There was no better fighting force than the G.I. Joes back in the 1980s. These real American heroes put their lives on the line to protect our freedom from serpent-shaped fascist leaders. But after the fighting ended a lot of the Joes fought their own private battles with PTSD. Today we rank your favorite characters by just how bad it got for them.
30. Sgt. Slaughter
Despite having such a terrifying last name, Sergeant Perry Slaughter is an extremely well-adjusted individual. He spends his days yelling at incredibly specifically themed G.I. Joe commandos, and then his nights grilling with the family. Slaughter has, of course, seen horrific things, but his sociopathy makes them completely trivial. Slaughter lives a life of luxury and restful nights that the rest of the Joes can only watch enviously.
29. Slip Stream
Slip Stream was born in Utah, so he is almost certainly a Mormon, instantly giving him a leg up in mental well-being to the other Joes. Additionally, he only flies planes and works on computers. Sure, he sees horrific shit, but he sees it through the lens of a computer, which instantly defuses it and makes it not real. Slip Stream never had to grab his buddy’s face only to feel it turn into a pile of red mush. But he did see a live stream of that once, but it was in like 2019.
28. Grunt
Grunt did exactly what you think he did. He carried heavy shit for the NCO Joes and cleaned up after them when they had eaten. Grunt also spent most of his time masturbating in a hot porta-potty. While he has some minor PTSD of the time a spider landed on him in the Jon, he mostly turned out alright, ending up getting an engineering degree from Georgia Tech and walking onto the pickleball team there.
27. Psyche Out
Psych Out is a former psychologist and social worker who decided he needed to stop helping people and start terrifying them with psychological warfare. Sure, he might have a twinge of PTSD from arranging the mangled corpses of Cobra soldiers in lewd positions, but the satisfaction he got from the screams of terror helped out. Nowadays he is able to use his psychiatric training to block out the nightmares. Also he runs a very mediocre couples therapy workshop.
26. Muskrat
Muskrat is the GI Joe swamp expert, from the Bayou. Muskrat would have far more severe PTSD, but there really weren’t that many missions involving a swamp, so he stayed home most of the time perfecting gumbo. He did once make a jambalaya with non-deveined shrimps, and that fucks him up to this day.
25. Hawk
Hawk is commanding officer of the GI Joes. He spent his early career suppressing Vietcong, but fortunately his extreme racism helped to insulate him mentally from most of the damage. He was on a path to complete PTSD until he pitched the GI Joe program to the government. Now he can relax in his air conditioned office as special ops soldiers with pun names save the world.
24. Wild Bill
Yeehaw! Wild Bill flies the helicopter for the Joes, as well as a country singer. Through his hobby he is able to compartmentalize all of the horrific things he saw from a bird’s eye view. He loves dropping napalm on unsuspecting insurgents to the smooth strummings of Willie Nelson. Of course, if you attend a Wild Bill concert you’ll hear him singing about the trauma he experienced, but it seems to be blocked behind lyrics about trucks and beer.
23. SpaceShot
SpaceShot, which isn’t really even a pun, is a fighter pilot and, you guessed it, astronaut. He’s defended multiple space stations from Cobra attacks, and seeing men silently turn into red bubbles and dissipate into space does stick with you. SpaceShot also had a profound case of the Overview Effect, and has realized how pointless and insignificant Earth and humanity is in the face of the unrelenting maw of space. So he’s got to deal with that.
22. Grand Slam
Grand Slam is an artillery officer with the Joes, known for his ability to estimate distances without any issue. He also is known to house an entire Denny’s Grand Slam in under four minutes. That’s two pancakes, two eggs, two bacon strips, and two sausages. That’s a lot of damn food, and Grand Slam was famous for crushing it. Now he’ll wake up in a cold sweat, thinking he has to eat more pancakes. It’s a nightmare.
21. Cobra Commander
Cobra Commander, born William F. Buckley, is the leader of Cobra and the mortal enemy of the Joes. While Cobra Commander is a psychopathic megalomaniac, for the purposes of plot he gets foiled basically every week. While you might expect his PTSD to manifest from killing millions with giant lasers, or some similar bullshit, it mostly comes from his plans being foiled. Cobra Commander cannot find a moment of rest without imagining Roadblock swinging in on a rope and punching his henchmen in the hog.
20. Falcon
Falcon, as his name implies, is a special ops soldier who, for some reason, does not actually have a falcon. How badass would a Joe be if they just had a falcon that would fly over and peck some Cobra’s eyes out, and then come back to be fed a worm. Holy shit that would be so cool. Falcon is just some birdless asshole though. Also he once saw his men set a VC village on fire and shoot the fleeing inhabitants, so that haunts him. But it’s mostly not having a bird that gets him.
19. Hard Drive
Hard Drive, another Joe computer expert and online video game satirist, has a unique form of PTSD from people not understanding satire. He’ll constantly wake up in the middle of the night thinking of comments from people insulting him for his headlines, not realizing that they’re just a made up joke, just a goof. But the people don’t get it. They just assume Hard Drive is being serious. They’re so stupid.
18. Frostbite
It’s so cold. That’s all Frostbite can remember. Even in his warmest moments, with a weighted Snuggy wrapped around him, he still remembers the cold. The purple extremities, the delirious overheating, the frozen bodies. His name is Frostbite. That’s like naming someone who got in a serious car accident ‘Pileup’. The man is missing three toes and half a hand, he can’t even look at his name tag without remembering his lost digits.
17. Dial Tone
Dial Tone had a perfectly charmed life with the Joes in the ’80s and ’90s. He was always making crank phone calls to Cobra, or hacking into their system using a payphone. He was in his element. Then the internet came along. Suddenly Dial Tone wasn’t so popular anymore. These days kids don’t even know what a Dial Tone is! He tried to change his name to 5G, but it didn’t stick. Poor Dial Tone will never again be relevant. Then there’s the time he was tortured by the Taliban for months, that probably didn’t help.
16. Deep Six
Deep Six is a deep sea diver, and thus he has seen things that no other man has. In the depths of the sea lurks horrors unknown, bizarre, unthinkable things of snot and cartilage. Deep Six has seen all. He has descended to the blackness and, even though his body came up, his mind never did. He is haunted with images of cultists, tentacles, and New England towns. Deep Six better work on his non-Euclidean geometry. Because they are coming.
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