Walking Tank

Be shot or be stomped.

The "mech" is a giant bipedal mechanical robot armed with a variety of missiles, Gatling gun arms, laser-beam eyes and a deadly kung-fu punch. Although not currently found on the modern battlefield, no doubt across the world governments and evil corporations are secretly developing these metal behemoths even as we speak.

— Civilopedia of Civilization V regarding the Giant Death Robot unit

A common feature of military stories set in Cyberpunk settings, and also 20 Minutes into the Future and beyond, a Walking Tank is just that; a tank with legs instead of treads. Unlike the classic Humongous Mecha it needn’t have a human-like head, torso, or arms, and while bipedal ones are pretty common there are also types with four or more legs. The overall posture and anatomy may resemble a non-human animal such as a flightless bird or an elephant. If it does have "arms", they're usually decidedly non-humanoid in appearance (elbow-joints optional), and more likely to end in Arm Cannons instead of hands.

Given that they're used almost exclusively by military forces, it should be no surprise that Walking Tanks are always treated as Real Robots. The physics are also generally handled more realistically. Don't expect these guys to be dodging missiles at high speed at any point; they're never nimble. Taking advantage of this fact is usually the best way to take them out; wrap some high-tension cable tight around the legs and then stand back to watch the show. If you're lucky, Every One Of These Is A Pinto. If you're not, the design includes all-round machinegun coverage.

This is a supertrope of Chicken Walker and Spider Tank, and subtrope of Real Robot and Tank Goodness. Not related to people who are described as walking tanks. Contrast Tank-Tread Mecha, which can be thought of as the opposite of this trope — a humanoid upper body mounted on a tank's treads. The 1993 Amiga game Walker where you pilot one of these through time is described here. If you thought this trope was about humans that are basically tanks, then you're looking for Implacable Man and The Juggernaut.

See the Analysis page for why these don't work as well in real life as they do in fiction.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Macross/Robotech:
  • The two-legs-and-no-arms Regult battlepods favored by the Zentradi are an interesting example. They're surprising mobile, and while their engines and thrusters don't have enough power to achieve in-atmosphere flight, they do confer high maneuverability in zero-g combat. That said, Regults are mostly inferior in both arms and armor to the flight-capable Variable Fighters favored by the UN Spacy, and many (though not all) "cultured" Zentradi units have abandoned them for superior models like the Queadluun-Rau powersuits. Also, Regults are Mini-Mecha proportionally-speaking; it just so happens that their pilots are 30 feet tall giants.
  • The UN Spacy's Tomahawk and Monster Destroids are straight examples, with the latter actually fitting better into the category of "walking artillery" due to its immense firepower and limited maneuverability.
• Crab Gunner (AKA Goliath from BattleTech) and Tequila Gunner from Fang of the Sun Dougram are literal examples.
• Three huge, hulking examples from Code Geass, in stark contrast to the smaller, nimble Knightmare Frames.
  • The Bamides is a model built and used by the Middle-Eastern Federation, which completely abandons Knightmare design norms. It looks rather similar to a very large, elongated modern tank on large hover legs, with various cannons and missile launchers strapped to it. It's very large and not very maneuverable, but has an insanely powerful armament, especially at long range.
  • The Raikō is a behemoth built of four normal Knightmares attached to what is quite possibly the largest cannon in the series (though not the most destructive), plus four secondary weapons on each of the unoccupied Knightmare arms. Again, very big, not very manuverable, but hits like a truck. Apparently more successful than the Bamides.
  • The ONA Code Geass: Akito the Exiled introduces the Canterbury, Britannia's answer to the Raikō. It looks like a long-legged turtle and boasts more power and a better firing angle than the Raikō, but requires three pilots.
• Both human nations' mechs and the Legion drones in 86 are these in the form of Spider Tanks, ranging from the small crappy light tank-analogue in the form of the San Magnolian Juggernaut, to the WWII superheavy tank-analogue with the Legion Dinosauria, and at the extreme end, the Schwerer Gustav-analogue with the Legion Morpho (which combines this trope and a railway cannon, just like its inspiration).

Films — Animated

• The Storrian military in Ark pilots two-legged walking tanks in their arsenal.
• War of the Worlds: Goliath has three-legged Dieselpunk mecha of various sizes being used by Earth forces.

Films — Live-Action

• Star Wars
  • The Empire's AT-AT (All-Terrain Armored Transport) and AT-ST walkers from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are probably the best-known examples of this. Attack of the Clones introduces the clone army's AT-TE, a low-slung six-legged Spider Tank that probably wouldn't be susceptible to the old tripwire trick, and apparently the predecessor to the AT-AT.
  • Parts of the Star Wars Expanded Universe mention that there are legless versions which fly slowly on repulsorlifts, which would seem more practical, but it's also mentioned that there is technology to disrupt repulsors and make those versions crash. The Star Wars Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels posits that such disruption technology made the legged version more reliable in a setting where repulsorlift technology is otherwise ubiquitous.
  • The AT-TE was more stable, but it was also more vulnerable to mines, hence, raising it high above the ground.
  • The Expanded Universe also has the AT-XT, a Super Prototype for the AT-ST. It's got better armament, slightly stockier legs, and Deflector Shields. Which would tend to defeat the tripwire trick (not to mention rocks and logs).
  • The Last Jedi introduces the First Order's AT-M6, which is built on the lines of the AT-AT but is about twice as tall. It's intended less for troop transport and more as an artillery piece—it mounts a heavy turbolaser on its back that fires over the cockpit. The front legs are reinforced against the turbolaser's recoil (and, incidentally, incorporate a tripwire-cutting device), which gives the walker an intimidating gorilla-esque gait. First Order–era AT-ATs are briefly seen alongside the AT-M6, serving mostly to reinforce how much more huge the new generation of war machines can be.
• The ED-209 from Robocop. Sort of; it's more of an anti-personnel vehicle rather than tank. Unfortunately they were never truly finished as they couldn't distinguish between civilians and criminals, or walk down stairs. It was possible (and heavily implied) that they were purposely designed that way to force consumers to call OCP to repair them but even they only used them to guard buildings, not patrol streets like intended. The sequels expand on its general uselessness with the second film depicting one caught on an open manhole cover and the third showing it can be easily hacked by a child.
• In Battle: Los Angeles, the aliens have a 7ft-tall walking gun that fires homing missiles. A lot of them. It is worth noting that the alien walker seems to be manufacturing them before firing, giving them effectively unlimited ammo.
• The 2011 movie Super Shark features a bizarre battle between a shark and a walking tank with anachronistic World War II markings. Additional hilarity comes from CGI enthusiasts recognising the tank as a 'freebie model of the week' from a 3D content company. The tank's creator, Valandar posted:
  They used my Quad Tank for this... thing! So should I be happy, or outraged?

Literature

• The "Clanker" powers from Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan use these, both in two-legged variations like the Cyklop Stormwalker and Spider Tank versions like the SMS Herkules. Note that the last one is less of a Walking Tank, and more of a walking battleship.
• The Step-Walkers of Orson Scott Card's Empire appear to be this, but they're more of a role in anti-personnel - they're only armed with heavy machine guns and a few were disabled by a fleet of police cars ramming the legs.
• The serv-machines in Andrey Livadny's The History of the Galaxy are between this and Humongous Mecha, depending on the novel. In the 'verse, serv-machines are considered to be the epitome of planetary warfare, refined over the centuries since they were introduced during the First Galactic War. The original walkers were designed as terraforming tools by the colonists who have settled Dabog, a hostile world with treacherous swamps and large, dinosaur-like lizards, which eat standard planetary vehicles (e.g. tanks, troop transports) for breakfast (sometimes literally). The colonists studied the lizards' locomotor system and designed new types of vehicles using this method. The walkers proved extremely effective at clearing away hostile flore and fauna and, during the invasion of the Earth Alliance, showed them to be superior combat vehicles to traditional tanks and troop transports. Since then, the latter were relegated to support roles, leaving most of the fighting to serv-machines.
  • Unlike your typical Walking Tank, serv-machines (later models, especially) are partially automated using an onboard AI module. Most are equipped with short-range jump jets, allowing them to either quickly change location or pop out from a cover.
  • Some are also equipped with a system of indirect fire, allowing it to precisely calculate the trajectory of a Gauss round bouncing off objects with known properties to hit the target. In one book, this is used to perform an assassination with a 30-mm round. A seemingly wild shot bounces off several ruined structures, as well as the remains of a skyscraper, and hits a man living in an enclosed compound on top of a large hill. Only a machine can pull this off.
• In Clay and Susan Griffith's Vampire Empire series, humans had faced a vampire apocalypse in the 19th century which had stalled human technological development so that it's 2020 and everything is steampunk tech. A recent innovation in the war against the vampires, was the "Galahad Division". These are 12-feet tall, chemically-fuelled, humanoid mechs made in Africa and are even referred to as land tanks. The earliest models were a failure, but latest improve greatly on those and carry a flamethrower, .50 cal machine gun (in a setting where the standard weapon for a soldier is a bolt-action rifle) and explosive rockets.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • The AT-AT and its cousins appear frequently.
    • A story in Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina revolves around an Imperial Army recruit who trains as an AT-AT driver. While defending against a simulated air attack that he doesn't know isn't real, he kneels the AT-AT to keep the enemy from attempting a tripwire maneuver. Unbeknownst to him, he embarrasses Colonel Veers by bringing up the possibility during his debriefing, and Veers has him transferred to the stormtroopers; he ends up on ISD Devastator during the pursuit of the Death Star plans and turns out to be the guy in A New Hope who goes "Look, sir, droids!"
    • In The Thrawn Trilogy, Lando Calrissian's latest business venture is a Base on Wheels for mining a close-orbiting planet. The base is built atop several dozen demilitarized AT-ATs because the planet's rotation is slow enough that the walkers can keep it on the dark side. The place is attacked by Grand Admiral Thrawn twice, and the second time enough of the AT-ATs are damaged that it can't move anymore, costing Calrissian everything.
    • In X-Wing: Isard's Revenge, a quartet of AT-ATs sortie against the New Republic invasion of Liinade III. They have the misfortune to meet an X-Wing air raid led by Wedge Antilles and are curbstomped with guns only, leaving the heavy implication that the only reason the Rebels on Hoth couldn't handle them was that they simply didn't have enough X-Wings to provide air cover to both the holding action and the evacuation.
  • The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand presents the Yuuzhan Vong counterpart to the AT-AT, a fire-breathing bioengineered beast called a rakamat. Wedge defeats it by pulling a Wronski Feint against a Yuuzhan Vong coralskipper pilot: he flies his X-Wing between the rakamat's legs and the pursuing skip crashes into it, impaling the beast with the skip's needle-like nose.
• In The Sun Eater, the human Sollan Empire had the colossi. These are Giant Robot plasma artillery cannons that are also heavily armored and shielded. While many models are bipedal, there's also many multi-legged versions as well.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Astra Militarum Sentinel is a one-man light scout walker used because of its ability to quickly traverse rough terrain. That being said, Sentinels are more of a Walking Barely Armored Coffins sort than a Walking Tanks sort.
  • The Aeldari have the graceful War Walkers that are protected by a Deflector Shield and sport a pair of powerful heavy weapons.
  • While Astartes Dreadnoughts are somewhat bulky but humanoid Mini-Mecha, those outfitted purely for ranged firepower, such as the Mortis-pattern, can resemble walking tanks.
  • The T'au have the KV128 Stormsurge Ballistic Suit, a walking gun platform even larger than the Riptide battlesuit.
• BattleTech may be the Trope Codifier for the western Real Robot genre. About 50-60% of Battlemechs in the series are this type, the rest are either traditional "Armored Soldier" types, Spider Tanks, or something in between. Exactly how 'tank-like' they act depend on the medium: Both video game, tabletop and the BattleTech Expanded Universe agree that 'mechs have near-instant acceleration and will reach top speed much faster than a tank, but books and lore describe 'mechs as being capable of actions like jumping, sprinting, ducking, weaving, rolling and diving for cover, picking up and carrying objects, and tackling, punching and kicking other 'mechs. The video games, meanwhile, are fairly universal in presenting 'mechs as tall, walking weapons platforms capable of, at most, punching and torso rotation, likely because that's much easier to animate. Either way, 'mechs are not capable of fine manipulation and have definitive limits to what they can and cannot do — they are still 20+ tonne constructions made of metal and myomer.
  • The Goliath 'Mech deserves a particular mention, being a walking tank in the most visually literal sense imaginable.
  • Clan Hell's Horses has developed QuadVee's tanks that can transform from a tread vehicle to a four legged Mech.
• Most of the Panzerkamfers in Gear Krieg fall into this category.
• Most of the AFV's in AT-43 are walking vehicles, the Therians AFV's are Spider Tank's. "Combat Striders" seem to have all but completely replaced treaded tanks in the setting — only one army, ONI, has an armor division made up of "regular" tanks.
• In Scythe, the creation of giant mechs in this style is a key component of the game's 1920s Alternate History. In-game, they're one of only two combat-capable units, and producing more of them also grants each one additional powers, like extra speed and the ability to cross rivers.
• In the Diesel Punk RPG Age of Steel the largest class of Mecha, Heavy Battle Rigs, fall into this category.

Video Games

• Andro Dunos 2 introduces a new enemy absent in the original - bipedal alien tanks which patrols their moon base, with two mechanical legs carrying a cockpit with a massive turret attached. They serve as Giant Mook-type enemies in the game.
• Done literally with the Bein Panzer from SCEI (aka Kouashi Kikou Shidan: Bein Panzer which was an attempt at German for Legged Tank). It's an alternate history WW2 game where combat takes place on Earth and Mars using more advanced versions of vehicles that actually existed in WW2 including VTOL Stukas and many of the tanks that pop their treads into makeshift legs to walk on.
• Black the Fall: There are a lot of two-legged walkers the size of a house patrolling the countryside. If they spot the worker, they'll shoot first and not even bother asking questions later. At the end of the game, the worker can pilot one of them (which has a limp), and use it to break down a massive wall.
• The BattleWalkers from Battlefield 2142 are textbook examples of this trope; the EU's L5 Riesig provides the page image.
  • Notably, after many months of playing this game and being butchered by the hypothetically-evil PAC walkers, one can get an almost Pavlovian fear response from the characteristic "WHUD...WHUD...WHUD" of a walker on a Sunday stroll, or the gut-wrenching rhythm of the PAC walker's main gun. It's safe to say that the Battlewalkers stole the show.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II features them in the form of the C.L.A.W. (Cognitive Land Assault Weapon), an unmanned four-legged mech based on the real-life Boston Dynamics Big Dog— it possesses armour strong enough to resist multiple RPG strikes and is armed with a powerful minigun and grenade launchers, but is susceptible to hacking.
• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has Quadruple Legged Tank, which can fold its treads as a regular tank, or separate into four legs allowing it to walk over trenches.
• Command & Conquer:
  • In the first game, the Global Defense Initiative's arsenal is almost entirely conventional (Future Copters and Kill Sats aside), but by Tiberian Sun, the increasing environmental destruction caused by the titular Green Rocks has turned much of Earth into a broken wasteland that normal tanks have trouble traversing. Thus, the Humvees, medium battle tanks and Mammoth Tanks of the First Tiberium War are replaced with bipedal Wolverines and Titans, and quadrupedal Mammoth MkII walkers. The Firestorm expansion introduces the GDI Juggernaut, basically a battleship turret on legs that can deploy stabilizers to act as a mobile artillery platform, since conventional sea power is having trouble getting into position when the oceans are choked with Tiberium weeds. In gameplay terms, these walkers move at a slow but steady pace regardless of terrain, in contrast with the Brotherhood of Nod's wheeled and tracked units, whose speed will vary based on the flatness of terrain and the incline they're moving along.
  • By Tiberium Wars, however, GDI has mothballed most of their walker units. Turns out they were expensive to build and maintain, with the legs being particularly vulnerable to wear and breakdowns, as well as sabotage by infantry crazy enough to dash in and slip an explosive charge into a key joint. So GDI redesigned their latest generation of tracked vehicles with multiple articulated tread-pods that let them effectively crawl and clamber over hostile terrain (and even over smaller vehicles in the case of the Mammoth MkIII), making them actual tanks capable of semi-walking. Only the Juggernaut artillery walkers still see widespread use, because they typically stay well away from direct combat and don't move around much, while updated versions of Titans and Wolverines are only fielded by the Steel Talon GDI sub-faction introduced in the Kane's Wrath expansion. Again, the strengths and weaknesses of walkers are borne out in gameplay - they continue to ignore terrain, but each faction's Commando unit can now run in and inflict a One-Hit Kill on a walker by blowing out a leg joint, though the wreck can subsequently be repaired and commandeered by an Engineer unit.
  • Averted in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 despite the addition of Japan as a faction, where vehicles are either on wheels (collectors, light vehicles), insectile legs (the Stingray, the Sickle and Reaper walkers), treads (tanks, the Futuretank), or outright mecha (Tengu, Steel Ronin, King Oni).
• The giant mecha in the Front Mission series are called Wanzers and definitely fall under the category of walking tanks. Even their name is a contraction of the German "wanderung panzer", literally "walker tank."
• Most versions of Metal Gear are bipedal walking tanks. RAXA had four legs but didn't really walk.
  • Notably, the Shagohod was not like this, as it's shown that the Metal Gear concept was considered too avant-garde for the Soviets to take seriously - although the Shagohod could kinda stand up a little by tilting its front treads.
  • From Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: Gekkos. While their greatest weapons are their legs, Gekkos come equipped with small machine guns in their heads and can be modified with heavier machine guns, grenade launchers, and rocket launchers as well.
  • Moreso than the Gekko, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance have Grads, that use conventional weapons like machine guns and rockets (as opposed to Gekkos, which will kick and stomp its targets) and can switch between using wheels on its legs and walking.
  • The Walker Gears of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain are miniature walking tanks designed for infantry use. Subverted with Metal Gear Sahalanthropus, which is more of a traditional Humongous Mecha in its design when it stands upright as opposed to later models, from the TX-55 to REX.
• Metal Head, a mecha-themed FPS, have bipedal tanks piloted by terrorists as recurring enemies.
• StarCraft:
  • StarCraft has the Terran Goliaths, decent against ground targets but meant for heavy-duty anti-air, and the Protoss Dragoon, a quadrupedal tank with a Phase Disruptor cannon that is equally effective against both ground and air armored targets.
  • In StarCraft II, the role of Dragoons is replaced by the more agile Stalkers, (also quadrupedal but with thinner legs and taller bodies) which also come with a short-range Teleportation ability. The Dragoons themselves were retrofitted into Immortals, losing their air attack but massively improving their anti-armor firepower and giving them a unique shield making them extremely resistant to artillery fire.

• G-Police: Weapons of Justice has the Raptor, a bipedal, walking, gliding tank. It's awesome.
• Some enemies in the Star Fox games take the form of Walking Tanks. The Arwings themselves would qualify in the unreleased Star Fox 2, with a quick press of the Select button. Star Fox Zero brings this back.
• Steelborn grants you a gigantic, bipedal robot tank moving on two legs as your default equipment when you land on the hostile, monster-infested surface of Planet VL-744.

• Civilization
  • The Next War mod for Civilization IV talks about the problems walkers would face and how impractical they are in the Civopedia. After mentioning said problems, it justifies all of them by saying that walkers are cool, making them worthwhile.
  • They make a comeback in Civilization V in the form of Giant Death Robots. Said Giant Death Robots require 2 units of uranium to be built. For reference, a nuke only requires one.
  • Then the Brave New World DLC introduces the XCOM Squad unit that gets a bonus against Giant Death Robots, likely from their experience fighting Sectopods, making the robots even less practical.
  • They reappear in Civilization VI, near the very end of the Tech Tree, costing a huge amount of uranium, but a single one is probably more powerful than the rest of your military combined. They're meant to speed up the endgame, since a player who has them will certainly dominate one who doesn't.

• Most AFWs in Ring of Red. Those that aren't (the 4-legged AFWs) are Spider Tanks. Just to emphasize how much they fit this trope, most of the AFWs are blatantly based off of actual World War II tank designs.
• Fallout Tactics got four-legged Pacification Robot and bigger six-legged Behemoth.
• In Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, the Vertical Tanks were redesigned from the Humongous Mecha that they were in the previous games to be this. The starting VT is literally an M4 Sherman with legs instead of treads. Also, much like an actual tank, they require a crew to operate (here a crew of 4) instead of single pilot.
• The more advanced Beta units in Grey Goo (2015), such as the Cloudburst, Hailstorm, and Guardian, are these sorts of mechs, while their lower-end units like the Stalker and Predator are more akin to Mini-Mecha. Compared with human and Goo units, they are much more mobile, and most of them can become impromptu turrets by jumping onto wall mounts or the Hand of Ruk.

• Metal Slug
  • In Metal Slug 3, there are walking tanks... which are actually three Japanese soldiers carrying a hollowed-out tank◊. Too poor to afford a regular tank?
  • The Slug Gunner from Metal Slug 5 is a walking tank with great firepower but a painfully slow turning animation. It helps that it's also a Transforming Mecha and can switch between walker and tread modes, allowing for faster turning but still can't shoot behind or diagonally.
• While many designs from BattleTech are already examples of walking tanks, the various MechWarrior games have been much more true to the spirit of the trope—some humanoid 'Mechs that are normally possessed of features like hands or vague face shapes have had much of that anthropomorphism stripped from them and replaced with guns. Lots and lots of guns. This is also true of the fan-made Mektek Expansion Pack for Mechwarrior 4, though in that case it is purposefully invoked; the lead modeler for the project stated that he disliked 'Mechs possessing overly humanoid features like hands and faces, and went on to remove said visual features from many of the new models added to the game.
  • That this also makes it easier to handwave not having to implement physical attacks such as punches and kicks (for which rules do exist in the board game, just in case two MechWarriors really do get that close and feel the urge to go mano-a-mano with each other's machines) has not gone wholly unnoticed. Even for 'Mechs that possess more humanoid arms like the Atlas, the arms are always facing forward relative to the torso rather than swinging back and forth for balance. This is more for the sake of sparing animation effort and because the weapons on those arms need to be ready to fire at a moment's notice. The only time the arms are depicted to swing like this is in BATTLETECH where humanoid 'Mechs would swing their arms for balance as they run or sprint to their destination but return to being held straight out once they stop.
• In Universe at War the Novus' Field Inverter is essentially this, being a large gaussgun mounted on armored legs.
• The mecha in Trenched are World War I-era trenches with mecha legs.
• Ground Control II: Operation Exodus has the Terran Empire use walkers alongside their hoverdynes. The missile-armed variant is very effective against air units, even your Drop Ship.
• Several of these can be found in Sengoku Basara as mini-bosses, particularly in Chosokabe Motochika's stages.
• Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has the Warhound, a man-tall quadruped combat drone with a mortar and missile launcher.
• The Robodyne 7000 from the 1993 Amiga game Hired Guns.
• Your player characters in Gatling Gears are these.
• From Mass Effect 3, the "smaller" Reapers, Destroyers, become this whenever they come onto the ground and are one of the most powerful examples you can find. Anything less than continuous orbital bombardment at its weak point or a giant Sand Worm, might as well be nothing more than rocks being thrown at it.
• Titular mechs from Titanfall are an example.
• Chromehounds's mechs, the HOUNDs are built of modular components, which in the singleplayer campaign, are extremely un-anthropomorphic, looking like a mix between a battleship, attack helicopter, and an artillery position on legs (or treads/wheels/hover skirts). Multiplayer, on the other hand, generally had everyone stomping around in ridiculous stick mechs due to the Design-It-Yourself Equipment allowing complete control over a HOUND's appearance, layout, and equipment.
• Final Fantasy XIV has the Magitek Armor. This is a reference to the Magitek Armor from Final Fantasy VI (which was pretty much the same thing).
• Nether Earth has "bipod" tank chassis (besides "tracks" and "anti-grav"). Slowest, with lowest turning rate, unable to pass most obstacles, but cheapest and with highest hit points.
• Most of the mechs in Iron Harvest are this but special mention goes to the Isegrim and Wotan which actually look the most like World War II German tanks that had their treads removed and spider legs mounted in their place.
• Mechs are one of the vehicle types available in Brigador, and this trope is best exemplified in the Loyalist mechs, which are stocky and block-like like modern-day battle tanks.
• Muv-Luv: Fort-class BETA are a biomechanical form of this, resembling inverted scorpions the height of a large office building. The "tail" of the scorpion, which hangs below, contains a whip-like stinger that can smash smaller enemy targets, but mostly it's their sheer bulk and thick armor that makes them dangerous: they're pretty much only vulnerable to high-caliber cannon shells fired into their shoulder joints. To cap it off, they're often used as Drone Deployers for smaller Laser-class BETA, highly efficient Anti-Air artillery.
• Starship Troopers: Terran Command has the Marauders; heavily armed mechs designed to provide heavy fire support to Mobile Infantry squads.

Webcomics

• In S.S.D.D. the Texans used what looked like literal tanks on chicken legs, while most other factions use robots. It's mentioned that many of the Anarchist volunteer forces have tried tripping them with tow-cables and gotten killed.
• The second volume of Girl Genius features a brief appearance by a "walking gunboat," a two-legged machine with lots of heavy weapons, but no anthropomorphism. One of many apparently designed expressly to work in rough terrain. Unfortunately, it was incredibly vulnerable to air power.

Web Originals

• Between the World Wars and early in World War II, there were many unusual Awesome, but Impractical prototype military vehicles. Surely, somebody could try to make an armoured machine with legs. Thus, shopped black-and-white photos and faded blueprints keep appearing online. Usually as April Fools. Here are 3 photos (with comments in Russian) of a walking tank with a KV-2 turret.

Western Animation

• The VileDriver of Chaotic subverts the usual speed limitations; it can keep up with a monowheel motorcycle at top speed, and apparently has such a powerful engine that it can jump from a hill and land in front of a fleeing target (or on top of said target).
• ReBoot gives us a tank that replaced the head of a Tyrannosaurus rex when two games merged. Same basic principal as this trope.
• The Meap army of Phineas and Ferb employs skipping tanks. The reason being that their military, like their entire society, is based on cuteness.
• Spittor's altmode in Transformers: Animated is a send up of his traditional frog mode from earlier versions.

Real Life

• Not quite a tank but ruggedized nonetheless, Boston Dynamics' Legged Squad Support System (LS3) is a walking quadruped robotic "pack horse" designed to carry supplies for US Army soldiers. The robot can find its own way around obstacles and moves with a surprising grace and smoothness, though some may find this graceful walking a bit creepy. It can walk at up to 3 MPH over rough terrain and run at up to 7 MPH over flat surfaces. This video shows various demonstrations of the LS3. This one, interestingly enough, solves a very real problem—in rugged environments, troops are often reliant on pack horses to carry their supplies. A mechanical horse is easier to armor, doesn't tire, doesn't get scared, and (we hope, eventually) can run on solar power.

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