Tripod Terror

"And this Thing! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees and smashing them aside its wallowing career; a walking engine of glittering metal, reeling now across the heather, articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder."

— The War of the Worlds (1898)

The second most iconic of alien vehicles after the Flying Saucer, Rule of Three comes into play for the Alien Invasion, when our new overlords bring out their army of Three-Legged Humongous Mecha. This may also be here to induce What Measure Is a Non-Human? or earthly being, as most animals tend to have even numbers of legs.

The Ur-Example is undoubtedly The War of the Worlds (1898), and its many adaptations since. Compare and contrast to Spider Tank. A Sub-Trope of Starfish Robots.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Deucalion Kataphrakt in Aldnoah.Zero is a three-legged machine, though it prefers to float thanks to its anti-gravity engines.
• Gundam:
  • The massive Zeon wonderweapon Apsaras 3 in Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team has three dangerously spindly-looking retractable legs, though it usually floats through the air using an exotic particle-based flight system, giving it a strong resemblance to both the book and 1953 movie versions of the classic Martian Fighting Machines.
  • The Mobile Suit Gundam SEED spinoff manga Delta Astray has the Guardshell, which can change from a tripod to a Gundam-like form that uses the tripod's carapace as a giant yo-yo. Considering it was designed and piloted by a Martian, it's definitely a Shout-Out to War of the Worlds.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, also taking place on Mars, features the Mobile Workers, small, futuristic tanks with the three legs ending in wheels. The 'terror' goes in two directions here, though — while Mobile Workers are notorious for their ability to shred infantry and break up riots, they're little more than tin-plated coffins if a mobile suit shows up.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing's spinoff Frozen Teardrop, also taking place on the red planet, gets in on the act with an upgraded version of Epyon that turns into a three headed dragon.
• The Olmecs' three-legged flying machine in The Mysterious Cities of Gold, which is also capable of walking.
• The Invaders in Occult Academy will use them to crush Mankind.
• The Dark Nebula Empire has these in the Space Battleship Yamato spin-off film Be Forever Yamato.

Comic Books

• When Martians from Killraven's reality invade the mainstream Marvel Universe, they arrive in giant tripods.
• Mr. Hyde lampshades the design of the Tripods during the Martian Invasion in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2. He then proceeds to deconstruct the trope by commenting that there's a good reason why no animals have only three legs, and demonstrates this reason by breaking one tripod's legs, causing the thing to fall over. He then breaks the cockpit open and eats the horrified Martian inside.
• Sonic X features Tripods in #7 and #12.
• The Dark Horse Comics version of The War of the Worlds makes the tripods more fearsome than the previously known (such as the page image).
  "That thing I saw! How can I describe it?"◊

Fan Works

• Deconstructed in Slipping Between Worlds. A group of "visitors" from Roundworld (Earth) provoke a mass panic that Ankh-Morpork is being invaded by pitiless alien conquerors. The possibility of a Slight Disagreement of the Worlds is explored in Discworld style and includes stolid Discworlders debating the self-evident drawbacks of top-heavy tripod war machines. A farmer looks down at a cattle grid and nods, saying "I'd like to see 'un get over this 'un!", while a Man in a Pub smugly discusses how unbalanced a tripod would be to — for example, a troll or a golem grabbing one leg and flipping it over. "Sides, your golem. Made out of invulnerable heat-resistant ceramic. Your troll. Fire a death ray at him, just makes him dumber and angrier. Them tripods is just scrap metal either way!"

Films — Animation

• The Boxtrolls: Snatcher builds one, with the help of captured Boxtrolls, to break into the Boxtroll lair and round up the rest.
• In Cars, Lightning McQueen has a dream where he stars in a movie about spark plug tripods (actually "quads", as they have four legs) destroying the city.
• In War of the Servers, the Mingepods aren't even really tripods. They have two front wheels, and a third "leg" with another two wheels on it. Thus, while they're technically tripods (three 'legs') they still have four points of contact.
• As War of the Worlds: Goliath is a sequel to the Trope Maker, naturally the Martian tripods reappear. However, this film supposes that humanity reversed-engineered leftover Martian tech from the original invasion and have used it to create a Diesel Punk world full of human-built tripods armed with human-built heat rays, which become major centerpieces of the action when a second Martian invasion takes place.

Films — Live-Action

• Lost in Space features a race of insectoid creatures with this flaw. The DVD commentary acknowledges this, admitting that nature would never design anything like this because of the off-balance problem.
• Scary Movie 4 attempts to spoof The War of the Worlds with the triPods, which resemble an iPod on three legs with a "Destroy Humanity" playlist.
• Even Star Wars is not exempt from this.
  • Though not as huge as most other examples, the Droidekas are functionally tripods when they're not rolling around as wheels. They aren't meant to move around much like this, though; it's mostly just to steady them, like an actual tripod.
  • The Walkers in the original trilogy were inspired by the War of the Worlds tripods.
  • The AT-AP (All-Terrain Attack Pod) Walker seen in Revenge of the Sith is a tripod. However, the third leg is retractable — it primarily serves to steady the Walker when using its artillery cannon.
  • Aside from being four-legged, the spider droid matches the Wellsian Martian fighting machine, right down to the heat ray. Only the traditional black-smoke bomb launcher (which rarely appears outside Wells' literary masterpiece) was replaced by an anti-personnel blaster cannon.
  • In a more direct homage to The War of the Worlds, we have the Separatists' Octuptarra tri-droids, which come in the smaller combat tri-droid variant and the much larger magna tri-Droid variant.
  • R2-D2 himself is tripodal, although his supporting struts don't bend, and he rolls rather than walks.
• Even the "floating" Martian war machines from The War of the Worlds (1953) have, if you look closely, three repulsors keeping it hovering in the air. (They were originally planned to have the usual tripod legs when Ray Harryhausen was attached to bring the tentacled Martians and their machines to life via stop motion animation, but the amount of money available and the limited technology of the day led them to be changed to fit a Flying Saucer motif.)

Literature

• In Alien in a Small Town, the Jan and most of the animals from their world have trilateral symmetry. The Jan are cone-shaped, with three stumpy legs underneath and three arms sprouting out the top, two ending in hands and one in an eye. Like Rama's biots, they revolve as they walk.
• The Idirans in Consider Phlebas have three legs.
• The Day of the Triffids goes into a bit of detail about how the titular walking plants move, comparing them to a man on crutches and specifically noting that it's not an especially fast or stable method of locomotion. Being plants, of course, they don't really need to move very often or over a great distance.
• Expedition has a number of tripodal creatures, including the Sac Back, Beach Loper, and the Groveback (a gigantic animal that goes about on two legs and a massive supporting tail).
• Larry Niven's Rainbow Mars features creatures with these — they are meant to be roughly the Martians from The War of the Worlds (1898), had they lived on the same Planet Mars as the Martians from John Carter of Mars, the Martians from "A Martian Odyssey", the Martians from Out of the Silent Planet and the Martians from Flash Gordon. Niven calls them the Softfingers or Astronomers, depending on who is talking about them.
• Rendezvous with Rama features three-legged biots used as a sort of mobile sensor. These move very fast by pivoting around on one leg, using each of them in alternation, and reversing the direction of rotation from time to time. As a matter of fact, a three-part symmetry is central to all things Raman. Unlike many of the examples on this page, they're harmless, unless you cut into one's power-cell while dissecting its corpse.
• The Tripods features, well, what you might expect. (The aliens that pilot them also have three legs.) John Christopher essentially filed the serial numbers off of Wells' Martians and depicted what the world might be like if their initial invasion had been successful. He also does a fair job of justifying the impracticality of the 3-legged design; the number 3 appears to be integral to the culture of the Masters, presumably as a consequence of their biology (as well as 3 legs they also have 3 tentacles and 3 eyes), and as well as the tripodal design of their vehicles, they also incorporate triangles and pyramids into their architecture and technology at every opportunity.
• The tripodal war machines that lead the Martian invasion in The War of the Worlds (1898) are the Trope Maker, and arguably the Trope Codifier as well.
• In Warstrider, the tripods are actually the humans' titular mecha.

Music

• The album cover for Doctor Steel's album People of Earth shows an attack by giant tripod robots reminiscent of The War of the Worlds — the foreground shows Dr. Steel controlling them. (A similar tripod is seen in the background of the album art for The Dr. Steel Read-A-Long.)

Tabletop Games

• BattleTech advanced to the point where the 135-ton Ares, and its slightly smaller precursor, the 125-ton Poseidon, have been added to the game as the first two tripod mechs. Players have yet to decide if the advantages they have in firepower, armor, and their three-person cockpits make up for their extremely low speed. Beyond those two monsters, though, there are rules for constructing tripodal mechs (as well as one canon design that's a mere 75 tons, the Triskeleon). They get bonuses to stability and can easily change direction compared to standard designs, but with the added tonnage cost of the extra leg and the parts needed to control it they're a bit more limited in overall firepower than a standard bipedal mech of the same size and speed would be.
• Dungeons & Dragons has several three-legged monsters, such as the Xorn, the Otyugh, and the Triapheg.
• Genius: The Transgression has the Martian Empire, whose primary leaders, the Overlords, are based on the martians from The War of the Worlds, and as such go to battle in three-legged vehicles.
• In Monsterpocalypse, the Martian Menace faction has some figures based on the tripods from War of the Worlds: the monsters Deimos-9 and Phobos-7, and the Reaper and Despoiler units.

Toys

• G.I. Joe had the Cobra Pogo Ballistics Battle Ball (called such despite it not actually being ball-shaped) toy. It was a red and black three-legged craft that used jets to bounce around battlefields. Several years later, it was renamed the Invader and released in a neon green color with a spring-fired missile launcher instead of the machine gun the original had.
• The LEGO Alien Conquest theme includes one, the Tripod Invader, as its third-smallest set; its cockpit can split off its legs to act as a Flying Saucer.

Video Games

• Invoked in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim: the gargantuan Hi-Quad robots, though four-legged in design, are likened to the Tripods from The War of the Worlds, complete with the book's name dropped and a quote from its pages.
• Command & Conquer:
  • Scrin Annihilator and Reaper Tripods from Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars. The aliens just love these things.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has the Shogun Executioner in two scripted missions, a Humongous Mecha with three legs and three torsos, with each torso shaped like a samurai complete with a Laser Blade. The thing is so big it can destroy aircraft just by walking at them. It's especially effective against the Soviets, as electrical attacks only serve to heal it.
• Crysis 2 has tripod drones known as Pingers, which substitute the death ray for powerful sonic weaponry.
• Darius: The boss Tripod Sardine from G-Darius.
• House Harkonnen's Devastator from Emperor: Battle for Dune.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 3 has Sentry Bots, which are one of the game's most fearsome enemies. Also, Mister Handy/Gutsy, which resembles the aforementioned The War of the Worlds tripod bots.
  • In the Fallout 4 DLC Automatron, you can build your own Sentry Bots at a Robot Workbrench.
• Half-Life 2: The Combine Striders and Hunters both possess three legs. The Striders are much taller, being about two stories tall, while the hunters are smaller and about human-sized. As with all Combine tech, they are made of Organic Technology.
• A particularly gigantic instance of this trope in the form of the Teraformer in Jak 3. The thing is so big, that after you take it down with a vehicle, you have another fight on its wreckage with plenty of room to maneuver around.
• Most Martian units in Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds, although they have a few quadropods, a bipod, and even a pentapod (five footed) walker, a mighty can of Beam Spam called the Tempest.
• The battle with Princess Shroob in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time has her battle the brothers in a three-legged robotic throne that shoots huge lasers and protects her with a force field.
• Dwarf Gekko from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
• Pikmin 3 has a biological variant in the Quaggled Mireclops, the largest boss in the game (and indeed the whole series) which resembles a chunk of earth walking on three hoofed legs with a fruit-like head at the top. Its three legs are also its weak point, attacking them will cause the Mireclops to fall over, leaving its fruit-like head within reach of your Pikmin.
• In Quake IV, as a possible Shout-Out to the aforementioned Droidekas, the Convoy drones roll into battle before deploying tripod legs. Luckily, they don't have Deflector Shields.
• StarCraft II: Colossi may have four legs, but they are otherwise totally in fitting with the spirit of the trope. They fry stuff at extreme long range with sweeping heat rays, and have very long stilt-legs that let them stride over any terrain with ease.
• Megaleg (a giant planet-sized robot built by Bowser Jr.), the first boss of Super Mario Galaxy.
• The early Psygnosis game Terrorpods has the titular alien craft, which were based on Roger Dean's artwork originally designed for Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.
• Unreal Tournament III: Darkwalkers and Scavengers. The Darkwalker is the classical Humongous Mecha variant of this trope, armed with a dual laser cannon. It is one of the stronger vehicles of the game. The Scavenger is a small but fast vehicle that runs on three tentacles. One of its attacks is turning into an electrified ball and roll into enemy players.
• The second Expansion Pack of World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, has giant luminescent tripod-like wild creatures with jellyfish-like heads roaming Zangarmarsh in Outland. One such is a boss/elite that hits like a truck and must be killed for a quest.

Webcomics

• Some clanks in Girl Genius have this design, like this one. Also, on "My vacation" picture, evidently left from one of older Heterodynes. The tripods on this filler page seems to be a more direct reference to The War of the Worlds.
• Ahem from The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! is basically shaped like a biological version of an H.G. Wells' tripod.
• Wind turbines become this in this xkcd comic.

Websites

• The Wellsians from The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids (slightly parodical versions of Wells's original Martians) are shown to have devised the Tripods on Earth as a last-minute solution when they realized that Earth's gravity made it nearly impossible for them to move on foot. This might explain the rather slapdash engineering.
• The tribbetheres of Serina are tripedal mammaloid vertebrates descended from mudskipper-like ancestors that modified their pectoral fins and tail into three walking limbs. One group, the canitheres, become fierce hyena-like top predators of the plains, with some Artistic License – Biology being made in the assertion that their three-legged gait made them more efficient to the other quadrupedal bird-descendants they preyed upon (which is clearly a very unlikely case).

Western Animation

• Batman: The Brave and the Bold:
  • Black Manta mans a giant tripod in order to steal an armored car.
  • The invaders of Rann in "Mystery in Space!" use tripods.
• Jimmy dreams up invading tripods in an episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy.
• The Martians in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.
• The Justice League pilot "Secret Origins" features invading tripods from Mars, and a heap of War of the Worlds in-jokes. The instability of this method of locomotion is shown when Wonder Woman and the Flash work out ways to trip them up.
• The Lorwardians in Kim Possible make use of walkers during their invasion of the Earth, though they are technically four-legged.
• The Mask: In the first episode, Stanley and Charlie have to house-sit a "home of the future". Naturally, Dr. Pretorius gets in and starts futzing with its processors, transforming it into a three-legged weapon of mass destruction.
• Referenced in The Venture Bros. when Dr. Venture transforms HELPER into a classic tripod "walking eye". When asked what they're good for, Venture is at a loss, apparently convinced by popular sci-fi that they're simply a requirement. Random scenes of destruction also occasionally show a tripod terror running amok.

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