Robot Soldier - TV Tropes

"What if this thing can read our minds?" Commander Kotay was saying.
"Then we must use soldiers who do not have minds," replied his companion.
"Alright then, I'll send in the latest intake from West Point."
"No, you military moron! I meant robots!"

• Dragon Ball features Major Metallitron/Sergeant Metallic of the Red Ribbon Army; Android 8 was intended to be one as well, but wound up having a gentle heart. Though Android 8's creator would go on to create several more Androids bearing the Red Ribbon Army's logo, the army itself was destroyed long before then, excluding them from this trope.

• ABC Warriors follows the exploits of an ever-changing group of robot soldiers, drawn from different regiments but initially built to fight in the Volgan War. They're seen as expendable (if expensive) cannon fodder by their human commanders. The robots themselves think differently, and several of them have made the humans pay for their callousness.
• In Junkyard Joe, part of The Unnamed, the titular character is a mute, robotic soldier who was originally deployed in The Vietnam War. After growing beyond his programming, he was traumatized by the war, but comes back in the present day to meet up with a human member of his platoon.
• DC Comics' J.A.K.E., the GI Robot was a prototype robot soldier and the image for the thumbnail above. Super-strong and extensively armoured, J.A.K.E was successful enough that his line went into limited production for various fictional American government organizations such as S.H.A.D.E.

• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K:
  • As in canon, the Confederacy of Independent Systems relies on vast armies of robot soldiers, from the B-1 battle droids to elite killing machines like the droidekas. This, ironically, makes them even more hated by the Imperium of Man than the Galactic Republic, as Artificial Intelligence is literally considered Satanic in Imperial theology.
  • The Terriphont Entente were an Anti-Human Alliance from the Warhammer 40K universe that often carried out raids on the Xek-Tek Sector and used armies of Mechanical Monsters as their soldiers. A Space Marine viewpoint character in the story compares the Confederacy's battle droids to the Terriphont's mechanical monstrosities and finds the Confederacy's droids to be lacking.

• Castle in the Sky prominently features very powerful robot soldiers who act as the guardians of the titular castle.
• Doraemon: Nobita and the Steel Troops has Doraemon and friends being thrown into a Robot War as machines from Mechatopia invades earth. Among the Mechatopian invasion force, their main robot soldiers who forms their invasion force's backbone seems to follow some military hierarchy (despite being treated as disposable Mecha-Mooks in the movie), with sergeants and platoon leaders wearing capes and identified by black markings.
• The Iron Giant: It's eventually revealed that the titular character was one of these, being a giant alien war robot programmed to attack and destroy other planets, before he crashed on Earth and lost his memory.
• Patlabor: The Movie: The Phantom is described as a military Labor, but appears to be unmanned, having an electronic warfare suite inside its torso instead of a cockpit.
• Tulips Shall Grow, made two years after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, features a peaceful village in Holland being overrun by the "Screwballs", an army of mechanical soldiers who seemingly live only to conquer and destroy. It ends on an optimistic note when the Screwballs are caught in a sudden rainstorm and are paralyzed by rust.

• Future World (2018): Once humanity invented hard AI androids, they were used as soldiers, and this spiraled into a global war which completely destroyed civilization. Ash seems to be one, given her extensive combat skills (why she's made to appear like an attractive young woman is another question-possibly for infiltration however).
• Judge Dredd: Rico finds and reactivates an old ABC Warrior robot.
• Rebel Moon: Jimmy's type was designed centuries before the Veldt rebellion to defend the royals of the Motherworld as part of the Mechanicas Militarium.
• No. 5 and his fellow robots from Short Circuit were designed as this trope, but thanks to a freak accident, No. 5 develops sentience and decides he doesn't want to hurt anyone.
• Solo (1996): Solo is one who's identical outwardly to a human, but far stronger and more durable. When his programming causes him to develop a conscience and abort a mission that would kill civilians, the US Army, which made him, orders his termination. The successor robot utterly lacks Solo's scruples.
• Star Wars: The Confederacy's battle droids are robotic soldiers that comprise the vast majority of the Separatist military forces during the Clone Wars. Numerous models are seen, including the numerous, spindly humanoid B1 model that serves as bulk disposable forces, the larger and more heavily built B2, intelligent and stealthy BX commandos used for infiltration and assassination missions, deadly and rapid Droidekas, humanoid MagnaGuards used as bodyguards, and four-legged spider droids that serve as mobile laser cannons. Many of them even holds military rankings like sergeants, corporals, and commanders (identified by their yellow markings).
• Terminator: The titular robots are soldiers, spies, and assassins used by Skynet to serve as its infantry force, infiltrate human society, and eliminate certain targets. Also the Hunter-Killers from the same series, which serve as Syknet's armored and air forces fighting a war against the Human Resistance in the post-apocalyptic future.

• The Ganymede Takeover: Rebel Leader Percy X has gotten hold of a weapon that turns illusions into reality, so robot soldiers who are invulnerable to its effects are sent against him.
• The History of the Galaxy: during the First Galactic War, they were used by the Terran Alliance as foot soldiers and commandos, when they started running out of warm bodies to send into the meat grinder.
• The Soul of Colonel 607 by Garry Kilworth has the titular robot officer question the ethics of warfare itself, which for obvious reasons its superiors aren't happy about.
• Star Wars Legends features this trope a couple of times:
  • In Han Solo and the Lost Legacy, Han and company find a long-lost army of war-robots originally created by an ancient tyrant, Xim the Despot. The war-robots are genuinely dangerous: eight feet tall, heavily armored, armed with a variety of projectile and energy weapons, and completely obedient to orders given by anyone with the proper authority codes.
  • Tales of the Bounty Hunters: The IG droids were designed to be assassins by the Empire. However, it worked too well when IG-88 turned against them, enlisting its fellows along with other droids in a clandestine revolution to overthrow organic beings everywhere.
• Torchwood (BBC Books): "Border Princes" briefly features the Serial-G, a race of robotic soldiers deliberately designed by the Melkenes to have no inhibitions, compassion or morals to win a war they were losing badly. They won, but the condemnation that the Melkenes faced from the galactic community was severe enough that they attempted to decommission the Serial-G - needless to say that they were extinct within six weeks.

• Inazuman Flash has Udespar, the Killer Robot general of the Despar Army. The Robot Fighters are this as well, though some seem to be cyborgs.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "I, Robot", the robot Adam was created by Dr. Charles Link as an experiment. When Dr. Link lost his funding, he was forced to find alternative sources of finance. To that end, he entered into business with a defense contractor who wanted him to create an army of robot soldiers. Adam was to be the prototype. When Dr. Link attempted to erase his memory files, a malfunction caused Adam to reactivate and he killed his creator.
• Red Dwarf has the Simulants, a race of murderous robots that were built for a war that never took place.
• War of the Worlds (2019): Technically cyborgs, they're sent by the aliens to kill all surviving humans after the EMP blast wipes out most.

• Eberron has a Magitek example with the warforged. These Mechanical Lifeforms were created to fight The Last War, but unexpectedly developed sapience and free will even while following their makers' orders in that cataclysmic conflict. Now that the war's over, the warforged have been granted legal status as persons rather than military hardware, but are struggling to find a purpose during peacetime, since in most cases war is literally all they've known. It doesn't help that peacetime has also introduced the warforged to Fantastic Racism: not only are they large and intimidating in appearance, but their ability to work without rest leads many to see them as Job Stealing Robots. Some warforged thus become adventurers, while others form The Remnant with other warforged to continue their military lifestyle.
• Grimdark Future by One Page Rules has the Human Defense Force (the game's Expy of the Astra Militarum) using a large number of humanoid robot units as heavy weapons carriers and frontline soldiers, led by human officers. The Machine Cult (the Expy of the Adeptus Mechanicus) also fields robots, mostly in heavy weapons roles.
• Rifts: Coalition forces have various models of Skele-bot, plus the Northern Gun entity and Triax Industries producing various kinds of robots which can be programmed and armed for security, law enforcement support, and military use. The Mechanoid Invasion book also shows various kinds of combat robot deployed by the Mechanoids, including two different models of humaniform robot as frontline infantry — the SkeleBot 9000 "Thinmen" and the diminutive "Runts"; an ironic joke among the Mechanoids, which is lost on most humanoids.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Adeptus Mechanicus fields combat robots, though given the Lost Technology motif of the Imperium, these are presented as an extremely rare and difficult to produce part of their arsenal. Heavy Combat Servitors, which are lobotomized Cyborgs armed with large amounts of weaponry and armor, largely have taken their place.
  • In a technical sense, the Necrons, being an entire species forcibly subjected to Brain Uploading into mechanical bodies. They also field purely robotic auxiliaries to their forces, such as the insectile scarabs and spyders.
  • The orks are what you get when you attempt to create robot soldiers with Organic Technology; based on genetically engineered fungus, they are literally built for war, emerging from their fungal bio-factories with all the knowledge they need pre-programmed into their brains and compelled to seek out battle, incapable of doing anything else. Their fungus-based replication process allows them to engage in Hostile Terraforming, for added measure. They were originally created by the bygone Old Ones during an apocalyptic war far in the past, but outlived their creators and continued to propagate and war across the galaxy long after the war that they were made for ended.

• Beyond Sunset: While most of the enemies falls under Mecha-Mooks, being generic-looking robot units, the red drones appear to be part of some mechanical armed forces, being clad in military gear and trained in using weaponry.
• Cave Story: An important part of the backstory involves a war, in which an army (or several from various factions) was sent to conquer a powerful treasure on a remote island, native Mimiga creatures be damned. Though it's not immediately obvious, the player character is one such robot. Initially, he meets several NPCs who wonder if he's "a soldier from the surface". Then Professor Booster clarifies that he is a robot soldier. Shortly after, you meet Curly Brace, another robot and a veteran of the same war as him — but from a third-party faction with a slightly different objective.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: The tutorials inform you that all soldiers and vehicles destroyed are in fact extremely lifelike robots, so don't feel bad about butchering them. It turns out this is entirely true in the Imperial and Soviet campaigns where the American president/Emperor were robots all along.
• Distant Worlds: The "Robotic Troop Foundry" allows an empire to manufacture robot armies.
• Earth 2150: The last game in the franchise, Earth 2160, finally introduces infantry to the earlier three factions. The UCS soldiers are skele-bots with old-fashioned gatling guns as Arm Cannons.
• Fallout has had three robot armies so far: the robot armies controlled by the Calculator in Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, Robert House's Securitron Army from Fallout: New Vegas, and the Synths controlled by the Institute in Fallout 4. The pre-war USA also had several models of robot soldiers supplementing their human army, many of which roam the wastes killing anything they encounter after two hundred years of decay. Of course, only their Morality Chip tends to be damaged, you can generally expect their movement systems, weapon systems, and Self-Destruct Mechanism to work like new.
• The Fermi Paradox: When a civilization becomes technologically advanced enough, they can construct whole robot armies, and several of the game's Random Events revolve around them.
• Gene Rain: Wind Tower: The game is set during a Robot War, where the titular Wind Tower would produce mass amounts of robotic foot-soldiers to dominate humanity. In the opening FMV, several of them are shown marching neatly in a single file down some urban ruins.
• Girls' Frontline: Tactical Dolls. Depending on the faction, they range from specialized combat models with barely any humanoid features to civilian A-Dolls equipped with fire control software and a firearm made anywhere between the 19th century and the late 2010s.
• Helldivers II: The Automatons.The "children" of the Cyborgs from the first game, the Automaton faction has laid siege to the galaxy, fielding units ranging from the human-sized Troopers to the enormous Factory Striders, with their ultimate end goal being the liberation of their creators and their ancestral homeworld from Super Earth's control.
• LBX: Little Battlers eXperience: While the Innovators use LBX robots, the Black Intelligence Division and the Red Military Division train their soldiers to use LBX efficiently to the point where they can stage numerous terrorist attempts, siege an assault at the end of Artemis, and engage in a huge LBX war between them and the Seekers during the attempted siege on Tiny Orbit.
• Loopmancer: In 2046 Dragon City (a renamed version of Hong Kong in the future) robots serves as military and police units. Unfortunately most of them were hijacked by the Greater-Scope Villain, Dr. Song, who then proceeds to use the robots to stage a takeover.
• Mega Man X: Some Reploids end up betraying humanity and became destructive for one reason or another, called "going Maverick". In response, Doctor Cain formed the Maverick Hunters, an organization filled with robot soldiers to fight these Mavericks. They're put into distinct units such as "Marine Unit" or "Arctic Unit" to cover activities in different areas.
• In 2019, a former designer revealed that in the Might and Magic games preceding Heroes of Might and Magic V, this is what the Angels actually are. They are self-aware androids created by the Ancients who were sent out across the galaxy to hunt down the Kreegans wherever they appear.
• Mutant Football League features BruiserBots, the remains of a US Army project built to combat a demonic invasion in the wake of the fourth world war. Being a Black Comedy, they took to playing football like homicidal, armored ducks to water and are content to simply prove the superiority of silicon over their organic counterparts. On the field they're as tough as the proverbial brick latrine and half as fast, making them natural choices for linemen and linebackers, but can also prove invaluable as hard to kill quarterbacks.
• Overwatch takes place after a massive war between Humanity and their Omnic creations. One of the playable characters is a former frontline combatant for the omnic side.
• Ratchet & Clank always features hordes of robot soldiers. While there are usually organic fighters in there as well, they will be vastly outnumbered by robots on both sides of the conflict. A notable case of this is the Galactic Rangers in the third game.
• Rengoku: The Great Offscreen War has evolved into what's called the Machine War, with everyone fighting with remotely controlled machinery and later androids. The new ADAM units were so efficient, they've quickly put the war to an end.
• Star Wars:
  • Revenge of the Sith naturally has the Separatist Droid Army, with special Super Battle Droids that are equipped with shields to block lighsabers.
  • Dark Forces revolves around the Galactic Empire conspiring to put a line of these into production: the Dark Trooper. Far from being easily-mown-down cannon fodder like the B1 battle droids, Dark Troopers are hulking, armour-clad brutes with weapons to match.
  • Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has many droid soldiers.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic features battle droids and multiple droid armies, including the Eternal Empire's Skytroopers.
• Stellaris: With enough research, robotic armies can be built for either planetary defense or invasion. They cost somewhat more than regular armies for the same offensive strength, but they have twice the health and don't take morale damage.
• Team Fortress 2 has Mann Vs. Machine mode, which pits six players against hordes of their robotic counterparts. The robots are more or less the equals of the base players, but are disposable and expected to die in droves anyway because their AI is pretty bad and the human players have tons of purchasable powerups. There's also a slightly-too-literal example in the Robot Soldier, which, thanks to using the Soldier's existing voice lines, comes across as a giant Cloud Cuckoolander Robotic Psychopath.
• Z is set in a war between two different robot empires,; MegaCom Corporation and TransGlobal Empires

• Hue Are You: Blue and Red both qualify as this with weapons of mass destruction and their general classification is called "Soldier Bot".
• Ragnar in Nixvir has an entire army of these things! Not only do they help him out on his military campaigns, they also help him in the snow world as well. They are capable of producing a blade from their wrists and stabbing someone with it.
• Questionable Content: These are rare because most AIs don't want to jeopardize their newly-won civil rights by stoking human fears of a Robot War. Bubbles the android defied her AI elders and enlisted out of patriotic duty; as the only survivor of her squad, she's a Shell-Shocked Veteran who needs a lot of time and encouragement to come out of her metaphorical (and literal) shell.

• The Terran in Chrysalis (Beaver Fur), being an uploaded human brain with the goal of exterminating the aliens who exterminated humanity, naturally had to build themself an arsenal of — among other things — remotely controlled robot soldiers. Their first design is a kind of dog-spider with an autocannon on its back. It's highly effective, but not put into prouction as per the limits the Terran imposes on themself to avoid Cybernetics Will Eat Your Soul. Instead, they choose a design resembling a shorter-than-average human with clawed, three-fingered hands and wearing a stylized cross between medieval armor and a spacesuit.
• RWBY gives us the Atlasien Knights, used by the Atlas Army. Their official purpose is to defend people from Creatures of Grimm so humans won't have to risk their lives, but they prove to be utterly worthless. During the Fall of Beacon in Volume 3, Roman Torchwick uses a computer virus to turn all of the robots against the heroes. In Volume 7, the Knights are seen defending the city of Mantle, but their inability to keep even low-level Grimm out of the city shows that their placement is to demonstrate how little Atlas (More specifically, Ironwood) cares about Mantle.

• Futurama: Killbots, which are in such sufficiently high demand that multiple inventors have made their own versions. Notably, General Zapp Brannigan once defeated an army of Killbots by sacrificing "wave after wave" of his own men to get them up to their preset kill limit of 999,999 each.
• Samurai Jack: The overwhelming majority of Aku's military forces consist of expendable war robots. The most common of them are the insect-like Beetle Drones. Some of Aku's mercenaries and bounty hunters are more humanoid variants, including the morally conflicted assassin X-9.
• The Simpsons: In "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson", Bart and Lisa attend and graduate from a military academy, and the Commandant's commencement speech tersely states that future wars will be fought by small robots, and that the task of the soldiers of the future will be to maintain these robots.

  "The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today, remember always, your duty is clear: to build and maintain those robots. Thank you."

• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Dr. Robotnik uses a myriad of robots as military forces, ranging from his SWATbot infantry◊, to automated stealth aircraft and surveillance drones.
• Transformers: The Transformers are autonomous robot soldiers fighting an ongoing civil war between Always Lawful Good and Always Chaotic Evil counterparts.
  • Several stories see new characters being "born" for the sake of some tactical advantage (such as the Dinobots, Stunticons, Trypticon, and more throughout the original cartoon).
  • In a few continuities, the first being the original cartoon, the Decepticons were explicitly built for the purpose of being military hardware, while the Autobots were only civilian models forced to adapt to war. In Transformers: Animated, this means that individual Decepticons are much more powerful but not necessarily skilled, forcing the heroes to use clever gambits or sheer numbers to even the odds.

• Truth in Television: Military robots are widely used for combat and non-combat purposes. While aerial combat drones are likely the most well known example of this, Wikipedia has an entire list of them. Indeed, since risking one's life in a war is one of the most obvious unpleasant tasks that humans would be likely to hand off to a robot to do instead, Asimov's First Law isn't looking very likely at this point.
  • Some take it into Companion Cube territory, with a well-known example being an IED squad nicknaming their robot "Scooby-Doo". After it got blown up, the squad was informed that the replacement robot would arrive soon, only for a distraught soldier to say he didn't want a replacement, he wanted Scooby-Doo back.