Basic Trope: Pain is pleasure. Their own, and others. Alternatively they got stronger due pain pleasure from a combat fight.
- Straight: Paige is a brawler who enjoys causing and receiving as much pain as possible, even getting turned on by it.
- Exaggerated: Paige can only be sexually satisfied if intercourse involves serious war crimes and breaking at least three of her own bones or suffering first degree burns.
- Downplayed:
- Paige is a bit sadistic and has a slightly unhealthy fascination with suffering battle wounds.
- Paige likes to feel and inflict pain during a fight. Unless things start to get deadly, in which case, she's more likely to wince in sympathy or run away in fear than to actually enjoy it.
- Justified:
- Paige suffered a serious case of PTSD that she "dealt" with by becoming a sadomasochist.
- Paige has a supernatural ability to turn any pain she receives into physical power
- Inverted:
- Instead of sadomasochism, Paige is highly sensitive to the pain of others and is herself almost phobic of being physically harmed. As soon as she sees blood — hers or someone else's — cue her uttering "Oh damn..." and falling over.
- Paige is a very Reluctant Warrior; while she is capable of giving her opponents a world of hurt, she is not willing to do it unless really needed.
- Subverted: Paige gives off creepy sociopathic and S&M vibes along with a reputation for combat. When she starts fighting, it turns out she prefers a fighting style that favors fast and painless kills while completely avoiding harm herself. Turns out she's an assassination artist that gets off on being undetectable and untouchable.
- Double Subverted: … which is how she handles stealth missions, if she's hired to make a lot of noise and cause a lot of pain, she gleefully causes painful non-lethal wounds and allows herself to get smacked around.
- Parodied: Paige goes around kicking people in the shins and goading them into hurting her, which only weirds them out and scares them off.
- Zig Zagged: Paige is into S&M via combat, only it turns out she's unable to feel pain and actually hates harming others… which is what she told the good guys before betraying them and cackling manically as they kill her for the betrayal.
- Averted:
- In an action movie with plenty of evil, sadistic enemies and a few masochistic ones, no one is ever depicted as enjoying both causing and receiving pain.
- All of the enemies in a war movie are professional soldiers, none of whom have PTSD that could have evolved into Combat Sadomasochism.
- All the sadists, masochists, and sadomasochists only act sadistic or masochistic in sexual encounters; outside the bed room, they actually react to pain quite normally.
- Paige isn't a brutal combatant because she likes the pain of herself and others, but because she can't feel pain.
- Enforced:
- The actress playing Paige in an action is famous for a series of raunchy TV shows, which the producer wants to capitalize on by having her character be an S&M brawler.
- The movie is PG-13, not enough to allow sadomasochistic sex acts, so instead they demonstrate through vague pleasure during actions scenes.
- Implied: Paige uses a series of Eye Takes during fights when she hurts or is hurt by others to suggest she's enjoys it.
- Lampshaded: "Dude, avoid dating the hot girl on the bad guy's team. Anyone that hot and on the bad guy's side is probably massively insane."
- Invoked: Paige knows she may get captured and tortured, so she pretends to be a Combat Sadomasochist so they think she's also Too Kinky to Torture.
- Exploited: Owen knows Paige is a Combat Sadomasochist, so he floods the area where they'll both fight with painkiller gas, which puts Paige off balance and gives him an edge.
- Defied:
- Nicole has hired Paige and knows her S&M tendencies make her both feared and sloppy, so she puts a Restraining Bolt on her in the form of a collar that releases painkillers and tranquilizers into her bloodstream. If she ever seems to be enjoying herself too much or torturing someone for too long, the cocktail kicks in.
- Bill attacks Paige in a way that would not allow her to arouse herself, if she survives it, such as tossing her down a very deep elevator shaft.
- Discussed: "Sure, everyone's afraid of that psycho Paige. But you know what? Anyone that fixated on pain is also going to be really sloppy and easy to take down; they're a glutton, and that can be exploited."
- Conversed: "Wow, that Paige character is ‘'sick!'' Any sane boss would put her in a psych ward regardless of how evil they are."
- Deconstructed: After an abusive childhood and combat related PTSD, Paige becomes a Combat Sadomasochist. But while this does initially make her terrifying and lethal, this kind of combat style is both unsustainable and unwise, leading her to be either picked off or go into an emotional collapse."
- While terrifying against those who don't know better, against professional aware of their tendency to prolong the "sex" as much as possible, while a Combat Pragmatist would go for a quick and efficient kill, they are far less dangerous than their equipment and training suggests.
- Reconstructed:
- Her evil employer has installed electrodes in Paige's brain and used brainwashing to rewire her pleasure/pain/empathy/shadenfreud impulses in such a way that she's far more dangerous in a fight.
- Paige has the self preservation instincts to avoid injuries when possible. When she does get hurt, she can turn the situation around by, breaking out of various hold that would be to painful for a normal person to do, and greatly intimidate the opponent.
- They still make decent weapons of terror to demoralize the people whom aren't professionals.
- Played For Laughs: Paige runs around trying to hurt people and to get hurt, but is instead mistaken for being a kind and gentle soul.
- Played For Drama: After suffering PTSD and becoming a Combat Sadomasochist, Paige slowly degenerates, her pleas for help take the form of violent outbursts. She reaches the point only extreme sadism or self-harm cause any emotional response, eventually leading her to suicide.
- Played For Horror: Paige quite visibly and viscerally gets off when she gets her hand blown off by a shotgun and uses the bone to shiv the Red Shirt.
Go back to Combat Sadomasochist if you get off on what you give out.
