Society of Virtue (originally titled Sociedade da Virtude) is a Brazilian series of YouTube Videos that serve as Deconstructive Parody of superhero comics, cartoons, and movies featuring expies of various DC and Marvel Heroes. They can be viewed here
Now has a character page.
Society of Virtue provides examples of:
- '80s Hair: The R-Men's resident Storm expy, named Blast, has such ridiculously large hair she has her own personal entourage of stylists to tend to it.
- Addiction-Powered: Parodied in "Blue Crystalic"; the Green Lantern Expy is just a junkie hallucinating he's a superhero.
- Aliens Are Bastards: The Spock Expy from "Star Trip" uses "Logic" as an excuse to weasel out of dangerous situations.
- All Webbed Up: In "Two Men and a Spiderweb".
- Ax-Crazy: Not being allowed to kill in World War 2 to preserve his squeaky clean image quickly causes Patriot Lieutenant to become steadily more insane as he forces his sidekick to murder Axis soldiers in his stead.
- Badass Bystander: One episode has a hooker Flaring Roach was soliciting tagging along on a mission to save several heroes from Doctor Evil Congressman and kicking his ass. She and Roach's Body Double are now part of a superteam.
- Bad Future: Parodied in "Undesired Days of Future Past". The future that Future Bear came from is actually much better than the present for most everyone else. He came back because it's bad for 'him' specifically.
- Played straight in "Season Finale"
- Batman Parody: The series has three different expies of Batman each serving a different function.
- Black Badness is meant to represent the general archetype of The Cowl. His style of dress and facial hair makes him more resemble Green Arrow but his role as the Society's second in command and his archnemesis Pierrot being an obvious Joker stand-in make him more Batman-like.
- Bernard and Fredick are supposed to be more of a parody of Silver Age/Adam West-era Batman. Bernard is portrayed as a rich manchild with a drinking problem who drags a frightened teenager with him on life-threatening missions.
- Urban Crow is used to parody more modern appearances of Batman. He's The Comically Serious with a strained relationship with the local police commissioner and flashy but horribly impractical tactics.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: Taranis's kingdom is constantly at war because there's always some member of his family out for revenge against another member of his family. They are never at war with anybody 'except' other members of his family.
- Black Vikings: Taranis is supposed to be a Welsh god but he's black. Justified since he's supposed to be a parody of both Storm and Thor
- Bloody Hilarious: "Blood Rain" and "Marvelous Boy and Ms. Dorothy"
- Boxed Crook: Defied in "Suicide Troop", where the Suicide Squad parodies (with the exception of the Harley Quinn parody, who responds to everything with "I'm in") refuse to join a group explicitly called the Suicide Troop until the Amanda Waller parody offers to change the name to imply a slightly higher chance of survival.
- Butter Face: Tarantula Man.
- Cardboard Prison: Pierrot, one of Black Badness' villains, claims that he was let out of the asylum because he gave the right answer to the Rorschach Test.
- Cast of Expies: The cast of the shorts is comprised of parodic versions of famous superheroes from Marvel Comics and DC Comics.
- The Chosen Zero: In "The Chosen One", said "Chosen One" destined to save the world turns out to be a Neo-Nazi redneck;
Word of God says it's supposed to be a Take That! to Donald Trump. - City of Adventure: Megalopolisville.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Michael was appointed as one to Bernard by his mother. Subverted since Bernard has so many crazy ideas that his mother's already Long List doesn't cover, so he simply allows him to do the things that will get them in the least amount of trouble.
- Comic Book Death: In "Resurrection", leading to a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: The guy Captain Virtue was in the middle of saving in her premiere episode really didn't appreciate her non stop spouting of feminist speech, and would much rather have Majestic save him since she never preaches about any of that........except Captain Virtue barely spoke to him beyond telling him she was going to save him, while when Majestic shows up she admits that her 'entire thing' is talking about female empowerment, and it was painfully obvious to both heroines that what the guy really hated about being rescued by Captain Virtue was that she was dressed in a non-revealing or form-fitting flight suit and not a barely-there leotard like Majestic, who he was too busy staring at her under-cleavage to even know she was talking.
- Complexity Addiction: The Archer in "The Archer 2" with his trick arrows.
- Continuity Nod: Several.
- The Stinger of "Fox Fusion" shows Blur still has the rat dressed as Black Badness.
- The commercial breaks for "First Class 1 & 2" are callbacks to several previous episodes.
- The female monk from "Chosen One" takes part in Big Bang's origin episode.
- Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: Mr. Platinum's superhero group is like the Avengers if they tried to market their missions as movies.
- Bloodshot is an actor working for a company that owns rights to his fictional in-universe superhero persona and have him engage in actual superheroics so they can sell merch.
- Corrupt Politician: Doctor Evil Congressman
- Create Your Own Villain:
- Parodied in "Majestic", turns out there are a lot of Too Kinky to Torture fanboys out there willing to be beaten up by a Stripperiffic superheroine.
- In "Tarantulaman Villains & Blast", it's lampshaded that Tarantulaman's extended Rogues Gallery not only know who Tarantulaman is, they were all in some way involved in his personal life before ending up becoming a costumed supervillain with a vendetta against him. One of them (a random person he had met once at a party) even points out that he doesn't have anything against him, yet he feels like he has to kill him anyway.
- Cute and Psycho: Ronald the Fox.
- Decon-Recon Switch: Ginger Panther starts out as a transvestite who uses his "superhero persona" as an excuse to cheat on his spouse. His later appearances have him as a more traditional Black Widow pastiche who actually does save the world, only to lampoon the super-spy genre and the absurdity of a secret agent being part of a high-profile superhero team like the Society of Virtue.
- REBOOT posits that for as much guff the series likes to throw at comic books and their indulgences, the show still loves them and pointedly doesn't want them to transform into shallow, self-conscious shells of themselves reminiscent of the rebooted Society.
- Dirty Communists: Captain Space Rocket hates them to the point he will ignore any other criminal activity to stop them. Though Captain Space Rocket also tends to be selective towards the definition on "Communists" when one of the straw-villains' goals happened to include free trade—a concept typically assigned to capitalism—that made Captain Space Rocket ignore him on the ground of being a "center-left".
- Dirty Old Man: Professor R isn't exactly old but he's a colossal creep.
- Disguised in Drag: The Ginger Panther is an actual Drag Queen, but the outfit is also his superhero costume so it fits. Also the mooks from "Villains" have to do this to join a themed supervillain group.
- Enfant Terrible: A cutaway in "Faking Big" has The Society letting a Littlest Cancer Patient who wanted to be a Supervillain beat them up as a last request. Big Bang is the only one willing to point out how disturbing a wish this was, while the other members of the team found it to be rather adorable.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Happens in "Faking Big" and "Mascot". Coincidentally, both involve Volt getting crushed by a tentacle monster.
- Evil Cripple: Taken to extremes in "Ginger Panther and the Aluminium Island".
- Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humour: Inverted, Eyesight is a superhero who has no sense of humor, Mr. Platinum is frustrated at this as he's trying to market footage from the teams missions as movies and it looks bad for the cameras.
- Evil Lawyer Joke: The Galactus expy from "Birdman No More" turns out to be a cosmic lawyer, Big Bang tries to refute this by saying that being a Humanoid Abomination that eats worlds doesn't make the alien a lawyer only to realize the similarity.
- Fake Ultimate Hero:
- Scary Hook is a serial killer who pretends to be a Dark Is Not Evil Terror Hero as a cover.
- Bloodshot is an actor hired to be a Corporate-Sponsored Superhero so they can make money off selling his merch, he doesn't even bother to stick with his characters backstory when talking to the Society to gain membership.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: The Apocalypse expy from "R-Men Armageddon" is several thousand years old and has very out of date ideas how to conquer the world.
- Forever War: In "Autotrons 2" its implied that the Autobot and Decepticon expies enjoy living on earth and do this as an excuse not to leave.
- The Ghost: In "Juan Marine and the Whale " the narrator mentions the trap the heroes are in was made by a villain called The Torquoise Mollusc, but he never shows up in person.
- God Is Evil: Played for laughs in "Jonathan & Samantha" where the superheroes treat Jesus's Second Coming as a typical "Physical God trying to bring about The End of the World as We Know It" scenario. Though it turns out it wasn't the real Jesus so they were right.
- God of Thunder: Taranis is an Expy of The Mighty Thor (with a dash of Black Lightning in his design) and a member of the titular Society of Virtue. He is the Celtic God of Thunder who wields the power of thunder with his magic wheel. Being an old Pagan god, he is powered by Human Sacrifice (a rather problematic drawback considering he is working as a modern superhero) and it is implied that his magical wheel is just a useless bobble given to him by his father to get him to be more responsible.
- Gratuitous Animal Sidekick: Invoked by Volt in "Mascot".
- Great White Hunter: In the short "Tarantulaman Villains & Blast", the Kraven pastiche is dressed like the perfect picture of a Victorian Era colonial hunter.
- Hated by All: Tarantula Man's entire Rogues Gallery is composed of people who know him personally, that includes his teachers, former friends, ex-girlfriends and all his living relatives. Even one of his friends who wasn't his enemy decides that he 'has' to be Tarantula Man's enemy because there has to be something seriously wrong with him if this many people close to him all end up becoming super villains with grudges against him.
- Horrifying Hero: Scary Hook would probably be more effective as a superhero if he didn't dress like a slasher movie villain.Also, if he wasn't an actual slasher movie villain pretending to be a superhero.
- Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Juan Marine's ex-girlfriend is a literal whale; he insists it's not bestiality since he's part fish.
- HULK MASH!-Up: Stuff is a large hulking man with discolored yellow skin who speaks in third person and gets stronger the madder he is. In "STUFF", Stuff is trying to save the rest of his team by keeping their plane from falling off of a cliff. They all try to make him mad to make him stronger, but their hurtful comments either make him sad or happy by accident. It takes the Archer admitting to sleeping with his wife for him to get angry, but it is a Tranquil Fury that leads to him letting the plane drop.
- Human Sacrifice: In "Taranis - The Real God of Thunder", how did you think a god recharges his powers.
- Humongous Mecha: In "Mighty Morphing Applied Force Rangers"
- Ignored Epiphany: Tanaris's father considers the idea that maybe his family should go to therapy rather constantly war with each other for a moment, right up until he realizes the suggestion came from his disguised Loki expy adopted son, who legitimately just wanted all the pointless fighting to stop. Then he decides to have him ineffectively punished for this deception yet again.
- Imagination-Based Superpower: "Purple Fannypack" is a deconstruction of how easy it would be for someone to suffer Power Incontinence when they are shaped by your thought. Purple Fannypack was going to easily save the town with his powers....right up until Majestic showed up and made it very hard for him not to think about what he ''should'' be thinking about.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The mugger from "Choices" may have wanted to rob the Wayne expies but even he was kind of freaked out when the father's stupidity led to their deaths.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Mr. Platinum is very clearly Elon Musk.
- Bloodshot is Vin Diesel.
- Inventional Wisdom: The scientist in "Age of Hypertron". On one hand, he couldn't have done more to cause A.I. Is a Crapshoot if he tried, on the other Hypertron ends up more traumatized than evil and is easily beaten.
- It's All About Me: The human from "Guardians of 0.01% of the Galaxy" refuses to take any missions on planets he cannot survive on, regardless of how rich it would make them if it means that 'he' can't play the hero on it.
- Future Bear wants to prevent a peaceful human-mutant future because he's the only member of the R-Men who came out of the event worse with half of his body replaced with very heavy cybernetics.
- It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Carl seems to think so, judging by his reaction in "Chosen One"
- Last of His Kind: In "The Crystal Mansion in the Middle of Alaska", the alien from "Adopted Son" learns that he isn't and that his dad is a dick.
- Lethal Chef: The woman from "Ghost Skater" managed to SUMMON A DEMON LORD with her terrible cooking.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Big Bang tries to avert this ahead of time in "Crossover" by setting up a meeting to make sure that the Society and the R-Men don't end up in a pointless brawl. He fails.
- Limited Animation: While the art direction is certainly top-notch, the actual animation is next-to-nonexistent. The character's mouths, eyebrows, and sometimes irises are the only parts of their bodies that actually move; when the characters need to appear in a specific position or angle, the scene just simply jump cuts or transitions to it. Seeing as how the series is a parody of the superhero genre, it's likely this was intentional to invoke the feel of either motion comics or older 1960s superhero cartoons.
- Load-Bearing Boss: In "Aluminum Island" when Ginger Panther knocks out the Big Bad Mission Control tells her that it disarmed the missile, Ginger Panther wonders how.
- Mama Bear: Deconstructed in "Marvelous Boy and Ms. Dorothy", she can only use her superpowers when her son is in danger meaning in order to be a superhero she has to put him in danger.
- Man of Kryptonite: The titular villain in "The Shrimp Man", see Weaksauce Weakness below.
- Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: A throwaway line by Bernard in "The Terrible Misunderstanding" implies that Fredick has masturbated on all of the pillows in their mansion.
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: In "Mind Link" Professor R pulls the R-Men into his mind during a battle against a villain to come up with a battle strategy only to accidentally pull the villain in too. While the R-Men are used to the professor's antics enough to merely be grossed out the villain ends up traumatized.
- Monster Clown: Black Badness' nemesis Pierrot.
- One Jonathan and Samantha episode has them looking for a demonic Monster Clown hiding at a clown convention, after trying to narrow things down by asking the crowd if they committed any horrible acts and failing because everyone in the room answers "yes" the demon clown gives up because after seeing everyone else's answers he's starting to freak out.
- Mood Whiplash: Most of the series is a rather Affectionate Parody of the superhero genre and episodes usually only involve dialogue between characters with actual combat being rare. Black is a completely serious story that covers one of Black Badness' adventures and hints at some of his background.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Doctor Evil Congressman again.
- Moving the Goalposts: The monk lady from "Chosen One" tries to backpedal after having second thoughts about Carl, but he shoots down her attempts.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: After arguing over Pragmatic Villainy vs. Cartoonish Supervillainy the villains in "Villains Meeting" decide to create a plan that combines both which results in them being declared Superheroes for pirating streaming services.
- Non-Human Sidekick: The rat dressed like Black Badness in "Mascot" and Roland the Fox in "Fox Fusion".
- Offing the Annoyance: in "Guardians of 0.01% of the Galaxy" the aliens kill the Token Human by "accidentally" opening the spaceship door on a planet where he can't survive.
- Older Than They Look: The eponymous Rosie from "Rosie, The Wonder Woman" is incredulous that Jessica, the amazon she's speaking to, is over 50 years old and yet still has an Impossible Hourglass Figure.
- Only Sane Man: The senator in "Weapon Z" can see what the result of the scientist needlessly antagonizing the Wolverine expy will result in.
- Only the Chosen May Wield: Taranis's Wagon Wheel in "Taranis 2" is supposed to work like this, from the context though it sounds like his dad lied to him to get him out of the house.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The Clark Kent Expy from "Adopted Son" turns out not to be a Human Alien, also discussed in "Thousand Disguises in the Golden Mirage Casino".
- Perverse Puppet: General Puppet.
- Police Brutality: In "Black Zebra" the police shoot Black Zebra on sight. Admittedly he did turn up out of nowhere wearing an intimidating costume. However, they continue to harass him after he establishes he is a hero. Cock their guns again when he says 'black', accuse him of stealing his E.M.P producing watch because it looked expensive, throw a gun at his feet so they can claim he was armed when they shoot him, and when he takes off his mask to be less intimidating. The police open fire on him again without provocation when they see he's black.
- Poor Communication Kills: Taranis in "Fox Fusion" is trying to tell Monocle that they'll be sharing a room, but everything he says makes him sound like he wants to molest him.
- Pretend to Be Brainwashed: In "MIND SLAVE", the minions of the Scarlet Man are simply pretending to be brainwashed by him since he's a rich and gullible idiot who gives them an amazingly comfortable lifestyle complete with trips to exotic locales with little personal hassle. It's so good that even the Jessica Jones parody decides to get in on the action.
- Propaganda Hero: Deconstructed in Patriot Lieutenant & Tobby. Patriot Lieutenant reveals, since he is supposed to a symbol of the cause, he isn't allowed to kill anyone... in a war. So, they gave him a Kid Sidekick to do all the actual killing.
- The Psycho Rangers: Deconstructed with the Society of Disvirtue. Made in a hurry by Big Bang's nemesis Colonel Zed, he was unable to find a corresponding Evil Counterpart for each member of the Society of Virtue due to how often, like many superhero teams, its charter changes, leaving the Archer with no one to fight. He also attempts to up his chances of victory by bringing along Weird Big Bang as extra muscle.
- Puny Earthlings: In "Guardians of 0.01% of the Galaxy" the team is limited in what missions they can go and because the Token Human can't survive on most planets.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The Venom expy "Poison" takes control of his host Freddy and forces him to do terrible things that he would never do himself. However this trope is not applied maliciously as Freddy is a lazy, selfish, slacking jerkass, and the 'terrible things' Poison makes him do are clean his house, makeup with his family and girlfriend and re-enroll in college. The symbiote essentially forces him to act like a decent human being against his will.
- Radiation-Immune Mutants: Not featured in "The Nuclear Powered Man". Though "First Class part 2" reveals they Never Found the Body.
- Rain of Blood: In "The Hyper Powerful Twins - The Blood Rain" of course, turns out the Zan Expy doesn't have the Required Secondary Powers that prevent him from evaporating while he's water.
- Starfish Language: Played for Laughs in "Birdman No More". The heroes initially can't understand what the giant alien is saying, then one of them, who was sued by his wife, is able to recognize the words. The alien is just talking in legal jargon in a really droning monotone.
- The Straight and Arrow Path: Deconstructed in "The Archer". Turns out a bow and arrow aren't all that great for crime-fighting.
- Super Hero Origin: "Choices" and "Adopted Son", "The Impressives" plays it for laughs by using the lamest origins imaginable.
- Super Zeroes: Most of the cast in some way or another but The Impressives stand out, and among them, you have guys like Man-Man and The Steven. Also BORDAM.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Bear from the future complains that because only one of his arms is robotic, the weight imbalance has destroyed his back.
- In "Suicide Troop" the criminals refuse to do the mission because it's almost certain that they will die. When the Amanda Waller expy threatens to blow up the bombs in the heads, the criminals point out that they were almost certain to die on the mission regardless, so the threat is not effective.
- It's really, really hard to take action shots of a super-hero that a paper would want to publish when you are the hero you're trying to take photos of. The editor Tarantula-Man tries to sell photos of his alter-ego to not only doesn't want photo's of Tarantula-Man doing mundane things in a mask, he questions how he got photos of the hero going through his mundane routine in the first place.
- Technologically Blind Elders: Lampirydae used to be into Zeerust technology back in the day, but due to repeated cases of It Will Never Catch On is out of touch with modern tech. Here's an example of some of his tech by the way
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Bernard and Fredick manage to defeat Lord Roulette in "The Terrible Misunderstanding" but said victory causes them to go on a celebratory bender that kicks in the much weirder conflict of the episode.
- Too Dumb to Live: Several examples:
- The Thomas Wayne Expy from "Choices" manages to get himself and his wife killed due to his Blood Knight tendencies, his ideas on what his son should do with his life aren't that great, either.
- The heroes in "The Stuff" try to save themselves by making the Hulk expy angry... by telling him how they screwed him over without him knowing about it with predictable results.
- The woman in "Scary Hook", and the audience, as Lampshaded by Scary Hook himself.
- The scientist in "Weapon Z", his entire plan to build a Super-Soldier revolves around needlessly pissing off a Wolverine expy.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Lord Tamikatsu and a lot of Majestic's Rogues Gallery really want to get beat up.
- War Is Hell: This is a main theme of "Patriot Lieutenant & Tobby". Even the Villain Protagonist Patriot Lieutenant openly admits this. note
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: The Hammer Man of The Impressives obviously.
- Wonder Twin Powers: The Hyper Powerful Twins.
- Working with the Ex: In "Juan Marine and the Whale", Juan Marine has to team up with his ex, the aforementioned whale.
- Yellow Peril: Lord Tamikatsu.
