Legacy Character: Difference between revisions

[[File:robin555 574.png|link=Robin|frame|All '''five''' of the (canonical) Robins.<ref>In chronological order: Dick Grayson (left), Jason Todd (bottom center), Tim Drake (top center), Stephanie Brown (top right) and Damian Wayne (bottom right). Not shown: Carrie Kelly from ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]''.</ref> All of them have been sidekicks to the '''same guy'''<ref>One of them (Damian) was even a sidekick to another (Dick)!</ref>]]

 

 

You just can't keep a good character down. Even in a setting where [[Death Is a Slap on The Wrist]], a hero can't keep his heroics up forever (nor do most want to) and even if super-villains and world-spanning disasters can't kill him, old age eventually will. But while a man can't beat the Reaper forever, the identity he holds is contained in a vessel comprising of little more than a name and a mask, meaning that if he cannot continue his Legacy, someone else can.

* [[Marvel Comics]]' [[Immortal Iron Fist]] was [[Retcon|Ret Conned]] to being a legacy character, with a lineage stretching back hundreds of years. This is why Iron Fist is immortal: the position will never die, only its occupants. This is also true of the other immortal weapons; there will always be a Dog Brother #1, always a Cobra Warrior, etc.

* Power Man is a complicated example. The first Power Man was a villain named Erik Josten before the name passed to its most famous holder, [[Luke Cage, Hero for Hire|Luke Cage]]. Luke currently goes by his civilian name and no longer wears a costume, so the identity has since fallen to Victor Alvarez, an Afro-Latino teenager who fancies himself a "hero for hire."

* Unknown to Fastback of ''[[Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew]]'', his uncle Merton McSnurtle is actually the long-retired Golden Age superhero the Terrific Whatzit, who like his nephew also possessed super-speed powers (plus several other abilities Fastback lacked).

* Averted ''hard'' in ''[[Star Wars Legacy]]'': Except for his [[Brother-Sister Incest|weirdness with his half-sister]] and Force powers, including some time on [[The Dark Side]] (Cade's still there. And he can raise the dead.), Cade Skywalker is ''nothing'' like his ancestor.

* The title character of ''[[Turok (comics)|Turok]]'', both the comics and the video game adaptations. "Turok" may have been the actual name of the first one, but afterwards it title given to his successors, [[Magical Native American]] warriors tasked with keeping the beasts of the Lost Lands away from Earth, and the title has been held by (as of the 2017 series from Dynamite Comics) seven individuals.

 

* This is the premise of several ''[[Death Note]]'' fanfics, like ''[[Kira Is Justice]]''.

* In the "[[Gundam Seed]]" fanfic Chaotic Cosmos, this trope is subverted; Blue Cosmos' new leader, Cervantes, manages to convince his right hand man to pretend to be the pilot of the Freedom Gundam in order to win support from Orb (which Kira Yamato, the real Freedom pilot, saved in the previous war). Since no one had seen who the pilot actually was, all they needed was a fake Gundam so that Asmodeus could fill Kira's shoes.

 

 

== Film ==

** Another similar example, Aardman's ''[[Arthur Christmas]]'' has the job of Santa be passed down from father to son.

* In the [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] film series, Q's associate (nicknamed "R" by James) played by [[John Cleese]] from ''[[The World Is Not Enough]]'' succeeds the late Desmond Llewelyn's Q in the followup film ''[[Die Another Day]]''.

** Though according to one of the producers, the original plan for ''Godzilla: Final Wars'' was to have Godzilla in that be Junior, but rewrites removed specifically naming himself as such.

** MOTHRA!

** That, and the original character (Griffin) was an [[Ax Crazy]] psychopathic rapist, which would've been harder to squeeze into a heroic role than the film's formula-stealing burglar.

* ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'': The Dread Pirate Roberts.

* Several exist in the ''[[Star Wars]]'' universe. Perhaps most notable are Jango Fett and Boba Fett, who becomes the best bounty hunter in the galaxy just like his genetic dad was twenty years prior.

* After the original Chatterer was killed in ''Hellbound: Hellraiser II'', two new character with similar attributes (Chatter Beast and Torso) showed up, with an entirely new Chatterer (dubbed Chatterer III, even though Chatterer II was just the original with enhancements) eventually appearing.

* The 2000 version of ''[[Shaft]]'' features the titular ex-detective, played by [[Samuel L. Jackson]], getting a pep talk from his uncle, the original "bad mother...shut yo' mouth!" played by Richard Roundtree.

* Unlike [[Made of Iron|most slasher movie villains]], Ghostface from ''[[Scream (film)|Scream]]'' is very much killable; the trouble is there's more than one. In order, they are: {{spoiler|Billy and Stu in the first film, Mrs. Loomis and Mickey in the second, Roman in the third, and Jill and Charlie in the fourth}}. Despite being several different people, they use [[Voice Changeling|voice masking]] when talking to their victims over the phone; the same actor does the phone voice throughout the series, and retains a similar personality, despite the various personalities the killers display when not in costume.

* Jason Voorhees almost became one in the fifth ''[[Friday the 13th]]'' film, but poor reception forced him to return from the dead in the next sequel.

 

 

== Literature ==

* In ''[[The Princess Bride (novel)|The Princess Bride]]'', we have the Dread Pirate Roberts, where the previous Roberts handed the title over to another when he wanted to retire. And so forth—there've been about half a dozen Dread Pirate Robertses by the time of the book.

** A similar situation is found in ''The Legend of Johnny Lingo'', wherein we learn that the "Johnny Lingo" that we've met is not the original bearer of that name, and is about to pass it on to his protegé.