Will Turner: You ignored the rules of engagement. In a fair fight, I'd kill you. Jack Sparrow: Then that's not much incentive for me to fight fair, now is it?
A commercial for Geico tested the question of whether the pen is mightier than the sword. A skilled ninja shows off his sword skills, and his opponent uses a pen to sign for a package containing a taser, which he immediately uses on the ninja.
Anime and Manga
Jagi from Fist of the North Star made a career out of doing this. Be it spitting needles, using a gun, or making a hole in an oil tanker and lighting the leaking oil on fire with him on top of said tanker.
This translates into the video game, in which his move set involves using a shotgun, setting oil barrels and gasoline puddles on fire, throwing needles, chaining his opponent to a cinder block, using pillars and random junk as weapons, pistol-whipping, and the aforementioned oil tanker trick.
Jackal was no novice at this either. His primary offense was throwing Dynamite, with concealed blades and other such dirty tricks.
Nanoha Takamachi has no problem shooting people in the back, magically freezing them so they can't resist her attacks, et cetera. It's worth noting that every dirty tactic she uses on someone else is a tactic that was once used on her. (And her attacks tend to be non-lethal anyway, so she has almost no worries about killing her rival in battle.)
Deed tends to take her enemies by surprise, often by jumping out to suddenly attack, attacking from behind, or getting up from supposedly being unconscious for a sneak attack.
The very first thing we see Curren do on-screen is shank HayateIn the Back.
Most of the Go Nagai characters have absolutely no trouble using cheap, dirty tricks to win his fights and nowehere they show they know of, feel concerned about or bound to rules of fair play and sportmanship. Given what is in stake when they fight, it is unsurprising. Several examples are:
Ryoma Hayato, Musashi and Benkei from Getter Robo. Hayato is a particularly prominent example. If the enemy is holding hostages, he exhorts his teammates to disregard the hostages and keep fighting, arguing everybody will die if they do not.
Section 9 from Ghost in the Shell is probably one of the least heroic teams of protagonist police officers. As they are fighting terrorism and organized crime, and the government and judical system is completely corrupt, they have the policy to kill any armed suspects on sight and only try to make arrests when it's relatively safe and any other mission objectives have been secured.
Mobile Suit Gundam: As the original bearer of the White Devil name, Amuro Ray is a textbook example, basically doing anything and everything in his power to kill his enemy. He has no qualms shooting distracted opponents, sacrificing various armaments, and ambushing opponents. He even takes this to the logical conclusion, using the Gundam as a decoy in order to rush to the enemy cockpit and take out Char.
Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: In the final story arc, Zechs Merquise (previously a Worthy Opponent and thus a major subverter of this trope) has become the leader of the space rebel group White Fang. Treize Khushrenada, leader of the Earth's military, proposes a one-on-one duel in order to decide the conflict. Zechs' response? Fire his space fortess's Wave Motion Gun, saying that a simple duel won't resolve the underlying causes of the war (for the record, it misses).
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE: The UE may have set the record for combat pragmatism in Gundam. They camp enemy hangars, shoot down supply crates, don't hesitate in killing off defenseless foes, promote infighting in their enemies, back off when faced with superior opposition... their effectiveness in battle is as much due to their intelligence as their advanced technology.
Asuka Kuronari. Sure, she's a ninja, but she proves almost suicidally determined to come out on top against Kyoichi Kunugi, who has her hopelessly outclassed throughout the fight. That is, until she starts crying her eyes out, telling him her pathetic life's story and deploying a smoke bomb while he's distracted, allowing her compatriot Xiaoxing the chance to attack him.
Xiaoxing herself, as well; her entire fighting style revolves around using Instant Knots to tie her opponent up, thereby incapacitating them.
Kunugi often uses the Hannibal Lecture to disarm opponents (figuratively speaking) while confusing them with illusions and violently seizing every opening in their defense.
Ranma ½: Ranma Saotome is a Combat Pragmatist whenever he battles an opponent that is clearly more powerful than him. When facing his rival Ryoga, who'd been powered up by the Mark of the Gods, he resorted to using the "Saotome Desperation Techniques", which were basically just creative ways to make his opponent look away from him so could attack them while they were distracted ("What's that behind you?!", "Look, there's 500 yen on the ground!", etc.). When he was getting his butt kicked by prince Herb, a man with an irrational hatred of breasts (due to be being cursed by a naked girl while he was distracted by her boobs), Ranma repeatedly flashed his breasts at him, until the guy was so overwhelmed with anger that his accuracy was shot to heck. The man is the heir to the Saotome Anything-Goes School of Martial Arts for a reason.
Then there is the a twist on this with the "Saotome Ultimate Desperation Technique: Crouch of the Wild Tiger" which is getting on your knees and saying "I'm sorry" constantly. Lampshaded by Cologne on how stupid it is till Akane shows up and it gets used well.
KODACHI. KUNO. She is, without a doubt, the dirtiest fighter of the series. She has weapons that can instantly turn lethal at will. She'll use her ribbon to grab and immobilize her opponent or throw objects at him/her. She bends the rules like mad and uses cheap tricks such as trying to shake Ranma's hand with tacks between her fingers and paralysis gas and pills in food and flowers, trying to put her opponents at a disadvantage even before a match. She will do anything it takes to win and sink lower than the Titanic to achieve victory.
Joseph Joestar from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 2 gleefully declares himself to be "a master at cheating". He's the main character, too.
His grandson and son (born in that order) inherit some of his skill.
Askeladd in Vinland Saga is more than willing to just have his men stick an opponent full of arrows then fight him one on one.
Thorgrimm as well.
Kiritsugu Emiya of Fate/zero wants to save people, but came to understand that saving some means sacrificing others and decided that at least he could save the many by sacrificing the few, and became an expert in killing mages with extremely low-blow tactics. This leads to personality conflicts with the "knight of the sword", Saber, who he summoned as a servant in the Fourth Holy Grail War and who greatly believes in fighting in an upright fashion.
One Crowning Moment of Awesome of Kiritsugu involved using C4 explosives to bring down a magically defended building. Practical indeed.
And he considered this worryingly soft of himself because he put in a bomb threat to get the civilians out about fifteen minutes before. Even though his target would most likely never even get said warning from the hotel staff let alone bother to think it was dangerous.
This is the raison d'être of the Assassin class. They're unfit for fighting so they make extensive use of their Presence Concealmentskill while targeting Masters instead of their Servants.
Lone Wolf and Cub's Ogami Itto has been known to kill his quarries with a sword... or spears or naginatas... or his own bare hands... or any other damn thing within his reach, from a wooden board split in two with a knife hand strike to a proto-gatling gun.
It's lampshaded heavily how dirty he fights. If he's facing someone with similar skills, you can expect him to use some kind of trick. This includes throwing his sword (quite dishonorable and unthinkable for a samurai) and using his own and only child as a bait.
Of course, Yagyu Retsudo is equally pragmatic either in battlefield as in politics. He just has to do it undercover in order to not losing face (which Ogami also uses in his advantage).
Saitou Hajime in Rurouni Kenshin, who explains this to an idealistic youngster by stating that in a real fight, there is no such thing as fair.
Rakan of Mahou Sensei Negima! occasionally classifies. Lifting skirts up to flee from a fake dimension, plus stealing the girl's panties certainly does.
A flashback shows Rakan defeating Eishun by distracting him with a bunch of naked women.
Honorable mention must go to Gantz's Masaru Kota. When threatened by a much larger bruiser what does he do? He catches the bastard with his pants down (quite literally — he ambushed him on a toilet) and beats him to kingdom come. Can't get more pragmatic than that.
Berserk's Guts is no honorable swordsman. He's willing to let opponents beat him up so that he can blast them with his Arm Cannon at point-blank range, bites an opponent's sword in one fight after Griffith jumps on his sword, and actually prefers to kill opponents with long-ranged weapons rather than engaging in melee combat.
And this doesn't even mention things like his willingness to take innocents hostage if he thinks that it'll give him an advantage, which fits the concept of "fighting dirty" much better than anything mentioned there. At one point, he uses a small child, hanging by his clothes on his sword, as bait to distract a swarm of vicious, homicidal "fairies" into chasing him into a barn where he blows them up. The kid doesn't get hurt, either.
At one point, Guts is training Isidoro (a young boy who seems to believe Berserk is a SHONEN manga) and Isidoro nearly pulls off a sneaky attack using his speed and smaller size to his advantage. Isidoro berates himself for trying something so dishonorable, but Guts praises the pragmatism of the attack, telling Isidoro that he needs to use every advantage he has.
Vagabond has Miyamoto Musashi who ironically embodies this trope more so than merely being a swordsman; more specifically he is described as "flexible and unfettered," taking the opportunity as it comes. Notably demonstrated in fighting the Yoshioka at Ichijouji, as he takes the opportunity of showing up an hour early and from the mountains instead of the road, allowing him to severely wound their leader right at the beginning. He may have defeated Inshun, Shishido Baiken (his Dual Wielding was to overcome the different mechanics involved in the chain and sickle), and the Yoshioka brothers (defeating the second brother's attempt to clinch and set up a killing blow by gutting him with his own wakizashi on instinct), but this is ''the'' defining fight for him. It's also a defining fight for the Yoshioka as they try and almost succeed at this, but can't quite "reach that far" and he mostly succeeds at fending off their attempts. (The closest they ever come to actually killing Musashi is when Nanpo Yoichibe tackles him to the ground and holds him down, but it fails since his cohorts hesitate to simply stab Musashi to death through Yoichibe.)
In general the Yoshioka leadership failed to prepare themselves and their followers for the essential fact that instead of dueling it was kill-or-be-killed.
Yaiba from the eponymous manga firmly believes in this trope. Well, his mentor is Miyamoto Musashi after all... that explains a lot of things...
Full Metal Panic! - Sousuke, Sousuke, Sousuke. Being raised on guerilla warfare and land mines does not an honorable fighter make. Apart from pulling the Indy stint no less than three times and inducing two of the most painful looking crotch stomps known to man, he also once saw it fit to use guns and tear gas in an official martial arts spar...and when that was barred, a hand grenade.
Ryo Narushima of Shamo has this as his signature. This is part of him being The Unfettered.
And it isn't limited to combat per se. In an early Tournament Arc he proceeds to gather as much dirt as possible on his opponents' private lives, then blackmails them into throwing the match. A solid case could be made for Shamo being a Deconstruction of such character type as Ryo is reviled both by other characters and majority of readers.
In History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, they take the titular character to visit another martial artists to learn 'tactics' which amounts to pragmatic fighting. The lesson doesn't really take.
Also, Fake!Loki counts as well — during his fight with Kenichi, he pulled a tazer, among other nasty tricks (Although they didn't work well at all). The real one is even more so.
"An honest person is another name for a fool!"
Slayers has Xelloss. Gaav states that Xelloss's specialty is to attack someone in the physical plane from the astral plane, which would best be characterized as a sneak attack (as Gaav demonstrates). Also, in Xelloss's battle against Valgaav he uses some very dirty tricks, one of the most notable being when a stray blast put a team mate in danger (Filia), he rescues her then immediately drops her on Valgaav.
And then there was his cheap shot on Lina to get his hands on Galvayra...a pressure point shot to put her out? Practical.
Most characters in Blade Of The Immortal, except the truly bushido believing Samurai (and sometimes not even those), are like this. The sympathetic villain Anotsu even based his entire sword school Itto Ryu on this concept, saying that the only thing which matters in a fight is that you win and survive but not how. His main goal at the beginning of the series was even to destroy other schools who, in his view, only teach fancy moves by making their students hit immovable practice targets.
Afro Samurai has no trouble with breaking most of the rules of bushido if they'll save his life. One of his trademark moves is using an enemy as a Human Shield. He'll use innocent bystanders, too.
In Fushigi Yuugi, this is typically Tasuki's first instinct. His first line of attack is a fan that shoots fire, and he's not above combining it with a Dynamic Entry. Nor is he above taking hostages, or attacking while his opponent is talking or otherwise distracted. On the rare occasion he's put Honor Before Reason, he explicitly regrets it.
Jet Black from Cowboy Bebop is something of a master of this trope, utilizing head butts, glass bottles, the element of surprise, and HIS OWN SPACESHIP to deadly effect; in one instance he is able to turn the tide of battle against a much better trained opponent by stopping a bullet with his own bionic arm.
Bleach has several of these characters. The most obvious is IchimaruGin. Gin has the philosophy of striking like a snake in battle. His signature style involves ambush tactics as a result and he even throws dust into Hitsugaya's eyes when they fight.
Byakuya Kuchiki when he first appeared, his entire fighting style (around Ichigo at least), revolved around Senka, a technique that attacks the target's sources of spiritual power, completely depriving them of the power to fight. He only stopped using it when he realized Ichigo could track him. Now, if he'd start using this again...
Ganjuu knows he's not strong enough to defeat Yumichika, so uses every dirty trick in the book hoping that Yumichika will drop his guard because it's so obvious they're not equals in battle. It's his only chance and it works.
Kyoraku lives by this philosophy. He even lectures his allies to remember that when people go into war both sides are evil so there's no point in trying to be honorable about it.
Iba tries to teach Ikkaku that he should be more this way when Ikkaku throws a fight to protect his ideals.
Ginjou, while training Ichigo, slashes his eyes to force him to fight blind. He also deliberately invites Orihime onto the battlefield because he understands that if Ichigo has someone to protect, he'll be more determined in his fighting.
Ulquiorra, Tsukishima and Ginjou all understand what it means to fight an archer. They immediately go for Uryuu's bow-hand and injure it beyond use.
Starrk really hates fighting or hurting others, but when he gets serious, he does tactics like shooting his opponents as soon as they get distracted and pretending to run out of ammo to lure enemies out of hiding.
And on a larger scale we have Balalaika of Hotel Moscow, who fights her mob wars like military operations. Her men smashed the Washimine Group special forces-style, complete with snipers, frag grenades, flash-bangs, explosives and whatnot and suffered no casualty; the only loss from Hotel Moscow is the ex-KGB and his men, who is not part of Balalaika's ex-airborne troops and who she never likes anyway.
Despite often winding up in unfair fights anyways, most of the cast of Fullmetal Alchemist pull dirty tricks in at least one big fight, if not all of them. Ed is a good example—in one fight he gets a foe to drop his guard by shouting to his brother (who has not just sneaked up behind him), and in another he realizes that the ninja he is fighting gets sloppy whenever her master is insulted and milks it for all it's worth. The first time he "beats" Alphonse while sparring he throws a towel in his brother's face and knocks him to the ground before he can react, while injured heavily enough that Al is afraid to hit back.
In Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, wandering emperor Ling uses this tactic on Envy by throwing sand into his eyes when the homunculus, after snaring him, offers a sadistic choice on how he should kill him. Envy shouts at him in shock and anger on his cheating trick, but Ling counters that all the years of constant assassination attempts on him had made him willing to use any dirty trick in the book to live and run his country.
Major General Armstrong is also a big proponent of pragmatism, although on a more abstract scale. She considers racism a luxury she cannot afford, because she needs varying viewpoints to evaluate the best course of action. She will also pursue any technology or any form of alchemy that will give her troops an advantage in combat.
Just on abstract scale? Pfft. During Sloth's raid into her base, her first reaction is sack him with anti-tank recoilless rifle. When that failed to stop him (and at that point, Sloth is pretty much The Juggernaut), she opts to freeze him using northern cold climate. Practical indeed.
Pretty much everyone in Darker than Black, but particularly Hei. He attacks from ambush whenever possible, and is particularly fond of electrocuting his enemies through anything handy, be it a pool of blood, a car, or a well-thrown choke wire. If he's in a bad situation, he ninjas away, and at one point even jumped off a building so he could come back a few minutes later and attack his opponent when he wasn't expecting it. His lack of compunctions about cheating is one of several reasons for the Fan Nickname "Chinese Electric Batman."
When not participating in sanctioned matches, the protagonists of Pokémon Special have demonstrated pragmatic strategies like attacking the opposing trainer directly or even destroying their opponent's Pokeballs.
Villains do it too, though sometimes more in the Kick the Dog territory...
In Medaka Box, the Abnormal Munakata turns out to be a combat pragmatist, though strange; he starts out fighting with multiple swords pulled out of Hammerspace, and once he determines the way Zenkichi fights(barehanded, by the way), he pulls a gigantic mace out of nowhere. When Zenkichi catches it with his shirt, Munakata pulls out pistols.
You wouldn't expect it from Hellsing, which might be better titled "Blood Knights Come to London" (Call forth your demons, regenerate your legs! FIGHT BACK! and of course Gentlemen, I love war...) but then we recall Bernardotte giving a little speech on how humans fight vampires, complete with demonstrations. And the memorable assertion that claymore mines are just things, they have no killing intent.
Just about everybody in One Piece, but considering it's about pirates it's to be expected.
Most notable on the heroic side is Usopp. His fighting style revolves around playing dead, distracting his enemy with horrible phrases or noises, smoke screens, oil slicks, etc. The first opponent he defeated by playing dead, hiding, dousing him in high proof alcohol, setting him on fire, and pounding him with a hammer until he stopped moving. It was played for laughs.
Usopp has also defeated another opponent by discovering her fear of spiders and attacking her purely at the psychological level. He renders her unconscious, foaming at the mouth, using supplies he scrounged up and never having to deal any physical damage.
Luffy himself bites, hits people in the crotch, takes human shields, and has hit more women than Ike Turner.
Touma of To Aru Majutsu no Index shows shades of this; he's perfectly willing to punch women full on in the face, use psychological warfare and throw a shovel full of dust into the eyes of another. This is entirely justified as most of his opponents have won the Superpower Lottery like you wouldn't believe, while all he has is an Anti-Magic fist.
Holyland points out several times the differences between sparring in the tournament or training context and fighting on the tough streets where one has to do whatever it takes to win.
Kyou Kara Ore Wa!!: being a manga about school delinquents pretty much every character tried something dirty at least once. That said, the protagonist Takashi Mitsuhashi outclassed everyone: when fighting a supposed yakuza and a street gang, he feigned being stabbed to beat the enemy scared by his willingness to fight even when dying, and then convinced his best friend to cancel his debt; when facing a bear (it was actually a man in a suit, but Mitsuhashi didn't know), he suddenly kicked it in the crotch with all his might; when facing a huge American wrestler who could shrug his every punch or kick, Mitsuhashi got him in a chase until he was tired before slugging him; he routinely uses people as weapons and baits, especially if he's supposed to help them. In fact, when he stormed a delinquent-filled school, his allies fully expected him to use them as expendable baits to get at the enemy leader (they were OK with that, as long as he got at the enemy leaders. He slugged him in front of his henchmen). And don't even try martial arts or knives: he's still stronger and faster than any martial artist he faced but one he outsmarted, and when a guy tried throwing knives at him he caught all weapons with a ping-pong racket.
As of chapter 238, Mitsuhashi has been topped by the current foe, Kitagawa: he brought a gun to a fistfight. Partially subverted when he's scared by Mitsuhashi's ally Takasaki and miss him three times at point blank.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Homura Akemi is this with good reason. Given the nature of her powers, she doesn't have any real offensive capabilities and has to resort to stealing conventional weaponry from the local Yakuza and the military. She also makes her own bombs.
Almost everyone in Claymore have no hesitation to fight four on one, strike without warning or play dirty. The only person who does insist on fighting fair is a young and naive Claymore whose idealistic mindset ends up driving her to become the Big Bad.
Jim: Hey Gene, let's beat this guy.. even if it means fighting dirty. Gene: You got it. The fun's just getting started.
Air Gear is made of this trope, so far it's easier to count the amount of times the protagonists have bested their opponents without recurring to cheap tricks than an actual straight fight, to give an example, in a battle aboard jets (yes, the kind that fly at supersonic speed, don't ask) Kazu and Agito/Akito team up against two opponents, each team combines their respective strongest attack and charge head-on, but turns out Kazu and Agito/Akito where just an illusion and their opponents fell to the sea because there was nothing to clash on.
No dirty trick is beneath Section 9 in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. They frequently go into battle invisible or hack into their opponents' brains during a fight.
Balsa The spearwielder in Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit. When injured and outnumbered she rushed one of her attackers, and smashed him in the head with rock in one swift motion, before collapsing moments later.
Mylene from 009-1 is a very effective Action Girl and has no qualms about using all the tactics she can when she fights. The way she beats Egg is notable. She reveals that her earrings allow her to track and dodge incoming bullets and takes them off. Egg in turn tells her that his eyes allow him to read her next move and agrees to fight their next duel at night. Mylene wins and reveals that she lied — her super sensitive hearing is built into her body.
Phaia from Spunky Knight has no problem doing this especially if the enemy did it first after a Lady of War drugged her with an aphrodisiac with "unique" results and had her on the ropes, Phaia promptly lactated in her eyes long enough to almost kill the enemy, forcing her and her gang to retreat.
In Sailor Moon, we have Eudial, who, in her battles against the Sailor Senshi, discarded magic or complicated plans and used guns that could extract an Heart Crystal faster than the Daimons that she brought with herself only to provide cover for her escape, flamethrowers capable to overpower Sailor Moon's attacks , and even a few dozens machine guns! The latter served to show why you don't just shoot the Sailor Senshi: the machine guns shot and hit Sailor Neptune until they ran out of ammo, and, while battered, she wasn't even bleeding.
No Name from Sword Of The Stranger gives a lesson on combat pragmatism during his first fight sequence. He uses his sheathed katana to toss a cooking pot filled with boiling water at the aggressor, and then ends up killing another guy without even having to DRAW HIS SWORD.
He doesn't have a monopoly on the trope though, as pretty much everyone but Luo-Lang qualifies to some degree or another. Luo-Lang is exempt because he's like a foot taller than everyone else, and hops around like Yoda on crack.
Alfred Pennyworth became this as the series progressed. I mean, come on, the guy was a freakin' former S.A.S. soldier! And he has helped Bruce solve cases, invent new tech, heal his (both personal and Bruce's) own wounds, and managed to fight off thugs that would typically be more physically fit than him, as well as carrying extremely powerful firearms, with his bare hands!! Though, he wishes to remain a harmless butler.
Being this kind of character is half the reason The Joker can threaten Batman toe-to-toe; the other half is his enthusiasm in combat.
Rorschach from Watchmen: He uses several household items to give himself a chance to get away. To wit, he improvises a flamethrower with hairspray and a match as he flees upstairs, on the basis that people are reluctant to chase a psycho up a burning staircase. The first person up the stairs after him gets a handful of black pepper thrown directly into his eyes and his floundering gives him the time to draw his last weapon—his compressed-air-powered grappling-hook gun,
In the video game Watchmen: The End Is Nigh, you can control Rorschach in battle. He's not nearly as skilled a fighter as Nite Owl (who uses an adapted form of martial arts), but he makes up for it with absolutely devastating strikes, and freely uses weapons, such as nightsticks, bottles, knives and crowbars, which Nite Owl refuses to do.
Ozymandias fights dirty too. It's not immediately obvious, but he's perfectly willing to take advantage of any psychological weaknesses his opponent has and uses the environment for his own benefit. Of course, with him, what looks like an Improvised Weapon was probably specifically placed right there hours ago.
During his final confrontation with Rorschach he pulls his mask across his face to gain advantage. And people keep on harping about Dollar Bill's cape...
Nightwing, despite being a Technical Pacifist, does this with acrobatic flair. He basically fights like Batman with a sense of humor: nose tweaks, groin kicks, and distractions in the form of ass smacks are not outside of his domain.
There is not a force on Earth that can get The Punisher to fight fair.
Vick "The Rain" from 100 Bullets is not above fighting dirty and will even use his own allies as human shields.
Much of the G.I. Joe comic books involves this trope. Around issue #75, Tunnel-Rat emerges from a well, tunnel and mows down about ten Cobra soldiers from behind. An issue of Special Missions has one Joe save another by simply beating the hell out of a captured CIA prisoner for needed intelligence.
Despite being better known to the casual fan for his ninja ways, never forget that Snake-Eyes is an Army Ranger, and is more than happy to go for the grenades or machine gun as a ninja armed with melee weapons advances.
Cerebus, being a veteran mercenary, knows better than to fight fair. Early in the series, he was face-to-face with a rebel mastermind and as his opponent strode out onto a bridge, finally revealing his identity, Cerebus heaved a rock at his head, causing him to stumble off the bridge to his death. Afterward, this exchange took place:
Lord Julius:That wasn't exactly fair, was it? I mean, he thought you were going to fight to the death with swords! Cerebus:He is dead and Cerebus is alive... You can't get much fairer than that.
Throughout his adventures, Corto Maltese does his share of kicking people in the nuts and shooting them in the back.
In the final issue of Tim Drake's Robin series, he's forced to fight Lady Shiva. Tim knows that he's hugely outmatched, so he poisons her food two days before the fight with a heart-rate dependent neurotoxin.
The following exchange from a comic where Deadpool and one of the forgettable 90s X-Teams are facing a villain who can dampen mutant abilities:
Mutant Super Hero: All right, just because our powers don't work, doesn't mean we're helpless. We should engage him one-on one in hand to hand combat with our strongest fighters going first until he drops.
Warren Ellis' series Desolation Jones has the titular character lampshade his status as as a combat pragmatist. When attacked by a fearsome S&M clad bodyguard, Jones explains that the combatant who wins isn't the strongest but the one who cares the least for holding anything back. The sickly old man then stabs his finger into the charging guard's eye socket and pulls him skull first into a wall, knocking him unconscious. He also makes liberal use of the Groin Attack.
Actually, most of Ellis' protagonists favor this approach to fighting.
Jesse Custer from Preacher may want to be the good guy, but he really loves his Groin Attacks.
Parodied in Astérix in Britain. The Romans, observing that the... British take a regular break every afternoon to have tea, decide to attack at tea-time.
Moon Knight is more than happy to use truncheons, knives and a spiked steel cestus in the fight for justice.
Spider-Man has been known to fight this way, using his webs to blind/restrain his enemies as well as finding all sorts of ways to humiliate them, specifically so they'll get angry and make mistakes. In the Ultimate series, he even gave Ox a wedgie. Having been bullied in school, Spidey was of course, very ashamed of himself.
Nikolai Dante is frequently described as the dirtiest fighter in the empire.
This was a plot point in one Justice League of America arc - The Crime Syndicate of Amerika is impersonating the League and actually gets into a scrape with some low-level supervillains called the Rainbow Raiders. Despite being far more powerful, and the Rainbow Raiders being pathetic enough that just one superhero is usually enough to take them out, the CSA loses miserably. Why? Simple: They've never fought anyone who didn't play by the rules. Whether it's the heroes from their world or the Justice League themselves, the CSA never faced off against somebody who fought dirty and sincerely wanted to kill them.
Actually the CSA fought plenty of people that wanted to kill them and prevailed. The reason they were losing to Z-list villains is because of some "rule of the universe" where the CSA was destined to fail on the regular Earth just as the Justice League was destined to fail on the CSA's anti-matter Earth.
Spider Jerusalem, outlaw journalist of Transmetropolitan infamy, isn't all that great in a stand-up fight. He is, however, very good with sucker punches, improvised weapons, psychological warfare and a bowel disruptor.
Marv from Sin City is physically capable of handling most opponents in battle but often uses whatever he can get his hands on simply because he's that damn crazy. Case in point: using a nearby hatchet to shove into a cop's groin.
Lusiphur, the protagonist of Poison Elves, almost never fights cleanly if he can help it. He isn't above such tricks as pretending to beg for mercy in order to get the jump on a superior opponent.
2011 DC Universe reboot: Hal Jordan starts boasting to Batman that with his ring, he can easily take down Superman. By the time Batman blinks, Superman has Flash Stepped up to Hal and punched him out.
In ElfQuest when the Wolfriders are attacked without warning by Guttlekraw's trolls:
There is no fairness, no grace, no nobility in the Wolfriders' method of combat. They obey but one rule: survive by any means, no matter how cruel or bloody.
The Firefly fanfic Forward also plays with this, including replicating the legendary Indiana Jones 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.
More or less everybody in Aeon Natum Engel, especially the Replica Elite.
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!"
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).
The Battle Fantasia Project gives us 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 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.
Kaoru from the Rurouni Kenshin 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.
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.
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.
Film
One of the most famous examples in all of film; Indiana Jones, in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, after going through a lengthy fight and chase sequence, is approached by a villainous swordsman who proceeds to show off a few fancy sword moves. Indy opts to simply pull out his gun and shoot the swordsman. This wasn't in the original script and was a Throw It In by Harrison Ford who had dysentery at the time of the scene and wasn't up for the scripted fight. Watch it here.
The 2000's Batman films saw his fighting style noticeably updated to reflect this, moving away from the flashier style he is usually shown to have in live action media. This was a deliberate choice by Nolan and Bale. In Batman Begins Henri Ducard even hangs a lampshade on this while training Bruce Wayne saying, "This isn't a dance." Ducard is also one himself. "You've sacrificed sure footing for a killing strike (tap, Bruce falls through the ice)." His mantra is "Mind your surroundings.", which Batman is doing by the end of the movie. The Scarecrow is also one. Crane immediately sprays Batman with toxins upon being confronted by him.
The Dark Knight sees The Joker sucker punch, use a knife hidden in his boot, trick an entire gang of robbers into killing each other, pull off the now famous 'magic trick', violate Mook Chivalry, use a cop as a Human Shield, use a bomb inside a cell phone inside a guy's stomach, disguise hostages as the hostage takers and vice versa and sic dogs on Batman before going in on him with a lead pipe. However, it's slightly averted at one point with the Joker telling a cop that he prefers to kill people with knives than guns since guns do it too quick and don't allow him to savor their final moments.
Shortly after the Joker is arrested, it's rather comical as to how many knives the police take off of him. What's even more comical is that in the shot where they're laying the knives out on the table, the last one is a POTATO PEELER..., and the cop handling it clearly takes a second look as if to say "wtf?"
In The Quiet Man, John Wayne's brother-in-law challenges him to a fight using Queensbury rules. As soon as John agrees to it, his in-law kicks him in the face.
The newest incarnation of James Bond played by Daniel Craig is particularly appealing due to being this kind of character, not that the other Bonds were averse to getting a little dirty themselves.
Most notably, in The Man with the Golden Gun Bond faces a trained martial artist in a karate match. When the other man bows, Bond kicks him in the throat. The next opponent comes and bows while keeping a careful eye on Bond to prevent getting sucker kicked himself.
The professional fighter "Mad Dog" in Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior was a particularly dramatic example of this, using absolutely everything that came to hand as a weapon, even ripping out electrical wires to attack his opponent.
Jack Sparrow beginning with the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. He pulls a gun on Will Turner during their sword duel.
The Jedi and the Sith usually subvert this in terms of weapons, only using lightsabers and refusing to use blasters, but the Sith, being the villains, are more willing to fight dirtier.
In A New Hope while Obi-wan is dueling with Darth Vader, as soon as Obi-wan deliberately lowers his defenses, Vader immediately strikes with his lightsaber, killing Obi-wan.
In The Empire Strikes Back Luke grabs a broken pipe that is spraying exhaust and uses it to blind Vader, while Vader uses the Force to throw tons of large debris at Luke.
Han himself doesn't waste any time pulling his gun on Vader. Unfortunately for him, Vader can make an effortless Bullet Catch.
In Return of the Jedi, though it's part of Palpatine's plan, Luke Force grabs his lightsaber and attempts to kill the unarmed Emperor. When Luke turns off his lightsaber and tells Vader he will not fight him, Vader still attempts to strike him (though he gives Luke a small warning, telling him "It is unwise to lower your DEFENSES"). Palpatine tells Luke that since he will not turn to the dark side he will die, but rather than attempt to kill Luke with a lightsaber or challenge him to a lightsaber duel, Palpatine immediately uses Force Lightning.
Goofy acrobatics aside, most of Jackie Chan's characters are perfectly willing to strike some wince-inducing blows and think around their opponents almost as much as they hit them. And that is not even taking into account Jackie being the poster boy for Improbable Weapon User.
A number of characters from Ip Man. Even the titular hero, who is a Martial Pacifist, is not above kicking joints in, knees to the face, chops to the throat etc. He may not outright cheat, but he certainly isn't a stickler for the rules of gentlemanly sparring.
Viciously subverted with Zealot Lin, who tries to attack General Miura In the Back. Unfortunately for him, General Miura has a Badass Back. The results are not pretty.
The Twister also shows this, with things like repeatedly slugging Master Hung in the face when he refuses to go down or nailing Ip just when the round-ending bell sounds. However, rather than seeming impressive, it only reinforces how nasty he is.
Long before Indiana Jones there was Paul Newman's Judge Roy Bean who dealt with one challenger by shooting him in the back with a buffalo rifle from a decently long range.
Actually, all of the assassins are this to various extents. O-Ren doesn't use guns, but instead sics her highly trained Yakuza Mooks on the Bride. They die, but it's just to buy time for another few dozen mooks. Vernita is caught off-guard by the Bride and forced into a fist fight, but escalates things to knives and doesn't hesitate to use a concealed gun in a cereal box when she gets the chance. Even Bill is packing heat when the Bride first confronts him, though one can't discount the psychological advantage of having their daughter there. Since the Bride thought that she had lost her child during the coma, it was particularly effective.
Though in this last case, Bill's being armed with a handgun isn't the typically "unfair" case of Combat Pragmatist as the Bride opts to enter Bill's place with an uncharacteristic and hitherto unseen pistol of her own.
The titular characters from The Boondock Saints who actually kill a guy by dropping a porcelain toilet off a building so that it crushes him.
To be fair, the toilet was literally what Connor had handy (well, that and a pair of handcuffs with which the Russian mob dude in question had forced him to cuff himself to the toilet). Connor also landed right on the bad guy's buddy after dropping the toilet on the first bad guy. (It Makes Sense in Context). Ignore any theories involving Huge Friggen Guoys.
Of particular note is his use of the (rarely-used-in-movies) trick of dealing with imminent reinforcements by simply playing possum in a room full of dead enemies, then blasting said reinforcements a few moments after they arrive.
Ned Lynch: Never fight fair when you're fighting for your life.
The sole reason why El Topo survived every and all fights in the first half of the film. Eventually subverted because the last master is so good, no amount of cheating done by El Topo can even come close to tipping the scales in his favor.
Used ironically in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. When challenged to a knife fight by a mutinous crew member, Butch insists that they first go over the rules. As the other man scoffs, "There are no rules in a knife fight," Butch delivers a swift Groin Attack.
Snake Plissken from Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.. To put out one example offhand, he offers a bunch of thugs a chance to do an old fashioned Duel to the Death with guns, where he throws a can, and once the can hits the ground, they all draw and shoot. He throws the can up, and promptly draws his gun and kills all of them, not even waiting for the can to hit the ground.
William Munny from Unforgiven. He shot a man crawling to safety from behind a rock, an unarmed saloon owner (although he should have armed himself if he was gonna decorate his saloon with William's friend), and the Big Bad without letting him have the chance to draw.
The One-Armed Boxer from Master of the Flying Guillotine is not above tricking other martial arts masters into ambushes and booby traps to survive. He lures the barefoot Muay Thai fighter into a hut with a metal floor. His entire martial arts school arrives to lock them inside the hut and light a fire beneath it so the Thai boxer roasts from the feet up. For the blind Flying Guillotine, however, One-Armed Boxer first manufactures a field of bamboo targets to destroy the master's signature weapon. Then he lures him into a coffin shop that he has booby trapped with birds to deafen the master, and axe-throwers to chop him down to size.
Wally Stephens: I know I can't beat you in a fair fight.
'Stretch' Sitarski:[scoffs] Stupid, I don't fight fair.
Wally Stephens: Neither do I!
[kicks Stretch in the crotch, then hits him across the face with a belt of .50 calibre machine-gun ammo. Stretch smiles dumbly for a second then falls over]
Gideon, Pierce Brosnan's character from Seraphim Falls doles out pragmatism and damage throughout the movie.
This was Steven Seagal's distinguishing feature back in the nineties. Instead of more striking arts, like Karate or Kung Fu, he employed Aikido, which is focused on defense and using the opponent's strength in one's favor, with a heavy dose of this trope. He would often target vital spots (eyes, throat, groins), twist and break joints, use improvised weapons, etc.
"You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?"
Later in the film, Malone is attacked in his apartment by a gangster but fights him off saying, "Just like a wop to bring a knife to a gun fight".
The same goes for Ace Rothstein's initial description of Nicky Santoro in Casino:
Army of Darkness has Ash do this to Evil Ash. Evil Ash taunts Ash and starts beating him up with clownish tactics, until Ash shoots him in the face with his double-barrel shotgun. There's also the beginning of the movie, when he shoots the king's sword's blade in half, as the king was challenging him to a sword fight.
Ash: Good... Bad... I'm the guy with the gun.
In Mystery Men The Sphinx is training the titular characters. When he meets Shoveler during his sparring session, he asks how many weapons does he wield. After he responds one, The Sphinx replies: No. The fist, the knee, the elbow, the head! You must lash out with every limb, like the octopus who plays the drums.
The Expendables: The titular guys completely ignore ANYTHING that might even resemble fair fighting and instead go for an exquisitely liberal use of Groin Attacks, ganging up on the baddies, and pulling out guns in the middle of CQC/melee confrontations.
A humorous moment in Dagon has a Deep One attempting to drown Paul Marsh in its toilet bowl, but Paul brains it with the lid.
LordShen, the Big Bad of Kung Fu Panda 2, knows that he is too weak to defeat his opponents and conquer China with kung fu alone. So he uses cannons instead. As well as fight with knives.
This is evident when he uses the weapon instead of facing Master Thundering Rhino in a kung fu fight which he knows he cannot win.
In Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, Holmes and Watson find themselves in a fight with a number of dirt antagonists. Both Watson and Holmes are willing to improvise. Pots, pans, cans, etc abound. In fact each is the quintessential dirty fighter, going so far as to throw one bad guy into another.
Doomsday has a lot of 'effective combat'. Although this includes eye-gouging, biting and using a gun in a knife fight, it never feels very wrong because there are no friendly characters around in the first place. Partly neutralised by a Gray and Gray Morality, although the Squick remains.
The protagonists of the film are a militia for the American Continental Army that use guerrilla warfare against the British Army and cause serious damage to their supply routes.
The film's main protagonist and commander of the militia, Colonel Benjamin Martin, mentions this while witnessing a Real Life battle between the Continental Army and the British and makes a comment regarding the American side's commander, Real Life General Horatio Gates
Martin: That Gates is a damn fool. He spent too many years in the British army. Going muzzle-to-muzzle with Redcoats in open field. It's madness.
Real Life General Lord Charles Cornwallis does not believe in this trope at all and invokes it with both his enemies and his own side. Earlier in the film he gets angry at one of his officers, the film's main villain, Colonel Tavington, after explaining how King George III has rewarded him (Cornwallis) with 400,000 acres of land for his conduct in the war, explaining "This is how His Majesty rewards those who fight for him like gentleman". Later in the film he brings this up again in a meeting with Martin in regards another example of this trope; the militia's targeting of British officers during engagements. He tells Martin of the chaos that can result from leaderless armies on the battlefield. Martin replies that their doing this is in response to the British Army's even dirtier tactics of attacking civilians. A few moments later, Martin says he wants to arrange a prisoner exchange of some captured British officers for some of his own captured men which results in this exchange.
Cornwallis: This is not the conduct of a gentleman. Martin: If the conduct of your officers is the conduct of a gentleman, I'll Take That As A Compliment.
The film's main villain, Colonel William Tavington, is a firm believer in this trope but really more of a Complete Monster. His actions are really more out of sadism than wanting to win. He's more than willing to kill civilians, (including children), kill retreating troops, execute wounded troops begging for mercy, burn down the homes of civilians for "harboring the enemy" (meaning they took in and gave care to wounded troops from both sides), and even sets fire to a church full of the families of the militia's men after having promised them that if they told him the location of the militia's base, they would be forgiven. The only time he shows any restraint is when he orders Gabriel to be hanged rather than just having him shot, and even that is only so his body can be put on display as a warning. As he explains to Cornwallis, "I advance myself only through victory." However, in this case Cornwallis is correct in his disapproval of Tavington's tactics. He explains to Tavington that the Americans "are our bretheren, and when this conflict is over, we will resume commerce with them", and tells him later that it's Tavington's fault that Cornwallis's army is still stuck in South Carolina and hasn't advanced northward; Tavington's brutality has gotten results but has angered the colonists and given more support to the Revolutionary cause. Indeed, it's Tavington killing Martin's son, Thomas, that causes Martin, who previously had no interest in the Revolution, to join the Continental Army. Truth in Television, due to the Continental Army's guerilla tactics, the British sometimes had to result to cruel tactics against American civilians, which ended up causing them to support the revolution.
Saving Private Ryan During the D-Day invasion of Omaha Beach, Wade, a combat medic, is attempting to tend to a wounded soldier in the middle of all the crossfire. As soon as he's fixed the soldier he's happily proclaiming how he stopped the bleeding only for the wounded soldier to immediately get shot and killed. Wade starts screaming at the Germans to "Just give us a fucking chance!".
Like the Full Metal Jacket sniper, the German sniper is that kills Caparzo just leaves him to bleed out in the street, knowing that he is a) no longer a threat, and b) bait for further targets.
Full Metal Jacket has a sniper use a rather dirty tactic on a squad of Marines; shooting one who was sent to scout ahead but deliberately only wounding him and not killing him, causing him to lie there screaming in pain. When another Marine in the squad comes to help him and drag him back, the sniper shoots him as well. When another Marines does not come, the sniper puts more bullets into the two wounded Marines causing them to scream loudly in pain with the rest of the squad now having a Sadistic Choice; watch and listen to the two wounded Marines screaming in pain or try to retrieve them most likely getting themselves shot as well?
During the climactic battle in the Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, Sentinel Prime has no problem calling for an air attack on Optimus when he starts losing the fight. Shortly therafter, he is shot in the back by Megatron. Throughout the series, both sides tend to be absolutely ruthless, bringing guns into melee fights as their baseline. Also in the third film is effectively taking America—yes, all of it—hostage in order to force the Autobots off Earth. And while they're leaving, they shoot their ship with a missile, just to be sure.
Old School Frank gets into a fist fight with Dean Pritchard. While getting beat badly, Frank starts saying "Time out", which Pritchard ignores and keeps hitting him.
Last Action Hero parodies this. In school, Danny is watching a film version of the scene in Hamlet where Hamlet has an opportunity to kill Claudius but refuses due to Claudius being in prayer. Danny starts whispering to himself, "Just do it", and then has a fantasy sequence of an action movie version of Hamlet with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role. In the scene where Hamlet discovers Palonius hiding behind a curtain, Palonius says "Stay thy hand, fair prince" to which Hamlet replies "Who said I was fair?" and shoots him with an uzi, then mows down several palace guards with it.
The Mighty Ducks has a sports version. The Hawks' coach tells one of his players to "finish off" Banks, the Ducks' best player, who was previously a Hawk. The Hawk player is more than happy to do so, and trips Banks causing him to fly headfirst into the metal portion of the goal requiring him to be taken out of the game.
The second film has another sports version. Tibbles introduces Gordon to his new players, one of whom, Dean, is a large, tough guy who starts playfully rough housing the other team members. Gordon tells Tibbles his kids "don't play that kind of hockey" to which Tibbles replies, "They're called enforcers" and that Gordon is going to need them when he places against the Iceland team.
The Rundown The film's protagonist, Beck, (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) does not like guns, on account of his past. When asked about his not wanting to use guns, he says, "I pick up guns; bad things happen". He fits this for just about everything else though, including using a herd of cows on the villains. He resists shooting guns for the whole movie (though he's more than willing to use them as blunt weapons) however, at the film's climax, he's up against way too many armed bad guys and finally gives in and uses guns to defeat them and isn't shown having any regrets about it.
In Letters From Iwo Jima, the senior commander, Kuribayashi, directly orders his troops to stay alive as is practical in their course of their duties to inflict as much damage to the American invaders as possible and not throw away their lives in honorable suicide at setbacks, as was traditionally encouraged in the Imperial Japanese military.
Literature
In Tom Clancy's stories, the good guys subscribe to this line of thinking, particularly the military, who are paraphrased at one point as believing If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan it very well.
Caine/Hari from The Acts of Caine is widely considered the best infighter alive, even after being rendered partially paraplegic. He does not fight fair, ever, and it allows him to win fights where he really should have had no chance. Illustration: right after his lowest point in Blade of Tyshalle, he escapes a dungeon cell by luring a guard in and provoking him to attack, apparently giving up the element of surprise. To recap, this is a naked and malnourished Caine, covered in his own filth, chained to the wall with his legs currently not working. The guard on the other hand is armored in chainmail, upright and well fed, and has the "chance" to draw his club and attack Caine first. After a few minutes the situation changes to that of a naked and unconscious guard in Caine's shackles while a now armed and armored Caine crawls up the dungeon steps.
The the flashbacks of Caine Black Knife, Caine describes how most armchair tacticians give advice like "Other things being equal, the advantage lies with the longer weapon" or "Other things being equal, the fighter who strikes first wins" or "Other things being equal, a big man beats a small man." He then proceeds to kill an opponent twice his size, him using a knife and the ogrillo using a spear, after the grill strikes first.
Caine: Get it? "Other things" are never equal.
Matt Stoverloves this trope. It even pops up in his Star Wars Expanded Universe novels; one of the best examples is a character getting into a fight he knew he would lose just to be able to track someone, so it'd be easier to anticipate the inevitably fatal fight later. The novel is Shatterpoint, BTW. This even extends to situations that aren't combat, merely minor conflicts. Such as arguments.
Ender in Ender's Game explains to an enemy that real soldiers don't play fair; they do whatever it takes to keep themselves alive. Ender doesn't just win; he annihilates. If he's kicking someone's ass, they won't have an ass left to be kicked when he's done.
This is not an exaggeration. In the beginning of the book, Ender is six, and a bully of the same age picks a fight with him. Ender decides on the strategy mentioned above (his theory being that a badly beaten opponent will hesitate to attack again), and beats him to death.
To be fair to Ender, he did not know the end result of the two fights, both Earthside and at Battle School - Coronel Graff deliberately covered them up, making Ender think that the opponents were merely badly beaten and not dead.
Bean makes a similar speech to Achilles in Ender's Shadow about how real soldiers do whatever it takes to win.
"We're soldiers. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the enemy, and outnumber the other bastard every chance they get. Your kind of murder only works among civilians. And you were too stupid, too insane, to realize that."
Ender: And then, in that very moment when I love them-..... I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don’t exist.
Staying with Orson Scott Card for a moment, in his novelisation of The Abyss the SEAL team leader, Coffey, is mentioned as having taken down a neighbourhood bully eight years his senior not in a straight-up street fight: rather, by going, lying in wait for the guy, and caving his head in with a cinderblock when the guy's back was turned. He then describes how Coffey tidies up, goes home, and never seeks any recognition of his act. On the other hand, Coffey is characterised as somewhere between a Heroic Sociopath and a Complete Monster, so Your Mileage May Vary on this one.
Locke Lamora of the Gentleman Bastard(s) is most definitely one of these.
Sam Vimes of Terry Pratchett's Discworld is a great believer in dirty fighting. His fighting style consists of using everything you have to hit anything you can. He calls it "artful". About the only time he's ever been delicate about the subject was when he was mentioning Nobby's "favorite kick" in front of Lady Sybil Ramkin.
His most iconic move is probably the "Vimes Elbow."
Vimes' pragmatism can be pretty well summed up by this quote:
Vimes:"And for close-up fighting, as your senior sergeant I explicitly forbid you to investigate the range of coshes, blackjacks, and brass knuckles sold by Mrs. Goodbody at No. 8 Easy Street at a range of prices and sizes to suit all pockets, and should any of you approach me privately I absolutely will not demonstrate a variety of specialist blows suitable for these useful yet tricky instruments."
At one point he and an Assassins Guild member end up in a standoff with knives being pointed at portions of each other's anatomy that are generally considered unsporting to target. The assassin's comment that Vimes is "no gentleman" is both given and taken as a compliment.
Also from Discworld: "Cohen had heard of fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it."
There's also one of the Silver Horde squaring off against a ninja in Interesting Times. After pretending he's getting ready to break a block of wood barehanded and making sure the ninja is watching his hands, he kicks him in the treasury and whacks him over the head with said block. Should've watched the leg, indeed.
Later on in the same book, one of the local lords shows off his Samurai by having him throw a handkerchief into the air, and slicing it cleanly in half. Cohen then throws his handkerchief into the air...and then chops off the Samurai's head as he's watching the handkerchief.
It's implied in the City Watch novels, that in the street fights of Anhk-Morpork being able to use your hands is already considered posh.
Vimes' fighting style is contrasted with that of the Marquis of Fantailler, a send-up of the Marquis de Queensbury who "wrote a set of rules for what he termed 'the noble art of fisticuffs,' which mostly consisted of a list of places where people weren't allowed to hit him. Many people were impressed with his work and later stood with noble chest out-thrust and fists balled in a spirit of manly aggression against people who hadn't read the Marquis's book but did know how to knock people senseless with a chair." A surprising number of those people's last words were something along the lines of "Stuff the bloody Marquis of Fantail-"
Vimes' opinion on Fantallier seems to have softened slightly by the time of Snuff, at least to the extent where he's prepared to offer the use of the rules when challenged to a duel. When they're refused, he brings this trope out in spades. "Should've accepted Fantallier", indeed.
Carrot, however, seems to be able to make said fighting fair work, insofar as it can be considered fighting fair for Carrot to be getting involved to begin with. In Carrot's case fighting fair might actually be considered pragmatic, what with Theory of Narrative Causality and all. Fighting fair, and generally playing fair, seem to be Carrot's form of Refuge in Audacity. Plus, who needs dirty tricks when they can cold-cock a troll with a right cross?
But Men at Arms shows that if Carrot needs you dead, there will be a foot of cold steel through you before you realize there is even to be a fight. Sometimes a sword is enough to win a gun (or gonne) fight.
Vimes' antagonist in Night Watch is Carcer, whom Vimes describes as a "bottle covey". The guy who'll take every possible way to kill you, just because he likes it, and takes advantage of the system whenever he can. In some ways Carcer is "evil Vimes", which is hinted at several times in the book.
Although he's not a viewpoint character, it's very clear that General Tacticus was a big proponent of this style of warfare; his method of command tended to not only conquer lots of territory but do it with most of his men still alive at the end, which more traditional military historians felt was somehow cheating. Vimes is, rather unsurprisingly, a fan.
It should be noted that the regular style of warfare from Tacticus's time till the time the novels take place, was basically to inflict as many "heroic casualties" on each other's army as possible. Which means to allow as many of your men to be killed by the enemy as possible. If you have more men at the end than the enemy it was a nice bonus.
Tacticus described one of the good strategies for assaulting an near-impenetrable fortress with a good supply of water and food available to the defenders: "See (that the occupants) stay there". He considers the other good strategy to be "Endeavor to be the ones inside."
Rincewind will openly admit he's a coward and a rat—they survive, after all—but when cornered, his strategy is to hit his opponent with everything he can before they can realize that he doesn't know how to fight.
He also ended a battle with an all-powerful reality-warping Sourcerer not with magic, but with a half-brick inna sock. Granted, it was a highly ineffective weapon, but it did end the battle.
The titular sourcerer has to be defeated and Rincewind is the only one capable of following the sourcerer through a portal. The sourcerer is just a kid that has faced lots of wizards by following orders from his father, cointained in his staff, but he only does it because they are dangerous. Cue Rincewind, inept wizzard and incapable of hurting a fly (not for lack of trying, mind you), attempting to attack him with half a brick in a sock. After asking if it's an magic sock or if this is a trick, the boy is so convinced that Rincewind is completely harmless that he refuses to follow his father's orders for the first time in his life. Technically, fighting dirty did save Rincewind's life, just not as somebody would expect it to work.
Simon Illyan, Miles's 50-something boss in the Vorkosigan Saga, is a fairly uptight but Reasonable Authority Figure. He doesn't actually get his hands dirty, he has underlings for that. When his artificial memory chip is sabotaged, and his underlings have to get him into medical treatment, though, he fights back...and he fights dirty. No one knew, because no one had ever seen him fight before.
In Ethan of Athos, Miles' protege, Elli Quinn, has to rescue a hostage, with inadequate forces and without collateral damage.
She paced back and forth like a frenzied tigress. "I'm being stampeded. I know I am. ... Q.E.D.—Quinn Eats Dirt. Gods. Don't panic, Quinn. What would Admiral Naismith do in the same situation?" She stood still, facing the wall.
Ethan envisioned diving Dendarii starfighters, waves of space-armored assault troops, ominous lumbering high-energy weapons platforms jockeying for position.
"Never do yourself," muttered Quinn, "what you can con an expert into doing for you. That's what he'd say. Tactical judo from the space magician himself."
... So she files a false report of a new infectious disease.
Lois McMaster Bujold's other series has Cazaril, an experienced soldier who is a decent swordsman but notes on many occasions that swordfighting is not nearly as useful as dirty fighting, which he is also good at.
Cazaril had to admit, the battlefields he'd been on had more resemblance to the butcher's yard than the dueling ring. But if Dy Sandez knew the desperate brutal tricks that kept a man alive on the battlefield, he'd not taught them to Teidez. (also) "I don't duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as little risk to myself as I can arrange. If I decide you die, you will die when I choose, Where I choose, by what means I choose, and you will never see the blow coming."
In John C. Wright's War of the Dreaming, we have the Handicapped Badass Peter Waylock, who is very much the Unfettered when it comes to fighting:
Peter: "Kind of hard to kill a man when you've looked in his eyes, ain't it... [his opponent keels over with a knife in his eye] 'course, it gets easier once you've done it a couple times."
Marshal Atkins, from The Golden Age kills an alien saboteur by a) accelerating the spaceship they're on to fifty gees, immobilizing him; b) bathing the command deck with hard radiation, c) infecting it with nanobot poison, d) severing its spinal cord with a katana.
Will and Lyra from the His Dark Materials trilogy have no problems fighting dirty if this gives them an advantage. Being children going up against adults who are very willing to kill them, it's just about their only chance to win anyhow. It's mentioned that Will learned at a relatively young age that the point of fighting is to hurt the other person more than they can hurt you, not to show off; he broke a boy's arm in school and he can and has killed. He's twelve.
Mention should also go to Lyra's ability to inspire other people to follow her example, leading a rabble of confused children to pack rock-hard slushballs and "aim for the eyes".
Corwin in the Chronicles of Amber is big on this. For example, in his climactic sword duel with a powerhouse foreshadowed a book earlier, Corwin runs away, rounds a corner, throws his cloak into the other man's face as he follows, then stabs the guy while he's blind.
"Not the Winter Olympics" indeed.
His son Merlin later mocks the guy's ghost for fighting fair after defeating him again by accidentally throwing a sword at him.
This is essentially Cowin's biggest personality trait. He takes over a swords-and-sorcery kingdom with a small force carrying assault rifles. At one point he wants his son to follow him; his son declines, and so Corwin attacks him with a sword, feints around him, punches him unconscious and carries him away.
In his Wing Alek series of short stories the main character is forbidden from ever using killing to win a conflict (luckily the villains don't know that) so he uses underhanded methods to get the villains to defeat themselves.
Nicholas van Rijn from the Technic History series frequently uses sneaky methods. On one occasion, he taunts an alien prince into biting his behind; the alien prince realizes too late that human biochemistry is toxic to his people.
While he prides himself on his pure combat skill, the assassin Artemis Entreri of the Forgotten Realms novels is not above using blackmail, dirty tactics and overwhelming odds to win fights when necessary. It isn't often necessary. There is one particularly memorable scene in the The Icewind Dale Trilogy where he spits a mouthful of sewer water into Drizzt's face to gain the upper hand. Drizzt had just a few minutes earlier been wondering why Entreri was a little less talkative.
From the same series, Entreri's Drow sometimes-ally Jarlaxle is not beyond using some tricks or magic items to gain the upper hand in a fight, often to the surprise of his enemies.
In the main Drizzt novel's, Drizzt met a dwarven Battlerager, a group of combat pragmatists who fly into a rage and attack like a spazzed ball of spikes, in this case their leader, Thibbledorf Pwent cops to this off the bat, citing that he's not above kicking an enemy when they're down. Usually subverted in Drizzt's case though, as he prefers to fight with a bit more honour, but its generally well understood that he'd kick an opponents ass either way.
The Black Company, a mercenary force in the series of the same name by Glen Cook, make a living, and survive in the face of enormous odds, by fighting dirty and using every resource available to them in order to make themselves look like the baddest motherfuckers around. When it works, things look good for the Company. When it doesn't, that's when the fun begins.
Smilla Jaspersen from Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg has a history of winning against people much bigger and stronger than her. She stabs a man in the neck with a screwdriver when he tries to kidnap her, and topples a shelf onto a person she thinks is following her in the filing room of an office building. She also forces her stepmother to listen to her demands by pinching her in the crotch and bending her pinky finger all the way back. Apparently she's been this way all her life. She beat up a racist school bully much larger than her by finding out where he lived and ambushing him early in the morning, sending him to the hospital. When her father, a noted surgeon, tried to grab her and drag her home after she ran away at the age of twelve, she cut him with a scalpel she stole from the hospital she escaped from. When she is trapped on a ship with the vaguely psychopathic character Jakkelsen, she makes a weapon from a towel and a ball bearing, and injures him badly enough that he needs medical attention. However, she is always described as a petite and delicate woman. She is the narrator, by the way.
In Dan Abnett's Horus Rising, Loken defeats Lucius in a practice sword fight by punching him; Lucius's still smarting over it in Graham McNeill's Fulgrim.
In Ben Counter's Galaxy In Flames, Tarvitz, who watched, commented that he had learned from it, to do whatever was needed to win. So, Lucius being a Turn Coat who had betrayed them to Horus and having gotten into a figh with Tarvitz, Tarvitz has the Emperor's Children coming to make a flanking attack shoot at Lucius and end their fight.
Possibly the best example of this trope in the 40K universe is that of Alpharius and the (Pre-Heresy) Alpha Legion. Whilst other legions had very specific ways of doing things (one legion would specialise in assault, another in defense, seigecraft etc), Alpharius decreed that his marines should master all aspects of warfare. He went even further by doing away with "inefficient" things like honour and chivalry, and often conquered entire planets through stealth and treachery.
Your Mileage May Vary on that: While Alpharius did indeed preach pragmatism, he rarely practiced it. Alpharius wanted to prove himself to his elder brothers, so his tactics were usually incredibly convoluted and elaborate purely so he could show how great his men were when they pulled it off - in one case, he held off attacking a poorly defended planet so the defenders could bolster the defenses to a huge level. He won, and told his fellow primarchs that "it would be too easy" to just attack at once. A better example would be Guilliman, who favoured efficiency (he concentrated on the boring stuff like logistics and supply, knowing it would help more towards victory than cool weapons etc) or Night Haunter, who was a completely ruthless,psychoticvigilante, who led a Legion of rapists and murderers and nuked his own homeworld.
Don "Mad Dog" Slade from David Drake's Cross the Stars observes that you should only hit someone with your bare hands when you're naked and your feet are nailed to the floor.
Similar Advice is passed along to the protagonist of Star Dance by a Space Fleet Captain: "My Daddy also told me 'Only hit the soft parts with your hand. Hit the hard parts with a utensil.' "
If Repairman Jack can't beat it, he'll shoot it. Heck, he'll probably shoot it even if he can beat it - he'd rather err on the side of caution. Now, if shooting doesn't work (which is not unlikely, given somethings he bumps into) things will get really funny.
The mercenary Bronn regularly uses unchivalrous tactics to win fights. When championing Tyrion in a trial by combat, he uses light armor and evades his heavily armored knight adversary until the man is exhausted. The knights in attendance find these tactics in very poor taste.
When Cersei orders Bronn to be killed, the man who does it knows that he would be no match for such an experienced killer in a sword fight. Consequently he challenges Bronn to a joust on horseback (thinking that he would lose because he would have no experience of jousting,) and plans to kill him while he's lying stunned on the ground. Unfortunately, Bronn proves himself to be a better Combat Pragmatist than him; he aims for his horse rather than him, and kills him while he's lying stunned on the ground.
Oberyn Martell uses light armor, a spear, and poison to fight the much larger, heavily-armoured Gregor Clegane. He forgets to be pragmatic where it really counts, and loses in the end, though not before fatally poisoning his opponent.
In his first scene, Loras Tyrell faces down Gregor Clegane in a joust. Gregor favours large, bad-tempered stallions, so Loras comes to the joust riding a mare in heat. Gregor's stallion did all the work for him.
Despite being a Wide-Eyed Idealist with more devotion to the ideals of chivalry than any other character in the series, Brienne of Tarth can also be very pragmatic; she defeats Loras Tyrell in a mounted melee by tackling him off his horse. In her fight with Jaime Lannister she knows that her endurance is superior, so she stays on the defensive and lets him chase her through a forest until he tires before attacking him. When he manages to disarm her, she pins him down and tries to drown him in a river—it's only a third party interrupting the fight that saves him.
Feyd-Rautha of Dune hides a needle with a paralyzing agent on his waist in his knife-fight with Paul. On top of that, he also pretends to be "shield-conditioned" (slower than he is) and leaves his right hip undefended a little too much, leading Paul to guess there's a poison needle hidden there. However, when locked in close, Paul trys to keep himself to Feyd's left only to discovers the needle is actually on his left hip and he was playing Paul very, very well.
The Dresden Files has Kincaid, Psycho for Hire mercenary and all-around Combat Pragmatist. He actually gets mopey when Harry tells him he can't just level the vampires' hideout with explosives because it would kill the hostages. For a short time anyway, before he goes back to gruff and grumbling about how poor the plan is.
Harry Dresden himself. He doesn't like it, but he WILL do what it takes. A brief, and by no means comprehensive list of examples:
Up against a deranged Fae Queen, Harry, the wizard, instead of slinging his baddest spells, decides to Zerg Rush her instead. Using pixies. Armed with steel boxcutters. After which he physically pins her until she dies of a combo of blood loss and cold iron poisoning.
When fighting fallen angel host Nicodemus, he realizes the only thing Nick is vulnerable to is the artifact which grants him invulnerability. So Harry strangles Nicodemus with it (it's conveniently in the shape of a noose).
Harry has specifically ordered his superpowered guard dog Mouse to kill more than one enemy.
Dead Beat's climax involves him creating aZombieT-Rex to fight zombies.
After seeing Kincaid using incendiary shotgun rounds on vampires, he specifically starts researching the fun stuff you can do with custom shotgun ammo. Knowledge which he later puts to good use.
His standard procedure for dealing with ambushes: Run away. Fast. Anything knowingly attacking a wizard has probably come prepared. To this end, he seriously took up gymming and martial arts to improve his stamina and melee skills.
When taking on Cowl at the end of Dead Beat, Harry doesn't even try to fight him fairly, because he knows Cowl is a badass who'd smash him in a straight confrontation. Instead, he waits until Cowl is at the most delicately explosive point of the A God Am I spell, and then brains him over the head with his staff. Kaboom.
In "Day Off," when Darth Wannabe and company attempt to challenge him to a magical duel, Harry just pulls a gun on them. Incidentally, he keeps upgrading said sidearm through the series.
This is also a special case, since killing a mortal with magic is strictly against the rules laid down by the White Council of wizards, and doing so means you can expect a visit from a surly enforcer with an enchanted sword. Harry killed his spellcasting mentor*
in self defense
, which made his life hell for decades; thus, whenever he engages a mortal foe, he has to use conventional means.
Harry has also found out, and demonstrated, that Groin Attacks work just as well on trolls and grendelkin as they do on humans. The fact that he did it with cold iron on the former—resulting in said troll's bits bursting into flame—let him hold off a whole bunch of them who wisely did not try to press their luck after seeing what happened to the first one.
In Ghost Story Harry interrupts the Big Bad in the middle of a villainous monologue with a blast of fire. When she voices her outrage, he does it again. When she still doesn't get the idea he hits her with a third blast. Turns out she's a bit of a pragmatist herself, luring Harry into wasting precious memories casting spells, and nearly reducing him to a mindless wraith. She can afford to take the hits better than he can afford to throw them.
Don't forget that in the first book, he gains the advantage against Victor Sells with a cleaning spell.
Wizards aren't the only ones who can be utterly pragmatic. The Billy Goats Gruff, while being fairytale...um, fairies, have absolutely no compunctions against using such mortal inventions as submachineguns.
In the Sword of Truth series, Kahlan learns about how the Mud People once slaughtered a vastly larger tribe simply by killing them everywhere except on the battlefields. In their homes, in their privies, in their beds, everywhere. Later, when confronting an army of D'Haran rebels who have sided with the Imperial Order, she puts these lessons to work. To start with, she poisons a cart of liquor and leaves it to be found by the enemy officers. Later, she leads a night raid into the enemy camp...naked, like the Celts, and butchers several of the officers remaining. This trend continues as she has her army made particular emphasis on killing physicians and other non-combatants, as killing one of them is as good as killing dozens of other soldiers who could no longer be healed by them. By the end, she has led an army of recruits to victory against a battle-hardened veteran force ten times its size.
Later, during the fighting retreat as the Imperial Order in its millions finally invades the New World, Kahlan increases her pragmatism by an order of magnitude. After the D'Haran army is handily defeated in a stand-up fight, she takes charge and spends the better part of a year using hit-and-run guerilla tactics to grind down the Order's army by hundreds of thousands. In her most impressive feat, she she uses a barrel of powdered glass and scatters it in front of an advancing enemy force, killing thousands from lung infections and causing tens of thousands to go blind.
The eponymous Action Girl of Mike Shepherd's Kris Longknife series. Shepherd mentioned that while most marines had to be trained out of notions of fighting fair, she took to dirty fighting like a duck to water.
The Third Rule of the bodyguard school called Matador Villa in Steve Perry's Matador series is: "There are no rules in a fight involving death."
Anita Blake isn't at all averse to this, especially considering she's usually up against vampires, shapechangers or worse but she pales compared to Edward, famous for using a flamethrower against some vamps.
This shows up all the time in Mercedes Lackey's work, especially her Velgarth novels. Fighting instructors, as opposed to fencing masters, constantly emphasise to their students that there's no such thing as "unfair" or "dishonourable" tactics in a real fight. Fencing matches and the like are a different thing entirely.
The Dorsai do believe in thinking outside the box. However, they would never, ever, violate the "Mercenaries Code" (which is something like the Geneva Conventions). When one person asked one of the Dorsai commanders if he had ever shot prisoners, the commander got quite threatening about the idea that he would ever do such a thing.
Mike Z. Williamson's Freehold, especially the Black Ops. Think Improvised Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
In Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, this is how Weak, but Skilled Padawan Scout wins a padawan tournament. She takes advantage of the fact that in the tournament, lightsabers are turned down and won't cut through her if she grabs the blade.
The Star Wars Expanded Universe is RIFE with this, especially with certain authors, such as Stackpole and Allston (who wrote Starfighters above.) In the X-Wing Series, both Rogue and Wraith Squadrons are completely happy to use any unfair and probably illegal methods they can think of, including pretending to be the enemy, flying false flags, and acts of piracy. Note that in Real Life, all three of those are HIGHLY illegal. Hell, Wraith Squadron was BUILT on this, using random misfits and Special Forces soldiers as pilots specifically so they wouldn't fly and fight like pilots.
Mara Jade is particularly fond of this, especially before she firmly joins the good guys.
The novelization of Revenge of the Sith offers a better explanation (that is to say, an explanation) of how Palpatine killed three of the best swordsmen in the galaxy without breaking a sweat. When the Jedi Masters came to arrest him, he pretended to be a helpless politician, terrified of four armed men threatening him for no reason. The moment their certainty faltered, he was across the room and one's head was bouncing off the floor, while another staggered with a hole drilled through his forehead. He may be old, but he's a Master of the Dark Side.
Partially because she's untrained but mostly because she's her, Sirantha Jax of The Sirantha Jax Series will use any means to win — fighting dirty, crazy tactics, you name it.
Alanna/Alan from Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe is being abused by a bully. What does she do? She goes into the city, and has her friend George and his men teach her street fighting. Alanna and the bully fight, and Alanna wins. Of course, everything that she does goes against the code of conduct for the boys, but...
In Chris Roberson's Imperial Fists novel Sons of Dorn'', Jean-Robur learns to fight like this in his first battle, stabbing a foe In the Back.
Dragaera: On their way into the Paths of the Dead, Vlad Taltos and Morrolan are forced to face a group of Dragonlords, one at a time, in single combat. Vlad throws a knife at his opponent while the latter is waiting for him to draw his sword, which makes the Dragons angry enough to attack them all at once instead.
Standard vampire-fighting practice in Night Watcher is to inject them with a silver solution early in the morning (when the vampires are already asleep and most potential human witnesses are still asleep). Captain Kotov sometimes mixes this up by just hacking unconscious or stunned vampires into pieces with an axe before they can start fighting back.
Sherlock Holmes is a weird case. Holmes himself has a general Screw The Rules attitude, but he completely averts this trope as he usually prefers to fight fair in hand to hand combat. Watson, the veteran of Afganistan, is far more conventional, only breaking society's rules when there are lives at stake, but if you ever come down to Baker Street looking for a piece of him or his homeboy he will grab a chair, or poker, or whatever and bust your head open with it before you even get to throw a punch.
Remember that above all Holmes loves a challenge - he most likely approaches his fights the same way he approaches his mysteries. Besides, contrary to what some people seem to believe, having actual fighting skill gives you an advantage in a fight and Holmes is a damned good boxer.
Sadrao, an anthropomorphic dog in Ursula Vernon's Black Dogs, uses a weapon that a lot of Funny Animal protagonists forget about: teeth. He bites off a bandits face.
Garren in the Farsala Trilogy fits this trope, despite being the villain. In a duel meant to decide the fate of Farsala, he calls in his entire army when the odds turn against him. Of all the characters, he's one of the few who really understands how to get the job done. That doesn't mean we have to like him.
He does this twice. In the first book, when the king challenges him to a one on one duel on the battlefield to end the war quickly, what does he do? He simply orders several archers to shoot him while he stood there without attacking.
The second time is the one mentioned above. When he has yet another duel to determine the kingdom's fate, he actually begins to lose...and so he orders the exact same thing on the teenager who was beating him. This was going a bit too far, however, because the main female protagonist completely destroys him with a bolt of lightning afterwards.
Valentinian from the Belisarius Series is a vicious bastard who compensates for his (relative) lack of height and bulk compared to some of the other badasses in the series by taking advantage of his lightning fast reflexes to help him pull off every dirty trick in the book. He's so good at it that late in the series he trains a twelve year old boy well enough that the kid can take out multiple professional soldiers on his own. He loses one fight in the series, against the legendary Rana Sanga, specifically because he steps away from this trope for once (he had Sanga wounded and could have picked away at him and bled him to death while staying out of reach, but chose to try to finish the fight honorably and had his sword (and skull) broken as a result). He survives and avoids doing anything that stupid ever again.
Kirth Gersen from Jack Vance's The Demon Princes cycle. At one point during a Blood Sport, he and one other player face off against The Dragon. Gersen has a number of cheating options available. What does he do? Make a deal with the other player to split the prize, and team up.
Arthur Dent has a moment of Pacifist Pragmatism in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He finds Trillian and Thor canoodling at a party, and challenges the later to step outside for a fight. The party was taking place in an airborne building. This version of Thor can't fly. Of course, there might've been a porch outside, but Arthur locks the door when he leaves and suggests everyone nip out the back. It later turned out he survived.
Present in The Pyrates in the form of Colonel Thomas Blood, skilled swordsman and master shin-kicker. His dirty fighting is enough to let him keep up with classical master (and deliberate Canon Sue) Long Ben Avery, despite being slower, weaker, and far less fit. Also averted by pirate swordmaster Black Bilbo:
Avery, on t'other hand, is a genius, as we know, and younger and fitter — but then again, Bilbo has the experience, and knows lots of tricks — but curiously enough, black scoundrel though he is, the thought of using them never crosses his mind.
Don Quixote: Alonso Quixano admires famous Knight Bernardo del Carpio because he defeated Roldan (in an alternative legend to the Song of Roland) because, instead of attacking Roldan the Enchanted with a sword, Bernardo just strangled him. Part I, Chapter 1:
"He thought more of Bernardo del Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of enchantments, availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he strangled Antaeus the son of Terra in his arms. "
In Fate/zero, the prequel novels to the Visual Novel, Fate/stay night, Kiritsugu Emiya is basically revealed to be the god of combat pragmatists, if said god was injected with extra pragmatism steroids. Rather than duel his fellow magi in spells or face them openly with his Servant, Kiritsugu prefers to use his powerful Servant as little more than a decoy in order to draw out the enemy Masters and then uses an arsenal of modern weaponry to ruthlessly murder them. During the course of his hunting spree, Kiritsugu resorts to sniping enemy masters, demolishing buildings with explosives, taking a hostage to force an enemy master to forfeit (and then has him gunned down afterwards, just to be safe), and choosing as his primary weapon a special gun specifically designed to kill magi.
Quite a few of the characters in the Honorverse. At one point, Honor has to meet a pirate captain in person to arrange the release of hostages he is holding. Knowing that he will scan her for energy weapons, she simply brings along a semi-automatic handgun (of a model that went out of style millenia before the story takes place) and plugs him and his body guards the moment they let their guard down.
The novel Party Line by A. Bates averts this; when the male protagonist goes to a self-defense class, the instructor emphatically tells the students to go for the eyes, ears, throat, etc. When the protagonist happens upon a kidnapper later, he does precisely that. When he wakes up, he finds out that it didn't work because the kidnapper was the self-defense instructor.
James Patterson's Alex Cross novel Kiss the Girls has a woman who takes self-defense classes, with the Groin Attack recommended. When Casanova abducts her, she kicks him in the nuts. Unfortunately, Casanova was wearing protection. Because he had been watching her go to her self-defense classes.
From the same author as The Dresden Files above, Codex Alera is set in a land where everyone has access to what are basically elemental Pokémon, and the main character is the one kid who doesn't. As a result, he's had to rely on his wits where most people use brute force. For example, salt dispels wind "furies", wild or tame. So he specifically carries around rock salt should he encounter some wild ones, and gives his uncle the idea to use rock-salt arrowheads, which are very useful against aerial attackers using wind furies to fly. By the fifth book, he's pretty well known for winning apparently hopeless fights.
The Vord Queen, the Big Bad of the series, is even more of a pragmatist than Tavi. She expresses her disappointment over the fact that she can't kill refugees because soldiers are covering their escape. When it's pointed out that every able man is already fighting, the Queen points out that the elderly civilians can bring experience, the women can bear young, and the children will grow up to be her enemies. That clears "pragmatism" and goes straight into "sociopathy".
Skulduggery Pleasant has three usual weapons; his fists, a fire spell, and his revolver. Given the heavy The Dresden Files influence, a good portion of the magical community seems to have absolutely no problem using firearms and hand-to-hand whatsoever. One exchange came from the second book, however, between Baron Vengeous and Skulduggery:
Baron Vengeous: "...only a heathen would bring a gun to a swordfight."
Skulduggery: "And only a moron would bring a sword to a gun fight."
In The Spellsong Cycle, Ashtaar Ashtarr notes that Secca is one of the most dangerous people in Erde precisely because she is this, borne of her hatred of fighting and willingness to do anything to end a fight as expeditiously as possible. Her mentor Anna did that, too.
In the Dale Brown novel Executive Intent, the Chinese are this in their attack on Mogadishu. Some guy firing on their troops from a building? Most forces would try to storm the building and get into risky room clearing. Screw that. They level the whole damn building. Doesn't matter if you're a militiaman/pirate/gangster or really just a civilian - you make the mistake of gathering in a group that could be remotely construed as a regrouping squad, they'll mow you all down and let Chairman Mao sort out the dead.
Live Action TV
In a pirate themed episode of Married... with Children, Captain Courage (Al) and Rubio the Cruel (Steve) are sword fighting for Scarlett's (Peg) freedom, Rubio boasts, "How can you think to beat me? I was taught swordfighting by the finest teachers of the finest schools in Europe!" Courage simply says: "Oh yeah, I learned in the streets!" and knees Rubio in the nads, winning the battle.
Bud also applies this trope on a few occasions. When he gets into his first barfight at the nudie bar, a seasoned veteran decides to give the "rookie" a free shot. Bud immediately smashes him over the head with a chair, which makes Al very proud.
Michael Westen in Burn Notice. As he explains in the Season 3 episode, "Friends and Family", "Spies are not trained to fight fair. Spies are trained to win." He always explains via voice-over what he's doing and why he's doing it. For example, in a car chase, he explains that small-caliber weapons can't penetrate the engine block, so it's best to aim for the windshield, or try to ricochet bullets up from the ground, as it's really hard to drive when you've got bullets coming at you from under your car.
He once used a copy of Cat Fancy magazine to beat up some loan shark thugs. In another episode, he teaches self-protection techniques to a kid with a bully problem, including feigning submission and headbutting
The other two members of Michael's Power Trio, Sam and Fiona, fit this as well. One episode has Fiona showing that she had no qualms about subduing a thug she was trying to capture with a well-placed beanbag shotgun round to the thug's groin.
Sam from iCarly will cheat as much as possible in any combat related event. She ran around with an extra half-dozen blowtubes for her game of paintball assassin with Spencer.
Apparently she's also knocked out a trucker with a jug of milk, according to Carly.
Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly goes here too. Man cheats in a fight every real chance he gets.
Similarly, the Operative fights dirty too. As Mal himself exclaims, "You shot me in the back!"
Notably in this scene from Serenity (according to the DVD commentary, it was created as a deliberate subversion of the controversial Greedo Shot First incident, and was the second of three "Mal shoots an unarmed man" moments just in the film proper).
Operative: "I want to resolve this like civilized men. I'm not threatening you... I'm unarmed..."
Mal shoots him, turns to run. Operative grabs Mal from behind.
Operative: "I am of course wearing full body armor - I am not amoron!"
It might be thought that Mal is still honorable enough not to shoot a man who isn't wearing a helmet in the head, but hitting someone with a from-the-hip quick-draw like that, you're lucky to actually hit them, let alone shoot them in the head. That he managed a direct torso hit is testament to Mal's skill, not his honor.
For that matter, Jayne himself. And Zoe "sand in the eyes" Washburn.
The only person who fights even remotely fair is Simon in Safe, and that was only because he was unarmed, outnumbered, and had never been in a fight before. Simon might be one of those people who actually read the Marquis of Fantailler (above). Though he isn't adverse to choking a guy to unconsciousness with his knee.
He did drug Jayne in "The Train Job" to prevent him from taking over the ship.
And once made it perfectly clear to Jayne on a later occasion (while Jayne was restrained and medicated in the sickbay due to a back injury) that he was not to be trifled with because Jayne depended on Simon when he was most vulnerable. Simon doesn't fight dirty because, when given a choice, Simon doesn't fight. He's smart enough to just slip you something that will make you fall asleep. If you're lucky.
Pretty much every fight in Firefly that isn't caused by alcohol is this trope.
Are you forgetting the fight int he second episode? "Actually, I just said that so that she could get behind you."
Also, in The Train Job, Zoe throws dirt in someone's eyes.
I think the fighting philosophy of much of the Firefly crew can be summed up by Jayne's line from the movie that "I'll kill a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight."
Angel had a few of these, which is surprising considering that it's high fantasy, and the protagonist is nearly indestructible. Especially when considering how over the top its parent show could be. Probably the best example would be Lindsey's hand. Lindsey dangles a scroll that Angel desperately needs to save Cordelia over an open fire while goading Angel. So Angel cuts the guy's hand off at the wrist then casually walks over and picks the scroll up.
And, lets not forget Russel Winters,Lindsey: "So you kicked him out a window."
While in Professional Wrestling cheating to win a match usually makes you a bad guy, several noted wrestlers have gotten famous as nontraditional babyfaces who beat the heels through all manner of dirty tricks. The two most famous examples would probably be Eddie Guerrero, who would win matches by (among other things) throwing a chair to an opponent and flopping to the mat as though he had been hit and was one of the most beloved men in the industry despite having "I lie, I cheat, I steal" as his personal slogan, and the legendary Ric Flair, world renowned as "The Dirtiest Player in the Game" who would beat the opposition with eye gouges and the dreaded "testicular claw".
You can call this a gutless rationalization if you like, but technically Eddie's chair trick wasn't illegal because it didn't require him to touch his opponent. The only three actions that can get a wrestler disqualified are 1) hitting your opponent in the groin or using another dirty strike, or using a dirty grapple and not releasing it in five seconds; 2) hitting the referee; or 3) hitting someone not involved in the match, in which case you essentially get disqualified for being a dick. You can also get disqualified if another person hits your opponent or the referee, which isn't really fair.
Finlay, in his current WWE run, is a more recent example. To Finlay, every part of the ring is a weapon, including the apron (which he utilizes as a net to trap wrestlers trying daring-leap-to-the-outside or baseball-slide maneuvers). And, just in case things start really going south and he needs a real weapon, he always has his shillelagh waiting for him in the corner. And did we mention he's a Face?
And then there's Money in the Bank, a Gimmick Match whose winner can claim a title shot any time within the next year. It usually gets cashed in right after the current champ has gotten thoroughly beat up by someone else.
An episode of Seinfeld has Jerry and George ask Elaine which of the two would win in a fight. Elaine says George, on the basis that he would fight dirty. George happily admits it, and Jerry happily accepts it. This is confirmed in a later episode where the three of them fight, and George does win.
Starbuck in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, particularly during the episode Scar, wherein Viper pilots are confronted with a deadly, newly-motivated enemy sortie, who utilises all sorts of tricks and decoys.
Starbuck: 'This isn't dueling pistols at dawn, this is war. You never wanna fight fair. You wanna sneak up behind your enemy, and club 'em over the head. You see, Scar understands that. And so do I. So, that's why I'm gonna kill him.'
Of course, the most pragmatic thing Starbuck ends up doing in that fight is swallowing her pride and luring Scar into an ambush so that someone else can take the kill and get the glory.
Colonel Tigh took this trope to a much wider field during the occupation of New Caprica. Suicide bombers, random violence — "I'm on the side of the demons."
24 Jack Bauer especially but also many of his opponents. He'll use sneak attacks and break bones, kick in kneecaps, and shoot to incapacitate or coerce. His fighting style is brutal with little or no flourish.
This gets taken to utterly pants-shitting levels at times. Early in Day 6 whilst tied to a chair and being tortured, he waits until the mook has his back turned, and removes the cuff on his EKG from his arm, causing it to flatline. He plays dead while the mook comes over to check on him and then TAKES A CHOMPOUT OFTHE DUDE'SFUCKINGNECK.
A producer's write-up on John Steed, to guide writers of episodes, specifically stated that "he fights like a cad and uses every dirty trick in the book..."
If you take out the wacky sound effect frames and just look at how Batman fights in the 60s TV show, you'll see that he gets fairly brutal. At one point, he rips a lead pipe off a wall and beats a mook with it.
Star Trek: Captain Kirk, despite fighting dirty whenever possible, is still seen as one of the most honorable men in the galaxy.
Garak from Deep Space Nine. It's best summed up in this exchange.
Odo: 'You'd shoot a man in the back?'
Garak: 'Well, it's the safest way, isn't it?'
Don't forget Weyoun. Of the more strategic type than actual throw-downs, but... he'd shoot a man in the back, too, without feeling the need to justify it to anyone.
And Major Kira. As has been noted elsewhere, fair tactics do not keep one alive in the Bajoran Rebellion. Therefore, Kira doesn't use them.
John Sheridan used a distress signal to lure a Minbari capital ship in an asteroid field mined with fusion bombs. Garibaldi put it best:
Garibaldi: "[...] Right now, according to his file, Sheridan is a good tactical thinker. He can take an inferior defensive force and turn it into an offensive force capable of taking on a better-equipped enemy. Now, he did it with the Black Star, he did it during the Mars riots. Now, you ask me, he is the one chance we've got to make it through this thing alive."
Do note that in the incident with Black Star, he's actually sending out REAL distress signal.
Note that Sheridan was merely beating the Minbari at their own game, the Black Star wasn't coming to help. Minbari tactics were to listen for human distress calls then come to finish them off even though they're crippled and no threat. Dirty play indeed.
Sheridan also uses Minbari as his main force and other aliens as a backup in a human civil war. By contrast Delenn handles internal matters in a Let's Fight Like Gentlemen manner, even forbiding Lennier to tell Sheridan that Neroon might be coming to assasinate her, rather then air her own planet's dirty laundry before foreigners.
Cameron of The Sarah Connor Chronicles does not know of any other way to fight. For example, at one point she casually shoves another Terminator through a wall and blows its prone body apart with a grenade launcher. She also has no qualms with dropping a Terminator down an elevator shaft, and then dropping the elevator on said Terminator. Being a Terminator herself and given the kind of opponents she faces, this pretty much comes with the territory.
The Rockford Files: Jim Rockford definitely fits. Whether it's low blows, improvised weapons, or distractions, he uses any dirty fighting technique he can think of. Lampshaded in one case, where he makes sure he has the Mook's attention, goes into the bathroom, spreads soap all over the floor, slips a roll of quarters into his hand to up the impact on his punch, and, when the guy follows him in, goads him into attacking first so he'll slip and be easier to cold-cock. He then tells the recumbent idiot that "the problem with Karate is it's based on the ludicrous notion that the other guy is gonna fight fair."
Odd case in Deadliest Warrior. For the choreographed fight scenes at the end of each episode, if somebody has a ranged weapon, they immediately use it, and it never succeeds in making a kill, typically for implausible reasons (except in Pirate vs. Knight where tests earlier in the show showed that the pirate's guns could not pierce the knight's armor). Note however, that those fights are only for show and have nothing to do with how with how the fights in the simulated program turn out, not matter how onesided the scores of kills are. The fights in the simulator program actually work under the example of the fighters being an example of this trope in Apache vs. Gladiator, more then a fifth of the fights ended with the Apache just killing the gladiator with his bow.
Methos in Highlander: The Series. If the fight's going against him, Methos is not above feigning helplessness (such as pretending to slip) and then, when his opponent moves in for the kill, drawing a hidden dagger and stabbing him.
In Malcolm in the Middle Malcolm, Dewey and Reese teach Craig how to be a win a fight by any means necessary.
Reese: So, once you've taken out his eyes, you can take your time and really get creative. Personally, I like to leave at least one sense working, so he can tell what's happening to him.
On The West Wing, campaign consultants Bruno Giannelli and Lou are political equivalents of this, in contrast to most of the other protagonists, who are more principled and idealistic.
On SmallvilleClark Kent of all people does not believe in a fair fight. His usual strategy boils down to "clock you in the head from behind at 500 miles an hour."
Pierce in Community episode Comparative Religion claims to be using this to try and help teach Jeff fighting, but actually he just wanted an excuse to kick Jeff (and Troy) in the shin.
Gawain in Camelot explains the philosophy of pragmatic combat to Arthur and his merry men. It takes them a while to accept the idea.
In The Office, the duel between Michael and Dwight proves the point. While Dwight uses Honorable Combat and martial arts, he gets easily defeated by Michael's schoolyard bully tactics.
Plus there was that other duel Dwight fought against Andy. Dwight again tried to fight honorably, but Andy opted to use his electric (and therefore silent) car to sneak up on Dwight and pin him against a fence.
In an episode of Legend of the Seeker, Kahlan is kidnapped and kept in a dungeon. She finally escapes after the guards give her a plate of stale bread to eat. She takes the metal plate, folds it in half, creating a sharp corner, and stabs her guards with it. Stay in the Kitchen does not work on this woman.
Eliot can be like this on Leverage. Mr. Quinn and Roper are as well, with the former comboing Talk to the Fist with Kick Them While They Are Down and the latter deliberately targeting a concussed Eliot in a hall of mirrors.
Law & Order: SVU In the Season 10 episode, "Crush", Stabler attempts to question an arrogant suspect in a gym in a boxing ring, only for the guy to tell Stabler to wait until he's done. Stabler gets into the ring, and the guy to takes a swing at him. Stabler dodges it and knocks him down, to which the suspect yells that it was a cheap shot, to which Stabler replies, "I though it was a street fight".
"Yes, by every means possible, we go for the win."
Tabletop Games
Lukas the Trickster in Warhammer40000 is the dirtiest fighter in the Space Wolves Chapter, making him the dirtiest fighter in an army of dirty fighters, and thus easily the dirtiest fighter in the whole damn Imperium. He went so far as to have one of his hearts replaced with a bomb, just to make sure he takes the other guy out with him.
And said bomb is a stasis grenade that traps those caught in the blast in a stasis field, where they can only hear Lukas' laughter for the rest of eternity.
He DOES play up the Space Wolves as berzerkers just so nobody realized what bloody brilliant tacticians they really are...
Don't forget Gabriel Seth, Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers Chapter. In close combat, he isn't adverse to headbutting an opponent, kneeing them in the groin or biting their throats. This is represented by him getting a free attack every time an opponent in close combat rolls a one. This ability alone makes him able to go through fifty man conscript units with ease.
And, surprisingly, the Grey Knights have a beautiful Combat Pragmatist in the form of their amazingly heroic and powerful Brotherhood Champions, who can, when fatally wounded, pour all their power into one final attack that can kill anything. Such attacks are even more potent for their unexpected arrival. Not to mention that their captains have absolutely no problem calling down Nemesis Dreadknights when faced with Daemon Princes or Orbital Bombardments on their own location to spite enemies.
Virtually anything the Orks do. Ork logic is basically, "If I win, I win, so it don't matter how I won see?"
Too many Dungeons & Dragons classes to name. The rogue's "Sneak Attack" ability is probably the most prominent example; dealing extra damage by specifically striking vulnerable parts of the body. The Sandstorm expansion in 3.5 includes mechanics for blinding opponents with sand. Stormwrack includes mechanics for holding opponents underwater until they drown.
Paranoia: The main book includes a "Tips for Traitors" section with such advice as "Don't shoot at your buddy the first excuse you get. This gives him a chance to shoot back. Dumb. Wait till he's busy with something else (better yet, give him something else to keep him busy), then shoot at him."
The Dawn caste Solars of Exalted. They're natural warriors, skilled in all forms of combat. Every. Last. One.
Evgeny Shvarts has a play called The Dragon. When the titular dragon is challenged to combat by the protagonist, he wants to just incinerate him first, but is reminded that there is a document he signed preventing that (the dragon claims he wrote it when he was "a naïve, sentimental, inexperienced youth", but the threat to reveal he is afraid to fight fair is enough for the battle to happen on more even terms).
Spawn camping in online shooters is based on this. Due to the reluctance of many servers to kick or ban a player for their first offense of breaking server rules, players may camp until the server gives them a warning. Even if the server specifically forbids it, the player can always feign ignorance and claim not to have known or can camp again but just a little bit further away from where they were before.
Ryuji Yamazaki from Fatal Fury stomps people when they are on the ground and kicks dirt in their faces.
A big part of Altair's fighting style in Assassin's Creed is his willingness to be a brutal combatant. Included in his many nasty killing animations is punching a mook in the face to spin him around and then stabbing him in the lower back, through the hip, and out his crotch. Another involves breaking an opponent's leg by kicking out a knee, and another has him kick them in the crotch, and as they drop to their knees, stabbing them in the top of their head with his short blade.
Let's not forget his gruesome hidden blade counterattacks, which are so underhanded many players don't even realize they exist.
This seems to be something passed down from generation to generation. Ezio of the Renaissance fights even dirtier than Altair, aided by new weapons of the time period and some new skills (lacking his ancestor's Super Drowning Skills for one, allowing him to pull enemies into the water). He even learns to toss sand in enemies' eyes.
Unfortunately for him, by Brotherhood the polearm-wielding Seeker guards (and possibly other guards) will sometimes throw sand at Ezio's eyes or at your allies, while any guard is capable of grabbing Ezio — leaving him unable to block or counter any enemy attack unless he escapes first — and armored Regular guards will sometimes mount horses so as to charge and swing at Ezio, the only melee attack in the game that Ezio can not Counter with the Hidden Blade. Papal Guards will sometimes use a pistol, which like other projectile attacks can not be blocked or countered.
Although the guards get pragmatic-er, Ezio still wins the fighting dirty award for calling in henchmen to shank people.
Kratos of God of War is pretty damned brutal, willing to stab Cyclops' in the eye, slashing their knees to open them up for attack, slam and throw enemies around and even rip enemies apart with his bare hands. The final battle of the second game has him pulling off an I Surrender, Suckers on Zeus, asking to be executed which he takes as an opportunity to give Zeus a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. By the third game he's able to use enemies as battering rams.
Theseus breaks off direct combat to snipe Kratos and calls up minotaurs to aid him. Perseus reflects light with his shield into Kratos' eyes. Hercules calls up troops to aid him and throws chunks of the battlefield at Kratos.
Micaiah gets another one later in the game, where she shows she is quite willing to resort to dirty tactics like pouring oil on her enemies and lighting them on fire when the situation calls for it. Granted, this little ploy doesn't work so well when the Hawk King decides to retaliate with his own dirty strategy.
The Amazon from the Nintendo game Pro Wrestling is notorious for this. Some of the moves he uses to fight the other wrestlers include biting them, choking them and stabbing them with a fork.
In what might be a Take That against protagonists such as Leon from Resident Evil 4, Isaac from Dead Space wouldn't know "finesse" if it tried to claw his face off. Everything from frenzied curb stomping to strangulation while beating his victim around the head with a gun, the man can and WILL take any advantage offered in melee.
Isaac is less about brutality than panic-flailing. He is understandably freaked out by what's going on, and when attacked, he flails, panics, then gets a temporary advantage and freaks out, killing his opponent.
Keep in mind, Leon is a cop turned secret agent, with all the training that it implies. Isaac is an engineer in a bad situation, he doesn't have any techniques or experience in that would help him; in essence, he fights dirty because he has no reasonable alternative.
Isaac's animations for getting out of grapples usually consist of pushing the necromorph back, punching it in the face and yelling till it ends up on the ground and then stamping on it's spine.
Can we just say it's fair for Isaac to fight dirty given that many of the enemies he faces aren't fighting fair from the start?
Pokémon is filled with some seriously dirty attacks. One of the first attacks you encountered in Red/Blue was Sand Attack, which is kicking/blowing sand in the opponent's face to reduce their accuracy. The second game adds Mud Slap, which uses mud (and actually does damage, too), and Pursuit, which strikes a Pokemon as it's being switched out. In fact, the "Dark" type combines not only obviously Darkness Elemental attacks, but also a lot of "dirty trick" attacks which invariably involve underhanded tactics or maneuvers, like Fake Tears, Bite, Torment, and Faint Attack.
Don't forget the dirtiest Dark-type attack of them all, Beat Up, which works by having all the other Pokémon in the party gang up on the opponent. It's not called the Aku ("evil") type in Japanese for nothing.
The two types of Pokemon who take double damage from Dark-type moves are Ghosts (who are ironically rather timid) and Psychics (whose minds are broken by the sheer malice). But Fighting-types are trained combatants, and don't fall for such crap.
As mentioned in the Pokémon page, Croagunk and Toxicroak are like this, and learn a lot of dark attacks. However, it's for survival, and some of those species are said to be laid back and perhaps good. That may come from being Fighting-type though, most of them are honourable.
The Punisher game has this as a feature. If the player runs into an enemy, there are many choices. Hold him hostage, interrogate him, knock him out, shoot him in the head or just outright drive a k-bar into his brain. One of the many twists is the Punisher distracts the enemy by handing over his own gun, then it's knife-face time.
If you have inhuman strength in most games, it means you will use some kind of sword or other weapon. Of course, if you don't think about using a massive Gatling gun meant to be used in combat planes, like Vulcan Raven in Metal Gear Solid.
Considering who he's fighting, he might have handicapped himself by bringing only one tank to that earlier fight in the minefield.
More importantly, Solid Snake and Big Boss themselves. The whole gameplay in the series is based around fighting dirty, from holding an enemy hostage in a firefight, knocking them out with sleeping gas to distracting them by leaving porn mags lying around. This how ever does not stop Big Boss from claiming:
I'm no assassin. Shooting a soldier with their guard down isn't my style.
Perfect World's Assassin class. They can turn invisible at will (Shadow Walk or Shadow Escape), teleport to you from longer than the range of a bow (Shadow Jump), do the same thing while stunning you for 3 seconds (Shadow Teleport), immobilize, seal, sleep, or stun you while doing probably illegal amounts of damage (Tackling Slash, Throatcut, Deep Sting, and Headhunt respectively - especially Headhunt), increase their already ridiculously high crit rate by a huge amount while doing damage (Power Dash), dodge 1/4 of all your skills (Focused Mind), and are not fun to fight in PK unless you're a really good barbarian. At least the fight is fast. Unless you're a really good Barbarian.
Sword of the Stars has the Tarka, whose concept of "honor in battle" involves walking away with as few casualties as possible while leaving their enemies dead. Consequently they can and will employ almost any dirty trick in the book for an advantage; their favourite techs in-game are mines and torpedoes, and the game's novel has a Tarka commander betraying her own allies during a fight so that the telepaths they're fighting will be unable to learn her real battleplan from them — a battleplan that involves basically gift-wrapping the main character and handing him over to them on a silver platter so she can sneak up and stab them in their backs while they're preoccupied with... "processing" him.
In games that are played competitively or offer environment for competitive play, playing dirty and using mechanics that are considered overpowered by a large number of players is usually the norm. The game usually has a way of dealing with it or they are just things harder to counter than to employ, so they are 'overpowered' in lower levels of skill.
The Elites in Halo come off as a rather brutal example. They are proud warrior-race guys who have no problem with turning invisible in the middle of a fight. They may take pride in combat, but that doesn't mean they're stupid when it comes to that combat.
Humanity are huge on combat pragmatism, mostly because they absolutely have to. Since they're facing such a bad technology gap, they have to come up with devious and unusual strategies to make up for it. But even when they don't, they use particularly brutal methods. The human military has no qualms with kidnapping hundreds of children, replacing them with short lived clones, training those children to be soldiers, then subjecting them to drug enhancement therapies which potentially kill them or leave them seriously crippled. To make the ultimate soldier.
While most of the boxers of Punch-Out!! have rather unconventional movesets, to put it mildly there are characters who use Martial Arts alongside boxing (Dragon Chan) as well as weapons (Hoy Quarlow). AranRyan in the Wii version however is the biggest example, using elbow strikes, head butts, putting horseshoes inside his gloves and later on using a boxing glove whip against you that lets him get a free hit in upon knocking him out.
It's hard to get more pragmatic than Prototype's Alex Mercer. Anything that isn't nailed down or on fire can be thrown at enemies, any civilians unlucky enough to be within range of his wild flailing get torn to shreds, and he heals himself by eating anyone still standing. He is also a shapeshifter, and not even slightly above becoming a soldier and accusing another soldier of being him to get them shot, or taking the shape of a commanding officer and ordering "his" troops to bomb each other, or playing dead to escape when cornered.
In World of Warcraft Rogues are one of the dirtiest fighters in the game. They can become invisible in combat (Vanish), they have several abilities that incapacitate opponents, such as Blind, Kidney Shot, Backstab, Ambush, Cheap Shot, Garrote, and poisons on their weapons.
It doesn't help that players behind the class are fond of attacking you while you're low on health or already engaged in combat, further capitalising on their advantage.
In fairness, players of every class will do that.
Really, many classes fight dirty when their spells are taken literally. Priests can use psychic-magic based abilities to mentally torment enemies to death, not to mention the ability to infect enemies with a literal Devouring Plague.
Okay World of WarcraftPvP players, raise your hand if you've come across someone of the opposite faction battling with something, waited until their health was low, then attacked for the honor points. Rogues need not reply, assuming you haven't already stealthed and snuck up behind me.
Many attack for the lulz or factional pride, but it's much the same.
Players with the Engineering profession can take this to new heights, being able to use flamethrowers and rocket launchers in a high fantasy setting. This is taken to the fullest heights with the Big Daddy bomb, the highest ranked bomb in the profession to date, which does massively increased damage if the enemy is out of combat, meaning that a level 70ish character can creep near an enemy respawn point, let everyone respawn, then hit the whole area with up to 15,000 damage, which is enough to one-shot most characters at that level.
A rogue with engineering is essentially the predator on steroids, able to dish out massive damage using bombs after climbing to unorthodox places in stealth and essentially strafing enemy locations or (even pre-burning crusade and therefor pre-flying mount) flying above the enemy positions with a rocket boot boosted running jump and parachute cloak use (one character flew from The ledge outside of the Dwarf main city to the ARATHI HIGHLANDS using this method.) and teleporting behind the target, stun-locking them until dead. The enemy tries to heal up? Wounding poison can stack enough to halve their healing and mind numbing poison slows their casting. Try to flee? Rocket boots, sprint, net guns, frost grenades, another shadowstep, crippling poison, the list goes on. Try to kill them in a fair fight? Prepare to miss 90% of the time due to evasion, be disarmed by a riposte, for them to jump around the back of you and therefor be unable for you to attack, to stunlock you again, to blind you, to vanish and run, to use smoke bomb and be untargetable inside the area, to knife kite you with crippling effects and fan of knives/deadly throw or to simply stun you then dimension rip their way to another location. Have a counter to these? He just popped his belt add-on, the grounded plasma shield, which tanks 26,000 damage, more than twice the average health of a burning crusade era warrior tank. The mitigating factor of engineers is the inherent costs and that their goggles usually give them away. The exception is that their goggles can't mount their item mod mind control device, so an otherwise normal PVP-gear rogue may suddenly mind control the Fury warrior and send him barreling into your lines. Even very early equipment can be useful, for instance there is documentation of a low level rogue waiting 45 minutes in a tiny pond in Westfall, in stealth, completely submerged, then erupting from the water, Kurtz style, and returning to ganking low level characters who helped repel the previous raid. In short, engineers, rogue one in particular, are among the most effective guerrilla warfare PVPers in World of Warcraft's history. This has been attributed to Blizzard taking away all their sources of income from the job, leading to a colossal lack of things to do.
Danpierre from Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny loves to fight dirty. Along with his pair of hidden-below-the-forearm blades, he will also throw sucker punches during throws, and even fake injury right before springing up and attacking again.
In Spelunky, one of the protagonist's main abilities is the ability to pick up and throw anything. Priceless golden idols, enemy corpses, Distressed Damsels, you name it, he can throw it. Damsels can also be used for a host of things besides the reward you get for rescuing them, including the infamous"damsel bomb" trick. Other pragmatic tricks include getting a Ballistic Discount at a shop, and luring enemies into the vicious Death Traps meant for you.
Some of Batman's moves in Batman: Arkham Asylum easily qualify for this trope. One of his delicate ways of saying 'stay down' is to wrench someone's lower leg by ninety degrees to the sound of breaking bones. That's gotta hurt.
Aside from Batman's vow to never take a life, most of Arkham Asylum's combat is like this. In freeflow combat he routinely breaks bones, dislocates joints, turns enemy weapons against them and generally does whatever most expediently neutralizes the threat. When facing thugs with guns? Use stealth, environmental traps, misdirection and psychological warfare to whittle them down one by one without a shot being fired (if you're good).
The salarians in Mass Effect always start their wars with no warning, either hitting an enemy pre-emptively or assaulting their targets out of the blue. The Codex entry for their military doctrine even explicitly states that they view the concept of warning your enemy you're about to attack by declaring war is insane and stupid.
The same codex entry states explicitly that, by the time the Salarians go to war with someone - they've already won.
Shepard him/herself - a Renegade can sometimes punch/shoot potential problems through dialogue options. The Renegade Action Commands in the second game more or less consist of attacking or threatening suddenly. And punching that reporter.
And now, in the sequel, there are optional Quick Time interrupts in which Shepard can cut people off by shooting them, punching them in the face, throwing them out skyscraper windows, etc. This has the bonus of making certain scenes a lot shorter, not to mention easier. In one case, doing this will take out a half dozen opponents, leaving you to face only one. And all without taking damage, thanks to the magic of cutscenes.
Humans in Mass Effect have an equally pragmatic doctrine - they go after enemy supply lines and the like, leaving their forces to "wither on the vine".
Humans are also said to be fond of Disproportionate Retribution. They don't have the manpower to guard each of their colonies, so they make sure that whoever attacks one is in for a world of hurt. Word travels around, so the human colonies are usually left alone...
Inverted with the Geth (minus the Heretics), at least when fighting other geth. Due to their nature they tell each other everything, even plans for attack. Legion finding out that the Heretics have been spying on the other geth horrifies them.
The Cerberus Daily News goes into detail on just how vicious the turians are in combat, particularly when dealing with a rebellious province in one of their colonies. Since every turian is a soldier, turian military doctrine does not distinguish between civilian and soldier, and in a turian vs. turian war, they bomb their own cities indiscriminately. A common practice in these types of engagements is to establish "safe camps" near a combat zone, where enemy adult turians who do not wish to fight can surrender and move to to remain out of combat. Any able-bodied enemy turian who isn't in the safe camp when combat commences is a legitimate target. This tendency was also shown when the humans were fighting the turians at Shanxi; the turians were not particularly concerned about civilian casualties and were consistently bombing human squads from orbit, destroying entire city blocks to kill individual fireteams.
Miguel from Tekken is a pretty dirty fighter, even having one move that starts off with you laughing at the opponent unguarded and then just punching them in the face for a one-hit KO.
Apparently stomping on enemies is a divine move, as is attacking enemies in the crotch as both are in his Roulette Wheel (which has moves such as God Charge and Divine Smash). The latter is useless against women and Camp Gays though.
End Credits: "Don't act like you don't like the Ball Buster!"
The MMO Dungeon Fighter Online epitomises this trope with the "Brawler" subclass. The Brawler throws sand in the opponents eyes, uses bladed fist weapons (though any fighter class can equip them, the Brawler specializes with them), poisons said weapons, throws nets at opponents, and more.
And that's relatively tame, considering that Gunners are willing to use flamethrowers and airstrikes in the same situations.
The bosses in Dawn of War II will always call reinforcements when you fight them. Particularly nasty is the Avatar of Khaine, which likes to call in lots of tanks.
Kind of justified considering that you can Deep Strike.
Wrestling skill in Dwarf Fortress, aside from the obvious locks, throws and chokeholds, lets you do such interesting things as gouging out eyes, twisting your weapon in the wound, and tearing off parts of the other guy's face. Sadly, the AI doesn't make very efficient use of it.
This being Dwarf Fortress, ways to set up elaborate and extremely brutal deathtraps for your fortress abound, and the instructions for any one of them can be found on the forums or wiki, often with diagrams. One of the easiest "traps" to develop is the "Dwarven Atom Smasher": Build a drawbridge over solid ground, trick enemies into walking beneath it, and lower the drawbridge onto your foe. The main drawback to this method is that the enemy's belongings are also crushed, so you don't get any loot for your dwarves, and extremely large or strong enemies won't be crushed. In order of increasing complexity from there are pitfalls, drowning traps, magma traps, "Goblin Grinders" forcing your enemies (or cats or other undesirables) to walk in circles endlessly across repeating spike traps, and the "Dwarven Checkerboard", which isolates demons and then covers them in magma and water to encase them in obsidian.
In Street Fighter IV, Balrog and Cody both qualify. Granted, the rules of the tournament are shaky at best, but in Cody's case it's probably safe to say pulling a knife or hitting people in the spine with a pipe are probably against it. In Balrog's case, one of his Ultra combos involves him stepping on the opponent's toes to hold them in place before he beats them about the face. It ends with a hilarious "Who, me?" shrug towards an unseen ref, who may exist only in his head.
As well as C. Viper, who hides various gadgets in her clothes.
In the MMO EVE Online, all the most successful players who fight other players will do anything to win, such as using ridiculously superior numbers to ensure a kill. Many will even engage in metagaming where they will infiltrate enemy alliances to find out where enemy players are, what ships why're flying and how they're fitted out, what tactics they use and how to counter them. Some will even infiltrate in order to pretend to be on the enemy's side, stabbing them in the back when a fight commences. All of these are considered acceptable tactics by not only the PvP playerbase, but also the game developers who actively encourage it. The common response from PvPers in EVE Online to anyone who complains about these unfair tactics is that a kill is still a kill, and there is no such thing as "Space-Bushido".
There's a rumour that some players physically went to a foe's house and made noise so that he couldn't sleep, which greatly reduced his combat effectiveness.
There is another rumor that during a war between two ingame alliances, members of one alliance were planning to cut the power to the house of the fleet leader of the other alliance during a battle.
Of course it seems like both of the above mentioned tactics were in fact criminal in nature, trespassing and vandalism, and could have gotten the players arrested.
Intelligence and resourcefulness are the most respected traits one can demonstrate in EVE Online combat. A player will gain far more recognition for using unconventional (often called "dirty" by newbies) tactics to achieve victory.
In Fallout 3 it might seem cool to use melee weapons against other melee attackers or even fight unarmed like a ninja with the right skills and perks, but often all this is relatively impractical when you will have a much easier time throwing a grenade into a room full of Mooks.
Also the VATS targetting system makes getting a kill painfully easy as it is a turn-based system that allows you to target body parts and score better critical hits. The only thing limiting it is the number of action points you have available, meaning you're forced to fight in the conventional fps style from time to time. And even THIS limitation can be overcome by a high level perk that instantly refills your action points upon just one successful kill in VATS, which essentially means almost infinite use since enemies that can't be killed in a single VATS barrage are practically nonexistant past the first few player levels.
Even more so in Fallout 1 and 2 were you could aim at the eyes or groin, with a gattlin gauss rilfe.
In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, you, CJ, comes up against the head of the local Triad. In the final showdown, he tosses you a Katana and you do duke it out with him using Katana swords. Sounds fun right? But this is Grand Theft Auto. Most players will more than likely have a couple guns on them. Why bother fighting the guy when you can just pump him full of lead right?
Kingdom of Loathing gives you the option of playing as a Disco Bandit, who specialises in enemy-weakening attacks. These include a suckerpunch, an eye-poke, a face-stab, breaking your opponent's knees with a spinning kick, and pretending to run away then attacking while your opponent's guard is down.
In the second Fable game, you are sent to find the Hero of Skill and get them to join your group of Heroes. Reaver turns out to be...not as nice as the other Heroes on your team. His combat pragmatism becomes apparent when one finds out why his signature pistol is called the 'Dragonstomper .48', as discovered in the description of the pistol the 'Red Dragon'.
The description of the 'Red Dragon' is: This unique an exotic pistol once belonged to Wicker, the finest shot Albion had ever seen. Until Reaver appeared. Wicker visited Reaver and challenged him to an honourable shooting challenge to decide who had the greatest skill. Reaver's reply was to shoot him in the head.
In The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, most of the fights involving both Link and Zelda consist in one character distracting the enemy for the other to strike its back.
In Diver Down Drek fights like this in the cutscenes. No action is too underhanded or dishonorable when his survival is at stake. In gameplay, not so much.
Team Fortress 2's Sniper and Spy. The latter uses copious amounts of disguising, invisibility, and backstabbing, and the former throws urine.
The Scout has shades of this too. One of his domination lines for the Engineer is "Don't bring a wrench to a gun fight."
There's also the Demoman, who fights mainly by setting up remote activated sticky bombs just outside doorways (where the incoming enemies can't see them) and gibbing whoever comes by next before they even see the Demoman. He can also spew numerous grenades at people, over walls and/or around corners so that they can't fight back. The Pyro can light you on fire and then bounce you helplessly into the air, letting him critical-hit you to death with his axe or simply watch while you fall off a cliff. Engineers won't even fight you directly; they'll just build a bullet-spamming turret and hide behind it, repairing it constantly while it slaughters your team. TF2 is full of this trope, but there are always ways to defeat the pragmatists.
Bayonetta simultaneously subverts and plays this trope straight. Since the game puts a lot of value in stringing together combos and generally killing your opponents quickly, there are a lot of ways to make her fight very pragmatically from using her enemy's own weapon against them to shooting them while they are speaking. The subversion comes from the fact that while she plays unfairly in nearly all of her fights, she has a habit of being incredibly over the top to the point where whatever benefit she gained from dirty fighting is negated by her showy nature. Thankfully, her explosive power makes her make the best out of this situation without much of a problem.
Akuji: Did you really think you could match my skill? Protagonist: No *Shoots him in the chest* I'm gonna cheat.
Shadow from Sonic the Hedgehog is this. Despite having Super Strength, Super Speed , and a slewof otherpowers, he is quite able and willing to wield any sort of weapon, be it guns, explosives, vehicles or improvise with debris. He doesn't naturally hold back against opponents, and also has no qualms against using lethal force against weaker or defeated foes in gameplay and several of the games. This goes against the "Does Not Like Guns" (Sonic) or "Bare Fisted Monk" (Knuckles) mentality of other characters.
Rangers from Guild Wars. They have Throw Dirt which can blind enemies for a period, making melee attacks useless, can target enemies' legs and cripple them and slow movement, an assortment of landmine-like traps, and when the going gets tough, they even have a skill called Escape that lets them run faster while having a high chance to block any attack aimed their way. Fighting dirty indeed.
Assassins also fit this trope. Aside from being the only class in the game that can teleport, their attacks also feature liberal use of poison, knockdowns, crippling, and disabling enemies in various ways. They also have their Dark Escape skill, which halves their damage intake and gives them a speed boost, making them very tough to kill when fleeing.
And let's not forget the Assassin's infamous Shadow Form skill, which in PvP, makes them IMMUNE TO ALL ATTACKS AND SPELLS, while the Assassin is free to cause whatever damage he sees fit. There's a reason Assassins are feared in PvP.
Mesmers are practically the personification of this trope. Among their bag of nasty tricks, they can steal spells off your skill bar, cancel nearly any skill you begin casting, give you huge damage penalties for either attacking or casting spells, completely drain your magic meter, and even send your skills into cooldown mode for absurdly long periods of time. Mesmers are also feared in PvP for this very reason.
Rogues in Dragon Age are built around this, with a focus on backstabbing (especially the Assassin specialty), and such abilities as "Dirty Fighting," which appears to throw sand in an enemy's eyes to stun, and "Below the Belt," which is described as a "swift and unsportsmanlike kick".
The Smuggler class in Star Wars The Old Republic uses abilities such as Dirty Kick, Fake Surrender and, of course, Shoot First. One of their specializations is even called 'Dirty Fighting', and true to form, it can be used to greatly boost the potential of all the dirty tricks in your arsenal.
Similarly, the Imperial Agent specializes in assassination, with poison, sniping and backstabbing as their specialties. Considering that both classes are Badass Normals going up against Jedi/Sith, they're going to need some tricks to even the odds a bit.
Also, if Kaliyo Djannis is around when the Imperial Agent confronts Darth Jadus in the finale of the first act, she'll eventually decide to shoot him while he's gloating. Unfortunately for her, Jadus simply teleports away and responds with a Force Choke.
Several characters in the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, especially Starkiller, who throws in punches, kicks, and grapples during lightsaber duels and can turn nearly anything into an Improvised Weapon with the Force. Special mention is his incarnation in the non-canon Ultimate Sith Edition, where he throws Luke Skywalker in the path of a snow speeder!
Web Comics
In Girl Genius the end of Agatha and Othar's little talk she pushes him over the side of an airship.
Agatha vs. her cousin:
Zola Anya Talinka Venia Zeblinkya Malfeazium: Bringing a knife to a gun fight doesn't seem very smart, now does it?
Agatha Heterodyne: Well, I suppose it isn't that much worse than bringing a gun to a clank fight.
DuPree. The best example is her fight with Zulenna.
In The Order of the Stick, Haley has no problem fighting very dirty. For example, she ambushed Crystal as she was in the shower, catching her without her weapons, armor, and protective jewelry, and killed her while she was stunned on the floor. It might be argued that this is dishonorable, but aside from that being the whole point, Haley is Chaotic Good, not Chaotic Stupid.
Considering Haley's class and the above commentary on D&D rogues, this is justified.
Belkar also fits into this category, being quite willing to fight sneakily with a paladin and either taking potshots or using traps against her.
When he knocked said paladin unconscious, however, he actually waited until she woke up again instead of simply killing her. He even let her believe that she had merely become dizzy for a few seconds. He did steal and drink her healing potions while he had the chance, however.
For Belkar, this was less about being honorable and more about pissing her off. Obviously, he can't annoy her if she's out cold. Not to mention that his plan had been to let her kill him so that she lost her Paladin powers, while he could always get resurrected later.
In addition, when Belkar was confronted with the son of a Kobold he had killed, who was in full revenge mode, he was unable to kill him due to his Mark of Justice. So does he accept his fate? Hell no! He simply hires mercenaries mid-fight to slay him.
Belkar: "50 gp bonus to whoever makes him scream the loudest!"
Miko herself surpisingly pulled this off while appearing to be more of the Honor Before Reason type. When facing a group of enemies, she rouses them all to wake up, allows them to pick up their weapons and even lets them eat first, allegedly so it'll be a fair fight. In truth, this was all a ploy to get them into one group so they could all be hit with the same attack.
Belkar is an even better example in the prequel book On The Origin of PCs:
Guard: You knifed seventeen people in a tavern brawl.
Belkar: Hey, its not my fault they brought fists to a knife fight.
Guard: It wasn't a knife fight until you started stabbing people!
Vaarsuvius shows shades of this, particularly in his/her fight with Zz'dtri.
Zz'dtri: Cheater.
Vaarsuvius: Oh heavens! I cannot believe I violated the detailed rules and regulations we agreed upon before starting this contest! We must consult the referee for an appropriate penalty regarding my heinous transgression!
During the siege of Azure City, Redcloak averts this when he accepts the duel with the human cleric while he still has an overpowering army. Later however, he plays it strange when he is proposed to a fair fight by Thanh, who is held by an elemental summoned by Redcloak.
Redcloak: Stupid risks are just that: stupid. Redcloak: Crush him.
During his gladiator match against Thog, Roy uses discarded crossbow bolts as improvised shivs, smashes an empty potion bottle into Thog's face, throws sand in his eyes, and eventually wins by goading Thog into destroying the pillars holding up a section of the stands.
Tagon, from Schlock Mercenary. His first pugil-stick practice with Schlock involved slicing Schlock, and his pugil stick, in half with a concealed Razor Floss wire hidden in his shoes. Don't worry, Schlock can survive that sort of thing.. His second, against the neophant Chisulo, involved lobbing the pugil stick into his opponent's eye from across the ring. The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries deals heavily in this trope; Maxim 31 even explicitly states "Only cheaters prosper".
Chisulo: I'm pretty sure that's cheating.
Tagon: I'm sorry, did you just say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?"
Chisulo: Thank you sir! Point...um...taken.
Bun-Bun from Sluggy Freelance just plain loves this trope. Some examples:
In Errant Story, Jon Amraphel is the only main character without any magical ability. How does he cope with fighting Magic Knight elven military, monks with Bullet TimeSuper Speed, and tiny fairy demigods? By a) being very good with guns, and b) cheating like hell. Being a semi-retired assassin, he does his best to avoid anything like a face-to-face fight.
Pinton the Pig in Future Pig is definitely this. See him teach it to a student here.
Dark Pegasus from DMFA not only disintegrates an enemy in mid-speech, but then finishes his speech by mocking his enemies for allowing him to do that.
Jack Noir in Homestuck is a big fan of teleporting behind people and stabbing them in the back. Though he is omnipotent, so perhaps he doesn't count.
Winning his immortality by killing the Black Queen with the bunny does, however.
Vriska Serket and her ancestor, Marquise Mindfang have no qualms with using their psychic powers to use others to kill or maim their opponents.
Dave is not above using his friend who their foe cannot bring himself to harm as a human shield. AUTO-HARLEY!
7.) When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."
7.) (Depending on what site you're using) When the rebel leader challenges me to fight one-on-one and asks, "Or are you afraid without your armies to back you up?" My reply will be, "No, just sensible."
11.) I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.
39.) I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
I will only employ assassins and bounty hunters that work for "the money". Those who work for "the thrill of the hunt" tend to do stupid things, like even the odds to give their victim a sporting chance.
If I'm sitting in my camp, hear a twig snap, start to investigate, then encounter a small woodland creature, I will send out some scouts anyway just to be on the safe side. (If they disappear into the foliage, I will not send out another patrol; I will break out the napalm.)
201.) Under no circumstances will I ever, EVER give a weapon back to the hero engaged with me in a duel. Sporting chances are for sissies.
Sensei Ito, one of the martial arts instructors at Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe, has created an entire fighting style around this. He's a little old man with no mutant powers, and he can take down flying bricks, avatars, you name it. He's fighting (and training) mutants, so you know he isn't going to fight fair.
One should note, of course, that some folks - including Ayla - doubt that Ito is actually just a Badass Normal. One of the prevailing theories is that he's also either a secret mutant, or very experienced at Ki manipulation. Odds are weighted towards the Ki manipulation.
And don't forget Erik Mahren, before his emergence as a mutant. As one of the range instructors, he's the one who okays or used to what is and is not allowed to be used on the range. And he is a Badass Normal, and is more than capable of defending himself against most of the students at Whateley - even the ones who think it's funny to sneak up behind people and stab them in the kidneys.
In The Salvation War, the demons accuse the humans of fighting dishonorably by using long-ranged artillery, airstrikes, tanks, and long-range rifles rather than fight the demons in hand-to-hand combat. Or at least, the demons try to, but the humans are too busy slaughtering their Bronze-Age armies wholesale to listen.
Sup guy extraordinaire Johnny Rocketfingers.
Pretty much everyone in Darwin's Soldiers fights dirty but Dr. Kerzach probably fights the dirtiest.
In Suburban Knights, the That Guy With The Glasses crew tries to play along the fantasy scenario, only using (fake) swords. But when the Cloaks use a machine gun, Angry Joe uses his gun. And in a climactic battle, Linkara goes "screw this" before dropping his sword and grabbing his gun, and while Joe is using his SMG again, Obscurus Lupa grabs a spare and starts shooting as well.
Darth Apparatus from The Gungan Council, a Sith, has thrown sand in eyes, used blasters, and bombs in order to win in a universe where his comrades will use only the Force and their lightsabers.
Western Animation
Terry McGinnis in Batman Beyond is quite fond of fighting dirty. In Terry's case, it actually gets noted in The Movie, where the Joker points out that the real Batman would never fight that way. To which Terry's response is that he's not the same Batman, which he then uses to make a couple other points in an epic verbal beatdown. It was even an Ironic Echo because Joker had made it a point to let Terry know he didn't consider Terry the real Batman.
Of course, it just led to the Joker introducing HAND GRENADES to their fight. And then Terry uses the Joker's own joybuzzer on him to short out the microchip, so it all balances out.
In one of their encounters in the G.I. Joe CG movies, Snake Eyes defeated Storm Shadow by pulling the pins off the grenades he was wearing across his chest.
He also dispatched a Red Ninja in the comic by tossing a grenade at him; Larry Hama did the scene as a homage to the Indiana Jones Cairo swordsman scene.
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Season 3 episode, "Sokka's Master" has Sokka learn sword fighting from a Master Swordsman. He's be praised by the teacher for his resourcefulness (e.g. taking advantage of his greater agility compared to someone who is older, attacking from higher ground, pulling bamboo shoots so they'll fly back and distract his opponent, throwing sand in his eyes).
Honestly, this pretty much applies to everyone in Avatar. After a century's worth of genocidal warfare with all sides fighting to the knife, no one really has battlefield scruples left. Even Prince Zuko, obsessed as he is with honor, will (covertly) betray his own country and personally free the only enemy left capable of outright destroying it, so long as it gives him the chance to capture that enemy instead of his rival.
Starscream from Transformers Prime also qualifies, lacking Megatron's insistence on defeating his enemies personally and single-handedly or Airachnid's need to let her prey run around or suffer before she goes for the kill. When he is handcuffed and at Arcee's mercy when she learns he was the one who killed Cliffjumper, Starscream immediately resorts to Ain't Too Proud to Beg and seems too terrified to even free himself. When Arcee, in contempt for his cowardice, goes to free him herself (and then kill him), Starscream immediately impales her in the side, frees himself, and proceeds to beat the crap out of her until she gets her Heroic Second Wind.
Of the three main characters in The Boondocks, Riley is much more resourceful than his brother and granddad. Sure he lacks his brother's kung fu or his granddad's belt proficiency, but he will use every tool at his disposal to win a fight.
An early episode of The Simpsons has Bart trying to do this to Nelson, throwing mud in his face before attacking him. It doesn't work.
Sasha of Titan Maximum has basically one attack in her arsenal: the Groin Attack. It's not so effective against the giant monsters the titular robot fights, but it's very effective against the mostly male members of Titan's Engineering Core. Palmer also goes for the groin a lot, but uses other attacks, too. Finally, even Jodi, normally quite the fair fighter, gets in on the action in the season finale when having trouble beating the superhuman assassin Claire.
The Shredder in the 03 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Even though he has his villainous ego, in virtually every fight in the series he also brings his underlings with him no matter who he's fighting, though he never brings out a gun, but maybe because he realizes that nobody with guns ever hit anything.
In the Season 1 episode of Justice League that introduces Grodd, the Flash deliberately uses this against him. Flash is wearing a special headband to protect against Grodd's brainwashing. He jumps on Grodd and then jumps back and takes off the headband and suggests to Grodd that they just have a fair fight. Grodd replies, "You're a bigger fool than I thought" and attempts to use his brainwashing helmet only for it to malfunction and knock him out because Flash had sabotaged it super speed when he's jumped on Grodd.
The Question in Justice League Unlimited is this, on top of being Crazy Awesome. He does everything from smashing computer monitors over people's heads, to running over Darkseid's minions with HIS FRIKKIN' CAR.
The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest The Season 2 episode, "Digital Doublecross", has Jonny and Jesse trapped in a Quest World game that Surd has placed a virus in which creates evil clones of the two of them. At the end of the episode, after defeating the clones, an image of Surd appears to blow them up anyway saying, "You know I never play by the rules" (though this isn't exactly true; Surd fall victim to Bond Villain Stupidity throughout the series.)
In the Season 2 episode, "Thoughtscape", Lorenzo and some of Surd's mooks break into the Quest compound and capture Race and Hadji while Jonny, Jesse, and Benton are trapped in Quest World. While tied up, Race says to Lorenzo, "Too bad you don't have the guts to face me man to man", however, Lorenzo knows better and doesn't let it bruise his ego, instead just firing back an insult of his own.
Many of the villains in Teen Titans are fond of fighting dirty, but they're not necessarily smart about it. Of course, they're balanced out by Slade and Red X, both of whom are skilled, intelligent, and very well-versed in ignoring the rules of combat etiquette. Slade is a top contender for the title of the most outright dangerous enemy the Titans have ever fought, and Red X flat-out curbstomped the Titans in his first (real) fight against them; on top of that, they never did defeat or catch him. Robin is usually a combat pragmatist, which makes sense considering who trained him.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold gives us Wong Fei's most important lesson: "When outmatched...cheat." Batman proved an...adept pupil, to say the least.
Contrary to the common wisdom, it usually is a good idea to bring a knife in a gun fight, if the distances are 30 ft or less. A running man will cover that distance in 1.5 seconds. At that time the gunman will get one aimed or two haphazard shots. If the gunman misses or doesn't hit the knifeman on head, spine or pelvis, he is very likely to get stabbed. A one-and-half inch deep knife wound anywhere on the body is usually lethal. If the distances are 20 ft or less, the knifeman will win 9 encounters out of 10.
One of the better examples is a Self-Defense class. Since other forms of martial arts are either done for discipline or fitness, they tend to be much more elaborate. Since self-defense classes are done simply to save your life, they prune away all the extra bits and basically boil it down to "Kick them in the crotch/poke them in the eye and run the hell away."
Humanity's advancement is a decent amount of testament to this trope, honestly. If there's no way you can kill a larger animal with your bare hands, use a sharp rock. When your opponents are using sharp rocks, lash a sharp rock to a stick to create a spear. When your opponents are using spears, throw the spear, making it a javelin. When your opponents are using javelins, attach feathers and shoot them out of a bow, making them arrows. And so on...
Miyamoto Musashi. Musashi probably would have used a gun if he had one available and the other guy didn't. "Fight FAIR!" is never really emphasized in his book.
He'd have been willing to use a gun as though it were surprising. History shows that Samurai generally were pretty pragmatic on this and many other points.
He killed people in sword duels. Other traditional samurai weapons like spears, naginata, longbows, armies of particularly disgruntled and dishonorable peasants, rifles and ninja weren't really appropriate. People ended up dead because he was incredibly Badass.
Read his book. Any weapon was appropriate; being limited to swords is the only thing that wasn't. "Bows, guns [they did have them then], spears and halberds are all warriors' equipment." Specifically, "from inside fortifications, the gun has no equal among weapons. It is the supreme weapon on the field before the ranks clash, but once swords are crossed the gun becomes useless." They weren't very good at that time.
You hear about how Musashi deliberately showed up late to his duel with Kojiro? in order to psychologically unnerve him? People are still debating whether or not, in doing so, Musashi "cheated."
The legend goes that he not only showed up late, but came with a wooden sword and looked about as well-kept as a hobo. This made Kojiro so mad he began screaming out insults, which Musashi just laughed at. This continued to piss off Kojiro so much that he blindly charged at Musashi, who proceeded to knock him down and kill him with a blow to the ribs. Kojiro's supporters—watching the fight—were so incensed that they tried to kill Musashi for his dishonorable conduct right there and then, forcing Musashi to run for his life.
His first kill was at the age of 13, when he signed up for a duel with a swordsman who came to the local village looking for duels. When his uncle found out, he arranged to formally apologize to the swordsman for wasting his time. As said uncle was apologizing, the young Musashi charged him with a bo (also called a quarterstaff or "a 6-foot-long stick"), knocked him to the ground, dazed him with a blow to the head, and then beat him to death. That is not how duels are typically supposed to go.
Believe it or not, Bruce Lee. His personally-developed fighting-style, Jeet Kune Do, is based on the philosophy of doing 'whatever it takes' to win. In one apocryphal case, during a sparring-match, he was pinned by a judo practitioner who asked what he'd do if this was a real fight. He responded, "Bite you, of course." Basically, he acknowledges that, if you're fighting for real, you use everything at your disposal, including crotch kicks, eye-gouges, hair-pulling and biting. Of course, he was also perfectly capable of fighting 'by the rules' for martial-arts tournaments and movies, but that's another matter.
Bruce Lee was actually quite the combat pragmatist and was never shy about how he felt about martial arts skills vs. guns, and even asked a few times if he could use one in his movies. Let's be perfectly clear here, given the choice between showing off his well-earned skills and shooting someone in a real fight, one of the greatest martial arts masters of all time would opt for the gun.
There exist numerous martial arts systems in real life based on similar precepts - MCMAP (developed for the Marines), Krav Maga (Israeli Mossad), Systema (KGB), and Kajukenbo for some examples. Even Karate - hardly a new martial art - includes eye-gouging, a multitude of groin attacks, ear rips (it's as painful as it sounds) and even pinching the inner thigh.
Ninjutsu is a lot like this. For all the talk of ninjas, it's often forgotten that ninjutsu means not being seen, and, if you are seen, coming up with a way to get away quickly. There's a lot of emphasis on blinding one's opponent.
Also completely inverted by police and (to a lesser extent) military combat programmes, where your own survival is not the priority and therefore dirty fighting is usually discarded (it's more useful for staying alive than "honourable" fighting, but improvisation is generally less effective at hurting or subduing the enemy).
This appears to be a Cyclic Trope. During dangerous times fighters develop brutally effective fighting styles, then peaceful times come. During peaceful times the fighting styles start to become more showy and flashy, more to make an artful scene than to harm an opponent. Dangerous times return and new fighters develop new styles by taking the old styles and cutting-out all the Kruft. This scales up to whole armies, some of which have been much better at looking good in parades than winning battles.
A particular subversion is also often found in martial arts: the most effective fighters are the ones who get to spend the most time training, which means that fighting styles exclusively consisting of crushed throats and gouged eyes will not produce very many fighters who actually know how to even apply the moves, or what will (or probably won't) happen when they try. Fighting styles with a heavy emphasis on decidedly non-lethal and even non-damaging techniques, such as Judo, can be practised to perfection with live, resisting opponents before betting one's life on them.
It's not as if sport martial artists are unaware of cheap shots and dirty tricks. Fridge Logic would dictate that there is a damned good reason why such events have rules in the first place.
A longtime boxing legend was that Mickey Walker, a champion at welterweight and middleweight, pulled this on Harry Greb, a middleweight champion many experts pick as one of history's greatest boxers. After losing to Greb in a championship bout, the two bumped into each other later in a bar. They drank together for awhile until Walker made some comments about Greb's dirty and unsportsmanlike conduct in the ring, which Greb countered by offering to fight for real outside. The original story goes that while the two were standing in the street Walker waited until Greb was tied up in taking off his jacket and vest, and then hit Greb with a monster shot while Greb was constrained. This version of events was repeated for a long time, until about 30 years later Walker, then a painter long since retired from the sport, admitted that it was a wild exaggeration of events, and the fight was stopped before it started when a bystander separated the two.
In a Pankration Tournament, Frank Shamrock was fighting Bas Rutten. In that tournament, anyone hitting their opponent in the face was docked points. Frank's answer in a hold he couldn't escape? Keep making faces at Bas until Bas couldn't resist anymore and hits him.
Frank fought Bas in a Pancrase match, which was a shoot form of Japanese pro wrestling (unscripted, no predetermined endings, essentially MMA) where it was illegal to punch someone in the head with a closed fist. Open handed strikes were allowed. Frank made faces to annoy Bas but it was not done in order to force Bas into breaking the rules, which Bas did not.
Bas himself knows a thing (or twenty) about fighting dirty.
Then there are the Very-Not-Combat sports which almost anything is done when the ref isn't looking. Water polo gets really bad as half the game is just acting—you "draw a foul" and "draw an ejection" even when you weren't being hurt, and if you *are* getting hurt the ref probably won't call it because that would be "rewarding" you for not being able to play. At least, that's what the refs from California and Canada do.
To quote a Karate instructor: "No, we don't practice roundhouse kicks as defense. We do them so we can learn how to respond to them if someone does it to you, but as actual self-defense? Would you punch someone in the foot? Sounds silly, doesn't it? So why would you kick someone in the face? Just punch them in the face, your hands are closer."
In tae kwon do, there are many kicks, but when one actually spars, most of the fancier kicks are left alone. In fact, most of the kicks would be simply to get the opponent to move farther away when they're close enough to punch you so that you can punch them instead. Punches to the head are considered illegal moves in tournament sparring, but in normal sparring, they are better because it's harder to block punches to the head.
To give a good idea of what we're talking about, in a typical non-tournament rules spare in Tae Kwon Do, a person will only use 3 different kicks: a round, or roundhouse, kick (used to set up combinations), a front snap kick (used to push opponents away, or slip between a guard) and a side kick (a powerful kick used at the end of combinations) and that's it. Where Tae Kwon Do kicks are useful is when multiple of them are thrown without putting one's leg down. In other words that "impractical" roundhouse kick mentioned above becomes far more practical when hit with many of them, at fast speeds, from multiple angles.
Practical use of Tae Kwon Do (like in a situation where you could really get killed) utilizes kicks to the knees (which will snap the kneecap) and the side kick listed above (which delivers a strong blow after said kneecap has been snapped). In other words kicks are best used in quick combinations of 2 or 3. Not extremely pretty but it will keep you alive.
Fencing. Yes, fencing. The 'honorable' stuff on a strip with handshakes and salutes is a sport. Its origin is amongst highwaymen and cutthroats who used grabs, pulls, concealed weapons, kicks, and the like to win. Even historical fencing is a cleaned-up game.
Fencing masters of the time emphasize there's nothing dishonorable in running away from multiple opponents, advise on kicks to the balls, and begin lectures on grappling by "break his arm and proceed to grappling".
Classically, fencing was so heavily oriented toward dirty fighting, that it was considered taboo in polite society to seek lessons. Doing so was considered an admission that you were up to no good. Matters eventually reached the point that complimenting a social rival's fencing skill was a dire insult, as you'd basically just called him a dirty, underhanded scoundrel.
A tale from Amberger's Secret History of the Sword vividly demonstrates this trope: an older fencing master is challenged to a duel in a bar by a younger, faster, stronger man with more balls than brains. He agrees to a one-on-one duel in a back alley, just the two of them, mano a mano. When the younger man shows up, the old guy points to the alley entrance and complains that the young guy broke the rules by bringing friends: when the kid turns around to look, the fencing master takes his head off from behind. The fencing master then goes back to the tavern, picks up his beer, and tells the other bar patrons he taught the younger man a lesson he won't soon forget. . .
Similarly, the handbook by fifteenth-century master Hans Talhoffer contains advice on how to (amongst other things) boot your opponent in the gut, snatch his sword off him, pull a dagger as a surprise weapon and how to stab or slice a man from behind.
Predating the above example is German longsword fencing. The core texts and commentaries thereof are mostly concerned with fighting sans armour, but still include large sections concerning grapples and other tricks despite the deadliness of the two-handed longswords featured. Furthermore, the sword techniques themselves are often based around deception as are the motor techniques used to employ them.
One example is simply launching a strike. Most users of a longsword would tip their sword to ninety degree and then swing to complete a horizontal strike. A German swordsman extends their hands first and only alters the angle of the blade at the last possible moment. This way, his adversary has no clue which strike is actually being employed, or otherwise believes themselves to be on the receiving end of an overhead strike.
This doesn't even mention the armoured fighting techniques, which are almost entirely based on dirty fighting. They even talk about inverting one's sword to act as a staff/mace hybrid with grabbing on blade and stiking with crossguard.
This technique is called ''Mordhau'' (murder-stroke). It is explicitly forbidden in the SCA Marshall's Handbook.
Modern Western martial artists who are attempting to recreate realistic longsword fighting (based on what documentation exists, as well as learning from experience) not only use the sword as a mace, but one style involves keeping one hand holding the blade almost all the time. This allows the sword to be used in a huge variety of ways. One or two hands on the handle and it's a sword. Let go of the handle and it's a mace. One hand on the blade and the other on the handle and it's a short staff. Hold the blade with both hands and use the crossguard as a hook to snag a shield or the opponent's sword and move it out of the way, and so on.
So does any self-defence class. Once you have to fight, fight dirty.
Krav maga excels at this.
A good portion of martial arts have this in them somewhere. Many disarms involve breaking the gunman's finger to get the weapon away from him, and Savate includes an alarming number of kicks to the liver.
This video of a Vale Tudo fight between Gary Goodridge and Pedro Otavio. Seanbaby best described it with this quote: "Gary Goodridge was finding more uses for a human dick than I did during two years of puberty. And I grew up on a farm." Goodridge, incidentally, had complained before the match that two of his favorite techniques, biting and eyegouging, were banned.
Goodridge won that match by decision. That match also held quite a bit of responsibility for the end of the "no rules" days in MMA.
Capoeira. Depending on who you learn it from, Capoeira can encompass anything from the standard showy but slow acrobatics, sweeps and kicks to slapping opponents' ears to disorient them, headbutts to the groan, concealed weaponry, tackles, takedowns, and more. "Cheapshots" just before a match proper aren't unheard of from savvy Capoeiristas who see an opponent without his guard up at all times.
Real Life-War
General
War in general. All warfare exists around this trope, as does the development of any new tactics and technology. Despite all the hubbub about honor and glory, the point is to win, and that is done by making it unfair to your side's advantage. Yes, there are rules, and there are standards of honor (or, more accurately, professionalism) that are followed, but even when these are adhered to, the overall point is to still make things unfair to your advantage. A fair fight just means you give more chances for your enemy to hurt or kill you and/or your comrades.
Belligerents can make arguments about fighting "honorably" or "like gentlemen" all they want. They only make the accusations of dishonor and cowardice when it's the otherside doing it. Even if they don't resort to equally "dirty" tactics immediately when the war starts to tip in the other side's favor, eventually there will be a breaking point of desperation in where they don't care anymore. If they don't, it clearly means that the the glory and honor of battle itself was more important to them than actual victory.
Colonel Jeff Cooper on the "Fair Fight": "If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!"
Contrary to the popular image, the knightly warfare wasn't exactly chivalrous. The usual means of Medieval warfare was Indirect Warfare - instead of attacking the enemy army, the knights attacked the enemy's means of waging war. This is known as chevauchee and meant attacking the enemy's agriculture, his peasants - yes, they were prime targets, as they were crucial for producing food! - his supplies, his logistics, assassinating his leaders, and arranging ambushes whenever possible. Field battles were considered as an erratic and uncertain way of winning battles, and most field battles occurred when one of the armies had trapped the other and the other had no way of averting it. Attacking castles and cities was considered as the worst possible option.
Most armies will start a large war doing the complete opposite of this trope, or continue for some time, often using very visual and quite atrocious tactics, before buckling up and getting creative. They'll start to focus on only that which works really well, and to hell with honour and such. Examples being the Prussians during The Napoleonic Wars (though the French started out as this trope, to great success), the Union during the American Civil War, and the British Commonwealth and French forces during World War One (after two or three years). Generally, though it might seem obvious, Armed Forces at the end of long wars are full of very "dishonourable" soldiers and officers who are very, very good at their jobs.
Values Dissonance and Rule of Symbolism can have a large effect on this. What is and is not considered "fair" or "honorable" in war can be a matter of culture and time. For example, during World War I, the German Empire vowed to execute any American POW found to have fought with a shotgun for war crimes because the shotgun was the weapon of the hunt (for game), and the Germans found it insulting. (American soldiers were using shotguns because they were very effective in clearing out trenches.) As for time, it used to be a war crime to drop bombs from the air (the Hague Convention of 1899).
Pretty much every air force in the world that gets the chance would rather destroy the enemy air forces on the ground, before they get in the air, rather then let them get in the air and have a fighting chance. A preferred tactic is to hit the runway first, preventing the planes from escaping, and allowing you to destroy them at your leisure.
Certain types of Combat Pragmatism are illegal by the laws of warfare, not the least of which is not wearing an identifiable uniform. You break the rules, you lose their protection, such as eligibility for Geneva Convention rights.
Combat engineers are the ultimate Combat Pragmatist troops. Not only mines are their expertise, but also Booby Trap is an example of not fighting fair.
There's a saying: "If the engineer wants to get you by the balls, he will". There are - for a lack of a better word - downright evil ways to booby trap objects. One memorable story was about a booby trap that was set under a kitchen sink. The electrical circuit to detonate it was set inside the drain, with two metal plates separated by a sugar cube. The moment you turn on the water to wash your hands - boom.
Combat engineers take this trope Up to Eleven. They are trained in mine warfare, booby trapping and improvised munitions. The classical boobytrap is to tilt a picture on the wall slightly, then rig an explosive charge with a mercury trigger behind it. When an enemy soldier - usually an officer - attempts to right the harmless-looking picture on the wall —- KABOOM!
Specific
Sun Tzu, general during the Warring States period in China, not only was a warfare pragmatist to put others to shame, but quite literally wrote the book on it. It's worth noting that the same book, The Art of War, is still used to teach tactics and strategy (fighting dirty on army scale) to this day.
George Washington was a warfare Pragmatist. Launching a major attack on Christmas morning, when the enemy was sure to be drunk/sleeping/both, is only his most infamous act of dishonorable warfare. Many historians have attributed the American victory to this.
One wonders how else you'd expect to beat a town-full of BadassMercenaries.
The North Vietnamese also took advantage of a day that was a holiday when they launched the Tet Offensive on January 30th, 1968. That was Tet, the first day of the New Year, probably the most important holiday of the Vietnamese calendar. On top of that, they had previously announced that they would honor a two-day ceasefire to allow the celebration of the holiday. Given the scope of the attack, they never had any intention of honoring that ceasefire. Worse still, they didn't attack soldiers: they attacked camera crews, hoping that the footage sent back to America would lessen morale at home. It was at that point that the war really started to be perceived negatively by the public.
They also used many other effective tactics. Littering the woods with booby traps designed to wound soldiers so when the others came to rescue them the Vietnamese would shoot them. The tunnel system drew a platoon of Americans with a small force and then had reserves pop up out of the ground and destroy them. They also used prostitutes as spies.
Egypt's invasion of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Not only was it a religious holiday for Jews, it was also during Ramadan - the Muslim fasting month where war is supposed to be ceased. Some Arabs know it as the Ramadan War, by the way, while others call it the October War. In Egypt it's usually just called '73.
During Yom Kippur it is traditional to fast from sundown of the previous evening to the next sundown—so not only were they praying, they were also underfed.
It's generally agreed that this actually backfired on the Egyptians: Attacking on a day when everyone was easily reachable, when the roads were empty (Yom Kippur is the one day in the year when even secular Israelies avoid driving) meant that mobilisation of the reserves was very quick. Had the Egyptians attacked on, say, Passover, when everyone's either abroad on holiday or stuck in traffic jams, the result would've been more to their advantage...
On the other hand, an Arab will tell you that the ultimate failure was really more because the North Africans didn't pull through with the amphibious assault that Gaddafi suggested. Well that, and Sadat had purged one of his two competent generals for political reasons, and the second had been killed while visiting the front lines during the War of Attrition.
The reason for the crushing defeat of the French by the English during the Battle of Crécy.
Various battles of the Hundred Years War, particularly Agincourt, have earned this reputation for the English. The French expected a civilized battle with knights on horseback and everything, and the English just shot a lot of arrows at them. Whether that's the reality or not, the reputation still stands.
Actually at Agincourt, the French attacked on foot. The original battle plan was about dismounted knights attacking on foot at center, then when the battle was engaged, the mounted knights attacking at flanks, performing an envelopment operation, and a local knight, Isembard d'Agincourt, attacking at the English rear with his retinue as he knew the local pathways. Because of extremely bad leadership, rain which had turned the fields into mud and that Isembard d'Agincourt was more interested in looting the English baggage than fighting, it all ended up in Total Snafu.
"Knightly"? Definitely. Civilized? Not so much. Many times the French lost battles because their just so proud cavalry charged over their own infantry and crossbowmen making the fight actually easier for the English. But hey, turns out France had reserves. Many reserves. And from 1400 onward, also lots of gunpowder weapons.
This happened just twice - at Crecy 1346 and Agincourt 1415. The reason why the English prevailed was that they just had better discipline and better generals. The French eventually learned this, abolished the feudal army and set up a professional army consisting of competent professionals - knights, infantry and artillery.
Legendary Vietnam-era Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock demonstrated this when he was sent to one camp that was being constantly harassed by a good enemy sniper. After observing the terrain and seeing where the enemy's targets were when shot, he figured out where the sniper had to be shooting from. Does he then go into the field to engage in a sniper duel, an honourable clash between two expert warriors? No. He sets up a rocket that's targeted at the sniping position and waits. The next time the sniper attacks, the rocket is fired, and it starts raining sniper chunks.
Did you seriously just say "sniper duel"? Everything about snipers fall under this trope, starting with their very existence.
Standard doctrine for dealing with snipers involves artillery fire.
The US Navy is developing a railgun designed to fire projectiles at Mach 8 and sink a cruiser or aircraft carrier from 400 miles away. Said one of the officers on the project, "I don't ever want to see our boys in a fair fight".
How about the Gunboat? Think of this much firepower in something that can actually sail up the James River should the need arise.
American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, rather than fight it out on the battlefield, had the idea to devastate the South's economy by pillaging and burning everything from Atlanta to Savannah up to Richmond. It worked almost too well. It took years to rebuild the South's economy after the war. Arguably his actions brought the war to an end earlier, which was his justification.
In the process, he more or less invented the modern understanding of total war: if they're giving you everything they've got, then everything they've got is fair game. Since most of that stuff is behind their lines, this wasn't very useful in most wars in later years...until World War II, where you could fly over enemy lines if you had air superiority. Lo-and-behold, we now have strategic bombing.
This concept is Older Than Print. The warfare during the Age of Chivalry wasn't particularly chivalrous; rather than risking troops on field battles, knights far rather waged war by attrition - by fighting the enemy's ability to fight rather than his forces. That meant killing his peasants, burning his crops and devastating his countryside.
The Marine Corps Line Combat program is all about disabling, crippling, and killing your enemy as viciously and quickly as possible. Examples: crushing a throat, breaking the Achilles tendon, then driving your heel into their sternum, then finally crushing their face with your boot.
Marine Corps Line Combat is deprecated. Even people who used to teach it acknowledge its NON pragmatism compared to the MCMAP, which is essentially MMA.
Line Combat wasn't pragmatic because it only taught killing attacks. There were no provisions for non-lethal takedowns, which modern warfare often requires.
Richard Marcinko, U.S Navy SEAL. He wrote in his book Rogue Warrior how he was sitting in the Pentagon during Operation Eagle Claw, the 1980 failed attempt to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. Everything went wrong, including a bus full of Iranian civilians accidentally showing up at the landing zone. When the men at the landing zone asked what to do about the civilians, Marchinko said, "Kill them". He got some strange looks for that from his fellow soldiers. Needless to say, they weren't killed.
In fact, one of his Ten Commandments of Spec War is: "There Are No Rules - Win At All Costs".
Naval mines are the main weapon of the Finnish Navy. Likewise, Finnish warships are basically examples of Glass Cannon - armed as heavily as possible for their size and intended to retreat in the safety of the archipelago immediately once they have delivered their payload. Hiding behind an island is a far better idea than going and exchanging shots in the open.
This argument has long been used as the defense for the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, given the choice between (a) killing high numbers of Japanese instantly and convincing the Japanese to surrender quickly or (b) killing even more of them (possibly all of them, as they had declared they would fight to the last) as well as the predicted one million US casualties over the two years that Operation Downfall was predicted to take.
This was also the reason behind the US fire bombing of Tokyo, which in turn brings up another interpretation of this argument. In March of 1945, the US conducted a bombing raid on Tokyo. By itself this was nothing special, as the US had been bombing Tokyo continuously throughout the war, however what was special was the weapon they were using; napalm, a brand new weapon at the time. Keep in mind that most of the buildings in Tokyo at this time were made of wood and tar paper. When napalm was dropped all over the city, it didn't just burn; it incinerated. Over 100,000 Japanese were killed in one night, more than were killed at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet this incident gets considerably less attention than the atomic bombings which brings up issues of morality; is it really more wrong to use one extremely powerful weapon to instantly kill large numbers of people than it is to use less powerful weapons to kill the same amount of, or even more, people over a period of time?
Likewise, the Japanese were certainly no strangers to these tactics during the war. This was the reasoning behind the Pearl Harbor attack, both the attack being by surprise and the way the Japanese didn't break off diplomatic relations with the US until minutes before the attack began. During the war, the Japanese used extremely aggressive tactics against Allied troops; booby traps, suicide bombings, kamikaze attacks, pretending to surrender, using civilians as shields, attaching bombs to civilians, and telling their civilians that the Allies would do horrible things to them if they were taken prisoners. It's no wonder that the Allied invasion of Japan was estimated to take another two years and one million Allied casualties.
Russian militaries have used their country's harsh winter, immense size, and destroying of supplies left behind to aid in invasions; from Charles XII of Sweden during the Great Northern War, Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars, and Adolf Hitler during World War II. Rather than fully engaging the enemy immediately, the Russians retreated back slowly, luring the enemy deeper and deeper into the country, causing the invaders to overextend their supply lines, the "Scorched Earth" policy of destroying supplies left behind to prevent the enemies from using them, and waiting for the winter (nicknamed "General Winter") to set in which would greatly slow down the enemy's advance, badly damage enemy morale, and cause huge amounts of cold weather injuries and deaths.
During World War II, Joseph Stalin issued Order 270, which made it a treasonable offense for a Soviet soldier to be taken prisoner, allowing officers to shoot soldiers even suspected of trying to desert, and made the soldiers' families susceptible to arrest. He also issued Order 227, which required the establishment of penal battalions comprised of soldiers with disciplinary infractions who were ordered to be shot if they retreated.
The reason why the Ninja were so successful as spies and assassins was because of their complete disregard for the code of honor that almost all warriors in Japan were expected to follow, as well as the social code that civilians followed. Ninja had no issue with running from fights, catching their enemy off guard and using weapons disguised as farming or gardening implements. They also would disguise themselves as farmers, gardeners and even geisha and prostitutes. A samurai would literally die before being seen dressed as anything other than a proper nobleman.
There were also female ninja, called Kunoichi, who did very well in disguise, because who are you expecting to stick a knife in your back? Not the pretty lady in the lovely kimono, the geisha makeup and the tessen, a fan with metal struts...
Perhaps surprisingly, Tai Chi, that meditative martial art like exercise that old people and hippies do in the park? That's based on a Chinese martial art. Recall that big, flowing, windmill motion you make with your arms where you sink into a crouch as you sweep your hands across and out from you? What you're actually doing is grabbing dirt... and throwing it in your enemy's eyes.
