By the time 2026 arrived, a regular player who had spent hundreds of hours in Marvel Rivals knew the roster screen like the back of their hand. They had watched Jeff the Land Shark go from deep-cut obscurity to a household name, proof that NetEase could turn a weird little joke into a legitimate superstar. Still, not every Marvel oddity was destined for the spotlight. For every Jeff, there was a drawer of characters that felt less like gameplay opportunities and more like a collection of broken toys; the line between charming obscurity and full-blown Z-list disaster was thinner than a spider's silk, and NetEase walked it with a tightrope artist's caution.
1. Hindsight Lad
Carlton LaFroyge was not blessed with powers, charisma, or even a decent costume. He blackmailed his way onto the New Warriors after discovering that his neighbor Robbie Baldwin was Speedball, then betrayed his own team and slid into paranoid conspiracy theorist territory. In a hero shooter where every move matters, Hindsight Lad would have brought nothing except a laughably bad fashion sense and a narrative no one wanted to revisit.
2. Armless Tiger Man
This character lost his arms in a factory accident, then declared war on all machines and somehow became a cannibal, two details with absolutely no logical connection. He was not merely baffling; he was a minefield when it came to disability representation. No developer would, or should, want to drag that into a modern game. Adding him would have been like placing a grenade in a nursery; no amount of balance tuning could make it safe.
3. The Almighty Dollar
J. Pennington Pennypacker had the kind of name that sounded like a trust fund, and his power was firing coins from his wrists. In a vacuum it was funny; next to Gambit, Bullseye, or even a properly tuned projectile duelist, it was a penny in a vault of better ideas. The comedy was not enough to justify a roster slot.
4. Payback
Payback was a police officer whose family died in retaliation after he cooperated with The Punisher. Blaming Frank Castle, he vowed to stop him. It was a fine, tragic origin, but gameplay-wise he offered nothing The Punisher did not already cover. A second gun-toting vigilante would have been redundant, like adding another shade of black to a noir palette.
5. Lady Stilt-Man
Lady Stilt-Man and the slightly less absurd Stilt-Man were actually fun comic-book creations. But in Marvel Rivals, where maps and sightlines are sacred, a character who could lengthen their legs to step over obstacles would have created endless level design headaches. The developers would spend more time patching terrain than designing skins.
6. Scarecrow
Everyone knew the Batman villain first, and that was the problem. Marvel's Scarecrow was genuinely fascinating: a contortionist, an escape artist, a crow trainer, and eventually even a ghost. His fear-based kit might have been amazing, but the name confusion would have made him a marketing roulette wheel. NetEase would not gamble on that.
7. Gamecock
Carlos Cabera was a powerless man who dressed like a chicken and fought superheroes. The name alone was enough to get him laughed out of any pitch meeting. Not even the studio that turned Jeff into a phenomenon could make a chicken-costumed Z-lister feel threatening or fun.
8. Lasher
Symbiotes were a guaranteed hype machine, but not every symbiote had Venom's gravitational pull. Lasher was one of dozens of forgettable symbiotes, and while Carnage felt inevitable, most other symbiotes would never escape the comic-book bargain bin. A cool skin could not fix a character with no identity.
9. Phone Ranger
Phone Ranger's origin was so absurd it circled back to surreal: a telephone was secretly an alien prison, and he used its technology to become a hero. His real name was A.G. Bell, a joke about Alexander Graham Bell so on the nose it required no explanation. There was no way to place him in a game without turning him into a walking punchline.
10. Bliss
Bliss was a mutant with a prehensile tongue that ended in its own head, complete with a face, a mouth, and another tongue. It was less a character design and more an ouroboros of body horror. She was not bad, just so distinctly strange that imagining her voice lines and hitbox gave developers a migraine. Still, the idea of the tongue having its own dialogue was so absurd it almost became charming.
As 2026 continued to add characters from the deeper shelves of Marvel history, players learned that obscurity was not the same as incompatibility. But the ones above were different. They were not hidden gems; they were cracked lenses that no patch could ever correct. Every live-service roster was a carefully balanced terrarium, and adding the wrong creature could collapse the entire biome. The player closed the roster screen with a small sense of gratitude: NetEase had kept the weird, but it had also kept the wiser species out.