Big Badass Rig



A Big Brother Bully Trope to Cool Car, this is the kind where even four wheels aren'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.

Basically, it is a truck with a great capacity for inflicting destruction, whether through weapons attached to it or even supernatural powers.

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 short-lived 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.
 * The Dreadnought from Death Race(2008). It comes with spikes coming out of its wheels and is filled to the brim with guns. Its sole purpose is eliminating competitors to prevent anybody of surviving the competition enough to earn their freedom.
 * The Joker's semitruck from The Dark Knight.
 * Maximum Overdrive, adapted from the short story "Trucks," runs on this trope. When all of the vehicles and devices decide to rebel against humanity, a few larger rigs corner survivors at a truck stock.
 * Long Haul from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a Blood Knight construction truck Transformer whose weapons launch projectiles.

Live-Action TV

 * Power Rangers: Done with the latter-year Disney-owned seasons.
 * 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
 * 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.

Tabletop Games

 * Car Wars from Steve Jackson Games has a supplement called Truck Stop which expands the original rule set to include armed and armored 18-wheelers in the autoduelling action.

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, whose weapons are mower powerful than other non-boss vehicles, at cost of acceleration.
 * The reboot gave us Juggernaut, the Dreadnaught Expy. Its special weapon are mines and teammates can use machines gun mounted on top of it and missile launchers on the trailer. As a boss in Needles Kane's story, it gains even more health, can deploy new enemies after ninety seconds, and don't appears in the radar, though there is still indicative arrows pointing to it. In Mr. Grimm's story, two are fought at the very start. Finally in Dollface's story, a red-painted version Calypso calls Juggernaut 2.0, which has even more health and spawn new enemies after sixty seconds.
 * 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.
 * The G.U.N. Truck from Sonic Adventure 2, a truck large enough which can pull over cars stationed on both sides of the road and can keep up his speed with Sonic in an attempt to arrest, if not outright kill him.
 * The same truck returns in Sonic Generations, now armed with chainsaws and even rocket boosters while trying to ran over the hedgehog.
 * In Kirby and The Forgotten Land, the protagonist uses the new mouthful mode to take control of a truck. Once taken over by the pink blob, the truck can smash through the debris and enemies with ease.

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.