogun which turned her into one, Wolverine also taught her to become skilful enough in the Japanese martial arts, including samurai and ninjutsu, to contend against Ogun.
• Teen Titans Go!: At least one movie of the Super Ninja Fury movie series Cyborg and Beast Boy watch features Canadian ninjas.
• A gang of Canadian ninjas are recurring minor antagonists in the new Ms Marvel.
• The Punisher:
  • In one arc, Frank chases a lead by infiltrating a "ninja training camp" in (an admittedly well-hidden location in) Kansas. He gets sidetracked by an 'authentic' ninja forcing him to help her take down the camp for fraudulent claims of being affiliated with her father.
  • In Punisher (2022), the Punisher himself has become a ninja as he becomes one of the highest ranking leaders within the Hand.
• The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones: The recurring villain Ben Ali Ayoob employs a group known as the Ismaili assassins as his personal enforcers and acquisition team. They wear veils and carry scimitars and Indy describes them as "the Middle Eastern equivalent of ninjas".
• The Warlord: The villainess Y'Smalla is a member the Vashek assassins: the most feared killers on Skataris, and essentially a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to the ninja.

Fan Works

• New Beginnings: Page ascribes this trope to the Canterlot Castle maids. He always finds a hot pot of tea and a fresh sandwich waiting for him when he gets out of bed each day.
• A Possible Encounter for a Phantom: When Kim tells Danny that Monkey Fist's monkey ninjas are trained in Kung-Fu, Danny points out ninjas are Japanese and Kung-Fu is a Chinese martial art.
• In the Discworld fic The Black Sheep, we have the crack team of ninja lawyers, who serve writs of compulsory name change on Howondaland Smith (formerly Howndaland Smith-Rhodes, till the lawyers found him) while he is fighting a battle against wild gnolls in a remote region.

Films — Animation

• Flushed Away has French ninja, too. They are also frogs.
  • Which could be an unintentional reference to the importance of toads in Japanese folklore. Look at Naruto's Jiraiya, for example (or the novel character he was named after and based on).
  • It could also be a Stealth Pun referring to frogmen.
  • And (more likely considering the source material) a reference to "frog" being a racial slur for French people.
• Ninja security guards appeared in Rugrats in Paris, but it's justified, as the amusement park is run by Japanese.
• In Despicable Me 2, Edith is going through her "ninja phase" and spends most of the movie in costume. And armed.

Films — Live Action

• The ninjas in any given movie Godfrey Ho did for IFD or Filmark. The lead ninjas are white and they tend to wear brightly colored clothes.
• An entire series of movies: American Ninja. It even got parodied in Irish American Ninja
• The movie Tongan Ninja.
• The Hellboy movie's version of Kroenen is a Nazi German clockwork Cyber Ninja with a gas mask.
• The 2004 movie Ella Enchanted had this in the Red Guard, a group of Elite Mooks who appear to be Ninja in plate armor helmets and pressed military uniforms... In what is the generic Medieval setting of Middle Ages Europe. This includes the typical bright red outfits and "flipping out and killing people". Naturally, none of this was in the original novel.
• Surf Ninjas.
• Beverly Hills Ninja
  Haru: It is a black art, and I, Haru, am the blackest of the black. Or rather the great white black art... blackest... master.'
• Brigada Explosiva Contra Los Ninjas. The entire cast was Argentinian, even the ninjas.
  • Same goes for the Argentinian-playing-an-Asian having ninjas as her Mooks in Bañeros 3: Todpoderosos.
• Using the Double Dragon (1994) medallion turns American villain Koga Shuko into a ninja in the movie of the same name.
• G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra not only keeps Snake-Eyes as a Caucasian who trains under a Japanese master, but also has Storm Shadow played by Korean actor Lee Byung-hun.
• The League of Shadows in The Dark Knight Trilogy appear to be an Equal-Opportunity Evil collection of these (an appropriate place for an American ninja to learn his trade), but with strong hints that the organisation is descended from the "original" ninja. In Batman Begins, the leader is apparently Japanese, though with an Arabic name, while his Dragon has an Irish accent (and turns out to be the real Ra's al-Ghul), and the various other members we see are very ethnically diverse. Their headquarters appears to be in the Himalayas.
• Phantom Raiders features a McNinja training Vietnam Vets to be McNinjas for mission that features ninja stars, grenades, and gunfire.
• There's the film, The Black Ninja, which is about Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Kip Killigan, one of the Commandos from Small Soldiers, sports some oversized shuriken on his uniform.
• The title of Ninja Cheerleaders pretty much says it all.
• 300 portrays the elite, near-legendary, Persian warriors known as 'The Immortals' as Persian ninja with black face masks and vaguely Japanese swords. This movie is also set several centuries before ninja came into existence in Japan.
• Hop has the Pink Berets, who are very ninjaesque, though the berets mean they actually look more like generic Special Forces troops. They're also rabbits.
• Bangkok Knockout has Thai ninja.
• The Pacifier: Shane Wolfe is attacked by a pair of ninjas who are revealed to have come from North Korea.

Literature

• In Discworld,
  • The black-clad Assassins give every appearance of being very English Ankh-Morporkian ninja.
    • Except inasmuch as Assassins are explicitly no good at unarmed combat - because no Assassin is ever unarmed.
  • There were the Ninja agents being used (as a throwaway gag) by the Men In Saffron (History Monks) in Thief of Time. While the MIS did, admittedly, train their members in various martial arts, Lu Tze's opinion of the ninja isn't all that high. "Agatean for 'The Passing Wind'."
    • Interesting side note; the best of them in both cases (Vetinari and Lu Tse) are those who ditch most/all the (stereo)typical ninja stuff.
  • Ninja make a token appearance in Interesting Times, even though the Agatean Empire is more Chinese than Japanese.
  • Magrat went through a phase where she was interested in martial arts, even though the other witches thought it was a stupid idea because she's well, a witch, and doesn't need to be a Kung-Fu Wizard. (Incidentally, Lancre is roughly Discworld's Scotireland, so she's more literally a Mcninja than some.)
• The 1989 Space Opera novel Not for Glory by Joel Rosenberg had a whole planet of mainly Jewish-Israeli descended mercenaries who also practiced ninjutsu, though they did have a small amount of Japanese ancestry mixed in. The main character was even named after a distant Japanese ancestor.
• While the term is never explicitly tossed around, with their penchant for throat-slitting scout and stealth work, Gaunt's Ghosts are fairly ninja-ish. Their best member out-stealthed a Mandrake, who should have had the Puny Human beat easily.
• In Codex Alera, the Canim have a specialist caste of spies/assassins known as "hunters" whose purpose is to allow the Canim lords to bypass attempts by other Canim to abuse the law - in other words, they're there to allow their Canim lords to avoid being Lawful Stupid. In effect, this makes them Wolfman ninjas.
• The Apprentice Rogue: The Black Knights are stealthy, have an evasive fighting style, go on covert missions, and wear black; they're like ninjas from the British Isles.
• In Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth, the Qwarm are basically ninja.
• Timothy Zahn's Blackcollar novels have the titular special forces that who wear black clothes that cover their faces, and their primary weapons are their own bodies and shurikens. Actually, their greatest strength comes from their superhuman reaction time granted by the Backlash drug.

Live Action TV

• The Mythbusters Ninja episode featured noticeably more ninja-costumed footage of Tory (Belleci) than of Grant (Imahara).
  • On the other hand, all things considered, it makes PERFECT sense for Tory to be the one in the ninja costume. Playing ninja offers so many exciting new ways for Tory to injure himself.
    • And then there is this...?
  • In a more recent ninja special, the professional martial artist they hired to do demonstrate arrow catching was Australian. This was lampshaded.
• Not quite ninja, but related: Monty Python's Flying Circus features a sketch about Her Majesty's own McKamikaze Highlanders.
• An episode of Series Two of Doctor Who. "Tooth and Claw" inexplicably had a squad of martial artist monks clearly inspired by the Shaolin (orange gis and all) working for the villain. The episode takes place in 19th-century Scotland, with the monks being native Scots. Thay may not be McNinjas, but it's in the same vain.
• The Robin Hood episode "Peace? Off!" featured Saracen ninja in 12th Century England. That's before there were ninja in Japan. But the Hashishim assassins were very much active. The word "assassin" comes from the name of their sect. They could conceivably have come on the boats returning from the crusades, like Robin Hood himself (and his Saracen bow.)
  • Viewers will no doubt be aware that the BBC adaptation of Robin Hood is not known for its historical accuracy.
• Super Sentai
  • The series Ninja Sentai Kakuranger featured Jiraiya (a.k.a. Ninja Black, therefore not that one), a But Not Too Foreign ninja who dressed as a stereotypical cowboy-hatted American and spoke in English most of the time (though his Japanese improved as the series went on.) The character's "foreignness" was often played up for laughs. For bonus points, he was played by Kane Kosugi, who is half-American himself.
  • Kakuranger had a ninja who dressed like a cowboy in his first episode, but Shuriken Sentai Ninninger had Kinji, a Sixth Ranger whose actual hero form was a But Not Too Foreign cross between a ninja and a Texas sheriff, who sprinkled lots of Gratuitous English into his sentence and morphed with a cheeseburger.
  • The villains of Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger are alien ninjas.
• Power Rangers
  • For that matter Power Rangers Ninja Storm, with only one of the Ninja Storm Rangers, Cam Watanabe, actually being Asian (and he was designated as a Samurai Ranger, to boot - noting that, in the source series, his counterpart was as ninja as the others, what with his Gratuitous English and all).
  • Additionally, Humongous Mecha aren't exactly the stealthiest of machines.
  • Also, one of the villains in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, Miratrix, is played by New Zealander actress Ria Vandervis. She and her boss Kamdor are also good at smoke exits and activate spells by throwing sutras. (Or, well, just making ninja hand-gestures and sutras come from... somewhere... it looks cool, okay?)
    • Well, she subbed in for Kaze no Shizuka, who was a bona-fide ninja.
  • In season 3 of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers there's Ninjor, a bright blue alien Ninja with a body made of armored plates and a voice that could shatter glass; and then the Aquitian Rangers, who, due to footage from the aforementioned Kakuranger, have ninja-like suits and the powers used by the original team's Ninja Ranger forms. Of course, Ninjor's connected to them, too, so it makes in-universe sense, but they're still Aquatic Alien Power Ranger ninjas.
• In the fighting game Martial Champion, has a kunoichi name Racheal who is American.
• Mortal Kombat Conquest features Chinese ninjas. This gets even more weird when all but a few of them are white.
• Alarm für Cobra 11 has occasional episodes with villains in black ninja suits ("Die schwarze Madonna," "Unter Feuer"). The Polizei SEK teams gear up in ninja-like black as well.
• Again not exactly ninjas, but John Belushi's samurai businesses (e.f. Samurai Optometrist) on the early years of Saturday Night Live.
• Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya, the 1988 Metal Heroes series, featured numerous foreign ninjas in addition to Japanese ones, see the map◊(hence the title of the series, "Jiraiya: War of the World Ninjas").
• The Spaniard TV series Aguila Roja features the titular hero, who is a Spaniard medieval ninja, who is also a school teacher. Oddly enough, he's never addressed as such in-universe, due of the time period, as it takes place in Medieval Spain.

Pro Wrestling

• 1970s EMLL luchador Bruno Victoria was sometimes known as "ninja". The promotion later saw "El Ninja" in 1991 and later still, his sons, El Hijo del Ninja and El Ninja Jr. 1991 was also when IWRG was graced by El Ídolo Oriental Takeda, another Mexican ninja.
• Brian Adams wrestled as "American Ninja" while in Oregon's Pacific Northwest Championship Wrestling in 1987. Cocoa Samoa also disguised himself as "Black Ninja" around the same time in the same place.
• Robby Royce wrestled as a "Ninja" in 1993 and 1995 for River City Wrestling in Canada. Portia Perez and Nicole Matthews, the "Canadian Ninjas", in SHIMMER.
• AAA would have Ninja Del Fuego in 1995, a ninja from the Dominican Republic. The gimmick would later go to a Mexican wrestler who showed up on a CMLL show in 2005.
• WrestleCrap lists Kwang, a Puerto Rican^note better known as Savio Vega ninja, among its inductees.
• The Hardcore Ninja tag team, also known as the Evil Ninjas, pests of the International Wrestling Syndicate based in Quebec, also spotted in CZW.
• Yorshire England native Cameron Kraze is known as "The Ninja Pirate Of Awesomeness" in 3CW.
• In 2013, Elite Canadian Championship Wrestling saw Red Denero become the Ginga Ninja, a multiple reference pun to a Japanese rail service and his hair.

Music

• "I am Ninja", by German band the Neu. "I am ninja, you are ninja, we are ninja too..."
  • Features at the start of every Ask a Ninja episode.
• South African rap/comedy trio Die Antwoord are lead by MC Ninja... who sings about little else. In a thick Afrikaans accent. It's better than it sounds.
• Kamikaze Highlander by Andrew of Songs To Wear Pants To is not exactly about Ninja, but champions this trope in spirit.
• "Ninja" by Europe is pretty much In Name Only, seeing as the song has a kind of "love during wartime" theme.
• Jennifer Murphy's "I Want To Be Neenja" is about Murphy in her Kayfabe Music superheroine persona, training to be a ninja.

Tabletop Games

• The Assassin class in Dragon Warriors are explicitly not ninjas (called the sulsa in Dragon Warriors), the game mentions they're too far east to have come to the kingdoms which Dragon Warriors take place. Instead the Assassins are from the fantasy equivalents of India and the Middle-East as well as local rubes who get an experience penalty. In Blood Sword's first book, you'll be fighting some very dark-skinned assassins who look very ninja-like and they even throw shurikens.
• The Ninja class in a Dungeons & Dragons expansion can be taken by anybody capable of PC class levels, and the book itself states that ninja could be anyone. Given the nature of D&D settings, this means you may well encounter ninja wizards, ninja orcs, ninja Cat Folk (the racial abilities really fit the class by the way), ninja barbarians (figure that one out), ninja Giants, ninja pirate zombies...
  • In The Complete Ninja's Handbook for AD&D's second edition, the ninja is an entirely separate class which was essentially a thief with reduced thief abilities, a new martial arts system, a clan, and a few new items. One kit was also capable of very limited magic, while another had a very gimped form of the fighter class's weapon specialization. Of course, for reasons unknown to posterity, elves could not be ninja, but dwarves could.
  • The Monk class likely also fits, at least in spirit. A class clearly inspired by the legends and films of the East with everything from Supernatural Martial Arts to Ki Manipulation... being drop into a game that is predominantly built up of various permutations of Medieval European Fantasy. At least the Forgotten Realms have Kara-Tor to justify it.
• Warhammer Fantasy has Dark Elf ninjas, ratman ninjas, and Ogre Ninjas. as well as more traditional Nipponese human ninjas (although they're Canon Discontinuity: one of the many troop types in the first Warhammer Armies book that were subsequently dropped out of production because they didn't sell well enough.
• Ninja Burger is a card game based on a joke website about fast food delivery ninjas. (Guaranteed delivery in 30 minutes or less, or we commit Seppuku!) I'd say more, but the awesomeness that is Ninja Burger must be experienced for oneself.
  • Not just a card game. There's a tabletop RPG done by 9th Level Games, too. There's even a McNinja clan among the possible clans your ninja can hail from!
  • Naturally, Ninja Burger's arch-rivals are Pirate Pizza.
• The Talislanta game features Mandalan Mystic Warriors and Mondre Khan Raiders in the Kang Empire, which is more Chinese than Japanese in flavor. The Rajan Assassin-Mage is apparently supposed to evoke the historical hashishin, yet carries a strong whiff of Mcninja as well.
• SPANC Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls, a boardgame illustrated by Phil Foglio where Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls fight for loot and cute poolboys.
• Champions had Seeker, the 'Australian Ninja'.

Video Games

• The Hokkaido mission in Hitman (2016) has the option of starting in a stereotypical ninja outfit, complete with a katana and shuriken. There are several challenges related to this. Amusingly, Agent 47's usual MO of getting in, killing only the specific targets he was hired for, and getting out before anyone even realizes someone has died, is far more similar to real life ninjas than most pop culture depictions.
• Pedro Cortes of Kessen III is a Spanish ninja-class officer.
• Two of the three titular heroes of Ninja Commando, Joe Tiger the American Kōga-ryū ninja and Rayar Dragon, a British Iga-ryū ninjutsu warrior.
• In Shadow Hearts: From The New World, one of your party members is a Brazilian ninja, who hails from a hidden ninja village deep in the Amazon rain forest. Brazilian-style ninjutsu apparently centers on turning any vaguely elongated object into a sword by sticking a hilt on it. This party member is also a Highly-Visible Ninja, considering his bright red-blue costume (with a glowing deely-bopper antennae on the headpiece), and his habit of trying to hide... by holding up an American flag in front of himself. Did we mention he also works for the CIA?
  • Frank actually seems to be of Slavic descent, disappointing his father by leaving to study ninjutsu in the jungles of South America instead of taking over the family fireworks business. He later decides to bridge the eternal gap between fireworks and ninjas by sticking a hilt on a firework and using it as a sword. Even if he were less conspicuous, he's not a very good ninja, as he's constantly berated by his master — a giant talking cat who serves as second-in-command to Al Capone.
  • Ninjutsu seems to be a sport of world-wide popularity in that world, as he gains at least one skill by winning a Mini-Game against a ninja from a rival German ninjutsu school.
• Squirrel Fish from Shiwuyu/Tale of Food is a ninja in all but name despite being a Chinese dish through and through. Though, as his characterization is mostly based on the Chinese assassin Zhuan Zhu, the resemblance to the ninja archetype may be unintentional.
• Vega, from the Street Fighter series, refers to his fighting style as "Spanish Ninjitsu". He's a cage fighter, so he can afford to be highly visible, and it's more referencing the fact he studied Ninjitsu and mixed it with techniques he developed as a matador. In Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game, it's claimed that "Spanish Ninjitsu" is actually a combination of Ninjitsu and Savate (a European kickboxing style) with added emphasis on acrobatics.
  • The Street Fighter RPG also claims that the last "world champion" of Sumo Wrestling that E. Honda beat was American.
  • Sodom from Street Fighter Alpha and Final Fight may be trying to be a ninja, or a samurai, or something else entirely. It's hard to tell because for all his enthusiasm he's so very bad at trying to be Japanese.
  • Guy (one of the three heroes of Final Fight and a member of the SF roster in more recent games) plays this trope half-straight; he's a Japanese-born naturalized American, although you probably wouldn't have been able to tell this had it not been for supplementary materials. Just to clarify, Guy's nationality was originally stated to be Japanese in Final Fight and his "real name" was even written in kanji in manuals and such. From the Alpha series and onward, his nationality was changed to American, but it was unknown if this was a retcon or if he became a naturalized American after Final Fight; as of Super Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter X Tekken it's almost officially certain as being a retcon, since his website lists his place of birth as the USA.
  • Street Fighter 6 adds Kimberly, an African-American McNinja who utilizes spray cans in place of smoke bombs. She's an apprentice of the aforementioned Guy.
• Mortal Kombat is full of "ninja" characters, and not all of them are Japanese (in fact, the only major one who actually is Japanese is series poster boy, Scorpion). Most of them are related to the Lin Kuei, a ninja-like organization rooted in China that claims to be either a contemporary or even a precursor to Japanese ninja, though Sub-Zero is particularly insistent that the two are not interchangeable^note In the real world, it's believed that the Lin Kuei were actually a real thing in ancient China; they obviously weren't magically-powered assassins, but records suggest they were a monastic cult of survivalists with superficial similarities to ninjas, and there are even (mostly-debunked) theories that they inspired ninja.
  • Both known incarnations of Sub-Zero, Sektor, and other characters of Grandmaster heritage are explicitly all Chinese. Frost, Sub-Zero II's former apprentice, is of undetermined ethnicity, but mostly appears to be Caucasian.
  • Other members of the Lin Kuei included Cyrax (from Botswana), and Smoke (from the Czech Republic).
  • Reptile and Ermac are also considered two of the series "ninjas", but the former is from a different realm called Zaterra and the latter is an amalgam of souls. There is also Tremor whose nationality is never stated, but he works for the international crime syndicate Black Dragon.
• The Metal Gear series had quite a few: first there was the Black Ninja from Metal Gear 2, who was actually Kyle Schneider, the South African resistance leader who helped Snake in Metal Gear. Then there was the Cyborg Ninja in Metal Gear Solid, who was actually Gray Fox, Snake's combat buddy from the first two MSX games. And finally, there's Raiden, a former Liberian Child Soldier turned American commando, in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, who helped Snake during the events of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, but became a Cyborg Ninja afterward (noticed a pattern?). There's also Olga Gurlukovich in MGS2, who was not actually a cyborg minja, but was disguised as one when she helped out Raiden as a double agent. The Tengu Commandos in MGS2 are Elite Mooks who wear ninja-like high-tech equipment, but are all Russians.
  • In addition to Raiden making a return in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, we also have "Jetstream" Samuel Rodrigues, a Brazilian samurai.
• Samurai Shodown has Galford and Earthquake, from California and Texas, respectively (despite both states being Spanish and Mexican territories at the time).
• Chipp Zanuff of Guilty Gear is an American ninja. He isn't too happy about that, either, and often bugs the Japanese native Anji to teach him Japanese so that he can at least act the part. He learned the art from a Japanese assassin (a feat in itself considering they're short in supply in-series).
  • From the game's Spiritual Successor, BlazBlue, Bang. Japan, along with most of the world, was wiped out two hundred years previous by the Black Beast, but he's a self-proclaimed ninja from Ikaruga, an in-universe Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Japan. The thing is, he doesn't look Japanese, and from his physical appearance, you probably wouldn't tell he was a ninja either. He looks more like an unkempt homeless dude who inexplicably carries a giant nail around. And judging by the location of his hometown, he's Eastern European.
  • A non-ninja example, but Jin and Hakumen both have samurai motifs, in both personality and playstyle. Both of them use Japanese swords(Jin's is a katana and Hakumen's is a Nodachi), and even most of their attacks are Japanese themed as well, both having a Distortion Drive very reminiscent of a Single-Stroke Battle. Unsurprisingly, its later revealed they're the same person, well Alternate Self to be more precise. How does it come to this trope? Well Word of God say they're British.
• Roger Sasuke from the bullet-hell shooter Castle of Shikigami III is another American ninja.
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein was originally supposed to have Nazi Ninjas, but they didn't make it into the final product due to time constraints.
  • The sequel delivered, though, converting the female Elite Guards into agile, ninja-like martial artists. There's even a piece of concept art that shows they were supposed to carry swastika-shaped shurikens, but unfortunately, they ultimately went unused.
• F.E.A.R. has clone ninjas in the form of the Replica Assassins. Although their nationality is unknown (they're Faceless Mooks), they are produced by an American corporation.
• Mass Effect 3 has these of the cyborg variety: Cerberus Phantoms. They have biotic barriers, flip around constantly, have guns built into their gauntlets, have an instant kill melee sword combo, can Overload your shields, and can cloak once their barrier comes down. This follows the increased focus on close combat in the third game.
  • Thane is also very ninja-like, at least in cutscenes. As is Kasumi, but she's actually Japanese.
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe (particularly Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith) has Clone Assassins, Clone Troopers who have received ninja training to allow them to fight in melee combat against Jedi. And then there are the Sith Assassins & Jedi Shadows in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords who were invisible ninjas with lightsabers.
• Rome: Total War features the Arcani, a secret society of fanatics who worship Jupiter. Armed with twin gladii, they wear intimidating masks, black shrouds and well-crafted armour. They can hide practically anywhere in the wilderness, they have exceptional stamina, fighting ability, speed and morale. To round it all off, they operate with less than half the number of a more conventional unit type, perhaps invoking the law of Conservation of Ninjutsu. Their role is to flank and ambush the enemy, and perform the least capably in a straight-up fight against superior numbers.
  • However, if Arcani units get the armor and weapon bonuses of a well-built-up city, they can stand their ground against Gladiators and Praetorians without much trouble. Urban Cohorts not so much.
• The third Commander Keen game had Vortinija, a group of blue space dog ninjas.
• In World of Warcraft, some Rogue talent builds (especially Subtlety) and gear sets will result in a character pretty much exactly like a stereotypical ninja. However, only two options out of all the playable races can avoid this trope: Night Elves (though just barely since they have lots of other influences as well) and some Humans (specifically Humans using the Asian features provided by Shadowlands.) This means that it's possible to play as a Medieval European Fantasy ninja, a dwarven ninja, a Mayincatec troll ninja, a Victorian British werewolf ninja...
  • The decidedly Chinese-influenced Pandaren have their own ninja clan: the Shado-pan.
• The House of the Dead series has ninja zombies as well as cyborg versions of those.
• Psylocke's status as this is somewhat emphasised in X-Men: Next Dimension. As in, every move she can use includes the word "ninja" somewhere, and she speaks in an incredibly thick British accent.
  • This is because she's a mutant psychic who was born in the UK, that took over the physical body of an Asian martial artist.
• In the Golden Sun series, Ninja is a class group available to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter Adepts. There's also a set of Ninja Garb (colored gray, not black) which can be worn by just about everyone regardless of class. There is only one fantasy-counterpart-Japanese player character in the cast as of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, so making a Ninja of anyone else would make them a Mcninja.
• Quake IV's version of the Berserker probably qualifies, as well as being very durable and hard-hitting for its speed.
• Super Robot Wars: Original Generation's Brooklyn "Bullet" Luckfield is a Caucasian samurai-in-training who pilots a Chinese Humongous Mecha.
  • From the same games, Sanger Zonvolt is a German who speaks like an old-fashioned samurai and pilots the Dygenguard, which has a samurai motif and a very large sword.
  • The Raioh and its Mid-Season Upgrade Dairaioh, are Humongous Mecha ninja with heavy Kamen Rider elements; when they made the transition from the Alpha games to Original Generation, the ninja elements were emphasized much more than the Kamen Rider elements. OG also introduced a mass-produced version of the Raioh, dubbed the Jinrai, which is much more distinctly ninja-styled thanks to its sword and Fuuma Shuriken.
  • The Vysaga from Super Robot Wars Advance and Original Generation is a Humongous Mecha ninja of uncertain but likely non-Japanese manufacture.
• Fallout
  • Fallout 3's Operation Anchorage Expansion Pack has Chinese Crimson Dragoons, who wear Invisibility Cloak-equipped catsuits and usually wield Chinese Officer Swords or Sniper Rifles. The player can combine the Stealth Armor and Jingwei's Shocksword for a Grey Fox-style ninja getup.
  • Fallout: New Vegas lets the player be a McNinja if they so desire and have enough DLC - just combine the Chinese Stealth Armor from Hoover Dam (although it no longer has the invisibility feature), the Assassin Suit from Dead Money or the Stealth Suit Mk II from Old World Blues with a katana from Gun Runners Arsenal.
• Sensory Overload has two types of ninjas, the more common type that only use melee attacks, and the shuriken-throwing Invisibility Cloaked ones.
• Corvo Attano of Dishonored is a Gothic Victorian steampunk ninja mage. On the enemy side, there's the Whaler Assassins, who wear gas masks and have an enhanced version Corvo's Blink ability.
• Ninja Commando for the Neo Geo has a multinational team of protagonists, including American ninja Joe Tiger and British ninja Rayar Dragon.
• From Skullgirls, there is Valentine, a nurse/assassin with a great interest in eastern culture.
• The character design for Silk Fox from Jade Empire is essentially a Chinese ninja.
• Mei Ying's fighting costume in Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb is heavily based on the masked, black-suited ninja stereotype.
• The setting of Final Fantasy XIV is a country called Eorzea. The art of ninjutsu comes from the foreign nation of Doma, so the Player Character by default becomes a Mcninja if they chose to become the Ninja Job (with the exception of Au Ra from the Raen clan, who hail from the same region).
  • Redway, a villainous NPC from the later quests in the Rogue/Ninja storyline, is a darker take on the trope than most; he was constantly overlooked by his master for his lack of Doman blood and went bad largely due to favoritism being shown to his fellow (Doman) students.
• In Mirror's Edge, it turns out the city's police are training specialist "Pursuit Cops" in Parkour and melee combat to chase down and kill Runners. They're being trained by your Big Bad Friend Celeste.
• Raven from the Tekken series. His style is listed as Ninjitsu, but he's a black guy with blonde hair. He even does the Kuji-in, carries Kunai and has a friendly rivalry with Tekken's other "ninja" Yoshimitsu. Many players have noted that Raven is like a mix of Blade and Simon Pheonix from Demolition Man, two roles played by Wesley Snipes. When Namco was asked about the similarities being intentional, they stated that they simply wanted a true ninjutsu practitioner and a "cool black guy" for a character, and that the similarities were purely coincidental.
  • In Tekken 7, he is replaced with a black woman ninja known as Master Raven.
• Red Shadow from Bushido Blade is a Russian-born ex-ninja.
• While the ninja-like Sheikah themselves of The Legend of Zelda are portrayed with a very Japanese-inspired culture, several characters of the European-inspired Hylian race are also shown adopting their techniques. In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Zelda disguised herself as a Sheikah called Sheik by wearing a ninja-like outfit and using ninja-like techniques. In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Link can wear the Stealth Armor provided by the Sheikah to make it easier to sneak around.
• In the Save the World mode of Fortnite, Ninjas are one of the 4 core class archetypes a Hero character can be, in a setting where survivors have to pass an aptitude test in order to be eligible for the weapons and tech each class utilizes. So literally anyone can be a Ninja if they really want to. Aside from throwing shurikens and wielding katanas, they're also adept at tossing smokebombs, throwing a barrage of kunais, delivering deadly spin kicks, double jumping with fancy tech attached to their legs, and calling out every one of these manuevers when they do it because it's cool.
• In Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain, the Chinese-born Lian Xing's bonus mission puts her in a surprisingly realistic ninja role, including switching between various disguises to blend in, and using poisoned shurikens to silently assassinate a target.
• Target Terror has McNinja mooks that either pop up close to shank the player or throw knives at range.
• The King of Fighters XIV introduces Bandeiras Hattori to the roster. Bandeiras is the founder of his own style of Brazilian Ninjutsu, and he's very dedicated to his craft (read, very much a weeaboo). While he's pretty goofy, he's surprisingly talented for a relative novice still looking to train (it helps that it's implied his ancestor may be Hanzo Hattori, considering the shared surname and how he uses a lot of Hanzo's techniques).
• Scarlet "Shinobu" Jacobs is a recurring supporting character throughout No More Heroes, being an African-American assassin with a smattering of ninja and samurai motifs, with her arsenal including a badass katana and lightning-fast agility. She's introduced in the first game as just a schoolgirl who moonlights as an assassin, implicitly invoking Japanese motifs as merely an aesthetic choice, but by the time of the sequel, Shinobu spent the years after graduating building up her legitimacy as a ninja, touring Asia and becoming the #1 assassin on the continent.

Web Animation

• Porkchop 'n Flatscreen!: Ninja Girl Mai comes from a line of Latino ninjas.
• Xionic Madness: One of Bolverk Squad's members is Xero, a cyborg ninja hailing from the United Kingdom.

Web Comics

• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: The trope namer. In addition to the shamrock shuriken-throwing Irish-American ninja-doctor of the title, there is Frans Rayner — a former Danish ninja — and his army of American ninja mooks. Who eventually come back from the dead as zombie ninjas.
• In General Protection Fault, James Baud (aka Fooker) once faced off against French ninja maids in the Elaborate Underground Base of the supervillain Moldfinger...
• In Freefall, Winston and Florence have a dinner date at a restaurant run by French ninja waiters. You'll be served an excellent meal, without ever seeing a single waiter...
  • They even go so far as to call out the difference between 'traditional' ninja gear and what one would actually dress like to complete a mission.
  Covert!Ninja: The ultimate compliment to ninja craftsmanship. To see what has been done and swear that it could not be possible.
• In It's Walky!, one of the main villains is a group of British ninja.
  • The Walkyverse also gives us an American wannabe-ninja in the form of Shortpacked's Ninja Rick.
• All the ninjas in Ninjas are this. They show no signs of actually being from Japan. Or in Japan, for that matter.
• No Need for Bushido features a female, blonde ninja. With big boobs. And a female ninja with an eyepatch. And big boobs. Oh, and the female Ninja with the fan who has moderately sized breasts.
• Girl Genius has Smoke Knights, who seem to be the stealth branch of Knights of Jove. So far Velchen, Violetta, Tarvek and Zola have demonstrated some impressive training. Also, one Smoke Knight in the hospital gets herself killed trying to off the Baron, but it's not clear which in the pile of wannabe assassins' corpses (except perhaps the first fake nurse, as she neither was already infiltrated nor remembered to stab first and scream never).
  • Also, the Wulfenbachs had the Black Squad as a high-tech variety and Stealth Fighters as a commando variety. The former gave a good fright to Wooster and were mopped up by Zola's minions (i.e. Knights of Jove operatives) prepared to face them, and the latter ended up at the wrong end of Conservation of Ninjutsu in an overt mission where they ran into a bunch of Jäger generals and one Smoke Knight.
• In Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire, almost every race in the cosmos — from uplifted cats to ambulatory mountains to humanoid insects — has something identifiable as a ninja. This trope is shamelessly invoked and even named the Universal Ninja Puzzle — "Many of these races cannot see eye to eye (literally) on the definition of such basic concepts as Food, Shelter, Sex and Memory, but they all have Ninja." And they all think that the others are a bunch of posers.
  • And when they meet, Hilarity Ensues.
• The Order of the Stick
  • This strip features a waitress that suddenly appears next to the table, causing Vaarsuvius to angrily exclaim about waiters that sneak up on you. The waitress explains that she's putting herself through ninja school.
  • Redcloak's (now deceased) Goblin ninja which is replaced by Hobgoblin Ninja. The justification is right here. One of the gods thought they would be fun.
  • The prequel book Start of Darkness contains what may be the most horrifying ninja sub-breed ever conceived... Ninja Clowns.
• Sam & Fuzzy includes an international brotherhood of ninjas, most of whom are McNinjas.
• Wikkity from Panda Xpress. Although he claims that the only real American ninja is Michael Dudikoff.
• Quantum Ninja, in an otherwise European medieval fantasy dimension in Casey and Andy.
• Homestuck Dave and his Bro, self-described as "ironic rapping roof ninjas". The two employ katanas and Flash Step techniques in hash-rap battles on the rooftops of Houston, considering themselves governed solely by Rule of Cool.
• The ninjas in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! are Japanese, but the Running Gag of the story is that all the ancient Japanese dialogue is translated as wildly inappropriate modern American slang. This is driving the Grammar Squirrel (the resident Grammar Nazi) to distraction.
• The Dreadful has Bludkolt, a ninja horse!
• Agrippa Varus of Terra isn't called a ninja in-universe but it clearly had an influence on his design (black clothes, melee weapons strapped to his back, more weapons concealed, One-Man Army). See here especially, after which a commenter called him an "alien space ninja".
• The Nightjar, a side character in Lavender Jack, is a masked, stealth-using warrior who uses a hooked blade on a rope. and also the exiled princess of a tiny Mediterranean island monarchy.
• In Weregeek, Abbies elf rogue character in the D&D game dresses up as a ninja.

Web Original

• The "Panous-Panous" — Mooks in the amateur French sentai show France Five (no, really) — have been described as "ninja-mimes".
• The original website for Ninja Burger is dedicated to this trope- also quite literally.
• Ask a Ninja doesn't quite count as this, but his theme song does.
• Nex of the Whateley Universe. Ruthless mutant-powered ninja killer. Who happens to be English. Also, the 'ninjas' at Superhero School Whateley Academy tend to be Americans and Europeans, not Asian at all. A later story, in which a family of 'phantom thieves' very meticulously avoid being called 'ninja', explains that the actual ninja clans in this world, while not above recruiting many of Japan's most promising mutants for training at the Yama Dojo, are very jealous of their name, and tend to frown on anyone - especially other Japanese - trying to steal their thunder.
• Ninja the Mission Force runs on this Godfrey Ho-fueled trope.
• The Nostalgia Critic flies into a rant about this during his 3 Ninjas review when he sees the telephone operator:
  Nostalgia Critic: WHY IS THE TELEPHONE OPERATOR WEARING A NINJA SUIT?! What is the point? Is the telephone operator a martial artist? If so, why isn't he out there fighting with the rest of the ninjas? What is the purpose of hiring a martial artist to answer the telephone?! It makes no sense!
• In Freeman's Mind, Gordon mistakes the black ops assassins for ninjas. They do look the part, being clad in black bodysuits that even obscure their eyes behind goggles, and are very fast, nimble, and stealthy... but they're never shown using martial arts or any other close-range combat, only extremely accurate silenced pistols.

Western Animation

• In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "The Case of the Cola Cult", said Cola Cult's second-in-command Bubbles has a ninja team of henchmen for no good reason, though instead of being garbed in the traditional black, they are dressed in the soda-colors (orange, grape, and cherry) of the rest of the cult's members.
• The public library in Jacob Two-Two has a squad of highly-trained "Library Ninja" specialized in recovering overdue books.
• Snake-Eyes from G.I. Joe a blond-haired blue-eyed white American who trained in Japan under the same master as Storm Shadow (who is a full blooded Japanese), although his backstory was not given as much emphasis in the cartoons as it was in the comics.
  • And by "not as much emphasis" we mean "none at all", at least in the Sunbow episodes. It didn't help that following the first two miniseries, the cartoon's writers had a hard time using a fully-masked mute ninja commando, so they put him in the background. The DiC seasons featured Snake-Eyes more, and he's been a core character in Sigma 6 and Renegades.
• Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja is an American high schooler who defends the city of Norrisville and Norrisville high from the forces of evil. The Ninja's origins are traced back to Norrisville and has no connection to Japan or anywhere else, even though the Ninjanomicon is very Japanese-inspired.
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were explicitly trained by a Japanese ninja, who had moved to New York and got turned into a rat (or a rat who learned from such a ninja before passing his teachings on to the turtles). However, they are in every other way 100% American.
  • In some iterations, their first human ally eventually trains under the said rat teacher. Since she's of Irish descent, that makes her an Irish-American New Yorker ninja.
• On The Fairly OddParents!, Poof becomes a ninja during the "Wishology" trilogy thanks to television.
• Prowl and Jazz of Transformers: Animated. Alien robot ninja, masters of metallikato and circuitsu. Prowl's still working on mastering processor-over-matter to unlock the really cool stuff, though.
• Family Guy:
  • In one Peter Griffin Imagine Spot, he pretends he's the star of a nineties situational comedy called "My Black Son"; the theme song ends with the claim "also, he's a ninja!"
  • Another Charlie and the Chocolate Parody episode has one of the golden ticket winners be an American ninja who appears to be a completely normal married man, aside from the obvious.
• Subverted by the Shadowkhan in Jackie Chan Adventures. If paying attention, one might initially think it strange that Shendu, a demon sorcerer of Chinese origin, would have control over a magical army of ninjas (which, of course, are Japanese). This is explained come season 4, however, when it's revealed that Shendu possessed an artifact owned by Tarakudo, King of the Shadowkhan, which granted him that control.
• House of Cool's Ninjamaica is about an amnesiac, Rastafarian ninja who was found in the North Pole and who is wanted dead by a gang for reasons he can't remember.
• Dan Vs. has Ninja Dave, the last member of an order devoted to cookie baking. He later opens up a cookie bakery.
• Lothar is no longer Mandrake's sidekick tribal strongman in Defenders of the Earth. In his action figure from the toyline, it says he's a ninja from the Caribbean and since Lothar has a son that trains under him, it's likely Lothar Jr.'s a ninja as well.
• Kim Possible villain Monkey Fist is a British lord who donned ninja garb to steal the macguffin in his first appearance and later gathered a small army of monkey ninja minions.
• The Inspector Gadget episode "The Capeman Cometh" features the M.A.D. Ninja in his only appearance.
• Shuriken School: One of the main characters, Jimmy B., is of African decent.

Real Life

• Many Americans who purport to know ninjitsu learned it from Masaaki Hatsumi, who claimed direct lineage from an unbroken ninja tradition that dates back centuries. His claims are highly disputed, however.
• Early Mixed Martial Arts at its "style vs style" era saw a few self-styled Ninjutsu practitioners. Scott Morris in UFC 2 got a victory in the first round of the tournament with a Guillotine Choke but in the second round was thrown into the ground by kickboxer and MMA pioneer Patrick Smith, who violently rained ground-and-pound strikes on him until Morris rested his motionless head in the mat. His gymmate Steve "Ninja Cop" Jennum was a little more successful, winning the UFC 3 by entering directly to the finals after Ken Shamrock withdrew due to injuries, and fighting against Harold Howard, who came exhausted from other two fights. In the end however, Jennum flopped in his post-UFC 3 career.
• From the 90s to the early 2000s, there were a group of paramilitary soldiers in Angola referred to as ninjas. The Angolan Ninjas lived up to the name, too; there are several reports of them assassinating targets on upper floors by coming in through the windows. They were trained in parkour, and frequently made use of their skills to navigate to places their targets thought to be unreachable, inside Angola and in other countries.
• For a more modern, benign example, Matthew Wright is a practitioner of Bujin Ki Ninjitsu who runs the Mangetsu Dojo in Toronto. He also has a YouTube channel — Nine Directions — where he smiths his own ninja weapons and demonstrates techniques.
• Inverted in a way by the sulsa, who were ninja-like special operatives of the Kingdom of Silla in Korea. The inversion comes from the fact that they predate Japanese ninja by several centuries (having come into existence in the 500s AD).

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