Bigger Stick: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"Peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy!"''|'''Howard Stark''', ''[[Iron Man]]'' (the guy selling the sticks.)}}

 

 

And sometimes, you get characters who just use a '''Bigger Stick'''. They don't care if they aren't as strong as their opponents: it's their equipment which does all the fighting—if you have better equipment you can handily defeat anybody, after all. Just Add [[More Dakka]].

* ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]''

** Averted. Despite their mecha being superior in every way to those possessed by the major world powers, Mithril is shown to be a force that depends heavily on small-scale and well-planned surgical interventions and hit-and-run attacks, because ultimately they cannot hope to fight protracted battles and come out the victors. Also, those piloting the near-[[Super Robot]] lambda driver-equipped arm slaves are given that privilege ''because'' they're already highly skilled pilots.

** Also, the first episode of ''Second Raid'' is an object lesson in the fact that, no matter how superior your weapons are, you can still run out of ammunition.

* ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'':

* Rando of ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'' has about a hundred different powerful spiritual techniques, but he's not very strong without them, doesn't use them very well, and doesn't even completely understand how they work. He's ultimately defeated when [[Hoist by His Own Petard|one of his own spells backfires]] as a result of him not understanding its weakness.

* ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'': Homura doesn't care of the jarring power difference between her and The Walpurgis Night, she will just bring more devastating [[More Dakka|(conventional!)]] arsenal against it/them, [[Groundhog Day Loop|each time]]. {{spoiler|Doesn't work.}}

 

== Comics ==

 

== Fan Fic ==

* In ''[[An Entry With a Bang|An Entry with a Bang!]]'', while the ''[[BattleTech]]'' chaps have the [[Frickin' Laser Beams]] and the tougher armour, Clancy-Earth's effective BVR (Beyond Visual Range) capability is one of the key reasons why the latter has prevailed so far.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* Most players in ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' tend to be concerned more with getting better weapons than everyone else had rather than actually ''surviving''. This gets a lot of them [[Too Dumb to Live|killed]].

** Of course, if that still fails, they just call [[Apocalypse How|Exterminatus]] and wipe out all life on the planet.

 

* In ''[[Star Fox (series)|Star Fox]] 64'', the Star Wolf team shows up near the end with improved fighters that are technically superior to the Arwings.

** Incidentally, in ''Command'', Star Wolf team do indeed have better ships, outclassing every other playable ships in the game.

* In the ''[[Ace Combat]]'' series and other flight-action titles, getting a better plane which is better-armed, faster and more agile is an [[Invoked Trope|invocation of this trope]]. As to be expected, every now and then a [[Weak but Skilled]] enemy ace, like Alberto "Espada One" Lopez from ''ACZ'', will proceed to show that having the better plane is not all that matters.

* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' has been locked in what can only be described as an escalating Arms Race between its 9 classes. However, the Engineer, the most recent recipient of an update, has a ''smaller'' stick: the combat mini-sentry that deploys faster and having a higher rate of fire than a level 1 sentry at the cost of having less firepower and un-repairable.

** Special note for the Engineer:

 

== Western Animation ==

** Parodied in one episode of where one character pulls out a gun on another character, then that character pulls out a bigger gun. The two keep pulling out guns bigger than the other until the guns reaches ''outer space''!

** A similar exchange in another episode subverts this at the last second, with Bugs' final Bigger Gun being...a peashooter. (that is, a hollow straw full of peas)

* ''[[Iron Man (animation)|Iron Man]]'': In the second-seson finale, after his plan to destroy all advanced technology has fallen, Mandarin reveals his backup plan to be this - armor bigger, stronger, faster and generally better than Tony's and [[Magitech|increasing the power of his rings]].

{{quote|'''Mandarin:''' This is another backdraft of your technology, Stark. Somebody can always build a bigger stick.}}

Both: "[[Evil Laughter|Hahahahahahah!]] }}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Weapons and Wielding Tropes]]