Small Girl, Big Gun



"''Everybody says

''Don't go messing with a girl with guns

''She don't need you

''She couldn't love you

She couldn't be any fun"

- Tommy Shaw

She may look cute in her school uniform, but she's packing enough firepower to overthrow a Central American dictatorship. And she'll probably use it, too, before the half hour is up, no matter how minor the situation -- because she's just that Trigger Happy.

How does she carry all those guns, anyway? Maybe it's related to the phenomenon of the Hyperspace Mallet.

Sometimes pops up with the Little Miss Badass, BFG.

Compare with Cute Bruiser, Girl with Psycho Weapon, Girls with Guns (when the girls aren't necessarily small and the guns aren't necessarily big), Black Magician Girl (the fantasy version).

Anime and Manga
"Mao: Let's try this party favorite! (lifts a rocket launcher)"
 * Ritsuko Inoue from Those Who Hunt Elves, with her sniper rifle, battle tank, and other deadly gear -- and her immaculate schoolgirl's uniform -- is the ultimate archetype.
 * B-ko Daitokuji from Project A-ko. Essentially Lex Luthor as a sexy high school girl, complete with battle suit.
 * Iria, from Iria Zeiram the Animation.
 * Kotoko-01 from Divergence Eve, seen only once in episode 3.
 * The extremely shy Ururu Tsumugiya on Bleach wields a bazooka that resembles a giant lit cigarette as a weapon. (Check out the reveal at 1:00 in the clip from Karakura Super Heroes.) Soifon's Bankai is an example of this as well. It's a GIANT MISSILE LAUNCHER attached to her arm. It's so big she can barely move when carrying it, and needs to tie herself down with a heavy iron sash to stop the recoil blowing her away.
 * Seras Victoria from Hellsing is frequently shown waving around her 30mm artillery rifle which is longer than she is tall. Later in the manga, she starts shooting down zeppelins using a pair of 72mm automatic versions of those rifles. Yes, Small Girl, More Dakka! Near the end of the manga, she . To a lesser extent, Rip van Winkle, who wields a very large (albeit not excessively so) musket.
 * Rally Vincent from Gunsmith Cats usually goes for quality/precision over raw power/rate-of-fire, but she will pull out the occasional BFG when needed.
 * Ran from Urusei Yatsura. Benten too, though she's more of a bikini-clad Badass.
 * Kome Sawaguchi from Blue Seed.
 * Sawa from Kite.
 * Naomi Armitage in Armitage III.
 * Natsumi Tsujimoto from You're Under Arrest
 * And, of course, Kei and Yuri from Dirty Pair, who arguably originated the trope.
 * Kirika from Noir prefers a smaller pistol, but can fire off a machine gun with the best of them. ...also, she does overthrow a typical Central American dictatorship. ...A few, actually.
 * Nanoha from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha; her "Magic Wand" is capable of firing off energy blasts that can (and do) take out Humongous Mecha.
 * Canon material says that she is 129 cm (roughly 4'4") tall and weights 24 kg (roughly 52 pounds). In the movie she levels a city with a single Starlight Breaker. That tiny girl isn't called White Devil for nothing.
 * Dieci and Wendi have large guns as part of their Inherent Equipment, the former being a BFG that can fire devastating explosive projectiles, and the latter being a surfboard-like gun that she can use to fly through the air, fire energy bolts and block attacks. In one part of the manga, Nanoha is shown testing out a gun that appears to be around her size.
 * Arnage wields multiple Gatlings and missile launchers.
 * Gretel from Black Lagoon can fire a Browning Automatic Rifle (with a teddy bear or doll keychain attached to the barrel) from the hip despite only being about twelve years old. There is some real-life precedent for this. Bonnie Parker (of Bonnie and Clyde infamy) is reputed as having fired a BAR from the hip, and she was quite small at 4'11" and 90 pounds. The BAR was noted for having fairly low recoil, as it was heavy (around 20 pounds loaded) and had a recoil-reducing mechanism in the buttstock.
 * Gunslinger Girl; unsurprisingly, given the name. Although any of the glamour or comedy typical of the image is subverted about as hard as it possible to get. The first DVD volume is even titled "Ragazzine Piccole, Armi Grandi" -- literally "small girls, big guns" in Italian.
 * Palus Abel from King of Braves GaoGaiGar has multiple large energy cannons attached to her chest that conveniently only appear when she spreads her cloak.
 * Mana from Mahou Sensei Negima. Half subverted: the guns are air-powered replicas, but they use ridiculously effective magical ammunition. At the end of the Kyoto Arc, Chachamaru uses a gun that's at least as long as she is tall.
 * And, Sayo gets in on this, too.
 * Cisqua in Elemental Gelade.
 * Yoko Littner and her sniper rifle (which is bigger than she is) in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
 * Despite her pacifistic philosophy, Nausicaa (from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind) gets a brief Girls With Guns moment with a large-caliber machine gun.
 * Comes up from time to time in Eat Man given the way the setting is saturated with BFGs
 * In Seto no Hanayome, Maki's Water Cannon is only the size of a conch-shell but the proportions work out.
 * In the second season of Code Geass: . Anya is a sixteen-year-old girl and the youngest person to ever be accepted into the Knights of the Round (the Britannian Empire's twelve most elite soldiers) and whereas most Knights of the Round pilot swift, agile custom mechas, Anya's Knightmare Frame is really slow but has impenetrable shielding and countless guns, including one BFG that probably makes up a third of the frame's weight. Toward the end of the series,
 * Chise in Saikano has a huge Gatling Gun for an Arm, (as seen here) that she uses to instantly destroy B-1 Lancers in the First Episode. And her arsenal gets BIGGER. They don't call her the ultimate weapon for nothing.
 * Everyone in the titular Strike Witches regiment. In fact, sometimes it's Small Girl Big Guns.
 * At one point in Solty Rei, Bratty Half-Pint Kasha fires a massive bazooka and gets sent flying backwards by the recoil.
 * Luki and Noki from DOGS Bullets and Carnage are small, colorful, cute...and will reduce you to paste with their massive artillery/bladed weapon things.
 * Defied in Desert Punk. Kosuna starts bugging Kanta and their weapon shop owner to give her a bigger gun. After the owner has her dig a lot with an oversize shovel, she tries out a moderately-sized rifle. Even though she's a pretty good shot with it, she realizes it weighs too much for her to carry it and extra ammo around easily and the recoil is so strong it actually hurts her shoulder. Her and the owner then conclude that you need to know your own limitations and guns are just tools which become pointless if you are unable to use them, so she settles on a more powerful but appropriately-sized 9mm automatic weapon (which is made a point that if she's doing her job right she wouldn't even need since she's suppose to be staying out of sight).
 * Eboshi in Princess Mononoke believes that women should not be excluded from warfare and has her gunsmiths design a rifle for women. It is fired more like a rocket launcher than a musket and her personal prototype seems to be the most powerful weapon in the whole film.
 * Himeko of Kurohime wields the legendary pistol Senryuu (Tornado Dragon), a huge pistol capable of firing magical bullets. Additionally, it shoots regular bullets with enough power to wreck a small carriage.
 * Black Rock Shooter's Rock Cannon is as long as she is tall.
 * In Darker Than Black: Gemini of the Meteor Suou wields an anti-material sniper rifle that is significantly longer than she is tall. And she summons it out of her chest in a magical girl transformation sequence.
 * Mao of Full Metal Panic. She might rarely be seen fighting outside of an M9 but when she does...


 * Jennifer Grey of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple strives for a little more realism than other examples on this list. Only a little, though, becauseAt one point she's still dual-wielding Hand Cannons, with a BFG left over in reserve. Seen here.
 * Kaori in City Hunter, except that she carries a ton of them yet even with this great arsenal can't even hit a single baddie. This can be extended to Xiang Ying in Angel Heart as she inherits Kaori's Heart and the first thing she does is to blow up a castle. She can later be seen with all sorts of automatic weapons as she is a former assassin.
 * One scene in episode 5 of FLCL has Amarao's female sidekick Kitsurubami trying to take out Canti the robot with an anti-tank rifle.
 * Mami Tomoe from Puella Magi Madoka Magica has her Tiro Finale. A massive matchlock of variable size and form.
 * Homura Akemi's not to be forgotten. A 14 years old girl who fires machine guns and rocket launchers with ease. Stolen from army bases thanks to her time-stopping power. By the end of the series, she stole and fired cruise missiles. (Granted, she wasn't holding them in her hands, but still.)
 * OK, Stella is not that small, but she is only 16 and completely childlike. And the Destroy is a very big Humongous Mecha with many missile launchers.

Comic Books

 * Some pre-launch publicity art for the Elf Quest series Jink showed the title character sporting a very big gun, combined with a male-on-female Leg Cling.
 * When a semi-paranoid Spider tells Channon and Yelena to get guns to defend themselves, streetwise Channon takes them to a gun dealer, and patiently explains to a somewhat condescending proprietor, in technical terms, exactly what is needed. Contrasted with her is the diminutive Yelena, who finds a bazooka-like gun and asks if she can have it. (The proprietor declines, and insists it's not because she's a girl, but because it was designed for people with two backup spines.)
 * Stargirl of the Justice Society of America and the Cosmic Rod, which is about a head taller than she is (since it was made for Jack Knight) and a very potent weapon and sky surfboard.
 * Tank Girl, in both comics and film, has a love affair with this trope. To emphasize the phallic, she's often shown standing waist up from the tank's hatch, with the barrel of her Big Gun aimed forth from where her pelvis would be.
 * Brianna Diggers from Gold Digger might not be small, but she uses guns and Power Armor that are far larger than her with ease and, later on, tends to power them with magic.
 * Sabretooth's partner Birdy, from Marvel Comics
 * An early 'test' for Victory Girl was Boomstick. She might not be smaller than normal, and what she weilds is not a traditional 'gun', but the huge symbiate cannon that is her right arm does seem to count.
 * Panda Delgado in Body Bags. Mostly only in covers and pin-ups, in the actual book she usually has a Glock.

Film
"Commissioner Dolan: Is every goddamn woman in this goddamn hell hole out of her goddamn mind?
 * Private Vasquez from Aliens is played by a 5'3 actress and wields a 40-pound machine gun. "Let's rock!!"
 * In the movie Jackie Brown, the characters are seen watching a video of bikini-clad women firing off massive assault rifles. Such things actually exist.
 * Mattie in both True Grit adaptations.
 * Smokin Aces gave the smallest girl in the cast the largest weapon, a fifty caliber anti-personnel rapid-fire sniper rifle that shoots straight through walls.
 * While Morgenstern, from The Spirit film, looks like an ordinary rookie cop at first, later she pulls out a massive Hand Cannon of a gun.

Morgenstern: No, sir. We're just equipped."


 * In Pirates of the Caribbean, Elizabeth Swann normally prefers swords, but dips into this trope as part of her new Action Girl status in the beginning of At Worlds' End. They make her take out all her weapons, including one large handgun. It's never made clear where she kept it.
 * Is it?
 * Little Rock from Zombieland can use a quite impressive arsenal for a 12-year-old.
 * In Predators, one of the character is a Special Forces sniper played by Alice Braga. The actress went on the record as saying that she had to train a lot just to be able to carry the gun around.
 * Nikita carries a Desert Eagle. Lampshaded in radio adverts for the film, where Antoine de Caunes said, more or less, "If you like movies about pretty girls in teeny tiny dresses carrying big guns..."

Literature

 * Hope Adams from Women of the Otherworld has the superpower of sensing chaos, but no combat abilities. She's also quite shor- petite. Since her chaos detector invariably draws her into danger, she makes a point of carrying at least one gun with her, and she regularly practices with it.
 * Shiro Miaowara of "The Adventures of Samurai Cat" is male, but fits the trope otherwise; he's a tiny little boy, and packs ridiculously huge guns. At one point he totes around a giant vulcan Avenger cannon and says he's able to swing it about thanks to possessing the strength of madness.
 * Zack of the Hell's Bells series of Urban Fantasy novels is an example of Small Girl Big Staff, her channelling focus being an iron pole described as longer than she is tall, with which she wipes the floor with vampires, wizards and demons alike. As if that weren't enough, her normal firearm is a .455 Webley revolver, and in the climax of Dead Silver she ends up behind the barrel of a minigun.

Live Action TV
"Kari: Mama like."
 * Any number of police/thriller shows where a petite female character wearing body-hugging clothes suddenly pulls a full-frame service automatic from under her jacket. Caitlin Todd (Sasha Alexander) often did this in the first two seasons of NCIS, and Rita Lance (Mitzi Kapture) of Silk Stalkings did it in nearly every episode. Avoided in the serial-killer thriller Copycat where very petite Holly Hunter carries an compact SIG-Sauer 232 in a realistic manner.
 * She isn't exactly timid but Ace from Doctor Who could be an example of this trope.
 * WHO ARE YOU CALLING SMALL?
 * And the S4 episode The Stolen Earth has
 * Rose has a massive ice gun (well, a futuristic fire extinguisher) in "The Girl in the Fireplace"
 * In an episode of Everybody Hates Chris, Chris has an Imagine Spot of his family manically holding weapons, with each descending family member getting a bigger weapon, leading up to Tanya holding a bazooka.
 * Sakura (BoukenPink) does this in one episode of GoGo Sentai Boukenger. When her male teammates get kidnapped, she draws on her Japanese Self-Defense Force experience instead of her Ranger powers, and rescues them by walking into plain sight of the army of Mooks and firing two machine guns nonstop. No explanation is given as to how her shoulders aren't instantly dislocated, but that was probably done on purpose.
 * Star Trek: Voyager: Captain Janeway brandishes a large compression phaser rifle whenever it's time to get Sigourney Weaver on the Monster of the Week's butt. See "Macrocosm", "Dark Frontier" and many more.
 * Kari Byron from Myth Busters once held the reins of a M-134 Minigun, for the "cutting a tree down with gunfire" myth. And it was awesome.
 * Happened again with the 'shooting around corners' myth, although it was more the device it was in that was huge than the gun itself. The gun itself is actually just a handgun.

"Science gets more fun when I get a bigger gun."
 * When testing if you could bullet-proof a vehicle with phone books, Kari got to play with a .50 cal sniper rifle, and succeeded in disabling the engine of the vehicle with it.


 * Also in the James Bond Propane Tank myth, where the boys had a handgun and a small-caliber rifle, she brought in a shotgun!
 * In fact, just about any time all the members of the build team are shooting something, she's the one with the biggest gun. This probably isn't accidental.
 * In the "Scary-go-round" myth, Kari fires a .50cal rifle, as well as posing with it.
 * Dr. Brennan of Bones carries what appears to be a stainless .45 revolver for a few episodes, prompting nervous commentary from Agent Booth. In a moment of unusual realism, it get subverted in a later episode; in the midst of a desperate firefight Bones offers Booth her gun, admitting "mine is too big for me." It's a Smith&Wesson .500, the largest caliber handgun available on the market. It's used for metal silhouette target shooting. And moose hunting.
 * Despite being a size 0, Fiona from Burn Notice always has a huge shotgun or assault rifle handy nearby.
 * It's not her weapon of choice, but Buffy once takes out a particularly powerful demon with a rocket launcher almost half as big as her body.
 * Hana may be a young girl due to timetravel weirdness, but her weapon of choice is a bazooka. No weapon is more fitting for a girl who can singlehandedly beat the tar out of a kaijin twice her size.
 * Very tiny general Beckmann uses a rocket launcher in an episode of Chuck. (Law of Inverse Recoil was luckily averted)

Real Life

 * Four foot, ten inch (1.47 meters) Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde. See picture at the Outlaw Couple page.
 * When Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, she used an M1911A1 .45 Colt semi-automatic. The fact her nick-name is "Squeaky" suggests she's not exactly an Amazon, either.
 * This adorable little girl.

Tabletop Games

 * The character of "Suzie Jones" in ''Vampire: The Masquerade'. Embraced at the age of 16, Suzie was your archetypal gun-bunny munchkin Brujah. Used the Obfuscate discipline to wear all her firearms in plain sight, and just keep people from noticing. Highlights of her career involved firing an anti-tank missile launcher down a crowded tunnel (it was full of demons), using her fangs to literally hang off the shoulder of a much larger vampire elder in melee while using her sole functioning arm to stuff an unpinned white phosphorous grenade into the elder's back pocket, and going through an entire 500-round belt of minigun ammo while in a synagogue. (In her defense, she was aiming at a Setite Methuselah that had already flattened the rest of the party, and her only hope of survival was More Dakka.)

Theatre

 * Taz from Starship arguably has the biggest gun in the group despite being the shortest person in the cast.

Video Games

 * Any female character from Gods Eater Burst fits this description, as the weapon they all wield, the God Arc, is several times their size by standard.
 * Ciel from Tsukihime, a curry loving Meganekko [[media:tsukiCG_049.jpg|by day]] and... [[media:ciel_bfg.png|this]] by night. Plus she's a bit of a Knife Nut. Though her "Seventh Holy Scripture" is not so much a gun as it is a pile-bunker with a unicorn's horn for anti-vampire purposes... but it's close enough. Normally, the magical weapon is a spear or sword, but she personally and specifically redesigned it to be an enormous jack-hammer. She's just that hardcore.
 * B. B. Hood from Darkstalkers, who carries machine guns, land mines, flame throwers, grenades, a rocket launcher and occasionally, a pair of heavily armed mercenaries under her red riding hood cloak.
 * Rozalin from Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories. While, technically speaking, she can be equipped with anything from a sword to a staff like anyone else, she unarguably is best with ballistics and her first special attack involves whipping a chaingun bigger than she is out of Hammerspace and riddling enemies with tons of bullets.
 * Meryl from Metal Gear Solid wields the Desert Eagle 50. AE, a gun that is well known for being impractically huge, no matter who carries it. And it's a custom long barrel model.
 * In Makai Kingdom, just about anyone can wield a minigun, bazooka, or giant arm cannon though only a few classes are proficient. With class changes, an Archer can use those just fine. Etna specializes in miniguns as a special character, while Castile can use bazookas.
 * Try handing Miranda or one of the female Marines one of the bigger weapons in Halo. You'll suddenly realize that they were initially scaled for 7 foot cyborgs or 8 foot aliens.
 * Take a wild guess how a gender-bender version of Heavy Weapons Guy is usually portrayed in fanart. And no, they didn't make the Scout a lumbering beast in return.
 * Carol from Wild Arms 5. Teeny-tiny girl, huge honking rocket launcher.
 * Xenosaga has a couple. KOS-MOS isn't exactly small, but she dual-wields triple miniguns in a few attacks; Shion plays it straighter, with her arm-mounted MWS.
 * Lady from Devil May Cry hefts around a gun that happens to be larger than she is tall.
 * Any female Lancer from Valkyria Chronicles, whose weapons are longer than they are tall. Applies to Aisha as well, as she's only 12-years old and wields the Shocktroopers' standard assault rifle.
 * Carmelita Fox in Sly Cooper wields a shock pistol that kicks so hard she can hardly hold onto the thing when she fires it. The bolts of electricity it fires can destroy inanimate objects in one shot and kill even hulking flashlight guards in 2 shots.
 * Iji complains at the beginning that she can barely lift her Nanogun. Hardly surprising, as it's designed to be carried by a Tasen Soldier, who are about seven feet tall. Iji herself is actually 6'3", but the weapon is still pretty big compared to her. The recoil from the MPFB Devastator (essentially a triple-nuclear-rocket launcher) knocks her off her feet, unless she maxes out her Strength stat.
 * The eponymous protagonist of Hyper Princess Pitch, by the same author, uses an even bigger gun.
 * Possible via cheating in Fallout 3. Use mods or console commands to make your character a 10 year old, then specialize in Big Guns. Normal adult female characters specialized in Big Guns also fall under this trope.
 * Noel Vermillion uses a pair of Hand Cannons each the length of her arms. Her Distortion Drives summon even bigger guns for More Dakka.
 * Femme Fatale Mona Sax from the Max Payne games is rather slender and petite, yet her signature weapon is a Desert Eagle, the largest handgun available in the games. This is especially evident in her Mexican Standoffs against Max, who usually sticks to more modest but more efficient (dual) Berettas.
 * Tess designs BFGs for Jak that are at least as big as she is.
 * The unlockable cutscene commentary in Jak 3 explains that, in one scene, they actually had to scale down one of Jak's guns just so that it wouldn't look ridiculous when she held it. Considering how many fans this trope has, it's kind of a shame they didn't leave the gun as it appears in-game.
 * Speed Buster from No More Heroes used a 50-foot laser cannon as her weapon of choice.
 * Playing a female Shepard in Mass Effect 2 and using the Cain probably counts. The weapon itself isn't THAT big, but it makes a ridiculously big explosion. Likewise, any combat-class FemShep who picks one of the advanced weapons. The Widow looks like a telegraph pole, and the Claymore and Revenant are just huge.
 * And Mass Effect 3 allows you to give Tali a Claymore...
 * As well as carry a Widow, a Revenant, and a Claymore at the same time as Female Shepard...
 * Oerba Dia Vanille's Eidolon, Hecatoncheir, can transform into a walking war platform with really big guns.
 * Also,
 * During the first chapter,
 * Playing Rochelle and picking up an M60 in Left 4 Dead 2 could count as this, seeing as the M60 is almost at tall as she is.
 * A build possibility in Hellgate London; a tiny markswoman can dual-wield massive gatling rocket-launchers.
 * Phantasy Star Online has the human and CAST female Ranger classes, R Amarl and R Acaseal respectively. Phantasy Star Universe also has a Ranger class and its offshoots that are open to females of any race. While not always being the case, they can be made as small as a young girl. And with the same customization systems, one could also make a Gender Flipped example of this trope.
 * Same in Phantasy Star Zero - and the cannons of that game compensate for every penis on the server.
 * Tristana from League of Legends, of course. She carries around a rocket launcher taller than she is, and can even use it to Rocket Jump.
 * Imca from valkyria chronicles 3 may be the queen of this trope not only dose she get a huge missile launcher from the beginning but it also has the capibility to fire at all enimes on the screen in rapid sucession did i mention the thing is as big as she is and still has a bayanet that must be like stabing some one to death with a television set and still manages to swing it around in combat like its nothing
 * Rebecca Chambers from Resident Evil Zero becomes this when equipped with a shotgun. It's not that the gun is big as much as she's really, really tiny, but the result is still pretty hilarious.
 * Jill Valentine in Resident Evil 3 Nemesis isn't as tiny, but her bonus Rocket Launcher is only slightly smaller than her.
 * Aya, the small-framed heroine of the Parasite Eve series gets her hands on some really big guns. In the first game she gets a rocket launcher that is as long as she is tall. The sequel ups the ante by allowing her to wield a giant portable railcannon that takes time to charge, and sends her back a few feet whenever she fires it.
 * Time Splitters 2 lets you dual wield a fair number of weapons. Picking any of the smaller characters and using twin homing RPGs can lead to a few laughs in multiplayer. Unfortunately, the full potential is prevented by scaling.
 * Saki Omokane from Quiz Nanairo Dreams.

Webcomics

 * Joyce's Hammerspace BFG in It's Walky!
 * Mell from Narbonic.
 * Unity from Skin Horse.
 * Nerf Now!! gives us a baby Heavy Weapons Girl.
 * Fleur in Okashina Okashi.
 * An unnamed girl from the Terrible Interviewees Montage at the start of Keychain of Creation has a very large Essence Cannon. The interviewers are less than impressed, especially when she drops it and it shoots one of the interviewees behind her.
 * Homestuck: Jade Harley is an adorable thirteen-year-old Genki Girl... who happens to very adept at the use of hunting rifles as long as she is tall. When she gains access to Item Crafting, the guns get even bigger.
 * Panda Xpress had its origins in a sketch of the (five year old) protagonist Dahlia with a machine gun. The gun was replaced with a cyborg panda before the launch of the series.

Web Original

 * As seen on Deviant ART: A schoolgirl firing a Barret .50cal sniper rifle from the shoulder.
 * Bunker, of the Whateley Universe. Petite (mutant) girl, usually armed with bazookas, full-sized machines guns, you name it. She likes the big guns. Hive might qualify too, given that she wields a Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle.

Western Animation

 * Disney seems to have a fixation for girls/love interests with guns who love to use them:
 * Glittering Goldie from DuckTales. In Scrooge's nephews' words, "Cupid's arrow is nothing next to Goldie's shotgun."
 * Most of the main female characters in Danny Phantom has brandished large Fenton guns at several points in the episode. Especially Ghost Hunter Valerie who had rocket launchers attached to her shoulders at one point!
 * Re Boot has Dot Matrix wearing a really big strap-on gun. "What do you think? Does it make me look too butch?"