History DumbMuscle / Videogames

* Minsc, from the ''Franchise/BaldursGate'' games, is a blend of DumbMuscle, GentleGiant, BoisterousBruiser, and CrazyAwesome.

%%* ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' is quite fond of this trope:
%%** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemJugdral Genealogy of the Holy War]]'': Arden to some extent.
%%** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemJugdral Thracia 776]]'': Marty.
%%** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe The Binding Blade]]'': Gonzales, and Ward to an extent.
%%** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe Blazing Sword]]'': Bartre. "Big words... make head hurt. I'm gonna go over there and punch that rock until my head feels better."%%Quotes are not acceptable context.

* ''Franchise/{{Persona}}''

* [[VideoGame/{{Touhou}} Cirno, the Strongest]] [[WrongGenreSavvy thinks]] she's this (being able to pound a nail in with a banana, after all), but is closer to a SquishyWizard who [[BoisterousWeakling vastly overestimates her abilities]], and is likewise considered ''smart'' for a fairy, the average of which is much less intelligent.

* The Hunters and Brutes in ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' seem to be this, but the expanded universe shows that the Hunters are [[WarriorPoet Warrior Poets]] who were one of the more advanced species to be incorporated into the Covenant, and that the Brutes are one of the few Covenant species who don't consider modifying Forerunner technology to be blasphemy.

* ''{{VideoGame/Fallout}}''

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'''s Super Mutant Behemoths are, not surprisingly, the least intelligent of their kind, and never speak, vocalizing solely in monster roars. The Vault 87 Mutants, with the exceptions of Fawkes and Uncle Leo, are in general dumber than the Mariposa ones.

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' has Strong, another Super Mutant. He's not nearly as smart as Fawkes or Uncle Leo, and thinks the "milk of human kindness" from ''[[Theatre/{{Macbeth}} "Mack Beth"]]'' is something he can actually drink to become a more powerful Super Mutant.

* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' features Goliaths, the GiantMook of the Bandit enemy type. Extremely slow and very childish, Goliaths also possess size and strength befitting their name. Strangely, they seem to get smarter when they lose [[RestrainingBolt their helmets]].

** Morton is one of the biggest and strongest of the Koopalings, and is "more brawn than brains" according to his ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros 4'' trophy.

* In ''VideoGame/DungeonsAndDragonsOnline'', in one of the challenges resides a boss named Ugg the Assertive, having the lovely [[BossSubtitles Boss Subtitle]] <Confused Meatshield>.

* ''Videogame/DarkestDungeon'': The Swine King is the gigantic, brutish and extremely dangerous result of your Ancestor summoning some extraplanar creature into the body of a common pig. Unfortunately for him, what he got was too stupid to be useful in the least, and he locked it up in the warrens. When you fight it, it actually needs a helper to tell it who to target.
* [[ProudWarriorRace Krogan]] are generally considered to be this in ''Franchise/MassEffect'' by the other races, especially salarians and turians, and you'll find plenty of krogan thugs throughout the series that play it straight. Any krogan who's [[NominalImportance actually got a name]] is probably smart enough to avert the trope, though. Wrex, Grunt, and Drack certainly all are, while in Mass Effect 2 and Andromeda there are even krogan scientists, engineers, mechanics, and technical minded individuals who are shown to be quite good at what they do.
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls''

* Beat from ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou''. His ridiculously slow wit is balanced by his equally overwhelming abundance of power.

* The Prone race in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChroniclesX'' are collectively like this. Their homeworld had been ravaged by a millennia-old war between two rival clans even before the Ganglion incorporated them into their ranks, and that whole time they never developed proper strategy, to the point that one Prone is fascinated by Sun Tzu's writings. They also frequently speak in HulkSpeak. Contrast all this with the [[CatFolk Wrothians]], who are also a ProudWarriorRace but are much more intelligent.

* ''The Twins'' has Bob, who serves as the muscle of the duo, but is very simpleminded. He has a SimpletonVoice and is dumb enough to drink coffee laced with rat poison which visibly turns rhe coffee green.
* Invoked in ''VideoGame/PathOfExile'' with [[https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Actum Actum]], a unique weapon with powerful base stats, but sets your Intelligence points to 0.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'': Guy, a massive brute who is barely capable of speech. The Japanese-only novelization of the game's plot reveals him to be a former WildChild -- which is why he can talk to animals.

* Sabin from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI''. He seems a pretty clever fellow up until the point when he's taken to the opera.
-->[[MusicalWorldHypotheses "Uh. Why's everyone singing?"]]
** Sabin is actually played as a tech-savvy, fairly intelligent character otherwise. He's got the book smarts, but he's culturally oblivious. Which makes sense given that he spent the last decade before the start of the game in the mountains learning martial arts from a hermit master.
** Umaro is probably a better example, using HulkSpeak on the rare occasions when he speaks at all. His main solution when he sees something he doesn't like is to repeatedly bash away at it until he destroys it. This can be the enemies he beats with his giant club, or [[DungeonBypass the walls in Kefka's Tower that he smashes down to clear a path for his friends]]. [[FridgeBrilliance Which, in its own way, is almost clever]].

* Beat from ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou''. His ridiculously slow wit is balanced by his equally overwhelming abundance of power.

* The Heavy Weapons Guy from ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' is a subversion; although speaking simple English, he's [[EloquentInMyNativeTongue a lot more eloquent in Russian]] and even has a [=PhD=] in Russian literature (if you take his appearance in ''VideoGame/PokerNightAtTheInventory'' as canon). He also lampshades this by saying people can outsmart him, but they can't outsmart bullet.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'': Moblins are this in comparison to the Bokoblins. Neither enemy type is portrayed as especially bright -- they're at a Stone Age level at best -- but Moblins are distinctive for never using weapons more complex than clubs and spears, unlike the Bokoblins' use of bows, and never inhabit complex camps unless Bokoblins are also present -- Moblins found by themselves simply live in the wilderness without even the simplest shelter or even a simple firepit area and crates that even the simplest Bokoblin-only camps have. However, they're a lot bigger and a lot stronger than Bokoblins, being archetypal {{Smash Mook}}s to the Bokoblins' easily slain {{Mooks}}, and serve as the main combat muscle and damage sponges in mixed bands.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' is quite fond of this trope:
** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemJugdral Genealogy of the Holy War]]'': Arden to some extent.
** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemJugdral Thracia 776]]'': Marty.
** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe The Binding Blade]]'': Gonzales, and Ward to an extent.
** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe Blazing Sword]]'': Bartre. "Big words... make head hurt. I'm gonna go over there and punch that rock until my head feels better."
* Guy in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'', a massive brute who is barely capable of speech. The Japanese-only novelization of the game's plot reveals him to be a former WildChild -- which is why he can talk to animals.
* Gaira Kafuin in ''VideoGame/SamuraiShodown'' is a parody of the MartialPacifist mold, being a Buddhist monk who is actually a violent knucklehead.

* Balrog from ''StreetFighter''. After Bison's disappearance, Balrog was left in charge of Shadowloo, and promptly ran it into the ground.
** And then there's Hugo...

* Ogres in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. Most of them, anyway; Two-headed ogre mages are utter geniuses even compared to other races. To Ogres, might makes... might, and leadership is decided by who can beat up who.

* Chang Koehan from ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters'' series is a colossal numbskull with unbelievable physical prowess.
* Titanic Tim of the ''Saturday Night Slam Masters'' series of fighting games. One of his prefight quotes is "No one can sink the Titanic", which certainly ''sounds'' intimidating until you examine it for one second (hint: the Titanic actually did sink, but it's that exact sort of boasting that made its sinking memorable).

* Dekar from ''VideoGame/LufiaIIRiseOfTheSinistrals'' is a classic cutout for just the two words "Dumb muscle" put together.

* Completely and totally averted in the case of the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Qunari]] of ''Franchise/DragonAge''. They are certainly big and strong, but while they tend towards the xenophobic and unimaginative they are in no way dumb. Every Qunari Hawke meets in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' is perfectly capable of countering every argument Hawke makes against the [[ArcWords certainty]] presented by the Qun.

** Many of the series' physically larger minor races, such as [[OurGiantsAreBigger Giants]] and [[ALoadOfBull Minotaurs]], are considered this by the races of Men and [[OurElvesAreBetter Mer]], but most subvert it by displaying greater intelligence than they are typically given credit for. [[OurOgresAreHungrier Ogres]] are one exception, typically being every bit as dumb as they are described to be. Exceptions exist, but they are fairly rare.

* ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTenseiPersona''

* ''[[VideoGame/CityOfHeroes City of Heroes/Villains]]''. Wretch. Oh, Wretch.

* ''GuildWars2'' has an entire race of these with the Ettin, bulky two-headed ogres with apparently half a brain in each head. Most are aggressive monsters who know no other combat tactic than bludgeoning things to death and stomping the ground really hard, a few of them are peaceful [=NPCs=] who cannot understand any word longer than three syllables.

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' has Strong, another Super Mutant. He's not nearly as smart as Fawkes or Uncle Leo, and thinks the "milk of human kindness" from ''[[Literature/{{Macbeth}} "Mack Beth"]]'' is something he can actually drink to become a more powerful Super Mutant.

* Most of the hard-hitting heavyweight characters in the ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' series - Donkey Kong, Bowser, King Dedede and Charizard - have shown below-average intelligence and poor judgment in their home series (or in Charizard's case, it's merely an animalistic character). Exceptions include Ike (who is of average intelligence), Ganondorf (who is a GeniusBruiser), and Bowser Jr. (a GadgeteerGenius who classifies as a heavyweight due to the vehicle he's riding in).

* In ''Franchise/SlyCooper'', the [[EliteMooks Flashlight Guards]] are this, especially from the second game onward. Murray also counts as a semi-heroic example.

* Akihiko Sanada from ''{{VideoGame/Persona 3}}'' most certainly ''wasn't'' this in his original game. It's made clear that he's a very good student on top of being insightful, keen, and good at planning during fights; in fact, he's the first one to connect the dots in regards to why [[BossBattle those large Shadows]] appear during [[{{Lunacy}} full moons.]] His only shortcomings, mentally, are his sorely lacking social graces. Once {{Flanderization}} kicked in during ''VideoGame/Persona4Arena'' and ''VideoGame/PersonaQShadowOfTheLabyrinth'', his more bookish intelligence is thrown out the window, his tactlessness is ramped up, and he becomes far more aggressive than even his worst moments in ''3'', as demonstrated by his battle quotes in ''Arena'' and his constant whining and arguing with his friend Shinjiro in ''Q''. Throw an obsessiveness with protein that wasn't in the original game and you've got one dumb, tactless boxer.
* Kanji Tatsumi in ''{{VideoGame/Persona 4}}'' plays it a bit straighter than Akihiko, being far more academically inept and clueless (how he gets involved in the action in ''Arena'' involves him ''falling asleep and falling into his television set,'' and he spends his entire story mode thinking he's in a dream.) It's emphasized with his more brutish fighting style, which involves smacking chairs and other blunt objects, whereas Akihiko is a trained boxer.

** VideoGame/{{FalloutNewVegas}} has Mean Sonovabitch, a Supermutant employed as a bouncer/guard. He's incredibly simplistic and acquired his name because everyone kept saying he was one, so he assumed it was his name (he's actually [[DeathbringerTheAdorable very nice]]).
*** There's also another Supermutant who kept trying to get his car repaired and functional so he could drive it around. It was a toy car so small only a mouse could fit in it.
*** The ''Dead Money'' DLC adds Dog, a Nightkin Supermutant who's not much more than a violent animal who barely follows your commands. However, he's actually a subversion as he's got dissociative identity disorder, like many Nightkin, and his alternate personality, God, is highly intelligent but useless in a fight.

* Tiny the Tiger in the ''Franchise/CrashBandicoot'' series. In his debut, ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot2CortexStrikesBack'', he's a large, roaring pile of muscle, and his appearance in [[VideoGame/CrashBandicoot3Warped the third game]] shows his talking for the first time in HulkSpeak, but ''VideoGame/CrashOfTheTitans'', like with everyone else, decided to modify his character, making him still muscular but without the "Dumb" part.

** VideoGame/{{FalloutNewVegas}} has Mean Sonovabitch, a Supermutant employed as a bouncer/guard. He's incredibly simplistic and acquired his name because everyone kept saying he was one, so he assumed it was his name.

* ''GuildWars2'' has an entire race of these with the Ettin, bulky two-headed ogres with apparently half a brain in each head. Most are agressive monsters who know no other combat tactic than bludgeoning things to death and stomping the ground really hard, a few of them are peaceful NPCs who cannot understand any word longer than three syllables.

* Crag Hack of ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' (New World Computing verse only, the Ashan incarnation was quite a clever man in his appearances) may be a barbarian, but as his fellow barbarian Yog notes, most barbarians aren't ''quite'' so dumb as Crag Hack -- this is a man who, despite ''decades'' of experience as a mercenary across (''at least'') two continents, not all of it in combat, ''still'' hasn't picked up that 'Mister' is a title, not a name.

* The Imperial assassin droids in ''VideoGame/StarWarsDroidworks'' play this to an extent. Lacking droid brains, they don't have much tactical advantage, and sport weapons so short-ranged that [[LongRangeShortRangeWeapon they have to be in contact with the target]]. But that doesn't stop them from spouting all sorts of nightmarish [[IShallTauntYou taunts]] at you, [[spoiler: and one of them shows enough skill to have sabotaged a nuclear reactor on its own.]]

* SelfDemonstrating/{{Bowser}} of ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' is frequently portrayed this way, especially in the ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' and ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigi'' games. In particular, ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiBowsersInsideStory'' gives him a BrainsEvilBrawnGood dynamic with Fawful, where the latter sets up a GambitRoulette and utilizes various gadgets and robots while Bowser simply punches his way through the Mushroom Kingdom to get his castle back. Averted in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'', where Bowser displays a surprising amount of competence from the get-go. Additionally, this is generally averted in the main series.