Foe Tossing Charge - Television Tropes & Idioms

This happens a number of times on the football field in Eyeshield 21.
In the last episode of the second arc in Naruto, Zabuza (the arc's primary villain) charges through a thick mob of gangsters to get to the ring leader, Gatou. Even as they stab and injure him, he shrugs it off and slits their throats, throwing them to the wayside. He does this armed only with a small knife. Held in his teeth. In the manga he even cuts off Gatou's head.
- He'd also had his arms rendered useless not five minutes prior.
Near the end of the Soul Society Arc in Bleach, three lieutenants try to block Ichigo's path; Ichigo takes all three down in two seconds and keeps going. This doubles as a Look What I Can Do Now moment (especially given that a single lieutenant gave him trouble several episodes back - though, to be fair, said lieutenant was abnormally powerful for his rank).
- Made even more awesome by the fact he did it with his bare hands, even smashing one of the liutenant's weapons with his fist after they powered up!
One of the biggest, and most destructive Foe Tossing Charges in fiction is probably Gunbuster's Super Inazuma Kick, which they use to tear through dozens, if not hundreds, of aliens to get back to their ship.
Samurai Champloo once had Mugen being denied sex he paid for from a female Ninja posing as a prostitute. When she needs help later, she whispers something in his ear, and says she'll do it if he helps. Thus we have Mugen beating the shit out of a bunch of guard while unarmed and half-naked.
Shannon Casull in Scrapped Princess gets his Crowning Moment Of Awesome, when he enters a room full of enemies and notices his little sister Pacifica handcuffed and surrounded on the other side of it. Let's just say it takes a Physical God to stop his charge.
Nanoha during the final mission of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, who flew towards the Throne Room of the Saint's Cradle at full speed while destroying any Gadget Drone that tried to block her path, and only briefly stopping to one-shot a member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad who had the unfortunate job of defending the path to said room. Kidnapping Nanoha's adopted daughter and using her to power the Weapon Of Mass Destruction was a really bad idea.
Luffy from One Piece does this often. Most notably when he charges through 5000 people to get to CP9.
- He attempts this later when trying to save his brother Ace from execution, along with several other pirates, including all of Whitebeard's crew. However, it doesn't work so well when some of the foes he's trying to toss are Vice-Admirals and Shichibukai.
Akane (sometimes aided by Ranma) in Ranma 1/2, when forced to fight through the male student body of Furinkan High. They used to pose some measure of challenge at first, and she had to stop to fight them seriously. Nowadays, either she kicks them into the sky all at once, or just plows through them and leaves them flattened in her wake.
In Princess Mononoke, Ashitaka does this to get to San and Eboshi when San attacks Iron Town.
- It's also the basic assault method of the Boar Gods until Jigo's engineers took advantage of it. Moro herself indulged in it when attacking Eboshi's convoy in the mountain, killing more people by shoving them off the cliff than by mauling them.
Sengoku Basara does this on a large scale. Every. Single. FIGHT!! Just look at that preview pic at the top of this page for an example.
Junpei from Those Who Hunt Elves does this every time they encounter multiple enemies. Sometimes he does this to the women he's stripping. It Makes Sense In Context...

One of the most awesome parts of Spider-Man: Reign was the Foe Tossing Charge Spidey performed on the reformed Sinister Six (Now the Sinner Six) after comming out of his retirement and once again putting on the Red and Blue suit. Even Mysterio's usual trick of using an image of Mary-Jane to put Peter down didn't work.
The Juggernaut does this in the film X-Men 3. He also does this pretty much any time he appears in any medium. It's kinda his thing.
- Of course it is. He's The Juggernaut, BITCH!
After having his life and reputation all but ruined by his archenemy Cobweb, Marvel Comics hero Sleepwalker fought his way through a mob of Cobweb's Mooks on his way to finally capturing and banishing the monster for good in the final issue of the series.

Film example of the variant: In Spider-Man 2, an entire train-car of people stand united to keep Doc Ock from getting to Spidey...to no avail, as he shoves them all aside with ease.
Double example: In the climactic fight scene of Willow, Madmartigan and General Kael spot each other across the battlefield at the same moment, and each of them initiates a Foe Tossing Charge toward the other.
A staple of Wire Fu movies, notably Kung Fu Hustle
In the film version of Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Sam, Merry, and Pippin get tossed aside when they attempt to protect Frodo from the Ringwraiths on Weathertop. (In the book, Frodo is a bit more proactive, and attacks the Ringwraiths himself.)
- In the prologue, Sauron does this on the way to the human royalty. The way it's done makes you think he was just wandering around smacking people forty feet for the fun of it, though. Not that that's not a perfectly good reason.
  - In the battle before the Black Gates, Legolas attempts a Foe Tossing Charge when Aragorn is about to be crushed by a troll. Unfortunately, being an elf, he lacks the muscle mass for proper foe-tossing and doesn't get very far. Pity none of them are dwarves.
- Near the end of the Helms Deep battle the few remaining Rohans pressed in the inner sanctum of the keep decide to go with a boom and charge into the Uruk-Hai army in a suicide attack trampling and tossing aside everybody in their way. The attack turns out not so suicide after all. Although awesome as nine hells, this does raises a question of what exactly stopped the Uruks from storming the inner sanctum anyway(the chargers couldn't possibly kill them all and the doors were breached) and massacre everybody inside?
  - The survivors rigged barricades (with tables and such) when they fled inside. One of the outside shots showed the Uruks hitting the doors with battering rams to get around (well, through) that.
- This is the basic strategy of using the Mumaks in a fight - move them forward fast. It'll suffice.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, some poor passerby gets riddled with bullets for standing between the T-1000 and the T-800 when they open fire.
In The Patriot, Colonel Tavington (bad guy) and Mel Gibson's character spot each other across the battlefield in the final battle. Each then slices, shoots, and wades his way through the other side's Mooks to get to his nemesis.
Gangs Of New Yorks opening melee involves Daniel Day-Lewis wading through Mooks towards Liam Neeson.
In Forbidden Kingdom, the Monkey King tosses Jade soldiers left and right with his staff as he leaps through the air. Note, this is not to reach the Jade Warlord or anything, he just thinks it's fun.
Grendel does this in the 2007 film version of Beowulf. He also throws people at people, and hits people with people as melee weapons, and tears them apart with his bare hands. It's not really to get to anyone in particular, though, he's mostly just complaining about the noise coming from his neighbors.
In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, when Yoda enters Palpatine's chamber he knocks two guards unconscious by using The Force . Hmm, a power that belies his stature, he shows.
Name a movie about American Football, any movie - you'll find someone plowing through a group of the opposing team at one point.
Done in the Wire-Fu movie Hero, wherein two protagonists tear straight through an army of mooks to gain access to the palace.
In 300 One of the Spartans flies into a blood rage, killing several Persians with his everything at hand, including his helmet, to reach his son, who had just been beheaded by a Persian on horseback
Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon features a cameraman standing between the killer and his Final Girl, stating, "If you want her, you'll have to get through me!" He's tossed aside.
Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame throws the Archdeacon down a flight of stairs on his way to his final confrontation with Quasimodo and Esmeralda.
In Highlander, Connor's older brother/cousin performs one to save Connor from the Kurgan's attack during the battle of the clans at the start.
In Bodyguards and Assassins, the chief assassin's right-hand man does this to a crowd of civilians to get to Donnie Yen.

Happens twice in the Battle of Five Armies near the end of The Hobbit. First when Thorin and company (of 12) fight their way as far as Bolg's bodyguard. Second (and more effective) is when Beorn fights his way to Bolg himself.
- Double points for Beorn being a werebear in giant bear form.
Vimes in Night Watch uses one of these to reach Carcer so he can bring him back to their own time.
At the finale of Children of Dune, Leto II fights his way through Alia's elite guards before smashing downthe door to her chambers, his extreme strength (due to sandworm-based enhancements) allowing him to basically sweep them aside. Since he was dragging his sister along during all of this, it means his Foe Tossing Charge was one-handed!
In Proven Guilty, Morgan is said to have cut his way through an entire Red Court army, coming within feet of the Red King himself.
In Off Armageddon Reef, by David Weber, Merlin engaged in one of these near the end of the book. Merlin is an incredibly advanced android with strength, speed, and reflexes far above human capacity; he is equipped with nanoengineered nigh-unbreakable incredibly sharp katanas. (Well, technically, a katana and a wakizashi.) His foes are sailors equipped with metal armor, swords, spears, axes, and primitive muskets. To quote the book: "he went through his enemies like an avalanche, more hampered by their corpses than by their weapons."
Subvertet in the Wheel Of Time: Rand al'Thor is captured by Aes Sedai, and kept in a strongbox for days, only taken out to be beaten. When this doesn't break him, they show him that they also captured his girlffriend-to-be, and beat her in front of his eyes. He breaks free, kills a Warder with his hands, takes his sword, and wounds another mortally. All in the seconds it takes the Aes Sedai to control him again.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, episode: "The Gift". Buffy heads to where Dawn is; the guy who was bleeding Dawn steps forward and says, "Ah, the Slayer. This should be interest-" He is then flung off the ledge and plummets several stories.
- In "The Wish", Buffy and the Master each fling aside several vampires as they charge across the room to fight each other
Simon Tam did this in the Firefly episode "Safe". Of course it didn't work but it was impressive.
- It worked well enough to make sure three townsfolk had a sore jaw.
In the NCIS season five episode "Requiem", in what may be his personal Crowning Moment Of Awesome, Tony DiNozzo does a Foe Tossing Charge with a gun, charging full-tilt at two bad guys and dropping them both with his handgun without stopping, then throwing his gun aside and diving off of a dock after the car that's just gone into the water with Gibbs and the Distressed Damsel in it.

This is one way to interpret the Magic The Gathering trample ability in "real combat" terms. (the other interpretation being that the creature simply walks over its opponents.)
In Dungeons And Dragons 3.5, if a fighter has the "Supreme Cleave" ability, then each time he slays an enemy he gets to immediately move one square and take another attack. As long as each attack kills an enemy, he can keep repeating the trick, carving a long path of carnage before anyone gets a chance to strike back.
- There's also the Zeal spell, which lets you move through enemies and gives you some protection from their attacks of opportunity as long as you keep moving towards a designated target.

Used often in the Super Robot Wars series. A character will, at a dramatic moment, ignore movement rules and move across the entire map to attack a specific character. They also ignore HP or anything else, doing MacGuffin level damage.
Nethack gets very much like this later in the game, with many of the more nastier enemies summoning monsters at the player, and killing them just gives the summoner time to summon more. Then there's the big room full of monsters before facing the Wizard of Yendor, Yendor himself calling a bunch of nasties (or even a clone of himself), another such room full of undead, and after that some demons and a bunch of bug-summoning priests, right before the amulet-carrying High Priest of Moloch, and as the ultimate example, the Astral Plane with more priests summoning annoying little insects, angels and other astral beings, a gang of former heroes, and three Riders of the Apocalypse ganging up against the player. In all of these examples, beating all of your enemies would be quite crazy, when all you need to do is to get through them - and sometimes back again.
The opening cinematic of Drakengard shows Caim doing this to a group of enemy soldiers and then flashing his Slasher Smile. The player can also do several attacks in the game that qualify as foe-tossing charges.
In Devil May Cry 4, Nero performs one of these when trying to reach Sanctus in his order armor before he escapes, carrying Kyrie with him. At first, he gets battered by enemies as his attention is diverted to the aforementioned spoiler, but quickly proceeds to start literally throwing the enemies, before finally bursting through a group of them.
Dynasty Warriors is probably the video game poster child for this trope... worse yet, some incarnations of characters in 'Warriors' franchise games (for example, Lu Bu, or some Samurai Warriors 2 characters) literally can toss their foes... and even worse yet, it's usually unblockable!
- Sanada Yukimura is known for this, in any games he appeared, especially Samurai Warriors. In fact, he did that in Real Life, obviously his Crowning Moment Of Awesome, tossing and plowing through the Tokugawa soldiers with only some trusted men, or himself alone, until he reached Ieyasu face to face, only to declare that he has ran out of energy and died afterwards. No wonder Ieyasu was so impressed and dubbed him Japan's Number One Soldier
- In Dynasty Warriors 6, Zhao Yun and all the other characters with the True Speed ability do exactly this (once it's activated). And Zhao Yun himself did this in Romance of the Three Kingdoms to save Liu Bei's son in the battle of Chang Ban. (Not to mention Dynasty Warriors 6's intro...)
  - The opening for Dynasty Warriors 5: Xtreme Legends features Gan Ning performing a Foe Tossing Charge... DOWN THE SIDE OF A CLIFF.
This trope is the entire basis of the combat system in the DS game Rondo Of Swords. Rather than moving, then attacking, one fights by selecting a path for a character to follow, then executing the move action. Then, as the character runs along the path, he attacks each enemy he passes through. Every non-ranged attack can be a Foe Tossing Charge in that game.
In Dead Rising there are several ways to do this. Just grab a nearby skateboard, shopping cart, parasol or any other handy melee weapon and off you go.
The Tank from Left 4 Dead does this in the opening cinematic, either knocking aside, crushing or ripping apart any zombie unlucky enough to be between him and the survivors he's trying to kill, even though the other zombies are trying to do the exact same thing.
- Also happens during the game as well. If a zombie or any other special infected are pouncing the player and a Tank is near, he'll gladly smash them to get to the player. In fact, Tanks can inadvertently rescue players who are caught by a Smoker or Hunter by smashing them since the game does not register damage on the player when a Smoker or a Hunter has caught them.
In Dawn Of War II, the Force Commander has a skill called "To Victory" which involves him quickly charging to a selected point. This causes all cover-type obstacles in the path to be destroyed, and all enemies to fly around. Painfully.
- The Grey Knights, introduced in one of the expansions to the original, have this as an optional upgrade. Heavy weapon squads and Tau Fire Warriors really, really hate it.
In Prototype Alex Mercer usually uses Le Parkour while running forward at 70 mph; however, if he activates his armor or shield powers he'll simply run through anything in his way up to the size of a car. Civilians, non Elite Mooks, oncoming traffic present no impediment to his forward momentum.
Dragons in almost any RPG trailer almost always show up by stomping on (or eating) a fellow evil mook to show off just how big they are. Both Warhammer and Dragon Age for example have this happen.
In Assassins Creed 2, when Ezio's father and brothers are executed, he tries to pull this on his way to kill the guy that did it. Unfortunately, he's stopped by a pair of heavies and disarmed, forcing him to run.
Haseo toss 5 P Kers to the sky then slash all of them with scythe at the opening scene of .hack//G.U..
Titan mutants in Batman Arkham Asylum will charge at Batman without the slightest concern for the thugs caught in their pace. You can use this to your advantage.

In Cwen's Quest, Riddly Lancer spots the #1 Big Badass Wolf across the battlefield while he's "In the Zone". Anyone in his way literally goes air-born.
Problem Sleuth had a habit of throwing Mooks through the doors of the Cathedral of Syndetic Ascension as he scaled each floor in an attempt to look totally badass..

In Super Mario Bros Z episode 8 Mario and Sonic did this.

In Avatar The Last Airbender Prince Zuko was once able to simultaneously take down mutiple "elite" Royal Procession Firebenders to get to his sister in the second season premiere. One might argue that said sister proceeding to smack him around like a red-headed stepchild served to weaken the overall effect of said charge, or confirm that she was even scarier. They could also be holding back because Zuko is a member of the royal family.
- Similarly in a later episode, to gain an audience with the Earth King, Aang and the Gang are forced to plow through an inumerable amount of Royal Earthbender guards, apologizing the whole way. The creators note that the biggest point of this was to demonstrate how by this point their powers have reached super-human levels even by standards of a world with people that control the elements.
- In the second season finale, after Azula has shot Aang in the back with lightning, Katara takes all the water she has and creates a giant wave that crashes over Zuko and the Dai Li, catching him just in time. However, as it was just water, they're back up and ready to go a second later.
- Subverted in the second episode when Sokka prepares for one of these against Zuko and is unceremoniously kicked into a snowbank.
Makes an appearance during the wedding scene in the first Shrek movie. The eponymous ogre and Fiona find themselves beset by Mooks; Shrek starts 'wading' through them, throwing them off as necessary. They manage to slow him, but we never get to find out the ending thanks to a Big Damn Gunship moment.
Bully Francis chasing Timmy Turner in the The Fairly OddParents episode "Timvisible".
Animated film example: In the 1986 Transformers The Movie, Optimus Prime does a surprisingly dramatic version of this before confronting Megatron.
- The absolute best part is the Oh Crap look on Thrust's face... which is reflected on the front of Prime while he's running over him!
  - You could also call this a Crowning Moment of Awesome... if Prime weren't already the most awesome thing there.
In Disney's Robin Hood, Lady Cluck, a dumpy, motherly anthropomorphic chicken, does this to an army of rhinoceros mooks - all in the style of a NFL player.
- Set to two college fight songs, USC's and "On Wisconsin."
Nothing will stop Beast Boy from getting to the Brain! He cares not for the hundred or so villains his friends are all dealing with, He MUST get to the Brain!
- ( one epic fight later) beastboy: "hey look! (throws brain into freezer) BRAINFREEZE!
Norman does this in Mighty Max during one zombie episode to help Max get to Virgil.

Alexander the Great, in his final battle with Darius of Persia, is said to have performed a Foe Tossing Charge to reach the enemy king. Darius, feeling less bold, fled the scene; it is likely that Alexander would have caught him, but for a desperate message from his own general that he was needed elsewhere.
Cyrus the Younger tried to pull this during the Battle of Cunaxa, charging into the Persian emperor's bodyguard of 6000 horsemen with his own escort one-tenth that size. His charge came as a complete surprise and scattered his opponents, but his foe tossing was cruelly interrupted by enemy javelin tossing, with fatal effect.
Pelopidas of Thebes attempted this during the First Battle of Cynoscephalae to get to his hated enemy, the tyrant Alexander of Pherae. He did not have superhuman strength, though, and fought on foot, and his enemy's bodyguards were not so amused by his attempts to toss them aside. Once they had disposed of him, they discovered to their dismay that his death was a cause for renewed enthusiasm on the part of his army, which proceeded to utterly wipe them out.
Bulls, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, elephants, and, to a degree, crocodiles are all capable of this trope.
There was a Japanese shogun who was forced to fight an enemy army with nothing but his elite samurai guard at his side. The couple of hundred of them rode through the whole army and seven emerged alive from the other side.
The Ancient Near East knew a type of cavalry which the Greeks called Kataphraktoi ("the armoured ones"). They were custom-built for this trope; both horse and rider were completely covered in scaled armour and chainmail. Their moment of glory was the Battle of Carrhae, in which a mere few hundred of them completely steamrolled a Roman army that had been previously weakened by arrow fire.
Richard III tried this at Bosworth Field in 1485. He came very close to killing his enemy, Henry Tudor (the future Henry VII) with his own hands, but was prevented by some men on his own side turning against him.

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Examples: