Shane McMahon
Shane Brandon McMahon is the eldest of Vince McMahon's children, and like his sister, Stephanie, has been heavily involved with Professional Wrestling ever since young adulthood. He spent over twenty years with WWE, working his way up from ring crew to referee to wrestler to GM-figure. He is one of the only fourth-generation wrestlers, and was the former head of Global Media for WWE before leaving in early 2010 to become the CEO of an Asian internet company. He returned to the WWE in 2016.
Shane McMahon provides examples of the following tropes:
- Action Survivor
- Badass Family: The McMahons.
- Big Screwed-Up Family: What they tend toward in-character.
- Badass Normal: The son of the boss who can hold his own in the ring against trained wrestlers, and sometimes even win? Yeah, he qualifies.
- Brother-Sister Team: With Stephanie as owner of WCW during the Alliance storyline.
- Calling the Old Man Out: To Vince if they're not on the same side.
- The Cameo: Has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it part in the film Rollerball. He's the CEO Paul Heyman's character says hello to when coming into the arena for the first time.
- Has made a lot of these at recent PGA championships; his company is a major supporter of certain PGA golfers.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: When he's a heel.
- Dance Battler: One of his signature taunts - which he freely admits he stole from Muhammad Ali - is dancing and weaving from side to side, swinging his arms, and then punching whoever he's fighting in the face. The dance, which he does during his entrance as well, has been dubbed "The Shane-O Shuffle".
- Deadpan Snarker: Shane doesn't even need to talk to get this aspect across. His utterly deadpan reaction to Vince calling out God was to give Vince a "WTF" look and take a single, but significant, step back.
- The Dragon: To his father when both are heels.
- Dragon Ascendant: Pulled it off on his father twice, first, in The Corporation, and second during the InVasion storyline.
- It was actually subverted with that first example, as it was later revealed that Shane was actually still The Dragon to Vince the whole time, as Vince was the Higher Power that masterminded the whole plot to kidnap Stephanie just to show Stone Cold Steve Austin how far he was willing to go to screw with him.
- This was actually an aspect of Shane's character in the early days, as he was built up to be the "heir" to Vince's throne in the future in kayfabe and in real life. It wound up being apparently subverted though as Vince is still running WWE and Shane has resigned from his position, though only time will tell whether this is truly the case.
- Dragon Ascendant: Pulled it off on his father twice, first, in The Corporation, and second during the InVasion storyline.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Harming Linda is his biggest Berserk Button.
- Subverted in that the moment he crossed the Moral Event Horizon during the Attitude Era was when he told his mother to shut her mouth. Don't worry, they soon made up and he was back to being protective of her.
- Family Business
- Finishing Move: Both of his involve jumping from high places. The Van Terminator was hijacked from Rob Van Dam and modified with a trash can instead of a chair, and the Leap of Faith involves the complete destruction of the Spanish Announcers Table.
- Foe Yay: Staggering amounts with Kurt Angle and Randy Orton.
- Genius Bruiser
- Guy Posse: The Mean Street Posse. They'd wanted Shane to have an entourage for his feud with Test and were going to use some indy wrestlers. Shane convinced the bookers that his actual high-school best friends could be more annoying than anyone they cast. He was right.
- High School Sweethearts / First Girl Wins / Victorious Childhood Friend: Married the first girl he'd ever dated, Marissa. They actually used to live across the street from each other.
- Hot Dad
- How Much More Can He Take?: Pretty standard in Shane matches. His Street Fight with Kurt Angle in 2001 was a double How Much More Can He Take?, considering the spots with the glass.
- To elaborate, "the spots with the glass" refers to Kurt attempting to German-suplex Shane through the panes of glass used for the set. Apparently, they hadn't gotten the right type of Plexiglass and the glass refused to break. Shane took a hellacious German suplex and landed on his head. He told Kurt to suplex him again, and the glass broke. Then when they tried to do the same spot back out onto the ramp, the glass didn't break again. Kurt reportedly tried to stop the match, but Shane (who was close friends with Kurt in real life) told him they'd never get the chance to do this again. Kurt suplexed Shane through, and that shot of Shane going through the glass the final time has become iconic, used for years as the very first shot of the Smack Down video package.
- To elaborate more: When Shane was bouncing off the Plexiglass, he was landing neck-and-noggin first on the concrete floor.
- Ho Yay: With Booker T during the Alliance storyline, and Rob Van Dam in 2003.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Right-handed, but throws left-handed punches. Opponents get a nice surprise when they attempt to grab his left hand, and Shane goes and uses his actual dominant hand.
- I Have the High Ground: Ranging from a simple turnbuckle to the top of the big-ass screen used as WWE's set, the Titantron. Jumping off high places is Shane's hat.
- Improvised Weapon: Uses a trash can for his Coast-to-Coast Van Terminator.
- It Runs in The Family
- Keet: Especially in his younger days. There were many, many jokes made about Shane needing to switch to decaf.
- Knight Templar Big Brother: At various points in time in regards to Stephanie. It depended on the era if Shane would take the unlucky sod who hurt his baby sister and beat him to a bloody pulp, or if he'd watch from the sidelines and leave her there.
- Like Father, Like Son: In his early Corporation days, he was a carbon-copy of Vince.
- Papa Wolf: Even as a face, you DON'T SMACK ABOUT HIS KIDS, as Kevin Owens soon found out.
- Long Bus Trip: Resigned from WWE to "pursue other interests" (becoming the CEO of an Asian internet corporation), his absence hasn't been explained on television.
- Money Song
- No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Before his final confrontation with Kane at Survivor Series 2003, he invited Kane to a fancy restaurant so that they could issue their final threats over dinner.
- Only Sane Man: As a face, usually toward Vince. Taken to hilarious, Screw This, I'm Outta Here extremes during the "McMahon Family Portrait", where Shane simply bailed rather than witness any more of what was going on.
- It started at the end of the InVasion storyline, where he calmly signed over his share in WWE to Ric Flair (instead of throwing a temper tantrum like Stephanie).
- Particularly pronounced during Vince's religion-based Sanity Slippage against Shawn Michaels, where he started fancying himself as a counterpart to the Almighty Himself, they had a segment in church where Shane was privy to his father's insane ramblings. Vince had Shane read a modified version of the Lord's Prayer, complete with excerpts about Vince's "omnipotent semen"; Shane stopped mid-reading because it was getting... weird. Later, Vince got on the podium and challenged God to strike him down where he stood. Shane slowly stepped away from him, not wanting to get caught in case of actual lightning.
- Then the next week, Vince started a promo by stating that Shane had asked him if he was going to hell. He would end up introducing McMahonism to the world.
- Overlord, Jr.: In-character.
- Power Stable: The Corporation, and the Corporate Ministry
- Put on a Bus: Left the company in 2010.
- The Bus Came Back: His return in 2016.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The most reasonable of the McMahon family, in or out of character.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money: When he's a heel.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them: When he's a heel.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: When he's not wrestling. Shane can wear the hell out of a suit.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Both in and out of the ring, Shane is the more level-headed businessman to Stephanie's spotlight-loving occasional Yandere.
- Singapore Canes Are Even Better
- Smug Snake: Can get this way as a heel.
- Spanish Announcers Table: His elbow-drop from the top turnbuckle onto a prone Test on the table has become synonymous with the Spanish Announcers Table bump, and one of the most infamous examples.
- The Starscream: His Wham! Line kick-start to the InVasion storyline, revealing he'd bought WCW right out from under his father.
- Subverted during the Higher Power storyline, when it seemed at first that Shane had turned against Vince to join forces with The Undertaker, only for it to be revealed that Vince was the Greater Power giving them orders and it was all part of his plan.
- Warrior Prince: Being the son of WWE's owner, he can be considered as such.
- Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Has been, in order - a referee, part of his father's entourage, a wrestler, the owner of WCW, a wrestler again, and finally, co-owner and GM of WWE.
- Wrestling Family
- You Look Familiar: The first performer to walk out at Wrestlemania VI, he was a ring announcer and later showed up as a referee way before he was ever acknowledged as Vince McMahon's son.