YMMV / American Ninja

• Complete Monster: Col. Scott Mulgrew, from The Annihilation, is a British ex-soldier who teamed up with a cabal of Middle Eastern Terrorists to extort 50 million dollars out of America under the threat of nuking New York. Mulgrew is a vile, mass-murdering, America-hating sadist who doubles as a rehearsed Torture Technician, operating his own torture chamber where he tests out his skills on everyone from captured American soldiers to three innocent patrons of a bar the heroes visited. As the film goes on Mulgrew clearly indicates his intentions to rape the hero's female compatriot and ultimately attempts to burn all of his prisoners to death when his nuke plot is thwarted.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Jackson, played by the late, great Steve James, doesn't so much steal the movies he appears in^note the first three as takes them over through his enormous charisma and generous helping of asskickery.
• Informed Wrongness: In the first film, Jackson himself says he was wrong for tearing Joe a new one over getting a bunch of people killed when the latter decided to fight back against the hijackers in the opening... except it's really hard to argue with anything he said. In Jackson's mind the entire thig seems to boil down to "He kicked my ass so I must be wrong," apparently.
• Spiritual Adaptation: At the time, the films can be seen as the closest we get for a live-action spin-off series for G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero character Snake Eyes.