The Toxic Avenger

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He's a hideously deformed creature of super-human size and strength!

"Hohoho, no ticky, no washy!" —Toxie, after shoving an old lady into a washing machine.

Melvin the Mop Boy. A wimp, 98 pounds of solid nerd, got toxic waste in his face (among other places) when he was forced out of a second story window at the Tromaville Gym.

Now he's the Toxic Avenger, a Hideously Deformed Creature Of Superhuman Size And Strength. After hooking up with a blind, blonde female accordion player, he proceeds to beat up the baddies (and boy are they bad) in the most gore-tastic ways possible.

Certainly the most well-known film made by Troma Entertainment, a studio known for films with plots that are freakin' bananas, as this series certainly is. Followed by three (or only one) sequels and an animated series. There's also a musical.

Tropes used in The Toxic Avenger include:

• Almighty Janitor: Subverted; Melvin was actually a rather ordinary janitor, until he became a hideously deformed (yet environmentally informed) mutant with Super Strength and became an Anti Hero.
• An Arm and a Leg: Toxie rips a guy's arm off in the first film. The actor only had one arm to begin with (you can tell because he never uses his right arm).
• And Your Little Dog, Too: The Corrupt Corporate Executive's Hench-lady gives this to Toxie after she receives a kick to the crotch... by his blind girlfriend, no less!
• Animated Adaptation: the kid-friendly "Toxic Crusaders".
• Asshole Victim: Everyone Toxie kills is a cruel sadist who had it coming.
• Author Filibuster: The Last Temptation of Toxie is pretty much entirely an anti-corporation Author Filibuster. The head of the Apocalypse Corporation is literally The Devil.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Inverted; Toxie is incredibly ugly, but he's the hero.
  • Downplayed in the animated adaptation, where the bad guys are pretty ugly too.
• Blind and the Beast: Though strangely when she can see again, she thinks Toxie is the sexiest man alive, and that normal people are hideous.
• B-Movie: As per Troma's specialty.
• Body Horror: Melvin turning into Toxie, for one.
  • And Toxie turning back into Melvin in the third film.
• Bring My Brown Pants: The fourth movie begins with Toxie fighting a band of terrorists calling themselves "The Diaper Mafia". Those diapers get used. Yes.
• Canon Discontinuity: At the beginning of the fourth movie, a formal apology is given for the previous two sequels.
  • For some reason, in Part IV Melvin's last name is still Junko (it was Ferd in the original), and his mother is completely out of the picture. This is never explained.
    • Sarah's last name is revealed to be Junko in Part IV. Melvin may have acquired his last name through Sarah.
      • The idea to apologize for II & III in IV was the editors' idea. If Lloyd Kaufman's first book is any indication, Uncle Lloydie has a rather soft spot for III. See also the Lighter and Softer entry on this page.
• Creator Cameo: Kaufman has a cameo in the second movie (uncredited) as a Sumo wrestler.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Toxic Avenger tends to do this to his victims, but they always have it coming.
• Dawson Casting: Tito and Sweetie Honey in part 4 are supposed to be 13. Riiiiight.
  • One of Toxie's victims in the first film is a man who's pimping out a twelve-year-old girl. If she's twelve, this website is the Gutenberg Project.
• Deal with the Devil: Toxie does this in the third movie to get money for Claire's surgery; pulls a Faustian Rebellion about halfway through.
• Detect Evil: Toxie has an innate ability to sense evildoers.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Lampshaded in Citizen Toxie:

"This is an American-made car: every time they flip 25 feet into the air and crash down, they blow up. Let's get out of here!"

• • Near the end of part 2, two cars slam into eachother frontally. They explode violently. TWICE.
• Evil Twin: The Noxious Offender a.k.a. Noxie and Evil Kabukiman from part IV.
• Fan Disservice: Played straight and averted. Obviously, Toxie having sex with a beautiful(albeit blind) woman, but averted in that this is one of the few of Lloyd Kaufman's movies that doesn't feature the hyper-skinny "women" Lloyd seems to like so much. Also, the fourth movie has a very buxom chick with blue hair making out with Toxie's wife. We'd say It Makes Sense in Context, but really, it makes sense because it's a Troma movie.
• Gorn: Calling it Gorn doesn't even begin to describe it. Then again, what do you expect from a Troma film?
• Hey, It's That Guy!: The fourth movie is full of cameos, including Stan Lee, Corey Feldman, and Lemmy. Also, Ron Jeremy plays the mayor.
  • Part II features an appearance by Go Nagai. Yes, that Go Nagai.
    • Also Michael Jai White in a mobster suit, beating up homeless people with French bread. A bystander tries to object and ends up taking a picture perfect spin kick to the mouth.
  • Marissa Tomei appears onscreen for about 5 seconds in the 1st film, before she became famous.
• Humiliation Conga: One of these ends with Melvin going out the window and taking a swan dive into the barrel of toxic waste.
• Improbable Weapon User: Melvin's Weapon of Choice is... a mop.
• In Love with Your Carnage: The female villains in the first film are sexually excited by blood and carnage by their boyfriend's turning pedestrians into roadkill... and taking photos of it afterward! Yeah, it's that kind of movie.
• Jerkass: At the end of the first movie, the crowd cheers when the mayor gets disemboweled.
• Joisey: Toxie is the First Superhero from New Jersey!
• Kick the Dog: In the first movie, the villains shoot a blind girl's seeing-eye dog. This remains the most complained-about scene in Troma history.
• Large Ham: Some of the characters in the series. Bozo in the first movie is probably the most infamous example.
• Lighter and Softer: Parts II and III were deliberately less graphic than the first film, yet the MPAA still removed a bit of stuff compared to the director's cuts.
  • The animated children's series had this trope in spades.
• Mega Corp: Apocalypse Inc. Yeah, they don't even try to hide it.
• Mood Whiplash: The movie moves from a romance scene straight into a dark horror scene, where the scary monster is the same person who was just in the romance.
• Now What?: Subverted; in the second movie, Toxie has pretty much gotten rid of all the crime in Tromaville and hardly knows what to do now, until Claire gets him a job at the Tromaville Center for the Blind. Unfortunately, on his first day there, a bunch of new villains show up...
  • Happens again in the third movie, leading to Toxie making a rather regrettable deal with the villain.
• The Other Marty: John Altamura, the original actor that was hired to play Toxie in the second and third films, was fired halfway through filming due to an alleged case of Small Name, Big Ego. Because they couldn't afford to re-shoot the footage, they just had his stunt double, Ron Fazio play Toxie for the rest of the shoot. In a rare case of this trope being acknowledged, both men were credited as Toxie in the finished films.
• Politically-Incorrect Villain: Among the goofy villains Toxie fights in the second movie are a bunch of KKK goons.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: Toxie's leitmotif in the first film is "Night on Bald Mountain".
• Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner/Bond One-Liner: Toxie is one of the all time masters of the bon mote, up there with James Bond, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Freddy Krueger, and Ash Williams.
• Recycled: the Series: The cartoon spinoff, Toxic Crusaders. Replaced all the R-rated elements with jokes and ridiculousness, and, the fact it was and will be a Troma production, it actually kinda works.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Toxie battles a pair of henchmen in Part 2 dressed up like two Oni, complete with tiger-pattern loin cloths (though one is more green than blue)
  • Fridge Brilliance: In the Far East, "blue" and "green" tend to be treated as the same colour. So it's not that much of an issue.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Practically Tito's catchphrase.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: The Toxic Avenger 2 takes place in Japan.
• Self-Deprecation: The third movie opens with goons from Apocalypse Inc holding up a video store and demanding that people watch their movies instead of the ones produced by MGM, Warner Bros., and... Troma
• Sex Slave: What the villains in the first movie are involved in; to drive in how scummy they are, most of their victims are teenagers.
• Shout-Out: Part IV references The Wizard of Oz numerous times.

Toxie: "I don't think we're in Tromaville anymore, Toto." Tito: "Tito! My name is Tito!"

• • At one point, the Noxious Offender gets a nosebleed. Cue him muttering "noseblood" and dropping a snowglobe. Then again, since the movie is titled "Citizen Toxie", it would be odd not to have a Citizen Kane reference.
• Sissy Villain: A lot of crooks in this franchise dress like gimps.
• Slapstick Knows No Gender: Toxie's attacks on female criminals tend to fit this Trope; he holds Wanda's behind against the heater in a spa, and then stalks Julie into the basement, cornering her and then cutting off her hair!
• Spank the Cutie: Averted to one of the villainess' bad babes who tried to rape and brutalize Toxie's girlfriend. Toxie gives the scarlet woman an equally red behind!
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Muffled 80's pop plays while the villains run down an innocent young boy for fun and back the car up over his head, crushing it completely. They then proceed to get out of the car and the girls take pictures of the incident for future use.
  • Part II uses an arrangement of Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" during the first fight scene and during the climax.
• Stylistic Suck: The Toxic Avenger's voice is so badly dubbed it becomes absolutely hilarious.
• Too Soon: Awesomely averted. Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV was released in the States shortly after 9/11. While most films underwent editing to remove images of the Trade Center, Citizen Toxie didn't. It received a standing ovation from a New York audience for this.
• Two-Part Trilogy: The second and third films were originally shot together all as one film. But it was so freakishly long that they divided the movie in half during post production.
  • Averted with the fourth movie, which was thrown in a decade or so after the previous films.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Toxie's lover Claire is a buxom blonde bombshell; she's is blind, but after her disability is cured, she still thinks Toxie is some sort of sex god.
• Victory Is Boring: The second movie starts with Toxie having cleared out all the criminals in Tromaville and making it a safe place again, but he has no idea what to do now. Claire gets him a job at the Tromaville Center for the Blind... and then new villains start to show up...
• Villainous Crossdresser: Nipples.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Subverted; Tromaville is a fictional town, but it is most definitely in New Jersey.
• Working Title: The Monster Hero, which is why the line gets thrown around so much in the first movie - it was supposed to be a Title Drop.