Full Boar Action

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
This little piggy's gonna eat you!

Need to make piggies much more badass? Simple, add tusks.

Basically, pigs with tusks and a personality to match. While non-tusked swine are generally shown as greedy and somewhat messy, boars are generally seen as their Ax Crazy cousins. Why? Basically, pig noses are awesome and adding Spikes of Villainy should only make them even more awesome!

Wild Boars can be dangerous and are quite capable of killing a man. Boar-spears were designed with specially shaped spear-heads to keep the animal at arms length because otherwise a boar could still kill you even after you'd stuck a spear through it, even if doing so involved it charging down the spear and goring itself in the process. Even then, those spears were more commonly used by hunting nobility who were in it for sport, as traps were still much safer.

Wild boars have one of the worst reputations among wild ungulates. They are reputed to have a pleasure to kill humans, especially if you stumble upon a sow with piglets. At least, this is what most people think about these animals. In Real Life boars are not more dangerous than most other ungulates of similar size. If they are not provoked, they'll not charge you anymore; they do battle only for self-defense against their predators.

It's true, however, that sows might charge if they see their young menaced; but again, this is a common thing among wild mammals. Try to menace elk or deer fawns and you'll probably get a similar response. And nobody in Fictionland seems ever to consider that baby boars are among the cutest young mammals, with their brightly colored stripes. Never mind boars are among the most intelligent ungulates in Real Life, they are easily tamed if raised young and can be used in the same way as their domestic tusk-less descendants (like searching for truffles).

Boars make really one of the few exceptions, along with bulls, rhinos and buffalo, of ungulates qualifying as bad guys in pop-consciousness. See What Measure Is a Non-Cute?.

Compare Pig Man.

The name is Just for Pun.

Examples of Full Boar Action include:

Anime and Manga

Card Games

Comic Books

  • The Asterix series has boars, but they don't quite fit, primarily they are underpowered compared to the Gauls.
    • But delicious!
  • The Boar in Rod Espinosa's classic The Courageous Princess. He's an aversion in that he's actually quite a nice guy. Gives muddy kisses though.
  • The comics continuation of Gargoyles introduced Coco, a gargoyle from the London clan who resembled a wild sow and was a pretty tough fighter.
  • The monstrous, child-eating boar that haunted the town of Doglick in Hellblazer
  • Transformers Generation 1 have Snarler, a Pretender Beast Decepticon who's Pretender shell and alternate mode are boars (with the alternate mode having drills for the snout and tusks). In the Beast Era we have Razorbeast, a noble Maximal with a warthog alternate mode who was sadly infected by evil Angolmois by the Blendtron Rartorata and became a feral berserker before being mercy-killed by his teammate Optimus Minor.

Film

  • The '80s B-movie Razorback.
  • The recent Korean film Chaw is about a giant, mutant boar.
    • So is the direct-to-video Pig Hunt, in which it's the mascot of a sicko cult.
  • While not technically boars (or even Earth lifeforms), Gamorreans from Star Wars. They're pig-like enough and are very mean.
  • "They call me MR. PIG! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

Literature

  • The Pig a.k.a. Zhaa Buujie from Journey to the West.
  • The Celtic fantasy branch of Heroic Fantasy is prone to magical and very dangerous swine. Patricia A. McKillip's Forgotten Beasts of Eld has a major character that's a talking boar with magical knowledge. Her Riddle of the Stars trilogy has many allusions to the possibilities of talking swine. Similarly, in Teresa Edgerton's fantasies set in Celydonn, talking pigs are frequently alluded to a possible marvel; one two-headed and enormous boar does appear, and may even have spoken a few words (though they may have been grunts).
  • In George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, King Robert gets killed by a giant boar. Though it's also possible he was poisoned, or at least over-inebriated so he was an incompetent hunter
  • In Meredith Ann Pierce's book Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood, the wizard turns into a giant gold boar and tries to kill Hannah.
  • The Hogfather, Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus, rides in a sleigh pulled by four enormous, fierce-looking boars. In in-series Disneyfication, we're told that most modern portrayals have four cute, pink piggies instead.
  • In Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings, Garion kills a boar and almost gets himself killed in the process.
  • Though tuskless, domesticated, and female, Raz Buchanon's pet pig Marjorie (from the Maggody mysteries) once bit the leg off a mule, and chased a man out an upstairs window, causing his death. This troper thinks she qualifies for Full Sow Action!
  • In Patricia A. McKillip's The Book of Atrix Wolfe, Tanis is dazed in the woods when the dogs harry a boar near him. He kills it on instinct, and everyone is dully impressed—after they get over the fear that he has been killed.
  • In Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, the Beast of London resembles an enormous boar.
    • Only in the book, though; in the TV miniseries, it's a giant ox. They wanted a boar, but as it turned out, modern-day British boars are just too damn...

Neil Gaiman: (disgusted) ...cute.

  • Clive Barker's "Pig Blood Blues" features a huge man-eating sow that's possessed by the ghost of a young criminal she'd half eaten after he'd hanged himself in her pen.
  • In The Two Towers, Treebeard's recitation of Middle-Earth's living creatures lists the boar as "the fighter".
  • In By the Sword, Kerowyn helps the king's hunting party take out a pair of boars. However, these were explicitly domestic pigs gone feral, not ordinary wild animals; they had no fear of humans and were very aggressive as a result.
  • Two times in the Icelandic heroic Saga of Hrolf Kraki, King Hrolf and his champions face off against a giant demonic boar summoned by a sorcerous enemy.

Live Action TV

  • The island from Lost is inhabited by wild boars, which are generally shown as being quite ferocious. In an early episode, Michael gets injured by one during a hunt.
    • One stole Sawyer's tent.
  • Animal Planet's Hogs Gone Wild and Pig Bomb are about the Real Life destructive threat posed by feral pigs. Hunters who work to remove the animals face genuine danger from their tusks, and put kevlar jackets on their hunting dogs to prevent injury.

Music

Mythology & Folklore

  • Older Than Feudalism: The Erymanthian Boar from the Twelve Labours of Hercules.
  • The Calydonian Boar. In the Greek myth of Atalanta, Meleager brings Atalanta to hunt it. When she kills it, Meleager offers her its hide and asks her to marry him.
  • In Norse Mythology, there is Hildesvini, which roughly translates to "Battle Swine", as Freya's mount whenever she's not using her cat-drawn chariot. Also Gullinbursti, the boar with golden mane (or, sometimes, hide made of gold) manufactured by dwarves for the god Freyr.
  • Twrch Trwyth, the enormous boar from Welsh mythology. Culhwch from the prose romance Culhwch and Olwen is tasked to hunt the boar for the magical scissors, comb and razor hidden in its hide, and he completes the challenge with the help of King Arthur and his warriors.
  • The Boar of Ben Bulben which killed Diarmuid Ua Duibhne in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.
  • Varaha, an avatar of Vishnu, has the form of a large boar. He was credited with rescuing Prithvi (the Earth goddess) from the grasp of the demon Hiranyaksha.
  • The Japanese folklore has Inosasao (lit: Boar King of the Bamboo Grove), a huge boar whose back is covered in leaves. He was killed by a hunter and came back as a shapeshifting ghost in order to obtain his revenge, but those whom he asked for help refused to do so. So he turned into the giant Ippondatara demon, a gargantuan one-legged hog demon who ate travellers.
  • From the folklore of Southern Sweden, we get the gloso ("glaring sow"), a ghost pig that runs on lonely country roads after dark. It tries to kill people using its literal razorback, running between your legs to split you in twain. It seems to not be the ghost of a pig, but a ghost which takes a pig's shape.
  • The so-called "Bisterne Dragon", an unidentified livestock-killing beast that prowled the Avon valley in 1460, may have actually been one of southern England's last surviving wild boars. This ferocious animal was killed by Sir Maurice Berkeley, who died of infection from wounds suffered at the "dragon's" jaws, leaving no other witness to its real nature.

Newspaper Comics

  • Major, Wal's other dog in Footrot Flats, is a pig dog bred for hunting boar. The Dog, perhaps rightly, regards this as sign that Major is crazy (but still secretly envies Major's toughness).

Real Life

  • There is an epidemic of giant, razorback pig-boar hybrids roaming the swamps of the Deep South United States. No one knows where they came from, but they are particularly cussed, driving people out of communities, and can grow to enormous size (10 feet long and 2 tons) in the Lost Woods of Alabama (see here, here [dead link] and here)
    • Actually, at least one of these pics (the "Hogzilla" pic) has been debunked (by National Geographic, no less) and other pics of really huge pigs are thought to be similar hoaxes (basically, the photomakers have had just a BIT of fun with perspective). Still large wild hogs ("Hogzilla" turned out to be closer to 8 feet long and 800 pounds in Real Life)--just not the 2-ton behemoths of urban legend.
      • That said—hybrids can get bigger than non-hybridised wild European boars; domestic pigs have ended up at Scary Giant Pig levels (it is not uncommon for Hampshire domestic pigs to get close to 1300 pounds and 7–8 feet flat, closer to 10 feet hung for dressing like a wild boar). Even that is huge for domestic pigs, though (which, unlike feral pigs, don't have to root for their food).
    • And actually, it's very well known where the hogs are coming from—most feral hogs in the Southeastern US are crossbreeds of domestic pigs (which escaped pig farms) and wild European boars deliberately released in North Carolina in 1912 (the intent was to create a game farm, but the boars escaped—turns out pigs are well-nigh Houdini-esque escape artists, being roughly as intelligent as monkeys).
      • And, unfortunately, they're found all over the United States now, not just the South, because pigs are pretty good at escaping farms everywhere. Furthermore, because feral hogs are usually regulated as pests rather than game animals restrictions on hunting them range from "very generous" to "nonexistent", and a few less-than-ethical hunting enthusiasts have intentionally introduced them to the wild as a result. The entire feral hog population of Kansas is probably a product of intentional release. Feral hogs are a potential threat to both the environment and agriculture.
  • Pigs and boars, particularly when cornered, can be very vicious.
    • Also Entelodonts, 10-foot long prehistoric pig-relatives from the Oligocene and Miocene eras, complete with nasty tusks and warthog faces. Worse, they were predominantly carnivorous, and fed regularly on rhinos and elephants.
    • Peccaries are small and don't have external tusks, so they don't look menacing. Until they open their mouths, and you realise that there are around 20 of them together. They can drive jaguars off, and jaguars are strong animals that wrestle caimans and bite through skulls.
  • Tourists who enjoy hiking in Germany, in deep woods rather than the Volksmarch trails, are advised on hearing the distinctly loud snort of a wild boar to immediately run up the nearest tree. If you value your life, there's really nothing else you can do. Make sure it's a sturdy one, because a persistent boar can uproot a leaner tree.
  • The babirusa has particularly fancy-looking upper tusks that grow upward through the skull and curl backward, and can in rare cases eventually grow into the brain.
  • Warthogs. Also, Warthogs.
  • Boar hunting ("pigsticking") on horseback used to be a favorite sport for aristocrats and while it died out in Europe for lack of prey it hung on in India until comparatively recently.
    • At one time during The Raj the Prince of Wales was riding out with an Indian Noble on a pigsticking expedition. The inexperienced prince got too close, whereupon the Indian (who was an old hand) said "I know you are prince of wales, and you know you are prince of wales, but that boar doesn't know you are prince of wales."
  • An apparent problem in Southeast Asia according to this video. One attack is in Busan, South Korea and the other is in Ehime, Japan.

Tabletop Games

  • Fantasy Tabletop RPG's sometimes have Wild Boars as possible opponents for player characters. Examples include Pendragon and Dungeons & Dragons.
    • In the third editions of D&D, every boar has the Diehard feat which prevents it from falling unconscious when it's out of hit points; you have to keep going until it's dead dead (negative ten or so). This was also alluded to in the older editions of the game, which allowed boars to keep going for a few combat rounds even after their hitpoints went to zero. After that, or when they hit a certain negative number, they then died.
  • Orcs in Warhammer Fantasy Battle often ride boars. Orks in 40k sometimes ride cyboars.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse had Boar as a possible spirit for a pack totem. He was designed for packs of war.
    • There were also wereboars, the Grondr, once upon a time. Notably, as every Changing Breed has a role in Gaia's design, their role was to clean up areas that had been tainted by the Wyrm. Sadly, this was when the Garou didn't know that other Changing Breeds existed, thought everything else to be "of the Wyrm," and slaughtered them to the last in the Wars of Rage.
  • Exalted gives us Isidoros, The Black Boar That Twists The Skies. Probably the least malevolent of the Yozis, he acts as the universe's upper limit of physical strength, and spends most of his time absentmindedly wandering around Malfeas trampling things and leaving hoofprints the size of city blocks.
  • Orcs were frequently depicted in older editions of Dungeons & Dragons as being humanoid boars, when they weren't depicted as Pig Men. Wereboars are a straighter example, in that they're short-tempered and very violent, albeit not truly evil.

Video Games

  • In Age of Empires II, hunting wild boar takes several villagers so that they can kill it before it kills any of them. At least they are entirely passive unless provoked.
    • Age of Mythology had the heroes Arkantos and Ajax being turned into boars by Circe, while the ordinary soldiers become regular pigs. Needless to say, they totally kick Circe’s minions’ asses.
    • And let's not forget Freyr's Mythical unit: a huge, metal Boar capable of sending nearby enemies flying.
  • Pey'J from Beyond Good and Evil, who is not only a badass fighter but also the head of La Résistance.
    • Also a founder of the orphanage and an ingenious inventor.
  • In Eternal Sonata, Frederic and Polka's first boss is a big boar that can land some severe attacks for that early in the game.
  • In The Lord of the Rings Online the number of boars, and quests related to killing them, had become a bit of an in-joke among the players, and the developers are not above lampshading this. In the region of Evendim there's a quest that sends you to find some boars only to point out that there are no boars in this area. In Lothlórien, one questgiver who sends you kill a number of boars, asks why the players character is rolling his eyes at the mention of the word "boar". Another quest sends you picking boar-droppings. There's even a boar related title: Killing a boar in every region of Eriador awards you the title "Pork-Chopper".
  • In the German Gothic community, the sentence "Lass uns Wildschweine jagen!" (Let's go hunt some boars) has become some kind of a meme, because in the earlier patch versions of Gothic 3, boars were among the most deadly enemies one could face because of a broken game balance.
    • Although the dreaded stunlock pretty much sums up why boars can be extremely dangerous when provoked.
  • Some enemies (primarily the Bulbins) in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess have boars as mounts. If you don't know what you're doing, you could get boared to death. (The sister trope Pig Man is also quite popular in that series.)
  • Pokémon has the small Swinub, its evolution Piloswine, and its final evolution Mamoswine, which more closely resembles a small mammoth than a swine.
    • Pokémon Black and White introduces Tepig and its evolutions Pignite and Emboar, the last one being a burly bipedal boar.
  • Hellride Boarski, from Mega Man X 7, is a boar-model Reploid with a motorcycle-style alternate mode. He's also got a short temper, a lot of power, a styling mohawk, and is a member of Red Alert and the leader of a prominent street gang. One of his attacks is to ram into you at full speed and toss you into the air.
  • Boars are all over the Tales (series), where their signature move is to lift you up with their tusks like a forklift and then throw you over their backs. A large boar was also featured in the beginning of Tales of Phantasia, where hunting one caused the heroes not to be in town when it was burned down. When you return to the future, you can hunt them freely, and they usually come with several children that, if you can catch them before they flee, drop large amounts of Pork.
  • Mother 3 had boars as enemies. One of them, called the Agitated Boar, has the description of "The look on his face growls, 'Calm boars don't deserve to be called boars!'"
  • Warcraft 3 had both summonable boars and anthromorphised versions.
    • World of Warcraft has tons of boars; it's actually possible to level from 1 to 70 killing nothing but various forms of wild swine. They also make good Hunter pets, if not the most stylish, with their high health and stun ability.
      • The most extensive use of boars is in the Barrens, whre the Quillboars, the anthromorphic variant, train armored traditional boars and guard the body of their fallen boar god.
  • First boss Boarax from Legend of Kay.
  • Brutal Legend has Razorfire Boars: half boar, half motorcycle, and their chrome skeletons make excellent laser guns.
  • NieR has these as creatures... and, if you complete a certain Sidequest, a mount!
  • The Ippondatara boss (see above under Mythology) appears in both his forms (Ogre and Boar) as a boss in Muramasa: The Demon Blade
  • In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the player sometimes encounters wild boar in the countryside. Unlike their Real Life equivalents, they attack on sight rather than running away.
  • In League of Legends the champion Sejuani rides a large boar, enabling her to charge into enemies.
  • Guild Wars has a small population of Wild Boars, largely isolated to the Maguuma Jungle region. They're neutral unless injured by players and tameable, but not a common choice by rangers.

Web Comics

  • El Goonish Shive's "Death Sentence" arc has a magically grown boar rampaging in a forest near Moperville.

Western Animation

  • Averted and played straight by Pumbaa in The Lion King. Except when you hit his Berserk Button, he's really only dangerous after dinner. (Pumba with his Berserk Button pressed is very much an example of this trope, as an unfortunate group of hyenas found out.)
  • The Boarcupine that attacked Appa in "Appa's Lost Days". It was only a third of Appa's size, and despite this managed not only to hold its own, but actually wounded him (keep in mind that Appa is stated as weighing ten tons). It was a Javelina crossed with a Porcupine though, and both animals are known for giving a nasty surprise to anything that dares disturb them. Even hitting it with a tree was not enough to dissuade it, and Appa only got it to back off when he threw it several hundred yards. The incident left him severely rattled, not to mention injured, and it took Suki and the rest of the Kyoshi warriors to get him to trust people again.
  • Played with on an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures. When normally timid Hampton is challenged by some school bullies, who then start picking on Hampton's friends, this seems to hit Hampton's Berserk Button. Hampton then angrily tells the bullies(while breaking through walls and boards to get his point across), "In humiliating my friends, you have incurred the wrath of my piggy ancestors! The Wild Boar! The Razorback Boar! The Crashing Boar!" It's later revealed that Hampton had demolished some breakaway props to scare the bullies off, but his friends congratulate him on his quick thinking and on his standing up to the bullies.
  • The Thembrians from the Soviet Union stand-in Thembria in Tale Spin.
  • And of course there is South Park take on the World of Warcraft, after which tedious repetitive grind in MMOs is often referred to as Boar-killing amongst the community.
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