- Not Quite As Planned: In a world where fighting with swords is the norm, Ichigo tends to use his feet, elbows and knees in fights. He even uses a Cero pointblank in a blade lock. Due to this he ends up with a defeated captain count of six. Two of them he takes down by unleashing his Super Mode before they're even aware of him and blitzing them immediately.
- In Spy Game
, Xander fights this way and encourages others to. After he questions Kennedy's teaching she decides to have him fight a Slayer in an effort to humiliate him. Before Kennedy shouts begin, Xander whips out a collapsible baton and hits the Slayer on the head, followed by a kick to the knee, a powerful blow to the head knocking her to floor, and ending it with a kick to the stomach.Xander: Done yet?
Kennedy: (stunned) You. You cheated.
Xander: You think this a game? Treat this like a game and you'll get your ass beat. Just like she did. You want to win? You want to survive? Then you hit 'em hard. But, smart. In the right place. Right time. You box the ears. You spit in their eyes. You kick 'em in the balls. You don't let up. Ever. And when you think they're done, you fucking cut their heads off. Just to be sure. Power will only get you so far." You go in with that as your only weapon, and you'll just get everyone killed. You. Your sisters. Skill beats strength. Every time. - In Better Living Through Chemistry, Buffy offers to let Xander patrol with her if he can knock her out, even offering him the first punch. Xander sprays formaldehyde in her eyes then punches her with brass knuckles on. Buffy later insists he "cheated".
- A Is A: Several teams, primarily SG-1, Dead Six, and Team Rainbow, all prefer to use the simplest means available to end a threat. Which often flies in the face of more idealistic teams such as the CHS Seven, the Sailor Senshi, and Section III.
- Ace Combat: The Equestrian War: Gilda uses Medley as a living shield to defend herself against Rainbow Dash's attempts to fight her. She breaks Medley's wings anyway. Earlier, she calls four other griffins to immobilize Dash and subjects her to a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
- Battle Fantasia Project:
- Akiko Yamaguchi, aka Magical Girl Star Reverie, whose Mentor Mascot was killed in the line of fire before she could receive one of several power-ups needed to fight her latest batch of villains. By the time the next batch of villains has come around, Akiko is skipping her Finishing Move and using gasoline drums and Car Fu alongside numerous other tricks instead of more traditional magical girl tactics.
- In the Italian remake, Sailor Venus is an advocate of this philosophy. Some of her best hits, dating back to the time of the anime, are rushing Galaxia while she was distracted to try and pour scalding hot acid in her lungs (Galaxia was distracted because Sailor Moon had just purified her, but Venus hadn't noticed it yet) and fill the van of Eudial's car with a lot of gelignite to detonate when she returned at the base (that's why Eudial's car exploded: as soon as it touched the water Venus set off the bomb). She later taught the same philosophy to the rest of the group and gave Naru the Fire Buster II (captured to Eudial).
- In the same side story detailing the above we have Soun Tendo being hired to teach self-defence to Naru and Umino and announcing he'd teach them the use of such things as sticks, knives, forks, pepper spray, pencils and guns (for hunting and sportive purposes, of course. If someone attacks them while they're going hunting or clay shooting and gets shot, then it's self defence), the latter justified with guns being superior to most martial artists at all ranges but close range. He knows what he's talking about, given the ease with which he annihilated an horde of low-level youmas (even if we only see finishing the last one).
- Again in the Italian remake, the side story "Mami l'Invincibile" ("Mami the Invincible") shows that Mami Tomoe is another, with stunts ranging from shooting a rival Puella Magi with a Tiro Finale during a speech to ribbons that are either explosive or made of tear gas and attacking Walpurgisnacht with a magical nuke. A number of magical girls (including Kyoko) live in the fear of giving her a reason to come after them.
- Enhance knows the other Dead Apostle Ancestors he's hunting are way stronger than he is, so he balances it with such things as Holy Weapons provided by the Church, a demonic sword he stole from his first kill, the fact they're Squishy Wizards and he's former military, and other tricks to come close and personal. The first battle he had on screen involved him finding out of the Broken Masquerade before most other Dead Apostles and thus using the newfound ability to interact with magicals of other kind to put together an artificial Walpurgisnacht and sicking it on his target, both to deplete his forces and get him tired and to sneak upon him and drink his blood and his powers with it.
- Child of the Storm has most of the heroes lean into this to one extent or another, and Harry forgetting to remember this against someone who absolutely does and who he should otherwise have turned into jam ends up going very, very badly. In the sequel, he is an absolutely ruthless adherent to the philosophy of targeting whatever weaknesses his enemy has, whether via psychological warfare or just by going for the eyes, the back, or other soft parts.
- The Games We Play (The Gamer/RWBY) has Jaune, who Had to Be Sharp seeing as he's so often pitted against far stronger foes who would destroy him utterly if he tried to fight fair. He goes for weak points, turns out the lights while using equipment that lets him see in the dark, uses his foe's fear against them, uses the Hunters' refusal to fire upon a city to his advantage, fires into the Grimm to use them as distractions, abuses Dust crystals to keep himself healed and lets his elementals distract his foes. Even as he comes into power, not only does he not get complacent, but his increased options only enable him to cheat ever more vigorously. For example, after deliberately using a showy Awesome, but Impractical move to invoke The Worf Effect on a professor, he notes in his internal monologue that if they had been really fighting for real, he would instead have used Delusory to hide himself from his foe, then overwhelmed the foe with invisible psychokinetic strikes from all directions; after all, ranged combat ultimately boils down to hitting the foe and not letting him hit back.
- In Risk It All, Ren takes a page from Batman's book in his approach to superhero work, ending fights quickly and abruptly to minimize potential collateral damage and loss of life. This means Speed Blitzing people with his Flash Step and taking them out of the fight instantly with Soul-Crushing Strike. When it comes time to take on Black Mask himself, Ren doesn't barge in the front door, instead dropping flashbang grenades from the ceiling and taking out as many people as he can while they're half-blind.
- In Thousand Shinji:
- Shinji never fights fair. If he has an advantage, he'll use it. Backstabbing, hidden weapons... are only some of his tools.
- Subverted with Asuka. She is the "honorable warrior" type... but if her enemy cheats, she cheats.
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Supergirl crossover The Vampire of Steel the titular heroines work together to fight a Kryptonian vampire. Supergirl is willing to break her "Do not killing rule" and use hidden weapons or transdimensional-banishing devices to deal with him.
- In God Slaying Blade Works, Odysseus knows if he faces Shirou Emiya in open combat, he'll lose. Instead, without even announcing his presence, he fires arrows at him from afar, making sure to stay out of sight. While Shirou is skilled enough to dodge or deflect the arrows, they explode and release poisonous dust into the air. And when Shirou collapses from the poison, Odysseus still stays out of sight and then starts draining his life force. It was a wise move because Shirou gets a Heroic Second Wind and manages to neutralize the poison.
- Xander defeats Guy Gardner in Lacking an Anchor by throwing a billiard ball at his head (specifically the five ball, which is yellow).
- In The Man with No Name, Mal is quick to try just shooting the villain once things go to hell. It doesn't work, but hey, he tried.
- Rise of the Galeforces: Violet becomes this in the later episodes. Then again, anyone who sics three baby T. rexes on the Big Bad in retaliation for shooting them (with extremely gory results mind you) can't exactly be considered honorable... right?
- In Warmistress of Equestria (sequel to The God Empress of Ponykind), Sleight-Hoof hits Luna in the face with a bag of sand during a sparring match, in an attempt to blind and disorient her. It fails because Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress, but Luna agrees that it would be a valid tactic in combat... just not sparring.
- In Six Paths of Rebellion the Black Knights take this attitude even further than canon. Besides canon tactics like causing a landslide at Narita, Lelouch shoulder-checks Cornelia's Gloucester before she can even get it started up, Naruto twice defeats someone by pulling their Knightmare underground, and C.C. once escapes the Royal Guard by tunneling underground while Lelouch detonates explosives scattered throughout the area.
- Like canon, Ranma Saotome frequently employs unusual tactics in A Horse for the Force. Notably, people who've fought/sparred against him pick up his way of thinking. After a few spars with Ranma, Shaak Ti wins a spar against a fellow Jedi by punching him then hitting his wrist to steal his lightsaber.
- Harry Potter's approach to combat in The Denarian Renegade is summed up nicely when Voldemort asks if he knows how to duel.Harry: First one to die, loses.
- Mythos Effect: If there's something the Aeon War taught humans, is that nothing is overkill.
- In Fate/Stay Night: Ultimate Master, Archer notices that Ben Tennyson, hero that he is, tries to keep innocent bystanders safe and well away from Grail fights and tries to exploit it against him by getting hostages. While he gets a few good licks in, this tactic eventually backfires hard because Ben gets so pissed about what Archer did that he transforms into Way-Big and finishes the fight immediately by punting Archer over the horizon.
- In Harry and the Shipgirls, this trope is regularly employed by the heroes. Special mention goes to how Henry Potter wiped out the French Malfoys in World War II. He allowed the sword Juuchi Yosami note , which they had been trying to take from him in the first place, to be taken, and when he returned two days later, the head of the family had used Juuchi to wipe out his whole family before killing himself. It is arguably one of Juuchi's fondest memories.
- In Harry Potter and the Harem Game, Wednesday Addams regularly spars with Harry every week. While ostensibly, the two are fencing with rapiers, Wednesday uses judo throws, eye pokes, and kicking dirt in Harry's eyes, among other things, to gain an advantage. When Susan curiously asks why they move all over the place rather than simply back and forth in a line, Harry explains that she's thinking of sport fencing, while they're fighting for real.
- The epic-length Return To Normal/Beyond Normal, Buffy comes to the realization that Jack O' Neil is this. He might lose in 'fair' matches and tournaments, but in a real fight he'll start at kick to the groin and then he'll get nasty. Buffy puts this to use while fighting Kennedy during the final battle, where she bites off her nose before literally ripping her throat out.
- Inaccurate Legends:
- The Witch often just turns people into newts while they are talking.
- Sir Not Appearing In This Film is fond of stabbing people in the back and attacking while invisible.
- In an omake for Metagaming?, Harry Potter gifts Goblin Slayer with a sword made specifically for goblins and infused with their mutual hatred of goblins. After Goblin Slayer learns that any goblin who takes up the blade will become possessed by said hatred and kill every goblin they can find, he takes to throwing the sword into goblin nests and letting them butcher each other.
- Kyril from The Night Unfurls has a distaste for honourable combat, something he learned through his accumulated combat experience from the Night of the Hunt, as well as his mentor, Gehrman, the First Hunter. This trope is evident throughout every combat scene that Kyril and his apprentices participates in. Should there be a window of opportunity, they would shoot first (literally), attack stealthily, kill mid-sentence, and employ any tactic that guarantees the upper hand.
- Suffice to say, this trope applies to the army of Eostia, especially Kyril's company. Boring, but Practical, their dismissal of Hollywood Tactics, as well as the consideration for long-term strategy, is ultimately what makes them superior to The Horde, mostly orcs and mutants that are defined by their Unskilled, but Strong Zerg Rush, with little concern for strategy or tactics. Of course, the hunters' asskicking provides invaluable morale that serves to boost the army's effectiveness.
- Scoob and Shag: When faced with Popeye, whose Ballyhoo amounts to Bullet Time and therefore counters his shooting-focused powers, Yosemite Sam decides to go for Dee-Dee as she lies incapacitated on the ground, knowing that Popeye would literally rather take a bullet for her than leave her to die.
- The Westerosi: Jade is fond of using futuristic stun weapons and of course "Mr. Zappy" in the medieval Westeros with predictable (and sometimes messy) results.
- Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse:
- As in Ranma ½, Ranma Saotome is a master of the Saotome School of Anything-Goes Martial Arts, and is capable of being brutally pragmatic in seizing any advantage to exploit. He's largely held back by his morals, such as his disinterest in killing, so when he deems it's time to cross the line there, watch out.
- Kodachi Kuno and Shampoo are, if anything, worse than Ranma, since they're both far more ruthless. They have no qualms about Groin Attacks (and these are coming from Kick Chicks with Super-Strength!) and Kodachi's own fighting style makes heavy use of using her Whip Sword to grapple, blind or disable foes, close-range shots from her pistol, and lobbing around grenades, smoke bombs, fire bombs, and poisonous gas bombs with abandon.
- Jack Napier in But Doctor, I Am Pagliacci uses every advantage he has, whether it be calling on his allies when his opponents are unsuspecting, sneak attacks, or using equipment like hidden liquid kryptonite sprayers. When your usual opponents are Superman and the Justice League, it pays to be prepared.
- The Self-Insert Black Lantern in It's An Unliving takes out the leaders of The Light by appearing before them at Flash level speeds, punching out their hearts, and incinerating their bodies before moving on. He notes that part of why he's so brutal is that killing them is literally his job and he hates it, so he uses the fastest and most effecient method to insure he doesn't have to spend more time than necessary on it.
- In Paladin Light Yagami throws a cup of scalding hot coffee into the face of a thug threatening him and his sister.
- In the Tamers Forever Series both Piedmon and Chaos are shown to be firm practitioners of this trope.
- The fighting Witch-pilots of the Air Watch, thrown into war with Elves above the skies of Lancre and the Chalk, know about the theory of air combat. They've rehearsed it and trained for it. Lady Olga Romanoff and her squadron realise in The Price of Flight that there are no rules up there. Not with Elves, and not after two Air Witches are killed by them. the air Watch become hardened fighters very quickly. And when shot down and briefly captured, Olga herself turns the tables by hitting the Elves in exactly the spot where they are most vulnerable.
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Future Trunks is more concerned with winning fights to the death to save lives than he is in "honor". He begins to run out of patience for the other characters' nonsense when Goku is running out of steam fighting Cell, he recommends throwing Goku a Senzu bean in order to revitalize him to continue fighting, and everyone else hesitates.Future Trunks: Guys, if you're bothered by cheating, either loosen your moral code, or stop hinging the fate of the world ON DEATH MATCHES!
- The plot of Inheritance is kicked off when Piccolo subverts Transformation Is a Free Action and kills Freeza mid-transformation.
- Vow of Nudity: Haara constantly plays dirty, usually because she's fighting naked and unarmed and needs any conceivable advantage to even the odds. In one example, she agrees to a Duel to the Death using exotic polearms she's not proficient with...just so she can ignore the weapon she's holding and kick her opponent to death.
- Ulyssian's preparations for his duel with Jael in The Odyssey included, but weren't limited to: poisoning him with contact poison via his armor, breaking into his apartment to steal his money, then placing it in a trash chute to separate him from his twin (neutralizing his Gemini bloodline), and hiring a sorcerer to summon demons to ambush him.
- In The Steep Path Ahead, Louise follows this as a way of life, pretending to surrender only to use Forced Sleep spell and then steal all your stuff before leaving you out in the woods naked and alone.
- Fate/Harem Antics: Archer/Francis Drake prides herself on using dirty tricks in a fight, like firing her gun through her own jacket so her opponent won't see it coming. A few characters call her out on this, but she points out she is a pirate.
- In Golden Threads Tie Us, Severa is an expert in attacking enemies from the back, and she can't care less about fight fairly when she's fighting the unending army of zombies overrunning the world.
- Forward also plays with this, including replicating the legendary Raiders of the Lost Ark scene with River casually shooting an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy who tries to fight her with a bo staff. At one point in the most recent story arc, Mal points out that he considers any fight where he's forced to fight fair as inherently unfair.
- The Basalt City Chronicles has Tors Beers (who hates fighting) taught to end fights as quickly as possible—biting, clawing, breaking bones, and outright killing are all acceptable means to win (though it's best to avoid the last).
- In Finishing the Fight, the Master Chief and company emphasize this is the way to fight. They then show nightmarish videos of the war with the Covenant and Flood to emphasize why they think this way.
- In a Shout-Out to the Indiana Jones scene, During the retaking of Mithril Hall, Johnson and Drizzt encounter a Drow who spins her scimitars around in a fancy display. Drizzt is about to go fight her, but then Johnson just shoots her.
- Harry himself in Brutal Harry does not fight fair at all. To quote the boy himself; "I don't duel, I fight." He obsessively trains himself in not just magic, but also in melee combat like martial arts and both handheld and projectile modern weapon wielding, two areas that the Wizarding World is significantly behind on. To wit, he has:
- Killed the mountain troll in his first year by shoving his combat knife up through its eye socket and into its brain.
- Pulled a concealed blade on Lucius Malfoy's throat before the man can even draw his wand.
- Summoned the wands right out of Draco and his goons' hands so that they can't attack.
- Smashed through a magically sealed room simply by blowing it up with sheer force.
- Shoved a table into Scrimgeour's stomach during a formal interrogation, knocking the air out of the man before pulling a knife on him.
- Utilized a combination of silent, wandless magic, Teleport Spam, and muggle weapons like grenades and machine guns against Voldemort and his Death Eaters to literally mow them down.
- In Bungle In the Jungle: A Harry Potter Adventure, Harry goes to Collins and Qwan with the expectation they'll teach him how to duel. They laugh and say neither of them knows anything about dueling beyond it being two idiots standing in place and trading spells. They're going to teach him how to fight. Their instructions later show through when Harry, Qwan, and Bill fight a demon by first siccing a horde of inferi on it.
- In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Professor Quirrell explains this in the very first class of "Battle Magic", formerly known as "Defense Against the Dark Arts", that the methods that their textbooks show are useless in a real situation.Quirrell: Your useless excuse for a third-year defense textbook will suggest to you that you expose the mountain troll to sunlight, which will freeze it in place. This, my young apprentices, is the sort of useless knowledge that you will never find on one of my exams. You do not encounter mountain trolls in open daylight! The idea that you should use sunlight to stop them is the result of foolish textbook authors trying to show off their mastery of minutia at the expense of practicality.
- He later states that one should use only one of two things, if you can: either the Killing Curse or teleport away. Bear in mind that telling a bunch of kids to use Avada Kedavra (that even if a very practical offensive spell because it's a near-constant One-Hit Kill, it's an "Unforgivable" (that is "instant ticket to Azkaban" levels of illegal) spell) as their "hammer" brings an awful lot of Foreshadowing to the front in retrospective.
- Harry/Mr. Black in Make a Wish uses anything and everything he can think of to win a fight. When Harry starts teaching the DA again, the number one rule of their matches is "It's only unfair if the other guy does it."
- Harriett Potter in The Rigel Black Chronicles learns most of her self-defence skills from "free-duelling", where pretty much anything goes, from a Groin Attack to nerve gas; even in a tournament, killing or maiming your opponent is more frowned upon than actually forbidden (there are healers on standby, and the atmosphere is mostly one of friendly contest rather than bloodthirst, but the risk is there). When she's later in a more formal tournament, she has to hold back on some of her dirtier fighting skills or risk disqualification.
- Dumbledore lectures Harry in What Was Your Plan for going to a duelist to learn how to fight, noting that dueling is useful only for dueling where there's rules on what you can or cannot do, likening it to a glorified play. He even notes that Harry's mistake was to draw a wand on him, believing him to be an enemy, and not immediately casting as many borderline illegal spells as he could think of. If Harry had gone to someone like Snape or Moody, they would have drilled such an "unforgivably stupid action" out of him.
- In Queen of All Oni, one of Jade's Co-Dragons, Left, comes off as this. While he — like his "brother", Right — usually fights with his swords, he'll resort to quicker methods if necessary. For example, during the assault on Lung's fortress, he breaks out a chainsaw to get by a Hybrid Monster, and when confronted with a gateway that's impervious to magical attack, he simply blows it open with dynamite.
- Captain Black's Number Two, Agent Wisker, also qualifies. When Jade infiltrates Section 13 to try and steal the masks in the Vault, he stands in the way. She attacks him with magic, and he retaliates by shooting her — intentionally non-lethal shots, and it doesn't even work, but it's still the thought that counts.
- He also tries to (lethally) shoot Hak Foo in a later fight. Hak dodges and breaks his gun arm, but hey, he tried.
- Jade's foreman Blankman — we finally get to see him in combat when he fights Drago, and while he primarily fights with savate (a French martial art), he does enhance it with magic. And when even that isn't enough to win, he resorts to whipping out a mystically-enhanced shotgun.
- Captain Black's Number Two, Agent Wisker, also qualifies. When Jade infiltrates Section 13 to try and steal the masks in the Vault, he stands in the way. She attacks him with magic, and he retaliates by shooting her — intentionally non-lethal shots, and it doesn't even work, but it's still the thought that counts.
- In A Minor Miscalculation, Nui Harime is captured by Nudist Beach and subjected to this in hopes of breaking her for information. Before Isshin and Ryuko can extract anything meaningful, Satsuki throws a Spanner in the Works.
- In Twilight Valley everyone fights dirty. It even gets a Lampshade Hanging.
- Pretty much everyone to some extent in Game Theory, but special mention goes to Fate, during the TSAB assault on the Garden of Time. She uses ambushes, Anti-Magic Fields to weaken them and scramble their sensors, shuts off the lights to blind them, Mecha-Mooks to even the numbers, and seals the doors and rearranges the corridors to isolate small groups of enemies and prevent them from reaching their objectives.
- In Stars Fade, Commander Shepard is already an infiltrator and not exactly a master of chivalry; however, she's left with a major shortage of armour and ammunition while trapped in Thedas, forcing her to operate almost exclusively through even dirtier tricks than usual. As such, during the point in Dragon Age II when Ser Varnell would have opted to murder the Qunari hostages before turning the rest of the mob against the heroes, Shepard just one-shots him with her sniper rifle before combat even begins.
- In I'm still alive this is the only reason Jen survives after thrust into a kill-or-be-killed world.
- Discussed in Spider-Man: Finding Home, when Spider-Man finds himself meeting up with Kate Bishop while she's patrolling New York after he assists her and Clint in the final confrontation with the Kingpin's forces. While Kate initially tried to go straight to hand-to-hand combat when dealing with any crimes she found, Spider-Man advises her that there's nothing wrong with relying on her arrows to deal with most opponents, considering that she lacks his superhuman strength or Clint's hand-to-hand experience and so would be at more of a disadvantage in a straight fight.
- In Volpina, the Accidental Matchmaker this is how the two fights with Volpina (after the one in canon) can be described:
- In chapter one, Volpina has put dozens of illusions in the dead-end corridor she knew her opponents would come from. But as she has unknowingly put them in the room behind her, they just jumped her from behind and destroyed the Akumatized object.
- In chapter two Volpina steals a car, even if Roof Hopping to her goal would be faster, because she plans to use it as a weapon, and when Ladybug and Chat Noir catch up with her she throws the chaffeur at Chat Noir and hits Ladybug with the engine block. She gets dirtier from that, and gives them a desperate run for their money.
- In Mega Man Reawakened, Robert is this, as are some of the Robot Masters. Flash Man uses his Time Stopper and electricity powers for a very lethal combination.
- ProtoMan from Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race. Mega Man can also be this if he's angry enough.
- As befits a full-scale war, A Feddie Story has pretty much nobody fight fair. Both sides are quick to employ ambushes and exploit it when they have a local superiority. Earth Federation tank crews tend to go several steps beyond Zeon mobile suit pilots, though, because they know they're at a disadvantage to start with.
- The Earth Federation Air Force is more than willing to exploit the fact that they're trained to fly in all kinds of weather and Zeon's pilots (trained in climate-controlled space colonies) aren't. They also sometimes stage week-long round-the-clock bombing campaigns against Zeon ground units, not because of the casualties inflicted but because they are trying to break them psychologically: they know it makes the Zeon troops feel that they are defenseless and it denies them much chance to sleep or eat as long as the campaign goes on.
- Passion on Display: While fighting the students who attacked Kirishima, Bakugo smashes one of them in the face with a duffel bag.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- In Diaries of a Madman, Navarone doesn't just show this, but actively shows his contempt for fighting honourably on multiple occasions. Given that doing so would almost certainly have gotten him killed, he does have a point.
- In The Life and Times of a Winning Pony, Cloud Kicker notes that both Blossomforth and Fluttershy are fighting their hardest just to win one little catfight. She does note that they probably didn't learn any formal training, so fighting dirty was pretty much the only thing to do.
- In The Rise of Darth Vulcan, the titular character will take any advantage he can in a fight, be it diversions, his immunity to his own fire attacks, a Breaking Lecture, or anything else that might help him win. When Tirek tries to drain his magic, Vulcan shoots him dead with a shotgun.
- Bad Future Crusaders has both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. The former calmly remarks she fights to win after being chastised for pulling a gun on an unarmed opponent, and the latter actually calls out Lightning Dust for comparing her to Rainbow Dash who didn't fight dirty.
- Pony POV Series:
- In the Dark World timeline, once Fluttercruel gains Reality Warper powers, she instantly makes the air around the heroes turn to stone, commenting that unlike Discord, she's not going to screw around. The only reason why it failed to take them out was because Pinkie Pie's Toon Physics powered Offscreen Teleportation allowed her to escape. In the ensuing fight, almost everything she tries is a killing blow.
- Prime Fluttercruel is also this trope: she's very willing to fight dirty when she actually fights. As several Changelings found out during the Wedding Arc.
- Trixie is this trope, as while having become very powerful, she's a trickster first and foremost. It's safe to say the more powerful she gets, the more this trope she becomes, as that power just provides more tricks for her to play on her enemies.
- Back when Chrysalis was named Kifuko, she was once forced into a gladiator match with a hulking Changeling named Wolf Spider. The night before the fight, she tricked him into eating food laced with black mamba venom. The next morning, he keeled over and died just as the match began.
- In The Witch of the Everfree, Nightmare Moon is impressed with Sunset's willingness to blow up Ponyville's town hall for the sake of stopping her.
- Tydal in The God Squad does this for FUN. He can wipe pretty much anyone off the face of the earth with a wink but prefers to fight cheap and dirty to keep from getting bored. This is a capricorn that once defeated several criminals by weaponizing PINKIE PIE.
- Triptych Continuum: As a unicorn with minimal physical strength, strictly average field strength, and no offensive or defensive spells beyond telekinesis, Rarity goes into every fight knowing she could very well die, and therefore preared to do absolutely anything to survive.
- Chiaroscuro:
- Ino defeats Lee in the Chunin exams by spamming genjutsu and then hitting him when he is busy taking off his leg weights.
- Even Kakashi admits that Raikiri is too loud and flashy to be a reliable technique. He has other original techniques, but up until Orochimaru, no one lived to tell the tale.
- Sakura also counts, when she gets around Neji's Byakugan by using auditory genjutsu instead.
- The First Try Series has Naruto outright admit himself as one. As a Trap Master it's to be expected.Naruto: "In the fights we've had that were pure taijutsu, who won?"
Sasuke: "Me."
Naruto: "In fights where ninjutsu is allowed who wins?"
Sasuke: "You... because you cheat."
Naruto: "Since you've gotten your Sharingan, has that changed?"
Sasuke: "No." - Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox: Just about every fight shown has the combatants as this, in accordance with the story's direction toward realism. The best example is Shino, who gets Kiba to surrender their qualifier match in Sasuke's tournament by grabbing him in a submission hold and then threatening to break his arm if Kiba doesn't yield.
- In Vapors the original character Aiko Uzumaki is one. She knocks out Zabuza because he can't believe that she'd use a lightning jutsu that would also hit Kakashi, she purposefully takes a hit to invoke Naruto's Roaring Rampage of Revenge on Gaara, and she uses shock and ambush tactics to humiliate a strike team of 8 jonin that include a Kage's bodyguard and a jinchuriki.
- In A Teacher's Glory, Anko makes it very clear to her students that if they get into a fair fight, they've already failed.
- In Sugar Plums the main character Ume does not usually win her fights by fighting fair, she isn't afraid to hit delicate areas, hit people mid monologue, and coats her weapons with poison. She has some hang ups with killing people but as time goes on she gets more comfortable with ending someone because it would be easier then dealing with the fallout of them living.
- In Dreaming of Sunshine, Shikako prefers to ambush her opponents or take them out with traps whenever possible, and would even resort to murder if she thinks it's the safest and most efficient way to achieve her goals.
- Doing It Right This Time: In chapter 2, Misato pits Shinji and Asuka against each other in unarmed combat training, culminating in Asuka dropping Shinji with a Groin Attack. When he cries foul, Misato reminds Shinji that the Angels don't play by tournament rules and she expects her pilots to fight dirty.
- Higher Learning: Invoked and reinforced in chapter forty-eight's prologue: "Bring a bat to a fist fight. Bring a knife to a bat fight. Bring a gun to a knife fight. Run the hell away from a gun fight."
- Once More With Feeling (Crazy-88): When Shinji and Asuka sortie to fight Israfel, Asuka complains "two against one is not a fair fight". Right away Misato tells her the last thing she wants to give the Angels is a fair fight.
- In This Bites!, Blueno tries to avoid entering his dimension to fight Sanji by throwing a couple grenades in via a hand sized door.
- Any trainer worth their salt in Challenger utilizes unusual tactics and Combination Attacks. Besides ganging up on wild Pokemon, flying types will often be instructed to attack from the air to prevent retaliation. Though no one takes it as far as Team Rocket who will not only use hideously overpowered Pokemon, but will try to kill enemy trainers from the start.
- Team Rocket in Common Sense will do everything from attacking a trainer directly to fighting Pokemon themselves in order to win. One of their earliest victories consisted of using Koffing's smoke to take out an entire hive of Beedrill at once.
- PMD: Another Perspective: Purry is well aware of type matchups and beneficial abilities, and does not hesitate to exploit them to her advantage. She'll even let others get hurt in order to produce results.
- Red in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines believes that there's nothing wrong with using his bloodliner abilities to give himself an edge in Pokémon battles since there's no written rule forbidding them. This puts him at odds with Ash, who refuses to use his own in competitive battling because he considers it cheating.
- His philosophy does get deconstructed somewhat in a later sidestory: after losing to Ultima while on Two Island, he's upset that the old woman's Dragonite defeated his Charizard without using its full strength. Ultima however points out that she was only gauging Charizard's power, and she held back to avoid injuring him more than necessary, pointing out that, barring a life-or-death situation, holding back isn't necessarily a bad thing.
- The Most Evil Trainer: Max From Nowhere's battling style can be described as this; while he never breaks the rules of the tournaments he's in, he will push them to their limits and uses tactics based around misdirection, deceptions, and trickery to overcome opponents that would crush him in a power-vs-power contest. Unfortunately, in the Kalos region, trainers are expected to abide by an Honor Before Reason style, leading him to be extraordinarily unpopular in the region where the story takes place.
- In A Force of Four, Power Girl has to fight three Kryptonians used to gang up on their enemy and fight coordinately. Fighting "fairly" doesn't even cross her mind. Heat beams to the groin followed with an uppercut are perfectly good tactics.
- What Lies Beyond the Walls: Nearly everyone in the story fights dirty and will not hesitate to gouge out eyeballs, kick or punch others in the groin, attack others from behind, or even go as far as killing others in their sleep. Traegar even lampshaded in the first chapter that he fights smart, not fair.
- Kaoru from the AU fanfic Frozen Moonlight is quite willing to let her opponents think she's helpless while hiding the knife taped to her wrist or to try bashing their skulls in during their monologues. Notably, her father specifically taught her to think like this and to use other people's perceptions of her being vulnerable to her advantage.
- Both Jaune Arc and Roman Torchwick in Not this time, Fate are described as fighting to cause as much pain and damage as possible to their enemy. The first time they have a proper fight, Roman is surprised to note that Jaune isn't fighting to disarm or disable, but to kill and to hurt his opponent as much as possible to make killing them easier.
- Jaune in The ProfessionARC admits early on he hates that Huntsmen are taught to fight the Grimm when they should be taught to kill the Grimm. Unlike many other Huntsmen, he'll set up traps in advances, use explosives and poisons, and basically anything he can to make killing his enemy easier. In the backstory, when hired to act as Weiss's bodyguard, Jaune proved his point by kicking the table between them into her then slammed her into it before pulling a knife on her. As Jaune explains afterwards, the people after Weiss don't care about attacking when she's ready, waiting for her to draw her rapier, or hurting bystanders. So she needs someone to watch her back so she doesn't spend all her time looking over her shoulder for enemies.
- All of the Vale Secret Service agents in In the Kingdom's Service fight as brutally as possible, seeking only to kill or disable an enemy before moving on. As such they will use explosives, distractions, cheap shots, and gang up on targets when possible. Jaune has used his grappling hook vambraces multiple times against enemies, including shooting them point blank into Neo's shoulder. At one point, Jaune even uses a corpse as a decoy against Mercury and Emerald in order to get the drop on them. Vanguard/Cardin softened up Neo for Jaune by blowing up their car, which she was currently standing on. In many of his fights, Jaune makes a point of fighting at extreme melee range because even martial artists tend to be unused to fighting someone too close to even punch.
- Jaune uses this same philosophy to explain why he can fight stronger, better trained enemies despite his cover identity being a small time criminal who failed to get into a huntsman school. Such as getting away from Blake and Ruby while sabotaging the CCT by first smashing computers to spread broken glass all over the floor (Ruby took off her heels to fight) then taking Blake hostage long enough to escape.
- Professor Arc: By virtue of necessity, Jaune learns to fight as dirty as possible: low blows, attacking an unprepared opponent, using others weapons, etc. In the sequel, Jaune thinks to himself that Neo didn't teach him how to fight fair, but how to survive at all costs. Neo herself loves using both surprise attacks on distracted opponents and weaponizing Distracted by the Sexy, such as throwing herself at Jaune in such a way that her crotch is pressed against his face then pressing her blade to his throat.
- Professor Arc: Student of Vacuo:
- Jaune, Neo, and Ilia are all predominantly Taught by Experience and fight as brutally as necessary to take out their enemies. Jaune and Neo use Groin Attacks and Friendly Fire among other tactics against Team CRDL. Ilia gains a reputation fighting more brutally than Jaune and Neo combined, attacking groins, striking joints, and strangling opponents after using smokescreens, flashbangs, and explosions to hide her approach long enough to close with her enemy. Pyrrha notes that even those who can beat Ilia certainly don't enjoy fighting her.
- Jaune teaches his students to abuse rules as much as possible, including outright telling them to cheat at times. For example, what's supposed to be an eight on four match becomes an eight on twelve match due to the lone team having bribed two other teams in advance to help them out.
- Pineapple: Since Jaune is the only one to pass Initiation, and thus on a team by himself, he learns to fight dirty by necessity. During his match against Team BRNZ, Jaune traps the three melee fighters in ice Dust then spends some time pummeling their sniper, May. By the time the other three break free, Jaune's already run off and takes out the entire team by using May's sniper rifle to shoot her hat, which he'd stuffed full of all the Dust he carried.
- The Sanctuary Telepath: Janine very quickly abandoned her idealist views about her telepathic powers and generally uses them as she finds necessary. Yes, this includes reading her friends' minds too. Then again, when one goes up against an elemental from another dimension radicalism becomes a requirement...
- In Prison Island Break, since they're all convicts, most of the cast does this, even Sonic - but it's emphasised that the Psycho Knife Nut Shadow will always find a shiv even directly after a shakedown, and can make them out of anything. He constructs a shotgun out of his bed, and matches.
- Beelzebub from Sonic X: Dark Chaos is one of these. Rather than using a gigantic continent-sized flagship like Astorath, he uses a small battleship armed with a cloaking device so he can surprise foes.
- Astorath himself wields two Gatling miniguns, which create such a huge storm of projectiles that they pin down both Knuckles and Sonic. Then he moves in so he can crush them in melee, knowing Sonic and Knuckles are too agile for guns. In the same episode, Cream realizes that Astorath is basically invincible to regular weapons - so she fights dirty and throws her chao Cheese into his eyes to blind him.
- Tsali uses his robotic abilities - super strength, super speed - and his Chaos powers - energy blasts and telekinesis - in lethal and unique combination, allowing him to fight Super Sonic one-on-one and win. And he nearly defeats both Super Sonic and Super Shadow again later on.
- Sonya uses Demon-made plasma weapons against Shroud in order to burn them, as she knows they are highly resistant to ballistic projectiles. She also handily averts Katanas Are Just Better (and she even mocks the trope at one point despite it being linked to her Japanese ethnicity), only using her plasma katana as a backup for emergencies.
- Tephiroth stabs Tsali in the back in Episode 72 rather than get into a long battle with him.
- Hellsister Trilogy: As much as Satan Girl is concerned, biting ankles in order to hamstring your opponent or clawing their eyes out are perfectly acceptable combat techniques.Kara drew on her every erg of reserve power to keep fighting. But, increasingly, she found herself on the defensive. She fought to keep Satan Girl's fingers from her eyes, her jaws from her carotid artery, her knees from her crotch.
- In Superman and Man, Lex Luthor doesn't know why his nemesis looks distracted all of sudden during their bout, but he most definitely doesn't mind."It's not fair!" he snapped.
"Of course it isn't," said Luthor, grabbing him by the hair and presenting his palm-blaster to send a Kryptonite blast into his face. "And that's the way I like it." - Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation: Superman's nemesis Muto isn't interested in fighting Superman physically; he just wants him dead. So he comes up with scenarios such like keeping a whole city hostage and then demanding Superman essentially kills himself.
- In Urusei Yatsura The Senior Year, during part 10, an OC gives this advice:"Now, here's something I once heard when it comes to a fight! You kick them in the balls, stab them in the back, poke their eyes out, and if they're still in the mood to fight..." she gives them a fanatic sneer, "...THEN, you fight dirty!"
- And a few paragraphs later...
Mie then transforms into a female General Patton. "Then go do it!" she points to the door with her riding crop. "Remember, you can't serve your country by dying for your country! You serve your country by making the other dumb bastard die for his country!"
- Attelus Kaltos, the main character of Secret War. One of his first actions in the story is to kick an attacker in the shin... with a boot knife.
- The All Guardsmen Party uses every dirty trick in the book and arms themselves with potentially-heretical xenotech and illegally-procured weapons - but if it keeps them alive, they'll use it.
- Multiple examples in Worldwar: War of Equals ranging from mountain ranges being used as natural fortresses, using the winter season to freeze the warm blooded alien invaders cold, forbidden weapons of war being utilized, and using ginger to disorient the invading forces.
- Keleria in Children of the Stars, messy kills when available, groin attacks, biting, she gets progressively worse the more she slips into that blood rage thing.
- A Darker Path: Atropos thinks fighting fair is stupid - and demonstrates so multiple times. At best, she will add a lot of flair to her killings in order to make her reputation as The Dreaded even stronger.
- Quicken: Emma doesn't care for fighting fairly. She cares for surviving and knows that she’s completely outmatched against thugs and murderers, so she fights extremely dirty and never holds back. And since she has super-regeneration… she’s perfectly willing to bite her own tongue off and spit it out and on the eyes of an enemy.I knew what I had to do. She was making the same mistake the ABB thugs made in the alley. They treated me like another person when I had been fighting, as if I was concerned with protecting my body first and foremost, as if I wasn't willing to do anything it took to win. This wasn't some fucking prize fight. This was combat.
- In A Mother's Touch, Yoko decides that her Sirens will fight Obelisk Force not through Duel Monsters but through any type of weapon they can get their hands on or running them down with a motorcycle. Given how their operation ends with every Obelisk Force soldier apprehended and no one carded, it was proven highly successful.
