Military Rank Names

Basically, the tendency of heroes and villains to have names that start with Captain, Major, General, Sergeant, etc., especially when it's doubtful that the character even has that military rank. Or has even been in the military.

Super-Trope of The Good Captain and Captain Superhero. Related to Colonel Badass.

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Examples:

Privates

• Private Iron from Top 10: The Forty Niners
• Private HIVE from Teen Titans
• Private Warr
• When Captain Cold was de-aged to his early teens, he took the name Private Cold.
• Private, the youngest of the penguins in the Madagascar films.
• Private Brick McArthur from Total Drama
• Pvt. Bullit, a hero character in Boom Beach with a serious case of Testosterone Poisoning.

Corporals

• Corporal Punishment, Newt's character in Nitro's superhero game in Knights of the Dinner Table.
• Corporal, Private's counterpart in North Wind in Penguins of Madagascar.

Sergeants

• Sgt. Slaughter
• The State Patrol, a jobber tag team in WCW with a police gimmick, featured DeWayne Bruce as Sgt. Buddy Lee Parker.
• Sarge Steel is interesting, because of Flip-Flop of God. Either he was a sergeant during his time in the military and the nickname stuck with him or his actual first name is "Sargent".
• Sergeant Superior, one of the Actioneers from The Astounding Wolf-Man.
• Sergeant Stomp from The Intimates
• Sgt. Marvel of The Savage Dragon
• Sgt. States, Jack Staff's Captain Ersatz version of Captain America who is actually an evil vampire.
• Sgt. Strike
• Sgt. Brick, another Boom Beach hero character.
• Sarge from Red vs. Blue, although an interesting twist in that it is is given name and rank, but it is initially just presented as his rank. His full title for the entirety of Blood Gulch and a fair bit beyond is "Sergeant Sarge", but this reveal only comes way down the line when he is promoted to "Super Colonel."

Lieutenants

• Gym Leader Lt. Surge of Pokémon, though he's apparently an actual American military veteran.
• Lieutenant Liberty, one of the superheroes fantasized about by Insane Jane
• In the Marvel Universe, the NYPD's Code: BLUE is called in to deal with superhuman threats, and can thus be considered superheroes in their own right. Their leader is Lt. Stone
• Shazam!: There were three other Billy Batsons (Fat Billy, Tall Billy and Hill Billy) who could gain the powers of Captain Marvel, but only if they all said the word "Shazam!" at the same time. They were known as the Lieutenant Marvels.
• The other half of WCW's State Patrol was Dale Veasey, aka Lt. James Earl Wright.
• Lou Tenant aka Lieutenant, the Master’s Number Two in Fallout

Commanders

• Commander Steel of the All-Star Squadron. Two of his grandchildren tried to keep his legacy going, but out of respect to the fact that he really was a Captain in the Marine Corps they went by Steel and Citizen Steel, respectively - averting and inverting the trope.
• Commander Kraken, though as leader of a band of pirates he'd technically be a Captain.
• Commander Capitalism, a prominent member of Capes, Inc.
• Minor Wolverine foe Commander Courage is not only a supervillain, not only a real Lieutenant-Commander in the Belgian army, but his real name is Guillaume Courage.
• As if to mock us, Captain Cold shows up here again with a 25th Century Legacy Character known as Commander Cold - and another one in the 853rd century!
• Commander Power from Common Grounds
• Commander Keen.
• "Commander Cash" was an in-universe comic book superhero on Robocop The Series.
• Commander X of the X-Team from Minilife TV
• Manly Guys Doing Manly Things: Commander Badass holds his rank in an a far-future military that runs on Rule of Cool. As an Artificial Human, his "real name" is D37-9E-B52, but the Awesome Mc Cool Name has better public appeal.
• CommanderVideo (note the CamelCase) is the protagonist of the BIT.TRIP series, as well as the leader of his group of friends.

Captains

• See The Good Captain and Captain Superhero for countless heroic examples.
• Captain Boomerang
• Captain Cold, an enemy of The Flash
• In Dragon Ball Z, Captain Ginyuu holds a quick job interview to find replacements for the lost members of his Quirky Miniboss Squad. One of the candidates tries to invoke this trope but accidentally "outranks" the captain and gets punted over the horizon for his insolence.
• Captain Dynamic
• Captain Valor, a villainous tribute to Captain Marvel.
• Captain Steel, archenemy of Judo Girl.
• Captain Metropolis from Watchmen.
• Kapitan Krieg, Jack Staff's greatest enemy
• Captain Atom, who actually held the rank of captain in the air force before being promoted to major.
• The Adventures of Captain Proton is a Show Within the Show of Star Trek: Voyager, with the eponymous hero a 1930's Flash Gordon-expy.
• Kaptin Badrukk and Kaptin Bluddflagg, ork Freeboota captains. Given that orks have maybe four ranks- boyz, nob, warboss and warlord, this is presumably taken in imitation of human ranking.
• Whose Line Is It Anyway?: This is common during the game Unlikely Superheroes. One of the most famous is when Colin was Captain Hair.
• Cpt. Everspark, a Gadgeteer Genius hero character in Boom Beach.
• Exaggerated with Captain Tim of The Twelve: Tim is his actual name, he just stuck "Captain" in front of it to get his superhero name.
• Heck, This Very Wiki has Captain Geographic, Captain Patriotic, Captain Ethnic—you get the idea.

Majors

• Major Disaster, foe of Green Lantern.
• Major Glory from Dexter's Laboratory
• Major Victory of the Force of July
• Also Major Victory from Guardians of the Galaxy (31st century incarnation)
• Major Force, a villain of Captain Atom and perpetrator of the original Stuffed in the Fridge moment.
• Ursa Major. And yes, he really does hold the rank of Major.
• Major Bummer averts this while trying to play it straight - the title isn't the hero's superhero name, but it's intended to sound like it is.
• Major Mapleleaf from Alpha Flight.
• Major Maxim, one of the primary antagonists of Danger Girl
• Major Havoc, a teammate of Empowered's on the Superhomies.
• Major Battle, a member of the Brute Force from The Savage Dragon
• Major Minor, a minor (shut up) member of the Circus of Crime
• Major Deadpool, who naturally hails from an alternate universe
• On the Robocop TV show, Major Market was the sidekick of in-universe super hero Commander Cash.
• Motoko Kusanagi is commonly referred to as simply The Major in any incarnation of the franchise.^note How she received the nickname is told in the at least two mutually exclusive ways. In Ghost In The Shell Standalone Complex she was said to be issued her rank in an express Battlefield Promotion in exceptional circumstances, her being essentially a civilian hacker of unclear origins, while in Ghost in the Shell: Arise though she serves in a Special Forces unit, her rank was entirely ordinary. The original manga and Oshii's Movies simply gloss it over. Anyway, she always retires from the military before joining the Section 9, making her rank just a nickname.
• Major Amazing and Captain Omnipotent in Dr. Blink: Superhero Shrink argue over who outranks who.
  Captain Omnipotent: These ranks really mean something?
  Nocturne: I'm looking it up.

Colonels

• Colonel America in the Marvel Zombies Alternate Continuity.
  • In the Ultimate Universe, the only person besides Cap to survive the Super-Soldier treatment is Colonel Abdul al-Rahman, or simply "The Colonel".
• Colonel Lilliput from Top 10, inspired in no small part by General Jumbo
• Colonel Computron
• Colonel Brass, a minor Batman villain.
• Another minor enemy of Batman's is Colonel Sulphur
• Speaking of Batman, early issues of Detective Comics featured a back-up about Colonel Blimp.
• Colonel Bravo, father of Shaft.
• Colonel Future, a pre-Crisis foe of Superman.
• Pro wrestler Ed Wiskoski was best known for his run in the AWA as Colonel DeBeers, a pro-apartheid South African (who didn't bother with the accent).

Generals

• In WCW, Hugh Morrus went by "General Hugh G. Rection" for a while when he led the Misfits In Action (MIA). His cohorts were "Major Gunns", "Major Stash" (Van Hammer)^note Originally supposed to be "Private Stash", but Hammer complained about his low rank enough to get promoted, even though it kills the joke, "Lt. Loco" (Chavo Guerrero Jr.), "Corporal Cajun" (Lash LeRoux) and Sgt. A-WOL (The Wall).
• Pro wrestling managers General Skandor Akbar and General Adnan.
• They've called the cruel Russian environment "General Winter" and then some. This is because the winter has kept invaders away with frightening success.
  • General Winter is given villainous human form in Silver Age Sentinels
  • It is sometimes said that WW2 was actually won by only four generals - General Winter and General Mud from the USSR, as well as General Motors and General Electric from the USA ^Explanation The harsh winter and boggy conditions caused Germany’s advance to stall, but it was the USA’s industrial might that allowed the Allies to then out produce Germany in military equipment and war materials.
• General M. Bison
• Many Generals in comic books are likely to be actual generals - and most are antagonistic. General Sam Lane, General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, General Dru-Zod, General Wade Eilling, General Demetrius Lazer...
• The General, a minor Batman villain obsessed with military history and strategy. For the record, he's a very young man who even went by "Li'l General" in his early appearances. He later became a nemesis of Robin.
  • Wade Eilling is mentioned above, but in Post-Crisis continuity he simply started calling himself "the General" after being turned into a colossal monster man.
• Classic Doom Patrol foe General Immortus
• General Jumbo (from The Beano) and his Jack Staff Captain Ersatz General Tubbs. Jack Staff and Captain Cold are sharing a good laugh right about now.
• General Wolfram, a wolf man with a Nazi theme.
• General Disarray from South Park.
• General Glory, one-time member of Justice League International.
• General Monger from Monsters vs. Aliens.
• General Red of the X-Team from Minilife TV
• General Guy, the military-dressed shyguy from Paper Mario.
• During the late 2000s recession, there were jokes about General Motors (an American automobile company) being “demoted” to “Colonel Motors” when it entered bankruptcy restructuring proceedings, and being further demoted to “Corporal Motors” when it had to take a government bailout.

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