History Characters / TheKarateKidSamanthaLaRusso

* CuteBruiser: Sam is a very sweet and endearing girl but she's also a skilled fighter and in Season 3, she becomes more aggressive towards Cobra Kai after she tries to channel her fear into anger.

** Her impulsiveness. Sam frequently tries to do the right thing but like her father, she's too headstrong and her actions only get her into more trouble, especially when she tries to stand up to Tory and Hawk.

** To Tory. The main reason Sam and Tory become such instant bitter rivals is because of how fundamentally different they are as people. Tory is a HardDrinkingPartyGirl who sees nothing wrong with stealing alcohol from the beach club, while Sam is more polite and rule-abiding, leading Tory to derisively refer to her as a "nun" or "princess". Tory is aggressive and spiteful with a hidden caring side, while Sam is kind and empathetic with an occasional temperamental streak. Tory comes from a working-class background and struggles to keep her family together as their sole breadwinner, while Sam comes from a wealthy and more stable family. Tory embraces Cobra Kai's AttackAttackAttack fighting style, while Sam follows in her father and Mr. Miyagi's footsteps in stating that karate should focus on defense.

* FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse: In Season 2 and 3, this is her default response to Tory's accounts of her DarkAndTroubledPast. In Season 4, [[DeconstructedTrope it's changed from a criticism of Tory's behaviour to an excuse for Sam to be apathetic towards Tory's situation and continue their grudge]]. It takes until the tail end of Season 5, [[spoiler: and seeing Tory's situation with her own eyes,]] to realize that ''maybe'' the girl has a lot of legitimate rage and nowhere to put it, making the aggression of Cobra Kai extremely appealing to her, and that Sam's dismissals of her troubles didn't help.

* ItsAllAboutMe: Played with. She frequently gets concerned over situations that involve her and in season 1 is hesitant to speak up about bullying happening right in front of her when it would be bad for her social status. Her actions also make it clear that she'd rather have Miguel join a different dojo to make it easier to make her relationship with him acceptable since her dad won't approve of them together as long as Miguel is in Cobra Kai. On the other hand, it does show she feels for people, even if she doesn't act on it. In season 2, when Robby's mother decides to enter rehab, Sam does ask Robby if he's even up for attending Moon's party considering the situation. However, she then proceeds to get drunk, cheats on Robby with Miguel, and puts Robby in a role where he has to take care of her, even asking him to hide her so she can avoid trouble. All in all, she is a teenager who can be very selfish and impulsive at times, but she often shows moments where she does try to be a compassionate and benevolent person.

* LikeBrotherAndSister: Sam and Demetri have a close friendship where Sam is like a protective older sister and is always the one to stand up for him.
* LikeParentLikeChild: Daniel and Sam are pretty similar because both are hotheaded, impulsive and fierce fighters who are willing to protect others they care about and engage in intense rivalries with people their age while having to deal with fear.

* MasculineGirlFeminineBoy: The masculine girl to Demetri's feminine boy. Mainly since Sam is a more trained and skilled fighter than Demetri is, more aggressive than him and is often the one to look after him.

* NiceGirl: Unlike her younger brother, Sam's a very kind, compassionate and polite person, despite growing up in a well-off family. [[JerkassToOne So long as you're not]] [[TheRival Tory]], though she's the exception, not the rule.

* ActionGirl: She was trained by Daniel at a young age, so despite being a few years out of practice, she quickly and efficiently handles a handsy Kyler. In Season 2 she begins training again alongside Robby as Daniel's top students.

** She is not so lucky when Tory enters her life, especially when the latter hooks up with Miguel and Sam still has lingering feelings for him despite trying to move on with Robby. One drunken moment leads to Sam kissing Miguel and all hell breaks loose on the following day at West Valley High School. [[spoiler:Tory maims and bruises her in retaliation for her actions and Sam witnesses Miguel fall from the second floor and fracture his spine thanks to Robby]], effectively giving her PTSD.
** In Season 3, Tory becomes a TraumaButton for her, which shows when Sam becomes petrified and frozen in fear the moment Tory arrives in the midst of the brawl in the laser tag warehouse. [[spoiler:Sam can do nothing as her fellow Miyagi-Do students are soundly beaten and hearing Hawk break Demetri's arm severely cripples her mental state for a while, to the point of having nightmares.]]
** In spite of the training and confidence she built up throughout Season 4, Sam ends up losing to Tory in the 51st All Valley Karate Tournament. Sam can do nothing but cry and lament to her father that all her efforts ended up being AllForNothing and return home, despondent [[spoiler: (initially unaware until the end of Season 5 that the match had been fixed by Silver and she should've won)]].

** Inverted in Season 4, as Sam becomes more aggressive thanks to Johnny's influence and the stress of her various run ins with Tory, while Miguel becomes more melancholy and sensitive thanks to Daniel's pacifist Miyagi-Do teachings.

* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: She kisses Miguel ''once'' in Season 2, while she's completely drunk. It sets off a devastating free-for-all at school, and Miguel ends up hospitalized with a spinal injury and Sam with lacerations and a broken rib.

* PintSizedPowerhouse: At 5'3" in height, she's even smaller than the other [[ActionGirl action girls]] Aisha and Tory. She can still go toe-to-toe with the best students of either side.

** Although she's often annoyed by Anthony's teasing, she still cares about him and is quick to defend him from Cobra Kai's students in Season 5. She later helps show him the ropes to karate when he starts doubting his ability and confidence.

* PintSizedPowerhouse: At [[TeensAreShort 5'3" in height]], she's even smaller than the other [[ActionGirl action girls]] Aisha and Tory. She can still go toe-to-toe with the best students of either side.

* TeensAreShort: At 5'3", she is half a foot shorter than her parents and most of the other Miyagi-Do students.

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!!!'''Played by:''' Creator/MaryMouser

* TookALevelInJerkass: In season 4, after Johnny training Miyagi-Dos for a day and Sam being the only one to roof jump in episode 3, she unexpectedly bonds with him and becomes interested in his more offensive training style. It comes to a point that, in episode 8, she joins the Eagle Fangs while remaining a Miyagi-Do. Unfortunately, she also adopts some of the unhealthier facets of Eagle Fang ideology, which in their turn were Cobra Kai holdovers, like "strike first" which led her to provoke and start a fight with Tory that the latter was trying to avoid given that she was thankful for Amanda's help (though in this case, Tory kind of broke her promise to Amanda to stay away from Sam as she and Robby went to mess with her and Miguel and partly started the prom fight and approached Sam and insulted her which caused Sam to kick her back). [[spoiler:She eventually calms down after several people call her out on her attitude, and in the penultimate episode of Season 5, she has a JerkassRealization upon seeing Tory's home life and learning the true depths of how Cobra Kai was abusing the latter.]]

* TookALevelInJerkass: In season 4, after Johnny training Miyagi-Dos for a day and Sam being the only one to roof jump in episode 3, she unexpectedly bonds with him and becomes interested in his more offensive training style. It comes to a point that, in episode 8, she joins the Eagle Fangs while remaining a Miyagi-Do. Unfortunately, she also adopts some of the unhealthier facets of Eagle Fang ideology, which in their turn were Cobra Kai holdovers, like "strike first" which led her to provoke and start a fight with Tory that the latter was trying to avoid given that she was thankful for Amanda's help. [[spoiler:She eventually calms down after several people call her out on her attitude, and in the penultimate episode of Season 5, she has a JerkassRealization upon seeing Tory's home life and learning the true depths of how Cobra Kai was abusing the latter.]]

* AllYourPowersCombined: A variation; having been trained under Miyagi-Do throughout most of her life as well as taking lessons from Eagle Fang more recently and adopting some of their combat stances and moves, which, by proxy, has some influence from Cobra Kai's ruthless style, allows Sam to develop a fighting style derived from the teachings of all three dojos in some way or another by the time she enters the 51st All Valley Karate Tournament. She only loses to Tory in the finals because the referee had been bribed by Silver and disallowed a point Sam scored, which would have been the second of three scored consecutively.

* DudeMagnet: No fewer than ''three'' guys (Kyler, Miguel and Robby) vie for her attention in Season 1. There's also some subtle hints in the early seasons that Demetri may have an unrequited crush on her due to his having NoSenseOfPersonalSpace around her, although this is firmly dropped once he and Yasmine become a couple.

* DudeMagnet: No fewer than ''three'' guys vie for her attention in Season 1.

* AllYourPowersCombined: A variation; having been trained under Miyagi-Do throughout most of her life as well as taking lessons from Eagle Fang more recently and adopting some of their combat stances and moves, which, by proxy, has some influence from Cobra Kai's ruthless style, allows Sam to develop a fighting style derived from the teachings of all three dojos in some way or another by the time she enters the 51st All Valley Karate Tournament. While she loses the finals against Tory, Sam does put up a tough fight in which Tory had to earn her win hard.