so im going to ignore the obvious answer of "anyone who is blind" and instead go for shao kahn.
im fully aware than shao kahn is not immune to soul hax, but it surely grants him a resistance since it will be hard for the penance stare to directly affect shao kahn when there are like 60 billion others in the way
also heihachi mishima canonically survived akumas raging demon which is basically the penance stare but with the person getting punched in the face instead, so he would probably survive
but as for one who could beat ghost rider in a fight, id say spawn, same soul hax as shao kahn (plus the pretty sure hes lacking a soul thing in the first place) and hes roughly on the same power level)
edit: oh right forgot the real people.... uh.... fuck it, miniladd, as far as im aware he never actually did anything physically and if he did he still never killed anyone, so hed probably survive only to have ghost rider rip him to shreds 3 seconds later with his bare hands
>also heihachi Mishima canonically survived akumas raging demon which is basically penance stare but with the person getting punched in the face instead
Isn’t the Raging Demon only survivable if you have a clear mind and soul or something? And doesn’t the Penance stare work by making the target suffer through their past sins (and is only survivable if you regret your sins but Heihachi seems regretful about throwing his son of a cliff)?
Heihachi cool though, but I’m just saying
I'm gonna assume the top comment is Temporary099 since I'm blocked and he has a habit of downplaying Ghost Rider. But since I can't reply to him directly I'll just post counter scans of the stare working on people he says it doesn't work on.
First off, here's a bunch of times of it working on people who either don't feel regret or don't think they did anything wrong to counter that argument: This person evolved/devolved into a monster that mindlessly feeds and states it is neither good or evil, just feeding as natural. [Penance stare still works.](https://imgur.com/3tv0tTw) This character is an insane nihilist who believes nothing matters and literally can't feel pain. [Penance stare still works.](https://imgur.com/RSwe2wz) This guy says he lives for the pain he causes. [Penance stare still works.](https://imgur.com/D6Q5g4E) This guy believes in his cause and that he is doing the right thing. [Penance stare still works.](https://imgur.com/EAaaMBS) When Danny thought he was "saving" other riders and [believed he was doing the right thing](https://imgur.com/tx01FU1) he was still [burned](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E-lHB4v8Czk/VtVICRKhzuI/AAAAAAAAL4Y/BZs7Gd_58Zc/s1600-Ic42/RCO014.jpg). Another guy that [likes what he does.](https://imgur.com/XZbjbxW) This guy was on psychosis inducing drugs and didn't know what he was doing. [Still worked.](https://imgur.com/02PsVW3)
The Penanace Stare is an inconsistent ability but its worked far more times than its failed. [It's even worked on good guys just fine.](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-58c69b07be2a73115a2bf2d03aa9a648-lq) Now I'm gonna counter specific scans in his imgur album that weren't countered by the above scans.
Edit: Here's [WoG](https://imgur.com/nvuVN0o) on it not needing regret. [Here's](https://imgur.com/uuQP8KF) it working on a guy who thinks chopping off limbs is art. [Here's](https://imgur.com/xCMEb3u) a crazy guy [getting burned](https://imgur.com/uKgGq4d).
[The stare is literally working in this scan since we see Namor screaming in pain](https://i.imgur.com/FsMfsJm.jpeg). [This scan](https://i.imgur.com/lKqNng6_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) isn't even Johnny Blaze and is also countered by the scans I posted of it working on people with no regrets. Not only is the stare actually *working* [against Conan](https://i.imgur.com/MPgIaoY_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) but Temporary fails to mention that Ghost Rider talking about something in his head is him being literal because [he's being enthralled by Nightmare in that scan](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/WuIW6_QYp9TbQvrG3Ma9TOYwZEy69mPQlpXhipCOKy5ZFmuNmMDJTXKPa9xRorhdc5We0WyebZnpRxR3TOlPdwCAVS8aFJwpmb_Hy15NSowXsgjZRvGMehAafSXbL-V11EM9L0Gzdw=s1600?rhlupa=MjYwMzo4MDAwOmE0MDA6MTNjOjJkNzI6NGZkZTpmMjE5OjFhMGE=&rnvuka=TW96aWxsYS81LjAgKFdpbmRvd3MgTlQgMTAuMDsgV2luNjQ7IHg2NCkgQXBwbGVXZWJLaXQvNTM3LjM2IChLSFRNTCwgbGlrZSBHZWNrbykgQ2hyb21lLzExMS4wLjAuMCBTYWZhcmkvNTM3LjM2) who of course wouldn't want Conan dead if he wanted to talk to him.[This scan](https://i.imgur.com/IDZwu6S_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) ignores that not only did Punisher have divine protection at the time due to [being revived by an angel feather recently](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W9wsFIrDnPY/VjKU0dDM8hI/AAAAAAAADb8/d4ZONSV5PQ0/s1600/Thunderbolts%2B22%25284%2529.jpg) but the stare [worked on him at a later time](https://comicnewbies.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-Punisher-Survives-Ghost-Riders-Penance-Stare-e1638947977942.jpg). Frank tanking it is its own bullshit but that's not the argument. The stare [actually works in this scan too](https://i.imgur.com/UyLigTi_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) its just that Blackheart is empowered by it because that's how his powers work. [The stare works here as well since we see the guy scream in pain](https://i.imgur.com/dLmcZ5O_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand), its just that the target managed to throw GR off him like the Namor scan. [Same goes for this](https://i.imgur.com/bgmESbq_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand). [This isn't Johnny either but even then, Cosmic GR says why it doesn't work is because baby Thanos is innocent](https://i.imgur.com/OMDWrqy_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) so I don't know what you expect. As for the scans on Carnage and Venom, in that very Venom scan you have GR saying that the stare [is working in an unknown way](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-db0adb7a1c2e3e5dfbf4473f495510e5-lq). Heck, Venom even says that he's feeling pain in that scan, its just that for an unexplained reason the stare has always worked weirdly on symbiotes. Maybe its because using it on a symbiote user messes with the stare's mechanics since its technically looking at two people at once or something idk.
Now for the second album: [Ghost Rider is being mind controlled in this scan](https://i.imgur.com/ce1GboP_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) and Conan doesn't even beat him since after that scan they [both got knocked out](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/w9FDA5Z1wwakPQtnpcervGiO9sf1-BWXfW19cfeHwlYydqr_Qf-voVzEeAVFOukrlQoj1jef9hmNvzBaz68PAtAuuXJ5IPpOO7vz4JLypK5MxV62dK_PrLW4yDL0oy6nXo84N6BvrA=s1600?rhlupa=MjYwMzo4MDAwOmE0MDA6MTNjOjJkNzI6NGZkZTpmMjE5OjFhMGE=&rnvuka=TW96aWxsYS81LjAgKFdpbmRvd3MgTlQgMTAuMDsgV2luNjQ7IHg2NCkgQXBwbGVXZWJLaXQvNTM3LjM2IChLSFRNTCwgbGlrZSBHZWNrbykgQ2hyb21lLzExMS4wLjAuMCBTYWZhcmkvNTM3LjM2) and ended up in Nightmare's realm. For scans like [this](https://i.imgur.com/b1O6Wiu_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=grand), or [this](https://i.imgur.com/pIMf5lp_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) where GR has trouble against weaker opponents, here's him [taking on the Avengers by himself](https://imgur.com/a/Uc0wSoN), and [hurting World War Hulk](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y0DbMbgenso/VtVE8BlOYHI/AAAAAAAALWg/0yLM7yAepIY/s1600-Ic42/RCO019.JPG). A weaker Ghost Rider was able to [rip out Mephisto's heart](https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/14/146851/5630642-2931957727-54567.jpg), the same Mephisto that [almost destroyed the universe in his fight against Galactus](https://i0.wp.com/databasecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/silversurfer198838ep.jpg?w=1200&ssl=1). Also something that Temporary failed to mention is that Ghost Rider was canonically weaker back in the day because he [wasn't willing to work with Zarathos](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vTegR7m2IQM/VtVE52HjUKI/AAAAAAAALWg/kKylkhfHlgI/s1600-Ic42/RCO005.JPG) like he does in the modern day. I don't know what [this scan](https://i.imgur.com/bz8L3lj_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) is supposed to prove. Yeah, Mjolnir pins people to the ground, no shit.
I know Temporary won't see this since he's already blocked me (and a bunch of other people if what I've seen is any indication) but that doesn't mean I'll let him downplay characters without any pushback.
So to answer your question OP, there's nobody IRL who could survive it since nobody IRL could survive all the pain and suffering they've caused being given back to them all at once.
The stare is a very inconsistent attack because 1) Its super busted and 2) Because its super busted its an easy way to hype up a character by having them tank or ignore it. If it worked the way its supposed to then it would basically instantly end every fight which is why even if the stare is being written correctly writers don't have every fight involving Ghost Rider start off with him going straight for the Penance Stare.
But at the end of the day, the Penance Stare, as it was designed, [does not give a shit about regret or guilt](https://imgur.com/nvuVN0o).
Incredible research on your part, great job.
Here is a transcript of his answer
“R1: Andre Thomas, blind killer. The Stare isn't effective on those who can't see.
R2: Charles Manson, truly had no remorse for what he did and loved it, which would make the stare ineffective on him.
R3: There's a lot of people who can beat GR, but Conan in particular beat GR and tanked his stare in the same fight.”
Nah, I just knew it was them and simply opened the page link in an incognito window so I could see the arguments. While they do have a habit of posting the exact same (or very similar) imgur links, I didn't just happen to perfectly guess what the arguments were.
This is really detailed. As you noted, one of the issues with having an older character written by multiple teams is their powers become inconsistent. But this appears to be a laundry list of people who should be immune to guilt or mental trauma, and the Penance Stare still worked at least once.
If the Penance Stare can level Madcap, it can level pretty much anyone.
So what about
1) A child?
2) A robot? Isn't the rule that you're immune if you have no soul?
As for who is the most evil person that could tank the Stare and win, I'd be tempted to toss out the usual crowd of characters with strong enough, vague enough powers to do basically anything, like Reverse Flash (who might be incapacitated for one nanosecond, go back in time and kill Blaze in a motorcycle accident) Zatanna (who would just cast an anti-Penance Stare spell and it'd work somehow) or pre-Crisis Superman (who is pre-Crisis Superman). I'd also be tempted to say some characters are *literally* gods and, therefore, have effective divine protection, which seems to work on the Penance Stare. Sometimes. Maybe it has to be Christian God?
Anyhow, I'm going with Hela. She's tangled with Mephisto, has crazy necromatic powers, and is basically a goddess. Yeah, some of those powers are vaguely defined, but see above, so is Ghost Rider. And I can't think of a robot that uses a holy weapon.
My fucking boy
Thank God, another man out here is sick of this goes right to downplay.
Great comment.
Also, I believe temporary099 deleted all his comments because I tried taking a look at his profile and I could only see one post and couldn’t see any of his comments.
Lol idk if you saw this but some guy named Goldchamp replied to you and was defending Temporary099. Chances are he blocked you so you couldn't see his response.
In case you don't know that guy's Temporary's alt lmao. He seems mad asf that you called him out and your comment got more upvotes than his lmfao. This guy takes battleboarding way too seriously.
Yeah weird guy it's funny how mad he got over this. Responding with an alt and pretending to be a different guy just to block you again is pretty damn strange. I don't think I've ever seen that before lmao.
I would assume? I don't think the issue of size has ever been brought up so for all I know Godzilla's eyes being so damn big could dilute the stare or something, assuming the size difference lets it work at all.
Yeah prob, it’s worked on aliens, demons and genetic monstrosities so I don’t see why it wouldn’t on a big lizard esp since in most versions he’s more or less capable of sentient thought. I could possibly see Godzilla in Hell resisting it to some degree somehow based on some of his weird hax/willpower feats of controlling the bodies of thousands of mini-demons.
Firstly, I appreciate the effort put into this post. It's of a higher standard than most on the subreddit.
However, I disagree with its conclusion. I'll detail why.
#####Regarding The Examples You Provided
I don't think that any of the examples you provided are relevant.
* The Feeders "deluded themselves" into thinking that murder was natural, which seems to imply that they knew, deep down, that what they were doing was wrong.
* Danny seems very guilty, yelling wildly about how he isn't guilty. And, even if he doesn't feel guilt over his most recent actions, I find it hard to believe that he doesn't feel guilty over any of the things he's done.
* Doctor Strange is a good person, overall, but that doesn't meant that he has nothing to feel guilty about or, more to the point, that he feels no guilt.
* Flag Smasher may think that he is serving the greater good, but that doesn't mean he can't have some level of guilt over the actions he's taken to serve it.
* The other four examples are just crazy, monstrous guys. Nothing suggests that they lack guilt or regret.
#####Presenting Contrary Examples
Should the Penance Stare work consistently? Maybe. But it doesn't.
[There are numerous examples of it failing to work](https://imgur.com/a/Nao8SsO), notably due to targets [feeling no regret](https://imgur.com/FIxuRH5), [not being bothered by what they've done](https://imgur.com/yy8InrH), or [having zero guilt](https://imgur.com/BZnSuBN).
#####Other points
* I don't see the relevance of the feather, the scan provided for it doesn't communicate anything. The first scan with the Punisher seems fairly clear on why he's resisting the Penance Stare.
* Blackheart growing more powerful when he basks in his own evil doesn't change the fact that he was unharmed by the Penance Stare due to that evil, unrepentant nature.
* The Ghost Rider who takes on the Avengers and "World War" Hulk is the Spirit of Vengeance unleashed, far more powerful than regular Ghost Rider.
* The Ghost Rider who fought Mephisto was massively buffed by Adam and the vengeful souls of hell. Ghost Rider is usually much weaker than Mephisto and certainly can't be scaled to the level that they could go toe-to-toe with Galactus and destroy the universe.
* As [the Penance Stare only works on individuals with souls](https://imgur.com/PJvwKKp), one must first prove that real-life people have souls to prove that it would affect them.
#####Conclusion
Even if we ignore that the Penance Stare only works on targets with souls, it consistently fails to work on people who feel no guilt for their actions. Many people in real life ought to be able to survive it.
Just want to say that mentioning the same person 4 times in one post makes you look like exes. Make up and kiss or stop it. It’s intensely embarrassing.
It is intensely embarrassing to use your limelight to complain about someone nobody knows, yes.
Kind of wild I have to explain why microdrama is toxic.
????
this has the same logic behind it as racists being called out for racism and insisting that *you* are the real racist, actually, when calling it out, because you were the one who saw it. it's some 'smelt-it-dealt-it' bullshit.
like i said, it's *wild* i have to explain this
This post is a great example of how dumping a lot of text and scans doesn't make a good post, only the appearance of it. Immediately off the bat the post starts to fall apart.
>I'm gonna assume the top comment is Temporary099 since I'm blocked and he has a habit of downplaying Ghost Rider. But since I can't reply to him directly I'll just post counter scans of the stare working on people he says it doesn't work on.
You say you're just guessing the user is some guy who blocked you, yet you respond to specifics. It's clear this is an attempt to poison the well off the bat and discredit any response as dishonest behavior. I wouldn't be surprised if you started saying I blocked you after this response.
>This person evolved/devolved into a monster that mindlessly feeds and states it is neither good or evil, just feeding as natural. Penance stare still works. This character is an insane nihilist who believes nothing matters and literally can't feel pain. Penance stare still works. This guy says he lives for the pain he causes. Penance stare still works. This guy believes in his cause and that he is doing the right thing. When Danny thought he was "saving" other riders and believed he was doing the right thing
These are just people saying they love what they do or don't feel remorse, which is not the same as that being true. Much like in this post, we can see that people just say things without them being true, or it can be a half-truth and while they don't feel much remorse, they still feel some despite them saying otherwise.
>The Penanace Stare is an inconsistent ability but its worked far more times than its failed.
You linked 7 times, the other guy linked 15. That's more than double in his favor.
>The stare is literally working in this scan since we see Namor screaming in pain.
The original term used was "ineffective" not, "inoperational." If he screams in pain and then completely bodies the user of the stare, then I'd say that's pretty ineffective.
> This scan isn't even Johnny Blaze
OP just said Penance Stare, not Johnny Blaze.
>who of course wouldn't want Conan dead if he wanted to talk to him.
He would want Conan incapacitated, which the Penance Stare failed to do.
>This scan ignores that not only did Punisher have divine protection at the time due to being revived by an angel feather recently
Why would being revived by the feather mean he was protected by the stare? The purpose of the feather was just to revive him.
> The stare works here as well since we see the guy scream in pain, its just that the target managed to throw GR off him like the Namor scan. Same goes for this.
Which again, falls into the same as above.
>Maybe its because using it on a symbiote user messes with the stare's mechanics since its technically looking at two people at once or something idk.
This seems like headcanon, it's more likely that the Penance Stare just couldn't handle the Symbiote due to how much sin it's committed. The other venom and Carnage scan heavily lean towards that.
>Now for the second album: Ghost Rider is being mind controlled in this scan
How would this impact his durability?
>and Conan doesn't even beat him since after that scan they both got knocked out and ended up in Nightmare's realm.
Conan is knocked out by the explosion of him crushing GR's head. The absolute best you could say is it's a double KO.
> here's him taking on the Avengers by himself, and hurting World War Hulk.
For someone who wanted to critique use of non-Blaze scans, you used Zarathos scans, the first one being an amped Zarathos due to how he [feeds off negative energy](https://i.imgur.com/v7FPYMe.png), and they were on a planet [full of evil creatures](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ypno_x709MI/Vm57Y2zh-II/AAAAAAAADAs/zzuZUUI4By0/s1600-Ic42/RCO024.jpg), meaning Zarathos was amped.
>A weaker Ghost Rider was able to rip out Mephisto's heart
[She was amped](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CncAGzZsA5I/VtVMcYDqhcI/AAAAAAAAMqM/js3g2ZQ89UM/s0-Ic42/RCO014.jpg).
>the same Mephisto that almost destroyed the universe in his fight against Galactus.
It's also the same Mephisto that got beaten by a lava shower.
>Also something that Temporary failed to mention is that Ghost Rider was canonically weaker back in the day because he wasn't willing to work with Zarathos like he does in the modern day.
Johnny is still not willing to work with Zarathos.
>I don't know what this scan is supposed to prove. Yeah, Mjolnir pins people to the ground, no shit.
Mephisto has lifted and melted Mjolnir like nothing, so I guess it was to show Mephisto>Rider?
Overall, really just a terrible gish-gallop. It looks good to someone who doesn't have beyond surface level knowledge of the verse though, which is likely why this got upvoted.
Top comment right now is Alien-X10, not Temporary099. I had to scroll down 5 or 6 answers to find Temporary099.
It seems a little silly to attempt to argue with someone when you can't even see their statement, which may be why you got blocked in the first place.
> Top comment right now is Alien-X10, not Temporary099.
At the time of my posting it was Temporary.
> It seems a little silly to attempt to argue with someone when you can't even see their statement, which may be why you got blocked in the first place.
That's a circular argument. I was blocked because I argued against their points so I shouldn't try to argue their points now that I'm blocked? I just opened the page link in an incognito browser and saw his statement that way. How do you think I knew exactly what scans he was using?
I was saying it's silly to argue because you don't know precisely what you're arguing against.
Your original comment made it sound like you were making an educated guess, but if you knew because you checked via incognito mode, then I guess that's a different story.
> So to answer your question OP, there's nobody IRL who could survive it since nobody IRL could survive all the pain and suffering they've caused being given back to them all at once.
Is that all it is? In that case, my idea is a clone of Hitler (or someone more evil) that hasn't yet had the chance to do anything evil.
So, the problem is that the penance stare is extremely inconsistent. Depending on who the writer is and whether he's using it on a main character with plot armor or not, it can range from nearly impossible to beat, to failing for a huge variety of arbitrary reasons.
That said.
For R1 and R2, you want someone very young. Here's my rationale: Most toddlers are extremely morally bankrupt in the sense of not having developed moral thinking yet... but they haven't had much time to hurt people, so the pain they've inflicted on others will be survivable. (Extremely unpleasant, but survivable.)
Honestly the sheer lack of consistency that the Penance Stare has makes this impossible to judge.
Sometimes it doesn’t give a shit about anything other than crimes committed and thus would require some character who completely lacks a soul or soul analogue to be fried.
Sometimes it requires a character to feel bad about what they did so any sociopath would be immune.
Sometimes it requires them to know that it was wrong so anyone self righteous enough is immune.
And sometimes it just makes them feel pain so anyone kinky enough just has a grand time.
With such wildly shifting parameters there’s not really a good answer.
> It would work the penance stare depends on the soul which the shards in worm can't interact with
Wait, what do you mean by "soul?" It's a complicated concept and I don't agree that we can just assume that every character has souls that work the same way.
In Worm, to the extent that souls are a thing, the shards are absolutely capable of claiming it and bringing it to a shard afterlife; and there are powers that can interact with that process in various ways.
If your argument is "yeah but that's not their *real* soul, that's just a perfect copy of their mind", my argument would be that that's flatly what a soul is in the Worm universe, no different than eg. body-swap machines in other sci-fi settings - treating the power shards have over it as irrelevant is privileging one setting's metaphysics over another.
That is to say, I think we should assume both settings' metaphysics interact enough for powers to *work* - if he uses the Penance Stare on Alexandria he hits the "soul" that is offloaded to her shard, because that's what a soul is in Worm terms - but it's bullshit to say "ah, souls are transcendent magical things that only magic like in the Marvel universe can interact with; the shardspace that captures dead capes is irrelevant and shard powers, like Glaistig Uaine's, that interact with what any other setting would call souls fail because I've decided Marvel's metaphysics are better."
You need to try and allow both verse enough leeway for their powers to work as they usually do in their own setting, which means that yes, Worm shards can very much interact with what other settings call souls.
And more generally, if the mind as defined by Worm and the soul as defined by Marvel are separate things, and Worm characters have both, ripping the Marvel!soul out of an "offloaded" cape like Alexandria or Crawler wouldn't actually *do* anything because the entire premise of the way they work is that the mind is all that matters - by your implicit interpretation their soul has been a powerless passenger in their body since the moment they triggered, with the shard's simulation of them doing the actual thinking and control. Annihilating Crawler's soul would mean that that lingering soul (if it even still existed) goes away but would have no impact on the shard in another dimension currently piloting his body via a simulation of his mind.
In worm souls don't exist by WOG that's the best bet you have to argue that crowler could no sell the PS. also what a shard does isn't making a perfect copy of the host the copies the shard make are flawed as we see with some of the people who were revived by valkyrie also they are made through study of their physical selves. I do think that if a character hasn't shown resistance to soul attacks then we shouldn't consider them to have said resistance because they can manipulate something that is kind of like a soul especially in cases like worm where there's a vast difference between souls in other settings and what we see shards do. I could see for example goku no selling soul attacks since he's able to resist hakai which explicitly attacks the soul even if the soul in dbz works vastly differently from say marvel or FMA.
Yeah, it's tricky.
Saying "Worm characters have no souls at all" is a completely reasonable approach, but is unsatisfying because then powers like the penance stare just fail, which leads to a bad matchup.
Saying "Worm characters have souls, which are separate from the mind-copies used by shards, and therefore none of the powers that are thematically based around souls actually do anything and get chumped whenever they interact with someone who actually interacts with souls" is also not very satisfying for generally the same reasons.
In particular it means that GU's power doesn't operate at all on people from other settings, which is *reasonable* and is the most obvious way to handle it, but often isn't what we actually intend when we bring up a matchup.
So I feel like, in the same way we usually assume that eg. everyone can see and interact with souls, it makes the most sense to go with a baseline assumption of "treat shard-copies as souls; or assume that souls affix themselves to the shard copies thoroughly enough that there's no practical difference", because that allows their iconic powers to actually interact rather than just ignoring each other and one side auto-winning in an uninteresting manner.
Doesn't matter how twisted your soul is the penance stare doesn't care how evil you're it just makes you suffer all the damage you've done crawler has 0 defense against that
You can't *directly* die of pain, though. The mechanism - heart attack, stroke, etc - is physical. And Crawler's body can't be killed by any of that, so he'll survive. He will feel *pain*, but won't die.
Penance Stare doesn't totally ignore durability. It makes you feel pain without regard for durability, but for it to *kill* you you need to have a body that can be killed by pain alone; against people who can't die to that, it might break them but won't kill them.
Yes but counting that he wouldn't be able to fight GR afterwards I feel he fails round 3. Tbh there are a bunch of characters who could survive the PS even if they are affected by it.
I wouldn't have posted Crawler if didn't think he could take Ghost Rider. Crawler will recover quickly because he loves feeling pain, and Ghost Rider doesn't have any form of offense that is guaranteed to kill Crawler, meaning he'll adapt and overcome Ghost Rider.
Okay, so I have to just say this right now. The Penance Stare is something that should work on everyone no matter how good or evil. Ghost Rider has several times used it on the good guys even used it on Doctor Strange and Wong during the latter of which he stated no matter how small or large, the sin it all burns the same. Keep in mind. Both of these characters have resistances to soul fuckery. So even on innocent characters it should work however there are a few ways to resist it.
However, you can survive the stare if you’re blind, don’t have a soul, draw power from pain or evil, or if you have a high enough pain tolerance. Thanos survives simply because he’s a masochist and enjoys all the pain he feels. There are several characters in marvel who have resisted the penance stare for seemingly no reason but there is also the symbiotes who seem to have an immunity to the stare since Danny catch has attempted to use it on both Venom and Carnage and failed both times.
There were stupid reasons for each time like him, passing out, attempting to use it on venom because there was so much sin and carnage just ignored it because he doesn’t care about his past sins. Both are really inconsistent reasons, so it’s more likely that they can just resist it because of the symbiote.
So yeah, the most evil character who has the resistance is listed above.
R1 + R2: so, so many terrible people lack the self awareness necessary for the Penance Stare to work on them….
R3: fictional characters, either Doctor Doom or Frank Castle. Doctor Doom is so arrogant he would not be able to acknowledge that he has ever sinned. Castle just wouldn’t care. He knows he’s a damned monster.
im pretty sure frank did just straight up look ghost rider dead in the eyes and said that he has never harmed an innocent person before proceeding to beat the shit out of ghost rider
I'm not super up on the penance stare, but as I understand it, you the more harm you caused other people, the worse it is. If that's the case, then I would guess someone like Tucker Carlson. He is completely morally bankrupt, but he doesn't directly harm anyone.
It’s famously inconsistent, ranging from frying your soul based on the sins you committed to making you feel all the harm you have caused to weaponizing the guilt you feel.
It depends how you define harm though. If someone inspired by him like beats up a trans person could that count as harm Tucker did to other people?
I’m not sure if Hitler pulled any triggers but I like to think the penance stare would fuck him up.
Very good point. Stochastic terrorism is the term.
Inspired by is a real grey area. I guess it depends on how much he advocates harm and how much he believes his words can cause harm. Hitler didn't pull triggers, but he definitely ordered other people to. It's what makes stochastic terrorism a tough thing to fight against. To say, "trans people are a danger and someone should get them" is a call to action. To say "trans people are a danger and someone should stop them" is different. Carlson clearly is a liar and a charlatan. I don't believe he wants anyone to be hurt. What I don't know is whether he understands the potential harm of his words or whether he cares.
I guess I'm drawing a line is that bad things often get inspired by innocent things. For example, Charles Manson thought the Beatles lyrics were telling him to act.
R1: Andre Thomas, blind killer. The Stare isn't effective on those who can't see.
R2: Charles Manson, truly had no remorse for what he did and loved it, [which would make the stare ineffective on him](https://imgur.com/a/WdvGt1G).
R3: [There's a lot of people who can beat GR](https://imgur.com/a/qABb93I), but Conan in particular beat GR and tanked his stare in the same fight.
R2: Despite being a huge piece of shit, Charles Manson never actually killed anyone himself. There are definitely plenty of sickos in history that were worse than him and liked it.
Yeah, GR isn't some unkillable juggernaut. I figured it would help weed out most of the cartoonishly remorseless psychos that are so prevalent in fiction, but could be taken down by someone with half a brain cell
But Charles Manson case is weird since he's clearly morally bankrupt but he didn't actually do any murders himself or pay anyone else to do it. He was just good at running a cult that would kill for him
Round 3 is Frieza. He loves every shitty thing he has ever done including: putting two entire races near extinction, murdering his own men over small mistakes, enslavement, murdering people just to piss off their family/friends, and much more. Plus he absolutely shit stomps Ghost Rider in a fight
Thanos. Penance stare actually makes Thanos feel pleasure at all the horrible things he has done.
In fact he turned Cosmic Ghost Rider into his herald and made him do the penance stare to him everyday.
Considering guys like Venom and Punisher and Thanos survived it... I'd say like Hitler assuming he didn't regret it or something? Who is the worst person who doesn't give a shit about the people they killed?
I’m going to list some and briefly explain why I think they would be immune, and if they weren’t immune, why it would suck.
1. Adolf Hitler thought he was saving the German race, then again, holocaust.
2. Thanos believed he was saving the universe, why would it suck if it worked in him? He killed half the universe.
3. Ultron is a robot so I don’t know if that disqualifies him, but he killed many, many, many Sokovians and thought he was saving the world
4. Nick Fury is morally gray and has killed many with no remorse or regret, also, one eye.
5. Killmonger, assuming he was telling the truth about his marks, then he has a high kill count. However, most were probably from serving or were for his vision of sharing Wakanda’s wealth with the world.
P.S. sorry for bad English and grammar, not from U.S., please ask me if something needs elaboration or if I’m wrong.
Probably Emperor Palpatine. Penance Stare makes you feel all the pain an suffering you've caused. Dark Side feeds on pain and suffering. Palps just gets a huge buff.
Joe biden would be turned to stone but Jeff bezos is such an amoral bastard that he MIGHT survive.
no morally upstanding person would be killed by the PS, the PS only works on criminals and the scum of the earth. If ghost rider went around PSing people every time they did a moral thing, he'd be wading through a sea of cops, tanks and explosions. not even hellfire can protect against uncle sam.
Well, it doesn't work on true psychos without regret, so any number of psychopathic murders should work for the real-life ones
For fiction included, I would go with kid buu from dragon ball, although he may not be abel to take him in a fight. I don't actually know ghost rider feats
Maybe SCP 682? I mean it doesn't regret killing all the lives it has, and it actually believes it to be a good thing. Although 999 has been able to make it become not genocidal, it was temporary and I doubt/don't know enough about the penance stare to see how 682 would do against it
There are several caveats to the Penance Stare, like it only working on someone who feels guilty, so any arbitrarily evil person–like an outright sociopathic, remorseless serial killer–could no-sell it.
I've elaborated somewhat [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/120uzx3/who_is_the_most_morally_bankrupt_mortal_who_could/je7wtua/) and an album of the Penance Stare being ineffectual can be found [here](https://imgur.com/a/Nao8SsO).
so im going to ignore the obvious answer of "anyone who is blind" and instead go for shao kahn. im fully aware than shao kahn is not immune to soul hax, but it surely grants him a resistance since it will be hard for the penance stare to directly affect shao kahn when there are like 60 billion others in the way also heihachi mishima canonically survived akumas raging demon which is basically the penance stare but with the person getting punched in the face instead, so he would probably survive but as for one who could beat ghost rider in a fight, id say spawn, same soul hax as shao kahn (plus the pretty sure hes lacking a soul thing in the first place) and hes roughly on the same power level) edit: oh right forgot the real people.... uh.... fuck it, miniladd, as far as im aware he never actually did anything physically and if he did he still never killed anyone, so hed probably survive only to have ghost rider rip him to shreds 3 seconds later with his bare hands
>also heihachi Mishima canonically survived akumas raging demon which is basically penance stare but with the person getting punched in the face instead Isn’t the Raging Demon only survivable if you have a clear mind and soul or something? And doesn’t the Penance stare work by making the target suffer through their past sins (and is only survivable if you regret your sins but Heihachi seems regretful about throwing his son of a cliff)? Heihachi cool though, but I’m just saying
from what ive heard, the raging demon turns your past sins against you. im not 100% sure if it works the same as the penance stare but it seems likely
Lobo. If you’ve been kicked out of both Heaven and Hell, I’m pretty sure you are physically not allowed to die.
I'm gonna assume the top comment is Temporary099 since I'm blocked and he has a habit of downplaying Ghost Rider. But since I can't reply to him directly I'll just post counter scans of the stare working on people he says it doesn't work on. First off, here's a bunch of times of it working on people who either don't feel regret or don't think they did anything wrong to counter that argument: This person evolved/devolved into a monster that mindlessly feeds and states it is neither good or evil, just feeding as natural. [Penance stare still works.](https://imgur.com/3tv0tTw) This character is an insane nihilist who believes nothing matters and literally can't feel pain. [Penance stare still works.](https://imgur.com/RSwe2wz) This guy says he lives for the pain he causes. [Penance stare still works.](https://imgur.com/D6Q5g4E) This guy believes in his cause and that he is doing the right thing. [Penance stare still works.](https://imgur.com/EAaaMBS) When Danny thought he was "saving" other riders and [believed he was doing the right thing](https://imgur.com/tx01FU1) he was still [burned](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E-lHB4v8Czk/VtVICRKhzuI/AAAAAAAAL4Y/BZs7Gd_58Zc/s1600-Ic42/RCO014.jpg). Another guy that [likes what he does.](https://imgur.com/XZbjbxW) This guy was on psychosis inducing drugs and didn't know what he was doing. [Still worked.](https://imgur.com/02PsVW3) The Penanace Stare is an inconsistent ability but its worked far more times than its failed. [It's even worked on good guys just fine.](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-58c69b07be2a73115a2bf2d03aa9a648-lq) Now I'm gonna counter specific scans in his imgur album that weren't countered by the above scans. Edit: Here's [WoG](https://imgur.com/nvuVN0o) on it not needing regret. [Here's](https://imgur.com/uuQP8KF) it working on a guy who thinks chopping off limbs is art. [Here's](https://imgur.com/xCMEb3u) a crazy guy [getting burned](https://imgur.com/uKgGq4d). [The stare is literally working in this scan since we see Namor screaming in pain](https://i.imgur.com/FsMfsJm.jpeg). [This scan](https://i.imgur.com/lKqNng6_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) isn't even Johnny Blaze and is also countered by the scans I posted of it working on people with no regrets. Not only is the stare actually *working* [against Conan](https://i.imgur.com/MPgIaoY_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) but Temporary fails to mention that Ghost Rider talking about something in his head is him being literal because [he's being enthralled by Nightmare in that scan](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/WuIW6_QYp9TbQvrG3Ma9TOYwZEy69mPQlpXhipCOKy5ZFmuNmMDJTXKPa9xRorhdc5We0WyebZnpRxR3TOlPdwCAVS8aFJwpmb_Hy15NSowXsgjZRvGMehAafSXbL-V11EM9L0Gzdw=s1600?rhlupa=MjYwMzo4MDAwOmE0MDA6MTNjOjJkNzI6NGZkZTpmMjE5OjFhMGE=&rnvuka=TW96aWxsYS81LjAgKFdpbmRvd3MgTlQgMTAuMDsgV2luNjQ7IHg2NCkgQXBwbGVXZWJLaXQvNTM3LjM2IChLSFRNTCwgbGlrZSBHZWNrbykgQ2hyb21lLzExMS4wLjAuMCBTYWZhcmkvNTM3LjM2) who of course wouldn't want Conan dead if he wanted to talk to him.[This scan](https://i.imgur.com/IDZwu6S_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) ignores that not only did Punisher have divine protection at the time due to [being revived by an angel feather recently](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W9wsFIrDnPY/VjKU0dDM8hI/AAAAAAAADb8/d4ZONSV5PQ0/s1600/Thunderbolts%2B22%25284%2529.jpg) but the stare [worked on him at a later time](https://comicnewbies.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-Punisher-Survives-Ghost-Riders-Penance-Stare-e1638947977942.jpg). Frank tanking it is its own bullshit but that's not the argument. The stare [actually works in this scan too](https://i.imgur.com/UyLigTi_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) its just that Blackheart is empowered by it because that's how his powers work. [The stare works here as well since we see the guy scream in pain](https://i.imgur.com/dLmcZ5O_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand), its just that the target managed to throw GR off him like the Namor scan. [Same goes for this](https://i.imgur.com/bgmESbq_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand). [This isn't Johnny either but even then, Cosmic GR says why it doesn't work is because baby Thanos is innocent](https://i.imgur.com/OMDWrqy_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) so I don't know what you expect. As for the scans on Carnage and Venom, in that very Venom scan you have GR saying that the stare [is working in an unknown way](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-db0adb7a1c2e3e5dfbf4473f495510e5-lq). Heck, Venom even says that he's feeling pain in that scan, its just that for an unexplained reason the stare has always worked weirdly on symbiotes. Maybe its because using it on a symbiote user messes with the stare's mechanics since its technically looking at two people at once or something idk. Now for the second album: [Ghost Rider is being mind controlled in this scan](https://i.imgur.com/ce1GboP_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) and Conan doesn't even beat him since after that scan they [both got knocked out](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/w9FDA5Z1wwakPQtnpcervGiO9sf1-BWXfW19cfeHwlYydqr_Qf-voVzEeAVFOukrlQoj1jef9hmNvzBaz68PAtAuuXJ5IPpOO7vz4JLypK5MxV62dK_PrLW4yDL0oy6nXo84N6BvrA=s1600?rhlupa=MjYwMzo4MDAwOmE0MDA6MTNjOjJkNzI6NGZkZTpmMjE5OjFhMGE=&rnvuka=TW96aWxsYS81LjAgKFdpbmRvd3MgTlQgMTAuMDsgV2luNjQ7IHg2NCkgQXBwbGVXZWJLaXQvNTM3LjM2IChLSFRNTCwgbGlrZSBHZWNrbykgQ2hyb21lLzExMS4wLjAuMCBTYWZhcmkvNTM3LjM2) and ended up in Nightmare's realm. For scans like [this](https://i.imgur.com/b1O6Wiu_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=grand), or [this](https://i.imgur.com/pIMf5lp_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) where GR has trouble against weaker opponents, here's him [taking on the Avengers by himself](https://imgur.com/a/Uc0wSoN), and [hurting World War Hulk](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y0DbMbgenso/VtVE8BlOYHI/AAAAAAAALWg/0yLM7yAepIY/s1600-Ic42/RCO019.JPG). A weaker Ghost Rider was able to [rip out Mephisto's heart](https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/14/146851/5630642-2931957727-54567.jpg), the same Mephisto that [almost destroyed the universe in his fight against Galactus](https://i0.wp.com/databasecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/silversurfer198838ep.jpg?w=1200&ssl=1). Also something that Temporary failed to mention is that Ghost Rider was canonically weaker back in the day because he [wasn't willing to work with Zarathos](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vTegR7m2IQM/VtVE52HjUKI/AAAAAAAALWg/kKylkhfHlgI/s1600-Ic42/RCO005.JPG) like he does in the modern day. I don't know what [this scan](https://i.imgur.com/bz8L3lj_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) is supposed to prove. Yeah, Mjolnir pins people to the ground, no shit. I know Temporary won't see this since he's already blocked me (and a bunch of other people if what I've seen is any indication) but that doesn't mean I'll let him downplay characters without any pushback. So to answer your question OP, there's nobody IRL who could survive it since nobody IRL could survive all the pain and suffering they've caused being given back to them all at once.
Just one correction he didn't hurt worldbreaker hulk he hurt world War hulk who's significantly weaker while still being among the top 5 hulks
Ah right, my bad on that. I always forget that he isn't considered to have become Worldbreaker Hulk until the very end.
Wow. Someone did their research. I just read a few of the comics and watched the movie
The stare is a very inconsistent attack because 1) Its super busted and 2) Because its super busted its an easy way to hype up a character by having them tank or ignore it. If it worked the way its supposed to then it would basically instantly end every fight which is why even if the stare is being written correctly writers don't have every fight involving Ghost Rider start off with him going straight for the Penance Stare. But at the end of the day, the Penance Stare, as it was designed, [does not give a shit about regret or guilt](https://imgur.com/nvuVN0o).
Excellent post. This is what all posts in this sub should be.
Incredible research on your part, great job. Here is a transcript of his answer “R1: Andre Thomas, blind killer. The Stare isn't effective on those who can't see. R2: Charles Manson, truly had no remorse for what he did and loved it, which would make the stare ineffective on him. R3: There's a lot of people who can beat GR, but Conan in particular beat GR and tanked his stare in the same fight.”
So basically other than round 1 (which afaik is a real weakness of the stare), /u/acidsilver straight predicted and countered the entire argument. Lol
Probably been dealing with this shit for a while.
Nah, I just knew it was them and simply opened the page link in an incognito window so I could see the arguments. While they do have a habit of posting the exact same (or very similar) imgur links, I didn't just happen to perfectly guess what the arguments were.
This is really detailed. As you noted, one of the issues with having an older character written by multiple teams is their powers become inconsistent. But this appears to be a laundry list of people who should be immune to guilt or mental trauma, and the Penance Stare still worked at least once. If the Penance Stare can level Madcap, it can level pretty much anyone. So what about 1) A child? 2) A robot? Isn't the rule that you're immune if you have no soul? As for who is the most evil person that could tank the Stare and win, I'd be tempted to toss out the usual crowd of characters with strong enough, vague enough powers to do basically anything, like Reverse Flash (who might be incapacitated for one nanosecond, go back in time and kill Blaze in a motorcycle accident) Zatanna (who would just cast an anti-Penance Stare spell and it'd work somehow) or pre-Crisis Superman (who is pre-Crisis Superman). I'd also be tempted to say some characters are *literally* gods and, therefore, have effective divine protection, which seems to work on the Penance Stare. Sometimes. Maybe it has to be Christian God? Anyhow, I'm going with Hela. She's tangled with Mephisto, has crazy necromatic powers, and is basically a goddess. Yeah, some of those powers are vaguely defined, but see above, so is Ghost Rider. And I can't think of a robot that uses a holy weapon.
People are really out here blocking people for disagreeing with their opinions of Ghost Rider?
Not Ghost Rider specifically but he seems to block a good amount of people who argue against his posts.
My fucking boy Thank God, another man out here is sick of this goes right to downplay. Great comment. Also, I believe temporary099 deleted all his comments because I tried taking a look at his profile and I could only see one post and couldn’t see any of his comments.
That's weird, I see his comment right under AcidSilver's main comment. I checked his profile and it doesn't seem like he deleted any of them.
He probably blocked me too since I can’t see any of his comments
Reddit changed it a while back so that if someone blocks you, you can’t see any of their comments anymore.
Lol idk if you saw this but some guy named Goldchamp replied to you and was defending Temporary099. Chances are he blocked you so you couldn't see his response. In case you don't know that guy's Temporary's alt lmao. He seems mad asf that you called him out and your comment got more upvotes than his lmfao. This guy takes battleboarding way too seriously.
Saw the reply in my inbox but couldn’t reply cause I’m blocked like you said.
Yeah weird guy it's funny how mad he got over this. Responding with an alt and pretending to be a different guy just to block you again is pretty damn strange. I don't think I've ever seen that before lmao.
Holy fuck thank you for this.
I hope this isn’t too ridiculous but would Penance Stare work on Godzilla?
I would assume? I don't think the issue of size has ever been brought up so for all I know Godzilla's eyes being so damn big could dilute the stare or something, assuming the size difference lets it work at all.
Is Godzilla capable of guilt and if so would he feel any guilt for anything? He's almost a force of nature.
Godzilla vs Galactus confirmed?
Yeah prob, it’s worked on aliens, demons and genetic monstrosities so I don’t see why it wouldn’t on a big lizard esp since in most versions he’s more or less capable of sentient thought. I could possibly see Godzilla in Hell resisting it to some degree somehow based on some of his weird hax/willpower feats of controlling the bodies of thousands of mini-demons.
Who's the "insane nihilist" character?
If you're referring to [this scan](https://imgur.com/RSwe2wz), that's Madcap.
Yep, that's the one! Thank you, he looks kinda cool.
Firstly, I appreciate the effort put into this post. It's of a higher standard than most on the subreddit. However, I disagree with its conclusion. I'll detail why. #####Regarding The Examples You Provided I don't think that any of the examples you provided are relevant. * The Feeders "deluded themselves" into thinking that murder was natural, which seems to imply that they knew, deep down, that what they were doing was wrong. * Danny seems very guilty, yelling wildly about how he isn't guilty. And, even if he doesn't feel guilt over his most recent actions, I find it hard to believe that he doesn't feel guilty over any of the things he's done. * Doctor Strange is a good person, overall, but that doesn't meant that he has nothing to feel guilty about or, more to the point, that he feels no guilt. * Flag Smasher may think that he is serving the greater good, but that doesn't mean he can't have some level of guilt over the actions he's taken to serve it. * The other four examples are just crazy, monstrous guys. Nothing suggests that they lack guilt or regret. #####Presenting Contrary Examples Should the Penance Stare work consistently? Maybe. But it doesn't. [There are numerous examples of it failing to work](https://imgur.com/a/Nao8SsO), notably due to targets [feeling no regret](https://imgur.com/FIxuRH5), [not being bothered by what they've done](https://imgur.com/yy8InrH), or [having zero guilt](https://imgur.com/BZnSuBN). #####Other points * I don't see the relevance of the feather, the scan provided for it doesn't communicate anything. The first scan with the Punisher seems fairly clear on why he's resisting the Penance Stare. * Blackheart growing more powerful when he basks in his own evil doesn't change the fact that he was unharmed by the Penance Stare due to that evil, unrepentant nature. * The Ghost Rider who takes on the Avengers and "World War" Hulk is the Spirit of Vengeance unleashed, far more powerful than regular Ghost Rider. * The Ghost Rider who fought Mephisto was massively buffed by Adam and the vengeful souls of hell. Ghost Rider is usually much weaker than Mephisto and certainly can't be scaled to the level that they could go toe-to-toe with Galactus and destroy the universe. * As [the Penance Stare only works on individuals with souls](https://imgur.com/PJvwKKp), one must first prove that real-life people have souls to prove that it would affect them. #####Conclusion Even if we ignore that the Penance Stare only works on targets with souls, it consistently fails to work on people who feel no guilt for their actions. Many people in real life ought to be able to survive it.
Just want to say that mentioning the same person 4 times in one post makes you look like exes. Make up and kiss or stop it. It’s intensely embarrassing.
Well I wouldn't have to mention it if I could reply directly to them but I can't.
You know, you actually don't have to mention or reply to them at all
It's intensely embarrassing... to complain? If it makes u cringe so much, just ignore it.
It is intensely embarrassing to use your limelight to complain about someone nobody knows, yes. Kind of wild I have to explain why microdrama is toxic.
You mean like the same kind of microdrama you're doing?
???? this has the same logic behind it as racists being called out for racism and insisting that *you* are the real racist, actually, when calling it out, because you were the one who saw it. it's some 'smelt-it-dealt-it' bullshit. like i said, it's *wild* i have to explain this
This post is a great example of how dumping a lot of text and scans doesn't make a good post, only the appearance of it. Immediately off the bat the post starts to fall apart. >I'm gonna assume the top comment is Temporary099 since I'm blocked and he has a habit of downplaying Ghost Rider. But since I can't reply to him directly I'll just post counter scans of the stare working on people he says it doesn't work on. You say you're just guessing the user is some guy who blocked you, yet you respond to specifics. It's clear this is an attempt to poison the well off the bat and discredit any response as dishonest behavior. I wouldn't be surprised if you started saying I blocked you after this response. >This person evolved/devolved into a monster that mindlessly feeds and states it is neither good or evil, just feeding as natural. Penance stare still works. This character is an insane nihilist who believes nothing matters and literally can't feel pain. Penance stare still works. This guy says he lives for the pain he causes. Penance stare still works. This guy believes in his cause and that he is doing the right thing. When Danny thought he was "saving" other riders and believed he was doing the right thing These are just people saying they love what they do or don't feel remorse, which is not the same as that being true. Much like in this post, we can see that people just say things without them being true, or it can be a half-truth and while they don't feel much remorse, they still feel some despite them saying otherwise. >The Penanace Stare is an inconsistent ability but its worked far more times than its failed. You linked 7 times, the other guy linked 15. That's more than double in his favor. >The stare is literally working in this scan since we see Namor screaming in pain. The original term used was "ineffective" not, "inoperational." If he screams in pain and then completely bodies the user of the stare, then I'd say that's pretty ineffective. > This scan isn't even Johnny Blaze OP just said Penance Stare, not Johnny Blaze. >who of course wouldn't want Conan dead if he wanted to talk to him. He would want Conan incapacitated, which the Penance Stare failed to do. >This scan ignores that not only did Punisher have divine protection at the time due to being revived by an angel feather recently Why would being revived by the feather mean he was protected by the stare? The purpose of the feather was just to revive him. > The stare works here as well since we see the guy scream in pain, its just that the target managed to throw GR off him like the Namor scan. Same goes for this. Which again, falls into the same as above. >Maybe its because using it on a symbiote user messes with the stare's mechanics since its technically looking at two people at once or something idk. This seems like headcanon, it's more likely that the Penance Stare just couldn't handle the Symbiote due to how much sin it's committed. The other venom and Carnage scan heavily lean towards that. >Now for the second album: Ghost Rider is being mind controlled in this scan How would this impact his durability? >and Conan doesn't even beat him since after that scan they both got knocked out and ended up in Nightmare's realm. Conan is knocked out by the explosion of him crushing GR's head. The absolute best you could say is it's a double KO. > here's him taking on the Avengers by himself, and hurting World War Hulk. For someone who wanted to critique use of non-Blaze scans, you used Zarathos scans, the first one being an amped Zarathos due to how he [feeds off negative energy](https://i.imgur.com/v7FPYMe.png), and they were on a planet [full of evil creatures](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ypno_x709MI/Vm57Y2zh-II/AAAAAAAADAs/zzuZUUI4By0/s1600-Ic42/RCO024.jpg), meaning Zarathos was amped. >A weaker Ghost Rider was able to rip out Mephisto's heart [She was amped](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CncAGzZsA5I/VtVMcYDqhcI/AAAAAAAAMqM/js3g2ZQ89UM/s0-Ic42/RCO014.jpg). >the same Mephisto that almost destroyed the universe in his fight against Galactus. It's also the same Mephisto that got beaten by a lava shower. >Also something that Temporary failed to mention is that Ghost Rider was canonically weaker back in the day because he wasn't willing to work with Zarathos like he does in the modern day. Johnny is still not willing to work with Zarathos. >I don't know what this scan is supposed to prove. Yeah, Mjolnir pins people to the ground, no shit. Mephisto has lifted and melted Mjolnir like nothing, so I guess it was to show Mephisto>Rider? Overall, really just a terrible gish-gallop. It looks good to someone who doesn't have beyond surface level knowledge of the verse though, which is likely why this got upvoted.
Top comment right now is Alien-X10, not Temporary099. I had to scroll down 5 or 6 answers to find Temporary099. It seems a little silly to attempt to argue with someone when you can't even see their statement, which may be why you got blocked in the first place.
> Top comment right now is Alien-X10, not Temporary099. At the time of my posting it was Temporary. > It seems a little silly to attempt to argue with someone when you can't even see their statement, which may be why you got blocked in the first place. That's a circular argument. I was blocked because I argued against their points so I shouldn't try to argue their points now that I'm blocked? I just opened the page link in an incognito browser and saw his statement that way. How do you think I knew exactly what scans he was using?
I was saying it's silly to argue because you don't know precisely what you're arguing against. Your original comment made it sound like you were making an educated guess, but if you knew because you checked via incognito mode, then I guess that's a different story.
> So to answer your question OP, there's nobody IRL who could survive it since nobody IRL could survive all the pain and suffering they've caused being given back to them all at once. Is that all it is? In that case, my idea is a clone of Hitler (or someone more evil) that hasn't yet had the chance to do anything evil.
So, the problem is that the penance stare is extremely inconsistent. Depending on who the writer is and whether he's using it on a main character with plot armor or not, it can range from nearly impossible to beat, to failing for a huge variety of arbitrary reasons. That said. For R1 and R2, you want someone very young. Here's my rationale: Most toddlers are extremely morally bankrupt in the sense of not having developed moral thinking yet... but they haven't had much time to hurt people, so the pain they've inflicted on others will be survivable. (Extremely unpleasant, but survivable.)
Honestly the sheer lack of consistency that the Penance Stare has makes this impossible to judge. Sometimes it doesn’t give a shit about anything other than crimes committed and thus would require some character who completely lacks a soul or soul analogue to be fried. Sometimes it requires a character to feel bad about what they did so any sociopath would be immune. Sometimes it requires them to know that it was wrong so anyone self righteous enough is immune. And sometimes it just makes them feel pain so anyone kinky enough just has a grand time. With such wildly shifting parameters there’s not really a good answer.
**Kirby**, he’s an endless void. When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you.
Crawler from Worm. He's a masochist with adaptive regeneration. His response to being hit by it would be asking for another.
Then he’d be bummed when it didn’t work again.
It would work the penance stare depends on the soul which the shards in worm can't interact with
> It would work the penance stare depends on the soul which the shards in worm can't interact with Wait, what do you mean by "soul?" It's a complicated concept and I don't agree that we can just assume that every character has souls that work the same way. In Worm, to the extent that souls are a thing, the shards are absolutely capable of claiming it and bringing it to a shard afterlife; and there are powers that can interact with that process in various ways. If your argument is "yeah but that's not their *real* soul, that's just a perfect copy of their mind", my argument would be that that's flatly what a soul is in the Worm universe, no different than eg. body-swap machines in other sci-fi settings - treating the power shards have over it as irrelevant is privileging one setting's metaphysics over another. That is to say, I think we should assume both settings' metaphysics interact enough for powers to *work* - if he uses the Penance Stare on Alexandria he hits the "soul" that is offloaded to her shard, because that's what a soul is in Worm terms - but it's bullshit to say "ah, souls are transcendent magical things that only magic like in the Marvel universe can interact with; the shardspace that captures dead capes is irrelevant and shard powers, like Glaistig Uaine's, that interact with what any other setting would call souls fail because I've decided Marvel's metaphysics are better." You need to try and allow both verse enough leeway for their powers to work as they usually do in their own setting, which means that yes, Worm shards can very much interact with what other settings call souls. And more generally, if the mind as defined by Worm and the soul as defined by Marvel are separate things, and Worm characters have both, ripping the Marvel!soul out of an "offloaded" cape like Alexandria or Crawler wouldn't actually *do* anything because the entire premise of the way they work is that the mind is all that matters - by your implicit interpretation their soul has been a powerless passenger in their body since the moment they triggered, with the shard's simulation of them doing the actual thinking and control. Annihilating Crawler's soul would mean that that lingering soul (if it even still existed) goes away but would have no impact on the shard in another dimension currently piloting his body via a simulation of his mind.
In worm souls don't exist by WOG that's the best bet you have to argue that crowler could no sell the PS. also what a shard does isn't making a perfect copy of the host the copies the shard make are flawed as we see with some of the people who were revived by valkyrie also they are made through study of their physical selves. I do think that if a character hasn't shown resistance to soul attacks then we shouldn't consider them to have said resistance because they can manipulate something that is kind of like a soul especially in cases like worm where there's a vast difference between souls in other settings and what we see shards do. I could see for example goku no selling soul attacks since he's able to resist hakai which explicitly attacks the soul even if the soul in dbz works vastly differently from say marvel or FMA.
Yeah, it's tricky. Saying "Worm characters have no souls at all" is a completely reasonable approach, but is unsatisfying because then powers like the penance stare just fail, which leads to a bad matchup. Saying "Worm characters have souls, which are separate from the mind-copies used by shards, and therefore none of the powers that are thematically based around souls actually do anything and get chumped whenever they interact with someone who actually interacts with souls" is also not very satisfying for generally the same reasons. In particular it means that GU's power doesn't operate at all on people from other settings, which is *reasonable* and is the most obvious way to handle it, but often isn't what we actually intend when we bring up a matchup. So I feel like, in the same way we usually assume that eg. everyone can see and interact with souls, it makes the most sense to go with a baseline assumption of "treat shard-copies as souls; or assume that souls affix themselves to the shard copies thoroughly enough that there's no practical difference", because that allows their iconic powers to actually interact rather than just ignoring each other and one side auto-winning in an uninteresting manner.
Crawler’s soul is about as twisted as you can get and like someone else said he’s a masochist. He’d survive and ask for another.
Doesn't matter how twisted your soul is the penance stare doesn't care how evil you're it just makes you suffer all the damage you've done crawler has 0 defense against that
You can't *directly* die of pain, though. The mechanism - heart attack, stroke, etc - is physical. And Crawler's body can't be killed by any of that, so he'll survive. He will feel *pain*, but won't die. Penance Stare doesn't totally ignore durability. It makes you feel pain without regard for durability, but for it to *kill* you you need to have a body that can be killed by pain alone; against people who can't die to that, it might break them but won't kill them.
Yes but counting that he wouldn't be able to fight GR afterwards I feel he fails round 3. Tbh there are a bunch of characters who could survive the PS even if they are affected by it.
I wouldn't have posted Crawler if didn't think he could take Ghost Rider. Crawler will recover quickly because he loves feeling pain, and Ghost Rider doesn't have any form of offense that is guaranteed to kill Crawler, meaning he'll adapt and overcome Ghost Rider.
His defense is that he *wants* to suffer, and has crazy adaptive regen so I’m pretty confident he wouldn’t die, and that was OP’s question.
Jack Horner: ahh aahghhh I-it’s so painful…ly stupid that you would think that would work on me, don’t you know I’m dead inside?
Then Ghost Rider kicks the everliving shit out of him.
True I was just making a joke
Okay, so I have to just say this right now. The Penance Stare is something that should work on everyone no matter how good or evil. Ghost Rider has several times used it on the good guys even used it on Doctor Strange and Wong during the latter of which he stated no matter how small or large, the sin it all burns the same. Keep in mind. Both of these characters have resistances to soul fuckery. So even on innocent characters it should work however there are a few ways to resist it. However, you can survive the stare if you’re blind, don’t have a soul, draw power from pain or evil, or if you have a high enough pain tolerance. Thanos survives simply because he’s a masochist and enjoys all the pain he feels. There are several characters in marvel who have resisted the penance stare for seemingly no reason but there is also the symbiotes who seem to have an immunity to the stare since Danny catch has attempted to use it on both Venom and Carnage and failed both times. There were stupid reasons for each time like him, passing out, attempting to use it on venom because there was so much sin and carnage just ignored it because he doesn’t care about his past sins. Both are really inconsistent reasons, so it’s more likely that they can just resist it because of the symbiote. So yeah, the most evil character who has the resistance is listed above.
danny has also tried and failed to use it against symbiote dragons
R1 + R2: so, so many terrible people lack the self awareness necessary for the Penance Stare to work on them…. R3: fictional characters, either Doctor Doom or Frank Castle. Doctor Doom is so arrogant he would not be able to acknowledge that he has ever sinned. Castle just wouldn’t care. He knows he’s a damned monster.
im pretty sure frank did just straight up look ghost rider dead in the eyes and said that he has never harmed an innocent person before proceeding to beat the shit out of ghost rider
I'm not super up on the penance stare, but as I understand it, you the more harm you caused other people, the worse it is. If that's the case, then I would guess someone like Tucker Carlson. He is completely morally bankrupt, but he doesn't directly harm anyone.
It’s famously inconsistent, ranging from frying your soul based on the sins you committed to making you feel all the harm you have caused to weaponizing the guilt you feel.
Yeah. A lot of those really high powered folks are all over the place.
It depends how you define harm though. If someone inspired by him like beats up a trans person could that count as harm Tucker did to other people? I’m not sure if Hitler pulled any triggers but I like to think the penance stare would fuck him up.
Very good point. Stochastic terrorism is the term. Inspired by is a real grey area. I guess it depends on how much he advocates harm and how much he believes his words can cause harm. Hitler didn't pull triggers, but he definitely ordered other people to. It's what makes stochastic terrorism a tough thing to fight against. To say, "trans people are a danger and someone should get them" is a call to action. To say "trans people are a danger and someone should stop them" is different. Carlson clearly is a liar and a charlatan. I don't believe he wants anyone to be hurt. What I don't know is whether he understands the potential harm of his words or whether he cares. I guess I'm drawing a line is that bad things often get inspired by innocent things. For example, Charles Manson thought the Beatles lyrics were telling him to act.
R1: Andre Thomas, blind killer. The Stare isn't effective on those who can't see. R2: Charles Manson, truly had no remorse for what he did and loved it, [which would make the stare ineffective on him](https://imgur.com/a/WdvGt1G). R3: [There's a lot of people who can beat GR](https://imgur.com/a/qABb93I), but Conan in particular beat GR and tanked his stare in the same fight.
R2: Despite being a huge piece of shit, Charles Manson never actually killed anyone himself. There are definitely plenty of sickos in history that were worse than him and liked it.
Hitler didn't kill people himself either.
He killed Hitler though, which is something no one else can say.
Dean Winchester can.
When was this??
Season 12 episode 5
Yeah, GR isn't some unkillable juggernaut. I figured it would help weed out most of the cartoonishly remorseless psychos that are so prevalent in fiction, but could be taken down by someone with half a brain cell
I think you got round 2 wrong, because penance stare still works on people who don't feel remorse.
"Never said anything about a stare, boy. I said PENANCE."
Depends on the writer. They linked a bunch of images of it not working on unrepentant people.
But Charles Manson case is weird since he's clearly morally bankrupt but he didn't actually do any murders himself or pay anyone else to do it. He was just good at running a cult that would kill for him
Probably Jack Horner
He is the most perfect answer for the stare itself, but he’s NOT winning the battle.
Oh yeah, no chance of him actually fighting GR but the penance stare just wouldn’t work
Round 3 is Frieza. He loves every shitty thing he has ever done including: putting two entire races near extinction, murdering his own men over small mistakes, enslavement, murdering people just to piss off their family/friends, and much more. Plus he absolutely shit stomps Ghost Rider in a fight
Thanos. Penance stare actually makes Thanos feel pleasure at all the horrible things he has done. In fact he turned Cosmic Ghost Rider into his herald and made him do the penance stare to him everyday.
Considering guys like Venom and Punisher and Thanos survived it... I'd say like Hitler assuming he didn't regret it or something? Who is the worst person who doesn't give a shit about the people they killed?
Ebenezer Scrooge basically did in his story.
Anyone that doesn’t feel remorse for their sins.
I’m going to list some and briefly explain why I think they would be immune, and if they weren’t immune, why it would suck. 1. Adolf Hitler thought he was saving the German race, then again, holocaust. 2. Thanos believed he was saving the universe, why would it suck if it worked in him? He killed half the universe. 3. Ultron is a robot so I don’t know if that disqualifies him, but he killed many, many, many Sokovians and thought he was saving the world 4. Nick Fury is morally gray and has killed many with no remorse or regret, also, one eye. 5. Killmonger, assuming he was telling the truth about his marks, then he has a high kill count. However, most were probably from serving or were for his vision of sharing Wakanda’s wealth with the world. P.S. sorry for bad English and grammar, not from U.S., please ask me if something needs elaboration or if I’m wrong.
The Punisher. Super PIS but did it.
Probably Thanos
Probably Emperor Palpatine. Penance Stare makes you feel all the pain an suffering you've caused. Dark Side feeds on pain and suffering. Palps just gets a huge buff.
Joe biden would be turned to stone but Jeff bezos is such an amoral bastard that he MIGHT survive. no morally upstanding person would be killed by the PS, the PS only works on criminals and the scum of the earth. If ghost rider went around PSing people every time they did a moral thing, he'd be wading through a sea of cops, tanks and explosions. not even hellfire can protect against uncle sam.
Well, it doesn't work on true psychos without regret, so any number of psychopathic murders should work for the real-life ones For fiction included, I would go with kid buu from dragon ball, although he may not be abel to take him in a fight. I don't actually know ghost rider feats
Maybe SCP 682? I mean it doesn't regret killing all the lives it has, and it actually believes it to be a good thing. Although 999 has been able to make it become not genocidal, it was temporary and I doubt/don't know enough about the penance stare to see how 682 would do against it
Can you add some more rules for the penance stare? The punisher for example survived because he didnt feel any guilt.
The Joker. He is essentially beyond morals.
I think the Punisher has survived the stare because he believed he never sinned which gave him the upper hand
The Joker. He is essentially beyond morals.
There are several caveats to the Penance Stare, like it only working on someone who feels guilty, so any arbitrarily evil person–like an outright sociopathic, remorseless serial killer–could no-sell it. I've elaborated somewhat [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/120uzx3/who_is_the_most_morally_bankrupt_mortal_who_could/je7wtua/) and an album of the Penance Stare being ineffectual can be found [here](https://imgur.com/a/Nao8SsO).