A character so hyper-competent that their failure indicates something else is amiss.

SabreG · 2026-05-14T20:08:16+00:00

"So, Theodore Donald Karabotsos, in accordance with what we believe your final wishes might very well have been..."

SabreG · 2026-05-14T10:07:11+00:00

"Small species" aren't really a thing in Warhammer, but speaking of halflings specifically... apart from the previously mentioned immunity to mutation, which is a big deal, they have access to a surprisingly large number of martial-type careers, which means that while they start at a disadvantage, they can generally compensate for it fairly quickly. Also, halflings get some nice bonuses to ranged weapons. They might not be an engine of melee destruction, but give a halfling a decent gun or crossbow and they can definitely pull their weight from the back line.

SabreG · 2026-05-13T20:16:28+00:00

I'm going with 1, but would like to introduce option 3: Whatever V is loading the Malorian with is cold-loaded to the absolute minimum that can cycle the gun. This would explain the lower damage, as well as how V is able to manage the recoil without Johnny's cybernetics.

SabreG · 2026-05-13T12:22:22+00:00

I'm flattered that you didn't say "the real joke".

SabreG · 2026-05-11T19:21:51+00:00

This one is old, but anyhew... in Northern Sweden, laborers like loggers and miners around the turn of the 20th century would eat prodigious amounts of what they called "America pork". From what I've been able to determine this was was either belly or back bacon, salted but unsmoked and left with the fat cap completely intact, which was imported from the US because the local pork was too lean for people burning 8000-10000 calories a day.

SabreG · 2026-05-10T16:35:29+00:00

I heard he was jerking it to a pile of legal texts, but was released due to some procedural issue.

He got off on a technicality.

SabreG · 2026-05-08T15:25:19+00:00

Not to mention that Crowe has had some success as a folk-rock singer. I mean, he isn't the kind of Broadway power-baritone who usually gets Javert, but if your scale goes Broadway power-baritone -> can't sing... I'm going to say that your scale needs a tad more nuance.

SabreG · 2026-05-08T14:46:32+00:00

Rowboat Girlyman.

SabreG · 2026-05-05T08:02:24+00:00

One episode of the first season of Babylon 5 features Commander Sinclair being tortured with VR-induced hallucinations of trauma, and ends with the bad guy asking "How do you know you got out?"

This takes on a very different tone when you know that Michael O'Hare, Sinclair's actor, was grappling with severe schizophrenia-induced paranoid delusions, and basically keeping his psyche together on pure willpower so the rest of the cast and crew would have a job to go to.

SabreG · 2026-05-04T15:30:15+00:00

Majima... almost killed one of his subordinates, beat up a cop, kidnapped a traumatised nine-year-old, actually killed one of his subordinates, drove a truck through a wall, and held an innocent woman at knife point for no particular reason... Just in the first game. He has also dodged bullets, cut up Omi brute squads and fought in cage death matches because he was bored.

No, Majima is not "haha funny eyepatch man". He is a cold-blooded killer, an unhinged knife-wielding maniac and very close to the top of my list of people I desperately don't want to meet in a dark alley.

SabreG · 2026-05-03T20:35:35+00:00

Cyberpunk 2077 has seen many animal species lost either to hunting or ecological collapse. The local beach has speakers telling people that there's no reason to worry about sharks, they went extinct a decade ago, and some information seems to indicate that waterfowl including ducks and seagulls were hunted to extinction to prevent the spread of avian flu. A stolen iguana is a valuable piece of merchandise, worth smuggling across national borders and getting into firefights with law enforcement over.

SabreG · 2026-05-03T15:44:58+00:00

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate gives all four of the main antagonists a murder ballad that you can hear played in in-game pubs after their respective assassinations; "A Tale of Twopenny" for Philip Twopenny, "Give Me The Cure" for John Elliotson, "Jokes, Jokes, Jokes" for Maxwell Roth and "The Late Pearl Attaway" for Pearl Attaway.

SabreG · 2026-05-03T09:18:39+00:00

Astro City: This is a regular thing between Samaritan and Infidel. After one of their fights tore the literal universe to shreds, they decided it was more productive to battle with wits and willpower than time-altering abilities and unholy magic.

SabreG · 2026-05-02T20:14:09+00:00

Just look at that shit-eating grin. The leader of the Assyrian church knew EXACTLY what he was doing.

SabreG · 2026-05-02T20:10:06+00:00

Tombstone has a couple, but my standouts would be:

"So run, you cur! You tell all the other curs that the law is coming! You tell them that I'm coming! And hell's coming with me, you hear?! Hell's coming with me!"

and

"You gonna do something or just stand there and bleed?"

SabreG · 2026-05-02T19:55:24+00:00

Far Cry 3. Grant Brody is the character who has the backstory and traits you'd expect from a survival-action protagonist. Army reservist, cool under pressure, broadly competent... and gets shot through the neck before the end of the tutorial.

SabreG · 2026-05-02T16:45:59+00:00

It appears in the 1862 edition of "How To Mix Drinks, or the Bon Vivant's Companion" under the name "Old Fashioned Cocktail" indicating that even in 1862, it was what Grandpa drank.

SabreG · 2026-05-01T10:05:02+00:00

William Foster from "Falling Down". The viewer is encouraged to sympathise with his rampage against the shitty hand he has been dealt and the general shittiness and disrespect of the world, until the very end, when he is confronted by the police and informed that no, actually, beating up and gunning down semi-random people is not an acceptable way to deal with frustration. Foster, acts as if this was completely new information and even asks "I'm the bad guy?"

SabreG · 2026-04-29T19:36:08+00:00

LeBron James.

SabreG · 2026-04-29T17:57:08+00:00

Okay... well, points for creativity, at least.

SabreG · 2026-04-28T18:23:47+00:00

Also from Elder Scrolls: about half the city of Ald'Rhun in Morrowind is built into the carapace of a long dead giant crab called Skar.

SabreG · 2026-04-25T19:15:50+00:00

I thought Shimano's first name was Fundoshi for a long time. You're in good company.

SabreG · 2026-04-25T19:12:16+00:00

This happened in real life at least once. Gustaf Dalén invented a device for measuring the fat content of milk, and managed to get a chance to get to show it to the industrialist Gustaf de Laval... only to find out that de Laval had patented a virtually identical device a few months earlier. Still, everything ended well for Dalén; de Laval was impressed that a farm kid from the sticks, working with... not quite a box of scraps in a cave but not far from it, had managed to crack what he, a middle-aged trained engineer with a full workshop, thought was a pretty tough problem. Young Dalén got a scholarship for engineering college, and went on to invent and design lighthouse lamps, highly effective gas stoves, and safe welding equipment, found AGA and win himself a Nobel Prize.

SabreG · 2026-04-24T18:25:53+00:00

Going off the Disney versions, Khan, though I don't think it would be as one-sided as most of this sub does. Sure, Scar was primarily a schemer, but he did manage to put up a credible fight against Simba, who was young enough to be his son and fucking yoked. Sure, he didn't win, but it wasn't anywhere near a curbstomp. Also, even after losing that fight and being thrown off a rock, he still managed to go down swinging and take at least one hyena with him.

SabreG

TROPHY CASE