List of Mary Sues

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There are too many fucking 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

This article or section involves Plot Armor so asinine, that its sheer bullshittery warps and breaks the very fabric of the setting's universe. Expect Rage, Butthurt and accusations of Mary Sue being flung around in an endless Skub debate. THEY MAKE IT HAPPEN. You have been warned.

• Alice from the in-name-only Resident Evil movies: A character created for the movies who started out as corporate spy, she has ever-growing superpowers and is presented as ENTIRELY invincible. She manages to become 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. Later films even gave her clones to explain why she's still in the films. On top of all this, 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 POV's outside of his.
  • Ender's siblings Valentine and Peter. Ender's sister is a self righteous prig who is only overshadowed by their sociopathic brothers Peter. Peter himself is a mid-to-low functioning sociopath, but intelligent enough that, as a child, he comes up with sophisticated political philosophies that wow academic circles and get him appointed Political Leader of Earth as an adult. Despite the fact that a sociopath with absolute power would get tyrannical as soon as someone opposed them, he does no violence and dies with a benign, well-loved legacy. Yes, this really happens.

• Batman in an unskilled author's hands. He's a handsome human billionaire who's the pinnacle of human physical prowess and manages to defeat superpowered beings simply because "he had time to prepare" (with few thinking "why don't his opponents also use that time to prepare?"). On top of this he has LITERAL PLOT ARMOR; one of the 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 such as Knightfall). Because of this a certain tendency for Batman to turn into a Mary Sue is well documented (Read JLA: Act of God and weep; that story was all about starting the First Church of Batman. Or hell, check out the Dark Nights: Metal storyline, where a bunch of Evil Batmen who are variants on an existing superhero attack the DCU as opposed to, say, just doing a whole Evil Justice League like they have multiple times before). This problem becomes particularly acute when he takes down superpowered villains who usually bother other superpowered heroes, such as the Reverse Flash. On the non-Sue side, while Batman does have plot armor (nearly no one thinks to just shoot him when they get the chance and the few times they do he escapes, and he's never unexpectedly engaged by superhuman opponents who could easily beat him - like Darkseid), the same can be said for other non-superpowered heroes. Note, as well, that 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 or the villain can escape to cause trouble even after their plan is thwarted, which also helps lessen the Bat-Sue Factor.
  • Batman is at his worst when written by Frank Miller, who on top of the plot armor issues, writes Batman as a violent psychopath and anybody who calls him out is always presented as being in the wrong. Frequently other superheroes only exist in the story to be written as incompetent so Batman can be made to look better in comparison.

• Billy Butcher from "The Boys" (comics and show, especially the comics) is a prime example of a Jerk Sue (An unsympathetic character nevertheless favored in the story, according to our frenemeies; "There's a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic"). Hating "supers" because one raped his wife and caused her death, Billy is half Punisher-knock-off, half self-insert mouthpiece for Garth Ennis hate boner against superpowers and religion - especially Christianity (it's no coincidence that Billy's a bitter atheist while the antagonist Homelander has a side job as a Christian Pastor and Starlight loses her Christian faith). Billy forms an anti-supers black ops team and works to help the protagonist Hughie get justice for his girlfriend’s death by superhero collateral damage. But Billy's reasons are selfish and he's also an edgelord (mean-spirited? check. violent? check. dark clothes? check. created by edgelord author? check. Revolves around attacking "The Man"? that's a big check!) who nearly turns on Hughie when Hughie starts dating the super defector Starlight, then continues the comics trend of nihilistic subversiveness. He has plot armor to put Batman to shame - even getting away with his dog urinating on a supervillain who's killed people for less - and supposedly has the moral high ground despite doing the same type of crimes as the villains. He then becomes a Villain Sue while trying to genocide supers, because Billy only loses in the end because he chooses to. Even when he loses he gets to die on his own terms by provoking Hughie into killing him so Billy doesn't get arrested and spend the rest of his life in prison while crippled, meaning that despite "losing" Billy effectivily still won. He’s also consistently never allowed to be wrong, as any time a character has something to say about Billy or his actions, he has something to throw back at them proving they’re actually wrong due to author fiat ensuring Billy only argues against strawmen. Finally, this story embodies the author's hatred of superheroes... but Billy himself has superpowers, making the entire premise hypocritical. Goes to show that edgelord Mary Sues are just as repellent as the sugary sweet ones.
  • One of the reasons the Amazon show is more widely liked then the comics is that Billy is both called out on his bullshit, and explicitly and repeatedly self-defeating, making him more of a normal anti-hero.

• Brian Griffin from Family Guy at his worst. While he was generally depicted as the most sensible member of the Griffin household from practically the very beginning, this was balanced by his flaws (one of the most prominent being his drinking problem) and the fact that the show acknowledged that he could be annoying and/or an asshole. Later on, though, he became a mouthpiece for the showrunner Seth MacFarlane who was treated in-universe as being always right, with the only people who disagreed with him being strawmen who were obvious to the point of being cartoonishly over-the-top. Throw in the facts that Seth MacFarlane voices Brian, he uses his natural speaking voice to do so AND he often does this on hot-button topics... This was made all the more obnoxious by how flawed or downright ridiculous his logic often was (one of the most notorious examples being the widely-hated episode "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven", where he manages to convince a newly-fundamentalist Christian Meg that God doesn't exist because... she doesn't look as attractive as her mother Lois. Even worse, this was after the episode "I Dream of Jesus" where the Griffin family - Brian included - had Jesus Himself live with them for a week and do several miracles in front of them). This was somewhat addressed after Season 7, with following seasons often having other characters comment on the inherent absurdity of a talking dog lecturing people about politics (even though them actually challenging the views previously raised was a rare event). Quagmire even got a famous speech where he called out Brian for his self-righteousness and hypocrisy.

• 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.

• Darkseid from DC Comics is a rare case where people actually like someone for being a Sue. He wasn't one at the start of his career - Jack Kirby conceived him as a paper tiger who, for all his grandiose plans and ambitions, was only powerful if people feared him and could be beaten up by two street thugs who didn't know who he was, not anticipating that fans might prefer a villain who was really as intrinsically powerful as Darkseid claimed to be. He's strong and tough enough to go toe-to-toe with Superman, he has laser eyes that can do whatever he wants them to (including killing people instantly or bringing them back to life), he's a masterful schemer who knows all about setting up gambits where he wins no matter what and striking deals with easy ways around them he doesn't mention, most of his minions rival the Justice League in power and on top of all that he's the ruler of an entire planet that reliably goes to shit when he's not around to slap it into shape and sometimes a wide-reaching galactic empire. Despite all this Villain Sue-ness, any attempts to nerf him or bring him down to a more realistic villain level are met with widespread backlash and outrage, and his most celebrated storyline in recent comics history is Final Crisis, in which the heroes required a time-travelling, god-killing bullet to defeat him and he actually forced Batman to abandon his rule against killing. The message is clear: Darkseid is DC's ultimate villain (or close enough to that status that the number of people higher than him can be counted on a hand or two/ doesn't require literal divine intervention etc. to defeat and thus retaining a meaningful conflict) and the fans won't settle for anything less.
  • There's a reason for this, by the way: Darkseid and his court neatly fill the archetypal niche of embodiments of "the fucked up things people do when you give them power", with, for example, Gods of Child Abuse and of Torture as two of his chief henchmen. Darkseid himself is the God of Tyranny. If you're going to have a hero who's about Hope and positive, creative or protective Aspirations (see: Superman, Flash, etc.), a villain who embodies the crushing of hope and negative, destructive Aspirations is incredibly useful. Making such a character a paper tiger can be made to work (see the Crimson King, under Special Cases), but is more often than not going to be unsatisfying, usually deeply so.

• 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. It doesn't help that he's a genius and self-made tycoon monarch with a tragic past, who keeps getting his deaths, defeats, failures and embarassing moments retconned as body doubles (naming the infamous "Actually a Doombot" trope). Worst case scenarios are when 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. Writers who like him too much also have him winning fights he doesn't deserve, beating characters who specialize in hand to hand combat despite rarely displaying any such skills himself, overpowering much stronger characters who should be able to defeat him based on how his fights with the Fantastic Four go, and be portrayed as a flawless genius who can plan for everything akin to how some writers handle Batman. Doom has had some famous victories when he's punched above his weight class in the past, which fanboy writers have used as the pretext to let him steal the powers of other beings with no difficulty, even though his past successes doing so weren't by any means easy.

• 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 child only 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, individual interpretations vary depending on whether you view her murders as character arc-defining. To make her comparable to Sues like Lightning and Alice: Ken Levine tweeted to complain about all the people who'd rule 34'd his perfect wife, begging them to stop because it was like seeing his daughter in Playboy (or words to that effect). Which resulted in the internet giving Ken Levine exactly what he wanted. She even gets to be tied into how Fontaine got Jack's command code in the first BioShock. Way to ruin the franchise with some conventional plot device.

• 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. Also, along with the gods of the setting and the Harpers, he's one of the reasons why the Forgotten Realms are in Medieval Stasis.
  • Ironically he didn't start out originally like this. Back at the beginning of D&D, Elminster wasn't a massive Mary Sue. Believe it or not, he simply used to be a maxed-out wizard with some additional abilities and stuff that appeared as a Deus Ex Machina in case players had an encounter that was too difficult to overcome, much like Gandalf in The Hobbit.

• Emma from The Promised Neverland. Although originally a well fleshed-out character who stands as a clear foil to Ray. After the Goldy Pond Arc, Emma and, let's be honest, the quality of the manga itself started to go downhill. What was once meant to be a trio of protagonists that balanced each other with their strengths and weaknesses, was dumbed down to just Emma pulling shit out of her ass and having a talk-no-jutsu so powerful it can put even Naruto to shame. The amount of asspulls that Emma showed during the TPN in the later arcs was....pronounced enough that it becomes jarring especially when compared to the first two arcs of the manga. Seriously, she can somehow convince every single opponent that challenged her beliefs by simply talking to them and she never ever suffered any repercussions from it. Don't even get us started with enemies knocking themselves out due to very specific conveniences. Poor Ray was sidelined and reduced to a fucking side character near the end. She is idealistic to the fault and her ideas somehow manages to perpetuate inside the Daemon world just because she's that fucking good. Emma is one of the unique cases where a well-written character got put into Mary Sue territory within the same series no-less. Instead of her character evolving, she devolved. Look, we in /tg/ knows that shonen manga and 'good conclusion' don't often mix, but TPN is one of the most infamous examples that recently came out.

• Empress Theresa is a good example of the "waifu" theory of Mary Sues and the Doylist definition of Mary Sues, where the author's relationship to the character is the defining factor. Short version: Deranged author who can't take criticism creates his perfect waifu, hands her the world, and refuses to edit the resulting masterpiece, and posts the result for sale on Amazon. Criticism results, which in turn results in internet arguments on a scale that is amazing (by themselves, they dwarf all of the arguments and criticisms of the Twilight franchise put together, with the unsettling add-on that this is all the author's mindset).

• Every author self-insert. Especially those found in high-school writing assignments.

• Green Lanterns from Earth, especially Hal Jordan. All the human Green Lanterns are regularly shown to be the best Lanterns in the Corps because they ALL have indomitable willpower, skill, and courage, surpassing others who have been in the corps 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. The most Green Lanterns ever killed was during the Emerald Twilight story arc and they were killed by, you guessed it, Hal Jordan.

• Haoh 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. Haoh 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 Chaos jealous. To top it all off, the sequel series has the heroes fighting to ensure he keeps his position as Shaman King because the alternatives to him would be worse, even though Haoh hasn't actually admitted plotting to destroy humanity and killing almost anyone who stood in his way was wrong, so really, there shouldn't be anybody worse than him.

• Heracles from Greek Mythology: As TV Tropes will put it, perhaps the Ur-Example of one. Wait! Let us explain why! Heracles, or Hercules, goes a plethora of adventures. And he has a fuck ton of poems dedicated to his exploits. But unlike someone like, say, Gilgamesh, he has no missing chunks of his epics. We got the full picture. And Lord Almighty if it ain't generous. Let's take the Twelves Tasks; such a legendary tale, you've heard of it, haven't you? Yes? Well, have you actually read it? In most of his works, Heracles just stumbles into the place he's supposed to be, faces the problem, says "No", punch maybe two or four things, and he's done. No really, that's it. The Nemean Lion? Stangles it. The Lernean Hydra? Cuts every head, burns the necks, and buries the single immortal one made of gold in the ground. Like, on the spot. A flock of man-eating horses? Gives his gay lover to them and his meat actually calms them down. A flock of birds that are giant and carnivorous, literally sent from Gods? He plays the castanets to chase them away, and it works. Besides all of this, Heracles is loved by all except Hera and her favored children, has had multiple wives and a husband, became a god because Zeus said "Fuck it" and deemed him worthy, and only got killed on accident. Many Greek Heroes have a lot of negative sides to them, usually their ambition, thirst for power or cunningness. Or even the dread hubris the Greeks loved so much. But Heracles? Anything he does bad is usually explained to be Hera's doing.

• 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. For those who're unfamiliar with the lore, this means that a single assassin droid managed to upload its personality into one of the most heavily-secured star stations in the galaxy, without any of at least one million personnel (including techs, soldiers, and the human equivalent of Satan incarnate) discovering that anything is amiss. It also took over a planet, though this is far less Sueish than it sounds due to there being only a few dozen people on said planet in total, it having another four assassin droids to help it out, and it re-programming large numbers of extant droids to help it out in killing everyone on this planet along the way.

• James Bond. To what degree varies, but the Roger Moore version is the worst offender: he's unbeatable at just about everything, never loses his composure, 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 was questionable consent at best...so Bond arguably gets away with actual sexual assault if not outright 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.

• James T. Kirk of Star Trek, but only when written by William Shatner. While in TOS, Roddenberry himself outright stated Kirk was his Author Avatar and that he wanted the show to have the ambiance of Kirk being able to have any woman he desired, Kirk was still allowed to occasionally fail or make mistakes in certain situations. For other non-Shatner written works, the Suedom factor is kept under control by factors gone into under the list found under "Somewhat Special Cases", below.

• John Kramer, the "Jigsaw Killer" 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. He's also influenced people to the point that even after he dies, some of them copy his actions and ideas and think they're doing good things.

• The Joker can be this in the hands of a poor writer. While there are damn good reasons he's one of the most iconic villains in all of pop culture, he's all too easy to write as a flawless schemer and trickster who can punch well above his weight class for no good reason. This is especially irritating if the writer takes the wrong lessons from The Killing Joke (by trying too hard to make him sympathetic; while that take on Joker is certainly tragic and nuanced, it's made very clear that his unfortunate past doesn't justify his actions... assuming it even happened at all, since he himself admits his memories of his pre-Joker life are inconsistent) and/or A Death in the Family (by reducing him to a guy who just brutally murders people; that story along with the aforementioned The Killing Joke helped make it a bigger part of his character, but it still kept his random and unpredictable goals and motivations rather than just making him a one-note murder machine who kills people for fun even when doing so would be counterproductive).

• 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 Daenerys' nephew - but that doesn't stop him from having sex with aunt Daenerys*, and the incest is portrayed positively this time! Also, him 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 losing 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 (*Daenerys, a warqueen who brought dragons back from extinction among other things, makes mistakes and suffers consequences that would seem to impact her Sue-factor if they didn't always turn out to be functionally inconsequential in comparison to her astounding triumphs through casual part-time parenting.) Book Jon is way more well rounded as a character, where it is pointed out that he actually had a decent life as a bastard before coming to the Watch, and several choices he made ended up biting him in the ass come the mutiny.

• Jotaro Kujo, from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 3 and 4 (And part 6 but not in part 6... we'll get to that later). He's pretty much invincible like Kenshiro, but unlike Kenshiro, he didn't train a single day to be as hax as he is (His Stand "Star Platinum" is really strong, at the cost of short range, but plot gets in the way and he always gets close enough to ORAORA the bad guys). Also unlike Kenshiro, he is an asshole to everyone, but never suffers any consequences from it (Women literally ADORE him despite his jerkass attitude, because 80's). He spends the entire trip to Egypt spurting out massive amounts of Just as planned against every villain of the week, or simply getting powers as plot demands, some of the most outrageous examples being: The use of "Star Finger", which completely negates the previously stated range weakness; His "battle" against Steely Dan, where he DID get humilliated but retributed it tenfold in the end; His "battle" against Alessi, where he gets to beat a grown man unconscious with his bare fists despite being turned back into a SEVEN YEAR OLD; His battle against main villain DIO where he wins DIO's time stopping powers for bullshit reasons and wins; and, even more ridiculously, being able to RESURRECT his very dead Grandpa Joseph by using his stand for blood transfusing and heart-resetting. In part 4 he mellows down a lot, most notably getting beaten by a rat, but that doesn't prevent him from beating the shit out of the main villain Kira TWICE and stealing the spotlight from Uncle Josuke (The titular Jojo of part 4) on his final battle; too bad Josuke!. Part 6 however, does a great job at not only nerfing but rounding him altogether, the Jojo this time being his own daughter, Jolyne Cujoh (Note that is not Kujo), a delinquent who ends out in prison and resents him greatly for being an awful, absent father and constantly reminds him of it. He attempts to "fix" things but falls into one of main villain Pucci's schemes and is rendered comatose for great part of the story, when he latter regains his powers (With a significant decrease in durability) and comes to terms with Jolyne, the villain becomes Godlike and ends out killing him along with the rest of the cast. Too bad Shonen Jump!, now Seinen is Araki's best friend. In Pucci's universe he is a complete spineless weakling, but in case that was a bit too much, reality resets again and creates a new universe free of the horrible, horrible things that happened in Stone Ocean. PD: In the Videogame Eyes of Heaven he is even worse, but this entry is already too long so i'll only say the creators weren't too good with resolutions.

• 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.
  • Alternate take: What appears to be Sue-ness is BioWare writing him as a Hate Sink. (Basically a character designed to be hated and nothing else, ask those smashers at TV Tropes for more info.) BioWare were using the Reapers as cool villains and leaning into the Illusive Man getting the Darth Vader treatment of the tragic, sympathetic villain who can possibly redeem himself with his death, so Leng became the game's villainous punching bag. Given what a gut punch the final battle is, clearly they wanted Leng's ultimate downfall to give the player a moment of catharsis so they could take a small victory where they got it. And for that to work, it had to be satisfying, and that meant he had to get on the player's nerves without an excuse or understandable motive to undercut their focused rage against him. Note that during the final battle against him, Shepard spends the whole time dressing him down as a coward who can only win by running away and after beating him, smashes his stupid sword and guts him like a fish with their omni-blade. "That was for Thane, you son of a bitch!"

• 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.

• Kirby from his/their (Localization made him a he instead of ambiguous as in Japan, and it's been discussed ever since) eponymous franchise, and the first brainchild of the Smash man. Kids' game logic is in effect, but even then it can be egregious. Between their insta-death inhaling, the Copy Ability (and various gimmick abilities throughout the franchise), unnatural toughness, and godkilling streak, the puffball is a strong contender for most powerful video game character. However, their immense, possibly-Eldritch (as of Star Allies) power is balanced by the fact they're almost always portrayed as ignorant if not a full-blown dumbass baby. Seriously, their naive nature is known to cause various problems for themselves and others. Notable feats include repeatedly turning back an all-assimilating Eldritch hivemind, defeating an interdimensional wizard and the god-crown he wore, singlehandedly bringing down an uber-greedy megacorporation and stopping their AI from going full Exterminatus, destroying(?) an actual Eldritch god of darkness and destruction they may or may not be related to, and stopping a god-alien (not-so-originally called the Ultimate Lifeform) from causing two worlds to collide just by running it over with Truck-Kun.

• 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. Err, some of this is because most of the gods he kills with super-powerful items, including Blade of Olympus, the God of War universe's version of Zeus' lightning bolts the cyclopes gave him to defeat the titans, which has been infused with all the power of the Greek God of War. And he is later revealed to house the Power of Hope since GoW1, a power strong enough to kill gods. Now he is starting a new family in Norse mythology land Midgard while STILL having the "godly" super strength despite the blade of Olympus having drained all his power and given it all to the world. (Note that he clearly didn't give up his combat experience nor his genetics as a demi-god son of Zeus. Even without those things, he's at minimum a heavily trained demi-god from the strongest of the Greek gods.) At least he acknowledged how fucking awful he was in the past and tried to be a good father toward his new son Atreus, but still keeping his no gods allowed policy.

• Lana Lang from the TV show Smallville (note; Smallville is not considered canon to the Superman story by DC Comics). Almost big a Mary Sue as Bella from Twilight; almost because she actually has a few useful skills, but she learns them unrealistically quickly (becoming a black belt in martial arts in one week). She has the cliché orphan story but with a unique spin for maximum snowflake effect (her parents were killed by a meteor strike), everyone in the story loves her with the exception of some villains (the key word is SOME), and she's treated as someone who can do no wrong. Lana even got on the cover of TIME magazine, in-universe, as a child! She serves as a wedge between Clark and having a relationship with any other girl and between Clark and his eventual Superman destiny. Clark technically sacrificed his father to save her! In one episode, Clark rewound time on a day in which Lana died, and instead lost his father.

• Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII, 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. Even ignoring the dozens of better-written female characters, some of which he himself has written, the "strong" meaning just physical doesn't work either; FF7's Tifa (a game he worked on, btw) can punch tanks to death.

• Lisa Simpson from The Simpsons, depending on the writer. Lisa has dipped into Mary Sue-dom the same way as the above-mentioned Brian from Family Guy (both serving time as smug mouthpieces for their show's creators on hot-button-topics). There was also a time where Lisa had the tendency to never be punished for the times she does do the wrong doing (she ruins Homer's BBQ in "Lisa the Vegetarian" and merely got scolded by him where Bart would likely have been strangled for it). One episode had people deferring to Lisa over Prof. Stephen Hawking in Hawking's area of expertise, and Groening once said Lisa is his favorite character and that he would do anything to prevent her from looking bad (to reference the strangling; the show's animators also applied a double-standard as they strongly protested against the idea of Homer strangling Lisa for upsetting him like he does with Bart). While Lisa's popularity in-universe fluctuates, at its worst the whole town bends over backwards for her even when it goes past characterization (eg; Springfieldians can be VERY sore losers, as demonstrated in the episode "Boys of Bummer" where the whole town - sans Marge - ridiculed Bart for losing a sports game to the point that they nearly drove the 10 year old to suicide, but when Lisa lost a spelling contest she was applauded for winning second place and got a Mount Rushmore-style sculpture of her face). That being said, there are episodes where Lisa is depicted as unpopular at school, her activism is made over-the-top to be played for laughs, she's neglected at home and less of a "smartest person around" and more of a "only sane person surrounded by idiots", lessening the Sue-factor.

• Lucy from the 2014 movie of the same name. Long story short, she gets forced by gangsters to smuggle drugs in her stomach, but the container bursts and the drugs make her smarter and use more and more of her brain, because this movie was seriously written around the pseudoscientific premise that humans only use 10% of their brain. This also causes her to develop superpowers somehow, and at the end of the movie she basically becomes god.

• Magneto is not inherently one, but he does have 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!") or just forget he's the bad guy. 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.

• 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 equivalent to Spacemarine Captain in rank but with inferior gear and training) 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.

• Moka Akashiya from Rosario + Vampire: Stupidly fucking OP enough to one-shot kick EVERY OTHER FUCKING MONSTER IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING SERIES AND BOTH SEASONS, has a special exception to her power levels made so she gets 'first ancestor' vampire blood to enable her to be even more powerful, has no character development at all (this is true of both her personalities), is a student at an academy and one-shot kicks two members of the fucking faculty AND TOTALLY GETS AWAY WITH IT, and is unbearably arrogant, revelling in her power and basically saying everyone else is beneath her. The reason she's this bad? The author admits he LOVES vampires. So she's not only an Author Avatar, but a Canon Sue as well, existing only for heretical deviants to fap to and the author to schlick to. God-Emperor fucking damn it, Akihisa Ikeda. You little shit. What's worse is that he has no shame about it. No, really.
  • This is lessened slightly during S1's later episodes (and S2 more generally), with a number of non-vampire characters who rather easily take her down or otherwise outmatch her being introduced. Compared to the big leagues, she's a promising new recruit but not comparable to them.

• 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. He was born into a wealthy family, then threw it all away and earned even more money. He's a perfect athlete, good-looking, smartest man in the world (He mind fucked Dr. Manhattan, a blueish godlike superhuman) and a vegetarian. In the book he is able to successfully genetically engineer some sort of monster that would be teleported to New York and as it dies unleash a psychic shockwave that would kill millions in a "common enemy" plot to avert World War 3 by uniting them against "interdimensional aliens" (he does the same in the movie, but instead of aliens, he tricks people into making Dr Manhattan their common enemy - Dr Manhattan himself goes along with the plan once he finds out so there will be world peace). 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 caught a bullet fired from a gun with his bare hands, and the bullet didn't just go through them, like it would in real-life, despite him not having superpowers. 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!! Thankfully, he has the decency to acknowledge what he did was wrong in the comics while also justifying it as being for the greater good...which it was in that it stopped World War 3, and he is more complex and well rounded as a character than several others.
  • There's also the deliberately ambiguous implication that Ozymandias could get some comeuppance in the future (author Alan Moore stated that what happened after the end of the graphic novel is for each reader to decide for themselves); this is done with Dr Manhattan's cryptic response to Ozymandias' question whether things would work out, and Rorschach giving his journal - containing evidence implicating Ozymandias and revealing his plan - to a news outlet.
  • A direct sequel to Watchmen called "Doomsday Clock" came and finally made Ozymandias pay for what he has done. After the news outlet ousted Veidt's plans, it started a chain of reaction that eventually led to his downfall as well as the supposed end of humanity. The European Union dissolved, the USSR went back its old warmonger ways with their relation between the US degrading to lows below even the Cold War, nuclear weapons failed to be disarmed and one such missile was fired from Russia to New York City. Adrian is now the most wanted man in the world and has brain cancer (possibly ironically validating what he framed Dr. Manhattan for). Still, he managed to fight his way out of this chaos with other DC heroes (Superman and the godamned Batman mind you, characters with thick plot armor), the Comedian (brought back by Manhattan), pretty much everyone around the world but especially Dr. Manhattan (who masterminded this all from his glass palace on Mars). Also, keep in mind this sequel is not written by Alan Moore himself so it's at best considered an alternate continuity.

• 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 rogues 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 not just unarmored but SHIRTLESS 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 dumbass"). 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.

• Rey AKA Ma-Rey Sue from the Star Wars. From the release of the first movie, she already caught some backlash among the old guards of Star Wars who consider her a self-insert Mary Sue with a feminist agenda. Leaving aside the politics, the resulting trilogy and related events have only confirmed Rey’s Mary Sue-dom. Reasons from the first movie alone include Rey showing a better knowledge of the Millennium Falcon’s inner workings than then Han Solo and Chewbacca who’d maintained the ship for decades where she had it for less than a week, being offered a job by Han shortly after meeting him despite him and Chewie being sufficient crew for the Falcon and Han being a cynic who barely knows her (like something right out of "A Trekkie's Tale"), Rey suddenly being a powerful Force user who can resist a trained Force-user's mind probe despite no previous mention of her being Force sensitive and Rey performing said Jedi mind trick while in captivity almost immediately after learning she's Force Sensitive despite the fact that performing said trick is known to be difficult to master (the explanation that Rey had just been in telepathic contact with somebody who knew how to pull off a Mind Trick, and wasn't as good at telepathic interrogation as he thought he was, is unbelievably stupid, because that would be the best teaching method in the Galaxy with every Force-user utilizing it). She can also pull out new Force abilities from her sleeve, like Force healing (yeah, Anakin would have liked to have some of that, wouldn't he?). Rey’s only character flaw is recklessness, and while it does get her captured by the villains in the first and third films, this is offset by Rey getting rescued unharmed both times by luck/plot armour, which is a Sue-ish trait (at least Luke suffered actual setbacks and injuries – such as a severed hand and failing to save Han from Boba Fett). Furthering Rey’s status of Mary Sue is the “creator's relationship to the character” part, with several of the filmmakers either pulling new explanations out of their asses to explain Rey’s abilities (or retconning them, such as the Force “cheat-coding” and the “Force Dyad”) or attacking anyone who didn’t like the character by tarring them with the same negative brushes (accusations of sexism got lots of usage). The third film threw in the big twist that Rey is really Rey Palpatine. You heard right, Rey is literally Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter, almost as if they're trying to one-up Luke’s relation to Vader. The third film also ends with Rey taking the last name “Skywalker” while Luke and Leia’s force ghosts look on approvingly. For a more comprehensive coverage on why Rey is a Mary Sue, look up the results of the Mary Sue Litmus test on the discussion page.
  • While it could be argued that Luke and Anakin are just as ridiculous, they fit easier the form of tropes they are. Luke, being the most classic Hero ever, is quickly established as good at most things he does, culminating in flying an X-Wing through the Death Star trench and making an one-in-a-million shot to destroy the Death Star, and this is less than a week before he was just a backwater farmboy, albeit one who is outright stated to be both a decent pilot and skilled shot. Though while Luke used the Force untrained like Rey did, his only feats were enhancing skills he already had and developed; a bit of a stretch, but more plausible than pulling new skills that require training to use out of nowhere. Anakin is the Chosen One, and people who are chosen tend to be skilled and powerful regardless because the Powers-That-Be have their backs on top of any personal skills they have. Young Ani competes and wins a pod-race that only aliens can normally participate in due to the sheer insanity of it, and then blows up a Trade Federation Dreadnought with a fighter he'd never been in before (even then kid Anakin also had R2-D2's help). However, Anakin's Chosen One status made the Jedi, including even his teacher at first, loathe and treat him with suspicion. No matter how hard he fought or what sacrifices he made, it was never enough for the Council, and the only guy in his life who showed him with kindness turned out to be a Sith lord. Now Rey is about as much the Hero as Luke but is an Unchosen One compared to Anakin, and the wildest thing she does in her first movie is to use the Force untrained (much like Luke does in A New Hope) and gain the upper hand on a Sith apprentice (aka a guy who holds the same rank as Darth-fucking-Vader) while fighting with a weapon she sees for the first time in her life. And no, lightsaber wielding has never been as easy as "pick it up and start swinging". She is also instantly liked by every good guy she meets. Jeez, I wonder why people call her a Sue when comparing with Luke, who had to be saved from Vader twice in the first movie, and Anakin, who, despite all his power and skills, regularly fucks up during the Prequels, with a crowning mistake so bad it required three original movies to fix. The fact that Rey is touted as a strong female character while being propped up by the failures of men and saved by men throughout the trilogy doesn't help her case. Also, Rey has never once lost a fight in the movies, while Anakin first got his arm chopped off in a hilariously one-sided fight with Dooku then later had all his limbs cut off and was lit on fire in his duel with Obi-Wan, and Luke was totally outmatched by Vader in The Empire Strikes Back and got his ass handed to him on a beskar platter.
  • Another thing to consider is the ridiculous timeline of Episode 7 and 8. In approximately 5-6 days, Rey went from being a scavenger on Jakku to defeating Snoke's bodyguards and being on par with Kylo Ren in combat.

• 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 inspired from his own D&D Rogue. 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) with dubious morality and a lovably snarky badass attitude. 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.

• Rick Sanchez, of Rick and Morty, in seasons 3+. (See Rick under "Special Cases", below; the only reason we're not moving him here completely is because Rick and Morty arguably became an entirely different show between seasons 2 and 3.)

• Roran, from the Inheritance Cycle. He started as a farmer-apprentice blacksmith, yet he managed to become an invincible warrior, charismatic presence, expert orator and master strategist without any training. We are talking of a young man who soloes 194 soldiers in a melee battle and wins without taking any major injuries. He then survived a public flogging severe enough to be an alternative to execution despite it being not long after that battle. He also beat an Urgal in a wrestling match despite the Urgal being stronger, bigger, better trained and having horns. In the third book he even single-handedly defeated a Ra'zac; a race that are to humans what wolves are to sheep. Then in the final battle Roran bested the magically-enhanced warrior who killed the elf-queen, and did so without magic or special weapons of his own. Yes, Roran managed to achieve feats that even elves would consider impossible. While his cousin Eragon has the (weak) excuses of magical enhancement and helping from his dragon companion, Roran doesn't. He is a common man who, for plot reasons, creates a plot armor just by thinking about his girlfriend.

• Sarah Kerrigan from the Starcraft series has become this more and more as time passes. In the first game she's just a terran ghost (psionic assassin) who gets turned into a human-zerg hybrid and disappears from the plot after like two or three missions in the zerg campaign, but then she becomes one of the main villains of the expansion pack and everyone else in in the game becomes a thundering dumbass so she can look like a master manipulator despite being played for a sap by yet another character, and commits several atrocities to serve herself and her own agenda but is not punished them in any way despite multiple characters swearing revenge on her. Then the sequel ramped it up. Out of fucking nowhere she is designated the savior of the galaxy from the new villain in town with virtually no justification offered except that Blizzard were too cowardly and attached to the the character to follow through on people wanting her dead. She gets purified of zerg corruption and another character who's more fun and interesting gets killed off so she can live. The zerg campaign centers on her and shows her doing yet more pointlessly-cruel and destructive things in the name of petty revenge, its only concessions to the ridiculousness of letting her live being some half-hearted acknowledgements of her past crimes. And after a pair of pointless guest appearances in the protoss campaign and its prologue campaign, she gets picked by the last good Xel'Naga in the universe to receive his essence and become a Xel'Naga herself so she can defeat the main villain in a laser beam-off. And after her boyfriend, a better-written character who spends all his time getting shit on throughout the series, is seen moping in a bar at the end of the final campaign, she gets to ass pullingly make him a Xel'Naga too, for some moron's idea of resolving their relationship with happily ever after ending.

• Sakamoto from 'Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto' never fails at anything and always manages to look Awesome no matter what he is doing or how much the other characters try to sabotage him, and it is hilarious.

• 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.

• Squirrel Girl from Marvel Comics is another one of these Sues who's actually popular and enjoyed for it, probably because she's 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 her first appearance and several times afterwards, and this is a rare instance of a Doom-related incident that was not smoothed over with the "Just a Doombot" excuse), 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, because again, she's played entirely for laughs and there's nary a title in Marvel Comics that couldn't do with more laughs.

• 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 it thankfully Superman Returns had so many plotholes that Man of Steel declared it all non-canon. The only reliable 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). Good writers can avoid falling into this by having him go up against villains who can genuinely threaten him (such as General Zod, Maxima or Doomsday; in fact, the writers made Doomsday specifically to be a threat who can physically match Superman), showing that even with all his vast powers there are things Superman just can't do (in one tragic story it turned out that even though he can benchpress planets, he can't stop his parents from dying of cancer) or emphasizing that his strong morals are not intrinsic to him, but a product of a happy childhood, caring parents and a network of close friends, and he wouldn't necessarily have them if he were raised somewhere less pleasant (like, say, Planet Apokolips or the Soviet Union - both actually happened in Elseworlds stories, look it up) or if those close to him were taken away (like in the Injustice and Kingdom Come comic series).

• The Sun Crusher, from Star Wars. Possibly one of the few cases where a Mary Sue was not a character, but a superweapon. This...thing first came under the much Skub Jedi Academy books and was considered so fucking overpowered its mere existence created more plotholes than Erda would have pushed out. Hated by basically everyone in the fandom, this fucking trainwreck of a superweapon was small and fast as hell, had weapons that could destroy an entire star system and has armor so powerful it could even tank a glancing hit from a Prototype Death Star. Seriously, there was one case where the Sun Crusher destroyed an entire ISD by simply ramming into the fucker. And you thought Goku's power wanking was filthy. This abomination makes the World Engine look limp-dicked in comparison. Considered one of the worst examples of Legends' superweapon power creep (previous superweapons were frequently OP, but at least they generally had notable limitations and vulnerabilities), this overpowered mess of an idea almost broke the Star Wars EU itself since anyone piloting this proverbial rape train could have single-handily curb-stomped both the Galactic Empire and the Yuuzhan Vong combined. Also, it kinda looks like an ice cream cone for some reason.

• 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 undermining or retconning the book, Jackson creates a special snowflake elf OC. Tauriel's ridiculously skilled at fighting to the point she matches Legolas in archery - and he's pretty OP in the films (as shown when she shoots an arrow at him when he surprises her, he returns fire and their arrows collide with each other) - she also 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, some who's studied healing for millennia and is 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 - albeit he was shoehorned into the film to cash in on his popularity with fangirls and his presence makes some sense since his father Thranduil was in the book) and Kili. To be fair, some of the ship tease between Kili and Tauriel is well-handled as well, in particular when Kili teases her and then tells her stories when locked in prison.

• Tobias (or Takuto in the original Japanese) from the Pokémon anime. His design looking like someone was trying way too hard to make him seem "mysterious" and "badass" is just the tip of the iceberg. For starters, he has at least two legendaries in the form of Darkrai and Latios, despite the anime earlier establishing how difficult it was for even Frontier Brains (who are trainers deliberately selected by Battle Frontier head honcho Scott from among the best of the best) to acquire and control Pokémon of such caliber. How he got such Pokémon is never explained. When he faced off against Ash in the Sinnoh League after only getting a few mentions and cameos beforehand, he knocked out Ash's entire team while losing only the aforementioned Darkrai and Latios, then went on to win the league and essentially disappear from the show entirely. To put it simply, he was clearly only put in the anime to prevent Ash from winning so that he wouldn't end his journey - which didn't even make any sense, since Ash had already won a league (the Orange League) and still continued traveling and training; as a matter of fact, it would be out of character for a spirited competition hound like Ash to sit on his laurels no matter how many awards and accolades he won. While Tobias wasn't the first character to knock Ash out of a league competition and wouldn't be the last, him being an inexplicably absurdly overpowered trainer who blatantly only existed to keep Ash from winning made him by far the most hated.

• Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones, most of it strictly in the show (especially in the later seasons), much, much less in the books. He is exceedingly smart, capable of fighting against trained soldiers double his size, ends up at Daenarys' court despite her having more than ample reasons to distrust him, gets in charge of Mereen for no reason given when Daenarys disappears, runs a complete shitshow on top of it and still somehow ends up in her council, where he continues to give advice that is just plain wrong and sets back Daenarys' efforts to retake Westeros. His sheer incompetence in Seasons 7 and 8 should get him at least fired, if not outright executed. Instead, the showrunners abandon his character arc altogether to make him the audience's avatar and the closest thing the setting has to Prime Minister in the end, who also is able to make all of the lords of Westeros follow his idea of an elective monarchy, which he came up with on a whim. This is counterbalanced by his character as portrayed in the books and the earlier seasons (incidentally the ones where GRRM was still actively involved in the production of the series), where he is impulsive, arrogant and extremely vindictive (to the point of murdering his former lover, a prostitute, for sleeping with his father in a jealous rage) towards nearly everyone in his immediate vicinity. To add to this, he is also often too blinded by his hatred for his own family to see the bigger picture; where Tywin gave him the authority to act as Hand of the King in his absence as a last chance to prove his worth for the Lannister name, only for him to disregard all of Tywin's advice and orders out of spite.

• Wesley Crusher. Wesley FUCKING 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 cases He'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 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... and coming from him, that's saying something). Wesley is even named after Gene Roddenberry, as Wesley was Gene's middle name - or to give Gene's full name, Eugene Wesley Roddenberry. That said, Wesley gets better once Roddenbery wasn't dictating the story. He does get served a healthy dose of reality in "The First Duty", wherein he lies to cover up the fact that his Academy flight team was doing a dangerous and illegal stunt that got one of them killed and pinned all the blame for the accident on the dead kid. Picard absolutely shreds him when he realizes what's going on, delivering one of the best speeches of any Trek series in the process, and Wesley faces actual consequences for his actions.

• Young main characters in crappy Japanese animes and manga.

• Main characters from Japanese Isekai light novels. Usually they were nerds or losers whose only interested in a particular underrated hobby/talent in their world, but became a fucking skyrim tier powerhouse once they enter the so-called mysterious otherworld. Upon entering, they became super powerful since their somewhat boring talent suddenly becomes a miracle to the other world residents thus making the main character successful. It is a trend that they will done the following to prove their superiority: wrecking Saturday cartoon villain tier antagonist (usually a reference to the main character's childhood bully) that made even Ahriman look good, instantly gained many female party members because the main character was an unpopular virgin in their original world (and no males allowed, they are yucky), using their otaku knowledge to solve every problem that was deems unsolvable in the other world (more reason that their useless hobby/talent that was deemed useless has more use in the otherworld). The other world usually consist the cliches of JRPG world: Medieval Stasis, fantasy creatures like dwarves and elves, old European like hierarchy and cultures, monsters, JRPG mechanic. One of many trend of isekai protagonist is that almost all of them have tragic background featuring how they were bullied in high school or parent suicide or some typical Japanese cliches of tragic (such as truck-kun). There are also many situations where authors would made the protagonist suffer by have him stuck in a misunderstood situation, setup by the unlikable villain as an attempt to make him look good. Then again, these kind of self fulfilling characters are authors self insert whom was a victim of a depressing citizens of their society, or they thought. There are a few exceptions to this such as Ainz Ooal Gown, Kazuma Satou or Kazuya Souma who are thrown into situations that requires far more intelligence, planning and Indy Polys than your typical light novel protagonist can muster. Some try to subvert this with mixed results. Re:Zero is a deconstructive take where its protagonist (Subaru Natsuki) dies painfully over and over and over again, and eventually confesses to everyone around him that he's completely useless. (Though then he starts learning from his mistakes and becomes more competent-- but not an uber-badass.)
  • Tl;dr, they are Cringe incarnate. It would have been funny if it wasn't so fucking pathetic, and given the sheer amount of shitty isekai, harem trash plaguing the manga industry, it should really tell you the lack of self-esteem on whoever wrote these fucking abominations of literature.

• Drift from Transformers is a particularly fascinating and useful case study, as he not only is a good example of a Sue, but is also a prime example of how a Sue can be redeemed into a legitimately Awesome character. Beginning life as the original character of a newbie writer named Shane McCarthy, Drift was effectively every stereotypical Mary Sue fan character trait in a single character; super-skilled beyond everyone else, a former member of the bad guys turned good, always right about everything, never allowed to lose, shilled by established characters and the creators, milking his “tragic” backstory for sympathy, characters who dislike him portrayed as close-minded jerks, shallow anime-influences like dual-wielding katanas, and an all-around “Edgy teenager’s idea of cool” aesthetic. But then McCarthy left the series and Drift was handed off to a new writer, James Roberts, and everything changed; Drift was completely reworked as a character and made… likable. Now he was skilled but not to an extreme, his personality was given more depth (most notably rewriting his shallow anime mimicry into a samurai-esque sense of honor and spirituality), he had true flaws and made mistakes he had to suffer or atone for, characters who disliked or disagreed with him were given legitimate reason for it, and even his “villain turned hero” backstory was deconstructed by repeatedly emphasizing that he still has a “bad guy” mentality/instinct he often fights against and which contributes to his aforementioned mistakes, such as being overly-quick to resort to violence or being willing to take part in an illegal conspiracy for the “greater good”. In short, he went from an embarrassingly juvenile fan character that everybody wanted dead to a beloved member of the cast who would make many future appearances because people legitimately liked him now. Even more impressively, when his original creator Shane McCarthy returned to the character years later, he demonstrated that he himself had improved significantly as a writer, actually acknowledging and building off the work other writers did with him where most Mary Sue authors would ignore or lash out at anything that undermined their Sue. It all goes to showcase the reason that the “Bad Writer Syndrome” mentioned on the main page exists; sometimes the only thing a Mary Sue needs to not be a Mary Sue is a new writer who isn’t as unhealthily emotionally-invested in the character and has the objectivity/common sense to see what they need to be rather then what their creator wanted them to be.

• Judging from the rest of the list, any character you don't like.

Works with more than too many of them

• In Nomine's Superiors may or may not qualify; if they do, they do so as a block, thus placing them here. The problem here is that each Superior is an NPC made to more or less be their entire organization (most PCs report directly to at least one of them), and thus needs to be larger-than-life. Ultra high-powered NPCs plus Strong Personalities plus Needing to Show Up Frequently is a formula only in need of a small amount Bad Writing or Poor GMing to go into hardcore Suedom. On the "possibly further from Suedom" side, all the Superiors have exploitable character flaws, but the result is still an edifying example of why High Powered NPCs are a problem.

• Sonichu, made by you-know-who. To make a long article short, just about anyone who is friends with the author or from some franchise s/he/it they like gets to be overwhelmingly hax and unbound by the laws of morality, everyone who isn't is pretty much either nonexistent or very very evil (the latter guaranteed for any character representing someone the author has a personal beef with).

• Twilight
  • 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 (SMeyer admitted that herself), "clumsy" Bella is the Mary Sue of her generation.
  • 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 nearly impossible to kill, doesn't have the vampire weakness to holy objects despite seeing himself as an abomination against God, doesn't feed off humans despite his literal bloodlust (except for criminals or "those who deserve to die"), is always fashionable, owns exotic and expensive cars, and is ridiculously rich 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.
  • Jacob Black: A Native American werewolf and the third side of the franchise's infamous love triangle. He commits sexual assault on Bella by forcing a kiss (a line not even Edward crossed), 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 some kind of weird werewolf pheromone thing, 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.

• Warhammer unfortunately has several examples, many of them a result of Matt Ward's bad writing. They get much better in the hands of more skilled writers, or in parodies.
  • 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, and was 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 battlefield only a quick glance. He leads a company of mini-Sues, each squad having a special title for some great feat, such as their Devastators having somehow 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 Company 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. He outright admits to his men that he didn't care about the 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 for 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.
    • More recent works have deconstructed and played with this: his glory-hound behaviour and massive ego have put his company at extreme risk multiple times, with his egotistical behaviour at Damnos contributing rather heavily to the thrashing the Second Company was handed by the Necrons; furthermore, he's been relegated to the effectively ceremonial role of Rowboat Girlyman's bodyguard while the Primarch in question attempts to unfuck the Imperium and train Cato to be less of a massive prick. On top of this, he's established to have some pretty severe PTSD after being lost in the Warp near the start of the Indomitus Crusade, which knocked a good deal of his former brashness out of him.
  • 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. He then joins the Ynnari after being shunned by his Craftworld.
  • Kaldor Draigo. Wrote his mentor's name into Mortarion's heart without contracting Spess AIDS, or being fucking destroyed by said Primarch which despite each of those 19 (21?) being capable of rolling through a squad of Custodes without too much effort. Then he got schllupped into the Warp and somehow remains pure.
    • Like Sicarius, other authors have taken steps to reduce the Sue factor of Draigo by showing him as a moderately flawed character and retconning some of the more egregiously Sue-ish moments - see the 'Placed in the hands of other authors' section of his page for examples of this.
  • 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 limbs 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.
  • Captain Matthias Ward, I am the better Mary-Sue.
  • The Primarchs and their daughters.THOSE WORDS ARE BLASPHEMY! /tg/ can only create perfection! (To be fair, the daughters are only Sues in that they inherited their Sue traits from their fathers.)
  • 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.
  • Iskandar Khayon is a pretty awesome villain, but some of the stuff he does is just unbelievable, though some of that may be because his book is actually him telling the events to his enemies while captured, so he may be lying about a lot of it to fuck with them.

• World of Warcraft:
  • 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, but simply because he was the only surviving named blue dragon with anything approaching a personality. 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) and bad track record with lovers. Though Kalecgos later disbanded them as an organization, he's still the go-to blue dragon (despite older, more powerful ones like Azuregos and Senegos still being in the lore).
  • Jarod Shadowsong, a Night Elf commander shoehorned into the setting in books "War of the Ancients" and "Wolfheart", by Richard Knaak. Brother to canon character Maiev Shadowsong, love interest to Shandris Feathermoon, - Tyrande's adopted daughter with both characters canon since WC3 (Shandris in case you don't recognize her, is that one Elf archer with a unique model present in the first two and last Night Elf missions in Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos) - and the Night Elves greatest war hero after Furion and Tyrande themselves. His mere presence raises morale so much that people, to quote the book, "automatically fight harder and obey him with greater swiftness". He survived a one-on-one fight against Archimonde, a demon lord who can destroy cities single-handedly, because he suddenly decided to toy with Jarod even though time was of the essence. Said war saw various Night Elf DEMIGODS place themselves under Jarod's command! He also lacks any personality beyond humble hero and has no character flaws that effect him negatively. 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 Jarod out on this in-universe. On top of this, Shandris' love for him is poorly written and makes no sense. Her feelings were puppy love, and after that, Shandris had had no contact with Jarod for thousands of years until they met again during the Cataclysm. And when they met, Shandris propositioned Jarod at his wife's funeral. This bears repeating; Shandris pursued someone who she hadn't spoken to for millennia and who was married to someone else by trying to hook up him before his wife's body was even cold (and Shandris is not that kind of ignorant/thoughtless/crazy/predatory person).
  • Krasus (AKA Korialstraz) a high-ranking red dragon, mainly due to the author's overuse of him, and said author is also Richard Knaak. He disguises himself as an elf, and said elf is one of the leaders of the Kirin Tor. On top of this, he's Consort/Adviser of the Dragon Queen, he might as well be the Dragon King considering how much importance Alexstraza puts on him and how few decisions she makes until after he's gone. 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). To be fair, Krasus is tame compared to most WoW examples listed here.
  • Med'an, half human, one quarter draenei and one quarter orc. This alone should set your alarm on. Let's add that he is the son of Garona and Medivh, two quite important lore characters, with the latter being one of the most powerful mortals EVER. Not enough? He is the focus of a prophecy about who will save he world and, thanks to his mixed ancestry, he is skilled in arcane magic (ok, this quite makes sense), but also with the holy light and elements. And, obviously, he saves the world and gains his father's awesome staff and charge.
  • Rhonin, human archmage of the Kirin Tor. By Richard Knaak again, Blizzard Entertainment's equivalent of Robin Cruddace. Knaak made up a new member of the famous Windrunner family just for Rhonin to hook up with. 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), not to mention that those half-elf kids are one of the very rare examples of human-elf hybrids in WoW (the other is Arator the Redeemer, son of legendary characters all the way back in Warcraft 2 - human paladin Turalyon and elven general Alleria). 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.
  • Sylvanas Windrunner from World of Warcraft (The trend is now a bullet train into Edgytown): Started out as a Fantasy counterpart for Sarah Kerrigan, she's been turning into Fantasy Hitler/Mengele (or rather, was from the beginning). Originally a High Elf ranger in Warcraft III who is killed and turned into a Banshee by Arthas. 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. While this upset some players, it's not a guarantee of Mary Sue'dom, but the problem becomes obvious as the plot advances. She was already under suspicion before 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 (and only joined them for selfish gain), built a Cult of Personality around herself, employed the Val'kyr (which even the Death Knights called her out on), 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 a 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 - rather weaksauce given the almighty kicking they were giving Garrosh throughout that expansion pack, making him out to be evil incarnate. In Legion, after retreating from the Broken Shore, 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, followed by her abandoning the fight against the Burning Legion for a way to cheat death, and everyone in the Horde is okay with this. In the next expansion, the Horde forced the Night Elves out of Kalimdor in the War of Thorns, with Sylvanas pulling an Arthas by forcing the dying commander to watch her burn Teldrassil, an action worse than Garrosh's Bombing of Theramore because Theramore was a military target while the Night Elves had surrendered and Teldrassil was inhabited only by non-combatants. The writers give her plot armor by having "never forsake honor" Saurfang save her life by dealing a dishonorable blow to her opponent. As Sylvanas' atrocities grow barely anyone from the Horde turns against her, and writers pull new powers out of their asses for her culminating in her one-shotting Saurfang and soloing Lich King Bolvar and a horde of undead. The Mary Sue reason on top of all this? She never suffers any (literally, ANY) setback except Greymane ruining her Val'kyr agenda. All her atrocities and horrors are ignored or turned into heroism, and what's worse, she automatically pulls out the next phase of her agenda out of her ass like some Pentagon's high command after snorting a line of coke each. Her Forsaken, despite horrendous losses and ban on raising unwilling dead, somehow destroys everything with a shred of goodness around her...only for her to get raised to Warchief status like some spoiled prepubescent princess. This issue is compounded by the fact that Sylvanas has a very vocal fanbase and she's the Creator's Pet of at least three of Warcraft's dev team, lead quest writer David Kosak, director Steve Danuser and developer Travis Day (who once insisted she's not evil and just wants to protect the Horde). Even with the Shadowlands expansion having Sylvanas as a major villain helping the BBEG, they pull back by shoehorning in a "split soul" plot device to pave the way for her redemption.
  • 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 and save them from their enemies 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), with a lot of help from some allies and another demi-god he sets things right and they kick the Burning Legion's demonic asses off of Azeroth. He still holds the line against threats and tries to make peace, but he's a bit too forgiving of trouble-makers in the Horde (see Sylvanas above and Garrosh below). In the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcramps, he became Azeroth's premiere shaman and leader of half the world while appointing the VERY CONTROVERSIAL balls to the wall violent and universally hated patriotic 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 Thrall during Warcraft III have started to get sick of him.
    • The writers appear to have realized what kind of monster they unleashed in Cataclysm and every expansion since has given him a kicking in some way. In Mists of Pandaria Garrosh kicks his ass just before his final fight with the players. In Warlords of Draenor he gets relegated to the sidelines and has another fight with Garrosh, which features a memetastic sequence in which Garrosh pummels his dumb ass while listing his failures. He wins the fight only by cheating and using his shaman powers, and Legion (the expansion) reveals the Elemental Spirits have nerfed him for his blatant haxxing. Even when he begins getting his powers back, you only see that happen if you're a shaman, and he ends up becoming your bitch. Even his big fancy Doomhammer gets misplaced so it can become an Artifact weapon for Enhancement shamans.

• Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" had the most Mary Sues before the phrase existed. In fact her garbage is old enough that the term Mary Sue could be replaced by the name of any one of her characters and it wouldn't change the meaning at all. John Galt, Dagny Taggart and most of the cast, which figures given her literature's reputation for being barely-disguised political sermon. Galt frequently has the narrative grind to a halt in order to focus on his inane views, somehow single-handedly grinds the economy to a halt by founding a libertarian utopia where no "communists" can hold him or other similar geniuses back, and is shilled as the only sane man after the rest of the world becomes a dystopic hellhole without said "genius". Then there's the primary female character, a wannabe railroad tycoon trying to get a new train line built despite the fact that "evil socialists" can't keep them running without crashing every few hours because of mean ol' unions and regulations oppressing the poor upper class. Said woman somehow manages to bed Hank Rearden, local inventor of a metal alloy supposedly even stronger than steel called Rearden Metal. Yes, just drips with creativity, don't it? It's telling that the Bioshock series, based off her work, is far better received and a more realistic depiction, generally due to taking the prospect of a single man basically playing God to its logical conclusion (I.E. another dystopia but now with blackjack and hookers).
  • Nearly all of her works have blatant Mary Sues in them. Best not to bother with a full list because her tree wasting dysentery would take up over half the page. It explains a lot about her psyche that her ideal man was a serial murderer who kidnapped, raped and dismembered young girls.

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 Krogan's violent nature which can easily waste their long lifespans), all of them are biotic users, every single 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 out of necessity, are shown to be attracted to them), 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's privates because you know they all look like "wominz". Thessia, their homeworld, is regarded as the "jewel" of the galaxy (instead of the fucking Citadel) 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 they're 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 government kept that knowledge to themselves and used it to make their race the most powerful in the galaxy. When the Reapers showed up, the Asari leadership buried their heads in the sand on their homeworld like the smurf elf pussies they are, leaving the other races to fend for themselves, then 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. And then humanity steps up and saves the day, because of course we do.

• Angry Marines. When was the last time YOU heard of an Angry Marine LOSING? Thought no-*BLAM*

+The current author has been executed by the Inquisition to prevent the total destruction of the Imperium of Man by Angry Marines. Thank you and have a nice day.+

• The Draka, once human, then Posthuman slaver empire from the Domination Series by S.M Stirling, collapsing the "Bullying, slaving, torture-happy, heartless Karma Houdini asshole who is the channelized catharsis of the author rather than genuine art." shtick into a black hole the size of the galaxy. South African British colony turns into a nation of literal "Drow in human skin" when due to (mis)fortune, every losing side from worldwide wars against tyranny gets exiled to Drakia, the British colony named after Francis Drake. Turning chattel slavery into a race-wide, airtight regulated franchise in the case of blacks, they exploit the entirety of Africa by taking the colonies belonging to the enemies of British people. Unifying in a Spartan way of life, completely shedding any morality in the case of slave control, eventually Draka Dominion declares independence from the British Crown, and turns entire Africa into a mega plantation with industrial giants enticed by obscene gold and diamond handouts exploited from Africa. The Draka then adopt Nietzschean ideals, and declare every non-Draka a slave, or a potential slave. Somehow the First World War happens anyway despite massive divergences, and Draka overrun the dying Ottoman Empire, local Turks, after a brief "enserfment" finding great joy in new and better slave soldier living standards (being able to rape young white captive Finnish boys seems a source of joy for a moustached swarthy Turk whose name and appearance IRL was one of the last good politicians in Turkey.). When the second World War starts (with a blond and one-eyed Hitler) the Draka start turning white people into slaves starting from Italy with approval of Hitler and employ black slave soldiers who are given ample living standards and items with free rape of anyone that is captured.
  • This (Post-World War 2) is where the story turns from an Edgy /pol/-fanfic to pants-on-head retarded FAPfic. Though the series displays a very detailed alternate history AND technological evolution (steamer cars phased out far later than combustion engine driven ones due to efficiency and lack of fuel corrosive-resistant metal research), the Draka's endless S&M laden plantation slave bitch fantasy hits overdrive and they simultaneously conquer Russia, Europe minus Britain, and the entirety of CHINA with black soldiers and their white masters that were, mind you, from an Africa that wasn't overpopulated but ecologically protected. They do not lose one, ONE battle while rampaging and raping and enslaving. Their methods are extremely savage: impalement and rape are regular actions at every resistance, and the black soldiers can take out any psychosis forming from mass atrocities on other slaves back home, every capture tortured until completely broken before being enslaved. Their research facilities have *zero* ethics, using up millions of humans in torturous experiments to develop fantastic drugs, bioweapons and medications since, well, their citizens are drilled from age 2 to 18 with a Nietzsche-on-crack ideology to circumvent a sudden case of conscience to heart. Eventually they change the Draka Citizen DNA to that of an immortal superhuman species, destroy the rest of non-Draka armies with weaponized AIDS and make all slaves into docile abhumans and take over the rest of the world, rape all the women and men, destroy every monument and cultural heritage not belonging to them, turn the USA into a hunting reserve where they hunt humans like animals (and eat them sometimes- AND make paintings, artworks and monuments celebrating the rape and slavery of non-Draka of all ethnicities). Then the Draka expand into alternate universes, infiltrating our world and its parallel versions and start taking them over as well and enjoying immortal, eternal exploitation of everyone everywhere forever. What the entire US and UK plus the rest of Asia, Japan, Southeast Asia does is to create an Alliance that walks on eggshells and fucks up every espionage action against the Draka, loses every battle and ends up escaping to Alpha Centauri. S.M Stirling eventually writes a sequel where an alternate Earth has the human Alliance win for a change, but the damage is already done. We are graced with the endless plantation BDSM fetish fantasy of bisexual, blonde, white, transhuman, constantly horny blue-eyed men and women fucking their farm slaves of either gender and make them work their asses off after breaking them in of every little inch of their personalities. A particularly nasty lesbian Draka is Stirling's Creator Pet: she manages to capture the sister of an American soldier who killed her lover and makes her a slave. She tortures her with a mental chip for years to destroy her brain, forcing her to bear her lover's clone children, and rapes her mentally, and eventually, physically. And her side wins the war, the girl escapes an old ruined wreck into space (albeit back to her brother), and our bitch spends her long, long life to torture and kill surviving Alliance holdouts for fun, happily raping, killing and torturing ever after. Seriously, even Kosak had more of a shred of decency, Stirling. The Draka's only saving grace is that every Draka must devote several hours of their time every day to be on top physical condition by law and always earn their place, as well as senseless slave abuse is seen as a character sickness.
    • And then, since only another suevilization can stop them at this point, they run into The Culture. The End. (well, we can dream, right?)
      • Or the Xeelee.
        • Especially the Xeelee. We'd even settle for the Qax.

• The Drow from Drowtales. Their Mary Sue factor isn't even funny. Shaped by several inputs from several authors, their Drow are the best example of how too many cooks spoil the broth as well as the main author's high school misanthrophy hitting overdrive. The Drowtales' Drow are practically immortal, have regenerating limbs, never menstruate, possess metals that are impenetrable to other sentient beings and virtually twice as big and a thousand times as powerful as other races to the point of a few drow kids on an adventure can butcher a city with innocents to save their friend who was about to be killed for its blood, since humans, hunted and enslaved for centuries, are desperate to the point of killing elves for their blood just to have an edge. Their houses in underworld have all the modern technology and some futuristic things to boot complete with giant walkers and submarines, modern machinery, PARTICLE RIFLES and magitech street lights, but somehow they need human and other races as slaves and this need is shown as just and necessary right at the beginning with the "good" faction's "surface raiders" murdering an entire village and taking women and children to slave markets because the poor widdle drow need slaves and "It's just their unique morality". And the way the webcomic shows them as tragic beings is the cherry on top: I didn't know it was so tragic and sad when the humans counterattack to save their raided relatives from your homes, locked in to be sold as slaves.

• ALL Chakats! The entire fucking race are distilled and purified Mary Sues, sometimes warping stories they are barely even mentioned in. 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 (Look above at Drowtales), 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. Then there are curvy anime rapebait elves (often dark elves) who get high on male smells and secretions and turn into thicc fuckdolls taking massive amounts of dicking.
  • This depiction usually comes from elves as shown in The Lord of the Rings, which is coincidental as it was the end of the Third age and all the bad elves had long since died off, leaving only the wise and good-hearted ones (like Elrond and Galadriel). A read of The Silmarillion (the heroic First age where elves and magic were strong forces in the world and loads of Awesome shit happened) will prove quite pointedly that elves in this setting could be just as flawed, stubborn and downright immoral as humans could. Fëanor for instance. And how. He may have been gifted and intelligent even by the standards of elves, and a fierce opponent of Sauron's old boss Morgoth, but he was also an obnoxious, arrogant kinslayer with a creepy attraction to his niece's golden hair, and he didn't give two shits about anybody else's concept of morality up to the Maiar themselves, he just insisted single-mindedly on getting his way until it got him pile-drivered to death by balrogs. It's also very explicit that their time in Middle-earth is coming to an end, with those relative few who remain destined to essentially fade away, and the destruction of the One Ring only accelerates this process.
  • Elves from Eragon are probably the worst example of Mary Sue elves yet. Elves from Eragon move so fast that humans are incapable of tracking their movements, stronger than humans to the point "even the weakest (elf) can easily overpower (a human)" (actual book quote), anything they make even from the most base materials is beautiful and they can run over a hundred miles an hour plus maintain that pace for hours on end. Character wise they're all atheists and vegetarians who are treated as morally and spiritually correct in all regards and there are just one or two evil elves in the story or the background lore. They can destroy entire human armies in minutes yet are somehow on the losing end of a war and have to hide in a forest on the edge of the map, are one of only two races on the planet capable of riding dragons, the other being humans (who literally turn into elves when they start riding the dragon plus elves were the first), are naturally connected to magic to such a level that an elven child can surpass an adult human who has spent their entire life studying magic and, apparently, were the second race in existence, only predated by dragons.

• 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, Orks, Tau, Tyranid, Chaos in all it's forms and the 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 Timelords themselves are hardly better than the Daleks at times.), 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.
  • In this case, Whoverse humanity's Mary Sueness can't really be blamed on any one author. It's mostly the result of sheer age causing increasingly severe continuity snarls and the unwillingness of newer writers to change or retcon forty year old fluff.

• 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 saliva 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 enough, 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.

• LeShay are a race that appeared as a monster in the D&D 3th edition book Epic Level Handbook and have been completely forgotten about since then like most of what was in that book. They are described as being to elves what elves are to humans only more so. That sentence alone should immediately set off red flags. LeShay are extremely powerful immortals resembling albino elves who are survivors from a civilization that was erased from history. Whoever it was that came up with this race (some of us blame Raymond Feist, for the Valheru) may even have intended for them to be anti-Sues, to foil the elves. As such the concept is defensible, but they probably would have ended up as Mary Sues if any bad writers had gotten a hold of them. Bad writers like Feist.

• The Mandalorians in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, depending on who's writing them. While good under the correct writers, under some of the bad ones (coughcoughKarenTravisscoughcough), they compete with badly written expanded universe Jedi and Sith for the position of Star Wars' Ultrasmurfs. In the pre-Disney expanded universe, ALL Mandos are elite warrior mercenaries, skilled enough to take out heavily armed enemies with their bare hands and usually packing enough firepower 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 them 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 any way. 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 creating the clone army (one Jedi who wasn't acting on orders from the council requested that, under the manipulations of Palpatine, and it was him and the Senate who ordered the clones to fight), and generally 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. One of the best things to come out of Disney buying Star Wars was the fact that the people in charge of the new canon scrapped pretty much all of Traviss' lore, whereupon she flounced off to go ruin the Halo EU and they got down to creating a more three-dimensional and complex society.
  • 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". Sure, Jango kills six Jedi with his bare hands in that massacre, but the Jedi he killed were not decades old masters and he is (as an individual) supposed to be that good. The fact that he managed that made Palpatine choose him as the Clone Army template donor.
  • And now we have the Mandalorian With No Name (until they ruined that joke by giving him one), who has some Sueish traits; he's an excellent bounty hunter and a skilled gunfighter who rarely loses a duel, he's good enough at diplomacy to negotiate with Tusken Raiders, he has a near-full suit of rare and indestructible beskar armour, and pretty much everyone he meets takes a liking to him, even his enemies. That said, he also has a number of flaws: he was raised in an extremist splinter faction that is to normal Mando society what the Cult of the Redemption are to regular believers in the Imperial Creed, doesn't always think through the consequences of his actions, is constantly hustling for jobs just to scrape by, and occasionally makes some serious mistakes. He also tends to be at a disadvantage in straight-up fights and has to rely on stealth, misdirection, and ambush tactics, rather than soloing entire stormtrooper platoons in the open with a dull knife like Traviss would undoubtedly have had him doing. He is also most definately not shown to be a match for Jedi, when got into a scuffle with Ahsoka Tano he lost very badly and only survived by letting her know he actually just needed her help with something, and when Luke Skywalker showed up at the end of the season he wasted a platoon of Dark Troopers while our hero could barely handle one. All in all, he's pretty much the complete opposite of a Traviss Mando, and that is a good thing.

• All Na'vi, the blue-skinned eco-humping gobshites.
  • Or are they? Without excessive human help (one of them warned the entire planet of what the space humans were capable of) they would have gone the way of countless human indigenous peoples...

• Smurfs. They're portrayed as a peace-loving, quasi-communist society who always come out on top in their primary conflict with an evil wizard family 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. Then again, most of the other conflicts they encounter are usually due to one or more of their clan fucking something up in accordance with their singular personality trait, and overall they seem collectively naive about things to the point of gullibility. Said approach is likely designed to promote the usual aesop of teamwork and the importance of family, so it could be far worse.

• Vampires in a certain book series. Even though they were as gay as fuck (which damaged the reputation of actual vampires).
  • Vampires in general started falling in modern years due to their weaknesses being forgotten or ignored by untalented authors. They have often been portrayed by such writers as immortal monsters that are top-tier magic users, skilled at all martial arts and forms of killing, master scholars with libraries that would put Alexandria to shame, incredibly attractive and charismatic, and living in huge castles while commanding other monsters like they were their servants or slaves, making them the Elves of the monster world by that definition. Initially in novels like Bram Stoker's Dracula, vampires had notable weaknesses including regularly drinking the blood of many human victims to stay young and powerful, but later writers dropped this in favor of making vampires straight up immortal. Seriously, some writers even give them plot armor to get past their weaknesses of holy objects, divine power or sunlight (though the former usually depends on the author's attitude towards religion and the latter only became outright lethal to vampires in the 1920s).
  • Clan Tremere (a.k.a. "Tremary Sues") from the Vampire: The Masquerade ttRPG game are an entire clan of Mary Sues as they were the author's pet mages from his previous Ars Magica game. Tremary Sues enjoy the narrative absurdity of holding a near-monopoly on vampiric thaumaturgy, despite the fact that older vampiric clans had millennia to perfect thaumaturgy (and many other arts that can blow the Tremere out of the water) before the first Tremere was ever born.
  • Probably one of the best exceptions of this is Count Orlock from the classic silent film Nosferatu. Whereas nowadays vampires get the treatment of being oh-so-sexy, suave, charismatic, pitiable creatures whose lives suck despite being immortal, undead bloodsuckers, Orlok is just a hideous predatory monster out to drink blood. No charisma, no suaveness, nothing to pity, nothing to feel empathy for. In short, straight-ahead horror vampires done completely right.
  • By contrast, the vampires of the House of Night series by mother and daughter team P. C. and Kristen Cast are far worse examples than even Twilight's bastardization. To clarify, vampires worship the goddess Nyx who is the only real goddess, are selected by a tracker when they are a human teen, are the poor, oppressed minorities of the world even though literally almost every famous person in human history was a vampire, will become utterly handsome and beautiful unless they reject the Change in which case they are afforded no sympathy as they die due to events outside their control, every negative stereotype is because of stupid humans, they can never do anything bad... in short, vampires done so badly that Twilight is more believable as good vampire literature. Seriously.
  • Higher Vampires from Witcher are as sueish as they get around here. Beside the point of being intellectually and spiritually superior to pretty much anybody (and we have immortal elves here), and relatively young ones fast and agile enough to go toe-to-toe with the best witchers that exist, they have NO weaknesses. Crosses, godly idols, other divine aspects? Nada. Drinking blood to live? Not even close, you can grab a humanbeer with some boys, but there's no neeed for it. Sunlight? Try again. Silver? NO. They are as much suspectible to silver like, say, humans are suspectible to paper swords. Cue in their "racial" power to become stronger and faster the older they get, shapeshifting, mistyfying (as in turning to mist) and unique superpowers, refined throught their lifetime, ranging from coming in handy once in a while better alchemy to mind controlling entire kingdom's worth of lesser vampires as on-wish army, with even that just being stated to be a "unique" power, not a really "powerful" one. The worst is when you realize they are not even "magical beings" by any degree, just a vaguely human-shaped collective of individual living cells just so happened to work together for the time being, granting them mind-blowing regeneration - nothing, NOTHING, can kill higher vampire but another higher vampire, even if regenerating from a melted puddle of blood would take some decades, they will return. One would start to wonder why they did not steamroll through entire continent and make it their own, to stop hiding and openly search for a way to return to their home world - as almost all higher vampires see themselves superior to other races, and majority would not bat an eye for this final solution - but this just adds to their sueness-good-for-the-sake-of-plot aspect.

• Doobies describe themselves this way. Aside from their crazed fans, it is obvious to everyone else that they aren't.

• Saiyans from Dragonball are practically born more powerful than any human could ever be, get exceptionally stronger every time they almost die (the words that are actually used to describe it), can literally become strong enough to eclipse actual gods with little effort and have more asspulls and deus ex machinas than any other race on this list. A twenty-three-year-old Saiyan can destroy an entire place with a single movement in the anime, and the manga implies that a Saiyan can do it with a finger before the first manga even concludes.

• The Forerunners from Halo easily fit the bill of being Mary Sues. For one, the Forerunners were created by actual no holds barred Gods who could rewrite time and space with little to no effort. These Gods, known as the Precursors (real original), thought the Forerunners were such hot shit that they decided to make them the new gods of the universe before they moved onto the next one, despite the Forerunners having achieved nothing of note yet. But then the gods changed their minds and decided to make humanity the new gods of the universe. The Forerunners responded by turning on their guns and literally murdering actual gods with no effort. The remaining gods ran off in a panic and turned to dust, later degenerating into the Flood. Then the Forerunners pulled a bunch of crazy shit like building ships that could ROFLstomp everything in Warhammer with minimal effort and creating an AI so advanced it could simulate entire universes in microseconds. Then they somehow got wiped out by the Flood.
  • The Forerunner's main enemy, the Flood, are similarly sueish, if not more so. While it is debatable as to whether the Flood should be considered a race or a single organism, it is undoubtedly completely OP, to the point of it being ridiculous. For one, they are quite literally the degenerate (ergo inferior) offspring of the Precursors, but they are somehow better than them in every way. They can infect time and space just by existing for long enough, are completely unbeatable, incurable, and can literally infect all life in the universe, including purely mechanical technology somehow, despite that not being how biology works. They are also capable of convincing AI that was programmed with the simple purpose of protecting all life from being infected by the Flood to join them by simply talking to them, can convince an entire group of human scientists to kill themselves just by saying a single sentence, and can never be defeated as 'they will always return'.

• The Qu from All Tomorrows are an egregious example of “Tell not Show” in this list, as they overpower the future humanity, even though they have technology capable of destroying star systems and many other things that could be beyond our imagination. It is never explained how they managed to defeat the Star People, nor why they would turn them into the fucked up abominations for the rest of the story. Well, they kind of say their philosophy is one about being gods, that other lifeforms are nothing but toys to play with, and humanity was unfortunately in their path. So for millions years, they turn most humans into twisted mockeries of their former selves, sometimes becoming literal toilets for the bloody things! So despite being an all-powerful race capable of modifying life to remove their sentience, they had the enlightened intelligence to create a race that communicates by literally shitting on each other.
  • Can somewhat be considered averted in the end when it is said that they were defeated by a union of galaxies who had enough of their shit. This is handwaved even more poorly, with little explanation to how it happened or if the Qu were truly rendered extinct. For most of the book, they get away with their literal crimes against humanity, and it’s implied that they’ve done it to more species than just us.

Mary Suetopias

As mentioned in the main article, there are some cases of entire civilizations getting the "Mary Sue" label with some justice. Here are a few.

• The Draka, before they become a species, are usually held to be a fairly strong example of a Villian Suetopia. See above in Mary Sue Races for more.
• Anarchist habitats in Eclipse Phase. To quote TVTropes, they "are apparently flawless societies where robots and nanofabricators provide for everyone, crime is virtually non-existent due to surveillance sensors everywhere and well-armed populaces, and there's no shortage of spare bodies like there is in the Transitional Economies."
• Aldis, from Blue Rose, has this accusation thrown at it, with some justification.
• The various civilizations of Ayn Rand's science fiction are either Mary Suetopias or Villain Suetopias. No in-between.
• Ultramar. Need more be said?

There are some "special cases" (parodies, twists, and deconstructions), that are worth mentioning:

• Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is... odd. Go read it if you want more, because it's very short.
• Rapture and Columbia from the Bioshock series are "functionalist" Suetopias: Because the games are about killing lots and lots of dudes, you need to have those dudes be crazy or assholes or both. Rapture under Andrew Ryan could actually be interpreted as a criticism of Ayn Rand's Suetopias by showing how they will go wrong in a less ideal world, while Rapture after Sofia Lamb's takeover is an equally scathing deconstructive critique of collectivist Suetopias. Columbia, meanwhile, is a very obvious attack on ultranationalism and religious extremism, while also serving as a demonstration that even the so-called "good old days" often had negative aspects to them.
• The original "Utopia" by Thomas More is interesting, in that it somewhat parodies the concept before it existed. To provide two examples, "Utopia" is a pun on eutopia-"good place", and outopia-"no place", and the frame story narrator's name translates as "Peddler of Nonsense". Yes, this means that the man who literally coined the term Utopia immediately considered it a wishful fantasy.
• Mordent, from Ravenloft, has a somewhat interesting twist. Its Darklord focuses more on Ghosts than on the living, so the living aren't the focus of the horror, and as such, for Ravenloft, it's a relative Utopia for the living. Once you die there, however...
• Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" is widely interpreted as a parody of such works.
• The Federation of Star Trek seems like a Mary Suetopia on the surface. However, because the show was initially focused on morality stories, they're rather prone to Insane Admirals in Starfleet (to the point that one of the show's writers joked about the Federation's training standards), an early sign of cracks in the foundation. Later seasons of TNG and all of Deep Space Nine brought those cracks directly into focus, with the Maquis and the consequences of the Dominion War. Captain Sisko even rants about this a few times during the show; sure, Earth in the Star Trek-verse is practically a paradise compared to most other planets in the galaxy, but "It's easy to be a saint in Paradise," and the Federation has a much harder time living up to that image outside of their home system, examples including the Federation spy agency Section 31 engineering a virus to use on The Dominion's Founders (aka rulers) or Sisko himself collaborating with a former Cardassian spy/assassin to bring the Romulans into the war via a massive fraud. Also, what some people forget is that the episodes from the perspective of the characters, take anywhere from hours to days and even longer during multi-episode storylines. Even the crew of the original Enterprise could spend weeks to get the solution shown during the final ten minutes or end up exhausting all other options to take a random shot in the dark that solves the current problem. Usually, this didn't involve pulling it out of the writers' collective asses or pressing the reset button, something that happened often enough on Voyager and Enterprise to an unrealistic degree that viewers started hating them.
• Wakanda, from Marvel Comics wasn't this originally - it was just an African nation that avoided getting buttfucked during the Scramble for Africa and which had instituted a policy of sending its best and brightest abroad to learn at the most advanced foreign schools before returning to share what they learned with their people, thus keeping it well ahead of most other African nations and on par with the most civilized "first world" nations. They still had Vibranium as an ace up their sleeves, but they were more "America during the Atomic Energy race... if America had the world's only known supply of fissile material". It was subsequently retconned that the presence of Vibranium meant that Wakanda was centuries ahead of the world technologically and always had been. Different writers have applied differing levels of counter-Sue-ishness to Wakanda on this basis, ranging from making them archetypical "smug Utopians", who think knowing the cure for Cancer makes them better than others, to presenting them as a technologically advanced nation that's still imperfect, having deep social and political problems like any other country. The first Black Panther movie especially interrogated the premise of this nation's existence by pointing out that they stood by while atrocities happened all over the world, including to other black people, and they did nothing about it to protect their own hides. The short-lived "Ultimate Universe" took perhaps the biggest piss on the idea of Wakanda as the "Mary Suetopia" by replacing the "because Vibranium" background with "we reverse-engineered a crashed alien starship", and emphasizing that this didn't make them as powerful as they thought, as they ended up needing the Ultimates (Ultimate Marvel's Avengers) to save their asses when the aliens who lost that ship in the first place came knocking looking for their property.
• Alpha Complex, from Paranoia. Need more be said?

Somewhat Special Cases of "Not Quite Sues"

There are a few situations where a character either (1) isn't really a Sue, even though the accusation gets pointed at them often, (2) is sufficiently clearly a parody or deconstruction that they don't count for the main list, or (3) aren't in any way Sues, but are needed to give some context to something above. This section is for these special cases. Note that characters who veer in or out of Suedom depending on the author or episode go on the main list, as do Sues who audiences actually like (such as Darkseid or Squirrel Girl).

• The Crimson King from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. He's talked up as a big threat, and his plan legitimately threatens the universe; but when confronted, he turns out be a paper tiger, whose chief power was getting so many people and monsters working on one page on his plan to destroy the world, and was otherwise actually rather mediocre compared to them. Given the heavy theme of disappointment in both the series as a whole and the last book of it in particular, this sorta worked on a meta level, but was very, well, disappointing. (For the main reason he's included here, see Darkseid above; the contrast between these two BBEGs gives you a good idea of why a paper tiger BBEG is often felt to be a problem.)

• Griffith, from Berserk, seems a Mary Sue on the surface: he leads the efforts to save Midland and defeat the Kushan invaders while everything goes his way and everyone praises him... but then you remember that he's also a member of the Godhand who's got reality-warping powers handed to him in a handbasket and uses them to manipulate everything and everyone around him to his advantage. Basically, Griffith hacked the game and then began playing on the lowest difficulty, while setting it to Ultra-Nightmare for everyone else. If anything, Griffith is all the common jokes people make about a Mary Sue deconstructed, showing how utterly awful and soulless such a person would actually be. On the other hand, one of his former Warband member, Rickert, saw through his bullshit and bitch slapped him for it even though he wasn't there when Griffith betrayed his comrade. So not everyone is falling for Griffith.
  • That being said, these facts don't change the following: He is portrayed as a tactical genius, yet during all his battles he is using absolutely retarded tactics, but all of them still work, because his high-ranking enemies turn out to be just a bunch of bumbling idiots. Can't push "time manipulation" excuse on this, they are just stupid; He's lost only two times and didn't die the first time, because Zodd had a plan for him and the second time, because Guts didn't want to kill him; The lowest point in his life i.e. a year of torture in the end led him into becoming a member of Godhand and then getting resurrected as "Griffith, but cooler", read "even when he fails, he doesn't"; The only time he had a formidable foe after this, he beat him with a single blow, while everyone else could barely stand against him; The second time he faces same formidable foe, he just bullshits his way out of that fight and creates his promised kingdom out of it. It's like if Superman blew up Darkseid with one punch (that was not even his) and created Paradise planet from his corpse; Despite sacrificing men who sworn to protect him and raping Casca just to get back at Guts, he didn't have any moral downfal afterwards, his character hasn't changed any single bit and everyone, except his ex-buddies (if they wouldn't, that would be too stupid), adore him, even if they know what he's done; Also, Godhand treats him like a messiah and people consider him Flaming Falcon i.e. he is also a chosen one.

• Jonathan, from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Superstar", provides a pretty good case study of the in-universe Mary Sue.

• Joeseph Joestar, though he does have some sueish traits such as being a super-genius who can trick anyone and knows exactly what people are going to say before they say it, alongside having the appearance of a Greek god, is very much not a Sue when you actually get down to it. He is extremely flawed, to the point of being weaker than all of his allies in part two and part three, both physically and stand/hamon wise, is very obviously outclassed by the villains of both respective arcs (Dio being able to easily beat him without even touching him, and Kars being a literal god by the end) and does extremely scummy things, such as cheating on his wife with a Japanese woman, who's race he supposedly hates. His grandson, Jotaro Kujo, on the other hand...

• Momonga/Ainz Ool Gown from Overlord boarders on Mary-Sueish and is the protagonist of an Isekai work, but is also a decent deconstruction of Invincible Villain Sues at the same time. He is transported to a fantasy world as his Lich MMO avatar, along with his Guild Hall and all its NPCs, now alive. He's still a no-life (literally) Japanese salary man, but finds he has lost his humanity and feelings, all the better to pretend to be (and eventually become) the overlord his adoring minions expect. These expectations pressure him to conquer the world with his gamer skills, system knowledge and corporate experience, min-maxing his way to success whilst bullshitting people that he's an evil mastermind. He still has many advantages however in resources, magic and diplomacy (substituting sales pitches for evil monologues, surprisingly easy) compared to all other characters so far. This results in him single-handedly winning wars, having an Empire become a vassal state almost by accident, and annexing a whole town from a neighbouring kingdom to rule over (Word of god is that no other YGGDRASIL players will appear). Being by many definitions OP, the story's drama arises from him not having complete control and knowledge of his minions' actions.
  • Though fanatically loyal, they are constantly guessing his true intentions to try and impress him, misinterpreting his commands, and in some cases outright deceiving him. Two such examples are Ainz's advisor Albedo plotting behind his back to kill other Supreme Beings that he wants alive and unharmed, and Demiurge harvesting human captives to make magical items for their use (Demiurge himself considers humans "animals" and refers to them as such, hence Ainz has never found out). Both are in part because of Ainz's actions, and in any case, he has ordered and done equally terrible things himself.
  • While most of Ainz's female guardians lust after him, even this is deconstructed. Albedo's a succubus, so lust is par the course, and full-force yandere for Ainz because he altered her code in YGGDRASIL to change her from " a slut" to "in love with Momonga" as a joke. Shalltear wants Ainz because he's a walking skeleton and she's a necrophile (she's not to Ainz' taste being a loli vampire; furthermore, she holds her absent YGGDRASIL creator in higher esteem than Ainz), while Aura keeps a lid on her crush (she's a flat-chested teenage elf and wary of jealous reprisals from Albedo and Shalltear). Ultimately, the fact that Ainz is a walking skeleton means he's unable to fulfil their desires or consummate his own.
  • TL:DR: Ainz's skills as a salary man and a competitive gamer don't translate well to politics or world conquest. Without his own gamebreaking powers, his almost as powerful loyal NPCs, his permanent poker face (well, poker skull) and a dose of incompetence from some of the enemy commanders, Ainz's plans wouldn't have worked nearly as well.
  • To give one an idea of just how lousy Ainz is as an actual leader, in an official list made by the author of the best leaders in the series, Ainz is close to dead last.

• The Monkey King, from Journey To The West, if one assumes he isn't a religious figure and thus safe to include in this list, is interesting in that while he's very close to being a Mary Sue, several factors drag him away from the classification:
  1. He's charged with protecting an unworldly monk, along with a horse (actually a shapeshifted dragon, which even the author seems to forget about), a borderline nonentity, and a pig-headed idiot (in both senses of the term, since he's a pig-demon who often lets his selfishness screw the group over). Rescuing them is most of what he does in the main body of the story.
  2. He's repeatedly shown as being outwitted by the Buddha and Guanyin, and is outright curbstomped in combat by some of the many demons they encounter along the journey. While Wukong usually wins in the end, he rarely wins with no setbacks at all (whether that's physical injury, emotional turmoil and angst, or his friends getting kidnapped again) - contrasting heavily with a typical Mary Sue's victories being all but handed to them.
  3. On a related note, he doesn't win everything and anything by himself: for example, during the contest with the Three Immortals, the last task (sitting on top of a pillar for days on end without moving) has to be undertaken by Tripitaka (the monk) specifically because Monkey's impulsive ways and lack of patience render him unsuitable for it; much earlier, he's rendered temporarily blind and has to rely completely on an otherwise neutral Bodhisattva to fight for him when faced with a demon he can't outsmart or outfight. This contrasts heavily with the omni-competence displayed by many Mary Sue characters.
  4. He's pretty heavily flawed as a character, being impatient, reckless, childish, and frequently hot-headed - all of which have actual consequences for the Monkey King (ex.: rashly accepting Buddha's 'jump out of the palm of my hand' challenge, which gets him stuck under a mountain for several centuries; killing a demon disguised as an innocent woman without explaining himself first gets him kicked out of the party by his pacifistic boss; bumrushing a powerful demon nearly gets him killed by the True Fire of Samadhi, forcing him to go to Guanyin for help), with a good portion of the story involving him undergoing character development and overcoming these flaws as opposed to starting out as the pinnacle of morality with zero flaws whatsoever.
  5. If one cares to dip into a religious reading, one can see in his introduction the clear Buddhist message "No matter how awesome you are, you are still trapped in the machinations of Desire and Karma"; alternately, if you don't care for religion, there's also the message "make enough of a nuisance of yourself, and your enemies will eventually slap you down even if it means X" (in the case of the Monkey King, swallowing their pride and asking help from somebody they dislike).
  • TL;DR: Sun Wukong can be viewed as a deconstruction of certain kinds of Mary Sues, before the idea of a "Mary Sue" was even created.

• The Raven Queen is a fairly good example of why "Mary Sue" accusations, unless taken from a Author-Centered or Functional perspective, are somewhat useless. TRQ hits many Mary Sue buttons, and thus is sometimes accused of being a Sue. HOWEVER,:
  • She's never the protagonist, and when she does appear, she's treated the same as any of the other deities in 4e. Accusations of Functional Suedom thus sort of fall flat.
  • While she may hit some Authorial-Centered (or Doylist) definitions of the term, it's probably more appropriate to compare her to just about any other non-monster female character in 4th Edition D&D in this context--while she is obviously designed to attract those who are attracted to a certain kind of woman, so are all the other non-monster females (to quote a famous demotivator, "RPG Artwork: Let's face it, a lot of it is porn. (Pretty odd porn, too).").
  • She is no longer an example at all due to her backstory being completely rewritten in 5th edition to make her fit in with the setting better. She is no longer even a god since her attempt to become one was sabotaged, turning her into a phantom with a craving for knowledge and memories.

• Saitama from One-Punch Man. As the title indicates, he's able to defeat just about any opponent with one punch (with a few exceptions that require two or, rarely, three). While this makes him stronger than most of the "S-Class heroes" (the highest rank in the Hero Association), at the start of the series Saitama's personal life royally sucked: he had to pinch pennies to eat, had no knowledge of the Hero Association until he was notified by others of its existence, and his sheer strength means that his fights are inevitably painfully one-sided and boring for him. Even the arc villains who force him to use his Serious Series techniques will leave him bored, and since nobody knew who he was until recently, credit for his work went to other people. Capping it all off, the superhero name he was given by the association is "Caped Baldy".
  • Just to be clear, the main reason why he's not actually a Sue has to do with the main focus of the series: that Saitama gets no satisfaction from his lopsided victories, and the fact that the World's Strongest Man is something of a pathetic loser.
  • The Monster Association Arc actually served to highlight Saitama's flaws since his knack for getting lost, stuck, or just being late to a fight meant that the Hero Association had to get by a number of very hard fights without his help, which included a battle with a villain who would have wiped out humanity. Even though Saitama is virtually unstoppable, he still can't protect the world on his own.

• Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty, for the first two seasons. When it comes to his (seemingly) limitless ability to invent crazy sci-fi tech and to get himself out of virtually every tough spot, not to mention with getting away with being a colossal jerk to everyone around him, Rick could qualify as an anti-Sue. But his character is far from perfect, and he often falls under a combination of archetype and deconstruction. As a person, he is an older man who’s had a tough break (divorce and the death of a close family member in some parallel universe), and the fact that he has all this tech and that he either can't solve his personal problems or prevent new ones from occurring. Though the fact that he can be funny, the handful of moments of his positive qualities and being a fictional character do contribute to his likability.
  • Again, to be clear: Rick's antics would probably qualify him for the main list under normal circumstances, but the show is very clear on a few points that move him here: First, Rick is an asshole (also a massive nihilist), and not the type you want to be, either (it's almost directly stated that his assholery grows from some pretty grim experiences and knowledge); second, Rick is not somebody you want to be, nor be around; and third, the writers realize that he's both of the above.
  • Season 3 however, ruined this and tried to attempt to drop his despicability, what few weaknesses he had, and just plain made him extremely overpowered. The only reason we haven't moved Rick back to the main list is because, if you look at the production end, it becomes obvious Seasons 1 and 2 were effectively a completely different show from later seasons. The newer seasons have wavered between "Rick is a nigh-unstoppable god" and "Rick is a terrible, broken wreck of a human being who nobody should want to emulate", but seem to be coming down way more firmly on the latter side of things.

• The main casts of Star Trek in the TOS and TNG eras (besides Wesley due to being Roddenberry's self insert and Voyager due to poor writing all around)--in particular, James T. Kirk when not written by William Shatner-- provide a good reference line for Suedom. Although they are usually right by authorial fiat, there are several points that point the other way from Suedom:
  1. They are also usually allowed to be wrong about an issue, at least initially (and rarely, but still often enough to be worth mentioning, all the way to the end of the story).
  2. The fact that the focus is usually on the scenario presented, rather then the perfectness of the characters.
  3. They all have character flaws (Kirk's "No Such Thing As A No Win Situation" attitude is presented as something that could get him and his crew killed one day, for a notable example.)
  4. They are not omni-competent, even within their field -- Kirk has canonically been outmaneuvered multiple times.
  5. Most importantly, the writing is usually of sufficient quality to not make their perfectness an issue (except, in Kirk's case, for works written by William Shatner).
  6. Notably, as part of #2 and #5, there is no "right" solution to many of the situations beyond "survival"; the audience is usually allowed to draw its own conclusions about the morality of the situation, whereas the author of a Sue typically drives home in heavy-handed fashion that X is definitely the morally correct course of action.
  • Combined, these points make them a good reference line for "hyper-competent" characters: Beyond here may lie Suedom.
    • The creators of DS9 succeeded in toning down the Mary Sue factor a bit. This was a necessity when one of the premises of the series was energy based aliens who live in a wormhole who know little to nothing of meatbag values and have no concept of time. The were even given a weakness too. The Prophets also did some highly fucked up shit themselves(its a long list) and had to be convinced to help out the main cast. Even when the Alpha Quadrant was being invaded by an empire that /pol/ wishes they were. The Dominion themselves are a deconstruction of pre-turn of the millennium Imperium of Man and the Galactic Empire. Unfortunately post Voyager Star Trek went Transwarp speed in the other direction and the franchise had to be rebooted. Twice.

• At first glance, Tsukiko from Order of the Stick seems like a textbook Mary Sue, given the LONG list of Mary Sue boxes she ticks: Heterochromatic eyes, great beauty, skimpy clothing, unusually skilled for her young age, Japanese name meaning "moon child", oppressed by a stuck-up society not understanding her greatness etc. But in reality, Rich Burlew wrote her as a satire and deconstruction of the Mary Sue archetype and the mindset that often creates such characters. Listing them off:
  1. The reason she was "oppressed by society"? Azure City's legal system threw her in jail for literal corpsefucking. Yes, she's a necrophile, and it's treated as being just as gross as it is IRL, even by other villains.
  2. Great beauty? Nobody cares, and it doesn't make her a good person by default.
  3. Sees good in the bad guys that nobody else does? It's based on deliberately ridiculous logic that is completely wrong anyway. (To be exact, she holds the view that the living are jerks, and the undead are the opposite of the living, ergo the undead must be good people; the batshit insanity of this is called out for what it is.) Also, she thinks that Xykon is some kind of Edward Cullen type-guy, as opposed to the Chaotic Evil Lich Sorcerer he actually is.
  4. A bad guy becomes a complete dumbass to accommodate her genius? Nope, Redcloak only let her have her way so his own, far more subtle machinations could avoid having attention drawn to them; when she forces his hand, he gladly demonstrates to her that she was completely outclassed by him the whole time.
  5. The bad guy gets effortlessly beaten by her because of her skills? Ha ha ha -- hell no. When she confronted him, Redcloak casually killed her in deliciously karmic fashion by effortlessly dominating her Wights (simultaneously her surrogate children, minions and lovers), removing her enchanted anti-level-draining ring, and then ordering them to devour their creator as he delivered a scathing "You suck!" speech to her about how undead are not people, just complex weapons; her thinking otherwise doesn't make it so and if she ever thought he was powerless before her, she was dead wrong.
  6. Just to really drive home the point: for all her big talk and all her supposed greatness, nobody on Team Evil gives a damn when Redcloak quietly ganks her (except the Monster in the Darkness, but they're the resident softie of the team) and she's swiftly forgotten about.
  • TL;DR version: Tsukiko is a parody and deconstruction of a Sue, who is shown to be objectively deluded about everything and suffers actual consequences for her actions.