Basic Trope: A story with two action girls has the tougher, less feminine action girl killed off while the other survives.
- Straight: Kelly and Frankie are the two action girls. Kelly is a Girly Girl while Frankie is a tomboy. Frankie dies in the second act and Kelly lives Happily Ever After.
- Exaggerated:
- Frankie is the first character to be killed off.
- Every single unfeminine character is killed off.
- Kelly is a frilly, girly princess, while Frankie looks like a Brawn Hilda. Frankie dies.
- Downplayed:
- Frankie and Kelly are more or less even in terms of femininity but Kelly is just a bit more feminine. Frankie is injured/crippled but survives.
- Kelly and Frankie are tomboys of different spectrum; Kelly is a Tomboy with a Girly Streak while Frankie is The Lad-ette. Kelly survives and lives Happily Ever After, while Frankie dies.
- Frankie is either overly tomboyish and openly kick-ass in demeanor, with femininity downplayed if present. Kelly, on the other hand, is a full-blown Lady of War who is proficient in the use of polearms. Frankie goes down fighting head-on, while Kelly's traps and ambushes do in the bad guys.
- Justified:
- The villains kill Frankie first because they know she's a bigger threat than Kelly.
- Frankie finds herself in situations which could get her killed far more often than Kelly does because she is better equipped to handle it than Kelly.
- Frankie pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to protect a group of other people, including Kelly.
- Frankie is Leeroy Jenkins while Kelly's reserved Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass attitude translates into caution.
- Frankie is strong but stupid and relies on her muscles to do her thinking. The less physically capable Kelly has to rely on her wits a lot more, so she avoids traps Frankie blunders into.
- Frankie and Kelly's fighting style differs, with the Frankie having brutish fighting style to Kelly's graceful style, nevertheless, the villains can counter Frankie's style but not Kelly's.
- Inverted:
- Kelly dies while Frankie lives.
- The sensitive guy Chris survives while manly-man Derek dies.
- Frankie and Kelly have the Vasquez/Ripley thing going on, but as the film goes on Frankie develops a hard-core Heroic BSoD that reduces her to a constantly crying mess while Kelly develops an Adamantium backbone and a kill count in the three figures. The possibility is then split 50/50 in Frankie dying because she was the "Vasquez" or because she picked the wrong time to become useless.
- Gender Inverted:
- The manly-man Dereks survives while sensitive guy Chris dies.
- Camp Gay Guy Dies First.
- Subverted:
- Frankie walks into a room, and seconds later an explosion occurs from inside. Kelly presumes that Frankie is dead, but she is later seen emerging from the wreckage.
- Frankie dies early in the movie, but Kelly also dies later on.
- Double Subverted:
- Kelly has a Mortal Wound Reveal.
- Kelly's actually just unconscious and possibly injured - she is able to recuperate after getting to a hospital. Frankie was hiding her own injuries in her effort to get Kelly said medical attention, to which she succumbs just as she gets Kelly into an ambulance.
- Parodied: An entire army of masculine women and only one girly girl go into battle. All the masculine women are easily killed while the girly one survives.
- Zig Zagged: Frankie and Kelly have Resurrective Immortality; while Frankie does die more often than Kelly, they always come back.
- Averted:
- Kelly and Frankie survive.
- Both of the girls die.
- Enforced:
- "Our audience doesn't want to see a manly tomboy survive the film instead of the sexy girly girl,so kill Frankie off."
- Frankie is helpless against the killer and dies quickly, and Kelly is shown to have survived by caring for the rest of the team instead of going with Frankie. The obvious contrast seems to suggest that the writer disvalues women who aren't "feminine" enough.
- Lampshaded: "Maybe Frankie would have lived if she'd acted more like a girl."
- Invoked: "Kill the tomboy first, she looks like a bigger danger to us!"
- Exploited: The Noble Top Enforcer Would Not Hit a Girl so Kelly dresses and acts in a girly fashion to avoid execution. Frankie is mistaken for a boy and so she receives no mercy.
- Defied:
- "I am not going to end up as another tomboy that dies in favour of the girly girl!"
- "I better dress up like a girly girl. They always survive in the movies!"
- Discussed:
- "If we send Kelly and Frankie in to save our friends, I'm pretty sure only Kelly will make it."
- Or:
Frankie: "It's you and me, huh, Kelly? Guess I should go write my last will now." - Conversed: "We know Kelly's going to survive this movie and Frankie will be lucky if she makes it past 30 minutes."
- Implied: Kelly and Frankie are minor characters who fought their last battle at the same time as, but not together with, the heroes, so the narration focuses on the heroes' battle. The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue doesn't cover Frankie's future at all, while Kelly is shown to place flowers at somebody's tombstone.
- Deconstructed: If Frankie dies, then whatever killed her takes Kelly out in the next second, because Kelly is less combat-capable.
- Reconstructed: Kelly is girlier, smarter and a better fighter than Frankie, who puts up her tough tomboy image to try and make people think she is a skilled fighter. When troubles comes, Frankie's bluff is called and she is killed.
- Plotted A Good Waste: The author is trying to make a point about how you don't have to act or look "manly" to be of any use in serious situations. (The point could come across better if it's used together with the Reconstruction.)
You Are Too Late. Vasquez Always Dies after all.
