If a Boxing Battler or punching Extremity Extremist has a Limit Break, Special Attack, or Signature Move, chances are it'll be one of these. The magical variation is a common tool of the Kung-Fu Wizard. Likely to cause the victim to be Punched Across the Room.
Super-Trope to Elemental Punch and Rocket Punch. If it's an external weapon such as brass knuckles or a glove that gives a character this ability, it's a Power Fist. Compare and contrast Pressure Point and Attack Its Weak Point, where it's the area attacked, as opposed to a property of the punch itself, that makes it special. See also Megaton Punch, a comedic trope in which the strength of the punch usually goes unexplained.
Not to be confused with spiking the punch.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In The Big O, the titular robot's standard finisher is to punch an enemy Megadeus and fire a piston in its forearm on impact, dealing massive damage and usually obliterating whatever part of the enemy robot it hits.
- Buso Renkin: Captain Bravo's Direct Hit Bravo Punch technique enhances his regular Badass Normal Bravo Punch attack with the Nigh-Invulnerable ability of his Silver Skin buso renkin to produce bolder crushing force.
- Dragon Ball: Dragon Fist, one of Goku's moves from Dragon Ball Z that doesn't see much use in the main series but shows up in the Non-Serial Movies from time to time, as well as in Dragon Ball GT, is a full-out lethal punch that, at Super Saiyan 3 or higher, creates a mini golden Shenron (presumably out of ki) which explodes. The Dragon Fist is also based on the technique that Goku uses to kill King Piccolo in the original Dragon Ball. The punch has no official name, but it has been called the Monkey Fist and the manga chapter it is used in is titled "The Fist of Son Goku." This particular punch takes the shape of a Great Ape and is embedded with all of Goku's remaining energy since it's his last gambit to beat King Piccolo.
- In Hunter × Hunter one of Gon's special nen techniques turns his already powerful punch into an Enhanced Punch by gathering all of his nen in his fist.
- Jujutsu Kaisen: Yuji's initial main technique, Divergent Fist, is this. Thanks to his body's delay in releasing cursed energy, a ripple is created that causes his punches to hit twice, doing devastating amounts of damage.
- Magic-powered punches are a common attack type among mages in the Lyrical Nanoha franchise who eschew weapons. For instance, Einhart Stratos' super punch, Unchain Knuckle, even got a chapter named after it in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid.
- In the Macross franchise, Macross and New Macross-class ships like the SDF-1 can focus their forcefield onto one of their fists to give them a powerful punch into an enemy's hull, where they then unload their missiles into the enemy. In later entries, smaller mecha like the Macross Quarter and even Variable Fighters can also pull off this maneuver (except the VFs generally skip the missile part).
- "Smash" attacks in My Hero Academia, as used by One For All users, are basically physically-enhanced melee strikes. All Might's United States of Smash is an enhanced haymaker powerful enough to create a tornado that can lift concrete buildings.
- Naruto:
- Tsunade and Sakura have some of the highest destructive potential in the series because of their ability to focus their chakra into their fists for a devastating attack.
- Choji from the same series can do this with his Butterfly Bombardment attack after using his Calorie Control jutsu. He can make this punch even more ludicrously powerful by by making himself gigantic.
- In The Last: Naruto the Movie, Naruto channels his Sage Nine-Tails Chakra Mode into one fist to augment a punch.
- In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, mages like to augment their punches with spells that discharge when the fist connects. The Dangerous Forbidden Technique Magia Erebea allows one to outright merge with the spell, enhancing their punches to even greater levels.
- One Piece: Luffy has many of this kind of move, but the most notable would be his Gum Gum Pistol, Bazooka and many variations of it, which are given additional range and force by his Rubber Man powers. Later, he learns to blow his limbs up to gigantic size for even more force. Once he learns how to use Haki, he can turn his fists black and bypass the natural defenses of a Devil Fruit user, including a Logia.
- In Pretty Cure, punches are common attacks for the series' Magical Girl Warriors anyway, but Cure Star of Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure has an enhanced punch as her Signature Move. For her Star Punch, she uses her Star Color Pendant to create a star, and punches it straight toward the enemy. Its power can be enhanced by the Taurus, Aries, and Pisces Star Princess Color Pens, as well.
- Radiant: Seth's Signature Move is Titan Punch, enhancing his punch with a surge of Fantasia. It's much more effective when he's not wearing feather gloves.
- In Rurouni Kenshin, Sagara Sanosuke ends up focusing on unarmed combat, and in a chance meeting with Yūkyūzan Anji, is taught the Dangerous Forbidden Technique Futae no Kiwami ("Mastery of the Two Layers"). It involves hitting your target separately with subsequent joints of the hand, resulting in two rapid blows. The idea is that the first blow overcomes an object's natural resistance, and then the second hits before it can recover, allowing the practitioner to cause huge damage to opponents with punches capable of shattering solid stone.
- In Toriko, Knocking Master Jirou can strengthen the muscle fibers in his arm to perform the "Big Bang Impact," a punch strong enough to send its target into space.
- YuYu Hakusho: The Spirit Wave technique used by Yusuke and Genkai turns the user's entire body into a catalyst for their spirit energy, then focuses that energy into a single extremely powerful punch. It's their most powerful destructive technique, as Yusuke sends Jin flying across the arena and into the stands, and Genkai blows a hole in Younger Toguro's torso with it despite their colossal difference in strength.
Comic Books
- The Iron Fist': Iron Fist's sole superpower (at first) is to charge his fist with chi to make it "like unto a thing of iron." While he eventually gets more powers to go along with his Charles Atlas Superpower, he's generally just a skilled martial artist with an occasional superpowered punch.
- In Justice League of America, The Flash fights a speedster called Zoom. Once Flash starts thinking of it as a fight rather than a race, he uses his speed to accelerate his body until his uppercut has sufficient force to propel Zoom upwards at 25,000 mph. The Flash has the Speed Force to render himself immune to relativistic effects of approaching lightspeed as he runs. Zoom lacks that same protection, and thus from his perspective Wally was punching him with infinite mass.
- Superman possesses the ability to vibrate any combination of the molecules in his body. One of his favorite techniques he got from the Flash, which is to vibrate his fist as he punches someone. He chooses to vibrate his fist just under the speed of light, thus increasing the mass of his fist to a near-infinite level, creating the Infinite Mass Punch. He even hit Goku with it, once.
Comic Strips
- Popeye has the Twister Punch, which requires twisting his arm so that it unwinds upon contact.
Fan Works
- In The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan, Aegis is able to punch with lightning. It requires some time to gather all of the energy, but when he releases it, it's able to completely break a strong magic shield, but it leaves him winded for a few moments.
Films — Live-Action
- Captain America: Civil War: Crossbones's fists are covered with piston-like devices that allow him to punch Captain America hard enough to send him flying.
- The protagonist of Five Fingers of Death can enhance his chi into his fists, causing his hands to glow with a powerful red aura and One-Hit Kill everyone in his way. He even punches a katana into two...
- In Pacific Rim, Gipsy Danger has rocket boosters on its elbows to give its punches extra power. Like Big O, Cherno Alpha has pistons that extend its forearm upon impact in order to give it more force.
- In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Judge Doom gives Eddie a devastating punch by turning his fist into an anvil.
Literature
- The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden wears enchanted rings that sap a tiny amount of kinetic energy every time he moves his arm, to be released at his command. Fully charged, the rings can give him a punch strong enough to knock over a car. He originally wore one ring, but eventually went up to a whole fist full of them.
- Worm has Acidbath, whose punches turn into splashes of Hollywood Acid as they connect.
Live-Action TV
- Community: The fictional superhero Kick Puncher uses cybernetics to give his punches the strength of kicks. It makes exactly as much sense as it sounds.
Toys
- A few figures in the Transformers toyline have special punching gimmicks:
- Lugnut (an Alternate Universe version of the one from Transformers: Animated has a spring in his forearms allowing for a spring-loaded "Punch Of Kill Everything."
- Stockade from Transformers (2007)'s toyline (and his redeco, Gears) have a gear-based mechanism allowing his fists to extend for extra strong punches.
Video Games
- Batman defeats the final boss of Batman: Arkham Asylum by coating his gauntlet in Explosive Gel and setting it off on impact with the boss's face.
- Dark Devotion: You can obtain some Enchanted Bandages by defeating Sariandel, Prisoner of the Void. Equipping them lets you throw punches wreathed in blue flame, increasing their reach and damage.
- Elsword: Reckless Fist's Wild Charge skill is a forward-rushing punch that is chargeable for more damage, augmented by the power of his Nasod Arm.
- The third Endless Nightmare game, Shrine, grants you a Tech Glove, which boosts your punching strength to the point where a Charged Attack allows you to break down walls or send mummies and Anubians flying.
- The recurring Final Heaven Limit Break in Final Fantasy amounts to a super charged punch that causes a devastating explosion in its wake. Like most of the limit breaks in the game, there's no real explanation for where the explosion comes from.
- Marvel vs. Capcom 3:
- Iron Fist's Level 3 Hyper Combo, Dragon's Prey, has him deliver a one-inch punch powered by chi.
- Nathan Spencer's Bionic Lancer Hyper Combo is a very fast lunging punch with his bionic arm.
- Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate: The Brachydios specializes in these. Its bulbous, hard hands are covered in a special slime mold that spreads itself by combustion. Brachydios agitates the slime with its saliva and the resultant punches are...explosive.
- Mortal Kombat's Johnny Cage has the "Green Shadow Uppercut" (sometimes called the "Rising Star" or "Johnny Uppercut"), an uppercut move enhanced with green energy.
- Overwatch's Doomfist wears a mechanized gauntlet that lets him charge up devastatingly powerful punches.
- Street Fighter: One of Ryu and Ken's special moves, the Shoryuken, is a rising punch enhanced by ki. The nasty scar on Sagat's chest was caused by taking one of these from Ryu during the first World Warrior Tournament, though the Alpha series would retcon this into something of a Diabolus ex Machina, with Ryu inadvertently tapping into the Satsui no Hado after losing to Sagat and performing a Metsu Shoryuken as Sagat, his guard down, was offering to help the young warrior back up to his feet.
- Super Robot Wars: Original Generation:
- The R-1's Super Move Portrait Attack is a TK-powered punch where the mech's hand glows green before striking.
- The grunt unit Gespenst Mk. II has a special attack of Jet Magnum, where the plasma stakes on its forearm fire as it hits.
- Super Smash Bros.: It's unclear exactly what, if anything, enhances Captain Falcon's Falcon Punch, but the equivalent move used by his Moveset Clone Ganondorf, the Warlock Punch, is powered by magic. Both have a short charge time but pack a serious wallop.
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown: MEC Troopers in the Enemy Within expansion have the option to upgrade their cyborg frames with a Kinetic Strike Module, which is essentially a rocket-assisted Power Fist. The poor saps who get hit will be sent flying, and if they hit a car, it immediately explodes. With the proper Foundry upgrade, the damage goes from an already respectable 12 damage to a devastating 18, and the MEC can use both action points to strike. If the "Absolutely Critical" Second Wave option, a single upgraded punch will One-Hit Kill anything in the game save for the Final Boss or a Sectopod (its armor in Enemy Within halves, rounded up, all damage taken).
Web Animation
- Mystery Skulls Animated: Lewis's ghostfire-imbued punch is able to tear Shiromori's head clean off and send it flying.
Western Animation
- In Justice League Unlimited, The Flash once literally ran around the world to build up enough momentum to punch the Braniac out of Brainthor.
- In Transformers: Animated, Lugnut has an ability nicknamed the "Punch of Kill Everything" where his arm transforms into a bomb and creates a massive crater upon impact.
