Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon

"Logan Grimnar, strong wolf of the pack, his Axe hungers for red flesh, his guns thirst for battle, he laughs amidst the war-din."

"Kronis likes to blow stuff up. He builds things to destroy other things."

— Teela, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021)

A character's weapon can tell you a lot about their approach to life. Large, heavy, force-based weapons are typically depicted as the Mighty Glaciers of the weapons world, slow and difficult to handle and poorly suited to any complex technique, but capable of dealing immense damage when they land a hit. Their wielders follow suit in personality — fictional mace-wielders, hammer-hefters, and axemen are usually direct and brutish sorts, provided with the tremendous strength needed to wield such weapons effectively but lacking the skill, patience, or interest necessary for making use of anything that requires finer technique. Alternatively, they may be capable of learning more technical weapons, but just don't see a good reason to do so when a good solid blow from a heavier tool can still send any foe flying out of their boots.

These weapons can take a number of visual forms, such as maces, mauls, battleaxes, warhammers, or morningstars and their kin. Even huge two-handed swords turn up from time to time. Less commonly, in modern or futuristic settings, the most violent character of the cast (villain or hero) will carry firearms that are massive and brutal in comparison to what the other characters are carrying, such as huge pistols, powerful shotguns, and the occasional Grenade Launcher; a common element here involves the heavy gunman in question starting off from range with a spray of indiscriminate gunfire before using their weapon as a heavy bludgeon once the enemy closes in. Either way, the core concept is the same among them all: this is a weapon that needs a prodigiously strong wielder to even lift off of the ground, but which in the hands of a sufficiently mighty brute can crack walls and shatter shields with ease.

Among the more common wielders of these implements of bone-breaking you will find The Big Guy, The Brute, the Barbarian Tribe (and their Barbarian Hero), the Feral Villain, The Berserker, and the Smash Mook. In fantasy settings, different sorts of brutish weapons will be found in the hands of local orcs, ogres, trolls, and giants.

Subtrope of Weapon-Based Characterization. Supertrope to Boulder Bludgeon, which describes how brutal and primitive rock-based combat is and how it reflects on the character doing it, and Primitive Clubs, which describes the association of crude, simple clubs and mauls with cavemen and other primitive sorts.

In the case of the more evil brutish sorts, this can overlap with Good Weapon, Evil Weapon and Savage Spiked Weapons. Has overlap with Heavy Equipment Class. See also Clothing Reflects Personality and Telephone Polearm.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Gundam:
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: The Zaku suits use heavy axes in comparison to the beam sabers used by the Gundam. This helps illustrate both the Gundam's greater technology and more heroic status. Subsequent series make a point of giving the mook suits kinetic melee weapons to make the energy weapons of the resident Gundams look more elegant.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny: Shinn's preferred weapon in both the Impulse and Destiny is their massive two handed swords rather than the multitude of options both have. Considering previous main character Kira preferred the flight configuration on the Strike, it conveys how Shinn prefers violence over diplomacy.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Freedom: Newcomer Agnes uses a massive beam axe as her primary weapon. Considering how the heroes are trying to find non-lethal measures to subdue their opponents, this makes her the odd one out of the group. Sure enough, it doesn't take long for her to put her lot in with the villains.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans:
    • Reflecting the Darker and Edgier Deconstruction angle of the series, the main Gundam of the series, the Gundam Barbatos, is armed with a gigantic club. Compared to the more elegant beam sabers of previous series, the Barbatos is a brutal, savage creature more akin to a wild animal than a soldier on the battlefield. In-universe, the Barbatos is finally destroyed when its enemies stop trying to treat it like a human and more like a frenzied beast to be put down.
    • His teammate Akihiro and his Mid-Season Upgrade the Gundam Gusion Rebake are the massive bruiser of the Tekkadan, an impressive feat considering Barbatos is the poster child. Discarding all subtlety his main weapon is an MS-sized pair of scissors that can crush lesser suits like tin cans.
• The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (2004): Blue, the most violent and hot-blooded of the four Links, wields a hammer.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering: Creatures with the Barbarian creature type, such as Balduvian Warlord, Barbarian Outcast, Plundering Barbarian and Tiger-Tribe Hunter, are usually depicted wielding large, broad-headed battleaxes.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • Green Lantern: The Butcher, the embodiment of the Red Light of Rage, uses an axe when he's inhabiting the body of a lifeform capable of wielding it properly.
  • The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): Antiope, the most muscular and violent of the Amazons, uses a mace.
• Marvel Universe: The Wrecking Crew is a villain team of four super-strong individuals. One member is Dr. Elliot Franklin, a.k.a. Thunderball, who wields a large ball and chain. Interestingly, he's also a Genius Bruiser.

Fan Works

• Ice and Fire (Minecraft): Trolls, huge and vicious monsters found in caves, fight by swinging around huge axes, hammers, tree trunks or stone columns.
• Stormwolf Adventures: The Fat Bastard Hammer of Abyss, one of the first serious threats to the heroes, is a brute who focuses on strength, leads raids on cities and wields a giant hammer.
• Under the Northern Lights: The giant reindeer berserk Heikko the Humongous fights with a huge double-headed axe, which he puts to terrifying effects when in the grip of battle rage.

Films — Animation

• In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Jack has the mythical sword Excalibur as one of his weapons. Because he's a monstrous bruiser unworthy of drawing it from the pedestal, he just swings the set like a club.

Film — Live-Action

• Hobo with a Shotgun: Rip, one half of the armored quasi-immortal thugs called the Plague, wields a brutal-looking machete with a flat tip, making it look more like an oversized meat cleaver.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Sauron himself is seen fighting in the Battle of the Last Alliance in the opening of the movie, and he solidly establishes himself as much stronger than any of his Orc soldiers by sending entire waves of Elves and Men flying with each sweeping blow of his mace. It shows that, before he lost his physical body and became an inactive villain, Sauron was just as good at brutally crushing opposing armies as he was at manipulating them.
  • In The Hobbit, Sauron's main enforcer, Azog the Defiler, who has become much stronger than his book self, is a pale-skinned Orc who we first see smashing his way through tons of Dwarvish soldiers at the gates of Moria with a massive bone-bladed mace, roaring murderously all the way. Azog's fighting style is very brutal and physical, though, seeing as he's also a Genius Bruiser, he's not above using other weapons to win a fight. Azog's own enforcer, his son Bolg, also carries a mace, apparently forged from a spinal column. The shaft end of the mace is sharp like a spear, which means he can kill you with both ends of it, as Kili finds out.
• Pursuit have the two main characters, protagonist Lin-Chung who's a retired soldier, and his brutish, overweight Boisterous Bruiser bestie Flower Monk Lu. They both use long weapons in combat, but while Lin-Chung uses a fine spear, Lu on the other hand wields a huge Shaolin Monk Spade that can send mooks flying with a single slap.
• Water Margin, much like the novel it's adapted from, have a massive cast of heroic warriors, each of them wielding a different weapon. Li Kuei the "Black Whilwind", who's The Big Guy, in particular Dual Wield two heavy battleaxes and is a Blood Knight whose thirst for blood is proportional to his size, at one point gleefully gloating as he lops off a mook's cranium.
• The War Lord (1965): The barbarian Frisian raiders who attack the English coast carry battleaxes.

Folklore

• In the European cycle of tales known as Jean de L'Ours ("John of the Bear"), the titular hero is (usually) the son of a human woman and a bear (which explains his great strength). In many of his tales, either he fashions or commissions from a blacksmith a heavy and large cane made of iron.

Franchises

• Transformers:
  • The Dinobots are traditionally armed with melee weapons. The G1 Dinobots are armed with broadswords more suitable for clubbing and hacking than the more elegant blades like the ones used by Springer or Bludgeon. The live-action versions introduced in Transformers: Age of Extinction are equipped with even more brutish weapons, like Grimlock's spiked mace or Slog's clubs. When given ranged weapons, like in G1, they tend to be large, powerful guns that clearly focus on maximizing damage over range or precision.
  • While G1 Megatron famously wields an energon-based Epic Flail, already hardly a graceful instrument, his Aligned counterpart in Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is armed with a brutal-looking two-handed spiked mace. In the latter half of Transformers: Prime, Aligned Megatron forges the Dark Star Saber, a massive two-handed sword hammered out of a shard of dark energon, with a suitably crude, jagged appearance to contrast to the more refined Star Saber.
  • His more notable signature weapon, however, is his Fusion Cannon, effectively an entire artillery piece mounted on his right arm, which unlike most Cybertronian weapons in later series, does not transform away. In the IDW comic universe in particular, Fusion cannons are treated as effectively symbols of Megatron and the Decepticon cause as a whole, with the particularly zealous Tarn even totting two of them on his forearm along with his Decept-icon mask to symbolize his devotion to the cause, something even Megatron considers excessive.
    Megatron: Two fusion cannons. Look at yourself.
  • While hardly a brute, Optimus Prime is, in fact, a very large bot, literally built like a truck, who's commonly more known for his strength and experience than speed or finesse, and fittingly, many versions of his character are equipped with large, energon-bladed axes especially his own War for Cybertron incarnation, whose massive two-handed great axe is used to chop Decepticons in two and smash a way through obstructing walls.

Literature

• Conan the Barbarian: Conan generally uses swords as his weapon of choice, he has used the battleaxe from time to time in Howard's stories, such as in the first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword", which has King Conan taking one to the assassins trying to kill him in his bedchamber after breaking his sword.
• Discworld: The City Watch employs Troll policemen, mainly to act as mobile riot shields that can punch back. Sergeant Detritus used to have a habit of breaking weapons designed for mere humans as he was too strong for them and lacked a delicate touch. The problem of finding him a suitable side-arm was solved when a massive ballista, used as siege artillery and capable of firing bolts of four feet in length, was taken off its wheeled carriage and repurposed as a Troll's personal crossbow. In general, troll society views the club with a nail in it as a cultural weapon.
• The Faraway Paladin: Will's adoptive father Blood is the animated skeleton of a legendary warrior known in life as the War Ogre, known for being a freakishly strong Blood Knight. His weapon of choice is an enormous two-handed sword which he is quite expert with: when he has a sparring match with Will as a graduation test of sorts late in volume 1, he's shown using maneuvers such as half-swording (one hand on the hilt, one hand on the blade) to counter Will's attempts to get inside his guard.
• In The Hammer (2022), Tiny is a self-admitted musclehead who takes the heft and sturdiness of a warhammer over any "flimsy" sword. While he's quick on his feet when it comes to thinking up Indy Ploys, he's brutal in combat and crushes his enemies without remorse. One of his favorite maneuvers is to use his superior strength to grab one of his enemies and use them as a club against their own teammates. When offered a choice between two warhammers, he instantly goes for the one designed to weigh 100 kg.
• Crislie and Jeidhe from Heralds Of Rhimn — both characterized by the exact same ax. Knight Jeidhe starts out wielding Ironheart in his first appearance in Shadow Herald, where he shows himself to be a brutal fighter ruthlessly dedicated to his cause. Then Crislie takes the axe and renames it to Ember. She notices later on that he’s still trying to fight like an ax wielder even when he’s been handed a sword as a replacement; in turn, the ax shifts her own fighting style from wild-swinging fisticuffs to something more ruthless and deadly.
• How to Train Your Dragon: The Ax-Crazy warrior Norbert the Nutjob has a huge double-headed axe, with one head black and one head gold, and sharpens it lovingly all the time.
• Kull: The barbarian warrior Kull uses a battle axe as his main weapon. After he becomes king, his advisors make several attempts to civilize him, including training him in swordsmanship. He never quite takes to it and goes back to his axe, showing he's truly a barbarian at heart.
• Mistborn: Huge, crude BFSes are the signature weapon of the Koloss — giant, violent brutes first created as Living Weapons. In the original trilogy, the swords serve as population control; any Koloss without a sword will fight to the death to obtain one.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • King Robert Baratheon's signature weapon is a giant two-handed warhammer, befitting his legendary strength and fiery temper. Most other characters can barely even lift the monstrous weapon, but Robert swung it around with ease; during the Battle of the Trident, he famously used it to crush Rhaegar Targaryen's chest through his plate armor.
  • The Barbarian Tribes of the Mountains of the Moon favor axes, particularly the giant chieftain Shagga, who wields one in each hand.
  • Victarion Greyjoy, the leader of the pseudo-Viking fleets of the Iron Isles and often noted for his intimidating size, great strength, and limited intelligence, favors a huge battle axe.
  • Tales of Dunk and Egg: Dunk, a knight nearly seven feet in height, usually carries a sword in the knightly fashion, but believes that he's virtually peerless with an axe or mace.

Live-Action TV

• Firefly: Jayne is the big, muscular mercenary, the largest character, and something of a brute as well. His signature gun Vera is a large, powerful Callahan Full-bore Autolock, based on the Saiga 12 Kalishnakov semi-automatic shotgun. It's quite a bit stronger than the shotguns and pistols the other characters regularly use.
• Kaamelott: It's something of a Running Gag that Léodagan the Bloodthirsty (Arthur's father-in-law, Hanging Judge, and Blood Knight) keeps trying to outfit the kingdom with the latest in huge siege weapons, no matter how costly or impractical. When it's pointed out that having two dozen catapults is only useful if Kaamelott is actually besieging someone (as opposed to being used defensively), he says maybe it's time they get around to doing that.
• Kamen Rider Geats gives us Azuma Michinaga/Kamen Rider Buffa. No matter what weapon he has, he will use it like a club- Including the Magnum Shooter 40X. He is the primary user of the Zombie Raise Buckle, which grants him a huge chainsword.
• The Mandalorian: Paz Vizsla is the biggest member of the Mandalorians. Accordingly he uses a massive repeater blaster that needs two hands to be effectively used.

Mythology & Religion

• Classical Mythology: Herakles, the mightiest of the Greek heroes, is usually depicted wielding a heavy club. While he used several weapons (his arrows are also famous and a Plot Coupon in one poem of The Trojan Cycle), the club is easily the best-known; it and the skin of the Nemean lion which he killed with it are considered his most recognizable iconographic attributes.

Pro Wrestling

• Impact Wrestling: The monstrous Abyss spent a long time carrying a spiked two-by-four that he nicknamed "Janice".
• WWE: Fit Finlay, a barrel-chested mug who loves to fight, often carried an ugly, short-handled shillelagh to the ring, and usually knocked out his opponents with it when the ref's back was turned.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The traditional barbarian stereotype has them waving axes about as large as themselves. In fifth edition in particular, the greataxe's damage (1d12 where most two-handed weapons do 2d6) synergizes with the barbarian's brutal critical ability adding a single extra damage die of the sort the weapon does.
• In Nomine: Michael, Archangel of War, the strongest single living being under God, favors a battleaxe in combat. In fact, even though the game has rules for adding miraculous powers to angels' weapons and entities of Archangelic power levels are kept deliberately vague, Michael's axe is explicitly statted in a player supplement: its only power is to teleport in on command. He doesn't need any others.
• LEGO Games: In Heroica, Barbarian is a Barbarian Hero who is missing a tooth and has an unsightly stubble. His weapon is, naturally, a double-bladed axe.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Chainaxes were popular close combat weapons used by assault troops during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. Some particularly archaic and/or barbaric assault troops still use them during the main 41st Millennium era: furthermore, they are popular with Khorne worshippers, as the axe is considered as a sacred weapon to the god of blood and slaughter. In the Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitor's Hand, Cain faces off against a World Eaters Chaos Space Marine who wields a chainaxe against Cain's chainsword.
  • Logan Grimnar, the Wolf Lord (chapter master, though in Fenrisian the correct title is Jarl) of the Viking-inspired Space Wolves chapter who frequently decorate their Powered Armor with battle trophies and animal pelts, favors as his primary weapon a gigantic double-bladed battleaxe called the Axe Morkai that he took as a trophy from a World Eaters champion he slew during the First War for Armageddon.
  • Ogryns (Heavyworlder human-derivatives) are big, tough, strong enough to wrestle an Ork, and about as smart as a rock, and their weapons are similarly designed. Each and every piece of Ogryn equipment, from their mauls to their slab shields, is specifically built to be "Ogryn-proof", which is to say that they're built as tough as the Adeptus Mechanicus can manage in order to hold up in the face of being used by an Ogryn to slaughter the Emperor's enemies. This practice extends even to their guns, which are built and reinforced to the point that they can be used as melee weapons as well; it's not uncommon for the simple-minded and enthusiastic Ogryns to use their huge ripper guns as clubs.
• Warhammer Fantasy:
  • The Warriors of Chaos generally use heavy metal axes, hammers, chain flails, and large two-handed swords. They are no-nonsense warriors and brutal vikings, so ferocious close combat is what they're all about.
  • Beastmen tend to use the same kinds of hefty axes, cleavers, and bludgeons as the Chaos Warriors do.
  • Orcs, a culture of ferocious and brutal warriors, are usually depicted wielding an assortment of axes, spiked maces, and cleaver-like blades called choppas.
  • The Ogres' weaponry tends to focus heavily on brutal melee bludgeons, such as clubs, hatchet-like swords, maces, and monstrous iron knuckles. Even their ranged weaponry is like this — their primary ranged troops wield giant repurposed cannons known more for their raw damage than their range and precision, and which can also be used as huge bludgeons if the enemy reaches melee range.

Video Games

• Age of Empires II: Berserkers, the Viking Unique Unit, are armed with Dane axes and round shields.
• Atelier Series: Throughout the series, the big, physically-imposing party members also tend to wield large, heavy weapons such as axes and huge swords, though given the series' lighthearted tone, this tends to emphasize their strength, rather than outright brutality:
  • Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland: Melvia has monstrous Super-Strength, so she uses a gigantic axe as her weapon of choice.
  • Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey:
    • Drossel is the most direct, melee-focused party member, and axes are her primary weapon type.
    • Angriff, a rough, muscular, battle-hardened mercenary, uses Zweihanders as his primary weapon.
  • Lent, introduced in Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout, is The Big Guy of the group and can sometimes be a bit of a Dumb Muscle. His weapon is a gigantic BFS.
• Baldur's Gate III: The hard hitting companions Lae'zel and Karlach use powerful heavy axes and claymores, which helps because of their great critical chance and high power. Played with Shadowheart, she uses heavy maces as she is a cleric of her religion despite being otherwise a much nicer person than most of the companions. After her personal quest she gets a spear, more refined than her maces.
• Blade Master:
  • Arnold the barbarian's preferred weapon is a heavy poleax which can swat entire groups of lesser enemies aside with ease. There's also a special attack for Arnold to perform a downward skewer attack pinning mooks to the floor with the ax which deals massive damage.
  • The giant living armors all use dual axes as weapons.
• Dark Souls:
  • The demons of Chaos all use massive, brutal weapons that convey their inhuman strength. Get your hands on one and the strength requirements to use one are massive, often requiring one to invest their entire build around wielding one properly.
  • The cannibalistic executioner Smough, who is considered a real bastard by the actual knights, used a massive, uneven hammer covered in pointed ends. The fact that he is the end boss of Anor Londo alongside Dragonslayer Ornstein says a lot about the city that paved its glory around routing the dragons must eat its own to survive.
• Dark Souls II: Velstadt the Royal Aegis wields a massive bell-hammer/mace as he defends Vendrick's tomb. Considering that many hollow out without purpose, this likely signifies his unending loyalty that he is still relatively himself.
• Deltarune: Susie wields a giant battle axe in combat, tying in with her initial characterization as a crude, thuggish bully who threatens to maul people.
• Diablo:
  • Diablo II: Choosing the Barbarian from the character select screen will prompt him to let out a yell and start grinding an axe while you choose his name, and his starting inventory also includes an axe. Diablo II also introduces one-handed axes that the Barbarian can use with a shield or in each hand, while the first game only had two-handed axes. Axes have more consistent damage output, with higher minimum but lower maximum damage than swords and maces.
  • Diablo III: Enforced in the case of Mighty weapons, which are usually gigantic broadswords, axes, and maces that can deal massive amounts of damage but have very slow attack speeds. Due to their size, the Barbarian, who for either sex is built like a tank, is the only character that can wield them.
• Dota 2:
  • Mogul Khan, the Axe, is a brutal strength hero. He's an Oglodi (the Dota 2 equivalent of orcs) warrior whose Blood Knight tendencies were so intense that he was promoted to the rank of Red Mist General—not only due to his savagery on the battlefield, but also because he also killed his superiors so he could take their place. Fitting for such a vicious and barbaric combatant, and as evidenced by his title, he wields a large axe, which he uses in a Spin Attack or to inflict a One-Hit Kill execution on weakened enemies.
  • Bradwarden, the Centaur Warrunner, belongs to a race defined by their love of fighting. He wields a huge axe, with one of his moves having him swing it so hard that he hurts himself in the process.
  • The Troll Warlord's weapons of choice are two axes, which he can throw or use in melee. His default weapons are made of stone and are rather crude-looking, emphasizing his savage nature.
• Dusty Revenge and it's prequel, Dusty Raging Fist have the hippo and cow enemy classes, Giant Mooks defined by their size and using their strength to pummel Dusty to a pulp. Fittingly they're armed with heavy weapons like hammers and maces. The prequel also have fierce rams who uses huge axes as weapon.
• Elden Ring:
  • Godfrey the First Elden Lord wields a massive double-headed axe that had one head broken off during a battle. As his ideology states that the strongest rule, it is pretty telling that he uses this massive war-torn weapon. And that's just in Phase 1. In Phase 2, he discards his axe and most of his armour to fight you with only his bare hands. It doesn't get much more brutish than that.
  • General Radahn the Starscourge idolizes Godfrey and styles himself after him. In battle he wields a pair of massive curved blades, chipped and pitted from battle, and a Greatbow sized for his gargantuan frame. During the battle he even coats the swords in earth to make them even larger and more jagged.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Barbaric and physically powerful factions and beings, such as orcs, minotaurs, and the Nord barbarians, are traditionally depicted as wielding large, ornate axes into battle.
  • Giants are typically seen wielding crude clubs made of wood and stone.
• Fallout 4 has Grognak's Axe, which is a replica of the one used by the comic book character Grognak the Barbarian.
• Final Fantasy VII:
  • Protagonist Cloud Strife uses a massive Buster Sword as his signature weapon. As most prior main characters used elegant straight swords and shields it gives the impression that he is much more confrontational than prior characters but still very heroic.
  • Barret uses a minigun grafted to his severed arm, a very clear message that he uses violence instead of letting old wounds heal.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Warriors practice an art in which they tap into their "Inner Beast" to access incredible Super-Strength and stamina at the risk of losing control and attacking friend and foe alike. They wield war axes in combat, many of which have heads larger than their wielders' torsos.
  • Dark knights are vigilantes who murder corrupt and powerful elites that evade justice for their crimes. In contrast to the Knightly Sword and Shield and spear wielded by the Temple Knights, dark knights all wield a BFS through which they channel their inner darkness and vengeful emotions.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Axes, one of the three main weapon groups, emphasize high power but low accuracy and are often wielded by large and brutish men. Women never use axes in early games, but more modern games give them axes to signify their dominance and strength.
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: Big Bad Ashnard, who instigates a war with the entire continent out of his belief in the strongest should rule so that all will carve out their own fate, wields a massive, jagged blade. While protagonist Ike wields a decently sized sword himself, Ashnard's is still vastly larger to show how he wants only bloodshed to be the guiding force in the world.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening: Walhart, the Arc Villain of the Valm chapters, is a brutal conqueror who is the only person capable of wielding the axe "Wolf Berg", his signature weapon. While he can also use swords and lances as part of his Conqueror class with equal ratings, axes are what he's most closely associated with.
• For Honor:
  • Axe-wielding classes are common among the Vikings, namely the Raider, who uses a long-handled Dane Axe as their primary weapon, and the Berserker, who dual-wields one-handed axes.
  • Shugoki are the largest Chosen class, are based on oni, and wield kanabo clubs.
• God of War:
  • God of War II: On his quest to find the Chamber of the Sisters of Fate (the Greek Moirai), Kratos meets a resurrected (and giant-sized) Barbarian King, who wields a large and heavy hammer.
  • God of War (2018) has Kratos swap out the Blades of Chaos for the Leviathan Axe, but ironically, he's actually less pissed off and violent than in previous installments. He'll still bring on the hurt, but he's not as quick to do so.
• Golden Force: The two smaller characters, Gutz and Spina, both use swords. Meanwhile, the muscular Old Master Elder wields a Power Fist while the team's Token Non-Human, a gigantic Draconic Humanoid named Drago, carries heavy axes.
• Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance has large enemies using large weapons:
  • The second enemy introduced in the game, the Hoplomachus gladiators, are much taller and stronger than the default Secutor-class gladiators. Fittingly they all swing heavy axes as weapons.
  • Cyclops enemies are among the most muscular mooks, and uses heavy maces to bash you to a pulp.
• Guilty Gear: Protagonist Sol Badguy is an interesting example. He is extremely rude and vulgar, and fights by wildly swinging a blunt weapon with no grace whatsoever. However, he's also a genius scientist and a world class bounty hunter, he just chooses to fight this way. His alternate, "Order Sol" self might qualify even more for this trope, as his weapon is basically a slab of concrete that he swings around like a sword.
• Halo: The Jiralhanae (appropriately known as 'Brutes'), towering apelike Space Orcs known for their brutality and foul tempers, traditionally wield two-handed Gravity Hammers capable of killing foes in one hit and wrecking armored vehicles. In addition, they also prefer two projectile-based weapons rather than the Covenant's usual plasma: the Brute Shot, a grenade launcher with a menacing metal blade for melee attacks (that they put a bayonet on a grenade launcher says all you need to know about their combat mentality), the Brute Spiker, a single-handed pistol that fires heated metal projectiles and also has small plates for enhancing melee attacks, and the Mauler, a drum fed shotgun pistol, also with metal blades for melee attacks. Additionally, where the rest of the Covenant have hovering and/or elegant vehicles such as the Ghost or Scarab, Brutes have a wheel-based motorbike called the Chopper, which is used to run its enemies over and butcher them. Their other vehicle is a War Sled known as the Prowler, which while armed with plasma cannon, is better served to ram enemy lines and then offload troops. Tellingly, the Reporting Names for most Covenant vehicles are after mythological creatures (Ghost, Banshee, Wraith, etc.), Brute vehicles have violent or aggressive names like Chopper and Prowler.
• Hero of Sparta has gigantic minotaur enemies who prefers using axes or maces. Meanwhile, Hades the powerful Tin Tyrant who towers over your hero uses an axe almost as large as himself.
• Hunter Hunted: Garath Den ("the Beast") is a muscular, vicious minotaur-like alien. His signature weapon is a heavy spiked club that sends blood flying when he bashes opponents with it.
• Indivisible: Ajna uses her mother's axe as her primary weapon, though she's good with her bare hands and uses the other weapons she obtains as well. Although her heart's in the right place, Ajna has a bad habit of smashing through problems without considering the full consequences, and the heavy, destructive axe that serves as her main weapon reflects this.
• Jitsu Squad: Aros Helgason is the team's musclebound Viking and the strongest of the four playable characters, so naturally he wields a BFS.
• Jotun: A large, two-handed axe is the only weapon of Thora, a Viking trapped in Norse purgatory. The axe proves more than sufficient to deal with the magic, elemental giants she needs to defeat in order to escape.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising: Magnus is a burly mercenary who wields a massive sword that is only slightly smaller than his own body. His aggressive fighting style reflects his personality, as he rudely insults Pit and Palutena even as the two help him fight against the Underworld Army.
• Kingdom Hearts: Lexaeus is the epitome of strong and silent, both his bulk and his earth magic being used in straightforward assault. The massive "Axesword" that he carries complements this: you know exactly what you're up against, and that won't make it any easier for you.
• Kingdom of Loathing: Players undertaking the challenge path where they take the role of the mighty barbarian warrior Boris are restricted to using Boris's trusty axe, Trusty.
• Kirby: King Dedede is the large, haughty and boorish self proclaimed king of Dreamland, and he fights with a gigantic wooden hammer bearing his logo. Taken to its logical extreme in the Super Smash Bros. series, where many of his attack animations have him wildly swinging the thing without much finesse.
• The Last of Us Part II: Seraphite Brutes are large, hulking men and women who wield sledgehammers and fire axes.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, Iron Knuckles are a type of enemy that wear heavy armor and wield large double-headed axes. They also move slowly and are quite resistant to Link's physical attacks, taking many hits before they are defeated.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: When battled in the Bulblin Compound and at Hyrule Castle, the hulking leader of the barbaric, orc-like Bulblins fights Link using a huge two-handed axe swung in broad, powerful blows.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: All of Hyrule's races have weapon types they are particularly associated with, such as bows for the flying Rito or one-handed swords for the stealthy Sheikah. The Gorons, the towering rock people of Death Mountain and the largest and strongest of Hyrule's civilized peoples, favor the use of giant two-handed (for Hylians; Gorons wield them one-handed) greatsword-like weapons with blunt edges, designed to make use of their owners' prodigious strength. In flashbacks, the Goron Champion Daruk shows Goron fighting techniques with his personal weapon, the Boulder Breaker, swinging it in great sweeping arcs and slamming enemies off their feet.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Boss Bokoblins, the colossal leaders of Bokoblin tribes, almost always wield two-handed heavy weapons such as Sturdy/Gnarled Thick Sticks and Claymore hammers, showing their preference for brute strength when on their own. They typically only use other weapon types when disarmed and scrambling to grab the first thing they see.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor: The Hammer of Sauron is The Brute of Sauron's three Black Numenorean lieutenants who serve as part of the Big Bad Ensemble, and he's the most physical fighter of the bunch, armed with a massive mace, which, according to his background lore, belonged to Sauron himself, until Sauron was defeated in the battle of the Last Alliance, and the Hammer (back then, a humble Gondorian stretcher-bearer) picked it up, whereupon he was corrupted by his bloodlust and became a servant of Sauron. The Hammer primarily uses his mace to dish out pain upon his enemies — such as breaking the bones of Talion's left hand just to be a Sadist before sacrificing him and the rest of his family, or sending Ratbag flying just to punish him for letting Talion and a band of Gondorian rebels blow up the Gorthaur and kill all the other Orc Warchiefs.
• Mortal Kombat: Shao Kahn, Emperor of Outworld, uses his infamous two-handed "Wrath Hammer" as his weapon of choice, which is indicative of his strength and power and the iron-fisted brutality with which he both fights and rules his realm.
• Onimusha: Warlords: The huge, minotaur-like Genma known as Oowassha are armed with humongous single-bladed axes, which are slow as molasses but can hit like trucks. A variation carries double-bit axes they can throw away as a special attack, after which they rely on massive cleavers to finish the job.
• Pokémon Scarlet and Violet introduces the Tinkatink line of Pokemon who wield hammers of increasing sizes (Tinkatink's weapon is effectively a baby rattle while Tinkaton's hammer is stated to be 200 lbs) and are characterized by a need to improve it via hunting down Steel-types coupled with a shockingly vicious temperament. Tinkaton in particular is noted to be the reason why Corviknights cannot operate flying taxis in Paldea due to them actively knocking them out of the air via launching boulders with their mallets and it's Signature Move is "Gigaton Hammer", a 160 power move that's limited by the fact that it cannot be used twice in a row as well as the line's middling Attack stat.
• Resident Evil Village: The chieftain of the titular village, Urias, wields a massive hammer in battle. His brother Urias Strajer prefers to fight using a gigantic mace instead. Both were transformed into Lycans and became feral beast men, and fight by pursuing their target while furiously swinging their weapons.
• Saints Row (2022): The Panteros, a Mexican gang, are stereotypically hyper-masculine (including the women) and are prone to fighting with sledgehammers in addition to shotguns. If one of them swings at the Boss, you'd better dodge it.
• Samurai Shodown:
  • Wan-fu doesn't qualify for this trope in his debut appearance, as he fights with a scimitar. But when he swaps it out for a gigantic broken off stone pillar, he's a textbook example. He even has a special move that has him slamming his own head against it, causing damage to himself but boosting his own rage meter.
  • Darli Dagger, introduced in the 2019 game, is an incredibly muscular sailor woman with a rough but friendly demeanor and a love for alcohol. Her weapon of choice is a massive serrated cleaver, not unlike something you'd see in the Monster Hunter series. She also swaps out the handle to turn it into a giant steel hammer and a drill, giving her a whole arsenal of brutish weapons.
• Star Fox Adventures: The warmongering and antagonistic SharpClaw Tribe arm themselves with maces and double-headed axes.
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor: Rayvis the massive Jedi killing hitman to Dagan wields a huge flail/Morningstar as his melee weapon and a Hand Cannon the size of two handed rifles as his long range.
• Super Catboy has as its second boss a huge, muscular Rottweiler-man who uses a Gatling gun as large as himself.
• Super Mario Bros.: Ever since New Super Mario Bros. U gave the Koopalings distinctive fighting styles and weapons outside their wands, Roy and Morton have taken the heavy hitting weapons. Morton uses a massive headed hammer, though the handle is surprisingly small, while Roy now uses a handheld bullet bill launcher.
• Team Fortress 2: The Heavy, the game's slow but hard-hitting Mighty Glacier, uses a huge underslung gun called Sasha as his primary weapon. It's not a precision tool by any stretch, being instead intended to deal tremendous amounts of damage to whatever's standing in front of him.
• Three the Hard Way: The Big Guy Anderson is a gladiator champion who uses axes or maces in combat. His personality is far from brutish, being The Stoic and intelligent, but a long-time acquaintance that the party could encounter in an optional side quest claims that he used to be a Blood Knight in the past.
• Vermintide II:
  • Crude, rusty, cracked axes are the signature weapons of Elite Mooks in the Rotblood Tribe, a vicious barbarian horde that worships a God of Evil. Savages have a pair of hand axes; Maulers and Chaos Warriors have massive great axes; and Lord Bödvarr Ribspreader has an oversized magical axe that's crafted out of a rotten human torso. (Mooks scrounge whatever weapons they can find.)
  • The two Monster-class enemies that wield weapons, Minotaurs and Bile Trolls, both have oversized axes and just enough sapience to use them very, very aggressively.
• Warcraft:
  • Orc warriors and death knights often wield two-handed axes, contrasting the Alliance's preference for swords, though a few sword-wielding orc characters exist.
  • The mogu, a race mainly composed of barbaric conquerors, tend to wield heavy swords and axes. They're more for intimidation than actual combat, so they proved impractical against the Acrofatic pandaren when the latter finally rebelled against and overthrew the mogu.
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Earthblood: The Endron Elite Mooks are hulking, muscular brutes who wield either huge serrated knives or heavy, low-slung rotary guns that they use as improvised clubs in melee.
• Wild ARMs: Berserk wields a massive flail that, in the remake, is capable of knocking your party members out the first time you fight him. He's also hot-tempered, and impatient and believes brute force is the most important factor in battle.
• Wild Blood has ogres as Giant Mook enemies who use either maces, clubs or hammers larger than your character. There's also a gigantic Cyclops boss who swings a massive hammer.

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue has the Meta, formerly Agent Maine of Project Freelancer, a large and hulking operative who is quite ready to throw down when the need arises, as opposed to the other Freelancers who operate more precisely, so to speak. He's not afraid to use other weapons or implements lying around (up to and including a full M12-LRV Warthog), but his weapon of choice is the Halo 3 Brute Shot, a grenade launcher with a massive steel blade curving out the underside and around its back. He is also not afraid to use the blade.
• RWBY: Usually the heavy weapon is the forte of the Big Guy of the team, as a representation of how weapons are a reflection of their wielder.
  • The exuberant and emotional Yang has Ember Celica, a pair of power fist shot-gauntlets that augment her hand to hand techniques and raw power fighting style. In contrast to the sniper rifle, revolver and handgun ammunition of her teammates, Yang reloads with a string of shotgun shells. After volume 3 Yang had to replace her right arm with a cybernetic arm that had similar effects and in 7 upgrades it with a bulkier appearance and mine rounds.
  • Nora has an enormous hammer/grenade launcher to drive home her Boisterous Bruiser ways. It can open up the chamber to fire all her rounds at once in a giant heart formation for even more destruction.
  • General Ironwood normally uses a pair of elegant, if simple and straightforward, revolvers called Due Process. After his Face–Heel Turn he upgrades them with a large extension that amplifies their power into a massive laser as a show of power as his Appeal to Force mindset is continually challenged. It makes his weapon large and bulky enough to be used as a makeshift club.
  • Harriett Bree is impatient and much more willing to use force when compared to her compatriots in Atlas. Her weapon Fast Knuckles is a large, blocky piece of equipment with exposed machinery. It's more noticeable because most Atlas tech is smooth and elegant.

Webcomics

• Homestuck: Hegemonic Brute/Hearts Boxcars is a towering brute notable more for his inhuman strength than for any particular cleverness, and serves as the Midnight Crew's muscle in missions requiring the application of liberal amounts of brute force. Fittingly, he uses an assortment of battleaxes, warhammers, and morningstars as weapons.

Websites

• Neopets: The group aptly known as the "Brute Squad" are made up of large, muscular types who carry large bludgeoning weapons like maces, axes, clubs, hammers, and oversized swords.

Western Animation

• DOTA: Dragon's Blood: Davion's cold-blooded superior Kaden wields a huge executioner's sword, befitting his brutal approach to dragon-slaying.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021): Kronis is an Evil Genius Sadist who creates weapons and takes perverse delight in the destruction they cause. When transformed into Trap Jaw, his brutishness is reflected in his Signature Move, "Mecha-Maw". Unlike Man-At-Arms, who can use his "Speed Build" to create anything he can imagine with nearby materials, Trap Jaw has to destroy raw materials with his Maw of Weaponry and can only create a new weapon for his mechanical right arm.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Temporal Edict", Vindor, the colossal Gelrakian gladiator, fights using a huge club studded with crystalline spikes.
• Star Wars: The Bad Batch: Wrecker is the Blood Knight of Clone Force 99 who loves to charge into battle. His preference in any fight is to either crush it with his Super-Strength or to create the biggest explosion he can.
• Steven Universe:
  • Jasper is a Blood Knight who believes in personal strength above all else. Her weapon is a spiked helmet she uses to literally face her opponents head on and overpower them.
  • Sugilite, the powerful but vicious giant fusion, combines Garnet's gauntlets into a giant meteor hammer with Amethyst's whip as the chain. Being Garnet's pride and Amethyst's wild side, Sugilite brutally destroys everything in front of her to show off her strength.
• Transformers: Animated: The barbaric Dinobots wield huge flaming weapons; a BFS, a flail, and a giant club.

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