Super-Strong Child

He's the strongest toddler in the whole land
Tear your arm off if he's shaking your hand

— "Weird Al" Yankovic (describing Bamm-Bamm from The Flintstones) in "Bedrock Anthem"

Little child + Super-Strength = dangerous.

These little kids have strength that puts The Incredible Hulk to shame, and an attitude to match. And don't you forget it! Those who mix it up with them the first time and demonstrate their ignorance have a short life expectancy. This tends to be more common in girls than boys for the surprise factor, but it can be found in both.

Compare with Small Girl, Big Gun, Cute Bruiser, Little Miss Badass, Pint-Sized Powerhouse, Glacier Waif, and Waif-Fu. If an Enfant Terrible is this, you're in real trouble. Probably a Badass Adorable. A Child Mage is when they "casts the spells that makes the people fall down" instead of just pummeling them. For examples where kids are omnipowerful, see Goo-Goo-Godlike. If the child doesn't know their own strength and has difficulty controlling it, it may overlap with Unstable Powered Child.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Bleach, after Kenpachi's duel with Ichigo, Yachiru carries the former on her shoulder to get medical attention. A particularly impressive use of the trope because Kenpachi is very tall and muscular, while Yachiru looks like an eight-year-old but manages to effortlessly carry him to the top of a building by performing multiple two-story high jumps while carrying him. One of the author's many hints that she's more dangerous than she looks.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Saiyan children are like this from a human perspective.
  • Dragon Ball: Goku is already bulletproof and super strong when he first meets Bulma at age 12, and at that point he's physically younger due to Saiyans' slower aging. By Saiyan standards, of course, he's just a normal child, but then, Saiyan children are known to conquer entire planets as infants.
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • Goku's son Gohan, a half-Saiyan, has even greater potential power than Goku had at the same age, although Goku's strength was "always-on" and in Gohan's case it only comes out under extreme duress until he receives proper training.
    • Goten and mainline Trunks, also half-Saiyan, are able to attain Super Saiyan form by the age of seven, without training and and apparently without needing to undergo the same Traumatic Superpower Awakening as their fathers and Gohan. Fanon has it that children conceived after the father has already achieved Super Saiyan status inherit the ability to do so more easily.
  • In the non-serial movies, Broly was this as a child. When he was born, his Power Level was already 10,000. For comparison, Goku's highest power level when fighting Raditz as a fully-trained adult is under 1,000, and it isn't until he learns the Kaioken technique to multiply his power level that he gets over 8,000.
  • In Dragon Ball Super, Gohan's daughter Pan is capable of flight and fully capable of wrecking a house if left alone for a few minutes, despite just being a few-months-old baby. It's fortunate that her father and usual babysitter (Piccolo) are strong enough themselves to handle her.
• Chibi America from Hetalia: Axis Powers likes to swing bison around. And he keeps his Super-Strength when he grows into an adult.
  • In the present day, Sealand is this, and demonstrates it against one of the Parallel!Frances that tries to attack him in the 2010 Bloodbath. It's said to be because, as a sea fort, he's made out of steel.
• Gon Freecss of Hunter × Hunter started off as an 11-year-old strong enough to carry multiple grown men on his back while sprinting even before he started learning Ki Manipulation.
• In an episode of Inuyasha, there are two ninja sisters and Suzuna, the younger of them is much stronger than her older sibling. She makes it clear by punching a door open and lifting more than twice as much of the Demonbones they stole, which were too heavy for her sister.
• Monster Rancher:
  • Genki Sakura can carry much bigger girls like dolls. Seen in episode 20 where he lifts Pixie up as if she was weightless.
  • Holly gets carried around by Genki even more and she is 4 years older than him. But it doesn't seem to bother her.
  • Another character is Tama, a girl with strength almost equal to Genki. She can knock him and a monster out cold with a single punch.
• 12 year old Nekota from My Magic Fridays a manga by Arina Tanemura carries his 16 year old cousin Ai. While he struggled to hold her at first, just after a few weeks he easily lifted her up in his arms running around with the panicking girl.
• In Future Boy Conan, the 11-year-old protagonist Conan is strong enough to lift boulders and fight off armed soldiers. In episode 5, he lifts and throws seven men who piled on top of him. His trademark is to carry around his friend Lana in his arms while running or leaping at full sprint.
• Kaolla Su from Love Hina must be mentioned. In one episode she almost creams Keitaro in a bearhug while still sleeping. Shortly after Naru gets dragged in there too.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid has Rio Wesley, one of Vivio's 10-year-old friends. Her first on-screen battle had her judo throwing Corona's giant rock Golem into a building, and later in her match with Harry, she decides to arm herself against the tournament veteran by physically ripping out a huge chunk of the arena floor with her bare hands and lifting it above her head.
  Vivio: Rio's magical and brute strength are the greatest in our team!
• Mio in NEEDLESS is a Token Mini-Moe of Vague Age whose Power Fragment grants her Super-Strength, with her weapon being a weighted teddy bear.
• Doctor Slump created Arale to be this.^note Then again, she is a robot...
• Shizuo Heiwajima from Durarara!! has been shown to have possessed his god-like super strength since childhood when his younger brother ate some food that belonged to him. He was so enraged that he tried to crush his brother under a refrigerator.
• In One Piece, the Yonko Big Mom has had her insane strength and durability ever since she was a young child. At 5, she was more than a match for giants in combat. Problem is, no one around her could handle that crazy level of power, which significantly contributed to her later villainy.
• Jotaro Kujo, the protagonist of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders is incredibly strong for a seventeen year old (and actually looks somewhat younger in later parts due to Art Shift), but his crowning moment with this trope is when Alessi, one of the nine Egyptian god stand users sent by Dio, uses his age-reducing ability to transform Jotaro into a child, Alessi thinks that he can easily overpower Jotaro. Twelve-year-old Jotaro simply tilts his oversized hat accompanied by his Catch Phrase, and lands a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Alessi with just his fists. Yes, this is without his Lightning Bruiser Stand Star Platinum.
• The protagonist of Daicon III is a grade school-age girl who is strong enough to pick up a mecha and throw it several feet away with one hand.

Comic Books

• Molly Hayes from Runaways is a super-strong mutant 11-year-old girl. Who takes this trope to fairly absurd levels, what with her punishing Wolverine and her ability to rip a magically attached cloak through strength. It's been suggested that her powers are psionic in nature (due to the fact that both her parents were psychics, that she glows when she uses her powers, and that she becomes quickly fatigued when she uses them without showing many signs of physical stress) which might explain the magic-cloak-ripping thing at least a little.
• PS238 has a few of them:
  • Julie "84" Finster, a 7-year-old girl who is a bit neurotic about the fact that she's the 84th F.I.S.S. (Flight, Invulnerability, Super-Strength, Super-Speed)... basically the superhero equivalent of Brand X. She's also strong enough to wrap a superarmoured attacker in a casino sign and catch punches from a guy who looks to be somewhere in the range of nine feet tall and is identified as having a muscle/mass ratio of "Omega Five" (whatever that means, although given the reactions to this fact, "bloody strong" seems appropriate).
  • Also Ron "Captain Clarinet" Peterson, son of the local Superman Substitute.
  • Dillion "USA Patriot Act" Fillmore. Who later gets a nanite injection that makes him strong enough to wad up junked cars like tissue paper.
  • Bernard Brenner, who is the son of the Hulk expy and is modelocked in "Hulk" form.
• The Harvey Comics character Little Lotta, who combined this with Stout Strength and Big Eater.
• Superman:
  • Depending on the incarnation, Clark Kent may have had superpowers even from toddlerhood. Most modern versions, however, have him start as a normal kid who gains his powers slowly over his preteen and teenage years. Either way, him having powers as a kid is justifiable since it's the Sol System's sunlight and Earth's comparatively low gravity that gives Superman his powers.
  • Superboy (aka Conner Kent aka Kon-El) is a teenage clone of Superman who has his powers from when he's first created. Supergirl, likewise, is usually about a teenager in age with all of Superman's powers.
  • Last Son: Superman's Kryptonian foster son, Chris Kent, has powers from the moment his ship landed on Earth. This actually caused some problems, so in The Third Kryptonian Superman created a device that looked like a wristwatch that would block most his powers away. Eventually it absorbed too much, however, and blew up the family's apartment.
  • Clark and Lois's biological son, Jon Kent, is 11-12 in his early appearances, but later has a Plot-Relevant Age-Up to about 15.
• The title character in the Belgian comic Benoit Brisefer (created by Pierre "Peyo" Culliford, the man behind The Smurfs) is a super-strong little boy (his last name translates to Ironbreaker), who goes around and does good deeds such as lifting buses out of traffic jams, blowing out burning houses and helping kittens down from trees by uprooting them (the trees, not the kittens). Unfortunately, he loses it as soon as he catches cold, which is pretty much anytime it's inconvenient or he's telling adults about his strength.
• The title character of Monica's Gang is also this: a super-strong seven-year-old girl whose weapon of choice is a blue bunny plushie, which she uses mainly to beat up the boys who bully her. Some stories go to the extremes of showing her with Silver Age Superman-like power levels—in a story, she had a cold and sneezed so hard that her friends were blown away to different parts of the world (her best friend Maggy ended up in China, for example).
• Molly Danger, the perpetually 10-year-old, super strong protector of Coopersville.
• While she is by herself merely normal-strength, Nalle-Maja is the only recurring character in Bamse other than Bamse (her father) himself to get super-strength from eating dunderhonung ('Thunder Honey'). She only uses it in extreme emergencies, as she also gets a three-day stomach ache once the super-strength wears off, but of course stories that focuses on Bamse's children has seen fit to create such emergencies more than once.
• Asterix: Obelix was one in his youth ever since the incident where he fell into a cauldron full of the magic potion. And in the album "Astérix and Son", the baby Asterix and Obelix find on their doorstep and look after during the story becomes one after twice accidentally drinking some magic potion.
• Sister superheroines Wendy and Marine from the French comic book Les Super Sisters◊. Especially Marine, the younger of the pair, a cute-as-a-button 6-year-old blonde girl, who rips apart giant robots and bug armies with her bare hands, and blows her mentor into space with her super breath◊ when he won't let her have a laser bracelet, like her big sister. (He had his reasons, though◊).
• Pansy Potter the Strongman's Daughter, a character in The Beano between 1938 and 1949, and periodically thereafter.
• Steve Ford/The 12 1/2p Buytonic Boy/Super Steve in Whizzer and Chips, who gained his powers from a tonic he bought for 12 1/2p.
• Sidney Braithwaite/Souper Boy in The Topper, another Super Serum character, who gained strength from his family's secret soup recipe.
• For a period after he came Back from the Dead, Damien Wayne had Flying Brick powers. Gotham Girl is another Flying Brick teen in Batman, with the twist that her powers are killing her.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): The Golden Age/Earth-Two Diana and Steve Trevor's daughter Lyta had super strength as a child, and the Earth-One Diana was shocked when she tried catching what looked like a large beach ball the child was playing with as it was solid steel and much heavier than she expected.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): The level of destruction the toddler Lyta Milton (Circe & Ares' child) can cause while playing disturbs quite a few Amazons when she's brought to Themyscira to be raised, but their own immortality and super-strength means they're quite capable of raising her without harm, she just goes through toys at a disturbing rate.
• In Invincible this is averted with Mark who gained his powers as a teenager but is played straight by many of the other Viltrumite hybrid children introduced later in the series. Mark himself notes to his son Marky at the end of the series that he was something of a late bloomer.

Eastern Animation

• Masha and the Bear: Depending on the Writer, Masha can have the average strength of a child of her age, or she can lift and carry things that are much heavier than her. In one episode, she was able to pull a train (not a toy train, an actual train) without any inconvenience.

Film

• Boy God, a Philippine fantasy film where the titular character - a deity reborn as a human baby - displays some serious feats of strength. As a child, the boy god lifts a cart out of a pothole effortlessly and chops wood with his bare hands.
• Superman: The Movie: Baby Clark Kent effortlessly catches the Kent's truck when it almost falls on Jonathan.
• Superman Returns: Clark and Lois's young son saves Lois from a Luthor henchman by throwing a concert grand piano at him from across the room.
• The Shaw Brothers film, Descendant of the Sun, have it's main character as a superman Expy who as a child was adopted by a lowly human farmer. Sure enough, in one of his childhood scenes he's shown stopping an out-of-control cart with his bare hands.
• The first Na Cha film have the titular character, then a 7-year-old, imbued with immense strength after eating from a sacred peach tree he's assigned to guard. Feeling the energy flowing through him, Na Cha tests it out by punching a nearby oak tree only unintentionally split the tree AND half the ground in two.
• Ultraman X The Movie: Here Comes! Our Ultraman!: The climax of the movie has the Kurosaki research center collapsing thanks to the kaiju Zaigorg going on a rampage, causing a metal railing to fall on and pin resident scientist Tsukasa onto the ground. Her son Yuuto, among various other adult characters, tries valiantly to lift the heavy railing off her just as the kaiju begins closing in, and in the most dire moment, Yuuto, who had Ultraman Tiga's Spark Lens tucked in his bagpack, was selected to become Tiga's host - at which point the boy suddenly becomes incredibly strong and lifts the metal railing off his mother with his bare hands.

Literature

• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: Bronwyn Bruntley, and her brother Victor. Both are seemingly in their early to mid teens.
• Pippi Longstocking of course! She is the strongest girl in the world, lifting a few guys at once and even her horse.
• Throm Ngho from Girl Giant and the Monkey King by Van Hoang is super strong, and she hates it. She keeps accidentally breaking things, she is afraid of hurting the other girls when she play soccer, and she is desperate to keep her strength a secret from her classmates (better to be the weird Asian girl with no friends, than the weird and SCARY Asian girl with no friends).

Live-Action TV

• Jo McCormick from Big Bad Beetleborgs fits this perfectly (especially since she's a pre-adolescent girl).
• Supernatural has an episode revolving around an actual, working wishing well. One of the wishers was a small boy who was being bullied. He got super-strength, along with a bad temper.
• GoGo Sentai Boukenger: Episode 36 features a modern day incarnation of the legendary Momotarō who, despite being just a young boy, can effortlessly lift a Humongous Mecha off the ground and toss it away.
• An episode of Ultraman 80 features the monster Jihibikiran, who can assume the form of a chubby, if somewhat overly-muscular child, who can throw adults around like ragdolls.
• Wonder Woman: Wonder Girl. In "The Feminum Mystique", she's shown as a teenager enjoying teenage life in Washington D.C., including an incredible appetite. Her strength is impressive. Let's let General Blankenship describe it:
  Major Steve Trevor: Say, what happened to Wertz? Did they catch him?
  General Phil Blankenship: Yes. The poor man's lost his mind. He gave himself up babbling something about a fifteen year old girl with the strength of ten men!

Myths and Religion

• Hercules was, in canon and the Disney animated movie, able to strangle two snakes as baby. He would later kill a fellow child (in some versions, his own (adult) teacher) in music lessons by hitting the other with a harp of all things. Reaching adulthood just made his feats of strength more impressive.
• Lord Krishna of Hindu Mythology was this. While an infant, he strangled a demon sent to kill him while inside a hurricane. The most extreme example of this would be him holding up a mountain with a finger.
  • Bheem and Duryodhan of Mahabharata had this as well.
  • In Ramayana, when Sita was a small child, she once absentmindedly lifted a table holding the bow of Shiva, which was extremely heavy.
• Norse Mythology: Magni, the son of Thor and the giantess Járnsaxa. One time, Thor killed the giant Hrungnir, but Hrungnir fell on him and he was pinned. None of the gods could lift him, then Magni, who was three nights old, effortlessly lifted Hrungnir off his father.

Video Games

• Mizuki from AI: The Somnium Files is a 12-year-old girl who benches 155 lbs and was shown in a flashback to send out shockwaves when she punches the air. She has a fascination with iron pipes to the point that they're her weapon of choice.
• Ken Amada a 10 year old elementary schooler from "Persona 3" tells the 16 year old female Main character that if she gets tired he will carry her. While another character has his doubts about that, Ken tells him he could easily do that because she is very light.
• Quite a few Tales Series games have the youngest looking members being Cute Bruisers.
  • Tales of Symphonia has Presea, a 12 year-old girl, who fights with huge axes and cracks the ground with some of her artes. Her strength is Justified with her using an Exsphere (and experimental one at that), but she's still shown effortlessly lifting a large log, while Lloyd, who also uses an Exsphere, failed to even budge it.
  • Tales of Innocence has Hermana, the party's martial artist. Despite being 13, she can keep up with sword- and gun-using party with only her fists. She is empowered by being a Reincarnation of a dragon goddess, but the rest of the party are reincarnations of deities as well, making her enormous strength unusual even among them.
  • Tales of Vesperia: Karol, a 12 year-old boy, uses hammers, axes, and large swords in battle. While the game characterizes him more like a humorous Lovable Coward, he still should be very strong to even lift these weapons, let alone using them effectively. During a skit he lifts up Rita commenting on how light she is.
  • Tales of Graces: Sophie looks 14, but she is a martial artist, who can punch things into space in one of her Mystic Artes. This is justified with her mysterious powers and being an ancient combat "humanoid".
• Leah from Chrono Cross is one of the youngest characters but also the physically strongest. She wields an axe and throws big rocks single handly.
• There is Fen from Toshinden 4 ,a muscular kid who fights with a spear to avenge his grandfathers death. In the ending he just lifts up an older girl and let her sit on his shoulders for no reason besides to show off.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Toad in Super Mario Bros. 2. He's not only super strong, he's also super agile. His strength is seen again in Wario's Woods, while his speed is retained in Super Mario 3D World.
  • Baby Mario and Baby Luigi in most of the games they appear in. Babies or not, the Mario Brothers are powerful and effective heroes.
• Zig-Zagged in A Hat in Time, where Rule of Funny seems to determine whether this is the case for Hat Kid. In Mafia Town, she only hurts her fist if she tries to strike a Mafia goon unarmed, but she's able to beat them up once she gets her trusty umbrella back. In The Arctic Cruise, however, she's able to lift stacks of items, drinks, and wandering toddlers several times her size without losing any speed, jump height, or other platforming abilities. (Balancing them is the hard part.) And in the final act, she is able to lift the captain, a walrus many times her size, as easily as she does aforementioned toddlers.
• Psychonauts 2: Raz's baby brother Queepie is strong enough to balance both his parents and all four of his older siblings atop himself.

Webcomics

• Cirque Royale: Red, age seven, is naturally super strong as her clown trait — a trait that comes from her distant grandmother, Josephine the Strong. She is learning under Ron how to perform as a strongwoman, and her nickname is "Buff Baby."

Western Animation

• An early male example is Bamm-Bamm Rubble from The Flintstones, though his Super Strength was mostly done for laughs.
  • His future daughter Roxy would inherit his strength when she and her brother Chip are born in Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby.
• The Simpsons:
  • Lisa Simpson in the Treehouse of Horror episode where she gains superpowers and becomes Clobber Girl.
  • Maggie Simpson is able to swim for her father Homer who is drowning in the sea. She rescues him and swims back, dragging him to the shore. What a toddler!
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Apple Bloom becomes one of these when the Cutie Pox makes a weightlifting Cutie Mark appear on her, and is suddenly able to lift a 1,000 pound (or some other unit) barbell with her tail.
  • Baby Pound Cake is able to drag Pinkie Pie around while flying.
  • Despite remaining unable to achieve full flight for any length of time, Scootaloo is capable of towing Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom on skis, clear from Ponyville to the Crystal Empire.
  • One of the schoolyard fillies in Crusaders of the Lost Mark is strong enough to lift up one end of the schoolhouse to get at a ball that ended up underneath it. Oddly enough, someone tries to BLACKMAIL her with this fact about herself.
  • Princess Flurry Heart one-ups the earlier mentioned example of dragging an adult around while flying by carrying that same pony into the air rather than merely dragging her along behind on the ground while themselves airborne.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Jade Chan with the Ox Talisman.
• The Super Hero Squad Show: One episode had a little girl becoming super strong while holding a fractal.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • Then there is The Powerpuff Girls with not one, not two, but three of them as our main characters.
  • And their Evil Counterparts the Rowdyruff Boys. They are just as strong and as shown in their debut appearance, even more efficient fighters than the Powerpuff Girls; this is justified because the girls hold back to an extent to limit the collateral damage, something the guys don't care at all, so they always fight at top power.
• Diaperman from Terrytoons' The Mighty Heroes.
• In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, "Take Elmyra Please", Elmyra's baby brother is shown to have super strength, which he uses to bend the bars on his crib and go on a mini-rampage in the living room. However, in the follow-up episode, "Grandma's Dead", he does not display any of his super strengths and acts more like a typical baby.
• Early episodes of Steven Universe occasionally have the title character show strength exceeding a regular child or even an adult human—wrestling a monster twice his size into a lava pit, easily picking up a full grown woman, smashing a dashboard with his bare fists. He's eventually shown as being explicitly superhuman in "Drop Beat Dad": Steven easily lifts music equipment bigger than he is, (a similarly sized box is being lifted by two grown men) causing Marty (a character that only just met Steven for the first time and doesn't know Steven's status as a Half-Human Hybrid) to wonder what kind of food Steven's father feeds the kid. The fact that he is half-Diamond makes a lot more sense.
• Finn from Adventure Time may have skinny limbs, but he's strong enough to overpower burly marauders, ogres, and other monsters bigger than him with his bare hands. In one episode, he lifts a massive Eldritch Abomination with little effort.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: Anais, when angered, can be strong enough to break even bricks and walls. Gumball in some episodes, can't break a board, and has bad fighting skills, but in others, he is strong enough to kick a door or bend a spoon. They are Nicole's kids, after all.
• The main character from Harvey Beaks is capable of being really strong:
  • In "The Storm", Harvey is able to kick down a door.
  • In "Rage Against the Michelle", Harvey is able to break a rattle and a plate.
  • In "Grand Motel", Harvey is able to hold really heavy weights with no issue.
• Triceps from The Crumpets is the most physically strong member of her family. She lifts her house in one episode.
• PJ Masks: Greg/Gekko and Armadylan both have super strength as their main superpower.
• Scooby-Doo: Scrappy shows this by often hoisting suspects over his head and bringing before the gang who is embarassed by his lack of restraint.
• Downplayed with Adelaide in The Casagrandes. The strength she shows isn't exactly superhuman, but still outstanding for a child her age. In "Bunstoppable" she easily tosses around three full-grown bandits, and in "My Fair Cat Lady" she casually lifts Bobby over her head and carries him.

---