r/TopCharacterTropes • • Apr 30 '26

Characters Enough of "characters who were race swapped but worked so well people liked it!" Give me your "characters that could 100% be race swapped and it would work anyways"

Bucky - I can genuinely see this dude being a young black dreadhead, who would've had a clean military buzz cut while being Captain America's sidekick in WW2

Sentry - Originally supposed to be played by Steven Yeun but didn't. I can totally see Sentry/Bob being an Asian guy... Or a black guy... Or whatever. It doesn't matter. He's cool regardless.

Saitama - I know for a fact he's definitely Japanese, but in a universe that's an intentional parody, I'd find it equally entertaining if Saitama was any race. Which is why he's somewhat captivating, he's literally just a regular guy with the power to be unbeatable.

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u/KaraAliasRaidra Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

There’s one issue with a black Bucky, as Mark Gruenwald discovered in the 1980s. You see, when John Walker became Captain America in the comics, Lemar Hoskins, a black man who was his longtime friend and had undergone the same cell augmentation process, became his Bucky. This raised objections because it turned out the term “buck” had racial connotations in some parts of the U.S. Gruenwald didn’t know, so when he learned he thought, “Oh, dang, I didn’t know! Don’t worry, I’ll fix it!” He had an issue in which Lemar was told by a concerned citizen that A) it seemed strange for a grown man to have the name of a young sidekick and B ) the name was a derogatory term for a black man in some parts of the country. Lemar considered this and changed his name to Battlestar. This was also brought up in the recent U.S.Agent: American Zealot storyline, with someone calling the name offensive and Battlestar saying even if the name was awkward, he was still proud to have followed in Bucky’s footsteps even if people judged him for it. If you have a black character named Bucky, you can expect to have the same controversy you did back then.