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Random bystander: He was holding a half-million-pound jet, for cryin' out loud!
Likely the most primal super-power. Super Strength doesn't require any long-winded explanations and it's not at all nerdy.
Very common power from the Silver Age. Usually does not know Kung Fu. Usually, this is the linchpin power of a Flying Brick. Characters with a wide variety of Superpowers will very frequently include this as a baseline ability. Characters with super strength may demonstrate it with a Neck Lift. A must for The Big Guy. This is also the most common Charles Atlas Superpower.
See also World's Strongest Man and Required Secondary Powers. Villains show this off with a Neck Lift, Minion Maracas, Barrier-Busting Blow, or Hoist Hero over Head; heroes do it by being a Load-Bearing Hero. Characters with this power may sometimes not know their own strength. They are often described as having The Strength of Ten Men.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In Ranma ½, most of the martial artists seem to have some level of greater-than-human strength, implicitly because of the fact they practice martial arts. Akane Tendo, generally considered the least skilled of the group, can carry a refrigerator up and down a flight of stairs in her arms, single-handed and at a jogging pace. Mousse, who generally prefers fighting with weapons to bare hands, is capable of splitting a huge temple bell with one punch. Ranma Saotome himself is generally considered Weak, but Skilled because he prefers agility and technique to brute force, as opposed to Ryoga Hibiki, who tends to break things around him without meaning to, but is still capable of feats like lifting multiple tons, smashing through solid rock and wood with his bare hands, bending steel and leaping multiple stories.
- Ranma might be considered so in fandom, but Word Of God doesn't think so. In any case, during tests of strength like arm wrestling and such, he's pretty much one of the strongest; whenever he is in a "strength vs strength" sort of lock or such with Ryouga, they're basically dead even.
- Tsunade is the mascot of this trope for Naruto with monstrous super strength as her trademark ability. In her first appearance, she slams her finger into the ground and splits the earth before her into a large chasm. Orochimaru realized that she would put his life in danger if she was at full strength. Soon after this, she wields Gamabunta's Sword, slamming it down on Manda's jaw. In Part II, she smashes the Nigh Invulnerable Susano'o on her own.
- The second example is her student, Sakura Haruno. She can now shatter boulders, launch Naruto over 300 meters (over 1000 feet) away with a single punch, and break the highly defensive Hiruko puppet's defense with ease.
- Third is Naruto Uzumaki himself: he was able to stop a giant snake from hitting Sasuke during the Chunin Exams while tapping into the Fox's chakra. His most triumphant example is during the Pain Invasion, with him stopping Pain's giant ass rhino by grabbing its horn and then throwing it high into the sky while in Sage Mode; even without Sage Mode, he was able to shatter Preta's now stone body by just flexing his muscles. Later, he was able to fight Kyubi himself, slamming him flat on his back, although this was a Battle in the Center of the Mind.
- Fourth is Jiraiya, Naruto's master, who could kill some of Pain's summons in just a few kicks; in Sage Mode he could punch a giant ram a significant distance out of a massive skyscraper that stood in Amegakure, and he could blind the insanely durable taijutsu body Human Path with just a single kick.
- Fifth, we have Killer Bee and the Raikage, A, both of which demolished Sasuke in two separate occasions. Killer Bee could wield Zabuza's BFS with one hand and he doubles as being Made of Iron. A smashed through Sasuke's Susano'o on two separate occasions by just strength alone, and his Liger Bomb... causes mass destruction.
- Sixth, but not least, are Rock Lee and Might Guy, whose entire philosophy is devoted toward physical power (being practitioners of the Strong Fist Style) and skill over ninjutsu. Lee, as a 13-year old child, was able to uproot trees.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Teana made the mistake of telling Subaru to put more strength into boosting her up during a wall climbing exercise in the Ground Forces Military Academy. Subaru did... and accidentally threw Teana all the way up to the sky in the process. This was our first clue on Subaru's cyborg nature.
- In FORCE, most members of the Huckebein family sport some degree of boosted physical strength but so far Fortis is the only one who has done a clear demonstration by crushing a soda can to a little marble with barely an effort.
- Apparently a standard ability of the vampires in Hellsing. Alucard dual-wields Hand Cannons that are explicitly said to be beyond human ability to lift, while Seras's BFGs keep getting bigger and bigger.
- During a flashback sequence in Volume 3, Integra's father tells her during a lecture that vampires can rip humans apart, "like wet rags." Alucard, naturally, does exactly that in the same chapter to a SWAT team, including one instance of apparently bitch-slapping a man in half.
- Strike Witches implies that the characters have Super Strength, what with their ability to carry around huge guns. Gertrude really shows off her strength in episode 12 when she throws an I-beam.
- The Tower of Druaga has ten-year old Coopa be capable of carrying Utu (who was still in armor) and Melt's rod bag with little difficulty.
- Some time in Season 2, she was able to pull up the (big and presumably heavy) metal cage she was trapped in, while injured. And at the end of the season, she was able to pull up the entire band of True Companions from a dangling cliff.
- Dragon Ball fighters tend to always have at least super strength to rely on. Even Mr. Satan, the Fake Ultimate Hero, is shown in the anime to be able to drag multiple buses behind him and break stacks of telephone books. And not just the usual strongman demonstration of ripping them in half (which is in fact quite difficult), he breaks them with a karate chop. And does the same with a large stack of bricks. And his strength, while very impressive among Muggles, is a tiny fraction of what even the weakest fighters in the main cast can do.
- The Z Senshi's strength is so great they can rip mountains up with their bare hands without even trying, for example. Even young Goten could throw rocks clean through a mountain without even going Super Saiyan.
- Forget fighters: Some non-fighters seem to possess an abnormal amount of strength. Case in point, Maron was able to pick up a lawn chair and attempt to smack Master Roshi around with it.
- Eclair from Kiddy Grade has super strength as one of her main powers.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist (manga and Brotherhood, at least), during Scar's first fight with Major Armstrong, he comments that shiny man's strength is "almost superhuman". Granted, it's not exactly super strength, but with muscles like those, along with his alchemy, it could count.
- Cyborg 009 has Geronimo Jr., a.k.a., Cyborg 005, a massive Native American who has this as his main ability.
- In Axis Powers Hetalia, this seems to be a trait of several nations:
- America could lift a buffalo as a toddler. He is also seen once dragging UK's car with one hand (and apparently he was walking about with said car for an hour). Moreover, during the 2010 Bloodbath, a party (possibly Finland) calls America and Russia 'superhuman.'
- One anime episode has a very angry China punching through a wall with eleven chops, kicking through another one with just one kick and even visibly cracking a third one with just his head before America stops him.
- Greece is also implied to have this "power". One picture shows him wrestling down Germany seemly without trouble, in a strip he knocks out and carries around France's body like it's nothing, and in the Gakuen Hetalia PSP game he manages to move around several life-size stone statues and not even pant afterwards.
- Belarus' introduction includes her clawing through a door and ripping its knob out with her bare hands. She also is able to break multiple fingers on Lithuania's hand with very little effort.
- Hungary can beat up entire Prussian armies basically by herself.
- Most of the characters in One Piece, even Mooks, have super strength, so much so that it might be a requirement in being a good pirate.
- Luffy is able to push two buildings apart, Zoro is able to lift a house over his head and throw it at his opponent and Sanji is able to send Elite Mook Kuroobi crashing into a building through several walls with great ease. This isn't even the biggest showing of their strength.
- Fishmen have super strength as a species-wide ability; the average fishman is ten times stronger than the average human, and when in the water they get even stronger.
- With that said, there are fishmen that are even stronger than your average fishman, like Jinbe, Tom, and Fisher Tiger. In the case of Jinbe, his feats put Energy Steroid guzzling Hody Jones (who is also a fishman, by the way) to shame. When Wadatsumi (an incredibly strong gigantic fishman) ate an Energy Steroid, he tried to punch Jinbe, who casually counters with a roundhouse kick, which was so powerful that it injured Wadatsumi's fist and caused him to fall to the ground.
- The Arlong Pirates and New Fishman Pirates were built up to be so fearsome, because of their immense strength as fishmen, but all in all, they're just your slightly above average fishmen that can be outclassed by several superhumans. This is one of the reasons why the Straw Hats were able to defeat Arlong's crew. And post-Time Skip, this is taken Up to Eleven when Zoro effortlessly defeated Hody Jones with a single slash underwater , even though Zoro was going to pass out, because he couldn't breathe.
- Ku Fei in Mahou Sensei Negima! is essentially the Badass Normal of the main cast yet still one of the top fighters. Even Negi has to resort to buffing himself with dark magic to match her sheer physical strength.
- Quite a few of the girls in 3-A can enhance their strength with either ki or ki and magic combined, Asuna, Kaede, and Setsuna, for three. And if Ku Fei wasn't doing it in the early books, she certainly advanced to it by the Mahora War arc.
- In Black Butler, Finny of all people is able to easily lift and toss a large marble statue. He throws it with such force that it becomes A Twinkle in the Sky...before falling at terminal velocity toward Ciel's head.. Due to this super strength, is the only one able AND willing to play with Plu (a giant, demonic dog).
- While most of the cast seem to be Made of Iron with regards to being physically injured, a few in Soul Eater demonstrate extreme strength. Outside of gods like Shinigami and Kid putting craters in the scenery when not using their Weapons, Black Star has been known to punch holes in walls thanks to his soul wavelength.
- Standard feature of Youkai in InuYasha. The titular character, despite being half-human, is in the high side of the curve for Youkai. Not surprising, as his late father was one of the strongest youkai to ever live.
- Heiwajima Shizuo in Durarara. Though he was born with the strength, he initially lacked the Required Secondary Powers and repeatedly broke his bones throwing stuff at people. Shizuo's body toughened up, though, so by the time most of the series take place he routinely chucks vending machines around and swings lampposts without suffering any ill effects.
- Makoto/Lita, AKA Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon possesses great strength even in civilian form. She can pick up and throw man-sized enemies without much strain. All the Sailor Soldiers have enhanced strength in their Sailor forms, but Jupiter is the most powerful physically. Appropriate, given the god she's named after.
- Ryoko in the Tenchi Muyo! worlds often has this ability; one manga episode had her rather crudely performing 'brute force barbecue': heat plus (surprised) cow.
- Gurren Lagann, Most Mech's have it, but good ol' Gurren Lagann Lifted what was the equivalent of an aircraft carrier with a mountain-city balanced on it at the same time while the aircraft carrier was pushing into the ground.
- Kagura from Gintama can toss around boulders and cars with ease and stop Gin's scooter by grabbing the back of it, among other things.
- In Rosario + Vampire, pretty much every monster out there is stronger than a normal human, but most especially the vampires, whose primary power is this.
- A-ko in Project Ako has super strength as part of her powers of being the daughter of Wonder Woman and Superman. B-ko gains super strength via her Powered Armor.
- The title character from Kimba the White Lion has this power along with Super Vitality.
- Fairy Tail's Natsu has this, probably due to his dragon magic. Erza is even stronger than Natsu.
- Daily Lives of High School Boys
- Tadakuni's little sister Mei:in High School Boys and Tower she can lift two guys both older and bigger than her on her shoulders, and in High School Boys and UFO Catchers she can shake a UFO Catcher at the arcade which the main trio together couldn't even move.
- Habara shows signs of this in the unanimated skits. Remember, she was an Enfant Terrible-level bully when she was an elementary schooler.
- In High School Girls are Funky — Superficially, she incidentally burst a volleyball.
- In High School Girls are Funky — Megaton Poke, Yanagin had Habara try out the "punch machine" in the arcade in which the former just broke the new record. While Habara didn't get as many points as Yanagin by far... close inspections revealed a hole on the punching pad after Habara played with it, and upon asking Habara said she didn't know she has to clench her fist in the first place... Which mean she just stabbed her hand into the punch pad.
- Ikushima Saya in Onidere is often compared to a demon. She's the strongest Delinquent around and her biggest fear is that her beloved one would leave her.
- Almost all Digimon have this to some degree. Most champions have no problem smashing up trees and boulders and even low tier megas can toss around pieces of skyscrapers like they were footballs. But by far the most impressive showing was when Lucemon blew up three moons at once by pile-driving another Digimon into one of them. A notable aversion would be Lillymon. Despite being an Ultimate level Digimon, and holding her own as well as the other Digimon, her physical strength is at the level a woman of her stature and build would have.
- The antagonists in Part I and II of Jojos Bizarre Adventure all have superstrength to some degree. Even the basic zombies in Part I are so strong that it's almost impossible for a normal human to beat them without the Ripple. Actual vampires like Dio Brando even more so. Strongest of all are the Pillarmen of Part II. At one point, Wham upends a stone pillar and uses it as a club!
Comic Books
- Superman is the standard comic-book example, as well as one of the most over-the-top due to Power Creep, Power Seep. During the Silver Age, he regularly juggled planets.
- The Incredible Hulk is the standard to which other Super Strength wielders are compared in the Marvel Universe, and he only gets stronger as he gets angrier. However, he's only the strongest in theory. In practice, because his strength is never the same at any given moment, there are tons of people whose physical strength can far exceed Hulk's own at the time, as Zeus will now demonstrate
 , while at other times, Hulk can easily overcome people who are explicitly stronger than those who previously handed him his ass, like Juggernaut, Thor, or Zeus' own son, Hercules.
- Unlike her cousin, She-Hulk doesn't get stronger when she's angry. However, her strength when she's "hulked out" is exponentially proportional to her strength as a normal human. A month of exercise and an extra pound or two of muscle mass can make her as strong as the Hulk at baseline; too bad for her she never goes to the gym except to show off when she's already big and green.
- The X-Men have had many examples, with Beast being the earliest and Colossus probably being the best-known.
- Writers bounce back and forth over whether or not Wolverine has Super Strength or not. He was originally conceived as having strength roughly equal to Spider-Man's, and is often shown doing things that a normal human being shouldn't physically be able to do, but that could simply cross into Charles Atlas Superpower. At any rate, some writers say he has low level super strength, others say he doesn't technically have it as a power, but as a by-product of his indestructible bones and healing factor, he is able to exert more strength than a human would without injuring himself.
- Ghost Rider, Spider-Man, Silver Surfer, Superman, Darkseid, Apocalypse, The Sentry, The Mighty Thor, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Ms. Marvel, Rogue (until recently), etc. are all cases in point of Super Strength being a "basic feature" included for characters with Combo Platter Powers. The degree of their strength varies considerably, but all are vastly stronger than it's possible for a real human to be.
- Note that Spider-Man's "proportional strength of a spider" line crosses with another trope as well.
- Usually a default benefit of Powered Armor, especially if in comics, such as Iron Man, Doctor Doom, etc.
- The Astérix comic books are about a village of Gauls who fend off the Roman empire with the aid of a magic potion that grants them the power to send Roman legionaries flying with their punches. Asterix's friend Obelix doesn't get a dose of the potion when all the other villagers are lining up for it, since he fell into the cauldron as a baby, an event which increased his strength permanently.
- On one occasion only Obelix was given a tiny dose... so that he could punch his way out of a pyramid.
- Popeye - even without his spinach he is still capable of feats of strength even the strongest man can't do. With it? He's as strong as he needs to be.
- There is one Donald Duck cartoon where he gets Super Strength and flight but not the Required Secondary Powers to go with it. A rocky island he lifts up crumbles in his hands, and a ship he salvages from the ocean floor snaps in half, comically squashing him.
- Old characters in both The Beano and The Dandy employ this trope examples include Pansy Potter from The Beano and Desperate Dan from The Dandy.
- The Tick has the proportional strength of a tick his size who engages in routine exercise.
- The Savage Dragon and thus, many of his villains, have super strength as well.
- In Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman, it's never suggested that Reid is more than an unusually strong person, but he routinely performs impossible feats of strength, like lifting cars and milktrucks. Justified by Rule of Funny.
Fan Works
- The iCarly Fan Fic, iFight Crime With Victorious, has several characters with this power. Sam has a Muscles Are Meaningless version that she rotates with Carly and Freddie's powers, while Ricky Flame, the pathetic adult who tried to prove his strength in a junior league wrestling tournament, becomes a Smug Super after getting the World's Strongest Man version of this.
- Paul in With Strings Attached. Two levels: “low,” where he can lift about 15,000 lbs., and “high,” whose upper limit is unknown, but greater than 90 tons. Both levels give him proportional Power Incontinence. He doesn't find a whole lot of use for his strength, since he's an Actual Pacifist.
- Sarah Squall, aka Stratogale, from Rise of the Galeforces, practically rivals Mr. Incredible in terms of physical strength. Note that this power was one of her abilities in canon, at least according to her official NSA profile.
- In Renegade, Kaidan Alenko has superhuman strength thanks to being a Tiberium mutant in this timeline, to the point that he can chuck a two-ton Mini Mecha with a bit of help from his biotics.
- In The Wizard In The Shadows, Emrys develops this. To what level is hard to tell (so far), but he's seen easily killing Trolls and tearing an armoured Uruk in half with his bare hands without breaking a sweat.
Film
- Ghost Rider gives an impressive visual example of super strength violating the laws of physics, as the Rider snares a helicopter with his chain and pulls it down. Unless he's heavier than a helicopter, tugging on the chain should have launched him toward it. Whatever demonic powers were at work somehow knew which he was trying to achieve.
- Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles has super strength and (apart from some degree of implied invulnerability) that's pretty much it. It's actually quite a hassle, because if he doesn't concentrate on keeping it in check he can accidentally saw a plate in half when cutting his steak or indent his fingerprints into his car, and the only way he can believably work out is to rig up an exercise machine with entire locomotives used as weights.
- The recent CG-film version of Beowulf certainly implied that the title character has beyond normal strength and fortitude. As he should: The original poem states that he had the strength of 30 men.
- Mr. Hyde, in — among other things — The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
- While not Superman level, David in Unbreakable can rip car doors off and lift over five hundred pounds.
- In his case, Super Strength may be a direct side-effect of his immunity to injury. Normal humans probably would be able to lift that much weight, if not for self-defense reflexes in our muscles, which stop us from exerting too much force. With no fear of sprains or muscle tears, David can use 100% of his muscles' potential, where most of us poop out at a fraction of maximum contractile power.
- Fezzik in The Princess Bride. Most noted during Westley's first encounter with the giant, as Fezzik holds an enormous boulder in one hand, and nonchalantly chucks it over his shoulder when they decide to fight hand-to-hand combat.
- The Adventures Of Captain Marvel film serial of 1941 showcases one of the earliest film examples (which makes sense, given its the first superhero film of all time) with the titular Captain Marvel. Throughout the 12 episode serial, the Captain lifts enormous stone columns, large fallen trees, elevator cars, and other feats of strength, to the point where he ends some of his fist fights with criminals by casually slapping them.
- The Golem in the silent movie classic The Golem is arguably super-strong, single-handedly supporting the ceiling of the Emperor's palace at one point.
- Captain America and Red Skull were shown to possess this in Captain America: The First Avenger as a result of the Super Soldier serum.
Literature
- Golden Boy in the Wild Cards franchise had super strength that the authors tried to portray realistically. If a speeding car or tank slammed into him, for instance, his super strength did nothing to anchor him to the ground and he'd get tossed around like a ragdoll — he had to drop down to the ground and let the tank run part of the way over him, then lift it up and hurl it aside.
- Earthcrafters in Codex Alera can give themselves super strength by using their furies. Particularly powerful ones tend to wade into battle wielding huge BFSs and warhammers to get the most out of this ability.
- Fezzik in The Princess Bride.
- Eponymous character in Aatomik has super strength as his main power.
- Most nonhuman creatures in The Dresden Files, especially when compared with puny humans.
- Wrestling Matt in Of Snail Slime.
- Trapped on Draconica: All dragokin have this though it varies between them. Daniar may have the greatest but she's too honorable to use half of it on humans.
- An interesting version shows up in the John Ridley books Those Who Walk In Darkness and What Fire Cannot Burn. People with superstrength tend to look scrawny and lack muscle tone because they are unable to strain their muscles enough to gain visible musculature.
Live Action Television
- One of the basic abilities of a Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Vampires also have super strength, though it's unclear whether they have it to the same degree.
- Most of them don't. Angel, one of the stronger vampires in the franchise, admits that Buffy is stronger than him.
- Vampire strength varies greatly, with older vampires tending to be stronger. "Bloodline" seems to matter too; those turned by truly ancient vampires like the Master seem to be unusually strong even by vampire standards, from the moment they're turned. The most commonly seen vampires in the Buffyverse, Angel and Spike, benefit on both counts.
- Joss also admitted in interviews and commentaries that he never set a definitive limit to the strength of either vampires or slayers as that could get in the way of writing the story. So for the sake of the plot, they're all Strong as They Need to Be.
- Elliot Reid from Scrubs has it. What? She has the finger strength of a rock-climbing jazz pianist, once lifted J.D. off the ground by his neck, and is described to be "thick through the trunk"!
- She also has powerful legs, demonstrated when she snapped a food tray in half and served as the bottom third of the World's Most Most Giant Doctor for about 15 seconds; Lonnie isn't as sturdy as she is.
- Jim Powell on No Ordinary Family is super-strong.
- Niki on Heroes has super-strength. Too bad it drives her insane.
- Volume 3 introduces Knox, a villain who's Super Strength is powered by fear. While Niki has run-of-the-mill super strength, as long as Knox is surrounded by fear he can get stronger and stronger, kinda like The Hulk is with anger. On the other hand, he's powerless if nobody around is afraid.
- There was also Mohinder, after he injected himself with a formula for super people. It started to kill him, but he got an improved formula that allows him to use without fear.
- The writers seem to really hate this power, which is strange considering it's one of the cheapest effects to do. Volume four Mohinder is the first character with this power that wasn't either killed off in one episode, permanently insane from his power, or required some gimmick to make it work (such as fear).
- In No Heroics She-Force is the world's third strongest person. And apparently sexually clumsy...
- Subverted in The 4400, when a guy gets super strength, and uses it to kick the drug dealers and hoodlums out of his neighbourhood park. Then one stabs him. Fortunately, his death inspires the people of the neighbourhood.
- In Star Trek, Vulcans, Klingons and the Jem'Hadar are both several times stronger than humans. And of course there is Data...
- In Haven, Duke Crocker eventually learns that he has super strength (enough to send a guy flying twenty feet with a shove), but it only activates when the blood of a Troubled person makes skin contact with him (the blood absorbs into his skin), and it only lasts for a few minutes or seconds. While active, his eyes glow and he becomes semi-berserk.
- Percival in Merlin. He's HUGE and his first scene in the show involves him saving the lives of Arthur & Co by causing a rock slide.
Mythology
Tabletop Games
- Mutants And Masterminds separates this out from enhanced strength. Enhanced Strength applies to all abilities using strength such as increased lifting capability, melee damage, and skill checks and for all practical purposes, just directly increases your strength score. Super-strength only applies to lifting and "feats of strength" involving sustained force like forcing open doors, grappling, etc, but is available at a fifth of the price. It's also traditional used for power stunts like super-breath, GroundPounding, and the like.
- Third Edition just uses Enhanced Strength (Limited to lifting), due to the greatly accelerated progression of carrying capacity.
- GURPS lets you buy Lifting or Striking strength separate from normal strength. To simulate people like Superman or the Hulk the Super Effort enhancement increases normal strength exponentially when you really need it.
- Represented in the old Marvel Super Heroes RPG with a good roll for your Strength stat...if you were playing a character type with access to the upper echelons, that is. (Incredible is about Spider-Man strength. Monstrous or...whatever the level after that was...lets you hit people with oil tankers.)
- The Potence discipline in Vampire The Masquerade gives vampires super strength. Clan Brujah is most known for it, but it's generally relatively common among vampires. Even some ghouls eventually learn lower levels of it.
- Ghouls get the first level of Potence from the very beginning.
- In Vampire The Requiem, Potence is replaced with Vigor, which does pretty much the same thing.
- The Paramount Strength gift in Nobilis. You can also take it as an Affliction, in which case you will probably feel rather like Equis Zahhak.
Toys
- BIONICLE: granted by the Mask of Strength.
- Different Kinds of Toa have a degree of it ingrained naturally. The Makuta all posses it. Some Characters with impressive strength include Nocturn, Takutanuva, Tren Krom, and especially Mata Nui.
Video Games
Web Comics
- A standard trait of Constructs in Girl Genius, as shown by the Jägers, Punch and Judy, and Von Pinn. This fact has led to some Wild Mass Guessing on whether or not Gilgamesh is a Construct after he managed to lift and throw a Humongous Mecha.
- It also seems to be a power of any sufficiently powerful Spark when they're in The Madness Place. Then there's the Baron.
- Subverted in Van Von Hunter. The magic gauntlets acquired by Van's sidekick let her lift very heavy things, but not throw them, push them, or manipulate them in any other way.
- Mr. Mighty from Everyday Heroes has this power, as does his daughter.
- In the Walkyverse, the majority of abductees have superhuman strength and durability as standard powers.
- Nova from Overlord Academy has this power.
- A few characters in Homestuck possess MANGRIT, which is basically Super Strength but manlier and grittier. John's Dad is strong enough to bend jail cell bars and throw around safes. The troll Equius also possesses considerable MANGRIT — too much in fact. He injures his Lusus with grateful pats on the head which are done as gently as possible — made even more impressive by said Lusus being one of the strongest on the planet and the only one that could survive raising Equius. Every time he tries to enjoy a glass of milk the glass breaks and he spills it. He wants to be an archer but has to settle for being a fistfighter because he always breaks the bows. John eventually develops enough MANGRIT to Dual Wield sledgehammers.
- Demon Lord Horribus from Sluggy Freelance was treated as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain for years, until his demons finally got their own major story in "That Which Redeems". When he finally confronts Torg in the climactic ending, the gloves really come off. Though it has already been hinted that a Demon Lord is very powerful, his true power is revealed when he attacks the heroes by knocking down stone buildings, picking them up and using them as projectile weapons.
- The Order of the Stick
- Roy is able to body-slam a half-dragon by his tail after he obtained a Girdle of Giant Strength.
- Thog, when in his berserker state, can shatter steel prison bars and break the support pillars of a palace.
- Gunnerkrigg Court has Jones, who can crush a stone with her hands.
Web Original
Western Animation
- One of Bravestarr's animal-based powers is "strength of the bear."
- Hego from Team Go in Kim Possible has Super Strength as his power.
- Lisa Simpson had this power in a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons.
- From Teen Titans, Cyborg, Starfire, Beast Boy (depending on form; his gorilla form is the go-to for feats of strength), Pantha, and believe it or not, Aqualad. (Hey, YOU try breaking down the doors to Titans Tower with your bare hands!)
- Ed from Ed Edd N Eddy is shown to have incredible feats of strength such as lifting the pavement out of a sidewalk, uprooting a tree and carrying it along with him, carrying a cow on his shoulders while running, bending swing sets and monkey bars into the shapes of chickens, lifting a whole house off the ground,etc.
- Rolf and Sarah are also shown to be incredibly strong.
- It's justified differently in-universe for each of them: Ed is too dumb to know he can't be that strong, Sarah's a product of her extreme temper, and Rolf gets it from backbreaking farm work.
- Brock Samson of The Venture Brothers fame has what's best described as Charles Atlas Superpower but there are times (particularly when angry) when he pushes into the realm of Super Strength like when he ripped apart a car that had been programmed to kill him with his bare hands.
- Whilst shedding Manly Tears (the car in question being his own beloved Charger)
- On The Fairly OddParents, The Crimson Chin has this power. Francis and Trixie get it briefly in "The Big Superhero Wish".
- The Gnormans on Jimmy Two Shoes.
- Implied in The Little Mermaid when Ariel manages to move an underwater boulder (most likely sealed shut with an imbalanced volume on both sides) blocking her Grotto with relative ease.
- Even more implied with Flounder. How the heck was he even able to get a giant statue of a Prince into Ariel's Grotto. (Assuming the only people who knew about the Grotto were Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian)
- The power of the Ox Talisman in Jackie Chan Adventures.
- Raseem in The Arabian Knights.
- The eponymous gargoyles from Gargoyles. Even the smallest, Lexington, is physically much stronger than a normal human, able to bend steel and iron and rip walls out with ease. Goliath and Demona are the strongest of them all-Goliath was actually stated to be able to use a bus as a weapon, and Demona yanked out a massive boulder with ease and uses it as a wrecking ball.
- Comet Guy, a frequent annoyance to Darkwing Duck, has this, as do most of those from his homeworld.
- In Batman Beyond, the Batsuit gives Terry McGinnis super strength.
- Jenny frequently used hers on My Life as a Teenage Robot; her Bragging Theme Tune claims she has "the strength of a million-and-seventy men."
- Radioactive waste in Family Guy gave Lois this power.
- Big Macintosh, has this as his explicit special talent, to the point that the CMC tied a house to him and he was barely slowed down. Other characters can be strong too, but, unlike Big Mac, it's generally a case of Strong as They Need to Be with a dash of Rule of Funny or Rule Of Cool.
- A few of Ben's aliens in Ben10 possess super strength compared to humans. Four-Arms and Humongousaur are two of his strongest forms, though others are also far stronger than the average human. Vilgax is also incredibly strong, whether it's due to cybernetics or powers he took from defeated opponents, to the point that he can easily manhandle Ben's stronger alien forms.
Real Life
- The protein myostatin limits muscle growth in people and other mammals. Rare mutations can suppress the production of myostatin, or reduce the body's sensitivity to it, resulting in heightened muscle development. Scientists bred this condition into "mighty mice", and at least one German child was born with the condition, resulting in double the normal amount of muscle mass. The obvious drawback to this condition is that subjects would starve to death much more quickly than normal because they could not catabolize their muscle mass properly.
- A normal human being has the capability to lift over a ton in emergency situations, and only emergency situations. It shuts down the immune system and digestive system when it happens, however (not permanently, of course), and doesn't last more than a minute.
- It also tends to cause lots of muscular damage, meaning being able to do this all the time would be incredibly detrimental to the survival of an organism and would be selected against. It's only an emergency thing because temporarily damaging muscles in exchange for surviving a short-term threat is a benefit.
- Super Strength in the original sense of the trope (the superpower before all superpowers, which makes your Kung-Fu superfluous) is encountered in the animal kingdom - in bears. The ordinary bruin is able to do a lot of things while obviously not built for them, like running for a short time as fast as a racehorse, digging with the force of an excavator, raising truck-sized boulders to get its food and beating most other land animals to a pulp if cornered, despite the common "Bear vs. Gorilla" forum babbles. Beyond all shortcomings of its supposed heavy and unwieldy ursine build, it all plays down to insane muscle power.
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