Badass - Television Tropes & Idioms

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When I need to find something out, I just go out and find somebody that knows more than me, and I go and I ask them. Sometimes I ask pretty hard.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

—Snow Crash

The Rule Of Cool personified.

A character who gets away with outright insane stunts (defusing a bomb with their teeth, conning a mob boss, getting into a firefight with the entire US army, etc.) that would never work in real life. A Bad Ass is a fantasy figure who the audience roots for precisely because they break or stretch the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief. Of course, willingSuspensionOfDisbelief may still be maintained depending on the mechanics of the universe.

It's notable that fans are more likely to tolerate a violent monster of a "hero" than a befuddled, cowardly Type I Anti Hero. For example, in Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji and Asuka each whine just as much as the other, but Asuka was more popular with a significant portion of the fans because she had guts (although some might say it was for a different reason), despite her being a complete and utter... um... Well, let's just say that she's one of the few characters in Evangelion to even come close to deserving what happens to them. (Your Mileage May Vary.)

Most attempts to parody or deconstruct the Badass have turned into Misaimed Fandom - no matter how nutty the character gets (like Rorschach from Watchmen), the fans just cheer on how Badass the character is. This has led to a new trope: the Heroic Sociopath. Writers beware: Take it too far and either God Mode Sue or Jerk Sue will stride Out Of The Inferno of your work.

For a child-friendly version of the Badass whose badassery is somewhat diminished by the limitations of the work, see Badbutt.

Below are the tropes that are definite signs of a true Badass. For Sub Tropes when the character who you do not expect to be like this becomes a Badass anyway, see this index.