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Even the commute is scenery chewing for them.

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

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

In such a world, you cannot merely actYOU MUST OVERACT! Scenery will be chewed — ground to fine dust. Giant cows will be milked to desiccation. Every single line of dialogue will be given as if it were a pronouncement from Heaven itself, or unto the Heavens themselvesWITH! ADDED! EMPHASIS! Every villain will roar, or perhaps sneer, at the pitiful worms who dare to crawl in their divine presence. Furthermore, there's a good chance that BRIAN BLESSED can be found STOMPING around somewhere. In this kind of world, it may seem like everyone's having a ball being as over the top as possible, but, in fact, it is the setting that requires, nay, DEMANDS it… and by GOD, its demands will be met!

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

For a world actually made of hamlike substance, see Meat Moss. It'll probably be just as badass, though.

Compare Dark World, Crapsack World, Crapsaccharine World, World of Badass, Dystopia, Wretched Hive, Dysfunction Junction, World of Chaos, World of Snark, World Gone Mad, Layered World, Death World.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
At this point, it sounds like the announcer is going into convulsions.

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame, both the Disney film and the book.
  • All the works of Alexandre Dumas' oeuvre. Especially The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the foremost philosophers of Romanticism, seems to think the world we live in should be like this. His style, which tends to reflect Scripture style, is so hammy, offensive and pretentious NO author has probably ever topped him afterward.
    • Only in The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In the former case, he added a preface to the second edition of the book in which he explicitly repudiated the bombastic elements of his youthful style. In the latter, he wrote half-a-dozen books after it, and none of them came anywhere close to the histrionics of Zarathustra.
      • In the former case, he repeats the EXACT SAME PARAGRAPH in different words for Over 9000 pages.
  • The First Dwarf King is a novel populated by Large Hams and hammy villains. Bonus points for the characters' arguing.
  • Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire, by Neil Gaiman, is a short story about a writer living in a World of Ham, who tries to write "realistically", but fails — his attempts to depict life in the world of Gothic novels he lives in inevitably turn into parody (or is it satire from his point of view?). In the end he decides to write fantasy instead, and that's when he gets into normal family drama. Only to be interrupted by his long-lost brother jumping in through the window with a sword...
  • Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, set In a World… where people go on being hammy even after they die, and where haircuts are Serious Business.
  • The fact that The Lord of the Rings gets away with this to the extent that it does imply that we ourselves may be living in a World Of Ham.
  • Redwall. Name one character who hasn't had at least one hammy line.
    • Corp. Rubbadub (Long Patrol) only talks in beatbox, but that probably still counts.
  • As an Affectionate Parody and satire of both opera in general and The Phantom of the Opera specifically, Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Maskerade qualifies. Discworld is a fairly hammy place to be in any case, but basically every trope from opera is taken and hammed up massively. This includes, among other things, a character who can sing in harmony with herself, a grandiose, emotional aria whose actual lyrical content is along the lines of "This damn door sticks! It sticks no matter what I do!" and the villain's death scene, which was played in true operatic style, right down to the sword being between his arm and his chest, rather than actually cutting him. He dies anyway, from the sheer density of ham involved in opera. Literally — he's so caught up he doesn't realize it's fake until it's too late.
  • Jack Chalker's River of Dancing Gods books pretty much embody this, with everything but everything governed by THE RULES to ensure proper Swords And Sorcery action.
  • William Shatner? Ham. Shatner at a Shatner-focused convention? The whole pig. A Shatnerquake with Shatner, Captain Kirk, T.J. Hooker, Shatner, Denny Crane, and just about every character William Shatner has portrayed? If that doesn't scream "World of Ham", nothing does.
  • In Shadow of the Conqueror, every main character is as Hot-Blooded as their creator, and not the least bit shy about letting the world know how they feel in the most bombastic manner possible.

    Live-Action TV 
  • This is a defining trait of the Monty Python troupe. If a given skit, scene, song, what have you doesn't start with at least one character being a large ham, just give it a few minutes...
  • ESPN. Even the straight people there have their hammy moments.
  • Pick a Soap Opera. Any Soap Opera. But especially telenovelas (Mexican ones in particular; Brazilian dubbers often note how difficult it is to Lip Lock when everyone is so hammy!).
    • Passions deserves special mention, though: in what other show have you seen an old lady fight off a mountain lion while water-skiing? (We won't mention the orangutan-nurse's love scenes.)
    • However, there are some soaps that fall under World Of Dull Surprise. Fair City, I'm looking at you.
  • 24 is like this.
  • Power Rangers, particularly whenever anyone is morphed, and villains at any time. Especially in the early seasons.
  • Star Trek is basically a Universe of ham.
  • Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide has got to be one of the most over-the-top Nickelodeon live-action shows on the network! What with the bullies coming off like the most stereotypical bullies you can find (pushing people against lockers, giving them wedgies, chasing them around with the most hilarious Evil Laugh you'll ever hear, pushing them around to their annoyance, not fear, annoyance), an Evil Teacher Mad Scientist mix, the school vice Principal that acts and dresses like he's from Miami Vice, and it gets crazier from there.
  • The Blackadder franchise contains BRIAN BLESSED, Tom Baker, Stephen Fry, Rik Mayall, Rowan Atkinson, Miranda Richardson, Ronald Lacey a.k.a. The Baby Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells (and also Major Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark), Hugh Laurie, Robbie Coltrane, Ade Edmondson, and many, many others.
  • 'Allo 'Allo! is very similar to Blackadder in the amount of Ham. Virtually every actor was chosen for their ham qualities.
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand features not only an enormous cast of naked, oily Large Hams battling to the death in the arena but also Lucy Lawless as a rare female of the species.
  • Glee, and arguably Truth in Television as well, considering that the primary cast is a group of high-schoolers; theatrical, drama-nerd high-schoolers no less. And when you consider the fact that virtually the entire show takes place from the warped, surreal viewpoint of one character or another... yeah.
  • Monkey, both the original Japanese series, and the BBC dub.
  • Doctor Who has every Monster of the Week trying to out-ham the last, with the Doctor themself out-hamming them all.
    • The show has its own Large Ham page.
    • This especially applies during Tom Baker's era as the Doctor. Part of this was because the two genres that formed the bulk of his tenure were Gothic Horror and witty character-focused comedy, both of which reward unsubtle characterisation. Mostly it was because he was such a catastrophically powerful ham black hole that he would (and occasionally did) derail the show if he didn't have an outrageous and three-dimensional supporting cast to provide some balance. Robert Holmes went on record as saying that the writers had to spend a lot of time and effort providing these for him, and if Tom hadn't been so over the top, the era wouldn't have been one of the show's characterisation high points. The wilder he gets, the wilder everyone else gets, culminating in "The Horns of Nimon" where the entire cast reaches swivel-eyed pantomime levels of acting (and Tom still blows everyone else off-screen without making a visible effort).
  • There's no doubting that Gilligan's Island was an island full of ham — and we're not talking about the wild boar.
  • Zeke and Luther, where skateboarding is Serious Business.
  • Babylon 5: Being an epic it pretty much has to be. But it is well done ham. This gets lampshaded early and often. In one episode Garibaldi attempts to have a Seinfeldian Conversationnote  with Sinclair, stating that "not every conversation has to be about the end of the world." In another, Ivanova accuses a character of having "the worst case of Testosterone Poisoning I've ever seen." And both these examples are just from the First Season.
  • The Stargate-verse universe is one of these, where EVERY villain except the Replicators is incredibly bombastic (Jack O'Neil even reacts properly to one's introductory line). And maybe it's no coincidence that the SGC is headed by General HAMmond.
    Ba'al: You dare mock me!?
    O'Neil: C'mon, Ba'al, you should know me by now. Of course I dare mock you!
  • The IT Crowd is this, except for the titular IT department. This was deliberate, the writers wanting the day to day office life to approximate a South American Soap Opera and to try and portray the IT department as Only Sane Man (for a given value of sane).
  • While not one normally, the world of How I Met Your Mother often spontaneously morphs into one of these, due to the fact that everything that happens is either Ted's twenty-year-old, emotion-tinted, perspective-skewed memories, or Ted's extra-colorful retelling of twenty-year-old, emotion-tinted, perspective-skewed memories (or perhaps a blend of the two).
  • The Aquabats! Super Show! There isn't a single character who isn't over-the-top.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Even the Lawyer and the Waitress have their moments.
  • Arguably, Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego. A fun game would be for the viewers to try to pick the hammiest actor on the show.
    • It gets even better when you realize that the producers of the show fully expected the contestants to be just as involved as the host and other actors were. Whenever the Chronoskimmer was attacked, Kevin (the host) would go absolutely nuts, running around and screaming that they were in "big trouble" as alarms flashed and the camera shook like crazy. Half of the time, you'd see one or two of the kids on the show not reacting at all, or slowly swaying back and forth. It's understandable — they were kids trying to win a game show, not break into acting — but it's still great for some unintentional humor.
  • SCTV evoked this trope with their parody movie trailers for such epics as "How the Middle East Was Won" and "The Man Who Would Be King of the Popes", starring the likes of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Katherine Hepburn, and Peter O'Toole all loudly determined to outact each other. The SCTV characters themselves are all over the top.
  • In Danger 5, every character is over-the-top.
  • dads: "Over-the-top" is every character's default tone.
  • Father Ted is notable for having many one-off characters who proceed to chew as much scenery as they can in their limited time onscreen. Honourable mentions go to the racist townsfolk from Are You Right There, Father Ted? ("Feckin' Greeks! They invented gayness!"), Henry Sellers ("Sack me?! I made the BBC!") and the particularly-hammy priest from the Christmas Special ("You must excuse me for my impetuous interruption!"). And this is on top of the regular characters, including Father Jack Hackett.
    Jack: RATS! HAIRY JAPANESE BASTARDS!
  • Roseanne got like this quite often. Kind of a given when your main cast is Roseanne, John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf and the supporting cast includes Estelle Parsons, Martin Mull and Sandra Bernhard.
  • WandaVision has within the throwbacks to old sitcoms a parade of overacting that wouldn't be out of place in the originals. Just look at the ever-changing opening, all of them with snippets of the actors mugging endlessly.
  • Warehouse 13: In the episode "Savage Seduction," our heroes are transported by an Artifact into a Spanish Telenovela — quite literally a World of Ham. And it seems to affect the characters even when they're not "in character;" Pete's holding another Artifact that protects him from the effects of the Telenovela, but he's still chewing more scenery than he usually does.
  • Whose Line Is It Anyway? has consistently been a whirlwind of ham, and that's really part of the charm that's made it an enduring cult favorite over the years. Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie are a frequent source of Ham-to-Ham Combat, and Wayne Brady, being The Cast Showoff, frequently out-hams them both.
  • The Borgias has hammy moments aplenty, as you could expect from a series that Jeremy Irons plays the main character in, but he isn't the only one serving up the ham. Several characters (Savonarola and late-second-season Juan especially) have No Indoor Voice or at least partake in Suddenly Shouting or Punctuated! For! Emphasis!.
  • 7th Heaven: The show is notorious for this, with almost every character overreacting to the slightest thing.
  • RuPaul's Drag Race invokes this as hard as a reality show possibly can. A reality TV competition of Drag Queens? Now you know you're gonna see some big personalities here. Any given season is filled to the brim with endless sass, Catch Phrases, Insult Comedy, Attention Whores (we're looking at you, Laganja Estranja), Motor Mouths (we're looking at you, Silky Nutmeg Ganache) and big, loud arguments. Hell, this is a show hosted by RuPaul, who's already shameless with this. (It should be noted, by the way, that by numerous accounts, the queens you see on the show are indeed a little less colorful when the cameras aren't on.)
  • Gotham City on Gotham is so much this trope it may as well be called Goth Ham City. It comes with the territory of being a live-action comic book show that borrows heavily from the Narm Charm of the 60's Batman series. Every episode we have Robin Lord Taylor as the Penguin, Erin Richards as Barbara Kean, Cory Michael Smith as the Riddler, Cameron Monaghan as basically the Joker, Benedict Samuel as the Mad Hatter, Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney, and Michael Chiklis as the Executioner all gloriously hamming it up. It gets to a point where the sane characters are the minority, but it's all part of the fun.

    Music 
  • A hallmark of the Romantic period.
  • Most music by Celldweller fits here. Songs from 'Soundtrack for the Voices in My Head' often take it to the next level.
  • Almost all epic movies, fantasy films, action movies, and science fiction films contain a hammy or bombastic soundtrack. Bonus points if the music was composed by Hans Zimmer, David Arnold, John Williams or Brian Tyler.
  • All of Eminem's narrative universe: "You better LOSE/ yourself in da music...". Except for Recovery, in which he seems to have settled down into a much more "adult" persona, with the music changing accordingly, becoming much more understated but at the same time much more contondent. Returns in The Marshall Mathers LP 2.
  • There are entire genres which exist for and through incredible levels of ham. Starting with The Power of Rock, through Power Metal and finally back to Tenacious D:
  • Every song written by Jim Steinman. They're all about extreme emotional trips of love and despair, typically require the singer to howl, and even his personal spoken-word piece "Love and Death and an American Guitar" is downright crazy ("So... I... took my guitar... and I SMASHED it against the WALL. I SMASHED it against the FLOOR. Smashed it against the body of a varsity cheerleader...")
    • Especially when said songs are performed by Meat Loaf. Reaches its epitome in "Bat Out of Hell":
      "Then like a SINNER... BEFORE... the GATES of HEAVEN, I'll come crawlin' on back to you..."
    • Steinman's work with Céline Dion is hardly low-key, either.
      "BABY, BABY, if I kiss you like this
      and if you whisper like that..."
    • Or Bonnie Tyler, whose ragged vocals match Jim's penchant for ridiculously over-the-top emotional lyrics in songs like "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Faster Than the Speed of Night."
  • Heavy Metal in general. Power Metal especially. Brilliantly parodied in This is Spın̈al Tap.
  • Even though the pieces are lyricless, Gustav Holst's "The Planets" seems to indicate that we are living in an entire Solar System of Ham.
  • Manowar. Practically every song is a Heavy Mithril battle epic that's not so much sung as roared, or an emotional ballad to departed comrades.
  • Drum and Bass generally tends to be very hammy. Pendulum is one such example.
  • Public Enemy — nothing is half-hearted, everything is full of passion and conviction. FIGHT THE POWER!
  • The video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Tacky" manages to do this even though Weird Al is the only one whose voice can be heard, since every single guest star and Al himself have cranked up their strutting and posing to scenery-destroying levels. Jack Black is probably the most overacted though.
  • Primus is made of ham. It's no coincidence that lead singer/bassist Les Claypool often performs in a pig mask.
  • Ultravox under Midge Ure's leadership practically embodies Ham. The classical-infused compositions, with heavy uses of lentandos and crescendos, are the just the tip of the iceberg; the verses are just as over-the-top ("We Came To Dance" has dancers having to move in time 'cause they're being whip-cracked!) & Midge vocalises each lyric with the melodrama you'd expect from an opera singer. Hell, this band somehow managed to make a song about listening to someone's voice majestic!

    Myths & Religion 

    Pinballs 

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

    Puppet Shows 
  • Anything with The Muppets, from The Muppet Show to their movies, or even their guest spots on talk shows. The Muppets always bring the ham. And no, that's not a pig joke. "'Pig joke'?! I'll show YOU a pig joke!! HIIIIIIIII-YAH!!!" They also had some pretty over-the-top guests, most notably the late Zero Mostel, whose "Fears" sketch featured even his index finger overacting.

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

    Sports 
  • Soccer/Football. Every goal is celebrated like it won you The World Cup, and every "injury" is played up to draw a penalty. Bonus points if the ref doesn't buy it, and the player jumps right back up and joins the flow like nothing happened.
    • Enters a whole other dimension of ham with Spanish-speaking commentators, hot Latin blood and all that:
    Number 5! Number 5! Number 5! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO[cut for length]OOOOOOOOAAAALL!!!
  • Professional ballroom dancing, particularly the Latin category. The costumes are skimpy, usually in flashy colors and covered in glitter and rhinestones. The dancers, even the men, wear tons of makeup and fake tans. Not to mention the always huge, even more fake smiles to display the whitened teeth.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Virtually any tabletop roleplaying game has the potential to be this, depending on the inclinations of the Dungeon Master and the players.
  • Warhammer 40,000, in whatever media form it takes. The game itself almost requires the player take on this sort of attitude. The novels are bombastically hammy. The Dawn of War game series is so hammy that it has become the subject of several internet memes https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dawn_of_War#Soulstorm. Ham-to-Ham Combat is inevitable. The Imperium is based around being as ostentatious as physically possible in veneration of the Emperor ("Be faithful! Be strong! Be vigilant!"). Chaos is based around going beyond the physically possible, because the Dark Gods demand even more ("MAIM! BURN! KILL!"). Orks consider being LOUD AND MEAN to be valid battle tactics ("WAAAAAAAGGGGHHH!"). The Eldar and Tau are relatively sedate, but in a non-World Of Ham setting they would blow everyone away. The only factions that isn't pure ham and cheese are the Tyranids, who can't exactly speak, and the Necrons, who appear to be completely mute! (to their enemies; the wireless communication Lords and Crypteks use is given a long raspy tone in the Translation Convention)
    • Even then, the Necrons are magnificently hammy even without speaking. Necron Lords in every medium, stomp, not walk, stomp around the battlefield pissed they didn't get the Imperial March for theme music. The talking characters introduced later are so theatrical that they seem mildly resentful that they don't have a mustache to twirl. And the Tyranids? Well, somehow they seem to be a hammy Horde of Alien Locusts.
    • The presence of Tyranids can cause other people to get hammy in Apocalyptic Logs.
  • Paranoia is all about this trope when it's done well.
  • Dungeons & Dragons world Eberron is designed like this. "ACTION POINTS!"
  • Exalted. This is a game where there are three base stats, three skills and an entire combat system governing your ability to make epic, bombastic speeches and generally persuade people via scenery-chewing. The game actively encourages you to do this and being sufficiently awesome will impress the gods of the laws of physics, convincing them to pull a few strings in your favor. (Seriously; this is how the fluff justifies stunting.)
  • TORG has among its realities the "Nile Empire", inspired by pulp dime novels. A world full of stereotypical villains, dashing (super) heroes and distressed damsels.
  • Teenagers from Outer Space demands this of its players:
    "You've just been grabbed by the foot by an unknown thing on an alien planet. If you aren't screaming like a cat dipped in Nair, you aren't grasping the seriousness of the situation."
  • There isn't a single major villain in Rocket Age who won't monologue, attempt to lower someone into molten steel or try to blow up a world (or two). Heroes tend to slip into this as a defense mechanism.

    Theatre 
  • Theatre itself is an entire world of ham, the original one, if only because all the techniques and traits associated with large hams originated from theatre. This is because it's mostly required by the constraints of the art form itself — the actors' performances must have impact on the audience in the back rows who are going to be some distance away and aren't going to see subtle nuances.
  • Pretty much all of opera, be it Romantic or not. Inevitable when your medium is the narration of every little thing that happens to you via really loud singing while Orchestral Bombing plays in the background. The music isn't always hammy (see: Gluck, Mozart) but the characters are usually way larger than life; Chewing the Scenery with No Indoor Voice is standard practice due to overlarge theaters, no microphones, and inattentive audiences, thus forcing every action and word to be heavily telegraphed; and the plots are usually so far gone, contrived and over-the-top — often based in mythology — that there's really no other way to be. To say nothing of often having to jump the language barrier and still come across. Modern practice is making it a little more subtle and realistic with time, but there are still all the logistic and artistic problems to address. There's a reason that the genre Soap Opera uses "opera" in its title. And let's not even get started on any aria and solo parts.
  • Richard Wagner, Lord High Kapellmeister von der Schinkenwelt. After all, he composed the Ride of the Valkyries, Music to Conquer Empires By. And his lyrics are just as Hamtastic, as in this from Die Walküre:
    Holiest longing's highest need,
    Yearning desire's searing demand
    Burns for me bright in my breast,
    Drives to death and deed!
    Needful! Needful I name thee, o sword!
    "Needful! Needful!" Envied steel!!
    Show forth thy sharpness's shearing fang!
    Come forth from thy scabbard to me!
  • Carmen: Not only does the opera take just about every popular trope of the late 19th century (gypsies, Spain, tobacco, smuggling, dangerous women, soldiers, bullfighting, unrequited love) and turn it up a notch, it does so in the hammiest way imaginable. Escamillo's "Toreador Song" is a five-minute-long blast of ham in which he repeatedly compares his prowess in the ring with his prowess in bed. There is also "Écoute, écoute, compagnons", another hammy blast about how sneaky you have to be to smuggle cigarettes.
  • Somewhat related: the J.G. Wentworth opera commercials.
  • Hamlet, pun unintended. Macbeth a lot more so.
    • If given to the right actors, any of Shakespeare's plays. Done properly (enunciated, with stilted hand gestures and a very serious look) it can either be filled with Narm or exceptionally Hammy.
    • It can be argued that many of Shakespeare's plays were originally meant to be hammy. For much of his career the man had to compete against such traditional London pastimes as drinking, whoring and watching a bear fight dogs while getting jabbed with a pointed stick. He did it, successfully, with as much overacted innuendo, swordplay and comedy as he could cram into a show.
    • The 1996 Kenneth Branagh adaptation of Hamlet deserves special attention, with BRIAN BLESSED arguably turning in one of the most subdued performances of the movie. Wrap your head around that, if you can.
  • Henrik Ibsen wrote a horny vikings play in 1859, while still a young man: The Warriors at Helgeland is excessively hammy from beginning to end, containing sword fights, badass boasting, and a cataclysmic climax where the designated heroine Hjørdis jumps off a cliff in the middle of a thunder storm only to be collected by the wild hunt. Ibsen never topped the amount of hamminess he achieved in this play.
  • If Cirque du Soleil has taught us anything with its shows, it's that you don't need lots of intelligible dialogue/lyrics to be hammy. Gestures and expressions pick up the slack — and all on top of the often jaw-dropping feats the performers pull off.
    • Circus in general is an extremely hammy art form (not necessarily a Circus of Fear, though that can certainly qualify as well). When the entire soundtrack consists of a whistle, a brass band, maybe some clown horns, and a steam-powered organ so loud that it can be heard for miles, how can it all not be hammy in excelsis? In recent editions of the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus, even the ringmaster sings and dances.
  • Count the number of Broadway musicals that aren't this. The most egregious examples are from Gilbert and Sullivan, Mel Brooks, and Stephen Sondheim.
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber: The Phantom of the Opera, his most successful work, is a full-on balls-to-the-wall Melodrama in which several of the characters (including two of the three leads) are opera singers. If that doesn't bring the ham, nothing will.
  • Pantomime is built on this trope, and when you have amateur actors involved, the SHEER EAR-SHATTERING VOLUME and Ham-to-Ham Combat can reach ridiculous (but hilarious) levels.
  • Starship. Even the background is hammy when it needs to be.
  • "Little Shop, Little Shop of Horrors! Bop shu bop, you'll NEVER stop the terror!"
  • Peter Pan: Neverland is this, since it's the product of children's imaginations. The pirates especially tend to be enjoying themselves, with Captain Hook the hammiest of them all.
  • In the 2013 stage adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, little Charlie and his parents are the only characters who don't ham it up at least once. Most everyone else hams it up as a way of life, none more so than Willy Wonka. Of course, in a world where there's scenery that can be literally chewed upon, can one blame them for indulging?
  • In Shrek: The Musical, the entire cast qualifies, but Farquaad especially so.
  • 1776 is particularly guilty of this trope, but it was intentionally invoked: composer/lyricist Sherman Edwards and librettist Peter Stone were deliberately attempting to shake up the image of the American Founding Fathers and the signing of the Declaration of Independence as stoic and composed. As such, the show opens with John Adams screaming at the rest of the Continental Congress, and the legislators singing in response ("SIT DOWN, JOHN! SIT DOWN, JOHN!"). It only gets hammier from there, from the Southern delegation dancing a minuet to the Committee of Five (who wrote the Declaration itself) having a rhyming battle to get out of actually doing the work to One-Scene Wonder Richard Henry Lee bursting onto the stage on horseback and bellowing "HELLLLLLLLOOOOOOO, JOHNNY!" The sheer hamminess of 95% of the show also helps to contrast the much quieter five percent, especially the somber Act I finale "Momma, Look Sharp," about a soldier in the colonial army dying on the battlefield and calling for his mother.
  • Takarazuka Revue productions are generally melodramatic, lavish, and more stylized than what a Western audience might be used to. This is especially evident when comparing original productions with Takarazuka adaptations — acting, makeup, costume, sets, everything Zuka must be high-budget and often sparkly. The impression that a Takarazuka production ideally should make on the audience is that it is in its own "World of Dreams", separate from reality altogether. The actresses play highly idealized concepts of "men" and "women" as well, extending to their offstage gender presentation.
  • As in the original film and the film of the musical, The Producers has nearly every character ham it up as much as possible, which is entirely appropriate for a show about an attempt to put on the worst Broadway show ever.

    Video Games 
  • Baldur's Gate. For reference, Jaheira is probably by any standard the least hammy, most "normal" major character in the entire game. She goes around screaming "FOR THE FALLEN!" and "NATURE TAKES THE LIFE SHE GAVE!" in a fake-Russian accent. In most other circumstances she'd be the cast's Large Ham.
    • And, on the opposite side of the spectrum, we have Minsc. This man is undisputedly considered among the series' greatest hams. The man's mere presence is an Incoming Ham. What does he say for simply walking? "Stand back, FOR JUSTICE" at the top of his lungs.
      You point...I PUNCH!
      Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES! YAAH! *squeeek*
      SWORDS not words!
      SWORDS FOR EVERYONE!
      Buuuutt-kicking... FOR GOODNESS!!
    • In fact, once battle comes around, the curse of hamminess tends to find even your most level-headed companions. And as if proof was needed that hamminess makes no discrimination, it affects companions from all across the sliding scale of good and evil, law and chaos. A few samples:
      Dorn: Hah! I'll rip you apart, you whey-faced cur!
      Cernd: THE SILENCE OF NATURE WILL CLAIM YOU!
      Edwin: Your worthless lives end here!
      Korgan: Blood and glory, now you die!
      Keldorn: Good is on our side this day!
      Haer'Dalis: For the Doomguard, I strike a blow!
      Yoshimo: Pay attention... you will get no second chance!
      Nalia: If you fight, you die! You cannot match our power!
      Aerie: For all that is decent, I fight!
      Rasaad: I'll see you in the ground!
      Sarevok: Death comes for you; feel its icy breath!
  • Much of the Borderlands series is pretty hammy, but a special mention must go to the second game's DLC Mister Torgue's Campaign of Carnage. As the plot of the DLC involves a tournament which is an affectionate parody of professional wrestling, this is to be expected.
  • Champions Online: The initial training mission is an alien invasion which you complete by taking the superhero Ironclad (who is a ham of titanic proportions all by himself) and shooting him out of a cannon at the alien mothership. And it only ramps UP from there...
  • Command & Conquer likes this trope in its settings.
    • The Tiberium universe is less blatant about it, but it's a very hammy Crapsack World once you get past the in-progress apocalypse. By Tiberium Wars, the setting has upped the ham. Kane himself is hammy enough, but then you get Billy Dee Williams as the director of GDI and you know it's gonna be awesome.
    • The Red Alert universe, on the other hand... Red Alert 1 is hammy but sane. Red Alert 2 embraces the pork and experiments with some zany ideas. Red Alert 3 has Tim Curry, Jonathan Pryce, J. K. Simmons, and George Takei as major characters. It's worth noting that the Ham Acting is entirely intentional in the later game. You can see the big-name actors are having a lot of fun with it, and with Tim Curry's character deceased in Uprising, Malcolm McDowell and Ric Flair are right there to yank the ham from his jowls.
    • Generals is relatively sedate, but the Zero Hour expansion is extra-hammy to make up for it.
    • All three series have their hammy units and unit quotes, implying that the troops on the field are just as hammy as their leaders. Notable examples include the USA Paladin tank from Generals, The Nod emissary from the Tiberium Universe, and practically everything that can talk from Red Alert 3.
  • Contra. Especially Neo.
  • The Pocket Dimension of MORTAL KOMBAAT! is powered by Ham and FLAWLESS VICTORY.
  • Devil May Cry. Even the sets manage to be hammy! But nothing can match the sheer hamminess of the series' main character.
  • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness:
    • Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! definitely takes the cake, but Laharl's attempts at being evil (not to mention his personal special attacks) are pretty hammy as well, and Flonne is, well... very enthusiastic about her heroism and The Power of Love. Vulcanus and Mid-Boss also get plenty of good posturing done, and Prinny Kurtis makes an entrance in style as well. Etna, of all characters, comes off as one of the most sedate during the body of the story — yes, the same character known for her over-the-top, wildly inaccurate chapter previews which rival even Gordon for hamminess.
    • The sequels all continue this trend, and every game has at least a few hams. Disgaea 2 has Rozalin and Axel, 3 has Mao and especially Mr. Champloo, and 4 features Axel again as well as Valvatorez, who has given up ham for "the power of SARDINES!"
  • Dynasty Warriors, in which it's worth unlocking every single one of the characters just to find how many new and ham-tastic variations on "I DEFEATED AN OFFICER!" are possible. Particularly excellent is Zhang Jiao's shriek that "The Heavens have SPOKEN!!!"
    "Unnleash your raaaage, my CHOsen CHILdren. Unnnnleash-your-rage-upon-the-Han, and bring forth, THE AGE of the Yellow TURBANS!"
    "I don't belieeeeve in magiiiic... ONWAAAARD"
    "So, you summon-a-rainstorm, with your magic. Whahahat of it?"
    • Or his henchman Zhang Bao:
    "I AM LU BU!!!"
    • Then there's Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, which even has the normally stoic Real Robot characters taking a cue from Domon and friends and abandoning Kosher. Say it with me now... "Camille's a man's name! AND I'M A MAN!!!"
      • Let's just hope they don't get too crossover-happy and do Dynasty Warhammer 40k... The world might not be able to handle so much ham.
  • While well acted, Eternal Darkness certainly qualifies for its melodramatic script.
  • Gears of War 2's single player qualifies with Marcus' and Dom's outbursts. Otherwise it's just Testosterone Poisoning like its predecessor.
    Marcus: It's — it's a GIANT HAM! THEY'RE SINKING CITIES WITH A GIANT HAM!!!
  • In God of War, even the rocks are Large Hams! Kratos spends most of the time killing everything, but when he speaks...
    • The titans deserve special mention. Near the beginning of the second game:
    "YOU WILL PAY... FOR THAT... KRAAAAAAAATOOOOOOS"!
  • Inazuma Eleven is a kids' game about soccer. The first game can get a little over-the-top for a middle school soccer tournament, But then we get to the second game. It's an Alien Invasion. With soccer. Suffice it to say, the overall tone of the series can be summed up as "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann meets soccer".
  • Fallout: New Vegas gives us the Old World Blues DLC set in BIIG MOUNTAIIIN!, where everybody talks like a hammy actor from a 1950's B movie. You can even indulge in some scenery-chewing hammery by channeling your inner Mad Scientist.
  • The Metal Gear series has probably the highest concentration of ham in any media, ever! It's easier to list the characters that are not completely hammy. In the first four main games, there are more than 20 villains, every single one a Large Ham in their own right. They can even make a stoic Lady of War out to be a Large Ham.
    • And then there's Liquid Ocelot, the King of Ham, who out-hams all other characters in the game combined.
    Liquid Snake: I'm you! I AM YOUR SHADOW!
  • Sengoku Basara, where even supposedly low-key strategy/planning scenes are filled with wall-smashing punches and epic, manly name shouting.
  • The Soul Series is the unquestionable king of this trope. Every battle quote is as over-the-top and poetic as possible, and when a character wins a match they do a little dance with their sword, punch the ground/bend over provocatively, and SCREAM ABOUT THEIR BACKSTORY.
  • In Halo, everyone but the Master Chief seems to be a big ham.
    • Captain Keyes would only be a medium ham, but everything he says lets you know what a great officer he is.
    • Cortana has her moments, but in Halo 3 she digs into the ham for all that it's worth.
    • Sgt. Johnson is another Large Ham, and he knows it.
    • All of the Prophets count, but the Prophet of Truth easily steals the cake.
    • Though he pales a bit compared with the other characters, the Arbiter is a serious ham in his own right.
    • Shipmaster Rtas 'Vadum only has a loud ham voice and a calm ham voice, and nothing else.
    • And then there's Gravemind, the pure and awesome manifestation of hamminess. When it first reveals itself, its first words are "I am a monument to all your sins!"
  • Street Fighter, OF COURSE!!!.
  • Super Robot Wars especially due to how tongue in cheek the characters are. That, and the fact that you have a crossover of multiple Hot-Blooded, over-the-top Screaming Warriors from across the multiverse.
  • As mentioned above, Dawn of War, in which everyone from the lowliest Chaos Cultist to the narrator to the fiery incarnation of the God of War and Murder is always hammy, all the time. Winter Assault is the absolute pinnacle, including the indomitable General Sturnn, the Ax-Crazy Lord Crull, and of course the Laughably Evil Warboss Gorgutz 'Eadhunter. When Gorgutz and Crull meet, it is truly a sight to behold.
    • The Soulstorm Chaos Lord's rant on metal boxes became incredibly popular for the sheer ham value. The video also has Lord Bale's infamous "SINDRIIIIII!" from the first campaign.
    • Soulstorm adds the Sisters Of Battle, more bombastic and strident than the orks. Build a flame-thrower tank and the driver will announcer herself with "Behold...THE IMMOLATOR! BURNING GLORY!"
    • The bloody Commissars. "FEAR ME, BUT FOLLOW!"
      • Which continued into Dawn of War 2. "Be like General Tarsus of yore, BULLETPROOF, AND FREE OF FEAR!"
    • Or the Space Marine Scouts: "FOOOO THE EMPRAH!"
    • The sequel's voice acting was more sedate, to the dismay of some fans. Probably why Araghast, the Chaos Lord in Chaos Rising, is so popular. "FACE ME, IF YOU DARE."
    • Evil Is Hammy is taken very seriously, as demonstrated here. FORCES OF CHAAAOOOOOOOSSSSSS, FiLL ME WITH POWWAAAAAAAAAAHRRRHRHGLGLHHH!!!!
    • Dawn Of War II: Retribution, in addition to Ascended Memes, bring back the ham by the herd. Orks, Chaos forces, everyone will ham it up at some point. Especially the Mad Mek.
      • "OI! TRESPASSAHZ! INVADAHZ! ‘OOLIGANS AN’ NE'ER-DO-WELLS! NOBODY, BU’ NOBODY, JUS’ POPS OU’ O’ THIN AIR ON THIS 'ERE SPACE 'ULK, WIFOU’ ME SAY-SO! NOW, PISS-OFF, OR I’M LIKE TO SAY-SO TO SOMEFIN’ NASTY!"
      • "Dem Orkz got a Mek for a boss! Dat's just sad, dat is."
  • Diablo probably is a world full of hams. From the High Heavens above, we have the Archangels Tyrael, Imperius, and even Itheriel and Auriel when they speak. From the Burning Hells, we have the Three Prime Evils Diablo, Mephisto, and Baal. And so on and so forth with the player characters and among their followers. Even the funny Ghost of the Cow King himself is hammy...or rather, beefy.
  • Power levels are very clearly defined by hamminess in Shin Megami Tensei games. Basically, the tougher the enemy is, the less afraid he'll be, the more boastful he'll be, and the more awesome and powerful he'll be.
  • StarCraft, where everyone from Tassadar down to basic Terran Marines is overacted unless they have some kind of special reason not to be. The Zerg Overmind is perhaps the worst offender.
    • Warcraft III even more so. For example, Arthas is prone to proclaiming things like "Betrayer of the Light!" when you send him into battle. Even if said "battle" consists of bashing open a defenseless barrel...
    • StarCraft II takes the ham of the first game and up-hams it to almost unnerving levels. After a few hours of hearing one unit after another trying to out-ham all the others, it's actually nice to hear Mohandar's calm, soft voice for a change.
  • Hyrule, as interpreted by The Legend of Zelda CD-i Games. It's accompanied with plenty of huge, unnecessary hand gestures.
  • King's Quest: Mask of Eternity. Everybody speaks in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe, even the peasants.
  • Filgaia in Wild ARMs 4. When you have synchronized dramatic speeches, a guy wearing a rocket pack and wielding an anti-tank chainsaw, and another person punching out a missile followed by yet another dramatic speech, you might just live in a world of ham.
  • The Star Fox games. Especially Star Fox 64 with its over-the-top voice acting.
  • Team Fortress 2:
    • One of the Heavy Weapons Guy's sandvitch eating quotes is even "DON'T RUN, IT'S JUST HAM!"
    • What can you say about a world where Billy the Kid, Stonewall Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Alfred Nobel, John Henry, Nikola Tesla, Sigmund Freud, Davey Crocket, and Fu Manchu were the main characters' predecessors? (That someone dropped the ball by not sending Teddy Roosevelt back in time to join the fun.)
  • Brütal Legend, which you probably should expect from a game created entirely from pure METAL!
    DECAPITATTIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNN!!!
    • Given that it basically boils down to Jack Black VS Tim Curry in a world that has replaced physics with HEAVY METAL...
  • Dragon Age: Origins. The only characters who aren't hammy are deadpan snarkers. Mind you, most are both. They manage to ham up being deadpan, it's amazing.
  • Chewing the scenery is part of the Krogans hat in Mass Effect, which makes Tuchanka a Planet Of Ham.
  • Bayonetta: The forces of both Heaven and Hell are loud and dramatic, and even the humans who form pacts with them get in on the ham when the action goes down.
  • Outside of combat, the Valkyrie Profile series is closer to Narm Charm than this, but certainly has aspects of it, particularly in the "English" translation. In combat, the ham is so overwhelming, "It shall be engraved upon your soul!" (It helps that every playable character gets a fully voice-acted Pre Ass Kicking One Liner, Pre-Mortem One-Liner, called special attack, and Bond One-Liner.)
    • Every wizard has their chance to overdo their lines when they call down the Great Magics. Put a couple big casters in with the right weapons against Lezard Valeth and watch the Ham-to-Ham Combat with great glee.
  • Sacrifice takes place in one of these. The gods lead by scenery-chewing example, and their devotees follow suit.
  • Evil Zone: Just look at Danzaiver and Greg, add Setsuna and Midori as well.
  • Nosgoth, the world where the Legacy of Kain games are set, has the ham flying in all directions. Between Simon Templeman's (justly) pompous, over-articulated delivery of Kain's lines, and Michael Bell's dramatic, simmering rendition of Raziel's voice, the ham gets delivered by the truckload, with all the other characters frantically trying to stack their ham higher than the protagonists. "But does one ever truly have a choice? One can only match, move by move, the machinations of Fate..."
    • Which makes for a funny moment in the Outtakes, where the director asks Rene Auberjonois to ramp the Ham UP. Michael Bell's reaction? "WHOA! License to kill! Let me and the scenery out of the room!"
  • Kingdom Hearts. Good Lord, Kingdom Hearts. It's easier to list the moments when characters, particularly villains, aren't hamming it up than when they are.
  • Touhou Project. The games have no voice tracks, but they have loads of over-the-top posturing. Special mention goes to the fighting game spin-offs, which have actual spriting for the cutscenes. Very theatrical spriting. Print works tend tone it down a bit, though.
    • An especially special mention goes to Toyosatomimi no Miko, who tends to carry herself with the air of a very hammy and affable supervillain, complete with the required amount of PRESENTATION! Seriously, her personality tends to shine through in every scene she appears in. Literally: She is often surrounded by Bishie Sparkles and tends to radiate blinding light!
  • Whatever world that Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents takes place in is certainly a hammy one. Whether it's an overwhelmed babysitter, a ramen shopkeeper seeking customers, or Cleopatra trying to lose weight, the distressed victim is sure to emit a sky-filling scream... which promptly attracts the team of cheerleaders/dancers/agents, who immediately proceed to help solve the problem with The Power Of Dance.
  • Castlevania. Most characters are either stupidly stoic or hams. And even the stoics say some overdramatic lines. It doesn't take itself too seriously though, and it has DRACULA for god sake. Dracula's always gonna be hammy. It arguably increases the series' appeal, especially Symphony of the Night. What is a man, indeed.
  • F-Zero. When even the straight-laced, get-right-to-the-point Captain Falcon (note that he is not the Boisterous Bruiser as seen in Super Smash Bros.) breaks out some hickory-smoked scenery-chewing without even batting an eyelash, you know that the Ham levels are at an all-time high. It should also be pointed out that Card Carrying Villains (and that is to say, pretty much every villain aside of Deathborn and maybe Black Shadow) are more like Billboard Carrying Villains.
  • Air Force Delta Strike turns it way up and serves up wholesale ham both in the Enemy Chatter in missions and in the stillshot character interactions between missions. The look on Almighty Mechanic Grandpa Bob's face when you crash a plane is priceless, but can be easily confused for extreme constipation.
  • Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited seems to be this way, with voiced NPCs chewing the scenery whenever possible. The DMs also tend to speak in a deep, ominous voice for no particular reason sometimes. And the WORST offender is Cellimas Villuhne, a cleric NPC you meet early on in the game. The ONLY line she delivers that isn't over the top is at the end of the first dungeon, when she offers a reward for your help. She only shows up in three dungeons, but the way she acts you'd think she chewed enough of the scenery to dig them all out herself.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising, so, so much. It's combined with Casual Danger Dialogue and No Fourth Wall, to boot! Everyone with a speaking role is a Large Ham, Deadpan Snarker, or (most commonly) both.
  • Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal is an extremely poorly translated bootleg of Pokemon Crystal Version. Everyone in the game speaks in all caps, has very poor grammar, and comes off as very hammy. There are little gems like this all throughout the game: "I AM VERY DISGUSTED WITH THE TRASHY MAN. IN SPITE OF THE MONSTER, AND THE COACH, ONLY TRASHY, I WILL BEAT DOWN THEM ALL. FOR THIS I MUST STRENGTHEN MYSELF. THE MONSTER IS THE SAME TOO. COLLECT ALL THE TRASHY, RIGHTEOUS FELLOW ALL ARE UNPARDONABLE! YOU DON'T AFFECT ME. THE TRASHY STROLLING IS AN EYESORE!"
  • Hell is an Afterlife of Ham in the videogame Dante's Inferno. If people aren't screaming lamentations or cackling madly, something's wrong.
  • To say that Undertale is filled with hammy, scenery-chewing moments would be an understatement. Nearly every character you encounter is super hammy, to the point of self-parody:
    • The Mad Dummy:
    "HEY GUYS! Dummies. Dummies! DUMMIES! Remember how I said NOT to shoot at me? Well... FAILURES! YOU'RE FIRED! YOU'RE ALL BEING REPLACED!!! Hahaha. Hahaha! HAHAHA!"
    • Don't forget THE GREAT PAPYRUS!
    • hOI!!!!!! I'M tEMMIE!!!!
  • With the exception of Rachel Alucard, who is too busy being the Ojou to get hammy, every other character in BlazBlue is hammy to the umpth degree. And they come in all possible kinds of flavors, too, from Ragna the Bloodedge's cocky, shounen-heroic ham; Arakune's insane, gibbering ham and Hakumen's sheer badass ham to Bang who is simply a walking Large Ham scene (so much, in fact, that his Super Mode comes complete with a Theme Music Power-Up about how awesome he is)... And then there's Hazama / Terumi Yuuki, who outhams them all. Go ahead and look up a match on YouTube to get an idea. Just be sure to turn your headphones down before you do so.
  • Asura's Wrath is full of this, with Asura himself and his mentor Augus being stand out examples.
    • Perhaps the best way to describe just how hammy it is this: It's Dragon Ball Z X God of War. Yeah.
  • We can add yet another BioWare IP to the list. A wide variety of characters in Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 (particularly your cohorts in Storm of Zehir) merrily ham it up. And a sizable majority of the Player Character voices (even the ladies) seem to be channeling BRIAN BLESSED. And like BioWare's subsequent Dragon Age series, when they're not hams, they're deadpan snarkers, and sometimes they're both.
  • Space Channel 5 doesn't just have a world of ham, it has a GALAXY of ham.
  • Shadow Hearts: Covenant is this in spades. It starts out fairly mild, with a few wacky folks like the tailors but pretty normal. And then comes Joachim Valentine and it goes from there. At one point Yuri and Roger Bacon are discussing losing something important to them with sad music in the background. It's about a porno mag.
  • Dota 2. To fight for the Ancients, one must apparently be either a Large Ham or a Cold Ham, no exceptions. Notable examples include Axe ("I SAID GOOD DAY SIR!"), Clinkz ("I'll! See! You! BUUUUUURRRRN!"), Wraith King (who would like you to know that HE NOW HAS ALL THE SEXY), Brewmaster ("Three of me! HAHA!"), Storm Spirit ("BLOOOOOOOW THE MAN DOWN!"), Sven (whose responses are mostly battle roars), and Phoenix (who doesn't let a silly little thing like not having intelligible lines get in the way of scenery-chewing). To top it off, the game has an item that lets you eat trees. That's right, it allows you to literally chew the scenery.
  • The world of Lollipop Chainsaw. You are a cheerleader with a chainsaw killing zombies, with the fashion accessory of your boyfriend's severed talking head on your belt. You kill zombies that moan that they have Katy Perry songs stuck in their head and spew rainbows when you kill them thanks to simply being awesome. Yeah, that's the normal stuff.
  • The world of Tekken is incredibly hammy. Even the ninjas, animals, and non-speaking robots are overflowing with ham!
  • Planescape: Torment joins the fine constellation of Dungeons & Dragons games which fit this trope. From a Chivalrous Pervert floating skull asking you to spare female zombies for needs a floating skull doesn't have a means of acting upon to a mad mage who is eternally on fire as a torment for being a pyromaniac — and enjoys it — nearly everyone is hammier than a Christmas ham wrapped in bacon on a bed of pork chops. Even the few apparently level-headed characters are just one or two conversation options away from a Heroic BSoD. But the hammiest ham is the Big Bad.
    Big Bad: "I can forge planes with my power — I can unmake you."
  • Bill Nye the Science Guy: Stop the Rock! has so much ham, the only person who averts this is the news reporter.
  • World of Warcraft
    • TRIFLING GNOME! YOUR ARROGANCE SHALL BE YOUR UNDOING!
    • Suffer, mortals, as your PATHETIC magic BETRAAAAAAAAAAYS yoouu!!!
    • MADNESS SHALL CONSUME YOU!!!
    • I am DEATHWING, the DESTROYER, the END of all things... unstoppable... indomitable... I! AM! THE CATACLYSM!!!
  • Project × Zone. Even characters who usually aren't hammy get to ham it up in this game.
  • Total War: Warhammer lives and breathes pork products, though a synthesis of the gloriously hammy Total War-franchise and the hammily glorious Warhammer-franchise could hardly be anything else.
  • Resident Evil: almost all its villains are perfect examples of Evil Is Hammy and often Cold Ham as well. Albert Wesker, Alex Wesker (slightly less so than her brother, but that's not saying much), Sergei Vladimir, Alexia Ashford, Alfred Ashford, James Marcus, Ramon Salazar, Ricardo Irving... And some of the heroes get in on the act (especially Barry Burton, but Leon has his moments).
  • Super Smash Bros. is not just video gaming's biggest crossover, but also one of its hammiest. Almost every attack is over the top to amazing extents (most famously, FALCOOON PUNCH!), every character has a taunt (three starting from Brawl) that has them either making a cheesy one-liner, gesticulating wildly, or acting out in other hammy ways. In the Smash Ball, each fighter gets access to a visually-satisfying Finishing Move that usually encompasses the entire screen, or in some cases, comes with its own cutscene altogether. Even the Announcer is a giant ham, best showcased in the 50 Fact Extravaganza.
  • The world of Psychonauts double subverts this trope. In the "real world" there are a few hammy characters, but it isn't everyone. However, a significant part of the game is going into the Mental World of various characters, and almost universally the figures in there are over the top dramatic.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney series. Even the most serious and stoic characters have at least one hammy moment. One of the biggest running gags is the over-the-top mental breakdowns both the heroes and villains have. In fact, it seems like you can't make a decent rebuttal of someone's argument without shouting OBJECTION! or HOLD IT! even when outside of the court!
  • The entire Shinza Bansho Series with all of its subseries are just an explosion of ham with a level of cheeky self awareness and honesty that is hard to find anywhere else. Everything from the writing to the voice acting to the music is all overly dramatic and over the top simply for the sake that it can. And even with all that said there are still characters that manages to out ham everyone else around them. This has really become a recurring trait in writer Takashi Masada's work.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 

    Websites 
  • TV Tropes:
    • THIS VERY WIKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! It IS THIS TROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE! We tropers can get a bit... PASSIONATE about our FAVOURITE SEEEEEEERIEEEES!
    • Seriously... look at all the caps we've put on this page alone. We had way too much fun doing this...
    • This is especially obvious when someone who has... let us say a "more balanced attitude"... toward a particular work, or a particular genre, or a particular type of work (animation, horror movies, Korean comic books, whatever) makes an edit that, while inoffensive and normal in and of itself and made with all the best intentions, is taken as a purposeful affront by a fan of the work, genre, or whathaveyou because of the "anyone with any sense would be as fanatic about this Work/Genre/Type of Whatever as I am, and since you disagree you are EVIL!!!!!." (It helps to read that last word in Ernest Borgnine's Mermaid Man voice.)
    • Consider that as tropers, despite using English as a common tongue, we are all spread across the globe. As stated above, we are all hammy, or at least sometimes we tend to exalt ourselves when discussing our favourite subjects. Basically what I mean to say is: WE ARE THE VERY PROOF WE LITERALLY LIVE. IN. A. WORLD. OF. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!
    • BRIAN BLESSED is the only article on TV Tropes where bite marks are visible.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 


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Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo

In the world of Bobobo, nothing makes sense, almost everyone is crazy and stuff happens because shut up.

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Main / WorldOfHam

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