The Punisher/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Characters from The Punisher include:

Frank Castle, aka. The Punisher

  • Anti-Hero: Varies between type IV and Type V in the Marvel Universe, Type V in MAX.
  • Anti-Villain: Type III
  • Badass
    • Badass Grandpa: In MAX.
    • Badass Longcoat: He frequently dons a black trenchcoat.
    • Badass Normal: Castle has no superpowers of his own, and typically most of his foes are either just mooks or other badass normals. However, he has gone toe-to-toe with various superheroes and villains in the past.
    • In the MAX continuity, no superheroes exist, but Frank's badassery is not lessened one bit.
  • Berserk Button: While general rage and vengeance drive Frank to wage a one-man war on serious crime, and his general demeanor is to be The Stoic he does have a few personal buttons and lines that, when pushed, will have him go from his normal Tranquil Fury to pitch black rage.
    • Don't hurt children. Frank was once a father and had both a daughter and a son. He cares deeply for children and harming them will mean the difference between a bullet in the head and being tossed in the ocean while inside a cage.
    • For Frank, Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, and he was absolutely vicious to a sex slaving ring. It's even summed up after he tossed the female manager out of a window from a skyscraper.

There was a dull feeling in the back of my head since this all started. Only now do I realize what it was. It had been a long time since I hated anyone as much as I hated them.

    • Desecrating the memory of his dead family or harming his illegitimate daughter will have him go so crazy with rage, he won't even remember what he did after or how badly he fucked you up.
  • Blood Knight: Why does Frank kill? 33% justice, 33% revenge, 33% because he likes it, and the other 1% is just plain Ax Crazy.
  • Byronic Hero
  • Celibate Hero: Frank doesn't seem to have much interest in the ladies, but this is most likely justified by the fact that he still thinks about his family and/or he's too busy killing scum. He isn't opposed to sleeping with O'Brien in the MAX series though, but on the other hand he doesn't seem particularly enthusiastic about it either.

O'Brien: "I've been in jail around eighteen months. When we get through here, wanna jump in the sack?"
Castle: "Sure."

  • Chest Insignia: The Punisher's iconic skull. Like Batman, it serves as a heavily armored target and in the earlier issues the teeth were spare ammo magazines
  • Colonel Kilgore: Even though he was only a Captain in Vietnam, he still fits this trope
  • Combat Pragmatist: The following quote from "Welcome Back, Frank" sums it up:

Frank Castle: "When you're on your own, behind enemy lines, no artillery, no airstrikes, no hope of an evac, you don't fight dirty. You do things that make dirty look good."

  • Dark Is Not Evil
  • Deadpan Snarker: Frank occasionally shows a sense of Black Humor
  • The Dreaded: Every crook and mobster (and most "street" level supervillains) brown their trousers at the mere mention of Frank. In the MAX continuity, the smarter crooks are shown to be the ones who know to run like hell when they see him.

Polly: [during a firefight as Frank is cornered behind a bar] We've gotta go!

Eamon: We've got this guy Polly! We've go-

Polly: Eamon, "that guy" is the fucking Punisher. We have got to go.

Fury: Drop the Punisher on one end of Latveria, and the Hulk on the other, and see who gets to the middle first.

  • Papa Wolf: Do not desecrate the memory of his dead wife and children, as Nicky Cavella learned the hard way. Likewise, Barracuda meets the fate he does by attempting to kill Sarah Frank's illegitamate daughter with Kathryn O'Brien.
  • Pay Evil Unto Evil: This trope defines him.
  • Perma-Stubble: Quite regularly.
  • Perpetual Frowner: Frank's default expression.
  • Phrase Catcher: When Frank enters a room, the response is usually some variation of...

Mobster: Holy shit! It's the fucking Punisher!

  • Semper Fi: Frank was a marine.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Frank definitely fits the bill. After three brutal tours of duty in The Vietnam War, Frank Castle lost his wife and children to Mafia thugs and now wages a one-man war on crime. Various authors have toyed with Frank's mental state, and Garth Ennis has suggested that in Vietnam, Frank started to love combat and killing people, with the death of his family possibly being only the final straw that caused his killing sprees.
  • Sociopathic Hero
  • The Stoic: Frank is either calm, detached, and homicidal, or (much more rarely) pissed off and homicidal. That's it. To quote the videogame (written by Garth Ennis):

*after blasting Bushwacker through a wall* I don't smile much. Don't smile ever. But if I did, this would be one.

  • Torture Technician: Push one of his Berserk Buttons, and you'll wish he was just using the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Rare 'heroic' version. If you aid the Punisher, even save his life repeatedly, don't expect him to show much gratitude if you're on his 'bad' list. Or his 'good' list either, as Yorkie has found out.
  • Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As seen in the one-shot The Tyger Frank was a tough but quiet, thoughtful kid who liked poetry, stood up to bullies who picked on weaker kids, and was friends with an older girl whom he had a crush on, and her older brother, a Marine. Then this girl was raped by the jackass son of the local mafia don and killed herself. Frank then takes his father's gun and tails the don's son, intending to kill him, only to witness the girl's brother brutally murder the guy himself.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist
  • Vigilante Man: One of the ultimate examples in the Marvel Universe

Mainstream & Marvel Knights Characters

Martin Soap

  • Butt Monkey: He's the biggest joke in the NYPD
  • The Chew Toy
  • NYPD: He manges to blackmail his way to Commissioner before being blackmailed back down.
  • Interrupted Suicide The first time he tried to commit suicide, The Punisher talks him out of it and convinces him to be a mole for him. The second time, he Ate His Gun in the restroom of his favorite bar and the bartender stops him, but only so he wouldn't have to clean up the blood. This leads to Soap...
  • Took a Level in Badass: He threatens the cruel bartender, breaks the nose of an snitch, and even shoots the Punisher and almost arrests him.
    • Then subverted almost immediately as the Punisher just gives him a mean look in the middle of his attempted arrest and Soap breaks down whimpering.

Billy "Jigsaw" Russo

  • Bishonen: Billy used to be this. Then the Punisher gots his hands on him...
  • Butt Monkey
  • Joker Immunity: Jigsaw even lampshades this and the Punisher justifies letting him live since Jigsaw is more of a danger to his fellow criminals than innocents.

The Russian

  • Adult Child:
  • Adorkable: A rare evil example. Affectionate towards his allies/friends, wants to get "lots of Levis and CD's" with a million dollar reward, and is openly a fan of GOOD Superheroes (Mighty Thor Good Communist, with that Big Hammer of his!!).
  • Affably Evil: Murderous, violent and psychopathic. He is, nonetheless, incredibly friendly to his enemies, actively complimenting and joking with them mid-fight.
  • Ascended Fanboy: He is a huge fan of the Fantastic Four, X-Men and Spider-man and is the president of his local chapter of the "Daredevil: Man Without Fear" fan club.
  • Blood Knight: He went to Afganistan for a vacation
  • Boisterous Bruiser
  • Dumb Muscle
  • Immune to Bullets: In the video game
  • Made of Iron

MAX Imprint Characters

Nicky Cavella and Crew

  • Abhorrent Admirer: Theresa. While she isn't that bad looking, what really qualifies her for this trope is her attitude. Casually threatening to close peoples' penises shut, dropping Cluster F Bombs at the drop of the hat, generally being a scary Jerkass. Like brother like sister. Nicky is very in denial when Rawlins points out Theresa has a crush on him, to boot.
  • Armored Closet Gay: Nicky with Rawlins.
  • Broken Pedestal: While Tony was very supportive of Nicky's ascension at first, when he discovered just how badly he and his crew were screwed over by Nicky's carelessness he lets him have it.
  • Complete Monster: Ranking somewhere in vileness between MAX Kingpin and Tiberiu, though his carnage is considerably subdued compared to those guys. His flashbacks remove any lingering doubt over how evil he really is.
  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: Yes and no - Cavella has ideas on how best to tackle Frank, but continually fumbles the endgame. When he first sees Frank tied up, he instantly goes to shoot him in the head [1]. He sets up Pittsy to take Frank down[2]. He desecrates the remains of Frank's family to piss him off and make him pull a Leeroy Jenkins[3]. The last one is a gamble too far...
  • Groin Attack: Pittsy and Theresa seem to have a thing for these.
  • Left for Dead: At the end of Up is Down and Black is White, Frank drags Nicky far, far out into the woods and shoots him low down in the stomach, leaving him there to die over a couple of days. Subverted as it's confirmed in the next story that Nicky's corpse was found some time later.
  • Made of Iron: Pittsy for sure. He gets thrown out a window and impaled on a wrought iron fence and still wants to fight. Even when Frank blows his face apart with a shotgun he takes a few steps forward, which Frank hoped were just twitches.
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: Nicky Cavella freely admits to hating everyone in the whole wide world, and thinks when he dies and goes to heaven (as if) he'll bring that attitude with him.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Theresa, after feeling jilted by Nicky's rejections, goes into the Punisher's place without a gun in order to kill him in a blind rage. Even when she gets the drop on him, she doesn't even stab him correctly, instead nonfatally stabbing him so she can rant about how no one wants to touch her. All of this started because she thought that the best time to screw her boss was during a stake-out of the wounded Castle.
  • Villainous Breakdown: After losing the respect of his Mooks and sight of Theresa, Nicky becomes a whimpering coward begging for mercy.

Kitchen Irish

  • Dangerously Genre Savvy / Too Dumb to Live: Maginty is a rare case of being BOTH. He's very cunning and begins a campaign of psychological warfare and biting around the edges, looking to strike when the other players are weak (must've played a lot of Risk as a kid) and even correctly spots a hole in the Punisher's defenses and comes really close to killing him--too bad a mook screwed it up. Even so, he blindly walked into a trap a five-year old would've seen coming TWICE. First time he got lucky, second not so much.
  • Informed Ability: Finn Cooley, both now and in later comics, constantly gets his Ax Crazy reputation hyped by other characters. But he's really one of the more level-headed and thoughtful villains of this Gambit Pileup; despite being rather cavalier about civilian casualties he was far less unbalanced than most of the other participants.
  • Knight Templar Big Brother: Eamon fancies himself as this, going so far as to kill a crewmate who made a tasteless incest joke about him and Polly--but Polly figuratively spits in his face when he tries to present himself as one of these to her, backhandedly calling him a failure.
  • Mad Bomber: Cooley's specialty. The arc kicks off when a bomb he planted to kill off the other factions in the gang war detonated early, killing dozens of civilians.
  • Nightmare Face: Cooley blew off the upper half of his face with one of his own bombs several years earlier, and in the first chapter is seen wearing a plastic mask to keep the remaining tissue from sliding off. Frank shoots it off in the second chapter, so in the third, he has to keep it on with tape. In the final chapter, Frank bites off one of his cheeks!
  • Retired Monster: The takeaway this arc: do not mess with these people, no matter how nice or harmless they seem. Also, most of the named baddies in this arc were trying to become this.
  • Ruthless Modern Pirates: Polly, Eamon, and the River Rats.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: Cooley's nephew really believes in the IRA, to an almost pitiful extent. Of course any sympathy you may have had for him evaporates after his (probably unintentional) crossing of the Moral Event Horizon early on.

William Rawlins

Kathryn O'Brien

O'Brien: There've been some nice boys too. They never last, usually because I decide they don't deserve the shit this life inflicts. It's mostly guys like Rawlins. Or idiots. Or drunks. Or the truly, irrevocably doomed. That stupid bastard Tommy...

  • Broken Bird: In between three failed marriages, getting raped, thrown in jail, and being in the middle of the violence the Punisher is associated with, it's no wonder she's one.
  • Dying Alone: Averted - Frank stays with her until her last breath.
  • Give Her a Normal Life: After giving birth to Sarah, the daughter she and Frank conceived during their affair, Kathryn gives custody of the child to her sister to keep her safe.
  • Hot Amazon
  • Prison Rape: Averted. During her time in jail, a bunch of inmates frequently tried to do this to her. Kathryn would not have any of it.

The Slavers

  • Ax Crazy: Tiberiu Bulat
  • Badass Grandpa: Tiberiu again. A horrifyingly evil and insane one, to be sure.
  • Berserk Button: Tiberiu completely flips his shit when Frank calls him a “coward” in Romanian.
  • Blood Knight: Tiberiu, again. Almost considers Frank a Worthy Opponent ("this will be an interesting man to kill...") when he hears about the events of "Up is Down, Black is White," and claims that had someone desecrated the body of his son Cristu's mother, he would have killed thousands.
    • Turns out to be the downfall of the Bulats, as Tiberiu was interested in standing and fighting, and felt that Cristu was cowardly and womanly for wanting to avoid the Punisher... as Frank admitted near the end of the story arc, Cristu was right. The family tension over this led to a failed attempt by Cristu to have Tiberiu killed and probably distracted Cristu enough to make vulnerable by not paying his usual attention to personal security.
  • Complete Monsters: Truly the worst scum to feature in a Punisher story. If you’re not burning with the desire to see them wiped off the face of the earth before you’re even a quarter of a way through the story, then there’s something seriously wrong with you.
  • Evil Counterpart: Tiberiu to Frank. At one point Frank calls him “a sick old fuck who still thought he was a soldier”, completely unaware of the irony of this.
  • Karmic Death: What Frank does to Vera and the Bulats is pure Nightmare Fuel, but is it truly deserved? Absolutely.
    • When we first see Tiberiu, he's murdering a gangster who's tied to a chair, trash talking Tiberiu and telling him to loosen his ropes so they can fight "like real men". When we last see Tiberiu, he's tied to a chair telling Frank to untie him so they can fight "like real men". Frank answers with gasoline and a match.
  • Moral Event Horizon: They were veterans of Eastern Europe’s ethnic genocide, responsible for slaughtering the inhabitants of a dozen villages, numbering in the thousands, during which Cristu had the idea of going into business using the women and girls from the last four villages. And it went even more downhill from there, as they kidnapped even more women, and began gang-raping them to break their spirits. As if all that wasn’t enough, when one of their prisoners escaped with her baby daughter, they re-kidnapped the baby and killed her, then sent the mother a photograph.
  • Pragmatic Villainy: Cristu at least has the paper-thin excuse of genuinely not getting any pleasure out of torturing or killing people, seeing it as just the cost of business--for instance, he tries to spare the lives of some rival gang members, figuring that it's only necessary to kill one to get the rest of them to back off and even wanted to kill the one who had to die quickly and painlessly. Still, a Moral Event Horizon crossed is a Moral Event Horizon crossed, guy; no getting off that crazy train.
    • Still, he definitely qualifies as a Complete Monster. After all, he wanted to kill his own father out of pragmatic reasons, and he's a mass murderer, possibly a rapist, and most likely a sociopath.
      • Wanting to kill Tiberiu is very, very understandable, regardless of blood relation. What really qualifies Cristu is his treating the murder, rape and enslavement of so many people as nothing more than a check on his profit column.
  • Would Hit a Girl: When Frank finds out about what Vera's role was in the operation, he repeatedly throws her against a shatter-resistant window pane face-first. The frame gives out before the pane does.

Barracuda

  • Affably Evil: Genuinely friendly, optimistic and happy 99% of the time. Will kill you without blinking.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: Always optimistic and cheerful even when killing people. His response after Frank smashes the fingers off his right hand and sticks a knife in his eye?

Barracuda: Oh, it is on now, motherfucker. It is on.

Frank: Barracuda was dead when you shot him to bits and shot the bits and burned them. Anything less just left that nagging doubt.

General Zahrakov

Rawlins: For God's sake, why not give me a job?

Zahrakov: Because I am a soldier and you are something else. It is in your nature to betray, a small child could tell you that. You would betray me and I would be forced to kill you—and why would I create that much trouble for myself?

  • Magnificent Bastard: He was sent to investigate the attempted theft of a bioweapon, and when the Punisher goes in to steal it he keeps his identity secret, to the point of letting Moscow think an American trained terrorist group who hijacked a plane for a suicide bombing on Moscow were Al Qaeda. He reasoned that Russia would be too scared to fight Arab terrorists, but were prepared for nuclear war with America, and watched as Castle hid inside a nuclear missile and faked a missile attack to escape.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Personally throwing a baby off a cliff
  • My Country, Right or Wrong
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: He views himself as this. He justifies his crossing of the Moral Event Horizon in Afganistan by claiming it would have brought peace sooner.

The Eight Generals

  • Armchair Military: Both Frank and Fury note none of them have ever seen active service. This does not stop them from trying to tell Colonel George Howe, who is tasked with capturing Frank, how to do his job.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: The all use their position and contacts to service their own interests.
  • Pretty Little Headshots: How they meet their end. Eight bullets for eight targets - Frank does not mess about.
  • Smug Snake: A cabal of them.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Using Rawlins' terror cell, that they backed, to fake a terrorist attack on Moscow as a diversion, causing Russia to shoot down the plane filled with innocent passengers. Even Nick Fury, renown hardass and Cold War vet is horrified, and uses his belt to whip the ever loving crap out of one of them who dared to give him lip about it.

MAX!Bullseye

  • Affably Evil: Even cheerier than Barracuda, he's a genuinely friendly, smiley psychopath who commits mass murder as though it's eating cereal.
  • Implacable Man: Unlike his mainstream counterpart, he does not have superhuman accuracy. His name instead refers to the fact he always gets his target.
  • Foe Yay / In Love with Your Carnage: Thinks Frank is pretty much the greatest thing ever, and is so happy he gets a chance to try and kill him.
  • Mad Hatter: Utterly insane, and fully aware of it.

Kingpin: You're a madman.

Bullseye: I kill people for a living. What did you expect?

  • The Profiler: After some unique investigations, he manages to get inside Frank's head perfectly.
  • Reality Ensues: During his introduction, he threatens to kill a man with a toothpick. He flicks it at his face...and it bounces off his forehead.

Bullseye: Don't be stupid. I can't kill you with a toothpick. [pulls gun] But I can with this.

Jenny

  • Action Girl: She does the job even better than Frank Castle.
  • Anti-Hero: Type V. She even scares Frank.
  • Ax Crazy: And The Punisher knows it, coming across as intimidated by her. For her part Jenny knows this and discusses the damage the abuse they go through does.
  • Badass: She methodically trails the mobster widows until they set a trap for Castle, slices open the one who lured him there, picks up his assault rifle and makes the others flee for their lives. She finishes them off when they later try and run from the police, before beating her sister to death in front of a frightened Punisher.
  • Broken Bird: She gets cancer, is brutally beaten all the time during her arranged marriage and is finally disposed of, left for dead. Then she took a level.
  • Byronic Hero: She bluntly picks up men, however she cannot feel anything, gets upset and beats them to a pulp, then regrets her actions later. She's also vicious enough to creep The Punisher out, but given what was done to her nothing is too reprehensible to be unjustified.
  • Cosmic Plaything: Given everything done to her it's little surprise Jenny kills herself after she gains revenge and finds nothing changes.
  • Distaff Counterpart: A perfect carbon copy of The Punisher himself.
  • Loony Fan: Of Frank Castle. She doesn't particularly bother him, or try and harm him, and he goes along with her desire to be him, but it's safe to say that Frank goes along with this not just because of his injuries but out of fear of setting her off.
  • Pettanko: Her breasts are gone because of cancer and abuse to her.
  • Pet the Dog: A old school friend tries to talk to her. Knowing how damaged she is, Jenny politely tells him he has her confused with someone else, and he shouldn't associate with her.
  • Sociopathic Hero
  • Took a Level in Badass: From mobster wife to The Punisher.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist:
Back to The Punisher
  1. ↑ Frank bites his fingers and distracts him long enough to get free
  2. ↑ He's tough, but Frank's tougher
  3. ↑ Which works perfectly, except even Rawlins points out that a bunch of scared mobsters still probably wouldn't be enough to take Frank down, even if he just came at them straight on without any real tactics
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Punisher/Characters?oldid=1915574"