The Incredible Hulk (comic book)/Characters

Dr. Bruce Banner
For Bruce Banner or his various alters/hulks, please click here.

Betty Ross/Harpy/

 * Brainwashed and Crazy
 * Broken Bird
 * Convenient Miscarriage:
 * Heel Face Revolving Door: As
 * Hot Amazon
 * Tragic Monster

She-Hulk
See the main page.

Rick Jones/

 * Conveniently an Orphan
 * Sidekick
 * Totally Radical in the early comics Rick spoke heavily in the slang of the era
 * Totally Radical in the early comics Rick spoke heavily in the slang of the era

Doc Samson

 * Genius Bruiser
 * Meaningful Name: He is a doctor, and his real name is Samson.
 * Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: To the savage Hulk and the grey Hulk.
 * The Shrink
 * You Gotta Have Green Hair

Doctor Strange
See the main page

Skaar

 * Antagonistic Offspring: Towards the Hulk, but not Bruce. He spent a lot of time trying to become a Self-Made Orphan
 * Barbarian Hero
 * BFS
 * Cain and Abel: With his brother Hiro-Kala (Which is which is up for debate.)
 * Calling the Old Man Out
 * Dishing Out Dirt
 * Heroes Prefer Swords
 * Not So Different: Daken says this to Skaar when they first meet.
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy
 * Younger Than They Look

Caiera

 * Action Girl / Dark Action Girl
 * Chainmail Bikini
 * Dead Little Sister: Dead...whole family, really.
 * Dishing Out Dirt
 * Disposable Women
 * Died in Your Arms Tonight
 * The Dragon
 * Face Heel Turn
 * Foe Yay
 * Hot Amazon
 * Killed Off for Real
 * My Master, Right or Wrong
 * Nigh Invulnerability
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge: A What If story showed what would have happened if Hulk died instead of her. Hell hath no fury like this woman.

Korg

 * The Big Guy
 * Dishing Out Dirt: Kinda...he's basically made of rock, but he can't control earth at all. He can apparently communicate with it, though.
 * Gentle Giant
 * Informed Attribute: Supposedly his strength and durability are related to the makeup of the atmosphere of whatever planet he's on at the time. That hasn't really been expanded upon.
 * My Greatest Failure: Killing his brother.
 * Nigh Invulnerability
 * Proud Warrior Race Guy: More proud soldier race, but it's there.

Hiroim

 * Badass Abnormal: His species natural abilities and training put him slightly above Captain America (comics); then once Caiera died, he got the old power.
 * Badass Preacher
 * Dishing Out Dirt: After the death of Caiera
 * The Heretic
 * Heroic Sacrifice
 * Heel Realization: During World War Hulk, he admitted that the Warbound had gone too far—but he knew it was too late to stop.
 * Killed Off for Real: He got better.
 * The Lancer
 * My Greatest Failure: Most people point to him breaking his oath as a shadow guard, but he stands by that. He sees his greatest failure as believing that he was the Sakaarson.
 * New Powers as the Plot Demands: In Planet Hulk he was shown to be versed in the mystic practices of the shadow priests, but there wasn't anything to suggest those practices translated to actual magical power. In World War Hulk, he's able to break through enchantments made by Doctor Strange, who was weakened at the time, but still.
 * Warrior Monk
 * Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Broke his oath to the emperor when he refused to kill the emperor's son on his orders. Considering that son grew up to be the Red King, that might not have been the best move, but he stands by it.

Abomination

 * Arch Enemy: He was considered this for quite a long time.
 * The Dragon: Would often fill this role.
 * Eldritch Abomination: After his death he received an "upgrade"...
 * Evil Counterpart
 * Killed Off for Real: Not that it did much good.
 * Like a Badass Out of Hell: During Chaos War, the "given a job" type.
 * The Mole
 * Mother Russia Makes You Strong
 * Super Strength

Absorbing Man
Carl "Crusher" Creel was a professional turned ordinary criminal, until he drank a liquid provided by Loki that gave him the power to copy the properties of anything he touches. Creel's intelligence lags far behind his incredible power, leading to his defeat more than once over the years. Originally a Thor villain, but turned into a semi-regular sparring partner for the Hulk, due to his scale of power and simple nature.
 * All Your Powers Combined: Creel has demonstrated the ability to combine previously copied abilities.
 * Alliterative Name
 * Anti-Villain: Tom Defalco played him as a mixture of types I and II, but this portrayal seems to be gone nowadays.
 * Bald of Evil
 * Battle Couple: With Titania.
 * Dumb Muscle
 * Epic Flail: Creel's favorite weapon is a ball and chain that gains the properties of whatever he touches.
 * My Suit Is Also Super: The outfit Creel wore when he got his powers changes properties with his body.
 * Sizeshifter: Creel can copy extra mass if the object he's touching is larger than himself.
 * Superpower Lottery: He can duplicate virtually any power or attribute whatsoever, including energy, and the more powerful you are, the more powerful he gets.
 * Super Strength: His strength level depends on what object he has copied the properties of.

Arm'Chedon/"Armageddon"

 * Cold-Blooded Torture
 * Galactic Conqueror
 * Pet the Dog: His personality is virtually identical to that of Zeus, but similarly he had a very well hidden "soft" spot for his favourite son. With that son dead, he doesn't have any nice spots anymore.
 * Proud Warrior Race Guy
 * The Social Darwinist
 * The Spartan Way
 * Sins of Our Fathers: One of the laws he enforces are to slaughter the entire family of anybody who goes beyond any of his rules in the slightest, regardless if they had nothing to do with it, as it serves as a "more powerful preventative warning".
 * Superpower Lottery: He is basically a more skilled, powerful, and ruthless version of the Silver Surfer, with a galactic armada to back him up.

Brian Banner

 * Abusive Parents
 * Alcoholic Parent
 * Back from the Dead: Repeatedly
 * Beard of Evil
 * Mouth of Sauron: Becomes the host/mouthpiece for the One Below All when he's sent down to the Below Place, the deepest layer of hell.
 * The Power of Hate: After becoming the host for the One Below All, Brian Banner gains its ability to manipulate people based on their hatred and negative emotions.
 * Offing the Offspring

Galaxy Master

 * Cosmic Entity
 * Doomsday Device
 * Galactic Conqueror
 * Voluntary Shapeshifting

Gamma Corps

 * Blessed with Suck: Mess. The left half of her body is Abomination-like. She's super strong, super durable, and has a healing factor... only on her left side.
 * Brother Chuck: Glenn (and Grey) technically has a nephew named Matt Talbot (which means that there is at least one missing brother or sister), who briefly hunted Hulk, but thought better of it.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Griffin.
 * Genre Savvy: Griffin/Clown. He guessed Stryker's plan exceedingly quickly.
 * Insane Troll Logic: Mister Gideon blamed the Hulk for the death of his son, Jim Wilson. Jim died of AIDS (which, to be clear, he did not contract from the Hulk).
 * My Brain Is Big: Prodigy.
 * Super Soldier
 * Quirky Miniboss Squad
 * Revenge Before Reason: For Gideon, Mess, and Prodigy. Grey has his own motives and Griffin just wants someone to be mad at.
 * Sibling Rivalry: Grey's real reason for joining the team. He is Glenn Talbot's younger brother. Glenn tormented him during his upbringing, so he is not out for revenge, but to prove himself more capable than his brother by beating the Hulk.
 * Talkative Loon: Griffin again.
 * Two-Faced: Mess.

Hiro-Kala

 * A God Am I: He is the World Breaker and Sakaarson. He demands your worship.
 * Antagonistic Offspring: Like Skaar, he desperately wants to kill their father. Unlike Skaar, he doesn't care how many people become collateral damage in the process.
 * Bald of Evil
 * Cain and Abel: With Skaar
 * Dishing Out Dirt
 * Freudian Excuse: Abandoned on a barbaric planet, sold into slavery, saw his world destroyed...
 * Galactic Conqueror
 * Kill All Humans
 * Nigh Invulnerability
 * The Power of Hate
 * Sibling Yin-Yang: They couldn't look more different, and have radically opposed personalities as well.
 * Super Strength

Juggernaut
Originally associated with the X-Men, but similarly to Absorbing Man, he eventually turned into one of Hulk's regular opponents, due to being one of very few regular supervillains that can actually pose any threat to him.
 * Anti-Villain: Type I-II
 * Attack! Attack! Attack!: His default tactic.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: With Black Tom Cassidy.
 * Immortality
 * The Juggernaut: ...
 * Pet the Dog
 * The Rival
 * Super Strength

The Leader

 * Arch Enemy: Another major contender for the title.
 * Assimilation Plot: More than once, his goal has been transforming most/all the world's population into gamma beings.
 * Back from the Dead / Not Quite Dead: He's been killed off more than once, and there's rarely an explanation as to how he's come back. It's even been theorized there's more than one Leader running around from alternate universes.
 * Big Bad: Frequently, and of the Fall of the Hulks storyline in particular.
 * Catch Phrase: "So says the Leader" in the 90s cartoon.
 * Charm Person: Can mind control any non-gamma being just by touching them.
 * Do Not Call Me "Paul": Hates being called Samuel Stearns. This is somewhat justified; after the Hulk, his gamma transformation likely caused the greatest alteration to his personality, to the point where they may well be two different people, like the Hulk and Banner.
 * Evil Counterpart: The Hulk is a skinny scientist who gains Super Strength from gamma rays. The Leader was an almost handicapped janitor who gains Super Intelligence from gamma rays.
 * Evil Is Petty: It's been pointed out several times that many of his schemes would have worked... if he chose not to preemptively involve the Hulk, who would have in all likelihood, ignored him. But his petty grudge against the not-so-jolly green giant prevents him from leaving the Hulk out of his plans, thus shooting himself in the foot.
 * Insufferable Genius
 * Mind Rape: Had to take his Charm Person power Up to Eleven, with a healthy dose of Cold-Blooded Torture to get it to work on Red She-Hulk.
 * My Brain Is Big
 * Smug Snake: Often
 * Super Intelligence: Probably the second smartest human, after the High Evolutionary, in terms of raw intelligence.
 * Utopia Justifies the Means
 * Visionary Villain
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: Although in this case the well-intentioned part is likely mostly in his own head.
 * Would Be Rude to Say Genocide / Evilutionary Biologist: He once blew up an inhabited city just to see if the radiation would produce useful minions. He has a history of much more ambitious schemes of the same type, with all of humanity acting as his lab rats.

Madman
The Leader's brother, but so completely unhinged that Leader wants nothing to do with him.
 * Ax Crazy
 * Cloudcuckoolander
 * Evil Counterpart: He's even crazier than Hulk himself, and with no conscience or morality whatsoever to keep it in check.
 * Evilutionary Biologist
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin
 * Faux Affably Evil
 * In Name Only: In the 2003 video game Hulk(which served as a sequal to the Ang Lee movie), virtually nothing of his character remained from the comics. He was a Stalker with a Crush to Betty, rather than the Hulk, and his obsession with the Hulk (which was rather mild) boiled down to wanting to prove he was stronger. His shape/size changing powers were also left out.
 * Insane Troll Logic
 * Mad Artist
 * Mad Scientist
 * Mood Swinger
 * Power Born of Madness
 * Psychopathic Manchild
 * Stalker with a Crush: Yes, romantically, in a completely unhinged Ax Crazy Yandere fashion.
 * Super Strength: Even stronger than a calm Hulk, and able to grow and increase his density further still.
 * Talkative Loon
 * Troll: The other half of his motivation to harass the Hulk is that he finds it hilarious to be extremely annoying.
 * Voluntary Shapeshifting

Maestro
A corrupt, more powerful version of the Hulk from a possible Bad Future where most of humanity was decimated by nuclear war. He built a city with radiation shielding which he named Dystopia, where he rules over the surviving humans like an Emperor.
 * After the End
 * Badass Beard Of Evil
 * Badass Grandpa
 * Bad Future
 * Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me
 * The Berserker
 * Brother Chuck
 * The Corrupter: Tries to be this to the "present" Hulk.
 * Dystopia: He chose this as the name of the kingdom he built.
 * Evil Counterpart: Taken to whole new levels.
 * Evil Overlord
 * Evil Me Scares Me/ Future Me Scares Me: The Hulk is utterly horrified and repulsed by what the Maestro has become and the society he has created.
 * Fallen Hero
 * Future Badass
 * Gratuitous Rape: He has one of his slaves do this to a paralyzed Hulk.
 * The Hedonist
 * Humans Are the Real Monsters
 * I Hate Past Me
 * I Love Nuclear Power: Far stronger than his younger self due to absorbing the fallout of the nuclear wars. It also apparently unbalanced his mind.
 * Impossibly Cool Clothes: As befits his status as an Evil Overlord, his wardrobe is definitely a few steps up from torn purple trousers.
 * Kick the Dog: A lot.
 * Might Makes Right
 * The Social Darwinist
 * Up to Eleven
 * Voluntary Shapeshifting: In the What Savage Beast novel, he demonstrates the ability to change back into an elderly Bruce Banner at will.

Mercy

 * Be Careful What You Wish For: Especially if it's a death wish.
 * Combo-Platter Powers
 * Dark Chick
 * Depending on the Writer: Very different assigned origins and motivations, from alien, to angel of mercy, to artificial mutate. One moment she will turn into a giant monster, and the next help a soul to the afterlife. Lampshaded in that she has mentioned that she is simply very fickle.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Consequently.
 * Everything's Better with Sparkles
 * Femme Fatalons
 * Immortality
 * Mercy Kill: Her shtick, usually. Sometimes it's less about people who actively want to die and more about people she feels would be better off dead, hence her battles with the Hulk.
 * New Powers as the Plot Demands: Can apparently do virtually anything on a limited scale.
 * Not So Harmless: She looks like some kind of fairy... and can still give the Hulk a good run for his money!
 * Reality Warper
 * Rose-Haired Girl
 * She's Got Legs: All her outfits greatly reveal her long legs.
 * Strange Girl: Very wayward, whimsical and unpredictable.

Nightmare

 * Anthropomorphic Personification
 * The Corrupter
 * Demon Lords and Archdevils
 * Eldritch Abomination
 * For the Evulz
 * God of Evil
 * Gratuitous Rape
 * It's Personal
 * Mind Rape
 * Nightmare Fetishist
 * Nightmare Fuel
 * Psychic Powers
 * Reality Warper

Onslaught
An entity with the combined powers of Professor X, Magneto, Franklin Richards, and X-Man. The Hulk defeated his physical form in single combat.
 * A God Am I
 * The Corrupter
 * Cosmic Entity
 * Energy Being
 * Mind Rape
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When Hulk destroyed Onslaught's physical form, the entity turned into an incorporeal energy state. Still, all the other heroes of the Marvel Universe combined were helpless before it, whereas Hulk excels at raw power (and not much else), and somehow made it vulnerable to (admittedly contrived) alternative approaches afterwards.
 * Omnicidal Maniac
 * Psychic Powers
 * Reality Warper

Shaper of Worlds

 * Anti-Villain: Not evil, as such, but does evil work for others.
 * Creative Sterility
 * Reality Warper
 * The Spock

Thunderbolt Ross/Red Hulk
See the page.

Tyrannus

 * Affably Evil
 * Faux Affably Evil
 * Immortality
 * Magic From Technology
 * Magitek
 * Magnificent Bastard
 * Pragmatic Villainy
 * The Roman Empire
 * Utopia Justifies the Means
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist

U-Foes

 * Evil Counterpart: To the Fantastic Four. Oddly, they've never actually fought the Fantastic Four. This was also completely intentional on their part; they got their powers deliberately through the same method as the FF.
 * Four Is Death
 * Four-Temperament Ensemble
 * Not So Harmless: Sure, they don't have much of a street cred, but Vector can repell the magic of Doctor Strange, hurl planets, blast the Hulk into a walking skeleton, and rip apart reality itself. Also, they think nothing of blowing up thousands as long as they get paid.
 * If one takes time to examine their powers, they're actually considerably more powerful than the Fantastic Four(they were exposed to considerably more cosmic rays). Unfortunately they aren't nearly as smart as the FF, which is probably the main thing holding them back from being major villains.
 * Psycho for Hire
 * Unholy Matrimony: Vapor and Vector

Umar
Possibly the Hulk's most dangerous "adversary", Onslaught and Galaxy Master included. A billions of years old higher-dimensional energy being, and occasional ruler of her own magical universe, fully capable of beating up cosmic entities or rewriting entire realities to suit her whims, and by far exceeding virtually any known arch devils or pantheon godheads in existence. Basically the most evil and powerful woman in the Marvel Universe. She finds the Hulk extremely attractive as a potential trophy husband, due to the upper limits of his raw power, destructive potential, and easily manipulated nature.


 * Black Comedy Rape
 * Cosmic Entity
 * Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?
 * Dimension Lord / Multiversal Conqueror
 * Double Standard Rape (Female on Male): Tries to invoke this but often fails.
 * Dystopia Justifies the Means
 * Eldritch Abomination
 * Humanoid Abomination: Considerably moreso than her brother.
 * Energy Beings
 * God of Evil
 * The Hedonist
 * Immortality
 * Manipulative Bitch
 * Nightmare Fuel
 * Out with a Bang: Most of her lovers are fortunate if that is all that happens to them...
 * Physical God
 * Reality Warper
 * The Vamp
 * Villainesses Want Heroes
 * Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: A being even Mephisto considers a bit on the extreme side finds the Hulk attractive and his relationship with Red She-Hulk "cute".

Zeus
Father of The Incredible Hercules and king of the Greco-Roman pantheon.
 * A God Am I
 * A Million Is a Statistic
 * Cold-Blooded Torture
 * Disproportionate Retribution
 * Double Standard Rape (Divine on Mortal)
 * Easy Road to Hell
 * Jerkass Gods
 * Karma Houdini
 * Shock and Awe
 * The Social Darwinist
 * The Social Darwinist

Zom
Possibly the most powerful known demonic entity, seeking to destroy all of reality, and occasionally used by Doctor Strange as a weapon.
 * Cosmic Entity
 * Demon Lords and Archdevils: But unlike other virtually omnipotent demonic entities Zom isn't very clever, and although apparently more powerful as such than any of them, he cannot use it for a lot of versatile purposes.
 * The Dreaded: Scares the hell out of Umar. Think about that.
 * Eldritch Abomination
 * Flat Character
 * Godzilla Threshold: Strange only pulls him out of the bag when he feels the situation has crossed this. The first time was against Umar. The second was against Hulk.
 * The Juggernaut
 * Living Weapon / Lost Superweapon/ Attack Animal: Zom isn't a natural creature, but rather was created as a weapon.
 * Really? I thought that he just behaved like a Doomsday Device? It makes sense though.
 * Omnicidal Maniac
 * Physical God: When you require a goddamn MULTIVERSAL JUDGE to stop your rampage, you've more than earned this title.
 * Sealed Evil in a Can: Up to Eleven. It took the combined efforts of Eternity, Dormammu, and assorted other mystical entities to seal him up. When fighting Hulk the second time it stated that it was only due to Doctor Strange restraining its full power that allowed Hulk to win the first battle, and this was a Hulk angry enough to overcome the full multiversal-scale power of The Sentry. (Hulk later stated that he still held back though.)

ZZZAX

 * Energy Beings
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Or rather psychic vampire
 * Shock and Awe: A being of pure sentient electricity.
 * Super Strength: Somehow... maybe through electromagnetism.
 * Technopath


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