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alt title(s): Take A Level In Badass; Badass Level Up 
It's amazing, the difference a couple of seasons can make.
"Danny-boy, you've changed considerably... into a badass, if I may!"
"Why aren't you a joke anymore?"
So you're flipping channels looking for something to watch and you come across a battle scene in a familiar show. One character in particular is making a very good showing, doing at least as much as the main character to save the day. But who is this mysterious man in the Badass Longcoat? Did you miss the episode where they were introduced? Why the nagging feeling of familiarity? And then it hits — you know this guy. It's just that last time you saw him, he was a nebbishy wisecracker with the constitution of a glass-jawed squirrel. What happened to transform him so completely? Simple: last time he leveled up, he took a level in badass.
The phenomenon is the opposite of Badass Decay, and frequently just as unjustified. In some particularly egregious examples, a character’s personality does a complete 180 in a single episode. Instead of being the meek and intelligent person they once were, they may turn into an arrogant Jerk Ass because of their recent leveling.
On the plus side, it can be the capper to an entire series worth of Character Development, and, if well-done, can make even The Wesley into an interesting part of the show. And since this is about Character Development, that means it doesn't genuinely apply when comparing a character in different adaptations. See Adaptational Badass.
If the change is a result of a Face Heel Turn, see Superpowered Evil Side and Good Is Dumb. If it's a result of a Heel Face Turn, then it's a case of Evil Is Dumb. If the change is due to time travel, see Future Badass. If it is the result of finding a powerful object, see Amulet Of Concentrated Awesome. This can also happen because Prisons Are Gymnasiums
There is also the Super Hero Origin, where the first story gives some explanation for why they became the badass hero.
The reference comes from roleplaying, where it's sometimes possible to "take a level" in a completely different class. For instance: a level ten Fighter could take a level in Wizard, therefore being both a level ten Fighter and a level one Wizard. Although truer to the trope would be a level ten Wizard taking a level in Fighter and thus becoming significantly tougher and better with weapons, instantly.
If they were already Badass to begin with and notched it Up To Eleven, it's Badass Abnormal.
Contrast Badass Decay.
Compare Obfuscating Stupidity, Lets Get Dangerous, Cowardly Lion, and Not So Harmless, where actually competent characters who have been hiding their powers finally reveal their abilities.
Adrenaline Makeover is when the love inerest does this. Also see Misfit Mobilization Moment, when a group of losers collectively takes a level in badass.
Examples
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Board Games
- Pawn promotion in Chess.
- And likewise the upgrade the queen underwent in the fifteenth century. Before that it was limited to moving one square diagonally, making it not even as powerful as a king, which can at least cover all eight squares around it. Afterwards the new rules variation (orthogonal and diagonal travel without limit where unobstructed) became tellingly known as "madness chess" ("That much power wielded by a woman? Madness!") and the Italians called the piece rabioso.
- If it comes to that, the ancient bishop was even weaker, moving diagonally two squares exactly, which restricted it so that 56 of the 64 squares were permanently off-limits.
Card Games
- This happens to numerous characters in Magic: The Gathering. Crovax and Ertai each take about twenty levels in badass when they sign up with the Phyrexians. Kamahl takes a level in badass when he becomes the Fist of Krosa, and his sister takes a level in badass when she becomes Phage the Untouchable.
- Don't forget about flip cards – creatures that, if you do what their effect request, turns into much more powerful, Legendary Creatures.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! has few cards that tells a story, if put together. Cute but weak Gigobyte
 becomes Gagagigo◊, who is quite badass, but it's not enough for him – with help of cybernetic he turns into much more dangerous◊ forms◊.
Comics
- Just about every single character who comes into contact with some kind of weird Green Rocks that give them superpowers.
- Joke character Hammerhead from Spider-Man got this treatment, as part of becoming The Dragon for Big Bad Mr. Negative. He got a reinforced skeleton (made out of canonical Nightmare Fuel) and strength and durability upgrades. The very first thing he does is utterly stomp Spidey. As Peter is lying on the floor with a gorram dislocated jaw, he says "Why aren't you a joke anymore?"
- KEVLAR. THROAT.
- Current Spider-Man writer Fred Van Lente has been doing this in general with a few F-list villains, taking them and making them into genuinely capable threats. The best example is the Spot, who is developed by Van Lente into a mute killer who's been driven insane by his being trapped in an alternate dimension and who can now only communicate by writing in his own incomprehensible language of dots. We also see just how legitimately terrifying the powers of even the lowliest super-villlains can be. More recently, Van Lente has been writing background stories featuring some of the classic Lee/Ditko/Romita villains in the new Web of Spider-Man series that began in late 2009.
- Spider-Man's writing team is currently making all his classic villains either take a level in badass or be replaced by stronger and more dangerous counterparts (Vulture, Rhino). Doctor Octopus took control over all of New York's technology with his last appearance, Chameleon (written by, already mentioned above, Fred Van Lente) returned to his original ways, becoming a perfect - and dangerous - impersonator and assassin. Electro can now turn into the Lightning and destroyed the Daily Bugle building, Sandman can make multiple copies of himself some of them are murderous, Mysterio took control over the
Mafia Maggia with his tricks. Not so classic White Rabbit has been turned from a complete joke into a dangerous drug dealer and crazy killer and together with the Spot and a bunch of Clist Fodder villains - Scorcher, Speed Demon, Bloodshed, Squid, Lightmaster and Answer - almost destroyed Mr. Negative's criminal empire and defeated his immortal servants and Hammerhead (they lost only because Negative brainwashed Spider-Man and sent him to fight them),
- Grunge of the newly rebooted Gen 13 series is a slightly different example. He starts out as your more than average nerd with genius IQ and photographic memory. And the first name... Percy. So he starts working out, hides his book smarts and his photographic memory, starts using his middle name, trains in martial arts and starts skateboarding. And turns into a stereotypical 'stupid' musclebound frat boy slacker by the start of the series when we first see him. And then he gets superpowers.
- Storm from X-Men is an interesting example; she started off as a fairly strong Claremont Woman, but a bit unsure of herself. After some time with the team and a radical makeover in Japan, however, she became less an African Yamato Nadeshiko and more of an ethnic Action Girl. She still used Spock Speak, however, and continues to do so to this day.
- In the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book, Evil Sonic, Sonic's Evil Twin (duh), is nothing more than a minor pest, at best. He spends his time either playing underling for more powerful villains, or behaving like a glorified thug. However, when the new writer comes into the comic, Evil Sonic gets jacked up on chaos energy, gets a makeover, changes his name to "Scourge", and proceeds to kick his threat level up a notch. It doesn't stop there, however — after a few "inspiring" words from Sonic, he returns to his home dimension, applies himself, and conquers his own version of "Moebius" in a matter of DAYS.
- An even better exemple would be Antoine D'Coolette. Starting out as a bit of a cowardly, uppity jerk, over the course of the series he grows as a character, becoming more likable, growing a backbone, becoming a competent swordsman and even scoring one of the hottest girls in the Freedom Fighters. One can actually track each time he takes up a level in badass over the series, up to his current level.
- Yorick in Y: The Last Man starts as an inept loser who's often beaten up by women (including his sister) but with the help of some traumatic incidents, and training by Agent 355, becomes more adept at defending himself. Subverted also in one scene when a non-action character suddenly whips out a sword in an apparent elevation to Badass, only to be easily defeated by the more experienced villain.
- Lawrence Dobson from Firefly received a Level of Badass in the Serenity comic books.
- In the Villains United and Secret Six comics, former Batman whipping boy Catman has graduated to a capable threat, fighting the Caped Crusader to a standstill in one issue.
- Just to give you an idea how big the change was, the last time we saw Catman before Villains United was Archer's Quest where he was a fat slab doing grunt work for the Shade. First scene with him in Villains United has him, very fit, leading a pride of lions and telling the Secret Society of Super Villains where they could put their recruitment drive.
- In the first issue of G.I. Joe: Cobra, we watch Chuckles gain Badass XP in a training sequence with Jinx.
- In the Marvel Universe, Anthony Davis was a second-rate C List Fodder supervillain known as the Ringer, who was humiliated by Spider-Man before being unceremoniously murdered along with 17 other supervillains by the villain-killing Scourge. A later retcon would reveal that Davis was Not Quite Dead when he was found by a group of agents from the technological terrorist group A.I.M., who were investigating the site of the massacre to steal the technology of the dead villains. He Got Better when A.I.M. turned him into a cyborg with advanced laser weapons and teleportation powers. Now calling himself Strikeback, Davis proved to be a much better fighter than he ever was as the Ringer, defeating the Vulture, Stegron, Boomerang and Swarm one after another when he reappeared in the SpiderMan comics.
- The first volume of French comic Dungeon pretty much revolves around initially helpless and cowardly lead character Herbert the Duck Taking a Level in Badass over and over again. By the end, he has a magic sword he's one Great Deed away from being able to wield, that, if touched by another, will turn him into one of its previous bearers to defend itself — unfortunately, not all of them are awesome, and it can be exploited by forcing him to cycle through forms too quickly to actually react — can't be killed by normal means because his heart was first removed, then eaten by a Bewmew — granting it a soul, and the now-sapient... blob-thingy now acts as his loyal servant and bodyguard in thanks — and is a master of the stick and the feather — since he's a duck and covered with feathers, this means he can dismember and eviscerate opponents completely unarmed.
- An issue of Ambush Bug from the 1980s once listed a bunch of corny Silver Age characters that should never be mentioned again because they could not possibly work in modern comics. Grant Morrison has since made them all awesome.
- Recently in the Incredible Hulk book (the one written by Greg Pak), Bruce Banner took a level in Badass. Proving he's not as useless as people think he is.
- Seems to be standard for a character when they're managed by Geoff Johns.
- Valkyrie from Ultimate Marvel. She started out as a delusional superhero wannabe and a dirty slut. Then, she kicks the crap out of Venom and nearly cuts him in half with a sword and gives a few A-list villains like Magneto a run for their money.
- In Final Crisis Aftermath: Run!, the Human Flame gets tired of being a joke villain and decides to take so many levels in badass that he will never have to run away again. He takes too many of them and ends as a monster so big, that he cannot move under his own weight.
- Deconstructed by Brian Bendis with The Hood – he was becoming more powerful and getting New Powers As The Plot Demands, but was also making the link between him and the source of his powers, Dormammu stronger. When it was strong enough, the demon turned him into his slave.
Fanfiction
- A very interesting inversion of this trope comes from the Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfic NGE: Nobody Dies. Shinji Ikari is no stranger to Taking Levels In Badass, but Nobody Dies Shinji could be more accurately described as having Lost A Level In Suck; thanks to Yui surviving the backstory, Shinji has grown up into a well-adjusted and perfectly normal teenager, with none of the numerous neuroses that plagued him in canon but also none of the ungodly self-confidence or super-powers other fanfics tend to give him when doing this. It makes for a very interesting take on Shinji's character to see him stick up for Asuka and trade verbal jabs with his classmates when he's not smiting Angels with an Eva-scale BFS or a Wave Motion Gun. Then again, when you're the walking embodiment of You Suck, even becoming an Ordinary High School Student is a big step in the right direction.
- Sailor Moon Millenials gave this treatment to Chibi-Usa of all people by having her come back from the future as a teenager and newly-christened Neo Sailor Moon. While not exactly a Future Badass, she was at least as useful as the other Senshi on a consistent basis.
Films — Animation
- Prince Charming from Cinderella goes from a guy with ten lines and who's greatest piece of character development is yawning boredly at the ball in the first movie, to a man who leaps from his horse to a moving ship, slides downs the sail using his sword, and uses that same sword to block magic spells. Not to mention that in the sequels he's voiced by friggin' Spider-Man.
- Kadaj from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children can teach a class on taking levels in badass after literally becoming Sephiroth in the blink of an eye.
- Cloud himself took a few levels in badass in Advent Children. ''First he was no match for the Silver Haired Men, then he defeated Bahamut Sin, and then the aforementioned Silver Haired Men, and then Sephiroth himself. Of course, Plot Armor does help.
- It seems suggested that he simply gained back levels he had lost. At first, he was angsty and ill, but before the dragon fight, he gained his self-confidence back, and by the end he had been physically healed as well. Tifa also spoke of the strength the lot of them had felt near the end of the game and how they had already lost it, except that, near the end of the movie, Cloud had regained it.
- In Up, Carl Fredericksen is a 78-years grumpy, sour, etc., old man who is completely obsessed by his house, which he considers as the last remnant of his late wife, who he feels he "betrayed". He even goes as far as to let the Big Bad capture a rare bird he earlier swore to protect to save the same house (and gets a "What The Hell Hero"). But when a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming makes him realize at last that the house is nothing but a house, that his memories are what are keeping his wife alive within him, and that he never "betrayed" her, he immediately goes from old grumpy selfish almost-Jerkass to happy and brave Badass Grandpa, recovers the energy and strength of his youth, and sacrifices the remnants of his house to be able to go and save the bird. Never underestimate The Power Of Love!
- Parodied in Team America: World Police with the "montage" song.
Films — Live Action
- Accomplishing this may, in fact, be the central thesis of Wanted.
- Neo in The Matrix has many levels of Badass uploaded into his brain, most memorably Kung Fu. Later in the film he then takes some more when he hacks the system and starts to see everything in green.
- Survivor Girls in horror movies usually make this change going from scared n' sexy to fighting the monster hand to hand.
- Barbara in the color remake of Night of the Living Dead goes from fetal position to super-zombie hunter.
- Sarah Connor.
- Halloween
- Behind The Mask: Rise of Leslie Vernon
- Return of the Living Dead III
- Intelligent zombie who turns her body into an unliving weapon by shoving shards of glass and nails through it.
- Clarice throughout the Hannibal series. Starts somewhat baddass and comes out crazy-scary.
- Though its implied that much of it is due to Hannibal.
- More than one Friday the 13th.
- Pasha Antipov, a minor character in Doctor Zhivago, begins the movie as an utter wimp. He's a cuckold, a bespectacled naif, and an ineffective revolutionary. Even his name is a bit puny. But then he's hit by a bomb on the Eastern Front and drops out of the movie—only to return in an impossibly cool scene as the enigmatic "General Strelnikov," a [1] with his own armored train.
- In the book , it's Red Commander, not General. The Reds did not use officer and general ranks until WWII.
- In the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, delicate but spirited Damsel in Distress Elizabeth Swann has become a quite competent sword-wielding Action Girl. This is handwaved in a throwaway line: her fiance Will Turner, the best swordsman in the series, has been teaching her for the past year. Then again, she is hanging around with pirates...
- Even more so when she becomes the captain of a ship, escapes from Davy Jones, and then becomes the Pirate King (King, not Queen).
- One of the most jarring examples would be Sarah Connor's transformation between the first two Terminator movies: She (and the actress) was a normal, happy-looking girl in the first one, but looks like she lost about thirty pounds of body fat and transformed the rest into solid muscle by the second one, as well as going from Damsel In Distress to Psycho Action Girl. Of course, a decade of preparing for The End Of The World As We Know It will do that to a person.
- Another alarming one was Straw Dogs, in which Dustin Hoffman starts out as, well, Dustin Hoffman, in the role of a mathematician. As the local louts gradually cause him more and more grief, however, he goes a bit mad, and ends up brutally murdering them all when they try to break into his house.
- Galaxy Quest: "By Grabthar's hammer, you shall be avenged!" is a level-up moment if there's ever been one.
- More of a Berserk Button press, really.
- However one could argue that most of the cast took a level in badass around the time they escaped from the airlock. Not only is it their first real victory, it's when they stop acting like actors and start acting like Dangerously Genre Savvy Big Damn Heroes
- As a general rule, the less someone did this in The Descent, the faster she died.
- River Tam, though she had her Crowning Moments of Awesome during the Firefly series, levels up in a big way during Serenity when her deadly martial arts killing machine programming is activated at the Maidenhead bar. She eventually goes on to wipe out a whole mess of Reavers in order to save the crew of the titular ship.
- In Michael Clayton, Arthur Edens does this when he escapes his hotel room in the dead of night leaving a message "Make believe it's not just madness."
- In Feast, when all the hero types are dead and hope is lost, the mother who lost her son (Tuffy) "levels up" and becomes Heroine 2. Then she proceeds to punch all the monsters teeth out with the butt of her gun and punch its stomach through the mouth, choking it to death. Crowning Moments of Awesome? Yes, you could say that.
- In Feast 2 she spends much of the movie surviving, but surviving through a Feast movie is a pretty big deal.
- Captain Sulu's 10 level Badass upgrade is completed with the final battle in Star Trek VI. At the end of the movie he's reached full Badass status.
- Star Wars: Luke Skywalker may have set the record for most levels in Bad Ass taken up in a single trilogy. He's a naive, whiny teenager who complains about having to clean droids at the beginning of the first movie and becomes the man who rescues a princess, nukes a Death Star, becomes an ace pilot and a celebrated war hero, amputates a number of bad guys, takes out a giant fucking Walker with a hand grenade, survives an endless fall with the use of only one hand, gets into several lightsaber duels, rescues his friends from Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett, gives the Emperor the finger, and even brings his dad back to the Light.
- And some credit where credit is due: Wedge and Lando, being a former rookie pilot and a former businessman, respectively, took out the second Death Star.
- Can a Cool Ship Take A Level In Bad Ass? If so, the Millenium Falcon counts. A dingy rustbucket only good for outrunning Star Destroyers at first, it actually vaporizes the Second Death Star from the inside out in the third movie.
- If you look at the stats for the Falcon in the RPG handbook, you can see that compared to the standard freighter it started out as, it is a Super Badass.
- Technically, the Falcon was Badass from the beginning. The Falcon broke loose of the construction yard and destroyed most of the others on the line at the time, before it even got a pilot.
- Sgt. Powell in the first Die Hard. Munching donuts and relegated to desk duty in the beginning his gets a huge Crowning Moment Of Awesome at the end when he shoots the final bad guy dead in the face complete with the Rousing Music playing in the background.
- Evil Dead: "Groovy."
- Done to Abe Sapien between Hellboy I and II. He goes from the geeky, psychic Non Action Guy to someone that carries a gun and has enough martial arts ability to at least evade and stall a troll three times his size, if not actually damaging it. Still geeky and psychic, but a bit more power behind it.
- Done in Paul Blart: Mall Cop where Paul initially manages to defeat the Le Parkour Totally Radical mall robbers through large amounts of dumb luck, upon learning that his daughter is amongst the hostages he takes a massive level in badass, setting up a fair amount of traps and managing to stealthily take out the remaining goons with a combination of disguises and using his location (IE getting them to come to the Rainforest Cafe and hiding amongst the animatronics).
- Johnny 5 went this way in Short Circuit 2. After being nearly destroyed, he rebuilds himself as a crazy-ass punker robot and goes on a rampage.
- Between the second and third Back to the Future films, Doc Brown (of all characters) takes a level in badass. The third film sees him toting a big bad rifle, saving (and subsequently wooing) a damsel in distress, standing up to the local gunslinger, hijacking a train and driving it off a cliff.
- While we're on Back to the Future, let's look at George McFly. With an assist in the past from his as-yet-unborn child, he goes from a mousy, cowardly junior-level worker to a highly successful writer... and along the way, Mrs. McFly gets a little spillover badassery (or at least some weight loss and athletic skills).
- Jason Tripitikas takes several levels in badass in the movie Forbidden Kingdom after he trained with Lu Yan and the Silent Monk. It isn't enough for him to take on the Dragon (Ni Chang), but it's still a vast improvement. Then again, it's Jackie Chan (Lu Yan) and Jet Li (Silent Monk), the two of them combined could grant a 90 year-old grandmother several levels in badass.
- In Moonwalker, Michael Jackson mostly does shit like running through a field of flowers with some children. However, at one point, he takes a level in badass by grabbing a Tommygun and mowing down a bunch of ghetto stormtroopers. Toward the end, he takes another level in badass and turns into a giant fucking robot and blows the shit out of a bad guy's evil lair.
- Only through the amazing power of children's wishes!
- The character of Hudson in Aliens goes from whiny soldier to Level A Badass with a moment of You Shall Not Pass.
- Optimus Prime in Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen. Despite having a cool Curb Stomp Battle with Bonecrusher, the first film had him get mostly trounced by Megatron. The sequel shows him for what he truly is. Pure. High-Octane. Badass.
- Rocky Balboa, the titular character of the Rocky series of films must always have a mandatory montage in the films where he trains hard...and I mean HARD. Pushing the absolute limits of his body, will, and even expectations of him...these montages always end up with Rocky gaining a new "power" and thus...a new level of his already noteworthy badass status. You can even visually see his badass level go up. Set to the song Gonna Fly Now, this montage is one of the most famous film conventions of the modern age. If you don't feel pumped up and ready to cheer by the end of at least one of these, you're not alive.
- In the first he gets the dedication and conditioning necessary to "go the distance" with Apollo Creed.
- The second sees Rocky gain some speed and the ability to switch his dominant fighting hand.
- Third gives Rocky a tremendous boost in speed and offense.
- The fourth gives Rocky the ability to show Russia just how awesome he is by training in the snow by pulling chains.
- The sixth (we'll skip the fifth) sees an aged Rocky gain overwhelming power to compensate for his erroded speed due to age.
- Over the course of District 9, Wilkus from goes from sweater vest wearing pansy to badass who single-handedly breaks out of a fortified government facility and then later choses to break back in.
- In 28 Days Later, main character just barely flees the soldiers about to execute him, and sees jet trail above, realising there's still civilisation intact from Zombie Apocalypse. Before, he was wimpy bike courier boy, but when he leaves Heroic BSOD caused by this realisation, he switches into utter badassmode, wreaking havoc, killing with bare hands, performing offscreen teleportation and spouting one-liners. While to us, the audience, this is a good example of Crouching Moron Hidden Badass, Jim's friends are so surprised by his sudden acts of badassery that they think he's become Infected.
- Daphne from the Scooby Doo moive mentions how she is sick of being the Damsel In Distress and thus takes kung fu lessons to defend herself. This pays off when she defeats a masked wrestler guy, even taunting him. "Now who's the Damsel In Distress?"
- In Apocalypto when Jaguar Paw reaches the forest while being chased by the bad guy Mayans: "I am Jaguar Paw. This is my forest. And I am not afraid."
Literature
- Despite many of the Disc's more iconic (and recurring) characters having a mostly constant level of badass (Vimes, Granny Weatherwax, Rincewind, Death, the Librarian) certain Discworld characters gain quite a few levels by the end of their books. Among the more notable are Brutha (Bishops move diagonal) and the great god Om from Small Gods.
- The Librarian becoming an orangutan.
- Agnes levelled up quite a bit in the course of Carpe Jugulum.
- Vimes wasn't badass in Guards Guards, but in Men At Arms he was seriously Badass. It could be argued that he took another level after Men At Arms, as well: in the other Watch books he is probably the most badass thing on the Disc.
- Neville Longbottom of Harry Potter, previously a bit of a Butt Monkey, gets some character development in Book 4, then actually starts showing some competence in Book 5. This pays off in Book 7; the Power Trio misses out on what he's up to for much of the year, but when they see him again, he's clearly leveled up in Harry's absence and has become a leader in his own right. He's a key player in the final battle, and actually ends up destroying the last Horcrux: he pulls the Sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat and uses it to lop the head off of Nagini, leaving the way free for Harry to kick Voldemort's scaly ass one final time. Did we mention Neville was on fire during all of this?
- He wasn't on fire in any meaningful way because Harry taking the bullet for all his friends prevented Voldemort from doing them any damage. "Haven't you noticed that none of your spells are binding?" But he's still a Badass for keeping his head, noticing he could break Voldemort's body-bind curse, and remembering where the Sword of Gryffindor would be when needed.
- The fandom has turned this up to about 90, with things such as "What happens if you break the Unbreakable Vow? Neville."
- Also, "NOT MY DAUGHTER YOU BITCH!" Give it up for Molly Weasley, everyone!
- Edmond Dantes becomes The Count of Monte Cristo to get revenge on his enemies.
- As does Gulliver Foyle, of The Stars My Destination. He was always an asshole, but now he's an obsessive one.
- Happens to Admiral Daala from the Star Wars Expanded Universe. In her original appearances, during the 90's, she was an overblown Villain Sue, repeatedly stated as being a tactical genius, but her strategies were highly incompetent. On her return in the Legacy of the Force series, she not only lives up to the reputation she was given in-universe, but manages to kick all kinds of ass using a fleet consisting mainly of obsolete starships. On top of everything else, she has an eyepatch now, not to mention a full name. Natasi Daala
- However, most people contribute Daala's sudden 'competence' to the fact that the Author didn't do the research. As always, its a Travissity. Not only that, the ultimate salt in the wound is said war criminal becoming Chief of State.
- Partially justified in that her backstory had her being a genius in infantry tactics, which don't necessarily translate well to naval combat. That, and she suffered a severe brain injury during a battle taking place before her original introduction. Presumably, she finally recovered from that injury and spent the decades between her appearances studying up on naval combat. The idea that she'd be Chief of State (or, given her reasoning behind her handing command over to Pellaeon decades earlier, that she'd even want the job) is still a Wall Banger, though.
- In War and Peace, Dolokhov returns from being Put On A Bus at an opera house the Rostovs attend. Rumors fly about concerning the adventures in Persia he has been on, and the new sword sheathed at his side shows he's not just a conniving swindler anymore. Nikolai Rostov also levels up when he goes hunting with his uncle during the book's Christmas Episode, as he transforms from a coward during battle to a war hero.
- In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf's evolution from Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White is arguably a level-up, as exemplified in this poster.
- Enough so that, in an initially niche Russian internet/pirate-distributed parody consisting of the movies' video and completely revoiced quirky audio that enjoyed such success that it vastly surpassed the original films in popularity across the former Soviet Union, Gandalf in fact utters "I fell into the white and gained a levelup" upon his return.
- Eowyn took a discernible level in badass in the third book, in the movie it's still badass, but less so. You can't even tell that she's the soldier Merry rides into battle with in the book. You don't know until her big reveal.
- In the movie she doesn't really level in badass, the implication is that she's always been that good and just needed a chance to show it.
- Samwise Gamgee takes a big level in badass when Frodo is incapacitated by the Giant Spider Shelob and taken by the Orcs in Return of the King. He takes up the Ring in Frodo's stead to keep the Orcs from taking it, takes up Sting and takes Shelob down. Then he heads for
Barad-dur the Tower of Cirith Ungol and takes down every Orc standing between him and Frodo. Forget Aragorn, Samwise is the true action hero if this story.
- How about Merry, who helps take down the freaking Witch-King!, or Pippin, when he... you know what? Every single hobbit in the Shire ends up taking a level in the Scouring of the Shire! This was proof that Hobbits can be tough when they want to be, they just prefer being lazy.
- It's implied that all hobbits have the potential to be badass, due to their stubborness. There are many examples, but a good one is when a cursed sword breaks off in Frodo's arm about halfway through the first book and later Gandalf tells him that he lasted seventeen days with it in him, while an ordinary man would have died long before then. Gandalf doesn't attribute it to Frodo's individual toughness, but says that hobbits can be amazingly tough when necessary.
- As long as we're talking about Hobbits, how about Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, who goes after a human ruffian with her umbrella?
- In the Latin textbook series Ecce Romani, Sextus spends a whole two years worth of lessons being annoying, whiny, and cowardly. Then, being his usual wimpy self, he goes back to the changing room at the public baths because the water's too hot, sees a thief stealing his clothes and chases the guy halfway across the bath complex on slippery tiles, then pushes him into a frigidarium (that's the cold pool, for you non-Latin-students). Unfortunately, he goes right back to being a wimp after this chapter.
- Well, according to the epilogue, he joined the army after the end of the story...
- On the subject of Latin textbooks... the Cambridge series! In the first book, Quintus has such exciting adventures such as going to a debate and being in the garden... then his dad gets killed in a volcano and all of a sudden he's a world traveler, fighting rowdy Egyptians, hangin' with kings, and just generally being ridiculously kick-ass...
- The Laughter of Dead Kings, the most recent Elizabeth Peters Vicky Bliss book, reveals that Schmidt has had a hidden level of badass all along, and actually is the Greatest Swordsman in Europe.
- In Prince Caspian, when the Pevensies return to Narnia, they regain all the fighting skills they had learned in the fifteen years they were in Narnia the last time. They return as children, except the relatively inexperienced children you had read about in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are now a bunch of young badasses. The difference is even more noticeable in The Film Of The Book.
- In the Malazan Book of the Fallen innocent n00b characters will invariably become demon-slaying demigods within a few dozen chapters of their first appearance, whilst the already-extant badasses will become elite super-badasses in the same timespan.
- The Wheel of Time novels, although granted magical reasons are usually given for the level-gaining, such as Mat's implanted fighting and tactical planning memories turning him literally overnight into a canny warrior and general, or Rand having his former, much more experienced and competent incarnation pumping advice directly into his brain, like Yoda-on-Tap. The only unexplained levelling up takes place with regards to Gawyn Trakand, who goes from a decent swordsman to somehow being able to take down experienced Warders twice his age to later wiping out attacking bands of Aiel warriors, trained since birth to be badass, by himself.
- Susan from The Dresden Files between Grave Peril and Death Masks. At the end of the former she turns down Dresden's proposal of marriage to leave Chicago to find a way to deal with her half-vampirism, which she had gained after being taken hostage to try and manipulate Dresden. When she returns, a combination of the increased physical capabilities granted by her state, and training and mystic tatoos given to her by an organisation which is a combination of focus group for people like her and covert organisation fighting against vampires leave her a competent combatent (who at one point is able to match a surprised sorcerer being powered by a fallen angel) who is a useful asset to Dresden during his case in that book. At the end, she returns to South America (where she had spent the interim between books) to take in the fight against the dominating vampire faction based there.
- Do inanimate objects count for this trope? If so, Harry's shield bracelet between Proven Guilty and White Night took a couple of levels, going from a burnt-out talisman that only blocked kinetic energy and spat out sparks every time he used it to a shiny new trinket interlaced with several precious metals that blocks "heat, cold, electricity - even sound and light". Even Elaine, whose specialty was in subtle and varied magics, was impressed by the versatility of it.
- How did we leave out Harry himself? He's been getting steadily more awesome since the start, but after Dead Beat (He rides a zombie T. rex through Chicago!), he's been getting EXPONENTIALLY more awesome. Especially in Turn Coat.
- During the first few books Harry would burn out after a couple of spells. Now he can blast spells like crazy in a fight, due to his toning of his metaphysical muscles. And the firepower of his gun has gone steadily up too. Not to mention he is becoming adept at Xanatos Speed Chess.
- The Alphas. They go from a bunch of high-school senior/college age nerds who wear too much leather and Old Spice and just happen to be werewolves to a pack of fit, healthy young men and women who transform into a virtual army of monster-shredding fangs and claws; enough to strip a professional ghoul assassin to the bone. Mentioned by Harry in Summer Knight.
- Murphy, though her increase in badassness has less to do with actually getting more badass and more knowing how to be badass to the latest monster of the week. Storm Front, does nothing. Fool Mool, wounds a loup-garou with a pistol. Summer Knight, defeats an ogre and a plant monster with a chainsaw.
- Small Favor drives off a Denarian by pulling Fidelacchius two inches out of its sheath.
- Kim Kinnison, in E.E. Smith's Lensman series, does this, going in a few chapters of Galactic Patrol from relying almost wholly upon brawn and gadgets to not only taking over multiple enemy officers' minds to achieve his ends undercover, but controlling guard dogs in order to turn off shield generators that are blocking him, and more besides. Lampshaded by Mentor, the Deus Ex Machina who grants him his powers, who tells him the advanced training he's getting was inevitable if he survived long enough, and if his mind became mature enough to appreciate the need for it.
- Julie Sims of 1632 goes from being an energetic high school cheerleader at the beginning of the book to a ruthless, crack shot sniper by the end. (True, as a cheerleader she'd also been training to be an Olympic markswoman, but it's still a noticeable change in additude, if not in aptitude)
- Tally Youngblood in Scott Westerfeld's Uglies seires. She starts out as a normal Ugly kid and quickly becomes a rebel with insane hoverboarding skills who thinks her way out of brainwashing (twice) and eventually turns into something called a Special complete with crazy techno tattoos, long claw-like nails, and sharp teeth. Also she overthrows the government, unbrainwashes everyone, and then disappears into the wilderness after warning the new government to step lightly because she's watching their every move now. And apparently she wasn't kidding.
- Shay also fits this trope pretty well.
- Most of the major characters from Percy Jackson and the Olympians go through this, but a special mention for Nico di Angelo, son of Hades. When we first meet him, he's a somewhat nerdy little kid who's really into a collectible card trading game and is ignored in favor of his sister. By the last book, he shows up in a Big Damn Heroes moment, dressed in skull motif armor, radiating an aura of death, wielding a sword of three-foot long Stygian iron, and at the head of an army of the dead, with his father Hades, his stepmother Persephone, and his grandmother Demeter right behind him. Damn.
- As if the real Roman Republic wasn't Badass enough, John Maddox Roberts' Alternate History Hannibal's Children has them take a level or three in reaction to being exiled north of the Alps. When they come back one hundred years later, a Greek thinks that the sound of Roman laughter reminds him of swords clashing against shields. They don't swagger or bully; they're too badass for that. In one battle, an "inexperienced" Roman army under a "second-rate" general faces a veteran mercenary force twice their size and led by Carthage's best general. The Romans are wiped out — but the Carthaginian army is wrecked, with two-thirds of its troops killed outright, and most of the rest badly battered.
- In Stephen King's Dark Tower series, most of Roland's katet go from regular folk to badass gunslingers.
- In Frederik Pohl's Gateway series, the protagonist Robinette Broadhead (a male, he assures) goes from a Wyoming mold miner to a man who survies an encounter with a black hole then, after his death, saves some children from escaped convicts as a digtally stored personality.
- In Shannara, Menion Leah goes from ditzy prince who's constantly getting lost to savior at least two cities, defeater of
Grima Wormtongue the mystic Stenmin, and rescuer of two elves, a mighty warrior, and an awesome dwarf. Oh, and he picks up a hot girl along the way.
- The Bible: Jesus does this when he's baptized in the Jordan.
- Tavi, in the first book of the Codex Alera: small for his age sheepherder who is handicapped by lacking powers that everyone else has, and survives only because of his quick wits and having (and making) an assorted group of Bad Ass friends. Tavi (sorry, First Lord Octavian) in book 6 of Codex Alera: still wily and intelligent, has an even larger assorted group of badass friends, now a tall, physically powerful experienced warrior and wartime commander who now wields powers practically all his peers can only dream of.
Live Action TV
- Michael's mom (Madeline) in Burn Notice who is going from a nagging, hypochondriac chain smoker to some sort of super spy in season 3.
- Best demonstrated in an episode where Sam and Fiona are interrogating a pilot to find out where Michael has been taken. Sam gives up the questioning when the pilot makes it clear he's not afraid of anything, and goes to think through new options with Fiona. Madeline calmly walks out to the garage where he's being kept, and comes back 4 minutes later with the coordinates, having not even had to TOUCH the pilot.
- And she takes another one in the season 3.5 opener, "A Dark Road", when she outright blackmails a woman she's become friends with because the woman possesses information that Michael needs to save lives. She hates it, but she stonewalls the woman and gets the files.
- Joel Fleischman, in his final season on Northern Exposure, went from a clean-cut, irritable Fish Out Of Water to a grizzled Zen master survivalist.
- Examples from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel:
- Wesley on Angel is one of the more long-term, visibly executed cases, marked with actual Character Development. It wasn't just the writers' decision to make him suddenly "cool" — it was the character's decision to.
- Before his actual level-up, Wesley is a subversion of Took A Level In Badass. When first seen in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wes was a weak, weaselly wimp. When he first appears in Angel, he seems to be leveled. He rides a motorcycle, dresses in badass chic, and claims to be a "rogue demon hunter". Turns out, though, he's just as pitiful. Then he nearly dies...
- And in Buffy the Vampire Slayer itself Willow starts as geek and a bookworm, helpful only as research type. Her powers increase with time until by the end of Season 7, she is a super-powerful witch (and fully in control of her abilities).
- Giles is retroactively given levels in badass in Season 2, when it turns out he used to be a badass before putting his skills on hold when he joined the Watchers, but occasionally trots them out when the need is great. Best examples: unexpectedly beating the crap out of Ethan and later attacking Angelus with a flaming piece of wood and, momentarily at least, gaining the upper hand. Also: end of season 6, anyone? Giles full of magic = crowning moment of awesome.
- The Scoobies seem to accumulate levels of badass over the course of the show, particularly over the summers of 1998 (between season 2 and 3) and 2001 (between season 5 and 6), to compensate for the Slayer's absence.
- The entire graduating class of 1999 gains a level in badass when they take off their graduation robes to reveal their arsenal of medieval weapons.
- Dawn is a relatively mild (or at least non-flashy) but still striking example, being a fairly normal high school kid who manage to pick up reasonably fluent Turkish and Sumerian, apparently in her spare time.
- Not to mention scaring the crap out of Spike in Season 7.
- Ultimately, it can be argued that any character who interacts with the main cast in the Buffy/Angelverse for a reasonable stretch of time ends up gaining levels in Badass, to the point where you have half a dozen "normal" human characters taking down beasts and monstrosities that previously were considered unkillable by anything but a supernatural hero like the Slayer.
- Because the only choices for people around The Slayer and The Champion are: run far, far away; get horribly killed; or level up.
- Xander during Halloween is turned into a super soldier and later retains memories and skills (plot dependent) even though no one else retains them from their transformations
- Also in the season eight comics Xander has become a high tech battle watcher for Slayer Inc. He also wants people to call him Sgt. Fury
- Considering Willow was a ghost, Buffy was an 18th-century noblewoman, and and Cordelia didn't get transformed, what skills could they possibly retain?
- Quinn Mallory from Sliders apparently took a level of badass during the Channel Hop from Fox to Sci-Fi. This was mostly a result of Jerry O'Connell's increasing creative control over the show, and, like pretty much the rest of the show by this point, came off as contrived and meaningless.
- Peter Petrelli takes a level of badass from Season One to Season Two of Heroes. Unfortunately, his intellect fails to keep up.
- In the Dystopian future of the 1st season episode "Five Years Gone", Future Peter, Hiro, Matt, and Sylar have all taken multiple levels.
- The season 3 premiere is full of characters taking a level: Suresh by injecting himself, and future Ando (yet to be explained)
- Ando previously Took a Level in Badass when he challenged Sylar with nothing but a sword in the finale of season 1.
- In all honesty, Hiro started taking severeal levels of Bad Ass from the first three episodes. He flirted with full Bad Ass status in the last episode of season 1.
- Matt Parkman and Mohinder Suresh have taken up several levels of Bad Ass in season 2. Micah Sanders has potential to to do the same in season 3.
- In the dystopian future revealed in Season 3, Claire has clearly taken a level in badass.
- Apparently, all the villains Claire defeated over the course of volume 3 were enough XP for her to gain a level in Badass by the volume finale, culminating in her defeat of Sylar.
- Daniel Jackson started Stargate SG-1 as the team's Smart Guy, and was at most armed with a Beretta, tasked mainly with translations and exposition on Earth's various pantheons. A couple seasons later, and he's upgraded to whatever automatic weapon the rest of the team's using, and holding his own as much as the career military characters.
- Someone (possibly Jackson himself) handwaved this by mentioning that Jackson had received some form of combat training since joining SG-1. Which is rather understandable, given the kinds of situations SG-1 found itself caught up in on a regular basis.
- In Stargate Atlantis, Rodney followed in Daniel's footsteps. In a first season episode he's terrified of the idea that he might actually have to use a gun to defend himself. Not too long later, he's laying down covering fire with a P90 and using cover like a trained soldier. Probably justified in both cases, as it wasn't an immediate change, and it seems like a matter of necessity given the situations they find themselves in. Rodney himself may be a partial subversion, as he still freaks out while killing Wraith, even though he seems good at it. This is also possibly due to his internal Chance of Imminent Doom meter; when it redlines, he gets Awesome.
- Which was nicely Lampshaded in the second season episode "Inferno" where Rodney yells at Shepherd for putting pressure on him and Shepherd point out this fact to him.
- More recently, Dr. Keller is seen fighting off a Wraith with a stick long enough for McKay to shoot it. He asks where she learned to fight, and she mentions she's been taking sparring lessons.
- Teyla had a hand-waved level in flying the ship single-handedly badass. Apparently a short lesson with the weapons officer is enough to run the entire ship.
- Since most ships in the gateverse seem to be partly flown by psychic powers — including the Goa'uld's motherships, that isn't particularly surprising.
- In Smallville, Lana Lang, of all people, has traded the Wangst that made her The Wesley of the show for so long for running her own secret organization and being prepared to kill if necessary. They may have gone a skosh too far for it to be believable, though.
- It also went away after about half a season so she was back to the same old Lana Lang
- Clark himself finally became a decent fighter in the sixth season when he dealt with a phantom zone thug in an illegal TNA-like match. Most other times when he dealt with an enemy of a comparable power level, he would get thrown around like a rag doll before a Deus Ex Machina ended the fight. With this match Clark was in a bad mood and legitimately traded blows with the guy, winning through skill and strength, not dumb luck. Ever since Clark has done markedly better with these throw-downs.
- Dexter took a level in Badass in one of the late season two episodes:
Dexter: In that case... let me put this out in the open for you. No matter what you try, no matter when, no matter how hard you work, I'll always be one step ahead of you for one simple reason.
Doakes: And what's that?
Dexter: I own you. (HEADBUTT!)
- A long-term-development example: in Xena Warrior Princess. In episode 10, "Hooves and Harlots", Gabrielle had her first lesson in staff fighting. She kept hitting her own head. Over subsequent episodes, she practiced and got good at it. In later seasons she takes multiple levels with her fighting skills increasing until she's almost on a par with Xena.
- Culminating in the Season Six finale, when she becomes one of the few people other than Xena to catch the Chakram and, in the last ever scene of the show, appears to be taking up Xena's legacy as a full blown hero.
- Mickey Smith of Doctor Who does this twice. Or maybe it took two stages. At first a cowering if sweet natured nerd, he moves up a level during the year he's falsely suspected of his girlfriend's murder. He becomes a lot braver, even willing to die to protect his girlfriend's mother, as well as developing some impressive hacking skills. He goes up another level offscreen after several years of fighting Cybermen in an alternate universe. Last time we saw him as a full Bad Ass complete with deeper voice and BFG.
- Rose becomes equally badass by the end of season 4.
- We can't forget Rose's mum Jackie, who got to carry a BFG and shoot a Dalek to smitheerens alongside Mickey.
- They're not the only ones to do it. Between her departure and visit in the middle of season four, Martha joined UNIT and is now quite Badass herself.
- There's a good chance it started before that, with Martha Walking The Earth for an entire year in season 3.
- Anyone who watches Doctor Who knows the Doctor has the tendency to turn his companions into badasses. It could be argued that it's part of the reason why he takes companions in the first place. Davros, one of the Doctor's oldest enemies, accuses him of this specifically, saying that while he may have created the monstrous Dalek killing machines, the Doctor has transformed innumerable innocent normal people into weapons himself.
- John Connor takes a long-anticipated level of badass in the first episode of the second season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles when he violently stops a rape attempt on his mother and in doing so throws his old standard of Thou Shalt Not Kill out the window.
- And in "The Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter", John shows he's continued leveling up in badass when he confronts Jesse and tells her he figured out who and what Riley really was, casually takes her pistol from her, lays out why he is and will be the future leader of mankind, and tells her that her plan to make Cameron kill Riley never would have worked to break them apart. Thoroughly awesome.
- 24 is full of characters who have taken up multiple levels of Badass. These include Teri Bauer, Kim Bauer, Chloe O'Brien in season 4 (see also Crowning Moment Of Awesome), George Mason (see also Heroic Sacrifice), Wayne Palmer, and even Milo Pressman (total geek in season 1; to taking bullets in season 6). Some of the bad guys pull this off as well (Behrooz Araz and his trusty shovel in season 4 is the premier example)
- John Crichton from Farscape takes multiple levels of badass over four seasons: he starts out as a clueless nerd, and by series end is so badass he manages to intimidate two entire galactic empires into leaving him the frell alone by threatening to wipe out the universe. THE ENTIRE FREAKING UNIVERSE! And what makes it Bad Ass is he can pull it off.
- Of course, a big part of it is that he's gone so insane that he's come out the other side.
- In Babylon 5 Lennier is introduced as a mild-mannered, monk-like Minbari religious caste-member with a zen-like philosophy who is surprisingly shown a few episodes later to be able to defend himself with martial arts and take out a whole room full of drunk people, which is fair enough. However, by Season 4 he is fully capable of taking out multiple opponents belonging to the Minbari warrior caste trained almost from birth in the art of unarmed combat. This is before he joins the thousand-year-old organisation of elite badasses from beyond badassery in the final season who train up his badass skills to something on the other side of preposterousness.
- Sayid on Lost is a badass to begin with, but in the post-island flashforwards, he's graduated to international hitman. Sun is also seen in "There's No Place Like Home" to take a level (or two).
- Hoshi Sato, the nervous alien language specialist in Star Trek Enterprise, is given retroactive martial arts skills which she uses during Dr Phlox's kidnapping. While it's likely Hoshi would have become more assertive after her experiences during the Xindi conflict, it would have made more sense for her to have used the more simple takedowns taught to the crew by Major Hayes during this time. But less cool, I'm sure.
- And she even levels up in the Mirror Universe, too. Empress Sato, anyone?
- Another Star Trek example. Like the Millenium Falcom, the USS Enterprise NX-01 is another spaceship that takes multiple levels in badass. But this was a logical progression, when the ship first left Earth, Starfleet had no clue of the kinds of dangers out there. As the ship encounters various threats, the crew upgrades the ship's ass-kicking abilities on the go, Trip and his team build phaser cannons from scratch, Reed creates the proto-type force field and comes up with the Red Alert system, and T'Pol routinely improves the ship's sensors. Of course, after the Xindi invasion, the ship is literally retrofitted into a war-ship, complete with the introduction of the famous photon torpedoes.
- Interestingly, the civilian characters of Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica have been immune to this (with the exception of those revealed to be Cylons), although Laura Roslin becomes a political badass. Considering military officers like Adama and Cain, the badass market of Battlestar is pretty much cornered.
- However, the [[TV]] movie Razor is all about Kendra Shaw being molded into a badass by Cain.
- Also: Saul Tigh. In the first two seasons he's basically an alcoholic Commander Contrarian, but in the first five episode of Season Three alone he loses an eye, sends men on suicide missions against the Cylons, shuts up Laura Roslin, poisons his wife, and executes collaborators by airlocking them. He has remained awesome ever since.
- In the X-Files, Skinner took a level up in badass when he beat up Mr. X in the elevator. Don't mess with 'Nam vets.
- To a certain extent, Jadzia Dax in Star Trek Deep Space Nine. She starts off as a reserved, quiet young woman, but (especially after her experience meeting an incarnation of her high-living former host Curzon) abruptly metamorphoses into a blood wine-chugging, bat'leth-swinging, Samoan-fire-dancing, blood-oath-honouring, Worf-marrying-and-rough-Klingon-sex-having Bad Ass. Interestingly, Dax's next host Ezri went through an abbreviated version of this after she was introduced at the beginning of the seventh season, starting as a bewildered Fish Out Of Water and going on to do such things as hunting a serial killer and confronting her gangster-involved family (particularly after Garak reads her beads in "Afterimage").
- Both played magnificently and deconstructed a bit in Power Rangers RPM. The yellow ranger was initially a Rich Bitch who took a level in badass to survive the razing of the planet, but she runs into problems when her new Action Girl career is interrupted by pre-badass commitments.
- The green ranger first gets his powers without any kind of training whatsoever. And it is made very clear in his first battle. However, as the season is progressing, he, while still the least skilled fighter of the team, is undeniably improving, as he is no doubt receiving training off screen.
- Chuck's second season finale. "Guys, I know kung-fu," indeed.
- Chuck also shows this trope can apply to inanimate objects too - in Season 1, Sarah's "workplace" had nothing but a gun hidden in the mayonnaise. Then in Season 2, the stock room turns out to be a fully decked-out underground base
- Gwen from Torchwood, who starts off fairly incompetent and has no idea how to handle a gun. By the second episode of Children of Earth she's jumping sideways out of an ambulance firing two guns at once, interrogating a would-be assassin, and infiltrating a military installation to rescue Jack. Seriously, the best word to describe Gwen in season 3 is "badass".
- Though sadly, she backslides and takes a level in dumbass in the closing seconds of the third episode, when she is shocked, shocked! to hear that in 1965 Jack gave 12 human children to the 456, having apparently forgotten what happened in the season one story "Small Worlds".
- Terrible remark, as in "Small Worlds" it was just one kid, and she was happily willing to go away with the fae people.
- Subverted in Monty Python's "Marriage Guidance Counsellor" sketch, in which mild Arthur Pewtey finds his wife stolen from under his nose by the title character. A cowboy gives Pewtey a level-up in badass — "you gotta turn, and you gotta fight, and you gotta hold your head up high" — which lasts for as long as it takes the marriage guidance counsellor to tell Pewtey to go away.
- To a lesser extent, JJ from Criminal Minds. She is almost always portrayed as the perky blonde. Cops always assume that she's just the media liason, and most of the time she's displayed as such. It changes slightly when she takes out three dogs with three shots in Season Two's Revelations. And then she becomes one of the coolest people, ever, when she gets a headshot on a criminal holding a hostage at gunpoint. If this doesn't sound particularly awesome, consider the fact that she shoots through the FBI seal on a solid glass door.
- Not so lesser: in early seasons she's rarely seen with a weapon and rarely on the scene during the capture/arrest/takedown. Lately she's just as likely as Prentiss to be busting into a building packing heat. If her family ends up threatened by a killer has have almost all the other members, one suspects a full blown Mama Bear incident and local police cleaning up what's left of the threat in Aisle 5.
- Annie in Being Human definitely takes a level after refusing to pass to the other side although one could argue that it began after she breaks her emotional bond to her boyfriend/killer.
- Gussie Fink-Nottle seems to magically develop the ability to stand up for himself to a certain degree by his last episode.
Manga & Anime
Pro Wrestling
- Japanese professional wrestling does this in a number of ways. Most Japanese wrestlers start out as lower-than-dirt Jobbers who lose pathetically unless they're wrestling each other, in which case they use stock moves to decide the victor (the German Suplex is a huge crowd-pleaser in Japan partly because it is the official finisher of anyone who doesn't have a distinct finisher yet). After spending a few years as total losers, these wrestlers will then get Put On A Bus to wrestle overseas, after which they come back with a more distinctive wrestling style and a new, more badass Finishing Move that allows them to climb the ranks. This gets taken even further in some promotions, in which the new finisher becomes So Last Season and the wrestler breaks through to the very top with another finisher and another level in Badass.
- One of the most famous uses of this was the All Japan Pro Wrestling 1995 Champion's Carnival. Akira Taue had spent years as a bit of a Wesley because, while a competent grapler, he was constantly Overshadowed By Awesome in his tag team with Toshiaki Kawada and was given top billing despite being nowhere near the level of fantastic main-event technicians like Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Steve Williams, and the aforementioned Kawada. However, during the Carnival (a round-robin tournament for a title opportunity), Taue discarded his goofy agility-based offense in favor of brutal power moves that better suited his height and awkward build. The more power-based moveset and accompanying winning streak made a Dark Horse Victory look very plausible going into a match with the nigh-unbeatable Misawa.
- One somewhat related example is Kazushi Sakuraba, who wasn't anything remarkable as a pro wrestler, but then switched to real-life fighting and became one of the greatest mixed martial artists of all time.
Tabletop Games
- While no Dungeons & Dragons Prestige Class is explicitly named "Badass", there are many, many candidates, such as:
- Heir of Siberiys — Eberron dragonmark, turned Up To Eleven.
- Extreme Explorer — Kind of like being Indiana Jones, really.
- Archmage — is able to sacrifice high-level spell slots to get things like
six fireball spells per day 2 Time Stops (9th level spell) a day at the cost of a 9th level slot (and it can be done 5 times).
- It also makes blasting a bit more viable. Imagine what it does with the actually worthwhile spells...
- Pyrokineticist — Kill It With Fire, well, psionic fire anyway.
- Risen Martyr — "Hey look, I died, and now I can do all this awesome shit!"
- Wait, SERIOUSLY? D&D includes a prestige class that makes you JESUS? HOLY SHIT!
- Increasing in level in any class arguably makes one more of a badass (that 1st level wizard having troubles fighting kobolds? He's having troubles fighting Pit Fiends now). It's just that the badassness is split out over twenty levels, which generally makes the shift somewhat gradual.
- Why there is no mention of Incantatrix, Planar Shepherd, Dweomerkeeper, Ruby Knight Vindicator, Jade Phoenix Mage...? Even if they grant a level in badass to already badass classes While on that, why not add Survivor to the mix?
- If none of the official classes are badass enough for you, try these fan-made rules.
- Any RPG character will level up through the course of the game. Unless they die, of course.
- Although, if you're playing Deadlands, death can be step one to taking that level. Just ask Abe Lincoln who came back from the to run the Union's monster-hunting agency.
- The Imperial Guard took a whole bunch of levels in bad ass this year after they got a new codex that's actually good. Also an example of Throw The Dog A Bone since IG and IG players were Games Workshop's favorite Butt Monkey
Video Games
- In Mass Effect 2, Garrus and Tali take more than A Level, more like a few hundred levels. Garrus has become a Sole Survivor of a squad of good guys on Omega! Also, at one point, Tali holds Legion at gunpoint.
- Oh we can do better than that. How BadAss is Garrus? Well... when you meet him, he's a vigilante going by the name of Archangel, who's spent months pissing off the three top mercenary companies on Omega: specifically, targeting them in their homes, attacking their raids, and scaring them to the point that they start hiring freelancers to go after him. After killing ten of his squadmates, they've had Garrus pinned down for days, but he's destroyed every entrance to his hideout except a narrow bridge that allows him to pick them off by the hundreds. They tried sending a gunship after him, but he shot it down. He's foiled everything they've thrown at him so thoroughly that the only strategy they have left is to keep throwing cannon fodder at him.
- Also, to be fair, Tali was always that way. In the first game, she caught and disabled a geth by herself—before ever meeting Shepard.
- Liara has gone from being an archaeologist to an information dealer. When you first walk into her office, you hear her threaten to flay someone alive. With her mind.
- In Xenosaga, MOMO proved quite useless, serving as little more than a plot device; in battle she had a high MP count but was pathetically weak and virtually any other character was better. In the sequel she had aged up slightly and become more competent, but most notably had suddenly become an absolute god in combat: High speed, high evasion, high attack power, excellent heals, excellent buffs, and the largest mana pool in the game had her far outstriping any other playable character. Her low HP was her only remaining flaw, but considering her ridiculous evasion meant she didn't really get hit anymore anyway...
- There's also Allen, a Non Action Guy who Cannot Spit It Out, and a lovably pathetic Butt Monkey. He has a crush on his boss, Shion, who he calls "Chief," but even the biggest supplier of wangst in Xenosaga is still laughably out of his league. He's not even a regular party member. Then comes Episode III, and Allen stands up to Kevin, Shion's ex-boyfriend and the beating he takes negates Shion's Face Heel Turn and sparks her interest in him. In the ending, a Gnosis threatens Shion, and Allen pounces on it, beating it to death with an assault rifle. The end shows Shion finally returning his affections.
- Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2 started life as a naive dork, albeit one with a nasty secret and a bit too much talent at chopping people up. In Metal Gear Solid 4, he's turned into a homicidal, husky-voiced, immortal cyborg ninja capable of killing things with antigravity kung-fu and his feet. It was a backlash against him being The Scrappy, probably. He also appears to have taken a few levels in "Lightning Deity", since he was capable of killing soldiers with bolts of lighting from inside a properly grounded ship.
- Surprisingly enough, Johnny Sasaki, the recurring joke character takes a level in badass in Metal Gear Solid 4 by removing his mask, but only gets to show it in the cutscene where he admits his love to Meryl and makes a Combat Proposal. The rest of the cutscene is then nothing but pure badassery.
- Leon from the Resident Evil series. The idealistic Naive Newcomer who just began his first day of duty at the Raccoon Police Department in RE 2 had somehow became almost as badass as Albert Wesker by the time of RE4!
- At least Leon was a trained cop in RE2, and was hired on by the U.S. Government before RE4. Claire Redfield's level-up has no similar justification. She goes from being a college student in RE2 to a certified ass-kicker in RE: Code Veronica.
- Notable in that Albert Wesker HIMSELF takes a level in between Resident Evil and Code: Veronica— notable in that said level was taken AFTER he was STABBED THROUGH THE CHEST, and was shown off in a brilliant Crowning Moment Of Awesome as he smacked Code: Veronica's virus-injected baddie around like a ping pong ball, completely outshining the game's own protagonists. And Leon's RE4 incarnation is almost as badass as this new Wesker.
- Leon gets yet another upgrade in the movie Degeneration, although it seems to come at the expense of his personality and sense of humor, since he ends up pulling double duty as the film's Mr Exposition.
- Albert Wesker. RE5. Suffice it to say that if he'd had that kind of power back in Code: Veronica, Alexia wouldn't have lasted ten seconds.
- Before Leon was Jill, who got more and more badass throughout the series, from RE to RE 3 to RE 5. Chris fits the trope as well.
- Super Robot Wars manages to do this to Shinji Ikari. And it works. (Partially Or So I Heard due to translation issues.)
- That said, word was that was partly thanks to Captain Bright's infamous bright slaps, which has been scientifically proven to turn wimps into men of awesome (MEN OF DESTINY are another thing).
- Also, Shinji freaked the hell out during the last two missions in the End of Eva Route of Super Robot Wars Alpha 3.
- In addition, one of the main characters in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 starts out as a delivery boy with a minor Karate background. Then he trains with certain members of the Alpha Numbers—this includes, but is not limited to: cyborgs (Guy and Hiroshi/Jeeg), combat pros (the Wing boys, Banjo, Tsurugi Tetsuya...), a yokozuna, masters of various martial arts (Camille, Wufei, Yun Lee...), a dude who cleaves evil, gods, and battleships (Zengar), a dude who smacks stuff around in space with a ball and chain (ware koso wa~ waRE koso wa~ Baran Doban! fire!fire!fire!fire!), and various characters voiced by Kamiya Akira. By the end of the game, he's kickin' gods around.
- In the Compact series of Super Robot Wars, Leina Ashta of ZZ Gundam fame. Considering that, in the series, she got kidnapped by Gremmi Toto a few episodes in, and spent her time either waiting for Judau to rescue her or being thought dead after almost getting crushed by a MS you'd think her to be a useless character... WRONG! She's, in fact, pretty powerful if used correctly, reaching a Newtype Level of 6 (Amuro, Camille and her brother reach Level 8, just to give a comparision) and becoming quite destructive if placed in a Mobile Armor. From personal experience, I managed to take down Bask Ohms' flagship just using her.
- The original Super Robot Wars 3 on the SNES does this with Kou Uraki, hero of Stardust Memory. Starting with less than half the levels of most of the worthwhile characters and piloting a unit meant only for skirmishes, the GP-01. However, as soon as you head off to space and it's upgraded to the Full Vernian model, he proves to be a nimble character if you put effort into training him. Near the end of the game, upon gaining the GP-03, Kou ends up being a proverbial tank in a top-notch Mobile Suit.
- Of course, they couldn't go for too long without doing this to one of their original characters. Original Generation features a character named Ryoto who first appeared as a scared enemy mook. He remains a very minor character until the end of the game, piloting only his original mook mecha or a hand-me-down from more important characters. By the time he rejoins the crew in OG 2, however, he's spent the last six months testing Super Prototypes, and pilots one that can combine with either his girlfriend's tank-thing or a suit of Powered Armor that can detach and turn into a weaponized flying surfboard. Oh, and he almost single-handedly holds off a giant robot dragon that routinely crushes more important characters long enough for said girlfriend and his co-workers to escape. Appropriately enough, this is the point where his theme song upgrades to one called "Ace Pilot" ("Ace Attacker" in the original Japanese).
- Does this also apply to Setsuko Ohara of Super Robot Wars Z? She starts out as the lowest of her team, is quite timid and unsure of herself. Her debut actually starts with being shot down by Kamille Vidan. But then, she is subjected with lots and lots of traumatic event. And when she eventually gets pissed, not only her emotions evolve her BFG into a much more dangerous version, she discards her timid and unsure persona into a badass, yet still gentle, soldier, then proceeds to one shot the guy who breaks her with her new BFG.
- Muse from Romancing Sa Ga 3. She shifts from Ill Girl to Lady Of War instantly. Also Sharl who is upgraded from Broken Hero provided that you got the Silver Hand in Muse's Dream
- Also in addition, the Pirate Black, who regains his youth if you bring him to the fight with Forneus, you don't even need to place him in the active battle party which is good since his stats are quite sucky as an old man.
- Mickey Mouse in Kingdom Hearts 2 You'd have to see it to believe it.
- Let's not forget Sora himself. Two words: "Reaction Commands".
- Don't forget Kairi who in Kingdom Hearts 2 gets a level from Riku, in the form of her own keyblade (while granted, all she fought were Shadows, that's the ideal Heartless for ANY beginner to take on, and in this case, there were a helluva lot of them and they gave even the more experienced Riku trouble.)
- Riku himself, after a frusturating period of Badass Decay, is finally granted a new level of badass once he gets his original body back, after being stuck in the form of Ansem for most of the aforementioned period.
- Roxas takes several levels in badass after absorbing Xion. Kind of explains Sora's upgrade as well.
- To elaborate: He now dual-wields Oblivion and Oathkeeper, can kill Neoshadows (who were a bossfight in the first game and very pesky and durable enemies in the second) with one hit, goes on a Roaring Rampageof Revenge against the Organization and manages to defeat Riku (who was up to this point portrayed as unbeatable) pretty easily with only Oathkeeper. Riku had to use his full power (which caused him to transform into Xehanort's Heartless in the first place) and use the element of surprise against Roxas to win. ''Damn.'
- In-universe, Sora gets another one after fully merging with Roxas. This is what unlocks Final Form
- And while we're on the subject of Disney games, in Epic Mickey the Phantom Blot is upgraded from a criminal who wants to take over the world into an Eldritch Abomination of paint and thinner who easily does take over a world.
- Phoenix Wright in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.
- Rydia from Final Fantasy IV, who begins as a kid with weak magic. After a period of time training in another dimension, she returns with a Plot Relevant Age Up and several Summon creatures, just in time to save the party's ass.
- Leo Stenbuck from Zone of the Enders, who started out in that game as a (justifiably) depressed street kid, apparently spent the four years between the plotlines of Zo E 1 and Zo E 2 frantically leveling up in Badass until he emerged in the second game almost as a wolf among lambs, capable of piloting his non-Unobtainium LEV against full-on Orbital Frames and more than holding his own.
- In Valkyrie Profile Silmeria, Alicia starts off the game with such fight quotes as "Do we have to fight?" and "My hands are stinging." Three-fourths of the way through the game ironically, after Silmeria, the titular warrior maiden, is stripped from her she takes a real role as leader, gets an upgrade to her special attack, and is practically thirsting for blood in her fight quotes.
- In Half-Life 2, Alyx Vance practically has to be babied by the player during the sequences where she tags along. Valve paid attention to these complaints and from Episode One on, she's a capable shooter who takes out wave after wave of zombies and soldiers, both during the gameplay and in the scripted events. In one level with a shortage of ammunition (which doesn't affect Alyx's gun), the player spends a lot of time using the flashlight to illuminate targets for Alyx to shoot, turning the first half of the stage into a sort of reverse Escort Mission.
- Not really, while Episode One makes her even more Nigh Invulnerable, even in Half-Life 2 she can take tons of punishment as long as you at least try and shoot a few things for her.
- The Vortigaunts started off as low-level mooks in Half-Life, but keep leveling up until they are full-fledged Warrior Poets in Episode 2. Vortaaal Combat!
- Gordon Freeman himself could qualify. He went from a simple scientist to a man whose name alone sparks hope in the people and fear in his enemies and is usually associated with his famous crowbar.
- And he wasn't even a good scientist to begin with. He majored in what, cart pushing and switch flipping?
- Gordon Freeman went to MIT and majored in Theoretical Physics. His thesis was titled: Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement on Supraquantum Structures by Induction Through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array.
- In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Haar was a fairly average unit who joined too late to be useful. Come Radiant Dawn, Haar joins earlier (among other things) and is now in the top tier.
- In the gap between The Binding Blade/Fire Emblem (AKA Blazing Sword) we have Barte (to a degree) and Karel, depending on whether you go by chronological order (Karel) or release order (Barte).
- The first part of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War has Oifaye and Shanan as tag-along cute kids no older than 14, and the second showes them as quite capable fighters and leaders.
- Then there's Elincia, who starts out as a quiet princess sitting at the sidelines and cheering for her bodyguard and his mini-army to win. By the end of the story, she hops on a pegasus, picks up a sword, and decides that Ashnard bitch is going down. Three years later, after being pushed around by her fellow nobles, she too jumps on the top-tier boat to show the country who's queen.
- Zelda, previously a Distressed Damsel, leveled up in Ocarina of Time with her alter ego Sheik, and has ever since had the tendency to assist Link in the final battle, even though she's still a Distressed Damsel for part of the game just before that fight.
- Continued further in The Wind Waker with her identity of Tetra and assistance in the final battle. Likewise, she assists in the second-to-last battle of Twilight Princess, and her period of captivity in that game is of her own choice (to protect her people) rather than because she was kidnapped.
- Link himself is pretty much an incarnation of this trope; he starts pretty much every game as an unarmed kid in a backwater and ends up Bad Ass enough to believably take down the Big Bad, all the way up to the King of Evil himself. Differs from the standard RPG hero listed above by being more of an Action Adventure character.
- Zelda again in Spirit Tracks for the DS. Her spirit gets separated from her body, forcing the princess to tag along with Link. Her ghostly form allows her to possess Phantoms, among other things.
- Baldur's Gate saw several characters take levels in badass at various points-Sarevok, Nalia, Aerie, and Imoen in Throne of Bhaal come immediately to mind. (the protagonist) seems to take his/her biggest round of badass in Spellhold in BG2.
- The change is especially notable in Aerie, who is initially the most timid and insecure character in the entire game. And then, suddenly, she blurts out the battle cry, "This will hurt you a lot more than me!". Even Minsc's battle cries can't beat that one...
- For a quite literal example, Dual-classing Imoen to a Mage in BG1. It's such a big boost the sequel just assumes you did it.
- In the Neverwinter Nights expansion, Hordes of the Underdark, Deekin undergoes this as well. Formerly he was a kobold (weakling level one type creature) musician with the barest hints of magical power. In this expansion he becomes a half-dragon and helps your hero take on a greater devil, Mephistopholes— ruler of Cania, the eigth hell (making him the second most powerful devil in existance!)— eventually defeating him. Also note, Deekin is the only character that will not turn away from the hero as Mephistopholes attempts to persuade them to join him, showing his true colors as a very good and loyal creature, which is almost opposite of most Kobolds.
- The good is the opposite of most kobolds. They are, however, extremely loyal, being Always Lawful Evil.
- Zack, the titular character in Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, is one of the more feeble game protagonists. He can flip switches, set off cannons, and use enemies' strength against them, but if he were to encounter a common goon who isn't asleep or distracted, and he's done for. In the penultimate mission, however, Zack finds a sword and is actually able to duel and destroy roaming guards the old-fashioned way.
- Metal Sonic in Sonic Heroes. He manages to augment himself with "data" samples from Sonic, Tails Knuckles, Shadow, and Chaos. The result is an obscenely powerful, fast, intelligent machine made out of liquid metal and possessing the power of Chaos Control. Now compare that to his first appearance.
- Even then, he was badass. And the whole point of his creation was to be a robot that could fight Sonic on equal terms -with the addition of built-in weapons. What about Eggman in SA 2, when he puts a gun to Amy's head (TWICE)? Not to mention in Sonic Adventure how Amy herself Took a Level in Badass.(Beware. That. Hammer. It should not be called the Piko-Piko Hammer, not in her hands. In her hands it should be called Mjolnir.)
- In his first appearance, Wally in Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald is quite sickly and needs help in catching his first Pokémon (Ralts), and moved to a cleaner town to recover. He later shows up partly recovered but still only has that one mon and is easily beaten. Much later he shows up right at the end of Victory Road and has an almost full team of mons levelled in their forties.
- A lot of Pokémon fit this trope, evolving from cutesy but weak creatures to powerful menacing badass monsters. In the anime, this happens to May's Torchic while fending off a herd of Breloom.
- Quite a few Pokémon get this treatment between generations, whether by receiving evolutions, receiving new moves, or just fitting in very well with the changes in gameplay mechanics. Perhaps the Most Triumphant Example of this is Wobbuffet. When first introduced, it was a completely useless Joke Character and no one would be caught dead with it. Then came Ruby and Sapphire, giving every Pokémon their own unique ability. Wobbuffet's ability was Shadow Tag. With such an incredible Game Breaker as this ability, along with the move Encore he gained in this Gen thanks to his pre-evolution Wynaut, which forces the enemy Pokémon to repeat a move for several turns, allowing the Wobbuffet player to use the according counter move to destroy its opponent, Wobbuffet now competes at the same level as Mewtwo.
- Another Most Triumphant Example is definitely Scizor. Up until Diamond and Pearl (even though he gained in those games the useful moves U-Turn and X-Scissor, and the Technician Ability), this Pokémon was a forgettable Borderline-overused at best. Then came Platinum, which gave him the moves Bullet Punch, Superpower, and Bug Bite. Bullet Punch is a Steel-type 40 power priority move (thus able to hit Ghost unlike Mach Punch and Quick Attack) which get boosted thanks to Technician and STAB to 90 (equivalent of Psychic and just 5 points inferior to Thunderbolt, Flamethrower and Surf, the standard competitive Elemental moves) ; Superpower is a 120 power Fighting type move, giving him the coverage for Steel types he needed ; and Bug Bite is a 60 power Bug move that gets boosted by Technician and STAB just like Bullet Punch (and thus is superior to X-Scissor). With those, BAM, instant top Overused Pokémon.
- While already a Badass, Boss from Saints Row 2 does what he did so well in the first installation and adds a more brutal touch to it in the sequels. Feats include putting radioactive liquid in Maero's tattoo ink just to show he won't accept 20 percent of the town, saving his hideout from gangsters while high on drugs as well savagely beating up most of his enemies if possible. Events in the finale of the first game inspired him to stop being a Silent Bob, stop being "A bitch who keeps his mouth shut and does what he's told".
- Star Fox: Team Star Wolf were once generic boss enemies who soon developed character (at least, Wolf and Leon) and kicked the two typical baddies Pigma and Andrew and replaced them with Panther. They also become involved in the story.
- In Super Smash Bros. Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode, Lucas is pretty much characterized as a scared little kid, despite his psychic powers. He spends half a level running away from a giant hopping statue that Ness offs with one PK Flash. Then, after Wario attacks the two of them, Ness makes a Heroic Sacrifice for Lucas, who then runs away from Wario and the trophy-ified Ness without trying to save him. He makes some progress since then; several stages later when Wario shows up to attack him and the Pokémon Trainer, and instead of running away, he steps up and takes Wario out.
- This mirrors his growth in Mother 3. His twin brother Claus is much braver... though this leads to Mecha-Drago nearly killing him when he goes to avenge his mom's death, and Porky reformatting him as his army's general.
- The Sly Cooper series of games has Murray and Bently. Murry goes from just being big to actually being somewhere near as strong as he thinks he is from the first game to the second. Bently is an even more obvious example. He acts strictly as Mission Control in the first game, actually starts going out and doing stuff in the second and by the third has tricked himself out so that Sly is really only the leader of the gang in name. Many fans actually consider Bently, not Sly, to be the true hero of the franchise thanks to this and his overall characters development.
- Happened twice to Jak. There was a little incident involving two years of Dark Eco experimentation at the beginning of Renegade, and then during Jak III he gained Light Eco powers. Also happens to other characters — Tess goes from simple Fanservice to being a scarily competent weapon developer between 2 and 3, and everyone (except Tess and Samos) becomes an expert driver in Jak X. Even a vehicle gets Rescued From The Scrappy Heap with the aid of a level in badass; the Hellcat cruiser was useless in Renegade, but an upgraded version appears in Jak 3 so Jak can take on an entire flying war factory of tanks and drones by himself.
- Don't forget Daxter! Even though he stays mostly the same in terms of personality, he gets more screen time as the series progresses: from completely unplayable in TPL to being invaluable in the later games. A few in-game comments on Daxter's badassery include:
- Jak's "I'm proud of ya, Dax," after Daxter wins the Class Two Race. Ironically, one of the only times Daxter shares credit.
- Samos admits that Jak could never have succeeded without Daxter in the prologue to Daxter, since Daxter is responsible for not only saving Jak but also taking down Kor's Dragon.
- In Jak 3, Daxter has to ride a missile with Torn occasionally chiming in comments and encouragement over the radio: one line you can hear while playing is "You're braver than I thought, Daxter."
- In Siren, Kyoya Suda and Yoriko Anno take serious levels in badass.
- In Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Zack takes several levels throughout the story majorly when he is forced to kill his mentor, Angeal, gaining the Buster Sword and a new hairdo. Cloud also takes some serious levels within the literal last two or three minutes of the game, going from a simple SOLDIER grunt to the asskicker you know and love from Final Fantasy VII.
- Well the level taking may have occurred earlier when he picks up the Buster Sword after Zack was defeated and thrusts it into Sephiroth's midriff and when Sephiroth returns the favor grabs the Musamune's blade, lifts Sephiroth up and tosses him across the room.
- Knights of the Old Republic: T3 M4 in the second game. Flying a ship to safety, Locking the navigational controls so only her can guide the ship, and deactivating an assassin droid? Tell me he didn't take a few levels [considering the droid had almost no personality in the first game and only one required instance.
- Every single one of your opponents in the Wii Punch Out Title Defense Mode. They all spend the time after Little Mac kicks their asses to learn new and more devastating tricks. Yes, even Glass Joe.
- You the pilot in the Ace Combat games. The first plane is almost always a dinky, outdated model, and even the relatively modest starter F-16 in 6 is not top tier. By the time endgame arrives, you're using a faster, more agile and survivable Cool Plane, to say nothing of the Game Breaker superfighters turning on a dime with Frickin Laser Beams or Macross Missile Massacre on tap. Beyond that, however, is going back to the dinky planes and Cherry Tapping people to death. In fact, the same could be said for many combat flight-action games in the similar vein.
- In the five years between his appearances in Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter IV, Dan must have been training; he's gone from the Joke Character to a Lethal Joke Character that's surprisingly high on the tier list. It's even reflected in the game; his face is much more serious (though he still gets excited when he wins).
- In the most recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, Smash Up, the Utroms, a naturally peace loving race, suddenly get an Utrom with a mecha and guns, making this something interesting for some, or just not desired.
- The development team says Utrominator is "An upgrade to the Krang character", meaning that, the developers may be hinting that the Utrominator is Krang, therefore, Krang has taken a level in badass.
- Oh, and the Fugitoid seems to have taken a level in badass too, yes, his weapon is a hammer, but now, he can actually fight, how is that not taking a level in badass?
- Cecil's ascension from Dark Knight to Paladin in Final Fantasy IV.
- Broly in Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3, actually: his Rush Attacks happened to become more brutal, he smashes his opponent into the ground, grabs them, kicks them into the air, grabs them in the air again, smashes the opponent in the ground again, but he punches them away for good measure.
- And Broly is getting a Super Saiyan 3 form in the latest game. And Vegeta.
- The Grunts in Halo 3. Suicidal Grunts, My God.
- Gryan Stoutmantle. One first encounters him as a lowbie quest-giver in westfall. Next time you see him, he's a level 75 elite in Northrend. Commanding the Westfall Brigade. On some servers he's amassed quite a fan following.
- Though he starts off pretty badass in Prototype, Alex Mercer eventually is infected by a parasite that saps his powers and severely weakens him. Once he gets over it, though, he takes many new levels in badass, complete with the Armor and Blade powers. He sums it up best with two simple words: "I'm back."
- Kogasa Tatara of Touhou Project: Undefined Fantastic Object. Starts off as a weak umbrella Youkai, ends up being the Extra Stage miniboss.
- Tokugawa Ieyasu in Sengoku Basara 3. What was once a really ineffectual Bratty Half Pint James Bondage has now grown up and kicks butt with just fists and feet, no longer needing to be overdependent on his
Gundam Hondam.
- Mario And Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story does this to Bowser, since the game focuses on him as a main character (with some help from the Mario Brothers). He performs several Crowning Moments Of Awesome, shows a talent for great comebacks and becomes the savior of the Mushroom Kingdom rather than the terrorizer (that role belonging to Fawful).
- Not to mention keeping the Shroob invaders on ice. Including their leader.
- Also, Princess Peach demonstrates some quite potent psychic powers (her "wish power").
- ...which was already present in her rare PC role in Super Mario RPG. Group Hug, anyone?
- The Death Jr. series does this to Pandora. The first game she served as a Distressed Damsel while in the sequel she's a fully-playable character.
- Warcraft III custom map Footman Frenzy has the Death Sheep. Its maximum attack speed is 1 attack per 6 second with laughable damage, crappy HP to the point that a wind walking Blademaster can 1-hit KO it, have the movement speed of a snail that you need a zephyr to really go anywhere. On top of that, it only has TWO inventory slots as oppose to normal hero's six which it desperately need for HP item. The catch? It has the listed skill: Star Fall, Tranquility, Big Bad Voodoo and Stampede, all ultimate skills. Starfall at the very beginning of the match against a throng of footman battling out in a 4 way match can result in the Death Sheep User a lot of gold.
- In Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, your player character, "Soap" MacTavish, is an Ageless, Faceless, Culturally-Ambiguous Adventure Person, whom Captain Price continually ribs for being the FNG (Fuckin' New Guy). Despite this, you still manage to pull off some badass moments during the game, most notably during the final level when you manage to shoot the Big Bad while he's distracted. This is ratcheted Up To Eleven for the sequel, Modern Warfare 2, where you find out that MacTavish not only survived the ordeal, but shaved his head, got some tattoos, got a promotion, and became a totally badass captain in his own right and plays essentially the exact same role to the new player character that Captain Price did for him. The student learned his lesson well.
- Jann Lee from Dead Or Alive, believe it or not, used to be a weak kid who gets bullied all the time, and to ease his pain, he watched Bruce Lee movies. He ends up as an Ascended Fanboy, masters the Jeet Kune Do and is now a very formidable, if arrogant, fighter.
- In Super Mario Sunshine, Bowser's primary goals are simply to kidnap Peach again and make Mario's vacation unpleasant. In Super Mario Galaxy, Bowser's primary goals are to kidnap Peach and take over the entire universe.
- Punch-Out!!. Title Defense Glass Joe. Full stop
- In Final Fantasy IV, Edward is the quintessensial Spoony Bard. He's lovesick, he's an admitted and self-pitying coward, and worst of all, he's just plain weak. Lower damage output than the white mage, and utterly worthless abilities *
Hide, which was his best, made him... run away from battle, being invulnerable but unusable for several turns. Salve took one Potion (not a Hi-potion, not an X-Potion, not a status-healing item, but always a Potion) and split it 5 ways. Bardsong used random status-inflicting songs which failed often) made him the weakest and least-liked party member. Fast-forward 17 years in the game's world, and we come to Final Fantasy IV The After Years, where Edward has suddenly grown some balls of steel. His first act in the story, during the base chapters, is to refuse to stand down when faced with Kain, and he responds to a small army invading his throne room by opening a box with a Carnelian Signet, AKA a Bomb Ring, and wiping out the entire entorouge in one swift motion. Sadly, you are controlling the bad guy in that scenario, so he and Rosa go down, but after he shows us how much he's grown.
- And we're not done there. In his own tale, which takes place before that, we see Edward cross the desert twice and brave the Antlion Cave, by himself, in order to save his assistant, who has taken ill with Desert Fever. And then he goes to Baron, has a conversation with brainwashed!Cecil, gives him a pot of flowers as a gift, and leaves with a presant of his own from the guy he was speaking with. As he sails away, he explains two things. One: the flower was actually a cutting of Whisperweed, the voice-throwing plant he saved Cecil with once before, and two: the presant he left with is, he suspects, the aforementioned Carnelian Signet. The upshot of this is that Edward planted a bug in Cecil's throne room right in front of him, simply in order to find out if Cecil really had gone evil (if it really was Cecil, he'd know what Whisperweed is), and that, in the aforementioned encounter with Dark Kain, he went on a hunch. He went into that encounter almost blind. Add that to some seriously improved abilities *
Bardsong includes healing effects, haste effects, and is much more accurate, Salve now takes one item (of your choice) for each party member and uses them at full strength, and Hide is much more useful when he can be the only one to survive a massive attack, only to come back with 5 Phoenix Downs at once. Plus, he's the fasterst character and has some really powerful harps. , and we've got one seriously Badass bard.
Web Animation
Web Comics
- Done in D&D-based webcomic The Order of the Stick, where Elan literally takes a level in badass — or, rather, in the Dashing Swordsman prestige class.
- Vaarsuvius also does this (albeit only temporarily through a Deal With The Devil) in order to save [his|her] children from a really pissed off dragon.
- Zebra Girl: Jack / Jack The Plaid. Complete with LoTR quote and the villain noting he 'pulled a Gandalf'.
- Kedamono from The Pride Of Life has managed to take one or more recently.
- In Narbonic, the character Seth was a pimple-faced girl-shy role-playing nerd. Then he got sent to hell, where he fought his way out after obtaining the demonic axe Zürrr by defeating the devil queen Sh'zk'ra. And picked up a Badass Longcoat somewhere along the way.
- Torg of Sluggy Freelance took his level in badass during the That Which Redeems arc. Being stuck in an alternate universe with demons hunting you all the time will do that. Afterwards he seems to have settled back into a Crouching Moron Hidden Badass.
- It's easy to forget that, yes, he still owns a sword that can kill demons and gods if he allows it to feast on the blood of the innocent. Untill somebody gives him a reason to pick it up again.
- It's also worth keeping in mind that, prior to That Which Redeems, he succeeded in killing off Aylee's Evil Clone, who had just defeated Bun-Bun. Bun-Bun prefers to pretend that the whole thing didn't happen, and nobody feels like arguing the point.
- From the time Torg got the sword in the Stormbreaker Saga, his badassery was more or less incidental/accidental. It wasn't until after That Which Redeems that it became remarkable. He appears to have taken another level during Aylee-Code Boom, becoming a casual zombie-slayer.
- And again. Perhaps it has become a Running Gag.
- Demons are obviously tougher than the different "zombies", so it doesn't really suggest a further level-up.
- Under the tutelage of her "Kolee", her teacher Zeetha, Agatha's most literal level-in-badass in Girl Genius appears to be a work in progress, though the mere evolution from hopeless klutz of Polygnostic University to a Spark on the level of any previous Heterodyne would certainly qualify.
- Gil's evolution from a bored pupil constantly tested by his father for basic worth into a man capable of facing down his father, and an army of war clanks, is a clear example. See here for evidence.
- Steve from Questionable Content, in what doubles as an epic Big Lipped Alligator Moment... unless, of course, it's mentioned again.
- Mentioned again. This is either a single continuity nod to the fans who insisted it was real, or will become the most epic 3rd line ever.
- The character Cale'Anon from the webcomic Looking for Group. He starts the series off rather clueless and useless, and in the first comic gets blasted to cinders by Richard. By the third or fourth issue, he's changed a little and very soon is pulling stunts like this and this .
- For some of the more unconventional crossovers in the Hellsing fancomic And Shine Heaven Now, the characters from that crossover have done this. The prime example is Madeline from the books of the same name: a sweet schoolgirl in the books, a regenerating vampire hunter in Shine.
- Rumy from Fans!, like everyone else, had already come a long way from The Ordinary High School Student with martial arts training by the end of the fifth book, but after the five-year Time Skip she comes off as a battle-hardened Lady Of War.
- John Egbert of Homestuck initially has troubles even lifting his hammer, but once he starts levelling up, and gets some easier to use hammers, he becomes quite the powerhouse.
Web Original
- Emma in lonelygirl15 appears to have done this in between "I Love You All" and "Operation Emma", largely as a result of having to fend for herself and witnessing Elizabeth's murder.
- Three words: "Brand. New. Day."
- Dave (or Dawei) of Pure Pwnage was a quiet, withdrawn sort of guy at first. He absolutely refused to play any video games until a furious micro (a combat skill based on game-playing ability) battle threatened the lives of his friends. After a flashback showing a tragic gaming incident that killed/injured his sisters, he finally snaps and proves to be an incredible user of micro, effectively taking a level in badass and reverting to the arrogant, snarky personality he had in his past.
- Simon Wood from Survival of the Fittest is nigh-unrecogniseable in SOTF spin off SOTF Zombies. He goes from Romantic Runner Up to somebody who will not hesitate to punch his undead adversaries in the face. On one occasion, this actually killed one.
- Codex takes a level in badass at the end of The Guild season three. It probably doesn't last.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Many people found Katara's sudden leap from being second to Aang in waterbending to being Aang's more skilled trainer rather jarring (the fact that her training was handled entirely offscreen and concluded with the use of As You Know does little to rectify).
- Played for laughs in the The Fairly Oddparents Made For TV Movie, Abra-Catastrophe!, where Cosmo briefly helps Timmy combat an all-powerful Denzel Crocker after watching an 11-second workout video and gaining Hulk Hogan pecs.
- Transformers:
- Transformers Generation 1: All the Autobots should qualify for this trope, since they were designed for civilian use. Extensive after-market tuning turned a loser into the Optimus Prime we know and love today.
- Wheelie of all people took a level in badass after season three. He lost the rhyming speech disability, got drunk, and beat up several Decepticons in succession in the Headmasters pilot.
- After season 3? Try after The Movie — in the five-part season premiere, he shoots a Sweep right in the face while free-falling, simultaneously breaking from his rhyming to deliver the One Liner "Galvatron is strong, but Wheelie is mean!"
- Let's not forget Galvatron. As Megatron, "Decepticons, REEEETREEEEEEAT!" was pratically his catchphrase, uttered about three times per episode. His high-pitched voice (second only to Starscream) didn't add Badass points, either. Then he gets upgraded into Leonard Nimoy temporarily. Then he goes mad, permanently and becomes a much more interesting villain and unpredictable threat. Unfortunately, crazy Galvatron was as likely to pound his own minions as he was the Autobots. Other versions of Megatron get upgraded into Galvatron as well, but for the first Galvatron, it's about the personality change even more than the increase in power.
- More recent incarnations of Megatron have themselves become far more intelligent and dangerous in their skills and motives to the point where it feels they don't need an army to win. Perhaps the most notable of them is the Animated Megatron, who is so much of a threat that he considers the Autobots as little more than pests for most of the time (even going so far as to not acknowledge them by name).
- Reversing this seems to be the main point of Transformers Animated, where the Autobots were all workers on a space bridge, and only have a weapon or two each, all of which, with the exception of Optimus's axe and Prowl's shurikens, had non-combat purposes in mind. This was to keep the Decepticons from suffering from villain decay (which is also why there are more human villains). In fact, they're armed to the teeth and it takes all of the Autobots to just take down one or two of them.
- Sort of subverted by the second season. Not only did Optimus Prime come close to being in the Elite Guard (making Prime rank despite being kicked out), Bumblebee and Bulkhead were at boot camp for a while, Prowl has had cyberninja training, and Ratchet lived through the Great War. They're not just handymen.
- Not quite... with the exception of Ratchet (who wanted a quiet job out of the limelight), they were all failures. Bulkhead and Bumblebee were kicked out, Optimus Prime was kicked out, and Jazz immediately realizes that Prowl hasn't completed his Cyber-Ninja training.
- During Transwarped, Sari of all people took a level in badass. In fact, she had to take a level out of badass, because powering up her newly-discovered-to-be-technoorganic self made her an out of control juggernaut that nearly killed Bumblebee and endangered most of the city. Now she just shoots energy blasts from her hands, can program space bridges, and is actually mature.
- Cheetor from Beast Wars got noticeably more capable with his own abilities. Originally just a scout and little skill in combat, he eventually became The Lancer to Optimus Primal during Beast Machines and a competent leader in his own right.
- Certain versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, like the recent CGI movie, have April O'Neil learning their brand of ninjitsu.
- Serling, a butler robot in Fast Forward, actually saved his master's life in probably one of the most impressive fashions.
- In the animated version of The Legion of Superheroes, the entire series takes a level in badass between the first season and the Darker And Edgier second season. Several of the male characters bulk up significantly, especially Superman, Brainiac 5, Timber Wolf, and Lightning Lad (who also Grows the Beard). On top of that, it also introduces a second Future Badass version of Superman. At least in the case of Superman (the original one) this is justified as Brainiac intentionally went back in time to get him, but not as far back in time, so the Superman he brings back is older and more experienced.
- Enzo Matrix from ReBoot. Even more jarring come Season 4.0, when both the Before (Enzo) and After (Matrix) versions exist simultaneously.
- Ofdensen in Metalocalypse, starting with the first season finale. Because sometimes a Liz Lemon Job requires you to kick some ass.
- Here's a fun game: take some buddies who are familiar with the Superfriends and show them either the Justice League episode "The Enemy Below" or "The Terror Beyond". Once they're done, tell them that the crazy blonde badass dude with the hook for a hand is, in fact, the once incredibly lame Aquaman. We would like pictures of their reactions.
- The cartoon version of the American Godzilla. Sure, it's technically his last-surviving offspring. But, the fact that he has nuclear breath and fights other monsters like his Japanese counterpart really helps.
- Don't forget that a three-part special has the ORIGINAL American Godzilla being turned into a surprisingly powerful cyborg.
- Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible took a severe level in badass the first movie, the Grand Finale and the episodes where he is turned evil.
- In the Kim Possible movie, 'A Sitch in Time, the future version of Monique has clearly taken several levels in badass since we last saw her— she's gone from having to duck and weave and run away from every bad guy she faces (when she subs for Ron as Kim's sidekick in the present), to helping Kim kick some serious ass in the future. (Of course, Ron is still the one who ultimately saves the day.)
- Also from the movie, future!Wade is a Gentle Giant Badass commando.
- And so on for everyone else. Including the vilains.
- In the Disney short "Lambert The Sheepish Lion", Lambert is a lion that is always hiding behind his sheep mommy when the other sheep tease him. Up until a wolf tried to eat his mom.
- In Batman The Animated Series the episode "Mad Love" shows the character, Harley Quinn taking a level of badass on multiple people. She utilizes a thrown away plan by The Joker positively, stabs Batman in the back (of the neck), and has Batman out to the point where he later admits to Joker, "You know, she came closer to killing me than you ever have. Puddin'." Of course her CMOA vanishes when she gets knocked out a five story building.
- Remember when Cobra Commander of Gi Joe was a whiny twit of silly schemes? When he destroys Moscow as a show of force, in Gi Joe Resolute, you will know you are dealing with a badass Big Bad who would give anyone nightmares.
- Valerie Gray of Danny Phantom. She started out as a rather spoiled, superficial girl, and by the end of the second season, could kick major ghost butt without her suit using little more than her housekeys.
- Arguably Danny himself through Character Development. Compare his first few episodes to the latter ones. In the beginning he was awkwardly stumbling with his powers. By end though, he had enough strength to kick God-like ghost beings!
- In the Aladdin TV series, Princess Jasmine was noticably more of an Action Girl than in the two preceding films. This got even more pronounced when certain spells got put on her:
- In "Sandswitch", Jasmine is given memories of a life as a street rat. The new Jasmine is introduced effortlessly beating up four of the royal guards to rescue Abu and Iago.
- In "Forget Me Lots", Jasmine's memory is removed and she's told that she is Harmless Villain Abis Mal's daughter, and one of the most evil and feared people in the area. This causes her to instantly become a marvelous Dark Action Girl who takes over the palace almost singlehandedly, then gives herself a Klingon Promotion when she realizes how useless Abis Mal is.
- In "Eye of the Beholder", Jasmine is turned into a naga. Even though she's horrified of her snake tail, she puts it to very good use a few times on the way to find a cure.
- This carries over into the final sequel, The King of Thieves where she holds her own against the Forty Thieves, all of which are at least twice her size.
- In Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Walter Hartford spent most of the series as a Deadpan Snarker and "computer guy" who was nowhere near the other three when it came to a fight. But when a Evil Chancellor steps in and threatens to kill the king they're trying to ally with? Doc picks up a sword, brawls him, and hands said evil adviser his ass. All the while admitting that he learned fencing from "Miss Abercrombie's Charm School!"
- Which has led a great many fanfic authors to wonder just what kind of Charm School Miss Abercrombie was running in the first place.
- Aelita from Code Lyoko spends the first two seasons as a Distressed Damsel needing the protection of the Hero Secret Service (and sometimes picking the Distress Ball herself, to the point of being considered The Load by part of the fandom). Then by Season 3 she gains an attack power and no longer can be killed just by losing all her Hit Points. She also progressively gets more confident, turning into a full-fledged Action Girl. She is still XANA's Designated Victim throughout Season 3 and 4 thanks to her MacGuffin Girl status, but now she's certainly fighting back.
- Spyke from X Men Evolution. True to the name, Spyke went through a major Evolution over the course of the series. He went from being the slacker all the internet fans hated in season one and two, to being put on a bus in season 3, to emerging as a new found badass that people suddenly liked in Season 4.
- Henchman 21 from Venture Bros is a prime example of this trope. From Season 1 to Season 3, he was blubbery, lazy and inept. But when his best/only friend Henchman 24 was killed, his personality changed radically, and he started training. Now instead of being the Monarch's pudgy, occasional go-to guy, he is officially his most fearsome and competent henchman, now sporting a heavily muscled frame, as well as wrist-blades and greatly improved fighting skill.
- Of course, this is still Henchman 21, and this is still The Venture Brothers . While more competant than he had been in any previous season and arguably more competant than his boss, he's still a fanboy whose Genre Savvy is based more on Rule Of Funny than Rule Of Cool, making him still prone to solutions that are Awesome But Impractical.
- 21's skills have been even further quantified when he takes on Brock Samson and actually puts up a better than decent. Brock himself admits as much after beating him. A Crowning Moment of Awesome for 21 to be sure.
- In the episode "Assasinnany 911," Molotov Cocktease attempts to give the Venture boys a lesson in Bad Ass. It doesn't take.
- Done in a small way by Sally Impossible after she hooks up with J-J Venture. She goes from a flaky co-dependent (and possibly alcoholic) to a strong-minded young woman who can chew out Richard and co-pilot the Ventron.
- In the Family Guy episode "Dial Meg for Murder" Meg Griffin turns into a hardened criminal after three weeks in a prison (due to sheltering an escaped convict) and returns the suffering inflicted on her over the years to her family and fellow students. This is just an one-episode thing though.
- Private Snafu, a Wartime Cartoon Looney Tunes character who starred in shorts made especially for soldiers. In his early apperances he was portrayed as the worst soldier in the US military, and the purpose of his cartoons was so soldiers could learn what not to do. By the end of the war, he was behaving much like Bugs Bunny, outwitting enemy soldiers and successfuly completing missions.
Real Life
- Stevie Wonder began his career as Little Stevie Wonder, recording undistinguished albums of soul and big band covers under the creative control of Berry Gordy's Motown. At the age of 21 he threatened to quit the company unless he was allowed to do things his own way; Motown gave in, and Stevie Wonder went on to record a string of innovative albums that made him one of the key stars of the 1970s.
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