When a pet can be just as much of an action character as any person.
Even in
Real Life, pets aren't always timid. They can be dangerous (say if people take in attack dogs or rescue dogs with behavioural problems as pets), or helpful.
But this takes that even further, where the pet is made of
Pure Awesomeness.
These pets don't stop at going for help when people are trapped behind a landslide. They push boulders out of the way, fetch dynamite to toss at those rocks, or even just will the rocks to move by staring them down.
And the kind of pet doesn't matter. A parakeet, to an alligator, could count, as long as it does stuff that even amazes people that know what the species can do.
A
Sub Trope of
Action Hero.
Can overlap with
Cool Pet,
Badass Adorable,
Killer Rabbit,
Living a Double Life (if the owner is not aware of the pet's action nature),
Heroic Pet Story,
Heroic Dog,
Team Pet.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- Pantherlily from Fairy Tail is this to Gajeel. While the other Dragon Slayers have talking, winged cat as pets, Gajeel has one that turn in a gigantic humanoid panther who wields a BFS.
- The Strawhat Pirates of 'One Piece'' have a cute, cotton candy love, naive reindeer-man as The Medic, who also doubles up as Team Pet. However, once he goes into Monster Point, he can kick some serious ass.
Fan Works
- In The Fledgling Year, Aravis’ belligerent horse Inga takes out her fair share of bad guys.
- A Growing Affection: Ni-ne, Hinata's pet cat a.k.a. happily sealed version of the Two-Tails. She later helps Hinata fight off Kabuto's giant two-headed snake summon and stands guard over Rei when Konan tries to kidnap her.
Literature
- In the The Dresden Files series, Harry acquires a very large dog named Mouse which is really a Foo Dog. Said dog is explicitly smarter than a human, VERY resistant to damage, has a bark that can wake everyone in an apartment and innately detects evil.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Stark children each adopt one of a litter of orphaned direwolf pups. So far they've saved their owners' lives on numerous occasions.
Live Action TV
Magazines
- Disney used to have a magazine where they had super-powered pets named the Jet Pets who attacked villains, while also being adorable pets.
Video Games
Web Original
Western Animation
- Phineas and Ferb have Perry the Platypus, who is a badass secret agent in an agency where virtually all of the field agents are action pets, and have a Fedora Of Asskicking as their uniform.
- Rainbow Dash Invoked this in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "May the Best Pet Win!" by insisting her pet had to be awesome. It turned out the pet she got, Tank the tortoise, was like this, as he can lift large rocks with his head.
- In "Owl's Well that Ends Well" Twilight Sparkle's new pet owl, Owlowiscius, helps save Spike from a full-grown dragon.
- Monkey in Dexters Laboratory is secretly a superhero.
- Appa, from Avatar The Last Airbender has several Big Damn Heroes moments, and thats before he gets plate armor.
- Brain of Inspector Gadget is the Hyper Competent Sidekick of the bumbling detective, and arguably even Penny as well.
- Albert of The Dreamstone who is usually more competent and knowledgeable in stopping the Urpneys than the Dream Maker or his assistants.
- The old WB show Road Rovers, about the pets of several world leaders who were secretly a superhero team.
- Pongo and Perdita in One Hundredand One Dalmatians.
- Bolt, but only in the Show Within a Show. In "real life", he's just an ordinary dog.
- Courage the Cowardly Dog has faced numerous horrors that are enough to send a normal human running to the loony bin. But Courage goes through any lengths to save his owners Muriel and Eustace.
- In Centurions, Jake's pet dog named Shaddow tends to accompany them on missions, as he is quite smart and also happens to wear a harness rocket launcher that he definitely knows how to put to good use.
