Neutral Female characters in Video Games.
- Another Code: Ashley Mizuki Robins may solve all the puzzles, figure out bulk of the mysteries on her own, and spend her games helping pull her dad's fat out of the fire, but when confrontations turn physically violent, we're swiftly reminded that she's still just a normal teenage girl with no combat training whatsoever. Nothing much that having superior memory abilities and puzzle-solving skills can do against someone holding you at gunpoint.
- Molly in Call of Juarez just stands rooted to the spot while Billy and Juarez engage in fisticuffs.
- Aerith becomes this in Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and Kingdom Hearts but Crisis Core in particular doesn’t feature her fighting or getting into any sort of scrape like the 1997 game with Aerith being portrayed as meek and scared of violence here and her role in the story consists of being Zack’s cute Love Interest and shoulder to lean on. Thankfully the Final Fantasy VII Remake continuity averts this throwing Aerith into the battlefield once more as The Red Mage.
- Devil May Cry:
- Kyrie from DMC4 spends the whole game watching her boyfriend Nero from the sidelines clutching the necklace he gave her — when not getting captured by the villains. The only action she performs that impacts the story in any way is delivering Nero his Cool Sword Red Queen. Given in the dub she’s voiced by Stephanie Sheh the English VA for Orihime maybe it’s all too fitting.
- A big complaint of DMC5 is that Trish and Lady whom unlike Kyrie are the poster Action Girls of the franchise spend the vast majority of the game as this, just hold up in the back of Nico’s van like furniture while the boys, Dante, Nero and V get to have heaps of Stylish Action fighting demons. Particularly egregious in Trish’s case as while she’s weaker than Dante she’s still incredibly powerful and there’s no reason given as to why she isn’t fighting the other demons besides Urzien. The fact the game primarily uses them for Male Gaze fanservice in the place of action didn’t help either.
- Gender inverted in Cuphead; while Sally Stageplay introduces Cuphead to her Parasol of Pain, her husband can be seen bouncing about in the background, behaving in the manner of a stereotypical scared love interest during a battle aside from briefly serving as a getaway driver.
- Played With for Katey from Dead Rising 2. She is too small to help her father when they get attacked by madmen or zombies, but she's smart enough to find a safe hiding place (typically under a couch or behind crates), so that she won't be in the way and that Chuck can focus on kicking ass instead of worrying about her.
- In Final Fantasy IV, Rosa just sort of shouts at Kain when he shows up to steal Fabul's crystal and nearly kills Cecil. Seventeen years later, she does nothing to stop Kain's dark side from kidnapping her, and in the battle between Edward and Dark Kain she sits on the sidelines, untargetable, doing nothing to help, not even healing Edward.
- Rinoa in Final Fantasy VIII especially in the third disc where she spends most of it in a coma and literally carried by Squall and the party members to get help for her, and almost immediately she's abducted and has to be rescued again, and then gets abducted again at the end of the disc * . Not helping matters is that Rinoa spends a lot time on the sidelines anyway and her actions in the previous discs that actively help out the party are few and far between.
- During the fight against Caius in the ocean of Valhalla in Final Fantasy XIII-2, Noel yells "Together now" to Serah to which she responds by doing absolutely nothing. Instead, she stands on the side and watches Noel fight Caius solo. She only drops her neutrality a few seconds later by...falling on her knees and sobbing after Noel's overdramatic speech.
- Invoked in the battle against Boc in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II where a recently freed Jan Ors heads to safety. Subverted in the novella covering the game, where Ors is able to distract the dark Jedi with a thrown rock allowing Kyle to strike him down.
- A variation in The King of Fighters 2003: Rose Bernstein calmly sits on the sidelines and plays the piano while her older brother Adel and the player beat the tar out of each other. People are throwing fireballs around and she doesn't seem to have any supernatural powers, making her less than optimal help anyway. The King of Fighters XI pokes fun at this with Adel's "G. Princess" move; it calls Rose into the battle... by which we mean she strolls in under an umbrella and makes fun of Adel.
- Subverted at the end of King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, where you will only win the final swordfight if you earlier slipped the princess a dagger, which she will use to stab the villain in the back when he's about to win. While the swordfight is going on, the princess isn't just watching, but visibly struggling against the ropes that bind her. The moment she frees herself, she's on her feet and advancing with the aforementioned dagger.
- Kingdom Hearts II:
- Subverted when Xaldin is trying to make the Beast choose between his magical rose and Belle. He hesitates for a moment, at which point she takes a third option, elbowing Xaldin in the chest and stealing the rose while he's distracted.
- Played Straight when Axel was kidnapping Kairi. While both Hayner and Pence at least attempted to stop them, Olette just sat and watched, even though she was sitting on one of the couches right next to her.
- The manga averts this and has Olette attempt to chase Axel with a bat full of nails after Hayner and Pence get their hair set on fire. The Dark Corridor knocks her back instead.
- Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] subverts it as well. While Pete and Maleficent capture Minnie, the moment Pete lets his guard down, Minnie hits him with a Light spell and escapes.
- Kingdom Hearts III: In regards to Kairi, the game finally averts her Neutral Female status... by making her a Faux Action Girl who does nothing of consequence. Eventually averted in the Re:Mind DLC, however, which allows the player to control her for the first time and has a handy explanation of why she appeared to be weak in the original.
- Averted with Ellie in The Last of Us. Every time the person playing her saw an opportunity to intervene constructively, she’d point it out, leading to the character being retooled as having more competence and agency.
- Zelda herself in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when Link is battling Ganon, Zelda herself despite her vast array of magical powers including being able to teleport wherever she wants and ability to transform into a more nimble being who could easily jump over the firewall simply stands there doing nothing in the battle. Even when the firewall goes down all she does is tell Link to get the Master Sword (while she makes no attempt to move whatsoever) and stands there even after there is nothing blocking her. She only gets involved at one point. This contrasts to other games such as Wind Waker and Twilight Princess where Zelda at least helps Link out by shooting Light Arrows at Ganon.
- Iris only pleads for them to stop during the fights between Zero and Colonel in Mega Man X4. Supplemental material justifies this: she and her brother were the result of an experiment to create the ultimate combat reploid. The repliforce scientists couldn't get the warrior and pacifist sides of the personality to mesh, so they were split into Colonel and Iris and they have a mental link from sharing over half the same mental programming. She's literally unable to go beyond her neutral-ness if Colonel's alive. In the manga of the same game, Iris points a gun at ''her own head'' and threatens to kill herself if either of them continues to fight.
- Averted at the end of Outlaws. When the Not Quite Dead Big Bad comes into the room and puts a gun to the main character's head (echoing the way he killed the main character's father), his daughter shoots him.
- Resident Evil:
- Rebecca Chambers spends most of RE1 as this, despite being a Combat Medic. Compared to Barry when you’re playing as Jill, Rebecca is firmly The Load to Chris in his scenario doing little of value beyond briefly holding some zombies back at the end and is otherwise meek and damsely. Strangely enough Rebecca averted this in the prequel RE0 where she’s way more active and badass (being able to take down the Proto-Tyrant) though you could argue she’s simply at the end of her tether by 1. Rebecca also plays this straight in Resident Evil: Vendetta where beyond killing one zombie she’s otherwise just captured and dressed up by the villain Arias while Chris and Leon do all the ass kicking. Averted in Resident Evil: Death Island where Rebecca is part of the action once again.
- Ashely Graham in RE4 besides the brief segment where you play as her, is otherwise just a Damsel in Distress civilian Leon has to protect and unlike Ada she doesn’t aid Leon or contribute anything to the mission beyond a headache when she’s screaming while being captured. Averted superbly in 2023’s RE4make as Ashely will actively help Leon out, helping him solve puzzles, escape from the Gando horde and even helps him take down a Regenerador.
- Averted in Sid Meier's Pirates! 2004, where you can confront Annoying Captains (yes, that's their title in the game) in the various taverns, who are all annoying the barmaids. Telling one of them to leave a barmaid alone results in a duel with the Annoying Captain, but while the barmaid is the subject of the fight, she doesn't just stay passive and out of the fight—in fact, she's the one who ends it if you defeat the Annoying Captain, by virtue of beaning him with a bottle of wine.
- Princess Peach of Super Mario Bros. plays this straight in most games she's in, with a few exceptions:
- In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Peach doesn't fight the Final Boss, but she does help the Bros. out by tossing them Stars to attack with. Of course, when things get really tough, she faints, leaving them on their own.
- She helps out when Bowser first appears in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story by reducing his power with Starlow. Later when the Bros. have to face the Kretin both Starlow and Peach are there, but they don't do anything to help.
- Peach subverts the trope in the first two Paper Mario games. In both cases she's being held captive in...inaccessible places, but still takes care to make sure that Mario is sent all information she finds out. In the first game, she is also able to send Mario items to help him out and is able to give Twink the power to stop Kammy Koopa.
- In the second Paper Mario game, she also manages to resist possession by the Shadow Queen long enough to completely refill Mario's various health meters.
- In Super Mario World in the final fight against Bowser, Peach tosses out a Mushroom every two hits Bowser takes.
- In Super Princess Peach the roles are reversed: Mario and Luigi are kidnapped by Bowser and Peach goes off to rescue them.
- The first fight with Ramsus in Xenogears has a neutral (or at least non-combat) female for both sides. Ramsus has Miang on his side, whereas Bart and Fei have Margie. Both will occasionally heal their comrades but neither take part in the fighting directly (Miang isn't even a selectable target). Miang later averts this when she appears alongside Grahf as the Executioner: in this fight she CAN be targeted, and for good reason, too — her One-Hit Kill attacks make her an even bigger threat than Grahf. Even later on, Miang proves to be able to hold her own as a solo boss, as well.
