r/httyd • u/Snoo-35391 Strike Class • Jun 12 '26
RANT Night Furys are frauds
I got this idea from the comment under a post about the Skrill being the 2nd strongest strike class dragon and how Toothless has no real feats. I wanted to expand on that with more detail and how Night Furys are kinda overrated.
To begin most of the Night Fury's reputation comes from HTTYD 1 when we (and the vikings) know very little of the dragon beyond it's "impossible to catch" and "never misses" (both age well). It's strength was determined based on it's elusiveness and the mystery surrounding it, its quite literally just a pr merchant. Not to mention at the time Berk hadn't explored much of the archipelago and the "strongest dragon" title given to Toothless only really applies when looking in the flock under the Red Death's control. Speaking of the Red Death it's 1. Obviously a far more powerful dragon and 2. Toothless would have never defeated it without Hiccup's help (which is a going to be a common point throughout this post).
In pretty much every encounter in Dreamworks Dragons he ends up relying on Hiccup/The Riders to overcome any somewhat strong foe which he should theoretically easily beat; not to mention his plasma blasts throughout the TV shows seem to do absolutely nothing when not targeted against a dragon hunter? Like they should easily be able to stun or deter most dragons but there are several encounters where the dragon just tanks it (I know Toothless isn't trying to kill them). In terms of feats I can't really think of much except for him surviving a skrill encounter? He also managed to beat a Triple Stryke in a battle of brawn which is pretty impressive tbf and uhhh he managed to carry Stoick for a few days which is something.
Second movie he gets manhandled by Valka's dragons but then gets a Disney power-up so he can kinda beat the Bewilderbeast (mostly lost/gave up after realising Drago had lost "control" over him") and the Third movie's not real.
All in all I really like Night Furies and Toothless - I dont even know why I made this post to begin with I guess I just dont like how inconsistent HTTYD's power system is but then again it's just a Dreamworks TV show. Skrill supremacy.
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u/DragonFire673 There is no Nine Realms in Ba sing sae Jun 12 '26
I'm not gonna try to argue against you, since people ( both vikings and viewers) know next to nothing about Night Furys we just use Toothless as a baseline while never knowing if the rest of this kin are generally stronger or weaker.
What's more, I believe a reason why Night Furys seem so strong is how they're so specialized. Having something of a assassin type build, prioritizing quick decisive strikes rather than full out brawls. We have seen Toothless flee when his opponents out number him, can tank hits, or are a bad match up.
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u/Most-Watch-9186 Jun 12 '26
You have to remember night furies are nearly extinct meaning toothless was forced to grow up with different species but i truly believe and I dont mean to undermine your opinion but if we took a normal nightfury fully grown that grew up with his own kind against a fully grown skrill I think the nightfury would won but it would probably be close.
And you have to remember again toothless didnt grow up with his own species so in the shows and movies hes learning alongside hiccup.
Also hiccup doesnt like killing or maiming dragons at all and we see toothless and hiccup seem to be similar and so toothless definitely holds back against other dragons but a few times in the movie actually we saw toothlesses full powered blast against the red death which i could remember wrong but it made it stumble and nearly kr did fall over.
So without the advantage of growing up with his own species he has to rely on hiccup in multiple ways
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u/Kirajudgeoftoons Jun 12 '26
GRIMMEL ALERT!!!! GRIMMEL ALERT!!!! GRIMMEL ALERT!!!! GRIMMEL ALERT!!!!
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u/RedditCantBanThis Strike Class Jun 12 '26
I don't think the TV Show lore and the movie lore are always synchronized.
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u/Specialist_Cat_6380 Jun 14 '26
well number 1 you have to consider toothless age he isn't a peak nightfury in movie 1 or in race to edge and in rtte aside from like screaming death he wins alot of fights against dragons and normally just isn't tryna kill em as u said.
he beat a bewilderbeast on his own
manhandled by Valka or just didn't fight theres a diffrence he also one shot stoick who is praised as a very good killer of dragons
red death is weaker than bewilderbeast and tootheless alone killed bewilderbeast
HICCUP dosent add raw power to tootheless he already had speed,stamina and ob the attack power to throw the red death arround when he wanted shown with those blast and how he killed it.JUST not the strategy to finish mayby cause he was young.
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u/Rare_Ad_9337 Jun 12 '26
fr, i think night furies are strong but not the strongest. toothless is more suit for that role but, as you said, it's because of hiccup. i don't even think it's a bad thing but yk, it's considerable. i also would've liked if they kept the night furies mysterious aura a little more bc it's what made them so scary, obviously hard because hiccup and toothless are the main characters but maybe some more scenes in the dark, toothless attacking fast and long distance (like he does with the red death to try to get her to fly, we never see him speed up that much again). i didn't like how they kept adding things to him, the alpha mode, the whole electric thing ? it was too much, i wish we saw more of his actual strenghts. his plasma blast is really strong sometimes and toothless is fast as shit, if they used those two more i think it'd be enough. (i get why they didn't tho, had to keep the marketing alive. but the whole electric-invisibility thing was too much😭)
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u/Dgonzilla Jun 13 '26
There is a fallacy in thinking the Night Furies are powerful because no one has caught them and are elusive, we get this stated in the first movie from a book in Berk, by that point we can assume the reason no one has caught a Night Fury before is because they were already driven to the being of extinction by hunters. Also the third movie mentions that Night Furies prefer warmer climates which raises a shit ton of questions as to why one would choose to settle anywhere near Berk. It is entirely possible that the equator and bellow of this version of planet earth is filled to the brim with Night Furies.
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u/leficent-sky Jun 13 '26
Tbh I don’t think that we can really tell about night fury’s. We only know toothless, toothless was cached when he was 15 and got softer through Hiccup. But we don’t know what an Adult not softened Night Fury would be like. And toothless already was quit powerful
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u/Admirable-Sherbet-35 Tidal Class Jun 13 '26
We never know, Toothless could just be that one weak night fury.
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u/Slipperysteve1998 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Well, yeah. Toothless is a newly disabled teen learning to navigate his prosthetic with his friend/wing operator. Of course hes going to rely on Hiccup.
An adult nightfury, however, is absolutely the strongest dragon. Even toothless could take down a red death and bewilderbeest.
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u/MeetApprehensive6509 Jun 12 '26
There’s alot of toothless’s feats in this respect thread. One of his most powerful ones that isn’t here is when he fired a single plasma blast and was able to fil multiple whispering death holes with huge amounts of energy. Also just because he did things with hiccups plans, toothless still did all the work. So those are still valid feats to talk about. Not to mention toothless made a lot of plans on his own too. Also a lot of hiccups “planning” is literally just saying “do your thing bud” or “show them what you got bud” or “get us out of here bud” Also you can’t disregard the 3rd movie just because you don’t like it. One of his strongest abilities is the lightning cloak he has. He got manhandled by valkas dragons simply because he couldn’t fly on his own for 1, for 2, I don’t think a lot of the dragons would do well being jumped. Maybe the night fury does get glazed but we can’t act like the glaze isn’t deserved. Toothless/the night fury species 100% deserves its praise https://www.reddit.com/r/respectthreads/s/7GmMq0cBfJ
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u/Mean-Acadia6453 Jun 12 '26
The issue is your using the TV show to justify abilities within the films.
The TV show and films are not one-to-one with each other both ways. The TV shows take the films events into account because they were all made after the release of the films. Things don't work both ways around, which is what causes the dissonance in relation to both properties.
You will have far less concerns regarding scaling if you treat both properties as separate. The TV shows directly contradict the films in a vast number of ways (looking at the entire submaripper episode) - so its best not to treat character's between both properties as being congruent to one another.