First, she turns you on. Then, she turns on you. The typical client in a Hardboiled Detective story (French for "fatal woman", idiomatically "woman to die for"). You know the type. Dressed all in black with legs up to here and shady motives, she slinks into the P.I.'s office, sometimes holding a cigarette on a long, long holder, saying "Oh, Mr. Rockhammer, you're the only one who can help me find out who killed my extremely wealthy husband." Did she do it? Do I care? Wait, where'd that saxophone music come from? Whatever her story is, whether she did it or not, she's definitely keeping some secrets.
The Femme Fatale is sexy and she knows it. Made famous by Film Noir and hard-boiled detective stories, she manipulates and confuses The Hero with her undeniable aura of sexiness and danger. Unlike the virginal and sweet Damsel in Distress (or possibly Action Girl), the Femme Fatale exploits with everything she's got to wrap men around her finger. (In some eras, use of make-up is a tell-tale sign.) He knows that she's walking trouble and knows much more about the bad guys than she should, but damn it if he can't resist her feminine wiles.
If the Femme Fatale is vying for the hero's romantic attentions she will likely have a sweeter and purer rival. The hero might decide that she's not worth the trouble she causes, but if he doesn't, then they might become an Outlaw Couple.
While related to The Vamp, the Femme Fatale is not just any seductress; she has a distinct look and feel. The main distinction is how she presents herself. If you know she's dangerous from the start, but she's sexy enough that you don't care, she's likely a Femme Fatale. On a lesser note, the Femme Fatale generally uses sensuality instead of upfront sexual advances. She may imply that you could have sex later, but she'll never promise it, not even say it — that would decrease her air of mystery and power. Her wiles may include apparent helplessness and distress, and appeals to the man's greed, desire for revenge, or gullibility, as well as the implication of possible romance or sexual rewards, while The Vamp more often relies on raunchy sex or the promise of it sometime real soon.
The Femme Fatale is generally villainous, and heroic exceptions — in an artificial context to snare the bad guy — are closer to Heroic Seductress. Frequently, she is a Wild Card, changing sides according to her own desires and goals; she does not often go through a High-Heel–Face Turn. If she's actually a kind-hearted person who puts on this facade just for fun, this is Trickster Girlfriend.
She's often The Chanteuse or the Lady in Red but possibly dressed like everyone else so as to not be Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. The Femme Fatale is one of the female character types that can often be seen wearing High-Class Gloves, especially in conjunction with her sexy evening gowns, and, during the daytime (particularly in old Film Noir movies), is often seen wearing a "fascinator" or "pillbox" hat with a partial- or full-face veil. She's definitely not above using the Kiss of Distraction.
If she can fight as well, then she's really going to be trouble.
Sub-Trope of Manipulative Bastard. The younger version of this is the Fille Fatale. The spy version of this is Femme Fatale Spy. If the femme fatale also eats the targets of her manipulations, she's a Literal Maneater.
If she's a prostitute, she may also be a Shady Lady of the Night.
Often, this is the characterization given to the College Widow, a Dude Magnet who lives near a male-only institution and encourages the attention she receives.
A Nice Guy might inspire her to desire innocence.
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Examples:
- Bitch-sensei Irina Jelavic from Assassination Classroom. Before coming to class 3-E, she was an assassin famous for her Honey Trap method. Now that she is a teacher, she's more than willing to pass her skills to her students and at least two of them are already on the way to become this trope.
- Banana Fish's protagonist Ash is a rare, intentional male example. He frequently uses his charm and good looks to seduce adults (usually middle-aged men) to get information out of them. It factors into his tragic backstory, as it stems from him being a former child prostitute and the sex toy of a mafia don. He even goes as far as performing a striptease in front of a security camera to try and trick the guards into visiting his hospital room by throwing a blanket over the camera. It works for one of them, who is promptly shot.
- In Basilisk, the kunoichi Kagerou's Head-Turning Beauty leads many unknowing (and even some knowing) to their deaths due to her breath turning poisonous when aroused. A simple kiss from Kagerou is lethal enough to drop a man dead almost instantly. While very useful, this has manjor drawbacks for Kagerou, as she can never even embrace the man she's deeply in love with.
- Bubblegum Crisis: In the public eye, Sylia Stingray is the modest entrepreneur of the Silky Doll fashion boutique. But, away from prying eyes, she's an alluring businesswoman who brokers backwater deals with wealthy clients and informants in high-level government positions, who also act as her eyes and ears against the Genom Corporation. And while she doesn't mind them looking, she makes it clear that her body is never part of the deal.
- Erica Blandelli of Campione! is an unusual example, since she's also the main heroine and Love Interest for the protagonist. While she's manipulative and seductive towards Godou Kusanagi, she genuinely loves him and everything she does is for his sake.
- Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop has all the hallmarks of the Femme Fatale, a sultry dark haired beautiful and curvaceous woman who’s very seductive to gullible men, while also being quite a deadly wanted swindling criminal in her own right. Spike and Jet understandably distrust her and handcuff Faye in their first and second encounters with her. Subverted as Faye is really a deconstruction of a Femme Fatale, since a lot of her surface feminine wiles give way to klutzy dorkiness as Faye does some very unclassy things like eat dogfood and in later episode get diarrhoea which would never happened to other Femme Fatales listed here. It turns out Faye’s Femme Fatale behaviour is really just a put on, since being a Human Popsicle for fifty-four years Beneath the Mask she genuinely has no idea who she is and being a sultry swindler is just a defence mechanism. Considering the first man Faye met in the future Whitney (whom she fell for), betrayed and ripped her off, you can’t fault her for adapting to that lifestyle to survive.
- Interestingly Julia is closer to being a straight example, as seen in the vague flashbacks where she’s wearing a black leather getup and sleeps with Spike while still being in a relationship with Vicious. She’s also very much capable of murder and abandonment. Her genuine love for Spike however does undercut this, but even Faye can’t get a good read on Julia, saying she’s either a demonic angel or angelic demon.
- Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners briefly plays this role as part of the trap against David when they first meet so Maine can get his Sandevistan implant back from him. She deliberately lures him with his obvious attraction towards herself to eventually 'destroy him' for crossing the gang. Once David joins instead, however, she completely drops this behavior and they earnestly fall in love with each other.
- Dragon Ball:
- Bulma usually uses her looks and body to manipulate guys to do her bidding. She tried using it on Goku initially, but it failed.
- Hasky a female mercenary hired by the Red Ribbon army in the anime, is an effective Femme Fatale who almost steals the Four Star ball off Goku. Unfortunately for her Goku was a Pint-Sized Powerhouse.
- Colonel Violet proved to be one in the anime, throwing two of her men overboard in crocodile infested waters to save her own skin and feigning loyalty to her superiors before stealing the money in their vault. Although granted, it’s the Red Ribbon army she’s betraying.
- Futari wa Pretty Cure: The third member of the villainous Dark Five, Poisony, is a cold-blooded shapeshifter who specializes in using her natural charm to get other characters to drop their guard. In her debut alone, her impersonations of a chocolate saleswoman and a kindly old grandmother nearly get the heroes to give up their Prism Stones willingly.
- Two of the three GARO animated spin-offs have subversions:
- GARO: The Animation’s Ema Guzmán is mysterious, flirtatious, icily beautiful, sharp-tongued, and exceptionally dangerous in a fight, but she soon proves herself to be an entirely trustworthy and reliable ally who just happens to enjoy messing with the heroes’ heads when she’s off the clock. While she does have secrets, they’re more dangerous to her than to anyone else.
- GARO: Vanishing Line has Ema’s expy, Gina, who occupies pretty much the same narrative role with slight variations. She plays up the Femme Fatale vibe in her introductory episode, before settling down as a reliable member of the team and a Cool Big Sis to the Kid Hero, Sophie. She does still spend most of her time dunking on Sword, the resident muscle, but then again, who can blame her?
- Ino-Head Gargoyle: Shizuka Aomori is drop-dead gorgeous and knows how to use her charms, but ends up dragging Saejima into her Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the gang that forced her into prostitution.
- Lupin III's Fujiko Mine is anime's primary and longest-running example. She's a doll and she knows it, often using her sex appeal to charm her way into her mark's good graces, while plotting to rob them blind. Naturally, Lupin can't resist the challenge of trying to smooth talk her into bednote , despite usually being left empty-handed.
- Fujiko's fame reached a climax in 2012 when, after forty years and much egging by the fans, she had a spin-off series that featured her and the rest of the Lupin gang as a series-long Origins Episode, similar to the Monkey Punch era titled Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, there is Due, the second Number, who infiltrated the Grand Cathedral of the Sankt Kaiser Church ten years before the story began. As a Master of Disguise, she pretended to be an innocent-looking sister and seduced an unnamed priest in charge and persuaded him to steal the Shroud of the Sankt Kaiser for her. The DNA of Olivie Sägebrecht was used by the Big Bad Jail Scaglietti to create a clone of her, Vivio Takamachi, Nanoha's (and Fate's) adopted daughter.
- Maria no Danzai: Maria is not above using her looks to get what she needs, but she also has a low opinion of anyone who falls for her wiles.
- She first gets her job as the School Nurse by blowing the principal in his office, allowing her to hunt her targets Beneath Suspicion.
- When Kumiru sends Iijima to beat her up out of spite, Maria turns things around by giving him a mouthful of tongue when he's about to rape her, then taking him to an out-of-business Love Hotel nearby where they can take their time (and where she can turn him against Kumiru when she needs him the most).
- Nao Yuuki from My-HiME, with claws to match. She uses her feminine wiles to lure overly eager sexual predators with promises of dating them and separate them from their money as a sort-of revenge for the family she lost: thugs robbed her family, killed her father, and left her mom in a Convenient Coma. (Oh, and she can fight, too.)
- The enigmatic Kaworu Nagisa of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame is the Ambiguously Gay male equivalent. He turns up in The Hero's lonely life to seduce him, note all while secretly moving toward his own morally questionable goal. Like many female examples of this trope, he's less evil than he is misguided, and in the end, after presumably falling in love with The Hero, he redeems himself through a Heroic Sacrifice.
- One Piece surprisingly has numerous Femme Fatales making up most of the female cast with only a select few Nice Girl exceptions such as Kaya and Tashigi. Among the main heroines there’s Nami (a seductive Classy Cat-Burglar who has a nicer side but is still very manipulative), Robin (a sultry former female assassin), Vivi (who spent years masquerading as one under the guise of Miss Wednesday, before revealing she’s actually Purity Personified) and Boa Hancock (the Pirate Empress who’s immensely powerful feminine wiles can overcome just about everyone with the exception of Chaste Hero Luffy). There are also a few actually villainous ones like Miss Valentine, Miss Doublefinger, Kalifa and much later Black Maria, although Valentine and Doublefinger turn over a new leaf.
- Played with Pudding and Komurasaki (really Kozuki Hiyori). The former starts off a sweet and bubbly Nice Girl before revealing herself as Cute and Psycho albeit a Broken Bird deep down, whilst the latter is introduced as a manipulative courtesan who robs gullible men of their money but turns out is Good All Along.
- Inari of Princess Jellyfish uses her good looks to bend men to her will. It doesn't work on Shu though.
- SPY×FAMILY: At first glance, Yor Forger certainly has most of the trademarks of one - she is a highly attractive woman, has long dark hair, her Iconic Outfit is a flattering black dress that shows off her curvaceous figure, classy enough to meet Eden College's standards for parents, the love interest to a super spy, and happens to be a dangerous world-class assassin. However, she subverts and deconstructs the trope: first, she's so dangerous that she never needed to use her womanly wiles to complete a mission, as her physical prowess was more than enough to get the job done, and as a result, she became a Socially Awkward Hero whose dedication to providing for her younger brother through her assassin jobs has left her romantically lacking, to the point where she actually has a Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality (though she can overcome this, at least briefly, with some Liquid Courage). For added irony, it is her husband Loid who is the charming Honey Trap who has seduced and discarded numerous women for the sake of his missions.
- In Tokyo Ghoul, many female ghouls fall into this category.
- Rize Kamishiro is a beautiful and sadistic Ghoul that enjoys preying on men. She uses her good looks to seduce her victims, often playing coy and innocent to draw them in before revealing her true nature. The story is kicked off when she appears as the mysterious and beautiful girl at the coffee shop that ill-fated Kaneki asks on a date. She plays the damsel, faking tears and asking him to walk her home because she's afraid of doing it alone... then attempts to eat him once she has him in a suitably deserted area. After being transformed into a Half-Human Hybrid as a result of receiving a transplant from her, one of Kaneki's primary goals is to learn who Rize actually was and what made her abandon her original identity and spend her life on the run.
- Nutcracker, from the sequel. A beautiful ghoul obsessed with money, she works in a hardcore S&M club as a Dominatrix as a means to meet potential victims. Arranging to meet clients outside the club, she lures them to private locations in order to eat them. Besides that, she also works for a human trafficking ring and lures young women with the promise of well-paying jobs.
- Barbara in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, specifically the Crashtown Arc. She not only used her charms to gain Yusei's trust, only to betray him later (and then offer to spare him if she willingly submitted to him, something he refused) she later betrayed her original lover, showing true loyalty — apparently — to her equally-rotten boyfriend (husband in the dub) Lotten, and was, like him, one of the few villains in the franchise incapable of redemption. (Ironically, despite the fact that she didn't duel even once — whether she even did that or not isn't even known — Barbara remains one of the most hated villains in the franchise by fans.)
- Played with in Yuri!!! on Ice: When Yuri performs his Eros program, he uses the Femme Fatale archetype as inspiration, figuring that "feminine seductress" is truer to his personality than "masculine playboy".
- The Femme Fatale is an archetype that was commonly used by the Symbolist Movement. In The Sin, Eve is portrayed almost Lilith-like in how the shadows frame her as this voluptuous lure of physical delights, a far-cry from the passive waif Abrahamic art usually portrays her as.
- John William Waterhouse early on was enamored by the visual of a dangerous woman ensnaring a man, and he painted many 19th-century examples.
- La belle dame sans merci, titled after the John Keats ballad, depicts a wayward woman seducing what should be an honorable knight.
- Mythical creatures that often took the form of beautiful and seductive, but dangerous, women, such as nymphs, sirens, and lamia, were frequent subjects.
- Betty Jo Bialosky ("everyone knew her as Nancy") from The Firesign Theatre's "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger" (a parody of Film Noir tropes) drugs Nick and frames him for the murder of the villainous Rocky Roccoco.
- Jan Tenner: Big Bad Seytania is considered quite attractive by everyone who comments on her looks. She is also a powerful sorceress with a multitude of powers and abilities, most notably her ability to turn people into puppets that made her almost impossible to defeat whenever the heroes encounter her.
- Not surprisingly, due to its noirish roots, Sin City has quite a few. Almost every female character counts, and Dwight is the one that gets in trouble with them as they tend to go back and forth between Damsel in Distress and The Vamp. The most triumphant example from the series is in The Babe Wore Red. Dwight said it best:
Dwight: The moment I lay eyes on her, I know I'm in trouble.
- Fatale (2012) places a horror spin on this trope which also serves to make the femme fatale in question more sympathetic; it's implied that she's supernaturally cursed to forever remain young and beautiful, and the spell also works to cause men to fall hopelessly in love with her to the point where it leads to their own ruin. It's clearly established that she hates her life and the effect that she has on men, but can't escape it.
- Batman's Rogues Gallery gives us quite a few, with Poison Ivy and Catwoman standing out. They have both repeatedly tried to beguile Batman, though Poison Ivy cheats by using pheromones. And, well, he technically is a detective who lives in a Vice City...
- Spider-Man: Black Cat, being the Marvel Universe’s answer to Catwoman, is a pretty classic Femme Fatale, but while very obviously seductive and manipulative her love for Spidey is actually quite genuine and marked her turn from villainess to Anti-Hero. Although, her infatuation for the Wall Crawler managed to bring out the worst in her as well as poor MJ learned first hand.
- Talia in Brody's Ghost is a very unusual version of the trope. She's not explicitly played up for sex appeal as she's a dead teenager, but she's the one who enters Brody's life to set him on a "case", in this case catching the Penny Murderer, has a sweeter and less snarky opposite in Brody's ex Nicole, and is revealed to be way more manipulative, immoral, and untrustworthy than she lets on. Thanks to her involvement, Brody's already crappy life is completely destroyed by the end of the series, with things only getting better thanks to outside help.
- Blacksad: Surprisingly, mostly averted for a comic so steeped in 1950s Film Noir. Of Blacksad's love interests, Natalia Wilford is The Lost Lenore for Blacksad whose worst crime was being a bit of a vain woman, and Alma Mayer is a Brainy Brunette Nice Girl. Jezebel Karup sort of fits the archetype, but is really a subversion of the trope since the people she seduced to lead them to their doom are the leader of a racist lynch mob who also happens to be her father and his even more vicious right-hand man, not the detective hero.
- Black Widow started off as a Femme Fatale Spy working for the KGB who used her feminine wiles to fool both Iron Man and Hawkeye. Turns out she was a victim of brainwashing though and eventually pulls a Heel–Face Turn to the Avengers. She also Took a Level in Badass, not having to rely purely on seduction to be effective, having crazy She-Fu abilities and Improbable Aiming Skills which she retroactively always had. Her Ultimate Marvel counterpart is a more classically cruel Femme Fatale seducing and having sex with Tony right before betraying him and even killing Hawkeye's family.
- The Dregs: Arnold, who is obsessed with noir fiction, hallucinates a beautiful woman styled in midcentury glamor (complete with cigarette) at pivotal moments in his investigation. Near the end of the story he asks her to betray him since that's her role, but she merely vanishes.
- Gun Honey is a Pulp Noir comic from Titan Comics under their Hard Case Crime comics. Joanna Tan is a half Corsican/Malaysian who got her nickname from her reputation of being able to smuggle almost any weapon to anyone regardless of where they're held. As a Ms. Fanservice in a comic aimed at mature audiences, the Gun Honey often does use her good looks and charm to manipulate and con.
- Rocket (2017): Otta, Rocket's ex-girlfriend (an otter-alien). He didn't take the hint she was bad news when she set him up to be arrested by the Kree the last time they saw one another, and this time is suckered in by a story about reclaiming land deeds for her people from a greedy corporation. It's another set-up. At the story's climax, Otta turns out to be massively unhinged, wanting to outright eradicate her people for looking down on her, and draws a gun on Rocket.
- Star Wars: Legacy: Darth Talon, the sexy female Twi'lek Sith Lord who has significant Foe Romance Subtext with main character Cade Skywalker, even seducing him once during his stay at the Sith Temple. She's counterpointed with Cade's main Love Interest, the equally fanservicey but significantly more wholesome Zeltron smuggler Deliah Blue.
- Underworld: The Yavin Vassilika: Jozzel Moffet tends to wear a Sexy Backless Outfit or a tight scuba suit, manipulates her bosses into following an agenda that will make her rich, and flirts with Han and Lando while getting them to work with her, although she is fairly honest to them about her goals and would be fine with getting her payoff without hurting anyone.
- Mystique of X-Men fame might as well be the ultimate comic example, a beautiful and curvaceous blue shape changing mutant woman who has tricked, seduced, and manipulated hundreds of people before cruelly betraying them all like clockwork. It’s not just gullible men or women who are enamored with her either, Mystique will even manipulate her own children into trusting her before inevitably stabbing them in the back. Granted, it is largely Depending on the Writer when it comes to how treacherous and cruel she is.
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, heiress Maia Simmons knows how to subtly use her good looks in face-to-face interactions to get what she wants for her company. The trope name is even used by Griffin.
- The female Interrogator in "Nubby's Girlfriend" betrays the All Guardsmen Party in the middle of a mission.
- As befits a Noir Episode, the second chapter of Half Past Adventure introduces a femme fatale (actually a one-off character from the original show thirty years later) in the form of jewel thief Penelope Farthington.
- In chapter 11 of An Impractical Guide to the Force
, Anakin and Palpatine each learn too late that all 42 of Dooku's present concubines are skilled fighters, including half of them being trained Force users and one of them being Darth Talon.
- White Sheep (RWBY): Cinder has spent ten years wrapping Jaune around her little finger, making sure he craves her approval and will do whatever she says. Unfortunately for her, since they're Like Brother and Sister, this backfired a bit; Jaune is left with a rather odd understanding of what is considered appropriate behavior, and he always obeys strong-willed women unquestioningly. In particular, the fact that his first reaction to meeting a girl is to give her an honest compliment about her looks (since Cinder always liked that) earns him a rather large Unwanted Harem without even noticing.
- In Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Helga Sinclair has the sultry voice and beautiful looks of a typical femme fatale; however, she is never seen seducing anyone, and does have some hesitation towards stealing the Heart of Atlantis once she learns it is the life force of an entire civilization of people.
- Megara of Hercules (1997) is beautiful, cynical, and mysterious. She is a Honey Trap working for the Big Bad not by her own volition, and she pulls a Heel–Face Turn after falling in love with the hero.
- The Incredibles 1 has Mirage, who lures Mr. Incredible onto a desert island where the Big Bad can kill him, although she does pull a Heel–Face Turn and begins helping his family when her Big Bad Boss's mistreatment of her goes too far. It is also strongly implied that Mirage feels something for Mr. Incredible, even if she knows he is married and with children. He also doesn't seem particularly interested in her but in her offer which allows him to return to his glory days as a superhero.
- 3 Days to Kill: Vivi is a very beautiful, sultry young woman with a constant air of menace who offers Ethan money he needs in return for him taking out several dangerous criminals. She's clearly pretty dangerous herself, urging Ethan to take ruthless action when he's hesitant.
- Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct is one of the most iconic examples in modern filmmaking. No surprise, seeing as how the entire film is a '90s update on the Film Noir genre. She seduces both men and women to attain her goals, tempts Nick with her emotional vulnerability after Roxy's death, and probably committed all the murders.
- Vivian, from noir classic The Big Sleep, is set up to be the typical Femme Fatale, such as being involved in several shady deals, gambling, and admitting to help cover up a murder all while trying to manipulate detective Marlowe into doing what she wants. Where the novel plays the trope completely straight, the film changes up the game by making her turn heroic halfway through the picture instead.
- Madelline Linscott from The Black Dahlia is the Dark Feminine to the sweet, angelic Kay's Light Feminine, hangs around seedy lesbian bars, and has affairs behind her rich parents' back. It's in constant doubt as to whether she can be trusted. Turns out she can't, and she's the one who murders Dwight while dressed as a man.
- Bound (1996) Violet is one and she is well aware of it. She dresses very seductively (all dark lipstick, black slip dresses, seamed hosery and dark nail polish), she is able to charm people around her with her looks and fast talking wit, and she even remorselessly kills her boyfriend Caesar after he threatened her and her lover Corky.
- In Brute Force (1947), Spencer tells the story of a woman he met in an illegal gambling place that stole his money and his car at gunpoint. He still can’t forget her.
- Tashi in Challengers isn't above using her sexuality to manipulate the men in her life to do her bidding. Best demonstrated when she outright tells Patrick she'll sleep with him in order to get him to throw the match to Art.
- In The Cocoanuts, Penelope is accustomed to using her feminine charms to get unsuspecting men to do her bidding. Unfortunately, she's now up against the Marx Brothers...
- Selina Kyle has always been a classic example, but the way Anne Hathaway portrays her in The Dark Knight Rises takes it to a whole new level. Suffering from a major case of Heel–Face Revolving Door, her tough, street-smart cat burglar is as elegant as she is dangerous, something Bruce Wayne both notices and forgets when he's in her presence. Director Christopher Nolan claims that he has always envisioned Catwoman as an "old-school femme fatale".
- Deadly Pickup has Breezy Johnson, who seduces men and women alike, kills them while having sex with them, and steals their valuables.
- Summer in Definitely, Maybe is the sexually adventurous "bitch" that destroyed her boyfriend's career to advance her own. That said, her boyfriend was working for a Corrupt Politician. Summer does eventually make amends with her ex-boyfriend.
- Detour: Vera sees through Roberts' ruse and blackmails him. She insists that they should milk the situation for all they can, instead of trying to distance themselves from it.
- Phyllis Dietrichson from the classic noir Double Indemnity. She starts an affair with Walter Neff, an insurance agent. Together, they convince her husband to take out a life insurance policy, then kill him and Make It Look Like an Accident so they could collect the money. Walter assumes that Phyllis is an attractive lay that's the perfect shill for The Perfect Crime he's always fantasized about. He finds out when it's too late to back out that this is not the first murder she's been involved in, and he's in fact the patsy for her.
- The Dreamers evokes this trope with Isabelle - who is comfortable being naked around her brother and watching him masturbate. There's something very erotically dangerous about her - so it's no surprise that when the movie turns out to be happening during the 1968 Paris riots that Isabelle and her brother immediately get involved. Isabelle's actress Eva Green nearly got typecast as Femme Fatales after this.
- Barbara Matthews in Drive a Crooked Road. Her boyfriend Steve sends her to act as a Honey Trap to recruit Eddie into being the gang's Getaway Driver.
- Europa trilogy by Lars von Trier has two examples. Because these are Lars Von Trier movies, both characters are examples of ruthless deconstruction of the Femme Fatale trope, both utterly fail their agenda and turn out to be extreme versions of Jerkass Woobie trope.
- In The Element of Crime, there is Kim, an Asian prostitute who slept with Serial Killer the protagonist is looking out for, and she tries to misguide the protagonist, but fails and, in the end, she can do nothing but cry when he watches how the man who was, in fact, her real lover and father of her child is hanged by himself.
- The other example is Katharina Hartmann from Europa, who seduces the hero, makes him fall in love with her and marry her, exploiting her image of Innocent Bystander who merely got involved with Nazi underground, while in fact she was a Honey Trap for the hero, and she drove her father to suicide and tried to make the hero commit bombing killing many allied officers. She utterly fails at the end, and is killed along with every major character in the movie by suicidal bombing of the train by the protagonist.
- In Ex Machina, regardless of what Ava's motivations were, she does use her charm to manipulate Caleb. In fact, this is even invoked as a Turing Test by her creator.
Nathan: Ava was a rat in a maze. And I gave her one way out. To escape, she’d have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did. Now if that isn’t true AI, then what the fuck is?
- In the classic noir, Fallen Angel, Linda Darnell plays Stella who doesn't care about double-crossing romantic partners or stealing.
- Femme Fatale (2002) naturally has as its main character a female thief like this, played by Rebecca Romijn.
- A Foreign Affair has Marlene Dietrich as a woman with Nazi affiliations who has an American Captain lusting for her.
- The Hot Spot: Dolly Harshaw (played by Virginia Madsen) is very obviously one, as Harry Madox (Don Johnson) realises immediately when he meets her, his new boss' wife.
Co-worker: Boss always said she just kinda... happenedHarry: Well, the smart thing to do woulda been to get on out of there and let her happen to somebody else...
- The shade of Mal in Inception. She killed or tried to kill someone in about every other scene she was in, but she still gave the hero pause when he was faced with stopping her.
- Dr. Elsa Schneider in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. She seduces both Indiana and his father to gain vital information for the Nazi’s mission to find the Holy Grail. Like most femme fatales, she couldn’t overcome her biggest Fatal Flaw - greed. In a Literal Cliffhanger, she thought she could reach the grail with a free hand in time for Indiana to pull her up. Unfortunately, he can’t hold her slippery gloved hand and she falls to her death.
- Danique of The Last Witch Hunter has this trope down the pat — she's rich, beautiful in crime noir style, smokes from a cigarelle, talks in an elegant and sensual manner, and of course tries to have Kaulder killed.
- Brigid O'Shaughnessy from The Maltese Falcon is one of the earliest examples in noir fiction. She's directly involved in betrayal, theft, and several murders all while trying to play innocent to (not to mention seduce) the lead character throughout most of the film and the book.
- Natalie from Memento is a Manipulative Bitch who convinces a mentally handicapped protagonist with antereograde amnesia to dispose of one of the thorns in her side. Even though she's unaware of it, she manages to avenger her boyfriend, Jimmy.
- Mulholland Falls: Interestingly, subverted with Jennifer Connelly's character Alison despite the setting being ripe for it. While she *did* have a torrid affair with the main character, a married Sergeant in the LAPD, it's never established that she was evil or manipulative in any way. She's even killed early on and becomes his motive for revenge against the real villains.
- In Murder by Proxy, the glamorous heiress Phyllis Brunner approaches the down-and-out Casey Morrow in the bar of his hotel and inveigles herself into conversation with him before offing him £500 for a simple job: marrying her.
- Naked Weapon is all about a Murder, Inc. organization that kidnaps and trains young Asian girls to seduce and kill their male targets. Their favorite method of killing the target is to rip out the spinal cord, which they can do in the blink of an eye. Often, they will first have sex with the mark and then offer a massage. Cue the spine attack.
- A Night in Casablanca: Beatrice Reiner is The Chanteuse in the Hotel Casablanca's supper club, and part of the gang searching for the Nazi treasure hidden in the hotel. Stubel sends her her to seduce the new hotel manager Kornblow.
- The eponymous Nikita is alongside aforementioned Catherine when it comes to modern iconic examples of this and Nikita managed to inspire other examples listed here such as Ada Wong from Resident Evil. A professional assassin who uses her sex appeal to murder for the French government, Nikita is actually a subversion and deeply sympathetic example being a Broken Bird who’s drug addiction was used against her by her government handlers and is torn between her work and genuine Love Interest Marco who wants to try and help Nikita escape from the system.
- Kathie Moffat (no relation) from Out of the Past is the quintessential film noir example. She lies, steals, kills at least three people, and conspires to commit another murder, uses sex to ensnare men to do what she wants, and looks great in a cocktail dress.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: Angelica is very flirtatious towards Jack and tends to manipulate him to do her father's bidding. The mermaids use their charms to lure sailors to their deaths.
- Myra in Please Murder Me!. She married Joe for his money, then manipulates Joe's best friend Craig into falling in love with her, before murdering Joe and claiming it was self-defence, and relying on Craig's legal expertise to get her of the murder charge.
- Vera in Quicksand is a low-rent version of this. It is implied that a lot has happened in her life before she started working as a cashier in Dan's favourite diner. She latches on to Dan as shortcut to getting her longed-for mink coat. She doesn't tell him to steal for her—he does that off his own bat—but once she finds out, she is happy to encourage him. And, when things go south, she rats him out to the cops in an attempt to save her own skin.
- Marian Stevens in Robin and the 7 Hoods who, in turn, seduces or attempts to seduce Robbo, Little John, Guy Gisborne, Deputy Potts and finally Allan A. Dale in order to control the Chicago mobs from behind the scenes.
- RocknRolla has Stella, who deconstructs the archetype: She has the looks (which allows her to play all sides in order to obtain a whole lot of money stolen from The Mafiya (twice!)), but unfortunately she doesn't really have the smarts to go with it (she became a way too obvious suspect for the person who did the Inside Job and the only reason she's not found early on is that her boss (the leader of said Mafiya) likes her too much to really listen to his Dragon)... and what does her in is that she accepts a painting that she should have known her boss liked a lot (had she actually bothered to listen to him in details other than what she cared about), and in fact was berserk about it having been stolen, and placed it in her home in a place where he would see it the moment he walked in. Whatever he did to her in retaliation, we were probably better off not seeing.
- Katherine "Kitty" March from Scarlet Street, and how. A model turned amateur scam artist, she wraps the main character around her finger with lies, faux sweetness, and alleged helplessness. Meanwhile, she and her real boyfriend completely ruin the lead's life in the process.
- Solo has Qi'ra, Han Solo's First Love, who is even described as such in pre-release material. She's an attractive and flirtatious young woman who serves as Dryden Vos' top lieutenant and is a capable Dark Action Girl, though she prefers to use honeyed words or trickery to get what she wants. It's not entirely clear whose side she's on or what her motives are, and Tobias Beckett straight-up warns Han he can't trust her (Han being Han, he doesn't pay much attention). As it turns out, Beckett's concerns are partially right, as while she does save Han’s life over Dryden's, Qi'ra pursues her own self-interests above all else and leaves Han behind to take Vos' position. Lawrence Kasdan actually stated he drew inspiration for Qi'ra from Kathie Moffat.
- The German movie Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer has a rare example where the Femme Fatale is transgender. She is a nightclub singer who seduces a closeted public prosecutor so that he can then be blackmailed by political opponents. Previously the singer's boyfriend had been arrested by the authorities for public indecency (homosexuality being illegal at that point in time in the 1950s) and she was offered a reduction to his sentence in return.
- Stage Fright (1950): Charlotte Inwood is the film's antagonist, and is a sultry seductress. Played with in the sense that she didn't commit the murder in question.
- Another great noir performance by Barbara Stanwyck as Martha Ivers in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. She kills her aunt as a young child and stops at nothing to make sure no one finds out.
- Tae-ju in Thirst (2009), who seduces Sang-hyun, convinces him to murder her husband and turn her into a vampire, then turns into a gleeful killer.
- Too Late for Tears: Jane (played by Lizabeth Scott) is the cruelest, most without principle femme fatale ever put to screen.
- Troll 2: Creedence in her younger human form seduces Brent in this manner.
- In Up the Front, Mata Hari seduces British men in order to get information for the German army.
- The White Orchid: The White Orchid is a very beautiful woman who had used her good looks to seduce both men and women, using this to rob or murder them.
- Jessica from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. She's a toon clearly created by some artist to be the perfect example, from her dangerous good looks and sultry voice to the slinky way she moves. Even her smile is suspicious. She's actually a subversion of the trope: she's a Red Herring and was telling the truth all along. Jessica loves her husband Roger dearly, and does everything she can to protect him, even if it ends up backfiring on her in the long run. When she says, "I'm not bad... I'm just drawn that way," she's absolutely right.
- Viper from The Wolverine, kills with a kiss… literally. She does know how to use her considerable sexuality as a weapon.
- Carmen (1845): Carmen embraces the power of her sexuality, frequently employing it against men to her advantage. Carmen seduces Don José in particular, becoming the dominant partner in their affair. José's alienation as a Basque exile makes him susceptible to Carmen's appeal to his patriotism when she convinces him to free her against his orders, as she is similarly an ethnic outsider as a Romani woman and speaks to him in his native Basque when no Spaniards bother to learn Basque. José becomes desperate for Carmen's love and companionship, thanks to her acts of generosity towards him. Carmen warns José against pursuing her after she sleeps with him to repay his favor, but he refuses to listen. José abandons his military duties to join Carmen, who brings him into her gang of smugglers to save him from execution after a lieutenant wounds him in a fight. The affair between Carmen and José leads to both of them dying, as José becomes a jealous, possessive lover towards Carmen until he is sentenced to death for her murder.
- "Greyback in Blue": Faye Darrow is an attractive temptress (by gorilla standards anyway) who manipulates his brain waves to instill loyalty in Joe through his male instincts so that he could procure a MacGuffin for her.
- Rita, the sexy, deadly, devil-may-care manhunter from Put the Sepia On is named after legendary film femme fatale Rita Hayworth, and lives up to it.
- In The Stainless Steel Rat action/comedy series by Harry Harrison, thief turned galactic secret agent 'Slippery Jim' DiGriz finds himself up against the psychotic (yet beautiful and criminally brilliant) Angelina. Jim falls in love and marries her in the next novel of the series. Supposedly, the psych-techs have straightened out Angelina's twisted personality, implanting her with a conscience, but there are times when her husband has to restrain Angelina's natural enthusiasm for torture and killing. Plus, Jim quickly learns the inadvisability of showing interest in other women or trying to wriggle out of promises (an attempt to back out of their marriage is stopped by Angelina shoving a .75 calibre recoil free pistol up his nose).
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel Ghostmaker, Inquisitor Lilith actively tries to incite jealousy in Gaunt as a way to manipulate him. Gaunt calls her on it and tells her it's not needed, he will help voluntarily. She admits at the time that she's not used to voluntary cooperation and, later, when about to go through a gate to an Eldar craftworld, that she actually found Gaunt attractive.
- Patience Kys in the Ravenor books by the same author is a heroic example; she is a somewhat hostile Ice Queen who tends to use her attractiveness to her advantage on covert operations.
- The Dresden Files:
- Lara Raith. It helps that she's a Sex Goddess even by White Court vampire standards. It contrasts rather nicely to her cousin, Madeleine, who tries to pull this off, bless her sordid heart, but really just comes off as a Vamp.
- The first time we see Mab, the Winter Queen, she is pulling the classic 'slinky sexpot asks the P.I. for help' routine in Harry's office. Harry gets suspicious and manages to figure out what Mab is (although a Cold Iron test is how he was certain). Although it is more surprising for him not to be suspicious of Femmes Fatales.
- Empire of the Vampire: Astrid Rennier, all the way through. Beautiful, intelligent, resourceful and very aware of it, Astrid is an almost textbook example of the trope, down to the raven hair, ivory skin and near-constant smoking. Laure Voss tries to put up a simmilar air, but winds up somewhere between The Vamp and The Brute due to her fundamentally childish mindset.
- Senna Wales of Everworld, by a combination of physical attractiveness, emotional manipulation, and magic.
- In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "The Devil in Iron", the slave Octavia is ordered to do this to lure Conan.
- Mrs Coulter in His Dark Materials is noted by several characters to be very beautiful, and she uses this beauty to her advantage, seducing men based on how rich, powerful and influential they are and manipulating everyone else into granting her more power within the Church hierarchy.
- In Josepha Sherman's The Shining Falcon, Ljuba uses magic and sex to try to work herself into power.
- Cora Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice. She's married to an old Greek man named Nick who owns a diner. When Frank, a young drifter, gets a job at the diner, Cora starts a passionate affair with him, and together they conspire to kill Nick.
- Homeland Security agent Cassandra Renaldo in the Dale Brown novel A Time For Patriots, who seduces Bradley to use against Pat.
- In Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, Angel is a former prostitute who has no qualms about using her notoriously drop-dead gorgeous looks to get what she wants. Interestingly subverted in that because this is the only way she knows to get what she wants, it’s a sign of immaturity and desperation rather than of self-confidence (and normal social skills) via The Power of Love.
- Annabel St. Clair in the short story Amante Doree from Somewhere Beneath Those Waves — she's a beautiful, charming Louisianan courtesan-spy for the interests of the French government.
- Subverted in Mr Blank: Our genre-savvy hero just knows Mina will betray him on account of her beauty, yet she turns out to be the most loyal ally he has. Once again subverted in the sequel, where we have Heather Marie Tooms, former movie star and current assassin for a self-help cult. While she tries to be flirty (and she's certainly attractive), she's far too creepy and unstable to be alluring.
- Lampshaded in City of Devils when the hero remarks, upon entrance of the femme fatale, Oscar-winning doppelganger actress Imogen Verity, "not only had I seen the movie, but it had starred her."
- Surprisingly averted in the "Damsels of Distress'' series of novellas. None of the members of the all-female mercenary gang are particularly apt at anything related to charming or seducing men. They are deadly, however.
- The backstory of Harry Potter has Gellert Grindelwald, the greatest dark wizard before Voldemort, as a male example. By exploiting sexual attraction and feelings of love, Grindelwald temporarily indoctrinated Albus Dumbledore into his White Man's Burden-esque plan to conquer Muggles "for the greater good." However, like many female examples, Grindelwald wasn't purely evil, but instead misguided and capable of redemption. When Voldemort interrogates him about the Elder Wand, he refuses to tell, presumably out of respect for the Wand's master—namely Dumbledore, Grindelwald's former target of seduction.
- Lazlo Woodbine, a parody of the Hard Boiled Detective from the far-fetched fiction of Robert Rankin, invariably has a run-in with "the dame that done him wrong".
- Gone Girl’s Amy Elliott-Dunne uses her sex appeal to manipulate situations, befuddle men, and also kill them while they're distracted. She sets up her cheating husband to be falsely accused of her disappearance and possible murder, and even though she didn’t go through with it in the end, she still managed to escape punishment.
- Invoked in Shaman Blues with Konstancja, whose looks and behaviour quickly make Witkacy start to call her this way in his head. She's beautiful, with black hair and long legs, she's his ex and is troubled by a matter she can't take to the police.
- Joe Pickett: Stella Ennis in Out of Range. A Trophy Wife who is a lot cannier than her husband thinks she is, Stella turns to Joe to protect her against her husband's schemes. But she is definitely keeping secrets of her own. Significantly, she is the only woman to ever make Joe question his faithfulness to his wife Marybeth.
- The Scholomance: Liesel is probably the most sexualized of El's classmates and often gives cooing, insincere compliments to well-connected male enclavers and is an an Academic Alpha Bitch who menaces El a few times and flirts with her boyfriend. In one scene, El finds her dolling up for a date with the well-connected Magnus and gritting her teeth about it when he isn't there to see her. Ultimately though, she's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at worst.
- Milady de Winter from The Three Musketeers is one of the earliest examples. Her beauty and cunning turn many men to work for her, such is the case of how she escaped from her imprisonment, seducing her jailor, John Felton, to help her escape and convinced him to murder the Duke of Buckingham.
- The title character of Max Beerbohm's Black Comedy Zuleika Dobson is so irresistible to young men that she drives the entire undergraduate class at Oxford to commit suicide. The novel ends with her preparing to do the same thing to Cambridge.
- Another English femme fatale is Pamela Flitton in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, a beautiful but mean-spirited woman who likes to use her power over men to make them destroy themselves. One of the novels in the cycle, Books Do Furnish a Room, is mostly the story of how Pamela seduces a promising young writer, wrecks his self-esteem, destroys his manuscript, and leaves him unable to write again until his early death. One of her last conquests literally dies while in bed with her.
- At the beginning of The Purple Cloud, Adam is engaged to a beautiful but wicked woman named Clodagh who is always 'joking' about her admiration of Lucrezia Borgia and her desire to poison someone. Clodagh encourages Adam to join the expedition to the North Pole so she can share in his wealth and glory. Adam agrees, but protests that the expedition already has a doctor, botanist, and meteorological assistant: Clodagh's nephew, Peter Peters. Shortly afterwards, Peters mysteriously falls ill and dies, leaving an opening for Adam. During the voyage to the Pole, Adam dreams about Clodagh giving Peters poisoned water. He jerks upright screaming, 'Clodagh! Clodagh! Spare the man!'
- In Carl Hiaasen's Double Whammy, Elaine (or Lainie) Gault seduces Private Eye R.J. Decker and helps her brother Dennis frame him for the murder of Dennis' rival Dickie Lockhart.
- Selena Coombs of American Gothic (1995). In an interesting inversion, however, her primary sexual usage in the show, aside from being Buck's mistress, is not to turn a good man evil, but to keep a man nominally on the side of evil—Ben Healy—from defecting to the good.
- Babylon Berlin features Svetlana Sorokina, a shady Russian cabaret singer and supposed Trotskyist who promptly sells her comrades out to the Russian secret police and tries to make off with several tons worth of gold bars intended to fund a revolution. That said, she even supplies the show's theme song.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Inverted by Spike (a knowingly seductive, platinum-blond male vampire), who tells Buffy that she belongs "in the dark, with me." Especially pronounced in "Dead Things," the source of the quote.
- Darla also qualifies. She is very manipulative (for example, she easily controls Lindsey in Angel — who is a lawyer) and exercises sexual power over Angel. She's also something of an Anti-Hero, however.
- Drusilla is a wholly villainous example. She appears very innocent and vulnerable (for a vampire) at first and often uses this to lure men into her service.
- Faith, who serves as a Foil to Buffy herself. She would often use her sexuality to her advantage, e.g., she tried to get Angel to sleep with her which would cause him to lose his soul and become evil.
- Charmed (1998):
- In the episode "Used Karma", Phoebe is accidentally possessed by Mata Hari, briefly becoming a Femme Fatale who tries to get her ex-boyfriend killed by demons.
- Christy Jenkins is a less sexual version of this, but she acts as a corrupting influence to her sister Billie. Through a Wounded Gazelle Gambit, she pretends to be a Damsel in Distress captured by demons — when she's actually working with them and trying to lure Billie to her side.
- Purposefully invoked by Paige in "Charmed Noir" after she and Brody are sucked into the noir-themed world inside an enchanted book. To move the plot forward Piper and Phoebe influence her to play up the role and flirt her way through the story by writing the Dirty Cop dialogue that she's "nothing but a regular femme fatale."
- Dita Von Teese's character in the CSI episode "A Kiss Before Frying" is a serial killer who seduces Greg so that she can find out more about the case and tries to kill him like her previous lovers.
- Dark Matter: Ambrosia in "Give It Up, Princess" is Adrian's girlfriend who gets kidnapped and held for ransom. It turns out she's set this all up to rob him and get enough money for retirement on a private moon. She seeks to kill him as a loose end, but Solara stops her. Ambrosia is really beautiful, so it's easy to see why Adrian had falled for her charms.
- Maneater Edie Britt on Desperate Housewives seduces and uses any man she comes across, and she doesn't care if they're married either. Special mention goes to Mike, Carlos, and Karl.
- Doctor Who: Lady Cassandra is a villainous example. When she was younger, she took the lives of many of her lovers in order to get away with their money. When she possesses Rose in "New Earth", despite showing some differences of personality with her, she actually does fool The Doctor into thinking she really is her by giving him a passionate kiss and even helps him find out the secrets of the hospital before turning on him like in the classic, film Noir fashion.
- Dollhouse: Adelle DeWitt — charming, morally grey ballbuster who is equally at home with threats and seduction, and approaches Darth Vader levels of nastiness in the second season. She is. In. Charge.
- A villainous example is Commandant Mele-On Grayza from Farscape. In addition to being very attractive with well-displayed breasts, she also secretes a chemical from a gland between her breasts that literally hypnotizes men into doing her bidding.
- Femme Fatales was a TV series that was naturally about these. Every episode a story of women like this, based on classic film noir but in modern settings.
- Saffron (or whatever her name is) from Firefly is a deconstruction of both this and The Vamp. She's sexy, smart, manipulative, resourceful, and morally ambiguous (if not outright evil), but she's also a borderline sociopath with a lot of other mental problems who seems incapable of forming a genuine connection with anyone. Even the one of her many husbands that she genuinely cared for doesn't trust her as far as he can throw her.
- In a comedic vein, on I Love Lucy, Lucy's cousin Ernie, played by Tennessee Ernie Ford, was warned by his mama about "wild, painted-up, wicked city women." Figuring this would cause Ernie to flee home, Lucy plays a vamp with a black wig and dress. Unfortunately, when she "vamps" him (rubs his head, mussing his hair), he likes it too much. Doubled up with Squick, since the audience knows she's his cousin, in-universe.
- Sam Marquez on Las Vegas works for a casino. Specifically, her job is to keep 'whales' — big spenders — happy. Once, she only slept with a guy because he was dying, and she has openly called herself a slut. Strangely, she rarely sleeps with any of the whales themselves, and had to start going to a therapist later in the series after she was abducted and nearly raped and killed.
- The Outpost: Sana is a seductive, very beautiful woman and she uses her wiles to mess with Garret.
- Miss Parker from The Pretender. Makes her entrance stomping out a cigarette on an oil tanker, shoots at the good guy a lot, has UST with him, and regularly growls at and intimidates most men within range.
- The Shadow Line has Petra Nayler, girlfriend of the missing Glickman. She seduces the married Joseph Bede using her apparent helplessness, and is later revealed to have done this to Glickman too, under the orders of Counterpoint. Not only that, she only went to Bede to look for leads on Glickman's location, so she could kill him for trying to expose the conspiracy.
- Smallville: In the episode "Noir", an episode with all the characters in a Film Noir, Lana takes the role of the Femme Fatale, having an affair with Clark Kent, an undercover cop, killing her husband, Lex, and framing Jimmy for the murder.
- The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Noir Episode "Necessary Evil" has a suspect who oozes this trope. It's a Red Herring, as while she is a villain, the real Femme Fatale murderer turns out to be series regular Major Kira, whom the investigator Odo is secretly in love with.
- Supernatural: Ruby has been known to make use of her sexuality to manipulate others, although it doesn't seem to be her preferred tactic. In "Malleus Maleficarum", Ruby exploits it to lure her Evil Mentor into a false sense of security, and she also uses it throughout Season 4 to strengthen her manipulative relationship with Sam.
- Taxi Driver (2021) has a rare Gender-Inverted Example in its protagonist, Kim Do Ki, and it really shows during the voice phishing case, where he disguises himself as the rich Chinese criminal Wang Tao Zi and slowly but steadily seduces Lim Bok-ja, the boss lady who runs the entire operation, completely with expensive-looking clothing and a low, husky voice. While she's initially distrustful, he manages to get rid of certain enemies of her (one of which was playing along) and warms up to her by telling his (fake) backstory and cracking jokes. When he has to leave due to prosecutor Kang Ha Na being on his tail, she even goes to see him off and she pays for the boat he's on to turn around out of pure panic after discovering her savings are gone, blowing all her cash into it. At that point she's so in love that she forgets that the same day is payday while all of her money is already down the drain, and eventually gets locked inside a boat with her fighting underlings. When he finally pulls the rug, he leaves her a sobbing mess, crying out to him with his fake name.
- Cameron of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has more than once used her physical body's attractiveness to coldly manipulate people, up to and including John Connor himself. It is implied that this was, in fact, the entire reason she was built. Her external appearance was based on a girl named Allison Young, who was implied to be either a close friend or lover of the future John Connor, and Cameron interrogated Allison to learn her mannerisms before attempting to take her place.
- Katherine Pierce from The Vampire Diaries is a classic example. She's willing to seduce anyone that can give her what she needs, and the many, many men that have taken the fall for her over the past 3 seasons are more than happy to comply.
- Veronica Mars has a number of gender inverted examples, most notably Troy Vandergraff and Logan Echolls - both Love Interests to the female detective protagonist at some point. The former is a petty criminal masquerading as a Nice Guy, and the latter is a morally ambiguous charmer with shady motives, whose weapons of choice are a) sex and b) psychological manipulation.
- On Weeds, Nancy may not seem like it at first, but she has this effect on men. They seem to be attracted to her despite the fact that she brings chaos to everything she touches.
- Wedding Season: Katie is a modern version. She's a beautiful young woman with a mysterious past and a trail of bodies in her wake. She drags the hapless everyman protagonist Stefan into a cross-country adventure to clear her name, and he keeps helping her despite being told it's a bad idea at every turn because of how he is drawn to her.
- Scarlet Stevens from The Wrong Mans is another modern version of this trope, despite seeming, at first, to be a helpless victim. She kills her own husband right in front of Sam and Phil, frames them as the attackers (thereby forcing them to go on the run) and then blackmails them into fetching a music box for her from the home of Marat Milankovic, which contains a USB stick containing video files of her having sex with various people.
- Soti from Cyber Weapon Z left Park Iro for Leiting and at first looks like an indecisive Dark Mistress. However, she's not above infiltrating the Shaolin temple to spy on the man she once loved and gain information for her new boyfriend but usually doesn't act directly against him out of respect for what they once had. Iro is often troubled by her presence since her sweet face and apparent harmlessness still get to his heart, despite the fact that she's a quite capable Dark Action Girl.
- Auryn's song Heartbreaker clearly is about one of these, who seduced the guys only to leave them high and dry. This is emphasized in the music video, in which we see the 'heartbreaker', played by Úrsula Corberó, seduce the five bandmembers and 'kill' them one by one.
She destroyed my life without shedding a tear, like an assassin
- David Byrne's "Miss America" uses this as an extended metaphor for the US's foreign policy. America is a woman who seduces men then discards them when she no longer needs them. The narrator knows how dangerous she is, and he loves her anyway.
- Calexico's "Ballad of Cable Hogue" has an Old Western version. She's only ever referred to as "Madame". Even though the narrator suspects that Madame will be the death of him, she sweet-talks him into leaving his gold with her for safekeeping. Then she leads "an army" to his hiding place and guns him down.
- Nelly Furtado's "Maneater" is about a woman using her charms to convince men to give her whatever she wants.
- "American Woman" by The Guess Who, which is more of an allegory for the US itself. It was notably covered by Lenny Kravitz.
- Daryl Hall & John Oates's "Maneater" describes a woman who is only interested in money, luring men in with her charm while hiding that there will be a price to pay. According to the artist, it's a metaphor for New York in the 80s.
- Pretty much the whole description of the girl in Kero One's "So Seductive
".
She looks so good when she shakes that assMoving like snakes in grass, with a face to matchBut on the inside a straight killer,She'll reel ya in, your head spin like a gorilla … (And that's just the first stanza.) - Lit's song Miserable is about being in a relationship with a woman who you know is bad for you but you stay with her anyway. The singer knows she's using him, his plans, and his friends up, but he doesn't care because he's in lust (you make me come) and in love (you make me complete) with her despite the fact that she makes his life hell (you make me completely Miserable ). The video drives this point home further by portraying the woman as a towering beautiful giantess who uses the lead singer and his friends for her own amusement, then devours them once she's had her fun.
- "Blood on the Dance Floor" by Michael Jackson is about a woman named Susie who is a Serial Killer that seduces unsuspecting men to kill them after she's had her fun with them. And you're her next hit.
- In the first scene of the video for Rammstein's "Deutschland", Germania is seen cutting off the head from a dead body (probably a Roman soldier, evoking Rome's Germanic Wars); in several scenes throughout the video, Germania is holding, and one time, kissing the head (which appears to be the head of Till Lindemann). This pose evokes two famous femme fatales from the Bible, Judith (who seduced Holofernes in order to murder him and cut off his head) and Salome (who used her beauty to persuade King Herod to have John the Baptist beheaded); both of them are often depicted in art together with the severed heads of their victims. The same characterization is also apparent in a different set of scenes which show Germania watching indifferently, or sometimes with apparent delight, as Till Lindemann gets beaten to a pulp in a 1920s boxing match, skewered with swords in a medieval battle, hanged as a Concentration Camp prisoner, and beaten up by a policeman in a 19th century prison. The accompanying lyrics (sung by Till Lindemann) fittingly address Germany with the lines "Deutschland – deine Liebe / Ist Fluch und Segen" ("Germany, your love is a blessing and a curse") and "Deutschland – mein Herz in Flammen / will dich lieben und verdammen" ("Germany, my heart in flames / I want to love and to damn you").
- Mia Rodriguez: Gender-Inverted in "Poison Ivy", where the singer warns her ex's current girlfriend, Ivy, about the danger he represents, outright saying "That boy is poison [...] yeah, he got red flags all over his body". She regrets falling for his bedroom eyes so many times when he's unreliable, a cheater, and a liar who will snarl girls in his vines to devour them whole.
- Britney Spears's 2011 album Femme Fatale played off of this concept, as did the accompanying tour.
- "Evil Woman" by Spooky Tooth, which was famously covered by Black Sabbath.
- In Stan Ridgway's song "Peg and Pete and Me," the speaker is a simple mechanic seduced by Peg, the beautiful wife of his wealthy employer, Pete. Peg convinces him to murder Pete so they can be together, but he ends up taking the fall, and Peg gets all of Pete's money.
- "Black Lady" by Donna Summer from I Remember Yesterday, which is more about a bad woman than one who has a black skin color.
Black lady, black ladyShe was mean, really badShe was slender as a cat at night, she made the men go madWell her eyes were green, and her skin was softAnd the lady's heart was as hard as rock
- Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale" from The Velvet Underground & Nico is literally about a seductive woman.
- Delilah of The Bible handily seduces Samson into revealing the truth about the source of his strength.
- Aphrodite of Classical Mythology often got what she wanted through seduction. For example, she offered Paris any woman he wanted if he chose to give her the Apple of Discord.
- The hinoenma is a Yōkai taking the form of a beautiful woman, luring young men so that she may utterly ruin their lives and bring about an untimely death. Some stories say that the hinoenma feed by sucking blood, not unlike a vampire.
- Soodabeh in The Shahnameh is the very attractive wife of Key Kavous who tries to seduce her stepson, Siavash. When Siavash turns her down twice, she claims Siavash sexually assaulted her. Even though the evidence is against her, she uses the aborted deformed babies of a witch to cast doubt on Siavash, who finally proves his innocence by riding through a huge fire and coming out unharmed. Even then she tries to frame Zal for losing the babies which doesn't work and Key Kavous sentences her to be hanged. Siavash knows his father will soon regret having her killed and will hold Siavash in contempt for her death, so he asks for Soodabeh to be pardoned. Soon, despite all she's done, she bewitches her husband once again and starts poisoning his mind against Siavash. When Afrasiab wages war on Iran, Siavash volunteers to go to battle to get away from Soodabeh and her schemes and this ultimately leads to his tragic death.
- Carmen (1875): Carmen seduces the naive soldier Don José, who abandons his childhood sweetheart, Micaëla, and his military duties for Carmen's sake, running away with her gang of smugglers. José later loses Carmen to Escamillo, a toreador, as she grows tired of José. Enraged by Carmen leaving him, José kills her outside the bullfighting ring at the end, ultimately meeting his downfall.
- Dalila from Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila. She seduces Samson with her aria "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix" (My heart opens to your voice), demands he tell her the secret of his strength as a proof of his love, pretends to cry when Samson refuses, to which he ultimately tells her and is forced to sacrifice his life in order to redeem himself.
- Subverted with Violetta Valéry from Verdi's La Traviata. On one hand, she has all the qualities of a femme fatale: wealthy, a courtesan, and very good at her job. However, she's a genuinely good-hearted woman who truly loves Alfredo and willingly ends her relationship with him at his father Giorgio's request. Then there's the fact that she's dying from tuberculosis.
- Manon Lescaut from Massenet's Manon is a woman who abandons her lover Des Grieux for the wealthy De Brétigny, gloats her power over men, and she seduces Des Grieux from his priest training into becoming a gambler. However, she eventually realizes what she's doing by Act 5, but by then, she dies at Des Grieux's feet after he forgives her.
- The Foreign Princess from Dvorak's Rusalka. She seduces the Prince away from Rusalka on his wedding day to her, mainly out of jealousy, and manipulates him using her passion and appealing to his frustration over Rusalka's timidness into rejecting Rusalka, thus dooming him to death, and dooming Rusalka to becoming a spirit of death at the bottom of the lake.
- Venus in Wagner's Tannhäuser. At the start of the opera, she's already seduced the minnesinger Tannhauser into debauchery, and her spell on him is prevalent throughout; during Act II's song contest at the Wartburg castle, Tannhauser is entranced into singing his love for Venus, horrifying Princess Elisabeth and the court, and causing the Landgrave and the knights to condemn him to death. At the end, however, Tannhauser is saved by Elisabeth's love, banishing Venus and allowing Tannhauser to be forgiven before his death.
- Kundry from Wagner's Parsifal. In between serving as a messenger for the Knights of the Grail, she also acts as a seductress on behalf of the evil mage Klingsor to try and lure the Knights to their doom in a tempting flower garden of evil. As it turns out, she has been cursed for laughing at Jesus Christ while he was on the cross, and now seeks to be released from her curse.
- Princess Salome from Richard Strauss' Salome strips before her stepfather while demanding the head of Jochanaan, and then kisses Jochanaan's severed head while declaring her love for it in front of everyone.
- Francine would get friendly with the baby faces of ECW, such as The Pitbulls and Tommy Dreamer, become their valets, and then screw them out of title shots against their rivals when they least expected it.
- Billie Kay on NXT has an entrance theme titled 'Femme Fatale', wears black and purple outfits, and slinks her way to the ring. Her tag team partner Peyton Royce is borderline too, though she's more of an Expy of Poison Ivy.
- In Rocket Age Princess Stephanika, ruler of the Martian city-state Melikia uses her charms to manipulate the many Earthling diplomats that come to her court. Rumoured to have used her sexuality to keep the various imperial powers focused on one another, Stephanika may be a relatively sympathetic example.
- Liliana Vess, the Black-aligned planeswalker from Magic: The Gathering. She sold her soul for eternal youth and beauty and doesn't at all mind leveraging her attractiveness if it'll get her what she wants. She's also an extremely powerful necromancer, ruthless, selfish, and manipulative. Her art and abilities focus equally on these characteristics.
- Miss Scarlet in Clue(do).
- Invoked in Cross Road. "Femme Fatale" is the title of the second duet between Amduscias, the devil of music, and Princess Elisa Bonaparte, the lover and patron of Amduscias' contracted human, the violinist Niccolo Paganini. In their first duet, "Tango to Sin", Amduscias presented Niccolo to Elisa as a gift to relieve her boredom, because Niccolo needed a patron and promoter to become one of the most famous musicians in Europe. But as the Arc Words say, Niccolo is quite literally playing with his life — his contract with Amduscias says that he can play one million songs of genius, after which Amduscias gets his life. As his remaining songs dwindle, Niccolo gets sicker and sicker, until one day he faints backstage. As Elisa stands over him, stroking his hair, Amduscias enters and tells her that she is a "Femme Fatale", killing Niccolo by making him play (though Amduscias knows that really he's the one doing that). Elisa sends Niccolo away so that he'll live longer, defying Amduscias' words.
- Lady Luck, the gambling seductive shapeshifting evil redhead icon of Universal's Halloween Horror Nights.
- Aveline in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation become a femme fatale whenever in her lady persona who can bribe guards and charm gentlemen to have them follow her and then dismisses them when she's done with them.
- Elizabeth in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode I as she lures Booker/Comstock deep into Rapture just so she can kill him.
- Chicken Police: Natasha Catzenko is a sexy and mysterious nightclub singer, and trouble follows her.
Sonny: I knew she was trouble the first time I saw her. She wore danger like a perfume. It was simply part of her being, and it attracted me like light attracts the moth people.
- Maggie Chow in Deus Ex. Turns out, she's actually in league with the villains and murdered the leader of the Red Dragon triad and stole his nano-technologically enhanced sword in order to initiate a triad war.
- Disco Elysium: Klaasje is a subversion. On the one hand: sexy, mysterious, dangerous to know, involved with industrial espionage. On the other hand: she feels guilty about the damage that her spying caused, and is hiding out in Revachol because she thinks that her former employers want to kill her. Her best ending has her go on the run to another city.
- Carlotta Von Überwald in Discworld Noir, the extremely attractive woman who hires Lewton and who turns out to be directly or indirectly responsible for multiple murders, a Religion of Evil cultist, a werewolf, and the Disc's counterpart to the Femme Fatales in The Maltese Falcon, To Have and Have Not, and Farewell, My Lovely with elements from The Big Sleep.
- The Elder Scrolls series has Mephala, a Daedric Prince whose sphere is "obscured to mortals", but who is associated with manipulation, lies, sex, and secrets. She could practically be considered the patron deity of spies and assassins, and to the Dunmer, she actually is, being the patron of the Morag Tong.
- Bonne Jenet from Garou: Mark of the Wolves. She isn't evil per se (despite being a Pirate Girl, her Lilien Knights only steal from the rich), but she can and will use her feminine wit and sex appeal to get what she wants (she's also very flirtatious). Oddly enough, she also happens to be a Lad-ette.
- Ultimecia in Final Fantasy VIII is this. When she's possessing Edea - who normally wears a very simple and modest dress — she makes her wear incredibly ornate and over-the-top "sexy" clothing. When you finally meet her in person, the costume she has on is, to say the least, extravagant. She uses her body to get what she wants and was openly called a Femme Fatale in the spin-off game Dissidia.
- Olivia Ofrenda in Grim Fandango. She dates a mobster and his lawyer at the same time, and exhibits all the traits of one otherwise (true to the game's Film Noir influence.) Subverted when she helps the resistance against the main evil plot, but then Double Subverted when it is revealed she tore the leader of the resistance, Salvador Limones, to pieces and betrays Manny Calvera to Hector LeMans, who she is now also dating.
Manny: You know, you have a really bad taste in men.Olivia: No, I have a taste for really bad men. There's a difference.
- Miranda Lawson in Mass Effect 2 at first appears to be a femme fatale, but it's ultimately subverted as she quits Cerberus and makes no attempts at seducing Shepard. She actually tries to avoid a romance, at first, if a Male Shepard pursues it. Morinth however, is a straighter example, as she is found looking for prey in an exclusive nightclub.
- Naomi in Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. According to the backstory, she seduced Richard Ames away from his wife, Nastasha Romanenko, in order to get onto the FoxDie project so she could modify it to kill Snake. She spent the game until the bombshell alternately acting very cold towards him and drooling over him. She has good intentions.
- Sylvia Christel from No More Heroes manages to convince an impoverished otaku living in a cheap motel to use his laser sword that he got off the Internet to murder people. Granted, said otaku wasn't exactly a prince himself in terms of morality.
- Persona 5: Invoked by Ann Takamaki's Fighting Spirit based on the title character of Carmen (1845), who appears as an attractive woman leading along two men with hearts for heads on dog collars and chains.
- Resident Evil:
- Ada Wong initially showed very mild Damsel in Distress qualities in her first appearance, but by the fourth game in the series, there was no question that she was a first-class example, to the point that it's clear in retrospect that her original helplessness was playact the whole time. Trying to figure out which side the girl is on and if she's going to help you or hurt you can give you (and poor Leon) a serious headache.
- Excella Gionne from Resident Evil 5 is also an example, being Wesker's Dragon. An example that ends up being subverted: it is she who ends up being manipulated and betrayed by Wesker, who injects her with the Uroboros virus she created. Rather than a manipulative woman behind the man, she's actually just an opportunistic Rich Bitch who is Too Dumb to Live.
- Janet Page from Strike Commander. She's a sexy brunette Ace Pilot who has the hots for the protagonist. Though she leaves The Squad early on to join its rivals, she spends most of the game atoning for her actions and trying to win back the protagonist's favor. In the end, she offers to help him steal a cutting-edge F-22 fighter jet from the evil Internal Revenue Service, in order to take out the Big Bad with it. Once he steals the plane however, she reveals that she's only been in it for herself all along - and demands he hand the plane over, effectively at gunpoint.
- Viletta Vadim from Super Robot Wars, starting out as The Mole of the team for Ingram and is a deadly pilot in combat. This is later subverted as Viletta and Ingram have good intentions, despite coming off as rather strict and oh-so-much a Magnificent Bastard for Ingram, not flat out evil. Her looks also gave her the distinction of being one of Excellen's 'Three Beautiful Sisters' and the only person she'd go Les Yay with. To hammer it home, her theme song was re-named to this trope when Original Generation got a US translation by Atlus (it was formerly 'Woman The Cool Spy').
- In Thief The Dark Project, Viktoria plays this to Garrett's Noir action hero, tempting him with greed, the power of an exotic blade, and obliquely hints at the possibility of sex. Without Constantine's leadership in Metal Age, she becomes less this, but still remains Strange Bedfellows.
- The Consort from Town of Salem can Roleblock any target (blocking their Night Ability) on behalf of The Mafia. She is the Evil Counterpart to the Escort.
- Hilda from Under Night In-Birth. Though it's deconstructed because a) she's too dumb to convince anybody to do something she wants, b) everyone is numb to her advances because she never turns the seduction off, and c) almost everyone knows she's a crazy, idiotic Ungrateful Bitch so they don't pay her any attention. The only time her seduction actually works is on Hyde Kido, which isn't much of an accomplishment.
- In Wolfenstein: The New Order, it turns out that Anna Oliwa was this prior to meeting B.J., being a Honey Trap for unsuspecting Nazis. According to "Ramona's" diary, she has quite a kill count to her name.
- Yandere Simulator allows for the player to play Ayano as one, if they so choose. One gameplay stat is "Seduction", which, when upped, makes the male students more comfortable around you, making it easier to talk to them and ask for favors. If it's upped enough, the girls will too. When the stat is in effect, hearts hover around the student's head when talking to them.
- Rosé Mulan from Spirit Hunter: NG. She's flirty and dons a simple black dress, bearing an exotic name as part of her stage persona, but she deliberately keeps an air of intrigue around herself while assisting Akira with his investigation.
- Beautiful, manipulative, and deadly, Emma of Togainu no Chi is the kind of woman who doesn't tell you who she works for. She's the one who gets the plot rolling by pressuring Akira into becoming her pawn, although she lies about how she plans to use him.
- Lucrezia Mongfish (a.k.a. literally the Other herself) from Girl Genius, as shown in her backstory. She was the beautiful daughter of the evil Dr. Lucifer Mongfish, and while she was alive she was able to seduce Bill Heterodyne and Klaus Wulfenbach with varying results for both of them.
- Selenis Zea, the main character from Supermassive Black Hole A*, is an assassin who is willing to utilize her sex appeal and ruthlessness to accomplish her goals, one of which includes refining her cloning technology that transfer her memories and personality to one of her clones upon her death multiple times.
- Sahar of the Whateley Universe has spent several years seducing any mutant (male or female) with the right powers, so she can copy their best psychic traits. Even the campus Alphas and Intelligence Cadet Corps fear her.
- RWBY Chibi: Cinder ends up cast as one in the Film Noir episode with Junior Detective Neptune as the narrating protagonist. Hot (figuratively and in terms of her powers), looking for a detective's help (still looking for the Fall Maiden), morally suspicious (the Character Exaggeration the series as a whole does to the canon RWBY cast puts her squarely into Card-Carrying Villain most of the time), hints at other means of payment besides cash...until Neptune's not-so-inner monologue and comically inept attempts to woo her disgusts Cinder enough to quit and look elsewhere.
- Batman: The Animated Series: Poison Ivy alternates between this and The Vamp, depending on the episode, leaning more towards the latter in her debut appearance.
- This page wouldn’t be complete without Carmen Sandiego who’s right up there with Catwoman, Catherine Tramell and Ada Wong when it comes to iconic examples of this trope. An elusive global Classy Cat-Burglar and Villain Protagonist of a few educational mystery games and a 1994 cartoon series. The 2019 Netflix continuity reboot series, gives Carmen heaps of Adaptational Heroism making her more of a sympathetic Anti-Hero who is still very crafty and alluring.
- Phineas and Ferb: While hardly alluring at ten years old or younger, Isabella Garcia-Shapiro played this role in the Indiana Jones-themed episode "Phineas and Ferb and the Temple of Juatchadoon". She even has a card that calls her such.
- Castlevania (2017): With how she seduced and tricked Hector into slavery, Lenore definitely counts as an example. She does become more likeable to a degree in Season 4 having fallen for Hector for real, albeit entirely off-screen and apologises for what she did to him before stepping into the sunlight. It’s more than likely Lenore being a Vampire couldn’t see the demeaning cruelty of her actions regarding Hector and being raised by the Femme Fatale queen herself Carmilla certainly didn’t help either.
- Transformers:
- Blackarachnia from Beast Wars plays this to the hilt when she gets a chance, towards allies and enemies alike, though she does less flirting and more fighting than is usual for this trope. The choice of a black widow spider as her alternate mode is surprisingly appropriate, though she's not without redeeming qualities.
- The Blackarachnia in Transformers: Animated fulfills this trope whenever it's convenient for her, either with the Autobots or the Dinobots. Optimus Prime is especially vulnerable to falling for this no matter how many times she does it. It does make you wonder why she considers herself such a horrific freak when everyone with a spark seems to want to jump her thorax. Probably because of her face under the helmet.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man's Classy Cat-Burglar Black Cat has shades of this trope, willingly flirting with and helping Spider-Man to clear his name while using the same opportunity to steal jewels on the sly. Though the flirting stopped when her father (the Burglar who shot Ben Parker) decided to remain in prison to repent. She hates Spider-Man for this and will never forgive him.
- Used in The Legend of Korra in the design of Asami Sato. With her long raven hair, beautiful figure, red clothes, fighting prowess, lack of bending, competition as Mako's love interest, and rich family, she fits this trope like a glove. It was all a subversion, because she really was nice and caring, and not the double-crosser so many fans assumed she'd be based on her appearance. And she went beyond being a Romantic False Lead for Mako - she ultimately became Korra's love interest. Asami was originally written as a femme fatale Equalist early in development but the writers liked her so much they made her a subversion instead.
- Before The Legend of Korra gave us Asami, the predecessor series Avatar: The Last Airbender also put a twist on this trope in the form of Jet, a sexy, charming boy who used his outer seductiveness to blind Katara to his dangerous intentions. Like many female examples of this trope, he came to genuinely care about Katara, and ended up redeeming himself - and then dying.
- Samurai Jack ran into this type of villain twice. (Demons and bounty hunters were easy for him; seductresses, not so much.) The first one was actually Aku in disguise, and it ended very badly for Jack. The second one was Josephine Clench, also a Dark Action Girl and half of an Outlaw Couple with her ex-husband Zeke. Apparently, her typical MO was to lure a victim into a false sense of security with her charms so that Zeke could attack by surprise, and then she could strike from behind when he tried to fight him. It almost worked on Jack, but the plan fell apart when she tried to double-cross Zeke. Possibly, something like this may have been why they had divorced. It's subverted with Ashi, a deadly but sexy young lady of the Daughters of Aku who would fit the trope to a tee, but instead she attempts to kill Jack, and then romances him later.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
- Femme Fatale was the name of a one-shot villainess from the episode "Equal Fights." The name was the only thing she really had in common with the trope, since she was a Straw Feminist who tried to indoctrinate the girls into "solidarity" because she really Does Not Like Men.
- Sedusa is a bigger example. She is a mistress of seduction who manipulates men into doing her bidding and has snake-like hair she uses as tentacles for battle; both representing her Meaningful Name.
- Rugrats has a film noir parody episode called "Radio Daze" featuring both Angelica and Lil as Femme Fatales. Angelica is the Big Bad who's after the MacGuffin - and her name is 'Madame Evil', dressed like a traditional noir villainess. Lil initially appears to be one - drugging Tommy with a Honey Trap (although since they're babies, this is just giving him warm milk so he goes straight to sleep). But she undergoes a High-Heel–Face Turn.
- Shego on Kim Possible overlaps between this and Dark Action Girl besides kicking ass. She’s fully capable of fooling and manipulating people using her beauty. She even playfully tries seducing Ron at one point, in order to seriously piss off her rival Kim.
- In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Rarity plays this role in "Rarity Investigates!" as part of her detective investigation, flirting with and charming some guard ponies to get information.
- Tanya Keys in Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart plays this role. She enjoys teasing Mao Mao to the point he becomes flustered and continues to trick him throughout her debuting episode. It is also teased that she once had a "complicated" adult relationship with Mao Mao.
- In the Love, Death & Robots episode "Sonnie's Edge", Jennifer serves as a Femme Fatale assassin for her employer/lover Dicko. She seduces and attempts to murder Sonnie for refusing to throw a match with Dicko. It doesn't end well.
- Duck Dodgers: Played with via the Martian Queen Tyr'ahnee. She tries to woo Dodgers because she genuinely thinks he's trying to impress her with his (usually accidental) heroics. Of course, she did decide to kill Dodgers outright at one point after he turns down her advances flatly.
- Woody Woodpecker: In "Alley to Bali", Woody and Buzz Buzzard are two sailors on shore leave who get seduced by a beautiful Balinese priestess looking for an offering of "long pig" for the local volcano god.
- Animaniacs: Hello Nurse plays one in "This Pun For Hire", hiring the Warners to find the MacGuffin so she can take it for herself. The Warner Brothers even catcall her with "Helloooo Femme Fatale Nurse!" when she first appears.
- Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama features a rare male version in Synthodrome #901 aka Eric who was literally designed by Drakken to be everything that Kim looks for in a man, to distract her from his plan to take over the world, and later lead her into a trap planted by Shego.

