G.I. Joe

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G.I. Joe was originally a line of action figures & toys from the 1960s based more on the real-world version of the US military. It's as generic as it sounds, which is probably not why you're here. In the early 80s, the toy line rebranded to be based on a fictional elite team of specialists gathered from across the US military's different branches to battle the forces of COBRA, a terrorist organization/cult that sought world domination. They gained enough attention that they earned an official comics line from Marvel Comics, but the main reason it tends to be remembered is because of the batshit crazy 80s cartoon "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero", which basically turned the premise more into a low-key science fiction setting.

As Hasbro has released an official roleplaying game for the setting based on Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and it's a legitimate inspiration for a campaign of d20 Modern, we've gone ahead and added a page for it.

IRL History

Around the world there are a bunch of slang terms for a normal guy, an American one is Joe Average. In WWII a general term for American Military stuff was GI, short for Government Issue. Eventually these two terms were crammed together and you got "GI Joe" as a term for your standard US Army grunt and in '45 the propaganda film The Story of G.I. Joe was released in American theatres. The name stuck and simmered in the background of pop culture for the next couple of decades.

Jump ahead to 1963 to the Hassenfeld Brothers Toy Company (latter shortened to Hasbro) and a puzzle they're trying to solve. A few years back, Mattel released Barbie and Barbie was a bombshell in the toy market. Especially since as a fashion doll people did not just buy a Barbie, but also a full wardrobe for her. They had the new plastic tech to make similar dolls, but Barbie had saturated the market. So the question was "How do we sell a Doll with different outfits to boys?" The Solution: call the Doll an Action Figure, make him a soldier and sell different uniforms and stuff. G.I. Joe was as good as a name as any so they snatched it up. In 1964 Twelve Inches of possible military fighting man were deployed to toy stores. And it was a hit, for a time.

Then it's popularity faded. Partially it was a shift in culture brought on by the Vietnam War against gung-ho militarist nationalism in the US, partially it was the 1973 Oil Shortage driving up the cost of plastics. Either way, sales gradually slumped. Gimmicks like "Kung-Fu grip" gave a little extra shelf life, but by 1976 the run was discontinued. A year latter, a samurai-cowboy movie with rocket ships rocked Hollywood like a hurricane and as a side effect a second stringer toy company named Kenner could not make Star Wars action figures fast enough to keep up with demand while some Japanese Imports were beginning to be hot new things. The Hasbro execs saw this and knew the demand was there, but if they wanted back in on the market they needed to do this right.

The solution came with Marvel Comics and in particular a guy named Larry Hama. Previously GI Joe was a Soldier Guy, but the kids who bought Star Wars toys did not just want a Space Guy. They wanted Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewie and even C-3PO and R2-D2 because these were guys they knew and had some investment in. So they took some GI Joe soldier designs based around broad archetypes and made concepts around them (Leader, Big Guy, Demo-Guy, Sailor Guy, Female Soldier, Marine, etc) and worked them together as a team of elite soldiers. But another fact that was overlooked was that the Star Wars kids also bought Darth Vader and Stormtrooper figures for them to fight. After all, what's a hero without a villain? So they came up with a foe and not an IRL one since that would case a crap-fest neither Hasbro nor Marvel wanted or needed. So they came up with a bunch of quasi-fascists and mad scientists with snake iconography out to Take Over The World and made COBRA. First came comics which were advertised on TV and then the action figures and their vehicles in 1983. This lead to a five-part mini series in '83, another one in 84 and a full blown series in '85. Some new side characters were added both as new groups (the Dreddnoks, Oktober Guard, etc) and as individual dudes. Some stood the test of time, others did not.

From there, the franchise has had it's ups and downs, though it has really gone away. Yo Joe!

The Basics of the Joeverse

G.I. Joe is an elite anti-terrorism unit in the American military founded to battle the actions of COBRA, a terrorist organization and borderline (if that) cult created to overthrow the existing world order and replace it with the iron grip of COBRA. The setting has a distinct science fiction slant, although how much of a one depends on which universe; even the 80s comicverse eventually added things like genetic engineering and robots.

Notable Characters

Given this was a universe built out of action figures, it makes sense that both the Joes and COBRA have plenty of unique figures.

G.I. Joe

Being the main characters of the franchise, the Joes get the Lion's share of unique and interesting characters. It helped that lead writer Larry Hama was himself a Vietnam vet, and managed to make the Joes fell like real soldiers in spite of the standards of the time.

Hawk was the original field commander of the team, taking command of almost all situations until the death of the original commander, Gen. Flagg. A good commander, in the sense he earned personal respect of the team along with the recognition of his rank, he also led the expansions of the team through the years. One constant has been Hawk's willingness to go to bat for his people, up to and including ordering them to go underground when the US government has accused several Joes of being targets rather than trusted soldiers.

Roadblock serves as the team's heavy machine gunner. Specifically, the M2 Browning Heavy Machine Gun. Those who don't know the franchise but know their weapons are asking, "Wait, one guy on the Ma Deuce?" Yes, he is one guy on the Ma Deuce. One guy that can carry it like the rest of the team carry assault rifles. He's also a qualified gourmet chef and gives out memorable body massages.

Gung-Ho was the first Marine to join the Joes, hailing from the deep bayous of Louisiana and basically acting as the living embodiment of the Marine Myth in the series. In his first mission, he essentially assaulted a civilian by literally tearing the man's sports car door off, then beating the rest of the car with it. Which eventually morphed into the in-Joe urban legend of him lifting a COBRA tank off his foot after it ran him over. Noted for always running around with a bare chest, which means he can show off the massive Eagle, Globe, and Anchor tattoo on his pecs.

Scarlett served as the token "girl" character in the series, being a crack intelligence officer as well as a crossbow and martial arts expert. She served as one of the original Joes back in the day and later being promoted to being a drill instructor. While rather cliche in the modern day, it was rather novel in the 80's to have a female character who was capable of being more than a damsel in distress.

Sergeant Slaughter is an interesting case in that he's a crossover character, as he's a professional wrestler who served as a living mascot. His gimmick was essentially being the stereotypical hardass ex-marine drill instructor who served in 'Nam despite the man behind the act doing none of that. Most infamously got scrapped from the series altogether in the 90's when his wrestling gimmick switched from being an all-American drill instructor to being an Iraqi Sympathizer, all during the opening days of the Gulf War. Corporate shit aside, this led to the man himself getting some serious death threats from former fans and jingoists.

Snake Eyes is one of the most recognized Joes, thanks to his distinct appearance of always wearing a black bodysuit and never speaking. A member of a Long Range Recon Patrol in Vietnam with fellow Joe Stalker, horrific wounds in battle were compounded by the deaths of his family in the same car accident that killed Cobra Commander's brother. A period of training with a clan of ninjas later, Snake Eyes was recalled to serve on the expanding Joe team to assist in even more covert actions against COBRA's followers. Infamous among the enemies of the Joes for being more like a force of nature than physical being.

COBRA

Crashing through the Sky, comes a Fearful Cry...

COBRA's official head honcho is the mysterious figure known only as Cobra Commander, his face perpetually covered either by a blue cloth mask probably ripped off of Marvel's Baron Zemo, or a much more iconic and cool-looking helmet with featureless polished faceplate. He is generally depicted as a brilliant (if insane) and highly charismatic figure with great ideas but also terrible tempers and a raging ego. Even in the 80s cartoon, whilst best known for shouting "retreat" when it seemed battle was going against him, a lot of his plans were genuinely quite clever! The 80s animated movie presented an alternative origin for Cobra Commander, in that he was an exile from a lost civilization of biotech-using Serpentfolk hidden in the Arctic who planned to reclaim the world they had ruled before the destruction of the dinosaurs... most people prefer to forget this iteration exists, if only for the HFYness of his 80s comic backstory, where he was a failed used car salesman who went mad after his family were killed in a traffic accident, and subsequently reinvented himself as a world-threatening supervillain.

Contrasting the Commander, Destro is a cold, calculating arms dealer hailing from Scotland, and looking like he should be dancing to Boney M in his spare time with his plunging neckline. Supplying COBRA and all other bad actors worldwide with weapons and mercenaries, Destro's most defining trait is the metal mask he wears to look like knockoff Dr. Doom. In universe, it's a tradition in his family after his ancestor was sentenced to have a mask fitted to his face after he sold arms to both sides of a medieval conflict. You'd think that with his money he could move on, but then the Scottish traditions should not be mocked.

The Baroness rounds out the top brass of COBRA, a blue-blooded aristocrat who's as much of a gifted genius as she is absolutely corrupt to the core. Her intelligence and personal wealth are of such a scale that it's very likely that she's the power behind the organization. She's also responsible for a lot of...awakenings for many young boys in the 80's, considering she's evil, some sort of Central European, and typically wears spandex or leather and glasses.

Doctor Mindbender acts as the organization's resident mad scientist, though his topless outfit would have you wonder how that even was the case. See, he started off just making a device to numb pain for orthodontic procedures, only for it to go haywire and screw with his brain just enough to delete his sense of morality and not render him a vegetable. With restraints such as ethics no longer being an issue, he decided to go further into the field of mind-fuckery and genetics to such a point that Cobra Commander gave him an offer.

Storm Shadow is pretty much a palette swap of Snake Eyes, being a ninja, except wearing white - and thus defeating the point of being a stealthy ninja. At least he's not utterly married to the outfit, so that's a point in his favor. He's of the same ninja clan as Snake Eyes, being a descendant of the clan's founder, but he decided to go renegade and get hired to act as Cobra Commander's personal bodyguard.

Serpentor is COBRA's alternative to having Cobra Commander as their head honcho; a genetically engineered super-soldier created by Dr. Mindbender using DNA harvested from some of history's greatest conquerors to produce one super-clone that would genetically inherit their combined tactical skills, charisma and personal fighting abilities. It... technically worked, but there's one teeny tiny little problem: he's fucking nuts! Yes, the guy has the respect of the troops for his willingness to fight alongside them, he's a legitimate badass, and he's capable of surprisingly brilliant schemes on occasion, but he's also incredibly aggressive, overbearing, shortsighted, demanding and impulsive. We're talking a man whose first plan upon taking charge was to launch a full-scale invasion of Washington D.C. and conquer it with nothing but the men he had available to him as COBRA's leader. Even Cobra Commander pointed out that this was a stupid idea, because they didn't have anywhere near the military forces to hold out when the entire US army came to kick them out of town! Mindbender officially blames the flaw on the fact he didn't get that one last DNA sample he intended to stabilize Serpentor's personality, but considering said DNA sample was from Sergeant Slaughter, the more likely culprit is that Mindbender just screwed up on a fundamental level.

Vipers: The Basic COBRA grunt.

In the toylines, COBRA traditionally gets the weirder, more science fictiony vehicles, such as the Pogo; a one-man vehicle that mounts a dual-linked lascannon and uses a combination of a rocket booster and four spring-loaded legs to bounce around over even the rockiest terrain.

Specific Continuities

The original G.I.Joe continuity is known as G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero. And even that is split into two distinct continuities; the very much lighter and softer 80s cartoon universe, and the darker, more mature and realistic Marvel comic.

The G.I.Joe: ARH cartoon got a movie, which was highly controversial. It was then followed by two seasons officially set post-movie, released by DiC Entertainment instead of the Marvel/Sunbow teamup, but these were so bad they got the series canceled.

But you can't keep a series down, and G.I.Joe began to see reboots both in animation and in comics.

The Transformers Connection

Since G.I.Joe and Transformers are both products of the same company, Hasbro, one has to wonder whether or not the two worlds interlock. The answer is a... maybe. It really depends on the continuity.

Some fans have theorized that the 80s cartoon takes place in the same world as both Transformers and Inhumanoids, a nightmarish 13 episode mini-series about a team of Power Armored scientists trying to prevent humanity's conquest or annihilation by primordial giant horrors that have emerged from the center of the Earth. Considering that two episodes of the 80s cartoon actually feature giant monster deities, plus the weirdness of the movie, it's not that hard to envision.

There are several different official "Transformers meet/fight G.I.Joe"-themed crossover comics by different publishers, with the first known instance of this was back in the late 80's, when Marvel made a small run of crossover comics as part of the G1 line. There were also hints here and there of Hasbro using Joe bits in Transformers, with any official toylines only popping up after the turn of the century.

Finally, IDW publishing officially welded both of their Transformers and G.I.Joe comics together by placing them in the same universe, leading to things like ex-Decepticon Skywarp actually joining the Joes.

G.I. Joe: The RPG

Renegade Studios released a G.I. Joe RPG in 2022, using the same Essence20 system that they also used for fellow Hasbro brands Transformers and the Power Rangers. Same as those games, the game works has character set by general classes with a choice of subclass, alongside a background (whether in some military branch or not) and personal traits.

The game runs with the general d20 roll to solve things, but you also add in an additional die that grows in size (ranging from d2 to d12) based on the level of proficiency a character has on a particular skill, situational modifiers and any specializations.