A lot of old forties and fifties print ads. Hilariously sexist, always manly.
An advertisement for a casino shows a man playing roulette with a squirrel next to him placing all his nuts on the table as his bet as the voice over goes "You can cash in now and save for a rainy day or you can be a man and bet it all." The ad is basically blasting men that don't play with risky big bets.
Chaosic Rune, and its sequel, Chaosic Rune ES. Yes, it's a manga about a card game, but it's about a card game that, if you lose, you die in the same incredibly painful fashion your monster did (and the death will always be in excessively graphic detail). Hot blooded, manly men and well endowed (95% of them, anyway) women fight evil villains in epic battles that include badass dragons, giant motorcycle robots, magical monsters, and more. And along with cards that summon monsters, there's cards that summon weapons such as swords, pistols, and shotguns. Yes, shotguns. It's like if ~Yu-Gi-Oh!~ were written by Bruce Campbell and drawn by Chuck Norris.
Cowboy Bebop is packed to the brim with references to manly action movies, a soundtrack packed with upbeat jazz and rock music, awesome fight scenes (including non-ironic use of Gun Kata!), and MANLY plot threads such as a guy trying to find a girl he lost all while battling his pretty-boy arch rival and another guy struggling with his dark past as a cop and still haunted by the girl he loved leaving him. Oh, and did we mention Faye Valentine?
Dragon Ball Z is about men with muscles so large (and in places where muscles aren't really supposed to exist) as to be an impediment to motion in scenarios even remotely grounded in reality fighting one another in increasingly violent and deadly battles (everybody except the Fake Ultimate Herodies at least once). Women feature, but mainly as a means by which to introduce sons into the mix. And breasts. By the time the series ended, the characters could quite literally tear the universe apart by shouting loudly enough, and were probably in danger of destroying the planet they were on if they so much as tripped.
Foul! Bulma allows for all the technological impossibility, and 18 beat up Vegeta without breaking a sweat.
Eyeshield 21 has this in spades, though given that it's about American Football, it's a bit of a given. Especially notable given that it's a post-Millennium Shonen Jump series that mostly manages to avoid Bishonen Jump Syndrome in an era rife with it.
Many of the characters go straight into Testosterone Poisoning territory, considering most of the cast have some pretty impressive muscles and they're only in high school. For example, the 15-year-old whose 6'7, eats nothing but meat, looks like a caveman, and smashed a car head on with his bare hands when he was in grade school.
Fairy Tail Gray Fullbuster and Elfman. He (Elfman) believes everything should be settled with fists.
Elfman's usually talking about things that are "Man", or what a Man should do, and all of his emotions are Man as well. It goes so far that in later episodes in both manga and anime other characters question whether Elfman himself understands what he is saying. And Natsu himself is has plenty of manliness about him.
Gildarts does some pretty manly things, one notable example was a simply showing his power, not even doing anything with it which left a crater and [[Determinator Natsu]] intears of fear. Another being destroying a black hole
Fist of the North Star in which a Bruce Lee knockoff defeats post-apocalyptic biker gangs by touching them gently in such a manner as makes their heads explode ["You don't even know you're already dead."]. Also features exploding shirts in every episode.
There was the following description of this manga in the internet:
"Every page oozes massive amounts of testosterone. I once knew this girl who refused to read it because she was afraid she'd get pregnant."
WARNING: The following opening sequence is the most manly sequence EVER CONCEIVED. The sheer amount of testosterone displayed may make you start karate chopping RANDOM OBJECTS!!
Fullmetal Alchemist: Profound manliness has been passed down the Armstrong line for generations!!
G Gundam: the most manly Gundam series ever, if only you can get pass how ridiculous it is; ridiculously awesome, that is.
This hand of mine glows with an awesome power! Its burning grip tells me to defeat you! Take this — my love, my anger, and all of my sorrow! Shining Finger! GO GO GO! Here I go! This hand of mine is BURNING RED! Its loud roar tells me to grasp victory! ERUPTING! BURNING!FINGER!!! AND NOW! HEAT END! Erupting Burning Finger! Sekiha! LOVE-LOVE!TENKYOKEN!!!
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It's been described as "the glam version of Fist of the North Star" for a good reason: even though 90% of the characters are well-dressed, sparkly attractive guys, it oozes testosterone, blood and raw fighting spirit from every page. It's not called manga for nothing.
Kinnikuman has muscular superheroes and supervillains duking it out Professional Wrestling style, typically while wearing nothing but a pair of short shorts. It's very title translates to "Muscle Man."
Kongoh Bancho. The main character crowns the first chapter by carrying a car through a Yakuza base, and can use his hands to carve a wall into a relief so beautiful as to make a grown otaku weep.
A lethal dose of manliness is breaking through! Try not to get addicted!
Mahou Sensei Negima! Jack Rakan can break the laws of magic and physics and general common sense with sheer "guts." Even his own power (reflected back at him) isn't enough to kill him! If he does die, he can still come back and give the hero a lecture if he wants! He's also the only character in the series that Barbie Doll Anatomydoesn't apply to...
Among the main cast, Zoro is the most prominent example. His daily schedule consists of three things: eating, sleeping and training. And when a fight is incoming... oooh boy.
Amongst the manliest men ever to walk the planet, Edward Newgate A.K.A. Whitebeard A.K.A the World's Strongest Man, is made out of pure manliness. He is about five times as large as a normal man (and is a biological human), is insanely strong and can create earthquakes. He can also take a TON of damage: at the time of his death, he had received 267 sword wounds, 152 gunshot wounds and 46 wounds from cannonballs - and did not have a single scar on his back, because he never, ever ran away from a fight. In addition to all of this, he is probably the purest example of A Father to His Men you will ever find: he call all his crew members and allied pirates "sons", and goes to war against the World Government to save just one of them.
Saint Seiya: Phoenix Ikki epitomizes this trope in every way possible. And not too far away, Dragon Shiryu, who is at his strongest without his armor, in a series where almost every character has one and wearing it is supposed to heighten your abilities to their max.
Then there is Guy Shishio the man who epitomizes Drop the Hammer.
To wit, everyone in this series Exudes Manly Tears, the men, the children, the women, everyone.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is all about drills. And fighting. Breasts feature prominently in the background. And the manliness is so awesome it warps reality. Manliness warping reality is actually the driving force of the plot.
Even the girls are manly enough to warp reality.
Heck even the pet piglet is manly enough to warp reality.
It's a show all about doing the impossible, seeing the invisible, breaking the unbreakable. Fighting the POWAH.
Lordgenome might top them all. He's a giant muscular man with an impressive spiky beard and spiral-shaped chest hair who goes around shirtless despite essentially ruling the world. He is so manly HE DESTROYS GIANT ROBOTS WITH HIS OWN BARE HANDS. HE CONSIDERS USING HIS GIANT ROBOT IN A BATTLE AS "HOLDING BACK". He ate a Big Bang. As in for breakfast. Without milk. Devoured the damn thing whole and then turned into a gigantic-ass drill. Said drill was directly responsible for the defeat of the Big Bad.
Simon invented time-space teleportation just to punch Rossiu in the face.
By the end of the series, Simon becomes so manly that a nice outfit and ridiculous-looking pair of sunglasses spontaneously generates on his body, right in time for the final battle.
As described to an anime club once: "Gurren Lagann is about brotherhood, giant robots, and killing furries with phallic symbols."
Soul Eater: BLACK*STAR WILL SURPASS GOD!!!!! YAHOOOOOOO!
Half of the group that fight with Toriko has the ability of Flexing their upper bodies to ridiculous levels. Known as "knocking". This of course includes Toriko himself
While Vandread is not an example by itself, Tarak (the planet where men live, essentially, as a One Gender Race) definitely is.
And the Tarak men make children together, which may either negate this trope or make it even sexier.
Vinland Saga. It's about vikings. It'll put hair on your chest.
Legend of Galactic Heroes. As a poster once put it "One does not simply walk into Iserlohn, after all. We're talking about knife-fighting Germans on spaceships, people." Indeed, the show is filled with larger-than-life "galactic heroes". Special mention has to go to Oskar von Reuenthal and Walter von Schenkopp, though.
Half of the titular Heat Guy J's dialogue is espousing what a man should and should not do.
Lobo a space biker who does anything he wants because he can, and almost no one can stop him.
Newspaper Comics
In The Boondocks, when Grandad and Mr. Dubois go to see Brokeback Mountain for the first time, they assume this is what they're going to get. It isn't.
John Freeman fights with bare bear hands, performs multiple backflips and other cool moves, is a One-Man Army and even pulls a knife out of his own back to use on the enemy. Bad Ass!
Not to mention shrugging off several rounds from the combine's rocket racket launchers and machine masheen guns while preventing the hug tower from blowing up long enough for the rest of humenkind to escape!
He needs to kill fast and BULLETS TOO SLOW!! Also, in the machinima, he lifts a train and throws it at the 'enemys.'
The Hunter in With Strings Attached, in pointed contrast to his “little” charges, the “Little Fool,” “Little Hero,” “Little Lunatic,” and “Little Weakling.”
Apocalypse Now. Along with Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, this suffers from Do Not Do This Cool Thing syndrome. Most young men want nothing more than to attack a Vietcong village with helicopters and napalm, and then go upriver in a boat, whilst taking drugs, wearing a flak jacket and machine-gunning peasants. Despite ostensibly being anti-war films, all of the aforementioned make war look awesome.
Anything with Charlton Heston, in fact. Whenever his broad shoulders crowd out everything else onscreen, the testosterone factor in the room increases hundredfold!
Beowulf. A 7' tall CG Ray Winstone takes on a much taller, hideous Grendel with: No sword, No shield, No armor, no clothes of any kind. And wins. And proceeds to dismember his arm using a massive door from a Viking mead hall. Nuff said.
Just about every movie Clint Eastwood is in. Heartbreak Ridge. A Fistful Of Dollars. Unforgiven. Gran Torino. Even The Bridges of Madison County. You heard us; Clint Eastwood could star in a movie about Bella from Twilight reading an Oprah's book of the month club book on Lifetime and still make it manly.
The Evil Dead series. Especially Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.
The Expendables. It's about a group of mercenaries sent to South America to depose a dictator, and it stars Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, and Stone Cold Steve Austin. It should go without saying, but here goes anyway: If you don't got balls, this movie'll give you a pair, and if you already have 'em, you'll get extras.
If that ain't enough, the sequel is guaranteed to give you a seizure from the overdose of testosterone. Take A Look Yes, that's right.... you saw it. It's... CHUCK MOTHERFUCKIN' NORRIS!!!
In Her Line of Fire. Yes, Mariel is manly and gets the chick.
Iron Man: Multi-billionaire with charisma and swagger keeps himself in shape, kicks all kinds of supervillain ass, and gets all the hot chicks, the hot cars, the house, the ultimate Man's Garage downstairs, fucking robots, and the fact he's cool about having been caught masturbating by Gwyneth Paltrow. Oh, and the fact he gets to wear FLYING ARMOUR.
Ninja Assassin. The title should tell you everything you need to know.
Predator (Entertainment Weekly once named it the Manliest Movie Ever Made, beginning with Arnold Schwartzenegger and Carl Weathers giving each other a manly handshake, featuring Jesse "The Body" Ventura toting a Gatling gun, and starting the climax with Arnold bare chested, covered in mud and screaming out a battle cry.)
The more modern Predators does its best to live up to this (hey, they even have Danny Trejo!) and you could say it's definitely the manliest movie of its year. No contest for competing with Arnie and Jesse, though.
Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. An expy of Kenshiro, who himself is an expy of Bruce Lee, learns kung fu from his uncle by shattering gravestones thrown at him. When he kills the drug dealer who killed his girlfriend, he is imprisoned; whereupon he fixes cut tendons in his arm with his teeth, punches the lower jaw off one of the wardens, punches the arm of the same warden thus causing it to explode, battles and defeats an ogre by throwing it into a meat grinder, and then escapes the prison by punching a hole through a concrete wall, also causing it to explode. Did we mention he has five bullets embedded in his chest the entire time but is totally unconcerned? This would honestly fall more into the realm of Testosterone Poisoning; if only the film-makers, as far as anyone can tell, weren't dead serious.
Sin City, especially Marv. Literally every scene featuring him has him either inflicting/surviving insane amounts of torture and damage, having sex with women (well, one woman, but that doesn't lessen Marv's badassery), and making hilariouslydark, deadpan comments.
Starship Troopers: Space football, rifles that double as shotguns, arachnid aliens that tear people in half, space-marines, explosions, and uncensored co-ed shower scenes. You pay for the whole seat, but you only need the edge!
"You're some kind of big, fat, smart bug, aren't you?" "Do you want to know more?"
And much like the earlier war movie examples, this was an anti-war film that still managed to make war look flipping awesome!
Though Star Wars as a whole doesn't seem to count (like Avatar and a few other examples above), Darth Vader definitely counts in the original trilogy (albeit slightly more dignified than other examples). And from the prequels, we have Mace Windu and Darth Maul.
Most classic war movies, that is- those which lean even slightly towards War Is Hell tend to avert this trope. A decent rule of thumb is whether it's in shelved under "Feature Films" or "War" at the video store.
Anything with Pam Grier. Real men love real women!
Which makes her role in Escape From LA a whole lot funnier.
It says right in the theme song for Black Dynamite that he does kung-fu when he wants to, and has sex when he pleases. What more could a man hope to be?
Bonuse points to Gable for saying the greatest line in the history of cinema: after 10+ years of kissing Scarlett's ass and getting nothing but attitude, he finally decides to walk out. And when she asks what she's supposed to do now...
The Three Musketeers is really an early example of this trope. The main characters' lives apparently consist of entirely of sex, drinking and fighting—the last for a cause if one is available, but one isn't really necessary.
By extension, Ciaphas CainHERO OF THE IMPERIUM! of the Warhammer 40000 universe, who was largely inspired by Flashman. He keeps up a Manly-and-Bad Ass-yet-humble facade to hide the fact that he'd rather be shuffling papers at a nice safe desk instead of going toe-to-toe with Hive Tyrants and Khorne Beserkers (though the skill with which he fights said monstrosities makes it a really convincing facade).
Louis L'amour, or more specifically, any of the hundred-odd Western books he wrote, which have largely been responsible for half the scripts of the Western genre of filmmaking.
Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart is absolutely obsessed with acting as manly and tough as possible. It ends tragically, as a deconstruction.
Wereworld is about as manly a young adult fantasy novel can get with Therianthropes ripping each other apart from chapter 3 onwards
Romance of the Three Kingdoms: If Ancient Greeks have the The Iliad the Chinese have ROTK. Set in the Divided Post-Han Dynasty China filled with one man armies who can hold a gateway by themselves alone, strategic geniuses bordering on wizardry, and rulers both righteous and ruthless.
Tarzan. A muscular jungle guy, who fights big apes and crocodiles. 100% manly!
H. P. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, or at least the character, Randolph Carter. In Dream-Quest, Carter scales mountains, rides Nigh-Gaunts, allies with the Ghouls, is the cause of several full-scale wars and goes toe-to-toe with Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos. Then in Through he Gates of the Silver Key, he ascends reality, discovers he meaning of life, becomes an alien then travels millions of light-years back to Earth with nothing but his stash of space-weed to help get him through it.
Many of William Hope Hodgson's stories (including his first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig) feature small groups of men (typically led by a Bad Ass) who face off against Eldritch Abominations, sometimes an entire Zerg Rush of them; even in the stories where the heroes lose (or die), they sure don't go down without a fight. Hodgson himself was something of a Real Life badass, which tends to make the manliness seem that much more authentic.
Spike TV as a whole. It's the result of taking "Rated M for Manly" and building an entire 24 hour a day TV channel around it, not at first, but now they have distilled their lineup. If it's not howling-in-your-face overdone manliness, if it's not about death or booze or babes you'll never get, it doesn't belong on Spike. Its Chick Flick equivalent is Oxygen, and its nerd equivalent is SyFy.
For that matter, American Gladiators itself. The third co-host of the show was Larry Csonka, the manliest man to ever play fullback, and the events that include wrestling, an urban assault course, beating each other with sticks, a game called Powerball that was the deadliest version of Red Rover ever, and finally, The Eliminator.
Don't forget John Winchester. He is Dean's role model, after all.
Lets not forget Bobby Singer.
Sure Sam Winchester seems like the sensitive one at first, until he starts ripping off vampire heads with barbed wire.
Especially whenever his brother's life is threatened.
Don't underestimate badass nerdy angels.
Sons Of Anarchy: Harleys? Check. Guns? Check. Brotherhood? Check. Good Old Fisticuffs? Check. Violence and Bloodshed? Check. Booze? Check. Willing and available women? Check. Gratuitous occasional nudity? Check.
The Sopranos - sex, drugs, violence, male bonding, fatherhood, and diatribes about the emasculated state of contemporary Western society abound. Frequently subverts itself, though, by reminding viewers that most of the "manly men" in question are in fact morally bankrupt human beings whose inability to express themselves in any way other than aggression makes both them and their families miserable.
Human Wrecking Balls is a show about enormous men that break everything they can WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!
Stargate SG-1: How Colonel Jack O’Neill has not been mentioned yet is beyond me. Teal'c also deserves to be on this list. Lieutenant Colonel John Shepherd and Ronon Dex of Stargate Atlantis do too.
Ramayana is a lot of things, ranging from morality tales to story True Companions-hood. But ultimately, it's about the quest of a man of strength to get his woman back from a big hulking monster.
Norse Mythology extols heroism, courage, loyalty, perseverance, sacrifice and more heroism. Contains lots of stories about slaying giants and assorted monsters. And it's idea of heaven is going to war in the day and partying & making love (with those valkyries) all night. Ragnarok is basically one big Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny involving the whole pantheon, and everyone on Earth except a pair of humans Badass enough to survive and rebuild the human race ends up dying.
Rustam is a mighty hero in (pre-Islamic) Persian Mythology (told of in the Shahnameh), complete with his own version of legendary Labours. He fought dragons, demons, and eventually, a sorcerous demon king.
Particularly Bon Scott; womanising, drinking and non-stop carousing make him something of a rock and roll archetype. Manliness to aspire to. They even have a song called Big Balls!
Slightly averted in that last case, as Big Balls is more of an extendedpun than a celebration of Scott's manhood.
Alestorm, scottish pirate metal, with epic songs about drinking, piracy, revenge, privateering, giant goddamn monster, plundering, and keelhauling landlubbers.
All That Remains: Perhaps the only Metalcore band that deserves mention, as nearly all of their songs feature manly imagery such as courage and fiery passion
Amon Amarth: Vikings, Valhalla and music videos containing epic battles. Johan's Badass Beard helps too.
Death Metal. Because nothing says MANLY like distorted guitars, growling, and usually Gorn laiden lyrics. Not to mention it's a Spin-Off of Thrash Metal
Hekla has the distinction of being the manliest piece of music ever written: Nineteen percussion players are needed. "Percussion" instruments required are "rocks with a musical quality," steel ship's chains, anvils, sirens, church bells, shotguns and cannons
That must mean the 1812 Overture qualifies as well.
Knorkator's Der Ultimative Mann (the ultimate man) tells women why they don't really want Mr Nice Guys.
"Hot blooded, bold, and handsome. Fast and athletic, determined and couragous. With a body like steel, and eyes like fire. I am what you want: The ultimate man!"
Although the WOAH-OH-OH-AH-AH-AH-AAAAAAAAAAAA-HA-AAAAH-AAAH-AAAH part is definitely manly, the rest of the song ("Highlander: The One" by Lost Horizon) qualifies as well. It must be heard to appreciate the manliness.
Peter Tosh: Self-proclaimed "The Toughest" and "Steppin' Razor", he's considered the hard man of reggae. He made it his lifetime goal to challenge authority figures and to encourage others to do the same. His marijuana consumption was legendary and he survived many police beatings. Also, he didn't really do love songs - he has a small handful across his whole career. He would also swear frequently, creating his own words like "shitstem".
Steely Dan (most of the time in a barfly kinda way)
Susumu Hirasawa Forces, Forces 2, Sign, Sign 2, Indra, Aria, pretty much everything he made for Berserk and some other masterpieces.
Tenacious D: (from The Other Wiki) "[Jack] Black characterizes Tenacious D's comic nature as an antidote to "the masculinity of rock", adding "There's also something funny about the macho-ness of rock. Like the bands that are the fucking hardest rocking are like, 'We'll fucking kick your ass, dude-with our rock.'"
"He asked us, 'Be you angels?' and we said, 'Nay, we are but men! ROCK!'"
Thrash Metal. Fast drumming, heavy, brutally melodic riffing, and harshly chanted vocals. Nothing says manly like that. Not to mention its pure old-school vibe!
It's derivative, Groove Metal, also has a tendency for displays of testosterone.
While the "Awesome" wolf shirt might seem manly, this is actually a common misconception. TRUE manliness would be demonstrated by either going shirtless, or wearing the skin of an actual wolf.
Or Theodore Roosevelt? He was seen by many in his own time as a god among men!
Mixed Martial Arts is like wrestling mixed with the ability to just flatly beat down your opponent instead of simply making them tap.
Professional Wrestling
Specific examples aren't exactly needed here since a staple of pro wrestling stereotypes in the general populous are muscular dudes wearing nothing but trunks hitting each other with chairs or raving about how awesome they are/you're about to get your ass beat at the next big show. It's obvious it was meant to be something of a showcase of manliness from the get-go. However, if you need some standouts...
Macho MAN Randy Savage. Nothing else needs to be said other than 'OOOOOOOOOH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
If any of you guys think Stone Cold Steve Austin should have a place in this trope, GIMME A HELL YEAH!!
HELL YEAH!!!!!!
IF YA, SMEEELLLLAAALA!!!! WHAT THE ROCK... IS COOKIN'!!!
William Regal's original WWE entrance music (when known as Steven Regal) was "HE'S A MAAAAAAN, SUCH A MAAAAAAN, HE'S A REAL, A REAL MAN'S MAN" while he would do manly things like mixing concrete, chopping wood and squeezing his own orange juice.
Warhammer may not be as over-the-top as it's erstwhile sci-fi spinoff, but it's no slouch in the manliness department.
In normal High Fantasy settings, the elves are somewhat effeminate, the humans resemble real-life humans, and the dwarves are manly. In Warhammer, the elves are manly, the humans are beyond manly, and the dwarves make Chuck Norris look like a milk-drinking wimp.
The Warriors of Chaos make them all look like dickless pansies. They're an incredibly muscular, bearded, daemon-worshiping, One-Man ArmyViking warrior race who thrive in the most inhospitable areas of the Old World, and who are clad in spiky, skull-studded Conan gear. And their best fighter tend to be eight foot tall Norse demigods clad in really,really intimidating plate armour (with skulls and spikes everywhere), wielding weapons most men struggle to lift and who are able to wrestle Bloodthirsters to the ground.
The humans in Warhammer fight many of the same gargantuan demonic monstrosities as the humans of Warhammer 40,000, but instead of artillery and lasers they've got steel breastplates, matchlock muskets, and swords. They still win.
Warhammer 40000 is the manliest tabletop game, no, manliest THING in existence. From its fluff to the posing of its models, everything about 40K drips pure, unbridled, unfiltered, grimdark MANLINESS! Some examples include:
A demi-god revives a walking war engine the size of the Empire State Building simply by touching it and saying "BE HEALED, MACHINE SPIRIT!"
A crazed, speed-obsessed Ork ramps his kustom bike off a cliff and slams through 12 Void Shields to enter the nuclear core of a walking war engine the size of a building and kills the entire crew while he's still on fire from breaking the shields. The burning skulls of the engine's drivers are now mounted on that Ork's bike.
Ordinary men with t-shirts flak jackets, flashlights laser guns, and standard issue balls of steel, battling metal zombies, gigantic all-devouring bug monsters, super-advanced aliens, ancient manipulators who have had thousands of years to perfect their methods of war, hulking psychotic genetically engineered warriors that live only to fight, and mindblowing horrors from beyond space and time...and sometimes managing to win. The fact that they've got some amazing tanks and trulybadassleaders helps.
Newborn infant travels through a Negative Space Wedgie unharmed, crash-lands on an icy hellhole and subsequently gets Raised by Wolves. Eventually he beats the most powerful human in existence in a drinking contest and then gets to lead an army of space Vikings across the galaxy. Face it, Leman Russ is the pure distilled essence of manliness.
The Orks and Space Wolves are basically entire factions of Manliness. To wit:
The Orks were inspired from Highschool Football hooligans while every other faction had it's roots in real-life armies (one of which is the spartans). They only care about Fighting (shooting and smashing faces), Food and Fast Cars, and their form of promotion is beating the crap out of the boss. They've also managed to fire guns which had no triggers or bullets, made the color red into instant speed potions, and invented space travel using a junk pile.
The Space Wolves are all Drunken Boistrous Bruisers. They are the only faction to be considered "good" in the setting, mainly because their leader holds a Daemon Axe, and still managed to intimidate the Inquisition from hurting innocents through brute force. They also ride wolves into battle, wolves the size of cars, and one of their more notable members managed to get laid 12 times within one night. Everyone has a badass beard and prior to the Grey Knight retconn they were the only non-chaos faction to survive in the warp without turning evil.
Ah, but what are these two compared to Khorne and his followers? He's a god of war, rage, strength, martial honour, battle and single combat, and is depicted as an impossibly muscular warrior with a horned, wolf's head sitting atop a massive throne of skulls floating in an endless sea of blood and his plane of existence is basically a site of never ending conflict. And his worshipers are giant, axe brandishing, war loving Blood Knights who also tend to be the best melee combatants in the setting.
If ever there was a game that was made of pure 100% mansauce, Warhammer would be that game!
God himself could not sink this game!
Correction: The only possible way God himself could sink this game would be by destroying the entire planet Earth by blasting it down to it's component atoms, then hurling said atoms into the sun, then throwing the atom filled sun into a black hole. Then probably throwing that black hole into another black hole. But that would be cheating. And it still probably wouldn't work. Bitch.** In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, even the nuns walk around with flamethrowers and pistols that shoot miniature rockets.
A third-person shooter of the universe is being created, starring the Space Marines (Titled Space Marine too, actually). The manliness of the game has already shown with footage of the Player Character jumping off the air transport he's on effortlessly when it was hit and losing altitude.
This is a game about aggression. This is the game of metal on metal combat. This is fuel injected power hopped up on steroids. This is WARMACHINE - the battle game that kicks so much ass we have to use all capital letters.
Exalted: Your predecessors kicked the ass of god-monster creators of the world itself. Now they are returning with an army of death and legions of demons, and it's your job to kick their ass again. The only thing right is what you declare as right yourself, you're beholden to no one, so get your swords/guns/big-badaboom-spells and start racking up the kills.
Asura's Wrath is quickly becoming manliness embodied. The main character has as much raw rage as Kratos, if not more, and takes on demons, gods, demigods, and anything else that gets in his way with pure manliness and rage to keep him going. At one point he fights an enemy that is larger than the planet, gets into a punching contest with the enemy's finger that's so intense that he breaks his arms off, then kills the guy with one final punch. And this is just an early boss fight. The following boss fights are even crazier. The best part? Asura's reaction to being faced with an opponent the size of the planet and tries to crush him with a finger the size of a mountain? Bring It. Oh, and the next few levels, Asura will fight enemies with just his feet, head, and rage, since he destroyed his arms taking out the last boss. But Asura doesn't care, that's more than enough. Asura only has five weapons: his fists, feet, head, his rage, and his planet sized cahones.
In a Bit of Irony, the game itself is rated T and C in America and Japan respectively, though it it is rated M and Pegi 18 in Australia and Europe.
Bad Dudes: Are you a bad enough dude to play this game?
Call of Duty: You get to shoot scores of mooks and blow shit up. And on top of that, you play as beefed-up Navy SEA Ls and one leatherneck in fricking Afghanistan! Am I missing anything?
Except Jin. Who falls mostly into Ambiguously GaySissy Villain territory, especially around Ragna. Ironic considering that he becomes Hakumen, part of the above 2/3. And even Jin becomes an insanely badass Determinator about halfway through the sequel.
Dragon Age: Origins: Try and pretend the trailersaren't fueled by this trope. Whether your character is a man or a woman, the 100% badass is mandatory.
Dragon Age II is slightly less over-the-top about it, but is arguably even more awesome.
The Qunari as a whole are incredibly manly, standing over 7 feet tall and going anywhere bare chested, with red warpaint and a permanent scowl on their faces. Entering their camp is like walking into a gym and a biker bar at the same time.
Duke Nukem is quite literally the embodiment of all that is badass.
Duke Nukem Forever, the game that has required 12 long years to gather the required amount of manliness necessary to do this character justice.
F-Zero; this game not only brings us Captain Falcon, but Samurai Goroh, Black Shadow, Super Arrow, and tons of other muscular masked racecar drivers. In a Japanese game with Loads and Loads of Characters, there is only one bishonen in the game (Jack Levin) and even he's manlier then most!
Forget the men! Mrs. Arrow, one of the few women in this sausagefest, outright shames most of the men in the series. She's easily one of the best racers and is depicted as a confident woman with the muscular physique of a female bodybuilder. She also happens to emasculate her husband, who is a bona-fide superhero and the defender of Earth. In spite of this, she's still eye-candy, has a veryfeminine figure, and is (at heart) a sweet, caring, nurturing, loving housewife and friend who grew up as an Ojou with an aptitude for music and linguistics and a fondness of high class culture. Try wrapping your heads around that.
Gungrave. How about killing alien zombie gangsters with hand cannons on each hand and a BFG hanging from your back, or Katana fighting Tanks with a Blind Badass Longcoat wearing Deadpan Snarker (said katanas have pistols on the handles) or Electrocuting said Zombie alien gangsters with an electric guitar wielded by a Rocking Ghost that looks like a Vash The Stampede expy? and that is not counting the Bosses.
Dwarf Fortress adventure mode is so hilariously manly, it often goes to Testosterone Poisoning levels. Did you just lose your four limbs ? NO PROBLEM ! Go, crawl through the landscape and bite your foes to death ! No healing for you, unless you are a werebeast !
You can wrestle bears and win. You can then throw these dead bears at other bears to kill more bears, even without limbs. Or even dual wield bear corpses and pummel your enemies with it !
Hell, even fortress mode is pretty manly. Mostly your legendary soldiers, who will become (if they don't die) so Bad Ass they can go and slaughter Eldritch Abominations on their own or entire goblin sieges, but your blacksmiths are generally pretty manly because they don't even need a hammer to work, they just hammer the metal with their fists.
Dwarves can ride a minecart while that minecart is full of lava. How's that for manliness ?
Even your female dwarves can be very manly. Maternity break ? What's that ? They can give birth in the middle of an enemy siege and still completely curbstomb the siege !
You jump/fly around the world, gib everything in front of you and you die a lot. Imagine that, at infinite.
Gears of War. "Delta Squad is in your house, bitch! You hear that shit? All you grubby-ass bitches are going down! Like, way down! Dead down! So down you ain't gonna know which way is up! Your asses are gonna be crying to your skank-ass Queen, 'Oh Mommy, don't let the bad man hurt us!' Fuck you! We gonna whoop yo momma's ass! WHOO!"
God Hand. Everything about God Hand is powered by 100% high-octane, weapons-grade, enriched testosterone, and 50% slapstick comedy. Yes, that is 150% of AWESOME. Therefore, God Hand probably straddles the line between this and Testosterone Poisoning.
In just the first 10 minutes of God Of War, you get to make Kratos literally tear people in half, rip the wings off of a harpy, gouge a Hydra head's eyeballs out, and impale another head on the mast of a ship. It only gets better from there...
In number 2, you start off by fighting the Colossus, a giant animated statue using a man that would bring Leonidas to his knees in shame, then just move on from there.
In three, you start off by fighting the leviathan, the apocalyptic living embodiment of the sea itself, as it is destroying the Titans who are climbing up Mount Olympus to wage war with the gods. Even more epic than it sounds. And then it's god slaughtering time.
The handheld version sets you off against a Cyclops as your first big boss. Well, that's understandable, smaller platforms gonna mean WHAT THE FUCK SOMETHING JUST ATE THE DAMN CYCLOPS!
You can say the whole Halo series represents this trope, especially when Master Chief appears in it.
League of Legendsloves this trope when it comes down to their male characters along with World of Buxom for their female characters. Some examples include Graves, Jarvan IV, Jayce, Pantheon, Draven, Alistar, and Darius. And there is even more to the list with Loads and Loads of Characters.
You can catch a cruise-missile mid-flight, and throw it at a robot the size of a building. You can skateboard on top of a bus, destroying everything in your path. You can crush a car into boxing gloves. You can smash your fists together so hard that everything in a hundred-foot radius of you is sent flying.
Pump It Up: This game allows you to choose a male announcer then jam to hip-hop songs about respect and power with names like "The Good Life" and "Like A Man" while looking at animations of overblown anime combat and gangsters. Classical Music is also abundant and features, among other things, cats piloting giant robots.
MCChris: Meanwhile, you're playing Resident Evil 4, it's like, "BITCH! Zombies comin' up the hill right now! Shoot 'em in the head! Shoot 'em! Grab the shotgun! you don't need to load it, we did that shit for you! What are ya pressing Select for?! you don got time to make a profile! Bitch, zombie's in the room! His axe's on fire! He killed your parents! Shoot him in the head! SHOOT HIM IN THE HEAD!"
Scarface: The World is Yours. Imagine Tony managed to escape from the finale of the movie alive. He now remembers how he was the baddest mofo around, and it's your goal to make all of Miami and beyond take notice that Tony's back and he's BAD—by literally rebuilding your Reputation (your experience points in this game). Your manliness (which you can build by doing macho things like shooting guys in the nuts and making timely—and profane—taunts) is literally measured in "Balls", which you can then use to go into a briefUnstoppable Rage.
He owes some of that gumption to his predecessor, the Hero of Time of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, who once took on a giant, fire-breathing Dodongo with nothing more than a stylish bracelet and some bombs. And that was back when he could still fit in most overhead storage compartments.
Let's also not forget the adult Hero of Time's battle cries.
The Elder Scrolls Arena features a beefy man-among-men blacksmith who forges swords with nothing but his tight pants, Fabio hair and his thick, hardened muscles.
The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim will go down in history as one of great examples of this trope. The game is set in a land of fantasy Vikings, now in the grip of civil war. Around you, a great empire has crumbled, and its remnant struggles against Nazi elves. The world is about to die, devoured by a dragon god whose reptile servants already roam the skies. And you're the legendary Dragonborn, the only one who can stop them. You kill dragons in droves and eat their souls to gain their might, while a barbarian choir chants a song about how awesome you are in DRAGON LANGUAGE. Did we mention that character creation includes an incredible number of options for facial hair?
We might add that the trailer features a man weathering the full force of a dragon's flames with nothing but a metal shield, then shouting it down before summarily kicking its ass.
Any of the Warcraft games, but specifically all installments with Samwise Didier as the main artist. Dear lord, even the elves are gigantic beefcakes you wouldn't find outside of a professional body builder contest. His profile on the Sons of the Storm website containing Blizzard artists' work flat-out says his style of art and favourite things to create are "Over-proportioned, primary colored, bulky armored dudes and monsters."
Until World of Warcraft's first expansion came along and wrecked it, by adding Blood Elves.
There is a certain (repeatable) quest, the premise of which is that your character is admiring a giant spear, not sentient, or magical, or enchanted. But it radiates so much manly that your character looks to the horizon, spots a Proto-Drake and decides that only one of you will live to see the dawn. To reiterate: This spear is so manly that simply LOOKING at it inspires you to kill dragons. With your bare hands, no less.
If you're gonna include Warcraft, then you can't forget Starcraft or Diablo.
Starcraft2 gives us Tychus Findlay: a Space Marine in Power Armor (that's not all that necessary,as he's already huge and muscular), who smokes enormous cigars, drinks hard, fights hard, carries a minigun, pilots a gigantic war machine that qualifies as a One-Man Army... Face it: You want to be this guy.
Up until the point that Raynor shoots you in the face because of your Face Heel Turn.
Jim Raynor is pretty awesome as well. After all, he managed to sit a drunken and suited-up Findlay on his ass while he himself wasn't wearing armor!
Final Fantasy X gives us the tag-team duo of Jecht and Auron. Wither in shame as we enumerate their manliness:
Jecht hurls meteors. Prior to that, he was a professional athlete superstar with the body of a bronzed god, perpetual shirtlessness, and masculine facial hair. When he ends up in Spira, he's immediately put in jail for being a raging drunken jackass. About the only mark against his manliness is his lousy treatment of his son (which tried to be tough love and just ends up being emotional abuse), but in the ends he takes responsiblity and mans up to his failure, thus attaining perfection.
Not to mention the final battle against him, in which he fights the heroes as a giant flaming Kaiju, whom at one point arms himself with a BFS by yanking it out of his chest. All to the tune on Otherworld.
Auron is a living legend of Spira, the only guardian ever to survive a successful pilgrimage. Despite being dead (from an unrelated incident following the pilgrimage), he refuses to rest and instead walks the world as a battle-scarred veteran who's utterly unimpressed by anything, speaks only when neccessary, and tries to raise his dead friends' kids to become the heroes he and his posse couldn't be, all while smacking behemoths clear out of the battlefield in single strokes and lighting things up with cyclonic hellfire created by whipping up a whirlwind with his sword and throwing his jug of booze into it. And when he's done with all that, he heads over to the Kingdom Hearts universe to back-talk Hades and nearly kill Hercules with one hand.
Speaking of, Jecht, mentioned above, manages to go from manly to even more terrifying strong. Without being in his Aeon form, he throws a punch at Tidus and whiffs him, and it stillsens him flying. And Jecht estimates it would be three days before he woke up, imagine what would have happened if the punch actually connected!
Sazh in Final Fantasy XIII. Specifically, in crystal stasis. See this picture◊, where he looks like he's about to get up and kick ass even though he's solid crystal. Also, Chocobo in the 'fro, 'nuff said.
Snow, who, despite the name, is a 6'7" dude in a longcoat and bandana with stubble who runs around shouting about heroism, beating up pagan gods with his bear hands (his weapon is the longcoat itself), riding around in a bike made out of attractive robot women, and leading a resistance movement that specializes in turning random mothers into badasses and whose favorite move is protecting others with STEELGUARD! His appearance in XIII-2 cranks this Up to Eleven by removing his ability to die.
This trope is apparently the reason Gaston hasn't been in any of the Kingdom Hearts games, aside from being too similar to Clayton. Actual examples from the series, most of which are incarnations of Big Bad Xehanort:
Terra, possibly the manliest playable character, who uses rock and darkness powers, wields a giant Claymoreof a keyblade and looks much, much more like an actual male than Sora or Riku. And he would also later be possessed into becoming Xehanort himself, who would then be separated into the above two characters.
Endless Frontier. The four male protagonists are a cop, a cowboy, and two badass martial artists. The females are a foxgirl, a demon-girl, two Robot Girls, and a pair of busty princesses for good measure. And to top if off, they got a half-dozen armored assault mecha for sidekicks.
Super Robot Wars itself is nothing to sneeze at in this department. Given the amount of anime series with Hot Blood involved in most installments, it's no wonder that all the manliness rubs off on the most quiet or wimpy characters.
Mutant League Football and its sequel Mutant League Hockey.
Gordon Freeman may be a theoretical physicist, but he goes after invading alien armies with a freakin' crowbar!!
And he's the strong, silent type. Lampshaded by Alyx Vance.
Alyx: Man of few words, aren't you?
Solid Snake and Big Boss make hiding under a cardboard box badass!
The Boss. Her favorite disciple is Big Boss and her son is Revolver Ocelot. This woman makes the world's manliest men.
Dealt with intelligently, though, because although the characters are extremely manly and cool the series portrays a lot of the usual manliness tropes (like a penchant for committing horrific and flashy acts of violence, or not having emotions) as, at best, bad life choices, and at worst symptoms of actual mental disorders obtained through experiencing battlefield trauma. Also, as a Stealth-Based Game, it does not reward you blowing everything up. Usually.
Bulletstorm: if it's not the fact that a simple kick to the face can throw your target 10 yards away and the whole focus of the gameplay is to be as creative as possible with your frags, the main character's dialogue is a constant stream of swears and he even looks a bit like Wolverine. And talks like him.
No More Heroes at times. We have Death Metal, covered in tattoos and with decorative bolts in his face. A little before you get to him there's a picture in his mansion of him sittin' with a hot woman. Destroyman, although insane, has a codpiece that fires super lasers. In the sequel, Travis himself gets a great manly moment in the form of one of his Dark Side powers, in which he turns into a friggin' tiger and shreds mooks to pieces. We also get Charlie McDonald, who fights alongside his throes of under-cleavage showing, Uncanny Valley invoking cheerleaders. Letz Shake returns as a robot that looks like a giant penis. Also, Travis's bikes, both of which are called the Schpeltiger.
Spec Ops The Line subverts this trope, using it to create an expectation in the player then pull the rug out from under them. At first, heroic, bad-ass-looking manly men from Delta Force go out to do manly things like save American troops in Dubai and shoot brown people in the face. They show no emotion except grim determination and professionalism as they announce, "Tango down!" and kick all kinds of ass. By the end, the characters are war criminals screaming with mad rage and terror. They shout, "I want him FUCKING DEAD!" at targets and howl like animals when hit. Their rugged good looks have been reduced to scarred, broken ghoulishness. Nervous breakdowns, freakouts, and PTSD-induced hallucinations start raining down from the character's shattered minds and morals. War Is Hell and possibly Hell Is War as the game deconstructs this trope - along with most tropes found in a modern war shooter video game. Then the game flatly delivers to the player a "The Reason You Suck" Speech just for wanting to live this kind of fantasy in the first place.
Websites
Badass of the Week, in which every week the tale of a new badass is told; including real-life superspies, legendary warriors who kill monsters, and a guy who disarms live mines by whacking them with a pipewrench. Has its own page on this wiki, as befits its manliness. There are occasional articles about women as well, but those too are more manly than you will ever be.
Homestuck. Equius Zahhak achieves this all by himself. He has much more muscle than a kid/troll his age should have (and when it shows, it shows), a few of his teeth, one of his horns and his sunglasses are all broken from his sheer strength, he's the STRONGEST troll on Alternia and never fails to emphasise the word STRONG, can only safely and adequately express his rage in cage matches with robots he built himself, he breaks/bruises everything and everyone with the lightest of touches, and instead of playing Sgrub properly he STRONGjumped straight through his first few gates. Also present are Dad Egbert (powered by pure mangrit) and Bro Strider (flash stepping ironic rapping roof ninja with more than a passing resemblance to Kamina).
Hell Bastard Comix (or Hellbastard Comix) has a little of everything: demons, violence, pirates, pop culture references, violence, and deep love of alcohol (and also violence).
Western Animation
Manish Man, the Manly Minotaur, of Adventure Time is an example of this trope. But he seems to be a more joyous character than most listed.
Iron Manmakes this list once more. This is from the second season of his 90's cartoon, in which the show seriously grew the beard... or mullet, as the case may be. Face-melting guitar solo. Medieval-style blacksmithing — not merely without protective gear, but without a shirt. All the while "I! AM! IRON MAN!" roars in the background.
An actual response to the video:
I had testicular cancer before I watched this. Then I watched this. My balls, now properly inspired, got their act together and proceeded to beat cancer to death. Thank you, Iron Man.
Korgoth Of Barbaria. More manly than the Conan the Barbarian movies, and actually more faithful to the original books in sheer amounts of ultraviolence.
From The Venture Brothers: Brock Samson. He may not kill you with a gun, but he'll kill you with anything else he can get his hands on!!
In one episode he actually gets sucked into space. Not only does he survive, but he proceeds to get laid almost immediately afterward.
Well he had to warm up some how after being in the coldness of space.
In "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic" Brock enters a machine that shows people their deepest desires. He fights off a horde of ninjas with a knife, beats up cowboys wielding flamethrowers and riding T-rexes, whallops polarbears in cars with gatling guns, and has sex with Molotov Cocktease. It doesn't get any manlier, folks.
Subverted and played straight. The band deals with less "manly" issues like body image, abandonment issues, and group therapy, but they also make things that aren't really Capital M Manly and make them so, like coffee (which they will make blacker than the blackest black times infinity) or golf (which Nathan will play alone, hatefully, in a rainstorm).
The Argentinian animated movie called "Boogie The Oily One" contains every single archetype from any kind of action film (film noir, western, gangster film, etc.) and combines it with lots, lots of Black Humor.
In The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack, Captain K'nuckles tries to prove to Flapjack that he's this trope. He is less than 1/4 of this, at least whats left of him that's human anyway.
Beavis And Butthead like rock 'n' roll, heavy metal, gangsta rap, beer, cigarettes, breaking things, fighting, guns, explosions, Toilet Humor, fire, and chicks with big boobs so they pretty much LIVE for this trope.
They don't fit the trope, mind you. But they yearn to.
Extreme Dinosaurs has a seriously testosterone laced intro. Hard rock intro coupled with scenes of muscled-up dinosaurs fighting each other pretty much screams this trope.
Street Sharks, seriously, what could be manlier than muscular mutant humanoids with shark heads and razor sharp teeth, and can chomp about anything hard as steel, going around riding motorcycles and bursting through walls every five seconds?!
Heavy Metal is possibly the greatest animated example of this trope. All but one (the scientist's daughter) of the women characters are naked at one point, and none of them (with the possible exception of Taarna) act remotely human. World War II pilots are shot and turn into zombies. It's also loaded with sex, violence and a kick-ass 80s rock soundtrack. The ultimate example of animated testosterone.
Exo Squad of all the cartoons in the 90's this is the only one which has the most gratuitous amounts of Beam Spam, and explosions that can only be matched by Gundam.
in the contrasting segment of the Janus Syndicate parody video Counter-Strike For Kids.
When those in charge think that a foreign video game would sell better with this aesthetic than the one it came with, you get the American side of American Kirby Is Hardcore.
The World of Badass is often the setting for this trope. Compare Darker and Edgier, Awesomeness Is Volatile. Not directly related to Rated M for Money in any way but the potential for intersection between the two is high.
Compare with Testosterone Poisoning, where the appeal to masculinity is exaggerated to the point of parody (though expect to pass through here before hitting Testosterone Poisoning levels of manly).
Contrast Chick Flick (which is this trope's opposite), Tastes Like Diabetes, Kawaisa and Moe (which are all opposed aesthetics).
