Rated "M" for Manly

Man's Life: For men only.
"Indiana Jones is the epitome of what all men strive to be. He's handsome, he's intelligent, he's single, sleeps around, he's got cash, he punches people, he travels the world, he can sleep with any of his students, he uses a whip, he punches people, he bangs his students in the locker room, women love him, he goes on adventures, he punches people, he can shoot people and get away with it..."
—Mr. Plinkett

Something that is fuelled to the end with testosterone. Here we see big, muscular men being badasses. Made by men for men. Expect to see Perma-Stubble, Carpets Of Virility, Stuff Blowing Up and large amounts of Rule of Cool. Most of the main characters are often grade-A badasses and sometimes Large Hams—although some of them are sometimes women, as long as they are Badass. Expect to see somebody shout a phrase WHERE! THEY! EMPHASIZE! EVERY! WORD! which can result in Memetic Mutation. Soundtrack is prone to be fueled by The Power of Rock.

Named after a line from the parody video "Counter-Strike For Kids".

In the anime fandom, the male lead of such shows is often also described as GAR, a term for characters who are so Badass that it's considered hot, even if you are normally not into that gender.

When those in charge think that a foreign video game would sell better with this aesthetic than the one it came with, you get the American side of American Kirby Is Hardcore.

The World of Badass is often the setting for this trope. Compare Darker and Edgier, Refuge in Cool, Awesomeness Is Volatile. Not directly related to Rated "M" for Money in any way but the potential for intersection between the two is high.

Editor's Note: This is for extreme manliness played seriously. For exaggerated manliness played for parody, see Testosterone Poisoning.

Contrast Chick Flick.

Examples of Rated "M" for Manly include:

Advertising

  • A lot of old forties and fifties print ads. Hilariously sexist, always manly.
  • An advertisement for a casino shows a man playing roulette with a squirrel next to him placing all his nuts on the table as his bet as the voice over goes "You can cash in now and save for a rainy day or you can be a man and bet it all." The ad is basically blasting men that don't play with risky big bets.


Anime & Manga

  • Megalo Box is somewhat of a retelling of Ashita no Joe. The boxing in this version has Gear, (and is called Megalo Box) which obviously makes the sport more dangerous. Oh, and here is the theme song .
  • Even for a cast dominated by Bishonen, we have Germany, a wurst-eating muscly fellow who also happens to be the gayest gay who ever gayed.

SUBMIT TO MY MANLINESS!!

    • Don't forget Hungary, who's arguably manlier than many of the male cast.
  • Akagi
  • Ashita no Joe
  • Bastard!!
  • Beelzebub
  • Berserk
  • Black Lagoon...except it's the women who act like this. Thus giving it some noticeable appeal to women who love shows with Action Girls and Badass women.
  • Blaster Knuckle
  • Bleach's most prominent examples are probably Genryusai Yamamoto and Kenpachi Zaraki.
    • Ikkaku had a dislocated shoulder. What does he do? Just flex it back in place.
  • Captain Harlock.
  • Chaosic Rune, and its sequel, Chaosic Rune ES (although ES takes the manliness Up to Eleven). Yes, it's a manga about a card game, but it's about a card game that, if you lose, you die in the same incredibly painful fashion your monster did (and the death will always be in excessively graphic detail). Hot blooded, manly men and well endowed (95% of them, anyway) women fight evil villains in epic battles that include badass dragons, giant motorcycle robots, magical monsters, and more. And along with cards that summon monsters, there's cards that summon weapons such as swords, pistols, and shotguns. Yes, shotguns. It's like if Yu-Gi-Oh! were written by Bruce Campbell and drawn by Chuck Norris.
  • Cowboy Bebop is packed to the brim with references to manly action movies, a soundtrack packed with upbeat jazz and rock music, awesome fight scenes (including non-ironic use of Gun Kata!), and MANLY plot threads such as a guy trying to find a girl he lost all while battling his pretty-boy arch rival and another guy struggling with his dark past as a cop and still haunted by the girl he loved leaving him. Oh, and did we mention Faye Valentine?
  • Digimon Savers
  • Dragonball Z is about men with muscles so large (and in places where muscles aren't really supposed to exist) as to be an impediment to motion in scenarios even remotely grounded in reality fighting one another in increasingly violent and deadly battles (everybody except the Fake Ultimate Hero dies at least once). Women feature, but mainly as a means by which to introduce sons into the mix. And breasts. By the time the series ended, the characters could quite literally tear the universe apart by shouting loudly enough, and were probably in danger of destroying the planet they were on if they so much as tripped.
    • Hold on, there are as many daughters born during the series as sons.
    • Although save Videl, none of them DO anything, GT aside.
    • Foul! Bulma allows for all the technological impossibility, and 18 beat up Vegeta without breaking a sweat.
  • Eyeshield 21 has this in spades, though given that it's about American Football, it's a bit of a given. Especially notable given that it's a post-Millennium Shonen Jump series that mostly manages to avoid Bishonen Jump Syndrome in an era rife with it.
    • Many of the characters go straight into Testosterone Poisoning territory, considering most of the cast have some pretty impressive muscles and they're only in high school. For example, the 15-year-old whose 6'7, eats nothing but meat, looks like a caveman, and smashed a car head on with his bare hands when he was in grade school.
  • Fairy Tail Gray Fullbuster and Elfman. He (Elfman) believes everything should be settled with fists.
    • Elfman's usually talking about things that are "Man", or what a Man should do, and all of his emotions are Man as well. It goes so far that in recent episodes in both manga and anime other characters question whether Elfman himself understands what he is saying.
    • Don't forget Natsu.
  • Fist of the North Star in which a Bruce Lee knockoff defeats post-apocalyptic biker gangs by touching them gently in such a manner as makes their heads explode You don't even know you're already dead.. Also features exploding shirts in every episode.
    • There was the following description of this manga in the internet:

"Every page oozes massive amounts of testosterone. I once knew this girl who refused to read it because she was afraid she'd get pregnant."

WARNING: The following opening sequence is the most manly sequence EVER CONCEIVED. The sheer amount of testosterone displayed may make you start karate chopping RANDOM OBJECTS!!

  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Profound manliness has been passed down the Armstrong line for generations!!
  • G Gundam: the most manly Gundam series ever, if only you can get pass how ridiculous it is; ridiculously awesome, that is.

This hand of mine glows with an awesome power! Its burning grip tells me to defeat you! Take this -- my love, my anger, and all of my sorrow! Shining Finger! GO GO GO!
Here I go! This hand of mine is BURNING RED! Its loud roar tells me to grasp victory! ERUPTING! BURNING! FINGER!!! AND NOW! HEAT END!
Erupting Burning Finger! Sekiha! LOVE-LOVE! TENKYOKEN!!!

  • Getter Robo ("If there's a hole, then it's a man's job to thrust into it!")
    • Never mind that every character, unless they represent Bald of Awesome, has gigantic sideburns. Even the women. Even the dinosaurs.
  • Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin
  • Golgo 13
  • Just about everything by Go Nagai, but especially the one that started it all, Mazinger Z.
  • Grappler Baki
  • Gintama. Especially in serious arcs
  • Great Teacher Onizuka
  • Hajime no Ippo
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It's been described as "the glam version of Fist of the North Star" for a good reason: even though 90% of the characters are well-dressed, sparkly attractive guys, it oozes testosterone, blood and raw fighting spirit from every page. It's not called manga(emphasis on MAN) for nothing.
  • Kaiji
  • Kinnikuman has muscular superheroes and supervillains duking it out Professional Wrestling style, typically while wearing nothing but a pair of short shorts. It's very title translates to "Muscle Man."
  • Kongoh Bancho. The main character crowns the first chapter by carrying a car through a Yakuza base, and can use his hands to carve a wall into a relief so beautiful as to make a grown otaku weep.
    • A lethal dose of manliness is breaking through! Try not to get addicted!
  • Lupin III
  • Mahou Sensei Negima Jack Rakan can break the laws of magic and physics and general common sense with sheer "guts." Even his own power (reflected back at him) isn't enough to kill him! If he does die, he can still come back and give the hero a lecture if he wants! He's also the only character in the series that Barbie Doll Anatomy doesn't apply to...
  • Naruto: A and his father the Third Raikage.
    • Also Gai with YOUTHFULNESS!!!
  • NEEDLESS, and half of the cast are Little Miss Badass.
  • One Piece
  • Riki-Oh
  • Rokudenashi Blues
  • Saint Seiya: Phoenix Ikki epitomizes this trope in every way possible. And not too far away, Dragon Shiryu, who is at his strongest without his armor, in a series where almost every character has one and wearing it is supposed to heighten your abilities to their max.
  • Sakigake Otokojuku
  • Space Adventure Cobra
    • Heck, Buichi Terasawa's works in general (Goku Midnight Eye, Karasu Tengu Kabuto).
  • GaoGaiGar and its OVA sequal Gao Gai Gar Final, in addition to Hot-Blooded, runs on this trope.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is all about drills. And fighting. Breasts feature prominently in the background. And the manliness is so awesome it warps reality. Manliness warping reality is actually the driving force of the plot.
    • And let's not forget that even the girls are manly enough to warp reality.
      • Heck even the pet piglet is manly enough to warp reality.
    • Manliest of all is Kamina. So much so just wearing his Cool Shades at least triples your manliness. WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK HE IS?!
      • Kamina will make a man out of you!
      • It's a show all about doing the impossible, seeing the invisible, breaking the unbreakable. Fighting the POWAH.
      • Bah. By the end of the series Simon out-manlies Kamina by miles.
      • And yet the Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a gigantic version of Kamina.
        • Correction, it's a low-scale physical representation of Kamina-sama's soul!
        • It's actually a combination of Kamina, Kittan, Simon and Lordgenome. People just think it's Kamina because it has his cape.
      • Lord Genome might top them all. He's a giant muscular man with an impressive spiky beard and spiral-shaped chest hair who goes around shirtless despite essentially ruling the world. He is so manly HE DESTROYS GIANT ROBOTS WITH HIS OWN BARE HANDS. HE CONSIDERS USING A GIANT ROBOT IN A BATTLE AS "HOLDING BACK".
        • He ate a Big Bang. As in for breakfast. Without milk. Devoured the damn thing whole and then turned into a gigantic-ass drill. Said drill was directly responsible for the defeat of the Big Bad.
      • Simon invented time-space teleportation just to punch Rossiu in the face.
    • As described to an anime club once: "Gurren Lagann is about brotherhood, giant robots, and killing furries with phallic symbols."
  • Soul Eater: BLACK*STAR WILL SURPASS GOD!!!!! YAHOOOOOOO!
  • Toriko is about finding the most dangerous animals on the planet, beating them to death with your bare hands and then feasting on their eye-wateringly delicious flesh.
    • Half of the group that fight with Toriko has the ability of Flexing their upper bodies to ridiculous levels. Known as "Knocking. This of course includes Toriko himself
  • Trigun
  • Vagabond
  • While Vandread is not an example by itself, Tarak (the planet where men live, essentially, as a One-Gender Race) definitely is.
    • And the Tarak men make children together, which may either negate this trope or make it even sexier.
  • Vinland Saga. It's about vikings. It'll put hair on your chest.
  • Legend of Galactic Heroes. As a poster once put it "One does not simply walk into Iserlohn, after all. We're talking about knife-fighting Germans on spaceships, people." Indeed, the show is filled with larger-than-life "galactic heroes". Special mention has to go to Oskar von Reuenthal and Walter von Schenkopp, though.

Comic Books


Fanfics


Film

  • The 13th Warrior
  • 300
  • Apocalypse Now. Along with Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, this suffers from Do Not Do This Cool Thing syndrome. Most young men want nothing more than to attack a Vietcong village with helicopters and napalm, and then go upriver in a boat, whilst wearing a flak jacket and machine-gunning peasants. Despite ostensibly being anti-war films, all of the aforementioned make war look awesome.
  • Even though the movie itself doesn't qualify, Colonel Miles Quaritch from Avatar definitely counts.
  • Bloodsport
  • Ben-Hur, mostly thanks to the Chariot Race and Galley Slave scenes
    • Anything with Charlton Heston, in fact. Whenever his broad shoulders crowd out everything else onscreen, the testosterone factor in the room increases hundredfold!
  • Beowulf. A 7' tall CG Ray Winstone takes on a much taller, hideous Grendel with: No sword, No shield, No armor, no clothes of any kind. And wins. And proceeds to dismember his arm using a massive door from a Viking mead hall. Nuff said.
  • Billy Jack
  • The Bodyguard: Because Kevin Costner is a manly man who is a stoic, obsessed with Samurai stuff and makes his living bodyguarding celebrities. And Whitney Houston will always love him.
  • The Boondock Saints

Rocco: Men build things. Then we die. It's in our fucking DNA! It's what we do!

"You're some kind of big, fat, smart bug, aren't you?"
"Do you want to know more?"

Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.


Literature

  • The Icelandic Sagas and Gesta Danorum.
  • The modus operandi of Baen Books
  • Belisarius Series has so many Badasss and so much badassery that one can feel the heat from all the manliness warming the covers of the books.
  • Conan
  • The Dark Tower
  • Dune
  • Fight Club
  • The Three Musketeers is really an early example of this trope. The main characters' lives apparently consist of entirely of sex, drinking and fighting—the last for a cause if one is available, but one isn't really necessary.
  • Flashman, in an odd way.
    • By extension, Ciaphas Cain HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, who was largely inspired by Flashman. He keeps up a Manly-and-Badass-yet-humble facade to hide the fact that he'd rather be shuffling papers at a nice safe desk instead of going toe-to-toe with Hive Tyrants and Khorne Beserkers (though the skill with which he fights said monstrosities makes it a really convincing facade).
  • The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the rest of the Trojan Cycle.
  • Lankhmar
  • Louis L'amour, or more specifically, any of the hundred-odd Western books he wrote, which have largely been responsible for half the scripts of the Western genre of filmmaking.
  • Moby Dick
  • Norse Mythology which extols heroism, courage, loyalty, perseverance, sacrifice and more heroism. Contains lots of stories about slaying giants and assorted monsters. And it's idea of heaven is going to war in the day and partying & making love (with those valkyries) all night.
  • Shogun
  • Snow Crash
  • Beowulf:
And Beowulf is like: "I'm afraid it's true, after swimming for a solid week in full plate armor, I'm afraid I can't say I beat Breka. But in my defense, I was slightly slowed down by the nine sea monsters I killed along the way!"
—Red, Overly Sarcastic Productions
  • There exists an entire subgenre of pulp fiction known as men's adventure.
    • As illustrated in these magazines:
  • The Dresden Files, Riding a Zombie T-Rex. Nuff said.
  • The Executioner series, featuring the role model for The Punisher, Mack Bolan.
  • The Destroyer series, featuring Remo Williams and Chuin, Master of Sinanju.
  • A lot of stuff written by Roger Zelazny.
  • The Manly Handbook, by David Everitt & Harold Schechter. Find it on Amazon, you won't be sorry.
  • The Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness, by the Von Hoffman Bros. Also on Amazon.
  • The Hebrew Bible has Samson, who kills Philistines by the hundreds, and King David, who does that plus runs a country, screws the beautiful women in his harem, and writes poetry.
  • The Lord of the Rings
  • Jurassic Park
  • Jack Reacher
  • Wereworld is about as manly a young adult fantasy novel can get with Therianthropes ripping each other apart from chapter 3 onwards
  • Tarzan. A muscular jungle guy, who fights big apes and crocodiles. 100% manly!
  • HP Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, or at least the character, Randolph Carter. In Dream-Quest, Carter scales mountains, rides Nigh-Gaunts, allies with the Ghouls, is the cause of several full-scale wars and goes toe-to-toe with Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos. Then in Through he Gates of the Silver Key, he ascends reality, discovers he meaning of life, becomes an alien then travels millions of light-years back to Earth with nothing but his stash of space-weed to help get him through it.
  • Many of William Hope Hodgson's stories (including his first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig) feature small groups of men (typically led by a Badass) who face off against Eldritch Abominations, sometimes an entire Zerg Rush of them; even in the stories where the heroes lose (or die), they sure don't go down without a fight. Hodgson himself was something of a Real Life badass, which tends to make the manliness seem that much more authentic.
  • Rudyard Kipling, Robert Service, Henry Rider Haggard and several other Victorian authors.
  • Poul Anderson: Wrote about vikings, Roman soldiers,space merchants, space spies, space warriors, babynapping elf kings, historical badasses in a cross-dimensional tavern, dark age warlords, a medieval baron who conquers a space empire with longbows and on and on. He also helped found the Society for Creative Anachronism.
  • Longfellow's Village Blacksmith is a gentle peaceful soul. But he is a "mighty man with strong and sinewy hands" and his arms are "as strong as iron bands."
  • The Winds of War and War and Remembrance features a whole Badass Family going round the world fighting evil empires. And oh yes the author considers the US Navy really manly. Guess what he was doing at the time?
  • History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: A big series of nonfiction books about Stuff Blowing Up.
  • The Great Game and anything else by Peter Hopkirk. Another nonfiction series. All about British spies and Russian explorer-spies struggling for power amid deserts, mountains, ruins, and natives who might be annoyed at their activities.

Live-Action TV

  • Captain James T. Kirk
  • Justified
  • 24
  • Deadliest Warrior
    • Spike TV as a whole. It's the result of taking "Rated M for Manly" and building an entire 24 hour a day TV channel around it, not at first, but now they have distilled their lineup. If it's not howling-in-your-face overdone manliness, if it's not about death or booze or babes you'll never get, it doesn't belong on Spike. Its Chick Flick equivalent is Oxygen, and its nerd equivalent is Syfy.
  • Married... with Children
  • With Hot Blood, hot girls, and football, there's no other way to describe Kamen Rider Fourze.
  • Ninja Warrior (Essentially American Gladiators on crank.)
    • For that matter, American Gladiators itself. The third co-host of the show was Larry Csonka, the manliest man to ever play fullback, and the events that include wrestling, an urban assault course, beating each other with sticks, a game called Powerball that was the deadliest version of Red Rover ever, and finally, The Eliminator.
  • Dean Winchester.
    • Don't forget John Winchester. He is Dean's role model, after all.
      • Lets not forget Bobby Singer.
        • Sure Sam Winchester seems like the sensitive one at first, until he starts ripping off vampire heads with barbed wire.
          • Especially whenever his brother's life is threatened.
            • Don't underestimate badass nerdy angels.
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand
  • The Sopranos - sex, drugs, violence, male bonding, fatherhood, and diatribes about the emasculated state of contemporary Western society abound. Frequently subverts itself, though, by reminding viewers that most of the "manly men" in question are in fact morally bankrupt human beings whose inability to express themselves in any way other than aggression makes both them and their families miserable.
  • The UFC. That's all that needs to be said.
  • Walker, Texas Ranger. Let's cut to the chase: it's a television show featuring Chuck Norris. Hell, he sings the intro. Just listening to it is enough to make every woman within 5000 miles pregnant. With triplets. And all of them will have beards.
  • Ron Swanson. As the man himself said: "Every three weeks, I have to sand down my toenails. They're too strong for clippers."
  • Mad Men - what man doesn't want to be Don Draper?
  • Human Wrecking Balls is a show about enormous men that break everything they can WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!
  • Stargate SG-1 How Colonel Jack O’Neill has not been mentioned yet is beyond me. Teal'c also deserves to be on this list. Lieutenant Colonel John Shepherd and Ronon Dex of Stargate Atlantis do too.

Mythology


Music

"Hot blooded, bold, and handsome. Fast and athletic, determined and couragous. With a body like steel, and eyes like fire. I am what you want: The ultimate man!"

We'll take away the fuel from the fiends -
They won't have any left to stoke they cauldrons!

  • The Who
  • Greece's 2010 Eurovision entry Opa is VERY much this trope.
  • WASP
  • ZZ Top
  • Thrash Metal. Fast drumming, heavy, brutally melodic riffing, and harshly chanted vocals. Nothing says manly like that.

Other


Professional Wrestling

  • Specific examples aren't exactly needed here since a staple of pro wrestling stereotypes in the general populous are muscular dudes wearing nothing but trunks hitting each other with chairs or raving about how awesome they are/you're about to get your ass beat at the next big show. It's obvious it was meant to be something of a showcase of manliness from the get-go. However, if you need some standouts...
    • Macho MAN Randy Savage. Nothing else needs to be said other than 'OOOOOOOOOH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
    • If any of you guys think Stone Cold Steve Austin should have a place in this trope, GIMME A HELL YEAH!!
      • HELL YEAH!!!!!!
    • IF YA, SMEEELLLLAAALA!!!! WHAT THE ROCK... IS COOKIN'!!!
    • William Regal's original WWE entrance music (when known as Steven Regal) was "HE'S A MAAAAAAN, SUCH A MAAAAAAN, HE'S A REAL, A REAL MAN'S MAN" while he would do manly things like mixing concrete, chopping wood and squeezing his own orange juice.
    • Who's next on the list!? Goldberg, YOU'RE NEXT!


Tabletop Games

  • Warhammer 40,000 is the manliest tabletop game in existence. From its fluff to the posing of its models, everything about 40K drips pure, unbridled, unfiltered, grimdark MANLINESS! Some examples include:
    • A demi-god revives a walking war engine the size of the Empire State Building simply by touching it and saying "BE HEALED, MACHINE SPIRIT!"
    • A crazed, speed-obsessed Ork ramps his kustom bike off a cliff and slams through 12 Void Shields to enter the nuclear core of a walking war engine the size of a building and kills the entire crew while he's still on fire from breaking the shields. The burning skulls of the engine's drivers are now mounted on that Ork's bike.
    • Ordinary men with t-shirts flak jackets, flashlights laser guns, and standard issue balls of steel, battling metal zombies, gigantic all-devouring bug monsters, super-advanced aliens, ancient manipulators who have had thousands of years to perfect their methods of war, hulking psychotic genetically engineered warriors that live only to fight, and mindblowing horrors from beyond space and time...and sometimes managing to win. The fact that they've got some amazing tanks and truly badass leaders helps.
    • Newborn infant travels through a Negative Space Wedgie unharmed, crash-lands on an icy hellhole and subsequently gets Raised by Wolves. Eventually he beats the most powerful human in existence in a drinking contest and then gets to lead an army of space Vikings across the galaxy. Face it, Leman Russ is the pure distilled essence of manliness.
    • The Orks and Space Wolves are basically entire factions of Manliness. To wit:
      • The Orks were inspired from Highschool Football hooligans while every other faction had it's roots in real-life armies (one of which is the spartans). They only care about Fighting (shooting and smashing faces), Food and Fast Cars, and their form of promotion is beating the crap out of the boss. They've also managed to fire guns which had no triggers or bullets, made the color red into instant speed potions, and invented space travel using a junk pile.
      • The Space Wolves are all Drunken Boistrous Bruisers. They are the only faction to be considered "good" in the setting, mainly because their leader holds a Daemon Axe, and still managed to intimidate the Inquisition from hurting innocents through brute force. They also ride wolves into battle, wolves the size of cars, and one of their more notable members managed to get laid 12 times within one night. Everyone has a badass beard and prior to the Grey Knight retconn they were the only non-chaos faction to survive in the warp without turning evil.
      • Ah, but what are these two compared to Khorne and his followers? He's a god of war, rage, strength, martial honour, battle and single combat, and is depicted as an impossibly muscular warrior with a horned, wolf's head sitting atop a massive throne of skulls floating in an endless sea of blood and his plane of existence is basically a site of never ending conflict. And his worshipers are giant, axe brandishing, war loving Blood Knights who also tend to be the best melee combatants in the setting.
    • If ever there was a game that was made of pure 100% mansauce, Warhammer would be that game!
    • God himself could not sink this game!
      • Correction: The only possible way God himself could sink this game would be by destroying the entire planet Earth by blasting it down to it's component atoms, then hurling said atoms into the sun, then throwing the atom filled sun into a black hole. Then probably throwing that black hole into another black hole. But that would be cheating. And it still probably wouldn't work. Bitch.
    • In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, even the nuns walk around with flamethrowers and pistols that shoot miniature rockets.
    • A third-person shooter of the universe is being created, starring the Space Marines (Titled Space Marine too, actually). The manliness of the game has already shown with footage of the Player Character jumping off the air transport he's on effortlessly when it was hit and losing altitude.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Battle may not be as over-the-top as it's erstwhile sci-fi spinoff, but it's no slouch in the manliness department.
    • In normal High Fantasy settings, the elves are somewhat effeminate, the humans resemble real-life humans, and the dwarves are manly. In Warhammer, the elves are manly, the humans are beyond manly, and the dwarves make Chuck Norris look like a milk-drinking wimp.
      • The Warriors of Chaos make them all look like dickless pansies. They're an incredibly muscular, bearded, daemon-worshiping, One-Man Army Viking warrior race who thrive in the most inhospitable areas of the Old World, and who are clad in spiky, skull-studded Conan gear. And their best fighter tend to be eight foot tall Norse demigods clad in really,really intimidating plate armour (with skulls and spikes everywhere), wielding weapons most men struggle to lift and who are able to wrestle Bloodthirsters to the ground.
    • The humans in Warhammer fight many of the same gargantuan demonic monstrosities as the humans of Warhammer 40,000, but instead of artillery and lasers they've got steel breastplates, matchlock muskets, and swords. They still win.
  • War Machine. Here is a quote:

This is a game about aggression. This is the game of metal on metal combat. This is fuel injected power hopped up on steroids. This is WARMACHINE - the battle game that kicks so much ass we have to use all capital letters.


Video Games

  • Anarchy Reigns
  • Asura's Wrath is quickly becoming manliness embodied. The main character has as much raw rage as Kratos, if not more, and takes on demons, gods, demigods, and anything else that gets in his way with pure manliness and rage to keep him going. At one point he fights an enemy that is larger than the planet, gets into a punching contest with the enemy's finger that's so intense that he breaks his arms off, then kills the guy with one final punch. And this is just an early boss fight. The following boss fights are even crazier. The best part? Asura's reaction to being faced with an opponent the size of the planet and tries to crush him with a finger the size of a mountain? Bring It. Oh, and the next few levels, Asura will fight enemies with just his feet, head, and rage, since he destroyed his arms taking out the last boss. But Asura doesn't care, that's more than enough. Asura only has five weapons: his fists, feet, head, his rage, and his planet sized cahones.
    • In a Bit of Irony, the game itself is rated T and C in America and Japan respectively, though it it is rated M and Pegi 18 in Australia and Europe.
  • Bad Dudes: Are you a bad enough dude to play this game?
  • Borderlands is for Real Gamers.
  • Dynasty Warriors: Lu Bu, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei best exemplify this trope. Deng Ai as well.
  • Brutal Legend. This is the best descriptor that Brutal Legend could have possibly received!
  • Another Double Fine work, Trenched, actually uses the magazine at the top of this page as source material.
  • Cho Aniki, though depending on who you ask it may be the wrong kind of manly.
    • On that note, Muscle March.
  • Contra
  • Dead Space: One man, alone, armed only with power tools, takes on a ship full of space zombies. And his most powerful weapon is his almighty boot.
    • In the future, the engineers are more badass than an entire warship full of armed soldiers.
    • In the future, flamethrowers are considered power tools.
    • Dead Space 2 delivers even more Boot-on-Necromorph action.
  • Devil May Cry
  • Doom
  • BlazBlue. Bang Shishigami. 'Nuff said.
  • Dragon Age Try and pretend the trailers aren't fueled by this trope. Whether your character is a man or a woman, the 100% badass is mandatory.
  • Dragon Age 2 is slightly less over-the-top about it, but is arguably even more awesome.
    • The Qunari as a whole are incredibly manly, standing over 7 feet tall and going anywhere bare chested, with red warpaint and a permanent scowl on their faces. Entering their camp is like walking into a gym and a biker bar at the same time.
  • Duke Nukem is quite literally the embodiment of all that is badass.
  • F-Zero; this game not only brings us Captain Falcon, but Samurai Goroh, Black Shadow, Super Arrow, and tons of other muscular masked racecar drivers. In a Japanese game with Loads and Loads of Characters, there is only one Bishonen in the game (Jack Levin) and even he's manlier then most!
  • Gungrave. How about killing alien zombie gangsters with hand cannons on each hand and a BFG hanging from your back, or Katana fighting Tanks with a Blind Badass Longcoat wearing Deadpan Snarker (said katanas have pistols on the handles) or Electrocuting said Zombie alien gangsters with an electric guitar wielded by a Rocking Ghost that looks like a Vash The Stampede expy? and that is not counting the Bosses.
  • Dwarf Fortress, a game where judicious use of magma is the solution to any problem, you can throw serrated steel disks at goblins and have their leg end up in a tree nearby, and people have devised death traps that collapse entire mountains to kill an invasion, freeze the opponents in an ice block, and turn the entire ocean into obsidian. It also has a learning curve described by some as a learning cliff. Oh, and you can dig a tunnel down to HELL, and fight off an army of demons.
    • And in Adventure Mode, you can wrestle a bear with your bare hands, and if it rips one of your arms off, you can then beat it to death with your freshly severed arm. If it rips off your legs, quit being a pansy, just keep on it! If it rips off your other arm, you can bite it to death!! And, once dead, you can sit down on it's corpse and drink a beer while you wait for the bleeding to stop. What, healing potions? What healing potions? All a man needs is a beer and a short sit down while they wait to see if they're gonna bleed to death. And even if you lose both arms and both legs, you're expected to keep going.
  • Fate/stay night: The whole Internet is GAR for Archer.
    • On the same token, Tsukihime... sorta. The only living guys, other than the Big Bad (who is just plain Ax Crazy), are so absurdly manly that you'll grow a beard from playing just one route.
    • This only apply to the characters and even then they are not even trying to "manly." The games sell themselves as action dramas, with heavy doses on the plot and drama. The games are fairly free of Testosterone Poisoning, especially the senseless kind.
  • Quake
    • You jump/fly around the world, gib everything in front of you and you die a lot. Imagine that, at infinite.
  • Gears of War. "Delta Squad is in your house, bitch! You hear that shit? All you grubby-ass bitches are going down! Like, way down! Dead down! So down you ain't gonna know which way is up! Your asses are gonna be crying to your skank-ass Queen, 'Oh Mommy, don't let the bad man hurt us!' Fuck you! We gonna whoop yo momma's ass! WHOO!"
  • God Hand. Everything about God Hand is powered by 100% high-octane, weapons-grade, enriched testosterone, and 50% slapstick comedy. Yes, that is 150% of AWESOME. Therefore, God Hand probably straddles the line between this and Testosterone Poisoning.
  • In just the first 10 minutes of God of War, you get to make Kratos literally tear people in half, rip the wings off of a harpy, gouge a Hydra head's eyeballs out, and impale another head on the mast of a ship. It only gets better from there...
    • In number 2, you start off by fighting the Colossus, a giant animated statue using a man that would bring Leonidas to his knees in shame, then just move on from there.
    • In three, you start off by fighting the leviathan, the apocalyptic living embodiment of the sea itself, as it is destroying the Titans who are climbing up Mount Olympus to wage war with the gods. Even more epic than it sounds. And then it's god slaughtering time.
    • The handheld version sets you off against a Cyclops as your first big boss. Well, that's understandable, smaller platforms gonna mean WHAT THE FUCK SOMETHING JUST ATE THE DAMN CYCLOPS!
  • The live-action trailer for Halo 3: ODST. Need we say more?
    • You can say the whole Halo series represents this trope, especially when Master Chief appears in it.
  • MadWorld
  • Marathon
  • Mass Effect
    • Mass Effect 2 in the words of Miranda Lawson He's a hero, a bloody icon. obviously referring to y'know who.
    • Mass Effect 3 Prepare to also shed those Manly Tears due to the game's obvious nature.
  • Mercenaries
  • Mortal Kombat: FINISH HIM!!!
  • Painkiller
Painkiller is in the same bucket as Serious Sam and the original DOOMs in that it serves as an antidote to fancy-pants complex modern FPSes. There are no stealth elements, no key hunting, no escort quests, no dorky support characters dribbling in your ear, no mission objectives besides kill everyone. It's just you, some guns, and the entire population of Murdertown between you and where you need to be.
—Yahtzee, severely Caustic Critic of Zero Punctuation.
  • Conker's Bad Fur Day: Even the money smokes cigars like a Badass.
  • Prototype. Alex Mercer kung fu kicks helicopters and tackles tanks, making them explode!
    • The game it was a Spiritual Successor to, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, is pretty much the same. You are The Hulk! And nothing can stop you!
      • You can catch a cruise-missile mid-flight, and throw it at a robot the size of a building. You can skateboard on top of a bus, destroying everything in your path. You can crush a car into boxing gloves. You can smash your fists together so hard that everything in a hundred-foot radius of you is sent flying.
  • Rastan
  • Resident Evil 4 & 5.

MCChris: Meanwhile in Resident Evil 4 they're like 'BITCH! zombies comin up the hill shoot 'em in the head! shoot 'em in the head! Grab the shotgun! you don't gotta reload we done did that shit for ya! What are ya pressing select for? you don got time to make a profile bitch zombie's in the room SHOOT 'EM IN THE HEAD shoot em in the head! he killed your parents! His axe is on fire! SHOOT HIM IN THE HEAD'

  • Rune
  • Scarface: The World is Yours. Imagine Tony managed to escape from the finale of the movie alive. He now remembers how he was the baddest mofo around, and it's your goal to make all of Miami and beyond take notice that Tony's back and he's BAD—by literally rebuilding your Reputation (your experience points in this game). Your manliness (which you can build by doing macho things like shooting guys in the nuts and making timely—and profane—taunts) is literally measured in "Balls", which you can then use to go into a brief Unstoppable Rage.
  • Serious Sam
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It's the first game in the series to be rated Teen, and Link can turn into a wolf.
    • He owes some of that gumption to his predecessor, the Hero of Time, who once took on a giant, fire-breathing Dodongo with nothing more than a stylish bracelet and some bombs. And that was back when he could still fit in most overhead storage compartments.
      • Let's also not forget the adult Hero of Time's battle cries.
  • The Elder Scrolls: Arena features a beefy man-among-men blacksmith who forges swords with nothing but his tight pants, Fabio hair and his thick, hardened muscles.
    • The teaser trailer to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Narrated by Max Von Sydow with a Norse-inspired choir and orchestra in the background.
      • We might add that the trailer features a man weathering the full force of a dragon's flames with nothing but a wooden shield, then shouting it down before summarily kicking its ass.
      • Skyrim will go down in history as one of great examples of this trope. The game is set in a land of fantasy Vikings, now in the grip of civil war. Around you, a great empire has crumbled, and its remnant struggles against Nazi elves. The world is about to die, devoured by a dragon god whose reptile servants already roam the skies. And you're the legendary Dragonborn, the only one who can stop them. You kill dragons in droves and eat their souls to gain their might.
  • Any of the Warcraft games, but specifically all installments with Samwise Didier as the main artist. Dear lord, even the elves are gigantic beefcakes you wouldn't find outside of a professional body builder contest.
    • Until World of Warcraft's first expansion came along and wrecked it, by adding Blood Elves.
    • There is a certain (repeatable) quest, the premise of which is that your character is admiring a giant spear, not sentient, or magical, or enchanted. But it radiates so much manly that your character looks to the horizon, spots a Proto-Drake and decides that only one of you will live to see the dawn. To reiterate: This spear is so manly that simply LOOKING at it inspires you to kill dragons. With your bare hands, no less.
    • If you're gonna include Warcraft, then you can't forget StarCraft or Diablo.
    • Starcraft2 gives us Tychus Findlay: a Space Marine in Power Armor (that's not all that necessary,as he's already huge and muscular), who smokes enormous cigars, drinks hard, fights hard, carries a minigun, pilots a gigantic war machine that qualifies as a One-Man Army... Face it: You want to be this guy.
      • Up until the point that Raynor shoots you in the face because of your Face Heel Turn.
    • Jim Raynor is pretty awesome as well. After all, he managed to sit a drunken and suited-up Findlay on his ass while he himself wasn't wearing armor!
  • Darksiders: Wrath of War. You play The Horseman of War as he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against both gun-wielding Angels and Demons with a BFS named Chaoseater as well as other demonic toys. It's basically The Legend of Zelda with the sheer testosterone of the God of War games.
    • You open chests by punching them. You open locked doors by stabbing them with knife keys.
  • Final Fantasy VI gives us Locke and the Boisterous Bruiser who traded his throne for his freedom; Sabin Rene Figaro.
  • Final Fantasy X gives us the tag-team duo of Jecht and Auron. Wither in shame as we enumerate their manliness:
    • Jecht hurls meteors. Prior to that, he was a professional athlete superstar with the body of a bronzed god, perpetual shirtlessness, and masculine facial hair. When he ends up in Spira, he's immediately put in jail for being a raging drunken jackass. About the only mark against his manliness is his lousy treatment of his son (which tried to be tough love and just ends up being emotional abuse), but in the ends he takes responsiblity and mans up to his failure, thus attaining perfection.
    • Auron is a living legend of Spira, the only guardian ever to survive a successful pilgrimage. Despite being dead (from an unrelated incident following the pilgrimage), he refuses to rest and instead walks the world as a battle-scarred veteran who's utterly unimpressed by anything, speaks only when neccessary, and tries to raise his dead friends' kids to become the heroes he and his posse couldn't be, all while smacking behemoths clear out of the battlefield in single strokes and lighting things up with cyclonic hellfire created by whipping up a whirlwind with his sword and throwing his jug of booze into it. And when he's done with all that, he heads over to the Kingdom Hearts universe to back-talk Hades and nearly kill Hercules with one hand.
  • Also from Dissidia, Golbez. He is above walking, is clad in some kickass armor, drops twin meteors on your ass, blasts you with Frickin' Laser Beams, and literally pimp slaps some knowledge into you. And they say video games can't teach you anything... Oh, and this is what he looks like, with and without his armor. It helps that he was a Darth Vader Clone in his original game (and Vader himself is under Film, above).
  • Sazh in Final Fantasy XIII. Specifically, in crystal stasis. See this picture, where he looks like he's about to get up and kick ass even though he's solid crystal. Also, Chocobo in the 'fro, 'nuff said.
  • This trope is apparently the reason Gaston hasn't been in any of the Kingdom Hearts games, aside from being too similar to Clayton. Actual examples from the series, most of which are incarnations of Big Bad Xehanort:
  • Endless Frontier. The four male protagonists are a cop, a cowboy, and two badass martial artists. The females are a foxgirl, a demon-girl, two Robot Girls, and a pair of busty princesses for good measure. And to top if off, they got a half-dozen armored assault mecha for sidekicks.
    • Super Robot Wars itself is nothing to sneeze at in this department. Given the amount of anime series with Hot Blood involved in most installments, it's no wonder that all the manliness rubs off on the most quiet or wimpy characters.
  • Mutant League Football and its sequel Mutant League Hockey.
  • Gordon Freeman may be a theoretical physicist, but he goes after invading alien armies with a freakin' crowbar!!
  • Solid Snake and Big Boss make hiding under a cardboard box badass!
    • The Boss. Her favorite disciple is Big Boss and her son is Revolver Ocelot. This woman makes the world's manliest men.
    • Dealt with intelligently, though, because although the characters are extremely manly and cool the series portrays a lot of the usual manliness tropes (like a penchant for committing horrific and flashy acts of violence, or not having emotions) as, at best, bad life choices, and at worst symptoms of actual mental disorders obtained through experiencing battlefield trauma. Also, as a Stealth Based Game, it does not reward you blowing everything up. Usually.
  • Most Street Fighter games, or at the very least the ones involving Guile.
    • Or Charlie. So, in other words, pretty much all of them.
  • Final Fight. The Power Trio in the first game consists of a bare-knuckle brawler who punches a dude out of a thirty-story building for kidnapping his girlfriend (Cody), an extremely Badass Ninja (Guy), and (last, but MOST CERTAINLY NOT LEAST) a politician (and father of said kidnapped woman) who cleans up crime... by piledriving thugs into the ground and introducing them to the concept of gravity (Haggar). Of course, it exists in the same world as Street Fighter, so go figure.
  • Bulletstorm: if it's not the fact that a simple kick to the face can throw your target 10 yards away and the whole focus of the gameplay is to be as creative as possible with your frags, the main character's dialogue is a constant stream of swears and he even looks a bit like Wolverine. And talks like him.
  • No More Heroes at times. We have Death Metal, covered in tattoos and with decorative bolts in his face. A little before you get to him there's a picture in his mansion of him sittin' with a hot woman. Destroyman, although insane, has a codpiece that fires super lasers. In the sequel, Travis himself gets a great manly moment in the form of one of his Dark Side powers, in which he turns into a friggin' tiger and shreds mooks to pieces. We also get Charlie McDonald, who fights alongside his throes of under-cleavage showing, Uncanny Valley invoking cheerleaders. Letz Shake returns as a robot that looks like a giant penis. Also, Travis's bikes, both of which are called the Schpeltiger.
  • Red Dead Redemption: John Marston. Just... John Marston.
  • Silent Hunter: You get to practically live inside an Epic Movie, sail your sub around and destroy things.
  • Vanquish.
  • The makers of Pokémon seem to be trying to give their newest poster child, the intimidating legendary turbine-tailed Tyrannosaurus Rex-like thunder dragon Zekrom, this vibe. Second to Zekrom is Gourdon, a ginormous Kaiju like pokemon, with power over earth.
  • In Tales of Graces, when someone speaks (and firin' his lazorz) with his back, the manliness meter gets broken. Ladies and gentlemen, say hi to Malik Caesars.
  • Team Fortress 2: Saxton Hale.


Websites

  • Badass of the Week, in which every week the tale of a new badass is told; including real-life superspies, legendary warriors who kill monsters, and a guy who disarms live mines by whacking them with a pipewrench. Has its own page on this wiki, as befits its manliness. There are occasional articles about women as well, but those too are more manly than you will ever be.
  • The Art of Manliness


Webcomics

  • Axe Cop. "I'll chop your head off!"
  • Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. So manly, it's in the title twice.
  • Homestuck. Equius Zahhak achieves this all by himself. He has much more muscle than a kid/troll his age should have (and when it shows, it shows), a few of his teeth, one of his horns and his sunglasses are all broken from his sheer strength, he's the STRONGEST troll on Alternia and never fails to emphasise the word STRONG, can only safely and adequately express his rage in cage matches with robots he built himself, he breaks/bruises everything and everyone with the lightest of touches, and instead of playing Sgrub properly he STRON Gjumped straight through his first few gates. Also present are Dad Egbert (powered by pure mangrit) and Bro Strider (flash stepping ironic rapping roof ninja with more than a passing resemblance to Kamina).


Western Animation

I had testicular cancer before I watched this.
Then I watched this.
My balls, now properly inspired, got their act together and proceeded to beat cancer to death.
Thank you, Iron Man.

  • Korgoth of Barbaria. More manly than the Conan the Barbarian movies, and actually more faithful to the original books in sheer amounts of ultraviolence.
  • Brock Samson. He may not kill you with a gun, but he'll kill you with anything else he can get his hands on!!
    • In one episode he actually gets sucked into space. Not only does he survive, but he proceeds to get laid almost immediately afterward.
      • Well he had to warm up some how after being in the coldness of space.
    • In "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic" Brock enters a machine that shows people their deepest desires. He fights off a horde of ninjas with a knife, beats up cowboys wielding flamethrowers and riding T-rexes, whallops polarbears in cars with gatling guns, and has sex with Molotov Cocktease. It doesn't get any manlier, folks.
  • Metalocalypse
    • Subverted and played straight. The band deals with less "manly" issues like body image, abandonment issues, and group therapy, but they also make things that aren't really Capital M Manly and make them so, like coffee (which they will make blacker than the blackest black times infinity) or golf (which Nathan will play alone, hatefully, in a rainstorm).
  • G.I. Joe Extreme. The series actually toned down this compared to the toys, which were downright Testosterone Poisoning.
  • Batman. Nuff said.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: WANG FIRE! Also, THE BOULDER.
  • The Argentinian animated movie called "Boogie The Oily One" contains every single archetype from any kind of action film (film noir, western, gangster film, etc.) and combines it with lots, lots of Black Humor.
  • Ultramarines: The Film
  • In The Mis Adventures of Flapjack, Captain K'nuckles tries to prove to Flapjack that he's this trope.
  • Beavis and Butthead like rock 'n' roll, heavy metal, gangsta rap, beer, cigarettes, breaking things, fighting, guns, explosions, fire, and chicks with big boobs so they pretty much LIVE for this trope.
  • Megas XLR. What's more manly, a Cool Car or a Super Robot? Apparently, the answer here is both.
  • Inhumanoids
  • Extreme Dinosaurs has a seriously testosterone laced intro. Hard rock intro coupled with scenes of muscled-up dinosaurs fighting each other pretty much screams this trope.
  • Street Sharks, seriously, what could be manlier than muscular mutant humanoids with shark heads and razor sharp teeth going around riding motorcycles and bursting through walls every five seconds?!
  • Heavy Metal is possibly the greatest animated example of this trope. All but one (the scientist's daughter) of the women characters are naked at one point, and none of them (with the possible exception of Taarna) act remotely human. World War II pilots are shot and turn into zombies. It's also loaded with sex, violence and a kick-ass 80s rock soundtrack. The ultimate example of animated testosterone.
  • SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron.
  • Exo Squad of all the cartoons in the 90's this is the only one which has the most gratuitous amounts of Beam Spam, and explosions that can only be matched by Gundam.
  • Mulan: Well a little toned down considering it has a Disney Princess in it. But what the heck, what's wrong with that? And it has some realistic displays of military life as including a shot showing the tedium on the march and a war crime scene. It even has a really manly Training Montage in the mouth of a Drill Sergeant Nasty.
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