The Alleged Steed
There is the Cool Horse ... and then there's this, the four-legged equivalent of The Alleged Car, a broken-down nag destined for the knacker's yard or the glue factory—or it would be, if it hadn't somehow wound up in the hero's possession.
Any member of the genus Equus can qualify.
If the animal's appearance turns out to be deceptive and it's unusually strong or fast, then it may be a stealth Cool Horse.
Anime and Manga
- One Piece: Doc Q's horse, "Stronger."
Comic Books
- Asterix: An extremely sharp-smiling horse dealer sells Asterix is sold an awesome shiny black Cool Horse. Then it rains and the paint peels off, revealing it's a beaten down pale horse which faints a few panels later.
- Wit's horse in Kajko I Kokosz is a bit of a subversion. He sure looks the part and is cowardly enough to climb trees when threatened. However, since his master is a Warrior Poet with dreams of heroism and little common sense, having a steed that actively avoids danger is actually a large asset most of the time.
Film
- Shrek: Lampshaded with Donkey.
- "A horse with two rear ends!"
- Buster Keaton worked with a few:
- The deaf, denture-wearing horse in Cops.
- The mismatched team that draws his chariot in the Roman Empire segments of Three Ages.
- In Dead Man, the crazy Western industrialist (Robert Mitchum) not only hires three of the most "vicious killers of Men and Injuns in the West" to hunt down the murderer of his son, he wants them to return his "most prized posession"... a Pinto. Which he takes even more offense at.
 |
Dickinson: Last night, my youngest son, Charlie was gunned down in cold blood right here in our own hotel. The gutless murderer... also shot to death Miss Thel Russel, the fiancee of my beloved son. Not only that, but he stole a very spirited and valuable horse, a beautiful young Pinto that belonged to my personal family stable. |
 |
- Moe, Larry, and Curly ended up with one of these plugs more than once.
Literature
- Don Quixote: Rocinante, the noble steed of Don Quixote, has achieved Trope Namer status in the Spanish language.
- In The Three Musketeers, d'Artagnan is introduced riding a yellow horse (later named Buttercup) so old and funny-looking that it is mocked by Rochefort, thus establishing the enmity between the characters. The resemblance of d'Artganan and Buttercup to Don Quixote and Rocinante is Lampshaded by the author.
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Ichabod Crane's horse, Gunpowder, in Washington Irving's story.
- The title horse in the Newbery-winning novel King of the Wind, Sham, is treated as an Alleged Steed for much of the book. After he's sent from the Caliph's stables (where he's prized as one of the finest horses) to the King of England as a gift, the English stablemaster considers him a long-necked, undersized, weedy runt and an insult to the stables, and sends him to the horse auction. Even his final owner considers him an Alleged Steed until the colt that he sired (on a mare he was never supposed to be allowed near) outraces all of the man's other, carefully-bred, racehorses, and realizes what he has in Sham. The epilogue explains that Sham is the horse known as the Godolphin Arabian, one of the three foundation sires [dead link] of modern thoroughbred horses.
- Land of Oz series:
- The Saw-horse in The Marvelous Land of Oz, who has no joints in his legs and, at first at least, has no ears and can't follow directions, starts out as this. Later, he is revealed to be completely tireless and the fastest ride in Oz.
- Jim the Cab Horse is one of these before he came to Oz.
- The Brogue: In the short story by Saki, the eponymous gelding is known throughout the neighborhood for violently startling at little to no provocation, recklessly endangering its rider. At the beginning of the story, its owner has finally managed to sell it . . . to his daughter's wealthy fiancé.
- Monstrous Regiment has Lieutenant Blouse's horse Thalecephalus, a skinny, bad-tempered brown mare named after a legendary stallion. (Blouse is ridiculously shortsighted.)
- In Douglas Hill's Blade of the Poisoner and Master of Fiends, Scythe's horse Hob is a subversion, as he's a stealth Cool Horse.
- In The Lord of the Rings, Bill the pony is expected to be this. While he's not quite a Cool Horse, he's no Alleged Steed either.
- In Cerberon, Thedrik's old mule is half blind, unreliable, and cranky. He still chooses her over a good horse when given the chance.
Live-Action TV
- The Adventures of Brisco County Jr: In "Crystal Hawks", Brisco is separated from Comet the Wonderhorse and has to buy a temporary replacement horse. Problem is, he's only got thirty dollars in his pocket. The resultant horse is so slow, stubborn, and dumb that Lord Bowler calls it a lemon when he sees it.
- An episode of Bottom revolves around A Simple Plan to raise £500 to place a bet at long odds on a three-legged blind horse called Sad Ken, after the bookie tricks them into thinking it's a dead cert. His performance is about as good as you'd expect, and the commentator informs us that they've had to shoot him (and his jockey).
- The nag the crew from Hustle attempt to pass off as a race horse in "Signing Up to Wealth".
Music
- "Feetlebaum" from Spike Jones' version of "The William Tell Overture", which was rendered on kitchen implements and used a horse race as a background. He wins the race, and also manages to win the Indy 500 in a later rendition of "Dance of the Hours".
Oral Tradition
- Russian hero of The Fool archetype is the youngest of three brothers who inherits The Horsie-Hunchie and was laughed at and dismissed for one more reason. It turns out not only Horsie can give a good advice, but having him compete with normal steeds in running jumps is like bringing a grasshopper to cockroach racing. Whether he and/or the hero will look better later or whether he gets wings varies in different versions.
- The hero Conn-Eda recieves a 'shaggy pony' from an old druid to bring him to fairy-land. The horse not only successfully does so, once they reach the outskirts of the fairies' city, it tells him that the only way for him to get in safely is for him to kill the pony, skin it, and wear its skin over his head until he gets inside the city. He does so.
Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy
- Seinfeld: Jerry Seinfeld had a bit about horseback riding: the "U-shaped" horses he usually gets have names like "Almost Dead" and "Glue Stick."
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons adventure T1 "Village of Hommlet." If the PCs aren't careful when buying from the traders they can end up with a couple of "swaybacked, potbellied, spavined old plugs" pretending to be draft horses. The horses are 50% likely to stop every turn to rest, and if pushed by hard riding or carrying a heavy load they have a 50% chance of dying every 10 minutes.
Theatre
- The horse Petruchio rides to his wedding in The Taming of the Shrew takes this trope Up to Eleven, apparently. Unfortunately, this being a stage show, we never actually get to see it.
|
Biondello: ... his horse hipped with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred, besides possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine, troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of wingdalls, sped with spavins, rayed with yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten, near-legged before and with a half-checked bit and a headstall of sheeps leather, which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst, and now repaired with knots ... |
|
Video Games
- In Mount & Blade: Warband, you generally start with the worst horse in the game, unless you take very specific choices during character creation (which requires your character be female), then you start with the fastest of the fragile speedsters worth bothering with (the only faster horse is stupidly expensive if it is ever generated at all).
- In Red Dead Redemption, the cheapest horses (as well as the easier ones to unlock in multiplayer) are diseased, weak, and tend to be very slow. You can also find donkeys in Mexico, which look healthier but move even slower.
Web Animation
- The Real Legend of Zelda: The web animation series casts Epona as a small, overweight donkey, much to Link's disappointment.
Web Comics
- In Tales of the Questor, Quentyn is very excited by the prospect of riding a unicorn...until he sees it.
- Played with in Penny Arcade: Gabe plays Bella Sara and accidentally creates The Unhorse, which is this trope and then some.
Western Animation
- Family Guy: The brain-damaged horse Peter gets.
- All Dogs Go to Heaven: The Grand Chawhee, which only won the race because it was his birthday and the other horses wanted to do him a favor.
- The Replacements: Prince Cinnamon Boots.
- In one Looney Tunes short, Porky Pig buys the racehorse Tea Biscuit (based on Real Life example Seabiscuit, see below), an out-of-shape nag subject to coughing fits, and more interested in the trombone on the marching band than in racing. It wins the race anyway, after it's spooked by a popped balloon and runs the track in record speed.
- On the Classic Disney Short "They're Off!", Goofy bets on Snapshot III, the even money candidate, while someone else bets on the 100 to 1 shot Old Moe. Snapshot easily takes the lead and even trips up the other racers... except Old Moe, who through sheer perserverance closes up the gap, leading to a photo finish. The winner is Old Moe, because Snapshot couldn't resist posing for the camera.
- Here Comes the Grump: Grump's klutzy dragon. Only when it's funny, though—when the Grump needs to catch up with Dawn and Terry to keep the plot moving, Dragon has no difficulty overtaking their Cool Airship.
- In one episode of Goof Troop Pete wins a horse like this in a card game. He manages to turn it to his advantage by entering it into a race and betting against it. Unfortunately said horse is one of said stealth cool horses once it's broken shoe is fixed, and Pete ends up with a Springtime for Hitler on his hands.
Real Life
- There is a story that Abraham Lincoln, when he was a lawyer, wagered that he could come out ahead in any horse trade. A judge took up the challenge. Here's how it played out, according to Lincoln's Own Stories:
|
A crowd gathered, anticipating some fun, and when the judge returned first the laugh was uproarious. He led, or rather dragged, at the end of a halter the meanest, boniest, rib-staring quadruped—blind in both eyes—that ever pressed turf. But presently Lincoln came along carrying over his shoulder a carpenter's sawhorse. Then the mirth of the crowd was furious. Lincoln solemnly set his horse down, and silently surveyed the judge's animal with a comical look of infinite disgust. |
|
- Seabiscuit, a famous thoroughbred champion during The Great Depression, did not perform to his full potential and was sometimes the butt of stable jokes for the first three years of his life. Then, with special training, he blossomed into a Cool Horse.
- Phar Lap, one of the greatest racehorses of the Great Depression in Australia, was roundly criticized during the early years of his life as a no good horse and waste of money before similarly blossoming into a Cool Horse. He went on to dominate Australian horse racing, winning one Melbourne Cup, two Cox Plates and nineteen other weight for age races.