Comic Book / Hercules (Marvel Comics)

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• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Greek gods are an archetypal example.
• Crossover Cosmology: Every pantheon under the sun, to the point that Marvel released the Encyclopedia Mythologica, a special issue of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, to codify just how many active pantheons there are in the Marvel Universe.
• Physical God: Most of the main characters.
• Prisoner's Dilemma: Both Hercules and his partner Amadeus Cho are captured by the Greek god Hephaestus. The rooms they're trapped in both have a switch which will open the other cell's door and allow escape, but will flood the room of the person who pressed it with a gas that not even Hercules can survive. Once the countdown starts, both Herc and Cho press their buttons instantly, setting each other free.
• Sadly Mythtaken: Despite taking a lot from the original myths and adapting some of them, many things have been changed:
  • Hercules being called Hercules instead of Herakles is actually explained as him taking the name to distance himself from both Hera herself, and more importantly his mistakes.
  • Pluto has gone from a neutral god ruling the underworld to actively trying to overthrow Zeus and conquer Earth.
  • In myth, Hercules and Hera made peace upon his ascension to godhood. Here, she hates him more than ever despite Zeus' attempts to broker peace.
  • In myth, Zeus's thunderbolts are spear-like weapons forged by the Cyclopes. In Marvel, it is a power source that dwells within him.
  • In myth, Zeus is a much more controversial figure thanks to contrasting versions of stories, different translations, and values can easily come across as an evil serial rapist who demands mortals worship him, and unleashed the horrors of Pandora's Box upon the World for extremely petty reasons. In Marvel, while still a prideful, jerk some of his more questionable actions have either not been mentioned, dismissed as mistakes in the myth and Zeus's overall character more toward the benevolent side with allowing his worship to die out and keeping the evils of the more malevolent Olympians such as Hera, Pluto and Ares in check.
  • In-universe example: Some of the labors Hercules was attributed with were actually done by a similar immortal, super-strong hero: Gilgamesh aka The Forgotten One of the Eternals. Also a meta-example, as Gilgamesh is wholly unconnected to Greek mythology.
• Tangled Family Tree: What do you expect from Greek deities which spend thousands of years mating with anyone? Of note, however, is the fact that due to Marvel's Gaea and Jord being the same person, this means that Hercules' relatives extend into other pantheons as well. For example, Thor is actually his great-uncle, since Gaea is Hercules's great-grandmother and Jord is Thor's birth mother.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe. Most Marvel gods talk this way, but Hercules (and the Greek pantheon) switched to modern English round about Civil War.

This section covers stories from his first appearance until his defeat of Typhon and the end of his exile from Olympus.

• Badass in Distress: Thor even comments on the fact that he hates seeing a warrior like Hercules being made so helpless and powerless while captive in the Underworld.
• Defeat Means Friendship: A variation in that Hercules challenges Captain America's right to give him orders, so he and Cap fight. Cap uses his acrobatics and martial arts skills to evade all of Hercules's attacks, and after a while, Herc is so impressed that he declares Undying Loyalty to Cap.
• Distressed Dude: The Pluto arc in the pages of Thor had Hercules in need of a champion to fight for him and rescue him from a terrible fate. Even when captive, he fights every step of the way, but it was a lost cause.
• Magically Binding Contract: Disguised as a Hollywood director, Pluto tricks Hercules to sign an "Olympian Contract", which even Zeus is forced to abide by. When Hercules does something that breaks the rules of the contract, he becomes zapped by some sort of enchantment and stripped of his powers.
• Mighty Glacier: In his fight with Cap, Hercules is too slow to hit the more agile fighter. But Cap knows that all Herc needs is one half-decent hit to instantly KO him. Fortunately for Cap, seeing his skill and bravery is enough for Herc to concede.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Hercules gives Typhon one of these at the conclusion of their first fight. The Avengers have to hold Herc back from continuing to beat him down, as Hercules didn't know he was knocked out.
• Orphean Rescue: A variation; when Pluto tricks Hercules into taking his place as ruler of the Underworld, Thor has to travel to the underworld and fight as his champion.
• Sixth Ranger: When Hercules first showed up in the book, it was as a "guest" of the team and not an actual member. He still went on missions with them, but more as a useful tagalong. He later joined the team proper and became a full Avenger.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: The first meeting between Hercules and Thor was treated as this both in and out of universe, with everyone eager to see just which of the two gods would win in a fight.

Tropes gathered from Herc's sporadic appearances between his return to Olympus and the "Dark Age" incarnation of the Avengers starting from issue #355.

• Call-Back: When Hercules meets Wonder Man for the first time, he hears that Simon is more interested in being an actor than an Avenger, so he tells Simon he has contacts in Hollywood. This is a nod to a few Silver Age stories which showed that Hercules sometimes did acting roles.
• Face–Heel Turn: Subverted trope. In Thor #221, Thor attacks Olympus thinking that Hercules has kidnapped the Asgardian goddess Krista. Hercules has no idea why Thor is calling him out, but (as Herc does) decides to punch first and ask questions later. Zeus then breaks up the fight and hears Thor out, before explaining that Hercules is innocent because he's been at a festival the whole time.
• Frame-Up: Ares tries to frame Hercules for the kidnapping of the goddess Krista in order to get Thor and Herc to kill each other.
• Honey Trap: Tanya Sealy (aka "Black Mamba") seduced Hercules and took him drinking so that he'd be too inebriated to fight the Masters of Evil, just as Zemo planned.
• Leeroy Jenkins: During the "Under Siege" storyarc, a drunk Hercules refuses to wait for Wasp and Captain America to come up with a plan to retake Avengers Mansion from the Masters of Evil and not only gets his ass kicked, but also those of the Wasp and Cap when they try to save him.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Thor storms Olympus to fight Herc (whom he believes is a traitor), but Zeus later sets things straight. Then the two start fighting again over who will rescue Krista and a stupefied Zeus just tells the two of them to stop acting like idiots and team up.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Hercules's brief reappearance in The Avengers after returning from Olympus has him running in fear of an opponent named "The Huntsman" (Zeus's personal tracker/assassin). This is the first time Hercules is ever shown running from, or avoiding, any sort of fight.
• Token Minority: Lampshaded. At one point, he's upset that he was called to stand in for Thor during an awards ceremony, calling himself the "Token God" of the team.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Zeus calls out both Thor and Hercules after they start fighting each other again over who gets to rescue Krista—right after he just stopped them from fighting only a few minutes ago.
• World's Strongest Man: Issue #222 is the one which established that Thor and Hercules are equals. The two men (the strongest gods of their respective pantheons) arm wrestle each other on Mount Olympus. The contest ends in a draw when the table shatters under the weight of such manliness.

This section covers Hercules following Avengers #355 until "Heroes Return".

• Big Bad Duumvirate: Hera, who plots to kill him alongside Ares, only to be betrayed by Ares at the last moment.
• Birds of a Feather: Herc became friends with Deathcry, when he realized that they both no longer had any other home than the Avengers Mansion.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Zeus created Taylor Madison in order to foil Hera's attack on Hercules, and when Herc finds out and then watches Zeus unmake her, he is pissed. Zeus is offended that Herc doesn't appreciate his "help" and strips him of his immortality.
• Did They or Didn't They?: In the end, we never know if Hercules and Deathcry ever slept together—but she certainly wanted it, and they were alone in space for a long time.
• Ladykiller in Love: Throughout this era, Hercules was in love with a woman named Taylor Madison, to he point that he became lovesick when she suddenly stopped seeing him and promised to forsake all other women for her.
• The Lost Lenore: Taylor Madison became Hercules's lost love later during this era.
• Loving a Shadow: Hercules was in love with a woman named Taylor Madison—except that was exactly the role she was intended to serve, as a false construct created by Zeus to be Hercules's "perfect woman".
• Survivors Guilt: Hercules is horrified when he finds out that the other Avengers died fighting Onslaught, as he was in space with Deathcry at the time.

This section covers Herc's disparate appearances between Heroes Return up to the start of World War Hulk.

• The Alcoholic: After losing Taylor Madison, his immortality, the disbanding of the Avengers and the apparent death of Thor and the entire Asgardian pantheon, Hercules, who was always a big partier, degenerates into a full-blown one.
• Badass Crew: Hercules, Thor and the Destroyer team up to save Asgard. It's as awesome as it sounds.
• Broken Pedestal: Learning that mortals no longer respect him is what prompts him to go on his new labors.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Hercules is torn between attacking Thor on his father's command for the apparent destruction of Olympus or believing that his friend is innocent. He chooses the latter, to Zeus's disappointment.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Artume, a villain is an obvious take-off on Wonder Woman. Like Diana, she's the daughter of Hippolyta, who is an Amazon, and was animated from lifeless material (stone rather than clay). Also like Diana, she rebels against her mother. Unlike Diana, she's a treacherous megalomaniac, and her version of being an Amazon involves taking Does Not Like Men to genocidal levels. For extra points, both characters are named after the same goddess (the Greek Artemis/Roman Diana).
• Drowning His Sorrows: Hercules' way of coping with the loss of Thor and the dissolution of the Avengers.
• One-Hit KO: Hercules defeats Hulk's nemesis, the Abomination, in one hit.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Erik Josten (Atlas) apologizes to Herc for almost killing him so long ago, but Herc is having none of it.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When he finds out that the Thunderbolts are the same Masters of Evil that beat him in a coma years ago, Herc goes into a rage for revenge.
• Undying Loyalty: Hercules chooses his loyalty to Thor over his loyalty to Zeus.
• Unexplained Recovery: Hercules reappears in his original costume, with all of his godly power intact with no explanation aside from the implication that he's on speaking terms with Zeus again.
• Titanomachy, Round Two: In one Hercules/Hulk crossover, a fight between the two strongmen is interrupted when Cronus escapes from Tartarus along with other titans and other creatures. Though the duo beat back the escapees, the bloody and merciless slaughter upsets the Hulk, who sees a lot of himself in these fellow "monsters". Hulk thus leaves Mount Olympus in disgust.
• With Us or Against Us: Zeus gives Hercules this ultimatum and bids him to attack Thor. Hercules refuses, and Zeus banishes him once again.

• The Alcoholic: He's firmly on the fruit juice these days, but semi-frequent allusions are made to his past and his current sobriety by contrast.
• All-Loving Hero: After No Road Home and his subsequent introspection, his behaviour would do credit to Superman. Where possible, he avoids violence, uses the minimum necessary force, and takes the time to make Richard Rider get some sorely needed therapy. Gamora at one point, while lashing out over Peter's apparent death, bitterly says that kindness is his answer to everything.
• Antiquated Linguistics: He occasionally slips into this, but not all that often.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's a kind and gentle man these days, but he is still Hercules, with all that implies, and as he puts it, on a good day he's the strongest man in the universe.
• Character Development: He's an Older and Wiser All-Loving Hero these days. He rejects both his past hedonism (which itself was suggested on more than one occasion to be both an almighty hangover from millennia in Olympus, which was basically one long consequence free party, and a coping mechanism for his guilt about killing his family in madness), and the brutal warrior values of the resurrected Olympians, responding to his father's taunting about his nigh-pacifism by saying that it's a different kind of strength - one that doesn't break.
• Dumbass No More: Continuing the trend from his 2015 series, Hercules is no longer the Idiot Hero he once was. Being sober has a lot to do with this.
• Martial Pacifist: He would much rather talk than fight. This does not mean he has become any less effective in combat - if anything, quite the opposite.
• Meaningful Appearance: The streaks of white in his beard are a visual cue towards his growing maturity.
• The Mentor: To the Prince of Power, and a little bit to the Guardians as a whole, being by far the oldest and thanks to his maturity (and sobriety) the wisest.
• Older and Wiser: Following the events of Avengers: No Road Home, Hercules spends some time soul-searching, and emerges as a more introspective, less boastful figure who dedicates himself to helping others.
• Replacement Flat Character: The Prince of Power, an aristocrat-turned-mercenary who embodies everything bad about who Herc used to be (minus the getting around), even sharing his classic sobriquet. Herc is fairly taken aback when he hears this. He also quite clearly sees his past self in the Prince and is not overly pleased, finding his successor understandably annoying - though rather than having a punch up, after hearing the latter's Dark and Troubled Past through the gloss he tries to put on it, he ultimately takes the Stepford Smiler Prince under his wing and helps him deal with his regrets.
• Strong and Skilled: Enough to effortlessly put the Prince of Power, the very dim 'wielder' of an Infinity Stone (translation: he ate it), in his place.
• Took a Level in Kindness: He was pretty friendly immediately before this, and generally affable beforehand (so long as one didn't set his temper off), he's now Superman levels of kind.
• White Sheep: As the only Olympian not to be killed by Nyx and resurrected as a murderous, destructive cosmic god, Hercules is solidly opposed to his new family (it's implied that he was resurrected, explaining the change in look, white streaks included, but the fact that he didn't die violently may have contributed to his retention of sanity).

This section covers the Hercules limited series trilogy by Bob Layton.

• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
  • The fate of the Olympians, after Zeus determines that mankind has evolved beyond the need for gods.
  • Also the fate of Hercules himself, who becomes a successor to Galactus named Cosmos.
• Ax-Crazy: Zeus, father of the gods, with an actual ax.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Played with somewhat here. Hercules travels the galaxy in a golden sun chariot bequeathed him by his half-brother Apollo, god of light. It can not only fly fast enough to enter hyperspace, but also apparently generates an aura that protects its passengers from space's freezing temperatures and contains an apparently limitless oxygen supply. Whenever a character quite reasonably asks how the hell this is possible, Herc always blithely replies that "it is the Will of Zeus!" Hercules at one point engages an enemy spacecraft by leaping from the chariot and breaching the ship through the cockpit, dispatching the pilots and rushing to the airlock to commandeer the vessel, noting internally that his superhuman physiology enables to survive the vacuum of space for only a brief period outside the chariot's magic aura.
• Beware the Superman: Arimathes, Hercules' bastard son by Layana Sweetwater, is the realization of this trope, at least in the beginning. He has all the power and inhuman durability of his father, and, misled by his vengeful, power-hungry mother, uses his gifts to violently carve out an empire for himself.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Hercules comes from one, and later, through Arimathes and his progeny, becomes the patriarch of his own. Downplayed as Arimathes' sons and daughters, aside from being somewhat hot-headed and reactionary (like their grandfather), are pretty well adjusted and stable, but their grandmother Layana continues to be a source of strife and discord, even into her declining years.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Recorder. Throughout the course of the first limited series, he loses a hand, then his legs, and he's arrested for being a Peeping Tom.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Skyppi chews out Zeus, the Father of Gods and Men himself, for murdering his progeny and threatening to do the same to his remaining son Hercules. The King of Olympus does not take this well.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Even in dangerous situations that don't affect him directly, Hercules, a lover of combat and adventure, is often and always compelled to jump in and strike a blow for justice.
• Con Man: Skyppi, out of necessity and love of money.
  • Alpo and Clyde, who cheat to beat Herc in a space race, and later run a galaxy spanning scam to loot whole unsuspecting worlds.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Or perhaps "filial devotion", in this case. It takes Hercules defeating Arimathes in a devastating battle for the son of the Prince of Power to see the error of his ways and seek the counsel and love of his father.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Hercules attempts to deck Galactus, who responds by summarily reducing the Lion of Olympus to protoplasm, before mercifully turning him back.
  • Decades later, Hercules faces off with Galactus once again in defense of a planet. Enraged at the Devour of Worlds' seeming ignoring of him, an enraged Hercules leaps up to Galactus' face and unleashes a thunderous blow... that literally knocks the air out of the giant, causing him to deflate and fly off (it was a balloon decoy)!
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Hercules tries to defeat Galactus by drinking with him (with spiked liquor), only for Galactus to be so amused by the attempt that he declares a fondness for Hercules.
• Fantastic Racism: In a galaxy filled with all types of weird, humanoid, non-humanoid, organic and non-organic alien beings, the Skrulls are still the most universally feared and hated race of all.
• Fish Out of Water: WOW. Not only is Hercules a native of Earth travelling through far-flung alien galaxies, he's also from a race of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens whose fame and overall influence peaked around three thousand years ago.
• Heel–Face Turn: Arimathes, upon losing to his father Hercules in a duel and undergoing a Heel Realization, becomes a wise and beneficent ruler from that point on.
• Heel Realization: Hercules, upon encountering a huge, massively-muscled and intimidating looking alien called a Pheragot, Hercules, despite the creature making absolutely no hostile moves, immediately strikes the Pheragot with a tremendous punch. All in attendance are shocked and repulsed, as the Pheragot race is known as the most benign, peace-loving species in the known galaxy. Hercules himself is deeply ashamed, especially when the Pheragot makes no move to defend himself and merely sits on the floor, sobbing and weeping. It is at that point that the Lion of Olympus begins to see that his Jerkass Blood Knight behavior needs to be seriously toned down, and he genuinely starts to think before he acts and consider others' feelings.
• Honey Trap: How Layana Sweetwater manipulates Hercules into "rescuing" her from a supposedly forced wedding to Count Igwanus.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Hercules almost pleads this in battle with his apparently genocidal father.
• I Owe You My Life: Hercules finds himself in opposition to a supernatural Skrull slayer calling himself the Red Wolf, who is determined to kill Skyppi, Hercules' companion. When their battle breaches a spaceship's hull, Hercules manages to anchor and save himself, but the Wolf is not so fortunate, and is on the verge of being sucked out into space. The son of Zeus rescues Red Wolf, and in gratitude, the slayer drops his vendetta against Skyppi and helps Hercules and his band escape the authorities.
• Last of His Kind: After Hercules' father Zeus and the rest of his extended family move on to a new dimensional afterlife, the Lion of Olympus is left as the sole survivor of the Greek Pantheon.
• Locked into Strangeness: At one point, in a fit of seeming madness, Zeus, king of Olympus, calls back the godly powers of all his children, including their immortality . This causes his son Apollo to die of old age, and Hercules, who dreamt of this event, wakes from his seeming nightmare with streaks of white in his mane of otherwise reddish-brown hair. (He gets better.)
• Monumental Theft: A group of religious zealots who worship Galactus use advanced technological means to entrap and steal entire planets for the World Devourer, serving as sacrifices to atone for the sins of their race. Hercules puts an end to this.
• My Beloved Smother: Layana Sweetwater poisons her and Hercules' son Arimithes' mind with hate and eggs him on to become a galactic tyrant.
• No-Sell: Hercules, literally one of the strongest beings in Creation, unleashes a thunderous punch upon Galactus. The Devourer doesn't even blink, but is pissed enough to turn Herc into goo.
• Prematurely Grey-Haired: Happens to Herc (and Apollo) when Father Zeus revokes their immortality.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hercules, because of his brash, thoughtless, reckless nature, is on the receiving end of quite a few of these throughout the series,
  • Herc gets to return the favor after defeating his errant son Arimathes, setting him on the path to redemption.
• Reduced to Dust: The method by which Zeus (apparently) slaughters the other Olympian gods, starting with Ares.
• Robot Buddy: The Recorder, left in Hercules' custody by the Rigellian empire to document his adventures.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: He slays a new version of the Silver Surfer after witnessing the murder of his son, so enraged that he breaks the Surfer's board and beheads him with it.
• Secret Test of Character: Zeus subjects Hercules to one to see if he's matured enough to be the progenitor of a new race of gods.
• Space Is Noisy: Played with. When Hercules shouts through the magical Horn of Zeus, his voice booms clearly through the void of space and is received by all passengers of spacecraft in the immediate area.
• Taking You with Me: When the Surfer gloats that Galactus will soon arrive and devour their planet, Hercules proclaims that if that's true, then Surfer himself won't be alive to see it and then beheads him with his own board.
• The Trickster: Skyppi the Skrull. It's how he and Hercules first meet, and his hat for the entire series.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Hercules first meets Skyppi (a Shapeshifting Skrull) when the latter is disguised as a beautiful and underdressed woman. He wasn't too thrilled about the revelation.
• Unstoppable Rage: In his duel with Zeus, Hercules is extremely hesitant to strike his father, even in self-defense against a maddened King of Olympus. But when it appears Zeus has slain the aged Skyppi, Hercules snaps and unleashes a colossal pummeling upon the crazed immortal.
  • When pissed, he dishes out a beatdown on this universe's Silver Surfer, breaks his board in two, and then decapitates him with it.
• Unusual Euphemism: Several characters, at many different times throughout the series, use obvious but cloaked swear words like "fropp" (for "shit"), or "blavlak" (for either "bastard" or "asshole").
• What the Hell, Hero?: In the second issue of the second Hercules limited series, Skyppi chews out the utter stupidity of the eponymous protagonist for suddenly and recklessly bailing out on the Golden Chariot, resulting in the Recorder becoming disabled.
• Wunza Plot: He's the Prince of Power! He's the Seventh Smartest Man on the planet! They fight crime!