Follow TV Tropes

Following

Stout Strength

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/heavy_removebg_preview.png

"He's bulging with what could be muscle!"
Turanga Leela, Futurama

A character is stout, overweight, or even obese, but quite strong.

This trope is common for a Boisterous Bruiser who enjoys good food and drink as much as he likes cracking heads. The Big Guy might also be packing on a few extra pounds. Muscles aren't the only thing that makes you big, after all! It's also common in older characters who are nowhere near as trim and athletic as they were in their youth but are still as strong as they ever were. Strength, in reality, does last much longer than your cardiovascular endurance.

Sometimes the trope will be played for comedy, with a common fat character suddenly displaying surprising strength. Other times the character will be an unmistakable mountain of muscle and fat. This trope was especially common in older television and film before bodybuilding became as popular as it is today. Large, bulky actors were much more easy to find than large, chiseled actors.

This is, in fact, Truth in Television (to a point), which is why Olympic shot putters, powerlifters, and competitors of World's Strongest Man don't resemble Arnold Schwarzenegger. A layer of cushioning fat is naturally an asset in a fight as long as you can move it, and also large quantities of calories are often necessary to maintain muscles and energy. See the Analysis subpage for details. Note that this trope doesn't necessarily mean that a character is obviously fat or out-of-shape despite their strength, as some characters that fit this trope (such as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises) can still be primarily muscular and fit despite having some bulk, fat or otherwise.

See Kevlard, for vitality and stamina instead of strength. Contrast Muscles Are Meaningless, where the muscles are visible on a character with only average strength. Often overlaps with Mighty Glacier. The most likely explanation for the Acrofatic.

(Trivia: The "strong" meaning of "Stout" was the original — a "stout warrior", a "stout defence". The "plump" meaning came from the fact that many stout warriors are also stout men.)


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • Early Kool-Aid commercials had the rather big Kool-Aid man bursting through walls like they were nothing. Even brick walls stood no chance. A more recent advertisement showed him winning a tug-o-war match against a group of boy scouts by turning around to watch a butterfly.

    Anime and Manga 
  • Banba in Bio-Meat: Nectar is chubby as part of his role as the Gonk, but we quickly learn he has impressive physical strength as well.
  • Juzo Megure from Case Closed, a policeman in his 40's who has a huge belly but is so Made of Iron that he can take a knife to the gut and survive, or get hit to the head with a metal pipe to save a teenage girl... and be conscious enough to deal a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the culprit.
  • One of Jet's old buddies in Cowboy Bebop, Fatty River, has the belly his name suggests and loves food. While we don't see him in action, he's doing pretty well as a bounty hunter, a career that the main characters have trouble earning a living in, and has arms like a professional wrestler.
  • Numerous characters from Dragon Ball. Notable examples include Majin Buu, Champa, and Toppo. note .
    • Yaijrobe deserves a mention, despite being known as a cowardly fat comedic relief, his introductory arc put him on par with Goku, made him achieve feats that Goku couldn't achieve in a day faster than him, and made him to be a powerful lonesome warrior. The next arc had him taken out someone who was essentially God in that narrative, and after that ... Dragonball Z happpened.
  • Ryoukan Kurita in Eyeshield 21, who is explicitly the strongest lineman in the country until Gaou shows up. There's also Niinobu Kasamatsu of the Taiyou Sphinx, who is incredibly squat and wide, but as a member of the Sphinx' powerful offensive line, is tremendously strong.
    • This is, however, inverted by Kengo Mizumachi, one of the more formidable linemen in the series, who is extremely tall and lanky. Then again, it's explicitly stated that he has a completely different kind of strength; His height and long limbs give him a lot of leverage against shorter opponents.
    • Daikichi Komusubi also has roughly the shape and consistency of a four-foot-tall concrete pillar.
  • Mr. Heart from Fist of the North Star. While he's generally quite a polite combatant, even towards his opponents (as long as he doesn't see his own blood, that is), he's incredibly strong, with the equivalent of a gentle slap being enough to slam Kenshiro into the ground and leave him coughing up blood. His fat also acts like a natural suit of armour, shielding his pressure points from being activated. It takes Kenshiro using a technique to force Heart's fat out of the way before he can hit them, while in theory, a Nanto practitioner (whose techniques revolve around cutting, rather than pressure points) could avoid this problem entirely.
  • Sig Curtis (Izumi's husband) in Fullmetal Alchemist is quite portly in comparison to the bodybuilder-esque Major Armstrong, but is probably his equal in physical strength.
  • Most incarnations of Musashi from Getter Robo.
    • Pretty much all who fill the coveted "fat guy" position (pilot of Getter-3/Poseidon), are of this trope. Benkei's a gentle beast, and Gai's pretty tough from what we can get. The Musashi/Benkei amalgamation in New Getter Robo is very powerful. The only exception may be Professor Saotome if you're going from the earliest manga.
  • Akiko Toshiura from Metsuko ni Yoroshiku is an insecure fat girl who just wants to have friends... she also happens to be a fearsome Blood Knight delinquent with a Hair-Trigger Temper as well as a Physical God who helped create the Earth.
  • Chouji Akimichi from Naruto. His clan's jutsu revolve around their weight and converting calories into chakra. His entire clan's fighting style is based on this very concept.
  • One Piece:
    • The first example in the series is Alvida, a morbidly obese pirate who wields a massive mace-club. She only has this status for her first appearance, however; next time we see her, she's become completely unrecognizable due to eating the Sube Sube no Mi (Smooth-Smooth Fruit) Devil Fruit, which removes all friction from the consumer's skin. As a result, this made all of the fat slip off of her body, leaving her a strikingly beautiful, slender woman whose looks would put Boa Hancock to shame, and still wields that mace just as well as before.
    • Butchie of the Black Cat Pirates from the Syrup Village arc fits this…and even more so when he's hypnotized into berserker mode.
    • Brogy from the Little Garden arc fits this nicely…but considering the fact that he's a giant, he's not really expected to be weak at all.
    • Mr 4 from the Alabasta arc. He looks like this and swings a 4-ton baseball bat.
    • Yama from the Skypiea arc. Seriously, with the amount of weight he has on, he's so nimble that it's preposterous.
    • Tom from the Water 7 arc (in a flashback). He's fat, but he can lift an entire ship with one hand!
    • Fukuro from the Enies Lobby arc is very, very round, with comparatively thin limbs. But he's a master of Rokushiki, notable among which are Soru (Shave), Rankyaku (Tempest Kick), and Shigan (Finger Pistol), the last of which he's changed into a full punch, which only makes it more powerful.
    • Blackbeard also qualifies. A massive gut, but hits (and takes hits) like a damn tank.
    • Sentomaru from the Sabaody Archipelago arc is a very good example of this; not only is he masterful in martial arts, but he wields a large axe and utilizes Busoshoku Haki (reinforces physical strength and nullifies invulnerabilities granted by Devil Fruits).
    • Boa Marigold from the Amazon Lily arc also uses Busoshoku Haki but also uses the powers of her Hebi Hebi no Mi (Snake-Snake Fruit) Model: King Cobra, along with a large halberd.
    • Jinbe is an interesting-looking Fishman (a whale shark type) reminiscent of the Oni in Japanese mythology. A tough guy of large girth, he's a master of the distinct Karate of his people along with a variety of other martial arts. There's so much power behind his strikes that even their force can knock an opponent down without physical contact. He's got a good heart and is very honor-bound; he's also got a stylin' outfit.
      • This seems to be rather common with Fishmen, in fact. Other notable examples from the Fishman Island arc are King Neptune, Prince Manboshi, and one of the antagonists, Dosun.
    • Machvise from the Dressrosa arc actually has this as his superpower; he already looks heavy enough, but he can press down on his opponents with a force of up to 10,000 tons.
    • Charlotte Linlin AKA Big Mom is an overweight elderly woman in her late 60s, but as one of the Four Emperors, she was able to earn that title due in part to her absurd physical strength. The same applies to her when she was only 5 years old, as she accidentally killed a bear by smacking it once during a scolding!
    • Queen The Plague, one of Kaido's top subordinates, is large and very round but according to him, it's all muscle. While he hasn't had much chance to prove his strength, one doesn't get a bounty of over a billion Berries by being a pushover.
  • Mao from Princess Nine, judo champ, the only female catcher capable of taking one of Ryo's dynamite pitches without being floored & beloved by chubbychasers everywhere.
  • Genma Saotome from Ranma ½. His reputation as being fat is actually greatly exaggerated, he's more stocky than anything, but his panda form is rather bloated looking (particularly in the manga) and, in either form, he is quite strong.
  • Shu/Kento from Ronin Warriors. Chunky, cheerful, cute as a button (as far as the show's art style goes, anyway)... and capable of astounding feats of strength and endurance. (How did you think they were going to open the giant gate of doom, a polite knock?)
  • Ryu Nakanishi of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. Whenever he's shown fighting, there's always at least one moment when he punches or pushes a line of Galactor minions into a pile or off a high place.
  • In Tiger & Bunny, one of Sternbild's greatest superheroes, Mr. Legend, was a heavyset man with a large gut, but was also powerfully built. However, based on Wild Tiger's flashback to meeting Mr. Legend when he was a child, his superpowers were more telekinesis-based than physical.
  • In Plus-Sized Elf, three of the monster girls, despite being overweight, are still considered quite strong. The best example is a cyclops girl known as Hitome, who is not only the tallest monster girl, but despite looking stocky appearance, all her fat is firm padding for her well-muscled physique. In fact, unlike most of the monster girls, she seems to have always had a bulky figure, barring the paunch and plumpish thighs she developed from her stay on earth.
    • Oga is another example as, despite the beer belly a majority of abs melted into from bar hopping, she is still quite beefy with muscle power. And is the only one who can match Hitome’s bulk and raw strength in a battle.
    • Oeda also lost a portion of her strong abdominal muscles as she indulged in soft serves and grew a plump potbelly like her niece. But despite being somewhat out of shape like her niece, Oeda is still considered a very robust and athletic woman who is more than capable of utilizing her centuries of combat experience.

    Comic Books 
  • Sergeant Crumb in Adventures in the Rifle Brigade is the largest man to serve in the British armed forces, and his strength is practically supernatural. Indeed, it's not uncommon for Captain Darcy to commend him with "Stout fellow!" as he punches an enemy soldier's head clean off.
  • Armstrong from Archer & Armstrong. While not as fat as some of the examples listed here, he does have a fairly substantial gut, as well as a fairly substantial ability to kick your ass.
  • Asterix:
    • Obelix is actually a case of Muscles Are Meaningless since his strength isn't muscular, but comes from the magic potion (even if its effects are permanent on him, after, as a child, he fell in a full cauldron of it, and drank it all...). He's also very sensitive about his size and insists that he isn't actually fat.
      "Of course not, Obelix. Your chest just slipped a bit, that's all."
    • Other notably stout examples include the village chief Vitalstatistix, who is a warrior chieftain after all, and Unhygenix the fishmonger, who in spite of his somewhat sedentary lifestyle (and intolerably awful stock of thoroughly expired fish) is still quite stocky and often seen getting the better of village blacksmith Fulliautomatix, who is far taller and more traditionally muscular.
  • Subverted in Avengers: The Initiative, where to all initial appearances the rotund Butterball seems like a wall-busting powerhouse. In reality, he's invulnerable to harm... and that's it. He can't lose weight or build muscle, meaning he'll never develop any useful offensive capabilities. Due to the fact that, accordingly, the Initiative can't use him as he is and he doesn't respond to training, they're forced to let him go.
  • Blacksad: Ted Leeman, the corrupt hippo detective in A Silent Hell seems like a sweaty, obese sloth whose bark is worse than his bite. When Blacksad outsmarts him and reveals himself, Leeman unleashes a brutal beating on Blacksad and tanks three shots to the gut to show his immense strength.
  • Mr. Block of Black Science looks like a typical overweight executive, but he's able to throw Pia around like a ragdoll.
  • Blast: Polza is surprisingly strong and fleet-footed in spite of weighing three hundred pounds. Throughout the story he's shown to have no problem hiking long distances, sleeping in the wilderness for months on end, and outrunning people chasing him. He's also strong enough to have repeatedly beat people to death with his bare fists without doing lasting damage to his hands.
  • Buck Godot: See that fat? It's actually muscle. People from his high-gravity planet are so tough courtship involves high explosives.
  • Horrorshow of the Oktober Guard in G.I. Joe comics. No, he isn't named for his intimidating girth, but for his astounding strength ("khorosho" meaning "good" in Russian).
  • Great Lakes Avengers member Big Bertha fits this exactly in her superform. As Ashley Crawford, her body is slim and has no noticeable powers. As Big Bertha, her body can stop a runaway semi and leave a nice dent in its front.
  • Fat Cobra from the Immortal Iron Fist. While he easily weighs 400 lbs and has a seemingly boundless hunger, he's strong on the level of Hercules himself. Fat Cobra is also a Lightning Bruiser, given that he has a speed technique that actually lets him speed-blitz the Iron Fist.
  • Believe it or not, The Incredible Hulk used to be this. Never fat, but early on he was lacking in definition, which has become almost a trademark of the character. This may be the result of time marching on; when the Hulk was first made the popular idea of strong men still had a bit of fat on them and didn't care about being as cut.
    • While the Hulk may be extremely ripped, he's still occasionally drawn to fit the trope. Dale Keown is a good example of an artist who draws a Hulk with lots of definition and a thick rectangular mid-section.
    • The Thing of the Fantastic Four often had the same thing going for him in early stories. Jack Kirby drew both characters with a wide, boxy body type.
  • The Red Tornado from the Justice Society of America was a portly middle-aged housewife who dressed up like a (male) superhero and beat up crooks in her neighborhood. She was very much a Boisterous Bruiser, verging on Dumb Muscle. Nowadays she's pushing 90, and she can still beat the livin' daylights outta any palooka who looks at her funny.
  • Kid Colt: Much like The Kingpin, the Fat Man is a large mass of muscle, with a nice layer of fat on top for decorative purposes. He is much stronger than an average-sized man and can throw and take a punch with the best of him.
  • While The Kingpin is said to be almost completely muscle (2% fat...even if this is Artistic License – Biology), he LOOKS like an obese man. And while he doesn't have any superpowers, he's physically strong enough to beat Daredevil and has even given Spider-Man a hard time once or twice.
    • In the Ultimate comics, the Kingpin actually is massively obese, as seen when he's in casual attire or stripped down to an undershirt. However, while there is a great deal of fat around his midsection, his arms are bulging with muscle.
  • Little Lotta is the epitome of this trope. She's depicted as being unrealistically strong, able to lift a grand piano easily.
  • Wayne Boring drew a Superman who took the phrase "Flying Brick" and ran with it.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has the recurring antagonist Slash, an Evil Counterpart (Though usually more of an Anti-Hero or simply misguided) humanoid turtle across multiple continuities. To emphasize his great strength compared to the Turtles, he's usually depicted as notably wider and bulkier, often modeled after (if not mutated from) a snapping turtle.
  • X-Men:
    • The Blob from the Brotherhood of Mutants, who had superhuman strength in addition to his girth and gravity power. In addition to this, Blob has the speed and agility you would expect of a fit man, rather than a man his size. It's come as a shock to many opponents to see him move. He was a circus performer before learning he was a mutant, and he did a lot more than just stand in place and show off his invulnerability.
    • Beast, depending on the version. The Ultimate X-Men graphic novel that has him as one of the first students of Charles Xavier shows him as basically looking like the human equivalent of a gorilla, and as agile as a spider monkey. Which is part of the reason that his hair turns blue.
    • Landslide of Cerebro's X-Men has this ability, which is fitting as he is an artificial construct molded after Blob as well as Beast and Sabertooth.

    Fan Works 
  • Cibus Esculentus Madoka Magica is an alternate take on Puella Magi Madoka Magica, in which all Magical Girls have both muscle and fat alike expand upon making their contracts. The real purpose of their fat, though, is to make them more wholesome for Esurientes, the flesh-eating monsters they fight in place of Witches.
  • Played for laughs in this Good Omens (2019) fanart, featuring chubby bookworm angel Aziraphale and an improbably towering stack of hardcovers.
  • Nine Days Down: When she and Celestia encounter Polyphemus, Twilight notes that he has the kind of heavy, rounded muscle that visually resembles fat, but which is much stronger than the sculpted physique of bodybuilders.
  • Robb Returns: Illyrio Mopatis may be one of the series' resident Adipose Rex... but remember that underneath all that blubber is still the man that survived for years as a member of a sellsword company, and was able to retire as a rich man. Which he aptly demonstrates by almost killing Viserys and tanking through the Targaryen's mad stabbing, as a fire rages around them.
  • Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: The original character Miriam is a permanently potbellied thunderously gluttonous Amazonian Beauty who happens to be over 4 meters tall and equipped with Super-Strength.

    Films — Animated 
  • The Road to El Dorado: Chief Tannabok is very fat and kind, but incredibly strong, although we don't see it until the climax.
  • The Incredibles: Mr. Incredible once had a Heroic Build, but during his forced retirement, he let himself go. He then works some of it off midway through the movie but some still sticks with him.
  • Chien-Po, the Gentle Giant monk-turned-soldier in Mulan, is a very quiet man who is probably bigger than the rest of the squad together. He also proves to be stronger than the rest of the squad together, being able to lift all of their weight plus pull a mounted horse up a cliff at the same time.
  • Po, the panda protagonist of Kung Fu Panda, is frequently underestimated due to being overweight, but is actually much stronger (and, after some intensive training, much more agile) than his chubby appearance would suggest. In fact, his excess fat turns out to be a major advantage in his fight against Tai Lung, since it protects him from the latter's nerve strikes.
  • Gloria from Madagascar can smash through brick walls with her power. Makes sense, since she's a hippo.
  • Big Bill from Shinbone Alley.
  • Robin Hood (1973): The Sheriff, Friar Tuck, and Little John are all obese, but are also the most physically formidable characters in the film (which makes sense, since they are a wolf, badger, and bear, respectively). Lady Kluck, Marian's handmaiden and the resident Violent Glaswegian, also qualifies with flying colours.
  • Baymax from Big Hero 6 is rather round and pudgy for a robot, but he's still capable of lifting up to 1000 pounds and can deal even more damage while wearing the armor Hiro makes for him.
  • Shrek may be a fat green ogre, but boy is he strong. Humorously enough, Shrek Forever After shows that Shrek is actually a bit of a runt for ogres, showing larger and beefier ogres.
  • The demigod Maui in Moana is well-padded in the traditional Polynesian style.
  • In Turning Red, Abby is very short and chubby, but strong enough to knock an untransformed Mei down with a single punch and act as the group's bouncer during their red panda racket.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Fat Bastard in Austin Powers, who can lift a sumo wrestler over his head.
  • A Bronx Tale: Morbidly obese Jojo the Whale effectively uses both his fists and his belly to hurt a biker during the Bar Brawl.
  • Miss Blubberidge in Muppet Treasure Island. The pirates never had a chance.
  • Fezzik in The Princess Bride, played by real-life example André the Giant. Fezzik mentions that he doesn't bother exercising. Andre himself did not go out of his way to exercise, feeling no need to be stronger than he already was.
  • Characters played by Donald Gibb:
  • Gentle Giant Mose in Open Range is noted to never start a fight, but reportedly kicked the asses of an entire bar full of goons.
  • The obese Pops in Speed Racer is played by John Goodman. When an attacking ninja notices his Greco-Roman wrestling ring, he starts tossing ninjas around like ragdolls.
  • Big Edna in UHF throws two men several stories into the air.
  • The two strongest players in A League of Their Own are played by Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Cavanagh.
  • Pee-wee's Big Adventure: Andy, the jealous boyfriend of Simone.
  • Popeye: Oxheart Oxblood and Bluto.
  • In Godzilla (2014), Godzilla's more heavily built than other versions of the character, but it doesn't make him any less dangerous.
  • Blob, post-eating disorder in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Add the bulky composition with an innate control of gravity...
  • Bane in The Dark Knight Rises is extremely muscular, but has a stocky build that does not include washboard abs.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Rasputia in Norbit who is more frightening than her three crook brothers combined.
  • Jacob Kowalski in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them isn't skinny and doesn't look very muscular, but he can throw an effective punch or kick a door down. Justified as he was a soldier in World War I.
  • Paul Bunyan in Tall Tale is not a giant, just "Three Hundred Pounds of Raging Fury!
  • All characters played by Erland Van Lidth De Jeude, a 6'6, 340-lb actor, opera singer, and Olympic wrestler:
  • All roles played by Randall "Tex" Cobb, a stocky, bearded former boxer:
  • The Trunchbull in Matilda is a former Olympian in shot-put, javelin, and hammer-throw, with a physique to match. She's still shown regularly practising those sports even 20+ years after competing (using both actual equipment and the occasional child), and at one point she even lifts the back of her car off its axles.
  • The Road House: Both Tinker the Mook and Jack (one of the bouncers) are chubby guys who handle themselves decently well in fistfights, although neither is a match for top-notch combatants like Dalton, Jimmy, and Wade.
  • Super Mario Bros. (1993): Mario and Luigi run into Big Bertha, a corpulent (VERY corpulent), hulking woman who introduces herself by lifting an old lady overhead and hurling her off a catwalk (she deserved it). Later she manhandles Mario during a dance and knocks out a Koopa guard with one punch.
  • In Swashbuckler, Polanski (Avery Schreiber) is noticeably overweight but is also the strongest member of Lynch's crew. He smashes his way through a wooden wall at the customs house and is able to snap the steel hasp holding shut Moonbeam's pillory.
  • In Hoboken Hollow, Weldon Broderick is noticeably overweight but is strong enough to hoist a dead body over his head and impale it on a spike hanging from the ceiling.
  • In A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die!, Eli is the largest of the Boxed Crooks and is constantly insulted being called fat. However, he is also strong enough to lift up a man in each hand before slamming their heads together. Given he is played by Bud Spencer, this comes as no surprise.
  • Today We Kill... Tomorrow We Die!: Being played by Bud Spencer, O'Bannion has this as one of his defining traits. His feats include hoisting one of the Comancheros over his head and hurling him out through the window, and snapping the solid wooden chair he has been tied to.
  • Santa Claus in Violent Night might be thinner than the rounder depictions of St. Nick, but he still has a bit of a noticeable gut, and can do serious physical damage.
  • Wild River: Joe John Garth is not a thin man. But after Chuck calls Mrs. Garth senile, Joe John is capable of picking up Chuck head over heels, marching him several feet, and throwing him in the river.

    Folklore 
  • Friar Tuck from the Robin Hood legends is usually portrayed as very fat. The most common version of how he joined the band involves him fighting Robin to a standstill.

    Literature 
  • Angie's First Case: One of the Wolfpack members tries to avoid a police search (the cops are looking for two teenaged boys travelling together) by hiding in the trunk of their car. Jess's gut is repeatedly commented on by his enemies, but he is a fast runner and wins a fistfight.
  • Monk in the Doc Savage series pretty much exemplifies this trope. Next to Doc himself, he's generally treated as the physically strongest of the Fabulous Five, no mean feat when one of the "weaker" member's common habits include punching his way through locked doors.
  • Haymitch Abernathy from The Hunger Games.
  • Prince Egil and Ambassador Baindur from A Harvest of War.
  • Haegr in William King's Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolf novel Wolfblade. Massively fat and continuously eating. Torin warns Ragnar that a lot of that bulk is muscle, and he fights well. At one point he uses a Thunder Hammer, a weapon most marines can only use at all while wearing full Terminator armor, as a thrown weapon with deadly accuracy.
  • In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novels, Soric is described as both overweight and strong.
  • In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files novel Fool Moon, Dresden watches a young man he's found himself allied to, and is pleased because of the way he moved, most of his (considerable) weight is muscle, not fat.
  • In Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League stories, space merchant tycoon Nicholas Van Rijn looks like a tub of lard, but most of that is muscle earned in a lifetime of hard work and brawling. One fellow bruised his knuckles punching van Rijn in the gut. And then van Rijn hit him ... just once ... and the lights went out. It's also been shown that he's fast enough to safely catch a tomahawk thrown at his face.
  • Discworld series:
    • Sergeant Jackrum from Monstrous Regiment. To call Jackrum fat would be to miss out on an opportunity to use the word "gross". To call Jackrum dangerous would be to miss out on an opportunity to use the word "badass".
    • To a lesser extent, Agnes Nitt in the Lancre Witches subseries. It takes her split personality to notice that she's much stronger than she believes herself to be because the fat hides a lot of functional muscle mass. Also notable is that her heavy build is considered desirable in Lancre, where a woman is expected to be able to carry a pig under each arm and a young man is given to consider the evidence of how well a family enjoys its food. (As some older married men in Lancre are known to say, over the years kissing loses its fire, but cookery tends to just get better.) It is her emotional isolation and personality that keeps her single, not her looks.
    • Mustrum Ridcully is a pretty large individual, tall and carrying the sort of weight large University dinners produce as a matter of course (if nowhere near the size of the Dean). He is also a vocal advocate for fresh air and exercise, a keen outdoorsman, angler, hunter, boxer, and quarterstaff fighter, and is in pretty terrific shape all told.
    • The Upwright brothers, Harry and Jim, who run the Ankh-Morpork's mail carriages are this, with their apparent obesity looking even more so due to their heavy clothing.
    • Willie Hobson, the owner of a large stable complex, described in Going Postal as "what you would probably get if you shaved a bear".
    • Reacher Gilt is described as wearing clothes fit for two men and being capable (though he deliberately refrains from it) of a bone-crushing handshake.
    • Lady Sybil as well. When she draws herself up or inhales such that her bosom moves, metaphors involving continent drift are used. She's also capable of whacking a werewolf with an iron bar so hard that she bends the bar.
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe
    • Jabba and the various other Hutts, while certainly fat, are also quite strong, at least to a certain point. Jabba's grossness, in canon terms, is because he adopted a sedentary lifestyle as he got older, as most Hutts do as a sign of social status; in his youth, he was described as being quite powerful. There was actually a Hutt Jedi named Baldorian, who, due to his Jedi training and, later on, the influence of the Force after he fell to the Dark Side, remained physically fit and able to easily participate in lightsaber duels as acrobatically as anyone from the prequel movies. Of course, Leia killed him anyway.
    • The X-Wing Rogue Squadron bonus comic featured Jek Porkins, the first pilot to die fighting the Death Star. He was somewhat overweight (and claimed to be from a high-gravity planet), and accounted for himself pretty well in a ground fight.
    • The Wraith Squadron novels had Voort saBinring, a Gamorrean with altered brain chemistry that let him be a Genius Bruiser. He had somewhat less fat than most Gamorreans, but he still had a thick layer of it and was very strong. As in, after using a desk to flatten an assassin against a wall, the impact dented the wall and knocked a person lying in the bunk on the other side of the wall onto the floor. The wall was evidently thick enough to hide all sounds of the fight, including a blaster shot, from the people in the bunk room.
  • Caramon from the Dragonlance series. Practically a paint-by-numbers The Big Guy in the original trilogy, he had to battle obesity (with varying levels of success) his entire life yet, for the most part, remained quite powerful.
  • Captain Jack Aubrey from the Aubrey-Maturin novels. He is depicted in the books as a very large, heavy man, weighing something like 18 stone (252 pounds). He is also a skilled and fearless fighter and, of course, being The Captain, he leads his crew into close combat rather than hanging back and giving orders.
  • Being Aubrey's Expy In Space, Daniel Leary of the RCN series. He tries to keep his weight down, but he's been noted as sitting down with particular care on occasion because he fears bursting the seams of his uniform.
  • Ben from Fred Saberhagen's Book of Swords series. Ben's a tall guy, but he's also very broad—big shoulders, big hips. He's not attractive—in fact, people assume he's stupid (he's not, by any means)—and he's so packed with muscle that if he's wearing a robe or something which just shows his general outline, it's easy to think he's fat. His arms and legs are described as looking stubby, they're so thick in proportion to their length. But, when Ben arm-wrestles a carnival strongman—one who's strong and looks it, with thick knots of muscle clearly defined against each other—the man is absolutely no challenge for Ben. In fact, the arm-wrestling involved two lit candles—whoever cried out first from their hand being against the flame would also lose. Ben used the back of the guy's hand to crush the candle so quickly the man wasn't burned.
  • Jean Tannen from the Gentleman Bastard Sequence was fat as a child, but spent most of his teens in intensive martial arts training. He never lost the fat, but put on a lot of muscle underneath it. The narrative tracks when Jean has gained or lost weight based on his activity level. He serves as the Bastards' chief enforcer and is perfectly capable of dismantling minor street gangs on his own.
  • Rubeus Hagrid from the Harry Potter series is described in his introduction as being "twice as tall as a normal man, and five times as wide". His enormous size is attributed to his being half-giant. His displays of strength are few and far between in the series, but he is seen alternately knocking a door completely off the hinges by simply knocking, picking up a grown man with one hand and pinning him to a tree, single-handedly hauling 50-foot Christmas trees across the grounds every year, and knocking pursuers unconscious with a single blow. He even offhandedly (and quite dismissively) mentions altercations with "Mad trolls on the Polish border" and "a vampire in a pub in Minsk" that are never described in detail but are nonetheless... intriguing...
    • Dudley is a less extreme example, being a Muggle and a pre-teen when the series starts out but is still capable of some pretty impressive physical feats for a Fat Slob. In the fifth book, when he takes up boxing, he very quickly becomes quite formidable, and a growth spurt helps him shed the weight. As an adult, Dudley is described as being large and muscular.
  • Cord MaKiy in The ColSec Trilogy plays with the trope. He's baby-faced and built like a fireplug, well ahead of the rest of the cast in terms of raw strength, and is stated to look chubby in baggy clothing. However, when he gets his shirt torn off during a fight in the first book, he's revealed to be quite toned.
  • In Mary Gentle's White Crow stories, recurring character Baltazar Casaubon. In Rats and Gargoyles, he effortlessly lifts up his sometime love interest Valentine (who seems fairly average-sized) and tosses her into the air in his joy at being reunited with her, then is scarcely slowed down by the much smaller Lucas hanging onto his arm as he walks off. He's 6'5" and large-framed in the bargain, and is described both in that book and The Architecture of Desire as not so much being a fat man as a huge man who also happens to be fat.
  • The Duel of Sorcery Trilogy Hern Heslin is yet another little fireplug of a guy, and actually is somewhat pudgy. However, he's both strong and nimble enough to untie himself.
  • Reality Check by Charlie Brooks features Mick Mannus, a man whose weight is estimated at around 300 pounds. Due to cybernetic enhancements, though, he's immensely strong. Unlike many other characters in this trope, he's not too likely to be taken lightly, what with having half his face made of metal and all.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire
    • Strong Belwas has a fat belly covered in scars—because he lets each opponent cut him exactly once before he kills them.
    • Robert Baratheon is a powerful warrior gone to seed. He's put on eight stone in weight (112 pounds) from the time when he was "muscled like a maiden's fantasy," but has apparently retained at least some of his strength. At one point he shoves badass knight Jaime Lannister off his feet and laughs about how he can still push men like Jaime into the dirt. He also has enough strength to stab a wild boar to death with his guts ripped out.
  • Marco from the Animorphs is emphatically not this trope — until he assumes his preferred combat morph, a 400-pound silverback gorilla.
  • Chet in various Hardy Boys books is described as this.
  • Annie Wilkes in Misery is a fairly heavy-set woman, but is also capable of moving Paul Sheldon, an adult man, around as she cares for him. As her insanity becomes clearer to him, he realizes that, due to her strength, escape might be quite difficult, so he starts using his typewriter as a makeshift weight set.
  • Dashiell Hammett's The Continental Op is 5'6" and admits that some of his 190 pounds is fat, but not all of it. He's a very tough customer.
  • In Neverwhere, Mr. Croup refers to his partner, Mr. Vandemar, as stout. Vandemar, for his part, grouses a bit at this, considering it a poke at his weight.
  • Dream Park: Both played straight and inverted in The Barsoom Project. Max Sands is a hefty wrestler and The Big Guy of his group during the "fat ripper" Fimbulwinter Game. However, when the team needs to shove their way through an icy barrier, it's the skeletal-scrawny bulimic Keven whose meager muscles achieve what his heavyweight companions can't, due to the strength-enhancing magical token he'd received in-Game.
  • Frank Burly, the protagonist of John Swartzwelder's The Time Machine Did It, describes himself as "190 pounds of rock hard muscle, underneath 40 pounds of sturdy protective fat".
  • William Kraft in Victoria is an old and more than somewhat bulky man, but still stronger than many who are younger and more fit. At one point, when he is angry with his number two man, John Rumford, he almost rips his door off its hinges.
  • Wayward Children: Cora has been fat all her life and is by far the best athlete out of the main characters in Beneath the Sugar Sky; in particular, she's a phenomenal swimmer, able to pull an unconscious person and still greatly outpace the others. She's deeply tired of people's assumption that fat means idle.
  • A Desolation Called Peace: The Four-Star Badass Nine Hibiscus has a generous curve of fat over solid muscle. She's described as projecting an image of power and stability that would be the envy of any casting agency trying to find an actor for her role.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Game of Thrones: Hodor is a chubby person and one of the physically strongest characters in the series.
  • Seinfeld: Elaine tries to sell up George Costanza's stocky build as "powerful," claiming, "He can lift one hundred pounds right over his head!"
  • Discussed Trope in an extra scene from Survivor Pearl Islands; where the chubby old hippie Rupert pointed out that he was much more adept at surviving than the buff-looking Osten, because of the effects of having "working muscles" and fat to burn, instead of "gym muscles" and no endurance for camp jobs and challenges.
  • Chris Farley's characters on Saturday Night Live are often characterized this way. In one particular sketch, he plays an ice skater who has recently gained a considerable amount of weight. One commentator asks if there was any advantage to the extra weight. The other commentator says, "Power!" Farley then flings his partner a surprising distance. This was true of Farley himself as well, a former football and rugby player who was quite strong and surprisingly agile despite his appearance.
  • Farkus "Bulk" Bulkmeier from Power Rangers. On the other side of the Pacific, while its source material, Super Sentai, has only had a handful of Rangers who were fat, their defining trait was that they were the physically strongest of their team. Incidentally, four of them were male Yellow Rangers: both Daita and his temporary replacement Daigoro, Kijima, and Raita. The last, Ramirez, was a rare Cyan Ranger. Out-of-universe, veteran suit actor, Jiro Okamoto, is renowned for his belly despite being no less physically capable than his fellow stuntmen. It's most obvious when he wears the Shinken Gold suit, which is noticeably wider at the waist compared to the face actor.
  • Sammo Hung's character Sammo Law on Martial Law. Sammo Law is accused of being "out of shape", to which Sammo replies, "Not out of shape, just fat!"
  • Let's hear it for Lauren Zizes of Glee fame; she's a big girl and a Big Eater, but she's also the Ohio state champion in Greco-Roman wrestling and she wrestles on the boys' team. She's shown practicing in one episode by tossing aside an endless stream of challengers onto the mat, she's an unshakeable stone wall in the episode in which she takes to the football field, and she wipes the floor with tough-talking Santana Lopez in a fight over Puck, without even breaking a sweat.
  • My Wife and Kids has the Calvinator, who can move entire work trucks & throw standard size refrigerators.
  • Hoss from Bonanza.
  • In Cannon, the overweight Frank Cannon was often shown overpowering younger and fitter opponents through sheer brute strength.
  • Sam Hanna from NCIS: Los Angeles may not be obese, but he's definitely not skinny. He is, however, a Lightning Bruiser in hand-to-hand combat, courtesy of his Navy SEAL training.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In one season, Mac puts on 60 pounds of fat and claims that he's "cultivating mass" to make himself stronger. In the next season, he's disappointed to have lost the weight and thinks he's gotten weaker.
  • Boba Fett's bulkier in The Mandalorian than he was in the original Star Wars movies, and sports a noticable gut on his otherwise muscular frame. This does not in any way lessen his badass credentials. If anything, it makes him look far more believable as a terrifying strongman who can shatter Stormtrooper helmets with a single blow.
  • "Two-Ton Harley" from the eponymous episode of Supah Ninjas, played by Big Show, used to be a beanpole before bulking up as he did entirely on fat to break his fellow biker gang members out of prison by literally throwing his weight around.
  • Cobra Kai: Captain Turner, Kreese's CO in Vietnam, is a Green Beret and Tang Soo Do master. He has a fairly sizeable gut but can use the significantly more overtly athletic Kreese as a punching bag.
    • Aisha Robinson might be a bit on the thick side, but there's a reason Johnny said the "... girl's a natural Cobra." She also yanked her principal tormentor, roughly a hundred pounds lighter, off the ground by her underwear!

    Newspaper Comics 
  • Sergeant Snorkel from Beetle Bailey is a pretty extreme humorous example. His exaggerated bulk and strength together mean that, for example, while can't actually lift himself from the ground, he can do chin-ups one-handed by pulling the bar down to his chin, bending the supports.
    • Subverted in one longer story where Sarge actually became skinny via hypnosis that made him a compulsive jogger and detest food. Everyone saw him as puny and unimpressive, but he still literally killed a bull with a single blow of his bare fist. In the same story, Lt. Sonny Fuzz effectively tried to take his place by first being stout and then becoming strong. That came to an end when he punched the re-obesified Sarge (he ate the bull) on the chin, and broke his newly acquired bicep.
    • A more recent one spelled it out. He does a massive amount of working out and strength training in his morning routine and then has even more massive meals.
  • Bluto from Popeye is a massive individual, and when he was first introduced in the comics, was one of Popeye's few matches in physical strength.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • This used to be the norm in Professional Wrestling before WWE, WCW and TNA started requiring just about all of their wrestlers to have chiseled physiques. The extremely large wrestlers, however, often get a pass, such as Big Daddy V, Awesome Kong, and Mark Henry (whose "World's Strongest Man" gimmick comes from having legitimately won a World's Strongest Man competition before entering pro wrestling.)
  • The Highcheif Peter Maivia, The Wild Samoans, most wrestlers who follow their mold (and Samoa Joe) and Polynesian wrestlers stereotypically are a variation of this and/or Acrofatic.
  • The fact that Haystacks Calhoun could move his own 600+lbs body with anything resembling grace was bad news for pretty much anyone he could get his hands on, although he had nothing on Happy Humphrey(besides superior agility), who was 800 lbs.
  • George "The Animal" Steele wasn't exactly obese but he wasn't built like a bodybuilder and he needed to be strong to pull off his Flying Hammerlock Finishing Move since he was lifting 200+ lbs. men in the air by one arm.
  • André the Giant. His stout physique came from his reluctance to exercise. He didn't feel the need to be any stronger than he already was.
  • Mr. Harry Fujiwara was much more flabby than many of his chiseled opponents like Shoulders Newman and Rocky Johnson, but his performance in their matches suggested he was just as strong as they were.
  • Kamala The Ugandan Giant is The Giant more for his weight than his height, but despite being flabby he's managed to hold his own in wrestling matches against bears and was one of the people who gained fame by slamming Andre The Giant.
  • Bam Bam Terry Gordy, and to a lesser extent his Tag Team partner "Dr. Death" Steve Williams. Gordy's manhandling of Mighty Inoue in All Japan Pro Wrestling made his career in the country, becoming half of the Miracle Violence Connection with Williams made him legendary.
  • Before Dump Matsumoto became the fearsome scissor-wielding Garbage Wrestler Zenjo fans know and(love to) loath, she was a pudgy immovable powerhouse who could easily send all comers flying back to where they started. Followers in her mold include Kyoko Inoue, Bull Nakano, Aja Kong, and Monster Ripper, who all really did it better(hence Matsumoto switching to hitting people with sticks).
  • Mitsuharu Misawa was not the ideal picture of physical fitness, but the man could move, and more importantly he could also march around the ring with other men suspended on his shoulders.
  • Female wrestler Reggie Bennett was a bodybuilder before becoming a professional wrestler and during the first few years of her career, but she gradually switched over to a stout strength physique as she got older. Same for her cousin Bionic J, except J looked this way even longer. Whether or not she was as strong as Bennet, J was still plenty strong.
  • Tommy Dreamer hasn't wrestled shirtless since 1995, but he once slammed THE ONE MAN GANG on his first try.
  • While fans of Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling tend to despise Kodo Fuyuki for his booking, those attending live were clearly intimidated by the sight of him tearing apart arenas or throwing around their favorites like Masato Tanaka and Hayabusa.
  • Yoshihiro Takayama was skinny once, but it wasn't too long into his career that he started letting his gut go. As long as he can easily manhandle guys like Toshiaki Kawada and Hiroshi Tanahashi he feels his weight is fine.
  • Fans like to poke fun at Akebono's gut and lack of stamina, but the man can easily toss around wrestlers almost as big or even bigger than himself and is famed for his jumping piledrivers.
  • Otoko Sakari with a sleeveless shirt on looks like a strong guy; without his shirt, he looks like a man with a wide waste. But he's still really strong.
  • Kevin Owens has a noticeable belly but is far from weak.
  • Atlantis got rather stocky late into his career, compared to some of his long-running rivals like Ultimo Guerrero, who still retained some of their shape. But while there was much criticism of CMLL for keeping the aging Atlantis in the main event he could still deliver tiltawhirl backbreakers to members of opposing trios in rapid succession.
  • "The Native Beast" Nyla Rose is stocky and very powerfully built, able to powerbomb her fellow female wrestlers with ease.
  • "Limitless" Keith Lee is 340lbs with a torso like a barrel, and is perfectly capable of hurling a smaller wrestler literally all the way across the ring. He's also unbelievably fast and agile for a man his size, capable of jaw-dropping feats of athleticism.
  • Captain Lou Albano was certainly a round and stocky individual, but there was definitely some muscle under there, although he would have argued that it was ALL muscle. He did slim down a bit in the '90s though.

    Stand-Up Comedy 
  • Patton Oswalt has a bit where he relates watching a fight in which a short, "roly-poly" man in a suit was accosted by a hulking cowboy. The roly-poly man picked up the cowboy effortlessly and dumped him on the ground face-first, ending the fight immediately. Oswalt then looked more closely at the roly-poly man's physique and realized that he was a power-lifter, with a torso shaped like a single, round bicep.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Games Workshop games:
    • The Ogres of Warhammer, and their Ogor successors from its sequel Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, epitomize this trope. They regard a massive gut as the primary sign of strength, and the strongest Ogre character is the Tyrant Greasus Goldtooth the Shockingly Obese. This is actually a good indicator given their biology since the gut is actually a mass of muscle so strong they can devour pretty much everything.
    • The Skaven Star Player Glart Smashrip from Blood Bowl is not only insanely obese but also the strongest Skaven player in the game who isn’t a Rat Ogre.
    • Dwarves are short, squat, and tend to have prominent pot bellies. And axes. And short tempers. And if the shirtless dwarf with the obvious gut has orange-dyed hair and a broken nose, what you have is a Slayer, one of the most brutal hand-to-hand combatants in the world, as more than a few clumsy bar patrons have learned just a little bit too late.
  • Sesus "The Slug" Nagezzer from Exalted. He was always a man of great appetites, and when he suffered a crippled leg in his youth while fighting a rampaging little god, his weight quickly got out of control. However, just because he can't run anymore doesn't mean he hasn't kept up the other parts of his old training, and mistaking him for a fat lazy slob is a good way to get killed.

    Video Games 
  • One of the challengers in Arm Wrestling is Kabuki, a beefy sumo wrestler.
  • Banjo-Kazooie: Despite being routinely considered fat by other characters, which is reflected in how he's not a fast runner, Banjo himself is undeniably strong, being able to carry Kazooie in his backpack with ease, along with any other heavy things he scoops up with the Taxi Pack, and despite their short range, his fists pack quite a wallop. This is further emphasized by how, despite being rather hefty, he has a V-shaped back to represent his muscular abilities.
  • Battle Chef Brigade: Thrash is a Battle Chef, a monster hunter who also turns the monsters he kills into delicious orc-fusion cuisine. His arms are as thick as protagonist Mina's waist and bulging with clearly defined muscle, but he also has a sizable gut, presumably from overindulging in his own creations.
    • Cesar, the Dwarvish battle chef, has a similar build to Thrash.
  • Battle Realms has Sumo wrestlers carrying cannons. As the manual notes, considerations of strength aside it takes a man of massive bulk to stay standing when such a weapon fires.
  • Borderlands:
    • Brick in the first one, and Salvador in the second. Brick's weapon outside of the uncountable guns the game provides is a huge sledgehammer, and he is built like a bouncer. Salvador is similar in build, but the shortest of the playable characters in Borderlands 2. He is also the only character in said game able to dual-wield any combination of guns, from pistols to sniper rifles to missile launchers!
    • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!'s Wilhelm might also count, as despite being quite portly in build he can carry just as many guns and kick just as much ass as all the other playable characters.
  • Street Fighter:
    • E. Honda and Rufus. They're also Lightning Bruisers. Honda has moves that grant him great mobility, and Rufus is a bit more of a traditional Lightning Bruiser.
    • Ryu himself comes across as this in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U, as he keeps his exaggerated, overly bulky musculature while other muscular characters have sleeker and/or more realistic builds, and are usually taller too (except for Little Mac).
    • Birdie's Street Fighter V incarnation gives him a rather large gut without sacrificing his developed musculature. While this does give him shades of the Fat Comic Relief to go with it (for example, his V-Skill has him drop banana peels or cans of soda to trip his opponents up), he's still very strong indeed. Several of his attacks involve snatching up the opponent with a chain and smashing them into the ground, which is equally effective on every member of the cast, including the resident Big Guys like Alex, Zangief, other Birdies and even Abigail, who's objectively even larger than him!
  • Bloodline Champions has the Vanguard and Glutton bloodlines, both being in the toughest archetype 'Tank' in the game.
  • In God of War Ragnarök, Thor possesses a very heavyset build akin to a powerlifter's, and is the strongest of the Aesir, and Asgard's deadliest warrior. He's capable of killing mountain-sized Giants, dwarfs Kratos, and can fight him to a stalemate without too much effort.
  • The King of Fighters
    • Takuma Sakazaki's KOF XIII sprite puts him squarely in this category, although it's unclear exactly how much is his body and how much is just loose fabric.
    • Chang Koehan is a Fat Bastard who fights using his body weight and a huge iron ball attached to a chain. Keep in mind that prisons used ball and chains to stop prisoners from escaping.
  • The four protagonists of Deep Rock Galactic are portly, chubby Dwarves with a prominent multi-chin under their beards, but they can sprint for an unlimited time without having to stop to catch their breath, can deal some serious melee damage with their pickaxes and two of them (the Gunner and the Driller) carry heavy weapons that do not weight them down in the slightest. Besides their weapons and tools (and the ammo needed to feed said weapons), all four of them can also carry a lot of minerals without slowing down and can casually pick up and carry objects almost as big as they are while only suffering a minor slowdown effect.
  • Earthquake from the Samurai Shodown games is a McNinja who mixes this with Acrofatic.
    • There's also Wan-Fu who depending on the game ranges from ripped but wide to having a noticeable potbelly who nevertheless is still strong enough to lug a massive pillar around with just one arm.
  • Gan Isurugi from the Rival Schools games. His fighting style is even rooted in sumo wrestling.
  • Tekken
    • Bob, a fat dude entirely played for comedy. The gag has no bearing on his gameplay, as he nearly broke the first version of Tekken 6 by being too good.
    • Ganryu, by virtue of being a sumo wrestler, is rather husky.
  • Pokémon:
    • Makuhita and Hariyama, given that they are strong Fighting types but they also look like they're fat (as opposed to the Machop line, which has obvious muscles). This is mainly because they're designed to resemble sumo wrestlers.
    • In fact, Snorlax, who might as well be the official "Fat-type" Pokémon, can be a formidable physical powerhouse when trained right.
    • Slaking is also quite fat, and has the fourth-highest base Attack of all Pokémon (so far), tied with Regigigas. Though Slaking is stuck with the physical equivalent of Brilliant, but Lazy, entire teams are built around removing this weakness, because, once it's off, Slaking can easily stand toe-to-toe with even the most powerful of Olympus Mons.
    • Stoutland is a tubby (hence the name) dog-like Pokémon whose best stat is its Attack.
    • Camerupt is a fat-looking camel (an animal whose most prominent features are its fat storage units) whose best stats are Attack and Special Attack.
    • Pangoro looks like a pudgy panda-man but hits like a train with its 124 base attack points and with the Iron Fist ability increases punching attacks by 20%.
    • Played with in regards to Throh; he's no slouch in Attack, but his taller, thinner, blue-skinned counterpart Sawk is significantly stronger. Justified with their martial arts styles: Throh, with his much higher HP and marginally higher Defense and Special Defense, is a Judo master, while Sawk, who trades endurance for Speed, is a Karate master.
    • Conkeldurr is classified as the "Muscular Pokémon", hits extremely hard, can swing concrete pillars around like they were twigs, and is quite short and stout. His evolutionary line was based on circus strongmen, known for being large and muscular people.
    • Charizard qualifies, particularly as Mega Charizard X, which is stouter, fatter, and more muscular than the slim, aerodynamic Mega Charizard Y but hits much harder physically.
    • Tinkaton has a bit of a gut, but is still strong enough to swing around her giant hammer like it's nothing.
    • As for humans, there's two notable Gym Leader examples, Chuck and Crasher Wake. Chuck is an older man, and it's implied that he use to be in fantastic shape. While he still trains, he clearly settled down after marriage, and his Big Eater appetite, once needed to keep his strength up, is now a determent to his slower metabolism. Wake, meanwhile, is a masked wrestler, which are typically a bit doughier around the middle. Hikers also fit this trope, being overweight in all generations but having the stamina to explore mountains and canyons. One in Hoenn even tells you post-battle how to get in shape by carrying a full, heavy backpack and really stomping through rugged terrain.
  • The appropriately named Heavy Weapons Guy in Team Fortress 2. Whether or not he's fat per se or just a naturally large man is debatable (though some of the other classes will taunt him about being fat), but that doesn't diminish his strength one bit. If the Meet the Team videos are to be considered canon, the Heavy's Minigun weighs 150 kilograms, or 330 pounds (with ammo possibly not included), and he lugs it around at 70% of the base speed. The "Jungle Inferno" update also gave him a taunt where he does push-ups one-handed, an exercise that takes a lot of strength even if you're small, let alone GIANT.
  • In 007: From Russia with Love, OCTOPUS also employs stout types to carry their heavy artillery. And it takes quite a lot to put these guys down.
  • Dynasty Warriors
    • Meng Huo and Dong Zhuo are extremely large men who nonetheless can cause earthquakes with punches in the case of the former, or pick up and toss the likes of Lu Bu in the case of the latter.
    • Samurai Warriors gives us Goemon Ishikawa, who despite his extremely fat appearance is second only to Keiji Maeda in strength. Not only does he wield an Epic Flail, but he's also got a cannon strapped to his back!
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Wario is the strongest of all the mustached plumbers. He is also the fattest.
    • Bowser isn't so much fat as he is naturally large, which comes from being the King of Koopas. He was originally an ox, in fact. While not plump in the literal sense of the word, his minions reference his natural mass by calling him "Your Chunkiness", "Your Chubbiness", etc.
    • Mario himself, though nowhere near as fat as Wario (in fact, Mario may not be fat per se and could just be round design-wise, but it's worth noting he's stouter than his brother Luigi), and he can lift and throw Bowser by the tail; not to mention his jumps, flips, and somersaults that would impress an Olympic gymnast. He's not slow, either.
    • Sledge Brothers are overweight versions of the Hammer Brothers that can jump way higher than Mario and shake the ground upon landing.
    • Also, Sumo Brothers, who carry enough horsepower in their feet to stomp with and shake a flame-spreading lightning bolt down from whatever row of blocks they occupy.
    • Tubba Blubba is another example. His name says it all: he's a fat, but powerful Clubba.
  • Likewise, King K. Rool, the immensely fat Kremling king from the Donkey Kong Country series. When you're one of the strongest beings in a land where Donkey Kong is considered average, that's saying something. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate gives K. Rool a sumo build where he has an exaggerated gut, but also has muscular arms and can be quite nimble at times.
  • King Hippo, Bear Hugger, and Mad Clown from Punch-Out!! Are all fat, but strong.
  • Hong from Live A Live is the fattest of the three possible inheritors of the Earthen Heart style, but also the strongest in terms of brute force.
  • Kiesha Phillips and Dmitri Petrovich of Backyard Sports. Both are fat but strong in every game.
  • Final Fantasy has a few examples:
    • Seeq, from the Final Fantasy games revolving around Ivalice. You can tell right off that the intelligent and wiry Bangaa are physical powerhouses. The Seeq who coexist with them, on the other hand, are played more comically with their dim wit, jiggling bellies, and snorting, but they are just as powerful as Bangaa — and surprisingly fast to boot.
    • Gilgamesh appears this way in Dissidia 012: Duodecim, in that he's similar in size to some of the Tin Tyrants (like Garland and Golbez), but he doesn't share their comparatively narrow waistlines.
    • The Vanu Vanu in Final Fantasy XIV are a race of bird beastmen that are very portly while also having muscular arms. In combat, they can easily smash you with their knuckle dusters to put on the hurt while others will use knives or fire magic.
  • In The Darkness, Butcher Joyce is a clearly obese "Cleaner"... and strong enough to lift two dead bodies under either arm. Made particularly clear by the fact that the protagonist can only manage one in both hands.
  • The Grunts of Halo. They may not look like it, as they're shorter and stubbier than your average human, but those who've read Halo: First Strike remember how ODST Cpl. Locklear struggled to lift a Fuel Rod Cannon before the Spartans decided it was too heavy for him and took it from him. Now notice that Grunts heft these things around no problem. In fact, Grunts are shown to be quite capable of tearing humans apart with their bare hands.
  • The Jydge from 10tons, is a cyborg law-enforcer. In a blatant case of Bigger Is Better, the Jydge can get the Shrinkify mod fairly early. This makes the Jydge 30% smaller, so he's harder to accurately target and can fit in narrower spaces. Late in the game, there's the Giant mod which makes the Jydge much wider and taller so he's a bigger target and can't fit small spaces. However becoming a Giant has its upside, the Jydge has 4 times more health and it does far more damage in Melee plus the Jydge's reach greatly increases as well. Interestingly both Shrinkify and Giant can be combined, the resultant Jydge is now slightly beefier than the average man and is a slightly larger target, but the Jydge has all the bonuses that being a giant gives.
  • In Shenmue II, Lan Di's Dragon is Dou Niu, a very tall, fat man who is so physically powerful he's a Hopeless Boss Fight until the very end of the game.
  • Grimm from Advance Wars DS is a fairly heavy-set guy whose gimmick as a CO is that his units hit harder than the average (but have lower defence as compensation).
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, Frank West's weight went a little north as his life and career went south, but he's still very muscular overall.
  • Purple Pikmin are very stocky. One purple weighs as much as 10 Pikmin of other kinds, and they can lift 10 times the weight. Their downside is being very slow, to the point where a purple Pikmin with a leaf or bud on its head simply cannot keep up with the Captains when on the move.
  • Warcraft
    • The Ogres in the first game were slabs of lean muscle, but in Warcraft II, they gained a second head and a big ol' belly, which carried on into Warcraft III and World of Warcraft. A patch shortly before The Burning Crusade suddenly made them much leaner again — though they're still pretty rotund — and gave them significant muscle definition.
    • Also, the Pandaren. Their culture considers being fat a good thing, but this doesn't stop them from being extremely capable fighters.
      Chen Stormstout: "Why would I want to feel skinny? Size is strength!"
    • The Kul Tirans are noticeably fatter than most playable races (beaten only by the above Pandaren,) but one of their racial abilities allows them to deck an enemy so hard it knocks them back.
  • Hugo Strange from Batman: Arkham City apparently trains his body to the limits every day in an attempt to be as physically fit as his hero/obsession Batman, to the extent that he could punch a dent in steel and not feel it. He dies before we find out if this was empty boasting or not.
  • The Legend of Zelda
    • The Gorons are a race of these. Strong as boulders, most have big bellies to go with their strength. In Twilight Princess, they practice sumo wrestling (a common sight of Stout Strength), and the only way for Link to beat them is to strap on Iron Boots so that he can more easily stay in place.
    • Ganondorf in Twilight Princess, Wind Waker and Hyrule Warriors has put on some weight since Ocarina of Time due to his age, and not all of it is muscle. In particular, Hyrule Warriors and Super Smash Bros. make him shorter and stouter, presumably to balance his size with the other characters. He's still extremely buff, strong, imposing and not laughably fat in the least, with Hyrule Warriors even depicting him as a wild Lightning Bruiser. His classic depictions as anthropomorphic pig Ganon take this even further, where he's obviously very fat and just as strong.
    • King Dorephan of the Zora in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He may be round, but it's the roundness one gets from being built like a barrel full of muscles. He's incredibly strong, even having destroyed a Guardian by picking it up and hurling it off the edge of a cliff.
    • A Link Between Worlds gives us Rosso, a miner and one of the era's Seven Sages. He's a miner for a living, so while he's very large and carries extra heft, he can pick up and break rocks without any sort of effort (something that the Bishōnen Link needs special equipment to do). It's implied that he might be a descendant of Darunia, the Goron Sage of Fire from Ocarina of Time, given both his association with the color red and Goron-like features including all-black eyes and a notably rounded stomach.
    • Queen Oren of the Zora is a Zig-Zagged example. For most of the game, she's a slim fish-like woman, but when Link first meets her, someone has stolen her Smooth Stone, a voluntary Restraining Bolt; without it, she bloats to a massive size and is said to be overflowing with power. It's not entirely clear which form is Oren's natural one.
  • The Sly Cooper games has "The" Murray, who despite being The Load in the first game is upgraded to the muscle of the crew in the later games. His missions generally involve wrecking stuff and dealing with large groups of enemies.
  • OFF has Enoch, the zone 3 boss, who is so bulky when you first fight him he's completely unkillable. You get to use this against him by running away so that, when you confront him again, he's so tired he can actually be harmed.
  • In Chuck Rock, not only can Chuck lift and throw heavy rocks, as the name implies, but his basic attack is bashing enemies with his enormous beer belly.
  • Meg from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn appears to be chubby, but her description says that she's fat because of her large muscle. While not as strong as other Knights, Meg can still wipe floors with enemies if trained. Played straighter with her father Brom, who like her has worked on a farm his whole life, but is also a veteran from the Mad Kings War, and despite being a little heavier than in the last game is one of the top two best Generals in the game. There's also the Lion King Caineghis, who while in Lion Form has attack power matched only by his Nephew Skrimir, and it takes even Skrimir a fair amount of grinding to get there.
  • In Saints Row, you can turn the Boss into one of these — the option to be a huge Fat Bastard is there and the Boss is powerful enough to pick up and throw the average human being or snap necks with minimal effort. More canonically, Genius Bruiser Oleg Kirrlov is first seen in the third game held captive and naked, and it's very clear that he's an individual of considerable girth. However, it's also patently clear that he is a main battle tank of a man and could probably crush a human head in his hand like a pea. The Brutes from the same game are actually imperfect clones of him, lacking his speed, intelligence, and ability to demonstrably kill the Boss dead with a single punch if angered.
  • In League of Legends there are a few characters who are notable for this trope.
    • Gragas, the Rabble Rouser, is pretty much the fattest character in the game by far and is stated in his background to loom over the tallest man. At first glance he's doesn't seem anything more than an uncouth though impressively large drunkard but nonetheless, he holds his own among the League's experienced soldiers and deadly assassins.
    • After his relaunch, Sion also became this. While it's not as notable because of his size, he's quite portly now, and if one looks at his in-game character model, he has a very notable rotund shape. Which fits, as when he was alive he's described as "a human battering ram".
    • Post-relaunch Udyr is also this, and to a fairly realistic degree. He's much portlier than the average male fighter in League (something made clear by his perpetual shirtlessness), but not only is he not out of shape, he's very muscular in the places that matter, namely his arms. If anything, his beefy physique is a tipoff to the fact that he's in fact immensely durable and can shrug off hits like it's nothing.
  • In Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, Jake, Mark, and Martin Brown are visibly rotund and strong enough to use long guns one-handed.
  • Guts Man and Hard Man from Mega Man and Mega Man 3 respectively. The former can jump hard enough to create tremors and dislodge boulders to catch with one hand and throw at you, while the latter jumps pretty high up and launches its fists as boomerangs at you. Mega Man 8's Grenade Man and Frost Man also have some swift physical attacks for someone of their builds. And this says nothing about various other robots such as the Devil series.
    • Byte from Mega Man X3 is a Reploid with the build of a powerlifter: his body is designed to look muscular and imposing while also sporting a big belly. Why he'd be built with a round gut is a mystery since it doesn't seem to offer him an advantage in combat, but it sure as hell doesn't get in the way either. His punch combo can shave off a ton of health and makes him one of the game's most dangerous foes, especially if you're unlucky enough to run into him without any upgrades or Maverick weapons.
  • King Dedede from the Kirby franchise carries a huge mallet, and can also jump high and land hard.
  • The criminal Roadhog in Overwatch is very fat but has very developed arms. His main skill has him throw a chained hook at an enemy and pull them into close range with a single tug on the chain, one-handed. This is equally effective on every character in the game, whether they are a man-sized robot, an adult gorilla wearing armor and a jetpack, a Mini-Mecha, a giant of a man clad head-to-toe in Powered Armor and carrying an enormous hammer, or another Roadhog.
    • Similarly, Torbjorn is a lot rounder than his squadmates from the original Overwatch strike team, but he's far more muscular than all of them save for Reinhardt and capable of kicking ass even as an old man. His first comic story even has him infiltrating and disabling a gigantic mech before effortlessly defeating its pilot.
  • Attikus from Battleborn is a very fat and rather strong Thrall.
  • Duncan Wu from Shadowrun Hong Kong was this in his youth, when he was fat enough to earn the nickname "Duncan Donut" and strong enough to act as muscle for several different street gangs. After joining Lone Star, he slimmed down but remains a heavy hitter.
  • Is Karnov fat? Yes? Is he strong? Most definitely.
  • Sigismund Dijkstra from The Witcher is a textbook example, being one of two characters in the entire franchise who could be described as obese. He is also mentioned as being prodigiously strong, and his fighting skills are such that hardened spec ops veterans like Vernon Roche and Isengrim Faoiltiarna are leery about fighting him.
    • King Henselt of Kaedwen is also a heavily built but powerful fighter, though neither as fat nor as dangerous as Dijkstra.
  • Samurai Goroh from F-Zero manages to be simultaneously ripped and obese.
    • Dr. Stewart is also fat but has noticeably defined biceps.
  • Body Blows: Dug, a Las Vegas-based wrestler, really throws his weight around in battle. Notably, he is heavy enough to cause tremors by jumping and leaping into Ground Pounds that can do some damage to any opponent with his or her feet on the ground.
  • In Fable II, Sister Hannah is a Big Fun nun who fights with a gigantic warhammer that she tore out of a commemorative statue barehanded. After leaving her order, she becomes known as Hammer, the Hero of Strength.
  • Futoshi Shimano from Like a Dragon is basically the Kingpin (see the Comic Books folder above) as a Yakuza boss, whose seemingly fat with the suit on but reveals some impressive muscle when he takes it off for a beatdown with his fists or katana.
    • Hiroki Awano from Yakuza 0 is noticeably pudgy, but his arms are bulging with muscle. It is mentioned that he used to be a serious fighter before he let himself go, but it quickly becomes apparent that he hasn't lost much.
    • Sakakiba from Judgment is quite a Fat Idiot but he's almost as dangerous as Honda and Koga.
    • Shigeru Nakahara from Yakuza 3 is a short, pudgy, grey-haired grandpa, who is also strong enough to wrestle a bull into submission and call an ambulance for himself after being shot three times at close range. A villainous example would be Tsuyoshi Kanda, the current boss of the Nishikiyama Family, who's a screaming wall of flab but also physically strong enough to rip off a massive stone plaque from a wall and swing it around as a weapon.
  • Asgore in Undertale is a giant of a goat-person, and while his sprite doesn't give that much detail on his physique, he's strong enough to wield a trident that's as tall as he is, and is tied for having the highest stats of any monster in the Underground (80 atk and def, same as Toriel). His build is not obvious in your first encounter with him, given that he wears a bulky cape and heavy plate armor, but when he wears casual clothing in the True Pacifist ending of Undertale and in Deltarune, it's clear that he has both a prominent belly and sizable muscles.
  • Kabbu from Bug Fables is a thickly built beetle whose waistline is subject to a few wisecracks from his friends Vi and Leif. He's also the powerhouse of Team Snakemouth, sporting enough strength to hurl solid blocks of ice in the air and shatter huge boulders by ramming into them. Fellow beetle Stratos of Team Slacker is even bigger around the middle and is so insanely powerful that he can easily be considered to be one of the strongest characters in the setting, bar none.
  • Many characters in Tribal Hunter exemplify this. Munch in particular literally revolves around this, both by game mechanics and lore.
  • The Iron Bull in Dragon Age: Inquisition is huge and powerfully built, but he has a barrel-chested powerlifter's figure rather than a leaner stereotypical Heroic Build.
  • Guilty Gear -STRIVE- introduces us to Goldlewis Dickinson, the Secretary of Defense and right-hand man of the U.S. President. Despite being so massive and hefty, he's still strong enough to swing his coffin around like a flail and at one point in the story mode, he manages to catch a rocket bare-handed moments before it hit some soldiers and toss it away.
  • Potionomics: Muktuk is a humanoid walrus who comes from a culture that considers muscles a sign of both physical and spiritual power. His torso is shaped like an oblate spheroid, but his arms are thick with muscle. He works as a metalworker, and Sylvia can go weightlifting with Muktuk in his personal gym as a stress relief activity.
  • Dark Souls: Executioner Smough wears armor that makes him look morbidly obese. In fact, the art book shows that underneath the armor he's a lot more muscled than he appears, though he's still wide and stocky. Of course, he would have to be extremely strong to walk around in full plate armor and swing his Humongous-Headed Hammer around.
  • The Battle Cats: Weightlifter Cat's evolution line is big, chunky, and extremely strong, with the final form, Pizza Cat, being able to huck around four giant pizzas at once like it's nothing.

    Web Comics 
  • In General Protection Fault, the badly-overweight programmer Dexter demonstrates superhuman strength on a couple of occasions - most notably during the Battle of Liberty, when he took on C.R.U.D.E's Giant Mook, Mr. Inertia, singlehandedly. Despite Inertia being a literal giant, at least 12 feet tall and nearly as wide across the shoulders, Dex somehow managed to knock him out. In a more recent arc, while trying to lose some of his mass to avoid health complications, he's seen knocking punching bags straight off their ropes, and into the wall hard enough to leave cracks.
    • Mr. Inertia himself also qualified as a particularly extreme example - he's not just tall, he's MASSIVE. Later hints, however, seem to point to there being more to him than meets the eye...
  • Sydney Burns of Mob Ties, big, fat, loud-mouthed, and pretty much unstoppable.
  • Kevin Dewclaw of Kevin & Kell isn't exactly that small. 6'0", 250 or so pounds, and former professional wrestler. His physique is showing his age, but he's not exactly the weakest in his family.
  • Schlock from Schlock Mercenary looks like he's made out of mush, but is pretty fast ("you're faster than you look" is almost a tagline) and incredibly strong (that shield looks to be at least 6' * 3' and at least 4" thick, and it's solid hull-plate).
  • The titular character from Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire is a Heavy Worlder, and while he looks like a walking blob, he grew up in 3G, and what looks like fat is actually pretty much solid muscle.
  • Ace Dick from Problem Sleuth is the strongest of the trio, even before gaining experience. After merging with two other selves, he becomes the World's Strongest Man.
  • Rocko Sasquatch from The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!
  • Mikkel from Stand Still, Stay Silent can do quite a lot of heavy lifting and perform other acts of strength that leave other members of the team winded, but has trouble getting himself up a too steep hill.
  • Philomena Vasilia from Never Satisfied is as stocky as she is sweet, and didn't have her magic come in until she was fifteen. What's a lady of nobility to do with herself while waiting? Training for and winning every heavyweight sports championship in the country, apparently!
  • El Goonish Shive:
    • Mr. Tensaided's appearance during the non-canon Grace-A-Monsters arc shows that he's got a decent amount of muscle and Word of God is that this part of his appearance is canon.
    • The fantasy bartender from the Parable side story is a heavyset woman. She's also strong enough to easily lift multiple barrels of alcohol.
  • Meowriza is a Minecraft streamer best known as cross-dressing streamer F1nnst3r's girlfriend, and is a powerlifter with a very bulky [[Amazonian Beauty(though feminine)]] build.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons: Early concept art for Jagganoth (back when he was known as the "God-Eater") showed him to be massively rotund and overweight. In his current incarnation, he has a much more classical strongman build and is notably hirsute and with a belly instead of a six-pack. He is the World's Strongest Man, and a match for all of the other six Demiurges combined.
  • Serix: Rees is overweight but is shown to still be very strong, possibly due to her body being built for industrial work. May does complain about Rees's body not being able to run fast after piloting it during a battle, though.

    Web Original 
  • Survival of the Fittest version one had Ian Hargrave, the baseball team's obese catcher. His profile explicitly stated that he was rarely bullied once other kids found out about his strength, and considering the Training from Hell the baseball team went through, it's likely that he had quite a bit of muscle under the blubber. Unfortunately, he was gunned down in his first appearance without getting a chance to use this strength. V4 also has Simon Grey, though he's merely pudgy rather than obese.
  • Darwin's Soldiers features Gustave, a Funny Animal Nile crocodile. He is described as being kind of overweight with a potbelly. He is also extremely strong, capable of decapitating people by punching them, bending one-inch-thick rebar like paper clips and other feats of Super-Strength.
  • In videos on their second channel where they appear on-camera, Lauri and Anni of Hydraulic Press Channel fame both look rather stocky and strong. Lauri has been working in his family's machining business since he was thirteen, and both are competitive powerlifters. Their wedding photo even shows them powerlifting!
  • Baseball from Inanimate Insanity is said to be fat (Although he hates being called as such.), and at one point is shown to kick Knife powerfully off of an iceberg.

    Western Animation 
  • Eleanor from Alvin and the Chipmunks is a slight variation on this trope as well as one of the few female examples. Despite her physique, she was revealed to be very athletic and was able to beat Alvin in a one-on-one soccer match.
  • Pam Poovey from Archer was mostly portrayed as a just a Big Eater woman. However, in season two we learn that not only is she quite strong but also that she paid for college by participating in and winning illegal bare-knuckle boxing matches against men.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: It is very easy to see General Iroh as a largely harmless old butterball (especially in the first two seasons). When it suits him it is also very painful. Even more so in Season 3, when he trades his keg for a six-pack.
    • Also the Hippo, one of the competitive earthbenders in "The Blind Bandit."
  • Billy Bob of Beavis and Butt-Head fame is a morbidly obese hillbilly who can smash through walls with little effort. He's also surprisingly fast on his feet.
  • Nathan and Chad may be the most heavyset characters on Clarence, but are nonetheless the strongest, being able to easily lift weights and throw rocks.
  • Ord from Dragon Tales doesn't look very strong, but he can throw a baseball out of bounds.
  • The title character in Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids is absolutely huge, but no less athletic than the other characters. In one episode, he lifts the back end of a car off the ground.
  • Peter Griffin of Family Guy fame is quite overweight, but he can give a beating just as good as he can take one.
    • His son Chris is just as fat, but is also shown to possess great physical strength; many episodes mention him having strong arms (which "Bookie of the Year" reveals to be the result of years of masturbation), and "Stand By Meg" has a scene where he's shown lifting very heavy-looking weights with relative ease in his living room.
  • Broadway from Gargoyles is very much overweight, but every bit as powerful as his fellow gargoyles.
  • Goof Troop has a father/son pair of these. PJ has fought off bullies and is required to do a lot of difficult manual labor by his hardass father which he is shown to be quite capable of doing even in rapid succession. Meanwhile, Pete can carry his overweight 11-year-old son wherever he wants with ease.
  • Gravity Falls:
    • Gentle Giant Soos is notably chubby and can run while carrying two twelve-year-olds if he needs to.
    • Grunkle Stan is the older character version. His Top-Heavy Guy physique has gone to seed a bit in his old age, but he can still throw an impressive punch.
    • Mabel's friend Grenda is a stocky middle-school girl who can wield armchairs as improvised weapons.
  • Jackie Chan Adventures:
    • Tohru is huge and heavily built, like a sumo wrestler, but he has strength like....well, a sumo wrestler. (He claimed that he was "too small for sumo", although his stated weight of 480 pounds is actually typical for the sport.) He's been seen taking on demons, ninjas, and all manner of monsters, both when serving the Big Bad of the series, the dragon-demon Shendu and being Uncle's apprentice after seeing the error of his ways. He is also more intelligent than one would think based on his size and strength.
    • El Toro Fuerte is another example. He has a noticeable gut, but his arms and pecs are quite impressive. Although he's smaller than Tohru, they are roughly equal in terms of strength.
  • In Justice League Unlimited, Steven Mandragora, one Villain of the Week, was effectively a Tobius Whale Expy and then some: Black Canary's Canary Cry — which could kill someone if she uses it too close to them, even at a distance can flip a truck end over end, and once destroyed an entire arena — does no damage besides ripping off his shirt. (Thanks for that.) Then again, his son eventually became a high-powered psychic, so.
    • Foreshadowed in the beginning when Canary punches him for one crass remark too many. She winces in pain afterwards, since it was like hitting a brick wall and she doubts there is even an ounce of fat on him.
  • Eugly the rabbit from Kaeloo is extremely obese, but capable of beating up anybody (even Mr. Cat isn't safe from this).
  • Gunther from Kick Buttowski looks like a regular fat kid, but as it turns out, a lot of that bulk is apparently muscle. He's been shown to perform some impressive physical feats, like wrestling a bull to the ground.
  • In an episode of King of the Hill, Bill needs to exercise to get in shape for his army physical. However, he befriends a group of bodybuilders who get him fixated on building muscle without doing anything else, meaning Bill ends up with beefy arms and legs but the same beer belly he always has.
    • Back in high school Bill was a powerful, heavyset football player nicknamed "the Billdozer," who could push back multiple opponents at once. He occasionally shows he still has his strength in his middle age, like when he can force a large pile of furniture to keep from sliding out of a semi-truck.
    • Hank Hill himself counts. He has a thickset build and a noticeable beer belly but has also outrun charging bulls and kicked through a chain link fence to chase down a man who almost got his son hurt. In one episode, him not being able to lift multiple propane tanks at once is a sign he's having serious back problems (which he solves with yoga, regaining his strength).
  • Willow Park in The Owl House has a stockier build compared to her peers and is shown to be capable of heavy workouts. She also shows more physical prowess in fights without the use of magic, being able to manually whip with her vines and even holding down Hunter possessed by Belos with her bare hands. To be clear, she manages to pin down one of his arms with only one of her own, despite it being several times larger than her entire body and Belos struggling the entire time.
    • Hexside student Viney has a similarly stockier build than most characters and is strong enough to manhandle her pet griffin Puddles, who is several times larger than her.
  • Mikey from Recess. People are generally aware of his strength, but overlook it because of his Gentle Giant personality, mixed with a bit of Cloud Cuckoolander.
  • Muscle Man from Regular Show may not look to be in top form, but he's still pretty strong.
  • In Samurai Jack the Scotsman's wife obviously qualifies. Despite being overweight, she was able to knock out the Master of the Hunt and slaughter an entire army of robots by herself that Jack and the Scotsman couldn't defeat together, unarmed. As for how that same army managed to kidnap her in the first place, it appears she possesses little to no combat ability or at least no desire to ever use it... until someone calls her fat, at which point she enters Unstoppable Rage mode. Even Jack would rather turn tail and run than fight her in this state.
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Shaggy and Scooby temporarily acquire this attribute after they consume all of the starchy food in Crystal Cave. While too fat to fit into the Mystery Machine, they have enough strength to go one-on-one with the Gluten Demon.
  • She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
    • Rare female example in Glimmer, who's definitely a bit bigger-boned than, say, Adora, but is almost as capable an Action Girl and at one point lays out Shadow Weaver with one teleport-assisted punch.
    • The unnamed lizard woman who accompanies Huntara in the Crimson Waste is stout and shockingly strong.
  • The Simpsons:
    • The fat Homer Simpson is very much Strong as They Need to Be. In one episode his punches don't discomfort a fly, while in another episode he picks up a boulder. Another episode has him start to lift weights, gaining a more muscled physique, but when he defiantly tells his kids to try to find any fat on his body, they quickly find a whole lot.
    • Barney is even fatter than Homer but strong enough to carry a grown man or full beer keg under each arm.
  • Bigmouth and pretty much all ogres in The Smurfs are big, fat, and strong.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Patrick & Mr. Krabs are quite strong for their size.
  • Steven Universe:
    • This appears to be a common trait amongst Quartz Gems: Rose Quartz is by far the biggest member of the Crystal Gems, both in height and girth. Amethyst and Steven are much smaller (due to Amethyst being "overcooked" and Steven being half-human), but are also plump and strong (although Steven may just be strong by human standards). Jasper has muscle upon muscle, and is tough enough to take on a highly synchronized two-Gem fusion alone, and mainly loses because of her opponent using her environment against her.
    • On the human side, Sadie is short, stout, and can break a screen door in half with one kick. In bunny slippers.
  • MacArthur from Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race is overweight but also one of the strongest, fittest competitors to the extent her physical prowess can rival that of a pair of Olympic athletes.
  • Bulkhead from Transformers: Animated.
  • Xiaolin Showdown
    • The Acrofatic Tubbimura is not only fast for his weight but incredibly strong as well.
    • Clay Bailey is definitely smaller than Tubbimura, but he's still The Big Guy of the main cast.
  • Bluto from Popeye. In one episode alone, he manages to send the high striker puck right through the bell and onto the sun, get Popeye in a wrestling hold, and tie Olive in some train track rails.
  • Like you'd expect bears to be, the 3 main characters of We Bare Bears are quite strong. For instance, Ice Bear often carries his brothers around when they travel.
  • A repeated trope in The Venture Bros., filled as it is with heroes and villains who are past it but determined to carry on reliving the glory days. Amongst the main cast, Sergeant Hatred, 21, and Brock Samson all fit the bill.
  • In Wakfu, the first Iop God (as seen in extra materials such as the card videogame Krosmaga) is a Top-Heavy Guy who has quite a bulky physique. This doesn't stop him from being the physically strongest God of all the 12, as well as the one who personally defeated Rushu when the latter was about to conquer the world.
  • Idiot Hero Coop of Megas XLR is a prime example: he's fat, lazy, and a Big Eater extreme, having won the "Lord of the Large Pants" eating contest several years running, but he also has enough physical strength to easily lift car parts and destroy a radio with a single punch. On his own, he's a Mighty Glacier, given that he lacks genuine fitness—in one episode, he angrily complains that a villain dared to "make him run half a block"—but thankfully he has a Humongous Mecha to provide agility and speed.

    Real Life 
  • Weightlifters, powerlifters, and strongmen. Even those that aren't pumped up on steroids tend to look like piles of marshmallows. Examples include:
    • Andy Bolton, the first man to deadlift over one thousand pounds: Andy Bolton's Thousand-Pound Deadlift
    • Hossein Rezazadeh, aka "the strongest man in the world," world record holder for the snatch and clean & jerk.
    • Vasily Alekseyev, holder of 80 world records in weightlifting, a gold medal winner at the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics, and possessor of an awe-inspiring gut.
    • British strongman Eddie "The Beast" Hall, winner of World's Strongest Man 2017, was 6'3" and 379 pounds (172 kg) when he competed, sporting a great big belly but also undeniable muscle. Notably, he set a strongman deadlift world record of 500 kg, which stood until Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson deadlifted 501 kg in 2020. Since retiring from strongman, and especially since he committed to fighting a boxing match with Hafþór in 2021, Eddie has downsized to a still-husky but notably reduced weight where you can properly see his abs.
    • Kyriakos Grizzly, a middle-aged former Olympic Weightlifter turned bouncer from the Greek city of Kavala, known by some as "the strongest man on the internet" and (affectionately) to fans as the "Bloatlord" with his style of workout and calorie intake known as "Bloatmaxxing", is effectively a Sphere of Destruction at this point with no neck; He regularly posts videos of weighting anywhere from 190-210 kilos, and much more than you might think of that is muscle. As a result, he is absurdly strong, able to lift weights most can't even move, including sled-pulling over half a ton and being able to remain seated when men 3/4th's of his size try to pull him up by the arm. See former World's Strongest Man Brian Shaw struggle to move 2/3rd's of the weight Kyriakos does on the Zercher Shrug for yourself.
    • Discussed in a video made by Vice detailing strongman Robert Oberst's (the second strongest man in the world at that time) diet, which amounted to 20,000 calories a day. Oberst and most of his workout buddies looked like huge fat guys but were all immensely strong. One of them was slim and had the classic "inverted triangle" physique, and the others all lightly ribbed him for all the extra pain he put himself through to keep his shape.
  • When pro Bodybuilders are "off-season" they focus on bulking, exercising mainly to increase their muscle mass and eating large amounts of food to fuel their growth. The side-effect of this is that they also gain fat and water weight, making them look husky or even fat despite their bulging muscles. It’s only in the months leading up to the competition that they get off the bulk and start "prepping" for the show, which involves a cutting program of dieting and cardio exercise intended to burn off all the fat while losing as few of their muscular gains as possible. Right before the competition, they’ll go to the extent of dehydrating themselves so that their skin will look paper-thin, and no fat or water will be present to hide the separations or striations of their muscles. This means that they’re actually at their weakest and most depleted when they’re on stage at their most visually impressive while being at their strongest when they’re in their flabby-looking offseason. After the contest, they'll start the bulk/prep cycle all over again. Repeatedly gaining and losing a large amount of weight is hard on the body, and it's one of the many ways in which bodybuilders risk their health in pursuit of fame and glory.
  • Sumo wrestlers, practically by default though with some exceptions, cultivate extremely large physiques to give them additional pushing power, and because being difficult to move is practically the most important thing in sumo. They have quite a lot of fat, but over short distances, they pack an enormous wallop in surprising bursts of speed and explosiveness.
  • American Football linemen are some of the closest equivalents to sumo wrestlers in Western competitive team sports. Linemen are known for eating far more than they actually enjoy while playing to keep their bulk up and becoming almost unrecognizable when they can finally stop after retirement and quickly shed the fat. This dietary practice has been one major point of criticism of the sport, as it can often result in health problems later in life. Some football players famous for weighing in at well over 300 lbs include William Perry, Nate Newton, and Vince Wilfork.
  • Masutatsu Oyama claimed to have killed bulls by punching them and founded a school of Karate that remains popular today.
  • Louis Cyr, the late 19th century-early 20th-century Canadian strongman who may have been the strongest man ever to have lived, looked like the Michelin Man with a moustache.
  • Boxers in Ancient Greece are thought to have pudgier figures than modern boxers. A possible explanation is that bouts were barehanded, focusing the sport more on body blows, and big bellies are thought to offer additional protection. It might also be simply because they had no weight classes, so fighters had incentive to be as big as possible. Classical artwork of the era, however, usually depicted boxers with classical heroic proportions favoring broad shoulders, narrow waists, with the "pudginess" coming from extremely well-developed sides, obliques and lat muscles which were more common due to the absurd amount of pulling strength required in the manual labor of said times.
  • Boxer George Foreman became a prime example of this during his comeback; opponent Evander Holyfield wore himself out throwing body blows, while Foreman (to quote Holyfield) "just sorta wobbled a bit". Despite no longer looking as chiseled as in his youth, George still punched every bit as hard as he did in his first boxing run. Mike Tyson notably refused Don King trying to set a fight with the middle-aged Foreman, quoted as saying "I ain't fighting that fuckin' animal!"
  • Heavyweight Chris Arreola was often criticized for his chubby physique, with the belief that he was not taking his conditioning seriously enough and was not reaching his potential. He went on a winning streak after slimming down.
  • Some Mixed Martial Arts heavyweight fighters are famous for being rather rotund, most notably Roy "Big Country" Nelson, who rubs his enormous belly after every win, and Eric "Butterbean" Esch, with a right hook comparable to a train crash. Fedor Emelianenko was widely considered to be the best MMA fighter for the better part of a decade with a noticeably pudgy physique.
  • The USMC has two fitness standards because the old PFT favors small, wiry cross-country runners. The new CFT (Combat Fitness Test) consists of an 800-meter sprint, followed by lifting a light but awkward weight and overhead press it, then an obstacle course-like event where you have to fireman carry and drag someone your size through parts of it. The big guys do a hell of a lot better because power and speed are more important than endurance for that test.
  • Sammo Hung, again. Sammo has the build of a teddy bear but is more than capable of holding his own against guys half his weight and age on and off-screen.
  • Actor Abraham Rubin Hercules Benrubi.
  • Harold Sakata (famous as hat-throwing henchman Oddjob in Goldfinger) only measured at 5 foot, 10 inches, and came in at a billed 230 pounds. A lot of that was muscle, hence his Olympic silver medal in weightlifting at the 1948 games.
  • Warren "Tiny" Everal got his 15 minutes of fame by lifting two tons worth of crashed helicopter off of Magnum, P.I. pilot Steve Kux, on camera.
  • Basketball player Charles Barkley acquired the nickname "The Round Mound of Rebound" while at Auburn University for his rebounding prowess, short height (listed at six-foot-six but, by his own admission, not even that tall), and a rather chunky physique. He posed for publicity photos with a piece of pizza in his hand (which he later regretted). Despite all that he played center, a position usually reserved for the tallest players, because his strength and jumping ability were extraordinary. By his third year in the NBA, playing power forward, he was an almost unstoppable force on offense and was the shortest player to ever lead the league in rebounding for a season.
  • Yet another NBA example would be Shaquille O'Neal. While Shaq was always one of the tallest men on the court at 7'1", he was also the biggest, tipping the scales at around 350lbs and his build could be best described as like a refrigerator. However, Shaq was excellent at using his size and strength to overpower and bully his opponents. Shaq was a living nightmare on the court due to his size and strength, and he was so feared that teams took to intentionally fouling the big man and relying on his notoriously poor free-throw shooting rather than trying in vain to stop him from dunking at will. It's also widely believed that Shaq's large frame (much of which was muscle, to be certain) was the reason why he was able to avoid the career-ending injuries often suffered by men of his height. His big body could handle a pounding, while his spindly counterparts could not.
  • Zion Williamson is best described as being Shaq stuffed into the body of Charles Barkley. 6 feet 6 inches, 285 pounds, 44-inch + vertical leap, and strong enough to yank basketballs out of competitors' mitts with one hand while crushing his fingers into the ball. Zion may only be a rookie but he's already manhandling 300-pound beasts like Steven Adams (prior to Zion considered by many to be the strongest player in the Association). Hopefully, his knees hold out.
  • Baseball player Prince Fielder: five-time all-star, 2007 NL home run leader. He's billed at 5 feet 11 inches (180 cm) tall and 275 pounds (125 kg).
  • The yearly World's Strongest Man Competition frequently features these.
  • Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters. Among other feats, the barrel-chested Hoosier has bashed through a wood-frame door with his shoulder and climbed up the side of a building using only a knotted rope. He also water-skied behind a cruise ship and swam a quarter-mile in a drysuit and SCUBA to demonstrate that Spy-Tux Reveal is plausible in real life.
  • Female examples: Powerlifter Becca Swanson, and Olympic weightlifter Jang Mi-Ran.
  • Italian actor Bud Spencer (real name Carlo Pedersoli) was an Olympic-level swimmer in the early '60s. As with many sportsmen, he gained considerable weight when he retired from competition and then had a long acting career in spaghetti westerns, police moves, and exotic/period comedies where fisticuffs and colorful brawling scenes featured heavily. He was often paired with the slim, blond-haired blue-eyed Mario Girotti (who adopted the alias Terence Hill).
  • A lot of the strongest animals on Earth had rather bulky body builds.
    • Elephants are easily the largest living land animals on the planet and they are capable of various feats of strength, ranging from knocking trees down to picking up full-grown adult humans in their trunks.
    • The rhino. While rhinos are normally calm and peaceful animals, they can cause major property damage when enraged.
    • The hippo. There's a reason that they're considered more dangerous than lions and crocodiles. To say nothing of being dangerous to lions and crocodiles, which will give healthy adult hippos a wide berth. There have been cases of crocs being bitten in half by hippos. Along with their great size and strength, they're violently territorial.
      • Hippos can be considered a subversion, since although they look quite pudgy, they have one of the lowest body fat percentages of all animals and what looks like chub is actually pretty much all solid muscle wrapped in a flappy hide thick enough to stop small-arms fire.
    • The domestic pig, while not as intimidating as its wild cousins, can still weigh up to a half-ton and grow to almost 11 feet in length.
    • On a much smaller scale is the Rhinoceros Beetle. While smaller than humans, they are still giants among the bug world and they can move 850 times their own weight.
    • Most bears certainly fit this, especially those that hibernate. Despite their fluffy, rotund, jiggly bodies, grizzly bears can easily outrun any human, while black bears are known for how effortlessly they can climb trees.
    • Gorillas may have a bit of a rotund gut and are normally gentle by nature, but don't ever consider them harmless. Averaging 400 pounds in weight, the Silverback Gorilla can lift over four times their own weight, twice as much as the strongest humans! Practically speaking, this comes in handy when they regularly tear down trees to get the fruit hanging above.
    • Smilodon fatalis, the famous saber-toothed cat, was the powerlifter of the feline family and would have made the biggest, strongest tiger or lion alive today feel inadequate. It was shorter in height but more than made up for it in terms of muscle mass, and paleontologists often describe its physique as being more bear-like than cat-like. It evolved its stocky physique to singlehandedly bring down gigantic prey like 1.5-ton ice-age bison.
  • Daniel Lambert (13 March 1770 – 21 June 1809) was a gaol keeper and animal breeder from Leicester England who weighed 32 stone (450 lb; 200 kg) at the age of 23. However, he was still an athlete who could kick above his head, at one point ran the eight miles from Woolwich to London "with less apparent discomfort than several average-sized men of the party", moonlighted as a swimming instructor, and used to swim across the Thames while carrying two men as a party-trick. Unfortunately, his continued weight gain reduced his mobility over the years. By the time he died at the age of 39, he weighed 52 stone 11 pounds (739 lb; 335 kg).


 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Monkey Fist vs Hulk Ron

In "Grande Size Me", Monkey Fist feels confident that his superior fighting skills and agility will fair against the hulking strongfat Ron's brute strength. Unfortunately, even after aiming for Ron's "weak spots", Monkey Fist is still outmatched in power.

How well does it match the trope?

4.91 (22 votes)

Example of:

Main / MusclesAreMeaningful

Media sources:

Report