World of Ham

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Even the commute is scenery chewing for them.

There are Dark Worlds, Crapsack Worlds, Crapsaccharine Worlds, Badass Worlds, Dystopias, Worlds of Chaos, Worlds of Snark, Worlds Of Woobie, Worlds Gone Mad, complex Layered Worlds, and even brutal Death Worlds.

...and then there are Worlds of Ham.

Basically, a World of Ham is an entire universe populated by Large Hams and the Hot-Blooded, where everything that happens is extremely dramatic, and every activity is Deathly Serious Business, where in every conflict everything is on the line. Not because of the treatment it receives, but because it just works when done that way! Moments of Awesome, Funny Moments, Heartwarming Moments, and Tear Jerkers happen almost one after another, giving works with this sort of setting unbearably high Holy Shit Quotients.

Every factor (characters, plot, pacing...) is configured to produce the maximum possible amount Emotional Torque, the more low-key scenes being used efficiently to make the more dramatic and actiony scenes all the more taking.

In such a world, you cannot merely act - YOU MUST OVERACT!! Scenery... will be chewed—ground to fine dust. Giant cows will be milked dry. Every single line of dialogue will be given as if it were a pronouncement from Heaven itself -- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!. Further, there's a good chance that Brian Blessed can be found creeping STOMPING around somewhere. In this kind of world, it may seem like everyone's having a ball being as over the top as possible, but, in fact, it is the setting that requires, nay, DEMANDS it... and by GOD, its demands will be met!

Works that take place in a World of Ham tend to be Trope Overdosed, and contain Melodrama, as well as plenty of Ham-to-Ham Combat. They also preclude Evil Is Hammy, as that required just one side to be hams.

Examples of World of Ham include:

Anime and Manga


Comic Books

  • During the Silver Age, pretty much every comic book storyline happened in a World of Ham, probably the best example being Marvel's Asgard: an entire Dimension of Ham!
  • And the Bronze Age brought us Jack Kirby's New Gods Saga, a senses-shattering cosmic god-war between two Worlds of Ham! With Earth, the Doomed Dominion, caught in-between!!!
  • Sin City. Just about everything written by Frank Miller debatably exists in such a world, but Sin City particularly thrives on Refuge in Audacity on several levels.
  • Nextwave. Plot? Dialogue? Sanity? OH NOES! If you can't accept it as it is, Warren Ellis shall kick you. And then you shall explode.
  • Transmetropolitan. Halfway justified because the main cast are two halfway psychotic journalists/bodyguards, a bunch of politicians running for president, an editor-in-chief, and a Cyberpunk Hunter S. Thompson.
  • The Trigan Empire.


Fan Works


Film

I'm in pain, and I'm wet...AND I'M STILL HYSTERICAL!

GORDON'S ALIVE?!

Prince Barin: I swear by the goddess Arbor that I will not kill you. Unless you BEG me to!

Cyrus: Don't move or the bunny gets it.

  • The 1937 film The Great Garrick is an invoked example of this trope, as all the actors ( except for Olivia De Havilland) are playing very large hams who are engaged in a a spitting match over comments allegedly said by one of them. By the end of the film, there is very little scenery left as everyone except Olivia De Havilland gets a large taste of the sets.


Literature

  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame, both the Disney film and the book.
  • All the works of Alexandre Dumas ouvre. Especially The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche seems to think the world we live in should be like this. His style, which tends to reflect Scripture style, is so hammy, offensive and pretentious NO author has probably ever topped him afterward.
    • Only in The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In the former case, he added a preface to the second edition of the book in which he explicitly repudiated the bombastic elements of his youthful style. In the latter, he wrote half-a-dozen books after it, and none of them came anywhere close to the histrionics of Zarathustra.
      • In the former case, he repeats the EXACT SAME PARAGRAPH in different words for Over 9000 pages.
  • Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire, by Neil Gaiman, is a short story about a writer living in a World of Ham, who tries to write "realistically", but fails - his attempts to depict life in the world of Gothic novels he lives in inevitably turn into parody (or is it satire from his point of view?). In the end he decides to write fantasy instead, and that's when he gets into normal family drama. Only to be interrupted by his long-lost brother jumping in through the window with a sword...
  • Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, set In a World where people go on being hammy even after they die, and where haircuts are Serious Business.
  • The fact that The Lord of the Rings gets away with this to the extent that it does implies that we ourselves may be living in a World of Ham.
  • Redwall. Name one character who hasn't had at least one hammy line.
    • Corp. Rubbadub (Long Patrol) only talks in beatbox, but that probably still counts.
  • As an Affectionate Parody and satire of both opera in general and The Phantom of the Opera specifically, Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Maskerade qualifies. Discworld is a fairly hammy place to be in any case, but basically every trope from opera is taken and hammed up massively. This includes, among other things, a character who can sing in harmony with herself, a grandiose, emotional aria whose actual lyrical content is along the lines of "This damn door sticks! It sticks no matter what I do!" and the villain's death scene, which was played in true operatic style, right down to the sword being between his arm and his chest, rather than actually cutting him. He dies anyway, from the sheer density of ham involved in opera. Literally—he's so caught up he doesn't realize it's fake until it's too late.
  • Jack Chalker's Dancing Gods books pretty much embody this (with everything but everything governed by THE RULES to ensure proper Swords And Sworcery action).


Live-Action TV

  • ESPN. Even the straight people there have their hammy moments.
  • Pick a Soap Opera. Any Soap Opera. But especially South American telenovelas.
    • Passions deserves special mention, though: in what other show have you seen an old lady fight off a mountain lion while water-skiing? (We won't mention the orangutan-nurse's love scenes.)
    • However, there are some soaps that fall under World Of Dull Surprise. Fair City, I'm looking at you.
  • 24 is like this.
  • Power Rangers, particularly whenever anyone is morphed, and villains at any time. Especially in the early seasons.
    • Almost all Tokusatsu, really; since everyone is wearing rubber suits, they all compensate for lack of visible faces and occasionally freedom of motion by SHOUTING REALLY LOUDLY and using a lot of exaggerated body language. Those not in rubber suits ham it up too, probably so as to not be left behind. Even the original Godzilla!

"Serizawa! SERIZAAAAWAAAAAAAA!!!"

  • Star Trek is basically a Universe of ham.
  • The Blackadder Franchise IS THIS TROPE!!! Having contained BRIANBLESSED, Tom Baker, Stephen Fry, Rik Mayall, Rowan Atkinson, Miranda Richardson, Ronald Lacey a.k.a. The Baby Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells (and also Major Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark), Hugh Laurie, Robbie Coltrane, Ade Edmondson, and many, many, many, many others. Thankfully not all in the same episode or the universe itself would have spontaneously combusted under the density of Ham.
  • Allo Allo is very similar to Blackadder in the amount of Ham. Virtually every actor was chosen for their ham qualities.
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand features not only an enormous cast of naked, oily Large Hams battling to the death in the arena but also Lucy Lawless as a rare female of the species.
  • Glee, and arguably Truth in Television as well, considering that the primary cast is a group of high-schoolers; theatrical, drama-nerd high-schoolers no less. And when you consider the fact that virtually the entire show takes place from the warped, surreal viewpoint of one character or another... yeah.
  • Monkey, both the original Japanese series, and the BBC dub.
  • Doctor Who has every villain of the week trying to out-ham the last, with the Doctor himself out-hamming them all. When the Doctor and the Master are in the same room, you know no piece of scenery will be free of bite marks before the day is over. Still, the winner is either the captain from "The Pirate Planet" or Davros. (The destruction! OF REALITY! ITSELF!)
    • John Lumic probably also deserves a special mention.

And how will you do that FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.

I. AM! THE CREATOR. OF TIME LORD. SOCIETYYYYYY!

Ba'al: You dare mock me!?
O'Neil: C'mon, Ba'al, you should know me by now. Of course I dare mock you!

  • The IT Crowd is this, except for the titular IT department. This was deliberate, the writers wanting the day to day office life to approximate a South American Soap Opera and to try and portray the IT department as Only Sane Man (for a given value of sane).
  • While not one normally, the world of How I Met Your Mother often spontaneously morphs into one of these, due to the fact that everything that happens is either Ted's twenty-year-old, emotion-tinted, perspective-skewed memories, or Ted's extra-colorful retelling of twenty-year-old, emotion-tinted, perspective-skewed memories (or perhaps a blend of the two).


Music

  • All of the Romantic period, period.
    • That is just plain ignorant. Refer to: Franz Schubert.
      • Schubert's collected Lieder is pure World of Ham in music. What do you think Der Erlkönig is? You could even make the argument that purely instrumental, abstract music like 14th string quartet is pure sonic overacting, in the most wonderful possible way. I'd say Brahms could be exempt, but just listen to the "WO IST DEIN SIEG!" over and over in the middle of Ein Deutsches Requiem.
        • Brahms exempted himself here and there with some of his smaller piano works and the gorgeous Choral Preludes for organ that form his final opus. Otherwise, he goes out of his way to be dramatic. See the Sonata in F Minor, Op. 5, fifty minutes of piano hammery.
    • Much of opera, be it Romantic or not. The music isn't always hammy (see: Gluck, Mozart) but the characters are usually way larger than life; Chewing the Scenery is standard practice due to overlarge theaters and inattentive audiences forcing every action and word to be heavily telegraphed; and the plots are usually so far gone, contrived and over-the-top - often based in mythology - that there's really no other way to be. To say nothing of often having to jump the language barrier and still come across. Modern practice is making it a little more subtle and realistic with time, but there are still all the logistic and artistic problems to address. There's a reason that the genre Soap Opera uses "opera" in its title.
  • All of Eminem's narrative universe: "You better LOSE/ yourself in da music...". Except for his most recent album, in which he seems to have settled down into a much more "adult" persona, with the music changing accordingly, becoming much more understated but at the same time much more contondent.
  • There are entire genres which exist for and through Beyond the Impossible levels of ham. Starting with The Power of Rock, through Power Metal and finally back to Tenacious D: "AND HE SAID: "Be thou angels?" And we said NAY, we are but MEN, ROCK!! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNN!!!"
  • Absolutely everything by DragonForce.
  • Every song written by Jim Steinman. Ever.
  • Heavy Metal in general.
  • Even though the pieces are lyricless, Gustav Holtz's "The Planets" seems to indicate that we are living in an entire Solar System of Ham.
  • The entire discographies of Muse and Linkin Park.


Professional Sports

  • Soccer/Football. Every goal is celebrated like it won you The World Cup, and every "injury" is played up to draw a penalty. Bonus points if the ref doesn't buy it, and the player jumps right back up and joins the flow like nothing happened.
    • Enters a whole other dimension of ham with Spanish-speaking commentators, hot Latin blood and all that:

Number 5! Number 5! Number 5! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO[cut for length]OOOOOOOOAAAALL!!!


Professional Wrestling

  • Pro Wrestling. The whole thing. All of it. No need to go into detail, because everything about it is a World of Ham. In most cases, a wrestler's position on the card is directly proportional to the amount of scenery they chew.
    • As with the Power Rangers example above, this was originally a matter of practicality. If you're in the middle of a ring surrounded by thousands of fans, taking part in a largely non-verbal performance, you need to overact so that the guys in the cheap seats can see what's going on.
      • A wrestler also needs to be rather loud when screaming in pain, or when doing anything else in general. Granted, in the larger arenas, the cheap seats won't hear it, but it's the effort that counts.


Puppet Shows

  • Anything with The Muppets, from The Muppet Show to their movies, or even their guest spots on talk shows. The Muppets always bring the ham. And no, that's not a pig joke. "'Pig joke'?! I'll show YOU a pig joke!! HIIIIIIIII-YAH!!!"


Radio

  • The Navy Lark. Somehow, even on radio, the cast managed to chew enough scenery to keep a good-sized Shakespeare festival supplied for years.
  • Most Radio Drama sounds like this to many used to tv, considering that the actors have to talk about what they're doing as the audience doesn't have any visual aids.
  • Prairie Home Companion
  • A March 1952 episode of The Jack Benny Program, which already starred the prosciutto-rich Benny and Phil Harris featured as guest stars Frank Sinatra, George Burns, Danny Kaye, and Groucho Marx, leading to perhaps the least kosher radio show in history.


Religion and Mythology

  • Holy scriptures. Any holy scriptures. Anything involving Gods as protagonists. The Bible. The Quran. The Silmarillion. Greek Mythology. Norse Mythology. If a fictional character from any work is being hammy or invoking the name of GOD (especially in cases of having the role of God), his speech patterns could reflect the poetry of the Bible or Koran, with overdosed injections of mythical allusions added in their sentences. And that makes this trope Older Than Feudalism.
    • Parodied in the South Park episode "Damien" where the eponymous character and in some cases Jesus himself talk in hammy style. Damien only gets mocked for it.
    • The Manga Bible actually succeeds in making it even more hammy. Not one character there can say anything without posing dramatically and bellowing his dialogue like he's at an amateur dramatics convention.


Tabletop Games

  • Warhammer 40,000, in whatever media form it takes. The game itself almost requires the player take on this sort of attitude. The novels are bombastically hammy. The Dawn of War game series is made of Awesome and Ham. Ham-to-Ham Combat is inevitable. The Imperium is based around being as ostentatious as physically possible in veneration of the Emperor ("Be faithful! Be strong! Be vigilant!"). Chaos is based around going beyond the physically possible, because the Dark Gods demand even more ("MAIM! BURN! KILL!"). Orks consider being LOUD AND MEAN to be valid battle tactics ("WAAAAAAAGGGGHHH!"). The Eldar and Tau are relatively sedate, but in a non-World Of Ham setting they would blow everyone away. The only factions that isn't pure ham and cheese are the Tyranids, who can't exactly speak, and the Necrons, who appear to be completely mute!
    • Even then, the Necrons are magnificently hammy even without speaking. Necron Lords in every medium, stomp, not walk, stomp around the battlefield pissed they didn't get the Imperial March for theme music. And the Tyranids? Well, somehow they seem to be a hammy Horde of Alien Locusts.
    • The presence of Tyranids can cause other people to get hammy in Apocalyptic Logs
  • Paranoia is all about this trope when it's done well.
  • Dungeons & Dragons, whenever The Real Man is involved. And when that Real Man happens to be Vin Diesel...
    • Eberron is this, period. "ACTION POINTS!"
  • Exalted. This is a game where there are three base stats, three skills and an entire combat system governing your ability to make epic, bombastic speeches and generally persuade people via scenery-chewing. The game actively encourages you to go Beyond the Impossible, and being sufficiently awesome will impress the gods of the laws of physics, convincing them to pull a few strings in your favor. (Seriously; this is how the fluff justifies stunting.)
  • TORG had among its realities the "Nile Empire", inspired by pulp dime novels. A world full of stereotypical villains, dashing (super) heroes and distressed damsels
  • Teenagers From Outer Space demands this of its players:

"You've just been grabbed by the foot by an unknown thing on an alien planet. If you aren't screaming like a cat dipped in Nair, you aren't grasping the seriousness of the situation."


Theatre

Opera

Holiest longing's highest need,
Yearning desire's searing demand
Burns for me bright in my breast,
Drives to death and deed!
Needful! Needful I name thee, o sword!
"Needful! Needful!" Envied steel!!
Show forth thy sharpness's shearing fang!
Come forth from thy scabbard to me!

  • Georges Bizet's Carmen is pure unleaded ham. Not only does it take just about every popular trope of the late 19th century (gypsies, Spain, tobacco, smuggling, dangerous women, soldiers, bullfighting, unrequited love) and turn it up to eleven, it does so in the hammiest way imaginable. Escamillo's "Toreador Song" is a five-minute long blast of ham in which he repeatedly compares his prowess in the ring with his prowess in bed.
  • Somewhat related: the J.G. Wentworth opera commercials.


Video Games

  • Baldur's Gate. For reference, Jaheira is probably by any standard the least hammy, most "normal" major character in the entire game. She goes around screaming "FOR THE FALLEN!" and "NATURE TAKES THE LIFE SHE GAVE!" in a fake-russian accent. In most other circumstances she'd be the cast's Large Ham.
    • And, on the opposite side of the spectrum, we have Minsc. This man is undesputedly considered among the series' greatest hams. The man's mere presence is an Incoming Ham. What does he say for simply walking? "Stand back, FOR JUSTICE" at the top of his lungs.

You point...I PUNCH!
Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES! *squeeek*
SWORDS not words!
SWORDS FOR EVERYONE!

  • Also to some degree City of Heroes.
  • Champions Online: The initial training mission is an alien invasion which you complete by taking the superhero Ironclad (who is a ham of titanic proportions all by himself) and shooting him out of a cannon at the alien mothership. And it only ramps UP from there....
  • Command & Conquer likes this trope in its settings. The Tiberium universe is less blatant about it, but it's a very hammy Crapsack World once you get past the in-progress apocalypse. The Red Alert universe, on the other hand... Red Alert 1 was hammy but sane. Red Alert 2 embraced the pork and experimented with some zany ideas. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has Tim Curry, Jonathan Pryce, J.K. Simmons, and George Takei as major characters. It's worth noting that the Ham Acting is entirely intentional in the later game. You can see the big-name actors are having a lot of fun with it.
      • And with Tim Curry's character deceased in Uprising, Malcolm McDowell and Ric Flair are right there to yank the ham from his jowls.
    • By Tiberium Wars the Tiberium setting has upped the ham. Kane himself is hammy enough, but then you get Billy Dee Williams as the director of GDI and you know it's gonna be awesome.
  • The Pocket Dimension of MORTAL KOMBAAT! is powered by Ham and FLAWLESS VICTORY.
  • Devil May Cry.
  • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! definitely takes the cake, but Laharl's attempts at being evil (not to mention his personal special attacks) are pretty hammy as well, and Flonne is, well...very enthusiastic about her heroism and The Power of Love. Vulcanus and Mid-Boss also get plenty of good posturing done, and Prinny Kurtis makes an entrance in style as well. Etna, of all characters, comes off as one of the most sedate during the body of the story—yes, the same character known for her over-the-top, wildly inaccurate chapter previews which rival even Gordon for hamminess.
  • Dynasty Warriors, in which it's worth unlocking every single one of the Loads and Loads of Characters just to find how many new and ham-tastic variations on "I DEFEATED AN OFFICER!" are possible.
    • Particularly excellent is Zhang Jiao's shriek that "The Heavens have SPOKEN!!!"

"Unnleash your raaaage, my CHOsen CHILdren. Unnnnleash-your-rage-upon-the-Han, and bring forth, THE AGE of the Yellow TURBANS!"
"I don't belieeeeve in magiiiic... ONWAAAARD"
"So, you summon-a-rainstorm, with your magic. Whahahat of it?"

    • Or his henchman Zhang Bao:

"Feel the power of my MMMMMMAAAAAAGIIIIIC! You flaming idiots!!"
"I AM LU BU!!!"
DID YOU THINK THAT I'D RESPOND TO ALL OF YOUR TAUNTS?

    • Then there's Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, which even has the normally stoic Real Robot characters taking a cue from Domon and friends and abandoning Kosher. Say it with me now... "Camille's a man's name! AND I'M A MAN!!!"
      • Let's just hope they don't get too crossover-happy and do Dynasty Warhammer 40k... that could implode the world with awesome...
  • Freedom Force.
  • While well acted, Eternal Darkness certainly qualifies for its melodramatic script.

MAY THE RATS EAT YOUR EYES!!!

Marcus: It's- It's a GIANT HAM! THEY'RE SINKING CITIES WITH A GIANT HAM!!!

  • God Hand.
  • In God of War, even the rocks are Large Hams! Kratos spends most of the time killing everything, but when he speaks...

KRATOS: ZEUS!! I BRING THE DESTRUCTION OF OLYMPUS!!!

    • The titans deserve special mention. Near the beginning of the second game:

"YOU WILL PAY... FOR THAT... KRAAAAAAAATOOOOOOS"!

  • Inazuma Eleven is a kids' game about soccer. The first game can get a little over-the-top for a middle school soccer tournament, But then we get to the second game. It's an Alien Invasion. With soccer. Suffice it to say, the overall tone of the series can be summed up as "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann meets soccer".
  • Fallout: New Vegas gives us the Old World Blues DLC set in BIIG MOUNTAIIIN!, where everybody talks like a hammy actor from a 1950's B movie. You can even indulge in some scenery-chewing hammery by channeling your inner Mad Scientist.
  • The Metal Gear Solid series has probably the highest concentration of ham in any media, ever! It's easier to list the characters that are not completely hammy. In the four main games, there are more than 20 villains, every single one a Large Ham in their own right. They can even make a stoic Lady of War to be a Large Ham.
    • And then there's Liquid Ocelot, the King of Ham, who out-hams all other characters in the game combined.

Liquid Snake: I'm you! I AM YOUR SHADOW! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!

  • Sengoku Basara, where even supposedly low-key strategy/planning scenes are filled with wall-smashing punches and epic, manly name shouting.
  • The Soul Series is the unquestionable king of this trope. Every battle quote is as over-the-top and poetic as possible, and when a character wins a match they do a little dance with their sword, punch the ground/bend over provocatively, and SCREAM ABOUT THEIR BACKSTORY.
  • In the Halo, everyone but the Master Chief seems to be a big ham.
    • Captain Keyes would only be a medium ham, but everything he says lets you know what a great officer he is.
    • Cortana has her moments, but in Halo 3 she digs into the ham for all that it's worth.
    • Sgt. Johnson is another Large Ham, and he knows it.
    • All of the Prophets count, but the Prophet of Truth easily steals the cake.
    • The he pales a bit compared with the other characters of the game, the Arbiter is a serious ham in his own right.
    • The Ship Master Rtas 'Vadum only has a loud ham voice and a calm ham voice, and nothing else.
    • And then there's Gravemind, the pure and awsome manifestation of hamminess. When it first reveals itself, its first words are "I am a monument to all your sins!"
  • Street Fighter, OF COURSE!!!.
  • Super Robot Wars especially due to how tongue in cheek the characters are. That, and the fact that you have a crossover of multiple Hot-Blooded, over-the-top Screaming Warriors from across the multiverse.
  • As mentioned above, Dawn of War, in which everyone from the lowliest Chaos Cultist to the narrator to the fiery incarnation of the God of War and Murder is always hammy, all the time. Winter Assault is the absolute pinnacle, including the indomitable General Sturnn, the Ax Crazy Lord Crull, and of course the Laughably Evil Warboss Gorgutz 'Eadhunter. When Gorgutz and Crull meet, it is truly a sight to behold.
    • The Soulstorm Chaos Lord's rant on metal boxes became incredibly popular for the sheer ham value. The video also has Lord Bale's infamous "SINDRIIIIII!" from the first campaign.
    • Soulstorm adds the Sisters Of Battle, more bombastic and strident than the orks. Build a flame-thrower tank and the driver will announcer herself with "Behold...THE IMMOLATOR! BURNING GLORY!"
    • The bloody Commissars. "FEAR ME, BUT FOLLOW!"
      • Which continued into Dawn of War 2. "Be like General Tarsus of yore, BULLETPROOF, AND FREE OF FEAR!"
    • Or the Space Marine Scouts: "FOOOO THE EMPRAH!"
    • The sequel's voice acting was more sedate, to the dismay of some fans. Probably why Araghast, the Chaos Lord in Chaos Rising, is so popular. "FACE ME, IF YOU DARE."
    • Evil Is Hammy is taken very seriously, as demonstrated here. FORCES OF CHAAAOOOOOOOSSSSSS, FiLL ME WITH POWWAAAAAAAAAAHRRRHRHGLGLHHH!!!!
  • Power levels are very clearly defined by hamminess in Shin Megami Tensei games. Basically, the tougher the enemy is, the less afraid he'll be, the more boastful he'll be, and the more awesome and powerful he'll be.
  • StarCraft, where everyone from Tassadar down to basic Terran Marines is overacted unless they have some kind of special reason not to be. The Zerg Overmind is perhaps the worst offender.
    • Warcraft III even more so. For example, Arthas is prone to proclaiming things like "Betrayer of the Light!" when you send him into battle. Even if said "battle" consists of bashing open a defenseless barrel...
    • StarCraft II takes the ham of the first game and up-hams it to almost ennerving levels. After a few hours of hearing one unit after another trying to out-ham all the others, it's actually nice to hear Mohandar's calm, soft voice for a change.
  • Hyrule, as interpreted by The Legend of Zelda CDI Games. It's accompanied with plenty of huge, unnecessary hand gestures.
  • King's Quest Mask of Eternity. Everybody speaks in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe, even the peasants.
  • Filgaia in Wild ARMs 4. When you have synchronized dramatic speeches, a guy wearing a rocket pack and wielding an anti-tank chainsaw, and another person punching out a missile followed by yet another dramatic speech, you might just live in a world of ham.
  • Gaia Online.
  • Team Fortress 2.
    • one of the Heavy Weapons Guy's sandvitch eating quotes is even "DON'T RUN, IT'S JUST HAM!"
    • What can you say about a world where Billy the Kid, Stonewall Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Alfred Nobel, John Henry, Nikola Tesla, Sigmund Freud, Davey Crocket, and Fu Manchu were the main characters' predecessors? (That someone dropped the ball by not sending Teddy Roosevelt back in time to join the fun.)
  • Brutal Legend, which you probably should expect from a game created entirely from pure METAL!

DECAPITATTIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNN!!!

    • Given that it basically boils down to Jack Black VS Tim Curry in a world that has replaced physics with HEAVY METAL...
  • Dragon Age. The only characters who aren't hammy are Deadpan Snarkers. Mind you, most are both. They manage to ham up being deadpan, it's amazing.
  • The Ace Attorney series, to the point where coutroom battles resemble actual battles. Complete with weaponry.
  • As the Spiritual Successor to Devil May Cry, it should come to no surprise that Bayonetta makes prodigious use of this trope as well.
  • Outside of combat, the Valkyrie Profile series is closer to Narm Charm than this, but certainly has aspects of it, particularly in the "English" translation. In combat, the ham is so overwhelming, "It shall be engraved upon your soul!" (It helps that every playable character gets a fully voice-acted Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner, Pre-Mortem One-Liner, called special attack, and Bond One-Liner.)
    • Every wizard has their chance to overdo their lines when they call down the Great Magics. Put a couple big casters in with the right weapons against Lezard Valeth and watch the Ham-to-Ham Combat with great glee.
  • Sacrifice takes place in one of these. The gods lead by scenery-chewing example, and their devotees follow suit.
  • Evil Zone: Just look at Danzaiver and Greg, add Setsuna and Midori as well.
  • Nosgoth, the world where the Legacy of Kain games are set, has the ham flying in all directions. Between Simon Templeman's (justly) pompous, over-articulated delivery of Kain's lines, and Michael Bell's dramatic, simmering rendition of Raziel's voice, the ham gets delivered by the truckload, with all the other characters frantically trying to stack their ham higher than the protagonists. "But does one ever truly have a choice? One can only match, move by move, the machinations of Fate..."
    • Which makes for a funny moment in the Outtakes, where the director asks Rene Auberjonois to ramp the Ham UP. Michael Bell's reaction? "WHOA! License to kill! Let me and the scenery out of the room!"
  • Kingdom Hearts. Good Lord, Kingdom Hearts. It's easier to list the moments when characters, particularly villains, aren't hamming it up than when they are.
  • Touhou Hisoutensoku doesn't have a voice track but that doesn't stop the characters from gesturing in wild and exaggerated manners.
  • Whatever world that Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents takes place in is certainly a hammy one. Whether it's an overwhelmed babysitter, a ramen shopkeeper seeking customers, or Cleopatra trying to lose weight, the distressed victim is sure to emit a sky-filling scream... which promptly attracts the team of cheerleaders/dancers/agents, who immediately proceed to help solve the problem with The Power Of Dance.
  • Castlevania. Most characters are either stupidly stoic or hams. And even the stoics say some overdramatic lines. It doesn't take itself too seriously though, and it has DRACULA for god sake. Dracula's always gonna be hammy. It arguably increases the series' appeal, especially Symphony of the Night. What is a man, indeed.
  • F-Zero. When even the straight-laced, get-right-to-the-point Captain Falcon (note that he is not the Boisterous Bruiser as seen in Super Smash Bros.) breaks out some hickory-smoked scenery-chewing without even batting an eyelash, you know that the Ham levels are at an all-time high. It should also be pointed out that Card Carrying Villains (and that is to say, pretty much every villain aside of Deathborn and maybe Black Shadow) are more like Billboard Carrying Villains.
  • Airforce Delta Strike turns it way up and serves up wholesale ham both in the Enemy Chatter in missions and in the stillshot character interactions between missions. The look on Almighty Mechanic Grandpa Bob's face when you crash a plane is priceless, but can be easily confused for extreme constipation.
  • Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited seems to be this way, with voiced NPCs chewing the scenery whenever possible. The DMs also tend to speak in a deep, ominous voice for no particular reason sometimes. And the WORST offender is Cellimas Villuhne, a cleric NPC you meet early on in the game. The ONLY line she delivers that isn't over the top is at the end of the first dungeon, when she offers a reward for your help. She only shows up in three dungeons, but the way she acts you'd thing she chewed enough of the scenery to dig them all out herself.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising, so, so much. It's combined with Casual Danger Dialog and No Fourth Wall, to boot!
  • Hell is an Afterlife of Ham in the videogame Dantes Inferno. If people aren't screaming lamentations or cackling madly, something's wrong.
  • With the exception of Rachel Alucard, who is too busy being The Ojou to get hammy, every other character in BlazBlue is hammy to the umpth degree. And they come in all possible kinds of flavors, too, from Ragna The Bloodedge's cocky, shounen-heroic ham; Arakune's insane, gibbering ham and Hakumen's sheer badassy ham to Bang who is simply a walking Large Ham scene (so much, in fact, that his Super Mode comes complete with a Theme Music Power-Up about how awesome he is)... And then there's Hazama/Terumi Yuuki, who outhams them all.
  • Asura's Wrath is full of this, with Asura himself and his mentor Augus being stand out examples.
    • Perhaps the best way to describe just how hammy it is is this: It's Dragon Ball Z X God of War. Yeah.
  • We can add yet another BioWare IP to the list. A wide variety of characters in Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 (particularly your cohorts in Storm of Zehir) merrily ham it up. And a sizable majority of the Player Character voices (even the ladies) seem to be channeling Brian Blessed. And like BioWare's subsequent Dragon Age series, when they're not hams, they're deadpan snarkers, and sometimes they're both.
  • Space Channel 5 doesn't just have a world of ham, it has a galaxy of ham.


Web Comics


Web Original

  • Golduck Productions. Every single character in this So Bad It's Good flick. "GOLDDUCK PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS ..." Get my point, the first link leads to the "Some Sucky Action Movie" and the rest simply link to the sequels and spinoffs.
  • Kickassia, with the exception of President Baugh, who never raises his voice even when his country is invaded.
    • And his family, who never look up from their books. Given that the main cast are known for their over-the-top reviews of... well, everything, it should come as no surprise.
    • Then comes Suburban Knights. Helped by the fact that some of the reviewers are aping hammy performances.
  • Sockbaby.
  • A Very Potter Musical and it's sequel. To the point that they became the inspiration for Ham-to-Ham Combat
  • Nella's "pony melodrama", which manages to include a whore teacher with a heart of gold, a polar bear as Jesus and family relationships getting torn apart.
  • In The Fantastic Favio Bros, every character is a Large Ham, from the overly Chivalrous Pervert hero Favio and his Cloudcuckoolander brother Tony to the Obviously Evil villains who think that Everybody Must Get Stoned.
  • The world of The Questport Chronicles.
  • THIS VERY WIKI! It IS this trope! We tropers can get a bit... PASSIONATE about our favorite series.
    • Seriously...look at all the caps we've put on this page alone. We had way too much fun doing this...
    • This is especially obvious when someone who has... let us say a "more balanced attitude"... toward a particular work, or a particular genre, or a particular type of work (animation, horror movies, Korean comic books, whatever) makes an edit that, while inoffensive and normal in and of itself and made with all the best intentions, is taken as a purposeful affront by a fan of the work, genre, or whathaveyou because of the "anyone with any sense would be as fanatic about this Work/Genre/Type of Whatever as I am, and since you disagree you are EVIL!!!!!." (It helps to read that last word in Ernest Borgnine's mermaid man voice.)

Western Animation


Other

  • The circus. (And no, not necessarily a Circus of Fear, though that can certainly qualify as well.) When the entire soundtrack consists of a whistle, a brass band, maybe some clown horns, and a steam-powered organ so loud that it can be heard for miles, how can it all not be hammy in excelsis? Taken Up to Eleven by recent performances of the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus, where even the ringmaster sings and dances.


Real Life

  • In some sections of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City, the use of intense speech patterns and a theatric eloquence at parties, among friends, or even during family squabbles is the norm.
    • "Young MAN, if I EVER see BEFORE ME this kind of MANIFESTATION of INSOLENCE from my own FLESH AND BLOOD again, you will regret the HONOR your parents GAVE YOU in ALLOWING YOU To! Be! Born!"
  • Most amateur improv shows turn into this very quickly.
    • Not just amateur.
  • Argentina.
    • Now imagine Iron Maiden live in Argentina: "[(relatively) somber] Fear of the Dark [ham] ARGENTINA!! Muhahahaha! [somber again] I have a constant fear that something's always near."
  • The real world is probably the result of combining a World of Ham with a World of Snark.
  1. ↑ as in cheesiness, not overacting
  2. ↑ "Nightfall In Middle-Earth", sung in the Key of Ham
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