Basic Trope: Characters without muscles can easily outperform heavily-muscled ones.
- Straight: The puny Bob takes on the heavily-muscled Alex, but beats him in no time flat.
- Exaggerated: Bob looks like he can't even lift a small dumbbell, while Alex looks like he can benchpress several tons. Bob beats him in record time.
- Downplayed: Bob wins, but it's a very close match and had things gone slightly differently Alex would've won.
- Justified:
- Bob uses superior tactics and technique to maximize the effective power of each strike, as well as making sure he doesn't waste his energy.
- Bob is able to augment his physical strength with magic or Psychic Powers.
- Bob's muscles may not be big, but they are very dense.
- Alex is a bodybuilder and his excessive muscles are just for show, but end up cutting down his endurance and flexibility; all Bob has to do is dodge his blows for a couple minutes to wear Alex out, before he starts ACTIVELY fighting.
- Alternately, Bob trounces Alex not because he's STRONGER than him, but because Alex has never been in a real fight before.
- Bob isn't human, and his strength as an alien/robot/elf is significantly different by nature compared to a human of similar size.
- Inverted: Muscles Are Meaningful
- Subverted:
- Bob walks out and assumes a martial arts stance against Alex. Alex walks out and flattens Bob in one second.
- Bob is really scrawny, but when he begins training, he eventually gets ripped.
- Bob looks scrawny with his clothes on, but actually has compactly well-developed muscles that are further hidden by the fact that he doesn't bother with the exercises and dietary regimen for achieving extreme muscular definition.
- Double Subverted:
- But then Bob gets back up, heals himself and takes down Alex.
- But he's only ripped when he's in "battle mode", so to speak. When he's not fighting he looks pretty scrawny.
- Parodied:
- In a work set in a high school, the chess club beats up the football team for lunch money.
- Muscles are weaker the bigger they are in this universe. People compliment Bob on working out enough to get so scrawny and ask what sort of diet he has.
- Bob is a literal stickman, and Alex is a ten-foot-tall muscular behemoth. Bob simply brushes against Alex, and Alex falls down dead.
- Zig Zagged: Some characters are muscular and powerful, while others are thinner and yet just as strong.
- Averted: Muscles are generally a good indicator of strength.
- Enforced: They want to appeal to the female Periphery Demographic, and a protagonist with too many muscles would oppose this.
- Lampshaded:
- "He may not look very strong, but I'll bet he can kick our asses!"
- The bout between Bob and Alex is described as "like the battle between David Versus Goliath... and we all know how that went!"
- Invoked: Bob trains in a specific way to ensure his muscles build density and efficiency over size and bulk, meaning he looks scrawny but is still incredibly powerful
- Exploited: Bob's shady manager plays up his lack of traditional physique so the bookies will all bet against him, ensuring a big payoff when he bets on his own fighter.
- Defied: Alex schools Bob in ten seconds flat, and then tells him he needs to bulk up if he has a hope of winning.
- Discussed: "What is with all these super-thin super-strong people these days? Back in my day a man actually LOOKED like he could throw a car at people..."
- Conversed: "Bob is simultaneously the thinnest and the strongest character on this show. Discuss."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's prowess despite his lack of muscles only does him good offensively. His lack of muscles makes him unable to take hits from his opponents.
- Bob is thin because of, rather than despite, his strength. He had his supernaturally-based power from birth and as such his muscles never properly developed, leaving him emaciated rather than Bishounen. When he's hit by a Power Nullifier, he can't even stand up under his own weight.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob uses his scrawny appearance in a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to catch his opponents off guard and quickly knock them out.
- Bob starts working out, and while he never becomes bulky, he can actually live without his powers for once.
- Bob is aware of his innate Super-Strength despite his skinny body, and starts developing actual musculature to get the most possible benefit from it. He is less developed than his more muscular peers, but still stronger than them and his prior skinny state.
Back to Muscles Are Meaningless
