Maverick (video game)

A Maverick, in the video game series Mega Man X, is a Reploid who has decided that the human race is inferior to their kind. Reploids usually go "maverick" through infestation by the Maverick Virus, though some cases show that some robots go maverick of their own will. In this state, they usually tend to be crazy, erratic, and extremely homicidal, especially against humans but sometimes against other reploids. Some infested mavericks, though few, do not act in an erratic manner and can act as if they were not infested (with the exception of their desire to kill humans), causing identification of that subject as a maverick to be difficult. All mavericks effectively break the First Law of Robotics as written by Isaac Asimov (which technically no reploid is bound by, as their designs are all variations on X's). To combat this, the Maverick Hunters were formed as a peacekeeping force; their goal is to track down and eliminate all mavericks as soon as they appear so as to limit the amount of harm brought to humanity or fellow reploids as much as possible. The threat of the mavericks became severe when the original leader of the maverick hunters, Sigma, went maverick himself, taking most of the active hunters with him. The robot that all the reploids designs were based on, Mega Man X, decided to take the task of maverick hunting, along with the new leader of the hunters, Zero. The first game begins as X and Zero set out to neutralize Sigma and his subordinates.

Gameplay-wise, mavericks are usually every enemy in the game, from the big bosses like to small enemies like Metools. In the Japanese version of the game, mavericks are known as Irregulars.

The idea of robots or other artificial lifeforms "going maverick" and rebelling against their creators is a common theme in much science-fiction. Rick Deckard, hero of the movie Blade Runner, is the original Maverick Hunter, responsible for "retiring" dangerous androids. In Frank Herbert's Dune novels, the movement against artificial lifeforms became a holy war, specifically the Butlerian Jihad, a crusade against all thinking machines. (Though Herbert himself never described this war, his son Brian, accompanied by author Kevin J. Anderson, has stepped up to the plate.) The idea of a machine-human war undercuts the entire story of The Matrix movies and is the subtext of the The Terminator films. None of these stories actually depict the machine uprising, though; that has been left to the 2004 movie I, Robot.