IT’S ALMOST HALLOWEEN, and also The Last Week of Monster Month, so I decided to End it with a Bang as we tackle none other than New Line Cinema Horror, the largest series from the classic 80’s Slasher movie genre. New Line Cinema was a small movie studio started back in 1967, which rose to prominence and popularity throughout the 80’s by distributing, creating and buying up numerous iconic Slasher and Horror franchises. Friday the 13th was a horror movie franchise started by Paramount and first began in 1980 and continued on to produce 8 films before being Bought by New Line who continued it on from there. Evil Dead was a Sam Rami made Horror franchise that New Line distributed and bought the rights to, gaining 3 films and a Television series. A Nightmare on Elm Street was made by New Line themselves and played throughout the 80s gaining 7 total films. Throughout the 90s and 00s, New Line created numerous crossover films and comics between the 3 franchises, making them canonically a Shared universe and with said shared universe consisting of 21 canonical films in addition to numerous comics, television series and novels, it is therefore the Biggest Slasher Franchise in both content and influence out there. And Today, I’m telling you how to be OP in it.
Building Tier:
The lowest tier of this verse is populated mostly with threats that most humans in the verse are portrayed as having somewhat of a fighting chance in dealing with, containing numerous Serial Killers and Fodder Monsters. Characters in this tier are Building level due to feats from the Human version of Jason being able to shake small buildings with the force of his fight, and Deadites being able to kill a person in such a way that their Blood erupts in a way comparable to an actual Geyser. In terms of speed, multiple Deadites have been able to keep up with Ash Willaims in fights, who was able to keep pace with Jason, who can dodge bullets from a Helicopter Minigun, which should put them Hypersonic in that regard. Beings like The Human Jason Voorhees can populate this tier and have abilities like causing terrified ford to hallucinate illusions, or shrugging off grievous injuries. That said, Ironically the Jason Copycat Killer Roy Burns has better feats than him in power and speed. You would also have to deal with beings such as Tommy Jarvis, the Van Hellsing of Jason, who killed the Human Jason when he was only 12 years old, went on to kill Roy Burns, and has multiple times fought against the significantly more powerful Revenant Jason. Tommy is an incredibly skilled commando who comes armed with Guns and Explosives to deal with extreme threats. Beyond Humans this tier contains the supernatural entities from The Army of Darkness, consisting of Numerous Skeleton Warriors and flying Griffin Creatures which are all very hard to take down. However the strongest creatures contained in this tier are none other than The Deadites, or humans who have become possessed by the Necronomicon, an ancient evil book of the dead bound in flesh and written in blood. Deadites can levitate, shapeshift into monsters, clairvoyantly see hidden things, impersonate their living self, and have such high survivability, they can only be stopped by complete dismemberment.
So how would one stop this tier? These characters seem to work primarily off of stealth and misdirection when hunting their foes, and favor those who are afraid of them and there are good reasons for that, namely they have some pretty pathetic range with most of their attacks, basically hitting in Melee and that's about it. One could get a quick edge over the verse if they simply hit from a long range away, although the powerful regen prevents one from simply doing so with a gun. Another thing that I have found would work well here is using their own tactics against them, as Illusions or other stealth based strategies would also be perfect for defeating them in battle. For my first counter,
The Invisible Man:
Firstly I have chosen Griffin from the Invisible Man series in Universal Classic Monsters. Griffin is superior to Abbott and Castello who could briefly outpace The Creature from The Black Lagoon and could survive falling off a castle. Griffin as the Invisible Man is, obviously, Invisible and therefore the characters in this tier would not be able to find him, while he's free to use his own stealth to land hits on them or lead them into dangerous situations. Griffin is a genius level scientist and a cunning strategist who can lure people into elaborate traps and outsmart the entire police force. Griffin could simply run them down with his car and cut them to bits with a clever or something, or blow them to smithereens with a boobytrap and they basically wouldn’t be able to catch him until this eventually works, he's very good at playing the long con. Now the obvious problem with Griffin is if they DO catch him, he could get killed himself, and he likely cannot use the weapons he needs to finish off the targets without giving his position away. But I feel like Griffin is more than clever enough to play around this, that said, for a more devastating counter,
The Pyro:
Yeah the Pyro from Team Fortress 2 would work extremely well in this tier. The Pyro can scale to the feats of other Team Fortress members who are able to endure exploding rocket blasts and run faster than sound, which would allow him to compete here. The Pyro comes armed to the teeth with absolutely Devastating weapons including a huge ass Flamethrower and a Grenade launcher sidearm which are both capable of one shooting the characters in this tier and overtaxing their Regeneration through blowing them to pieces and immolation which are both specifically cited to be able to destroy a Deadite. The Pyro also wields a large Fire Axe for close range combat which he is extremely skilled with and could also easily use to dismember targets. Not only can the Pryo readily destroy all these characters with his brutal arsenal and bloodthirsty rage, but he can largely defend against their own Strategies such as Illusions and Intimidation. This is because The Pyro is completely, dangerously insane and views a completely different reality from our own where everything is happy and delightful instead of the violence and war he is directly causing, making attempts to intimidate him or throw him off laughable because his brain isn’t wired to respond that way. That said, he is still technically human and can be attacked by them if they manage to take him by surprise, so for my final counter,
Scarecrow:
I think a perfect counter to this would be none other than the Jonathan Crane Scarecrow from DC Comics. Crane has multiple times been able to keep up with an Early Batman in battle, actually taking him on with a Scythe which would signify he can scale somewhat to Batman’s low building level and hypersonic feats from his earlier days. The Scarecrow’s main asset is his Fear Gas, a toxic fume he can release onto the battlefield that makes anyone exposed hallucinate their worst fears and see everything around them as unbelievably terrifying. With Fear Gas going into effect, all the characters in this tier would lose touch with reality and essentially be Sitting Ducks as they wouldn’t know where Crane is and with be too distracted by the delusions flooding into their head to stop Scarecrow from just carving them up with his scythe, which seems like an automatic GG. They really don’t have any counter to Crane’s chemical warfare strategy so their only real option is to try and Kill Crane before he unleashes it, but thats unlikely to happen, not only because Crane can do it at any point from a longer range, but also because he doesn’t look intimidating at all without the Fear Gas so they likely wouldn’t take him seriously enough to go for a swift kill. Even if they did, Crane is more than skilled enough to fend them off for a few seconds to unleash this so really, their victory is a lost cause.
City Tier:
This is the tier where the Verse’s Big Name Supernatural Threats are contained, essentially having the main villain of all 3 series and their most powerful adversaries. Characters in this tier get into the city level range, based off the Demon Kandor being able to summon enough clouds to block the moon in the night sky, as well as similar feats from Freddy Krueger who was able to make it rain blood over the entirety of Washington D.C. and turn into a cloud that eclipsed Mountains in size. Speed wise we have a bit of a speed disparity, most of the characters like Jason Voorhees have only displayed Hypersonic feats such as dodging machine gun fire, but the character Freddy Krueger is So Fast he could move a kid and his entire house into orbit at the speed of Light, potentially allowing us to gain a speed edge over most of the monsters here with our counters.
So the Monsters in this tier are NOT playing around, often having very volatile arsenals of powers and just being incredibly hard to take down. Generally they all have very impressive Healing factors, the Revenant Jason Voorhees capable of regenerating his entire body from only a piece of his brain, and Freddy Krueger being able to straight up resurrect himself from the Dead if completely destroyed. They can also all use common powers including making devastating mental illusions, possessing people, weather manipulation and strong Super Senses. After becoming a Revenant, the serial killer Jason Voorhees picked up several additional supernatural powers, including Teleportation, Mental Attacks that deal Physical Damage, a blood borne virus that turns others into serial killers, and the power to absorb Lightning. This tier also includes numerous Human characters with some degree of Supernatural powers of their own, such as Tina Shepard, a psychic girl who has the powers of Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis and the power to resurrect the dead to do her bidding, or how about The Dream Master, Alice Johnson, who can fight beings on the mental plane, summon ghosts to fight for her and absorb the dream powers of others to use herself, giving her numerous magical powers and skills. Likely the most difficult to deal with Human in this tier is Ash Willaims from Evil Dead fame, who is literally the Chosen One, which gives him passive probability manipulation that allows him to survive going up against creatures far out of his league, as well as resist things like Death Hax or being turned into a Deadite. Ash is also an extremely skilled and resilient fighter, who wields a bionic arm, a powerful Shotgun, and a Chainsaw that is Far more powerful than one reasonably should be. Ash needed that considering the main boss monster he was up against, Kandor the demon of the Necronomicon. Kandor is a powerful evil force who cannot be normally detected or interacted with. Kandor can speak telepathically, Control people's Bodies, possess objects, transform people into Deadites, use any of the Deadites abilities himself, and completely control nature and plantlife, making the woods themselves do horrific things. He has Hemokinesis which can summon INSANE amounts of blood from basically anything, drain away someone's vitality, turn mirrors into dimensional portals of water, or even make evil mirror monsters to attack someone. But by far the most terrifying creature to deal with at this tier is none other than the terrifying Incubus Serial Killer himself, Freddy Krueger. Freddy was once the Most Evil human being on the planet, and upon his death was infused with the power of the Dream Demons with the goal of breaking down the border between Dream and Reality. He can travel between the dream world and the real world at will, and while in the Dream world he can attack a person's mental plane body, allowing for anything he does to said person in the dream to also happen to them in real life. Freddy can also control reality in pretty much any conceivable way whether he's in a Dream or Not, giving him an extremely long list of powers which are hard to deal with. Freddy can Read Minds, Erase people's Memories, control animals, hypnotize people, make people go insane, and also resist mental hax to a similar degree. He can Stretch and Shapeshift himself into anything, Duplicate himself into hundreds of clones, manipulate matter, transmutate his foes into objects, and even forcibly fuse himself to their body. He can Fly, Turn Invisible, Warp Space to his Whim, control technology, cast force fields, and manipulate numerous things including Ice, Explosions, Shadows, Gravity and Sleep. Freddy can manipulate Time to some degree, being able to predict the future to some extent and even trap someone in a Time Loop. In addition to all of that he can also turn Intangible, interact with other intangible objects, and most famously steal and consume the souls of others in order to raise his own powers. Freddy has numerous more abilities of varying degrees of utility but those are all his main ones so let's stick to how in the heck one is supposed to survive against a verse as volatile as this. Well despite how strong this verse seems in terms of abilities there are a fair number of weaknesses to exploit, one of which funny enough is the fitting power of Purification. Dark beings like Freddy, Kandor and Jason are all specifically vulnerable to holy attacks and spells that harm evil, and while they were never permanently stopped by it, they have been harmed and defeated for a large amount of time by these things before eventually coming back. Freddy Krueger, like any Nightmare, specifically draws his energy from the Fear of his victims. When facing someone who has the ability to stop people from being afraid, or erase him from their memories, he will quickly lose his supernatural powers. Another big overall weakness shared by the entire tier is Dimensional Sealing, as the Necronomicon was able to seal Kandor and Freddy away, and they never came back once that was done to them, similarly it was able to seal Ash in medieval times and he similarly could not return without outside assistance. Also a more minor note but a lot of these beings struggle to battle against those who have similar abilities to themselves, such as Freddy Struggling against The Dream Master or Jason losing to KM. So with that said, one character I think would do well here,
Pandora:
An interesting strategy I think could work is to use Pandora from Sailor Moon. Pandora is a member of the Dark Agency division of evil Yokai, and is comparable to the very early Sailor Senshi making her relevant to feats such as Usagi’s “Ultrasonic Crying” could destroy a Town Sized Dimension, and how Minako could fly to the Planet Venus in seconds immediately after transforming the first time, more than allowing her to compete here. Pandora is an Idol Singer who can mind control her victims with her singing, her Mind control is so powerful it can affect the entire country of Japan at once so it's superior to anything that has been seen in this verse before. Even if it cannot affect Characters like Freddy or Kandor, it would keep the entire country from feeling fear towards them due to being distracted feeling adoration towards her, which would slowly drain away Freddy’s powers leaving him weak and vulnerable. Also she has another staple power of Sailor Moon Villains, Energy Draining which is strong enough to completely drain an entire stadium's worth of people at once. With this ability she could potentially kill any character in the verse after a long enough exposure, and since both it and her mind control works at a greater distance than any of their own, this could allow her to pull a win condition before they get into her effective range. Even if Freddy did pull her into a Dream it wouldn’t prevent her from using these powers as Freddy is specifically not able to depower people in Dreams, as seen when Jason still maintained all of his normal powers despite Freddy really not wanting him to. Now that being said this does have some risk to it because should Someone like Freddy manage to close the distance on Pandora before she ends up taking away too much of his power, he could one shot her with hax. For a safer bet, lets try,
The Second Coming:
Orange, or The Second Coming from Animator VS Animation would be extremely OP Against this tier. Orange was able to to fight characters capable of actually intercepting legitimate laser beams, and could directly annihilate a mountain with his own blasts, putting him more than on par with the likes of Kandor and Freddy. Orange is a being made of Data rather than physical matter and thus doesn’t possess physical, astral or mental material for Freddy to exploit with his magic. One might think their technopathy would work but also no, Orange was specifically able to resist viral software that could erase any data that it came into contact with in an instant. Orange can fly, has an insane healing factor that can repair being impaled over every part of his body, and can open dimensional portals that allow him to travel to other planes, which would allow him to seal away the foes of this tier and prevent them from coming back. The Second Coming can also manipulate some form of energy which is expressly shown to be holy energy that can enable him to shoot energy blasts, cast force fields and resurrect the dead. This should be able to deal devastating damage to Freddy due to his weakness to holy energy. The main advantage that The Second Coming has over this tier is how he has immersion powers which not only allow him to jump into forms of media, but also jump into the metafictional plane, basically giving him the ability to interact with any of the targets here while also making it extremely difficult for anyone to affect him, as only Freddy in his evil entity form has ever been able to do something similar. The Second Coming can create basically any weapon or creature imaginable, as well as erase foes from existence with his eraser power which should allow him to completely destroy any of these characters regardless of their regeneration or self resurrection.
The Nightmare:
Yeah one last character I think would perform super well here is the Nightmare Grimm from RWBY. The Nightmare is essentially a Virus like Grimm that can infect people in the real world and trap them in a Dream where this creature manifests on the Mental Plane and slowly drains the energy of their soul until they die. In the Dream the Nightmare is able to take on the form of a shadow, meaning it is capable of adjusting itself at the same speed of light, and was able to Amp the Negative Weiss’ power to be able to create a Hurricane over the entirety of the Ice Queendom, meaning it can easily match Freddy Krueger at his strongest. The Nightmare is a Grimm, a creature of Darkness that seeks to destroy mankind and its creations. Grimm specifically do not have Souls or Minds, and thus this thing is outright immune to any of the Astral or Mental hax that Freddy or Kandor could possibly throw at it. Similarly, Grimm’s senses are not based upon sight and sound like our own, but rather their detection of Negative Emotions like sadness, anger, fear, hatred, and other things that are in no short supply here, meaning it could always find the characters and see straight through things such as Illusions or invisibility. Inside the dreamscape, The Nightmare is able to penetrate every single part of one's mind and subconscious and battle upon the mental plane, plus due to the fact that it hides specifically in the shadow of its mental plane body, it's basically impossible for any of these characters to locate before it's too late. Similar to Freddy it also has control over Space inside of the mental plane, can trap entities inside of Time Loops to keep them busy, and even control the hosts mind. If that wasn’t broken enough the Nightmare’s Thorns can trap anyone they touch inside of a dream, which even works on the mental bodies of beings already in a dream, trapping them in a second layer of dream which they’ve never had to combat before. Basically, this thing can match or counter every single ability even Freddy has, can spatially seal beings away in dreams Within Dreams, and drain away their soul overtime which would kill them regardless of their regen. So long as Freddy doesn’t learn from his own character flaws and actually find this thing, no one in this verse would survive.
Planet Tier:
Finally we get to the tier of the verse’s distant future, where Mankind devastated and abandoned planet Earth on the downside, but on the upside they invented tons of Future tech and colonized deep space! Only a single character really exists in this tier, that being Uber Jason AKA Jason X. This Jason was awoken in this technologically advanced future and was infected by Nanobots, losing many of his more supernatural qualities but becoming a significantly more powerful Cyborg Zombie. In the novelization, Jason X is powerful enough to endure the intense gravitational force of a small black hole that was pulling in nearby planets, and fast enough to grab onto spaceships capable of traveling across the Universe in a short time frame in mid-flight, which would make him Planet Level, and Millions of times the speed of light. While he did lose much of his powers in this form, one power JX certainly maintained is his regeneration, his nanobot tech is capable of healing any injury he receives, and can even completely reconstruct his body if just a single drop of his blood remains. That’s far from the only power the Nanobots grant him though. Jason X can also sense other sources of energy to track foes down and gauge dangerous entities, super quickly hack into and shut down technology with his presence, and even sent some of his Nanobots into peoples bodies and take full control of them like a puppet, often making them perform grizzly murders while their moral mind is still conscious, but unable to stop themself.
So how does one beat Jason X? Well despite his cosmic power, X often lacks ways to capitalize on it due to the fact his range is absolutely pathetic for his tier, only able to use Melee range attacks, and losing or straight up not possessing any mobility increasing powers, not only losing some of his abilities like Teleportation and Illusions, but also not having any means of flight, meaning that extremely common power can single handedly make a character unhittable to him. Jason X is also somewhat vulnerable to extreme temperatures such as Heat and Cold, which even in non cosmic amounts such as the Heat of Atmospheric Re Entry or the Cold of a Cryochamber have been able to stop him temporarily by shutting down his nanobots. So with this in mind, someone I think could absolutely destroy Jason X is,
Starfire (Teen Titans):
Starfire, specifically the alternate universe version from Teen Titans, would be extremely overpowered in a fight with X. Starfire was able to tank a blast from a Space Mine that generated an explosion that eclipsed planets in size at its epicenter without any injury whatsoever, and is fast enough to physically fly intergalactic distances in short timeframes which means she could easily compete with Jason X’s own stats. Starfire is a species of alien known as a Tamaranean, a warrior race who gain Kryptonian-like abilities through their own emotions. Starfire can Fly and Breathe in the Vacuum of Space, and has the ability to generate and fire powerful energy blasts called Starbolts and Shoot Lasers from her eyes. With this powerset, it would be ridiculously easy to simply fly outside of Jason’s effective range and bombard the hell out of him with burning energy blasts while he cannot do anything to stop her. Also considering how Gross Jason X is she probably wouldn’t wanna touch him so this would be her preferred way of fighting him. Even if Jason did manage to get into close range Starfire is significantly more skilled than he is, being a badass Alien Warrior who has taken own armies of skilled warriors and a much wider variety of metahumans than Jason X has, so could easily fend him off and continue bombarding him from a distance. Tamaraneans have naturally much higher body temperatures than humans due to their absorption of Solar Energy through their skin, Even in Teen Titan’s continuity Starfire has shown the ability to casually make her body so hot it can flash melt Steel and let her reshape the metal into different shapes in an instant. Not only does this prove that Star can attack with enough Heat to Fry X’s tech and prevent him from properly healing, but also resist him trying to possess her as his Nanobots simply would not survive in her body. The only real concern Starfire would have against X is that she probably wouldn't try and completely vaporize him until she realizes that is necessary, which would make this a longer fight, for a swifter option…
Donovan Baine:
One could simply use the Dark Hunter, Donovan Baine from Darkstalkers. Donovan is a Dark Hunter who works to destroy Evil and Darkness by hunting monsters and clearly would completely annihilate a monster like Jason X without holding anything back. Donovan is capable of battling against the Mortal Form of Pyron who could destroy planets and fly across the galaxy at millions of times the speed of light so should have no trouble taking him on, plus he is a very skilled martial artist so could hold his own in melee. That said, Donovan specializes in fighting from a distance, using his Flying sentient sword to hack foes to pieces without him even holding it. Since this sword is a solid mass of metal with no technological or biological component, X could not harm this creature using his Technopathy or Possession, and would end up getting repeatedly hacked up. Donovan can also use his Buddhist magic to summon forth elemental gods to produce devastating attacks, including blazing hot fire and freezing cold ice which would each wreak havoc on his circuits and likely permanently incapacitate him. Donovan can even use his Sword as a flying surfboard to just stay completely out of Jason X’s reach while he bombards him with these elemental attacks. X’s only real shot in this fight is to try and possess Donovan himself, but not only would he have to catch him first, Donovan can likely resist possession to some extent due to his Buddhist training to keep his own evil Vampire side from taking him over. Still though if you want a 100% guarantee.
Magneto:
Well you can’t possibly counter a cyborg harder than with the Master of Magnetism himself, Magneto from Marvel. Magneto, while not as impressive as Jason X in physical might, through his Magnetism has been able to pull himself across the Galaxy in a single day and move the entire Planet around through its very Magnetic field. So it feels kinda weird having to Explain why Magneto would be Overpowered here but, he's the Master of Magnetism, and Jason X is a cybernetic being who has a body full of metal. Magneto can completely shut down all his nanobots, or tear him apart, or Literally fling him into the Sun with a thought, and X couldn’t do anything to stop him. Magneto can fly out of his range, surround himself in a basically impenetrable force field, track Jason by his bioelectric aura, somehow turn himself completely invisible with Magnet Powers, and could directly take control of the Nanobots to stop the possession even if by some absolute miracle Jason X did manage to land that. He basically has a direct counter to every single power he has, and could kill him so easily I wouldn’t be shocked if he could take out an entire army of Jason X.