Rated "M" for Manly



""Indiana Jones is the epitome of what all men strive to be. He's handsome, he's intelligent, he's single, sleeps around, he's got cash, he punches people, he travels the world, he can sleep with any of his students, he uses a whip, he punches people, he bangs his students in the locker room, women love him, he goes on adventures, he punches people, he can shoot people and get away with it...""

- Mr. Plinkett

Something that is fuelled to the end with testosterone. Here we see big, muscular men being badasses. Made by men for men. Expect to see Perma-Stubble, Carpets Of Virility, Stuff Blowing Up and large amounts of Rule of Cool. Most of the main characters are often grade-A badasses and sometimes Large Hams—although some of them are sometimes women, as long as they are Badass. Expect to see somebody shout a phrase WHERE! THEY! EMPHASIZE! EVERY! WORD! which can result in Memetic Mutation. Soundtrack is prone to be fueled by The Power of Rock.

Named after a line from the parody video "Counter-Strike For Kids".

In the anime fandom, the male lead of such shows is often also described as GAR, a term for characters who are so Badass that it's considered hot, even if you are normally not into that gender.

When those in charge think that a foreign video game would sell better with this aesthetic than the one it came with, you get the American side of American Kirby Is Hardcore.

The World of Badass is often the setting for this trope. Compare Darker and Edgier, Refuge in Cool, Awesomeness Is Volatile. Not directly related to Rated "M" for Money in any way but the potential for intersection between the two is high.

Editor's Note: This is for extreme manliness played seriously. For exaggerated manliness played for parody, see Testosterone Poisoning.

Contrast Chick Flick.

Advertising

 * A lot of old forties and fifties print ads. Hilariously sexist, always manly.
 * An advertisement for a casino shows a man playing roulette with a squirrel next to him placing all his nuts on the table as his bet as the voice over goes "You can cash in now and save for a rainy day or you can be a man and bet it all." The ad is basically blasting men that don't play with risky big bets.

Anime and Manga
"SUBMIT TO MY MANLINESS!!"
 * Megalo Box is somewhat of a retelling of Ashita no Joe. The boxing in this version has Gear, (and is called Megalo Box) which obviously makes the sport more dangerous. Oh, and here is the theme song.
 * Even for a cast dominated by Bishonen, we have Germany, a wurst-eating muscly fellow who also happens to be the gayest gay who ever gayed.

""Every page oozes massive amounts of testosterone. I once knew this girl who refused to read it because she was afraid she'd get pregnant.""
 * Don't forget Hungary, who's arguably manlier than many of the male cast.
 * Akagi
 * Ashita no Joe
 * Bastard!!
 * Beelzebub
 * Berserk
 * Black Lagoon...except it's the women who act like this. Thus giving it some noticeable appeal to women who love shows with Action Girls and Badass women.
 * Blaster Knuckle
 * Bleach's most prominent examples are probably Genryusai Yamamoto and Kenpachi Zaraki.
 * Ikkaku had a dislocated shoulder. What does he do? Just flex it back in place.
 * Captain Harlock.
 * Chaosic Rune, and its sequel, Chaosic Rune ES (although ES takes the manliness Up to Eleven). Yes, it's a manga about a card game, but it's about a card game that, if you lose, you die in the same incredibly painful fashion your monster did (and the death will always be in excessively graphic detail). Hot blooded, manly men and well endowed (95% of them, anyway) women fight evil villains in epic battles that include badass dragons, giant motorcycle robots, magical monsters, and more. And along with cards that summon monsters, there's cards that summon weapons such as swords, pistols, and shotguns. Yes, shotguns. It's like if Yu-Gi-Oh! were written by Bruce Campbell and drawn by Chuck Norris.
 * Cowboy Bebop is packed to the brim with references to manly action movies, a soundtrack packed with upbeat jazz and rock music, awesome fight scenes (including non-ironic use of Gun Kata!), and MANLY plot threads such as a guy trying to find a girl he lost all while battling his pretty-boy arch rival and another guy struggling with his dark past as a cop and still haunted by the girl he loved leaving him. Oh, and did we mention Faye Valentine?
 * Digimon Savers
 * Surprisingly, Digimon Xros Wars is heading this way.
 * Dragonball Z is about men with muscles so large (and in places where muscles aren't really supposed to exist) as to be an impediment to motion in scenarios even remotely grounded in reality fighting one another in increasingly violent and deadly battles (everybody except the Fake Ultimate Hero dies at least once). Women feature, but mainly as a means by which to introduce sons into the mix. And breasts. By the time the series ended, the characters could quite literally tear the universe apart by shouting loudly enough, and were probably in danger of destroying the planet they were on if they so much as tripped.
 * Hold on, there are as many daughters born during the series as sons.
 * Although save Videl, none of them DO anything, GT aside.
 * Foul! Bulma allows for all the technological impossibility, and 18 beat up Vegeta without breaking a sweat.
 * Eyeshield 21 has this in spades, though given that it's about American Football, it's a bit of a given. Especially notable given that it's a post-Millennium Shonen Jump series that mostly manages to avoid Bishonen Jump Syndrome in an era rife with it.
 * Many of the characters go straight into Testosterone Poisoning territory, considering most of the cast have some pretty impressive muscles and they're only in high school. For example, the 15-year-old whose 6'7, eats nothing but meat, looks like a caveman, and smashed a car head on with his bare hands when he was in grade school.
 * Fairy Tail Gray Fullbuster and Elfman. He (Elfman) believes everything should be settled with fists.
 * Elfman's usually talking about things that are "Man", or what a Man should do, and all of his emotions are Man as well. It goes so far that in recent episodes in both manga and anime other characters question whether Elfman himself understands what he is saying.
 * Don't forget Natsu.
 * Fist of the North Star in which a Bruce Lee knockoff defeats post-apocalyptic biker gangs by touching them gently in such a manner as makes their heads explode You don't even know you're already dead.. Also features exploding shirts in every episode.
 * There was the following description of this manga in the internet:

"WARNING: The following opening sequence is the most manly sequence EVER CONCEIVED. The sheer amount of testosterone displayed may make you start karate chopping RANDOM OBJECTS!!"
 * A Top Ten List of Anime openings and endings put this at #1, with the following disclaimer:

"This hand of mine glows with an awesome power! Its burning grip tells me to defeat you! Take this -- my love, my anger, and all of my sorrow! Shining Finger! GO GO GO! Here I go! This hand of mine is BURNING RED! Its loud roar tells me to grasp victory! ERUPTING! BURNING! FINGER!!! AND NOW! HEAT END! Erupting Burning Finger! Sekiha! LOVE-LOVE! TENKYOKEN!!!"
 * Do not forget its prequel, Fist of the Blue Sky!
 * Fullmetal Alchemist: Profound manliness has been passed down the Armstrong line for generations!!
 * G Gundam: the most manly Gundam series ever, if only you can get pass how ridiculous it is; ridiculously awesome, that is.


 * Getter Robo ("If there's a hole, then it's a man's job to thrust into it!")
 * Never mind that every character, unless they represent Bald of Awesome, has gigantic sideburns. Even the women. Even the dinosaurs.
 *  Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin
 * Golgo 13
 * Just about everything by Go Nagai, but especially the one that started it all, Mazinger Z.
 * Which is downright girly compared to Violence Jack
 * Grappler Baki
 * Gintama. Especially in serious arcs
 * Great Teacher Onizuka
 * Hajime no Ippo
 * JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It's been described as "the glam version of Fist of the North Star" for a good reason: even though 90% of the characters are well-dressed, sparkly attractive guys, it oozes testosterone, blood and raw fighting spirit from every page. It's not called manga(emphasis on MAN) for nothing.
 * Kaiji
 * Kinnikuman has muscular superheroes and supervillains duking it out Professional Wrestling style, typically while wearing nothing but a pair of short shorts. It's very title translates to "Muscle Man."
 * Kongoh Bancho. The main character crowns the first chapter by carrying a car through a Yakuza base, and can use his hands to carve a wall into a relief so beautiful as to make a grown otaku weep.
 * A lethal dose of manliness is breaking through! Try not to get addicted!
 * Lupin III
 * Mahou Sensei Negima Jack Rakan can break the laws of magic and physics and general common sense with sheer "guts." Even his own power (reflected back at him) isn't enough to kill him! If he does die, he can still come back and give the hero a lecture if he wants! He's also the only character in the series that Barbie Doll Anatomy doesn't apply to...
 * Naruto: A and his father the Third Raikage.
 * Also Gai with YOUTHFULNESS!!!
 * NEEDLESS, and half of the cast are Little Miss Badass.
 * One Piece
 * Riki-Oh
 * Rokudenashi Blues
 * Saint Seiya: Phoenix Ikki epitomizes this trope in every way possible. And not too far away, Dragon Shiryu, who is at his strongest without his armor, in a series where almost every character has one and wearing it is supposed to heighten your abilities to their max.
 * Sakigake Otokojuku
 * Space Adventure Cobra
 * Heck, Buichi Terasawa's works in general (Goku Midnight Eye, Karasu Tengu Kabuto).
 * GaoGaiGar and its OVA sequal Gao Gai Gar Final, in addition to Hot-Blooded, runs on this trope.
 * Shining examples are Geki Hyuuma who still shows off his massive biceps while in the vacuum of space and Goldymarg a robot based on him that is so manly ONE WOULD THINK HE WAS PROGRAMMED IN ALL CAPS.
 * Koutaro What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome? Taiga can make even golf Badass.
 * Then there is Guy Shishio the man who epitomizes Drop the Hammer.
 * To wit, everyone in this series Exudes Manly Tears, the men, the children, the women, everyone.
 * Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is all about drills. And fighting. Breasts feature prominently in the background. And the manliness is so awesome it warps reality. Manliness warping reality is actually the driving force of the plot.
 * And let's not forget that even the girls are manly enough to warp reality.
 * Heck even the pet piglet is manly enough to warp reality.
 * Manliest of all is Kamina. So much so just wearing his Cool Shades at least triples your manliness. WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK HE IS?!
 * Kamina will make a man out of you!
 * It's a show all about doing the impossible, seeing the invisible, breaking the unbreakable. Fighting the POWAH.
 * Bah. By the end of the series Simon out-manlies Kamina by miles.
 * And yet the Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a gigantic version of Kamina.
 * Correction, it's a low-scale physical representation of Kamina-sama's soul!
 * It's actually a combination of Kamina, Kittan, Simon and Lordgenome. People just think it's Kamina because it has his cape.
 * Lord Genome might top them all. He's a giant muscular man with an impressive spiky beard and spiral-shaped chest hair who goes around shirtless despite essentially ruling the world. He is so manly HE DESTROYS GIANT ROBOTS WITH HIS OWN BARE HANDS. HE CONSIDERS USING A GIANT ROBOT IN A BATTLE AS "HOLDING BACK".
 * He ate a Big Bang. As in for breakfast. Without milk. Devoured the damn thing whole and then turned into a gigantic-ass drill. Said drill.
 * Simon invented time-space teleportation just to punch Rossiu in the face.
 * As described to an anime club once: "Gurren Lagann is about brotherhood, giant robots, and killing furries with phallic symbols."
 * Freud Was Right.
 * Soul Eater: BLACK*STAR WILL SURPASS GOD!!!!! YAHOOOOOOO!
 * Toriko is about finding the most dangerous animals on the planet, beating them to death with your bare hands and then feasting on their eye-wateringly delicious flesh.
 * Half of the group that fight with Toriko has the ability of
 * Trigun
 * Vagabond
 * While Vandread is not an example by itself, Tarak (the planet where men live, essentially, as a One-Gender Race) definitely is.
 * And the Tarak men make children together, which may either negate this trope or make it even sexier.
 * Vinland Saga. It's about vikings. It'll put hair on your chest.
 * Legend of Galactic Heroes. As a poster once put it "One does not simply walk into Iserlohn, after all. We're talking about knife-fighting Germans on spaceships, people." Indeed, the show is filled with larger-than-life "galactic heroes". Special mention has to go to Oskar von Reuenthal and Walter von Schenkopp, though.

Comic Books

 * MAN comics. That is all.
 * Many comic covers from WWII definitely qualify. Most notably the Black Terror.
 * The Doom comic. It's manliness and a half! It's a 12.0 on a 10.0 scale of manliness!
 * RIP AND TEAR YOUR GUTS!
 * YOU'RE HUGE!
 * THAT MEANS YOU HAVE HUGE GUTS!
 * RIP AND TEAR!
 * Wolverine.
 * Thor
 * The Incredible Hulk
 * The Sub Mariner
 * The Punisher.
 * Spawn
 * Nick Fury
 * Bane
 * Lobo.
 * Actually in the realm of Testosterone Poisoning. Lobo is in fact the Supreme Icon of Sheer Manliness; liable to give the reader a Testosterone Aneurism. Women reading his comic have been known to grow chest hair and fetuses. If Frank Miller wrote him, the pages would burst into flames.
 * Catman
 * Luke Cage
 * Deathstroke
 * The Goon
 * It should be noted that while a lot of the Goon is like this, it also has many heartbreaking and tragic moments, which is not so manly. Including a very extended scene (4 pages long) of the Goon himself breaking down into tears.
 * Manly Tears.
 * Judge Dredd. He is the law.
 * You are the lawn?
 * Batman, Depending on the Writer
 * Frank Miller absolutely revels in this trope, sometimes inadvertently approaching Testosterone Poisoning.
 * As does Rob Liefeld.
 * Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandoes.
 * Nick Fury in general.
 * Battle Pope to the point of Testosterone Poisoning.
 * Jon Sable Freelance by Mike Grell
 * Green Arrow by Mike Grell
 * The Warlord by Mike Grell
 * The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
 * Grimjack
 * Preacher (Comic Book)
 * Hitman

Fan Works

 * Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami
 * Thirty Hs
 * Tiberium Wars
 * Latias' Journey
 * Brave New World
 * Poke Wars
 * John Freeman fights with bare bear hands, performs multiple backflips and other cool moves, is a One-Man Army and even pulls a k nife out of his own back to use on the enemy. Badass
 * Not to mention shrugging off several rounds from the combine's rocket racket launchers and machine masheen guns while preventing the hug tower from blowing up long enough for the rest of humenkind to escape!
 * He needs to kill fast and BULLETS TOO SLOW!! Also, in the machinima, he lifts a train and throws it at the 'enemys.'
 * Shinji and Warhammer 40 K
 * The Hunter in With Strings Attached, in pointed contrast to his “little” charges, the “Little Fool,” “Little Hero,” “Little Lunatic,” and “Little Weakling.”

Film
"Rocco: Men build things. Then we die. It's in our fucking DNA! It's what we do!"
 * The 13th Warrior
 * 300
 * Apocalypse Now. Along with Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, this suffers from Do Not Do This Cool Thing syndrome. Most young men want nothing more than to attack a Vietcong village with helicopters and napalm, and then go upriver in a boat, whilst wearing a flak jacket and machine-gunning peasants. Despite ostensibly being anti-war films, all of the aforementioned make war look awesome.
 * Even though the movie itself doesn't qualify, Colonel Miles Quaritch from Avatar definitely counts.
 * Batman Begins
 * Bloodsport
 * Ben-Hur, mostly thanks to the Chariot Race and Galley Slave scenes
 * Anything with Charlton Heston, in fact. Whenever his broad shoulders crowd out everything else onscreen, the testosterone factor in the room increases hundredfold!
 * Beowulf. A 7' tall CG Ray Winstone takes on a much taller, hideous Grendel with: No sword, No shield, No armor, no clothes of any kind. And wins. And proceeds to dismember his arm using a massive door from a Viking mead hall. Nuff said.
 * Billy Jack
 * The Bodyguard: Because Kevin Costner is a manly man who is a stoic, obsessed with Samurai stuff and makes his living bodyguarding celebrities. And Whitney Houston will always love him.
 * The Boondock Saints

""You're some kind of big, fat, smart bug, aren't you?" "Do you want to know more?""
 * Braveheart
 * Blood And Bone
 * Bullitt
 * Lawrence of Arabia
 * Casablanca is Rated "M" for Manly because it features a swashbuckling guerilla and a dour retired merc who is not so retired. But as it also features a beautiful woman who has two great men in love with her it is also a Chick Flick.
 * The Chronicles of Riddick
 * Cobra. Stallone out-Arnies Arnie
 * Commando. So manly it doesn't need the girl!
 * Conan
 * The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises
 * Deliverance
 * Die Hard
 * The entire Dirty Harry franchise.
 * Just about every movie Clint Eastwood is in. Heartbreak Ridge. A Fistful of Dollars. Unforgiven. Gran Torino. Clint Eastwood could star in a movie about Bella from Twilight reading an Oprah's book of the month club book on Lifetime and still make it manly.
 * Enter the Dragon
 * The Evil Dead series. Especially Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.
 * The Expendables. It's about a group of mercenaries sent to South America to depose a dictator, and it stars Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, and Stone Cold Steve Austin. It should go without saying, but here goes anyway: If you don't got balls, this movie'll give you a pair, and if you already have 'em, you'll get extras.
 * This fan-trailer.
 * If that ain't enough, the sequel is guaranteed to give you a seizure from the overdose of testosterone. Take A Look Yes, that's right.... you saw it. It's...
 * Fight Club
 * Gladiator
 * The Godfather. "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."
 * Highlander. Music by Queen, for double manly.
 * Indiana Jones
 * In Her Line Of Fire. Yes, Mariel is manly and gets the chick.
 * Iron Man: Multi-billionaire with charisma and swagger keeps himself in shape, kicks all kinds of supervillain ass, and gets all the hot chicks, the hot cars, the house, the ultimate Man's Garage downstairs, fucking robots, and the fact he's cool about having been caught masturbating by Gwyneth Paltrow. Oh, and the fact he gets to wear FLYING ARMOUR.
 * James Bond
 * Jason and the Argonauts
 * Jaws
 * Machete
 * Mad Max (especially The Road Warrior)
 * Master and Commander (film): Contains beautiful scenery of the ocean and of sailing ships, gentlemanly virtues, young men growing up, classical music, science, sailor folklore, ...what's that? Did I forget sword-swinging, blood and gore, and Stuff Blowing Up?
 * The Dollars Trilogy Spaghetti Western movies.
 * Nam's Angels. Nobody will have heard of this one, but it's basically Rambo with motorcycles.
 * Never Back Down
 * Ninja Assassin. The title should tell you everything you need to know.
 * Predator (Entertainment Weekly once named it the Manliest Movie Ever Made, beginning with Arnold Schwartzenegger and Carl Weathers giving each other a manly handshake, featuring Jesse "The Body" Ventura toting a Gatling gun, and starting the climax with Arnold bare chested, covered in mud and screaming out a battle cry.)
 * The more modern Predators does its best to live up to this (hey, they even have Danny Trejo!) and you could say it's definitely the manliest movie of its year. No contest for competing with Arnie and Jesse, though.
 * Rambo
 * Raw Deal
 * Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. An Expy of Kenshiro, who himself is an expy of Bruce Lee, learns kung fu from his uncle by shattering gravestones thrown at him. When he kills the drug dealer who killed his girlfriend, he is imprisoned; whereupon he fixes cut tendons in his arm with his teeth, punches the lower jaw off one of the wardens, punches the arm of the same warden thus causing it to explode, battles and defeats an ogre by throwing it into a meat grinder, and then escapes the prison by punching a hole through a concrete wall, also causing it to explode. Did we mention he has five bullets embedded in his chest the entire time but is totally unconcerned? This would honestly fall more into the realm of Testosterone Poisoning; if only the film-makers, as far as anyone can tell, weren't dead serious.
 * RoboCop
 * Rocky
 * The Scorpion King
 * Seven Samurai - So manly it makes its own manly trope.
 * And its Western remake The Magnificent Seven - Where the seven gunmen, plus the villainous bandit leader, are Badass from start to finish.
 * Shoot Em Up
 * Sin City, especially Marv. Literally every scene featuring him has him either inflicting/surviving insane amounts of torture and damage, having sex with women (technically of one woman though), and making hilariously dark, deadpan comments.
 * Soldier, so manly it doesn't need words.
 * Spartacus
 * Starship Troopers: Space football, rifles that double as shotguns, arachnid aliens that tear people in half, space-marines, explosions, and uncensored co-ed shower scenes. You pay for the whole seat, but you only need the edge!

" Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. "
 * And much like the earlier war movie examples, this was an anti-war film that still managed to make war look flipping awesome!
 * Though Star Wars as a whole doesn't seem to count (like Avatar and a few other examples above), Darth Vader definitely counts in the original trilogy (albeit slightly more dignified than other examples). And from the prequels, we have Mace Windu and Darth Maul.
 * Do you reckon Team America: World Police counts?
 * FUUUCCK YEEAAH!
 * Terminator (The sequels had manly women)
 * As did Aliens.
 * Thor, at least in the Asgard and Jotunheim scenes.
 * Total Recall
 * The Towering Inferno: Because Steve Mcqueen saving people from a burning skyscraper is just awesome.
 * The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
 * Tropic Thunder: I'M A LEAD FARMER MOTHERFUCKA!
 * True Lies
 * The Wind and The Lion is a fine example of old-school manly.
 * XXX
 * Any Bruce Lee movie.
 * Any Tony Jaa movie. Be you man, woman or child, his fight scenes will make a man out of you.
 * Any Swashbuckler starring Errol Flynn.
 * The Long Kiss Goodnight
 * Hell, even Geena Davis grows a pair halfway through the movie.
 * Most war movies, especially The Dirty Dozen.
 * Lee Marvin tends to make a movie manly just by showing up.
 * Hell in the Pacific. Lee Marvin AND Toshiro Mifune. How the world survived is anyone's guess.
 * Delta Force. Lee Marvin AND Chuck Norris!!!
 * Any movie that stars Chuck Norris automatically qualifies for this list, for the simple fact THAT IT CONTAINS CHUCK NORRIS.
 * Most classic war movies, that is- those which lean even slightly towards War Is Hell tend to avert this trope. A decent rule of thumb is whether it's in shelved under "Feature Films" or "War" at the video store.
 * Many Blaxploitation movies, i.e... Shaft, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Truck Turner...
 * Anything with Pam Grier. Real men love real women!
 * Which makes her role in Escape From L.A. a whole lot funnier.
 * It says right in the theme song for Black Dynamite that he does kung-fu when he wants to, and has sex when he pleases. What more could a man hope to be?
 * The films of Quentin Tarantino. Inglourious Basterds, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs are rated M for manly... Death Proof, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill are rated W for womanly!
 * Excessive blood, violence, and swearing? Still pretty manly, even if it's all coming from women...
 * Most of Michael Bay's movies. Bad Boys, The Rock, Transformers...
 * Much of Reb Brown's filmography including Yor, Mercenary Fighters, Strike Commando, Space Mutiny and Robo War.
 * A lot of John Carpenter's films with Kurt Russell, Escape from New York, Escape From LA, Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing...
 * John Carpenter's Vampires is so manly, the only women in it are hookers! Frank Miller would be proud.
 * Pretty much anything scored by Ennio Morricone or Basil Poledouris.
 * The Wild Geese, in which Richard Burton, Richard Harris, and Roger Moore are mercenaries.
 * Every movie of John Wayne, Clark Gable, James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson ever.
 * Bonuse points to Gable for saying the greatest line in the history of cinema: after 10+ years of kissing Scarlett's ass and getting nothing but attitude, he finally decides to walk out. And when she asks what she's supposed to do now...


 * So It Happened One Night should be Rated "M" for Manly??
 * Yes. To elaborate: Clark Gable nearly destroyed an entire industry just by taking off his shirt in that flick.
 * The Blues Brothers is about saving an orphanage with the power of awesome music and outrunning the police in a Cool Car, while wearing Sunglasses at Night. It's the only musical men will watch, even if they deny that it's a musical.
 * What about Tommy? Or The Wall?
 * Don't forget Paint Your Wagon Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood for the Manly Musical.
 * The Wild Bunch
 * Super Troopers.
 * ...Mother of god.
 * Patton
 * No Country for Old Men
 * The Raid, the entire movie is basically people shooting or beating other people.

Literature
"And Beowulf is like: "I'm afraid it's true, after swimming for a solid week in full plate armor, I'm afraid I can't say I beat Breka. But in my defense, I was slightly slowed down by the nine sea monsters I killed along the way!""
 * The Icelandic Sagas and Gesta Danorum.
 * The modus operandi of Baen Books
 * Belisarius Series has so many Badasss and so much badassery that one can feel the heat from all the manliness warming the covers of the books.
 * Conan
 * For that matter, anything by "two-gun Bob" Robert E. Howard, ever.
 * In a similar mold, The Elric Saga.
 * The Dark Tower
 * Dune
 * Fight Club
 * The Three Musketeers is really an early example of this trope. The main characters' lives apparently consist of entirely of sex, drinking and fighting—the last for a cause if one is available, but one isn't really necessary.
 * Flashman, in an odd way.
 * By extension, Ciaphas Cain HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, who was largely inspired by Flashman. He keeps up a Manly-and-Badass-yet-humble facade to hide the fact that he'd rather be shuffling papers at a nice safe desk instead of going toe-to-toe with Hive Tyrants and Khorne Beserkers (though the skill with which he fights said monstrosities makes it a really convincing facade).
 * The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the rest of the Trojan Cycle.
 * Lankhmar
 * Louis L'amour, or more specifically, any of the hundred-odd Western books he wrote, which have largely been responsible for half the scripts of the Western genre of filmmaking.
 * Moby Dick
 * Norse Mythology which extols heroism, courage, loyalty, perseverance, sacrifice and more heroism. Contains lots of stories about slaying giants and assorted monsters. And it's idea of heaven is going to war in the day and partying & making love (with those valkyries) all night.
 * Shogun
 * Snow Crash
 * Beowulf:

- Red


 * There exists an entire subgenre of pulp fiction known as men's adventure.
 * As illustrated in these magazines:
 * The Dresden Files, Riding a Zombie T-Rex. Nuff said.
 * The Executioner series, featuring the role model for The Punisher, Mack Bolan.
 * The Destroyer series, featuring Remo Williams and Chuin, Master of Sinanju.
 * A lot of stuff written by Roger Zelazny.
 * The Manly Handbook, by David Everitt & Harold Schechter. Find it on Amazon, you won't be sorry.
 * The Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness, by the Von Hoffman Bros. Also on Amazon.
 * The Hebrew Bible has Samson, who kills Philistines by the hundreds, and King David, who does that plus runs a country, screws the beautiful women in his harem, and writes poetry.
 * The Lord of the Rings
 * Jurassic Park
 * Jack Reacher
 * Wereworld is about as manly a young adult fantasy novel can get with Therianthropes ripping each other apart from chapter 3 onwards
 * Tarzan. A muscular jungle guy, who fights big apes and crocodiles. 100% manly!
 * HP Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, or at least the character, Randolph Carter. In Dream-Quest, Carter scales mountains, rides Nigh-Gaunts, allies with the Ghouls, is the cause of several full-scale wars and goes toe-to-toe with  Then in Through he Gates of the Silver Key,
 * Many of William Hope Hodgson's stories (including his first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig) feature small groups of men (typically led by a Badass) who face off against Eldritch Abominations, sometimes an entire Zerg Rush of them; even in the stories where the heroes lose (or die), they sure don't go down without a fight. Hodgson himself was something of a Real Life badass, which tends to make the manliness seem that much more authentic.
 * Rudyard Kipling, Robert Service, Henry Rider Haggard and several other Victorian authors.
 * Poul Anderson: Wrote about vikings, Roman soldiers,space merchants, space spies, space warriors, babynapping elf kings, historical badasses in a cross-dimensional tavern, dark age warlords, a medieval baron who conquers a space empire with longbows and on and on. He also helped found the Society for Creative Anachronism.
 * Longfellow's Village Blacksmith is a gentle peaceful soul. But he is a "mighty man with strong and sinewy hands" and his arms are "as strong as iron bands." Just because his main pleasure is being a decent villager who harms no one does not make him unmanly.
 * The Winds of War and War and Remembrance features a whole Badass Family going round the world fighting evil empires. And oh yes the author considers the US Navy really manly. Guess what he was doing at the time?
 * History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: A big series of nonfiction books about Stuff Blowing Up.
 * The Great Game and anything else by Peter Hopkirk. Another nonfiction series. All about British spies and Russian explorer-spies struggling for power amid deserts, mountains, ruins, and natives who might be annoyed at their activities.

Live-Action TV

 * Captain James T. Kirk
 * Deep Space Nine : Sisko, Jadzia, Kira, and Any...klingon...Whatsoever
 * Justified
 * 24
 * Deadliest Warrior
 * Spike TV as a whole. It's the result of taking "Rated M for Manly" and building an entire 24 hour a day TV channel around it, not at first, but now they have distilled their lineup. If it's not howling-in-your-face overdone manliness, if it's not about death or booze or babes you'll never get, it doesn't belong on Spike. Its Chick Flick equivalent is Oxygen, and its nerd equivalent is Syfy.
 * Married... with Children
 * With Hot Blood, hot girls, and football, there's no other way to describe Kamen Rider Fourze.
 * Ninja Warrior (Essentially American Gladiators on crank.)
 * For that matter, American Gladiators itself. The third co-host of the show was Larry Csonka, the manliest man to ever play fullback, and the events that include wrestling, an urban assault course, beating each other with sticks, a game called Powerball that was the deadliest version of Red Rover ever, and finally, The Eliminator.
 * Dean Winchester.
 * Don't forget John Winchester. He is Dean's role model, after all.
 * Lets not forget Bobby Singer.
 * Sure Sam Winchester seems like the sensitive one at first, until he starts ripping off vampire heads with barbed wire.
 * Especially whenever his brother's life is threatened.
 * Don't underestimate badass nerdy angels.
 * Spartacus: Blood and Sand
 * The Sopranos - sex, drugs, violence, male bonding, fatherhood, and diatribes about the emasculated state of contemporary Western society abound. Frequently subverts itself, though, by reminding viewers that most of the "manly men" in question are in fact morally bankrupt human beings whose inability to express themselves in any way other than aggression makes both them and their families miserable.
 * The UFC. That's all that needs to be said.
 * Walker, Texas Ranger. Let's cut to the chase: it's a television show featuring Chuck Norris. Hell, he sings the intro. Just listening to it is enough to make every woman within 5000 miles pregnant. With triplets. And all of them will have beards.
 * Ron Swanson. As the man himself said: "Every three weeks, I have to sand down my toenails. They're too strong for clippers."
 * Mad Men - what man doesn't want to be Don Draper?
 * Human Wrecking Balls is a show about enormous men that break everything they can WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!
 * Stargate SG-1 How Colonel Jack O’Neill has not been mentioned yet is beyond me. Teal'c also deserves to be on this list. Lieutenant Colonel John Shepherd and Ronon Dex of Stargate Atlantis do too.

Mythology

 * Hercules: Possibly the Trope Codifier. Achilles is another standout example.
 * Thor and Tyr: Like the comic book examples.
 * Generally found in an Epic.

Music
""Hot blooded, bold, and handsome. Fast and athletic, determined and couragous. With a body like steel, and eyes like fire. I am what you want: The ultimate man!""
 * ACDC
 * Particularly Bon Scott; womanising, drinking and non-stop carousing make him something of a rock and roll archetype. Manliness to aspire to. They even have a song called Big Balls!
 * Slightly averted in that last case, as Big Balls is more of an extended pun than a celebration of Scott's manhood.
 * Alestorm, scottish pirate metal, with epic songs about drinking, piracy, revenge, privateering, giant goddamn monster, plundering, and keelhauling landlubbers.
 * Airbourne
 * Alice Cooper
 * All That Remains: Perhaps the only Metalcore band that deserves mention, as nearly all of their songs feature manly imagery such as courage and fiery passion
 * Amon Amarth: Vikings, Valhalla and music videos containing epic battles. Johan's Badass Beard helps too.
 * Beastie Boys
 * Black Flag
 * Black Sabbath
 * Crowbar
 * Indie musician Demetori turns Touhou Project soundtracks, a series (in)famous for its Fundamentally Female Cast, into PURE MANLINESS!!! this is maybe the manliest guitar solo ever.
 * Disturbed
 * The Doors
 * Death Metal. Because nothing says MANLY like distorted guitars, growling, and usually Gorn laiden lyrics. Not to mention it's a Spin-Off of Thrash Metal
 * Godsmack
 * Gown, despite having a distinctly unmanly name, produce the manliest song ever.
 * Guns N' Roses
 * Velvet Revolver
 * Iggy Pop & The Stooges
 * Iron Maiden
 * Iron Savior
 * JAM Project: Need proof? Listen to this epic cover of Omoide wa Okkusenman!
 * Jimi Hendrix
 * Johnny Cash
 * Jón Leifs
 * Hekla has the distinction of being the manliest piece of music ever written: Nineteen percussion players are needed. "Percussion" instruments required are "rocks with a musical quality," steel ship's chains, anvils, sirens, church bells, shotguns and cannons
 * That must mean the 1812 Overture qualifies as well.
 * Knorkator's Der Ultimative Mann (the ultimate man) tells women why they don't really want Mr Nice Guys.

"We'll take away the fuel from the fiends - They won't have any left to stoke they cauldrons!"
 * Judas Priest
 * Kiss
 * Lamb of God
 * Led Zeppelin, SO MUCH.
 * Ludwig Van Beethoven, for a more classical take on manliness.
 * Manowar, so much so that this trope might as well be called Rated M for Manowar
 * Megadeth
 * Metallica
 * Motley Crue
 * Motorhead
 * N.W.A.: Fuck Tha Police!
 * A very descriptive song on the trope comes from the film Orgazmo. Listen to it here. It's hilarious, but also a great example of this trope!
 * Pantera
 * Hellyeah!
 * Pentagram (for evil men!)
 * Public Enemy: Fight The Power!
 * Queen—for when Manly bends backwards and crosses into Manly Gay.
 * Rammstein
 * Ratt
 * Richard Wagner
 * Rob Zombie
 * The Rolling Stones
 * Running Wild: Pirates, blazing fast riffs and no weepy ballads.
 * Sabaton
 * Saxon
 * Sex Pistols (for those angry young men who love nothing more than to shock and piss off The Man)
 * Skid Row
 * Steely Dan (most of the time in a barfly kinda way)
 * Tenacious D: (from The Other Wiki) "[Jack] Black characterizes Tenacious D's comic nature as an antidote to "the masculinity of rock", adding "There's also something funny about the macho-ness of rock. Like the bands that are the fucking hardest rocking are like, 'We'll fucking kick your ass, dude-with our rock.'"
 * "He asked us, 'Be you angels?' and we said, 'Nay, we are but men! ROCK!'"
 * Van Halen
 * Vladimir Vysotsky half of the time. His songs cover all the traditional areas - soldiers, seamen, mountaineers, prisoners and assorted thugs. Then he sweeps up more, such as The Black Gold about miners...


 * The Who
 * Greece's 2010 Eurovision entry Opa is VERY much this trope.
 * WASP
 * ZZ Top
 * Thrash Metal. Fast drumming, heavy, brutally melodic riffing, and harshly chanted vocals. Nothing says manly like that.

Other

 * All the shirts from Wicked Jester
 * While the "Awesome" wolf shirt might seem manly, this is actually a common misconception. TRUE manliness would be demonstrated by either going shirtless, or wearing the skin of an actual wolf.
 * Adam Baldwin in general.
 * Toshiro Mifune
 * The Three Stooges
 * Cheech and Chong
 * Sean Connery. 'Nuff said.
 * Samuel L. Jackson!
 * Patrick Stewart
 * Most artwork by Frank Frazetta
 * Tommy Lee Jones
 * Vladimir Putin has based most of his public persona on this perception.
 * How has Bruce Campbell not been mentioned yet?
 * Or Theodore Roosevelt? He was seen by many in his own time as a god among men!
 * A dark version of this was Those Wacky Nazis who tried to make a religion of German manliness. Some would say they took it a little to far.
 * Rome. Nuff said.
 * The original meaning for virtus was not so much morally sound qualities(as in virtue)which might theoretically be possessed by anyone of any station in life. It meant primarily manliness in the Roman concept.
 * Sparta.
 * The Society for Creative Anachronism. A whole club designed around gathering together dressed as knights and thumping each other as in the days of old. Of course you can be a princess too so it's not just Rated "M" for Manly. But then again you can also be a Badass Princess.

Professional Wrestling

 * Specific examples aren't exactly needed here since a staple of pro wrestling stereotypes in the general populous are muscular dudes wearing nothing but trunks hitting each other with chairs or raving about how awesome they are/you're about to get your ass beat at the next big show. It's obvious it was meant to be something of a showcase of manliness from the get-go. However, if you need some standouts...
 * Macho MAN Randy Savage. Nothing else needs to be said other than 'OOOOOOOOOH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
 * If any of you guys think Stone Cold Steve Austin should have a place in this trope, GIMME A HELL YEAH!!
 * HELL YEAH!!!!!!
 * IF YA, SMEEELLLLAAALA!!!! WHAT THE ROCK... IS COOKIN'!!!
 * William Regal's original WWE entrance music (when known as Steven Regal) was "HE'S A MAAAAAAN, SUCH A MAAAAAAN, HE'S A REAL, A REAL MAN'S MAN" while he would do manly things like mixing concrete, chopping wood and squeezing his own orange juice.
 * Who's next on the list!? Goldberg, YOU'RE NEXT!

Tabletop Games
"This is a game about aggression. This is the game of metal on metal combat. This is fuel injected power hopped up on steroids. This is WARMACHINE - the battle game that kicks so much ass we have to use all capital letters."
 * Warhammer 40,000 is the manliest tabletop game in existence. From its fluff to the posing of its models, everything about 40K drips pure, unbridled, unfiltered, grimdark MANLINESS! Some examples include:
 * A demi-god revives a walking war engine the size of the Empire State Building simply by touching it and saying "BE HEALED, MACHINE SPIRIT!"
 * A crazed, speed-obsessed Ork ramps his kustom bike off a cliff and slams through 12 Void Shields to enter the nuclear core of a walking war engine the size of a building and kills the entire crew while he's still on fire from breaking the shields. The burning skulls of the engine's drivers are now mounted on that Ork's bike.
 * Ordinary men with t-shirts flak jackets, flashlights laser guns, and standard issue balls of steel, battling metal zombies, gigantic all-devouring bug monsters, super-advanced aliens, ancient manipulators who have had thousands of years to perfect their methods of war, hulking psychotic genetically engineered warriors that live only to fight, and mindblowing horrors from beyond space and time...and sometimes managing to win. The fact that they've got some amazing tanks and truly badass leaders helps.
 * Newborn infant travels through a Negative Space Wedgie unharmed, crash-lands on an icy hellhole and subsequently gets Raised by Wolves. Eventually he beats the most powerful human in existence in a drinking contest and then gets to lead an army of space Vikings across the galaxy. Face it, Leman Russ is the pure distilled essence of manliness.
 * The Orks and Space Wolves are basically entire factions of Manliness. To wit:
 * The Orks were inspired from Highschool Football hooligans while every other faction had it's roots in real-life armies (one of which is the spartans). They only care about Fighting (shooting and smashing faces), Food and Fast Cars, and their form of promotion is beating the crap out of the boss. They've also managed to fire guns which had no triggers or bullets, made the color red into instant speed potions, and invented space travel using a junk pile.
 * The Space Wolves are all Drunken Boistrous Bruisers. They are the only faction to be considered "good" in the setting, mainly because their leader holds a Daemon Axe, and still managed to intimidate the Inquisition from hurting innocents through brute force. They also ride wolves into battle, wolves the size of cars, and one of their more notable members managed to get laid 12 times within one night. Everyone has a badass beard and prior to the Grey Knight retconn they were the only non-chaos faction to survive in the warp without turning evil.
 * Ah, but what are these two compared to Khorne and his followers? He's a god of war, rage, strength, martial honour, battle and single combat, and is depicted as an impossibly muscular warrior with a horned, wolf's head sitting atop a massive throne of skulls floating in an endless sea of blood and his plane of existence is basically a site of never ending conflict. And his worshipers are giant, axe brandishing, war loving Blood Knights who also tend to be the best melee combatants in the setting.
 * If ever there was a game that was made of pure 100% mansauce, Warhammer would be that game!
 * God himself could not sink this game!
 * Correction: The only possible way God himself could sink this game would be by destroying the entire planet Earth by blasting it down to it's component atoms, then hurling said atoms into the sun, then throwing the atom filled sun into a black hole. Then probably throwing that black hole into another black hole. But that would be cheating. And it still probably wouldn't work. Bitch.
 * In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, even the nuns walk around with flamethrowers and pistols that shoot miniature rockets.
 * A third-person shooter of the universe is being created, starring the Space Marines (Titled Space Marine too, actually). The manliness of the game has already shown with footage of the Player Character jumping off the air transport he's on effortlessly when it was hit and losing altitude.
 * And more gameplay footage has shown, among other things, cutting Orks in half with chainswords, shooting Orks in da face with bolters, shooting Orks tied to missles who are shooting at you out of the sky, and stomping a downed Ork's skull in with your mighty power armored boot. This game is so manly, your balls will grow balls.
 * Warhammer Fantasy Battle may not be as over-the-top as it's erstwhile sci-fi spinoff, but it's no slouch in the manliness department.
 * In normal High Fantasy settings, the elves are somewhat effeminate, the humans resemble real-life humans, and the dwarves are manly. In Warhammer, the elves are manly, the humans are beyond manly, and the dwarves make Chuck Norris look like a milk-drinking wimp.
 * The Warriors of Chaos make them all look like dickless pansies. They're an incredibly muscular, bearded, daemon-worshiping, One-Man Army Viking warrior race who thrive in the most inhospitable areas of the Old World, and who are clad in spiky, skull-studded Conan gear. And their best fighter tend to be eight foot tall Norse demigods clad in really,really intimidating plate armour (with skulls and spikes everywhere), wielding weapons most men struggle to lift and who are able to wrestle Bloodthirsters to the ground.
 * The humans in Warhammer fight many of the same gargantuan demonic monstrosities as the humans of Warhammer 40,000, but instead of artillery and lasers they've got steel breastplates, matchlock muskets, and swords. They still win.
 * War Machine. Here is a quote:

Video Games
"Painkiller is in the same bucket as Serious Sam and the original DOOMs in that it serves as an antidote to fancy-pants complex modern FPSes. There are no stealth elements, no key hunting, no escort quests, no dorky support characters dribbling in your ear, no mission objectives besides kill everyone. It's just you, some guns, and the entire population of Murdertown between you and where you need to be."
 * Advance Wars (especially Days of Ruin)
 * Anarchy Reigns
 * Asura's Wrath is quickly becoming manliness embodied. The main character has as much raw rage as Kratos, if not more, and takes on demons, gods, demigods, and anything else that gets in his way with pure manliness and rage to keep him going. At one point he fights an enemy that is larger than the planet, gets into a punching contest with the enemy's finger that's so intense that he breaks his arms off, then kills the guy with one final punch. And this is just an early boss fight. The following boss fights are even crazier. The best part? Asura's reaction to being faced with an opponent the size of the planet and tries to crush him with a finger the size of a mountain? Bring It. Oh, and the next few levels, Asura will fight enemies with just his feet, head, and rage, since he destroyed his arms taking out the last boss. But Asura doesn't care, that's more than enough. Asura only has five weapons: his fists, feet, head, his rage, and his planet sized cahones.
 * In a Bit of Irony, the game itself is rated T and C in America and Japan respectively, though it it is rated M and Pegi 18 in Australia and Europe.
 * Bad Dudes: Are you a bad enough dude to play this game?
 * Lampshaded here.
 * Borderlands is for Real Gamers.
 * It's also a bit of a Funny Aneurysm Moment, given Gearbox's community management strategy.
 * Dynasty Warriors: Lu Bu, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei best exemplify this trope. Deng Ai as well.
 * Brutal Legend. This is the best descriptor that Brutal Legend could have possibly received!
 * Another Double Fine work, Trenched, actually uses the magazine at the top of this page as source material.
 * Cho Aniki, though depending on who you ask it may be the wrong kind of manly.
 * On that note, Muscle March.
 * Contra
 * This Let's Play takes it to extreme levels!
 * Playing Contra 4 on hard will make you a man.
 * Dead Space: One man, alone, armed only with power tools, takes on a ship full of space zombies. And his most powerful weapon is his almighty boot.
 * In the future, the engineers are more badass than an entire warship full of armed soldiers.
 * In the future, flamethrowers are considered power tools.
 * Dead Space 2 delivers even more Boot-on-Necromorph action.
 * Devil May Cry
 * Doom
 * BlazBlue. Bang Shishigami. 'Nuff said.
 * In fact, about 2/3 of the cast in this game is either manly overload, or hot damn chicks.
 * The other 1/3 consists of Token Mini-Moe, Cute Shotaro Boy, Eldritch Abomination... and, depending on who you ask, the Darkskinned Blonde Genki Girl Cloudcuckoolander catgirl with a (lack of) face made of pure Nightmare Fuel falls either here or in the previous 2/3s, so take from that what you will.
 * Except Jin. Who falls mostly into Ambiguously Gay Sissy Villain territory, especially around Ragna. . And even Jin becomes an insanely badass Determinator about halfway through the sequel.
 * Dragon Age Try and pretend the trailers aren't fueled by this trope. Whether your character is a man or a woman, the 100% badass is mandatory.
 * Dragon Age 2 is slightly less over-the-top about it, but is arguably even more awesome.
 * The Qunari as a whole are incredibly manly, standing over 7 feet tall and going anywhere bare chested, with red warpaint and a permanent scowl on their faces. Entering their camp is like walking into a gym and a biker bar at the same time.
 * Duke Nukem is quite literally the embodiment of all that is badass.
 * As evidenced by this kickass fan movie
 * Duke Nukem Forever, the game that has required 12 long years to gather the required amount of manliness necessary to do this character justice.
 * The original Earthworm Jim game, especially in levels such as New Junk City and Buttville.
 * F-Zero; this game not only brings us Captain Falcon, but Samurai Goroh, Black Shadow, Super Arrow, and tons of other muscular masked racecar drivers. In a Japanese game with Loads and Loads of Characters, there is only one Bishonen in the game (Jack Levin) and even he's manlier then most!
 * Forget the men! Mrs. Arrow, one of the few women in this sausagefest, outright shames most of the men in the series. She's easily one of the best racers and is depicted as a confident Hot Amazon with the muscular physique of a female bodybuilder. She also happens to emasculate her husband, who is a bona-fide Superhero and the defender of Earth. In spite of this, she's still eye-candy, has a very feminine figure, and is (at heart) a sweet, caring, nurturing, loving housewife and friend who grew up as an Ojou with an aptitude for music and linguistics and a fondness of high class culture. Try wrapping your heads around that.
 * Special note goes to Baba, who pretty much epitomizes Macho Camp (unless he's really just a overly flamboyant Narcissist), and even he could give some guys on this page a run for their money.
 * Gungrave. How about killing alien zombie gangsters with hand cannons on each hand and a BFG hanging from your back, or Katana fighting Tanks with a Blind Badass Longcoat wearing Deadpan Snarker (said katanas have pistols on the handles) or Electrocuting said Zombie alien gangsters with an electric guitar wielded by a Rocking Ghost that looks like a Vash The Stampede expy? and that is not counting the Bosses.
 * Dwarf Fortress, a game where judicious use of magma is the solution to any problem, you can throw serrated steel disks at goblins and have their leg end up in a tree nearby, and people have devised death traps that collapse entire mountains to kill an invasion, freeze the opponents in an ice block, and turn the entire ocean into obsidian. It also has a learning curve described by some as a learning cliff. Oh, and you can dig a tunnel down to
 * And in Adventure Mode, you can wrestle a bear with your bare hands, and if it rips one of your arms off, you can then beat it to death with your freshly severed arm. If it rips off your legs, quit being a pansy, just keep on it! If it rips off your other arm, you can bite it to death!! And, once dead, you can sit down on it's corpse and drink a beer while you wait for the bleeding to stop. What, healing potions? What healing potions? All a man needs is a beer and a short sit down while they wait to see if they're gonna bleed to death. And even if you lose both arms and both legs, you're expected to keep going.
 * Fate/stay night: The whole Internet is GAR for Archer.
 * On the same token, Tsukihime... sorta. The only living guys, other than the Big Bad (who is just plain Ax Crazy), are so absurdly manly that you'll grow a beard from playing just one route.
 * This only apply to the characters and even then they are not even trying to "manly." The games sell themselves as action dramas, with heavy doses on the plot and drama. The games are fairly free of Testosterone Poisoning, especially the senseless kind.
 * Quake
 * You jump/fly around the world, gib everything in front of you and you die a lot. Imagine that, at infinite.
 * Gears of War. "Delta Squad is in your house, bitch! You hear that shit? All you grubby-ass bitches are going down! Like, way down! Dead down! So down you ain't gonna know which way is up! Your asses are gonna be crying to your skank-ass Queen, 'Oh Mommy, don't let the bad man hurt us!' Fuck you! We gonna whoop yo momma's ass! WHOO!"
 * God Hand. Everything about God Hand is powered by 100% high-octane, weapons-grade, enriched testosterone, and 50% slapstick comedy. Yes, that is 150% of AWESOME. Therefore, God Hand probably straddles the line between this and Testosterone Poisoning.
 * In just the first 10 minutes of God of War, you get to make Kratos literally tear people in half, rip the wings off of a harpy, gouge a Hydra head's eyeballs out, and impale another head on the mast of a ship. It only gets better from there...
 * In number 2, you start off by fighting the Colossus, a giant animated statue using a man that would bring Leonidas to his knees in shame, then just move on from there.
 * In three, you start off by fighting the leviathan, the apocalyptic living embodiment of the sea itself, as it is destroying the Titans who are climbing up Mount Olympus to wage war with the gods. Even more epic than it sounds. And then it's god slaughtering time.
 * The handheld version sets you off against a Cyclops as your first big boss. Well, that's understandable, smaller platforms gonna mean WHAT THE FUCK SOMETHING JUST ATE THE DAMN CYCLOPS!
 * (cough)Threesome mini-game(cough)
 * The live-action trailer for Halo 3: ODST. Need we say more?
 * You can say the whole Halo series represents this trope, especially when Master Chief appears in it.
 * MadWorld
 * Marathon
 * Mass Effect
 * Mass Effect 2 in the words of Miranda Lawson obviously referring to y'know who.
 * Mass Effect 3 Prepare to also shed those Manly Tears due to the game's obvious nature.
 * Mercenaries
 * Metroid
 * Mortal Kombat: FINISH HIM!!!
 * Painkiller

- Yahtzee, severely Caustic Critic of Zero Punctuation.

"MCChris: Meanwhile in Resident Evil 4 they're like 'BITCH! zombies comin up the hill shoot 'em in the head! shoot 'em in the head! Grab the shotgun! you don't gotta reload we done did that shit for ya! What are ya pressing select for? you don got time to make a profile bitch zombie's in the room SHOOT 'EM IN THE HEAD shoot em in the head! he killed your parents! His axe is on fire! SHOOT HIM IN THE HEAD'"
 * Conker's Bad Fur Day: Even the money smokes cigars like a Badass.
 * Prototype. Alex Mercer kung fu kicks helicopters and tackles tanks, making them explode!
 * The game it was a Spiritual Successor to, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, is pretty much the same. You are The Hulk! And nothing can stop you!
 * You can catch a cruise-missile mid-flight, and throw it at a robot the size of a building. You can skateboard on top of a bus, destroying everything in your path. You can crush a car into boxing gloves. You can smash your fists together so hard that everything in a hundred-foot radius of you is sent flying.
 * Rastan
 * Ratchet & Clank (especially Up Your Arsenal)
 * Resident Evil 4 & 5.


 * Rune
 * Scarface: The World is Yours. Imagine Tony managed to escape from the finale of the movie alive. He now remembers how he was the baddest mofo around, and it's your goal to make all of Miami and beyond take notice that Tony's back and he's BAD—by literally rebuilding your Reputation (your experience points in this game). Your manliness (which you can build by doing macho things like shooting guys in the nuts and making timely—and profane—taunts) is literally measured in "Balls", which you can then use to go into a brief Unstoppable Rage.
 * Serious Sam
 * The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It's the first game in the series to be rated Teen, and Link can turn into a wolf.
 * He owes some of that gumption to his predecessor, the Hero of Time, who once took on a giant, fire-breathing Dodongo with nothing more than a stylish bracelet and some bombs. And that was back when he could still fit in most overhead storage compartments.
 * Let's also not forget the adult Hero of Time's battle cries.
 * The Elder Scrolls: Arena features a beefy man-among-men blacksmith who forges swords with nothing but his tight pants, Fabio hair and his thick, hardened muscles.
 * The teaser trailer to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Narrated by Max Von Sydow with a Norse-inspired choir and orchestra in the background.
 * We might add that the trailer features a man weathering the full force of a dragon's flames with nothing but a wooden shield, then shouting it down before summarily kicking its ass.
 * Skyrim will go down in history as one of great examples of this trope. The game is set in a land of fantasy Vikings, now in the grip of civil war. Around you, a great empire has crumbled, and its remnant struggles against Nazi elves. The world is about to die, devoured by a dragon god whose reptile servants already roam the skies. And you're the legendary Dragonborn, the only one who can stop them. You kill dragons in droves and eat their souls to gain their might.
 * Star Fox
 * Super Smash Bros, in which even the female characters are some of the toughest and sassiest ones in existence.
 * Any of the Warcraft games, but specifically all installments with Samwise Didier as the main artist. Dear lord, even the elves are gigantic beefcakes you wouldn't find outside of a professional body builder contest.
 * Until World of Warcraft's first expansion came along and wrecked it, by adding Blood Elves.
 * Which only get that reaction because they're the only race with normal human proportions.
 * There is a certain (repeatable) quest, the premise of which is that your character is admiring a giant spear, not sentient, or magical, or enchanted. But it radiates so much manly that your character looks to the horizon, spots a Proto-Drake and decides that only one of you will live to see the dawn. To reiterate: This spear is so manly that simply LOOKING at it inspires you to kill dragons. With your bare hands, no less.
 * If you're gonna include Warcraft, then you can't forget StarCraft or Diablo.
 * Starcraft2 gives us Tychus Findlay: a Space Marine in Power Armor (that's not all that necessary,as he's already huge and muscular), who smokes enormous cigars, drinks hard, fights hard, carries a minigun, pilots a gigantic war machine that qualifies as a One-Man Army... Face it: You want to be this guy.
 * Jim Raynor is pretty awesome as well. After all, he managed to sit a drunken and suited-up Findlay on his ass while he himself wasn't wearing armor!
 * Darksiders: Wrath of War. You play The Horseman of War as he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against both gun-wielding Angels and Demons with a BFS named Chaoseater as well as other demonic toys. It's basically The Legend of Zelda with the sheer testosterone of the God of War games.
 * You open chests by punching them. You open locked doors by stabbing them with knife keys.
 * Final Fantasy VI gives us Locke and the Boisterous Bruiser who traded his throne for his freedom; Sabin Rene Figaro.
 * Final Fantasy VII has Barrett, the huge, loud, easily-angered Large Ham and leader of a militant group of environmental activists who has a giant gun in place of one of his hands and is basically Mr. T with an arm cannon.
 * Cid Highwind wielding enormous spears, swearing like a sailor, being easily the single most arrogant character in the game and even lighting dynamite fuses with the smoking ends of his cigarettes, anyone?
 * Final Fantasy X gives us the tag-team duo of Jecht and Auron. Wither in shame as we enumerate their manliness:
 * Jecht hurls meteors. Prior to that, he was a professional athlete superstar with the body of a bronzed god, perpetual shirtlessness, and masculine facial hair. When he ends up in Spira, he's immediately put in jail for being a raging drunken jackass. About the only mark against his manliness is his lousy treatment of his son (which tried to be tough love and just ends up being emotional abuse), but in the ends he takes responsiblity and mans up to his failure, thus attaining perfection.
 * Auron is a living legend of Spira, the only guardian ever to survive a successful pilgrimage. Despite, he refuses to rest and instead walks the world as a battle-scarred veteran who's utterly unimpressed by anything, speaks only when neccessary, and tries to raise his dead friends' kids to become the heroes he and his posse couldn't be, all while smacking behemoths clear out of the battlefield in single strokes and lighting things up with cyclonic hellfire created by whipping up a whirlwind with his sword and throwing his jug of booze into it. And when he's done with all that, he heads over to the Kingdom Hearts universe to back-talk Hades and nearly kill Hercules with one hand.
 * Also from Dissidia, Golbez. He is above walking, is clad in some kickass armor, drops twin meteors on your ass, blasts you with Frickin' Laser Beams, and literally pimp slaps some knowledge into you. And they say video games can't teach you anything... Oh, and this is what he looks like, with and without his armor. It helps that he was a Darth Vader Clone in his original game (and Vader himself is under Film, above).
 * Sazh in Final Fantasy XIII. Specifically,, where he looks like he's about to get up and kick ass . Also, Chocobo in the 'fro, 'nuff said.
 * This trope is apparently the reason Gaston hasn't been in any of the Kingdom Hearts games, aside from being too similar to Clayton. Actual examples from the series, most of which are :
 * Ansem, Seeker of Darkness. One of the hugest hams in the series too.
 * Xemnas, voiced by Norio Wakamoto in Japanese.
 * Terra, possibly the manliest playable character, who uses rock and darkness powers, wields a giant Claymore of a keyblade and looks much, much more like an actual male than Sora or Riku..
 * Endless Frontier. The four male protagonists are a cop, a cowboy, and two badass martial artists. The females are a foxgirl, a demon-girl, two Robot Girls, and a pair of busty princesses for good measure. And to top if off, they got a half-dozen armored assault mecha for sidekicks.
 * Super Robot Wars itself is nothing to sneeze at in this department. Given the amount of anime series with Hot Blood involved in most installments, it's no wonder that all the manliness rubs off on the most quiet or wimpy characters.
 * Mutant League Football and its sequel Mutant League Hockey.
 * Gordon Freeman may be a theoretical physicist, but he goes after invading alien armies with a freakin' crowbar!!
 * Solid Snake and Big Boss make hiding under a cardboard box badass!
 * The Boss. Her favorite disciple is Big Boss and her son is Revolver Ocelot. This woman makes the world's manliest men.
 * Dealt with intelligently, though, because although the characters are extremely manly and cool the series portrays a lot of the usual manliness tropes (like a penchant for committing horrific and flashy acts of violence, or not having emotions) as, at best, bad life choices, and at worst symptoms of actual mental disorders obtained through experiencing battlefield trauma. Also, as a Stealth Based Game, it does not reward you blowing everything up. Usually.
 * Most Street Fighter games, or at the very least the ones involving Guile.
 * Or Charlie. So, in other words, pretty much all of them.
 * Final Fight. The Power Trio in the first game consists of a bare-knuckle brawler who punches a dude out of a thirty-story building for kidnapping his girlfriend (Cody), an extremely Badass Ninja (Guy), and (last, but MOST CERTAINLY NOT LEAST) a politician (and father of said kidnapped woman) who cleans up crime... by piledriving thugs into the ground and introducing them to the concept of gravity (Haggar). Of course, it exists in the same world as Street Fighter, so go figure.
 * Also, the other Haggar-centric series, Saturday Night Slam Masters. The WWE has nothing on this. Even the lone female is sure to emasculate many, even though she reveals herself to easily fulfill the Fan Service quota.
 * Bulletstorm: if it's not the fact that a simple kick to the face can throw your target 10 yards away and the whole focus of the gameplay is to be as creative as possible with your frags, the main character's dialogue is a constant stream of swears and he even looks a bit like Wolverine. And talks like him.
 * It frequently veers into outright parody.
 * No More Heroes at times. We have Death Metal, covered in tattoos and with decorative bolts in his face. A little before you get to him there's a picture in his mansion of him sittin' with a hot woman. Destroyman, although insane, has a codpiece that fires super lasers. In the sequel, Travis himself gets a great manly moment in the form of one of his Dark Side powers, in which he turns into a friggin' tiger and shreds mooks to pieces. We also get Charlie McDonald, who fights alongside his throes of under-cleavage showing, Uncanny Valley invoking cheerleaders. Letz Shake returns as a robot that looks like a giant penis. Also, Travis's bikes, both of which are called the Schpeltiger.
 * Red Dead Redemption: John Marston. Just... John Marston.
 * Silent Hunter: You get to practically live inside an Epic Movie, sail your sub around and destroy things.
 * Vanquish.
 * Viewtiful Joe
 * The makers of Pokémon seem to be trying to give their newest poster child, the intimidating legendary turbine-tailed Tyrannosaurus Rex-like thunder dragon Zekrom, this vibe. Second to Zekrom is Gourdon, a ginormous Kaiju like pokemon, with power over earth.
 * In Tales of Graces, when someone speaks (and firin' his lazorz) with his back, the manliness meter gets broken. Ladies and gentlemen, say hi to Malik Caesars.
 * Team Fortress 2: Saxton Hale.
 * Wario Land (especially Wario Land 4)
 * Wario Land (especially Wario Land 4)

Websites

 * Badass of the Week, in which every week the tale of a new badass is told; including real-life superspies, legendary warriors who kill monsters, and a guy who disarms live mines by whacking them with a pipewrench. Has its own page on this wiki, as befits its manliness. There are occasional articles about women as well, but those too are more manly than you will ever be.
 * The Art of Manliness

Webcomics

 * Axe Cop. "I'll chop your head off!"
 * Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. So manly, it's in the title twice.
 * Homestuck. Equius Zahhak achieves this all by himself. He has much more muscle than a kid/troll his age should have (and when it shows, it shows), a few of his teeth, one of his horns and his sunglasses are all broken from his sheer strength, he's the STRONGEST troll on Alternia and never fails to emphasise the word STRONG, can only safely and adequately express his rage in cage matches with robots he built himself, he breaks/bruises everything and everyone with the lightest of touches, and instead of playing Sgrub properly he STRON Gjumped straight through his first few gates. Also present are Dad Egbert (powered by pure mangrit) and Bro Strider (flash stepping ironic rapping roof ninja with more than a passing resemblance to Kamina).

Western Animation
"I had testicular cancer before I watched this. Then I watched this. My balls, now properly inspired, got their act together and proceeded to﻿ beat cancer to death. Thank you, Iron Man."
 * Manish Man, the Manly Minotaur, of Adventure Time is an example of this trope. But he seems to be a more joyous character than most listed.
 * Conan the Adventurer. The manliest intro ever.
 * Iron Man makes this list once more. This is from the second season of his 90's cartoon, in which the show seriously grew the beard... or mullet, as the case may be. Face-melting guitar solo. Medieval-style blacksmithing—not merely without protective gear, but without a shirt. All the while "I! AM! IRON MAN!" roars in the background.
 * An actual response to the video:


 * Korgoth of Barbaria. More manly than the Conan the Barbarian movies, and actually more faithful to the original books in sheer amounts of ultraviolence.
 * Brock Samson. He may not kill you with a gun, but he'll kill you with anything else he can get his hands on!!
 * In one episode he actually gets sucked into space. Not only does he survive, but he proceeds to get laid almost immediately afterward.
 * Well he had to warm up some how after being in the coldness of space.
 * In "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic" Brock enters a machine that shows people their deepest desires. He fights off a horde of ninjas with a knife, beats up cowboys wielding flamethrowers and riding T-rexes, whallops polarbears in cars with gatling guns, and has sex with Molotov Cocktease. It doesn't get any manlier, folks.
 * Metalocalypse
 * Subverted and played straight. The band deals with less "manly" issues like body image, abandonment issues, and group therapy, but they also make things that aren't really Capital M Manly and make them so, like coffee (which they will make blacker than the blackest black times infinity) or golf (which Nathan will play alone, hatefully, in a rainstorm).
 * G.I. Joe Extreme. The series actually toned down this compared to the toys, which were downright Testosterone Poisoning.
 * Batman. Nuff said.
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender: WANG FIRE! Also, THE BOULDER.
 * The Argentinian animated movie called "Boogie The Oily One" contains every single archetype from any kind of action film (film noir, western, gangster film, etc.) and combines it with lots, lots of Black Humor.
 * Ultramarines: The Film
 * In The Mis Adventures of Flapjack, Captain K'nuckles tries to prove to Flapjack that he's this trope.
 * Beavis and Butthead like rock 'n' roll, heavy metal, gangsta rap, beer, cigarettes, breaking things, fighting, guns, explosions, fire, and chicks with big boobs so they pretty much LIVE for this trope.
 * Megas XLR. What's more manly, a Cool Car or a Super Robot? Apparently, the answer here is both.
 * Inhumanoids
 * Extreme Dinosaurs has a seriously testosterone laced intro. Hard rock intro coupled with scenes of muscled-up dinosaurs fighting each other pretty much screams this trope.
 * Due to its Surreal Horror theme, Courage the Cowardly Dog sometimes becomes this if/when its infamously over-the-top Mood Whiplash happens to feel like making it this.
 * Street Sharks, seriously, what could be manlier than muscular mutant humanoids with shark heads and razor sharp teeth going around riding motorcycles and bursting through walls every five seconds?!
 * Heavy Metal is possibly the greatest animated example of this trope. All but one (the scientist's daughter) of the women characters are naked at one point, and none of them (with the possible exception of Taarna) act remotely human. World War II pilots are shot and turn into zombies. It's also loaded with sex, violence and a kick-ass 80s rock soundtrack. The ultimate example of animated testosterone.
 * SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron.
 * Exo Squad of all the cartoons in the 90's this is the only one which has the most gratuitous amounts of Beam Spam, and explosions that can only be matched by Gundam.
 * Mulan: Well a little toned down considering it has a Disney Princess in it. But what the heck, what's wrong with that? And it has some realistic displays of military life as including a shot showing the tedium on the march and a war crime scene. It even has a really manly Training Montage in the mouth of a Drill Sergeant Nasty.