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Fast. Bulletproof. Sleek. Even solved the icing problem.

"A suit isn't a space suit — although it can serve as one. It is not primarily armor — although the Knights of the Round Table were not armored as well as we are... A suit is not a ship but it can fly, a little — on the other hand neither spaceships nor atmosphere craft can fight against a man in a suit except by saturation bombing of the area he is in."

The Knight in Shining Armor's fashionable protective wear does well enough against swords and arrows, but as the field of battle became increasingly dominated by technology, any reasonable amount of protection a soldier may carry becomes obviously inadequate to face bullets, missiles, Death Rays and autonomous war machines — not to mention all manner of Big Creepy-Crawlies prone to invading planets. The solution? Power it up, of course!

Powered Armor is the Sci-Fi Counterpart of the iconic medieval plate armor, frequently used by Space Marines, Super Cops or futuristic Knights. The powered armor is built around an exoskeleton combined with a supplemental system that acts as artificial muscle, mimicking the wearer's own movements in a sort of purely mechanical Synchronization. As a result, it at the very least negates its own perceived weight and allows the wearer to carry thick, bulky armor plating without being encumbered. (In many cases, the wearer gains effective Super-Strength). This is typically the most advanced form of personal protection available; it usually is at least Immune to Bullets or whatever else is used in Five Rounds Rapid in the local 'verse; superior models may mount Deflector Shields allowing the armor to No-Sell damage well above its apparent weight class. It also usually provides protection against environmental hazards that can't really be resisted or dodged by being a self-contained environment, allowing the user to exist comfortably in space, underwater, or in other areas that would kill unprotected humans, like a Hazmat Suit.

In order to boost the wearer's mobility, certain armor versions also have built-in thrusters that allow them to fly, at least for short distances or via rocket-assisted jumps. If this gives them good mobility and speed without sacrificing protection, the users often join the Lightning Bruiser camp, with the disadvantage, if any, being bulk and low maneuverability. There might, however, be variants that are (comparative) Fragile Speedsters, which forego the thick plating in lieu of even more equipment made to amplify the movements of its wearer, providing a boost to agility and movement speed.

As the powered armor allows for ample spare carrying capacity, it often comes equipped with many useful gadgets built in. If it does this with weapons, then it's a wearable Swiss-Army Weapon; expect at least one of these to be an Arm Cannon, or possibly a Power Fist. Shoulders of Doom (and in turn, Shoulder Cannons) are almost mandatory. It may also provide emergency medical support to the wearer, if they manage to get injured in spite of the armor's protection. A Man in the Machine may have such a suit doubling as a life support unit, likely unable to remove the suit without risking death. Some suits are also capable of taking over, being controlled remotely or autonomously if the wearer becomes incapacitated — or as a Restraining Bolt in case they refuse to follow orders. Often, the suit's computer is an Artificial Intelligence capable of acting as Mission Control, as well as controlling the systems the wearer can't pay attention to in the heat of combat. Some suits of Powered Armor are explicitly made to be Adaptive Armor capable of great versatility and effectively repairing and upgrading themselves. Too much of this can result in them becoming a sort of wearable Do-Anything Robot. With crystals.

Powered Armor is distinct from Clothes Make the Superman in that it is specifically designed for combat and is clearly armour rather than clothing. Distinct from Humongous Mecha in that Powered Armor is a suit worn on the body, while Humongous Mecha are vehicles that are controlled, either from a cockpit or with some Unusual User Interface. There are, however, the occasional mecha that sit on the line between Humongous Mecha and Powered Armor. A really advanced set of powered armor will usually be made of Nanomachines that make the hero into a Chrome Champion. The change may even be Instant.

While there are massive engineering challenges involved in solving such a suit's power supply and logistic requirements, as well as making it versatile and durable enough to participate in actual combat, powered armor is conceptually plausible. Unlike Humongous Mecha, it could actually be useful, especially in urban battles where tanks (or four-story robots) would be limited in movement. There would also be a number of different non-military uses for a suit that makes you strong enough to lift a car. The US military and many civilian R&D departments are currently conducting experiments with powered exoskeletons, perhaps making this a future Truth in Television.

Compare Clothes Make the Superman, Humongous Mecha, Scary Impractical Armor, Battle Ballgown. Bio-Armor is a living creature that has a similar function.

Not to be confused with Mini-Mecha, where despite the machine's size, the limbs are still fully mechanical (though the line can sometimes be a bit blurry). Nor with Meta Mecha which is Powered Armor for Mini/Humongous Mecha. Or The Power of Amore.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Active Raid, both the criminals and the special police unit 8 utilize Powered Armor, here called the Willwears.
  • Appleseed has two classes of Powered Armor: "Protectors", which are fairly standard suits; and "Landmates", which border on being Mini-Mecha and suspend the wearer in the torso of the armor. The Landmates' main outer "Slave Arms" follow the movements of the arms of the pilot, placed in smaller, form-fitting armored gauntlets which dangle outside the main body.
  • Black Clover: Noelle gains a spell called Valkyrie Armor, compressing her mana into an armor and lance made of water. Using it, she can control the mana around her, letting her fly through the air.
  • Bubblegum Crisis features both the Knight Sabers' "Hardsuits" and the bulkier Battlemover suits other factions use. Genom and the AD Police also have their own "powered suits".
  • In Campus Special Investigator Hikaruon, the hero uses a suit similar to Metal Heroes, specifically an Expy of Space Sheriff Sharivan.
  • Academy City uses these in their military, as well as in their rescue divisions, in A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun.
  • Code Geass:
  • The Figures in Figure 17 Tsubasa & Hikaru are a kind of sentient powered armor, and Hikaru is an accidentally-created Artificial Human derived from a broken Figure, who can still revert to Figure form when necessary. The aliens D.D. and Oldina also use Figures to fight.
  • Bonta-Kun in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu is a theme park mascot converted into the cutest miniature death machine since Metal Slug by Sousuke Sagara. Oddly enough, he markets it to various police forces around the world, with limited success. Even more oddly, it appears to be based on Sharp X68000 hardware.
  • In GaoGaiGar, Cyborg Guy has a suit of "Ultimate Armor". He graduates to "ID Armor" when he becomes an Evoluder. It's not clear whether the armor is enhancing his natural strength and speed, enabling it, or is just there to look cool. That said, the ID armor has one important part in it (the GaoBrace and Will Knife), and Evoluder Guy probably at least needs the ID Armor to pilot GaoFar and GaoFighGar. The PlayStation video game Blockaded Numbers reveal that the ID Armor and the Ultimate Armor were used by 3G's predecessors.
  • Gantz gives the hunters particularly advanced powered armour that provides Super-Strength, Roof Hopping jumping powers, and apparently some kind of forcefield. In typical Gantz style, the big black ball doesn't bother telling anybody these facts, or that the suits' protection does not extend to swords or lasers. As seen in the Osaka and Italy arcs, there is a bigger, tougher Gantz armor that's supposed to be superior to the regular suits. It's not sure if it can really hold up considering all of the users seen thus far are dead.
  • The main Transforming Mecha of Genesis Climber MOSPEADA is a motorcycle that turns into a Powered Armor.
  • In Ghost in the Shell, in order to combat fully-cyborg individuals (like the protagonists), paramilitary organizations occasionally requisition Armed Suits (though ironically, the first versions seen are unarmed and must carry external weaponry). They're exceedingly rare, however.
  • Guyver uses this concept to its fullest extent. It starts out with a high schooler named Sho Fukamachi walking in the woods near the school with his friend Tetsuro Segawa. There they hear and see the aftermath of a huge explosion and see something hurtling through the sky towards them. Sho picks it up and points out that it's alien-looking when he all of sudden trips and smacks his face against it and it starts to encompass him. Later when Tetsuro is in immediate danger from a secret world government-style organization known as Chronos, Sho clad in this "bio" metal armor then destroys the ones troubling Tetsuro. Afterward, he seemingly regains consciousness while still in the armor and notes that it is definitely alien. A downside of the armor is that they can't be permanently separated from their recognized user without the Remover. The user can "dequip" the armor at will when not be needed, and it's been demonstrated that a sufficient electrical jolt to the control metal can cause the armor to spontaneously dequip. The Removers have to be bonded to someone and though they don't kill the host, they do leave them naked and powerless in front of someone who wanted to strip their armor from them, probably a bad guy.
  • Kaiju No. 8: Members of the Japan Anti-Kaiju Defense Force wear armor suits to fight against the Kaiju. The suits even incorporate parts from dead Kaiju, which is also why they have such a strong physiological resemblance to Kafka in his monster form.
  • One of the more bizarre powered armors comes from Kemeko Deluxe!. The titular Kemeko is a Super-Deformed, borderline Gonk-ish power suit that nonetheless provides its wearer, MM, with enhanced battle capabilities. MM herself wears a Latex Space Suit and has to have some form of Hammerspace inside that thing — she's bigger than it is.
  • Macross:
    • Non-micronised Zentradi in Super Dimension Fortress Macross and its sequels wear Powered Armor the size of Humongous Mecha. They kind of have to, given that they're the size of Humongous Mecha.
    • Macross Frontier gives us the debut of the EX-Gear, a powered armour/exoskeleton suit (with built-in Jet Pack and provision for a BFG) for use by Variable Fighter pilots. It's not as well armored as most of the other examples (the waist, upper arms, and thighs are somewhat exposed, as poor Michel finds out...), but that's because its main function is to serve as a linkup/ejection system for the new line of VFs.
    • Frontier also gives us the one-off "Armored Klan": Klan Klan is unable to get to her powered armor suit to repel a Vajra attack, so, being a Zentradi, she improvises by strapping on equipment designed for Valkyries in order to fight.
    • Macross Delta shows that the basic NUN Spacy Zentradi armors got quite a few upgrades, as new versions of the Regult and Glaug pods appear alongside the Queeadluun-Rheas that were a carryover design from Frontier. Too bad they're no good against the Windemerian Knights.
  • Madox-01, though it's large enough to verge on being a Mini-Mecha.
  • My Hero Academia: All Might gets Powered Armor in the final battle against All For One.
  • The Robes from My-Otome fit somewhere between this and Clothes Make the Superman.
  • Naruto:
    • Akatsuki member Sasori is the prime example, hiding himself in a mobile and heavily armed puppet, we also have a version of this of the spiritual version in the form of Susano'o, which Sasuke Uchiha and Itachi Uchiha use.
    • In its higher forms, Sasuke and Itachi's Susano'o falls more into Mini-Mecha in their size and power. Same with Madara's in its 'complete' (full skin form), but it turns into a Humongous Mecha in his 'Perfect' Form.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Chao Lingshen claims that the outfit she wore during the festival arc was merely a somewhat upgraded version of a standard battlesuit from her homeland, but even without the built in time-travel device, it straddles the line with Clothes Make the Superman.
  • In New Mazinger, several characters (including Kouji Kabuto) wear Powered Armor for combat.
  • One Piece: The royal family of the highly advanced technological Germa kingdom, the Vinsmoke family, all use special combat gear called Raid Suits. These suits give the wearers increased strength and speed, allows the wearers the ability to fly with rocket boots, grants them the ability to project a shield for protection, and also enhances the unique powers that all the Vinksmoke children have been genetically modified with.
  • One interesting variation in Pokémon Adventures is what Koga wears during the Silph Co. siege. His armor is made out of his Pokémon. His Muk forms a shoulder and chest plate while his Golbat rests on his arm for a tonfa-like weapon. His other arm has an Ekans wrapped around it.
  • Project A-Ko:
  • Radiant: Doc accidentally activates the armor of Pen Draig when he hides inside it while carrying memory stones containing the spirits of old heroes, which is a Fantasia-powered, black-clad armor that grants him Super-Speed, Super-Strength, and has five modes each with its own arsenal of weapons made of Fantasia. Doc, being Doc, prefers to run away as his first option.
  • Ranma ½:
    • The manga presents Do-chan (for dogi, a martial arts uniform, plus an affectionate suffix.) It is an ancient, sentient (and utterly perverted) suit of armor that looks like a puffy Chinese blouse, black leggings, and a yin-yang belt. It can move around independently, has limited senses (sight, hearing, and touch, at least), and can fight to defend itself. It will only accept a female owner, but those who wear it will find that their speed, power, and agility have been increased to match their own ultimate potential. Thus, when Akane wears it, she can punch enormous craters into asphalt, leap over buildings, and generally outclass Ranma to the point of utter humiliation.
    • A more straight-up example is the Battle Armor which Gosunkugi purchased off a mail-order ad. It promises amazing strength and incredible combat skills for defeating one's foes... and it certainly delivers, except that it locks into place as soon as you put it on and only activates when said foe comes along. And then, you have a very limited time to defeat him before the suit self-destructs.
  • Robotech features some examples, mostly taken from its source materials:
    • The first saga, based on Macross, has the Zentraedi suits.
    • The Masters saga, based on Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, has the Bioroids, that would actually be considered Mini-Mecha if not for their telepathic drive system. Supplemental materials show that other branches of the Army of the Southern Cross use power armor for their troops.
    • The movie, based on Megazone 23, features the MODAT series (Garland in the original), a limited production series of suits that can turn into motorcycles.
    • The New Generation saga features the Cyclone, motorcycles that, combining with the normal armor worn by the user, can be used as power armor. The various models are markedly less powerful than the MODAT series (developed on Earth as opposed to by the Pioneer Expedition) but more agile, cheaper, and can be outfitted with multiple weapon systems.
    • Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles features an original model, the VR-057 Super Cyclone, faster than the previous models and compatible with a more powerful energy weapon and a railgun, both powerful enough to scrap even a MODAT.
  • Saint Seiya:
    • The Gold Cloths certainly qualify. Although Bronze and Silver Cloths, as well as rival gods' distinctive suits of armor, can protect the wearer to a supernatural degree, the Zodiac-based Cloths of Athena's Gold Saints provide notable increases in strength, speed, and defensive power, far beyond any other Cloth, Scale, or Surplice. They can even survive absolute zero and being hit with earth-shattering attacks.
    • Also, the anime presented a three-man squad called the Steel Saints, created by the Kido Foundation as assistants to the heroic Bronze Saints. Their "Cloths" are mechanical and crammed with gadgets that can emulate a Saint's supernatural abilities. They were Put on a Bus as soon as they could...
    • The Bus Came Back in the second season of Saint Seiya Omega. The Steel Saints are trained to fill the gap caused by mass Saint death following the siphoning of Earth's cosmo to Mars in the first season. Just like any stopgap measure, the Steel Cloths are a shoddy job and the wearer weaker than even the Bronze. The Steel Saints are fully aware of their unenviable fate, and in one episode, chews the Gods (including Athena) for making playthings out of humans.
  • Symphogear features Magical Girls in shapeshifting Magitek armor powered by the wearer's singing voice.
  • In Taboo-Tattoo, the President of the United States wears a suit of powered armour, so he can participate in the battle at the South Pole despite his advanced age. The armour incorporates a Jet Pack and offers enough protection that the President was fine despite falling into a deep crevasse.
  • The Tekkamen from Tekkaman Blade appear to wear powered armor, but in fact become metallic life forms when they transform. However, the Sol Tekkaman units ("Teknosuits" in Teknoman) are actual powered armors.
  • In Tenchi Universe, Mihoshi pilots a suit like this to chase down Ryoko. She does quite well the first time before Ryoko destroys it. When Kiyone enters the fray and gets Mihoshi to pilot a second, that goes out the window in an instant.
  • Many of the superheroes in Tiger & Bunny make use of some form of Powered Armor, most notably the two title characters.
  • The Autobot Pretenders in Transformers: Super-God Masterforce can summon Powered Armor as an intermediate form between their Human and Transformer forms.
  • Played with in UFO Warrior Dai Apolon. After the titular Humongous Mecha is formed, the protagonist uses his alien energy powers to grow and combine with the robot, "wearing" it like armor.
  • Similar to the Toph example below, Risho of YuYu Hakusho uses earth to cover himself for battle, although it's not clear if it actually powers him or just lends more ferocity to his blows.
  • Tokusatsu Deconstruction Zetman has Alfasz, who combats the Players. The suit's wearer, Kouga Amagi, purposefully modelled it on a children's show hero, due to being a bit of a justice freak.

    Comic Books 
Marvel Comics:
  • Captain America: Even Captain America got in on the armored action in the mid-90s, as he was forced to wear an armored version of his familiar red-white-and-blues due to the Super-Soldier Serum breaking down in his body and rendering him paralyzed. Naturally, it didn't take.
    • He got a new version, briefly, under similar circumstances at the end of Time Runs Out, just prior to Secret Wars (2015), when he went after the inverted Tony Stark.
  • Fantastic Four:
    • Numerous times, Reed (or someone else) has been able to cure Ben Grimm and restore him to human form, although it never lasts. During those times, Ben has been known to use a suit of powered armor to continue to fight alongside the team, which is designed to look like the Thing and gives him Super-Strength.
    • Doctor Doom. Contrary to its almost medieval-industrial revolution aesthetic, being covered in visible rivets and displaying no apparent electronics, it is actually a nuclear-powered, ultra-sophisticated walking tank that stands up next to Tony Stark's best designs. It makes him strong and tough enough to go toe-to-toe with the Thing, discharge an array of devastating energy attacks, enables him to fly and control his vast arsenal of external technological devices. (Some versions even have a device that renders him immune to direct assault by mutant powers, so Magneto's victory over him in a fight isn't as assured as it would be against Tony.) He can basically beat the tar out of any non-"cosmic" character short of the Hulk and Squirrel Girl.
      • Doom also has on occasion created stronger variants of the armor, powered by draining some of the above-mentioned "cosmic" characters and thus rendering Doom's power almost as God-like as his ego. Since Doom is also a mage, he can use a combination of magic and science.
      • In one notable issue of Mighty Avengers (just before Civil War) Doom and Iron Man go one-on-one after the rest of the Avengers were subdued by an army of Doombots and an array of traps. Their suits are so well matched that it comes down to whose suit's battery can last longer. It's Doom's.
      • Following Secret Wars (2015), Doom actually winds up genuinely going straight (to the bafflement of just about everyone in the Marvel Universe), abdicating his rule of Latveria and (among other things) slowly winding up Tony Stark. After Stark is critically injured, he takes up the Iron Man mantle as the 'Infamous Iron Man', with a sleek silver-grey copy of Tony's latest armour with green eye-lights and his signature dark green cloak.
  • Iron Man:
    • Tony Stark first built his powered armour in the Vietnamese jungle and has since made countless upgrades, redesigns and variants to stay ahead in the Powered Armor arms race with villains like Titanium Man and the Crimson Dynamo. To make matters worse, villains are constantly trying to steal his designs, and the first Spymaster succeeded. His sale of Tony's blueprints on the black market sparked the Armor Wars, a storyline in which Iron Man goes about attacking armored villains and heroes in a fit of paranoia over misuse of his inventions.
    • His friend James Rhodes has used Stark armor many times, either taking up the Iron Man mantle while Tony was incapacitated or presumed dead, or working independently as War Machine.
    • Pepper Potts also has her own armor that was designed by Tony, called "Rescue".
  • The Mighty Thor: The Asgardian Destroyer is an unusual example, since it is, depending on your point of view, not armor at all, or the very purest form of armor. It is not wearable, but rather sucks up the spirit of a sapient being that comes too close to it - it cannot operate on its own, although it quickly overrides the will of anyone who powers it. Unless that individual's will is strong enough. Anyway, it's more or less an armor that is powered by its 'wearer' instead of the other way around. It might be the most powerful armor in comics (well... apart from the Celestials' armor, but that might not be armor).
  • The Order: Supernaut uses a suit so big it practically qualifies as a miniature Humongous Mecha, with enough armament for a small army to boot. Supernaut's somewhat notable in that outside of his suit, he's a paraplegic.
  • Spider-Man:
    • Spider-Man once donned one of his own, the Iron Spider armor. However, he dumped it in favor of his old red-and-blues when Civil War really picked up and he defected from Iron Man's side.
      • Beyond the Iron Spider, Spidey has also created a number of armors for himself. Notable ones include the original Spider-Armor, the Sonic Armor (which became Kaine Parker's costume), the Bulletproof Spider-Armor, and the Ends of the Earth armour, designed to combat the Sinister Six.
  • The 616 version of the Rhino is a muscular thug in a suit resembling the hide of a rhinoceros. However, the Ultimate Marvel version of the Rhino is a wimpy geek in a high-tech suit of robotic armor. They drew on this portrayal for the character's appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
    • Rhino was also briefly replaced by a power-armour-wearing counterpart after he tries to go straight. When the New Rhino makes the mistake of killing Classic Rhino's new wife, he gets the match with his predecessor that he richly craves. Classic Rhino crushes his power-armour counterpart like he was nothing.
    • Mysterio's suit serves as a containment/protection for his various hologram and gas-based gadgets, but depending on the writer it also has a battery-powered strength-enhancing system. It was far more rudimentary and basic than the ones employed by, say, Iron Man, however.
  • X-Men:
    • Jubilee and several other depowered mutants started wearing powered armor to compensate for their lost abilities in New Warriors.
    • Apocalypse wears powered armor made with Celestial technology and they are fully aware he has it and are letting him use it in exchange for future favors that enhances his already formidable superpowers and possibly grants him new ones.

DC Comics:

  • Batman:
    • Similar to Tony Stark, Batman has had many different that fit this trope, based on the situation or even the mood of that universe (the Batman: Arkham Knight suit is possibly the clearest example of this). Many other suits don't count simply because Batman's gadgets are contained externally via pouches: if they were then they would easily qualify!
    • Batman in certain incarnations (most notably when Jean Paul Valley took on the role) beefed the suit into a virtual war machine. (This was a sort of "Be careful what you wish for" to fans who wanted Batman to become more Punisher-like during the Dark Age). Batman Beyond had the same general concept, but the suit was more slender and less clunky looking than most.
    • In Kingdom Come Batman needs an exoskeleton to move at all (thanks to the wounds from a life-time of crimefighting). His actual Batman costume is a Powered Armor. As is the Blue Beetle's and several other heroes.
    • In The Dark Knight Returns, Batman uses powered armor (among other things) to fight Superman.
    • Batman foe Mr. Freeze has to wear a sealed, temperature-controlled suit to even survive in lukewarm environments, due to his cryophilic physiology/disease/disorder/whatever. Many writers offset this by outfitting Freeze's suit with a powered exoskeleton capable of breaking a man in half.
    • In Batman vs. Predator, Batman resorts to this in order to continue the fight while recovering from the ass-kicking the Predator gave him earlier on. Also uses sonar to beat the Predator's cloak.
    • His Insider Suit was a suit with the powers of every League Member. The problem is, using those powers required a ridiculous amount of energy.
    • He's had power armor built for both Batwing vigilantes, one looking like a more armored version of the Batman Beyond suit.
    • He has broken out two power suits during the New 52. One to fight against Terminus, a dying villain whose armor doubled as life support, but also during the Night of the Owls, when he uses a suit so large it was basically a mecha. Although he used this suit specifically so that he wouldn't be frozen when Alfred lowered the temperature in the room to freeze the (undead) assassins.
    • Batman and Robin (2009) gives us the Hellbat, a One-Man Army, Godzilla Threshold suit forged by the Justice League equal parts science and magic made of liquid metal that allowed Batman to demolish the forces of Apokolips by himself and later, go one on one with Darkseid himself. However, it drains Batman's life the longer it's used, and if put on for too long will kill him.
    • Batman: Endgame has the Justice Buster, a large suit of armor designed specifically to battle the Justice League.
    • The post-Convergence comics has Jim Gordon piloting a massive suit of bat-armor which even he complains looks a little ridiculous, and not like the real Batman.
    • The third Clayface, Preston Payne wears a suit of armor that gives him superhuman strength and keeps him from touching people when he's wearing his gloves.
    • Robin: Villain "Scarab" is an Egyptian assassin named Maat Shadid who wears powered armor that allows her to fly. The rest of her secret organization the Covenant of Ka also wear variations of her armor with differing shades and helmets, which seem to be inspired in-universe by Blue Beetle's scarab.
    • Batman: Black and White: "Broken Nose" features a one-off villain who robs banks in a home-made suit of powered armor. Batman's first fight with him lasts around two minutes and ends with Batman limping away with a broken nose, but Batman also spent the time assessing the armor's weaknesses; the second fight lasts around the same amount of time but ends in a victory for Batman.
    • Nightwing: Villain Raptor wears a suit of powered armor that was a Lexcorp prototype meant to be destroyed and disposed of. Instead it ended up on the black market. The armor allows the wearer to fly and has wrist-mounted weapons, but leaks radiation that ends up being fatal to the wearer.
  • Blue Beetle Jamie Reyes is partnered with a Reach Scarab which is an artificial lifeform that constructs Instant Armor that is incredibly powerful around him.
  • Superman:
    • In the story arc Krypton No More, the J'ai — a warlike alien species that Superman and Supergirl meet and fight — wear green powered armors to fight in space.
    • In "Superman: 3D", a substory of Final Crisis, Superman and Ultraman (his evil counterpart) are merged, together, with a 'thought robot' made out of 'divine metals' by Monitor Dax Novu to defeat the Dark Monitor, Mandrakk. This 'thought robot', basically a giant (really giant. It's giant in the World of Nil, where the Monitors live - which means that it is much, much, much bigger than a universe) mecha empowered by the dual spirits of the two supermen, meant for one single battle. It is super-adaptive, getting stronger in response to its opponents' strength.
    • In the Crucible storyline, Kara wore a blue-and-red Kryptonian powered armor during several fights, including the final battle against the Big Bad.
    • In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, both Lena and her brother Lex wear green-and-purple power suits.
    • In Last Daughter of Krypton, Simon Tycho's hired mercenaries wear flying grey-blue suits, armed with on-board hand blasters and energy combat tentacles.
    • Let My People Grow!: Superman builds a space armor suit to protect his body while he collects energy of an exploding supernova.
    • Lex Luthor has several times donned a suit of green-and-purple Powered Armor to fight mano a mano; once in the early '80s, quickly abandoned after Crisis on Infinite Earths; and once in the mid-'00s, during the run-up to Infinite Crisis. His armour was a gift from Darkseid (it was part of the ongoing plot thread in Jeph Loeb's run about an alliance between Luthor and Darkseid.) Later stories (like Blackest Night and The Black Ring) would show Luthor occasionally using upgraded versions of the armour when necessary, and the Superman: Up, Up and Away! arc had some goons attempt to steal some of Luthor's suits as well.
      • Luthor also gains a sort of Powered Armor in Justice League. It increases his abilities, but its main purpose is to keep his Kryptonite-induced disease in check (shooting Kryptonite rays is just a bonus). The Luthor that shows up in various video games (particularly fighting games) also wears the armor.
      • During the New 52, he used a more sophisticated version first to fight Superman (he did pretty well, then Superman got dangerous and started kicking him all over Metropolis), then to save the world in Forever Evil. After that, he wore it while working with the Justice League.
      • In the DC Rebirth era, he dons a blue and red armor sporting the familiar S-shield and wears the cape of the fallen New 52 Superman in his drive to actually be a hero. This is what drives the pre-Flashpoint Superman to get back into the game as he doesn't want Luthor with that shield.
    • Steel, a.k.a. John Henry Irons.
    • When his niece Natasha Irons took on the identity, she had her own, sleeker suit of armor.
    • In Action Comics (New 52), John Henry Irons (Steel) and John Corben (Metallo) both got their Powered Armor from the US Military's "Steel Soldier" project, which was designed by Lex Luthor and headed by Lois Lane's father, General Sam Lane. Further on, it's also revealed that their suits were reverse-engineered from Brainiac's technology and that Brainiac's psychic influence was the initial cause of Metallo's insanity.
  • In Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Pat Dugan -S.T.R.I.P.E.- wears a white armor suit.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Sensation Comics: Byrna Brilyant the "Snowman" created a suit of mechanized armor equipped with a Jet Pack and Ray Gun and a whole slew of robotic duplicates which hide which one of the Snowmen "robots" is the real deal. She made her first appearance in 1946 and in her second appearance had managed to build an updated and even more durable version of her armor while in Amazonian prison.
    • (Pre-Crisis) Doctor Cyber wore a suit of powered armor equipped with lasers and an invisibility screen. (Post-Crisis), she donned a similar suit on top of her mechanical enhancements.
    • Byrna Brilyant used a snowman-themed "Blue Snowman" mechanized snow-creating armor in the Post-Infinite Crisis continuity, though given who she's normally up against it didn't do her much good and she ended up easily defeated by Power Girl and then eaten alive by monsters. In the revamped Wonder Woman (Rebirth) continuity her armor was upgraded to a Humongous Motion-Capture Mecha.
    • Wonder Woman (1987):
      • Annual #8 introduces Akila, a member of the Bana-Migdhall Amazon tribe. Akila wears a recreated version of the Shim'Tar war-suit which she modified with magic and her own impressive engineering skills. This suit allows her to aid Wonder Woman in battle.
      • "Julia" of Daxam—of all characters—ends up wearing power armor after helping Diana abolish slavery in the Sangtee Empire. It is presumably meant to protect her from lead poisoning and offset some of the damage done to her during her torture at the Empire's hands.
    • The Red Panzer armor is the one consistent thing about the men who have taken its name. It grants Super-Strength, Nigh-Invulnerability, and the ability to fire concussive blasts.
  • The Total Justice mini-series (which was based on a popular Hasbro toyline) revolved around the members of the Justice League losing their powers and being forced to don suits of armor that mimicked their abilities.
  • Hardware originally from Milestone Comics.
  • The DCU's Rocket Red Brigade, who are basically the Powered Armor division of the Russian army. Originally, their armor was blocky and square; in recent years, they've shifted to a more streamlined, figure-fitting design.
  • Dan Dreiberg of Watchmen tried making a powered exoskeleton version of his costume. It didn't get past the prototype stage; the first (and only) time he wore it, it broke his arm.
  • Booster Gold wore one following The Death of Superman after Doomsday destroyed his original costume. The thing was plagued with bugs and it even forced Booster to use it as life support after he was killed and revived. Thankfully he dumped it in favor of a present-day version of his old costume made using the material used for Electric Superman's costume.

Other

  • Brianna Diggers of Gold Digger uses a variety of Powered Armor, and even Gina has broken one out one or two times.
  • The Iron Empires comics by Christopher Moeller made extensive use of powered armor shocktroops who were the "Anvil" element to the space-borne capital ships "Hammer". The Hammer provided orbital bombardment to break up enemy formations and trapping them against the Anvil which surrounded the enemy and ground them to dust. The comic was later adapted into the Burning Wheel system under the name Burning Empires.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures: The Ninja Turtles from the year 2094 wore these during an arc, based on action figure designs.
  • Darkhawk has his entire body replaced by a powered armor body.
  • An interesting version appears in Okko—the Combat Bunraku are huge, wooden, and entirely analog, being controlled via series of ropes and pulleys by the "puppeteer" who sits in the chest cavity.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
      • During the original "Death Egg Saga", Sonic, Tails, and Robotnik all donned powered armor, though Sonic and Tails' were quite unconventional — Sonic rode around in the shell of Silver Sonic while Tails rode around in the shell of a SWATBot.
      • Rotor Walrus has taken up wearing Powered Armor when he decided to return to active duty.
    • In Sonic the Comic, Robotnik wears War-Armour to battle Brutus which has a distinctive green and purple colour scheme, much like the battle-suit worn by Lex Luthor. It also has a hose-like weapon that sprays liquid nitrogen which allows Robotnik to destroy Brutus.
  • In The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, it is eventually revealed that "Ultra Magnus" is actually a form of Powered Armor that has been worn by several different Autobots over the ages since the death of the original Ultra Magnus. The idea was cooked up by a lawmaker, Chief Justice Tyrest, who was so fascinated with Magnus' reputation that he created the armor and spread a story about Magnus merely faking his death to create "an eternal lawman" controlled by him. The current wearer of the "Magnus Armor" is a small, unassuming 'bot with the somewhat unfortunate name of Minimus Ambus. It's also mentioned that the wearers of the Magnus Armor have to be "Point One Percenters", meaning that they have stronger than usual sparks that allow their bodies to integrate with the armor without their frames collapsing from the strain.
    • In general, G1 Ultra Magnus is usually a case of this, merely being a white Optimus Prime wearing his car carrier rig as armor. This is a holdover from the original Diaclone toyline they are imported from, where Powered Convoy (Ultra Magnus) was really just an upgrade of this sort for the original Convoy truck that became Optimus. He just has it on all the time, at least in the cartoon, to further distinguish him from Prime as a brand new toy than a mere Palette Swap of him. The only time he really takes it off is in vehicle mode, due to the nature of the transformation between modes.
  • Jack Staff:
    • Tom-Tom the Robot Man is revealed in the comic's first arc to be a paraplegic teenage girl in Powered Armour. Later on in the comic, she upgrades him to a pure remote-controlled machine.
    • In a later arc, the second Molochai, who is basically just a Waddling Head, uses a suit of power armour to make himself less disabled and pose as a normal humanoid.
  • Valiant Comics's Aric of Dacia wields the sentient X-O Manowar armor.
  • As a Reconstruction of comic books, Astro City is full of these alongside its Flying Bricks and Super Speedsters. The N-Forcer, the Mock Turtle, Skyraker, Conquistador, the Chessmen... even unarmored heroes consider one when they start to get older and their reflexes begin to slow down.
  • 2000 AD:
    • Shakara: Shakara's robotic body is actually very advanced armor that is powered by the spiritual energy of the dead Shakara.
    • Judge Dredd has Dredd and a Multi National Team of judges take to the Radlands of Ji in Hondo-built power armour to take on hordes of zombies in order to reach Sabbat. The suits are outfitted with an array of weaponry and are stated to be the greatest advancement in personal armament since the Stub Gun. Earlier stories also feature Exosuits, which are used in construction and demolition work. A gang uses them to commit robberies.
  • One of Tom Strong's inventions is a big transparent crystal suit for exploring dangerous environments, complete with three color-coded buttons operated with the user's tongue.
  • The Metabarons features the elite Endoguard who are outfitted with extremely bulky suits of power armor which provide increased strength and supposedly good protection, but offers no protection against the might of a Metabaron. As a show of being the World's Best Warrior, the Metabaron eschews power armor except for environmental protection.
  • The Mickey Mouse Comic Universe Darkenblot features the exoskeletons, later renamed as "coraut" (Corazza Automatica, Italian for "Automated Cuirass), that are normally used for heavy works but can also be used as traditional power armor:
    • The main one is the Darkenblot itself, a mighty suit of armor that the Phantom Blot uses whenever he has to fight, that gets improved with each story:
      • The prototype was assembled by Phantom Blot in jail from various devices he had convinces the director to let him build, and, after being powered by lightning, is used to break out. Also serves to give an early hint on the true nature of the Darkenblot (initially appearing to be a force of robots controlled by PB).
      • The original model could easily thrash Robopolis' robot cops, both the normal one and the more heavily armed Panthers, features numerous ballistic weapons and can fly, but couldn't take a large turbine and was wrecked when Mickey tricked PB into flying in one.
      • The 2.0, obtained by repairing and improving the original, is more heavily armored and features even more weapons. This one gets destroyed when Phantom Blot hits the self-destruction system to destroy the device that had made all of Robopolis' robots go insane and threatened to kill everyone and destroy the city he intended to rule.
      • The 2.1 seems identical to the 2.0, making Mickey immediately suspect a copycat until he notices the one modification: a large yellow button that contains a powerful EMP that, coupled with an identical suit, allows Phantom Blot to enact a massive scam to procure funds to build the equipment for his newest plan, including the 3.0.
      • The third features improved armor and strength and energy weapons (this to correct the flaw that cost him the 2.0, self-destructed because it had ran out of ammo at the critical moment), but at the price of becoming too massive to fly.
    • The second story features Mr. Me's suits to make him appear tall rather than the midget he is. They are all affected by the device that turned almost all electronic devices insane, and eventually confiscated by the police after he's exposed as the one who broke Phantom Blot out and tried to mastermind his actions in that story (keyword: tried).
    • The third story features four, each with Elemental Powers, designed specifically to take on the Darkenblot 2.1 and the expected improvements of the 3.0, and drive him off in the initial confrontation. In the second, however, Phantom Blot doesn't hold back and the Darkenblot 3.0 utterly and easily wrecks them without using the on-board weapons.
  • Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars!: Jenny's Aldebaran Battle Armor is a form-fitting Aldebaran Battle Armor is equal parts functional high tech battle-armor and active weapon system. The armored bits of the suit are made of a very shiny metallic substance that is just as flexible as the rest of the suit.

    Fan Works 
  • Child of the Storm has Tony and Rhodey, in the traditional examples.
    • HYDRA invent a remote-controlled version based on the Destroyer. It's flight-capable, extremely powerful, and capable of shapeshifting weapons. However, what makes it dangerous is the fact that it's being controlled by major league badass Baron Zemo and that its first set of opponents are kids in (mostly) their first life or death fight who have just been temporarily bootstrapped to god-like levels of power and are only scratching the surface of their capabilities. As the author remarks, they should have ripped it apart in a matter of minutes. Indeed, more skilled and experienced combatants do just that - though they're hinted to lose a little something once they go into mass production and under mass mental control.
    • In the finale, Tony reveals that he's been building a counter: the Prometheus suit which, even incomplete, is powerful enough that its conventional weaponry is described as merely 'punctuation'. The completed version was designed to handle 'planetary-scale emergencies'. However, it doesn't do quite so well against Reality Warpers.
    • In the sequel, the Red Room get their own versions, with lower profile versions that have both repulsor-style weapons and scaled-up combat knives that require Super-Strength to wield, and the fully-fledged Crimson Dynamo.
    • Later in the sequel, Harry's given his own stripped-down version, code-named 'Project Galahad'. It's largely white and silver, with emerald green eye-lights, and its design is mainly focused on speed, agility, and defences, on the grounds that by this point, Harry is a weapons system, and its main function is to prevent someone getting past his guard.
  • Contraptionology!: Theoretically. Rainbow tries to create a set of flight-capable powered armor, but the best that she can manage is an unconvincing mockup made out of cardboard boxes.
  • A Crown of Stars: The Avaloni soldiers use powered armors named Heinlein Mk 161 infantry combat suit after Robert A. Heinlein. Misato wears one as she is leading a squad to seize the Big Bad's fleet.
  • The Flight of the Alicorn: In the penultimate chapter, Windlass reveals a suit of clockwork armor, complete with a pair of razor-edged mechanical wings and a set of rocket boosters, which grants her flight and increased strength.
  • Forward: The Hands of Blue wear blue bodysuits underneath their normal suits that turn out to be a "low profile" suit of powered armor. It allows them to resist bullets and crossbow bolts, as well as allowing them to move with surprising speed and to hit extremely hard. With these suits, they are fast enough and strong enough that even River proves unable to match them in hand-to-hand combat. Fortunately, they aren't invincible, but it takes a lot of abuse to bring one down, unless you're Kaylee. Kaylee just squishes them with a power loader.
  • Spirit Of Redemption: The quarians and geth have made War Machine battle suits for the quarians to wear.
  • In Avalon (Dave19941000), there are the Iron Suits, dummied down versions of the Iron Man suit used by Nerv.
  • In Digimon 2: Return of Digimon the eponymous character creates a robot body to defend the world from an evil Digimon.
  • Mass Effect: Clash of Civilizations: This Mass Effect / Halo Crossover has the MJOLNIR Mark VIII, made from Forerunner metals that are lighter and stronger and it can be used by non-SPARTANs.
  • In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, most of the heroes wear MISTILTEINN armor which utilizes a small hypermatter reactor to provide strong shields and extremely powerful blasters combined with flight. That doesn't stop them from carrying more guns as the mission demands. Sometimes, they (and perhaps the author) forget about the suit's built in weapons...usually because they have something bigger and/or cooler in hand. The Master Chief has his customary MJOLNIR and the MISTILTEINN was designed by Cortana.
  • The Secret Return of Alex Mack: The Collective is able to build an experimental suit, but understandably enough it has a very limited power supply. Danielle Atron ends up with it and uses it to fight Terawatt.
  • The Dusk Guard Saga: Sky Bolt designs custom crystal-powered armor for the Dusk Guard. The basic design enhances strength and durability. When fully powered, it leaves the other guard units' enchanted armor in the dust.
  • Here Comes The New Boss: Taylor makes use of Tock Tick's tinker abilities to make herself a suit. Not only is it endlessly useful in its own right, and conceals her face much better than a mask, it also provides a cover story for her Super-Strength and Super-Toughness.
  • Lord Maledict from Sonic X: Dark Chaos has one of these under his cloak that keeps his horrifically-mutilated and decaying physical body from falling apart. And its "studded with sacred pentagram sigils and spikes, hewn from gold and rubies, adorned with screaming souls, flanked with flaming goat skulls on the shoulders and inscribed with six hundred and sixty-six prayers."
    • Tsali's metal endoskeleton is actually one of these, powered by Dark Chaos Energy which allows him to absorb impacts and tank nearly impossible amounts of damage.
  • Zero 2: A Revision introduces Holy Armors for Shaun, Davis, TK and Kari which enhances their physical abilities and allows the Digidestined to fight alongside their own Digimons.
  • Sudden Contact: The terrans have the traditional CMC. In turn, CMC armors and their derivatives are becoming popular in Citadel space, such as the turians' CMC-based Hardened Mobile Exosuit (HME) which are used by turian heavy infantry, and also known as "fat falcons."
  • In Wonderful (Mazinja), the Sentinel Suits worn by Taylor -"Wonder Red"- and her allies are a kind of light armor that enhances their physical abilities.
  • In Thousand Shinji, main character's mentor Khenmu and the four Rubric Marines wear Warhammer 40,000-styled, nearly indestructible, blue-and-gold power armor.
  • Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations: Samus is the only character from her own series to solely use her Power Suit. Over the course of the series, Samus can change into different suits themed mostly on a Kamen Rider's specific forms and powers a la Kamen Rider Decade. The main difference is the Rider Suits that Samus equips are those Kamen Riders that succeeded Decade.
  • In Marionettes, Director Masquerade, the leader of the Stallions in Black, wears this underneath her standard-issue suit and tie. While it doesn't cover her entire body, it boosts her strength enough to let her match strength with an Earth Pony despite being a unicorn herself. She dons a full-body Alicorn-based one later on called the Puppeteer that was based on the Marionette concept and intended to survive combat with Celestia for the Final Battle between her and Trixie (who'd been upgraded into a "mecha Alicorn" at the time). While it boosts her greatly and gives her a lot of weapons, it's also an untested, dangerous prototype that would put immense strain on her body even if she wasn't already injured at the time.
  • In Equestria: Across the Multiverse:
    • Mainline Equestria began to try and develop this to allow ponies who aren't the Mane Six to go jaunting to other worlds. Their early prototypes weren't survivable by ponies (thankfully they were intentionally using nonsapient golems to test them for that exact reason). This changes after they find a Metal Heroes inspired world and manage to adapt the armor used by the native ponies. Thankfully, they already had weaker mass-production versions anyone could use in addition to the Advanced Models that can only be used by those with high magic reserves or things like the Elements of Harmony. As part of their trade agreement, they also used the tech to create multiple versions for Mundane Utility. They can be quickly equipped using a magical sequence and all have a Laser Blade function to increase the power of their weapon, with the Advanced Models having a Magic Surge function.
    • The Tales World uses the Magitek they've co-developed with Equestria prime and the Paladin Armor to create their own Powered Armor, as most people on their world don't know magic all that well yet. It's called the RANGER (Robotically Augmented New Generation Elite Responder) Armor, inspired by Kamen Rider G4. It replaces the more magical abilities with lots of guns, which are also magically augmented. Thus, it's superior in range to the Paladin Armor but weaker in close quarters. The Super Prototype version is used by Shining Armor's Alternate Self Sincere Heart.
    • The World of Empathy ponies also have their own version of the Powered Armor, due to being Actual Pacifists who still want to be of help. The result is the Bard System (in case it was not obvious, the armors all have a Dungeons & Dragons Theme Naming), which has zero offensive abilities but is a Stone Wall and White Mage dedicated primarily for healing, buffing, and supporting allies. Despite being completely defensive and supportive in nature, the Bard armor is perhaps the most versatile of all the different armor types.
    • The Fire Ponies make their own version, Pyromancer, which primarily exists to augment their life support suits they need to survive outside their Equestria (as to them, Equestria's natural temperature is hypothermia conditions) and weaponize the intense heat they need to survive and naturally produce. The Ice Ponies from Ice Equestria make a counterpart called Cyromancer which is the same idea, except with ice.
    • The leader of the Dark Web crime syndicate in Mainline Equus, Shadow Web created an Evil Knockoff of the Paladin Armor called Blackguard in response to the Royal Guard's new Paladin Armor allowing them to completely annihilate what few crime syndicates existed in the first place. While it does its job well, Shining Armor manages to destroy Blackguard and the factory Shadow Web intended to mass-produce it in before he could achieve his goal of selling it to his fellow criminals. Unfortunately, Chrysalis managed to get the last remaining Blackguard suit...
    • Tales!Chrysalis and her network use Evil Knockoff versions of the RANGER armor, which in some ways are actually superior to the originals.
    • Eventually thanks to an Equestria were the natives are sapient robots that can combine with one another, the suits are given a combination matrix that enables them to combine when their users perform a Fusion Dance using a spell from Fusion Equestria.
    • The Stellarians have 'Lights' Chosen' armor, which is roughly comparable to the Paladin Armor used by the Equestrians.
  • Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls: Applejack's Evolved Fullbring is a reduced variant, consisting of armor for just her arms and legs with just like that "fella wit the fancy armor suit" she can use them to fly. Her Completed Fulbring is a near perfectly form fitting golden armour with skull motif and many faintly visible circular ports. It even extends into her body, forming around her very bone, keeping them together even if they break.
  • Davion & Davion (Deceased) has the Federated Suns secretly developing armoured exoskeletons for infantry storming Castles Brian, massive underground fortresses.
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami: Multiple:
    • Ami's personal armor in the duel against the Horned Reaper, powered by a Remote Mana Tap, and increasing her speed to match a demon.
    • Small physically boosting armor for Ami's general employees.
  • SAPR: After deciding to stay on Team RSPT full-time, Twilight creates a set of powered armor to make up for the fact that she isn't otherwise very physically strong or capable.
  • A set of interestingly dysfunctional suits of this appear in Seventh Endmost Vision. The Armored Shock Trooper, or AST, suits from the Remake are in the fic, but are unfinished, being old War prototypes that have been rapidly dragged out of mothballs by Shinra due to the security situation with AVALANCHE. Scarlet, in a rare fit of Even Evil Has Standards, explicitly told management that the suits weren't done and would result in problems- and they do. Apparently it's not uncommon for internal pipes to burst and fatally send shrapnel through the user, or for circuitry to go haywire and fry them inside the suit. Older and more veteran soldiers fob them off onto New Meat who don't know any better, sticking to older, more tried-and-true- and thus, safer- weaponry.
  • In Atonement, Theo Anders wears a set that he built with a little help from Chris. Its full capabilities aren't identified, but it can be equipped and removed at will, stores and charges his drones, and includes a television screen inside the helmet.
  • Hellsister Trilogy: During "The Apokolips Agenda", Supergirl wears a Kryptonite-proof armor suit to counter any Kryptonite-based villains on Darkseid's payroll.
  • In Friendly Foreign Exchange Student Spider Man, Peter Parker comes from the ending of Infinity War where he had the Iron-Spider suit on. It has a ton of features like nanobots to form it up, armor plating, and robotic spider-legs that he can use to tear through things. It also looks cool. Unfortunately, the armor is destroyed by the Noumu during the USJ attack.
  • In Kara of Rokyn, Lex Luthor wears his green-and-purple warsuit during his final confrontation with Superman. Later on, Kara uses a high-tech armor suit which lets her keep her powers under a red sun.
  • Zero Context: Taking Out the Trash: The story's antagonist, Marc Maddhouse, wears a large armored suit in case he needs to get his hands dirty. The suit is described by one character as a "dark-toned Hulkbuster rip-off", and possesses all the abilities of such. The suit comes equipped with an onboard AI and a complex suite of sensors that allow Marc to zero in on his foe's weaknesses, with its most dangerous features being the ability to adapt itself to the opponent's movement speed and an Agony Beam that directly targets a person's cell nuclei.
  • In the 101 Dalmatian Street the fanfic I AM A DE VIL Dyrant De Vil got injected with the super serum and he also gets his armor combine the two give him superhuman levels.

    Films — Animation 
  • Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem: It actually comes off as a big surprise toward the end, but the Joker reveals he has a purple and green Iron Man-like armor which he uses to fight Batman for a short time. Despite coming out of nowhere, it is still very awesome.
  • In Big Hero 6, Hiro makes Baymax a couple suits of armor to make up for his squishiness, the second suit includes a Jet Pack, Rocket Punch, an upgraded scanner that can sweep the entire city, and magnetic pads for Hiro's suit to grab onto. Though it's unclear if he had any strength upgrade since Baymax is already capable of lifting a thousand pounds or so. The rest of Big Hero 6 get their own suits with various tricks.
  • Mewtwo's armor in Pokémon: The First Movie is a partial aversion in that its only power is to weaken Mewtwo's power to a level where he can safely battle without slaughtering his opponent as well as keep him under control.
  • Steamboy has one of the least impressive examples of Powered Armor on this list. They're basically full-plate armor with steam backpacks (how they're not cooking with that setting, we're not sure), showing immunity against small arms fire and not much else.
  • In The Wrong Trousers, Wallace buys a pair of ex-NASA techno-trousers.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Batman & Robin Mr. Freeze wears a powered armor that allows him to toss people around. The suit was, of course, powered by diamonds.
  • DC Extended Universe:
    • Man of Steel: Kryptonians all wear a suit of powered armor when venturing outside. It's bulletproof and has a self-contained atmosphere. Given the effect of Earth on Kryptonians, it seems doubtful that it enhances their strength to any meaningful degree, and Zod ends up ditching his in the final fight against Superman.
    • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Batman dons an armored suit of his making for his fight against Superman. While it does improve his strength, he mainly has to use it to protect himself from the blows and crashes Superman inflicts him, especially when the Man of Steel is not weakened by Kryptonite gas.
    • Zack Snyder's Justice League: The New God Steppenwolf wears a reactive chromed armor that is made of numerous collapsible blades.
  • Elysium:
    • Max DaCosta's Exosuit gives him the strength to rip machines apart with his bare hands in his quest to reach Elysium.
    • Later Kruger is outfitted with a sleeker model, which appears to be a fifth-generation exosuit. That said, the armor part of the suit is shown to be distinct from the exoskeleton that allows the protagonist to walk and move. Unlike Max's older model Exosuit, a third-generation exosuit; Kruger's has more extensive armour components, including better protection for his torso. Also, unlike Max who had to undergo extensive surgery for interfacing, Kruger only needed assistance from Drakey and Crowe, as opposed to an entire surgery team, in part because Kruger already has point-mounting implants on his body that the exosuit is attached to.
  • In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, the heroes' costumes were armor, rather than the spandex suits worn in the series.
  • GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra features the "Delta-6 Accelerator suit", a powered armour that allows the wearer to outrun cars, leap over speeding commuter trains in a single bound, dodge missiles and climb buildings like a hyperactive monkey. Oh yes, and it's armed (quite literally) with an on-board Gatling gun and mini-missile launcher. They're used in a single scene by the two newest recruits; the story goes that the script was originally for a HALO movie or rip-off and that scene is an artifact.
  • The aliens in Independence Day use biological suits, but are still weak enough that Will Smith can knock one out with his bare fist.
  • Iron Man is unique in that it shows the trials and tribulations that would logically have to go with actually creating and testing such a device. The sound of Tony Stark screaming in terror as his suit(s) malfunction at inopportune moments almost becomes a Running Gag. To say nothing of the disastrous North Korean, Iranian, and the cringe-inducing Hammer Tech tests in the second film.note 
    • The Deconstruction goes further in Iron Man 3, showing what happens when a PTSD-burdened, sleep-deprived Tony Stark attempts to rapidly prototype dozens of different designs. Unfortunately, they seem to suffer from Conservation of Ninjutsu.
    • In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony takes the Iron Man suit even further with the Hulkbuster: a colossal suit of powered armor that itself fits over his normal suit of powered armor to let him take on the Hulk in an emergency.
    • In Avengers: Infinity War, the genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist reveals a fully nanotechnological suit of armor during an epic clash with the Black Order (It aids Tony during his adventures on the Q-Ship, as well as the battle of Titan, when it gets absolutely wrecked by Thanos and reduced to smithereens. The last glimpse of it we see is in Avengers: Endgame, when Tony uses the last few thousands of nanoparticles left to conjure a helmet with a message to Pepper Potts).
      • Spider-Man also gets one, courtesy of Stark's inventory quirks and parental concerns. The Iron-Spider armor, teased during the final minutes of Spider-Man: Homecoming, gets its fair share of glory here. It also appears in Endgame, Spider-Man: Far From Home (albeit briefly) and Spider-Man: No Way Home, where it gets damaged (chestpiece ripped out) and partially intercepted by Doctor Otto Octavius and used in his tentacles as an additional layer. The armor sacrifices its helmet to fill the hole in the chest, and Peter uses its interface to incapacitate Otto's metal arms via Bluetooth connection between identical nanoparticles. The suit gets out of commission later on, and the remaining nanoparticles are returned by Octavius upon his Heel–Face Turn to Peter. Metal mixes with the fabric of his standard outfit, creating the Integrated Suit.
    • Avengers: Endgame includes Tony's last (and probably finest) effort in armor engineering. Mark 85 is used to extract The Tesseract from its locker, fly large distances, battle the minions of Thanos, and finally perform the Snap as Tony delivers an epic one-liner to the Big Bad and kills them all. The armor disintegrates soon after.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man 2:
    • Harry Osborn wears one as the Green Goblin. The suit works in tandem with the spider venom in his veins and heals his injuries and ailments.
    • The powered armor that The Rhino has is a very interesting portrayal. For one, it triples as Powered Armor, Walking Tank, and Mini-Mecha. Two, it's also a Walking Armory, featuring guided missiles and 50 caliber machine guns. Three, it can switch between bipedal and quadripedal.
  • The (sized more like Mini-Mecha) combat suits of the humans from The Matrix Revolutions that carried big guns but provided very little protection. Word of God has said this is because the Sentinels could easily tear through any armor they put up, making it more efficient to simply leave them unarmored. It has been shown in The Animatrix that the armored suits go down just as easily as their descendants, but prolong the suffering of the pilot.
  • Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, unlike the two prior installments of the film series, does include prototype/early run suits of Marauder Powered Armor, although almost as a b-plot, and they only get 5, maybe 10 minutes of action on screen. It was, however, awesome, and long overdue.
  • In The Wolverine, the Silver Samurai is a humongous robotic suit of adamantium armor to help him face off against Wolverine.
  • The "Jackets" of Edge of Tomorrow (and its source material, All You Need Is Kill) allow regular humans to move faster and carry more weapons than they would ordinarily. At the same time, they're shown to be completely useless against Mimic weaponry, and are essentially worthless in combat against them except for the power of their weapons. At the start of the film, they're touted as the greatest piece of military tech ever created, and their effectiveness at the previous battle is used as proof. However, that was only because the hero of that battle was in a "Groundhog Day" Loop that allowed her to repeat it until she won. It also turns out that the Mimics deliberately let humans win that battle to grow overconfident and commit their forces to an all-out attack.
  • The Shredder wears a nifty set of it designed by Eric Sacks in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). It allows him to go head-to-head with the Turtles, sports several retractable blades per arm, and the blades can even be launched out as projectiles and drawn back with magnets.
  • Lazer Team has a set of Powered Armor created by aliens. However, thanks to a group of dimwits shooting down the alien's transport ship and taking the pieces for themselves, the four pieces are divided by the four.
  • The possible Ur-Example in film is found in The Master Mystery, a 1919 silent serial featuring Harry Houdini. The main villain Balcom has "The Automaton", a super-strong Killer Robot ostensibly controlled by an electrocuted human brain as his Dragon. Towards the end of the film, it's revealed that Balcom (and later his son) actually wore the Automaton.
  • A bulky suit of powered armor is used in Aliens as a forklift. And to fight the xenomorph Queen in the climax. It's manufactured by Catterpillar, even. It straddles the line between this and Mini-Mecha, making its wearer 10 feet tall and giving them the strength to lift cars, but slowing them to a crawl and not actually providing any protection besides a roll cage.
  • The augmentation Exo Suit variety appears in Johnny English Strikes Again. In order to scale a tall castle tower, Johnny equips an "old" exo suit, powered by an equally ancient brick of a mobile computer run with floppy discs. It features enhanced strength and retractable claws on the fingers and feet to scale the stone surface.
  • Star Wars has Mandalorian armor, such as the iconic armor worn by Boba Fett. In the prequels, we see this armor in action with a jetpack and a rocket launcher on the back.

    Gamebooks 
  • Games Workshop had Herald of Oblivion, a Warhammer 40,000 gamebook where you're an Imperial Fist in a Terminator battlesuit.
  • Night of the Necromancer has among the things that your ghostly character can possess, is a Clock Punk suit of armor.
  • Cyrus, the Evilutionary Biologist main antagonist of Space Assassin wears a powered suit called a WALDO to attack the titular hero, although that hardly makes him a threat in battle (justified, Cyrus is a Mad Scientist and not a combatant, while the hero is trained in "twenty-seven different kinds of martial arts across the galaxy").

    Literature 
  • 12 Miles Below: Relic armor is the greatest treasure in the world, Magitek plate armor that provides strength, speed, environmental protection, and an advanced heads-up display. Going into the underground without relic armor is largely considered a death sentence.
  • In Alliance/Union, the Earth Company Marines (and, presumably, their Union equivalents) wear Powered Armor. The only really detailed description is in Rimrunners when ex-Marine Bet Yeager, late of the carrier Africa, has to repair and recondition a pair of suits and then teach a neophyte to use it.
  • In All Men of Genius, Violet (who's attending a Steampunk science academy while disguised as a man) designs something like this. She sees it as benefiting women since if it becomes common, any question of physical strength differences between the sexes is rendered moot.
  • All You Need Is Kill refers to its powered armor as "Jackets." They're the only way that humans can really fight the alien Mimics at close range, due to their toxic biology and hardiness.
  • The titular armor from Armor. Made of plasteel, they come in Scout and Warrior variants. Scouts are human-sized and carry a blazebomb rack which the user pulls off bombs like grenades and tosses them. Scout armour doesn't have an integrated weapon system, so users carry their blazerifles by hand. Warrior armour is a bigger target, but they have vastly superior augmented limbs and far more firepower (blazerifles are integrated into both arms and fired with a simple gesture, and instead of a bomb rack, they have blazebomb launchers that carry more bombs and fires at will with greater range). As the main character bitterly notes, the casualty rates for scouts are a lot higher.
  • Bill the Galactic Hero spares barely a paragraph to mock the armored soldiers in Starship Troopers, showing what happens when one tries to land in a swamp. The suit is too heavy to even walk, so soldiers wearing them just hop around on booster jets. The one that falls in the swamp had its fuel line damaged by an enemy shot. The soldier is begging for help, but not one is willing to get dragged down by the swamp, so they just stand and watch, although some are shouting for him to get out of the armor. The soldier screams that it takes an hour under normal conditions.
  • 1980s World War III books typically had a Soviet invasion, society reverting to banditry and primitive tribes and threats from rape-crazy mutants and road warriors. John Sievert's C.A.D.S has all the above but with the added twist of 20 Minutes into the Future Powered Armor. The C.A.D.S (Computerized Attack/Defence System) were battle suits with jetpacks, arm-mounted 9mm rifles, liquid-plastic flamethrowers, and the armor-piercing E-Ball system (which was alternately described as a lightning-guided rocket or a plasma bolt). The C.A.D.S were immune to small-arms fire but were vulnerable to heavy weapons (an early C.A.D.S was killed when he got shot by a bazooka from a road warrior) and Soviet laser guns. Later models of C.A.D.S had a tactical battle computer that could read enemy actions and their 9mm rifles were replaced with guns that could attack using almost type of ammo — ranging from a .38 pistol round to a mortar shell.
  • Used in Caliphate, although not in the traditional sense. The suit itself is more of an armored exoskeleton, but the ones worn by the Suited Heavy Infantry can have armor added to them to increase their protection, or reduced to enhance speed and endurance. It's explicitly pointed out when they're introduced that they do not make the wearer invulnerable, just that the user requires more effort to kill.
  • The Chronicles of Fid: The notorious Doctor Fid has created dozens of suits of powered armor over the course of his long supervillainous career.
  • Humanity in the post-apocalyptic future of the Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin has forgotten what electricity is and have difficulty making black powder weapons that don't explode, yet one faction called the Founders have the Forge Walkers, which are steam-powered battlesuits that have integrated musket batteries and pop-up blades.
  • The Commonwealth Saga novels feature powered armour (worn by conscript soldiers in a war against a genocidal alien Hive Mind) which is super-strong and protected by force fields, while also sporting plasma rifles, kinetic missiles, tactical nukes and other heavy-duty firepower. Even so, their wearers tend to get slaughtered in a pitched battle with the enemy, who outnumber them several million to one.
  • Confederate Marines in the Confederation of Valor series use a low-key version of this. Like all their tech, the armor has to balance the benefits of powered armor with being light and flexible enough not to impede movement if the enemy uses EMP to knock out the electronics.
  • Count to the Eschaton: The Knights Hopsitaliar wear these in The Hermetic Millennia.
  • The Culture:
    • Powered, intelligent armor features in Matter and The Hydrogen Sonata. These armor suits are pretty nifty even by the Culture's high-tech standards, providing impressive protection, massive physical strength, and a significant degree of AI autonomy.
    • Also featured as a protagonist in the short story "Descent" in The State of the Art, and as a device to protect the wearer in a high-gee hazardous environment populated with super-strong Starfish Aliens in Excession. The latter is technically a glorified spacesuit, but anything that provides super-strength and plenty of damage resistance can easily be used for military purposes.
    • The protagonist of Use of Weapons wears powered armour/spacesuit at one stage, which he requisitioned from the Culture (though he very pointedly does not want a sentient suit). At one point he turns up his suit's strength in order to lift a large stone object but has to be very careful that he's in the correct stable and braced position.
  • Devil's Cape has the third and fourth Doctor Camelots. The fourth makes some significant alterations and refinements to her version of the suit.
  • The Diamond Age has "Hoplites", military combat exoskeletons that seem to take the place of infantry and tanks in serious warfare. Some models are notable in that they allow the wearers to go Roof Hopping.
  • Dire of The Dire Saga cannibalizes the power-suit of a fallen hero, Scrapper, to build her own armor.
  • Dominant Species by Michael E. Marks centers on a Marine Rapid Assault Team in powered armor; the depiction takes a serious (rather than fantasy) approach to the depiction of powered armor capabilities and vulnerabilities.
  • Development of this is finished near the end of Duumvirate. The people wearing it are already genetically engineered superhumans. The combination tends to work well.
  • The Expanse:
    • In the second novel, Caliban's War, Marines of both the Martian Congressional Republic and the United Nations of Earth wear powered armor that enhances strength, protects against projectiles and radiation, and mounts a full-auto gun firing 2mm armor-piercing rounds. The suit also contains communications and sensor equipment and a computer that can identify and provide technical specifications for weapons carried by opponents.
    • In Abaddon's Gate, the third novel, we get to see what they can really do. Disarmed of all of their weapons and in the hands of inexperienced users, four of them prove almost unstoppable only being beaten by sneaky tactics such as sending a full speed elevator into one. Had they been fully armed it's basically a given that they would have been unstoppable.
  • Factory of the Gods has this near the end of the first book, where the main character uses his massive factory to produce a suit of power armor for himself. It gets upgraded in later books.
  • Odd subversion in Fallen Dragon: Skin suits are largely biological suits powered by the wearer's blood. The skin suits also have Adaptive Armor features like using reserve supplies to provide the wearer with a Healing Factor, reconfiguring itself on-the-fly to provide enhanced protection against different types of damage or even accomplishing simple tasks without the host.
  • The Forever War, although in this case, the suits have little armour.
  • In Galactic Marines, the USMC has these. They start out as glorified spacesuits and end up being a combination starfighter/power armor/drop pod with enough features to make the Mjolnir VI look like a Model T.
  • Hack Alley Doctor: Ping, a large man himself, is outfitted with a heavy-duty exoskeleton "common in multi-purpose manufacturing plants". The exoskeleton is strong enough to let Ping unhinge a door without noticeable effort on his part.
  • The marines in Honor Harrington use powered armor. Interestingly enough, we never see fights between forces equipped with Powered Armor, only between the armored troopers and non-armored enemy forces. At least one book includes an example of what happens when you try to stealthily land on top of a building in a heavy Powered Armor suit. While they are portrayed as Nigh-Invulnerable in this setting (at least against infantry), there has been at least one example of them being defeated by regular squishy unarmored personnel who catch them by surprise (and use a BFG).
  • In The Hoplite by Robert Reed, the marines sent out to pillage the surrounding territory use a suit of high-tech powered armor, with a railgun in one arm and control systems to call in drone and artillery strikes.
  • The eponymous Infinite Stratos suits are powered armor that doesn't do much to actually armor the pilot's torso and head, instead enveloping it in some kind of force field. They are also of the Instant Armor variety, being summonable at will.
  • The marines in In Fury Born use powered armor, and so do some FALA terrorists. Cadre drop commandos have powered armor on crack.
  • The Wyverns from Into the Looking Glass start off as more Mini-Mecha, using only Earth technology, but later versions that also use Adar technology fit this trope.
  • The marines' battlesuits in Invasion of Kzarch, which actually come in three versions: one optimized for scouting, one regular version, and one that's the equivalent of heavy infantry (making them the heavy infantry version of heavy infantry!).
  • The Eternads of Robert Buettner's Jason Wander and Orphan's Legacy series.
  • Legacy of the Aldenata has the main character design and then command units of ACS against the invading Posleen, powered at one point by actual Glowing Green Rocks (appropriated alien heavy plant power cells).
  • The Lensman series is probably the Ur-Example. Galactic Patrol, the first book to be published, ends with the hero wearing a super-tough high-tech suit of armor that is not explicitly described as being powered, despite being said to weigh "close to a ton". Armor explicitly described as being powered first appears in Children of the Lens, serialized in Astounding magazine in 1947 and published in book form in 1954; the powered armor is a Lensman Arms Race outgrowth of the series' earlier armor suits.
  • Line of Delirium:
    • The protagonists wear Powered Armor during their raid on the Imperial orbital base. Most Imperial soldiers also wear power armor, though. Various functions are controlled by the chin. In particular, the protagonist puts on a type of armor that can generate a plasma shield around it, not for protection but in order to walk through walls, even space station bulkheads. Melting walls with your entire armor drains the power supply, though. Apparently, any powered armor can be quickly put on and taken off without any special tools.
    • Shadows of Dreams shows us Psilon power armor. It's mentioned that back during the Vague War, three Psilon marines in armor managed to completely level the city of Vilnius when they managed to breathe through to Terra.
  • This is the raiment of choice for both Lisa and Brock in Lone Huntress. It's not even a specialized combat model; it's an old workhorse model produced for both military and industrial clientele. It's not because industrial workers wanted something military grade, either - the military wanted something industrial grade.
  • The Space Opera series Lucifer's Star has Durandal armor (based on Halo), which are used for Special Forces to smash through enemy targets like a miniature tank.
  • Machine Man makes use of this when Carl the security guard needs an exo-suit to hold up his titanium sledgehammer arms.
  • In the Magic: The Gathering book The Thran, the Halcyte Guard get a form of powered armor: they're lighter and tougher than conventional armor, mold themselves to fit the wearer, and the helmets even have a magical form of radio communication. The only real downside is that they're just as vulnerable to their own weapons as conventional armor is, and their swords can already slice through metal as if it were butter.
  • In the Paradox Trilogy, powered armor is in common use by both the military and private mercenaries. The protagonist, Devi, owns a custom suit of powered armor called the Lady Gray.
  • The Perfect Run: A common sight among both Dynamis and the Augusti, because Vulcan made the Dynamis armor before she left for the Augusti. This is all despite the fact that her Mad Scientist focus is on weapons; as far as her power is considered, the armor is little more than a weapons delivery platform. Ryan also has Vulcan and then Len build him one, which he later uses to supercharge his Black-Elixir powers during time-stops to go toe-to-toe with powerful foes like Geist, Fallout and Augustus.
  • Space and combat suits in the Perry Rhodan universe tend to come with basic comm gear, flight capability, and some kind of force field for protection at a minimum; additional sensors, life support, fairly sophisticated built-in computers, and stealth features like invisibility are also found more often than not. Perhaps ironically, one thing that these suits are not primarily intended to function as is actual body armor; that's what the force field is for. Likewise, weapons tend to be external (and frequently hand-held) rather than integrated into the suit.
  • In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, this is Mech's primary schtick. He's a Mad Scientist, and the armor is his first and greatest invention. It's highly modular, capable of adapting to any device plugged into it, not to mentions millions of layers of microscopic ablative plates that let it adapt to any threat. It's also the most obvious reason that he's a clear Iron Man expy.
  • Although present in Prince Roger series, these don't see a lot of use in the earlier books due to limited power and the environment of the Death World the titular prince's bodyguard unit is stranded on is exceedingly hostile to advanced electronics.
  • In Rebuild World, augmented suits are a special mix of Future Spandex and an exoskeleton that greatly boost one's strength and agility. Using it incorrectly can lead to wear and tear on one's body, but it's an enormous help in traversing a battlefield. Because of the risks, there are classes on how to utilize them, and Alpha gives Akira additional training so he doesn't become reliant on it. She's also able to interface with it directly to control Akira's movements, allowing her to fight with a level of coordination that Akira lacks at the cost of putting severe strain on his body.
  • Revelation Space Series: The first novel features powered armor suits that can fly to a planet's surface and back to orbit, extrude powerful weapons, withstand heavy damage and change their shape; oddly, they aren't mentioned in later books, even if they would be useful. They're mentioned as being exceedingly rare and powerful by one character in the novel. Chasm City is largely empty of serious high-tech of that kind. Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap don't contain any infantry combat of note. Similar armor is, however, used in Diamond Dogs when a group of characters uses it to gain entry to a hostile alien structure.
  • Mach from Rumor's Block uses power armor that she based on two older heroes' named Panzer and Sherman.
  • Although derived from otherworldly "strange matter" rather than from technology, the golden battle-armor worn by the Droods of the Secret Histories series works exactly like this trope, up to and including stealth, sensory enhancements, safe-cracking and computer-hacking capacity, self-sustained oxygen supply, and near-instantaneous deployment.
  • In Shadow of the Conqueror, sunforged armor is nearly indestructible, enhances the user's speed and strength, and has the added advantage of being instantly summoned if the wearer is a Lightbringer or Lightbinder. The downside being that each individual piece of the armor has to be independently sunforged, increasing the chances of it being ruined by a faulty link or exposed to darkstone, which shatters it on contact.
  • Skulduggery Pleasant: The battle armour of Lord Vile serves as this, because it's the focus item for his necromancy and thus the embodiment of his power and under his complete mental control. When worn by Baron Vengeous, who's exceptionally formidable but has no real clue how to use it, it's exceptionally dangerous and downright scary, being able to massively enhance strength, adapt, and wield Combat Tentacles made of shadow. However, as someone else who knew the real Vile bluntly informs him he's just wearing Vile's clothes and is nothing compared to the real thing. Given that even when the armour decides to get up and walk around by itself, it's a teleporting, curbstomp-inflicting, borderline unstoppable nightmare, this is justified. Then, the real Vile, Skulduggery himself, puts it on, and reveals that he's a fully fledged Flying Brick capable of slaughtering anyone who isn't a True Name sorcerer (and one of those, a pacifist, admits that Vile's skill, power, and killer instinct could probably take him out) without breaking stride, and surviving a blast compared to a miniature nuke that devastates a small city.
  • Space Captain Smith features the Edenites, militant religious fanatics who make use of Powered Armor similar to the ones in Starship Troopers, down to having jump jet capacity though no portable nukes. That said, Edenite armor is no match for Smith's .308 Mark Plainsman rifle which was capable of punching thru a bank vault door.
  • The powered suits in Diane Duane and Peter Morwood's Space Cops books.
  • In Stark's War, all American ground forces wear powered combat suits. These are beneficial on Earth, but are essential on the Moon (what with the lack of air and all). However, Stark notes that "armor" isn't really a very accurate description anymore, because most modern weapons can punch through the suits fairly easily. Effectively, they're used as fancy high-mobility space suits rather than as protection.
  • Starship Troopers codified the concept, building on the Lensman series.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • Dark Lord—The Rise of Darth Vader describes in loving detail exactly how uncomfortable Darth Vader's armor and prostheses are, even as they enhance his strength and senses (not to mention keep him alive). The author even consulted an employee of Lucasfilm who has worn the suit.
    • Star Wars: Scoundrels: Avrak Villachor's security includes a set of police droids that have been modified with extra armor to cover any areas skinnier than human average. This allows him to disguise human guards in armor that appears the same as the droids, so any infiltrator prepared with anti-droid countermeasures can be surprised when they're ineffective. The armor comes with strength and sensory enhancements. In the climax, Han Solo steals a set and uses it against Villachor's guards.
  • The protagonist of Gary Gibson's Stealing Light has some sort of Latex Space Suit Instant Armor Powered Armor she stole from some aliens. If they knew about it, they'd want it back. Alas, it's implanted in place of one of her lungs (at least).
  • The Stormlight Archive has Shardplate, Lost-Magitek powered armor. It magically fits itself to any wearer, is extremely resistant to any form of attack (including being the only armour that can resist a Shardblade at all), and increases the wearer's strength and speed. If it gets damaged, it can regrow itself if it is supplied with stormlight. Not only that, but it is implied the armor does not simply act as extra muscles like most examples of Powered Armor, but instead powers up the body of the wearer himself, giving it greater strength, speed and resilience, allowing for example the physically wimpy Renarin to jump from a building and fall head-first without any lasting consequences. The armor is powered by Stormlight, losing most of its properties if the gems fueling it run out. In those instances it's more of a hindrance than anything, as moving in the heavy armor without the strength it grants is incredibly difficult. Later books reveal that Shardplate is created from the bodies of spren associated with each particular order of the Knights Radiant, as long as the Knight has been able to swear their Fourth Ideal. Compared with the "dead" sets of Plate that are more commonly worn, "living" Shardplate is effectively Instant Armor that can appear and vanish at will, and can form floating protective barriers or even be sent to form around a non-Radiant to shield them from harm.
  • In Strike Lightning, the death of Bond's schoolmate leads him to uncover a plot to sell steampunkish exo-suits to the Nazis as Germany is rearming itself. In the finale, Bond has to wear one, and is forced to take on the Nazis' more advanced suits.
  • Steam Knights in Threadbare are a mixture of magic and technology to create power armor. It's incredibly strong and incredibly durable, but the pilots in the armor don't recover their resource pools normally, which means they will run out of "fuel" at some point.
  • From The Tin Man onwards, some of Dale Brown's books have featured the eponymous armours. They are noted as being resistant to bullets and eventually having limited jumpjet capability and railguns, but vulnerable to knives and missiles.
  • In the Vorkosigan Saga, Miles ("Mr. Naismith") Vorkosigan was too short to use the average powered armor suits of his universe, but acquired a "petite" size in his first mercenary venture. He had to have the techs adapt the plumbing to fit, though, as it was originally for a female. Later in his career, he's worn powered armor so often that the equipment's left a mark on his forehead.
  • The "living-brain" Martians in The War of the Worlds (1898) come very close; their war-machines straddle the line between this trope and Humongous Mecha. They also have smaller non-combat work-machines into which they strap themselves.
  • The Zombie Knight has this in the character of Abbas Saqqaf, oldest and strongest of the Sandlords of Sair. Its currently known capabilities include breaking the sound barrier under its own power, deploying small drones with submachine guns, and the ability to create antimatter.

    Live-Action TV 

By genre:

  • Nearly all Tokusatsu programs qualify in some way, although some have the protagonist as a Hollywood Cyborg, Ridiculously Human Robot, or a bioweapon created through genetic engineering or magic instead. Even with these, the character's superhero form is often treated as a power-enhancing suit. For the sake of not listing every show in the genre, only exceptional instances are listed here.

By title:

  • Arrowverse:
    • Arrow: Chimera uses a WayneTech prototype power armor to fight most of the heroes at the same time. Once they disable the power supply, he can't even support his own weight.
    • The Flash (2014):
      • A Villain of the Week develops an exoskeletal suit that allows him to move as fast as the Flash. Then his control chip gets damaged. Cue the "bug on its back" sight.
      • Savitar spends most of his time wrapped in a mechanical suit of armor. It sports retractable blades, channels lightning, and can be controlled remotely. It's also revealed to be a necessary element to Savitar's Super-Speed since it also redirects the heat and friction that would otherwise destroy his body.
      • Red Death in season 9 has a mechanical suit that appears to be derived from Wayne Enterprises tech, and the villain's symbol is bat wings with a lightning bolt. The villain turns out to be Ryan Wilder from another Earth, who has gone off the deep end when fighting crime and has a serious grudge against her world's Flash. She has used her suit to generate the Negative Speed Force, granting her Super-Speed while wearing it. The suit is also able to operate without her in it through mental remote control and can fly to her in pieces on demand (like Iron Man's Mark 42).
    • Legends of Tomorrow: The Atom wears dwarf-star alloy power armour that gives him flight, lots of damage resistance, increased strength, and photon blasters. These are all in addition to his usual comic book ability to shrink.
    • Supergirl (2015):
      • Lillian Luthor uses one of the suits her son Lex used against Superman.
        Winn: Is that the Lexosuit? That is awesome! [sees Alex glaring at him] Gonna be awesome when Supergirl destroys that thing!
      • When Lex himself shows up in season 4, he's upgraded the Lexosuit to run off energy drained from alien prisoners, and has enough Kryptonite that Supergirl needs a Kryptonite-Proof Suit just to fight him at all. After all that, the suit is relatively fragile, and Supergirl is able to strip it off him without trouble when she can actually fight him.
    • Black Lightning (2018): The titular character gets a set of armour that not only protects him, but it's also designed to increase his control over his powers and has high-tech goggles that gives him telescopic sight and "lightning vision". His armour also appears to boost his strength.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Daleks are basically evil lumps of flesh encased in salt-shaker-shaped personal tanks that function the same way Powered Armor does for humanoids.
    • The Cybermen, both the original and the Alternate Universe version in the new series, were originally designed as a suit to increase the vitality and lifespan of the wearer.
    • The Ice Warriors wear powerful armor in Earth's atmosphere and in "Cold War" it can act autonomously from its user.
    • The Arcturus delegate from "The Curse of Peladon" is housed within a mechanical transport housing somewhat like a Dalek's, although in his case it's mainly for life-support in a non-aquatic environment.
  • The Expanse: Both the Martian and the UN militaries employ Force Recon Marines using power armor that turns its wearer into a walking tank and allows them to operate under otherwise lethal conditions such as in deep space or a nuclear blast site. When it is used onboard a spaceship where heavy weapons are all but impossible to use, these suits are nearly unstoppable, which seems to be their primary purpose, as one of the few cases in which conventional ground vehicles don't often make more sense.
  • Kamen Rider:
    • Kamen Rider Agito: The man-made Kamen Rider G3 is notable for being the only Rider which is treated completely like a suit instead of something pulled out of hyperspace via a Transformation Trinket. The wearer actually needs an entire support crew to help him put the armor on before deploying into the field, and its various upgrades are the result of engineers building a new suit or modifying the existing one.
    • Kamen Rider Kiva: Kamen Rider IXA, again the only man-made suit in its series, goes through eleven versions between 1986 and 2008, with the earlier versions having serious flaws like overheating that take decades of research and development to fully resolve.
    • Kamen Rider OOO: Kamen Rider Birth emphasizes its mechanical nature with a few in-helmet HUD shots clearly inspired by Iron Man. Like IXA, there's also a less powerful prototype version, which leads to a time when they need to Break Out the Museum Piece.
    • Kamen Rider Fourze: Fourze was developed as part of the Japanese space program, with his Swiss-Army Weapon nature being various useful tools including rocket thrusters, mechanical arms, medkits, and more. His primary ally Meteor was built purely for combat and has a single, much more directly battle-focused tool, while Fourze has to get creative with abilities that mostly aren't designed to be directly useful in a fight. Fourze's non-superpowered friends can also use the Power Dizer, which skirts the line between powered armor and Humongous Mecha, and as such is so heavy and strenuous to use that only the football quarterback has the physical strength to wear it for long periods.
    • Kamen Rider Build: All of the suits in this show are explicitly being developed as part of a government-sanctioned Super-Soldier project. The early enemies Night Rogue and Blood Stalk are stated to be "aggressor systems", weaker suits that anyone can use that are mainly used to help Build get stronger via combat. Like Birth, the series also makes use of in-helmet HUD shots.
    • Kamen Rider Revice: The final forms of the title characters, Ultimate Revi and Ultimate Vice, are created as an extra layer of powered armor worn over their original suits, with parts of the new armor being translucent so the original suits can be seen underneath.
  • Luke Cage (2016): Diamond puts on a power suit for his final fight with Luke.
  • The title character of M.A.N.T.I.S. wears this. Being paraplegic, the dude required the suit even to walk, let alone be a superhero.
  • Ever since it first appeared in Power Rangers in Space, the Battlizer power-up has usually been a staple upgrade for the Red Ranger and occasionally other Rangers in Power Rangers. Of course, the source of their Powered Armor varies by series.
  • In Stargate Atlantis, the Lost Tribe faction of the Asgard wear humanoid-shaped power armor suits that provide them with mobility, protect them from hazardous environments, and come equipped with blasters and built-in energy shields. They're also conveniently designed to automatically adjust to the wearer, so other races that aren't bigger than the armor's maximum size can wear them. This is extremely convenient, given that that all the Asgard we have seen are half the size of the average human, and as they are a race of clones, we can reasonably presume that their stature is pretty uniform. Intimidation probably has something to do with it. Admit it, you'd be half as afraid of someone wearing armor half your size than someone who is larger. Also, if it came to hand-to-hand combat, a smaller power armor would probably be at a disadvantage. It also serves to hide the identity of the wearer. After all, if you encounter a power armor soldier half your size, you'd immediately think of all the races you know that size (hint: 1). A generic human size means the identity isn't easy to guess. It becomes fairly clear after the early events of Stargate Universe that the suits are actually of Ancient design, as they're present on Destiny. The adaptive size is likely an overengineered means to prevent having to customize each suit to the individual wearer — it probably wasn't intended to work for a being as differently sized as an Asgard, but the Ancients did tend to overdo things if they were going to do them at all.
  • "The Suit" in Super Force. In the first episode, an advanced spacesuit serves this purpose, though, by the climax, they've switched to a purpose-built urban assault system based on the space suit.
  • Downplayed in The Mandalorian. Mando's Beskar steel armor is light enough that it doesn't need mobility assistance, but it's still Immune to Blasters and sports enough other goodies to make him a Space Western equivalent of Iron Man. For the titular character, it is also presented to be not airtight and of modular construction (which means he can still be vulnerable to blaster fire in unprotected parts. Other Mandalorians presented, however (particularly the remnants of Death Watch) are shown to wear more Space Marine-styled outfits, with the power and skillset these imply. In case of the Imperial Remnant officer Gideon, however, the trope is played straight - his version is reverse-engineered from the Phase 3 Dark Trooper units of combat droids (which are already famous for their sheer strength and durability).

    Pinballs 
  • The warrior-contestants in Gottlieb's Gladiators wear glowing orange power armor suits that cover their entire bodies (but not their heads).
  • Deadpool: Amassing enough weapons results in "Mechsuit Multiball", centered on Deadpool acquiring one of these. It reappears during the climactic final fight against against Mister Sinister.

    Podcasts 
  • A series of events in Interstitial: Actual Play lead to the party having to fight Mr. C while he wears a suit of power armour built out of his car—complete with a mullet made out of floor mats.

    Roleplay 
  • Powered armor does appear in Darwin's Soldiers but they are intended mostly for carrying heavy cargo.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Rackham's AT43 features suits of powered armor for nearly every army (including Space Gorillas).
  • While BattleTech is best known for its 'Mechs, there's also Powered Armor down there, ranging from simple suits worn by special forces troopers to one-ton monsters capable of taking down a 'Mech in teams and withstanding their weaponry, to two-ton four-legged machines more piloted than worn, with enough firepower to shame an infantry company. Interestingly the Inner Sphere has a clear divide between lighter Powered Armor (typically less than half a ton) and heavier Battle Armor (can weigh up to 2 tons).
    • In the heyday of the Star League, the Star League Defense Force (SLDF) and their intel apparatus had the R&D and tech on hand to create the Nighthawk Stealth Powered Armor, which is designed for their black ops units and focuses more on low visibility and sensor obfuscation than armor plating.
    • Comstar, which is the successor organisation to the Star League Ministry of Communication (MiniCom), initially inherited a bunch of SLDF Nighthawk suits directly from SLDF units that did not join the Exodus (or left them behind). By the Third Succession War era, they were starting to have difficulty making replacement parts and attempts to reverse engineer the Nighthawk yielded a marginally less advanced Tornado Light PA suit.
    • The Clan genetics program has culminated in the birth of huge humans to pilot their massive Battle Armor; the Elementals. Even one outside of the likewise-named armor can dismember an armored opponent with their bare hands, and the massive brutes top seven or even eight feet tall. Elemental armor fits above into the 'one-ton monster' variety, a sizable fraction being the pilot itself. Examine for yourself a cutaway diagram of the standard Clan Elemental battle armor. The tactics used by Elementals to headhunt and bring down even mighty Assault-class mechs quickly resulted in a form of trauma amongst Inner Sphere pilots during the early days of the Clan Invasion colloquially known as Elemental Shock.
    • The Federated Commonwealth was already attempting to use the fruits of the recovered Lost Technology knowledgebase of the Helm Core to develop their own Battle Armor, but they were not able to fill in the missing technical gaps until they started recovering Elemental armor and studied it to correct some of the missteps in design.
    • Much like the larger Battlemechs, the powered armour technology is even present in the civilian market throughout the Inner Sphere, with uses ranging from police and rescue work to forklift truck analogues (which was presented as a clear homage to Aliens).
  • Powered Armor characters are common in Champions. This is in part because putting superpowers into armor, which the character presumably won't be wearing all the time and which can be potentially damaged, stolen or destroyed, serves to make them somewhat cheaper point-wise; on the more in-universe level, power armor also has the advantage of being one of the easier ways to enable otherwise non-powered agents to at least try to deal with super-threats, so quite a few organizations employ it.
    • One of the most powerful human villains in the official game universe is Doctor Destroyer, who wears a suit of powered armor that lets him take out (spelled "kill") whole teams of superheroes.
    • PRIMUS and DEMON Organization Book. PRIMUS has the Iron Guard and DEMON has two different types of Mechagents (Type I and Type II). All three consist of agents wearing standard power armor suits.
    • Some super characters with powered armor in Enemies, Enemies II and Enemies III: Anklyosaur, Cryotron, Death Commando, The Green Knight, The Juggernaut, Lady Blue, Ladybug, Mechassassin, and Professor Muerte.
  • In the Chi-Chian rpg based on the comic by Voltaire, those with money will wear Powered Armor as a display of wealth and fashion. The most notable of these suits is the Dragon armour, besides enhancing one's stats and providing the best protection rate, the very fanciful Dragon has wings that allows the wearer to fly and there's a dragon-head attachment to the helmet which breathes fire. Chi-Chian herself owns the Nigh-Invulnerable unique Biologic Suit given to her by her supergenius father. The suit has an armor rating of infinity as well as boost her stats!
  • Pretty much every side in CthulhuTech is a big fan of powered armour. Of course, how dangerous they are is entirely dependent on what they're up against. They're basically invincible to infantry level firepower, requiring specialist anti-armour weapons to scratch while carrying guns that can kill a normal human/Migou/Deep One with a single shot. On the other hand, up against anything larger, they're the Glass Cannon, who tend to get crippled if they get hit at all.
  • Cyberpunk 2020 introduced an entire subclass of Solo called 'PA Trooper' whose only reason for existence was using various heavily-armed suits of Powered Armor. The supplement 'Maximum Metal' was mostly devoted to their design.
  • The d20 Modern supplement D20 Future features Powered Armor in a few different forms. The standard version is a fairly basic version, providing a sealed, protected environment and enabling flight, but not giving the wearer any offensive abilities. Blurring the line with Mini-Mecha, the Mecha chapter includes rules for Large size Mechs (roughly 9-11 feet tall) that act more like the Marauder suits from Starship Troopers; they grant the wearer a sizable Strength bonus (+8 for the smallest, when a normal human's absolute maximum is 18) and serve as mounting brackets for heavy armor, shielding, and weapons too heavy for a normal human to wield (such as .50 caliber chainguns and rocket launchers), with options for sealed environments, flight capability, and other neat doodads.
  • In Dark Legacies a D20 game from ''Red Spire Press', one advanced class for a race of gnome-like people can make a Steampunk suit of Power Armor that's armed with a modified Automatic Crossbow and Power Fist type weapon.
  • A fair number of powered armor suits survived the Last War in Deadlands: Hell on Earth. The trick isn't so much finding one as getting it to work for more than fifteen minutes in the Scavenger World left After the End.
  • Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition includes an Armorer subclass for the Artificer which is a clear homage to Iron Man. The armor can be either Guardian, which gives additional power to your punches and defense, or Infiltrator, which increases speed, dampens the sound of your movement, and a laser from your palms.
  • Eclipse Phase has powered exoskeletons for those who prefer biomorphs but want to take on synthmorphs in close combat. The higher-end models have integral makers that can recycle their occupants' air, water, and food indefinitely, and actually better armor than a Reaper morph. No weapon mounts though.
  • Given Exalted's attitude towards the Rule of Cool (namely, if the concept exists and is sufficiently awesome, put it in the game), it should come as no surprise that there are many, many examples of this to be found in Creation, ranging from Gunzosha (which can even be worn by mortals, at the cost of a mere half their lifespan) to Celestial Battle Armor (which is as tough as Superheavy Plate armor, far less restrictive, and can usually fly).
  • Fading Suns has some powered armors, but these are rare and it's hard to get your hands on one. The most accessible ones, the Durasteel armor are powered just enough to compensate for their weight (allowing you to wear it with no penalties as long as it has power), better ones such as those for the Church Militant outright enhance the wearer's strength and may even have integrated weapons such as a flamer.
  • Gamma World featured various powered armor suits in the higher tech tiers of the Schizo Tech setting such as the mighty Powered Assault armor which boosts strength and has a force field. The 4th edition of the game had a spin-off game called Gamma Knights which focuses on powered armor combat and expands the arsenal for appropriate weapons and armor.
  • Genius: The Transgression lists this as one possible product of the defensive Prostasia axiom (although you have to use the travel axiom Skafoi to make it fly and the weapons axiom Katastrofi to give it weaponry).
    • And the Exelixi axiom for super-strength... a good suit tends to be an expensive investment for a veteran Genius. But oh so worth it.
  • GURPS:
    • GURPS Ultra-Tech has a slew of suits. The most powerful is the TL12 "Warsuit" which, just for starters, is armored with layers of hyper-dense regenerating metal alloy and multiplies an ordinary person's strength 25 times over. There's also the clever "Exo-Field Belt", which is Powered Armor made out of nothing but force fields.
    • Or, if you want to go retro, GURPS Steam-Tech includes not just a coal-fired Steampunk suit of power armor, but a wind-up Clockpunk version.
  • One of the previews for Hc Svnt Dracones shows off the "Pangolin Diffusion System", midweight powered armor meant for bomb squads. It projects a superheated field that vaporizes bomb triggers and can curl up into an armored ball, resulting in a few embarrassing web videos where pangolin suits are seen being thrown like cannonballs.
    • The final product has four types of powered armor, ranging from the lightweight Mobility Augmentation Rig to the superheavy MC-850 LEADARM. And then there's living armor made by Transcendent Technologies Inc, which might start sucking the wearer's blood if it takes too much damage.
  • Marvel Super Heroes features these extensively in the supplement MHAC8 Weapons Locker and the supplement Uncanny X-Men boxed set "Adventure Book".
    • In Chapter 4 "Time Out" the Mandrill's soldiers wear armor based on SHIELD's Mandroid armor.
    • Chapter 5 "Nightmare in New Guinea"
      • The PCs are at an audience with the Mandrill when he decides to capture them. He and his soldiers open fire on them with neurostunner pistols that cause unconsciousness. If that fails to take them down, several soldiers wearing the special armor from Chapter 4 will appear and attack.
      • While the PCs are escaping from Mandrill's base, one his soldiers wearing a battlesuit attacks them. She uses a neurostunner built into her armor to knock them out.
  • In Mechanical Dream, there's Mechanized War Armour which was a gadget designed during that world's Years of Chaos. This Gear Punk powered armour increases a character's agility and strength, but it's considered obsolete technology as it's very heavy (though not particularly bulky) and the actual protective value of this armour is only above moderate, with many other kinds of armour being superior to it in protection.
    • The far superior "skin-crafted suits" of the Yakis' Armor is made from a newborn Yaki's placenta being taken and worked on in an Awakener's rituals by the tribe's Birth Shamans. The new armor is then placed on the child where it grafts itself to them and evolves new powers and abilities as the Yaki grows.
  • Although Mekton primarily focuses on Humongous Mecha, the scaling rules provide two different power levels for powered armor - the smaller Human Scale (which are light powered suits on the Iron Man - Bubblegum Crisis axis) and larger Roadstriker Scale (which are slightly larger and bulkier, on a rough size and mass scale with a large motorcycle to a light truck).
  • Mutants & Masterminds: while the Device power can be used to represent anything from the hammer Mjolnir to a Green Lantern Ring, the battlesuit is one of the coolest uses. (Especially since there are no restrictions on what you can give a battlesuit save the points available, meaning that it's not impossible to build a suit that lets you warp time.) There is also a Battlesuit archetype, for characters whose Device is armor.
    • To expand, there are two types of device. Those you can remove with a disarm check (weapons) and those you can only remove from someone only when he's unconscious. This include powered armors.
    • Published characters in power armor include Freedom City's Star Knights (Green Lanterns with alien armor instead of a ring), Emerald City's Ultramarine (whose armor is distinguished by starting out as a high-tech diving suit and its Samus Is a Girl appearance) and Halt Evil Doer!'s Steel Commando (an Iron Man/Captain America cross, created before Iron Patriot in the comics).
  • Surprisingly downplayed in Mutant Chronicles, much of the fancy armor look like they'd be Powered Armor but they're nothing more than future full-plate with a closed helmet. The Brotherhood's Crucifier armor is the most famed armor as it has a magically responsive 2nd set of arms to provide the user with four arms worth of guns and other weapons.
  • Myriad Song has a variety of exoskeleton outfits, their main use being to mount waldoes with weapons.
  • Obsidian: Age of Judgement has 3 kinds of armor: soft, hard and mechanical. Mechanical armor has muscle coils and stabilizers to increase a wearer's strength and ability to handle recoil but requires daily recharging. The armors are: Stormtrooper which is a common, medium suit that offers good protection but lacks environmental sealing. Bounty which is a light armor used often by bounty hunters - while it's lightweight and unencumbering while lacking coverage for the head and extremities. Deathware is a strong, heavy armor that offers great protection and stability but inhibits movement speed. Last of all is Assault Stabilizing Wear which is a massive suit that's very clumsy and slow but offers many extra features. Officers of the LAW megacorp have their own unique variations of Deathware and Assault Stabilizing Wear (Patrol armor and Law Stabilizing armor) which are greatly improved compared to the standard versions, such as Patrol being fully sealed and Law Stabilizing having built-in machine guns.
  • Palladium Books is fond of this trope for their sci-fi/superhero games:
    • Rifts sings "The Girl is Mine" with Warhammer every Saturday on the subject. It also enjoys playing with the trope to a degree usually not seen. Many units that one might classify as powered armor from their size, like the Triax Ulti-Max and Coalition States Terror Trooper, are in fact very small piloted combat robots instead of worn suits, while some worn suits such as the Glitterboy are simply so powerful as to intrude on combat robot territory. The Lunar Colony's VRDS system even allows one to wear a combat robot like it was power armor.
      • The books even state (at least for the Terror Trooper) that such suits blur the line between Power Armor (Rifts doesn't use the -ed) and Giant Robots. The defining characteristic seems to be that Power Armor is one man, while Giant Robots need a crew of 2-5.
    • Another Palladium game that extensively uses Powered Armor (but of Organic Technology) is Splicers. Host Armour is the power armour of the system and like the name says it's a symbiotic parasite for its host which provides the host with an extensive array of powers and stat bonuses while the host procures power sources for the armour. The source of power for Host Armour depends on the type of suit and can vary from taking ambient heat from the surrounding area, to digesting minerals, gulping large quantities of meat and just sucking life force from its host.
    • Also from Palladium is Heroes Unlimited, which includes rules for playing as a non-superpowered hero who fights crime with a robotic exoskeleton. The player can customize this exoskeleton however they please, with the only limiting factors being their imagination and the design budget.
  • French undersea RPG Polaris published by Blackbook Editions has a lot of armoured suit (a must if you're living deep in the oceans). Light and Heavy armour are just unpowered suits of armour for day-to-day use or military operations. Meanwhile, Exo-armour are powered suits of heavy armour that are so large and stiff that the user has to be fitted into an open suit before being locked into it, with some being Mini-Mecha with a cockpit. Exo-armour have mostly military and industrial uses, with much of the arsenal unique to Exo-armour (as opposed to integrated conventional weapons) being re-purposed industrial tools like drills and hammers.
  • Erisian 'Knight' Armor from Rocket Age is this for a race of giant gorilla people.
  • In Sentinels of the Multiverse, Bunker wears a suit of advanced, US military-engineered power armor capable of "wielding the firepower of an entire battalion." And going by the amount of dakka he can lay down once he arms up, that's not hyperbole.
  • It is technically possible to do this in Shadowrun by combining multiple levels of Mobility Upgrade, Strength Upgrade, and Hydraulic Jacks on a suit of milspec or modern Samurai armor, but your GM will not be pleased.
  • The Singularity System features powered armors that allow personal-scale combatants to effectively be treated as vehicles for vehicle-scale combat.
  • SLA Industries has most power armor produced by the corporation Power Projects, with their heaviest suit being the Dogeybone (lighter power armor has motors and exoskeletons too small to improve strength but the heavier suits will boost the wearer's strength). Military Assault Laminates mostly specialize in guns, but do have one suit, the Shock Armor - which was made to rival the Dogeybone and it's so large it almost counts as a Mini-Mecha (it doesn't boost the wearer's stats, instead having its own strength and dexterity rating). The most potent armor suits belong to the hostile Thresher Inc. who discovered the unique technology on an alien War World. The greatest of Thresher Inc. armor is the Sarge which puts all the other heavy suits to shame and all Thresher suits share depleted uranium ammo for their guns, an integrated Jet Pack and armor made from a special ceramic material that reduces the effect of HESH rounds.
    • The symbiotic, quasi-magical DeathSuits for the Ebon race and their subspecies the Brain Wasters and Necanthropes, are used to store Flux from the Ebb. Once these suits, themselves made from solidified Flux, are filled with Flux the suits gain new abilities including increasing their weight/protective class, enhancing stats, becoming sentient, etc. and even permanently bonding to the wearer.
  • In Starfinder as The Future spinoff of Pathfinder there are various suits of power armor based on purely physical engineering, Magitek or pure enchantment.
  • Tiny Epic Mechs, despite the name, only really features one Mech, by definition; the majority of the "mechs" are pilots in power armour that allows them to equip advanced (aka, "mech sized") weaponry as shoulder mounts.
  • Traveller had "Battle Dress" armor, which was pretty much an Iron Man suit for every G.I. in the Imperial forces. Besides its protective function, the powered armor was the only way to handle the recoil and backblast from the awesome FGMP-14.
  • Despite its medieval setting, Warhammer has Chaos Armor, another case of daemon-powered armor. The Albion campaign expansion also introduced the High Elf "Armour of the Gods," suspiciously identical in effect to Warhammer 40,000's Power Armor.
  • Warhammer 40,000 just loves Power Armor, so that nearly every faction has some variant of it. And in many cases, several increasingly-extreme variants of that Power Armor.
    • The iconic Space Marines are famous for their distinct suits of armor with huge pauldrons and scowling helmets, often festooned with purity seals and other signs of devotion. They can also field Terminator Armor, heavier suits with built-in teleporters that are commonly equipped with Power Fists and are capable of firing an Assault Cannon one-handed. Said suits are cumbersome, slow, but so incredibly durable that a Space Wolf hero in Terminator Armor famously survived having a titan step on the building he was inside, bloody and battered but still raring to fight. There are also a few recursive examples like the Centurion armor which is even bulkier than terminator armor and worn over normal power armor and the Exosquad-style Dreadknight which has an armored marine operating it from a harness in the front (creating an unfortunate resemblance to a baby carrier).
    • Other human forces also use power armor, particularly the Sisters of Battle and some Inquisitors, but because they lack the Black Carapace - a sub-dermal layer of neural interfaces implanted towards the end of the Space Marine creation process - they aren't able to use the armor to its fullest potential.
    • Spyrers are ordinary humans from the heights of Necromunda's Hive Primus who use Powered Armor to achieve Clothes Make the Superman. It's hinted that their ancient, possibly alien (the names are all useful descriptions of their function in Tau) suits are actually The Symbiote, as they literally grow stronger and more powerful as the wearer gets more used to them. These are unusual artefacts belonging to noble families rather than standard military gear, however.
    • Chaos Space Marines naturally have the same suits as their loyalist counterparts, which are usually covered in spikes, horns, and grisly trophies, and can be daemonically-possessed to boot.
    • The Tau may come closest to the Starship Troopers example, in that their Crisis suits can mount an array of heavy weapons and gadgets, but also sport jet packs that allow them to cross difficult terrain and pop in and out of cover. Broadside suits lack this mobility but make up for it by carrying railguns that are among the most effective anti-armor weapons in the game. In both cases, the suits are large enough to straddle the line between Powered Armor and Mini-Mecha, though in gameplay terms they're treated as infantry, not walker vehicles.
    • Ork "Nobs" and Warbosses sometimes have their Mekboyz assemble suits of Mega Armor, scrapyard knock-offs of Terminator Armor that are even more unwieldy than their inspiration. Still, between Orky know-how and the inhuman strength of their wearers, crude in this case does not mean ineffective.
    • Eldar armor is powered in a different respect - it's made from a psychically-reactive material that reshapes itself as its wearer moves to provide maximum protection while still fitting like a glove, and hardens when struck to disperse the force of a blow. Because of the technology that goes into making it, it is also lighter than other races' versions; allowing them greater speed, mobility, and grace. The suits worn by Aspect Warriors are stronger and bulkier for the most part, while the Exarchs who lead such squads benefit from the centuries of combined combat experience provided by the spirit stones of the armor's former bearers.
  • WARMACHINE features military commanders wearing technomagical suits called Warcaster Armor. Additionally, the empire of Khador reserves valuable robot cyberbrains for only their largest war robots, with the role of light armor being filled by soldiers sturdy enough to wear Man O' War suits. There's even a soldier wearing this bulky powered armor on horseback, and his mount gets its own powered barding to compensate.
  • Judges Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy (Issue N) has a plethora of relic high-tech items with little description, including mechanical power armor.

    Toys 
  • BIONICLE:
    • The Golden Armour, although it's more of a fantasy variant than most of the science fiction examples on this page. It has the power to incinerate Antidermis, including all the Kraata inside Rahkshi, and permanently transfers the Kraata's powers to the user. The Toa Nuva's Adaptive Armor also develops different characteristics to enhance the wearer's performance depending on the environment.
    • There's also the Exo-Toa which, as the name suggests, are an exo-skeleton armour for a Toa. If need be, they can function independently making them robots as well as Power Armour.
  • Some of the figures from Kenner's Total Justice line from the '90s, which featured various DC Comics heroes. Some made sense, but others were pretty WTF-worthy (why would Superman or The Flash need armor?)
  • The X-Men: Mutant Armor and Spider-Man: Techno Wars lines. If you're wondering why heroes who already have superpowers would need to wear suits of armor, it's because the figures were all recycled Iron Man toys with new paint jobs and head sculpts.
  • "Sigma Strike Duke" from the G.I. Joe: Sigma 6 line literally wore a suit called "P.O.W.E.R. Armor."

    Video Games 
  • Aleste Gaiden puts protagonist Ray Waizen in a suit of high-speed combat armor which can jump 30 meters In a Single Bound and comes equipped with twin gravitational-energy swords.
  • In Alone in the Dark 3 (which takes place in the Wild West), the final boss fights you wearing a 19th-century powered armor suit (which even has an Arm Cannon).
  • Arcana Heart: One of Mei-Fang's supers has her pulling out a Powered Armor from... somewhere and shoulder-tackling her opponent while wearing it. If Mei-Fang has enough for a second super attack, she could then follow it up with a blast from its shoulder canon.
  • Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura had Steampunk Powered Armor. The best-powered armor in the game is being worn by a character who was sent out from his desert-located Hidden Elf Village to locate a water crystal and who is now being refused permission to rejoin the community because he's changed too much. The dev team is definitely referencing their previous works.
    • One must question what the powered armor-user thought would happen when he decided to become a technologist (as using steampunk powered armor heavily implies he's become) considering that the universe operates on Magic Versus Science logic and the Hidden Elf Village is a community of master mages.
  • Avengers Academy has Iron Man and War Machine, naturally, though they start off only wearing bits and pieces of their armour and slowly accumulate the rest of it as they rank up.
  • A functional suit of Magitek power armor (complete with Arm Cannon) is an easter egg in the Baldur's Gate series. As a decoded note in Baldur's Gate says "ALWAYS keep the pantaloons!".
  • Caldarius from Battleborn wears the jet-enhanced J-HTX Assault Frame armor, a power armor that makes him look a bit like an anime mech like a Gundam. Of note, one of Caldarius' lore challenges mentions that while every J-HTX Assault Frame looks the same from the exterior, the interior of each suit though completely varies. Each suit can be heavily modified internally to accommodate the shape and biological needs of varied pilots. This includes radically sized occupants. One suit for instance featured a very small operator's cockpit, adjusted for a pilot no more than 18 inches tall. For such a pilot, the experience of controlling the HTX Assault armor would've been akin to piloting a giant war-bot.
  • Depending on if you consider it powered or not, BioShock's Big Daddies wear armored diving suits. The game does state that they require certain circuit boards (R-34s) to run properly, that and the drill needs fuel, as well as the helmet lights. Obviously the power has to come from somewhere, and it certainly doesn't come from the guy inside (unless he's loaded with Electric Shell gene tonics, that is).
  • Brigador has Power suits, which are used as both a drivable vehicle and a common enemy type, mainly by The NEP Loyalists. However, even though the Flavor Text describes them as Power Armored infantry and are even labeled as such, they technically straddle the line between this trope and Mini Mechs due to the fact that they, while rather small compared to most other vehicles, would be quite large and bulky compared to the majority of other Power Armor described on this page. The game itself even treats them as tiny Mechs, to the point where you can only buy them in the same Acquisitions section as their larger Mech cousins. The 'Fence' powersuit further blurs the line between Power armor and Mech, because unlike the 'Mongoose' Powersuit, which actually looks like a suit of heavy Powered armor (And bears a resemblance to the Battlesuits from BattleTech, See Tabletop section), the Fence looks like a quite literal Mini Mech despite its classification, even being controlled from a cockpit rather than being worn by the pilot. Mind you, said cockpit is Horrendously exposed, to the point where, in similar fashion to the 'Walker Gear' Mini Mechs from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the pilot hangs off the back of the Powersuit's main body, completely open to enemy fire. But considering how horrifyingly fanatical the Corvids (The Fence's manufacturer) are to their cause, how limited their resources are already (forcing them to make most of their Combat Vehicles from old car parts and junk), and the fact that Powersuit units are used as Pseudo Cannon fodder anyway, they just don't care enough to improve the design. So long as it works I guess.
  • The Panzersoldat of Treyarch's Call of Duty: Zombies fame, introduced in Origins. For all intents and purposes, they're just zombies running around in powered armor. Albeit dangerously competent ones, being able to give many an unprepared player a hard time. They also have a larger, more potent spiritual successor in the Krazny Soldat for Cold War Zombies.
  • Captain Commando uses a powered armor to fight crime. According to the Arcade flyer, his armor is split into the "Captain Protector" (a super-tough chestplate made of "Captanium" able to resist up to a trillon degree heat), "Captain Gauntlets" (which increases the Captain's strength 48 times), "Energy Gloves" (which shoots flames at 500.000 degrees and 100.000 bolts of lightning) and "Captain Boots" (which protects him from 100-meter falls)
  • The Chronicles of Riddick:
    • The Riot Guards in Escape from Butcher Bay fall somewhere between Powered Armor and Mini-Mecha, being soldiers wearing robotic suits similar to a compact version of the Aliens Power Loader example.
    • In Assault on Dark Athena, an enemy roughly analogous to Riot Guards return in the form of Athena Mechs. However, Revas dons a suit that plays this trope completely straight for the final boss fight.
  • City of Heroes:
    • This is pretty much the entire idea behind the Technology origin, and the Arachnos Wolfspider Archetype has powers based around giant suits of armor.
    • Some enemies start building up robotic armor as well, especially the Longbow and Arachnos soldiers (though the former eventually drop the armor and get superpowers instead.)
  • The first unit of the Purity Affinity in Civilization: Beyond Earth is the Battlesuit power armor, in keeping with Purity's ideal units being either highly traditional Earth military forces or their updates. (For all their technology, Battlesuits are fundamentally infantry, just stronger.) Harmony soldiers, for their part, get an organitek version in the form of a humanoid wolf beetle that is symbiotically linked to the wearer. Supremacy goes the route of directly implanting the powered goodies into the wearer.
  • Classified: The Sentinel Crisis grants you the Sentinel suit, your default armor which grants you superhuman durability and stamina, besides having a visor that can detect enemies hiding behind walls. There's a No-Gear Level where you lose said suit halfway and must find a prototype.
  • Powered Armors are a common sight in Combat Heaven, being issued to soldiers sent to the battlefields. They act as an analogue to Gundam's Mobile Suits.
  • The Command & Conquer universe features several examples of powered armor:
    • Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series:
      • Most of the units from Tiberian Sun and Tiberium Wars, particularly the GDI Commando and Zone Trooper units from Tiberium Wars.
      • The Wolverine looks more like a Mini-Mecha (and does have an entry in that trope page) and is built from the vehicle factory, but is described as powered assault armor in both of the two games it shows up in. It also uses infantry voice clips in Tiberian Sun.
      • The predecessors of the Zone Trooper armor and the Wolverine are the Mobius suit and the X-O Powersuit, respectively. The former was built by Dr. Ignatio Mobius during the First Tiberium War mainly to protect the wearer from exposure to Tiberium. His daughter modified it to be effective in combat. The X-O Powersuit was designed for combat and was armed to the teeth (an 8mm minigun, a 20 MW laser, and a 35mm rocket launcher). Presumably, the less powerful but more cost-effective Wolverine was designed as the mass-produced version.
    • Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series:
      • Soviet Tesla Troopers from Red Alert 2 and 3.
      • With the most recent expansion pack in the series, Cryo Legionnaires as well. Their suits are noted as making tesla troopers' look downright primitive, and give them vastly increased speed and the ability to walk on water in addition to the usual protection.
      • There are also the Desolators from RA2 and 3, whose suit, in the latter game, doubles as life support for their unlucky pilots.
  • Prominently featured in Conduit 2. Players can also customize their armor loadouts for different attribute buffs.
  • The Silencers from Crusader have a kind of powered armor as their uniform. The armor itself doesn't (apparently) increase strength or speed, but it can mount a dizzying array of technological devices, including wide-spectrum vision, targeting sensors, personal shielding (against weaponry and hard radiation), and also apparently comes with a backpack of holding standard. Oh, and it's apparently made of polonium, which (among other things) is ridiculously radioactive.
  • Crysis pretty much centers on the deployment, uses, and functionality of a semi-realistic, 2020's Power Armor suit. This "Nano-muscle suit" or Nanosuit is designed like a materials scientist's wet dream, with a reactive fabric that can, in turn, make the user bulletproof, super-fast with enhanced reflexes and dexterity, super-strong (and by that we mean "bring-a-whole-house-down-with-nothing-but-your-fists" strong), or invisible. It also includes a large suite of sensors, scanners, emitters and recording equipment, and a medical system that can bring the user back from the brink of death in a few seconds. It's as close to being Superman as one is likely to get in this century. The only problem is, just like today, the power source. Exertion of any of the four suit functions drains power very quickly (especially the cloak, which increases power drain with movement speed). The capacitor banks recharge quickly, but there are significant intervals of vulnerability, especially outside of Armor mode.
    • US Army Intelligence also seems to thinks that the larger alien machines, the flying Scouts and gigantic Hunters, are actually a sort of powered "exosuit" for the rather feeble, jellyfish-like Aliens. In Crysis 2 this is made clearer, as the main enemies are mollusk-like alien organisms granted rigidity and legs via an advanced robot exoskeleton.
    • The Nanosuit 2 in the sequel takes this trope and kicks it into orbit. The suit is more of a symbiote that can fully integrate with the user on a molecular level, growing its nanofabric into wounds and replacing vital functions, essentially keeping a corpse not only alive but in combat capacity far beyond that of a normal soldier. It also features an advanced AI that can link up with your brain and save a copy of your personality if you actually kick the bucket. All of the previous functionality is ported over and improved as well.
  • The Network Planner from CT Special Forces: Bioterror wears a powered suit when assaulting the heroes in the Final Boss battle. His suit allows him to absorb plenty of damage, as well as leaping all over the place and sic powerful electrical bolts, making the battle suitably epic.
  • Dead Rising 4 introduces "exo suits" to the series, suits of exoskeletal armor that grant the wearer enhanced strength for as long as it remains powered. While wearing an exo suit, Frank can use large weapons that would otherwise be too heavy for him to wield, including miniguns, giant swords, and battle axes. Frank can also modify and upgrade an exosuit with specific pieces of junk, granting him ice cannons, Gatling guns, and suchlike.
  • In the Dead Space games, everyone wears a form of powered exoskeleton called RiG (Resource Integration Gear) that serves to monitor health and personal resources, and manages communications and interfacing with other machines and computer systems. On top of the standard RiGs, the games' protagonists usually wear an enclosed suit of armor, complete with Collapsible Helmet. These suits have specific profession-based designs (Soldier, Engineer, Archaeologist, Miner, etc), but regardless of the individual model, they are all vacuum-enabled with an oxygen supply, zero-gravity boots and thrusters and have incorporated armor & weapons management systems. So even a lowly systems engineer has a chance in the unlikely event of a Space Zombie Apocalypse.
  • According to what is All There in the Manual, the Alto Angelo enemies from Devil May Cry 4 are what happens when demon-ascended members of the Order of the Sword use the Bianco Angelo Animated Armor suits as Powered Armor, although this does not fully explain the different capabilities of the former. Then again, demons and magic.
  • Chapter 8 of Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten introduces the Battle Suits. According to Fuka, whose father helped in the development of said suits, they increase the user's power 500 times, allowing even a kindergartener to kill most demons. Unfortunately, the Hades Party, lead by Valvatorez, is a serious cut above most other demons, and the suits have a flaw: if they reach below 10% HP due to an attack, they self-destruct. Desco even admits that she played with them quite a lot in the testing labs.
  • Doom (2016) has the Praetor Suit which is worn by the Doom Slayer, it allows him to take health and ammo from enemies he kills. And if you read the codex you learn that it was made for him by a demon that turned against hell.
  • Dr. Muto: The game's first boss, Vinny Bino, sports a suit of armor styled similarly to the Power Loader.
  • The idea of powered-armor-wearing shooter heroes is directly ridiculed in Duke Nukem Forever. Duke is offered some oddly familiar power armor but turns it down on the grounds that "power armor is for pussies". In fairness, since Duke can kick an alien's head off, rip open metal doors with his bare hands and survive weapon damage using the power of his ego, he hardly needs it.
  • In Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 5, we have the Wing Divers and Fencers. Wing Divers are women with equipment that allows them to fly around and blasts those bugs to paste. Lancers are more in line with this trope as they wear powerful armor, don massive weaponry and other equipment to protect and/or destroy.
  • Earthworm Jim has the Ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit, which not only mutates Jim to a strangely large size but allows him to wage war against various intergalactic nasties. While it's made to be Powered Armor, with a foot-long mutant earthworm sitting in the collar it borders on mecha territory.
  • ESWAT has the Shoulder Cannon and Arm Cannon-toting I.C.E. suit, worn by police officers who graduate to the E.S.W.A.T. level.
  • Several of the assault characters in Evolve have one of these. Markov has the simplest version, a Space And Low Gravity Environment suit modified with a jetpack and a personal force field. Parnell has a military-grade one, which comes with the forcefield and jetpack as well as a Super Serum injector. Lennox has the most elaborate one, modified from a magmadiver suit, which has a plasma lance built into one arm and an autocannon in the other, plus the standard gear.
  • Factorio has two levels of power armor as late-game research items. Both sets of armor are extremely durable, very expensive, and highly modular. They can accept a variety of modules, such as an exoskeleton for faster movement, automated turrets, or logistic robot charging pads. However, they are limited to solar-powered battery packs until the very expensive portable fusion reactor is researched.
  • The Fallout series prominently features powered armor developed before or after the Great War of 2077. Almost every game has featured its unique power armor design on the box art.
    • Fallout has T-51b Power Armor, the uniform of the Brotherhood of Steel. Powered by a nuclear battery, it is said to be the most advanced military hardware ever fielded before the war.
    • Fallout 2 features Mk 1 and 2 Advanced Power Armor, produced post-war by The Enclave, which offers even better protection than pre-War models. Getting your hands on a suit is a challenge (unless you know where to go beforehand), but it makes most combat encounters a breeze.
    • Fallout 3 features the less-advanced T-45d model as the Brotherhood's new uniform on the East Coast. This is apparently because the T-51 series has become exceptionally rare in the decades since the first game, though one suit of it can still be found in the depths of Fort Constantine. Sadly, neither model is particularly effective due to the game's handling of damage resistance.
    • Fallout: New Vegas sees the return of truly effective power armor, with an overhaul of the damage system that makes armor ratings more meaningful. It also features the return of the Enclave's Mk 1 Advanced Power Armor from the second game as a quest reward for helping the Enclave Remnants. The New California Republic also has heavy troopers that wear salvaged Brotherhood armor with the servomotors removed, which makes it possible to wear without special training but "feels like you're carrying a brahminnote  on your back".
    • Fallout 4 features the T-60c series armor, a Super Prototype model that was only just entering field testing when the bombs fell, and in the 200 years since the Great War, the Brotherhood has gained the capability to produce them. The game also overhauls power armor completely: rather than just being a set of armor equipped via the inventory screen, it behaves almost like a vehicle, with its own power source, customization, Subsystem Damage, and the ability to freely enter and exit the armor. Every suit of power armor was redesigned to look more plausible: bulkier, shoulder-ier, and more proportional to the human inside. It also decided to retcon the Enclave Advanced Power Armor Mk. 1 as being the finished production model of the pre-War X-01 prototype, as a way to have Enclave APA Mk. 1s without having to involve the Enclave.
    • Fallout 76 introduces the Exacavtor Power Armour, taking some design features from the earlier T-45d but is designed for use in mining applications rather than a frontline combat platform. Though this model was completed, it never entered full production. The Wastelanders update introduces T-65, a model designed for and used exclusively by the United States Secret Service, though they're willing to trade the plans in exchange for recovering gold bullion and returning it to Vault 79. It has a bulky appearance and though it's origin isn't specifically clarified, it's effectively superior to all previous models.
  • R.E.V.6.s from F.E.A.R. Though it's actually more along the lines of a Mini-Mecha in design. The sequels allow the player to hijack powered armor and wreak havoc on the enemy.
  • Man-Bot in the Freedom Force series wears a powered exoskeleton that feeds off his energy generation power and bleeds off excesses. He can't take the armour off or his power starts killing people.
    • Positron in City of Heroes has much the same deal, until recently his armour was the only thing stopping him from going boom.
  • Half-Life's Gordon Freeman has his HEV suit, which features "high impact electro-reactive armor" (read: goes rigid when hit), and gets an actuator upgrade (read: powered sprint function) in Half-Life 2. It was originally designed for combat situations, but the expense of the suit made it unfeasible to implement, so it was instead adapted for handling things in hazardous environments. When it's called on for a combat role, however, it's still a suit of reactive armor.
    • Half-Life: Opposing Force reveals that while the US Military didn't adopt the suit itself, they adapted the reactive armor aspect, in the form of the Powered Combat Vest. Like the HEV Suit, it protects the user from gunfire, explosives, radiation, and fire damage, provided it is charged. The only thing it lacks is the Long-Jump Module, but that's because the vests were designed with only Earth in mind.
  • In Halo:
    • Master Chief John-117's MJOLNIR armor is one of the most well-known video game examples, being a fusion-powered, energy-shielded suit of death that makes the operator so powerful that they can flip tanks over with little effort. It is literally too much for a normal human to take, which is why only Spartan super-soldiers, who are biologically and cybernetically enhanced to post-human levels, can don the suits. MJOLNIR comes in many varieties and can be divided into three distinct generations; GEN1 (aka Mark IV-VII) was worn by Spartan-IIs and select Spartan-IIIs during the Human-Covenant War, GEN2 is the standard for Spartan-IVs, and GEN3 is worn by Master Chief in Halo Infinite.
    • Most Elites wear power armor that's functionally identical to MJOLNIR, with those of specialist units getting extra features like active camouflage and anti-gravity packs. Even the traditional Arbiter suit has all the standard capabilities (plus cloaking), despite being an antiquated relic in comparison to the more modern Covenant standard-issue suits.
    • While a select few got MJOLNIR, most Spartan-IIIs during the Human-Covenant War wore SPI (Semi-Powered Infiltration) armor, which provides far less protection and physical enhancement than MJOLNIR, but has photoreactive panels which function like a poor man's invisibility cloak.
    • The Cyclops Exoskeleton borders between this trope and Mini-Mecha, though most models are designed more for repair and heavy utility work rather than combat.
    • The manual for Halo: Reach implies that combat Scarabs are not so much vehicles piloted by a Lekgolo worm colony (as fans previously assumed) as a huge Lekgolo worm colony in a similarly massive suit of Powered Armor. For some idea of the scale here, the combat Scarab is adapted from a form of fully-mechanical mobile mining platform. They also normally carry a complement of more normally-sized infantry to protect against boarding attempts and man-mounted guns.
    • The Halo Legends short Prototype shows us another one: the HRUNTING/YGGDRASIL Mark I Prototype Armor Defense System, a weapon so powerful that it made a normal soldier amount to an entire battalion. Before it could be mass-produced, however, the UNSC ordered its destruction to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, as the research station was being overrun; the guy assigned to do it took out a couple hundred Covenant soldiers, as well as a few fliers and tanks before he activated the self-destruct, which in itself resulted in a nuclear explosion visible from orbit.
    • Forerunners wore suits of armor for their entire lives, which, among other things, gave them virtual immortality, had their own personal AI (or Ancilla), and took away the need to sleep. Warrior-Servants wore a variant known as Combat Skins: in Halo: Combat Evolved, 343 Guilty Spark claims that Chief's MJOLNIR would rate Class 2 on the Combat Skin power-scale, and recommended he switch to Class 12 or higher. Just how outclassed the MJOLNIR armor is in comparison to a Forerunner Combat Skin is clearly demonstrated in Halo 4, where the Didact handily throttles the Master Chief - repeatedly.
  • In Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, the Nova Suit is depicted as this in the manual's comic, however, in the original Mashin Eiyuden Wataru anime, it was a Humongous Mecha.
  • Killzone and Killzone 2 give us the Heavy Assault troops (Abbreviated to just "Heavies" in the second game) who wear big bulky Faceless suits of powered armour, often carry some of the heavy-hitting weaponry, and soak up tonnes of punishment before finally dying (especially in the second game).
  • Amusingly, in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, there is a Palette Swap of the Guard Armor, called exactly... you guessed it... Powered Armor!
  • A number of armors in Knights of the Old Republic are described as powered in Flavor Text.
  • Mass Effect has this, to an extent. Regular armor is still powered, but it can be upgraded with a more powerful exoskeleton that increases melee damage (especially noticable if they already had something that boosts melee attacks, like the assault training talent). The standard for armor in Mass Effect includes kinetic barriers capable of absorbing a dozen assault rifle rounds and recharging in seconds, a motion tracker, an aiming assistance VI to account for things like bullet drop and atmospheric conditions, full NBC protection, thick bulletproof ceramic plating, medi-gel injectors, an omni-blade, and an omni-tool. Specialist suits with greater capabilities also exist.
    • Mass Effect 3 has the multiplayer N7 Destroyer, who wears a "T5-V Battlesuit". This includes enhanced strength, very strong armor and shielding, a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, a Shockwave Stomp, and a "Devastator Mode" that increases fire rate and weapon damage at the cost of turning you into a Mighty Glacier. The turian DLC characters wear armor similar to Garrus - except with a Jet Pack function and a Power Fist.
    • The Inferno and Collector armor suits, the former re-used in multiplayer as the N7 Paladin, are built to give the wearer some of the traditional benefits of power armor. In the Inferno armor's case, you can actually see motors on the elbows and knees.
    • In a non-combat example, in Mass Effect 3, James wonders if someone couldn't invent a powered suit that would enable Joker to walk around normally despite his brittle bones. Joker responds that such suits do exist: a bit pricey, but he could afford one if he really wanted. He doesn't have one because he likes to feel the Normandy move with his whole body as he's piloting, and wearing one of those suits would interfere with that.
  • Master of Orion has Powered Armor as a technology that can be researched. Once done all your infantry will wear it to gain a boost in their combat rating. In the sequel game, power armour gives a very substantial boost in boarding and ground combat - not only does it increase the wearer's combat rating, it also gives an extra hit point as well to greatly improve survivability.
  • MDK has the Coil Suit, an experimental prototype armor that can withstand a nuclear explosion. Besides enhancing Kurt Hectic's vision, it has a sniper rifle in the head and an Arm Cannon that starts off with a gatling gun. It also has a ribbon chute to slow his falls and aid in gliding.
  • The various MechWarrior games often feature Battle Armor, usually as annoying Cannon Fodder for your Humongous Mecha's weaponry. Mechwarrior Living Legends allows the players to use the Elemental or Longinus power armor, which can carry a pair of hand weapons ranging from flamethrowers to laser cannons, an integral back-mounted rocket launcher, and oodles of sticky explosives. Battlearmor are extremely agile courtesy of a Jump Jet Pack despite their slow running speed, allowing them to jump on enemy battlemechs and start carving the pilot out. They are the only unit capable of healing themselves on the field via a built-in Auto Doc.
  • Rush turns into several variants in the Mega Man (Classic) series. In Mega Man 6, One confers a Power Fist, while the other flies. In Mega Man 7, the Super Mega Man form splits the difference, granting a Rocket Punch and short jet boosts. Treble can also do this for Bass, though his is primarily a flight mode.
    • It's debatable whether Mega Man X's various armors are powered, though the Ultimate Armor from Mega Man X: Command Mission almost certainly is.
    • Mega Man Zero 3 has Omega, an Ax-Crazy Reploid bringer of Demise who is none other than Zero's original body that has been enhanced to reach its limits wearing an enormous suit of armor designed for him by Dr. Weil. In fact, most people In-Universe who don't know his origins assume the armor is his body since he was almost never seen out of it.
    • Mega Man ZX: The Biometals? The Biometal envelops the Chosen Ones with a Powered-Armor based on the previous character the Model was based on. Of course, this is a topic of contention among several fans.
  • Metal Gear:
    • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty:
      • Although in Metal Gear Solid the Gray Fox Cyborg Ninja was a literal cyborg fused to his armor, 2's Cyborg Ninja is only wearing a powered exoskeleton.
      • How does ex-president George Sears AKA Solidus Snake stay limber despite premature aging? This trope. Sears's Arsenal Tengu goons wear something similar, just without the tentacles and with a gas mask.
    • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots:
      • The Beauty and the Beast unit wear animal-themed powered armor/suits, while the Haven Troopers (aka FROGS) wear form-fitting suits that allow them to leap over 2-meter walls in a single bound.
      • One brief rail shooter scene in South America features actual powered armor mooks. They don't show up anywhere else.
      • Snake himself uses powered armor here: his OctoCamo suit augments his prematurely aged muscles, allowing him to operate as if he were a man of a much younger age. Without it, he finds it difficult to even stand.
    • In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Raiden's original combat augmentations are externalized in a bodysuit (a la Gray Fox), while using a more humanlike body to facilitate bodyguard duty.
    • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: You can use the Parasite Suit to gain temporary superpowers (one of which is Rock Armor), but the charges required are EXPENSIVE. The Elite Mooks have their bio-augmenting symbiotes cover every millimeter of their skin, so it's also like powered armor (and the only source of the charges required to fuel the Parasite Suit).
  • Metroid's Samus Aran's power suit is the other quintessential example. In addition to acting as powered armour, her suit allows her to operate underwater, in the vacuum of space, and in super-heated and extremely cold areas.
    • ...And the Galactic Federation Marines probably got the idea from her.
    • Samus's suit itself is essentially a modified (for humansnote ) version of a Chozo warrior's armour. Of course, being a race of Actual Pacifist aliens after giving up their Proud Warrior Race Guy ways, Samus is the only Chozo (by adoption, of course) to take up the mantle for hundreds of years...until Metroid: Samus Returns hints and Metroid Dread confirms there is at least one Chozo tribe that still kept up the ways, and their leader Raven Beak has an even better version of her suit, as in it has the Hyper Beam for his Arm Cannon.
    • The Zebesian Space Pirates have also been inspired to try to develop their own version of Chozo Power Armor by watching and researching Samus Aran. Unfortunately for them, while there were able to replicate the various beam weapons and to some extent the environmental protections, they lack the technology of the Chozo and, well, the results were not pretty according to some Apocalyptic Logs. Especially when they tried to engage the Morph Ball...
      Log 11.222.8: Aran's Power Suit technology remains a mystery, especially the curious Morph Ball function. All attempts at duplicating it have ended in disaster; four test subjects were horribly broken and twisted when they engaged our Morph Ball prototypes. Science Team wisely decided to move on afterward.
  • In the Mortal Kombat series, depending on game, Jax's augmented arms are either a powered exoskeleton (fitting this trope) or full-blown artificial limbs.
  • Myst has the Environment Verification suit, designed by the Guild of Maintainers to test Ages; a user would be given a small Linking Book that'd fit in one glove, with the other to Link back, the Link done in a 2-second timespan for the suit's on-board sensors to collect data on the Age for study. Being made of a special type of D'ni stone, the EV suit would be capable of protecting the wearer from hazards up to a supernova. The suit mostly came in a heavy, lumbering model that restricted movement to the point of requiring rollers to move on, but Uru features a skintight model that players could wear and run around in at will.
  • Nefarious has Crow, a Villain Protagonist who uses high-tech powered armor that can shoot grenades, as well as absorb the shocks of its own grenade blasts to bounce up to higher locations.
  • No More Heroes III: Travis gains the ability to henshin into Full Armor, a suit of powered armor that dramatically boosts his attack power for a short time. It also has a space combat mode that resembles a Mini-Mecha, which he uses in space defense missions and the second form of Mr. Blackhole, and an improved version called Full Green that he uses for the entire Midori fight.
  • Operation: Matriarchy has the Human Armor in a few areas, which are armed with assorted weapons and can kick massive amounts of alien ass in areas you can use them. Though unfortunately you'll inevitably need to ditch them (if they're not destroyed by monsters along the way) to enter doorways and corridors too narrow for said armor to cross.
  • Overwatch loves this trope. Pharah and Mercy both have flight-capable suits, with Pharah's also having a built-in Macross Missile Massacre ability. Many other characters seem to wear high-tech armor or devices that grant them special abilities. And then there's Reinhardt, a sixty-three-year-old giant that looks like a knight of legend and happens to have a rocket installed in his warhammer... and another mounted on his back.
  • Planetside has the MAX (Mechanized Assault eXoskeleton) suits. Extremely powerful and durable, but are fairly clumsy and expensive. Each empire has its own set of anti-air/vehicle/infantry MAXes with a unique ability: the Vanu Sovereignty get a Jump Jet Pack, the Terran Republic can anchor down to increase their twin cannon's rate of fire, and the New Conglomerate gets a regenerating bubble shield. The sequel adds more customization such as a different cannon on each arm, and alters the abilities, with the NC getting an energy riot shield, the VS getting a berserk mode, and all factions having access to a forward charge ability.
  • Pokémon X and Y features the Expansion Suit, which was created by Dr. Xerosic as a means to utilize the ultimate criminal, complete with the ability to transform the person into various sizes, superhuman strength, and even the capability to steal Poke Balls, all the while doing so while the subject is in a comatose state. Emma is the subject who wears it, and after the Trainer and Looker thwart his plan, he deems the suit a success and willingly gets arrested, but not before leaving the suit to Emma's possession to use for the sake of good.
  • The Power Suit in Power Blade is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The sequel has several specialized power armors such as the Newt Suit and Rocket Suit.
  • The Ragnarok Online 3rd job Mechanic can get a set of powered armor, which is necessary for some of the Mechanic's skills.
  • HACS (Heavy Armour Combat Suits) that the terrorists use in Razing Storm generally serve to be the game's Giant Mooks.
  • The Riftbreaker has the main character riding around in a Mecha-suit, nicknamed "Mr. Riggs", that is designed to withstand the harshest environmental conditions as it is to be used to explore hostile, unknown territory. It also has a full range of equipment for base construction, resource extraction, gathering biological and geological specimens and combat.
  • The Sacred Armour of Antiriad: The eponymous Sacred Armour of Antiriad is a combat suit capable of resisting extreme environments and not only protects its pilot but also heals them. It is hooked up to a teleporter and with the right parts, it can fly (gravity displacers), shoot lasers from an arm cannon (pulsar beam), dispatch a bomb (implosion mine), and further improve on its protective capacity (particle negator). Tragically, the combat suit played a key role in the destruction of mankind in 2086, because its development could eventually make all weapons ineffective. So before that could happen, the parties in power went at each other with all they'd got, causing a nuclear winter few survived. Centuries later, the remnants of mankind have reformed themselves into hunter-gatherer societies of which only the elders are taught what is still known about the cataclysm. Among others, they keep a blueprint of the "ANTI-RAD combat suit", but a tear in the paper between the "R" and the "A" causes them to read it as "ANTI-RIAD". When aliens enslave them, the elders send out the warrior Tal to locate the Antiriad armour and defeat the aliens. He successfully retrieves the suit and the extra components, eventually using the suit's implosion mine to do away with the alien occupation.
  • In Saints Row IV The Boss pilots a suit of armor with all of their superpowers and a repulsor cannon during the final mission.
  • Section 8 has players using Powered Armor - which allows them to 'burn in', that is, rain themselves from 15000 feet in the air to the ground. In ten seconds. Among other things.
  • Shadow Complex has the Omega Armor XOS-7, a combat exoskeleton that grants a 30% damage reduction and a devastating Ground Pound ability that instantly kills weaker enemies. During the game's prologue, Colonel Sam Dallas manages to steal one from a Restoration soldier and uses it against them to fend off their assassination attempt on the Vice President until Lucius hacked his suit and car bombed the Vice President's SUV. The main character Jason Flemming eventually gets a hold of the prototype and upgrades its capabilities.
  • The NES game Shatterhand also has a power armor powerup.
  • Shining Force's Guntz is a Steam-Powered Armor-dillo.
  • The Demonica in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is designed to withstand the environment of the Schwartzwelt. Its Adaptive Armor abilities allow it to increase the wearer's performance to superhuman levels, its HUD can be enhanced with exploration and combat feeds, and early on acquires the Demon Summoning Program, allowing the user to control creatures of eldritch power. The only catch is that there are no on-board weapons - you have to carry an issued gun and knife. There's nothing stopping you from later upgrading those too, though.
  • Relatively late in Silent Storm, you gain access to Panzerkleins, developed by THO scientist. They're as ridiculous as they sound, and if you want to finish the game, you'll need all of them you can get. Panzerkleins make your soldiers immune to anything but armor-piercing rounds, heavy explosives, and energy weapons. The armor itself is very difficult to destroy. It's much easier to kill the pilot and take it for yourself. The Big Bad even has a flying variant.
    • The stand-alone Expansion Pack returns the Panzerkleins halfway through. This time, though, they are much more susceptible to damage, although small arms fire is still mostly useless.
  • SOMA has a rare non-military application. Pathos-II is stocked with several Haimatsu-manufactured High Pressure Suits (HPSs) which are tough, rigid-bodied affairs with strength enhancement to allow divers to perform Extra Vehicular Operation in extreme pressure-underwater environments, such as the Abyss, 4000 meters below. Simon Jarret eventually has his brain copied to a dead person in one of them.
  • Spellcross: The Last Battle from Cauldron Interactive, has your modern World Alliance battling the supernatural invaders, the Forces of Darkness. If you progress far enough you can research Hi-Tech Infantry, these guys are a joint venture of the world's top military engineers using cutting-edge sensor suites, hydraulics and miniaturized motors to create an exoskeleton with an integrated 25mm chaingun. It also incorporates newly researched magical materials to incorporate the quasi-magical alloy Tanarit as its armor plating. Going beyond Hi-Tech Infantry are the Flight Infantry, after researching small rockets capable of lifting over 250 kg - you scientists create a Jet Pack power armor that integrates heavy machine guns and anti-tank rockets for greater firepower at the cost of rate of fire. The armor is also made of pure Andurital, the magical metal that humans previously couldn't mold until after months of research, making Flight Infantry armor much tougher and lighter than those of the Hi-Tech Infantry.
  • In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, powered exoskeletons have been smuggled into the Zone after the Ukrainian special forces ditched it for being outrageously expensive. It is comprised of a full-body closed-circuit Kevlar radiation suit augmented with composite or titanium panels, with the exoskeleton itself being a framework of servomotors and synthetic muscles surrounding the suit. It is the most protective armor in the game and can increase your carrying capacity, though the suit is so bulky that it prevents sprinting. In Shadow of Chernobyl, it is an 11th-Hour Superpower gained in the final hour of the plot, but in subsequent games, it can be obtained far earlier albeit at extreme cost, and in Call of Pripyat it can be upgraded with faster servomotors or a basic Auto Doc.
  • Star Control has the Orz, who board enemy vessels in power armor, and proceed to kill the crew inside. It helps them get around too, as the Orz are parrotfish-like aliens from the *OUTSIDE*
  • StarCraft has several types, most of them Terran. The only reason the Terran infantry stands a chance against the Zerg is that they're in that armor that makes a regular human about as strong as a Hydralisk (and just as large); the guns also help, letting them draw first blood against Zerglings. Protoss Zealots get powered armor as well, but theirs is more geared around a plasma shield and cybernetics than actual armor. It makes the Zealots capable of killing 3 or 4 enemies each when properly used.
    • In StarCraft II, you get to see it up close. Marine CMC suits aside, Firebat and Marauder armor systems are frikkin' huge, more like Mini-Mecha than anything else; almost the size of a tank.
      • In fact, the Marine suit straddles the line with Mini-Mecha as the Marine's hand is actually inside the suit's forearm while the suit's hand is fully mechanical.
    • We also get to see how a Marine gets suited up: the armor is built around him by multiple mechanical arms, in a scene that's uncanny in its resemblance to the one in Iron Man.
  • Every player class in StarCrawlers wears a power-armored suit. Different heroes wear different types of armor; for example, the Smuggler only wears a very light powered suit while the Soldier goes into ultra-heavy suits of powered armor. In-game, you can also wear different types of armor: Light suits only offer minimal protection but offer great agility and ability to evade attacks. tactical suits use a combination of electronic warfare systems and active camouflage to hide the wearer in combat to give them tactical positioning advantages. Heavy armor suits are unsubtle masses of thick plating designed to just shrug off as much damage as possible.
  • In Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, all members of the hazard team wear highly advanced armor with shielding and regenerative capabilities, as well as lots of fancy electronics. When you pause the game, you can see a diagram of the armor that they use. The armor is also equipped with a pattern buffer (a version of the transporter that converts matter into energy and stores the energy matrix to re-convert to matter on-demand) that justifies the use of a Hyperspace Arsenal.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • Dark Forces Saga: Featured in some form or another in three of the four/five games (Dark Forces II and its expansion pack Mysteries of the Sith are the only exceptions).
      • The original game features the Dark Troopers, a new breed of battle droid. In the final level, the project's backer General Rohm Mohc wears a Phase III Dark Trooper suit (which can serve as Powered Armor or fight independently) to battle Kyle Katarn, who's been sent to destroy the factory ship where the Dark Troopers are being manufactured.
      • Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast: Galak Fyyar wears a huge battle suit with lightsaber-resisting cortosis, shield generator, and other toys. There's also the Shadowtroopers, dark Jedi also clad in lightsaber-resistant armor. Not that this poses a problem for Kyle Katarn.
      • Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy adds Hazard Troopers, who are typically armed with one of the game's two BFGs, armored enough to take multiple lightsaber strikes, and can smack the player away if they get too close.
    • Star Wars: The Old Republic: Bounty Hunters and Troopers utilize power armor to protect themselves, and also allows them to become a mobile artillery. Sith Juggernauts and Jedi Guardians also make use of such an armor, but since they are close combat specialists, it's more for their protection than anything else.
  • Bounty Hunter Solo from the Strider series is identified by wearing one of these. His armor possesses jet thrusters that let him fly at high speed, and an assortment of several deadly weapons, ranging from missiles and explosives to pure Energy Weapons.
  • In Stellaris powered exoskeletons are a tech advance that strengthen your armies and increase mineral production, as it is also worn by miners.
  • Subnautica has a possible example in the form of the Exosuit, though it counts as more of a Mini-Mecha.
  • Super Robot Wars J and W are unique for the series, in that they also feature series' that use Powered Armor as well as Humongous Mecha, namely Detonator Orgun and the abovementioned Tekkaman Blade.
    • But before that, a couple of little-known games called Hero Senki and Super Hero Sakusen combined Tokusatsu heroes like Kamen Rider and Ultraman with Gundam pilots wearing Powered Armor versions of their Mobile Suits, though in Super Hero Sakusen it was implied that the Gundams and original mechs were full-size. Don't think about it too hard.
    • Hero Senki also featured the first appearance of one of Banpresto's most wide-ranging original mecha, the Gespenst, in Powered Armor form. It later got upgraded to a Humongous Mecha in Super Robot Wars 4.
  • In The Surge and its sequel, RIGs are a combination of this and full body cybernetics. The RIG's core capacity power allows the wearer to equip more advanced and complex pieces of armor, but should the RIG shut down the user is left completely immobile and helpless. The extensive implantation of machinery and medical equipment, coupled with heavy external armor plating, render anyone with a RIG so tough that they are Immune to Bullets. The only reliable ways to kill someone wearing a RIG are heavy anti-armor cannons and lasers, or using the superhuman strength of a RIG and massive weapons to cut or crush through the armor plating and the cyborg beneath.
  • Sword of the Stars:
    • Human marines (which are not shown in-game, but appear in a splash/loading screen) are supposed to use this. Though in the actual game they're just used for boarding actions, instead of ground combat they use Orbital Bombardment.
      • However, one of the spin-offs in beta, Sword of the Stars: Ground Pounders is all about ground combat and the human and Tarka infantry appear to be wearing armor at the very least.
    • The Suul'ka are Liir Elders who wear Powered Armor that allows them to live in space. The armor is a very crucial part of the backstory since the main reason the Liir are so advanced is that the Suul'ka psychically enslaved the younger Liir to jumpstart an industrial revolution solely to build those spacesuits.
  • One of the ground troop technologies available in the Master of Orion series.
  • Syphon Filter 2 had the Emergency Defense Squad from the Bio Lab Escape level who can only be killed by explosions. Chance and Rhoemer (in a flashback in part 3) both wore Nigh-Invulnerable high-impact kevlar armor. Ditto for Anton Girdeux in the first game.
  • System Shock 2 has a notable example in that although the powered armor is the best armor, it - surprise! Requires power and will prove no protection when the power runs out until it's recharged again. And in the later levels of the game, you can go a very long time without finding a recharge station...
  • In Time Crisis 4 there are suits that allow the mooks within to remain mobile while firing rotary guns.
  • TimeShift had a pretty nice suit, a bit like The Master Chief's, except you didn't need to be superhuman to use it, but still made you stronger, faster, provided shields, in addition to providing the power to slowdown time, stop time and reverse it (like 10 seconds).
  • Featured prominently in Vanquish, which basically allows the user to go crazy awesome. Comes with a shapeshifting gun!
  • Tribes has everyone wearing a suit of Powered Armor, complete with Jet Pack. They come in three sizes: light/scout, medium/assault, and heavy/juggernaut. They can be further customized with a variety of packs that draw from the armor's energy supply (or in the case of the energy pack, give increased recharge rate), such as a shield pack, repair pack, cloaking pack, or sensor jammer pack. According to the backstory the technology had rendered the Humongous Mecha earlier games in the franchise were focused on obsolete.
  • Turrican's protagonist wears the eponymous suit, which has plenty of weapons and a spiky ball mode not too much unlike Samus Aran's.
  • The protagonist, Marines and heavy Skaarj of Unreal II: The Awakening are wearing various forms of power armor.
  • Any Warhammer 40,000 video game such as Dawn of War can expect a treasure-trove of power armor from various races.
  • Wolfenstein: The New Order: Caroline Becker gets her hands on a Da'at Yichud super suit.
  • World of Warcraft has several versions which straddle the line between this and Mini-Mecha, such as Goblin Shredder and Gnome Pounder. In addition, the Gan'arg demons and some creations of the Scourge employ powered exoskeletons though they're more of a Hollywood Cyborg and Frankenstein's Monster respectively.
  • Warframe: Every single Warframe is a suit of power armor controlled by an organic host Tenno from afar that is capable of channeling the user's innate power into different abilities, which are dependent on the frame. They are also highly resilient, much more so than any enemy in the game that isn't wearing extremely bulky and unwieldy armor. They even allow for parkour and jumps through the air inconceivable by humans. Later it turns out to not be the case; warframes are ultimately revealed to be humans infected with a strain the Technocyte virus which transformed them into incredibly powerful, nigh-uncontrollable berserkers. The Operators aren't so much controlling the warframes as they are providing support and comfort for their tortured minds and providing direction and purpose for the mission, meaning the Tenno are more of a gestalt creature than machine and user.
  • Wasteland: These show up as the top armour; only five suits are available late in the game (for a party that can max at seven) until you reach The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Earthblood: Exos are mechanical frames intended to be piloted by a single soldier, and are equipped with a variety of weapons such as giant knives, rotary blades, guns, and flamethrowers.
  • The best (and most expensive) form of armor tech in any turn-based game is generally this. Flying Armor, Magnetic Ion Armor, X-COM Armor (sic) all apply. The first two even give you unlimited flying, allowing for much more freedom in moving around the battlefield. Sadly, these suits do nothing against any of the game's Demonic Spiders.
    • Except for Chryssalids, which can't attack you (or create more doubles of themselves) if you're on air. It's not advisable to hover too near to them, in any case.
    • XCOM Apocalypse: X-COM Armor is not in fact powered, but simply extremely light. Marsec Armor on the other hand...
    • Note that this the opposite of how "Powered Armor" worked in the first game: The Power Suit (the penultimate armor in the first game) consisted of thick armor plating and a power source that just restores normal mobility and strength to the user. With nothing but heavy armor plates and a sealed environment, this is just about as basic as powered armor gets. The "Flying Suit" is the same design with flight capacity.
    • Spiritual Successor UFO After Blank has two varieties of powered armor in Aftermath. Human-powered armor is the standard version of this trope, but since it was in prototyping before the alien invasion, it has several drawbacks, most notably the fact that the user cannot run. However, carrying capacity is vastly increased, and the powered armor is the only way to use deployable weapon turrets. On the other side of the equation is the Reticulan bio-armor, which doesn't enhance statistics, but actually acts as a symbiotic armor layer (some of which can project a personal shield) powered by, well, whatever a symbiotic armor layer eats.
    • 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown features powered Titan and Archangel armor, the former being the heaviest armor in the game and the latter being jet-pack-equipped flying armor.
      • The 2013 Enemy Within expansion adds giant MEC armor, which turns its users into walking tanks with built in flamethrowers, power fists and grenade launchers; on the downside, it can only be used by special cyborg troopers who must have all four limbs amputated before they can use the armor.
      • In XCOM: Enemy Within there is an enemy unit called a Mechtoid, which is a Sectoid (one of The Greys) in a large mechanized suit.
    • In XCOM 2 the research project for the third tier of armor is explicitly referred to as powered armor. It comes in three variants: medium armor (Warden Armor), which provides light armor, moderate hp, and an extra item slot; light armor (Wraith Suit), which provides moderate hp, mobility, and dodge, and gives the user the ability to grapple and walk through walls; and heavy armor (W.A.R. Suit), which provides heavy armor, moderate hp, a heavy weapon slot, and allows the user to act as temporary cover for teammates.

    Visual Novels 
  • A core part of the story for Full Metal Daemon Muramasa is focused on the mystical armors known as Tsurugi in the East and Cruxes in the West. They are all forged by skilled smiths who infuse their very souls into the metal to produce an armor that both enhances the wearers strenght, allows for flight and a level of durability that can withstand even the rounds of a cannon. By the time the story takes place the means of mass producing these armors have also come into being, though these often lack the fancier features of their handcrafted counterparts. Thanks to all of this they have come to dominate the battlefields throughout history with things such as footsoldiers and tanks mostly being used to either pad out numbers or simply play a supportive role. This has also resulted in most combat taking place in melee range, both on the ground and in the air, as only the weapons and strength of these armors can pierce them.

    Web Animation 
  • Any Machinima filmed using Halo will naturally require the presence of this trope. How much it's emphasized or played with as a part of the plot may vary. Red vs. Blue adds specialization modules that give individual Freelancers different abilities. These can range from invisibility to super healing to creating a Stable Time Loop.
  • Dreamscape: Anjren's red robot suit. It's also Instant Armor because it appears just by her touching a microchip to her chest.

    Webcomics 
  • XRS: Though not meant to be worn as armor, the XRS's thermoplastic heat-resistant skin is also strong enough to defeat small calibre firearms.
  • The A.N.T from Mechagical Girl Lisa ANT, when used by a human (it was intended as a Humongous Mecha for alien ants).
  • Ysengrin from Gunnerkrigg Court. His wooden arms aren't Artificial Limbs, but part of magically-powered shapeshifting armor. Made of wood. Surrounding a pathetically wizened and balding wolf.
  • Girl Genius: This suit, while not armored, certainly does all the other things that power armor is supposed to do.
  • In Schlock Mercenary, Tagon's Toughs (and some other military/mercenary groups) all wear powered clothing that can deflect small arms fire, increase strength, offer emergency life support, and fly. And that's just their knocking-around uniform; their big hard-shelled field combat armors improve on all those abilities multiple times over and add huge shoulder-mounted cannons to boot. (Though that's the latest stage in a zigzag process; the low-profile suits were a strict upgrade from the original bulky hardshelled suits.)
  • Tessa and the rest of her squad of super soldiers in S.S.D.D. are field-testing experimental powered armor that is controlled using nanomachine implants as of the current arc (which is backstory), she has been seen using the armor in other story arcs that take place later (from her perspective).
  • Nodwick: Piffany gets a suit at one point, as an Aliens Shout-Out.
  • Abigail Primrose in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! owns a suit of Bubblegum Crisis-styled Powered Armor capable of flying into space. It was given to her by space dragons.
  • In Sluggy Freelance, the 4U City military initially seems to be using Humongous Mecha, but they are later revealed to be this trope.
  • In Tales of the Questor, the newest member of Quentyn's party is a knightless squire with a sort-of-borrowed, sort-of-stolen suit of magical, self-propelled armor.
  • The squirrels at Sequential Art built a set of suits (along with a Mini-Mecha for 4mb3r) after the giant bug incident.
  • Coga Suro: Steve's second Super Suit [and possibly the third] works like this; in the sequel, Zero-Saviour wears a Robot Girl that turns into a Kamen Rider-esque suit of Power Armour.
  • The Bulls from My Life at War wear bulky, primitive power armor. They even have power cables to power them.
  • The End features Fiah Guardian armor, which is apparently powerful enough to contend with armed spacecraft.
  • In Bob and George, Dr. Wily suits up to face Megaman.
  • In Pulse, Superhero School students Annie "Pulse" Chang and Tabitha "Bolt" Greene use their natural electrical charge to power Instant Armor with Deflector Shields that allow them to fly and make them car-lifting strong for up to an hour.
  • Spinnerette has Mecha Maid, who in her civilian identity, is wheelchair-bound.
  • Slick in Waterworks wears a diving suit which also happens to have an assortment of special equipment, such as the ability to teleport from one pool to another, Hammerspace, or being able to see in various bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.
  • By the Book has "steam knights", who wear steam-powered armor. Unfortunately, it's very heavy.
  • Dragon Ball Multiverse: The Heliorians from U19 use them to compensate for their lack of ki abilities, and they are INCREDIBLY effective.
  • Just like in the Metroid series, Samus has her Power Suit in Metroid: Third Derivative and it helps protect her from harm as long as Samus has Energy in her Energy Tanks. Samus can increase her suit's capabilities by collecting upgrades or scanning things in the local environment.
  • In Heroes Unite (and now Heroes Alliance) both Relik and SHELL. SHELL's suit is made from unobtainium (a unique meteoric crystalline material called volucite). Relik's is an alien suit that appears as a belt until activated. Arsenal and B.A.S.S. wear more 'conventional' military power armour.
  • These have started to show up in The Far Side of Utopia, in particular the soldier from Kor's World seems to have a rather advanced one.
  • In We Are The Wyrecats, XAG suits are considered some of the most powerful and dangerous equipment on the planet. And they were developed by a team of four high school kids with disabilities.
  • The titular character of Rezz & Co Bounty Hunters is always wearing power armor, even in his sleep.
  • The cosmoknights in Cosmoknights all wear suits of powered armor during their fights.
  • The armored orcs in I Log In Alone has magic powered suits of armor that makes them super powerful monsters.

    Web Originals 
  • Babe Ruth: Man-Tank Gladiator has man-tanks.
  • The New Vindicators universe has a few of these, being built by genius scientist and businessman Noah Meinstein to let normal people fight superhumans. The first one is the 001, also called the Portal armor because it can (among other things) create teleportals. There's also the 002, also called Deus Ex Machina, which is equipped with flamethrowers. Meinstein made a bunch more prototypes before using the 137 armor, which is mostly big bulky armor, hydraulic lifting equipment, and a powerful hammer.
  • The GIACA from Welcome To Omega is a good example, but it's not strictly speaking power armor. It's a lot like the Venom symbiote, built into the wearer's genome and its protection based on their reaction time.
  • In Defection the villain, Prysim, has never been known to show herself in anything less than something capable of keeping up with the A-listers.
  • The armor worn by the Dimensional Guardians in the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes.
  • Whateley Universe: Building your own suit of power armor is apparently a pretty common ambition of gadgeteer and devisor students at Whateley Academy. There is even a course on the subject, "Applied Defensive Technologies", where the term project is to build a working suit of powered armor (though at least some students have already done so when they start the class).
    • Loophole has designed and built a suit of "Iron Man"-style power armor with flight, weaponry, and spacesuit capabilities. She's about fifteen. Dynamaxx has a similar power armor suit, but he may have bought some of the components.
    • In a bit of a subversion, the blind devisor Jericho is working on a life-saving powered armor super-suit for EMTs and medics to wear on battlefields and in similarly dangerous spots (such as your basic superpowered hero-vs.-villain slugfest). However, since Jericho is something of a Combat Medic, his own rig includes a rather intimidating Hyperspace Arsenal, though he doesn't design the weapons himself.
    • In "Ayla and the Birthday Brawl" a squadron of mercenary killers, half of them in power armor, attack Ayla's friends. Since these are friends from Whateley Academy, this turns out to be a serious mistake.
    • Most military and paramilitary forces have a small number of Power Armor units, though cost and power requirements limit them operationally. Even the police departments of some major urban centers (NYC and Los Angeles, in particular) have Power Suit Squads in their SWAT units to handle super-powered threats, though they are mostly effective in stopping low-level Ragers rather than addressing coordinated attacks.
  • Nick Klein inherited his grandfather's Powered Armor and his superhero identity, The Rocket, in Jim Zoetewey's Legion of Nothing.
  • Lampshaded in the blog-novel Flyover City! — crime-fighting archer Sureshot is something of a joke until he dons his '90s-style cyber armor... transforming him into an even bigger joke.
  • Soldiers in the Registry of Time universe wear suits of armor that increase strength, stamina, speed, and have built-in targeting systems.
  • Worm:
    • Dragon is famous for arriving at every battle in a brand-new powered-armor. Subverted in that there's no one inside the armor; she's an AI masquerading as a human superhero, and the suits of armor are the closest thing she has to physical bodies.
    • Defiant, as Dragon's partner, gets to wear some of her creations too.
  • Enter the Farside: Artifex, the resident Gadgeteer Genius, has made this his pet project. He even explains some of the pitfalls associated with having a suit of Power Armour, as well as why he can't mass produce them easily.
  • SCP Foundation:
    • SCP-2461 ("Aftermath"). SCP-2461-B are suits of powered armor scavenged from a Nazi flying saucer destroyed by the early GOC made of steel alloy and tailored to fit the individual wearer. The suits provide increased strength and life support in space, and the armor makes the wearer Immune to Bullets.
    • In the Resurrection series of tales, Foundation agent Andrea Adams uses a unique combat suit made using anomalous technology. Despite being skin-tight the suit makes her immune to heavy machine gun fire (though the force of impact still sends her flying), lets her wield a 20mm BFG as a normal soldier would an assault rifle, and even provides sensory protection to let her No-Sell a memetic kill agent.
    • There's also the Global Occult Coalition's White Suits. In addition to the standard power armour trifecta of enhancing the wearer's strength, speed, and resilience they have an Invisibility Cloak as a standard function. Befitting the GOC's more militaristic feel and their focus on destroying rather than containing paranormal threats, White Suits are generally portrayed as superior to any tactical gear the Foundation can field barring one-offs like the above-mentioned suit and Samsara Squad.
  • Wearing Power Armor To A Magic School is what happens when muggles who are deathly allergic to mana need to enroll in Space Furry Hogwarts. Emma's power armor is filled with anti-magic shields, the latest cyberware, and enough combat equipment to take on a small army. She manages to upend the status quo on her first day by writing her name in a soul-stealing Artifact of Doom without losing anything.
  • A few variations appear in The Jenkinsverse:
    • The EV-MASS worn by human HEAT operators is an armored spacesuit that acts as a Downplayed example: while it has powered tactical systems and its durability helps a bit with physical activity, most of the associated feats of superhuman strength come from the operators themselves- who need to be that strong to even wear it.
    • Gaoian HEAT operators wear a lighter version of the EV-MASS that incorporates their technology- multiple layers of Deflector Shields, active camouflage, and miniature fusion scythes acting as extensions of their claws- to help them act as infiltration units.
    • Lewis tries to make a true suit of powered armor to aid the human militaries, but quickly runs into several problems that make him scrap the project; not the least of which being that any power source able to significantly increase the wearer's strength would make the armor too heavy to make use of it.
  • Thicksuits in Orion's Arm are a cross between this and Latex Space Suit. They're mainly meant for surviving in space, but (thanks to including artificial muscle) they also give the user The Strength of Ten Men and reduce the apparent force of impacts.

    Web Videos 
  • The Onion mentioned it in passing on the video about the axed Dragon Tank.
    "Or the Cyberarmor so after one of our troops is shot his body will keep firing guns while rock music plays."

    Western Animation 
  • In one episode of Atomic Puppet, crazy gazillionaire Rudolph Mintenberg creates some so he can form a superhero partnership with Atomic Puppet.
  • The Avengers: United They Stand gives most of the Avengers suits of battle armor that they wear over their existing costumes, complete with a Once per Episode Transformation Sequence. Given the emphasis on the show's toyline, this was almost certainly an attempt at making the heroes more "toyetic".
  • In The Batman, everyone's favorite vigilante dons a power suit similar to the larger one from Batman Beyond in order to tangle with Bane. It allows him to survive, but that's about it. He later dons a different suit to battle a mind-controlled Superman, although it doesn't help much aside from providing a distraction.
  • The suit from Batman Beyond originally served as an aid to keep the older Bruce Wayne in decent fighting condition, before his heart gave out. The suit is certainly sleeker than most Powered Armors, protective yet still retaining a certain fabric-like dexterity. Bruce later shows a more Iron Man-like suit he had designed years earlier, which is more powerful and has heavier armor but also puts a lot of strain on the wearer. Of course, Bruce later gets to wear the suit to help Terry in a jam.
  • Carl Nesmith a.k.a. Captain Nemesis from Ben 10.
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command establishes that Star Command spacesuits are powered armor. Would've justified the toy's clunky appearance... except the animation style makes the suit sleeker.
  • Danny Phantom:
    • The Ecto-Skeleton is one, created by Danny's parents; it uses a neural interface to connect the user to the armor and increases their abilities by 100-fold. Danny's dad Jack is able to swiftly handle the powerful Fright Knight with just the prototype legs, and Danny himself is able to create large explosions with just a small amount of ecto-energy and manages to re-seal Pariah Dark with the full suit. The big downside is the suit drains the user's energy, with Jack feeling faint after using it for only a minute or two and with Danny losing consciousness after his big fight with Pariah Dark. In the following episode after its introduction, Vlad Plasmius (who had stolen the suit after Danny fell unconscious) finds a way to overcome to suit's user drain with a combination of a ghostly lightning-rod, an ecto-converter, and nanites (which he injects into Danny's sister Jazz in order to set them on each other). Jazz ends up setting the self-destruct button to blow it up in Vlad's face at the end of the episode.
    • Valerie ends up getting two sets of powered armor to fight ghosts with. The first set is more cloth-like, but still gives her increased durability, friction-resistance, and a wrist-mounted ecto-laser. Her second set is much more like powered armor, giving her improved durability over her previous suit, the ability to breathe in space, and all of her needed gear comes from the suit itself. It should be noted that she was given these suits by villains in order for her to be a threat to Danny.
    • The Fenton Ghost Peeler gives one of these to the user after pressing the button on top to protect the wearer, as the device is stated to "tear ghosts apart, atom by atom".
  • Gizmoduck of Darkwing Duck and DuckTales fame wears Powered Armor that's almost reminiscent of Inspector Gadget, with mechanical arms and gadgets coming out of every panel. In the 2010 Darkwing Duck comic series, Gosalyn controls the Gizmoduck suit for a while, since it responds to her catchphrase.
  • El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera: Grandpapi Rivera/Puma Loco's Golden Sombrero of Chaos can transform into a flying suit of armor, which he uses to commit various robberies with his spare time.
  • Exo Squad has the "Exo Frames", usually called "E-Frames", which are basically Power Loaders with weapons, armor, and a flight system bolted on, in addition to the occasional Humongous Mecha (one of the Terran examples even has a hangar bay for launching E-Frames) and the lighter Powered Armor worn by the Jump Troopers.
  • The Fairly OddParents!: Mark equips a set when he faces Timmy in Death Combat. Timmy responds by wishes that Cosmo and Wanda would turn into a set. Notably, it fires pillows, which are deadly to Yugopotamians.
  • Gargoyles loves this trope:
    • Xanatos has several versions: his standard suit, which resembles a crimson gargoyle, the bulky iron gargoyle suit that he uses to fight Oberon, and a sort of skeletized armor that basically consists only of a chestplate, powered gauntlets, and a rocket pack.
    • Dingo from the Pack opts for Powered Armor rather than cybernetic upgrades or genetic manipulation like his fellow Pack members.
    • The three modern Hunters are also briefly seen using their own variety of Powered Armor.
    • Demona had Powered Armor in the first act of "The Reckoning".
    • Subverted in "Leader of the Pack": Coyote appears to be Xanatos in yet another suit of powered armor, but it turns out to be a robot.
  • G.I. Joe:
  • The Earth Corps scientists from Inhumanoids wear Powered Armor designed for subterranean exploration.
  • In Justice League, as in the comic book continuity, Lex Luthor occasionally dons a Kryptonite-powered battlesuit. Possibly as a friendly Shout-Out to Iron Man, it's originally intended to slow the effects of a terminal heart condition (ironically the result of constantly carrying around a piece of Kryptonite). Also ironically, it packs Kryptonite rays up the wazoo, making it quite appropriate for battling Superman.
  • Kim Possible:
    • One of the episodes of the first season had Kim Possible obtaining a power armor that got powered up by the user's stress level. Ironically, despite all the good things that came with the armor, Kim defeated Shego much easier without the armor...
    • She later gets a battle suit. Among its features are: defensive shields, self-repair, the ability to capture and redirect energy beams and a physical boost sufficient to let her clumsy boyfriend become a star quarterback.
  • A bulky powered armour is standard equipment for the Enforcers in Phantom 2040.
  • In the Phineas and Ferb episode "The Beak", the titular brothers build a suit that is half this, half mecha (since it requires the two of them to pilot it).
  • The Powerpuff Girls villain Princess Morbucks is a Spoiled Brat who wears one of these with a Jet Pack, as first shown in the episode "Stuck Up, Up and Away".
  • Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, the CGI spin-off series of the Starship Troopers film series, does feature powered armour, unlike the first two films. The troopers' standard suits are powered and provide some degree of strength enhancement, and they also use larger, more mecha-like suits called Marauders, typically 1-2 per squad of troopers. The Marauders are highly impressive until their limited battery life expires, at which point the occupant becomes "canned lunchmeat".
  • Cybron from Skysurfer Strike Force.
  • The Spectacular Spider-Man: In "Gangland", Silvermane shows off his powered armor, which inexplicably doesn't cover his face. It's the kind of powered armor that hums and whirs with every movement, and the noise tips Spidey off about how to defeat him. The armor is a tribute to Silvermane's cyborg body from the comics and Spider-Man: The Animated Series, unprotected head and all.
  • Sym-Bionic Titan: Although they resemble mechs, the armor Lance and Ilana use (Manus and Corus, respectively) fit this more. There are/were many more Manus armor back on Galaluna.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • Total Drama: In Revenge of the Island, faced with having to duel Lightning in the finals, Cameron uses his smarts to build an Iron Man suit. Despite its awesomeness, Rule of Drama requires the final challenge to come down to the wire, so Iron Cam lacks enough battery power for an extended battle, Lightning can take a supreme amount of punishment, and Chris unleashes the mutants into the battlefield, which forces Cameron to waste even more power protecting his friends.
  • Transformers has a few varieties.
    • The simplest are the exo-suits worn by Spike and Daniel in Generation 1 — these are modified space suits that confer protection and limited transformation ability. Headmasters and Targetmasters in the American continuity are more advanced forms, which grant improved protection and firepower as well as full transformation abilities, effectively making them one with their partners.
    • The Apex Armor from Transformers: Prime functions as this for Cybertronians granting invulnerability and enhanced strength. Miko later discovers that the armor works for humans as well.
  • The Venture Bros.:
    • The Monarch and his Deaths-Head Panoply. Subverted in that it isn't actually powered. It's just a solid, unmoving suit that fires missiles and rockets about. He can't even move his arms. However, this is due to design flaws that haven't been worked out yet.
    • In season five, Hank appropriates the "strength suit" of the former Countess of SPHINX, and it really does live up to the awesome potential of this trope. It's also pure fanservice in the "improbably molded metal" tradition, but it looks like Hank is hanging on to it regardless.
  • Granny May from WordGirl has one. In addition, one episode involves the Evil Genius Dr. Two-Brains building one.
  • Season Two of Young Justice (2010) introduces Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes, who just like his comic counterpart also uses a Scarab created by the Alien race known as the Reach, who show up as the main antagonists of the season. It also introduces us to "Black Beetle" and "Green Beetle" later in the season. According to Word of God, in this continuity there are three main varieties of Reach Scarabs, the Blue and Green variety are sent to infiltrate worlds and possess the natives so they can act as the vanguard of the Reach invasion, while the Black variety are used by the Reach themselves, specifically elite members of their Warrior Caste.

    Real Life 
  • Believe it or not, it's coming, and getting increasingly advanced. Utah-based company Sarcos has already developed a functional powered exoskeleton called "XOS" that increases the strength of the wearer significantly. As one person put it, "From enough grace to gently play ball, to enough super-power to load a missile on an aircraft". And indeed, from the footage, it seems surprisingly mobile. The main problems being that A) Currently, it doesn't have the covering to act as armor, but they fully intend to add an outer shell when the kinks are worked out. And B) they're still working out how to power it as a self-contained unit. The scary part? Sarcos has been bought up by the major defense contractor Raytheon (they make a lot of US military equipment, particularly missiles), meaning we may be seeing elite soldiers in these things by the 2020s. Indeed, the US Army already field-tested it in 2009, and by 2010 Raytheon had developed an improved version named XOS 2, which can be seen in action here.
    • According to Scientific American, Raytheon plans to introduce a tethered version of their suit for operational logistics and loading/unloading in 2015, and an untethered version 3-5 years after that. The logistical problem with the untethered suit is building in a power supply that won't run out in less than an hour. But with recent advances in battery technology, that shouldn't be an issue for much longer.
    • Notably, as of the early 2010s many fictional portrayals of powered armor began to take on the general look of military prototypes — a skeletal frame running parallel to the wearer's limbs without much in the way of armour, rather than the general space-knight looks of earlier depictions
  • As of 2013, several tech companies and research organisations have developed working exoskeletons for medical and emergency applications — some are already in use by patients, and one woman has even used a robo-suit to run the London Marathon.
  • A one-man project armor, that while not fire-proof could have potential use for fighting forest fires. Or the vengeful, hellfire-fueled ghost of Smokey the Bear.
  • Atmospheric Diving Suits, especially the more modern ones, could be seen as a type of Powered Armour.
  • Similarly to the above example, spacesuits used for EVA (extravehicular activity) are basically tiny spacecraft in the shape of a flexible suit, used for manual work outside in the vacuum of space.
    • While the current US spacesuit, the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), remains more similar to clothing (in that you have to gradually put it on and off piece by piece), its Russian counterpart, the Orlan, is entered simply via opening a door in its back, entering and having someone close the door behind you. This technically makes the Orlan slightly closer in feel and design to a stereotypical Science Fiction suit of Powered Armor.
    • And the US equivalent, the ARX-3 developed during the Strategic Defense Initiative days. Not for fighting Soviet Space Marines, but for servicing space-based weapons in a polar orbit (meaning a higher exposure to radiation) and for sabotaging Soviet satellites (which were believed to use corrosive fuels that would eat through the fabric-type suits) all requiring a hard-shell spacesuit.
  • A Japanese company named Cyberdyne introduced a powered exoskeleton named HAL (it's like they're trying to bring about the end of mankind). It's already being rolled out to hospitals across Japan to help treat paralysis. See for yourself.
  • Similarly to the Japanese, Russian company ExoRobotics is developing a powered exoskeleton dubbed ExoAthlete for rehabilitation of paraplegics, with the clinical trials having started in August 2015. In an Older Than They Think way, the project actually builds on the Soviet research from the Eighties, which in turn grew out of the powered exoskeletons built in 1969 by a Serbian researcher Miomir Vukobratović.
    • The company's first product was actually an unpowered load-bearing exoskeleton originally offered to a Russian MoD exactly to allow the weight of the protection equipment (such as a body armor or a Hazmat Suit) that the soldier could wear, but it was met with only a limited interest, which has prompted the company to switch to a powered design and a medical application to raise more funds for the development, as they were essentially told to come back when they'd have more than that. In fact, they still have only a lower body support and an open-loop computerized remote control, instead of a fancier brainwave or muscle potential inputs, though they are working on it.
  • After successful tests, Korea's Daewoo is also planning a wide-scale deployment of exoskeletons for heavy load lifting in the ship assembly business.
  • The US military model HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier) has graduated from testing to production, still no arms though, but has the added bonus of being useful for spinal cord injury sufferers. [1]
  • Following the model of the HULC, the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) is a full-body powered armor suit with powerful body armor under production for SOCOM.
  • Several hobbyists build these things in their garages. For example, Make it Real (AKA "The Hacksmith") has built an upper-body rig based on Elysium, a full body rig based on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. While the former can only be used to deadlift cinder blocks (and ended up being used as a display stand for a katana), the second is modular, can recharge its pneumatic power supply with a built-in battery-powered air compressor, and even incorporates ballistic plating (albeit only tested against a crossbow due to Canada's gun control laws), and an Augmented-Reality H.U.D. (or at least it will when it's done). Super Prototype is very much averted. While the prototype gives the wearer the strength to lift a car, it boils down to, as one YouTube commenter put it, "A jack you can sit in." The prototype also lacked the ability to turn properly until U-joints were added to the hip assembly. While the project was shelved indefinitely in favour of the creator's "Fly like Iron Man" project, it could potentially be married to it... They're also working on de-fictionalizing the power loader from Aliens (although it uses treads instead of legs), and built a "bionic arm" based on Crysis.
  • This trope's basis is actually substantially Older Than Television in the form of a 1919 patent for a device called a pedomotor, which used cables serving as artificial ligaments, powered by a backpack-mounted steam engine, to move the wearer's legs. Powered armor being an Unbuilt Trope at the time, the device's intended use was simply to allow the wearer to run further without tiring.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Powered Armour, Power Armor, Power Armour

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Silhouette Gear

Designed by Ernesti as a testbed for use in developing his new Telestale Silhouette Knight, the Silhouette Gear primarily functions as a means to train future Knight-Runner Pilots to manage their Mana output needed to operate Silhouette Knights along with serving as a viable combat option in areas where Silhouette Knights would draw too much attention.

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