#shuttlecock

(life caught up with me and in the meantime we overshot it a little BUT) i now OFFICIALLY have MORE FOLLOWERS than there are VENTURE BROS CHARACTERS WHO DEFECTED FROM THE OSI AT SOME POINT

in what I like to call the organisation with maybe the worst defection rate of any fictional military ever, there are - depending on how you count - maybe as many as 22 characters who have turned tail on their employer at some point during their storylines:

NUMBERS 1-6:

Hunter Gathers

Brock Samson

Sky Pilot / Mile High

Shoreleave

(unknown)

(unknown)

All six of these people defected from the OSI to form new SPHINX, and then turned right back around to rejoin the OSI when Treister handed it over to Hunter because that's LOYALTY. if you see any of them call, uh, me. call me please. i would also like to see them.

(I am not counting any of the other anonymous SPHINX guys because it's entirely possible they were recruited from other, non-OSI origins and just followed Hunter when she went back to the OSI because giant men love to follow her around. like ducklings)

NUMBER 7:

7. Billy Whalen / Billy Quizboy

Billy was drafted into the OSI under duress and narrowly avoided becoming a lifelong guineapig for the OSI's Psy-Ops, getting his memory wiped in the process. since then his memories of his time in the OSI have ebbed and flowed (and he has occasionally been forced back into the washing machine) but despite his decision to be a practicing protagonist, he retains a clear disdain for the OSI every time his memories do return. The work Billy performs often aligns with the OSI's goals, however he's not afraid to put his foot down and uphold his morals over the game of cat and also cat - most notably he refused to purposefully botch Monstroso's surgery, citing the Hippocratic oath as a greater calling than any of this superhero bullshit and cementing his position as one of the most morally sound characters in the show.

NUMBER 8:

8. Myra Brandish

Myra Brandish was an OSI agent assigned to the standard rookie detail of bodyguard duty, in her case for Dr. Thaddeus Venture. However, while the assignment was standard, her asset was not, and the combined stress of being under constant attack, the romantic relationship she formed with her asset, and his decision to gaslight her into thinking his lab-created children were actually somehow hers led Myra to become paranoid, obsessive, and ultimately violent. When the OSI attempted to relieve her of her duty, she defended herself (and, in her eyes, her children) and was subdued with force, after which she was taken into custody and ultimately ended up in the same facility which housed criminally insane Guild villains. Make of that shared arrangement what you will.

NUMBER 9:

9. Bobbi St. Simone / Madame Majeure

Bobbi St. Simone was forcibly recruited into the OSI by Jonas Venture Sr. (and two somebodies from Mister Branch) when she asked him to remove the invisibility powers he had given her some time earlier. Instead of doing what she fucking asked him to do, Jonas jumped at the opportunity to once again use someone as a tool for his own gain and forced Bobbi into a honeypot operation against his archenemy, Force Majeure. Bobbi proved to be too good at this assignment and soon became Majeure's partner in life as well as crime - the two fell in love and had a daughter, and while Bobbi kept the OSI at bay by snitching on everyone else on the OSI's Most Wanted list, they continued to hound her to give up her husband, too. When Majeure was killed by the Sovereign, Bobbi not only successfully escaped the shapeshifter's wrath, but went on the run from the OSI, too, and eventually managed to set up a quiet life for herself looking after animals that had been used and exploited by antagonists and protagonists alike, much like herself.

NUMBER 10:

10. Courtney Haine / Sergeant Hatred / Uncle Vatred

I legitimately have trouble keeping track of all the times the big man has switched sides. We know that during the 80s he was a member of the OSI, where he was used as a guinea-pig for SHED's super-soldier serum, but it is unclear whether he was a genuine OSI operative who then joined the Guild at the end of The Invisible Hand of Fate, or whether he was already working as a Guild mole within the OSI at that time. Regardless, he served as a supervillain for the Guild up until the end of Season 3, when he asked Treister for his old job in the OSI back and - incredibly - was granted it. He became the Venture family bodyguard for approximately two years, until the stars aligned and Brock was once again assigned as Rusty's bodyguard. Relieved of his field role, Vatred was offered a desk job (being entirely unsuitable for the only superscientist currently eligible for OSI protection) and chose instead to quit the OSI. Which was, frankly, a crazy decision. You know Hunter isn't giving him a pension.

NUMBER 11:

11. Steve Summers

Steve was an astronaut who died, badly, in an explosion, but was recovered by the OSI and rebuilt by SHED with $6 million worth of bionic body parts. They put him to work as an OSI agent and demanded that he pay them back for his new body, using the money they were paying him as an agent. Entirely reasonably, Steve decided the best way to deal with this situation was to fuck off into the woods forever and get gay married to bigfoot, in the process threading the incredibly fine needle of becoming close friends with Brock and successfully evading the OSI.

Steve is notable as not only one of the defectors who helps out others who have left the OSI (presumably his name is in that little book Hunter gives Brock in The Family That Slays Together Part I, and I need to know who else is in there SO bad), but also as the only character we see who successfully gives the entire game the slip. Even after the SPHINX defectors return to the OSI, Steve stays put in Canada. Even Bobbi remains tangentially related to the world of arching through her care of "henchbeasts" et al., but Steve remains put, motivated by one of the strongest drives present in the Venture-verse: being broke as hell.

NUMBERS 12-13:

12. Mister Cardholder

13. Mister Doe

These two dipshits were moles for the Guild who rose to become Treister's right and left hand men (presumably after everyone actually worthy of that position had flown the nest). They had the ingenious plan of becoming appointed the heads of the OSI (both of them? like were they going to share?) by making Tresiter think he was a Hulk, thereby getting him declared mentally unfit to serve as General. Lying to the guy who claimed to have invented the secret-keeping business went about as well as you'd expect, and the two were-

actually wait hang on. we never saw what happened to these guys after Sky Pilot got them at gunpoint in PROM. did he arrest them? blow their brains out right there and then? send them to some kind of horrifying OSI black site? I really want to know now goddamn.

NUMBERS 14-18:

14. Shuttlecock

15. Slapchop

16. Bum Rush

17. Junk Dog

18. Tank Top

This assortment of G.I. Joe rejects, remains and reheated leftovers were all - apparently - double agents. When Brock voices his horror at the idea of letting Molotov join the OSI at the end of O.S.I. Love You because he'd just seen her kill an obscene amount of his coworkers, Hunter says that they were all double agents. We have absolutely zero information about how she knew this, whether they were all in on it together or if the Guild was just throwing random individual guys at the hover-quarters and seeing what stuck, hell we don't even know if they were double agents for the Guild at all. They could have been PP guys for all we know. Or just people who happened to have pissed Hunter off at some point. The only thing we can say for certain is that they all have names that sound kinda like the tags on a weirdly twee gay porn website, which is presumably why Shoreleave was appointed their mission commander.

NUMBER 19:

19. The Creep / Mission Creep

The artist formerly known as Mission Creep was - according to himself - at one point the OSI's most valuable agent. Unfortunately, his zeal for the job led to him mistaking a Boy Scout troupe for a squad of enemy agents, and while the OSI aren't above using child soldiers, murdering a whole swathe of civilian children was enough to get him kicked out. Not, like, arrested or anything, though. Just kicked out. Where he was left to operate without supervision as an unlicensed supervillain who immediately set to hoarding some of the most powerful equipment in the show, including Grover Cleveland's Presidential Time Machine. Really wanged it on this one guys I can't lie - frankly they got lucky he had such a penchant for throwing lawn darts around.

AMBIGUOUS CASES:

NUMBER 20:

20. Afterburner

Yeah, this guy, also from O.S.I. Love You. Here's the thing, though, unlike the rest of those bozos, we never actually see this guy die. Which means he could have escaped, which - from how the infiltration mission is framed as a complete success - means he could be innocent. Of course, he could also just be another double agent who happened to die off-screen, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know he's embarrassed of his scars but I legitimately think he's pretty cute. Anyway.

NUMBER 21:

21. Agent Kimberly McManus

Agent McManus definitely remains employed by the OSI, so we can't say that she was kicked out or anything, but her career isn't exactly going great. I find it interesting that while she was disgusted by Guild Stranger S-464's being a member of the Peril Partnership, she never offered this intel to a more senior member of the OSI - Hunter had to hear about it from Dermott. Considering they're an intelligence agency in direct opposition to both the Guild and the PP, this would seem like a pretty major secret to keep. We have no indication of the OSI's regulations beyond their treaties with the Guild, but it would not be unreasonable to assume she could be charged with Dereliction of Duty in addition to Aiding/Fraternizing with the Enemy.

If she was, however, it seems her punishment only went as far as kicking her down a few rungs from "Sniper on Level 10 sting" to "pretending to be a truck driver to secure the perimeter of a Level 1 confrontation", which is insanely lenient for the OSI, frankly.

NUMBER 22:

22. General Timothy Treister

Handed the wheel of the hover-quarters to Hunter before expunging her treason charges, thereby committing a violation of UCMJ Article 103b - Aiding the Enemy at a level literally, textually, mathematically,