- “I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.”
- ―Bad-Anon creed[src]
Bad-Anon is a support group for the bad guys of the arcade games at Litwak's Arcade in Disney's 2012 animated feature film Wreck-It Ralph and its 2018 sequel.
Role in the film[]
The meetings are held in the Ghost Pen of the game Pac-Man once a week, and are led by Clyde. The members share their woes as a result of being bad guys and give each other moral support. Meetings are ended by the Bad Guy Creed: "I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me." It's here that Ralph starts to admit his desire for acknowledgement. When he mentions that he doesn't want to be the bad guy anymore, the members react with shock, some in animated ways, and Bison asks if Ralph's "going Turbo", which he quickly denies. Clyde tells Ralph that bad guys can’t change who they are. The slogan for the group is "One game at a time".
At the end of the film, after his adventures in Hero's Duty and Sugar Rush, Ralph happily reports and tells Bad-Anon that he's finally taking life "one game at a time". The support group was also invited to Fix-It Felix Jr. and Sergeant Calhoun's wedding.
Members[]
- Clyde from Pac-Man (group leader)
- M. Bison (Vega) from Street Fighter II
- Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog
- Zangief from Street Fighter II
- Bowser from Super Mario Bros.
- Shinobi (believed to be Smoke from Mortal Kombat)
- Satan (He prefers it pronounced "Sa-teen") from Satan's Hollow
- Wreck-It Ralph (new member) from Fix-It Felix Jr.
- Cyril the Zombie from The House of the Dead
- Kano from Mortal Kombat (referred to as Cyborg in the credits)
- Beholder from Eye of the Beholder
- Neff from Altered Beast
- Sorceress (original character)
- 1011001 from Cyborg Justice
Trivia[]
- The two Bad-Anon meetings that Ralph attends are used as the bookends for the film (the prologue and the epilogue).
- Dr. Wily from Mega Man was originally set to make an appearance in the Bad-Anon villains support group as shown in an early render image. However, he was cut in the final version of the film and replaced with Shinobi, further fueling sentiment that Capcom is trying to kill the Mega Man franchise.
- In both the Junior Novelization and Golden Books adaptations, all of the real-world video game baddies are replaced with generic video game baddies.
- M. Bison is the only member of Bad-Anon who is voiced by his current voice actor in the games, as all the other members are voiced by someone else or are completely silent. All the silent members are actually lip-syncing when they recite the credo to give the viewers the impression that they are actually speaking. Curiously enough, Jim Cummings is among the additional voice cast, which is ironic since he had previously voiced Dr. Robotnik in the more serious Sonic the Hedgehog "SatAM" cartoon that aired on ABC and also voiced the character in the pilot for the more lighthearted Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (in that series, Robotnik was instead voiced by the late British actor Long John Baldry).
- It should be noted that Bowser can be seen and audibly heard growling when Ralph is about to get on board the train with the other villains. It is unknown if his growling was provided by his current voice actor, Kenny James, or if it was a stock sound effect.
- Mike Pollock, the current voice of Eggman as of 2003, was unaware of the recording sessions for the film.
- The video game villains' sprites, with the exception of Clyde, were all created specifically for the film (Eggman's, Kano's, Smoke's, M. Bison's, and 1011001's Pac-Man-style sprites are not shown since they were the first to leave that game), and look nothing like how their sprites appeared in their respective games. Most noticeably, Bowser's sprite resembles the one from Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. However, it's possible that they all altered their sprites so that they all are drawn in the same artstyle of Pac-Man.
- Of all the video game characters and elements that appear in the film, the Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter, Q*Bert, Tapper, Altered Beast, and Pong characters are the only ones who are all drawn very accurate to their games' official artwork: While Kano sports the red eye like his Mortal Kombat counterpart, his appearance in the game doesn't have the mechanical right arm. Also, most noticeably, Clyde looks more like his in-game sprite rather than his official artwork seen in the game Pac-Man World (which looks like this; a similar treatment was done to the other three ghosts as with Pac-Man himself).
- Zangief is actually portrayed as a Bad Guy in this film, similar to his appearances in the live-action Street Fighter film and animated series, but not in the games' storyline. According to screenwriter Phil Johnston, the reason for Zangief's villainy was due to the fact that he found him very hard to beat when playing Street Fighter II as a boy and personally considered him to be a villain. Johnston also maintains that Zangief's high difficulty level would make the wrestler feel bad about some of the things he had to do to defeat players, making him feel like a Bad Guy.[1]
- The sprite depicting Ralph grabbing the cherries before leaving Pac-Man and later sharing them with the Q*Bert gang eventually shows up one more time at the end of the film when the Walt Disney Pictures logo becomes a "kill screen."
- The Sorceress is the only female villain to attend the Bad-Anon meeting.
- In addition, she is the only original villain created for Bad-Anon apart from Ralph.
- Sorceress does resemble Mishaela from Shining Force as well as the Dark Queen from Battletoads with the coloration of Lilith from Darkstalkers.
- The Bad-Anon affirmation is recited by Ralph again at the end of the film when he is about to deliver the final blow at Turbo by completely destroying all of the Mentos stalactites at Diet Cola Mountain and sacrificing himself.
- Ralph's opening monologue during the first Bad-Anon meeting reveals it's the Nicelanders' inability to see he only acts bad during game-play, which is why he's frustrated with being a villain.
- Cyborg (Kano) bears more resemblance to Silver from Treasure Planet, particularly the red eye and mechanical right arm.