Lethal Joke Character: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

You've just unlocked an absolutely useless [[Joke Character]]. Weak attack, laughable specials, etc. And yet, the player next door uses him every time... and always kicks your ass.

 

 

The designers, looking for balance, have sneaked in one obscure, impossible-to-master, but incredibly rewarding technique for this character, and using it, you'll win every time... if you can get it down. But doing so requires skill, practice, and the ability to see the potential in the seemingly-useless. It's a sort of [[Obfuscating Stupidity]] applied to the game mechanics.

 

 

As with [[Joke Character]], this is a [[Game Tropes|Game Trope]]. For non-game examples, see [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]].

 

Has absolutely nothing to do with [[The Killing Joke|Alan Moore]].

* The ''[[Naruto Clash of Ninja]]'' games had Akamaru the puppy who, unlike all the other human characters, was very tiny. Even though he only had a few attacks that don't do much damage, all the ''other'' character's attacks were designed to attack regular characters so a vast majority of them would fly over you. It came to the point that all of a character's intricate combos would be useless and they'd have to focus on aiming kunai or carefully timing sweep kicks to hope to survive.

** [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ornithopter Ornithopter] looks mostly harmless: A flying 0/2 is pretty useless. The 'thopter's real value for combos is that it has zero cost - and you won't be using it for ''attacking''. Hint: [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Enduring%20Renewal Enduring Renewal]. It has also fueled cards like [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Arcbound%20Ravager Arcbound Ravager] and other components of the ravager affinity deck, including [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cranial%20Plating Cranial Plating], which made it into a lethal evasive attacker.

*** Or it can be used to sneak in stuff using [http://magiccards.info/bok/en/88.html ninjutsu].

** There's also four cards based off of [[Parodius]], resembling four plastic men riding paper airplanes. Two of them are Normal Monsters with almost no attack or defense, but the other two are Union Monsters (monsters that can turn themselves into Equip cards) and when unioned to the others, make them ''impressively'' powerful.

** Skull Servants. These are well known as being the weakest monsters in the game with no effect, low points, and no support. Until the release of King of the Skull Servants, a creature that gains 1000 attack points for every Skull Servant in your grave, as well as every King of the SS. After that there was Lady in Wight and Wightmare, who both are treated as SS while in the grave. This means that with all of these cards in the grave, King can easily become a monster with 11000 attack points.

* In the ''[[Suikoden]]'' series:

** Sheena. He's a lecherous [[Upper Class Twit]] with not-so-special stats. Basically, a character that most casual players would never use. However, long-time players of Suikoden swear by him, because he has something casual players tend to overlook. Sheena comes with three free Rune Slots, giving him insane twinking potential. With very little effort, one could very easily turn him into a [[Game Breaker]].

** In the same game, we have Phoenix Wright. His attacks may seem useless and stupid, but when you collect all three pieces of evidence, you can bring him into turn about mode. He can shoot lasers and his opponent with his FINGER and the evidence, and his damage output is increased exponentially. Basically, if you're a good player you'll have no problem beating someone with Phoenix Wright.

* ''[[Street Fighter III]]'': Sean probably qualifies; he's Ken's young student and attacks with basketballs, but he's actually quite good. He also strives to be everything Dan wasn't. They [[Just for Pun|nerfed his balls off]] in 3S, though. The only character worse is Twelve, although the joke there might be how terrible Capcom was (is?) at balancing games. Also notable in Sean's case is that he's actually ''worse'' than Dan in the storyline.

* In ''[[Street Fighter IV]]'', ''[[Masked Luchador|El Fuerte]]'' also qualifies for this trope. Soon after the game was released, a near-infinite Fierce punch loop was discovered that would allow him to stun enemies in seconds. Capcom decided not to patch this, with the justification that the loop was extremely difficult to perform, and that El Fuerte had little else going for him as a character.

* In ''[[Gundam]] Battle Assault 2'', the player can unlock such powerful cheese machines like the Big Zam, Epyon, deceptively-ridiculous Zeong, the f***ing [[Mobile Fighter G Gundam|Dark Gundam]], the more under-the-radar Hydra Gundam, the Missile spam crazy [[Mobile Suit Gundam Wing|Heavyarms Custom]], and the custom [[Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam|Psycho Gundam Mk. III]]. Sharing the spotlight with these titans of argh is...a Ball, piloted by barely-above-no-name [[Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team|Shiro Amada]]. [[Badass Normal|Not to denigrate his status as a pilot or a protagonist]], but Shiro isn't exactly on a par with Newtypes like [[Chars Counterattack|Char]] or zombie-cyborgs like [[Mobile Fighter G Gundam|Major Ulube]] or even prettyboy aces like [[Mobile Suit Gundam Wing|Treize Kushrenada]]. Still, people fear the Ball, all for one reason: sheer speed. Ball is the second-fastest character in the game, and has a trick by which it can stop its vernier boost and rapidly descend with an attack. This lightning-fast cross-up could then be canceled into his damaging jackhammer attack or his even-more-damaging 120mm cannon shot. Even without any mega-specials and pitiful defense, the trusty Ball managed to crush almost anyone in its path.

** Likewise, the Ball of ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]: [[Gundam vs. Series|Federation vs Zeon]]'' has the lowest armor and most limited weaponry of any suit, while being slow and having rather limited boost power. A Rick Dom or most Mobile Armors can blow it up in a single shot. It's mostly in-game for plot purposes. It can still be ridiculously lethal in the right hands, though, since where you'd only get a couple Rick Doms, players using the Ball get at least six, and often many more, all of which are small targets devoted to long-range attacks. They can only take down real mobile suits by nibbling them to death, but they ''can'' [[Death of a Thousand Cuts|nibble things to death]].

* ''[[Gundam vs. Series|Gundam Extreme Vs]]'' has the old fan favorite joke MS, the Acguy, as a playable suit. However, while in most games the Acguy appears in it's weak and pathetic, here it is fairly fast and has three different Support MS's it can call up, meaning you can easily find yourself Zerg Rushed by Acguy variants.

* In the ''MMORPG'' [[Ragnarok Online]], a class called the Super Novice can be obtained if one creates a regular Novice and keeps it from obtaining a class until base lv 45. The Super Novice at first seems to have a great deal of potential, being allowed to acquire almost all the skills the 1st class Jobs can use, and having a collective pool of 99 points (instead of the usual 50 1st class Jobs usually have) to allocate them to. However, Super Novices can only use the same crappy gear novices have, and along with their abysmally low HP/SP gains from leveling up, can easily be killed in one or two hits. Their real strength shines if built like a Mage class, as, since casting time for spells is determined by the game's DEX stat, using the right gear, maxing their base DEX stat, and using all the DEX skill buffs available to them, the Super Novice can nearly be able to instantly cast spells. If coupled with a Bard skill that even further lowers casting time and after-cast delay, players can effectively make efficiently-leveled Super Novices into living, Fire Bolt-spewing maching guns...as long as their puny SP holds out, anyway. Or if built for AGI they get the highest flee in the game and if their XP is kept between 99 and 100% they will get up if killed with a host of buffs making them a strange little tank so long as they're not being mobbed.

** In [[Updated Rerelease|HeartGold and SoulSilver]], contests are replaced by the Pokéthlon, a sport variety of Minigames. Each Pokémon has different stats in a category for how well they do in the competitions. The officially weakest Pokémon, Sunkern, has Pokéthlon stats comparable to [[Olympus Mons]]; the likes of [[Ridiculously Cute Critter|Mew]], [[Eldritch Abomination|Giratina's]] Origin Forme, and '''the''' Olympus Mon itself, [[God|Arceus]]. And [[Voluntary Shapeshifter|Ditto]]. On top of that, its slightly-better evolved form, Sunflora, doesn't have these stats. However, it's maximum stats are full, but its base stats are 1. And there is no way to get them all to full.

** Rotom was an [[Awesome but Impractical]] levitating Electric/Ghost type with an awesome movepool/typing but no stats introduced in Diamond and Pearl... which, in Platinum, gained the ability to transform into a handful of ridiculous yet incredibly badass alternate forms, such as a [[Better Than It Sounds|toaster oven or lawnmower]]. [[Awesome Yet Practical|Now, these frankly ridiculous variants? They have excellent defensive stats, special moves that give them great coverage, and very nice Special Attack. One of the best Pokemon in the game... ...is a toaster oven.]] Of course, anyone who actually looks at the STATS of the Pokemon will notice right away that Rotom-A in no joke, but if you just have this kinda useless Pokemon that suddenly transforms into an appliance...

** There's also Spinda, a Pokemon usually lambasted for its TERRIBLE stats. However, with the introduction of the Dream World, it gained access to the ability Contrary, which turns its stat drops into stat boosts. The Dream World also gave it the move Superpower, which would normally cut its Attack and Defense, but now RAISES them instead.

** [[Mushroom Man|Breloom]] may not look like much. After all, what could a goofy-looking mushroom-dinosaur do, right? Well, for one thing, he can use Spore, which is a one hundred percent accurate Sleep-inducing move, and if he's low on hit points, he can hit hard with Drain Punch. Oh, and his double Flying-type weakness? He just Sky Uppercuts them to death. Did we mention he also has an incredible attack stat?

** Additionally, Relm starts off pretty useless; her physical attacks suck, and even when Sketch works, it's not very useful. However, take a look at her stat screen, and you realize that she has the highest natural Magic in the game, and though she doesn't start off with any spells, the nature of the Esper system allows the player to customize her magic any way they like. In the second half of the game, you can get some very useful magic-boosting equipment for her, giving her a [[Glass Cannon]] flavor due to not being quite as durable as most of the other characters (but the Esper system can help this too).

** Mog isn't quite as underrated as the above two, but he can still be surprisingly powerful with the right equipment.

** Think that's all the Borot can do? In Alpha Gaiden, once his will was high, just plant him in water and have him fight beam using enemies. They do 10 damage, HE kicks their ass. Also, if you buff his defense and HP, you can actually turn the Borot into a highly viable meat shield in J and W.

** Alpha 2 takes it a step further, with Boss getting his copilots Nuke and Mucha. Unlike in J, they start out with a pair of decent-ish seishin each, until they hit level 80. [[Game Breaker|At which point Nuke starts throwing Exhaust for 10 SP and Alert for 5.]]

** Also, in the online version, Zuo Ci's weapon seems to be the weakest out of all of them, inversely having one of the WORST stat averages of the game, the average high of the weapon is actually poor quality if compared to other weapons, and having a mostly gimmicky moveset. Unless you get the right combination of first and 6th charge attack. If done right, you can have a perfect assist weapon, second only to none. You could have the ability to naturally stun, freeze, or burn any opponent without using items, and if you do then you can stack up the advantage by using a combination of 2-3 elements depending on your luck with the weapon attacks. Being able to inflict status effects stacks well with the activation skill, you get a debuff and slowly lose health, one of the weapon's higher stats, and give a bonus in attack and defense to all friends, as well as heal them. You don't play this weapon for it's stats.

*** Talking about online, a less straight out joke weapon is the Feather fan, not to be confused with the strategist's fan of the same game that is also a feather fan but uses black feathers, because you can ask anybody online about Zhuge Liang, the character that this weapon moveset is based off of, and they will tell you it sucks. However, those who do know how to use it are in for a treat. It has very high defense, life, and attack upgrades, comparable the weapon based off [[The Dragon]] from the dynasty warrior games, and a deadly [[Limit Break|Musou attack]] is hard to aim, being a spamming of beams forward, but if you manage to connect you get a very effective stunlock that is impossible to get out of once hit unless the attacker stop or misses. Along with that it has only one really good normal attack, a moving wall attack, and it makes it confusing if somebody starts using other parts of the combo, you aren't likely to see the [[Everything Is Better With Spinning|Charge 4]] in combat, making it confusing when it's suddenly used to knock you and anybody near you away after you trap a user.

** Even in the hands of an unskilled player, combinining her Hammer Rain with Lloyd's level 2 Sword Rain arts in an Unison Attack provides the devastating Stardust Rain combination, which can connect for 100+ hits on its own against a sufficiently large opponent.

* The ''Tales'' fangame, ''A.C.S.'', gives you the Kakashi Scarecrow (the training dummy from ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]''. Its one attack shaves off about a quarter of the opponent's health bar... [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVZgkX3FtgY Much] [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* Shingo Yabuki of ''[[The King of Fighters]] '97'', who is less effective in terms of technique but still has ''lots'' of damage potential in him, thanks to his ability to do random critical hits. Basically, it's a bit hard to have him hit you, but when he ''does'' hit, he'll break your defenses more than once. Yeowch.

** Also in ''[[King of Fighters]]'' are Chang and Choi. Both characters look and act goofy and are part of the "joke" team, but are absolutely lethal in the right hands. The AI also tends to play them very well, making them lethal joke characters in normal play.

** Or tuning a Volkswagen Golf to be faster than a Bugatti Veyron.

* In the Japanese version of ''Marvel Super Heroes'' a hidden character was Anita, Donovan's companion from ''Darkstalkers''. Anita was small so many attacks flew right over her. Her super-move "Love For You" is the most devastating attack in the game: she throws a torrent of doll heads at you which hit for 99 hits, and even if you block you'll still lose half your life bar.

** She's ridiculously effective on a horse, also. While her normal attacks are essentially her flailing her tiny fists at people (little damage, no range), her mounted attack is ''lobbing fireballs of doom.'' Gracia + Matsukaze = apocalyptic destruction.

* The Monkey of ''[[Time Splitters]] 2'' and its sequel, ''Future Perfect''. With character attributes off, the monkey still retains its MUCH smaller hitbox, making him VERY hard to hit. Worse yet, his hitbox is BELOW the neutral position viewline, meaning opponents need to deliberately aim downwards to make their shots count, adding to the inaccuracy. With attribs on, his speed combines with the already almost gamebreaking hitbox, making him literally impossible to damage with non-hitscan weapons if played right.

*** On the subject of Robofish, let's not forget this; since he's a robot, he's completely immune to fire damage. Meaning quite a few attacks, like the Flamethrower and the Grenade Launchers secondary fire, are utterly worthless against him.

* ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'''s Nightwolf was originally a parody of Thunder Hawk from [[Street Fighter]]. Except that he could run faster than a character was being thrown, and he had a fast recovery time, so you could set up a throw combo. He's still pretty good even in subsequent games, but no unblockable 100% combos.

* Arguably, Zappa from ''[[Guilty Gear]]''. Due to the random nature of his ghost summons, he's just as unpredictable to the person playing him as he is to his opponent, and his really powerful ghost takes a long time to set up...but once Raoh appears, the fight is more or less over. Plus he's good for just plain freaking opponents out with his constant babbling and impossible contortions.

** There is actually a method of consistently selecting a summon for Zappa based on the 2nd digit of the game timer. This makes him considerably more dangerous.

** Even more on Mist. She is notable in the game for having the among the lowest strength growths and stat caps in the game while also having amazing magic growth and stat cap. Unfortunately she uses swords as a weapon of choice, which makes her mediocre in battle at best. Until you give her one of the magic swords available in the game, which uses her magic stat for attacking and behaves pretty much like a magic tome. All of the sudden, you have a beastly unit capable of destroying hundreds... at least until her magic sword breaks.

*** This is only possible in ''Path of Radiance'', however. In ''Radiant Dawn'', magic swords do physical damage now. This makes Mist far less usable as an attacker, but allows for more than three sword users (one of whom isn't even in Radiant Dawn) to be able to effectively attack from afar, since every other sword user relies a lot more on the strength stat than the magic stat.

*** In the DS remake of the first game, thieves are noted for only their ability to open chests and doors without keys and on first glance are useless in actual combat. Jules, the first thief you get in your army, has a completely hidden yet amazing stat progression. His combat stats level to the point where he can practically tank like a heavily armored Knight, plus getting two blows every single combat exchange and having an amazing chance to critical hit.

** In ''Radiant Dawn'', one of the starting characters is Meg, low leveled and rather weak. She seems worthless...until you level her up a bit and realize he stats skyrocket. She can become one of the fastest heavy characters in the game, not to mention the [[Luck Stat|luckiest]], and gains tons of HP. Combined with her personal skill Fortune, she can't be critical thus making her a mighty tank. By the end of the game and trained right, she's one of the single most useful characters in the entire series!

* In ''[[Final Fantasy]]'', the Bard is usually thought of as a joke class, mainly due to the fact that most people outside of Japan were first exposed to it by Edward in ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'', then called ''II'' in North America, and he [[The Load|sucked]]. In the [[DS]] [[Enhanced Remake]] of ''IV'', Edward gains "Life's Anthem" one level after you meet him, which is nearly a [[Game Breaker]]: It lets the entire team [[Healing Factor|regenerate]] a set amount of HP every ''second'' for the duration. Thus, the best use for him is to make him go first, set up Life's Anthem to fully refill HP, ''then'' destroy the enemies. At higher levels, he gets "Hastemarch", a full-party haste, and "Hero's Rhyme", a full-party 10% boost to all stats.

** Edward actually could qualify as this in the original too. Since you lost him early in the game, the developers gave [[Magikarp Power|him the best stat increases in the game at the higher levels]].

* The portly Duane in ''Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom'' is the only character who has no achievement for beating the game, has no real story quests to speak of, has comical dream sequences and foppish costumery, and tends to fall over when Dashing. His ranged attacks, though, are some of the strongest.

* ''Death Vegas'' has ''two'' lethal joke characters: Duff, a fat guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a crown, and Lourdes, a plunger-wielding cleaning lady. Both of them have nasty counterattacks and are capable of holding their own against a roster that includes a karate expert, an martial artist assassin, a tazer-wielding FBI agent, and a roided-up boxer.

** The Toyota Celsior and Aristo (Lexus LS and GS, respectively) are cars that, while high-powered, are more designed for luxury than performance. As such their racing ability is questionable, and their in-game performance reflects it...unless you play VS mode. As the heaviest cars in the game, they are the hardest to push around, making it easy to knock away higher-tier cars into traffic or even walls.

* In the video game ''[[Biker Mice From Mars]]'', the player who chooses Vinnie is often mocked mericlessly - even with great acceleration and grip, the White Wonder is chastised for being pitifully slow and having an awful special attack (he just jumps in the air). However, a player who knows how to use Vinnie to his best potential will shut everyone up. Using his special attack many times in a row on a straight stretch will vault a player to the head of the pack... FAST! Slap a few engine upgrade on Vinnie and he will be on par with everyone else... AND still have the best acceleration and grip in the game! Every other player ALWAYS has a "WTF?!" reaction when seeing what Vinnie is truly capable of.

* Hidden character and in-game shop-owner Mel, from ''[[Power Stone]] 2''. She has three special attacks; of these, two do low damage and are difficult to connect with. The third also does low damage; unlike any other special attack however, it can be used up to four times in a row. Combine with Mel's special ability to triple-jump out of range, and suddenly the opposition is being crushed by a never-ending rain of unavoidable moneybags spawned by an untouchable foe.

** Commoners can also qualify for the Survivor prestige class at level 1. Its only non-role play prerequisite is that you have to have your highest base save lower than your level (usually you start with at least one of the three base saves at two) and has exceedingly high defensive abilities. In the same list as the 'Chicken Infested' flaw you can find a flaw that causes enemies to arbitrarily attack the person with that flaw, which is also exclusive to commoners. Combining the two can potentially be quite potent... Assuming you can survive that first level.

** The other two NPC classes, Expert and Adept, are not to be underestimated either. Expert can have ''any'' 10 skills, which is potentially very useful when source books contain ways to make skill use lethal. Adepts, despite their intent, actually have some useful spells on their list, and often at a low level, puting them quite high on the class tier lists.

{{quote|... our party scrambled down a side passage, only to be ambushed by more kobolds firing with light crossbows through murder holes in the walls and ceilings. Kobolds with metal armor and shields flung Molotov cocktails at us from the other sides of huge piles of flaming debris, which other kobolds pushed ahead of their formation using long metal poles like broomsticks. There was no mistake about it. These kobolds were ''bad''.}}

*** ''Any'' creature can become a heck of a lot more dangerous than their base challenge rating would seem to indicate with the help of clever tactics and items. What makes kobolds special is that they combine statistics and fluff that make it perfectly in-character to come up with and implement clever tactics with an extremely low challenge rating. Add to that a racial bonus to making traps...

** The tourneys for the game actually consider him to be the highest tiered character. Some even have him banned from use in competitive play.

* Fighting game ''[[Eternal Champions]] 2'' (Also known as ''Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side'') had, as an unlockable character, Crispy, a chicken with no special moves and not many ''regular'' moves to speak of either. But he was also so small that the majority of the other characters' moves couldn't hit him, and opponents could only block his attacks while crouching (except his jumping attacks). The character was supposed to be just a cute novelty character, but he was ridiculously hard to beat, even when played by an inexperienced player. He was practically invincible in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. (The fact that the game introduced a "juggling" mechanic that the bugs hadn't exactly been worked out of, and that Crispy was too small for other characters to juggle but fast enough to easily juggle anyone else didn't help.)

** Not to mention the "[[Fartillery|Bear Fart]]". It's hard to connect, but it's one of the most powerful moves in any Tekken game and practically a OHKO if it connects.

* ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' has had Jigglypuff since the start. Low weight, weak moves on several of her buttons, and rather close range attacks, virtually everything about Jigglypuff screams low-mid tier or lower. She also has Rest, which can guarantee a kill pretty much once one figures out its hit box location.

** Her many flaws and her one plus got balanced out in Brawl. She became much more effective at recovery, and she's a monster in air combat, but her rest is far from dangerous.

* In ''[[Breath of Fire]] II'', by combining your characters with Shaman spirits, they can become powered up in various ways. The more noteworthy combinations can actually change what your character looks like; most characters have one such morph, but Spar has three of them. You'd think the badass grass dragon transformation would be the best one, right? Nope. It's not the [[Cute Monster Girl]] morph, either. It's the tiny seed that walks by hopping. By casting Atk-Up on Spar in seed form and using the Bud attack, Spar can do absolutely ludicrous damage. Nothing quite beats the hilarity of overkilling evil demons by crashing a tiny hopping seed into them.

* [[Banjo-Kazooie|Banjo-Tooie]] allows Banjo to transform into a washing machine. While the one attack available here ([[Abnormal Ammo|firing underpants]]) isn't exactly lethal, it's arguably the most useful transformation in the game thanks to its other abilities.

* Cielo from [[Digital Devil Saga]]. His [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors|weakness]] is to status effects, which means that with Cielo in your party, not only might you have multiple characters fall asleep but the enemy will get an extra turn. He's also introduced relatively late, when the player has already sorted the other characters into various roles, so players often ignore him and fail to level him and learn his skills. While using Argilla as the healer, despite the fact her stats make her the best [[Black Mage]]. Late second playthrough, this becomes a fatal mistake.

** While other characters can't do anything about their weaknesses until the lategame, and even then they can only resist those elements by taking up a skill slot, Cielo in the hands of a player who sees his potential can begin to null individual ailments as soon as he's introduced, equipping whatever nulls are best for the boss or dungeon. Nulling an enemy's attack causes them to lose a turn. In addition to that, Cielo's seemingly odd and useless stat distribution means that he's got an incredibly high dodge rate & good MP. Dodging an enemy's attack also causes them to lose a turn. It's very common to lose one or more characters to attacks that Cielo dodges without a scratch. Eating the enemy's turn icons make Cielo a defense character, and in addition to that his odds of survival mean that he's able heal and revive the party after a devastating blow, in addition to the fact that learning to null aliments also means Cielo can block and cure those ailments. [[Shoot the Medic First]] is impossible when the enemy can't ''hit'' the medic.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Fighting Game]]

[[Category:Hidden Badass]]

[[Category:Competitive Balance]]

[[Category:Game Tropes]]

[[Category:Example as a Thesis]]