G.I. Joe / YMMV - TV Tropes

Adaptation Displacement: Most Joe media after the original cartoon tend to portray Duke as either the team leader (when Hawk doesn't appear) or a central figure right from the start, even though the original toys and comics did not initially feature him for a bit.
Audience-Alienating Era: The DiC Entertainment-produced cartoons in the early 90s likely count, being a Lighter and Softer version than the 80s series. One episode even features Cobra plotting in taking over a school with bogus history books, and end up getting defeated by school-children.
- The Toyline itself had entered a Dork Age of its' own around the same time. Vehicles began looking far more fantastical than military, often painted in bright, even florescent colors, and depending far more on gimmicks like launching missiles and rotors.
- G.I. Joe Extreme anyone? This thing was pretty unpopular since it was riddled with so much Rob Liefeld-esque 90s cheese and it more or less killed the entire franchise up until 2001-2002.
- G.I. Joe: Sigma 6 can count as this as well for going so far into the other direction that it's painfully Animesque, an entire squad of ninjas and campy dialogue.
Awesome Music: Especially the opening theme of the 1987 movie.
Broken Base:
- Comic fans vs cartoon fans. The debate subjects range from the tone (the silliness of the cartoon vs. the more serious comic) to how certain characters were handled.
- Science fiction elements. Some think the Joes should be, at most, 20 Minutes into the Future with a focus on harder military stories, while others embrace the full gambit of science fiction elements from clones to Cybertronian technology.
- Speaking of the latter, there seems to be a fair amount of debate between certain fans on whether G.I. Joe should share a universe with Transformers or not.
Complete Monster: Now has its own page.
Creepy Awesome: Cobra Commander, when he gets to be an actual threat.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Due to the huge cast, this trope is inevitable. Snake-Eyes, for example, is extremely popular among fans. For a later part of the Marvel Comics run, the cover title actually included "Featuring Snake-Eyes." As well as his pet wolf Timber and Storm Shadow his archrival.
- Dr. Sidney Biggles-Jones is an interesting case. Normally she'd just be a minor scientist (albeit a good-looking one), but she was a key player in the Transformers: Generation 2 crossover/Backdoor Pilot, making her a memorable figure in two different fandoms.
Evil Is Cool: Loads of Cobra members. Cobra Commander himself frequently qualifies.
Fan-Preferred Couple:
- Comic readers have always preferred Snake Eyes and Scarlett while cartoon viewers took her to be Duke's girlfriend.
- Many fans have shipped Cobra Commander with the Baroness over her canon love interest of Destro or gone for a One True Threesome.
Fair for Its Day: The original animated series is often mocked for its lack of a body count and has been deemed "The A-Team of animation"; however it was actually one of the edgier American animated kids shows of the '80s. For starters, characters were able to actually hit each other and they showed that plenty of times in the show. And while characters weren't killed they did acknowledge the concept of casualties in war, so Never Say "Die" was averted— heck, there was an episode where they talked to ghosts, and another where some Joes found the decayed skeletal remains of themselves (in a parallel Earth).
- In the episode "Let's Play Soldier", a group of Joes went to Southeast Asia and encountered Amerasian street kids acknowledged to have been fathered by American soldiers during the Vietnam War.
Fashion-Victim Villain: Metal facemask, Absolute Pec-Cleavage, and a big old disco collar. Destro almost makes it work, somehow. Besides, his Iron Grenadier outfit compensates for the original one.
- Not to mention Serpentor's costume. Hoo boy...
  - Said costume gets an update in the "Devil's Due" comic run, but it's still pretty darned silly. Credit where it's due, the artist took the concept and got it to skew towards the awesome end of hokey. Gone is the cobra hood that made it look like a cheap Halloween costume, and the weird neck snakes are shrunken and incorporated into the sleeker, more metallic look. In the end, though, it is still a guy in a snake suit.
- Cobra Commander's hood is this for some fans. It's a bit of a split on whether it's in line with his evil yet anonymous dictator shtick, or if it looks like he's wearing a very small ghost costume over his head.
Fridge Logic: So, if they're supposed to be the Real American Heroes, why is their flamethrower-guy Irish? The UK comics averted this by making G.I. Joe into an international strike force, though that raises the question of why an international team only has one non-American or British person on it.
Friendly Fandoms: With Transformers which was inevitable given that the two are basically set in the same universe and crossover on a regular basis.
Growing the Beard: One could argue that the shift away from realistic military toys to more general adventure toys had this result for the franchise as a whole. It gave the series a more unique, vibrant, and interesting setting and allowed the creators' imaginations to roam free. Not to mention it led to the creation of all of the franchise's most beloved characters like Cobra Commander, Snake-Eyes, and Destro.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- The episode Cobra Quake. While the plot of the episode focuses on G.I. Joe stopping Cobra from making an artificially created earthquake to destroy Tokyo, on March 11, 2011, Japan actually got hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. Now, The Hub no longer airs this episode on its channel.
- In part 4 of "The MASS Device," when Cobra Commander learns that the G.I. Joe team's surrender is a bluff, he orders the Device to fire on New York City, thanks to a targeting device the Baroness secretly planted on the Empire State Building. At one point, when the beam it fires is shown on a monitor the way it's drawn it makes it look like it's heading straight for the World Trade Center instead.
- In the original animated movie, Duke's death was retconned away at the last minute. For G.I. Joe: Retaliation, they refilmed a bunch of scenes to include Duke's death. It's too bad they didn't retcon away his death at the last minute, despite not padding out Channing Tatum's role.
- One of the "Special Missions" issue has a terrorist group hijacking an airliner and trying to crash it into a Soviet chemical weapons depot, with Soviet fighter planes wanting to shot it down. Besides it being likely inspired by the KAL 007 shotdown, the similarities to the 9/11 attacks are obvious.
- Terrorism was certainly a concern in The '80s but certainly became a massively larger issue when the War on Terror occurred. Suddenly, the prospect of international networks of terrorist organizations were no longer the stuff of fantasy. Doubly so when ISIL became a concern as they became a high-tech media savvy threat.
- Cobra Commander in the comic used a lot of populist class-based rhetoric that was always a part of the American discoure but became increasingly relevant after the War on Terror. Many individuals could describe the comic book version of Cobra as a militia.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Hama's original proposal involved Nick Fury's son assembling a team to take on Hydra. This is almost exactly what's happening with Marcus Fury/Nick Fury Jr. in recent Marvel comics.
- Seal Team 6 and the mission to kill Osama bin Laden (as recounted in Zero Dark Thirty) feels a lot like a real-life version of GI Joe, including bringing a dog along and wacky hijinks with the EOD guy.
- Netflix's The Toys That Made Us revealed that Snake Eyes was the 'cost cutting measure' character, and that his creators actually considered him "boring". In 2018, it was announced that Snake Eyes would be getting his own stand-alone movie.
I Am Not Shazam: G.I. Joe is the name of the organization, not the name of any one character. There is actually a character named G.I. Joe in the series, Joseph B. Colton, the legendary soldier for whom the organization was named—his name was Joe, and he was a GI (traditionally, from WW2). For the record, he's implied to be the very same gentleman from the 12-inch line famed for his full beard and kung fu grip.
Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
- Scarlett, as the main female Joe, has this: Official Couple status either with Duke in the cartoon or with Snake-Eyes in the comics, Clutch tried to hit on her in the comics, just like Tunnel Rat in the Sigma 6 cartoon and Ripcord in the live-action movie. Her interaction with Zartan in the TV episode "The Gamemaster" looks almost flirtatious. And there's even people who pair her with Bumblebee due to them teaming-up in the many crossovers.
- The Baroness despite being loyal to Destro in most continuities is someone that is frequently paired with other characters like Cobra Commander, Serpentor, or Storm Shadow. She's also been paired with other characters like Duke in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. She even had a child with Cobra Commander in Transformers vs. G.I. Joe who turned out to be Serpentor!
Magnificent Bastard: See here.
Memetic Badass: Joe Colton, the first G.I. Joe, is treated as this both in and out of universe. Ditto for Snake Eyes.
Memetic Mutation: Fenslerfilm's dubbed-over PSAs.
- Cobra Commander's lament of "Was once a man!" after being transformed into a snake-thing.
- And of course, "YOOOOOO JOE!"
- "COBRA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!"
- The picture of Cobra Commander kicking a puppy, so much so that it's the image for the trope page Kick the Dog.
- The toyline is where the phrase "Kung Fu Grip" originates from, something that's been poked fun at in many parody commercials.
Moment of Awesome: Snake-Eyes is one of these personified, including breaking into Destro's castle to save Scarlett and actually taking on Storm Shadow and his ninjas with little weapons, and breaking free during a Cobra torture session, and going upstairs to rescue the people who were supposed to rescue him. In Snake-Eyes-Land, prisoner saves you!
- The opening for the 1987 film is made up of several of these. Examples include Snake-Eyes stealing a Trouble Bubble in mid air, Cobra Commander getting punched off the Statue of Liberty, and Duke blowing up the Cobra airship.
Moral Event Horizon:
- In World War III, Cobra Commander definitely crosses the line by activating a superweapon that melts indiscriminate numbers of people that the comic implies to be in the millions.
- In the opening of Resolute, Cobra Commander kills ten million innocent Russian civilians, just to prove he should be taken seriously.
- When Overkill was a SAW-Viper, killed many Joes (Breaker, Doc, etc) without any remorse. In fact, he VOLUNTEERED to do the deed.
My Real Daddy: Larry Hama for the comic and Snake Eyes in particular.
Narm Charm: Yeah it's cheesy and hammy, but that's part of what makes it so damn fun!
Older Than They Think: This started out as a 12'' action figure for decades before the cartoon.
One True Threesome: A lot of fans support the interpretation that the Baroness, Destro, and Cobra Commander were in a Love Triangle or one of these.
Parody Displacement: Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe brought the Captain America franchise into mainstream consciousness, more people were familiar with Cobra than Hydra, which it was an expy of. Even nowadays there are plenty of people who don't realize Cobra is meant to be a parody of Hydra.
Replacement Scrappy: Serpentor isn't an unpopular character on his own, but if he replaces Cobra Commander than he becomes this partly because he's widely seen as lacking all the qualities that make Cobra Commander likable and cool.
Rooting for the Empire: C'mon who hasn't rooted for Cobra at least once. In the cartoon Cobra Commander is such a lovable bumbler that a lot of fans wanted him win at least once, if only to Throw the Dog a Bone.
The Scrappy:
- Shipwreck's parrot Polly in the cartoon due to being annoying and lacking the usefulness of the other team pets.
- Helix in the IDW comics due to being a God-Mode Sue. You're doomed for Scrappydom when you're written as not only canonically beating Snake-Eyes in a straight-up fight, but doing so with ease.
Signature Scene: The above-mentioned opening to the 1987 movie, featuring the Joes and Cobra having an epic showdown on the Statue of Liberty.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Being a merchandise-driven franchise with a huge cast each of which has a professionally written character profile, you are likely to find at least a handful that sound intriguing to you and you wish were explored in some of the official fiction, but never did.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: Cobra Commander, like most villains of 80s cartoons, is just so hapless and clumsy and riddled with bad luck and loses so often in a humiliating fashion that sometimes you just can't help feeling bad for him. While the comic version of Cobra Commander was far more ruthless and successful than his cartoon counterpart, much of his rhetoric about wealth disparity and the death of the American Dream can be surprisingly poignant as focus on those issues become increasingly prevalent in society.

YMMV / G.I. Joe

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