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Original Cast

Filia (and Samson)

Filia Medici

Voiced by: Christine Marie Cabanos (English) / Ayana Taketatsu (Japanese)

Femme Fatale

Filia: "Let's go, Samson!"
Samson: "Hell yeah!"

A schoolgirl who woke up one day with a couple problems: first, she can't remember who she is, and second, she has a new "friend"— a powerful, hair-like Parasite named Samson. She seeks the Skull Heart to hopefully remedy these issues, although doing so requires this odd couple to figure out how to cooperate.

Filia is an incredibly versatile rushdown character with an emphasis on mixing up her opponent. While she has relatively short-ranged attacks, she more than makes up for it with her incredibly high mobility, which is further supported by her small size. A core component of Filia's mobility is her airdash, which is one of, if not the fastest in the game, and is built around her stubby air normals.

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Tropes associated with Filia:

• Amnesiac Hero: Her memories were erased when Samson was bonded to her. Or rather it was caused when Ottomo bashed her head against a wall.
• And I Must Scream: In Eliza's story mode, Sekhmet still has a sadistic crush on Samson despite everything that happened, but doesn't particularly care for Filia. She's promptly beaten up, bound and mummified in a blood construct until she can find Samson a new host. Considering Eliza left room for her nose to breathe, she's probably still conscious in there.
• Apologetic Attacker: She doesn't want to fight, but she has to.
• The Atoner: Becomes this when she remembers what happened to Carol, to the point where she wishes on the Skull Heart for her to be able to go back to a normal life.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Helps Squigly defeat Double in the True Final Boss of Squigly's 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: Filia is as adorable as she is a fierce fighter.
• Badass Bookworm: Considering the fact that "reading and learning" is listed in her likes.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's arguably the nicest character in the entire game. She's also a Glass Cannon and one of the more powerful playable characters. It's a fighting game, however, so it's unavoidable.
• Big Eater: "Eating" is listed among her likes. She's a bit Hollywood Pudgy, though it should be noted as seen in flashbacks in Painwheel's storyline she was still quite skinny even before Samson. As mentioned below, due to her and Samson being symbionts, any nutrients he eats and doesn't digest go to her (and vice-versa).
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • She wishes to return Painwheel into her former friend Carol again and give her a normal life. The Skull Heart grants her wish, but detects that some small part of her intention is to absolve herself, as she feels somewhat guilty about Painwheel's current state. Thus, Filia is doomed to become the next Skullgirl. At the very least, as her wish was mostly pure even by the Skull Heart's standards, the Heart slows down her painful transformation.
  • Her origin in the mobile game, though it leans a lot more on the bitter. Her family is attacked by Marie and she nearly kills them all, despite Filia trying to plead that they've long since distanced themselves from the rest of the Medicis and never actually took part in their criminal activities. Samson and his host-dog manage to fight Marie off for a short time, triggering some sort of memory within her that leads her to show Filia's family mercy on the condition that they leave New Meridian. They prepare to do so - only for Vitale to come knocking at the last moment, see them all ready for departure after every other Medici-branch in New Meridian has been killed and assume betrayal, ordering Ottomo to gun them all down. Samson's host is killed, forcing him to transfer to a barely alive Filia. The two of them survive and manage to escape, but Filia's entire family is dead and due to Samson attaching himself to her head she no longer has any memory of who she is. Though that might have been a mercy, considering everything.
• Body Horror: If Valentine's trading card is accurate, Samson replaced most of her skull.
• Bound and Gagged: In Eliza's story mode, she's held captive by Eliza via mummification in order to keep Samson in her sight, as the parasite needs her as a host until Eliza can find him another one more suited to her tastes.
• Calling Your Attacks: Only one example on her end, and she shares it with Samson:
  FENRIR...
  With Samson: DRIIIIVE!
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Eliza keeps her captive in her story mode just to keep Samson alive until she can find him a "more suitable" host.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget:
  • Her wish to restore Carol's normal life will eventually make her the new Skullgirl.
  • An unused alternate ending implies this is one of the reasons Samson is attached to her, and by her own request.
• Downer Ending: In her own story mode, Filia wishes for Painwheel AKA her old friend Carol to return to normal from her cruel experiments, but the Skullheart still warps this wish as a selfish need to absolve her amnesiac guilt. Due to how kind and selfless of a wish it was, Filia has plenty of time before she turns into a Skullgirl. She gets to be with Carol again, but as the sudden bouts of chest pain shows, she's not long for the world.
  • In Eliza's story, Filia, Samson, Squigly and Leviathan utterly fail to take down Eliza and Sekhmet, and all of them are imprisoned for Eliza's own purposes. Sekhmet very much disapproves of Samson's current host (presumably wanting someone more submissive), and mummifies Filia in a blood construct for safe storage, with no hope of her getting out alive once Eliza finds what she needs for Samson.
• Due to the Dead: Despite their rivalry, Filia and Samson buried Squigly and Leviathan again, under a tree away from the city.
• Enemy Mine: In Squigly's Story Mode, there's a battle where Filia and Samson fight alongside Squigly and Leviathan. They also try this against Eliza in her story mode, which ends about as well as you'd expect.
• Exotic Eye Designs: In her ending, the 1/2 skull motif of the Skullgirl manifests on her eyes when she sees Painwheel.
• Expy: Her design is basically a younger Millia Rage, albeit with black hair instead (though her natural hair is blonde as well).
• Eye Glasses: One concept artpiece shows that (before she had her memories erased by Samson) she wears them. It should be noted that this was early concept. From the same time when she had hairpin swords and Peacock was older.
• Fan Disservice: She's a cute, sweet young woman in a midriff baring school uniform with a face growing out the back of her head that is more than happy to beat and/or stab the crap out of anyone who lays a hand on his host without permission (as Riccardo and Lawrence find out the hard way).
• Femme Fatale: While she is called one, she really isn't one. Sure, she is an attractive young lady who is more then capable of handling herself in a fight. However, the main trait she lacks is that she isn't seductive, at all. She has never once tried to seduce anyone, let alone say anything suggestive.
• Final Boss: Fukua fights the cast in reverse order so the usual Final Boss, Marie, is her sixth opponent. Appropriately enough, Filia — with extra HP and five meters to start with — is her last fight. She is also the final opponent in Eliza's story mode alongside Squigly, though without the aforementioned bonuses.
• Foil: Her and Samson are this to Squigly and Leviathan. Both Squigly and Filia are close with their respective Parasites, but have very different dynamics with them: Leviathan is a longtime family friend who (despite his occasional grumblings) is more than happy to defer to Squigly's judgement and vice-versa, while Samson is more of a rough-and-tumble bodyguard figure who does his own thing and (often literally) drags Filia along for the ride, reflected in their fighting styles. They also both inadvertently lose their normal lives in return: Filia loses her memories and becomes a vagrant unable to go back to how things were before, while Squigly becomes a slowly rotting zombie unable to carve a path for herself outside the shadow of the Skull Heart's cycle. Both of them were also daughters of old money in their previous lives (and suffered greatly due to things they weren't responsible for) but approached their heritage in vastly different ways, with Filia's family completely cutting ties and living a normal life out of shame and Squigly's openly embracing it.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Filia and Samson are strong but incompetent at fighting together, and Filia's playstyle is that of a rushdown character, an offensive character that has little regard for defense, but rather for overwhelming the opponent with special moves and easily reproduced combos. This type of character is also ideal for beginners learning how to play the game.
• Greater Need Than Mine: Instead of asking her memories back, she asked for a normal life for Painwheel. She can live on without her past, but Carol's life was destroyed entirely.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: A natural blond, she was very much this before becoming the host of Samson.
• The Heroine: She's claimed to be the main protagonist of the game and is a Nice Girl who uses her wish to give Painwheel a normal life. However, this is downplayed by how little of an impact she actually provides.
• Heroic Host: Is the host to Samson, and the two get along surprisingly well.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Wishing for Painwheel to live a normal life, as the Skull Heart still curses her to become the Skullgirl, albeit with a delayed transformation.
• Hobo: According to Word of God, Samson has a lot of "friends" he bugs to get the currently-homeless Filia and him a place to sleep. If neither player is using her, she'll be riding the rails on the Meridian Rapid Transit stage. An observant eye can find her sleeping on the scaffolding of Medici Tower.
• Home Stage: Maplecrest.
• Identity Amnesia: Thanks to having her head attached to Samson.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: Says this when fighting Robo-Fortune. Samson doesn't want it though.
• Irony: A Medici mafia daughter ends up being good friends with Squigly, a victim of said mafia who was gunned down mercilessly. While the two girls get along pretty well, Samson and Leviathan aren't so quick to let their hosts get friendly with the other.
• Leitmotif: "The Lives We Left Behind", although that's shared with Painwheel's.
• Locked into Strangeness: Bonding with Samson turned her hair black.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: It's implied her old, pre-amnesia personality was like this, considering both her background and her kind attitude toward Carol in those days. The mobile game, which goes into her backstory, very much confirms this to be the case.
• Mafia Princess: Her true origin. Downplayed in that her family cut ties with the mafia eventually but she still considered Vitale her uncle pre-amnesia.
• Meaningful Name: Filia is Latin for daughter, and she's a daughter of the Medici mafia.
• Must Have Caffeine: Implied, considering coffee is one of the things she likes.
• Mummy Wrap: In Eliza's story, she is bound and gagged this way to keep Samson still while Eliza searches for a new host for him.
• Nerd Action Hero: She likes reading and learning, and she has monster hair that eats people she doesn't like.
• Nice Girl: In contrast with Samson, she's a kindly and good person and even as a Mafia Princess, she was this pre-amnesia.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Happens in her ending.
• Not Quite Back to Normal: At the end of her storyline, she's back at school, still with amnesia, a parasite for hair and initiating the slow and painful transformation into the next Skullgirl.
• Powers Do the Fighting: While Filia is capable of handling herself, she doesn't so much as fight as she has her body used as a mace, or is maneuvering Samson around, as neither Filia nor Samson are particularly skilled at fighting.
• Quest for Identity: Initially she wanted to wish her memories back upon obtaining the Skull Heart, that is until she encountered Carol (or at least what's left of her after becoming Painwheel).
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: A side-effect of hosting Samson (implied to be due to the Theonite energy from the Parasites). However, she is very nice and naive.
• The Rival: Word of God says that she's this to Squigly, especially the relationship between Leviathan and Samson.
  • Friendly Enemy: Despite that, Filia and Squigly are rather decent towards each other when they met.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Potentially justified, in that she's homeless and they're probably the only clothes she owns at this point, as evidenced by the fact that she wears them even while riding the rails in the background of the Meridian Area Rapid Transport stage.
• Shotoclone: Mike Z said she's the game's Ryu-clone — although she's not a perfect example, because she doesn't have a projectile attack. Ringlet Spear is the closest she has to one, except that it pops out of the ground at specific locations instead of traveling horizontally.
• Sins of Our Fathers: The Big Bad wants to kill Filia because she has Medici blood in her.
• Slow Transformation: Goes through this at the end of her story, painfully.
• SNK Boss: When fought at the end of Fukua's Story Mode. This boss version of Filia has increased health, better AI, and starts with a full super meter.
• Supporting Protagonist: Despite being stated to be the main protagonist of the game she has an extremely small role in the story compared to the likes of Peacock, Parasoul, and Painwheel. She didn't even have a speaking role in anyone else's storyline until Squigly's story was added.
• Symbiotic Possession: Well, sorta. Samson takes control most of the time, but the two can work together when they need to.
• Theme Naming: If you look at the names of her normal attacks when assigning a custom assist attacks, you can see that some of her kicks are named after the different levels of Zettai Ryouiki. Her punches are similarly named with hairstyles.
• Token Good Teammate: For her family, the Medici, though the mobile game also implies that her parents were also fairly decent people.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Bonding with Samson caused her to lose all her memories...and considering how Samson seems to currently comprise much of her skull...however, it's very possible that Ottomo nearly killing her could have caused the amnesia rather than Samson's bonding.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Filia herself has very little experience with fighting even discounting her amnesia, but she gets by thanks to Samson's sheer power and ruthlessness in a fight, which is shown in the attack animations where the most Filia tends to do is get in close for Samson to morph himself into various attacking appendages, and what punches and kicks she uses herself are usually aided in power in some way by Samson. Most of her blockbuster moves are just her getting dragged along for Samson's big attacks.
• Use Your Head: Her Gregor Samson blockbuster move involves Samson turning into an insect and rushing Filia forward, using her head like a battering ram and hitting their opponent with it.
• Vocal Dissonance: An In-Universe example: Riccardo and Lawrence initially thought that she had this in her introduction, but it was actually Samson talking.
• Walking the Earth: According to a Q&A, Samson has made many contacts and "friends", including Yu-Wan, so he and Filia can get a place to sleep for the time when needed.
• Weight Woe: One of the aforementioned "side effects" of Samson's parasitism is that she gains weight from the food he eats. As seen in Hostile Makeover and the flashbacks in Painwheel's storyline, she was significantly skinnier before Samson.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: She alongside Squigly plays an integral role in separating Marie from the Skull Heart at the start of Marie's Story Mode, but both aren't even brought up for the rest of it.
• White Sheep: To the entire Mafia Medici after her amnesia. All Medicis and their workers are violent, ruthless, cold-blooded murderers. Filia is kind, good-natured, and only takes a life when she has no other choice. As it turns out, this extended to her parents as well, their family having distanced themselves, then later outright cutting ties with the Medici wholesale.
• Worth It: Her ending where she's doomed to become the next Skullgirl shows that she (mostly) thinks that giving Carol her old life back is worth the price she'll have to pay.
• Yōkai: She's based off of a fairly well-known minor yokai called the Futakuchi-onna, or "Two-Mouthed Woman"; a cursed woman who develops long Prehensile Hair surrounding a large second mouth in the back of her skull, which has a ravenous appetite and a mind of its own, causing her to devour any food she finds.

Tropes associated with Samson:

Voiced by: Patrick Seitz^*Credited as "Del Stetson" before 2nd Encore (English) / Takashi Kondo (Japanese)

• Ambiguously Evil: Little is known about Samson, but he's gruff, violent, he lies, and he apparently likes to gamble. Here's what we know.
  • An old, outdated bio for Squigly states he's working for the mafia, but a quote against Big Band indicates that he wants to avoid them.
  • He also doesn't seem to want the skullheart as was claimed in Squigly's old bio, as when fighting the skullgirl he will say "this is for Delilah," an old host and possibly his best host.
  • He discourages Filia from investigating Painwheel, who is part of her past, but there's also that Wham Line in the unused alternate ending (see the Wham Line entry below).
  • He and Leviathan have each other's enmity, but Samson ends up deciding to help him in the end of Squigly's story as well as immediately deciding to team up with Leviathan to stop Eliza/Neferu in Eliza's story mode.
  • Ultimately pushed squarely into the 'Good' category by the mobile game. He puts his life on the line multiple times to protect Filia and her family and is utterly heartbroken when Vitale has them and his host (a stray dog) gunned down in a fit of misplaced rage over the Skullgirl's rampage. Then he attached himself to Filia to save her from dying and it's heavily implied that the reason he tries to keep her from finding out about Carol/Painwheel is that he, unlike her, remembers how hard the loss of her best friend hit her back when she still had her memories.
• And I Must Scream: He gets trapped in a blood sarcophagus by Eliza in her story mode.
• Anime Hair: Considering all the shapes he can take.
• Big Eater: He's said to be a bit of a glutton, which explains why Filia is slightly pudgy. Since they're symbiotically attached, any nutrients he absorbs but doesn't digest go to her, and vice versa; likewise, when Samson drinks too much, they both get hammered. He even swallows her hat during her pre-fight animation.
• Big Friendly Dog: Before latching onto Filia, he had one of these as a host. Sadly, it got gunned down by Ottomo in the raid on Filia's home.
• Bond Creatures: He very much acts as one to Filia, and did the same to his previous host. His possession of Filia very likely saved her life after nearly being killed by Ottomo, something which the mobile game implies is the real reason for her amnesia, rather than the symbiosis.
• Calling Your Attacks: Far more prone to this than his host is.
  SPLIT ENDS!
  BIG BOOT!
  RINGLET SPIKE!
  RINGLET SPIRE!
  HAIRBALL!!
  GREGOR SAMSON!!
• Combat Tentacles: Samson has a number of tentacles protruding from him that he can use to attack opponents or shape-shift into other objects.
• Canis Major: The Fenrir Drive Blockbuster ends with Samson transforming into a giant Wolf's head.
• Dramatic Wind: Two of Filia's victory poses have this. One has Samson shifting into a human-like shape and puffing out his chest while Filia sways dramatically in the breeze behind him.
• Evil Former Friend: According to Leviathan, Samson was once noble, but he has long since strayed from that path. Though considering he still absolutely loathes Eliza/Neferu, it seems like he hasn't strayed too far.
• Flight: Can transform into wings for the Gregor Samson Blockbuster.
• Funny Afro: When Filia performs her Infinite Detection animation, Samson poofs into a really large afro, complete with an afro comb.
• Heartbroken Badass:
  • Eliza's story mode reveals that Samson may have had an exceptionally close relationship with a host long ago, a woman called Delilah.
  • Filia's origin in the mobile game shows him devastated over having failed to protect Filia's family and his host at the time from Vitale and Ottomo.
  • A quote of his when fighting Marie indicates that Delilah died fighting a skullgirl.
• Good All Along: After spending much time in the Ambiguously Evil camp, with his motives behind bonding with Filia left a mystery, his story in the mobile game definitively shows that he's always had Filia's best interests at heart and bonded with her in order to save her life.
• Heel–Face Turn: Of the cut content variety. Originally, Samson is essentially just another asset to the Medicis. However, by the end of the game—at least in Filia's story mode—she's clearly become the center of his concerns, and not whatever his prior objective was.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In Squigly's story, Samson insulted Squigly's appearance and says the undead cannot be trusted when the Skullgirl is around. Although Leviathan's power has prevented Squigly from being controlled, Marie said that the Skullheart's power could overwhelm her as her will falters. The Skullgirl has the ability to control the undead in the vicinity.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: As morally ambiguous as he is, he's a saint compared to Sekhmet. The mobile game's added backstory, however, pushes Samson firmly into Good All Along territory.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Samson can project tentacles, spines, and shapeshift to attack.
• Man Bites Man: Some powerful moves use Samson's teeth to bite opponents.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Samson is the name of a biblical figure whose covenant with God gave him superhuman strength so long as his hair was uncut.
  • "Del Stetson", the Stage Name Patrick Seitz used while voicing Samson until 2nd Encore, refers not only to Samson and Delilah, but also Stetson, a very old manufacturer of hats.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: He has a wide mouth studded with fangs, which he can tuck in to resemble a headband in case he needs to lie low.
• Overly-Long Tongue: Any art with him sticking his tongue out tends to stray into this.
• Prehensile Hair: He takes the place of Filia's hair, can morph into various objects, and is generally her main method of attack.
• Really 700 Years Old: Squigly's Story Mode reveals he's older than the Skull Heart. If Eliza's Story Mode is to be believed, he was even around when Lamia's daughters were alive and kicking.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Unlike Filia, played straight, but only when he's extremely pissed. See the quote below.
• The Rival: To Leviathan, a shared sentiment that goes very far back.
• Rolling Attack: The Hairball Special.
• Shapeshifter Longevity: On top of being a wearable Shapeshifter Weapon, it's indicated that he's been around for a long time. He actually predates the Skull Heart.
• Shear Menace: Jumping High Kick turns parts of Samson into giant shears.
• This Is a Drill: Filia's Standing Medium Punch turns Samson into a small drill.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: Can transform hair into weapons to be used in attacks.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Completely solid ones.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The mobile game reveals that he repelled Marie when she went after Filia's parents. Unfortunately, Marie sparing Filia's parents led Vitale to believe that Filia's parents were colluding with Marie, and he had them killed. Filia also would've died had Samson not bonded with her.
• Wham Line: One of the Dummied Out lines in the original script has one for the ending where Filia wishes for her memory back. Mobile giving more context to Filia's past would suggest just why she would want to forget:
  Samson: No, Filia! You asked me to...!

Cerebella (and Vice-Versa)

Cassandra Veranos / Cerebella

Voiced by: Cristina Valenzuela (English) / Toa Yukinari (Japanese)

Diamond in the Rough

"Get ready for a show-stopper!"

The star performer and the Diamond of the Cirques de Cartes, Cerebella is known across the Canopy Kingdom for both her amazing feats of strength and her alluring curves. Her strength is largely thanks to her hat, a living weapon named Vice Versa that only she can use. She's good at heart, but unfortunately is in with the wrong crowd— the mobster Vitale Medici took her in a while back, and he's been like a father to her ever since.

Cerebella is a tricky and versatile grappler with hefty, long-reaching strikes, but with some somewhat disjointed movement options to act as a counterbalance. Her airdash is incredibly lacking, and her ground dash has a fairly long startup period. However, she has access to a unique, armored command dash in the form of Tumbling Run, which has a myriad of follow up attacks that can be used to break the opponent's defenses and lay the hurt on them with her command grabs

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Tropes associated with Cerebella:

• Abandoned War Child: She was born and raised in one of the countries/territories unlucky enough to be between the Canopy Kingdom and its enemies during King Franz's warmongering reign, now collectively called 'No Man's Land'. Her willingness to believe that the Medici are the good guys is reinforced by her belief that the Renoirs had to be the bad guys for being responsible for the No Man's Land and all the suffering in it in the first place.
• Affably Evil: She's a brutal hired muscle for the top dogs of the Medici Mafia, but she's also a kind and chipper young woman who loves making people (especially children) smile as part of her job as a circus entertainer.
• Agitated Item Stomping: Her time-out animation has her throwing Vice-Versa down to the ground and stomping on him.
• All There in the Manual: Her real name of Cassandra Veranos was first revealed in the instruction manual that comes with the Limited Run Games physical edition of the game.
• Ambiguously Brown: According to Word of God, her ethnicity is the Skullverse equivalent of Brazilian. The manual for the physical edition of the game points more fingers towards this by revealing that her real name is the Brazilian-sounding Cassandra Veranos, with her fighting style being called "Circular Kick of the Summers Family" in Spanish^note Patada Circular de la Familia de Veranos. The dev team probably intended that to be Portuguese, but well...
• Anti-Villain: While she is a loyal and deadly enforcer of the Medicis, she truly is a good person at her core who just wants to help Vitale.
• Armed Legs: She has blades hidden in the soles of her boots which uses to put an extra edge to her kicks. She actually learned this trick from BlackDahlia.
• Ascended Fangirl: In-universe in Beowulf's story. She's a big fan of his and is quite happy to be the first person he fights as part of his comeback tour.
• Aside Glance: Looks towards the camera while Vice-Versa flashes twin peace signs when tagging out. Several of her other moves have a Freeze-Frame Bonus showing Cerebella looking at the screen.
• Ass Kicks You: Her Butt Slam move from Mobile.
• Ass Shove: Of the Kancho variety. You do NOT want those giant muscular fingers anywhere near your rear!
• Break the Cutie: Her ending, where she realizes the only way to get the Life Gem back is to kill Ms. Fortune (who ate it), which she does by crushing her. This is what finally makes Vitale return her affections, but now her devotion to him has crossed the line into killing for him, and she's starting to regret what happened...
  • Happens again in Black Dahlia's campaign, where Black Dahlia trounces both Cerebella and Eliza and forces Cerebella to watch her father figure right in the face. The last we see of her is Dahlia's henchbunnies throwing her in a cell to stew.
• Breast Attack: Her Excellebella throw normally involves lifting her opponent up by the ankle and slapping them in the face repeatedly. Using this on taller characters like Parasoul and Valentine results in this.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: One of the bustiest members of the cast, and she has a low-cut cleavage to emphasize them. In the story mode, Feng gets hit with A-Cup Angst when looking at Cerebella's chest.
• Calling Your Attacks: Probably the biggest offender. Justified since she's a showgirl, and is very much supposed to be as over the top with her attacks as possible.
  Lock 'n' load!
  Drop Kick!
  Smack attack!
  Diamond... (Drum Roll) Drop!
  CERE-RANA!
  Merry-Go-Rilla!
  Cerecopter!
  Titan Knuckle!
  Diamond...DYNAMO!
  A Diamond is... FOREVER!!
• Character Death: Implied to have been Killed Offscreen in Peacock's story, and shown being murdered on-screen in Eliza's.
• Chekhov's Skill: One of Cerebella's supers involves having Vice-Versa crush a boulder into a diamond. It turns out this is enough to reforge the Life Gem... from Ms. Fortune's body.
• Circus Brat: She's got a pretty arrogant disposition and is fairly hostile (or at least confrontational) to just about anything that's not a Medici or a member of the circus. It's downplayed somewhat, as she's noted to be pure at heart and a good woman despite being in the pocket of the Medici.
• Combat Stilettos: A quite literal example: her heels have knives hidden in them.
• Daddy's Little Villain: While Vitale may be Cerebella's adoptive father, she treats him like a genuine one as he took her in under his wing when she was orphaned at an early age, and giving her all the glamour and fame that she enjoys presently. Now, she serves him as his top enforcer as a token of gratitude, and will dutifully carry out his every whim in order to earn his respect.
• The Dragon: One of the Medici's main enforcers, alongside Black Dahlia and Ottomo.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Well, it's less that she's evil and more that she's loyal to evil people. In Umbrella's story mode, even after finding out that Umbrella is a Renoir, she's reluctant to kidnap her as Eliza suggests and only fights her after Eliza goads her hatred towards the Renoir family- and when Eliza clearly indicates intent to seriously hurt Umbrella, Cerebella sucker punches her and lets Umbrella go after a short conversation about the elder Renoirs. She's willing to hurt a lot of people for the Medicis, but hurting a young child is a non-starter for Cerebella.
  • She also doesn't enjoy senseless violence, as seen in Black Dahlia's story mode where she's disgusted when she realizes that Dahlia's enjoying the bloody chaos she's creating by holding the Skull Heart in her den. Which helps explain her Heel Realization at the end of Cerebella's own story mode - she had to go against her own morals to get Vitale the Life Gem he so desired.
• Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: Her win pose.
• Eyelid Pull Taunt: Hard to tell, but she pulls one during her Kancho move.
• The Grappler: She stands out amongst fighting game grapplers as one with a much less steep learning curve than most thanks to simpler commands for her grab moves.
• Heel Realization: Her ending pretty much shows this, apparently having second thoughts over crushing Ms. Fortune to death on Vitale's behalf. While she doesn't say anything, her shamed look implies she's rethinking everything she's put her love and faith into.
• Home Stage: Medici Tower.
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: Her main attire invokes this.Official design notes say◊ she has her dress taped on so it doesn't accidentally slip off while she's performing or fighting.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: She's (allegedly) the only character who could wish on the Skull Heart without becoming a Skullgirl (though that doesn't seem to stop the Heart from cruelly twisting her wish anyway, if her scrapped ending is anything to go by). It doesn't exactly paint a flattering picture of the setting, considering her side job of breaking bones for the Mafia.
• Ink-Suit Actor: She does resemble Cristina Valenzuela, depending on what photo of her you compare Cerebella to.
• Killed Offscreen: In Peacock's ending, Peacock is seen holding a tattered scrap of Vice-Versa, with the implication that she killed Cerebella off-screen.
• Love Makes You Evil: Seems to be on the road to this in her ending, where she crushes Ms. Fortune into a new Life Gem in order to win over Vitale.
• Magic Skirt: Averted with extreme prejudice. About the only time she's not going out of her way to show off her undies is her idle animation.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: One of her specials involves her doing this to her opponents, using Vice-Versa to grab and slam them repeatedly before tossing them into the air and impaling them with the sword on one of her heels.
• Mini Dress Of Power: A short skirt and plenty to show under it, and she's one of the mafia's top enforcers thanks to her putting her circus skills with Vice Versa's attacks.
• Minion with an F in Evil: The Medici Mafia are much worse than Cerebella is. Her favorite part of her job is being a performer because she gets to make people happy, and she generally only gets violent when directly ordered by Vitale or she believes the Medicis are directly threatened. Even Marie herself calls her out about this.
• Mistaken for Clown: Due to her brightly colored circus outfit, it isn't uncommon for her to be misinterpreted as a clown. ^note  While never stated, she is likely a harlequin.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The final shot of her during her ending implies this; she got Vitale what he wanted, but she had to kill Ms. Fortune to do it.
  • It gets worse, the Skull Heart was ready to grant her the wish without turning her to a Skullgirl since she does not have any form of malice had she wished for Vitale to love her.
    • Her unused alternate ending is... strange (even stranger than her normal one). The heart never says she will turn into the Skullgirl, but since she didn't word her wish to exacting specification, it still translated it in a way she didn't want. Since this didn't make the final cut, we don't know whether it would have been changed at all, or whether she was legitimately pure enough, not just pure for a mafia thug.
• Nice Girl: For all her showboating, she's never shown any negative emotions (except to those Vitale tells her to get rid of and the villains) and even the Big Bad notes her heart of gold and purity.
• Only Known By Her Nickname: Cerebella is a stage alias, although Vitale refers to her that way in private too. The physical release's instruction manual finally reveals her real name to be Cassandra Veranos.
• The Only One: Cerebella is the only character to not have an impure heart, yet she ignored the Skull Heart.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket: Was abandoned at The Cirque de Cartes as a baby. She had Vice Versa even then...
• Perky Female Minion: To Vitale and the Medici, being one of their top enforcers and seemingly only outranked by the likes of Black Dahlia and perhaps Ottomo.
• Playing Card Motifs: The diamond, in particular. Happens to be a motif in many of her attacks as well. Diamond Drop, Diamond Dynamo, Diamonds Are Forever, etc.
• Pure Is Not Good: Played with in that, while she's said to be pure of heart (and is generally a good person), she's still a mafia leg-breaker. It's also been said that her "purity" has to do with her innocence regarding how awful the Medici Mafia really is more than anything else.
• Red Baron: Her film poster refers to her as "The Diamond in the Rough".
• Sacrificial Lion: For Eliza's story mode. Cerebella's death marks the point where we know Eliza will stop at nothing to achieve her goals.
• Sadistic Choice: The Skull Heart would have granted her the wish without a hitch or she could simply take the Life Gem from Miss Fortune. She took the gem from Ms. Fortune because she was shouting death threats against the Medici family, who are like real family to Cerebella. Even so, she regrets what she did. In the removed alternate route, the Skull Heart would've corrupted her wish anyway, meaning the only option available to her would be running away, which she would never do.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: She wears a orange and black performance uniform, has mint green hair, lipstick, and nail polish, and even has purple eyeshadow as well as a purple diamond tattoo on her check.
• Sexy Jester: Not exactly as she's a circus performer, but her outfit was clearly designed after the trope.
• Skill Gate Characters: Due to her high damage output and surprisingly decent mobility, Cerebella's often considered to be the "newb" character in Skullgirls. Once she reaches higher level play her usefulness starts to peter out, though it doesn't go away completely. Dekillsage, second-best Skullgirls player after arguably the best fighting game player in the world (Sonicfox), has played Cerebella at the highest level for years.
• Symbol Motif Clothing: The Diamond suite as stated above. She has orange diamonds on her boots and has a cloth that is patterned with orange and black half diamonds.
• Tattooed Crook: Greatly downplayed to the point it is hard to notice. She does have a tattoo on her, and it's the purple diamond on her cheek that resembles a beauty mark.
• The Tease: "Flirting" is explicitly stated to be one of her likes.
• Token Good Teammate: For the Medici mob along with Feng, Hubrecht and Filia plus her parents.
• Use Your Head: Her Battle Butt move, in which Vice Versa grows some ram horns for good measure.
• Was It Really Worth It?: She defeats Marie and the Skullheart in battle and got the life-gem back from Ms. Fortune, something that Vitale's been looking for ever since it got stolen, but she had to crush Ms. Fortune to death (or worse by condensing her into the shape of the artifact) after hearing her passionately recall the deaths of all her friends by the hands of the Medici. Her shamefully contemplative look before the credits role, even while she's being praised by Vitale, imply heavy guilt and second thoughts over what she's done.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: In relation to her mob-boss adoptive father. The very reason she became his enforcer in the first place was to earn his pride.

Tropes related to Vice-Versa:

• Agitated Item Stomping: Cerebella's time-out animation has her throw Vice-Versa to the ground and stomp it in frustration, much to its displeasure.
• Aside Glance: When Cerebella tags out, they look towards the camera and Vice-Versa flashes a peace sign.
• Bring It: Of the move-finger-towards-self variety, when Cerebella walks backwards.
• The Comically Serious: Vice-Versa does have a goofy side, but only when interacting with Cerebella. The rest of the time it's got the Face of a Thug and rarely anything else. One good example is in one of the promotional images for Beowulf, which has him autographing his name on Vice-Versa's back for Cerebella with a marker. Cerebella can barely contain her excitement, Vice-Versa is visibly disappointed.
• Expressive Accessory: Usually stuck in an angry expression, but shows off a wider range of emotions depending on the context.
• Expressive Skull: While his head resembles a skull, he is able to emote with eyes to show when is mad, happy, or embarrassed. It's a bit justified considering the fact that his head isn't simply just bare bones.
• Gemstone Assault: Cerebella's level 3 Block Buster, "Diamonds are Forever", has Vice-Versa lift up a chunk of the ground and then jettison it at the opponent with a enforce force that gets compressed into a diamond.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Cerebella's fighting style sometimes involves tossing Vice-Versa around to deliver a pummeling. Usually, it's a cooperative effort, but some frames show that it's visibly wincing in pain from being slammed against the ground so hard and dizzy when being spun when Cerebella does Ultimate Showstopper.
• Living Weapon: Eliza even refers to it as such when working alongside Cerebella.
• Hat of Power: Emphasis on power, Vice Versa can lift and carry grown elephants with ease, to say nothing of adults caught by it and give them a severe beatdown. In-game, Cerebella uses Vice Versa to deal monstrous amounts of damage with his grabs, blockbusters and body-flinging punches.
• Horn Attack: Battle Butt has Vice Versa elongate his horns so they are are more ram like and then uses them to head butt the oponent.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: They can go from a soft cap with tiny stubs for arms to a hulking muscular pair of arms with fists wider than a persons body. Along with that, their horns/antennas can turn into other forms, such as the horns of a ram or bunny ears.
• Skull for a Head: His head greatly resembles a skull and has a pair of horns sticking out that makes him look almost demonic.
• Top-Heavy Guy: Exaggerated, as he is nothing but top. Although, it makes sense considering he is a hat.
• Weaponized Headgear: Hulking muscles, flexible arms, a mind of its own and a little bit of Voluntary Shapeshifting makes it probably one of the more versatile Living Weapons seen in the game.

Peacock (and her cronies)

Patricia Watson / Peacock

Peacock voiced by: Sarah Anne Williams / Tomoko Kaneda (Japanese)
Tommy voiced by: Mike Zaimont (English) / ? (Japanese)

Murder-Go-Round

"Time to paint the town red!"

One of many youths orphaned thanks to the war against the Skullgirl, Patricia Watson was forced into slavery, and a deadly encounter with her slavers led to her being utterly mutilated. Dr. Avian and the members of Anti-Skullgirl Lab 8 would recover the broken young girl and rebuild her, equipping her with a reality-defying set of weaponry designed to eliminate the Skullgirl. While this fixed her body, her mind was a different story— twisted by her experiences in the slave camps, Patricia, now known as "Peacock", would become violent and deranged, and her love of cartoons would turn her weapons into a gang of animated cronies ready to help her paint the town red with the Skullgirl's blood... along with those who happen to get in her way.

Peacock uses the Argus System to its full advantage with her cartoon sensibilities, making her mark as a zoner with confusing movement options such as a shockingly fast backdash and a teleport move that can allow her to close and open the gap between her and the opponent at will. Despite preferring to apply pressure from a distance, Peacock is more than capable of laying the hurt from up close, with any stray hit from a projectile potentially spelling doom for her opponent.

---

Tropes associated with Peacock:

• Abnormal Ammo: Her revolver fires, amongst other things, bowling balls, baseballs, and Bullet Bills.
• The Ace: Took to the Avery System a lot faster than expected and became one of the strongest subjects of Lab 8, and was rushed to the front lines as a result.
• Alliterative Name: Not her specifically, but her assist characters, Andy Anvil and Tommy Ten Tons. This is a reference to the vast majority of characters found during The Golden Age of Animation having Alliterative Names, which Andy Anvil and Tommy Ten Tons fit right into. In older concept art, Peacock's birdlike crony Avery was named "Patty Peacock". Despite the feminine name, he is actually male.
• Animal Motifs: Peacocks. Her codename is literally "Peacock", she's surrounded by large, colorful prosthetic eyes (an allusion to the brilliant eye-like designs on the male peacock's tail feathers) and her hat transforms into a peacock-styled mage hat during Argus Agony. Said prosthetic eyes are a part of an artificial parasite known as the Argus System, a reference to the tale of Argus (a hundred-eyed giant who was slain by Hermes and memorialized by Hera through the feathers of the peacock).
• Armed Legs: Her crouching low kick has Avery kick while wearing Kuribo's Shoe.
• Artificial Limbs: Her arms are rather obvious, but Peacock's legs are actually mechanical, too.
• Assist Character: She has a bunch of strange characters that help her during some of her attacks, if they aren't the attack itself. The most seen of these, especially in art, are Avery (a little blue bird dressed in attire matching Peacock) and walking bombs of small and large sizes (George and Lenny, respectively). Others seen often are Andy Anvil, a boxing anvil with Popeye-like limbs and Tommy Ten Tons, a stout anthropomorphic 10T weight. These characters seem to be manifestations of Peacock's power. The Avery Unit she was equipped with (same name as the bird) was supposed to be a "spacial link" between her and an arsenal of weapons, but Peacock seems to be altering the weapons themselves in addition to calling them to her.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Her level 3 super, Goodfellows. Sure, the move looks hilarious and takes off about a third of a lifebar... but it costs three meters and requires you to get close enough to grab (which is risky, given Peacock's fighting style). If you botch the input for Goodfellows, you perform a standard grab instead and now are right up in the opponent's face. You're generally better off using Argus Agony multiple times, which is less costly and more versatile, though arguably less badass.
• Badass Adorable: As bloodthirsty, insane and disturbingly adult as she is, she's still quite cute (so long as she isn't covering her face with her hat and/or flashing her steely sharp teeth, at which point things are starting to get nasty).
• "Bang!" Flag Gun: Her Bang! attack. The medium variant substitutes the flag with a sword, and the strongest variant (BANG! BANG! BANG!) actually fires projectiles.
• Batter Up!: Peacock's Outtake "Who's On Next?", where she hits her opponent out of the screen with a nailed baseball bat. A George Bomb also uses a bat in the Goodfellas Blockbuster.
• Beam Spam: Argus Agony launches a number of small lasers towards the opponent.
• Bear Trap: Her teeth is actually a pair of bear trap dentures, which she uses to bite the opponent on some attacks.
• Big Ball of Violence: Her air throw. It even happens to be named "Big Ball Of Violence".
• Black Bead Eyes: Justified in that it's really her empty eye sockets.
• Blood Knight: She likes fighting quiiiiite a bit. Her Origin Story in Mobile implies that this mindset developed partly out of a response to her trauma and partly as a result of her admiration of the ASGs, particularly Big Band. Even right after her surgery, she's raring and ready to be put onto the front lines and show off her new kit.
• Body Horror: Aside from her head and her torso, there's practically nothing left of her. Her eyes were forcefully gouged out (which we got to see from her perspective), so technically what remains are her eyesockets (but she can see with the eyes on her arms). Her teeth were pulled out, and her arms were ripped off (her legs were intact when she was found by Lab 8, but were presumably amputated in the surgery that gave her her Parasites) This all happened within the span of a single day.
  • If you pay attention during her Victory Pose, the smoke she exhales after she puffs on her cigar comes out through her eye socket, which transforms into a second mouth just for the Victory Pose.
  • She has another attack that betrays the nature of her eyes. Peacock can pull a large Hyperspace Mallet out from behind her back. After she swings it, she puts it away by stuffing the hammer headfirst into one of her eye sockets.
  • Look carefully at the holes leading to Hammerspace that she manifests in the environment (some of her item drops fall into them after they hit the ground, she leaps up through one when she's tagged in, she gets yanked into one during her tag out, etc.). The holes all have eyelashes identical to hers◊, and the color of the space behind them is identical to her eye color if you're using a palette that doesn't have her eyes blacked out. In one of her new intro animations, she walks out of one of these holes while missing an "eye", before grabbing it and putting it on her face. Make of that what you will.
  • Peacock's model sheet makes note of even more hidden body horror: it indicates that there is a very large hole in her back (large enough to fit her hand through), hidden beneath her dress. It appears to be the logical explanation for Peacock's use of the "pulling items out from behind your back" cartoon mechanic.
• Boyish Short Hair: As part of her Tomboy and Girly Girl dynamic with Marie.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: One of her taunt quotes seems to directly address the opponent.
  Peacock: Why ya so bad at video games?
• Break the Cutie: Being tortured in the hands of Slave Traders drove her into madness.
• Brooklyn Rage: While the Skullgirls universe doesn't actually have a New York, Peacock has the accent. She's got the mean streak and love of violence to match, too.
• Calling Your Attacks: Only has two moves where she does this.
  Poke!
  Argus Agony!
• The Cameo: Peacock gets only one gag appearance in Umbrella's story mode, having conveniently bought all the ice cream for her and her cartoon pals before Umbrella and Hungern can get some, evidentially feeling peckish before they felt like hunting the Skullgirl. Umbrella initially objects to this, but when Peacock notes her looking familiar, Umbrella denies it and decides to leave before the Skullgirl-hunter can figure out she's one of the princesses.
• Card-Carrying Jerkass: One of her win quotes shows she's self-aware about how irritating projectile spam can be.
  Peacock: "Ain't I a stinker?"
• Car Fu: The Boxcar George special has George driving a go-kart towards opponents.
• Cartoon Bomb: The Assist Character bombs, George (the small one) and Lenny (the big fat one).
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Sports this constantly and doubles as a Slasher Smile due to her nature.
• Cigar Chomper: She's fond of smoking fat cigars and occasionally uses them in attacks.
• Cigarette Burns: One of her attacks is to poke her opponent with the lit end of her cigar.
• Computer Voice: Unlike most examples, her voice sounds screechy and slightly high in pitch with a filter that makes it sound like she came from an old cartoon of low quality in terms of audio.
• Confusion Fu: Just try to keep up with all the zany attacks Peacock can throw during a match. A couple of them look virtually the same till they hit (such as her revolver attacks). Most notably, she can make a black hole on the ground appear, and can make one of three things happen. 1. Ducks under as a way to dodge attacks. 2. To teleport her behind her opponent. 3. Throw a bomb in the hole and make it teleport under her enemies.
• Cute and Psycho: Peacock is adorable, sure, but she was reconstructed as a living weapon and her cartoony antics take place in a world where Toon Physics only apply to her.
• Cyborg: Her body was augmented by several different mechanisms, with one of the main ones being the Argus Unit.
• Deconstruction: Of slapstick cartoon characters ala Bugs Bunny. She's utterly insane, slapstick antics are her attacks (funny between cartoon characters, horrifying when done on real people), her cronies are all ordinary weapons brought to life by advanced technology and her Hammerspace is holes in her body. Her appearance is supposed to invoke a Non-Standard Character Design compared to the Animesque designs of everyone else, but how she got that way is pretty horrific and she would be described as a "walking corpse" if she was a real person.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Peacock has relatively weak damage output made up for by her strong keep-away playstyle, created for spamming weak ranged attacks and frustrating the opponent into making mistakes... which cause them to get hit with more projectiles.
• The Dreaded: Her ending has her become this for the Medici mafia, with her apparently having cruised around town hunting and slaughtering every Medici member she can find and even managed to fight her way through their HQ to confront Black Dahlia and Lorenzo himself. Judging from Lorenzo's reaction, he heard about her rampage well in advance.
  Peacock: (Entering his office) And then there were two...
  Lorenzo: D-D-DAHLIA! HELP! She's here!
• Deranged Animation: As part of her love for the The Golden Age of Animation, she partakes in this sometimes. She can smoke a cigar with her hollowed-out eye socket that forms the shape of lips, remove said eye socket to use it as a Portable Hole, shoot her sharpened dentures out of her toothless gums to bite her enemies, and her Infinity Breaker has her perform an especially angry Wild Take.
• Determinator: A example of why this is not a good thing in the wrong situation; Eye Scream happened because she was too strong-willed and defiant.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After everything she and Marie went through, helping Marie break from the Skulheart's influence permanently and being able to resume their friendship despite everything that happened is more than warranted of being called a happy ending.
• Electronic Eyes: She sees using the Argus Unit's cybernetic eyes, which are on her arms.
• Even Bad Women Love Their Mamas: The death of Dr. Avian in her story route spurs her to seek revenge against the Co-Dragons.
• Eye Beams: Her Argus Agony attack.
• Eye Scream: We get a first-person view of a slaver jamming his thumbs into her eyes. And keep in mind, she was a little girl when this happened.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Those black dots on her face aren't her real eyes — along with everything else they did, the slavers put her eyes out. She sees with the eyes of the Argus System, which are attached to her arms (as well as the floating ones she summons)... all of which can fire Eye Beams. When she sleeps, she puts sleeping masks on her arms, where her real eyes are.
• Eye Pop: Used offensively as her standing low kick.
• Extendo Boxing Glove: Her tag-in attack has a Portable Hole appear below the opponent and uppercuts them with a spring-loaded boxing glove coming out of her hat. It throws the opponent into the air if it hits, but whiffing it means Peacock's right in the opponent's face ready to be punished.
• The Fatalist: As a result of her hometown being destroyed by the war against the Skullgirl, Patrica was just content to watch cartoons and wait for the Skullgirl to come finish them off. Marie's intervention and friendship is what was able to bring the spark back into her life, even sacrificing her own life to save Marie when the Medici Mafia came to steal the kids.
• Fiery Redhead: Has reddish-brown hair and is a short, impatient, bratty little cyborg girl who loves fighting.
• Fighting Your Friend: Marie, the current Skullgirl. Tellingly, while she has nothing but taunts and mockery for other characters, even Big Band, she has uncharacteristically somber parting words for Marie if she lands the killing blow.
  Peacock: Show's over, friend.
• Flower-Pot Drop: One possible item to fall for the Level 1 Shadow of Impending Doom Special.
• Foil: One to Big Band, another ASG agent who's life was saved by Avian. Whereas Big Band is an utterly massive older man, cool-headed and grounded in reality with somewhat antiquated tech made to fight in close quarters, Peacock is a short teenage girl with a tendency to be combative and violent while using her bleeding-edge gear to bend the laws of physics to her cartoon-obsessed whims and pressure her enemies from afar.
• Four-Fingered Hands: She has only four fingers.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Dr. Avian describes the laser projectiles Peacock's able to fire as being able to 'disrupt a Skullgirl's very essence', building up Peacock to be Lab 8's trump card against Skullgirls even though she's practically a rookie in terms of fighting experience. In actual gameplay, Marie AKA the Skullgirl is a Stone Wall of a Final Boss who can take an intense amount of damage before flinching for even a second, and even then it'd likely require being right in her face for a pummeling when she recovers. Peacock's Blockbuster, Argus Agony, happens to be the best Blockbuster when it comes to stunlocking Marie due to it almost immediately flinching her and being able to be used across the whole screen. Peacock's standard playstyle of standing back and zoning with projectiles is also a pretty safe way to fight off Marie, if time consuming compared to going all in for a brawl.
• Gag Dub: Anime Peacock, which is essentially what Peacock would be like if she was a fan of real-world anime instead of in-universe cartoons.
• Graceful Loser: When it comes to essay contests, at least. In Annie's story mode, when she meets Annie and Aileen (who won an essay contest to spend time with Annie) she notes that she sent in a lot of submissions, but she's still happy to concede the win to Aileen despite also being a fan of Annie.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Anime Peacock
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: It's hard to see thanks to how fast it happens, but her air dash plays with this trope. Peacock pauses in mid air to wind-up like she's ready to run, though in practice she'll fall at normal speed and is mostly used for canceling jumping attacks.
• Grenade Spam: Her George bomb attacks are specifically set up so that she can chain one into another, which let her fill the screen with a relentless number of bombs.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: A bottle may fall as the Level 1 Shadow of Impending Doom Special.
• Hammerspace: Not surprising given her cartoon influence. Avery allows her to pull items out of Lab 8's arsenal and turn them into cartoony weapons.
• Handicapped Badass: Without the Argus System, she's blind as well as a quadruple amputee.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: She's clearly out for the kill, but most of the time it's still Played for Laughs quite a lot especially when coupled with her brand of cartoon violence.
• Home Stage: Lab 8, where she was modified.
• Hypocritical Humor: Most of her voice lines regarding Umbrella are making fun of how short she is, despite Peacock herself being nearly as short (and remarkably short for a 13 year-old).
• Inkblot Cartoon Style: Her passion for The Golden Age of Animation carried over to her appearance, but in practice its execution is justified - her limbs were removed and replaced with flexible prosthetic metal limbs with a very wide range of motion, giving her a sort of rubberhose movement style. Meanwhile, her Black Bead Eyes are the result of her actual eyes being gouged and hollowed out.
• Instrument of Murder: She occasionally pulls out a banjo as part of a combo.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She has an unhinged and pretty murderous attitude, but when it comes to Dr. Avian and the rest of Lab 8's crew, Peacock has a warped sense of affection for them. When Lab 8 is destroyed along with many of its scientists and Dr. Avian by the Skullgirl and Valentine, Peacock is riled up and ready for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge in both her story mode and Big Band's. Her motive for killing Marie despite still considering her a friend is also purely altruistic (she has no desire whatsoever for the Skull Heart); she doesn't want Marie to go out of control and hurt innocent people.
• Kids Driving Cars: The webcomic gives her a Sentient Vehicle that she and her cronies drive around in.
• Kitchen Sink Included: One of the twenty-three items she drops in her Shadow of Impending Doom move is a kitchen sink. It's even her unique achievement.
• Little Miss Badass: She's one of the youngest girls on the roster, and is a very deadly combatant to boot.
• Living Weapon: She was a mutilated young girl who was converted into a reality-warping combat cyborg.
• Long-Range Fighter: Her specialty is playing keepaway with her opponent. She does so with a variety of far-reaching normals, very spammable projectiles, and a teleport that lets her quickly reposition to her desired range.
• Magnum Opus: In-Universe, Peacock is regarded this by her creator, Dr. Avian, in the opening cutscene of her storyline. She's the most advanced and powerful cyborg by Lab 8 yet, and the scientists are eager to send her to the frontlines to fight the Skullgirl despite how soon it's been since her augmentations.
• Made a Slave: As noted in her backstory, she was captured as a slave by Medici-backed slavers along with Marie.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Her codename, Peacock, refers to the design of her Argus system and its resemblance to Peacocks. It sports plenty of electronic eyes around its components, similar to male Peacock feathers looking like they've got tons of eyes in their patterns. Her Blockbuster, Argus Agony, even have her sprout 'tail feathers' on her rear while Avery mans a laser canon shaped like a peacock's head in her hat to drive the resemblance home.
  • The name of the Argus system brings Argus Panoptes to mind, a Greek giant of myth who sported hundreds of eyes placed all around his body, much like how Peacock is now. Going by the myth, those same eyes were preserved by Hera after his death through placing them in the feathers of the male peacock.
• Meido: Some spoilerific art done by Alex Ahad◊ shows she was one before getting mutilated, like Marie.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Those aren't her real teeth, they are removable dentures (so she doesn't wear them while asleep). Essentially, she has a miniature stainless-steel Bear Trap in her mouth, and some of her regular attacks involve biting the opponent.
• Nominal Hero: She works for the good guys, but is crass and brutal after the fashion of Golden Age cartoons.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Played with in that her eyes, teeth, and legs look entirely different from everyone else's, but they actually have a specific reason to be like that instead of just being drawn that way.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: The names of Peacock's bombs were originally Little Boy and Fat Man. Come the announcement of a Japanese release, their names around the globe were changed to George and Lenny to avoid insensitivity.
• Occidental Otaku: Anime Peacock
• Only Known By Her Nickname: Marie is the only one who still calls her Patricia.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The number of times Peacock drops the humor and gets serious can be counted on one hand. Such moments include finding Dr. Avin dying after the attack on Lab 8 and, of course, the entire encounter with Marie, her best-friend-now-enemy.
• Orphan's Ordeal: As noted above, she's a war orphan.
• Painted Tunnel, Real Train: In an unused special◊, Peacock exploits this trope by drawing a train tunnel to summon a train to damage the opponent.
• Peacock Girl: Duh. Her Beam Spam super shows off a large amount of robotic eyes (identical to the ones on her arms) coming out of her back to use Eye Beams to attack the target, the eyes resembling a peacock's tail.
• Piano Drop: Capable of this, and with a variety of objects, as the Level 3 Shadow of Impending Doom Special.
• Pie in the Face: Her standing medium punch.
• Plucky Girl: She'd have to be to still be smiling after all she's gone through, though some of her pluck may be attributable to the fact that she's lost her mind. It especially shines through in the otherwise rather somber conclusion to her story mode.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: The great portion of her attacks make up many of the game's already plentiful Shout Outs, making her Reference Overdosed by default. Peacock herself is a walking Homage to The Golden Age of Animation.
• Practical Taunt: Her taunt ensures that her next Shadow of Impending Doom will be a multi-hit Tenrai-Ha if it's fully charged.
• Proud Peacock: While she exhibits Troubling Unchildlike Behavior as a result of her experiences, she also tends to brag about her abilities. In her story mode, she refuses to use the Skull Heart because she's strong enough without it (and Genre Savvy to realize it's "nothing but trouble"). She additionally has peacock Animal Motifs.
  Peacock: Pff, who needs wishes? I'm already the strongest there is.
• Pungeon Master: When she isn't spewing familiar quotes, she's usually making puns based on whatever attack she's using.
• Purple Is Powerful: Her default color palette has her wearing a mauve dress.
• Recoil Boost: Her jumping heavy punch has her pull out a double-barreled shotgun and blast the opponent with it while also letting the heavy recoil push herself backwards in mid-air.
• Reality Warper: The Avery Unit's powers combined with her damaged psyche and love of vintage toons to give her what is essentially a cartoonish form of this. She can't create out of nothing things like a true RW, but can manipulate what already exists, though this may change as she adapts to her powers.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her real eyes were green, and all of her artificial eyes are red.
• Save the Villain: In Marie's story mode, as oppose of killing Marie to obtain the Skull Heart so anyone could either wish or destroy it, Peacock decide to reasons with her and rips the heart straight out from her with the help of Fillia and Squigly in order to make her return to her sense.
• Shadow of Impending Doom: This is literally the name of one of her attacks. The size of the shadow and object fallen depend on how long you hold the button, and it can follow the opponent around on one variation.
• Short-Range Shotgun: This being a fighting game and all, it only hits directly it front of her as her crouching and jumping heavy punches.
• Slasher Smile: Mostly because she has a bear trap for teeth.
• Smoking Is Cool: Her win pose, as well as her Level 3 super. The smokes aren't real, just an effect of her powers.
• Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass: Subverted, she actually just shoots an Eye Beam through it. According to Word of God (the Skullgirls website's own canon lore threads to be specific), it's just a teleporter beam that can access alternate dimensions, hence how she's able to spawn multiple ants with a bit of creative canceling.
• Spanner in the Works: Is this to the Trinity. Thanks to her friendship with Marie, she was able to not only stop Marie from being the last piece of will the Trinity needs to cross over into the human world, but she was able to encourage Marie enough to make her get a second wind to live and break the cycle of the Skullheart, taking the will that was captured by the Trinity through the Skullgirl back, effectively sending them back to step one.
• Spring Coil: She has springs built into her ankles that allow her to jump really high into the air.
• Super Prototype: Played with. While Peacock is a superpowered and unique project, her enhancements were a product of years of the ASG Labs' research, so she isn't a prototype in the technical sense.
• Sweet Tooth: Junk food is listed as one of her "Likes".
• Take Up My Sword: Ironically for the trope, she does this for the Big Bad AKA Marie. Both being orphaned friends who fell victim to the Medici mafia, Peacock has nothing but understanding for Marie's personal quest to slaughter the entire family and their associates, but still reasons she must be killed. As Marie gives Peacock her dying words, Peacock gladly promises to continue Marie's mission of hunting every Medici down. With the Skullheart dealt with and no one in Lab 8 being around to pull her leash, Peacock promptly starts a Medici massacre around the city, and even raids Lorenzo Medici's personal tower to kill the big boss himself.
• Talk Like a Pirate: During her cannon move.
  Yo ho ho! Avast!
• Teleport Spam: Encouraged, as part of her keep-away fighting style.
• 13 Is Unlucky: Her birthday is November 13th, and she's thirteen-years-old. Considering what her life has mostly consisted of... yeah.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: She's tomboy girl to Marie's girly girl, due to her being the most violent and rebellious of the two.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Out of all of the main cast, Peacock is by far the least feminine as she has Boyish Short Hair, has a slight rasp in her voice, and is quite prone to violence. And yet, she has no issues wearing a pimped out dress and a big fan of Annie of the Stars' TV show.
• Toon Physics: Her power is basically operating under these.
• The Tooth Hurts: The slavers who mutilated her presumably ripped her teeth out, hence why she has a set of bear trap-like dentures in her mouth. You can see her empty gums in some of her animations.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Jack Daniels.
• Trauma Conga Line: Her home was destroyed by war and her parents killed. She and her best friend was Made a Slave. Her limbs were ripped off and her eyes gouged out. Even when she was rebuilt as a Cyborg, her mind was unable to cope and she was driven insane. In her story mode, her father figure and friends are all killed, and she then has to kill her best friend. Girl's got it rough.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Where do we even begin? Smoking, cussing, killing...
• Unflinching Walk: One of her more powerful attacks involves tossing a cigar behind her back... at a bomb standing next to her victim. Cue explosion and malicious grin. And this is after stuffing her opponent in a burlap sack, calling down two of her cartoon mooks (Ten Ton Tommy and Andy Anvil) to help curbstomp her helpless victim into submission, and having the aforementioned bomb (George) continue to beat the ensnared foe with a baseball bat, all before pulling the cigar toss. This is even mocked in her Steam trading card, which has the caption "Cool people don't look at explosions!"
• Unskilled, but Strong: She has very little (if any) actual fighting technique, mostly relying on guns, Toon Physics and her cronies to do the fighting, and she only recently acquired these abilities at all given her previous condition with her full testing phase not completed. But she can afford it due to the sheer number of weapons the Argus System gives her.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: What little we get to see of her before she went crazy paints her as a rebellious, but well-meaning person.
• Useless Spleen: "My spleen..." happens to be one of her losing quotes. However much of her body was replaced by mechanical parts, it appears the spleen is one of the few organs she definitely has left.
• Vaudeville Hook: In her assist tag-out taunt. Peacock does softshoe for a few seconds before she is pulled off the stage by a cane into a Portable Hole.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: As revealed in Marie's story mode, she and Marie occasionally tends to bicker over their differences, in addition of some of the latter's battle quotes against her suggests that they're fighting over a TV. Nonetheless, they still value each other as friends.
• Visual Pun:
  • Her blocking animation often has her hold up a literal block, from a cinderblock to an L-block.
  • Her standing light punch, a typical fighting game "poke", or safe move used to attempt to start a combo, is an actual poke. As in, Peacock pokes her opponent with her finger.
• Was It Really Worth It?: If Peacock's ending is to imply. Sure, she killed the Skullgirl, destroyed the Skullheart, fulfilled what she was made to be, got her revenge, and went on a rampage against the Medicis like she wanted... but the people she wanted revenge for are still dead, she had to kill her best friend with the knowledge she became the Skullgirl to get revenge for what happened to her in the first place, and the rampage she goes on is just as much to find closure with herself as it is to fulfill her dying friend's last wish.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Judging from how much of her ended up replaced, she was practically just a head on a torso when ASG Labs found and rebuilt her as a Cyborg.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Marie, who is the recent Skullgirl. They technically still shares a respectable term, but the circumstances prevent them from properly reconcile, which they finally do in Marie's story mode.
• Wheel o' Feet: Her forward dash.
• White Gloves: Considering her cyborg arms have no wrists, it's unknown how they stay on. But if the X-ray on Valentine's Steam trading card here is any indicator, the metal that forms her arm is connected to the metal bones that form her hand with a sort of ball joint. That's probably what keeps the gloves up.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: See Trauma Conga Line above.
• Write Who You Know: In-Universe. Peacock's cartoon pals are based on her own caricatures of Lab 8's scientists: Andy Anvil is based on Stanley, Tommy Ten-Tons from a big, blocky scientist, and George and Lennie from a smaller one with a topknot.
• You Are Better Than You Think: Is on both ends of this, being on the receiving end as Dr. Avain's last words in the Skullgirls webcomic, and giving this to Marie constantly through her story mode, encouraging her to keep going and that even if she is at risk of being the Skullgirl again, she deserves to live a happy life.

Avery

Voiced by: Christine Marie Cabanos (English) / ? (Japanese)

A synthetic parasite provided by Lab 8, Avery is a little bird born from Peacock's imagination shortly after getting augmented with the Argus System. As Peacock's right-hand man (or rather bird), he rests in her hat wherever she goes.

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Tropes associated with Avery:

• Assist Character: Peacock's got tons of these, but Avery by far gets the most mileage, being present in most of her attacks from normals to specials. In a Blink-and-You-Miss-It Fashion, you can spot him being the source of a bunch of her moves, with some examples including:
  • Brandishing a chainsaw from the bottom of her hat.
  • Firing a loaded shotgun through her hat and visibly struggling with the intense recoil.
  • Menacingly starring at the viewer from behind a TV summoned from Shadow of Impending Doom. Very rarely, he's manning the bulldozer that can be dropped by the same attack.
  • Providing the football and taking it away so Peacock can do the Peanuts Charlie Brown football gag as a kick.
  • Wielding a spring-loaded boxing glove as Peacock's tag-in attack, the rest of Peacock follows suit right after,
  • Being thrown by Peacock into the air as he slashes furiously with a knife.
  • Manning the bird-head laser in Argus Agony.
  • Looking beaten up and confused during the end of Peaock's Big Ball of Violence, apparently just getting punched by Peacock after the opponent left the cloud.
  • Actually being the source of Peacock's get-up animation, crawling out of her hat and stomping her feet to erect her back up from the ground and hiding again in less than a second.
• Chainsaw Good: When Peacock uses her jumping low kick, Avery will pop out of her hat and shred the opponent with a chainsaw.
• Circling Birdies: In the mobile game, Peacock getting hit with an attack that stuns her with the dizzy effect has her seeing stars as Avery flies around her head, also looking dazed. While not literal to the trope itself, her collapse animation has an exhausted and pained looking Peacock fall to her knees while Avery shoots out of her hat with a cuckoo clock sound effect before she's KO'd.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Dealt this fate to Ottomo, a Medici robot goon whose head is found split right down the center to Avery's knife as he carries it around.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Named after Tex Avery, a titan during the The Golden Age of Animation reknown for his work behind plenty of cartoons during the time and many of the cartoony gags Peacock employs as attacks.
  • Being a bird, it's also not far off from Avian. Avian also happens to be Dr. Avian's name, the lead scientist behind Peacock's revival and most of Lab 8.
• The Napoleon: By far the smallest of Peacock's cronies, being even smaller than the George bomb, to the point where he has to stand on Lenny in cutscenes to be at eye level. In spite of this he's got a wicked Slasher Smile that rivals his boss.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Basically the relationship between him and Peacock, being a direct extension of her reality warping powers. Not only does he have the same dress and black eyes/sharp teeth like her, he's practically got the same personality as her just in the size of a bird. There's a reason Big Band refers to Peacock soley when the whole gang, namely Avery, are taking the piss out of him.
• Toothy Bird: He has a beak filled with sharp fangs.
• Worf Had the Flu: Due to the Ginormous Cosmic Timeosphere, aka the fabric of time and space, being connected to the Trinity who wants to keep Peacock out of the picture to get Marie onto their side, Avery is absent after freeing Marie in her story mode, meaning Peacock can't teleport or use her parasite that much. He comes back after the Trinity retreats after Marie breaks the bond between them and the Skullheart.

Andy Anvil

Voiced by: Kaiji Tang (English) / Daisuke Ono (Japanese)

A product of Peacock's cartoon-loving imagination, Andy Anvil, along with others in her gang of cronies, was brought to life thanks to the power of her synthetic parasite, the Avery Unit.

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Tropes associated with Andy:

• Animate Inanimate Object: A walking, talking anvil.
• Anvil on Head: He owes his existence to this trope. He also has a chance to fall as the Level 2 Shadow of Impending Doom Special for Peacock.
• Assist Character: He is one to Peacock. This may have changed if he became an Ascended Extra — but, well, he didn't.
• Bash Brothers: In his proposed play-style he and Tommy Ten-Tons would have been this. Possible attacks included punching Tommy across the stage toward your opponent and tripping him to cause an Earthquake effect.
• Fan: Despite being a boxing anvil he's seems to like watching wrestling more and is a fan of Beowulf in particular.
• Meta Guy: He apparently saw the same montage that the audience saw of Peacock putting her hat, gloves and teeth on/in. He's disturbed by her apparent lack of hygiene and asks Avery if she took a bath or brushed her teeth (with metal polish?). Avery responds that all of that was implied. but it's not something the audience needs to see.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: He's a shark-toothed boxing anvil with Popeye limbs!
• Red Boxing Gloves: A talking, boxing anvil.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: With yellow scleras. Though he's actually a good guy, being one of Peacock's creations.
• Scary Teeth: Has sharp, pointy teeth, brought about by how Peacock imagines Stanley.

Parasoul (with Krieg and the Black Egrets)

Parasoul Renoir

Voiced by: Erin Fitzgerald (English) / Rie Tanaka (Japanese)

Crown Princess

"Egrets, get ready!"

Parasoul is the crown princess of the Canopy Kingdom, the leader of its elite military squadron, the Black Egrets, and one of few who can say they intimately know how terrifying the Skullgirl can be. Seven years ago, her mother, Queen Nancy, became one of the most dangerous Skullgirls ever known, and ever since she's been incredibly protective of both her kingdom and her surviving family. Armed with Krieg, a living umbrella, she aims to destroy the Skull Heart to avoid a repeat of what happened with her mother.

Parasoul is a combination of a charge character and a setplay character who uses Krieg and her army of Egrets to not only keep opponents at bay with firearms, but keep them on their toes with traps in the form of tears, which she can place via her Napalm Toss and Napalm Shot specials. To master her space control, Parasoul's moves must be planned out in advance, thanks to her nature as a charge character, but when mastered, she can decimate the opponent from just about anywhere.

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Tropes associated with Parasoul:

• Adaptational Modesty: While still very short, her skirt is noticeably longer in the first nine chapters of the Webtoon. After the new art team was hired, her skirt's about as short as it is in the game.
• Aerith and Bob: The daughters of King Franz and Queen Nancy? Parasoul and Umbrella.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Her eye-hiding bangs. She also has a single armband on whichever arm's holding Krieg, in certain palettes.
• Assist Character: Provides the page image. She has a few attacks that utilize her off-screen soldiers.
• Big Good: As the ruler of the Canopy Kingdom, she qualifies.
• Big Sister Instinct: She is fiercely protective of Umbrella. Her being in danger kickstarts Parasoul's story mode.
• Calling Your Attacks: For at least four of her moves.
  Parasoul: Arc de feu!
  Touché!
  Napalm Pillar!
  Napalm Shot!
• The Captain: She commands the Black Egrets.
• Charge-Input Special: Parasoul is one of two fighters in the game that uses charge inputs. Her projectile, "Napalm Shot", travels a long distance and will create an explosive trap wherever it lands. And her anti-air, "Napalm Pillar", is invincible and launches opponents, with the added function of detonating Napalm Shots. She also has a set of three other charge specials that utilize her soldiers, the Black Egrets. "Egret Call" which resets Parasoul to a neutral position, "Egret Dive" where a soldier jumps in front of her and blocks incoming attacks, and "Egret Charge" where a soldier on a motorcycle comes and slams the opponent into the wall to start a combo.
• Chess Motifs: Many of her attack names are named after Chess, such as Queen's Gambit.
• Closet Geek: If you believe her profile, she secretly watches Annie: Girl of the Stars, which she has likely watched since she was a little kid.
• The Comically Serious: See her attempts to have fun with Umbrella in Umbrella's story mode.
• Cool Big Sis: To her little sister Umbrella.
• Crosshair Aware: One of her supers, calling a sniper to shoot.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Poor mobility, charge specials as opposed to quick quarter-circle/Z-motion specials, and intricate combos make Parasoul have one of the highest difficulty curves of the cast. That said, once you manage to master her combos and learn to manipulate space with her projectiles and long-ranged normals, she's a monster to fight against with horrifying range and power, coupled with traps everywhere.
• Dual Wielding: She holds Krieg in one hand and a pistol in the other.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: She speaks with a light French accent (usually), has several attacks that have French names, and her surname (Renoir) is French.
• Expy: One to Mitsuru Kirijou. The designer is a fan after all. Parasoul even has a Palette Swap based off of her and shares her Japanese voice actress!
• Fainting: Her time-out animation has her doing the emotional variant. A Black Egret catches her and glares at the opponent.
• Fiery Redhead: Subverted, as her background lists "Logic" as one of her likes and "Overly emotional people" as one of her dislikes. She does fit in a literal sense, given Krieg's Playing with Fire powers.
• Gag Dub:
  • Salty Parasoul.
  Take the damn shot!
  • For more Salty Sailor Parasoul, Erin Fitzgerald posted this picture on her Tumblr.
• Gratuitous French: Several of her attacks, such as Coup d'arrêt or Arc de feu. She also calls out the name of several of these.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: One of her eyes is hidden by her bangs, accentuating her general aloofness in attitude.
• The High Queen: At this point, she's the ruler of her country.
• Hollywood Genetics: Parasoul has red hair, and Umbrella has pink. Queen Nancy had black hair, and Fraz was a redhead.
• Home Stage: Glass Canopy.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Deserves a special mention, her official measurements being 34DD-24-38.
• Kick Chick: Her high kicks were almost certainly done just to show off her legs. And underwear.
• Kinda Busy Here: Egret Call has one of her soldiers call her when she's in the middle of a fight. It does serve the practical purpose of allowing her to Lag Cancel.
• Lady of War: A very smooth, elegant fighting style based on fencing. This ties into her slow movement.
• Lag Cancel: Parasoul's "Egret Call" special serves this purpose. Parasoul's attack is interrupted by an Egret, and reduces the recovery of whatever attack she cancelled out of, allowing her to continue her combo where she normally couldn't.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Downplayed, but she's got a rather pointy chin. She fits the personality, though.
• Leg Focus: Her character art, kick attacks, and short skirt are all designer to place emphasis on her legs.
• Little Black Dress: The top part of her dress is long sleeved, but the skirt part is rididulously short.
• Long-Range Fighter: Less specialized than Peacock in long-range fighting, but she can actually hold her own in a melee fight.
• Mighty Glacier: Parasoul stands out from the rest of the cast because she doesn't have an air dash, a double jump, a run or even some command dash to let maneuver around the screen with ease. How does she compensate? With a wall of projectiles, more command normals than anyone in the cast and the ability to cancel these normals.
• Mini Dress Of Power: Her skirt is pretty short...
• A Mother to Her Men: "Black Egret troops" are listed on her likes list, and despite Parasoul's occasional annoyance at them, they clearly have nothing but mutual respect for one another.
• Not So Above It All: The first portion of her origin story mode in Skullgirls Mobile has the framing device of her telling the story of how her mother became the Skullgirl to Umbrella. She really talks herself up in these sections.
• Not So Stoic: She rarely expresses any sort of emotion in gameplay or otherwise. A notable exception is when she uses her Canopy Bounce move, where she states "Up you go!" in a very mocking tone. However, during her story mode, she (understandably) freaks out when Umbrella chases after the Skull Heart.
• Parental Substitute: Umbrella would have been very young when their parents died, so Parasoul is this for her younger sister.
• Parasol of Pain: She uses her living umbrella as a beating tool and a gun, among other things.
• Parasol Parachute: Her jumping mid-kick.
• Pimped-Out Dress: If you're fighting on the Glass Canopy stage and neither player is using Parasoul, she'll appear in the background wearing one of these.
• Princesses Rule: Despite being the de facto ruler of the Canopy Kingdom after her father's disappearance, her official title seems to be "princess" instead of "queen".
• Punny Name: She uses an umbrella as a weapon, and as the de facto ruler of the kingdom, she's the heart and "soul" of it.
  Ms. Fortune: I... uh... dammit, your name's already a pun!
• Putting on the Reich: A rare heroic example: The Black Egrets wear grey-coloured uniforms, armbands on the upper-right arm, and gas-masks, seem to be using MP 40s and a MG 42 in a super, and have helmets resembling the fairly-stereotypical Pickelhaube (though those helmets, while culturally German, were used in World War I). Parasoul herself utilizes a Luger Parabellum. Unusually, the resemblance to Nazis doesn't go beyond appearances; they're actually the good guys (and their country is based on France as much as Germany).
• Religious Bruiser: Her necklace and emblem are the Trinity's symbol, implying this.
• Rocket Jump: If one of her tears explodes near her when she's floating with Krieg, she gains more height.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: She's got royal heritage, and she's actually fighting! She's this in-story too, as it's made abundantly clear that she is trying her hardest to rule the kingdom fairly and atone for the mistakes of her warmongering father.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Downplayed in the Webtoon. Parasoul is personally trying to uphold the rules, but that would require publically going after the Medici Mafia, who are Villains With Good Publicity. Her father warns that the lack of public support would simply make the mafia more powerful and demands she back off, something she refuses to do.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Both her father (who is implied, and later confirmed, to have started The Grand War), and her mother (who became a Skullgirl in her attempt to stop it).
• Smart People Play Chess: Chess is listed as one of her "likes", and one of her moves is entitled "Queen's Gambit".
• Specs of Awesome: Quite a few of her alternate color palettes give her these.
• Statuesque Stunner: The third tallest female of the cast, at 5'10".
• Unwanted Assistance: Invoked. Parasoul's Egret Call attack summons a Black Egret to attempt to give a report to Parasoul, whom she quickly dismisses. While annoying for her, it's helpful for players: the Egret interrupts her current attack, allowing her to Lag Cancel.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Parasoul really took after Queen Nancy◊.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: By default she's aloof, professional, and not inclined to show mercy to most of her opponents. When it comes to her little sister though, she's a fiercely protective and caring individual.
• Sultry Bangs: By default, one of her eyes is always covered by her hair, adding to her classy style of sexiness.
• Take Me Instead: In her ending, her dying sister gets too close to the MacGuffin and Parasoul can't destroy it without her sister getting caught in the blast. So she wishes her sister will never become the Skullgirl. In the aftermath, she promises to start her sister's training after she wakes up to prepare her for Parasoul's eventual transformation.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Many of Salty Parasoul's win quotes are her gloating.
  Parasoul: "Beating you down is the only therapy I need."

Tropes related to Krieg:

• Extra Eyes: He has at least eight Glowing Eyes.
• Fiery Stoic: Krieg has the power to cry highly flammable tears of napalm, and is by far one of the most composed Living Weapons out there.
• Fireball Eyeballs: A weaponized example, as Krieg's eyes have the ability to produce flammable napalm. His eyes sometimes include flames coming out of them.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: You'll know if Krieg is about to fire when his eyes start to burn brightly.
• Living Weapon: While seemingly not mobile or responsive, it's confirmed to be a living creature who can produce smoldering napalm from its eyes.
• Meaningful Name: His name is the German word for "war". This helps tie in with Parasoul's Putting on the Reich. It's also because there are four umbrellas in her family, which represent the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
• Parasol of Pain: Parasoul's fighting style revolves around fencing with Krieg. The fact that it's spiked and cries napalm only further solidifies it as a deadly weapon.
• Playing with Fire: He cries napalm tears, which can be placed on the screen and detonated. In addition, bullets shot into Krieg shoot out the other end, engulfed in a ball of flame. Parasoul has a number of attacks that involve her shooting Krieg with her Luger. Her Level 3 Blockbuster has her open Krieg fully, and have the Black Egrets fire on Krieg with automatic weapons. The result is a veritable storm of fireballs.
• The Stoic: Out of all of the living weapons, Krieg is by far the most level-headed. So much so that you would think they were an ordinary umbrella.
  • Not So Stoic: However, despite this, the webcomic has shown that Krieg does have a few moments where he can be expressive. This includes sweating nervously when Parasoul was at gunpoint, and is visibly offended when Peacock threatens to rip him to shreds.
• Swiss-Army Tears: Krieg's tears can be quite useful. However, instead of being used for healing, they ae used for pretty much the exact opposite.
• The Voiceless: Unlike Hungern, Krieg is completely silent.

Tropes associated with Parasoul's Black Egret soldiers:

Voiced by: Kaiji Tang, Bobby Thong, Erik Kimerer, and Jason Wishnov (all English) / ? (all Japanese)

• Angry Fist-Shake: During Parasoul's time-out animation.
• Assist Character: Their Egret Dive move provides the page image.
• Badass Biker: Parasoul's Egret Charge move summons a single soldier on a motorcycle to grab the opponent and drag them to the edge of the screen, and her Motor Brigade super summons a fleet of them to run the opponent down.
• Big "NO!": All of the soldiers have one of these lines when performing the Egret Dive move.
  • Slow "NO!": One speaks all of their lines for Egret Dive in slow motion, so combined with the Big "NO!" above, it becomes this.
• The Faceless: We really don't what they look like without their masks.
• Faceless Goons: Her Egrets' faces aren't showing under their helmets and masks.
• Falling into His Arms: Parasoul's time-out animation has her faint into an Egret's arms. The Egret glares at the opponent and does an Angry Fist-Shake.
• Gas Mask Mooks: Her Egrets sure look the part.
• Major Injury Underreaction: When Egret Dive is used, an Egret will throw themselves to take any attacks meant for Parasoul. Their responses to get shot, stabbed, bludgeoned and/or maimed is a simple 'Ow' before they retreat.
• More Dakka: Parasoul's level 3 super, Inferno Brigade, spawns a large number of Egrets to shoot at Krieg, who cries a torrent of napalm tears to hit the opponent with.
• Putting on the Reich: Gray and green uniforms, red armbands, Pickelhaube helmets (Though technically those are more connected to WW1), German-inspired weaponry (StG 44, MP 40, a Luger going by Parasoul's own sidearm, etc.), and the motorcycles used are of German design. Umbrella's addition to the game removes their red Canopy Kingdom armbands in her own story mode, lessening the Nazi Germany half of their design influence.
• Slow "NO!": Their shielding dive attack, complete with apparent Bullet Time for the Egret. Their cries range from dramatic and serious to completely silly.
• The Squad: The Egrets Parasoul uses for her assist attacks are five identical-looking soldiers (justified, since they all have helmets and are in uniform), each with a different voice and role.
• Unwanted Assistance: In-Universe. They try to help Parasoul by giving her a report when you use her Egret Call attack, but she, being in the middle of a fight, quickly dismisses them. However, it's helpful for players, letting them use Parasoul's extremely important Lag Cancelling.
• Taking the Bullet: The Egret Dive attack, which has an Egret throw themselves in front of Parasoul to absorb attacks. Sometimes they do this while shouting "NOOOOOOOOOOO!".
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Said word for word by the Egrets when Parasouls rudely dismisses them when Egret Call is used.

Ms. Fortune

Nadia Fortune

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

Purrfect Treasure

"Curiosity can't kill me."

The last living member of the Fishbone Gang, a band of Dagonian (fish-people) thieves, Ms. Fortune— the gang's only Feral member— came out of the gang's last job lucky: they had attempted to steal the mysterious Life Gem from Lorenzo Medici, and her fellow thieves had met grisly ends. It was only thanks to some last-second thinking that Fortune swallowed the gem before the Medicis caught up with her, cutting her into pieces. The gem's energy empowered Fortune, granting her a body that cannot truly die. Although she's been hiding out in Little Innsmouth since then, the reappearance of the Skullgirl has provided an opportunity to get out there, claim vengeance for her gang, and— perhaps— wish for their revival.

Ms. Fortune is an odd stance character who, thanks to the powers of the Life Gem, has the ability to swap between Head-on and Headless Modes. In Head-on Mode, Ms. Fortune is a powerful rushdown character with access to some truly oppressive mixups and resets. However, some specials result in Ms. Fortune entering Headless Mode. In Headless Mode, Ms. Fortune becomes a Puppet Fighter, which sees her losing access to her heavy punch normals, but instead uses the button to control her head separately from her body, allowing her to catch her opponent off-guard from a distance.

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Tropes associated with Ms. Fortune:

• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Since her limbs and head are fully detachable, they have an unlimited amount of rotation at the detachment points.
• And the Adventure Continues: Her story mode ending. She comes to terms with the death of the Fishbone Gang, destroys the Skull Heart and returns to Little Innsmouth. But when she gets there, she learns that Minette and several other Dagonian women have been kidnapped, probably by the Medicis. So she teams up with Irvin to fix things.
• Anti-Regeneration: She's not completely unkillable. While cutting pieces off of her does nothing, in Cerebella's ending, we learn that she can be crushed to death. You can't pull yourself together if there's nothing solid left of you to pull together.
• Badass Adorable: She is a catgirl, after all.
• Berserk Button: Ms. Fortune didn't particularly like those thugs picking on Minette during the opening of her story...
• Big Sister Instinct: Towards Minette, who she is friends with and keeps her from getting hurt by thugs.
• Bloody Murder: She can jettison her own blood from severed limbs as a means of propulsion.
• Body Horror: She has quite a bit of unnatural control over her body even beyond popping her limbs off. One attack even involves entangling her opponents in a yarn ball made from her own muscle fibers.
• Butt-Monkey: Fittingly for her name, she seems to suffer a more than her fair share of bad luck or terrible fates. In all of the story modes she's been featured in so far, she's been...
  • Crushed to death (or worse going by her immortality) by Cerebella into the shape of the Life Gem.
  • Captured by Valentine and cut up, tortured and experimented on by the woman until she escaped.
  • Told her surrogate family was kidnapped by Black Dahlia and held hostage by the Medici mafia in her own story mode ending.
  • Given a harsh beating by Big Band after a misunderstanding (that was all her fault).
  • Made a Slave by Eliza as both a pet and an exotic drinking fountain for the cat-loving vampire.
  • Beaten up and plausibly killed by Robo-Fortune, as she's not heard from again after their battle.
  • Smacked around hard by Annie for wanting to wish on the Skullheart as a warning.
  • Beaten and captured by Cerebella and Eliza, essentially tortured to the brink of death by Black Dahlia, and kidnapped again by Robo-Fortune, who later proceeds to compress her into a new Life Gem.
• Calling Your Attacks: Not quite as often as Cerebella, but still a rather frequent offender.
  Claws for Alarm!
  Headbutt!
  Limber Up!
  Zoom!
  Omnomnom!
  Fiber Uppercut!
  Feral... Edge!
  Cat Scratch Fever!
  Remember, remember... the Fifth of Dismember!
• Catgirl: Which is fairly unusual — the rest of her gang were Fish People.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: Literally!
• Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Before a fight, presumably to hide her injuries or to be less noticeable.
• Cool Big Sis: How Minette sees her.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: In Cerebella's ending, she's crushed with so much force that her body is compressed into a new Life Gem.
• Cute Little Fang: No catgirl would be complete without one!
• Detachment Combat: Her main ability. As a player character, this translates to her key mechanic being the ability to pop her head off, which sits on the battlefield and can be given commands separately from her main body until it's recalled.
• Eat the Evidence: When she realizes the Medicis sent powerful goons after the gang, she swallows the Life Gem in hopes of hiding it (though apparently she had originally simply intended to hide in her mouth and swallowed it by accident).
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: Technically, but neither of the brain-eating or the flesh-eating variety. Apparently she still needs to eat, hence her frequenting Yu Wan's restaurant. Her status is discussed among the fandom. Some consider that she came back to life after dying, others think that she never truly died and what the Life Gem did was alter her body and give her an extreme healing factor.
• Expressive Accessory: Her bell which stylized to look like a Life Gem.
• Fan Disservice: Lithe, tan and in a revealing outfit with a generous helping of Underboob. Oh, and detachable limbs with visible muscle, bone and constant spurting of blood.
• Go-Go Enslavement: Her ultimate fate in Eliza's story mode ending. The outfit somehow manages to be even more Stripperiffic than her usual attire.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Though it's not as apparent as her other limbs, her tail is detachable as well and she removes it specifically to use as a weapon (such as a golf club or a sword) for a few of her attacks.
• Grotesque Cute: Awww! It's a kitty! You're a cute kitty, aren't y — ugh... ew.
• Home Stage: Little Innsmouth.
• I Know Madden Kombat: She can use her head like a volleyball or a bowling ball in some moves, and swings her detached tail like a golf club for her Snap Back - which can send her similarly detached head ricocheting about the field.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Her bio states she's exactly twenty years old. It's unknown how old she was when she gained her immortality, but it was likely not too long ago.
• Immortality Hurts: In Cerebella's story it's implied she got to The Grand Cathedral first, lost to Valentine and/or Double in a fight, and that Valentine's been conducting painful experiments on her regenerating body, preventing Ms. Fortune from recovering her stamina and escaping. Valentine's implied to want to do these experiments in Ms. Fortune's own story mode but fortunately she's strong enough to beat her there. Also if Valentine KOs her in Gameplay she sometimes screams "No...! No...!!!" as if she knows what's coming next. Her ability to regenerate her blood also makes her the ideal drinking fountain for Eliza.
• Immortality Inducer: The Life Gem.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: She has blue irises, which help highlight how light-hearted she truly is.
• In-Series Nickname: Despite most other characters referring to each other by their first names, only a few characters ever call her Nadia, suggesting "Ms. Fortune" is this for her. It's possible they're all just being polite too.
• Just Like Robin Hood: Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor are classified as two of her "Likes".
• Le Parkour: One of her many likes.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Implied. Two of her lines when using her Feral Edge super are delivered in a much more ferocious tone of voice than her normal jovial tone.
• Little Bit Beastly: She has the ears, tail, fangs, and claws of a cat, but otherwise looks human.
• Losing Your Head: She has the ability to take off her head and attack with it.
• Made a Slave: She's turned into a drinking fountain by Eliza, as her body being able to regenerate her blood infinitely thanks to the Life Gem, which also makes her blood extra delicious, is the perfect treat for the blood-sucking woman.
• Made of Plasticine: Her body comes apart very easily. The difference from most examples is that for her, this is an advantage.
• Man Bites Man: Her severed head can chew on opponents. (Popularly called OMNOMNOM.)
• "Miss X" Pun: Her name being a pun on "misfortune".
• Nerf: She's one of the biggest victims of the nerf bat in the "Slightly Different Edition" patch. Pre-patch, Ms. Fortune was a monster that could pull off ten-second long combos with her head off. The key to pulling those combos off, however, was her OMNOMNOM move, which post-patch is now limited to once per combo.
• Nothing Personal:
  • It's not that she particularly wants to fight Marie, but she has to if she wants to bring the Fishbone Gang back to life.
  Ms. Fortune: So, no offense, but you're the last thing standing between me and my family, so let's get this show on the road!
  Marie: I too have lost much to the Medicis. Do you not seek vengeance? Wishes such as yours rarely turn out well.
  Ms. Fortune: I've got to try — the Fishbone Gang raised me, protected me and taught me everything I know. The least I can do is return the favor.
  • Both she and Squigly have been killed by the Medicis and come back to life. If she loses to Squigly, she'll occasionally mutter "But... we're... the same..."
• "Not So Different" Remark: The Big Bad remarks that their wishes are similar; to destroy the mafia and all affiliated crime organizations as revenge for their friends.
  Ms. Fortune: Look, I'm gonna have to stop you before you get to the 'We're a lot alike, you and I' bit.
• Odd Friendship: She's a Cat Girl and all of her allies are Fish People.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Compared to the more traditional rotting zombie that is Squigly, Nadia has no outward signs of her state besides her scars. Until she starts fighting that is.
• Pulling Themselves Together: She did this after being chopped into pieces, and her Fifth of Dismember special involves her exploding and then doing this.
• Pungeon Master: Even worse than Peacock. There's a pun in the name or callout of nearly every one of her moves, and a lot of them have both. One of her "likes" is "Subjecting others to terrible puns."
  Ms. Fortune: A purr-fect plaything.
  Paws-itively delightful.
  Remember, remember, the Fifth of Dismember!
  Purrserker Furrage!
  Wow, I'm claw-some.
  You're not claws-strophobic, are you?
  Not a-mew-sing.
  Time to pull myself together!
  Meow it's purr-sonal.
  That's a CLAWS encounter of the FURRED kind!
  [On defeating Parasoul] I... uh... dammit, your name's already a pun.''
• Punny Name: Her name is a play on the word "misfortune" (fittingly enough).
• Puppet Fighter: If you take off her head, you can control it as a separate entity by using the HP button plus a directional input. It can simply headbutt, push itself away using blood, sneeze and send itself into the air, or bite the opponent and keep them in place. By doing so, however, you lose a bit of mobility options, a good lockdown normal, and anything else the HP button would've done.
• Rubber Woman: In a rather grotesque variation. While she's not exactly made of rubber, she's still able to stretch her body to extreme lengths, as seen in certain moves like Fiber Uppercut. This is thanks to her scars and the Life Gem's regenerative capabilities allowing her to lengthen her body by disconnecting her muscle fibers.
• Running on All Fours: Her forward dash.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: One of her quotes when blocking.
  Hiss...
• Scars Are Forever: She retains these after being dismembered.
• Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration: Type IV. She swallowed the Life Gem, granting her immortality with an impressive Healing Factor.
• Spectacular Spinning: Her intro animation has her shred her trenchcoat by spinning her body independent of her head. Her stun animation in Skullgirls Mobile has the opposite, when attached her head spins 360 degrees continually until the stun effect ends.
• Spicy Latina: As noted above, she's the Skullgirls universe's equivalent of Latina.
• Statuesque Stunner: At 5'8", she just barely qualifies.
• Stealth Pun: She's a cat burglar.
• Stripperiffic: Her costume. It was designed to highlight her scars such that they can be easily seen when they separate. Justified in that her fighting style involves dismembering herself. Thus it makes sense for her to wear clothing that won't get in the way of removing and reattaching her limbs. If her intro animation before each fight is any indication she wears a trench coat to cover herself when out in public and only rips it off when she knows she's about to get into a fight.
• The Undead: Well technically she is a zombie. The gem's the only thing keeping her body alive.
• Underboobs: Her top is cut high enough to expose the underside of her breasts.
• Unusual Ears: Cat ones. Conveniently, her hairstyle covers the sides of her head, hiding whether or not she has additional human ears. Ms. Fortune's model sheet◊ reveals that she lacks an extra pair of ears.
• Use Your Head: Several of her attacks involve her ripping her head off and hitting her opponent with it. If her head is attached while executing Cat Scratch Fever, she will directly headbutt her opponent.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The webcomic clarifies that the Fishbone Gang were not originally after the Life Gem; they were just stealing valuables from Lorenzo Medici. Nadia simply stole the Life Gem from Lorenzo as an impulse while he was vulnerable. She realizes far too late to stop it that her impulsive theft just sealed their fate in time for her worst fears to come true.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: In her ending, she decides to return home without making her wish, destroying the Skull Heart...except Minette has been kidnapped, so she and her friends at Innsmouth set out to find her.

Painwheel

Carol / Painwheel

Voiced by: Danielle McRae (English) / Izumi Kitta (Japanese)

Not Quite Condemned

"Get out of my head!!"

Painwheel's story is a sad one— once a normal girl named Carol, she was kidnapped by Valentine to be used as a guinea pig at the most secretive of the Anti-Skullgirl Labs— Lab Zero, headed by the maniacal psychic known as Brain Drain. Implanted with synthetic Parasites and given a transfusion of experimental Skullgirl blood, these experiments drove the newly-dubbed "Painwheel" mad, with Brain Drain mentally controlling her as a precaution. Fueled by her undying rage and continuously trying to fight off the voices in her head, Painwheel has been dispatched to destroy the new Skullgirl.

Painwheel is an incredibly vicious rushdown character with access to two unique mechanics. Not only can she fly, which allows her to disorient the opponent and open up their defences, but she also has a unique armor mechanic in the form of Hatred Guard, where she is able to charge up certain attacks and increase their startup time by holding their buttons. During this increased startup time, any damage that Painwheel receives when armored will be stored up within the attack, reflecting that damage back at her opponent when the attack successfully lands.

---

Tropes associated with Painwheel:

• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: If one pays attention to her normals, you can see that she forces her limbs into various positions to force out the Gae Bolga parasites. Her standing Hard Kick in particular is gruesome enough with her leg bending backwards at the knee.
• Alien Blood: Her blood type is SG for Skullgirl, giving her the ability to sense the Skullgirl's location. It also causes her to turn into the next Skullgirl in her story mode's ending.
• And I Must Scream: Zig-Zagged Trope. Valentine remarks in Painwheel's Story Mode that "that little shred of a soul we left you shouldn't be enough to resist Brain Drain's control"; combined with Fighting from the Inside below, and it's made clear that, whenever Brain Drain puppeteers her body to serve his ends, she's conscious the entire time. Thanks to her Skullgirl blood, however, she can summon the force of will to resist, and even outright defy, Brain Drain's control while a Skullgirl exists (or a half-Skullgirl, as Umbrella's story mode demonstrates), with her strength of will seemingly being proportionate to her proximity of them. Even outside of this, however, there are moments in various story modes, hers included, that suggest that she can summon up the willpower to resist him on her own even without a Skullgirl, or that she may be able to act autonomously while Brain Drain isn't actively trying to control her.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: In her ending, despite not wishing on the Skull Heart, she gets the skull-pattern eyes of a Skullgirl in the final shot, indicating she'll become the next one. It's implied to be due to her Skullgirl blood combined with her despair at being rejected by her family and her desire for revenge on Brain Drain.
• Anime Chinese Girl: The image given off by her appearance. However, she is a decidedly non-cute example closer to a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl.
• Artificial Stupidity: When battling against an AI controlled Painwheel, she's occasionally capable of putting up a decent fight - if she isn't so preoccupied trying to hover uselessly in the air in her flight mode. She'll keep doing her best to keep flying even if the player is completely open to attack or if she's already been swatted out the air before.
• Barefoot Loon: Painwheel doesn't wear shoes, which is partially justified as she can protrude spikes from her soles. However, she isn't eccentric, but mentally unstable due to the fact that Brain Drain is constantly controlling her like a puppet.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Eventually averted, once Painwheel breaks free of the mind control.
• The Berserker: So much so that her charge attacks can gain more power when she's hit while readying them.
• Bittersweet Ending: But not in her ending, oh no, rather, in Filia's. Carol returns to her normal life as a schoolgirl, free of the constant pain, and is reunited with Filia at school. Unfortunately, this happiness is doomed because Filia will eventually turn into the next Skullgirl as the price for Carol's freedom.
• Black Eyes of Crazy: The experiments performed on Carol gave her black sclera, as seen in Valentine's ending, and turned her into an at-times feral berserker.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: The Gae Bolga Matrix parasite is threaded through her entire skeleton, but the retractable blades emerge from below both Shoulders and both Knees.
• Blood Iron: Gae Bolga is one of Painwheel's two syntehic parasites and it takes the form of an amorphous ferrofluid and resides within Painwheel's bloodstream. With it, Painwheel is able release sharp metallic needles from various parts of her body.
• Body Horror: She has a giant pinwheel attached to her back (connected to what looks like her spine), as well as nails driven into her thighs, shoulders and head. She's also able to produce spikes anywhere on her body. What's more is that she is constantly aching, as every attack causes her to scream in pain.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: And the pivotal point of her story mode is how to break out of her brainwashing.
• Calling Your Attacks: Painwheel calls her Death Crawl whenever she uses it, but unlike most of the cast, she hardly says anything else when fighting.
• Charged Attack: Almost all of her normal attacks can be charged when you hold the button, and they even gain armor when charged.
• Color-Coded Emotions: As her dialogue portraits get progressively angrier, her skin turns an increasingly vicious shade of red.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: Brain Drain and Valentine tortured and experimented on a young girl in order to turn her into a monstrous killing machine. Said killing machine then breaks free from their control and swears revenge.
• Dark Reprise: Her Leitmotif, The Lives We Left Behind is remixed to a depressing effect and called The Lives We Tried to Reclaim in her ending, with the ending segueing into the opening notes of Skull Heart Arrythmia.
• Deadly Rotary Fan: The Beur Drive can be used as such, though the blades give off a Sinister Scythe vibe.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Implied in Big Band's story. After defeating Painwheel, he asks Leduc to bring her to the Lab 8 survivors.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Painwheel's sluggish movement, awkward normals, and reliance on flight canceling give her one of the steepest learning curves in the game. A skilled player, though, can turn her into an absolute terror, putting together difficult blockstrings and insanely huge combos.
• Downer Ending: She regains her free will, but is still a monster. Returning home to her parents, they are terrified and drive her out. Brain Drain orders her to return to Lab Zero, but she simply declares she's coming for him next while her eyes gain the familiar skull-pattern of a Skullgirl, implying that though she didn't wish on the Skull Heart, her Skullgirl blood coupled with her despair was enough to induce a transformation on its own.
• Dual Boss: With Double in Valentine's story and Robo-Fortune in Black Dahlia's story.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: In Umbrella's story, Umbrella's mere presence was generating so much energy that it disrupted Brain Drain's signal to Painwheel, and after a beating she's able to regain enough control and rage to fully separate herself from the doctor. And unlike Filia's, Big Band's, or her own ending, she gets a great deal out of the end - the Renoir family offers to undo her cybernetic surgery, she becomes fast friends with Umbrella, and she reunites with her best friend Filia (and Samson). The ending shows all of them at Umbrella's slumber party looking as jolly as they can be, surgery scars aside.
• Electronic Eyes: The way her eyes light up behind her mask during her story mode's opening cutsceen give the impression that she has these.
• Exhausted Eye Bags: She has these whenever she's seen with her mask off, which is unsurprising considering everything she's been through.
• Exotic Eye Designs: In her ending, Painwheel's eyes develop the signature half-skull-shaped pupils when it's shown that she's going to become the new Skullgirl, punctuating her swearing revenge on Braindrain.
• Expressive Mask: The stitched together mouth-piece of her mask stretches as she screams, and the eye sockets change to match her mood.
• Facepalm of Doom: Her air throw.
• Fan Disservice: She has a nice figure underneath her outfit, but it's unfortunate that she is malnourished enough that her ribs are visible, covered in horrible scars, has metal barbs coming out of her body, and is in constant, pitiful agony.
• Fighting from the Inside: Carol, as implied by her backstory. This is taken to a literal level in her story mode, when she must fight her inner self in order to break control. (You just fight a Palette Swap.)
• Flight: Can use the Buer Drive's blades like helicopter rotors to fly.
• Floral Theme Naming: Her name is a play on "pain" and the Pinwheel flower. She also has quite a few moves named after flowers, such as Snapdragon, Cruel Lily and Violet Grudge.
• Gag Dub: Valley Girl Painwheel.
  Like, Deathcrawl!
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Canonically she weighs 375 lbs. (most of it due to her experimentation), but for combo/juggling purposes she's classified as a "lightweight".
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Her face is scarred from where her mask was sewn on but is otherwise left intact from before her transformation, making her look a lot softer than the rest of her body implies.
• Gorgeous Gorgon: Downplayed; the modifications done to her body are still incredibly painful and grotesque. Her face on the other hand is mostly unchanged from the transformation, barring her stitches, and is still conventionally cute and youthful not unlike Fillia's. As a result, she still feels like a young girl underneath the mask, even after everything that's happened to her.
• Home Stage: Maplecrest.
• Hulking Out: Her Gae Bolga special causes her to do this.
• I Just Want to Be Free: All she wants is to be able to destroy the people who made her the monster she's today, break free of their oppression, and return to her normal life. The last part is quite a bit more difficult to achieve as the end of her storyline show us and the only way to ever be normal again is wishing it to the Skull Heart like Filia did. Umbrella's story does actually provide an alternative solution with significantly less downsides, as Umbrella's sheer energy output disrupts Brain Drain's control over her long enough for her to sever their mental connection entirely.
• Implacable Woman: While using Hatred Install, Painwheel can use her charged normal attacks to absorb hits that would normally kill her, and survive.
• Leitmotif, The Lives We Left Behind, which is odd as it is a song that sounds graceful and determined, and yet serves the theme of one the most disturbing characters in the game. And while it may seem like Soundtrack Dissonance, keep in mind that Carol is normally a kind yet persistent girl, so it could also serve as a reminder of who she truly is. Also, the song is played in Maplecrest, which is also where she used to live.
• Living Weapon: She was converted into an anti-Skullgirl killing machine by Brain Drain.
• Malevolent Masked Woman: She has a mask sewn to her face, and is extremely violent.
• Meaningful Name: Her real name, Carol, means Free Man. A pivotal part of her story is her breaking free of Brain Drain's control.
• Miniboss: In Valentine's story.
• Moe: Carol is specifically referred to this on her design sheet.
• Morality Pet: As Carol, she was one for pre-Samson Filia.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Her name is a pun on pinwheel, but references the four-bladed fan-like weapon on her back.
• Not Quite Back to Normal: In Filia's ending, her wish is for Painwheel to live a normal life. While she's no longer got her parasites and the pain from them, Carol still goes by the name Painwheel and has the cross shaped scar on her face. To say nothing of her attempt to smile. As for Filia however, cue her slow and painful transformation into the Skullgirl.
• Perpetual Frowner: After becoming Painwheel. One piece of concept art published by Reverge Labs shows her smiling, with the emphatic note this NEVER happens. penciled in next to it.
  • Subverted... kind of... in Filia's ending.
  • Subverted completely in Umbrella's story after breaking free from Brain Drain's control. She takes off her mask shortly afterwards and is shown with a friendly smile on her face when she talks with Umbrella. When she arrives with The Cavalry at the end, it's shown that she can even smile through her mask.
• Phlebotinum Rebel: She was created to be Lab 0's ultimate weapon, but turns against them.
• Power Echoes: All of her spoken dialogue has a reverb effect.
• The Power of Hate: Mainly towards Valentine and Brain Drain.
• Primal Stance: Crawls on all fours when walking normally.
• Proper Lady: As hard as it is to believe, it's implied she was this before her transformation. The "likes" in her profile include "proper etiquette".
• Psycho Serum: She was infused with experimental synthetic Skullgirl blood.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes are glowing red.
• Scars Are Forever: Although it's hard to tell whether the scars on her face after removing her mask are permanent or not.
• Senseless Violins: Word of God says that the cello case she brings at the end of Filia's Story Mode contains her Buer Drive blades.
• Shout-Out: Her death-crawl is reminiscent of Voldo's reverse crab-walk.
• Skyward Scream: In her victory pose, she throws back her head and lets out a howl of rage while surrounded by a Battle Aura.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Check her trailer, which is filled with disturbingly upbeat singing. Word of God said that the music was selected for Carol and for the disturbing contrast.
• Swirling Dust: Her victory pose. Kind of overlaps with a bit of Battle Aura.
• Tainted Veins: She has dark veins all over her body, thanks to experiments that transformed Carol into who she is.
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: Her ending, unfortunately, where she returns to her parents, but scares them and is called a monster. It is slightly justified because at this point, Carol is barely recognizable.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Painwheel has the potential to be one of the most powerful characters in the series, but her lack of finesse with her Parasites keeps her from attaining her maximum potential.
• The Unsmile:
  • When introducing herself to her new classroom, after Filia wished a normal life for her.
  • This giant toothy grin is also her taunt that can be performed in a fight.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Until Valentine kidnapped her. She gets better in Filia's story and even moreso in Umbrella's, and is implied to be on the road to recovery in Big Band's.
• Wheel of Pain: Her weapon, and her name.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The poor girl has it tough. In her story, she finally breaks free but she's still a monster and her parents shout at her to leave. Then her eyes get the signature half skull, meaning she will become the next Skullgirl and possibly destroy the world.

Valentine

Valerie / Valentine

Voiced by: Laura Post (English) / Asami Imai (Japanese)

Bloody Romantic

^{Click here to see her original appearance}

"Side effects may include nausea, headaches, and death."

The mysterious and elusive Valentine is the last surviving member of a special unit of Anti-Skullgirl Lab Zero called the Last Hope, which met their end fighting the newest Skullgirl. Valentine now works for her, carrying out her will in the shadows of New Meridian while also pursuing her own agenda.

Valentine is a rushdown characer with a high emphasis on aerial combat who combines quick strikes, powerful command grabs, and a unique resource in the form of Vial Hazard, which gives Valentine access to three different kinds of poison, which are all tied to her punch buttons. LP is a purple poison that slowly drains her opponent's health; MP is a green poison that leaves the opponent stunned for longer when hit; and HP is an orange poison that adds input delay to the opponent's actions. Additionally, Valentine has the ability to bring dead teammates back to life via her Rebirth Ex Machina super, which comes at the hefty cost of all five bars of super meter.

---

Tropes associated with Valentine:

• 1-Up: Her Level 5 Super can bring a dead teammate back to life with 33% of their health.
• Abusive Parents: Possibly; stated to have had a rough childhood, hence her early training as an ASG operative.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: She is secretly against the Skullgirl and seeks to kill Marie, not caring that she is a child, she enjoys fighting others for sadistic pleasure, and she works for Brain Drain in the game. In the comic, her introduction has her show genuine concern for Marie's wellbeing and is quick to rush toward her to provide medical aid when she is hurt.
• The Alcoholic: One of her likes is alcohol. She is a Death Seeker. Make of that what you will.
• All Your Powers Combined: Most of her weapons were once those of her friends in the Last Hope; Christmas used scalpels, Patty used the IV stand, Easter was the one with the bodybags, and Hallow used syringes. Valentine's own weapon during this period was her bonesaw.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Her eyepatch changes which eye it covers depending on which way she's facing. During her turning animation, her hair briefly hides both eyes to disguise the change.
• Anti-Villain: Although she's in no way a particularly good person and does the Skullgirl's bidding, her intention is actually to perform Skullgirl research no-one could do outside her position for the labs to use and destroy Marie.
• The Atoner: Implied in her story, where she thwarts Double, kills Marie, defies Brain Drain and makes a wish to the Skullheart with Painwheel not far from her trail, directly wishing to become the next Skullgirl. The implication being that she's trying to make some right out of her involvement and expects Painwheel to kill her soon after her wish.
• Boob-Based Gag: Her large breasts are made into a constant visual gag, as many of Valentine's animations have her adjusting her top or supporting her breasts as she pulls items from her cleavage.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In their respective Story Modes, when they each meet Valentine barely seems to remember Painwheel existed at all.
• Calling Your Attacks: There are two attacks she may call the names of upon use.
  Dead Cross!
  Skyward Strike!
• Buxom Beauty Standard: She has a well-endowed figure, which is emphasized by her cleavage and Jiggle Physics in her animations. Eliza even makes note of her cup size in her pre-round introduction, rather than trash-talking like she would with anyone else (though, knowing Eliza, it could be a back-handed compliment).
  Eliza: Are you blessed by Taweret^note The Egyptian goddess of womanly fertility, or a scalpel?
• Code Name: According to Word of God, Valentine is her code name and her real name is Valerie.
• The Colored Cross: The May 13, 2014 patch changed Valentine's default palette crosses from having red crosses to fuchsia ones since the Red Cross symbol is protected by the Geneva Conventions. The cross would later be designed to look more like a shuriken to highlight her ninja-esque fighting style and fascinations.
• Combat Medic: As a character type, she is much more focused on the combat aspect, but she still has a healing ability for her Level 5 super.
• Counter-Attack: She has one as a Level 2 Blockbuster. Notably though, it is incredibly discreet for a super counter, there is no dramatic super flash, Valentine merely stands with her arms open inviting an attack to hit her, and one of two things will happen - she either injects a syringe full of poison into the opponent for big damage and the effect of the desired toxins, or she writes a prescription and slaps the opponent in the face to paralyze them helpless for a few seconds. Because it’s so quick and subtle, it’s also easy to whiff the counter and end up doing nothing but waste your meter.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Downplayed. Mechanically speaking, Valentine works great as a close-ranged rushdown character with lightning-fast attacks and aerial maneuverability. As an assist character though, many of her attack options are generally poor or unwieldy to use thanks to their quick but low base damage, limited range and lack of synergy, being meant to help Valentine get the attack going, not her partner. As a result she often fares better as the lead fighter rather than the assist.
• D-Cup Distress: She measures at 36E and lists "Back pain" as one of her dislikes.
• Death Seeker: Implied in her story mode. She seems intent on persuading Painwheel to kill her. So much so that in her ending she willingly wishes to becomes the next Skullgirl just as Painwheel is walking into the catacombs..
• Difficult, but Awesome: Not as much as Parasoul in this regard, but comes with a variety of different kinds of moves and many movement capabilities. Mastering her turns a potential nuisance into a nigh-unstoppable ninja that zips around the stage.
• Disappointed in You: Her reaction whenever she defeats Painwheel in a match, or when she's swapping in for her as she retreats.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In spades:
  • Her dialogue when she starts talking about experimenting on Ms. Fortune is suggestive enough that the Cat Girl thinks she's hitting on her.
  • Her injured◊ sprite shows her blushing and panting, with her top starting to slip off no less!
  • Her Victory Pose in which she bends forward and cups a thermometer in her breasts until it pops.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: Worked for the government and Lab Zero, then worked for the Skullgirl, but was actually working for herself the whole time.
• The Dragon: To the current Skullgirl.
  • Dragon with an Agenda. Both to the Skullgirl, and apparently to Christmas while in Last Hope.
• Driven to Suicide: In her ending. See Suicide by Cop below.
• Dual Boss: In most of the vanilla story modes, she serves as a miniboss alongside Double before the character can challenge Marie.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Apparently, she wasn't happy about having to work on Painwheel and turn her into what she is now; Brain Drain had to lean rather heavily on her to get her to cooperate.
• Evil Mentor: In her story, she prepares Painwheel to destroy the Skullgirl.
  Don't fail me.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Her pupils are black crosses, the same shape as the red crosses on her uniform. Apparently they're one of the side effects of the drugs she took when she was in Lab 7. When she becomes the Skullgirl in her ending, the telltale skull-shaped iris marks get added on.
• Eyepatch of Power: An accident in Lab 7 injured the bandaged eye to the point of apparent uselessness.
• Eye Scream: She apparently lost an eye in a lab accident.
• Face–Heel Turn: Prior to the events of the game, she used to work for the Anti-Skullgirl Lab, but now works for the Skullgirl after the defeat of the Last Hope. She was actually Good All Along.
• Fan Disservice: As something of a walking inventory of this, Valentine has a lot of graphic and bloody imagery to contrast her sexiness, only outdone by Double (a barely humanoid blob of flesh and teeth) and Eliza (a construct of blood housing a monster within). Valentine's Infinite breaker animation has her attempt to tear her shirt off before tearing her chest open and exploding into a pile of bones and gore, after which she reappears from a body-bag.
• Fanning the Knives: As an homage to DIO, Valentine can perform "Checkmate Incision" where she throws a barrage of scalpels at her opponent, fanning them out like DIO does with his knives.
• Flash Step: Her ground tech and wakeup roll are this instead of traditional rolls.
• Flatline: Her rushdown super mimics the effect.
• Foreign Culture Fetish: Her fascination with Eastern culture apparently inspired her McNinja fighting style. Alex Ahad has specifically described her as a "weeaboo".
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Valentine's outfit in a nutshell.
• For Science!: Is more the willing (in fact, downright eager in some cases) to perform horrifying experiments on her opponents to advance her research.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Every playable character has palette swaps. In Valentine's Level 3 Blockbuster, her eye color will change depending on what palette you chose for her. One of her palettes include what she would be like as a Skullgirl, which is what she wishes for in her story ending. We are then shown a close-up of Valentine's eye, which now bears the skull motif and Valentine's cross pupils now as the skull's "eye socket". This doesn't appear in the Blockbuster.
• Glove Snap: Performed at the end of Valentine's Level 3 Blockbuster.
• Good All Along: In her story mode, she was actually only biding her time until she could get another chance to defeat the Skullgirl.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars:
  • Her mask hides a scar crossing her lip, onto her chin.
  • Her eyepatch, too; the scar over her eye (presumably it's supposed to be her right eye) is even more noticable according to her concept art.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Her Level 3 super is a particularly bloody one, having operated on the opponent so graphically she left a bloody mess behind the curtains.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Her jumping hard kick has her pull a body bag out of nowhere, open it up, and hit the opponent with the cadaver's legs and then his arms with strikes to the body's back.
• Hammerspace: Where does that body bag come from? Then, of course, there's the astounding inventory she manages to keep between her breasts and in her medical bag.
• Handicapped Badass: Her right eye, hence the patch.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Alex Ahad states that Valentine hides her (somewhat) good intentions by being a jerk most of the time.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Although she's a nurse. She'd blend in if she was working in a hospital.
• Holiday Motif: The not-too-subtly-named Valentine is loosely themed around the eponymous day. She's the resident Ms. Fanservice (which in a game as risqué as this says a lot), making herself present as desirably as possible to manipulate enemies. She also enjoys dark chocolate and alludes to "heart-stopping" with many of her attacks like her defibrillators and super move that flatlines her enemy.
• Honey Trap: Word of God says she uses her looks to seduce others to obtain information when needed.
• Hospital Hottie: She's a ninja nurse and one of the most blatantly sexualized characters in the game. Peacock actually says "Helloooo Nurse" when she's fighting against Valentine.
• Improbable Weapon User: Uses weaponized versions of medical tools — bonesaws, defibrillators, syringes, scalpels, body bags (some with cadavers still inside), an IV stand with one end sharpened... though her weapon of choice seems to be a bonesaw with a katana hilt.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Even more-so than Parasoul; her official profile lists her measurements as 36E-25-40.
• Instant Sedation: Her grab incapacitates the opponent with knockout gas rather quickly, forcing them into their knockout animation and leaving them open to attack the whole way down.
• Irony:
  • Named Valentine, but her birthday is on Christmas. Additionally, she never got along with the Last Hope operative named Christmas.
  • Likes: Dark chocolate. Dislikes: Candy.
• Last of Her Kind: The only remaining survivor of the 'Last Hope', a squad of ASG ninja nurses like herself.
• Lightning Bruiser: Valentine is characterized with rapid movement, fast and multi-hitting attacks and the ability to alternate between dashing around melee range to chucking ranged attacks, or pulling out implements that keep the opponent at bay.
• Magical Defibrillator: Valentine can use her defibrillator as a Level 5 Super to bring one team mate back to life, no matter the circumstance. As an offensive tool, it’s also her Outtake, charging a burst so big that she can smack the opponent off the stage or make them splatter against the edge of the screen.
• The Medic: She can revive a teammate at the cost of five meters.
• Miniboss: Holds this position as the first unambiguous villain to be a playable character, whereas most of the other "villainous" characters are more like heroic comedic sociopaths. Reinforced by her being one of two characters of the initial eight who has a Level Five super.
• Mistaken for Romance: Ms. Fortune thought her admiration of her body was flirting. Unfortunately for her, Valentine's more interesting in capturing her for other reasons.
  (Valentine): Well well~... What have we here? That's quite the body you've got there, kitty.
  (Fortune): Err, sorry creepy lady. I'm not interested.
• The Mole: She's waiting for the right time to betray Marie.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's got by far the biggest and most animated bust in the game and is regularly handling and adjusting it while fighting. Special mention has to go to:
  • Her pre-fight intro, where she's seen in a Sexy Silhouette behind hospital curtains fiddling with her top.
  • See also her Victory Pose; it involves her trying to pull a mercury thermometer out from inside her shirt, but "accidentally"^note (probably not accidental, judging by the smug grin visible through her face mask) snapping the end off because the rest of it is too firmly lodged between her breasts.
  • When she gets knocked down, her top slowly slips off, showing Toplessness from the Back. When standing back up she quickly re-buttons her shirt.
• Nerf: Not a direct sort of nerf, but she was one of the biggest victims of the changes in the IPS system from the "Slightly Different Edition" patch, since it dramatically reduced the length of her combos.
• The Nicknamer: Last Hope's codenames were her idea.
• Ninja Log: After executing her Flash Step ground tech, she leaves a bag of medical supplies in her place.
• Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: A ninja nurse.
• Ninja Run: Her ground dash.
• Not So Stoic: She's normally got a cool attitude when interacting with other characters, rarely breaking out into anything but arrogant sarcasm whenever she gets involved. On the other hand, when her mask comes down it's to show off an absolutely wicked Slasher Smile normally reserved whenever she's excited to 'operate' on someone.
• Noxious Nurse: She dresses like a nurse and uses many hospital equipment as her weapons, such as a saw, scalpels, syringes, body bags and an entire hospital bedroom.
• Only a Flesh Wound: She has this reaction whenever she recovers from a hit that sent her collapsed against the floor, which can be as 'light' as getting thrown down to a lengthy beatdown combo that sent her flying. More rarely, she'll quote the actual line if an opponent recovers.
  Been through worse.
  I've seen worse.
• Out of Focus: Despite being a key player in Painwheel's character arc, Valentine is not given any form of mention when Umbrella encounters Carol during her story, which puts more emphasis on Brain Drain instead.
• Pet the Dog: Her story mode implies that she's quite fond of Painwheel.
• Proud Beauty: While she never tries to use her looks to her advantage she DOES seem to be pretty vain.
  • The code she uses during Story Mode to get Painwheel to obey her consists of her measurements.
  • Her aforementioned Victory Pose, which involves her trying to pull a thermometer out of her cleavage and breaking it because it's lodged in there too snugly. She's smugly smiling behind her mask the whole time, implying Big-Breast Pride.
  • One of her intro quotes toward Parasoul concerning The Egrets:
  No way they'll follow you once they've seen me.
• Red Baron: As seen on her film poster, "The Bloody Valentine".
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: She sports red eyes marked with medical crosses as pupils, on top of already being a highly deadly ninja usually out for blood.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: After retrieving the Skullheart in her removed alternate ending, Valentine returned to Lab Zero and gave it to Brain Drain. Unfortunately for her, Brain Drain was upset about his forces (especially Christmas) were killed due to the fact that she betrayed him and the others. As such, he made sure Valentine will obey him indefinitely with an implanted mind-controlling device.
• Slashed Throat: Her air grab is this done with her bonesaw, albeit nonlethal.
• Slasher Smile: Whenever her surgical mask is down.
• Smart People Play Chess: Like Parasoul, chess is listed as one of her likes.
• Spinning Piledriver: Of the Izuna Drop variety: one of her throws stuffs the opponent in a body bag before performing the piledriver. Her level 3 Super also begins with the same move.
• Statuesque Stunner: In-game, Valentine is about the same height as the other girls, but that's only because she's crouching. As we can see in her match intro (or her page image above), she's 6', two inches taller than Parasoul. Officially, she is the 4th tallest character in the game, behind Double, Beowulf and Big Band, respectively.
• Stealth Pun: A bunch.
  • In her Story Mode she steps in between Painwheel and Double's fight, prompting Double to call her a "double-crosser." She's referring to Valentine's ambiguous alliance of course, but given that she's literally crossing Double... And Valentine's red crosses...
  • On a related note, ever notice that Valentine's pupils are little medical crosses? She's cross-eyed.
  • When Valentine tags out with Double, one of her lines is "Prepare for trouble!" "And make it Double!".
• Stripped to the Bone:
  • Her infinity breaker has it look like Valentine's about to tear her top off, only to end up flaying herself alive in a bloody mess that leaves her skeleton behind for a bit. She shows up just fine in a body bag after, though.
  • Her Level 2 Blockbuster has her leave herself open to attack, and if struck she disintegrates into a skeleton, and reappears in the flesh to counterattack the enemy.
• Suicide by Cop: At the end of her story mode, she wishes to become the Skullgirl, presumably so Painwheel will kill her.
• Super Serum: According to Word of God, Lab 7's entire schtick was drug enhancements, explaining most of her prowess as having come from drug use.
• Take Up My Sword: In her story mode towards Painwheel, in a guile variation.
• Technicolor Toxin: Valentine has three different poisons she can load into a syringe mid-battle, and each has a different color and effect. Purple causes damage over time, Green adds extra hitstun to attacks, and Orange adds delay to button inputs.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: As part of her status as The Mole, working with Double is this.
• Theme Naming: All of the members of Last Hope are named after different holidays: Valentine is Valentine's Day, Patty is St. Patrick's Day, Hallow is Halloween, and Christmas and Easter are self-explanatory.
• Undeathly Pallor: Despite not being dead, her skin is a creepy pale grey. However, it's less noticeable than most other examples of this trope.
• [Verb] This!: Two of her lines when using the Checkmate Incision super, one of them being a Shout-Out to the Trope Namer.
  Dodge this.
  Bandage this!
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Occasionally pulls out weapons from her cleavage. Her victory pose is her pulling a thermometer out, which then snaps.
• Villain Respect: If she’s KO'd by Peacock, she mutter out a strained "Well done… Avian." for being defeated by a Lab 8 agent. Likewise she also has dying praise for Painwheel, and swaps between mocking and praising Umbrella for being a (powerful) little girl in a fight.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: If the timer runs out and Valentine is on the losing end of the stalemate, she angrily leaves the stage in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a comical amount of bones Mortal Kombat style.

Double

Double / "Sister Agatha"

Double voiced by: Charlotte Ann (English) / Nakae Mitsuki (Japanese)
Republican Double voiced by: Kaiji Tang (English) / ? (Japanese)

Toil and Trouble

"Have you come to give confession?"

The shapeshifting monstrosity known as Double is a being of unknown origin. While not much is known about her, she does always seem to be near when a new Skullgirl emerges, aiding her in whatever her goals are. While capable of taking any form she pleases, she can be most commonly found in the guise of a nun working at the Grand Cathedral of the Divine Trinity.

Double is Confusion Fu made amorphous flesh, being able to rush down the opponent with a barrage of unpredicatable moves that have her taking the form of several different characters. While she's plenty strong on her own and more than capable of going solo, Double especially shines when part of a team, having some of the best synergy out of the entire roster.

---

Tropes associated with Double:

• The Ageless: Double has been aiding the Skull Heart for years, how long exactly is unknown, and possibly ever since there's been a Skull Heart
• Ambiguous Situation: Eliza's story mode reveals that Double is—or is at least linked to—Queen Lamia and the mother of the Trinity, but doesn't elucidate beyond Eliza's brief speculations.
• Ascended Extra: In most of the vanilla story modes her only real roles are to give the player character a Mirror Match and to be the penultimate opponent fought before Marie, and even her own story mode offers little insight into her character. The majority of the DLC stories (such as Squigly's, Beowulf's, Annie's, and Marie's) have her show far more personality and plot significance, with her even being the final boss of Squigly and Annie's stories.
• Ass Kicks You: She takes Cerebella's form to do this one, and it's similar to R. Mika's famous Flying Peach attack. The real Cerebella lacks this move, though she does gain access to it in Mobile.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Her Level 5 Super turns her into a Gradius boss. While Mike Z mentioned a 60,000 damaging juggle combo with it, it's easy to screw up, especially when you're pressured with not wasting a whole five meters. Only time will tell.
• Ax-Crazy: Go ahead. Manage to get her to bring down her stoic mask, watch her come undone.
• Bad Habits: Her nun disguise is more disturbing when you realize it has veins in the lower parts of her habit.
• Batman Gambit: In Squigly's story mode, where she gave the Skull Heart to the Contiellos so the Medicis would murder the family.
  • She also led Big Band to the River King Casino, seemingly knowing that Cerebella would kick up a fuss and stall him long enough for Valentine to break into and destroy Lab 8.
• Berserk Button: Seeing Eliza in her story mode causes her to go ballistic.
  • Any Spanner in the Works seems to be this for her... IE, the DLC characters who interfere from outside the main cast, as we only ever see her going all out to deal with Squigly, Beowulf, and especially Eliza.
  • Has a particular hatred of Annie due to Annie taking advantage of her immortality to combat both her and the Skull Heart for years.
• Black Eyes of Evil: She has these in her nun form for one of her alternate color palettes. Still, her monster form has black sclera.
• Big Bad: While not necessarily the main one. In nearly every story mode, she is almost always the driving force.
• Blob Monster: Albeit one that retains a vague approximation to a humanoid.
• Body Horror: Let's start with the fact that she has a giant, razor-toothed mouth in her back and go from there.
• Chunky Updraft: No, not the floor around her. She does this with... herself. The best way to describe it would be like the "lava" rising in a lava lamp sped up about a hundred times. Some of the pieces brush up against her "boobs" as they rise past her which results in constant bouncing so long as she's standing still.
• Churchgoing Villain: Despite the fact that she's a horrible person (and probably a bit because of it), Double is rather pious, giving praises and religiously themed lines before and after her fights.
• Create Your Own Hero: In Marie's story mode, the whole ordeal of her tempting Marie to wish on the Skull Heart and subsequently turned into a Skullgirl indirectly lead to this, as the latter vows to be the last Skullgirl and use her power to combat the Trinity after she breaks free from their influence.
• Ditto Fighter: She assumes the forms of other members of the cast and uses specials they used to have in planning stages, such as taking Peacock's form and using a car to run down her enemies. However, all of her moves have different properties, making them unique to her. She does not possess the ability to copy powers, either. For example, she cannot use Krieg's tears, so she uses Parasoul's gun instead. As a whole, she only assumes the forms of her enemies not to outright copy them, but to mock them.
• Draconic Abomination: Double's Beast of Gehenna form—appearing in one of her Blockbuster moves and being shown in full during Beowulf's story mode, is a multi-eyed draconic monstrosity that devours her foes and drags them to Gehenna.
• The Dragon: To the current Skullgirl. On the surface.
• Dragon Ascendant: You still have to fight Marie in Double's story mode, and Double isn't pulling any punches.
• Dragon-in-Chief: She is the one who is in charge of the Skull Heart and is the one who makes sure the Skullgirl does as she is told.
• Dragon with an Agenda: She really doesn't give two shits about what Marie wants or doesn't want. In fact, if Marie's orders involve any kind of mercy or goodness, she'll outright defy them. At the end of the day, Marie's just another Skullgirl to tide her over until the next...
• Dual Boss: In most of the vanilla story modes, she serves as a miniboss alongside Valentine before the character can challenge Marie.
• Eldritch Abomination: As a shapeshifter she can be anything, but her seemingly-default form is a mass of constantly shifting eyes, tendrils, and mouths. She is even called this in her own concept art!
• Eldritch Location: Her "stomach" is one as Beowulf finds out, which shows that it is the location of the Gehenna stage. However, that's not the strangest part. What really is strange is that you don't need to be eaten by her to go there Annie and Eliza's story modes reveal that Gehenna is located beneath the Grand Cathedral, with Marie's story mode elaborating that Gehenna spans the entire world and that things even worse than Double live within it. So with that in mind, it is very much unclear if Gehenna truly is or isn't her innards.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She has a moment with Beowulf- albeit that she's not the only person to underestimate him. Her manipulation of him as "Zane" relies on him being a Glory Hound Fake Ultimate Hero who will be content with the fights she "arranges" by pointing him in the direction of her enemies and won't bother actually fighting the Skullgirl, and her Break Them by Talking attempt assumes that either Beowulf would try to keep his fake victory under wraps or retire again out of shame. He does neither; instead, the knowledge that he let his fans and Grendel down just renews his motivation to do something truly heroic by defeating the Skullgirl.
• Evil Is Visceral: She's an undulating blob of shifting body parts, do we really need to go further than that?
• Expy: A horrific Eldritch Abomination that can take any shape at will and manipulates people to her inscrutable ends. Are we talking about Double... or Nyarlathotep?
• Eyes Always Shut: In her nun form, presumably to hide that they're actually Blank White Eyes. She opens them before transforming into her battle form. Her 'Zane' form in Beowulf's story mode also has her/his eyes hidden.
• Fan Disservice: Double is unquestionably the queen of this, with the curvy nun with a generous Hartman Hips figure quickly showing her true colors by turning herself inside out to reveal the teeth and goo spewing abomination within. It only gets worse from there, as Double herself has breasts that are constantly bouncing like lava lamps and sometimes a curvy human-like figure emerging from the mass, but again surrounded by and covered in goo, teeth, faces wincing in agony and whatever else Double is brandishing.
• Final Boss: In Squigly and Annie's storylines.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Double, when not in battle, takes the form of a serenely smiling nun with her eyes constantly closed.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: This is in effect between characters whenever Double is someone's fighting partner in a match. Half the cast don't have any kind or encouraging things to say when they're swapping out for Double even though they're teammates, ranging from disturbance to outright hatred. And considering what she is, and what she's done, their reactions are very much justified.
  Peacock: Eugh...
  Parasoul: Come, demon!
  Leviathan: GET IN HERE!
  Big Band: (Bitingly) Stand-in! / Monster.
  Beowulf: Yeah. whatever...
  Eliza and Sekhmet angrily speaking in unison: Lamia!
  Robo-Fortune: Messy!
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Double's Level 3 Blockbuster has her transform into all of the 7 main cast members, but also various unimplemented characters (except for Squigly): including Umbrella, Squigly, Andy Anvil, Black Dahlia and Mrs. Victoria.
  • The opening to Skullgirls has a Freeze-Frame Bonus near the 1:16 mark, a poster that practically spoils her existence.
• Gag Dub: Republican Double.
  Hey hey hey, I'm here to take your JOB!
• Gainax Ending: One minute, Double is getting ready to devour the fighters she defeated. The next, two girls are playing Skullgirls...and then we learn that none of the storylines in the game are canon.
• The Ghost: Strangely enough, she never makes a physical appearance in Umbrella's story. She's mentioned to have attacked the Black Egrets and separated them from Parasoul, but she never actually shows up onscreen and her ultimate fate is never addressed.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The DLC story modes have effectively cemented her place as this outside the Trinity itself. She's clearly in charge of every new Skullgirl, she's been manipulating the course of history for the Canopy Kingdom for decades, and on top of everything else, she is Queen Lamia's "double".
• Hartman Hips: Her nun disguise is very shapely around the hips. Disturbingly enough, these carry over to her monstrous form.
• Home Stage: Grand Cathedral and Gehenna.
• Humanoid Abomination: Her nun form, which looks human at first glance, but a close look reveals distinctly inhuman traits, such as blank-white eyes and veins at the base of her habit.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: One of her win quotes.
• I'm a Humanitarian: In her ending she eats the other playable characters.
  • Tries this repeatedly to Beowulf and Annie.
• Just Eat Him: One of Double's more go-to tactics. Most glaringly her tactic for dealing with Beowulf after he strays from the course she'd tried setting him on. Even when he shows too tough to be ensnared like the rest of the cast, she's more or less fine leaving him trapped in her stomach with the knowledge he can't do anything from in there.
  • Two of her moves (her throw and her Beast of Gehenna super) involve doing this to her opponent.
• Mama Bear: Towards Venus and Aeon when facing Eliza in the latter's story mode. It's hinted that Double is actually Queen Lamia, Aeon and Venus' mother and that Eliza was responsible for their deaths.
• Manipulative Bitch: Orchestrated the events that led to the death of the Contiello family (and thus, Squigly's death) and the creation of a Skullgirl 14 years ago. It's implied that she had a hand in the creations of all Skullgirls as well.
• Meaningful Name: In all of her attacks, she doubles one of the other characters.
  • Matching the game's movie theme, she can fill in as any character's acting and stunt double for Same vs Same matches.
  • In a plot twist, she is revealed to be Queen Lamia's double.
• Miniboss: In everyone else's storylines (Except for hers, Painwheel's, and Squigly's), with her teaming up with Valentine most of the time to put a stop to the protagonist before they reach Marie.
• Monochromatic Eyes: In her nun form. In her default color they are white.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Double's dragon form, seen in Beowulf's story mode, has a mouth completely filled with fangs.
• Mouth of Sauron: She speaks for the Trinity, issuing commands to Marie.
• Nerf: Her "Hornet Bomber" move no longer has priority over everything as of the "Slightly Different Edition" patch.
• Nothing Is Scarier: She demonstrates the trope both figuratively and literally by having "nothing" listed under both her likes and dislikes. Despite the lack of creepy items like under Painwheel's bio, a completely neutral mindset is horribly inhuman.
• Nuns Are Spooky: Sticking to her disguise for a minute, while being a nun in a creepy church is on thing, some of her posters show visible arteries in her habit.
• Nun Too Holy: Double shapeshifts into a nun disguise with hands clasped and head bowed, but otherwise acts nowhere near the part.
• Out of Focus: In the base game and the Indiegogo DLC stories, Double is an integral part of the cast and story who is responsible for basically everything. However, while she still plays a major role in Annie's story, she has fallen into this in the Season 1 Pass stories, being reduced to The Ghost in Umbrella's story (even though she expressed personal interest in her during Parasoul's story) and falling into Chuck Cunningham Syndrome in Black Dahlia's (despite that campaign involving Dahlia murdering Marie early on and holding the Skull Heart for ransom as a means to fight other worthy challengers).
• Perpetually Protean: In her true form, Double is a horrific, bubbling mass of semi-humanoid flesh, and she regularly changes her appearance either to attack or for misdirection/infiltration purposes in the story modes. It's more unusual for her to stay in anything remotely resembling a single shape, as even simple motions such as dashing or crouching utterly warp her body far beyond the bounds of physical movement.
• Prophet Eyes: When Double is shown opening her eyes in her human form, it is shown that they are completely blank.
• Red Baron: The film poster calls her "The Devilish Double".
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In her natural form. Her nun form can also use a Monochromatic Eyes version of this.
• Red Right Hand: In her humanoid forms. You can see veins in the lower part of her nun "habit" and in Squigly's story, the spots in her scarf take the shapes of faces.
• Secret Character: Zig-Zagged. She's playable from the start, like everyone else, but she's the only fighter not to appear in the game's Attract Mode and launch trailer, presumably to avoid spoiling her existence. However, she still received a character trailer, like all the other playable fighters. Her story mode also needs to be unlocked, by doing everyone else's story modes first.
  • While her existence was NEVER a secret (she was confirmed as one of the eight initial characters from the start), her true form was. In promotional materials up until then, we only saw her in her nun form or as some other deformed creature, but never in her default fighting form. Her character trailer (the last one to be released, coming out only on the day the game itself was released for the first time) was the first time we got to see what she truly looked like, and even then, only for a few seconds - a "blink and you'll miss" type of thing.
• Self-Duplication: At least capable of doing this in Gehenna, as seen in the penultimate battle in Annie's story mode.
• Sequential Boss: Fought three times in a row at the end of Annie's story mode.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Double Subverted in Annie's story mode. First she tries to get Annie to break by taking on the forms of Big Band and Squigly, but Annie sees right through it and fights on. Then she does it again in her Breaking Speech, first by taking the form of a young Annie, and then her mother, which is enough for Annie to hesitate and let Double get in a cheap shot.
• Shapeshifter Longevity: A shapeshifting Blob Monster that's been serving the Skull Heart for centuries. Dialogue in Eliza's storyline indicates that she's actually Queen Lamia, making her almost as old as Samson.
• Shapeshifter Mashup: Just look at her! Her entire mass is made up of bits and pieces from various characters that are all in illogical placements and positions.
• Shapeshifting Trickster: Quite apart from having a fighting style that exemplifies Confusion Fu, story mode reveals she enjoys using her shapeshifting powers to entice new candidates - or pit them against each other. At least one plotline reveals that she's used her abilities to make sure the Skullheart claims a host by posing as a well-wisher and delivering it to unsuspecting women as a "gift." In the finale of her personal storyline, it's revealed that even the Skullgirl herself can't trust Double, for if the current host shows signs of too much individuality, the shapeshifter is more than prepared to stab her in the back and replace her with a new candidate.
• Slide Attack: And it emulates possibly the most famous slide attack in gaming history.
• The Stoic: Barely ever emotes, with her only expressions being calm and disturbing Slasher Smile.
  • Except in Eliza's Story mode, where she flips out.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Played with: her Level 5 super transforms her into an Easter Island statue that spits projectiles and summons Peacock's cartoon cronies. Sounds almost like a certain shoot-em-up series Konami made...
• Voice Changeling: It is said in a Q&A that Double is able to mimic any voice she chooses and is capable of talking normally. Demonstrated in-game by the way she can talk to Selene Contiello and Beowulf in disguise without them noticing anything strange.
• Voice of the Legion: In more ways than one. Along with her shape, her voice morphs to match whichever character she's impersonating; she has very few lines in her "real" voice. In 2nd Encore, her normal speaking voice sounds like many people speaking at once.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Double takes the form of the other playable characters to copy their attacks. In Squigly's storyline, she was the strange woman that gave the Skullheart to Squigly's mother, and in Beowulf's storyline, she mimics his former agent in order to use Beowulf as an attack dog.
• Was Once A Person: If Eliza's Story mode is any indication, Double used to be Queen Lamia.
• Woman Behind the Woman: Implied Trope, given the way she actively seeks out creating new Skullgirls, she may be an influence in what drives them insane afterwards.
• Womb Level: Gehenna is explicitly Double's stomach, a cavernous and pulsating structure of flesh with old architecture relating to Queen Lamia and whatever else ended up rotting in there, and as a sort of Mind Screw, Double herself will fight in her own stomach in her smaller more mobile form. Beowulf and Eliza get swallowed and sent here when they cross paths with Double.

Others

The Trinity (Unmarked Spoilers)

The Trinity (Lamia, Venus, and Aeon)

Lamia voiced by: ? (English) / ? (Japanese)
Venus voiced by: Lauren Landa (English) / ? (Japanese)
Aeon voiced by: Cristina Valenzuela (English) / ? (Japanese)

The figures at the center of one of the Canopy Kingdom's major religions. The beings that Double speaks for to issue orders to Marie. They seem to consist of two sisters: Aeon, who controls time, and Venus, who controls space, as well as their enigmatic "Mother", Queen Lamia.

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Tropes associated with the Trinity:

• All for Nothing: Thanks to Marie's friendship with Peacock and both of their determination to keep going after everything that happened to them, the will that they collected throughout the years was taken back by all their victims, leaving them back at square one.
• Ambiguously Bi: Seen in her hoard, Aeon has both a Taliesin/Beowulf yaoi doujin and a Ms. Fortune dakimakura.
• Ancient Evil: They ruled over the world in the ancient past before Venus and Aeon were killed by Neferu and Queen Lamia was defeated by Samson and Leviathan. Despite this, they persist as godlike enties outside of time and space, attempting to return via the Skull Heart and their minion Double.
• The Assimilator: The Trinity as a whole are revealed to be this in Marie's story mode, as they absorb the will of anyone fully corrupted by the Skull Heart or killed by the Skullgirl. In fact, this is a crucial element in their grand plan.
• Big Bad Ensemble: They're a family of mother and two daughters, they created the Skullheart, and they want to use it to create Skullgirls until the world is finally destroyed, although why is currently unknown.
• Body Horror: If you thought Double had a lot of this, then Venus puts it to shame; her Parasite takes up the space where her ribs and abdomen should be, and basically every part of her hypothetical moveset involves her sprouting and weaponising immense amounts of sinew and flesh from her body.
• Chekhov's Gunman: As of the non-Canon storylines, they appear in statue and stained-glass-window form in the background of the Grand Cathedral and Final Atrium stages, only appearing in the flesh in Double's Cliffhanger ending and The Stinger to Robo-Fortune and Black Dahlia's stories.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: They consist of three deities, worshiped in collective, rather similar to the Christian concept of God having three "Identities" as The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. Except the Trinity here are genuinely separate, are female (mother, two daughters) and, oh yeah, are evil otherworldly abominations out to destroy the world.
• Dead All Along: In Eliza's story mode, Double reveals that Eliza killed Aeon and Venus. It's also heavily suggested that Double and the Skull Heart are all that's left of their mother, Queen Lamia. But if that's the case, then who is Double talking to in her story mode, and why does the Trinity appear in Double's, Robo-Fortune's, and Black Dahlia's endings? Are they stuck in the afterlife or Limbo?
• Deity of Human Origin: They once belonged to an ancient, highly-advanced civilization. Eliza betrayed and killed them, and it's unknown how Venus and Aeon came to be the eldritch entities they now are.
• Eyes Always Shut: Aeon.
• God Is Evil: They're the Greater-Scope Villain of the game, and their religious symbol is an upside down cross.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Granted that they are the ones responsible for the Skull Heart.
• Hikikomori: Aeon is stated to be a shut-in otaku according to her bio in the vote-in character details. It explains the collection in the room we meet her...
• Humanoid Abomination: While it could be argued that they could be this, Venus' concept description seems to imply she is this, since the true form of her and her parasite "exist beyond the threshold of human comprehension".
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Aeon takes this to the extreme, having a literal hourglass in place of a torso.
• Multiple Head Case: Abaddon has at least three heads.
• No Name Given: The Mother's name was initially unknown, though one of Double intro quotes hinted it was Lamia. This was eventually confirmed in Eliza's Story Mode, then apparently later disconfirmed in an info-dump, leaving her true identity unknown.
• One Bad Mother: The Great Mother. Not only did she turn the Theonite meteor that crashed into her kingdom into the Skullheart, but is also implied that her soul/consciousness is bonded to it. It is even implied that Double, the agent of the Trinity, was created using her remains.
• Ouroboros: Aeon's parasite Khronos.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Venus, the restless one who manipulates space (red) alongside Aeon, the observant one who controls time (blue).
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Aeon. Though referring to her as a "Sweetie" might be a stretch...
• Scarf of Asskicking: Venus wears a salmon scraf and many of her concept arts have shown that she is an excellent fighter.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Marie's story mode reveals that the realm where the Trinity currently resides isn't some divine realm, but a prison, and they want out.
• She Who Must Not Be Seen: The Mother. Her cameos are in the form of a statue and a window in the Cathedral's stage and Double's ending as a shadow. During Marie's story mode, this applies to all three of them as Marie cannot actually see their true forms, with them instead using a copy of Marie to talk to her.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: See Red Oni, Blue Oni above for the dynamic of Aeon and Venus.
• Space Master and Time Master: Venus and Aeon respectively.
• Stripperific: Venus. Even beyond Ms. Fortune or even D. Violet; Venus only uses lingerie. Justified, since it's likely that the sheer voracity of Venus's Body Horror powers would make wearing standard clothes difficult.
• Terrible Trio: They are a Trinity of evil goddesses who want to destroy the world out of spite for what happened to them so long ago.
• Token Good Teammate: Implied. While nothing's explicitly confirmed, during the after credits scene of Black Dahlia's story mode, when she's alone, Aeon makes a comment about how "if [Venus]'d seen what was waiting after the credits, [she] wouldn't want the game to end either." Combined with Fukua's cryptic warnings about The End of the World as We Know It in Black Dahlia's story mode proper, and her grumbling about how she told a certain "hourglass-waisted lady" it wouldn't work, it seems that Aeon at the very least has cooled down on her bloodlust a little bit.
• Vagina Dentata: Venus is apparently host to a trio of parasites in her abdomen that fight on her behalf. While they're not actually housed in her vagina, the allusion to it is undeniable.
• Villains With Good Publicity: The rest of the world genuinely worships and reveres them as holy authority figures. In reality? They created the Skullheart and the cycle of Skullgirls because they want to destroy the world.
• Visual Pun: Aeon has a hourglass for a torso. She has a literal Impossible Hourglass Figure.
  • The mouths that grow from Venus' ribs and stomach? They're called Ab-baddon parasites.
• Walking Spoiler: There's a reason why they only appear in the last scene of the story mode that (amongst the original cast) had to be played last.
• Xanatos Gambit: The Skull Heart is one MASSIVE one for the Trinity, as revealed in Marie's story mode - either someone becomes a Skullgirl strong enough to end the world and succeeds, or enough Skullgirls are made and their wills consumed that the Trinity can break out of their prison, and then end the world themselves
• Yaoi Fangirl: Aeon is hinted to be one by her collection, which includes a Taliesin/Beowulf doujin.

Skull Heart

The Skull Heart

Voiced by: Cristina Valenzuela / Cassandra Lee Morris (English) / ? (Japanese)

Down here 'neath the sheets
The world is yours to conquer
Won't be long, dear
I'm the king and you're the pawn
We're a perfect pair

The MacGuffin everyone's after. A mystical item that can grant any wish, but if the wisher's heart has any slight bit of darkness, it will take over their body and claim it as its own for its own destructive ends.

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Tropes associated with the Skull Heart:

• Affably Evil: It's nice enough to tell Filia that while she will become a Skullgirl, her transformation will still be slow and she should make the most of the time she has.
• Artifact of Doom: It was created in an eon long past the events of the game, and has been ravaging the world with a consistent stream of Skullgirls ever since, women who wished upon the Heart and were possessed by it in exchange, creating apocalyptically powerful host bodies.
• Ascended Extra: Normally, it just appears at the end of the story modes in which Marie is fought and killed, and even then some of the characters' goals don't encourage them to acknowledge the Skull Heart. For Black Dahlia, however, Marie makes her appearance earlier and is killed just as fast, with Dahlia not having a wish to make but keeping the Heart on her for later, allowing it to talk more.
• As Long as There Is Evil:
  • It gets destroyed in a few of the endings, though there is the implication that this is only a temporary solution at best and it will return in some form or another.
  • The artbook indicates that the Skull Heart reappears every seven years, regardless of what happens to it. This is more-or-less confirmed in Robo-Fortune's story.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: It doesn't deliberately subvert the intent of those who wish on it, as Filia and Parasoul both get just what they asked for, but it absolutely can't be relied on to give what you want. In the case of Queen Renoir, it granted her wish for an end to the great war by making her into a Skullgirl so powerful that the warring kingdoms were forced to stop fighting and band together to kill her.
  • Ironically, the only person that makes a wish on it and genuinely gets what they want is Black Dahlia due to her being "pure" through her love of violence and killing. By the end of her story mode, she kills Lorenzo Medici and wishes for a world where she never gets bored. The Skullheart grants her wish and gleefully tells her it was created to make her kind of world.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Black Dahlia's story mode ends up giving some crucial insight into how the Skull Heart judges those who wish on it. In the Skull Heart's eyes, trying to make a benevolent wish inherently ruins the outcome, as the unnatural intervention can't provide any good. And since wishing for your own personal gain is clearly impure, this creates a lose-lose scenario that makes it near impossible to wish on the Skull Heart without turning into a Skullgirl. The only two who do meet the Skull Heart's standards are the two who have no reason to wish on it in the first place - Cerebella and Black Dahlia. The Skull Heart also sounds uncharacteristically overjoyed when Black Dahlia finally does make a wish, seemingly because Black Dahlia wanted to be sent to a world of brutal conflict for the fun of it and thus didn't make a wish that could provide benevolent assistance to anyone, including Black Dahlia herself.
  Skull Heart: Wishing cheats the outcome. Undoes the good it sets out to do. How can the world be saved by such intervention? It cannot.
• Butt-Monkey: Ends up becoming this in Black Dahlia's story. With Marie killed early on and no one bothering to make a wish on it despite nearly everyone interacting with it, the Skull Heart is mostly stuck discussing What Is Evil? with Dahlia, who already operates on Blue-and-Orange Morality thanks to her Blood Knight nature, as well as being used as bait for Dahlia to fight and kill the cast. She does end up getting her Pet the Dog moment at the end, when Black Dahlia makes a wish on it so she can be transported to a world where death and carnage is a constant.
• Demonic Possession: It takes control of its bearer when it transforms them into a Skullgirl, though Marie is fighting its influence.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Its victims have this in the form of half a skull on each iris.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In one of the cut alternate endings it rejects Peacock's wish to transmute the earth's atmosphere into chocolate or turn everyone into dogs. It also seems to abhor Eliza.
• Evil Counterpart: Like the Parasites it is a sentient entity made of theonite, bonds to a host, and grants its host extraordinary power. Unlike the Parasites, it can only bond to women, is capable of warping reality to a limited degree to grant wishes, and transforms its host into a lich—compelling the ensuing Skullgirl to ravage the world and kill everyone in her path.
• Gender-Restricted Ability: Only women can wish on the Skull Heart, and thus become Skullgirls.
• Jackass Genie: It has a tendency to twist peoples' wishes to screw them over. Furthermore, Word of God is that it's nearly impossible to wish on it without being corrupted into a Skullgirl, since wishes are inherently selfish.
  • With Filia it may seem like the Skull Heart followed through with the intent of her wish (aside from making her the Skullgirl), but remember that Filia wished for PAINWHEEL to live a normal life, not Carol, and there are hints that is exactly what the Skull Heart gave. Painwheel should have her memories of Maplecrest and everything, but she isn't exactly Carol.
  • Black Dahlia gets exactly what she wanted with no strings attached, because she's a Straw Nihilist whose wish isn't benevolent because it's for something she wants and isn't selfish because she gets no special advantage in the Death World she ends up in.
• Pure Is Not Good: It is said that only the pure of heart can make a wish on it without being turned into a Skullgirl. "Pure" in this context doesn't mean being good, as even the most benevolent of wishes is inherently selfish and the need to use such a tool to achieve it undermines the actual goodness of the deed. Black Dahlia's story mode shows that the only 'wish' it considers pure is one that neither helps or harms anyone, and the only person who fits the bill is Dahlia via her Straw Nihilist philosophy and single-minded devotion to combat. The Skull Heart sounds genuinely thrilled to grant her wish of being transported into a world of constant violence.
• Sentient Phlebotinum: The Skull Heart is alive and has a mind of its own. It also holds Lamia's will, showed when it recognizes Eliza as Aeon and Venus' killer; Eliza states that the Heart has a vendetta against her and because of that she can't wish on it despite being a woman.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: As revealed by Double in Marie's story mode, this is the "lesson" the Skull Heart is meant to teach - that no matter what you do, you can never achieve what you truly wish for, and that it's best to simply let yourself be consumed by the Trinity.
• Would Hurt a Child: Has absolutely no problem turning children into Skullgirls—just ask Marie, Filia, Painwheel or Umbrella.

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