List of Mary Sues
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There are too fucking many Mary Sues in our games and fiction. We know it, and we love to complain about it, because it makes us feel a little better to call a spade a shovel. The original purpose of this list is to provide examples so the phenomenon can be studied, identified and as a result of the latter avoided.
(Note: please post Mary Sues in alphabetical order, so they don't fight about who's the better Mary-Sue. Also, this is about fictional characters, so while Canon Sues are acceptable, no real-life examples (even if there is such person named Mary Sue AKA the Scientology founder's wife I'm just adding that for fun). For the sake of peace, religious figures [and possibly mythological characters; particularly when they're from original mythologies] are real-life examples. Also, any characters added to the list without justifying reasons will be removed from this page. If you're going to add a race, please use the list below this one.
Mary Sues Case Studies
- Alice from the in-name-only Resident Evil movies: A character created for the movies, she has superpowers and is
presented asENTIRELY invincible. She manages to becomes an even bigger Sue when she loses said superpowers yet continues to obliterate armies unscathed. The film refuses to even let other characters do anything but get rescued by her, she's worse than characters written by Matthew Ward. The bitch is played by the director's wife; she's his perfect Mary Sue waifu insert and she's literally sleeping with him to get the job. Don't forget that she dual-wields katanas. And shotguns. And probably Desert Eagles, too.
- Andrew "Ender" Wiggin from Orson Scott Card's Enderverse, and a blatant (almost comical to a serious reader) example at that. What's worse: he only becomes more of this as the story and the books progress. It's even worse in the 2013 movie. At least the books gave the other characters more depth, Ender's feats took more time to achieve, and it contained some POV's that weren't of or about Ender.
- On that note, both of his siblings. Valentine, Ender's sister, is a self righteous prig who is only overshadowed by her obnoxious, sociopathic brothers. Peter, Ender's older brother, is a low functioning sociopath, but becomes intelligent enough that, as a child, he comes up with sophisticated political philosophies. As an adult, the prove so sophisticated that he's appointed Political Leader of Earth. Despite the fact that a sociopath with absolute power would become a dangerous tyrant as soon as someone refused to do what they say, he doesn't mess up and dies being hailed as a great ruler. Yes, this really happens.
- Batman in an unskilled author's hands. Because one of the effective DC editorial mandates is that Batman is not allowed to be truly defeated (he's usually too popular (and has a presence in too much of the DC Universe) to be allowed the downtime by editorial, unless it's part of a major storyline), a certain tendency for Batman to turn into a Mary Sue is well documented. That being said, there are many ways of adding dramatic tension to such a foregone conclusion situation, and the above mandate only includes actual defeat, so Batman is allowed to fail and make mistakes in certain situations, which also helps lessen the Bat-Sue Factor.
- Bella Swan: Though she is a pretentious, manipulative, male-dependent, self-pitying downer who takes her parents for granted and makes no time for her friends, Bella is adored by all. Her first day of school is supposedly hard for her, despite the fact that every person she meets instantly presents her with a best friend badge, and/or falls in love with her. She's also clumsy EXCEPT when there's a moment where she'll die if she does something clumsy. Add being a painfully obvious author surrogate and even being the product of one of the author's dreams (S Meyer admitted that herself), "clumsy" Bella is the Mary Sue of her generation.
- Caius Ballad, the antagonist of Final Fantasy XIII-2. Impractical overdesigned costume? Check. Impractical giant, overdesigned sword? Check. Purple hair? Check. Story-breaking powers? Check. Can't be beaten? Check. Openly called the most powerful Final Fantasy villain ever by his creator? Check. The only mitigating feature this fool has is that his English VA is Liam O'Brien.
- Cato Sicarius. Seriously this guy is Mary Sue's Mary Sue. He was born to a noble house on Talassar, trained with a sword as soon as he could hold one, inducted into the Ultramarines. He got commendation after commendation going from sergeant to company champion to Captain of the 2nd Company in several decades. He refined lightning assaults to near perfection and knows what to do after giving the battlefields a quick glance. He leads a company of mini Sues, each squad having some title for some great feat; their devastators having destroyed a titan, and a tactical squad that hasn't taken a casualty in close to 100 years. He is not only captain of the 2nd but "Master of the Watch", "Knight Champion of Macragge", "Grand Duke of Talassar", and "High Suzerain of Ultramar", seriously those last two titles are completely made up. He's a complete dick, valuing glory for himself and his company over all else, admitting to his men that he didn't care about planet Damnos when they were battling the Necrons over it (where he got his ass handed to him by a no-name Necron Lord). He also decided to appoint himself judge, jury, and executioner, to judge Uriel Ventris when he broke from the Codex, even though they're the same rank and only the Chapter Master has the right to do stuff like that. Oh yeah that reminds me, to top it all off most of the chapter thinks he's next in line to be Chapter Master, instead of Captain Agemman of the first company, even though he's got much (see fuck-tons) more experience than Sicarius. Add all that to the Mary Sue-ness of being a Space Marine and being in the Ultramarines and it reaches critical levels.
- Divis Mal from the RPG Aberrant. Oh, where to begin? Well, first of all on top of being the absolute, balls-out, most powerful Aberrant in the setting, ever, he's super smart, plans for everything, never loses no matter what the players do, and has an ideology that can basically be described as "like Magneto, only right. About everything." He's also in a loving relationship with a super-attractive partner who is also super-powerful, and his enemies are all stupid and happen to be straw-stuffed right-wing stereotypes because of course they are. He also serves as a thinly-veiled self-insert fanfic character for the lead game designer (a gay man with issues), and said designer once claimed that the title of the game referred to him specifically. It was all the sequel game could do to take the piss out of all the problems he caused.
- Dr. Doom, depending on the writer. Worst case is he's written by somebody that forgets that he's a VILLAIN and depicts his rule over Latveria as unrealistically benign and makes it look like the superheroes are wrong for trying to keep him from taking over the world.
- Edward Cullen: This character is the reason the popularity of vampires took a massive hit when the book came out. Possibly the most rage-inspiring aspect is he introduced the idea that vampires SPARKLE HARMLESSLY LIKE DIAMONDS IN SUNLIGHT! He can read minds, is near impossible to kill, doesn't feed off humans despite his literal bloodlust except for criminals or "those who deserve to die", always fashionable and multi-talented. Despite being a textbook case of an emotionally abusive and controlling boyfriend to Bella, he's always treated as having the moral high ground... except when he refuses to make Bella a vampire, but that gets swept under the rug as soon as he changes his mind.
- Eldrad Ulthran, and what's worse: he knows he is, and is a complete dick about it. Though he was recently imprisoned by his Craftworld for trying to help the Imperium and messing up Ynnead's ascension.
- Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite. Plot-sustaining power (the key to the whole plot literally rests in her hands), cannot be harmed,
makes a grown veteran of war look like an idiot childonly if you suck at the game... Regardless, she is routinely placed in easily escapable situations for the pure purpose of being saved when she can plausibly save herself, and makes none of the major (or minor) mistakes in the game. While some claim that she greatly dislikes violence, especially killing, she in fact killed a number of key characters in the game (Daisy Fitzroy, Dr. Pettifog & assistants, Songbird, Booker/Comstock). To make her comparable to Sues like Lightning and Alice, Ken Levin told the trolls who 34'd his perfect wife purpose, which result in a hilarious reverse psychology that gave Ken Levin what he wanted.
- Elminster, who is currently having a threesome with the goddess of magic and rad boobies and his adopted super-hot albino elf daughter while simultaneously beating the god of murder in a sword fight with one hand and the god of slavery in a magic fight with the other. Also, he's like a million years old and looks it. Ed Greenwood's self-insert character in the Forgotten Realms, and a big source of "Why doesn't he just do this for us?" questions whenever he appears in questlines.
- Every author self-insert. Especially those found in high-school writing assignments.
- Green Lantern, especially Hal Jordan. All the human Green Lanterns are regularly shown to be the best Lanterns in the core because they ALL have either, indomitable willpower, skill, and courage, surpassing others who have been in the core for decades. Most other lanterns, exist only to be killed off as a means of showing how dangerous a threat is. They're only ever effective when they are helping the Human ones.
- Hoah from Shaman King. If there is any villain that can truly be called a Mary Sue, it's him, most other villains with this accusation still get defeated. Hoah not only proves invincible throughout the whole series, able to easily pull of feats that are impossible for everybody else, he also has the ability to revive himself if killed, meaning even if the heroes beat him, which they state is impossible in a straight-up fight, it would be pointless, because he'd just back even stronger. Worse is that he goes around saying how awful humans and everyone, even the writer, seems to agree with him because the series ends with him winning, only delaying his plans to kill humanity because reasons, and gets away with a number of atrocities that would make numerous the Warriors Of Chaos jealous.
- IG-88 in the Star Wars expanded universe, given that he easily breaks into the second Death Star and uploads his personality into it and takes control with nobody noticing, and before that single-handedly took over a planet.
- Jacob Black: A werewolf from the Twilight franchise. He commits date rape on Bella (forcing a kiss), trolls the vampires and switches sides between the werewolves and the vampires without consequence. The worst part is when he falls in love with Bella's and Edward's newborn daughter because of a vision, practicing wife husbandry on her as soon as she can walk and talk... and all the other characters are fine with this. The story also gushes about his looks to the point that the movie doesn't go five minutes without the character taking off his shirt and the camera focusing on his muscles.
- Jarod Shadowsong, World of Warcamp. Shoehorned into the setting in books "War of the Ancients" and "Wolfheart" written by Richard Knaak (Blizzard Entertainment's equivalent of Robin Cruddace). Brother to canon character Maiev Shadowsong, love interest to Shandris Feathermoon, who is Tyrande's adopted daughter (both characters canon since WC3). His mere presence raises morale so much that people "automatically fight harder and obey him with greater swiftness". Survives a one-on-one fight against Archimonde, a demon lord who can destroy cities single-handedly, and DEMIGODS place themselves under his command! He spends thousands of years after the first fight against the Burning Legion resting on his laurels and doesn't show up when they invade the second time, but no-one calls him out on this in-universe.
- James Bond. To what degree varies, but the Roger Moore version is the worst offender: he's unbeatable at just about everything, a ladies' man to an unrealistic degree (even lesbians and villains who stand for everything he opposes switch sides after a dicking from Bond, not to mention that time he had sex with a lesbian it was questionable whether she consented...not that the story would punish Bond for possible rape), implausibly intelligent, a crack shot, and basically unkillable. In the books, he is an unlikable git and an alcoholic, yet still gets shit done.
- Jigsaw from the Saw films. Pick any character you know of with a long list of skills or attributes, this guy has more, and he keeps getting away for a half dozen movies.
- Jon Snow (especially the show version): While this is in the books as well, it is more evident in the show and he is currently dying from a mutiny in the books. Being a bastard is a bad thing in Westeros so he gets sent to the wall, but it's uphill from there. He gets a Valyrian steel blade (which is incredibly rare and an heirloom of noble houses) in his first week. He has a pet Direwolf puppy like his siblings, but of course his looks unique. From here he gets named as squire and successor to the commander of the Night's Watch (though this does cause some resentment among his peers). Later on he meets Wildings where he spares one who turns out to be a woman; it's obvious where this goes... they don't get along, they fall in love, have sex and spend some time together, something forces them apart and she dies. She also has red hair, which stands out because among Wildings its considered lucky. While he gets stabbed like in the books, in the show he dies from it then gets resurrected by Melisandre/the Lord of Light. He's revealed to be the bastard child of Rhaegar Targereyn and Lyanna Stark, making him Westeros' rightful king as well as beating Ramsay Bolton (see below); that's right, Jon's so Mary Sue his plot armor trumps the plot armor of another Mary Sue (to be fair, though, he was actually on the verge of loosing the big battle to Ramsay right up until the moment his ass gets saved by his little sister and about four thousand mounted knights.) While some of the earlier traits don't necessarily equal a Mary Sue, they add up... oh, they add up (at least Tyrion and Dany suffer lasting consequences that balance out their out-of-the-ordinary awesomeness).
- Kai Leng, from Mass Effect 3. You're constantly told he's a badass assassin, but when he shows up, Shepard's crew suddenly become drooling idiots so Leng can strut about, act tough, and monologue. He brags about killing Thane (alien assassin squadmate from the previous game) even though the latter was hobbled by a terminal illness requiring daily medical care and Thane STILL got the drop on Kai Leng; Thane even says himself "That other assassin should be embarrassed. A terminally-ill Drell kept him from reaching his target." When you "win" the "fight" against him on Thessia, he still gets away, utterly unaffected by the crumbling architecture that stops Shepard from pursuing him. By the end of the fight, you've advanced the plot a grand total of nowhere, regurgitated information you already have, and been hamstrung as a player because the writer wants his character to look cool. He is yet another antagonist dropped onto a story filled with them, but is nothing more than a costume, sword, and book of one-liners. Unlike Saren from ME1, we have no connection with this douchebag because the story doesn't give him enough screen time to develop into anything.
- Kalecgos (AKA Kalec), blue dragon who can disguise himself as a human-elf hybrid; from World of Warcrabs. Ham-fistedly inserted into the Blood Elves' redemption story arc as an enabler. Later he takes over the blue dragonflight even though he's not the oldest, wisest or most powerful blue dragon. Later he hooks up with Jaina Proudmoore, a powerful human mage/noblewoman/faction leader introduced in Warcraft III. She does this in spite of their vast age difference (which made her reject an Elven prince who loved her).
- Kenshiro, nothing can kill him and he's morally flawless, superior to everyone-fucking-else. At least until Shin Saga in the anime, where he starts fucking up often, even with his super kung-fu laser ninja powers. Most battles are curb-stomps until later on because it's a fucking show from the 80's. Do note, however, that Kenshiro loses a lot, especially later on, and mostly wins his hardest battles because he's the only one worth a shit left alive by that point in the series.
- Kratos from God of War. He curb-stomps fucking gods due to plot armor (and because one of them decided to give a bloody psychopath the powers of a god; MENSA applicant right there) and he has threesomes with complete strangers, even though he is meant to be grieving for the death of his family that he himself murdered. Oh and the rules for how death works change whenever it's convenient for him.
- Krasus (AKA Korialstraz) from World of Warcrack
(noticing a trend yet?), mainly due to the author's overuse of him. An elf who's secret identity is he's really a dragon, and one of the oldest living dragons. One of the leaders of the Kirin Tor. Consort/Adviser of the Dragon Queen, he might as well be the Dragon King considering how much importance she puts on him. He also gets sent back in time to partake of a historical event despite the fact HIS YOUNGER SELF WAS AROUND IN THAT TIME. He also set up another Mary Sue in Warcraft, Rhonin (NOTE; both characters were created by the same author).
- Lightning from Final Fantasy 13, she is basically a pink-haired Cloud without any of Cloud's likable personality traits. She's currently the NEW AND ASTONISHING HEAVENLY Valkyrie that fights a purple Sephiroth in her new game "Lightning's Return". Not that we care, but she was created by Motomu Toriyama (Matt Ward's Japanese cousin), a man with a Chris-Chan-like persona and Matthew Ward-style writing who is now continuously raping the franchise. He has a waifu love for Lightning like Paul has for Alice. Lightning is comparable to Alice on many levels, which says a lot, really. She also has tons of fucking DLC "costumes" dedicated to her so the player could dress her up and fap her to death. This is so fucking shameful that I'm crazy enough to believe Alice is a much capable heroine. Somebody kill me, please. Oh, just recently, Toriyama decided to have Lightning become a guest character in a future Final Fantasy. So not only is the franchise gonna suffer the rotting Emperor syndrome, but Lightning is now the literal goddess of every Final Fantasy game? Seriously, have you ever seen Paul doing such disgusting things with Alice? Like forcing Alice into an actual Resident Evil game (well, the Resident Evil franchise is dead as well)? Motomu Toriyama is officially worse than Paul Anderson!!
- Gets worse: Toriyama has stated that Lighting is the "first" strong female character in any Final Fantasy, which ignores dozens of better-written female characters, some of which he himself has written, the "strong" meaning just physical doesn't work either since FF7's Tifa (a game he worked on, btw) can punch tanks to death.
- Magneto has the INSANE potential to become this when crappy writers start taking his sympathetic traits too far ("Hey guys, let's make Magneto a member of the X-Men and have him date Rogue!") Hell, he sometimes becomes this even when he's a horribly despicable villain. Jeph Loeb's raping of the Ultimate Universe known as "Ultimatum" has him use his magnetic powers to nearly destroy the world just by waving his hands at Earth's magnetic poles (completely breaking the laws of physics in the process) and then effortlessly take on half the X-Men and almost all of the Ultimates singlehandedly and nearly win.
- Marneus Calgar, especially post-Ward. Killing an Avatar of Khaine by punching its chest in and not getting seriously hurt in said fight with one. An Avatar of Khaine is supposed to be as hard to kill as a Bloodthirster, something that takes a Primarch or a Bio-titan to beat in a one-on-one fight (then again, Games Workshop loves worfing Avatars, and Space Marines are their Creator's Pet). Calgar had his arms and legs chopped off by the Swarmlord, which didn't kill him due to Plot Armor, and he leads the Ultramarines, themselves considered a Mary Sue chapter in a Mary Sue faction (see the Space Marine entry on this page). These are just the first few examples.
- Master Chief from the Halo series is definitely one. For one, he has Ward-grade plot armor. Seriously, it was repeated throughout the games that he was born with the word LUCK. To further expand on his Sueness, this 7-foot tall hunk of raging Leprechaun saved the entire Galaxy Twice!, single-handedly stopped the Human-Covie War at the last minute, escaped and defeated an entire race of "Super-Space-Zombie-Fungus" that could mindfuck Culture-tier Civilizations without having his own brain being raped, is one of the last surviving SPARTAN II's, solo an entire legion of Covenant Honor-Guards (Which are like Spacemarine Captain levels) as well as successfully assassinating a very important Covie leader protected by said Guards without being captured, survived escaping an Exterminatus-level explosion that destroyed a Super-Weapon 'Ring' by out-flying it, somehow his armor is strong enough to deflect Fuel-Rod shots (Which are essentially Plasma Cannons), destroy a flying and mentally psychotic lightbulb with an overcharged Lascannon as a Self-Defence weapon (To be fair 343 Guilty Spark is a Forerunner Janitor Robot), and did I mention he saved the entire Galaxy twice? Furthermore with the release of Halo 4, MC is now magically gifted the genes and DNA by the Librarian to become full on impervious to a fucking Forerunner Super-Weapon/Death-Beam, which allows him to single-handedly fight through the insides of a very important Forerunner Capital Ship filled with Necron/Warp-Spiders kill bots and somehow through the act of plot, defeat the highest ranked Forerunner Military General that has the power to solo the entire Galactic Empire from Star Wars. I mean WTF! did the developers of Halo not realize that they just created a character with plot-armor so powerful that they make the likes of Kaldor Draigo look decent in comparison? Thankfully however, as pants-on-head retarded as some of the feats listed for MC are, he at least has some faults such as being psychologically raped in childhood, doesn't have the "Morally Superior to thou" personality and has a very grim view of the war, almost got killed by the killer space popcorn, being rather mediocre for a SPARTAN II when compared to his other colleagues, is only good in leadership and even then made some stupid mistakes, gets pretty beaten the fuck up by a Brute, his Superhuman abilities only stopped when fighting against low-ranked Elites and know he will lose against one if he fought one-by-one, and most of the battles he has been through had almost cost him his life. Those faults listed are what makes good old Chiefy NOT in the top 10 most powerful Mary-Sues and makes him somewhat tolerable albeit boring compared to the other listed.
- Captain Matthias Ward, I am the better Mary-Sue.
- Mordenkainen (Gary Gygax's personal avatar in the Greyhawk setting and a level 30 wizard who never fucking ages past 50 despite being a hundred fucking years old without turning into a lich, he became bald for some reason, which makes him look evil, but he remains stupid neutral).
- Olympia Vale, another character from the Halo Series and seems to be all around taking over the mantle of Mary Sue from Master Chief as he is pushed in the sidelines like an old man being pushed in the old folks home. Whilst Locke has been accused for being a rather bland and forgettable copycat cutout of the original MC, he still pales in comparison to that of Vale. Essentially imagine Vale as MC but remove the sociopathic and borderline mentally damaged aspects of John 117, make her a prodigy even beyond that of Spartan recruits which in turn made her pretty easy to integrate in the SPARTAN IV program and make her instantly learn the language of the Elites whilst by herself in space with the only excuse being that 'she was bored'. Vale and to an extent, the majority of the SPARTAN IV's seem to be an ongoing campaign from Karen Traviss (AKA the Destroyer of Fluff and Halo's Matt Ward) to further demonize Halsey and her SPARTAN II program for no better reason other than being forced to be unethical in an organization as ethically sound as the Imperial Inquisition. As you can imagine, this has already spurred some ire bitching in the Halo community and only time will tell if newer sequels from the game would flash her character out in a more decent or obscene matter.
- Ozymandias, AKA, Adrian Alexander Veidt from Watchmen. Born into a wealthy family (then threw it all away and earned even more money), perfect athlete, good-looking, smartest man in the world (He mind fucked Dr. Manhattan, a blueish godlike superhuman), and a vegetarian. The only downside he had is loneliness, since he had betrayed all his friends and killed the only companion in his life, a fucking genetically-engineered female lynx named Bubastis, by having her bait Dr. Manhattan to the incinerator and killed them both with a switch. Still, Ozymandias is perfect because Mary Sue don't need friends. It was also portrayed that his "common enemy" scheme to stop World War 3 (which involved killing millions) in a positive or at least sympathetic light. He also grabbed the bullet fired by Silk Spectre. Interesting to note that he the idol he worships: Alexander of Macedonia, is a man born before Christ, and the name Ozymandias is reference to a freaking Egyptian pharaoh: Ramses II, proving that Adrian is just as egoistic as Dante and the Ultramarines by have the name of an ancient ruler as his own nickname. Hell, his color page on "before the watchman" made him looked like some sort of floating Jesus!!
- The Primarchs
and their daughters.THOSE WORDS ARE BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!! /tg/ can only create perfection!
- Prometheus (the DC supervillain) certainly didn't start as this but ended up being twisted into one. When first introduced he was a genuinely cool and intimidating supervillain whose insane skill and manipulations were balanced out by his crippling mental issues (which the heroes exploited to take him down). Unfortunately, writers who weren't as skilled as Grant Morrison got their paws on him and made him ludicrously overpowered to the point where he single-handedly destroyed Star City, killing Roy Harper's daughter in the process. Thus Prometheus went from an awesome member of Batman's rogue gallery to a complete waste of pages. Thankfully he was prevented from becoming any worse thanks to Green Arrow putting an arrow through the bastard's skull.
- Ramsay Bolton (show version): Oh good fucking God, where to start with this particular Villain Sue? Well, for one, he manages to take on twenty of the best Ironborn warriors, who were all heavily armed and armored, while COMPLETELY SHIRTLESS, a bit tired from a vigorous sex session with his show version only girlfriend, and armed with nothing but a kitchen knife and a mace, and SOMEHOW kicks their asses. Then, much later, he is shown to completely annihilate the battle-hardened Stormlander army led by Stannis Baratheon, the greatest military commander in Westeros, with nothing but cavalry, while the previous episodes had established that Ramsay is a tactically inept moron. (This can also tie in with the fact that the writers of the show seriously fucked over Stannis from "stern-but-honorable competent tactical genius" into "greedy, fanatical moron"). Finally, he is constantly shown to get his way no matter how stupidly contrived it seems to the viewer, arguably the worst case being marrying and deflowering Sansa Stark by raping her and getting the killing blow on fan-favorite giant Wun-Wun. His Sueness ends with his face getting caved in by Jon and fed to his own hounds by Sansa.
- Revan, from Knight of the Old Republic. Classic Star Wars Mary Sue, but done in such a way that we still think he's awesome, achieved way more than nearly any other SW character ever did: single-handedly won the Mandalorian Wars (according to Canderous Ordo), then became Dark Lord of the Sith, then very nearly defeated the Republic in such a way to not leave it a smoldering ruin, then suffered cliche amnesia and still managed to remaster the Force, going from Padawan to Jedi Master in a couple of weeks and then won the Jedi Civil War, THEN got his memories back and managed to combine his Jedi/Sith powers enough to not give a fuck about anything. Was said to be one of the best lightsaber duelists ever, a champion swoop racer, and capable of manufacturing awesome (see HK-47) droids. The only person he couldn't defeat was the Sith Emperor of the time who had absorbed the Force energies of entire planets, yet STILL managed to keep him at bay mentally for 400 years until SW:TOR.
- Rey AKA Ma-Rey Sue from the new Disney trilogy of Star Wars. Like Olympia Vale from Halo, Rey has only been in one movie insofar so she has an excuse that later sequels would flash out her character more. However, even then she has already caught some backlash among the old guards of Star Wars who view her as a self-insert Mary Sue with a feminist agenda. Pushing aside from politics, accusations on why she is an insufferable Mary Sue spans from her immediately knowing how to fly the Millennium Falcon despite being a scavenger who should have no pilot experience, knowing more about the inner workings on said Millennium Falcon then Han Solo and Chewbacca (You know, the guys who flew the ship for half their god damned lives), knowing how to speak and understand Wookie despite no evidence or mention that she could, being all of a sudden a powerful Force user who can resist the mind tricks of a trained Jedi-turned-Sith apprentice despite no previous mention of her being a Force sensitive, performing said Jedi mind trick almost immediately after learning she is a Force Sensitive despite the fact that performing a Jedi mind tricks is known to be difficult to master, learning how to be a ridiculous crack shot of a Blaster Pistol immediately after being given by Han Solo with no mention on any military training and kicking a pretty powerful Force User in the ass that has been trained in the lightsaber far longer that she is (To be fair, Kylo Ren was shot by Chewbacca's Bowcaster which can make people fly ten feet of the air). As you can imagine, this created a shitstorm of untold proportion not seen since the likes of Chewbacca being killed back in Legends material.
- Rhonin, archmage of the Kirin Tor, World of Warcrap. Richard Knaak is Blizzard Entertainment's Matt Ward, and Rhonin is Knaak's Kaldor Draigo. He makes up a new member of the famous Windrunner family just so Rhonin can boast being connected to these legendary elves in Warcraft. They have half-elf kids who are blessed by dragons despite the fact they've done nothing to earn it (the player characters have done more, but they don't get anything like that; just a few trinkets that will be rendered obsolete by the next expansion). Even the name Rhonin is just the title "Rōnin" (referring to a Samurai with no master during Japan's feudal period) with a few changes to anglicize the name (and, of course, the character doesn't even look Japanese). He gets sent back in time to partake in the first fight against the Burning Legion for no other reason than Knaak wanted Rhonin to be there. He does practically nothing in the game, yet everyone says he's a great hero; even then, he didn't do half the things they praise him for.
- Richard, from the Sword of Truth series (he's not as bad in the TV series). He is always considered an ideal hero despite being cruel, sociopathic, and thinking that the universe should bend over backwards for him (which it actually does). Everyone who disagrees with him is evil (even if that's the only reason they're considered a villain) or turns evil. Gratuitous rape is thrown in by the author as a cheap way to make him look better (making villains as reprehensible as possible doesn't solve the problem of the protagonist being completely un-heroic).
- Richard B. Riddick, from the Riddick universe. Vin Diesel's personal self-insert. Didn't start out as a Mary Sue though, going from a sensible power level (where a fist-fight with a morphine-addicted merc is reasonably fair) and dubious morality that you just had to love. Later becoming (particularly amongst the directors cuts) a superpowered badass who can single-handedly take on squads of soldiers with a knife, resist soul sucking, commune with animals and make threats with Just as Planned modes of killing. ("kill you with my teacup" / "dead in 5 seconds"), oh... he can also explode as shown in the director's cuts and off-screen in the video games. His later portrayals also show his morality becoming a "told you so" mentality, where, when people die it's really because they are the assholes and nothing to do with Riddick.
- Selene, from the 'Underworld' movies. Throughout the series, she bears several similarities to Alice; both are experts with weapons, both have superior biology to their respective species (humans for Alice, Vampires for Selene), both kill their way through swarms of enemies without getting a scratch, both have little regard for their source material, and both are played by the wives of the directors of their respective film series.
- Sonichu, made by you-know-who.
- Squirrel Girl from Marvel Comics. Played entirely for laughs: Doreen Grey is a Mutant teenage girl with Spider-Man levels of strength/speed/agility, can grow bone knuckles, can talk to squirrels (and have them do her bidding) and has the ability to defeat any villain she wants off-screen. This includes big-name villains like Doctor Doom (she beat him in his first appearance and several times afterwards), Ego the Living Planet (who is, like his name suggests, a planet, meaning that a teenage girl beat up a planet), Thanos (who is one of the biggest badasses of the Marvel Universe, but the writers saved his face by replacing him in this instance with a perfect copy of him), Deadpool (whom she calls the mean, mean man; he's actually scared of her), M.O.D.O.K. and tons of other people. She was once part of a C-list superhero team, but quit because she thought she was holding them back (which she was entirely correct about: she once apologized to them for being late because she had to beat a 100' space dragon) and left for Marvel's Nexus of the Multiverse: New York. Despite her unapologetic Mary Sue-ness the fans love her and see her as the one spot of light in the otherwise relentlessly grimdark Marvel Universe.
- Superman in the hands of a poor writer. He is morally perfect, one of the strongest beings in the DC universe, and his one weakness that's supposed to kill him never works
ex: he lifts an entire continent of Kryptonite after being stabbed by a dagger made of itthankfully Superman Returns had so many plotholes that Man of Steel declared it all non-canon. The only way to nerf him is to have Batman beside him, because Superman always becomes a dumbass when Batman is around (go watch DCAU Justice League to see for yourself).
- Sylvanas Windrunner from World of Warcraft: Started out as a Fantasy counterpart for Sarah Kerrigan, she's been turning into Fantasy Hitler/Mengele. She sets up the Undercity as a fortress/Horde-run concentration camp for Alliance captives, and has free reign of atrocities ranging from slavery to genocide. Her Royal Apothecary kidnapped innocents to experiment upon under her watch, torturing them for fun and science. She was under suspicion for the Wrathgate Incident (she knew about the plague, but not that it would be used on the Horde too), invaded Gilneas, nuked Southshore, waged a torture-filled genocidal campaign on the Humans, manipulated the Horde (to join them in the first place in order to use them as tools), built a Cult of Personality around herself, employed the Val'kyr (which seems to be a case of "Even Chaos has standards" when seen by pragmatic Death Knight Thassarian), resurrected those who she killed against their will despite not liking when it happened to her, shot and killed Liam Greymane then taunted his father Genn about it, attempted to steal the Scythe of Elune to enslave the Worgen to expand her personal army and made some kind of deal with the devil to get the Val'kyr in the first place. The closest she got to any kind of punishment was Lor'thermar threatening to kill her if she raised the Horde's dead as Forsaken, stating he'd leave her to the Alliance if she tried it on their dead and calling her out on several of her actions in Mists of Pandaria. In Legion, after retreating from the Broken Shore on Vol'jin's death, the crowning moment of Mary Suedom occurs when she ends up being named the next Warchief of the Horde with Vol'jin's dying words. Mary Sue reason? She never suffers any (literally, ANY) setback except Greymane ruining her Val'kyr agenda. All her atrocities and horrors are ignored into heroism, and what's worse, she automatically pulls out the next phase of her agenda out of her ass, and her Forsaken, despite horrendous losses and ban on raising unwilling dead, somehow destroys each and everything innocent around her...only for her to get raised of Warchief status. This issue is compounded by the fact that Sylvanas has a very vocal fanbase and she's the Creator Pet of one of Blizzard's lead writers, David Kosak.
- Tauriel, Peter Jackson's special snowflake from The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (a Mary Sue in something related to Tolkien; Beren and Luthien are deep and well-written enough to get a pass, this is a sad day). Not content with pissing on the established characters and story from the book (i.e. the Barrel-escape from Thranduil's castle is changed, Smaug is much less intelligent than he is in the book...), Peter also adds unnecessary and over-the-top new characters. Tauriel's ridiculously skilled at fighting (even for an elf) and has healing powers. According to all of Tolkien's books, only a select few elves can heal people such as Lord Elrond Half-Elven, wielder of one of the three Elven Rings of Power and a direct descendant of the Kings of the Noldor; all things which Tauriel lacks. In addition, she's ship-teased with canon-characters Legolas (who never appears, or even gets mentioned, in the book) and Kili.
- Thrall, the (in)famous Orc Warchief from Warcraft. Started out cool in WC3 as an Orc orphan raised in a human internment camp who escaped with help from a friend, he led the Orcs because he was the former Warchief's son and a powerful but not story-breaking shaman. By having his forces fight alongside the trolls and Tauren he made allies. Though he fucked up by sending Grommash to collect resources from Ashenvale (antagonizing the Night Elves, giving the demons an opportunity to corrupt the Orcs and leading to the death of a demigod who would've been a great help against the Burning Legion), though with a lot of help from some allies and another demi-god he sets things right. In the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcramps, he became Azeroth's premiere shaman and leader of half the world while appointing the
VERY CONTROVERSIALballs to the wall violent and universally hatedpatriotic warmonger Garrosh Hellscream as Warchief of the Horde; despite the protests of several others including Garrosh himself (who was uncertain he could handle the responsibility of such a role at the time). Takes over as Aspect of Earth from a borderline demigod, and even deals a crippling blow to him when he's empowered by the Old Gods. Even people that were fans of him during Warcraft III have started to get sick of him.
- Wesley Crusher. Originating from the same franchise as the original Mary Sue, Wesley is a very young ensign training to be an officer in Starfleet, where he's earned the admiration of many of the bridge officers. He became something of a protege to Captain Picard, who was impressed by Wesley after he showed that he had learned all the controls at the captain's chair when they first met.
While not morally perfect or incorruptible Wesley is as close as he can be in most casesHe's only moral by Gene Roddenberry's standards (which were messed up beyond belief, the man thought it was okay to be a prima donna director to a point that made even Stanley Kubrick and James Cameron look tame but not for children to grieve over dead loved ones, and that's not getting into his corporate shyster practices, anti-religious prejudices and sexism; seriously we're not making any of that up), by a normal person's, he's smug and egocentric, along with his Deus Ex Machina techno skills, which are shown off by making the rest of the crew look useless. He notably also gets the Enterprise into danger before getting it out of it, and never gets called out for it. Many people thought that he was an insufferable little shit, among them Wil Wheaton (the actor who PLAYED the guy).- Interestingly, Captain Kirk himself is something of a Mary Sue; Roddenberry himself practically outright stated he wanted the show to have that ambiance that Kirk, as his Author Avatar, could have any woman he desired.
- Uriel Ventris - despite initially coming off as a subversion of Wardian Ultramarines-are-the-best Mary Sue bullshit, he quickly devolves into Ultramarines are the worst unless they use the Codex to wipe their asses and act like Space Wolves - which is pretty much limited to - guess who? - McNeill's OC-Do-Not-Steal Special Snowflake Ventris.
- Young main characters in crappy Japanese animes and manga.
- Judging from the rest of the list, any character you don't like.
Mary Sue Races
While not every member of a race is a Mary Sue, with one or two exceptions, sometimes whole races are considered Mary Sues because they have huge amounts of plot armor and are idealized beyond reason. They were put here as the Mary Sue list was originally conceived for characters. Also, please list them in alphabetical order.
- Although some might find this as arguable, the characteristics describing the Asari race in Mass Effect are blatantly Mary-Sue. Although not every Asari is a Mary Sue (though some are), when it comes to the general race as a whole, oh boy does their 'Sueness' reach Chakat levels. Examples on what makes them a Mary Sue includes having the second longest lifespan behind the Krogan (over 1000 years, plus they lack the Krogans violent nature which can easily waste their long lifespans), all of them are biotic users, every one in the game is intelligent, founders of the council, considered sexy by many other species despite being a monogendered species (even Salarians, who lack a sex drive and mate by necessity), and are deliberately oversexualised by the developers so they can be Rule 34'ed to death. Their race as a whole is portrayed as peace loving hippies, the best diplomats, the most respected species in the galaxy as well as having a serious case of "Holier/Morally Superior then thou" attitude. Their ship the "Destiny Ascension" is the largest and most powerful ship in the Citadel fleet and their ships perversely resemble a lady privates because you know they all look like "wominz". Thessia, their homeworld, is regarded as the "jewel" of the galaxy as well as having the largest amount of Eezo which partially explains how their entire race is biotics. Any asari can 'Read' most people's minds and inner-thoughts with near complete-accuracy, though only if that person agrees to it (they can literally mindfuck you). Furthermore with their way of reproduction, since they are monogendered (Meaning their all female) a lot of newcomers in Mass Effect start to scratch their heads on how they manage to get each other pregnant without any physical evidence of having a dick (Although one of the hypothesis is that they might actually screw around with the local fauna AKA Bestiality). However the fluff states this as Parthenogenesis, for those that don't know what it is, think of them as chickens....which is actually hilarious if you seriously put the comparison in context. Another odd thing about their reproduction is that somehow the Asari have the capability of getting pregnant from just about Anyone. Do those traits sound fucking familiar to you? So all in all, not only are they a holy (unholy?) fusion of a smurf, elf and a monster girl, but they also commit in sweaty Lesbian/Bestiality/Xenoality orgies with almost everyone, turning the Asari race into nothing more then a giant Whorehouse for Aliens and Humans to fap in a hundred dozen ways and yet they are still okay with that....
Slaneesh approve of this!BLAM! BLAM! DOUBLE HERESY! But to be fair, at least Asari aren't furries or physical hermaphrodites.
- Amusingly enough, the third game reveals that the only reason Asari are so much more advanced than the other races is because the Protheans (the super-advanced precursor race) were deliberately manipulating them and sneaking tech to them in their ancient history in order to give them a boost (such as genetically engineering them to be a race of skilled biotics and leaving instruction manuals on how to create all sorts of advanced technology and deal with the other races in their "beacons"). The hope was that if they were given enough a headstart, the Asari would be able to unite and lead the other races to victory against the Reapers (in other words, they were deliberately trying to make the Asari Mary Sues in order to give the next cycle an advantage over the Reapers). Instead the Asari kept that knowledge to themselves and used it to become the most powerful race in the galaxy. When the Reapers showed up, the Asari buried their heads in the sand like the smurf elf pussies they are on their homeworld, leaving the other races to fend for themselves, than promptly got their asses kicked by the Reapers (Which they probably deserved it for being such self-righteous and selfish cockbags). Perhaps one of the few instances of a Mary Sue being both invoked and subverted.
- Angry Marines. When was the last time YOU heard of an Angry Marine LOSING? Thought not.
- The Drow from Drowtales. Seriously just reading the main page on why they are a bunch of insufferable Mary Sues is enough to make any Neckbeard to combust into flames by pure RAGE. Read it, and despair.
- ALL Chakats! The entire fucking race are distilled and purified Mary Sues, sometimes warping stories they are even mentioned in passing. Not just feline-centaur dick-girls(Sick Fucks), they're also each master psionicists with faster-than-light mind-reading, able to cure deep neurotic complexes with a good deep dickin', strongest and most stable form of 'Taurs', considered as the most "beautiful thing in the universe" despite looking exactly like lions with the fact that they have dicks, morally perfect to the extreme, nobody technically hates them, their breast milk can turn the most feeble human into mini-Arnold Schwarzeneggers and every non-Chakats seem to have a unnatural and unhealthy lifestyle on trying to "Do it" with them. Despite the fact that there are hundreds of other Catgirls outside of this furfag heresy, that are more attractive, cuter and prettier then them with the added benefit that they are actually female, not hermaphrodite abominations.
- Elves are often portrayed this way in fiction, though there are exceptions and it's becoming rarer for elves to be portrayed as Mary Sues. A lot of their sueness comes from how idealized they are. They're always beautiful, sometimes even without making an effort, either immortal or have very long lifespans and can only die from violence. They're often considered to have the moral high ground yet also be condescending to the younger races, but the elves contempt kept getting justified in some stories. Some have the natural ability to make anything beautiful from even the most base materials, naturally have great magical ability, and are often favored by their gods. However, there are evil elves in fiction and some elves who are morally good without being Mary Sues.
- Whoverse Humanity takes this up to a 100 million in this case. Depending on the timeline, Humanity not only manage to become the dominant ruler of the multi-galaxy not once, but Five Fucking Times! Without any indication on how they manage to conquer the Galaxy, thriving with hostile Aliens that could LOLStomp the Necrons, Eldar and Imperium combined. Furthermore not only are they one of the most numerous species in the Universe, but also one of the most adaptable and longest lasting race, as seen when they are one of the few species still alive near the end of the fucking Universe. To give you an idea on how fucking ludicrous Humanity got within Doctor Who, in just 500 years from present day, Humanity was already a major force in the Galaxy (Compare this to most Sci-Fi timelines where Humanity either just started to explore their surroundings or already establish a small and insignificant area), as well as having weapons that could make Strike Legion seem useless in comparison, and when you take note on how short the timeline distance is between the present day and the end of the Universe, it just makes you say to yourself....the Fuck? Compare this to say Star Wars in which they have the excuse of not knowing how long Humanity has been space traveling, or WH40K where the thousands of years gap of slow progress before the Warp Drive was invented seem much more plausible then this absurd scenario. You know Humanity is a Mary Sue when even the near-death of the Universe can't kill them off....until a certain Dues Ex Machina appeared. To be fair, they only gain their Sueness momentum when a certain Time Lord keep on foiling the plans of countless Aliens attempting to conquer and crush humanity in various stages in time; either that or because the Doctor has a unusually unhealthy Humanophile fetish. They are probably one of the few examples of a "Accidental Mary Sue", in which the Doctor, with his fancy Time gizmos and intellect, unintentionally guided Humanity to such power levels by either saving their asses from certain doom or altering the timeline so they won't fuck up, due to his love of Humans. Granted Whoverse Humanity is definitely far from morally perfect (A substantial amount of Whoverse villains are Humans and the multiple Human Empires itself are morally questionable at best), the main point of contention is how influentially powerful they are for such a young race while at the same time, disregarding other more ancient and more powerful races (Silurian, Cybermen, Sontarian, Ice Warriors, etc) that should be the one having more galactic screen time and hegemony then them.
- Dwarves as seen in the Artemis Fowl series. While virtually all dwarven exploits described are performed by one Mulch Diggums, most of his Mary Sueness is excused as "dwarven racial talents." His spit can harden into a glowing substance that's strong enough to resist high speed impacts, he can fart hurricanes and shit cannonballs, he can dig a self sealing tunnel through any earth-like substance as fast as a man can run, drink water with his pores, use said pores like suction cups if he's thirsty, hear better than a stethoscope, and has tremorsense to at least a hundred feet. Dwarves are also described as having access to the fairy magic (Common uses include instant healing, invisibility, and mid-grade mind control), but Mulch gave that up to steal things instead. This despite no readily apparent level adjustment, nor any mention of useful powers before those same powers are necessary, puts this race quite firmly in this category.
- The Mandalorians in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, depending whose writing them. While good under the correct writers, under some of the bad ones (Hint, it involves Karen fucking Traviss), they compete with badly written expanded universe Jedi and Sith for the position of Star Wars' Ultrasmurfs. In the expanded universe ALL mandos are elite warrior mercenaries, skilled enough to take out armed enemies with their bare hands and usually packing enough fire power to level a building. They're so badass in fact that they're known to hunt Jedi for fucking sport because they're the only thing that'll give'm a real challenge. Experienced jedi hunters can be good enough to fight them head on despite all their force powers and saber swinging because they have the right gear and experience to counter it. Bear in mind that Mandos do not use the force in anyway. Karen Traviss also writes them with the Mary Sue trait of always being right and people agreeing with them for things they call the Jedi out for that they didn't even do, like create the clone army, and makes them out to be the pinnacle of civilization despite being warmongers with a history of allying with the Sith and trying to conquer the galaxy themselves.
- The most famous Mandalorian, Boba Fett, generally avoids becoming this trope and is just a plain badass (as a bonus he rarely if ever engages in the dick-stroking egomania of Traviss's Mandies), but under bad writers his badassitude can push into this. His father Jango Fett follows this same idea; in fact his origin story partly involves his old merc group of Mandalorians getting slaughtered by a group of Jedi in a moment that reads sort of like "fuck you Karen Traviss".
- Smurfs. They're portrayed as a peace loving communist society that never has a conflict more dangerous than a family feud who have a ritual to maintain their immortality and are idealized to the point of ridiculousness. They're also friends with animals and never have to worry about being eaten even though they're the size of large mice.
(More to be added later (sounds of crying editors))