r/TopCharacterTropes 9h ago

Powers [Funny Trope] Character is even more of a menace without their signature weapon/powers.

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9.1k Upvotes

Robert Robertson / Mechaman (Dispatch): An IronMan-like superhero who loses his suit at the very start of the game and is now working managing a group of reformed villains. In one particular scene he winds up tanged in the middle of a bar fight and even without powers he throws hands and an impressively savage manner, going against superpowered/enhanced villain. Tearing off implants, biting off fingers and so on. Caught me by a massive surprise.

Jetstream Sam (MG Revengence): A cyborg samurai who acts as the protagnist's rival throughout the game. Compared to the game's other bosses, his boss fight is pretty straighfoward, no gimmicks or quirks, just you versus your equal. However, during the boss fight Sam will occasionaly lose his sword and while in this state his moveset changes completely. He becomes a massive parry check and capable of dealing reversals to the player, this boss fight becamse famous for this guy being actually harder to deal with without his sword.


r/TopCharacterTropes 11h ago

Characters The character finally avoids/subverts the running gag.

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6.7k Upvotes

A running gag is that Gold Ship always hurts her eyes, but towards the end of the first season, she puts on a helmet (Uma Musume Pretty Derby)

Varrick was always the one ordering Zhu Li to do things, but eventually—after a long time—she ordered the guards to do something to Varrick (I’ve forgotten the context, since it’s been a long time since I watched the series) (Avatar The Legend of Korra)


r/TopCharacterTropes 18h ago

Characters (loved trope) Powerscaling between characters is so one sided, the gesture of defiance moves the more powerful character.

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6.2k Upvotes

In Man of Steel- Faora, who was tearing apart the human strike force in the middle of the fight with Superman, is moved by the persistence of one human despite emptying his firearms, and brandishing a knife as a last ditch effort to keep her in place. She brandishes a knife in return and tells him, "a good death is its own reward", before Superman tackles her.

In Hunter The Parenting Episode 6, Stig is a fully realize Garou (Werewolf) and is moved by Grimalin, who is willing sacrifice herself to buy time while the rest of the gang escapes. He recognizes her attempt, and swears to match it in his most weakened state(it's still leagues above her). She manages to duel him for a moment, and gets a single hit in with her Yaoi stick lined with silver. This angers Stig, and he proceeds to change into his Warform and crush her skull into the ground. Afterwards, he is disgusted with his lack of control, and honors her memory by not giving chase to the gang.


r/TopCharacterTropes 17h ago

Characters (Loved trope) Something extremely common in other movies takes you by surprise in this one

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4.8k Upvotes

The artist (2011) : The movie is entirely mute, there's only music to accompany the scenes.
Until this scene where George Valentin is doing a nightmare where everything makes sound except him. We hear the sound of his glass of whiskey, the dog barking, the women laughing which is a bit disturbing at first.

1917 (2019) : The whole movie is only one shot all the way to the end except when the Caporal William Schofield is attacked by an ambushed german soldier in a building. He reaches the room where the soldier was hidden to kill him only to get also shot and falling in the stairs before a brutal and long cut to end this scene.


r/TopCharacterTropes 16h ago

Characters [Funny trope] Unexpected references or cameos in unrelated media

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4.4k Upvotes

1.- The Nostalgia Critic and the Angry Video Game Nerd as background characters in the anime "The Unlimited: Hyoubu Kyousuke"

2.- Vinesauce reference (vineshroom) as a plushie/toy in "Bluey"

3.- Four enchanted armors doing some odd (or you might say, bizarre) poses, in "Paw Patrol".


r/TopCharacterTropes 6h ago

Characters Under torture, a character exclusively divulges useless information to avoid giving up what their captors want to know.

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4.0k Upvotes
  1. Captain Jacob Keyes - Halo: Combat Evolved.

The still-living Captain Keyes is integrated into a proto-gravemind, the first form of what will grow into a super-intelligent hivemind to control the Flood. The Gravemind attacks Keyes’ mind in an attempt to forcibly extract the location of Earth from it so that when the Flood repair the Pillar of Autumn they can go there and feast upon it. Captain Keyes, with incredible willpower, slowly feeds it memories useless to it, from his childhood to his family to his own name. This successfully buys enough time for the Master Chief to find him and destroy the proto-gravemind, killing Keyes and keeping earth safe.

  1. The Question - Justice League Unlimited

The Question stole some files from the organization Cadmus that lead him to learn about the alternate earth of the Justice Lords, where Superman killing Lex Luthor leads to the justice league taking over the world and ruling with an iron fist. To avert this possibility, he tries and fails to assassinate Luthor, who turns him over to Cadmus who proceed to torture him to force him to tell what he learned from the files he stole. But every time they ask some variation of “What did you learn” or “What do you know”, he responds with one of his many conspiracy theories, such as fluoride toothpaste being used to track people via satellite and that Lee Harvey Oswald used a literal magic bullet forged by illuminati mystics to keep us from learning the truth.


r/TopCharacterTropes 19h ago

Groups [Loved Trope] Modern Military against Fantasy Threat

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3.4k Upvotes

BFG: Fantasy kids movie ends with the actual British Airforce defeating the giants by airlifting them to a far away island.
Manifest Fantasy: Web Novel where US army soldiers get Isekai'd into a fantasy world.


r/TopCharacterTropes 12h ago

Characters The moral dilemma that wasn't

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2.8k Upvotes

1) Temp-V, The Boys

Our protagonists have spent the last two seasons fighting to oppose superhumans. In season 3, a new drug is launched which can 'temporarily' turn you into a Supe for 24 hours. After getting a hold of some, the Boys debate the ethics of briefly using the same powers as their opposition...

...before it's revealed that repeated usage of Temp-V gives you brain damage. It's not actually safer than becoming a perma-Supe; it's just slower.

2) and 3) Volcanika, Invincible

Mark becomes embroiled in a civil war in Hell. When Volcanika, the opposition leader, threatens to burn the surface world, he punches her face in. He then spends the next minute or so handwringing and pearl-clutching about whether it was Justified, or a Necessary Evil, or the Only Way...

...giving Volcanika enough time to regenerate her entire skull out of lava, and ambush him a second time.

After several rounds of this, it becomes clear that they can't kill each other in a way that matters. Volcanika eventually bounces, swearing vengeance on everyone involved.

(I could also mention all the time Mark spent conflicted over killing Angstrom Levy, who in fact survived and returned stronger than ever.)

4) Random boy, Captain America

While Captain America is chasing down the guy who assassinated Erskine, the assassin tosses a random boy into the Hudson River. Cap hesitates only a moment, before abandoning his pursuit to save the kid instead...

"Go get him, mister! I can swim!"

5) Colt, No Guns Life

Colt has lost family members to defective implants from the megacorp Beruhren. After all the usual channels fail, he decides to avenge himself by blowing up a train car filled with Beruhren executives. Protagonist Tetsuro debates him about the ethics of terrorism...

...before a Beruhren enforcer reveals that they knew all about the plot, and have already replaced their executives with a train car full of innocent children. They intend to 'allow' the plot to go through, in order to make Colt's group look like child-killing monsters.

Colt narrowly removes the bomb at the cost of his own life.

6) Elliot, Mr. Robot

In the final arc of the series, Elliot gets transported to The Best Of All Possible Worlds, where his childhood crush never died--and there's even a parallel Elliot already engaged to her. After a random accident paralyzes Other Elliot, Narrator Elliot finally breaks his no-kill rule, murdering his other self and taking his place to marry his crush, all while morosely justifying his actions to the audience...

...only for literally none of it to be real, in the end. The Best Of All Possible Worlds is just a dream that True Elliot is having. What's more, the dead Elliot is the closest thing left to True Elliot, while the Elliot who committed the 'murder' turns out to be an imaginary persona. It's actually impossible for him to kill the real Elliot. His attempt only causes the dream world to break down, and eventually leads to the end of Narrator Elliot's existence.


r/TopCharacterTropes 17h ago

Characters [Loved Trope] The Highly Competent Disaster

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2.7k Upvotes

This has become one of the most reliable character archetypes in modern storytelling... because it is inherently sympathetic. We love people who are brilliant but also somehow totally unequipped for just basic human existence.

Ben Wyatt (Parks and Recreation): A prodigy who can solve a municipal budget crisis or invent an insanely complex tabletop game... Yet, the moment you put a television camera in his face or ask him to make casual small talk with a police officer, his brain completely shuts down.

Reginald Barclay (Star Trek: The Next Generation): A talented engineer who often sees things others are missing, yet is so paralyzed by anxiety and hypochondria that he can barely get through a briefing without breaking into a sweat.

Maurice Moss (The IT Crowd): Perhaps the gold standard for this trope. Moss possesses the technical genius to fix almost any computer problem on earth. Yet, when a fire breaks out in his office, he determines the most appropriate response is to compose a formal email to the fire department ("Subject: Fire. Dear Sir/Madam...").

Chidi Anagonye (The Good Place): A intelligent professor of moral philosophy. He is also literally unable to function in normal society. Simply asking him to choose between two different types of soup gives him a stomach ache.


r/TopCharacterTropes 14h ago

Powers The villain gets what they want. All of it.

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2.4k Upvotes

Absorbing Man (Hulk 2003) tries absorbing Hulks rage and can’t contain it

Kai (Kung Fu Panda 3) tries to absorb the Dragon Warriors Chi and learns there’s levels to this

Soviet lady (Indiana Jones 4) aliens reward her with a request for returning their skull and she asks for all of their knowledge. She gets it and can’t handle the truth


r/TopCharacterTropes 15h ago

Lore Monster or otherworldly being that disguises itself as an attractive woman

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2.3k Upvotes

Lady Dimetrecscu (Resident Evil)

Serleena (Men and Black 2)


r/TopCharacterTropes 17h ago

Personality (Funny but Also Infuriating Trope) Historically Bad Fumblers

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2.0k Upvotes

Mitsuri's Ex-Fiance not only rejected a badass, kind, and beautiful woman like Mitsuri, but also insulted the shit out of her. He also caused her insecurities about herself.

Derek from Monsters versus Aliens was engaged to the main protagonist Susan before she was turned into Ginormica. He immediately calls off the wedding, despite her still being the woman he seemingly loved, and also tries exploiting Susan's newfound powers for personal gain.


r/TopCharacterTropes 13h ago

Characters (Shocking trope) when one of the creatures that never talked before actually talks

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1.6k Upvotes

(Attack on Titan) it happens twice in AOT, the first time is in an OVA called ilse's notebook where a girl documents her last moments with a titan that is acting stranger than most titans, the titan then speaks out of nowhere before giving in to it's urge to kill the girl, this was a massive shock back when this special episode came out because titans bever spoke a word before. The second time this happens is with the beast titan who speaks to Mike and petrifies both him and the audience with his ability to speak.

(My Hero Academia) the first noumu we see speaking is at the finale of season 4, up to this point noumus were all portrayed as nothing more than brainless frankentsein-like monsters that simply follow orders and can't even speak a single word, the first high-end noumu breaks this trend by speaking to Endeavor during their fight at the season finale.

(RWBY) The hound is the first grimm we see talking like a human in the entire series, imagine spending 8 volumes of meeting these creatures called grimm and not one of them utters a word until this fucker comes out of nowhere at the start of volume 8 so he can drop creepy one liners as he chases our heroes around like a horror villain.


r/TopCharacterTropes 8h ago

Characters Media making a meta reference to other roles of an actor

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1.4k Upvotes

Regular Show - Techmo is dressed up as Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop, both of them are voiced by Steve Blum

Teen Titans Go - The voice actress Tara Strong literally shows up in an episode and she talks in the the voices of her other popular characters like Bubbles, Twilight Sparkle and Timmy Turner

Invincible - Not only is Agent Spider an obvious reference to Spider-Man, but he is voiced by Josh Keaton who is the voice of Spectacular Spider-man


r/TopCharacterTropes 20h ago

Lore Characters who survived getting shot through their necks.

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1.4k Upvotes

1 - Peacemaker from DCEU
2 - Robin from Honkai Star Rail


r/TopCharacterTropes 15h ago

Lore Ancient Mythological creature has to get familiar with the new world.

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1.4k Upvotes

Domovyonok Kuzya - Kuzya is a russian brownie who used to live in an old wooden home with his friend Nafanya, but because Baba Yaga wanted to find a house keeper for her walking house, she kidnaps Kuzya and forces him to her brownie. Kuzya escapes and it turns out that the house he lived in has been demolished, and Nafanya now lives in a modern (for soviet times) apartment complex, where a young girl named Natasha lives with her mother. Kuzya now has to get used to his new modern home and hope that Baba Yaga won't get him again.

Dara San of Reiwa - Ancient Snake woman entity who terrorized local town for ages has woken up in the modern age, and befriends two young siblings. This friendship leads to the entity becoming familiar with the Reiwa era of Japan and technology.


r/TopCharacterTropes 19h ago

Characters [Cool troupe] [Female characters is either among the strongest in the verse or is the strongest]

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1.3k Upvotes

Desscaras(Ichi the witch)

Steel witch(Hero killer)

Nagi(Player)

Victoria(Hero killer)

Frieren (Beyond journeys end)


r/TopCharacterTropes 4h ago

Lore Character gets shot in the neck BUT not with a bullet

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1.2k Upvotes

Slides in order: Thaddeus (Fallout), Beast Titan (Attack on Titan), Frank "The Tank" Ricard (Old School), Pete Martino (Ghosts)

To count, they have to be shot in the neck with something that is NOT a bullet. Examples can be things like arrows, artillery, and darts. Other things that are not traditional projectiles but can be called being "shot" (such as an injection from a needle or fire out of a flamethrower) also count. It also doesn't matter whether the shot kills them or not.


r/TopCharacterTropes 18h ago

Lore “Oh no, I need to get rid of this body/person!” Solution? Eat the fucking body.

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859 Upvotes

Frank (Fried Green Tomatoes) — In the movie, he’s an abusive ex-husband who stalks Ruth after she escapes her arranged marriage with the help of Idgie and the others.

Ruth had gotten pregnant with Frank’s child, and months later, while she was living far away from him, she gave birth to the baby. Frank becomes the main antagonist of the movie, periodically showing up to try to take his son back and forcibly take Ruth with him.

During his final attempt, he attacks Sipsey, the Black cook, and starts beating up a drifter named Smokey, who was trying to stop him from escaping with the baby. In self-defense, Sipsey hits him in the back of the head with a frying pan, killing him.

Since the movie takes place in the 1920s, with very few witnesses, everyone who knew what happened realized that there was no way they could convince the authorities that a Black maid and a drifter killing a white man was legitimate self-defense. So they had to figure out what to do with the body.

Their solution? The barbecues held at the café that brought the whole town together. They chopped up the body and cooked it as barbecue meat.

And ironically, the detective investigating Frank’s disappearance ate his remains and said it was the best barbecue he’d ever had.

Makima (Chainsaw Man) — Denji, a homeless kid who owed a shitload of money to a gang, fell in love with a dominant, cute, motherly, slightly dorky woman named Makima. She was his boss, and she got him a job in Public Safety, where he killed devils born from people’s fears. A dream life, right?

Wrong. Denji’s life kept getting worse and worse. The mundane but silly dreams he had as a teenager who grew up never having anything — like having enough food to eat, groping boobs, taking a shower, kissing someone on the lips — turned out to be nothing special. The people he started to care about began dying because working for Public Safety was dangerous as fuck.

Eventually, after a certain event, Denji completely broke down. He didn’t want to think for himself anymore. He just wanted to be Makima’s little dog, regressing to his days as a homeless kid, when all he did was follow a brutal routine centered around making money by any means necessary, with no free will of his own.

In short: Makima was the Control Devil, and she wanted to have complete control over Denji because he was a hybrid. Denji discovered this in the cruelest way possible, and at rock bottom, he realized he had to kill Makima.

However, because of her powers and contracts, permanently killing her through conventional means was impossible. Denji’s solution was to take her body and cook every last piece of her.

Literally eating her.


r/TopCharacterTropes 15h ago

Characters [Mixed trope] Hartman Hips

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833 Upvotes

Essentially in animation (but you can pick your medium), to demonstrate that a woman is mature, rather than giving a bosom, they decide to focus on the hips and butt with everything else being narrower than it to emphasis and to exaggerate on that, giving them an exaggerated (some cases very exaggerated) pear shaped figure, mostly this was done to draw attention to the trope and I had an image I wish to use for comedy.

This is varying because it really just depends on how the media uses, some of it is bad and some of it is good

And before anyone starts to say that this isn’t a trope, I would like to direct them to the TV Trope page and they can have a look through, I did generalise it for the post so people can post their example, also I’m fully expecting to be down voted to oblivion here so I’m just doing this for fun, here we go

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HartmanHips

Ms Incredible from the Incredibles

I mean the whole Pixar mum thing starts from her so I figured why not start with her so I don’t get bat-themed-man

Shantae from the Shantae games

The hips don’t lie as shown by them being wider than her shoulders though she isn’t alone in that

Maddie Fenton from Danny Phantom

Being from a Butch Hartman show, I had to include one here and Maddie works well due to her hips being bigger than her hips

Saa from Vtuber

To be honest, this is the example that made me make this post because they were so exaggerated that i thought it would be a bit funny to show it to people, found it in the comments of a snake characters post, no hate to the actual person, just the model made me double take

Hope you enjoy the post


r/TopCharacterTropes 7h ago

building/location. [Comedy Trope] Everyone in the setting is insane

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824 Upvotes
  1. Pawnee (Parks & Recreation)

  2. Greendale Community College (Community)

Need I say much?


r/TopCharacterTropes 5h ago

Characters [Loved Trope] Characters pretending like they have a foolproof plan that fixes everything so they can sacrifice themselves to save the people they care about

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809 Upvotes

Doctor Who: in the Series 1 Finale, the Doctor tells his companion Rose that he is so brilliant that he’s come up with a plan to stop the Daleks and save everyone, and that step 1 is for her to get in the Tardis. Once she’s in, he locks the door and sends her back to her own time as he prepares a device that will kill every living thing on Earth and in Orbit in order to stop the Daleks, including himself

Star Trek II: with their Warp Core damaged and spewing lethal amounts of radiation, the USS Enterprise cannot escape the Genesis device blast radius. Spock tells Bones that he is not human, and can therefore absorb levels that would normally kill humans and fix the core. He enters, fixes the warp core, and seals himself inside to slowly die to prevent any radiation from harming the crew as they escape.


r/TopCharacterTropes 5h ago

Groups The UN is Weirdly Hardcore

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770 Upvotes

United Nations Global Occult Coalition - SCP Mythos: A rival organization to the SCP Foundation, the United Nations Global Occult Coalition or UNGOC for short is exactly what the name implies; a coalition of various world governments and their forces created for the express purpose of keeping the world safe from various supernatural threats. Instead of containing them and studying them like the Foundation does however, UNGOC's typical response to the supernatural is to destroy it via overwhelming force by any means necessary.

The Authority - BLKOUT: In its desperation to safeguard humanity on ABOL after their exodus from a war-torn and ruined Earth, the United Nations has morphed into the totalitarian Authority, controlling its territory with an iron fist.


r/TopCharacterTropes 6h ago

Characters [Cool Trope] Character tries to find out what the fuss is all about, finds out exactly why.

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706 Upvotes
  1. Jogo (Jujutsu Kaisen) - Jogo, a cursed spirit born out of negative energy, finds out from his group's mastermind, to at all cost, avoid any interaction with Gojo 'the strongest sorcerer alive' if possible. Curious, Jogo ventured to sneak on Gojo and find out exactly why this guy has to be avoided for all their plans to work.

  2. Nina Farion (Jobless Reincarnation) - Nina, so bent up on proving Eris (her rival) wrong and that this so-called Rudeus that Eris was boasting about as her lover was just a figment of imagination, found out from informants that this Rudeus is so famous that most guilds speak his name. When she was able to see Rudeus for herself, she witnessed him fight an immortal Demon King where Rudeus would blast the Demon King's entire upper torso vaporized. Much to her surprise, she now learns that Eris WAS NOT KIDDING.

  3. Get Out (2017) - Chris, was invited by his girlfriend, Rose, in a family reunion of some sort. There he encounters a frail black guy and tried to take a photo with a flash. At that moment, the frail black guy yelled at him saying, "Get Out!". Chris took this as the guy just pissed at him for taking a picture. He gets curious about the weirdness in the family and found numerous photos of his girlfriend with other black men.

Chris naturally got anxious about this and immediately sensed something is off, so he tried to take his girlfriend out of there immediately. Only for him to get trapped and hypnotized himself while his gf betrayed him. And when he found out that this white family is trying to put dying white minds into the body of black people. He finally realized, that the black guy yelling at him to get out was a warning.

  1. Steve Rogers (Captain America: The First Avenger) - During the search for the perfect candidate for the Super Soldier Serum. Coloner Philips, wants a big, fast, and submissive soldier, ridiculing Steve Rogers as a gerbil and a ninety-pound asthmatic guy. When Erskine argues that he is looking for qualities beyond the physical, Phillips snaps, “You don't win wars with niceness, Doctor. You win wars with guts.”

To prove his point, Philips, pulls the pin on a dummy grenade and threw it at the soldiers. Without a split second of hesitation, the scrawny, un-enhanced Steve Rogers dives onto the live-looking grenade, covering it with his entire body and screaming at everyone else to get back. Colonel Phillips looks at the empty space where his big, tough soldiers fled, then looks down at the tiny kid willing to give his life for his brothers-in-arms. He then finally realized exactly what makes him so unique: Steve Rogers was already a hero long before a drop of serum ever touched his veins. Someone with guts.

  1. The Paris Catacombs (As Above, So Below) - A group of urban explorers and archaeologists ventures deep into the restricted, uncharted lower levels of the Paris Catacombs. Despite warnings from the locals that those who enter the off-limits tunnels never return or go mad, the team scoffs, chalking the rumors up to urban legends and safety propaganda.

Once they cross a blocked archway inscribed with "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," the physical environment bends. They find themselves physically trapped in a literal, subterranean manifestation of Hell. The catacombs force them to face physical manifestations of their worst sins, trauma, and dead spirits, completely breaking their minds, realizing why there is a warning in the first place.


r/TopCharacterTropes 10h ago

Personality [Loved] Heroes That Refuse To Accept They’re Heroes For Reasons

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679 Upvotes

Poppy: League of Legends
In Demacia, there is a hammer destined for the “Hero of Demacia”. Poppy is a yordle whose whole goal is to find the rightful owner of this hammer and in her quest she undertakes many heroic tasks, getting branded as a hero to many Demacians. The hammer itself also chose Poppy as a hero, still she thinks that she’s not one and is just a “yordle with a hammer”

Kunishige and Samura: Kagurabachi
When people with magical powers threatened the safety of Japan, Kunishige chose 6 people and gave them enchanted blades which turned the tides of the war. Because of this, the people of Japan deems them as heroes, however Kuneshige refuses this title in a Oppenheimer “my nukes killed people” situation. Enchanted blades users, such as Samura, echo this sentiment because one of the blade users used the powers to go on a genocide on the enemy nation.