Category:Action Girl

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The phrase "Fight like a girl" is flawed beyond repair.

"Stay, stay thy hands! Thou art an Amazon and fightest with the sword of Deborah."

-- King Henry VI, Part One

The Action Girl is a female Badass who can go toe to toe with her male counterparts without breaking a sweat. Distressed Damsel? Not for this babe. She doesn't sit around waiting to be rescued. She's headbutting her jailer and breaking herself out. She proves, with her very being, that girls aren't only not helpless, they kick ass. But not just "any girl with a fight scene" can be considered an Action Girl. An Action Girl is accompanied by Rule of Cool, and routinely and reliably gets in on the combat. And what's more, she wins.

Because of Double Standards, true Action Girls are less common than male Badasses. If you want to get more into the why of that, check out the Gender Dynamics Index or our very own Action Girl Analysis page. The short version however, is the concept that Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty and females should Stay in the Kitchen. For a very long time, females who did much but wait around for their hero to come rescue them were unusual and rare. Even now, women aren't automatically assumed to be able to fight and protect themselves the way men are. Society has progressed since then and Action Girls are popular and more common than ever, but girls still haven't completely caught up with boys when it comes to expectations in media, hence the continued existence of this trope.

That being said, one must watch out for the dreaded Faux Action Girl. With the popularity of the Action Girl increasing, creators are trying to slip them in for more appeal and political-correctness, without actually giving them a chance to show themselves off. The "Action" part of the character is left as an Informed Attribute, with characters constantly playing up how much of a Badass she is, and yet when it comes to facing the music, she proves otherwise by being a Damsel in Distress or suffering the effects of being on the wrong end of a Curb Stomp Battle, assuming she gets any action at all. Basically she can talk the talk, but she can't walk the walk.

Sometimes an Action Girl can start off well, but derail into a Faux Action Girl over time, with no adequate justification for it. This is known as Chickification.

Compare the Action Girl with her Evil Counterpart, the often far-more-aggressive Dark Action Girl, and the more mundane versions You Go, Girl and Plucky Girl. Not to be confused with Affirmative Action Girl, who is just a girl added to the cast in an adaptation or new season to balance out the gender ratio, no matter what role she actually plays (though, often, the girl is an Action Girl herself). See Real Women Never Wear Dresses for when people think that every female character has to be an Action Girl to deserve something similar to basic respect.

Not to be confused with Action Girl, a comic series about an action girl.

Examples

Animation

9. 7 is the only girl out of the group , and makes her entrance by decapitating the Cat Beast in one swing.
Alpha and Omega. Kate the alpha wolf.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Audrey.
Balto. Jenna is willing to fight a furious bear far larger than she is and has no qualms with standing up to Steel, something many of the male dogs in the film are too afraid to do. Sadly, she ends up fading into the background in the other two films.
Cars 2. Holly Shiftwell
How to Train Your Dragon. Astrid and Ruffnut.
The Incredibles. Elastigirl is of the ActionMom variety.
Kung Fu Panda. Tigress and Viper.
The Lion King. Nala is a very strong fighter, and a fierce hunter.
Monsters vs. Aliens. Susan, a.k.a. Ginormica, eventually becomes one of these after starting out as a Reluctant Monster.
Mulan.
Open Season. Giselle.
Tangled. Rapunzel. For a Walt Disney Pictures Fairy Tale adaptation of a Princess tale, she may be bubbly, but she is the toughest human female character since Mulan.
Toy Story. Jessie. Barbie turns out to be a bit of one too in the third movie.
WALL-E. EVE, with built-in nuclear cannon.
Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion is practically Queen of the Action Girls, and she knows it. Her greatest feat would undoubtedly be when she single-handedly fought back against the entire offensive, including the mass-produced Evas and kept trying to fight after getting impaled by a mass-produced Lance of Longinus.
Electra from Cowboy Bebop: Knocking On Heaven's Door

Spike: "Are all the employees around here like you? You got some classy moves for a corporate girl."

Electra: "The more you know, the shorter your life will be."

Spike: "I love the kind of woman who could kick my ass."

Nagisa and Honoka of Futari Wa Pretty Cure.
Shana from Shakugan No Shana.
Aisha Klan-Klan and Twilight Suzuka from Outlaw Star.
Tokiko from Busou Renkin.
Major Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell is likely the best there is in Section 9 at just about everything. The only character who was shown to be better than her at something was also thought to be too cool to exist.
Balsa from Seirei No Moribito.
The first several episodes of The Daughter of Twenty Faces show Chiko's rapid development from a seemingly Spoiled Brat to a cunning, resourceful, and skilled Phantom Thief Action Girl.
Both Elle Ragu and Folli of Shadow Skill.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has Nanoha, Fate, Vita, Signum, Subaru, Teana... you know, it'd probably be easier to list the female mages that wouldn't count as an Action Girl.
Yoko Littner from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has a BFG and knows how to use it.
Mirielle, Kirika, and Chloe in Noir.
Sango from Inu Yasha is a demon-slayer with a ludicrously-sized boomerang, of all things.
The female pilot trio in Martian Successor Nadesico, especially Ryoko.
Lina Inverse from The Slayers. She left a path of devastation wherever she went, kicking the collective asses of everyone between her and whatever goal she was pursuing at the time.
Tomoyo Sakagami from Clannad, making her kinda stand-out in a mostly non-Action anime.
Saki Asamiya from Sukeban Deka.
Leela from Futurama.
All three of The Powerpuff Girls.
Sam, Alex, and Clover of Totally Spies seem to take turns being competent.
Hawkgirl and Wonder Woman, Justice League. In Unlimited we gain Huntress, Black Canary, and Vixen.
Artemis and Miss Martian, Young Justice.
Toph, Katara, Suki, and Ozai's Angels (Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee) on Avatar: The Last Airbender; at this point they outnumber the male Badasses.
Kim Possible beats up super-villains for kicks, using only her cheerleading skills. She can do anything indeed.
Teen Titans's Starfire and Raven.
Valerie Gray from Danny Phantom. She's been stated as a ninth degree martial artist despite being only fourteen.
Sandy Cheeks from Spongebob Squarepants.
Kylie Griffin from Extreme Ghostbusters.

Comic Books

The archetypical comic book Action Girl is, of course, Wonder Woman, created for just that purpose in 1941. Not the first female superhero, but a true cultural icon and never out of print in 67 years.
Black Canary is a character who fluctuates between Action Girl and Faux Action Girl, depending on the writer. Chuck Dixon and Gail Simone, in Birds of Prey, were frustrated at the fact that she always seemed to end up as a victim/hostage, and devoted much of the comic to re-establishing Canary's Badass credibility. Sadly, the Green Arrow/Black Canary title utterly evaporated all that martial arts street cred.
Big Barda of the New Gods, who's a beautiful seven-foot walking tank. And her husband, Mr. Miracle, loves her that way.
Every } X-Woman in existence has had an Action Girl moment, but doubly so if she was created/handled by Chris Claremont. Notable Action Girls include Storm, Psylocke, Polaris, Rogue, Emma Frost, X-23, Kitty Pryde, Dazzler, Jubilee, and Jean Grey. Though special mention goes to Storm, who led the team without her powers during a long period in the '80s, and accumulated several Badass levels during that period.
Chakaal from Groo the Wanderer.
Modesty Blaise, whom Jennifer K. Stuller (author of Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology) called "The most complex, sophisticated, skilled and intelligent of all action heroines".
Red Sonja
Agent 355 (and most of the rest of the Culper Ring) in Y: The Last Man. A good thing too, as the eponymous walking MacGuffin is a definite Non-Action Guy. Natalya Zamyatin also fits the bill, as does Hero Brown after her Heel Face Turn.
The Bat Family has a record of having some of the most awesome Action Girls (Barbara Gordon both as Batgirl and Oracle, Cassandra Cain as Batgirl, Spoiler, Huntress and Catwoman, just to name a few) and tending to go through long periods where those girls are Stuffed in the Fridge or misused in some other way, before making returns.
When creating the new Batwoman, introduced in 52, the writers were afraid that she would quickly become a Faux Action Girl, especially since, though important, she is not the hero of the story. The Real Life furor surrounding the fact that she was a lesbian caught them completely by surprise (rhey expected a response, of course, but not nearly of the size they got) and they wanted to make sure she was more than a token-anything. As such, they wanted the few action scenes she was in to be explicitly cool, they did not want to just talk about how cool she was. To this end, when writing one fight scene they scripted it as simply "Batwoman is finishing off the last two Intergangers with a devastating move that will have people saying 'holy **** , she's cool!'" When looking at the finished product, Greg Rucka observes what she is doing and points out that the injury she is causing is something "the Batman himself would think twice about before inflicting."
Electra from Daredevil.
Action Call Girl in the case of Gail, one of the more badass girls of Old Town, and Dwight McCarthy's "Warrior Woman".

Film

In Aliens, Ellen Ripley was slowly converted from a Final Girl into an early example of the Action Girl. Her performance earned her an Oscar nomination and the number eight spot on the AFI's Greatest Heroes list. Not to mention she frequently appears on lists of the best female Heroes.
In the first two Terminator films, Sarah Connor grows from Distressed Damsel to one of the most Badass heroines of all time, perhaps the only other that can truly stand beside Ellen Ripley.
Mace in Strange Days. It pretty much takes an entire police SWAT team to kick her ass. Justified in that she's a professional bodyguard, whom you'd reasonably expect to be able to kick someone's ass if necessary.
Quorra of Tron Legacy can do just about anything, from showing kickboxing skills and driving Light Runners to piloting Light Jets and being able to give one of Clu's minions a headshot.
Action Girls were not common in early movies, as the true form usually requires convincing hand-to-hand combat skills. However, a female character in a Western or Pirate movie could get away with the role. Maureen O'Hara is probably the most famous. She had a powerful screen personality, great acting skills, and an ungodly beauty that could carry any part. She also always looked to be having enormous fun whenever she got in a swordfight, most particularly in Against All Flags (as a Pirate Girl) and At Sword's Point (as the daughter of one of The Three Musketeers!).
Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Cheng Pei Pei came together as Shu-lien, Jen, and Jade Fox of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The sequence in the bar is fantastic, as well as the fight between Shu and the rebel Jen.
Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill. The other major female characters fall into Dark Action Girl territory.
In Last Action Hero, Slater's daughter is one of these, and at first it's played for laughs by subverting the Distressed Damsel -- she's screaming mock-hysterically as she kills the mook sent to take care of her. But it's also deconstructed a bit when Slater mentions that she spent her prom night alone in her room, field-stripping an AK-47.
Trinity from The Matrix.
Elizabeth Swann, from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, quickly evolves from a Distressed Damsel to an Action Girl over the course of the three films.
Rose McGowan's role in Planet Terror.
Ukrainian model/actress Milla Jovovich frequently plays Action Girls. She has the attractiveness to get by in Hollywood, and the lean, rangy body of a female athlete.
- Alice, ResidentEvil. She played Alice in the Resident Evil series, Leeloo in The Fifth Element, and Violet in Ultraviolet, among others.
Selene in Underworld, played by Kate Beckinsale. However, this is debatable on whether she's an Action Girl or a Dark Action Girl.
Pam Grier's film carrier is made up of Sassy Black Woman Action Girls.
Eowyn from the Lord of the Rings movies. "I am no man!"
- In the first film, Arwen Evenstar carries a wounded Frodo from Weathertop to Rivendell, outrunning the Black Riders.
The Quick and the Dead (1995) with the unnamed "Lady" played by Sharon Stone.
The Belmont sisters from Night of the Comet, who are basically Action Valley Girls.
Johnny Mnemonic has Jane, a female cyborg bodyguard. She's not as Badass as Molly Millions in the original story, but this was probably due to the limits of cinema at the time.
Hit-Girl in the 2010 movie Kick-Ass, she is also a total Category:Badass.
Helen Mirren's character in RED is an Action Girl at retirement age. She still kicks ass.
Fox in Wanted.
Peggy Carter in Captain America: The First Avenger, who gets to do quite a bit of ass-kicking, like shooting down a Nazi agent from a block away, and even rescuing Cap from a flamethrower-wielding HYDRA mook in the film's climax.
Babydoll, Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie, and Amber from Sucker Punch.

Folklore

In The Death of Koshchei the Deathless, Princess Marya Morevna is apparently a fierce and vicious warrior. However, she does come off as a bit of a Faux Action Girl when Koshchei the Deathless kidnaps her, turning her into a Damsel in Distress and forcing her Non-Action Guy husband to go on a quest to save her.
In some depictions, Maid Marian of the Robin Hood legends. There's even a ballad (one of the Child Ballads) where Marian went to seek Robin, armed and in man's clothes, and when she met him, he was also in disguise -- so they fought, for "at least an hour or more", before recognizing each other.
- Ironically, Marian started out as an Action Girl only for much later Hollywood adaptations (as in Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood) to cast her as the Damsel in Distress. Only recently has she regained her original Action Girl status (Judi Trott in Robin of Sherwood and Lucy Griffiths in Robin Hood), though just as often she comes across as a Faux Action Girl (as in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves).
The character of Hua Mulan, known for joining the army in place of her elderly father and too-young brother, fighting to the West of China, then going home and eventually dying of old age.

Literature

Action Girls were popular in classical literature. Penthesilea the Amazon Queen who appeared in the ancient epic cycles (and later Kleist's play) and Camilla in Virgil's The Aeneid. The popularity of Amazon women waned in Middle Ages, but they were to make a comeback in Renaissance epic in the form of female knights such as Bradamante and Marfisa in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Clorinda in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Belphoebe, Britomart, and Palladine in Spenser's The Faerie Queene. In the latter poem, Spenser laments the scarcity of Action Girls in his own time and bids females to start kicking ass again as they did in the old days (because he knew Queen Elizabeth would appreciate it).
Anne Westfeld from Reality Check by Charlie Brooks. They don't call her Sister Machinegun for nothing.
Sharrow in Iain M. Banks's Against a Dark Background.
Velvet in David Eddings's The Malloreon. She kills one enemy in Demon Lord of Karanda by throwing a viper in his face. The viper is 'very' annoyed.
Susan, Lucy, and Jill are like this when they're in Narnia
In Harry Potter, Hermione Granger is the wizarding world's resident Badass Bookworm. Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood also have their moments, and so does Ginny's mom Molly. Also let us not forget about Professor McGonagall.
Anita Blake from Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. She is the ultimate killing machine.
Robert E. Howard wrote some surprisingly strong female characters considering his time, genre and upbringing, including Valeria, Dark Agnes, Tarala, Helen Tavrel, Conchita and the original Red Sonya (a totally different and far more realistic character than the better known Marvel comics version).
Terry Pratchett has outright stated that he "can't write 'soft' female characters." Thus, Discworld contains Angua von Uberwald, werewolf cop; Susan Sto Helit, Death's granddaughter; Polly Perks, a dirty-fighting Sweet Polly Oliver and one of a squad entirely composed of them; Granny Weatherwax, an old Action Girl-ish witch; and even normally bland female characters who have their moments. Magrat Garlick, generally rather useless, has taken down a pair of snake-ladies in Witches Abroad and a few evil elves in Lords and Ladies, Agnes Nitt roughs up a few vampires in Carpe Jugulum, and Saccharissa threatens a man with a crossbow near the end of The Truth convincingly enough that he passes out.
The titular character in Robert Heinlein's Friday epitomizes this trope. She is stronger, faster, smarter, and hornier than everyone she meets. Most of Heinlein's heroines are larger-than-life, but Friday is literally superhuman.
Honor Harrington from David Weber's Honorverse novels not only commands starships (and later in the series, entire fleets), but on occasion takes part in various forms of hand-to-hand combat. She's an all round example of the action woman who's both smart and physically very capable.
If Katniss of The Hunger Games wasn't this before the title event, she is by the end of them.
Molly Millions in Neuromancer and its sequels.
Hester Shaw and Anna Fang of Mortal Engines.
Eowyn, of course, from The Lord of the Rings. A Lady of War who pulls a Sweet Polly Oliver and kills the leader of the Ringwraiths.

Music

David Bowie's song "She's Got Medals".

New Media

Jan of I Love Bees.

Professional Wrestling

Chyna was really the first proper Action Girl in the WWE, at least in the AttitudeEra. She was introduced as a bodyguard for Triple H and actively competed in the men's division, even capturing the Intercontinental title three times. She was also the first woman to compete in the Royal Rumble and King of the Ring tournament and even became Number One contender to the WWE Championship.

Real Life

Artemisia of Caria fought at the Battle of Salamis, commanding five Persian ships against the Greeks. Her ship was nearly captured by the Greek navy, but she turned and rammed one of her own fleet's ships, sinking it and escaping. Nevertheless, she was praised by Xerxes for her ruthless ingenuity. The poetic quote from Xerxes: "My men have become women and my women have become men."
Female Soviet snipers achieved some of the highest individual kill counts of the Second World War; Lyudmila Pavlichenko is generally regarded as the deadliest, with 309 confirmed kills.
Two Soviet female fighter aces of World War II: Lydia Litvyak and Katya Budanova. Not to mention the whole of the 586th Fighter Regiment who were all female pilots.
Yim Wing Chun. You know someone's an Action Girl when she has a martial arts style named after her.
Ching Shih was one of the most badass pirates of all time. And best of all, she was able to get away with everything, keep all of her loot and avoid suffering the indignity of a death by hanging.
Trude "I'll see your six, and raise you thirty-five" Lacklandia, the first female knight of the Society For Creative Anachronism. That's Sir Trude to you.

Religion and Mythology

The Bible, in Chapter 4 of Judges, has Deborah, a prophetess and leader (or "judge") of Israel, leading her people to victory against a foreign enemy.
Greek mythology features goddesses Athena (Lady of War) and Artemis (The Archer).
Sif, sword-maiden and wife of Thor, from Norse mythology.

Tabletop Games

Any female Player Character in a fighting-oriented role is an Action Girl by definition.
In Chess, the Queen is the most powerful of all pieces.
The entire organization of the Sisters of Battle in Warhammer 40000, as well as the Eldar Howling Banshees.

Television

The protagonist of Alias, Sydney Bristow.
Beka Valentine from Andromeda.
You really don't want to get on the bad side of Fiona Glenanne from Burn Notice. Though we may have to create the "Faux Girly-Girl" trope for her as her action girl status is apparent only in action, her demeanor and clothes are definitely girly, so that a new viewer who has also missed the "a trigger happy ex-girlfriend" line in the title sequence might a bit surprised to see her in kicking ass mode.
Kara "Starbuck" Thrace from [[Battlestar Galactica (Reimagined)|Battlestar Galactica. Kara is perhaps the ActionGirl while in the cockpit of a Viper, but is no slouch in hand-to-hand or ranged infantry combat, either -- she's described as "the best shot in or out of the cockpit."
Sarah Walker on Chuck as well as numerous female guest characters.
Max from Dark Angel.
On Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Smith told off brutish middle-ages jerks, faced a Sontaran without flinching, helped a king and queen organize a revolution, captured the Doctor, and later rescued the Doctor. And that was just in her first episode. To say nothing of the next three-and-a-half seasons... and her own spin-off.
Jo Lupo, Eureka.
Aeryn Sun, Farscape. The other women on the show are no slouches in a fight either, except Jool, and even she gets better in The Peacekeeper Wars. Even Zhaan gets some combat ability. But none of them are highly-trained soldiers who show themselves consistently able to make the hard call.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the very beginning. Joss Whedon explained that besides the pure female-empowerment angle, he wanted to turn the opening of virtually every horror movie ever on its head; normally, the pretty blond girl walks into the dark alley, the monster goes in after, and the girl dies. Here, the girl rips the monster a new one.
FBI agent Olivia Dunham from Fringe.
Agent 99 from Get Smart.
Detective Olivia Benson from Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
Juliet on Lost. Television Without Pity calls her a ninja. Kate, Ana-Lucia, Rousseau, Charlotte (who rarely got to show it off), and Ilana (who took out Sayid, one of the biggest badasses on the show) as well.
Ziva David of NCIS, a Mossad officer trained as an assassin. She's responsible for some impressive takedowns, such stopping the steroid-fueled Unstoppable Rage of a Marine who'd thrown off McGee, Tony, and Gibbs in "Corporal Punishment", and temporarily holding off four Marines at once in "Cloak".
Hunter of Neverwhere.
Megan Reeves of NUMB3RS. Not only does she have the firearm proficiency expected of an FBI agent, but she also has a black belt in Krav Maga. As she remarks to Colby, "If you're going to be arresting people a hundred pounds heavier than you, you'll need to learn some hobbies."
Teyla from Stargate Atlantis is easily mistaken for the self-effacing type until she comes after you with a P-90 or her trusty Bantos rods. She routinely kicks Sheppard's butt during their sparring sessions and is not afraid of making her point with a knife to the throat.
Samantha Carter in Stargate SG-1 prefers to be the thinker of the gang, but when butt kicking is called for, she kicks butt!
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Jadzia Dax is a dab hand with a bat'leth, and Kira -- well, Kira once beat the shit out of a serial killer while the equivalent of nine months pregnant. Kira is also a former Bajoran Resistance fighter, with all the hell-raising and combat capability that implies. In fact, Kira might just be the Action Girl of the Trek Verse, at least with regard to the Canon series.
Cameron Phillips and Sarah Connor in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Despite the fact that she seems to be The Chick, Gwen Cooper from Torchwood is actually an Action Girl.
Xena of Xena: Warrior Princess]]. I mean its right there in the title.

Theater

Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella in the fairy tale-based Broadway show Into the Woods. While ACT I isn't very action-oriented, they both (along with male counterparts Jack and The Baker) Took a Level in Badass in ACT II, with Cinderella disguising herself as a peasant, wandering into the woods on her own, and dumping her "Prince Charming" (who actually turned out to not be nearly as good a guy as she thought) and Little Red Riding Hood replacing her red hood with a fur coat from the Wolf the Baker killed, receiving a knife for self-defense, and becoming a Deadpan Snarking, Axe Crazy Girl With Psycho Weapon threatening to gut any potential attackers. Both ladies are among the only four survivors of the show and actively participate in defeating the Big Bad.

Video Games

Metal Gear Solid has The Boss, who is a very extreme example of this trope, probably closer to an Action Hero with breasts and bordering on a female Ace: physically powerful, emotionally intelligent, and deeply perceptive. She beats the snot out of the main character repeatedly; fought in World War II -- while hugely pregnant -- and became a hero; and makes everyone cry at the end. For a lot of rather complicated reasons, she has never been considered a Mary Sue and is probably the most popular female character in the fandom.
Jaheira, of the Baldur's Gate series, is both a warrior and a druid, not afraid to criticize the PC for doing stupid things, and assumes a role of either leader or trusted advisor. She also has fabulous stats and wears the pants in her marriage. There are two parts of the games that are arguably not suited to her being an Action Girl, where she apparently picked up a Distress Ball (or was forced to):
Alyx Vance of Half-Life 2.
Metroid. Samus Aran is the original video game Action Girl, even if that wasn't always obvious. Nowadays, everybody knows -- and she's still one of the most Badass characters in the video game world, female or no. In-universe, she's considered a living legend.
Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. Even as the size of her breasts enlarged, she still kicked lots of ass. At the height of her popularity, she was probably both the best recognized video, and the most popular video game (and PC) character originating in the western hemisphere. And her gender has never really been a matter of suspicion (a common problem in earlier, sprite-based characters). Given that all of her adventures have circled around her shooting enormous amounts of ammunition at similarly enormous enemies, she's the Action Girl many would most readily identify.
Mona Sax of Max Payne 2 is a very capable assassin who is the title character's equal when it comes to guns and ass-kicking in general. You get to play as her during the second act, when Max gets in trouble at the construction site and Mona has to ensure that he stays alive. You also step into her shoes during the third act, when Max gets a bullet in the head from Vlad at the funhouse and Mona "comes to get him through the fire." The two eventually go on a two-person castle storm on Woden's manor.
Chun Li from Street Fighter II and beyond could turn anyone's head with her looks or one (thousand) of her ridiculously fast and powerful kicks. Her Street Fighter legacy is continued by ladies like Cammy White, Rose, Sakura Kasugano, Karin Kanzuki, Makoto, Elena, Hokuto, Pullum Purna and others.
Ashley Williams in Mass Effect. Of all of the squadmates, she is the best all-around fighter, being able to use shotguns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles, wear heavy armor, has high hit points (second only to Wrex) and health regeneration, and can use Immunity, Shield Boost, and Adrenaline Burst. None of your other squadmates can do all of this. The sequel gives us four new action girls: Miranda Lawson (the Illusive Man's right-hand woman and Shepard's second-in-command), Samara (asari matriarch, Knight Errant, and Punisher), Jack (trained from childhood to be the ultimate biotic), and Kasumi Goto (possibly the galaxy's best thief).
- All of these characters, however, are altogether outdone if Commander Shepard is played as a woman.
In the Halo 3 level "The Covenant", as Sergeant Johnson is held prisoner by the Brutes, Miranda Keyes crashes her Pelican through the Citadel's window and starts blowing away the Brutes with her shotgun.
Ophelia, Lita, the Razor Girls, and the Zaulia in Brutal Legend. In other words, every woman in the game.
Lelianna and Morrigan from Dragon Age. The player character, if female, definitely qualifies as well.
Just like their comic book counterparts, all of the women in the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games are super-hardcore, super-badass Action Girls; Ms Marvel, Storm, Elektra, Invisible Woman, Songbird, Spider Woman, Jean Grey, Psylocke, and She-Hulk.
Alan Wake has Sheriff Sarah Breaker, who is an indispensable ally and one of the few people you run into constantly that isn't a Jerkass.
Fallout 2 had Miria, an Unwanted Spouse that you could marry regardless of gender, who was Good Old Fisticuffs quite skilled in Unarmed]].
- [[Fallout 3}]] had Star Paladin Cross, for goodies and Clover the psycho-slave for baddies.
- Fallout New Vegas has the Power Fist loving Veronica and the hard drinkin' hard shootin' Cass, daughter of Cassidy.
- Furthermore, you were allowed to bestow this status upon your female Player Character from the very first Fallout by way of the Action Girl perk.
Ellie from Dead Space 2. Just for starters, when she gets her eye gouged out by Dr. Stross, she bashes him over the head with a big pipe and yells at Isaac, "You owe me an eye, you bastard!"
Faith from Mirror's Edge certainly counts as one, too.
Eleanor Lamb from Bioshock. We may only get her briefly, but she kicks so much butt.
Chell from the Portal games. Armed with only a portal gun, the long fall boots and her own brains, she'll escape death traps and fight robots. Just watch!

Webcomics

Pirogeth from MegaTokyo.
Oasis in Sluggy Freelance, though not an especially heroic one (which is to say, she is completely psychotic). May be a [[Robot Girl[[ or a former Tyke Bomb or a vengeful spirit that possesses random passers-by or more than one.
Zeetha from Girl Genius is a warrior woman from a hidden, jungle city. She appears to be a stronger warrior than any of the humans in the comic, although she is beaten in combat by the superhuman Baron Wulfenbach.
Haley from Order of the Stick is a high-level chaotic good thief. Her archery is unmatched in the comic. Maybe Vaarsuvius, too.
Radical, in Gaming Guardians. Her shapeshifting Evil Twin, Ultima starts out as a Dark Action Girl, but (unusually for the trope) does a Heel Face Turn later -- after having put Radical through seven kinds of hell (including fathering Radical's child while disguised as Randarch, and then causing her miscarriage).
While there are several in Schlock Mercenary -- Legs, 'Chelle, even Breya fit the bill -- Elf takes the cake. Ranging from blowing up a refinery to procto-ing a reality TV host with one of his own cameras.
The Girl from the webcomic A Girl and Her Fed. She's one of the best in the world at Judo, and will use it when necessary.
Homestuck: Rose Lalonde, Jade Harley, Kanaya Maryam, Terezi Pyrope, Aradia Megido, Nepeta Lejion, PM, Mom, Nanna, and The Black Queen and Snowman. Basically, if a character is female and in Homestuck]], chances are she's this.

Web Original

Almost every female character from Darwin's Soldiers, though Snow, Dr. Joe, and Aisha deserve special mention.
Tex from Red vs. Blue. Prior to her arrival in Blood Gulch, she was often hired to kill off entire outposts on her own. The only character noted to be tougher than her in combat was the superhuman Meta, and only because he had a bunch of abilities he stole from other people. Without them, he had to gang up on her 2-against-1 to beat her.
Since the Whateley Universe]] is a Superhero world, it's not surprising that every female main character is this. Except Summoner, who's a Staff Chick and Squishy Wizard right now.
Since The Butlerverse is all about superheroic action, pretty much all female characters were this
Taz in Starship. She even declares herself leader by ripping off Up's Badass Mustache and putting it on herself.
Marzgurl in Kickassia. Complete with punching her troops into shape.
- And continued in Suburban Knights, while acting as San. She can swing a mean spear.
Foxy from Dead Ends is just as good at fending off the undead as the male characters. She even decapitates a would-be rapist with a katana!
In Greek Ninja, Sasha, Eleonora, Electra and demigoddess Danae Elliades, although it's more of an informed attribute in her case.

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