Mighty Glacier

Mr. Huge: Huge! Huge! HUUUGE! OK, now we can fight.

Snowflake: Jesus, dude, can you even move?
—Buttlord GT

One of the three classic video game character builds, along with the Fragile Speedster and the Jack of All Stats.

As the name implies, the Mighty Glacier is one of the strongest people in the world. A single hit is like ten hits from anyone else. Hitting them feels like hitting a solid wall of iron, and they'll usually laugh at anything that is too weak to have them Blown Across the Room. Mighty Glaciers also tend to carry weapons that would break anyone else's arms just to pick up, and can hold open doors that would break a lesser person's fingers off when they slammed shut.

The catch is this: they're slow. Reeeeeeaaaaalllly slow. They would need rocket skates to be described as "inching along". This has the unfortunate tendency to render them useless later in the game, when landing more hits than the enemy is often more important than how much damage the hits do.

Was used a lot in older video games with Bosses who could deplete your entire health meter with a couple of blows, and the trick was to jump around / move fast enough to avoid his deadly attacks. Some games back away from the trope later on; the leveled-up Mighty Glacier becomes as fast as other characters or even positively zippy. Racing games tend to have a variant where the heavier vehicles have slow acceleration and turning, but once they get moving they can go really fast. Other games mitigate the Mighty Glacier's slowness by providing support units which can carry it around more quickly than it can move on its own.

The Mighty Glacier is usually male; Fighting Games will commonly make him a Husky Russkie. Mighty Glaciers are most often portrayed as "Dumb Muscle", but the Genius Bruiser variant is increasingly common. A greater muscle mass theoretically provides speed but the Mighty Glacier tends to use the heaviest equipment possible, sacrificing any speed for the pure crushing power that only he can achieve. Stout Strength may also come into play. They tend to become Difficult but Awesome in games that favour the relentless pressure strings Fragile Speedsters or Jacks of All Stats can produce.

Contrast the rare but highly feared Lightning Bruiser, who is strong and fast. See also the Stone Wall, who trades strength for even more defence. See Glacier Waif for when a Mighty Glacier is of average or below-average size.

See also: Competitive Balance, PVP-Balanced, and Character Roster Global Warming, which they are frequent victims of because it appears to be harder to be "creative" with big-and-slow characters. Heavily Armored Mooks tend to be this when they're not Stone Walls.

Examples of Mighty Glacier include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Knightmare Frame Mordred from Code Geass is this, thought not technically a character in any game. Heavily armored, heavily shielded, all of its projectiles are Hadron cannons to some extent, either small ones that fire hundreds of pin-point lasers or a massive quad Hadron Cannon that can destroy an Airborne Aircraft Carrier in one shot. Problem is, it's slow and has no effective close-ranged weapons, so a group of anybody better than a mook can generally surround and shoot it down, and its Float Unit is quite vulnerable.
    • Don't forget the Gawain. A massive and imposing Knightmare Frame, 2 Hadron cannons (one on each shoulder) and a Slash Harken in each finger.
    • Last but not least, Lelouch's subsequent frame, the Shinkirou, also the recipient of the former's Druid System, which is used for its Beehive Barrier, the Absolute Defense Field.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, its been specified by a Power Level chart that Negi Springfield is this during his dark mode. Normally his speed is 4800 with an attack and defense of 1800 and 800 (with wind and lightning), but when using his dark powers his strength and endurance raise to 3800 and 2200 while mobility drops to 1200 (uses Mana Drain). He can switch on the fly.
  • Thor from Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple. When fights against Fragile Speedster Rimi, hilarity ensues.

"You fool! The soft cannot cut the hard! No matter how fast you are, you cannot even think to match me in strength and willpower! I will not die!"

  • In Ranma ½, Ryoga Hibiki is this to Ranma Saotome, being incredibly strong with little control over it and Nigh Invulnerable, but Ranma is capable of dodging his attacks and outmaneuvering him with ease, particularly after studying the Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken. However, against anyone else, Ryoga is more of a Lightning Bruiser, capable of moving with frightening speed himself, so either Ranma Saotome just has greater heights of Super Speed or Ryoga's rivalry with him has helped him overcome this weakness. Genma Saotome seems to be something of a Stout Strength variant of the Mighty Glacier, but he's surprisingly quick and agile, even when he's turned into a fat, ugly panda, to the point he can actually challenge his son equally for most of the series (and fell behind only because he kept dodging real fights and leaving them to Ranma, so Ranma outpaced him). Played utterly straight with Lime of the Musk Dynasty.
  • The closest thing Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has to a Mighty Glacier would be Cute Bruiser Vita. She isn't particularly fast by the heroes' standards, and her attacks use a really big hammer that doesn't swing particularly fast. On the other hand, she deals out immense amounts of damage, takes more punishment than she has any business taking, and then asks for more.
    • Arguably a better fit would be Reinforce. Her speed is also middling, but her attack power is among the strongest—who else have you seen throw out a city-sized Starlight Breaker?—and unlike Squishy Wizard Hayate who has some of her power, her defence is also top-notch. Just see her entry under Won't Work On Me.
    • Nanoha herself, too. She's not slow in terms of agility, but her attacks are rather slow but extremely powerful beams. Starlight Breaker alone takes significant time to charge, which is why she only uses it when her enemy is being held by magic binds. Her endurance is also phenomenal. Like Vita, she's a mage that combined power and durability.
  • Blackbeard of One Piece has incredible strength and endurance - however, he is also very slow, and his Devil Fruit has the Necessary Drawback of attracting damage to his huge frame. His Charles Atlas Superpower endurance is usually enough to compensate (although an earthquake to the face was still enough to pierce his defenses).
    • Also Whitebeard. He's no slouch, and many fighters would probably lose to him in a contest of speed, but he has no feats that suggest truly superhuman speed which is pretty uncommon amongst the absolute top tiers in the series. Actually he almost doesn't evade any attacks in the war because he relies on his reflexes to block the attacks. To his defense, his lack of real super speed is only so easily noticed because his raw strength is so absolutely massive.
  • Using the "Ultra-Super-Saiyan" state can have this effect in Dragonball Z. Compared to almost anyone else, they're still ridiculously fast, but the sheer bulkiness of their muscles makes it tougher for them to keep up with anyone on the same level. Both Goku and Vegeta spotted this flaw during their training, but Trunks only cottoned on after trying to beat Cell in this form and getting his ass handed to him. Gohan sidestepped it entirely by being the first to achieve Super Saiyan 2.
  • Bleach: Poww, one of the few fracciones who needed a bankai-wielding captain to defeat. He was a literal mountain of strength but, as he himself complained, movement was a nightmare for him, and he was sluggish at best.
  • Many of the linemen from Eyeshield 21, understandably. Notably, Kurita (whose tied with Gao for strongest high school lineman in Japan) and the Taiyou Sphinx, with their main defense being their sheer mass.
  • The Akimichi clan in Naruto are an entire clan made up of Mighty Glaciers. They're all pretty big, due to eating a lot in order to convert calories into chakra, are physically very strong, and can expand their arms, legs, and entire bodies. However, they are also very slow, and as we've seen in Chouji's fights, this lack of speed tends to put him at somewhat of a disadvantage.
    • Which is why they team up with the Yamanaka and Nara Clans. The Nara Clan techniques can immobilize the opponent or the Yamanaka Clan techniques can take over the opponents mind...letting the Akimichi pound away without them dodging. Also...Akimichi is one of Konoha's four Noble Clans, the other three being Aburame, Hyuga, and Uchiha.
  • Subverted in Fullmetal Alchemist, where the manga's and 2009 anime's Sloth can ironically travel at high speeds despite his oversize muscled form. The catch is he cant control himself, and most of the time stops by slamming into something.
    • Played straight up until the fight where he does this, though. Think of the scene at Briggs, for instance, where he just kind of meanders about while Armstrong tries to figure out how much ordinance it will take to deal with him.
  • The Destroy in Gundam Seed Destiny is a giant mobile armour/Gundam cross. At 400-tonnes it's both heavily armed and armoured, but lacks the mobility of the regular Gundams and mobile suits. Stella more or less uses hers as The Juggernaut, bludgeoning her way across Eurasia and to her fiery death in downtown Berlin, while Sting prefers to focus on the defensive qualities of his Destroy, leading five of them at the Battle of Heaven's Base, where they essentially serve as mobile pill boxes. Several of the Earth Alliance's other mobile armours may count as well.
    • The Big Zam in Gundam 0079 also counts. It was arrayed with 28 mega particle cannons and one even larger one on it's chest which allowed it to rip the EFSF forces a new one and was the first mobile weapon to utilize I-field barriers that allowed it to withstand the setting's kill weapon. Unfortunately, it was incredibly slow and had no close-combat capabilities whatsoever and was destroyed when the Gundam got behind the I-fields protection.
  • Ramiel in Neon Genesis Evangelion. For those unfamiliar with the show, it is a giant octahedron which flies slowly, with the most powerful shield in the whole series, and same for the cannon. Nothing in the series could have gotten close to it without being destroyed. It eventually takes a sniper rifle shot powered by the entire energy output of Japan to take it down.


Comic Books

Nightwing: 'How could anyone so big move that fast?' We've all heard that one, right? Well forget it. This guy is big and sloooww.

  • In Marvel on the heroic side you have The Thing, although he seems to be more agile, weaker, and softer than Juggernaut who is the ultimate example.
  • In DC, you have the Shaggy Man, a villain that is stronger than Superman, at least as tough and has regenerative ability that would make Wolverine jealous. Then there's Steel (not the powered armor version) who has strength and toughness in the Superman category but leaves footprints in pavement as he walks.
  • Among the X-Men's foes, there's the Blob and Stonewall, who fought side by side in a version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that served the U.S. government as Freedom Force. Both of them were immensely strong and resistant to injury, but neither one was known for his speed.


Fan Works

  • In the Fusion Fic Renegade, the Global Defense Initiative has developed "Glacier-class" dreadnoughts, which are massive warships that are so ponderous that they are primarily used either to defend static locations like resource-collecting "supercarriers" and strategic planets, or to assault worlds of major strategic importance, with the objective in this case being to either force the enemy to stand and fight to defend the planet and get subsequently annihilated by the Glacier, or to flee and surrender a critical strategic resource.
  • The Pokèmon They Carried features a land battleship known as the M1-12 Rhydon. This is a large vehicle that weighs about 130 tons and carries a 105 mm smoothbore gun and is bristling with 30 mm autocannon. Its armor can shrug off anything but Legendary Pokèmon attacks or a Hyper Beam. As a tradeoff, it is insanely slow with a top speed of twenty five miles per hour.[[/


Film


Literature

  • Lensmen: The Maulers - for when the terms battlecruiser, battleship, dreadnought and super-dreadnought are no longer enough. Maulers will swerve aside for nothing smaller than a planet. Imagine a Super Star Destroyer on steroids, without the flaw which permitted the Executor's destruction.
    • And the Super-mauler essentially one giant gun that the Patrol built a ship around, equipped with the heaviest shields available.
  • Ronald Niedermann, the blond giant in The Millennium Trilogy is freakishly strong, to the point that every blow seems to shatter bones, as well as biologically immune to pain. However, he's a terrible boxer and telegraphs his lumbering punches.
  • Lance-Constable Bluejohn of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch would probably qualify as such, being the biggest troll in the city, but he is mostly just used as a riot shield during crowd control.
  • The Lord of the Rings: Gimli the dwarf.
    • The trolls.


Live Action TV


Professional Wrestling


Tabletop Games

  • The original Mighty Glacier is the Dwarf race from Dungeons & Dragons.
    • In 3.5, the Stone Dragon techniques from the Book of Nine Swords rely on keeping yourself grounded and balanced so you can deliver massive damage, punch through defenses, and break rock and metal. All its attacks require you to be on the ground, and most of its stances require you to not move or break the stance. The Dwarf-only class Deepstone Sentinel goes further, allowing you to control the ground around you with martial arts, as long as you don't move at more than a crawl.
      • Just gonna clarify something here: IF you haven't used your Swift action that turn (and have no real need for it), a Stone Dragon adept can easily go from Mighty Glacier to Lightning Bruiser. You move into position, use your Swift to reactivate the Stance you just ended, and then use a Strike (most Stone Dragon Strikes are Standard actions, meaning you can do this all day).
    • Also in 3.5 the Dwarven Defender prestige class, which gives you a limited use ability that increases your strength and constition but preventing you from moving. It's dwarf exclusive. It's very useful for Hold the Line situations in a bottlenecked dungeon where all enemies must get through the dwarf's square to reach your Glass Cannons. In most open spaces... Considerably less so.
    • The Barbarian in D&D editions 3.5, 4.0 and the spinoff Pathfinder somewhat averts this. While they do have the capability to have the highest amount of HP of all the classes, and can definitely deal out as much pain as they take, their speed boost is 10 feet per turn (an extra 2 squares of tactical movement). While this is still pretty impressive, it's quite anemic compared to the Monk, and if you're wearing medium armor, you're pretty much back to your standard speed. Unless you're playing Pathfinder and took 3 levels in Fighter to get Armor Training, that is.
  • The Necrons of Warhammer 40,000 tend towards this, being on average the toughest, most durable race in the game while generally having plodding movement. However, they do have a few Fragile Speedster units (which also favor the Glass Cannon angle), and with the right units, their normally slow troops can teleport into position.
    • The new Imperial Guard codex turns the Leman Russ into one of these. Has slow movement, but can fire its turret weapon in addition to any attacks allowed depending on how far it moved. Also got improved side armor.
    • So-called "DISTRACTION CARNIFEX" is one of these used as a Weapon for Intimidation. Early on, Carnifex was employed this way, but in general it's any unit that will be hard to kill and likely to draw much fire - preferably also from weapons that have little chance to hurt it and/or missiles with limited shots, as an overreaction to something that looks threatening - moving in the open where everything can shoot at it, while they could have been busy picking off your fast attack units or grinding a huge wave of mediocre units instead. Being an actual threat is a bonus, and does make the feint more plausible, but actually it's here as a sacrifice rather than in hope to cause much harm: the idea is that an enemy who wastes a shot on the monstrous lump of metal and/or flesh doesn't shoot at the things that could be harmed and would matter more for the outcome.

Guard turn 1: Everything shoots the DISTRACTION CARNIFEX.
Tyranids turn 1: Tyranids advance.
Guard turn 2: Everything shoots the DISTRACTION CARNIFEX.
Tyranids turn 2: Tyranids advance.
Guard turn 3: Everything shoots the DISTRACTION CARNIFEX. DISTRACTION CARNIFEX finally dies.
Tyranids turn 3: Remaining Tyranids eat everyone else's face.

  • Warhammer Fantasy Battle: Dwarves are all over this trope, with durable and hard-hitting units that are nevertheless meaningfully slower than everything else (the Dwarven movement score of 3 is the worst available in the game without a unit that's actually been hexed by an enemy spell). The Lizardmen also have this kind of thing in their frontline combat troops, Saurus Warriors, which have standard movement distances and an Initiative score that's unlikely to impress even the slowest troops from other armies. The Lizardmen do, however, have Fragile Speedster Skink units, while everything in the dwarf army is either a) really good at killing things up close or b) really good at making the enemy want to come closer so they don't have to take another rune-enhanced boulder to the face.
  • Dwarf teams in Blood Bowl. Their Fragile Speedster model (the runner) has the same statline as a human lineman, while most their other models trade movement and agility for additional armour and access to the Thick Skull and Block skills from the get-go. A well-built dwarfen line or cage is a bulwark of death that will slowly, inexorably, slide across the field and leave your players pummelled and senseless in the dirt and leave your star blitzers marked by linemen that could probably take them in a one-on-one block. And that's before we factor in their Big Guy, a steamroller.
  • BattleTech's selection of 'mechs is grouped into four classes, the biggest and slowest being Assault. Assault 'mechs are most often slow, plodding, ultra-durable behemoths, and usually pack enough firepower to destroy a Light mech or cripple a Medium with one salvo. They also don't have to worry too much about their speed, since most Assault 'mechs are equipped to deliver death at extremely long range.
  • Exalted has Mount Mostath, a glacier-mammoth Behemoth whose assigned duty is to arrange glaciers in the arctic north. Its normal movement is too slow for anything with a human lifespan to notice that it's animate at all—but when sufficiently agitated, it does attack the aggressors. It has Strength rating of Immeasurable and its stomps usually inflicts infinite damage to those without divine constitution. Of course, even a mere mortal can run quickly enough to evade Mount Mostath's stomps, given its tremendous size and weight.
  • The Glitter Boy power armor of Rifts can soak up damage like a sponge and deals anywhere from thirty to one hundred and eighty points of damage per shot. It's also huge, slow, one hundred percent land bound and has to anchor itself between each shot to avoid being hurled through the air by its own recoil. A group of three or four characters wearing the more fragile but speedy and flight-capable SAMAS suits can surround and chip away at a lone Glitter Boy easily.
  • The Neu Swabian League of the space combat minatures game Full Thrust have tendencies in this direction, with many ship classes that are big, tough, heavily armed, but slow for their types.

Video Games

Action Game

  • Luminous Arc series has three notable MightyGlaciers, Heine, Rasche and Gaston. While giving AO+ Lapis to the bottom two made them faster, it turned Heine into a Person of Mass Destruction immediately.
  • Mask de Smith from Killer7: walks slowly, carries twin grenade launchers, can take more damage than any other character and is strong enough to pull trucks along. He used to be a pro wrestler.
  • The Nero Angelo Devil Trigger from Devil May Cry 3 acts like this. Most of its moves are slower than the ones for Vergil's normal DT, but its blows are more powerful and it can remain in one place after taking blows that would have the other DT form Blown Across the Room or Punched Across the Room.
  • The Gargantuar zombie from Plants vs. Zombies is slow. VERY slow. However, one hit from the telephone pole/road sign/fellow zombie it wields as a weapon will (with one exception)flatten any plants it hits, even the mightiest of your bastions of defense, the Tall-Nut. It's also has a crazy amount of health; it takes two of your exploding plants, normally instant kills on anything they affect, to bring him down.
  • Any large mobile armor in Gundam Climax UC. They usually have a powerful attack that can possibly one-shot you.
  • In Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, in the Y-Wing is the slowest craft but packs a huge amount of armor and generally has plasma bombs that are dropped on targets.
  • The eponymous protagonist of Overlord video game is unable to run, jump etc. He utilizes minions for a majority of strenuous tasks.
  • There's Yellobrates from Cubivore. They overpower and can fend off attacks easier than the Lightning Bruiser Greyodons. Example: A Splits, the strongest Yellobrate in the game, can easily cash out 200 damage, AND can fend off any attack from even their own kind. However, Yellobrates sometime tend to be slow.
  • The Frost Atronach in The Elder Scrolls Skyrim is a very literal example, being a huge ice golem. It lacks ranged attacks like its lightning and fire counterparts, but if it does hit you, it deals frost damage that slows you down and hinders strong melee attacks.

Beat'Em Up

  • Hagar from Final Fight is one of the oldest examples of this trope in video games.
  • Streets of Rage: Adam in the first game has an A in Power and Jump attacks, but his speed is B. In Streets of Rage II, Max is a hulking bruiser of a pro-wrestler who can take out entire mobs of mooks by landing amongst them just as he's hitting another thug with an atomic drop. It's beautiful.
  • Smasher (far right) from Fighting Force is this, contrasted with the three other playable characters: Fragile Speedster Alana and Jacks of All Stats Hawk and Mace. Smasher's unique ability is to pick up enemies/heavy objects and use them as weapons.
  • Punch-Out!! King Hippo counts as one of these. Despite being slow and clumsy, his blows will hurt if they connect.
  • Abore in the arcade version of Double Dragon II is even taller than Abobo and packs a mighty punch, but is sluggish.

Driving Game

  • The Need for Madness series gives us EL KING in the first game, and adds the even more fitting M A S H E E N in the second game. A tractor and bulldozer respectively, both cars have issues when it comes to performing stunts and pursuing other cars, but they are the strongest vehicles in the entire game and can easily waste every other car, including each other.
  • Heavyweights in Mario Kart are an interesting case. They're actually the fastest characters in the game, but in this case, it's their acceleration that's terrible. End up off-road, or get hit by something and they're going to lose a lot of ground trying to get back to speed. At the very least, if they should bump into another racer, it's likely going to be the other guy that goes flying off the track.
    • For example, Princess Rosalina in Mario Kart Wii.
    • Or Bowser in the original. His engine sounds like a clogged weed whacker when he gets pushed off the track and is trying to catch up.
      • Truth in Television in this case, due to Newton's Laws - "An object in motion tends to stay in motion" and all that. The more weight you carry, the harder it is to stop that weight from continuing on.
        • No credit for partial answers, maggot! The other half of Newton's First Law is that "An object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force", hence the poor acceleration speed.
    • In Diddy Kong Racing there's Krunch the Crocodile and Drumstick the Chicken.
    • See also: F-Zero. Samurai Goroh's Fire Stingray functions the same way, though Don Genie's Fat Shark is easily the most exaggerated example of this type in the series, with maxed out body and max speed, but practically nonexistent acceleration and cornering.
    • Although note that Beastman's Hyper Speeder possesses one of the highest top speeds in the game (indeed being the only pilot besides Don Genie to have it to that degree), and he lacks acceleration power, but his racer has average scores in both body and cornering, making him much more versatile than you'd think.
    • The real example in F-Zero is probably Pico, who, fittingly enough, is extremely turtle-like biologically. While his Body is maxed out and complemented by an excellent turning score, he's got below average accelleration and max speed, making him one of the slower pilots... though he can easily turn this misfortune around with aggressive techniques.
  • The Hunter Olympus from Burnout Paradise. Technically, it has a very high top speed rating, but takes an eternity to get to it, if it ever does thanks to all the twists and turns in the roads. But you need an actual tank to stop the damned thing, and it has no boost system. It's improved version, the Olympus Governor, gives it a Stunt-type boost system, turning it into a Lightning Bruiser.
  • The original Burnout has a huge Tow-truck that can be unlocked, which is a basic Goliath that can smash other cars out of the way like flies. Unfortunately it doesn't have a very high speed to compensate. However, the game gives you are 'Burnout' gauge which gives your car a boost in acceleration, which is filled by doing tricks or driving against traffic. Thus, the tow truck can take advantage of its unstopability and simply drive against traffic the whole time.

Fighting Game

  • Zangief, T. Hawk, Birdie, Alex, Hugo, Q, and Urien from the Street Fighter series. Note that with the with the exception of Hawk, Q and Urien, most of glaciers in Street Fighter are wrestlers or feature wrestling-esque moves in their moveset. Subverted with oil wrestler Hakan (he's a low-level Lightning Bruiser [1]). Alex is a unique glacier in that while he moves rather slow, some of his attacks launch and/or hit very fast, like the Stun Gun Headbutt.
    • But especially Zangief, as he's not only easily the most immobile Street Fighter ever, he's NEVER had any kind of rushdown attack or (aside from the Marvel crossovers) powerful jump. He actually gained an attack (the Banishing Flat) for the sole purpose of foiling the fireball-uppercut game, which absolutely ate him for lunch in the old days. SFIV, if anything, cemented his glacier status, as he no longer even has fast strikes; even Hugo could do rapid-fire pokes.
    • Not true, he still has his low jab of doom, and his Banishing Flat makes him surprisingly mobile. He still fits the trope, though.
    • Super Street Fighter IV adds Makoto, a rather odd example since she's sized close to speedy fragile characters like Sakura and Ibuki. Unfortunately, this puts her at something of a disadvantage compared to other slow movers because she's got less reach with her attacks.
  • Hulk, Blackheart,Sentinel Colossus, Juggernaut, Tron Bonne, Thor, Haggar, and Nemesis in the Marvel vs. Capcom series
    • In Marvel vs. Capcom Clash of the Superheroes, a hidden character, Mega Armor War Machine (who comes in gold and ice blue colors to contrast the regular War Machine's Grey and Blue colors). He cannot block, moves slower then Zangief, can barely jump out side of a super jump and is the same size as War Machine being a Palette Swap. Glacier status? He has Powered Armor that has him in a state of permanently negating stun statusses, auto combo's are ineffective after the first hit and his defense is the hightest in the game meaning that it takes a lot to defeat him. On top of that, his high offense is higher then the regular War Machine's (who already had a high offense). MAWM is said to have defeated many Spider Man, Wolverine and Ryu players since their spam combos can be brushed off and countered easily leaving them to try hit and run attacks against MAWM which puts them against his missile attacks.
    • Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter featured a character similar to Mega Armor War Machine in Mech Zangief. He was even slower than Zangief, couldn't block and lost his Banishing Flat. He did however gain a Yoga Flame-esque breath attack and a new Hyper Combo, the Siberian Blizzard. Marvel vs. Capcom Clash of the Superheroes would make him a super mode for regular Zangief.
  • Donkey Kong in Super Smash Bros., Bowser and Ganondorf as well in Super Smash Bros Melee. Oddly enough, Princess Zelda also counts, but has the option to switch to a Fragile Speedster in battle. You might think DK and Bowser in Melee would be slooooow, but indicates that they both run faster than Mario. Brawl gave us King Dedede, Ike and Charizard in this category, as well as Solid Snake.
    • Again to mention Brawl Minus (a side competitive field for SSBB), Ganondorf's rank on the tier list goes from bottom to top, with most of his moves being instant KO's. His warlock punch alone deals 666 damage and instant KO's anyone hit, not to mention all of his other moves are upgraded in power and range, such as his forward smash creating explosions. Bowser gets an upgrade as well, as he no longer flinches from moves that do 10 damage or less, allowing him to simply walk through projectiles and some attacks. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that Bowser's attacks now hit potentially multiple times and kill at simple damage areas like 40%. His Up B on the ground for example not only hits far more often, but creates a whirlwind sucking opponents into it. Both characters are still extremely slow however, and Ganondorf, to make up for his ridiculous power, is even slower than standard Brawl.
    • Zelda is more of a Glass Cannon. She deals out huge damage and has great knockback, but she's very light.
    • Anyone spamming Falcon Punch becomes this.
  • The various JACK robots from Tekken, Ganryu who's a sumo and King, the Luchador. Each has a unique style to offset this: Jack has extreme reach and a few tackle moves, Ganryu has many blocks and counters. King (who is agile, but not fast) some highflying and groundscraping lucha moves designed to get you into his multi-hit chain combos
  • Wolf, Jeffry and Taka-Arashi from Virtua Fighter.
  • Potemkin from Guilty Gear (pictured) is unable to run or air-dash, but can still be surprisingly fast when using certain techniques (the dashing-in Hammerfall and the jumping-in Megafist are fairly fast, especially considering the range of his arms).
    • BlazBlue, the Spiritual Successor to Guilty Gear, has Iron FUCKING Tager. He takes up half of the damn screen with his GIGANTIC TAGER. You will regret getting anywhere near him. What makes Tager even more terrifying is the fact that a lot of his attacks will cause the enemy to be magnetically charged, meaning Tager can drag them around the field. You can't even run from him. Hakumen, although he can dash, is also something of a slow powerhouse.
  • Chang Koehan, Seth, Goro Daimon, Tizoc, Maxima, Yashiro, Ryuuji Yamazaki, (maybe) Clark Steele, and Hinako Shinjou from The King of Fighters (to name but a few). The latter is notable for, like May, being a Cute Bruiser as well (she's a schoolgirl who practises sumo wrestling). Most of them are grapplers.
  • In Art of Fighting Jack Turner, Temjin, Jin Fu-Ha and Wyler fit this trope
  • Garland from the Dissidia Final Fantasy games is almost as slow as Exdeath (a Stone Wall Barrier Warrior), but has the biggest BFS ever and really long and painful combos. Even his Ex-Mode ability is based around that, by allowing him to attack without being interrupted by other attacks!
    • There's also Cloud Strife, predictably (in that he's a hard-hitter who has many attacks that can cause extra Wall Rush damage, but they tend to have slow start-ups) and in EX-mode all of his attacks are unblockable and deal more damage the more HP he has. The game's SNK Boss Chaos is technically also one, but the only stage you're able to fight him on is so small he barely has move to attack you (because his attacks are both extremely fast and have stupidly long reach).
    • On the ground, Firion is the slowest-moving characters on Cosmos' side, which is understandable, given the sheer number of weapons he carries on his person (in a game where almost everyone else makes use of a Hyperspace Arsenal). It's such a shame that aerial combat tends to be more useful in this game, given how fearsome Firion's ground attacks can be when mastered...
  • Samurai Shodown has its share of this type of characters, including some that are extremely huge, like Earthquake, Gandara, Gaira, Yagyuu Hanma and Kusaregedo.
  • All-female fighting game Arcana Heart subverts it by making the youngest and smallest girl, Kira the mighty glacier. She takes "glacier" literally, fighting merged with a massive water creature thing.
    • The sequel continues that trend, adding the similarly-built Catherine as a glacier... though her "glacier" is a large mech, instead.
    • Fiona is only slightly taller than Kira (who is 11, let's not forget it - Fiona's actually older than Kira, but stopped aging when she was dropped in the human world). She wears several pieces of full plate mail mixed with a maid outfit, and carries around a sword larger and broader than most of the rest of the cast, let alone herself. She's (predictably) tremendously slow, but her normal attacks hit harder than anyone else in the game except Bonus Boss Parace L'sia (although with Parace even her normal attacks look like supers, so it's hard to determine which attacks are normals and which aren't).
  • In the Last Blade series, there are two "styles" to choose from: Speed and Power. Several characters, however, were just meant for power, including Ax Crazy Knife Nut Mukuro, Red Oni (with an iron club!) Juzoh, Lawful Stupid Samurai Shinsengumi agent Washizuka, Handsome Lech and Chivalrous Pervert Hyo, Gentle Giant Shigen, and several more.
  • Berserker from Fate/stay night's Fighting Game spinoff, Fate/Unlimited Codes, where he hits like a truck, but is the second slowest character in the game (the slowest, for whatever reason, is Sakura). This is actually reversed from the original Visual Novel (or rather, the anime), where it's noted that, for a dude his size, Berserker is surprisingly agile.
    • In the Visual Novel, his attacks were so strong and fast that they caused air distortions which hit nearly as hard as his stone sword-axe-club-thing. With his Won't Work On Me God Hand, he was very much a Lightning Bruiser. However, this would obviously have made him rather broken (Saber notes in the Visual Novel that all the skill in the world wouldn't help if your opponent can just attack-spam his way through without consequence), so he got Nerfed.
  • Jane Doe in the fighting game Crimson Alive. It helps that she's a cyborg and appears to be partially based on Maxima from King of Fighters.
    • Nightphobia-1 and Nightphobia-2, as well. Both are tremendous women in suits of armor... apparently, but they move very slowly and their weight is evident while playing them.
  • Rumi Nanase fulfills the Mighty Glacier role for Eternal Fighter Zero. She's one of the slowest characters, but can take many attacks without flinching, and hits really, really hard. With a wooden kendo sword.
  • Oozaru in the Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi games were like this. They were immune to being thrown and hit with dragon rush based special attacks (mostly because the attack animations would be too awkward for either, although the latest game lets you use a few dragon rush ultimates on them). They also didn't flinch when hit with melee attacks, so it didn't matter if you could hit them before they attacked, because their attacks would still land. That's the theory, anyways, in reality, it's not too difficult for the lighter weight character to either use stronger stunning melee attacks, or just keep their distance and spam energy attacks. Later games introduce other types of "giant" characters that work the same way.
  • Gold Lightan in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom takes this trope to the extreme: he hits really hard (Hell, every single move of his consists of throwing, slamming or crushing you in a really hard manner) and he's so colossal, he cannot be in a team and the camera has to pan out. And that makes Alex's supers used against him quite hilarious.
  • In the Godzilla series of games, Destoroyah is among the strongest and the slowest. Jet Jaguar in his Giant form is both the strongest AND the slowest. However Ghidorah is of a similar power rating but is somewhat agile due to his large wings, and Orga runs around like a drunken rugby player.
    • In Godzilla Unleashed, Biollante has the lowest speed with the highest attack and an extra health cell.
  • SNK/Guilty Gear ripoff Asura Blade has Talos, who has some light but deceptively quick attacks (some whose sprites would lead you to believe they were originally meant to go the other way) backed by the craziest fierce punches ever seen in a fighting game. With a lead-in time of over a second, being stupid enough to run into it, or making the mistake of jumping just as the other player decides to go for a basic Fpunch, results in around 70% of your health being knocked off in a single blow. Some of his special moves will kill you outright if timed appropriately. The most interesting thing is that he isn't a boss but a normal playable character. The first boss is a straight-up Glass Cannon, but a VERY FAST rapid-firing glass cannon, and the second a standard fighting game SNK Boss (who, like other endbosses with superpowers, mysteriously forgets how to duck). Due to the first boss's huge (more like CHEAP) reach and speed, and the second not being able to block low attacks, he's generally accepted as harder than the actual final SNK Boss. If you're really unlucky the AI will get locked on Beam Spam mode and you'll never touch him the entire fight, being constantly knocked back from blocking his laser cannon or catching it full on the face and dying miserably. Sizewise the beams are on par with Marvel vs. Capcom 2's Cable. On top of that he also can lob grenades and has a friggin' bayonet. Yes, a bayonet... on a laser cannon. It hurts just as much as you'd expect it to.
  • Tsunade from the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series sends people flying with a single punch, but is rather slow on the attack. Similarly, Gaara and Chouji can be rather quick with their attacks, but both barely move faster than 'speedwalking'.
  • Astaroth and Rock in Soul Calibur.
  • Raiden - Oh God! Raiden! From Virtual On. The slowest virtuaroid, it enjoys the best armor and the most powerful attack in the series.
  • Victor von Gerdenheim the Frankenstein's Monster from Capcom's "other" fighter series, Darkstalkers, is the resident Mighty Glacier: big (tied for the talles hurtbox in the game), slow (tied for the slowest walkspeed), bulky (highest health), and can deal massive damage with his excellent normals.
    • Meanwhile, the series' affable Canadian Sasquatch (who is, unsurprisingly, a yeti) wields the power of ice (ironically, considering the trope's name), is big, and also has the ability to destroy lifebars in very little time, yet subverts the Mighty Glacier trope. He can quickly traverse the screen using "shorthops" and has quick normals that also reach far and hit hard, which makes Sasquatch more of a Lightning Bruiser more than anything. These qualities, along with a slew of other strong points, place him arguably at the top of Vampire Savior's (the most commonly-played title in the series) tier list while the "true" Mighty Glacier Victor rests near the bottom.

First-Person Shooter

  • The Heavy Weapons Guy class from the various Team Fortress games embodies this ideal type, having a very powerful gatling gun but extremely limited movement, especially when firing. In a sense, the most readily identifiable bane of this class, the Sniper, also has elements of this concept, possessing an if anything even more lethal gun, which can only be effectively employed when remaining still. It is, however, not anywhere near as capable of withstanding damage, nor as slow when in movement.
    • TF 2 also made him a Husky Russkie.
    • The Soldier to a lesser extent; he's armed with a rocket launcher that deals incredible damage (a critical shot capable of reducing most classes to a bloody pile of body parts with one hit) and has the second-highest health of all classes, and is also the second-slowest.
      • The Sniper is a sort of Mighty Glacier slash Glass Cannon hybrid. Incredible long-range precision damage (in a game where almost everybody has a shotgun and nobody else has a rifle, that quality is gold), can't take a hit worth beans, slow movement while scoped.
    • The Heavy truly embodies this if he has the Brass Beast. More damage in exchange for reducing his speed to the point that he might as well be standing still when it's deployed.
  • FPS example: the Leviathan is a slow-mowing but deadly mobile fortress, the biggest achievement of Axon technology. Features 8 huge, 3+ m diameter wheels designed to support its massive weight (and crush enemy vehicles in the process), 4 independent turrets, each one with a distinct type of ammunition (2 of them are actually hitscan weapons) and its own energy shield, and 2 cannons: the smaller launches huge tarydium chunks, and the bigger one it's actually an orbital-grade Ion Cannon, fed by 2 quantum fusion impulse reactors and able to take on an enemy Core with just 5 shots. And the damn thing has 6500 armor points, so killing it means basically throw everything in your arsenal and hope you have some vehicles available. The drawbacks? It's extremely slow, the Ion Cannon can't be used unless the wheels are stable and the Leviathan is fully stopped, and its defense systems are rather useless without a full crew (1 driver and main cannons + 4 turret users).
  • The Drinniol (aka Hulks) in the original Marathon, and the Juggernauts throughout the series.
  • The Tank in Left 4 Dead somewhat falls under this. Its speed is pretty average, so a healthy survivor can outrun it, but as the name and the looks show, it has enough strength to send anyone and almost ANYTHING (cars, forklifts, etc.) flying several feet, which can spell an instant game over in places where the team is very high up. It can also lob huge chunks of rock at the suvivors if they are far away. Tanks lose their slow speed when set on fire and run faster, but this does not apply in VS mode.
  • One of the new armor abilities in Halo: Reach is "Armor Lock", which briefly immobilizes you, but makes you completely invincible. Useful if you're about to get smeared across the map by a vehicle or a rocket.
  • The Juggernauts in Modern Warfare 2.
  • Heavy Armor Replicas and REVs in F.E.A.R..

4X

  • The Hivers from Sword of the Stars. Unlike most of the other races, the Hivers have no FTL drives on their ships. This drops the power and size requirements of their ships as they have no ability to outfit them with bulky FTL drives... so they just put more guns and armor on the ships to make up for it. This doesn't reduce their maximum speed in combat (they are about average, faster than the Liir and Humans), but it makes their thrust to mass ratio abyssmal, so it takes a while for them to reach that top speed or change directions. In strategic movement, the Hivers have the insta-moving teleport system, meaning that although it takes them a long time to reach a new system, once they've deployed a teleportation gate there they're nigh impossible to dislodge from it.
    • Except when they get their late-game gate upgrade, they can jump instantly to nearby stars without a receiver gate. This system is inaccurate however and will sometimes teleport the fleet about two lightyears away from the target.
      • Which is still closer than traveling STL all the way.
    • The Leviathan-class ships in the sequel are three times the size of Dreadnaughts. To put their firepower in perspective, the forward-mounted main guns on Dreadnaughts are turret-mounted on Leviathans. Now imagine their main guns. Building and maintaining them takes a large chunk of your economy. Losing one is a huge blow to any empire, to the point where there's a special achievement for this.
  • Leviathans from the Call To Power series. They are more powerful than any other unit, but can only move one square per turn, even on roads.

Hack and Slash

  • Toyotomi Hideyoshi in Sengoku Basara, since he's portrayed as a man with the size of a gorilla. He's even moreso Mighty Glacier than the Humongous Mecha Honda Tadakatsu, since a lot of his moves involves grappling moves (also Tadakatsu actually has good moving speed due to jets on his back). Even moreso in the fighting game spinoff Sengoku Basara X thought the most notable Mighty Glacier would be Church Militant Love Freak Xavi, the slowest of all characters in the game but one with massive amounts of firepower and love.
    • Takeda Shingen also plays this trope straight (though maybe not as slow as Zabii), being the foil of his super speedy rival Uesugi Kenshin. Regardless, when you have Genda Tesshou as the seiyuu, you're almost guaranteed to be a Mighty Glacier.
    • In the third game, Kuroda Kanbe takes this role since the ball and chain he's hooked up to is dragging him down.
  • Roach from Heavenly Sword, a giant, deformed man who is also somewhat unintelligent.
  • Possible Ur Example: Thor in the original Gauntlet (1985 video game). Fortunately, speed power-ups later in the game make him more reasonably fast.

MMORPGs

  • In City of Heroes, the final power available to the Stone Armor set (accessible only to Tankers and Brutes) was Granite Armor, which basically turned the character into a Mighty Glacier. Virtually impervious to any type of damage, but you moved extremely slowly, had heavily reduced recharge on all attack-powers, and coouldn't jump at all... In general, though, this trope was averted in City of Heroes, which allowed Tankers to be speedsters if the player so chooses.
    • It also let Tankers pick up teleportation, which pretty well negated the whole "barely mobile" thing.
    • Setting aside movement speeds, the Energy Melee and Assault Rifle powersets had elements of this. Both sets had attacks with devastating amounts of damage, but also carried extremely long attack animations. Furthermore, Energy Melee had only one (mediocre) area attack, while Rifles were not at their best against one enemy.
  • World of Warcraft had a member of a Quirky Miniboss Squad that was possibly the ultimate Mighty Glacier - Kael'thas's minion, Thaledred the Darkener. His melee attack is pretty respectable on its own, AND it applies a 12-sec DoT where each tick does about the same damage as his regular melee. This could take out a BC tank easily. He moves at Walking Speed. The strategy for beating him is "Shoot him from far away, and run if he looks at you."
    • Don't forget the Deformed Fanatics from the Lady Deathwhisper encounter in Icecrown Citadel in Wrath of the Lich King. They move at walking speed, but will one-shot most tanks with less than 70,000 health on 25-man. They have to be kited by a tank, similar to the aforementioned Thaladred the Darkener.
    • Dire Trolls and Dire Orcs also fit this trope.
    • Another boss that requires kiting is Forgemaster Throngus, who will randomly forge a weapon every thirty seconds or so as you fight him. When he gets his mace, two hits will kill a tank, but he moves so slowly it's possible to sit there and spam emotes at him as he walks towards you and still dodge all of his attacks.
    • Chimaeron of Blackwing Descent hits you like a truck and puts a stacking debuff on you that allows him to hit you like a train. The thing is, he hits slooowwww, so bring your avoidance, kiddies. When he becomes enraged he will chase you (slowly) around a tiny room. You better hope to god he's not looking at you, because you either need to haul some major ass or eat dirt when he eventually rips you apart after you reach the corner of the room (or get stuck tripping over a rock).
    • Probably epitomized in Cataclysm with the Whale Sharks. They move at a snail's pace, just a bit slower than the player can swim. Which is great, because a single hit from it is instant-death. Doesn't matter if you're a fully-decked tank or a caster in grays, it will kill you. But if you try, you can outswim it.

Platform Game

  • Bifrost from Mega Man ZX Advent, the largest pseudoroid boss in the game. Fills this trope quite literally as he's ice-themed too.
  • Wario in Super Mario 64 DS. He's very strong and his punches send enemies flying, but he's also extremely slow and can't jump all that high. And since the preferred way of killing enemies in Super Mario is by jumping, and one punch from anyone is enough to KO most monsters, Wario is often passed up in favor of Fragile Speedster Luigi, and is normally only selected to get stars exclusive to his abilities or by players wanting an extra challenge.
  • Runman has Stumblor, a completely invincible behemoth and can walk over or through any enemy in the game. However, as the entire game is build around the idea of running through the stages as fast as possible the mighty glacier build is somewhat less then optimal. Still Stumblor seems to be a fan favorite.
  • Earl from Toejam and Earl. He's slower than Toejam, compounded with the fact that his pants constantly fall down, but he has more health to compensate.
  • Frost Man from Mega Man 8 is almost a literal example, even if he is more like an igloo.
    • Frost Walrus from Mega Man X 4 might be another. He's got great projectiles and a sliding attack, but is still by far the least nimble boss in that game.
      • X4 also has General, who is freaking gigantic, even by Mega Man boss standards. He jets along very slowly, but is likely to hit you just from being that huge, and his only weak point being far above the ground.
  • The stone form of your ball in Ballance. It can move pretty much anything outta its way, but is itself hard to control (and will fall through fragile bridges).
  • In Little Samson, Gamm the Rock Lord is the slowest and least maneuverable of the four characters, but has a lot of health and attack power and can walk on spikes without getting hurt.

Real Time Strategy

  • In the RTS Total Annihilation, the unit called "The Sumo" is true to its name: huge and powerful. Its problem is that it moves really slow. Its maximum speed is 0.34 m/s, compared to 1.72 m/s for the basic infantry unit. It acceleration stat is 0.04, which is abysmally slow.
    • "The Can" came first. Not as slow (that's not saying much), not as powerful, not as expensive. But a lot more useful, since you can actually get it to go somewhere; in contrast, the Sumo is basically a defense turret that can be repositioned around the base if need be.
      • The Krogoth may not be that slow, but its by far the mightiest unit in the game, both in terms of attack power and armor strength. Core gets all the good Kbots.
    • In Supreme Commander, which is in-all-but-name Total Annihilation 2, the Forged Alliance Expansion Pack brings one of the sides The Brick, which is a clear descendant of the Can/Sumo lineage.
    • Also in Supreme Commander, the Aeon's Galactic Colossus fit this trope to a tee prior to the expansion. Slower than molasses, but if it gets to an enemy base, everything in that base is so much scrap metal. Its plodding speed and lack of any anti-air weapons killed it in the practical use analysis. That said, a GC parked in front of your base might as well be holding a giant sign reading "Hope you can beat my AA, because you can't beat this."
      • Pretty much every Experimental in SupCom is a Mighty Glacier. They all move slowly, but they're a beast against practically everything.
    • Supreme Commander 2 takes it even further with the King Kriptor whixh dwarfs even the ACU.
      • The DLC reintroduces the original Cybran Monkeylord, who lacks the general downscaling of experimentals in the base game.
  • The Mammoth Tanks used by the Soviets/GDI in Command & Conquer are among the slowest units in the game, but they pack a combination of two ultra-heavy cannons and anti-air/anti-infantry missile launchers, along with extremely heavy armor, enabling them to smash through enemy forces outnumbering them many times over. In Tiberium Wars, the Mammoth is so overpowering that it can literally crush other tanks beneath its treads, and once upgraded with railguns, even waves of suicide bombers and missile infantry are mowed down without mercy.
    • And in the Kane's Wrath Expansion Pack, their epic unit, the MARV, can run down anything save another epic unit. It can also survive a nuclear strike.
      • All three epic units qualify.
    • Don't forget the Red Alert series which just absolutely runs wild with this, especially for the Soviets. The Soviets are lucky enough to field the Apocalypse Tank, an Expy of the Mammoth Tank (which the Soviets also had in RA 1) which can also run over smaller tanks, as well as the mighty Kirov airship which is slow enough that infantry can outrun it; fortunately, it not only can obliterate an enemy base single-handedly, but is nothing short of a bullet sponge, especially in RA 2. The Allies gained the Battle Fortress in Yuri's Revenge whose main attack mode is to simply run over enemy tanks, and the Assault Destroyer in RA 3 which is quite literally a warship on land. And to say nothing of the Empire of the Rising Sun's Shogun Executioner, which is quite possibly the slowest, most awkward-moving unit in an RTS—and you're expected to defeat the enemy completely with it and it alone.
    • Uprising also has the Empire of the Rising Sun's Giga Fortress, a warship that looks like a high-tech animesque fortress that transforms into a giant flying demon head with long range that inflicts massive damage. Thing is as slow as Kirov and cost more then anything else in the game, but people still say it's a Gamebreaker.
    • In Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour the Emperor Overlord tank is this. It has two cannons, a built in device to heal itself and nearby units, it can be upgraded to use anti-air gatling guns.
  • In the RTS Company of Heroes, the King Tiger tank of the Wehrmacht falls well under this category, as it has huge armor and a massive gun, but is even slower than infantry and even light tanks can just run circles around taking off small chunks of health while its gun struggles to keep up with them. It also applies to the American M26 Pershing heavy tank, which can succumb to many small tanks also.
  • The Harkonnen's Devastator tanks in Dune II. Like the Mammoth Tanks from Westwood's later franchise, Command & Conquer, these have the highest attack and armor in the game, but have the slowest movement speed.
  • Rook in Demigod is a walking fortress, several times the size of the other demigods in the game, and most of them can run circles around him.
  • Bile Demons in Dungeon Keeper.
  • The Hierarchy's walkers in Universe At War: Earth Assault. They are the slowest units in the game (pretty much all of the Hierarchy's units are slow, but even they are fast compared to these things), but they can crush most ground units and buildings. They also serve as production buildings, and have customizable hardpoints to either improve on producing units or turn a walker in Landbattleship. The Massari also have this tank called the Peacebringer, which is a lot like a Mammoth Tank (most of the people at Petroglyph used to work at Westwood, so they are lots of similarities to Command and Conquer, and in fact many of the games units have functions and abilities resembling units from Command and Conquer). Like the Mammoth Tank, it can crush smaller units, is for reason uncrushable by walkers, is slow, heavily armed and armored, but has not turret so it has to turn around to fire at things. Unlike the Mammoth Tank, its main fires at ground and air targets, and has a high rate of fire. It has a tractor beam as a secondary weapon that slows down a target, and can be upgraded to inflict heavy damage on a unit every second it hits.
  • The War Elephants from the first two Age of Empires games are extremely slow (though if they were fast as they were in real life they'd be gamebreakers), but have by far the most health any land unit. Pretty much the only things that pose a danger to them are pikemen, assuming they have a numerical edge, priests which can easily convert them before the elephant can reach them (even though that shouldn't work since it's trying to convert an animal), and siege weapons because they are too slow to avoid attacks from them, but coupled with the right units those things won't be a problem.
    • The titular Titans in the Age of Mythology Titans expansion are a good example, as though the only two things that can stop them are a. another titan b. a massive army coupled with god powers, they're slow enough to at least give you a few minutes before meeting your doom.
    • Teutonic Knights from the second game are the infantry version. Enough health, defenses, and attack to take on a Paladin one-on-one - and win, but so slow garrisoning them in Battering Rams speeds them up.
  • Phalanx formations in Rome: Total War. Slow and hard to manuevere, but virtually invunerable to frontal charges and able to steamroller over all but the more determined infantry. Defeating them requires either slick manuevering, or, in many cases, another, slightly stronger phalanx. Truth in Television.
  • Each faction in StarCraft II has one of the three slowest attacking units:
    • The Terran Thor, a walking death machine armed with dual railguns, anti-air missiles, and is piloted by The Arnuld.
    • The Zerg Brutalisk, a massive Zerg strain which has the strength of 3 Ultralisks and the speed of two Reavers.
    • The Protoss Immortal is rather slow for a ground unit but possesses a special shield that prevents a single normal attack from dealing more than 10 damage (A Nuke is an exception to this rule), and it will cause maximum damage to armored targets (who tend to have slow but powerful attacks). This comes at the price of being vulnerable to Death of a Thousand Cuts, meaning that rapid-fire-and-weak attacks are effective, due to the unit's actual armor (not it's armor class) being average, and it's damage being reduced against these units.
  • StarCraft
    • The Terran Battlecruiser, a massive flying fortress with built-in Wave Motion Gun.
    • The Zerg Guardian, a flying unit with a long-range air-to-ground attack.
    • The Protoss Zealot is also the Mighty Glacier in comparison to the Marine and Zergling with significantly higher life and power, but being more expensive and only an averaged speed melee unit to counter this. The Charge upgrade however, turns it into a Lightning Bruiser in comparison to the other two, but a damage sponge to the rest most tech trees.
    • The Protoss Carrier is an interesting example as well; it's speed relative to other flyers tends to be sub-par, but it is still pretty nimble for a large unit, especially when considering it's ability to evade ground forces by flying over obstacles. It's Hit Points and armor are also quite impressive, and once a fleet of carriers is assembled, they can be a serious destructive threat that is hard to ignore. A common joke in the StarCraft community is "Mass Carriers = Instant Win!" due to the perception of how difficult a fleet can be to stop.
  • In UFO Aftermath, you can equip your troops with Heavy Armor which gives them the ultimate protection against physical attacks as well as the ability to use deployable heavy weapons like railguns. However, this armor makes the wearer unable to run or crouch, hinders healing as well as making the wearer very vulnerable to warp attacks, preventing it from becoming a Game Breaker.
  • Similar to StarCraft, each faction in Warcraft III have heroes and units that are slow and tough.
    • The Humans heroes are the Paladin and the Mountain King.
    • The Orcs hero is the Tauren Cheiftain, and their unit is the Tauren.
    • The Undead hero is the Crypt Lord, their unit is the Abomination.
    • The Night Elf unit is the Mountain Giant, and Bear form Druids of the Claw have many elements as well.
    • Although some of these units are not actually that slow, their large size makes them rather hard to maneuver in combat or retreat, and allows for them to easily get surrounded and trapped or hit by micromanaged spells. Once they are in combat, however, they are the strongest melee units in the game.
  • The battleships and the Vardrag city-ships in Nexus the Jupiter Incident are this. The battleships carry some of the heaviest weapons and may even include the Siege Laser, a Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon that can take out most enemies in several shots but require the energy of up to 3 other ships to fire. The Vardrag city-ships are armed with Cataclysm missiles that can One-Hit Kill starbases.
  • The heavy cruisers in Homeworld. The Taiidani Qwaar-Jet-class heavy cruisers are nearly half-a-kilometer long and armed with 2 dual ion cannons and 6 large mass driver turrets. They can take and dish out tremendous amount of punishment before going down. They are also slow as hell and vulnerable against fighters and corvettes, lacking anti-fighter weapons, making carriers useful, if they can stay out of their weapons range. The Kushan Avatar-class heavy cruisers are slightly smaller and faster but just as powerful (and just as vulnerable to fighters). Homeworld: Cataclysm features the return of the Qwaar-Jet but also adds the Archangel-class dreadnoughts for Kiith Somtaaw (a Kushan clan), which costs almost double the heavy cruiser but also has more firepower and a better defense against fighters. Homeworld 2 features even more mighty glaciers, including massive (nearly a kilometer long) battlecruisers for the Hiigarans (formerly known as the Kushan) and the Vaygr, both featuring their own Wave Motion Guns (the Vaygr one being a Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon, while the Hiigaran one being turreted). Then there are the limited-edition Progenitor dreadnoughts (only 2 in the campaign) and the Sajuuk (5 kilometers in length), all of these featuring ridiculously-powerful phased cannons that can One-Hit Kill most warships.
    • Homeworld: Cataclysm also shows that a single Bentusi Tradeship can easily take on an entire enemy fleet and come out on top via Beam Spam.
    • Averted with the NAGGAROK in Cataclysm, an enormous ship with powerful weapons, which is also the fastest ship in the game (it can rapidly move across the entire battlefield without the use of a hyperdrive thanks to its inertialess drive).
  • The Martian Fighting Machine from Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, slow and powerful.
  • Sacrifice most of James units are mighty glaciers, two that exemplify it are the Jabberrocky and the Rhinok. The both can soak up a ton of damage and dish out the same amount on their foes, but are one of the slowest units in the game.

Role-Playing Game

  • Ox, Rand, Garr, and Cray from the Breath of Fire series.
  • The Pokémon Slaking is the embodiment of this trope: It has the third highest Attack stat of any Pokémon, and while its speed stat is above average, it can only attack once every two turns due to its ability Truant. There are many double battle sets that revolve around compensating for this.
    • Slaking's all-around base stats are equal to those of most legendaries. Stat-wise, it's even stronger than the likes of Dragonite, Tyranitar, Salamence, and Garchomp.
    • As if being one of the strongest and slowest wasn't enough, Snorlax can use Curse to make itself even stronger AND slower.
    • Used in the anime as well -- when Ash's Turtwig evolved into Grotle, it lost all the speed it was renowned for. Paul's Torterra, having likely been in this situation before, demonstrates this trope to Grotle to help it change battle tactics.
      • A much earlier example is Lt. Surge's Raichu. Evolving it far too early caused his Raichu to be much slower than the average Raichu, which are normally Fragile Speedsters. Ordinarily a slow Raichu would be a housepet and not a battler, but fortunately Lt. Surge's Raichu appears to have compensated for its slow speed with immense power and a great deal more bulk. But neither Raichu nor Lt. Surge were aware of any of this, and Raichu was completely confused when faced with Pikachu's superior speed during the rematch.
    • Almost every game's Pokédex entry for Kingler talks about its 10,000 HORSEPOWER CLAW and how it's too big to for Kingler to use it properly.

DPP Entry The larger pincer has 10,000- horsepower strength. However, it is so heavy, it is difficult to aim.

      • Sure does explain the failure accuracy of Crabhammer.
    • Many Rock, Ground, or Steel-type Pokémon in general fit this trope.
    • A surprising number of Unova Pokemon exhibit this trait, one of the most notorious being Reuniclus, who (barring the Dream World) is absolutely immune to weather damage and has an ability to protect it from everything other than direct damage. High defenses, profound Special Attack, and HP higher than a hippie on an airplane, but a pitiful base Speed of 30. Then Trick Room comes out to play...
      • Then you've got Musharna, with slightly better bulk, lower speed still, and not as useful abilities. And then there's stuff like Escavalier who is slow but stupidly strong, Conkeldurr, Throh, Eelektross, Bouffalant...
      • Scrafty serves as an interesting variation on this trope; while one of its common sets uses Dragon Dance and the sweeper-friendly ability Moxie to make it a Lightning Bruiser and rely on its defenses being good even uninvested to keep it afloat, an alternate set for it focuses almost entirely on HP and Special Defense before using Bulk Up to raise its Attack and Defense, evading status effects like poison through the Shed Skin ability. Barring moves like tricking it a choice item, phazing it out, or hammering it HARD the second it switches in, Scrafty becomes slow but nearly invincible once it's used Bulk Up two or more times and can proceed to plow through the entire enemy team using nothing but Drain Punch and Crunch/Payback, Resting as necessary.
  • Ness from EarthBound fits this role - and he falls into Glacier Waif as well. He has the most HP of anyone in the party, and the highest offense. It rises to Game Breaker levels once he gets the Magicant boosts.
  • Grandia has Gadwin, a huge, muscular knight, and later a female Mighty Glacier in the form of Milda, a hulking barbarienne.
  • In Legend of Legaia, Gala qualifies as this. The problem is that not only is his speed ridiculously slow, but his agility is low as well...which means he gets fewer attacks per round and thus the benefit of his extra strength is largely negated. Fortunately, there's an item that makes any character wearing it go first automatically, so after obtaining it in the last 3rd of the game, he ends up becoming the team's healer (having also the best magic in addition to strength).
  • The Wild ARMs series loves this character type. The first game and Alter Code F had Rudy, the second had Brad, and the third had Clive. The fourth game pushes this build's traits to their extremes. Its Mighty Glacier is so slow that everyone else tends to get two turns for the character's one, but hits so hard that even the game's strongest Bonus Boss can be dropped with two of the character's physical attacks. Oh, and her name's Raquel, making her one of the rare female examples.
    • Although in Raquel's case, as one of her special abilities allows her to take an additional turn immediately after her current one, she can do this four times in a row with a full force meter. Most later storyline boss fights have some unusual form of evasion or other tactical requirement to compensate for this.
    • Greg from Wild ARMs 5 and Ragnar of Wild ARMs XF fit this example pretty well too.
  • Xenogears has Rico, who is extremely strong but predictably also very slow, enough so that a fairly well-leveled party including him will often finish battles before he ever gets to take a turn. The same applies to his gear. Thus, he seems to be a "love him or hate him" character, with most players either never using him, or never taking him out of the party.
  • Final Fantasy X's resident Badass, Auron, sadly falls into this trope as well.
    • However, his ultimate weapon gives him the First Strike ability, which gives him the first attack in any battle, even if the party's been caught off guard.
    • Caste haste on him or equip armor with the Auto-Haste ability though...
  • Chrono Trigger has Robo. Outstanding physical power; best defense of anyone; excellent overall endurance, given his healing powers... and slow. Ohkillmenowsoslow. Even with his speed cranked up to its maximum capacity, he STILL moves slow as hell compared to the others.
  • Dragoons in Vandal Hearts have high damage outputs, very high physical defense, and a movement rate which leads to them being left behind by everyone else in the party.
  • The golem summons in Summoner are tremendously powerful, immune to knockdown, and far too slow to be of any real use in a wide area fight. Fortunately, since they can be summoned and dismissed at will (for a minor AP hit), you can dismiss them when they've beaten one group of enemies and then re-summon them near another group.
  • In Tales of Symphonia the Mighty Glacier, Presea Combatir, is a twelve-year old girl with pink hair who wields axes bigger than she.
    • In the same vein, Anise Tatlin from Tales of the Abyss, and Karol Capel from Tales of Vesperia.
    • Max from Tales of Eternia should also count, as he holds ridiculously powerful gun skills that take a looong time to charge up, is slow as molasses in general, and have a visible edge in hit points over all the other characters.
    • Tales of Hearts' Innes is An Ice Person who moves slowly and hits hard with her gigantic axe. She learns techs that drop her defense in exchange for making her impossible to interrupt, allowing her to close with the enemy and hit with her slow, powerful combo openers.
  • Kakurenbo Battle Monster Tactics has a strongman named Goum (GOOMU, with a dash representing the second O by making the "go sound" continue), whose element is Earth, and he's a slow guy with high attack power. He can fit the role of a Stone Wall or a slow Glass Cannon due to the odd way his defenses are handled.
  • Matilda from Last Scenario is the second slowest party member and has the strongest attack power and second best defense.
  • Sonic Chronicles has a few Mighty Glaciers, the biggest of which is Omega. He only gets one command in base condition, but he has the highest power and armor ratings, and his base attack is the only base attack with a Blast property (hits enemies on the sides of the target). On top of that, he has the single most damaging solo move in the game (Machine Gunner, up to 12x 75% of base attack damage).
    • Big and Knuckles are relatively slow as well.
    • Chaos exemplifies this type in Sonic Battle, his run being the only thing slower than Emerl's default. However, his attacks have reach and knock you over- and when he does, you'll be lucky if you ever get back up.
  • In the X-Men Legends series, you get your fare share of very strong and very slow characters: Colossus, Juggernaut and Rogue. One exception might be Iron Man. He has the strength, but move at normal speed.
  • Kanji Tatsumi, from Persona 4 is a the biggest of all the main characters, and uses various shields and plates as his weapons, and his ultimate weapon is a round shield with a huge spike in the middle. His Personae, Take-Mikazuchi and Rokuten Maoh are big demonic robots, and their Strenght and Endurance stats tower over everything else,including his average Magic stat.
  • In Fallout 3, don a suit of T-45D power armor, gain 2 strength points and lose 2 agility points, and you become this.
    • The Behemoth is monstrously large and can eat a mini-nuke for breakfast. The first time he charges may be terrifying, until you notice it's not particularly fast, and avoidable if you're not too close when he begins. His slow attack rate but powerful strikes make Hit and Run Tactics necessary but manageable.
    • All Super Mutants are this to some extent, though some compensate for it with Gatling Good / More Dakka.
  • Adelbert Steiner is pretty slow in body, and before Character Development kicks in he's not exactly swift when it comes to brains, either. On the other hand, he can both give and take a tremendous amount of punishment.
  • In various Kingdom Hearts games, the colossal Lexaeus plays this to an extreme, being all brute force with extremely limited movement. In Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, Terra takes this role, as well, compared to Ven's lightning-quick, long combos and Aqua's focus on magic.
  • YMIR mechs in Mass Effect 2 are equipped with twin mass accelerator machine guns in one arm and a guided rocket launcher in the other, and their heavy shields and armor let them survive multiple full clips of slugs before being put down. Thankfully, their slow speed and large size allow you to keep your distance.
  • Mario and Bowser in Super Mario RPG both seem to follow this trope (yes, even though Mario is The Mario, he's the slowest in the game aside from Bowser.)
  • Jazz in Eternal Sonata. He easily has the highest HP and attacking power, but he's also the slowest character by far.
  • The "Iron Flesh" Pyromancy in Dark Souls turns your character into this. Defense and poise skyrocket, but your movement goes down to a crawl. Extremely useful if your strategy consists of standing in one place taking everything the enemy throws at you while you try to kill it first (a surprisingly viable strategy against many bosses).
    • There are a number of NPCs you can encounter that exemplify this, the two most notable are (1) Havel the Rock, whose equipment is so heavy that he's crawling slow but he WILL one-shot a bitch. And (2) Black Iron Tarkus, who takes a while to get around, but can easily go alone against the Iron Golem boss of Sen's Fortress.

Shoot'Em Up

  • In Touhou Hisoutensoku, Utsuho Reiuji falls under this. Her most powerful spellcard actually takes about a second to charge before use, but when it fires, it can take out over half the opponent's health bar.

Simulation Game

  • The X-Universe series has two versions of this; M3+ (ultra-heavy fighters) are very powerful and well shielded, but are even slower than their already slow M3 (fighter) cousins. Ships built by the Teladi also fit this; they're very slow, but mount ridiculously powerful shields.
  • Ace Combat 6 has the A-10A—it's (even moreso than before) a Lightning Bruiser against ground targets, but as before a Mighty Glacier in air-to-air combat. Highest Defense and Stability in the game, but it pays for that in Speed and Mobility, and due to its lack of any air-to-air special weapon the A-10A pilot must use the regular short-range missiles and/or the even-shorter-range gun for dogfighting.
  • Some of the Mechwarrior games have the Atlas mech. It's a 100-ton behemoth with weaponry and armor that allows it to face a group of smaller mechs all by itself and make it out alive, but nobody ever uses it because it has a maximum speed of thirty-something kph, when most other mechs have little trouble reaching 70. It's technically possible to put a better engine in it and make it faster, but doing that takes so much weight that everybody uses the already-fast-enough 100-ton Daishi instead.
    • In Mech Commander 2, it's possible to strip the Atlas of its armor and turn it into an incredibly slow glass cannon... One packed with enough weaponry to instantly kill anything in a single shot from each gun.
    • In one of the Mechwarrior 4 games, this is best played with a Daishi; strip its speed down to that of Atlas, and then stick light railguns to all its hardpoints and link them to the same trigger group, end result is a mech with pretty much the same performance stats and a long-ranged instant death attack providing you can hit a torso or cockpit, or simply amputate limbs off the mech', even an Atlas is prey to this. Glacier Cannon indeed. Alternatively just strip the speed and pile on more armor to the Daishi.
    • Just for accuracy, the Atlas moves at 3/5 in all its variations, which translates into a run speed of about 54kph. You're probably thinking the Annihilator, which DOES move at 32kph max, and is known for ludicrous firepower (most commonly, a quartet of class 10 autocannons). It's vulnerable to being plinked from extreme range, but if you're anywhere near it then it's definitely a mighty glacier.
      • Actually it isn't. The Annihilator sacrifices armor as well as speed, making it an exceptionally slow Glass Cannon and possibly pushing it into Awesome but Impractical territory, since it's absurdly easy to stay out of the range of its weapons while firing back with longer ranged cannons and lasers or getting behind and shooting it in the back.
      • The "Gausszilla" version with quadruple Gauss Cannons makes up for the Annihilator's total lack of mobility with the ability to one-shot-kill almost any mech in BattleTech.
  • Heavy fighters in Space Sim games are almost always Mighty Glaciers, but the GTF Ares from FreeSpace 2 stands out as an particularly notable example. It is slower than many bombers and severely deficient in maneuverability, but has a ton of shields and the ability to carry a truly obscene number of Trebuchet missiles, allowing it to simply lob missiles at every target within 5 kilometers and watch them all die.

Sports Game

Stealth Based Game

  • Assassin's Creed II has the Brutes and mercenarii. They can't chase with/join you in Le Parkour, but are more resilient and stronger. The former can smash through your guard, though the favor can be returned if you buy the appropriate training from Mario.

Tower Defense

  • Sanctum has the Tank, a very slow-moving, extremely high hitpoint enemy that pretty much requires headshots with a highly-upgraded sniper rifle to take out. Or just a fully upgraded Lightning Tower. After all, Lightning Can Do Anything.

Turn-Based Strategy

  • The Heavy class was one of the four classes in Gladius (along with Medium, Light and Animal) and fits the Mighty Glacier definition to a tee, even though its members can be male or female. They had a rock-paper-scissors advantage over Mediums.
  • In any given Fire Emblem game where you have Knight and General class characters, you have a Mighty Glacier. As these characters generally are barely mobile, often half the speed of anyone else, but will generally take a "No Damage" from most enemy units, while able to crush enemies with a single hit.
    • Knights are weak against magic, though, especially in the third game: due to how Critical Hits were calculated, the Graucalibur spell (which had a very high critical hit rate) was a massive Game Breaker against them, leading to the Fan Nickname "Can opener."
    • Arguably, the Great Knights from Fire Emblem 8 also fit. They do have more mobility than average since they were mounted units, but it was still much less compared with Paladins, Rangers, Valkyries or Mage Knights.
    • Hector, from Fire Emblem 7, is the lord version of the trope, eventually turning into a Great Lord to highlight this.
      • Even so, he's still much faster than his non-lord counterparts, getting double-attacks almost as often as Lyn or Eliwood.
      • That depends heavily on the RNG favoring him or not. If it gives you less Speed points... well, Hector is the epithome of this, and you may need to give him a Speedwing to fix it.
  • The Dwarves from Battle for Wesnoth, except for the Glass Cannon Ulfserker, are slower than most of the other races' units in terms of sheer movement, and are strong and tough individually, making them mighty glaciers for the most part. However, they aren't hindered by terrain as much as the other races, and in their domain, the mountains and caves, they're positively lightning bruisers. Other examples of mighty glaciers would be the human Heavy Infantryman, which is very glacial but also very mighty against certain enemies (though it has several weaknesses), and the Wose, which is similar but with slightly better mobility and fewer but more concentrated weaknesses. The Drake Clasher line and the Grand Knight are also mighty glaciers amongst Drakes and cavalry respectively, though on an overall basis they're still quick units.
  • The more powerful units in the Advance Wars series follow this trope, in the first game the medium tank had less mobility than the normal tank. Later games expanded this with the Neotank and the Megatank, of which the Megatank has less mobility, but both have more and more (in the case of the Megatank, a lot more) power and cost.
    • The Oozium from Dual Strike is definitely the best example of the trope, though. Capable of destroying ANY unit in one turn regardless of circumstances and with the highest defense in the game, its only limiting factor was that it could only move one space per turn. By comparison, Medium Tanks move 5 spaces, infantry moved 3, and even Mechs moved 2.
    • In Gameboy Wars 3, the promoted land units generally follow this trope for the most part. The higher rank air units avert it by being faster as well, but they are more specialized. The promoted submarine is a specific handling of this trope; it's faster, but it has less range with its normal weapon.
    • Grit, the Blue Moon CO, can't move and attack in the same turn with his specialty units. So to win in anything that involves a brawl, it's going to take awhile.
  • Star Control brings to the fray a number of Mighty Glacier ships, among them the pure brute-force Dreadnoughts and Marauders. Interestingly, the Earthling Cruiser has a number of traits here as well, despite being a cheap mass-produced vessel; it has the best crew complement (i.e. health) for anything near its cost, excellent long-range firepower with tracking systems surpassed by exactly one other ship, good turning rate to line up shots and point-defense lasers to sweep enemy fighters. The catch? It would kill the three-times-the-price Dreadnought without breaking a sweat... but its forward speed is so incredibly bad that the Mighty Glacier poster ship can simply chase it down and melt it to slag.
  • For the most part, all Super Robots in Super Robot Wars are Glaciers of various composition, while Real Robots serve as Speedsters. However, the most notable Original Generation Glacier is without a doubt the Giganscudo, which is all but useless in ranged battles without enough Will but takes hits so damn well when its armor and health are fully upgraded it doesn't really matter. There is also Mazinkaiser, which is trumped up as the "Unbreakable Defense" by Go Nagai, and it delivers(although in some incarnations, its stats are so unbalanced that it goes into Lightning Bruiser territory). Daitarn3 and the Mazinger series in general have always been the Glaciers of SRW, while Getter Robo is the Glass Cannon and the Gundams are Fragile Speedsters.
  • In the Disgaea series, if something has a base movement range of 3 or less and it's not a Squishy Wizard, it's generally one of these. Most of them are monsters, the most recurrent example being the Dragon, who's later joined by the Bone Dragon, Rifle Demon, and Wood Golem starting from the second game. They all have high attack and HP, and high to above average defense stats (Save for the Bone Dragon, who has horrible magic defense).
    • As well as the giga beast from Phantom Brave, and one of the slime-types. Mimic I believe. They have extraordinarily high defense and moderate attack, but half of their moves work off their defensive stat anyway. Mimics are literal Mighty Glaciers. Golems less so, having on average bad magical defense.
  • The Bangaas in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2. Most of their classes favor defense, offense, and HP over speed and evasion. In A2 however, the Trickster class has a decent amount of speed growth in exchange for less power.

Wide Open Sandbox

  • Epic Creatures in Spore, particularly in the Creature phase. They have at least more than 9 times the maximum HP of a regular creature and can instantly kill other creatures when attacking, but they are as slow as dirt.


Web Comics

  • From Problem Sleuth, this is exaggerated with Tootsie Roll Frankenstein Pickle Inspector, who has great attack, good defence, but moves so slow that it takes him several minutes to move several inches forwards.


Web Original

  • The Troll from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, favored son and hero of Newark, New Jersey is eight-foot tall, has lumpy green skin, and horns coming out of his forehead. Not the fastest fighter. But it takes a howitzer to even bruise him, and he can lift tanker trucks over his head, so when he does get around to hitting you, you're going to feel it for days.


Real Life

  • Tanks. They started out in The Great War as the ultimate Mighty Glaciers, with horrendous top speeds slower than that of a running infantryman, but great firepower, and nigh invulnerability to small arms fire. As wars became increasingly dynamic and mobile, though, tanks underwent progressive evolution to become Lightning Bruisers, with modern Main Battle Tanks striking an even balance between firepower, armor and mobility. The image, however, still sticks. The last true Glaciers would have to be the heavy monsters built or designed by the Nazis and Soviets in World War 2:
    • Later iterations of the Panzer VI Tiger battle tank fielded by Those Wacky Nazis were mighty glaciers. They had armour capable of withstanding anything two Allied tanks could throw at them, but their ridiculously underpowered engine forced them to move at a crawl. Tiger I was a Lightning Bruiser until the Germans decided it needs more armour and an improved gun. The result was Tiger II or Königstiger.
      • The Tiger II tank took this Up to Eleven. They were more like heavily armoured artillery positions, being far and away the most heavily armoured tank of their day. One of the few tanks that operated best on the defensive. Note that Tiger I was a Lightning Bruiser.
        • Not speaking of the tank destroyer version, Jagdtiger. It had 128 mm gun which could penetrate anything the Allies had on their disposal, and enough armour to protect a small town. It was usually driven into an ambush position, where it could best employ its assets - massive gun and massive armour. Jagdpanther was a similar tank destroyer version of Panzer V Panther.
        • The Tiger II actually had good mobility for it's weight class, provided it didn't break down due to overtaxed drive trains or lack of fuel.
    • The Nazis had several super-heavy tank projects. The Panzer VII Maus was built in 1944 and weighed 200 metric tons. The most powerful engine they could find for the thing could only move it at whopping 13 miles per hour. Then you have the Landkreuzer projects, which were never completed. The Ratte would be a 1000-ton mobile fortress armed to the teeth (including naval artillery), while the 1500-ton Monster would be armed with a railway artillery gun (800-mm; a single shell is twice the size of a Soviet T-34 tank). Both projects were scrapped in 1943, as their mass would make the tanks move at a snail's pace (if they could get them moving at all), or more critically, make a barn-sized target for even the high-altitude Allied aircraft.
    • British WWII Infantry Tanks (Mk II Matilda, Mk III Valentine and Mk IV Churchill). They had massive armour and decent firepower, but were sadly under-powered. They started off as Mighty Glaciers, but towards the middle of the war they were Stone Walls because their guns had become quite inadequate to deal with panthers and tigers.
  • The B-52 Stratofortress is a massive plane that needs eight jets to fly and can't break the sound barrier... but what it's meant to do, bomb the crap out of things, it does even better than the B-1B Lancers and B-2A Spirits supposed to replace it.
  • Ground attack planes. The idea is that it's going to buzz in, strike and buzz out - but unlike dive bombers, it approaches slowly enough to see its targets, while still having maneuverability limited by massive loadout, and stays rather low - so it can be fired upon by everything between handgun and howitzer, in addition to anti-air weapons proper. The obvious conclusion being that the plane will be hit a lot, and must be made robust enough to survive this.
    • The Germans called the Il-2 Shturmovik Betonflugzeug (Concrete Airplane) or Eiserne Gustav (Iron Gustav) for apparent reasons. It had all the aerodynamic properties of a Flying Brick, but it was notoriously difficult plane to shoot down. Its armor was so thick that some German pilots dumped their entire supply of ammunition into a Sturmovik without killing it. Even the canopy was known to sometimes stop 20mm cannon fire.
      • The Finns called it Maatalouskone (can be translated either as "Agricultural Machine" or "Crop Duster"). The name describes it well: large and slow plane, but hard to shoot down and able to belch out ordnance like weed spray.
    • A-10 Thunderbolt II, or as it is more often called the Warthog, is a rather slow aircraft (it can't break the sound barrier) has an insane amount of armor (1,200 pounds of it), can still fly if it is missing one engine and half a wing, and has a 30mm Gatling gun that shoots depleted Uranium shells.
    • Su-25 - "answer to A-10". Back when USSR had its turn with Afghanistan, the first version resisted autocannons and Blowpipe, but turned out to have the fuel tank above engines vulnerable, especially to to Stinger hits; later variants got improved armor, stopping losses to man-portable missiles. It survived Sidewinder hits, too. As to "doing unto others" part, twin 30-mm autocannon is the secondary weapon with modest magazine, the plane mainly relies on hardpoints. In comparison with A-10, differences are a close trade-off: somewhat lighter, but more agile [2] and versatile.[3]
  • While the Grumman F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat weren't particularly agile (and the Wildcat was dog slow as well), they could take an extreme amount of punishment and were among the only planes that could stand a chance of withstanding direct hits from a Mitsubishi Zero's cannons. Infamous Japanese ace Saburo Sakai once put six hundred rounds of ammunition into a Wildcat and it kept on flying.
    • Correction. The F6F Hellcat combined the F4F Wildcat's durability and firepower with the superior agility of the Zero, as well as far greater speed than both due to a much more powerful engine. That made it kill more aircraft than any other in the War, up to 5000 Zeroes and other Japanese fighters were shot down by Hellcats alone.
  • Battle trains and railway guns in general. Heavier than the largest tanks, but they can't be moved at all without railway tracks and a locomotive to tow them.
    • Schwerer Gustav was a heavy artillery piece which needed double tracked railroads to support it's weight, with 2500 people setting up the tracks. Once it was in position it would launch 800mm 7.1 metric ton shells to a position over 37000 meters away.
  • Turtle ships - early battleships from Korean admiral Yi Sun Shin. At the time Korea was attacked by the Japanese on fast light ships that could carry little to no deck artillery, and fought mostly by boarding. So the ship intended to counter this wasn't designed for boarding or ramming, but packed a lot of big cannons (firing both balls and fin-stabilized harpoons) and was wrapped in armor, with only masts and oars sticking out - even the top deck was protected with roof that had lots of spikes to stop the boarders right where archers from the narrow passage in the middle could shoot them point-blank. It also carried ready supplies for smoke cover and firefighting. Loading all this on top of a wide hull from thick and dense wood capable of taking strong recoil obviously made these ships sluggish - but nothing says "go away or go down" like a little floating fort.
  • Monitors. Self-propelled artillery in naval calibers and with good armor - not as good as some battleships, but the low profile is another advantage.
  • Cataphract cavalry. The ancient precursors of knights (who themselves were Lightning Bruisers), cataphracts had both horse and rider fully encased in scale, lamellar or mail armour. They were armed with long spear used with both hands. These guys never could do faster than trot, but they were pretty much invulnerable to arrows and javelins, and could break almost any period infantry. Romans calculated it took eight ranks of legionaries to stop a Parthian cataphract charge. Cataphracts eventually superseded legionaries in late Roman armies.
  • War Elephants.
  • The slugger. This type of boxer moves slowly and doesn't manouevre too much, but has extremely strong chin and even stronger punch. Usually one well-placed punch by a slugger is able to finish the boxing game.
  • Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. Not renowned for running ability but he'll smash the ball so hard he doesn't need to run.
  • In the marching band world, we have the bottom bass drum. The bass five/six/seven(!?) player is usually a big guy to better counter the weight of the drum, and also tall, so that when the drum is on, their long legs can get them further and their long arms can still get the right technique. In other words, big and slow, but got the loudest beats.
  • Rottweilers. They were bred to push carts, for crying it loud.
  • David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox. The man is slow as dirt when it comes to running. But when he hits the ball...
  • The Greek hoplite was designed to fight as a part of a huge, unstoppable steamroller; slow, but virtually impossible to halt with anything short of another hoplite formation. Later taken to it's logical conclusion by the Macedonian phalanx, which was even less manueverable, but even more unstoppable.
  • Former NFL nose tackle Ted Washington (and nose tackles in general). In roughly his last 8 seasons, Ted broke the scales at weights as low as 350 pounds to as high as 400+ pounds. While not a big playmaker, Ted regularly shoved offensive linemen (300+ pound men themselves) off with one hand while pulling down the ball carrier with the other. Too bad he couldn't actually catch a player in the backfield with a 20 minute head start.
  • A non-military example-A mountain being chewed up by a Bucket Wheel Excavator will take a few days to disappear. Unfortunately, it takes a few days to move a mile or so.
  • The Cool Train Norfolk and Western Y5/Y6 class was extremely strong so it could pull heavy coal trains over the Appalachian Mountains, but was very slow.
  • After his comeback, George Foreman was about as mobile as a glacier on Dramamine, but God help you if you stood within punching range.
  • Any bulldozer will qualify, but the Badass Israeli conversion of the Caterpillar D9 for the IDF is the best. It cannot go much faster than seven miles an hour (a fast walking pace), but is impervious to small and medium weapons. It can usually be seen razing houses and bunkers as part of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, but was also used for firefighting by burying the fire under the soil.
  • Baseball catchers- they squat nearly the entire time they're on defense, which has the side-effect of ruining their knees, so you're hard pressed to find ones that can run fast. There are, however, quite a few catchers who are power hitters.
  • You can become one if you train hard without proper muscle-stretching excersises. This is the origin of the phrase "Muscle Bound"- people who built their muscles extensively but (without proper weightlifting knowledge) severely damaged their joints. Strong and Slow.
  • It's believed that the largest sauropod dinosaurs like Diplodocus were extremely slow moving due to their sheer size and to conserve their energy, and may have only moved in slow, short bursts. However, their sheer size likely kept them off the menu of predators. Argentinosaurus may have weighed as much as 110 tons which for obvious reasons nobody wants stepping, stomping or landing on them. Many also possessed long, whip-like tails, which may have been used like bullwhips for defense. Imagine getting hit by a 60-foot bullwhip. Ouch.
  • This wrestling match is the mighty glacier facing off against a Fragile Speedster.
  1. ↑ In other words, Hakan is not extremely fast, but not too slow to be a full-on glacier
  2. ↑ rate of climb is almost twice better
  3. ↑ same 11 pylons, but Su-25T doesn't need to waste 2 on countermeasures and targeting pods, these systems are built-in - which leaves it with 2x 8 anti-tank missile launchers instead of a tank-cutting cannon, but those can be replaced with e.g. two fuel pods or antiship missiles
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