Husky Russkie

Wrestlink bears for Mozzer Russia!!

"Big Russian guy with big guns, all those American and their stereotypes!"

— Molotov, Facebreakers

Ah, Mighty Glacier. Stronk, brutish, beeg, stronk, not so bright (unless zat is point), stronk... Because Mozzer Russia Makes You Stronk.

And in Video Games, he is beink almost invariably Russian. Ozzer countries are, in some rare cases, substituted, but video game's large fellow often khas good chance of being from former Soviet Union. May also be replacink ze g in -ing works with k, for yexample; drinkink, skiink, dancink, and so on.

May have one of six possible names: Ivan, Vladimir, Yuri,^note No, not zat one! Or zat one! Viktor, Dmitri, or Boris.

This actually is not beink limited to just games. Apparently it has been common stereotype in Western film for Russian men to be depicted as large, boorish "bears" who are speakink in broken English. Khowever, is most visible in video games. Yespecially fightink games. A small town may have only one huge Vladimir, because as the Russian proverb says "Two bears don't live in one lair" (Два медведя в одной берлоге не живут (Dva medvedya v odnoy berloge ne zhivut.).

Often tend to be eizzer The Brute or Boisterous Bruiser, often dependink on what side zey are beink on. Zey use size and fighting ability by working as Bouncer or enforcer for the Big Bad from Soviet-bloc Bratvas. He may work the door at the boss' Totally Legitimate Russian Businessmens' Social Club in the Wretched Hive, or perhaps loads heavy, mysterious crates that Fell Off the Back of a Truck. Maybe Dmitri "deals with" troublesome enemy gangsters.

He has big scar from fighting in Spetznaz unit in Afghanistan/Chechnya back in the day. To block out painful memories of lost comrades-in-arms and difficult past, he drinks big glasses of overproof Russian vodka that iz so strong it can also be used as airplane fuel. If he gets in a fight, he will take many punches to the head and stab wounds and not go down.

Owink to greater yemotional freedom yin Russian culture, may also be Emotional Bruiser. Often is beink put through much abusing by writers.

Zis seems to be becomink eizzer Evolvink or Discredited Trope; khowever, more recent games such as Team Fortress 2 breazzink new life into trope for sheerest Camp value.

If you went back to Seventies and asked someone what Husky Russkie was beink, would assume you were referrink to woman, but now Russian women beink Sensual Slavs.

Often timez, they're accompanied by their sled dogs (especially zhe Siberian Khaskies^note Siberian Huskies, but pronounced in Russian).

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Boris from Black Lagoon. He also subverts it by being under the orders of a somewhat shorter woman named Balalaika... who, on the other hand, is a Magnificent Bitch as well as a very powerful and completely ruthless Dark Action Girl.
• Eyeshield 21: Rodchenko, the world record holder in the bench press at age 18. Didn't do him much good on the field, as he falls squarely into Unskilled, but Strong territory.
• Gundam:
  • Mobile Fighter G Gundam: Argo Gulskiiis The Big Guy of the Five-Man Band and relays heavily on brute force when fighting but outside the ring, he's a very calm and honorable Big Brother Mentor towards the group. In fact, Argo is so calm and strong in mind and heart that he didn't show mental/emotional damage after being Brainwashed and Crazy via DG Cells.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team: Commander Yuri Kerane although not he's not explicitly described as Russian and is a pretty competent commander who cares about his men despite having all the social charm of Gaston. It's still obvious what the writers were getting at, though. Interestingly, Ginias Sakharin could be considered a complete inversion of this trope, because despite also having implied Russian heritage (his surname), his design and mannerisms are anything but husky and brutish. And for even more irony, Ginias actually causes Yuri's death towards the end of the series.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Downplayed with Sergei Smirnov. He is one of the tallest characters, and he is a veteran who gained the name "Wild Bear of Russia" In-Universe before the events of the series. While he nearly succeeded in destroying two Gundams in separate occasions when the other troops were obliterated in a single hit, there’s nothing brutish about his fighting style nor his character, save for maybe the big scar on his face.
• Hajime no Ippo: Subverted. The Russian boxer Alexander Volg Zangief is a force to be reckoned with inside the ring... but in normal life he is soft-spoken, friendly, humble to the point of borderline shyness, a sort of Momma's Boy and very gentle (and has quite the Ho Yay with Ippo, Yaoi Fangirls say). He's not even that tall, either, compared with other boxers of the same cathegory.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers: Russia (human name: Ivan Braginsky) is the tallest of the characters, and has a matching impressive thick and muscular build. He's Made of Iron, able to stop a tank with his body, and his mass has been Played for Laughs, such as when he accidentally sits on Canada. But rather than being a straight example of a manly brute, he looks cute and seems friendly...then he turns out to be a Psychopathic Manchild with bad mood swings. (Though later in the series he's seen treating others better and his reasons to be the way he is are explained)

Asian Animation

• Guardian Fairy Michel: Ian and his sister are Russians with heavily-built bodies and strong accents.
• In Pleasant Goat Fun Class: Travel Around the World episode 2, the gang goes to Russia after they find one of Slowy's clues in a matryoshka doll. While there, they meet a strong bear man who helps them to retrieve another Russian doll that's frozen in the water; Sparky is impressed by his ability, and the bear explains that Russians like to exercise so they can adapt to all sorts of tough weather.

Comic Books

• Batman Incorporated is about having a Batman in every area possible. Most regional Batmen are Captain Ethnic heroes, and Russia's is no exception — the Batman of Moscow is an extremely large and muscular man, significantly dwarfing every other member of the group.
• The Boys: Vasily "Vas" Vorishkin, "The Love Sausage", is a big, bearded, broken English, loves a good drink, and a proud old commie.
• Deadly Class is about a secret school that trains teenagers into assassins, with students from all over the world. The most notable student from the Soviet Union (the series takes place in the 80s) is Viktor, who seems to be the tallest and strongest kid in the school. And, incidentally, it's also suggested that he has a large penis, to boot.
• In the Marvel G.I. Joe comics, Boisterous Bruiser Horror-show, the heavy weapons expert of the Oktober Guard, seems to fit this trope (his action figure was codenamed "Big Bear"), although he's technically Georgian. Subverted by the rest of the Guard, who have similar builds as other members of G.I. Joe and COBRA.
• Grushko in Global Frequency isn't especially muscular, but he's probably the tallest of the Global Frequency's operatives. He describes himself as the large man from your nightmares who murdered your family and destroyed everything you loved.
• Kick-Ass: The aptly-named Mother Russia from the second series is a seven-foot woman with an eyepatch, arms like utility poles, and a cold, murderous disposition.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmo is a bit of an unusual example, being a talking Cosmonaut dog, but he's certainly got the personality for it.
  Come on then, ugly zombies, if you think you can bite harder than Russian dog!
  • The Incredible Hulk: Mongu (Boris Monguski) subverted the stereotype by actually being a smaller man inside a set of Powered Armor that looked like a barbaric giant, which was ultimately trashed by the Hulk. Years later an actual barbarian named Mongu would show up, though as he hailed from another dimension he had no ties to Russia.
    • Emil Blonsky, The Abomination is also this. A gamma-radiated one at that.
  • Iron Man:
    • The Titanium Man, Boris Bullski, is a pretty large commie under all that armor, measuring in at 7'1" without the suit (the armor itself is 8'9"), and he's strong enough to use the armor without powered controls. The second Titanium Man, however, somewhat subverted the trope, as that armor was built and operated by Kondrati Topolov, the Gremlin. A Depraved Dwarf, Topolov measured in at 4'8", while his armor was the same height as Bullski's.
    • Like Titanium Man, most of the people inside the Crimson Dynamo armor have been slow-witted behemoths.
  • The Punisher: The Russian, although the comic book version was a truly over-the-top version... even when he got huge breasts. He's a big, big man with inhuman physical might — and a near-total invulnerability to harm.
  • Spider-Man:
    • Most versions of Kraven the Hunter; in the original comics, Sergei Kravinoff could wrestle a lion in his sleep even without the mystic potions and herbs he uses when officially on the hunt. His son Aloysha, on the other hand, once knocked out the Rhino with one blow. Again, though, Kraven and his sons all used what amounted to herbal steroids to achieve this level of power.
    • It rarely gets acknowledged, but the Rhino himself (real name Aleksei Mikhailovich Sytsevich) is a Russian immigrant, and also an example.
  • X-Men
    • Piotr "Peter" Rasputin aka Colossus. He's Russian, and very big and muscular even when he's not transformed. However, unlike most examples, he's an art student and fairly intelligent. Also, aside from the spattering of Russian words that some writers (notably Chris Claremont) liked to spatter into his dialogue, Colossus speaks English with an American accent, thanks to being taught the language telepathically (this detail is easy to miss, which is why he speaks with a Russian accent in the cartoons).
    • Piotr's younger sister, Illyana (aka Magik), is a Sensual Slav: a beautiful, svelte, and dangerous blonde demon-sorceress in a midriff-baring black outfit.
    • Piotr's older brother, Mikhail, is also a Huksy Ruskie: a few inches shorter than Piotr, but almost as wide, and just as heavily muscled. Mikhail is shown sometimes to either have Super-Strength or can approximate it with his incredible powers.
  • Winter Guard:
    • A mutant named Mikhail Uriokovitch Ursus, also known as Ursa Major. As if he wasn't already big, muscular and a great fighter, he can transform into a bear, with super strength and endurance. He's also actually pretty smart, too.
    • Ursa Major has a teammate in Perun, after the Slavic god of thunder, who also possesses greatly intimidating size and strength.
    • The Winter Guard's equivalent of Iron Man is Power Surge. His suit is his body, and it's much larger than that of his American counterpart.

Films — Animation

• The Aristocats: Billy Boss, a Russian alleycat in Scat Cat's gang and easily the largest one in the group.
• Boris from Lady and the Tramp, who is the largest of Lady's inmates while she is still in the dog pound.
• Lilo & Stitch: Jumba fits this trope, despite being a purplish, four-eyed alien. Being a Mad Scientist, he's the Genius Bruiser variant.
• Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted: One of the circus performers is a strong Russian tiger named Vitaly.
• Rise of the Guardians: Santa Claus is reimagined as a muscular, tattooed Russian who goes by North.

Films — Live-Action

• 2012: Yuri is stated to be a boxer in his earlier days. He apparently can still run as if he were in his prime, however.
• Everest (2015): Anatoli Boukreev, the Russian member of Scott Fischer's Mountain Madness team. In addition to being very tall, he ascended the mountain without oxygen (he felt it gave a false sense of security), and when the blizzard comes up, he makes several treks back up to bring stragglers back to the camp.
• Fist of Fury: Petrov, The Dragon, is a Russian wrestling champion. He is large and strong (he is able to bend metal bars). He seems to be the best fighter that the hero meets.
• Iron Man 2: Ivan Vanko, who can take a car crushing him against a wall repeatedly. The exoskeleton he's wearing barely gives him any protection either. He also nearly managed to beat Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit twice, and the second time nearly beats War Machine too.
• March Or Die: Ivan is a Russian member of the French Foreign Legion who's noticeably bigger than his fellow Legionnaires. He's played by heavyweight boxer Jack O'Halloran.
• In The Mountie, Nikolai is the largest of the Cossacks and acts as enforcer for the gang. He almost kills Grayling in their first encounter.
• Pacific Rim: The Russian Cherno Alpha is the biggest, bulkiest, and most heavily armored Jaeger, with a vague resemblance to a nuclear reactor cooling tower. This also applies to its pilots, the Kaidanovsky couple. Aleksis is portrayed by rather tall 5'10" Heather Doerksen, and Sasha by humongous 6'11" professional wrestler Robert Maillet.
• Predators: Nikolai is a rare non-Ivan example. He's a beefy Spetznaz commando who's also one of the nicer dudes in the cast. Nikolai is also one of the (formerly) rare cases where such a character is played by an actually Russian actor (and to top it off, is former MMA fighter Oleg Taktarov).
• The Punisher (2004): "The Russian" is a massive behemoth of a man who shrugs off punches, kicks, blunt force trauma, stab wounds, and walls as if they were minor nuisances.
• Red Heat: Ivan Danko is a stoic Soviet cop who starts the film with a Shirtless Scene to show off his Heroic Build (bonus point with the brawl in the snow), handles Hand Cannons without bothering about the recoil... You name it.
• Rock N Rolla: Uri's two psychos for hire who guard his money. One of them is stocky, while the other is tall and ripped. They compare scars they've received in Chechnya and prove to be quite implacable.
• Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. Drago's pretty lean compared to Rocky, but he's much taller and has a much longer reach.
  • The title also applies to his son Viktor, as seen in Creed II.
• Snatch.: Boris the Blade. Granted, he's Uzbek, not Russian, and he's not a muscular powerhouse, but he's Made of Iron, and unbelievably hard to kill.

Literature

• The Dresden Files: Sanya is a holy knight whose muscles cause instant feelings of masculine inadequacy in Harry Dresden. He's also a Twofer Token Minority, being a rare Russian Scary Black Man. In his first appearance, he speaks decent if not perfect English but in later appearances, he speaks quite fluently. He actually invokes this trope in Changes, when he interrogates a captured hitman by picking up the board he's been taped to with no particular effort, and in a thick Russian accent, threatens to break the man in half and chuck him in the incinerator. In the audiobook of the scene, James Marsters puts a hilariously-thick accent to Sanya's voice.
• Durarara!!: Simon Brezhnev is a giant, black, Russian sushi chef. But he's a sweet guy, really. And too modest to admit that he's the only one who can go toe to toe with an enraged Shizuo. The actual chef and owner of the shop is a smaller example, but burly compared to the rest of the cast. It's implied that both of them have seen enough violence in their lives, and don't welcome anymore of it.
• Solstice: Mikael is described by Io as "a Russian native, 6'5'', 280lbs of pure muscle" with thickly-accented English.
• Vampire Academy: Dimitri Belikov is tall, incredibly strong, and from Siberia.
• The angel Brumak in Wars of the Realm. He's not really Russian, but he does most of his fighting on the angelic Russian Front (literally) and, in the audiobooks, speaks with a Russian accent. And while angels are larger and stronger than humans, Brumak is extremely large and powerful, even for an angel (he can beat up droxans - demonic half-bear-half-dragon monsters - all by himself).

Pinball

• As with the source, Zangief in Gottlieb's Street Fighter II pinball is one.

Professional Wrestling

• Many of pro wrestling's Foreign Wrestling Heel Russians are big bruisers to boot; WWE's Vladimir Kozlov was one of the latest iterations of the model.
  • In a subversion, only a handful of them were actually Russian. Kozlov is at least close in being Ukrainian. (That is, close in that "Viewers Are Morons that can't tell the difference" sense.)
  • Rusev, who is somewhere between 280 and 300 lbs of thick muscle st any given time, spent about a year being billed as a Bulgarian who had moved to Russia. He exemplified the Russian Foreign Wrestling Heel in every other sense, but (oddly) it was never denied or ignored that he's Bulgarian by birth and upbringing.
• There were literally dozens of "Russian" heel wrestlers in the '70s and '80s, most of them giant swollen weightlifters. For some reason, they were also always bald. The largest Russian heels included: Nikita Koloff, Krusher Khrushchev (whose character was that of an American defector, possibly to cover for his Not Even Bothering with the Accent), Vladimir Petrov, and Soldat Ustinov.

Sports

• Russia traditionally does well in weightlifting, judo, and gymnastics. Oddly enough, they're also good at fencing and tennis, although these people are more often female.
  • They are also very good at chess.
  • And figure skating, both men and women. Subverted in this performance by Olympic gold and silver medalist Evgeni Plushenko (who is pretty tall, but goes more for the Deadpan Snarker and possibly Sad Clown ways).
• Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev, former holder of the WBA heavyweight title, is seven feet tall and weighs 325 pounds.
  • He suffers from acromegaly, which is rather evident from his face structure. And one of the symptoms of this endocrine disorder is gigantism — famous French wrestler Andre The Giant (who also had acromegaly) even got his nickname from this condition!
    • He also writes his own poetry.
  • Also, Ukrainians Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, who stand at about 6'6" and 6'8" respectively, and go into the ring at 240 and 250 pounds. At one point they hold all four heavyweight titles between them. A Klitschko fist may be the size of your head◊.
• This trope is so prevalent in international sporting events that several past victories over Russian juggernauts are considered a Crowning Moment of Awesome for the victors.
  • The 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team is the most famous example... but it doesn't really match: the Soviet team was precise, not big and nasty (in hockey, the big and mean stereotype goes to the Canadians).
  • Rulon Gardener over Alexander Karelin in Greco-Roman Wrestling.
• Alexander Ovechkin.
  • Subverted: Alexander Semin.
• Vitaly Petrov, Russia's first Formula One driver, is the tallest driver on the grid at 1.85 meters (about 6') and one of the heaviest during his stint in Formula One.
• Fedor Emelianenko, a long-time sambo and MMA champion, is also the definitive example of Stout Strength for both sports. His brother Aleksander, also an MMA fighter, counts as well.
• Alexander "The Experiment" Karelin, a Greco-Roman wrestler who has won three Olympic, nine World Championship and twelve European Championship gold medals. This at-the-time 286-pound man routinely won matches with his "Karelin Lift," which involved him picking up similarly-sized men and slamming them down onto the mat like a rag doll often as they lay flat to avoid being thrown. Can best be summarized by this image.
  • The Karelin Lift was so feared by other wrestlers that they'd actually not resist and let themselves be thrown when caught in it out of fear of getting hurt. Let that sink in: other wrestlers preferred to lose the match to losing their CAREER when Karelin did the Lift on them.
• Russian female tennis players tend to be on the tall side, most notably Maria Sharapova who's 6'2''.

Tabletop Games

• In the Champions sourcebook Red Doom, the leader of the Soviet superteam is a hulking brick who embodies almost every Russian stereotype. His codename is 'Ivan'.

Theatre

• Boris Kolenkhov is described in the script of You Can't Take It With You as "enormous, hairy, loud, and very, very Russian." Though he's a dance tutor, he recommends wrestling as a hobby to Mr. Kirby, on whom he performs some wrestling moves to demonstrate.
• Exploited in The Rite of Spring. Back when Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev's previous ballets were being performed in Paris, it was noted that the prominent stereotype of Russians at the time, especially among the French, was that they were strong, brutish, primitive, and untamed. As a result, they wrote The Rite of Spring, which is about pagan Russians sacrificing someone to the gods, with music and choreography designed to seem tough and primal.

Video Games

• Pictured above: Probably the Trope Codifier would be Street Fighter's Zangief. He's not the tallest World Warrior ^note (the Mexican T. Hawk, the German Hugo, the Thai Sagat and 'especially the Canadian Abigail edge him out there), but barring Abigail and Hugo, he's easily the most muscular and probably the most physically powerful.
  • Invoked rather epically in his X-Men vs. Street Fighter ending. So Omega Red is on the loose in Siberia? Why, Zangief will team up with the also Russian Colossus to fight him off! This means there are three Husky Russkies in the same location!
• Alpha Protocol has Championchik, an Olympic Champion boxer who serves as the bodyguard for Surkov. Mike has to eventually deal with him, but seeing as Championchik relies totally on his boxing skills, he could always just pull out a gun on him.
• Body Blows: Kossak is a Russian Kickboxer and quite a tall, strong muscular guy who fulfills this archetype for the Amiga exclusive series of fighting games that was made as an Alternate Company Equivalent to Capcom's Street Fighter series.
• Brutal: Paws of Fury: Ivan the Bear from isn't the tallest fighter, but he is the heaviest and hits the hardest (three fierce punches will knock out any opponent).
• Sergei from Call of Duty: Black Ops. Though in a less standard use of this trope, he's surrounded by a bunch of other Russians as well who are smaller than him, making his ethnicity more incidental to his size.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Given their dialogue and terrifyingly deep voices, the Apocalypse Tank drivers of would seem to be of this type. Ditto the Grinder Tank.
  • Flak troopers in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and 3 are described as "brutish." They have a deeper accent than most of their countrymen. So Husky Russkie to Russkies, then?
  • Yuri's Brutes in Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge are Russian soldiers genetically modified to fight tanks with their bare hands. They're essentially the purple-pink Russian version of the Incredible Hulk.
• Dead by Daylight: The Huntress is a beefy, broad-shouldered female survivalist from the Red Forest near Chernobyl who hunts men for sport as animals became boring to her.
• Dead or Alive: Bayman is a muscular Russian assassin. His character is also touch more intelligent than usual examples.
• Dirty Bomb: Although his actual Russian-ness is uncertain (the fact he can't speak the language lending credence to the possibility that he's faking the accent), Thunder is the closest the game has to this; a large-ish (second-largest character in the game, behind Rhino) man decked out in a full suit of tactical armour, often carrying either a shotgun or an LMG and tossing concussion grenades around.
• Freedom Fighters (2003): General Tatarin is technically a citizen of one of the satellite republics, but otherwise fits the bill. Especially with his mighty, bear-like "supersonic bitch-slap" (when he smacks Troy in the first cutscene, you don't hear the sound of it until his hand is way past Troy's face).
• Guilty Gear: Potemkin is a Mighty Glacier and grappler from Zepp, which has many parallels with Ruritania.
• Jagged Alliance: While not the absolute strongest, Ivan is a powerhouse. The absolute strongest character? A Polish ex-firefighter.
• Karnov: Jinborov "Karnov" Karnovski himself is a burly Russian strongman capable of breathing fire.
• Katana ZERO has V, who acts as The Heavy for much of the game. A Russian thug who acts as one of the unseen villain's Co-Dragons, he's the most physically powerful character shown and has killed several people with powers similar to the protagonist's despite having no special abilities himself.
• Antonov, the organizer of the tournament for The King of Fighters XIV. He's big, loves fighting, covered in hair, and surprisingly sensitive. Unlike pretty much every other King of Fighters boss, he's also actually quite a Nice Guy who organized the tournament simply because he loves spirited competitions so much and has no hidden nefarious agenda. The attack by Verse is just as much a surprise to him.
• League of Legends has Braum. Although he lives in Runeterra's Scandinavia, he has a strong, vaguely Slavic accent and is a huge muscular man.
• Mario & Luigi: Dream Team: The beefy, muscle-obsessed tour guides Big Massif and Lil' Massif, though only in the English version, where it came about as a result of Woolseyism. The translator saw that their mustaches and outfits made them resemble stereotypical circus strongmen, so he decided to make them speak in the appropriate fashion.
• Mega Man 8: Although the bulky Duo is actually some type of Alien/Robot/Police Officer, according to an interview with Keiji Inafune, he was originally supposed to be the Russian Dr. Cossack's newest robot. Some of the Russian influences are left in his design◊, like his huge buttons and his hat, so he sort of qualifies as a Husky Russkie.
• Metal Gear: Colonel Volgin fits the stereotype to a T. He is a tall, large, muscular and very brutal Russian man. Averted with the rest of the cast, who range from scrawny (Sokolov) to average (numerous NPCs)
• While the beat'em up Mother Russia Bleeds is set in Russia and has an exclusively Russian cast, the only playable character fitting this trope is Ivan, who is the tallest (he has the longest reach) and most muscular protagonist, as well as the Mighty Glacier of the game. The three other player characters are smaller and leaner. The bosses been taller and stronger than the surrounding mooks, they also arguably fit the trope.
• Overwatch's Zarya, a prospective champion weightlifter who dropped out of a competition to join the military when her Siberian village was threatened. In gameplay, she serves as a Tank-class hero who hauls around a massive particle cannon and can shield herself or teammates.
• Psychonauts Mikhali is a kid version of this. He wants to fight bears, thinks that American girls aren't any good for wrestling, and eventually becomes Maloof's bodyguard. It doesn't hurt that he's telekinetic. Also physically huskiest amongst the kids.
• Punch-Out!! has Vodka Drunkenski, who became the non-alcoholic Soda Popinski. The Wii game makes him 6'6", the tallest character in the game, even taller than Final Boss Mr. Sandman although he might be shorter than the Optional Boss Donkey Kong and he does the cossack dance when he wins. Also, in a possible Shout-Out to Rocky IV, after losing to Mac, scientists create a chemical formula to make him faster and stronger. The funny thing being that the contender mode montage (instead of the tougher Title Defense mode) features him performing rustic workouts like Rocky did in that movie.
• Sergei Vladimir, the Big Bad and Dragon-in-Chief of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is this. It turns out he was the key figure to the development of a T-virus variant which transforms an infected person into the monstrous bioweapon known as "tyrant" instead of zombies, thanks to him having a one-in-a-million genetic makeup for perfect adaptation to the virus.
• Strobaya, the first boss in Strider (Arcade), is a hulk of muscles that can only grunt and shout, and his official bio describes him as "single-minded". In the expanded PC-engine port apparently turns him into a Blood Knight.
• Saints Row: The Third: Oleg Kirrlov, a magnificently stocky Russian gangster and one of the most durable Saints.
  • A female Boss herself can count as one with the Russian voice set selected and muscle maxed out.
• Inverted in the Saturday Night Slam Masters games, where Russian Biff Slamkovich, a former sparring partner of Zangief's, is the Jack of All Stats; the British-born Giant Titanic Tim stands over two feet taller than him.
• Skeleton Krew is an old-timey arcade shooter where you control one of three soldiers - the American Marlon, the British Barbella and the Russian Ygor - to battle an entire prison cell of mutant enemies. Among the trio, Ygor is The Big Guy larger in size than the other two heroes combined, and the Mighty Glacier who wields a BFG and specializes in using explosive projectiles as well as being capable of taking more damage than the two others.
• Super Dodge Ball Brawlers: While the team with the highest average Power stat is Saudi Arabia, Russian team captain Moldof is tied for most powerful single player (with series headliner Kunio).
• Team Fortress 2: The Heavy. He's very tall, very hefty, and very strong. He's also extremely proud of his size and strength, often calling enemies little and comparing them to babies. Though he acts the part of the Exceptionally Loud Mighty Glacier on the battlefield, he displays traces of intelligence in his Meet the Heavy video and the supplementary comics, and Poker Night at the Inventory reveals that he has a PhD in Russian Literature. Also, don't get between him and Sasha.
  • In the comics we meet his family. His mother and two of his sister are pretty regular-sized, but his oldest sister is nearly as big as Heavy himself. And she's still pretty hot. They also casually mention brutalizing a couple KGB soldiers when they came looking for them, so it's not just size that runs in the family.
• The Draenei of World of Warcraft could arguably be classified as an entire race of Husky Russkies, due to their vaguely Eastern European accents.
• Downplayed with Ivan Istochnikov aka Wonder Yellow from The Wonderful 101. He's a Mighty Glacier with his preferred weapon being the hammer and he has the strong accent, but he doesn't quite have the personality because he's a dorky Shrinking Violet. His profile lists his hobby as "bodybuilding", appropriately enough.

Webcomics

• In Lackadaisy the bartender/rum runner/former hitman Viktor embodies this trope. He's not actually Russian, he's Slovakian (Strapping Slav?) but the accent is similar enough when rendered in text and there's even a comedic side comic that depicts him punching a bear.
• Dead Winter brings us Yuri, one of the members of the Blood Sport assassin hunting 'game' that provides part of the subplot, though he is mostly seen during the intermission strips.
• Pasha Moskowitz, of Academia, although he's more portly than muscular.
• Alek of Nerf NOW!! is the tallest, strongest, and most well-endowed of the five girls, to the point that some of the uniforms they wear don't fit her. It's understandable she's this trope, considering she started out as a Gender Flip of Heavy from Team Fortress 2.

Web Original

• From Darwin's Soldiers, Piotr Kozlov is a hulking Siberian grizzly bear with muscles to match his brains.
• Door Monster have the recurring characters of the KGB agents Yegor (played by Kyle, the one without beard) and Jegor (played by Ian, the one with beard). Jegor apparently wanted to be a doctor, but became KGB agent because his accent was so obvious that everyone would assume he was a poorly concealed hitman anyway. Yegor prides himself on following the KGB rules, while Jegor is more Genre Savvy (KGB apparently has a whole course on how to handle loose cannon American action heroes. He took notes).
• From Open Blue v4, Admiral Flota Vladimir Ilyavich Tokarev, HERO OF THE TRIBES, is like this only when fighting hand to hand or pissed off. Otherwise, he's a cunning strategist who would rather blow you up with his ultra-long-ranged rocket launcher than charge straight at you without thought if he thinks it more efficient. Of course, he's just as likely to be firing off said rocket launcher while charging straight at you without thought...
• This prank Amazon.com review for the book "English Grammar For Dummies" is written (in broken English) from the point of view of Russian man Nikolai Krestinsky, who comes to America to seek his fortune, "take many woman as lover, kill many bear." Although it seems more like the man is from the 1800s, every other stereotype is in effect, up to and including buying the book in the first place after smashing a table with the man giving him a job interview after he was told that his English is "poor like child." Also, "your wife is killed by bear."

Western Animation

• The Evil Con Carne episode "Boskov's Day Out" reveals that Boskov, the bear that Hector Con Carne uses has his new body, used to be a Russian circus bear who was trained by a burly and intimidating Russian named Vladimir, who spends the episode trying to get Boskov back.
• Molotov from Jimmy Two-Shoes, Lucius' top henchman and captain of his armies. Yes, he's named after that Molotov.
• Love, Death & Robots: The short "The Secret War" is about the Red Army versus Siberian ghouls. Naturally, all of the characters count, but the big bearded machine-gunner qualifies for this trope the most.
• Exile on Road Rovers is a literal version, being a Siberian husky in a group of superpowered dog men. He's not as big as the massive sheepdog Shag, but he's definitely the strongest of the group.
• The Samurai Jack episode "Jack and the Bounty Hunters" centers around a group of, well, bounty hunters gunning for Jack's head. The largest of them by far is Boris, a massive Russian whose plan for killing Jack involves Jack breaking his sword against his body.
• In the South Park episode "W.T.F.", where the boys start their own professional wrestling league, Fat Bastard Cartman's ring persona is "the Rad Russian."
• Buff Frog from Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Ludo's top henchman in the early part of the series and speaks in a Russian accent.
• Teen Titans (2003): The Russian Red Star is the same height as Cyborg.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The series' incarnation of Rocksteady, the rhino mutant, began life as Ivan Steranko, a tall, broad Russian mobster, who had a long history with the Shredder.
• Transformers: Animated:
  • A rare female version of this is Strika, a burly female bot who turns into a tank. She's not technically Russian, but she's got the accent.
  • The Russian-accented Jetfire and Jetstorm are skinny and acrobatic, but their combined form Safeguard (who has the same accent) is a lot bigger and burlier.
• Xiaolin Showdown featured Vlad, a Russian boy who dwarfs even Clay in size, as a mole in the Xiaolin working for Jack Spicer.

Real Life

• Peter the Great is generally remembered as being a giant as well as a hard partier. While extremely tall, especially for his time period, he was actually very skinny.
• Tsar Alexander III was a man inevitably described as "bear-like" who used to do things like bend metal eating utensils and rip packs of playing cards in half, for fun, and once notably kept a collapsing train roof off his family to allow them to escape^note  Although that may have been a factor in the kidney failure responsible for his early death in 1894.
• P.J. O'Rourke, in his book "Eat the Rich," records his visit to Russia, writing "Russians are a people of largeness: large bodies, large gestures, large voices. In fact, Russians are enormous. Being an average-size American in St. Petersburg is like being a girl gymnast at a Teamsters convention. And these are Russians who were raised on potatoes and suet with bread that you could use for a boat anchor. Envision them after twenty years of good nutrition. Twenty years from now, Americans may ask themselves if winning the Cold War was worth losing the Super Bowl." This didn't actually become a problem for the Americans since the Russians are more interested in Ice Hockey or The Beautiful Game, but the food situation improved massively.
• Inverted as of WWII: the vast majority of Red Army recruits, coming of age as of 1941, had grown up throughout constant misfortunes, including the Holodomor, and were rather small, thin and poorly fed.
• General Vasiliy Kostenetsky, the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812 and a venerable giant, who could personally drag a stuck cannon out of a bog.
• The Siberian domestic cat breed. National cat of Russia, it's stockier, stronger and slightly larger than most other cat breeds.
• Likewise, the Siberian tiger. Tigers are big anyway, but the Siberian is generally larger and heavier than other subspecies, and has a thicker coat that makes it look larger still.
• Candid Camera pulled this stunt several times: a frail blonde damsel in distress would be deposited on some street corner with two large suitcases. The suitcases looked identical, but one was empty and the other would be filled with concrete, weighing at least 200 pounds. When some big strong man approached, she would ask him to help with her suitcases ... then she would pick up the empty suitcase and walk away, while the hidden camera recorded the reaction of the poor schmo as he tried to pick up the other suitcase. On one occasion, the "Candid Camera" gang tried this in Moscow. The blonde pulled the routine on a burly Russian pedestrian ... who picked up the 200-pound suitcase and followed her effortlessly.
• Vasili Alexeyev, the famous champion Olympic weightlifter, is an almost embarrassingly stereotypical example of this trope.
• Most statistics show that there is no significant difference in height between Russians and Americans. Considering that Americans are stereotyped as being tall in Russia, this is an interesting case of two peoples having the same stereotypes about each other. One possible explanation is that wealthy, white, and young people get disproportionate exposure in foreign countries, and they are generally some of the tallest.
• Dmitry Muserskiy, a Russian volleyball player who is 2.18 m tall. In American, that's 7 feet, two inches.
• Nikolai Valuev is both the tallest and heaviest heavy weight boxer in history.
• Maryana Naumova is a female example who specializes in bench press. She has won multiple world championships, has set over 15 world records in her age category and holds the title of Master of Sport of Russia, International Class. She even met the famous ex-bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• Soviet born Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman is well known for being The Big Guy and not taking crap from anyone. While at Hebrew University in Jerusalem he worked as a bouncer for a nightclub. Later he was infamously arrested for slapping a 12 year old who had beaten up his son.

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