Those stupid boys and their ridiculous little games. What's a girl to do? Well, if you're this girl, most likely kick their asses.
The villainous version of the Action Girl. Likes dressing in black and keeping her nails particularly long and sharp, unless the story cares about practicality. A popular combination with The Baroness, but usually not The Vamp or the Femme Fatale, since she prefers to pummel The Hero to a bloody pulp instead of seducing him, but there are certainly exceptions, and these exceptions can be incredibly dangerous.
She's usually someone's Evil Counterpart. She tends to enjoy beating up tougher-looking characters, and a man's refusal to fight back tends to annoy her, and the chivalrous guy can end up badly battered.
You'd think that this would be the point where the Action Girl and the Dark Magical Girl intersect. Go on, keep thinking that way. We'll see how long you live. Hang on, let me get my stopwatch.
The Dark Action Girl is the Dark Magical Girl's polar opposite. Fiercely independent, cruelly carefree, and rarely interested in making friends. Just as the Dark Magical Girl almost always does a Heel Face Turn, the Dark Action Girl almost never does. If she is brought over to the side of good, even if only for an episode, expect her to be hesitant about it at best. If she stays, she'll remain more standoffish and cynical than the rest of the True Companions or the Five-Man Band. Typically, the Dark Action Girl will only aid the Action Girl against another villain because she considers herself the only one allowed to defeat her.
If The Messiah offers her friendship, expect her to take it as an insult. The Dark Action Girl is generally immune, or at least resistant, to The Power of Friendship. The Power of Love can soften her up sometimes, but it's a crapshoot; the foolish boy could just as easily wind up getting used and discarded, rejected violently, or just plain killed for his trouble. Deliver Us From Evil sometimes happens, but even then, the resulting Action Mom is almost always more of a Noble Demon with the child serving as a Morality Pet. Though, more often than not, especially if her little one is the fruit of an Unholy Matrimony, you just get an Evil Matriarch. Of course, if the child starts picking up some of her mom's habits, she might become a Little Miss Badass.
For some reason, while heroic Action Girls can fail to live up to their reputation, you will almost never find a FauxDark Action Girl. This is probably because no matter what standards the decade or culture sets for women, villains can break those standards anyway.
If there's no Action Girls on the good side, all of the heroic females being damsels in distress, the work is likely using the Madonna Whore Complex trope.
Compare Classy Cat Burglar, Dark Magical Girl, and Dark Chick.
Action Girl + Dark Action Girl = Designated Girl Fight.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
LadyDevimon from Digimon Adventure was thrown in, apparently at the last minute, as one of these. The only reason for this, however, appeared to be to set up an Evil Counterpart with whom Angewomon could have a Cat Fight, complete with slapping and hair-pulling. They even brought her back in Digimon Adventure 02 just to repeat the process.
Karinka from Steel Angel Kurumi toes the line. She beats another main character, and lives primarily so she can destroy the main character and steal her boyfriend. Oh, yeah, she curses like a sailor, too.
Grelle Sutcliffe of Black Butler is a male-to-female Transsexual who, in battle, fits in like a hand on a glove.
A brief glimpse of Caerula Sanguis' distant past in Volume 9 of Battle Angel Alita: Last Order shows that when she was part of the Chinese Triads, she was very much an example of this trope. After meeting Victor Byron, however, she softens a little. She softens further after meeting John Farrell in Volume 8, to the point that she became something of a Hero Secret Service, at first against Victor, to protect John Farrell's grandson, Arthur, eventually extending her protection to the whole of humanity.
Naruto has a load of bait-and-switch Dark Action Girls who sometimes don't live up to their initial posturing or pull a whiplash-inducing High Heel Face Turn, but the standout is Tayuya, the flute-playing, Cluster F-Bomb-dropping genjutsu expert of the Sound Four, who easily cows her Ax Crazy coworkers, punches out the eponymous hero, and demonstrates, perhaps better than anyone in the series so far, save Uchiha Itachi, why genjutsu is NOT the "soft" one of the three main ninja skill sets. She then goes toe to toe with Shikamaru, the smartest guy in the whole series, and proceeds to back him into a corner and break his nigh-unbreakable binding jutsu with sheer brute force and bloody-mindedness. The only thing that stops her is having a forest dropped on her courtesy of Temari, a BadassAction Girl whose idea of a "cat fight" is breaking her opponent's spine and then tossing them across the room.
Konan of the Akatsuki fully earns her Dark Action Girl creds when she becomes the third person in the whole cast (apart from the First and Fourth Hokages) capable of giving Madara Uchiha a run for his money. Madara himself says she was this close to obliterating him. Though, by the time this happens, she's wholeheartedly on the side of the heroes, due to Nagato's Heel Face Turn.
Balalaika was also one before she graduated to The Baroness.
Come to think of it, every major female character in Roanapur is a variant of this theme.
It's debatable whether Roberta (as of the anime) actually outdarks Revy. Her motives are selfless, after all: Give. Me. My. Morality Pet. Back. Now. SAFE. Until El Baile De La Muerte arc; if you thought Roberta was scary before... This is remarked on by the appearance of Fabiola Iglesias, the Action Girl and Badass Adorable who replaces Roberta as Garcia's caretaker and serves as her Foil.
Nena Trinity from Gundam 00, though she's more of a Dark Female Gundam Pilot.
Considering that Nena has only actually been able to kill stationary (like the wedding) or otherwise helpless (like Wang's shuttle) targets, she could actually qualify as a Faux Action Girl rather than a Dark Action Girl. The fact that Louise eventually kills her in a brutally one-sided fight certainly doesn't help matters. Even moreso, Throne Drei is built specifically for stealth and support purposes, therefore, asking it to actually kick ass is like sending in a squishycleric to deal with tough enemies that can deal a lot of damage.
Also, we may be able to include Soma Peries and Louise Halevy (from the second season on).
Hilling Care definitely qualifies for this, both inside and outside of a mobile suit. She technically lost against the 00 Raiser, but she did put up a spectacular fight.
Subverted by Rosamia Badam from Zeta Gundam, however. She looks and acts like one at first, but soon we find out that she's actually a badly-damaged Psychopathic Womanchild when not fighting.
Dorothy Catalonia and Lady Une of Gundam Wing. The former's a Blood Knight and The Strategist with latent Death Seeker tendencies, the latter's The Baroness, The Dragon, and a Psycho Supporter to Big Bad Treize Khushreneda, whom she does most of the dirty work for. Both of them prefer to avoid physical combat, but when forced to fight, are quite competent, with Une being a crack shot and a capable pilot, while Dorothy is absolutely lethal with a rapier.
Although Rizelle of Chrono Crusade prefers to use her powers to get other people to do her dirty work for her, when confronted by Rosette, she proves herself to be one of these, using her marionette strings and Femme Fatalons to cause a massive amount of (clothing) damage in the process.
Several female arrancars from Bleach, the biggest examples being Halibel and her Amazon Brigade (Apache, Mila Rose, and Sun-Sun), as well as Cirucci Thunderwitch.
Yachiru Unohana was one of these way back in the day. She was Soul Society's most brutal fighter and even today she is widely feared as Soul Society's most infamous criminal. The only reason she wasn't executed was because Soul Society wanted her on their side.
Gun X Sword's Fasalina, who (unlike the only other girl in her group, Melissa, who was merely confused) fully embraced the methods of The Claw and, most of the time, puts up a damn good fight against the heroes.
One Piece has its fair share, from Miss Double Finger (and arguably Miss Merry Christmas) to Kalifa. Boa Hancock initially appeared to be this, but mellowed out over time (though she can still be cruel to enemies). The sole female member of the Blackbeard Pirates, Catarina Devon, counts.
Nico Robin is the rare heroic version. She'll crush your testicles, and that's if you're a prospective companion. Her overall body count probably ranks higher than many of the series' Big Bads, as well.
Sabrina and Lorelei of Pokémon Special. Interestingly enough, both of them have joined forces with the protagonists at some point due to an Enemy Mine situation; in fact, Sabrina does so against Lorelei.
Arguably, Karen also qualifies. She's also a Dark-type specialist, to hammer the point home.
Ophelia: as a complete lunatic, obsessed with taking lives, she even kills her own fellow Claymores. She would have killed Claire if Irene hadn't intervened, which lead Ophelia to beg her dearly departed brother to protect her, while alone in the woods, and then moving to a hateful and (at least in the anime version) profanity-flooded monologue that ended with three F-bombs before "awakening". She makes BioShock's Sandar Cohen seem at least somewhat sane.
Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist. Although she's quite attractive, her personality isn't very sexualised, leading some fans to theorise that she's actually bloodlust.
Any of the Sailor Animamates from the last series of Sailor Moon. Sailor Animamates were the servants of Big Bad Sailor Galaxia, who was hunting down Star Seeds/Sailor Crystals across the universe. They were all once good, but Sailor Senshi become evil when they lose their Sailor Crystals.
The Doom and Gloom Girls, Queen Beryl's last and strongest warriors from the anime, who very nearly succeeded in defeating the Sailor Senshi.
Also the Ayakashi Sisters, Evil Counterparts of the Inner Senshi and pretty competent combatants. In the anime, however, they have a collective Heel Face Turn.
Esmeraude, as well.
Gavrill Madaraki from Franken Fran, the almost-invincible shapeshifting leader of an army of pillaging thugs.
In Attack On Titan, Annie, the Female Titan has the highest bodycount in the series.
Comic Book
Lady Shiva is generally regarded as the deadliest martial artist in The DCU. When Matt Thorne, the Crime Doctor, is on the run from the criminals he has betrayed, he asks for sanctuary from Oracle and her team. Injured and hurt, Thorne sees Shiva and remarks "Holy Mother of God. I'm almost honored they sent her to kill me."
Rose Wilson, aka Ravager of the Teen Titans, is the most badass girl they've had on the roster. Previously, she worked for Deathstrokethe Terminator, one of the DCU's top assassins (and also her father), though she eventually realized how messed up her relationship with him was.
Marvel's Titania is a foe of She-Hulk, and has similar degrees of superhuman strength and endurance.
Y The Last Man, thanks to the premise, has several examples as villains. Most notably, there's Alter and her Amazon Brigade, the (unrelated) Daughters of the Amazon, Toyota, and Hero, who makes the rare Heel Face Turn.
Especially Toyota.
Scandal from Villains United and Secret Six first appears to simply be a Middle Management Mook. However, she's shown to be extremely dangerous in combat, quite possibly insane, and very hard to kill (and it's revealed that her father is the immortal supervillain Vandal Savage).
Black Cat, one of Spider-Man's love interests. Her Heel Face Turn is often a Batman Gambit, her betrayals less an indication of her turn than the prime motivator all along. Though she doesn't need love in her life, she can appreciate it when it's there and remembers it fondly after abandoning it, which is why she doesn't return to the Heel Face Revolving Door by whacking the Hero.
Most of the main characters in the Chaos! Comics universe were these.
For a while, it seemed that Typhoid Mary was going to be this. Then she went and soared merrily over the Moral Event Horizon, diving right into her current personality.
The X-Men villain Mystique. Though her powers don't offer any real advantage in a fight, she's a skilled martial artist who supplements her physical prowess with an arsenal of firearms. She frequently makes fake Heel Face Turns that turn out to be Batman Gambits to screw the X-Men over, and when she betrays them, she naturally shoots or beats the shit out of whichever X-Man she'd gotten especially close to while she was "good" (see Iceman).
Mariah from Sin City. She mostly appears in Hell And Back as a deadly assassin who has a rivalry with vampish Blue Eyes, also a part of the same guild.
In Action Pack the only villains to appear as of now are women, Joystick , Iron Maiden, Snapdragon, and Quake. Both Joystick and Iron Maiden actually get one over on Spider-Man and they both get Black Fox to let them go, and coincidentally it takes both of them to take them down. And though only one actual appearance, Quake still goes head to head with Kira and can hold her own. The only real let down, the 'Faux Dark Action Girl' is Snapdragon.
Film
The Baroness from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Slick leather outfit, tall boots, and two guns, she is a crossover with the Femme Fatale, as she seduces quite a few characters, but her usual MO is kicking butt. Counterpart to GI Joe operative Scarlett.
Disappointingly, she turns out to be Brainwashed and Ax Crazy and not doing it purely For the Evulz.
The Die Hard series has Katja in Die Hard 3 and Mai Linh in Live Free or Die Hard. Both of them are martial artists and the girlfriend of a more cerebral Big Bad, serving as his Dragon.
Irina in the 5th one.
It can be argued that Selene from Underworld fits this trope quite nicely until she realizes that she's been fighting the wrong war.
O-Ren Ishii, Elle Driver, Gogo Yubari, and Vernita Green from Kill Bill.
The Russian gangster, Mona Demarkov, in Romeo Is Bleeding is a particularly ruthless and sadistic example, without the benefit of magic powers or Waif-Fu.
Dracula's three brides become this in Van Helsing. Marishka is killed off pretty early but Verona and Aleera really prove to be quite the thorn in the protagonist's side.
The Picts in Centurion have two. The first is also The Archer though she can more than hold her own in hand-to-hand combat. The second is Etain who is described as more like an animal than a human.
Arya Stark in A Song of Ice and Fire is turning into this. In later books, she joined the Faceless Men, a group of extremely skilled, religious wizard-ninja-assassins. She still only seem to want to kill "bad guys", but it's anyone's guess how long that will last.
Hester Shaw in Mortal Engines becomes a completely merciless killer.
Stalker Fang is at least as much of a bad girl. Being horribly crippled then turned into Brain in a Jar inside a Killer Robot chassis can do that to someone.
Angelina, supposedly reformed murderess turned Special Corp agent/wife of 'Slippery Jim' DiGriz. Always carries an arsenal of lethal weaponry on her person, and has the ability to produce a .75 calibre recoilless from Hammer Space whenever she thinks her husband is getting too slippery for her taste. Supposedly, her more psychopathic impulses have been removed by the psych-techs, but Jim frequently has to restrain her natural enthusiasm for killing and torture.
AsajjVentress, Count Dooku's main follower...cruel, skilled, and a major threat, with a tendency to pull a Not Quite Dead every time she seems defeated.
Rare heroic example: Rachel from Animorphs, who begins as an Action Girl but gets closer and closer to this trope as the series goes on. Taylor could be seen as an actual villainous example, though she generally avoids using her unique fighting skills in favor of psychological manipulation.
Phrygiar Navaris from the Codex Alera is a psychotically obsessive swordswoman and one of the top five blades in her civilization - she normally hires herself out as a mercenary, and has racked up a kill count in the hundreds during her life (and those are just the ones we know about). Aquitainus Invidia from the same series is more like The Vamp, The Chessmaster, and the Reliable Traitor all in one person, but she's more than capable of getting her hands dirty if she has to.
Makala of The Blade Of The Flame, both before her in-backstory death and after she gets bitten by a vampire. Exhibits Clingy Jealous Girl traits after the spoilered event too.
Death's Mistress, aka Sister Nicci, of the Sword of Truth series. She serves the Imperial Order in their war against the "good" factions, a terror to the forces of the New World and a heroine to the Order, and is one of the main threats to Richard Rahl in Faith of the Fallen. Interestingly enough, she is also a Dark Magical Girl, Femme Fatale, and a Stalker with a Crush at times. Eventually, she does a High Heel Face Turn and joins Richard's party, and is afterwards their Black Magician Girl.
Penny from Lies, the third book in the Gone series.
Lara Raith in The Dresden Files alternates between being Harry's Friendly Enemy and a reluctant ally. Being a White Court vampire, she is superhumanly strong, fast, and durable, but still needs to feed on the life energy of humans.
Miss Hakkendottir from the steampunky The Hunchback Assignments: beautiful, thoroughly evil, and considers Mooks a disposable/consumable resource. Extra points for her two half-mechanical attack dogs...
Lisbeth Salander of The Millennium Trilogy. She slashes the throat of one thug with a broken bottle and scares his gang off by acting herself, violates her sadistic guardian and blackmails him with evidence of his rape, reveals her solution to her pedophile father was to Kill It with Fire, attacks then chases down a Neo-Nazi who she causes to crash before leaving for dead, and that's just the first book. And she's one of the good guys.
Electra from Greek Ninja somewhat falls under this trope.
Sarah Corvis in Bionic Woman reboot is to be a prime example. She teaches the Action Girl protagonist just so that she can fight her later. Sarah also seems to like to drop hints, though it's been shown she does have a motivating romantic interest.
Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer is half this, half Dark Magical Girl. Her abilities are action-based, not magical, and the fights between Buffy and Faith are adrenaline-spiked highlights among the series' many action sequences. Directors, stunt directors, actresses, and stunt doubles always seemed to go all out whenever one of these scenes came up. At the same time, her issues are much more of the DMG vein, and she is eventually redeemed DMG-style in a two-part episode of Angel. However, even after Faith returns and joins up with Buffy, the two constantly butt heads, often violently.
Darla. While in flashbacks, she's less action-y and more just plain evil, during the first season, she was The Master's Dragon. That is, until she died.
God of Evil Glory should be mentioned, seeing as she was the Big Bad of a season.
Callisto, Xena's Evil Counterpart from Xena: Warrior Princess. She does pull a Heel Face Turn later in the show's run, actually. It takes divine intervention, though. It requires Xena — who, at this point, had died and become an Archangel — to take on all of Callisto's sins and suffering, thus damning herself to Hell for All Eternity. This removes all of Callisto's memories of being evil, which, not coincidentally, leaves her with more or less no memory of her life after turning twelve.
And of course, Xena was one herself prior to her Heel Face Turn.
Being a Long RunnerPower Rangers had quite a few of these: Scorpina, Archerina, Astronema, Trakeena, Vypra, and Tenaya 7, just to name some of the most prominent. And of course its Japanese counterpart Super Sentai naturally has these.
NCIS: Ziva's connection to the Mossad hints that she used to be a dark action girl - the few images we get of her past show her shooting a guy from the back of a motorbike. She used to be a professional killer. It's okay, though. Now, she never kills anyone! ...Well, hardly ever.
That doesn't make her this trope though. She is shown repeatedly to have had friends and people she cared about. She was killing people to protect her country, not for profit. Especially since Gibbs is shown to have been involved in assassinations as well.
Vlad from season 4 of Lexx. Most of her scenes with Kai involved her beating the snot out of him.
Isabella Gisborne from Robin Hood. One of only two Sheriffs in various versions of the story (the other being from Robin of Sherwood) to successfully kill Robin Hood.
Corrupt Corporate ExecutiveTess Mercer of Smallville has repeatedly demonstrated that, in addition to being an expert Manipulative Bastard and Chessmaster, she is not a slouch in the physical department either, having fought Lana, Lois, Green Arrow, Zod, and fellow Dark Action GirlMad Harriet on relatively equal footing (she had to cheat against Zod by using Kryptonite brass knuckles; still, the fact that she devised and built Kryptonite brass knuckles is pretty badass in and of itself!). Harriet and the Female Furies also fulfill this trope, as did Lana when possessed by Isobel Thoreaux.
Chloe Sullivan in season ten, Collateral, is an unusual combination of this and Woman in White.
In Doctor Who, Melody Pond was one of these, since she was a psychopathic Tyke Bomb raised to kill the Doctor. She does perform a Heel Face Turn and becomes River Song, though.
Silencia Venemosa in Dino Attack RPG was a ruthless bounty hunter who single-handedly ruined two major corporations by foiling a heist on one, a sequence of events that resulted in the deaths of four small-time criminals, both CE Os, and at least two innocent bystanders (though neither actually died by her hand). The untold story of what she did at Dacta Corporation is said to be even worse.
Tabletop Games
From the DarkEldar of Warhammer 40000, comes the wyches, each one a leather boundgladiatrix with a well-earned penchant for murder. The greatest of them and the absolute queen of this trope (to her fans at least) is Lelith Hesperax, who can murder an enemy squad before they can even fight back. She's so Bad Ass, an in-joke is that her hair counts as a power weapon.
Also, while wyches are not exclusively female, a majority of them are. The Dark Eldar value skill and potential above all else, so there are virtually no gender barriers. That also means that the Dark Eldar can hold this trope to every career path, from Haemonculus to Incubus to Archon.
Their fantasy counterparts are just as hardcore - only they replace the Blood Sport aspect with a Blood Cult; they're referred to as the "Brides of Khaine" (he's the elven god of murder).
Pathfinder has Szuriel, Seraph of Devastation, and Horseman of War. Once a fallen paladin, she now represents all of war's worst aspects, and of all the evil female deities is the one who most frequently gets physical.
Theatre
The Witch from Into The Woods placed a curse on The Hero and his wife before the events of the show, practically abused her daughter, Rapunzel, by locking her in a tower for years, and cut off Rapunzel's hair and banished her into the desert. While the Witch had to work with the heroes for a time, she was the first cast member to start taking initiative when the Bigger Bad started killing everyone, and was dead set on sacrificing Jack to the Giantess. Then, towards the end of the show, she curses the heroes when they all confront her, throws away her magical beans, and vanishes, possibly committing suicide. And on top of all that, she's got attitude.
She is, however, one of the more sympathetic versions of this trope: She apparently really did care for Rapunzel, despite having no idea how to properly raise her, and is devastated (and sees her attempts to keep her away from the prince confirmed as correct) when Rapunzel is trampled on by the giant's wife, killing her.
Sarah Kerrigan, post-infestation, in Starcraft and Starcraft II. Queen of Blades, ruler of the Zerg swarm, Manipulative Bastard, and Chessmaster extraordinaire. In the aftermath of the Overmind's death, she manages, through grit, will, and a burning need for vengeance, to exact bloody revenge on all her enemies and establish herself as the de facto ruler of not only the Zerg swarm, but also the entire Kroprulu sector (see quote at the top of the page). At the start of Starcraft II, the entire sector lives in fear of her inevitable return.
She partially evolves beyond this in her chapter of the game, mainly because the swarm is fleshed out more giving her more people to interact with. Very much keeps the "Action" part, though - it's a rare mission she doesn't personally involve herself in.
Valvalis/Barbariccia, the Archfiend of Wind from Final Fantasy IV.
Beatrix, the general of Alexandria, is one for most of the first two discs of Final Fantasy IX. Anytime she's fought by the party, it's a Hopeless Boss Fight. Lani the bounty hunter takes over for the rest of the game.
Larxene of Kingdom Hearts Chain Of Memories certainly fits the bill. She's well aware of it, too - her personal title is "The Savage Nymph", and she delights in taunting the heroes with "clues" that turn out to be completely fake. Plus, in RE:CoM, she manages to martial-arts kick Sora to the ground...TWICE. She's an absolute bitch to fight and, well, a bitch in general too!
Sonia, Ursula, and Limstella in Fire Emblem 7. And definitely Petrine from Fire Emblem 9.
Ashera from Fire Emblem 10 is arguably even more of one then Petrine, considering she's an evil goddess who's really fucking hard to beat.
Hilda, Deet'var, Pamela, Eng, Maybell, and Bleg from Fire Emblem Jugdral. Especially Hilda, who's quite possibly one of the most evil villains in Fire Emblem history.
Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid believes in Equal-Opportunity Evil and always has some female henchmen in his gangs. As with everything in the series, things are a bit more complex with Sniper Wolf, Olga, and Fortune, but Laughing Octopus, Raging Raven, Crying Wolf, and Screaming Mantis of the Beauty and the Beast Unit are just completely insane.
In fact, every female opponent in No More Heroes probably qualifies under this trope, especially Bad Girl.
After being killed, corrupted, and resurrected in undeath, Sylvanas Windrunner slips easily into this role. Unusually, she's often portrayed with sympathy (depending on your interpretation, she could easily be considered a protagonist), and actually doesn't like her new role very much. Indeed, the only things that seems 'dark' about her are her fighting method and aloof personality, not her goal (which seemed...nice).
It is heavily implied that Nathyrra of Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark used to be one. Almost every female drow that shows up in the campaign, as well as Aribeth in the original after her Face Heel Turn and if you keep her on the dark side in Hordes of the Underdark, also qualify.
Risky Boots, the villainous pirate captain in the obscure Game Boy MetroidvaniaShantae.
Menardi, from Golden Sun, fits this trope, although it's revealed in the sequel that she and Saturos were actually saving the world...after the heroes killed them. (Oops.)
Just ask any soldier of Tolbi, and they'll tell you she still fits the bill, no matter her intentions.
Bodhi from Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Even if your PC is a heavily armoured warrior with an Infinity+1 Sword or two, she can probably wipe the floor with him or her in single combat with her bare hands, while wearing less than required by decency.
Your PC may count as well, depending on how you play the game. And the fight goes much faster if you employ your One-Winged AngelSuperpowered Evil Side.
Viconia De Vir is a Femme Fatale who has a long history of mass murder and will openly insult your fellow party members for little reason beyond spite. Only slightly subverted in that she's on your side and can join the party, but she still qualifies.
However, she can pull a sort of Heel Face Turn if a male protagonist pursues a relationship with her in Throne of Bhaal, eventually changing her alignment from neutral evil to true neutral (though she gets killed in a rather bittersweet epilogue for her trouble. Yeesh).
Tavion and Alora from the Jedi Knight sequels. Both are dark jedi and (sub-)bosses.
Tati from Rise Of The Kasai, while not really a villain, qualifies for this trope. She's absolutely vicious and won't hesitate to kill any Kasai warrior she sees. Her family was slaughtered by the Kasai, she once hung out with her era's equivalent of a street gang, and she's cursed with a mark that is gradually corrupting her. She hates the world for this curse as well. Hatred runs through her veins.
Sasha from In Famous would also fit this trope. She was formerly Cole's (or, moreaccurately, Kessler's) girlfriend, and she's also one of the boss encounters in the game.
In Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, if your character is female, Mercurio says something about not wanting to speak of some matters (a vampire being a slut) in front of a lady. Your response is that a knee to the crotch tends to get men talking. He immediately talks.
Jack of Mass Effect 2, a shaven and tattooed biotics experiment, whose experiences have left her unstable, to say the least...though traveling with ParagonShepardcan make her a bit more balanced and less sociopathic.
This can be applied to a female Commander Shepard, as well, if you choose Renegade options in the game. By the third game a fully renegade Shepard would not only beat everyone else on this list, but be darker and eviler than all of them.
Kat in Halo Reach is a case of a Dark Action Girl in the protagonist's team. This doesn't make her exactly "good", however.
Selvaria Bles in Valkyria Chronicles. She is practically invincible, and she has zero interest in serving anyone else but the Big Bad, Maximillian. Her virtue, however, is due to loyalty, not due to for sheer lulz and evil.
Also from Valkyria Chronicles, Shocktrooper Jane Turner. Note that she's on the good guy's side.
The female Imperfects, from Marvel Nemesis Rise Of The Imperfects, would definitely fit here in this trope. Solara incinerates people, Fault Zone loves to make the ground tremble with her seismic accelerators, and The Wink seductively slashes people. All three are fueled by hatred and vengeance, just like their male comrades, Brigade, Hazmat, and Johnny Ohm.
And then there's the killing machine, Paragon, though she's not really one of the Imperfects.
Also, Cammy and the Dolls used to be Dark Action Girls, as Bison's brainwashedBodyguard Babes. Cammy has a full Heel Face Turn once her inner humanity is unlocked. In the case of the other Dolls, however, it's not that easy: they suffer heavy physical and mental consequences, and at least one of them (Julia a.k.a. Juli) has become an Empty Shell due to it.
Crimson Viper seems to fit in as well. Subverted, actually: she's a genuine Action Girlposing as a Dark Action Girl. While cold to the other warriors, she still has a kinder side that she shows to her daughter Lauren.
Jill is one for most of Resident Evil 5, thanks to being brainwashed.
The Soul Series has a few. Tira is the best example, completely insane and just loves to kill. She also killed Sophitia and corrupted her daugher Phyrra into the local Dark Magical Girl. Ivy is one but on the good side... just a good side that doesn't care about all the other good sides.
From Tekken, we have Anna and Nina Williams, both assassins.
Vacant Sky has Sandarga, who Does Not Like Guns presumably because she'd rather tear people to shreds close up, and will kill anyone who annoys her (which is most people).
Cetsa from The Way qualifies, being the leader of the Blue Scarves.
Rider of Visual Novel/Fate/stay night embraces this image, although she does show a nice side — how much depends on the scenario. Her alignment is Chaotic Good. I guess you don't have to be evil to be a Dark Action Girl, though.
Saber Alter probably counts as one too.
Web Comics
In Homestuck, thirteen year old Vriska Serket is an murdering egomaniac- the most violent, sadistic, and remorseless of all the trolls and is considered evil even by the standards of her barbaric planet. She is responsible for the deaths of thousands of trolls, as well as a teammate, and for seriously crippling two of her "friends" (and later killing one). She also purposefully facilitated a chain of events that led to an indestructible demon to be created and kill many, many more people- just because she wanted to have the glory of killing said demon. She's also among the most powerful characters in the comic. Later, however, she begins to realize that her upbringing was what caused her to become like this, as she was forced to hunt other trolls to sate the hunger of her spider-monster custodian, under threat of death. For the first time, she also feels true remorse after killing one of her friends. Her contact with and romantic interest inJohn also helps her see the error in many of the things that she's done. However, just as she comes to the conclusion that she doesn't want to kill or hurt people anymore, she is killed by Terezi in order to save the remaining trolls, as her plan to fight Jack Noir would have resulted in their deaths. As a consequence she has become one of the most controversial characters in the fandom. Later, we encounter Vriska in a dream bubble two years after her death. She's changed quite a bit.
Meenah Peixes is the Dark Action Girl for the pre-scratch trolls. She greets people by trying to kill them and is indirectly responsible for a few deaths in her team (even though she had no intention of causing them). She also idolizes her post-scratch counterpart, who is a genocidal tyrant. She's not anywhere near as bloodthirsty as Vriska was, although just as egotistical and belligerent, and a lot more mischievous. Needless to say, when the two meet, sparks fly.
Because almost every female cast member of Homestuck is an Action Girl in some sense, essentially all female antagonists in Homestuck count as this.
Saturday in Cucumber Quest is a thief and a gunslinger ([[Abnormal Ammo well, star-shooter-slinger). She isn't as evil as some of the other villains, but she definitely causes a lot of problems for the heroes.
Considering that until, Agatha freed the other Jaegers, she was doing pretty well holding her own against guards and Othar, Jenka from Girl Genius likely qualifies. Mamma Gkika, being one of the Jager Generals, probably falls somewhere between this and Lady of War. Von Pinn is just Ax Crazy. And then there's Dupree, who's axe CRAZIER. She routinely attempts to murder entire towns (and, it's implied, only fails because her commanders won't let her) and actively taunts Von Pinn, who can tear Jagers apart with her bare hands.
Lifolei (which is on the 'good' guys side!) and Thlassa of Juathuur.
Kusari from Sluggy Freelance - a masked assassin with superhuman powers who unfailingly follows the orders of the villainous Hereti-Corp executives. Her perhaps even more dangerous "sister", Oasis, is too nuts to count, especially as she imagines she's actually good.
Sakido from Slightly Damned certainly had a history as one of these. She was one of hell's most elite warriors in The Great War before retiring to the ring of the slightly damned. She shows us what she's made of when she takes down the guardian of hell and then single handedly fights her way through the legions of demons to get her little brother and his friend Rhea to the mortal world, even though she knows she'll die in the process. Doubles as a Crowning Momentof Heartwarming
Lazuli plays the role much straighter, and is pretty terrifying.
Web Original
A recurring character from v2 to v4 of Open Blue was Kapitänin Karla Weir. She worked for a 19th-century equivalent of Nazi Germany, was rumored to perform raids on colonies belonging to fellow member states of The Federation, and was frequently called on by intelligence officer and literal baroness Rhianna von Adolph to help her with carrying out the occasional dirty work.
Rhianna herself qualifies, being a highly-skilled Knife Nut armed with a diamond-coated combat knife. Unlike Karla, she makes a comeback in v5, if only reduced to a backstory role.
Winter (the daughter of supervillains) and Cutlass (wants to become a henchwoman to a supervillain), who ripped up the Cadet Crusaders. Or Olympia, who may be closer to Ax Crazy. Or...
Tex in Red vs. Blue is not only the only woman in blood gulch (until much later), but also the only capable soldier. She's technically on the side of the Blue Team, which doesn't stop her from abusing and scaring the shit out of her allies. She is also the one character who wears black armor.
A fair amount of villains in Survival of the Fittest fit this, on at least two occasions, being a homage to Mitsuko Souma. Examples include Angelina Kaige (v1), Mariavel Varella (v2), Melina Frost (v3), Clio Gabriella (v4), Reiko Ishida, prior to Character Development (v4), and countless others.
Blackarachnia of Transformers: Beast Wars is a bad, bad girl, ready to dish out pain by the bucket at the drop of a hat, as well as a treacherous Femme Fatale when it suits her. These two things, in combination, made her very popular in the fandom. Unlike many, though, she does do a Heel Face Turn in the end, though, at first, it's just for her own safety.
Despite the previous having a counterpart in Animated, the far better fit for this trope would be Starscream'sOpposite Sex Clone.
Ty Lee is a lesser examples of this. First of all, she's a lot nicer than most Dark Action Girls. Second, she's a Punch Clock Villain who doesn't seem to have any real interest in evil, other than because she's friends with the princess of the Fire Nation. And finally, at the end, she also switches sides, along with Mai.
Fox is a Heel Face Turner, though it doesn't change her personality one iota. Well, except for the Mama Bear thing.
Silver Sable from The Spectacular Spider Man, an incredibly dangerous and clever combatant who serves as The Dragon to her father, mob boss Silvermane. Black Cat from the same series might also be considered an example, though, being something of a Catwoman figure, she's sometimes antagonistic but not exactly evil.
Probably should be mentioned that, in the comics, Silver Sable is a very different character with no connection to Silvermane. She is an Anti-Heromercenary and Action Girl, and is usually on Spider-Man's side. Neighbours with Doctor Doom.
Inque from Batman Beyond. In addition to being a really effective, if not, really badass shapeshifting blob, she's the embodiment of implacable. Frozen, diluted, and dissolved, in that order, all things that would assuredly damage or kill her and is STILL alive. On top of that, all of her encounters with Batman are usually with her cornering or nearly killing him. She even manages to nearly off Bruce Wayne in steroid armor.
Lazerette and Cerina from Skysurfer Strike Force. Cerina especially doesn't get in the thick of it as much of the other Bioborgs, and has no visible powers and rarely uses weapons, but she still gives the Skysurfers more they can handle when she does fight.
