Dumb Muscle / Western Animation

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• Action League NOW! has The Flesh, who's "super strong and super naked" as well as having the "honor" of being the dimmest of a team of brain-dead two-bit super "heroes".
• Susan Strong, in Adventure Time, is almost a rare female example, but actually could be considered a subversion. She can't speak English right off the bat and is very confused about life on the surface, but that doesn't make her dumb; she learns very quickly.
• Aladdin: The Series: In the episode "Strike Up the Sand", Sadira conjures a sand monster to to get Jasmine out of the way so Sadira can pursue Aladdin for herself. Unlike many examples of this trope, the sand monster is surprisingly Genre Savvy regarding his abilities and limitations.
  "Look, I just smash stuff. I'm a one-trick pony, I admit it. Now, if you want her smashed into a smushy-mushy paste, then I'm your monster! Otherwise, forget it."
• The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers: Adi. Biggest and strongest of the brothers, but also the stupidest.
• American Dad!: Stan Smith is a muscular hunk who often does fairly well in combat as a CIA agent, but he's otherwise quite dimwitted, especially as the series goes on.
• Angela Anaconda 's older brothers. Probably because they're always banging their heads together... with no helmets.
• Angelo Rules: The resident bully Manetti is physically strong and a slow thinker who is also Book Dumb. Angelo takes advantage of his lack of intelligence several times.
• Pipsqueak from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
• Scarface had a huge, hulking henchman named Rhino in both Batman: The Animated Series and The Batman who fit the description. (One of the few times a villain's henchman appeared in both adaptations.)
• In Celebrity Deathmatch, Cousin Grimm, one of the Super-Freaks, was a pretty dumb bruiser. In the deciding match between him and Potato Khan, his brutal clubbing caused Khan to split up into many small duplicates of himself; Grimm reacted by stomping on them and gloating, "One potato, two potato, three potato, four," then scratched his head and said, "What's after four?"
• The Bullnerds, Thor Thort and Brick Buster in ChalkZone.
• Nicolas from Code Lyoko. More emphasis on the dumb part of the description though.
• Mr. Larrity's son, Dean, from Code Monkeys. Though he's strong, he has the same type of mental weaknesses played for laughs. "I love Japan! Except for their Reggae music, cause it has the word 'gay' in it."
• Numbuh Four of the Codename: Kids Next Door is the idiot of the team, but also the most inclined to physical violence. His actual combat ability varies greatly between episodes, usually switching between Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny. It is zig-zagged, since it's heavily implied that he actually is smart, but so reckless, violent, and impulsive that he rarely actually relies on his intelligence - and in fact frowns on doing so out of pride in being Book Dumb.
• The Fixed Ideas in Cybersix are a whole race of idiotic strongmen. They're still a bit of a threat to our heroine since she’s a Glass Cannon, but not by much since they're extremely dumb.
• Dave the Barbarian:
  • Candy became one was well in one episode, where eating magic broccoli gives her big muscles, but also causes her intelligence to drop to Neanderthal levels.
• The Infraggable Crunk (and actually Val Halen and Major Glory as well, to some extent) from the Justice Friends, the shorts from Dexter's Laboratory. Incredibly strong, but with the psyche of a 5-year-old... literally. "TV Puppet Pals! TV Puppet Pals! Lots of fun for boys and gals!"
  • And Crunk's Distaff Counterpart, the supervillain She-Thing. She promises to write every day from prison, prompting Crunk to promise to learn how to read.
• Soren from The Dragon Prince is the best fighter at the king's court, and can even compete with trained elves assassins. However, it quickly becomes apparent that he is anything but smart. This is eventually deconstructed. Soren may lack in book smarts, but he is far from stupid, and he questions his father's orders to kill the princes. However, years of being treated as "the dumb one" has taken a toll on his self-confidence, and even when he feels that his father is wrong, he does what he's told because he thinks he's too dumb to know any better.
• Captain Hero, a Shallow Parody of Superman in Drawn Together.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy:
  • Ed is the dumbest of the trio, and possesses a ridiculous amount of strength, despite looking pretty skinny.
  • May Kanker. Despite being the most dimwitted out of the Kankers, she usually is willing to resort to physical violence along with her sisters, and is shown to be very strong.
• Both Jorgen Von Strangle and Francis from The Fairly OddParents! qualify, but especially Francis; Jorgen becomes more of one later on.
• Fangbone!: The episode "The Helmit of Durling" features the eponymous cursed artifact, which transforms anyone who wears it into an example of the trope.
• Rock Bottom from the TV Felix the Cat cartoons. As he launches the Professor from a cannon:
  Rock Bottom: Ten...nine...eight....uh, what comes after eight, Professor?
  Professor: Seven, stupid!
  Rock Bottom: Seven...stupid...six...five...four...two...one...
• In Gargoyles, Broadway's clone Hollywood (and, indeed, the Clone Clan as a whole) is a straight example of this trope. Broadway himself at times seems like this compared to Brooklyn and Lexington, but he's too smart to be a completely straight example.
• Several in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002). Ram Man makes an impressive showing for the good guys, but he's eclipsed easily by Clawful, whose voice alone comes on a little too strong about the fact that he's an utter moron. (He's so dumb that in one episode, he can't understand the non-verbal language of his own species.) As it happens, in the original series, he was actually a Genius Bruiser, a role that was taken by Tri-Klops... who was Dumb Muscle in the original show, himself. Then there are guys like Beast Man and Grizzlor, who are frankly just bestial and have a lot of know-how related to their skills, and Spikor, who manages to be a Small Name, Big Ego Large Ham who strikes poses while boasting about his imminent victory in addition to being an idiot.
• Torvald and Harold in Hey Arnold!, who are both 13-year-old fourth graders as a result of being held back several times. The best grade Torvald ever had in his life was a C- from kindergarten.
• Beezy from Jimmy Two-Shoes.
• Miguel in The Jungle Bunch is not very smart. In fact, he refers to himself by his name. However, he is really strong, and acts as The Jungle Bunch's muscle.
• Kaeloo, in her Bad Kaeloo form.
• Greta from Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is another rare female example. She's not very bright, but Dr. Emilia keeps her around because she's capable of tearing through rope and pulling doors off their hinges with her bare hands.
• Korgoth of Barbaria himself, a pastiche of Conan minus the ingenuity and ambition. And still his intellect is debatable given the great survival skills that he undeniably possesses.
  • Scrotus the gigantic thug, on the other hand is lacking in any intelligence other than in colorful language and his muscle is still not enough to make up for it while confronting Korgoth.
• League of Super Evil:
  • Subverted with Red Menace. He's shown to be of normal intelligence and quite resourceful at times. In one episode, he even scored higher on a computerized intelligence test than Voltar (whose intelligence was on the level of celery).
  • Doctor Frogg became one after using a device to convert his brain power to strength, until they needed to disarm a self-destruct mechanism and needed someone smart to do it (when Red needed to "re-educate" him).
• Penny, the Shallow Parody to Donkey Kong from The Mighty B!.
• Texas and Tooley in Motorcity.
• Bulk Biceps in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, as lampshaded by his name and his dumbbell Cutie Mark, is easily the bulkiest pony in Ponyville, and certainly not the brightest. In "Rainbow Falls" he fails a Rhetorical Question Blunder, and in "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks" the CMC have to explain to him that his talent might not be limited to lifting dumbbells.
• The Oh Yeah! Cartoons short "Planet Kate" has this demonstrated by Bolivar. Of the five alien dogs seen in the short, Bolivar is physically the strongest and is also much dumber than the other four.
• Rico in The Penguins of Madagascar is the strongest and toughest member of the team, but he's also a bit of a Cloud Cuckoolander and talks exclusively in garbled grunts.
• The Powerpuff Girls:
  • Fuzzy Lumpkins is a Half-Witted Hillbilly who can be a threat to the girls with his raw strength alone.
  • Big Billy of the Gangreen Gang, a Fat Idiot with Stout Strength.
  • Also the short-lived fourth Powerpuff Girl, Bunny, who is significantly larger than the others, but not too bright.
  • The Rowdyruff Boys are explicitly stated as actually being stronger than the Girls, which would make them some of the most physically powerful beings alive. They're also complete morons who can't handle ideas more complex than "Destroy!" or "Eww, cooties!"
• The Proud Family: The one-shot wrestler "Mongo", with a Hulk Speak voice to match.
• ReBoot: Megabyte's henchmen, Hack and Slash. They're mostly incompetent and as dumb as a bowl of mice (not to mention constantly bickering), but can occasionally make up for it with Super-Strength, not to mention being Multi-Armed and Dangerous.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: The Rare Female Example is Scorpia, who is one of the physically beefiest characters in the show, a very friendly and Affably Evil sort, and is generally shown to be pretty far from the sharpest tool in the box... especially when her infatuation with Catra starts interfering with her other mental processes in episodes like "Roll With It".
• The Simpsons: Nelson is a bully, who should not underestimated. In a episode, he even managed to beat three other bullies. But he is not the smartest.
• Skysurfer Strike Force: Bioborg, Grenader, is a sentient grenade man, but is often the first borg defeated by the Skysurfers.
• Sonic Boom has Knuckles the Echidna who, at the best of times, is not all there to being a full-on ditz. But even he still has moments of clarity when anyone else acts stupid or when he shows off one of his skills like playing piano and he's a beast when it comes to fighting.
• South Park: Mimsy, Nathan's subordinate from "Crippled Summer"
  • Heather Swanson from "Board Girls" also counts. "She" absolutely crushes "her" opponents in sports competitions, but is very bad at games that require strategy and planning.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Patrick has demonstrated exceptional physical strength on several occasions, especially in the episodes "Karate Star" and "The Frycook Games."
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "No Small Parts", the Pakleds have become this. Although they aren't a joke any more and pose a legitimate threat, it is clear that they still aren't the brightest bulbs, such as how they refer to every Starfleet ship that they encounter as the Enterprise. This is reflected in their ships, which are powerful but crude and shoddily built.
• Teen Titans (2003): Subverted with Cyborg and Monsieur Mallah, who use brute force the most of anyone on their respective teams, but are both highly intelligent as well.
  • The Teen Titans Go! version of Cyborg, on the other hand, is dimwitted, impulsive, and easily distracted. He's still highly skilled at working with technology, but outside of that he's hopeless.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): Bebop and Rocksteady serve as Shredder's muscle. They're usually dumb as a rock but the Turtles would often win by out-thinking them, as they were already tough to begin with, and got even tougher when made a wild boar and a rhino respectively thanks to Shredder's Mutagen.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers: The Dinobots. People say Grimlock is smarter than he lets on, but he still wants Kup to tell him about the petro-rabbits, even in the middle of a firefight. Sludge is also particularly dim, and, as the largest of the Dinobots, particularly strong. All of the Dinobots have an idiosyncratic form of Hulk Speak that lends itself to this image. In later issues of the comics this is subverted. Depending on the writers, the Dinobots are either street-savvy bruisers, or regular Autobots who feign ignorance as an act. Grimlock is consistently portrayed as being a temperamental leader who prefers direct action.
  • Transformers: Animated:
    • Grimlock is almost toddler-like in his temperament and speech; Swoop and Snarl don't seem to have enough processor power to talk at all, either.
    • Lugnut, who is delusionally devoted to Megatron, Mixmaster and Scrapper, who are barely aware of their surroundings, and Blackout, the largest Decepticon in history, who needs to be closely supervised in order to be of any use. It's not so much that Lugnut is dumb, he's just blinded by his extreme loyalty. He has his moments, like "Decepticon Air" when he led a small band of Decepticons in taking over the Elite Guard flagship.
  • Also, in Generation 1, most combined robots were extremely crude mentally. Menasor was decidedly Hulk-like, for instance, only being able to act on things all of his component robots could agree on. Superion, similarly, had exactly two things he could do or think about: Fight and Protect. Even the super-smart Computron took so much time processing data that he was useless in battle. Motormaster and most of the original Predacons, as well, especially the hardheaded Headstrong, the easily enraged Tantrum, and he hyperactive Rampage. Bruticus and Abominus are even more pronounced examples, to the point where they aren't ordered to fight as much as turned loose to engage in wanton destruction. And then there's Beastbox, an interrogation expert who is often faced with extracting information from an Autobot he had beaten to death seconds before.
    • Outside of the cartoon, the true animal combiners (Predaking and Piranicon) subvert this. The explanation is that the component robots have a shared love of the hunt that completes the persona of the combined form.
  • As standout examples as the Dinobots are, the Decepticons tend to have more simpleminded brutes in their ranks:
    • What the Firecons lack in intelligence and direct physical power, they make up for in, ahem, firepower. The exception is their commander, Sparkstalker, a twisted genius wasting away babysitting moronic stooges Flamefeather and Cindersaur.
    • Skullcruncher, who is specifically described as "slow (in more ways than one) but powerful." This is the guy who eats his enemies after defeating them, even though Cybertronians don't get nutrition of any kind that way and he admits to hating how they taste. However, the surprisingly sophisticated symbolism of cruelly absorbing his foes isn't lost on Skullcruncher's Headmaster partner Grax, who can do enough thinking for the both of them easily.
    • Stranglehold, whose strength has always outweighed his intelligence by a hefty margin. While he's a genius fighter, he's a moron when it comes to everything else, making him ultimately a liability and only welcome on the Mayhem Attack Squad, a team of misfits with similarly bad reputations.
    • And Tidal Wave from Armada, who is basically only capable of saying his own name, and Demolishor's later incarnation in Energon.
    • Crumplezone from Cybertron. With his big forearms and short legs, he also looks like an ape. He's literally the largest mechanoid on Velocitron. And while compared to the rest of the natives he's very slow in a couple of different ways, he's much quicker than his size suggests.
  • BB from Beast Wars II subverts this slightly; His alternate mode is a stealth bomber. A gigantic stealth bomber equipped with a similarly enormous gatling gun. He's roughly three times as wide as your average transformer in robot mode, has strength and firepower ratings of 9 and an intelligence rating of 4, and can only say "Roger!"
  • Blastcharge in Beast Machines, related comics and Tankor from the main show, until Rattrap roots around in his head.
  • Beast Wars has Scorponok and Quickstrike.
  • In the Shattered Glass Mirror Universe, Buster and Spike Witwicky are the dumb muscle of the family gang, while oldest brother Butch is the brains. The SG Technobots are also in the "thick as bricks" category, thanks to a failed experiment that rendered them neurotic in their individual forms and arrogantly stupid in their combined form.
• Both Lok and Slog, the Rare Female Example, from Tak and the Power of Juju.
• Tuttle Twins: Bruce, the bully, qualifies for this trope. Yes, he's got muscle, but when Ethan kindly offers him a canvas for his project, he rejects his help solely because he believes his role in the show is to be a metaphor of certain nations who reject the value of free trade, and are deprived of its own benefits. He ends up getting an F as a result, much to his displeasure.
• Ned from The Venture Bros., who is actually mentally disabled. Not to mention Humongoloid, whose tremendous size comes at the apparent cost of having Down's Syndrome — at least until he gets shrunk, at which point he displays average intelligence.
• Wild Kratts has Dabio, henchman to Donita. Leads to a good Brick Joke in Fireflies when Donita tells a joke at the beginning of the episode, and then Dabio gets it in the end... right when Donita is too angry about being foiled again to care about it any less.
  Dabio: "Glowrious! I get it! Haha, very funny Donita. LOL."
  Donita: "You don't say LOL, you just laugh. AUGH!"
• Rondo Jr. from Yakkity Yak.

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