History Main / GlassCannon

* ''Film/GhostRiderSpiritOfVengeance'': Roarke compares himself to a flamethrower made of paper while explaining to Danny about his powers; he is unable to use his full power while in the human world because of his fragile human body. [[spoiler:Thus, he needs to possess Danny, the boy being his son and all.]]

** ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol3'': The High Evolutionary's gravity powers are undoubtedly deadly -- they can annihilate an entire roomful of enemies in a SphereOfDestruction at maximum output -- but they (and his combat skills in general) are so crude and simple that they offer him zero defensive options. Once you get past that, he's a lightly-armoured HumanAlien with perfectly ordinary durability and pain tolerance -- which is even more of a problem than it sounds, since being a GravityMaster apparently requires some level of concentration on his part. Any reasonably serious injury will distract him so much that he essentially loses any meaningful ability to fight back against whoever injured him, leaving him entirely dependent on his first-strike capabilities. There's a reason his "fight" against the Guardians can be summarised as "Rocket shoots him, and then a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown ensues".

* The direct inverse of StoneWall, who takes it but can't dish it out.
* Compare and contrast MightyGlacier, who can dish out at the expense of speed rather than toughness, and LightningBruiser, who can do the same without sacrificing anything (or sacrificing a "secondary" characteristic, such as [[CloseRangeCombatant range]]).

*** In the 1930s, the Soviet Union experimented with mounting rockets on tanks, producing [[http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/shirokorad/ot-min/244.jpg this monstrosity]]. Due to several defects with the design (namely horrifying lack of accuracy), it was never put into production.

** A statistical LightningBruiser can also [[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible become a practical Glass Cannon]] in a game where enemies keep attacking the player character and where MercyInvincibility doesn't exist, making their defense and LifeMeter near-pointless.

->''"I'm the caster, y'know! It's like I'm a cannon made out of glass. Like a...y'know, like a dainty figurine so ornately decorated you can't imagine how something so fragile manages to exist in this brutal, ugly world...and it makes you weep."''

[[caption-width-right:256:[[VisualPun Frail, but deadly.]]]]

[[caption-width-right:306:[[VisualPun Frail, but deadly.]]]]

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1655450810083676100

[[quoteright:306:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/glasscannon_5812.jpg]]

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] actual cannons made of glass, which would be its TropeNamer. For those, see GlassWeapon.

* ''Franchise/{{Rocky}}'';

-->'''AJ''': ''(in response to Dave calling him a SpotMonkey)'' I think it's funny that a guy who takes a bump and tears his back tells me I don't know how to wrestle.

* In ''Film/BackToTheFuture'', George is a lanky kid who gets manhandled pretty easily by the much taller and burlier Biff, but when he finally gets serious he one-shots Biff with a single punch.

* In ''Film/RockyIII'', Rocky’s opponent Clubber Lang is ultimately a variation of this, with his weakness being stamina rather than defence. While Lang is a powerful fighter who hits hard and generally demolishes his opponents quickly, his reliance on this strategy means that he puts too much power into his initial assaults. He defeats Rocky in their first bout because Rocky was out of practice and emotionally shaken by his manager’s recent fatal heart attack, but when they engage in a rematch Rocky has worked hard to get back in shape and manages to provoke Lang into a rage where he makes mistakes, resulting in Lang exhausting himself while Rocky utilises his greater endurance to strike back and win.

* Also often overlaps with LongRangeFighter, using range to keep out of harm's way. The direct inverse of StoneWall, who takes it but can't dish it out.

** Though the German and Soviet tank destroyers tended to go in the opposite direction, with [[MightyGlacier heavy armour and powerful guns with limited traverse]], they also produced a large number of lightly-armoured, open-topped self-propelled guns which were often used to take out enemy armour. In the case of Germany, some of these were specifically designed and pressed into service as tank destroyers, following their encounters with superior Soviet armour.

** The Vickers Medium Mk.II, designed in 1925, was armed with a 47mm anti-tank gun (and as such, were among the best-armed tanks of the time) but only had 8mm of armour. By comparison, the WWI-era Whippet had 18mm. The design was due to the doctrine that the best tool to fight a tank was another tank, and that armour was essentially for defence from small-arms fire (against which it was fitted with machine-guns). The Medium II was designed to replace both the WWI-era medium and heavy tanks, to break through the the enemy line and then exploit the rear, destroying headquarters, artillery parks, etc. while taking prisoners.

British cruiser tank doctrine was

* The British ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courageous-class_battlecruiser Courageous]]'' [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courageous-class_battlecruiser -class]] "large light cruisers" of late WWI had battleship-grade main guns (albeit in fairly-small numbers)... and next to no belt or deck armor, in order to maximize speed and minimize draft. They were so lightly armored that the Royal Navy saw them as fairly useless in a fight, as they had absolutely no ability to take a hit from anything heavier than an anti-torpedo-boat gun, and all three were converted into aircraft carriers during or after the war.
* Light tanks by definition are supposed to be very mobile, primarily designed for scouting and exploiting breakthroughs in enemy lines, so they would often give up armour in exchange for greater speed and range. Although many fall under the FragileSpeedster category, several designs (particularly the American M24 Chaffee and M41 Bulldog, as well as the French AMX-13 series) qualify as Glass Cannons, having sufficient armament to tackle heavier armour.[[note]]A few designs, namely a number of WWII French tanks, would invert this completely by being relatively slow {{Stone Wall}}s.[[/note]] A good example would be the British "Crusader" cruiser tank: extremely fast and agile and armoured with the superb 6 pounder 57 mm cannon, which was able to knock out ''any'' German tanks at the desert, but itself vulnerable.
** The American M551 Sheridan (technically an "armoured reconnaissance/airborne assault vehicle") provides a remarkable example of this trope, being poorly armoured but armed with a low-velocity 152mm gun. Put into context, its shells packed almost as much explosive as heavy artillery shells. It could also fire anti-tank missiles, which could theoretically take out any contemporary battle tank, though these were almost never used.

* Aircraft carriers exist to operate aircraft. Anything not related to operating aircraft is usually considered unnecessary, as the embarked aircraft give the carrier the effective ability to spot and engage enemy targets in a radius of several hundred miles or more. That they also tend to be [[MadeOfExplodium crammed full of munitions and volatile aviation fuel]] is just icing on the cake. Taken [[ExaggeratedTrope Up to Eleven]] by Japanese WWII carriers, which had an enormous airplane capacity, but tended to ignite violently on two or three hits, largely because of poor damage control and internal design. They attempted to rectify this with the ''Taiho'', with the design expected to remain able to operate after multiple bomb and torpedo hits. [[EpicFail A single American submarine-launched torpedo caused a fuel vapor explosion that sank her]]. Modern day aircraft try to subvert this by loading them up with the best anti-air and anti-submarine defenses possible, but hold superiority mostly due to just how huge the ship is and how deadly the aircraft and how precise the targeting and sonar systems are.

* The British ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courageous-class_battlecruiser Courageous]]''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courageous-class_battlecruiser -class]] "large light cruisers" of late WWI had battleship-grade main guns (albeit in fairly-small numbers)... and next to no belt or deck armor, in order to maximize speed and minimize draft. They were so lightly armored that the Royal Navy saw them as fairly useless in a fight, as they had absolutely no ability to take a hit from anything heavier than an anti-torpedo-boat gun, and all three were converted into aircraft carriers during or after the war.