Toxic Avenger recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1984 · Film

The Toxic Avenger recap

The Toxic Avenger (1984) follows Melvin Ferd, a bullied janitor in Tromaville, New Jersey, who falls into toxic waste and becomes a hulking mutant. Chased out of a health-club window by a prank, he lands in a drum on a truck. Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman directed it for Troma. Melvin is played by Mark Torgl before the change and by Mitch Cohen after it. The four gym regulars who drove him out the window, Bozo, Slug, Wanda and Julie, also run down kids in their car for points. Reborn with an instinct for sniffing out evil, Melvin kills drug dealers, pimps and robbers in gory ways and leaves his mop on the bodies. He rescues Sara (Andree Maranda), a blind woman, from a restaurant holdup, and the two fall in love and set up home in a junkyard and then a tent. One by one he punishes the bullies. Mayor Peter Belgoody (Pat Ryan Jr.), the secret boss of the town's crime, wants him gone. Start the series here.

How The Toxic Avenger ends

The Toxic Avenger ends with Mayor Belgoody bringing the National Guard to the woods to kill Melvin, after Melvin has killed an old woman who was secretly running a trafficking ring. The townspeople stand in front of him, his mother identifies him as her son, and the mayor's crimes come out; Melvin rips him open in front of the crowd. Tromaville hails him as its hero, the Toxic Avenger. The film flopped at first, found an audience at midnight screenings in New York and led to three sequels and a cartoon.

No. 02 · 1989 · Film

The Toxic Avenger Part II recap

The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989) sends Toxie to Tokyo to find his father while a chemical giant takes over his hometown. Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz directed it for Troma. Melvin, now with the surname Junko and played by John Altamura with Ron Fazio's voice, works at the Tromaville Center for the Blind, which Apocalypse Inc. blows up to clear the way for its plant. His blind girlfriend, renamed Claire and now played by Phoebe Legere, survives. The company's chairman (Rick Collins) and his deputy Mona Malfaire (Lisa Gaye) trick Toxie into crossing the Pacific to meet the father who left him. In Japan he befriends Masami, finds a yakuza drug boss called Big Mac Bunko, and fights his way through gangsters and kabuki warriors. A bottle of anti-Tromatons nearly kills him until a sumo gym nurses him back. Follows the 1984 film and leads straight into Part III.

How The Toxic Avenger Part II ends

The Toxic Avenger Part II ends with Toxie back in Tromaville, where Claire has already beaten Mona Malfaire. He chases down the Dark Rider, a biker carrying nitroglycerin toward City Hall, using a stolen taxi and then a hovercraft, and the rider blows himself up in a house. Melvin's real father then arrives in town: Bunko had stolen his identity. The chairman and Malfaire are left trying to hitch a ride home. The Toxic Avenger Part III followed the same year.

No. 03 · 1989 · Film

The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie recap

The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (1989) has a jobless Toxie sign with the company he beat to pay for his girlfriend's eye surgery. Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz directed it. Melvin Junko (John Altamura, voiced by Ron Fazio) fails as a mechanic and a babysitter before Apocalypse Inc. offers him a spokesman job, and he signs the contract in blood. Claire (Phoebe Legere) gets her sight back and sees him for the first time, but Toxie turns into a yuppie selling the company's chemicals to his neighbors. Kids kicking his poster wake him up, and he wins the town back by killing goons holding hostages in a video store. The chairman (Rick Collins) then shows he is the Devil and challenges Toxie to the Five Levels of Doom, a game built on earth, fire, wind and water. Follows Part II.

How The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie ends

The Toxic Avenger Part III ends with the Devil's last level shrinking Toxie back into little Melvin and blinding Claire again. Claire finds an act-of-God escape clause in the contract, an angel delivers a scroll, rain falls, and Toxie returns as Claire's sight comes back. Toxie skins and beheads the Devil and hurls the head to Tokyo, and he and Claire marry. Mona Malfaire died earlier, crushed by a falling bus. The next film, Citizen Toxie, declares that both sequels never happened.

No. 04 · 1991 · Series · optional

Toxic Crusaders recap

Toxic Crusaders (1991) recasts Toxie as the leader of a team of mutant superheroes fighting polluters from outer space in a children's cartoon. Thirteen episodes in one season ran in first-run syndication from January to May 1991, with a few aired as a trial in 1990. Toxie (Rodger Bumpass) keeps his origin as a janitor dunked in toxic waste, but his mop now talks. His team includes Nozone (Paul Eiding), a pilot with a giant sneezing nose; Major Disaster (Ed Gilbert), who controls plants; the two-headed Headbanger; and Junkyard (Gregg Berger), half man and half dog. They face the bug-like Dr. Killemoff (also Bumpass) and Czar Zoster from the planet Smogula, the sarcastic henchman Psycho (Michael J. Pollard), the bully Bonehead and Tromaville's corrupt Mayor Max Grody (Chuck McCann). Toxie's girlfriend Yvonne (Kath Soucie) plays the accordion. Stands apart from the films and needs none of them.

How Toxic Crusaders ends

Toxic Crusaders ends with "That's No Villain, That's My Mom!", in which Czar Zoster tries to invade by toxic hot-air balloon while Dr. Killemoff keeps the Crusaders busy with a convention for deformed creatures, and a mishap swaps the minds of Killemoff and Toxie's mother. The show stopped after 13 episodes, though the toys, comics and video games outlasted it. A live-action film at New Line fell through and ended in a lawsuit that Troma won.

No. 05 · 2000 · Film

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV recap

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000) throws Toxie into Amortville, an evil mirror of Tromaville, while his own double takes his place at home. Lloyd Kaufman directed it from a script by Trent Haaga, and Stan Lee's narration declares Parts II and III never happened. Toxie (David Mattey, voiced by Clyde Lewis) stops the Diaper Mafia from shooting up a school for special-needs students, but a bomb blast carries him to Amortville. There he meets Evil Kabukiman and Chester, the double of his late sidekick Lardass (Joe Fleishaker). Meanwhile his twin, the Noxious Offender, murders his way through Tromaville, becomes mayor and sleeps with Toxie's wife Sarah (Heidi Sjursen), who is blind. Sarah ends up carrying two babies by different fathers. Toxie and Chester click red shoes to get home. Follows the 1984 film and skips both earlier sequels.

How Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV ends

Citizen Toxie ends with Toxie returning to find Sarah in labor and the hospital full of the Noxious Offender's Nazi allies. He kills them, then fights Noxie inside Sarah's womb and tears his organs out; the evil Melvin who steps out of the body ends up in toxic waste and runs off burning. Sarah gives birth to Toxie's baby and to one fathered by Sgt. Kabukiman, and Toxie chases Kabukiman as the crowd laughs. Kaufman announced Toxic Twins: The Toxic Avenger V, but production never started.

No. 06 · 2023 · Film

The Toxic Avenger recap

The Toxic Avenger (2023) follows Winston Gooze, a sick janitor at a crooked drug company, who is left for dead in toxic sludge and rises as a mutant hero. Macon Blair wrote and directed the remake, which opened Fantastic Fest in September 2023 and reached US theaters on August 29, 2025 through Cineverse. Winston (Peter Dinklage) is raising his stepson Wade (Jacob Tremblay) in St. Roma's Village and cannot afford treatment for his brain disease. He breaks into the BTH vault the night whistleblower J.J. Doherty (Taylour Paige) comes to steal evidence, and the company's punk-band hit squad, the Killer Nutz, shoot him and dump him in waste. He comes back with a glowing mop and a mutated body that spits out bullets. BTH chief Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon) and his brother Fritz (Elijah Wood) want his blood to build super soldiers. Stands alone and needs nothing before it.

How The Toxic Avenger ends

The Toxic Avenger ends with Bob drinking an untested serum made from Winston's blood, killing mobster Thad Barkabus, and then losing to Winston; Bob's assistant Kissy mutates herself too and is beaten in turn. Winston wakes in hospital, his disease cured, while Bob's crimes are exposed and Fritz is arrested. He and Wade accept each other as father and son. Unlike the 1984 original, Winston is a grown stepfather rather than a teenage gym janitor, and Melvin Ferd appears as a reporter.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. The Toxic Avenger has a post-credits scene showing Kissy alive but badly burned, followed by Winston teaching the audience how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.