it dawned on me that more often then not, when cyberware shows up in entertainment thats not cyberpunk, the person having it is 90% of the time the bad guy of the story.

is it some kind of sci-fi white/black hat thing?

Hmm. I think it's because it freak people out, to lose your humanity like that and become part machine. It scares people. So therefore it either goes to the villain, who is of course an inhuman prick to start with so OF COURSe he would have cyberware, of the hero has it but relunctantly, as part of a dark past he's trying to forget (Will Smith in I Robot).

Then that's sort of the thing with cyberpunk. You break that barrier. People so don't give a fuck anymore, become part machine is nothing to them. Which is of course the central element of cyberpunk - loss of humanity due to technological advances (or at least it was in the 80s)

I'd be interested in some sort of listing of movies/shows and characters who have cyberware.

Luke (Hand) Star Wars Series
Darth Vader (Full replacement body) Star Wars Series
The 'Borg (Including Captain Picard) Star Trek
Jordi Laforge (Eyes) Star Trek
Del Spooner (Arm) I Robot
Ash (Arm) Army of Darkness
All the Humans (Datajack) Matrix Trillogy
Robocop (Full replacement body) Robocop

Do we count prosthetics?
Captain Hook (Hand) Well, lots...
Lt. Dan (Legs) Forrest Gump
Dr. Romano (Arm) ER <-- On the edge of not merely prosthetic, it had motors, grip, etc.
The One Armed Man (Arm) The Fugutive

What else is there?

Iirc there's a woman with a cyberleg (including a hidden gun) in "Grindhouse".

Yea, I thought about that. That gun was hidden? From what I saw in the previews that was the worst hiding job I ever saw.

You know her name, or do I have to IMDb it to add her to my list?

You're right, when I think about it the gun was very obvious. I'm not good in memorizing names when I see a movie for the first time, sorry.

I'd guess those where cybereyes in Chronicles of Riddick:
http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0296572/230...et_rgb.jpg.html
Sleepyman

Lieutenant Jean Rasczak (Hand/Forearm) - Starship Troopers
Recruiting Sergeant (Leg/Arm) - Starship Troopers
Johnny (Headware Memory) - Johnny Mnemonic
Asst'd Goons (Various) - Johnny Mnemonic

IIRC, There was a fair bit of cyber in Totall Recall and also in Freejack. However, it's been long enough since I saw either of those that I haven't the foggiest what the gear was.

If you want to get into Anime, cyberware becomes much more common. However, that's sort of its own world.

I'd suggest that Johnny Mnemonic is a cyberpunk setting, although it could also be suggested that Robocop and the Matrix Trilogy are at least dystopian.

As for 'ware in non-cyberpunk fiction; how about James Bond? Live and Let Die has the guy with the claw for a hand, And Jaws has Cyber Teeth™...

Yea, that's why I didn't include Johnny Justjohnny in my list.

does a life clock count as cyberware?

Oops, looks like i was a bit quick on the draw the. But if we eliminate the ones thats so minor (datalack and similar) that one kinda forgets that they are there, how many is left? And isn't Giordi shown wanting normal eyes all the time? And how much of the cyber is non-medical?

Double post, sorry.

What the?! Triple sort? I guess thats what i get for using opera mini on a phone;)

Geordi has normal eyes (until the late movies or whatever), but he definitely has LEDs implanted in his skull that make his magic hair clip work.

Geordi was blind without his hair clip, he had eyes that didn't work, the hair clip connected to his brain like a choclear implant works for hearing now. In the later movies he got chips implanted in his eyes.

Now that i think about it, his reason for having said visor was medical. So good guys get it, but they need some medical reason. And must go about wanting it fixed. Unless your some badass parody like the sarge in starship troopers...

what kind of crap technology was that anyway? they couldn't even get regular vision right. He had to get "crazy sight".
I think his whole character was just a big joke - "Hey let's make the guy at the helm blind! har har!"

Star Wars RPG definitely had an anti-cyber bias. In that game, the more cyber you had, the more vulnerable to the Dark Side you were. In many other games, cyber was heavily frowned upon and could make one an outcast. Total cyborgs were treated with fear and it was an open question if they were people or property, like robots. There was a novel series, can't think of the name, where there was something like the foreign legion, but was composed of primarily full or almost total cyborgs. They weren't trusted by the unmodified army, so they were based on their own planet. Officers were all either total human or mostly human. Beyond a certain point of cyberization, they couldn't command troops anymore and would be demoted to a ranker.

So I would agree with the others that cyber is seen as "cheating" and not heroic.

Let's see ... non-cyberpunk films ...

That crappy movie with the spider ... Wild Wild West.
Forrest Gump
Frankenstein (does that count? If it does, then ...)
Young Frankenstein
You Only Live Twice
Live and Let Die
Treasure Planet
Spy Hard
Moby Dick
Fullmetal Alchemist
Hot Shots
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The Dark Side (okay, this is a documentary on Dick Cheney)
[EDIT: girlfriend came up with this one] Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
[EDIT: girlfriend still brilliant] Edward Scissorhands

That enough?

Does Steampunk count as not cyberpunk?
Was there someone I missed in Forrest Gump?
Do parrodies count?
What were the names of the characters and what cyber did they have?

Johnny Mnemonic: The Jesus Freak (Preacher I think?) Lessee uhhh... Muscle Aug, Bone Lacing, Cyber Ears Eyes. I dunno.
The quote I remember from the movie was like "He's got so much metal in him he ain't even human anymore" So I guess he would be a CyberZombie. Hmmm....

The one thing that bugs me about that movie. (there's more than one believe me) They took out Molly's mirror lenses and her hand razors! That's half of what makes her so fragging cool!

First off, JM is a CP movie so that one falls under 'usual sources' mr freak was also a bad guy. And molly was not in the movie for copyright reasons Iirc...

Rose McGowan portrayed the female protagonist from Planet Terror, the first movie in Grindhouse. She started off with a wooden peg leg, got a modified M-16 with M-203 Grenade Launcher and then had a Vulcan Minigun as her last leg.

Denzel Washington in Virtuosity had

The theory still holds. Good guys in Hollywood cp films are getting implants because they got no choice while villains got their cyber because they want a cheap ticket to edge and because they didn't care much for their humanity anyways

So, you can fill your body with chrome until it bursts out of your ears, but you need medical reasons and you should regret it every once in a while before kicking ass with your kewlr than flesh implant.

Cheers,

Max

Edited for sorry syntax

somehow i find that list somewhat wide in its definition of cyberware...

but then again, what the definition of cyberware is, is a open question...

it can be something as simple as a peg leg. or it can be something as complicated as enhanced reflexes (clearly a non-medical cyberware).

treasure planet is a interesting one as the boy (forgotten the name) is warned against john silver as he is a cyborg, and therefor potentially not a trustworthy character.

so it kinda reinforce my current theory.

and like someone else stated, anime have a attitude all its own towards the subject. as in, its not really representative for the western world so to speak...

As much as I disliked the movie (it was entertaining, but I hated it nonetheless) I, Robot should probably be on that list too.

and it to pulls a heroic injury...

Well I don't think that having cyberware makes something cyberpunk. Neither does prosthetics. There is plenty of Scifi that has cyberware though. I don't consider any non-CNS control prosthetics to be cyberware. My mother had a metal hip bone and socket but it wasn't cyberware. I think that we are developing some very early cyberware right now with mental and nerve controls.

Also I always thought that Steampunk was a postcyberpunk setting but I haven't read much of it so I may be wrong.

Heh, what are the oldest ones you can find? I recall these two TV series from the 1970's:

The Six Million Dollar Man
Bionic Woman

and both again pulls a injury to justify the implants.

no elective surgery or whatever its called.

I think many of the bad guys just may not go into details about the injury that made them get the cyber.

Villains don't get back stories to make them more likeable; if they did they wouldn't be so villainous. It's rare that someone goes and makes three prequels to show your descent to the dark side.

EDIT: And Robocop wasn't done because he needed it, they used him because they needed a near corpse. He was a victim, not saved by the cyber.

Trigun - VASHU THE STAMEDU had a cyberarm with an implanted SMG. that was a heroic injury.

Cowboy Bebop - Spike had a replacement eye, though i believe it was organic. Jet Black had a cybernetic cheek(!), and i think i recall him having multiple vision modes in that episode about the crazy bouncing psycho. never said where he got the cybercheek and possible cybereyes.

ok, i may be moving the goal but like someone stated before, anime/manga could be put into the "usual sources" bag

as for robocop, thats kinda like the exception that confirms the trend. hell, outside of the first movie, and the "recent" mini-series, robocop got dumbed down to sell to a broader audience. as in, they downplayed how he got the "body" vs what he could do with it.

but then it was me watching the mini-series and seeing a little girl apparently have speed enhancement that made me post this thread in the first place. i have yet to watch the last two parts of said series so i guess there will be some kind of storyline reason for her having it...

i think robocop counted as a cyber zombie more than anything, remember how he had bad memories surfacing of the past and how he needed that crazy charging station to keep him alive? and he was more machine than person so the essence was def gone....