Memetic Badass

Chuck Norris has power and toughness, but nobody was brave enough to ask for specifics.

"Death had to take him in his sleep, for if he was awake there'd have been a fight."

— Thomas R. Marshall on learning of the death of Theodore Roosevelt

A specific form of Memetic Mutation when the fandom of a series exaggerates a character's capabilities and combat skills to preposterously epic god-like levels. Despite the name, it doesn't necessarily have to be a widely known Internet meme, and is sometimes just an in-joke among the fan-base. In some cases, the writers agree.

While Memetic Badasses can come in all shapes and sizes, there are two recurring flavors:

• The Unironic Badass (a.k.a. The Chuck Norris): An admirable character who in canon has demonstrated enough impressive feats and is a big source of awesome moments, to the point that the fandom stops asking "What else can they do?" and instead wonders: "What else can't they do?" It's at this point that their abilities, if they weren't already hyperbolic to begin with, enter Tall Tale territory in Fanon. Expect to see them pull off feats Beyond the Impossible, inflict Russian Reversals on anyone or anything that messes with them, and embody any noun or concept they damn well wish, all thanks to their sheer awesomeness.
• The Ironic Badass (a.k.a The Shaggy Rogers): An otherwise weak, unimpressive or outright silly character whom Fanon — for the sake of ironic humor — portrays as much, much more awesome than they actually are. Unlike the above, it's not just the absurdity of their exaggerated feats that is played for humor. It's also the idea that this particular character, of all people, could kick ass and be more awesome than they have any right to be, running on the same principle as tropes like the Fighting Clown and the Lethal Joke Character. As such, it is very common to see them humiliate any conventionally "cool" character in a fight. Has a lot of crossover with the Memetic Loser, with some characters managing the dubious honour of having both as highly popular fan characterisations.

Often overlaps with Fan Wank. Fear too the Memetic Psychopath, and especially the Memetic Molester.

In-Universe character reputations belong in Shrouded in Myth, Living Legend, Famed In-Story, or The Dreaded.

Upgrading the badassery significantly with a character from a previous work is an Adaptational Badass. When done to a historical character, it's a Historical Badass Upgrade.

Compare Testosterone Poisoning. Contrast Memetic Loser.

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Examples:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Fan Works
• Film
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
  • Game of Thrones
• Professional Wrestling
• Tabletop Games
• Video Games
  • Capcom
  • Nintendo
  • Square Enix
• Webcomics
• Western Animation
• Real Life

Other Examples:

Advertising

• The commercials for Dos Equis beer in America star a man whose credentials read almost like the Chuck Norris Facts: "He once had an awkward moment... just to see how it feels. He can speak French... in Russian. He is... The Most Interesting Man in the World." Of course, his beer of choice is Dos Equis.
  • He doesn't always drink beer, but when he does, he prefers Dos Equis. One would think that the "Most Interesting Man in the World" would usually be found drinking fine wines or brandy, hence the genius of the tag.
  • He once looked into a lake and had a staring contest with his reflection... On the third day, he won. He has never lost a sock. He doesn't believe in using oven mitts, nor potholders. Even his enemies list him as their emergency contact. He doesn't use oven timers, he tells the food when it's done. Sharks have a week... dedicated to him. He's a lover, not a fighter, but he's also a fighter, so don't get any ideas. He once punched a magician. That's right. You heard me. If he punched you in the face, you would have to fight off a strong urge to thank him. He can disarm you with his looks, or his hands. Either way. Based on the video, he has performed surgery on his own chest in a field hospital when the available doctors simply weren't good enough.
  • He's also an Expy of the already Memetic Badass Ernest Hemingway, albeit with a Spanish accent. (Though Hemingway spent time in Spain and spoke Spanish, so...)
  • And an expy of the equally badass Fernando Lamas (the bar setting is an homage to Billy Crystal's SNL homage to Lamas).
• The "Will It Blend" commercials attempt to do this for the Blendtec blender. One of them even incorporates the Chuck Norris meme.
  • In case you're wondering, no, Chuck will NOT blend.
• This trope is now Diamonds!
  • If you've never had any of it, ever, people just seem to know.
• Segata Sanshiro's claim to fame is beating the living daylights out of anyone who doesn't play Sega Saturn. It worked: he's credited for helping to revive popularity for the ailing Saturn in Japan! He's so badass, in fact, that he fought Chuck Norris to a standstill!
• Hi, BILLY MAYS here with A VOICE SO LOUD, he can sell ANYTHING and kick Vince Offer's ass!
• Captain Crunch
• The guy on a certain collection of Dairy Queen commercials.
  • Guy: We don't just have a fluffy cloud. We have a fluffy cloud that goes-
  • Cloud: Yeah!
  • Guy: And I'm not just water-skiing. I'm water-ski boxing!
  • Cloud: Yeah!
    • We don't just blow bubbles. We blow bubbles with kittens inside of them.
    • We don't just have rainbows. We have rainbows that are on FIRE!
    • We don't settle for bunnies. we have old-fashioned-shaving-bunnies!
    • We don't just have heart-shaped balloons. We have heart-shaped balloons.....tied to sharks.
    • We don't just have subtitles. We have subtitles you can ride around on. *is lying down on the subtitles as they go across the screen*
• John Jameson will punch out Cthulhu to protect his whiskey...or the ladies.
• There are a series of commercials for a brand of laundry detergent that fall under this trope so well that it even has a "Chuck Norris Approved" seal of approval displaying at the end of each of its commercials.
• The famous "TheLegend27" ("TheLegend27?" "Yeah, TheLegend27".") commercial for the app Game of War. It features some teens in the woods on a camping trip. On of them says the famous line: "I'm supposed to be playing Game of War but this one player keeps kicking my ass." One of his friends asks if it's TheLegend27. The rest of the commercial is the group rattling of feats TheLegend27 has accomplished. This commercial has been parodied many times. In almost every famous YouTuber's comment section, you WILL see a TheLegend27 joke.
• Nothing will stop the Shen Yun marketing team from advertising anywhere and everywhere. That backroad in the middle of nowhere? Here's a Shen Yun billboard. On a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific? 5,000 Years of Civilization Reborn. Humans set foot on Mars? SHEN YUN. Dead? They'll slip a pamphlet into your casket so you can watch Shen Yun in the afterlife.

Blogs

• Felicia Day has a blog entry detailing the Tweets other people have made of these about her.
• In The Slender Man Mythos, some have made Zeke Strahm one of these. When you can manage to give an epic Do Not Go Gentle speech in the face of a depraved, unstoppable, utterly horrific Eldritch Abomination, you are a badass.
  • To really drive this point home, he became the first person to actually shoot Slender Man. HE SHOT SLENDER MAN IN THE CHEST. It didn't do much good, but still...
  • As of "Ashen Waste", Evan from Everyman HYBRID for going after him with a baseball bat, and the Hybrid crew in general for trying to "run the fucker down". Again, it didn't actually work, but points for effort.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering has (or had, the fad has mostly passed now) Tarmogoyf Facts, based on the rather overpowered creature Tarmogoyf.
  • Chimney Imp, the most powerful creature ever. It kills Llanowar Elves in combat, can fly over an Ulamog, and can win a game on its own in just 20 turns! It sets your gameplan back if you kill it, and it even untaps for free!^Explanation On a more serious note, Chimney Imp is woefully overcosted and underpowered, and a solid contender for one of the worst creatures in Magic. Originating from a set otherwise known for producing many Game Breakers is not helping its case. This led to players sarcastically hyping up how good Chimney Imp is, cherry-picking singular "advantages" it has over other cards while leaving unstated the fact that the whole package is so awful no sane player would ever run it.
    • Craw Wurm, for the same reason.
  • More in the tradition of Tarmogoyf, Koth and Jace (especially his Mind Sculptor version) are looking to be this.
  • A few Magic: The Gathering players have also gotten the Chuck Norris treatment:
    • Jon Finkel, who is widely considered the best Magic player ever.
    • Mike Flores, who... isn't.
    • Mike Flores is the world's foremost plagiarism detective.
    • Razor Ramon got one, just for having the balls to name his deck "Hard Gay". And he won with it!
  • Storm Crow, the most powerful creature to ever exist.^Explanation This is because it was part of the Alliances set, which saw the printing of many overpowered blue cards, including possibly the best counterspell in the game to this day, Force of Will. The joke was that every blue card, no matter how mediocre, was automatically the best card ever since it could be discarded to power Force of Will. So the fandom latched onto an otherwise middling blue card and turned it into a Memetic Badass on the sole virtue of being Force of Will fodder.
  • Tarkir also brought us Surrak Dragonclaw, a guy so badass his card can best most dragons in the block in single combat... and the block is chock-full of badass dragons. He's most known from earning his rank by punching a goddamn bear in the face. Most Khans got demoted or died in the alternate timeline of Dragons of Tarkir. Surrak? Still alive and kickin'. And still badass. And now punching FREAKING DRAGONS in the face.
• The Pokémon Trading Card Game has several classic examples. Most notably, Charizard from Base Set conforms to this trope to a T: although it is one of the slowest attackers from the set, one of the most inefficient, outclassed in both HP and attack power by nearly every stage two since 2007, and no rarer than any other holographic, the casual fandom (as well as retro fans) adamantly claims that it is the undisputed strongest card in the game.
• Fans of the Universal Fighting System collectable card game have elevated players to such levels.
  • Matt "Matt Khols" Khols, the only man badass enough to have his whole name be his nickname.
    • Alternately, Scott "Scott Gaines" Gaines, the master of orange card-blue card.
  • James Hata, former US and World Champion and new designer for Fantasy Flight Games (the game's producer) is regarded by some as God.
• UNO has the Reverse Card. In game, it's a card that reverses the order of turns. On the internet, it's depicted as a Deus ex Machina that can allow somebody to cheat at anything and succeed.
• Shape Snatch in the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game. Look at it and despair at its horrible power! This became an Ascended Meme in the Duelists of the Roses spin-off, where it was one of a few cards turned into a powerful immortal variation and given an actual ability.
  • People have joked that the near-worthless card Zone Eater would be able to defeat the ultimate Big Bad of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Z-one (pronounced Zone).

Music

• Keith Moon: Perhaps one of the purest concentrations of Awesomeness Is Volatile in real life.
• The Protomen are somewhere between this and Shrouded in Myth. With the band's facepaint, codenames, and some if not all members being robots, it's justified.
  • Panther's singing can melt faces off.
  • The rest of the band can also melt faces.
    • Clearly, The Power of Rock
  • Get Down From There Reanimator
• God created Earth. Chuck Norris created God. Rick Wakeman composed Chuck Norris while drunk out of his skull. His website has a number of good Rick Wakeman facts. (Got everyone in the studio to drink all day, barricaded the bathroom, then mic'd an echo chamber and got people to piss in it at the same time.)
  • Of course, Don Francisco taught Rick Wakeman everything he knew...
    • And Don Francisco was created because Earth Herself was bored...
• It's scientifically verifiable fact that JAM Project can make anything awesome.
• MOTHERFUCKING SLAYER is the most badass band this side of Venom!
• It's a scientifically-proven fact that Freddie Mercury didn't die of AIDS. Pure epic power simply overwhelmed his body and he ascended back to the higher plane of existence from whence he came.
• King of the ocean! Master of the universe! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's Clarence Clemons!
• "Weird Al" Yankovic's 2009 single CNR is all about telling the badass traits of... Charles Nelson Reilly.
  • And to purposefully one-up Chuck Norris, the music video displays CNR's trophy room, complete with the mounted head of everyone's favorite Texas Ranger.
  • The song also one-ups the Jim Croce song about a non-memetic badass, "You Don't Mess Around With Jim", the chorus of which likens messing around with Jim to tugging on Superman's cape or spitting into the wind (basically, if you do it, you're Too Dumb to Live and you deserve what's coming to you). "CNR" tells you to go ahead and tug on Superman's cape or spit into the wind, it's still not as bad as messing around with CNR.
• David Bowie.
• Studebaker Hoch, superhero of the modern economic slump. Unfortunately for him, he forgot an important fact: you don't fuck with Billy the Mountain.
• On the Iron Maiden forum Maidenfans, they even founded the Holy Church of Adrian Smith. (note: he's the guitarist)
• Michael Kiske, for Helloween fans. He's on his way to become one.
• Most Dream Theater videos on YouTube have exaggerated facts about their playing skills in the comments, but John Petrucci gets the most, partially due to the popularity of the John Petrucci Psycho Exercises videos.
• Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy has this reputation, and to a lesser extent, so do all female artists who scream or growl in metal and metalcore bands (see the vocalists for The Agonist, Otep, Walls of Jericho, and Straight Line Stitch for more examples.)
• It is a well-known fact among fans that while it is possible to kill Till Lindemann, it is a useless thing to do as he'll just come back to life next music video.
• "Elvis is Everywhere" by Mojo Nixon portrays Elvis Presley as a perfect godlike being whom all living beings are attempting to emulate through the process of evolution (or, as the song calls it, "Elvislution").
• Beyoncé is so flawless, she's not referred to as Beyonce, she is Beysus.
• Mike Patton, the Insufferable Genius Man of a Thousand Voices. He can scream like Fay Wray and croon like Dean Martin. Just as this entry was typed he finished another side project with eleven different musical genres in it. He's been everywhere and done everything in the world, including Your Mom, and can fully and utterly convince you of it.
• Who would win a wrestling match: Lemmy or God? Trick question, Lemmy is God!
• Kenesaw Mountain Landis, at least according to Jonathan Coulton. Along with being seventeen feet tall and having a hundred and fifty wives, he saves the game of baseball... by shooting Shoeless Joe Jackson with a sniper rifle, from a blimp.
• Among classical music fans, some musicians and composers have achieved this status.
  • Ludwig van Beethoven, Trope Codifier of a Badass musician. Court etiquette was suspended for him because he didn't care but he was tolerated since he was frickin' Beethoven.
  • Niccolò Paganini's stage presence was so intimidating that people suspected the devil himself attended his concerts.
  • Influenced by Paganini, Franz Liszt and his intense style of playing stands for emotional virtuoso piano music to this day.
  • György Cziffra, the most famous Hungarian Pianist after Liszt, is notorious for his emotional piano playing and his name only inspired awe among classical music fans.
  • Vladimir Horowitz. Vladimir fucking Horowitz, a pianist who didn't leave an opportunity to alter a composition considered untouchable if he felt it wasn't badass enough. Altering a composition is like altering a piece of literature, and considered iconoclasm.
  • Igor Stravinsky, due to the riot The Rite of Spring caused.
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky gets this for writing a piece that calls for a battery of cannons in the percussion section, to the point where it's joked that cannons are his instrument of choice.
• Lou Reed is considered the coolest person who ever lived, period.
• Keith Richards. It's widely said that he cannot be killed by conventional weapons.
• Malcolm Pugh (Inferi, A Loathing Requiem) is known for his status as a living meme (which he wholeheartedly embraces) as much as he is for his great technical ability and The Artisan Era, the record label that he owns. Let's face it, who else would make a shirt with a picture of him sporting a devious grin while holding a gas station hot dog with the caption "ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN" after a fan jokingly started a Change.org petition to get him to print it?
• Greg Page of The Wiggles. He survived an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, a condition with a less than 10% survival rate. He was expected to only last seven years when he was first diagnosed with OI, but is still alive. Greg managed to survive a medical condition that kills 92% of its victims. Some fans joke that he's resilient to death.
• Metallica: Cliff Burton was the original bassist who avoided Nobody Loves the Bassist. He could play while headbanging because his hair helped him play.

Mythology and Folklore

• The Bible: Jesus Christ. If it wasn't for him, God wouldn't have forgiven our sins.
  • Unlike c.f. Optimus Prime, Jesus never blasted Roman soldiers with an ion rifle or demonstrated an ability to turn into an awesome truck... but he could have if he wanted to.
    • Heck, he wouldn't even need the ion rifle or transformation powers, he could just take out all of the Roman soldiers with his bare hands.
  • And he fights vampires with kung fu.
  • And he pwns kids at sports.
  • Then there's Michael the archangel, patron saint of police officers, military, mariners, paratroopers, EMTs, the Greek Air Force, knights, swordsmiths, and grocers.
  • It's said Satan and his various minions greatly fear Mother Mary. The rosary is the strongest weapon a prayerful person has in their arsenal.
  • David slew Goliath with a pebble and a sling (actually easier than it sounds).
• Buddhism: Guan Yin. Seriously, he/she's probably the most insanely awesome depiction of a badass pacifist to have ever existed.
  • Taken literally in M.U.G.E.N, where she works like the F1 button, but on steroids. By that, we mean she can take down nearly any character, even god-tiered ones such as Chuck Norris. There have been several versions of her, with varying cheapness for each version.
• Hinduism: The beautiful Goddess Durga and her terrifying and morbid "berserker form", Kalika... Known as "The Undefeatable". Both were summoned when an evil super-demon would threaten Creation (and the Gods were powerless against it). Durga-Kaali also major aspects of AdiShakti, the Divine Feminine Principle that is the power behind all things. Without Her, everything's a corpse. Durga even rides around on the back of a Tiger or Asiatic Lion.
• Paul Bunyan is one of the Ur Examples, along with other subjects of tall tales.
  • French-Canadian lumberjack Joseph Montferrand (1802-1864), known in English as "Big Joe Mufferaw", is a legend in the Ottawa Valley for his strength and skill. (The courthouse in Gatineau, Quebec, is named after him.) Two verifiable stories are that he knocked out the boxing champion of Canada with one blow in a fight and that one night he single-handedly beat up as many as 150 Irishmen who ambushed him on the Chaudières bridge. Subsequent stories (and a song by Stompin' Tom Connors) attribute such feats as putting out a forest fire between Arnprior and Renfrew while in Smiths' Falls (38 miles away) by spitting at it, and driving a log raft down the rapids-strewn Ottawa River from Mattawa to Ottawa (a distance of over 250 miles) in a single day.
• Most American Tall Tale characters started as either Real Life people or mildly exaggerated fictional characters. Then people got to exaggerating them, then those exaggerations got exaggerated, and so on and so on. And, since they're Public Domain Characters, those exaggerations eventually become Canon.
  • Davy Crockett used to kill a hundred bears each morning for breakfast, then go and kill a few dozen panthers for a snack. He could wrestle comets, wade the Mississippi, whip his weight in wildcats, stare most any critter to death, and shoot a baby gnat from two hundred miles on a foggy day with his eyes closed and holding his rifle with his feet.
    • Oh, and make a coon-skin cap look good.
    • The Real Life Davy Crockett was no slouch either. He was indeed a noted frontiersman, but perhaps his truest display of badassery was during his career in the House of Representatives when he defended the rights of Native Americans at a time when President Jackson was illegally seizing their lands. Crockett condemned the President for his actions and refused to back down from his defense of the Native Americans. That's right folks, Davy Crockett was tough enough to stand up to Andrew Jackson and fought against a racist practice as early as the 1820's. When asked about why he didn't back down and go along with the President, Crockett replied "I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, and fetch and carry, at the whistle of the great man in the White House no matter who he is."
  • John Henry gave his life to prove his—and by extension everyone's—awesomeness.
• Gilgamesh was the first fictional badass that we know of. He is still one of the greatest, memetism aside. Among other things, he killed the Humbaba, killed the Bull of Heaven, carried around 600 pounds worth of swords and generally forged the idea of Rank Scales with Asskicking.
• In Classical Mythology Hercules... uh... Heracles... uh... Herakles remains one of these even to this day. In myths he was often presented as the World's Strongest Man, defeating, among other foes, death himself on behalf of one of his friends and is commonly held as having invented wrestling as a formal sport. His name has entered into the English language as a byword for incredible feats of strength.
• You wouldn't think lightning would need to be a Memetic Badass. Native American Mythology, specifically plains mythology, turns it into an Eldritch Abomination with the power to make you go insane with just a look.
• Cu Chulainn will FUCK YOUR SHIT UP. In the battle he died in he tied himself to a rock with his own intestines so he could remain upright and continue fighting.
• King Arthur. Depending on the Writer. While he tended to get eclipsed by his Knights of the Round Table (especially Lancelot) as Arthurian Legend developed, in the early stages he was fighting monsters like the Giant of St. Michael's Mount and once single-handedly killed 960 men in a battle. When people like Sir Thomas Malory (the author of Le Morte D Arthur) were compiling single narratives out of the many legends, these incidents were relegated to his younger days. There is no doubt at all that the original Welsh tradition about Arthur featured him as this. He had the nickname the. Red Ravager of Britain and he did all his own dirty work originally. In fact, the earliest mention of him uses him as a measuring stick for other badasses. And they're all found wanting.
• Norse Mythology is chock full of these, but of course the most well known, and therefore memetic, would have to be Odin and Thor.
  • In one story, Thor, Loki and Thjalfi (a farmer's son and servant to Thor) visit the halls of the giant king Utgard-Loki. Tricked by Utgard-Loki's illusions, Loki nearly wins an eating contest against fire, Thjalfi holds his own in a race against thought, Thor hits the ground so hard with his hammer that he creates a series of hills, drinks so deeply of the sea that he creates the tides, lifts the body of the serpent who encircles the world from the ground, and wrestles well against old age. Utgard-Loki is so terrified that he banishes Thor from his lands and vanishes.
  • And on that note, for a non-god version of this, Ragnar Lodbrok takes the cake.
• Kintaro, from Japanese folklore, who would supposedly sumo-wrestle with bears as a kid.
• Maui from Pacific Mythology. He fished islands up out of the sea, lassoed the sun, and a whole lot more.

Roleplay

• Wands don't kill people. Jason Frost kills people.
• Remington Springfield of What Happened In Oregon beat up the original memetic badass, Chuck Norris. And everyone knows Chuck Norris is an Epic.
• Survival of the Fittest
  • V3's Bobby Jacks, who after scoring a headshot on another student while his back was turned, was named 'Bocelot' (a reference to Revolver Ocelot) by other handlers, who joked about him killing other students with triple ricochet shots, scoring headshots from halfway across the island, and firing his gun and killing a student in V4 a year later.
  • Furthermore: Nobody killed Bocelot. He just got bored.
  • John Rizzolo is just your average player, except a little more cunning and a lot more sadistic. THE RIZ!, however, is so entirely badass that he creates cliffs from nowhere and drop kicks anyone he wants off of them. His Rizzlefandom on the SotF Rizwebsite has gotten to the point where Rizzlehandlers, often discussing entirely unRizrelated things, will add 'Rizzle' or 'Riz' to their words.
  • Lance Vanguard and Zack Dynamite, two rejected names for Characters in v4.
  • A rejected Troll profile gave us THE GODDAMN BUBBA DOVER. It was a Scary Black Man, with Blaxploitation tropes. Rather than being annoyed, it backfired and the handlers of the board seized on this one instead, to the point where any mention of badass characters is sure to mention him at some point or another.

Web Animation

• In-Universe example: George Washington among other things invented cocaine, threw a knife into heaven (which scared God shitless), he routinely made love to bears, and possibly possessed as many as thirty penises.
• The manager of the English branch of hololive joined Ina, Gura, and Amelia during a game of Left 4 Dead 2. Not only did she have a surprisingly good grasp on the game, but she went out of her way to protect her teammates. Her reputation as a badass would be cemented in one fight where she attacked a Tank with a katana, intentionally drawing the monster's aggro, and subsequently killed the Tank with only a sliver of her health left.
• Tricky the clown, also known (and even regarded by the creator themself) as the UNSTOPPABLE NEVADEAN CHAMPION, from the Madness Combat series is definitely regarded as this. Being an unstoppable hazard that is incredibly insane, unstoppable, bloodthirsty and being able to mold reality to his liking without any care thanks to the Portable Improbability drive. He's nearly unbeatable with only the main protagonist: Hank, having stood a chance, and despite that he's also died to the clown a few times. Even the series' Big Bad had a rough time with him, when the Auditor absorbed Tricky's corpse, it ended up being a bit too much that it actually ended up with Tricky gaining the Auditor's halo an powers! Forcing the Auditor to help Hank out in order to have his sworn enemy take care of Tricky for him. This has even reached a point where if, another Memetic Badass like the Corrupted Boyfriend defeats or even corrupts Tricky, can be decried as Fandom Heresy.
• Agobard the Knight from Marble Kingdoms 10, due to his feats of managing to hold out long after the fall of the Green kingdom, his Duel to the Death with Captain Gojenola, and especially the incident in which he cut down approximately half of an 96-man strong army by himself, has amassed a large comment section praising his prowess in combat and hailing him as immortal.
• RWBY:
  • As the show's most popular villain, Roman Torchwick never stopped being top dog of the antagonists, is only toying with Cinder by pretending to be unaware and compliant with her nebulous grand scheme as he builds up his dragon's horde of Dust, that furthermore his humoring her is the only thing that is keeping her in a position of power at all, he can pimp-slap any of the heroes into submission without missing a beat no matter the odds, could pickpocket the whole cast blind without a single person becoming aware, rules over all human and Faunus gangs alike with Machiavellian absolute authority, and is only deigning to remain in Ironwood's custody because he can make use of the position he's in. Those are the same fans who don't believe he's actually dead.
  • Mercury Black, thanks to being in three of the best fights of Volume 3, his constant smug demeanor and a rip-roaring metal song in "I'm The One", to the point where some chan boards nicknamed Mercury "The One", out of respect during Volume 3. Even with his lessened screen-time in the Mistral Arc, Mercury managed to only add to this status in Volume 6 with the revelation that he doesn't even have a Semblance thanks to his father. Many fans took this as a sign of Merc's utter badassery that even without a Semblance, he was able to go toe-to-toe with Pyrrha and Yang, and both only won because he threw both fights.
  • After his dressing down of Jacques Schnee, many fans insinuate that James "Two Seats" Ironwood replaced both of his testicles with some form of God chairs. Most also believe that, should Ironwood get a third seat on the council, he would become all-powerful and single-handedly destroy Salem and the Grimm. His Amity Arena art confirms that he dual-wields revolvers which just made him even more of a badass in the eyes of his fans.
  • Kali Belladonna. While she had little actual screen time during the attack at her mansion and was mostly shown to be a Combat Pragmatist with a skill to improvise and adjust to a dangerous situation, even taking out Yuma with a tea tray, most fans consider her to be on equal footing with her husband or possibly even above him in skill and strength. She became especially known for her badass one-liner when shooting Mooks that cornered her in the library.
    Kali: GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!
  • In Volume 8, the manner in which The Hound was introduced was badass enough to make it the first Grimm to score a victory against main characters. It kicked the asses of Oscar, Ren, Yang and Jaune because it can shapeshift new body parts as needed, employed human-level intelligence, and it can talk.

Web Videos

• Agents of Cracked brings us The Chief, who, among other things, eats lead and craps bullets (so his toilet gets all...shot up, when he poops), rides a triceratops to work, drinks tiger blood milkshakes for breakfast (MILKSHAKES, FOR BREAKFAST!), and personally knows Die Hard (Not Bruce Willis, Die Hard). Turns out he belongs to a pantheon of other such Chiefs, all of whom are equally badass (Up to and including sexually assaulting a mountain).
• The Angry Video Game Nerd will take you back to the past, to play the shitty games that suck ass, even if he would rather have a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in his ear.
• Among the Shack Tactical group and in the greater ARMA community, Dslyecxi is widely considered one of the very best ARMA players around. Which is impressive enough, but if you listen to the way people talk about him, you'd think Dslyecxi had his own version of the Chuck Norris Fact List. People say he's a Ninja who can smell your fear from kilometers away, and can only be killed if you cut off his head. That he has senses other people lack that tell him when is the exact moment that nobody will be looking in his direction, and thus the perfect time to strike. He can land a helicopter on a piece of land the size of a postage stamp. He vanishes unless you look directly at him, and can stalk you perfectly for hours at a time, toying with you before he goes in for the kill. According to stories he can tip the scales in a battle between hundreds of players just by showing up on the field. Although given some of the stunts he's pulled, you start to wonder if the stories are all true. (Dslyecxi really has kept a helicopter flying for several minutes after its rotors stopped turning, for example, and he really did sneak up on a tank, climb it, then shot a crewman when the guy stuck his head up out of the turret, he really did dodge bullets, etc.)
• The eponymous Ninja of Ask a Ninja often makes astonishing claims about what he and other ninjas can do. Like how a ninja can go through a snowstorm without being hit by a single snowflake, or that they are faster than the speed of light. They are the speed of darkness. He also claims that he killed 4500 people in a day and that the Black Death was a ninja.
• Brandon Tenold devoted four episodes of his Cult Movie Review show to the late, great Doug McClure. For a brief time in The '70s, nobody fought big rubber monsters better. McClure was such a badass that he could take a arrow to the face and shrug it off.
• Carmilla the Series has Elsie. Who in canon material shows up briefly, twice, once as Carmilla's 'study buddy' in Episode 3 and in Episodes 34-35 after being rescued by the Dimwit Squad. The fandom latched onto her cool appearance and badass army jacket and made her into the Queen of Swaghilia.
• Channel Awesome
  • The fandom seems to have decided that That Dude in the Suede is a badass. And capable of bringing down Insano's reign of terror. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • God help Insano in May...
  • Proven in the Year 3 event... Suede kicked butt. No wonder Insano didn't show up.
  • In universe? SANTA CHRIST! SANTA CHRIST! WE ALL LOVE SANTA CHRIST!
  • "Shall I tell ye the stories of Blood Beard Joe?"
  • Malachite yet was already a badass in universe and it was proven to everyone when he let a car run into him and it exploded! He didn't even break his stride!
  • CHUCK NORRIS!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Don't Fuck With Mara Wilson
  • SSSNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWFFFFLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMEEE!!!!!!!!!!
  • Carl Copenhagen of Demo Reel, Ex-East German Police and Mercenary, Lived a life of killing dangerous animals and people too before becoming a mild mannered Camera man.
  • Not, in fact, Nash Bozard himself, but his XCOM Assault officer, Colonel Igor Koslov, Savior of ERF. Mere mortals fear abduction by aliens. Aliens fear abduction by Igor Koslov.
• In-universe example: William Clark in this Let's Play of Civilization IV. The Fictional Documents state that William Clark (the name of the starting warrior) became a legendary figure in American mythology. According to one legend, fish learned to breathe water so they could hide from him. The author describes his image as Gilgamesh meets Paul Bunyan meets Chuck Norris.
• Everybody knows that TotalBiscuit is THE FRICKIN' ARCHMAGE OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!
  • Till he met Criken [1][2][3]
• Bad Horse! He rides across the nation! The Thoroughbred of Sin!
  • Bad Horse does not sleep. He waits.
• Epic Meal Time: Muscles Glasses is definitely played up as this, culminating in coming Back from the Dead and winning a long series of arm-wrestles with various superheroes at Comic-Con. He also won a rap battle just by wordlessly flipping off his opponent.
• Ashly and Anthony's dad from Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? is the ultimate badass. Look at any of their videos on Youtube for confirmation, particularly Lips.
• Fans of Kilplix's Left 4 Dead vids will note that Con, despite usually just lighting his team (or mainly just Kilplix) on fire, has quite the fan base and is thought the be the definition of awesomeness. In fact, Con is so awesome, he could probably kill Chuck Norris with only one Molotov.
• During the third Desert Bus for Hope charity drive Matt Wiggins turned down an offer for $500 if he wore eyeliner. Hundreds of ridiculous accusations were made about how evil Matt was, including that he invented Desert Bus, midichlorians, and canceled Firefly. Two public access Twitter accounts carried out the meme (Things Matt Did and Things Matt Did 2). He was eventually redeemed by a) promising to watch Battlefield Earth, and b) this.
• An in-joke among lonelygirl15 fans is to speculate that the Purple Monkey is an immortal being responsible for every plot twist in the series.
  • A long time ago, Reed and Chuck Norris made a bet. The loser was supposed to wear a ridiculous cowboy hat.
• The chef from Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time melts butter by screaming at it, peels potatoes with his teeth, chops food with an axe, and generally demolishes the entire kitchen (and the occasional assistant) in the course of making delicious food. It helps that he's very, very Swedish.
• Prâk "Bane" Jaws, from Tear of Grace's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor series. Not only is he more or less Bane from The Dark Knight Rises in Uruk form, but he also has the ability to walk away in one direction only to then immediately attack Tear from behind. There's a reason he was Tear's Climax Boss in the penultimate mission of the game.

Websites

• Badass of the Week is a whole website devoted to profiling historical and fictional bad-asses, from Erwin Rommel to Ash Williams. They've even covered beef jerky, the B-2 Bomber, the country of Australia, and This Huge-Ass Beetle.
• Most Internet forums have a tendency to make out their Admins and Moderators into this very thing if they're around for any solid stretch of time (see also Forum Pecking Order).
  • On Golden Sun Realm, pretty much anything is fair game. It ranges from a moderator's beard, to a regular's fedora, to even an otherwise unknown Japanese old lady. And they're all out to kick your ass.
• The Pokemon-themed adoptable site GPXPlus has Cloysterman, a meme spawned from an entry in the site's Pokemon dress-up contest. If it punches you, you WILL die.
• In a meta way, SCP-682 from SCP Foundation is one. Stories about new ways of killing it always end up in describing how it made it stronger.
  • Alto Clef can't be seduced because his crotch is a hand, and that hand holds a gun.
  • SCP-999. Given that it can subdue SCP-682, fans off-site jokingly claim that 999 can tickle just about anything into submission.
• Uncyclopedia has AAA, the greatest gamer who ever lived.

Others

• You gotta hack teh gibbson if you are anything like a 1337 hax0r.
• On January 21st, a woman by the name of Linda Clacke left a tweet saying "I will destroy ISIS."◊ The internet found this, took hold of it, and went crazy over it. Making meme after meme of her due to her sheer bravery making a statement like that and earning her the nickname Linda Glocke.
• Gumi, the chattering lory owned by former Capcom sound designer Hideaki Utsumi, has been declared this ever since his first video, which had him doing his signature "wuewuewuewue" warble before giving an unnerving stare at the camera. Because of this, he's treated as an Eldritch Abomination ready to conquer the world at a moment's notice. He's also a skilled video game player, musician, shopkeep and a master at comedic timing.
• On December 13, 2023, a video went up showcasing a man absolutely refusing to answer a question that would disparage LGBTQ people, stating that both options can be done together. Despite looking like the quintessential 2010s nerd, the man quickly became this, someone who would refuse to answer any sort of flame bait question. This reputation grew further when it was discovered that the man had zero interest in a social media presence and thus had refused to elaborate or initiate further with his newfound fame, something that earned him even more respect and admiration from those already impressed with his refusal to answer leading questions.

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