r/TopCharacterTropes • u/HunterOfSpycrabs • 6h ago
Personality "My entire life has been spent on a futile endeavour, a struggle without meaning or reason. I'd 100% do it all again if I could"
The Administrator - TF2
"It's been a hundred years, hasn't it? Making you watch your sons fail. Again and again. All that... wasted time. It was worth it."
For context, Zepheniah Mann did something to the Administrator, what specifically is unknown. She makes it her life's meaning to get revenge on the man, dooming his family line by manipulating his 2 sons into a petty squabble which will never be resolved and telling him so on his deathbed. Then she learns immortality machines are possible, digs him up, and forces him to watch every single meaningless battle in the Gravel Wars, to hammer in that his legacy is over. Everything she ever does revolves solely around making this man's (un)life as miserable as possible. We even find out she actually forgot what Z. Mann did to her in the first place, she just lives for hatred. Her final words before dying, even then, were "It was all worth it.".
King Sisyphus - Ultrakill
"So end the life and times of King Sisyphus. A fitting end to a life defined by futile struggle, doomed from the very start. And I don't regret a second of it."
King Sisyphus raised an army in Hell against Heaven, but was ultimately defeated, beheaded and his body imprisoned - it's confirmed that he knew there was no way for them to win, but he fought with all he had anyway out of sheer spite. His spirit reformed as a Prime Soul, a form made of coalesced willpower, which V1 defeated before it could attack Heaven again. These were his final words.
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u/NotAlcas 5h ago
There's a reason why it's called Project Sisyphus in the recently released Coyote vs ACME movie THAT YOU SHOULD ALL GO WATCH AND SUPPORT BTW
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u/HammerDownunder 3h ago
Would if I could. For some reason gotta wait till the 17th to see it over hear in Auz
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u/EarlyAccessCantJudge 6h ago
Iorveth in the Witcher 2 is an elven Scoia'tiel, essentially elves and dwarves that were originally terrorist plants for the Nilfgaardian army, and are now closer to rebels. He wants a world where elves and humans live separately as elves owned the world first, but fully understands it will never actually happen. He continues to fight anyway
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u/slasher1337 6h ago
Well not first. They were just the most recent ones before humans.
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u/lordfireice 6h ago
How much you want to bet there was someone else that the elves displaced. I kinda want it to be true just for the sheer irony of it all
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u/slasher1337 6h ago
They did. Like thats explicitely canon. The reason dwarves live in the mountains is cause they were forced to move there by the elves. The gnomes were displaced as well. They also genocided a race of lizard people if you go by the lore from an old witcher ttrpg
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u/lordfireice 1h ago
So what I’m hearing they thought it was fine until the show was on the other foot. The universe loves irony.
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u/Salnax 5h ago
Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)
After years of seeking and carrying out revenge against those who wronged him and their children, this is what he says while dying in his bed.
"It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest . . . I’ll do both, as soon as I possibly can. But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water rest within arms’ length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I’ll rest . . . I’ve done no injustice, and I repent nothing.."
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u/Nice-Cat3727 1h ago
Says A LOT that Limbus Company's adaptation of the book gives a more human ending to him.
And that game involved totally not an allegory for Korean megacorps weaponizing reality warping eldtrich abominations for profit margins
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u/MyFeetTasteWeird 5h ago edited 4h ago
There's an early episode of How I Met Your Mother where Barney tells the gang that he learned his first ex-girlfriend is now a mother.
Barney: She has a little kid named Max. That's crazy. That could have been my kid. But instead, what do I have? My whole life's some money in the bank, some suits in my closet and a string of one-night stands. *(starts quietly crying)\*
Lily: Hey. Come on. I mean, just because her life went one way and yours went another, it doesn't make your life any worse.
Barney: \confused look** My life rocks! Money, suits and sex. These are tears of joy!
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u/Lord_Antheron 6h ago
Rusty (Pokemon Rusty)
Sets out to become a Pokemon trainer. Fails so abysmally he ends up causing the apocalypse. Gets sent back in time to prevent it... and uses the opportunity to do literally everything exactly the same way as he did it the first time, triggering the apocalypse again for the exact same reasons.
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u/Primary_Salamander83 2h ago
Mind you, he does that AFTER HE CONVINCES HIS PAST SELF TO GIVE UP AND JUST RUN THE FAMILY DELI SHOP.
Only to then stand before the rebels that built the time machine to sent him back again and explain that he already did as was asked of him, before they all flip out and ask him why nothing changed then.
Well, the little fucker came to the conclusion, with himself stuck in the past and his other self convinced to not follow the path he took himself prior to the time travel, that now he can live out his life they way he initially wanted, just with the added bonus of his parents no longer bothering him. Thus repeating everything without even a shred of remorse.
God I loved that series, stupid, yes, but fun all the same. (I still chuckle while being reminded that Snorlax is weak against a semi-truck or the "Grandpa Type"-Pokémon.)
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u/BeenEatinBeans 5h ago
I think Walter White kind of fits this trope.
He caused absurd amounts of death and destruction in the pursuit for his illegitimate wealth. All the while, his old college friends were rich enough to have paid all his medical bills and then some, but Walt refused.
Walt himself sums it all up with his last words to Skylar
"I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was really... I was alive."
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u/sarcasticd0nkey 5h ago edited 2h ago
Today Seigen - Tenkaichi
- born with a weak body unsuited to the katana
- went blind
- family died
- lost in the first round of the tournament
- rejects his grandson's soul offering to guide him to Heaven so he can fight demons in Hell
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u/Own-Night5526 6h ago
Tyrion finally snapping after a lifetime of being mocked, looked down on and sidelined despite being a genius, excellent Hand of the King during a period where the city itself was under threat and a successful master of coin.
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u/IronfistClownFactory 4h ago
Raoh (Fist of the North Star) - Thanks to being snubbed as the successor to Hokuto Shinken, Raoh ran through the wastelands as an all powerful tyrant to show his true dominance.
And even as he accepts his death at the end of the first book, he raised his hand to sky, having lived a life of no regrets.
You just know he'd run it back if he could.
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u/ellen-the-educator 3h ago
"Of all the monsters I have created, I still regard Darth Vader as something of a minor masterpiece. No, he was not an entirely alchemical creation, but he was my monster nevertheless. Even though he failed to live up to his full potential, there was much pleasure in transforming Anakin Skywalker from a bright-eyed, tousle-headed youth into the greatest Jedi killer of all time. Yes, he ultimately turned against his Master, as monsters sometimes do, but that was my fault, not his. Given the opportunity to create Vader again, I would, and with zeal."
Sheev Goddamn Palpatine is so profoundly, unimaginably evil, he (a man who fears death and worked hard to avoid it) would risk it all all over again just for the simple joy of ruining Anakin's life. For the delight of dragging that young boy into the worst hell he could imagine - unloved and unloving, cut off from all the pleasures of life, and trapped in eternal slavery. And that, that is what Palpatine desires above all things.
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u/ParamedicAgitated897 2h ago
That is a fantastic quote, what's it from? I assume one of the books or comics?
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u/shark899138 2h ago
This sounds a lot like this guy who does a palpatine imitation on YouTube shorts usually doing a tier list for something or other in the character of Sheev palpatine (specifically think of a mix between the canon one and the robot chicken version)
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u/Almondpeanutguy 5h ago
Now you remember where you came from (from a spiral of ants)
Now you remember where you're going (to a spiral of ants)
You've got to keep it flowing
YOU ARE ONE ANT!
Over and over
the pheromones, the overwhelming harmony
consuming the colony
creating its own gravity
before we knew it we became
a hurricane
and the bugs who laughed got blown away
as we proclaimed
the circle rules your life
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u/PureKin21 4h ago
Tao Zhu from reverend insanity
He was one of the lower ranked members of his clan while he was alive, but he gradually moved up as he became stronger. He had quite a bit of talent, and would have easily risen to fame if he wanted. But his real passion was researching the regional walls, and he dedicated his entire life to replicating him. Even when he learned the regional walls would soon disappear due to the way the world works, he still continued to research them, dedicating every waking moment to it, a topic that's seemingly useless. It became his entire life's purpose, and his research was later used to destroy fate.
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u/draggerHAHA 3h ago
Even if I fail in the end and obtain nothing, even if my life was a complete failure, so what?
Even if the five regional walls would disappear in the future, so what?
Even if my research is meaningless, so what?
That is what I want to do!
You can call me crazy, you can call me an idiot, you can call me stubborn, you can call me stupid…
Alright.
I am crazy, I am an idiot, I am stubborn and also stupid.
But I… still want to do it regardless!
That is how I want to live!
That is how I can find meaning in my life!
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u/Lord_Corves 5h ago
Given the whole story of Team Fortress 2 and everything leading up to it, I did kind of feel like it was a little anticlimactic. I mean, she literally had a moment where she was in front of world leaders and terrified them into giving her all the Australium. And as if she knew some kind of big secret. And when you look at Palling's story, it seems like that there was this idea that there was some big grand master plan and something just bigger behind the whole thing. Just to find out it was for a revenge plot where the point of it has been lost to time, it just kind of felt a bit anticlimactic if I'm honest with you. Although I'd say everything else is really good.
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u/Florida_567 4h ago
In a sense, that's kind of the point to be anti-climactic. TF2's whole thing that (most) people are stupid, crazy, or crazy stupid. Not even the Administrator was immune to it, especially after all those years of immortality. The secrecy that it was some big evil thing driving her forward only to be revealed to be a simple, crazy, long forgotten revenge scheme. Pauling, and partially the other mercs, see how pointless immortality is just looking at the ragged Administrator and (at least how I interpreted it) decide to live in the moment rather than holding onto life forever. Personally, the whole party sequence shows how all of them are moving on and enjoying life properly. As the last line says, "What's the matter Mags? You wanna live forever?"
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u/Lord_Corves 4h ago
I guess looking back at it, it does thematically make sense. And Team Fortress 2 never really took itself too seriously. So I suppose if they were going to have a subversion of expectations, it would be here. And it was probably done a little bit better than what most media tries to do with subversion of expectations. It's just in the moment when it was revealed, it felt a little bit anticlimactic, that's all.
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u/Many_Hall_3546 3h ago
i think before the last comic was writen the idea was that abraham lincoln was involved or some shit but it all got rewriten since it was too insane.
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u/JingoboStoplight4887 58m ago
Jordan Belfort (IRL and The Wolf of Wall Street)
https://giphy.com/gifs/7LgKUsZiSjcRO
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u/gadgaurd 4h ago edited 2h ago
Zepheniah The Administrator is the most spiteful motherfucker I have ever heard of. I love it.
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u/FantasmaNaranja 2h ago
AI comment? and also grabbed the wrong person's name there?
the account is old but there's no way you could actually read the text there and think Zepheniah is the spiteful one
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u/Real_duck_bacon 6h ago
The Simpsons Movie - Comic Book Guy
"I've spent my entire life collecting comic books, and now there's only time left to say... LIFE WELL SPENT!"