How to Choose Your Chosen One

Everyone wants to be special, at least a little bit. We want to believe that the world really does revolve around us and that we’re here for some great purpose. Luckily for us, we can project our desires onto fictional characters.  

Enter, Chosen Ones—characters that are literally chosen for greatness. They are typically the protagonist and have been selected to perform heroic deeds. However, there are many different ways to actually be Chosen, and the method often impacts what sort of character they become. So, which version should you choose? Let’s examine three of the most popular versions.  

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Chosen by Prophecy

In the Harry Potter series, prophecy states that “the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord” will be born under very specific circumstances, and he is seemingly the one that must kill Voldemort. Enter... well, Harry Potter. His birth matches the prophecy, and he survives an encounter with Voldemort despite being a baby.  

 That’s good enough for the wizarding world, and they promptly make Harry their official Chosen One. Despite only learning this himself at age 12, practically everyone puts all their hopes on him to defeat Voldemort once and for all. And he does, after a few years and with some help. But that is a lot of pressure to put on one person, especially a child. 

Prophecies are tricky business. They usually dictate that a special individual will rise up to do... something. Prophecies are extremely vague and can be interpreted in different ways. Neville Longbottom was just as likely to become the Chosen One, but it was Voldemort’s actions that solidified the true bearer of the prophecy. One thing is for sure: these prophecies will come true in some form, and our Chosen One is going to make it happen. 

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, prophecies are conveniently stored in these ominous orbs.

The Literally Chosen

Unlike winning the magic lottery and being prophesied, these characters are individually selected to become Chosen Ones. It is not fate that chooses, but a specific character like a mentor figure. This chooser has free will and, more importantly, they are not infallible. The Chosen One has no destiny or prophecy to guarantee success—more often than not, they’re just a regular person that is granted power. 

 One of the most popular examples in recent years comes from My Hero Academia. Izuku “Deku” Midoriya is one of the unlucky few not to be blessed with superpowers, or ‘Quirks’. After proving his heroism despite this, he is gifted a Quirk by legendary hero All Might.  

 Because their power and status is gifted to them, these Chosen Ones are the most likely to try and return it. Deku tries to pass on his Quirk to others he believes are more worthy on several occasions. These Chosen Ones are different from other iterations due to the fact that they were personally chosen, not by destiny or reincarnation. Speaking of... 

Despite appearances, there two are some of the most powerful characters in My Hero Academia

The Chosen Incarnation

These Chosen Ones are less random than others. They are regularly reincarnated in the world to fulfill their duty—usually a general ‘fight evil’ gig—and will be replaced with a new iteration upon death.  

 In the Avatar universe, the Avatar is a figure that can control the four elements, and their duty is to keep peace between the nations and maintain balance. Aang, the Avatar in The Last Airbender, is a twelve-year-old boy that must end a hundred-year war. Maintaining peace of the entire world is a lot to put on one individual, no matter how strong they are.  

 Reincarnated Chosen Ones have even more stress than other Chosen Ones. Not only do they have a massive life-long duty, but they also have the extremely high expectations set by all of their previous incarnations to live up to.  No pressure.

The Four Seasons, by Scott Wade. A depiction of the Avatar cycle.

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By its nature the Chosen One trope heavily impacts both the plot it’s featured in, and the characterization of your Chosen One. Typically, your Chosen One will face serious self-doubt throughout their story—there’s about a 99% chance they will at some point shout “I never asked for this!” Likewise, the broad strokes of the story are generally the same. The story often starts with the Chosen One’s discovery and often ends when they’ve fulfilled their Chosen Duty. 

 But no two Chosen Ones are the same. Even in Avatar, Aang and the next iteration Korra have very little in common besides being the Avatar. Practically the only thing the three stories we discussed have in common is their protagonists being Chosen Ones.  

 Being Chosen should be an important part of your character and story, but it doesn’t have to be the only part. There are countless ways to create a Chosen One, so find what works best for you. You can choose your own destiny. 

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Cor O’Neill

Cor is a Professional Writing student at Algonquin and a horror enthusiast. If he’s not working at the library or attending class, he’s usually creating in some form. He writes in a wide variety of genres and his life dream is to meet Mothman.

Underground Monkey

When you think their numbers couldn’t get any higher…

You might find this a rather bizarre name to give to any trope, but if you’re familiar with RPGs or Metroidvanias, you’ll have already encountered this trope in some form and not realize it. Often times there are enemies that are introduced very early on in the game that are soon dealt with. You travel further in the game and enter a new area, and suddenly that enemy you fought before in an earlier level is now back, but with a new colour, new name, new abilities and buffed stats.

This is where the term Underground Monkey comes into play. It’s essentially an enemy’s sprite or design being reused for later areas with the changes mentioned to make them ‘different’ enough from their weaker versions to give players more enemies to deal with. Most see this as a form of laziness with the developers reusing sprites to just make them harder, but there is an actual reason for this. A lot of older games, especially on the NES and SNES, are limited in what they can do in terms of the consoles hardware. Rather than make entirely new sprites that would eat up more of the file size, it’d be easier to simply reuse them since they are already there and just change the colour to help differentiate them.

Another reason could be a way of telling the story more without the use of text. Certain enemies you have dealt with before are getting stronger the further along you go on your journey, with new traits to back up that point. Animals like wolves can have subspecies that have adapted to their new environments, gaining traits that give them an advantage over their cousins. If done correctly, reusing sprites can be an effective way of providing more story for the game without being up in your face about it.

An example of reusing sprites shown above with 6 of the 15 wolf enemies you encounter in Final Fantasy XII. Despite the visual differences, this is an example of Underground Monkey.

In smaller length games, there is about three or four enemies that share the same sprite, though in longer games that range can jump to ten or so enemies or even higher. Reusing sprites isn’t necessarily limited to just normal enemies alone. Unique enemies like those found in hunts, optional encounters, or even bosses can fall under this category. This is especially prominent in MMOs.

Yiazmat, the Superboss of FFXII, shares a similar design with the optional Hell Wyrm boss, and in general the various Fell Wyrm enemies in the game.

Sometimes it doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to just RPGs or Metroidvanias. Other genre of games can also have reused sprites in one way or another. One example is Beat-em-Ups where enemies will have palette swaps, with that enemy having a new name and the various changes entailed, but still visually the same kind of enemy. Tower Defense games will also reuse enemies but may try to change things up by giving a few of them unique traits.

Some enemies in Arknights will also fall under the category of Underground Monkey with one another, despite looking vastly different from one another.

Most games will try to give these altered enemies additional benefits to differentiate them, like dealing more damage to your characters when they have a status ailment on them, or move faster when another enemy is on the field. These changes, while subtle, can help make these enemies dangerous in their own way.

So now you’re a bit more familiar with this trope and how it’s used in games. If you were already aware of it, congrats! Now try and see if you can recall any games you played in the past few years that have followed this trope.