Basic Trope: Tanks are useless.
- Straight: Tanks are sent in to dispatch a giant monster. They do no noticeable damage and are destroyed afterwards by the giant monster.
- Exaggerated: Tanks are sent in to dispatch a common thief armed only with a pistol. The thief blows them all up effortlessly using his pistol before the tanks can fire a shot or run him over.
- Downplayed: The tanks are destroyed, but only after a long battle where they did damage the monster.
- Justified:
- The opposition is just that strong.
- The tanks have poor performance due to hasty deployment, inherent flaws, mechanical failures, etc.
- They're not actually tanks, they're infantry fighting vehicles.
- They're actually gun carriers. They have so much gun they have no room/ weight capacity left for armor.
- Inverted:
- Tank Goodness.
- A state-of-the-art Humongous Mecha is utterly demolished by a (relatively) humble M4 Sherman
.
- Subverted: Tanks are sent in to dispatch a giant monster, and their shots seem to cause the monster to bleed...
- Double Subverted: ...but it turns out that the monster is actually turning red and is physically unharmed, simply enraged by the tank shots. The monster then lets loose a gigantic fireball that completely melts the entire tank division.
- Parodied: The tanks are often laughed at before and after the tanks' defeat.
- Zig Zagged: Tanks are sent in to dispatch a giant monster, and while they kill the monster, an even bigger monster appears and destroys those tanks without a hitch. More tanks are sent in, and they finally kill the bigger monster. But then they face another monster from outer space that destroys those tank reinforcements with ease.
- Averted:
- No tanks appear.
- Tanks are as useful as they should be.
- Enforced: "Tanks are vastly overrated, so let's show how useless they can be!"
- Lampshaded: "The tanks should have killed the monster, right?"
- Invoked: The monsters wear metal armor under their skins to absorb the tank shots.
- Exploited: Enemy forces manage to sucker the other side into wasting money on tanks, knowing that they are completely useless.
- Defied: "Let's use the tanks with the most powerful cannons on that monster."
- Discussed: "No, sending tanks in is a terrible idea, their armor does nothing."
- Conversed: "Every single tank we've seen so far has been blown up. How does the army even have any left to send in?"
- Deconstructed: Due to how useless tanks are, military commanders either stop using them or try to improve their performance to actually become useful.
- Reconstructed: Acme is handling the improvements.
Go back to Tanks for Nothing. Just don't use a tank, okay?
