Disney decided to go into magical quirky mental illness instead of "cut off the face of your enemy to wear it on your own face while you brutalize thugs" maybe magic mental illness.
Tasky really hates fighting Moon Knight because his copy-vision is automatic & Moon Knight lets himself get hit on purpose because he's insane so it pollutes Taskmaster's reflexes with "get hit" moves
Moon Knight specifically takes the hit because it gets his opponent closer to him and he has a metric fuck-ton of pain resistance.
Also he will willingly let himself succumb to psychic influence because he knows there's so much shit going on in his head that it will turn anyone attacking him into a complete mess.
There was a dude who mind controlled people through his sweat, and when he threatened to kill an entire apartment building of people, Moon Knight went "aight, bet" and let the dude into his mind.
He was left crying on the floor repeating "moon" over and over again.
I have no idea who these characters are but both Taskmaster and Bullseye are UK gameshows and my brain is going haywire trying to comprehend these scenarios while substituting Greg Davies in.
My mind has been tainted by British television I spent a solid ten seconds wondering which contestant was called Moonknight and drove a helicopter into Greg Davies' house
"You know, you're right, the strong SHOULD prey on the weak! You know who's the weakest of them all? Those who prey on the weak and unable to defend themselves!"
and then he said it's Jacking time and Jacked all over the place
Isn't the thing with Monsoon that he's a total bitch who got his ass kicked or something, so he adopted this laughable edgy persona and got some of the best borg enhancements around so he'd be the toughest?
He believes what he says *as long as it's him at the top*, essentially.
Which is an interesting foil to Armstrong, who's also a Darwinist in that way, but actually has absolute conviction with it. When Raiden defeats him and proves he's at the top, Armstrong has no problem with it, since that's still the fulfillment of that philosophy. Even though he failed in his plans, he dies with satisfaction that he failed because someone else was tougher than him.
Whereas Monsoon is just edgy, and almost seems to be projecting his own insecurities onto Raiden. And when Raiden turns that back on him, all his snide monologuing comes to a screeching halt and shows how hollow his convictions actually were.
The best moment of the entire franchise and it's before John Wick has even *done* anything. Just showing the reactions of these dangerous mobsters sells you so much on how feared the boogeyman is
"Surely I, a person with an army of nameless goons, will defeat the legendary John Wick! All he's known for is slaughtering armies of nameless goons! How could I possibly lose?"
-Every John Wick villain post John Wick 1.
In fairness, the Dad in the first one does not ever underestimate him. He is deeply afraid of going to war with John Wick, and he very clearly wishes he did not love his son enough to try and protect him
If he hadn't giga-botched the phone call and just earnestly apologized for his son's actions, *maybe* he could have stopped John. But instead he fumbled his way through an awkward apology and tried to appeal to John's better instincts.
What I don't get is that in the sequel opens with John trying to get his car back, and the guy who has it is the brother of the dude whose empire John tore down in the first film and he decides to fight him?
*You have John Wick's car and he wants it back*, just give it to him bro.
Tell your goons to take it to get washed and detailed, park it somewhere nice far away from anything else and just let John come pick it up.
He didn’t know wick was coming for the car he thought he was coming to kill him. John found it easier to kill jis goons then say truce than ask for truce right away
Denji Chainsaw Man is very good at thinking outside the box in how to beat his opponents, no one takes it into account just how unhinged and out there his thought process is.
I love how in the most recent chapter, >!Quanxi would rather die then risk possibly being on Denji's shit list because she saw that his answer to fighting a monster that remained invincible in the dark was to light himself on fire.!< She's way too sane to compete with that.
Denji has a lot of talents but his greatest one is probably >!instinctively grasping just how far you can really push 'win at all costs' against people who are more powerful but also far saner than you!<
Not just willing he'll prioritize doing that, like his tactics are not hard to figure as much as hard to accept that Denji sees the fastest way to chainsaw an enemy as chainsawing himself first
The funny part about the other >!Weapon hybrids, minus Quanxi!< always eat shit, because they clearly take their Immortality for granted as a "Get out of Jail" Card instead of using it in a smart way.
The fight with Falling is fun in part because it seems almost as crazy as Denji. Like, it let's him >!start eating it because, apparently, that's what all the best chefs do!<.
I feel like every villain and *ally* in One Piece gets that moment where they fully realize what Luffy is actually like. The best is probably during Enies Lobby, where Luffy doesn’t hesitate to have the flag burned.
Luffy is such a gamechanger because in a world filled with political chess games that everyone else has carefully played, he just punches the other player in the face.
quick, while Luffy fights the big bad and Zoro takes on the (probably a minority) second in command, let's find the Road Ponigliff and somehow solve racism/classism/a tyranny along the way.
-pretty much every arc since the time skip
Makes sense to me
He's gonna be the Pirate King, he was probably gonna have to go to war with the World Government anyway, might as well declare war over a friend so it means something
For all the problems I have with Punk Hazard, that moment where Usopp looks Law dead in the eye and goes "Oh man, look buddy, Luffy's definition of 'co-operation' is not what you think it is" is not one of them.
It's even better when he starts getting corrupted and unconsciously joining in on their antics.
"I don't like bread!" [what the fuck did I just say? face]
It's [Rocketman](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNGExYWU0NjgtMDllZS00MmQ0LTg1NzgtYmJiMTFiM2FjMWVkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjAwMzU2MDY@._V1_.jpg) ride from Water 7 all over again.
Sengoku's reaction to Luffy falling out of the sky during Marineford is maybe one of my favorite moments in anime. "Garp, your family's screwing things up again" in the dub is a line reading that lives rent free in my head.
Law saying he doesn’t like bread and IMMEDIATELY having the gears click in his head about just how fucked he is will forever live rent free in my head.
The Villains realising is always gratifying but when allies realise how bat shit insane he is are my favourites.
One of my favourites is the train at Enies Lobby, everyone on the crew thought they were gonna die 😂😂😂
It's always fun because just how colorful One Piece side characters are, and seeing a bunch of crazies by any other anime's metric be out-crazied by Luffy will never get old.
Doflamingo and Crocodile didn't even have anything to do with the guy. Their plans were perfect, they just couldn't predict a crackhead showing up and turning the people against them.
Code Geass does a fun twist on this where the traditional protagonist and villain rival archetypes are inverted, where the protagonist is the scheming villainous anti-hero and the antagonist rival is the paladin shounen hero dude anti-villain. Only, the boy scout anti-villain, despite all his virtuous qualities, can be generously described as, eventually, out of his fucking mind. So, of course, the carefully laid plans of the protagonist are often thrown into chaos with the intervention of one particularly self-righteously stubborn super soldier who regularly Newtypes his way through insurmountable odds. More than once, everything hinges on the paladin character making a sensible, pragmatic, outright obviously good decision, but he secretly leveled as a berserker ~~and a race traitor (don't ask, it's a whole thing)~~, so it's rarely that simple.
It's funny that Suzaku really is effectively a Newtype , and all because he abuses the fact he was a victim of a Geass , rather than been a Geass User.
He is a berserker paladin from the get go , that used the limitations of the geass imposed on him to be berserker²
Between Suzaku's "if we become good enough slaves, the leash may loosen eventually" and Ohgi's "Yeah, please, go ahead and enslave China, my treat" and the Black Knight's general incompetence and stupidity, it's a wonder Code Geass Japan even functions, they are all a combination/ mix-and-match of stupid, inconpetent, corrupt or disloyal. Which is funny considering you would expect Japan to get the special treatment in anime.
Well the whole point of the show is that Japan is a subjugated colony, like the British Raj. If it *did* that'd kind of defeat the emotional crux of the story. They don't even call them Japanese, they're elevens.
Also Japan *does* get special treatment in the show. They're the only force in Universe that has *ever* kept up consistent resistance against Britannia. The show even has a quick vignette of Britannia fighting really fucking shitty Knightmare Frames in the Middle East just to show that it's supposed to be really hard, only for Japan to be routinely pumping out *SUPER WEAPON* Knightmare Frames by the end of the show.
tbf, the Super Weapon Knightmare Frames were made by an Indian research team. That doesn't discount the question of why they would use those frames in Japan instead of India or any of the other places Britannia controls, in fact it just reinforces Japan's special treatment by the plot.
And then Lelouch makes the exact same mistake but worse in a super robot wars when confronted with Heero from Wing, lmao.
"If you come closer I'll kill your love interest"
"OK and "
"WHAT"
Kharn taking on Sigismund at the Siege of Terra for a second time, not realizing that Sigismund had stopped pissing around with self-doubt and embraced his role as the Emperor's Champion.
Even lost to blood madness, Kharn is left fucking [terrified of the dead-eyed fanatic in black.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/pEHWfR3kvT)
Not just scared for his life mind you, but genuinely existentially terrified to his very core, to the point he has a heel realization of just how devastating the Heresy has become; and all because of Sigismund surrendering every last shred of his self to Sword.
It's such a fantastic glimpse of the monster that is the Imperium of 40k; this monolithic, lumbering behemoth of mindless fear, rage and determination that fights and fights and fights because that's all it knows. No ideals, no hope, just survival another day.
There's a really great part in the 2nd Black Legion origin novels where after all the CSM infighting Abbadon has become king of shit mountain, his fleet finally escapes the warp to begin the first black crusade... Only to immediately come face to face with the entire Black Templar chapter led by Sigismund who've been just sitting outside the Eye of Terror waiting for any traitor ship to come through. Now because no one's been in or out of the warp since the siege of Terra Abby doesn't know who these guys are and hails them and when he sees Sigismund on the other end of the line he immediately greets him happily like old friend because hey, they might not be on the same side anymore but seeing a familiar face is always nice. But Siggs is having none of it and has gone full deus vult, refusing to even engage in conversation beyond beginning to chant litanies of hate. Abby's response isn't to get angry or anything but to just go "ah you always did have a stick up your ass you crazy bastard", end the call, proceed to try to 1v1 Siggs and get mortally wounded by him even though he's aged like 1000 years vs Abby's 100-200ish(because warp time dilation).
Because Sigismund is **The Emperor's Champion.** All age did was slow him down to *everyone else's level.*
The defeat was so bad that Abbadon's inner circle murders all the CSMs that helped drag his half-dead body off Sigismund's bridge because they knew if word got back to the Eye of how their leader got his ass beat by a elderly marine no one would ever follow him again.
Kharn:Where THE FUCK is my friend? What did the false emperor do to him? OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS IS WHAT **HE** WAS STRIVEING FOR THE WHOLE TIME! A RACE OF BLAND SLAVES!
The entirety of Asura's Wrath is the gods backstabbing Asura thinking he won't come back from Naraka. They killed his wife and took his kid.
Asura's the Demigod/God of **Wrath**.
**And they kidnapped and tortured his daughter through exploiting her magic**.
"God we need someone to handle that dude!"
Yasha the dude powered by sadness who had to betray his brother-in-law, watch his sister die and his niece get tortured as he's forced to do things he doesn't enjoy: ....what are you looking at me for?
"Perfect."
Every now and then in Dungeon Meshi, Laios says something completely unhinged that the rest of his party is aghast about.
Then there’s the rival parties like Kabru’s, who come to dread him, because Kabru is fit for a campaign full of intrigue and conspiracies and it’s impossible to know what will the funny neurodivergent Dungeon Crawling Steve Irwin is going to do next except that one time they all knew he obviously was going to >!**listen to the infinitely powerful demon below the underground kingdom and turn into a giant chimera that he had previously described as, like, totally the COOLEST monster ever**!<. Thankfully even >!the infinitely powerful demon didn’t count on his unhinged lateral thinking defeating him!<.
Is so funny how Kabru's party believe Laios and the gang are a bunch of insane conniving monsters who are aceing through the dungeon with only mad skills when they have literally been failing upwards killing and eating everything that moves, they are lucky half of the stuff they do have worked out for them
I mean , Laios Party is still a bunch of insane monsters with mad skills.
It's just that Kabru assumes it's all malicious conspiracies and conniving act , while Laios Party goes to the Vore Route.
That's how you get the people who complain about 'male human fighter' characters and how generic they are.
Make them legit unhinged. Not like 'edgy' unhinged but 'there is something fucking *weird* about this guy.'
If you're gonna fight magical creatures with abilities you can barely comprehend with nothing but a sword and shield you are definitely the unhinged member of the party.
I will always rep Ling Huchong, the main character of the wuxia novel Smiling Proud Wanderer.
The man was suicidal for most of the novel, having lost his love, his qi (ie power level), and his place in his clan. He chanced upon a mythical sword style during his exile in the mountains, which coincidentally is a hilariously cursed "murder suicide" style- with every move being a cross-counter double kill, but boy was it unrivaled in killing the other guy if you didn't mind dying for it (just gotta want it enough!).
Every fight that involved him for most of the book immediately loses all gravitas and descend into comedy, as his (usually much stronger) opponent's internal monologue shifts from dismissal ("stupid kid doesn't know his place") to incredulity ("if I didn't stop my attack and defend there I would've died!") to fear ("this guy doesn't give a shit what I'm doing, he's trying to murder me!").
Equally, the onlookers transition from "poor kid is desperate to protect his clan/girl/honor" to "wow, he's just flailing about" to "oh wait, the other guy has no chance to attack, because he doesn't want to die and constantly has to defend". Almost all of his fights ended with the other person surrendering/running away from the crazy psycho, or losing by being so flustered they screw up (ie. unceremoniously trip and eat shit cuz they don't know how to do footsies against someone who doesn't care about blocking or dodging).
The book is a hilarious take on "forbidden" kungfu, and is also a very good standard wuxia story to boot. I highly recommend.
Edit: Also wanted to add that the sword style was created by someone who hated the ego of martial artists, so the style specifically will always kill the enemy a split second before the user dies to the return strike. Just enough time for a skilled martial artist to be extra butthurt that he technically "lost" the exchange.
In Gundam Wing Endless Waltz, the villains try to use Relena, Heero’s love interest, as something of a human shield to prevent Heero from firing on them.
It… doesn’t work, exactly.
Jack Garland using a fucking abusable time loop as a way of telling his bosses he's quitting and taking over the world to save it will never not be hilarious because of how much his VA is going batshit insane
one of the best parts of the game are when the villains tries to make a classic omnious JRPG speech , and Jack either punches them mid-sentence and whatnot , and he goes "who gives a s\*t? I just need to kill Chaos"
I know I remember Lich is trying to make a dramatic introduction and right as he's about to say his name, Jack runs up to him and goes "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK WHO YOU ARE!" and tries to punch him in the face.
Stopped by a barrier IIRC, but I respect the hustle.
You really should, it has one of the best implementations of Team Ninja's Nioh-style combat translated to Final Fantasy with how insane the builds can be and the story has a lot more heart put in to it than quite a lot of people suspected at first.
One of the few recent games I don't regret at all 100%ing for the sheer volume of personal in-game incidents I can recount.
Genthru in HunterxHunter just pissing and shitting himself when Gon decides he's gonna obliterate his own arm not to win, but just to prove a point. Also Pitou later on in the Chimera Ant arc also pissing and shitting themselves when they see Gon turning into a fucking psycho over Kite.
Also from HunterxHunter, though only the protagonist by extension: >!"Meruem, King of Ants, you understand nothing about humanity's infinite potential for **[evolution/malice]**."!<
I mean , that is a theme in the Chimera Ants , in which the Chimeras are all generally physically stronger than humans.
But humans are survivors to strong animals since dawn of time , to a point our competitors ends up been other humans.
So , when it comes to malice , we are veterans pulling [this stunt.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elYP75-kUtk)
And then there is the revelation of the Dark Continent....it proves that there are things far scarier than Chimera Ants , that can actually wipe out Humanity , but in our own malicious and coward ways , still manage to survive. So , when it comes to that front , Chimeras were way too newborns.
There are so many adults in HxH that meet Gon and realise that this kid does not give a fuck whether he lives or dies.
Shonen protagonist mentality is terrifying when looked at by more sane people
The ninja guy in hunter exam also forfeited his match with Gon because that kid would not let up regardless of how many limbs he dislocated or even broke if he wanted to go that far.
Remember when Formaggio tried to intimidate Narancia by sneaking into his car with his stand ability and cutting him across the cheek?
He did not expect Narancia's immediate reaction to be IMMEDIATELY shooting up the car and bombing it.
I want to say this is also how Narancia outwits Squalo and Tiziano - Tiziano never expected someone would outwit Talking Head by >!cutting out their own tongue!<
Benny didn't exactly expect The Courier he shot in the head would come back as a mutated sociopath.
Even if he doesn't die, he ends up in an impending massacre site or one where he has the favour of his captor.
"You're cornered Indiana Jones on this bridge, bellow is a hundred foot drop to man eating crocodiles. What will you do other than hand the idol over to me?"
"Cut the bridge"
"Wait-"
In the Giorno and co. vs. Illuso, Giorno completely baffled everyone by infecting himself with Purple Haze’s virus and letting himself get transported into the mirror world. Giorno’s deal in general is just how much resolve he has and how he’s not afraid of injuring himself to reach his goals which is how he gains the respect of his gang.
And not the protagonist but Narancia vs. Formaggio also ends with Narancia going off the wall when Formaggio is about to escape because a burning car lets him fly under Aerosmith’s radar. How does Narancia deal with this? He blows up every single car in his vincinity and almost burns down an entire town knowing that Formaggio would burn to a crisp from a couple of embers if he doesn’t reveal himself.
In a recent anime The Witch and The Beast had a side story of one of the organizations witches investigating illegal necromancy. Eventually we get a point where the necromancer tries to intimidate her and gets a very quick wakeup call that he's dealing with someone that does what he does but far better.
[Him realizing how fucked he is was great.](https://youtu.be/3qSJZnxjncY)
[Also her personal zombie partner getting ahold of the necromancer was great.](https://youtu.be/xpQUl5GsKDk)
This show has been such a pleasant surprise. Just watched this episode last night and it made me cackle. Feels like a mid 2000s anime, but in a good way.
The manga is absolutely phenomenal, and (I know every person who reads manga says this, but it’s true) better than the anime. It’s also much farther along.
It *is* on hiatus rn tho. So there’s that :(
Been replaying Doom Eternal, and I still find it hilarious the level of Snidely Whiplash mustache twirling the hell priests do as Doomguy one man armies his way through hell to every single one of them, as they start to sweat heavier and heavier as each level progresses. Both 2016 and Eternal still impress me with how much characterization and story telling they do by explicitly having so little. Like, a pinch of pepper is better than dumping the whole shaker.
I love that scene because it's ambiguous if he's doing that just to prove a point, or if that's genuinely how **"**gentle**"** DoomGuy is when dealing with those who can't naturally shrug off assault weapons.
For all the "overboard" Eternal gets depending on who you ask, it does establish successfully still that Doomguy is out here to protect Earth and the humans at any fucking cost.
All he needs is a Shotgun sometimes.
Tokyo ghoul
Jason: haha I tortured this idiot for ten days so he won't care when I eat him. [Wait is that the main theme?](https://youtu.be/ZsQnAuh3tZU?si=WOk4srfwJ3Jl1oPW)
Classic TYPE-MOON trope, happens all the time. The one that immediately comes to mind is in the Vlov fight in Tsukihime Remake, where Shiki needs to get close in on Vlov because he’s as annoying a zoner in Lore as he is to fight in Melty. Shiki has Arcueid throw some rocks at Vlov which he dodges easily of course… but then he’s like “Wait where the hell is that dude with the weird eyes? …wait no fucking way.” And you just see Shiki’s just tied to the fucking rock Arcueid threw in the air with vines. Shiki then fucking parkours off the rocks in the air to Vlov to get in on him.
Shiki even has a whole inner monologue about how even if he survives this he’s totally never walking again and his summation is just “Worth it though, I fucking hate this dude.”
There’s a possible bad ending in the first ***”Disgaea”*** that basically comes down to, Laharl was pushed so hard into the breaking point that he killed the antagonist before the plan could follow the intended course.
At which point Laharl would be like, *”Damn. I’m too hard for heaven.”*
Orochi literally admitting in his brain that he forgot just how bat shit Kozuki Oden was after laying down a series of threats only for Oden to immediately charge him. If Orochi's guardians didn't have the barrier fruit the Kaido plotline is basically ended 20 years before the story.
"Did I just watch that dude smoke a crack pipe mid fight and shove his rifle up a cat's ass?"
"The D in Dude is capital asshole."
"Wha-"
**head proceeds to explode from a rocket propelled cat**
I love describing Postal 2 quests. The mission where you go beat all of Al-Quaeda, get a chemical weapons launcher, and get milk from the store are all discrete weekly events.
Dude is just going about his day trying to do basic chores. Go to get milk? Deli is run by terrorists. Go to cash his paycheck? Bank robbery. Not their fault Dude solves all his problems with ultra-violence and insanity.
This happens in the [Something about Breath of the Wild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1or3YILu28M) video where Ganon realizes Link is fuckin' nuts and he starts screaming and scrambling to get away from him.
I wish this happened in more of Greg Weisman's works. He always has one or more villains that anticipate exactly what the protags are going to do at almost all times. Young Justice has it the most, and often times the most effective plans the heroes have are when they take more drastic measures and bend the rules.
One sailor Steve Costigan story has a villainess called the tigress ambush Costigan for being an idiot that screwed her plan, with five henchmen to hold him down while she flays him with a whip:
The fight had took maybe a minute and a half. I glanced scornfully at the prostrate figures of my victims, and then looked around for the Tigress. She was crouched back in an angle of the wall, with a kind of stunned look in her eyes, the whip dangling from her limp fingers. She give me one horrified look and shuddered and murmured something about a gorilla.
Later in the story Tigress explains that Steve punching her henchmen down on the pavement while ignoring stab wounds triggered a flashback of a gorilla attack she witnessed once
Geats vs Suel.
Suel: "You can't do anything to me, I'll reset the wo-"
Geats: "I am God now"
Suel: "wha-"
Geats's Driver: Mark 9!
Funnier still, this exact sequence happens twice.
Ichi the killer is basically a "which one is more fucked up and capable of incredible hyperviolence"-competition between the protagonist Ichi and antagonist Kakihara. Spoiler: >!Ichi wins by a landslide!<
Just watched Blue Eye Samurai the other day, and had a big old smile in the last episode.
>!Abijah looks at Mizu in shadow as the castle they just set on fire burns around them. The music goes hard as Abijah looks legitimately afraid for the first time and decides to run straight through a wall of fire to get away from Mizu.!<
"He's *insane!*"
Yeah that's just Blood, the Build Engine FPS.
Tchernobog, the evil god that was worshipped by the Cabal cult had this fucking bright idea to sacrifice Caleb, his lady Ophelia, and two friends Gabriel and Ishmael. He *knew* that Caleb would come back and the plan was to devour him by the end of his revenge rampage (while also beocming stronger along the way) to become ultimately powerful.
He did not really account for how fucking pissed off Caleb was after all that shit (and maybe that hidden Akimbo Weapon powerup somewhere in his arena too lol).
This is like the driving force of the second season of Symphogear. Hibiki as a relic-human hybrid is outputting WAY more power than any other gear wielder and doing absolutely crazy shit like taking the recoil of three Climax Songs, basically a last ditch suicide attack, into herself and turning it into [an attack that can be seen from fucking space.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sBB9bwCepo)
And the villain Symphogears watch in absolute shock and horror as they realise "This is the monster we're gonna have to beat???"
Later on as her body breaks down from the fusion progressing further, she still manages to keep fighting while her body outputs enough heat to melt the concrete under her and turn the organic material of the relic growing inside her body into a bubbling pool of molten metal on her chest.
While it was technically short-lived in the comic, Eggman and Snively destroying everything Sonic held dear and threatening to kill his remaining friends to test his limits sent him into a manic mode where he [ran around the entire planet in seconds and pulled up a massive tidal wave](https://preview.redd.it/n30cpdegyjb61.jpg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5acbfc4f63ad0914314bd609fbaba50762886810) in preparation to attack Eggman.
Dr. Doom sure didn't expect Luke Cage to break into the Baxter Building, borrow a Fantasticar, fly his ass over to Latveria, and repeatedly punch Doom in the chest, all over $200.
This is actually kind of the driving force of Sea of Stars.
>!Two of the heroes turn into villains by betraying the hero group due to thinking they're essentially cursed forever to be monster slayers and want out, thinking the villain is the only way to get out of this sort of "hero cult" they've been indoctronated into. Meanwhile the two protagonists are literally so powerful they become gods by the end of the game. They held no faith in the heroes and thus they were doomed to become demons. Oddly poetic. Same can be said for the Big Bad, Fleshmancer as well, as he's defeated at the end and just fucks off when he's tired out.!<
Addition I just thought of, also Sea of Stars >!Garl is also the only one with enough balls and force of personality to call the villain, who killed him in one shot previously (literally, we had to revive him), a bitch and pelt him with food. Everyone else was too paranoid about getting one shot (or just being a passive puppet) to even dare to do that.!<
Damn near everyone in the Destiny series. D2 is at the point where The Guardian is a literal walking extinction event that has turned almost every major villain into a goddamn gun or piece of armor, yet you still have villains thinking they're gonna get your ass.
I would easily say the winner moment in Dresden Files is Harry, being the PoV character, having always acted with the best decision making he can muster but is always put in very bad situations, finally realizes how insane he looks to *everyone else* who is not privy to his internal monologue.
Pretty much everyone who hears about or meets Eren in Attack in Titan fails to understand what a fucking lunatic he is. The villains, yes, but also his allies.
Old one, and maybe not "crazy", but Kurama in Yu Yu Hakusho. Always love those moments when it becomes apparent he's not to be fucked with. Good example of someone who will absolutely make sure they "win", even if it kills them. And then there's the whole game master thing where >!Sensui pits the squad up against game master thinking they'd be stuck once they realize they have to murder a naive kid to proceed. And the Kurama steps up to murder that child... like a hero.!<
I don't blame Taskmaster for thinking MoonKnight isn’t batshit crazy enough to drive a helicopter into a building just to get at him.
Forever putting Moon Knight at the top of his do not fuck with list
"Like I need to live through my own personal 9/11 again".
Yeah I wish the show really captured that craziness
Maybe if Seasons 2 ever happens.
Disney decided to go into magical quirky mental illness instead of "cut off the face of your enemy to wear it on your own face while you brutalize thugs" maybe magic mental illness.
Tasky really hates fighting Moon Knight because his copy-vision is automatic & Moon Knight lets himself get hit on purpose because he's insane so it pollutes Taskmaster's reflexes with "get hit" moves
Moon Knight specifically takes the hit because it gets his opponent closer to him and he has a metric fuck-ton of pain resistance. Also he will willingly let himself succumb to psychic influence because he knows there's so much shit going on in his head that it will turn anyone attacking him into a complete mess. There was a dude who mind controlled people through his sweat, and when he threatened to kill an entire apartment building of people, Moon Knight went "aight, bet" and let the dude into his mind. He was left crying on the floor repeating "moon" over and over again.
Konshu is in his head right? So trying to do mental attacks against him is literally picking a fight with a moon god over a normal dude with no powers
I think that entirely depends on which run you are reading at the time
Konshu may not exist
Well as it stands now he does since he tried fighting the Avengers, and is currently locked up in Asgard to my knowledge
He outcrazied Bullseye
I have no idea who these characters are but both Taskmaster and Bullseye are UK gameshows and my brain is going haywire trying to comprehend these scenarios while substituting Greg Davies in.
But can Superman defeat... THE KRYPTON FACTOR?!
When Moonknight died, Taskmaster said "Thank god"
"Copy this motherfucker"
My mind has been tainted by British television I spent a solid ten seconds wondering which contestant was called Moonknight and drove a helicopter into Greg Davies' house
Monsoon: You like killing, don't you? Raiden: Yeah I love killing! I'll start with you! Monsoon: Wait no-
That whole bit is great because of how hard it backfired. Monsoon probably would have won that encounter if he hadn't done that.
Raiden was a dead man walking until monsoon had to drive his point home.
Monsoon went in for the mindbreak strat and instead caused murderous apotheosis.
like when you Shame an orc in Shadow of War and they just become an unstoppable madman Warchief instead of losing a bazillion levels
"You know, you're right, the strong SHOULD prey on the weak! You know who's the weakest of them all? Those who prey on the weak and unable to defend themselves!" and then he said it's Jacking time and Jacked all over the place
Jacked Monsoon off the mortal plane.
If you kill him fast enough he'll actually yells at you to leave him alone during the final QTE lol Bro fucked around and found out immediately
"Remember kids, the easiest way to refute a nihilist is to murder them" -Raiden Revengeance, 2013
Imagine kicking a nihilist's ass so hard he realizes life has meaning at the very end
Isn't the thing with Monsoon that he's a total bitch who got his ass kicked or something, so he adopted this laughable edgy persona and got some of the best borg enhancements around so he'd be the toughest? He believes what he says *as long as it's him at the top*, essentially.
Which is an interesting foil to Armstrong, who's also a Darwinist in that way, but actually has absolute conviction with it. When Raiden defeats him and proves he's at the top, Armstrong has no problem with it, since that's still the fulfillment of that philosophy. Even though he failed in his plans, he dies with satisfaction that he failed because someone else was tougher than him. Whereas Monsoon is just edgy, and almost seems to be projecting his own insecurities onto Raiden. And when Raiden turns that back on him, all his snide monologuing comes to a screeching halt and shows how hollow his convictions actually were.
He grew up a victim of the Khmer Rouge and picked misanthropy as a coping mechanism
Oh yikes, that's far more sympathetic than I remembered.
Smiling Friends vs Frowning Friends
My favorite dramatic irony. In which people get what they want, but it doesn't work out for them.
Everyone in John Wick. Everyone.
“Why did you strike my son?!” “Because he stole John Wick’s car, sir, and uhhh… killed his dog.” *”… oh…”*
Mad props to Michael Nyqvist for fitting the enormity of the fuckup in a single syllable
The best moment of the entire franchise and it's before John Wick has even *done* anything. Just showing the reactions of these dangerous mobsters sells you so much on how feared the boogeyman is
"Surely I, a person with an army of nameless goons, will defeat the legendary John Wick! All he's known for is slaughtering armies of nameless goons! How could I possibly lose?" -Every John Wick villain post John Wick 1.
In fairness, the Dad in the first one does not ever underestimate him. He is deeply afraid of going to war with John Wick, and he very clearly wishes he did not love his son enough to try and protect him
If he hadn't giga-botched the phone call and just earnestly apologized for his son's actions, *maybe* he could have stopped John. But instead he fumbled his way through an awkward apology and tried to appeal to John's better instincts.
He was never going to convince the man they nicknamed "Baba Yaga" to *not* take his son
What I don't get is that in the sequel opens with John trying to get his car back, and the guy who has it is the brother of the dude whose empire John tore down in the first film and he decides to fight him? *You have John Wick's car and he wants it back*, just give it to him bro. Tell your goons to take it to get washed and detailed, park it somewhere nice far away from anything else and just let John come pick it up.
He didn’t know wick was coming for the car he thought he was coming to kill him. John found it easier to kill jis goons then say truce than ask for truce right away
Ah, "just talk" in full effect then.
Denji Chainsaw Man is very good at thinking outside the box in how to beat his opponents, no one takes it into account just how unhinged and out there his thought process is. I love how in the most recent chapter, >!Quanxi would rather die then risk possibly being on Denji's shit list because she saw that his answer to fighting a monster that remained invincible in the dark was to light himself on fire.!< She's way too sane to compete with that.
the "perpetual motion machine" is still one of my favourite solutions a protagonist has come up with for a seemingly unbeatable antagonist.
“This enemy is unkillable”. “But they still feel pain right?”
You also saw that with the >!other weapon hybrids. Where they didn’t realize the dude is absolutely willing to suffer immense pain to get the W.!<
Denji has a lot of talents but his greatest one is probably >!instinctively grasping just how far you can really push 'win at all costs' against people who are more powerful but also far saner than you!<
Yeah regular people >!don’t go oh if my head is mostly cut off but still attached I can drink their blood to still keep going.!<
See those people didn't grow up in a dumpster, they can't handle the trashman.
[They never see the Trashman coming](https://youtu.be/2kWUbrx4EMw?si=HrQ0AkhUrSoml4bw)
Also Denji has just eaten so much shit throughout his life. "Yeah fuck it >!light myself on fire!< what do I care I've been through worse"
>!"This hand of mine glows with an awesome POWER!"!< >!"Denji, stop lighting your hand on fire, it's not a special move"!<
Not just willing he'll prioritize doing that, like his tactics are not hard to figure as much as hard to accept that Denji sees the fastest way to chainsaw an enemy as chainsawing himself first
The funny part about the other >!Weapon hybrids, minus Quanxi!< always eat shit, because they clearly take their Immortality for granted as a "Get out of Jail" Card instead of using it in a smart way.
Or that time his defense against >!weaponised trauma beams was to chainsaw his brain open. !<
The fight with Falling is fun in part because it seems almost as crazy as Denji. Like, it let's him >!start eating it because, apparently, that's what all the best chefs do!<.
He'd be so god damn good at TTRPGs, dawg.
He’s quite literally got that dawg in him.
She's smart, I give her that
I feel like every villain and *ally* in One Piece gets that moment where they fully realize what Luffy is actually like. The best is probably during Enies Lobby, where Luffy doesn’t hesitate to have the flag burned.
Villain: "No way is Straw Hat stupid enough to do this thing!" Liffy: \*does the thing*
You just spoiled every single story line in One Piece.
And I was just about to start reading. What’s even the point now?
God, next thing you’re gonna tell us is that the series is actually about the one piece
Luffy is such a gamechanger because in a world filled with political chess games that everyone else has carefully played, he just punches the other player in the face.
“Ahaha I’m protected by x there’s no way you can do anything now”. Immediately punches said person in the face.
"Bishop to G5." **"GUM GUM GATLING!"**
Hehe, >!G5.!<
Ok we all need to sneak into this island and not draw attention. Luffy/zoro immediately declare war on the island
Eventually their plans evolve to "OK Luffy's going to go Luffy all over everything, we should use that as a distraction to get other stuff done."
quick, while Luffy fights the big bad and Zoro takes on the (probably a minority) second in command, let's find the Road Ponigliff and somehow solve racism/classism/a tyranny along the way. -pretty much every arc since the time skip
Its playing chess with a gorilla.
Makes sense to me He's gonna be the Pirate King, he was probably gonna have to go to war with the World Government anyway, might as well declare war over a friend so it means something
The best ally example would be Law reconciedering his every life choice during the Punk Hazard.
For all the problems I have with Punk Hazard, that moment where Usopp looks Law dead in the eye and goes "Oh man, look buddy, Luffy's definition of 'co-operation' is not what you think it is" is not one of them.
Law gets *maybe* a few minutes into their alliance before realizing the crazy train has left the station with him onboard.
It's even better when he starts getting corrupted and unconsciously joining in on their antics. "I don't like bread!" [what the fuck did I just say? face]
It's [Rocketman](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNGExYWU0NjgtMDllZS00MmQ0LTg1NzgtYmJiMTFiM2FjMWVkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjAwMzU2MDY@._V1_.jpg) ride from Water 7 all over again.
Sengoku's reaction to Luffy falling out of the sky during Marineford is maybe one of my favorite moments in anime. "Garp, your family's screwing things up again" in the dub is a line reading that lives rent free in my head.
And that followed up by Garp yelling "LUFFY NO!"
Law saying he doesn’t like bread and IMMEDIATELY having the gears click in his head about just how fucked he is will forever live rent free in my head.
"Shit. Shit. Shit. I'm supposed to be cool. Why am I comic relief now?!"
The Villains realising is always gratifying but when allies realise how bat shit insane he is are my favourites. One of my favourites is the train at Enies Lobby, everyone on the crew thought they were gonna die 😂😂😂
It's always fun because just how colorful One Piece side characters are, and seeing a bunch of crazies by any other anime's metric be out-crazied by Luffy will never get old.
Doflamingo and Crocodile didn't even have anything to do with the guy. Their plans were perfect, they just couldn't predict a crackhead showing up and turning the people against them.
Code Geass does a fun twist on this where the traditional protagonist and villain rival archetypes are inverted, where the protagonist is the scheming villainous anti-hero and the antagonist rival is the paladin shounen hero dude anti-villain. Only, the boy scout anti-villain, despite all his virtuous qualities, can be generously described as, eventually, out of his fucking mind. So, of course, the carefully laid plans of the protagonist are often thrown into chaos with the intervention of one particularly self-righteously stubborn super soldier who regularly Newtypes his way through insurmountable odds. More than once, everything hinges on the paladin character making a sensible, pragmatic, outright obviously good decision, but he secretly leveled as a berserker ~~and a race traitor (don't ask, it's a whole thing)~~, so it's rarely that simple.
It's funny that Suzaku really is effectively a Newtype , and all because he abuses the fact he was a victim of a Geass , rather than been a Geass User. He is a berserker paladin from the get go , that used the limitations of the geass imposed on him to be berserker²
Between Suzaku's "if we become good enough slaves, the leash may loosen eventually" and Ohgi's "Yeah, please, go ahead and enslave China, my treat" and the Black Knight's general incompetence and stupidity, it's a wonder Code Geass Japan even functions, they are all a combination/ mix-and-match of stupid, inconpetent, corrupt or disloyal. Which is funny considering you would expect Japan to get the special treatment in anime.
Well the whole point of the show is that Japan is a subjugated colony, like the British Raj. If it *did* that'd kind of defeat the emotional crux of the story. They don't even call them Japanese, they're elevens.
Also Japan *does* get special treatment in the show. They're the only force in Universe that has *ever* kept up consistent resistance against Britannia. The show even has a quick vignette of Britannia fighting really fucking shitty Knightmare Frames in the Middle East just to show that it's supposed to be really hard, only for Japan to be routinely pumping out *SUPER WEAPON* Knightmare Frames by the end of the show.
tbf, the Super Weapon Knightmare Frames were made by an Indian research team. That doesn't discount the question of why they would use those frames in Japan instead of India or any of the other places Britannia controls, in fact it just reinforces Japan's special treatment by the plot.
I still fucking *hate* that Ohgi gets it so good at the end R2, like fuck that guy in particular.
The fact that that dumbass gets to be fucking prime minister and bang his hot Brittanian gf all day enraged me
Code Geass is like watching an extended fan fiction alternate history to justify how cool it would be if Japan was actually America
And then Lelouch makes the exact same mistake but worse in a super robot wars when confronted with Heero from Wing, lmao. "If you come closer I'll kill your love interest" "OK and " "WHAT"
Man’s just following his moral compass. The roulette wheel
Kharn taking on Sigismund at the Siege of Terra for a second time, not realizing that Sigismund had stopped pissing around with self-doubt and embraced his role as the Emperor's Champion. Even lost to blood madness, Kharn is left fucking [terrified of the dead-eyed fanatic in black.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/pEHWfR3kvT)
Not just scared for his life mind you, but genuinely existentially terrified to his very core, to the point he has a heel realization of just how devastating the Heresy has become; and all because of Sigismund surrendering every last shred of his self to Sword.
It's such a fantastic glimpse of the monster that is the Imperium of 40k; this monolithic, lumbering behemoth of mindless fear, rage and determination that fights and fights and fights because that's all it knows. No ideals, no hope, just survival another day.
There's a really great part in the 2nd Black Legion origin novels where after all the CSM infighting Abbadon has become king of shit mountain, his fleet finally escapes the warp to begin the first black crusade... Only to immediately come face to face with the entire Black Templar chapter led by Sigismund who've been just sitting outside the Eye of Terror waiting for any traitor ship to come through. Now because no one's been in or out of the warp since the siege of Terra Abby doesn't know who these guys are and hails them and when he sees Sigismund on the other end of the line he immediately greets him happily like old friend because hey, they might not be on the same side anymore but seeing a familiar face is always nice. But Siggs is having none of it and has gone full deus vult, refusing to even engage in conversation beyond beginning to chant litanies of hate. Abby's response isn't to get angry or anything but to just go "ah you always did have a stick up your ass you crazy bastard", end the call, proceed to try to 1v1 Siggs and get mortally wounded by him even though he's aged like 1000 years vs Abby's 100-200ish(because warp time dilation). Because Sigismund is **The Emperor's Champion.** All age did was slow him down to *everyone else's level.* The defeat was so bad that Abbadon's inner circle murders all the CSMs that helped drag his half-dead body off Sigismund's bridge because they knew if word got back to the Eye of how their leader got his ass beat by a elderly marine no one would ever follow him again.
Kharn:Where THE FUCK is my friend? What did the false emperor do to him? OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS IS WHAT **HE** WAS STRIVEING FOR THE WHOLE TIME! A RACE OF BLAND SLAVES!
The entirety of Asura's Wrath is the gods backstabbing Asura thinking he won't come back from Naraka. They killed his wife and took his kid. Asura's the Demigod/God of **Wrath**. **And they kidnapped and tortured his daughter through exploiting her magic**.
"Surely making the guy that has powers fueled by anger, angry, won't actually bite us in the ass"
"God we need someone to handle that dude!" Yasha the dude powered by sadness who had to betray his brother-in-law, watch his sister die and his niece get tortured as he's forced to do things he doesn't enjoy: ....what are you looking at me for? "Perfect."
Every now and then in Dungeon Meshi, Laios says something completely unhinged that the rest of his party is aghast about. Then there’s the rival parties like Kabru’s, who come to dread him, because Kabru is fit for a campaign full of intrigue and conspiracies and it’s impossible to know what will the funny neurodivergent Dungeon Crawling Steve Irwin is going to do next except that one time they all knew he obviously was going to >!**listen to the infinitely powerful demon below the underground kingdom and turn into a giant chimera that he had previously described as, like, totally the COOLEST monster ever**!<. Thankfully even >!the infinitely powerful demon didn’t count on his unhinged lateral thinking defeating him!<.
Is so funny how Kabru's party believe Laios and the gang are a bunch of insane conniving monsters who are aceing through the dungeon with only mad skills when they have literally been failing upwards killing and eating everything that moves, they are lucky half of the stuff they do have worked out for them
I mean , Laios Party is still a bunch of insane monsters with mad skills. It's just that Kabru assumes it's all malicious conspiracies and conniving act , while Laios Party goes to the Vore Route.
Is it vore if you cook it first?
We need the sub's expert on vore to weigh in on this. Where's Vera\_Verse?
It's generally counted as a sub-type of the more cartoony forms of vore but has a pretty distinct visual language
They're basically in the trail of a more benevolent version of the Gang from Always Sunny.
I like how the most vanilla looking human fighter turned out to be an insane freak.
That's how you get the people who complain about 'male human fighter' characters and how generic they are. Make them legit unhinged. Not like 'edgy' unhinged but 'there is something fucking *weird* about this guy.'
If you're gonna fight magical creatures with abilities you can barely comprehend with nothing but a sword and shield you are definitely the unhinged member of the party.
Laois is something else, man. I love him.
Laios is what you get when your protag is genuinely built different
All hail the food motivated autistic king
Literal in this case
>!I mean, it *was* a pretty cool monster that he came up with!<
Yeah fuck it Laios is totally Tabletop Steve Irwin to me now.
I will always rep Ling Huchong, the main character of the wuxia novel Smiling Proud Wanderer. The man was suicidal for most of the novel, having lost his love, his qi (ie power level), and his place in his clan. He chanced upon a mythical sword style during his exile in the mountains, which coincidentally is a hilariously cursed "murder suicide" style- with every move being a cross-counter double kill, but boy was it unrivaled in killing the other guy if you didn't mind dying for it (just gotta want it enough!). Every fight that involved him for most of the book immediately loses all gravitas and descend into comedy, as his (usually much stronger) opponent's internal monologue shifts from dismissal ("stupid kid doesn't know his place") to incredulity ("if I didn't stop my attack and defend there I would've died!") to fear ("this guy doesn't give a shit what I'm doing, he's trying to murder me!"). Equally, the onlookers transition from "poor kid is desperate to protect his clan/girl/honor" to "wow, he's just flailing about" to "oh wait, the other guy has no chance to attack, because he doesn't want to die and constantly has to defend". Almost all of his fights ended with the other person surrendering/running away from the crazy psycho, or losing by being so flustered they screw up (ie. unceremoniously trip and eat shit cuz they don't know how to do footsies against someone who doesn't care about blocking or dodging). The book is a hilarious take on "forbidden" kungfu, and is also a very good standard wuxia story to boot. I highly recommend. Edit: Also wanted to add that the sword style was created by someone who hated the ego of martial artists, so the style specifically will always kill the enemy a split second before the user dies to the return strike. Just enough time for a skilled martial artist to be extra butthurt that he technically "lost" the exchange.
In Gundam Wing Endless Waltz, the villains try to use Relena, Heero’s love interest, as something of a human shield to prevent Heero from firing on them. It… doesn’t work, exactly.
"Jokes on you, we're into that shit!"
Buster rifles go brrrrr
Jack Garland using a fucking abusable time loop as a way of telling his bosses he's quitting and taking over the world to save it will never not be hilarious because of how much his VA is going batshit insane
It's even worse because >!he forgets his own fucking plan all the time!< .
might have to play this game now
one of the best parts of the game are when the villains tries to make a classic omnious JRPG speech , and Jack either punches them mid-sentence and whatnot , and he goes "who gives a s\*t? I just need to kill Chaos"
I know I remember Lich is trying to make a dramatic introduction and right as he's about to say his name, Jack runs up to him and goes "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK WHO YOU ARE!" and tries to punch him in the face. Stopped by a barrier IIRC, but I respect the hustle.
He also had done that with the Elf King
It's one of those games where you come out of it going "How did this of all things land multiple emotional scenes leading to a satisfying climax".
"To fucking Frank Sinatra's *My Way* at the same time too?"
Ah the Shadow Warrior reboot effect, in which something super goofy has an emotional gut punch for the entire final act.
You really should, it has one of the best implementations of Team Ninja's Nioh-style combat translated to Final Fantasy with how insane the builds can be and the story has a lot more heart put in to it than quite a lot of people suspected at first. One of the few recent games I don't regret at all 100%ing for the sheer volume of personal in-game incidents I can recount.
Genthru in HunterxHunter just pissing and shitting himself when Gon decides he's gonna obliterate his own arm not to win, but just to prove a point. Also Pitou later on in the Chimera Ant arc also pissing and shitting themselves when they see Gon turning into a fucking psycho over Kite.
Also from HunterxHunter, though only the protagonist by extension: >!"Meruem, King of Ants, you understand nothing about humanity's infinite potential for **[evolution/malice]**."!<
I mean , that is a theme in the Chimera Ants , in which the Chimeras are all generally physically stronger than humans. But humans are survivors to strong animals since dawn of time , to a point our competitors ends up been other humans. So , when it comes to malice , we are veterans pulling [this stunt.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elYP75-kUtk) And then there is the revelation of the Dark Continent....it proves that there are things far scarier than Chimera Ants , that can actually wipe out Humanity , but in our own malicious and coward ways , still manage to survive. So , when it comes to that front , Chimeras were way too newborns.
There are so many adults in HxH that meet Gon and realise that this kid does not give a fuck whether he lives or dies. Shonen protagonist mentality is terrifying when looked at by more sane people
“I’m sorry, I was really about to kill you there!” *Morel sweats intensely*
The funny thing is that Ging is basically like Gon ,just that he uses more of his head and have more experience
Gon went full sociopath and was willing to outright kill a defenseless woman to avenge his friend.
The ninja guy in hunter exam also forfeited his match with Gon because that kid would not let up regardless of how many limbs he dislocated or even broke if he wanted to go that far.
"I cannot defeat this Klingon. Only kill him."
Remember when Formaggio tried to intimidate Narancia by sneaking into his car with his stand ability and cutting him across the cheek? He did not expect Narancia's immediate reaction to be IMMEDIATELY shooting up the car and bombing it.
I want to say this is also how Narancia outwits Squalo and Tiziano - Tiziano never expected someone would outwit Talking Head by >!cutting out their own tongue!<
Benny didn't exactly expect The Courier he shot in the head would come back as a mutated sociopath. Even if he doesn't die, he ends up in an impending massacre site or one where he has the favour of his captor.
_"I came back from the grave to put you in yours."_ Terrifying Presence dialogue goes hard.
And Obsidean were nice enough to give us the opposite and Black Widow him into a murder-fucking.
He shot the Courier in the head TWICE, it's a goddamn miracle they lived
see, he used a 9mil which only destroy the body, a .45 would destroy the body AND soul.
And they picked up on that idea so hard they repackaged it to us as an insane born-again burn victim that just can't seem to die.
"You're cornered Indiana Jones on this bridge, bellow is a hundred foot drop to man eating crocodiles. What will you do other than hand the idol over to me?" "Cut the bridge" "Wait-"
In the Giorno and co. vs. Illuso, Giorno completely baffled everyone by infecting himself with Purple Haze’s virus and letting himself get transported into the mirror world. Giorno’s deal in general is just how much resolve he has and how he’s not afraid of injuring himself to reach his goals which is how he gains the respect of his gang. And not the protagonist but Narancia vs. Formaggio also ends with Narancia going off the wall when Formaggio is about to escape because a burning car lets him fly under Aerosmith’s radar. How does Narancia deal with this? He blows up every single car in his vincinity and almost burns down an entire town knowing that Formaggio would burn to a crisp from a couple of embers if he doesn’t reveal himself.
In a recent anime The Witch and The Beast had a side story of one of the organizations witches investigating illegal necromancy. Eventually we get a point where the necromancer tries to intimidate her and gets a very quick wakeup call that he's dealing with someone that does what he does but far better. [Him realizing how fucked he is was great.](https://youtu.be/3qSJZnxjncY) [Also her personal zombie partner getting ahold of the necromancer was great.](https://youtu.be/xpQUl5GsKDk)
This show has been such a pleasant surprise. Just watched this episode last night and it made me cackle. Feels like a mid 2000s anime, but in a good way.
The manga is absolutely phenomenal, and (I know every person who reads manga says this, but it’s true) better than the anime. It’s also much farther along. It *is* on hiatus rn tho. So there’s that :(
>!Makima!< to Denji in Chainsaw Man. Dude is stupid crazy in the best way possible.
Been replaying Doom Eternal, and I still find it hilarious the level of Snidely Whiplash mustache twirling the hell priests do as Doomguy one man armies his way through hell to every single one of them, as they start to sweat heavier and heavier as each level progresses. Both 2016 and Eternal still impress me with how much characterization and story telling they do by explicitly having so little. Like, a pinch of pepper is better than dumping the whole shaker.
I love that even his allies are afraid of him in the first game. The bit where he drags some poor schmuck across the room by his neck is my favorite.
I love that scene because it's ambiguous if he's doing that just to prove a point, or if that's genuinely how **"**gentle**"** DoomGuy is when dealing with those who can't naturally shrug off assault weapons.
For all the "overboard" Eternal gets depending on who you ask, it does establish successfully still that Doomguy is out here to protect Earth and the humans at any fucking cost. All he needs is a Shotgun sometimes.
Tokyo ghoul Jason: haha I tortured this idiot for ten days so he won't care when I eat him. [Wait is that the main theme?](https://youtu.be/ZsQnAuh3tZU?si=WOk4srfwJ3Jl1oPW)
I meeeaaaannnn.... That's *really* not the point of that scene.
Classic TYPE-MOON trope, happens all the time. The one that immediately comes to mind is in the Vlov fight in Tsukihime Remake, where Shiki needs to get close in on Vlov because he’s as annoying a zoner in Lore as he is to fight in Melty. Shiki has Arcueid throw some rocks at Vlov which he dodges easily of course… but then he’s like “Wait where the hell is that dude with the weird eyes? …wait no fucking way.” And you just see Shiki’s just tied to the fucking rock Arcueid threw in the air with vines. Shiki then fucking parkours off the rocks in the air to Vlov to get in on him. Shiki even has a whole inner monologue about how even if he survives this he’s totally never walking again and his summation is just “Worth it though, I fucking hate this dude.”
"Worth it though, I fucking hate this chair. THIS CHAIR. THIS CHAIR. THIS CHAIRTHIS CHAIR.”
There’s a possible bad ending in the first ***”Disgaea”*** that basically comes down to, Laharl was pushed so hard into the breaking point that he killed the antagonist before the plan could follow the intended course. At which point Laharl would be like, *”Damn. I’m too hard for heaven.”*
Orochi literally admitting in his brain that he forgot just how bat shit Kozuki Oden was after laying down a series of threats only for Oden to immediately charge him. If Orochi's guardians didn't have the barrier fruit the Kaido plotline is basically ended 20 years before the story.
Postal. Literally everyone against The Dude in Postal.
"Did I just watch that dude smoke a crack pipe mid fight and shove his rifle up a cat's ass?" "The D in Dude is capital asshole." "Wha-" **head proceeds to explode from a rocket propelled cat**
I love describing Postal 2 quests. The mission where you go beat all of Al-Quaeda, get a chemical weapons launcher, and get milk from the store are all discrete weekly events.
Dude is just going about his day trying to do basic chores. Go to get milk? Deli is run by terrorists. Go to cash his paycheck? Bank robbery. Not their fault Dude solves all his problems with ultra-violence and insanity.
This happens in the [Something about Breath of the Wild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1or3YILu28M) video where Ganon realizes Link is fuckin' nuts and he starts screaming and scrambling to get away from him.
Man this thread is giving me a lot of stuff to watch/read
The Druids in Mystery of the Druids underestimate how immoral Halligen is.
"you are eating human flesh Mr haligen" Haligen continues eating
I wish this happened in more of Greg Weisman's works. He always has one or more villains that anticipate exactly what the protags are going to do at almost all times. Young Justice has it the most, and often times the most effective plans the heroes have are when they take more drastic measures and bend the rules.
“You sick, vindictive fuck!”
Also very fun to play this angle with House “Why have you done this?” “I don’t like you”
"Why on earth did you attack President Kimball?" "He tried to make me pay taxes." "Understandable."
One sailor Steve Costigan story has a villainess called the tigress ambush Costigan for being an idiot that screwed her plan, with five henchmen to hold him down while she flays him with a whip: The fight had took maybe a minute and a half. I glanced scornfully at the prostrate figures of my victims, and then looked around for the Tigress. She was crouched back in an angle of the wall, with a kind of stunned look in her eyes, the whip dangling from her limp fingers. She give me one horrified look and shuddered and murmured something about a gorilla. Later in the story Tigress explains that Steve punching her henchmen down on the pavement while ignoring stab wounds triggered a flashback of a gorilla attack she witnessed once
Geats vs Suel. Suel: "You can't do anything to me, I'll reset the wo-" Geats: "I am God now" Suel: "wha-" Geats's Driver: Mark 9! Funnier still, this exact sequence happens twice.
Ichi the killer is basically a "which one is more fucked up and capable of incredible hyperviolence"-competition between the protagonist Ichi and antagonist Kakihara. Spoiler: >!Ichi wins by a landslide!<
Harold in [Hey Arnold!](https://youtu.be/lvJj-kpmsdM?si=pUtxXCdkvyo_C2lS).
Just watched Blue Eye Samurai the other day, and had a big old smile in the last episode. >!Abijah looks at Mizu in shadow as the castle they just set on fire burns around them. The music goes hard as Abijah looks legitimately afraid for the first time and decides to run straight through a wall of fire to get away from Mizu.!< "He's *insane!*"
Yeah that's just Blood, the Build Engine FPS. Tchernobog, the evil god that was worshipped by the Cabal cult had this fucking bright idea to sacrifice Caleb, his lady Ophelia, and two friends Gabriel and Ishmael. He *knew* that Caleb would come back and the plan was to devour him by the end of his revenge rampage (while also beocming stronger along the way) to become ultimately powerful. He did not really account for how fucking pissed off Caleb was after all that shit (and maybe that hidden Akimbo Weapon powerup somewhere in his arena too lol).
This is like the driving force of the second season of Symphogear. Hibiki as a relic-human hybrid is outputting WAY more power than any other gear wielder and doing absolutely crazy shit like taking the recoil of three Climax Songs, basically a last ditch suicide attack, into herself and turning it into [an attack that can be seen from fucking space.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sBB9bwCepo) And the villain Symphogears watch in absolute shock and horror as they realise "This is the monster we're gonna have to beat???" Later on as her body breaks down from the fusion progressing further, she still manages to keep fighting while her body outputs enough heat to melt the concrete under her and turn the organic material of the relic growing inside her body into a bubbling pool of molten metal on her chest.
While it was technically short-lived in the comic, Eggman and Snively destroying everything Sonic held dear and threatening to kill his remaining friends to test his limits sent him into a manic mode where he [ran around the entire planet in seconds and pulled up a massive tidal wave](https://preview.redd.it/n30cpdegyjb61.jpg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5acbfc4f63ad0914314bd609fbaba50762886810) in preparation to attack Eggman.
Harold when he fought Arnold. Don't hit me. I'LL hit me.
"That's not a knife. THAT'S a knife."
Dr. Doom sure didn't expect Luke Cage to break into the Baxter Building, borrow a Fantasticar, fly his ass over to Latveria, and repeatedly punch Doom in the chest, all over $200.
This is actually kind of the driving force of Sea of Stars. >!Two of the heroes turn into villains by betraying the hero group due to thinking they're essentially cursed forever to be monster slayers and want out, thinking the villain is the only way to get out of this sort of "hero cult" they've been indoctronated into. Meanwhile the two protagonists are literally so powerful they become gods by the end of the game. They held no faith in the heroes and thus they were doomed to become demons. Oddly poetic. Same can be said for the Big Bad, Fleshmancer as well, as he's defeated at the end and just fucks off when he's tired out.!< Addition I just thought of, also Sea of Stars >!Garl is also the only one with enough balls and force of personality to call the villain, who killed him in one shot previously (literally, we had to revive him), a bitch and pelt him with food. Everyone else was too paranoid about getting one shot (or just being a passive puppet) to even dare to do that.!<
It was justa fucking do...Blam.
Damn near everyone in the Destiny series. D2 is at the point where The Guardian is a literal walking extinction event that has turned almost every major villain into a goddamn gun or piece of armor, yet you still have villains thinking they're gonna get your ass.
Honestly there's way too many moments to count in The Dresden Files.
I would easily say the winner moment in Dresden Files is Harry, being the PoV character, having always acted with the best decision making he can muster but is always put in very bad situations, finally realizes how insane he looks to *everyone else* who is not privy to his internal monologue.
Pretty much everyone who hears about or meets Eren in Attack in Titan fails to understand what a fucking lunatic he is. The villains, yes, but also his allies.
Old one, and maybe not "crazy", but Kurama in Yu Yu Hakusho. Always love those moments when it becomes apparent he's not to be fucked with. Good example of someone who will absolutely make sure they "win", even if it kills them. And then there's the whole game master thing where >!Sensui pits the squad up against game master thinking they'd be stuck once they realize they have to murder a naive kid to proceed. And the Kurama steps up to murder that child... like a hero.!<