From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 00:05, 14 May 2022

209 Seconds (Rough Estimate)

(The entirety of 160 Seconds, but with "160" in the intro replaced with "209")

4 branches: HOMESTAR: Chinese b-

the chair: STRONG BAD: Class!

what i want: MARZIPAN: Forgettably precious.

looking old: MARZIPAN: Up to your chin right

strong badathlon: STRONG BAD: To the wrong athletes

unnatural: STRONG BAD: Kill him? STRONG SAD: We do-

the movies: HOMESTAR: -tuce. Throw

your funeral: HOMESTAR: Abraham Lincoln

from work: HOMESTAR: -veges. It helps

rough copy: STRONG SAD: -tellectual property.

underlings: STRONG BAD: Get Mrs. Hard-

more armies: HOMESTAR: Saaay

the paper: STRONG BAD: Doesn't quite

mini-golf: STRONG BAD: In this infernal pl-

concert: STRONG BAD: Nope. They're a

hygiene: STRONG BAD: No matter what he does.

original: BUBS: B'zuh!

bike thief: STRONG BAD: Side of this couch

pizza joint: MAN IN PIZZA COSTUME: It burns!

slumber party: STRONG BAD: Can you guys start

web comics: TAKE DAGGER: Hiya

business trip: THE KING OF TOWN: Units? STRONG BAD: What

yes wrestling: HOMESTAR: The power... of

diorama: STRONG BAD: -lupe Hidalgo

nightlife: HOMESTAR RUNNER: More...more

environment: STRONG BAD: -pliant sticker!

winter pool: HOMESTAR: You're such a good

fan club: STRONG BAD: (screams)

pet show: HOMESTAR: Potion. A taste

licensed: (Strong Bad slides) STRONG BAD: What's

buried: BUBS: Is! STRONG SAD: Uh

shapeshifter: COACH Z: Coming to your concession

rated: BUBS: Bake sale!

specially marked: (The Deleted buzzer, and a message reading "SBEMAIL 194 IS NOT INCLUDED BECAUSE IT DOES NOT HAVE A 194th SECOND")

love poems: HOMESTAR: Apples!

hiding: STRONG BAD: Coma!

your edge: STRONG BAD: Where'd you check?

magic trick: STRONG BAD: But now, not only does

being mean: HUNGRY SHARK: Makes me wanna

email thunder: (Strong Bad runs out of Homestar's computer room)

hremail3184: COACH Z: Bad! I was gonna

imaginary: LIL' STRONG BAD: -ti! I'd like you to meet

independent: STRONG BAD: Solid gold sc-

dictionary: STRONG BAD: To Z

videography: STRONG BAD: (chuckles)

sbemail206: ANNOUNCER: For all your consummate

too cool: STRONG BAD: Mysteriously with no return

The Next April Fools Thing: STRONG BAD: -low lives, and this

parenting: THE KING OF TOWN: I've got this seven-

Alternate HRWiki

Strong Bad

Listing Strong Bad's attributes - he is selfish, dishonest, conniving, rude, and motivated entirely by his own interests; one would suspect that the character would be utterly unsympathetic and totally unlovable. In truth, the exact opposite is the case; Strong Bad has become the most personable, likeable and strongly portrayed characters on the website, and his popularity eclipses all of his cast-mates, including Homestar himself. Strong Bad is not the star of the show so much as the supernova; his presence holds together the plots of the cartoons he is in, he galvanizes the rest of the cast one way or another, and he is the most consistently funny character. Even in the event that everything else could be forgotten, Strong Bad places an indelible image on his audience.

Visually, Strong Bad is no beauty; he is ostensibly a Mexican wrestler, in the tradition of larger than life characters such as Santo. Although Strong Bad lacks a cloak, he is topless and clad in the requisite costume of a mask, pants and boots. Strong Bad's mask is adorned with a jewel in the centre, framed by a forked protrusion. His eyes are a deep green and shine like emeralds (the colour blending technique of his eyes is unique; virtually every other character is given "flat" colours). His mask is predominantly red, with a pair of black crests spiking downward from his forehead to his cheeks. His mouth is simply a rectangular hole in the mask, through which flesh can be seen. Strong Bad's mouth appears to be open even in repose. Mexican wrestlers of the days gone by have often been so intimately intertwined with their wrestling personas that they were never seen in public without their masks. Strong Bad takes this ideal one step further; he never takes his mask off because the mask is his face. Another link to his wrestling roots is his name; only a few would remember the archaic, woefully translated Nintendo game Tag Team Pro Wrestling, in which the benevolent "Ricky Fighters" fought the villainous "Strong Bads".

The rest of Strong Bad's body is hardly impressive; his torso is nothing more than a potbelly, and his arms and legs are short and stubby. His hands are a pair of boxing gloves (as with his mask, they are a part of his body rather than a costume), although this has not hindered him from performing fine manual skills with surprising dexterity. Another physical blow against him is his lack of height. Strong Bad is short and squat, and is smaller than any of his friends, The Cheat excluded.

His diminutive form is contrasted by the sheer size of his voice, which is unabashedly loud, coarse, and candid; clearly his bark is much worse than his bite. Strong Bad's voice is a masterpiece of voice acting: in total contrast to the stilted delivery of the rest of the cast (who often speak as though by rote), Strong Bad speaks in an entirely realistic manner, albeit in a humorous tone. Strong Bad's voice is deep, gruff, hoarse, and fluctuates between gruffly muttering and flamboyantly self-aggrandizing. Strong Bad has an accent; while this accent was once unashamedly Spanish, it has altered to a dialect not readily identifiable. However, the accent, as with the voice, is immediately realized as uncouth and disreputable, as is his habit of affixing the word "crap" to sentences. All of Matt Chapman's voices are brilliant creations, but Strong Bad's voice requires the most acting skill to pull off successfully. It is a fine piece of work.

The smallness of his stature also helps to build up Strong Bad as what theologians deem the "Little Man". Strong Bad is the weakling who charges blindly into battle against giants, the fool who considers himself a genius, the self-absorbed boor who considers himself irresistible to the opposite sex. Strong Bad is infinitely secure that he can handle anything that comes his way, and that anything he does is incontrovertibly right. Strong Bad's philosophy seems to be that if he doesn't do things for himself, nobody else will, and that if he fails to go for the gusto, the best things in life will only end up in somebody else's hands.

In short, Strong Bad boldly demonstrates every character flaw and selfish behaviour that the rest of the world frantically attempts to keep hidden. There are many times in which everybody would like to act as Strong Bad does, if they thought they could get away with it! Strong Bad, however, has no such fear of retribution; he lives the way he pleases, and if anybody has a contention with that, it's their problem, not his. It is notable that, despite the carefree hedonism of Strong Bad's life, he does not especially have a better existence than the rest of the cast. Many of Strong Bad's gambits fail, and the gains of his few victories are so trivial that his effort is hardly worth it (although Strong Bad would certainly claim it to be a moral victory). Through it all, however, Strong Bad continues undaunted and unchanged.

There is some stupidity and stubbornness to this determination, of course, but Strong Bad's strength of character and mettle, however misguided, are admirable. In this sense, Strong Bad is an analogue of a Jack of all trades; while no different from the rest of us, an Everyman, a Jack finds the courage to do things that most of us will not or cannot do. While Strong Bad is rather more skewed for comic effect than most Jacks, the dynamic still works; if we are not like Strong Bad we would like to be, and in the act of watching him and experiencing what he endures, we can, for a short time, become him. This is the most important aspect contributing to Strong Bad's endurance of character; audience identification never occurs with such a broad character such as Homestar, for example. But a small piece of Strong Bad exists within the psyche of humanity at large: to call Strong Bad a personification of id would be simplistic, if not inaccurate, but Strong Bad carries with him not only the joy of hedonistic existence but also the folly. Strong Bad is truly a tragicomic character, speaking to something fundamental in the human mind, while still being richly funny. This complexity, however, was a long time in coming.

Strong Bad's character history is as long as Homestar's, and is just as convoluted as well. He and Homestar both debuted in "The Homestar Runner Enters The Strongest Man In The World Contest", and both made their first full-length animated appearances in "Marshmallow's Last Stand". Physically, Strong Bad is recognizable in both stories, although his proportions are somewhat different. Personality-wise, however, the character is almost irreconcilable with his modern counterpart. In the book, Strong Bad comes off like a prototypical version of himself. He boasts, makes a big show of himself, and tries to win with the aid of The Cheat, and ultimately meets his comeuppance.

This version of Strong Bad, however, is much more appealing than the version seen in "Marshmallow's Last Stand". In this early cartoon, Strong Bad cruelly harasses Homestar and Pom Pom for no reason, calling them "babies". He constantly promotes himself and Strong Mad as the "greatest tag-team wrestlers in the world", and approaches the pals for a challenge (the early Strong Bad's obsession with challenges and fighting were later parodied by a rather different character). When Homestar refuses, Strong Bad steals Homestar's prized star, and refuses to return it until they are beaten in the ring. In the actual match, Strong Bad proves to be a pitifully incompetent wrestler, unable to lay even a single blow on his opponents. He is forced to rely on Strong Mad's strength, and when his larger brother is incapacitated by Pom Pom, Strong Bad is virtually impotent to avoid a further beating. Thrown out of the ring, Strong Bad resorts to actively malicious subterfuge (on his own: The Cheat is nowhere to be found), with intention of murdering Homestar. This backfires and a large portion of Strong Bad's head is blasted off. Even having lost, Strong Bad spitefully tears up Homestar's star, only to receive a further beating. It is clear that the character had some major overhauling to endure if he were to return; not only was he a villain without a cause, but he wasn't even a threatening villain in any way. Furthermore, there was no joy or humour in any of Strong Bad's actions. He was mean for the sake of being mean.

After this debacle, Strong Bad was largely absent from later cartoons, appearing only in guest shots. His next major role was in "A Jumping Jack Contest", which, while largely rehashing "The Strongest Man in the World Competition", was a step up. Strong Bad shows a more sophisticated villainy: gone are his sadistic and cruel streaks, replaced with a burning desire to prove himself to be the best. Little things, like Strong Bad resorting to elaborate costumes and psychological warfare to get his competitors to drop out, helped define Strong Bad as a character, and perhaps the most important addition was his improvising of a triumphant song when it appeared as though things were going his way. The journey was far from over, but it appeared as though the character could be salvaged. Strong Bad continued his role in bit parts, bullying and playing pranks, but not really altering the flow of the story, until the most important event of his character and, by extension, the entire website, took place.

When "Strong Bad E-mail" debuted, it was obviously an experiment: each week, Strong Bad would answer an E-mail from one of his fans (actual E-mails from real people), and each E-mail showcasing his response would be an animated short. Despite a few false starts, the Strong Bad E-mail became a runaway success story and the most popular segment of the website. This not only propelled Strong Bad into the starring role at last, but it also helped him make a connection with his audience. Part of this was Strong Bad's breaking of the fourth wall, and addressing the audience directly, but more importantly, he began reacting to his fans' entreaties in different ways. Frustration, curiosity, amusement, defiance, embarrassment; a gamut of hitherto untapped emotions soon became part of Strong Bad's oeuvre. This rapidly growing personality soon outshone the rest of the gang, and Strong Bad gradually moved to the role of the lynchpin. Now, it is difficult for anything of note to happen in Free Country without Strong Bad's involvement. He is the one that gets things happening, and the other characters truly shine when reacting to him. While this dynamic works well for most characters, Strong Bad and Homestar are truly at their funniest when reacting to one another, letting their divergent personalities and mindsets bounce off one another. The power of this relationship can be seen by comparing Strong Bad and Homestar's conversation at the marshmallow stand in "Interview" with their first conversation in the same locale much earlier, in "Marshmallow's Last Stand". Strong Bad is, above all, a reactor, and the E-mail has given him a near-infinite source of material to react to. There are many characters, songs, running jokes, and plot conventions that would not exist, were it not for the E-mail.

Strong Bad was once a villain of the darkest stripe, but those days have been left in the dead past. Today's Strong Bad, with his jokes, songs, schemes and creations, is not only a thoroughly three-dimensional character, but also a richly comic and even an affecting one. By being a fully formed personality, complete with highs and lows, loves and hates, desires and fears, Strong Bad is so identifiable that the audience feels as though they have met him personally. We may not want Strong Bad living in our homes, but we love every moment he is on screen.