Big Badass Rig - Television Tropes & Idioms

In the future, we will put guns on our trucks

When Testosterone Poisoning hits the road.

A Sister Trope to Cool Car, this is the kind where even four wheels isn't enough, you need the diesel fumes and huge smoking pipes and... well, you have the big rig truck that tends to be a mainstay in action movies and the like. Ostensibly a trope unique to the West, but it's caught on in any other region where the terrain is more accomodating to the regular use of big rigs, but mostly for Rule Of Cool.

Examples:

Anime

Daimos in his Tranzer form.
The Mammoth Car from Speed Racer, essentially a train on wheels.

Comic Books

The U.S. 1 rig from the shortlived Marvel Comics title U.S. 1.

Film

The truck from Duel.
Maximum Overdrive. Weren't these from before Stephen King's car accident, though?
The big rig from Land of the Dead is also a Weaponised Vehicle.
Mack from Cars is a rare benign version. The only thing fearful about him is when he nods off to sleep while in motion.
The Dreadnought from Death Race The third movie has the hilariously huge trucks driven by Joker and Nero, which, respectively, have a tank turret and an anti-air cannon for weapons.
The Joker's semitruck from The Dark Knight.
The tanker truck Max and the tribesmen use in the climatic chase scene in The Road Warrior.
Jack Burton's truck in Big Trouble in Little China.
The finale for the first Terminator movie has the Terminator chasing down the protagonists (on foot) in an 18 wheeler. the second movie has the T-1000 chasing John Connor off the road and into a canal, and only a direct collision against solid concrete stops it.
Optimus Prime in the Transformers movies has a Peterbilt 379 vehicle mode. Unlike most of his animated appearances, his vehicle mode is a conventional truck (with the engine ahead of the driver).
Billy from Beverly Hills Cop II steals a truck in pursuit of a suspect.

Live-Action TV

Power Rangers used this in some of the Disney-owned seasons. Ninja Storm made the most use of their Mobile Command Center, while Dino Thunder brought out a suspiciously identical-looking rig for their last-episodes assault on the villain's base. SPD went with an entirely original design for the SWAT Command Truck.
- Rig-styled mecha would show up about half the time in vehicle-teamed seasons, even in the Super Sentai precursors:
  - Kousoku Sentai Turboranger had a tractor cab for their Black Ranger
  - Hikari Sentai Maskman and Choushinsei Flashman had tractor trailer rigs forming standalone mecha on their own
  - Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger had green and yellow tractor trailers respectively
  - And some seasons, like Kagaku Sentai Dynaman, Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman and GoGo Sentai Boukenger, would have their vehicles combine into a tractor trailer form, a low-power high-speed alternative to their megazord configuration when getting there is the priority.
  - The Artillatron from Power Rangers Turbo, which carried the Rescuezords.
B.J. and the Bear. B.J. (Billie Joe) McKay drove a big rig truck. His sidekick was a chimpanzee named "Bear".
A late '80s action series called The Highwayman involved frontier lawmen traveling the roads in big black rigs. The lead character's cab even turned into a helicopter.
The original Knight Rider had one for a mobile base-cum-garage. Also, in a couple of episodes, KITT's Evil Counterpart Goliath.
The Supernatural episode "Route 666" has a possessed truck.

Video Games

The premise behind the game Big Rigs Over The Road Racing.
The Vehicular Combat trucks from Gear Grinder.
Convoy from Vigilante 8 drives a large yellow Mack truck. The sequel gives him the ability to attach a trailer to the back of it.
Darkside in it's many iterations from Twisted Metal.
- The reboot gave us Juggernaut, the Dreadnaught Expy.
PlanetSide and the sequel have the Sunderer◊ APC, more popularly known as the bang bus. The original Sunderer is absolutely huge, being almost two stories tall. A patch later gave it a cattle-catcher to the front. The sequel's version looks more like a giant APC than the original.
The lesser known PC Vehicular Combat/Role-Playing Game Hard Truck Apocalypse (known as Ex Machina in Russia) and it's expansion. You start off with a rather plain truck with a machine gun but as you go along you can buy new trucks and upgrades. Heavily modified trucks tend to end up as pint-sized land battleships. Like this one

Western Animation

Rhino, Outlaw, Goliath and Bulldog from MASK.
Optimus Prime. Tractor trailers would become a mainstay after that, and Optimus would appear as other kinds of vehicles (and animals!), but there's a very good reason he's most associated with a truck.
King of the Hill - Hank is going to transport a single piece of furniture long distance for his mother, and rents a full-size semi rig for the job. As he justifies his choice to his awestruck friends, Bill sighs "You don't have to explain to us, Hank!"

Real Life