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In Twilight Era Hyrule, bacon eats YOU for breakfast!

"You think you can take me? I ride a pig! Who do you think you are?"
— GanXingba, while playing Sejuani

Need to make piggies much more badass? Simple, add tusks, fangs, more speed, a dash of bravery, and finish off with a bad attitude.

Basically, pigs with tusks and a personality to match. While non-tusked swine are generally shown as gluttonous and somewhat messy, boars are generally seen as their Ax-Crazy cousins. This is Truth in Television, as wild boars are quite a bit larger than most people imagine, can be aggressive if startled or provoked, and are quite capable of killing a man. Boar-spears were designed with specially shaped spearheads to keep the animal at arms' length because otherwise a boar could still kill you even after you'd stuck a spear through it, even if doing so involved it charging down the spear and goring itself in the process. Even then, those spears were more commonly used by hunting nobility who were in it for sport, as traps were still much safer.

Wild boars have one of the worst reputations among wild ungulates. They are said to be prone to attacking and killing humans, especially if you stumble upon a sow with piglets. At least, this is what most people think about these animals. In Real Life, boars are no more inherently aggressive than most other ungulates (although unlike other ungulates they are omnivorous and will take prey as large as turkeys). They'll generally only charge creatures as big as humans if provoked; they do battle only for self-defense against their predators.

It's true, however, that sows might charge if they see their young menaced; but again, this is a common thing among wild mammals. Try to menace elk or deer fawns and you'll probably get a similar response. Nobody in Fictionland seems ever to consider that baby boars are among the cutest young mammals, with their brightly colored stripes. Never mind boars are among the most intelligent ungulates in Real Life, they are easily tamed if raised young and can be used in the same way as their domestic tusk-less descendants (like searching for truffles).

Boars, rhinos, and bulls are the only ungulates that regularly qualify as bad guys — or at least very morally ambiguous — in pop-consciousness; the Celtic branch of Heroic Fantasy is particularly likely to have magical and very dangerous swine. See also What Measure Is a Non-Cute?.

Compare Pig Man. See also Sinister Swine for a similar portrayal of pigs.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • A U.S. Cellular commercial has a guy using his phone to look up how to escape from a wild boar, while he and his friend are running from one.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Bleach: Ganju and his friends are all boar-riders. Their boars are large, powerful, mean and heavily tusked. Ganju's boar is called Bonnie. She used to belong to his older brother, Kaien. Upon Kaien's death, Bonnie was inherited by Ganju. She used to be sweet and well-behaved for Kaien. She's now the meanest-tempered boar around, hating everyone and everything... especially Ganju himself.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Inosuke Hashibira is human, but he's still heavily associated with boars. He wears a mask shaped like a boar's head almost constantly, he was raised by a wild sow, and Tanjiro notes that he tends to aim low when striking an enemy much like a real wild boar would. His name is also a pun, since the first two kanji in his name (伊之) is pronounced the same as the Japanese word for boar (猪, "ino/inoshishi"). Personality-wise, he's very hot-headed and eager to challenge people to fights.
  • Digimon:
  • Fruits Basket: Kagura Sohma represents the Boar of the Eastern Zodiac, and can turn into one when hugged by someone of the opposite sex. True to the trope, she's prone to violent outbursts, especially when it comes to her overbearing affection for Kyo.
  • Killing Bites: Zigzagged with a Brute named Ino Shinji, who can transform into a half-human half-Japanese Boar hybrid: while he is pretty hard-hitting, the narration helpfully points out that the Japanese Boars are actually extremely careful and timid beasts, capable of perceiving threats with their superior sense of smell, and thus Shinji is a rather careful and watchful fighter who does charge recklessly if he thinks he's lucky. Still suffers The Worf Effect as Heiji, a Brute Ibex, can tank his charge with her horns while Gecko Brute Kaede brutally offs him with a Neck Snap.
  • Kinnikuman: During the Devil Chojin arc, Kinnikuman's training in the mountains to perfect the Kinniku Driver is interrupted by the arrival of a truly humongous boar, who promptly attacks him and Terryman. Suguru manages to grab the charging beast and perfect the Kinniku Driver on the spot, using the animal as a guinea pig.
  • Monster Musume: Kimihito and Centorea end up getting attacked by a massive boar (roughly the size of an elephant) while on a date in a park. It nearly tramples Kimihito before Centorea is able to knock it out with her Super-Strength.
  • One Piece:
  • Ranma ½: Ryoga has faced wild boars on at least two occasions. His preferred tactic is stopping the rampaging pig in his tracks with the tip of his umbrella, then flip him up and away. Bystanders are always impressed, as well they should be; that boar tosses plow trucks like they're pillows, and neither Ryouga nor his umbrella budge one inch.
  • The Seven Deadly Sins: While stuck in Purgatory, Meliodas and Ban meet a large, long-tusked boar named "Wild", who claims to be on a quest to find his lost little brother Mild. To showcase how stubborn he is, he reveals that he has been challenging the Demon King to get out of Purgatory countless times, and yet, despite fighting a Physical God, he hasn't given up hope yet. His brother Mild is actually Hawk and the two are reunited after the death of the Demon King.
  • Ushio and Tora: A minor "Metamorphose" by the name of Fea appears during the H.A.M.M.R. arc as one of the monsters captured for study by the H.A.M.M.R. scientists and absorbed by the revived fragment of Hakumen. Fea resembles a feral boar monster with pointy teeth who can extend his tusks to humongous lenghts and apparently native of Greece.

    Comic Books 
  • The Asterix series has boars, but they don't quite fit, primarily they are underpowered compared to the Gauls.
  • The Boar in The Courageous Princess is an aversion in that he's actually quite a nice guy. Gives muddy kisses though.
  • Deadpool discovers in the Suicide Kings arc that Tombstone keeps a pack of giant, hyper-aggressive boars. Normally, they're used for disposing of bodies, but they'll happily eat live prey as well.
  • The comics continuation of Gargoyles introduces Coco, a gargoyle from the London clan who resembles a wild sow and is a pretty tough fighter.
  • The monstrous, child-eating boar that haunts the town of Doglick in Hellblazer.
  • One of Spider-Ham's enemies is Pork Grind, an anthropomorphic boar who's the Funny Animal version of Venom.
  • Sturmtruppen: A series of strips has two soldiers, in a cold and snowy night, trying to find refuge in a pigsty... entirely occupied by a huge, menacing boar which won't let them through. After trying to get rid of him by burning his tail, they end up running away, chased by the ferocious hog who has uprooted the pigsty and is running after them.
  • The Transformers (Marvel) has Snarler, a Pretender Beast Decepticon whose Pretender shell and alternate mode are boars (with the alternate mode having drills for the snout and tusks). In the Beast Era we have Razorbeast, a noble Maximal with a warthog alternate mode who was sadly infected by evil Angolmois by the Blendtron Rartorata and became a feral berserker before being MercyKilled by his teammate Optimus Minor. Even his longtime foe Magmatron was saddened by his death.
  • Gilbert Shelton's early superhero parody "Wonder Wart-Hog" — do not get on his bad side.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Queen Clea tries to have Steve Trevor killed by putting him in the arena with a group of large boars with unnaturally long tusks armed with only a sword. Luckily for Steve, the beasts prove exceptionally unintelligent and he's able to kill all of them with nary a scratch.
  • Usagi Yojimbo:
    • Gunichi was one of the head retainers of Lord Mifune, a boar/warthog and a stern but overall honorable samurai and a truly accomplished Master Swordsman who takes an interest in young Usagi and introduces him to Lord Mifune. Unfortunately, he lost his cool during the losing battle of Adachigahara and betrayed Lord Mifune by running away to save himself. Years later, he meets Usagi and they duel, resulting in Gunichi's death.
    • The retelling of the story of Yamato Takeru and the Kami of Mount Ibuki merges both versions of the story by having the Kami taking the form of a gigantic white boar (who Yamato manages to knock into submission without killing) and later a giant snake, confirming that the white boar from before was his alternate form.
  • Subverted in Valhalla; Gullinbursti resemble a massive, golden pig rather than a feral boar, to compliment Freyr's status as a God of Farmers and Agriculture above all else.
  • Downplayed in Zannablù: as depicted in the first issue, Boars and Pigs are two different populations, the latter being modern, civilized but also very corrupt and addicted to junk food while Boars, like the main character Zannablu, are cruder, dumber and live a more rural and simple life. Boars also speak in a peculiar way (translated in English as a combo of Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe and Hulk Speak).

    Comic Strips 
  • Major, Wal's other dog in Footrot Flats, is a pig dog bred for hunting boar. The Dog, perhaps rightly, regards this as a sign that Major is crazy (but still secretly envies Major's toughness).

    Fan Works 
  • Better Bones AU: Boars take the place of badgers in attacking ThunderClan in The New Prophecy, as their size and being animals that live in groups allows them to act how badgers are portrayed in canon without invoking Artistic License – Biology. One of One-eye's incarnations born to kill as many Tribe cats as possible is a boar-pig hybrid, which as in real life is twice the size of a normal boar. Shredtail also becomes the enemy of a white boar who killed his mate and kits, inventing all manner of traps to kill him.
  • Child of the Storm: in the sequel's side-story, Unfinished Business, Nimue uses symbiotes and dark magic on a number of her Dragon's minions to turn them into adequate distractions for anyone who follows. One becomes an enormous reddish boar-like creature that's eight feet tall, four feet wide, and fifteen feet long with 'tusks like broadswords'. It also grows clawed tentacles. However, it's no match for Carol wearing her now unlocked shield-armour, charged up by Gambit's powers.
  • A Diplomatic Visit: In chapter 20, the wolf Far-Tracker tells the story of how he unsuccessfully went after a wild boar, known as Big Raze, that had been causing some problems in the area.
  • Harry Is a Dragon, and That's OK: Viktor Krum's main obstacle in the Triwizard maze task is a wild boar. His solution to the problem? Wrestle it to the ground, much to the delight of his fangirls when they get an eyeful of his torn robes.
  • Hunters of Justice: RWBY and JNPR begin chapter 51 by fighting a giant, radioactive, mutated feral pig that they call Hogzilla alongside Captain Atom, the Teen Titans, and a small army of civilian hunters.
  • The Myth of Link & Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as a fanmade novelization of the namesake game, of course plays this straight with Calamity Ganon, but this story gives an explanation for why Ganon/Ganondorf has a boar motif. Calamity Ganon is really the enslaved soul of Ganondorf, the reincarnation of Groose from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. He was meant to wield the power of darkness for good through the creation of the Boar Spirit of Power which would grow stronger with each reincarnation of Ganondorf, but Demise's curse corrupted him for thousands of years.
  • Prehistoric Earth: Entelodonts are amongst the prehistoric animals rescued for the titular zoo, and they prove incredibly vicious and dangerous beasts over the course of the rescue team's efforts at getting them through the portal.
  • Prehistoric Park Reimagined: Much like in this story's spiritual predecessor Prehistoric Earth, the entelodon rescued for the titular park prove very dangerous animals over the course of the team's efforts at getting them through the portal, with even the staff at the park admitting afterward that they'll likely be a handful for whichever zookeeper division ends up serving as their primary caretakers. And considering how one of them delivered quite a brutal beatdown to an attacking hyaenodont prior to rescue, the staff certainly aren't wrong to consider these beasts as ones they should be careful with.
  • In Son of the Western Sea, Percy Jackson fights the Twrch Trwyth and (on a separate occasion) the Calydonian Boar. An author's note states, "If a mythology has a hostile pig, Percy is going to run into it. Hostile mythological pig suggestions are welcome."

    Films — Animated 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Part of the Turkish film Av: The Hunt takes place in a forest full of wild boar, which are never seen but are often heard. Different characters have different ideas of their threat level.
  • The "aurochs" (for all that that name actually refers to prehistoric cattle) in Beasts of the Southern Wild.
  • Boar is about a young family that find themselves in the Australian countryside, being hunted by a bloodthirsty wild boar. It is generally regarded as a Spiritual Successor to Razorback (see below).
  • The Korean film Chaw is about a giant, mutant boar.
  • In The Chronicles of Narnia films, wild boars briefly appear as fighters in Aslan's army.
  • Hannibal has a pack of wild boar bred and trained by Mason Verger (one of Hannibal Lecter's surviving victims), who intends to feed his old nemesis to the boars as revenge for his crippling and disfiguring injuries.
  • In The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Dain rides an armored boar into battle. And has a pair of tusks braided into his beard.
  • Maleficent: Some of Maleficent's soldiers in the moors ride on rhinoceros-sized warthogs during the battle scene.
  • Pig Hunt features a huge, man-eating boar that is the mascot of a sicko cult.
  • Razorback features a giant boar which can literally run through houses and flip over cars.
  • Run for the Sun: While hunting Mike and Kate through the jungle, Browne and von Andre run into a pack of wild pigs who attack their dogs; killing several of them.
  • While not technically boars (or even Earth lifeforms), Gamorreans from Star Wars are pig-like enough and are very mean.

    Literature 
  • Arly Kanks: Though tuskless, domesticated, and female, Raz Buchanon's pet pig Marjorie once bit the leg off a mule, and chased a man out an upstairs window, causing his death.
  • The Belgariad: In Pawn of Prophecy, Garion kills a boar and almost gets himself killed in the process.
  • Joe R. Lansdale aptly named novel The Boar features a giant wild boar as the Big Bad.
  • In The Book of Atrix Wolfe, Tanis is dazed in the woods when the dogs harry a boar near him. He kills it on instinct, and everyone is duly impressed — after they get over the fear that he has been killed.
  • The Tuskers are sentient pig descendants in Andre Norton's Breed To Come.
  • In Celydonn, talking pigs are frequently alluded to as a possible marvel; one two-headed and enormous boar does appear, and may even have spoken a few words (though they may have been grunts).
  • Everworld: One of the encounters the cast runs into is a boar that nearly kills them all, only relenting after the boar demands he be given the apples they're carrying. It was not their proudest moment.
  • Fengshen Yanyi has the boar spirit Zhu Zizhen taking the form of a human monk: in battle he turns into a gigantic wild hog to devour his enemies alive in one bite, but he's defeated when he eats Yang Jian, who can survive being Eaten Alive and forces him to surrender himself to be executed. Unlike Zhu Bajie below, he never takes a hybrid form, appearing either as a human monk or as a giant hog.
  • The Forgotten Beasts of Eld has the Boar Cyrin, a major character who is a talking boar with magical knowledge.
  • In Heralds of Valdemar: By the Sword, Kerowyn rides with the king of Rethwellan on a hunt for an enormous boar that local farmers had reported trouble with, which had already killed one swineherd and wounded others to get at their herds. The king and his party kill the boar only to find its companion, a sow of equal size and ferocity, which nearly kills the King before Kero on her warhorse intervenes. He offers her a boon in gratitude. However, once spotted these beasts were explicitly domestic pigs gone feral, not ordinary wild animals; they had no fear of humans and were very aggressive as a result.
  • Hogfather: The Discworld's equivalent to Santa Claus, "the Hogfather" rides in a sleigh pulled by four enormous, fierce-looking boars. In in-series Disneyfication, we're told that most modern portrayals have four cute, pink piggies instead.
  • InCryptid has dire boars, which can get as large as a bear and form highly dangerous and destructive sounders.note 
  • Zhu Bajie (or just Pig in many English translations) from Journey to the West. Despite the popular name and many late depictions, in truer-to-the-text pictures, he's definitively boar-like with hairs and tusks. Enforced when he uses his snout to uproot some demonic trees and when he transforms into an elephant-sized boar to eat his way through a hill worth of rotten fruit.
  • In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Treebeard's recitation of Middle-Earth's living creatures lists the boar as "the fighter".
  • Fener, the five-tusked Boar of Summer, is the War God from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. He is a gigantic boar, possibly hinting at a Soletaken connection from his former life. The cults worshipping him take his tusks as their insignia.
  • Merkabah Rider: In "Hell's Hired Gun", the demon-possessed sharpshooter Medgar Tooms is accompanied by a herd of pigs which rip apart the bodies of his victims, as well as serving as alternate vessels for the demons that possess him.
  • In Neverwhere, the mythical Beast of London is said to have once been an ordinary pig that escaped from a butcher into the sewers, but has since grown to enormous size after centuries of gorging itself on sewage, its hide bristling with broken weapons from countless hunters who tried and failed to kill it. In the TV miniseries, it's a giant ox instead — they wanted a boar, but as it turned out, modern-day British boars are just too damn...
    Neil Gaiman: [disgusted] ...cute.
  • In Nine Goblins, goblin generals and high-up messengers use pigs as mounts.
  • Wild range hogs are a source of the pioneer families' meat in Old Yeller. Each year, the piglets had to be marked, the ears cut in a way that would identify which pigs belonged to which family. Travis falls into a group when a cave collapses and is slashed by a tusk. (In the film, he is puled out of the tree he was working them from after accidentally lassoing a boar).
  • Oryx and Crake has genetically altered 'pigoons', bloated human-pig chimaerae made to better model human diseases and provide easily transplantable organs. These organs include brains, and in the post-apocalypse they're a force to be reckoned with, smart enough to plan, hold grudges, and be cruel.
  • Clive Barker's "Pig Blood Blues" features a huge man-eating sow that's possessed by the ghost of a young criminal she'd half eaten after he'd hanged himself in her pen.
  • Redwall: While actual boars don't appear in the series, one of the most famous Badger Lords was Boar the Fighter, who, as his name suggests, was quite the warrior, dying in a Mutual Kill against his nemesis (and as badgers are both berserkers and blacksmiths, it was Boar the Fighter who reforged Martin's sword from Thunderbolt Iron).
  • The Reluctant King: In a folk tale narrated by Jorian in the third book, King Fusinian is threatened by a gigantic boar who dwells in the forest of Chinioc, a beast so large that, according to the population, it was essentially a tusked buffalo. Fusinian survives by climbing on a tree and using his clothes, leaves and his fishing equipment to make a puppet with his clothes to distract the boar while he runs away in the opposite direction.
  • The Riddle Master Trilogy has many allusions to the possibilities of talking swine, especially the swine of the Witch Madir.
  • In Robin Hood And The Beasts Of Sherwood by Clayton Emery, Robin Hood and his Merry Men have to contend with a gigantic wild boar — which they believe to be demonic — which is terrorising Sherwood and the surrounding countryside.
  • RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant: In The Warrior in the Woods, the hero's first encounter with the Grimm consists of him being confronted by a Boarbatusk. He has no idea what it is; he's transfixed by the huge tusks, the four glowing eyes and the huge size of the creature. Once it realises he's there, it doesn't hesitate to charge at him, tusks first. If not for the Warrior's timely intervention, he would have died.
  • Two times in the Icelandic heroic Saga of Hrolf Kraki, King Hrolf and his champions face off against a giant demonic boar summoned by a sorcerous enemy.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • King Robert gets killed by a giant boar. It turns out he was so over-inebriated that he missed the strike. Even then, he got pissed and stabbed the boar in the eye, killing it with a single strike of his dagger. Pretty predictable, considering he was once The Ace of knights and hunters.
    • In A Dance with Dragons, Ser Barristan observes a gladiator fight between a "Pit Fighter" and a boar. The sword-wielding pit fighter manages a to give the boar a single wound before being killed by it, and Ser Barristan inwardly notes one can only kill a boar with a spear or arrows.
  • One of the many machinations of Duke Roger in Song of the Lioness is sending a magic boar after Alanna while she's alone on a cold weather survival exercise.
  • In Meredith Ann Pierce's book Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood, the wizard turns into a giant gold boar and tries to kill Hannah.
  • Tuskers is about mutated, highly aggressive, highly intelligent wild boars.
  • A side story in Warrior Cats features Rage and Fury, two wild boars who plagued the three great cat Clans with their presence. Fleetfoot, a LeopardClan warrior, offered to kill Rage (but not knowing that the other leaders didn't mention Fury), and she managed to kill both of them one at a time despite them being powerful animals. Because she had done this, Goldenstar and Shadestar let her and her Clan earn hunting rights to the river.

    Live-Action TV 
  • At least one episode of Billy the Exterminator involves the protagonists dealing with feral hogs damaging peoples' property.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sunnydale High's athletic team name is the Razorbacks (a common name with real life teams). Subverted in an early episode in which the mascot is shown to be a cute piglet in a fierce costume.
  • An episode of Call of the Wildman has the protagonists travel to New Orleans to help capture wild hogs that are running loose in the suburbs, their tactic of live-animal capture being particularly effective over traditional pig-hunting methods which don't work within city limits.
  • Game of Thrones: King Robert Baratheon is killed by a boar in a Hunting "Accident".
  • Animal Planet's Hogs Gone Wild and Pig Bomb are about the Real Life destructive threat posed by feral pigs. Hunters who work to remove the animals face genuine danger from their tusks, and put kevlar jackets on their hunting dogs to prevent injury.
  • In the House of the Dragon episode "Second of His Name", a boar attacks Rhaenyra Targaryen and Ser Criston Cole when the pair spend the night in the woods during The Grand Hunt that was organized by Rhaenyra's father. It takes both of them to put the beast down.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The "wolves/wargs" that attack the Harfoot camp aren't canine creatures like their cousin from the Southlands, they resemble more the Entelodont, possessing tusks and hoofed feet.
  • The island from Lost is inhabited by wild boars, which are generally shown as being quite ferocious. They are one of the Lostaways' chief food staples before the DHARMA supplies are found, and hunter Locke uses Charlie as bait to catch one. In an early episode, Michael gets injured by one during a hunt. One stole Sawyer's tent. It may be the reincarnation of a man Sawyer killed.
  • Midsomer Murders: In "Wild Harvest", the first Victim of the Week is tied up in a forest, doused with truffle oil, and left to be gored to death by a wild boar. This is strange and unusually brutal, even by Midsomer's standards.
  • In Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, the Bandersnatch from Through the Looking Glass is depicted as a disturbingly large boar.
  • An episode of Sons of Guns has the Red Jacket crew design a rifle specifically for taking down feral hogs; the thing fires a .458 SOCOM round that's almost half an inch across in order to penetrate the boar's armor-like bone structure.

    Music 
  • Bennie Hess wrote an old rockabilly number "Wild Hog Hop", telling of his encounter with such a beast while going to his girl's house.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Classical Mythology:
    • The Erymanthian Boar from the Twelve Labours of Hercules. In most versions of the myth, Hercules traps the boar in high snow before catching him and delivering him to Eurysteus.
    • The Calydonian Boar. In the Greek myth of Atalanta, Meleager brings Atalanta to hunt it. When he kills it, Meleager offers her its hide and asks her to marry him. She was actually touched, but due to certain actions that the two of them took during the great hunt, it did not end well for either of them.
    • Boars were sacred to Ares, the god of war. Why? Because they have a hair-trigger temper, charge anything they see when enraged, and seem to simply refuse to die. In most versions of the story, Ares sends a wild boar to maul Adonis to death when he learns that he's having an affair with Aphrodite.
  • In Norse Mythology, there is Hildesvini, which roughly translates to "Battle Swine", as Freya's mount whenever she's not using her cat-drawn chariot. Also Gullinbursti, the boar with golden mane (or, sometimes, hide made of gold) manufactured by dwarves for the god Freyr.
  • Culhwch from Culhwch and Olwen, one of the tales in the Mabinogion, is tasked to hunt the enormous boar Twrch Trwyth for the magical scissors, comb, and razor hidden in its hide, and he completes the challenge with the help of King Arthur and his warriors.
  • The Boar of Ben Bulben which killed Diarmuid Ua Duibhne in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.
  • Varaha, an avatar of Vishnu, has the form of a large boar. He was credited with rescuing Prithvi (the Earth goddess) from the grasp of the demon Hiranyaksha.
  • Japanese Mythology :
    • Japanese folklore has Inosasao (lit: Boar King of the Bamboo Grove), a huge boar whose back is covered in leaves. He was killed by a hunter and came back as a shapeshifting ghost in order to obtain his revenge, but those whom he asked for help refused to do so. So he turned into the giant Ippondatara demon, a gargantuan one-legged hog demon who ate travellers.
    • Proper myth has the Kami of Mount Ibuki, whom Takeru Yamato faces and either slays/is killed fighting against: in some sources, he's a colossal snake, in others is a massive pure white boar the size of a large ox.
    • Some artworks depict Tengu using wild boars as their mounts. This actually inspired a Knight Archetype in Pathfinder.
  • From the folklore of Southern Sweden, we get the gloso ("glaring sow"), a ghost pig that runs on lonely country roads after dark. It tries to kill people using its literal razorback, running between your legs to split you in twain. It seems to not be the ghost of a pig, but a ghost which takes a pig's shape.
  • The so-called "Bisterne Dragon", an unidentified livestock-killing beast that prowled the Avon valley in 1460, may have actually been one of southern England's last surviving wild boars. This ferocious animal was killed by Sir Maurice Berkeley, who died of infection from wounds suffered at the "dragon's" jaws, leaving no other witness to its real nature.
  • In the folklore of Victorian London, the Black Swine of Hampstead were the local version of Sewer Gators; terrifying feral hogs that had grown fat on sewage and might well emerge from the storm drains at any moment searching for more food. The inspiration for Neverwhere's Beast of London.
  • German folklore has a subset of field-spirits called "rye-pigs" which often steal children, and given the real-life note below that pigs are known for EATING humans, this has a lot of inherent Fridge Horror about child-eating.

    Professional Wrestling 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Boars traditionally are harder to kill than other simple animals. In early editions, they had rules allowing them to keep fighting for a few rounds even after losing all their hit points, 3rd Edition gave them the Diehard feat that let boars keep fighting until their HP hit -10, while 5th Edition gives boars rules allowing for a Last Chance Hit Point. Dire Boars are naturally even tougher.
    • Orcs were frequently depicted in older editions of D&D as being humanoid boars, when they weren't depicted as Pig Men.
    • Wereboars are a straighter example, in that they're short-tempered and very violent, albeit not truly evil. Devil swine, from the B/X/C/M/I iteration of the game, truly are (very) evil, and resemble obese domestic pigs rather than wild boars.
  • Exalted:
    • Isidoros, the Black Boar that Twists the Skies. Probably the least malevolent of the Yozis, he acts as the universe's upper limit of physical strength, and spends most of his time absentmindedly wandering around Malfeas trampling things and leaving hoofprints the size of city blocks.
    • Among mundane animals, Hellboars are a breed of wild pig so ferocious that they can prove more than a match for even a Terrestrial Exalted. They are also known to turn actively predatory, and can crack human bones between their teeth. The illustration in the corebook depicting one shows it as uncannily similar to an entelodontnote , and standing over the bloody carcass of an elephant while facing off a pack of claw striders.
  • Fabula Ultima: The Cragboar is a powerful and dangerous Elemental which resembles a gigantic boar made of living rock. It is an irritable and destructive creature fond of charging enemies and goring them with its rocky tusks.
  • Games Workshop games:
    • Warhammer:
      • Orcs use enormous, furious war boars as mounts and to pull war chariots. They aren't as fleet as horses, but hit harder during a charge.
      • Beastmen make use of boar-like creatures known as Tuskgors to pull their crude wooden chariots. Tuskgors combine all the bad-temperedness of a regular boar with ram horns, bony plates, extra fangs, bony maces at the ends of their tails and the like. There are also giant versions of the Tuskgor called Razorgors, which are covered in spikes and perpetually furious at the world. Beastman warlords often attempt to capture and break these beasts to be their personal chariot-pullers, despite Razorgors being so aggressive that beastmen are their normal prey; one warlord known as Urgor kept a Razorgor the size of a barn as a "pet", which he fed with his defeated rivals.
      • Bretonnian boars are bad enough, but some are mutated by Chaos and so even worse, having no problem hunting down and eating humans.
    • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Like their orc predecessors, the Orruks ride massive and ferocious boars into battle. The Ironjaw Orruks ride the even larger and more powerful "gruntas", boar-like beasts with jaws bristling with fangs and a ready willingness to eat anything, from battlefield corpses to inattentive orruks to iron armor and the foundations of buildings.
    • Warhammer 40,000: In early editions, Orks of the Snakebite clan could field Boarboyz cavalry straight out of Warhammer, or upgrade them into bionic "cyboars." Nowadays, the Beast Snaggas "subkultur" instead ride "squighogs," tusked fungoid monsters that are at least thematically similar to the old boar cavalry.
  • Kings of War has boars called Bores who are used as mounts for Orcs, Ogres also use them to pull their chariots.
  • Magic: The Gathering has boar creatures, which like other powerful beasts tend to be Green (the color of nature), Red (the color of chaos and emotion) or both, a combination that usually results in fierce and powerful, but often simple-minded and easily riled, creatures. As a general rule, Green boars are focused around strength and vitality, while Red boars are themed around aggression and crushing power. They're usually characterized as powerful, short-tempered and fierce, and tend to be quite strong. Also, since they're essentially walking pork, many can also be sacrificed in order to gain a bit of life. "Loyal in battle, hearty in stew."
    • Archetype of Endurance is a magical boar embodying strength and survival, and is described in its flavor text as an elusive survivor that hunts those who think they are hunting it.
    • Bladetusk Boar has massively overgrown tusks and shares a taste for human meat with the minotaurs that live in its territory.
    • Illharg, the Raze-Boar, is a giant boar god worshipped by the Gruul Clans of Ravnica, who believe that he will come one day to herald the End-Raze a great rampage that will level the world-city and replace it with a global wilderness.
    • Innistrad is home to immense and truculent boars in its vast, trackless forests. Some of them grow so large that they can eat entire cottages whole.
  • Pathfinder:
    • In general terms, boars are strongly associated with orcs, who often keep them as companions or — in the case of the larger varieties — mounts.
    • Dire boars, or daedons, are a variant of boars that, in addition to being the size of a horse, are also primarily carnivorous.
    • Titanboars are a variety of wild boar created by Taldori nobles and their huntmasters through careful crossbreeding of particularly powerful and impressive specimens of wild boars, domestic pigs and dire boars to create especially powerful, savage and exciting quarries for the hunt. The resulting beasts are enormous, highly aggressive four-tusked juggernauts prone to violent fits of rage, which have often proved so dangerous to the populations of the areas they're released in that several parts of Taldor have outright banned their breeding and release.
    • The Knight Archetype Tenguhatamoto consist in a Tengu riding a Dire Boar, based on a famous Heian period picture◊.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse:
    • Boar is a possible spirit for a pack totem. He's designed for packs of war.
    • There were also wereboars, the Grondr, once upon a time; naturally enough, their half-human warform was a Pig Man. Notably, as every Changing Breed has a role in Gaia's design, their role was to clean up areas that had been tainted by the Wyrm. When the Garou began attacking the other Breeds in the War of Rage, the Grondr stood with the Gurahl werebears, and for their troubles the Garou slaughtered them to the last.

    Video Games 
  • Age of Empires:
    • Age of Empires II: Wild boars are nonaggressive animals found on most maps, but unlike deer they will retaliate if attacked, and are more than capable of killing a Villager who tries to hunt one solo.
    • Age of Mythology:
      • The heroes Arkantos and Ajax are turned into boars by Circe, while the ordinary soldiers become regular pigs. While in these forms, they handily kick Circe's minions' asses.
      • Bragi's Myth unit is a huge, metal boar capable of sending nearby enemies flying.
  • ANNO: Mutationem: One of the various enemies are Mooks wearing metallic boar armor who'll pull out powerful swings or a charged rush to deliver heavy damage.
  • Assassin's Creed: Odyssey: The Kalydonian Boar and the Erymanthian Boar are, well, giant boar bosses.
  • The Battle Cats has Bore, who turned really Red upon introducing himself. It also includes Nimoy Bore, Boraphim, Razorback and Dread Bore. All of them are Lightning Bruisers in the extreme, with non-stop attacks and fast movement.
  • Beyond Good & Evil: Pey'J is a Pig Man, a badass fighter and also the head of La Résistance.
  • Boar-like monsters are recurring enemies in the Breath of Fire series. The second game featured horned warthog-esque monsters called Biruburu/W.Boar and the fourth game had giant boars called Bilbul/Bilboa/Bilbao.
  • Brütal Legend has Razorfire Boars: half boar, half motorcycle, and their chrome skeletons make excellent laser guns.
  • Clash of Clans: Hog Riders are a type of Elite Mook. They're hammer-wielding dudes who ride giant, tusked hogs into battle. Their special ability is that they can jump over walls, which is very useful because walls are the main form of defense against raiders.
  • Dark Souls features heavily-armored Fang Boars guarding the Undead Parish and the Duke's Archives. In Dark Souls 2, a minor meme has sprung up◊ regarding a particular fatality in the first gameplay trailer. This time, feral undead hogs can be encountered in certain areas of the game and they attack by goring or by body-slamming the player.
  • Dragon Quest V: Slon the Rook, one of the main enforcers of the villainous Order of Zugzwang, is a physically imposing humanoid boar.
  • The Elder Scrolls
    • Daggerfall has wereboars, a type of were-creature. They transform into humanoid boars with tusks and spiked hair on their backs. The Player Character can become one if the disease which causes the transformation is transmitted to them.
    • Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion includes Tusked Bristlebacks, an aggressive boar species native to the isle of Solstheim, the expansion's setting.
    • In Oblivion, boars are a random encounter in the countryside. Unlike their Real Life equivalents, they attack on sight rather than running away.
    • The Skyrim: Dragonborn expansion, which returns to the island of Solstheim, shows that centuries after Bloodmoon, the local Rieklings have learned to ride Bristlebacks as mounts.
  • Eternal Evil has zombie boars as enemies in the forest areas.
  • Eternal Sonata: Frederic and Polka's first boss is a big boar that can land some severe attacks for that early in the game.
  • Eternal Twilight has wild pigs as random encounters, who are all surprisingly fast for when they appear. The final Superboss, El Puerco, is a giant palette swap of the pig enemies.
  • Far Cry:
    • Wild boars are a recurring enemy throughout most of the games, starting from Far Cry 3.
    • Far Cry: New Dawn: You can recruit a boar named Horatio as a companion character. Functionally he's a replacement for Cheeseburger the bear from Far Cry 5 with the added ability of being able to auto-revive after being downed.
  • In Fate, starting from the third game of the series, the player can choose as a pet a miniature wild boar in lieu of a dog or a cat. It's sturdier than other pets. Wereboars are also common medium-level enemies in all games and The Cursed King even has giant armored boars as enemies.
  • Fate/Grand Order: The first summer event features an island inhabited by poisonous demonic boars (which kill Diarmuid), but also by adorable friendly non-demon boar piglets. Said demonic boars are later revealed to be led by a vengeful Twrch Trwyth, wanting vengeance on Altria for hunting him.
  • The Flame in the Flood: Boars are a fairly tough enemy who will charge Scout aggressively if she gets too close. You can kill one with a spear trap or a bow and arrow for hides and meat.
  • Ghostlore: One of the many supernatural enemies you fight is the "Babi Ngepet", a boar demon with horns who tries goring you on sight. Like every creature in the game it's lifted from South-East Asian myths, in this case based on an obscure Indonesian cryptid.
  • Gothic: In the German community, the sentence "lass uns Wildschweine jagen!" (Let's go hunt some boars) has become some kind of a meme, because in the earlier patch versions of Gothic 3, boars are among the most deadly enemies one can face because of a broken game balance.
  • Grim Dawn: Stone Tusks are massive black boar-like creatures with an incredible amount of tusks and even horns. They're ususally encountered in groups which attack en masse.
  • Guild Wars has a small population of Wild Boars, largely isolated to the Maguuma Jungle region. They're neutral unless injured by players and tameable, but not a common choice by rangers.
  • Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock: Lars Umlaut transforms into an anthro boar as his warrior form.
  • Herc's Adventures features small squealing boars as annoying enemies and two colossal wild boars with a giant laser breath as bosses near Lerna and in the Northern Lands.
  • Horizon Forbidden West has Bristlebacks, which are robotic boars the size of a tank that can spit either fire or acid, and can also be used as mounts when overridden. Actual wild boars are also among the animals that can be found in the world, although they're non-hostile and will run away when attacked.
  • One of the playable characters in Jitsu Squad is Aros Helgason, a Viking warthog who enjoys throwing himself into battle and hacking his enemies to bits, and serves as The Big Guy of the titular squad.
  • In Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Forgo Dedede, a feral alter-ego of King Dedede who's Brainwashed and Crazy as a result of his boar-mask that was put on him after his capture by the Beast Pack, causing him to act as boar including Running on All Fours.
  • Larry and the Gnomes: The second boss is a gnome riding a huge rampaging boar.
  • League of Legends: The champion Sejuani rides a large boar, enabling her to charge into enemies.
  • Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals: One of the obstacles Patti runs into while looking for Larry is a ferocious wild pig which she must dispose off by throwing it a coconut-filled bra.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails: Some of the recurring enemies throughout the series are Gourd Boars, that are usually in forest areas. Later on, they're replaced by Crushbone Boars.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The series's Big Bad, Ganondorf, often appears as (or temporarily takes on the form of) a great boar-demon, in which form he's called Ganon; no explanation for name differences has been provided, but he certainly has the same personality — and the same cunning and intelligence, much like real wild boars — in both forms. The Ganon form is usually humanoid enough to fall under Pig Man, but his appearances in Twilight Princess, Hyrule Warriors, and his final fight in Breath of the Wild are quadrupedal behemoths that satisfy this trope. Incidentally, all of them share the designation "Dark Beast".* His most common minions, the barbaric Moblins and Bokoblins, also tend to resemble humanoids pigs and boars.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has the Bulblins, who ride giant, aggressive boars called Bullbos. Link can even ride the Bullbos himself in a couple of locations. The Bullbos are pretty stupid, and can run right into walls or off the edge of cliffs (your horse Epona will always stop before doing either of these); but when charging can also smash down walls, allowing access to new areas, or break archer towers. They're also completely unkillable — after taking damage they just collapse and get back up again after a while.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild downplays this with wild boars. They're regular animals and will usually flee from Link or monsters, but if you startle them while standing in front of them they'll instead charge you down and trample over you before making their escape. The Compendium entries note the weaker woodland boar's aggressiveness, and advise particular caution in hunting the the stronger red-tusked boars.
  • The Lord of the Rings Online: The number of boars, and quests related to killing them, had become a bit of an in-joke among the players, and the developers are not above lampshading this. In the region of Evendim there's a quest that sends you to find some boars only to point out that there are no boars in this area. In Lothlórien, one questgiver who sends you to kill a number of boars, asks why the player character is rolling his eyes at the mention of the word "boar". Another quest sends you picking boar-droppings. There's even a boar related title: Killing a boar in every region of Eriador awards you the title "Pork-Chopper".
  • MapleStory: Pigs are the most dangerous monster in the Explorer's tutorial level, and there are a few in the game's Hub Level. As you progress through the storyline, you'll encounter several far more dangerous variations, cumulating with the mutations in the Fevered Land.
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: Fawful's dragon, Midbus, is a giant, villainous, slightly reptilian pig-monster.
  • Mega Man:
  • Minecraft: The Nether Update introduces the Hoglin mob, a type of large boar-like creature found in the hellish dimension of the Nether. They can fling the player up in the air, and have a high knockback resistance. If, somehow, a Hoglin ends up in the Overworld, they transform into an undead Zoglin, which attacks everything, short of Creepers and its own brethren, indiscriminately.
  • Minecraft Legends: The Beast rides a hoglin, which is essentially a giant pig, into battle. It doesn't naturally have tusks, but it wears a mask made of bones.
  • Monster Hunter: The Bullfango and Bulldrome are boar-like creatures that will charge you on sight with hardly a moment's worth of hesitation.
  • Mother 3 had boars as enemies. One of them, called the Agitated Boar, has the description of "The look on his face growls, 'Calm boars don't deserve to be called boars!'"
  • Muramasa: The Demon Blade: The Ippondatara appears in both his forms (ogre and boar) as a boss. In a subversion of the trope (which is kinda true to the legend), he's much more dangerous in ogre form than in boar form.
  • NieR:
    • The game has these as creatures you can hunt... and, if you complete a certain Sidequest, ride!
    • In The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, you run into Goose, a boss Shade in the form of a massive, armored boar. Specifically, it's Mother Goose, furious that Nier and company have been slaughtering baby Shades. Goose is in fact unkillable, and the party can only flee while allies pull a You Shall Not Pass! against it.
  • Nioh 2: A new Guardian Spirit takes the form of a massive white boar with large tusks and red stripes over his eyes. It belongs to the boisterous Shibata Katsuie, who you later fight as a giant boar man with huge flaming tusks.
  • Praey for the Gods: One of the gods to be defeated is a house-sized, blinded boar-like creature that charges and tries to crush whatever it hears.
  • Red Dead Redemption features wild boars that are much stealthier than their size would indicate and are surprisingly adept at ramming player characters off cliffs.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations 2 has Orthuses as the "zombie dog" of choice, though despite the name, niche and barking sounds more closely resemble horribly mutated wild pigs whose jaws hide massive, barbed bear traps.
  • Rimworld: Boars are not normally agressive, but if they turn "manhunter" then you have something to be very worried about. Boars are considered the most dangerous attack animal in the game due to spawning in large packs, moving faster than most humans, hitting harder and faster than wolves or wargs, and breeding fairly rapidly. A maddened pack can slaughter an unprepared colony in no time. On the bright side, these traits can be turned to your advantage should you tame some wild boars, and you'll have an easy way to dispose of raider corpses to boot.
  • In the video game adaptation of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, one of the levels involves having to kill a giant boar that's taken up residence in Sherwood. Said boar looks to be about ten feet long.
  • Smite: The Greek goddess Artemis' ultimate ability is summoning the Calydonian Boar, which damages enemies and stuns them for a brief moment.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has wild boars that appear in almost every map in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (see Real Life section below). Appearance-wise, they're the least scary-looking of all the mutants, but they're still Goddamned Bats because they will happily attack anybody and anything that aren't boar or Flesh-related or aren't zombies. They are always aggressive, and their charge attack is quite damaging to even moderately armored players; additionally, they have a ton of health and tend to be found in packs. However, their large size makes it easy for players to get a clean shot, especially since their head allows players to try for a headshot to deal critical damage.
  • Tales Series: Boars' signature move is to lift you up with their tusks like a forklift and then throw you over their backs. (A real-world boar would run between your legs, slashing them with his tusks as he went.) A large boar is also featured in the beginning of Tales of Phantasia; hunting one causes the heroes not to be in town when it's burned down. When you return to the future, you can hunt them freely, and they usually come with several children that, if you can catch them before they flee, drop large amounts of Pork.
  • Titan Quest: Act I features wild boars as commonly encountered enemies, including large feral boars, even larger Dusk Boars and the grotesque Monstrous Boars, all equipped with humongous tusks. Usually, they're calm and only rush to attack when you kill an enemy near them. It's implied that Centaurs and Satyrs tend to sounders of boars. Act V, being set in the Norselands, has Hildnsvini as a major boss, appearing as a giant boar covered in golden armor plates.
  • Ty the Tasmanian Tiger: A giant boar named Bull is the first boss. Later, he lets Ty ride him.
  • Valheim: Boar are found in the Meadows biome, and unlike deer who flee on seeing an enemy, will actively charge them. They can be a threat to a naked and weaponless player, but they lack the HP to last more than a single hit from an axe. Fortunately, they can be tamed, since their meat and skin are in high demand.
  • Warcraft III has both summonable boars and anthropomorphized versions.
  • The Wind Road has a gigantic boar alongside its handler as one half of a Dual Boss.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • There are tons of boars; it's actually possible to level from 1 to 70 killing nothing but various forms of wild swine, lampshaded in "Make Love, Not Warcraft". They also make good Hunter pets, if not the most stylish, with their high health and stun ability. The most extensive use of boars is in the Barrens, where the Quillboars, the anthropomorphic variant, train armored traditional boars and guard the body of their fallen boar god.
    • Early Concept Art of the Worgen race before the Cataclysm expansion had their racial mount as massive boar... somethings. Proper boar mounts would later appear in the Warlords of Draenor expansion.
    • The Beastmaster hero can summon a quilbeast, which looks something like an underfed warthog with a bad temper. Unusually for the trope, it's actually a ranged unit that sprays, well, quills, but it also has the Frenzy ability which makes it attack faster.
  • Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand has a wild boar as its second boss. Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim also has boar-like mooks, many of which inflict status ailments when they ram Adol.
  • Zeus: Master of Olympus: Wild boars can be found in certain areas and can be hunted for food (although they kill a hunter every now and then). However, in certain missions (usually if you got on Artemis' bad side), you're plagued by the terrible Calydonian Boar, which is bigger, spits fireballs and can only be defeated by Theseus.

    Web Animation 
  • Initially subverted in Fire Tiger vs. Acid Panther; The protagonist is a diminutive wild pig preyed upon by the titular characters, who get their elemental powers from magic berries. All that changes when the pig finds himself some berries with a bestial face on them, playing this trope awesomely straight and taking the fight back to the former predators.
  • RWBY: Boarbatusks are monstrous boars, both in terms of size and attitude. Like all Creatures of Grimm, they are exceptionally well-designed for killing humans. They are heavily furred and armour-plated on the top with huge tusks that would look more at home on elephants than pigs. They also have extremely powerful and long canine fangs, and a unique ability to attack by spinning their bodies like a Catherine Wheel. Their only weakness is a soft, unarmoured spot on their underbellies — which entails getting within goring range to actually hit.

    Webcomics 
  • El Goonish Shive's "Death Sentence" arc has a magically grown boar rampaging in a forest near Moperville.
  • The main antagonists in Ghost of the Gulag are a tribe of Russian wild boars at war with the Wolf clan. They are depicted being utterly massive, with their leader nearly twice the size of the Shadow Walker, who is a tiger.
  • In Hero Oh Hero, the bandit leaders ride acid spitting boars. They're less impressive when defeated.
  • The Monochrome in chapter two of Princess Chroma a huge boar with two sets of nostrils.
  • Averted with the earth demonesse Sahne in Slightly Damned: despite resembling a 12-foot humanoid boar with horns, she's actually a friendly individual and (alongside her friend Lakritz) defect from hell to start a polygamist family with the angel Kinako and her son.

    Web Originals 

    Western Animation 
  • Adventures of the Gummi Bears has an unusually massive wild boar as the Problem of the Week in one episode. It takes the King himself to fight (and ride) the beast off of a cliff to save the day.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: The boar-q-pine that attacks Appa in "Appa's Lost Days". It's only a third of his size, yet manages not only to hold its own, but actually wound him (keep in mind that sky bison are stated to weigh ten tons). Keep in mind, though, it's a hybrid of a porcupine and a collared peccary, both of which are known to give a nasty surprise to anyone who dares disturb them. Even hitting it with a tree is not enough to dissuade it, and Appa only gets it to back off when he throws it several hundred yards. The incident leaves him severely rattled, not to mention injured, and it takes Suki and the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors to get him to trust people again.
  • Batman: The Animated Series: In "Fire from Olympus", Maxie Zeus sends a boar after Batman. Given Maxie's obsession with Greek Mythology, it is likely his version of the Erymanthian Boar. Batman tries to lasso it, but it is too strong and ends up swinging him through a window.
  • Bernard: In one episode, Bernard throws fruit at monkeys who stole his food. One of the fruits hits a boar, angering it and sending it to attack Bernard.
  • Rooter from Harvey Beaks is a lot less ferocious than most of the other examples here, but he's still the strongest and toughest of Harvey's friends.
  • Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: At the end of Season Three, Mandu is shown fully-grown — being the same size as the two Mute pigs who work for the Chevre Sisters and sporting an impressive set of tusks.
  • Boar, the main antagonist of the Kung Fu Panda short "Secret of the Scroll", is an unstoppable warrior. He likes to remind the audience of this fact.
    "I am Boar! I am unstoppable! I am invis... incif... I AM BOAR!"
  • The Legend of Tarzan: One Punch Mullargan provokes a sounder of wild boars into attacking him, to lure Tarzan into fighting him. Tarzan has to rescue One Punch, Joe and Max from the angered boars.
  • Rocko's Modern Life:
    • Rocko is mistaken for a theater usher by a pig-woman named Tammy, who complains about a warthog dude smoking a cigar. Rocko (a small wallaby) has to tell the huge, grumpy warthog to put out his cigar. Somewhat subverted when the pig-woman throws both of them out of the theater, the warthog for smoking and Rocko for being useless.
      "Pummel him! Smack him with your flashlight!"
    • There's also an In-Universe football team called the Cleveland Warthogs.
  • The South Park take on World of Warcraft, after which tedious repetitive grind in MMOs is often referred to as Boar-killing amongst the community.
  • The Thembrians from the Soviet Union stand-in Thembria in TaleSpin.
  • Bebop in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) is a very mean boar-like mutant and henchmen of Shredder. He used to be human before his transformation.
  • A Thousand and One... Americas: Early on during the fourteenth episode, while Chris and Lon approach the whereabouts of the Anasazi, a short-tempered black boar that is eating grass spots them, and proceeds to chase them both relentlessly. Luckily, an Anasazi hunter shoots a couple arrows to drive it away.
  • Played with on an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures. When normally timid Hamton is challenged by some school bullies, who then start picking on Hamton's friends, this seems to hit Hamton's Berserk Button. Hamton then angrily tells the bullies (while breaking through walls and boards to get his point across), "In humiliating my friends, you have incurred the wrath of my piggy ancestors! The Wild Boar! The Razorback Boar! The Crashing Boar!" It's later revealed that Hamton had demolished some breakaway props to scare the bullies off, but his friends congratulate him on his quick thinking and on his standing up to the bullies.
  • The opening of The Wild Thornberrys has Eliza and Darwin getting chased by angry warthogs. Also happens in one episode where a warthog attacks and corners Eliza up a tree, only to be chased away by a hyena she befriended.

    Real Life 
  • The common wild boar is sometimes called a "Russian razorback" by hunters. Indeed, boar populations of central and southern Russia and Ukraine are among the largest, and hunting them is a long-standing national tradition. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is home to a particularly large population; nobody hunts them because of the radioactive meat, which caused a population explosion. In fact, the developers from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of video games included these animals as common mutants to be aware of in almost all of the game maps.
  • During the war in Ukraine, a team of Russian saboteurs tried to cross the border with Belarus in the Chernobyl region, but they stumbled upon a heard of wild boars. On of them was pushed down by a boar and hits his head, leaving him dead.
  • Wild boar are also native to large swathes of the Japanese countryside, and in the wake of the Fukushima accident, many wild boar emerged from the hills and forests to roam towns and cities temporarily evacuated to allow cleanup efforts to occur. Once they arrived, the boar population encountered and interbred with stray domestic pigs (giving scientists an excellent chance to study how hybrid animal populations gradually breed out domestic genes) and getting up to other forms of mischief, smashing windows of houses and shops in search for food and generally being a bit of a nuisance towards construction workers and people trying to make the area safe to live in again. Contrary to some news reports, these boar are not radioactive; they're merely trying to take advantage of an abundant amount of space, relatively large amounts of food and less humans around to hunt them.
  • Swine in general, particularly when cornered, can be very vicious. Peccaries — not pigs themselves, but close relatives thereof — are small and don't have external tusks, so they don't look menacing. Until they open their mouths◊, and you realise that there are around 20 of them together. They can drive away jaguars, and jaguars are strong animals that wrestle caimans and bite through skulls.
  • Farm pigs can grow over 11 feet in length, weigh up to half a ton, and have all the strength that their huge size implies. For this reason, most film and television productions only use piglets and young pigs due to them being much cuter, smaller and easier to handle. This has led to a common misconception that pigs don't grow much larger than dogs and many would be pig owners end up having to give up their pets after realizing how big they really get.
  • Micro pigs have a similar problem. They are bred to be pets and are incredibly cute as piglets, but as they reach adulthood they become bloated hogs that weigh a couple hundred pounds, like a medium-sized dog. While they are considerably easier to raise than their livestock cousins, many owners are still unprepared to deal with their size and needs. Quite a few less honest sellers simply sell ordinary piglets to buyers, who then unexpectedly find themselves raising a full-sized hog within a little over a year of their purchase.
  • Tourists who enjoy hiking in Germany, in deep woods rather than the Volksmarch trails, are advised on hearing the distinctly loud snort of a wild boar to immediately run up the nearest tree. If you value your life, there's really nothing else you can do. Make sure it's a sturdy one, because a persistent boar can uproot a leaner tree.
  • The male babirusa has particularly fancy-looking upper tusks that grow upward through the skull and curl backward, and can in rare cases eventually grow into the brain. Despite their appearance, though, they're not aggressive animals.
  • Warthogs. Also, Warthogs.
  • Boar hunting ("pigsticking") on horseback used to be a favorite sport for aristocrats and while it died out in Europe for lack of prey it hung on in India until much later.
    • At one time during The Raj the Prince of Wales was riding out with an Indian Noble on a pigsticking expedition. The inexperienced prince got too close, whereupon the Indian (who was an old hand) said "I know you are Prince of Wales, and you know you are Prince of Wales, but that boar doesn't know you are Prince of Wales."
    • Once upon a time boar hunting was considered good training for British military officers because (quoting from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica) "a startled or angry wild boar is... a desperate fighter [and therefore] the pig-sticker must possess a good eye, a steady hand, a firm seat, a cool head and a courageous heart."
  • In the Middle Ages, back when boars were still relatively common in Europe, a specialized type of spear was developed to hunt them; its salient feature was a stout crossbar behind the head, meant to prevent the speared boar from pushing itself down the shaft to attack the wielder. (A similar but longer and heavier type of spear was used to hunt bears, for much the same reason.)
  • An apparent problem in Southeast Asia according to this video. One attack is in Busan, South Korea and the other is in Ehime, Japan.
  • The white boar was the heraldric emblem of Richard III of England, who was known to be one of the country's best warriors.
  • Though not truly pigsnote , entelodonts (sometimes called "hell pigs" or "terminator pigs") looked the part. The largest species could reach the size of a bison, and they were powerful omnivores with the power to kill their own prey, such as small ancestors of camels and rhinos.
  • Andrewsarchus may have looked the part as well, given it's been recently discovered it was a close relative of the entelodonts. However, given that it's only known from one skull and literally nothing else, to what extent is still under debate.
  • Giant pigs form appeared in the fossil record several times, like Metridiochoerus, an enormous warthog that lived in Africa during the Ice Age, and Kubanochoerus, which was the largest pig to have ever existed, with males possessing a single horn on their foreheads for jousting each other.
  • Historically, pig herding was known to be a dangerous profession due to the constant risk that the pigs could attack, kill, and eat the herder.
  • Subverted by this friendly boar.
  • Feral pigs are one of the most dangerous and destructive invasive species in the world. Pigs are very hardy animals, can eat almost anything, and are restricted in environments only by the availability of water for drinking and bathing. They have no fear of humans, either. They also multiply like very large rabbits: a sow can have as many of three litters per year, of 8-16 piglets each. According to some estimates, just controlling a feral pig colony's population requires culling 90% of the pigs each year. In many places, pigs have become serious threats to both native animals and livestock: in Texas, for instance, feral pigs are responsible for the deaths of more lambs on sheep ranches than anything else. There's a damn good reason why many states have declared open season, no bag limit on feral hogs. However, in some places, like in the Pantanal, feral pigs are actually good for both wildlife and humans.
  • Boar (and sow hunting) is a pretty dangerous sport, to the point that semi automatics are usually recommended wherever they are legal.note 
  • An enraged boar is so vicious and distempered that they have been known to clamber up the shaft of a spear that has skewered them in attempt to harm the hunter wielding it. To that end, the "Boar Spear" arose: a pair of wing-shaped lugs right behind the tip prevents the boar from doing that.
  • Feral hogs are a problem in 39 US states. A recent iteration of people calling for gun control after a mass shooting was derailed when a rural American asked for a solution to 30-50 feral hogs running into his yard while his small kids played, and "30-50 feral hogs" became a subject of memes.
  • In a different manner, some fighter-bombers by Republic Aviation have traditionally taken on a porcine nickname, such as the F-84 Thunderjet (known by some pilots as 'The Hog') and the F-105 Thunderchief (better known as the 'Ultra-Hog'). This culminates to The Dreaded A-10 Thunderbolt II, which is also known as the 'Warthog.'
  • Wild boars were prominent among the "beasts of venery", the animals it was not disgraceful for a nobleman to hunt; the modern Boar's Head brand probably pays tribute to this.

 
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Beware of Boars

To be fair, there were warning signs of boar sightings posted around the park.

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Beware of Boars

To be fair, there were warning signs of boar sightings posted around the park.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (9 votes)

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Main / FullBoarAction

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