The Juggernaut

We think Captain Britain knows who he is now.
"Obstruction detected. Composition: titanium alloy supplemented by photonic resonance barrier. Probability of mission hindrance: ZERO PERCENT!"
—Liberty Prime, Fallout 3

"Juggernaut" is a word meaning "unstoppable." The Juggernaut is just that. It is often fixated on a goal, reaching somewhere that it shouldn't be, trying to accomplish something that the heroes don't want it to accomplish. In any case, it is moving ever and continually forward, letting no one and nothing stand in its path. Bullets? Pathetic. Rockets? Barely noticable. Nuclear bombs? Might make him flinch, but don't expect the flames to stop him - And that's if you're lucky. The group of powerful heroes we've been following are nothing more than the Redshirt Army to this thing. You Shall Not Pass? It's going to. And it's ever, continually moving forward. You can practically taste the invulnerability of this thing.

It also helps the illusion of unstoppability if The Juggernaut is also The Voiceless. If physical attacks don't slow it down, then talking it down isn't going to work, either. It sometimes won't even attack, preferring to just plow forward, as if the defenses trying to stop it aren't even there. Those determined to make you fear them or mock your inability to scratch them will take their time. Stopping this thing usually requires a last second gambit, or a Deus Ex Machina to defeat. If it ever appears again, Villain Decay is almost certain. After all, if the unstoppable is stopped once, that means it's not unstoppable anymore, right? An epic Not So Invincible After All moment will usually occur in the process.

Compare and contrast Foe-Tossing Charge, the usually heroic version of this trope. Also compare the Determinator who is powered by the sheer force of will. Compare Implacable Man which can be stopped but only temporarily. This may create a sense of false security in the Implacable Man's query that does not exist when dealing with a Juggernaut.

Also compare Super-Persistent Predator. Also the Perfect Play AI who usually applies only in gameplay terms.

Not to be confused with the 1974 film Juggernaut, which is about an extortionist who has planted time bombs on a cruise ship. Also note, that this Trope is not about the X-Men villain with the same name, even though he is certainly could be considered the Trope Codifier; for information specific to him, see the X-Men Characters section.

Examples of The Juggernaut include:

Anime and Manga

  • There really isn't much that can stop Killy from Blame!. In fact, the one thing that comes close to destroying him is an explosion that would make the Tsar Bomba look like a Sparrow's fart in comparison. Even then, this only destroys 40-odd percent of his body mass. How does he respond? By simply growing his body back and soldiering on.
  • Tetsuo from the movie Akira gains telekinetic powers, and promptly goes on a little stroll, destroying everything in his path. This includes tanks, soldiers, bridges, buildings, and even a Kill Sat.
  • Alexander Anderson from Hellsing, in his first appearance, takes multiple .454 Casull rounds to the head and continues fighting, even triumphing ever-so-briefly over Alucard. He continues to seem unstoppable up until his final confrontation with Alucard, where the trope is subverted by the vampire's mob of souls bogging him down. Not to say that Alucard does not look like one of these to his many enemies.
    • For that matter, Alucard too. He gets ripped to shreds by machine gun fire because it's fun. Just about nothing his enemies throw at him even slow him down. Of course, when he's at maximum level, he borders on becoming an Eldritch Abomination, so it's kind of justified.
      • Borders on?
  • Demons in Berserk are nearly impossible to put down. Nothing short of ridiculously thorough physical trauma can really stop one; Guts usually has to cleave one's head into pieces - repeatedly - and Wyald keeps moving until Nosferatu Zodd, another powerful demon, tears him clean in half.
  • Hao Asakura in Shaman King is definitely the most powerful shaman in the series. He shrugs off everything thrown at him and in the manga at least, destroys the most powerful of the X-Laws' Angels in only a single attack.
  • Most of the monstrous "Angels" in Neon Genesis Evangelion fit the bill to some extent, as they make mincemeat of the Tokyo-3 defenses.
    • Zeruel (the Fourteenth/Tenth Angel)takes more punishment than any other Angel in the series and is barely fazed by any of it, including an N2 bomb shoved through its AT Field.
    • If EVA-01 goes berserk, just pray that it'll stop soon
  • Lucy in the first episode of Elfen Lied, in a very graphic version of this trope.
    • A bit shocking to those who hear "Juggernaut" and think of the huge, muscly guy from X-Men. Lucy is a cute pink-haired teenage girl...until she rips you in half, spilling your blood everywhere.
  • Rikiya Gaou in Eyeshield 21 was the epitome of this trope in his first few appearances. He totally smashes through enemy defenses as though they were made of paper and is notorious for forcing opposings team to forfeit due to his tendency to break the arms of their quarterback.
    • Worf Effect took place when Kurita beat him, and then later, got beat up by Mr. Don in America.
  • Sloth from Fullmetal Alchemist is a very lazy Juggernaut. Despite being one of the core seven Dragons, he doesn't know or care about the Heroes, and just wants to rest. His laziness did not stop him from digging a circular tunnel all the way around Amestris, however, and he's strong enough to shove tanks out of the way when he wants to. And when the kid gloves come off and he finally starts exerting himself, Sloth also shows himself to be the fastest thing alive.
  • Faudo serves this role in the last arc of the Gash Bell anime (and the next-to-last arc of the manga).
  • The manga version of Akabane Kuroudou from GetBackers. Bounces from "not having a heartbeat" to up-and-running within a single page? Check. Having a two-page spread of blood coming out from him in a dramatic splash and still appearing in another dimension to act as the guide for one of the Heroes, without a scratch on him? Check.
  • The Pig Deva Vikaralamon in Digimon Tamers was like this. His actual fighting abilities were rather low but he simply ignored everything his opponents threw at him for a pretty good amount of time.
    • The D-Reaper fits even moreso. Until the final episodes, absolutely nothing the protagonists threw at it seemed to so much as slow it down.
  • Zorc Necrophadius in Yu-Gi-Oh!, who during his rampage in Ancient Egypt defeated all most powerful monsters in this world, including the ancient protector of Egypt, the Egyptian gods, a dragon who could be even equal to those gods and a creature made by fusing three of those dragons and one extremely strong warrior. It took the ultimate powerful being, created from fusing the three Egyptian gods, to stop him.
  • Kitano from Angel Densetsu manages it by inhuman reflexes. His father, however does not even bother avoiding blows and just stands there until everyone is too tired to punch him more.
  • Majin Buu from Dragonball Z. He's been destroyed and even vaporised, only to reform in the smoke and goes on to easily destroy Earth and nearly every character in the series.
  • Whitebeard from One Piece defines this trope. After receiving 267 slashes and stabs, 152 bullets, 46 cannonballs, pierced by a Laser, and half his face burned off, HE NEVER RETREATED, as seen by his back which had absolutely no injuries, save for a couple that were just a result of being impaled from the front. And he died on his feet, like a true warrior.
    • Even more impressive, this is him elderly and after spending a considerable amount of time on life support. In his prime, he may have even been able to shrug all that off. And let's not forget his Devil Fruit, which is considered the most powerful of all Paramecia-types: the Gura Gura no Mi, translated as Tremor-Tremor Fruit, which gives the user the power to create tremors of strength akin to earthquakes by punching the air. The rumors about that fruit being able to destroy the world seemed to be proven true when he TILTED THE ENTIRE FREAKING OCEAN!
  • The Spheres in Heroman have been dead set on crushing anything between them and their destination. Heroman barely slowed one down to get civilians out of the way in Episode 3; taking great damage to do so; and now there are five crushing their way to every populated continent in the world.
  • Reinforce from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is this in addition to being a Person of Mass Destruction. She shields against a combined attack of Nanoha and Fate without much problems. Later, Nanoha turns Raging Heart into Excelion Mode and puts all her power into breaking Reinforces shield and fires a massive beam attack at point-blank range right into Reinforce. It doesn't do anything.
  • Younger Toguro of Yu Yu Hakusho is portrayed as this all the way up to his final moments. Toguro is a hulking monstrosity unfazed by even the strongest of attacks in the series, such as Genkai's point-blank Spirit Wave and Yusuke's mountain-crushing Spirit Gun, regenerating or growing stronger each time. He curbstomps every single opponent in his way (including his elder brother), terrifies Hiei and Kurama, two of the world's most notorious criminals, and when Yusuke finally approaches Toguro's strength and fires his strongest Spirit Gun yet? Toguro dies not from damage sustained in battle, but from overexertion due to holding back said Spirit Gun. He even fits the bill physically: he's already a muscular 7-foot monstrosity in his human form, and his demon transformations become more and more large and muscular as he shows more power, all the while gaining strength, defense, and speed with every transformation.
  • The Walpurgis Night from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It's best described as devastatingly powerful magical flying fortress (which keeps laughing insanely), and it's plain unstoppable except with Madoka's power, but that's an entirely different can of worms.
  • Three words: Bazzet Fraga McRemitz from Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya. She was already one in the parent series, but she deserves a honourful mention in this Spin-Off for Curbstomping Ilya, Kuro and Miyu, shrugging off all of their attacks, to the point they never won agaisnt her, they needed to trick her and place a Geas to prevent her from attacking.
  • The Third Raikage from Naruto is this essentially this he fought the eight tails on equal grounds AND WON!!!
    • He held back 10,000 shinobi for THREE DAYS!!! Finally he Won't Work On Mes a RASENSHURIKEN!!!
    • It was a tie. He didn't beat Gyuki, the two just fought to mutual exhaustion.
  • The Destroy Gundam, the Gundam Seed Destiny-equivalent of the Psycho Gundam, is a battleship-sized mecha that was unleashed in Eurasia, causing millions of civillian casualties, and killing thousands of soldiers, before finally being stopped.
  • Gavrill from Franken Fran. The island she was trapped on got hit with a low-yield nuke. That pissed her off.


Comic Books

  • The Trope Namer is a very old term, but Marvel villain The Juggernaut is usually the Trope Codifier. He is primarily an X-Men villain but his power has been tested against pretty much all of Marvel's Nigh Invulnerable characters at one time or another and he generally lives up to his Catch Phrase: "Nothing stops the Juggernaut". Even in the rare instances when somebody is capable of causing him physical harm, the Juggernaut is hardly slowed down and quickly regenerates. For example, on one occasion the Juggernaut fights a powerful demon who magically incinerates his flesh, muscles, and organs... only to have Juggernaut's skeleton keep marching forward to clobber the demon. The Juggernaut's power, at least in the comics, comes from the "Gem of Cyttorak", which essentially makes him the avatar of a deity. Most of the time, the only way to beat the Juggernaut is to have a telepath attack his mind. Since Cyttorak provided him with a helmet that blocks telepathic intrusions, the majority of any fight with the Juggernaut usually consists of the X-Men desperately trying to remove the helmet so that whoever is the resident telepath at the moment can subdue him.

"Silly bitch, your weapons cannot harm me! Don't you know who the fuck I AM? I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!"

    • In the Fear Itself event, Juggernaut becomes possessed by an ancient being in service of an Asgardian god, The Serpent, becoming "Kull, Breaker Of Stone". In this incarnation he is even more unstoppable. Not only are all his usual weaknesses removed (telepathy doesn't work, draining his powers doesn't work, and teleporting him away will result in him teleporting back where he was immediately), but X-Men's attempts to stop him quickly turned into something akin to the SCP Foundation's attempts to terminate SCP-682.
  • Galactus. And on the one occasion he was stopped, something even worse arrived to take his place.
  • The Death of Superman storyline featured a villain named Doomsday, who plowed through most of the Justice League in the months leading up the main event. When the two finally clashed, it took everything Superman had to stop him, and though he was successful, victory came at the cost of his life. Superman got better. Doomsday did too-- eventually.
    • It should be noted that through out the first 3 Superman comics that Doomsday had one hand TIED BEHIND HIS BACK.
  • The Saint of Killers from Preacher (Comic Book) has not been budged by a crashing pickup truck and stopped an advancing tank by kicking it. He responded to being hit with a nuke with a calm spitting and the quip "Not enough gun."
    • Neither Heaven nor Hell can contain this vengeful soul. When he arrived in Hell in his backstory comic, he put a literal spin to the term "When Hell Freezes Over". The only reason he doesn't kill Jesse Custer? He revealed that God set him up, and he came up with a way for the Saint to get even. That's where we see the part where not even Heaven can contain him.
  • The Shaggy Man in The DCU.
  • In an issue of The New Universe's Star Brand, Ken Connell comes across an Implacable Man who has decided to use his powers to destroy Russia (It was the '80s, after all). When Ken finds him, he's walking to Leningrad having survived being nuked. Ken eventually has to throw him into space where he's destined to coast along forever (or at least until he runs into something very hot or hard).
  • DC's multiversal Superboy-Prime has exploits in various crossover events that are worth mentioning. In Infinite Crisis, he shrugged off the entire extended Teen Titans, JSA, and Doom Patrol, got trapped in the Phantom Zone and got out, got trapped in the Speed Force and escaped, beat up on both heroes and villains in the Battle for Metropolis, shrugged off getting rammed into a super machine by a different Superboy, broke through a 300 mile long wall of Green Lantern willpower like it was made of glass, and beat the entire Green Lantern Corps on his way to Oa. The only thing that could stop him was two Supermen who had to fly him through a red sun. Even then, he didn't actually die, and the Green Lanterns ended up just imprisoning him inside a red sun.
    • In the Sinestro Corps War, the eponymous villains of the event manage to break him out. He then goes on to easily fight off the nearly the entire Justice League in spite of not being at full strength, beats up Sodam Yat (who was supposed to be the strongest superhero in the universe), throws the Anti-Monitor into space like a rag doll, and then kills a bunch of Green Lantern Corps and Sinestro Corps members. He only gets beaten when a Guardian of a Universe blows himself up to stop him.
      • But then he survives that too, and ends up hopping between universes and killing superheroes and villains alike trying to find his "perfect Earth." Crazy much? This time around, he only gets stopped when a Monitor tricks him into fighting the Monarch, who's actually Captain Atom multiplied by 52. When Prime breaches Monarch's armor, the explosion is so massive, it destroys a universe. Of course, it's really too hard to keep a ridiculously powerful villain down...
      • ...In Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, it's revealed that Superboy-Prime managed to survive that explosion, having only become lost to time. He gets brought to the 31st century by another supervillain to do what he does best: commit senseless acts of murder. It gets to a point that Superman gets brought to the future as well to help defeat him. Here's the kicker: he, Superman, determines that the only possible way to beat Superboy-Prime is to try and redeem him. Apparently, they finally realized repeatedly blowing him up with cosmic explosions wasn't working too well.
  • Hulk can go on Juggernaut mode if you really piss him off. During World War Hulk the most powerful characters in MU, including Black Bolt, Hercules, Iron Man in Hulkbuster Armor, She Hulk, Ares, Ghost Rider, Thing, Doctor Strange with the power of avatar of destruction, Sentry and Juggernaut himself couldn't stop him! Though Strange lost control and Ghost Rider had a lack of motivation rather than ability. Still, Hulk defeating Sentry was thought up until then impossible and when they thought all his energy was used up doing so he saw who was really responsible for bombing Sakaar and Hulked Out hard enough to nearly break Earth with his steps before he was finally stopped.
  • Invincible's enemy, Conquest claims he's one of those - he conquers one planet after another with his bare hands, no matter how much firepower they have.
    • Then there's Battle Beast. The first thing he does in the series is curb stomp Invincible and another superhero offscreen before leaving Earth out of disgust and boredom. He's one of the few beings in the universe that is explicitly stronger than a Viltrumite.
    • And now there's new one - Thragg, Vultrumite Regent. Just to put him in in comparison - even Conquest fears him, Invincible after getting strong enough to kill Conquest couldn't even scratch him and his fight with Battle Beast lasted two seconds because that's how much time he needed to snap Battle Beast's neck.

Invincible: How do we beat this guy?
Omni-Man: We can't.

      • They don't.
  • Superman's enemy Imperiex has destroyed entire galaxies and nearly ended creation itself by the time he comes to blows with the Man of Steel. He blows through Superman and the JLA and vaporizes Doomsday (he got better). He is finally killed by being sent back to The Big Bang, which was the only thing powerful enough to destroy him.
  • Marvel Comics villain Onslaught had near infinite strength, capable of going one on one when the Hulk had his greatest strength potential put out, not to mention knocking the Juggernaut, literally, across the country.
  • The Fury in Captain Britain, at least the original Earth-238 version. Since this was an Alternate Universe, the full effects of a Juggernaut could be shown, without dodging it via Villain Decay or a Deus Ex Machina. How do you stop the Fury from destroying every superhero in the world? You don't.
    • It doesn't ends here. The Fury survived the destruction of the Universe and came to the main Marvel Earth. It then went after Mad Jim Jaspers, a Reality Warper so powerful that, if not stopped, he could destroy the entire Multiverse, survived everything Jaspers threw at it and killed him.
  • The Destroyer, a suit of magical armor created by Odin and other gods to battle the Celestials. As such, it is tremendously powerful and just short of invulnerable. Fortunately, it's mindless on its own, and can only be operated by the soul of another sentient, but it's still managed to nearly kill Thor several times.
    • Jormungand/The Midgard Serpent is another Thor example, with the adendum that he has killed Thor. Put simply, if you aren't a full-powered, thrown the rulebook out Thor, you have no chance of killing Jormungand. Being a snake the size of a planet helps with that.
  • The Anti-Monitor from Crisis on Infinite Earths. He was capable of consuming thousands of positive-matter universes and could personally battle scores of the multiverse's strongest heroes simultaneously and survived a blue star going supernova.
  • What If Charles Xavier Became The Juggernaut Solution: Launch him into space and hope he never finds a way back.
    • It turns out Xavier really was Cyttorak's first choice to become the Juggernaut.
  • Alternate Enerjak from Sonic the Hedgehog Archie Comics definitley qualifies. He manages to beat nearly every powerful character in his own timeline as illustrated by the large number of victims shown as his prisoners.

Film

  • Godzilla is an incarnation of this trope. Especially when fighting humans, but also when facing other monsters. Godzilla's monstrous rivals typically also display Juggernaut behaviour.
  • The eponymous Terminator, with the two subsequent films introducing an even more unstoppable version.
  • Star Trek movies - both The Motion Picture and IV: The Voyage Home feature unstoppable mystery probes heading straight for Earth.
    • As opposed to First Contact, Nemesis, and Star Trek (2009) which all feature unstoppable mystery ships heading straight for Earth.
  • Hellboy II: The Golden Army - The Golden Army.
  • Jason Voorhees occasionally strays from Implacable Man to this, especially in Jason X and its spin-offs. Probably best exemplified in the aptly titled "Unstoppable" variant cover of one the Avatar Press comics.
  • The twelfth of the eponymous 13 Ghosts was named the Juggernaut. A seven-foot tall serial killer, the tale of his death is like that of a modern-day Blackbeard. But death couldn't stop his madness or rage, as he increased his kill tally four times over as a ghost before his capture.
  • X-Men:The Last Stand had The Juggernaut pretty much only able to be contained in shackles designed specifically for him.


Literature

  • Although not villainous, the Luggage from Discworld books is quite implacable, and will follow its owner anywhere (even to the afterlife). In The Colour of Magic it gets bombarded with enough magic to cause reality itself to start breaking, yet survives unharmed (mostly due to being made from a completely magic-resistant material).
    • The Golems of the Discworld also qualify. They're not fast, but they're ridiculously strong, survive in just about any environment and never need to rest. As the Patrician says, "Four miles an hour is 672 miles in a week. It all adds up."
  • In The Black Company The Limper qualifies as this after he gets his new body in The Silver Spike. He REALLY qualifies after he comes out of the fondu pot at the end..
  • H.P Lovecraft's Great Old Ones are immortal and undying (that is not dead which can eternal lie, and so on). While it's possible to damage them they regenerate any damage nearly instantaneously. In Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game) Cthulhu got rammed in the face with a boat and suffered no permenent harm. In the work of another mythos-writer he's suffered a direct hit from a 300 megaton nuclear warhead and wasn't even slowed down, and in one mythos-themed RPG, rules state that if he is hit by a nuclear attack he gets vaporised, but reassembles 24 hours later and becomes radioactive! (Apparently the only thing worse than a cosmic horror is a radioactive cosmic horror.)
    • Though it has to be said that Cthulhu and many (if not necessarily all) of Lovecraft's other horrors, for all that they may be Nigh Invulnerable, show little in the way of juggernaut-style behavior—at least in the original works, they usually don't seem very interested in going anywhere in particular. They might well be unstoppable once they decided to, but we don't see it actually happen often; Cthulhu doesn't even leave his island and fails to as much as seriously damage the yacht that apparently passes straight through him, for example.
  • Another Cthulhu Mythos example would be the Hounds of Tindalos. Immortal creatures, dwelling in the angles of time who relentlessly hunt down anyone who attracts their attention. They use corners and other angles to access our plane of existence and the only thing that might slow them down would be to plaster over the corners to make them into curves (which they can't access). But you'd better get all the angles.
  • Pokebattles's Doompuff and it's many spinoffs are all Juggernauts. They can't be stopped, eat everything, and are 1 dimensional. The only one who beat a Doompuff was Emperor Sloth, by taunting two of them and throwing a decoy into a portal. Despite its long threatening name, HYPER VICIOUS EVIL RABID ULTRA POWERED SUPER MEGA FATAL DREADFUL DOOMPUFF is the only exception and Missinganime deleted it. Then again Missinganime isn't to be messed with either.
    • As of 2009, a doompuff has actually been caught. It was by Emperor Sloth, a professional at fighting them.
  • The Reaper from The Elfstones Of Shannara. Swords break on its face, falling off a bridge only delays it, blasts from the eponymous Elfstones, which kill most Demons with ease, barely scorch its hide. It tracks Wil Ohmsford and Amberle from one end of the Westland to the other and never, ever, stops. Wil finally has to direct the Elfstones' fire into its face and down its hood from a few feet away in order to kill it.
  • In the Nightside series, there's The Walking Man, an agent of God that is sent to clean up sin in the Nightside - violently. Nothing can hurt him, nothing can even slow him down, until John shows him that what he's doing is wrong
  • The giant squid from Beast. It's all but unkillable. This more or less holds true in Real Life as well. The only thing that can kill it is a Sperm Whale, which makes sense, as that is its natural predator.
  • The Shrike most definitely qualifies.


Live Action TV

  • In Super Sentai and Power Rangers, the most humongous of the Humongous Mecha often play the Juggernaut role. At least in the beginning when they are introduced, to emphasize their awesomeness. Later, tougher monsters tend to show up to match them.
  • The first appearance of the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation certainly makes them look unstoppable, but their second appearance really drives it home. The Enterprise is helpless to stop the Borg Cube from abducting Picard, and attempts to destroy it from the inside and a jury-rigged Wave Motion Gun are only minor setbacks. Later, the Borg destroy thirty-nine Federation ships without a scratch, and every planetary defense between Saturn and Earth crumbles without much of a fight.
    • And later, there was Species 8472, who waltzed through the Borg in the heart of the Borg's own empire like they weren't even there. They were that tough for about two episodes.
  • The Dalek in the "Dalek" episode of the new Doctor Who series, killing over 200 people in the process.
    • Mithril Dalekanium is possibly the best armour in the Whoniverse, rendering weapons from any time basically useless against the Daleks.
  • In the first episode of Angel that Hamilton appears in, he is The Juggernaut.
  • In the second season premiere of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron goes berserk and starts trying to kill John Connor, and proves next-to-impossible to stop, even with The Slow Walk due to a damaged leg. Eventually, the only way she is defeated is when John and Sarah crush her between two tractor trailers, and even then she's just pinned.
  • Ultraman Mebius has the Emperor. To emphasize how unstoppable he is, the mere act of the Emperor landing, levels buildings around him and sets others on fire.


Music

  • Godzilla raids again, tribute to the iconic Kaiju by Italian heavy metal band MenacE, emphasizes this aspect.


Machinima

  • Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction features the Meta, a Super Soldier that steals enhancements and AIs from its victims. Throughout the series, it dodges rockets, throws vehicles at people, and survives a direct attack against it with a chain gun. Bonus points for being The Voiceless - it only speaks in grunts and growls.
    • The Meta has been nerfed, losing pretty much all the powers he Mega-Manned along with the AIs in an EMP blast. He is STILL tough enough to massacre Agent Washington or take out Tex one-on-one. He survives several slashes from a knife, along with said knife being thrown into his chest, being stabbed by an Energy Sword, and four shotgun blasts. The only thing that manages to kill him is being dragged off of a cliff.
    • Episode 17 of Season 9 makes the damage he took in that fight seem trivial. He takes a sniper round to the chest, a full pistol clip point blank in the throat and is thrown into oncoming traffic at extreme speeds, this is WITHOUT any armor enhancements or AI like later in the series. The only permanent damage he takes is his loss of ability to speak.


Tabletop Games

  • The Tyranids and Necrons of Warhammer 40,000 qualify, the latter even on an individual scale. Given that they are Cosmic Horrors, this perhaps isn't very surprising; you can win battles against them, but they are but the first paltry drops of an imminent tempest.
    • Don't forget the Juggernaut of Khorne, a giant metal rhino that bleeds molten metal.
    • And on the subject of Khorne, there's his Champion, Kharn the Betrayer, an unstoppable engine of destruction feared even by his fellow Berserkers due to his tendency to kill everything. During the 13th Black Crusade Abaddon, in an unexpected display of competence, merely pointed him in a direction and Kharn proceeded to "KILL! MAIM! BURN!" everything in his path, for the Blood god.
    • Titans. Immense war machines built in humanoid form. Most of the major races and forces of the galaxy utilize their own forms of Titans, except the Tau who relies on long-range hit-and-run. Emperor Titans, enormous walking-cathedral-mecha deployed by Imperium of Man, are about 55m tall and pack more than enough weapon to level a city.
  • Older editions of Dungeons & Dragons had a monster called the "juggernaut" that could roll over and crush anything in its path, and was almost impossible to stop when it got rolling. Its biggest strength was also its biggest weakness, since it was fairly awkward and had a hard time changing direction.
    • Freakin' Tarrasque. 50' long walking living tank immune to almost every effect (magical or not) and reflects back some, regenerates From a Single Cell and has an unique mechanism of self-resurrection just in case someone managed to kill it anyway. And it's constantly hungry when it's not asleep.
      • It's ridiculously easy to control with a simple command creature.
    • Forgotten Realms has Simbul, the Witch-Queen. Her three most known qualities are: 1) in raw power, the first among the spellcasters of her world; 2) very obsessive; 3) easily falls into absurdly destructive rages. When (Elminster In Hell) she had to rescue Elminster from Avernus and blasted her way through the initial crowd of The Legions of Hell, she just continued to fly to where she located him. After she tore a pit fiend to pieces without even slowing down, the local who abducted her lover began to wonder who the hell she was... and spend non-renewable sources in running all over the plane.
  • Magic's Juggernaut type is basically named for this. As of the recent Conflux expansion, the canonical (if expensive) trope example may actually be Progenitus...
  • A power that lets you do this is available in Mutants and Masterminds. So is an immovability power. (We think Chuck Norris dies if the two come together.)
    • Although technically the Unstoppable power is simply an extra option for the Immovable power.
  • The Star Trek-based game Star Fleet Battles has the Juggernaught, a regenerating mega-ship with the firepower of a Starbase capable of taking on an entire fleet.
  • Somebody once made an experiment that created one - he adapted Cthulhu to Dungeons & Dragons and set him against a team of players with most iconic D&D characters, boosted up to 20th level each, with the addition that every time one of them died, they got another one. Cthulhu killed 13 of them and was defeated by a spell that imprisoned him, because nothing else worked.
  • The New World of Darkness sourcebook Slasher incorporates many of these elements into the Mask Undertaking (basically, the unholy lovechild of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees conceived after a night of indulging in PCP). Voiceless? The Mask loses all capacity for literacy and intelligible speech once it achieves its final metamorphosis. Unable to feel pain? Only because it's hinted that the mere presence of humans causes it blistering pain that no other sensation can match. Unable to be killed? Any attack against it -- from a sucker punch to a shotgun blast to the head to an unleashed flamethrower -- will only fill one health box.
  • The Yozi Isidoros, the Black Boar That Twists The Skies, from Exalted. Isidoros' title isn't just boasting - he was able to push the moon and stars out of his path.
  • In Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Skaven players can field the Hell Pit Abomination, which is basically a Clan Moulder mutation Gone Horribly Right. It's absolutely massive, can kill nigh-on anything and is tough as hell to beat. And the worst thing? On death, it gets to use it's special rule Too Horrible to Die to roll on a table- on a 5 or 6, the creature gets right back up, regardless of how it died, completely healed.
    • There's also the Regeneration rule, which, unless the attack is Flaming or ignores it for any reason, allows the user a 50% chance of ignoring any attack because they just keep growing back.
    • The Empire Steam Tank. With decent firepower, of course.
  • Diplomacy strategy often calls a Russia-Turkey alliance the Eastern Juggernaut because both countries are against the side of the board, meaning if they cooperate they can focus their efforts expanding west.


Video Games

  • Sin.
  • Bowser, full stop.
  • Archimonde, the Big Bad of Warcraft III, becomes the Juggernaut for the last half a minute of the game's final mission. He charges at you, summoning demons into your base, casting a spell that kills everything with one hit and blasting everything with a powerful attack. However, the mission is basically won at this point, since he can't get to the end of the course you are defending in the remaining time.
  • Modern Warfare 2 features in the Special Operations mission the Juggernauts, soldiers fitted in heavy armour capable to absorb insane amounts of damage, including grenades, C4 and MG bullets. Usually the only way to kill them is to use heavy weapons like RPGs and some rounds of sniper rifles; the problem is that they charge on you on sight, and since they are armed with powerful weapons and have a nice firing accuracy it demmands a lot of effort to turn them down.
    • It should be noted that their suits resemble modified heavy bomb squad armour. They reappear in Black Ops, where their armour was changed to resemble some modified riot gear (however with a military helmet).
    • In Modern Warfare 3, Price and Yuri don Juggernaut armor and blast their way into the hotel where Makarov is hiding.
  • At the end of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2, Raziel becomes The Juggernaut when he picks up the Reaver Blade, turning him entirely invulnerable, and making the rest of the game - a long series of bosses - a complete walkover. And he can't drop or lose the blade.
  • In the original Vandal Hearts, a long series of optional quests makes it possible to transform the main character into the Vandalier, with incredible defenses, an evasion rate that bordered on Made of Air, and the ability to cast any spell in the game - a Game Breaker if there ever was one. Everything in the game beyond that point, including the final boss, is a joke.
  • In Shadow Hearts: From the New World the de facto Big Bad, Lady, appears to be completely unstoppable, says almost nothing, and seems to have no real goals. She kills people largely because they happen to be in her way. She also sometimes kisses people.
  • Free Space 2 features the Shivans' Sathanas, which is even classified as a Juggernaut as it's bigger than anything the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance has save their own Juggernaut-type ship (which is admittedly not as powerful). It grinds through the GTVA's star systems until it's finally destroyed in a climactic showdown (the mission is even named "High Noon"). And then It Gets Worse - a fleet of the things shows up, destroys the good guys Juggernaut, and the Shivans blow up the Capellan star system.
    • Shivans are rather fond of this trope: the first game featured the SD Lucifer, a super-destroyer with shields so powerful that literally nothing in the Allied arsenal could bring it down. The Lucifer glasses Vasuda Prime, and sets course for Earth, destroying everything in its path. Then scientists uncover ruins of the Ancients—a race destroyed by the Shivans thousands of years ago—who left behind a dying message in the hopes of aiding some future race: Shivan ships can't use their shields in Subspace, and ships can be tracked into subspace (the means for which is provided in the message). Using this, you scramble a last-ditch attempt to pull this off, destroying the Lucifer just as it nears the exit to Earth. By the sequel, a GTVA destroyer is a match for a Lucifer-class ship, and the GTVA Colossus—a Juggernaut in its own right, designed to engage multiple Lucifer-class ships at once and win, embodies this trope for any ship that isn't Shivan. The Shivans, not to be one-upped, reveal the Sathanas in the sequel, which is somewhere around five kilometers in length, two-three kilometers in height and width, and bristling with twice as much firepower as the Colossus. Destroying one is a major effort in itself, even for the vastly-stronger Alliance in the sequel. When several of them start showing up after that, the GTVA command knows to prepare to destroy both jump nodes connecting the adjoining system to the rest of GTVA territory. This move saves them and is completely vindicated when EIGHTY of them show up, and then begin to make Capella's sun go supernova. Given how casually the Shivans sacrifice at least a dozen Sathanas's, several cruisers, and some destroyers, one has to wonder if they have something even bigger.
  • In Gears of War the Berserker fits this trope to a tee. She (yes, she, as she's apparently a normal drone - only female) is blind, but has an acute sense of hearing that will lead her to charge towards the noise, and nothing can stop her - the only way for Marcus and Dom to kill the Berserkers they encounter is by using the Hammer of Dawn on one and when encountering one on a train, tricking her into either running onto a train carriage which is then severed from the train or a pile of explosives (if this troper's memory serves him correctly).
  • Left 4 Dead gives us their version of The Juggernaut in the Tank, a zombie that can best be described as at least 600 pounds of undead muscle and condensed hatred for anything that still has a pulse. Walls? It smashes through them. Cars? It punches them at the survivors. The only way to come out of a fight with a Tank is lots of firepower, LOTS of running, and good teamwork.
    • And a Molotov. Tanks are very flammable.
      • Unless the team is actually healthy enough to outrun a Tank, lighting a Tank on fire makes it run faster. This doesn't apply in VS mode.
      • Tanks are, actually, less flammable than anything else. Incendiary ammo will only light them on fire for a few seconds(everything else is lit normally), and their massive health lets them find a water source to put themselves out if one exists on that level. And lighting a tank with a molotov doesn't actually stop them, it just makes them slightly more managable.
      • Chargers, from Left 4 Dead 2, are a minor example. They can charge through doors and windows and such, and have more health than any of the other normal special infected, but what actually qualifies them for this is what they do after they've charged a survivor. There is absolutely no way to get a Charger to release the person it's grabbed. Either it dies, or they do. And the extra health means that you can empty entire magazines of some weapons directly into them without killing them.
    • Funnily enough, all the infected including the Tank itself DO have a pulse.
  • Legend of Legaia has a type of Seru known as Juggernaut that's pretty close to God Mode... and the one you meet is the Big Bad's partner. Luckily, you never actually have to fight him.
  • Rocky from Adventures of Lolo. While he can't kill Lolo, he is capable of overpowering the blue guy, and is almost never found in the same room as Magic Shots. Even if Lolo does find a Magic Shot or two, firing them at Rocky won't turn him into an egg, like most other monsters. If Lolo is backed into a corner by one or more Rockys, the only hope for him is to use a Puzzle Reset and try again.
  • Alex Mercer from Prototype has access to hyper-fast Le Parkour moves (he'll even climb a building running at full speed), but if traffic is too big, he can shift his arms into shields to push cars away (and crush people) or transform his whole body into a very thick armor made of his own hardened tissue.
  • Illith of Lusternia was known as both "the Leviathan" and "the Juggernaut" prior to her defeat, and with good reason: she rampaged unstoppably through the whole length and breadth of the planet, devouring everything in her path. It could take hundreds of years for her to reach your settlement, but once she got around to it...
  • Pyramid Head.
  • Not to be confused with the enemies called Juggernauts, Marathon had a Dummied Out monster called the Armageddon Beast that would basically be this.
  • Dog in Half-Life 2 and its Episodes is a heroic version of this trope; literally nothing in the game can stop him. Combine soldiers? Crushed. APC? Hurled aside. Dropship? Climbed on top of as it attempts to flee. Strider? Dog tears out its Goddamn brain. He even manages to injure one of the horrifically powerful Combine Advisors at the end of Episode Two, though it's easy to miss through your tears.
  • In Mass Effect, it's possible to turn the player character into one using the right build. Wading through walls of light-speed bullets, high-tech rockets, and guns that shoot disruptions in space-time? Piece of cake.
    • Don't forget Sovereign. During the battle for the Citadel in the first game, after Sovereign appears, the massed warships of the Citadel Council open fire on him. Sovereign doesn't even bother firing back; he just plows right through them and doesn't even get scratched.
    • Mass Effect 2's Shepard is definitely this, even alone, tears through enemies as if their armour was made of paper. Being enhanced through cybernetics and having enhanced tech makes about 50 enemies like a 4 minute fight. Takes a Reaper tech device at full power to bring him/her down. Even sedated, it doesn't stop him/her for long. In fact each dose of sedative had to constantly get increased because Shepard grew immune to it.
    • Mass Effect 3 brings us the multiplayer-only Krogan Vanguard class, aka the murder train.
  • The Tower Defense game Defense Grid the Awakening has an enemy that goes by this name. It can steal three cores (the max for any enemy), and it can take a lot of damage due to having high health AND Deflector Shields. Fortunately for you, it is the slowest enemy unit in the game.
  • Liberty Prime. When he first appeared, it was a Mass "Oh Crap" moment for the Enclave.
    • If you weren't able to cripple limbs, Deathclaws would certainly be this. They can take you out with a couple of hits since their claws completely ignore armor as if you weren't wearing any. And once they spot you, they sprint towards you and their hitpoints are far too high for you to kill them using anything short of the alien blaster or fat man before they close the distance. The only way to kill them safely is to cripple their legs with a sniping weapon before they notice you. Unless you have a dart gun, that is.
    • In another interesting example, Yao Guai, giant mutated black bears, are every bit as powerful as Deathclaws, and with a certain perk, can fight on your side. Like Deathclaws, they can be taken down easily by shooting them first with the Dart Gun, which instantly cripples the legs of these fast powerhouses.
    • Then there's the Albino Radscorpions, only encountered if you have the Broken Steel DLC. They have loads of health, staggering offense and damage resistance, and unlike the Deathclaws or Yao Guai, cannot be crippled with the Dart Gun. Good luck.
    • And finally, we have the Feral Ghoul Reaver. not only does this thing send you flying as far as a deathclaw can, but it also can spazout and become invincible. the twitchy dance of doom that the F3 reaver does is ultimate Nightmare Fuel. Later, in New Vegas, the Reaver becomes a simple, non-threatning mook.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines gives us the werewolf; your weapons do nothing, your Disciplines do nothing, and the only way to survive the beast is either to evade it for four minutes and escape on the tram or crush it to death with the doors to the observatory.
  • The Hybrid Reaver in the secret mission in StarCraft II. While the ones fought in the Protoss mini-campaign are killable, this one will shrug off anything done to it. The only weapon that is effective against it is a device that slows down time—this only slows it down for a few seconds. Once it appears, the only goal in the mission is to get the hell out of Dodge.
  • It's not too hard to make the Grey Warden into a Juggernaut if he/she uses an Arcane Warrior build. It's ridiculously easy to do this in Awakening thanks to the new equipment available and the new Mage spells/talents and Battlemage specialization, all of which seem tailormade to make Arcane Warriors even more broken. Soloing everything on Nightmare with the possible exception of the Bonus Boss becomes utterly trivial. As a possible Lampshade, the unique set of armor that can be found in the same area as the Arcane Warrior specialization is called the Juggernaut set.
  • The Nemesis in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is a walking juggernaut of Nightmare Fuel. He can appear anywhere, will relentlessly pursue you from room to room, and gets back up quickly after you knock him down. Don't forget the rocket-launcher on his arm.
    • Mr. X in Resident Evil 2 is also a walking dispenser of pain and terror. Smashing through walls in the police station just as players pass by, and the cut-scene where he stands back up repeatedly...
  • The Ultimate Chimera from Mother 3. Can nothing kill it?
  • The mutated rancor in Jedi Academy. The whole level it's on is all about running away from it as it ploughs through more regular enemies and breakable scenery. When time you make it to a new area that is inaccessible to a creature of its size, it will bang on the wall or other obstacle until its shatters, and go on coming. It's invulnerable to all attacks (except the trick at the very end that kills it, of course) and possesses some mean ones of its own.
  • In Batman: Arkham Asylum, Killer Croc technically qualifies. You never actually BEAT him, you either set off a shock-collar that throws his whole nervous system out of whack for a few seconds so he doesn't run you over like a bulldozer and bring you home for dinner, or blow out a floor to send him hurtling to the stygian depths. After which he can be heard YELLING UP AT YOU for a few seconds. And depending on the random generator during the ending sequence, you might see his hand burst from the water to grab a surviving case of Titan.
  • Evil Otto from Berzerk, a taunting, invincible smiley face.
  • The game Juggernaut. Okay, so there aren't any characters that fit the description, but when you get to the end and realize that the priest who has been helping you is basically an unstoppable, evil force bent on selling souls to Satan and corrupting innocent people, the title makes more sense.
  • In Famous 2 introduces the Beast, an incredibly powerful Conduit. His fire powers are powerful enough to destroy entire cities, and any damage done to him is quickly healed. The entire game is spent trying to get Cole powerful enough to face him. During this time, the Beast is slowly making his way down the United States' east coast to kill Cole, destroying everything and everyone in his path. The only way to kill the Beast is to use a very strong Power Nullifier, at the cost of killing several thousand innocent people.
  • In Asura's Wrath well...Asura. The trailers clearly show that anyone that stands in his way is doubtlessly Too Dumb to Live.
  • The Destroyer in The Legend of Spyro, it's an ancient Eldritch Abomination the size of a mountain that is virtually unstoppable once it gets going and if it's allowed to reach the volcano it emerged from again, it starts The End of the World as We Know It. The only way to hope to defeat it is to slow it down long enough to destroy every single Dark Crystal on it's massive body, including going inside it and blowing up it's heart. And even that fails if the Big Bad just so happens to have a backup crystal handy... The Golem probably counts as well, as it's virtually unstoppable until a lucky attack uncovers it's brain, allowing Spyro and Cynder to kill it.
  • The Dahaka in Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within is a classic example—silent, unstoppable, and scary as hell [dead link] . He's been chasing the Prince relentlessly for seven years, and he'll chase you throughout the game. You can't even try to fight him without the secret Infinity+1 Sword.
  • Similar to the above, we have the SA-X in Metroid Fusion, an alien duplicate of Samus at her most powerful. (Samus herself has just picked up the Bag of Spilling.) It can't be fought, only escaped, until the very end—and it puts up a hell of a fight then. The ultimate proof of its power can be seen here, where a clever player manages to Speed Boost right into the SA-X... and through it.
  • Agarest Senki subverts this with the Black Knight. It firstly appears to be a boss that takes Leonhardt out easily with an ability to self-recover at the same amount of max health and hit more than 1000 HP per combo while Leo has around 300, just to make sure the players can't cheat their way out alive. When you faces him again, he's not as tough anymore.
  • The (mechanical?) monster from Dungeons & Dragons mentioned above makes an appearance in the D&D Real-time Strategy game Blood & Magic in the final levels of one of the campaigns.
  • City of Heroes has a Juggernaut in the Minds of Mayhem trial: the Player Characters have to find a way to stop a psychic projection of Mother from reaching a symbol of the local Sentient Cosmic Force, or that section of the raid effectively resets. Mother's projection does not attack during this phase; it slowly...methodically...floats...toward its goal, and can only be stopped by using manifestations of its own nightmares against it. While it's not as invulnerable as other examples, Mother's manifestation is still almost impossible to defeat in time without using this little trick.
  • The previously Glass Cannon Hunters in the Halo series were upgraded to this in the later games, especially Halo: Reach, where they are outright Lightning Bruisers that are very difficult to hit in their weak points, take buckets of damage, and will chase you down and One-Hit Kill melee you once you get close, if their Fuel Rod Cannons don't kill you first.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Uprising the Empire Giga Fortress massive naval unit that can transform into a flying fortress. It can dish out an immense amount of firepower on both forms, and can take a heck load of damages.


Web Comics

  • Cans from the Midnight Crew Intermission in Homestuck is the biggest and strongest member of The Felt and, along with Clover (who is too lucky to be killed off conventionally) and Snowman (who can't be killed without taking the rest of the universe with her), is one of the few members of the gang that does not get killed by the Midnight Crew. He can easily plow through walls Kool-aid Man style at lightning speed. Even worse, his time related power lets him literally punch people into next week or into a different calendar year. The Midnight Crew are understandably reluctant to face him.

Suddenly the whole vault room is shaking... It sounds suspiciously like Cans is about to plow through the wall Kool-Aid Man style. You pray to God that it is not Cans about to plow through the wall Kool-Aid Man style.


Web Original


Western Animation

  • The second appearance of Amazo in Justice League Unlimited falls squarely into this trope. The android, having absorbed untold amounts of power, charges through the entire Green Lantern Corps and the entire extended roster of the Justice League in an effort to get to Lex Luthor. It even moved a planet out of its way without destroying it and later bringing it back with little more than a thought.
    • He was almost as bad during his debut. He was able to duplicate and mix all the powers of the original Justice League and was only stopped when someone convinced him to 'look for knowledge' somewhere other than on Earth. Guess that came back to bite the JL HARD.
    • The Annihilator, an Expy of Marvel Comics' Destroyer (mentioned above), was virtually unstoppable, as it drew power from conflict itself (and thus any attacks on it only strengthened it). Fortunately, this meant you could beat it by not fighting it.
  • Vilgax, from Ben 10. Oddly enough, it takes a while for Villain Decay to set in, which it finally does in the Made for TV Movie... and even after that, he's still sort of The Juggernaut, in that he can't really be stopped permanently, just flung into the depths of space with fingers crossed. At the end of season two, he was in the Null Void, and how he managed to get back from Another Dimension was never addressed. A Time Travel episode at the start of season three showed him dead and in pieces, but he was quickly revived.
    • It goes farther than that. He defeats ten of the galaxy's most powerful warriors, gets hurled into space (again), sinks to the bottom of the ocean after being caught in his ship's explosion, and if the synopsis from Ben 10 Ultimate Alien's series finale is anything to go by, he survives an encounter from an Eldritch Abomination.
  • Nothing can stop the Smooze!
  • The gigantic Beast Planet in Shadow Raiders. A pitch-black, indestructible metallic sphere that sleeps within stars while its Mooks find new prey. Then, it moves ever forward, intent on devouring a fresh new Planet, teeming with life. Use the awe-striking Wave Motion Gun you built out of a Moon? Kiss that Moon bye-bye. Ramming Always Works? They tried ramming an entire planet into it. Rig another planet to self-destruct inside it like a Time Bomb? Didn't even burp from the indigestion. Rig yet another planet so it teleports it to the other side of the galaxy? Congratulations, you just doomed another innocent, inhabited planet who didn't even see it coming, with the added bonus that the Beast might just have assimilated that teleporter tech it just ate. And the Beast is STILL. COMING. FOR. YOU. It will get you. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Eventually, it will.
  • Similarly, Unicron from Transformers: The Movie. A giant monster planet that eats whatever's in his path, and completely impervious to any sort of conventional weaponry. DETONATING A MOON inside his maw didn't even leave a dent, and the combined arsenal of an entire planet of robots that transform into war machines simply irritated him. Lucky for everyone that the good guys had a spare Amulet of Concentrated Awesome lying around...
  • Rampage from Beast Wars in his first apperance. He's effectively what happens when The Juggernaut meets Serial Killer and Genius Bruiser. The results are less than pretty to say the least, and it's only by disabling his treads that they're able to temporarily stop him. After Megatron put a Restraining Bolt on him he did suffer from some severe Villain Decay, although even then he remained an Implacable Man of the first order.
  • Yono in Kim Possible "Oh no! Yono!". ("What part of "Yono the Destroyer" confuses you?!"). He swatted Kim and Yori away with ease, and turned Kim, Sensei and Rufus into stone, destroying everything in the process. Left because couldn't hit Hana, who kept dancing all over the place. Ron was goofing around for some reason.
    • Arguably Ron in the last episode, when he throws Warmonga and Warhok into their own spaceship blowing it up.


Real Life

  • Although they are still in the prototype phase, Powered Exoskeletons will be able to turn the average soldier into a Nigh Invulnerable, unstoppable killing machine.
    • Riiight... they made the same claims about tanks and every other major military advancement. and unless you have the right weaponry, tanks are fairly close.
  • The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was nicknamed Juggernaut by their pilots. The plane looked very clumsy and ungainly at first sight, and the pilots thought they were being sacrificed to fly suicide missions in those planes. When the true nature of the plane became apparent, the name stuck - only now it was the Germans and Japanese who were to face the juggernaut when they went up against the P-47. The name was then shortened affectionately to Jug, as the fuselage shape resembled a milk jug.
  • The original Juggernauts, of course. Hindu temple cars that reputedly tended to crush devotees in their path by accident, though first accounts mistook these accidents for human sacrifices.
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