Testosterone Poisoning
"Now with PREPOSTEROUS AMOUNTS OF TESTOSTERONE! PREPOSTERONE!"—Powerthirst 2 mock-commercial
MANLINESS! Do you have what it takes to be manly in this day and age?! Well, do ya, punk?!
We don't just mean plain old "macho", weaklings! You're on the Internet now, where the truly manly men eat dinosaur bones and razor blades for breakfast, brush their teeth with angle grinders, catch bullets with their furrowed brows, strangle rhinoceri with their mustaches, communicate exclusively with their fists, eat iron and shit a chain, overemphasise their heterosexuality (or Manly Gaiety[1]), juggle flying helicopters, sneeze meteors and belch tornadoes!
... and so forth.
This trope is about parodying the concept of "manliness" in an absurd, exaggerated fashion. It is, simply, Badass made silly. The Darwin Awards website uses the term to describe people who died attempting to pull off absurdly masculine stunts—the sort of things that would end up on this trope page. It was even used in the title for one death where a man lopped his own head off with a chainsaw.
Note that, in reality, men with either high or low levels of testosterone are actually more aggressive and violent than those with normal amounts of testosterone. Besides, everyone knows that Real Men Wear Pink.
The Trope Namer was Dr. Helen Caldicott, outspoken campaigner against nuclear weapons and the arms race.
Editor's Note: Remember, this trope is specifically for parodying excessive manliness. When excessive manliness is played straight, it is Rated "M" for Manly.
Compare Memetic Badass, Awesomeness Is Volatile. Not to be confused with the actual act of putting self in harms way to prove one's manliness: that one is covered by Macho Masochism (although overlap is common). Also compare Impossible Genius, when it's a character's intelligence rather than their manliness that enables them to do absurd things.
Contrast Tastes Like Diabetes.
Advertising
- Beer commercials.
- Well, okay, one sterling example: the Miller Lite "Man Law" commercials.
- A Foster's Beer "How to speak Australian" commercial crosses into this territory (crossed with Land Down Under): It shows a rugged man in the outback wrap up a bunch of power tools, regular tools, etc. in a leather skin, tie it around a huge wrench, heft it onto his shoulder and walk badassly into the sunset. The word was "man purse." It's followed by a can of Foster's being dramatically slammed onto a table, with the voice announcing "Beer."
- They're all like that. Giant man-eating shark: "Guppy." Can of Fosters: *Thoom!* "Beer."
- He's hungry for danger, he can take the heat! Fully Loaded Man has balls of meat! And yes, that's a real ad. Made even manlier by the fact that it was filmed down river from a grade five rapid, on the Kawarau River, in Queenstown New Zealand.
- You've gotta work it hard to be a Solo Man.
- It's a proud tradition that lives on today (skip to 1:30 if you want to avoid the buildup).
- This one for the Ford Courier
- Arrogant Bastard Ale is a beer all about aggression. The customer comments section specifically states that they don't want to hear any complaints, because then the beer isn't for you.
- Commercials for the Motorola Droid smartphone emphasize its amazingly manly design and function, particularly in comparison to the metrosexual-friendly iPhone and downright girly Palm Pre.
- I am man, hear me ROAR!
- Jack Link's Eat Like An Alpha commercials.
- Have you been cheese nachos ? Well then...
- Spoof advert done by the Australian team The Chaser, hawking Sandy dunny paper. Made from two-ply sandpaper, with a strip of velcro for added traction. And Sandy with chilli oil...
It's the roughest wipe in Australia!
(Skiing off a jump) "I'm a Man." (Crashes through a tree, suddenly pumping a barbell one-handed on an exercise bench) But sometimes I like to smell like a different smelling man." (crashes into a house, walks out with a new outfit, a badass moustache and a golf club) "Luckily, Old Spice makes a variety of different scents." (Drives a golf ball one-handed and proceeds to bite off a chunk of the golf club and eat it) "For men."
- Old Spice commercials in general are either Rated "M" for Manly or Testosterone Poisoning, the parody trope. Which is probably to be expected when you have spokesmen like Bruce Campbell.
- The Man Your Man Could Smell Like., though that's littered with Mr. Fanservice.
- Testosterone levels continue to rise with the new series of Youtube responses to people complimenting and asking questions of the Old Spice Man. Monocle Smile!
- The new commercials with Terry Crews.
- "ODOR BLOCKER BODY WASH IS TOO POWERFUL TO LET THIS COMMERCIAL END!"
- All of the Terry Crews commercials were directed by Tim and Eric. That might explain some things.
- Possibly this ad for soup, although it's more like Manly Nightmare Fuel.
- It's not an actual commercial (which is a shame, as it would sell those soups like hotcakes!), and despite it being all kinds of weird, it really does fit this trope.
- For those who are interested, here is the original commercial. Definitely does not qualify for this trope.
- SEGATA SANSHIRO. Never has so much preposterone been contained inside an advertising mascot.
- If you didn't play Sega Saturn he would throw you so hard you would explode on contact. Twice.
- "He died for our sins." (actually said (In Japanese) in one commercial)
- Snickers ads featuring Mr T, Get some nuts!
- Michelin brand deodorant features statements like "If your ratio of lighter fluid to charcoal is three to one, you might be a Michelin Man." Actually, most deodorant is probably like this (see Old Spice above).
- Most Utilikilt mockumercials, combined with All Women Are Lustful. Real men wear kilts.
- This Slim Jim commercial.
- This Skoda Fabia commercial. Made of MEANER stuff!
- Energy drinks. Like are Venom: Death Adder, which claims to be "the cold-blooded venom of the Death Adder, delivered in a fruit punch strike," and the Monster coffee energy drinks, which are "coffee done the Monster way, straight up, with a take no prisoners attitude and the experience and know-how to back it up."
- Many extra hot sauces use this as their marketing pitch; they convey the dubious message that you need to be extremely manly to eat that stuff and come out okay. For example, Blair's Sauces and Snacks, whose slogan is "Don't fear death, fear the consequences," has a product line named Death Sauce. Some other extreme hot sauces by various vendors have names like Demon Ichor, Pyro Diablo, Smack My Ass and Call Me Sally, Mega Death, Magma, Vicious Viper, You Can't Handle This Hot Sauce, Rectal Rocket Fuel, Ass In Space ("Ass-tronomically Hot!"), etc.
- BEAR SEMEN: THE MANLIEST DRINK ON EARTH
- This Dr. Pepper commercial.
- Dashing Superguy from the American commercial for Kirby's Dreamland
- The commercial for Doritos Jacked.
Anime and Manga
- Fullmetal Alchemist: This trope has been passed down in the ♥♥♥ Armstrong line for generations. ♥♥♥ Perhaps frighteningly so, if you're set up on a date with an Armstrong gal.
- Seto no Hanayome
- There're enough Art Shift homages to Fist of the North Star as it is, but what takes the cake is when San pulls this off: sprouting a mustache and beard, eating a raw steak ("You shouldn't even mind eating this way if you are a man! A man should eat meat in the morning!"), telling the male lead and love rival to Stay in the Kitchen ("You women walk three steps behind us men!"), and so forth.
- Lunar's father is... well... The Terminator.
- San's father also qualifies, at least in appearance; He's a big, buff, Yakuza head, with giant scars all over his face.
- By the end of the series, NaGARsumi becomes the epitome of manliness.
- Kamen no Maid Guy has Kogarashi, the eponymous maid guy, who's so manly that his brain is USB compatible. If you can't communicate with a printer, you aren't a man.
- Naruto
- The Raikage, a mixture of the Kool-Aid Man, the Hulk, and a pro-wrestler poured into the mold of a giant ninja. The fact that he is frequently shirtless certainly doesn't hurt. Also his brother, Killer Bee, who not only fits all of the above, but also appears to be a refugee from the Wu Tang Clan. Killer Bee isn't his nickname, it's his actual name. The Raikage's is either Killer A or Killer E, depending on translation.
- Might Guy and Rock Lee.
- Elfman from Fairy Tail says anything awesome can only be attributed to being manly! Regardless of whether a person he's telling to be "Be a Man!" is male or female.
- Tomitake from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni at times. To a milder extent, Keiichi, Ooishi and Irie.
- Ozma is not an adult, HE IS A MAN!
- Baki the Grappler. Pick a male character, any male character. If you use a dirty trick to slice off his hand, he might just smile, crack a joke, and then punch you in the face with the bone in his stump! That's fairly typical, and not even going near the territory of a monster like Yujiro. If the idea of permanent crippling injury gives you pause, then you have no business being in the ring with these fighters.
- Black Star from Soul Eater definitely, for he has three blades.
- The village leader from Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu is manly complete with manly chest hair...taken to the extreme
- Whitebeard from One Piece: In a World of Badass, he is acknowledged as the single most Badass man there is. And he's pretty old, to boot. It says something when a world-wide government that rules over one-hundred nations and has the firepower raze entire islands is utterly terrified of him. Plus, I mean, just look at him! Sadly, he proved Too Cool to Live, but even then he didn't fall!
Comics -- Books
- For those that regard Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Strikes Again and All Star Batman and Robin as Stealth Parodies of his earlier works, they certainly fit here. His earlier work like Sin City played the excessive manliness straight.
- No stealth about Lance Blastoff's parody. He takes it out and slaps you round the face with it.
- There is an aside in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac where two of Jhonen's characters meet two exaggerations of Nineties Anti-Hero comic characters, one of whom is an absurdly muscle-bound heap named "Schlong". His power would appear to reside entirely in his powers of teeth-gritting and flexing. In fact, when he is x-rayed, his skeleton appears as a spindly splayed doodle floating inside a mountain of meat. He needs to be supported by training wheels to keep from tipping over.
- In V for Vendetta, Alan Moore decided he needed an in-universe Schwarzenneger-like incarnation of the ideals of the Party: He is Macho!!! He is Aryan!!! He is what every woman wants!!! He is STORM SAXON!!! Needless to say, V enjoys its airings utterly, as fascistic camp treats.
- Saxton Hale from the Team Fortress 2 tie-in comics. This man parachutes into his office every day, has steak at every mealtime, and CUT HIS WAY OUT OF PRIMATE HELL! He also comes with his own MANLY sound effects (e.g. PROPERTY DAMAGE!).
Films -- Animation
- Beauty and the Beast. "No one's slick as Gaston; no one's quick as Gaston; no one's neck's as incredibly thick as Gaston's!" Did you say neck?... Well, he does use antlers in all of his decorating. And "every last inch of him is covered in hair." Check the eyebrow action when he says that. Ew.
- The lawn-mover that is "The TERRAFIRMINATOR" from Gnomeo and Juliet. "YOUR LAWN WILL BE AFRAID TO GROW! IT'S THE ULTIMATE WEAPON OF GRASS DESTRUCTION!"
- The "I'll make a man out of you" song in Mulan definitely qualifies.
Be a man! You must be swift as a coursing river
With all the force of a great typhoon
With all the strength of a raging fire
Mysterious as the dark side of the moooooooon!
- It would probably qualify as an Affectionate Parody as well.
Films -- Live-Action
- Idiocracy: Brawndo. Just in case you hadn't lost faith in humanity yet, Brawndo is now manufactured and sold.
- It's like a MONSTER TRUCK that you can POUR into your FACE!
- It's like shaving your CHEST with a LAWNMOWER! That sounds dangerous, but it's not more dangerous than BRAWNDO! Because drinking BRAWNDO is like RIDING A PONY! Which probably sounds not dangerous, except that the pony is THREE HUNDRED FEET TALL and COVERED IN CHAINSAWS!
- And to get on the pony you have to take an ELEVATOR with SIXTEEN LIVE COUGARS, WHICH IS AN ACTUAL SPORT IN LATIN AMERICA!
- I just SPLIT MY PANTS like the INCREDIBLE HULK! SEE THAT?! BRAWNDO will make you NEED NEW PANTS! And while you're out buying new pants you should buy some NEW SHOES because you're going to WEAR OUT YOUR SHOES BY KICKING EVERYONE'S ASS ALL THE TIME!
- It's got electrolytes.
- What are electrolytes? I don't know, but they're extremely AWESOME!
- Electrolytes is what plants crave.
- In the movie Freaked, we have this commercial
- Captain Gordon of Godzilla: Final Wars is so macho, he faced down Godzilla personally, with a sword.
- The theme song to Orgazmo: "Now You're a MAN!"
- The film Ten Inch Hero mentions this by name, though it's used in reference not to extreme manliness, but rather disgusting male habits.
- Black Dynamite parodies the excessively masculine heroes of blaxploitation films. When introduced, Black Dynamite seems to be penetrating three women at the same time. Actually six.
- The stetson-clad Colonel Kilgore from Apocalypse Now—of the famous "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" speech—shoots beyond manly into the realms of the impossible. He leads a helicopter assault to the tune of Ride of the Valkyries so that he can go surfing.
- From Dusk till Dawn: A confrontation between Harvey Keitel, Fred Williamson, the great Tom Savini, and George Clooney (!) against a room full of vampires. Featuring Danny Trejo and John Saxon. And Tom Savini sports a COCK-GUN!
- Three Amigos pokes fun at all the machismo, especially in the Bad Guy Bar "Where did you get that pretty little gun?" (with disastrous results for the "manly" bar patrons) and Ned's duel with the German aviator (Jefe: "You wanna die with a MAAAAN's gun, not a little CC[2] gun like this.") In which Ned falls over trying to holster the MAAAAN's gun handed to him by Jefe. And gets knocked back a couple dozen feet from the recoil when he shoots the German.
- Commando has a confrontation between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Duke (a large imposing man) in a hotel room, which they initiate by shouting insults at each other such as "You scared? You should be, because this Green Beret's going to beat your a**" followed by "I eat Green Beret's for breakfast, and right now I'm very hungry" etc. Rae Dawn Chong (a small slim actress) exhibits great intelligence and wisdom by cowering in the corner while these two behemoths demolish not only the room they are in, but several rooms around them. The trope is invoked by her comments while this is happening:
- "Can you believe this macho bull-sh**?"
- "They feed these guys too much red meat!"
- The Expendables. Nuff said.
Literature
- The Retrosexual Manual is all about this.
- Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys.
- The Alphabet of Manliness. Naturally.
- The Calendar of Manliness. Ditto.
- The Manly Handbook, by David Everitt and Harold Schechter.
- In the early '70s the National Lampoon did a dead-on parody of mid-century men's adventure magazines called "Real Balls", at the same time taking digs at "Silent Majority" conservatism with stories of infiltrating "beatnik hootenannies", fighting lewd sex-education teachers, and combating the "Krazed Kent State Kamikaze Kids".
Live-Action TV
- The show that redefined and glorified testosterone poisoning after an endless and unbearable number of shows of women being just better at everything than men: Home Improvement. URR URR URR! MORE POWER!
- A Double Subversion, since the uber-macho Tim is utterly incompetent seven times out of ten.
- The Australian reality show Double The Fist.
- The Man Show
- Manswers
- Sledge Hammer!
- Lord Flashheart, the manly swashbuckler from Blackadder II and his descendant, Squadron Commander Lord Flashheart from Blackadder Goes Forth.
"She's got a tongue like an electric eel, and she likes the taste of a MAN'S tonsils!"
- The entire network of Spike TV runs on this trope.
- The show 1000 Ways to Die, incidentally ran on Spike TV, references the Darwin Awards origin of this trope, for example, using an electrically stimulated cow heart as a... uhm... yeah....
- Announcer: You're watching Spike TV, full of stuff men like! (sounds include car driving, toilet flushing, and woman during sex) Yeah, that stuff!
- Gene Hunt from Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes. "She wants me. Poor bitch." Becomes Harsher in Hindsight if you've seen the finale: Gene is really an eternal 19-year-old kid in the body of a man, whose persona -- the larger-than-life Clint Eastwood/John Wayne type, the Sheriff in an old western -- he created after being shot in the head. His "life" is a construct, because even though he's living chronologically, he won't age. As Keats lampshades, it explains a lot about Gene's insecurity and misogyny around women.
- The Trope Namer is the Babylon 5 episode A Voice in the Wilderness, in which something is discovered on the supposedly-abandoned planet below the station. After a bunch of aliens show up and give the protagonists a ten-hour give-it-to-us-or-else ultimatum, the captain of the visiting heavy cruiser Hyperion threatens them with a NINE-hour leave-the-system-or-else ultimatum.
Ivanova: Worst case of testosterone poisoning I've ever seen.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy to Angel and Riley in "The Yoko Factor":
Buffy: Okay, stop it! That is enough. I see one more display of testosterone poisoning, and I will personally put you both in the hospital.
- Farscape: May not have been referenced, but you can bet Aeryn was thinking this when John and Crais were arguing over who should be in control:
Aeryn: Talyn, you've seen them both naked. Perhaps you can tell us who's got the biggest.
- The Soup's introduction for the "GAY SHOWS" segment.
- An episode of Scrubs had Turk acting much more aggressive than usual, such as wrestling for use of the breakroom TV. Turns out, he was overcompensating over the recent loss of a testicle.
- The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret has Thunder Muscle, which is the same idea as Powerthirst.
- Sketch character Johnny Xtreme from X-Play. "TO THE MAX!!!"
- "IT'LL PUNCH YOUR BALLS OFF!!!!!"
- A calender by Mulder's desk in The X-Files seems to invoke this. Consisting of women in swimsuits posing with giant tools.
- Ron Swanson of Parks and Recreation.
- Conan O'Brien: In episodes of Noches De Pasion Con Senor O'Brien, Conando defeats all his enemies with a defenestrating throw.
Conando: Si! Conando!
- Al Bundy fell victim to this a few times in Married With Children. Unfortunately for him, trying to do things he perceived as "manly" like drive Kelly's motorcycle would often get him hurt, arrested, or both. At very least, he ended up looking like an idiot.
Music
- The metal band Austrian Death Machine based on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
- The Man Land, song by metal band Between the Buried and Me.
- Amounts of testosterone-fuelled Narm and Ho Yay in Manowar are so Egregious, there's a band called Nanowar devoted to parodying them.
- "Men" by Martin Mull and Steve Martin
'Cause men can sweat and men can stink and no one seems to care-o,
We'll throw the dishes in the sink and clog the drain with hair-o
- "Road Hogs" by Stone Sour is a long, satirical look at the Great Southern All-American Badass Biker image with Corey Taylor doing his best Zakk Wylde impression. It includes such lines as "On the highway, I am thick as shit / It's just the seat is really killin' my 'roids", "June bugs on my face / Skeeters in my teeth / [extended coughing/spitting]" and a chorus consisting mainly of "Oh Yeah!" and "Hell Yeah!" shouted in a macho "Yea-uh!" style.
- Weird Al's "CNR", a tribute to Charles Nelson Reilly (as if he was Chuck NoRris).
Charles Nelson Reilly won the Tour de France with
Two flat tires and a missin' chain
He trained a rattlesnake to do his laundry
I'm telling you the man was insane
- Matt Stone and Trey Parker assign this status to Briann Boitano of all people, in their song "What Would Brian Boitano Do". The lyrics of the song chronicle his exploits, which include fighting grizzly bears in the Alps, beating up Kublai Khan, time traveling, breathing fire, rescuing princesses and wolfing down unpalatably spicy chicken wings.
- "Big Man with a Gun" by Nine Inch Nails is intended as a parody of the macho posturing and misogyny in Gangsta Rap amongst other things. Unfortunately this went straight over the heads of many listeners and Reznor was accused of many of the things he was parodying.
- "Vulgaris Magistralis" by Heidevolk. With lyrics such as "I cook my food on an active volcano."
Pro Wrestling
- In the '90s, the WWF had Steven Regal: A Real Man's Man! His debut was preceded with vignettes showing him doing MANLY things like chopping down trees, shaving with a hatchet and squeezing orange juice with his bare hands, while a very excited British man gave a running commentary about just how manly he was!
- Get a load of these lyrics:
I can tear a telephone directory in two
Bending iron bars is something else that I can do
I always pick my teeth with the nearest billiard cue
So imagine what I could do to you...
- Ring of Honor former champion and WWE star Daniel Bryan loves to use this, as seen in the Daniel Bryan Manliness Meter, and many of his ROH promos:
"I'm getting sick and tired of all these people giving me crap about what color my skin is. Yeah, I'm pale -- what's the big deal?... It doesn't matter what color my skin is, because I'm the best wrestler in the world! I beat Homicide, I beat everybody that Ring of Honor has put in front of me! And d'you know what? THAT is what makes me a MAN! And do you know what's unmanly? All these idiots talking about my skin color, going and sitting in front of a bunch of fluorescent lights with goggles and a Speedo!"
- And then he became the mentor for "Mantastic" Derrick Batemann, who, in Bryan's words, is "manly, so manly, OH SO manly!"
- Isn't pro wrestling and Testosterone Poisoning rather redundant? Kind of like wet water.
Theater
- David Alden's recent production of Francesco Cavalli's baroque opera Ercole Amante ("Hercules in love") had the eponymous hero take on his mythical-badass persona by putting on a rubber muscle suit onstage. The result fell somewhere between a life-size action figure, Hulk Hogan and Conan the Barbarian. On eight-inch platform boots.
Video Games
- Team Fortress 2. Out of the four women in the game, two are guns, one is a sadistic voice-in-the-sky, and one only appears in supplementary canon. Particularly full of preposterone:
- The Soldier. Proof? Here, here, and here.
- SAXTON HALE (in the trope's picture), whose company's motto is "We sell products and get in fights". He bears a suspicious resemblance to a poorly shaven bear, skydives through his office window for his morning commute, has a patch of chest hair in the shape of Australia, and claims that the breakfast steak is the most important steak of the day. See the comic for more manly info.
- He is also shirtless "for obvious reasons".
- The whole nation of Australia now runs on this thanks to Australium. They elect their king by fighting kangaroos and they are so manly even the women have enormous mustaches. The Sniper is apparently an anomaly amongst his people.
- This constitutes a fair portion of Joachim's character in Shadow Hearts: Covenant. Given that Ho Yay is another substantial portion (he is a professional wrestler), Hilarity Ensues.
- MadWorld's announcers are constantly talking about manliness, when not making hilariously terrible puns about the ruthless slaughter Jack is committing.
- The Jack Howitzer commercials from GTA Radio in the Grand Theft Auto series.
- This guide to the Defense of the Ancients incarnation of King Leoric, the Skeleton King who is the manliest hero in DotA that does not have testicles.
- Need we mention the Punch-Out!! Heel Super Macho Man? RELEASE THE BOGUS! Three words: SUPEEEER! MACHOOO! MAAAAAN!!
- Tales of Vesperia: "Gaze upon my physique, and be awed! MANLY MUSK!"
- Muscle March. You need LOTS of testosterone to play a game featuring spandex-clad bodybuilders pursuing a protein-shake thief running through walls ACROSS TIME AND SPACE!
- The Megaton Punch minigame from Kirby Super Star has to count. For God's sake, you can have Kirby punch a planet in half. Real men don't just wear pink, real men ARE pink!
- Dudebro 2, the Defictionalization of a Neo GAF meme, is intended as a parody of video games that fall under this trope. The voice of Duke Nukem was even cast as the lead!
- Final Fantasy X: You can seriously consider Jecht's portrayal to be tongue-in-cheek. Every scene seems to emphasise his incredible physique and gruff voice. He uses a giant anchor-esque sword as a weapon. Dissidia only catalysed it.
- Bulletstorm runs on this. The initial cast are horrifyingly detestable hyper-macho Jerkasses... and most of them die horribly despite it—only the main character and the one character from the starting set who wasn't like that actually survive past the first half hour. The over-the-top macho nonsense and parodically intense violence only continue from there.
- Two Words: Duke Nukem
- The First Funky Fighter lets you play as an uber-manly man (ala Kenshiro!) fighting crocodiles and sharks with bare fists and ultra violence to save a feminine woman.
- The Adventure Core from Portal 2. Played for (extra) laughs because it's a small round robot.
- Bang Shishigami, from BlazBlue, is "the man who fights for LOVE AND JUSTICE!" who thinks he's a shonen hero and thinks that everyone is either his young apprentice or a villain. One of his super moves is a literal Theme Music Power-Up, where an over-the-top metal song chronicles his manliness.
- Battletoads. The entire series is a monument to Testosterone Poisoning.
Web Comics
- Manly Man, the manliest man alive. From NSFW Comix.
In this day and age of political correctness (read: pussies), masculinity is a confusing and dangerous issue. Heterosexual men and boys of today find themselves in need of a role model who isn't a pussy, and that role model is the male chauvinist whom male chauvinist pigs wish they were: Manly Man. Manly Man once took on Chuck Norris and Maddox in a fight and won by staring at them until they turned gay and made out with each other, this distraction allowing Manly to punch them into orbit, where they still are to this day.
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja has a character who constantly talked in body-building clichés. And was so muscular that his sixpack could deflect bullets and he'd developed an organic jetpack.
- Also, Doc himself on occasion:
Doc, while flicking off a main street with both hands: "Oh, forget it. You know what? It is at you now. I JUST SURFED A ROBO DRACULA FROM THE MOON SO Y'ALLS CAN JUST TAKE IT!"
- Girly:
- "I DRIVE TRUCKS AND EAT STEAKS MADE OF TRUCKS!"
- Also, a self-parody entitled MANLY.
- Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, one of the honorable mentions in the Escapist's webcomics contest, is built around parodying macho video game character culture.
- Homestuck
- Equius Zahhak loves being STRONG, is constantly impeded from doing normal things by his sheer strength, wears a muscle-exposing tanktop, goes through the game of Sgrub completely unarmed, and has only one completely safe outlet for his aggression: beating the shit out of killer robots in cage matches.
- The cover of the STRIFE! album. Just look at it. It deliberately exaggerates Jack Noir's size by several orders of magnitude for the sake of pure badassery and manliness.
- This strip of Three Panel Soul manages to spoof this and Dr. Pepper 10 at the same time.
Web Original
- TOAD GETS ALL THE BITCHES!
- Spoony hypes up Reb Brown like this
Warning: What follows is the manliest thing ever recorded on film. Your balls may drop off in shame at the mere knowledge that you will never in your entire life do something half as manly.
- Spacebattles.com's Let's Play series has featured BLAST HARDCHEESE, name taken from Mystery Science Theater 3000. He has killed men simply by flexing his biceps until their heads explode.
- The website The Best Page In The Universe, as well as the accompanying book The Alphabet of Manliness.
- It also tore into a specific sub-genre of Testosterone Poisoning, X-TREME ADVERTISING.
- POWERTHIRST!
- ROCKET EDITION!
- POWERMOST!
- POWERTHIRST IS REAL! GET YOUR MENERGY HERE!
- Loading Ready Run brings us Man Cooking.
- And their episode about the channel known only as MEN and it's MANLY!
- Captain Hammer from Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog, Until he feels pain for the first time.
- Chuck Norris Facts is all about this trope with playing up Chuck Norris as a Memetic Badass. And also heavily robbing from Bill Brasky.
- MANGURT! Now in flavors like like Wolf Bacon, T-Bone, Buffalo Stampede, and Tequila Fight Juice!
- Badass of the Week. Everything on the list can fuck you up. Including Australia, this huge-ass beetle, the Hanta virus and Marie Curie.
- Much of the humour of Cracked.com. And specifically, Agents of Cracked: "GASP! The Chief?"
- This here's the Mantage!
- "MEAT PUNCH!!!" from Much Music's "We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties." The "MEAT PUNCH!!!" is made out of "beef, chicken, pork, lamb, goat, goose, duck, beef, moose, horse, monkey, hotdog, and donkey." No, that was not a typo; there is a double dose of beef. It is said that only one bite will leave you full, it tastes like the zoo, and that you cannot be considered a man if you don't eat it. You can see it here.
- Mandles. The Man Candles. 1% Wax, 99% Testosterone! In manly scents like A1 Steaksauce, Urinal Deodorizer, and Chuck Norris Sweat!
- Beau Smith, the manliest man in comics!
- The MANLY MENS OC Tournament. Just take a look for yourself.
- In The Guild, Zaboo tries to be this way but fails miserably.
- Contrat d'Gars is the Québécois epitome of the trope. You need to understand Quebec French vernacular to get half the jokes, though.
- Yahtzee, in his Bound in Blood: Call of Juarez video, gives us the Ben Croshaw "Hats" Scale of Manliness, whereby a man's manliness is judged by the size of his hat. Thus, to continue the example, Ray and Thomas both have large hats, so they can "eat danger and shit bullets", while Wee-um does not possess a hat at all, reducing him to eating Weetabix and shitting healthily.
- He also uses masculinity as one of the justifications for why he doesn't play Real Time Strategy games or JRPGs, stating after his review of The World Ends With You that he now must play an FPS or else his body will absorb his testicles.
"Fucking hell! Did anyone just see that!? I am squirting machismo out of my nipples over here! I am a monster truck that walks like a man!"
- This ad discussing the manly Army Rangers.
- "I AM A MAN!!!" *PUNCH!*
- Hyperbole and a Half has Sueeve -- for MEN: The Shower Hammer!! Brutalize the dirt off! Hit yourself until the dead skin submits to you. Bleed the germs away!
- XTREME MUSCLE PRODUCT!!!!
I went from being 150 pounds of flab to being 200 pounds of pure muscle.
I don't even have any organs."
- This short comic most certainly qualifies.
- Advice Dog spinoff Courage Wolf who demands that you bite off more than you can chew... AND CHEW IT ANYWAY
- The retrosexual code.
- Old Spice's videoblog. Imagine the manlinest thing in the universe, only in Morgan Freeman-esque voice.
- BIRD MISSILES!!!
- This piece of Not Safe for Work microfiction. Real men exercise 32 hours a day and still find time to get laid!
- A Brazilian Twitter, Clube do Macho ("Macho Club"). Common themes include anti-Feminism (divided into "Stay in the Kitchen" and "go to bed"), complaints that everything is done by queers and saying what a true man does instead, sexist jokes and/or comments (complete with terrible flirts, such as "I got a stick, you've got a hole, let's go home and play snooker!"), and showcasing hot girls.
- EPICMEALTIME serves this along with clogged arteries.
- Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time! It's good for you.
- Charlie Sheen's Winning Recipes.
- Get yourself one of these incredibly [dead link] manly Pokémon.
- Intensive Gastony Unity. One part Gaston, one part ponies, three part masculinity.
- While reviewing Superman: At Earth's End, Linkara advised viewers to settle all arguments by screaming, "I am a man!" and punching the offending person in the gut in imitation of a panel from the comic. This became subject to Memetic Mutation.
- This student-made water commercial is what happens when you take the Brawndo commercials listed above and take them Up to Eleven.
Western Animation
- Played with (with a touch of This Loser Is You) in Kim Possible. To wit: Ron discovers his bar mitzvah is unsigned, meaning he's not A Man. A special ring that turns him into a tower of muscles helps to compensate, though it's still Kim and Shego doing the ass-kicking.
- Cow and Chicken had it in an episode Chicken, Flem and Earl go after Sargeant Weenie Arms and follow his training. Among other things, they shave with smooth rocks and chop trees down with their faces. The following day, they wake up all buffed up... only for Sergeant Weenie Arms to take them to play dolls with Cow ("Real weenie marines aren't afraid to play with sissy dolls!").
- The Ripping Friends.
- Sol Butcher from Sons of Butcher. Especially when he goes hunting.
- The Powerpuff Girls had exactly two episodes about sexism in its entire run. One was about Straw Feminism, and the other was about this trope. Once all the male super heroes of Earth have denied the Girls membership in their club (for the obvious reason why, see Edmund Spenser's theory in The Faerie Queene), a ridiculously muscularly-drawn alien shapeshifting dragster appears, who introduces himself as "Breaker of men! Taker of worlds! So step forth and bring thy manhood against mine own, and let us see who has the upper hand upon the measuring stick!" Talk about Freud Was Right! More information can be found here.
- Rick and Steve delivered a Nerds Are Sexy Gay Aesop by having poor Rick be forced to drive the "Monsterbator", a comically oversized monster truck that runs on pure testosterone instead of gasoline.
- The Fairly OddParents: Jorgen. Von. Strangle. Originally, he was just a Drill Sergeant Nasty, but has since been Flanderized (like everyone else in the show) into an insanely over-the-top caricature of manliness who feels a psychological need to perform death-defying stunts that would kill a mere mortal every second of every day. He apparently doesn't sleep.
- On The Red Green Show, Ranger Gord, who is slender and lanky, has a cartoon segment in which he is portrayed as having an astoundingly muscular physique, so much so that when he bends an arm or even a finger, there is a metallic squeaking sound.
- The Simpsons: Shows up occasionally as part of Rainier Wolfcastle's shtick.
- The Regular Show episode "Death Punchies".
- Wakfu: In the season 2 Brâkmarian Gobbowl arc, there is a magic potion which can turn nerdy guys (and females) into macho men. It doesn't just gender-bend the females drinking it; it turns them into tall, hunky, hairy, overly-muscular specimen of manliness.
- In a recent episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, Gumball and Darwin eat their dad's muscle-growth supplements, which causes them to go through puberty at school. Anais also mistook the health food for cereal.
- Self-help guru Iron Will from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is hilariously macho.
- Similarly, an unnamed white pegasus stallion from "Hurricane Fluttershy", who consists almost entirely of bulging muscles, and whose only line, said several times through the episode, is an enthusiastic YEAH!. Between his absurdly oversized muscles and absurdly undersized wings, he quickly earned the nickname "Roid Rage".
Real Life
- Benito Mussolini can come across as this. Except when he is torturing dissidents, or gassing Ethiopians, or starting disastrous wars with more powerful nations or associating with street thugs.
- Facism generally espoused a moral philosophy less sophisticated than would be demanded of a Rottweiler of good character. Only martial virtue counted, without the mythopoeic imagination or love of liberty of Teutonic barbarians, the culture of samurai, or the Roman sense of law and order.
- ↑ It's the 21st century, we don't actually care who you bang as long you do it while exhibiting your MANLINESS
- ↑ yeah, he meant "sissy", but the accent's so strong