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In many series, there will be a character who is much larger than most everyone else, very strong, often quite quiet, and very often they will be black.
Sometimes they can be the Token Minority, sometimes they're a Proud Warrior Race Guy, and sometimes they're a Gentle Giant. But the fact remains that when you get right down to it, they're a Scary Black Man.
Authors will often claim this is not actually done in a racist way (not intentionally, anyway), as most anybody who is so much larger than the other characters will usually be equally scary (unless they're also outgoing or jolly). However, perhaps because of a lack of very large Asians who aren't sumo or very large white people who aren't professional wrestlers in a cameo role, they are often black. (This is the same reason that a Huge Schoolgirl usually isn't mean, either.) However, media generated in the U.S. or territories influenced by U.S. media depictions cannot escape the legacy of the Big Black Buck (as featured in such influential films as D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation) or the savage (noble or not). Amongst other reasons, when much of the creating population and the consuming population is not of African descent, then the Black Guy becomes other, and as such, easier to position as an imposing, scary force.
The few black characters in anime are usually some variation on this.
See also Scary Minority Suspect.
Examples include:
Live Action TV
- Teal'C, from Stargate SG-1.
- Worf, from Star Trek The Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine; beneath the fairly dark makeup is an African American Michael Dorn..
- Tyr, from Andromeda.
- Toberman, one of the few black characters in the classic Doctor Who (in the episode "Tomb of the Cybermen").
- Mr. Eko on Lost.
- The Haitian on Heroes.
- Hawk, from Spencer For Hire.
- Vaughan Rice, from Ultraviolet.
- WWECW wrestler Big Daddy V is 500 pounds(!) of half-Scary Black Man, half-The Giant; of course, the one thing (well, two things... possibly three) that's even scarier than his power and his quietness are his gargantuan man-boobs. I tells ya, those things are just creepy... Nelson Frazier, the man behind V, has actually been in the WWE off and on for 16 years, first as the rapper Mabel, then as the aristocrat King Mabel, then the gothic Viscera, and then as the world's largest love machine. However, he has always been a scary black man, as anybody who saw him break The Undertaker's face in 95 can tell you. Though at least, in those incarnations, he had a shirt.
- The Knights Of Prosperity lampshades this, as Rockefeller is explicitly referred to at one point as "our big scary black dude", a label he has no problem with.
- Bounty hunter Jubal Early from Firefly.
- He's actually quite slightly built, but makes up for it with the scary.
Character Actors
- Any character ever played by Michael Clark Duncan. He notably played Kingpin (in the comics, a white character) in the Daredevil movie, partially due to being the largest qualified actor casting could find.
- Which led to a version of the same character in a Spider-Man adaptation also being black.
- Any character ever played by Samuel L. Jackson, amongst other things.
- Any character ever played by Keith David.
- Mr. T, although he is rather more outgoing than most Scary Black Men.
- Vin Diesel is mixed-race, but he often fits the mould.
- Melanie Brown, who was Scary Spice of the Spice Girls; female, yes, but she embraced the trope, as seen by her callsign.
- B-movie actor Tom "Tiny" Lister. 6'5", ripped, cross-eyed, and very shouty. Even his IMDB headshot
 is scary.
Video Games
- Barret, from Final Fantasy VII.
- Back Alley Brawler from City Of Heroes... interestingly enough, he USED to be white, but was Ret Con'd black when the designers realized that their NPC superhero lineup lacked a Token Minority.
- Balrog (M. Bison in Japan) from Street Fighter.
- Subverted by Dudley of Street Fighter III, who is big and black, but not all that scary thanks to his "refined English gentleman" personality.
- Atlas from God Of War II. Also Kratos to some degree; while he is white, his voice actor is black.
- Craig Marduk from Tekken 4/5 is a white example.
- Kongol from "Legend of Dragoon" is an example, though he really doesn't have any specific ethnicity.
- Subverted by Hammer from Castlevania Sorrow series, who is surprisingly friendly, and always ready to lend a hand if Soma needs it.
- This troper is shocked Boman Delgado from Rival Schools hasn't been mentioned.
- Heavy D! and Seth from The King Of Fighters.
Film
- Included on a technicality is Darth Vader. The man inside the suit is Dave Prowse, a white man, but the voice is James Earl Jones, who is black.
- Despite having a rather unimpressive physique, Jones' *voice* is impressive enough that he can pull off roles that basically fit this stereotype -- see playing the King in Coming To America -- or, hell, playing Mufasa in The Lion King.
- Revenge of the Nerds pulls out a whole squad of 'em, when the Tri-Lamb head gives Gilbert the support to speak out in front of the Alpha Betas.
- Hightower in the Police Academy movies.
- Directly referenced in a Discworld context by a scary troll, Detritus, who appears in an exact
rip-off parody of the "Your uniform doesn't scare me!" gag.
- The Duke, portrayed by Isaac Hayes, in Escape From New York, is a villainous Scary Black Man. He's the Duke of New York! He's number one!
- Danny Trejo is a Scary Mexican Man in everything he has ever done, particularly his brief role in Grindhouse.
- In Burning Mississippi, the FBI brings in a professional Scary Black Man to intimidate the corrupt mayor into revealing who committed a hate crime.
- From the movie The Last Dragon, we have Sho'Nuff! Shogun of Harlem!
- John Coffey from "The Green Mile" can be considered an example of this due to his massive size, spooky healing powers and the fact that he is a convicted child murderer, though he turns out to be innocent as the film progresses.. He is also a Gentle Giant.
Western Animation
- Roadblock from GI Joe.
- Freight from GI Joe Extreme
- Heavy Duty from GI Joe Sigma Six.
- Lothar from Defenders of the Earth. His teenage son Lothar Jr. might grow up into one of these.
- Mr. T (again) from his self-titled cartoon.
- Cobra Bubbles (Ving Rhames) from Lilo and Stitch.
- John Henry Irons/Steel from Superman The Animated Series. (Though he was quickly established as a Genius Bruiser, he's no less scary for it.)
- First mate Kale ({{24}}'s Pres. Palmer) from the Dreamworks' "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas".
- Dr. Joshua Strongbear Sweet from Disney's Atlantis. He's more of a Badass Bookworm and is the only one who enthusiastically takes to the exotic Atlantian food and utensils.
Anime
Derivative Works/Roleplaying
- Survival Of The Fittest has a few examples from versions one and three, most notably Marcus Roddy, Darnell Butler, and Bobby Jacks. Marcus Roddy and Darnell Butler are made slightly less scary by the fact that they're Gentle Giants, but Bobby Jacks is a professional boxer who has few qualms about playing the game to win, Marcus is one of the biggest students on the island during version one, and Darnell happens to be his school's most skilled fighter on top of being a star athlete, and strong enough that he is said to have once picked up a 6'11, 300 pound player on an opposing football team and slammed him to the ground. He becomes significantly more scary if someone makes him angry.
- White Wolf's Exalted has the canon character Panther, a huge shirtless Zenith caste with a temper. Featured prominently on the 2nd edition book looming over the other characters.
Comic Books
- The second Tattooed Man, a Green Lantern villain, is a huge black ex-Marine (and a member of the Geoff Johns Awesomely Revamped Villains Club). Unlike the previous bearer of the powers, this Tattooed Man knows how to use his powers to maximum effect.
- Killer Croc's pre-croc form is typically African-American.
- Thunderball of Marvel's Wrecking Crew. He's also the smartest of the group.
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