Badass of the Week

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"....so if you give a crap feel free to check back in next week to satisfy your insatiable desire to read about grown people punching each other in the mouth or beating each other about the head and neck in a most furious manner."

Badass Of the Week (warning! NSFW!) is a website created by "Amazing Ben Thompson" in 2004, that exists primarily to provide weekly profiles of many and sundry badasses. The various badasses covered range from fictional characters such as Darth Vader, the Punisher, and Kefka to Real Life badasses such as Simo Häyhä, Saladin, and Steve Irwin, to the outright bizarre, such as this huge-ass beetle, Australia, the S&W .500 Magnum, and the AGGRO CRAG (aka the AGGRESSIVE ROCK). The exact criteria for badassery vary, ranging from individual acts of ordinary heroism to face-melting acts of blind bravery and violence. Of course, being a face-crushing, scrotum stomping killing machine isn't required for inclusion, as the Manly Tears-inducing article on Paul Rusesabagina proves.

Part of the humor of the site comes from its surprising historical accuracy used in conjunction with references to various historical figures in vulgar, irreverent language. An example of the former regarding the great Sikh hero Baba Deep Singh:

This crazy-ass bastard is one of the most hardcore freedom fighters to ever live, and a dude so extreme balls-out in his insatiable quest for vengeance that something as inconsequentially-trivial as being fucking decapitated couldn't stop him from crushing his enemies to death with his nutsack.

Another example is the Japanese warrior monk Saito Musashibo Benkei:

Benkei went out to the drawbridge leading towards the castle, clenched his naginata in his fists, and dared the army on the other side to fucking fuck with him. A couple punk-ass bitches thought they wanted a piece of SMB, but Benkei slapped the fail out of them with the blunt end of his bladed axe, knocking their brains out and sending crumpled remains splashing into the moat.

Or Saint Michael the Archangel:

So one day God and everybody are chilling out and this fucking insane-o motherfucking demon busts through the pearly gates ready to kick fucking asses and making the lesser angels (the fat kids and Victoria Secret models) piss themselves.

Holy shit everybody thinks they're totally fucked because look at this motherfucker. He's a fucking huge red monster with gleaming talons and spikes covering one-third of his body and glowing eyes and he looks PISSED. But instead of handing over St. Peter's keys like some kind of two-dollar pussy carjacking victim, God takes one look at this thing and is just like, "Mike, show this fucking douchebag the door". The Archangel Michael calmly nods his head, slowly takes the cigarette out of his mouth and flicks it onto the floor, cracks his knuckles and confidently strides towards Lucifer.

The site also includes a fan mail section and a series of random articles the site's writer decided to throw in, such as why you need to convert to Norse religion, and how to go about this.

Also, Ben recently wrote a book celebrating his love of scrotum crushing badasses, called BADASS: The Book, and is recommended reading for anyone who just can't get enough of of those who Dare to Be Badass!

Also, BADASS: The Book now has BADASS: The Book: the Trailer.

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Tropes exhibited THAT PUNCH YOU IN THE SCROTUM by this site include:

• Ace Pilot
  • Hiromichi Shinohara
  • Hans-Ulrich Rudel - the most decorated World War II pilot, and who flew 2,500 combat missions - more than any other pilot in history.
  • Joe Foss
• Author Appeal (Badasses!)
• Action Girl: Nearly any female profiled will definitely count.
  • Katie Brownell
  • Irina Sebrova - So much so that she broke down in tears after her plane got shot down one night, for the sole reason that for the rest of the night..... she couldn't kill anymore Nazis!
  • Hervor
  • Flora Sandes
  • Rukhsana Kauser - Made even better by the fact that she had never touched a rifle in her life and actually expected to die.
  • Anna Yegorova
  • Sarah Connor
  • Commander Shepard.
• Amazon Brigade: The White Tights
• Authority Equals Asskicking
  • Zeus
• Asskicking Equals Authority
  • Al Capone - Who also had an epic rivalry with fellow badass Eliot Ness
  • Edward Low
• Author Catchphrase: Badasses described as going progressively crazier will be described as losing his or her "already-tenuous grip on his/her sanity."
• Awesome Aussie:
  • The country itself
  • The Australian Light Horse
  • Ned Kelly
  • Steve Irwin
• Awesome but Practical: Just about everyone on the list.
• Awesome McCoolname
  • Finn McCool
  • Finn McCool's best friend Cuchulainn--translated, his name is "The Hound of Culann."
  • Wolf the Quarrelsome
  • Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - whose name quite literally translates into "Mustafa the Perfect, Father of the Turks." Yes, this guy was so badass that he was literally dubbed "perfect" by his instructors.
  • Max Hardberger. The name alone qualifies him as awesome, but that fact that this guy's job is to essentially serve as a maritime repo man whose specialty is in stealing ships back from pirates, it just pushes it to a whole new level.
• Badass: No shit, Sherlock.
• Badass Abnormal
  • Kefka - Go ahead, laugh at his clownish looks. He'll just turn into an overpowered deity and waste you like he epically devastated an entire planet!
  • Darth Vader - How many badasses do you know who can choke the shit out of you over a camera phone?
  • Wolverine - The Tv Tropes servers would implode from listing all the examples of the faces this guy wrecked.
• Badass Army
  • The 300 Spartans
  • The Australian Light Horse
  • The Winged Hussars
  • The British Light Brigade
  • SEAL Team Six
• Badass Beard
  • Fredrick Barbarossa
  • The aforementioned Max Hardberger.
• Badass Bookworm:
  • George Orwell
  • Alexander Solzhenitsyn
  • Aeschylus
  • Sir Richard Francis Burton
  • Marie Curie
  • Leonardo Da Vinci -This man was able to kill people with a sniper rifle......before they were even invented yet!
  • Nikola Tesla
  • Buzz Aldrin - If strapping a rocket to your ass and braving deep space isn't an act of sheer balls, then epically jacking some asshole in the face after he calls you a liar and threatens your daughter should count.
  • Jack McCoy
  • Zahir-ud-din Mohammad Babur
• Badass Bystander
  • Bishnu Shresta.
• Badass Creed - The Winged Hussars above had this: Kill First, Calculate Later.
• Badass Israeli - Jonathan Netanyahu
• Badass Longcoat
  • Leonid Rogozov - This man did life saving surgery on himself in sub freezing weather with a flashlight, intuition, and a knife, knowing the smallest mistake would kill him. He did it anyway and lived to tell about it!
• Badass Normal:
  • Diomedes
  • Han Solo,
  • The Punisher
  • Odysseus
  • Beowulf
  • Conan of Cimmeria
  • Perseus
  • Race Bannon
  • Lennie Briscoe
  • Jackie Chan
  • Ivan Drago
  • Lu Bu
  • Bruce Lee
  • Miyamoto Mushashi
  • Bhanbhagta Gurung
  • Simo Häyhä (He was a farmer before the war)
• Badass Grandpa
  • Tom Wanyandie - A Papa Wolf who kicked the ass of a literal Mama Bear!
  • Daniel Mmburugu
  • Yang Youde
  • Samuel Whittemore - This man was kicking ass for the British and later the colonies well into his eighties, survived being shot in the face and being bayonetted thirteen times, and lived to the ripe old age of 98.
• Badass Moustache
  • John B. Armstrong
  • Fridtjof Nansen - This man made Iceland's most hellish weather his bitch.
• Badass Pacifist:
  • Paul Rusesabagina
  • Ryan Cooper
  • Sergeant Alvin York
  • Aki Ra - Uses little more than a pipe wrench and balls the size of small planets to disarm absurdly lethal anti personnel landmines.
• Badass Spaniard - El Cid
• BFG The BFG-9000 Trope Namer.
• Boldly Coming: Commander Shepard

This is the first thing that pops up when you run a Google Image Search for "space babes", but, honestly, this weird alien space eyeball tentacle-monster also happens to be a good visual representation of Commander Shepherd's military career – drifting around in outer space groping a hot babe with his appendages while random dudes shoot him in the face with rockets at close range without doing any noticeable damage.

• Bow Ties Are Cool: Paul Rusesabagina isn't afraid to rock the bowtie.
• Catch Phrase: "Balls-out" appears often, sometimes multiple times in a single article. Even in the articles about women. Even in the article about the cow.
• Charles Atlas Superpower
  • Mas Oyama
• Cincinnatus - Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. Trope Namer.
• Cluster F-Bomb
• Cold Sniper
  • Simo Häyhä - Called The White Death by the Russians during the Winter War for headshotting over 500 of their men with a non-scoped Mosin Nagant.
  • Vasily Zaitsev - This man set up a sniper school in the middle of Stalingrad while the Germans were still invading, taught his students how to kill tons of soldiers, while notching over 200 kills himself!
  • Lyudmila Pavilchenko
  • Corporal Craig Harrison
  • Carlos Hathcock
  • Seal Team Six gets mentioned for their sniping three Somali pirates with synchronized sniper shots.
  • The White Tights
• Colonel Badass
  • Lewis Millet - Probably one of the few badasses who quit his own army at one point........BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T BEING BADASSED ENOUGH!
  • Lothar von Arnauld - a Worthy Opponent who always followed the rules of warfare and still managed to become the most successful submarine commander of World War I.
• Cowboy Cop
  • Detective Elliot Stabler
  • Bass Reeves - who also was Immune to Bullets.
  • Eliot Ness - of the Lawful Good type.
• Crazy Awesome
  • JACK. CHURCHILL. - His nickname was even "Mad Jack". And, considering this man fought World War II with a claymore and a longbow and was more effective than the guys using weapons made for that time, we can all agree it was crazy......and fucking awesome!!!!
  • Steve Irwin
  • Mick Foley - Who was so Made of Iron he survived being flung over 20 feet to the ground from the top of a steel cage , on his back.....TWICE...... AND WALKED AWAY UNDER HIS OWN POWER WHEN IT WAS OVER!
  • Chuck Yeager (The resident Trope Namer for guys who look at death and don't even flinch)
  • Beck Wethers
  • Stephen Colbert
  • Ned Kelly - the picture alone proves just how ridiculously awesome he was.
• Crazy Prepared
  • Chandragupta Maurya
• Crazy Survivalist
  • Bear Grylls
  • Juliane Koepcke
  • Yogender Singh Yadav
  • Aron Ralston
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass
  • Molly The Cow
  • Charles Upham
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Chronicles the CMOAs of pretty much everyone it details.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: Nearly every entry has hilariously overblown descriptions of the badasses in question.
• Dare to Be Badass
  • Wesley Autry
  • Rukhsana Kauser, who managed to gun down the most wanted terrorist in India when he started beating on her father and tried to rape her.
  • Yang Youde, a rural Chinese farmer whose response to a Mega Corp's attempt to steal his land was to build homemade artillery and blast the company's gang of club-wielding enforcers in a battle straight out of the wildest tower defense games.
  • Ron Woods
  • Hideaki Akaiwa, when faced with a tsunami that flooded his town, chose to don a suit of SCUBA gear and swim through the black, nighttime, debris-strewn waters to rescue his wife, and then went back in to save his mother, and now works as a one-man search-and-rescue unit, combing the disaster zone for others in need of help.
  • Anthony Omari - When machete-wielding thieves broke into the Kenyan orphanage he ran, he ran them off by chucking a hammer into their faces. When they came back the next night for payback, he dished out even more hammer-related injuries, while taking a severe wound to the face. Not that it stopped him from kicking their asses.
• Death World
  • Australia
• Determinator
  • Marcus Luttrell
  • Hiroo Onada, who fought World War II longer than most people would consider sane.
  • Baba Deep Singh, who decided a trivial thing like being decapitated was not going to stop him from kicking ass.
  • Fazal Din
  • Giuseppe Garibaldi
  • Che Guevara
  • Jason Vorhees
  • Baron Frederick von der Trenck
  • Buck Shelford, a New Zealand rugby player who quite literally had his testicles torn open in the middle of a game, and kept on playing.
  • Daniel Inouye
  • Samuel Whittemore, who ambushed an entire British regiment and killed three men before the rest of the regiment shot and bayonetted him. He survived and lived to the age of 98.
• Dying Moment of Awesome
  • Torii Mototada
  • Don Alejo Garza Tamez
• Eldritch Abomination - The Kraken
• Everything's Worse with Bears (Voytek the Soldier Bear) - If you were a Nazi, you were pretty much fucked.
• Everything's Better with Princesses - At least, when she's a Lady of War who got there by raising a massive rebel army against an incompetent ruler and curb-stomping both the army and the numerous other rebel groups trying for the throne.
• Everything's Better with Samurai
  • Tomoe Gozen - Who, considering she was the only female samurai, is pretty damn impressive!
• Evil Overlord
  • Caterina Sforza
  • Ranavalona The Cruel
  • Vlad The Impaler - The ORIGINAL Dracula, and the walking embodiment of Nightmare Fuel.
• Eyepatch of Power
  • Leo Major - This man killed an entire town worth of soldiers in ONE Night!
    • And, his take on how he did: I fought the war with only one eye, and I did pretty good!
  • Jan Zizka. Notable that he kept leading his armies after the eyepatch became redundant, on account of becoming completely blind.
• Four-Star Badass
  • Viriathus
  • Toyotomi Hideyoshi
  • Alp Arslan
  • Tomyris
  • Napoleon Bonaparte - This man was the ultimate subversion of Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys.
  • Ramses II
  • Xenophon
  • The Surena
  • Alaric The Bold - Who, despite being a Visigoth barbarian, was also a very clever Magnificent Bastard)
  • Khalid Bin Walid - Whom the Prophet Muhammmad dubbed "The Sword of Allah"!
  • Charles Martel (His Latin surname was "Martellus")
  • William The Conquerer
  • Harald Hadrada - his surname means "hardass"
  • El Cid Campeador (Possibly the only badass so badass, he scared the shit out of his enemies even after he was literally dead)
  • Vlad The Impaler
  • Peter The Great
  • Horatio Nelson (Called "Britannia's God Of War" by Lord Byron for a reason)
  • Saladin
  • George Washington
  • The Duke of Wellington
  • Zachary Taylor
  • George S. Patton
  • Chesty Puller - The most Badass US Marine commander the world has ever seen.
  • Alexander the Great
  • Andrew Jackson - Andrew Jackson, the man who survived more duels and bullets than should be realistically possible, and still kept kicking ass!
  • Saint Michael the Archangel
  • General Zod- Trope Namer for Kneel Before Zod.
  • Cassius Scavea
  • Julius Caesar
  • Theodore Roosovelt - This wasn't a man, he was a walking Chuck Norris meme!
  • Winston Churchill - Served as a British battalion commander in World War I and as Prime Minister of Great Britain in World War II.
  • Akbar The Great
  • Ali ibn Abi Talib
  • Hayreddin Barbarossa
  • Genghis Khan - Was originally named Temujin, which means Made of Iron
  • Tamerlane - Actually was called "Timur The Lame", but he's called Tamerlane because he might have been a little gimpy, but he sure as hell wasn't lame.
  • Attila the Hun
  • Darius the Great
  • Hannibal Barca
  • Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (So badass he has a monument dedicated to him in the capital of Australia, a former enemy)
  • Princess Pingyang.
• Gadgeteer Genius
  • Angus Macguyver
• Handicapped Badass
  • Baldwin IV of Jerusalem
• Hell: Australia
• Heroic Dog: Sergeant Stubby The War Dog
• Heroic Sacrifice
  • Jonathan Netanyahu
  • Gary Gordan and Randall Shughart.
• Hilarious in Hindsight (The article on the Horsemen of the Apocalypse is extra-funny now that Darksiders, a game where you play the Horseman of War is out. The description for him is amazingly fitting).
  • Commander Shepard is portrayed in game as being in Badass Weekly. The site responded upon finding out about this by playing through the trilogy then writing Shepard up to be one of the biggest badasses on the whole site.
• Historical Hero Upgrade
• Hold the Line
  • The 21 Sikhs, a single unit of twenty-one Sikh soldiers holding a small fortress outpost on the Indian border against a force of invading tribesmen that numbered over twenty thousand. They managed to hold for most of a day, while ounumbered 500:1 until the British could organize a counterattack. While all of them were wiped out, no one doubts the size or sturdiness of their balls, especially as every single one of them volunteered to stay and fight. When word of their actions reached the British Parliament, it received a standing ovation from the entire British government.
• Holy Shit Quotient
• Humongous Mecha
  • Optimus Prime
• Improvised Weapon: The entire article on home defense pretty much hits every single permutation of improvised weaponry.
• Jerkass
  • Alcibiades
• Killer Rabbit: No prizes for guessing.
  • The Honey Badger
    • On the subject of the African Honey Badger: But the Honey Badger doesn't give a crap – he comes across a puff adder that is eating a rat, and his first instinct is to run up, grab the rat out of the snake's mouth, carry it a few feet away, and then eat the rat right in front of the snake just to show the adder that he's a bitch. After eating the stolen meal, the Badger than decides, "Screw it, now I'm going to eat this damn snake too". This really takes being an asshole to another level, which is something I can appreciate. The adder and the Ratel fight, and the Honey Badger kills the viper, but not before being bitten in the face and pumped full of enough venom to kill a creature three times its size. The Badger succumbs to the poison, falls unconscious, but then – amazingly – somehow comes back to life and continues devouring the already-half-eaten snake.
    • Honey Badger don't give a shit.
• Kneel Before Zod
  • General Zod, The Trope Namer
• Lady of War
  • Matilda of Canosa
  • Agustina de Aragon
  • Joan Of Arc
  • Isabella Of France
  • Mai Bhago
  • Catherine Sforza
  • Rani Lakshmibai
  • Princess Pingyang
  • Shepard.
• Large Ham: The entire entry for THE AGGRO CRAG.
• Memetic Badass
  • John Wayne
  • A number of the articles may include phrases that seem to refer to the trope with outlandish deeds actually being performed by the subject in question or just some flavourful Testosterone Poisoning humour. A notable example is that the Battle of the Bulge was presumedly named after 'Lenny Funk's raging kill-boner'.
• Magnificent Bastard /Magnificent Bitch
  • Juan Pujol Garcia
  • Augustus Caesar
  • Erwin Rommel
  • Rupert Murdoch
  • Julia Aggripina
• Manly Tears (The story of Paul Rusesabagina will induce these)
  • As will the article on Steve Irwin.
• Minored in Asskicking
  • Thor Heyerdahl
• Mugging the Monster
  • Bishnu Shrestha. This retired Gurkha (which should say everything you need to know about how badass he is) was returning home on a train when forty gangsters boarded it, robbed the people on board, and tried to rape a girl. Bishnu taught them the error of their ways in a storm of blood-spraying violence, killing three men and disabling eight more with just his kukri before the rest ran for the hills.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Wolf the Quarrelsome's article includes a 300 word paragraph analysing the meaning of the name.
• Never Mess with Granny
  • Jennifer Musa
• One-Man Army
  • Henry Lincoln Johnson
  • Peter Franciso (and was called this trope by name by Four-Star Badass George Washington)
  • Samson
  • Audie Murphy
  • Zvika Greengold
  • Captain Michael Wittman
  • Sergeant Dan Daly
  • Leonard A. Funk
  • Captain Johnathan R. Davis: One prospector, two revolvers, one bigass bowie knife, and the most awesome mutton chops ever, versus eleven heavily-armed bandits. Guess who wins.
  • Simo Häyhä So much so that the Soviets actually ordered artillery bombardments just for the express purpose to try and kill him. They failed.
  • Lachiman Gurung
  • Dipprasad Pun
• Over and Under the Top: The site as a whole is full of loud hyperbole, which causes the solemn narrative of the last stand of Shugart and Gordon stand out even more.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Tom Wanyandie (an elderly Native American man who fought off a literal Mama Bear to protect his son)
• Pirate:
  • Edward Low
  • Blackbeard
  • Again, Cuchulainn.
• Pirate Girl
  • Anne Bonny
  • Mary Read
• Rasputinian Death
  • Grigoriy Rasputin, the Trope Namer
• Rated "M" for Manly
• Redemption Equals Death
  • Tlahuicole
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum
• Refuge in Audacity (Many of the Badass events depicted are more or less made of this)
  • Honda Tadakatsu won a battle where he was outnumbered 60-1 by openly attacking the enemy army. The opposing general was so impressed at Tadakatsu's balls that he acknowledged his badassery by withdrawing and conceding without any blood being spilled.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge
  • Marvin Heemeyer - Who did it with the KILLDOZER!
    • So Granby, how do you like him now?
  • Justinian II (ran on this)
• Samuel L. Jackson
  • Jules Winnfield
• Samurai
  • Yagyu Jubei Mitsuyoshi
  • Mushashi Miyamoto
• Scaled Up: TITANOBOA
• Serial Killer
  • Elizabeth Bathory
• Shout-Out: Got one in Mass Effect 2--a character mentions the publication "Badass Weekly".
• So Bad It's Good: Pretty much everything regarding Starship Troopers.
• Sobriquet
  • Manfred von Richthofen
  • Lydia Litvyak, the "White Rose of Stalingrad"
• Sophisticated As Hell
• Shrouded in Myth
  • Wolf the Quarrelsome
• Tank Goodness: The Panther Tank
• Testosterone Poisoning: A website so manly it'll make hair grow on your chest, even if you're a woman.
  • Thanos
  • Kratos- "Power", as described by the Greeks.
• Trademark Favorite Food (for true Badasses)
  • Beef Jerky
• Tranquil Fury
  • Susan Kuhnhausen
• Unperson: Damnatio Memoriae
• Writers Cannot Do Math: "killing him and six of his friends" means that the event killed 7 people (6+1=7), however the event only killed 6 people. http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=4116936037
• X Meets Y: Appropriately, to describe Wolverineerine:

Basically, Wolverine is what you would get if you combined a hockey enforcer, a rabid animal, and a wood chipper.

• You Shall Not Pass:
  • The Viking At Stamford Bridge
  • Saito Musashibo Benkei - This man was told to defend his lord's castle, and he died standing up and refused to fall to the ground even after death and more arrows wounds than anyone could possibly withstand. Whether, this is insane or not, one thing is clear: he followed his orders until death, just like he was supposed to.
  • Juan Pajota - Philippine guerrilla leader during WW 2. As Cpt. Robert Prince of 6th Ranger Battalion, US Army put it: "The Guerrillas were our flanking protection at the Cabu River, which was no more than a mile from the camp... there was a sizable force of Japanese, but Pajota and his men just killed everything in sight that came up that river and across the bridge. They were the ones that kept this thing from being a tough deal for us."