Lightning Bruiser

File:Challenger 2.jpg

A tank so fast, it's doing a wheelie (just not technically on wheels).

Be as fast as the wind, silent as the forest, aggressive as the fire, enduring as the mountain. —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

How can something so strong move so fast? How can something so fast be so strong?

There's the Fragile Speedster; lightning fast, but weak as a kitten. Then there's the Glass Cannon who can dish it out but can't take it, as well as his spell-based cousin the Squishy Wizard. But then there's the Mighty Glacier, a strong but slow behemoth that can take and deal a LOT, but can't dish it out fast enough. Then there's the Stone Wall, who can take even more but can't dish out or move well either, and then there's the Jack of All Stats, who can do all of these, but not to the degree the others are able to, as well as the Master of None who plain fails at everything, and even more so the Joke Character. All of these are very common character tropes from years back.

And there is the Lightning Bruiser. While all previous tropes are supposed to have trade-offs in terms of speed, ability to deal and take damage, the Lightning Bruiser has everything: he is fast, strong and enduring.

This kind of character is often a subversion of the Mighty Glacier or the Fragile Speedster: The hulking Big Guy you'd taken for a Mighty Glacier turns out to have lightning speed on top of his Stone Wall levels of defense, or the lean-looking Lancer you'd for sure pegged as a Fragile Speedster can take damage as well as dish it out! This could be said to be the ultimate Jack of All Stats; truly a force to be reckoned with in any medium.

You're more likely to come across such characters as boss characters. When playable, the Lightning Bruiser will often either be a secret Purposefully Overpowered Game Breaker, or be balanced by having other weaknesses, such as a total lack of range, magical capability, or a high resource cost (in games where such things exist).

A Lightning Bruiser may also perform Confusion Fu. (If he's good at everything, then he can throw everything at you, right?) May also be a Flying Brick. Compare and contrast Acrofatic, Muscles Are Meaningless.

The appearance of a Lightning Bruiser opponent in a story that used to obey the conventional character types is often a sign of entering the next level of the Sorting Algorithm of Evil.

For sorting examples amongst the categories below, what must be taken in account are expectations. If a character is obviously strong and resistant, but his nimbleness comes off as a surprise, then he's a Fast-moving Big Bruiser. If speed is to be expected, but you tend to forget about how devastating his attacks can be or how much he can take, then he's a Hard-hitting Speedster. Machines have their own subsection. If he doesn't come off as a subversion and isn't a Machine, put them in the unsorted category.

Examples of Lightning Bruiser include:

Anime & Manga

• The eponymous Tiger and Bunny are a fitting example. Kotetsu and Barnaby have it all (power, speed, defense, regeneration and super senses), but only for five minutes per hour. Kotetsu's time limit starts to decline in the latter half of the series, though the powers themselves remain largely intact.
• Bleach: When Omaeda was underestimated on the grounds of his huge, overweight form, he quickly proved that his massive physical strength and his massive body frame shouldn't be used to conclude he's in any way slow. He is, in fact, exceptionally fast. The only person in the second division faster and stronger than him is Soifon herself.
• Sword of the Stranger:Lou-Lang is a great example. As a Westerner he's almost a foot taller than most of Japanese and Chinese characters. Despite his size and strength (allowing him to cut man's arm clean off while holding sword in one hand) he is able to jump about eight feet high and block swords with his bare hands.
• Code Breaker revealed Takatsu Aoba to be one.
• Dragon Ball Z frequently shows that planet-crushingly powerful characters can be no stranger to being lightning fast. There are exceptions; Android 17 was much faster than he was strong, and when Trunks sacrificed speed for power it proved his undoing. However, the straight example is Goku himself, thanks to his Instant Transmission technique, essentially teleportation at will.
  • Broly may be the purest example, being a towering giant made out of pure muscle (and every bit as strong as that would suggest in a world of ordinary-looking people capable of blowing up planets)... while still being every bit as super-fast as the other DBZ fighters.
  • This was parodied in the Abridged Series.

Goku: He's getting HUGE! That means he'll be stronger. That means he won't be as fas-- (Vegeta throws a ridiculously quick punch) Goku: OH GOD, HE'S STILL FAST!

• • The Supreme Kai learns this the hard way during the first fight with Buu. Given his appearance and strength, he assumes he won't be very fast. He makes a hasty retreat and puts some distance between them... only to look up and see Buu already waiting for him.
  • Also happened at the end of the Dragon Ball series in a filler arc featuring a mummy as an enemy. The mummy was not only fast, but verbally lampshaded the idea that mummies are slow.
• Oars from One Piece is a zombie, incapable of feeling pain and fatigue and about four times the height of a "normal" giant in the series. Yet he is lightning fast and able to dodge cannon fire at point-blank range.
  • Bartholomew Kuma is a better example. The man may not be as big as Oars, but he moves with lightning speed and is one of the strongest characters in the series.
• Deconstructed in Rurouni Kenshin: Kenshin once fought a Giant Mook that was nearly as fast as he was. However, being that fast and that big ends up severely damaging his legs.
  • Kenshin's master, Hiko Seijuro, would be an example. Capable of "teleporting speed" and slicing a guy into 10 pieces in a second. Despite the fact that their sword style focuses on super speed and reflexes, Seijuro's slightly bigger than medium build is the most ideal for the style.
    • It is said muscle is needed to maintain the intense speed of the style -- Kenshin's a pretty thin guy, and so, his body has deteriorated by the end of the manga and he is unable to perform the style.
  • The big guy here is a bit of an odd example. It wasn't the speed itself that was the problem, but the turns--Kenshin kept leading him literally in circles until the strain of turning caused him to twist his ankle.
  • To clarify further, Kenshin was slowly increasing speed while moving the fight in right-angle turns. Eventually, the stress of suddenly moving that much mass in a different direction resulted in his ankle giving out.
• Guts from Berserk carries a BFS among BFSes around and can actually swing it with only one hand. When he swings his BFS, it's with enough speed so that most people can't even see it, and he's able to move at blindingly fast speeds in plate armour. Zodd is an even more extreme example, being superhumanly fast despite being eight feet tall and being even stronger than Guts.
• Claymore has Riful of the West, a mountain-sized villainess strong enough to fight two of the Single Digits at the same time but also fast enough to vanish in an eyeblink.
  • In fact this is the defining characteristic of almost all Awakened Beings.
• Junpei of Those Who Hunt Elves is tall, muscular and a master martial artist. Not only is he ridiculously strong (such as sending human sized foes flying into the horizon with a mere kick), but he's also been shown to be ridiculously fast as well. Of course, his main weakness is his tendency to be an idiot.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Sloth is not only one of the strongest Homunculi, he's also the fastest, able to move quicker than the eye can see. However, when he is moving that fast, he has trouble seeing his surroundings and therefore where he'll end up in a given burst of speed.
  • For a big guy capable of great power, Major Armstrong is also pretty fast. It helps him be the first State Alchemist to emerge from a fight with Scar without being killed or maimed.
  • Not to mention Alphonse Elric, who's been described as fast and agile and is a giant animate suit of armor.
  • Also Scar. He's a close-range fighter who has a lot of battles with long range fighters, so often the fight comes down to him simply being faster than everyone else.
• Star Platinum from Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure is not only one of the strongest and fastest Stands in existence, but also one of the most precise.
  • The trade-off is reach, though. Star Platinum can't work more than an arms' length away from its user. This is an established rule for all Stands; The Lovers is microscopic and has nearly no strength at all, but can reach across entire cities.
• Thorkell the Tall and Bjorn of Vinland Saga are both big guys, especially Thorkell, both are also pretty damn fast and enduring.
• Appledelhi (Ed's dad) in Cowboy Bebop. He can throw blows as quick and graceful as quicker and with more grace than Spike's blows, despite having significantly more girth.
• Mamoru Takamura from Hajime no Ippo might look like a Mighty Glacier, but is in fact an unstoppable Lightning Bruiser. His punches are so strong that he knocks out normal opponents in the first round, yet he is fast enough that even Fragile Speedster's like Miyata have a hard time landing a hit at all. In his fight against Brian Hawk, he moved so fast it was compared to Featherweight-class speed. If that wouldn't be enough, his stamina is also nearly unlimited. He has absolutely no problems with running distances where even Ippo (who has incredible stamina as well) would break down and that's when he isn't even being serious. In short, if one were to make a stat chart of his physical abilities, he'd rank full points in every category.
  • In fact, his main weakness is being a Lightning Bruiser. He should be a bona fide Heavyweight... but he can't rank up to world level on that weight-class in Japan, 'cause there aren't enough Heavyweights for him to fight. So he has to endure a very painful weight regime before almost any fight. His stamina can't go to his full under these conditions, so his fight against Brian Hawk became even harder after some rounds.
  • Ippo is another great example. He combines superb strength and stamina with fairly good (dashing) speed, which earned him the nickname "God of Wind" for his strong and fast barrage of attacks (such as the Dempsey Roll). Then there's Brian Hawk, who is more like Takamura, good at everything.
• Fist of the North Star: Kenshiro and quite a few other Nanto and Hokuto warriors are walls of muscle that can still launch Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs which are barely visible.
• Loz in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is strong enough to break and throw almost anything around (his "Dual Hound" weapon sometimes assisting), yet he also can speed between locations so rapidly that he has virtual teleportation. If he were only a bit smarter and ruthless...
  • He may or may not officially count since he likely has his hands on Haste magic.
• Despite being Actual Pacifist, Seiichiruo Kitano from Angel Densetsu is one of them : so fast he pulls out Made of Iron by barely avoiding blows every time, until the opponent is too tired to go on , can Flash Step and his Finishing Move is always his first one against his opponent. His father is also one, with the difference that his defense is more a meat shield one rather than evasion based.
• Ginji Amano from GetBackers in his "lighting lord" form is a literal example. Ban Mido and Akabane are this as well.
• Yu Yu Hakusho: Younger Toguro, and how. Though at 80% power, he's only as fast as a restrained Yusuke, once he hits 100%, he's so fast, his speed even surpasses and surprises Hiei, a Lightning Bruiser in his own right, and completely crushes an unrestrained Yusuke in battle.
  • Bui wears insanely heavy armor, wields giant axes, and is able to lift and shatter blocks of concrete. On top of that, he likes to charge up to opponents in a split second.
• Many Digimon fit this trope when they evolve. Often a far larger Digimon can be faster then its much smaller pre-evolution form in spite of an often MASSIVE size difference.
• The Raikage from Naruto is a very literal example of this trope. Normally, he's an enormous Scary Black Man who is capable of breaking down walls by punching them yet still pretty fast. Once in battle, he can use lightning chakra to boost his speed and reflexes to ludicrously high levels as well as shield himself. He's able to keep up with the extremely fast Sasuke, dodge Jugo's Beam Spam at point-blank range, and even dodge Sasuke's Amaterasu, a devastating fire attack that ignites whatever the user is looking at. Defensively, it can also totally block a sword that can easily cut through steel weapons and severely weaken an attack that could blow straight through stone. He was the fastest character in the manga since Minato Namikaze. Onoki the Tsuchikage can make him even faster by lightening his body, then increasing his weight at the right moment to deliver enough strength to completely shatter Madara Uchiha's Susano'o and send him flying over a mile.
  • Asura path Pain isn't anything to laugh at either, as it's strong enough to rip off a man's arm clean off, smash him through a stone wall, or crush his throat one-handed, even though that man was in his Super Mode. And yet, he also have Rocket Boots that let him jet around so fast he can catch someone off-guard even if they see him coming from a hundred feet away.
  • Not to mention Naruto himself, at least in one of his super modes; easily throws summons or bijuus around, throw punches that cause shockwaves that even Jack Rakan would be proud of and possesses an insane level of speed that can outpace most enemies (including the direct above). And now he has come full circle with his new Super Mode. He's so fast that Kisame, who reacted to fucking Maito Gai/Might Guy's insane speed, couldn't even see or perceive him when he activated his new Chakra Form. And Killer Bee (the Raikage's younger brother, so he knows what super-speed looks like) says that all he saw was a "yellow flash", comparing it to the 4th Hokage's Flying Thunder God technique.
    • Now he is faster than A. Replicating Minato's feat WITHOUT Hirashin no Jutsu.
  • A's dad, the Third Raikage. So fast he dodges the 'I can cross an entire mountain range in a single second' Rasenshuriken twice, even at a bad angle. His strongest attack, the Jigokuzuki: Yonhon Nukite (Hell Stab: Four Finger Nukite) which is like the Chidori or Raikiri...but even deadlier due to A's muscle mass and the fact he can increase its sharpness by extracting a finger.
  • Shisui Uchiha was one of these as well, his speed and swiftness easily made him one of the fastest Uchiha members in the clans history. Yet his strength wasn't anything to laugh at, for he could take on a group of Root members and even Itachi by himself. One of his signature abilities even allows him to escape death entirely, a power Danzo stole for himself.
• Arguably, most of the bulkier vampires of Trinity Blood qualify; in addition to brute strength, one of their stock abilities is enhanced speed, referred to in the English manga as the "Haste." Brother Petros, a bruiser for the Vatican, has the same power.
• In Mai-HiME, the Orphan of the sixth episode is a multistorey stone creature with both alarmingly quick telescopic arm attacks and the ability to take quite a bit. At least until Midori appears...
  • For that matter, Kagutsushi, the child from the main character herself would also count here, being capable to gather energy for a few seconds to unleash a nuke level ball of fire, while also being able to shrug off the full impact of the Pillar of Light produced by a Kill Sat from orbit, only to then casually fly there to destroy it.
• Have you ever seen a 80 meter tall cyborg sprinting at supersonic speeds? If not, watch Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0; specifically, the Units 00, 01, 02 VS Sahaquiel fight. You won't be disappointed.
  • The original series had that. In exactly the same battle. Though you only see Unit 01 go supersonic (causing a shockwave that takes apart the buildings to either side of it).
• In Airmaster the main character Aikawa Maki practically glides through air.
• Jack Rakan is a huge Boisterous Bruiser that can out-speed most opponents with ease.
• Most vampires in Rosario to Vampire are this; though they tend to have slight builds, they are better known for their enormous physical strength. That doesn't mean they can't outpace all but the quickest opponents. Tsukune became one as well after he Took a Level In Badass.
• Deville of Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force. He's a huge, muscled man with an equally huge axe. Oh, and he can Teleport Spam.
• For manga about football, this is unsurprising in Eyeshield 21. Shin Seijuro is one of the fastest runners and the hardest hitters in the series. Yamato Takeru isn't as strong, but takes hits and gives them back like a pro. Makoto Ootawara is a gigantic lineman who is insanely quick for someone his size.
• Suzaku Kururugi from Code Geass is a very skilled fighter and is so fast he can dodge bullets from machine guns. It's never explained how he can do this.
• Atsushi Murasakibara, at 208 cm (roughly 6'10"), is the tallest character in Kuroko No Basket and is also quite muscular. Because of this, he doesn't usually need to put in much of an effort when playing basketball. However, when he gets angry during a game and starts playing seriously, he is extremely fast and skilled.

Comics

• The Kingpin in the Marvel Universe is this, and damn smart to boot, even though he looks like a big fat man-slug.
  • And it's all MUSCLE.
• Also from Marvel, we have Warpath. He has a top running speed of over a hundred MPH, and reflexes on par with the likes of Spider-Man, but this is usually overshadowed by the fact that his punch is about one stage down from Colossus in terms of power. In the comics, he's been referred to as "an oncoming freight train" when he charges fist-first into someone.
• Sabretooth is strong enough to lift multiple tons with minimal effort, has claws capable of rending steel, and is an incredibly skilled martial artist with at least a century's worth of combat experience (probably more. A lot more.). He's also known for being incredibly fast, able to pounce upon an opponent in the blink of an eye and tear them to pieces before they even get a chance to react.
• Fat Cobra in Marvel's Immortal Iron Fist is a seven-foot martial artist who amply lives up to both of his names, being enough of a Game Breaker to singlehandedly stall the forces of Hell.
• Incredible Hulk, much faster than most Marvel characters that rely on brute strength.
  • The exact nature of his speed is VERY open to interpretation. Some have him just use the raw strength of those muscles to push him to insane speeds, but his reflexes are barely slightly above average. Others have had him be able to catch Quicksilver by the head with just his thumb and forefinger when he was running at top speed in a circle around him.
• The Thing from the Fantastic Four is another example. He's just as fast and agile as he was when he was still human and is trained in several martial arts. This is best shown in his battles with the Hulk who is fast, but relies more on strength. The Hulk can pound the tar out of him if he can get a hold of him first.
• Superman, whenever the writers don't forget that he has Super Speed. Pretty much any Flying Brick character generally applies.
  • Same applies for Supergirl and Power Girl.
  • The Marvel Family.
• Apollo of The Authority is an Expy of Superman, so he's the Flying Brick variant; so is Swift to a lesser degree. Midnighter's more of the "no-one built like that should be able to move that fast" kind -- reflexes fast enough to drop a speedster and the ability to see all moves before they happen (as well as being hideously strong and tough) make him a big, burly death machine.
• Doomsday, the beast that almost killed Superman in his debut. While he's decayed somewhat, he is still a nightmarish strong and durable behemoth who is much faster than he looks. Fast enough to keep up with Superman anyway.
• Crete, Augustus Medici's bodyguard, and Minutemen Jack Daw and Lono from One Hundred Bullets.
• Bane, the man who broke the Bat is not only faster than he looks, but smarter, too. Batman himself too, no special powers or equipment, but has trained since the age of 11 to be as strong and fast as humanly possible, and is a master of most martial arts.
• The Juggernaut, bitch. He can run a top speed of 111 miles per hour, can run through anything, and does not tire. So yeah, you're pretty much fucked.

Film

• Dante, the bigger, evil version of Mr. Hyde in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• The Predators; they tower over Arnold Schwarzenegger, and you probably won't even see them before they cut you into several pieces.
• Sammo Hung in his more-serious action films.
• Characters played by Michael Woods, often opposite Donnie Yen. Woods is a large, imposing, extremely muscular former Navy SEAL. Since Woods looks like a classic Mighty Glacier, it's always a little jaw-dropping to discover he could trade blows just as rapidly as the smaller, lither Yen.
• A trademark of Bolo Yeung, when he isn't scripted to be otherwise.
• The Butcher of Wanted is a very, very large man who could dance circles around the protagonist while slicing him apart with a large knife.
• Jet Li goes up against a pair of these in Kiss of the Dragon. Subverted as their size makes it hard to battle in the cramped quarters of the office level, where they are both killed eventually.
• Ip Man 2 has the Twister, a stereotypically hulking Western boxer who not only takes a lot of punches easily and puts a lot of power behind his own, but is also fast enough to keep up with Master Hung and Ip Man, at one point even engaging in a Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs pummel duel with Master Hung.
• The second Iron Man film has Ivan Vanko, able to hit professional racecars with his whips and faster than both Tony and Rhodey in his suit at the end. And Tony's new Arc Reactor means he doesn't have the excuse of being low on power! His bruiser qualities are self-evident.
• Thor is a literal version of this trope because he is the God of Thunder and Lightning. He's strong enough to throw his hammer through multiple Frost giants at a time, one hit almost all of them with a lighting strike created earthquake and smash throw the back of an enormous monster's head. And he flies. Very, very fast.
• Kamen Rider Kabuto appears to be the single least agile Rider at the first glance. His pose has him simply pointing skywards and he doesn't move much in battle either. But when he moves, he's to fast for the eye to see!
  • The other ZECT Riders are equally strong and fast, too. But they don't pretend to be slow to begin with.
• Danny Bateman in The Replacements. He plays on the defensive line, so you expect him to be strong. What you don't expect, is him crashing through the other team's blockers after the snap, and tackling the quarter-back before he's had the chance to take two steps back.

Literature

• Wild Cards:
  • Fatman from is a huge guy, but can move lightning fast and still dish out the hard damage because he has gravity powers.
  • Carnifex is a berserk killing machine, and he likes it that way.
  • At one point The Sleeper wakes up with greatly enhanced strength and reflexes and finds himself doing unplanned backflips before getting used to his body's new responses.
  • Durg At'Morahk, the Takisian Super Soldier, and Moonchild, who fought him to a standstill.
  • Starshine is extremely strong and can move at the speed of light.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, a Mighty Glacier gloats about his chances of bringing down the infamous Sandor Clegane. Jaime Lannister notes to himself that Sandor is not only one of the strongest men in Westeros, but also faster and more savage than anything the glacier could handle.
• Conan the Barbarian. In the original tales by Robert E Howard, Conan is not only incredibly strong and tough, he's so fast and agile that his movements are described as "panther-like."
• Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde in Terry Pratchett's Interesting Times. Especially awesome as they are all OAPs.
• The majority of the main characters from Soon I Will Be Invincible qualify; Doctor Impossible (besides also being a Mad Scientist), Fatale, CoreFire, Damsel, Lily, Feral.
• The Augments from The Postman.
• The Ents in The Lord of the Rings, and their semi-sentient allies. Sure they start out slow, but they're big creatures with long legs, and they seem to be able to move as fast as a bullet train when angry enough!
• Bael, and to a lesser extent, Rand al'Thor from The Wheel of Time series. Rand is mentioned as being taller than the majority of his countrymen, and Bael is often described as "The tallest man I've seen, even among the Aiel", but both are usually some of first to crack a can of high-speed whoopass.
• Various characters in the Warhammer 40000 Grey Knights novels, including the eponymous Space Marines and quite a few of their enemies.
• A key plot element in The Far Arena is the fact that the main character averts this. The idea that a small man might become a major "sports" star in any era is a bigger obstacle to anyone in the 20th century believing that he's a frozen-and-reanimated Roman gladiator than the bizarre mechanics of his journey.
• Obould Many-Arrows of R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms is an orc blessed by a god to be as strong as a bull and as fast as a mountain cat. Combine that besides being just damn tough, he wears nearly impenetrable armor.
• Several main characters in Animorphs favour Lightning Bruiser as their combat morph. These include Jake (Siberian tiger), David (African lion) and Rachel (Grizzly bear).
• Derek of the Darkest Powers series, who is also a Genius Bruiser. He's over six feet tall, weighs 220lbs of pure muscle, has shoulders as broad as the average doorway, and essentially has the reflexes of a cat on speed.
• Yama from Lord of Light is big enough to lift and carry half again his own weight in armored flesh several miles at a run, and fast enough to kill half a dozen people who get in his way before they can draw their weapons.
• Any number of beasties in The Dresden Files, most recently the Ik'k'kuox.
• The largest Culture ships (GSV's - General Systems Vehicles) represent the majority of the Culture's population centres. Their controlling AI's are nurturing, paternal, and extremely caring. However, if you happen to declare war, pray that you never face one in battle. Once that it's certain that its population is safe, you will be facing a 200 kilometre long badass who will convert its multi billion tonne mass into engines and weapons. You will not be able to outrun it and it is more than capable of engaging entire fleets on its own.
• Chinese Celestials (including the titular dragon) from the Temeraire series. There are dragons in the West that can overtake them in level flight. There are those who can outmaneuver them in close quarters. There are very few that could do both; and good luck finding one that can do either, match their (20 tons displacement or so, but only slightly smaller than the largest dragon species that displaces 50) size, and unleash a fearsome breath weapon.
• Allanon from the Shannara series. He's a seven foot tall man who's built like a wrestler, and moves with deceptive speed, grace, and stealth. He's also the last Druid and has a bit of a Kung Fu Wizard thing going for him as well. Not a man you want to mess with. Other examples include The Reaper from The Elfstones of Shannara, The Koden and The Creepers from The Heritage of Shannara, many Trolls, and all of the Mwellrets.
• Jack Reacher is built like a football player. He follows a rule of thumb in fights that goes "get your retaliation in first". He often hits first and even more often hits last.
• Pewterarms, aka Thugs, from Mistborn are Mistings with the power to increase their bodies' physical abilities. While Super Strength is the obvious application of this power, a Thug who knows what he or she is doing is superhumanly quick and dextrous as well. Full Mistborn and Inqusitors are this trope even moreso; their combination of abilities makes them incredibly mobile and capable of both taking and dishing out a tremendous amount of punishment.
• Achilles from The Iliad is the greatest fighter of the Trojan War, and he's described as "swift-footed" more often than anything else.

Pro Wrestling

• Samoa Joe. Any time you have a near-300-pound Samoan who cannot only keep up with the likes of AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels, but actually show them up in an X Division match, you can definitely call him a Lightning Bruiser.
• Sean O'Haire, similar to Samoa Joe. Who showed up the other depended on who was the Technico that night.
• Ultimo Guererro. Maybe not so big by American standards, but compared to his fellow Luchadors, he's massive. His finishing move is a moonsault off the top rope while holding onto the opponent.
• The late Umaga usually moved slow, but when something motivated him to speed up he bolted.
• The late Bam Bam Bigelow. Just watch his matches on Youtube.
• The late Mike Awesome. 6ft 7in, nearly 300 pounds, and could fly around the ring like a Luchadore.
• Vader. For much of his career, he moved quicker and more gracefully than a guy of 460 has any business doing.
• Rob Van Dam, able to do stuff usually reserved for the smaller high flyers, like back somersaults from a standing still position, while weighing close to 250 pounds of muscle.
• Not as pronounced as some people on this list, but The Undertaker is pretty spry, compared to other similarly sized (or bigger) wrestlers in the WWE. He's slowed down a bit with age, but can still do some impressive stunts (such as during the epic Wrestlemania XXV match against Shawn Michaels). In his earlier days he was known to walk on the ring ropes!
  • Perhaps the most memorable of his ring stunts besides walking the ropes was when he pulled off a plancha suicida dive over the top rope and onto nearly a dozen wrestlers during a 1997 In Your House match with Shawn Michaels.
• Also Kane before his Badass Decay occurred when he was unmasked.
  • The main reason he slowed down a bit was that shortly after his unmasking, he preformed a number of Tombstone Piledrivers to people on the steel stage and concrete floors backstage, injuring his knees in the process. He's still one of the faster big men in the business, having a very athletic arsenal.
• Brock Lesnar is probably one of the best examples. After all, how many other near-300-pounders can pull off a Shooting Star Press?
• Bobby Lashley. They called him "Black Lesnar" for a reason; not only is he a physical match for Brock, but he could also match Brock's speed and agility. He also matched Brock's career path, but let's not go there.
• Takeshi Morishima, a chubby guy of around 300 pounds. Would probably qualify as a bishonen if he weren't so hefty. And not just phenomenally agile for a guy his size, but in good enough health to carry 20-minute matches at his fast pace.
• Hulk Hogan, back when his hips were still made of bone and his knees were still in good shape (i.e. back before his second WWE run), was fairly light on his feet, capable of pulling off a hurricanrana in his younger days. Not bad for a guy listed anywhere between 6' 6" and 6'8" and 280 to 310 lbs.
• Scott Steiner before his singles push. He's why the hurricanrana is alternately called the Frankensteiner.
• Sheamus is strong enough to knock around Mark Henry, and his berserker fury can give even John Cena trouble. He also uses an awesome slingshot shoulder block, and can do the "skin the cat" trick.
• Perry Saturn was by far the largest member of The Radicalz (the others being Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, and Dean Malenko) and was never part of the cruiserweight division in WCW. However, he could fly as well as his smaller comrades.
• Albert, now wrestling in the WWE as 'Tensai', could actually move pretty fast for a big guy, particularly when charging across the ring. This made his 'A-Train' ring name particularly apt, as he often came at his opponents like one.

Sports

• In the NBA the center is usually the biggest guy on the team, with an average height of 7 feet. While the NBA has known fast centers in the past, Mr. David Robinson puts them all to shame.
• Most people remember Muhammad Ali for his lightning fast speed, but he was also 6'4, 220 pounds, had an iron chin, an incredibly durable body and heart for days.
• Modern Defensive Ends in American Football. Players like Julius Peppers and Justin Tuck strike fear into the hearts of many a Quarterback.
  • Special mention, however, must go to the late, great Reggie White. 6' 8", 300 pounds, could run a 4.6-second 40 yard dash, and in his prime was stronger than any offensive lineman he was matched up with. In fact, one of his favorite methods of sacking a quarterback was simply pushing the guard backwards until he reached the QB.
• Blockers in roller derby tend to be this. Some teams opt for having a Lightning Bruiser for their jammer as well, while others use a Fragile Speedster.
• In Mixed Martial Arts:
  • Junior Dos Santos, Andrei Arlovski, Mirko Cro Cop and Alistair Overeem. All of them are heavyweights who strike faster than a lot of lighter guys.
  • Fedor Emelianenko. Looks like an average chubby dude, pulls knockout punches and armbars so quickly, most of his opponents can barely react.
  • Brock Lesnar has surprising speed for a man who needs to cut weight to make 265 lbs.
  • Cain Velasquez, he outpowered and outspeeded Brock Lesnar on his way to UFC Heavyweight title and can push insane pace for the entire duration of a fight.
• Mario Williams, the defensive end for the Houston Texans. He's 6 foot 7, close to 300 pounds, and he runs the 40 yard dash in under 5 seconds. (4.65, to be exact). Or Albert Haynesworth. 6'6", 350 pounds, runs the 40 in 4.93.
• A lot of the good heavy-weights in "Amateur" Wrestling (e.g. College, High School, and Olympic) tend to be like this. They're big, beefy, but they can go about as quickly as a 105 pounder if they've trained right.
• A lot of sumo wrestlers fall into this category. Not all of that body mass is fat.
• Mike Tyson was not a large heavyweight, but he punched extremely fast and extremely hard, dispatching many of his opponents with almost insulting ease.
• Many power forwards in the sport of hockey are this. I don't think anyone ever accused Cam Neely or Jarome Iginla of being slow. Most players 6'3 and over are somewhat slower than others but there have been (and are) multiple exceptions to this.
  • Even a slow hockey player is a fast athlete overall. Training regimens for track athletes and hockey players overlap quite a bit.
• Jonah Lomu of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. Faster than a wide receiver, built like a linebacker. At full speed, he simply powered through defenders like a truck knocks over traffic cones.
• The most well known example in Australian Football is Barry Hall. Built like a brick shit house and incredibly strong but faster than any tall defender.
• Lebron James. 6'8", about 270 pounds, also one of the quickest, most agile players in the NBA. It was said of him that while Magic Johnson was the first "point forward", James was the first "point linebacker". Apparently he was an absolute monster as a high school wide receiver.
• Two of the best handballers in the world, Nikola Karabatic (France) and Mikkel Hansen (Denmark), both fall well under this category. Both stand at 1.96m and weigh over 100kg. While not having the pace of a winger, they're both fast and technically strong. They also have great view of the game and extremely powerful shots. Both started out as left backs, and they're both becoming playmakers (Karabatic primarily is, while Hansen is sometimes used on the position).

Tabletop Games

• Very common trope in RPG games as your characters near towards endgame. Their very high levels usually negate the flaws and when the cannon becomes anything but glass you're in for some serious ass kicking.
• Bretonnian Knights in the Warhammer Fantasy. Fastest of all heavy cavalry - and also the hardest hitting. They can take almost anything head on, and especially the Grail Knights are amongst the best troops in the game. The Bretonnian army is balanced by the fact that their infantry is mostly crap
  • Also Ogres, who can move 12 inches per turn and can get up to 12 attacks on the first turn of combat. Ouch.
    • Bear in mind that ogres are considered one of the worst armies, mainly due to the small size of their armies.
  • Lizardmen Saurus Warriors and Temple Guard start out as a Mighty Glacier with high durability and terrible initiative, but judicious application of Light magic by a friendly Slann can make things a lot more vicious. A unit of Temple Guard powered up with Birona's Timewarp can move as fast as cavalry and dish out three strength 5 attacks which always strike first each. This is generally somewhere in the vicinity of a horrible nightmare for any close combat army, since a Temple Guard unit in these circumstances can be charged in the rear by a full-scale horde and win.
• Pretty much everyone in Warhammer 40000 who isn't a squishy little space elf or Puny Earthlings. The Space Marines aren't lightning, but they are repeatedly and consistently noted to be faster and more agile than nine-feet transhumans in bulky Powered Armor seem to have any right to be. Fear the Orks who discover red Celtic woad.
  • In a game where the Space Marines are the Jack of All Stats, something really has to stand out to count as a Lightning Bruiser. Marine and Chaos independent characters such as Failbadon, certain Dreadnoughts, and various Monstrous Creatures with high initiatives might count.
  • Addabon is sort of a mixed bag since he has high initiative, but he moves slowly since he's in terminator armor.
• The Barbarian in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. They have the highest hit points, can wear up to medium level armor, rage out, giving them bonuses on taking and giving damage, and use any weapon they please, which is usually a double handed sword, bludgeoning tool, or axe. To top it off, they're also the fastest unmodified class, and at higher levels, react so fast to multiple enemies that they don't get a bonus when flanking him. Including making sure that the rogue doesn't get his handy dandy backstab feature in said mob.
  • In 4e they still have high hit points (really only beaten out by the Warden, now), move fast, and strike VERY hard with their rages. However, their defense is middling to poor, so you're gonna need all those extra hit points.
  • The Fighter in Pathfinder qualifys as a Lightning Bruiser. The ability "Armor Training" allows them to increase the Max Dexterity Bonus of their armor (they get better at dodging stuff, even when they're covered in plates of steel), decrease the Armor Penalty (they get better at getting around weight issues armor has when preforming physical actions like swimming, jumping, climbing etc.) and most importantly, they can move at full tactical speed in armor. Relatively early, too (3rd level for Medium armor, 7th for Heavy armor). Essentially, a Fighter can sprint while wearing full plate armor before he's even halfway done with his class progression.
• Magic the Gathering: anything big with haste. Consider Predator Dragon, Hellkite Charger, and Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund for three draconic examples. (Admittedly, the "lightning" part only applies on the first turn you summon it, but the "bruiser" will remain pretty much indefinitely.)
  • Alternatively anything big with first strike might qualify, such as Akroma, Angel of Wrath. Who has haste too, so she fits by either metric.
• Old World of Darkness:
  • Werewolves were the eminent personification of this trope. All Werewolves (even the weaker Tribes and Auspices) became at least as strong as the strongest normal human ever when in their war-form. On top of this, the Werewolf super-stat "Rage" had the default effect of giving you more actions per round on a 1-action-per-point-of-Rage-spent basis.
  • Vampires also had the Brujah, whose Clan Disciplines included Celerity (going fast) and Potence (being super-strong).

Video Games

• Bruiser class champions in League of Legends are melee champions designed after Riot realised their melee dps champions would get annihilated before they could do significant damage. Between naturally high defense and magic resist that scales with level, high amounts of health (and usually a form of life steal), very fast movement speed, a charge or teleport ability or other gap closer and still decent amounts of damage, they are vastly more powerful than any equivalent ranged dps in terms of stats. Their main disadvantage is that if the enemy dps is correctly positioned they have to force their way through the entire enemy team and probably die in the process, but this disadvantage only comes into play at high skill levels where players work together as a team, leaving bruisers free to trample unskilled and moderately skilled players.
  • Jarvan and Lee Sin are the prime examples. The former has a gap closer that spawns a circular wall to trap enemies, a shield that also slows all nearby enemies, a defense and damage buff that affects his entire team, an armor pierce ability that hits multiple targets and doubles as another gap closer (which goes through walls and stuns enemies in its path), and a passive that deals percentage based damage on auto attacks. The latter has a ranged nuke that can also be used as a gap closer and deals bonus damage against weak enemies, a shield that is also a teleport in the direction of an ally and shields him as well and can be reactivated to grant lifesteal and armor, an area effect nuke and stealth reveal that also slows enemies and reduces their attack speed, a knockback that potentially disables multiple enemies and deals major damage, and free auto attack damage after each of his abilities. Considering each champion nominally has only 4 abilities and a passive, the amount of overloading is impressive.
• Donkey Kong in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl is surprisingly fast for a big gorilla. Wario is heavy, but small and agile for his weight. Neither have projectiles (Except Wario's bike) and Wario's range with plenty of attacks is notably low even by close range combat standards. Ike is a somewhat weighty powerhouse who's nonetheless capable of some deceptively agile feats.
  • Notably in Brawl Minus (a side competitive field for SSBB), Wario's moves have been upgraded to have much further distance, increasing his tackle distance to nearly half the field without sacrificing power. Donkey Kong, however, is changed into a Mighty Glacier.
• Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, is Donkey fast, agile, and an adept swimmer; he can also defeat almost anything he comes across with strength.
  • He's bigger, faster, and stronger too.
  • On a related note, K.Rool is an obese crocodile man so people generally forget that he's as fast or faster than Donkey Kong while at the same time being twice his size.
• In several Super Mario Bros. games, Bowser has been seen getting around quite fast when he wants to. In Super Mario Galaxy, not only can he outrun Mario, but he actually backflips around the arena.
  • In the original Super Mario Kart, he and his functional equal Donkey Kong Jr. are the top speed record holders.
  • His kin share his agility, most especially Roy and Morton who can leap WHILE entirely within their shells.
  • Mario, as well. He's quite agile, he can pound through bricks, and even swing Bowser by the tail! He's considered the Jack of All Stats because other characters in his series generally outclass and fall short of him in other areas like strength and speed.
• In the Wario Land series, Wario is able to break huge blocks of stone, yet he is still able to dash quickly and jump high.
• The Deer Haunter from Time Splitters: Future Perfect was a particularly annoying miniboss because it was both fast, strong, and confined to a small room (until you figure out that he can't hit you in the room he starts in).
• In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, the Iron Knuckles become this once their armor has been removed, retaining their old strength but gaining more speed albeit still slower than Link. In Majora's Mask, the Iron Knuckles can become faster than Link sans armor.
  • The tradition is carried on in Twilight Princess with the Darknut.
  • Possibly played more straight by Wind Waker incarnation as the Darknuts move fairly fast in their armor and don't gain much speed from losing it.
  • However, something somehow often overlooked, when he sheds his armor, he becomes susceptible to arrows/boomerangs/etc (with added hitstun), whereas his armored form is completely invincible to these.
  • The Goron form in Majora's Mask. It's the biggest shape you've got and it has the slowest walking speed, but when you start rolling you're pretty much the fastest thing in the game.
    • Except for any *other* Goron that's behind you in the race.
  • Ganondorf in Twilight Princess in his boar form, in which he's the size of an elephant, smashes through the stone pillars in area you fight when running, and runs much faster than you do.
    • Gannondorf pulls this again in Wind Waker Giant sized, punches and kicks hard enough to send a person flying across a room, yet still agile and fast enough to dodge arrows fired at point blank range, AFTER they've been fired!
• Arguably Fatman from Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty. He rolls around on skates, has an impenetrable bomb suit, and wields a fully automatic Glock 18. Plus he is a Mad Bomber.
  • Metal Gear Solid's Vulcan Raven is a seven foot tall Inuit/Alaskan Native American who is capable of not only lifting a twenty millimeter Vulcan cannon, a gun normally mounted on fighter jets, and carrying the refrigerator-sized ammunition barrel on his back while in the middle of the permafrost layer without a shirt, he is able to run while doing so. Not only that, but he's smart. Needless to say, he's quite a challenge to defeat.
• Berserkers from Gears of War are capable of outrunning you in a mad sprint, and turning you into paste if they actually catch up.
• The small colossi from Shadow of the Colossus are some of the most frightening and difficult bosses as they are much, much faster than the player and not any less dangerous than the big ones.
• The Mighty Glacier characters from some of Capcom's 90's beat-em-ups (notably Perceval from Knights of the Round and Mess from Cadillacs & Dinosaurs) would have the ability to dash, enabling them to easily keep up with the Jacks of All Stats and Fragile Speedsters of the group without sacrificing any power.
• Edmond Honda from Street Fighter, a sumotori, has some of the fastest attacks in the game.
  • Alex from the Street Fighter III games, a grappler who can headbutt an opponent so fast he can stun them.
  • Street Fighter IV introduces Rufus, a man whose very rotund body shape belies his attack speed.
  • When Akuma isn't a Glass Cannon, he's a Lightning Bruiser. When he's a Lightning Bruiser, he's a Game Breaker.
  • Ditto for M. Bison.
• Most bosses in The King of Fighters tend to be this.
• Zappa's Raoh ghost in the Guilty Gear series. Raoh is capable of taking out 100% of the opponent's health, not to mention his attacks are fast and his exclusive super "Bellows Malice" can send the guard bar straight flying to the max.
  • Justice when she's in Gold Mode.
  • Potemkin, also, especially when you use his dash. Sol also becomes a frighteningly fast and durable opponent in Gold, and can easily spam his specials, as well as regenerates health constantly.
• Many raid bosses from World of Warcraft. The most extreme example is Patchwerk, whose Hateful Strike ability will One-Hit Kill all but the most well geared and buffed tanks (and even then you're cutting it close). He uses Hateful Strike approximately once a second.
  • Warriors are also this, especially Fury warriors. They have skills that allow them to dash insanely fast to an opponent and then cut them down. Druids, as a result, also have similar skills that mimic Warriors.
  • Way back in the original Warcraft RTS, the two Elite Mook units, the human Knight and the orcish Raider, both filled this role. They had 5 Armor, the best anyone of their species could have, 90 HP, and moved about the battlefield swiftly on their mount.
• Bob from Tekken 6. In his own words: Speed and weight!
  • Ogre (pre-One-Winged Angel) and Jinpachi, and the boss versions of Heihachi, Kazuya and Jin.
• Elvis in God Hand gets ridiculously fast in demon form, and his human form has several fast dash attacks as well.
• Berserker in Fate Stay Night. Insane strength, surprisingly fast, and has natural armor that can't be penetrated by anything but the most powerful attacks.
  • The Fighting Game, on the other hand, turns him into a Mighty Glacier.
  • Rider from Fate/Zero is the most massive Servant and a Boisterous Bruiser. Off his chariot he's fast for his size, not necessarily a match for other Servants, but he can move and fight quite dexterously from his car.
• The Assassin in Guild Wars. Properly built for PvE, it deals attacks more quickly than any other class, deals more damage than any other class, and is extremely hard to kill. It is capable of doing all of PvE with minimum effort and best time and uses most weapons better than the classes designed to use those weapons -- though it is also one of the harder classes to play for non-powergamers. In PvP it loses the resilience aspect to a degree but remains potent.
  • Addendum: the spirit changes have turned the Ritualist into something like this. It has the second highest damage in the game, can gain a frontline quality armour level, and can shift the spirits constantly to the best position on the battlefield.
• Big Daddies from Bioshock. Really big, but also fast and able to dish it out.
  • Brute splicers (in the sequel) are just as big, fast and able to dish it out like the Big Daddies.
• Duster in Mother 3 has the highest physical attack in the game, and is one of the fastest characters. He even has a special ability that occasionally allows him to get a hit in before anyone else, even if you don't manage a first strike. Balanced by not having any PSI, though depending on your viewpoint that just makes him even cooler.
  • Not just that, he has another ability where if the enemy catches you from behind, there's a chance he'll flip over them before they can act and attack them from behind instead.
  • What's really strange is that he walks with a limp. Imagine how fast he'd be with two good legs.
• Basically, for any Pokémon to be considered eligible for competitive matches, they must be either this, a hard and very bulky hitter, or a Stone Wall with lots of Standard Status Effects. Several direct examples exist:
  • Garchomp (especially in Gen IV): Better defenses than Swampert, faster than most of its supposed "counters", sky-high Attack, great typing (Yache Berry in conjunction with Garchomp's bulk prevents one-hit kills with Ice moves, sorry Mamoswine), crazy movepool which allows a lot of attacks For Massive Damage...
  • Scizor (in Gen IV/V): Steel/Bug typing means that it has plenty of resists (which artificially increase its bulk), it is rather strong, and it can use Bullet Punch to get over its lackluster speed.
  • Mewtwo: Absurd Special Attack and Speed, but also some sizable bulk. It's a threat in Ubers to this very day.
  • Due to the nature of Pokemon's in-battle stat change system, it's possible for a Pokemon who fits another build trope to become this with the right moveset and/or field condition. Example: item-Metagross, a Mighty Glacier, can use Agility to become absurdly fast and fit this trope. More absurd examples include Baton Passing speed and attack boosts to Bibarel, whose ability lets it double stat boosts it gets (up to +3, which makes Bibarel technically +6, after that stat boosts don't count anymore.)
  • "Several" doesn't even begin to describe it, as there is a large number of Pokémon that could qualify. For starters, every "uber" legendary aside from Deoxys has outstanding scores in every stat. Other notable Lightning Bruisers, relative to their respective tiers, include Leafeon, Miltank, Raikou, Zapdos, Celebi, Jirachi, Starmie, and Latios/Latias. On top of that, there's still a myriad of other powerful, durable Pokémon that can become faster through certain moves, traits, and items: Tyranitar, Scizor, Metagross, Gyarados, Gliscor, Kingdra, Feraligatr, Hitmontop, Ludicolo, etc. Considering the sheer amount of other strong Pokémon that can be made faster via Choice Scarf, Trick Room, or Baton Pass, the examples become far too numerous to all be listed here.
  • While Mewtwo's not as overpowered as he used to be, he's always very strong and fast.
  • And then there's Arceus. Having 120 in EVERY stat (which makes it either faster, stronger or more resistant than every other Pokemon), an insane movepool (only bested by Mew, who can learn every TM/HM, and Smeargle, who can learn every move period), and, most importantly, can take on any of the 17 types. In short, you can tweak your Arceus to counter, duplicate or best any of the other 648 Pokemon.
• Necrid in Soul Calibur 2 had high attack speed, and power. When he isn't attacking however, he is slow combo fodder. Nightmare also becomes one when he is split from Sigfried in the 3rd game.
• Halo's Spartan-IIs, at least in the fluff. Your average Spartan is proficient with all weapons, ridiculously strong, can shrug off terrible wounds, and has reflexes so fast they enter a Bullet Time-like state when in combat -- and that's without wearing their trademark Mjolnir Armor, which increases their strength and speed even more. In-game, however, Gameplay and Story Segregation results in Spartan characters being Glass Cannons who move only slightly faster than regular humans and can only take a handful of shots before dying messily.
  • Play the game on Legendary difficulty. Pretty much everything that ever appears on screen is going to end up dead, with the exception of the Chief. Those bits where you get human allies? Generally, they'll be dead in under 60 seconds. The Chief is Badass.
  • Ingame Brutes would probably count. They can move really fast and jump really high when they berserk despite being over 8 feet tall.
    • The new multiplayer Elite in Halo Reach. Not only are they bigger and have more health and shields than the Spartans, but they also are faster which is supplemented by their new evasion moves.
      • Technically, Spartans can take more damage, but Elites have better methods of avoiding damage and full regenerative powers.
      • Elites in general throughout the series, especially the more 1337 ranks such as Zealots and Ultras.
  • Hunters started as Mighty Glaciers (or Glass Cannons if you attack their weak point), but got faster and more evasive as the series progressed, taking this trope to its logical conclusion in Halo: Reach.
• Although in theory the right mix of items from the (in)famous Warcraft III map Defense of the Ancients allows any of its player characters to become one of these, only a few really fit conceptually. Amongst these are the Chaos Knight, who has the highest base movespeed and can summon unusually powerful illusions via his ultimate spell as tanking and DPS; the Lycanthrope, whose Super Mode maxes his movespeed and lets him make better use of attackspeed bonuses as well as giving a damage multiplier; finally the Slithereen Guard, whose Sprint move nearly maxes movespeed and whose armor-reducing ultimate spell lets him gain a large edge over his targets. These three happen to have Strength as their dominant attribute, giving higher un-enhanced health maximum and regeneration compared to most.
  • Any agility based hero in a map where you can buy infinite stat-up items. Agility gives attack speed, armor, and if they're agi-based, attack power. So one of these heroes will, when buffed up, high attack power, an absurd attack speed, and high armor. Eventually it reaches the point where the only thing stopping them from instantly killing things is their attack animation, which apparently reaches some sort of attack speed limit.
    • Syllabear, while being an agility hero, can almost double his HP with his ultimate and attack extremely fast using rabid. The only trade off is he trades off his range attack for melee. Medusa also qualifies as an agility hero with mana shield boosting her effective HP.
  • Bloodlust. Orcs. Just make sure your army has a mass buff dispel ability.
    • Warcraft 2, Knights and Ogres filled this role. Good damage, good armor, good hit points, fastest ground units. Then consider Orcs had the Haste and Bloodlust spells. With a good click speed, you could turn your ogres group into a mass of death.
• The Tank from Left 4 Dead. At 6000 hp it has the most health of anything and can give a good pummeling, while also being much faster than it looks. The Witch is also an example, in that despite looking as fragile as a standard zombie, it can withstand multiple autoshotgun blasts, is frightfully fast and will one-hit-down any of the survivors.
• Deathclaws in the Fallout series.
  • Some of the super-mutants in Fallout 3, some of which are very fast in spite of being the largest enemies in the game.
  • Player character martial artist are recommended to be built like this as speed is everything an action point based system.
  • Not to mention just plain every character in general, just to deal with those goddamned death claws.
  • See also X-com and Jagged Alliance, both of which use a similar AP system. Focusing on training speed alone whenever mercs have some downtime will make even revolver-packing mercs as deadly as machine gunners, with better accuracy when "spraying and praying".
    • Not so much for X-COM, as shooting a firearm takes a fixed percentage of your time units. Even if you have godlike speed, you're still only going to take single aimed shots with a big gun. Close combat attacks (eg, with stun rods) take a fixed number of TUs, and so will fit the Lightning Bruiser role nicely.
  • Grandma Lily Bowen in Fallout: New Vegas, like the rest of the Nightkin, is made and trained for speed and stealth. She towers over other characters, wields a BFS made out of the vertibird rotor blade, and is the only character with maximum agility, giving her all the AP.
    • Veronica goes from Glass Cannon to this if you give her Power Armor (which due to being from the Brotherhood of Steel, she's more likely to wear) and the Ballistic Fist. She becomes powerful enough to even take on Legate Lanius (who himself is this trope) by herself and win.
• Saren (in his final form at the end) in Mass Effect certainly fits this trope.
  • Krogan are also like this. Especially Wrex.
    • A recent addition to the Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer is the Krogan Vanguard. Start with their crazy durability and their melee-boosting rage powers inherent to all Krogan classes, then give him the Barrier power and the trademark Vanguard Charge, and you have the Murder Train.
  • Also, Harbinger. He moves faster than ordinary Collectors, has high barriers/shields, and spams a blast of yellow-black energy that deals significant damage.
  • Commander Shepard him/herself in ME2, depending on your class. Soldiers have Adrenaline Rush, which slows down time around you, and Vanguards have Biotic Charge, which uses mass effect fields (the same things that starships use to travel faster than light) to hurl you across the battlefield through anything in between you and your unlucky target. Both of them can use a shotgun that can shatter a regular human's arms if he/she tried to fire it, and the Soldier can use an anti-tank rifle or a light machine gun.
  • Don't forget Infiltrators. They can also use an anti-tank sniper rifle, while receiving significant damage bonuses for stealth and being able to slow time when aiming through the scope, allowing you to empty your magazine into some poor guy's head within seconds. They aren't all that squishy, either.
  • If the other Reapers are ANYTHING like Sovereign, then they'll all fit this trope. Sovereign was an enormous and incredibly powerful being that was able to almost able to wipe out an entire fleet before it was destroyed. It was also very fast and agile with Joker at one point saying that it "made a turn that would shear any other ship in half."
    • They fit.
• Prototype has the Supreme Hunter who is as large as a tank and has most of Alex's powers as an Evil Counterpart to the protagonist Alex Mercer who is a hard-hitting speedster. For that matter, standard Hunters are pretty damn speedy for their power, and on Blackwatch's side their Super Soldiers both have the physical brutishness to fight Alex in melee and the agility to Le Parkour while in pursuit of him.
• The bosses in Punch Out and its sequels. Particularly the Sandman from the Wii game, who stands at 285 lbs, ~6 feet 5 inches, and can punch in the blink of an eye, especially in the second playthrough.
• In Team Fortress 2, the Demoman's Eyelander. It takes off a chunk of your health at the outset, but you get more health and better speed after you behead someone. After two, you're up to above-normal HP and a goodly running speed, and at the maximum of 4, you've got more health than a Soldier and a little less speed than a Scout. Normally, the Eyelander is paired with a shield that reduces certain damage and allows guaranteed crits (which is handy because the Eyelander never gets random crits), but if you take the default Sticky-Bomb launcher and still manage to get 4 heads, you're basically unstoppable.
  • The Tomislav originally let a Heavy slow down his firing rate by just 1/5 to cut 70% of its startup time (and making no noise), making him rather excessively good at ambushing, before the spin-up time was Nerf to a somewhat more reasonable amount.
  • With most people a Soldier is a Jack of All Stats erring on the side of Mighty Glacier, with the Rocket Jump letting him become temporarily become a Fragile Speedster. For the people who can Rocket Jump with extreme efficiency--mastering both attacking while in midflight and using a mobility increasing technique called "airstrafing"--one Rocket Jump lets him successfully cut off or flee from any other class in almost any direction while attacking at the same time and still maintaining above average health. To add to this, the mobility also makes him very good at reaching medical packs and the team's Medic. And even if he is too low on health to Rocket Jump, the Equalizer's speed and power boost give him a good chance of escaping or landing a Desperation Attack.
• In the first Dungeon Keeper game, the Horned Reaper is almost universally assumed to be the strongest monster available, and it only takes a few levels of training before it gains the Speed Monster ability as well. Their drawback is that they're extremely hard to get your hands on, and they require a lot of monitoring to stop them flipping out and attacking your own creatures.
• The Brute archetype in City of Heroes has high Hit Points, self-sufficient defenses, and very strong attack sets. The archetype's special attribute is doing more damage the more it attacks or is attacked, making both quick frequent attacks and slow powerful ones beneficial (the former to power up the character so the latter hit extra-hard). It's essentially an entire class of playable Incredible Hulks.
  • This is boosted even more by taking powers that boost recharge (Hasten, Lightning Reflexes...) or using powersets that recharge quickly like Claws or Dual Blades. The Brute Playstyle basically amounts to Attack! Attack! Attack! while popping the occasional insp or clicky power. Oh, and sometimes holding aggro is involved.
• The Defender of Faith, one of the Empire's most powerful fighter units in Disciples 2: Dark Prophecy, is a Dual-Wielding heavily armoured knight mounted on a heavily armoured horse (poor horse...). Despite this, thanks to its high Initiative stat, it usually strikes first in each round of battle. He also hits hard. High HP, decent armor, strikes hard, strikes fast, and only takes up one space in the party? The only reason he's not a Game Breaker is that it takes a ridiculous amount of exp and gold to get them in most scenarios.
  • Another example would be Overlord, from Legions Of The Damned's support tree after his buff in Rise of the Elves. Despite taking two places in a party(Legions pretty much run on big units though) and an absurd amount of exp and gold, he's durable, hits like a truck, deals additional fire damage and moves at speed of a warrior(50 Initiative).
  • There's also Son of Ymir, even more broken than Defender of Faith and Overlord combined. First of all, he's level four as opposed to previous two level five which means he will level up faster. While he takes two places, he has an excellent hp, absurd damage with additional frostbite(sort of poison, but with ice) and, worst of all, the highest initiative in Clans, 50. Only summons and supportive mages tree have higher IN.
  • Summons from higher levels for all races also lean toward this.
  • Though they're vastly inferior comparing to afromentioned examples, both Bears deserve a mention. They have quite an hp(260 for normal and 300 for Polar variety respectively), attack hard enough to make you take notice and act fast enough to seriously weaken your front line. On the other hand, Hordes and their paralyzing Ghosts just love them.
• Though all of the superdragons could count, Crystal Dragon is probably the best example, mostly because it's unable to fly. Don't worry though, it's still fast enough to out-speed almost everything in the game, is insanely difficult to kill and packs an obscene amount of damage. The only saving grace is that - unlike most dragons - those aren't immune to magic, which allows you to cripple them down and make fight noticeably easier.
  • From Tier 6, we have Cavaliers(who are like this from III onwards) and Black Knights belonging to Castle and Necropolis respectively. The former gains bonus damage for each hex crossed, up to 50% extra, which allows him to simply blow enemy unit's socks off before the real fight even starts. The latter, on the other hand, is much more durable, can Curse his opponent(which minimalizes damage done) and is able to randomly Death Strike an enemy For Massive Damage(namely, the double). V incarnations of these two are even worse(Cavalier gains bonus from each square crossed for the whole fight, while Death Knight is capable of wiping down half of unit's stack in one slash).
• You know Elvis, the massive, muscle-bound, fist-fighting Professor in Wild Arms 5? Looking at how huge he is, surely he must be the Mighty Glacier of the villain team, right? Nope! He's the fastest of the four Sentinels you face, barely beating the resident ninja Fereydoon by a few speed points.
• All types of Skaarj from Unreal (not so much in the Tournament series, where they could be PCs and so were retooled into the Mighty Glacier for game-balance reasons). Taken to ridiculous extremes by the Berserkers, Lords and Warlords.
• Venom from the Ultimate Spider-Man game is at least twice as bulky as Spider-Man, attacks with brutal claw and tentacle strikes and throws and can pick up and toss cars with ease. He's also nearly as agile as Spider-Man and possesses a "locomotion jump" that lets him leap HUGE distances in a single bound.
• Jecht in Dissidia Final Fantasy is a heavy-hitting brawler with some of the longest, strongest combo attacks in the game. In contrast to Mighty Glaciers like Cloud and Garland though, Jecht moves pretty quickly and his attacks come out very fast as well.
  • Gabranth's gimmick is to charge his EX Gauge so he can enter EX Mode quickly. "Lightning Bruiser" doesn't describe Gabranth's EX Mode accurately enough though, a better term would be primal force of destruction. He moves and attacks quickly and his combos are incredibly powerful, and in addition to brute strength a lot of his attacks can crush guards, combo without hitting, or deflect projectiles. This is all on top of the normal EX Mode bonuses of regenerating HP, increased chance to land critical hits, and the ability to use an EX Burst.
  • Golbez is not to be forgotten, while his movement speed is amongst the slower in the game, he's the only one who gets a teleport for his dodge, and his attacks come out rather fast, are hard to block due to coming from multiple directions, and leave him with frighteningly little lag. Once he does hit you, usually with a critical hit, he'll hit just as hard as Jecht and will chain it into a HP attack instantly. Really, the only thing that separates him from Jecht, is a more varied moveset, the lack of Jeckt Block, the increased range on attacks, and the fact that you don't have to rely on careful button inputs. Though he does lack Jecht's guard crushing and charged attack capabilities.
• This is Akira Yuki's niche in Virtua Fighter. Most of his attacks come out incredibly fast with high power. However, many have a very short optimum range, and many of his attacks and combos have strict timings. One of the most extreme examples would be his knee attack, which is pulled off by pressing Guard+ Kick, then letting go of Guard exactly one frame (1/60th of a second) later. The faster ones also have a long lag at the end of them, leaving an opening if they miss or are blocked. Since most of his attacks do their best damage at close range, the opponent will likely be close enough to return with a damaging throw. However, his movement and basic attacks don't match the speed of Pai, Kagemaru, Sarah, or Lion.
• Iron Tager from Blaz Blue Calamity Trigger was a Mighty Glacier, but speed buffs in Continuum Shift are shifting him in this direction. Similarly for Hakumen. Then the trailer for the PSP version came out, showing Unlimited Tager crossing the screen at least as fast as Kokonoe wanted...
• The Rex Wheelie from Kirby Air Ride Star is a Bulk Star with more speed and acceleration, doesn't have the need to refuel, has a lot of HP, Defense and attack and is HUGE. Also, being a wheel based Machine and therefore always on the ground, it jumps high off ramps and automatically activates the special buttons and panels (i.e. Boost Panels) on the floor.
• From the Metroid series, Ridley is a super-intelligent killing machine that breaths fire and eats corpses. He's also about fifteen feet tall, utterly towering over the protagonist Samus Aran. You'd think he'd be slow and easy to avoid so you can pick him off with your Arm Cannon, right? Wrong. There is a reason he usually is That One Boss.
  • Samus herself counts. She's a power armored badass that can soak up damage like a sponge, is death at both melee and range, and is capable of reaching mach 1.
• Hunters from Half-Life 2 Episode 2. Large tripod-ish killing things with impressive speed (they can outrun you, period), an array of deadly weapons, and a lot of hit points - it can take multiple rockets to kill one, depending on difficultly, although the Pulse Rifle altfire is a nice one-hit-kill solution.
  • Antlion Guards from HL2 and its Episodes, though unable to jump like lesser Antlions, are the size of APCs - and just as fast.
• The Tyrants from the Resident Evil series; with the Nemesis as their undisputed king. Generally, they start off slow, hard hitting, and resilient. Then, when you piss them off enough, they get a speed boost. And they are faster than you.
• In Starcraft, the Zerg Ultralisk is one of the most powerful melee units in the game, and by far the toughest, even without the armor upgrade. It's balanced out mostly by being insanely expensive to build. Starcraft II Ultralisks, however, are more like Mighty Glaciers.
• Many end game creatures in Heroes of Might and Magic. Perhaps the best example is the dragon units, which are always the strongest units and among the fastest.
  • The Dragon Golem deserves a special mention. It's the fastest walking unit in the game, and the strongest Academy unit, slightly stronger than the Titan. To top this, it has both the First Strike and Negate First Strike special abilities, making it able to strike any opponent before it has an opportunity to react. Also, if you attack the Dragon Golem, the chances are fairly high that you'll be killed by the retaliation from the attack you never were able to make.
• Doom has many units that fit different parts on the scale of Competitive Balance but also has Hell Knights, Barons of Hell and Cyberdemons. Hard hitting on ranged and melee, good health and also surprisingly fast.
• Hell Knights in Doom 3, according to at least one expedition team member into Hell. You can hear his terrified ramblings on them in an audio log.
• Guardians in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves are one of the most unfair examples of this trope. Not only are they big, strong, fast, and capable of leaping absurd distances, they're also Immune to Bullets when you first meet them. Even when you do get the opportunity to actually kill them, they still absorb enough rounds to turn a small army into salsa and ask for seconds. Oh, and they also fire some of the most accurate and damaging weapons in the game. Good thing you never have to face more than three of them at a time.
• Juggernauts from Modern Warfare 2. Heavily armoured enough to need multiple hits from otherwise-One-Hit Kill weapons like the Barret .50 cal or grenade launcher, carrying a M240 machine gun which they use with near-aimbot accuracy, while also being able to charge at a fast clip. They are very much Demonic Spiders.
• Blizzard Buffalo from Mega Man X 3. He's an eight-foot-tall robotic bison-man who skids across icy surfaces at high speeds.
• Kain from Legacy of Kain. A vampire with superhuman strength sufficient to move boulders weighing several tons, superior speed, agility, and reflexes to mortals, and skin tougher than a suit of armor.
• Rise of the Kasai features Rau and Baumusu; two huge guys who fight with a variety of weapons at a blur of speeds, but can also move with amazing silence and stealth.
• Bacchus from Star Ocean the Last Hope, His strafing attack moves him quickly along the ground and hits twice. If you add More Dakka through Item creation, it actually becomes more powerful than his special attacks (which are already some of the best). Of course, He also has high Defense and HP. As well a skill that lets him heal 50% of his hp instantly.
• The Retribution Paladin in WoW is shaping up to be like this (sort of) in the next expansion, seeing as though a talent allows them to decrease the cooldown of their main instant-attack the more haste they stack and they pretty much do their damage as light-infused berserkers.
• The Advance Wars series past the second installment has the dreaded Neotank, an arachnidian monstrosity that hits harder than a Md. Tank, yet has the mobility of a regular tank. Makes you wonder why they even bothered with the Megatank in Dual Strike.
• Thanks to Koei, Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors end up with quite a few of these. Often times they end up being That One Boss. A few notable examples:
  • Dynasty Warriors gives us the most obvious example in Lu Bu. Where to start with Lu Bu? He's large, powerful, a lot faster than someone who can dwarf 80% of the cast has any right to be. His attack power is through the roof (quite often he's one of a very small number of characters who can flatly max out that stat at the maximum levels), his moveset is usually full of powerful, long-ranged sweeping blows, and just to make things worse you can bet good money that he's got an unblockable attack somewhere in his move pool. There's a reason a lot of Dynasty Warriors games make him the boss battle from hell, but also offer sweet rewards to those who can beat him when he's in his 'rage mode.'
    • Fortunately, this mainly applies in each game's Hu Lao Gate ("Coalition vs. Dong Zhuo") stage, as Lu Bu may be bypassed, where a somewhat weaker version is the end boss of the Xia Pi stage in some of the game... that is, somewhat weaker if you don't take out his love interest Diao Chan first.
  • Samurai Warriors gives us more than a few contenders, ranging from merely stupidly powerful to outright Game Breaker. These include Keiji Maeda, Tadakatsu Honda, and Kenshin Uesugi. Between them you can count on extremely varied movesets, frightening hitting power, some way to break blocks or cause stuns, Musou attacks that come out quickly and painfully, and a good chance of being given in-game status buffs. Keiji and Tadakatsu are clearly designed to be big, burly guys with weapons taller than they are, but they can swing with considerable speed and reach, and very often end up launching foes quite a few yards distant with a good power hit.
  • Finally, Warriors Orochi gives us Orochi himself, who is a Game Breaker on so many levels that they deliberately deny unlocking him (and his upgrade, Orochi X) until the very end of the game. He's large, powerful, moves fast, hits hard, and unlike almost every other character in the game, has automatic immunity frames in some of his moves where he can pummel the opposition without worry or cost.
• Every Armored Core in existence after the first generation is one, fifth and sixth generations being the most prominent. A fight between an Armored Core and anything but another Armored Core is a Curb Stomp Battle turned Up to Eleven. Some Arms Forts, giant mobile fortresses that can be several kilometres in length, are exceptions, but many like Stigro get massacred, as do huge numbers of mooks. Oh, and mooks in this game range from tanks to Mechwarrior style mechs, to battleships, to modern and futuristic aerial vehicles of any type you can imagine, and all are mercilessly and effortlessly slaughtered by Armored Cores in the later games.
• All the ghouls in Ghouls vs. Humans, as well as the preceding The Ghouls' Forest series of Doom WADs. Huge floating undead heads which not only glide around at ludicrous speeds (one of them takes it a step further and moves via permanent Flash Step!), but can kill you within seconds if they hit you. That's part of the reason why they're so damn scary.
• Papal Guards in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood pack more armour than Brutes, run almost as fast as Agiles, can use all the weapon types, have their own unblockable pistol attack, and are Kung Fu-Proof Mook to boot. Fortunately they don't appear often.
• Black Breeze and his two Werewolf allies from the bonus mission of Vindictus' first boat, which doesn't unlock until after you've beaten the third. And to make things even worse for the player, they fight together in one of the most evil Wolfpack Boss fights ever.
• Laharl for Disgaea Hour of Darkness, Adell for Disgaea 2 Cursed Memories, and Champloo for Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice; all 3 of these characters sport exceptional close combat strength, a good set of specials, and exceptional power, defense, movement range, and, for the really exotic on their specials, decent intelligence and resistance to magic. If played right, all one would ever need to complete Disgaea 1 is Laharl, a sword, and a few decent playthroughs of the item world, and he could take on the entire game himself save for a few team oriented stages. Adell can match Laharl (mainly due to his ability that gives him added attack power for units stronger than him) and while Champloo falls a tad short of both, he is almost still guaranteed kills when just within a few levels of his opponent let alone even or higher.
• The Purr-lin in Turok 2, especially the Juggernauts. Also, Lords of the Flesh.
• Heavy Hover Tanks in Quake IV.
  • The Boss Tank (who has literal tank treads for a lower body) in Quake II, despite its bulk, is the fastest of all the boss and Giant Mook-type enemies.
• The Armored Knights in the lower levels of Dragon Quest/Warrior's Final Dungeon were the second toughest and most damaging (after the Red Dragon) Mook in the game, as well as being equipped with both Healmore and Hurtmore.
  • In Dragon Quest VI, Carver very much fits the fast+hard hitting+can take damage description.
• Arem, the Big Bad and Final Boss of Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys, is very fast for his size especially in his second form, has many hard-hitting attacks, takes a long time to wear down even if your EXP is maxed out, and can regenerate his HP.
• Honda Tadakatsu is also this in Sengoku Basara, especially as an NPC. His offense is the highest in the game. He has more HP than most other bosses put together, and is near immune to stunning and knockback. His running and attack speed is a little above average, with his only weakness being a tendency to telegraph attacks (which, given his fearsome range and stun-immunity, is not as much a handicap as you'd hope) and the fact that his attacks continually move him forward, making it difficult to focus on a single target. Defeating him is usually an optional objective.
  • Oda Nobunaga is another example; he has the second-highest HP, attack and defence in the game (after Tadakatsu), almost as good movement speed, and attacks much faster than Tadakatsu with non-telegraphed attacks that don't move him. He also uses the powerful Shadow element, and his special arts are much more powerful than Tadakatsu's, including a super art that renders him invulnerable. Nobunaga is only unlocked as a Bragging Rights Reward and is Purposefully Overpowered.
• Asura from Asura's Wrath is a great example. He has a rather bulky frame, and with six arms, would seem rather slow, right? Nope, he can engage in Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs that can destroy planet sized beings, and can move quick enough to quite literally mow down just about anything in his way. His master Augus is very much one of these as well. Both have some speedster traits as well.
• Doc Robot's impersonation of Quick Man in Mega Man 3 is just as fast as his predecessor, but bigger and tougher.
• Golden Sun Dark Dawn gives us Sveta, a young beastwoman. Ordinarily, she's one of the faster party members, and also quite hard hitting. If you transform her, however, she takes this trope up to eleven, getting an immense power and speed boost. And if you get Himi to cast Weapons Graces on her, well!
• Sasquatch from Capcom's Darkstalkers series. Though he possesses the second-highest health in the game, deals heavy damage, and has a large hurtbox, the Canadian yeti also boasts some excellent mobility in the form of "shorthops," canceling his dash (a hop) short of finishing. This grants him some frightening mixup games that lead to devastating, yet simple, combos, and is a large reason why he is arguably the best character in Vampire Savior (the most commonly played title in the series) and Night Warriors.
• Plants vs. Zombies has the Football Zombie, who moves twice as fast as a normal zombie, eats your plants twice as fast, and can take as much damage as a Buckethead zombie. There's also the Zomboni- tons of health, moves faster than most enemies, and it crushes your plants instantly!
• Doku from Ninja Gaiden. A towering Animated Armor with a fair bit of health, his slashes come out fast and hurt a lot, and while his Deadly Lunge is telegraphed, if you don't immediately evade he'll eat the distance like a glutton at a buffet and make you pay. His spirit form is even worse.

Web Comics

• The Brute in Ninja Spirit is revealed to be like this when he dodges a lightning bolt.
• Mongo from The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. All the speed, agility, and skills of a ninja with the strength and body of a Giant Mook. And he wields Chainsaw Nunchucks.
• Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire. For someone over 7 feet tall and easily weighing in at 600 pounds (all muscle actually), he is A LOT faster than he has any business being.
  • Justified in that he's from a high gravity world.
• Like the second quote says, Pindar from A Miracle of Science, a (remarkably polite and intelligent) ten-foot-tall robot who can jump around like an enormous mechanical bunny if he needs to.
• Mr. Mighty from Everyday Heroes demonstrates this skill when needed.
• Sgt. Schlock - 500 pounds. 5 times stronger than a boosted human. You need anti-tank weaponry to do more than inconvenience him, and he's the Spokesblob for totally unnecessary amounts of firepower. Way faster than he looks? You betcha.
• Romeo from No Songs for The Dead would definitely fall under this.
• In Girl Genius General Goomblast, despite being the largest of the Jager Generals (which is no mean feat), uses a rapier as his weapon of choice. He is very, very, good with it.

Web Original

• SCP-173
• Red vs. Blue has Agent Maine/The Meta, which despite being exceptionally large and wearing some heavy power-armour, can move at lightning speeds.

Western Animation

• The Batman's version of Penguin could arguably count, being a pudgy little man who's "picked up a little something from the Orient". He's a good enough fighter to go toe-to-toe with Batman, and for defense he has the Kabuki Twins, themselves quite formidable.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The title heroes themselves subvert any expectations about speed: turtles are certainly not reputed for being fast, and even mutant ones would seem a poor choice to train as ninja... and yet they kick ass.
  • Hun is a humongous mountain of a man, and one of the largest human characters in the series; his speed and agility, however, is consistently shown to be on par with all the other martial artists.
• Megabyte of Re Boot can outrun vehicles and throw them around like rag dolls when he catches them.
• The Scotsman from Samurai Jack is about three times Jack's size but is easily capable of matching Jack's speed, fighting him to a standstill for three days and nights.
• Venom from The Spectacular Spider-Man is physically stronger than Spidey, but shown to be pretty fast.
• Vilgax from Ben 10. He's about twice as tall as any of Ben's aliens except Way Big, strong enough to smack Fourarms around with ease and shatter Diamondhead's face. He's fast enough to catch XLR8 even as he flees, and tends to charges into battle with all the speed of a freight train (and fifty times harder to stop, too).
• The Leviathan from Storm Hawks is fast enough to outfly the title heroes' flying motorcycles, AND big enough to swallow their mothership.
• In Wakfu, the Mmmmmmmmmporpg is introduced as a beefy, overweight fellow. It turns out his legs move faster than the eye can follow and he can easily suplex other boufball players who are much larger than he is. That's even before you hit his Berserk Button.
• The Transformers Prime incarnation of Bulkhead is this, and verges on One-Man Army at times. He's big, but he can move really damn fast when he wants to. To the point he can go toe-to-toe with a Dark Energon empowered Megatron
• Although we never see him really fight (just get strangled by invisible Fragile Speedster Randall), Sully of Monsters, Inc. is a very large, beefy monster. He's also not at all slow, something the film makers were concerned might break Suspension of Disbelief.

Real Life

• Knights. Medieval knights in full plate armor were actually fairly fast and mobile, having been trained from a very young age and usually having a suit of armor made specifically for them to facilitate easy movement and comfort. Earlier knights who wore mail (chainmail for D&D fans) were even more so. When a modern day nurse can do cart-wheels in an authentic armor one realises that "literary tropes of the 19th through 20th century" that exemplified the clunkiness and slowness of the armored knight were just that: pure fiction. Watch this video
• Samurai wore the heaviest armor in their culture, but were still quite maneuverable. The fact that they were mounted archers and spearmen as well as swordsmen gave them a lot of opportunities for lightning strikes from a variety of distances.
• Amur tigers. Saltwater crocodiles. Leopard seals. Grizzly bears. Great White Sharks. Elephants. Rhinos. Hippos. American Bison. All are several hundred kilograms each, longer than a man is tall, and each one will rip you to shreds with an unholy quickness.
• The Tyrannosaurus Rex. Scientists believe that its top speed was surprisingly fast for its size given its gracile legs.
• Cetaceans in general are heavy and very strong animals that can very easily reach high speeds, but the larger baleen and sperm whales can sink boats and move faster than them.
• Horses literally embody this trope, they can be very muscular yet have the speed and grace of an Ice Skater. Rather they're racing, performing or doing some good old fashioned carrying, Horses make reliable partners and lovable Gentle Giants.

Play By Post Games

• Uther from Fate Nuovo Guerra has top-level endurance, a Dragon Affinity that boosts that endurance even further as well as protects against status-lowering effects, a Rank-A holy sword that specializes in armor piercing, and AGI to throw it down with the rest of them. His main problem is his limited range, and the off-chance that somebody might come equipped with an Anti-Dragon Noble Phantasm.

Anime & Manga

• Shin and Yamato from Eyeshield 21 apply. Both of them are fast enough to keep up with Sena, but also have immense upper body strength to go with it.
  • They're considered this is because both aren't that large (but they do have ripped muscles), especially Shin is only 175 cm.
• Ranma Saotome. Not only is he capable of throwing hundreds of punches in the space of a second, but each one of those punches is likely capable of shattering multi-ton boulders.
  • Hell, a lot of the Nerima Wrecking Crew count: Mousse can land some strong kicks, zips around like a fly and can take a considerable pounding before going down. Ryōga can easily charge around like a bull and is only a Mighty Glacier compared to Ranma and Mousse. He even lampshades this himself when fighting Lime, a super-strong character (even by Ranma One Half standards) who is less than super-fast, which makes Ryōga realize that all those fights with Ranma have made him very very fast in turn.
• In most animated adaptations Sonic the Hedgehog can be seen taking, avoiding, and dealing out damage in equal measure, sometimes to Made of Iron levels. However, in most of the games, he is too fragile to qualify
• Negi of Mahou Sensei Negima When he finally perfects his Thousand Bolts spell, he uses Black Magic to absorb it, briefly turn himself into lightning, and beat the crap out of Jack Rakan.
  • Unfortunately for Negi, Rakan was able to take all that punishment and turned out to still be a stronger, faster, and tougher Lightning Bruiser than him even when he's in that form.
    • Later in that fight, Negi puts two Thousand Bolts into his Black Magic, which makes him even faster and removes a critical weakness. At that point, Negi was more of a classic Fragile Speedster, while Rakan was pretty much a Mighty Glacier -- but compared to pretty much everyone in the world, both are completely broken Lightning Bruisers.
• Natsu of Fairy Tail. He's agile, strong, practically Made of Iron, and uses a very rare and powerful Fire Magic taught to him by a Dragon. Fellow Dragon Slayer Gazille also qualifies, and he's literally Made of Iron at times, being the Metal Dragon Slayer.
  • Both Dragon Slayers are particularly notable for being extremely powerful with or without magic, as almost all other magic users are physically weak, and almost all other fighter types can't use magic. Exceptions would be Erza, Mirajane, the artificial dragon slayers and Zero of Oracion Seis.
• Eclair from Kiddy Grade, who can take defeat guard robots and combat cyborgs twice her size. Fittingly enough her name means "lightning bolt" in French.
• Father Alexander Anderson from Hellsing. He can regenerate from headshots with large-calibre explosive rounds, then close the distance and lop your head off before you know what's hit you.
  • Of course, that's because all his vampire opponents are LBs too. Even the artificial mass-produced Nazi vampire mooks are superhumanly fast, can tear men to shreds and regenerate from smalls arms fire, to say nothing of major named vampires - or Alucard himself.
• Luffy from One Piece certainly doesn't look like he is very strong and resilient. Thinking that has been the mistake of almost every Big Bad of the series
  • Sanji as well. Lean and swift on his feet...with enough leg-power to casually kick aside massive beasts
  • Zoro is fast enough to dodge bullet fired point-blank. And after the time-skip, he is faster than a Fishman while underwater.
• Sanosuke from Rurouni Kenshin. Though, his speed has generally been downplayed due to it being a specialty of the main character. From the beginning of the manga, he's been noted to be very quick, even with a massive zanbato. After abandoning that weapon, he's been able to trade blows with fellow Lightning Bruiser Anji and block gunfire with a well timed futae no kiwami.
• Masane, as well as Cloneblade wielders from Witchblade are able to move at superhuman speeds, take quite some damage and kill quickly and effectively.
• Gatomon from Digimon Adventure may be tiny and cute, as well as fast as one would expect. But she's actually a Champion Digimon and extremely strong.
• Ginei Morioka from Rosario to Vampire is a werewolf, supposedly the fastest monster of all, but that alone wouldn't be enough for him to take out an entire building full of mooks. Actually, he took out only half of them, but it's clear that he's capable of getting in some good hits (and that he can take a few, to boot).
• Birdy Cephon Altera runs along walls and jumps over rooftops like it's nobody's business. She can also punch through walls, robots and people without breaking a sweat.
• Bleach: Soifon is the main example of the series. She's a tiny woman but is one of the fastest captains in the Gotei 13. Her attacks are based on her exceptional speed and use it to full advantage. On top of that, however, the Official Bootleg confirms that her strongest ability is actually her physical strength rather than her speed. As a result, she's the unarmed combat expert of the captains, something that allows her to use her two strongest abilities together and to their maximum potential. In the manga, her great physical strength manifests in bankai form. As a nuke.
  • Yoruichi is Soifon's mentor and idol. Soifon has spent a century try to surpass Yoruichi in both speed and strength but hasn't made it yet. Yoruichi's reliance on her strength and speed together is so great that, unlike even Soifon, she doesn't even bother to use her zanpakutou in battle.
• Naruto- Many of the top tier Naruto shinobi move insanely fast & yet can hit deceptively strong. Some prominent examples would be Minato,,Might Guy,Rock lee etc.
  • Perhaps the most notable example is Pain and his Six Paths. Statistically he was overpowered, having immense strength, speed and defensive abilities. Hell, he was able to nuke Konoha easily and pin down Naruto in mere minutes, however his most powerful jutsus left him short gaps of recharge and costed absurd amounts of chakra. A price which he later couldn't afford no longer.

Comics

• The Flash, whenever the writers don't forget how much it sucks to be punched by someone going that fast.
  • This has varied over the years, and still varies with the writer. In Wally West's first hundred issues or so, he could usually hit no harder than a typical athlete -- his aura absorbed most of the energy. As the editor pointed out, Wally would break his hands with every punch otherwise. When the Speed Force was introduced, it quickly became a catch-all answer to physics gripes; thus Wally's been delivering super-punches again, apparently using the Speed Force to sneak around Newton's third.
• Reflex from Sovereign Seven was a specific aversion of the usual treatment of fast characters.
• Spider-Man and Beast of the X-Men have enhanced strength, reflexes, and agility.
• Nth Man the Ultimate Ninja has been trained as a ninja for most of his life and the deadliest killer on Earth. Though strong, he usually relies on his speed, agility, and expertise to defeat his enemies.
• Wonder Woman is this version. She's about as fast and strong as Superman, but has to rely on her bracers to deflect shrapnel and bullets.

Films -- Animation

• Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon. His species is so fast that the only time you know it's there is when it's blown something up. He then uses this to do a sort of Teleport Spam in the final battle.

Films -- Live Action

• Star Wars: The Jedi themselves. They wield Laser Blades that easily cut through steel walls and bodily appendages, can perform acrobatic feats such as jumping long distances, and are more or less Immune to Bullets. Once Darth Vader is turned into a cyborg, however, he no longer performs any feats of acrobatics or speed and has been reduced to a Mighty Glacier.
• The heroes of most cinematic martial artists, such as Jet Li, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, etc.
• The Beast of Kung Fu Hustle. The final Big Bad of the movie, he is faster and more Made of Iron than the Landlady and Landlord. Good thing Sing is faster than him after the Beast accidentally unlocks his true power.
• Godzilla series:
  • Megaguirus is the single quickest, nimblest monster in the entire series, and still manages to pick Godzilla - a monster three times her own mass - off the ground, as well as take a considerable amount of physical punishment and be little worse for the wear. She burns like a gasoline-doused paper bag, but physically speaking, she can swap blows with the best of them.
  • Some versions of Godzilla himself also qualify, but none so much as his Final Wars incarnate, who shrugged off nuke-scale explosions that left mile-wide craters in the ground, while simultaneously dispatched his enemies with wire-fu maneuvers and amazingly quick reflexes.
  • King Seesar is a less extreme example, being an (allegedly) stone monster who barrels right into enemies with surprising speed and executes spectacular roundhouse kicks.
• River Tam in Serenity; for someone that small, she hits hard as hell.

Wash: Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a 90-pound girl, 'cause... I don't think that's ever getting old.

Literature

• The Vord Queen in the Codex Alera books is terrifyingly powerful. While she looks a bit like a Cute Monster Girl (or at least tries), she's faster and stronger than Aleran crafters using Bullet Time and Super Strength, crafts better than pretty much anyone anyway, can run up walls and ceilings, and is generally able to slice you to little pieces. Oh, and balest bolts bounce off her skin. To make matters worse, she's a brilliant commander with a massive, Hive Minded army consisting in large part of lesser Lightning Bruisers.
• Max the Silent from Andrew Vachss's Burke books, despite not looking very powerful at first glance, is death in close quarters. In the event that someone manages to land a blow on him, it becomes apparent that he can shrug off should-be-painful stuff like multiple knee strikes from Muay Thai exponents.
• Pretty much all three types of vampire in The Dresden Files. The Black Court vampires are known for being the strongest and fastest by a fair margin, though they possess the standard vampire weaknesses (sunlight, garlic, etc.). The Red Court ends up second in strength, but with less weaknesses (only vulnerable to sunlight, symbols of faith, or a wound to their stomach, which is where they store their power-granting blood). The White Court has none of the standard vamp vulnerabilities, and the least physical strength, but they're still a force to be reckoned with (at one point, White Court vampire Thomas Raith faces a ghoul that hesitates for about a quarter of a second when fighting him; in response, Thomas splits its skull with his kukri knife, commenting that it might as well have put a bullet in its brain itself by giving him that much time).

Live Action TV

• A common feature of Heisei-era Kamen Rider series. Most of the time these forms are counted as the Mid-Season Upgrade; stronger and more impressive than the Riders' basic forms but eventually outclassed by the late-season Super Mode.
  • Kuuga: Amazing Mighty Form
  • Agito: Trinity Form
  • Den-O: Sword Form; surprisingly, however, this is the default form; it's explicitly described as both fast and a heavy-hitter.
    • Zeronos: Zero Form
  • Kiva: DoGaBaKi Form
  • Double: FangJoker
  • OOO: TaJaDor Combo
  • Fourze: Fire States. For once, this isn't the Mid-Season Upgrade; that instead goes to the Mighty Glacier form, Magnet States.
• The U.S.S. Defiant, first of her class, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine classifies. Due to being a Pint-Sized Powerhouse, it's small and fleet compared to ships several times her size, but thanks to very robust powerplants (meaning very robust shields), experimental hull armor, pulse phasers, quantum torpedoes, she can match them evenly.

Professional Wrestling

• Masato Yoshino from Dragon Gate is a Fragile Speedster minus the fragile. He's the second smallest guy on the roster, but he can press guys his own size over his head, and knock guys much bigger than himself flying across the ring with a dropkick.
• AJ Styles, while not as big as the others, is not only lightning fast and agile, but can casually lift and tackle behemoths like Samoa Joe and Abyss, and can stand up and carry someone who is using a jujigatame (crucifix armbar) on him.

Sports

• Manny "Pac-Man" Pacquiao. The man started his career at 106 pounds, has advanced all the way to 147 (almost unheard of in Boxing). And his KO percentage has risen, while he retains the same blinding handspeed he had at lower weights. Ricky Hatton got a little taste of that combination earlier this year, as did Miguel Cotto, both men billed as "bigger and stronger" than Pacquiao, until he put a thoroughly one-sided beat down on both of them. Hatton got knocked the hell out in the second round, and the ref jumped in to save Cotto in the final round of their fight.
• Roy Jones, Jr. Possibly the fastest pound for pound fighter in boxing history, Roy Jones also had incredible knockout power for the early part of his career. Watching Roy Jones is an experience in and of itself, he sits back and strikes like a viper. He's like a ninja in the ring...just watch his first knockdown of journeyman Richard Hall. I'm pretty sure he teleports at least once.
• Sugar Ray Robinson is still considered the greatest boxer of all time by boxing experts. Thanks in part to his blink-or-you'll-miss hand speed and ungodly punching power, he destroyed his opponents with his unequaled talent and the sheer ferocity of his attack. Ringside attendants said it was like watching a dancer with the killer instincts of a tiger.
• Mark Recchi is small for a hockey player who plays a physical style (5'10, 180 pounds) but early in his career was nicknamed "The Wrecking Ball" for his propensity to crash into opponents, many larger than himself. Pat Verbeek, also qualifies, earning the amazing nickname "The Little Ball of Hate". Unlike Recchi, he was also known for fighting.
• Mixed Martial Arts
  • UFC Featherweight champ Jose Aldo fights at 145 lbs and is known for his amazing knockout power in his hands, feet and knees.
  • UFC Middleweight champ Anderson Silva is a tall, skinny fighter at 185 lbs and is known for his one-punch knockout power as well as his effortless evasion on the feet. He's broken UFC records for winning streaks and title defenses.

Tabletop Games

• High Elf heavy cavalry (Silver Helms and Dragon Princes) in Warhammer Fantasy. Lightning quick and can deliver tremendous blow - almost as efficient as the Bretonnian knights. Not as durable, though, but have better initiative in combat.
• Speedsters in the Hero System can approach this. Obviously they are built for speed, but a high Dex score and Skill Levels in dodging can make them very difficult to hit, and the rules for adding velocity to melee damage mean that a speedster can, if he doesn't mind having a poor chance to hit, land a punch on somebody while going fast enough to circumnavigate the globe in a single combat phase.
• Monks were intended to be this in Dungeons and Dragons. They were meant to have high movement speed and hit very often. Unfortunately, the 3.5 version is often considered to be quite lacking at high levels of optimization. The 4e version does somewhat better as a relatively effective striker.
• The nature of the New World of Darkness character-building system dictates these -- damage is determined by Strength + skill, and speed is determined by Strength + Dexterity + 5. If you have high strength, you're quick and powerful.

Video Games

• Vaan from Final Fantasy XII, by virtue of him excelling in all stats.
• In City of Heroes, nothing's stopping mighty Brutes and Tankers from taking the Super Speed power pool, which includes Superspeed (to make you run fast) and Hasten (to make your attacks recharge faster). The Stone Armour powerset does slow the user, but that can be overcome with teleportation!
  • Then there are the Electrical Armor and Electrical Melee powersets for Brutes (and Stalkers). The armor set includes a power that boosts your movement and recharge speeds while the melee set has Lightning Rod, a top-tier attack that involves you turning into a bolt of lightning and teleporting to your target to hit them.
    • Don't forget Power Surge, which temporarily turns you into a person made of lighting for extra damage resistance.
• In the ninth and tenth installments of Fire Emblem, Ike is a pretty straight example of this. In Path of Radiance, he starts out a Fragile Speedster, but about halfway through, he becomes almost as strong and well armored as the Mighty Glaciers, but also retains his initial speed advantage. He starts out this way in Radiant Dawn, and only gets better (barring slight speed issues).
  • In the 10th game Haar (And Jill, if leveled) has stats that range from "good" to "more defense then most specialist" leading him to clear endless legions of enemies by himself with no support. Incidentally, he dies quickly when facing lightning. Haar starts off as a Lightning Bruiser, but towards Part IV his speed dwindles a bit and becomes a Mighty Glacier. His strength and defense are still pretty high however, essentially making him a flying tank. Meanwhile, if one levels Jill up enough, she starts off as a Fragile Speedster and then grows into this. Her caps are THE best Beorc caps. Case in point, she can reach up to 35 Str, Speed, and Luck. Then, she could reach 38 in Skill and 36 in Defense. She has the growths to reach them, as well.
    • Dragonriders in general have this kind of quality, being highly mobile, defensively impressive forces of destruction who, in any game except Radiant Dawn, fear only enemy archers.
  • As is Sety (who actually has the possibility of getting enemies a 0% chance to hit him) and the swordmaster class.
    • Pretty much ANY Second Generation FE 4 character. Except poor Corpul. Even those who'd appear to be Squishy Wizards , like Yuria, for example (Yuria's notable, her Physical Defense sucks, like a typical Squishy Wizard-- but due to the fact that she's known for "vamping" via the Resire/Nosfetaru spell, are fully capable of taking even the hardest of hits and shrugging them off like they were nothing) are examples of this.
  • Many of the "Mercenary/Hero" class characters throughout Fire Emblem gain great speed and strength gains. And are strong enough to wield the heavier swords myrmidons cannot.
  • Fire Emblem is full of these. In Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones, you could do this easily with Amelia, who had excellent speed growths and, if promoted into a Knight, access to the mighty General class.
  • Trueblades, the class that Swordmasters turn into after level 20 in Radiant Dawn, could also count, especially Mia. They have a ridiculous evasion rate, hit their target most of the time, and between all of their offensive stats you'd be hard-pressed to find anything short of a mini-boss or boss that can survive more than a single round with one; usually they'll end up getting killed by critical hits or their Astra ability.
• Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog. He's the strongest character in the Sonic universe AND is capable of moving at super speeds (although not to the extent of Sonic, Tails, and Shadow). Some of the 3D games have flanderized him into being portrayed as insanely slow, but Sonic and the Black Knight and Sonic X show he's still got some speed post-Sonic Adventure 2.
  • In Sonic Chronicles, Sonic is the Jack of All Stats except for being the fastest character in the game. In the usual gaming fare, he's a Fragile Speedster and somewhat of a Glass Cannon but it really just depends on whether you can hold on to a single ring. In Sonic Unleashed, he does indeed play this straight, as he is able to move fast, destroy tough enemies, and lose only 20 rings per hit.
  • All of the "Power" characters in Sonic Heroes (Knuckles, Big, Omega, Vector) are this. They can break huge blocks of stone but have no trouble navigating loops and corkscrews as the "Speed" characters do. When balanced for competition, however, they're Mighty Glaciers instead.
  • Sonic's "Sonic boost" ability makes him into one of these.
• Alex Mercer of Prototype just seems like a guy in a hoodie and jacket. But he can run fast enough to scale buildings and outrun helicopters. And can lift cars above his head, dropkick people to send them flying a block away. And let's not even go into his blades, tentacles, claws, clubs, or shapeshifting powers.
  • It helps that he has a ton of mass, to the point where a four-foot drop to the ground will result in cracked pavement and simply standing on a tank will noticeably slow it down; definitely a hard-hitting speedster.
  • The sequel gives protagonist James Heller similar powers, and a comparison between the two reveals that Mercer is stronger, but Heller is much faster.
• Oswald the Shadow Knight, from Odin Sphere. Strongest, toughest character in the game, with good speed and jumping power. Also hits even harder and moves faster when he uses his Shadow Form. Other characters in the game are capable of blocking for highly increased damage resistance or have ranged normal attacks, and some special double-jump power, like flight. Oswald's just meant to rush in and rip things to pieces.
• Backyard Sports: Pablo Sanchez. There's a reason why he's a Memetic Badass.
• Citan from Xenogears. He starts off as a Bare-Fisted Monk, with the highest speed and HP of all the characters (plus, enough attack power to compete with a weapon user). But then, as if he wasn't broken already, he eventually gets a sword, making him the strongest character BY FAR.
• Dante from Devil May Cry looks like any other human, as many of the bosses assume. However, his devil heritage gives him both the Healing Factor to shrug off humanly-fatal wounds and the power and speed to tear enemies a new one with ease. At least in cutscenes.
• Ayla of Chrono Trigger. She uses only physical attacks, as she was born before humans gained the power to use magic. She hits harder than anyone else in the game at that point, AND out-speeds over half the character roster. Conveniently, you get the Berserker Ring not long before. Add in her late weapon that does 9999 damage on a critical, and you got a powerhouse on your hands. Most of the other characters can accomplish this with proper tweaking of stats.
• Ratchet and Clank is a pretty good example. He's a quick, nimble hero capable of platforming his way around the levels. Yet he is also able to shrug off rockets to the face and carries more firepower than the entire U.S. Military could possibly ever dream of.
• Marisa Kirisame of Touhou. Her bullets fire mainly in front of her, dishing out narrow but concentrated damage, and she moves faster than Reimu, who in many games is the only other playable character.
  • Marisa B aka Marisa Bugged, aka Marisa Broken from Mountain Of Faith (and even Subterranean Animism, though to a lesser extent, which makes one wonder whether the bug may have been intended) takes this to ridiculous extremes. The game contains a bug that causes Marisa to dish out simply ludicrous amounts of damage as long as her energy remains between 3 and 3.95. Marisa Broken is powerful enough to cut long spellcards to a fraction of their length, and to end non-spellcard attacks before the first bullets fired even reach her.
• Beat from The World Ends With You moves around a lot on his screen to attack, and his non-finishing attacks do the most damage of those of the secondary characters.
• In Hokuto Musou Kenshiro is more of a Glass Ninja early on, but definitely this once he's been upgraded.
• In Blaz Blue's survivable speedster group we have Unlimited Ragna. Where normal Ragna is a Glass Cannon, Unlimited Ragna not only deals more damage and is faster than his normal self, but has the health to out-tank Mighty GlacierTaJaDorStone Wall Tager even before taking into account his life-draining Drive attacks.
  • There's also Makoto, who has the speed and agility of a Fragile Speedster and the damage potential of a Glass Cannon, but also has surprisingly decent health and defence. Lucky for us, her reach and capacity for dealing damage from longer ranges is severely limited.
• Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII can become this. Her final stats and abilities make her the Jack of All Stats by default, and her strength is surpassed only by Mighty Glacier Fang. However, Lightning is one of three characters (the others being Sazh and Hope) who can equip five pieces of equipment (one weapon and four accessories) that have a set bonus that increases ATB recovery rate, meaning she can attack more frequently. Furthermore, the weapon she equips as part of this set, the Axis/Enkindler, increases her ATB gauge with each attack. Slap on a Haste buff on her and she will easily live up to her name.
• The most powerful and hardest-to-recruit character in the Vanilla Edition of Freedom Force is Bullet, who has honest-to-goodness Super Speed. His most powerful attack is the same as his least powerful one, only it's done six times in quick succession.
• Sora and Riku play out this way in Kingdom Hearts II. Their magic plays second to their hard hitting fast combos.
  • Xehanort plays this rather straight too. Makes perfect sense, given how he's the Terra Master Xehanort performed Grand Theft Me on. Terra was very strong but obscenely slow, while Master Xehanort had good reflexes and could teleport.
  • Sephiroth's appearances in the games count as well: he's got multiple health bars, beyond insane reach with that sword of his, is as fast if not faster than you, and swipes significant chunks of your health everytime he hits you - and he will hit you.
  • Birth By Sleep's Mysterious Figure takes this trope up to ten thousand. Almost every hit he lands on you will knock you back to one HP- and that's only because of Second Chance and Once More. If you didn't have those abilities equipped....
• Not so much in the original game, but in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Cloud definitely counts. He's ridiculously fast on and off that oversized motorcycle of his and still easily carries Barret with one hand without slowing down.
• All three main player characters in the F.E.A.R games (Point Man, Becket, and the unnamed Sergeant) have Bullet Time-abilities that can make them extraordinary fast for a few seconds at a time. They still hit hard enough to instantly kill a cloned super-soldier by slide-tackling their ankles, and their round-house kicks would put Chuck Norris to shame.
  • F.E.A.R: Perseus Mandate has the Nightcrawler Elite Superpowered Mooks, who not only have the Pointman's super-speed ability, but can also withstand nearly as much damage as a Heavy Armor Giant Mook. Their leader, the Nightcrawler Commander, is armed with a BFG and can survive as much damage as a Humongous Mecha.
  • The main series has the Replica Assassins, who are both lightning-fast and amazingly tough and powerful for their small size.
• / Veteran Rangers and Caesar's Legion Praetorian Guards in Fallout: New Vegas, the most elite of Elite Mooks; they have more health than a (non-Quarry Junction) Deathclaw and are armed with the absolute best weapons in the game and can kill even a level 30 tank character with just a few hits.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Lloyd is the fastest character, hits fairly hard, is your primary and best meat shield (even with Presea on the field, unless she has Glory), has the best Combo techs in the game, which complement well with spells, especially multi-hit ones and those with stopping power. The one thing he can't do is use magic, a trait he shares with Presea. However, he proves he doesn't need it. Also, nearly every boss with a humanoid shape counts, but especially Kratos, after betraying you, who not only has a skill that allows him to chain Techs in any order, his casting speed is crazy fast, and he will randomly decide to shrug off your attacks and head straight for your mages. He pretty much never stops attacking, since he has very little recovery time from his techs. There's a reason you can lose this battle and not get a Game Over; it's meant to be a Curb Stomp Battle, and when you take into account where in the game this event takes place, it makes sense. Especially since it is preceded by That One Boss Remiel and followed by a Hopeless Boss Fight with Yggdrasil
  • Tales of Vesperia has protagonist Yuri Lowell who is very fast and can deal out hard damage as well as take it. He's also one of the most broken characters in the Tales Series. See Game Breaker for details.
  • Tales of Graces has main heroine Sophie, who is a fast and very hard-hitting brawler character. She also is a major healer in the party.
• Berserkers in the Quake series, especially in Quake IV, where they have a literal lightning attack and can One-Hit Kill you on General difficulty. Also, Fiends and Death Knights from the first game.
• The Demon Knight in Dragon Quest I dished out massive damage, had high defense, was magic-proof, and had the highest agility of any enemy.
• The Big Sisters in Bioshock 2 are much faster and more agile than the Big Daddies, and able to dish out a surprising amount of hurt. They are also probably the most terrifying enemy you face in the game...and this is RAPTURE we're talking about.
• The junction system in Final Fantasy VIII allows the player to boost any character's Strength, Stamina, and Speed dramatically by linking the stats to the right kinds of magic, but Zell deserves particular mention; his stat growth is naturally designed to make him hit fast and hard. At higher levels and with good junctions, his ATB speed becomes noticeably faster than the rest of the party's.
• Wild Arms 2 has the protagonist Ashley Winchester who fits this trope like a glove. Even though his build is average, he's got a pretty good HP, can insanely be fast even without his Accelerator Force Action, can deal good damage, and yet wields a bayonet that looks like a BFS. And that's not even getting into his Super-Powered Evil Side.
• Arch-Viles in the Doom series are fast, can take tons of damage, are resistant to flinching, attack with a deadly line-of-sight fire spell, and can revive or summon enemies.
• Shadow Man in Mega Man 3 is similar to Quick Man from Mega Man 2, but faster and tougher, and has the same sliding ability as Mega Man.
• Defying the common expectations of his job class, Zidane Tribal of Final Fantasy IX is a surprisingly hard hitter and has good HP, only balanced by his lack of heavy armor (of which only two characters in the game use anyway). And then he becomes a straight-up nuker in his Super Mode.
• The Big Bad and Final Boss of the first Soldier of Fortune totes a BFG, is extremely fast, and wears Powered Armor that can withstand more damage than a tank.
• Yuuto and Etrangers in general function as this in Eien no Aselia which is why they are valued so highly. While Yuuto has basically no skill in combat to start, he's still a match for all but the most skilled and powerful of spirits. Also, Eternals.
• Squall in Dissidia Final Fantasy. His attacks come out fast and he moves pretty quick too. His Bravery combos are very strong, hitting multiple times and can instantly drain the opponent's Bravery. It gets even worse in EX Mode, where all of his Bravery attacks deal twice as many hits, instantly doubling his damage output, and then take into account that EX Mode raises the probability of landing a critical hit. Add in other critical hit-chance boosting abilities, and you realize about the only thing that keeps him from being a top-tier character is his slow HP attacks.
  • Zidane is normally speedy but not too powerful, his Bravery attacks not doing much damage but being very fast. However, Zidane has the impressive ability to cancel out his attacks and chain them into new ones in a variety of different ways, and a skilled Zidane player can produce combo attacks this variety rivaling the likes of Jecht and Golbez as detailed above. He also has the advantage of having equally fast HP attacks, such as Free Energy which takes Instant Runes to the literal extreme (almost literally instantaneous in execution), and many of his Bravery attacks can chain into HP attacks.
• The first Silent Scope has Monica the Armed Secretary, who wears full body armor (requiring 3 headshots or two volleys of 10 chest shots) and is incredibly fast. The sequel has Sho & Kane the Lightning Bolts, who don't have armor, but are even faster than Monica, throw their swords, and confuse you with doppelgangers.
• Captain Falcon in the two first Super Smash Bros. games had the fastest running speed coupled with extremely fast, powerful attacks that lent themselves naturally to combos. He also had an average weight. In Brawl, all his moves lost priority, nerfing his offense and making him more Jack of All Stats.
• P.N.03's Blackbird suit, unlocked on a New Game+, has all its stats maxed out, making Vanessa one of these.
• Albert Wesker of Resident Evil, especially Resident Evil 5. He can move faster than a human eye could perceive, yet is able to punch through metal wall (not mentioning a ribcage and spine), lift and hurl a missile like a dart, and has a Healing Factor on the verge of immortality.
  • Maybe the most laconic summation of all his Lightning Bruiser features in one move: he can catch a rocket fired at him and hold it still; said rocket then exploding in his hands merely dazes him.
• Lancer, also from Fate Stay Night. He's the fastest hero and also the best defender, thinking nothing of fighting over several other heroes at once (though Assassin unnerves him somewhat). Also has a cheap instant kill attack, powerful magic and a primary limitation of being unable to win the Grail War because not only is he not a protagonist, his Master won't let him win either.
  • Saber can go toe-to-toe with aforementioned Berserker, is Nigh Invulnerable to magecraft, agile enough to sprint on the side of skyscrapers, and she's one of the few wearing proper armor.
• In the third game, Crusaders. Is able to sprint through half of the battlefield in one sweep(or even the whole with the right enhancements), packs high ATK/DEF stats, decent 35 points of hp and attacks twice. You can also usually get them as fast as on Day 2. On the other hand, they're pretty expensive.
  • From the same game and castle, Halberdiers. Though they're only Tier 1, they pack an obscene amount of damage, they are resistant to damage, immune to Cavalier's charge bonus and pretty fast. Since AI prefers to attack other units(namely, everything else), you can easily accumulate a vast amount of those guys and proceed to beat things into a bloody pulp.
• Built properly, the Dovahkiin can be an incredibly fast, greatsword-wielding, fire-spewing, unkillable murder machine. Both the Light Armor and Heavy Armor skill trees include perks that reduce weight of armor and let a character move at full speed in full armor, and two of the Dragon Shouts you can learn let you either slow down time (Slow Time) and move incredibly fast (Whirlwind Sprint).
• In Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (specifically, Ultimate), Phoenix Wright becomes this in Turnabout Mode (kinda). Despite having average at best movement, his specials become faster & more powerful, his standing, crouching, and jumping heavies becomes uber powerful Finger Pokes of Doom, and he gets (arguably) the best level 3 hyper in the game.
• Princess/Tsarevna Alena from Dragon Quest IV can be considered this. Starts gaining a LOT of Strength and Agility early on, and maxes them out around level 52 or 53, and because of the way Resilience is gained in the early DQ games (namely, at precisely half the rate of Agility), she's got the highest base defense to boot. Whether or not her average HP and subpar equipment options put her here or in Fragile Speedster territory is up for debate, but she still hits MUCH harder than anyone else on the team with normal attacks.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk 2 has the protagonist Nepgear herself. She's pretty fast, deals a lot of damage, and can hold on her own ground because she can take a lot of punishment. The one thing that makes her a Game Breaker? She has to be placed in support role because the only way you can get rid of the Damage Cap throughout the entire game (unless you defeat and acquire the rare item from the highest leveled Bonus Boss of the game) is by placing her as support.

Web Comics

• Grace in El Goonish Shive. When she really tries and is more or less in her default form, she moves too fast to track, even for experienced martial artists. The first time she fought, without any training, it was much like a rubber cannonball with claws. An opponent with Super Strength couldn't connect fast enough to make her more than bounce back and forth and slash again.

Web Original

• Most of the freelancers in Red vs. Blue qualify as this, but special mention goes to Agent Texas and Carolina - like most freelancers, they just look like normal soldiers (albeit in armour) but are exceptionally fast and hard-hitting, even amongst their fellows.
• Aries, at Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe. As strong as the tougher bricks, as fast as the faster speedsters. But he's a Dragon for the school's Big Bad.
• Mordred from Fate Nuovo Guerra hefts a Rank A++ Wave Motion Sword that has a secondary ability of slowing down enemies by making their weapons heavier with each stroke they exchange, has enough speed to keep up with most speeders, and reasonable defense. As the war progresses, however, she grows closer to Mighty Glacier Saber Alter, due to the growing power of the corrupted Grail. Odysseus and El Cid, who have identical stats, have top-level AGI paired with superior defense and strength.

Western Animation

• Ulrich of Code Lyoko is a speedster, but also the heaviest hitter of the group and has excellent defense with his katana.
  • William might count too, as he's even faster than Ulrich with his Super Smoke power, and wield his BFS with terrible power and speed.
• How to Train Your Dragon has the Night Fury, Toothless, easily the fastest dragon in flight, and with one of the most powerful fire blasts. Also, despite being comparatively small, he easily survives hitting the ground any time he gets shot down or loses control of his flight.
• In Sonic Sat AM, easily Sonic. Though in the games he is usually much more a Fragile Speedster, here he can punch and kick robots (kicking makes sense...), and when already running, throw things multiple times his size with his momentum.
  • He is also the only Freedom Fighter to have broken security cameras by throwing junk at them...with ONE hand...
• Both of the Fire siblings from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
  • The same series also gives us Toph and Aang. Although you would expect Aang to be more of a Fragile Speedster, mastering all the elements other than just air really helps him with the bruisin'.
• Mukhtar from the Aladdin series.
• Agent Six from Generator Rex.
• My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has Rainbow Dash, who is a boisterous tomboy and has been shown to not only fly fast enough to accomplish the legendary "Sonic Rainboom" - the only pegasus known to have ever done so, including the two god-princess alicorns - but has since also gained enough control over the ability to manipulate it into a thermonuclear explosion used to utterly demolish a huge old barn. And that's just the tip of the iceberg; on another occasion, she kicked a fully grown dragon in the face hard enough to not only provoke it into going on the offensive, when the entire problem the dragon posed was that it refused to get up from its nap, but actually whine near-tearfully about it afterwards in conjunction with Fluttershy's amazing verbal beatdown.
  • Big Macintosh can also be very fast and very strong when he needs to - being towed to a house doesn't even slow him down, when he's on the run.

Real Life

• Bruce Lee. Legend has it that he could hit a leather punching bag so hard that it would tear a hole in it and so fast that a 24-frame-per-second video camera would have trouble following him as anything but a blur.
• Swordfishes. One of the fastest fishes in the sea, it can painfully kill an unlucky person if it jumps out of the water and skewers them.
• Mako sharks have all the expected ferocity of a shark combined with a particularly fast swimming speed, clocked at up to 46 mph or even faster. They can shoot 30 feet out of the water and are particularly infamous for jumping into the fishing ships that have hooked them.

Anime & Manga

• Zeta Gundam: Paptimus Scirocco in his The O mobile suit. Heavily armored enough to withstand beam shots, where other mobile suits had abandoned armor due to the penetrating power of beam shots, yet also frightfully fast and agile. Compared to the MS of the time, it's also quite big. Admittedly it carried only beam sabres and a beam rifle, but when the suit is that fast and the pilot has really good aim... A Justified Trope in that Scirocco used to be captain of the Jupiter hydrogen-gathering fleet, where gravity is stronger and therefore more powerful thrusters are needed to use mobile suits effectively in the Jovian gravitational field. Scirocco's expertise in this area, having built the Messala, allowed him to apply this principle to a much heavier suit. Although The O has a large amount of vernier thrusters and is incredibly agile, it's not actually that fast, as the thrusters are designed for agility and the lack of a transformable mode means that only the backpack and rear skirt boosters are used over longer distances.
  • The O is a sort of Spiritual Successor to the original Mobile Suit Gundam's Dom series of MS, black and purple behemoths armed with colossal rocket launchers which are capable of traveling at breakneck speeds due to their lower bodies being outfitted with what are best described as jet-powered rocket pants.
    • The trend continues in Mobile Suit Gundam 00 with the Tieren Taozi and Tieren High Mobility type-B which are deceptively fast given their considerable bulk, the Ahead (its name is something of a Incredibly Lame Pun it is literally one head taller than regular mobile suits) and the Innovator suits (Gadessa, Garazzo, Gadess, Regnant and the Reborns). H/Allelujah's Transforming Mechas are designed to be hard-hitting speedsters for hit-and-run operations.
    • 00 Gundam Raiser is literally one as well.
    • And then there's the Dendobrium Orchis and Neue Ziel mobile armours in Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, not to mention the NCR Gundam Physalis.
    • From the same show, there's the Xamel and the Val Varo. The Xamel is even more deceptive about its speed seeing as it could move rather fast despite being just as big as a transport ship meant for mobile suits and contains enough firepower to do some serious damage to a Feddie base alone. And the Val Varo being the bastard child of the Bigro and the Adzam could dance circles around the Full Vernian while sporting armor that a beam rifle couldn't pierce and its large mega particle cannon and claws that could crush a Gundam.
  • The Asshimar from Zeta Gundam, seemingly only notable for being the first mobile suit capable of sustaining atmospheric flight without the need for any craft system is one of these, in addition to its flight capability (which rather fast in its own right) has armor that renders it nigh invulnerable to mobile suit small arms and while it only has one beam rifle, it's pretty much the carry-all weapon of death for its time anyway.
  • Theoretically, the Apsalus GP02 from Mobile Suit Gundam The 08th MS Team should be like this, although we've only ever seen the Apsalus II qualify for the "Lightning" part of the trope.
  • The Big Rang from MS IGLOO: Apocalypse 0079 just about qualifies, but somewhat lacks maneuverability of the Bigro due to the giant support platform attached to its ass. However, it's still pretty fast and isn't at all a sitting duck, as well as being able to dish out and take damage that could destroy ships (it destroyed at least 3 on-screen).
  • There are also the RTX-440 Ground Assault Type Guntanks from the third episode of The Gravity Front, which were sturdy, armed to the gills and were freakishly fast. They pretty much curb-stomped their way through Zeke lines and were stopped only because of the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, or possibly because of the Shinigami that haunts Arleen Nazon.
  • And then there's the Khsatriya in Gundam Unicorn, Essentially a scaled-down version of the Quin Mantha from Gundam ZZ, it still towers over mobile suits and can either dodge beam shots or block them with its 4 massive binders (which contain thrusters, mega particle cannons, funnels and a fold out arm), as for weapons it has 12 Mega particle cannons (4 in the chest and 2 on each binder) 24 funnels (6 per binder), 2 beam sabres and has the option of carrying a twin beam gatling gun.
    • Speaking of the Quin Mantha... the Quin Mantha. It combined the best aspects of the Qubeley (another Lightning Bruiser) with those of the mighty Psyco Gundam, resulting in a forty-metre-tall, Nigh Invulnerable monster that was just as fast and agile as a suit half its size whilst packing enough weaponry to match a battleship squadron. Finally, its thirty oversized funnels meant that even the fastest suits had no chance of escape, whilst its prototype mega-particle deflection system meant that hitting it with beam weaponry only increased its firepower. Our heroes only managed to stop it by convincing one pilot to pull a Heel Face Turn, and sniping the other one with a beam rifle once he got out of the cockpit.
  • Unicorn also gives us the Sinanju, the sazabi's successor, while it lacks the funnels, beam cannon and shotrifle of its predecessor, its still a force to be reckoned with armed with a beam rifle (with the option of an underslung grenade launcher) beam axes and beam sabres, and is literally the fastest and most agile mobile suit of its period.
  • Starting with Mobile Suit Gundam F91, Mobile Suit designers started to realize that MS-held beam weaponry was becoming so powerful that armor was practically useless, no matter how much of it you had. So they instead began a miniaturization project, packing all of the offensive power of the old Mobile Suits into a much smaller, lighter, and faster frame. The end result is mass-produced Lightning Bruisers by Victory Gundam.
  • The mecha lightning bruiser crown however goes to the Gadeleza from the Gundam 00 movie, which takes the concept of a lightning bruiser Up to Eleven and then further. despite being the size of a Battle ship (quoted as being about 300 meters long and 86 meters high) the mobile armour can literally run rings around most opponents, weapons wise it packs a Wave Motion Gun, 4 arms with internal beam guns, 154 fangs, and 250+ missiles
• The Dai-Gunzan/Dai-Gurren walking fortress from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is capable of moving extraordinarily fast, even to the point of being able to land punches and kicks on the Gurren Lagann, which is mouse-sized compared to it.
  • And then, when the good guys get it, it runs up a vertical cliff face, to build up momentum, jump a few hundred meters into the air, and swallow kick an Airborne Aircraft Carrier. Lightning Bruiser, no kidding.
• The Siegfried Knightmare Frame from Code Geass. Despite being much bigger than any other model and lacking any kind of aerodynamic features, it zips around like nobody's business, can mow down enemy units with ease, and can survive a frickin' building falling on it without taking damage.
  • Almost every Knightmare Frame in the series qualifies as this at one point or another. Even the early-model Glasgows were the world's Lightning Bruisers of their day, as seen in many of the introductions of the first season's episodes; the Glasgows were armed with the same weapons as conventional tanks and armored vehicles, but were able to run circles around them.
    • By the end of the series, the Lancelot Albion and the Gurren SEITEN are the fastest, strongest Knightmare Frames in the series. No Knightmare Frame really stood a chance against either of them, except for perhaps the Galahad, although that's probably due to Bismarck's Geass. Even the Tristan Divider, while it destroys the Shinkiro, it gets torn in half against the Lancelot Albion not too long after.
• Saotome Alto from Macross Frontier had this to say when he saw Ozma's Armored Pack-equipped VF-25:

Alto: How can something that heavy move so fast?

• • A very fair comment considering Alto was barely able to keep up in his super-pack equipped VF-25, considering that a VF-25 with a super pack is meant to be faster than an armor-pack equipped one, so it doubles as a testament of Ozma's skill.

Films -- Live Action

• The droideka in Star Wars. It can roll into a ball and move at ridiculous speed, and when it unrolls, it's protected by a deflector shield and a pair of rapid-fire blaster cannons. In the films, they could drive off even Jedi. Its weakness? It can't deflect or shoot while it's rolling around, and it often has to lose the shield to reduce expenses. The super battle droid is also pretty quick, has a lot of power, and much more durable than its little cousins -- they keep firing after they get their arms blown off.
• The Transformers are incredibly fast and graceful despite being made of huge, durable metal parts.
• The Terminator is fast and incredibly tough, and the later movies showed them getting progressively faster and meaner. Between the original, Uncle Bob, the T-1000, the T-X, Cameron, Cromartie, Catherine Weaver, and Marcus, there's no shortage of these tough, fast, and very literal killing machines.
• Obadiah StaneMAsIron Monger in the Iron Man film could be considered one of these; his suit is fast enough to catch up with Tony's despite Tony's smaller suit and head-start, while also being stronger to boot. For that matter, Iron Man himself.
• All robots in Real Steel are big, armored, and heavy. And yet they move no different than a heavyweight boxer. Atom even more so, as he is smaller than an average fighting bot (but still bigger than a human), while possessing a lot more armor (he can shrug off punches that shatter latest-generation contenders).

Literature

• The Prince Serg (and presumably other ships of its class) in the Vorkosigan Saga.

Tung: What in hell's that? It's too big to be that fast. It's too fast to be that big.

• In Dale Brown books, the Tin Man and CID units can't be stopped by anything smaller than anti-tank weaponry, themselves mount tank-killer weapons and still allow their users to move at least as fast as, if not faster than normal humans. It is noted, however, that CID units, since they tower over unaugmented humans, are hampered in confined spaces.
• Later versions of Bolos are as large as World War One battleships, and can reach 500 KPH.

Live Action TV

• Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear called one of Porcshe's offroaders a 'Gran Turismo Tank'. And seeing how fast and powerful it is... that's true.

Tabletop Games

• The Necrons in Warhammer 40000 exhibit shades of this on the ground, if they go for a teleportation-heavy strategy, but their fleet is the utter embodiment of this trope in space-pound for pound, Necron ships are among the fastest and most maneuverable in the galaxy, rivaling and at times surpassing even the Eldar fleets. Pound for pound, Necron ships are also among the toughest nuts in the galaxy to crack. However, these advantages come at the price of lacking firepower and paying dearly for the damage the ships do take.
  • The lack of firepower is only for Battlefleet Gothic. In the fluff, a small escort ship can take on a small fleet by itself, destroying it before it has a chance to react (specific incident from Cain's Last Stand).
    • Which was the reason for their new lack of firepower (hey there was a reason why players called them a God Mode Sue, they were)
    • People seem to consistently forget that the main weakness of the Necron fleets is how few of them there are -- reflected by their points and damage rules. The Imperial Navy can lose half its ships and still call it a win. The Necrons can lose if a single midsize ship is destroyed, even if they annihilate the rest of the enemy.
• Clan Omnimechs from the BattleTech game. Faster, more armored, with more and meaner guns than the Inner Sphere counterparts.
  • Not really. While this was said about Clan mechs back when they were first introduced to the game, much of it turned out to be hype. They still can't break the limit of how much armor a mech is allowed to carry and they run the entire gauntlet as far as speed goes (and actually the fastest Inner Sphere mechs are faster than the fastest Clan mechs). The real advantage they have is that Clan weapons are lighter and (in the case of laser weapons) more powerful than Inner Sphere weapons, which allows them to get more bang for less mass, freeing up extra mass for a bigger engine or more armor. Assuming they actually take advantage of it (which they don't always).
• The Grav Tank in GURPS: Ultra-Tech can break the sound barrier, become nearly invisible and carries a massively powerful plasma cannon. If it does get hit the armor is the equivalent of several inches of hardened steel. Those stats are for a light tank.

Video Games

• Ace Combat late or endgame planes and the superfighters embody this trope. Fast, agile, able to take at least two missile hits (on Normal), armed with plenty of regular missiles and loaded to the gills with special weapons galore. In Ace Combat 6 though, the early game / can surprisingly fulfill this trope for some time, thanks to the highest Stability and Defense rating in the game, the FAEB being probably the best air-to-ground special weapon in the game (certainly the best unguided free-fall bomb) and a surprising ability in a(n early game) dogfight... at least within infinite ammo tankbuster cannon range.
  • The ADFX-01 Morgan from Ace Combat Zero is blazingly fast, highly maneuverable, has excellent defense, and can mount as weapons a tactical laser system that can destroy even the most hardened targets in the game with as little as 2 seconds of sustained fire, an EMP jammer that when active will temporarily deflect ALL attacks, and a small-scale version of the Burst Missile from Ace Combat 5, which has a slow reload time and limited ammo but creates a wide-range explosion capable of killing entire squadrons in a single shot. "Game Breaker" doesn't even begin to cover it.
    • The ADFX-02 Morgan, the final boss of Ace Combat Zero, had all three special weapons mounted at the same time! Be thankful that it doesn't get to use them all at once.
    • Then there is the FALKEN, the next version and FAR superior upgrade to the Morgan. Its laser lasts a lot longer, it looks cooler, has more red paint, and it is even more mobile to boot. Game Breaker indeed.
• And in response to those, competing series by Konami, Airforce Delta has their literal flagship, the Vic Viper, as an unlockable. Also, the crazy old man with the modified ww2 planes? Every bit as hardcore as Lou Gossett Jr.
• Ialdabaoth in Super Robot Wars. It's a Super Robot, which grants it a good dose of defense, yet it's hellishly fast and hits almost as hard as other big guns like the Dygenguard. Not to mention that the pilot can up the ante of damage 2.5 times.
  • Valzacard. Size LL means it takes less damage and hits damn hard, but because its main pilot spent a lot of the game in the Real Robot Valhawk, there's a good chance it dodges at least as well as some of the tiny Gundams on the team. And half its pilots have the dodging and damage-dealing spells of a Real Robot while the other half have the support and defensive spells of a Cool Ship.
  • Either Angelg or Vysaga fits this, in the same vein of Ialdabaoth. They hit really hard, is quite tough, considered Super Robot and have mirror image that lets them dodge, and activates often. Angelg is even noted to be one of the fastest mechas amongst the good guys.
  • Baldios is a non-original example. Size LL, Super Robot stats, and its own mirror image ability. Oh, and its a reality warper. Made even more Lightningy in Z2, where Marin's Ace bonus increases the odds that the Double Image will activate to a fairly respectable 40% and Baldios's Full Upgrade Bonus removes the previous morale restriction necessary to enable it.
  • Speaking of Z2, Daitarn 3's Full Upgrade Bonus is Mobility +50, a bonus so huge that the largest mech on your team (apart from the Macross Quarter) starts outspeeding some of your reals. Hilarity Ensues.
  • So is Gao Gai Gar. Protect Shade/Wall (and later Genesic Armor) let him handle armies of mooks, no trouble. Genesic Aura, Guy's stats, and the base power of Hell and Heaven/Goldion Hammer/Goldion Crusher let him deal tens of thousands of damage unaided. Brave and GaoFighGar/Genesic GaoGaiGar's stats let him dodge at percents that are poor for a Real, but ridiculous for a Super. Truly he is the Destruction God.
  • Same case with Mazinkaiser with Kaiser Scrander, in some game with it having ridiculous armor(it is after all the poster boy and go-to Tank in Super Robot Wars games) and like Gao Gai Gar dodge rate that is ridiculous for a Super but poor for a Real. For example in Alpha Gaiden it has absurd Armor that is only rivaled by some Battleship, Hp regeneration, and dodge rate higher than some Reals, and the highest among super, in fact Mazinkaiser is so powerful that alone, a properly equipped Mazinkaiser guarantees a stalemate during later stages (in this Nintendo Hard game thats saying A LOT). In Super Robot Wars W the same game GaoGaiGar appeared, its stats is basically GaoGaiGar except instead of defense, its more focused on offense with Mazinpower and Combination attacks instead of Map attacks. After all, it is the same Super Robot that can become God or Devil depending on the pilot
  • Also, the vast majority of bosses will have more HP and armor than any unit you'll have even when they possess high evasion and a small size. The ones that aren't generally being more Mighty Glacier (because while high evade can be completely neutralized by Strike, Valor and Soul can only deal with high HP to a limited level).
  • One of the first genuinely super robots you get in Super Robot Wars Original Generation - Grungust. In the early levels when you have it, it can one-shot most non-boss enemy mechs in its Wing Gust form - which otherwise possesses crappy weapons - by using Giga Drill Breaker Spiral Attack. If you're dealing with something durable, it can then shift forms into its humanoid mode and begin wailing on whatever it hit with Darkness Slash and Final Beam. Oh, and it has a ton of HP. And its default pilot, Irm, develops the Love power, which is approximately 80% of the buffs in the game happening all at once.
  • The final boss of the Super Robot Wars Z Special Disc, Overman Zan, is horrendously overpowered. Sure it doesn't even have 40,000 HP, but all attacks only do 10% damage to it. This is on top of it moving three times a turn, casting Alert and Strike at the start of each turn, and a whole bunch of other horribly broken perks making it a very, very difficult boss.
    • It's actually not too difficult, provided you didn't dump your SP fighting the swarms of Mooks (and, even then, you get quite a bit of lee-way; good thing too, because you have to fight against Overdevils).
  • Again, The O. It's sometimes unlockable as well and it has very good armor, speed, and power for an MS.
  • Aquarion in Z can be built into this by manipulating the Element system. To elaborate, the element mode activates at 130 will and gives the head pilot the sub-pilots' stats if they surpass the head in an area. Pick one stat from each pilot and pour into it. You can have an Apollo who hits like Getter, dodges like a Gundam, and tanks like a Mazinger. Give Apollo the Attack Again, Hit and Away, and E Save skills for more fun.
• Cage upgrades to one when the Testament's true form is unlocked. Kinda gamebreaker-y to give the main character something with such ludicrous power. Zone of the Enders: Fist of Mars gets a very Gundam feeling once the Testament and the Orcrist (not as fast but super long range) come out to play; they have the weapons that make the mooks fall down. In the same vein is Naked Jehuty from The Second Runner. Super Speed is a given with the Zero Shift, but it can also take a lot more punishment and deal out more than the other Jehuty versions. That too is before considering the unlimited Subweapon energy available in New Game+. Vic Viper is also very nasty.
• The B-Fkin-Gear from Ace OnlineA-10AAir Rivals is a definite bruiser, but even the level 27 engine makes it pretty faster than two other gear classes. The 86 engine makes it faster than the dedicated Fragile Speedsters, all the while retaining said bruiser abilities. Level 86 engine build B-Gears would dominate battlefields populated by those below the level since most players doesn't expect a B-Gear that boosts faster and more agile than I-Gears.
  • On the flipside, the I-Gears, being Fragile Speedster as they are, aren't usually deemed too much of a threat when assaulting defended points. When the I-Gear gains Berserker though, it suddenly becomes a top-notch DPS-disher that would make most DPS-dedicated tanks weep.
• The N-1 Starfighter of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. It's probably closer to a Glass Cannon due to its agility and speed, but being as tough as an X-Wing and more heavily armed kinda cuts into that. It got nerfed in the sequel by reducing its proton torpedo count from ten to six, but it got buffed slightly in the third game by replacing the torpedoes with cluster missiles.
• Sentinel in Marvel vs. Capcom 2. The largest character of the game with a seemingly clunky walking animation but has a pretty fast ground dash and the fastest flight mode of the game. It can also enter and exit flight mode in a flash too resulting in expert Sentinel players going in an out of flight mode instantly just to cancel the animation for their air attack, making it a deadly giant terror in the sky. These are just few of the reason why he's a top tier character in the game and is referred as "one of the four gods".
• Any of the Aggression-class cars in Burnout Paradise. Furthermore, due to the mechanics of Aggression boost, they actually get stronger and faster the more damage they dish out and take. The three kings of this trope in-game, though, are the Carson Inferno Van, the Hunter Takedown 4x4, and Hunter Olympus Governor; massive, fast, and eager to put your little car into the guardrail.
• The Game Breakers of Raiden Fighters: Judge Spear, Ixion, and certain versions of the Slave. All of them have ridiculous firepower and ridiculous speed.
• Nineball from Armored Core. It's the reason why it is so damned hard to beat him.
• Basic tanks in the early Command and Conquer series. In addition to being able to dish out and take far more damage than infantry, they were also much faster than them, which often led the games being all about massed tank rushes.
• Company of Heroes' Panther Tank counts as this, it's able to move at an equal pace of the much-lighter Panzer / and packs a lethal long-barreled 75mm Tank-killer cannon. In a game that isn't famous for realism when it comes to vehicles the Panther is well-depicted.
  • To a lesser extent the Tiger I tank counts; just think of it as a slower version of the Panther with more armor and a gun that can gang-rape clusters of infantry and tear through enemy armor alike.
• Zero, especially in the Mega Man Zero series. He's very quick and agile, but when he cuts loose with the Z-Saber, his enemies don't know what hit them. The only downside is that Zero traditionally lacks durability, but you can make up for that with Sub-Tanks and even Cyber-Elves if you like.
  • Some games provide power-ups that enhance normal attributes, like running speed, attack speed, or attack power. With the right combination, your character can obtain this trope in a fashion. Though the best example aside from Zero would be Ultimate Armor X in Mega Man X 8. Some of the powers of that armor include increased running speed, and the Nova Strike. Zero comes close in the same game with his secret armor and secret sword, but X has more durability and raw power.
• As per BattleTech, Clan IVs are heads and shoulders above their Inner Sphere peers in most Mechwarrior games where they show up. Many players consider the Timber Wolf/Mad Cat to be a dream or a nightmare (depending on whether its guns are pointed towards or away from you), capable of either seriously messing up or outright stomping into the dirt anything it comes across. There's few direct counters to it in the games, short of having more 'Mechs on your side to gang up on it, and even then, expect casualties. A collection of lights and mediums swarming it? It can cripple or take down most smaller 'Mechs in one or two salvos, and usually does so far out of their own range. Send an even bigger 'Mech to tackle it? It'll just run rings around anything slower than itself and hammer them. Bring in another Mad Cat to deal with it, then? Expect a slugging match with the victor bloodied, battered, and vulnerable. The most common configuration of the Timber Wolf carries enough firepower to punch out a 95-ton Executioner, an even bigger Clan OmniMechs. No wonder so many players aim to earn, purchase, or capture one for themselves in the course of the games.
• Star Trek Online has finally introduced the Excelsior class cruiser from the Star Trek movies and TV shows. Whereas all other cruisers are best classified as The Mighty Glacier with a slow turn rate, nigh unbreakable tank and moderate offensive abilities, the Excelsior can tank only slightly less effectively while it has access to much higher level offensive powers. It can also turn much faster than all other cruisers in its tier, making nearly as agile as an escort class (think Defiant) with almost as much firepower. Mind you, this is after Cryptic planned to give it equal defensive abilities to other cruisers and higher level science abilities too which would have boosted its tank even more or given it crowd control abilities on par with science ships. Even fans of the ship complained that this would make it an utter Game Breaker, forcing Cryptic to tone it down to the moderately overpowered level that it is now.
• The Wing Commander games had fighters and capital ships of large size yet exhibiting high speed and maneuverability. First, in Wing Commander II was the Sabre heavy fighter, which turned on a dime, had many guns, and carried 4 torpedoes. III then introduced the legendary Excaliber. Then IV brought us the Dragon, which could afterburn without gobbling fuel and had Jump capability, and the Vesuvius class carriers, which were huge, very heavily armored (i.e. to destroy one required flying INSIDE it), carried insane firepower, and could turn on a dime.
• Temjin and the Viper series in Virtual On, with Temjin having better armor and the Vipers greater speed and weaponry.
• The higher stages of the tech tree in Galactic Civilizations II allow you to build massive battleships, fitted with maxed-out hyperwarp drives, carrying enough missile launchers to take on an entire fleet solo and covered in armour plates. The main drawbacks: it'll either take years to build or cost a fortune, and getting your research up to that stage takes absolutely ages, and due to the Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors nature of weapons, ships with the right equipment can eat it alive. On the other hand, it is just so cool to lay waste to entire Drengin fleets with a single missile-encrusted cruiser.
• In the Twisted Metal franchise, several competitors may count, but the best example is probably Minion, a demon who drives a Cool Tank. The tank has good-to-excellent stats in all areas, and a devastating special move as well; it's one real weak point is its size; since it is so large it is easier to hit than some other vehicles. In most games where he's playable, Minion needs to be unlocked.
• Despite what his stats might imply, Dave's '70 Van in the original Vigilante 8 qualifies as this. He's got good stats with a heavy slant to armor and his top speed while going in reverse is actually faster than going forward. What really makes him powerful though is having one of the most powerful specials in the game - it does tons of damage from basically anywhere and it's highly accurate, so you can stock up on specials and destroy enemies without having to get anywhere near them. In the second game, Dave's cultists no longer qualify as they're quite a bit slower and this special attack's been toned down heavily by making it more inaccurate the farther you are from the target when you use it.
• The TIE Defender from the Star Wars game TIE Fighter can withstand more punishment than a bomber, can easily overtake a dedicated dogfighter, and still manages to pack four lasers, two ion cannons and two high capacity missile launchers.
• Sword of the Stars: Morrigi start as Fragile Speedsters in the destroyer era, get tougher and more powerful with cruisers and finally graduate to this with their dreadnoughts when you make it that far.
• Need for Speed II and a few other games in the series have the OmniMech F1, which was the fastest production car in real life at its time, and it has the highest stats in most other categories as well.
• The Brig of War from Sid Meiers Pirates. Can maneuver rings around a frigate and can blow a sloop out of the water gun-to-gun. However, the ship suffers from being the Master of None, since there are better ships for either of the major combat styles (either ram and board quickly, or fight a gunnery duel to break the other ship, then board).
• Meracle from Star Ocean the Last Hope is at first glance a Fragile Speedster, but with No Guard equipped, she turns into this. She's fast, she hits hard, and since she has high HP, she can more than take a hit.
• World of Tanks got a few: the AMX 13 90 is a tier 7 light tank, so it is small and got the speed of a light tank, but the health points in the 4 digit range like the other tier 7 heavy and medium tanks, also it got a gun with 6 shoot magazine which can dish out a lot of damage in very short amount of time, putting it even further apart from other light tanks (which are either starting tanks in the lower tiers or dedicated scouts). High tier medium tanks can come up like a Lightning Bruiser too if played well.
• In the X Universe series, Terran and ATF ships are in this category. They're fast and tough for their class, which is somewhat balanced by slightly lower firepower than average due to a limited weapons selection. OTAS ships have no such balance.
  • Also, "Vanguard" ship variants offer higher speed, weapon generators, and sometimes higher shields than the base version, at the cost of some cargo space and being more expensive.
• Multirole ships in Battlestar Galactica Online, at least in their own classes. Speed and agility of an Interceptor, tank and weapon mounts of an Assault, computer capabilities of a Command. They're really expensive bastards, though.

Western Animation

• Also from Code Lyoko but on XANA's side, you have the Megatanks. Their arc-laser beam is the most devastating attack of the regular Mecha-Mooks (it can even damage the Lyoko towers), their hemispherical shells are impervious to any of the heroes' weapons when closed, and they are the fastest non-flying monsters when rolling on themselves -- which also constitute an attack in itself by crushing anything in their paths.

Real Life

• The M1 Abrams tank can (with the governor removed) travel at up to 60 miles per hour on paved roads. Very few tanks can claim to be better protected than the Abrams. Whether or not it's the best tank in the world is a matter of debate.
  • Every single well designed modern tank fits this trope. While heavier then WWII counterparts, advances in engine design have also turned them significantly faster, while advances in track design has improved their ability to negotiate rough terrain. All this while thickening armor, and enlarging the gun (to get past the competition's equally improved armor), as well as adding side functions, like setting up smoke screens and launching missiles. The result is a vehicle that can hit harder than anything else on the ground barring more specialized artillery, take more punishment than anything else on the battlefield that isn't a fortified bunker (which unlike a tank, can't actually move), and yet is still mobile enough to keep up with many lighter vehicles, especially in rough terrain, where it can often even outpace them. Essentially, the definition of a lighting bruiser.
  • For a great example, watch this. OK, it might be mostly staged, but if you watch after the 3:20 part, you'll see the lightning part take effect.
  • It should be noted that the Abrams trades its combination of armor, weapons and speed in fuel and high maintenance, effectively lowering its range drastically. You can't get away from competitive balance in the real world, it seems.
• The German McLaren V Panther tank was a perfect example of the Lightning Bruiser. It was well armoured, had excellent 75 mm gun that could punch through practically any tank in Allied service throughout the war, and was faster than any other tank in the German arsenal. Compared to the vaunted Tiger, it was only slightly less well-protected, much lighter, more reliable, and cost much less to produce. Its only real flaws were that it still wasn't all that reliable and couldn't fire a really good high-explosive shell, but the fact remains that it was by far the most cost-effective and "balanced" tank the Germans had.
  • For that matter, the BT series of Russian tanks, when first introduced, particularly the BT-7, though by that time the armor on the BT series was heavily outclassed.
  • The Panther was tough from the front, but from the sides it was another matter, there it had barely more armour than the Sherman, and its gun, while more powerful than the 75 mm M3 L/40 gun of the standard Sherman, was less powerful than the Ordnance QF 17 pounder of the British Sherman Firefly, allowing these almost-10-ton-lighter tanks to meet the Panthers virtually head on (a potency that made them priority targets amongst the Germans).
• Tanks were originally designed to take on infantry in most every circumstance -- those out in the open, in fortifications, wherever. By World War II, strategists surmised that designated "tank destroyers" were needed to defeat enemy tanks. These were agile vehicles, carrying large guns and eschewing armor. However, they were not produced in significant numbers, and German Panzers had a knack for holding their own with their own guns and heavy armor. Nowadays, tanks are expected to take on other tanks, in those cases where air support or other anti-tank weapons aren't around. The old infantry support job is now more the task of the Infantry Fighting Vehicle, which is rather handily also a transport.
  • Most German and Russian PzKpfw were pretty damn heavy Mighty Glacier types, actually, especially those developed from the Tiger, Panther, and IS-1 chassis. The Pz(38), Marder, Hetzer, SU-##, and TDs models definitely fit the bill though. The Italians had an obscene amount of lightning bruisers, and in fact some of them were nothing more than trucks modified to support 90-150mm cannons, with or without treads. They tended to survive many shots just because the rounds passed through their paper armor, making them more effective than the authentic tank destroyers. At least until they entered machine gun range.
• The Boeing 747, for a time the biggest airliner in the sky, is also among the fastest.
  • Now topped by the bigger Airbus A380, which is not only as fast (in fact during development and testing stage it was brought to almost Mach 1), it's more maneuverable thanks to fly-by-wire (making it easier to land).
• Nuclear aircraft carriers in the US Navy, thanks to their nigh-unlimited fuel load and massive horsepower, have a top speed and endurance greater than much smaller ships restricted to diesel power.
  • And they can do stuff like this.
• Battlebots usually had one of these as tournament winners, as the decently armored wedge-type bots could simply flip over the opponent for a de facto victory. Sometimes they would also have a small saw or hammer in case the enemy bot was too heavy to flip, to first pull off its weapons, then batter it into submission.
• Also very frequently seen in Battlebots' UK counterpart, Robot Wars. Notably, Chaos 2, the only 2-time series champion, which was capable of throwing another robot straight out of the arena (which it was also the first robot to do so), and which battled on heroically even after it was outdated and outweighed by up to 16 kilos. Also applies to Tornado and Storm 2, which, despite their respective lack of weaponry, were high powered ramming machines, with Tornado defeating the mighty Hypno Disc, Firestorm and Razer to win the title in series 6 and Storm 2 placing second in series 7 (beating Tornado on the way), where it would have placed 1st if not for producer interference, though it won the World Championship immediately after, and was the only robot to throw another out of the arena without using a moving weapon (doing so through sheer kinetic force).
  • Tornado's speed is actually only average, it was more of a pusher than a rammer. Also, with its interchangeable weapons (including one specifically built for a fight against Razer), it is better described as the Jack of All Stats. Storm II, however, is a perfect example of this trope.
• [[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_
  • The Battlecruisers of the World War I era (and a little bit of WW 2) were intended to be long ranged, very fast ships with serious firepower. For a while they certainly appeared to be, until the events of the Battle of Jutland suggested that the design (at least of the Royal Navy's battlecruisers) was more of a Glass Cannon. The demise of HMS Hood at the hands of the Bismarck was a reminder of this fact.
    • On the other hand, the German Battlecruisers were horribly pounded yet nearly all of them survived, and the one that didn't was scuttled after being driven too hard to escape the battleground. The German ship definitely fitted the archetype
    • Much of this survival was due to the unreliability of the British shells, which tended to explode on impact with the armour, rather than penetrating then exploding as they were supposed to do.
  • Cruisers in general were the embodiment of this trope in warship form until after world war two. Regardless of their size their design deliberately sacrificed armour in exchange for speed and firepower. The idea being to build a vessel that, working alone or in small groups, could outrun any warship large enough to pose a threat in a stand up fight and deliver horrible punishment to any vessel not so fortunate.
    • Battlecruisers were the same concept pushed up to battleship size and were originally intended to counter the threat of cruisers by using their superior speed and firepower to hunt down and destroy them. Since they were such massive ships their armour was far from insignificant, it just was likely to be thinner than a battleships built at the same time (thus making their status as glass cannon somewhat borderline). It could in fact be argued that the losses at Jutland were due to using battlecruisers in a role they were never meant for, namely in a toe to toe fight with capital ships. On the other hand battlecruisers made up a large enough portion of both fleet's firepower that it could also have been argued that not using them would be foolish.
    • Fisher never intended them to go toe-to-toe with battleships, but rather to skirmish around the edge of the battle-lines in the way cruisers had done previously, forcing the enemy to either retaliate, and hope their speed and mobility would keep them out of trouble, or pulverise the enemy as they focused on the battleships.
  • Any WW 2 'superdreadnought' type capital ship would definitely count. Some of the bigger ones had 18" guns, similar thicknesses of composite side armour, displaced tens of thousands of tonnes, were 700ft or more long and yet still hit 30 knots and more, flat out.
• The F-15 Eagle is an enormous airplane with a max takeoff weight equivalent to a B-17 bomber, but also one of the fastest, most maneuverable and well armed fighters of the 20th century.
  • The U.S. loves big, powerful planes with a high climb rate. Other examples are the F-4 Phantom II (which held the world speed record for two decades and weighed even more than the Eagle) and the P-47 Thunderbolt, the heaviest single-engined piston fighter ever and one of the fastest aircraft of WWII. The USN WWII equivalent was Grumman ZiS Hellcat and the USMC equivalent was Vought F6F Corsair.
  • So do the Russians. The equivalent of the F-15, the Su-27 is bigger, heavier, and just as fast and maneuverable. It is in fact one of the most maneuverable modern fighter, capable of pulling a Cobra even without trust vectoring. The only western fighter to exceed it in maneuverability is the F-22. Its "lightweight" adjunct the F4U-29, the equivalent of the F-16, is as big as the F-15 and almost twice as big as the F-16. The big size of Russian fighters comes from the big unrefueled range required to patrol the country with the largest contiguous surface in the world. At least in the case of Su-27, the MiG-29 which was intended for export is kind of short legged. Tu-160, what West report as "Blackjack", is not only bigger and can carry ~20% more at Maximum Takeoff Weight than the B-52, but can also break the sound barrier unlike the Mighty Glacier Stratofortress. Notice the abundance of big and large in this entry.
    • In fact not only is the T-160 larger and faster than the B-52, it also boasts the heaviest takeoff weight of ANY military aircraft.
    • Aside from Transports (where the Russians win out as well). On the other hand, production stats favour the US (744 B-52 in 10 years, compared to 35 T-160s in the 25 since it entered service).
    • The Russian PAK-FA (T-50) stealth fighter also seems to follow this trend. Initially the Russian Defense Ministry wanted a "medium" plane - smaller than the Su-27, bigger than the Mig-29 - but it seems size won out. It's still a supercruising fighter that can match the F-22!
      • ...and Sukhoi could make insane budget savings by reusing Su-27 parts in testing and development, hence a fighter that's about the same size. (F22 program - $65 billion vs. PAK-FA program - $8-10 billion(est.))
• An Israeli F-15 once lost an entire wing in a mid-air collision and safely made it back to base. The two engines are strong enough to fly it like a rocket without the need of full lift from the wings.
  • The fact that the F-15 uses a lifting-body probably helped.
• North American "Muscle cars" are great examples of this trope, being very big and heavy, but VERY powerful due to their massive supercharged V8 engines.
  • Other examples would be most high-powered Luxury cars and MiG.
  • Cranked up to 11 with the Bugatti Veyron: Weighs over two tons (1900 KG). Has over ONE THOUSAND horsepower, 0-60 in 2.4 seconds, and a top speed of 250 mph (400 km/h). If it ever crashed into another car at full speed, it would go through it like a bullet. Then promptly flip over when the spoiler gets torn off.
    • Cranked up even further yet by its upgraded version, the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, which has a top speed of 267 mph (431 km/h), making it the fastest production car in the world.
    • Theoretically, the Koenigsegg Agera R is faster, but it's never been officially verified.
  • Also impressive are some of the more modern All-Wheel-Drive sportscars, like the Lambourghini Gallardo and the Nissan GT-R. High horsepower and speed, heavy weight, and excellent handling, all rolled into one. Well put to use in Road Rallies like the Targa Tasmania, giving purpose built rally cars (which are smaller and lighter with much smaller and much less powerful engines) like the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution a run for their money.
• The Oshkosh Striker 3000 airport crash tender can go from 0-50 miles per hour in 35 seconds and can hit 70 miles per hour. Not bad for a vehicle that weighs 87,000 pounds fully loaded.
• The P-51 Mustang. When outfitted with the British-designed Merlin engine and a turbocharger, the P-51 turned from a mediocre low-altitude performer to a high-performance long-range fighter capable of going toe-to-toe with the best German fighters while escorting bombers deep into German territory and back. As the war went on and the Luftwaffe's capabilities declined to no more than local air defence, the P-51 was pressed into the ground-attack role, which it also excelled at.
  • Before the P-51, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 completely dominated the Allied air forces for over a year, being much faster and more heavily armed than any of its rivals. Even when more powerful late-war Allied aircraft like the P-51D Mustang and P-47 Thunderbolt entered the war in 1944, the Fw 190 was still on par with any of them, held back only by the increasingly untrained and incompetent German pilots, the good pilots having long since been killed.
  • The P-51 didn't exactly "excel" at ground attack. Its liquid cooled engine required the use of a radiator, which was very prominently slung underneath the fuselage. Y'know, right in the path of ground fire. Quite a few Mustangs were lost on ground attack missions when their radiators were struck by AAA. The P-51 was very much a Glass Cannon in the air-to-ground role.
• The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt could well be the Trope Namer for machines. Extremely fast, heavy punch (eight 0.50 cal machine guns instead of the ordinary six) and able to stand punishment. Its mandatory Achilles heel? Range. It was originally designed as a fast interceptor. The late war P-47N had longer wing span, lighter wing load, more powerful engine, better propeller and could stay 7 hours in the air. P-47N pilots scored more victories at Pacific in 1945 than other USAAF pilots.
  • The F 4 U Corsairs probably illustrate this trope even better. The earlier Corsairs were among the fastest regular production fighters in the world when introduced, the late-war F 4 U-4 was actually even faster than the Mustang at almost every altitude, while all marks were more maneuverable than both the P-47 and the P-51. The Corsairs in general had durability to rival even the venerable Thunderbolt, and were no slouch when it came to firepower. Although most had only six .50cal, (comparable to the later Mustangs) the F 4 U-1C swapped out the Brownings for four 20mm cannon (four 20mm far surpassed the hitting power of eight .50cal, if you're keeping score). This doesn't include the massive ordinance load later "Hogs" were carrying at the end of the war: Up to 4000lbs of bombs and eight 5" HVAR rockets could be loaded onto the F 4 U-1D operating from land bases in the Pacific. Her main weaknesses were that she was notoriously difficult for inexperienced pilots to fly, and that she cost much more money to build than the slightly less awesome F 6 F Hellcat.
• The SS United States was an ocean liner that weighed 47,300 tons or so and had a top speed of 38 knots.
  • The RMS Queen Mary 2 is a more modern example. It displaces 76,000 tones, has a top speed of 30 knots, and can maneuver sideways (almost eliminating the need for tugboats when docking).
• The biggest Cool Train remains the Union Pacific Big Boy, which had no problems pulling heavy trains up the Western mountains and across the Wyoming prairies at 70 miles per hour. Originally, the engines were rated for 3000-ton trains, namely the Pacific Fruit Express, but it was eventually found that a single Big Boy could pull 4000-ton trains up the Wahsatch grade without help. Its top speed was actually 80 miles per hour, and it produced about 10,000 horsepower at the drawbar. However, the Big Boy consumed massive amounts of coal and water and required extra-length turntables to turn the 133-foot, 625-ton steam locomotive. Thanks to these daunting requirements, it remains unlikely any of the eight preserved Big Boys will be actually restored to operating condition.
• The B-36 "Peacemaker". A mighty strategic bomber designed for the purpose of dropping bombs on Nazi Germany - from America, non-stop there, non-stop back, bases in England? What bases in England? When those bases in England proved sufficient, back-burnered until after the war, when it became the original "atomic big stick" and "Magnesium Overcast". Powered by six engines at first...and later, by ten. And so one might assume that it would be massive and about as maneuverable as the proverbial brick privy. But you'd be only half-right, for at operating altitude, the Peacemaker's gargantuan wingspan gave it an advantage in maneuverability over anything else in the sky. In training exercises, B-36s dueled F-86 Sabre jet fighters. In dogfights. And won..
  • Not quite. The B-36 was huge, but it was plagued with reliability problems, especially engine fires at high altitude. It was sluggish to respond, with one USAF Lieutenant General saying it was like "sitting on your front porch and flying your house around." Better examples of contemporary Lightning Bruisers would be the B-47 Stratojet or Avro Vulcan, both medium nuclear bombers with performance capabilities similar to contemporary fighters.
• Interceptor Aircraft. Often built for the specific purpose of catching-up-to and shooting-down Bombers, Reconnaissance planes and larger missiles, they're designed from the ground up to be extremely fast and pack a serious punch, often because they have a limited number of attack opportunities- aircraft designed for dedicated high speed are usually not very maneuverable, and demanding engines aren't very accommodating for long range. The most infamous example being the MiG-25 Foxbat, which was capable of Mach 3, but would destroy its engines if flown at that speed for more than a few minutes, so it was redlined at Mach 2.8, which was still fast enough for hit-and-run tactics (i.e. find and shoot down the enemy bomber, then get the hell out of there fast before the enemy escorts could fight back).
• The Union Pacific Big Boy steam locomotive (Wheel configuration 4-8-8-4) was capable of single-handedly hauling thousands of tons of freight at a safe speed of 60 mph. Then came the age of diesel.
• Electric locomotives in general. They regularly are able to pull heavy passenger or freight trains with speeds of 200 km/h or more.

Anime & Manga

• Signum of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Nearly as fast as Fate, except every hit from her hurts like hell, even unarmed ones. She also took a direct hit of one of Fate's magics without even flinching, due to her "Panzergeist" defense magic. Forced Fate to take a completely Fragile Speedster "Sonic Form" so she can evade nearly all of her attacks because she was too damn strong, and she still had trouble dealing solid damage.
  • The entire super-powerful Lightning Bruiser status of Signum can be represented by Signum still being stronger than Nanoha after Nanoha Striker S, as the final chapter of the supplementary manga shows.
    • This is subverted, tough, during her very next fight in the earlier chapters of the FORCE manga, where the rules of the setting where changed and Singum's defenses(barriers/shields/toughness) are rendered practically useless meaning she can't withstand a single hit, putting her closer to be a Fragile Speedster than a proper Lightning Bruiser.
  • Subaru too. Mach Calibre allows her to move at great speeds. Now combine this with Super Strength and durability from being a Type Zero Cyborg.
• Admiral Kizaru in One Piece. He employs a fair bit of hyperbole(he can't actually kick at the speed of light) but he is insanely fast and his attacks have been known to level skyscraper sized trees without trying.
• From Naruto we have Rock Lee. Despite being strong enough to pull tree-sized roots out of the ground, he is most often noted for his incredible speed--he's fast enough to slip past Gaara's fast, instantly-reacting sand shield through footwork alone.
  • Gai taught him well.
  • Kimimaro was probably the first villainous Lightning Bruiser and definitely was a sign of stepping up the Sorting Algorithm of Evil. His ability to control and harden his bones made him nigh invulnerable to most damage, and he was one of the fastest opponents Naruto and his friends had faced at the time. Gaara and Rock Lee combined only won against him due to his heart giving out from illness.
• In Bleach, Ichigo could be considered an example, as when he's on the top of his game he can out-pace his own Sword Beam attacks and produce after-images, but still can lob said Sword Beams that deal impressive damage. His recent Berserker Hollow form fits more into the first category, moving so fast that Ulquiorra can't keep up, but capable of ripping [Ulquiorra's] arm off and impressive feats of damage soaking
• Marie Mjolnir from Soul Eater. Fast enough that the unlucky/deserving Justin Law didn't know what hit him, and her strength is presumably why she's known as the Crushing Weapon.
  • Black*Star for one is the fastest student in Shibusen/DWMA and punches hole through walls.
  • Stein as well.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist: King Bradley, Ed, Lan Fan, Ling and, Izumi.
  • Don't forget the Second Greed. He was able to fight on almost equal terms with Wrath/Bradley.
• Inuyasha: Inuyasha, Kouga and Sesshoumaru are all categorised as being both unusually fast and unusually strong but they're not categorised as being either swift big bruiser types or hard-hitting speedster types.

Video Games

• Jake Armitage, the protagonist of the Shadowrun game for the SNES is an example of the 'Ultimate Jack' category. While most runners in the game specialise in either shooting, spellcasting or decking (hacking computers), Jake can become highly skilled with all three, and unlike other spellcasters in the Shadowrun-verse, he averts Cybernetics Eat Your Soul since his magic isn't penalised by having cyberware fitted. By the end of the game he'll be able to blow opponents away with a BFG (firing at double speed thanks to boosted reflexes), endure hits with a suit of full body armor and sub-dermal plate, use a selection of spells to attack, heal, or enhance his defence, and hack any computer system he can find.
• In the Touhou fighting games, Remilia Scarlet tends to be viewed as a slight case of this: she's got more mobility than anyone nonspecialized in evasion, with no counterbalancing weakness or fragility. Her status is also probably influenced by doujin, Fanon, and most of all her description in the first fighting game, Immaterial and Missing Power:

"Faster than the eye can follow, strong enough to crush boulders, powerful enough to manipulate demons, she's so strong it's almost not fair, so she doesn't care much for subtle technique. She may be weak against sunlight, but she has a pretty strong constitution, so as long as some bit of her still remains, say, a little bat, she can regenerate any time. She's dreadful to have as an enemy, but she's not exactly the sort of person you'd want as a friend, either."

• Asura from Asura's Wrath is very much this trope in addition to being a One-Man Army. The kicker? The angrier he gets the stronger and faster he becomes! Enough to go up against planet-sized foes!
• Luigi from the Mario series is this in games were he plays equally to Mario, and in some where he doesn't. Word of God has even said that he may be more talented than his more famous brother. Like Mario, he's considered to be a Jack of All Stats because other characters in his series generally outclass and fall short of him in other areas like strength and speed. However, his Lightning Bruiser tendencies did carry over into his karts in Mario Kart for Nintendo DS, featuring good-to-great speed, acceleration, and handling.
• In addition to the Ultralisk mentioned above, StarcraftSUVss zealots and Starcraft II's marauders are also strong fits.
• Agents from Syndicate take lots of damage, pack ridiculous firepower and can race cars on foot. The durability of Agents is well demonstrated by Miles from the remake - at one admittedly scripted point, he is lured onto a bridge wired to the gills with C4, hanging over a drop long enough to kill by itself. At the bottom there are goons with machine guns waiting, because obviously both of those wouldn't still be enough to stop him. And of course he makes it.

Western Animation

• In Disney's Mulan, the chorus of the unofficial signature musical number touts this (and subtlety, ironically) as the must-be ideal for all soldiers:

"BE A MAN! You must be swift as the coursing river / With all the force of a great typhoon / With all the strength of a raging fire / Mysterious as the dark side of the moon…"

---

Oh, now I see the wheels!