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Badass Bystander
- 173 statements
- 31 feature instances
- 385 referencing feature instances
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Sometimes, even Bystander Syndrome reaches its limit. Movies, anime, cartoons, even books have an unspoken (or in some cases, explicitly stated) fighting power curve where the hero and villain are at or near the top. The Muggles and Innocent Bystanders? They're waaaay down there at the bottom, duh! Otherwise they wouldn't really be Innocent Bystanders in need of protecting, now would they? Except for this guy. The Badass Bystander is a background or minor character who shows significant or surprising fighting prowess or strength against a major threat. Whether it's a doddering old man beating the DeathWalker 9000, going toe to claw with a werewolf, making a Defiant Stone Throw, or purse-whacking the Giant Mook into submission. Shows up frequently in martial arts movies, Western Bar Brawls, and various Tabletop RPGs, in which random wandering monsters or random NPCs occasionally kick a PC's or villain's ass, depending on how the dice roll. NPC shopkeepers are pretty tough too. This can result in Fridge Logic. Why aren't they helping you, The Only One who is trying to save the world? It's Up to You only? Then again, maybe there's a lot going on, and you've just had a brush with the Hero of Another Story. Frequently done for comedy, with the Bystander being either Weak, but Skilled or otherwise seemingly harmless. These minor characters may be so powerful they qualify as Sidekick Ex Machinas, with the hero "beating" their opponent by tossing him to the Badass Bystander to finish them off. By their nature, plots involving Zombie Apocalypse tend to include Badass Bystanders – out of the normal civilians in harm's way, the only ones left standing are likely to be unusually badass. If you have a whole crowd of armed Badass Bystanders, you get Everyone Is Armed and World of Badass. A Sister Trope to The Real Heroes. Compare Heroic Bystander, Mugging the Monster, Suddenly Always Knew That, Let's Get Dangerous!. |
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| Badass Bystander / int_1367cea0 | type |
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| Badass Bystander / int_1367cea0 | comment |
Worm: Forrest, a civilian with no powers and a refugee in Brockton Bay who, upon seeing local supervillain Skitter fighting the serial killer Mannequin in order to protect the civilian survivors of Mannequin's teammate Shatterbird, steps in and hits him with a cinderblock to help take his head off. Mannequin having relocated all important organs to his torso, this doesn't kill him, but it does drive him off. Forrest goes on to become Skitter's second in command. Later, during the Chrysalis arc, the students of Arcadia High do this, helping Skitter escape by mobbing the superheroes that were coming for her. |
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Pro wrestler Shawn Daivari choked a drunk, disruptive passenger unconscious on a lightrail in October 2012. | |
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| Badass Bystander / int_17c7cdc3 | type |
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In Daughter of the Lilies, a random fire mage and his friend manage to distract a monstrous demonic frog thingie before it can complete a gigantic Drath summoning circle. | |
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| Badass Bystander / int_184dc16f | comment |
Early in The Salvation War, a demon attacked a mall. A security guard died to give others time to escape and a pair of hunters who happened to have big game rifles in their truck finally took it down. Similar scenes occurred elsewhere, especially in Detroit. Given that Humans Are Special and Humans Are Warriors are big themes in the work, it's to be expected. | |
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Officer Tod from Sluggy Freelance, a seemingly useless cop, actually manages to go toe-to-toe with the assassin who killed Oasis. | |
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| Badass Bystander / int_22430950 | type |
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| Badass Bystander / int_22430950 | comment |
Professional wrestler Perry Saturn, a former US army ranger, once got shot in the neck trying to save a woman from getting raped and by the time the police arrived he had beaten the shit out of all three lowlifes by himself. | |
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| Badass Bystander / int_23945975 | type |
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| Badass Bystander / int_23945975 | comment |
Most of Paris gets to be this in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when in the climactic battle scene the crowd that had gathered to protest Esmeralda getting burned at the stake undergoes a mass Took a Level in Badass as a result of a Rousing Speech by Phoebus; they all join Phoebus in kicking the tar out of Judge Frollo's goon squad while Quasimodo is busy tending to Esmeralda (who is fighting for her life after having inhaled too much smoke). And we had actually seen hints of this earlier at the Festival of Fools, when Frollo orders his guards to arrest Esmeralda and the Street Performers in the plaza do their part to help her escape. | |
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| Badass Bystander / int_242b4b79 | comment |
In Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, John Henry Irons (who in this verse is just a construction worker) clobbers one of the attacking Atlantean soldiers with a sledgehammer. It should be noted that in the original comics, he tried to do the same to Doomsday before a building fell on him. | |
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From Cracked, 6 Nobodies Who Turned Into Super Heroes Without Warning. 5 Unknown Schmucks Who Turned Into Superheroes In The Clutch. 9 Acts of Vigilantism Straight Out of a Comic Book. 6 Awesome Stories of Bystanders Becoming Heroes. |
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| Badass Bystander / int_41931bef | comment |
In Barbie: Mariposa, a pink Flutterpixie helps Mariposa recover the antidote from Henna. The Flutterpixie isn't even named, but it's her contribution to the fight that helps save the Queen. | |
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| Badass Bystander / int_42ffb88e | type |
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| Badass Bystander / int_42ffb88e | comment |
In an interesting variation, SCP Foundation's usual Red Shirts are "D-class agents": death row criminals apprehended from all over the globe who nobody is going to miss, used as test subjects for anything that they can't use to their advantage, terminated if they survive through enough experiments. So, by Foundation standards, they're Bystanders. SCP-2439 is... the latest number that the D-class knew wasn't taken when they scrawled the Containment Procedures on the wall where the lamp is kept. It's an Eldritch Abomination that causes victims to start Hearing Voices, designated as Keter (same ranking as 682) by the last D-class who knew what Keter meant. If it infects someone long enough, it'll turn them into People Puppets. If it gets ahold of Foundation staff, the D-class reckon that the entire world is fricked. So they keep the information just between themselves, wreck anyone who tries to tell the Foundation staff about it, kill the Foundation staff who manage to find out about it anyways, and make sure that some of the other D-class agents know about it before their termination comes up. Every D-class who knows about it is (a) containing it voluntarily as The Atoner, (b) containing it voluntarily For the Evulz, or (c) is about to get his head bashed in because he's not willing to contain it. There's also SCP-1983 which is another Keter that got straight-up neutralized by one of the D-class. |
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| Badass Bystander / int_4965fb90 | comment |
In Incredibles 2, Winston refuses to let his sister murder all the supers and ambassadors left behind on the Everjust. He jumps off the escape plane, frees the Supers and ambassadors, and orders them to the back of the ship to be as far from the impact zone as possible. | |
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In the third RP of Darwin's Soldiers, the heroes end up getting ambushed by Dragonstorm soldiers. They are assisted by some nearby loggers, who do remarkably well in battle against them. | |
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In some performances of The Pirates of Penzance, the Pirate King attacks the orchestra conductor, who fends him off. This originated as improv but has since become somewhat traditional. | |
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| Badass Bystander / int_7b82aa31 | comment |
The driver in 101 Dalmatians whose van the dogs hide in to escape from Cruella, who keeps ramming him several times in the climax, hoping to first send him in the snow and then off a cliff. Not realizing that there's a bunch of Dalmatians hiding in the back of his van, the man merely yells at her, mutters "Crazy woman driver," and focuses on keeping his van on the road (which he succeeds in). | |
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Terry Funk was present at ROH Glory By Honor IX, but he was only their to ensure Tyler Black did not go through with his threat and bail during his title defense against Roderick Strong. | |
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| Badass Bystander / int_86c3beca | comment |
Airman Higgs from Girl Genius is a low-level soldier who never distinguished himself, despite unreal stamina, enough strength to hold his own in a barfight with Jägermonsters, and a bit of a silver tongue. Subverted: Higgs is one of the immortal creations of the Heterodynes temporarily sworn to the baron's service, implied to be the spycraft-focused Jäger general. That his career prior to this point in the story was mundane to the point of invisibility is not a coincidence, nor is the fact that he is willing to bend his cover to the breaking point to aid the Heterodyne and the Baron, who is keeping the Jägers alive. Essentially, he's anything but a bystander. | |
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Dramatic Dream Team: A random photographer won the Ironman Heavymetal Weight Championship belt by hitting Aja Kong with a hammer while she was coming out for a match. After the match, she tracked him down and gave him a uraken. | |
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Every Hunter started out as one of these, it's their willingness to be so that persuades their mysterious patrons to give them a level or two in Badass. | |
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| Badass Bystander / int_9910cc85 | comment |
In Mulan, there's the Chinese soldier from the intro, who... well, just watch. | |
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The grandma from Madagascar beat Alex, a tamed lion, which is only amped up in the sequel into an all devouring Deus Ex Grandmachina. | |
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A prefab scenario for having the team meet in Shadowrun involves the player characters being this when thugs attack a convenience store they are patronising, looking for another patron. | |
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Drowtales: This woman, who was quickly dubbed Crossbow Lady on the forums, pulls an epic Shut Up, Hannibal! on Pyromaniac Maki with a crossbow bolt to the shoulder. Even better is that her hands are visibly shaking, meaning that despite being scared she's still doing it, and she appears to be of mixed blood, a group that's looked down on in story. This chef who responds to Kiel's threat to flatten the place with her turtle summon if they don't get any food like any jaded service worker and tells her to get in line or get out. |
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While filming a night scene for the first episode of Person of Interest, actor Jim Caviezel spotted a woman being beaten by her boyfriend in the street; he immediately ran off set and "intervened". | |
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Glamour Boy Shane serves as a referee for TNA, but in a classy move on their part, TNA recognized that he was one of the Caribbean's most popular wrestlers, which was most obvious with his work for somewhat rival IWA Puerto Rico, and treated him as a man not to be messed with, as opposed to the typical wrestling referee. | |
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Avernite civilians from Embers in the Dusk are always armed and are almost all members of a militia with a skill level above that of the stormtroopers of most other human forces. | |
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Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword has a samurai sushi chef who casually takes out a horde of robot ninjas when they attack Shaggy and Scooby in his restaurant. | |
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GURPS Supers mentions these as one possible way of saving the heroes if the villain is getting the upper hand, pointing out that to avoid stealing the heroes' thunder it's better not to let the bystander beat the villain on their own, but rather contribute just enough to turn the tide. | |
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Rob Van Dam chased down a mugger outside his comic shop, and Bam Bam Bigelow ran into a neighbor's burning apartment to save them. | |
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In chapter 4 of T.O.T., an elderly man and regular home owner nearly kills Maximus Slade with his shotgun after the werewolf breaks into his house. He even manages to save a teenager after Maximus took her hostage and successfully mangled his face with his shotgun. He still ends up getting killed, b | |
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In My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), Derpy/Muffins sees one of the villains' petrification grenades heading for Twilight and shoves her out of the way. | |
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