15. Captain Grid-Iron
Captain Grid-Iron was dealt a bad hand to start by being given the worst possible G.I. Joe name. He’s a football player, and the best they could come up with was ‘Captain Grid-Iron’. Like seriously? Touchback, Touchdown, Safety, Slant Route, First Down, hell even Captain QB. But you called him Captain Grid-Iron. Captain Grid-Iron never even saw combat, but he had to endure constant ribbing from his better-named teammates, and that sticks with you.
14. Alpine
Alpine, born, conveniently enough, Albert. M. Pine is a master of climbing and scaling sheer rock faces. However, he’s the only Joe who is. Alpine was cursed with seeing his fellow soldiers incompetently try to scale rock faces, only to fall to a miserable death hundreds of feet below. Alpine effortlessly climbs cliffs as his compatriots try to emulate him and die in the pursuit of it. The survivor’s guilt of being the only guy who can successfully rock climb is too much for one man to bear.
13. Leatherneck
Leatherneck is another one of the Joes drill instructors, and in that capacity he lived a rather charmed life. His burden comes from constantly being confused with a member of the Village People. His square jaw and thick mustache makes him look like he is about to bust out a rendition of ‘Macho Man’ at any time. Dozens of missions were ruined by insurgents approaching him and doing the YMCA dance. All he wants to do is kill, but he gets confused with a flamboyant disco group. Nightmarish.
12. Heavy Duty
Heavy Duty needs help. He joined the Joes when he realized that his musical obsession fit nicely into the roar of heavy weapons, much like Tchaicovsky did. His passion for music dissolved quickly when he saw Cobra soldiers turning into pink mist with every ‘beat’ he played on his mortar. Heavy Duty is so mentally ruined by his heavy weapons duties that he can only speak in rhymes. You ever see such fucked up shit that you permanently abandon prose?
11. Cover Girl
A former model, Cover Girl used her beauty and makeup skills to become a master of espionage and going undercover, because nothing is less conspicuous than a model infiltrating your military base. Cover Girl has seen thousands of G.I. Joe black sites around the world, and been responsible for “enhanced interrogation” of captured Cobras. The muffled screams of the waterboarded still perturbs her as she walks down the runway.
10. Zap
Zap was one of the soldiers in Abu Ghraib. You can see him next to the human pyramid of naked detainees, smoking a cigarette and pointing at them. He thought he was going to do good for the world when he joined G.I. Joe, but he just ended up torturing prisoners for his own amusement. He was against it at first too. But the peer pressure. He just had to do it. Or they’d turn on him. He had to do it. He had no choice.
9. Skydive
Skydive once forgot to pack a parachute. He jumped out of the plane, expecting to drop in on Cobra Command and machine gun them from behind, just like the plan. But he pulled the rip cord and nothing. He pulled the backup parachute, but to no avail. He plummeted to the ground having an agonizingly long time to consider his imminent demise as the wind rushed past his face. Eventually he accepted his death and waited for the ground to come, but he was lucky enough to land in a trampoline park. You ever have the dream where you’re falling? Skydive only has that dream now.
8. Skidmark
Skidmark, formerly known as Desert Fox, is the Joes’ desert driver. For years he was called Desert Fox, and the name worked perfectly. He was respected, he was loved. Then he ate an entire box of pistachios for lunch one day. They were driving to an oasis when it exploded out of him, the texture of peanut butter. He couldn’t do anything. The other Joes just laughed. You’re not Desert Fox anymore. You’re Skidmark. The pranks became constant, the Joes would just toss their filthy underwear at his head. They prepare you for a lot in basic, but not that.
7. Jinx
Jinx’s true identity is top secret. However we do know that she’s from L.A. and went to Bryn Mawr, so if you really wanted to figure out who she is it would probably be fairly trivial. She is a ninja master, and assists the Joes in their surprisingly large number of ninja-based operations. Her PTSD moment came when she was forced to kill her former ninja master. He was working for Cobra and he also knew her real name and major at Bryn Mawr. No one can know her true identity so she plunged her sai into his heart and apologized to him before mentally breaking down. Then she went to an alumni event at Bryn Mawr.
6. Ice Cream Soldier
Honestly this one is too fucked up to get into.
5. Lifeline
Lifeline, a medic, got into the military to save people, which is the one thing we all know the military does. Lifeline is an avowed pacifist, never hurting anyone and only helping them. Until he can’t. Lifeline can barely go to the grocery store without his mind being haunted with images of men he tried to save, but their wounds were just too deep. He experienced the true horror of gimmick based weaponry and what it can do to the human body. And it’s terrifying.
4. Torpedo
Torpedo is the Joe’s mountaineering expert. Just kidding, he’s obviously a scuba diver and black belt, skills that are obviously complementary. Torpedo spent most of his time underwater, and had dozens of close calls. He was once caught in a pitch black room with the water rising in it for three days. He was certain of his death so he wrote a letter to his family telling them what to do with his gi and swimming flippers. He lived, but you don’t go through that kind of thought process without it changing you.
3. Mutt
Mutt is the animal expert. He can train an elephant to attack, a bird to deliver letters, or a dog to attack Cobra soldiers. The one thing he can’t do is train them to dodge bullets. Mutt had to watch each animal he trained run into heavy machine gun fire and get torn into pieces. He spent his time in a Sisyphean nightmare of training animals for combat only to watch them be destroyed entirely. The pigeons. Oh god the pigeons, I can hear them screaming. Also I’m Mutt.
2. Mainframe
Mainframe, the Joe’s computer expert, is seriously fucked up man. In the ’80s he spent most of his time doing Wargames-eque hacking, but as time progressed, and computers became more prevalent, he pivoted full time to cyber crimes. Mainframe saw the worst the internet had to offer, the heinous crimes of the dark web. This came to a head when he killed a pedophile with his bare hands and didn’t even have a clever, computer related pun to say. Now he throws up if he sees a child in the grocery store, and weeps openly when someone even brings up cartel executions.
1. Snake Eyes
Snake Eyes is constantly reliving the most horrible moments of his life. He is famously silent, only because the only emotion his words could express would be pain and terror. Every time he closes his snake eyes he sees his sword plunging into another man, another set of guts set free from their corporeal boundaries. But none of that can possibly distract him from the time he saw his parents fucking when he was six, making him silent forevermore.
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