In Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, we quickly get the impression that main character Hiro Protagonist is one bad motherfucker. However, the position of baddest motherfucker in the whole world is taken by Raven, a character we shall soon learn more about. Let's compare these two characters in several categories and see just why Raven is such a bad motherfucker...
Big spoilers up ahead...
Personality
Hiro: Typical hacker type - interested in all things technological and loves to tinker with complicated machinery. Generally a nice guy, gave up all his shares in Black Sun (the company he worked for) to put his mum in a nice community in Korea.
Raven: A nasty piece of work, Raven has POOR IMPULSE CONTROL tatooed on his forehead. Once killed most of the crew and passengers on a Russian nuclear submarine with a piece of glass, leaving the survivors to work in knee-deep blood (On a submarine, there's nowhere for it to drain to...)
Physical Characteristics
Hiro: Average height, very strong forearms and legs from years of samurai sword training. Is also blessed with freakishly good reflexes. Seems to wear a jet black biker outfit for most of the book, made from armorgel and arachnofiber - "A bullet will bounce of it like a wren hitting a screen door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest."
Raven: Built like a wrestler, has very long hair. His father was nuked twice before he was born - making Raven a mutant. Dresses relatively normally.
Technological abilities
Hiro: Wrote large portions of the Metaverse, the virtual reality universe that seems to be the equivalent of the Internet in Snow Crash. Can use sophisticated technology like the global Earth simulation and the Librarian daemon without batting an eyelid. He can code anti-viral programs and also wrote the routines that govern sword-fighting in the Metaverse.
Raven: Can vaguely get around the Metaverse on a motorbike.
Transportation
Hiro: Starts off in a Mafia-provided pizza delivery van that travels at a couple of hundred miles an hour and is described as a 'black chariot of pepperoni fire'. Transfers to a black Yamaha two-wheel-drive motorcycle with wheels that change shape according to whatever is detected by the bike's millimetre-wave radar.
Raven: Gets around the Pacific islands of his birth by surfing with his kayak, which can outrun steamships.
Weaponry
Hiro: Carries a matched pair of samurai swords with him at all times. At one point during the novel, Hiro engages the deck-mounted Gatling guns on the aircraft carrier Enterprise with Reason, a nuclear-powered suitcase-sized railgun that fires tiny slugs of depleted uranium at hypersonic velocities. This is a pretty cool gun.
Raven: Raven can make knives from glass that are a molecule thick and can therefore slice through bulletproof fabric. They can also pass through metal detectors without being detected. This technique is used to make glass-tipped spears that Raven throws at people very fast.
If you ask me, the bad motherfucker rating of these two gentlemen is almost equal. Unfortunately, there is one item that makes Raven the baddest motherfucker in the entire world. Raven has electrodes in his brain that are linked to a hydrogen bomb stolen from a Russian nuclear submarine. If Raven dies, 20 square miles of landscape around him disappear. These are the lengths you will need to go to if you wish to be the baddest motherfucker in the world.