Ham-to-Ham Combat

When the unstoppable pork meets the immovable sausage.

Dredd: You killed innocent people!
Rico: A means to an end!
Dredd: You started a massacre!
Rico: I caused a revolution!
Dredd: YOU BETRAYED THE LAW!
Rico: LAAAAAAAAWWWWW!

— Judge Dredd

When a work is populated by more than one Large Ham, and at least two get a scene together, it will usually turn into Ham-to-Ham Combat, where they try to out-over dramatic each other. The scene can become either really funny or really corny, or both, and really fast.

Note that they do not have to be enemies. It can be the Big Bad and The Dragon trying to out-evil-laugh each other, or a pair of heroes spouting Bond One Liners as they mow down the Mooks. The point is that their screen presences and overacting are competing.

Compare World of Ham. If they're villains trying to creep each other out, that's Eviler than Thou. Bigot vs. Bigot is when these characters are not only hammy, but extremely opinionated as well. Contrast Snark-to-Snark Combat.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Video Games

Examples:

Audio Plays

• Big Finish Doctor Who:
  • "Doctor Who and the Pirates" features Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor up against Bill Oddie's pirate king Red Jasper (heavily based on Long John Silver).
  • Paul McGann has Ham-to-Ham Combat against himself in "Zagreus" as the Eighth Doctor and Zagreus.

Comic Books

• Tintin: The "I am more evil than you!" argument that Rastapopulos and Lazlo Carreidas have in Flight 714 after they both take truth serum.

Fan Works

• Blackened Skies: When Gundam first meets Kaito, he's briefly taken aback by how he proudly introduces himself as "Luminary of the Stars!" and gives a brief speech bragging about himself. That momentary shock's swiftly followed by a rapidly spreading grin and booming laughter as he declares how rare it is for anyone to introduce themselves with 'their true title', before the two plunge into what Kaede calls a monologue-off.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
  • The latest thus far is Goku vs Frieza. The latter loses his cool the more Goku demonstrates his stupidity by being oblivious of Frieza's insults and making random shouts at each other. Frieza finally snaps and goes all Large Ham and so does Goku upon becoming Super Saiyan.
  • Recoome spends his sweet time boasting and yelling in his fight with Vegeta, who in turn tried to shut him up, right after they had a theme song introduction.
  • Ginyu vs Goku. Impressive considering the fight was only seen for a few seconds. Ginyu compliments Goku's skill in battle whereas Goku comments on his skin color (purple).
• The premise behind Family Honor is that Walburga Black's portrait meets Major Armstrong.
• The Heavy thinks he's the biggest ham, until Duke Nukem thoroughly cooks him in HEAVY IS DUKE NUKEM.
• The Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney fandub of "Rise from the Ashes" evokes the game's Ham-to-Ham Combat nicely, which is impressive given that Phoenix and Edgeworth are the same actor.
• Substitute Harmony: Trixie and Twilight Wish get into this; Gilda complains about it.

Films — Animation

• The final 15 minutes of AKIRA: "TetSUOOOOOOOOO!" "KaneDAAAAAA!"
• Alice in Wonderland:
  King of Hearts: What do you know of this unfortunate affair?
  March Hare: Nothing.
  Queen of Hearts: NOTHING WHATEVER??!?!?
  March Hare: NATTHING WHATEVVAAAH!!!!!!
  Queen of Hearts: THAAAAAT'S VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!
• Fittingly, given it's based on the '60s Batman series and two of the actors present, Batman vs. Two-Face features this, between Adam West as the Caped Crusader and William Shatner as Two-Face.

• Megamind and Metro Man engage in a lot of this Megamind. In their final battle, they have an extended sequence in which Megamind comments "In case you haven't noticed, you've fallen right into my trap," to which Metro Man replies "You can't trap justice. It's an idea, a belief," and Megamind replies "Even the most heartfelt belief can be corroded over time," and so on, and so forth. Eventually, non-stereotypical Damsel in Distress Roxanne Ritchie interrupts to tell them "Girls, you're both pretty" and ask if she can go home now. Later in the film, when Megamind creates Titan as a new hero to fight because of his And Then What? boredom, he's confused when Titan won't engage in this with him and instead has him Talk to the Fist.
• Robin Hood (1973): Prince John as a spoiled, petulant brat, vs. Sir Hiss as a neurotic, scheming chancellor, devour the scenery with gusto. Matters get even hammier when Little John shows up in the royal box in disguise as the Duke of Chutney.

Films — Live-Action

• The Addams Family: Any scene with Gomez and Uncle Fester together usually turns into this in short order.
• Pictured atop this page is Anger Management, where the hardly-subtle Jack Nicholson plays an off-kilter psychiatrist who is assigned to check on Adam Sandler's character. Sandler is thus forced to overact accordingly.
• Disney's The Apple Dumpling Gang brilliantly pairs Don Knotts and Tim Conway as Stupid Crooks Theodore and Amos. Hilarity doesn't just ensue; it devours all the scenery in sight.
• In the film version of Arsenic and Old Lace, director Frank Capra told Cary Grant and Raymond Massey to go wild on camera. The result is Grant playing the dashing yet hapless hero Mortimer to the scenery-chewing maximum, while Raymond Massey plays his psychotic older brother Jonathan in reverent homage to Boris Karloff whom his character is supposed to resemble.
• The scene with Lynch and Pike in the car together in The A-Team movie screams of this. It's clear they're both just having fun with the movie, and then they get in a conversation together...
• After Jack Nicholson had Batman (1989) all for himself, the three other movies had a Villain Team-Up that served as an excuse for the bad guys trying to overact each other. Then again, it is Got Ham City.
  • Danny De Vito (The Penguin) and Michelle Pfeifer (Catwoman) in Batman Returns. Even canaries are (nearly) chewed along with the scenery.
  • Batman Forever buries the needle on the Ham-o-meter when Tommy Lee Jones (Two-Face) and Jim Carrey (The Riddler), team up in the middle of the movie. Observe.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger (Mr. Freeze) and Uma Thurman (Poison Ivy) in Batman & Robin. Helps both are pungeon Masters.

• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) has this in-universe: Riggan Thompson is a stage actor, and suspects that his co-star Mike Shiner is overacting to try to steal the show.
• Par for the course for anything Dracula related. See Bram Stoker's Dracula: In the blue corner: Anthony Hopkins as an antiheroic Mad Scientist! In the red corner: Gary Oldman as a heavily accented Classical Movie Vampire in a wig! On the outside left: Tom Waits as The Renfield! Not even the power of Keanu Reeves can prevent the ensuing hamfest.
• Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes as Zeus and Hades, respectively, in the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans. Any time they are onscreen together (or with any other actor). No exceptions.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Batman Begins makes this a plot point; Ducard teaches Bruce Wayne that theatricality can be a powerful weapon, and Bruce Wayne, the character, starts Chewing the Scenery to intimidate criminals. He ends up facing Dr. Jonathan Crane, who dresses up as Scarecrow and uses similar tactics. The Dark Knight follows the same concept; Bale vs. Ledger is going on, but Batman vs. Joker is ham to ham combat in the story.
  • The Dark Knight: Christian Bale vs. Heath Ledger as Batman and the Joker.
  • And then, in The Dark Knight Rises, there's Batman vs. Bane, whose nature is also rather hammy.
• Death Becomes Her is all about Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, and Bruce Willis indulging in Ham and Cheese - and the latter two also each have a scene with Isabella Rossellini, who might be even the worst of them all. The "combat" part is specially prevalent as a just-dead Hawn indulges in a shovel fight with Streep, both shouting insults at the top of their lungs.
• In Descendants 3, Mal (who gets an overly-dramatic solo at least once per film) and Hades (one of the hammiest villains in the Disney Animated Canon) have a father-daughter argument in song form. And it is glorious.
• William Shatner and Ernest Borgnine commenced Hammification against each other in the So Bad, It's Good Religious Horror flick, The Devil's Rain.
• Vincent Price vs. Robert Quarry in Dr. Phibes Rises Again
• Dungeons & Dragons (2000) features the rare treat of Jeremy Irons locked in a battle of the hams with his own eyebrows. A scene had a weird variant: Overacting vs Underacting, with Irons' bombast against Thora Birch's Dull Surprise.
• Ernest Scared Stupid gives us a Ham-to-Ham Combat between Jim Varney and Eartha Kitt.
• Face/Off: John Travolta vs. Nicolas Cage acting out Nicolas Cage vs. John Travolta, pretending to be each others characters, and as a result of their usual acting style, pretending to be each other. Even better, they are out-hamming each other while exaggerating the other actor's mannerisms.
• A Few Good Men:
  Jessep: You want answers?!
  Kaffee: I want the truth!
  Jessep: You can't handle the truth!
• Flash Gordon, the 1980s movie. Pick any scene with more than one character on screen. No exceptions, especially with Mr. Ham himself.
• In Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez series, Cruchot and Gerber (Michel Galabru) often compete with each other on who can ham it up the most (particularly in the last films) whenever they argue with each other.
• Glengarry Glen Ross: There are several examples, but the best comes near the end between Ed Harris and Al Pacino, as Ed Harris is on his way out of the office.
• Groucho and Chico Marx in every movie.
• Alan Rickman versus Ralph Fiennes in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, at the very beginning. Interestingly enough, rather than go the whole nine yards with their roles ("NYEEEEEEEHHHHHHH!" and "POTTER!" respectively), they seemed to be having a contest about who could be the most subdued while still being the most dramatic. At several points, Fiennes even uses dramatic pauses like Rickman is famous for.
• Heat: Averted in Michael Mann's film. With Al Pacino chewing large chunks of scenery elsewhere, and Robert De Niro himself not unknown to it, their first scene together, ever, should easily have been one large hamfest. Instead, on purpose, we got a low key chat in a diner over coffee.
• Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern have a brief scene to this effect in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York when their characters try to trick Macauley Culkin into thinking they've been hit by paint cans.
• In Hook, two very large hams (Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman) chew the scenery to pieces in their individual scenes (which takes place in a World of Ham), but when they come together for battle, it's magic.
• House of Gucci, full of larger-than-life people, all played as overblown as possible, and most with Italian accents to enhance the ham.
• In The Huntsman: Winter's War the battle of Ravenna and Freya is secondary to Charlize Theron and Emily Blunt fighting to chew the most scenery.
• Inglourious Basterds: Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz. Both are massive Hams stealing the attention of any scene they are in separately, and when they meet at the end there is clear competition.
• Into the Storm (2009) features a battle between Winston Churchill (as played by Brendan Gleeson, a famous Large Ham) and General Montgomery (as played by Patrick Malahide) having a one-scene showdown of pure Ham.
• "Agony" from Into the Woods, complete with ripping shirts open, kneeling and swooning in the waterfall, before getting up in search of a more dramatic-looking part of the waterfall to sing at. It's also set in a waterfall.
• A literal (and oddly serious) example can be found at the climax of Bigas Luna's Jamón Jamón (1992), which has the female lead's (Penélope Cruz) two love interests come at each other with actual smoked hams.
• The Live-Action Adaptation of Josie and the Pussycats has a scene where Parker Posey and Alan Cumming try to out-laugh each other. Out-Evil Laugh each other, to be exact.
• Judge Dredd. Dredd, as an over-the-top police officer, and Rico, as an over-the-top villain, ham it up throughout the entire movie. When they finally meet near the end, though, the pork hits the fan, culminating in the dialogue quoted atop this page. Justified, in that they are revealed to be long-separated twins. Clones, actually.
• Kung Pow! Enter the Fist: Absolutely any scene with more than one character. For example, Ling and Betty's face-off and the final battle between Betty and the Chosen One.
• Legend (1985): A teenaged Mia Sara manages to hold her own against Tim Curry.
  Lily: DAMN YOU!!!
  The Lord of Darkness: We are all of us damned, my queen... (evil laughter)
• In an outtake from Liar Liar, the opposing attorney defeats Jim Carrey in a shouting match with the accusation: "Overactor!" To which Carrey responded (complete with shifty eyes), "They're on to me!"
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring has the massive ham-off between those two old thesps, Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen as Saruman and Gandalf. "You have chosen the way of pain!" indeed. No piece of the scenery is left unchewed.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Thor: L.A.M. gives us a celestial-level Ham-to-Ham Combat when the Norse gods took it to scenery eating levels. During the banishment scene, arguably the scene featuring this trope, Hopkins takes this to new levels when he inexplicably barks at Loki. (This has become a meme among the fandom. "HAAAAWWWWWRRRRR!")
  • Avengers: Infinity War: When the Guardians of the Galaxy rescue Thor, Quill attempts to reassert his authority as most of his team is entirely subjugated by Thor's appearance (and Rocket is snickering at him losing it), including a failed attempt at making his voice more dramatic. As Thor has no idea he's being challenged, it comes off as Large Ham vs. Cold Ham (cold wins).
• Mary of Scotland: In the 1936 Katharine Hepburn and Fredric March film, the entire cast seems to be engaged in ham-to-ham combat, with the possible exception of John Carradine, who during filming once said to "Katherine of Arrogance," who had expressed a desire to play both Mary, Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I, "If you did that, how would you know which queen to upstage?" If John Carradine is the least hammy member of your cast, something has Gone Horribly Wrong. Or maybe right.
• Twisted in on itself when Men in Black 3 uses time travel to have Jemaine Clement's character trying to out ham his younger self.
• Mommie Dearest is infamous for Faye Dunaway gobbling up scenery as a mean and abusive Joan Crawford. Once the daughter grows up, Diana Scarwid tries to overact as much as Dunaway, running the whole gamut from "Tranquil Fury" to "screaming her lungs out".
• The Duke and Zilder in Moulin Rouge!, most noticeable in the "Like a Virgin" scene.
• Mrs Henderson Presents: Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins.
• Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian has this when Larry does his last stand against Kamunrah. Secret of the Tomb does this when Lancelot crashes a staging of Camelot and has Hugh Jackman trying to counter him.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • In the first movie where Barbossa and Jack Sparrow face off with each other, and really, whenever they share a scene at any time in the film trilogy.
  • By the third movie, pretty much everyone is trying to out-ham the other, including Hans Zimmer, the sound-track composer.
  • Which makes perfect sense that the next film's focus is around Jack and Barbossa. Because like the first film proved, how can one not have fun watching Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush, two of the finest actors alive, having a ham contest in pirate garb and dialogue?
    Barbossa: What ARRR ya doin'?
    Sparrow: What are YOU doing?
    Barbossa: NO! What ARRRRRR ya doin'!?
    Sparrow: What are YOU doing?
    Barbossa: No, What AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR you doing?
  • Then after that, another ham steps in:
    Pintel: STOW IT! THE BOTH OF YOU! THAT'S AN ORDER! UNDERSTAND?! (Jack and Barbossa stare at him in surprise) ...Sorry, I just thought with the captain issue in doubt I'd throw in my name for consideration.
• The Princess Bride:
  • Very interestingly averted: when Cary Elwes and Chris Sarandon finally meet, it looks like they're about to engage in ham-to-ham combat, but Elwes' character instead instantly defeats the prince with his classic To the Pain speech.
  • The "Battle Of Wits" between Cary Elwes and Wallace Shawn, however, definitely qualifies. Which is rather a bit of a subversion as well, because Cary Elwes subdues his part quite a bit while Wallace Shawn, well...
• The Producers exists in a World of Ham, so this is only to be expected, but worth particular mention is the opening sequence in the 1967 film version when Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder's characters first meet. Mostel goes on a screaming rampage and Wilder has a panic attack.
• Obviously for a movie set in a World of Ham, Repo! The Genetic Opera encounters this quite a bit. In the song "Mark It Up", all three Largo siblings are trying to out-ham each other.
• Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in any of the Road to ...... movies.
• One scene from A Series of Unfortunate Events has Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep trying to out-act each other.
• The famous darts scene in Son of Frankenstein. You might as well replace Basil Rathbone and Lionel Atwill's dialogue with "See here, I'm about to out-act you!" "Oh really? Well, I say I'M about to out-act YOU!"
• Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov in Spartacus.
• Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over: Sylvester Stallone and Ricardo Montalbán were arch nemeses. They knew exactly what kind of movie they were in. They enjoyed themselves.
• Star Trek:
  • William Shatner says that scenes in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country between him and Christopher Plummer were like "two ham-asauruses". When Iman turns into William Shatner in one scene, the RiffTrax commentary jokes that Shatner is trying to out-ham himself.
  • Star Trek II. William Shatner on one starship, Ricardo Montalbán on the other, spending the entire film blasting the crap out of each other while shaking the galaxy with their thunderous overacting. Via video link — they never share a room with each other. Scream it with me now: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! Shatner and Montalban never even met on set; they filmed their roles months apart and were hamming it up with (mostly) the script girl who was reading their counterpart's lines.
  • Star Trek III. William Shatner vs. Christopher Lloyd: Figuratively, literally, and taken to eleven. The acting and fight choreography are so over-the-top that a planet is destroyed.
    Kirk: I! HAVE! HAD! ENOUGH! OF! YOUUUUUUUU!
• Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Emperor, Mace Windu and the Emperor (during the lightning-fest in Revenge of the Sith), Luke and Vader (during The Reveal in The Empire Strikes Back), and Vader with a disgruntled Imperial officer (in Rogue One).
• Summer Stock: Gene Kelly and Judy Garland going head to head and toe to toe in a spectacular ham-to-ham dance!
• Malcolm McDowell is tough to out-ham, but Lori Petty manages to match him in Tank Girl.
• The Tattoo (Le Tatoué): No surprise here after their legendary scene in The Trip Across Paris, but most of De Funès and Gabin's interactions are a contest of who can ham it up the most. And this time around, De Funès actually manages to fully keep up with Gabin's ham!
• The Ten Commandments (1956) has an epic (indeed, Biblically Epic!) ham fight between Yul "As it is written so let it be done!" Brenner and Charlton "Let my people go!" Heston. The high water mark of classic Hollywood hamminess? And then Anne Baxter enters the fray and nearly outdoes both of them.
• Tim Thomerson goes up against Tim Thomerson in Trancers 5
• A famous scene from French cinema is in The Trip Across Paris (La Traversée de Paris), the dispute between Jambier (Louis de Funès) and Grandgil (Jean Gabin). The script required for Gabin's character to be as loud as possible; Gabin was a living legend and de Funès was not the King of French Large Ham yet. Nevertheless (and despite being visibly intimidated), de Funès held his own, and was noticed by a lot of people.
• The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent forms a forbidden bromance between Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal, the latter of whom has, in real life, cited Cage as an inspiration for his powerful performances.
• The darts scene from Son of Frankenstein is parodied in Young Frankenstein — that is, if it's possible to parody something by doing the exact same thing.

Literature

• The first meeting between Gustav Adolph and Mike Stearns in 1632 is described as a lion (Gustav) fighting a tiger (Mike).
• This is invoked when Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, in Fritz Leiber's "Swords in the Mist", where the two heroes meet unexpectedly as the champions of opposite sides in an arranged combat. They use traded insults and challenges to covertly establish the rules of what becomes, unbeknownst to their respective employers, a staged combat instead of a battle royal.
• Pathruushkè and Trang Barok of The First Dwarf King manage to combine this with Evil Is Hammy every time they argue (which is pretty much every time they speak to each other).
• The argument between Severus Snape and Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix escalates quickly into childish name-calling. Considering both characters are scene-stealing and bombastic on their own, the fact that they have a scene together at all should make the wizarding world explode. Just imagine if the scene had been in the movie.
• Knight Jeidhe and the goddess Silamir are hammy enough on their own in Heralds Of Rhimn, and they only become more vehement when they come into conflict with each other. Silamir wins.

• Shadow of the Conqueror:
  • Daylen and Ahrek occasionally get into this. Ahrek is usually calm, but he's capable of matching Daylen shout for shout.
  • After Ahrek helps Daylen escape the custody of the Archknights, Ahrek and Lyrah positively pommel each other, with Lyrah even giving him the in-universe equivalent of the Precision F-Strike. They agree to have Lyrah join the group to keep track of Daylen shortly afterwards, but nobody is happy about it, especially not Daylen.
  • Daylen and Lyrah are both such Hot-Blooded Determinators that their first few conversations are practically endurance matches until their related psychological issues force them to retreat to their rooms to recover.
• Warhammer 40,000: In the Ciaphas Cain novel Cain's Last Stand, the confrontation between Cain and Warmaster Varan starts out like this. Then they fight. Bonus points for both of them explicitly playing it up for the propoganda potential, as it's being broadcast to the entire planet.

Live-Action TV

In General:

• Basically a recurring element in Soap Operas. This can go far with Latin American telenovelas, and Filipino teleseryes which were influenced by the aforementioned telenovelas.
  • As in the case of Maria Mercedes and its 2013 Philippine remake, and countless others that are basically rags-to-riches fairy tales with the underdog emerging from the slums and managing to out-rant at the aristocratic snobs...
  • ...and in the children's drama serye Annaliza where the eponymous Shrinking Violet ends up getting bullied and pissed at by her Attention Whore sister.^note Which the latter is being influenced by her mother into doing, mostly to kick the protagonist off what they think is her spotlight. It degenerates even more to a full-blown ham battle when even the adults are pissing the living daylights out of each other due to issues within their family, all while a Big Bad is plotting something sinister at Anna and her family.
• Norwegian comedian Harald Heide Steen Jr. managed to make a Ham-to-Ham Combat with himself in a spectacular historical parody in Canis Latinicus and a strange variety of old Norse.

By Series:

• 3rd Rock from the Sun:
  • John Cleese versus John Lithgow!
  • And when Lithgow's boss, the Big Giant Head, appeared, he was... William Shatner!
• 30 Rock:
  • Whenever occasional guest star Will Arnett's character gets into it with Jack Donaghy. Lampshaded by Liz Lemon when she affects a deep, gravelly, "intimidating" voice and asks if they're going to have a "talking-like-this contest".
    Devon: I'm honestly not trying to make this sound gay.
    Jack: No one is, it's just happening.
  • One episode has Jack encounter an Identical Stranger, meaning Alec Baldwin tries to out-ham himself.
• Babylon 5:
  • Londo and G'Kar, pretty much every time they met in the first couple of seasons led to a spectacular argument with actors Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas trying to out-ham each other.
  • Ham is part of the job description for any Centauri ambassador.
  • The climax of "Moments of Transition" turns into three-way Ham To Ham Combat between Delenn, Neroon, and Shakiri. The part where Neroon makes his Heroic Sacrifice elevates the whole thing to Narm levels.
• The Colbert Report:
  • Stephen Colbert vs. Steve Carell. Even Jon Stewart gets in on the action. Behold!
  • In a similar vein, Colbert squared up with Papa Bear O'Reilly on an episode of the O'Reilly Factor. It was Colbert with his energetic antics versus O'Reilly and his legendary Snark. The battle was truly legendary.
• The British impressions show Dead Ringers had a repeated sketch in which Ian McKellen and Alan Rickman battled it out in Ham-to-Ham Combat for token British bad guy roles. They were inevitably blown out of the water by a dramatic entrance from BRIAN BLESSED!!.
• Doctor Who is practically a Ham-to-Ham Warzone.
  • Even the cast and crew weren't averse to a bit of it among themselves. Roy Skelton, one of the Dalek voice actors during the classic series, says he and his colleagues would often compete with each other on set, to see who could be the most evil-sounding Dalek.
  • Averted, surprisingly, in "The Underwater Menace". The normally quite over-the-top Patrick Troughton prepares to go up against the incarnation of Evil Is Hammy in the form of Professor "Noffink in zuh VORLD can SHTOP ME NOOOW!!" Zaroff... and scales his performance right down so he manages to upstage Zaroff by using his own ham against him. This is something his Doctor tended to do a lot — only ramping up the drama against a hammy villain if it was as part of a bluff, or when he's completely losing his cool at the end of "The War Games".
  • Showdowns between the Doctor and The Master. Any of them.
  • The entire Jon Pertwee era is just one huge Ham-to-Ham Combat zone. If it isn't Pertwee and Roger Delgado, it's Pertwee and Nicholas Courtney.
  • Any time there's a multi-Doctor story:
    • "The Three Doctors" between William Hartnell (First Doctor), Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor), and Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor). However they are all restrained thespians compared to OOOOOOOOMEGAAAAAAA!!
    • "The Five Doctors", between Richard Hurndall replacing Hartnell, Troughton, and Pertwee, with Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor positively restrained in comparison. Extra ham from Anthony Ainley as The Master and Richard Mathews as Rassilon.
    • "The Two Doctors", with Troughton and Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor.
    • "Time Crash": 7 minutes of non-stop hamming from David Tennant (Tenth Doctor) and Peter Davison.
    • Even "The Next Doctor", while not a true multi-Doctor story, has David Morrissey out-hamming Tennant.
    • "The Day of the Doctor" has Tennant's Ten, Matt Smith's Eleven, and John Hurt's Eight-and-a-Half hamming it up together. And then Tom Baker shows up and blows Matt Smith off the screen in a performance that is even relatively restrained by his standards.
    • "Twice Upon a Time" features Peter Capaldi as Twelve hamming it up with David Bradley as One, replacing Hurndall and Hartnell.
  • This happens any time one of the Doctors confronts Davros.
  • Tom Baker is clearly having an excellent time going up against the outrageous Pirate Captain in "The Pirate Planet" in the scene that calls for him to dispense with the cutesy Obfuscating Stupidity and launch into an Unstoppable Rage.
  • "The Horns of Nimon": Lalla Ward almost manages to out-ham Tom Baker himself. He resists the onslaught, but then, unbelievably, they are both beaten — completely and utterly beaten — by Graham Crowden as Soldeed. His famous DREEEeeeAAAAaaAaAAAAms of CONquest are only the icing on the cake. He overacts so outrageously that he manages to corpse during his own death scene and it was still put in because it wasn't breaking character.
    Soldeed: The Nimon will fulfill his great promise! (waves hands in the air beatifically) The Nimon be praised!
    Romana: "The Nimon be praised"?! How many Nimons have you seen today?
    Soldeed: Don't dare blaspheme the Nimon-
    Romana: How many?!
    Soldeed: Skonnos will-
    Romana: How - ma - ny - Ni - mons?!
    Soldeed: (grinning insanely) Threeeeee! I have seeen threeeee!
  • "The King's Demons", for the master class in ham from Gerald Flood's King John and Anthony Ainley's Master. Gerald Flood's performance is utterly magnificent. It's been a while since they boilllled someone in oilll.
  • "The Mark of the Rani" has a three-way ham-fest among Colin Baker's Doctor, Anthony Ainley's Master and Kate O'Mara's Rani, and it is glorious.
  • Colin Baker again in "Timelash" where he squares off against Paul Darrow. As has been said elsewhere, the resulting combat has to be seen to be disbelieved.
  • There's a truly spectacular ham-off between Colin Baker and BRIAN BLESSED in "Mindwarp". No wonder Peri (Nicola Bryant) left the show after this; it would be physically impossible to be exposed to such overwhelming hammy glory for more than five minutes without ending up either dead or pregnant.
  • "Ghost Light" is famous for two things: its Neon Genesis Evangelion level of incomprehensibility, and the sheer level of glorious over-acting by every. Single. Cast. Member. Even the extras. Somehow, though, it manages to be utterly awesome and a firm fan-favourite.
  • "The Christmas Invasion": The Tenth Doctor argues with the Sycorax leader. While still in his jimjams and dressing gown.
    Sycorax: [roaring] I DEMAND TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE!
    The Doctor: [bellowing in outrageous imitation] I! DON'T! KNOW!!
  • "Doomsday": The Cybermen and the Daleks meet for the first time... and promptly proceed to bitch at each other for a good five minutes. It's hilarious. (Not in the least because they're all voiced by magnificent ham Nicholas Briggs.)
    Cyberman: Daleks be warned, you have declared war on the Cybermen!
    Dalek: THIS. IS. NOT. WAR! THIS. IS. PEST. CONTROL!
  • Whenever the Tenth Doctor and Donna get into a ham-off, it's epic. And Catherine Tate's very first appearance as Donna Noble had her up against the Racnoss Empress, truly one of the largest hams the series has ever seen. Tate as Donna Noble also has another special distinction: In "Partners in Crime", thanks to a sheet of soundproof glass, she and David Tennant had what might be one of the first silent examples of Ham-to-Ham Combat.
  • Let's not forget Donna's epictacular send off — the FOUR-WAY Kombat between the Doctor, the Doctor-Donna, the Donna-Doctor and Davros in "Journey's End". It is GLORIOUS.
  • The mexi-ham standoff between the Doctor, the Master, and Timothy Dalton from "The End of Time".
  • River Song is an incredible ham when she's very young, and Alex Kingston has a lot of fun overacting when her character gets to meet the Doctor for the first time (from her perspective). Eleven decides to accessorize with an impeccable top hat and tails tuxedo for the occasion while wildly gesticulating with a cane. It's absolutely incredible.
  • Every time Strax shows up. He will find an excuse to pick a fight with anything that moves and promptly obliterate it with anything from laser monkeys to acid traps, and grenades. ESPECIALLY grenades.
  • "The Crimson Horror": In one corner, Matt Smith as the Doctor. In the other, Dame Diana Rigg as the Axe-Crazy old crone Mrs. Gillyflower. The winner: Everybody.
  • "Nightmare in Silver" has Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor compete against an even hammier Matt Smith as the Cyber Controller, and it is glorious.
  • "The Time of the Doctor": Matt Smith hams it up against every Dalek attacking Trenzalore.
  • "The Husbands of River Song": River Song, the 12th Doctor, and a constantly-shouting Hydroflax (even when he's just a head in a sack). Gloriously over the top. Special note of the Doctor's Bigger on the Inside speech when River doesn't know yet who he is and they enter the TARDIS, and he describes how he thinks such a speech really should go.
    The Doctor: Oh... my... GOD! It's bigger!
    River: Well, yes.
    The Doctor: On the inside—!
    River: We need to concentrate.
    The Doctor: Than it is—-!
    River: Yeah, I know where you're going with this, but I need you to calm down.
    The Doctor: On the outside!
    River: You've certainly grasped the essentials.
    The Doctor: [prowling round the console, gesturing wildly] My entire understanding of physical space has been transformed! Three-dimensional Euclidean geometry has been torn up, thrown in the air and snogged to death! My grasp of the universal constants of physical reality has been changed... forever. [Beat] Sorry. I've always wanted to see that done properly.
• In the second episode of Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza, Jeff Davis and Chip Esten get into one of these while singing that little-known jazz ballad "Dust Storm". Near the end, Jeff puts his hand over Chip's mouth, then Chip grabs Jeff's microphone and sings the last line into two mics at once.
• Frasier:
  • The rivalry between Frasier and Cam Winston was truly a joy to behold.
  • Whenever Frasier and Niles got worked up with each other was the cue for an impromptu ham-off, due in equal parts to their natural pompous demeanors, their high education levels and established familiarity with theater, opera, and musicals, and their Sibling Rivalry urging them to show off by trying to outdo each other in the dramatically complex insults and long, hard-to-pronounce words departments. Also, Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce having too much fun for their own good.
• A scene in Friends has Joey and Gary Oldman devolving into one of these as both attempt to spit more in their dialogue.
• Matthew Morrison and Neil Patrick Harris in Glee, competing for a role in Les Misérables, singing Aerosmith's Dream On and getting progressively more over-the-top. It is unbelievably awesome.
• Gotham is a live-action Batman show full of comic-book gimmicks and villains. Hamtastic showdowns are inevitable.
  • Putting Penguin and Riddler in a room together, especially when they're feuding, will usually result in a titan clash of egos. Even when they're not arguing, they still tend to overwhelm every other character on screen with their Suddenly Shouting and Hair-Trigger Temper tendencies.
  • Barbara and Fish Mooney are also good sources of this, especially when paired with one of the above two characters.
• The main characters in How I Met Your Mother absolutely love, love, LOVE doing this, usually over very bizarre, trivial, or theoretical disputes, and usually while sitting in their booth in McLaren's. So commonplace is it to see them over-dramatically (and often over-eloquently) yelling and cussing at each other in the middle of the crowded bar over, say, what the most common food in America is, that Fridge Logic forces the conclusion that their Ham To Ham Combat must be a well-known, taken-for-granted fixture of the bar, or else it would draw dozens of gawking spectators or scare customers away.
• iCarly: Spencer and Jack Black in "iStart A Fan War".
• James Nesbitt as both Tom Jackman and Billy Hyde in Jekyll.
• In the Kamen Rider crossover movie Movie War Megamax, Shotaro Hidari meets Gentaro Kisaragi. "Right!" "Right!" "Right!" "Right!"
• Ham-to-Ham Combat was really the basis of Hawkeye and Trapper's (later B.J.) whole relationship in M*A*S*H. This was as much their characters desperately trying to deflect the horror around them with silly puns, as it was Alda, Rogers, and Farrel having altogether too much fun working together.
• The Match Game regulars and host Gene Rayburn turned the ham up, but when it came to Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly, pork flew fast and thick.
• Any scene in Mork & Mindy with Exidor and Mork. Exidor is a role that requires the finest hamming, and Mork is... well, Robin Williams.
• Any episode of Our Miss Brooks where Madison High Principal Osgood Conklin faces his archrival, Clay City High School Principal Jason Brill.
• Basically, any time any group of Power Rangers face their Big Bad. Especially when a Hot-Blooded Red Ranger faces their Big Bad.
  Devastation: That was your lesson for today! Your homework: Feel the emotion that rages within you. It is called—FEEEEEEEEAR! [Best if imagined in Macho Man Randy Savage's voice.]
• Prodigal Son focuses on imprisoned serial killer Martin Whitley who, played by Michael Sheen, chews the scenery with relish. Who can possibly match him? An Interpol agent played by Alan Cumming.
• Psych: There are at least flashes of this in either of William Shatner's appearances as Juliet's dad, any time he and James Roday Rodriguez share screen time.
• In Robin of Sherwood, guest star Lewis Collins and Nickolas Grace had a competition to see who could out-camp the other. The results are magnificent and full of glorious Ho Yay.
• Rome: Any scene in involving Pompey, Cicero and Cato. Pompey and Cicero will attempt to out-bumble each other, and Cato and Pompey will attempt to out-snarl each other.
• An episode of Roseanne had Roseanne's cousin Ronnie visiting from New York. Cousin Ronnie was played by Joan Collins. A rare female case of Ham-to-Ham Combat ensued.
• RuPaul's Drag Race runs on this trope. In addition to the Passive-Aggressive Kombat and screaming matches between drag queens that make up a normal episode, the two worst contestants in a challenge are forced into a "Lip Synch for your LIFE!" dance-off. The backstage companion series RuPaul's Drag Race: Untucked has also become notorious for its bitchfights, though past contestants have admitted that, at least in the earlier seasons, they were getting drunk off endless free cocktails during the Untucked portion. Eventually, production limited the queens to only two drinks, but this didn't entirely stop the fighting:
  Silky Nutmeg Ganache: IF I WOULD'VE LIPSYNCHED FOR MY MOTHERFUCKING LIFE TODAY, BITCH I WAS MOTHERFUCKING READY! *rips off dress, revealing a sexy bodysuit* I WAS READY TO DO SO!
  Yvvie Oddly: WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING, BITCH?!
  Nina West: Why are we yelling?
• Plenty of examples from Saturday Night Live, but one of the best is between Jon Lovitz as Master Thespian and Phil Hartman as R.H. Macy in "Master Thespian: Santa Claus":
  Macy: Weeelll, are we ready, Mr. Thespian?
  Thespian: Pleeease, call me MAS-TAAHH!!
  Macy: Well, aren't we PICKY?!
• Samurai Sentai Shinkenger: Being a pair of Large Hams, both Ryuunosuke and Genta fall into this when they argue. A good example is at the start of Act 19, where their argument of whether Genta is an authentic samurai involves both yelling and slamming their chests against each other while Mako and Kotoha try to pull them apart.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • Put two System Lords in a room together, and this is the inevitable result. It helps that their voices are extremely deep and they often like to display their Glowing Eyes of Doom.
  • Or put Anubis (who takes the traits of your average System Lord to extremes) up against President Henry Hayes, who goes full confident folksy politician. While relatively subdued compared to Anubis, after their conversation is over he asks his staff "Did I overdo it?"
• Star Trek:
  • In just about every episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, William Shatner brings enough ham to the table to feed a small nation. But in "The Doomsday Machine", he meets his match in Captain Matt Decker. Shatner wisely chose not to engage Ham-to-Ham with William Windom. His performance is for the most part very subdued, making Decker look even more deranged.
    Kirk: Matt, where's your crew?
    Decker: ...On the fourth planet.
    Kirk: There is no fourth planet!
    Decker: Don't you think I know that? THERE WAS! BUT NOT ANYMORE!!
  • The TOS episode "Whom Gods Destroy" featured a veritable clash of the titans between Shatner and Steve Ihnat. When Inhat's character disguises himself as Kirk (and is thus played by Shatner) it's a miracle that the universe didn't collapse in on itself.
  • About Shatner: look at most of the big-name guest appearances on most of his shows. Basically, Shatner is the Iron Ham, and any show he's on automatically becomes Ham Arena. Presumably, it's every actor's dream to go Ham-to-Ham vs. Shatner.
  • On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Ambassador Sarek comes aboard the Enterprise — and brings aboard a Hate Plague in the form of Bendii Syndrome, a degenerative disease causing him to lose his emotional control. Coupled with Vulcan telepathy, it causes him to inadvertently project bursts of anger onto random people, leading to such disturbances as a Bar Brawl and a shouting match between Picard and Riker on The Bridge.
  • Then there was the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Rules of Engagement". In the red corner: Avery Brooks as Ben Sisko, one of the few Starfleet captains who could give Kirk a run for his money. In the blue corner, Ron Canada as targ-acting Klingon Amoral Attorney Ch'pok. Given that the judge was a Vulcan, and thus unlikely to be swayed by mere volume, presumably they were trying to intimidate each other.
  • As if that wasn't ham-tastic enough, "Waltz" provides Sisko's next major competitor: former Cardassian ruler (i.e., Dominion pawn) Gul Dukat, driven insane by the loss of both his conquest of the Alpha Quadrant and his daughter, Ziyal. And just to make it an even bigger ham sandwich, hallucinations of Kira, Weyoun, and Damar take turns screwing with what's left of his mind. If they hadn't been able to escape the uninhabited planet they were stranded on, they could've feasted on their own ham for the rest of their lives.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Much of "Message In A Bottle" is made up of two cantankerous EMHs arguing with each other.
• That '70s Show: Bob arguing with a drive-thru statue of a clown, "voiced" by Fez. Must be seen to be believed.
• What We Do in the Shadows (2019): one episode has Laszlo (played by Matt Berry) up against Jim (played by Mark Hamill) and the two are clearly having a blast hamming it up opposite each other.
  Jim: CRAVENSWOOORTH!!!

Music

• The song "Under Pressure". Freddie Mercury and David Bowie duet.
• Bowie and Mick Jagger dueting in "Dancing in the Streets", too, especially in the video.
• Related to Mick Jagger, live performances of "Gimme Shelter" usually devolve into a hammy duet between Jagger and whoever is doing the female parts. Also occurs in Meat Loaf's live covers.
• Anywhere that GACKT and Yoshiki appear together.
• We could be here all week if we tried to list all the examples in the genre of Power Metal considering the prominence of Large Hams and guest vocalists. Special mention, however, goes to the following:
  • Ayreon is described on its page as an excuse for the "who's who of Progressive Metal to compete to out-ham each other."
  • Avantasia, much like Ayreon, gets this as a direct result of the numerous guest vocals. The songs "The Wicked Symphony" and "Stargazers" in particular have managed to bring together three (four in the case of "Stargazers") of the largest hams in power metal by having Tobias Sammet, Russell Allen, Jorn Lande and, in the case of "Stargazers," Michael Kiske all sing on the same songs.
  • Allen/Lande is a superband that came together entirely for the purposes of this trope in regards to the aforementioned Russell Allen and Jorn Lande.
• From the realm of classical music comes Rossini's "Duetto buffo di due gatti" ("Comic duet for two cats"). Any sopranos who do not use this song as an exercise in competitive hammery are just doing it wrong.
• Depending on whom you ask, Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman's Spirituals in Concert & Mythodea concerts were either the most sublime music of their genre (especially the latter) or a massive friendly showdown of two divas trying to outham each other (especially the former).
• Heavy metal is made of this trope, especially if a band has two lead guitarists (Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing of Judas Priest, most famously). They'll hit all the highest notes, play the fastest riffs, and do everything short of tickling their guitars to death. The hammiest of them can not only short-circuit their guitars, but cause them to melt.
• The Flanders and Swann song "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better" ends every verse with a singing duel between the two duetters. The ham level is high enough it can alter your blood cholesterol.
• Daemonic Angel's song "That Which Is Wrought of Fear." It consists entirely of two "Metal Screaming" vocalists, playing the part of a demon and a monster slayer, talking trash on each other. It then ends with a flurry of lyrical trade-offs before the both of them let out a massive unison roar.
• Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley during the second half of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light". "LEMME SLEEP ON IT!" "WILL YA LOVE ME FOREVER?" "LEMME SLEEP ON IT!" "WILL YA LOVE ME FOREVER?!"
• Led Zeppelin once opened for The Doors. Led Zeppelin once opened for The Doors. If only we could've gotten Jim Morrison and Robert Plant on stage at the same time...
• Korn's "All in the Family," a sort-of rap battle between Jonathan Davis and Fred Durst that ends with the two of them just screaming at each other.
• Michael Jackson and sister Janet in "Scream". The title already states they have to raise their voices, and they don't disappoint!

Music Videos

• In Journey's "Chain Reaction" music video, singer Steve Perry and guitarist Neal Schon engage in this, culminating in Steve laying the smackdown on Neal.

Pro Wrestling

• Really, any "good" match. Professional Wrestling is built on a solid foundation of PURE HAM. Promo confrontations between feuding wrestlers literally are an undiluted form of this trope. And in the setups to multi-man matches like the Elimination Chamber or Money in the Bank, you'll inevitably get a scene where every participant in the match comes out to cut a promo at the same time.
• This is part of why the rivalry between The Rock and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin was so fun to watch (the other was that the men were good friends in real life and relished the opportunity to give the other a good-natured ribbing).
  • Just about any time The Rock and Mick Foley were together could be described as this. Whether they were feuding, or teaming up as 'The Rock N Sock Connection', they always seemed to be trying to outdo one another in hamminess.
  • Another example is D-Generation X. Shawn Michaels thought Triple H was funny as hell behind the scenes, Triple H started trying to crack Shawn up on television, and it just evolved into Ham To Ham Combat meets No Fourth Wall.
• THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR!
• MACHO MAN RANDY SAVAGE, THE CREAM OF THE CROP! could out-ham anyone with his shouting and Milking the Giant Cow. Once, Ultimate Warrior and Randy Savage teamed up to form the Savage Maniacs, the result was by far the hammiest team-up of Wrestling history past, present and future. Observe.
• "HOAK HOGAN!" *skronk*
• There was that one time Hulk Hogan went to the Dungeon of Doom to confront the Giant (The Big Show).
• When Shawn Michaels and John Cena exist on the same show, it's kind of inevitable.
  Shawn Michaels: Bullets hurt me...
• And then we got John Cena and The Freakin Rock in the same building. You could just smell the glazed ham these two brought.
• Daniel Bryan vs. A.J. Lee, Kane, a random fan, or anybody for that matter.
• My god, the ham factory did not stand a chance in a ham-off between Bray Wyatt and "Woken" Matt Hardy! Observe!

Puppet Shows

• The Muppet Show:
  • Miss Piggy, as you would expect, is a reigning champion at these kind of scenes. The most literal example is probably Piggy and fellow pig Link Hogthrob trying to upstage each other while performing "La Ci Darem La Mano" from Don Giovanni in faux-Wagnerian Viking outfits.
  • Some of the human guest stars attempted to go one-on-one with the Muppets. A few of them - through training, conviction, and presumably two days of fasting to make room for all the scenery they had to chew - even managed it, such as Zero Mostel mocking Sam the Eagle behind his back or John Cleese whenever his in-character temper ran out, which was often.
    Cleese: You were supposed to be my host! How could you do this to me?! Kermit, I AM YOUR GUEST!
    Ensemble Muppets: THIS IS YOUR GUEST! TO FOLLOW THAT STAR!
  • For the musical equivalent, both Buddy Rich and Harry Belafonte took on Animal in drum battles. Both survived, narrowly.

Radio

• During the legendary Jack Benny-Fred Allen feud, any time either of the two appeared on the other's show, the hamminess reigned unrestrained.
  Jack Benny: (as his pants are being removed) Allen, you haven't seen the end of me!
  Fred Allen: It won't be long now!
• In the Rotterdam episode of Cabin Pressure, Roger Allam and Anthony Head compete to appear in the introductory video for MJN in oh so smooth duvet tones - leading to Carolyn complaining she is being drowned in syrup.

Roleplay

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• From Cerberus Daily News: VOLUS FIGHT!

Theatre

• Chicago: The climactic scene of the original play ^note not the musical is a contest between Billy and Roxie to decide who can do more to guilt the jury into exonerating her. Billy makes his closing argument furiously Chewing the Scenery, but Roxie, not willing to let her lawyer steal the show from her, wins without uttering a single line of dialogue.
• The two princes singing "Agony" in Into the Woods frequently takes this form. It's in the script. "Agony! Far more painful than yours!"
• In a recorded production of Jekyll & Hyde starring David Hasselhoff as the eponymous character(s), he's at his highest level of ham in the climactic song "Confrontation". Why is that an example of this trope? Because Jekyll and Hyde both sing that song. That's right, The Hoff can have Ham-to-Ham Combat with HIMSELF.
• Les Misérables: Any scene between Valjean and Javert. Notable on the original cast album with Colm Wilkinson and Roger Allam, taken to extremes with Alfie Boe and Norm Lewis in the 25th Concert.
• Cirque du Soleil's Mystère turns the eternal struggle that is Order Versus Chaos into this, pitting the conceited emcee Moha-Samedi against story-intruder Brian Le Petit. This climaxes with the emcee declaring "GET OUT!" and Brian taking on a look sooooooo pitiable that one can't help but "Awwwww..." for him... which is his intention — effectively calling upon hammy reinforcements.
• Peer Gynt: The titular character goes head to head with almost everybody else currently on stage. It begins with the first exchange of lines:
  Aase: PEEEER! You are LYYYING!!!
  Peer: NO! I AM NOT!!! ...and so forth.
• Older Than Radio: Mozart's opera-within-an-opera Der Schauspieldirektor has two sopranos both insisting "Ich bin die erste Sängerin" ("I am the prima donna") and seeking to prove their claim with abundant coloratura.
• A Very Potter Musical has three extremely Large Hams (Voldemort, Malfoy, and Snape). They finally get a scene together and it turns into this. And it's totally awesome.
• Wicked has a scene set almost immediately after Dorothy leaves munchkinland in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz where Elphaba and Glinda begin bickering and eventually catfight. Now, Glinda is miscast if she's not a Large Ham but the special treat in this scene is the actress playing Elphaba beginning to ham it up as well. It's also the last comic scene in the show too, so the actresses clearly like to have fun with it.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: We could spend an entire day talking about this, but here's a sample: "OBJECTION!" "I SAID OBJECTION FIRST!" Reaching its logical conclusion:
  Edgeworth: [speed stripes] Can you prove that? I THINK NOT!
  Phoenix: [speed stripes] Oh, yeah? I THINK I CAN! It's simple!
  Edgeworth: [speed stripes] WHAAAAAT!?
• In Umineko: When They Cry, Ham To Ham Combat is actual combat! Battler and Beatrice (and more characters later) launch theories and arguments at each other, full with Giving Someone the Pointer Finger, Laser Blades and red and blue flashes at each sentence. And it only gets hammier with each Episode. Except Episode 7, but that's only because Battler and Beatrice aren't in that one.
  Battler: CHEKKUMEEEEIIIITO DAAAAAAAAH!!!!

Web Animation

• Turnabout Storm: Hot-Blooded attorney Phoenix Wright gets into a legal battle of wits against the Great and Powerful Trixie. How many miles away from Ponyville can the generated pork be seen?

Webcomics

• Drowtales, due to being set in a World of Ham.
  • Just about anytime a fight gets serious you can expect this. Quain'tana, Zala'ess (even more so when they're in the same scene) and pretty much all of the Knight Templar Kyorl'solenurn clan seem to have a steady diet of the comic's scenery.
  • The hammiest moment, bar none, is during Sil'lice's flashback where she battles the equally hamtacular Kalki, and Sil'lice's ham-a-thon when she returns to the Sharen fortress afterwards. They literally start knocking down the scenery.
  • Sil'lice herself is no slouch as seen when she fights Yaeminira/Vy'chriel. It starts with Vy'chriel knocking down the door of the Sarghress fortress with a Humongous Mecha and Vy'chriel shouting a challenge and ends with Sil'lice repeatedly slamming her sword into Vy'chriel's forehead while naming the virtues the Sharen who betrayed them have lost, all while freezing Vy'chriel solid.
  • Kalki seems to be involved in a lot of these, including one with Kiel that even resembles the trope image.
• Gunnerkrigg Court, when Parley and Mort finally found the common ground.
• Shortpacked!: Galasso and Sydney "fool" around.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe example: in "Boston Brawl", The Necromancer and Fey have a one-on-one magical battle in the middle of Boston, complete with calling their attacks.

Web Videos

• The feud between The Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic goes this way almost any time they're on screen together.
• That Guy with the Glasses: Apparently it's some kind of employment requirement for Channel Awesome to be able to ham it up when necessary. And sometimes when it's not, too.
  • In Kickassia, very much a World of Ham, The Nostalgia Critic and The Spoony One have a particularly egregious example of this at the beginning of part 2. It stands out against all of the other extremely hammy cast members, and that says something. The battle between Nostalgia Critic and Dr. Insano is the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Haminess.
  • Played With in The Nostalgia Critic's review of Dungeons & Dragons (2000), when he ordained a contest between Profion's hammy overacting and the Empress' quiet underacting. Ultimately he decided they both sucked equally.
  • And again in The Langoliers, when the very hammy villain gets into an argument with a hallucination of his equally hammy father; the Critic decided to give them points based on how far their mouths opened while screaming.
  • The ham continues and escalates in To Boldly Flee as we get scenes with General Zod (played by Doug Walker) Mechakara (played by Lewis Lovhaug) and Terl (played by Noah Antwiler). It is pure, unfiltered pork.
  • Lindsay, Elisa and Nella go all out with each other in the Dark Nella Saga. Nella just about wins through Evil Is Hammy, but the other women put up a surprisingly good fight.
  • Linkara's crossover with Spoony to review Warrior #2 and #3 causes Insano versions of much of the Channel Awesome crew at the time to manifest at the end of the review and start fighting each other whilst taking advantage of the opportunity to gleefully overact. Special mentions go to Dr. InsanJoe, who channels Emperor Palpatine's over the top gesturing, and Dr. Bearsano, who in spite of being a teddy bear riding atop a mind-controlled Benzaie, manages to overact for two without actually speaking.
• Despite being a collaboration, The Runaway Guys often find themselves in combat. Mostly Chuggaaconroy and ProtonJon yelling and insulting each other.
• The entire point of Epic Rap Battles of History. Two famous people have a rap battle.
• The Gentlemen's dispute series of videos between CaptainSparklez and Markiplier.
  • The whole thing's so hammy you could feed a third world country with the amount of ham it creates. See here for yourself. And that's just the first video.
  • The follow up video might be even hammier than the first one as it involves a prolonged scene of acting at the beginning of it.
• What do you get when two hammy-aspiring actresses and have them "impersonate" Harry Potter spells? So much ham they barely hold the laughter.

Western Animation

• Transformers:
  • Optimus and Megatron are the masters of this trope, pretty much in every continuity (and they usually play it up during actual combat). Megatron and Starscream have their moments, too.
  • Unicron, Primus, and the Original 13 (7?), too, ham it up every time they activate their vocal processors, and go into overdrive when running combat subroutines.
  • Near the end of the Rebirth story arc, which serves as the conclusion to the original G1 cartoon, Spike Witwicky!Fortress Maximus and the evil Nebulan Lord Zarak!Scorponok have such an epic confrontation. In particular, Spike not only out-fights Lord Zarak, he arguably also manages to out-ham him. It has to be heard to be believed.
  • In Beast Wars Megatron and Tarantulas have formulated an Evil Plan. They begin to laugh in celebration. This becomes an Overly-Long Gag as they try to have the last laugh.
  • Just about every fight between Autobots and Decepticons are this.
• Invader Zim: Anybody going against Zim will inevitably be involved in one of these, although Tak is probably one of the best examples. Dib vs. Zim is an odd aversion: while both are accomplished Large Hams in their own right, whenever they have a scene together one or the other will generally fall into a more subdued Straight Man role...generally.
  Dib: Just this once, we work together! Mortal enemies working together for the common good!
  Zim: BE QUIET!
• Danny Phantom: Technus (who was a grade A ham from the start) versus Super Danny (who, apparently, is one of the hammiest characters of all without his human side to subdue it).
• Colonel Gathers and General Treister in The Venture Bros..
  Gathers: Don't kill yourself, you crazy bastard!
• Anytime Brain and Snowball face off in Pinky and the Brain.
• From Xavier: Renegade Angel, Xavier's epically stupid battle with himself, from "Shakashuri Blowdown."
  Xavier: You sound like the ugliest son of a bitch I ever heard!
  Other Xavier: YOU sound like the physical manifestation of some LOSER'S inner DEMONS!
  Xavier: YOU sound like some total chode's inability to confront his past actions!
  Other Xavier: If I ever hear one more word from your stinky mug, I swear to Jack-off I'll knock your clock off!
• Adventure Time:
  • There are a lot of these, but special mention has to go to any scene involving Finn and Lemongrab together.
    Lemongrab: TOO YOUNG! TOO YOUNG TO RULE THE KINGDOM!
    Finn: [puffs out his chest and slaps Lemongrab on the hand] WATCH your MANNERS with the PRINCESS!
    Lemongrab: HHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?!
    Finn: What the HUH?!
    Lemongrab: [frowning] MMMMMM...! [gasps] -MUH!
  • Any scene with Finn and the Ice King.
• In Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, just about any exchange between Beth Lestrade and Professor Moriarty...
  Lestrade: Must the two of you be so theatrical?
  Moriarty: [practically purring] But of course.
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: There's a reason the World of Ham trope is listed on this show's page.
  • Every scene with Buzz Lightyear and the EVIL Emperor Zurg. Every. Single. Scene.
  • For that matter, XR's exchanges with Nos-4-A2 and Warp Darkmatter...
• In SpongeBob SquarePants, Plankton and Mr. Krabs commonly do this.
• In The Amazing World of Gumball, this trope is the natural state of Gumball and Darwin.
• My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic:
  • Guest star "Weird Al" Yankovic gets into a music battle with the show's biggest ham, Pinkie Pie. The result is what you would probably expect.
  • A villainous example occurs in Season 7 when Nightmare Moon and Daybreaker, Luna and Celestia's Super Powered Evil Sides, face off against each other in Starlight's dreamscape and unleash war cries and boasts to match their magical attacks.
• Looney Tunes: Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck both would usually attempt to out-ham anyone else on the screen, so when the two of them faced off against each other (as in the "Duck Season/Rabbit Season" cartoons), it was epic.

Real Life

• The United Nations can on occasion descend into this when representatives of two unpopular countries, like North Korea and Myanmar, end up in a debate with each other.
• It happens a lot among sport fans: matches between teams that share a bitter rivalry with one another will see their respective fans fully indulge in this most of the time.
• World War II: Patton and any other general. Special note goes to him and Montgomery: The invasion of Sicily would have probably been a lot less bloody for the Allies if the two weren't trying to show each other who was the better conqueror. The movie Patton had Patton say this line:
  Patton: Hell, I know I'm a prima-donna, I admit it. The thing that bothers me about Monty [UK General Bernard Law Montgomery] is he won't admit it.
• The British House of Commons, because of the incredibly adversarial setup of the Chamber, often features attempts by the Members to out-ham one another. A typical exchange generally goes like this:
  Minister: (outlines government policy)
  Goverment MPs: HEAR HEAR, HUZZAH, GREAT, HEAR HEAR!
  Opposition MPs: SHAME! CORRUPTION! HOW DARE YOU!
• Really, any parliamentary government will get into this on a regular basis.
• On the battlefield, feudal Samurai often engaged in single combat, all the while exchanging colorful and extravagant insults and self-promotions. It occasionally got to the point that they'd momentarily stop dueling just to argue or praise their own combat prowess.
• Salt Lake City Comic Con 2013 had a panel featuring, for the first time ever, William Shatner and Adam West on stage together.
• The Norwegian constituent assembly of 1814 had several. Most notably the on going feud between the speaker, principal of the University Georg Sverdrup known for his lack of indoor voice, and the priest Nicolay Wergeland (the father of Henrik Wergeland), known for his lengthy speeches. They continued out-hamming each other even when the constitution was signed and sealed.
• As of September 2017, the war of words between the United States and North Korea, or rather, between Trump and Kim Jong-Un. However, given the stakes, this is less entertaining than disturbing for observers.

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