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Bayonetta

This page contains some unmarked spoilers for Bayonetta, Bayonetta 2, and Bayonetta 3.

Voiced by: Hellena Taylor (EN, 1 and 2), Jennifer Hale (EN, 3), Atsuko Tanaka (JP)

^{Click here to see her appearance in Bayonetta 2}

^{Click here to see her appearance in Bayonetta 3}

"As long as there's music, I'll keep on dancing."

The main character of the series. Bayonetta is one of the Umbra Witches, a magical European clan that existed hundreds of years ago to protect the world's sacred darkness. However, she was born at the center of conflict – her parents were an Umbra Witch, Rosa, and a Lumen Sage named Balder, and their union led to the destruction of both of their clans. In the midst of the Witch Hunts that put her life in danger, Bayonetta was sealed away without her memories for five hundred years. Her awakening and resultant desire to remember her identity starts the events of Bayonetta.

Like other witches, Bayonetta's powers are the result of a contract with a demon of Inferno, hers being Madama Butterfly, and her skills in combat are a mixture of magical gunplay and martial arts. Contrary to her bloody origin and training, though, Bayonetta is an outrageously carefree person who handles the angels sent after her with a mixture of playful sadism, camp, and sheer joy, all while remaining untouched by the carnage and ruin around her. While initially aloof to her allies and acquaintances, Bayonetta eventually warms up to them and displays fierce loyalty and protectiveness even in the worst of circumstances. Bayonetta also has an extremely soft spot for children, and will often provide care and support to her "little ones" in the midst of her quests.

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A-I

• Action Girl: Strong enough to lift a bus and suplex dragons at least three times her size, able to slaughter angels and demons without batting an eyelash, can summon and control demons large enough to swallow a skyscraper... yeah, it's safe to say she qualifies.
• Action Mom: Cereza may not be her daughter, but Bayonetta protects her like one, and Cereza mostly calls her "Mummy" anyway. Subverted when it turns out that Cereza is actually Bayonetta as a child. Later played straight in 3, as in Viola's world, the latter is hers and Luka's daughter.
• Alternate Self: In 3, Bayonetta meets several different versions of herself in Alternate Tokyo, Qin Lan, Giza, and Paris. Towards the end of the game, she also meets two more versions who appear as she does in the previous games, implying the Bayonetta in each game is a different version, all of whom had similar adventures (the Bayonetta in 2 has the Mr. Cheshire cat doll belonging to Cereza, and in 3 she's holding both the cat doll and one of Loki's playing cards). It's heavily implied towards the end of 3 that the Bayonetta players follow is in fact a grown-up Cereza from 1.
• Ambiguously Bi: There’s no doubt she has interest in men, as shown by her teasing Luka in the first game and eventually getting together with him in the third game. However, some of her interactions with Jeanne, such as mentioning a wake up kiss after the latter is rescued by her in 2, their overall closeness, and some of the official artwork, can be interpreted as fairly flirtatious. She also likes inflicting a certain Torture Attack on the very female Joy angels in 1, where the Joy is bound in chains in a sexual manner and is forced to sit on a wooden horse.
• Ambiguous Situation: Thanks to 3 introducing the multiverse, it becomes difficult to know whether the Bayonetta in 3, much less in the previous two games, is the same woman or all three games follow their own versions of Bayonetta. At least two different versions of Bayonetta with her appearance from 1 show up, with one lacking the distinct mole she has on the bottom left corner of her lips. Furthermore, it's implied that the Bayonetta in 3 is a grown-up version of Cereza from the first game, as evidence by Bayonetta 1 asking her if she was crying while she was gone, harkening back to Bayonetta's words from the first game about ordering Cereza not to cry as its one of the things she hates.
• Amulet of Dependency: Bayonetta has an amulet called an Umbral Watch, which contained the Left Eye of Darkness ^note Technically it didn't contain the real Left Eye of Darkness, just a fake., enables her to control the Umbral Demons she summons, and makes her The Ageless as long as she serves Inferno by slaying the angels of Paradiso. If it's damaged her powers falter, and should it be broken she will lose control of any summoned demons, and begin dying, resulting in her death in Bayonetta 3.
• Animal Motifs: Butterflies. Her contract is with a demon called Madama Butterfly, she can sprout butterfly wings during a double jump, and her Pulley's Butterfly accessory allows her to summon butterflies to block attacks. This ties in with the Butterfly of Death and Rebirth symbolism, referring to her "death" following the loss of her memories and the "rebirth" she undergoes once she's awoken again. There's also a bit of cat in there in both with her Panther Within ability and in regards to her personality: snarky and aloof with claws everywhere... unless she isn't being watched, in case she'll let down her guard and show a bit of emotional vulnerability.
• Anime Hair: Not only is her hair ridiculously long, she uses it as her SOURCE OF CLOTHING, and controls it in such a way that it's a deadly weapon. In a developer interview ^note :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d1wagWcrkQ&list=PLEYQ6LrlM_rGn8EZcretGy78Crr0K-cnQ&index=3 it's noted her radically different hairstyles in different games are not seen as a big deal to her. Rather, she changes hairstyles as readily and easily as she does clothing.
• Animorphism: She learns (or rather remembers) how to change into animals during the course of the game. She is very, very pleased by the development.
• Anti-Hero: A haughty witch wielding powers derived from a demonic pact who regularly leaves mass collateral damage in her wake and kills her enemies in creatively sadistic ways. On the other hand, she shows a soft spot for kids, deeply cares for her friends and allies , has risked her life to save the world three times, and almost never starts a fight unprovoked.
• Armed Legs: Provides the trope image. In the first game, she can sport freezing cold ice-skates, fiery or electrified claws, pistols, shotguns or bazookas on her legs, which she fires with her magic. In the second game, she can sport pistols, swords, chainsaws, or whips.
• Assist Character: Apart from her ability to summon demons, three of her accessories – Pulley's Butterfly, Infernal Communicator, and Sergey's Lover – let her summon helpers, being butterflies, the Little Devils, and ghostly copies of Madama Butterfly, respectively.
• Astral Projection: One of Bayonetta's many powers, which primarily sees use whenever she has to protect Cereza.
• Author Appeal: As Mari Shimazaki stated in her character design blog, "Glasses! This was something that Kamiya-san really pushed for, as he was aiming to differentiate Bayonetta from other female characters and give her a sense of mystery and intelligence. Of course, I think it is just because he likes girls with glasses." It got to the point that when executives took issue with her glasses, Kamiya threatened to stall or abandon the project altogether.
• Badass Adorable: Herself as a younger child in Origins certainly earns her the trope. Downplayed in 3 since she's still Ms. Fanservice as always, her new look makes more cuter than the last two.
• Badass Biker: In Chapter IX of the first game, she shows that she's just as skilled with a bike as Jeanne. She rides it up a crumbling tower in the climax of the first game, and even manages to make it jump hundreds of feet at once.
• Badass Boast:
  • She says this just before shooting Father Balder with a lipstick. It also doubles as a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner.
    Bayonetta: "Don't fuck with a witch!"
  • She uses a variant of the above when talking with young Balder.
    Bayonetta: Sanity is a requirement for our kind.
    Balder: And your kind are...?
    Bayonetta: The kind of witches you don't fuck with.
• Badass Fingersnap: When she clears a Homunculi-fighting verse in 3, she dispels their barrier with a literal snap of her fingers.
• Badass in Distress: Near the end of the first game, she's captured by Balder and used to resurrect Jubileus. She is thankfully rescued by Jeanne, who was freed from Balder's mind control earlier. A similar situation happens in Bayonetta Origins, but by a weakened Singularity who seeks to recover his lost powers by killing the young Arch-Eve Origin.
• Bad Liar: Bayonetta stammers and provides an extremely transparent lie when the Masked Lumen asks her how she knows his name. It's one of the few times in the series where she's visibly nervous.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Her powers come from demonic pledges (some said demons definitely being evil and all being potentially dangerous) and she is going to end up in Inferno when she dies... but she's trained to use her dark powers for the sake of protecting and guiding humanity. And while in no way "warm", she's not a bad person when you get to know her by any stretch.
• Barrier Warrior:
  • One of her accessories, the Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa, allows her to create a barrier in the form of the Umbra Witch symbol. If an enemy strikes the barrier, Bayonetta will counter with a punishing headbutt.
  • In Wii U and Switch versions of both games, having Bayonetta wear her Hero Of Hyrule outfit allows her to use the Hylian Shield in the same way as the Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa, even if the latter isn't equipped.
  • Her Crow Within allows Bayonetta to surround herself with a damaging ring of feathers.
  • In the first game, Bayonetta can form a protective barrier around Cereza during escort missions while she fights the angels in Purgatorio. However, the barrier will only hold up for so long before it's destroyed.
• The Baroness: Inverted. She is a domineering woman that likes abusing her enemies and happens to be the protagonist. Though she might be sexualized, she does have some Rosa Klebb attitude.
• Bat Out of Hell: She can transform into a group of bats when hit by an attack to negate the damage and activate Witch Time.
• Battle Couple: Ends up becoming one with Luka in 3, after Luka embraces his new fairy-werewolf form while whaling down on Singularity.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Early in the first game, Bayonetta chooses to go to Vigrid despite Rodin's warning that something seems fishy, saying that the minor angelic mooks she's been fighting no longer satisfy her and she's "looking for something more high class". Certainly nothing says "more high class" like dealing with the god of Paradiso.
• Beehive Hairdo: She sports one in the first game, with the intention of it looking reminiscent to a witch's hat. It's Magic Hair that also forms her Spy Catsuit and is used in her most powerful attacks. She trades it out for Boyish Short Hair in Bayonetta 2.
• Beneath the Mask: It's slipped off a few times when Bayonetta thinks nobody's watching. In the first game, she looks almost worried after realizing Luka grew up thinking she killed his father. In Bayonetta 2, her efforts to wake up Loki and later Jeanne devolve into panic when she thinks they're dead for good — but the mask goes back on as soon as Loki shows he was faking and Jeanne regains consciousness.
• Big Damn Kiss: Her materialized soul gives Luka one near the end of Bayonetta 3 after he pledges to go with her to Inferno, then embraces him as they both are dragged down to the afterlife.
• Black Speech: For a heroine, she (along with Jeanne) speaks Enochian, the language of angels, to summon demons and torture weapons.
• Blood Knight: A heroic example and more tame than most, but she loves a good brawl and derives an almost erotic pleasure from punishing and killing angels (and enemies in general) a bit too much. Nearly every fight scene begins and ends with a smile on her face. And other than recovering her memories, she states that one of the initial reasons why she was going to Vigrid was because the weak angels being sent at her made her bored. This trait is played up in Bloody Fate, where she outright says she loves seeing angels' faces contort in pain.
• Boisterous Bruiser: When finishing a combo, she'll describe her own fighting as "excellent!" or "smashing!" to herself. She's good, and she knows she's good.
• Bondage Is Bad: Bayonetta hits all the Dark Action Girl points; she's a witch who sold her soul to hell for awesome magical power, summons demons to finish off her foes, and has some definite dominatrix elements. Her "Torture Attacks" are odd combinations of medieval torture devices and some BDSM elements (some more than the others), and she uses these to obliterate actual angels who are gigantic assholes in their own right.
• Born of Heaven and Hell: A variation. Her mother was an Umbra Witch with connection to the demons of Inferno and her father was a Lumen Sage, who are aligned with the Angels of Paradiso. Being female, she was raised as a witch and shows no particular affinity for the heavenly side of her ancestry.
• Boyish Short Hair: She uses her magic to give herself a shorter hairstyle in Bayonetta 2.
• Braids of Action: Her default look in Bayonetta 3 has a long braid on each side of her head, and a close look at her outfit reveals several more forming her skirt and waist ribbon.
• Bruce Lee Clone: Bayonetta becomes this when you give her the nunchuck-like weapons, Sai Fung. When you do the basic 5-punch combo, she even imitates Bruce Lee's Kiai. It's made even more awesome by the nunchucks having guns in them. The name "Sai Fung" is even a reference to Bruce Lee.
• Bullying a Dragon: Bayonetta invokes this trope after Loki plays a trick on her by making her think he was dead.
  Bayonetta: Do you really think it's wise to play dead with someone who can make you dead?
• Casting a Shadow: Bayonetta, like all Umbra Witches, can use dark magic, often channeling it through her weapons and can use it to bolster the strength of her physical attacks. During her fight with Iustitia, she focuses her dark energy into her hand to slice off one of its tentacles, and her "Wheel of Torture" Torture Attack has her impaling an angel on the spike wheel then focusing dark energy into her foot to kick it away with great force.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: As a testament to her boundless confidence, she'll regularly snark and make small talk with her enemies. During the prologue of the second game, she and Jeanne are more concerned with planning a Christmas party rather than the fact that the Angels of Paradiso are trying to kill them. This casualness rarely changes, even when entire worlds are being destroyed around her in 3.
• Cat Girl: When equipped with the Umbran Elegance #5 perfume, Durga causes Bayonetta to gain a tail and/or a pair of cat ears made of flames or lightning. The precise piece you get depends on where you have Durga equipped; hands gives Bayonetta cat ears, feet gives her a cat's tail. You need to have bought the second pair and equip them to both slots to get both the ears and tail.
• Celibate Hero: Surprisingly, given how openly flirtatious she is with everyone. Word of god states that, while she teases Luka, she'll never ever commit because of the negatives of a Mayfly–December Romance. Besides, him following her around does seem to annoy her. 3 reveals however that a version of the two of them would eventually have a daughter, who turns out to be Viola — And in the end, Arch Eve Bayonetta also returned his affections as they're dragged down into Inferno.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: When strolling up a cruise ship in the Prologue of 3, Bayonetta, who is wearing a simple sweater-and-jeans ensemble, decides to spruce up her looks, and so she grabs a teal drape, throws it over herself, and in a split second she's already wearing a haute couture teal dress.
• Character Development: Becomes a hell of a lot nicer by the end of the first game, and much wiser and more motherly by the end of the second. In the third she is at her most heroic, openly advising Viola to learn to fight for others and not just for herself.
• Character Tics: Licking her lips when she gets a new set of weapons to play with and adjusting her glasses with her guns when she's about to fight.
• Charge Attack: She can do this with every weapon through the Charge Modifier, which involves holding down the punch or kick button after the initial attack, but it's played straightest with her melee weapons, where she'll take a stance and build up power. Using the Charge Modifier with ranged weapons usually just makes Bayonetta fire them, although Sai Fung, Kafka, and the Charge Bullet technique play it straight. Wearing the Galactic Bounty Hunter outfit in Bayonetta 2 lets her fire a charge shot, even if she doesn't have the Charge Bullet technique. Also true of the Star Mercenary outfit, but only when Love Is Blue is equipped.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Even without taking her magic into account, no human can replicate half of the downright supernatural stunts she can pull off, much less while wearing clothing made from hair. Case in point: During the beginning of the second game, she kicks a jet high into the air, then leaps up several thousands of feet after it, all while wearing her "Sunday best."
• Child of Forbidden Love: She is the result of a forbidden union between her mother, the Umbra Witch Rosa, and her father, the Lumen Sage Balder. As punishment, Rosa was imprisoned for life, while Balder was exiled from his clan.
• Cleavage Window: Her outfit in the first game has this, although unusually for the trope, it doesn't actually show very much cleavage.
• Clothing Damage: Bayonetta's nun outfit takes some cuts during the opening chapter in the graveyard, before doffing the disguise entirely to reveal her usual outfit. Happens again in the opening chapters of 2 and 3.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Her Torture Attacks summon giant demons to create a Finishing Move, usually by repeatedly inflicting a lot of pain in a very short amount of time to her target.
• Combat Pragmatist: Bayonetta does not fight fair. To her, everything is fair game in a fight whether it's sneak attacks, using pieces of the environment, using her enemies' weapons against them, using the enemies themselves against each other, Bayonetta will use any and every advantage afforded to her to win.
• Combat Stilettos: She wears high heels with heels replaced with guns, which she uses to perform Gun Fu.
• Compressed Hair: She can hide it when wearing clothes, cover herself with it to form a battle uniform, extend it further for Umbran Climax or Serious Mode, and separate it entirely from her body for constructs or conduits. This, combined with how her default costume in Bayonetta 2 isn't connected to her hairdo, suggests that Bayonetta's hair is less like normal hair and more like a power source she can call upon or put away at will.
• Cosplay: The Wii U release of Bayonetta has her dressing up as Link, Samus, and Princesses Peach and Daisy. The Princess costumes in particular are Sexy Whatever Outfits while the Link outfit was designed to be very modest, but Nintendo insisted Link's Undershirt be removed and the tunic be more revealing. Bayonetta 2 adds a Star Fox costume to the mix, replacing Love is Blue with Arwings (and the fighter jet from the final chapter with a fully-functioned Arwing, smart bombs and all).
• Counter-Attack:
  • Several enemies in Bayonetta 2, like shield-bearing Accolades and the Masked Lumen in his second fight, can launch attacks that give Bayonetta a chance to counter in a quick-time event.
  • Her Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa accessory lets her counter enemies with a headbutt if they strike her barrier.
  • When wearing the Evil Harvest Rosary, Bayonetta will create a mine-like magical counterattack when dodging attacks instead of triggering Witch Time.
• Creepy Crows: She can transform into a crow to slow her descent and use Feather Flechettes.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Her Torture Attacks and Infernal Climaxes practically scream this trope. Put simply, being Dragged Off to Hell will be a mercy after Bayonetta's done with you.
• Dance Battler: Bayonetta wields her weapons with incredible fluidity and grace, employing intricate acrobatics, and actually dancing for her long taunts and the Breakdance move. Some of the lyrics to "Mysterious Destiny" reference this.
  Girl, when you fight, it looks like a dance. You are magic. You're magic.
  Dance. Fight. Spin around. Spin around.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The Deadly Sin ritual introduced in 3. By ripping out her own heart, Bayonetta can empower any demon she's contracted with. With Gomorrah, she can upgrade it into Sin Gomorrah turning it into a proper skyscraper-sized kaiju monstrosity that'd look right at home in a Godzilla movie. There are three drawbacks to the ritual, however; if a demon empowered by the ritual is defeated, Bayonetta suffers a huge backlash. Alternatively, some demons can't handle the boost in power for long. In Alternate Giza, a Deadly Sin empowered Phantom turns into an Action Bomb that can't handle the power boost, with the resulting explosion being so powerful it creates a near honest-to-god black hole. Lastly, the demon summoned by the ritual is inevitably so powerful or deadly that the area around Bayonetta will suffer even worse damage than usual. Every time she uses it in 3 it is in a situation where the location she is in is already destroyed or beyond saving.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite Bayonetta being a centuries-old witch whose powers stem from demons, she's by no means a bad person and can be nice when you get to know her. But she is a snarky, incorrigible Troll who will mess with you non-stop and won't hesitate to pump you full of holes if you cross her.
• Dash Attack: She can do this with the After Burner Kick, Stiletto, and Heel Slide techniques. The Umbran Spear, which requires purchasing Crow Within first, is her fastest, but its lack of damage and stagger makes it more suited to being a "dash" instead of an "attack."
• Deadpan Snarker: She regularly snarks at her enemies to reflect how confident she is. She tends to drop it when she gets serious though. Or when she gets mad. That's when you really should be afraid.
• The Determinator: Failure isn't an option for her, even when she's traversing Inferno or going after gods or crossing the multiverse.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Regularly does this to angels of all sorts, with demons being added into the mix in 2. Though her crowning achievements are full on gods at the end of each game, including Jubileus, Loptr-Aesir, and Singularity, though the third case was a case of Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu that led to a Heroic RRoD-induced end for her.
• Disappeared Dad: Thanks to circumstances, Bayonetta never gets to know her father. Either he's a Big Bad or he's time traveling to avenge his wife's death.
• Distaff Counterpart: To Dante of Devil May Cry, Gene from God Hand, and possibly even the titular character from Viewtiful Joe.
• The Diva: Bayonetta when not adventuring is quite the "opera star enjoying some recreation". She even manages to maintain the Diva personality while fighting.
• Diving Kick: Her descending After Burner Kick. May remind some players of Crimson Viper.
• Double Entendre: She is very fond of using these before, during and after battle. They normally have a clearly obvious and literal relation to what is happening, but she'll use a tone and word choice that gives obvious sexual connotations.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Bayonetta's Game Over screen depicts this and this becomes her fate at the end of 3 after Gomorrah breaks free of her control and tries to devour her. Thankfully, Luka was able to slay Gomorrah and vows to stay by her side.
• The Dreaded: Has become this in the second game. Angels and demons alike are right to be afraid of her. Her slaying of Jubileus has earned her quite the reputation among the Angels of Paradiso, leading some to refer to her as "the famed witch." Likewise, her invading Inferno to rescue Jeanne's soul has earned her the fear of some of the Infernal Demons.
• Dressed Like a Dominatrix: She wears a black Sexy Backless Spy Catsuit with gloves and Combat Stilettos, which double as her guns, and she can use whips to attacks. The only catch is that the whole costume is actually made out of her hair and that whips are usually hair as well. Her dialogue and personality aren't subtle about her dominant sexuality, but her Punish moves, Torture Attacks (especially the one she reserves for Joys), and the Umbran Elegance she wears for Kulshedra are the most blatant examples.
• Easter Egg: If she ends up firing at a wall, she'll shoot a B with her bullet holes.
• Erotic Eating: Bayonetta's Trademark Favorite Food are lollipops. In the intro of the first game, we even get a slow-mo close-up of her sucking on one, and such scenes continue in the sequels.
• Expy: Many fans have noted general similarities between her and Dante: a hunter of the metaphysical who wields tons of weaponry, snark and style.
• Extremity Extremist: Certain weapons in the first two games can only be equipped to certain limbs. In the first game, 修羅刃 -Shuraba-, Kulshedra, and Sai Fung can only be used on the hands, while Odette (ice-infused ice skates) can only be used on the feet. In the second, Takemikazuchi, Chernobog, and Kafka (bow) are all hands-only, while the Chain Chomp is the game's only foot-only weapon. Strangely, the sword (Rakshasha, Salamandra) and whip (Alruna) weapons in the second game can be fitted to hands and feet alike, most likely because they come in pairs.
• Fairytale Motifs: She's compared herself to Alice of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in both games, whether through references or (in Bayonetta 2) outright calling herself "lost in Wonderland", referencing how she frequently gets caught up in bizarre plots.
• Fatal Flaw: Her pride and her insistence on doing everything herself carry her through most of the games' chapters, but when she actually starts going after the Big Bad, they're always more than she can handle on her own. Tellingly, both villains are only killed by a Climax summon Bayonetta performs in tandem with a second character, Jeanne in the first game and a young Balder in the second. In the third game, she not only has the help of two alternate versions of herself as well as Viola, but also accepts Luka's help in his faerie-werewolf form to fight the final boss.
• Faustian Rebellion: In the second game, due to the Balance of Good and Evil being thrown off, the forces of Hell are trying to kill Bayonetta, forcing her to fight them as well as the angels. Averted with a few demons, particularly Madama Butterfly, who continues to lend her assistance.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Her outfits accentuate her curves. Justified in that they're made with her Magic Hair. However, when wearing actual clothing (such as her nun's outfit or stylish shopping clothes), they're still form-fitting — and almost always suffer Clothing Damage at some point.
• Friend to All Children: Despite initial insistence to the contrary, Bayonetta has a soft spot for "little ones." Cereza is the first person Bayonetta shows genuine concern for, and she quickly warms up to Mouthy Kid Loki upon first meeting him in Bayonetta 2. She finally accepts it upon saving Loki from the Masked Lumen, as her next words are "What kind of adult picks on little children?!"
• Full-Contact Magic: With giant black fists and feet to back her up.
• Generation Xerox: When you see her mother in the second game, she looks exactly like Bayonetta, down to the hair style. This is why Cereza called her "Mummy" in the first game.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: Certain combos let her summon Madama Butterfly for a downward kick near the end, but she can also do this right off the bat with the Heel Stomp technique.
• Giant Hands of Doom: She can summon the massive hands of Hekatoncheir and Madama Butterfly through her Wicked Weaves. Or, if you have Mushroom Kingdom Princess or Sarasaland Princess as your current outfit, Bowser's fists will replace Madama Butterfly's.
• Godiva Hair: She turns this trope on its head. She is a witch whose default wardrobe consists entirely of her own magically manipulated Prehensile Hair. Not surprisingly, she uses her Prehensile Hair for other things sometimes, which, in turn, makes this both an inversion and an aversion of the trope. And when she's doing some serious witchcraft, not much is left on her person nor to the imagination.
• Godzilla Threshold: The "Sin Ritual" used by the main Bayonetta of 3 is treated like this. Involving summoning the true form of a powerful demon or transforming a demon into a more powerful form, as it tends to cause massive collateral damage even by Bayonetta's standards and severely taxes her powers, she only uses it when there are no better options and the region she is fighting in is beyond salvaging.
• Guest Fighter: She's shown up in Anarchy Reigns and Super Smash Bros. as a playable fighter. In the latter, she was initially DLC before being added to the core roster in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
• Gun Fu: Bayonetta can quadruple-wield pistols, shotguns, and rocket launchers – and she can fire all four at once.
• The Gunslinger: Her signature weapons in both games is a quartet of massive pistols, and both cutscenes and gameplay show that she's capable of some astounding gunplay.
• Hart Man Hips: She noticeably has very wide hips which is made all the more noticeable by her constant sensual swinging of them during her signature Super Model Strut.
• Hates Small Talk: Her usual response to a boss enemy's rambling, hammy speech is to either shoot them or throw something at them to get them to shut up.
  Bayonetta: I'm not much for the talkative types. How about we have a little fun instead? You did plan on having fun with me, right? There'll be plenty of time for pillow talk afterwards.^note Becomes a Stealth Pun if Bayonetta actually uses Pillow Talk on them.
• Head-Turning Beauty: And how. Even outside of her status as an in-and-out-of-universe Ms. Fanservice, the opening of the prologue in 2 has her walking down a street in the real world wearing her Sunday Best dress, with several (male) onlookers openly gawking at her. A similar scene plays out on the deck of a cruise ship in 3 after she changes into a fancy dress.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: It's actually her hair that forms that outfit, but it has leather-like properties: black, shiny, and form-fitting.
• The Hero Dies: The fate of Arch Eve Bayonetta, after having gone into a Heroic RRoD to beat Singularity, shattering her own Umbran Watch and being dragged off to Inferno with Luka. Played straight but then reversed with the other two main variants. While they and their worlds were killed by Singularity "long ago" according to him, the variants from 1 and 2 are implied to have been revived thanks to Arch Eve Bayonetta and returned to their home dimensions.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • A short-lived one after she fails to catch Luka after Balder tosses him out a window to his apparent doom. It takes her a minute to recover from what she had just seen, and when she does, she rounds on Balder guns blazing.
  • In the second game, Loptr uses the Remembrance of Time to show Bayonetta the events of the Witch Hunts and that he killed her mother. When she recovers, Bayonetta is clearly shaken up and visibly sweating.
• Heroic RRoD: How she ultimately dies in 3. The fight against Singularity ends up royally taxing her abilities. Her Umbral Watch is left so brittle by the time Singularity is defeated that it immediately shatters on its own, ensuring that she gets dragged off to Inferno.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: She's the heroine, and yet she casually roughs up her friends (Luka and Enzo especially), and brutalizes her enemies with glee. And it's wonderful.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: with Jeanne and Madama Butterfly. She's close enough to Jeanne that, not only is the latter the only cast member of 2 that calls her by her first name, the impetus of the plot was Bayonetta fighting to rescue Jeanne. As for Madama Butterfly, while she could just be a Noble Demon when it comes to honoring her contract with Bayonetta, the two sharing a brofist is a bit more casual than a mere business relationship, and her profile notes their bond is more than just the contract.
• High-Class Gloves: Her regular outfits and the "Sunday Best" dresses she wears in Bayonetta 2 feature long gloves over her hands, alongside the disguise she puts on in 3 after boarding the cruise ship.
• Hot Witch: Bayonetta is an Umbra Witch with glasses and Sexy Backless Spy Catsuit. In fact, the entire games almost revolves around this concept, with her constantly getting naked after every combo or summoning demons to finish off a boss (partly because her clothes are made from her Prehensile Hair, which she uses for her most powerful spells), and doing sexy victory poses to the sound of a camera shot.
• An Ice Person: Apart from her Odette skates and her Undine flamethrowers, in the cutscene during her third fight with Jeanne, she freezes the moisture in the air to form a spear in an attempt to impale her.
• Idiot Ball: In 3. Summoning Gomorrah at the beginning of the game? Understandable, since she didn't know he'd attack her for trying to have him eat something that wasn't divine, and she had her Demon Slave ability to keep him in check. Summoning Gomorrah at the end of the game when she's running on fumes, knows Singularity isn't divine either, and she's still in range of her "pet?" Not a smart idea.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: When she confronts Strider towards the end, Luka impales her with his claws, having not gained control of his faerie-werewolf form yet. Given the magical nature of her body, this injury doesn't actually bother her much, she soothingly noting that it is Luka who is afraid and shaking.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: They're made out of her Magic Hair.
• Improbable Weapon User: While many of her weapons are off-beat, in the original Bayonetta, she obtains a pair of demonic ice skates named Odette, fueled by the soul of a demonic witch of the same name with the power of ice.
  • Come the third game and her arsenal includes oversized clubs with sawblades that can be ridden and the door of a demonic clocktower.
• Improvised Clothes: At the start of 3, Bayonetta boards a yacht in search of someone and decides she needs to be more properly dressed for the occasion since there's a wedding going on, swapping her pink sweater for a turquoise impromptu dress. Said dress is made by one of the banners, by the way.
• Informed Flaw: In the first game, characters repeatedly claim she's afraid of her destiny and memories... not that this ever influences any of her decisions or ability to kick ass.
• In-Series Nickname: In 3, Luka has taken to calling her "Cerezita". It's noted in the character bios that he is the only man in the world she permits to use that name, and when Dark Adam uses it (after seemingly killing Prime Luka, no less), it results in one of the only times we see Bayonetta get genuinely angry.
• I Work Alone: Bayonetta pulls a gun on Rodin in the first chapter of the first two games when he implies that he's offering to help her. In Bayonetta 2, she actually starts shooting at him.

J-Z

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • She can come off as a Sociopathic Heroine at first glance due to her causal sadism when killing angels and causing horrendous collateral damage during her fights that would have most normal people arrested for vandalism years ago. She can also deal out enough snark to give ol' Spider-Man lessons. But underneath it all is a girl who genuinely cares for her friends and unless you want a first-class, one-way, all-expense-paid trip to Inferno, don't even entertain the idea of harming them.
  • She may not pay heed to all the collateral damage from her fights, but she doesn't condone causing needless misery to innocent civilians. In 1, she reprimands the angels for going way overboard in demolishing a civilian bridge just to kill her, and in 3 she is definitely not amused when Singularity uses Perlucidus to mass-mind control the French military for his sick entertainment, and proceeds to immediately Mercy Kill them in droves.
  Bayonetta, after some Braves obliterate the bridge: "I know you don't want me here, but you could've been more subtle about it."
• Jiggle Physics: Surprisingly, despite their size her breasts are usually pretty much under control during the games. It's her butt that does the jiggling. Averted in a battle cutscene in 3 during a slow motion dodge.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: She has many fancy dress options, especially in the Wii U and Switch versions of the games. The second game bookends with each version of the "Sunday Best" outfit, which is a slinky Simple, yet Opulent dress that includes a huge hat and fur wrap.
• Kid with the Leash: An adult variation, but the opening of Bayonetta 2 makes it clear that the Climax Summons that she pulls off are less 'allies' and more 'tamed beasts'. When the world starts getting thrown out of balance, her command over them becomes much more fragile, losing her hold on (at least) Gomorrah, Phantasmaraneae, and Scolopendra.
• Killed Off for Real: 3 ends with Prime Bayonetta getting her soul claimed by Inferno after her Umbran Watch shatters from damage and overuse of her powers.
• Kung-Shui: Up there with the Hulk in sheer property-damaging capacity.
• Lady of Black Magic: She's an Umbra Witch who uses her Magic Hair to summon demons capable of causing great destruction, and acts in a cool and classy manner. She's also very sultry and sensual, from her appearance to her mannerisms.
• Lady of War: She's a cool-headed and classy lady who uses many graceful acrobatics in battle to effortlessly kill angels, and looking very fancy while doing so.
• Lascivious Beauty Mark: Bayonetta has a beauty mark on the corner of her mouth and she is a Dark Action Girl, Hot Witch with dominatrix and BDSM-themed weapons and attacks. Her default look is a skintight, Sexy Backless Outfit made of her hair paired with Combat Stilettos. This goes along with her playfully flirtatious, The Tease-like behavior, which includes flirting with enemies and allies alike, Erotically Eating lollipops for fun and for power-ups, and occasionally licking her lips when excited. Her oversexed Ms. Fanservice characterization is deliberately done to the point of camp.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Bayonetta 2 doesn't hide the fact that she's Cereza as an adult.
• Leg Focus: Given she's a Statuesque Stunner who presents as a Shameless Fanservice Girl and employs a Dance Battler fighting style, you better believe she has numerous scenes dedicated to higlighting her incredibly long, powerful and slender gams.
• Lightning Bruiser: Fast, agile, strong as all hell, and hits like an out of control freight train. In 3, one of her Demon Masquerades allows her to partly transform into a train.
• Limit Break: Her Torture Attacks are the flashy one-time counterpart to her Super Mode, Umbran Climax. 3 gives her Masquerade Rage, which is essentially a weapon-dependent Torture Attack, which in turn can open up lesser enemies to her actual Torture Attacks.
• Lineage Comes from the Father: Inverted. Bayonetta is the daughter of the Lumen Sage Balder and the Umbra Witch Rosa. She looks identical to her mother and, even though her mixed heritage made her an outcast, identifies purely as one of her mother's people.
• Literal Ass-Kicking: As a Torture Attack on Applauds, Affinities, and Ardors. Then she beheads them with a guillotine.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Her line after defeating Fortitudo.
  Bayonetta: You know, you're not nearly as ugly when you're screaming.
• Mage Marksman: Like other Umbra Witches, she uses guns alongside black magic.
• Magic Hair: Subverted. It appears that she is using her hair to make giant fists, giant feet, and giant dragons, but reading Antonio Redgrave's notes reveals that witches need a medium in order to summon these things. In theory, they could use anything, but hair is the most readily available. It's not that the hair is magic, more like magic things are happening to the hair. In Bayonetta 2, you can tell shit is going south when Gomorrah breaks out of her hair and goes on a rampage.
• Magic Knight: As an Umbra Witch, she mixes the magical Dark Arts as well as a large variety of other magic spells, items and accessories with her Super-Strength, skill with a huge arsenal of weapons and various brutal martial arts and acrobatic moves to decimate her foes.
• Male Gaze: You can never have enough mentions about how much her ass is shown.
• Mama Bear: Mess with her "little ones" — especially Cereza — and Bayonetta will take you down.
• Master of Threads: Wicked Weaves are spells which allow Bayonetta to summon any demon she has a contract with by using her clothes as a conduit. She can do partial summons by having her clothes transform into a limb belonging to her demon. This also has the side effect of briefly leaving her naked. As her outfit is actually made out of her hair, this makes the spell a cross between Master of Threads and Prehensile Hair.
• Meaningful Name:
  • You get "Bayonetta" by adding "T and A" to "bayonet", which is a melee weapon attached to a gun, which describes Bayonetta's fighting style nicely.
  • Alternatively, her name is also a Portmanteau of "bayonet" and the gun manufacturer "Beretta".
• Mercy Kill: As the games go on, she's forced to do this a few times and even has done them unintentionally. For starters, she killed Balder in the first game who was possessed by Loptr, a figure introduced in the second, being the only unintentional case. In Bayonetta 3, she's forced to kill Phantom Thief Rosa and Bayonetta, as well as a load of the french military. Given they were all possessed by Homunculi forcing them to act at Singularity's whims, it's a given.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: One of her Punish Attacks lets her do this to enemies, grabbing them by the leg and slamming them repeatedly.
• Misblamed: Luka spent the vast majority of the first game believing she killed his father. He was actually intentionally murdered by the angels she was fighting, but Luka could not see them at the time.
• Misery Builds Character: In Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, we find out when she (or at least the Bayonetta 3 version of Cereza) was very young, she was ostracized due to the circumstances of her birth, her mother was imprisoned, and she had to kill her mentor Morgana when she finds out the Umbran Witch was just using her as a pawn to free Lukaon's imprisonment. And that's not even getting into her mom being slaughtered alongside her entire clan later on. There's no wonder she grown up into the hardened Sadist of an Umbran Witch she is in the main series games.
• More Dakka: Bayonetta certainly is a fan.
  Bayonetta: (to Rodin) Guns. Guns! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS!!!
• Morphic Resonance: Her animal forms always feature the gold chains on top her clothing in some form: in the first game, this also applies to the ribbon in her hair and in the second game, her pointed shoulderpads.
• Ms. Fanservice: Oh yes, you better believe it. She is deliberately designed around sex appeal, to the point of campy parody, and has a sultry, flirty, dominatrix-like personality to go with it. Hell, the only problem her creator had when Rule 34 kicked in was that she was usually submissive in it — once she started being dominant, he had no complaints. It's also probably telling that when PlatinumGames designed Bayonetta's Link-inspired costume with an undershirt for the Updated Re-release, Nintendo of all companies said it would be a good idea to get rid of the undershirt because it would have otherwise been out of character.
• Multi-Melee Master: She is incredibly skilled with practically any melee weapon she can get her hands on whether it's katanas, light-sabers, axes, greatswords, claws, microphones, hammers, flails, staffs, scythes, bladed fans, dual swords, chainsaws, clubs the list goes on and on. This is taken even further in that she can wield a couple of these weapons on her legs too. She can even use traditionally ranged weapons like guns, rocket launchers and bows in melee combat.
• Murderous Thighs: In an early cinematic cutscene, Bayonetta uses her thighs to catch a ride on an Affinity, while shooting countless numbers of them out of the air, then using said thighs to spin the Affinity she rides on into the ground. A recurring method of combat for her in cutscenes is to grab an opponent with her thighs and flip or throw them to the ground.
• Naughty Nuns: Her first appearance in the first game has her in a form-fitting nun habit. She then gets clothing damaged.
• Nerves of Steel: As shown in the second game, so long as there is the slightest chance of saving a friend's life (even invading the Inferno), she doesn't ever seem to be nervous. When there's nothing she can do, she doesn't remain upset for long. Probably in part due to her overconfidence (which she usually can back up). Even whole universes being destroyed in 3 rarely shakes her for more than a few seconds.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Killing Father Balder in the first game erased the Right Eye of Light and caused an imbalance in the Trinity of Realities, which causes her demonic summoning of Gomorrah to go wrong and results in Jeanne Taking the Bullet and being sent to Inferno. In other words, she is partially responsible for the events of the second game (Balder never would have snapped to begin with if not for Loptr).
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Yes, you wouldn't believe, but she can do it.
• Not Afraid of Hell: Despite having a Deal with the Devil centered around being Dragged Off to Hell at the end of it, Bayonetta herself has absolutely no hang-ups over her eventual fate. Even when she has to brave Inferno for Jeanne, she has nothing but sass for anyone in her way. When her time does finally come in 3, she has no fear and does nothing to stop it and spends her last moments on Earth embracing Luka.
• Official Couple: She and Luka become this in 3, with the reveal that Viola is their daughter. That, and Luka willingly goes down to Inferno with her as her Umbral Watch is broken.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • She has an utterly hilarious one in the beginning of the first game, where she lands on Enzo's car, trashing it. The look on her face is priceless, as she really didn't mean to do that.
  • A considerably more serious example occurs in the second game: she starts off her clash with the mysterious man in white as her normal snarky self. Then she sees him initiate Light Speed and casually brush aside her bullets...
    Bayonetta: Oh my... you're a Lumen Sage!?
• One-Woman Army: Countless angels, demons and other threats have tried to kill her, and she takes them all down with style and class.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • By default, Bayonetta is a massive Deadpan Snarker who can throw out Deadpool-esque snazzy one-liners. But when she stops snarking, you have sorely and genuinely pissed her off and the final moments of your life will be in complete agony. Only a few characters in the series have triggered this reaction. ^note Father Balder, Loptr, Alraune, Dark Adam and Singularity; as well as if you count Gomorrah's betrayal in the second and third games To say it didn't end well for them would be the nicest way to describe it.
  • A far sadder example is at the end of Bayonetta 2, when she watches Balder trap Loptr within himself, effectively damning himself to become the monster he was in the first one. At this point, Bayonetta realizes who her father truly was, and as Balder is dragged through a rip in time, she screams "DADDY!" in a heartbreaking tone.
  • She barges in on Viola's fight with Strider in 3, mocking the faerie beast for "bullying Little Red Riding Hood", but when Viola reveals that he's Luka, her face falls like a rock. In the following conversation, she remains dead-serious until Viola promises she'll keep him safe.
  • She also stops smirking in 3 upon realizing that she and Viola had been tricked by Singularity into going into the Alphaverse to be trapped, spotting the real Dr. Sigurd's body powering the Homunculi nucleus and his ID card, which goes to show how dire the situation really is.
  • When foes try and out-dance Bayonetta, she usually entertains them for a moment with a playful dance off. And indeed, when her French counterpart in 3 challenges her to a dance-off, she reciprocates before the two duke it out. Moments before the latter fight, however, Singularity forces an army of possessed innocent soldiers to do a Thriller-esque number for no reason other than to spite her, and she's so pissed off at that she just sneers in disgust before commanding her most violent demon to start wrecking their numbers as a Mercy Kill.
• Oral Fixation: Aside from using special ones for health and power ups, Bayonetta frequently just sucks on lollipops for fun, and is often seen enjoying them during her casual activities. Best expect the camera to draw some attention to how much she enjoys them. In 2 Luka lampshades how he inadvertently got her addicted to them due to giving lollipops to child Cereza while she was under his care.
• Orgasmic Combat: Her in-game combat is really heavy on grunts and shouts, and she routinely remarks on how pleasurable combat is for her.
• Parent-Child Team:
  • Twice in 2. She fights alongside Rosa when she’s transported back in time to the Witch Hunts. When Bayonetta returns to the present, she and young Balder become a terrifyingly powerful one at the climax.
    Balder: We may not see our next step. We may stumble. We may fall off the path. But we always move forward! That is the power of man! Bayonetta, shall we illustrate?
    Bayonetta: Let's rock!
    (Asskicking commences)
  • In 3, she ends up fighting alongside her daughter, Viola, against Singularity.
• Passing the Torch: The lingering darkness of her — or more accurately Arch-Eve Origin — passes down her Bayonetta name to Viola after being defeated.
• Person of Mass Destruction: And one who really doesn't give much of a crap about what she destroys as long as it suits her ends. Best shown in her fights with Jeanne, Gomorrah, Father Balder, and the Masked Lumen, where she causes enough collateral damage that would get most people arrested years ago. Heavily Downplayed in that most of the destruction is usually caused by her enemy initiating or escalating the battle. Bayonetta herself doesn't seek collateral damage, she's just not deterred by it either. Which does make sense because she pretty much has Seen It All.
• Pistol-Whipping: Her most basic fighting style: with Scarborough Fair, Love Is Blue, or similar weapons equipped, her punches and kicks have her smack angels and demons around with the four pistols. Far more evident in cutscenes, where the audience gets a number of close-ups of her slapping the taste out of angels with them.
• Power Echoes: Her voice gains reverberations when she's in Demon Masquerade mode.
• Powered Armor: In the second game, when traveling back in time to the Witch Hunts, she wields the Umbran Armor. It's an extremely powerful weapon, able to even make Aesir fall to his knees with a single shot. One of her accessories, the Earrings of Ruin, allows her to use it instead of Umbran Climax.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: When she enters Climax mode (against gigantic angelic bosses in the first game and when she activates Umbran Climax in the second), her hair also grows.
• Power Nullifier: The Bayonetta 3 variant is the only person in the world capable of overturning phenomena once thought undisputable. This means that she is the only person who can fight Singularity on fair terms.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: In the first game, Bayonetta says this before shooting Father Balder with a "lipstick bullet".
  Bayonetta: "Don't fuck with a witch."
• Precision F-Strike: Being a bit nicer-mouthed than some of the other characters, her vulgarity uses this trope. In the first game, she says "I feel like a fucking celebrity in this town!" and "Don't fuck with a witch." The latter has a Call-Back in the second game: "The kind of witches you don't fuck with."
  • She gives an epic one when Dark Adam (i.e. a malevolent force that possessed and tormented the Luka she cares for) dares to call her "Cerezita" after they cause Luka (who she had just fought to bring back to his senses) to fall from the fortress they were fighting on, seemingly to his death. It's notably one of the few times in the series she has looked and sounded outright furious.
    Bayonetta: "You have no fucking right to call me by that name!"
• Prehensile Hair: Her special moves are pulled off with help from her hair. Also, her hair composes her entire freaking outfit. Needless to say, the more powerful special move she uses, the more hair she needs (like using it to make a spider several stories tall), and the more skin we see. Subverted that it's not the hair moving by itself - she's summoning demons by using her hair as a conduit.
• Pretty in Mink: In the opening of the second game, Bayonetta is going shopping at Christmastime, and she's wearing a white Pimped-Out Dress in the style of The Gay '90s that's topped with a silver fur wrap. At the end she's going after Christmas shopping in a pink dress with a white fox wrap. Both of these can be purchased at the Gates of Hell to be worn as alternate costumes.
• Punny Name: Bayonetta's name is a combination of two words associated with guns: Beretta, a well known gun manufacturer, and Bayonet, a knife attached to a rifle.
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": She occasionally lets out wicked laughter during her fights. One clear example is when she activates Tartarus' Masquerade Rage in 3, where she gleefully laughs as she shreds her enemies during her "happy puppet show".
• Really 700 Years Old: Almost exactly 600 at the time of Bayonetta (of course while she was in a magical sleep for most of that time, other material makes it clear witches and sages can naturally live a long time). Presumably 603 at the time of Bayonetta 2. ^note Date of Birth: December 19, 1411
• Red Baron: "The Witch of Genesis" in Bayonetta 3.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • The emotional, warm, and vibrant red to Father Balder's cool, detached, and calculating blue, which is lampshaded in the eyes of Jubileus.
  • Meanwhile, whenever she and Jeanne clash, Bayonetta is the more cool-headed and lighthearted (usually) of the two, while Jeanne is a lot more hot-headed, wrathful and serious-minded.
• The Sacred Darkness: The Left Eye of the World that she bears (or more precisely that she is), overseeing the Darkness, is just as important as the Right Eye that oversees the Light. This is also the role of the Umbra Witches as a whole.
• Sadist: A rare heroic version, but she takes a little too much glee when killing enemies. In Bloody Fate, she outright says that killing angels and making their faces contort in pain really gets her excited.
• Scaled Up: A heroic example; in Bayonetta 2, she can transform into a cobra to swim more quickly.
• Serial Escalation: Not herself, but the enemies she fight seemingly snowball in scope and threat level as time passes. If the Origin timeline was to be believed, then Bayonetta started her career by slaying fairies in the Avalon Forest that don't do much other than threatening the local woods, followed by Angels who attempt mass genocide and a God of Evil who seeks to take over the universe, and finally a vicious madman of an Artificial Human who blows up over two thousand universes and kills all of their Bayonettas to merge all universes into a singularity where he rules over.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: The game takes Third-Person Seductress to whole new levels; she wears a variety of these, all made out of her hair. In Bayonetta 2, the backless outfit actually becomes functional in addition to alluring, since she can now use her demonic summons to become a Winged Humanoid. In Bayonetta 3, it's where the demon tattoos she's contracted with shows up.
• She-Fu: Mixed with Gun Fu and taken to ridiculous levels.
• Shoryuken: Her Witch Twist attack.
• Shoulders of Doom: A rare heroic version, as her 2 outfit gives her pointed shoulder pads.
• Showy Invincible Hero: From a story perspective, it takes an equally-strong Evil Counterpart to even inconvenience her. The first game's cutscenes have Bayonetta trashing everything from Affinities straight up to the four Cardinal Virtues; even Jeanne's fights only leave her out of breath, and Balder had to outsmart her via playing dead to capture her after losing their fight. Less prominent in the second game — aside from Gomorrah's betrayal catching her off-guard, Infernals don't give her much more trouble than the angels do, but the Masked Lumen and Loptr both end up either matching or outright defeating her. Even more downplayed in 3, as she ends up breaking her Umbran Watch and getting herself and Luka dragged into the underworld after she kills Singularity, but is instead capable of nullifying his Phenomenal Affirmation ability (and is thus the only person who can beat him in on a reasonable term) that otherwise makes him a full-blown Invincible Villain that's completely unstoppable and undoing all the death and destruction he causes to thousands of universes.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: This is one of Bayonetta's specialties; she really isn't a fan of long villain monologues, and her attitude is basically a "Shut up and FIGHT!" Any angel that decides to prattle on for too long tends to get promptly interrupted with bullets to the face. Her disdain for speeches is lampshaded in Bayonetta 2 during an encounter with the Masked Lumen:
  Bayonetta: Well, at least you're the silent type. The last sage I met spent 20 minutes rambling on and on!
• Slide Attack: Her Heel Slide and Stiletto attacks.
• Smug Super: Bayonetta brims with boundless confidence and has all the godly power to back it up.
• Sociopathic Hero: She takes a lot of delight in killing those angels and is generally apathetic to the horrendous collateral damage she leaves in her wake.
• Sophisticated as Hell: As Bayonetta says it, "If you get in my way, I will... how do the Americans put it? Oh yes. Bust a cap in yo' ass."
• Spectacular Spinning: A majority of her techniques involve her doing some graceful spins and twirls.
• Spy Catsuit: Her regular outfit resembles one, with a few odd touches here and there.
• Statuesque Stunner: Her actual height's unknown, but the camera loves to look up at her and the civilians we see in Vigrid and Noatun are always at least a head shorter than her.
• Stepford Smiler: The lyrics to "Mysterious Destiny" describe her as this.
  Bayonetta, you bury your loneliness deep down in your eyes.
  Sadness lies in your smile.
• Stripperiffic: She is a gun-toting witch wearing a Spy Catsuit made of her hair. That she strips off her body as she uses her magic. And turns it into a hair dragon while standing around in the nude.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She is implied to look exactly like her mother, Rosa, down to her outfit of choice. This causes Bayonetta's time-displaced child self, Cereza, to mistake her for her own mother.
• Summon Magic: She uses her hair as a medium to summon demonic entities to aid her in taking down enemies.
• Super Mode: Her Serious Mode in the first game and her Umbran Climax in the second game. Both of them back up every one of her attacks with a Wicked Weave.
• Supermodel Strut: Unless you make her run at full speed, Bayonetta treats every walk like a catwalk, swinging her hips and foot in either direction. Her stance is so exaggerated that even when standing still her feet are placed on the opposite sides of her center of mass. This is both to invoke Third-Person Seductress and to showcase her sexually confident and domineering nature.
• Super-Speed: Her Witch Time in a nutshell. By dodging at the last second, Bayonetta can boost her senses and physical abilities, allowing her to mercilessly pummel her opponents who are too slow to fight back. Her Bracelet of Time accessory allows her to activate Witch Time whenever she wants.
• Super-Strength: Even without her Wicked Weaves, Bayonetta is unnaturally and immensely strong despite her lithe figure, although this is mostly shown in cutscenes. She regularly tosses large enemies and bosses like ragdolls, can suplex Fortitudo, a giant dragon, with ease, and can slice of Iustita's tentacles with a single karate chop. At one point, after defeating Temperantia, she holds up a large trolley bus with one hand as easily as one would hold a ball and casually tosses it aside. The most ludicrous example of this would be headbutting a skyscraper into the distance.
• Suplex Finisher: In the opening cutscene of the first game, Bayonetta slams about five or six angels into each other, then suplexes all of them simultaneously, causing their heads to explode.
• Talk to the Fist: Bayonetta LOVES doing this to the Cardinal Virtues... sometimes multiple times in one conversation!
  Bayonetta: Ugh, another talkative type...
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: She's tall, she's dressed in black, and she rarely misses a chance to snark at her enemies.
• Taught by Experience: At the start of 2, Gomorrah deciding to attack her almost gets her killed and leads to an extensive boss fight. At the start of 3, when Gomorrah tries to attack her again, she breaks out the Demon Slave - which, going by Rodin's remarks, is a formerly-lost art.
• The Tease: Frequently does this with Luka to the point where it seems like she keeps saving him just to keep messing with him. It’s implied by Kamiya, that she does this for the hell of it.
• Technopath: Can use her magic to hotwire vehicles by jamming her middle finger in the ignition. And it's not limited to just land-based vehicles - the first game had her hijacking and riding a missile to get to Isla De Sol.
• Thinking Up Portals: Her Umbran Portal Kick in the first game. Bayonetta creates a portal in the shape of the Umbran symbol and sinks into it. She then reappears to crash down from above, striking a sexy pose.
• Third-Person Seductress: The series takes this to its logical conclusion; her magical hair forms her costume and is used for her attacks. This means that parts of her clothing disappear during attacks, and her finishing moves render her entirely naked aside from just enough coverage to keep it from getting an AO rating. The pure absurdity of the sex appeal on display in the trailers alone - never mind the final product - was almost certainly intentional on the part of the development team, many of whom are Clover refugees. Knowing their previous works^note Ōkami, God Hand, Viewtiful Joe, MadWorld,, they seem quite happy keeping a self-mocking sense of humor throughout.
• Time-Shifted Actor: She is voiced by Hellena Taylor and Atsuko Tanaka as an adult and by Joy Jillian and Miyuki Sawashiro as her child self, Cereza.
• Together in Death: For Arch Eve Bayonetta. At the end of 3, her Umbral Watch is destroyed. Luka was able to stop Gomorrah from devouring her soul before the two embrace and are dragged off into Inferno.
• Too Many Belts: Her first outfit has many buckled belts on the sleeves.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Bayonetta is obsessed with lollipops. She's usually sucking on one in cutscenes, and almost all of the expendable power-ups that players can craft or win in Angel Attack are magical lollipops. Apparently, this was due to Luka giving them to Cereza aka her younger self.
  • In 2 and 3, both she and her Tokyo variant mention caviar.
• Tranquil Fury: She rarely outwardly expresses her anger. Her reaction to most situations is to normally snark it out. In fact, the only warning that you have severely pissed her off and have simultaneously carved your own headstone is her voice lowering a few octaves and the lack of any snappy one-liners. If that happens, make your peace with whatever made you and pray you at least end up in critical condition.
  (To Balder) I could never call the man behind this nightmare "Father!"
  (To Gomorrah) I'm not one for pets who don't listen to their masters.
  (To Alraune) Then it's going to be a bloody coronation. Now release my Umbran sister.
  (To Loptr) Then just try to take it back. You've destroyed more than you know.
  (To Dark Adam) You have no fucking right to call me by that name!
• Transformation Sequence: Happens when she switches from the aforementioned nun outfit to her other one. She also learns how to shapeshift later.
• Tricked-Out Shoes: Weapons are attachable to the heels.
• Trigger-Happy: Bayonetta has a permanently itchy trigger finger and won't hesitate to pull her gun on anything and anyone who pisses her off, including her friends.
• Troll: Getting a reaction out of people, including but not limited to teasing them, seems to her idea of good fun. Her usual target is Luka (in the first game at least), who she goes out of her way to embarrass. Mostly because he is an annoyance to her. Considering how much rescuing he needs, he's potentially earned it. She continues this when working alongside Viola in 3.
• Two Aliases, One Character: She and Cereza are the same person.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • Is thoroughly repulsed by Balder from pretty much the second they meet, but as soon as he throws Luka to his doom, Bayonetta whips out her guns and opens fire on the Lumen Sage with a look of absolute fury on her face.
  • In Bayonetta 3, when Singularity confronts her with loads of soldiers outfitted with homunculi that force them into his control and that they may even be aware of their condition, topping it off by mocking her with a synchronized dance at her akin to how she uses Demon Slave, she simply corrects her glasses, fiercely glares and orders Gommorah to kill them all.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In 3, her reaction to first meeting Strider (a werewolf-like being with a cape made of stained glass and a constellation of eyes) is little more than a snarky comment about his lack of "attachments". After The Reveal that Strider is Luka, Bayonetta's attitude is more concern about why than any questions as to what. Similarly, when Viola and Lukaon show up in the Alphaverse during the finale, she shows very little reaction to this ephemeral man who looks like Luka with Prophet Eyes in a stained-glass robe. Origins reveals that she's met faeries before, so the fairy presence in 3 isn't as new for her as it was for the players, and she might even recognize Lukaon all grown up.
• Use Your Head: She likes using a headbutt to counter an enemy's attack, whether it's part of a quick-time event or using a parry.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Both versions of Cereza seen in the first game and Origins are sweet and kind children who are thrust into unenviable and violent circumstances, heavily contrasting the domineering, violent sadist of an Umbran Witch she is in the present day. If the story in Origins was of any indication, there's no wonder why she would grow up that way.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Where she gets the lipstick she uses to kill Balder.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: She needs to remember how (and buy certain abilities back), but she gains this ability over the course of both games. Panther Within for Super-Speed, Bat Within to evade damage, Crow Within for limited flight, and – in the second game - Snake Within for enhanced swimming abilities.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Unlike the other Nintendo costumes, Bayonetta's Hero of Hyrule outfit isn't substantially altered from its source — aside from removing the undershirt and adjusting the length and tightness of the rest of the costume, it's basically the same, but it still fits her personality very well.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She quips a variant of this in the first game:
  Bayonetta: "Tentacles! Why did it have to be tentacles?"
• Wrestler in All of Us: She's fully capable of suplexing a dragon and a half dozen angels simultaneously.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: She is the child of an Umbra Witch and a Lumen Sage. While she doesn't use any angelic-oriented powers it is worth noting she can pick up and use their weapons if they drop them.
• You Killed My Father: To Father Balder, who is responsible for the witch hunts that killed her mother. In Bayonetta 2, this hatred transfers to Loptr, the actual culprit.

Variants (Unmarked Spoilers)

Variants of Bayonetta, most of whom appear in Bayonetta 3.

• Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: Many of them are more proactive and consistent in their efforts to protect the world.
• Ambiguously Brown: Several of these come from distinctively non-European settings, unlike core-Bayonetta. β3 has a bit of a tan, but otherwise they look exactly the same.
• Barrier Maiden: Each Bayonetta is an Arch-Eve who serves as a lynchpin to her universe, with her death and absorption by Singularity serving as the proverbial nail in the coffin that allows Singularity to completely wipe out said universe from reality.
• Climactic Battle Resurrection: Prime Bayonetta is able to do enough damage to Singularity in the final battle that their absorbed souls are set free for just enough time to get their licks in before they get dispelled.
• Foregone Conclusion: Invoked and Exploited by Singularity himself to kill off these Bayonettas and collapse their universes. His strongest ability is "Phenomenal Affirmation", which changes the fate of the universes he attacks to a path he wishes. Naturally, it means the Bayonetta Variants are doomed to fail no matter what they do.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: The Variants get killed off in the same chapter they were introduced.

Bayonetta (Records of Time: The Witch Hunts)

A Bayonetta who, during her childhood, is flung 500 years into the future during the events of Bayonetta. Her experiences there with her future self, or "Mummy", set a brand-new path for her and change history in her native timeline. See here.

Bayonetta (Records of Time: The End)

A Bayonetta who has followed an identical path to the main Bayonetta until the events of Bayonetta 2.

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• Alternate Self: This Bayonetta has lived an identical life to the main Bayonetta, and even still ends up teleported to the past. However, in this reality, she goes up against demons and angels and meets the Masked Lumen much later.

Bayonetta β0

The Bayonetta of Viola's reality. She looks nearly identical to the main Bayonetta from the first game, with a few tiny differences.

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• Action Mom: Is Viola's mother, and kicks just as much ass as the main Bayonetta.
• Decoy Protagonist: You play as her during the prologue, where she falls in battle against Singularity.
• Defiant to the End: Despite clearly being outmatched against Singularity, even as she's severely injured, her Umbran Watch cracked, and barely being able to even hold up her guns, she still keeps trying to fight back before Singularity manages to incapacitate and finish her off.
• Early-Bird Cameo: She is the Bayonetta shown dying in the very first teaser for Bayonetta 3, as evidenced by the absence of the main Bayonetta's beauty mark and her guns' collective name.
• Futile Hand Reach: Was reaching out towards her daughter Viola before she crystalizes and gets killed.
• Red Baron: "The Indomitable Witch".
• Spotting the Thread: She lacks the main Bayonetta's beauty mark, and her guns, while nearly identical to Scarborough Fair, are collectively called Whittingham Fair instead.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: This Bayonetta only appears in the prologue before being killed by Singularity, and in the Old Picture Book as Cereza from when she was still in training.

Bayonetta β1

A Bayonetta living in an alternate Tokyo.

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• And Now for Someone Completely Different: She has her own playable segment where she chases after Iridescent and takes out its core.
• Animal Motifs: Spiders, with the demon she's contracted with being a large arachnid.
• Cheery Pink: She's a variant with pink hair, and a cheerful attitude to match. Just before the Homunculi came crashing in, she was eagerly awaiting her version of Jeanne for a bowling challenge.
• The Fashionista: In keeping with the Akihabara motif, this Bayonetta has a much more modern fashion sense, albeit still quite bombastic.
• Friendly Rivalry: With her Jeanne, both of them engaging in various noncombat challenges but always ending in a draw. Bowling was next until the Homunculi came.
• Killer Yo-Yo: Wields the Ignis Araneae Yo-Yo. After her death, the main Bayonetta gets ahold of them.
• Red Baron: "The Street-Smart Witch".
• Smug Super: Even for a Bayonetta, this one is quite overconfident. She outright says she always gets what she wants.
  "When I see something I want, it's mine."

Bayonetta β2

A Bayonetta living in an alternate China.

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• Big Sister Instinct: When fighting against Singularity, she steps in front of Prime Bayonetta in hopes of using her chainsaw to protect her, and gets wiped out by Singularity.
• Chainsaw Good: Wields Dead End Express in battle. Also counts as a BFS.
• Eyepatch of Power: She's missing her right eye and wears a red eye patch to cover it up. It's never explained how she lost her eye, but the soldiers have no shortage of theories for it.
• La Résistance: This one is styled as the general of the Chinese army leading the battle against the Homunculi.
• Red Baron: "The One-Eyed Witch".
• The Stoic: Far more stoic and less smug than the average Bayonetta.
• Transforming Vehicle: Unlike the other Variants, she has a contract with a demon train. Aside from being a normal train, it can even summon cannon's, which Prime Bayonetta uses.

Bayonetta β3

A Bayonetta living in an alternate Cairo as its ruler.

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• Afraid of Their Own Strength: Though a kind ruler, this Bayonetta dislikes fighting and refuses to fully embrace her Umbran powers. When the Homunculi attack and Singularity targets her universe's Jeanne, Bayonetta finally chooses to fight and makes a demon contract with Malphas.
• Big Sister Instinct: After defeating the Boss Homunculi in the Cairo area, she saves Prime Bayonetta by taking her place, thus sacrificing herself into the void. The next time during their fight against Singularity, she dives over to Prime Bayonetta and shoves her out of the way, causing Singularity to wipe her out.
• Cool Mask: Wears a large ornate mask that cover the top portion of her face.
• Combat Hand Fan: Wields Simoon, twin fans forged from the feathers of baby Malphas. She can also throw them like boomerangs.
• Go Out with a Smile: As she saves Prime Bayonetta and throws her fan out to destroy any rubble that may hinder her, she smiles knowing she had avenged Jeanne and saved other realities.
  "Jeanne... did you see? I won..."
• Guest-Star Party Member: The fight against Stratocumulus has the player swapping between β3 controlling Malphas and the main Bayonetta controlling The Phantom.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Saves the main Bayonetta in exchange for her own life being forfeit.
• Insult of Endearment: Her version of Jeanne seems to call her "princess" with mild annoyance to her tone, but does truly care for her.
• Light Is Good: Is dressed in almost all white and gold, with her even being known as a kind ruler.
• Mercy Kill: Kills the Jeanne of her reality, who begs for death, after the main Bayonetta refuses to do so.
• Nice Girl: While Bayonetta(s) in general are almost always a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, this variant is the most outwardly kind.
• Princesses Rule: She is the ruler of her Desert nation, but her official title is "princess."
• Red Baron: "The Cloistered Witch".
• Single Tear: After taking out her Jeanne when Prime Bayonetta couldn't take the shot, a single tear runs down from her eye.

Bayonetta β4

A Bayonetta living in an alternate France.

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• Animal Motifs: Bats, with her outfit and contracted demon both being related to bats.
• Attack Reflector: She can use her hat to reflect a bullet Bayonetta shoots and toss it right back at her.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Her first interaction with Prime Bayonetta is this.
  Bayonetta: And what was that?
  Phantom Thief Bayonetta: Oh, that? A simple bonsoir. Just wait until I get really chatty.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: In keeping with her Phantom Thief motif, this Bayonetta has made a career of burgling ancient Umbran artifacts alongside her maman.
• Dance-Off: Instigates and performs a short one with Prime Bayonetta.
• Detachment Combat: When she takes on her demon form, her torso and lower body split apart.
• Fake American: In-Universe, possibly. Given that she's still a Bayonetta, it's safe to assume she was born in Vigrid, however she lacks a Vigridian (i.e., RP British) accent and instead has an American one.
• Gratuitous French: Despite her American accent (and the only Bayonetta to have one), being a Phantom Thief in France she occasionally drops French words into her conversations with Bayonetta.
• Hammerspace: One of her attacks has her summon multiple bowling pins from her hat. She also demonstrates this during the fight against Singularity.
• Magic Hat: Her hat can not only deflect attacks, but also acts as a weapon for her to summon bowling pins out of that attack her enemies.
• Magic Wand: Wields the cane Cadabra, one half of her Abracadabra weapon set.
• Malevolent Masked Man: Wears a thin mask over her eyes, and proves to be a deadly foe for the police and Prime Bayonetta.
• Momma's Girl: This Bayonetta was raised to adulthood by Rosa to be a powerful witch, and they continued their adventures together as partners in crime. As a result she's very attached to her and is not happy in the slightest when prime Bayonetta has to Mercy Kill Rosa.
• Phantom Thief: She is Papillon d'Ombre the 2nd, daughter and partner of Papillon d'Ombre (her universe's Rosa). Posing as traveling performers, they use their powers to locate and steal back Umbran treasures from around the world.
• Puppeteer Parasite: Unfortunately falls to this when a parasitic Perlucidus attaches itself to her.
• Red Baron: "The Phantom Thief Witch".
• Revenge Before Reason: Whether she is unaware or heedless of the reason Prime Bayo kills her mummy, she definitely is out to kill her Prime counterpart out of vengeance. Singularity even mocks her for this simple-mindedness.
• Together in Death: After Prime Bayonetta has to kill her — and having already killed the phantom thief Rosa as well — Prime Bayonetta hopes that this Bayonetta is "reunited with her mummy".
• Tranquil Fury: She sounds calm even knowing that Prime Bayonetta had killed her mother.
• Weaponized Headgear: Her top hat Abra, the other half of her Abracadabra weapon set.
• You Killed My Mother: When her reality's Rosa is killed by the main Bayonetta, this Bayonetta ends up fighting her in revenge.

Bayonetta 1

A Bayonetta resembling the main Bayonetta from the first game.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Both she and Bayonetta 2 disappear into purple particles after helping Bayonetta Prime out, making their statuses unknown.
• Big Damn Heroes: Arrives during the final battle at the nick of time, destroying a spear Singularity had set to murder a heavily weakened and incapacitated Bayonetta Prime with.
• Meaningful Echo: When she appears and saves Prime Bayonetta she asks her, "You didn't cry while I was gone, did you?" This implies the Bayonetta we've been playing all game was the child Cereza that Bayonetta looked after from the first game, now all grown up.
• Leitmotif: A snippet of "Mysterious Destiny" plays when she first appears in the final battle. The full song also plays when control shifts to her.
• Missing Main Character: She briefly takes over as player character while Origin Bayonetta is recovering from having her watch cracked. She wields Scarborough Fair, uses Beast Within as a Demon Masquerade, and can summon Madama Butterfly in her design from the first two games.
• Painting the Medium: When playing as her, the HUD changes to match that of the first game.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Is strongly implied to be the actual Bayonetta of the first game, and that all three games were in different universes.
• Red Baron: "The Witch in Remembrance".

Bayonetta 2

A Bayonetta resembling the main Bayonetta from the second game.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Both she and Bayonetta 1 disappear into purple particles after helping Bayonetta Prime out, making their statuses unknown.
• Big Damn Heroes: Arrives during the final battle at the nick of time, summoning Labolas to intercept one of Singularity's summons attempting to attack Bayonetta 1 and Bayonetta Prime.
• Guest-Star Party Member: She fights alongside Bayonetta 1 while Bayonetta Origin is incapacitated.
• Leitmotif: A snippet of "Tomorrow is Mine" plays when she first appears in the final battle.
• Mythology Gag: Unlike Bayonetta Prime and Bayonetta 1, who mainly rely on Gomorrah, she summons Labolas — who essentially took Gomorrah's place in the second game — to rip apart the Homunculi.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Is strongly implied to be the actual Bayonetta of the second game, and that all three games were in different universes.
• Red Baron: "The Witch with Discerning Eyes".

Bayonetta α / Dark Eve

The Bayonetta of the Alphaverse. She tried to stop Singularity, but fell in battle. Her consciousness managed to survive, but has merged with the remains of many Arch-Eves consumed by Singularity.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Like Dark Adam, Dark Eve is described in her bio as being a mindless force of destruction with virtually nothing left of her former selves. Yet, when fought at the end of the game she is clearly testing Viola with purpose, shows memory of the lessons Arch Eve Origin taught Viola during the game, and explains why Viola must defeat her. Viola also acknowledges her as her mother in the end, all suggesting that Dark Eve underwent some kind of change after Singularity's destruction and the restoration of the various worlds, and may even have no longer been just Dark Eve but a conduit through which Arch Eve Origin Bayonetta in Inferno could interact with Viola in the World of Chaos one last time. Yet, nothing is confirmed.
• Anchors Away: Wields Cassiopeia in battle.
• Dying as Yourself: Upon defeat, she transforms back into her normal appearance, passing on her title of Bayonetta to Viola.
  Bayonetta α: That was your final lesson, Viola. But for someone who's grown so much, perhaps the gift of a new name is in order: Bayonetta.
• Post-Final Boss: The true final boss of Bayonetta 3.
• Voice of the Legion: When Viola stumbles upon her, her voice sounds distorted as she brokenly calls her "kitty".
• The Worm That Walks: Her body is composed with the warped hearts of many Arch-Eves.

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