Memetic Badass/Literature

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Takeshi Kovacs from Altered Carbon and the sequels by Richard Morgan. This is a man who will happily torture-murder (permanently) anyone whom he has judged to be a bad person. Or merely for getting in his way. Or for having the wrong religious convictions. Kovach has endured subjective months in simulation being mutilated whilst inhabiting a female body. What did he do when he escaped? He calmly strolled through the facility perma-killing everyone he saw, and coolly strutted out the front door with a head wrapped in a jacket.
  • Sherlock Holmes.
    • His brother Mycroft even more so. The canon gives us a few facts about him:
      • 1) Sherlock freely admits that Mycroft is smarter than him.
      • 2) He is a member of a "club for un-clubbable gentlemen"
      • 3) He is insanely Brilliant but Lazy, and practicly refuses to leave his club.
      • 4) He works for the goverment and, at certain points, is the goverment.
    • The fandom has since then decided that Mycroft was
      • The founder of MI 6,
      • The founder of the 00-program and that their leaders codename M originated with him,
      • A even greater supervillain than Moriarty ever could be, who rather than plans and controlls different crimes and gangs, controlls and moves different Nations
    • Sherlock, the show that translated the mythos to the 21th century, choose to portray Mycroft as a man that had full control of the CCTV-network (of London, which is the largest and most dense in the world,) a man who was asked by Sherlock to "try not to start any wars tonight", and who asked Sherlock to relocate a stolen Goverment Flashdrive with a street-value of £600.000.000 since he was busy elsewhere. So this Fanon is alive and well.
      • Not to mention he's played by a writer for the series, so he quite literally has control over what goes on in the show.
  • Sir Nigel from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company is so unstoppable he defeated a bear with a handkerchief.
    • Debatable if this should count, as it isn't Fanon. Anyone who reads the book sees Sir Nigel do it.
  • Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files:
    • He is physically immune to being made into a Memetic Badass. Why? Because no matter how Badass you think he is, he actually is twice as Badass.
    • He's also one in universe. At one point, five wizards, each individually at least as powerful as he is if not more, balk at the prospect of subduing him because of his previous exploits.
    • His own brother describes him as "Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver." And how about ... "and riding a goddamn ZOMBIE T-REX?"
  • Neville Longbottom uses Nagini's blood as soy sauce.
    • As a matter of fact, Neville's so Badass, he gets put in the Real Life category, so go check there.
    • Neville would have done it in four books.
    • In a fight between Grindelwald and Voldemort, the winner would be Neville.
    • Neville Longbottom will reject your bribes and kill your pet.
    • What happens when you break an Unbreakable Vow? Neville.
    • When riding the Knight Bus, Neville refers to himself as Harry Potter to avoid unwanted attention.
    • Why did Voldemort mark Harry as his equal? Because he took one look at baby Neville and said "Oh, hell no."
  • Molly Weasley can kick your ass and still have time to bake a pie. Bitch.
    • If you fuck with Molly's kids, she will fuck you up in ways that you cannot imagine.
    • Luna Lovegood may be a ditz, but push her buttons, and watch her apparently coincidental knowledge destroy enemy forces with a few words. Remember the issue with Ravenclaw's diadem? That.
    • In universe example: Voldemort can kill you with his eyes.
    • Dolohov considered this by the fandom, going so far as to claim the Dolohov defeated in the final book was his son, who was immediatly disowned.
    • Kingsley Shacklebolt also gets the 'facts' treatment.
    • An example of an in-universe actual meme: although it isn't mentioned explicitly, Merlin was evidently a really, really prominent one in the wizarding world. He got so memetic that nowadays wizards swear in his name, and the highest honor that can be given to a person is the Order of Merlin (although Neville may have changed that; see the Real Life tab.)
    • Yaxley became one after Deathly Hallows Part 1. He doesn't chase you. He walks after you and still gets you.
  • Samwise Gamgee. It helps that he bested the insectoid spawn of an Eldritch Abomination and stormed a castle full of Orcs, overawing the survivors with his presence alone and leaving rumors of a grim Elvish lord.
    • Orcs in general. They iz made for fighting and winning. And singing (about eating you.)
  • Levels of Victor Cachat worship on the Honor Harrington page make him one of the TV Tropes-specific examples.
  • When Baba Yaga crossed over from Russian fairy tales into Western fiction she went from an old witch frequently bested by little boys and flocks of swans to the most powerful magician in the world, able to stand up to gods themselves.
  • Vimes is considered this in-universe. People will line up to almost certain death instead of risking him using sarcasm on them. Also see the quote on Heroic Willpower about him.
    • That's nothing. When he was sent away as a diplomat in The Fifth Elephant, the Ankh-Morpork City Watch was left in absolute chaos with an incompetent leader. Despite this, the crime rate of the city decreased. Why? Because Vimes won't be away forever. And when he returns, he will not be happy. "And when Commander Vimes is unhappy, he tends to spread it around with a big shovel."
    • Nobby Nobbs once declined being crowned king of Ankh-Morpork because Vimes would 'go spare'.
    • WHERE'S MY COW!?!
    • The Assassin's Guild lost so many members trying to cash in on the bounty on his head that they officially declared him off-limits. Vetinari is the only other person to hold that "honor." Plus, Vimes made his house so Assassin-proof that it's now used as an obstacle course to test apprentice Assassins.
    • Vetinari's snark is even more feared than Vimes's. And rightly so.
      • Moreover, Vetinari's reputation for nigh-invincibility among fans is such that you'd never guess that he lost the only hands-on fight we've seen him engage in since his student days. (Granted, that was against Mr. Tulip, a Badeverything.) His true Badassedness rests in his ability to turn any sort of conflict into a verbal one, at which he is the Snark Codifier.
    • Likewise, Granny Weatherwax's Badass status, in Witches Abroad, is such that even the narrator dismisses the possibility that she might've been shaken up by seeing her long-lost, long-hated sister Lily in a mirror. Even though that's exactly how she's behaving!
    • Lu-Tze of the History Monks is an in-universe example. He's so famous that when an acolyte at the History Temple knocks over his shrine thinking it's only a sweeper's, he spends the rest of his life as a sweeper hoping to make up for it. Not to mention that even though he's not technically a monk, he has more access to the temple than anyone but the Abbot himself, and has the personification of Time as an apprentice.
    • Another in-universe example: 71-Hour Achmed.
  • Cthulhu. Seriously, Lovecraft had an awful lot of bizarre and seriously freaky cosmic horrors. Cthulhu appears in all of one story (though, like most of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones gets name dropped in countless others) and isn't nearly as terribly outlandishly freaky compared to the others (it's roughly humanoid, after all) and is escaped by a man who turns his boat around and steers towards it. Nonetheless, Cthulhu has become the icon of the whole Cthulhu Mythos and a memetic symbol for all that is evil.
    • On a related note, Nyaralathotep has become renown for being being a pants shittingly terrifying ultimate combination of Troll meets Humanoid Abomination, regardless of incarnation.
  • In-universe: Major ________ de Coverley in Catch-22. Everyone is too scared to ask his first name. He was able to bring an end to a loyalty oath clusterfuck with two words. Then again, those words were "Gimme eat", so...
  • Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, who takes down a gang of armed and vicious thugs by walking into the room (the fourteen officers with him wait outside until he calls it clear). He also knows he's following Valjean, even though Valjean is dead.
  • Among fans of The Wheel of Time, Bela. Bela is ta'veren, Bela is the Creator, Bela is a Darkfriend, or Bela will kill the Dark One. For the uninformed, Bela is a horse. Not a Cool Horse, but a damned reliable one.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Randyll Tarly, the Jerkass father of Samwell Tarly, was selected by the ASOIAF fandom as their answer to Chuck Norris Facts. Threads are dedicated to coming up with series-ralted facts for him, such as "When Randyll Tarly weds a Frey girl, the musicians kill themselves!" (though of course you'd have to have read the series to get the jokes.) He has a Valyrian steel greatsword named Heartsbane. He is noted in series as being one of the greatest soldiers in the realm, and unlike more of the other examples on this page, being named as a Memetic Badass is not a compliment.
    • Petyr Baelish has developed a more serious memetic badass reputation amongst the fandom due to the character's success in bending a continent to his desires. Some fans think he can achieve just about anything.
    • Jaime Lannister, an in-story memetic badass of the series, also became a fandom memetic badass in Suvudu.com's "cage matches." The site pit 32 fictional characters against each other in one-on-one fights to the finish. Due to reader votes, Jaime Lannister defeated Hermione Granger, Cthulhu, Temeraire, and Kvothe in spite of being so obviously overmatched due to a lack of magical ability and his sword hand. Rising backlash over his success ultimately caused him to lose to Rand al'Thor in the final round, though George R. R. Martin did pen a very good short story on how he believes the duel should go, which manages to pay tribute to his late friend's work as well as examine the fundamental differences in their worlds.
    • In-universe, Tywin Lannister is one. Everyone is so scared of him that a single verse of The Rains of Castamere (a song about the torments he inflicted on a vassal who dared to consider rebelling) will put an end to any opposition.
  • If it can physically be done, Zorro could do it with style. If it cannot physically be done, Zorro could do it with even more style.
  • The Three Musketeers: Porthos. He kills people with a single punch.
  • The Longknife family of the Kris Longknife series are another in-universe example - at least, the ones that are considered "one of those Longknifes" - not totally a good thing, as many people would prefer to avoid associating with them.
  • Tyler's Van among anti-Twilighters due to it's "heroic attempt to kill Bella" which would have ended the series prematurely. "Team Tyler's Van" has even been created to oppose "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob".
  • Major Jasper Whitlock, better known in Southern Texas and Mexico as The God of War.
  • Grand Admiral Thrawn can win a galactic war with a TIE Fighter, three Chess pawns, and an art history book.
    • He's also an in-universe example, especially since he's the antithesis of the Empire's "strength over smarts" philosophy, scaring the hell out of the New Republic.
      • In the Hand of Thrawn duology, the scheme to use a Thrawn impostor to take over the Empire works in part because the mere idea of Thrawn being there freaks people out.
      • Indeed, even though he was a top-class Magnificent Bastard alive, Thrawn's in-universe Memetic Badassery was so incredible that he was actually more of a threat dead than alive!
    • Thrawn's second-in-command and successor Gilad Pellaeon also has this reputation. He's a Badass Normal--no Jedi powers, no Mandalorian training, no crazy alien strategy powers--and yet he kept the Imperial remnant together for an incredible amount of time. He even (somewhat) overcame the Jedi Mind Trick of Joruus C'Baoth.
  • Time Scout: An in-universe example. Sven Bailey is widely recognized as the most deadly individual on TT-86, which makes him one of the deadliest individuals alive.
  • Dune. Multiple examples.
    • Paul is so badass that he has been deified by his followers.
    • Fremen in general are pure badass. Sardaukar win against any ten or so normal house guards. Fremen wipe the floor with Sardaukar. Even in the sequels, where Fremen undergo a serious downgrade due to better living conditions, there is still no-one who can take even a single one on.
    • Duncan Idaho was so badass he earned everyone's respect and then was resurrected endlessly for at least the next five-thousand years.
    • Leto II was badass enough to actually become a Sandworm. You know, that monster that is cameod in every game that has a desert level. The only thing that could kill him was water. According to his own plan. It could even be argued that Leto II is more Badass than Paul, since he accepted the Golden Path whereas his father was terrified by it.
  • Danny, hero of John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, becomes one of these in-universe by going out with a bang immediately after throwing the greatest party Tortilla Flat ever knew.
  • From Fablehaven, Patton Burgess. We learn he actually did almost everything he's known for and deliberately kept a number of them secret.
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