The Weirdest My Hero Academia Villains Inspired By Other Media

The Weirdest My Hero Academia Villains Inspired By Other Media

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My Hero Academia’s one-off villains tend to reference other works, like Star Wars, Godzilla, Dragon Ball, and even Thomas the Tank Engine.

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The Weirdest My Hero Academia Villains Inspired By Other Media

When artists have to design lots of one-offs and side characters, they tend to start having fun with it, and that’s just as true of My Hero Academia as it is many other series. The manga’s spin-off, My Hero Academia Vigilantes, is particularly fond of this technique of acknowledging beloved properties in its villains, but both series are known to include Easter eggs and references to other media.

Some of My Hero Academia’s shout-outs – like a man who resembles a mustachioed Luffy from One Piece in the first chapter of Vigilantes – are essentially just fond lip service, but others take this preference for homage to an even weirder place. Here are some of the most bizarre examples of My Hero Academia calling out beloved properties, and the strange things these familiar characters ended up doing.

Dragon Ball Z

The Weirdest My Hero Academia Villains Inspired By Other Media

It’s hard for a shonen series like My Hero Academia to go on for as long as it has without paying homage to Dragon Ball Z in some way, and while there have been many references to it here and there over the years, the most obvious is an unnamed one-off villain clearly based on Majin Buu. Appearing in My Hero Academia Vigilantes, this villain attempted to rob a bank back during Aizawa’s internship days, leading to the Purple Revolution Agency being called out to handle the problem.

The character’s design is clearly that of Majin Buu from Dragon Ball Z, particularly the “Fat Buu” form fans know and love. This villain’s quirk allows him to emit smoke from the openings on his head, a trait that Buu also exhibits when he’s worked up in some fashion, but taken to a laughable extreme. After initially using his smoke to escape, he was easily dispatched and arrested after a second robbery by Eraser Head and his friend Loud Cloud, before their attention turned to bigger issues.

Studio Ghibli

The Weirdest My Hero Academia Villains Inspired By Other Media

While the fact doesn’t come up very often, quirks in My Hero Academia aren’t exclusive to humans. U.A.’s own Principal Nezu is a mouse with a super-intelligence quirk, rather than a human with a mouse quirk, so if they’re capable of participating in society, it looks like they’re more than welcome to do so. In Vigilantes, a stray cat begins exhibiting a quirk, which is enhanced by the quirk-boosting drug Trigger to allow it to merge with other objects.

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The maddened cat takes over a city bus and transforms into the Monster Cat, which resembles the Catbus seen in Studio Ghibli’s classic My Neighbor Totoro. Local vigilante Koichi, aka the Crawler, has to catch up and stop the out-of-control Monster Cat and save Makoto Tsukauchi, sister of Naomasa Tsukauchi, a police detective and friend of All Might. Presumably, Trigger’s effects eventually wore off, and the cat returned to life as it was before, but the quirk helps this feline menace express the worst case scenario of actually merging a household pet with public transport.

Star Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The Weirdest My Hero Academia Villains Inspired By Other Media

Kohei Horikoshi’s love of Western media is no secret; his affinity for Marvel and DC superheroes is what inspired My Hero Academia in the first place. However, his other favorite subject is Star Wars. Many locations in My Hero Academia’s Japan share names with planets in the Star Wars galaxy, like Takoba/Dagoba Beach, where All Might first trained Midoriya. Horikoshi managed to slip in a more obvious reference with the League of Villains member Mustard, who first appeared in the attack on the Forest Training Camp. Mustard’s quirk creates mustard gas, but he must wear a mask to protect himself from it. Mustard’s gas mask is stylistically very similar to Darth Vader’s, and Mustard strikes quite a few poses to emphasize this fact.

The League of Villains has at least one other member who acts as a shout-out: Spinner, whose sword-wielding, reptilian design seems deliberately evocative of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While Mustard wasn’t lucky enough to escape through Kurogiri’s warp gate, and was subsequently arrested, Spinner has managed to stay on the League of Villains’ roster up to the manga’s present.

Godzilla

The Weirdest My Hero Academia Villains Inspired By Other Media

If there are people who can become giant, like Mount Lady, and people who take reptilian forms like Spinner, then it only stands to reason that eventually someone would be able to both turn giant and become a lizard. That’s essentially the story behind Vigilantes’ Ryuichi Gojiyama, whose quirk, Kaiju, allows him to turn into a familiar gigantic monster.

Enhanced by Trigger, Gojiyama went on a rampage, which was eventually stopped by a visiting American hero, Captain Celebrity. The incident mostly served to reveal how media-focused Captain Celebrity’s heroics were, as he refused to engage with Gojiyama until cameras were on the scene. While the inspiration of this one is fairly obvious, Gojiyama isn’t the only character shown to have a kaiju quirk. In My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, a brief scene includes a giant pro hero who looks like Godzilla taking pictures with fans. Supplemental information confirmed his name to be Godzillo, stating that he’s an actor with a long list of films to his name. His quirk is even said to be called Toho, the name of Godzilla’s production company. Toho is also the distributor for My Hero Academia’s films, so it made for a pretty open wink to the fans.

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Thomas & Friends/Chuggington

Last but not least are a pair of the strangest villains ever seen: Tommy S. Gordon and Willie Wanda. Both men have train-related quirks, turning their heads into train engines. Tommy’s appearance is clearly based on that of Thomas the Tank Engine, a long-running British children’s show about living trains, while Willie takes his look from the competing series, Chuggington. Also showing up in Vigilantes, Tommy first appears chasing Koichi, although what crime he committed initially is unknown. Koichi lures him to a spot where he knows Eraser Head will be waiting, and Aizawa defeats him with ease. Willie shows up later, and Koichi attempts the same trick, only to find Eraser Head isn’t there that day. He instead tries to call Midnight for help, and is left keeping the enraged train man busy until she shows up to handle it off-panel.

Tommy’s name obviously references Thomas, while Gordon is another character on the show. Willie seems to be a reference to the Chuggington character Wilson, to who his design is most similar. Tommy’s quirk is said to be “Steam Locomotive” while Willie’s is “Diesel Locomotive,” emphasizing the different style of trains in the two series. The quirk mostly allows them to move at car-like speeds, and provides them with seemingly limitless stamina.

While Tommy and Willie appear in different chapters, both were created by the Villain Factory group, and may have had some preexisting relationship before getting their quirks upgraded as villains. Tommy S. Gordon and Willie Wanda are easily My Hero Academia’s weirdest shout-out villains, but as the franchise continues, fans can expect to see even stranger antagonists appear in future.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/my-hero-academia-villains-inspiration-vader-turtles-thomas/

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