Mighty Glacier/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character who is extremely strong and tough, but slow.

  • Straight: Tom is an extremely strong and tough fighter, but moves very slowly.
  • Exaggerated: Tom can punch through a tank and survive a direct hit by a nuke, but takes an hour to cross the street.
  • Justified: Tom comes from a martial arts school that focuses on strength and toughness at the expense of speed.
    • Tom use heaviest armor, including large Force Field generator in order to maximize his defense. It's impossible to move quickly with all of those gears.
    • Tom is a superhero whose special abilty grants him great strength and toughness, at the cost of great speed.
  • Inverted: Tom is a Fragile Speedster
  • Subverted: Tom looks like he'd be really slow with all that muscle, but then he sprints towards his opponent.
    • Tom's frame is intimidating, but he also makes an enormous target and can't afford armor big enough for him to wear, making him more of a very ponderous Glass Cannon.
  • Double Subverted: ...For about five feet.
  • Parodied: Tom is literally a Mighty Glacier. He's big and tough as a mountain, but can't move an inch.
  • Deconstructed: Tom is killed by Mia, who enters and exits his range of attack too fast for him to hit them.
    • As soon as a speedster shoots or stabs a vital area, his strength becomes useless.
  • Reconstructed: Tom anticipates where Mia will appear and manages to defeat her with a single blow.
    • After nearly experiencing death, Tom realizes he has to increase his speed. He learns leaping or skipping isn't that girly if you can cause the earth to shake and get better speed. By using gravity, his jumping is powerful enough to stun fast movement long enough to attack.
  • Zig Zagged: Tom can knock out inexperienced Mooks and can withstand most unarmed attacks, but he moves very slowly (Straight). Following a Time Skip, Tom's strength and toughness matches that of a god's; unfortunately, he has the speed of a three-toed sloth (Exaggerated). However, it's because Tom received special armor that, at the cost of much speed, gave him much strength and toughness (Justified). Tom vows to work on his speed; in the process, he forgets his strength and toughness (Inverted).
  • Averted: Tom is not particularly strong, tough or slow
  • Enforced: "For balance, we'll need someone to contrast the fast but weak Mia."
  • Lampshaded: "You think that with all the training Tom does, he'd focus a bit on his speed."
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: Tom often uses his strength and toughness to catch Mooks who think that they can easily fight a slow guy without a problem off guard.
  • Defied: "I'll work on my speed, even if it means I'll have to be weak!"
  • Discussed: "Let's have Tom go in first. He can probably take out all of the guards without a problem. Provided they don't run away first..."
  • Conversed: "Wow, lookit at them guns!" "Yeah. Small wonder he's so slow, the muscle tension must be hideious!"
  • Played for Laughs: Mia can't even hurt or be noticed by the Implacable Man Tom, who slowly abmbles away, whistling a jaunty tune.

I doubt you could get back to Mighty Glacier in five minutes.