Big Badass Rig



A Big Brother Bully Trope to Cool Car, this is the kind where even four wheels isn't enough - you need the diesel fumes and huge smoking pipes and... well, you have the big rig truck that tends to be a mainstay in action movies and the like.

Note that this isn't simply a list of Big Rigs - that list is firmly in People Sit on Chairs territory. This page is for badass Big Rigs, and the examples should describe why they're badass.

Anime and Manga

 * Daimos in his Tranzer form.
 * The Mammoth Car from Speed Racer, essentially a train on wheels.

Comic Books

 * The U.S. 1 rig from the shortlived Marvel Comics title U.S. 1.
 * Spider-Man once fought a trucker and would-be crime fighter named Razorback; he was rather incompetent and had a pretty dumb-looking costume with a cowl that looked like a boar's head; the story was written back when CB radios were becoming a fad for motorists other than truckers. Having said that, the modified rig he drove - which he named "The Big Pig" — was kind of cool; he could even drive it using a remote control.

Film

 * The truck from Duel.
 * Maximum Overdrive. Weren't these from before Stephen King's car accident, though?
 * The big rig from Land of the Dead is also a Weaponised Vehicle.
 * Mack from Cars.
 * The Dreadnought from Death Race
 * The Joker's semitruck from The Dark Knight.
 * The tanker truck Max and the tribesmen use in the climatic chase scene in The Road Warrior.
 * Jack Burton's truck in Big Trouble in Little China.
 * The finale for the first Terminator movie has the Terminator chasing down the protagonists (on foot) in an 18 wheeler.

Live-Action TV

 * Power Rangers: Done with the latter-year Disney-owned seasons.
 * The truck in Dino Thunder was nearly identical to the one in the previous season, Ninja Storm, but the next season, SPD, went with an original design.
 * Rig-styled mecha would show up about half the time in vehicle-teamed seasons, even in the Super Sentai precursors:
 * Kousoku Sentai Turboranger had a tractor cab for their Black Ranger
 * Hikari Sentai Maskman and Choushinsei Flashman had tractor trailer rigs forming standalone mecha on their own
 * Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger had green and yellow tractor trailers respectively
 * And some seasons, like Kagaku Sentai Dynaman, Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman and Go Go Sentai Boukenger, would have their vehicles combine into a tractor trailer form while retaining their megazord configuration
 * B.J. and the Bear. B.J. (Billie Joe) McKay drove a big rig truck. His sidekick was a chimpanzee named "Bear".
 * A late '80s action series called The Highwayman involved frontier lawmen traveling the roads in big black rigs. The lead character's cab even turned into a helicopter.
 * The original Knight Rider had one for a mobile base-cum-garage.
 * The Supernatural episode "Route 666" has a possessed truck.

Video Games

 * The premise behind the game Big Rigs Over the Road Racing. All trucks are capable of Faster-Than-Light Travel and Intangible Man -- although, to be honest, this was the result of Idiot Programming, and not an intended feature.
 * The Vehicular Combat trucks from Gear Grinder.
 * Convoy from Vigilante 8 drives a large yellow Mack truck. The sequel gives him the ability to attach a trailer to the back of it.
 * Darkside in its many iterations from Twisted Metal.
 * The reboot gave us Juggernaut, the Dreadnaught Expy.
 * PlanetSide and the upcoming sequel have the Sunderer APC, more popularly known as the bang bus. The original Sunderer is absolutely huge, being almost two stories tall. A patch later gave it a cattle-catcher to the front. The sequel's version looks more like a giant APC than the original.

Western Animation

 * Rhino, Outlaw, Goliath and Bulldog from M.A.S.K..
 * Optimus Prime. Tractor trailers would become a mainstay after that, and Optimus would appear as other kinds of vehicles, but there's a very good reason he's most associated with a truck.
 * This commercial for his action figure is almost a Mook Horror Show.
 * The Decepticons had an equivalent in Generation 1 who also turned into a rig, Motor Master, the leader of the Stunticons and the core component of the Decepticon gestalt, Menasor. He was incredibly tough, but in one episode he dared try to face Optimus Prime in a head-on-head collision; it was a Curb Stomp Battle with the villain on the curb.
 * Also, Ultra Magnus, who was slightly bigger than Optimus, as he incorporated the trailer into his robot form. In fact, the original - Japanese - version of his action figure was an Optimus Prime variation.
 * Less known was Octane, a Decepticon Triple-Changer with heavy-cargo plane and tanker-truck vehicle forms.

Real Life

 * "Road trains" in Australia, essentially one truck pulling up to eight trailers at once.