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Keep Skullgirls Growing

Squigly (and Leviathan)

Sienna Contiello / Squigly

Voiced by: Lauren Landa (English) / Miyuki Sawashiro (Japanese)

Daisy Pusher

Leviathan: "Shall we dance, m'lady?"
Squigly: "Let's."

Sienna Contiello, better known by her affectionate nickname, "Squigly", is a member of a long line of opera singers... or rather, she was. Fourteen years ago, during her mother Selene's birthday celebrations, the Medicis received word that the family had mysteriously come into possession of the Skull Heart, and responded in turn by attacking the party, slaughtering all they could find... Squigly included. In grief, Selene wished for her family to be revived, and they were— as her new, mindless undead army, since her selfish wish also turned her into the Skullgirl. Squigly would be spared the fate of the rest of her family thanks to the timely intervention of the snake-like Parasite Leviathan, a close friend of the family. The pair aided the Anti-Skullgirl forces in defeating her mother before falling into dormancy, where she would remain until Marie became the Skullgirl years later.

Squigly is the first of the two characters originally planned to be in the original eight, but development was postponed in order to replace her with Valentine and Double instead. Squigly was released for the PC version on August 22, 2013, with the PlayStation3 version receiving her on February 11, 2014 and the Xbox 360 likewise doing so on July 31 later that same year.

As a playable character, Squigly is a stance character who excels at midrange. When a button is held on any of her grounded moves, Squigly harmonizes with Leviathan through her Dragon's Breath (Punch) and Serpent's Tail (Kick) stances. Whilst in either of these stances, Squigly is able to charge up whatever special is being held and execute an upgraded version of it, increasing the damage dealt and changing its properties, leading to some of her most damaging combos.

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Tropes related to Squigly:

• Ambidextrous Sprite: During her beginning animation, one of her twin sidetails is lost when Leviathan emerges through it, but Leviathan comes out of the other one when she flips (as well as her one skeletal hand switching sides), making it seem to grow back. In turning animations, it sort of looks like the ponytail recedes back into her skull, and then comes back out the other side.
• And That's Terrible: Squigly decides to go for revenge against Lorenzo Medici when she discovers that her mouth was sewn shut by him. The man wasn't satisfied with taking her family and her life, he also was hoping to take away her voice, the life of any singer.
• Apologetic Attacker: She sometimes apologizes to the opponent and says it's Nothing Personal.
• Ass Kicks You: Her snapback attack, though augmented by Leviathan's pointy tail.
• Attractive Zombie: The decade-and-a-half spent dead has been remarkably kind to her, all things considered.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Her Level 5 Blockbuster (which isn't listed in some versions of the game) does obscene damage, but also requires both her stances to be charged up and her taunt active to use. Even the execution (LK, LK, forward, LP, HK) is unconventional compared to all the other supers.
• Back from the Dead: Marie becoming the Skullgirl has caused this. Once Marie is destroyed, she dies once again until another Skullgirl appears.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Filia helped Squigly to defeat Double in the True Final Boss of her story mode. The two also attempt to do this at the end of Eliza's story mode... That one didn't work out so well.
• Badass Adorable: When one of your moves has you jump-roping playfully across the screen, you know this trope is in play.
• Big Eater: Four of the items on her "Likes" list are some kind of food or drink.
• Bittersweet Ending: She and Filia manage to defeat Marie and Double and destroy the Skull Heart, but since the Skull Heart's power was animating her as a zombie, she returns to being dead until the next Skullgirl shows up. At least Filia gives her a proper funeral.
• Blue Blood: Pre-zombification, anyway. It's probably literally blue at this point, what with the lack of circulation.
• Boom, Headshot!: How she died in life, courtesy of Black Dahlia. And how she re-dies in Black Dahlia's Story Mode by the gun of her killer.
• Broken Pedestal: Squigly was actually a very big fan of Eliza's singing growing up. Needless to say, Leviathan telling her that Eliza's actually an ancient evil didn't do wonders for the image.
• Buried Alive: One of her supers has her do this to her opponent.
• Calling Your Attacks:
  Draugen Punch!
  Drake Fang!
  Silver Chord!
  Dragon Strike!
  Tremolo!
  Dragonfly!
  Squigly: Pass!
  Leviathan: Away!
  Leviathan: Inferno!
  Squigly: Of Leviathan!
• Cute Monster Girl: The cutest zombie you'll ever see.
• Dark and Troubled Past: In her updated story mode, it's revealed that her family was murdered by Black Dahlia during the birthday party of Squigly's mother Selene. Selene wished on the Skull Heart to bring her family back, but they all returned as zombies and Selene became a Skullgirl. The only thing that saved Squigly from becoming a mindless zombie was her father Roberto transferring Leviathan to her. It's also implied that Squigly helped kill her own mother. Her Origin Story in Mobile shows this event in full, revealing that after being revived for the first time, she dealt the final blow to both her mother and her father.
• Diving Kick: Her "Fallen Woman" special.
• Downer Ending: After defeating Marie, Double appears and reveals that she set up the whole thing by giving the Skull Heart to Selene and then telling the Medicis that the Contiellos had it. After defeating Double with the help of Filia and Samson, they destroy Marie and the Skull Heart. As her existence was tied to the Skull Heart, Squigly returns to her deep slumber until another Skullgirl rises again.
• Enemy Mine: In her Story Mode, there's a battle where Fila and Samson fight alongside Squigly and Leviathan. Specifically, the final battle against Double or Eliza.
• Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: One of her battle intros has her curtsy to her opponent, as befitting her upbringing.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: Each cast member has their gimmick, and Squigly's is being a zombie. Who sings opera and has a wyrm in her head.
• Expressive Shirt: It's subtle, but her skull themed breastplate reacts to pain in some of her hit animations.
• Eye Scream: Is missing an eye under that fringe, it having been presumably shot out by Black Dahlia.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Her hairstyle.
• Fear of Thunder: Thunderstorms are listed as one of the things she dislikes.
• Final Boss: Of Eliza's story mode alongside Filia.
• Foil: To Filia and Samson: Squigly and Leviathan get along with one another quite swimmingly while Filia and Samson lack the same kind of unity. In battle, Filia and Samson overwhelm their opponents by sheer force albeit with limited cooperation while Squigly and Leviathan fight with incredible synergy to compensate their own lack of powerful attacks. Leviathan even calls out Samson on seemingly controlling Filia, while he, himself, never forces Squigly to do anything she doesn't want to and will apologize if he feels he has displeased her.
  • Also to Marie. Marie was abused and her best friend mutilated for the Medici, but Squigly lost her life and entire family at their hands. At first she was also trying to get revenge on Lorenzo, but unlike Marie she knows the danger of a Skullgirl and decides that stopping Marie is more important than her revenge. Additionally, she doesn't judge Filia for being a Medici, telling Double she'd rather let Filia's actions speak for her, while Marie is more than happy to have Filia die simply for having Medici blood.
• Friendly Enemy: Despite being rivals, Squigly and Filia are rather polite with each other. They probably wouldn't have even fought each other if Samson and Leviathan hadn't started bickering.
• Friendly Zombie: The Undead that are animated by the Skullgirl are not only completely obedient to the Necromancer, but are also extremely aggressive. Squigly is neither thanks to Leviathan's influence and thus retains her courteous nature.
• Girlish Pigtails: Leviathan knocks one of them out in her intro, turning the hairstyle into a single girlish pigtail.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The Contiello family's mass murder and Squigly's own death. Fall of the House of Contiello downplays this somewhat: we see Roberto and Squigly bleeding from their wounds, but the attacks themselves are left as Sound Only Deaths.
• Hartman Hips: To the point that one fanart of her had the title "19A-14-DAMN!" To drive the point home, Squigly's Outtake, Basso Buffo, which utilizes her butt, has Leviathan make the DAT ASS face with sunglasses and all. This trope is even cited by name on her model sheet. Big Band also commented on this in his intro when fighting Squigly using his "Saxploitation" voice saying, "You little in the middle, but you got much BACK."; though in 2023 the line was removed in order to tone down the game's sexualization of its female characters—especially the underaged ones.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Squigly is willing to stop the Skullgirl, even if it means dying again.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Squigly has this hairstyle for a completely justifiable reason: it's covering her missing eye.
• Home Stage: New Meridian Rooftops and Rooftops Assault came with her DLC.
• Implied Death Threat: When tagging out, she may taunt the opponent with a "See you soon!" Note that when she tags out, she goes into a coffin.
• Inconsistent Spelling: An image found in the game files spells her name "Squiggley." It is also very common for the number of gs in her name to be increased without checking first.
• Inelegant Blubbering: At the beginning of her Story Mode. Justified; her family was being assassinated and she was next.
• Innocent Soprano: Squigly is considered to be a Mezzo-soprano, and out of all of the female cast members, she is by far the most noble.
• Interface Screw: One of her attacks can cause the camera to zoom in closer to her, decreasing the size of the playing field so she can get closer. The charged version does the same thing except that she also temporarily prevents the camera from moving, which creates a corner.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: How can she fight in that skirt?^note She couldn't herself run while wearing it, but Leviathan provides some thrust which she uses to glide. Also, most of her kick attacks move both legs to the same place at the same time, similar to drop kicks, the exception being her standing mid kick which probably already goes as far as the skirt allows.
• Lady of War: Her fighting style is said to be very graceful and flowing, in contrast with the violent rough-and-tumble style of Filia and Samson.
• Lag Cancel: Performing a stance right after a normal and quickly releasing the button allows Squigly to do this, and proves to be the core mechanic of her longer combos.
• Last of Her Kind: In a way. She's the only Contiello that could keep her free will after the voice of the Skullgirl awoke them.
• Long-Range Fighter: Her gameplay focuses on long-range attacks and avoiding close quarters; she has Leviathan to provide far-reaching pokes and snares, her musical abilities to deny space, and fending off airborne foes with her uppercut.
• Magic Music: One of her supers involves using her opera skills to create a giant projectile, resembling Leviathan's flames.
• Man Bites Man: One of her planned attacks was to have her take a bite out of her opponents. This wasn't implemented, but Leviathan has many biting attacks.
• Mighty Glacier: Absolutely terrible mobility with slow attacks, but she hits like a truck if you let her. Her Center Stage and Silver Chord specials were made to help her poor movement.
• Mouth Stitched Shut: In her Story Mode we learn it was done after her "death" by Lorenzo Medici, who was trying to send a symbolic message to his rivals.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Does this in her Origin Story: Selene turns over the Skull Heart to Black Dahlia, and it seems like her and the surviving Contiellos will be spared - until Squigly insults Dahlia, aggravating the assassin into shooting her anyway.
• Of Corsets Sexy: See Hartman Hips above.
• On the Next: Parodied in her joke story mode ending, where Filia gives a deliberately vague preview of Squigly's actual story mode, with a couple of quips from Samson here and there.
  Samson: Don't miss it, or I'll knock your teeth out!
  Filia: Samson, be nice...
• Our Zombies Are Different: She is a walking corpse, but Leviathan's presence protects her from falling under the Skullgirl's sway.
• Overly Long Name: Her full name is Sienna Quinton CiShan Contiello...though the middle names might have been Retconned since they aren't used in her Story Mode.
• Power Echoes: Squigly's mouth is sewn shut, but invokedaccording to Alex Ahad, her space-manipulation powers allow her to talk by creating vibrations in the air in front of her face. As a result of her unusual method of "speaking", her voice has a bizarre reverb effect; it's easier to hear it when the music is turned down.
• Pretty Little Head Shots: The hole in her head that Leviathan occupies was caused by Black Dahlia's gun. Despite the massive size of said gun, the hole itself is relatively small and clean enough to leave her head intact.
• Punctuated Pounding: One of her lines when using her Heavy Fallen Woman attack, which consists of her falling from the air and using Leviathan's tail to toss the opponent away when landing.
  Grave! (Attack hits opponent) Digger! (Attack flings them away)
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: An after-effect caused by Levithan embedding himself into Squigly (this clearly happened because of his natural Theonite energy). In spite of this, she is very sweet and serene.
• Revenant Zombie: Out of all the types of zombies out there, Squigly is most likely a revenant. Unlike the ones summoned by the Skullgirl, are most of the time nothing more but puppets the Skullgirl can bend to her will. Squigly is an exception to this as not only does she retain her personality and memories, but her individuality is very much intact. And this is possible thanks to Leviathan.
• Revenge Before Reason: Averted. She leaves aside her revenge against Lorenzo Medici in favor of destroying the Skull Heart, knowing how dangerous a Skullgirl could be.
• The Rival: invokedWord of God claims she's this to Filia, especially the relationship between Samson and Leviathan.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Becomes this in her ending. Buried by Filia, Squigly will revive to destroy the Skull Heart when it re-appears and makes a new Skullgirl.
• Serious Business: Karaoke, apparently.
• Shoryuken: Played with. Her "Draugen Punch" special has Squigly perform one while Leviathan charges head on in synch with the punch. In other words, it's a literal "Rising Dragon Fist".
• Some Call Me "Tim": Even her mother called her Squigly. Also counts as an In-Series Nickname.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: To Double. And it was awesome.
  Squigly: I've heard enough!
• Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration: Type III. She heals the wounds she takes in fights as well as any other character, but parts of her have rotted away. All the rotten parts can be conveniently hidden by her clothes. Most notable is her left arm, which has completely rotted away, leaving only the skeleton.
• Stance System: Comes in two flavors.
• Theme Naming: Some of her attacks are named after famous operas, like "Dance of Salome" and "Madame Dragonfly" or musical terms, like "Arpeggio" and "Tremolo".
• Together in Death: A non-romantic example with Leviathan. He was buried alongside her and will remain at her side in her deep slumber.
• Undead Child: Poor Sienna was murdered and raised at the age of 14. And while she is technically a young adult, her body at this point has since stopped aging.
• Undeathly Pallor: Her skin is purple because her blood has since been embalmed and is clearing experiencing livor mortis.
• Unknown Rival: Being the one that killed Squigly, Black Dahlia is obviously listed as one of her dislikes, but the feeling isn't mutual — Dahlia doesn't even remember who Squigly is, having to be reminded by her secretary Bookie when Squigly confronts her in her story mode.
  Black Dahlia: You're not the ones I want, but I'm quite happy to play with you if you're bored, whoever you are.
  Leviathan: How dare you?! Is that all you have to say, murderer?
  Black Dahlia: Should I know you?
  Squigly: You killed me!
  Black Dahlia: I kill a lot of people.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite the important role she and Filia play at the start of Marie's Story Mode, being the ones who allowed Peacock to separate the Skull Heart from Marie, they practically disappear from the story immediately afterwards, not even getting a passing mention on what happened to them.
• Wise Beyond Her Years: She's only fourteen (discounting the time spent unconsciously dead), but she's one of the most mature, level-headed members of the cast. Especially towards the end of her Story Mode, when she decides stopping the Skull Heart, at the cost of her life, is more important than revenge against the Medicis who killed her and her family.
• You Will Not Evade Me: While singing, the camera focuses on her; which causes the field to move, drawing her opponent closer. The charged up version of the move also briefly immobilizes her opponent and can be canceled into her grab super.
  • She also has a move where she sends out Leviathan's tail to hook her opponent and pull them towards her.
  • Her Level 3 Blockbuster will follow the opponent until it contacts. It will be weaker, but still connect.

Tropes related to Leviathan:

Voiced by: Liam O'Brien (English) / Itaru Yamamoto (Japanese)

• Beware My Stinger Tail: He can use his bladed tail to attack.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Downplayed. While he's obviously fond of his host, treats everyone else with a fair degree of respect and usually acts like the gentleman he presents himself as, some of his lines fall into Jerkass territory and he can be prone to outright feral bouts of violence, so it's safe to say he's not completely honorable.
  Squigly: I apologize in advance.
  Leviathan: I don't.
• Breath Weapon: Leviathan can breathe fire. However, since he's relatively tiny, the flames don't go very far, and are better used as a short-range blaze. He does, however, fry Double with a Godzilla-style blast in Squigly's ending.
• Calling Your Attacks: Squigly and Leviathan have a unique version of this where they finish each other's callouts.
  Mortis!
  Circlet!
  Squigly: Pass!
  Leviathan: Away!
  Leviathan: Inferno!
  Squigly: Of Leviathan!
• The Comically Serious: Not all the time, but he has his moments, like showing a fierce face while Squigly is happily jumping rope.
• Dog Walks You: In a moment of uncharacteristic feralness, Leviathan drags Squigly while he bites everything in his way until he is pacified by his host.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When performing Squigly's snapback move, during the moment when the attack is supposed to connect, Leviathan is visibly wearing shades and has an expression on his face resembling the Rich Boy "Dat Ass" meme.
• Jagged Mouth: Leviathan has one as his fangs seem to be fused with his skull.
• Jump Jet Pack: Leviathan provides a thruster for Squigly's glide.
• Lemniscate: The symbol that Leviathan makes during the duo's Infinity Breaker.
• Non-Human Undead: Less obvious than Squigly's zombification, he is nonetheless a skeletal wyrm with glowing yellow eyes. Extra points for being tied into an undead human, which is the only thing that lets Squigly avoid the Skullgirl's control.
• Our Dragons Are Different: While he normally resembles a white serpent, Squigly at several points refers to him as a dragon, and indeed Squigly's Level Three Blockbuster has him transforming into a much beefier, draconian version of himself. Concept art actually shows him with wings and claws, in a manner similar to a Dracolich.
• Ouroboros: Some of their moves have Leviathan biting his own tail.
• Playing with Fire: Leviathan's specialty.
• Really 700 Years Old: Squigly and Eliza's Story Modes reveal he's older than the Skull Heart.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Leviathan plays Blue Oni to Samson's Red Oni. Whereas Samson is aggressive, Leviathan is more co-operative and gentle with his host, as well as honourable.
• The Rival: invokedWord of God says that he's this to Samson, especially between the relationship between Filia and Squigly.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: He has yellow eyes much like Samson and is able to do a variety of things such as spewing purple flames, blocking the influence of the skull heart, and even warping space.
• The Symbiote: Albeit a far more benign version than Samson.
• Take a Bite Out of Crime: While Squigly doesn't bite, Leviathan does.
• Technicolor Fire: The flames he spews are magenta in color.
• Together in Death: A non-romantic variant. Since Leviathan can't survive without a host, he dies along with Squigly when Marie is defeated.
• We Used to Be Friends: Apparently with Samson, if Leviathan's story is anything to go by.

Big Band

Benjamin Birdland / Big Band

Voiced by: Rich Brown (English) / Tomokazu Sugita (Japanese)

Bird Dog on The Beat

"When the word of law falls, pick it up and hold it higher!"

Before he was the musical detective he is now, Ben Birdland was an honest beat cop... too honest, in fact. His squad was on the Medici mafia's take, and when they found out that Ben had been sniffing around, their response was to beat him half to death, leaving him paralyzed and forever bound to an iron lung. It wasn't long after then that he was approached by the Anti-Skullgirl Labs, and he agreed to be rebuilt in exchange for joining their ranks. Now, "Big Band" walks a different beat, aiming to stop the Skullgirls no matter where and when they show themselves.

The second DLC and the cast's first male character. Like Squigly, he was funded by the fans through the Indiegogo crowdfunding event. Big Band was released in the retail version of the game on April 22, 2014.

Big Band uses his huge size to his advantage, creating an insanely powerful and wide hitting opponent with a number of crushing abilities. Unique to Big Band is the Sound Stun mechanic, wherein many of his moves apply additional hitstun to the opponent, which can lead into some truly deadly combos. Additionally, Big Band has access to Noise Cancel, which allows him to parry an attack when the player taps forward right before an opponent's attack hits, allowing Big Band to immediately counterattack.

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• Alliterative Name: Both his secret identity and his real name.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Big Band knows that New Meridian is a dangerous and shady place and knows this from experience as he was violently assaulted by most of his own squad of Dirty Cops for trying to arrest the Medicis and was left for dead with his body broken beyond repair. Normally, such a tragedy would drive anyone over the edge, but not Ben as not only did he retain his morality, but also his sanity as well. He also doesn't consider destroying the skull heart to be a happy end, as he knows that there are dangerous hooligans still infesting the city streets and wants to keep fighting to make sure those streets will always be safe.
• Armless Biped: He doesn't have human arms, instead using small claws to pick stuff up and hold his instruments. Though he does have a giant metal fist, it has no articulation so he can't use it for anything other than punching.
  • Could be considered zigzagged as he does have arms under his long coat. It's just that said arms are pieces of his hidden arsenal of weapons.
• Ascended Extra: He can be seen on the left hand side of the Lab 8 stage, originally being a voiceless background character long before he became a playable character.
• Badass Longcoat: Wears one to hide his mostly mechanical body. Interestingly, there's suggestions that it's also part of his 'pneumatic weapons' kit, as the large valve-shaped hatches on the sleeves factor into several of his attacks.
• Baritone of Strength: As voiced by the appropriately named Rich Brown, Big Band is a big man who hits like a runaway truck with its brakes cut, and has the deepest voice among the playable cast.
• Big Band: It's his code name and main motif, with the wide instrument ensemble and a particular focus on percussion and brass/woodwind instruments. Note that strings are conspicuous by their absence; this is due to them lacking the necessary 'pneumatic' element to fit his ASG weapon kit.
• Big Good: One of the most unquestionably moral characters and de facto leader of Lab 8's field team. Everyone instantly turns to him for guidance when Doctor Avian is killed by Valentine.
• The Big Guy: Following his rebuilding, he stands 7'8" and weighs 5000 pounds, of which 95 pounds is organic.
• Blank White Eyes: While his eyes are normally white, they will occasionally become these when he is hurt.
• By-the-Book Cop: He used to be one. Unfortunately, the cops he worked with were of the corrupt variety...
• Calling Your Attacks:
  Clash!
  Beat...Extend!
  Take the A-Train!
  SUPER SONIC!
  Giant step!
  Tympany Drive!
  Tubatubatubatubatub-AAAA!!
• Charge-Input Special: Big Band is one of two fighters in the game that uses charge inputs. He is a Juggernaut-style fighter who's Signature Attack, "Brass Knuckles", unleashes a devastating punch that powers through other attacks thanks to his super armor. He has another charge special called "Take the 'A' Train" which is a Grapple Move using the same windup animation as his punch, allowing for mix-ups. Both of these attacks can also be used as anti-air moves.
• Computer Voice: Because of his rebreather, Big Band's voice has a slight mechanical reverb to it.
• Conspicuous Trench Coat: He wears a heavy trenchcoat to conceal his heavily augmented body. However, it also makes him look even more suspicious as many people will actually attack him mistaking him for an outlaw.
• Continuity Nod: His story mode begins with a flashback of him arresting girls with bunny ears and a skull mask - the same ones seen working for Black Dahlia in Squigly's story mode. In the flashback Big Band is assisted by Irvin, the detective that appears in Ms. Fortune's ending; Irvin later appears in the present during Big Band's story.
• Coat, Hat, Mask: He wears a trenchcoat, a fedora, and a rebreather. All of which make him really cool looking.
• Cool Mask: His rebreather. Curiously, despite being a solid piece of metal he is still somehow able to play the trumpet by putting the mouthpiece up to the front and just... blowing hard enough, apparently. What makes this weirder is that Big Band actually lowers his mask sometimes in the dialogue scenes, so he could take it off and play like a normal person.
• Cyborg: As the game points out, he weighs 5000 lbs, but only 95 of those are actually human. The rest is a combination of iron lung and massed music-based weaponry.
• Difficult, but Awesome: On top of being a large-bodied character that primarily uses charge command motions, Band's Noise Cancel parry has to be used within the first 6 frames of when an attack will hit him, and it must be kept up for each individual hit of a given attack. Once you've got everything down, Band is a powerhouse that can't be killed by any move save for a grab attack.
• Donut Mess with a Cop: While he hasn't been seen eating a donut when he was a police officer, Black Dahlia's win animation against him invokes the trope with a cake resembling a pile of donuts.
• Downloadable Content: Available to purchase in the Season 1 Pass.
• Easter Egg: As shown in the link under Musical Gameplay, his trumpet can be legitimately played ingame.
• Everyone Has Standards: He might be willing to rough people up and is all for killing the Skullgirl regardless of her motives, but he draws the line at unnecessary collateral damage. In his own story, when Brain Drain proposes he and Painwheel kill Marie while she's holding up a collapsed building and can't fight back, Big Band vetoes it immediately noting plenty of civilians will die as a result, and proceeds to fight Painwheel when Brain Drain orders her to go through with it.
• Expy: Being a good and honest cop (nearly) killed in his prime due to the actions of corrupt police officials and then being rebuilt into a crime-fighting cyborg makes him a broad-strokes reference to RoboCop. This is even referenced in his "Robocopy" palette.
• A Father to His Men: Takes very good care of the younger members of Lab 8's team, to the point of being a father figure to the younger members of the ASG, especially Peacock. He dispenses fatherly advice (and the occasional whuppin') where needed.
• Film Noir: Big Band has been compared to a film noir character several times, partly for his character design and partly for his mannerisms. His story mode cements this by being the only one to begin with a first-person monologue as bluesy sax music plays in the background.
• Foil: To Peacock. Both are Lab 8 reconstructed Anti Skullgirl weapons/Cyborgs put back together from what little remained of their badly battered bodies, have a Practical Taunt that boost a particular attack, and both of their fighting styles revolve around the most popular forms of entertainment of the 1930's-40's^note Big Band and the big-band era of music (naturally), Peacock and The Golden Age of Animation. However, where Peacock is loud, rude, overconfident, and borderline sociopathic, Big Band is sedate, mostly polite, wise, and friendly (notably, he never starts any of his fights in story mode, except the final one). Peacock is also a young girl, while Big Band is an older man. There's also the fact that Big Band can play all the instruments in his body pretty well while Peacock can only manage to play a Banjo badly. And like the previous DLC-introduced foil character, Big Band teams up with his counterpart for the final battle.
  Big Band: Don't clown me, Peacock. I do not fool around.
  Peacock: Too bad, Big Bird! All I do is fool around!
• Good Is Not Soft: A good guy and one of the most moral members of the Anti-Skullgirl team (especially compared to more extreme examples like Brain Drain), but do not cross him by committing crimes or threatening his charges—he's Big Band for a reason, and he will dunk on you with a giant metal fist.
• Hammerspace: He's capable of pulling out some truly gigantic instruments and weapons from beneath his coat, more than his already large frame would allow.
• Handicapped Badass: Like Darth Vader, his suit is basically an Iron Lung.
• Hardboiled Detective: Complete with a Private Eye Monologue.
• Home Stage: Under the Bridge came with his DLC.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: It's impressive how many weapons can fit under that coat. Not only that but he can seemingly summon weaponry!
• I Have to Go Iron My Dog: One of his victory quotes, "I gotta go see a man about a dog!", sounds like this. It's actually an English idiom, though it's rather obscure and unfamiliar to most.
• Incredibly Lame Pun:
  Ms. Fortune: You can has cheezburger.
  Big Band: Now that's just bassist!
  • He has a few more when fighting Ms. Fortune, due to her being a Pungeon Master.
  Those are some choice pieces of calico.
  Better augmented than segmented.
• Instrument of Murder: His attacks all involve giant jazz weapons, including kick pedals, trombones and most notably a saxophone.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Squigly, as hinted at by his mid-fight quotes involving her, and confirmed in the mobile game, which reveals he and a handful of other heroes helped her defeat her mother when she became the Skullgirl; after Squigly and Leviathan passed away, he kept them a secret from the Anti-Skullgirls Labs so they could rest in peace. While Ben never encounters her in the base game's story, his fight quotes indicate he's pleasantly surprised to see her again.
  Big Band: (When starting a fight against Squigly) Now this takes me back.
  Big Band: (After winning a fight against Squigly) Rest easy, Sienna.
  Big Band: (Tagging Squigly in) Sing it, girl!
• I Shall Taunt You: Satchmo Solo gives Big Band 5 uninterrupted seconds to toot whatever the player wants to. Naturally, any Big Band player worth their salt will use this to absolutely style on their opponent, such as in this clip when the Big Band player plays the song "Happy Birthday", while about to score a Happy Birthday combo.
• Jet Pack: Of the Rocket Boots variety. One of his win poses actually turns his entire underside into a giant rocket booster to fly offscreen.
  Big Band: "I must go, my planet needs me."
• Jive Turkey: Half his battle quotes are jazz, blues, and funk shout outs. This gets exaggerated with the Saxploitation dub.
• Kiai: When he does his Satchmo Deathblow, he goes "TUBATUBATUBATUBATUBA".
• Let's You and Him Fight: In his story mode, he gets into fights with Cerebella and Ms. Fortune because of this. Cerebella thinks he's trying to start trouble with the Medicis, while Ms. Fortune thinks he is an agent of the Medicis. In the latter case Irvin, the detective Fortune works with, stops the fight and reveals he was Big Band's former partner.
• Living Weapon: Much to his dismay, but he gets used to it.
• Meaningful Name: Birdland was a famous New York City jazz club that was a Broadway landmark from 1949 to 1965, attracting jazz luminaries such as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Count Basie. It's a fitting surname for a jazz cyborg nicknamed "Big Band."
• Megaton Punch: With a fist roughly the size of Filia's entire body!
• Mighty Glacier: The first proper one in the game, at that. He is big and heavy, and is slow even while dashing but compensates with high damage combos and heavy-hitting Blockbusters. In a twist to this trope's usual characteristics, his standard attacks are actually short-ranged compared to the likes of Valentine, making him rely on his strong gap-closing moves to keep enemies in his reach.
• Musical Gameplay: He's currently planned to produce notes when he chains together combos, so that long combo chains sound like strings of free-form jazz.
  • His standing medium punch produces a trumpet, and hitting buttons while it's out not only extends the attack, but produces notes, allowing you to actually play songs while attacking your opponent. Playing the first five notes of the Skullgirls main theme activates Satchmo Slo-Mo.
  • Example.
• Nice Guy: Genuinely one of the most polite, responsible, and caring members of the cast, being something of a father figure to the younger members of Lab 8. This comes out of him having been an honest By-the-Book Cop prior to his maiming, and an extreme dislike of corruption and organized crime.
• No-Sell: His Noise Cancel parry allows him to tank any attack (except grabs) with reduced damage, even if the attack would have killed him otherwise. Parrying also lets him react to the attack faster than simply blocking allows. The only drawback is the input has relatively strict timing.
• Nothing Personal: Downplayed in his intent to take down Marie. In his eyes, a Skullgirl needs to be put down for the good of everyone and therefore is just a job, but he admits before fighting her that if she had killed Peacock it would definitely be personal.
• The One Guy: Was the only playable male character until Beowulf showed up.
• One-Man Band: Big Band is the fighting game version of this. Cerebella even says the trope's name in Big Band's story mode after he defeats her.
• Power Fist: He has one massive arm made of brass tubes.
• Practical Taunt: Holding his bagpipe taunt powers up his level one supers, turning Super Sonic Jam's ending into a multi-hit flurry of punches and adding a special ending to Tympany Drive that sends his opponent high into the air.
• Prophet Eyes: Big Band's pupils are white in color. This is likely because the corneal opacity is was caused by when one of the members of his former squadron injured his eyes.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: His Satchmo Deathblow followup can cause a punch flurry that'd make Jotaro Kujo and Star Platinum nod in respect.
• Recurring Riff: He'll play a few notes from his stage's theme before and after matches every so often.
• Revenge Before Reason: Averted. Much like Squigly, while he has a very good reason to want revenge on the Medicis, he's aware that they're small potatoes compared to the Skullgirl and doesn't bother antagonizing them.
• Shown Their Work: Big Band's finger placement when playing the trumpet is true to life for each note. Explained in-story as Avian being a jazz fan, and making an effort to work the proper engineering into Band's mechanics.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In Big Band's story, the Skullheart says that it will keep coming back even if it's destroyed. Big Band's response?
  So what?
• Stealth Pun:
  • One of his kick moves involves producing a bass drum pedal from one of his feet. In other words, a kick pedal.
  • Likewise, his standing hard kick has him lunge forward, supporting himself with a music stand. In other words, a Big Band, like a bicycle, is supported by a kickstand.
  • So he's an ex-police officer rebuilt with musical apparatus to fight? He is literally a "beat" cop.
• Team Dad: He is a fatherly figure to Peacock and other younger members of Lab 8.
• Time Stands Still: His level 5 super, Satchmo Solo, allows him to do this. By taking out a trumpet (his standing MP) and playing the first four notes of the Skullgirls Recurring Riff, Big Band can stop time to allow for either a full trumpet solo for the fun of it or do loads upon loads of damage using his Satchmo Deathblow followup.
• Top-Heavy Guy: He doesn't look it normally, but various moves show that his body is essentially a huge, antiquated iron lung balanced atop two short, relatively slender legs.
• Triangles Are the Worst Instrument: Ring-a-Ding has Big Band pull out a traingle and strikes it twice. It is one of his common, weaker attacks and only works when the target is at close range.
• Virtuous Character Copy: Of Q from Street Fighter III: Third Strike. He even borrows the parry mechanic from Street Fighter III to further reference Q.
  • invokedThe developers confirmed that part of his design objective was for him to be 'Q but good'.
• Weak, but Skilled: For a loose definition of "weak", but his machinery is fairly outdated and he does not have parasites like the younger Lab 8 members, but his experience makes up for it.
• We Can Rebuild Him: After being beaten half to death by the Corrupt Cops in his squad (to the point where his legs literally bent the wrong way), Ben was left on life-support with no long term prognosis beyond permanent immobility. Lab 8 found him and, pointing out rightly that he didn't have a lot of good options, suggested that he be a testbed for experimental pneumatic weapons. Ben agreed, and was rebuilt into Big Band.

Fukua (and Shamone)

Fukua

Fukua voiced by: Christine Marie Cabanos (English) / Ayana Taketatsu (Japanese)
Shamone voiced by: Patrick Seitz^*Credited as "Del Stetson" before 2nd Encore (English) / Takashi Kondo (Japanese)

F a t a l F e m m e

"We're gonna get you~"

Fukua is the result of Brain Drain's more unacceptable hobbies- creating clones and forcing the souls of dead warriors into them. She specifically is the result of two of these souls uniting as one- one a proud warrior known for being a brutal close combatant, and the other a silent assassin that specialized in ranged weaponry. Fukua has the best of both worlds, although how long this relationship will last is anyone's guess.

...That's the in-universe explanation. Out-of-universe, Fukua was originally a simple Palette Swap of Filia that the main UI person at Skullgirls created, but he accidentally made a typo when spelling her name. (Type Filia but move your right hand one key to the left to see why.) The fandom took and ran with it, creating an in-joke. She would later come to be an actual character on April Fools' Day 2014, as not only a way to celebrate said day but also to take a potshot at a reveal that happened a few weeks before. Consider her a prototype to Robo-Fortune.

Fukua, despite being a moveset clone, plays a very different game compared to Fillia, focusing less on rushing the opponent down and instead opimizing space control above everything else. Despite this, she's very well-rounded, being able to deal damage from up close with command grabs and her shadows.

---

Tropes associated with Fukua:

• April Fools' Day: The day she came into being.
• Art Shift: Fukua's story is done in a Super-Deformed art style.
• Ascended Extra: In a way, she became this in Black Dahlia's story, having actual lines of dialogue and implied to be acting as a messenger for Aeon. One of Dahlia's Henchbunnies even notes how she's a dead ringer for Filia and is promptly mistaken for her in one of the cutscenes.
• Ascended Glitch: In a sense, also something out a Shout-Out, Fukua's black-and-green coloration directly reference Glitch Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
• Astral Projection: She can separate one of her two souls from her body and use it to attack.
• Cassandra Truth: In her canonical debut in Black Dahlia's story mode, Fukua seems to be trying to warn everyone about the potential end of the world. Considering everything else going on and her inherent nature as a Lethal Joke Character, even the player is probably inclined to dismiss her at first. By the end of Black Dahlia's story mode, however... To her credit, Fukua is well aware of this and hates it.
• Catholic School Girls Rule: Though she may not actually be a schoolgirl at all, she wears the same uniform as Filia, albeit with different colors.
• Characterization Marches On: In her story mode, Fukua's very clearly a cut and dry villain, what with her Kill and Replace plan and all. Cut to her actual appearance in canon, though, and she's fighting against Black Dahlia and seems to be trying to warn everyone about The End of the World as We Know It...even if she isn't happy about it. It also seems like her origin's taken a drastically different route from what we were told before, considering Aeon's implied to be involved.
• Clone Angst: Besides Filia and Samson, she just hates being a clone.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Not immediately evident, but her Blockbuster KO art depicts her smiling as she reels back in pain, so she's probably getting something out of it.
• Divine Assistance: One of her lines in Black Dahlia's story is her grumbling about how she told that "hourglass-waisted lady" that trying to warn everyone about The End of the World as We Know It wouldn't work. It's a very odd descriptor, but doesn't really raise any eyebrows... up until you realize that there is someone with an actual hourglass for a waist in the cast, and an important someone at that.
• Evil Doppelgänger: In contrast to Filia, who is a Nice Girl, Fukua is a petty jerk.
• Expy: To Ermac. Like Fukua, Ermac began life as a invokedjoke before becoming an actual character. In addition, both characters are described as the result of a fusion of souls.
• Flat Character: Shamone is Fukua's parasite who, like Samson, can weaponize Fukua's hair. However, he barely has any characterization and merely parrots the words that Samson has said. This is possibly justified since the pair were created by Brain Drain, meaning that it is heavily implied that Shamone is a synthetic parasite.
• Green and Mean: One of the main things that make Fukua and Shamone different from Fillia and Samson is that they are primarily green instead of black. And considering they are willing to Kill and Replace them, saying they are mean would be appropriate.
• Hitbox Dissonance: Despite having a different neutral stance, Fukua still has the same hurtboxes as Filia. This was done on purpose to make sure that combos that worked on Filia also worked on Fukua.
• Home Stage: Nightmare Crest came with her DLC.
• Kill and Replace: Fukua's story mode takes place in one of Filia's nightmares, as she battles her way to kill Filia in a Battle in the Center of the Mind. The dream ends just after Fukua skins her alive and wears her face as a mask, declaring that "[SHE'S] Filia now!".
• Knight in Sour Armor: Even though she's convinced that no one's going to believe her about the end of the world (and is shown to be completely right about that), that doesn't stop her from trying.
• Lethal Joke Character: She's a moveset clone of Filia made as a complete joke. She's also insanely easy to form combos with and zone opponents.
• Makeup Is Evil: The main visual, non-color difference between her and Filia is she has lipstick and eyeshadow.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: Tender Embrace and Inevitable Snuggle, reusing the animation from Filia's Widow's Peak air throw. The latter is slower, but has armor.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: At the end of Filia's nightmare, Fukua uses her face as a mask. Filia of course wakes up all freaked out. In the bathroom, while inspectionating her face, suddenly, her reflection is Fukua, smirking.
  • Then Umbrella and Annie appear in The Stinger. It's hard to say if they're with Fukua or against Fukua. (Though, one of Umbrella’s victory lines against Fukua is "That was fun! I'll catch you in Filia’s mirror later." so she, at least, seems to be on semi-good terms with Fukua, if the line is to be considered any more canon than Fukua is.) Also, the whole sequence is a Shout-Out to the ending of Twin Peaks.
• Moveset Clone: An Affectionate Parody of the trope. Most of Fukua's normals are simply modified variations of Filia's normals (jumping medium kick and jumping hard kick being the biggest exceptions), and almost all of her palette choices are based on famous moveset clones from other fighting games, like Akuma, Falco, Reptile, etc. Despite this, Fukua's specials and Blockbusters are completely different from Filia's (more or less, see invokedDevelopment Gag) and she has a few other differences besides (such as double jumping instead of air dashing), which results in Fukua having a very different playstyle than Filia. Thus, the trope itself is downplayed.
• Palette Swap: The only visible difference between her and Filia.
• Secret Character: Played with: Fukua's icon on the character select screen used to be invisible until selected by a player.
• Shotoclone: Having most of Filia's moveset puts her here. And unlike Filia, she even has Hadoken-esque ranged attacks to go with it.
• Soul Power: Fukua can use this to throw balls of energy.
• Split-Personality Takeover: The end of her story mode implies that she successfully took control over Filia's body, and that she's Filia now.
• Symbiotic Possession: Largely the same case as Filia with Samson. Shamone takes control most of the time, but the two can work together when they need to. Fukua can fight more independently though, thanks to her Astral Projection powers.
• Take That!: Part of the reason she was made was to take a shot at Decapre. Fukua even has a palette swap based on her.
  • To be more specific, Mike has stated that Fukua's not so much a joke at Decapre as a character, but more how she was presented, having been hyped for eight months straight with Capcom continuously taunting their fanbase all the while... only to release what was (visually) a reskinned Cammy in a mask.
• Theme Naming: Her special moves and Blockbusters all have "romance"-themed names (such as "Blown Kiss" or "Head Over Heels"). Her normals, on the other hand, generally have names that are stolen from the versions of those moves used by Filia or Double and modified if their name includes a character ("Fukua sets mode+k," "Heartseeker," and "Butterfly Kiss" being the rare exceptions).
• Youkai: The "Meet Fukua" video implies "Fukua" is short for Futakuchi-onna, a youkai that takes the shape of a woman with a second mouth on the back of her head.
• Your Days Are Numbered: A mix of Clone Degeneration, Power Degeneration, and Possession Burnout. Fukua's body is unstable and slowly deteriorating because of the two spirits inhabiting it. The dots of energy, dubbed "fireflies", constantly emanating from her body are a byproduct of this.

Eliza (with Sekhmet, Albus, and Horace)

Eliza

Eliza voiced by: Michelle Ruff (English) / Chie Matsuura (Japanese)
Sekhmet voiced by: Wendee Lee (English) / Kujira (Japanese)

Egyptian Egoist

"Darling, you are not prepared for what you are about to face."

On the outside, Eliza is a beautiful, youthful songstress and celebrity diva that runs Bastet's Den, New Meridian's premiere nightclub. This image, however, belies the truth: Eliza is actually countless years old, her beauty maintained by a symbiotic relationship with the blood-hungry Parasite Sekhmet, who Eliza keeps fed through "charitable" blood drives. The Medici have recently discovered Eliza's secret, and are blackmailing her into going after the Skullgirl— a decision that may prove fatal for them, as Eliza's age-old ambitions once again start to stir...

The fourth DLC character and first character voted to be added by the Indiegogo backers, Eliza was released on September 29, 2014.

Eliza is a master of the mid-to-close-range game, being able to decimate the opponent from up-close with large, sweeping normals, but also being able to close the gap with several long-range pokes. Eliza also has a nasty trick up her sleeve with her Sekhmet's Turn special, which sees her retreating to the background and calling forth Sekhmet, who can rush down the opponent with infinite armor. However, while Sekhmet is out, Eliza's health continuously drains, and she must retreat before her host's health fully depletes. On the plus-side, Sekhmet's attacks cause the opponent to spill blood, which Eliza can pick up to regain her lost health.

---

Tropes associated with Eliza:

• All-Powerful Bystander: Despite arguably being an even greater threat than the Skull Heart, Medici Mafia, and Brain Drain combined, she rarely takes an active role in the story. Considering how bad things can get when she's given the opportunity to cut loose, it's for the best.
• Always Someone Better: Proves herself this to the other Parasite users, Filia and Squigly, during her story. Because she has a head start of a few thousand years on them, she is so synchronized with her Parasite that they may as well be one being, so she has such an incredible level of control over her powers that even by working together, Filia and Squigly with their respective Parasites stand no chance at overcoming her.
• Ambiguously Bi: She has (or at least had) a Villainous Crush on Samson, and she also subjects Ms. Fortune to Go-Go Enslavement at the end of her story mode... and in quite the Stripperific outfit, no less.
• Ambiguously Brown: Probably not-so-ambiguous, but we don't exactly know what the Egyptian equivalent in the Skullgirls universe is.
• An Arm and a Leg: Double cuts off one of her arms in Eliza's Story Mode. Eliza gets it back by going inside Gehenna and absorbing the blood there.
• Anti-Gravity Clothing: She has a scarf tied to look like an ankh that floats around her body. She likely uses her haemokinesis to keep it up.
• Ascended Extra: The first winner of the Skullgirls DLC character additions.
• Assist Character: She has two bodyguards that resemble Egyptian deities, one that looks like Anubis (named Albus) and another that looks like Horus (named Horace). She can call in either one to run into the opponent with a chair, call in Horace to divekick the opponent or call in Albus to send the enemy flying.
• Badass Normal: Certainly doesn't apply to Eliza, but her bodyguards, Albus and Horace, are just regular old Ferals.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In her story mode... until Marie suddenly reappears.
• Battle Aura: Of sorts. When standing or crouching still she has droplets of blood swirling upwards around her and the skin on her legs shifts around long enough to expose her bone.
• Beauty Is Bad: Is one of the most attractive, scantily-clad, and gruesome fighters in Skullgirls, with millenia of evil behind her.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Mostly played straight in her story mode, but a hard subversion otherwise: her entire fighting style revolves around twisting and shaping the blood in her body into constructs and weapons. Particular mention has to go to her damage sprites, which show things like her eyes flying out of her head from recoil, her brain getting squished out through her nose and her organs spilling out of her open gut.
  • Fully subverted in Black Dahlia's story mode, where she gets a new talksprite to show how thoroughly Dahlia thrashed her. It's not pretty.
• Big Bad: She can be considered the true villain of the game's plot, especially after she disposed of The Trinity.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: One of her Supers has her turning into a giant scarab.
• Bilingual Bonus: Her real name ("Neferu") means "Beauty". Certainly seems to fit her.
• Benevolent Boss: Surprisingly, she seems to be one to Albus and Horace. Throughout her story mode, she treats them fairly while they help her cut a swath through the main cast and only ever directs her wrath and bloodlust to her opponents, and even rescues them from Double's stomach as she makes her escape.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Stealing blood from charity donations is only the tip of the iceberg of what this woman will do.
• Black Eyes of Crazy: Most of her palette swaps have black sclera, as does Sekhmet.
• Blade Spam: For one of her attacks, Sekhmet forms a pair of khopesh swords out of blood and rapidly stabs at her opponent with them.
• Blood Knight: During her story mode, she commentates at how lively she feels ever since she started "hunting" again.
• Bloody Murder: She manipulates her own blood to create weapons, and Sekhmet uses blood to create a pair of khopesh and an axe.
• Body Horror: The parasite Sekhmet has replaced her entire skeleton. During her pushblock, Sekhmet explodes out of her body to force her opponent away and her eyeballs are held in place by beetles. All that's left of Eliza's original body are her eyes and a few vital organs, with everything else being Sekhmet or a blood construct.
• Break the Haughty: After getting knocked down a peg in Umbrella's story mode, Black Dahlia's story mode has Eliza's most substantial loss yet - she fights Dahlia alongside Cerebella after Dahlia refuses to forfeit the Skull Heart, and only after the fight does she realize that the stage is specifically designed to counter her powers by draining the blood she was using to somewhere she can't reach, at which point Dahlia's Henchbunnies end up incinerating her.
• Bullying a Dragon: The Medicis blackmail an ancient vampiric monstress to make her kill again. It's implied at the start of her story mode that this would lead to bad things and it does. Things never stop becoming worse and she appears to be causing it all for kicks.
• Cast From Hitpoints: As of a 2021 rework, Sekhmet now draws from Eliza's HP to remain active instead of her meter. Opponents hit by Sekhmet's attacks will spill blood, which Eliza herself may pick up to recover HP.
• Cat Girl: Sekhmet is referred to as a "cat", has ear-like protrusions extending from her skull and vertically-slitted pupils. Fitting, considering who she's named after.
• Chairman of the Brawl: Either Albus or Horace pushes a lounge chair towards the opponent as one Eliza's assist attacks.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Her winning animation has her going into a sarcophagus and suddenly coming out with some fabulous outfit, often either a Pimped-Out Dress or a Stripperific bathing suit. She also changes to a bathing suit for her crouching hard kick. Justified, as her clothes are made of blood, and therefore as malleable as the rest of her.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Appears on a billboard in the Medici Tower stage, long before she joined the roster of playable characters.
• Combat Stilettos: Of course, since they (like the rest of her flesh and clothing) are shapeshifted blood, they don't hinder her; she transforms them into a more suitable shape as necessary.
• Conspicuous Consumption: While most of her clothes don't count, being part of her body, everything else does. Notably, in the story mode, she makes her entrance in a personal custom limousine decorated with Egyptian imagery.
• Darker and Edgier: Her story mode is one of the darkest in the game, only really rivalling Double, Painwheel and Parasoul's.
• Dark Horse Victory: In a meta sense, her and Beowulf's fan vote victory. Compared to the amount of fanart and fan discussions, neither of the two seemed to be as popular as some of the other characters, such as Feng, Umbrella, or Minette, but both of them managed to out-vote the other hopefuls. Notably, while Beowulf had some fans, Eliza had very few people talking about her. Most of her fanart and discussions came after her victory.
• Dem Bones: Sekhmet takes the place of her skeleton and can emerge from her body to fight.
• Egypt Is Still Ancient: She's from a Fantasy Counterpart Culture similar to Egypt, her Parasite is named after an Egyptian goddess, and she uses the alias Neferu, the Kemet word for "Beauty", given as a name to several Egyptian queens. She also respects cats, like the Ancient Egyptians used to do.
• Expy:
  • Eliza has the famous Cleopatra haircut and pointy nose. Her current name may even be derived from a famous actress who played her.
  • Her name and use of blood to maintain her youth are also likely a reference to Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer who was believed to bathe in the blood of her victims believing it would maintain her youth.
• Evil Diva: In the present day, she makes a fortune as a singer and uses her influence to feed without drawing attention. Subverted a bit, since as long as she is allowed to remain a diva her evil remains limited to just phony blood drives, and that at least stops her from preying on the populace at large. It's when the Medicis decide to use her as a personal headhunter that things get a lot bloodier...
• Evil Former Friend: She is greatly implied to be one to both Leviathan and Samson considering she tries to be nice to them once they are reunited.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: And her storyline is a really good example why. You don't get The Crimson Scourge to come out of retirement and expect her to serve as a good little pet.
• Evil Versus Evil: When she goes up against the game's other villains which includes Cerebella, Marie, Double, and Black Dahlia.
• Fake Charity: Her charity blood drives, which actually serve to feed herself and Sekhmet. Although, it is implied that she does donate some of the blood, but only because she wants to maintain a good reputation.
• Fan Disservice: One of the more conventionally attractive characters. Also one of the more gory characters, frequently revealing her skeleton and organs through attacks.
• Fantastic Racism: Rails in her Story Mode against discrimination by humans against Theons (which they now in common parlance call 'Parasites'), and simultaneously believes Theons to be superior to humans and deserving of adulation. Fellow Parasites Leviathan and Samson could not possibly disagree more, and, according to the latter, human suspicion toward their kind is entirely Neferu's fault in the first place from her days as the Crimson Scourge.
• Faux Affably Evil: Speaks in an imperious and eloquent tone of voice even when beating her opponents into the ground- and that's not even taking Sekhmet into account.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Her stage costume looks to be themed after her old identity, or at least her culture.
• Game Face: When she's feeling particularly bloodthirsty, Eliza will reveal Sekhmet's eyes and fangs.
• A God Am I:
  • After defeating Double, Lamia's proxy, she considers herself divine and states that everything the goddess possessed was destined to be hers.
  • It is also one of her Infinite Prevention quotes. (I am a god!)
• Gorn: Her hitstun animations, seeing as she's a mass of blood and organs and getting hit disrupts her concentration. In one of them, her brain partially comes out of her nose.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Her story mode shows that her actions in the past set in motion the events that would make the world the terrible place it is today. In this case, she tried to usurp The Trinity.
• Harping on About Harpies: Transforms into a harpy (actually the egyptian goddess Nekhbet) during her air throw and her Nekhbet Breaker Blockbuster.
• Healing Factor: As long as she has enough blood at her disposal, she can regrow lost limbs at will.
• Hellish Pupils: Sekhmet has slitted pupils, a fitting trait for a creature named after the bloodthirsty lion goddess of Egyptian mythology.
• Hero Killer: She tears a hole in the cast in her own story mode. In order: Ms. Fortune is captured and enslaved, Cerebella is stabbed and drained, Marie is (predictably) killed (or...not), Double is killed, Squigly is allowed to expire and be entombed in Eliza's own house to serve as an alert for when the next Skullgirl will rise, and Filia is captured, bound in a blood sarcophagus and slated to be killed once a "more appropriate host" for Samson is found.
• Home Stage: Bath of Tefnut is the stage most associated with her among the three stages from her DLC.
• Humiliation Conga: She's undergoes a brief one in Umbrella's story: First she manipulates Cerebella into helping her try to kidnap the young princess for ransom, only for the both of them to get defeated, leaving Eliza completely mortified. And then, just as she was about to get serious and maul an exhausted Umbrella, she gets knocked out by a sucker punch from Cerebella.
• Icy Blue Eyes: In contrast to the usual Red Eyes, Take Warning of Squigly and Fillia, Eliza's eyes are blue. They fit well for her as they indicate that she is not only cold hearted, but also very patient.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Of a sort, since she — or rather, Sekhmet — drinks human blood.
• Improbable Weapon User: Zig-zagged. Eliza herself wields a mic stand, which is actually a disguised weapon called the Staff of Ra. Sekhmet's knife and axe would be regular weapons, except they are hieroglyphs made of blood.
• Instrument of Murder: Her microphone stand, which doubles as a Sinister Scythe.
• It's All About Me: There is a reason why she is nicknamed the Egyptian Egoist. Despite being a wealthy club singer and blood drive CEO, a part of her doesn't consider that to be enough. She doesn't want to be the center of attention on just a stage, but rather the entire world. As mentioned earlier, she has a god complex, and very much wants to be praised like one.
• Karma Houdini: Hoo boy. Not only is she responsible for several of game's conflicts in one way or another, but her story mode has her murder and/or enslave a good chunk of the cast before moving to conquer the Canopy Kingdom.
• Kill It with Fire: Her fate in Black Dahlia's story, where she's burned to death point-blank by the Henchbunnies after being stripped of any blood source to heal with.
• Kill the God: In her story mode, it's revealed that Eliza killed Aeon and Venus in the past. To complicate things their mother Lamia was possibly slain, through her proxy Double, after a failed attempt of revenge.
• Knight Templar: A lot of her dialogue in her story mode implies that she's thinks that she's doing what she believes is best for her kind and the world, and she continues to uphold these beliefs even when literally everyone else who knows her - even Double- is saying otherwise.
• Long Game: Eliza is surprisingly more relaxed than you'd expect, probably on account of being immortal. As long as she has blood, she's more than content to sit back and take the safe route, usually requiring outside prompting to actually do anything drastic. It takes her getting blackmailed to get off her ass and relive the glory of the hunt, and it takes Filia and Squigly double teaming her with their Parasite partners to decide to go full Kaiju rather than try and spin a web of subtle machinations. This bites her in the ass hard in Black Dahlia's campaign, however - in part because Dahlia isn't nearly as patient.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: For starters, a foreign being replaces her entire skeletal system in a tight symbiosis. The benefits include making her effectively immortal and giving her "haemokinesis", which allows her to: shapeshift, have a strong sense of smell for blood, regrow lost limbs, manipulate blood she comes into contact with to great effect (most often, by a slight margin, as Tentacle Rope), and is empowered when well-fed. The tradeoff is that she has to consume a constant supply of blood by drinking it or putting her "skeleton" into contact with a fresh source. While something like this might be depicted as a problem for a normal person (either due to practical or moral reasons), Eliza unrepentantly enjoys drinking blood and has developed quite a few ways to feed under the radar, most notably by holding blood drives and feeding off of any excess donations.
• The Mafia: She was blackmailed into working for them. They were able to do this because Eliza herself dabbles in racketeering, skimming off the top of her blood drives to keep Sekhmet fed.
• Ms. Fanservice: Shapely, well-endowed body, beautiful face, sensual foreign vibe, elegant clothing, Dominatrix personality... She gives Valentine a run for her money in this department, at least until she does basically anything in battle, at which point it becomes obvious she is little more than a living skeleton enveloped in a blood construct. It's very likely that Eliza herself exploits this trope. Due to the nature of her body, she can look basically however she wants, and since she's an Attention Whore and an Evil Diva who needs blood to survive, why wouldn't she make herself look attractive?
• Mental Fusion: Other parasite users have the parasite and the host conversing and distinct from each other, but Eliza and Sekhmet seem to be one being. Either one of them overpowered the other, or they've been bonded so long they stopped considering themselves as separate beings. She considers this to be a source of strength - when confronted by both Filia and Squigly, who say that Eliza is outmatched "4 to 2", she replies that it's more like 4 to 1... but that Filia and Squigly should not be too quick to think that's to their advantage, for she is perfectly bonded with her Parasite and they aren't. She then proceeds to prove her point in a very brutal fashion.
• Nasal Weapon: The optional second half of her Middle of the Sphinx crouching-MP normal has her sneeze her own nose off as a projectile propelled by High-Pressure Blood. It grows back almost immediately, though for a brief moment her face is scrunched in discomfort (her official bio lists 'losing her nose' as one of her dislikes).
• Nepharious Pharaoh: She is a malicious Eygpytian-themed villainess who absolutely qualifies for being this. She has a Cleopatra bobcut with a hieroglyph inspired headress, wears a stylized shendyt, is a wealthy performer, and creates several blood-formed constructs that all reference the Eygptian mythos.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: An unholy fusion of vampiress and mummy, with a Parasite that appears to be a Cat Girl skeleton... who also happens to be a popular singer.
• Oh, My Gods!: She swears on Egyptian gods.
• One-Winged Angel: At the end of her story mode, she turns into a giant cat-headed man made of all the blood she has been collecting in her life in order to make a strike on the whole Medici mafia. Pretty much as an opening act to take over the world.
• Our Vampires Are Different: It's not so much that she's vampiric so much as her skeleton is, but at this point the difference is mostly academic. She has just a touch of Mummy for flavor, coming from her Egyptian theme.
• Power Gives You Wings: She is able to summon a pair of wings made from her own blood that allow her to fly.
• The Power of the Sun: Eliza can use the Staff of Ra to produce burning stellar flames that can take on various shapes, be it hieroglyphs or giant Fireballs.
• Practical Taunt: Her taunt causes all attacks done while playing Sekhmet to heal herself for the duration of the transformation. In addition it also allows Sekhmet to perform her Lady of Slaughter super outside of Eliza's body once.
• Pretty in Mink: One of her win poses has her proclaiming her wealth while wearing a full length fox coat, which is usually white, but can be palette swapped.
• Primal Stance: The way Sekhmet moves around the field.
• Punny Name: One of her specials that makes Egyptian statue-like figures rise out of the ground is called Upper Khat. Uppercut, anyone?
• Puppeteer Parasite: Sekhmet's conversation with Leviathan in her story mode implies that Eliza is nothing but a meat puppet for the Parasite. Alternately, maybe their personalities have more or less merged and all that keeps them apart is independent identity.
• Really 700 Years Old: She's so old that she's not even using her real name; Eliza is just an alias she uses for the modern day. Her true identity is Neferu, and not only is she old enough to know both Samson and Leviathan like old friends, who themselves are older than the Skull Heart, she's old enough to remember Queen Lamia, the power directly behind both Double and the Heart, as well as her daughters Aeon and Venus, two of the Trinity. She killed the latter two as a matter of fact.
• Red Baron: "She Who Mauls" for Sekhmet, "Crimson Scourge" for Eliza herself.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Many of her normal moves have snake imagery in some form, and her crouching medium kick has crocodile imagery.
• Retired Monster: She was once known as the Crimson Scourge, but in the present day, she is keeping a low profile as a famous singer whose villainy is largely limited to feeding off of blood drives. And then the Medicis attempt to blackmail her into working for them, giving Eliza a chance to get back into the thrill of the hunt. Things rapidly go downhill from here.
• Rich Bitch: Hinted to be one, as if being a sadistic, unrepentant vampiress abomination was not enough. Granted, maybe the two go hand-in-hand after all.
  Eliza: (After changing her clothes to a fur coat) Yes, I am rich.
• Scarab Power: Eliza's Level 3 Blockbuster; Khepri Sun has Eliza taking on the form of a giant scarab that flies across the screen while burning the opponent with a giant fireball. She even turns the excess blood of Gehenna into a swarm of scarabs that follow her out of the ruins and even sics them on the Skullheart when it tries to intimidate her one last time.
• Slave to PR: It's pretty much the reason why she is working with the Medici Mafia in the first place. Eliza and Sekhmet have a bad habit of slurping some of the donated blood from her charity blood drives, and when the Medici's found out about this, they use it to Blackmail her into working for them.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: Most of her attacks involve taking advantage of her flesh's malleability to some extent.
• Showgirl Skirt: Her slinky dress has the skirt cut this way to show that her legs.
• Snakes Are Sexy: She's also one of the most fanservice-y members of the cast.
• Stance System: Certain specials allow Eliza to call Sekhmet out of her body to act as a more aggressive character. In this mode, Sekhmet is completely Immune to Flinching, and she can do some pretty nasty combos, but using her drains your total meter over time. If your meter runs out, Sekhmet will automatically go back to Eliza.
• Statuesque Stunner: At 5'11", Eliza's only an inch shorter than Valentine, the tallest female in the roster.
• The Sociopath: Eliza basically checks off every box for this one. She's ruthless, self centered, never feels any guilt for the awful ways she hurts others yet is fully aware of doing so, has no qualms about murder or kidnapping, and even her acts of charity in the form of blood drives only serve to make her look good and provide her with blood. Even her singing career is a means to an end; she mostly uses it because she craves recognition and power, and once she's powerful enough to simply take over the city, she decides to take a...different approach.
• Symbiotic Possession: Eliza and Sekhmet have such a close codependent relationship and are so in synch with each other that it's difficult to know where Eliza ends and Sekhmet begins. In fact, at several points it's implied that they've actually mentally fused with one another at some point in their past. If so, it might explain their mutual obsession with Samson, a Parasite.
• Technically Naked Shapeshifter: Her clothes are made of the same shapeshifted blood as most of the rest of her form. Shown off in her victory animation, where she converts her outfit to another.
• Terms of Endangerment: She may call her opponents "darling" in battle, but takes things up a notch by referring to Ms. Fortune as "my pet", "dangerous prey", and "forbidden fruit".
• Tomboyish Voice: In contrast to Eliza's voice, which is silky and charming, Sekhmet's is far more raspy and aggressive, befitting her nature of being the violent half of Eliza.
• Vampires Are Rich: She feeds on blood (or rather her Parasite does), and she is a famous diva loaded with money.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: Almost every attack of hers contains some reference to Egyptian Mythology.
  • Eliza's hitstun animation where her brain partially comes out of her nose is likely to be a reference to the way Ancient Egyptians prepared bodies for mummification. The brain is one of the organs that needed to be removed for the procedure, and to avoid damaging the cranium, embalmers used special hooks to extract it through the nose.
  • Those things floating around Eliza's mummy-like form while Sekhmet is out are canopic jars, used by embalmers to preserve the organs of the dead.
  • Her Solar Arc attack, where she swings the Staff of Ra, leaving behind a trail of fire, then follows by sending a blood snake along the same trail, is particularly clever. It's a representation of the struggle between Ra, the god of the sun, and the serpent deity Apophis, said to attack Ra every night in an attempt to devour him.
  • The projectile follow-up of her Middle of the Sphinx attack leaves her briefly noseless in a manner resembling the Great Sphinx of Giza.
• Villain Protagonist: In her story mode, where we, the players, discover that Eliza is the root of pretty much all the dystopian things in the Skullgirls world and we help her to reignite her ancient ambition for world domination.
• Voice of the Legion: When she's feeling particularly bloodthirsty, she flashes a Game Face and Eliza's and Sekhmet's voices are layered over one another when she speaks.

Tropes related to Albus:

Voiced by: Christopher Corey Smith (English) / Atsushi Imaruoka (Japanese)

• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Although it is a bit hard to tell, Albus' fur/skin is actually dark indigo.
• Assist Character: Eliza can use ‘Weight of Anubis' to have Albus appear from beneath the opponent to grab them by the legs and toss them towards her. Along with that, using ‘Throne of Isis' will have Eliza snap her fingers to summon either Albus or Horace to run the opponent over with a chair.
• Badass Normal: Albus doesn't have any powers, but he's tough enough to have become Eliza's servant/bodyguard.
• Bantering Baddie Buddies: Will argue with one another but never to the point of interfering with Eliza's work.
• Battle Butler: Is one alongside Horace.
• Beast Man: A bipedal and musclebound jackal.
• Beware of Vicious Dog: Not a dog. A jackal. But regardless, Albus is usually rude to anyone who isn't Eliza or Horace, and is more than happy to sic 'em if they try anything funny.
• Bouncer: He is described as being one in his concept art.
• Dark Is Evil: Albus has a very dark fur tone and is more than happy to beat up anyone who so much as gives him the wrong impression.
• Dreadlock Rasta: He has dreadlocks that resemble an Egyptian Headress and is very much a ruffian.
• Dreadlock Warrior: In addition to what was stated above, Albus is almost always very eager to get into a fight.
• Dumb Blonde: His dreads are pale yellow in color and he isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Although, this is downplayed as he isn't a moron.
• Dumb Muscle: Downplayed, Albus is the less attentive of the two servants and goes into the fray headfirst without thinking.
• Fur Is Skin: The fur on his body and hair that composes his dreadlocks are actually completely different in color.
• I'm Standing Right Here: When Squigly/Leviathan and Filia/Samson team up on Eliza in a 'four against two', Albus has this to say.
  Albus: Hey, don't we count?
  Horace: I don't think they care about us, friend.
• Mythical Motifs: He is clearly inspired by Anubis.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The crass and volatile counterpart to Horace.

Tropes related to Horace:

Voiced by: Sean Schemmel (English) / Tadanori Date (Japanese)

• Affably Evil: Is polite and well spoken, but doesn't hesitate to beat anyone up who looks at Eliza the wrong way.
• Assist Character: Eliza can use ‘Dive of Horus' to have Horace perform a dive kick from above on the opponent, knocking them down. Using ‘Throne of Isis' will summon either Horace or Albus to run the opponent over with a chair.
• Badass Normal: Like Albus, he doesn't have any powers but is tough enough to have become Eliza's servant/bodyguard.
• Battle Butler: Is one alongside Albus.
• Beast Man: He's a bipedal and wingless falcon.
• Black Bead Eyes: He actually has these under his glasses.
• Bridal Carry: How Horace holds Eliza when she's tagged in, dive-kicking the opponent before setting her down and soaring away.
• Brutal Bird of Prey: He is a humanoid Falcon who happens to be loyal Eliza and is very much willing to attack anyone who would dare to challenge her.
• Mythical Motifs: He is definitely inspired by Horus; even his name is homonymous with that of the Egyptian god of war and the sky.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue Oni to Albus's Red, Horace is the calmer and more sophisticated servant of the two.
• Stout Strength: Horace is noticeably pudgier than Albus, but it doesn't stop him from fighting alongside him.

Beowulf

Beowulf

Beowulf voiced by: Kai Kennedy (English) / Daisuke Ono (Japanese)
Referee voiced by: Christopher Corey Smith (English) / ? (Japanese)

A Hurtin' Coming On

"It's time! IT'S TIME!! IT'S BEOWULF TIME!!!"

Years ago, Beowulf was a star in the ring, best known for taking down the Gigan warrior Grendel. While this career solidified his status as a champion, his post-ring acting career proved to be fairly mediocre, and his legacy was tarnished as a result. With the new Skullgirl on the loose, Beowulf has decided to re-enter the ring, armed with both his folding chair "The Hurting" and the severed arm of Grendel, aiming to regain his lost glory.

The fifth DLC character and the game's second male character. Beowulf was the second character voted by Indiegogo backers to be added to the game, and was released on April 17, 2015.

Beowulf is a very unorthodox mix of a stance character and a pseudo-grappler who is constantly alternating between fighting with his bare fists and The Hurting. He can quickly pile on the hurt with his unique throw which causes him to enter his Grab Stance, giving him access to several powerful combo tools and suplexes for repositioning. Additionally, Beowulf has a unique resource called Hype, which gives him access to upgraded Grab Stance moves. Beowulf's Hype can be stored up to three levels, and can be built up via a variety of ways, ranging from landing a finisher in Grab Stance on top of The Hurting, to taunting.

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• And This Is for...: When finishing off the Skullheart using his secondary weapon the Hurting, he says, "This is for Grendel!".
• Animal Motifs: The Animal Alias variant. The "wulf" part of his name inspired a wolf motif that is applied to his outfit, logo, and moves. Kind of a misnomer because his namesake is named for the bear- albeit the literal translation of 'beowulf' is 'bee wolf'.
• Aside Glance: He does this after doing That Russian Squat Dance.
• Badass Normal: Beowulf is an entirely normal human being, at least by comparison to the rest of the cast — no cyborg parts, no parasites, no Living Weapons... just a strong pair of arms and an indestructible chair. His manager, Zane, even says being the only human who's matching these "freaks" is his ticket to a comeback.
• Bad Boss: Beowulf's manager Zane is pretty shady— and secretly being Double is about as bad as you can get.
• Beware the Honest Ones: Beowulf never makes a promise he doesn't genuinely intend to keep, no matter how outlandish it seems. Which is a bit of a problem for Double, because when he says he's going to fight the Skullgirl he means he's going to fight the Skullgirl, no matter how many fights with other cast members she uses to distract him.
• Beware the Silly Ones: One of the goofiest members of the cast, being a hitter of all Pro Wrestling tropes. He ends up being as effective as Squigly and Big Band, as he actually goes beyond Marie and faces Double with her sidekick facade down, and triumphs — albeit with a little help from Annie.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: He comes across to his opponents as this self-aggrandizing blowhard who's just getting in their way. However, Beowulf is a legitimately good and honorable person, and just thinks he's cleaning the streets of those who are terrorizing it.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Done quite literally in his intro, where he tears through the background art of the stage while some of Lab Zero's staff come to patch it back up.
• Bring It: He waves his hands in this motion whenever he walks backward.
• Calling Your Attacks: Being a Large Ham pro wrestler, he does this quite a bit.
  Pipe Bomb!
  Wulf Kick!
  Lone Boot!
  Gigantic... ARM!
• The Cameo: Peacock and the other Lab 8 Kids show up at the end of his story mode, watching him on TV.
• Character Catchphrase: Has several, a good number of them shout outs. Lampshaded with one of his win quotes.
  Beowulf: Everything I say is a catchphrase!
• Chairman of the Brawl: He uses The Hurting as a bludgeon, a projectile, a shield, and a platform.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Andy Anvil foreshadowed his return from retirement in Peacock's story, and (thanks to popular fan demand) he's right, otherwise, there would have been a grand total of one appearance in the entire game, and that's in a Yaoi magazine that appears in the room where we meet the Trinity upon beating Double's storyline.
• Companion Cube: Has shades of this with Grendel's arm. However, it doesn't stay inanimate for long, thanks to the Skullgirl's influence raising the dead, and actually leads him to her.
  • He's also got this going between him and his folding char, the Hurting. In a very quick animation when he recovers his chair after laying it down, you can see him give it an affectionate smooch before holstering it.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's a hammy send-up of professional wrestling, yes. But the thing everyone doesn't realize is that he lives up to every bit of his own hype. His story mode shows that he's fully capable of tangling with the rest of the cast without their various powers, and while his victory against Grendel was fake, the match-rigging was totally unnecessary as he could've won fair and square. He's also a genuine hero under his self-aggrandizement, foiling Double's plan to use him as a pawn with his refusal to get discouraged or distracted from his goal for too long.
• Dark Horse Victory: Along with Eliza, his victory in the fan-vote DLC was something of a surprise, although less so than hers. While he had some fans, he didn't seem to be as popular as many of the other characters like Adam or Annie, not having nearly as much propaganda art or fan discussions as some of the other contestants. And despite this, he still managed to pull off the surprise win.
• Defector from Decadence: He had an internal What the Hell, Hero? after the fight that killed Grendel, which precipitated his retirement.
• Determinator: Even though he's also concerned about returning to glory, he's just as motivated to save New Meridian, and nothing's going to stop him. Not even Double, and not the usual reserved Double who's going easy, we're talking Double going all-out.
• Deus ex Machina: Annie busting in and rescuing Beowulf from the depths of Double's stomach near the end of his story mode and again when Beowulf was pinned by Grendel's Skullgirl-reanimated arm and nearly eaten twice by Double.
• Due to the Dead: Beowulf does this for Grendel's arm in the end of his story mode. This might be a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, as he certainly doesn't stop using it as part of his moveset.
• Dumb Muscle: He's more ignorant and shortsighted than an outright idiot, but his excitement in getting back into the wrestling business and becoming a heroic icon again that he can't tell that he's really playing as Double's expendable goon to beat up and capture various cast members, which he thought were rigged fights for his comeback, for her own nefarious goals.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Beowulf fails to achieve a true comeback in his wrestling career and learns that his famous fight with Grendel was a sham, but he destroys Marie/the Skullheart, thwarts Double with Annie's help, gets a rematch against Grendel's spirit and proves he really was strong enough to defeat him fair and square back in the day, makes amends with Grendel's spirit in the aftermath and Annie even gets him a starring role as her partner in her hit television show, likely giving him the fame he always to regain since retiring. Not a bad way to conclude his story, considering the usual Downer Ending most characters get.
• Easter Egg: Performing a snapback and holding the button down as you win a match has Beowulf sit in his chair smugly instead of his usual victory pose.
• Evil Doppelgänger: One shows up to fight him in the ring during his story mode, courtesy of Double.
• Expressive Mask: The eyes of Beowulf's wolf pelt are normally shut except when put over his head, in which it'll react in pain or blink as Beowulf does.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Grendel was drugged up to his eyeballs during their match because the Canopy Kingdom wanted propaganda showing Gigans could be killed, but still didn't think it was possible for a human to kill one in a fair fight. Eventually, though, Beowulf more or less gets a rematch where he shows he really could have won anyway.
• Finishing Move: In keeping with the spirit of professional wrestling, this is the main style of attacking from Beowulf's grab mode. Most of his moves in the mode end in some kind of knockdown, either causing huge damage on the final hit or causing the opponent to crumple and force them to rise up slowly, rather than extending combos.
  • If Beowulf uses all 3 stocks of Crowd Hype in a single combo that ends with Canis Major Press, it will be given a boost in power that only triggers if said damage would end the match. This power boost involves the Penguin Feral referee sliding over to Beowulf to count the opponent out.
• The Grappler: He is a grappler that runs on Beat 'em Up grappling rules, meaning he can move around and perform several actions while grabbing someone instead of just grabbing and throwing.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: He can pull out the arm he ripped off from Grendel for certain attacks.
• Hammerspace: Where he keeps Grendel's arm. Unlike Peacock, the story makes no attempt to justify it.
• Heroic BSoD: Double tries to induce one via an Evil Doppelgänger, but it doesn't take.
• Hidden Depths: Valentine outright states that, as someone who fought Gigans at full strength, there is no way Beowulf took on arguably their most powerful warrior and won fairly...and she's absolutely right in that he didn't. Grendel had been doped up to hell and back. However, upon being forcibly "recruited" by Marie, Grendel's spirit challenges Beowulf one last time, and Beowulf wins anyway. Not only that, he wins in the exact same manner, proving that even if Grendel hadn't been drugged, he could have beaten him.
• Hoax Hogan: Like Hulk Hogan, he's a famous wrestler considered a national icon with a frenzied following of fans (Wulfamania, anyone?).
  • As tribute to the man himself, he also has a palette swap that makes him look like Hulk Hogan.
  • Might be a coincidence, given the parts of Beowulf's lore that are drawn from the original Beowulf, but Hulk Hogan is also known for a particularly famous match against a giant.
• Home Stage: NMO Arena came with his DLC.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: His response to Double's revelation that his career-defining match with Grendel had been rigged behind his back is to tell everyone that he didn't win fairly against Grendel. He then gets the audience back on his side by apologizing for not giving them the epic fights they deserved and vowing to make everything right by defeating the Skullgirl for them. He then proceeds to do just that, though he has to beat up Double with Annie's help first.
• Honor Before Reason: Finds out his ultimate victory was staged and unfair? Tells the public less than a minute later, at risk of his comeback.
• Hunk: Skullgirls' finest!
• Idiot Hair: Of the ignorant variety; he isn't so much dumb as he is out of the loop on most of the plot.
• Idiot Hero: Is focused completely on his comeback, even when things get obviously shady. Still, he has a good heart and refuses to knowingly engage in anything crooked. The moment he finds out about the truth of his match with Grendel, he right away announces it to the audience, full-aware that the truth could undo any hope of returning to glory.
• International Showdown by Proxy: His match with Grendel came right in the middle of a war between the mostly-human Canopy Kingdom and the Gigan Nation. It's even stated most of his popularity afterward came from wartime Patriotic Fervor, and it faded as soon as the war ended. This is why the Medici family and the Canopy Kingdom government worked together to rig the match.
• In the Back: His tag-in attack has him suddenly appear behind his opponent from offscreen to smash them against their back with his chair, knocking them down. It's very quick, having almost no warning before it connects, but whiffing it means Beowulf is now right in his opponent's face and can be easily punished.
• Jumped at the Call: Beowulf is a bit too eager to return as a hero after his retirement, which allows Zane (a.k.a., Double) to play him like a fiddle. Of course, Beowulf turns out to be too eager to be a hero even for Zane, as despite Zane's best efforts he soon refuses to be distracted from going after the Skullgirl.
• Kayfabe: He'll occasionally ask, in a subdued, sincere near-whisper, if his opponent is alright mid battle, as wrestlers are known to do to each other in real life. This implies the fight is, to him anyway, all an elaborate act, even if he's beating the senses out of people actually trying to kill him.
• Knight of Cerebus: Inverted on a meta level. Prior to Beowulf's inclusion, character story endings ranged between bittersweet to straight up Downer Endings. Beowulf was the first character to have his story end on a unambiguously optimistic note, a trend that would continue in Annie and Umbrella's stories.
• Large Ham: Holy jeez. Just look at his folder quote for the most subdued thing he belts out in-game.
• Lighter and Softer: Especially when compared to Eliza's story line. Beowulf is, at base, a good person, and he even manages to get an undeniably happy ending by finally settling his unfinished business with Grendel and striking up a friendship with Annie.
• Meaningful Name: His namesake Beowulf was also a wrestler.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Beowulf has a special kind of grab, as he can actually move around and perform various actions done by the player instead of just grabbing, performing an action, and throwing. In this sense he turns into more of a Beat 'em Up kind of character. The amount of time you get to do stuff is dependent on how you landed the grab (i.e. Simply grabbing the opponent like anyone else gives more time than if you hit them with an attack that causes grab mode on hit, like his chairless jumping hard punch).
  • Because his grab-based attacks are player-controlled rather than automated, Beowulf is the only character whose grab attacks are allowed to hit assist characters in addition to the main opponent, although they take far less damage than normal.
• Mic Drop: His standing medium punch has him hit the opponent with a microphone. If you hold the button, he drops it, hittting overhead and hyping the crowd up. He also calls out "Pipe bomb" when doing so.
• Morale Mechanic: Beowulf has a Crowd Hype mechanic; he can hype up the fight's audience through certain actions (holding down Standing Light Punch, letting the mic drop on his Standing Medium Punch, taunting, or hitting the opponent into his chair during grab moves). This in turn gives Beowulf up to 3 hype stocks that can enhance his grab finishers, string multiple finishers in a row, or let him grab his chair mid-combo.
• My Greatest Failure: Beowulf retired due to the events of his match against Grendel, where he ripped his opponent's arm off and had to kill his mother in order to prevent her from eating the audience. Turns out, it was even worse than that. As Annie and Beowulf's Evil Doppelgänger say, Grendel was drugged and his mother was elderly. Beowulf basically killed a half-comatose Gigan and a distraught old lady. Granted, he didn't know any of this, nor was it really his fault; the royal family hired the Medici to dope up Grendel and fix the match in Beowulf's favor as part of a scheme to drum up wartime morale, and things went horribly wrong from there.
• My Greatest Second Chance: At the end of Beowulf's story mode Marie takes Grendel's arm to fight with and his spirit possesses it, basically giving Beowulf and Grendel a chance for a proper fight. Beowulf wins for real this time.
• Named Weapon: The Hurting. Brings to mind Axl Rotten and Balls Mahoney.
• No Indoor Voice: Mentioned as one of the things he doesn't like in his profile page.
• One of the Kids: Has shades of this, and the most important fans to him are the little ones.
• Pro Wrestling Is Real: Zig-zagged: he's definitely a capable fighter, but he also makes a few references to thinking his battles are faked, nevermind the fact that he's brawling hard enough to KO people. During story mode, he thinks that his fights with the other characters are just parts of his comeback arc, completely staged, but in his conversations with Annie, he contradicts that outright. His fight with Grendel was also rigged, but this wasn't Kayfabe, it was illegal match-fixing that neither combatant was made aware of.
  Beowulf: Hey! Wrestling is real!
• Retired Badass: He retired from wrestling in his backstory, but returns. As it turns out, spending the better part of a decade as a B-rate actor and couch potato did not affect his skill in combat whatsoever.
• Running Gag: When the round starts and if Beowulf is chosen to speak the introduction, he's got a line for most of the public locations and communities in New Meridian. Including Gehenna, which is not a place he expected to wind up in.
  Finally! The Wulf has come back to New Meridian!
  Finally! The Wulf has come back to Canopolis!
  Finally! The Wulf has come back to Little Innsmouth!
  Finally! The Wulf has come back to Maplecrest!
  (Gehenna, AKA Double's stomach) Finally! The Wulf has come back to - wait, what?
• Spanner in the Works: Manages to be this for both sides, as his interference not only leads to a lot of the cast being captured by Double, but also the derailing of her entire plan and the defeat of the Skullgirl.
• Speak of the Devil: In Annie's story, where before he even appears, Annie and Florence are talking about a quick acting gig with an old colleague and Annie refuses to even name Beowulf with anything other than Him, apparently still annoyed over the last time they worked together.
  (Annie) But does it have to be... him?
  (Florence) "At least you didn't have to talk to Zane this time, he's so sleazy. Just stay on script and try to muscle through, once we're done I can take Aileen home. Then you and Sagan can hunt the Skullgirls to your hearts content."
  (Annie) "But does it HAVE to be HIM?"
  (Beowulf enters the ring) "That's right, your main man is back! Come on New Meridian, let me hear you HOWL!"
• Stance System: He has different attacks based on whether he has his chair or not.
• Stealth Pun: His standing hard kick is a Superkick. Hitting it causes a music note to come out, and he yells "Sweet". Don't get it? It's Sweet Chin Music.
• Stuffed Into A Trash Can: One of his grab moves inverts this—he takes a trash can and shoves it on top of his opponent, then kicks it away to perform a snapback.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: At 6'7"!
• That Russian Squat Dance: One of Beowulf's grab moves has him jump on the chair and do this while kicking the opponent.
• Underestimating Badassery: Constantly victim to this. Valentine regards Beowulf as a sham and a fake, which is technically true, Big Band thinks he's just a Medici goon, Double and Annie both assume Beowulf's only ability goes so far as dealing with the other cast members and cannot compare with the big guns, and Marie views him as an unrepentant jerk leeching off of Grendel's strength. Every last one of them learns the hard way what he's really capable of.
• Unwanted Assistance: In his appearance during Umbrella's story mode, after some friendly banter with the little girl, he suddenly notices she's carrying a tooth and eyeball covered creature and thinks she's about to be attacked, rushing in to fight. Umbrella can't convince him that Hungern is her friend and has to beat him up to get him to stop.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Double, disguised as his manager.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gets a pretty nasty one from his Evil Doppelgänger. Beowulf being Beowulf, it does very little.
• Whole-Plot Reference: His backstory is one to the original story of Beowulf. He defeated the Gigan Grendel as well as his berserk mother, with help from his weapon, "The Hurting".
  • Take note that Hrunting failed to do anything to Grendel's mother. Thankfully, "The Hurting" is much more useful in-game.
  • Many of his moves are derived from elements of the poem, such as Naegling Knee Drop, Geatish Trepak, and Heorot Family Roundhouse.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: 'Snakes' are listed as one of his dislikes.
• Womb Level: Brought back in the form of Gehenna after Beowulf is eaten by Double for going "off the leash."
• Worthy Opponent: Grendel, without question. Near the end of his story mode, it's shown that the feeling was mutual.

Robo-Fortune

Robo-Fortune

Voiced by: Kimlinh Tran (English) / Kana Hanazawa (Japanese)

Beep Boop Meow

"Priority override. New behavior dictated."

Created by Brain Drain out of both sheer pride and utter petulance, Robo-Fortune is a bit of an odd duck— although intended to be a loyal, cunning, top-of-the-line military android, Robo's programming, whether intentionally or otherwise, is faulty to the point that she pretty much fails to deliver in all areas. Nevertheless, she's been dispatched to claim the Skull Heart... and also fight those she could just as easily avoid along the way.

Originally a Gag Dub by Ms. Fortune's voice actor, Robo-Fortune quickly became memetic among the players and staff. During the Indiegogo fundraiser a playable Robo-Fortune was announced as a last-minute stretch goal and was subsequently funded. Robo-Fortune was released on July 7th, 2015.

Robo-Fortune is a pure zoner who uses laser beams, mines, missiles and other distance-keeping tricks to bring opponents to their knees and slowly whittle away at their health before they could ever dream of reaching her. She also has access to the ability to deploy Headrones, that have access to their own specials.

---

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: She is a Servile Snarker to Brain Drain, who regards her as a failure and doesn't expect her to succeed. She initially wants to use the Skull Heart to break free of his control, but Marie cautions her against it.
• Arm Cannon: 2 of them are used in the Catastrophe Cannon Blockbuster.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Her objectives are to eliminate the Skullgirl, capture the Skull Heart, apprehend all traitors to Lab Zero, incapacitate other subjects seeking the Skull Heart and master comedic timing.
• Ascended Meme: Was made to be a full-blown character for the game as Downloadable Content, along with her own theme music and stage.
• Attack Drone: Can launch up to 3 Headrones for a variety of attacks, from headbutting targets as a missile, planting themselves as landmines, and unleashing an air strike of smaller missiles that attack from overhead.
• The Bad Guy Wins: At the end of her story mode. She actually succeeds in capturing the Skull Heart, delivering it to Brain Drain to create an even bigger and more fearsome robot army to Take Over the World. The only hope left for the world lies in the hands of all the rejected DLC candidates from the Indiegogo campaign.
• Bad Vibrations: She's so heavy that she's the only other character who causes the screen to lightly rumble and thud loudly when she's walking, the other being the even bigger, lumbering and benevolent Big Band.
• Beat Still, My Heart: She does this to herself as her Level 3 Blockbuster, tearing her own electronic heart out and crushing it to enter a Limit Break mode while also setting off her self-destruct countdown.
• Beware the Silly Ones: She's one of the silliest characters in the cast, trailing just behind the ignorant Beowulf and the cartoonishly zany Peacock and her story mode makes almost no effort to take itself seriously. Despite her ending being of dubious plausibility in the canon, it shows that she absolutely does not screw around once she acquires the Skullheart, kickstarting a fiery robot apocalypse that leaves New Meridian in smoldering ruins and dominated by giant mecha versions of her, apparently so fierce that all the rejected DLC characters must band together to stand a chance at defeating her.
• Call a Human a "Meatbag": She shares her creator's dim opinion of humans and refers to them as "Pathetic creatures of meat and bone."
• Calling Your Attacks: A frequent offender:
  Overclawk.
  Scroll Heel.
  Aerial Screw.
  Blast Processor.
  Assault Battery.
  Magnetic Trap.
  Catastrophe Cannon... ALPHA/GAMMA/OMEGA.
• Captain Obvious: One of her win quotes goes:
  I'm not sure if you noticed, but I am a robot.
• Cast from Hit Points: While within her Limit Break, Robo Fortune can consume a head drone to add more time to her self-destruct at the cost of HP.
• Chainsaw Good: Extends a chainsaw-like blade from her abdomen as one of her attacks.
• Cloudcuckoolander: When Brain Drain started programming Robo-Fortune, he starts to realize there are several bugs in her coding which has left her with a couple of loose screws. And we mean that both figuratively, and literally. He realizes this when he asks her to identify herself.
  I AM MORE THAN A ROBOT. Except... not really.
  (she then pulls out a keyboard piano and starts playing it)
  Playing off error. DOOT-DOOT-DOOT-DOO
• Cute Machines: While is a bit uncanny at times, she is surprisingly adorable once you get on her good side.
• Detachment Combat: Can launch Headrones to be use in her Specials and detach her tail to be used as a sword. Her introduction animation has her body assembling itself in the air.
• The Dragon: Acts as a loyal one to Brain Drain, only briefly questioning his motives (which amounts to nothing).
• Defeat Equals Explosion: If the round timer hits zero and she's on the losing end of the stalemate, she'll explode and send parts flying everything out of sheer shame.
• Early-Bird Cameo: She appears fighting her fleshy original on the latter's Steam trading card.
• Easter Egg: After purrforming her Systemic Circuit Breaker in her Samus Aran and Gravity Suit palette swaps she erupts with the familiar oval explosion of the Power Bomb.
• Energy Weapon: Her Theonite Laser, which can be Eye Beams or a Chest Blaster, and the Catastrophe Cannon Blockbuster.
• Evolving Attack: Robo has a Level 1 Blockbuster where she pulls out two cannons to fire a giant laser. Holding a punch button while you have three bars of super meter adds 4 smaller cannons as a Level 3 Blockbuster, while holding the hard punch button with all five bars adds an arch structure to fire one additional beam as a Level 5 Blockbuster.
• Explosive Overclocking: Robo's Systemic Circuit Breaker move has her open up her chassis and rip out the central wire. Her power and speed is boosted, but she blows up after a while. If the attack doesn't connect on the opponent, she'll take a chunk of her own health bar out.
• Evil Is Petty: Outside of her being made pretty much only because Valentine dared to suggest using a biological solution/weapon in the form of Ms. Fortune to Brain Drain, a passionate believer in the superiority of robotics, she also has a win-quote against Peacock that's apparently pre-recorded and made specifically for a victory like this from Brain Drain.
  (Voice distorts into a lower pitch and even more monotone voice) Lab 0 superior - Lab 8 inferior!
• Expy: Of Robo-Ky from the Guilty Gear series. The chibified drawing of Robo-Fortune on the Indiegogo fundraiser page is pretty much Nadia cosplaying as Robo-Ky.
  • Her alternate colors are far more detailed color placement wise than any other character, which makes sense, seeing as they are deliberate references to mecha from Mobile Suit Gundam (the RX-78-2 and Char's Zaku), Sonic The Hedgehog (Metal Sonic), Persona 3 (Aigis), The Big O (Dorothy), Iron Man (original red and gold armor), and more.
  • Gameplay wise, some of her moves are inspired by Cyclops and Iron Man from the Marvel vs. Capcom games.
• Fem Bot: The robotic counterpart to Ms. Fortune, and she's just as slim and curvy as her.
• Gag Dub: She was originally created as one.
• Genius Bonus: Pretty much all of her likes and dislikes make a little to a lot more sense to programmers. For instance, liking "unrolled loops of strings" references loop unrolling and character strings, and "0x5f3759df" is a bit constant infamously used in the Quake InvRoot(). On the other hand, her listed dislike of DES, unsalted passwords (salted tastes better!), and bleeding hearts references various security failures.
• Glowing Mechanical Eyes: She has a visible light cone emitting from her eyes. In a brilliant display of the artists showing their work, her Motoko Kusanagi palette swap lacks them.
• Golf Clubbing: She transforms her tail into a wedge for one of her attacks.
  Four-Oh-FOOOOOOOOUR!
• Ground Punch: Has one such attack with an electric element.
• Guns Akimbo: The Catastrophe Cannon consist of 2 Arm Cannons.
• Home Stage: Meridian Area Rapid Transit came with her DLC.
• Humongous Mecha: In her story mode ending. Robo-Fortune pilots one to lead an army of gigantic copies of herself in conquering the world.
• Jet Pack: Has these for propulsion to mirror Ms Fortune's use of blood for the same purpose.
• Killer Robot: She is a robotic version of Ms. Fortune built to destroy the Skullgirl, capture the Skull Heart, and bring Valentine to heel.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Her Headrone Salvo fires a barrage of missiles, with the amount depending on the number of Headrones deployed (if she successfully taunts before firing the Salvo, she fires twice as many).
• Mecha-Mooks: At the story's end, the Skull Heart is powering an entire army of super-powerful Robo-Fortunes.
• Moveset Clone: Averted. She was originally intended to be a pure clone, but was later given significant differences. While a couple of her moves are visually similar to those of her fleshy counterpart, none of them are similar in terms of gameplay effects. Namely, Ms. Fortune is a close ranged fighter who can overwhelm her opponent with rapid and multi-angled attacks, while Robo-Fortune is geared towards dashing between a close range beatdown and backing off to keep opponents at bay with ranged attacks, while managing her drone numbers to create openings and traps.
• Multiple-Choice Past: At first. Kimlinh Tran did a thread on the Skullheart forum asking for suggestions about Robo-Fortune's lore. In the thread she gave several possibilities for Robo-Fortune's creator, including Tom, Stanley, or Brain Drain, with the latter confirmed to be canonical by invokedWord of God.
• No Fourth Wall: Her story mode has her constantly lamp shading plot conventions and cliches, while spouting memes and shout-outs.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Being a copy of Ms. Fortune and being in a game like Skullgirls, she's got a built-in bust.
• Perky Female Minion: Robo-Fortune is very clearly not a soulless killing machine, but rather a misguided and light-hearted henchwoman who is only evil because she was created to serve Brain Drain.
• Pet the Dog: Entertains Aileen with her keyboard playing in Annie's story mode.
• Plot Detour: Seems to have happened to her in Annie's story mode, where in the middle of her mission she ends up wrecked in a field and was found by the staff of Annie, Girl of the Stars and was taken into the set to help with filming. Annie and her have a fight to pass the time, and when they're done Robo-Fortune reminds herself that she's on a mission... but still sticks around the set to play with Aileen. By the end of the story, the Skullgirl is slain by Annie, making Robo-Fortune's mission a flop.
• Practical Taunt: Taunting will double the amount of missiles launched by the Headrone Salvo special.
• Pungeon Master: Not as much as the original, but it's still there... mostly robot or technology-related puns, of course.
• Reference Overdosed: Her quotes and dialogue are stuffed full of memes and Shout Outs.
• Robot Me: She's a robotic version of Ms. Fortune.
• Robot War: Her win quote against Marie is "Zombie Apocalypse canceled. Proceeding with robot apocalypse." Her story mode ending has her do exactly that.
• "Second Law" My Ass!: Robo-Fortune invokes this in her story mode. She admits to Marie that she has serious doubts about Brain Drain's competence, and asks if she could use the Skull Heart to break free of his control.
• Selective Magnetism: It's able to attract anyone with the Magnetic Trap Blockbuster, no matter how much metal they have with them.
• Self-Deprecation: She does this somewhat frequently, well aware she's the throwaway project of Brain Drain based off of a petty response to Valentine's suggestion, laments on her lack of friends and loneliness, and has at least a little bit of self loathing over being a machine.
• Shock and Awe: Some of her attacks use electricity.
• Spanner in the Works: Is this to Black Dahlia in her story, where she unintentionally pulls a Villainous Rescue by dragging Ms. Fortune and the Skull Heart away from Black Dahlia. Happens again towards the end, where it's revealed she has a compactor inside her torso that allows her to hard press Ms. Fortune into a Life Gem. Needless to say, Dahlia is not happy with this.
• Spectacular Spinning: In three variations as special attacks. The first of which has her spin her whole torso with arms outstretched to slash opponents with her spinning claws/arms, the second opening her neck to spin her head to starting hitting anyone right on top of her, and the last being a heavy attack that her her spinning her whole torso and head by spinning around her pelvis to whack the opponent with her full weight.
• Spin Attack: Some of her attacks has her spinning her head, arms, and torso.
• Tail Slap: Like Ms. Fortune, she can detach her tail to be used as a Cool Sword.
• Telescoping Robot: Has a lot of weapons hidden inside of her.
• This Is a Drill: One of her air attacks involve spinning her claws like a drill.
• Three Laws-Compliant: Referenced and defied in one of her quotes.
  Deleting first law...
• Troll: To some extent, as seen in one of her pre-battle lines when facing Painwheel.
  Loathing of puns detected. Activating pun mode.
• Unknown Rival: To Ms. Fortune who, at least the context of the story we currently have, isn't aware that Lab 0 has built a robotic doppelganger based on her, and that said robot has her on the back of her mind to look for. When the duo actually meet in Robo's story mode, they don't bother exchanging any words other than Ms. Fortune giving a surprised-yet-angered expression and Robo's eyes glowing at the sight of her in response.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Her Catastrophe Cannon super, with its Alpha (level 1), Gamma (level 3) and Omega (level 5) forms, the latter firing a beam that covers the entire screen.
• Wolverine Claws: Much like Ms. Fortune.

Second Encore Season 1

Annie (and Sagan)

Annabella / Annie of the Stars

Voiced by: Erica Mendez (English) / Yuuki Kuwahara (Japanese)

Girl of the Stars

"Let's make it flashy!"

Annie is the titular character of "Annie, Girl of the Stars", a long-running half-live-action/half-animated TV variety series based on various myths, legends, and bits of folklore surrounding its magical star, who's been played by multiple actresses over its years on the air... or so the cover story goes, anyway. In actuality, Annie is very much a real person, it's been her on TV all these years, and all of those stories were actual events from her life. Thanks to a wish made by her mother centuries ago, Annie has been cursed with eternal youth, and ever since has been fighting to stop the Skull Heart's ambitions, acquiring numerous weapons and artifacts to do so, most notably her remote Parasite, Sagan.

Annie was revealed as a brand new character coming to the mobile version of Skullgirls in 2020. She was then added to the Steam and PS4 versions of Second Encore on July 8th as the first character of Season Pass 1, but not before she went into Early Access on March 4th.

Annie is a true Shotoclone through and through, trading off short range and limited mix-ups for a versatile set of moves to counter any situation, leading into long, highly damaging combos. Unique to Annie is Star Power, an install super that allows her to fire off projectiles from every normal, at the cost of constantly draining her super meter as long as it's active.

---

• Actually Pretty Funny: She might disapprove of Ms. Fortune's intentions regarding the Skull Heart, but she admits that her puns are pretty good.
• The Ageless: Thanks to her parents and the Skullheart, she's been wished into eternal youth in the shape of a young girl. To hide this fact, she periodically changes her appearance up a little to masquerade as a new lead 'actress' for Annie of the Stars.
• Ascended Extra: She went from being scarcely mentioned in character profiles and as an unseen Show Within a Show, then playing a fairly major role in Beowulf's story, to finally becoming playable in Mobile and the game proper years later.
• Assist Character: Sagan is the source of a couple of her attacks and movements, from being ridden like a hover board as Annie's dash to opening his maw to spew out an energy beam.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Annie's AI at max difficulty has an incredibly fast and mix-up heavy style of fighting to the point of overkill with her choice of attacks, but she's not as concerned with defense like other characters.
• Badass Adorable: She's an ancient warrior who looks like a little girl.
• Big Damn Heroes: Saves Beowulf's life twice in his story mode; first by freeing him from Double's stomach, then by impaling Double when she was about to bite his head off after she teamed up with Marie.
• Big Good: Probably the closest the game has to one, being committed to defeating the Skull Heart and trying to prevent others from falling to its allure.
• Broken Pedestal: In Annie's story mode, Peacock bumps into the star herself, and after a friendly back and forth and a 'friendly' brawl, Peacock reveals that she’s going to kill the Skullgirl by herself and be a hero. Annie, who's been sulking in cynicism lately, rudely tells her off and tries to stomp the idea out. Peacock tells her off to with her usual swagger and walks away, but before she leaves it’s clear she’s on the verge of tears. In the ending of the story, it’s arranged that Annie's going to make it up to Peacock by bringing her and Beowulf on the show, probably redeeming her in Peacock's eyes.
• Calling Your Attacks: Nearly every one of her specials has her shouting their names out.
• The Cameo: She appears after the credits in Fukua's ending along with Umbrella.
• Color Motif: Green.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Her show is mentioned in Peacock's and Parasoul's profiles on their likes list at the game's launch back in 2012, and also appears on a book in the Trinity's room during Double's ending. Appears in the flesh in Beowulf's story.
• Comic Books Are Real: Most people know about Annie through folklore and a Show Within a Show, but most wouldn't believe she actually has magical powers.
• Create Your Own Hero: She became immortal through her mother's wish with the Skull Heart, the latter transforming into the Skullgirl as a result. Annie since then has taken advantage of her immortality to combat the Skull Heart for centuries.
• Creator's Apathy: In-Universe. The start of her Story mode shows that she has entered this mindset (it doesn't help that she wants to start hunting for the latest Skullgirl), with her story focusing on how she works through said mindset.
• Cursed with Awesome: She thinks of her immortality as a curse and the Skull Heart tempts her with having it removed, but it has also allowed her to fight the Skull Heart for centuries.
• Cute Bruiser: Instead of the usual techniques expected from someone of her stature, Annie's fighting style primarily consists of hard-hitting direct attacks that wouldn't be out of place in the moveset of the likes of Sol Badguy.^*And indeed, many of them are directly based off of Sol's sprites, albeit usually mirrored to reflect which hand Annie holds her sword in She even has an alternate palette that makes her look like him, complete with Sagan bearing the colors of Ky Kiske.
• Deadpan Snarker: Having been around for a pretty long time, she has little patience for others and gets intensely sarcastic when she puts up with Beowulf's ignorance.
• Dramatic Wind: Her standing idle has a constant stream of heroic wind blowing her skirt around.
• Eyepatch of Power: Like Valentine, she wears one above her right eye.
• Eaten Alive: Her standing grab has her whip Sagan onto the opponent to swallow them whole and then chuck them back out.
• Eye Scream: As mentioned above, her right eyeball is in Sagan's mouth. In some of her hitstun frames, her missing eye has a star drawn over where the socket would be.
• Flight: She is capable of hovering in the air for certain attacks, and she can ride Sagan in the air.
• Folk Hero: Her exploits against the Skullgirls form the basis for her TV show.
• Fusion Dance: One of her proposed Supers had her fusing with Sagan, regaining her eye and getting Frills of Justice in the process. Sadly, it's not present in her final playable moveset.
• Girlish Pigtails: Braided ones.
• Gosh Darnit To Heck: Apparently, thanks to her mother's immortality wish, she physically can't swear. She can certainly try, but it'll just get involuntarily cut off. With a bit of celestial wordplay, she can at least get close.
  (at match start) I'll kick...Uranus!
• Home Stage: Sound Stage 15 came with her DLC.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Sagan can do this; it's how she attacks and manages to rescue everyone from Double..
• I Know Your True Name: Variant. In an attempt to lower Annie's guard down for a sneak attack. Double transforms herself into Annie's mother (before she became a Skullgirl) expressing disappointment at what Annabella became.
• Intergenerational Friendship: She allies herself with Beowulf in his story mode, and the two go on to collaborate on her show. While he seems like the older of the two, Annie's actually the elder of the two by far due to her immortality.
• Just a Kid: As a result of her apparent age, she gets treated like this by people not in the know, especially when she brings up more serious topics like the Skullgirl. She's understandably more than a bit bitter about it.
• Kayfabe: Her combat banter and dialogue imply that she's treating her fights against the cast like they're acting gigs and fan meetups rather than an actual fight. Notably, one of her Blockbusters has her sign an autograph for the opponent, have Sagan slam it over their head and strike a pose with a new costume for a photoshoot.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Annie's firmly on the side of good, no question about it, but her attitude while shooting her television show is incredibly bossy and impatient to any staff she's talking to off screen. Even during her time in Beowulf's story mode, she's barely holding in her frustration trying to manage Beowulf's ignorance. In her story mode proper, it's made very clear that Annie's lost faith in her fans and most of the people around her for still falling for the Skullheart's curse after centuries of waging overt war against it and trying to educate people to stop making wishes on the darn thing via the show. While she still dedicates herself to killing each iteration of the Skullgirl, Annie's turned into a sour and frustrated woman to almost everyone she meets.
• Magical Girl Warrior: Evokes the trope.
• Meaningful Name: Annie is based off the ANIme trope of Magical Girls. And she's named "of the Stars" since she can generate celestial bodies for her various attacks.
• Megaton Punch: Her North Knuckle special has her punch the opponent twice with three increasingly more powerful effects, from knocking the opponent onto the ground to sending them flying across the screen to splatter against the wall.
• My Grandson, Myself: In the Show Within a Show, a new girl takes the role of Annie every few years... except this is always the same girl, with the excuse used to hide her immortality. The new girl is actually playing Annie's "life double" (in other words her life outside of her show) to keep the charade going.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Sagan is perhaps named after the astronomer and famed science communicator Carl Sagan.
• Nice Character, Mean Actor: Annie of the Stars is a classical cheery, cute, Magical Girl Warrior. The actual Annie playing as herself is... a bit less so.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Minor case, her (remaining) eye is in a more Animesque style than the rest of the cast.
• No Stunt Double: In-Universe. Claims she "does her own stunts", which is demonstrated in her story mode where she films a mid-season finale fight, which consists of actually fighting Robo-Fortune. She does, however, have life doubles, whose purpose is to play the "actress" Annie to keep up the illusion that Annie of the Stars is a fictional character.
• Older Than They Look: She's Really 700 Years Old, centuries old but younger than Eliza.
• The Other Darrin: Played With In-Universe, as she has to sprout a new hairstyle every few years and say they've got someone new to play her role on the show. It's just the same old girl.
• The Paragon: She tries very hard to use Annie of the Stars to be this to kids. By incorporating morals and life-lessons, Annie tries to help the children of each generation grow into adults who can understand the importance of supporting each other and doing the right thing, rather than seeking fulfilment through magical wishes (i.e. using the Skull Heart). It never works, as the kids she's taught discard all her lessons as kids' show naivete when they grow up. Being let down like this really gets to her.
• Parent-Induced Extended Childhood: Annie's mother used the Skull Heart to wish for Annie to remain eternally young, keeping her frozen at fifteen years of age. For added annoyance, the wish has also prevented Annie from swearing.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She's only a little taller than the other child-aged characters, Marie, Peacock, and Umbrella, but she's been keeping up the war against the Skullheart for centuries, and she's just as capable of slaying the rest of the cast as any other character.
• Promoted to Playable: Five years after the release of Robo-Fortune, the last DLC character to be added, Annie finally takes to the stage in 2nd Encore in 2021. But not before being added to the Mobile roster in 2020.
• Really 700 Years Old: Annie is eternally fifteen, but has existed long enough to have fought multiple iterations of the Skullgirl.
• Star Power: She is capable of producing quasars, black holes and all sorts of heavenly bodies.
• See You in Hell: Her last words if she's knocked out by the opponent, though she can't really get the exact message across.
  I'll see you in... heck...
• Shotoclone: Has all three moves with the apropos motions, albeit all three being punch motions, with Crescent Cut as her Hadouken, Destruction Pillar for a Shoryuken, and North Knuckle as her Tatsumaki.
• Super-Cute Superpowers: Annie got these, much to her chagrin.
• Super Mode: Star Power has her power herself up to leave a trail of rainbows behind her and augment her attacks with extra-damaging stars, so as long as she has at least one full tension meter, she can use it whenever she wants. The meter will continuously drain so as long it is active, and Annie can deactivate the mode early to explode in a burst of energy to send nearby opponents flying.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Her eyes are naturally goldish yellow and after bonding with Sagan she has gained a variety of supernatural powers.
• Sword Beam: She is capable of creating sword beams for attacks.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Her Level 3 Blockbuster has her toss her sword at the opponent, which homes in and traps them in a Cycle of Hurting for a few seconds.
• Thunderbolt Iron: Her sword was forged from a meteorite and can channel the power of the stars with its sweeping cleaves.
• Transformation Sequence: As befitting a magical girl, she utilizes this, one downplayed and one parodied. As an actual attack, Annie can gradually consume her meter to power up her attacks with shooting stars after doing a flashy twirl and inspirational quip to a backdrop of rainbows, but otherwise remains the same plus a trail of rainbows behind her. Her level 3 Blockbuster actually does have her transform into a flashier outfit you'd expect a magical girl to morph into when things get serious - but it's just for a photo shoot while the opponent gets slapped in the face with her autograph.
• The Unintelligible: Sagan, who seems to only vocalize through grunts and growls, although Annie still can understand what he means. Turns out he CAN talk, he just chooses to make people think he's this trope.

Umbrella (and Hungern)

Umbrella Renoir

Voiced by: Cassandra Lee Morris (English) / Ayaka Shimizu (Japanese)

MAXIMUM SALT: When it pours, grab an umbrella

"Geez, it's about time!"

The young princess of the Canopy Kingdom and sister to Parasoul. Compared to her big sis, Umbrella grew up incredibly sheltered, with only one true friend: Hungern, a family heirloom and living weapon whose power is tied to his nigh-insatiable appetite. Having been stuck in the royal palace for so long, Umbrella's dying to get out there and kick butt with Parasoul... and the arrival of a new Skullgirl might be the opportunity she's been waiting for, though she might soon regret what she learns about herself and her family along the way.

The second of the two characters originally planned to be in the original eight, but development was postponed in order to replace her with Valentine and Double instead. She ended up never coming out at all, her spot constantly going to other fighters, leaving her stuck on the sidelines... for a while, anyway.

Umbrella is both the second character included in Season Pass 1 and the second brand new character to be added to Skullgirls Mobile. She was officially released on April 16, 2022, with early alpha and beta access available to owners of the Season Pass on Steam.

Umbrella easily rivals Beowulf as the most Mechanically Unusual Fighter to date, being a strange hybrid of charge character, a setplay character, and a grappler. However, what makes Umbrella really stand out is her Hunger mechanic. Depending on how hungry Hungern is, Umbrella's moves and playstyle will be vastly effected. Starving leaves Umbrella at her weakest in terms of frame advantage and combo options, but greatly increases the damage of her command grabs. Ravenous is eaily her best state, and makes Umbrella one of the fastest, most dangerous characters in the game. Satiated is Umbrella's default state and acts as a jack of all trades. Overstuffed increases Umbrella's punch normal damage and setplay potential at the cost of reduced speed. The key to mastering Umbrella is to use every single one of these states to your advantage to keep your opponent on their toes.

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Tropes associated with Umbrella:

• Admiring the Abomination:
  • She thinks Hungern, a drooling, tooth-filled and multi-eyed beast with bones for a handle and a reputation for eating everything that moves and sometimes stuff that doesn't, is positively adorable and defends him against anyone who thinks otherwise.
  • If she's fighting Double in a match, she'll think she's super cool and disgusting-looking. Likewise she thinks Painwheel looks cool, but scary.
• And Call Him "George": She likes to hug Hungern really hard. One of her attacks has her hug him so hard, some of his eyes temporarily pop out of their sockets and her taunt also has her hugging him while he has an expression like he's gasping for air. Notably, if Hungern ate anyone with Umbrella's Level 3 attack, the hug will squeeze them out of him and they'll just lay unconscious for the rest of the match.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: To Parasoul, her much more put-together sister.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Stands a chance of becoming this. In both hers and Parasoul's story, Either Double (Parasoul) or Marie (Umbrella) says Umbrella could become a more powerful Skullgirl than her mother was. Keep in mind that her mother nearly destroyed the world.
• Ascended Meme: The expression on Umbrella's face when she whiffs her grab looks almost exactly the same as the one she makes in this particularly popular comic◊.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: In her story mode she pulls this on Parasoul to convince her that she doesn't need to be protected so much through the reasoning of “If I'm stronger than you, I don't need to be protected”. After she successfully beats Parasoul in a fight she wonders how Umbrella got so strong and begins to suspect that Hungern’s Power Limiter abilities aren't keeping her Skullgirl side in check.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Easily the smallest and youngest character on the roster, with the only characters coming close to her in age being Peacock and Marie.
• Badass Adorable: She might be the youngest, but Umbrella is more than capable of kicking butt all the same. In fact, she could potentially grow even stronger, thanks to her Skullgirl genetics.
• Big Sister Worship: She thinks Parasoul is the coolest because she arrests criminals and beats up bad guys. Downplayed in a Warts and All way since she feels Parasoul is overprotective of her and wishes she would let her get involved in beating up the bad guys. This reaches a boiling point in her story mode after she learns how their parents’ desire to protect led to them doing some very morally questionable things and dying, in the end. She doesn't want the same for her and Parasoul which is why she gets ticked when she feels she isn't listening to her. But at the end of the day she still thinks her sis is the coolest.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Downplayed as she isn't insane, just very young and sheltered, but her world has a very sharp distinction between heroes and villains. Meeting Cerebella severely shakes her worldview due to Cerebella switching between saving her life (good!) being convinced to help kidnap her (bad!), knocking Eliza out when Eliza wanted to genuinely hurt her (good!), and then angrily telling her that her parents were tyrants who hurt a lot of people (maybe good because it's the truth, maybe bad because it upsets her since she genuinely looked up to her parents). It takes a fight with Beowulf (and some good advice from him) to snap her out of it, and she gains a more nuanced view in the end.
• Blood Knight: Very much enjoys all the fighting that's endemic to, well, a Fighting Game.
  Umbrella (just before fighting Filia and Samson): Wait, you wanna fight for real? COOL! Let's go! The two of us vs the two of you!
• Bouncy Bubbles: Umbrella has several attacks that spawn bubbles across the stage. These can either be used to zone out an opponent or she can jump on them to grant extra aerial mobility.
• Brainwashed: The Skullheart's power (unintentionally) causes this to Umbrella in Parasoul's story. She thinks it's her mother and tries to seek it out. Does so again in her own story mode, but both Parasoul and Hungern manage to snap her out of it.
• Bratty Half-Pint: To contrast her older, sterner sister.
• Break the Cutie: Through her story mode, she learns about the various atrocities her parents committed in their lifetime, namely her father's war and her mother turning into the Skullgirl. She begins to have serious doubts on her relationship with her sister as a result.
• Broken Pedestal: Her story mode has her coming to terms with some of the more morally questionable things her family has done, though she uses the lessons learnt from this to motivate herself to help her sister, Parasoul.
  • Downplayed with Cerebella, but she's clearly horrified that the kind circus performer who saved her from falling and gave her a ticket to her show a moment ago is willing to kidnap her for ransom after being convinced by Eliza.
• The Cameo:
  • Makes her first appearance in actual gameplay proper in the background of the Glass Canopy stage, seen dancing with Adam in a Pimped-Out Dress.
  • She also appears after the credits in Fukua's ending along with Annie.
  • She also has a Freeze-Frame Bonus appearance in Double's "Nightmare Legion." Or at least, Double takes her appearance for a single hit.
• Color Motif: Yellow and pink.
• Comically Missing the Point: She's not very impressed by Sekhmet after defeating Eliza.
  “I have a skeleton inside me too! Big whoop...”
• Curtains Match the Window: Her hair and eyes are both naturally pink...somehow.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • First, she was removed from the initial roster, then when the DLC began to come out of Development Hell, she was replaced by Big Band as the second planned DLC character, and then lost both of the DLC Voting events to Eliza and Beowulf. This is lampshaded when Squigly and Big Band were funded. Official artwork was created◊ to thank the fans◊ for donating◊. In all of the pictures, Umbrella is looking very annoyed.
  • Finally subverted as of 2022, with her making her playable debut as the second Season Pass 1 character.
• Downloadable Content: Although she was released as a DLC fighter in 2022, plans for Umbrella's inclusion as a DLC fighter go farther back, even before her inclusion in the polls for the Indiegogo campaign. Being one of the characters planned for the original base roster, Umbrella was supposed to be the second DLC character, following Squigly... and then Big Band came along. And then Eliza won the first DLC poll. And then Beowulf won the second. And then Robo-Fortune got upgraded to a full character. And finally, when it was decided to create an entirely new character for the mobile game... they picked Annie. No wonder she was salty for so long...
• Evil Costume Switch: Owners of the Season Pass will get a Skullgirl color palette for her. She wears black and her hair turns white, like every other Skullgirl we've seen so far. It gives a lot of her moves more of a bone theme along with the pale blue energy Skullgirls are associated with and the Skullheart follows you as you play. It even comes with a matching, equally evil voice pack!
• Exotic Eye Designs: When using a Blockbuster and charging her move Cliff Hanger, her eyes briefly get a skull motif like that of a Skullgirl's eyes. This also occurs in Parasoul's ending when she gets close to the Skull Heart.
• Expy: She's based off of the Morton salt girl. As a result, she's heavily associated with both metaphorical and literal salt. Her poster is based on the Morton logo. And that's not even getting into the Salty Umbrella memes...
• Face–Heel Turn: At least, for her Skullgirl variant, where her dialogue makes her act more evil and sadistic than she is normally portrayed.
• Fluffy Tamer: Hungern in ancient times was a horrifying monster that devoured entire civilizations in his unending hunger. Under Umbrella, he's basically an overgrown puppy that occasionally puts something in his mouth that he's not supposed to.
• Freaky Is Cool: Certainly believes so. What other people find disturbing, Umbrella finds impressive. When Painwheel expresses her fears that her parents will reject her for her current appearance, Umbrella wonders why, because she thinks Painwheel looks awesome!
• Glacier Waif: She's by far the smallest playable character whose silhouette is only really kept on par with everyone else by the much taller Hungern she's holding, who also happens to be doing the majority of her attacks while Umbrella swings him around to fight. She's also fairly slow, since her legs aren't very long.
• Glomp: Her taunt has her give a big, suffocating hug to Hungern, leaving its tongue dangling hopelessly from its mouth. It's the quickest way to reduce the hunger gauge if you want to go down to Satiated or Ravenous more quickly, at the cost of leaving Umbrella open to attack.
• Goo-Goo-Godlike: This diminutive 11 year old happens to have been born right before, or perhaps even during, the terror of the most powerful Skullgirl in history by said Skullgirl. She's connected to the Skullheart by genetics and it's been said by both Marie and the Skullheart themselves that she can easily exceed her mother's power and end up destroying the world if she succumbed to her powers, or made a wish on the Skullheart. Hungern is there specifically to keep her energy in line by constantly absorbing her life force, which would have killed anything else, and also means that Umbrella is not fighting anywhere close to her full potential, instead relying on Hungern for the bulk of her fighting style.
• Grapple Move: She has a plethora of command grabs to use:
  • Her standing-heavy kick, rather than a more traditional strike, has her leap forward and, if she connects with the opponent, yank them by Hungern's handle and slam them down.
  • "Salt Grinder" has Hungern bite right in front of him, and if he hits anyone, he'll chomp down and trap them in his mouth. Pressing left and right back and forth will grind the opponent between his jaws.
  • "Tongue Twister" is a long-ranged grab where Hungern wraps the opponent up in his tongue, then reels them in to chew.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Umbrella's Story-mode would reveal that she is part Skullgirl, with her mother giving birth to her not long before fully succumbing to the Skull Heart. This is why Hungern was assigned to her, as it kept her power in check, and why her blood resonates with Painwheel/Carol.
• Hollywood Genetics: It's a mystery as to how Umbrella has pink hair, because her mother has black hair, while Parasoul got her red hair from their father. That being said, it's implied that the pink color came from the mix of her father's red hair and the white color motif of her Skullgirl genetics.
• Human Hummingbird: Her infinity Breaker has her throw a big hissy fit and start angrily flailing her legs and arms around to swat the opponent away while Hungern expands around her.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Besides her sister, she seems to have this with Carol (Painwheel) and Filia by the end of her story mode, two teenagers, as they're all having a slumber party by the end of it. Carol in particular since she helped her break free of Brain Drain’s control and Carol in return gave her a pep-talk after she was feeling down after a falling out with her sister. Beowulf could count, too, since he also gave her a pep-talk after she was feeling confused/conflicted after having to confront some of the things her parents did.
• Just a Kid: Subjected to this over and over during her story mode to the point where it becomes a Berserk Button and results in her Skullgirl side being let loose temporarily when Parasoul tries to dismiss her once again and have some Egrets take her home instead of letting her help with the Skullgirl situation.
• Little Miss Badass: For a cute little kid, she can sure knock around anyone who comes her way. Be it circus performers, professional wrestlers, and of course, the Skullgirl.
• Living Weapon: She has her own sentient parasol called "Hungern", which has a freakish number of eyes and a large gaping mouth where the tip of the umbrella should be.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: The first character to get a visible additional meter onscreen, specifically her hunger meter. Said meter also affects the majority of her moves at all times, rather than only a handful of moves or for certain periods of time.
• Mighty Glacier: Without using her bubbles for jumping, Umbrella is somewhat slow, can’t air dash or double jump and her sprint isn’t as fast as other characters, but she’s got powerful tricks and grabs to mess with the opponent. When Hungerns hunger meter is Overstuffed, a lot of their moves become even slower but more chunky and powerful, at the cost of not having as far of a range or not being able to digest opponents for as long during her grabs.
• Modest Royalty: She's a princess, but doesn't exactly dress like one, generally wearing a simple yellow raincoat with a matching hat and pair of boots. Since Hungern is constantly dripping his drool everywhere, she says she’s better off wearing a raincoat over whatever dress Parasoul wants her to wear.
• Older Than She Looks: She's short and bratty enough that you'd assume she was around 5 or 6. She's 11. For reference, Marie is a year older than her but is around a full foot taller. It's implied that her physical growth is stunted because Hungern feeds off her life-force and full power.
• Pint-Sized Kid: She's very small for an 11 year-old. Marie is only a year older than her but appears to be a full foot taller than her. Despite this, she's monstrously powerful.
• Power Echoes: Her Skullgirl voice pack has this going on.
• Power Limiter: Her story reveals she's more or less this to Hungern - her limitless energy is enough to keep the living weapon (mostly) docile in her hands. He's still perpetually hungry, but not to the apocalyptic degree he was before she started carrying him around.
• Practically Different Generations: She's around 14-16 years younger than her older sister, given that Parasoul was in high school when her mother became the Skullgirl.
• Promoted to Playable: After years of her being salty over her getting passed over for other characters, Umbrella is finally set to join the roster as a part of Season Pass 1.
• Raincoat of Horror: Well, probably not horrible for her, but a lot of her moves involve Hungern eating the opponent, which is probably a horrible experience for the one on the receiving end. Umbrella wears a raincoat because she prefers them over the usual froufrou princess attire and they're also practical for staying dry during all of Hungern’s water-based moves as well as his constant drooling in everyday life.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Umbrella's irises have a habit of turning into skulls every so often, with her eyes even turning red when sufficiently angry (making them look like the Skullgirl's eyes).
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: She's a little girl with pink hair, although she's more spoiled than a sweetie.
• Running Gag: Whenever she meets Beowulf, both in her story mode or as an opponent in a fight, she questions who the heck he's supposed to be or makes a goodnatured wish that he'll finally become famous, completely unaware he’s already a celebrity.
  • Previously, she had always been passed up on being the next playable character in favor of the likes of Squigly, Big Band, etc., to the point where celebratory art ended up featuring a very frustrated and salty Umbrella off in the background somewhere. This is, obviously, no longer the case.
• Running Gagged: Her Running Gag of always getting passed over to be made a playable character naturally came to an end when she finally did become playable.
• Sadist: If some of the expressions she makes during her attacks are any indication, she has a bit of a sadistic streak. It could be her Skullgirl heritage making her more bloodthirsty than usual, or she's just being smug. Or both. Notably, she says she feels better after beating up Beowulf in her story mode. If anything, it's even moreso with her Skullgirl variant, where her dialogue makes her more menacing than usual.
• Saved for the Sequel: Subverted as of 2022, although it was stated prior to her introduction that if there ever were a sequel, then Umbrella would've topped the list of potential new fighters, seeing how she was supposed to be in the core roster and invokedWord of God has stated that the true story mode can't be made without her. With Umbrella getting her own route in 2nd Encore, we might get that true story mode yet...
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Gives a great one to the Skull Heart in her own storyline when it tempts her with being able to wish for her mom back.
  Umbrella: Mom... I want to see you so much. But you're not my mom! You're just a skull, so shut up! All you do is trick people into thinking they can solve everything the easy way! If you want people to make pure wishes, you aren't very good at it! What are you really after?
  Skull Heart: No... what is this? This child shouldn't be strong enough to...
  Umbrella: Hungern, help! Let's smash this stupid thing!
• Sibling Team: Would really like to be this with Parasoul, much to the latter's chagrin. She gets her wish at the end of her story mode for the battle with Marie.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Or more like "small girl, big umbrella". Hungern is almost twice her height and only gets bigger the hungrier he is.
• Sore Loser: If Umbrella loses via the round timer going down, she'll shout into the air, toss Hungern aside and throw herself on the floor to throw a temper tantrum while a nervous Black Egret soldier tries his best to get her to stop crying.
  • She also tells Annie her show sucks if she's beaten by her.
  • She tells Filia she likes Fukua better if she's beaten by her.
  • She tells Fukua Filia is cooler if she's beaten by her.
  • She says “Took my spot...” if she's beaten by Squigly, a reference to her constantly being pushed back as DLC with Squigly being the first DLC character added to the game.
• Spectacular Spinning: Two of her aerials and one ground move involve spinning. Some of these no longer involve spinning if Hungern's in his “Overstuffed” state. This might be because he’d throw up, as bloated as he is.
• Spin Attack: Her jumping-heavy kick has her spin along Hungern's handle with her leg outstretched, dealing a multi-hitting kick.
• Spoiled Sweet: She's bratty, loud and feisty with pretty much everyone she meets, but she has a strong desire to be heroic and to always do the right thing, even if she doesn’t really get why good people end up doing bad things or why it’s hard to be completely heroic. She’s also very friendly, if also insensitive, to strangers.
• Spoof Aesop: She's quite prone to giving these out.
  Umbrella (just after Adam, The Egrets and Painwheel say they're going to come help her save Parasoul): Yay, more friends! See, everything will work out if we believe in ourselves or whatever! Let's go!
• Stance System: Hungern has different states based on how hungry he is (which raises over time and can be raised or lowered with certain attacks), with what state he's in affecting Umbrella's animations and the properties of her attacks. Satiated has no special attributes or weaknesses, Overstuffed has slower moves but higher damage and additional effects for move that involve spewing things at the opponent, Ravenous has faster moves and more damage for moves involving eating the opponent, but is right next to Starving, which has slower moves and several of her specials flat out doing nothing.
• Token Mini-Moe: Was planned to be this in the original line-up, and still remains the youngest character out of both the playable cast and the potential line-up.
• Touched by Vorlons: As indicated in Parasoul's story mode, Umbrella's mother Nancy was becoming the Skullgirl while she was pregnant with Umbrella. Because of this, Umbrella is attuned to the Skull Heart's power and in Parasoul's story she is drawn to it, thinking that it is her mother. The Skull Heart then drains her life when she gets close to it, in order to make her more receptible to becoming the new Skullgirl.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Ice cream. She nags her sister to buy her some, and as a fighter has several animations of eating an ice cream cone with Hungern. invokedWord of God is that Hungern likes spicy food, though this hasn't been seen in-game as of yet.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Downplayed, at least compared to the likes of Peacock or Marie; she uses foul language and behaves like she's older than she really is, but she lacks the maturity that comes with it and otherwise acts like a typical, albeit spoiled, child.
• Unwanted Assistance: One of her tag-out lines ("Wait! I was winning-!") plays to this effect as she's swapped out for a different fighter.
• Violence Really Is the Answer: Apparently what she took away from her story mode. The reactions of those listening to this conclusion range from fellow Blood Knight Samson showing amusement, Filia not wanting to entertain the idea, Carol not being so sure about the Aesop, and Parasoul realizing she probably hasn't been the best role model in that regard.
  Umbrella: Anyways, the moral of the story is if you mess around and get into fights all the time, eventually everything is okay in the end. Violence solves everything! Hooray for violence!
• World's Best Warrior: Despite only being 11, she's potentially the strongest character in the series lore wise besides the Trinity themselves. In her story, she managed to defeat Eliza, albeit barely, who was being assisted by Cerebella. She has so much power that she can use Hungern without any ill effects whatsoever, a feat so absurd that Samson claims that he's never encountered a "monster" like her before. Heck, the entire reason she was given Hungern in the first place was to serve as a Power Limiter for her Skullgirl blood. It's stated in both Parasoul and Umbrella's stories that if Umbrella were to become the Skullgirl, she'd be even more powerful than her mother, Queen Nancy, the same Skullgirl who nearly destroyed the entire world. The scariest part is that being so young means she only has room to grow.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In Story Mode, she lists off charge attacks from characters of other fighting games similar to Parasoul.
• You Remind Me of X: When Marie meets Umbrella, she admits that the young princess reminds her a lot of her best friend Patricia.

Hungern

Umbrella's bizarre and ravenous umbrella-shaped companion, who she carries everywhere like a loyal pet. To most, Hungern is an oddball of a weapon who's constantly dripping a gross amount of drool and eating whatever Umbrella feels like shoving into his mouth, but anyone old enough to remember ancient history knows that Hungern has devoured more than his fair share of people, civilizations, and landscapes. Moreover, he's also known to eventually drain whoever wields him of their life energy and leave them dead after a short time, making how Umbrella has held him for so long a mystery to anyone but the Renoir family.

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• Black Speech: Hungern speaks with an indecipherable font and can't be heard during gameplay, although Umbrella can understand him just fine. In the climax of Umbrella's and Parasoul's fight against Marie, however, he actually tries his best to mouth his loyalty for Umbrella in English.
  Hungern: "HUNG... ERN... PROTECT... UM... BRELL...A!"
• Big Eater: He's called Hungern for a resaon. This plays into moves that use him. Depending on hungry Hungern is, certain moves that involve him will get stronger, weaker, or have bonus effects, with Hungern getting particularly dangerous when he's in that narrow period where he's Ravenous, but not yet Starving, which gives the most amount of range, speed and damage potential. This means that Umbrella needs to either play around or manage Hungern's... well, hunger to work effectively.
• Bubble Gun: Well, umbrella, but Hungern can spew bubbles out in a couple of attacks that have varying ranges, the effects of which go between flat damage, encasing the enemy in a bubble or leaving puddles behind that can be kicked to drench the enemy.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Hungern's hunger states are all associated with a particular color. Satiated is yellow, Overstuffed is blue, Ravenous is red, and Starving is purple.
• Eating the Enemy: Hungern's fighting style is just eating the opponent alive, digesting them or grinding them in his teeth for a bit and then spitting them back out. If her level 3 Blockbuster finishes an opponent off, he'll actually swallow their remains for good until Umbrella is either knocked out or if she wins, at which point the body will spill out of his mouth no worse for wear.
• Expressive Accessory: Hungern makes a lot of expressions alongside Umbrella, getting angry eyes whenever she's pissed or tearing up in sadness when she's upset. He also looks upset if they whiff an attack, looks dizzy whenever Umbrella is spinning him around, and gets X's in his eyes if the duo is knocked out of the fight.
• Extreme Omnivore: He'll eat anything, paying little mind to flavor or size or value, aside from apparently preferring spicy foods. As a result, Umbrella likes feeding Hungern garbage and he likes eating it! And that's not even getting into what he does to their opponents... Parasoul, for her part, disapproves and would rather Umbrella feed him actual food, which she does, but she still likes to feed him garbage from time to time.
• Eye Scream: If he's not eating the opponent or Umbrella is swinging him like a bludgeon, then Hungern's eyes are being uses as projectiles or weapons, usually by Umbrella squeezing him hard enough to shoot them forward. Hungern doesn't seem to mind much, being able to regrow his eyes immediately after they're shot out.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: If you use their Level 3 to knock off the last of her opponents’ health Hungern will swallow them whole. But if you use her taunt to give Hungern a hug, he'll just spit them out. This is in contrast to Hungern’s other “eating” moves which involve him chewing on the opponent and spitting them out.
• Hunger Causes Lethargy: Hungern's starved state is weaker in some ways than other forms, but he can “eat” more before getting full in this state. Inverted in his “ravenous” state, where a lot of moves actually get buffed.
• Interspecies Friendship: Umbrella considers Hungern her best friend and he's fond of her in return.
• Just Eat Him: Hungern does both the “chewing and spitting out” and “swallowing whole” versions of this trope. Possibly justified if Umbrella taught him specifically to not lethally eat people.
  Umbrella: Hungern has never eaten anyone! ...that I know of.
• Life Drinker: According to Samson, Hungern eats the life energy of its user. He's honestly shocked that Umbrella isn't dead by now. As it turns out, Umbrella has so much excess power due to her Skullgirl heritage that Hungern is able to get his fill on that alone, which also helps to keep Umbrella's powers in check.
• Making a Splash: A lot of Hungern’s attacks use water/drool in contrast to Krieg’s fiery tears. He can burp bubbles, which can be used for a variety of things and can even encase the opponent if you catch them in an air grab or hit them with a special variety of bubble. Whenever one of these bubbles pop they leave a puddle on the ground which Umbrella can use to extend her combos. Also, if you use an “eating” attack on the opponent for long enough they'll get the “wet” status effect which inflicts them with longer hitstuns. Hungern also gets rather drippy if the Hunger gauge is full, constantly drooling out fluids if Overstuffed, further contributing to the water theme.
• Meaningful Name: Hungern is German for the word famine. This is quite appropriate for a gluttonous living weapon.
• Multipurpose Tongue: Hungern can use his tongue to grapple opponents and drag them into his mouth, kicking and screaming. One of his and Umbrella's grapple moves involve him rolling his tongue along the ground, (across or almost across the whole screen if he's ravenous!) and, if it comes in contact with an opponent, he wraps his tongue around them and drags them into his mouth to chew on them. The other is Umbrella's Level 3, where Hungern grows huge and suddenly wraps his tongue around their opponent’s ankle as they dangle helplessly upside down and drags them into his mouth, doing decent to devastating damage depending on how hungry he is.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Hungern, insatiable devourer of people, armies, civilizations and everything in-between.
• Power Limiter: Hungern's ability to siphon life energy just by being near him is supposed to be suppressing her dormant Skullgirl power. Keyword being "supposed", as when the time is right and when Umbrella is emotional enough, her Skullgirl energy spikes and can lead to some disastrous consequences if she's allowed to reach full power, or be let anywhere near the Skullheart.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Hungern has red irises and is an incredibly dangerous weapon known for eating anything in sight and draining anyone of their life energy, with the exception of Umbrella.
• Retired Monster: In a sense, despite however much destruction he caused and lives he took way back then, he's content to be domesticated and play with Umbrella instead of going on another rampage.
• Sneeze of Doom: Umbrella's Outtake has Hungern sneeze really hard at the opponent, hard enough that they end up flying off the screen or hit the edge of the stage.
  Umbrella: "We're allergic to YOU!"
• Stance System: As explained in Umbrella's entry, Hungern will get faster and sport extra range with some attacks the hungrier he his, and gets slower but more damaging the more well fed he is, on top of every hunger state influencing the effects or amount of times some moves can be used. Ideally, he's best kept at Ravenous (extra range, more damage potential per grab, light enough to keep Umbrella nimble) or Overstuffed (heavy attacks that knock opponents around, least amount of risk of dropping to Starving, can spew bubble attacks with impunity).
• Ugly Cute: In-Universe. In her Story Mode, Filia thinks Hungern is gross because of how much he drools. Umbrella takes offense and retorts that “he's the cutest!”
• Walking Wasteland: Hungern eats the life force of everything and everyone around it. That it seems like mostly a slobbering pet is proof of how powerful Umbrella is.

Black Dahlia (and her bunnies)

Black Dahlia

Voiced by: Wendee Lee (English) / Shiori Izawa (Japanese)

Murder is her life's work

"Let me tuck you in for your final bedtime..."

Decades ago, the woman now known as Black Dahlia was mortally wounded by the Skullgirl and brought to the Anti-Skullgirl Labs, where she was rebuilt with cybernetics akin to Big Band. After all was said and done, Dahlia unexpectedly developed a lust for bloody violence and inflicting suffering on others, and promptly betrayed her cohorts at the labs to sell her services as a hired gun for whomever could afford her... and keep her entertained. This led her to the Medici family, and she eventually became Lorenzo's right-hand-hitwoman, training his other assassins and performing such jobs as slaughtering the Contiellos and getting back at the Fishbone Gang for stealing the Life Gem. With one of the Fishbone's members discovered to be alive and well thanks to the Gem and a new Skullgirl on the loose— one with a serious grudge against the Medicis, no less— Lorenzo has sent Dahlia to do what she does best, though after all these years, it seems Dahlia's finally gotten bored of taking his orders, and might instead be pursuing the Skull Heart for her own twisted interests...

The third of the new characters added with Season Pass 1, Black Dahlia was officially released for Steam and Playstation owners on March 29, 2023, and for Switch on March 31, 2023; Steam Season Pass owners again had early Alpha/Beta access ahead of her full release.

A bonafide swiss army woman, Black Dahlia uses her array of tools and weapons to control space, forcing her opponent to act predictably and enable her to go in for the kill. Of course, she's got her signature Arm Cannon, which works differently from other projectiles in that Dahlia can only fire off six rounds before needing to reload. In addition to her standard shot, Dahlia has a light RNG element in the form of her five elemental rounds, each of which has different properties and travel arcs, but which of the five rounds are loaded is dependent on a randomized cycle unless she spends a bar to use Last Call, which lets her pick and choose and also puts her in the Empower state, which powers up her next heavy punch attack or grab. As if her gun weren't enough, among Dahlia's other tools are a teleport, a counter, a command grab (that also gives her Empower), and a unique movement option in Onslaught, which makes her leap towards the opponent in a variable arc.

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Tropes associated with Black Dahlia:

• Affably Evil: Despite having undeniably proven herself to be a remorseless and sadistic assassin, she curiously manages to straddle a line between this and Faux Affably Evil. Again, she's a vicious and gleeful murderer whose bloodthirst isn't even marginally concealed by how sophisticatedly she conducts herself, but her knock-out quotes are usually complimentary towards the victor, and even outside of that she is genuinely friendly towards certain opponents in her pre-fight dialogue (such as approaching her fights with Cerebella from more of a mentorly angle, taking up Eliza on a "girl's night" after their scuffle, or extending Valentine an offer to join her crew, complete with a compliment on how she would look in a bunny suit).
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Her Arm Cannon switches side depending on which side of the screen she's standing on. Her timeout animation has it switch sides multiple times.
• Ambiguously Gay: Has a personal army of young and curvy Playboy Bunny girls at the snap of her fingers, and she canonically likes them obedient and absolutely devoted to her. She also offers Valentine a job as one, saying that she would look "fetching" in a bunny suit.
• Arm Cannon: She has a shotgun for an arm. One approximately the size of a Grenade Launcher too.
• Artificial Limbs: Her entire right arm is now a huge gun, and her legs below the thigh have been replaced with metal replacements loaded with weaponry and similar in appearance to that of an articulated doll.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In her story, she kills Marie, Vitale, Lorenzo, Eliza, and forced Brain Drain into submission, then uses the power of the Skull Heart to travel to a hellish dimension where survival is a luxury and she can kill and maim to her heart's content.
• Badass Cape: It's a doilie.
• Bear Trap: One of her ground moves leaves a beartrap that can trap opponents in it for a small amount of time.
• Bittersweet Ending: The ending of her story mode is an unusual example in that it isn't bitter for her, but rather for the rest of the world. The Medici are doomed thanks to the deaths of its leadership and the Skull Heart is gone forever now that Dahlia has successfully wished upon it, with it and her being transported to another dimension...but New Meridian is in ruins after Dahlia's rampage, leaving many people (including a sizable portion of the main cast) dead.
• Blood Knight: Loves fighting and joined the Medici so she would be able to fight more. Notably the only animations she has where she's frowning are in her time out and stun animations.
• Bottomless Magazines: Averted; Her gun holds 6 slugs that can be stylishly reloaded at anytime with her special move "Another Round". She has a special counter below her character portrait that tells how many and what kind of bullets she has loaded, and the color of the rounds in her sprite's gun chamber actually change to reflect this, giving a player two methods of keeping track.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: As shown in her Alpha trailer, after defeating Squigly, who she personally killed in front of the girl's own mother, she coldly admits that she doesn't remember her. This carries over to her story mode where she has to be reminded of who Squigly is by Bookie, causing her to reminisce about Sienna’s reaction when she splattered Squigly’s brains all over her birthday cake.This pisses Leviathan off to no end, causing him to swear to make her pay when before he was hesitant to fight her.
  Black Dahlia: You're not the ones I want, but I'm quite happy to play with you if you're bored, whoever you are.
  Leviathan: How dare you?! Is that all you have to say, murderer?
  Black Dahlia: Should I know you?
  Squigly: You killed me!
  Black Dahlia: I kill a lot of people.
• The Cameo: Prior to becoming playable, Double takes her form as an attacker in her Nightmare Legion Blockbuster, shrouded in her cape and quickly attacking the victim.
• Chekhov's Gunman: She was mentioned in Ms. Fortune's profile and appears in both hers and Peacock's ending. She also appears in the background of the Medici Tower stage. She also has two lines at the beginning of Eliza's story mode before she's sent off on her errand, and is seen again at the end of it.
• Closet Geek: When fighting against Annie, she mentions that she hasn’t listened to her show ever since it was playing on the radio, implying she may have been a fan in her younger years.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: All of her ammo types are tied to a specific color of shell that can be seen loaded in the chamber of her sprite's gun: Red shells are normal rounds, orange shells are incendiary rounds, yellow shells are buckshot rounds, turquoise shells are laser rounds, light blue shells are ice rounds, and violet shells are taser rounds. Any shell that has already been spent is colored black. In Mobile, the third bullet in every reload will match the element of the Dahlia fighter being used.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Her animations of getting hit and knocked to the ground usually have her smiling. She also doesn't frown at all except for her time out loss, stun animations, or if she doesn't get hit during "Counter, Strike!".
  Black Dahlia: *misses Counter, Strike!* Boring!
• The Corrupter: Admits this to the Skull Heart when talking about her bunnygirls.
  Black Dahlia: I hope you weren't too bored. Did you have fun tempting my bunnies?
  Skull Heart: Hardly. I thought you had been foolish to trust them, but I see you had no reason to fear. They are so empty of desire they hardly seem human. What did you do to them?
  Black Dahlia: Why nothing at all, usually! This world makes an endless supply of girls like them with or without my help. The rest of the Medicis are all too happy to find a use for the broken unfortunates who end up at their door, but they prefer tools with enough upstairs to manipulate. I, on the other hand, only want the ones who lost everything and still want to live... but don't care if they'll die. Turning them from broken dolls into adorable assassins is a little hobby of mine. It worked out so well in my case, I can't help but want to share the experience.
  Skull Heart: So this is all you desire? To share the nihilistic thrill of combat on the edge of life and death?
  Black Dahlia: It's so good to meet someone who understands! So few do but my precious bunnies.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": One of her victory animations has her cracking her back.
• Crash in Through the Ceiling: Inverted; her tag out animation has her firing a grappling hook in the air, causing some debris to fall as she leaves.
• Crazy-Prepared: While she's fine with simply brute-forcing her way through enemies if it suits her, sometimes Dahlia will plan ahead to ensure her target doesn't get the upper hand. This is best shown in her story mode, where she manages to take down Eliza in short order by luring her into a place where her regenerative abilities won't work, and then having her Henchbunnies on standby to incinerate Eliza once she's on her last leg. This even plays into her playstyle, where a lot of her pressure involves setting up traps and using her different utiliites to dismantle her opponent's defenses and prevent them from going on the attack.
• Die Laughing: If knocked out with a particularly heavy attack, she lets out a very satisfied and sincere Noblewoman's Laugh in contrast to the usual agonized scream the rest of the cast makes.
• Driven to Madness: It is said that spending time in the labs has caused her to descend to madness and villainy.
• Dynamite Candle: Her win animation against Peacock features a cake with dynamite-shaped candles.
• Even the Girls Want Her: In her story mode, her henchbunnies talk about how devoted they are to her while making heart eyes.
• Evil Old Folks: She's responsible for a lot of death and destruction, including Ms. Fortune's friends and Squigly's whole family. She's also ancient, with only her enhancements keeping her going.
• Eviler than Thou: The only reason why she hasn't gone on a rampage is because she thinks being under the Medici's payroll would be enough to satisfy her bloodlust. Her story shows her just how badly Dahlia can trounce the other, more despicable villains once she's allowed to cut loose.
• Exploding Barrels: One of her Blockbusters involves an oil drum that can be detonated with any fire attacks from herself or her teammates.
• The Faceless: She's always seen with her mask on, which is pretty expressive by itself.
• Faux Affably Evil: As noted in Affably Evil above, she straddles a thin line between that trope and this one. She has a taste for finer things, is genuinely complimentary and friendly with certain opponents (as well as anyone that manages to strike her down), and can believably present herself as being a mentally-stable woman in more "polite" settings... but the lid comes off around people she's been charged with killing. Even with fighters that she compliments in her pre-fight interactions, just as many, if not more, of her interactions with them involve her relishing their impending death at her hands.
• Foil:
  • To Peacock. Peacock is one of the youngest characters in the game while Dahlia is amongst the eldest when not counting immortals like Double or Annie. Both are Anti-Skullgirl Weapons who were Driven to Madness after traumatic encounters that left them physically crippled. The two of them are ranged fighters who rely on their goons in battle, Peacock with her gang and Dahlia with her Henchbunnies. They are also Blood Knights of the highest order, both frequently using the term "paint the town red". The main difference between the two is the fact that despite everything, Peacock still manages to hold on to something at least resembling a moral compass and genuinely cares for Marie and her comrades at Lab 8 despite her irreverent attitude. Dahlia, while seemingly being Lorenzo's faithful attack dog, ultimately has no loyalty to anything besides her own twisted desires.
  • She also serves as one to Eliza. Both are some of the most vicious villains in Skullgirls' roster, have ties to the Medici, love the thrill of combat, and live in high society. They even seem to have an odd friendship going on between them, if some of Black Dahlia's lines towards Eliza when she fights her are any indication. However, where Black Dahlia is a Thrill Seeker and a Combat Sadomasochist who doesn't fear death, living to chase that high of a well-fought challenge and bring others to her breaking point, freely gambling with her life with little regard, Eliza wants nothing more than to insure her own immortality, doesn't take her losses well, and prefers to play the safer and subtle Long Game unless an outside force prompts her to do something more drastic. This difference in perspective is what ultimately pits them against each other in Black Dahlia's story mode, with Eliza electing to stick to the safe route of letting Vitale take over the Medici rather than following Black Dahlia's plan. It doesn't end well for her.
• For the Evulz: It’s hard to tell if she falls into this or It Amused Me since, while she mostly does the horrible, horrible things she does to keep herself entertained without doing it just for the sake of being evil, her idea of entertainment mostly involves hurting people both physically and emotionally which is probably close enough. The only mitigating factor is that she's in for thrills, especially when it comes to fighting, and so her Wish ultimately transports her to a world full of demonic monstrosities to fight, not innocents to ruin... even if she clearly enjoys that as well.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Invoked by her taunt, which is called "It's Apple Juice" despite her clearly drinking champagne.
• Graceful Loser: For a cold-blooded assassin who enjoys mocking and toying with her foes, she is surprisingly complimentary to the other playable characters (bar Squigly) if they do manage to beat her.
  Black Dahlia: So he can fight. (losing to Beowulf)
  Black Dahlia: Tenacious teamwork. (losing to Filia)
• Granny Classic: Her "Good Granny" voice pack makes her talk like one of these, complete with slang that would fit right in in postwar America.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Her shotgun can function as one when she tags out, leaving through the ceiling and causing some debris to fall.
• Greater-Scope Villain: In most plotlines that involves the Medici Mafia, Black Dahlia serves as its top enforcer and as Lorenzo's right hand woman, being responsible for murdering Squigly, her henchmen getting out of an arrest when Big Band's crooked police force cripple him as payback, being Lorenzo's last line of defense against Peacock and secretly kidnapping Ms. Fortune's surrogate family, among many, many other crimes and involvements.
• Hammerspace: Concept art made for her years prior to her inclusion in the roster has her harness just as much of this ability as her fellow ASG units, Peacock and Big Band. Her gigantic gun not only fires slugs, but also contains a flamethrower, multiple daggers, and a chainsaw in its barrel and frame as potential attacks. Her legs meanwhile can be armed with gun barrels and blades that appear out of her knees.
• The Hedonist: She could be considered this, since she seems to live for nothing but her thrills and various ways of keeping herself entertained.
• High-Class Gloves: Her normal arm is covered in a glove.
• Hope Crusher: She absolutely revels in bringing people to the brink, just like she was all those years ago when a Skullgirl nearly killed her. The fact that Ms. Fortune and Big Band still manage to hold on to some sense of hope and morality despite everything they lost, unlike her, might be one of the reasons she fixates on them so much in her story mode. Big Band holding fast despite being moments away from dying causes her to angrily spare him and send him away while Brain Drain nonchalantly (through Robo-Fortune) killing Nadia before Black Dahlia can even try to break her makes her go absolutely ballistic.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Constantly dresses like she's going to a funeral.
• Lady Drunk: She's no stranger to expensive liquor and has a love for the stuff, theming many of her attacks and callouts on mixing and alcohol-related puns.
• Large Ham: She's an assassin in her element, and is very clearly having a blast both in-and-out of combat. Her new talksprites reflect this, being some of the most expressive out of the entire cast to the point of Chewing the Scenery.
• Laughing Mad: When Ms. Fortune manages to escape Black Dahlia thanks to Robo-Fortune's intervention in Dahlia's story mode, she...has some thoughts about that.
  Black Dahlia: ...ha...Ahahaha...OH HO HO HO HO HO HO HO!!! ONE MILLION DEATHS WON'T BE ENOUGH FOR YOU, MS. FORTUNE!!!
• Long-Range Fighter: The bulk of her effectiveness comes from her mid-range capabilities, all but two of her ammo types having a slow but oppressive arc that land roughly around the center of the screen and only one ammo type can reliably reach across the entire screen, and many of her moves has her push herself back, reposition herself to where she'd rather be or keep the opponent at bay she can continue firing and reloading her shotgun.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: On top of having ammo and reloading mechanic, most of her Blockbusters are surprisingly not as immediately damaging as other characters and are meant to be oppressive, forcing the opponent to play it safe and let Dahlia control their spacing.
  • Parting Gift lays a bundle of highly visible and audible TNT that can make the opponent think twice about making a move near it, or if they've been tagged with the bomb itself, be forced to play defensively under the fear of not knowing when Dahlia will detonate it, if ever.
  • Stage Hazard has her kick an oil canister across the stage that leaves behind a streak of oil, which she can ignite using certain attacks or by further kicking the barrel around to make it blow up - if the opponent is on top of the oil slick, they'd need to be careful not to be caught in the explosion if it ever goes off.
  • Girls Night does incredibly low damage for a 3 meter Blockbuster, but summons a trio of Henchbunnies who constantly pressure the opponent from close, mid and long range and allow Dahlia to control her spacing while the opponent is forced to deal with multiple angles of attack and either defeat her minions or hold out until they leave.
• Never Mess with Granny: She's 50-60 years old according to invokedWord of God, and she happens to be one of the most feared and powerful of the Medici mafia's enforcers. Before the events of the game, a newly-empowered Marie attempts to kill the Medici Mafia's leaders — only for Black Dahlia to curbstomp her almost instantly and force her to retreat.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Frequently, complete with the smug and snobby hand gesture.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Tying into her Blood Knight tendencies, Black Dahlia finds her battles to be more exciting when her opponent have nothing left to lose. Notably, she refused to kill Big Band since his mindset made it hard for him to be put over the edge, and attempted to turn Ms. Fortune into her own personal challenge to see how many ways she can break her. Her Story Mode ending has her use the Skullheart's wish to teleport herself into a Crapsack World filled with monsters constantly fighting for survival every single day, with her sadistically taking pleasure in fighting said creatures.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: She see's Ms. Fortune's immortality and defiance in the face of despair to be exciting, and made it her personal mission to see just how far she can go with torturing Fortune until she breaks. Unfortunately, she was stripped of this chance when Brain Drain nonchalantly had Robo-Fortune press her to death to reforge the Soul Gem, which caused her to go ballistic, take down both Robo-Fortune and Painwheel at the same time, and become the only cast member in the game to come close to killing Brain Drain (who only survived by pulling a Villain: Exit, Stage Left).
• Outside Ride: One of her intro animations has her enter the arena from atop the hood of a vintage car, which she jumps off of.
• Perfect Reload Command: Black Dahlia can reload her gun by a few frames quicker should she perform a Perfect Reload.
• Pistol-Whipping: Is able to use her gun arm for melee attacks.
• Playing with Fire: When reloading her gun, she can load an orange incendiary round into the chamber, which deals extra damage and sets her opponent on fire.
  • Her level one Blockbuster has her roll out an oil drum that spills oil along the ground wherever it goes. The oil spill can be ignited by Black Dahlia's crouching heavy punch, the same incendiary rounds she can reload, or any other character that has fire in one of their attacks (e.g. Peacock's crouching medium kick in which she fires one of her eyes' laser at the ground and Parasoul's Napalm Pillar).
• Practical Taunt: Similar to the taunts that both Sean and Dudley from Street Fighter have where they shoot a basketball or throw a rose respectively at their opponent and it can hit them for a very small amount of damage, Black Dahlia throws her tea cup in an arc that can hit her opponent if spaced right allowing her to continue her pressure if they block it or get hit with the cup. Especially potent if the opponent gets countered with the cup as it will leave them frozen in hitstun similar to Valentine's green Flew Shot.
• Professional Killer: Is one of the most devoted of the Medici's assassins, and has never let one of her targets leave alive.
• Promoted to Playable: Was the 3rd Season 1 DLC Character to be added after appearing in the stories of other characters for years.
• Prophet Eyes: Always wearing a veil over her face, her expressions are limited to a blank white eye that glows through her mask.
• Psycho Prototype: Of the known ASG agents, she's one of the first, before they started using artificial parasites over solely body augmentations. She's also completely cuckoo.
• Pungeon Master: While nowhere near the level of Ms. Fortune and Peacock, she makes a few puns with her normal attacks and makes many references to alcoholic drinks based on which grenade she shoots at her opponent.
  Old-fashioned! (shooting a regular grenade)
  Screwdriver! (shooting a laser grenade)
  Hot toddy! (shooting an incendiary grenade)
  On the rocks! (shooting an ice grenade)
  Knife to meet you!
• Pure Is Not Good: The Skull Heart deems her pure enough to make a wish without turning into a Skullgirl and disappears forever after she does so, transporting Dahlia to a dimension where she can kill to her Heart's content. Needless to say, this trope is very much in effect.
• Seeking the Intangible: The Skull Heart speculates this to be the case with Black Dahlia's obsession with Ms. Fortune, pointing out that while she does enjoy breaking people, she possibly may want to be proven wrong about someone experiencing their breaking point and not becoming someone like her.
• Sexy Slit Dress: A black slit dress for the legservice. It also shows a clearer divide between her flesh and her prosthetics.
• Short-Range Shotgun: She uses a shotgun to force her target to tag out. Like other similar moves from other characters, it doesn't do any damage.
• Silver Vixen: She's approaching her senior years, being estimated to be between 50-60 years old, but aging has left her figure no worse for wear, with a shapely hourglass outlining her torso. Jury's still out on the state of her concealed face, however. It's almost certainly the result of her extensive augmentations.
• Slasher Smile: Frequently, especially in her story mode.
• Sticky Bomb: Parting Gift throws a bundle of dynamite that can attach onto fighters.
• Straw Nihilist: As the Skull Heart surmises and she immediately confirms, she fights for no greater purpose nor does she believe there is a greater purpose in life. All that matters to her is the thrill of spreading death and destruction. Though, she may have some doubts about choosing this course in life as her encounter with Big Band leaves her rather off-balance and part of the reason she makes her wish in the end is to prove to herself that she was right to “throw it all away”.
• Sweet Tooth: After she beats an opponent, her servants bring her tea and a large cake (or, occasionally, some other dessert item) based on the character she defeated to end the round, with the only exception being when she beats herself in a Mirror Match, which results in a champagne tower instead.
  • Filia's is designed to look like a hamburger.
  • Cerebella's cake resembles a circus tent with a clown-face ice cream cone on top.
  • Peacock's is a rather unstable purple cake with candles resembling dynamite.
  • Parasoul's cake is multi-layer with gray frosting, sculpted roses, and the Canopy Kingdom symbol on the top layer.
  • Ms. Fortune has a custard pudding slightly resembling a cat face, with two cones on top to resemble cat ears.
  • Painwheel's cake is a pile of eclairs with pinwheels stuck on top. Each eclair has icing to resemble stitches.
  • Valentine's cake is chocolate drenched in red jelly, with strawberries around the edges and a figure of her bonesaw on top.
  • Double's is a pile of cupcakes made to resemble other cast members.
  • Marie's cake is a rather complicated confection made to look like a graveyard with ghosts, with candles resembling Marie's flames.
  • Squigly's resembles a gravestone with Leviathan wrapped around it.
  • Big Band's is a saxophone sculpted out of chocolate on top of a pile of donuts.
  • Fukua has a parfait with a banana on top.
  • Eliza's looks like a pyramid with bright red jelly (presumably simulating blood) between the layers and wrapped in Eliza's ankh-scarf.
  • Beowulf has a square cake made to look like a wrestling ring.
  • Robo-Fortune's is a rectangular loaf of honey toast topped with ice cream and two cones to resemble Ms. Fortune's dessert. Two sticks of pocky on the back resemble television antenna.
  • Annie's is in the shape of a star with rainbow frosting, with her sword stuck in it.
  • Umbrella has jell-o that roughly resembles Hungern, with eyeball lollipops sticking out of it.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Ironically for a Cyborg, there's a quick little joke at her expense in her story mode where she can't figure out how to use the communication device Valentine has on her and hands it over to Bookie, saying she doesn't have time to fiddle with it.
• Teleport Cloak: Tea Slip has her teleporting using her shawl.
• That Woman Is Dead: Different personality and different name from her time in the labs.
• Thememobile: The car her bunnies drive for one intro animation has the same gemstone and feathers attached to it as Black Dahlia's hat.
• Thrill Seeker: A villainous example: since she was modified by Dr. Avian, she's always been seeking the next thrill higher, hence why she joined the Medici and later started pursuing the Skull Heart.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Parting Gift has her throw a bundle of dynamite onto the stage. If it lands on the opponent, they'll be left visibly and audibly ticking until Dahlia is either knocked out or if she activates the bomb when she pleases.
• To Create a Playground for Evil: This is one of the reasons why she prefers having Lorenzo in power compared to his son, Vitale. Lorenzo’s style of leadership results in more bloodshed and conflict, which is good for keeping her entertained. After she makes her wish, it results in a Death World somewhat similar to a Doom game, littered with nightmare creatures that she relishes fighting.
• Trick Bullet: One of her main specialties, holding certain inputs during her "Another Round" special has her load up to two of these into the 3rd and 6th chambers of her gun (In Mobile, the 3rd bullet is based on the element of the Black Dahlia fighter while the 6th is random). She's got a whole plethora of them too, though what types are loaded are random. One of her Level 1 Blockbusters allows her to load a whole clip of any of these that she can choose from:
  • Incendiary rounds explode when they hit the ground.
  • Buckshots can send the opponent flying into a wallbounce.
  • Turquoise rounds fire a thin laser that travel the full length of the screen.
  • Ice rounds freeze the opponent on impact.
  • Taser rounds can electrify the opponent, damaging and stunning them.
• Unfriendly Fire: Highlighting how maniacal she is, Parting Gift can attach onto opponents and teammates, giving her the option to kill her own Henchbunnies with an explosive or blow her tag team partner up for big damage if it means hurting the opponent.
• Unorthodox Reload: She throws her bullets in the air before moving her gun arm to click them into place.
• White Hair, Black Heart: In this case, the white hair is almost certainly due to her old age. Either way, she's one of the few completely villainous characters in the cast, only outdone by Double and Eliza by the sheer scope of their actions.
• Would Hurt a Child: Threatens to do this to young child Peacock in her ending, and unhesitatingly put a bullet through Squigly's skull 14 years ago. Then taunted the latter's mother about it shortly afterwards. In her story, the first thing she does is kill Marie, who's roughly as old as Peacock.

Tropes related to Black Dahlia Bunnies:

• Aerith and Bob: The names (or possible nicknames) of some of Black Dahlia's bunnies are as follow. The Timeout Assistant Bunny (Bookie), the Shotgun Bunny (Bonnie), the Pistol Bunny (Buttercup) and the Knife Bunny (Killer).
• Amazon Brigade: The Henchbunnies, a gang of women (and at least one man, seen in Dahlia's home stage) wearing playboy bunnysuits and rabbit-skull masks who serve her as assassins, armed thugs and waitresses. Her Blockbuster Girl's Night summons a trio of them onto the stage to target the opponent until they deal enough damage, are knocked out or their timer runs out, with one armed with a knife, one a shotgun and the other with a handgun.
• Ambiguously Gay: The way they talk about Dahlia and how devoted they are to her makes them sound like they're deeply in love with her (or brainwashed). When they talk about her during Dahlia's story mode, they have heart eyes.
• Fangirl: Of their boss.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Black Dahlia makes sure this trope is in effect when she recruits someone.
• Love Interest: Collectively they're possibly this to Black Dahlia, assuming they're not just meant to be eye candy to her. See Ambiguously Gay.
• Playboy Bunny: They wear playboy bunnysuits.
• Unmoving Plaid: Their fishnet stockings don't obey perspective, and are always the same diagonal texture regardless of how they're posing.

Marie (with Hilgard and the rest of her skeleton minions)

Marie Korbel / Bloody Marie

Voiced by: Kira Buckland (English) / Nao Tōyama (Japanese)

Maid For Revenge

^{Click here to see Bloody Marie}

"I'll sweep you up."

The current Skullgirl. Marie hails from Rommelgrad, a long-since destroyed town that now makes up part of No Man's Land. She and her friend, Patricia Watson, were both captured by the Medici slavers, and sometime after Patricia was disfigured by them, Marie somehow managed to escape and find the Skull Heart. She wished for revenge on the men who hurt her friend. Remarkably strong willed, she is able to hold off the influence of the Skull Heart, using her powers as the Skullgirl to enact revenge on the mafia.

Best known as the Final Boss for the original eight characters, Marie was announced as the final character of Season Pass 1 at EVO 2022, making her playable debut after over a decade. She went into Early Access on Steam starting December 12, 2023 before being formally released to all platforms on March 26, 2024.

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Tropes associated with Marie:

• Almost Dead Guy: Despite seemingly getting completely obliterated at the end of her boss fight (after already having been reduced to a few floating bones in her final phase), in a few of the endings she's able to briefly hold herself together for the following cutscene.
• Ambiguously Brown: Notably, her last name is Czechoslovakian, despite being from the same area as Peacock, whose last name is English/Scottish.
• Antagonist Title: She is the titular Skullgirl that the others must face before claiming and destroying/wishing on the Skull Heart.
• Anti-Hero: After she breaks free of the Skull Heart's influence, she's come to lean more toward this, deciding to use her power for good and ensuring that she will be the last Skullgirl, not wanting any others to suffer the same fate.
• Anti-Villain: A mix of Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds and Well-Intentioned Extremist. Her MO as the Skullgirl is to take revenge on the Medici family. She also displays a few moments of sympathy towards some of her opponents.
• Arch-Enemy: The Medici in general are this for her, but she has a great deal of hatred for Black Dahlia in particular due to her taste for wanton death and destruction. Even after Marie largely backs down from her goal of killing everyone associated with the Medici, she has absolutely no reservations about taking Black Dahlia down on sight.
  "I have given up on revenge, but I will make an exception for you."
• Artifact Name: Her initial title of "Bloody" Marie. Though originally referred to almost exclsively by her full title, over time the "Bloody" part slowly became phased out, eventually being lampshaded by Eliza in her story mode. As of the Future Club revival, she is only ever referred to as Marie, with the nickname simply used to differentiate between Marie's boss and playable appearances.
• Audience Surrogate: In the Joke Story Mode of Squigly. Squigly appears and apologizes for tricking you, saying you'll have to wait a little more to play her story. Cue Marie asking how much time. "Two weeks" Squigly replies. Then Marie gets to say what every player is thinking.
  "Two weeks? Two weeks...? TWO WEEKS?! RAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!!! I'LL TEACH YOU TO TROLL ME!"
• Bad Powers, Good People: When freed from the Skull Heart's influence, she still retains a majority of her abilities as a Skullgirl, basically making her a heroic necromancer.
• Back from the Dead: Appropriately enough, her character ability Rest and Resurrection allows her to revive dead teammates by standing near them.
• Benevolent Boss: After breaks free from the Skull Heart's influence, she treats her skeleton minions with compassion and no longer using them as mere slaves. In fact, it's less of Marie commanding them around like their higher up and more like her asking for their help as a fellow victim of the Trinity during the fight.
• Big Bad: She is the final boss of the story mode for most characters and is the current Skullgirl threatening the Canopy Kingdom and the world by extension.
• Big Bad Friend: She and Patricia were once best friends before Marie became the Skullgirl and Patricia became Peacock. They still care about each other, with Marie trying to specifically spare Peacock during her attack on Lab 8 and Peacock seeking out Marie to Mercy Kill her rather than to wish on the Skull Heart (which Peacock sees as "nothing but trouble").
• Big Damn Heroes: After Eliza has captured Filia, Samson, Ms. Fortune, and Squigly while seemingly kicking off her plans to Take Over the World, Marie shows up in The Stinger controlling a giant statue/vein monster to fight a One-Winged Angel Eliza.
• Break the Cutie: She was once a perfectly happy and normal girl (well, as happy as a war orphan can be, anyway), but losing her surrogate father, being sold into slavery by the Medicis and watching her best friend get horribly maimed trying to save her broke her to the point where she wished on the Skull Heart for the power to fight back against her oppressors.
• Calling Your Attacks: As a playable character, Marie has a few attacks that she shouts on top of her lungs, which also occasionally used to summon Hilgard.
  Swing big, Mr. Hilgard!
  Howl, Hilgard!
  Carpal Pummel!
  Feel the Weight of Our Will!
• The Comically Serious: Downplayed. Marie is all around No-Nonsense Nemesis, but the humors comes from her mostly retaining her stoic demeanor in the middle of humorous and mundane situations, such as having a quick bubble bath when trapped in one of Umbrella's bubbles, apparently a fan of wrestling, and not even mentioning of her flipped out in Squigly's joke story mode.
• Cool vs. Awesome: The Stinger to Eliza's story; Kaiju Eliza vs Humongous Mecha Marie.
• Creepy Child: To say the least... it comes with being an undead Humanoid Abomination. After breaks free from the Skull Heart's influence however, she's showing more of her sweeter side, making her comes across as Creepy Cute instead.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Has three stages in sequential order and takes very little damage in all of them (she has to do less than half her own health in damage to defeat you).
• Dark Is Not Evil: She becomes this following her Heel–Face Turn. Despite her black color motif and her Skullgirl power, Marie is a heroic character who vows to put an end to the Trinity's machinations.
• Death from Above: In Squigly's Story Mode she throws a building at an escaping Medici blimp.
• Dem Bones: She is missing a portion of her vertebrae, and her ribs are exposed. In her final form, she's completely defleshed and her bones orbit the Skull Heart.
• Determinator: Her will is so strong she can fend off the Skull Heart's influence... and in the end, even outlast it.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In any Story Mode where she is not the actual final boss.
• Downloadable Content: According to Mike Z, she was the one most requested to added to the roster proper, although she only placed 12th in the overall voting.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Not only she manages to break free from the Skull Heart's influence in her story mode, but Marie is able to archive her true wish to protect her loved ones with her power in the process and resuming her friendship with Peacock.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While Marie has no problems with killing people, she draws the line at killing innocents. This is best shown when Black Dahlia lanches an unstable jetpack at her while she is holding up the Medici Tower in order to protect the people below it. This then forces her to drop the building which then proceeds to land on the city streets, killing dozens of terrified citizens in the process.
  "There were people under that tower! I was protecting them and now... now they're all dead, because of you!"
• Evil Overlooker: In the cover art◊.
• Evil vs. Evil: While her main foes are the Medicis, she sometimes also goes head to head with the other fiends of the Canopy Kingdom like Brain Drain and Eliza.
• Exotic Eye Designs: As the Skullgirl, her eyes are pinkish-red and have two dots below the iris that make them that make each eye look like half of a vertically split stylized skull. After the Skull Heart is ripped away from her and she freed from its influence, the motifs in her eyes are gone.
• Expressive Accessory: Her vacuum cleaner gains a dazed look whenever an attack hits her.
• Faustian Rebellion: Her story mode begins where many others end: fighting Bloody Marie in the final stage, albeit with the player's control given to Marie instead. The end result of this fight, however, instead of destroying the Skull Heart, the combined forces of Peacock, Filia, and Squigly separate her from it, decreasing her power but removing the Skull Heart's influence on her personality.
• Fighting from the Inside: Noted by a few characters. Double in particular notes that Marie's heart was so strong that the Skull Heart couldn't take full control of her. It's also because of this that she is the weakest Skullgirl yet, since she's sabotaging her power by refusing to give in to the Heart's influence.
• Fighting Your Friend: Peacock was her friend before she became the Skullgirl and Patricia became Peacock.
• Final Boss: She is the final boss of the Story Mode for every initially released character and most of the DLC characters. The exceptions are Squigly (who fights Double), Fukua (who fights a beefed up Filia), Eliza (who fights Filia and Squigly), Annie (who fights Double repeatedly), and Black Dahlia (who fights Robo-Fortune and Painwheel). In her own story mode, the final boss is actually a copy of herself created by The Trinity to act on their behalf.
• Final Solution: Is trying to use the Skull Heart to wipe out the Medicis completely out of revenge for what they did to Patrica. Note that this includes characters like Filia and Cerebella (the latter whom she even acknowledges as being unusually "pure" for the company she keeps) who are some of the nicer characters in the cast. After she breaks free from the Skull Heart's influence, however, she has given up on this...except for Black Dahlia. She's going down, no questions asked.
• Friendly Enemy: To Peacock, since they used to be childhood friends. The enemy part is eventually dropped altogether when she breaks free from the Skull heart's influence.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Marie went from war orphan and child slave to budding destroyer of civilizations and current biggest threat to The Mafia in her goal to get revenge for what she and her best friend suffered.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Downplayed as tomboy is the last thing to describe her when compared to Peacock and given how well-mannered she is. With that said, she's a fan of professional wrestling and even put her interest in one of her movesets.
• Glacier Waif: She's less than five feet tall and doesn't look like she even weighs a hundred pounds, but she can take an absolutely ridiculous amount of damage before going down.
• Genki Girl: She was. But after losing everything she held dear and becoming the next Skullgirl, not so much. With that said, she eventually regains some of her "genki-ness" back after being freed from the Skull Heart's influence.
• Heel–Face Turn: In her story mode along with her subsequent appearance as playable character, after the Skull Heart is successfully ripped away from her, Marie is returned to her original kinder self.
• Heroic Willpower:
  • Her strong willpower actually allows her to hold back her murderous tendencies as a Skullgirl and prevent her from losing herself entirely like her predecessors, focusing solely on her revenge against the Medicis.
  • Even after the Skull Heart is ripped away from her, Marie initially still can feel its influence continue to linger over her a little whenever she taps into her Skullgirl power throughout her story mode. However, with Peacock's support, she slowly manages to overcome the feeling and fully break it altogether, becoming the first unchained Skullgirl in the process.
• Hidden Depths: She appears to have a fondness for wrestling, which is displayed by one of her moves, which sees Marie performing a German suplex on one of her skeletal minions. She also geeks out when facing Beowulf — asking him how her form was if she wins — and one of her victory lines against Peacock mentions that the two of them are going to watch wrestling.
• Home Stage: As a boss, Final Atrium serves as one to her. Playable Marie on the other hand has Hilgard's Castle, the manor/orphanage where she grew up.
• Humanoid Abomination: She is an undead girl bound to the heart of an Eldritch Abomination.
• Ironic Name: A nickname in this case. While she is sometimes called Bloody Marie, Eliza later finds out this may not be appropriate since she barely has any blood within her.
• Immune to Flinching: In the pre-patch version, she couldn't be stunned by attacks.
• Improbable Weapon User: Marie's playable appearance shows her wielding a demonic vacuum cleaner as her weapon of choice. She can also whip out a rug to whack opponents with and summon dust bunnies with swords for eyes.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Before she became the Skullgirl, Marie had blue eyes.
• I Shall Taunt You: Many of Marie's battle quotes condescendingly remark on how pathetic and foolish her opponent is. "SEE HOW WEAK YOU ARE!". Her post Heel–Face Turn appearance drops this, and she even occasionally encourages her opponent.
• Knight Templar: She is determined to exterminate the Medici Mafia, even benevolent members like Cerebella. As revealed in Mobile, she was barely restrained from murdering Filia and her family, despite them having cut most of their ties to the Medici, due to the intervention of Samson and a brief attack of her own conscience, and that doesn't stop her from being willing to kill Filia when they confront each other over the Skull Heart in Filia's Story Mode. Her story mode reveals the blind fervor to have been a result of the Skull Heart's influence. While she still wants to make the Medici Mafia pay even after she's freed of the Skull Heart, she becomes a lot more discerning on who deserves her wrath, merely pitying Cerebella for not realizing that the Medici are evil.
• Leitmotif: Skull Heart Arrythmia, her theme when fought as the Final Boss. Her playable version has a slower-paced, more somber arrangement of it called All That Remains.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Despite being the central antagonist of the game, Marie comes across as sympathetic when compared to Double, Eliza, Brain Drain, and Black Dahlia due to her backstory and the circumstance that leads her to become the next Skullgirl. It's pretty much a moot point in her Story Mode, as she's freed from the Skull Heart's influence, making her a firmly heroic character that just happens to possess the powers of the Skullgirl.
• Locked into Strangeness: Her look in the picture up there is post-SkullGirlification. Before getting the heart she had brown hair, blue eyes and no skull headbands. Just take a look for yourself◊.
• Made a Slave: She was one, along with Peacock, before the events of the game.
• Meido: The general basis of her character design, blended with Ninja Maid. Also thematically appropriate, as she intends to clean out the Medici Mafia.
  • She also is an interesting subversion since she is the boss of the game. Consider also that she is actively hunting and killing her slavers, she is not submissive.
  • But she is slowly becoming the Trinity's servant. Double subverted.
  • Then Double says that her heart is too strong and resisting the Skullheart. Triple subverted.
  • But Marie tells Double that she'll do as the Skullheart wishes after cleaning up the Medici cancer plaguing the city. Quadruply subverted.
  • The maid theme came before she was a Skullgirl; she found a maid outfit in the manor/makeshift orphanage where she lived, and she started wearing it to appear more grown-up so the other kids listened to her more.
• Man of Kryptonite: Gameplay-wise, she could be considered this to Umbrella, who excels in combos and grappling since, uniquely, she… can't be grappled and, while not it's not impossible, she's highly resistant to being comboed. On top of this is the fact that Umbrella is generally a Mighty Glacier so she has to wade through Marie's steady stream of projectiles to attack if Marie decides to move or the player push-blocks her away, taking chip damage all the while. Her second phase also has attacks that generally knock you away a fair distance, exacerbating this. And you still have to manage Umbrella’s hunger meter on top of this, which you could usually do by grabbing, but, again, Marie can't be grabbed, meaning you'll have to resort to Cutie Ptooie to keep from going into starving if you take too long which there's a high likelihood of considering Marie's a Damage-Sponge Boss and there's a high probability you'll get hit while doing so, further decreasing your chances of victory. Really with all this working against Umbrella is it any wonder she teams up with Parasoul to fight Marie during her story mode? (and lost to her off-screen in Parasoul's own)
  • Story-wise, too, considering what the Skull Heart does to Umbrella whenever she's near it.
• Miniboss: In Squigly's, Fukua's, Eliza's, Annie's, and Black Dahlia's storylines.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After breaks free from the Skull Heart's influence, Marie is understandably feel guilty of her actions as a Skullgirl and initially wanting to make amends to it with her death.
• Nerf: Yes, even Marie got nerfed in the patch. Specifically, she's no longer entirely Immune to Flinching, and will flinch after she takes enough constant damage.
• Night of the Living Mooks: She summons skulls, undead gangsters, and skeletal monsters, which she refers to as her "slaves."
• Ninja Maid: Her playstyle involves using her cleaning instruments to almost-literally clean the clocks of her opponents.
• Not Quite Dead: In Eliza's story mode. She returns in the stinger, despite her defeat and the destruction of the Skull Heart.
• Not So Above It All: If caught in one of Umbrella's bubbles, she'll take a quick bubble bath.
• Older Hero Versus Younger Villain: At around thirteen, she's younger than every playable character other than Peacock and Umbrella, as well as most of the supporting cast.
• One-Winged Angel: She undergoes two transformations, the last of which when she looses control of the Skull Heart.
• Our Liches Are Different: The Skullgirl appears to be a sort of lich, with the Skull Heart serving as the source for immeasurable necromantic power.
• Person of Mass Destruction: What she should be, but since she's resisting the Skull Heart she's nowhere near as powerful as her predecessors. Nonetheless, she still causing plenty of destruction in her wake against the Medicis.
• Pet the Dog: Quite a few.
  • A notable one in Parasoul's story shows that Umbrella is dying, yet Marie chose not to finish her off after she tried to take the Skull Heart but instead simply wait there to comfort her. She even helpfully informs Parasoul that at this point, only a wish on the Skull Heart can save her from either dying or becoming the next Skullgirl right then and there. Apparently, Umbrella reminds her of Patricia.
  • There's also Marie telling Double not to destroy Peacock along with the rest of the ASG creations. That part of the order may not have been followed, but the thought still counts.
  • She saved millions of people from death as she stopped a building dropping over their heads when she first showed up as the current Skullgirl. Leviathan even noticed that this was unusual for a Skullgirl. On the other hand it's implied she caused the building to fall.
  • She tells Peacock to leave when they meet again, as Marie doesn't believe Peacock can beat her and doesn't want to kill her friend.
  • Her playable quotes include telling Filia to leave her past behind and "decide for yourself who you are."
• Power Floats: She spends the entirety of her boss fight levitating off the ground, though she walks (and vacuums!) as a playable character.
• Powers Do the Fighting: As a boss, She never attacks the player with her own hands, instead throwing undead minions at them. Which is reasonable; as a half-skeletal child, she's not likely to do much damage with her bare hands. Downplayed as a playable character, where some of her attacks use her skullgirl powers, but others involve her directly hitting people with her vacuum cleaner.
• Power Up Full Color Change: As of an update to Encore, Marie changes to a backer-submitted alternate palette when encountered on Nightmare difficulty of Arcade mode or as Marie 300% in Squigly's joke story mode.
• Promoted to Playable:
  • In 2nd Encore, Challenges 24-25 make Marie playable, where she functions ala her boss battle in that she switches to a new form with various different attacks once she reaches a threshold of total damage. This is also how she initially plays in her own story mode.
  • She becomes a fully playable character as the final DLC character of the Season 1 Pass, after over ten years of being the final boss.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her irises are red with ½ skull-shaped markings. Applies to both herself and, when in her alternate palette, to the various skulls she summons as well.
• Redemption Demotion: While she's still capable to utilize her Skullgirl power, Marie's post Heel–Face Turn playable appearance consists her throwing hands like the other characters after the Skull Heart is ripped away from her as oppose of her initial SNK Boss appearance. With that said, she still manage to beat Bloody Marie through her determination and willpower.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Against the Medicis who enslaved her and mutilated Peacock.
  "Lorenzo Medici...Don't you dare to turn your back on me...or this empire you build over your victims' graves...! I...WILL...DESTROY YOU!!!"
• She Who Fights Monsters: Even though her goal is to destroy the Medici Mafia, the way she's doing it is attracting just as much attention from various peace-keepers as the Medicis themselves. However, it's revealed in her story mode that the lack of restraint was a result of the Skull Heart's influence, and she's still quite scrupulous when in full control over her actions.
• Shout-Out:
  • She is one to Persephone in the Castlevania series.
  • One of her playable moves involves sucking people into her vacuum cleaner. She even has a Luigi's Mansion skin to complete the reference.
  • Another move involves her slamming the opponent against the walls and floor using Hilgard's hand. Naturally, she has a sans skin.
  • Another move of hers is the Spirit Bomb from Dragon Ball Z.
  • Aside from the two above, she has palettes for Toph Beifong, Dusa, Noelle, Princess Luna, Beatrix Lebeau, and Marina.
• Sinister Scythe: Her vacuum cleaner can turns into a scythe for an attack.
• SNK Boss: The worst part is that she has three forms that share one lifebar and she doesn't stop attacking when hit (Although for the latter the Immune to Flinching only applies to the Pre-Patch Version).
  • Her last form is immune to low and mid attacks. This makes it nearly impossible for some characters, like Peacock, to hit it.
  • Marie 300% in Squigly's joke story mode is even worse.
• Starter Villain: Her defeat in practically every character story has another antagonist take her place as the next one to go after, such as the Medici mafia, Brain Drain, the Trinity, and Eliza.
• Take Up My Sword: To Peacock in the latter's story mode, who takes up Marie's mission to destroy the Medici out of respect for her friend.
• Token Heroic Orc: In her Story Mode, thanks to the combined efforts of Peacock, Filia, and Squigly, she's freed of the Skull Heart's influence while still retaining the powers it imbued her with, basically making her the sole heroic Skullgirl.
• Tom the Dark Lord: Marie the lich.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: She's girly girl to Peacock's tomboy girl due to being well-mannered and the most behaved of the two.
• Touched by Vorlons: Wishing on the Skull Heart turned her into a lich with the power to summon skeletons.
• Tragic Villain: For all the terror that she brought as the recent Skullgirl, she is a war orphan girl whose motive is purely driven by revenge against the Medici who took everything away from her.
• Transhuman Abomination: Much like the Skullgirls before her, Marie used to be a normal human girl, and a nice one, at that.
• The Undead: Along with her numerous Mooks.
• Undead Child: Marie was around the same age as Peacock when she became the Skullgirl, making her approximately 12 physically and 13 chronologically.
• Undeath Always Ends: As the game's final boss, she's destroyed at the end of every character's story mode, though only Peacock's story mode puts any particular emphasis on her death. Subverted in Eliza's story mode, where after her death she somehow manages to revive herself and is still alive at the end. It's also subverted in her own story mode, where it's revealed that Marie has managed to do the impossible and exist even after the Skull Heart is ripped off from her, thanks to its shard inside her keeping her alive.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: According to Peacock, Marie used to be a strict, yet a kind girl before she become a Skullgirl. However, she regain her kindness after breaks free from the Skull Heart's influence.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: Kind of inverted. While she's not exactly just sitting on her throne, most of the time when her and the heroes' paths cross it's because the hero sought her out (Cerebella being an exception), and in fact, are the ones who insist on fighting most of the time. If it weren't for the heroes' actions in their various story modes she probably would have carried on with her Medici genocide, paying them no mind.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: As revealed in her story mode, she and Patricia occasionally tends to bicker over their differences, in addition of some of her battle quotes against Peacock suggests that they're fighting over a TV. Nonetheless, they still value each other as friends.
• Volcanic Veins: Glowing blue blood vessels stretch out of the Skullheart.
• Walking Spoiler: Just look at her description paragraph!
• Warmup Boss: She's this to Black Dahlia, who proceeds to kill her in the following cutscene.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: At the end of the day, all she's trying to do is get revenge on the Medicis for mutilating Peacock. Though the fact that she's willing to kill Filia and Cerebella, who are both fundamentally good people, just because they're associated with the Medici clan probably pushes her into Knight Templar / She Who Fights Monsters territory.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Patricia, who is now Peacock tasked to hunt her down. They technically still shares a respectable term, but the circumstances prevent them from properly reconcile, which they finally do in Marie's own story mode.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Her hair turned white when she became the Skullgirl. This is subverted after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Wise Beyond Her Years: She talks in a remarkably eloquent and sophisticated manner for a girl who's not even fourteen. Back when they were in the orphanage, Patricia frequently got on her case for acting too grown-up for her age.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Marie may be the Skullgirl, but at her core she's a scared teenager who has lost everything she once loved and seeks vengeance upon those who took them from her.
• Worf Had the Flu: Because she's actually resisting the Skull Heart's influence from fully taking her over, Marie is actually nowhere near as powerful as she could be. In fact, there are comments from various characters that note she's much weaker than Queen Nancy and presumably Selene Contiello, which would explain why the various heroes stand a chance of defeating her in a one-on-one fight, whereas Nancy forced all the kingdoms to pool their forces to bring her down.
• Wrestler in All of Us: One of her attacks involves suplexing a skeleton into someone. This gets incorporated into her voice lines as a playable character, as it turns out she's actually a fan of professional wrestling.

Tropes related to Hilgard:

Voiced by: Kaiji Tang (English) / ? (Japanese)

A kindhearted Gigan gentleman who took in the children orphaned by Queen Nancy's rampage, serving as a surrogate father for Marie and Patricia, but was killed by slave-traders working for the Medici.

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• Assist Character: Hilgard at least is summoned for some of Marie's attacks.
• Breath Weapon: Higard can fire a beam of blue energy from his mouth.
• Declaration of Protection: After Marie breaks free from the Skull Heart's influence, Hilgard apparently swore to protect her even after his death.
• Gentle Giant: In life he was a towering individual—though small for a Gigan, judging by the colossal skeletons scattered around No-Man's Land. Unlike his often-belligerent brethren, Hilgard was compassionate—abandoning his search for his own son to turn his castle into an orphanage for the youngest victims of Queen Nancy's rampage—and exceedingly patient.
• Ghostly Goals: Killed when slave traders razed his castle, Hilgard's ghost comes to Marie's aid after the Skull Heart is shattered, fighting alongside her a la a Stand.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Hilgard gave his life trying to protect his charges when Medici Mafia-employed slave traders attacked his castle.
• Horned Humanoid: Hilgard's skeleton has horns.
• Our Giants Are Different: Hilgard was a Gigan in life.
• Outliving One's Offspring: It's implied his son was killed during Queen Nancy's rampage.
• Who Needs Their Whole Body?: When in combat mode as a ghost, Hilgard appears as the upper half of his skeleton.

Tropes associated with Marie's Skeleton minions:

As a playable character, Marie's taunts and several attacks involve summoning the skeletons of the previous inhabitants of Hilgard's Castle. These include Hilgard himself, a lady with a parasol, an old lady in a chair, a butler, a maid, and a dog.

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• Badass in a Nice Suit: Joe—who appears as the tommy gun-wielding skeleton in Marie's boss fight—was one of the Medici Mafia's enforcers before being immolated by Marie's flames, and still wears the snazzy suit he wore in-life. While he doesn't appear as one of her playable form's minions, he shows up in her story mode.
• Due to the Dead: Marie's taunt has her bowing to one of them.
• Enemy Mine: The reason that they still help Marie after the Skull Heart is destroyed despite some of them, like Joe, being mad at her for killing them is because they realize that the real ones responsible for everyone suffering is actually The Trinity themselves and want to help her take them down so they can finally rest in peace. It's also downplayed since they ultimately don't hold a grudge against her despite the factors.
• Signature Headgear: The lady skeleton has a large, wide-brimmed hat on.
• Undying Loyalty: After Marie breaks free from the Skull Heart's influence, they're remain loyal toward her and not following the Trinity's control. It helps that she treats them with compassion and promised to be their takecarer in the meanwhile until she can finally avenge their death by the Trinity.

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