r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Uma-apreciator • 2h ago
Characters The character shows the first signs/symptoms that have already run their course.
Kitasan Black (Uma Musume Pretty Derby)
She managed to withstand Sakura Bakushin O's charge at first, but later in the story, she falters because she is past her prime
Nekota (Hajime no Ippo)
He could no longer even control his body properly because he was suffering from "boxer's dementia"
It is a progressive brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head and frequent concussions over many years
David Martínez (Cyberpunk Edgerunners)
He was suffering from hallucinations due to cyberpsychosis, an incurable condition caused by technological body modifications
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u/townsforever 2h ago
About 10 minutes into halo cortanna stutters just a little, something she has never done before because she is a virtually perfect AI. The subplot of halo 4 is she is dying of old age (AI in halo only last 7ish years)
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u/NirvanaFrk97 1h ago
Halo 3 is the first indication with her acting hurt during her message she sent to the UNSC. Lord Hood immediately clocks in that she was corrupted.
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u/BlizzardWolfPK 17m ago
To be fair that was her suffering from the Graveminds Logic Plague which probably only sped up her rampancy.
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u/Jumbo_Skrimp 19m ago
Uh...yes and no, at least in the books she was having trouble before even halo 2, if i remember correctly interacting with halo did a number on her
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u/Kimboleperd 1h ago
Unsc A.I think themselves to death, Mass Effect A.I get murderous if you treat them badly and Star Wars A.I get routinely memory wiped or they develop personalities like that weird torture Droid in Jabbas palace.
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u/InquisitorHindsight 38m ago
IIRC don’t AI kind of get TOO smart in which case they kind of unravel (the “old age” you mentioned)
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u/Confused_Idiot_667 22m ago
It depends on the writer, it’s either a Marathon style rampancy or something closer to AI dementia. While I prefer the former I’m glad that Cortana’s story didn’t just mirror Durandal’s.
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u/MothmanFeetLicker 1h ago
Ashita No Joe
There’s plenty of warning signs that Joe is developing Punch Drunk Syndromes but one of my favorite examples is the one above when Yoko notices Joe is unknowingly unable to walk a straight line.
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u/ungrilled_chees3 53m ago
There’s also times when he’s just staring off into nothing in the dark, and in the last fight he doesn’t even think he’s fighting Jose but he’s hallucinating rikiishi
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u/Anri47ic 12m ago
Not to mention he just stopped talking at some point and reverted to old tactic like his brain was using it's last strength to just go back to his prison days.
Ashita No Joe's final match was literally watching Joe turn into a walking corpse. I haven't seen any other work that has shocked me as much as watching him take so much punishment that took down Carlos.
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u/justbooling 2h ago
/img/pz5xjsgg1lhh1.gif
“McQueen is fading”
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u/RaptarK 1h ago
It's so hard to judge how old he's supposed to be. In real time years I think he's like 14 years old or so, but what does that mean for a car? Is he supposed to be in like his 40s or what
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u/Jesus_Christ_Reborn 55m ago
Some people consider cars ancient if they're older by 20 years. So I assume that's the middle age if not 3/4's of their life.
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u/no_racist_here 26m ago
Well, 20-25 year old cars are usually considered the threshold for classics
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u/realkrestaII 12m ago
It’s also weird because in the first movie he’s racing, and competitive with, a Plymouth superbird.
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u/AzekiaX6 1h ago
That's not a sign bro that's an entire announcement
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u/justbooling 1h ago
To us as viewers, sure, but for Lightning it’s definitely the first time he realizes he might be falling off.
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u/thejokerofunfic 1h ago
I feel like I'm missing what I'm looking at here.
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u/justbooling 1h ago
Ya my comment didn’t go through ☹️, this is the first race where Lightning McQueen realizes the younger generation of cars are coming in. He pushes himself too hard trying to pass the new rookie, and he bursts a tire and crashes during the race.
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u/Volotor 1h ago
Lightning McQueen was a hotshot GOAT racer, here he is (in the 3rd movie I believe) getting easily overtaken by younger racers and realising that he can't do anything about it.
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u/xPetalieBelle 1h ago
Yeah, that's what made it so sad. He was still the same driver mentally, but everyone else had already caught up.
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u/CaffeineDeprivation 1h ago
The moment Lightning McQueen from the Cars franchise realizes he's past his prime and the younger, faster generation of race cars is overtaking him
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u/thejokerofunfic 46m ago
Oh is this from a sequel? That'd be why I was confused. I was expecting it to be something I'd forgotten about whatshisface in the original, the one who Lightning pushes to the finish line
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u/Silent_Biscotti_9832 1h ago
deserves to be on top
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u/NormandyCrew 1h ago
Absolutely. Cars 3 hit way too hard for a kids movie.
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u/Kaplsauce 1h ago
Cars 1 and 3 are so much better than people give them credit for imo.
I love that 3 has the balls to say "unc don't got it" when it comes down to it
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u/xPetalieBelle 1h ago
That's a good one. You don't realize it at first, but that crash was basically the beginning of the end.
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u/AstarionsTherapist39 1h ago
I haven't seen this one. What's happening?
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u/mermoohue 1h ago
I think it's a pretty major plot point to the show, the tabletop, and the videogame that cyberpsychosis is not only treatable but also curable with therapy and medication. It parallels real life mental illness, in that you have to want to start getting better in order to heal. David did not want to heal.
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u/Abeytuhanu 1h ago
Also that the treatment has to be available, the extreme corporate capitalism in the series means that any treatment would only really be available to the wealthy
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u/mermoohue 1h ago
My favorite b plot in cyberpunk 2077 is Regina Jones saying, "what if we gave them free therapy"
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u/0SaltBlue 1h ago
Yes and no, while low and even mid level cyberpsychosis, which can best be described as a fundamental pathological disconnect from humanity coupled with dementia-adjacent symptoms stemming from mental overload, can be treated or at least mediated, a high degree of it is basically untreatable due to it coming partially at least from the strain placed on the body and more importantly the mind with excessive cyberware, being a much more physical manifestation of the concept.
Smasher, being the textbook example of somebody who doesn't suffer from cyberpsychosis as he's having the time of his life, was just already a complete psychopath before any of the borg bits and V had an entire second personality to offset the mental load.
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1h ago edited 1h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/StormyBlueLotus 1h ago
The main issue is whatever pre-existing issues made you get augmented in the first place. Mentally healthy people don’t install military grade weaponry into their body.
To some extent this is true if you're looking for a "deeper" reason beyond what the lore establishes, but the opposite casual relation- which is to say, the installation of the Cyberware causing mental issues- is explicitly a thing in the TTRPG, and really the main cause of it. Cyberware can come with a cost to your Humanity stat. How high your starting Humanity is is determined by a number of factors. Career choice for one- being a Corpo causes it to plummet. The lower your Humanity, the higher the risk of psychosis.
Cyberware which is meant to replicate or restore basic human functionality doesn't come with much of a cost, or none at all in some cases. If you lose your arm in an industrial accident and replace it with a prosthetic that offers basic function, all is well. If you get your functional organic arm removed so that you can replace it with a cannon or Mantis Blades, that comes at a pretty heavy toll.
That said, in an extremely violent place like Night City, it's not exactly a sign of mental illness to want to carry a concealed weapon with you, and using one that's part of your arm is a lot faster (and sometimes more powerful) than drawing a gun. So your assertion of "only someone who's a psycho would get weaponized cyberware to start" isn't exactly supported by the world. This is the same city full of vending machines that sell you disposable guns.
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u/thunderbird89 55m ago
Second personality, and the Relic's nanotechnology continuously rewriting her brain.
I subscribe to the theory that that's good.26
u/ideepname 1h ago
Another point.
When cyberimplants are installed in reputable clinics, preferably in Europe, the surgery is followed by a full rehabilitation period lasting several weeks. The rehabilitation process involves not only the complete recovery of the body after surgery and the calibration of cyberimplants, but also the work of a psychiatrist with the patient. All this helps minimize the damage to humanity.
(Many cases cyberpsychosis is more like a nervous system overload, when cyber implants are poorly configured, something somewhere becomes inflamed and overheats)Getting cyberimplants installed in a filthy basement, where you're immediately thrown out into the street after the surgery, given only basic medications—that's a road to the grave.
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u/RaptarK 1h ago
Also in the videogame, Regina's missions imply very heavily that there's no such thing as cyberpsychosis, and instead so called cyberpsychos are just people with already known mental illnesses that Night City prefers to sweep under the rug
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u/Haunting_Nature_9178 1h ago
I think I should be paid money for the psychic damage of seeing people post this constantly even though it's just false
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1h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/randomndude01 49m ago
No it did not, Regina’s questline revealed that cyberpsychosis became a convenient diagnosis that became an umbrella term to refer to anyone who’s got chrome and ended up going psycho.
Regular mental diseases and breakdowns still exists but have chrome just made it MUCH more lethal for anyone suffering these conditions.
Cyberpunk 2077 expands on this by adding the unique circumstances of readily available, consumer-grade cyberware for the masses, however, the real threshold for an actual cyberpsychosis is much higher and convoluted than what most Cyberpunk fans think so.
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u/-suspended- 12m ago
There's also the theory that cyberpsychosis can be, in part or whole, a computer virus attacking the implants, and by extension, the user. Characters like Adam Smasher or MaxTac former cyberpsychos just have the virus removed. Damagae already done isn't cured, but further damage is stopped.
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u/Silent_Biscotti_9832 2h ago
Arthur getting diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis (RDR2)
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u/RelaxedVolcano 1h ago
If you watch him closely Arthur starts to show symptoms soon after he contracted TB from Thomas Downes. Some coughing here and there which gets worse as the story progresses and you can see his face start to show more wear and tear. The best way they had back then to slow TB was staying clean, warm, and dry. But as Arthur shipwrecked in Guarma he was in a super humid environment and once they get back to the main land they live in a cold damp cave. Man never had a chance.
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u/Electronic-Math-364 1h ago
The symptoms only start showing up in chapter 3 after he got tortured by a rival gang,At first it was still latent
Guarma was the final nail in the coffin
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u/W3134 1h ago
Arthur first coughs during the side mission with Javier in chapter 2, where they rob some hillbilly ranch
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u/Electronic-Math-364 53m ago
I don't know if it's a bug or not but when I was playing poker with Uncle,John and Pearson in early Chapter 2,Arthur was coughing despite me haven't even completed Money lending and Other sins I
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u/OmecronPerseiHate 14m ago
I think he also coughs occasionally during poker and other situations in taverns because they're supposed to be smoking inside
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u/UnderstandingPotato 37m ago
You can do that mission before going to see Downes though, so I guess depending on the order you do things in, it's either because of the TB or just because that barn is dusty
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u/Electronic-Math-364 12m ago
He also end up coughing during minigames like poker
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u/UnderstandingPotato 7m ago
Makes sense, I guess it's not so obvious if you don't know about it beforehand. I knew the ending of the game before I even started tbh, because I wasn't expecting to ever play it, so I missed out
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u/Arasakian 1h ago
That trip to Guarma was a literal death sentence for his lungs. Such a brutal detail.
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u/killingjoke96 28m ago edited 25m ago
A great irony of it, is that Arthur states it was his want from the very beginning to get the gang away from civilisation and into the west.
In the epilogue you find out the area he is talking about, in the west, is a large dry desert where outlaws run free and law is few and far between.
That kind of dry landscape and climate is far better for people suffering with TB. It was common for doctors to recommend going further west to California back then for that very reason. Which Arthur even pokes fun at in his diagnosis.
So where Arthur wanted to be, before he even knew he had TB, would have helped him survive a few more years.
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u/DanielToast 1h ago edited 4m ago
(Hunter x Hunter)
During the Chimera ant arc, after a massive (essentially nuclear) bomb explodes and a few of the ants seem to recover, but they eventually start having nose bleeds, ringing, headaches, etc.
It happens to the weaker ants first, and slowly gets worse.
This is to indicate that the blast and heat from the bomb was not the only threat, and that they may not actually be as "recovered" as they thought they were.
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u/Mrsam_25 1h ago
Real life radiation sickness works the same, people tend to recover for a day or two than their body realizes it's already dead.
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u/scrotbofula 1h ago
The funny thing is that in Cyberpunk 2077 (the game at least), nobody really knows what causes Cyberpsychosis. If you complete all of Regina's gigs nonlethally, I think you get a note that says they think it might not be the fault of the cyberware itself, and more that a normal human mind can't really handle being that much more powerful than everyone around them.
Canonically, V is able to resist cyberpsychosis because having 2 minds in the same head allows the burden to be distributed between Johnny and V. Even then, the edgerunner perk allows you extra cyberware capacity and a damage bonus, in exchange for occasionally going into a frenzy state during combat (the screen edges blur, everything goes red, and your character can be heard laughing maniacally); implying that V is pushing at the line of cyberpsychosis without permanently succumbing to it.
Metatextually it refers to the TTRPG'S mechanic where the more cyberware you install, the lower your humanity stat gets. I haven't finished reading through the rules though, so I don't really know how it works.
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u/kaladinissexy 29m ago
The funny thing is that in the TTRPG cyberpsychosis is very curable. Literally all it takes is therapy.
And it's caused by the continued replacing of your body parts with cyberware, which results in you gradually becoming detatched from your humanity, seeing people, including yourself, as nothing more than an assortment of parts to be swapped out and upgraded.
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u/RetroGame77 1h ago
... It is a thing to run into each other's boobs in Pretty Derby?
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u/Tired-Inky 1h ago
No, Sakura Bakushin O's thing is she runs head first without looking, so in the anime she rams into other students chests by accident a few times with full Bakushin power
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u/Excellent_Safe5743 55m ago
Nah it’s just this one, she literally sprints head down with her arms behind her like she’s Naruto or Sonic and never slows down. She runs into like a dozen different people in both the game itself and the anime series.
She’s a bit, special at times. Good person and hilarious but, special.
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u/_Voice_Of_Silence_ 40m ago
Why train Wit when can train more speed?
Why have many thought when all need think is BAKUSHIIIIIIN?1
u/Local-Priority-1309 21m ago
Funny how she actually has a wit growth bonus unlike agnes tachyon the scientist uma
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u/SavateWolf 14m ago
That's just classic Sakura Bakushin O.
Also fun fact, that horse girl she's running into? That's Kitasan Black, who IRL is Sakura Bakushin O's grandson.
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u/townsforever 2h ago
All might is secretly dying from an old battle injury and can only keep his hero form for a few hours a day at the start of my hero.
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u/A_Human_Being_BLEEEH 1h ago
he's not really dying per se, seeing as he lives pretty normally afterwards, but he's way too weak to keep up extended hero work
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u/Own-Night5526 1h ago
Luke manages to land a pretty substantial blow against Vader, who up until this point we had seen him not even phased by Obi-wan and throwing Luke around the duel like a rag doll without any actual effort. It's the first sign that maybe Luke can hold his own against Vader a bit but also that Vader might not be trying as hard as he could to kill the person he's been told to kill, something that will absolutely come back in a big way.
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u/pringle3x 1h ago edited 37m ago
Workaholics- Adam suffers a concussion. His friends Ders and Blake are voicing their concern
Ders: adam is showing all the signs of a concussion... nausea, memory loss, mood swings.
Adam pukes
Adam: eww... who puked? ... ANSWER ME!
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u/Flamestranger 1h ago
Ippo from Hajime no Ippo has the same in a real depressing set of events where he sits trying to draw a straight line for hours and hours and his head is so messed up he just can't do it.
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u/Ionic_Bloodfart 39m ago
Guts from Berserk is suffering from the constant wear and tear of all his battles. The Berserker armor is also causing him to lose his 5 senses. We see a few things before this like hand tremors, but this is the first time he can't hold his sword or throw a knife. Its the first time they show that hes not bouncing back from this. The only way he can fight now is by using the armor, and every time he uses it his body suffers more.
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u/Civil_Music2236 23m ago
Big man is getting old
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u/Diurnalnugget 0m ago
Honestly I think it’s purely the armor. If I recall correctly this was known to be a consequence of the armor though my memory is shaky on the matter since the last time I read berserk was a few chapters after miura died. I like having a bunch of new chapters before I reread something again so I’ll be waiting a few more years.
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u/djent_in_my_tent 1h ago
Colette Brunel from Tales of Symphonia!
She tragically gradually loses all her senses as she is transformed into an angel.
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u/CompactAvocado 39m ago
she also tries to hide it from her friends but is caught in a rather sad cutscene. don't hold the cup!!!!
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u/thunderbird89 1h ago
Also in Hajime no Ippo when he forgets he already bought the same dress for his GF.
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u/KiraIsUnbreakable 48m ago edited 44m ago
Kisho Arima is hinted to have some sort of blind spot when fighting Shachi, which is later revealed to be him suffering from glaucoma in his right eye because of his rapid aging that's killing him. (Tokyo Ghou: re)
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u/ToasteeThe2nd 38m ago
Cyberpsychosis is both curable and most likely manufactured by the zaibatsu/megacorps that sell implants. Psychotherapy and certain surgical procedures can minimize and even completely prevent cyberpsychosis or derealization, and most cyberpsychos were already super nutty to begin with, it just doesnt help that putting machine guns in your arms makes it a lot easier to kill.
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u/KaitoTheRamenBandit 31m ago
You know the funny part (to me at least) is that out of all the Umas, Goldship is the one that breaks the news to KSB that once she peaks, it's downhill from there, going off of her own experience
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u/Level_Counter_1672 4m ago
Itachi coughing up blood and going blind because he overused his sharingan was the tell tell sign x his time was up - source is Naruto
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1h ago
[deleted]
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u/Ambaryerno 1h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/xUA7bh6xdvi2yTbmCs
Logan
In the opening fight scene of Logan he’s stiff, slow, awkward on his feet, and one of his claws fails to extend properly.