Dark Action Girl

Aw darn, I Broke a Nail... gouging your eyes out!

"I'm pretty much the Queen Bitch of the Universe."

— Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, StarCraft: Brood War

Those stupid boys and their ridiculous little games. What's a girl to do? Well, if you're this girl, most likely beat them up.

She may like to dress in black and keep her nails particularly long and sharp, unless the story cares about practicality. A popular combination with The Baroness, but usually not The Vamp or the Femme Fatale, since she prefers to pummel The Hero to a bloody pulp instead of seducing him, but there are certainly exceptions. Can this wild woman be tamed? Go on, keep thinking that way. We'll see how long you live.

If she is brought over to the side of good, even if only for an episode, expect her to be reluctant about it at best. Typically, the DAG still falls prey to that old saw about women being wiser than men,^note "wise" in this case can mean "cunning" or "devious" and is more likely to lock horns with males in her camp. She typically acts as the Evil Counterpart to an Action Girl, and the two will often get into a Designated Girl Fight.

Faux Dark Action Girls are not unheard of, but very rare. This is probably because the standards the decade or culture sets for women usually don't apply to villains, and also because, regardless of gender, a villain who needs to be rescued by other villains would be utterly pointless from a narrative perspective, and being evil she doesn't earn her sympathy points for being captured.

Do not confuse with Dark Magical Girl, who is more likely to be an Anti-Villain and thus more sympathetic. They are also supposed to be foils to a heroic Magical Girl and possibly her friend after being defeated; neither of which is the case with this trope. A Dark Magical Girl really just wants to be loved, while the typical Dark Action Girl would much rather be feared.

Compare Dark Chick, which can overlap.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The group Jaegers from Akame ga Kill! has several female members.
  • The leader of the group is General Esdeath, An Ice Person who can freeze time itself with her powers, and is understandably hailed as the "Empire's Strongest."
  • Kurome is the sister of the titular Akame, an excellent swordswoman who can control People Puppets with her sword.
  • Seryu is a cyborg with Black-and-White Insanity and numerous armaments that she had willfully implanted in her body. She is fanatically dedicated to killing criminals in the name of "justice."
• Annie Leonhart of Attack on Titan has shades of this, being a cold and cynical soldier who enlists in the infamously corrupt Military Police Brigade, abandoning her Fire-Forged Friends without a second thought. She's also one of the Titan Shifter spies, and her rampage as the Female Titan leaves scores of veteran soldiers dead. She turns out to be a more complicated case, hinted to be a Broken Bird with serious Daddy Issues. Word of God explicitly states she isn't inherently evil, though it's hard to deny that she's a Sadist that likes to get.....creative with her kills. When Eren and Armin attempt to talk to her, she goes on one final city-smashing rampage before encasing herself in a Crystal Prison, denying the military the chance to learn her secrets.
  • Mikasa Ackerman actually has some darker shades, too. She develops over the course of the series and obviously holds some strong morals dear to her, but as soon as Eren is in danger she is willing to slice up pretty much anyone, friend or foe without a second thought to protect him. While most others join the Survey Corps to actually fight for mankind, Mikasa couldn't care less if Eren hadn't joined.
• A brief glimpse of Caerula Sanguis' distant past in Volume 9 of Battle Angel Alita: Last Order shows that when she was part of the Chinese Triads, she was very much an example of this trope. After meeting Victor Byron, however, she softens a little. She softens further after meeting John Farrell in Volume 8, to the point that she became something of a Hero Secret Service, at first against Victor, to protect John Farrell's grandson, Arthur, eventually extending her protection to the whole of humanity.
• Berserk only has about two. The first and one who engaged in the most fighting is Rosine, an insect girl Apostle who gave even Guts the fight of his life especially when she went One-Winged Angel. The second is Slan of the God Hand although her "fight" with Guts wasn't very long and she only got turned on by his attacks.
• Birdy the Mighty: Moss from Decode's second season, to the point of being the most badass of the fugitives. Undine may count as well, if "girl" is the right way to describe her.
• Grell Sutcliff of Black Butler is a Transgender woman who, in battle, uses a chainsaw and takes sexual pleasure in fighting Sebastian. She's later revealed to be at least a half of Jack the Ripper and Madame Red's accomplice in murdering the prostitutes.
• Black Clover:
  • Fana is one of the strongest members of the Eye of the Midnight Sun. Her Flame Magic lets her unleash incredibly destructive fire and she's implacable and merciless towards the ones she loathes. Gaining her hatred is an easy action.
  • Vanica is the only female member of the Dark Triad and the host of a powerful devil. She's a maniacal Blood Knight who enjoys fighting strong enemies with childish glee, ordering her underlings to attack civilians just to rile up her foes. She uses Blood Magic to fight, overpowering her opponents even at a disadvantage, and turns more demonic as she expends higher percentages of her devil Megicula's power.
• Black Lagoon:
  • Revy is a Protagonist version of this, a deadly gun slinger who would likely go on a killing spree For the Evulz if not for Dutch and Rock. She gets a bit better though with Rock's help.
  • Balalaika was also one before she graduated to The Baroness of Hotel Moscow, having been a sinister soldier sniper for the Soviets during the Afghan War.
  • By volume 10 Black Lagoon is pretty much a World of Dark Action Girls. These range from Roberta of whom we see a robotic and an Ax-Crazy version on separate occasions, mercenaries who do it for the money like Shenhua and Sawyer to outright psychopaths like Gretel.
• Bleach has many with its large cast.
  • Several Arrancar in Aizen's army are, namely Tier Harribel, who is the Third and only female member of the Espada and a reserved yet deadly fighter. Her Amazon Brigade Apache, Mila Rose, and Sun-Sun, and Cirucci Sanderwicci, a rude and cocky bitch, are as well.
  • The Vandereich have Bambietta Basterbine, a Blood Knight with a Commissar Cap and Zettai Ryouiki, who is seen gleefully joining the Seiteirei invasion and cheerfully bisecting almost everyone in her way. Her next big appearance involved her slicing a guy in half in a moment of frustration after asking him to have sex with her.
  • Bambietta's gal-pals fit in here pretty well, too. Specifically Candice Catnipp, who fries Kenpachi with her Psycho Electro powers and later attacks Ichigo in the most Hot-Blooded way. Aside of that Liltotto Lamperd stretches her mouth to eat her enemies, and Meninas Macallon cutely drops entire buildings on hers.
  • Yachiru Unohana was one of these way back in the day. She was Soul Society's most brutal fighter and even today she is widely feared as Soul Society's most infamous criminal. The only reason she wasn't executed was because Soul Society wanted her on their side.
• Saori, Kikako and Mako Fujisaki/Valkyria from Brynhildr in the Darkness. Saori can cut people into pieces, Kikako has a powerful Breath Weapon, and Valkyria has an arsenal of powers that can kill people. And she's the one who actually enjoys killing.
• N'rala/Nurara from "Captain Future"... as far as the zeitgeist allowed it. The Captain once floored her with a karate chop and commented "You're just a woman after all".
• Although Rizelle of Chrono Crusade prefers to use her powers to get other people to do her dirty work for her, when confronted by Rosette, she proves herself to be one of these, using her marionette strings and Femme Fatalons to cause a massive amount of (clothing) damage in the process.
• Claymore, as a World of Action Girls, has its Dark Action Girls.
  • Ophelia is a complete lunatic obsessed with taking lives. She even kills her own fellow Claymores. She would have killed Claire if Irene hadn't intervened, which lead Ophelia to beg her dearly departed brother to protect her, while alone in the woods, and then moving to a hateful and (at least in the anime version) profanity-flooded monologue that ended with three F-bombs before "awakening".
  • Also the even worse Roxanne, a Manipulative Bastard and Psycho Lesbian who, while she was still alive, would stalk powerful Claymores until she learned their technique and kill them when she was done doing so, allowing her to rise to the rank of Number 1.
  • Then there's Priscilla. The most powerful Awakened Being in the series due to her intense hatred, she's arrogant, calm, and brutal. Just after Awakening she killed Teresa, and has the vast power to utterly trash Alicia and Beth, Riful's daughter, and numerous Abyssal Ones.
• LadyDevimon from Digimon Adventure was thrown in, apparently at the last minute, as one of these. The only reason for this, however, appeared to be to set up an Evil Counterpart with whom Angewomon could have a Cat Fight, complete with slapping and hair-pulling. They even brought her back in Digimon Adventure 02 just to repeat the process.
• Even if you put non-canon material into consideration, Dragon Ball only has about six- Launch in her blonde side (before she got better), Hasky a female mercenary who works for the Red Ribbon army, Colonel Violet who managed to escape Red Ribbon army's destruction, Android 18 from Future Trunks' timeline, Fasha the Saiyan warrioress from Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku (although her evilness is debatable), Zangya from the 9th movie Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound and Towa the evil scientist demon from Dragon Ball Xenoverse
  • The Android 18 of the main timeline could be considered one as well, before her Heel–Face Turn.
• Dr. STONE: Homura appears to be Tsukasa's very own version of Kohaku; one of the first things she does is prove her worth by nearly burning down the whole village. The jury's still out on whether or not she's really all that bad though; Senku seems to believe that they can convert her to his side with the allure of creature comforts that science can create.
• The Villain Protagonist Lucy/Kaede from Elfen Lied. Mariko and her four clones, too. All of them have Vectors that can cut people into pieces.

• Fairy Tail has several.
  • Ikaruga, a reserved and proud assassin who uses her katana to send slashes through the air that slice through all of Erza's armors as she tries to slaughter her, qualifies.
  • Erza Nightwalker, Erza Scarlet's Edolas counterpart and a Sociopathic Soldier who fought Scarlet to a draw before a Heel–Face Turn, definitely counts.
  • Flare Corona, a deranged woman of the Raven Tail guild who has a constant creepy grin on her face, is willing to resort to dirty tactics to win (like taking a child as a hostage) and is sadistic towards her enemies, trying to humiliate them at every chance she has. After Raven Tail is dissolved, she however pulls a Heel–Face Turn and reveals her previous behavior was a result of the influence of the guild on her, revealing being shy and good natured without them. She's still a bit creepy despite that, however.
  • Minerva Orland is the cruel Ojou of Sabertooth who gives Lucy a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and tortures Millianna. Then after losing to Erza, she leaves to join a Dark Guild. After that she joins Tartaros, but then pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Kyôka of Tartaros, the head of the Nine Demon Gates, is first introduced callously disregarding the people she killed who could not handle her Curse, terrifying fellow Dark Action Girl Minerva. A Dominatrix and Sadist, her Cold-Blooded Torture was enough to break Erza, whom she later matches blow for blow and came very close to defeating.
  • Seilah is a fellow member of Tartaros who calmly uses her Macro to command Elfman to destroy the Fairy Tail Guild, nearly killing everyone inside. She then shows herself to be a Yandere when she wants to kill Lisanna because she was embarrassed in front of Kyôka, and then kicks Mirajane's ass and nearly kills her.
  • The Albareth Empire arc gives us the absolutely ruthless Dimaria Yesta. On top of being a Master Swordsman who enjoys taking her time to cut off her opponents' clothes to humiliate them, she's more than willing to kill Wendy and Sherria, who were no older than around 13-14, for opposing the Empire. It's best played straight when she gets furious over Ultear's thought projection interfering with her Age Seal (which freezes time), and reverts to her Physical God form, shooting Carla through the ribs and torturing Wendy with an Agony Beam that makes her experience all the pain she's ever felt throughout her entire life. If it weren't for Sherria's God-Slaying magic and receiving Third Origin from Ultear (a spell that greatly increases one's magic power, at the cost of never being able to use magic again) to defeat Dimaria, she, Wendy, and Carla surely would have been killed.
• Gavrill Madaraki from Franken Fran, the almost-invincible shapeshifting leader of an army of pillaging thugs.
• Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist. Beautiful, cruel, and seductive, she's the only female of the Homunculi and uses her Femme Fatalons as penetrating spears. Her "lust" is one for violence and murder.
• In Guardian Fairy Michel, Lady Salome uses robots and fairies to fight Kim and Michel.
• GUN×SWORD's Fasalina, who (unlike the only other girl in her group, Melissa, who was merely confused) fully embraced the methods of The Claw and, most of the time, puts up a damn good fight against the heroes.
• Gundam:
  • Kycillia Zabi of the original Mobile Suit Gundam is a Dark Action Girl/Lady of War cross. And Four Murasame of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Stella Loussier of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny are Dark Action Girl/Tyke-Bomb blends.
    • Subverted by Rosamia Badam from Zeta Gundam, however. She looks and acts like one at first, but soon we find out that she's actually a badly-damaged Psychopathic Womanchild when not fighting.
  • Dorothy Catalonia and Lady Une of Gundam Wing. The former's a Blood Knight and The Strategist with latent Death Seeker tendencies, the latter's The Baroness, The Dragon, and a Psycho Supporter to Big Bad Treize Khushreneda, whom she does most of the dirty work for. Both of them prefer to avoid physical combat, but when forced to fight, are quite competent, with Une being a crack shot and a capable pilot, while Dorothy is absolutely lethal with a rapier.
  • Other Dark Action Girls include Haman Kahn of Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ, who's probably one of the most dangerous pilots in the entire franchise as well as a Magnificent Bitch par excellence, Sarah Zaviaroff, Lyla Mira Lyla, Mouar Pharaoh, and Natasha Zaviaroff (one of the few not villainous examples).
  • Then, Victory Gundam gives us several. We have Lupe Cineau, Fuala Griffon, Renda de Baroma (an Anti-Villain version, as well as the female half of Battle Couple with Colonel Badass Duker Iq), and especially the Face–Heel Turn-ed Katejina Loos.
  • Carta Issue of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans appears to be this on the first glance, except she's an Ineffectual Sympathetic Anti-Villain. While she is capable of mopping her foes if an opportunity was given, she frequently loses miserably because of her obsession with honour when her foes are Combat Pragmatist having no qualms about killing her off guard, and she repeated this mistake for three times.
  • Nena Trinity from Gundam 00, though she's more of a Dark Female Gundam Pilot. Considering that Nena has only actually been able to kill stationary (like the wedding) or otherwise helpless (like Wang's shuttle) targets, she could actually qualify as a Faux Action Girl rather than a Dark Action Girl. The fact that Louise eventually kills her in a brutally one-sided fight certainly doesn't help matters. Even moreso, Throne Drei is built specifically for stealth and support purposes, therefore, asking it to actually kick ass is like sending in a squishy cleric to deal with tough enemies that can deal a lot of damage.
    • Also, we may be able to include Soma Peries and Louise Halevy (from the second season on).
    • Hilling Care definitely qualifies for this, both inside and outside of a mobile suit. She technically lost against the 00 Raiser, but she did put up a big fight.
• Zorin Blitz and Rip Van Winkle from Hellsing. Both are Nazi Vampires that enjoy death and destruction.
• Hero Tales has Shouka, powerful enough to put an entire town under her rule. Suffers The Worf Effect when Housei fights her with a mundane bow and beats her.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers has Belarus, a Clingy Jealous Girl and Boisterous Bruiser who skirts the line between this and Action Girl. She has been known to carry around knives and, while not villainous (she's more childish and extremely jealous/obsessive than evil), is often portrayed as having darker motives than the other Action Girls in the series, plus she has a Hair-Trigger Temper and exhibits strange behavior.
• Kyala from Highlander: The Search for Vengeance qualifies for this. She is an immortal, who was a soldier in Japan in the sixteenth century. She is a badass fighter, and at the same time a cruel sadist.
• Highschool of the Dead: Before the outbreak, Saeko Busujima was the captain of her school's Kendo Club, so she was already proficient with a sword. Then "They" came, which gave her the perfect excuse to use it - 'cuz Saeko is an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight, who literally gets off on violence. Which she openly confessed to Takashi, when she told him how she'd once beaten a would-be rapist within an inch of his life... and enjoyed it. Not because he tried to rape her, but because of the euphoric glee she got from beating the ever living sh*t out of someone without restraint. And she's GOOD at it. Which is why Takashi's glad she's on their side and regards her as a necessary evil.
• Inuyasha: Kagura started off as this and eventually softened via Character Development into an Aloof Ally of the good guys that fitted the cynical version of a Heel Face Turned Dark Action Girl; strictly speaking, she was a Dark Action Girl due to being enslaved to the Big Bad, which made her a Broken Bird as well.
• Satsuki Kiryūin from Kill la Kill The Rival and sister to the protagonist Ryūko definitely qualifies. She's an extremely powerful Dark Action Girl whose Fighting Spirit alone could down a 500 hundred men and wields a black blade katana Bakuzan which matches Ryūko's BFS scissors all while being powered by Junketsu. After being freed from her mother Ragyō's influence she becomes the Deuteragonist.
• Legend of Heavenly Sphere Shurato: Nara-oh Renge. Ability-wise, as she's very ruthless in battle and has the skills to back it up. Returns to being an Action Girl on the side of good when she's Back from the Dead.
• Since Defeat Means Friendship, there are only a few female characters from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha who still are Dark Action Girls:
  • Subverted with Presea Testarossa from the first season. Despite being one of most powerful known mages and the Big Bad of that season, she is The Unfought.
  • From Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Tre and Sette are the only two of the still imprisoned Numbers who fill the action part. And Due, who is one of the two darkest Numbers, is Killed Off for Real.
    • Ironically, the other one of the two darkest Numbers (Quattro) lacks the action part.
  • The Mariage from StrikerS Sound Stage X are almost literal Ninja Pirate Zombie Robots who kill and eat people and infect the corpses to turn them into new Mariages.
  • From Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force, the three fighting female members of the Hückebein family fit this trope: Curren, Cypha and Arnage. Arnage is the Perky Female Minion, Cypha is Ax-Crazy Blood Knight who almost killed Signum in their first fight, and Curren is the leader, a Mood-Swinger and the first thing she did when she appeared in the series is impaling Hayate from behind.
• Naruto has a load of bait-and-switch Dark Action Girls who sometimes don't live up to their initial posturing or pull a whiplash-inducing High-Heel–Face Turn, but the standout is Tayuya, the flute-playing, Sir Swears-a-Lot genjutsu expert of the Sound Four, who easily cows her Ax-Crazy coworkers, punches out the eponymous hero, and demonstrates, perhaps better than anyone in the series, save Uchiha Itachi, why genjutsu is not the "soft" one of the three main ninja skill sets. She then goes toe to toe with Shikamaru, the smartest guy in the whole series, and proceeds to back him into a corner and break his nigh-unbreakable binding jutsu with sheer brute force and bloody-mindedness. The only thing that stops her is having a forest dropped on her courtesy of Temari, a badass Action Girl whose idea of a "cat fight" is breaking her opponent's spine and then tossing them across the room.
• Evangeline from Negima! Magister Negi Magi, before her Heel–Face Turn. Not that she'd ever admit to having made one.
• One Piece has its fair share, from Miss Double Finger (and arguably Miss Merry Christmas) to Kalifa. Boa Hancock initially appeared to be this, but mellowed out over time (though she can still be cruel to enemies). The sole female member of the Blackbeard Pirates, Catarina Devon, counts. The Wano arc adds Ulti and Black Maria from Arc Villain Kaido's Flying Six. The strongest Dark Action Girl is of course Pirate Emperor Big Mom who's equal to Kaido in being a Person of Mass Destruction.
• The titular character of Overlord (2012) Satoru Suzuki/Momonga has multiple Dark Action Girls under his command, most notably his two main love interests, his elegant and beautiful, but barely stable and cutthroat Ax-Crazy second-in-command Albedo, and the Cute and Psycho vampire and guardian of the Nazarick's first three floors Shalltear Bloodfallen, both of which are among if not the best fighters on their side, as well as there most evil.
  • Another member of the guardians is Aura Bella Fiora a tomboyish dark elf, The Beast Master, and co-guardian of the sixth floor with her twin brother Mare Bello Fiore.
  • For an example not on their side, we have Clementine, a boisterous and sadistic Blood Knight who enjoys brutally killing anyone unfortunate enough to cross her path with a big Slasher Smile on her face.
  • There is also The Pleiades, who with the exception of their leader Sebas, are a squad consisting entirely of Ninja Maids, meant to serve as The Great Tomb of Nazarick's and its leader's last line of defense if the guardians failed.
• Sabrina and Lorelei of Pokémon Adventures. Interestingly enough, both of them have joined forces with the protagonists at some point due to an Enemy Mine situation; in fact, Sabrina does so against Lorelei.
• Every female villain in the Pretty Cure franchise does count to a degree, but the most outstanding example is Dark Precure, who doesn't rely on Monsters of the Week.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica has Kyouko Sakura. She gets better, to the point of even pulling a Mercy Kill/Heroic Sacrifice so that Sayaka (who she has become very sympathetic toward) doesn't have to die alone, even admitting that part of the reason she became a Magical Girl in the first place was because she wanted to protect someone.
• Early in Re:Zero the major threat is Elsa Granhiert. She's a polite raven-haired beauty with exceptionally eccentric fashion sense. She is also a ruthless assassin with a disturbing appreciation for the beauty of her enemies' guts and the combat skills to put up a decent fight against one of the most powerful knights in the kingdom.
  Elsa: If I lose my fangs, I’ll use my claws. If I lose my claws, I’ll use my bones. And if I lose my bones, I’ll use my life.
• Pirotess from Record of Lodoss War, a female dark elf who serves as the villainous counterpart to the high elf on the heroes' side, Deedlit.
• The Saga of Tanya the Evil has the titular character Lt. Tanya Degurechaff, possibly one of if not the youngest examples of this trope, at only around ten years old. Yet on the battlefields of an alternate version of World War I, she is one of the most powerful and ruthless soldiers you could ever have the misfortune of meeting, even earning herself the nickname The Devil of The Rhine. Tanya is a mage born with an incredibly high amount of power, that makes blasting through entire companies of enemy mages, ground soldiers, planes, and artillery a breeze, not that she won't resort to cutting her enemies open with her bayonet and even blowing herself up if she has to. She is also an extremely ruthless, brilliant, and sociopathic leader, willing to get her own men killed simply for annoying her and only pretending to care about her troops or country to further her own personal gain.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Any of the Sailor Animamates from the last season. Sailor Animamates were the servants of Big Bad Sailor Galaxia, who was hunting down Star Seeds/Sailor Crystals across the universe. They were all once good, but Sailor Senshi become evil when they lose their Sailor Crystals.
  • The Doom and Gloom Girls, Queen Beryl's last and strongest warriors from the anime, who very nearly succeeded in defeating the Sailor Senshi.
  • Also the Ayakashi Sisters, Evil Counterparts of the Inner Senshi and pretty competent combatants. In the anime, however, they have a collective Heel–Face Turn.
• Saint Seiya has Ophiuchus Shaina start off as this in the classic series (before undergoing a High-Heel–Face Turn), and a few others like Geist (anime only) who is Shaina's sister, and Mermaid Thethis in the Poseidon saga.
  • Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas features two. The first is Pandora, one of the dragons of Hades who, unlike her counterpart in the original Saint Seiya, gets involved in fights and doesn't fears to face the whole Sanctuary for the sake of her lord. The other is the Specter Behemoth Violate, who is able to fight toe-to-toe with Gold Saints with no problem.
  • Saint Seiya Omega brings more examples, among the most prominent ones Hornet/Scorpio Sonia, Gemini Paradox, the Big Bad from the second season Pallas, and her subordinate, Great Sword Gallia.
• Sands of Destruction features a couple, though who and to what extent varies by adaptation:
  • In the manga, Villain Protagonist Morte is a gleeful Omnicidal Maniac whose favorite things include bombs, Stuff Blowing Up, and hitting things with her BFS.
  • In the anime, Morte softensu into an Action Girl with a Dark and Troubled Past, but Rhi'a takes her place, preferring to shoot first and not bother to ask questions later. Naturally, the two of them end up fighting quite often, but rather than being a Designated Girl Fight, it's more about pitting two of the best fighters against each other.
• Karinka from Steel Angel Kurumi toes the line. She beats another main character, and lives primarily so she can destroy the main character and steal her boyfriend. Oh, yeah, she curses like a sailor, too.
• Adiane from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann beats down an entire brigade on land and is the most violent and psychotic member of the Beastmen Generals. Her Gunmen even brings to mind Vagina Dentata.
• The anime Tokyo ESP has several examples.
  • Kobushi Kuroi not only has the ability to make herself invisible, but is also a talented boxer. In the course of the plot, however, she becomes a heroine.
  • However, her sister Kozuki Kuroi remains evil. She is also a good fighter and has special powers.
  • Lin Lianjie also qualifies, as does Amie Namuro. Both are especially evil.
  • The second major villain is Minami Azuma, who also plays this trope.
• Tokyo Ghoul features several of these, all deadly Ghouls that enjoy playing with their food and killing anyone that gets in their way.
  • Binge Eater Rize Kamishiro, a serial predator that targets attractive young men and enjoys "gently scrambling" their insides.
  • The series loves pulling a Samus Is a Girl with its Big Bads, with the major threats of the side-stories Jack and Joker both revealed to be women. Perhaps the greatest example of this in the series is the legendary Hero Killer, Eto/Sen/the One-Eyed Owl. She is considered the most dangerous Ghoul in Tokyo, a brilliant Evil Overlord, and so powerful that only Arima, Kaneki (eventually), and Furuta have been able to take her on in battle.
  • The sequel introduces another in the form of Nutcracker, another deadly fighter with a preference for male victims. Guess why they call her that.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, Mai Kujaku becomes one in the Doma arc and eventually steals the souls of Pegasus and Jonouchi (though, she has a Heel–Face Turn right after stealing the latter's soul).
• Trigun has two among the Gun-Ho-Guns: Dominique the Cyclops who gives Vash a genuinely tricky fight thanks to her Magic Eye and Elendira the Crimsonnail who has Briefcase Blaster along with illusion powers and Super Speed.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
  • The two female Seven Stars Assassins, Camula and Tania, are among the four strongest members. Aside from Amnael, they are the only members to win against the Key Guardians, but both of them end up defeated by Judai.
    • Tania is actually a tiger, and she becomes an ally in the third season.
  • Asuka becomes one temporarily during the second season when she becomes a member of the Society of Light, and she replaces her Cyber Girl deck for a White Night deck.
  • If you see the Big Bad of the third season, Yubel, as a girl, then "she" counts as one. Woman Scorned is pretty much the reason for
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
  • Aki is one as the Black Rose Witch, a violent and destructive duelist with Psychic Powers, before reconciling with her parents.
  • Misty and Carly as Dark Signers. Misty tries to avenge her younger brother's death by trying to kill Aki, the person she thinks is responsible for his death, and nearly defeats her twice. Carly defeats Divine in a duel, in which her final attack sends him falling down a building, nearly killing him, and could have defeated Jack if not for a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL:
  • Droite starts out as one, although Affably Evil. She later becomes a regular Action Girl.
  • Merag is the only female member of the Seven Barian Emperors. To make Rio's Face–Heel Turn more effective, the first crime Merag commits is killing Tetsuo, although she kind of regrets it.

Comic Books

• Adventure Time: Candy Capers has Agent Princess, who pretends to be a female Tuxedo and Martini secret agent but is actually just a pyromaniac psychopath.
• Zephyr Quinn of Matt Fraction's Casanova, Casanova's Evil Twin and a hedonistic master thief.
• Most of the main characters in the Chaos! Comics universe were these.
• The DCU
  • Harley Quinn started off as this as a Canon Immigrant from Batman: The Animated Series. However due her extreme popularity, DC wisely separated her from The Joker and gave her some Adaptational Heroism. Now she's an unstable Anti-Hero who will aid the Justice League.
  • Punchline was created to be Harley's replacement as Joker's Dark Mistress and ironically has a far less joyful personality than her.
  • Lady Shiva is generally regarded as the deadliest martial artist in The DCU. When Matt Thorne, the Crime Doctor, is on the run from the criminals he has betrayed, he asks for sanctuary from Oracle and her team. Injured and hurt, Thorne sees Shiva and remarks "Holy Mother of God. I'm almost honored they sent her to kill me."
  • Poison Ivy started as one and continued to be for several decades. But after DC decided to revamp their back catalogue of villainesses to have more female heroes Ivy got some Adaptational Heroism in the New 52 and following comics, she became a Green Thumb Anti-Hero instead of an eco-terrorist.
  • Lex Luthor has Hope and Mercy, his team of female bodyguards.
  • Tim Drake foe Scarb, who fought him when he was both Robin and Red Robin, was an accomplished assassin and fighter both in and out of her powered armor and commanded respect among criminals worldwide.
  • Supergirl enemy Lucy Lane, Superwoman. She was a soldier before being subjected to experiments which gave her Kryptonian-like powers. Nonetheless, she's fixated on getting her father's approval, whatever the cost. In Who is Superwoman? her obsession has turned her into an amoral monster who will do anything to please him, caring for nothing more.
  • Superman's female Kryptonian foes Ursa and Faora definitely fall under this. Funnily enough they used to be the same Dark Action Girl before becoming a Decomposite Character and then would Man of Steel re-composite them into the same character again.
  • In Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom, the titular villain is a skillful, powerful female warrior who serves the god of tyranny faithfully and obsessively.
  • Talia Al-Ghul fits the criteria along the Trope Codifier for Daddy's Little Villain being the daughter of Ra's Al-Ghul though her relationship with Batman has conflicted her loyalty. Unlike Ivy and Harley however, Talia does not become a nicer and more heroic person over time, instead turning into quite the abusive Evil Matriarch to her son Damian to the point of arranging his death at the hands of her son's clone.
  • Green Lantern comics feature Bleez from the Red Lantern core Dark Action Girl who uses The Power of Hate and initially Carol Ferris aka Star Sapphire from the Pink Lantern core who uses The Power of Love ^note  in the DCU the Embodiment of the Love Aspect in the Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum is more that Ax-Crazy Yandere style of obsessive love rather gentler affectionate kind of love . Although Carol does Heel–Face Turn to good.
  • Scandal from Villains United and Secret Six first appears to simply be a Middle-Management Mook. However, she's shown to be extremely dangerous in combat, quite possibly insane, and very hard to kill (and it's revealed that her father is the immortal supervillain Vandal Savage).
  • Teen Titans rogue Cheshire is an evil Badass Normal action girl and Professional Killer who mostly fights using a wide variety of poisons, to the point even her nails are coated in poison.
  • Rose Wilson, aka Ravager of the Teen Titans, is the most badass girl they've had on the roster. Previously, she worked for Deathstroke the Terminator, one of the DCU's top assassins (and also her father), though she eventually realized how messed up her relationship with him was.
  • Terra the Double Agent is revealed to be this, as she works for the aforementioned Deathstroke. Many adaptations since have made her a more likeable and tragic character.
  • As Cheetah Priscilla Rich, Debbie Domaine and Barbara Minerva were each deadly fighters and manipulators with malicious intentions, Pris was even working for Imperial Japan and the Nazis before she ever donned an animal-themed costume.
  • Another Wondy villainess Giganta definitely counts as this being a Giant Woman who serves as the female version of The Brute for Lex Luthor alongside Cheetah. Although Giganta is more of a Punch-Clock Villain compared to other examples.
  • As an Atlantean Queen Clea of Venturia has most of the same Super Strength as the likes of Aquaman and Mera, and can consequently get physical with the best of them.
  • Superwoman from the JLA’s Alternate Universe counterpart The Crime Syndicate of America is a very notable and powerful Dark Action Girl and The Vamp, especially in her JLA: Earth-2 revamp where she’s an evil Composite Character of Lois Lane and Wonder Woman. In Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths she’s an evil composite of Diana and Mary Marvel instead.
• Destrii, from the Doctor Who Magazine comic. She begins a Heel–Face Turn after being beaten to a pulp by her father figure, the Big Bad, for daring to side with the Doctor.

• Anissa from Invincible a female Viltrimite, spends most of the comic as a particularly nasty one. She also serves as a disturbing subversion of the Villainesses Want Heroes trope as being stronger the protagonist Mark she brutally rapes him in order to impregnate herself, granted she does become The Atoner later on but how much she deserves to be forgiven is still highly debatable.
• Lady Death has a decent amount. Purgatori (a powerful vampire goddess), Stigmata (a Humanoid Abomination), and the Death Queen. The title character as well, as she was originally a Villain Protagonist.
• The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars: Jargala. Leader of the Creeping Crystal Triad? Check. Fearless even on the brink of defeat? Check. She'll fit right in.
• Both Mejai, a Hot Gypsy Woman Master Poisoner, and Ansea Latal, a swashbuckling Defector from Decadence, from The Scorpion.
• Marvel Comics
  • Amora the Enchantress is a prominent example of this, as she's joined Doctor Doom and Loki on their various evil plots and especially enjoys hurting certain attractive female heroes whom she perceives as rivals to her own beauty. She's not completely evil however as she does love Thor and did genuinely care for The Executioner as she nearly destroyed Yggdrasil in grief after his death.
  • Betty Ross when she's Brainwashed and Crazy as Harpy and Red She-Hulk. Although she soon gets better in later comics, even if her relationship with Bruce remains as troubled as ever.
  • Iron Man villainess Madame Masque, the Daddy's Little Villain of Count Neferia is a notable one, being a Badass Normal who hides her Facial Horror behind a golden mask. Due to being a Broken Bird with a Sanity Slippage she still wears the mask even after her face is healed.
  • Madame Viper The Baroness of Hydra (hell she inspired G.I. Joe’s Baroness herself!). She's a particular effective and evil Dark Action Girl and unlike a lot of other Marvel examples listed she is seriously lacking any sympathetic or heroic traits whatsoever, as several of her plans with Hydra reach Final Solution-level evil.
  • Black Cat, one of Spider-Man's love interests. Her Heel–Face Turn is often a Batman Gambit, her betrayals less an indication of her turn than the prime motivator all along. Though she doesn't need love in her life, she can appreciate it when it's there and remembers it fondly after abandoning it, which is why she doesn't return to the Heel–Face Revolving Door by whacking the Hero.
  • Dark Avengers feature several powerful Dark Action Girls and in as Karla Sofen aka Moonstone, Deidre Wentworth aka Superia (both of whom are a Flying Brick who imitate Carol Danvers) and June Covington aka Toxie Doxie who takes aliases of Scarlet Witch. Subverted with Victoria Hand, although she’s an impressive Badass Normal and does fight the actual Avengers alongside Norman Osborn, her heart isn’t in it as a Token Good Teammate and is pardoned by Captain America after Osborn is defeated and joins the heroes.
  • Sin, daughter of the Red Skull and just as evil as her father. She even took up his mantle as the new Red Skull for a while.
  • Shriek, most famous for being Carnage's Dark Mistress in Maximum Carnage counts as this with her Sonic Scream. In later comics she teams up with fellow Dark Action Girl Ruby Headsman (see below).
  • On the topic on Symbiotes and Carnage, from the Life Foundation Quirky Mini Boss Squad Scream and Agony count as this being Dark Action Girls empowered by the Venom Symbiote.
  • Gamora started off as this in the Adam Warlock comics as the loyal adoptive daughter of Thanos before she betrayed him for Warlock. Then again Gamora still walks the line between this and the more traditionally heroic Action Girl as even when working alongside the heroes in Annihilation or Guardians of the Galaxy she's still extremely violent, caring more about self-preservation and taking revenge against those who wronged her than actually doing the right thing. She's not called "The Most Dangerous Woman in the Galaxy" for nothing.
  • Thunderbolts have heaps of Dark Action Girls (a lot of whom eventually turned good) such as Songbird, Gypsy Moth, Figment, Man-Killer, Satana, Quicksand, Black Mamba, Jolt, Pretty Persuasions, Black Widow (Yelena Belova), Joystick and Kobik (who famously turned Captain America into a Hydra agent). Subverted with Black Widow though who turns out be Natasha going undercover as Yelena.
  • Hela is certainly this and unlike Amora, Hela's nicer qualities are almost nonexistent. She's the Evil Queen of The Underworld who has frequently tried to claim the souls of Asgard as her own and brought on mass destruction and death in her many battles with Thor and has even appeared on Earth to corrupts mortals. In more recent comics Hela even tried to shack up with Thanos and despite ultimately being rejected by him, she still sought to resurrect him, after Gamora killed him since she believes they are the perfect dark couple.
  • Promixa Midnight from Infinity is one, being part of Thanos's Black Order. She's even taken on the likes of The Hulk and Luke Cage in a fight. From the same group there's also Yabbat Ummon Turru aka Black Swan who's gone on to work for Doctor Doom as well.
  • Nebula is another space example, but unlike her aforementioned "sister" Gamora, Nebula has firmly stayed on the side of evil having attacked the good guys on multiple occasions and even destroyed the entire planet of Xandar. In The Infinity Gauntlet once she's freed from Thanos's torture she takes the Infinity Gauntlet for herself and tries to kill everyone before Adam Warlock stops her.
  • In The Amazing Spider-Man (Nick Spencer), Peter would run into a whole team of Dark Action Girls the Syndicate, some of whom are Distaff Counterpart to the Sinister Six. The team consists of the leader Janice Lincoln the fourth Beetle, Lady Octopus, Scorpia, Electro (Francine Frye), Trapstr and White Rabbit.
  • Ruby Thursday of The Headmen, a supervillainess with a gelatinous red organic computer/Shapeshifter Weapon for a head.^note In later appearances (and Depending on the Writer) the rest of her body is made of a less malleable form of the same goo. This gives her some limited Healing Factor, and suggests that her Statuesque Stunner form is an intentional invocation of the Evil Is Sexy aspect of this trope. While she looks exactly as strange as that description makes it sound, she leverages her mental and physical fortitude into a career as a highly competent Genius Bruiser.
  • Scarlet Witch was a downplayed version of this originally when she first appeared in early X-Men comics as part of her adoptive father Magneto's brotherhood. Though it's important to note Wanda was Forced into Evil by her Magneto and gladly heel-faced turned to The Avengers at the first opportunity. While she does have her Brainwashed and Crazy and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds moments, Wanda remains on the side of good.
  • Titania is a foe of She-Hulk, and has similar degrees of superhuman strength and endurance. She has since turned over a new leaf in Immortal Hulk along with her husband Crusher Creel.
  • Vapor of the U-Foes has Super Smoke powers and serves as a Evil Counterpart to Sue Storm although she’s never met or fought Sue once in any comic.
  • For a while, it seemed that Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary was going to be this. Then she went and soared merrily over the Moral Event Horizon, diving right into her current personality.
  • Speaking of Daredevil, Elektra was introduced as a Dark Action Girl who worked for The Hand but turned to heroism after falling in love with a certain blind lawyer vigilante, before Bullseye famously killed her. Years since after getting resurrected, being a Heel–Face Revolving Door switching between Anti-Hero and Dark Action Girl and getting replaced with a Skrull for a while, Elektra becomes a hero for real and even takes up the mantle of Daredevil to prove to Matt once and for all that she’s turned over a new leaf.
  • Rogue was this originally when she worked for Mystique and her introduction in Avengers Annual #10 did not paint her in a good light as she gleefully ran roughshod over the Avengers her with Power Parasite ability, having just brutalised Carol Danvers and tossed her off a bridge. She went on to fight the X-Men and others several more times before absorbing some of Dazzler's memories and having an epiphany at which Rogue left Mystique for the X-Men to atone and the rest is history. Rogue's appearance and personality also marks her change from Dark Action Girl to Good Action Girl, as she originally looked like a butch middle-aged woman with crow's feet who was pretty Ax-Crazy but after her heel-turn to good she became a bombshell who was willing to risk her life for her allies at the drop of a hat.
  • Emma Frost in her introduction during the The Dark Phoenix Saga was very much this. She was introduced as an Evil Counterpart to Jean Grey and had pretty much no redeeming qualities as she worked for the Hellfire Club and had no qualms torturing her fellow Mutants. After Jean beat her, Emma continued being a villain possessing Storm, clashing with the New Mutants and made an alliance with Magneto. It wasn't until The Phalanx Covenant and Generation X that Emma decided to turn over a new leaf and be a more righteous character and like Rogue eventually joined the X-Men, though she still remains a very unpleasant person to be around. She can easily switch back to Dark Action Girl though as seen in Avengers vs. X-Men or when she joins the Cabal.
  • Madelyne Pryor aka the Goblin Queen the Evil Is Sexy clone of Jean Grey created by Mr Sinister is one, having a good deal of Cloning Blues and an Ax-Crazy streak. In the recent Hellions she leads a Clone Army to attack the mutant paradise Krakoa for rejecting her before being defeated and killed.
  • X-23 usually dresses in dark colors, is often emotionally standoffish, and is willing to kill and torture to achieve her goals, even after joining the X-Men and attempting to turn her life around. However it's been increasingly downplayed over time, and while she's still able to kill if she has to, thanks to Character Development it's more and more her last resort. By the beginning of All-New Wolverine she's verging on outright becoming The Cape.
  • Lady Death-strike is another X-Men Dark Action Girl and Evil Counterpart to Wolverine with her Adamantium-laced Femme Fatalons. Although she’s spent most of comic appearances as a villainess with an Irrational Hatred of Wolverine, in later comics she begrudgingly decides to be a hero alongside other Wolverine-alikes and even joins X-Force for a while.
  • Mystique. Though her powers don't offer any real advantage in a fight, she's a skilled martial artist who supplements her physical prowess with an arsenal of firearms. She frequently makes fake Heel Face Turns that turn out to be Batman Gambits to screw the X-Men over, and when she betrays them, she naturally shoots or beats the shit out of whichever X-Man she'd gotten especially close to while she was "good" (See Iceman. And Forge, twice.). Somehow they always fall for it, because she's just that good at deceiving and manipulating people. In current comics Mystique is a begrudging ally to Xavier and Magneto, paying off her evil debts in order to get her wife Destiny resurrected.
• The Ultimates: Black Widow is the Action Girl of the Ultimates, and turns out to be a traitor, killing Hawkeye's family and Jarvis.
  • Main universe Black Widow started out this way in the early Iron Man comics (albeit a less physical Dark Action Girl), but once the brainwashing from the KGB wore off she heel-turned to good and has mostly stayed that way since.

• Mariah from Sin City. She mostly appears in Hell And Back as a deadly assassin who has a rivalry with vampish Blue Eyes, also a part of the same guild.
• Rapunzel in Snow White Zombie Apocalypse is a super badass, but also dark and troubled. She annihilates The Big Bad Zombie Wolf with her bare hands, but also leaves him alive in multiple pieces. Prince Charming even accuses her of "Slipping" which implies she's losing her sanity.
• In Thorgal, Kriss of Valnor is beyond greedy, but her badassness matches Thorgal's, which is really saying something.
• Trakk: Monster Hunter has Miss Rapture, a deadly female warrior who's in league with Vaquoul.
• From Usagi Yojimbo, we have Noriko, the Blood Princess.
• Y: The Last Man, thanks to the premise, has several examples as villains. Most notably, there's Alter and her Amazon Brigade, the (unrelated) Daughters of the Amazon, Toyota, and Hero, who makes the rare Heel–Face Turn.
  • Especially Toyota.

Comic Strips

• Princess Aura in the original Flash Gordon comic strips. She was the daughter of the Evil Overlord Ming, and had a complicated relationship with Flash that made her help him several times, but literally torture him at others. Either way, she was competent and dangerous in a fight.

Fan Works

• In Action Pack the only villains to appear as of now are women, Joystick, Iron Maiden, Snapdragon, and Quake. Both Joystick and Iron Maiden actually get one over on Spider-Man and they both get Black Fox to let them go, and coincidentally it takes both of them to take them down. And though she only has one actual appearance, Quake still goes head to head with Kira and can hold her own. The only real let down, the 'Faux Dark Action Girl' is Snapdragon.
• The Prowler in Amazing Fantasy is Hell-Bent for Leather, badass enough to go toe-to-toe with Spider-Man, and has eluded all of Japan's greatest Heroes, including All Might, for years.
• Becoming a True Invader: Tak is The Dragon, and a skilled enough fighter to match Gaz, who is the best fighter on the heroes' side of things.
• Kyoka Suigetsu, the (apparent) Big Bad of the Bleach fanfic Chasing the Moon.
• V in A Cure for Love. She is an assassin trained by Wammy's House and the Big Bad.
• A Force of Four has Wonder Woman's enemy Badra. Cunning, murderous and ruthless, Badra is a Hatorian alien, which means she's powerful enough to fight Diana hand-to-hand, and is perfectly able to survive and fly across space on her own.
• A Growing Affection has the Reaper of Shinobi, and Kohaku.
• Harmony Theory:
  • Charisma is a pegasus pony born with a "Killer Mark", which makes her a natural born Blood Knight, who is instantly told the best ways to kill everypony in her immediate vicinity (Whether she wants to or not.) as well as a former member of the Solar Kingdom Special Forces. This has lead to becoming an infamous and feared Psycho for Hire and chief enforcers to one of the Big Bads, who a said to be invincible in a fair fight.
  • One of the two main villains of the story is Nightmare Umbra, a nigh unstoppable Physical God, believed by many to be the living embodiment of war itself and wielding a vast arsenal of magic from simple Super Strength and Super Speed to being able to create armies of undead.
• In Supergirl story Hellsister Trilogy, Satan Girl is Kara's dark side embodied and non-fettered by a conscience or human compassion and empathy. She's inhumanly powerful and lives to destroy.
• Kaiju Revolution: Kamacuras, Kumonga and the Vagnosaurus matriarch are all very powerful fighters, but are more malevolent than the other female kaiju.
• Kara of Rokyn: Faora Hur-Ul is the most lethal Kryptonian woman alive. In addition to her Kryptonian powerset she is a powerful martial artist as well as a telepath and fulgurkinetic.
• In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race:
  • Dr. Wily brainwashes a cosmetics robot to attack and humiliate Roll, and sics Doris the maid on Dr. Light.
  • Nomad would have been this if she had stayed with Wily.
  • Splash Woman is also this; in addition to her brainwashing powers, she packs a plasma staff.
• Mortal Kombat vs Marvel Universe:
  • Cassie is the most prominent example from the heroes' side, being this in the main story and the omakes, due to being the host of the dark half of the Phoenix Force.
  • Kitana is also this, stemming from being an assassin and former revenant.
• Olga Discordia (pre-Heel–Face Turn) from The Night Unfurls is the Arc Villain of the Assault of the Black Fortress Arc, as well as the second belligerent of the centuries-old war against Eostia due to a burning hatred of the human race. Aside from wearing dark-coloured clothing, she once offered the Always Chaotic Evil orcs a city of her own kind, the dark elves, for their entertainment in order to have them join her ranks. Olga is the most powerful among her forces due to her magical prowess capable of rivalling Celestine's own, so powerful that at least one of the battles between the two caused much devastation to the lands (which leads to the both of them wordlessly agreeing not to directly face each other in battle). The remastered version buffs her up a bit, allowing her to hold her own against the world's strongest Lightning Bruiser Kyril for a while.
• C'ren Bieber of One Less Lonely Gurl is this and a Villain Protagonist, despite being a Girly Girl who refuses to wear black.
• Iva Kann from A Prize for Three Empires is a Kree warrior groomed since her childhood into becoming a killing machine.
• In the Jackie Chan Adventures fic Queen of All Oni, Jade is trying to fit this trope, with magic mixed in with physical ability, but has been weakened in a recent chapter, and is planning on recovering and taking a Level In Badass or two before entering the fight directly again.
• Tiffany Stevens in The Secret Life of the Backyard Kids.
• Amber Sheen in the The Hunger Games fanfiction Some Semblance of Meaning.
• Victoria Kati Ahart starts out as one in the Star Trek (2009) fanfic Safe and Sound, being one of Khan's followers and all, but she gets better as the story goes on. By extension the other woman follower, Cleopatra Suzette Ling, is most likely one too, but doesn't get the chance to show off her skills like Victoria does.
• "Cinder" from Vale's Underground, while preferring to work from the shadows, is more then capable of taking on anyone who challenges her. When Adam Taurus attempts to take her place as the top mob boss, she beats him down.
• Crimson Flame in the Eventide Verse My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fic A Moonlit Storm is a member of the villainous group called the Thunderstrikes. She's a kirin, but unlike canon kirin, she embraces her fiery nature and fights by wreathing her hooves in flame before striking out with them a la Shego. She's also vicious, bad-tempered, racist, and ultimately proves to be treacherous toward her allies once she gets her hooves on a source of additional power.

Film — Animated

• Helga Sinclair from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, as she can hold up a nasty, especially towards her former boss Rourke for betraying her for his greed.
• In Barbie in Princess Power, Kara's cousin Dark Sparkle is Super Sparkle's rival and they quickly try to outdo each other.
• Batman and Harley Quinn has Poison Ivy as one of the film's main villains and is pretty good in a fight. Harley Quinn was one before she retired.
• Andrea Beaumont from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm combines this trope with being a Femme Fatale Broken Bird. Averted in most of the movie, considering that nobody is even aware the Phantasm is female until the final act.
• Kubo and the Two Strings has Karasu and Washi, Kubo's aunts who serve as Co-Dragons to the Moon King. The two are extremely formidable opponents to Kubo as they pursue him relentlessly throughout the film. While Karasu is taken out of the film midway through, Washi sticks to near the end and manages to singlehandedly kill both Monkey and Beetle (the former of whom performs a Heroic Sacrifice to take out the both of them), forcing Kubo to face the actual Big Bad alone.
• Shenzi, Zira, and Vitani are nonhuman ones from The Lion King films. Shenzi is a hyena and one of Scar's henchmen (and it's implied that she's the leader of her entire clan). Zira is Scar's former mate, and tries to avenge his death by leading the Outlanders into war with the Pride Lands. Vitani loves to fight, does the most damage to Simba during the ambush, and holds her own against Nala.
• My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) has The Storm King's main enforcer Tempest Shadow, a unicorn mare that abandoned Equestria and turned evil, after her horn was broken in half as a child, making her magic dangerously unstable and ostracizing her from the other ponies. Throughout the film, she's shown easily defeating pretty much any thing in her way do to a mix of being surprisingly strong, a skilled fighter, and the fact that while her damaged horn can't cast most spells, it can unleash explosive blasts of energy.
• Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty is the formidable Big Bad and ultimately the One-Winged Angel opponent to Prince Phillip in his final battle to save Aurora.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Doc Ock is a lethal fighter who almost beats several versions of Spider-Man in combat.

Film — Live-Action

• 300: Rise of an Empire: has Artemisia, the leader of the Persian Fleet and their most skilled warrior, who has a vendetta against the Greeks. During the finale battle of the film she personally enters the fray while Dual Wielding a pair of swords, easily cutting down any Greek warrior in her way until she finally gets to Themistocles.
• Selina Kyle aka Catwoman in Batman Returns after suffering a psychotic breakdown. She has no qualms about winning by cheating, jumps rope while she destroys a department store, and survives fatal situations multiple times.
• Blade Runner 2049 has Luv, Wallace's top Replicant enforcer, who is shown to be a very skilled and sadistic fighter, at one point destroying K's virtual girlfriend in front of him, after she got the drop on the heroes.
• BloodRayne: Katarin becomes this after her Face–Heel Turn, while a couple female minor vampire characters are also fighters.
• Leilah, the elf terrorist and Big Bad in Bright. Imagine if Legolas used modern-day weaponry instead of bow and arrow, was a girl and evil, and you'd get her.
• Bumblebee introduces us to Shatter, the first female Decipticon to brought to film and the Big Bad of the film's plot. While she generally prefers to be the brains of the operation, and leave her partner Dropkick to be the brawn, she is no less of a sadist than he and is shown to be more skilled dealing with the titular Bumblebee .
• The Picts in Centurion have two. The first is also The Archer though she can more than hold her own in hand-to-hand combat. The second is Etain who is described as more like an animal than a human.
• The Die Hard series has Katja in Die Hard with a Vengeance and Mai Linh in Live Free or Die Hard. Both of them are martial artists and the girlfriend of a more cerebral Big Bad, serving as his Dragon.
• Viper from Doomsday, although her most memorable scene was not fighting but lighting a man on fire in order to cook him for the hungry crowd.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Sofina is the main villain of the story, who's a very skilled Red Wizard who fights off the heroes on her own, stabbing Holga with a knife as well. They only defeat her with guile.
• Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: Vinda Rosier, Gellert Grindelwald's loyal lieutenant, who murders a Muggle family in cold blood, and expresses a desire to kill every single Muggle.
• Gisele starts off as this in Fast & Furious, before her Heel–Face Turn. Though disappointingly, the only action she really gets to do in the film is very briefly firing at some SWAT team members at one point.
  • Fast & Furious 6 has Vegh, one of Shaw's henchmen, who drives a heavily modified vehicle designed to ram and flip-over other cars.
  • There is also Agent Riley Hicks, Shaw's mole in Hobbs/Dom's team and possibly the single most skilled female fighter in the series, as Letty desperately has to use everything she has at her disposal just to hold her own, let alone actually beat her.
  • Also Letty herself, who had a Face–Heel Turn and joined Shaw's, after losing her memories and disappearing, after supposedly dying two films ago. Though luckily, she's back on the hero's side by the end of the film.
  • Furious 7 has Kara, an implied Blood Knight and the leader of an Abu Dhabi billionaire's personal Amazon Brigade security force, who can fight Letty to a draw.
• Leather-clad Tatiana - The Dragon in Final Score - uses a submachine gun, kickboxing skills and a combat knife during a prolonged battle with the hero.
• Ni Chang from The Forbidden Kingdom, the "White-Haired Witch" and a minion of the Jade Warlord who nearly kills Lu Yan and easily outmatches Jason.
• Captain Phasma from The Force Awakens is a subversion. As the leader of the stormtroopers you'd expect her to be a formidable opponent for the heroes, but she never fights and gets captured easily. She has better luck showing off her skills in the expanded universe and in The Last Jedi, she gets into a fight with Finn and proves to be fair match albeit, only for a little while.
• The Baroness from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Slick leather outfit, tall boots, and two guns, she is a crossover with the Femme Fatale, as she seduces quite a few characters, but her usual MO is kicking butt. Counterpart to GI Joe operative Scarlett. Disappointingly, she turns out to be Brainwashed and Ax-Crazy and not doing it purely For the Evulz.
• The Gingerweed Man: One of the villains in the movie, is Smokahontas, a girl in black who works for F.U. Tech, trying to get buddy. She has no qualms abut killing people with hatchets and her arm-mounted crossbow.
• Bellatrix Lestrange from the Harry Potter series, who is just as much of a Hero Killer as her book counterpart and even more Ax-Crazy.
• Many, many bad Bond girls, but particularly the gleefully murderous Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) in GoldenEye, Mayday (Grace Jones) in A View to a Kill and Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) in Thunderball.
• Dr. Ilsa Hayden in Judge Dredd. She has a Cat Fight with Action Girl Judge Hershey.
• The John Wick series has a few examples, among the many different assassins that appear in the series:
  • Ms. Perkins from John Wick, is not only a competent assassin, but also one of the most ruthless and sadistic characters in the whole film. Unlike the other assassins, she does not obey the rules set by The Continental. This ultimately turns out to be a bad idea.
  • Though she is not nearly as badass as John or Cassian, Ares, the chief enforcer and bodyguard to Santino, the Big Bad of the sequel also qualifies and actually manages to give John a pretty even fight for awhile. The key word being awhile.
  • The sequel also has the unnamed "violinist assassin", one of the many assassins who go after Wick, after Santino inevitably betrays him. Though she loses, she does manage to wound Wick, making his confrontations with the proceeding assassin, all the more difficult.
• Most of the predatory dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park franchise could count, due to the scientist only creating females to help control their population. These include the iconic T-Rex and Velociraptors and the I-Rex.
• Kick-Ass 2 has Mother Russia, a super strong One-Woman Army and The Dragon, who is shown taking out ten police officers by herself and Hit Girl. The two fight in the climax, as they are the only ones in the film that are shown to be capable of taking the other on.
• Kill Bill: O-Ren Ishii, Elle Driver, and Vernita Green were all part of The Deadly Vipers Assassins, the same team our heroine was on and are all shown to be at least on par with her.
  • The first film also has Gogo Yubari, psychotic seventeen year old girl working under the aforementioned O-Ren Ishii, who in the present, has become a Yakuza boss. She a huge Meteor hammer like weapon with retractable saw blades that probably weighs more than she does.
    • Probably of note is that the The Crazy 88s, O-Ren's personal mooks, have a fair amount of female members in general.
  • We briefly meet another female assassin in the second film, named Karen Kim, who ambushes Beatrix in her hotel room with a shotgun.
• A fast and ruthless combatant, Gazelle from Kingsman: The Secret Service is a very capable fighter. Of her opponents only Eggsy is even able to land a scratch on her. Good thing a scratch was all he needed.
• Lady Macbeth: Katherine. She ends up poisoning her father-in-law, bludgeoning her husband to death and smothering her ward with a pillow.
• Man of Steel has Sub-Commander Faora-Ul, Generals Zod's second in command and one the Kryptonian Invaders' most skilled combatants.
• Mars Attacks!: The Martian Girl is the only known female troop in the Martian army. She's one of the more competent soldiers.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Natasha Romanoff a.k.a Black Widow used to be an assassin for the Soviets prior to doing her Heel–Face Turn. As seen by her solo movie Nat’s adoptive sister Yelena, her adoptive mother Melina Taskmaster aka Antonia and many other women of the Black Widow program used to count as this as well before defecting like Nat or escaping from brainwashing.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy has Nebula, the cyberneticly enhanced enforcer and adopted daughter of Thanos, who has a personal grudge against her "sister" resident Action Girl and member of the titular team Gamora. Though by the sequel, she starts to mellow out and even becomes a sort of semi-teammate.
  • Gamora also used be one, similar to Nebula, before joining the Guardians.
  • Several members of The Zealots from Doctor Strange are female.
  • Hela, the Big Bad of Thor: Ragnarok is one hell of a Dark Action Girl. She dresses in a skin-tight black and green bodysuit, keeps her nails long (and painted black) and wears copious amounts of Excessive Evil Eyeshadow. Oh, and she can wipe the floor with anyone. Anyone. Well, except a fire demon the size of a small mountain. More than that, she is a one-woman army who can slaughter entire armies single-handedly and without even breaking a sweat.
  • Proxima Midnight, from Avengers: Infinity War, is another female warrior and member of Thanos' adopted children, who's shown holding her own against several members of the Avengers throughout the film, but unlike Nebula and Gamora who very begrudgingly followed Thanos, Proxima seems no less devoted to his goals than he.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp introduces us to Ava Starr/Ghost, a deadly, ruthless, highly intelligent, and extremely athletic thief with intangibility powers. She fights on even footing with both Scott and Hope at multiple points throughout the film, and even overpowers them on a few occasions. Though its eventually revealed that she only does what she does out of desperation, as her powers are rapidly killing her and stealing the Pym family's particle technology may be the only way save herself.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch making her Face–Heel Turn following the events of WandaVision and serving as the Big Bad of this film, where she proves to be quite possibly the most dangerous villain since Thanos. Bringing The Masters of The Mystic Arts to its knees and slaughtering nearly all of another Universe's version of The Illuminate.
• Ms. Clinton in Momentum is a skilled (and rather sadistic) member of a Cleanup Crew whose first action is to kickbox a man into submission. It's not until the climax when she really gets to shine, though. After she survives a bomb blast, the bloody-faced killer takes on and defeats multiple security guards armed with truncheons and sidearms. And she starts the fight without a weapon. This toughie only goes down when a Combat Pragmatist shoots her in the head.
• The Mummy Trilogy:
  • Anck-su-namun / Meela Nais is shown to be an even match for Evy in modern times and even manages to defeat her in ancient times. Unfortunately in modern times, she proves herself to be a Dirty Coward who runs when the going gets tough.
  • Choi from The Dragon Emperor is a competent soldier and lieutenant to General Yang, and unlike Anuck-su-namun, is brave enough to die trying to save General Yang, after the latter gets caught between large wooden wheels.
• Princess Ahmanet from The Mummy (2017) is shown to be a skilled combatant, even before she became an undead mystical creature, managing to win a sparring match back in Ancient Egypt against a larger opponent.
• Nighthawks: Shakka is a Moroccan woman who serves as Wolfgar's assistant and accomplice in his terrorism. She's cold and ruthless like him, murdering Hartman while later holding people hostage with Wolfgar. He warns them not to expect mercy from her or underestimate Shakka because she's a woman.
• Pistolera blasts her way through a drug cartel on a murderous Roaring Rampage of Revenge. As a Villain Protagonist, she straddles the line between being a straight Action Girl and this trope.
• The Princess: Moira, Julius' mistress, is equally skilled to the princess and Linh with use of her long whip. She's The Baroness and wears dark clothing, giving both of them a very hard fight.
• The Russian gangster, Mona Demarkov, in Romeo is Bleeding is a particularly ruthless and sadistic example, without the benefit of magic powers or Waif-Fu.
• Rush Hour 2 has Hu Li, the female enforcer for The Triads, who manages to quickly defeat and injure Isabella in their Designated Girl Fight, before almost killing Detective Carter with a sword, and at the end of the movie tries to take the heroes out with her, using a bomb.
• The Scorpion King: From the second movie onwards, every entry includes an evil female warrior to have a Designated Girl Fight with the Love Interest:
  • Astarte in Rise of a Warrior as an evil goddess of love and war that actually serves as the movie's Greater-Scope Villain due to Sargon being her worshiper. She does fight against Layla briefly.
  • Tsukai in Search for Redemption is a undead summoned by the Book of the Dead to kill Mathayus and trades blows with Princess Silda.
  • Chancara in Quest for Power is a fierce cage fighter whom Valina is forced to fight against in order for her and her allies proceed into their quest.
  • Khensa in Book of Souls is arguably the darkest and most brutal example in the series, being a crazed Jackal Warrior with no reservations about killing children just because she felt like it. Unusually, she doesn't fight the love interest (since she is a non-fighter) and Tala is The Lancer instead. And it's Mathayus who kills her instead for personal reasons.
• Whenever it's a woman beneath the Ghostface mask in a Scream film, she's inevitably this on account of her being able to brutally kill multiple people.
  • Scream 2: Mrs. Loomis, despite being a middle-aged woman who doesn't look like an imposing killer, manages to drag a man into a news van and stab him to death. Furthermore, while she scored far fewer confirmed kills than her accomplice, she was the ringleader of the entire murder spree.
  • Scream 4: Jill Roberts is, like the last female killer, the mastermind of the plan despite killing fewer people than her accomplice. During the climax, she also puts herself through hell to pull off a convincing Wounded Gazelle Gambit and get people to think she was the Final Girl, and then, upon finding out that Sidney is still alive, gets out of her hospital bed to finish the job like a true Determinator.
  • Scream (2022): Sam Carpenter is a heroic example, a dark, troubled counterpart to the Action Survivor Sidney who's the daughter of the first film's lead killer Billy Loomis and has a deeply bloodthirsty streak to her, most notably when she kills the Big Bad in an exceptionally violent manner before wiping her blade in true Ghostface fashion. As for the killers, Amber Freeman is a Pint-Sized Powerhouse who acts as the main muscle of the duo with the most confirmed kills, the most brutal one being when she stabs a man in the front and back with two knives that she then pulls up his torso to gut him.
• Skyscraper has Botha's female lieutenant Xia. She kills numerous police officers and security guards throughout the movie (including two at the control facility she effortlessly demolishes with a mixture of martial arts and gunfire), callously murders the team's hacker after he did his job and was afterwards more of a liability, and she would have strangled Sarah to death near the end of the film, if not for Inspector Wu's intervention.
• Special Female Force: One of the Big Bad's lieutenants is a female gangster called Tung Zi, who stands out due to her exotic looks in a Hong Kong film, wearing dark leather clothing, being covered in tattoos and having long dreadlocks.
• Stiletto: Penny is on the bad guys' side, and fairly good at fighting. She brutally attacks Raina near the end, with the latter managing to take her down.
• Suicide Squad (2016):
  • Harley Quinn is the right-hand girl of The Joker and according to Amanda Waller, may be just as crazy and even more dangerous than him. In the film, she's able to keep up and fight on even terms with the rest of the team, despite having no powers, being significantly smaller than most of them, and presumably not having any formal combat training, and only being armed with a .357 revolver, a mallet and a baseball bat.
  • There's also the Big Bad of the film, The Enchantress, a Physical Goddess capable of easily decimating a city and posing a huge threat to the world, and even without using her powers, is able to fend off the whole squad on her own.
• The T-X (Terminatrix) from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is the first "female" Terminator robot of the saga. She was designed by Skynet to combat reprogrammed Terminator units. To wit, she is much stronger, much tougher, and capable of overriding the reprogramming done by the Resistance, and John Connor even calls her an "Anti-Terminator-Terminator". In terms of technology, she's a composite of the T-800 and the T-1000 — she's liquid metal over an endoskeleton, making her more stable than the T-1000, as well as being able to carry on-board weapons, and is still able to shift her appearance to impersonate other people, making her a Lightning Bruiser. Her thighs are capable of crushing bones with pressure greater than an industrial hydraulic press. And she wears a red leather catsuit in her default form.

• Lola from the Transporter 2, could also double as Psycho for Hire.
• Selene from Underworld (2003) fits this trope quite nicely until she realizes that she's been fighting the wrong war.
• Dracula's three brides become this in Van Helsing. Marishka is killed off pretty early but Verona and Aleera really prove to be quite the thorn in the protagonist's side.
• Werewolves Within: Cecily turns out to be the werewolf, who's a cunning, fierce enemy as well who takes a lot of killing at the end before she's killed.
• Wolf Warrior II: Athena is one of the villainous Private Military Contractors. Handy with a pistol and a sniper rifle and middling in a fist fight, but her most actiony moment is ramping a motor bike up onto the roofs of some shanties and then jumping from the bike onto a speeding 4x4 and trying to smash her way in. Probably the girlfriend of Great Bear, The Brute of the bunch.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • Mystique in the original trilogy is a lethal assassin, and her super-agility gives her a great advantage over her foes during combat. She's a manipulative seductress who's not ashamed to kick lots of ass with acrobatics and kicks. In X-Men: Days of Future Past, she's a main villain in 1973 and kicks even more ass.
  • X2: X-Men United: Lady Deathstrike. Raven Hair, Ivory Skin, stoic, dark clothes, agile and literally sharp. This may be subverted though, given that she's actually being mind-controlled by William Stryker.
  • X-Men: The Last Stand: Callisto is basically Magneto's replacement for Mystique and fights Storm twice with her Super Speed.
  • The Wolverine: Viper is a vicious poisoner and martial artist to the point that even men don't mind fighting her.
  • Deadpool (2016): Angel Dust can hold her own against Colossus.
  • X-Men: Apocalypse:
    • Storm wields enough power to attack Jean, Cyclops and Beast simultaneously and was overpowering Scott in their Beam-O-War.
    • Psylocke is trained in both sword fighting and martial arts. She goes toe-to-toe with Beast and almost kills him.
      Olivia Munn: Psylocke is very lethal, and she's not afraid to get her hands dirty.

Literature

• Rare heroic example: Rachel from Animorphs, who begins as an Action Girl but gets closer and closer to this trope as the series goes on. Taylor could be seen as an actual villainous example, though she generally avoids using her unique fighting skills in favor of psychological manipulation.

• Makala of The Blade of the Flame, both before her in-backstory death and after she gets bitten by a vampire. Exhibits Clingy Jealous Girl traits after the spoilered event too.
• Wedgie Woman is one of, if not the most badass Captain Underpants villain. Jennifer the alien and Trixie the Robo-Booger are also pretty tough, and they are implied, but not explicitly stated, to be female.
• Pernica the Swift in Codebook of the Cosmos faces as many as four street robbers in a row with a double set of knives, and wins. In The Dominion Device, she even confronts a hall full of Germanic warriors. With a drinking horn. And earns their respect by giving black eyes to a couple of them.
• Phrygiar Navaris from the Codex Alera is a psychotically obsessive swordswoman and one of the top five blades in her civilization - she normally hires herself out as a mercenary, and has racked up a kill count in the hundreds during her life (and those are just the ones we know about). Aquitainus Invidia from the same series is more like The Vamp, The Chessmaster, and a traitor all in one person, but she's more than capable of getting her hands dirty if she has to.
• In Dark Heart, Wyre is a gleefully sadistic assassin who volunteers her service as a bodyguard to the heroes Myrren and Raine. Later on, Myrren takes a level in badass and becomes one as well in order to fight Wyre when she realizes her real intentions.
• Kitiara from Dragonlance. Kitiara is beautiful, a skilled warrior and, above all else, she is cold and calculating. Power-hungry, she has never been truly able to call someone a friend. In many ways, she and Raistlin are much alike. Neither would hesitate to betray an ally if presented with a guarantee at supreme power.
• Exaggerated by The Draka series, in which the eponymous, ultra-militarist Draka state conscripts all citizen women and have them perform military service just like men, and even their Air Force pilots consistently beat the male infantry veterans and special forces operatives of the United States in hand-to-hand combat thanks to their uber training. In other words, every other random Mook is one of these. One book even lampshades how improbable this is, given their inherent handicap in size, reach and physical strength.
• Lara Raith in The Dresden Files alternates between being Harry's Friendly Enemy and a reluctant ally. Being a White Court vampire, she is superhumanly strong, fast, and durable, but still needs to feed on the life energy of humans.

• Queen Rielle of The Empirium Trilogy was the most powerful elemental in existance: not only could she use her powers without the need for a casting, she could manipulate all seven elements as well as heal any wounds and even ressurect the dead. However, she could also kill anyone with a single flick of the wrist, and even murdered her own husband by ripping his heart out.
• The Final Girl Support Group: Stephanie Fugate turns out to be a rare Faux Action Girl version. She is the accomplice of the main killer Skye Elliott, and spends the finale armed and trying to kill the main characters, but is very swiftly defeated. It's confirmed at her trial that Skye committed all of the actual murders, including the time she allegedly kicked a Serial Killer out a window to his death. (She did shoot out somebody's eye, though.) This is a bone of serious contention for her. By contrast, the main characters all earned the Final Girl moniker the hard way, by being the Sole Survivors of massacres who defeated the slashers who tried to kill them, and they prove that they've Still Got It even in their forties (and, in Julia's case, being wheelchair-bound from injuries sustained in her last ordeal).
• War from Good Omens, who's as deadly as she is beautiful. Considering she's the Anthropomorphic Personification of war, this shouldn't be a surprise.
• Amandis from The Great God's War is a devotee of the Spirit and self-proclaimed assassin. Her temper is unpleasant, her morals are uncertain, and she's very, very quick with a knife, to the point that Bifalt (who is a trained soldier and the veteran of a number of battles) admits that if she decided to kill him, he'd have no way of stopping her.

• Bellatrix Lestrange of Harry Potter. Voldemort's Dragon and a total Yandere for him, she takes great joy in torturing others and murders Sirius Black, Dobby, and Tonks - not to mention permanently hospitalising Neville's parents in the backstory.
• Miss Hakkendottir from the steampunky The Hunchback Assignments: beautiful, thoroughly evil, and considers Mooks a disposable/consumable resource. Extra points for her two half-mechanical attack dogs...
• The Hunger Games: Female Careers, since they've been trained for the games their whole lives like the boys have. This includes Clove from the first book, and Cashmere and Enobaria from Catching Fire. Enobaria in particular even had her teeth sharpened to a point after ripping out someone's throat with her teeth in the Games she won. (Annie is the exception, because her arena got flooded and she won by virtue of being the only one not to drown.) This is an Informed Attribute for Glimmer, Cashmere, and the unnamed girl from District 4 in the first book, since we never fully see them in action, but Cashmere at least must have been one in the past since she won her Games.
• InCryptid: Margaret Healy, being a member of the Covenant, is every bit the badass Action Girl her estranged cousins the Price-Healy family are. She serves as a foil for Verity and Antimony, her distant cousins whom she loathes for betraying the Covenant (read: not wanting to kill Benevolent Monsters and Non Malicious Monsters).
• Herad the Black Snake from The Iron Teeth web serial. She leads a group of bandits and is a merciless killer who does indeed like the color black, that and knives.
• James Bond:
  • Hera Volopoulos in The Facts of Death was raised by Konstantine Romanos, the novel's Big Bad, to be the top of her field in combat and assassination.
  • Margareta Piel in DoubleShot is a killer with an insatiable bloodlust who specializes in daring assassinations and is attracted to other deranged people like herself.

• Lisbeth Salander of the Millennium Series. She slashes the throat of one thug with a broken bottle and scares his gang off by acting herself, violates her sadistic guardian and blackmails him with evidence of his rape, reveals her solution to her abusive father was to Kill It with Fire, attacks then chases down a Neo-Nazi who she causes to crash before leaving for dead, and that's just the first book. And she's one of the good guys.
• Hester Shaw in Mortal Engines becomes a completely merciless killer. Stalker Fang is at least as much of a bad girl. Being horribly crippled then turned into Brain in a Jar inside a Killer Robot chassis can do that to someone.
• Dime Novel hero Nick Carter had quite a few of these. Perhaps the most dangerous was Dazaar the Arch Fiend. Her specialty was knife throwing; she could throw a knife hundreds of yards with extreme accuracy. Another one of Carter's female enemies was Zanoni the Woman Wizard, a skilled hypnotist and chemist (poisons were her specialty). She was a truly nasty piece of work. Once, after being captured by Nick, he warns her not to try to "make love" to him as a way to get out. Her reply conveys her fiendishness: "Have no fear, my pretty man, my cornucopia of driveling goodness. When I make love to you, it will be to your articulated skeleton—to your empty, fleshless skull—to your heart preserved in alcohol and your liver thrown to the dogs."
• Played with in Old Kingdom: Sabriel is a subversion of the trope, being a necromancer with stereotypical colouring who inspires fear in her enemies, but is instead the hero of the story, as she is a Hunter of His Own Kind. Clariel fits the trope more and more over the course of her book, eventually completely embodying it when she becomes Chlorr of the Mask, a necromancer and later one of the Greater Dead.
• Tansy in Mira Grant's Parasite subverts this trope by combining it with Genki Girl and working for the least bad of the factions in the story. But she still actively searches for reasons to kill things and without the Morality Chain of her creator would do so for the most trivial of reasons.
• The Radix: Adriana Borgia, modern descendant of 'that' Borgias, is one of the novel's strongest ass-kickers, and a master of Cold-Blooded Torture.
• Redwall had a few over the course of its twenty-two book run:
  • Mossflower: Tsarmina the Wildcat Queen doesn't seem like one of these at first. A scheming evil princess who poisons her father and frames her brother so she can become queen, Tsarmina leaves the fighting to others, preferring not to dirty her paws. During the final battle she tries to run away and is cornered by Martin the Warrior, the most famed fighter in the series' history, and you figure, game over. Instead she goes absolutely berserk and proceeds to give Martin the beating of his life, before his Implacable Man status spooks her into a mental breakdown and she runs into a lake. Huge, utterly mad, and capable of shredding chainmail with her claws alone she definitely belongs on this list. Plus, the physical and psychological fallout from this battle scars Martin for the rest of his life.
  • The Pearls of Lutra: Sagitar Sawfang, head of Emperor Ublaz's Trident Rats has a reputation as a formidable fighter, and lives up to it when she kills Rasconza, despite having taken a knife through her chest. Corsair ferret Romsca is also a deadly combatant, fighting Monitor-General Lask Frildur to a Mutual Kill; Lask's successor as Monitor-General, Zurgat, is the same sort of slavering monster that he himself was, despite being female.
  • Marlfox: Three of High Queen Silth's daughters, Vannan, Predak, and Ziral, are capable fighters, wielding their axes with the same skill as their brothers. Silth herself was purportedly a vicious fighter back in her day, though now, old and sick, she isn't up to much fighting.
• In Renegades, a number of villains are women, including The Detonator, Hawthorne and Nightmare, all of whom can go toe to toe with their male counterparts.
• The Stainless Steel Rat: Angelina, supposedly reformed murderess turned Special Corp agent/wife of 'Slippery Jim' DiGriz. Always carries an arsenal of lethal weaponry on her person, and has the ability to produce a .75 calibre recoilless from Hammerspace whenever she thinks her husband is getting too slippery for her taste. Supposedly, her more psychopathic impulses have been removed by the psych-techs, but Jim frequently has to restrain her natural enthusiasm for killing and torture.
• Star Wars Legends actually has a lot of these.
  • Mara Jade (pre-Heel–Face Turn), Aurra Sing, and every female Sith ever are among the most notable.
  • Asajj Ventress, Count Dooku's Sith apprentice...cruel, skilled, and a major threat, with a tendency to pull a Not Quite Dead every time she seems defeated. While she ultimately turns against Dooku, it's not a Heel–Face Turn so much as a case of Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
  • Vestara Khai from Fate of the Jedi was Ben Skywalker's Sith girlfriend who was skilled enough to earn a promotion to Lord and help kill an evil god alongside him.
  • In Maul: Lockdown:
    • The brutal, undefeated Yuuzhan Vong gladiator champion Maul fights in the opening scene is believed to be female by Warden Blirr.
    • Warden Sadiki Blirr is running a Gladiator Games, orders brutal executions without hesitation, and personally kills some of Jabba's enforcers and pet dragons when Jabba attacks the prison.
    • Sinister cult leader Komari Vosa is a former Jedi, and her combat skills deeply impress Maul.
• The Sword of Truth series:
  • The Mord-Sith began as Darken Rahl's servants, whom he employed to capture and break his enemy's wizards. Even without their Anti-Magic abilities they were often formidable fighters, with Cara being a particular standout. Under Darken Rahl's control they were and brutal and deadly, to the point that even their mere presence could terrify regular soldiers. Especially when they were wearing their red leathers. A Mord-Sith wearing red indicated she meant business, and your blood was about to end up all over her.^note Mord-Sith generally wore brown when off-duty, and white to show that they'd "broken" their captives, and no longer needed to torture them.
  • Death's Mistress, aka Sister Nicci. She serves the Imperial Order in their war against the "good" factions, a terror to the forces of the New World and a heroine to the Order, and is one of the main threats to Richard Rahl in Faith of the Fallen. Interestingly enough, she is also a Dark Magical Girl, Femme Fatale, and a Stalker with a Crush at times. Eventually, she does a High-Heel–Face Turn and joins Richard's party, and is afterwards their Black Magician Girl.
• Another protagonist example: Celaena/Aelin of Throne of Glass, especially in the first book. Not shocking, given that she's a conflicted, supernaturally-angry, secretive assassin. The shit well and truly hits the fan when she goes toe-to-toe with fellow DAG, bloodthirsty witch Manon Blackbeak.
• Malina Kekapania of Two Serpents Rise poisoned a city's water supply, killed a god, and awakened giant fire serpents to chase foreign sorcerers, whom she saw as an occupying force, out of the city.

• In Zero Sight, Deuteragonist and vampire Rei Bathory employs Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique, is a Blood Knight, feeds on humans and werewolves whenever she has a chance, loves black, and can go One-Winged Angel. Without her Blind Obedience to one of the good guys, she would probably be one of the villains instead of one of the heroes..

Live-Action TV

• The Americans: Elizabeth Jennings, undercover KGB agent and one of the two protagonists of the show. While masquerading as a travel agent and ordinary suburban mother of two children in the US, she is willing to kill in cold blood, poison a woman's son to force her to work for the KGB, and lie to her own children about what her and her husband Phillip actually do for a living, among other morally dark acts.
• Sarah Corvis in Bionic Woman is a prime example. She teaches the Action Girl protagonist just so that she can fight her later. Sarah also seems to like to drop hints, though it's been shown she does have a motivating romantic interest.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Faith is half this, half Dark Magical Girl. Her abilities are action-based, not magical, and the fights between Buffy and Faith are adrenaline-spiked highlights among the series' many action sequences. Directors, stunt directors, actresses, and stunt doubles always seemed to go all out whenever one of these scenes came up. At the same time, her issues are much more of the DMG vein, and she is eventually redeemed DMG-style in a two-part episode of Angel. However, even after Faith returns and joins up with Buffy, the two constantly butt heads, often violently.
  • Darla. While in flashbacks, she's less action-y and more just plain evil, during the first season, she was The Master's Dragon. That is, until she died.
  • God of Evil Glory should be mentioned, seeing as she was the Big Bad of a season.
  • Wishverse Buffy, to the point where Faith is Lighter and Softer.
  • Dark Willow can counts as well though it was temporary. She was able to confront Buffy in a close-ranged fight using her powers in addition.

• Criminal Minds: UnSub Miranda Jakar from "Outfoxed" was a survivor of the Srebrenica massacre who turned Child Soldier and later "family annihilator"-style Serial Killer. Cornered by the BAU she engaged Morgan in a fistfight and was overpowering him when he managed to shoot her with her own gun.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Planet of the Dead": Lady Christina de Souza is a Classy Cat-Burglar who's much more morally ambiguous than most companions. The Doctor doesn't seem to mind too much.
  • Melody Pond was one of these, since she was a psychopathic Tyke Bomb raised to kill the Doctor. She does perform a Heel–Face Turn and becomes River Song, though.
• Dracula (2013): Lady Jayne singlehandedly kills two vampires in the London Underground and decapitates a third later on. She's a high-ranking member of the Order of the Dragon, a secret society that has been covertly manipulating Western civilization for centuries.
• Game of Thrones: Ramsay's companion Myranda is shown to be highly proficient with a bow when she hunts with him.
• In From the Cold: Gaia, who Svetlana replaced Jenny with, shows great combat skill like her. She's her Evil Counterpart basically.
• Sqn Ldr Knox from Invasion: Earth, who has no qualms about employing the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on a man in a hospital bed.

• Kung Fu (2021): Zhilan is a very evil Chinese woman who's after the artifacts. She is a deadly martial artist who killed Pei-Ling and goes toe to toe with Nicky, Pei-Ling's later student, without difficulty. Zhilan wears black in her first appearance too, fittingly.
• Cold-blooded Israeli assassin Mikel Dayan in Leverage. She's more of a Punch-Clock Villain than anything else though.
• Vlad from season 4 of Lexx. Most of her scenes with Kai involved her beating the snot out of him.

• October Faction: Alice, the main antagonist of the series, is a female warlock who's skilled in combat (though she uses magic mostly). She takes down multiple armed male opponents with relative ease when they hunt her.
• Pandora: Tierney, whose good with both guns and unarmed combat, while being part of the criminal Hypatia Syndicate. She's basically Jax's evil counterpart.
• Power Rangers has quite a few of these: Scorpina, Archerina, Astronema, Trakeena, Vypra, and Tenaya 7, just to name some of the most prominent.

• Princess Silver: Hen Xiang, whose actions include almost murdering Zhao Yun and fighting a duel with Fu Chou.

• Smallville:
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive Tess Mercer has repeatedly demonstrated that, in addition to being an expert Manipulative Bastard and Chessmaster, she is not a slouch in the physical department either, having fought Lana, Lois, Green Arrow, Zod, and fellow Dark Action Girl Mad Harriet on relatively equal footing (she had to cheat against Zod by using Kryptonite brass knuckles; still, the fact that she devised and built Kryptonite brass knuckles is pretty badass in and of itself!).
  • Harriet and the Female Furies also fulfill this trope, as did Lana when possessed by Isobel Thoreaux.
• Star Trek: Picard: Narissa, a Zhat Vash operative and The Dragon in Season 1, is a competent combatant, but she's outclassed by Elnor's Super Reflexes and Seven of Nine's superior strength.
• Super Sentai has had plenty throughout its run.
  • Salome in Battle Fever J is a covert agent and assassin for Secret Society Egos. She's powerful enough she can take on every single member of Team Battle Fever.
  • Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan has the Zero Girls, an all-female quarter of spies who act as enforcers for Black Magma. Later on they're joined by Amazon Killer, who's powerful enough to take on all three members of Sun Vulcan at once.
  • Dr. Mazenda in Choujuu Sentai Liveman, particularly after she upgraded herself into "Machine Mazenda". She was strong enough to overwhelm Red Falcon initially, to the point where he resorted to tricking her into using up all her ammo to give himself a fighting chance.
  • Space Ninjas Furabiijo and Wendinu in Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger. One episode shows Wendinu gets much stronger and grows giant whenever she's angry or stressed, to the point where she's able to decimate both the Hurricanegers and Gouraigers in their Humongous Mecha.
• Tidelands (Netflix): Leandra murders Zach Maney in her very first scene, displaying unusual strength while doing so as she picks up Maney by his neck. She also later beats up Action Girl heroine Cal. Leandra appears to be Adrielle's main enforcer and bodyguard.

• Utopia (US): Colleen, Mike's wife]], turns out to be a sleeper agent for the Harvest, and she beats Jessica in their fight before being shot by someone else.

• Willow: Scorpia, leader of the Bone Reavers, is skilled with a knife and unarmed combat. Downplayed however as it turns out she's more of an Anti-Villain.
• Xena: Warrior Princess:
  • Callisto, Xena's Evil Counterpart. She does pull a Heel–Face Turn later in the show's run, actually. It takes divine intervention, though. It requires Xena — who, at this point, had died and become an Archangel — to take on all of Callisto's sins and suffering, thus damning herself to Hell for all eternity. This removes all of Callisto's memories of being evil, which, not coincidentally, leaves her with more or less no memory of her life after turning twelve. Then when Callisto is reincarnated, it happens to her all over again, including the Heel–Face Turn, as Livia/Eve, except she doesn't lose her memories.
  • And, of course, Xena was one herself prior to her Heel–Face Turn.

Multi-Media

• Lariska from BIONICLE is an energetic ninja-like bounty hunter/assassin. The leader of the Dark Hunter organization could only keep her in check by cutting off her left arm as punishment, replacing it with a robotic one. Not really a Punch-Clock Villain, as she will work for the good guys, but not enjoy it. Sadly, we don't know what she looks like.

Music

• Slymenstra Hymen, Estrogina Lugubrious, and Vulvatron of GWAR.
• Megadeth's eponymous "She-Wolf", a vicious beast woman and wicked seductress.
  One look in her lusting eyes!
  Savage fear in you will rise!
  Teeth of terror sinking in!
  The bite of the She-Wolf!

Mythology & Religion

• The lion goddess Sekhmet in Egyptian Mythology. She also was given titles such as the "(One) Before Whom Evil Trembles", "Mistress of Dread", "Lady of Slaughter" and "She Who Mauls". In a myth about the end of Ra's rule on the earth, Ra sends Sekhmet to destroy mortals who conspired against him. Sekhmet's blood-lust was not quelled at the end of battle and led to her destroying almost all of humanity, so Ra poured out beer dyed with red ochre or hematite so that it resembled blood. Mistaking the beer for blood, she became so drunk that she gave up the slaughter and returned peacefully to Ra.
• The Morrigan of Celtic Mythology was known for being a war and death goddess. She's certainly on humanity's side as Dark Is Not Evil for the Celts, but she was also a Blood Knight who loved to throw a wrench in human wars by fighting for whoever was winning...and then fucking something up so the other side would start winning. Her name meant either "Great Queen" or "Great Terror", and her most infamous moment was being responsible for the death of Ireland's greatest hero because he was too tired for a one-night stand.
• "The Black Goddess" Kali of Hindu Mythology has shades of this. She comes out when Durga loses her composure and is a Blood Knight. An example of this would be whenever she devoured a demon who could regenerate From a Single Cell and the following bloodlust caused her to do a victory dance that caused earthquakes throughout several worlds, but she still calmed down in the end. However she's firmly in Dark Is Not Evil territory as she usually only comes out to play whenever the gods have to kick the asses of especially evil beings.
• The Keres of Greek Mythology are goddesses of violent death who feed on the blood of sick, dying and traumatized men they find on the battlefield. They'll even fight over their prey if there isn't enough to go around. It's been noted by scholars that they're the Evil Counterpart to Valkyries.

Professional Wrestling

• Miss Texas continued to beat up men in USWA after her Face–Heel Turn, although she proved to be more effective as a face, as the story changed from her being tough enough to take offense from men and give it right back to them being reluctant to fight her until she attacked enough.
• Among the evil foreigners of New Japan Pro-Wrestling, there was Chyna, who was notable for working in a region with a much stricter male-female divide than say, The International Wrestling Federation or World Wrestling Federation in the North East United States. She was about the same size as later breakout star Prince Devitt, possibly stronger than him, almost as agile and easily as evil.
• The six foot, 200 pound vampire Rio Storm in California's Ultimate Pro Wrestling, though she ended up subverting this trope by turning face and teaming up with Gangrel. Before that though, they had tried to bring Melissa Coates and the aforementioned Chyna to deal with her and she was frequently considered a de facto heavyweight title contender (for reference, John Cena held that belt).
• La Tigresa after her infamous arrest, resulting Face–Heel Turn and the end of WWC's women's division saw her harass the male baby faces as a manager. Not many managers till then would keep interfering in matches even after the faces struck them with metal objects, nor could many managers choke slam the opposition of their clientele.
• MsChif started out in Gateway Championship Wrestling as a manager but when she started wrestling she ended up going on an undefeated streak, mostly at the expense of men, through use of deceptive strength, speed, flexibility and agility, though she was more remembered for continuing to attack after victories. But in the event a man could come up with a sound strategy in a match up, she was perfectly willing to break rules. And if that didn't work Tag Team partner Delirious would usually run in on her behalf. In these ways she was built up to face one of the main faces, Billy McNeil.
• While the Triple Tails' entry into SMASH was to ultimately result in a showdown between The World Famous Kana and her self described Arch-Enemy Syuri, the first targets of the Tails were Makoto and Yusuke Kodama, demonstrating no member of the roster was safe. After Yoshihiro Tajiri ran off the assailants, Kana and The Sexy Purple Sisters made their mission the elimination of him and any other old men like him they could find. Triple Tails endured after the SMASH promotion folded, spreading across the Japanese circuit, adding Ayumi Kurihara, Mika Iida, and Shu Shibutani to their ranks in the process.
• Celtic Championship Wrestling in Ireland has the appropriately named Raven Creed - who just loves to attack and antagonise everyone in sight. She also has a very 'dark' appearance, wrestling mostly in black. She's so violent she's able to be a Heel in intergender matches - when women are usually Faces.
• In CHIKARA, rivals Sara Del Rey and Daizee Haze had both beaten all the other regular and semi-regular female wrestlers on the CHIKARA roster, and were frustrated that their careers weren't advancing while they faced each other repeatedly. So when Claudio Castagnoli formed Die Bruderschaft des Kreuzes, Del Rey and Haze both joined up with it and proceeded to take their frustrations out on the male CHIKARA roster. Del Rey in particular, being as big and strong as the male wrestlers^note Del Rey was 5 foot 10 and in the neighborhood of 170 lbs, making her slightly bigger than the average male CHIKARA worker, was a force to be reckoned with. This led to the Bruderschaft's downfall, as Castagnoli became intimidated by Del Rey and worked to make sure she didn't overshadow him. In the end Del Rey and Haze were kicked out of the Bruderschaft. Haze suffered a career ending injury^note in-character, she really retired due to health issues and Del Rey proceeded to turn face and run Castagnoli out of CHIKARA.
• Recently, numerous WWE female wrestlers (particularly Rhea Ripley and Shotzi Blackhart) have broken the clean-cut mold of the WWE Women's Division with edgier and darker looks as well as tattoos and piercings.

Roleplay

• Silencia Venemosa in Dino Attack RPG was a ruthless bounty hunter who single-handedly ruined two major corporations by foiling a heist on one, a sequence of events that resulted in the deaths of four small-time criminals, both CEOs, and at least two innocent bystanders (though neither actually died by her hand). The untold story of what she did at Dacta Corporation is said to be even worse.

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering has several, from the Pyhrexian general and Hero Killer Tsabo Tavoc to the Anti-Hero necromancer Liliana Vess, to the Cult of Rakdos' Maze Champion Exava.
• Pathfinder has Szuriel, Seraph of Devastation, and Horseman of War. Once a fallen paladin, she now represents all of war's worst aspects, and of all the evil female deities is the one who most frequently gets physical.
• From the Dark Eldar of Warhammer 40,000, comes the wyches, each one a leather bound gladiatrix with a well-earned penchant for murder. The greatest of them and the absolute queen of this trope (to her fans at least) is Lelith Hesperax, who can murder an enemy squad before they can even fight back. She's so badass, an in-joke is that her hair counts as a power weapon.
  • There's also Lady Malys, also of the Dark Eldar, who goes for more of the "Dark Lady of War" approach. She's been compared to a Magical Girl anime villain, razor-edged steel fan and all.
  • Also, while wyches are not exclusively female, a majority of them are. The Dark Eldar value skill and potential above all else, so there are virtually no gender barriers. That also means that the Dark Eldar can hold this trope to every career path, from Haemonculus to Incubus to Archon.
  • Their fantasy counterparts are just as hardcore - only they replace the Blood Sport aspect with a Blood Cult; they're referred to as the "Brides of Khaine" (he's the elven god of murder).

Theatre

• Lynette Fromme and Sara Jane More in Assassins. The title of the play makes it rather obvious as to why these two ladies fit the trope, even if Fromme is the most incompetant assassin on the stage.
• The Witch from Into the Woods placed a curse on The Hero and his wife before the events of the show, practically abused her daughter, Rapunzel, by locking her in a tower for years, and cut off Rapunzel's hair and banished her into the desert. While the Witch had to work with the heroes for a time, she was the first cast member to start taking initiative when the true Big Bad started killing everyone, and was dead set on sacrificing Jack to the Giantess. Then, towards the end of the show, she curses the heroes when they all confront her, throws away her magical beans, and vanishes, possibly committing suicide. And on top of all that, she's got attitude. She is, however, one of the more sympathetic versions of this trope: She apparently really did care for Rapunzel, despite having no idea how to properly raise her, and is devastated (and sees her attempts to keep her away from the prince confirmed as correct) when Rapunzel is trampled on by the giant's wife, killing her.

Theme Parks

• If the gangster hijacker on The Great Movie Ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios is played by a woman, than she falls under this, as she directly gets involved in a mob war and keeps a gun on her at all times.

Toys

• Lucidique from Tortured Souls. Notable in that she starts out as a more standard Action Girl, going from an idealistic young woman who wants to save Primoridum from its corrupt ruler, to a vengeful, inhuman Anti-Hero who'll slaughter anyone who so much as annoys her.

Video Games

• Akatsuki Blitzkampf had two of these:
  • The Gesellschaft/Perfecti Cult's leader, Mycale/Perfecti, was manipulating history in middle ages and wants to destroy old humanity and create the new one under her rule. After her original body was executed by Holy Club for her villainy, she uses dark magic to link her wand: Mazen Dine Slave and able to possessed people (including WWII Female Doctor, Kati and later Anonym Merel) who touches it and continues her manipulations for centuries, and she's also responsible for not only manipulating Marilyn into betraying and kill her boss: Yin Hu (one of Murakumo clones) and becoming Black Hand's leader (as she was expecting), it cause Wei to come after her until he finds out who the boss really was. But she also appears to manipulate Marilyn again to kill or defeat Akatsuki then take his Blitz Motor from him for her to finally become a big boss of the traid. And she calls herself to be "The Perfect One" and is merciless for anyone in battle.
  • The Triad Assassin Marilyn Sue doesn't look like one at first, however she's one of them. She's a Femme Fatale implied to had a tragic past who puts up a bubbly and seductive facade that she remains no real loyalties save for herself. But in reality, she was actually manipulated to kill her boss and she was expecting to become the triad's leader by Mycale. And is ruthless, willing to go where other mobsters won't and completely determined to rise in power and influence by kidnapping Akatsuki or steal a Blitz Motor from him to The "Black Hand" organization.
• Baldur's Gate:
  • Bodhi from Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Even if your PC is a heavily armoured warrior with an Infinity +1 Sword or two, she can probably wipe the floor with him or her in single combat with her bare hands, while wearing less than required by decency.
  • Simply because playable characters are almost automatically good at combat, any evil female Player Character is bound to count too, unless particularly inept in combat, as is any evil female group member, which actually only includes Shar-Teel and Viconia.
• Ayme from Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the lost Ocean is one of Giacomo's two right-hand people (the other being a man named Folon) and terrorizes the party alongside her two comrades on several occasions throughout the game. The party fights all three of them together in two big events, and she proves to be an extremely challenging opponent both times. She's also the one who directly killed Kalas' brother and grandfather.
• BioShock:
  • BioShock 2 has a stable of Big Sisters, all of them psychotic, suped-up DAGs
  • Daisy Fitzroy of BioShock Infinite shows traits of this.
• Every female character from the BloodRayne series, including the main character. Especially the main character.
• Dark Forces Saga:
  • Sariss from Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, a reserved Broken Bird and Dark Jedi apprentice to Dark Jedi Master Jerec.
  • Tavion from Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, apprentice to the Dark Jedi Desann. A talented lightsaber duelist and Dirty Coward, who after begging Kyle Katarn for her life turns around and wastes the second chance at life he gave her by starting a new Dark Side cult to antagonize the Jedi after Desann's death. By the time of Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy she's taken a new apprentice named Alora, and Jaden Korr is forced to kill them both.
• Darkstalkers
  • Morrigan's Soul Jar Lilith is a mixed example as she's genuinely innocent and playful but is also The Dragon for Jedah.
  • Played straight with B.B.Hood (or Bulleta in Japan) and Q-Bee who lack any morality and are downright evil.
• Dark Souls II: The game's true Big Bad turns out to be Queen Nashandra, an Child of Manus that takes the form of a graceful queen in white before undergoing a horrific transformation for her boss fight.
  • Dark Souls III: The Dancer of the Boreal Valley looks like a sinister, undead odalisque and fight just as gracefully using a pair of flaming swords. Also the only explicit female boss in the game before the DLC, since all others are agendered, ambiguous, or male. The Ashes of Ariandel includes Sister Friede, a scythe-wielding nun that uses fire and cold magic in her boss fight.
• In Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders it turns out that four of them plays a big role in the plot. Before she became Empress, Wu personally handpicked four strong, beautiful, and intelligent young women to become the Silk Roses, her own squad of devoted and loyal assassins, who would use cunning, deception, and tenaciousness to get close to and eliminate her political enemies. It is also these women who are targeted by the Serial Killer Di hunts.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Trish the demoness from the first game spends most of the game as this since she works for the Evil Overlord Mundus and tries to kill the protagonist Dante towards the end. She heel-turns however when Dante saves her life and performs a Heroic Sacrifice and comes back to save him at the end. It helps that she's identical to his dead mother Eva.
  • The Secretaries who work for Arius in Devil May Cry 2 are this. Deuteragonist Lucia discovers she is one of them.
  • Arguably Lady from Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening is a downplayed version of this. She spends most of the game being antagonistic to Dante, shooting at him at any given opportunity and even fights him for real in a boss battle when he refuses to let her face her father Arkham. Except Lady is really a Broken Bird and becomes a much nicer character by the end of the game.
• In Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey, Zara. She's older than the heroine and an ex-princess who uses her magic for evil.
• Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins is a badass Lady of Black Magic with a snarky attitude and a morally ambiguous stance.
• Dragon Ball FighterZ: Android 21 is an incredibly powerful fighter, whose power rivals even the likes of Cell and Majin Buu, and serves as the Big Bad of the story. However, this description only applies to her evil half. 21's good half is still a skilled fighter, and though she retains her dark aura, this time Dark Is Not Evil and she's genuinely a Nice Girl.
• Christie from the Dead or Alive series is this. She is a professional assassin with a creepy The Only One Allowed to Defeat You Les Yay fixation on Helena.
• Dusty Revenge and Dusty Raging Fist have the cat bandits, an all-female legion of enemies who can put up quite a fight before going down. And they favor Wolverine Claws as their weapons. Revenge also has Amelia Swift, a jaguar kunoichi as the boss of Ogdro Jungle, while Raing Fist has Kitsune the fox, a deadly assassin who's an ally.
• In Enemies, the player character's girlfriend Joanna is a serial killer.
• Fallout:
  • The player of course has the option of being one, if they choose a female Player Character and use morally questionable if not outright evil action to solve their problems. Or, just do evil things For the Evulz.
  • With very few exceptions, the raiders in any given game have no issues with recruiting female members.
  • Clover from Fallout 3 is very much Cute and Psycho who you can usually only get as a companion with high evil karma. Unless you use console commands, allowing you to be a moral exemplar with a sadistic female teammate.
  • Violet from Fallout: New Vegas is a dog tamer and one of the four leaders of The Fiends.
  • Downplayed with Cait, one of the players potential companions from Fallout 4 and a carrier cage fighter, who do in large part to her Psycho addiction, is one the most aggressive and violent members of the player's party. ^note  Also, she enjoys steeling stuff. Though if the player chooses to help her kick the Psycho addiction, she will become significantly more stable.
  • Nisha, one the raider bosses in the Nuka-World DLC, runs her own personal Ax-Crazy Amazon Brigade ^note  Technically she does have male subordinates too, but they only make up about 10% of her gang and is almost undoubtedly the most ruthless and sadistic raider boss in the whole DLC.
• Final Fantasy
  • Barbariccia, the Archfiend of Wind and sole female member of the Archfiends from Final Fantasy IV, who fights the heroes in the Tower of Zot.
  • Scarlet the Dark Chick of Shinra from Final Fantasy VII is a subverted example. She's one of the Co-Dragons of Rufus Shinra and is presented as a foil to resident Action Girl Tifa, but Scarlet relies on her mooks in combat and her "fight" with Tifa is a notoriously silly slap battle. Played straight in Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade as Scarlet gets into her powerful Mini-Mecha and proves to be a more dangerous opponent.
  • Ultimecia of Final Fantasy VIII is the most powerful Sorceress in existence and the Big Bad of the game. She wants to destroy and remake the universe in her own image, thus becoming a god. Alongside her magical powers, she can possess any Sourceress and use their bodies to do what she pleases, fuse with her Guardian Force Griever which combines her powers with his and she can also transform into her most powerful form, a hideous, symmetrical, eldritch creature whose powers are amplified even further.
  • Beatrix, the general of Alexandria, is one for most of the first two discs of Final Fantasy IX. Anytime she's fought by the party, it's a Hopeless Boss Fight. Lani the bounty hunter takes over for the rest of the game.
• The Fire Emblem series has always granted us with lots of heroic Action Girls. However, female villains are much rarer, there is typically only one female villain, as opposed to antagonist or Dark Magical Girl in each game. Due to Females Are More Innocent this trope is becoming rarer in the series.
  • In Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, the remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, Nuibaba, is a scheming and evil witch.
  • Hilda, and many generic bosses from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. Especially Hilda, who's quite possibly one of the most evil villains in Fire Emblem history.
  • From Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, Brunnya is one of the top three generals in the Bern army, and makes for a super tough boss fight near the end. There is also the minor boss, Sigune, who betrayed her nation to side with Zephiel.
  • Sonia, Ursula, and Limstella in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, with Sonia being the particularly cruel one, Ursula being a ruthless minion, and Limstella being a Tragic Villain.
  • Petrine from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Only major female antagonist in the game and extremely cruel, being the cruelest of Daein's four riders.
  • Goddess Ashera from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is arguably even more of one than Petrine, considering she's the ultimate Big Bad, an evil goddess, and really fucking hard to beat.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening subverts this: Aversa is a Lady of Black Magic working for the Grimleal, a Religion of Evil. Only for Spotpass content where it turns out she was only evil due to being Brainwashed and Crazy by the Grimleal. When she learns the truth and snaps out, she immediately jumps ship, thus making this Females Are More Innocent instead.
  • Fire Emblem Fates Arete is a quiet, elegant Lady of Black Magic with VERY powerful spells. In another subversion she Came Back Wrong thanks to Anankos and suffers of Laser-Guided Amnesia. Minor boss Daniele plays this straight though, being a bloodthirsty soldier of Nohr.
• Apollyon in For Honor is a very physically powerful and intimidating example of this trope, being essentially a female, Low Fantasy take on the Evil Overlord trope. She serves as the singleplayer's Big Bad and is responsible for the newly instigated war between the game's three factions thanks to her War Is Glorious philosophy. She can also do this.
• Queen Myrrah heads into the fray with some new battle armor for Gears of War 3's multiplayer.
• Menardi, from Golden Sun, fits this trope, although it's revealed in the sequel that she and Saturos were actually saving the world...after the heroes killed them. (Oops.)
  • Just ask any soldier of Tolbi, and they'll tell you she still fits the bill, no matter her intentions.
  • Menardi's sister, Karst, is also very much an example.
  • Golden Sun: Dark Dawn introduces Chalis. She prefers subterfuge, but she's still a very dangerous opponent and a wielder of Dark Psynergy.
• Grand Theft Auto III has the main antagonist Catalina. She is the Big Bad of the game's storyline who betrays the main character and leaves him for dead and also has a gleeful affinity for turning on her "lovers" who outlive their usefulness when the business with them is done. To top it off, she's also the most powerful mob boss of the game.
• Guilty Gear gives us I-No, one of That Man's servants. Ramlethal Valentine in Xrd would also count, at least until her Heel–Face Turn.
• Megaera along with the other two Furies from Hades certainly qualify, being a Wake-Up Call Boss for the players who reach her. Though worth noting Megaera isn't as evil as other examples being a Punch-Clock Villain at worst, and she only fights Zagreus becuase she'd honestly rather be on his bad side than his dad (and her boss) Hades. Megaera is even an optional Love Interest after you kill her for the first time.
• Halo:
  • Kat in Halo: Reach is a case of a Dark Action Girl in the protagonist's team. This doesn't make her exactly "good", however; she seems to still bear some of the psychological scars of being a war-orphan-turned-child-Super Soldier.
  • Halo 5: Guardians: Cortana, after her Face–Heel Turn, seeks to bring peace to the universe by attaining the Mantle of Responsibility and ruling as Empress of the Galaxy. By using the Guardians, she plans to use their power to annihilate anyone who doesn't adhere to her moral authority.
• Heist: The Crime of the Century is the only one of his games with no primary villainess. As a thief, the player character is definitely an anti-heroine though. And there is a female bodyguard to a mob boss.
• Heroines Mantle has three: a murderous magician, a pirate captain with a laser sword, and a seductive martial arts expert. And the heroine gets into an action-movie fight with all three of them.
• Sasha from inFAMOUS would also fit this trope. She was formerly Cole's (or, more accurately, Kessler's) girlfriend, and she's also one of the boss encounters in the game.
• In Inside Woman, the director of the company you're infiltrating has six physically identical female assassins in his employ. All with special abilities and codenames.
• The King of Fighters has Vice, Mature, Orochi Shermie and Angel, amongst others.
• Larxene of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories certainly fits the bill. She's well aware of it, too - her personal title is "The Savage Nymph", and she delights in taunting the heroes with "clues" that turn out to be completely fake. Plus, in RE:CoM, she manages to martial-arts kick Sora to the ground...TWICE. She's an absolute bitch to fight and, well, a bitch in general too! In the manga she's seen reading a biography of Marquis de Sade, the namesake for sadism.
• In Knights of the Old Republic the main character can be this if you choose to be female and Dark Side. The many faceless female Dark Jedi you run across throughout the game also presumably count.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has Visas Marr, former Sith apprentice to the Eldritch Abomination Darth Nihilus as well as the Dark Jedi Master Atris. If the Player Character is Dark Side, they can turn their other female companions into this as well.
• League of Legends has some Dark Action Girls.
  • Katarina the Sinister Blade is this to a T, being Daddy's Little Villain and a professional killer who use knives. Her default skin has her dressed all in black, she's very aggressive and violent, and loves carnage. Her selection quote is even "Violence solves everything!"
  • Evelynn the Widowmaker, a deadly, psychotic assassin who Loves the Sound of Screaming, is definitely one.
• Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects:
  • The female Imperfects would definitely fit here in this trope. Solara incinerates people, Fault Zone loves to make the ground tremble with her seismic accelerators, and The Wink seductively slashes people. All three are fueled by hatred and vengeance, just like their male comrades, Brigade, Hazmat, and Johnny Ohm.
  • And then there's the killing machine, Paragon, though she's not really one of the Imperfects.
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of the Superheroes: The Secret Character known as Shadow Lady is Chun-Li from an Alternate Universe who was forcibly turned into a brainwashed cyborg for Shadaloo. In retaliation for foiling their operations, Shadaloo kidnapped and robotzed Chun-Li for the sake of transforming her into M. Bison's top assassin. Unlike Shadow—a brainwashed Charlie Nash, who escaped shortly after being transformed—Shadaloo added a Restraining Bolt to Shadow Lady's programming so she would remain fully loyal to them. As Shadow Lady, her formerly cheerful personality was obliterated, transforming her into a emotionless minion. In her ending however, Shadow Lady overcomes Shadaloo's brainwashing, regain her original memories as Chun-Li, and join forces with Shadow in taking down Shadaloo.
• Jack of Mass Effect 2, a shaven and tattooed biotics experiment, whose experiences have left her unstable, to say the least...though traveling with Paragon Shepard can make her a bit more balanced and less sociopathic.
  • This can be applied to a female Commander Shepard, as well, if you choose Renegade options in the game.
  • Tela Vasir, asari Spectre working for the Shadow Broker and willing to bomb innocent people to get at her target, and tough as nails, providing one of the most difficult fights of the game after going through a lot of abuse beforehand.
• Metal Gear:
  • Subverted with The Boss aka The Joy in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater she seems like a Double Agent for Big Bad Volgin and ruthlessly and efforestly defeats the protagionist Naked Snake several times throughout the game. It's revealed by the end however that she was Good All Along and was forced to pretend to be a traitor for her country and fight her protégé whom kills her and only discovered later that she was under orders to act like a Dark Action Girl.
  • Ocelot clearly believes in Equal-Opportunity Evil and always has some female henchmen in his gangs. As with everything in the series, things are a bit more complex with Sniper Wolf, Olga, and Fortune, but Laughing Octopus, Raging Raven, Crying Wolf, and Screaming Mantis of the Beauty and the Beast Unit are just completely insane.
  • Pacifica Ocean aka Paz the Double Agent for The Patriots reveals herself to be this in the finale of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker as she hijacks Metal Gear ZEKE and tries to kill Big Boss with it.
  • The Spin-Off Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has Mistral a Multi-Armed and Dangerous female cyborg who's easily stronger than the aforementioned examples, as while she does lose to Raiden she could stil match him in combat, even after he got a new even better cybernetic body.
  • Quiet starts off like this in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain as she works for Skull Face and tries to kill Big Boss or least someone she thinks is Big Boss before getting set on fire and thrown out a window. She comes back later as a mute Cold Sniper and even after getting brought to Mother Base she is kept under constant guard, although she does become nicer upon falling in love with Venom Snake.
• Metroid Prime Trilogy: Dark Samus is a reincarnation of the titular Metroid Prime and one of Samus's deadliest opponents, having all of her abilities empowered by Phazon and being difficult to kill.
• Mortal Kombat has some of these:
  • Mortal Kombat II has Mileena, an Evil Knockoff and Counterpart of Kitana. She was created from her "sister's" essence but also mixed with some Tarkatan genes. The result is an Ax-Crazy, psychopathic woman with a child's mind.
  • Mortal Kombat 4 has Tanya, who betrayed her homeland of Edenia by allying with Shinnok, a fallen Elder God who intends to destroy the Elder Gods and Raiden for casting him down in the Netherrealm and take over all of the realms.
  • Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance: Frost, being an Evil Counterpart of Sub-Zero, becomes one after she tried to usurp his position as the Lin Kuei's grandmaster. She again goes down this route in the new timeline again by aligning herself with the franchise's Greater-Scope Villain Kronika and roboticizing herself.
  • Mortal Kombat: Deception has Kira, a female Expy of Kano.
  • Mortal Kombat 9 besides Mileena, we also get Skarlet, a being composed of countless warriors defeated by Shao Khan, and is loyal to Outworld's ruler.
  • Mortal Kombat X has two of these:
    • D'Vorah. She at first serves Kotal Kahn, who took over Outworld after overthrowing Mileena. But it turns out that she was working for Shinnok, the Big Bad of the game. And it goes Up to Eleven in her arcade ending, where she double-crosses Shinnok and uses his powers for her own gain.
    • Kitana becomes one after being revived as a brainwashed revenant minion by Quan Chi at the end of the previous game. She and Liu Kang serve as the Co-Dragons to the necromancer (who in turn, is The Dragon for Shinnok, who was trapped in his amulet) during the 25-year gap, and both of them start to appreciate their status as revenants. And after Shinnok's downfall, she becomes the Netherrealm's empress ruling it alongside Liu Kang. Her new outfit as Dark Empress Kitana reflects her new role as a potential villainess for the franchise.
• It is heavily implied that Nathyrra of Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark used to be one. Almost every female drow that shows up in the campaign, as well as Aribeth in the original after her Face–Heel Turn and if you keep her on the dark side in Hordes of the Underdark, also qualify.
• No More Heroes:
  • Speed Buster, the not-so-nice old lady with a BFG is probably what happens when the Dark Action Girl survives into her 70s. In fact, every female opponent in probably qualifies under this trope, especially Bad Girl.
  • Shinobu Jacobs is introduced by Travis asking to see her in the middle of one of her classes - and slicing every single one of her classmates to pieces in order to Leave No Witnesses. She's the nicest of the ten assassins Travis faces. Even after her Heel–Face Turn in the second game, she's still very brutal in combat.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Peach becomes one while being possessed by the Shadow Queen, becoming Shadow Queen Peach. The Shadow Queen herself is an extremely powerful sorceress, having created the Crystal Stars, an immense number of demonic followers and three pet dragons to instill fear in the hearts and minds of many. She was responsible for the calamities that struck the city where Rogueport now stands, forcing the remaining survivors to serve her until she was sealed away by four heroes, but not before she condemned them to a Fate Worse than Death; even the Thousand-Year Door (and by extension, the Palace of Shadows) gave a bad vibe to anybody who ventured near it. The demon plans to plunge the world into darkness after being revived by Grodus.
• Shahdee in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is an accomplished swordsman, able to not only hold her own against the Prince in their rematch but also even defeat him on more than one occasion. In addition to being extremely proficient in swordplay, she is also skilled in unarmed combat.
• Resident Evil:
  • Ada Wong. Sure she’s very friendly with Leon (when they aren’t pointing guns at each other) but besides that there’s no doubt she’s an amoral She-Fu happy Femme Fatale Spy who will happily work for any number of sinister organisations as well as commit any crime and betray anyone for a pay check. The only reason to root for her is that, her enemies tend be Eviler than Thou.
  • Alexia Ashford from Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. She's completely sociopathic and believes all around her exist only to be experimented on. When in human form, she does not seem so threatening. Then she transforms into a monster that uses her blood like napalm and fights Wesker to a stand-still.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations has Jessica a Double Agent for Tricell, although like Ada in her first appearance she’s on your side for most of the game and her true colors are only revealed later.
  • Jill is one for most of Resident Evil 5, thanks to being brainwashed. During the final missions she kicks both Chris and Sheva asses simultaneously thanks to Wesker’s experiments. The same game has Excella Wesker’s Number Two, though she only gets to show off her asskicking Dark Action Girl status in Mercenaries Mode.
  • Carla from Resident Evil 6 who spends most of the game as Ada’s Evil Knock Off makes her counterpart seem like Mother Teresa in comparison as she sadistically butchers all of Chris’s men and causes immense destruction throughout the game before turning into a goo monster.
  • Played with in regards to Mia from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. It’s revealed towards the end of the game that she’s an operative of The Connections, a criminal syndicate which produces Bioweapons akin to Umbrella or Tricell (which explains her proficiency in firearms), and is partly responsible for events of game as she’s Big Bad Eveline’s caretaker. However Mia does manages to be much more sympathetic than Ada or Jessica since she genuinely loves her husband Ethan (who was unaware of her job) and urged him not to get involved with her life and even when infected with The Virus and trying to kill Ethan Mia still says “I love you” after Ethan shoots her in the head (she recovers). Curing Mia will give the player the good ending.
  • Resident Evil Village has the Large and in Charge Lady Dimitrescu and her no less powerful, attractive and Ax-Crazy daughters Daniela, Bela and Cassandra who serve as the pursuing vampire-like antagonists for a portion of the game. Following them, there's also Marionette Master Donna Beneviento and Big Bad Mother Miranda.
• Tati from Rise of the Kasai, while not really a villain, qualifies for this trope. She's absolutely vicious and won't hesitate to kill any Kasai warrior she sees. Her family was slaughtered by the Kasai, she once hung out with her era's equivalent of a street gang, and she's cursed with a mark that is gradually corrupting her. She hates the world for this curse as well. Hatred runs through her veins.
• The girls of Schwarzkreuz as well as Iris Zeppelin in RosenkreuzStilette count as these. All five (six if you count both of the Refraktia twins separately) are powerful magic-users and have quite a bone to pick with the members of RKS.
  • In general, the girls of Schwarzkreuz are part of an organization of witch-hunters that are attacking magi in an attempt to "put down the Walpurgisnacht".
  • Pamela Arwig, the captain of Schwarzkreuz, is an Anti-Villain with a magical sword who tends to come across as haughty and sanctimonious at times, and answers to the Pope in his oppression of RKS and the magi. She never doubts her views of justice and will stop at nothing to punish what she considers to be sinners and heretics alike. Pamela claims not to be a magus and instead claims that her power was nothing more than a gift from God himself.
  • Eifer Skute, while appearing to be cool-headed and mature, suffers violent mood swings sometimes, which results in her sometimes acting out of character and becoming a rage-obsessed monster at the worst of times. She carries seething hatred towards Freudia, and for good reason; it is later revealed that she is a homunculus created by Iris, using Freu as a template. By the time the entirety of Schwarzkreuz is defeated, Eifer reveals herself as The Mole and badly injures her own captain with a backstab attack, revealing that she's been working with Iris all along.
  • Schirach Fühler was formerly a member of RKS and had been absent without leave for years. Joining Schwarzkreuz, she's an Affably Evil Boisterous Bruiser of a Blood Knight who assists with the Church's witch hunts, and she's also heavily regarded as one of the toughest bosses in Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel. That, and she also introduces herself in Freudia's story by using a crane to kidnap Tia.
  • Recht & Link Refraktia, a pair of nuns, are the Dark Chicks of Schwarzkreuz, both of whom also assist the organization with its witch-hunts. Recht is introverted and dislikes interacting with others, while Link will subject those who threaten her in any way to the full extent of her fury.
  • Iris herself is the overall Big Bad of the entire Rosenkreuzstilette franchise. She may be a little girl, but she kickstarted RKS's coup against the Holy Empire solely for her twisted amusement, kills her own father after she deems him useless, pulls a Wounded Gazelle Gambit on Grolla in Rosenkreuzstilette Grollschwert, and manipulates Schwarzkreuz and the Church's witch hunts alongside her dragon Eifer. She also forces Freu to fight against a Brainwashed and Crazy Spiritia. She is also one of two reincarnations of Rosenkreuz, born with his wealth of power and intellect, and is not above claiming to have become a god because of it.
• In Sands of Destruction, Morte dances along the line between this and straight-up Action Girl for a good part of the game, eventually deciding she prefers being heroic while still not quite losing her Blood Knight tendencies.
• Septerra Core has Selina, who apparently goes back and forth between this and Action Girl a couple of times throughout the game.

• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • She may be of neutral alignment, but Rouge the Bat qualifies for this.
  • Blaze the Cat also was one for most of Sonic Rush.
• The Soul Series has a few. Tira is the best example, completely insane and just loves to kill. She also killed Sophitia and corrupted her daughter Phyrra into the local Dark Magical Girl. Ivy is one but on the good side... just a good side that doesn't care about all the other good sides.
• Sarah Kerrigan, post-infestation, in StarCraft and StarCraft II. Queen of Blades, ruler of the Zerg swarm, Manipulative Bastard, and Chessmaster extraordinaire. In the aftermath of the Overmind's death, she manages, through grit, will, and a burning need for vengeance, to exact bloody revenge on all her enemies and establish herself as the de facto ruler of not only the Zerg swarm, but also the entire Kroprulu sector (see quote at the top of the page). At the start of StarCraft II, the entire sector lives in fear of her inevitable return.
  • She partially evolves beyond this in her chapter of the game, mainly because the swarm is fleshed out more giving her more people to interact with. Very much keeps the "Action" part, though - it's a rare mission she doesn't personally involve herself in.
• Street Fighter:
  • Juri Han from Super Street Fighter IV. Notable because the vast majority of playable female characters in the games are on the side of good.
  • Also, Cammy and the Dolls used to be Dark Action Girls, as Bison's brainwashed Bodyguard Babes. Cammy has a full Heel–Face Turn once her inner humanity is unlocked. In the case of the other Dolls, however, it's not that easy: they suffer heavy physical and mental consequences, and at least one of them (Julia a.k.a. Juli) has become an Empty Shell due to it. (Though another, Juni, is in her path to recovery after waking up from a coma, so not all hopes are lost.)
  • The cynical, sexy, and very pragmatic Crimson Viper fits in as well. Subverted, actually: she's a genuine Action Girl posing as a Dark Action Girl. While cold to the other warriors, she still has a kinder side that she shows to her daughter Lauren.
  • And in Ultra Street Fighter IV, we meet another: Decabr/Decapre, the only Doll aside of Cammy who remains fully active. Even more so: she is a clone of Cammy.
• The Tales Series has a few of these, along with several heroic Action Girls. Notable Dark Action Girls, however, include;
  • Legretta, Arietta, and Nebilim from Tales of the Abyss.
  • Pronyma from Tales of Symphonia. Sheena starts out as this, but, before long, undergoes a Heel–Face Turn and loses the "Dark" part.
  • Elraine and Fortuna from Tales of Destiny 2, the Big Bad and Greater-Scope Villain respectively.
  • Emeraude and the Fodora Queen from Tales of Graces, the Greater-Scope Villain/Heavy and second Big Bad respectively.
  • Melanie and Schwartz from Tales of Legendia, a Vaclav enforcer and the Big Bad of the Character Arcs, respectively.
  • Gauche and Droite from Tales of Vesperia.
  • Agria from Tales of Xillia. Very much Ax-Crazy and a pyromaniac.
• Izebel from Tears to Tiara 2. She's strong enough to beat up any member of your party. And there's no Designated Girl Fight. She's seen taking on Hamil in the opening movie, while it's Laelius who takes on Tarte.
• From Tekken, we have Anna and Nina Williams, both assassins. Surprisingly Anna is more moral than Nina, and was willing to settle down and live a peaceful life. Until Tekken 7 when her sister Nina infiltrates her sister’s wedding and kills her husband at the altar while wearing Anna’s own wedding dress... cue a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Jeala from Thousand Arms is a loyal servant of Schmidt, the Dark Master.
• Time: All Things Come to an End has a time travelling villainess who shoots and strangles her way through history.
• Vacant Sky has Sandarga, who Doesn't Like Guns presumably because she'd rather tear people to shreds close up, and will kill anyone who annoys her (which is most people).
• Valkyria Chronicles:
  • Selvaria Bles is practically invincible, and she has zero interest in serving anyone else but the Big Bad, Maximillian. Her virtue, however, is due to loyalty, not due to for sheer lulz and evil.
  • Shocktrooper Jane Turner. Note that she's on the good guy's side.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, if your character is female. No matter the clan or how nice she may be, she is still a blood-sucking monster who preys on mortals, which qualifies her as "dark" even if she's not evil. And she kicks ass, a whole lot of it. By the end of the game, she can have been directly responsible for wiping out the LA Sabbat and the LA Kuei-Jin, as well as one petulant rogue Prince pretty much single-handedly. Seduction is also a possible part of her arsenal (especially if Toreadore), and more than a few of her dialogue options fall under the Deadpan Snarker category.
• Cetsa from The Way (RPG Maker) qualifies, being the leader of the Blue Scarves.
• Rubi Malone from WET easily outshines, or outdarkens, Shego. Let's see, she's a Guns Akimbo, Hard-Drinking Party Girl Psycho for Hire, spends half the game on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, goes into an Unstoppable Rage when the blood of some mook she shoots gets on her face, and has a penchant for the Groin Attack, using a gun or a sword. Oh, she wears a Slasher Smile during these last two actions. And she's voiced by Faith. Put it this way, she is far too dark to ever be a Disney Villain.
• Whiplash: Most of the female Genron employees, with the exception of the female scientists, are very athletic and skilled in martial arts. The company itself is evil because it runs by abusing animals.
• From World of Warcraft:
  • Sylvanas Windrunner is THE dark action girl. Banshee Queen, Dark Queen of the Forsaken, Dark Ranger...she's basically a Dark Lord who just happens to work for the Horde, although Garrosh sees it in action in Silverpine when she raises new Forsaken from the Alliance dead. She fundamentally hates all of the living, except possibly her two sisters, and is only biding her time until she can kill everyone. She's starting with the Alliance of course, because they refused to believe her when she said she wanted to kill Arthas back during Warcraft III, but nobody is really under the illusion that she isn't going to kill everyone in the Horde that isn't Forsaken.
  • Jaina Proudmoore, after the gigantic amount of Break the Cutie Mists expansion dropped on her. She is a Nominal Hero as Sylvanas is, and just so happens to rule an entire city of mages. Before that Establishing Character Moment in Theramore, she was a naive peace-seeking girl... who could hold her own against Arthas. Now that her Berserk Button has been pressed so hard that it broke, the only thing stopping her from literally drowning Orgrimmar in a massive deluge and exterminating the orcish race is Love Interest Kalec and the orders of King Varian.
  • Legion created another pair of these in Tyrande Whisperwind and First Arcanist Thalyssra. Both are Well Intentioned Extremists, who while not exactly evil are very unwilling to listen to criticism of their point of view. Battle For Azeroth then has Sylvanas press Tyrande's Beserk Button, by destroying Teldrassil (despite Cataclysm revealing that Teldrassil was not really a very good idea in the first place). The results are... explosive.
  • This franchise also has Maiev Shadowsong, Sally Whitemane, and Lillian Voss. Maiev zigzags the line between Well-Intentioned Extremist and Knight Templar. Her intention is genuinely to protect Azeroth, but she pretty easily allows herself to be manipulated into hunting someone whose intention is also genuinely to protect Azeroth. Sally Whitemane truly wants to save Lordaeron from the Scourge, but ends up getting played by a Dreadlord. It's arguable whether her attempt to "redeem" herself is really going to work, given that she ends up working for an omnicidal god. Lillian Voss is perhaps the most well-adjusted of these three, which is saying something since she was abused by her father (think Thanos, but a priest) and suffered a breakdown upon discovering that she was undead. She is still a completely remorseless assassin who is perfectly happy to kill anybody that Sylvanas tells her to without knowing a single thing about them. She draws the line at brainwashing though, because that's how her father abused her.
• Yandere Simulator has some.
  • Depending on your gameplay style, it's possible to play Ayano "Yandere-chan" Aishi as one. This is especially true if the player decides to build up her Strength stat, join the Martial Arts club, and/or use primarily violent elimination methods on the rivals. She can also join a group of delinquents, which has its benefits and drawbacks.
  • One of the rivals late into the game is the leader of the delinquent gang, Osoro Shidesu, who is openly stated to be "the strongest student", and was suspended from the school until her week. Since she is an official rival, the player will have to find a way to deal with her too.
  • It's heavily implied that Ayano's mother Ryoba was one back in the day. While she seems more like someone who favors the subtle approach, she is responsible for the death of the Phantom Girl through stabbing (and implicitly others). She and her husband are out of town because she's tracking down the Journalist who almost brought her to justice years ago. Word of God also says that a 1980s mode is planned, where the player can play as her using similar abilities as Ayano. Word of God also states that all Aishi women are Yandere in some way or another, making it likely there's a few more in the family tree.
  • "Mission Mode" introduces a character referred to only by "Nemesis," who will track Ayano down and stab her to death the second she gets close enough. Her motivations are currently unclear, but the fact that Info-chan, of all characters, freaks out when she realizes that she's in close vicinity makes it clear that you should stay away from her as long as possible. By the way, she's also a Master of Disguise.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night:
  • Rider embraces this image, although she does show a nice side — how much depends on the scenario. Her alignment is Chaotic Good. Seems one doesn’t actually have to be evil to be a Dark Action Girl.
  • Anti-Villain Caster.
  • Saber Alter.
• Villain Protagonist Saya from Saya no Uta.

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue:
  • Tex in is not only the only woman in blood gulch (until much later), but also the only capable soldier. She's technically on the side of the Blue Team, which doesn't stop her from abusing and scaring the shit out of her allies. She is also the one character who wears black armor.
  • Every female Freelancer counts on one level or another, especially South, who shoots her own brother in the back in a jealous rage.
  • There were also at least a couple female troops among The Insurrection's Elite Mooks, who managed to hold their own against the Freelancers just as well as their male counterparts.
• RWBY:
  • Cinder Fall is a ruthless and cruel villainess. She is one of the most powerful fighters in the series due to absorbing the Fall Maiden's powers. When she's not carrying out her plans to endanger the world and spread chaos, she's defeating enemies with relative ease using fire Dust, dual blades, or her bow and arrow. She solidifies her status as a Dark Action Girl when she personally murders Amber and Pyrrha.
  • Emerald is Cinder's underling and a stealthy thief and assassin who isn't above using under-handed tactics or her illusory powers to defeat foes with her kusarigama-like weapon.
  • Neo is an associate of Roman Torchwick and, despite standing at 4'9", has the finesse to completely avoid the attacks of and curb-stomp Ruby and Yang with elegance and style. And both time she's about to deliver the killing blow to them she has an obvious glee on her face.
  • Yang's trailer (Yellow) featured the elegantly dressed Tag Team Twins, Melanie & Miltia(des) Malachite, among Junior's mooks at his club. After Yang attacks and wipes the floor with all the other henchmen, they gang up on and manage to hold their own significantly better than Junior's more other more generically dressed men.

Webcomics

• Hortense in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja...at least, so far as we know. Not to mention the good doctor's mother, Mitzi.
• In Blade of Toshubi, Lamika, aka Lady Snow Blood, kind of falls into this trope.
• Saturday in Cucumber Quest is a thief and a gunslinger (well, star-shooter-slinger). She isn't as evil as some of the other villains, but she definitely causes a lot of problems for the heroes.
• Kria, the demon mare of Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, is a Dark Action Mom. But given the comic, her appearances are Villains Out Shopping.
• Amazi-Girl was mostly a Batman joke in her Dumbing of Age incarnation, until she started car-surfing, using bolt-cutters as a zipwire and beating up Danny's and Becky's fathers...
• Empowered has Ninjette, who deals out some pretty graphic violence on occasion.
• Heel Combagals in Furry Fight Chronicles invoke this image when fighting. Their fighting outfits are more provocative and with darker colors, and they fight more violently.
• Girl Genius: Everyone on this list is sympathetically portrayed, and usually are more-or-less on the side of good. Girl Genius is Black-and-Gray Morality Played for Laughs, because that allows for far more awesome Mad Scientists.
  • Jenka was doing pretty well holding her own against guards and Othar.
  • Gkika, being one of the Jager Generals, probably falls somewhere between this and Lady of War.
  • Von Pinn is just Ax-Crazy, and can tear Jagers apart with her bare hands.
  • Dupree, who's axe CRAZIER. She routinely attempts to murder entire towns (and, it's implied, only fails because her commanders won't let her) and actively taunts Von Pinn.
  • Zola, the false Hererodyne heir, isn't a bad example of this trope, either.
• Reng-Lo from Harkovast, who is notable for being a skilled warrior and complete psycho.
• In Homestuck, thirteen year old Vriska Serket is a murdering egomaniac- the most violent, sadistic, and remorseless of all the trolls and is considered evil even by the standards of her barbaric planet. She is responsible for the deaths of thousands of trolls, as well as a teammate, and for seriously crippling two of her "friends" (and later killing one). She also purposefully facilitated a chain of events that led to an indestructible demon to be created and kill many, many more people- just because she wanted to have the glory of killing said demon. She's also among the most powerful characters in the comic. Later, however, she begins to realize that her upbringing was what caused her to become like this, as she was forced to hunt other trolls to sate the hunger of her spider-monster custodian, under threat of death. For the first time, she also feels true remorse after killing one of her friends. Her contact with and romantic interest in John also helps her see the error in many of the things that she's done. However, just as she comes to the conclusion that she doesn't want to kill or hurt people anymore, she is killed by Terezi in order to save the remaining trolls, as her plan to fight Jack Noir would have resulted in their deaths. As a consequence she has become one of the most controversial characters in the fandom. Later, we encounter Vriska in a dream bubble two years after her death. She's changed quite a bit.
  • Meenah Peixes is the Dark Action Girl for the pre-scratch trolls. She greets people by trying to kill them and is indirectly responsible for a few deaths in her team (even though she had no intention of causing them). She also idolizes her post-scratch counterpart, who is a genocidal tyrant. She's not anywhere near as bloodthirsty as Vriska was, although just as egotistical and belligerent, and a lot more mischievous. Needless to say, when the two meet, sparks fly.
  • Because almost every female cast member of Homestuck is an Action Girl in some sense, essentially all female antagonists in Homestuck count as this.
  • After the RetJohn, Vriska returns to being this, along with Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work, with her presence almost single-handedly solving a majority of the issues the people on the meteor faced, from stopping Rose's alcoholism in its tracks to preventing Terezi from becoming Gamzee's kismesis. She also prevents a repeat of [S] Game Over by using her Mind Manipulation to knock out Jane and Jade before going to confront Lord English.
• I'm the Grim Reaper: Scarlet walking the lines between anti-hero and anti-villain makes her this. After all, she is a grim reaper. While she does kill sinners, the overall morality of killing in general is explored.
• It's Walky!: Sal Walters tends to weave in and out of the "dark" portion of Action Girl. She wasn't above opening a can of whupass on her own brother, though.
• Lifolei (which is on the 'good' guys side!) and Thlassa of Juathuur.
• Given the nature of the RPG World, The Order of the Stick has multiple: Sabine, Crystal, Tsukiko (she mostly creates undead Mooks but can fight very well if she has to), as well as Samantha, Laurin, and Oona.
• Sakido from Slightly Damned certainly had a history as one of these. She was one of hell's most elite warriors in The Great War before retiring to the ring of the slightly damned. She shows us what she's made of when she takes down the guardian of hell and then single handedly fights her way through the legions of demons to get her little brother and his friend Rhea to the mortal world, even though she knows she'll die in the process.
  • Lazuli plays the role much straighter, and is pretty terrifying.
• Kusari from Sluggy Freelance - a masked assassin with superhuman powers who unfailingly follows the orders of the villainous Hereti-Corp executives. Her perhaps even more dangerous "sister", Oasis, is too nuts to count, especially as she imagines she's actually good.

Web Original

• Pretty Pink Ponytails in Angel of Death is a highly skilled, sadistic, and unstable fighter. Thus far, she's the only human to survive direct combat with Cody, and the only reason she didn't win is because he, who has super strength and speed and the ability to fire bursta of magical energy from his hand, called the police on a mortal.

• In The Gamer's Alliance, there are quite a few characters who fit this trope such as Adela, Desdemona, Endoran, Etna, Glaurung, Nina, Shyralis, Tarna, Vaetris, Varalia and Zenobia.
• Common for evil women on The Gungan Council. Notable examples include Xyra Sizhran, a manipulative Stormcommando.

• Leather from Interviewing Leather is a mix of Dark Action, Perky Goth, and possible Dark Magical Girl undertones
• Open Blue:
  • A recurring character from v2 to v4 was Kapitänin Karla Weir. She worked for a 19th-century equivalent of Nazi Germany, was rumored to perform raids on colonies belonging to fellow member states of The Federation, and was frequently called on by intelligence officer and literal baroness Rhianna von Adolph to help her with carrying out the occasional dirty work.
  • Rhianna herself qualifies, being a highly-skilled knife wielder armed with a diamond-coated combat knife. Unlike Karla, she makes a comeback in v5, if only reduced to a backstory role.
• A fair amount of villains in Survival of the Fittest fit this, on at least two occasions, being a homage to Mitsuko Souma. Examples include Angelina Kaige (v1), Mariavel Varella (v2), Melina Frost (v3), Clio Gabriella (v4), Reiko Ishida, prior to Character Development (v4), and countless others.
• Sara from Trinton Chronicles can count as this with her bone control powers.
• Whateley Universe example: Vamp, the bad girl of The Necromancer's team. She beat Bladedancer in a fair fight. Also Winter (the daughter of supervillains) and Cutlass (wants to become a henchwoman to a supervillain), who ripped up the Cadet Crusaders. Or Olympia, who may be closer to Ax-Crazy. Or...

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Princess Azula, as a charismatic and powerful leader, combines this trope with Magnificent Bastard and Hero Killer.
  • Mai, the Deadpan Snarker, is also one of these until she switches sides. She certainly dresses like one. She wears red and black clothes, uses a dark makeup palette, and has black Femme Fatalons.
  • Quite a few mooks in the Fire Nation are female.
  • Sequel Series The Legend of Korra gives us the following:
    • In Book 1, several female mooks. Asami Sato was originally intended as a Sixth Ranger Traitor, but instead became purely heroic.
    • In Book 2, Korra's creepy yandere cousin Eska until she and her twin brother make a last-minute Heel–Face Turn.
    • Book 3 gives us Ming-Hua, a tiny Blood Knight waterbender with no arms but as many water whips as she could possibly ever need, and P'Li, a towering Cold Sniper firebender with a design explicitly stated to be inspired by Lisbeth Salander. They're members of the Red Lotus, and some of the most powerful benders in the world.
    • Kuvira, the Arc Villain of Book 4, is more of a Dark Lady of War. The dictator of the Earth Empire, she utterly trashes around Korra, who wasn't fully recovered, during their fight, and uses The Colossus to destroy much of Republic City during the finale.
• Batman Beyond: In addition to being a really effective, if not, really badass shapeshifting blob, Inque is the embodiment of implacable. Frozen, diluted, and dissolved, in that order, all things that would assuredly damage or kill her and is still alive. On top of that, all of her encounters with Batman are usually with her cornering or nearly killing him. She even manages to nearly off Bruce Wayne in Powered Armor. In only one appearance she's not a major threat, because the "Innocent Bystander" she takes hostage is actually Superman.
• Hera from Blood of Zeus having being given Adaptational Badass from the original myths. She’s such a powerful and cruel goddess that even her husband Zeus fears her wrath. Righty so as during a Unstoppable Rage born of jealousy Hera destroys pillars around her by landing hard and effortlessly overpowers Seraphim (the demon-man) without lifting a finger.
• Castlevania (2017): While Carmilla is mostly The Chessmaster, she's also able to kick fellow vampire Godbrand down a flight of stairs at high speed. Unlike most other examples listed here, she's not remotely likeable, being unsympathetic and somehow even crueler than she is in the games. In Season 3, Carmilla is joined by the Council of Sisters — Morana, Striga, and Lenore — who plan to Take Over the World in the wake of Dracula's death. Morana and Striga are the only Affably Evil members of the quartet, as Lenore gives even Carmilla a run for her money in the cruel bitch department, using her vampire strength to give Distressed Dude Hector a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown (though she does becomes nicer later on). In Season 4, Carmilla and Striga in particular have two epic One-Woman Army moments against a horde of foes — in Carmilla's case, against an army of monsters followed by a Duel to the Death with Isaac.

• Codename: Kids Next Door: Cree Lincoln, Numbuh 5's older sister, is the second in command of the Teen Ninja and easily their best fighter, able to dish out Curb Stomp Battles like it's nothing and the heroes rarely ever beat her in a straight up fight, usually having to wait for her to let her guard down or trick her.
• Magica de Spell from DuckTales (1987) is an evil witch who wishes to steal Scrooge McDuck's first dime so that she can cast a spell to make herself rich.
• The Flock of Fury in El Tigre is a whole family of dark action girls.
• Gargoyles:
  • Demona and Hyena are particularly Ax-Crazy ones.
  • Fox is a Heel Face Turner, though it doesn't change her personality one iota. Well, except for the Mama Bear thing.
• Galatea in Justice League Unlimited is an Evil Twin of Supergirl, quite the sadist, and physically stronger than her counterpart.
• Shego (pictured) of Kim Possible, the deadly sidekick of Dr. Drakken who has the superpower to project green energy from her hands, which she often uses with martial arts to fight Kim.
• Vanessa Warfield of the evil organization V.E.N.O.M in M.A.S.K.
• In the Mega Man (Ruby-Spears) cartoon, Doris the maid, a cosmetics robot, Ms. Lapierre, and a brainwashed Evelyn Ray have all fought Mega Man and Roll at points. The park attendant from Fun World was also evil, but she didn't fight.

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Trixie becomes one in "Magic Duel", while under the influence of the Alicorn Amulet.
  • Before she made her Heel–Face Turn, Starlight Glimmer was this, as one of the most skilled and naturally powerful unicorns in Equestria and the Big Bad of season five.
• Shannon, Lord Boxman's robot "daughter" from OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes.
• Plenty of examples from Samurai Jack. There's Ikra, Princess Mira, Josephine Clench, and all the Daughters of Aku.
• Lazerette and Cerina from Skysurfer Strike Force. Cerina especially doesn't get in the thick of it as much of the other Bioborgs, and has no visible powers and rarely uses weapons, but she still gives the Skysurfers more they can handle when she does fight.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man:
  • Silver Sable is an incredibly dangerous and clever combatant who serves as The Dragon to her father, mob boss Silvermane. Probably should be mentioned that, in the comics, Silver Sable is a very different character with no connection to Silvermane. She is an Anti-Hero mercenary and Action Girl, and is usually on Spider-Man's side.
  • Black Cat from the same series might also be considered an example, though, being something of a Catwoman figure, she's sometimes antagonistic but not exactly evil.
• As listed above under Literature, Asajj Ventress is also portrayed as this on Star Wars: Clone Wars.
• The Seventh Sister from Star Wars Rebels is ambitious, sadistic, and reasonably skilled with a lightsaber.
• Steven Universe:
  • By virtue of Gems being a One-Gender Race ^note  Technically they have No Biological Sex, but appear female (usually), use female pronouns, and are generally treated as female by human characters all Gems directly fighting against the heroes are this by default.
  • Jasper is an incredibly tough Lightning Bruiser who can easily defeat the heroes, unless they're a fusion like Garnet. And even then, they have to really fight as hard as they can to beat her.
• Storm Hawks:
  • Ravess is an archer, Talon commander, and total perfectionist.
  • Master Cyclonus as well, when The Gloves Come Off.
• Teen Titans:
  • Jinx, who is also the leader of the H.I.V.E F.I.V.E, with the rest of the members being males. She's the only one with any level of ambition, which leads to her eventual Heel–Face Turn being triggered by high-ranking villains (particularly Madame Rouge) dismissing her as useless. Developing a crush on Kid Flash also helped.
  • The aforementioned Madame Rouge is one of The Brotherhood of Evil's top enforcers and is shown to be cunning and skilled enough with her shape shifting powers to handle pretty much any of the heroes in a one-on-one fight.
  • Blackfire, Starfire's diabolical big sister who shares her sisters powers and is a formidable fighter in her own right.
  • The phrase "Dark Action Girl" really brings Raven to mind...though she's more an example of another trope. Or, more accurately, two.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • Karai from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012). She's been able to hold her own against any of the turtles, and has no trouble at all with the Kraang-droids.
  • The Foot Recruit from Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is similar to Karai, both being female ninjas working for the Foot Clan. The Recruit is a lot less cunning and a lot more Hot-Blooded than your typical dark action girl, though. The series finale reveals her to be a gender-flipped Casey Jones, and sees her make a Heel–Face Turn.
• Blackarachnia of Transformers: Beast Wars is a bad, bad girl, ready to dish out pain by the bucket at the drop of a hat, as well as a treacherous Femme Fatale when it suits her. These two things, in combination, made her very popular in the fandom. Unlike many, though, she does do a Heel–Face Turn in the end, though, at first, it's just for her own safety.
  • Despite the previous having a counterpart in Animated, another for this trope would be Starscream's Opposite-Sex Clone.
  • Airachnid of Transformers: Prime. This is a woman (well, fembot) who got bored with her job as a Torture Technician and decided, as a hobby, to hunt endangered species and keep trophies from her kills. Rather than finding endangered species to hunt, she makes her own.
• Molotov Cocktease in The Venture Bros., an assassin and ex-Soviet agent (and on-and-off love interest for Brock Sampson), combines this with The Baroness.

• Young Justice:
  • Cheshire is a sneaky and deadly assassin who works for the Light. After marrying Red Arrow, she becomes a Nominal Hero.
  • Cheshire and Artemis's mother, Huntress was one in the past, before a Career-Ending Injury.
  • Tigress, who works under Black Manta and serves as Aqualad's right hand-man. She is actually Artemis working as a mole.

---