- Babylon 5:
- This is the normal outcome of an attack by the Shadows against a Younger Race.
- Oddly enough, the Shadows suffered this every time they faced the Vorlons in battle. The interesting part is the Vorlons were only meant to have been a few million years old, yet the Shadows were billions of years old and stated to be far more advanced. This didn't seem to stop the Vorlons from wiping the floor with the Shadows in every one of their confrontations.
- It was the invariable result of encounters between EarthForce and the Minbari during the Earth-Minbari War. John Sheridan freely admitted that his destruction of the Minbari flagship Black Star was the only victory that Earth had during the conflict. And then having effortlessly destroyed the defences of the Asteroid belt and Mars and decimated the last-ditch fleet defending Earth, the Minbari surrendered. The reason for this bizarre decision remained a mystery for years after the battle.Sinclair: The sky was full of stars, and every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
- In the episode "Ceremonies of Light and Dark" Marcus Cole is determined to track down the Nightwatch cell and heads to a seedy bar in Downbelow. Marcus joins a poker game and tells the other players that if they didn't tell what he wanted to know then in five minutes he would be the only person at the table still concious, and five minutes after that the only person in the bar still awake. He makes good on his word.Marcus: Bugger! Now I have to wait for somebody to wake up!
- When Sheridan takes his fleet of White Stars against Earth Force. He loses a few White Stars, sure, but the Earth Force loses a lot more. It's all but stated that the big reason it wasn't more one-sided is that Sheridan was pulling his punches in the hopes of getting the other side to surrender first. This proved wise, since numerous Earth Force ships stood down or switched sides rather than fight for the dictatorial Clark regime.
- The Centauri attack and bombardment of the Narn homeworld — albeit that the Narn fleet was being decimated by the Shadows (in their normal curb stomp fashion) in another system at the time.
- Marcus's fight with Neroon in "Gray 17 is Missing". Marcus does get a few good hits in and makes Neroon bleed before being pounded into the deck. He only survives after calling on the name of Valen, the Minbari's most holy figure and pledging to die as a ranger for Delenn at which point Neroon realizes that he's in the wrong and retreats.
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): In the Miniseries, the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies resulted in the destruction of the Colonial Fleet and the near annihilation of the human race. Averted later as the Cylons repeatedly lose in fleet actions despite their overwhelming power. In one of the skirmishes, thanks to a Cylon defector, the human fleet curb-stomped a Cylon attack fleet by infecting them with their own computer virus.
- Being Human: On the last episode of Season 4 when Annie shows up in full-on Mama Bear mode, shouts "GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING BABY!!", then promptly curb-stomps many of the old ones singlehandedly, then sacrifices her best friend's baby to save the world.
- Better Call Saul: Jimmy's first case in the show is defending some teenagers in a case where they broke into a funeral home, mutilated a human body for laughs, and filmed themselves having sex with it. After Jimmy's long and impassioned speech, the prosecutor doesn't even say a single word and just plays the video to the judge and jury, which is enough to win the case.
- Bones:
- Booth versus the three special ops men sent to kill him in the season 9 finale. He does get badly hurt but takes down two single-handedly; one with a Neck Snap and one with a gun. He does get a little help from Brennan, who returned after he said to leave and shot one to save Booth. Still, you do NOT mess with an angry Booth.
- Brennan’s dad is no slouch either, killing several mooks working with Kovac to protect his grandkids. The strain on his heart did later kill him though.
- Buffyverse: A surprising number of fights, especially in the early years.
- The reason for Spike's early popularity could legitimately have been driven by the fact that he was the first to actually come close to taking Buffy out in a straight fight (as opposed to the Master's crazy hypnotic mind powers).
- The entire battle at the end of "Becoming, Part 1", when Drusilla and four hench-vamps attack the library when they know Buffy isn't there. They break Xander's arm, injure Willow badly enough to leave her in a coma, kidnap Giles and kill Kendra, a Slayer. Particularly curbstomp-y on the last one — Drusilla calls off her minions and faces Kendra herself, and takes about 20 seconds to grab her, mesmerise her and cut her throat.
- In "The Wish", Buffy's fight against Xander (despite being the Master's right hand man, he doesn't even land a punch on Buffy before getting staked) and, in the other direction, against the Master (he backhands her once, hard enough to stun her, then immediately snaps her neck).
- Reintroduced in grand fashion during "The Gift". The Dragon had just finished beating down Spike, throwing him from the top of the tower to prevent him from rescuing Dawn from the impending ritual sacrifice. Minutes later, along comes Buffy. The stage is set for a momentous battle, but before the villain could finish saying, "This should be interesting", Buffy walks right past him and shoves him off the tower without seeming to pay him the slightest bit of attention.
- In "No Place Like Home", Buffy and Glory's first battle was this, starting with Glory backhanding Buffy across the room. Same with the second fight in "Shadow". It raises the question of why Glory didn't just rip Buffy's head off. The writers threw in a line about her connection to Ben as an in-universe explanation why she's grown so soft. The other explanation being, of course, Buffy's so weak in comparison that she didn't really matter to Glory.
- The battles against Adam is another fine example. Adam seems to be far superior, until the Scoobies cast a spell that imbues Buffy with all their powers, turning her into the physical manifestation of The Power of Friendship. Curb stomping ensues.
- "Innocence": The Judge is a legendary demon who was defeated the last time by an entire army — most of whom died in the process. If anybody should be on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle, it's Buffy. Right? Buffy pulls a rocket launcher (stolen from the conveniently easy to break into local Army base), and the "fight" ends before it can even start.
- Shortly after coming back to life in "Bargaining Part 2", Buffy curb-stomps a demon who was strong enough to casually rip off a vampire's head before killing the rest of his gang.
- There's that time in "Family", where Buffy finishes a close fight by literally curb-stomping a demon.
- Season 7 has Caleb, who in "Dirty Girls", leaves Buffy unconsciously behind after a short battle that only lasted seconds, leaving to the question why he didn't finish her off for good. Earlier in "Bring on the Night", a comparable situation appears with some new type of vampire, though this instance could be explained with Buffy being left for dead.
- The half-demon twins Nash and Pearl vs a Slayer squad in a flashback in Season 9. The Slayers don't win.
- After becoming a Slaypire, Simone pounds Buffy in a straight-up fight.
- In Angel, Hamilton had the same skill. In "Not Fade Away", one of Angel's dumber decisions ever was to try and take him on alone, very shortly after he demonstrated his ability to beat down Illyria. He survived only through Connor intervening and Hamilton falling prey to Explaining Your Power to the Enemy.
- Connor has been on both sides of these types of fights; single-handedly taking on Team Angel twice and getting curb-stomped by the likes of the Beast and Faith.
- Pretty much any fight with the Beast who only fell due to being outsmarted.
- In "The Gift", Spike was swiftly defeated by Doc, who was then effortlessly taken out by Buffy.
- In the Buffy episode "The Freshman", the vampire Sunday kicked Buffy's ass with ease in their first fight, which ended with Buffy forced to run away after her arm was injured. In their second fight, Buffy fared a little better, but was still losing until Sunday pressed her Berserk Button.
- Bully Beatdown:
- One episode had a bully who was so much of a prick, the host, Jason "Mayhem" Miller, himself stepped into the ring against him. The bully kept talking shit the whole time before the match, even calling Mayhem a wimp. In Round One, Mayhem got the bully to tapout twice in 30 seconds (counting the time it took the bully to get back up). In Round Two, Mayhem toyed with the bully for a while before dropping him 3 times in a row with 3 hits. The whole time Mayhem had a grin on his face.
- A later episode posed a problem because the bully weighed only 150 lbs: It took a while to find a fighter that small. The diminutive fighter managed to finish both rounds in less than a minute and the bully had to stop in the middle of the post-fight monologue to vomit.
- Burn Notice: Michael Westen is more than competent when it comes to combat. He knows lots of martial arts and has had to use them a lot. However, show creator Matt Nix and actor Jeffery Donovan like realism. In fact, Donovan has a black belt in karate and has studied aikido and jujitsu besides. So in the first season they had him face off against a bounty hunter. A huge bounty hunter. Even with a home court advantage, Michael cannot win this fight. Westen's narration makes it clear that he can't win, and that it's because the guy is just plain big. In the commentary, Donovan and Nix state that they wanted to show Michael in a fight he couldn't win. Michael tries a choke hold and fails. Michael tries to hit him and fails. The guy's choking Michael when Fi takes him out from behind.
- Castle: After finding where the sniper that shot Beckett would be, Beckett and Esposito try and capture him, on their own, without backup, despite warnings that he may be too much to handle and that there will be consequences even if they make it out alive. The sniper takes down Esposito — a former Green Beret — in short order, then leaves Beckett hanging from the side of a building in a near-effortless beatdown.
- In Charmed (1998), Piper inflicts this to a whole Demon Market after a pair of demons kidnap her son Wyatt. Her rampage was so brutal and extreme, that the high-ranked demons inmediately created a law that forbid the evil side to kidnap Wyatt again in order to avoid another rampage from Piper. Never mess with a Mama Bear.
- Chuck: Ever since Bartowski learned kung fu, fights against the bad guys tend to go this way more often than not.
- Cobra Kai: Happens pretty much any time an unskilled fighter goes up against a trained martial artist.
- Colony: The Hosts take Earth in eight hours, thanks to orbital superiority, a decades-long infiltration of every government and liberal use of Colony Drop.
- The Crossing: A made-for-TV movie about the Battle of Trenton, depicts The Continentals vs. Hungover Hessians this way. Apart from the hungover part, this is Truth in Television — the Continentals had two casualties, and they were from hypothermia.
- Crown Court: In Treason, the Landing on Blackbeard's Bay on the island of Santa Isabella lasted a few hours before the invaders surrendered. The invaders supporting the white rulers should have had 200 mercenaries, but they only had 30. They should have had several heavy weapons, but only had a single Bren gun. The only reason that the security forces took more casualties is that they had more soldiers to lose. In court, the mercenary leader suspected that a journalist had warned the security forces in advance. Alternatively, the mercenaries lost because the security forces included the Royal Marines.
- CSI: NY: In "Exit Strategy," Mac gets stomped by the suspect in the Cold Open, despite being a trained Marine, and ends up at gunpoint. He only turns the table when the gun jams.
- Deadliest Warrior: Most battles, especially in Season 3, are rather close. However, some simulated battles end with one warrior utterly dominating the other. Examples would be:
- Apache vs. Gladiator, which had the Apache getting almost double the number of kills.
- Shaolin vs. Maori, which was the most one-sided fight in Season 1, with the Shaolin's twin hooks getting more kills than the Maori's entire arsenal combined.
- The Back for Blood pitted the Spetznaz against the Irish Republican Army, which as expected resulted in the latter getting absolutely slaughtered over 700 times out of 1000.
- The most one-sided fight of Season 2 had the French Musketeers and the Ming Warriors going head-to-head, and the Musketeers destroying their Chinese opponents with over 670 kills out of 1000 and thoroughly averting Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys.
- For the Zombies vs. Vampires episode, it was judged that two hundred zombies against a mere three vampires was a fair fight. The Vampires were overwhelmingly strong that they still won anyway.
- Most of the quiz rounds on The Diamond Head Game had one player shut out the other, by virtue of being faster with correct answers.
- In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, this is basically Bart's superpower. As its chosen assassin, the universe won't allow her to be hurt, and circumstances always align so that anyone she tries to kill, well, dies, no matter how mismatched the fight initially seems. She's killed most of the people she's ever met.
- Doctor Who:
- In the classic series during the Fourth Doctor's era, the Doctor and Leela are confronted with a Sontaran soldier. Leela simply asks the Doctor, "How do you kill one?" He explains the probic vent on the back of their neck and ten seconds later she takes it out with an animal call (to make it turn around) and a thrown knife.
- In "The Five Doctors", a whole platoon of Cybermen gets viciously slaughtered by something called a Raston Warrior Robot, which had never previously appeared in the show and played no further part in the story.
- The first Dalek to appear in the revived series single-handedly kills nearly the entire garrison of the bunker it was imprisoned in.
- "The Parting of the Ways": It takes a full-strength Dalek armada all of 15 minutes to conquer the entirety of the Earth. They are then on the receiving end of a curb-stomping from the Physical God known as the Bad Wolf, who vapourizes them all in seconds.
- "Doomsday" presents the villain battle fans had long dreamed of: Daleks vs Cybermen
. Amidst the copious amount of smack talk before the two enter open conflict is a claim by Dalek Sec that one Dalek, let alone the four comprising the Cult of Skaro, could easily take out five million Cybermen — and the Badass Boast is completely accurate. The combined forces of the Cybermen and Torchwood struggle to even slow the Daleks down due to lacking any weaponry that can get through their force fields, and the fight gets even more one-sided once the millions of Daleks that were stuck in a prison ship enter the fray. - Let us not forget that the Doctor gets one of his own at the end of "The Family of Blood": After disguising himself as a human and hiding in 1913 England, the eponymous Family track him down and force a confrontation, hoping to gain immortality by stealing his Time Lord essence. They lose so fast and so decisively they don't even get a fight scene; they each end up with various forms of eternal punishment, to fit their temerity ... it's even stated that the Doctor didn't need to hide from them. He only did so to avoid the curb stomp battle because he didn't want to fight if it could be avoided (his original plan was to let them die of natural causes).
- "The Poison Sky": Once UNIT overcomes the Sontaran cordolaine signal, the Sontaran "Super Soldiers" are slaughtered by human soldiers with assault rifles.
- "Day of the Moon": River Song versus the Silence. She faces an entire roomful of them. And wins.
- The Cybermen get it once again in "A Good Man Goes to War", when the Doctor destroys an entire fleet just to make a point.Rory: I have a message from the Doctor, and a question from me. Where. Is. My. Wife?
Cyberman: What is the Doctor's message? [the entire 12th Cyber-Legion fleet explodes outside the window]
Rory: Would you like me to repeat the question? - "Resolution" presents a showdown involving several dozen British soldiers and a tank versus a Dalek recon scout in makeshift "junkyard chic" armour. The British military is so hopelessly outclassed that all the soldiers can do is run for their lives as they are gunned down.
- Dollhouse: In one episode, Hearn (the disgraced handler) is sent to kill Mellie (as far as we know, a helpless civilian). We know the battle will either end with Mellie's death or Ballard getting back just in time to save the day. Then Mellie's trigger is activated, and it's Hearn that gets curbstomped. Literally, against a table.There are three flowers in a vase. The third flower is yellow.
- Friends: Monica's third season boyfriend Pete Becker decides to challenge himself physically by becoming an MMA fighter. Each of the bouts he takes part in put him on the losing side of this with his opponents making incredibly short work of him. The first fight puts him in an upper-body cast and his second fight lasts about fifteen seconds, not even enough time for the gang to finish serving the burgers they were going to eat while watching.
- Game of Thrones:
- Jon Snow vs. his fellow recruits (together or separate).
- Jaime Lannister vs. Jory Cassel in "The Wolf and the Lion". Jory takes one swing at Jaime, who sidesteps, gets Jory in a Blade Lock, and stabs him through the eye.
- Syrio Forel takes down several lightly-armoured guardsmen with a wooden practice sword in a matter of seconds. However, this trope turns against him when he must face the heavily-armored Ser Meryn Trant.
- Tywin Lannister's audiences are completely one-sided and anyone who dares to argue with him gets verbally demolished. The only exceptions have been Olenna Tyrell and Oberyn Martell. In literal military terms, his utter annihilation of House Reyne of Castamere could be seen as this as could his defeat of Robb's 2,000-man diversion on the Green Fork. The same goes for the Red Wedding, in which he all but annihilates the enemy forces in a single night, destroying their leadership and (to the best of his and everyone else's knowledge) male family line.
- Robb Stark's battles against the Lannisters in the Whispering Wood (where he captures Jaime) and Oxcross (where he meets Talisa) are described in these terms; Roose Bolton even mentions a 5:1 casualty ratio at Oxcross.
- Daenerys' Sack of Astapor using the Unsullied is hands-down one of the most one-sided battles in the entire series. There are also her victories at Yunkai and Meereen.
- Daario versus the champion of Meereen, who is disposed of quickly and with little effort at the end of "Breaker of Chains".
- In the backstory, the Targaryen Conquest was this. Dragons are a real Game Breaker.
- Stannis's attack on the Wildlings, to such an extreme that it almost doesn't qualify as a battle. Stannis cuts through them, as Tormund so eloquently put it, "like piss through snow." Stannis makes it very clear that he could've wiped out the entire army of 100,000 without the slightest trouble, and losses among his ~3,000 remaining men are best described as "negligible." This is what happens when a massive cavalry force with surprise and advanced tactics (they caught them in a disciplined pincers movement with two mounted columns) hits a rabble of untrained footmen. Other factors include: 1 — the Wildlings were focused entirely on the Wall to the south, so they were expecting a major new enemy to surprise them from their eastern flank about as much as they were expecting the sun to rise in the west; 2 — they'd been fighting the whole night so many were still resting in their own camp.
- Stannis's last battle, his attack on Winterfell, ends up as a Curb-Stomp Battle for the defenders, that is, the Boltons. Deserted by his sellswords who stole the remaining horses, Stannis and the rest of his army are caught out on flat ground by a larger mounted force and quickly surrounded. His troops don't even reach the castle; they realize they don't stand a chance after seeing the Bolton cavalry charge straight at them. Given Stannis' nature and the futility of surrendering to the Boltons, he simply draws his sword and walks forward.
- Euron kills his older brother with a Nonchalant Dodge and effortless ease. He also kills Nymeria in a few seconds after killing Obara. In a strategy sense, his destruction of the joint Martell-Greyjoy fleet is rather swift and merciless.
- During the climax of the Battle of the Bastards, Ramsay Bolton challenges Jon Snow to a one-on-one fight (despite the fact at that point Jon and his army have clearly beaten Ramsay's army) Jon accepts the challenge and then proceeds to easily beat Ramsay to a bloody pulp.
- In the flashback to the Tower of Joy battle, despite being out number by Ned Stark's men, Arthur Dayne defeats Ned's men and almost defeats Nedtill Howland Reed appears from behind and stabs Dayne in the throat.
- Brandon Stark was on the giving end, when he fought Littlefinger for Catelyn's hand. According to Lysa, he nearly killed him and left him with a lifelong scar across his chest.
- Once the Unsullied breach the gates of Casterly Rock, they cut through the Lannister forces like tissue paper.
- In Season 7, Dany's Dothraki accompanied by Drogon, completely wrecking the Lannister army. The Dothraki alone made the Lannister men nervous, but by the time Drogon entered the picture, they had already lost. Despite having won every major battle beforehand, this single defeat is enough to convince Jaime and Bronn that any thought of winning a war against Dany is pure fantasy.Jaime: That was only one of them. She has two more. If she decides to use them, to really use them...
Bronn: You're fucked. - The Battle of King's Landing between the forces of Daenerys and Cersei. Despite all the indications that Cersei would be a worthy final adversary, having bolstered her army by 20,000 by hiring the Golden Company, and arming the city with dozens of anti-dragon scorpions, Daenerys is able to decimate her forces singlehandedly in minutes using Drogon. Also, one of the major contentions of the entire season as the Night King went to the trouble of killing 'half the Unsullied and half the Dothraki', and then Euron went through the trouble of killing a dragon and massacring half of the Targaryen fleet, and then Daenerys wins anyway with only one dragon, making the entire 'evening the odds' pointless to say the least.
- Gladiators (2024): Some of the challenges can be ended abruptly by a Ring Out or similar victory.
- In the first episode, Giant wins his podium "Duel" just two seconds into the contest, sending contender Myles flying before he lands a blow of his own.
- In the second episode, during "The Edge", Apollo immediately intercepts contender John and simply throws him off the platform, five seconds into a minute-long challenge.
- In the third episode, Giant wins "Duel" in seconds, saying that he knew ex-military contender Finlay would be challenging, so he couldn't risk giving him an opportunity. On the flip side, after heel Viper has to restart "Duel" after Deliberately Jumping the Gun, contender Ash repays him for cheating by immediately knocking him off his podium, winning the challenge.
- Granite Flats: In a non-violent version of this trope, the FBI and all the townsfolk in on the secrets encircling Granite Flats confront Dr. Whittison about his status as the Soviet's Double Agent in an intense showdown/interrogation. All his attempts at defeating their arguments are quickly rendered naught, and he eventually admits to his crimes and willingly surrenders himself to the FBI.
- The Green Hornet: Amazingly, Kato, of all people, winds up on the other side of this. In "The Preying Mantis," he searches a back alley for the thugs who had just ambushed Reid's contact and gets royally ambushed by a masked Lo Sing. After just two good blows, Kato winds up in the trash can. In their Final Battle, he returns the favor.
- Happy Endings: Had a non-lethal comedic version. Dave and Max get drunk and decide to confront Bo, the guy whose confession of love caused Alex to leave Dave at the altar. Dave and Bo are actually talking things out peacefully when Max sucker punches Bo, apparently not realizing that all the trophies in Bo's apartment were for martial arts competitions. The next scene consists of Max and Dave getting punched and kicked in the head multiple times.
- Heroes (2006): This was one of the reasons the Season 1 finale was so lackluster. Multiple-superpowered hero versus multiple superpowered villain was doomed to come down to the quickest draw. Of course, it didn't even get that far. Budget restraints meant there was no money for Sylar's side of the fight. Either that or he was trying to beat Peter down Marquis of Queensbury style which, while stupid, makes about as much sense as the rest of the fight.
- How I Met Your Mother:
- Ted loses his only fight ever in this way, but the guy who knocked him out was himself taken down in an Offscreen Moment of Awesome by Marshall.Future Ted: Kids, I can't tell you whether fighting is good or bad; and I can't tell you not to do it. I can only give you one piece of advice about fighting: don't get into a fight with your Uncle Marshall. 'Cause that guy's friggin' crazy.
- In one episode, Lily makes sure she has full range of motion before beating down a co-worker of Marshall's because drunkedly kissing her husband equals making a move on her future baby-daddy.
- Given what we know about what Lily was like in high school, that bitch might've got off easy.
- Ted loses his only fight ever in this way, but the guy who knocked him out was himself taken down in an Offscreen Moment of Awesome by Marshall.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022):
- "A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart": Because vampires get Stronger with Age, Lestat de Lioncourt easily trounces Louis de Pointe du Lac in a fight because he's 117 years older than his boyfriend. When it's over, Louis is almost dead whereas Lestat doesn't have a single scratch on him.
- "No Pain": In 1794, the newly fledged vampire Lestat is completely helpless against the 286-year-old Armand note in a physical altercation, so Lestat is unable to defend himself or his human lover Nicolas de Lenfent when Armand decides to separate them by force because Boy Meets Ghoul romances are forbidden under vampire laws.
- Jeopardy!: Andy Richter vs. Wolf Blitzer on Celebrity Jeopardy. The score as they were going into Final Jeopardy? Andy, $39,000 and Wolf negative $4,600.
- Watson, a thinking computer made by IBM, creamed two human Jeopardy champions.
- Let's not forget James Holzhauer in his game against, well almost anyone. He buzzed first 58.3% of the time with 97% accuracy. Even if the other two players never answered wrongly they would still answer less questions correctly combined. Final Jeopardy won't save them either, he only got it wrong 3% of the time.
- Knight Rider: The end of "Goliath, Part 1". Michael and KITT vs. Garthe and the titular truck in a game of chicken. The winner is Goliath, with KITT damaged so badly that he gets his first upgrade in the series.
- Lingo: There is a celebrity episode, in which one team dealt the other an unmatched 500-0 beatdown. I repeat, a celebrity episode. Watch it here.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
- Halbrand vs a Gang of Bullies in Numenor.
- Once the Numenorian army show up in the Southlands, they completely wreck the Orcs and take them as prisoners.
- Merlin (1998): Merlin (wielding Excalibur) takes on Vortigern, the usurper king of Britain, on a frozen river. Merlin allows Vortigern to attempt one blow, which severs his own blade on Excalibur, and then kills Vortigern by making the ice beneath his feet break open with magic, sending him into the icy water.
- Merlin (2008): Against anything short of Big Bad material (unless he has to hide his magic, and even then if he's wielding Excalibur). For a hero, he has an utterly enormous body count and a major Papa Wolf complex. If it wasn't for that darn Ban on Magic, the series would be over in ten seconds. Oh, and that one time he found a way around that by disguising himself, he gave one of these to the entire Saxon army. With lightning.
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: In the season finale, the Ion Dragon takes on the much larger and stronger Godzilla, and it gets decimated by the King of the Monsters before it tucks tail and retreats.
- Played for Laughs in Norsemen, with Arvid's holmgang. After an entire episode of fanfare around the coming duel and his opponent cheating by using a poison-coated blade, the actual fight is over in the blink of an eye. Arvid's poor opponent has just enough time to gasp in horror before the giant cleaves him in half with one blow.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: The battle between Reva/Third Sister and Darth Vader is a humiliating show in why Vader is where he is. Reva never lands a single hit on Vader or even pushes him. Even more humiliating is that Vader never even bothers drawing his lightsaber: the first half of the fight is him countering her using the Force and the second half has him take Reva's lightsaber, split it in half and use one half to fight her with it. This was meant to be Reva's culmination of revenge and it was All for Nothing.
- Odd Squad:
- In "The Scientist", Oona attempts to dodge and beat back the plant that overtakes Headquarters in order to get gadget #86 from the lab, putting her time spent exercising to good use. The plant never even touches her, and she manages to escape to the real world from the Alternate Dimension she's stuck in before the plant even has a chance to land a hit on her while she's vulnerable.
- In "Down the Tubes", Orla immediately defeats Tennifer's Scrambler machine within seconds while the villainess is too distracted by performing her Evil Laugh. She doesn't even flinch when Tennifer goes from evil laugh to Big "NO!", answering an incoming call from Opal and Omar without paying her any mind.
- In "Odd Off The Press", the Mobile Unit ends up overpowering the Three Odd-skateers when they find them terrorizing reporters at Fourth Street. They initially believe the Mobile Unit to be incapable of stopping them, but that's exactly what they end up doing, much to their chagrin.
- In "Double O Trouble", Orla and Oswald don't even get a moment to dodge before they're turned into paper dolls by local Chicago villainess Aarti Craft. Osalind and Oxford, the two new agents with them, don't even try to fight back and quickly decide to make a break for it before they're turned into paper dolls as well, but end up giving Aarti a run for her money in the climactic battle, where the tables are turned and they curb-stomp her in battle instead.
- Osmerelda and Omar also swiftly and handily defeat their clones using the Multiply-inator gadget before said clones have a chance to retaliate against their creators and try to Take Over the World.
Osmerelda: I gotta say, I'm kinda proud of them for trying. - This is how most of Rumplestiltskin's battles in Once Upon a Time (2011) go. As long as he has his magic, he's pretty much unbeatable. The only times his fights lasted longer than about five seconds was when he was playing with his opponents.
- The season 1 finale of One Piece (2023) sees Luffy go up against his grandfather Vice Admiral Garp as his final obstacle before he can set sail for the Grand Line. Given the shear gulf of power between them, it doesn't come as much as a suprise when Garp wipes the floor with him without any visible effort.note The only reason Luffy managed to survive at all (let alone without any permanent injury) is because Garp was merely using the whole thing to test his resolve.
- The Outpost: Dred's forces easily crush the rebels who The Mistress and Withers gather, as Iliya had informed him of their exact plan with her ability, so he had them standing ready in ambush.
- In Person of Interest this occurs quite freqently with both Reese and Shaw, highly trained ex-assassins. A larger version occurs with Northern Lights, a secret clandestine government force with access to all those nice toys, versus Vigilance, a group of homegrown terrorists who hate all the invasions of privacy and other moral failings of the government, when they are forced into combat. Root is capable of this trope as well, as long as she has the Machine in her ear and someone is willing to trust her with a gun (or two) — as she first demonstrates in "The Devil's Share," it's easy to be a great shot when an all-seeing AI is doing the aiming for you.
- Princess Agents: Jin Zhu makes the incredibly stupid choice to pick a fight with Chu Qiao. Minutes later she's tied up and hanging from a pole.
- Revolution: Episode 11 demonstrates this quite graphically with Monroe's helicopters slaughtering an entire rebel camp while the camp had no time to react.
- Robot Wars: Several. One of the most famous was "Razer versus Milly-Ann Bug", which resulted in Razer setting Milly on fire, punching gaping holes in her, trying to chop her in half (and not quite being able to) and then finally settling on slicing all four of her wheels off. Johnathan Pearce compared the spectacle to a schoolboy ripping a spider's legs off one by one. There's also "Hypnodisc versus Robogeddon", which resulted in Robogeddon's whole body being shredded off in seconds — in fact, most of Hypnodisc's battles went like this.
- RuPaul's Drag Race: The elimination process of the show involves (usually two) drag queens lip-sync battling each other in order to stay in the competition, this "lip-sync for your life" format has led to some incredible one-sided curb-stomps.
- One of the most infamous has to be Season 9's lip-sync between Trinity Taylor and Charlie Hides. Charlie's performance was rather immobile, a result of an injury sustained in a previous challenge as well as wearing rather impractical platform heels. Meanwhile, Trinity threw out acrobatic flips, energetic moves, and generally stomped Charlie out of the competition. While the season's reunion still debated whether Charlie's lackluster performance was a result of circumstances or whether she just plain gave up, the consensus is that Trinity still demolished her.
- Season 13 also gave us Denali and Kahmora Hall's battle. Kahmora's tight-fitting dragon gown didn't allow for any movement other than her walking around the stage aimlessly and posing, while Denali absolutely unleashed her full skillset on poor Kahmora, using up every inch of the stage, voguing and duckwalking, and making the judges and fellow contestants cheer for her. Almost as soon as the lip-sync was over, host and head-judge RuPaul wasted no time in naming Denali as the victor.
- The Sopranos: A rare nonlethal literal example occurs in "The Second Coming", where Tony gives Coco a vicious beatdown for messing with his daughter, capping it off with a curbstomp on a step. He finds a tooth in his pants leg later.
- Special Ops: Lioness:
- The mooks whom the team faces usually have no chance against them, even when they have much greater numbers, as they're very well-trained soldiers from special forces.
- In Season 2, the convoy inside Northern Iraq escorting Joe with her team is attacked by a large number of Iraqi insurgents. After they're pinned down and call for air support, the attack helicopter which responds wipes them all out within minutes.
- Stargate SG-1:
- You had the absurdly powerful Ori ships, but then you had the newly built Earth ships with Asgard tech, and ships from the Jaffa and the Lucian Alliance. Huge buildup to the battle where four Ori ships emerge from the supergate followed by... an EPIC curb stomp by the Ori that made the Federation's defeat by the Borg look close.
- Every single space battle in Stargate is this trope. Asgard stomp Goa'uld by simply disintegrating their damn ships. Tollan one-shot Goa'uld. Goa'uld get better and one-shot Tollan and Asgard. Asgard get better and one-shot Goa'uld. Replicators stomp Asgard. Asgard catch Replicators with their pants down and stomp them. Ancient weapons stomp Anubis. And so on, up to and including the Ori. There is never a battle won by attrition or superior strategy.
- Stargate Atlantis: In one episode, a Genii woman has a major grudge against Teyla over the death of her father. When they finally fight, we see a small flaw in her plan — Teyla's technique is far superior to her own. Only her ferocity and Teyla's lack of desire to kill her extended the fight beyond thirty seconds.
- On the series finale, "Enemy at The Gate", the ZPM-powered Wraith Hive Ship makes short work of all of Earth's spaceships without breaking a sweat, even with the upgrades mentioned above.
- Stargate Universe: Pretty much every battle Destiny gets into becomes one of these. Of course, not having the ability to steer the thing limits what you can do in a spaceship battle.
- Star Trek: The Original Series: In "The Doomsday Machine", the eponymous weapon — which shatters and then devours planets for sustenance — devastates the starship Constellation, killing all but one member of its crew. It is a testament to the hearty Constitution-class that she's not destroyed outright.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- Subverted in "Q Who". When Enterprise is forced to fire on the Borg cube, her main phasers visibly obliterate 20% of the ship, and seem to render it completely lifeless. Turns out that the Borg let you get a couple of hits in so they have an opportunity to analyze and adapt to your weapons. From this point forward, everything Enterprise throws at the cube is a complete No-Sell; forcing them to run helplessly for their lives while the Borg methodically pick apart their defenses.
- The Battle of Wolf 359 in "The Best of Both Worlds", while not actually depicted on screen until the season premiere of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, definitely counts. A single Borg Cube slaughters a fully-staffed and trained Federation fleet of forty ships in the space of just a few minutes. Wolf 359 is often seen as a major turning point in Federation history, which was so traumatizing, it forced Starfleet to begin aggressively designing a new fleet of advanced warships like the Defiant-class.
- In "Conundrum", the Enterprise effortlessly fights its way past the Lysian fleet and nearly destroys Lysian Central Command with a single photon torpedo. The Enterprise crew stood down when they realized that they had been deceived by an infiltrator from a species that had been at war with the Lysians for decades. Notably, a force of six Lysian fighters attempts to intercept Enterprise, only to be destroyed by a casual, almost offhanded salvo of phaser fire. The engagement lasted all of two seconds, and it didn't even warrant a comment from the Enterprise command staff.
- In "The Survivors", the Enterprise encounters a Husnock ship trying to protect the planet Rana 4. The Enterprise fires a plethora of torpedoes and phaser fire at the ship and its shields are able to absorb everything. The Husnock ship hits the Enterprise three times, takes out their shields those three times and causes some casualties with its third shot, forcing Picard to get Wesley to move the ship out of there. Of course, the ship was cheating as it was a creation by the alien creature living in exile there.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- Kira vs Damar. When he tries to drag Dukat's daughter home, Kira beats him unconscious in less than a minute without him landing a single punch.
- The Battle of the Omarion Nebula. A force of twenty warships from the Romulan and Cardassian intelligence went on a mission to wipe out the Founders, only to be obliterated by a horde of waiting Dominion ships.
- The Dominion had a routine of handing these out early in their invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. When the Seventh Fleet attempted to counterattack, only fourteen ships made it back to Federation territory, out of an initial force of 112.
- When the Romulans entered the war, we saw the difference between the Romulan intelligence and the Romulan military. It's not shown, but by the time they stop to talk to their co-belligerants, the Romulans have single-handedly beaten back the Dominion into Cardassian space, even occupying at least one Federation planet (that they later gave back).
- Later, during the Second Battle of Chin'toka, 311 of 312 Federation, Klingon, and Romulan ships are destroyed by the Breen, using energy dissipators to disable enemy ships and then destroy them while helpless.
- The last duel between a captured Worf and the Jem'Hadar First running the prison camp. Worf's refusal to quit even in the face of such a relentless example of this trope garners him rather a lot of respect in the First's eyes:First: I cannot defeat this Klingon. I can only kill him, and that no longer holds my interest.
- Star Trek: Voyager:
- The Borg, usually the ones handing these out, find themselves on the receiving end when they meet Species 8472 in "Scorpion". Not only are they surprisingly resistant to assimilation, but they have vastly superior firepower, capable of wiping the floor with the otherwise imposing Borg Cubes — starships every other species fears. The Borg "invasion" quickly turns very sour, especially when 8472 decide it merits retaliation and launch a counter-invasion that almost wipes out the Borg altogether.
- Although it's only a holographic simulation, "The Killing Game" has a rather epic scene in which the Doctor and Neelix convince a group of holo-Klingons to cross into another simulation and attack the holo-Nazis who have captured other members of the crew. The tide very quickly turns in the Klingons' (and the crew's) favor.
- Star Trek: Enterprise:
- "Azati Prime" puts the NX-01 through the very epitome of a Curb-Stomp Battle. The ship is attacked by four vessels at once and is very nearly destroyed. There's no Reset Button this time — it remains on the brink of falling apart for the rest of the season, and thorough repairs only become possible three episodes into the next season.
- "In A Mirror, Darkly" shows that regardless of the aesthetics of what's inside it, a single TOS-era Constitution-class ship (the Defiant) is powerful enough to (severely undermanned and with several systems only partly repaired) cut through entire fleets of Mirror ships of the Enterprise era virtually unscathed. Even when sabotaged and left dead in space, it survives the attacks of several ships well enough that when the damage is repaired, it just gets back to destroying the attackers.
- Star Trek: Picard:
- In "Remembrance", after Dahj activates, it takes a dozen seconds for her to kill three Romulan jassassins.
- In "Absolute Candor", Elnor dispatches three Romulan thugs who attack Picard in two seconds flat, knocking out two of them and decapitating Tenqem.
- In "Stardust City Rag", Seven of Nine guns down Bjayzl and her entire security detail at the casino.
- In "The Impossible Box", Elnor cuts down three Romulan guards with his tan qalanq so quickly that they don't have a chance to pull the trigger on their disruptors.
- In "Nepenthe", from the moment Elnor performs a flip through the air, he slices through four of Narissa's minions in about ten seconds.
- In "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2", 218 Romulan warbirds face off against twenty or so Coppelian Orchids. After the onslaught is over, Jurati reports to Picard that 200 Romulan vessels remain.
- The third season episode "Disengage" has the Ferengi Sneed and his men on the receiving end of one of these courtsey Worf, Son of Mogh.
- Star Wars:
- The Book of Boba Fett: In the episode "The Gathering Storm", a group of Trandoshan gamblers are at the receiving end of one courtsey Krrsantan, who doesn't even break a sweat beating the crap out of them. The Trandoshan barely get a hand on him and the only one that does winds up regretting it a lot.
- The Mandalorian:
- In the first season finale, five Stormtroopers enter the abandoned Mandalorian Covert and find The Armorer kneeling before her forge, apparently refusing to fight. When one of the Stormtroopers nudges her helmet with his rifle she leaps into action. The Armorer proves to be a Lightning Bruiser who completely destroys all five Stormtroopers in a matter of seconds. Her blows hit with so much force she shatters two of their helmets and a third gets thrown head-first into the forge.
- In the second season finale, a large group of Dark Troopers have the heroes trapped in a control room and are about to break in. Given that Mando was barely able to defeat one, it's clear that this will be a hopeless battle. Cue the arrival of Luke Skywalker, who proceeds to wipe out the entire group in a few minutes flat without breaking a sweat.
- Supernatural: Sees this a lot, usually with the Winchesters getting their asses handed to them by the Big Bad. Although, in later seasons, it has become more and more common to see the brothers unleash these on common, lower-tier monsters.
- This happens several times with Alastair and Lilith, who pwn humans and angels alike to begin with, only for Sam to eventually kill them with his brain.
- Anything attempting to take on an archangel ends up burned to dust with a simple touch, or exploded with a snap of the fingers. Even after Castiel gets brought back "new and improved", Raphael can still kick his ass all over the shop.
- At a betrayal near the end of Season 5 by a suicidal Dean, Castiel gives him one of these in retaliation and to try to drag him back to his senses.
- Lucifer taking on the pagan gods in the fifth season episode "Hammer of the Gods". You would think that the mighty pagan gods might put up a little more of a fight than the humans could, but Lucifer slaughters them all without breaking a sweat. And then kills his brother — the archangel Gabriel — just as easily.
- Averted in the Season 5 finale. We never get to see the epic, world-ending battle between Michael and Lucifer. This was a win in-universe, though, since the curb-stomping in question would have torched the planet.
- Late in Season 6, the Winchesters and Bobby get ambushed by some demons and things go bad quickly — they're all down and the demons are about to inflict serious damage. Whereupon Castiel shows up and casually dispatches the assailants in less than fifteen seconds.
- In the Season 6 finale, the final battle between Castiel and Raphael ends up being one of these. Amped up on Purgatory souls, Castiel merely snaps his fingers and archangel Raphael explodes into bloody goo. The opening episodes of Season 7 show him continuing to level effortless Disproportionate Retribution on angels and humans alike.
- In the Season 9 finale, the one-on-one duel between Dean and Metatron ends up like this. Throughout the entire battle, Metatron, empowered by the Angel Tablet, easily wipes the floor with Dean even when armed with the First Blade, and to the point of mortally wounding Dean with his Angel Blade. Dean, on the other hand, never got a chance to retaliate.
- Season 10 sees this in its second episode where Demon Dean delivers a brutal and thorough beatdown to Cole, an ex-marine bent on avenging his father's death.
- Survivor: Palau: Almost all the young and physically fit contestants ended up on one tribe while almost all the older and more physically feeble contestants ended up on the other tribe. Guess which tribe ended up losing all the immunity challenges and all but two of the reward challenges? The tribe who...wasn't the most physically able but had a strong teamwork spirit and intelligent leaders who carried their tribe to victory while the more physically strong tribe floundered about with nary a clue about how to strategize or work together.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:
- There's the FBI raid against Cromartie's apartment in the first season finale. It didn't end well for the FBI.
- In the second season finale, a pro-Skynet Terminator tries to kill Weaver, apparently under the impression that she's human, and gets destroyed in seconds.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank", when Orgram Gatewood warns him to stay away from his sister Comfort, the title character manages to beat him up with little effort. Before Jeff's death and resurrection, Orgram had been whupping him ever since they were children.
- Titans:
- Most people who go up against the full Titans team get curb stomped.
- Dick has one within the first 15 minutes of the first episode. He's a detective, so he sees some cases that he feels deserve vigilante justice. One Asshole Victim is a child abuser whose charges were dismissed. Dick (as Robin) follows him to a drug deal. Cue Dick brutally incapacitating at least 7 goons without suffering a single hit. After he's done with them it turns into a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of the child abuser.
- In the season one episode "Hawk and Dove", the Nuclear Family take out Dawn, Hank, and Dick quickly and easily. Dick gets tossed off a roof immediately. Dawn and Hank get absolutely pummeled.
- Any human that goes up against Connor doesn't stand a chance. Even the highly trained security at Cadmus is no match for him.
- In the first episode of the third season ("Barbara Gordon") Dick takes out over a dozen goons singlehandedly and none of them land a single hit on him. For part of the fight, he's only fighting with one of his escrima sticks, just to be a show off. He kicks the last guy into a van so hard the back doors dent. Starfire easily handles multiple guys in about 5 seconds without taking any hits herself.
- Ultraman: Generally avoided - most of the Kaiju put up a decent fight, when it was clear that they could fight - but there's a couple of exceptions. Dada spends his episode chasing after the last two human specimens he needs... and one of them is Muramatsu, so that just goes over poorly. Then, Dada gets to fight Ultraman himself, and man is it one-sided. *
- Ultraseven:
- Ultraseven's first battle against the Alien Guts quickly turns in the Alien's favour, and they incapacitate him, then crucify him on a crystal cross.
- When Ultra Seven is fighting Pandon, he is rapidly losing energy due to having stayed on Earth for too long, and yet he still refused to leave, believing the Earth was in grave danger from the Ghos Aliens. He was viciously beaten down by the two-headed bird Kaiju, and only managed to win by a fluke with his Eye Slugger.
- Later, the aliens repair Pandon and turn him into a cyborg called 'Revised Pandon', and Seven, now in an even worse state than before, continues to fight the beast, even though he is on the verge of death. Again, he wins, but only by using what fleeting energy he has left to telekinetically tear his Eye Slugger out of Revised Pandon's hands, and direct it through the air so it decapitates the monster.
- The Unit: Versus anybody. The terrorists who hijacked the plane in the pilot episode got it the worst though.
- Upload with Shaquille O'Neal: in 2013, Shaq stated he wanted to avenge his embarrassing loss in "That's How I Beat Shaq", and challenged the then-25-year-old Aaron Carter to a rematch. Aaron smugly accepts, expecting another win over O'Neal. Calling it a blowout doesn't do Shaq's massacre justice.(Aaron attempts a shot, only to get stuffed by Shaq, and hits the floor; staring up in fear at the scowling 7-footer walking towards him menacingly.)
Aaron: (holds hands up in surrender) Shaq! Man, when I beat you in my video, it was only a joke! It was only a joke!
(Beat, Shaq continues scowling, before switching to a cheery smile)
Shaq: (sarcastically) Oh, okay, I get it! Good one! (goes back to scowling) - Walker, Texas Ranger: Often in an opening act, the bad guys will mercilessly beat up weaker people they were intending to torment. Even more often, the lead villain in a particular episode will help orchestrate and execute a brutal beating of C.D. Parker in an attempt to intimidate Walker and the Rangers. (It never worked.)
- Two of Walker's allies, in particular, were known for this. They tended to get off without so much as a scratch.
- The Walking Dead (2010):
- Shane witnesses Ed hitting Carol and unleashes the mother of all curb stompings on him. Ed later dies in a similarly one-sided confrontation with a Walker.
- Season 3 gives us a most literal example of a Curb-Stomp Battle with Andrea using a rock to smash a captive walker's teeth out of its mouth.
- Wheel of Fortune: on the episode aired December 26, 2014, a contestant named Matt repeatedly hit the top dollar amount nearly every time he spun, and solved every single puzzle, including all three Toss-Ups and a $6,000-per-letter Speed-Up round. Matt's final score was a staggering $91,892, while both of his opponents had goose eggs. (They still got the $1,000 consolation prize.)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/CurbStompBattle/LiveActionTV
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