Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!

Well, for once it's not Tokyo getting rampaged.

"There are always giant robots. Always."

— Cliché #54, The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Clichés

Simply put, this is when a work is not about Mecha, but throws one or more in at some point(s) anyway. Why? Because giant robots are cool, duh!

Note that perhaps no work absolutely needs mecha, but some works still center around them, especially a Super Robot show. This is when you can throw out the mecha and still have most of the work intact. But it wouldn't be as awesome, right?

Other popular condiments for when authors feel a science fiction or adventure plot is in need of fresh flavor are giant monsters, zombies and ninja.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, Sealand asks Japan to making him like a power ranger and Sealand randomly becomes a Super Robot Mecha with a Rocket Punch. He has to call Iceland to get the fist back because The Rocket punch just kept going straight to Iceland and Iceland's head was in the way so it couldn't come back.
• Laputa: Castle in the Sky has not a trace of Humongous Mecha until about halfway through the movie.
• In the last episode of Kaiba, three rebels break into the ruler's palace using a giant robot that the Nutty Professor had been saving for the task. It fights off the Mecha-Mooks with a Macross Missile Massacre while the others make their way to the ruler's chamber.
• The final battle of the School Festival arc in Negima! Magister Negi Magi throws in mecha just for the heck of it. And Gundam references. Plenty of Gundam references.
• Burst Angel. 'Course, 90% of the the plot is things they thrown in for the hell of it, so it doesn't stand out too much.
• Guilty Crown is a story that takes place after a major viral outbreak deemed Lost Christmas has ravaged Japan and left it under martial law and foreign occupation. Ten years later, a new Phlebotinum known as the Void Genome has been developed, which allows its user to draw powerful items from people that reflect their personalities. After a terrorist group bent on liberating Japan steals this weapon, it winds up being accidentally bonded to Ordinary High-School Student Ouma Shu. It's a story that tries to show normal teenagers living under constant threat of strife and death. It also features some CG robots that serve mostly to give Shu some enemies to chop up with his weapon without having to kill anyone. Although prominent in the first episode, for most of the show they are mostly absent or in the background.
• One Piece:
  • Mr. 3 creates one for himself out of candle wax. It's more dangerous than it sounds.
  • After the Time Skip, Franky has a Rule of Funny-based Giant Robot with a barrel-shaped body and tiny, spindly legs.
    • It's later revealed that its initial appearance was just for laughs and that it actually is an awesome machine.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • The finale of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha had Precia summoning an army of Mecha-Mooks, including a Humongous Mecha or ten. Though considering all the mecha references in Nanoha, it's more surprising that there aren't more.
  • The Reflection/Detonation duology had multiple Humongous Mecha that Iris created with her Formula powers.
• A few years prior, the same director had Kyosuke Date go a few rounds with giant machines in The SoulTaker.
• Now and Then, Here and There: The humans from the apocalyptic far-future occasionally use Mini-Mecha. This is less for Rule of Cool than to show their borderline Magi Tech is very different from modern technology.
• The preclimactic fight of the Soul Eater anime has Lord Death skirt the issue of being confined to Death City by turning the city into a giant fighting mecha.
• Magic Knight Rayearth. Although the mecha are cool to look at, they don't particularly do anything that the Power Trio couldn't do on their own aside from scaling up the fights (though in Season 2, they did fight another Humongous Mecha by a neighboring science-y nation and any other 'huge only' enemies). Although the mecha aspect helped them stand out amongst other Magical Girl entries and apparently made them eligible to enter Super Robot Wars in their 2019 installment.
• In the High School comedy I My Me! Strawberry Eggs old lady Lulu has a motorbike that transforms into a humanoid firefighting mecha. There is no valid reason for this other than Rule of Cool.
• In Naruto, one of Pain's bodies is inexplicably a Cyborg Walking Arsenal, with rocket boots, a Rocket Punch, Macross Missile Massacre deployed from his other arm, and a laser beam from his head. This just seems to be part of his bloodline ability rather than actual technology. He pulls off the same moves using his own body after being resurrected by Kabuto.
  • And in the game Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution, we have a Mecha Naruto and Mecha Kurama. He even transforms into Mecha Kurama ala a Super Robot Series.
• Red Garden: Dead Girls (OVA), Because being hundreds of years in the future isn't interesting enough, Gonzo decided it was time to add some mecha. Looking back on the TV series beginning episodes, one could never imagine this is how it would all end.
• Even though Ghost in the Shell has Spider Tanks, actual mechas are very rare and rather on the small side. The lobby fight in the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is already awesome, but when the mecha appears on the scene, the awesomeness instantly goes critical.
  • Not exactly a mecha, it was just a fairly large suit of Powered Armor.
• In Buso Renkin, most of the titular objects take the form of weapons. The boss of the Alchemist Army has his take the form of a giant mecha, which amplifies other weapons and abilities that are used by its other pilots.
• Quite literal in Hanamaru Kindergarten: Tsuchida's puppet show is a fantasy fairytale...up until the handsome prince summons his giant robot, which the children think is awesome.
• Air Gear has had a couple of these lately, starting with Caesar and Nina's AT Armors. Hell, soon enough even Kaito gets to pilot one
• In Psychic Squad, one of the characters ESPer powers involves making toys real and fighting with them. Guess what he tends to fight with? (hint: it's a toy model, starts with the letter 'M' and ends with 'echa'). Aside from pure awesomeness factor, there is no justification for this.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Most sorcerers use archaic weapons at most, but Kokichi's power allows him to operate a human-sized robot called Mechamaru as a Remote Body (in fact, most people treat "Mechamaru" as if he was the actual person) and a Humongous Mecha as a pilot.
• Agriculture Girls! is just a regular short about cute girls farming rice... With a giant robot.

Comic Books

• Normally The Avengers don't deal with giant robots, but in the 2021 Avengers - Mech Strike miniseriess, the Avengers aren't enough against Kang's bio-mechanical monsters. So Tony gives everyone a mech, including unsavoury ally Thanos.
• The X-Men have the Sentinels, which are towering robots meant to hunt mutants.
  • In the debut of the 2021 team, the X-Men use their powers to create a home-made mech the X-Mech to fight an alien giant robot. The team actually intends to keep and upgrade the X-Mech for future encounters.
• The giant Batman/Superman composite mecha created by one of the many people that go by Toyman. This particular Toyman is a Japanese teenager, so it's at least understandable.
  • A version of this character from the future later appeared in Teen Titans piloting Grendizer.
• In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 comics, Dawn (by now a giant) goes on a rampage through Tokyo, stomping on vampires and generally causing mayhem. The vampires counterattack with a Humongous Mecha version of Dawn with a Godzilla-esque tail and the two of them battle it out in the middle of the city, with Andrew giving tactics advice from a helicopter overhead.
• In Teen Titans Go!, the various vehicles used at different times by the cast can combine into a robot. We do not see this every day, and of course their cartoon and mainstream comic counterparts get along just fine without it.

Comic Strips

• Dick Tracy: At the height of the insanity during Locher's run, he introduced a Humongous Mecha called TRAZE-R to the strip.

Fan Works

• Hoofstuck: LoRaF-tan has one.
• This Warrior Cats fanfic declares that the only way Warriors could possibly be more awesome would be if the cats piloted giant mechs. And so they do.
• Sailor Moon could be more awesome if Sarina was, instead of (or as well as) a Magical Girl, she was a mechwarrior. So thought Foxi-5 at Deviantart.
• My Little Pony, on a related note, could also be more awesome. Now it is.
• Hotspring Souls! is a Soulsborne (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, and Bloodborne) crossover comedy fic that plays with the idea of the games' protagonists having a weekend vacation at an inn/hotspring in the countryside. The story starts out like a straightforward Hot Springs Episode, then turns into this halfway through.
• Theecat's six robotic horses combine into the mecha Lord Equus to combat Paul in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. It successfully kicks Paul across Boidan Valley. However, not long after that John sinks the thing deep into the ground. So much for awesome.

Film — Animated

• In the climax of The Secret of the Magic Potion, Getafix builds a giant Combining Mecha out of Roman legionaries and their shields to fight the Big Bad who has grown to giant size. Obelix eventually takes control of one arm to deliver an epic Megaton Punch.

Film — Live-Action

• When Spaceball 1 became (Dramatic Timpani) Mega Maid.
  "Its a Transformer!"
• Moonwalker, and the two video games modeled after it, have Michael Jackson single-handedly curb-stomping The Aggressive Drug Dealer Frankie Liddeo's private army by becoming a heavily-armed transforming robot (a magical comet did it).
• Even though Starship Troopers is based on the back cover of the novel that originally introduced the whole concept of Powered Armor, it and its sequels have little to do with the original, and thus don't have the armor. Then Starship Troopers 3: Marauder "introduces" mechs just for the cool of it.
• The first three Terminator films were conducted at the human scale. Terminator Salvation shows giant mecha robots in Skynet's army that are used to round up human survivors.
• Sucker Punch. The second fantasy battle sequence has the protagonists charging through a Diesel Punk World War I trench maze full of Imperial German clockwork zombies, with one of them providing support with a Humongous Mecha that resembles a ball turret with arms and legs. That is all.
• All Star Wars films since The Empire Strikes Back have added walkers such as the AT-AT and AT-ST. The Phantom Menace even introduced Transforming Mecha (specifically, droid starfighters which could shift into walkers when needed.)
• The new Gullivers Travels movie has a giant mech. Except it's used by the Liliputians, and as such is only human-sized.
• Wild Wild West. Dr. Loveless' giant steam-powered Spider Tank.
• In Aliens, Mini-Mecha loading bots are used to help load heavy missiles onto the drop ships. Ripley was trained to use those, and she utilizes it in the final battle against the alien queen, while dropping the Pre Ass Kicking One Liner "Get away from her, you bitch!".

Literature

• The final battle in Ready Player One involves Wade and co fighting the Sixers in mecha from Japanese Spider-Man and various anime.

• Christopher Ruocchio's The Sun Eater books are about a Touched by Vorlons Dark Messiah who's story world is half Dune and half Book of the New Sun. After much of the previous action in the series being boarding actions on starships or gladiator arena fights, the 3rd book has a planetary Hold the Line action against the vile alien Cielcin. On the ground, are the colossi. These are bipedal, quadrupedal and other multi-legged Giant Robots that have immense plasma artillery for bombarding enemy positions and the colossi also double as shielded, heavily armored large-scale troop transports.
• You wouldn't expect a mecha in a Dr. Seuss book, would you? But The Butter Battle Book has the Utterly Sputter, one of the many increasingly bizarre weapons created by the Yooks and the Zooks in their Lensman Arms Race.

Live Action TV

• Doctor Who: "The Next Doctor" has a giant steampunk Cyberman trampling through 19th century London. Later on, a reason is given why it wasn't in the history books.
• Super Sentai and Power Rangers. Let's face it, they don't need to include the Make My Monster Grow part every episode, but nobody's really complaining about the giant robots the Rangers pull out in response. The first two Sentai series, Himitsu Sentai Gorenger and J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai, had no super robots, just Gerry Anderson-esque vehicles, and the latter was not very successful — it was the introduction of super robots into the show with Battle Fever J that distinguished the show from the dozens of other Henshin Hero shows at the time and made it a Cash-Cow Franchise.

Puppet Shows

• This trope shows up in, of all places, a Christian kids' film. Buck Denver Asks: Why Do We Call It Christmas?^* part of a series from the creator of VeggieTales in which a collection of Muppet-like characters discuss the Bible opens with an excited puppet enthusing about the coming festive season, and proclaiming that there will be "much mistletoeing!" Wait... what's mistletoeing? Well, apparently, in the future wars will be fought by giant robots that shoot missiles from their toes. This sets up a Running Gag throughout the rest of the film, in which short segments detailing the story of Christmas and its history as a holiday are interrupted by invading missile-toeing giant robots from the future.

Roleplay

• Destroy the Godmodder invokes this trope repeatedly. The AGs will be going along, trampling the shreds of the godmodder's forces, then suddenly a horde of giant mechs attacks them. Again.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted: "Yeah, Bob, I like the sound of this game where you play the solar-powered demigod, but do you think there's any way we could get, I don't know, giant magic suits of power armour into this? Except we can't really call them that, so...warstriders, yeah that's a good name. Warstriders."
• CthulhuTech: "People beating the crap out of Cthulhu Mythos creatures is becoming a bit too common... What do you guys say we do it with mecha, and make a tabletop RPG out of it?"
• Dungeons & Dragons: "Hey, guys, I just had this awesome idea. Let's make a huuge golem out of flesh and bones, stat it up, and let necromancers possess it with Magic Jar!"
  • "Yeah, that sounds great. And then we could have, like, the dwarves or somebody build a walking city, and make it fight dragons from the moon..."
  • Even from the first edition, there was one mecha in the game: a wondrous artifact that could be found was the "Apparatus of Kwalish", a crab-like Mini-Mecha that could be used for underwater exploration and resembled an iron barrel until activated.
• Gear Krieg "All the action and adventure of World War II — with mecha!"
• Pathfinder: Getting bored with the standard medieval fantasy setting? Just head on over to Numeria, grab some laser guns and chainsaws, and fight a colossal scorpion robot with integrated chain guns in its claws and a plasma beam in its tail.
• Warhammer 40,000 - because what's a massive, apocalyptic battle with without skyscraper-sized mechs that can level cities with a single shot? The newer editions have been critizised for introducing more and more stompy robots to the game, invoking this trope.
• Modiphius Entertainment published fantasy RPG game, Unity from Zensara Studios. The main theme is the 4 races of this shattered world struggling to unify against horrors from beyond and new dangers from their altered planet. While mostly standard heroic fantasy, there's a Diesel Punk element in that revolvers and semi-automatic rifles are readily available from the humans and eons ago, humanity somehow leapfrogged into creating Lost Technology A.I. human-sized robots and the giant mecha known as Titan Rigs that standard mecha arsenal like Rocket Punch and Hand Blast weaponry.

Toys

• Ladies and gentlemen, The "Disney Megazord"◊.
• BIONICLE takes this to the logical extreme in Stars: one robot is 27 million feet tall and the other one is 40,000,000 feet tall and contains the entire Matoran Universe.

Video Games

• Mecha make frequent appearances in the works of Epic Battle Fantasy series developer Matt Roszak:
  • His first released game was a mecha-based Virtual Paper Doll game, fittingly titled Mecha Dress Up Game. Notably, possible designs within the game would go on to inspire the examples listed below.
  • His second, Brawl Royale, features an unnamed mecha as the seventh opponent.
  • The Epic Battle Fantasy series itself features a few - Epic Battle Fantasy 1 has a mecha (named Mecha) as its penultimate boss, Epic Battle Fantasy 2 has a mecha named the Guardian as its second boss, and Epic Battle Fantasy 4 has the Praetorian and Praetorian MKII, who appear in the Waste Disposal Plant and Battle Mountain, respectively.
• The eponymous Metal Gear mechs could be anything, really, considering the themes of the games otherwise are unrelated to giant mecha. They do make for awesome boss battles, tho'.
  • Especially in Metal Gear Solid 4 when you finally get to pilot one.
  • In a nice bit of lampshade hanging in the book of the first game, Snake reflects that Otacon even gave the thing sound effects to sound like a dragon. It doesn't get much cooler than that.
    • Of course, Otacon is an Otaku who got into robot engineering for the sole reason that he wanted to build Humongous Mecha like in anime. Of course he is going to want to snazz it up. His commentary in MGS4 suggests he and the rest of the engineering team sneaked in a lot of little features like that, just because they had the opportunity.
• The Knights of the Holy Lance in Persona 2 are what happens when you throw this on a pot with Stupid Jetpack Hitler. They were supposed to have actual personalities and be feminine.
• Warmech from Final Fantasy.
• Starcraft: The Goliath (and to a lesser extent the Dragoon) could've been a more normal tank-type vehicle, but that wouldn't have been nearly cool enough. The sequel adds even more.
• The first Destroy All Humans! game's second to final boss. Behold! The Roboprez!
  Crypto: That is seriously messed up.
  • Also, the titular mecha of Big Willy Unleashed for the Wii.
• The one-on-one duel between Sparkster and Axel Gear in Rocket Knight Adventures is fought in giant possum-shaped mecha.
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series suddenly introduced the Titan and Mammoth Mk II in Tiberian Sun.
  • In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, the Imperial Japanese faction has mecha... well, pretty much solely because it's the Imperial Japanese faction.
• Final Fantasy IV had the Giant of Babil (which inspired Alexander and Barnabas / Barnabas-Z (which was inspired by Mazinger Z).
• Final Fantasy V had the Omega Weapon as a Superboss. And it had an upgrade for the Bonus Dungeon.
• Final Fantasy VI has Magitek armor, walking war machines powered by magic that are easily twice, maybe three times taller than their pilots. You start the game with you and two soldiers piloting them, and later you get to do it again in an enemy camp.
• Instead of having to fight one, Final Fantasy XIV gives the player a lore friendly version of a Gundam to pilot, specifically the Gundam 00 Raiser, for a one-time fight in the sidequest "Sleep Now in Sapphire". You even get a limited use version of that Gundam's Super Mode.
• Fallout 3 features Liberty Prime, a giant robot who memorably spouts anti-communist propaganda in battle (making him a literal Propaganda Machine.) A particularly egregious example, as Fallout 3 takes place in a post-apocalyptic Scavenger World where the realistic odds of anybody getting a functioning giant robot are astronomical. The guy is just so damn cool though, that's he's become a Memetic Mutation.
  • Choosing to side with the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 4 gives the Sole Survivor the opportunity to assist with the rebuilding of Liberty Prime.
• The Elder Scrolls has the Numidium, a Dwemer-constructed Humongous Mecha designed to be powered by the heart of a dead god (and later powered by what is believed to be that god's soul), which distorts reality around it whenever it is activated. It played a major role in the series' backstory, where Tiber Septim used it to complete his conquest of Tamriel, and then shows up in Daggerfall as a major plot point. At the end of Daggerfall, it causes a Time Crash which makes each of the game's mutually exclusive Multiple Endings all happen at once, though none to the same extent they would have individually.
• Dark Cloud 2 has Steve the Ridepod, Maximilian's upgradeable fighting robot.
• Kirby: Planet Robobot decided that Kirby wasn't enough of a Memetic Badass and gives him a Mini-Mecha to lay waste to his enemies with from time to time. It even inherits his trademark copying abilities to allow it to utilize all the manner of different types of weaponry.
• The old mecha game, Krazy Ivan, have this happening in the opening FMV. You're caught in an ambush by enemy forces, your truck is surrounded by enemies, but then you hit and switch and reveals the vehicle to be a Transforming Mecha. Who then enlarges to kick ass.
• Live A Live devotes an entire chapter to buildup of piloting a giant robot, and it is awesome.
• The Jak and Daxter series has a line of mass-produced (in the distant past) Precursor Robots, used by the minuscule ottsel Precursors for much larger-scale tasks.
• As part of an Alien Shout-Out in DragonFable, you get stalked and hunted by an alien throughout a castle built on top of an ancient spaceship. Eventually, you find a giant mecha and smash it into oblivion.
• Dealt in Lead The Cavalry + Mecha = Mech-cavalry. Awesomeness ensues.
• Gradius games get Cool Ship all over the place as it is, then Gaiden has to go and throw in the Metal Gear-esque Big Ducker boss, which is a huger version of one of the series' staple Mooks. WITH ROCKET SKATES.
• In the Wii A Boy and His Blob, the 11th-Hour Superpower, available in only three out of 80 levels, lets the Blob turn into a Nigh-Invulnerable mecha that can punch, hover, and break stuff. And punch balls of energy back at the boss who chucks 'em.
• In No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, one of the bosses is an all-American football player backed by a squad of cheerleader assassins. He pilots a mech shaped like a football. Luckily, the player character (an Otaku) just happens to have a full-size working replica of the mech from his favorite Super Robot show lying around. That's the kind of game this is.
• When Otaku Surrogate Sanae saw the titular Hisou Tensoku of Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe, she immediately assumed this trope. Oh sure, a Humongous Mecha would look out of place in a Magical Land with a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, but as Sanae says, it's a Magical Land with a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, so why wouldn't there be giant robots? Naturally, the fandom ran away with this. Alas, this gets subverted in the end, as Hisou Tensoku is revealed to be a giant, steam-operated advertisement doll rather than an actual Humongous Mecha.
• The Ride Armor from Mega Man X series.
• Welcome to Wild ARMs, an RPG based on the wild west complete with horses and steam-powered locomotives. Your Chocobo for the game is a 30-foot tall, ancient, walking death-machine. Enjoy!
• In Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, the titular hero summons a steam-powered robot through the ancient, mystical ritual... of Tea Time.
• The Pokémon Golett and Golurk are very largely based upon golems, though they incorporate Humongous Mecha into their design as well. In particular, they're capable of using Fly without any sort of wings.
• The Civilization series has always been relatively realistic, so some fans were incensed when the most recent iteration allowed players to build Giant Death Robots. This became much less of an objection once it was clear that by the time players had sufficient technology and resources to build them, the game was pretty much over already.
  • The Giant Death Robot's entry in the in-game encyclopedia repeatedly lampshades how spectacularly dumb the whole idea is, while admitting that it's far too cool to not include.
• Halo:
  • The Halo Wars sub-series has the UNSC Cyclops.
  • Halo 4 introduces the UNSC Mantis, a Chicken Walker loaded with firepower.
  • Halo 5: Guardians adds the Goblin, an incredibly powerful Mini-Mecha piloted by the franchise's resident laughingstocks, the Grunts.
• Ironclad Tactics is "A fast-paced, card-based tactics game ... set in the American Civil War ... WITH ROBOTS."
• In Mass Effect 2, the enemy was fine using the YMIR Mech as an all-purpose Giant Mecha Mook. But in the third game, that wasn't cool enough... so they were replaced with the Atlas, seemingly just so that Shepard can shoot out the cockpit and steal one.
• Later games in the Ganbare Goemon series throw in Goemon Impact or some variation on it, because Japan, even in the Edo period, just wouldn't be exciting enough without giant robots.
• In Phantasy Star Online 2, one of the game's Emergency Quests, "Mining Base: Despair", is, as the name suggests, quite the challenge. Evening the playing field for the players, thankfully, is the A.I.S. (ARKS Interception Silhouette), a Purposely Overpowered Mini-Mecha outfitted with a giant sword, chaingun, rocket launcher, and beam cannon. The main downside to these mechs is that they only operate for about a couple minutes at a time, but you can take out bosses and whole volumes of baddies in such a short time with this baby!
  • Some quests place the player in control of A.I.S. for their entire duration to combat a gigantic boss of some sort. The first pits the mechs against the towering Magatsu. The second has them facing off against a replica of the battleship Yamato. Yes, that Yamato. Though for the sake of fairness, they've taken some creative liberties regarding its arsenal...
• War of the Monsters is about a bunch of Kaiju knock-offs duking it out in a Fighting Game... except for Ultra-V and Robo-47, who are Japanese and American-styled Giant Mechas respectively.
• In Lunarosse, we have Yliandra's ultimate weapon, the Bijelined Dreadnought. Big enough that its innards comprise a dungeon.
• Webbed is a game where a peacock spider enlists the help of other arthropods to defeat a bowerbird that had kidnapped her mate. The ants that help her are building a mechanical ant that's massive compared to the bugs and is the only thing capable of overpowering the bowerbird in the climax of the final boss fight.
• Fate/Grand Order has a few mecha-themed Servants:
  • Europa is accompanied by Tálos, a giant bronze robot forged by Hephaestus and given to her by Zeus. In battle, it punches and stomps her enemies and occasionally fries them with a Chest Blaster. She also rides the mechanical white bull Taurus.
  • Mecha Eli-chan (and Mk. II) is a robot version of Elisabeth Báthory, introduced during a Halloween event. She's an Affectionate Parody, explicitly said to use movie-making special effects to fly, breathe fire, shoot electricity, and fire missiles. (And she secretly wishes she had a Theme Music Power-Up.)
  • Charles Babbage Was Once a Man but as a Servant is fused with his Steampunk Powered Armor.

Webcomics

• Operator: Take World War One. Add mecha. Add a bionic Sharingan. Then forget the World War 1 part.
• Adventurers!: "Since when did we have giant robots?"
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!—Bob fights a giant robot lion for no apparent reason.

Web Original

• In Babe Ruth: Man-Tank Gladiator the narrator does this to the story of Babe Ruth.
• The Whateley Universe is arguably one of the settings where despite the best efforts of human and mutant engineers, giant mecha canonically just plain don't work. (Power armor exists, but is much more to human scale.) And yet, during the big Halloween 2006 battle, perpetual school project Tiny Tim gets a personal awesome moment once it's been brought to the surface — not under its own power, mind — by demonstrating that while it may not be able to walk worth a damn, at least some of its guns are quite operational...

Western Animation

• Animaniacs: In a Power Rangers parody, the water tower becomes a Humongous Mecha.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold:
  • The Batmobile can transform into a robot!
  • A Golden Age Lex Luthor pastiche (on an alien world where Bats had Superman-esque powers due to the environment) voiced by Clancy Brown had Raygun Gothic evil robots. It was even more awesome than it sounds.
• In Bubble Guppies, a monster truck appears for one episode, Humunga Truck, and at the end it turns out to also be a Transforming Mecha.
• Dexter's Laboratory:
  • The eponymous character builds plenty of them.
  • When Dexter went to Japan, everybody had a Mecha from the school bullies to the teacher of the class.
• The Fairly Oddparents: Timmy's Dad made a mecha out of his car to battle his next door neighbor.
• Family Guy. When Peter bans cripples from his restaurant, they come together to form "Cripple-Tron" (which, ironically, can walk).
  • When Peter becomes the producer of Lois' directorial debut of The King and I, Peter drives Lois so insane that she just gives him the director's seat out of frustration, and he eventually writes the role of Anna into A.N.N.A, Automoton Nuclear Neo-humanoid Android, a (male) sword-welding mecha when the previous actress drops out.
• G.I. Joe:
  • The original G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon managed to have giant robots made of water.
  • While M.A.R.S. Industries in G.I. Joe: Renegades would like to introduce you to their new line mech-suits, complete with Unstoppable Rage feature.
• A show predominantly about supernatural mysteries, Gravity Falls adds mechas to both season finales. "Gideon Rises" sees Enfant Terrible Li'l Gideon piloting a mecha designed in his own likeness, using it to chase down the Pines twins' bus. In "Weirdmageddon Part 3: Take Back the Falls", the Mystery Shack itself is turned into the "Shacktron", augmented with various parts that include a revived T-Rex, a totem pole that's been turned into a tank gun, and the Gideon-bot's right leg.
  Wax Larry King's Head: They made the house into a robot. Fascinating.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • There are Steampunk mecha owned by Hiroshi Sato, in a series about Elemental Powers. They even play a key role in attacks on Republic City.
  • In the Grand Finale, Kuvira invades Republic City using a giant robot with an arm-mounted laser cannon. And it is awesome.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Parodied with Norm, the Giant Robot Man, a killer robot with the personality of a mild-mannered white-collar suburbanite.
  • In "Tree to Get Ready", Phineas and Ferb build tree houses that turn into giant fighting robots.
  • "A Hard Day's Knight" has a fight between a fire-breathing robot dragon and a mecha in the shape of Queen Elizabeth I, which has laser eyes.
    Dr. Doofenshmirtz: That Queen Elizabeth is a tough old bird!
• Reboot: In "Nullzilla", Phong just happened to have giant combining robots to fight off a giant rampaging monster made from an amalgam of nulls.
• Mecha-Streisand, Barbra Streisand's Mecha-Godzilla-esque form, in South Park. She shows up in episode 12 "Mecha-Streisand" before vanishing for years... until episodes "200" and "201" a full 12 years later (1998 to 2010).
• Steven Universe:
  • "Back to the Barn" has Pearl and Peridot settle who is the best engineer by building, competing in, and finally fighting in two mecha.
  • Series finale "Change Your Mind" reveals that the Diamonds' conspicuously body part-shaped flagships can and do combine into a colossal robot, requiring the Crystal Gems to perform the largest Fusion Dance in the show to fight it in a Behemoth Battle (relatively speaking — Obsidian is gigantic, but still dwarfed utterly by the Diamond Mech).
• In We Are the Strange, the plot seems calm and suspenseful, only to suddenly end with a gigantic mecha battle.

Real Life

• There is a real, life-size Gundam model in Japan. It was finished in July 2009 and pulled down in September. Then it was put up again in July 2010 but with a beam saber. Oh, and it also moves a little bit. Unfortunately, the 2011 earthquake collapsed it. Fortunately it was rebuilt in 2012, and was exhibited at Hong Kong in 2013.
• According to Ars Technica, a real life showdown between the American Mega Bots Mk.III and a Japanese Kuratas, was scheduled for August 2017.

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