Badass Adorable

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Real Men ARE Pink!

"I know they look cute, especially when they're these little kittens, but I'll tell you what, these are tough hunters." —Thane Maynard of the Cincinnati Zoo, on sand cats.

A catch-all term for characters who, while being absolutely adorable, are also extremely Badass.

A significant overlap with Cute Bruiser and Little Miss Badass can occur. What distinguishes the Badass Adorable from their peers is the adorability. Particular emphasis is placed on their inherent vulnerability (emotional or otherwise), which is at odds with the abilities they can access.

Underneath the irrepressibly cheerful demeanor, behind the innocent wide-eyed gaze, lies an astonishing capacity for kicking your ass, leveling a city, or even leveling an entire country. Perhaps you've threatened their loved ones. Perhaps you've offended their inviolate sense of justice. Maybe you took the last piece of cake. No matter what shape the grievance against you takes, expect to be subsequently welcomed into a whole new realm of hurt.

Their destructiveness is directly proportional to their cuteness. Thus, Beware the Nice Ones. The Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds emerges as a result of the Badass Adorable being pushed beyond their limits.

Compare and Contrast with Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, who may not even be cognizant of their own badassery. Could be The Ditz, or just the Series Mascot, but equally likely to be a Bunny Ears Lawyer. In some cases they are also a Mama Bear and Papa Wolf, though the latter is rare. See also Tyke Bomb, for when the Badass Adorable is reared for the sole purpose of serving as living weaponry. A Badass little critter can also be a Killer Rabbit. There is also a subtype which could be called "Badass Adorkable", where the character in question has Nerd/Geek/Dork characteristics as well (such characters are often male, but Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer would also definitely qualify). A particularly idealistic or heroic Badass Adorkable may be a Dork Knight.

It can be considered a Sub-Trope of Moe.

Examples of Badass Adorable include:

Advertising

• The banana in this Wrigley Gum commercial.
• The little girl from this Haribo advert.

Anime and Manga

• Ask Dr. Rin: Meirin Kanzaki.
• Fairy Tail: has several adorable (and occasionally sexy as well) badasses on its roster, including Levy, Wendy, Lucy, and Mirajane.
  • Erza's adorable moments are few and far between, given that she's The Big Guy of the group, but when she has them they are priceless.
  • Happy, Charle, and especially Pantherlily.
  • Angel and Meredy as evil variants.
  • Zeref
  • Mavis, the first Guild Master of Fairy Tail, who manages to be kind, cute, mysterious and hilarious at the same time, and badass enough to master and cast one of the most powerful protection spells in the Fairy Tail universe from beyond the grave, Fairy Sphere. On top of that she created and can probably cast Fairy Glitter and Fairy Law.
• Solty Rei: Solty Revant. Cute, shy, plucky, considerate, compassionate... and a Robot Girl who will quickly make with the ass-handing to ANYONE who threatens her adoptive family.
• Sayoko Shinozaki from Code Geass.
• Daisuke from D.N.Angel. And Satoshi to a lesser extent.
• Cardcaptor Sakura:
  • Sakura Kinomoto, especially after she becomes master of the Clow Cards, effectively making her the most powerful being on the planet, while still remaining a blissfully naive Cheerful Child of the highest order.
  • Mei-ling, for more human reasons.
• Miharu from Nabari no Ou. Shijima, at times, as well.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • May Chang, complete with pink dress, adorable pet panda, and prodigy level alkahestry skills.
  • Also, Alphonse. Some would also say Edward. Just don't call him cute...or short.
  • Major Alex Armstrong! The childish sincerity of this big teddy-bear really makes you wanna give him a big hug. Unless you're Ed, in which case you're getting glomped and begging him to "Stop rubbing your chest on me!"
• Most of the main cast of Gunslinger Girl.
• Ginji from GetBackers is extremely nice to everyone, and steadfastly believes in giving people second chances. Pretty much all the 'good' guys/girls in the series like him (or at least don't dislike him), and he has a huge number of devotees who think the world of him. But heaven help you if you manage to awaken the guy's Super-Powered Evil Side...
  • And Natsumi in the anime. Anyone who's been unfortunate enough to believe that they can beat her at ping-pong will surely agree.
• Saeba Ryo, the Lovable Sex Maniac Man Child hero of City Hunter. Akira Kamiya is sure good at playing sensitive and kind hearted badasses, isn't he?
• Shiro Kabuto from Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger. He is the cute, ten-years-old Annoying Younger Sibling of the main character. And he is also pretty Badass when he wants, beating bullies bigger than him or adult men, or even piloting the Hover Pilder (the flying device was necessary docking on the head of Mazinger-Z to start the Humongous Mecha).
  • Goro Makiba from UFO Robo Grendizer also counts like a cute child capable of awesome feats. At least his incarnation of the original manga. In one arc Barados kidnapped several hostages and hijacked Great Mazinger, and then tied his prisoners to the Humongous Mecha to prevent Duke from fighting. Goro managed to get rid from the ropes tying him and then released Kouji.
• Peacemaker Kurogane:
  • While he's pretty cute and tough to begin with, it's only through Character Development that Tetsunosuke becomes that much more Badass.
  • Also, Okita Souji. He's constantly smiling, loves candy, plays with the neighborhood kids, has a cute little piglet as a pet that he fawns over, is pretty much a male Yamato Nadeshiko wife to Hijikata, and is well-known for being the most terrifying swordsman in all of Japan.
  • Nagakura Shinpachi, especially with Art Evolution gradually making him look more and more like a kid-edition Bishonen. Despite appearances, he is a very competent swordsman and commander, and still inspires the urge to cuddle him even while splattered with blood.
• The eponymous character of Rurouni Kenshin. It's the "oro?" The fact that he is the first genuinely sensitive, kind-hearted and nice anime bloke since Goku and Kenshiro, rather than just another emotionally repressed and cynical Jerkass Nineties Anti-Hero. And then you have about half the cast with Kaoru, Misao, Yahiko and Soujiro all invoking various flavors of this trope.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Shinji Ikari in the alternate continuities. The original series leaves most of the badassery to his mecha on autopilot.
  • People saying that Shinji is not Badass enough in the original series should one day just try holding red-hot pieces of metal for half a minute (never mind fighting someone in the process). Yes, his hands weren't damaged directly, but he felt all the damage to Eva-01 as if his own body was harmed.
  • And later he leaped into a freaking volcano and dived in the magma to save Asuka. Even if he was inside his Humongous Mecha and it was hand waved by his AT Field protecting him, both Unit-02 and Asuka had needed to wear a special suit to not die, so he was feeling the heat of the magma, and for all what he knew, he could die by attempting rescuing her.
  • Rebuild 2.0 - "GIVE REI BACK!" Commence reactivating 01 on willpower/rage alone, rocket punching Zeruel (or as close an Eva can get to one), saving Rei and almost ending the world. There just may be some Kabuto genes in him.
• Diebuster‍'‍s Nono. The cutest robot you'll ever meet is in fact the seventh Buster Machine and a Person of Mass Destruction capable of controlling the Buster Corps, slicing one of Saturn's moons in half and kicking the shit out of an Eldritch Abomination the size of a planet. And all of this while being ditzy and having Nia's voice.
• Hayate the Combat Butler:
  • Hayate
  • Isumi, especially thanks to her Big Damn Heroes moment and her great big dragon. Hinagiku also qualifies as she can be VERY moe sometimes and is very Badass all the time.
• A lot of Pokémon owned by characters in the anime fall under this. IE: Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Piplup, Teddiursa, Raichu and Clefairy are just a handful of examples.
  • One of the most prime examples is the 1st gen Pokemon, Mew, which is ungodly adorable and is always shown to be very playful and childlike, and is described as being the 'Psychic Kitten' Pokemon. One could hardly take it seriously until you realize that it's capable of using every single non-legendary specific move in the entire series.
  • In addition to actual monsters, some of the human characters also qualify. Ash Ketchum has the appearance and mannerisms of a brash, classically adorable little boy. He's also one of few humans to physically put himself on the line for Pokémon in the series, jumps around like a Mankey to rescue said Pokémon, and is even capable of using Aura. He even risks or even knowingly sacrifices himself for Pokémon regularly! Maylene, Whitney, and Misty may also qualify; Maylene is basically described this way by other characters.
  • This trope also holds true for the human protagonists of the Pokémon Special manga, as nearly everyone fights alongside their Pokémon. Special mention goes to Sapphire, who at the mere age of 10 is already capable of fighting Pokémon on her own, and is apparently strong enough to rip apart fountains and sprint while carrying a fully-grown man.
  • Hareta from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure is rather young but can go against Pokemon, can lift things far heavier than him (including a Rhyperior), and has a common battle strategy which can be summed up as "I fight alongside my Pokemon no matter how tough the opponent".
• Moka Akashiya (her friendly side) from Rosario + Vampire can count as this. Also Kurumu Kurono, Yukari Sendou, Mizore Shirayuki and Ruby Toujyou can count as well. They all are capable enough to kill humans, but they're also so damn cute.
  • And Inner Moka is quite Badass and has her Moe moments.
  • Kokoa Shuzen can count too, but at a much lesser extent.
  • And then there's Akuha Shuzen, who is of the Psychopathic Manchild verity.
  • Tsukune who is quite the sweet Adorkable Nice Guy and a Bishonen (season II of the manga due to Art Evolution) and becomes incredibly Badass.
• Digimon Adventure has Gatomon, who is a little cat mon... who happens to be able to take down six Champion/Adult Digimon without breaking a sweat. Technically, she was a Champion level too... but she still qualifies. In fact every Rookie Digimon counts.
• Kawazoe Tamaki of Bamboo Blade.
• Golden Darkness/Konjiki no Yami from To LOVE-Ru.
• Eve from Black Cat (The character who inspired Kawazoe's design and powers in Bamboo Blade).
• Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
  • Tsuna.
  • Reborn himself. He's a baby.
  • Yamamoto. He's an insanely Nice Guy that smiles a lot but put a sword in his hand and get him mad enough...
• Weed from Ginga Densetsu Weed.
  • Also Gin from Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin.
• Almost every Magical Girl (other than specific deconstructions of the genre) and their counterparts. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is possibly the most exemplary.
  • Nanoha makes friends by beating the tar out of them.
  • In the end though, it's probably Vita who's the best example of this trope. So Moe and yet so manly.
  • Despite being a Deconstruction, Puella Magi Madoka Magica's girls are very much this. Even Homura had an Adorkable phase before taking several levels in badass during the course of her Groundhog Day Loop.
• Yuki Nagato, from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is The Stoic dialed Up to Eleven, which makes her smiles extremely cute when they appear.
• Noir has Kirika-chan, who elevates the trope to Badass Woobie. The fact that she is so cuddly and huggable really helps.
  • Also the flashback where she commits her first assassination around the age of five! Certain death has never been so cute.
• Kara no Kyoukai: -- Shiki Ryougi. Mixed with a healthy amount of Fetish Fuel, as expected of Nasu, whenever she gets all dere-dere toward Mikiya, she's extremely huggable and borders on Moe. That's, of course, when she isn't slicing up ghosts, zombies, magicians and stuff.
  • Also in the same series, we have Azaka Kokuto, Mikiya's younger sister who can set things on fire and kick giant flower demon thing on the head, and finally overpower aforementioned Shiki. She does that while being extremely Moe.
• Also, from the same people who brought you Kirika, we have Madlax who is just as adorable and huggable, with the sexiness turned up to eleven.
• The eponymous Shakugan no Shana.
  • Even more so in the omakes. Shana-tan, the heroine's chibified alter-ego, doesn't lose any of Shana's strength due to the reduction in size, and even uses her signature attack in this form.
  • Her expies; even the non-magical ones pack a serious punch. The palmtop tiger is not to be messed with.
  • And after he gets his act together, Yuuji.
• Subverted with the main character of .hack//Sign. He's acting all tough and capable of holding things on his own in the game world, where in the real world she's in a coma, and her dad tries to pull the plug on her.
• Magic Knight Rayearth: The three titular Magic Knights are cute girls who are gutsy and powerful. Hikaru in particular is definitely this.
• Son Gohan from Dragonball Z can trash world destroying super-powered psychopaths.
  • Same thing goes to young Trunks and Son Goten during the Buu saga. Especially when they fuse.
  • And Son Goku, even in his adult self, is an endearingly innocent and kindhearted boy... who has saved the world so many times that he has "lost count" (he had trouble counting past eleven due to brain damage suffered as a baby).
  • It's been noted on the Dragon Ball page that Badass Adorable must be In the Blood: not only Goku and his sons, but his wife Chi-Chi, daughter-in-law Videl and granddaughter Pan are all Tsundere Cute Bruisers, too.
• Negi Springfield from Mahou Sensei Negima, especially in the later chapters of the manga.
  • Kotaro Inugami counts too. Most of the characters fall into this trope.
  • Even the current Big Bad.
  • Also Chachamaru, and especially her artifact, a Kill Sat capable of taking out a Cosmic Horror...and looks like this.
  • How can you not mention Miyazaki Nodoka? She interrupts a fight between Negi and the Big Bad just to gather intelligence and mind-reads and taunts the Bigger Bad. And afterwards goes back to being her humble Moe self.
  • Though she would threaten to kill you for calling her that, Evangeline could count as well, as she's a 700 year old evil vampire mage... in a body not older than 10, though she's not as evil as she insists she is. Definitely badass, and has her adorable moments.
• Spirit from Soul Eater. A rare Papa Wolf example.
  • Maka could be considered as a subversion of this trope. She doesn't display many Moe tendencies, but she can qualify as being cute, and DEFINITELY qualifies as Badass.
  • Thunder and Fire, by far the youngest Weapons (five? If that?) but very effective when they and their Hot-Blooded meister Kirikou fight.
• They turn up in the KeyAni adaptations, of all places.
  • Mai Kawasumi from Kanon: even if the demons she fights every night are emanations of her own powers resulting from her reluctance to embrace them, you have to admit she's pretty handy with a sword.
  • Tomoyo Sakagami from Clannad. Just ask the local biker gangs. Or Sunohara.
• Maya, the cute little Iriomote cat from Azumanga Daioh. His reappearance is both a Crowning Moment of Awesome and a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
  • Hey, Sakaki counts! Some of the amazing stuff she pulls off would not be out of place in any action series.
• Hungary from Axis Powers Hetalia. Ex-Cute Bruiser Bokukko. Gentle Meido and Parental Substitute to North Italy. Diehard Yaoi Fangirl. VERY capable and fearless Violently Protective Girlfriend.
  • Strips!Finland and Anime!China also count.
  • America had Super Strength even when he was a kid, though he seems to use it more for throwing buffalo/dragging vehicles around/ripping windows off their sills than beating people up. Still badass and adorable.
  • The young Italy once took down Turkey. It was a onetime thing but it proved he can be Badass when he wants to be.
  • Russia is pretty Badass and scary and has tons of fangirls in Real Life that think he's the most adorable thing ever.
  • Sealand has officially reached Badass Adorable status in the 2010 Christmas Special.
  • Let's just admit it: everyone in APH is both adorable and badass.
• Allen from D.Gray-man: exceedingly adorable. But, since he's a Shonen protagonist, he's also made of Badass. Anyone who can shout the name of his Innocence (Crown Clown) without looking like a total idiot automatically qualifies.
  • As creepy as she is, Road also counts.
  • And Lenalee.
• Tony Tony Chopper of One Piece. An adorable little reindeer kid, who nonetheless can turn into a muscular fighter and be quite Badass when the situation requires it. And that's not even going into his monstrous Deadly Upgrade.
  • Luffy and Nami also qualify: they're usually cute, but God help you if you fuck with them, their crew, or their friends..
• Bleach has Nel Tu, at least in her adult form. She manages to take down an opponent stronger than Grimmjow, or at least had him one strike from death before her power gave out and she reverted to her child form. Also doubles as a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass.
  • Also, Rukia. Short, flat chested and skinny, with pixieish features and big eyes even by anime standards, loves bunnies, can't draw but insists on doing so anyway, has a Dark and Troubled Past, and kicks ass. Well, most of the time.
  • Ururu Tsumugiya, a cute young girl who assists Urahara. She appears meek, but can pack a super-power punch. Ururu is short, shy, clumsy at times, and sad-eyed... and can kick an Arrancar's ass with ease. And that's before she pulls out the rocket launcher.
  • Retsu Unohana. She's the extremely gentle, ladylike, and motherly captain of the 4th Squad. Despite her calm and motherly outlook, Unohana happens to be one of the oldest Captains in the Gotei 13 and has been around presumably since the beginning of the formation of the Gotei 13, and has led her squad ever since. Not only that, she hides an extremely scary Battle Aura that makes even the most Badass Shinigami go weak in the knees when imagining her wrath. This is even more evident whenever other squads start bullying her squad, whereas a slight glare is enough to send the bullies pissing their pants.
  • Ukitake is rather sweet and like Unohana is one of the older captains. When he teams up with Kyoraku to fight Starrk that mild-mannered niceness suddenly looks a lot less harmless; "Did that guy just fire a cero?"
  • Also, Hiyori. She appears as a tomboyish, cute little girl, with a rather violent temper, and she isn't afraid to make this violent temper known to her enemies.
  • And her companion Mashiro, a Genius Ditz who dresses up as a Kamen Rider Fan Girl and can kick just as much as the original does. She literally does kick ass, "RIDER KICK!"
  • Yachiru. She's small, cute, gives nicknames to everyone, and rides around on the shoulder of everyone's favourite Badass, "Kenny." She's also the lieutenant of the combat based squad 11 for good reason, and the only reason she never gets to show off is because she likes letting Kenpachi enjoy his fights. In fact, it's been hinted that she's actually stronger than him. Also, she has pink hair.
  • One of the very rare villainous examples is Bambietta Basterbine, a membress of the Vandereich. Because a long-haired girl with a Commissar Cap and a heart-shaped belt-brooch can't just be on the villains's side, can she? Oh Shit--, How many enemies did she take down at once?! And did she just call Komamura "a doggie dog?!
• Hatchin is a pretty good example. While she can often be overshadowed by Michiko in terms of badassness, Hatchin is nothing to sneeze at.
• Nearly everybody from the female cast of Nagasarete Airantou. Especially Machi.
• Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Julian Mintz: starts the series as a little-boy Bishonen, end it as a blond haired pretty boy. You would never suspect the things he can do with an axe, espcially if you push his berserk button (like killing seven guys passing by in fourteen seconds, scary...)
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
  • Marufuji Shou. Short, cute, adorable beyond words. Juudai's the hero, but Shou is badass. And he does it all wearing glasses, too.
  • While we're on the subject, how about Yugi Mutou himself? Not only is he short and incredibly adorable, he's super special awesome enough at Duel Monsters to defeat his super sexy ancient Egyptian alter ego. To top it off, he's voiced by Dan Green.
• Tachikomas. It's pretty impressive to make a spider tank adorable.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple.
  • Thanks to Nijima's persistent rumor-mongering, most of the school is thoroughly convinced that Kenichi's some sort of human vortex of destruction and badassery. While he can live up to quite a few of the claims (except for the one about him OHKO-ing a bear. The Godless Killing Machines are still very excellent at fucking his shit up), people that meet him are surprised to find that he's usually more like this.
  • Then there's Chikage Kushinada, age 10 and fully capable of standing alongside the teenage fighters. Her nature as a Creepy Child makes the occasional slips into "Child Mode" as her character develops all the cuter.
• Ciel from Black Butler. Like a regular chess master he uses this to his advantage. He could get away with murder with a face like that. And he does. Repeatedly.
  • Finny looks sweet and innocent, even when tearing trees up by their roots and hurling hunks of stone.
  • Mey-Rin. An Adorkable Meganekko who can snipe you from miles away when her glasses come off
  • As of chapter 57, it seems Elizabeth is one too. She desperately wanted for her fiancé Ciel to not see her "uncute" side, so she deliberately hid her badass side. Right up until when Ciel despite his best efforts ends up injured and unable to save her in danger himself, then Elizabeth leaps into the air and takes down the zombies with swords in both hands while tearfully declaring that she'll protect him. She fights, still in her adorable dress with a cute but deadly expression across her face.
• Mariko from Elfen Lied. She pulls off both terrifying and adorable.
  • And Lucy? Her Nyu persona is the epitome of cuteness but she can also be adorable herself, for a murderous Yandere.
• Rena ^{[dead link]} from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. She's the Cute Mascot and can be either downright scary in more ways than one, or a very smart ally.
  • Shion also counts. She's adorable for a seventeen year old, and can be pretty awesome(and scary). Rika also counts when she becomes a Determinator.
  • The adorable Woobie-riffic Satoko. While she may not seem Badass at first there's no denying the awesomeness in her finally calling her abusive uncle out and yelling at him to "GET OUT!" despite being beaten while doing so. And in Meakashi-hen, she absolutely refuses to cry as Shion tortures her to death, claiming that she's realized how much of a burden she was on Satoshi and not wanting to be The Load anymore.
  • Keiichi. He's a Hot Blooded Bishonen who can be adorable and hilarious at times and at various points demonstrates epic displays of GAR-ness.
• Hunny-sempai from Ouran High School Host Club: while adorable, small, blonde, and cake loving, Hunny-sempai is also an expert martial artist and was able to single handedly take out 7 professionally trained and armed men in 15 seconds flat without so much as breaking a sweat. To top it all off, he scolds the by wagging his finger at them and saying that "hurting my friends is a no-no".
  • How he beat the crap out of 2 platoons of green berets after one of them woke him up from a nap. Hunny-sempai is not a morning person...
  • Also, after beating the crap out of his dad (who was supposedly the strongest martial artist of their family), the Japanese Secretary of Defense, who was the referee, begged Hunny-sempai not to fight in public ever again, lest other countries think Japan was training a WMD...
• Mirai Nikki's Gasai Yuno. Beautiful, adorably Moe, extremely in love with Yukiteru, is incredibly skilled in combat, knows her way around a knife, and is a terrifying psychopath.
  • Also Yukiteru. Following his taking a level in badass.
  • Akise Aru. Much like Yukiteru he's very cute. He's also undeniably Badass. There's no doubt about his badass status when in chapter 51 despite having just been stabbed by Yuno and sliced across the throat, Akise Aru gets back up out of sheer determination and texts an important message to Yukiteru even though Yuno ends up cutting off his head completely. Badass to the end.
• Sweet, innocent, adorable little Astro of Astro Boy fame is one of the cutest things on the planet - and equipped with mountain-levelling strength before you get into his absurd amount of onboard weaponry. Astro might be said to have created this trope.
  • In the 2009 film, he defeats a colosseum's worth of robots made to kill other robots and is merely out of breath; in the final showdown, he flips Peacekeeper over his head after it's absorbed the military and half of Metro City, and is then able to slow the city's fall after the generators blow out.
• Guchuko from Potemayo. Looks like a plushie, has the personality of a stray cat, carries a scythe, and can shoot laser beams at anyone who annoys her.
  • To be clear, the lasers are shot from what appear to be living hair ornaments.
• Utawarerumono's Aruru takes out a small group of soldiers using a tiger! (Granted, the tiger isn't part of her physically, but it might as well be) She is cute enough that the Big Bad (at least, part of him) brings her back to life twice!
• Kino from Kino no Tabi. Seriously, just look at that adorable face! But if you endanger her life, she will shoot you through the head at point-blank range or drive a knife right through your heart...without any hesitation.
• As a timid, doe-eyed messiah, Baccano!'s Jacuzzi is about as Moe as you can possibly make a man without without turning him into Shotabait. He's also prone to crazy feats of badassery like taking out eighteen mafia-owned speakeasies in a single night or going one-on-one with a crazy, flamethrower-wielding cult leader.
• When his young age and relative immaturity don't put him at a disadvantage, Jinpei "The Swallow" from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman can pack just as big a punch as his older teammates.
• Five year-old Ryouta Ninomiya, from Little House With an Orange Roof when he challenges a train otaku to a trivia contest to make him apologize to his step-sister. A Crowning Moment of Awesome for Ryota, as he actually wins the contest, and all the while you can't help but find his determined face adorable.
• Hunter X Hunter:
  • Gon is very much a Bishonen Friend to All Living Things Cheerful Child. His first shown action is ripping a fish that's about five times his mass out of the water by main force and then carrying it back to town over his head. At a dead run. Some time later, he proceeds to break the arm of a superhuman assassin... by grabbing his wrist. With one hand. Why only one hand? It was courtesy of his other hand being inoperative because Gon got his arm broken the day before after an absolutely brutal Determinator sequence where it was shown why twelve-year-old boys rarely win fights with top-flight adult ninja.
  • Killua is also a kid-Bishonen. In his case, though, he knows it, and has more-or-less weaponized it... so that he can get closer to his targets, as he's been trained as one of the world's deadliest assassins since he could walk. And given that this is a world where Training from Hell and Charles Atlas Superpowers actually work... yeah.
• Seras Victoria from Hellsing. She's very much a Moe Woobie, but swings around a massive BFG, and after she drinks Bernadotte's blood she becomes the second strongest vampire. Her absolutely epic Curb Stomping of Zorin Blitz, shortly after Zorin Mind Raped and mutilated her and killed Bernadotte, deserves mention.
• Chrono from Chrono Crusade appears to be a sweet, polite 12-year-old boy. He's actually a decades-old demon with enough power to level a city if he wants to.
  • Rosette too. A 16-year-old Hot-Blooded Plucky Girl who won't stop until she finds her brother. Despite what life she has yet.
• Nina Liebert from Monster is a deconstruction. She's a beautiful and kind-hearted Woobie who undergoes a Break the Cutie process repeatedly and yet she goes from being an ever-so-wholesome law student to a worldly, hooker-impersonating, gangster-frightening gunslinger in about one volume, and mostly through her own efforts. However, despite having the skills and the adorable looks, we see that the poor woman has borne a massive Trauma Conga Line ever since she was a little girl, so her mental fortitude simply can't keep up and at some point she has to be talked out of committing suicide when she realizes how utterly horrible her life as truly been. Just being Badass And Adorable will NOT cut it.
• The eponymous Sailor Moon. And Chibi-Usa. And Ami. And Chibi Chibi. In fact, most of the girls in the series count.
• Teito Klein from 07-Ghost.
• Yuki Sohma of Fruits Basket. Incredibly Bishonen, polite and a real sweetheart, turns into an adorable rat when hugged by the opposite sex, and he's also capable of beating the crap out of his cousin Kyou whenever they have one of their duels.
  • Kagura Sohma. She's adorably Moe and is incredibly capable of beating the crap out of Kyou. Check it out here.
  • Kyou himself probably qualifies, especially early in the series before all the boys have a rather impressive growth spurt. Troubled but Cute, turns into a cute cat when hugged by the opposite sex... and despite being the family punching bag, Kyou is a formidable martial artist in his own right, and has done enough damage to Shigure's house to prove it. His first entrance consists of smashing his way down through a roof to challenge Yuki to a fight.
• Tabitha from The Familiar of Zero. She is a powerful wind mage, can be adorably Moe, and is very much a Woobie. Louise too.
• Minoru of Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru is an adorable pretty boy who is a fast runner (from being on the gymnastics team) and becomes very skilled at karate.
• Yuuri and Wolfram from Kyo Kara Maoh.
• Celty of Durarara!!. A Sinister Scythe-wielding Headless Horseman of a Badass Biker... who wears adorable pink pajamas, likes to talk online, and is afraid of space aliens. Her helmet also has kitty-cat ears on it!
  • Also, Mikado, the shy, gentle Ordinary High School Student who's new to the city. He also has managed to more or less weaponize Anonymous by being the leader of a massive organized gang called the Dollars that he directs via cellphone texts and chatrooms.
• Alice of Pandora Hearts. She appears as an adorable hot-headed little girl. She is actually the infamous B-Rabbit (Bloodstained Black Rabbit), the strongest chain in the Abyss.
  • Oz is also this, when using Alice's power on his own, even when still under seal. Then, it turns out that he is B-Rabbit in Jack's body and his powers bound to Alice's soul.
  • Lily is one of the Baskervilles. She looks right about ten.
• L from Death Note. He's a Badass Bookworm and the greatest detective in the Death Note world. He also has a large amount of fangirls who all agree that he's rather adorable, and he has bizarre child-like mannerisms.
  • Apparently L was meant to be anti-Mr. Fanservice, or at least much uglier than Light. Generic Cuteness or no, they failed miserably.
  • For the guys, there's Misa Amane. She's a tiny, blonde, cheery, squeaky-voiced Genius Ditz who looks 16 (and is actually 19), but is easily one of the craziest characters (yet also pitiable) in the series, and kills innocent people without remorse... in the name of the man she loves. While wearing Perky Goth or Elegant Gothic Lolita attires and acting like a Dumb Blonde.
  • Also, Near. More maternal members of the audience may want to hug him even as he manipulates everyone around him.
  • Light Yagami himself has his moments of badass adorable, especially when he's younger. In some of the artwork, he looks like a Disney character while contemplating murder. Special mention, however, goes to the time when he loses his memory and reverts to his original good personality; some of those scenes portray him as absolutely huggable.
  • Teru Mikami deserves mention, as a child. Going up against vicious bullies despite getting beaten up again and again, all in the defense of a fellow classmate? Badass.
• Momo from Peach Girl. She's pretty and has huge eyes. She's a really sweet girl so long as you don't rouse her temper. If you do happen to piss her off...you may very well get a foot to the face, a headbutt, or a knee to the groin for your trouble. Her crowning moment came when she single-handedly beat up a huge guy who was trying to rape Sae. Other than that she's just a misunderstood girl trying to find true love.
• Akane of Ranma ½.
• Full Metal Panic!:
  • Kaname
  • Tessa as well. She's freaking made of Moe, but she's managed to outwit and pwn GAURON, of all people!
  • Sousuke, in his Bonta-kun mecha.
• Hansel and Gretel from Black Lagoon manage to fulfill the almost impossible task of mixing Badass Adorable with Creepy Twins and Ax Crazy. They use their cuteness to throw people off guard before attacking.
• Angel of Angel Beats!. Also Shiina.
• Kaiji grows from a shrimp into a pretty competent fighter who acknowledges his weaknesses. Some will argue that the whole point of this series is to see Kaiji lose tremendously, get back up in an inspiring and heart-winning manner...then lose even more tremendously. In the end, you just want to give him a hug or buy him some drinks after all that's happened to him (losing scads of money, betrayal and bullying, maiming, losing his comrades, being forced into slave labor, being harassed by a girl he doesn't like...the list goes on). Many, fangirls and fanboys alike, will argue that Kaiji is indeed "moe", or moeGAR.
• Kagura of Gintama. Her quirky, childish tendencies are all so endearing, but she can hold her own against an entire army if need be.
• Ultimo from Karakuridouji Ultimo. Rune as well.
  • That is, before Rune becomes an Ax Crazy, Depraved Homosexual that went to The Dark Side...
  • There's also Mizho, Hana, Service, Sophia, and Oume Hibari. An adult example would be Miyoshi Sumako.
• Simon of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, who takes the level of cuteness possible for a Badass Adorable to rather impressive heights. He's basically an endearing and initially-timid cutie who also happens to be one of the strongest, if not the strongest, Spiral warrior in the cosmos (his Big Brother Mentor Kamina initially exceeded him merely due to his charisma and courage). Later in life, after progressing to Bishonen he manages to summon a mecha the size of a galaxy and save the sentient races of the universe from extinction at the hands of a sociopathic despot. Even then, he still retains his optimistic and endearing personality. ManlyMoe, literally, doesn't begin to cover it.
  • Also post-Time Skip Nia.
  • Team Pet Boota also grows into this a bit later on.
• The Main Character from Kimba the White Lion is also a tough fighter complete with an army of beasts ready to defend his jungle.
• The titular Naruto according to his fangirls.
  • Hinata as well.
• Clan Clang in Macross Frontier: Adorable when micronized, Badass when macronized.
• Moogle Kupo in Final Fantasy Unlimited.
  • Also poor cute Kumo! He may be adorable, but he kicks so much ass that he can break into the Comodeen's Elaborate Underground Base using only a twig he picked up from outside and his breath of Mist.
• Any of the Frogs on Keroro Gunsou, but Tamama especially. He prides himself on appearing cute and innocent, when he's got the power to level buildings if he so wishes.
• Gon from the manga of same name, not the character already listed above.
• Kyo Kara Maoh! has Shibuya Yuuri, who sometimes becomes a Person of Mass Destruction if his loved ones or country are threatened.
• Packy & Botasky of Cat Shit One. These are bunnies... that are in the special forces, and they do kick ass and take names.
• The titular Steel Angel Kurumi. Also Saki and Karinka.
• Ricotta and Genoise from Dog Days.
• Mio from Nichijou; when she's pissed bad things happen.
• Aoi Futaba from Asobi ni Iku yo!.
• Shion from No. 6, the Adorkable Nice Guy Bishonen with big eyes and a huge heart. However, get him pissed off enough, usually by messing with Nezumi, and take cover.
• Sodom and Yuki from Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru.
• Veronica from Franken Fran.
• The Child from Berserk. It's largely speculated that the once misshapen fetus that was Guts and Casca's tainted child caused by Griffith's very heinous act during the Eclipse has been reborn into the very cute and silent little boy that Casca found on the beach. And if the implications are correct, the little boy is still doing what he was doing when he was not-so-cute: warding off evil spirits that try to harm Casca. But the true badass part comes when Guts is overpowered by the Beast, who constantly tries to goad him into killing Casca and all of his friends so he can get back to hunting Griffith. But whenever the Child is nearby, the Beast is always thwarted when the the boy manifests as a body of light within Guts' psyche and brings him back to the light by reminding him of his love for Casca..
  • Guts was pretty cute as a Child Soldier himself, and he could hold his own ground on the battlefield.
• Momoka Oginome in Mawaru Penguindrum. A young girl no older than 10 who is capable of rewriting reality via writing spells in her Destiny Diary at great risk to herself, and who had done a LOT to save two other children who badly needed her help.
• Unico: An adorable baby unicorn who has the power to bring happiness to whoever he befriends but is still able to fight against enemies and is capable of growing to a giant adult sized winged unicorn as necessary? For shame! Bonus points since, like Astro Boy and Kimba, he was created by Osamu Tezuka.
• Kirby, of course, in the anime Hoshi no Kirby/Kirby: Right Back At Ya!.
  • And Knuckle Joe.
  • Fumu/Tiff, too. She's the cute little Cappy girl who cares for Kirby and usually tries to end conflicts without employing violence. But in the second Dedede Elementary School episode, she takes a level in badass and singlehandedly beats up large armed thugs without even touching them.
  • Silica, from the Sacred Sword Galaxia episode, fits this trope too.
• From Tenchi Muyo!, we have Sasami. Adorable, pre-teen princess, darn good cook, most down-to-earth member of the entire cast that wasn't actually born on said planet. And depending on the series: has a hairband that turns into a staff for serious Waif Fu action, can use Juraian magic on par with anyone else, can summon a mini-mecha battle suit, oh and she just happens to be the incarnation/host of one of the three 8th-dimensional goddesses that created the universe as we know it, as little more than a science experiment.
• In The World God Only Knows Haqua goes from a menacing baddass to an apologetic, adorable girl in a single page. Her dere is showing.
• It's quite hard to remember that Akira from Ai Ore Love Me is a badass when he's so small and cute that Even the Guys Want Him.
• The casts of the Black★Rock Shooter OVA and series are so adorable in a way that Elegant Gothic Lolita are darkly adorable, but with added Badassery. Especially the eponymous character, who has Stoic Woobie charm on her.
• The titular Revolutionary Girl Utena and though she may not seem like it at first, Anthy.
• Trinity Blood gives us Seth. Looks to all the world like a cute teenage girl. If you somehow manage to hurt her big brother, kiss your ass goodbye.
• The Anarchy and Demon sisters in Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, especially Stocking.
• Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Nogizaka Haruka rarely shows the badass part of the trope but the first time Ayase Yuto saw her doing it was enough to make him understand he must never make her angry. And that's because her anger was directed at a boy trying to take her from him.
  • Some of her maids might count as well.
  • And her mother.
• Polly from Samurai Pizza Cats.
• Naoya from Lotte no Omocha. He's shown to be able to effortlessly throw Sigurd—a Warrior Prince with a lifetime of military training—aside using the momentum of his flying headbutt, implying skill in either Aikido or Judo. This is further justified by a photo of him that Lotte happened upon in his album, of him in a gi (Japanese Martial Arts Uniform) with a green belt, but four steps away from a black belt, as a child.
• Gerda, from the animated adaptation of The Snow Queen. She is an 11-year-old Danish Genki Girl that can take on boys much bigger than her (she apologizes, though), she is the one that persuades the others to go to a forest nobody went before and, when her best friend is taken by The Snow Queen, she goes in a journey to find him, alone, and the stunts she can pull in the journey, few people can.

Comic Books

• Sam and Max, especially Max. Max varies from being cute to psychotic at the drop of a hat. Sam is more reserved but can be aggressive if the time is right. And both can (and will) shoot people if they mess with them.
• Molly Hayes from Runaways. A cute hat, a giant's strength. A group of Marvel staff ("The Secret Cabal") couldn't put her on their list of "Top Ten Teen Heroes" because she technically isn't a teenager yet, but they stuck her on the list anyway. The picture they put on the list for her Crowning Moment of Awesome: Gut-punching the Punisher. She's eleven years old, goes by the moniker "Princess Powerful", thinks it's important that every burglar wear stockings during a crime (even if they do give her "waffle-face") and she's punching the Punisher. Yes, that Punisher. Molly, we are each and every one of us awesomed by you.
  • It's worth noting that Molly felt terrible about the incident with the Punisher afterwards, since she had assumed the the Punisher had actual powers and could take the hit. This, of course, only makes it more adorable.
  • Molly did the exact same thing to Wolverine, only hard enough to send him flying about fifty yards.
• Squirrel Girl. Absurdly cute with the power to talk to squirrels... and has beaten the likes of Dr. Doom and Thanos.
• Piffany of Nodwick. Cleric of fluffy sweetness who draws duckies and bunnies when the Gambit Pileup she's been diagramming gets too complicated, yet greater demons are terrified of her.
• Gully from Battle Chasers. Not yet nine and half, blonde, green eyed, utterly cute - and wields the Gloves of Aramas which give the wielder the strength of a thousand men. With them, she pwns a pack of werewolves (inadvertently beating one of them to death) and stops a demon at least ten times her size in its tracks long enough for her companion war golem to destroy the containment bracelet, sending it back to Hell permanently.
• The Mouse Guard.
• Julie-Su from Sonic the Hedgehog. A fearless and cunning cyborg experienced in hand-to-hand combat and capable of knocking down crocodiles twice her size. In addition to that, she’s one of the few good guys in the series who has no qualms about carrying a laser and using it. She’s also absolutely adorable.
  • Bunnie Rabbot/D'Coolette (a cute little rabbit with the addition cyborg limbs and super strength) may also apply.
• Lord Noriyuki in Usagi Yojimbo. He rarely has to fight personally (his soldiers do it for him, plus he's about 10–11 years old), but he's good at throwing knives.
• Galacta, the daughter of Galactus. An adorable Meganekko young woman who goes by "Galli" who happens to be the daughter of one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe—and she is almost as powerful as him.
• Power Pack, especially the modern mangaesque version, has Energizer, a six-year-old girl who is the team's firepower and cute as a button.
• Miho from Sin City. She's very small and cute but will decapitate you at the drop of a hat.
• Captain Marvel from DC Comics counts. As someone who is really just an adorable kid (between 12 and 16 years old depending on the writer), and the epitome of 'nice guy' in the DCU (even more so than Superman), he often comes off as a very sweet, kind hero who is easily flustered when women show interest in him or when he does things like befriending sick children at a hospital in Power of Hope. Despite that, he will take on any opposition, up to and including DC's version of Satan and The Spectre (aka the Wrath of God), to save innocent lives. One story involved him getting an ancient possessive spirit to leave a woman, which he did simply by glaring at the spirit and telling it "Get out of her. NOW." Said spirit promptly did.
  • For further proof of both sides of this trope, check out the Justice scene between the Big Red Cheese and the Big Blue Boy Scout in Big Damn Heroes.
• Bigby Wolf from Fables gets turned into a little girl during The Great Fables Crossover by Kevin Thorn. Gary the Pathetic Fallacy would not shut up about how cute Bigby was. This royally pissed off Bigby, who sulked for a couple of issues before sneaking up on a group of enemies that had his friends pinned down and slaughtering them literally bare-handed. This has the side-effect of breaking the spell on him and restoring him to his normal self.
• Mini Marvels turns the entire Marvel Universe into this.
• Wolverine's daughter/clone X-23.
• Loki when he was reincarnated as Kid!Loki. Preteen God of Mischief willing to take on The Dreaded Serpent to save his older brother and the world too? Without the magical prowess and memories of his former self? Winning the hearts of Fangirls and the acclaim of Fanboys? Currently the star of one of Marvel's top books in under six issues? The kid does good work.
• Tintin. A youthful, well-coiffed, baby-faced reporter who doesn't drink, talks to his pet dog, and upholds himself and the world to high moral standards. If you try to violate said standards in front of him, he will punch you through a wall.

Fan Works

• Charlene "Shar" Mack from The Secret Return of Alex Mack, better known as "Pyre", is an adorable nine-year-old girl and the most powerful pyrokinetic on the planet.
• The Anime fanmade versions of the commandos from Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, lovely.
• Yuki from The Return loves pink, glitter, colouring books, looks about 13-14ish, and she will fuck you up.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fangame Super Filly Adventure, this is what becomes of the main character Jade in the warrior ending. Essentially, she SOLO PWNS A DRAGON! With a MAGIC SPEAR..

Film

• Gizmo in Gremlins 2: The New Batch becomes this after he grows too tired of the gremlins' abuse and decides to Take a Level In Badass and start acting like Rambo... that is, if Rambo was an adorable furry... thing.
• Already mentioned in the literature section, but (because it bears repeating) Reepicheep from the The Chronicles of Narnia films. Modeled after Errol Flynn and voiced by Eddie Izzard, Reepicheep goes mouse-to-man several times... and wins! Even though he is as cute as Lucy says (he prefers "courageous, courteous, or chivalrous"), he's a force to be reckoned with. He even tried to take on an army of Telmarines by himself!
• In battle, Quorra of Tron: Legacy knows how to kick ass with her kickboxing and dogfighting abilities. When she's not fighting however, she's naive and has a childlike-innocent view of the world.
• Chewbacca the Gentle Giant from Star Wars.
  • The Ewoks as well.
  • Yoda.
  • Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace. Born of the Immaculate Conception, incredibly sensitive to the Force, a mechanical genius on his spare time and one of the best podracer pilots in the galaxy, with his instant mastery when it comes to pilot a Naboo royal starfighter, destroying the Trade Federation's mothership thus putting an end to the conflict on Naboo in the process. And he was only 9 years old.
  • R2-D2.
• Leeloo from The Fifth Element: cute, innocent and perfectly capable of breaking every bone in your body without breaking a sweat.
• Steve Rogers of Captain America: The First Avenger is a sweet-tempered, well-mannered and kind-hearted boy-next-door who just happens to possess a body rebuilt to human perfection.
• Monica Keena has played this character from time to time, like when she decapitated Freddy Krueger with a machete. Ditto Maggie Gyllenhaal, like when she kneed The Joker in the balls. Also Elliot Page, who totally pwned The Juggernaut, bitch!
• Hit-Girl, from the film and comic Kick-Ass, played by Chloë Grace Moretz.
• Zen of Chocolate. Autistic Waif Fu in action.
• Emily in The Final.
• Kyle Reese (via Anton Yelchin) in Terminator: Salvation. Moe with a shotgun. Also, his companion, Star: tiny, traumatized girl who knows how to crush a T-800 on Kyle's command? Nice.
• The rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Tim: That rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! He's a killer! Robin: What's he do, nibble your bum?

• Alisa Selezneva from Guest From the Future, played by Natalia Guseva.
• Maruti from The Return of Hanuman is adorable yet badass. Once he avoided bullets Neo-style. You could see his badassery here.
• Emily Browning's character in Sucker Punch.
• As is Saoirse Ronan as the title character in Hanna, although the apparent lack of eyebrows add a touch of Uncanny Valley...
• Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander in the Millennium Trilogy. Bikers, beware!
• In Jurassic Park, the villain encounters some cute little dinosaurs, which turn out to be the fearsome creatures mentioned at the start of the movie as some of the most vicious monsters in the park, but until then, never seen. After exhibiting some cute behaviour, acting like goofy, curious dogs, one refuses to fetch a stick, suddenly bursts out a spiked neck ruff and spits noxious poison into our villain's face. His buddies arrive and they gleefully finish him off.
• From Master and Commander, Midshipman Blakeney. He's this utterly adorable curly-haired twelve-year-old, who... gets his right arm amputated but doesn't let it slow him down, becomes something of a "fighting naturalist," and leads a group of men more than twice his age into battle, thus helping secure a decisive victory over the HMS Surprise‍'‍s archenemy, the Acheron. His inspiration is Lord Nelson, also missing an arm.
• Morph from Treasure Planet. Seems like a cute, little blob reminiscent of Ditto, right? Not only is he capable of transforming into any given person or object (still remains the same size when in normal form), but can utter very snarky phrases like a parrot, and, when against Ax Crazy Scroop, is able to put up a decent fight for several minutes. Badass Adorable, indeed.
• Emily from Corpse Bride is pretty cute for an animated corpse and proves just how badass she is during the finale in the church against Barkis Bittern.
  • Likewise, from Corpse Bride's spiritual ancestor, Jack Skellington and Sally. The former is one of the most adorable skeletons ever. He also is the scariest guy in town, and if you try to turn his friends into snake-and-spider stew, he will fuck you up. The latter is a complete sweetheart and also had the guts to go into Oogie Boogie's lair by herself to save Santa.
• In the Shrek movies Puss-in-Boots takes serious advantage of this, weaponizing Puppy Dog Eyes to catch opponents off guard.
  • Also, Fiona.
  • The spinoff Puss in Boots introduces another Badass Adorable cat character by the name of Kitty Softpaws, who is skilled and tough on a level fit to rival Puss himself.
• The Incredibles has both Dash and Jack-Jack, the Parrs' young boys, but Violet also qualifies.
• EVE from WALL-E.
• Coraline, from the film of the same name, with a look that invokes Big Brother Instinct. She's underfed and she has more balls than most healthy adult males.
• Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon, capable of going from Badass to Adorable in the blink of an eye.
  • It's all in the eyes. When he's happy to see you and wants to play, his pupils are huge, making him look adorable. If he doesn't like you or if you present a danger to him or his rider, those pupils will narrow to vertical slits and will make you instantly regret becoming the target of his wrath.
• Then there is Oliver and Company, where Oliver himself is adorable, and is somewhat Badass during his CMOAs.
• Kung Fu Panda has at least a few of these. First there's the main protagonist, Po, who has badass kung-fu skills by the end of the first film. The adorable is, of course, the fact that he's a chubby Panda. There's also Master Shifu, who is a small red panda, but he can kick just about anyone's ass.
  • Believe it or not, Viper is pretty cute ^{[dead link]} too. Plus, she's voiced by Lucy Liu.
• Denzel from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Case in point - "Son of a bitch!!!"
• The titular Mulan.
• Rapunzel of Tangled.
• Even though he's a 50-foot-something robot, the Giant from The Iron Giant is an endearing Gentle Giant, with a childlike naivety about the world he's come to. Just don't point a weapon at him...

Literature

• Luna Lovegood in Harry Potter.
  • Dobby. He's saved Harry's sorry ass quite a few times, disarmed/attacked several wizards, and says the most awesome line an elf could ever say: "Dobby has no master!!!" He even died like a Badass! Hit by a knife thrown by a crazy chick you just dropped a Chandelier on while apperating three other people out of the domain of Voldemort.
• Praise be to Ponch from Young Wizards, the Dog Who Is God! The Wolf of Darkness clashed with the Hound of Starlight, and the Hound threw his old Enemy to the floor of Heaven.
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • Reepicheep: A cute two-and-a-half foot talking mouse with honor, dignity, and the ability to successfully take on an armed opponent twice his size. One of the few characters from Narnia aside from Aslan who shows up in three books; at one point, he even sails over the edge of the world.
  • Lucy: The entire Telmarine army skidded to a stop in mid-retreat, scared stiff of one small adorable girl smiling sweetly at them from across the bridge (their only escape route) while brandishing a dagger. And that's before Aslan stepped up beside her.
• The Archive from The Dresden Files is a prepubescent girl who shows her Badassitude when she's attacked by Red Court vampires while she's moderating a duel. She grabs a piece of anti-life being used and, with sheer force of will, thrusts it into the vamps' heads and torsos, vaporizing them. In a later book she's attacked by a dozen fallen angels in an area cut off from magic. Using the little magic she could store in her tiny body she starts taking them down, two at a time, even while Harry carries her away. She even makes a point of trash talking the angels, although she's not that good at it. She's only captured because the demons take advantage of her low body weight and gas the whole area. She's also very fond of cats and renders official documents in crayon.
  • Mouse is pretty awesomely adorable, too. Sure, he's a dog that's around four foot tall at the shoulder, but he plays the goofy Gentle Giant act up so well you forget about that and just want to snuggle with his big fuzzy self. Then he starts glowing and makes an eldritch horror run away in terror after ripping the back of its foot off. He also garners more respect from a powerful Sidhe noble than his "master" does.
  • The series' original Badass Adorable, Karrin Murphy. Blond, five foot nothing, with a cute little button nose, and she's proven so incredibly badass so very many times that she'd need her own subpage to list all the examples.
• Temeraire, although unusually for the trope, the badass is the most immediately obvious (he is a dragon, after all), and the adorable comes out in his interactions with the other characters, particularly with Laurence.
• Redwall's cute fluffy animal Kid Hero characters. D'awww, fwuffy ickle mousey. Who just happens to be wielding a Blade of Fearsome Size.
• Mr. Nutt, from Unseen Academicals. The Woobie, Ugly Cute, No Social Skills, uses hilarious Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness ("We must be bursting with machismo!"), starts out as an Extreme Doormat, and could snap a person's neck with his bare hands. He never actually does anything of the sort, and one gets the impression he probably never would, but just threatening it is enough.
  • Tiffany Aching, aged 9, invaded the kingdom of the borderline-Eldritch Abomination Elf Queen armed only with a frying pan and a gang of Violent Glaswegian Smurfs in The Wee Free Men.
• The three Baudelaire siblings from A Series of Unfortunate Events but especially Sunny, who's a baby.
• Hobbits. For creatures the size of human children, they prove to be surprisingly adept at arse-kicking.
• Madeline.
• Coraline.
• Pippi Longstocking is a cute, quirky eleven-year-old... with incredible super-strength. Given that she lives in an otherwise mostly mundane world, we never really get to see just where the limits to her strength are, but she is perfectly capable of overpowering stampeding bulls, angry tigers and fierce sharks without the slightest difficulty.
• Alisa in the Alice, Girl from the Future series.
• Charlie McGee, the eponymous Firestarter; a cute little red-haired girl who even gets called "button" more than once, theoretically capable of cracking the Earth in two when she comes into her full power. Certainly already capable of vaporising a man with very little effort.
• In The Pale King, Leonard Stecyk is an excruciatingly upbeat,kind, and hard-working bully magnet. He's also the only one who rushes in to save his wood shop teacher from dying of shock and blood loss after an accident with a machine. His little apron keeps his clothes from getting drenched in blood, and he makes a perfectly-tied tourniquet on the fly.

Live-Action TV

• River Tam of Firefly owes her popularity to this trope.
• Speaking of Summer Glau, Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles also fits this role nicely. Summer is just the perfect combination of Badass and Moe.

Cameron: (lifting a young boy off of the ground) If you call your mother, the man will use her to get to you. He will kill her, then he will kill you. Sarah: (sternly) Cameron. Cameron: ...Would you like a bedtime story?

• Willow, Buffy, Anya, and Many of the Chosen, it seems like Buffy the Vampire Slayer was made for this trope.
  • When Buffy got her hair cut, Willow describes it as adorable.
• Carter, Genius Ditz of Hogan's Heroes, is usually innocent, oblivious and acts far below his years. He's also a complete fanatic about his bombs and has probably directly killed more people than anyone else in the group.
• Tamara Adama from Caprica appears to be shaping up into one of these - rather quickly as well. Might also be a Little Miss Badass.
• Hiro from Heroes definitely qualifies.
• Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1. A huggable, kissable, lovable Colonel Badass.
  • Daniel can qualify too once he takes his level in badass. Sweet and attractive, suffers adorably, and has been known to kick more than a little ass.
  • Vala Mal Doran wears her hair in pigtails, she's been seen by anyone passing by the SGC halls in a bathrobe with curlers in, she eats... enthusiastically, she's jumped on Teal'c and hugged him (she only doesn't do that to Carter, it seems, because Carter's not 6'3 and built like Teal'c. Sure, a tall and strong woman - there's a essay on that somewhere, about fanfic writers and their notions of male-female relationships - but maybe not that prepared for a full Vala hug). Anyway, yeah, she can kick your butt shooting cans while Mitchell complains about Kansas cell reception, she was convincing (if merciful) when she pretended to be a Kull warrior, and she doesn't let torture or being burned alive distract her from pulling her weight. Amnesiac and hunted by people who want to mind-frell her, she survives very well and full-memory Cam comes out worse than she does.
• Djaq from Robin Hood: tiny, adorable, Puppy Dog Eyes...and will rip your arms off if you get her angry.
• Jamie from The Thick of It. With his short stature, curly hair, boyish smile and gigantic blue eyes he doesn't look like the sort of man who threatens to push iPods up his enemies' penises:

Ollie Reeder: "When I met you this morning I thought you were the nice Scot" Jamie: "SHUT IT, LOVE ACTUALLY! WANT ME TO HOLEPUNCH YOUR FACE!!?"

• Castiel from Supernatural, who combines an unearthly and no-nonsense badassery with huge blue eyes, a slender frame, a nerdy trenchcoat and an escalating Woobieness and humanization as season 5 went on.
  • Sammy also qualifies, with his Puppy Dog Eyes and genuine compassion. Just don't piss him off.
• Bunny Ears Forensic Technician Abby Sciuto from NCIS typically bounces between Hot Scientist and Moe. Until you threaten her or someone she cares about; at which point, she'll thorougly kick your ass, and be totally adorable while doing it.
  • And kill you without leaving a single shred of forensic evidence!!
  • Zach, the son of a man who is kidnapped because of his knowledge. He has an incredibly good memory, and when the men that kidnapped his father try to kidnap him, Zach punches him in the 'nads. Abby nicknames him "Mini-Gibbs".
• The Vampire Diaries has Anna. Cute, bookish and a badass vampire.
• In the 2009 mini-series remake of The Day of the Triffids, the main character is fired upon when entering a town. After putting his hands up he realises he's been captured by Susan and Imogen—two cute little girls in Cool Shades, helmets and packing automatic weapons.
• Kamen Rider Den-O: Hana after getting aged down from a time travel occurence is a cute little kid who, if you're not doing anything to tick her off, is pretty sweet. However, this little girl has been known to wield a bazooka, have enough strength to manhandle the series kaijin with her bare fists, and thoroughly trashed a bunch of Yakuza thugs singlehandedly, and some of them may have been Fangire.
• Glee: Becky Jackson wants chocolate, or she will cut you. Don't mess with her. She's the only person in the school Sue Sylvester considers worthy of Dragon status.
• Sherlock gives us Dr. John Watson. He's played by Martin Freeman, wears cuddly jumpers, types with one finger from each hand, and spends most of the series being the most caring friend in the world. He's also an ex-soldier, shot a bad guy in the shoulder in one building....from the other building, has stared down the most dangerous man in England, Mycroft Holmes, and was prepared to do a Taking You with Me to the most psychotic one Jim Moriarty. He also punched a police chief, breaking his nose and earning himself an arrest, because the guy called his best friend a "weirdo".
• The Horatio Hornblower mini-series has Archie Kennedy, sweet, enthusiastic, and really likes fighting the French! The first hint of this comes in "The Duel/The Even Chance" after boarding a French ship and running up to Horatio afterward to babble about how he "killed two! Well, one, certainly." It's not always obvious in the first and third instalments due to the suffering he endures throughout, but by the second series, he's no less adorable but exponentially more badass. This includes helping Horatio blow up forts and shooting an enemy soldier off a tower from about a hundred yards away.
• Sam from iCarly. Or Shelby Marx.
• Annie on Community when she is playing paintball or needs to chloroform a man twice her size. Twice.
• Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds. FBI profilers can rarely be described as "adorable," but Reid can rarely be described as anything else... except when he's shooting UnSubs in the head or slipping messages to his teammates while being tortured. And then he reverts right back to napping all curled up like a kitten, going on rants about Doctor Who or having some form of sugar.
• The eponymous Merlin is a sweet, Adorkable boy with large Blue Eyes and adorably large ears. He can also blast you six ways to Sunday with his awesome magical powers, especially if you threaten anyone he cares about!
• Rory Williams from Doctor Who has two settings: Adorkable (eg. fighting vampires with a broom) and Badass (eg. facing down a Cyberlegion), and frequently overlaps the two (eg. smashing a killer robot over the head with the Mona Lisa).
  • Zoe and Jo Grant. The former being a perky little human calculator, whose hobbies include wrestling comic book heroes come to life and making giant computers destroy themselves with the power of confusion. The latter being cute, clumsy and pretty much The Ditz. And yet she's the only companion to have ever resisted the Master's hypnotising, as well as helping Three escape from whatever prison cell or bondage trap he'd got himself in that week.

Professional Wrestling

• Rey Mysterio, Jr.. A tiny little guy with big Puppy Dog Eyes who would look like a kid playing superhero in his backyard, almost across the border into Moe...except he's held as many or more titles than any giant in the ring twice his size and can usually be found, especially recently, whomping the hell out of those same giants.
• NXT contestant AJ. She looks a little like a squirrel ^{[dead link]}. Very petite, very energetic, absolutely adorable, and probably the most talented woman on the NXT roster.
• Daniel Bryan. Especially in his current persona, he looks absolutely adorable when talking to people backstage (most notably the Bella Twins of late) and then turns into a figurative wrestling giant when he gets in the ring.
  • No! No! No!

Tabletop Games

• Many Scrappy Kids in Feng Shui definitely qualify as this.
• In the German game Pluesch Power Und Plunder (about living plushies), every Player Character and many NPCs are this, essentially. And is there a better example?
• For a given value of cute, kobold player characters may qualify in Dungeons & Dragons.

Video Games

• Kirby, the little pink puffball of kickass, what with all the horrors he regularly crushes.
  • And Meta Knight, when you break his mask. Most characters in this series fit this.
• Roll from Mega Man Powered Up and especially Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. Even though she's normally one of the sweeter characters, she is more than capable of taking out not only Dr. Wily's army of Robot Masters (Dr. Light's brainwashed Robot Masters, that is), but also the Lord of Darkness himself, Yami, with only a broomstick!
  • Mega Man himself is adorable. And he's saved the world eleven times.
  • Taken Up to Eleven in the three-episode OVA. Did Proto Man just hack a missile while it was in flight?!
• Most of the Frost family of Persona and Shin Megami Tensei counts. Black Frost in Nocturne, to Batman fan Frost Ace and the adorably-armored Demonee-Ho in Strange Journey, or King Frost, with the possible exception of series regular Jack Frost, who begins as a Mascot Mook and can Badass his way into becoming any of the prior examples.
  • Alice counts, too. Cutest girl ever seen in the games. Extremely lethal sorceress to boot.
  • The Protagonist of Devil Survivor is a seventeen-year-old who borders sometimes into childishly adorable. He's either The Messiah, an Evil Overlord overseeing Humanity's Rage Against the Heavens, or the world's savior.
  • "Evil" Overlord is a bit fuzzy, his reasons are morally sound, the only reason it remotely comes close to fuzzy is because of who he's taking down. Either way, he's a savior; it's just which method he chooses.
• Chun Li from Street Fighter. She may be the "strongest woman in the world", but when she wins a match she jumps up and down girlishly and shouts "yatta!"
  • Sakura fits as well with various stereotypical 'schoolgirl' entries, fighting in a sailor suit and having a huge crush on Ryu that she seldom bothers to hide.
  • Makoto is the cutest karate girl ever! Ibuki and her cute hairstyle is also heart-wrenchingly cute as well!
• Meracle Chamlotte from Star Ocean: The Last Hope doesn't seem all that badass at first glance, being a Stripperific Moe Moe Catgirl, but once you max out her Critical skill and get her some decent equipment her multi-hit killer moves become absurdly deadly; she can clear the field with a single Claws of Fury that scores something on the order of a dozen consecutive critical hits.
• Bomberman with his cute face and outfit and BOMBS.
• Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog is a young two-tailed fox who likes to invent things and go on adventures with his best buddy Sonic.

Tails: ... Sonic... Eggman: Huh? Tails: Sonic has asked me -- for the first time -- to do something for him. I won't let him down; I won't give up!

• • In Sonic Unleashed, Chip ultimately proves to be one of these. Because what could be more Badass than turning a bunch of temples into a mecha around yourself?
  • Amy Rose, at least when not leaning too much into Yandere territory.
  • Cream and Cheese.
  • Speaking of Cream the Rabbit and Cheese the Chao, in Sonic X, she manages to defeat and destroy Emerl, while her friends weren't able to do so.
  • Sonic himself in his Genesis incarnation. Sonic Generations just bumps it Up to Eleven.
  • Most of the cast, including Shadow. The resident badass Anti-Hero is three feet tall and fluffy.
• The entire point of Koihime Musou, but especially Kan'u. Even more so in the first game.
• Child Link and both Toon Links from the Legend of Zelda franchise. Even adult Link tends to get a "d'aww" out of fans when he gets his cute on.
  • Lampshaded by Chuggaaconroy in his Let's Play of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. "Cuteness never looked so badass."
  • Zelda herself, especially in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks where she can take over a giant walking suit of armor while still retaining a cute/innocent personalty.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Midna as well, at least in her "imp" form.
• Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time: Baby Mario and Baby Luigi are about as effective in battle as their male counterparts, especially when they use Bros. Attacks. Though their stats are generally inferior, they're faster than their adult counterparts as well.
  • Grown-up Luigi is more badass than you'd think. And many fangirls consider him adorable.
  • Also, the various assistants from Paper Mario - Bombette, Goombario, Bow and, Watt.
• Super Mario Brothers: Yoshi. The adorable dinosaur that can swallow anything whole, turn said anything into eggs, and use them as ammo. He took on a super-sized Bowser Junior while at the exact same time keeping a baby on his back and running an obstacle course, all the while trying to keep the baby from being kidnapped!
  • Mario himself qualifies, though perhaps he's not as adorable as Yoshi and Luigi on account on being more masculine than them.
• The four main protagonists of EarthBound.
  • Pippi of EarthBound Beginnings in particular is based off of the above-mentioned Pippi Longstocking, right down to the name.
  • Everyone from Mother 3.
• Peter the Phoenix from Shining Force 2.
• Starfy and Starly from the Starfy series.
• Taokaka from BlazBlue may not look adorable, and she can be pretty deadly in combat, but just look at the way she talks and acts in her story mode in a game full of psychos, monsters, and jaded veterans.
  • Noel Vermillion.
  • And then there's Carl Clover. The Cheerful Child who has the game's only infinite combo.
  • Also, Makoto Nanaya. A squirrel girl (not THAT one), with cute ears and a big bushy tail that some find quite sexy. However, messing around with her is a bad idea. She can punch people and send them flying.
• Felicia from the Darkstalkers series, acts more catlike than human and is just too damn cute.
• Xenogears has Chu-Chu, adorable and badass enough to transform into a gear-sized pink.... thing...... who fights to support the man she loves.
• Xenosaga gives us Momo, specially in the second game onwards. Junior also counts.
• Xenoblade keeps the tradition going with Riki. One of the battle quotes of this Adorkable "fur ball" is "Riki can win by himself!". And he's not all talk. Far from it!
  • Shulk, Fiora and Melia also count. Man, this is a World Of Badass Adorable.
• LittleBigPlanet‍'‍s Sackboy. Powers of a god. Time manipulation, matter control, creation and destruction, and immortality (If you're playing the level editor). And as Yahtzee put it, he "looks like the result of a sinister experiment to concentrate cuteness to a weaponised level for use against angry girlfriends".
• Ōkami: Never has divinity been so... so... fluffy. Unless you're a goblin (or some other disposable monstrosity), you can ignore Amaterasu's other defining characteristic. Seriously, she won't even mind if you walk right up to pet her; Kushinada does this every time she sees Ammy. It helps that half the cast thinks she's just an ordinary dog even after she saves them, calling her Fluffy, Poochie, Fido, Wolfy, Furball, Snowy, Mutt, Powderpuff...
  • The Gaiden Game Ōkamiden one-ups the original by making the player character (named Chibiterasu) a tiny puppy dog instead. For an added bonus (if one was necessary), he spends most of the game carrying around kids on his back, most of whom are at least some degree of Badass Adorable in and of themselves. And, like his mother, Chibi can't catch a break in the name department, being variously referred to as Mutt, Pooch, Dude, and Squiddy.
  • Made even more adorable in Marvel VS Capcom 3, in which Ammy is a playable character.
• Touhou. Quite a lot of the Girls of Gensokyo are really, really cute, and they all either have crazy powers or plenty of danmaku with which to protect themselves.
  • Flandre Scarlet. A Cheerful Child, who loves her sister so much that she really doesn't mind having been locked in the basement for the past 495 years. And she canonically has the power to destroy absolutely anything at all. That's on top of enough firepower to utterly annihilate most humans she tries to play with. And you would never know it by looking at her.
• The Disgaea games:
  • Princess Sapphire Rhodonite, as most fans find her psychotic outbursts amidst the Cloudcuckoolander demeanor make her even more adorable... in a deranged and troubling sort of way.
  • Kurtis seems to get this a lot since he reincarnated as a Prinny. Nevermind the fact that he still has the same deep voice and his character is still as it always was.
  • Plenair.
  • Raspberyl, a Fun Size loli, number one delinquent, and self-proclaimed badass who shows it with her magical prowess.
  • Laharl, the cutest little Overlord ever.
  • Desco, a living weapon of mass destruction and Moe little sister of sorts who aspires to be a Final Boss someday.
• Soul Nomad and The World Eaters packs a few, being one of Nippin Ichi's more serious titles. You have Danette, cute, ditzy and slightly amnesiac who tears through enemies with knives and regularily makes remarks about snapping peoples' necks (and actually does so to one of your allies). Trish, a refined merchant's daughter, always positive and cheerful, who leads a mercenary company. And then there are the angels. Cute little baby-like guys... armed with guns.
• Square Enix loves this trope. You've got Moogles, Black Mages, Tarutaru, and even Slimes with battle tanks. The Tonberrys are adorable, but extremely dangerous if one underestimates them.
  • There is a young, lovely, cute, spunnky, aloof, innocent, friendly, childish Genki Girl in almost every Final Fantasy game: Rydia, Krile, Relm, Yuffie, Selphie, Eiko, Rikku, Penelo, Vanille. And all of them cover the Badass part of the trope. They are capable to decimate anything, be it with bombs, Black Magic, Summon Magic or just oversized weapons that they shouldn't be able to carry.
  • Selphie is willing to blow up a whole missile base, and that's just one of her moments. She possesses the strongest Limit Break in the entire game, called The End, which will wish the enemy into the flower fields in a one-hit KO. Worst of it all? It works on the final boss.
  • One of Vanille's "battle sayings" is "I'm not all flowers and sunshine!" In a sickeningly cute, sweet, sing-song voice. You could hear the jaws hit the floor when it was learned that cute and cheery she had a summon that was a walking war machine. She's also the harbinger of the apocalypse. Badass indeed.
  • Vivi from Final Fantasy IX. The little cutie is the freakin' Woobie, but if he gets angry and/or determined, he will own you.
  • Also Tifa from Final Fantasy VII. Although less adorable than sexy, Tifa is a sweet and wholesome girl (although she doesn't dress like one) who can dish out one of the biggest damage in the game, with her bare hands!]]
  • Terra, Mysterious Waif of exotic ancestry, Person of Mass Destruction, and Mama Bear. There's more. Dissidia Final Fantasy sets Terra up as the girl who snuggles moogles, then frightens Kefka into shutting up.
  • Half-Identical Twins Palom and Porom are Badass Adorable twins.
• Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, turning the World of Badass seen in Dissidia Final Fantasy into a World Of Badass Adorable.
• Sora, Roxas, Ven and Xion from Kingdom Hearts. Still, the absolute best example is none other than Mickey Mouse, who they managed to turn into freaking Yoda. Seriously, don't fuck with Mickey.
• Aside from Final Fantasy, The World Ends With You gives us Mr. Mew. An adorable little cat plush that could rip your eyes out.
  • Leah and Marcy from Chrono Cross.
• Super Robot Wars gives us several examples. There's Latooni, The Woobie who is also the best pilot in the Original Generation games; Mai Kobayashi, Tyke Bomb, one-time end-game boss, and adorable in the extreme; Ibis Douglas, the luckless but tenacious flat chested girl; and even the villain of the second Original Generation game Einst Alfimi, ridiculously Moe and ridiculously broken once you manage to recruit her.
• Tales (series):
  • Tales of Symphonia—Collette Brunel, Presea Combatir, and Genis Sage
  • Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World—Marta Lualdi
  • Also Emil. You just wanna hug him... then smack him in the face and tell him to get a hold of himself.
  • Tales of Rebirth—Eugene Gallardo. Though not in the main game, but is described in Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology as "big, fluffy, cute, huggable" by Tear. Mao qualifies too.
  • Tales of Vesperia—Karol Capel and Estelle, who is surprisingly effective at battle given her gentle nature. Patty as well, in the Play Station 3 version.
  • Tales of Graces—Sophie. Just see it for yourself if you don't believe it.
  • Tales of Phantasia—Arche Klaine and Suzu Fujibayashi
  • Tales of the Abyss—Anise Tatlin
  • Tales of Eternia—Meredy, one of the cutest video game characters ever but also capable of wiping out the enemy with her summons.
  • Tales of Innocence—Ruca Milda
  • Tales of Xillia—Elise Lutus, the most adorable out of all the examples.
• May from Guilty Gear. Bridget may also qualify if you're into that sort of thing.
• Quite a few characters from Fire Emblem can turn out this way.
  • Amelia can take this to an absurd degree if you make her into a General. She remains an adorable teenage girl in all of the cutscenes, but on the battlefield she's seven feet tall, covered from head to toe in plate mail, and wields weapons that make Cloud's Buster Sword look like a toothpick. Combine this with positively absurd stat-growth and you have what is basically a walking wall of certain death. An adorable, shy wall of certain death. Ross is a Hot-Blooded boy who idolizes his Retired Badass dad but is quite the sweetheart to others, and Ewan is a cheery prankster with a talent for magic. Raise them well and promote the first one into either a Berserker or a Warrior, while making the other a Summoner or a Druid. The three trainees absolutely Moe killing machines - and double if you get any of the boys to A Support level with Amelia.
  • Also Lilina from Sword Of Seals and Nino of Blazing Sword.
• A web video portrays Moon from Pokemon Sun and Moon this way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUVVdvnRmOk
• Yuria Bahara from Genealogy of the Holy War is a Princess Classic with a high amount of Moe (See her here.), who's very shy and somewhat depressing (she's usually depicted as crying. A lot.) Mind you, she's a Glass Cannon stat wise, and would be that way but usually she's got one of two weapons, one is her trademark "Resire" which makes her practically invincible, the other is a stacked Game Breaker- as she is already, her Infinity Plus 20 Tome, Naga, which, increases her stats by 20 (ignoring the Caps, oh and that tome? It fires a Dragon at her hapless foes.
  • And there's plenty more in the Tellius canon: Queen Elincia, Mia, Mist, Sanaki, Ilyana, Rolf, Marcia, Nephenee, Astrid...
  • Most of the female manaketes throughout the series (Tiki, Fa, Myrrh, and Nono, to be specific) definitely qualify.
• You can make one in Spore if you're clever enough.
• Gnomes in World of Warcraft, especially the females. That three foot tall gnome with bright pink buns tanking a massive boss four times her size is adorable.
  • Four times? Meet Supremus, the Largest boss currently in the game. A Gnome can tank that—it's about 10 to 15 times the size of a Night Elf (a rather tall character).
  • Speaking of which, Chromie. Hard to believe this adorable (and often scatterbrained) dame is one of the Bronze Dragonflight, a Time Lord with unfathomible power over the temporal flow.
• Ninjabread Man—A cute, little cookie that so happens to know self-defense.
• Koromaru from Persona 3. His victory pose is to cutely scratch himself! Ken Amada, as a ten-year-old cute little boy, might also count. The alternative female protagonist of the PSP version definitely does.
• Choko from Arc the Lad: at first she's a One Lolita Army, then, she gets an upgrade and becomes a Waif of Mass Destruction.
• Ghost Trick has Missile, a yappy little Pomeranian who is adorable even by Pomeranian standards. After he dies for the second time, he gains ghost trick powers. His reach is far longer than Sissel's and he has the ability to swap objects of different sizes, even huge stone statues.
  • And in an alternate timeline he waited ten years for the events of that night to play out again, so this time he could convince Sissel to help Lynne.
  • Sissel is also this, considering he's actually a little black cat. At the end, he's a little black kitten. Awwww.
• A few characters from Cave Story. King is a Mimiga (a rabbit-man) who takes out Balrog with a single swordstroke. Then there's Quote and Curly who... well, just look at this in-game art, depicting them in the act of storming Hell.
• Ar tonelico has Cocona Bartel in the second game. She's about ten years old or so, four-foot-nothing, wears her long hair in pigtails with two absurdly large hair ornaments, and is the main character's adopted little sister. She is a very cheery girl who is always willing to help her big brother and often pouts in the cutest way whenever he's late. Turns out that she accompanies her "big brother" on his knight missions, and fights by taking her hair ornaments off and using them as a sort of transforming baton weapon. Despite her size, she keeps up with the adult frontline fighters, including her older brother. And the kicker? She is a Reyvateil, a species that is usually kept in the back lines far away from the physical fighting.
  • Also thanks to her BFS in her Limit Break.
• The campers of Psychonauts are all pre-teen psychics in-training. Most notable is Raz, who not only learns several potent psychic techniques but is also a skilled acrobat due to his life as a Gypsy Circus Brat.
• Liara and Tali from Mass Effect. Liara is a socially awkward archaeologist that has never been in a relationship before, and can scatter enemy troopers like papers in a hurricane and crush tanks like tin cans. Tali is Naive Newcomer that, similarly to Liara, has never been in a relationship, but can shut down your shields, make your weapons explode, and poison your nervous system with a few taps on her omni-tool.
  • Legion, among other badass designations, also qualifies as Badass Adorkable.
• Ratchet and Clank from the series of the same name. A cute little fuzzy alien with big round eyes, an incredibly expressive face, and enough weaponry to take down a dozen intergalactic armies, and his cute little robot friend, a secret agent who can grow into a Godzilla sized living weapon and control time. Saving all of time and space while looking incredibly cute.
• As stated, a good number of Pokémon and even their trainers.
  • Also Mew.
  • All "cute legendaries" (Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, Manaphy, Shaymin, Victini) qualify. Notably Jirachi has a creepy eye, Celebi can Time Travel, and Shaymin transforms into a more badass form.
  • Which is even cuter than its Land Forme^{[is that sic or not?]}.
  • The protagonists and their rivals are almost always this, except for a few side game ones who are older.
• Opoona, Copoona, and Poleena all look like Playskool figurines. All of them fight the forces that corrupt half an entire planet.
  • This is pretty much their species hat to the point that their planet's constitution reads more like a warrior code.
• Princess, the protagonist of Magical Pop'n.
• Prince Cornelius and Mercedes from Odin Sphere.
• Little Samson.
• Leanne from Resonance of Fate, even in-Universe. Several NPCs gush about how adorable she is, and as for being a badass... well, she can gun down a tank or two.
• A villainous example where Sirus Dark Emperor Griffon from Dark Cloud 2 is a child-sized anthropomorphic bunny rabbit from the Moon with adorable eyes and ears and who only got into this mess because he loved flowers so much. He is also able to kick your ass 10 times over even without the power of the Atlamillia.
  • The heroes of the game, Max and Monica. Max is a cheerful young inventor who can make almost anything and his inventions never fail. He's also capable of piloting a Ridepod (robot) that can be armed with weapons ranging from iron fists to machine guns and portable missile platforms. Monica is a pink-haired Magic Knight from the future who's not only capable of holding her own in a fight, she's also a princess leading a resistance movement against the forces of Griffon.
• Patapon and Zigoton warriors in Patapon. Music enhances that.
• Sengoku Basara's resident Moe-fanbait is Sanada Yukimura -- wide-eyed, naive, intensely loyal, incredibly polite...and completely oblivious to all things sexual. He's also the most stupidly Hot-Blooded Screaming Warrior in the series and looks like a fluffy puppy.
• Rebecca Chambers, from the Resident Evil series. Originally just a pixie-esque medic, we later learn that she fought her way through a night of Lovecraftian horrors before Chris Redfield ever saw his first zombie. Also, in her cameo in the "Mercenaries Reunion" mode in Resident Evil 5, she sets people on fire.
• Tekken has Asuka Kazama.
  • Also Ling Xiaoyu.
• Dog from Dragon Age: he is a Big Friendly Dog... and also a Mabari: a breed of dogs who are basically part of Ferelden's elite troops and are used among other things to stop charging knights. While traveling with the Warden, Dog will jump headfirst into the fray, tear his ennemies to pieces, then will come back, covered in blood, wagging his short tail and looking at his master with puppy eyes waiting for him or her to scratch Dog behind the ears
  • And in Dragon Age II there is Merrill. She's a thin, naive, innocent, sweet-natured, easily distracted, practicing blood mage and Demon Summoner who becomes a Motor Mouth when nervous. She also has only offensive magic and vicious combat buffs, not even the slightest healing spell, and fearsome drive to revive the glory of Arlathan for which she is willing to sacrifice her life. Absolutely Adorkable and she can a-splode you from half a mile away with her mind.
• The Pet Dragon from King's Bounty: Armored Princess. He's a winged technicolored Stitch, who likes to play with a little snail and dance around his pot tree (check him out). Oh, look, he's summoning fountains of lava to engulf the enemies in searing agony, conjures lightning balls and finishes the survivors off with a somersault kick. Awww!
• Ecco the Dolphin, being both a dolphin and the protagonist of an adventure game series, would obviously qualify as this, but it tends towards Fridge Brilliance when you consider that the label Badass Adorable applies to real-life dolphins as well. Then again, real dolphins tend towards a more sinister variety of badass adorable.
• Sunny from Metal Gear Solid 4. Seven years old, cute as a button, and able to take down an AI that has effectively taken over the world.
  • Otacon too, for that matter. Combine his male-Meganekko-osity, shyness, niceness, and nerdiness with his genius hacker-dom, the fact that he's the creator of freakin' Metal Gear Rex, and his Heroic Sacrifice tendencies, and you get one true Badass Adorable.
• Dr. Fetus fom Super Meat Boy. He may be pretty ugly and be disgusting in some ways, like when you really acknowledge that he's a fetus, but that little fetus body is just adorable!
  • Almost the entire cast qualifies. Yes, even Bandage Girl.
• Golden Sun: Usually at least one playable member is a young, adorable teenager with Squishy Wizard and/or Glass Cannon tendencies at the least.
  • Sveta in Dark Dawn is a champion of this trope, a ridiculously Moe kitty-dog... deer... furry person, who is the series' first warrior-type Wind Adept and the series' first true Action Girl (most have been primarily casters). And this is before you sack all her Djinn to turn her into a giant anthropomorphic wolf who backhands bosses across the room.
  • Thirty years before being a snarky pirate in Dark Dawn, Eoleo was a dorky toddler with Blinding Bangs who could wrap his great-grandma around his little finger and blew up Alhafra's prison with his mind to rescue his daddy. D'awwwwww!
• Little Nana of Vanguard Bandits who's around twelve, has her hair up in pig-tails and is always followed by her platypus pal Kyu-Kyu, is fully capable of being a terror on the battlefield with her personal ATAC even when under-leveled.
• Klonoa is an adorable cat-like creature with big long ears. He could also throw you across the screen.
• T3-M4 from Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel. He particularly takes a level in badass in the sequel, where at one point he casually shuts down HK-47 when he starts getting too snoopy.
  • He also single-handedly demolishes three HK-50 droids at once on Nar Shaddaa. In one-on-one combat.
  • T3's Spiritual Successor in The Old Republic, T7-01, definitely counts. A cute little astromech droid who hasn't had a memory wipe for at least two centuries, considers himself the true hero of the story (partially justifiable, considering that he had front row seats to the start of the last war) and is the first astromech droid who had his language translated - and he is speaking in equations! That is the first companion character a Jedi Knight gets. He is a tank.
• Veronica from Fallout: New Vegas. She's a sarcastic Invisible to Gaydar Brotherhood Scribe, with a compulsion against showing her hair. She's also very good with a Power Fist. Being voiced by Felicia Day might also have something to do with this.
  • ED-E the Super Prototype Eyebot, a floating little robot that plays a catchy little tune when flying into combat armed with a laser and a perk that practically gives you max Perception.
• Dewy from Dewys Adventure.
• Lego Adaptation Games are known to do this. Lego Star Wars, that allows the player to re-live all the series' Awesome Moments while playing as Lego minifigures. Lego Batman, that is just this side of Batman: Arkham Asylum in terms of sheer badassery. Lego Harry Potter and Lego Pirates of the Caribbean...
• Every single playable character of the two Hyperdimension Neptunia games can be considered as one.
• Milly from Baten Kaitos Origins. She's the sheltered daughter of an Alfard nobleman, and she has butterfly wings. She also dual-wields clubs and can kick you across the room.
  • Sagi counts as well.
• Despite being an online golf game Kooh from Pangya. The 11 year old Token Loli is also a pirate captain who hauls around a cannon and rides a giant bomb.
• Turrets from the Portal games. They will shoot the crap out of anything they target, but the things they say are incredibly adorable.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic one of the Bounty Hunter's companions is Blizz. He's a Jawa, ya know those cute robed little guys with glowy yellow eyes? He's a tank. He also wields a rocket launcher.
• From Eternal Sonata:
  • The twins, March and Salsa. A pair of a adorable eight-year-old girls, one sweet and polite, the other something of a hothead. They wield twin chakrams, have access to powerful moves, and... are those sharp teeth and miniature skulls on those necklaces? On the other hand, their headgear is reminiscent of bunnies.
  • Beat, an eight-year-old boy who is sort of like a younger brother to Allegretto. He wields a repeating rifle with precision.
  • Polka, a sweet young teen with an unspecified illness. Her parasol is a powerful weapon, and she has some good magic in her arsenal.
• Many girls of the Rance Series qualify.
• Tux from SuperTux. A badass penguin who would go on whatever dangerous adventure just to get his kidnapped girlfriend Penny back.
• Pikmin are not to be trifled with, and they're able to take down the hugest of enemies when Olimar groups them into armies.
• Maple Story with its chibi-heroes and cute monsters. It's even focused on in the Armed and Adorable promotional short.

Visual Novels

• The Key Visual Arts games have a few in starring roles (see the entry for details).
• Pearl Fey from Phoenix Wright is a powerful candidate, since she's saved the day quite a few times by channeling Mia. She even slapped Franziska Von Karma!
  • For someone who is ostensibly the series' main Damsel in Distress, Maya certainly makes herself useful under the direst situations.
  • An evil example of this trope would be Dahlia Hawthorne. Not everyone has the guts to jump from a bridge into a river known for its deadly speed just to steal a jewel.
  • Ambassador Colias Palaeno from Investigations, who manages to really grow on a lot of players, and who shows up with a small army near the end and pressures the Big Bad into staying put with thinly veiled threats. And he keeps smiling while doing it.
• Arcueid from Tsukihime is more well known for being a bit adorably ditzy than being sexy. Also known more for her outrageously broken strength.
  • The Nasuverse is peppered with this trope, come to think of it. The Fate/stay night girls all have their moments, and some would even regard Shiki as one.
  • Ilya is probably the most prominent there. She also happens to be a complete (but intensely sympathetic) psychopath loli who isn't as young as she looks.

Web Comics

• The Trope Namer is Green Mega Man (The Mega-speaking, mega-hyperactive, mega-side kick from Captain N), from Captain SNES. Even the Cynical, rude, and foul-mouthed bastard that is Alex Williams, thinks Green Mega is Adorably Badass.
• Ruby Gem, the little toddler vampire girl from Monsterful.
  • Even more Badass when she transforms into a VSV (Vampiric Spartan Viking).
• Calvin/Freckle from Lackadaisy Cats.
• Grace from El Goonish Shive.
• Super Stupor, a side project from the creator of Something*Positive breaks down the trope as a basic fact of Superhero/Super Villain life and its result on those too stupid to recognize it.
• Arcturus Winrock from Suicide for Hire, if you think a chain-smoker who dresses like a punk and kills people for money can be cute.
• Several of the younger characters in Drowtales are like this due to the way drow age making them look like young children even when in their 20s, but Ariel is probably the best example, since she looks about 8 and has already kicked the asses of several people who've gone after her. Generally speaking even cute little kids in Drowtales can kick loads of ass since they live in a Crapsack World and pretty much have to in order to stay alive.
• Most of the cast of Digger is this. Digger herself, Ed, Shadowchild, Murai...
• Little Rorschach in a Gunshow story arc.
• Bridget the Zombie from Far Out There. Especially in this comic.
• Last Res0rt has Jigsaw Forte, among others.
• Tycho's cousin Anne, or "Annarchy" in Penny Arcade, tearing up zombies with a bat'leth. Her alter-ego "Anne-Claire" in Penny Arcade Adventures sports a Kill Sat attack.
• Sluggy Freelance has had a few including Princess-Princess who is really Secret Angel Princess-Princess. Especially when she figures out how stupid that sounds out loud. Secret Cranky Office Temp could also qualify. Aylee in a couple of her forms was adorable and could either swallow you whole or burn you to a crisp. Obviously Oasis, the ultimate cutie when she's not taking out entire armies single handed. Being bat-shit insane can have her going from one to the other in nanoseconds. And then there is Bun Bun; a cute little mini-lop with floppy ears, aww. That is until you look deep into those big dark eyes and see how much you are going to suffer if you don't get out of his face right now, toots.
• Sugar Bits. Bleedman is possibly the only person in the world who can make a cookie badass. And this is without mentioning Bo, the ridiculously adorable and tiny sheep... who will do this if you screw with her friends.
• The Racconans from Tales of the Questor are an entire nation of tiny Raccoon-like humanoids... ...Nearly all of which can unleash powerful magics in self-defence, have perfected magical engineering to the point they're nearly an industrial power in an age of knights and castles, and most Racconan communities have huge militias. Add to that an attitude of combat pragmatism and an insidious cunning, and you have a nation of 2 foot tall critters that has thus far squashed every invasion thus attempted on its territory. The Racconans could teach the Ewoks a few lessons.
• Bittersweet Candy Bowl, Lucy can kick a whole lot more ass than is apparent.
• In the same vein as Earthbound, the kids from Homestuck, even the Ugly Cute Trolls. Yes, those are thirteen-year-old tykes, casually manipulating time, space and the universe itself, fighting hordes that make the Zerg look conservative and blowing up stars.(Special mention goes to Rose and Nepeta.)
  • Taken up to eleven with Jade's God Tier form, which gave her her pet dog's Reality Warper powers - and dog ears.
• Ronin Galaxy: Cecil gives his opponent a cheesy little v-sign before dispatching of him. Twice.
• Generally speaking, Gunnerkrigg Court‍'‍s Reynardine is either a Big Badass Wolf or a not-so-nice (or cute) stuffed animal, but just look at the fourth panel of this comic.
• Several characters in Kevin and Kell qualify, but the undisputed champion is Coney Dewclaw, a three-year-old diaper-wearing bunny rabbit. She's also half-wolf (on her mother's side), and effortlessly devours slavering carnivores five times her size in a single panel.
• The Oswald Chronicles‍'‍s eponymous Oswald, a mouse with pince-nez glasses, a bow-tie and a vest. Also, enough magical mojo to go toe to toe with the greatest sorcerer alive.
• The animal forms of But I'm a Cat Person‍'‍s shapeshifting Beings include an adorable puppy and a fluffy pink rabbit. Some of their human appearances are pretty cute too.
• Morty of Suppression is described as a walking sphere of primal, powerful magic energy. He has (in teaming up with Kirk) devastated demons much larger than him and taken out an entire row of houses after turning into a BFG^[context?]. And he is absolutely adorable.
• While the titular character of Charby the Vampirate is stuck looking like an cute if sharp toothed kid, he took out a ship full of pirates on his ninth birthday, and has only gotten cooler since then.
• Jack Hawkin from Zokusho Comics is a foot shorter than anyone else on his team and considerably younger. He is obviously extremely pleased by a simple compliment on his chess playing abilities. Just a few pages later he's calling down lightning to fry the enemies he isn't just setting on fire.
• Platypus from Vinigortonio may look like an ordinary platypus but can actually hold his own in a fight and even infiltrate the police department without being noticed.

Web Original

• Jade Sinclair (Generator) of the Whateley Universe. Cute as a button, looks like she's only eleven... and has scared the holy <censored> out of violent villains like Bloodwolf and Killstench. Bloodwolf controls a werewolf spirit and likes hurting people. He got stapled to a tree with railroad spikes. Do not make Generator mad at you. And then there's the Syndicate hardsite she destroyed... after being tortured nearly to death, stabbed through the heart, then gives herself CPR and plays dead until her regen kicks in, then she goes about killing half the base herself with jagged metal objects and raising her victims as "zombies". It starts to cross the line into Grotesque Cute.
• Flippy from Happy Tree Friends.
• Kid LeBron from The Lebrons.
• Let's take My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, give it a grimdark spin, and make it into a Play By Post forum. This is what you get.
• feralAncient, oceanRising, flintlockEnthusiast, familyFun for starters from Adult Stuck. Given most of the cast starts out at 11, this is probably to be expected.
• Ruby Rose, Nora Valkyrie, and Velvet Scarlatina from RWBY.

Western Animation

• Nibbler from Futurama probably falls under this category. There's practically a whole episode devoted to how adorable the crew find him (much to Bender's chagrin), and in as the series progresses, it is revealed that the Nibblonian race was already 17 years old at the time of the big bang, and are charged with protecting the Earth from the evil Brainspawn and also that Nibbler himself had a fairly big part to play in getting Fry cryogenically frozen for 1000 years in the first place.
  • As an ancient, super-intelligent beings, the Nibblonians resent being regarded as adorable. Nibbler, himself gets fed up with it in season six:

Leela: If you want to be treated like a fellow crew member, fine, but no more purse rides, and no more dressing you up in your cute little sailor suit. Nibbler: I keep telling you, that's my real naval uniform.

• • Later, when the crew has dressed a cat in that same sailor suit

Nibbler: (Sighs) My best friend died in that uniform.

• During an episode of Justice League Unlimited, "Kids Stuff", Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Batman all get changed to kids for reasons too complicated to explain here. Batman in particular is pretty damn adorable.
• Tommy Pickles from Rugrats. He's constantly standing up to Angelica and is the bravest baby in the show.
  • Chuckie's very adorable with his messy red hair, freckles, and glasses, and despite his shy nature he's had his share of Badass moments as well. Like when he summons the courage to stop the wedding in the second movie. And he successfully (if a bit haphazardly) pilots Robo-Reptar with the help of the other babies. What follows is a great and crazy climax which culminates in his final fight with Jean-Claude (who is piloting Robo-Snail), and he beats him. Meek little Chuckie, who was still suffering from his mother's death, beats a fully grown man in a giant robotic snail, and makes it in time to halt the wedding.
• Steve from American Dad! is normally calm and adorkable, but has a short temper and has beat people much tougher than him on several occasions.
  • Also Reginald Koala.
• Ling-Ling from Drawn Together.
• An evil version is Professor Princess from Transformers Animated, a tech genius on a quest to rid the world of violent Toys by blowing them up with her toy-themed weaponry. Her mount is a flying robot horse named Powdered Sugar.
  • Also she has a doctorate. Professor Penny Princess is her real name.
  • Sari rolls with the Autobots and was actually a useful human sidekick (though she probably considered them her sidekicks). Highlights include saving Bumblebee and Prowl from space barnacle infestation and tormenting the Constructicons when they crashed the Autobots' hideout until they left. Goes double after "Transwarped."
• Avatar: The Last Airbender has five:
  • Toph is the cutest little girl in the world. Never satisfied by melting hearts, she also decided to become the strongest Earthbender in the world, so she could rip them out. Example--Toph, little blind grl who weighs all of a pound, can crush a steel sword in her hands like it's a Coca-Cola can. Effectively, what would happen if a Skipper doll became a Lightning Bruiser.
  • Ty Lee is an insanely hot, cheerful and bubbly, well-endowed teen babe who uses her enormous...strength (What? What did you expect?) to beat grown men to death with her bare hands. She easily downs powerful benders, even though she has no such power, and does it while filling out a shirt like no sanely-drawn woman should.
  • Aang himself, though. Sweet and innocent, with eyes some Anime characters would kill for, refuses to eat meat or kill even the most Complete Monster...and he can go Avatar State on you if you hurt one of his friends.
  • Kyoshi Warrior Suki definitely counts. Already a Badass Normal amongst a world of supermen, she can outmatch anyone at armed combat with her fans, all the while having irresistible Puppy Dog Eyes and the cutest pout/sassy smile ever ever.
  • And Appa! Aang's loyal aero-bovine companion, who looks like a ten-ton stuffed toy and gets some awesome Big Damn Heroes moments.
• The Legend of Korra has Korra's Establishing Character Moment take place with a Dynamic Entry, where she Earthbends a wall across the room, loudly and proudly proclaims herself the Avatar, and demonstrates by bending three elements at once. She's four.
• The Powerpuff Girls—Described on their own page as "Cute Flying Bricks".
  • Specifically Bubbles who is far and away the most adorable of all of them. Only one time does she ever truly get angry. After taking a level in badass she becomes more than a match for both sisters, easily beating them up by herself.^[context?]
• Dot Warner from Animaniacs.
• Shirt Tales, by 80's Saturday morning standards at any rate.
• Ding-A-Ling Wolf from Hokey Wolf cartoons. In one episode, he witnessed a robot trying to strangle Hokey and what did he do? He grabbed a massive stick and beat the living crap out of the robot. Keep in mind this is an adorable wolf cub with Puppy Dog Eyes and an innocent personality.
• Lexington from Gargoyles: He's tiny by gargoyle standards (and none too big by human standards) and has flying-squirrel-like patagia for wings, owlish eyes, and a reedy tenor voice. He's also the team nerd. That said: he's still a gargoyle warrior. Don't piss him off.
• There was a Tom and Jerry cartoon where Jerry got a bulldog about his size. Tom made the mistake of picking up said dog, tossing it up and down like a ball and giving an "Ah, how cute!" chuckle.
• Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory is about a foot tall, Adorkable and knows martial arts.
• Peter Puppy from Earthworm Jim. That is all.
• Timmy Turner from The Fairly OddParents has confronted bullies, aliens, and the Darkness ever since his Fairies showed up.
  • Poof, at times, especially in episodes with his Anti-Fairy counterpart, Foop.
• Danielle from Danny Phantom who looks like an adorable little tomboy and constantly in danger due to her unstable form proves even if she doesn't possess as much power as Danny himself, she can still dish out the damage when prompted. Not many people can go and one up Vlad Plasmius after all (though it may be justified as Vlad potentially may have trained her).
  • And depending on who you ask, Danny himself.
• Meap from Phineas and Ferb. He's an intergalactic cop who roams the universe busting people who do stuff they're not supposed to do. He's two feet tall, doe-eyed, pink, and without his translator all he can say is "Meap!"

Mitch: Okay, okay, I surrender! You can stop behaving in a way counter-intuitive to how you superficially appear!

• • Perry the Platypus counts as well. As his theme song states, he's a semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal of action.
  • She doesn't kick much butt, but Isabella has proven herself to be quite the Action Girl at times.
    • In "Meapless in Seattle", she actually uses her cuteness as a weapon to beat Mitch.
  • The Fireside Girls as a whole. One of their achievement patches is wrestling an alligator.
  • ...which is nothing compared to one of their others, which was moving a mountain with their bare hands. And this was played for laughs!
  • Phineas and Ferb themselves. If they wanted, they could probably invent a Kill Sat or Humongous Mecha in their free time.
• June from KaBlam!! appears as a cute tomboyish little girl, yet get her mad and take cover.
  • This might also relate to Loopy, though her temper isn't as fiery.
  • Jetcat is also very much this trope.
• Jenny from My Life as a Teenage Robot.
  • And the tiny windup robot Killgore, too. No one takes him seriously due to his size, but he not only manages to capture The Hero but also manages to rebuild a gigantic, world-destroying machine by himself.
• Raven, Starfire, Jinx, and Terra from Teen Titans.
• Occasionally, Mort from The Penguins of Madagascar. Mort is usually rather cute and pathetic, but he has been known to beat Skipper at arm-wrestling, uproot whole trees and smash things with them, and beat up gorillas (though the last one was a result of one of Kowalski's experiments accidentally making him extremely large and muscular). Private may also qualify. Despite being very "cute and cuddly" he's been shown to be an excellent fighter, able to fend of Skipper's attacks while training blindfolded in one episode. And all without breaking a sweat.
• Any of the kids from Codename: Kids Next Door count. Especially Numbuh 3/Kuki who is absolutely friggin adorable most of the time and is the team's sweet ditzy Genki Girl, but when she does get angry, epic asskicking usually ensues.

Mr. Boss: Quick! RUN LIKE LITTLE GIRLS!

• • Sonia also counts. Normally she's a sweet, shy little girl who looks like she doesn't belong in a organization that fights evil adults. Then, you threaten to places her somewhere dark...and then you can only watch in horror as she beats you within an inch of your life.

Sonia: (smiles sweetly) What? I don't like the dark!

• Snap from ChalkZone. He appears as a cute little chalk drawing with huge eyes and a big heart, but can get very aggressive if you harm one of his friends.
  • Rudy can also be one to an extent. He's got the magic chalk! which can do anything!
• The eponymous Kim Possible, Rufus and also Ron, though he falls more into the adorkable category.
• Sam, Clover, and Alex from Totally Spies!.
• The Simpsons:
  • Maggie Simpson. She shot Mr. Burns. Also, when the whole town failed to confront the mobsters who were threatening to murder Homer Simpson, Maggie shot all of them from her bedroom when they arrived at the house. Homer didn't see her do it, but when he heard those gunshots and saw those mobsters fall to the ground, he said "I must have a guardian angel with a rifle." The irony is, this approach might have put her into some sort of Enfante Terrible Anti-Hero category if not for how obvious it was that her targets deserved it.
• Bugs Bunny. He can stare down the barrel of a shotgun and casually ask "What's up, Doc?".

Garth: Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played girl bunny? Wayne: No. [cracks up laughing] Wayne: No! Garth: Neither did I. I was just asking.

• One of the best aspects of Bambi II is evolving Disney's icon of cutesiness into a resourceful guardian for his herd, taking out an entire pack of hunting dogs by himself (par one which is desposed of by the equally adorable Thumper and Flower).
• Kit Cloudkicker of Tale Spin, master of Sky Surfing and Hypercompetent Sidekick to Baloo. Molly to a lesser extent may also apply.
• Eduardo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. He's a cute purple friendly monster, but hurt someone he likes...
  • Mac is also very badass adorable. He can easily take you on if you harm his friends, and is probably one of the cutest ones in the entire show.
• Heloise from Jimmy Two-Shoes is an Ax Crazy Enfant Terrible who beats and murders anyone who sets off her Hair-Trigger Temper...but she just looks so darn Moe while doing it.
• A lot of the G1 My Little Pony gang was this. Especially certain Ponies like Firefly, Gusty, and Galaxy.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has loads of this to go around, what with how cute, tiny, multi-coloured ponies are living in a world full of monsters. It applies to practically all the main characters.
  • Fluttershy is normally a quiet, timid pegasus who is a Friend to All Living Things, but do not hurt or otherwise threaten her friends!
  • Rainbow Dash for rushing in at every possible threat,and being the only pony who can break the sound barrier.
  • Twilight Sparkle is the pony equivalent of Jean Grey, down to the huge power and even more powerful mentor.
  • Rarity, the most prim and proper of the Mane Cast, has one reaction to a manticore charging at her: kick it in the face. Also, Rarity vs. the Diamond Dogs.
  • Applejack lacks the special powers of her pegasus and unicorn friends, but she can be relied on to handle a dangerous situation at least as well as any of the others.
  • Pinkie Pie. She may be a slightly ditzy Cloudcuckoolander, but is smart enough to thwart a parasprite infestation and can blast away boredom with her Party Cannon!
    • And Celestia help you if you break a Pinkie Promise!
  • The Great and Powerful Trixie -- Saruman as a pony! A subversion in that her magic is almost entirely looks; the only thing she seems to be good at is putting on a show and telling tall tales.
• This is more or less Mickey Mouse's main characterization; he's cheerful and upbeat, but he always manages to save the day in the end. In particular, he takes a level in badass in Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey.
  • And in the comics too—since the very start (in 1930). Watch him fight crooks, pirates, etc. with pistols, lead pipes (!) or just his fists; he might be a nice guy, but he's no sucker.
  • His half-brother, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, ain't such a pushover himself. Notwithstanding his role in Epic Mickey, stunts pulled in Oswald's shorts included beating up a huge bear and relieving it of its fur coat and grabbing a gun and pumping a live lion full of lead.
• Wasp from The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. She's an adorable, spunky Moe/ActionGirl who isn't afraid to fly right up to ultra-powerful Big Bads and blast them in the face while smack-talking them.
• The main six kids in Recess, and they all take a level in badass in Recess: School's Out. Spinelli is a small, adorable nine-year-old girl with her hair in Girlish Pigtails, yet she's the toughest kid in school.
  • T.J. Detweiler. Short, chubby, wide-eyed, sweet, and adorable. He's also the leader of the gang, who's responsible for all of their awesome moments.
  • Then you have Naive Newcomer Gus Griswald, who is one of the cutest kids among the main six, being the adorkable sweetheart of the gang. He can be a bit of a fraidy cat at times, though when he stands up for what he believes in, he's extremely badass.
  • Outside the main six, you've got Miss Grotke, the kids' fourth grade teacher who is absolutely adorable...and a martial arts expert.
• The Trollz in Trollz, particularly Amethyst, Topaz, and Sapphire.
• Colleen from Road Rovers. She has no actual superpowers. You know those big concrete blocks that they have in parking lots to keep people from driving onto walkways or into the side of the building? She broke one of those like it was nothing, after a monster threw it at her. You know those 2 big, rabid-looking cano-mutants that used to act as Parvo's main goons? They run off in terror when she reminds them of the first time they met (she beat them up on top of a train). She also routinely beats the crap out of the doberman who has super strength and extra-sharp unbreakable claws. She also beat up a pack of werewolves, because they drooled on her and ruined her hairdo.
  • She also turned into a large werewolf capable of piloting a helicopter.
• From Titan Maximum, we have Clare the dealiest assassin in the solar system. She looks seven (Gibbs assures Jodi she's really 24) and acts the same with a love of all things cute, especially bugs and frogs. Unless she's killing someone.
• Quailman, a.k.a. Doug, who's Badass Adorkable.
  • Outside his Quailman fantasies, Doug certainly qualifies when he causes a CMOA
• Rocko from Rocko's Modern Life can be a real asskicker when he gets mad.
• Peng the snow leopard cub from Kung Fu Panda: Legends Of Awesomeness.
• The 2011 reboot of ThunderCats has a few:
  • The Cute Kitten Trickster Twins the Thunderkittens can outwit giant trolls by dosing themselves with a fruit that induces Caffeine Bullet Time and leading them straight into carefully laid tripwire.
  • The Lilliputian Plant Person Emrick is a swordsman who counts a bird many times his size as his lifelong nemesis. The bird is as tall as a human, while Emrick would fit in one's hand.
  • The Drifter is an ever-smiling Rascally Rabbit who manages to dance circles around highly-skilled (and highly agitated) swordsmen, all without much in the way of weapons himself.
• All main six kids in The Adventures of Blinky Bill become this after the Extraordinary Excursion in seasion 2. How they survived all that despite being kids. Just so badass.
• Metalocalypse: Toki Wartooth is a rather dark take on this, overlapping with Cute and Psycho. He's a handsome young Norwegian with an adorably childlike personality and interests and a very Woobieish backstory, who also plays guitar for the most brutal death metal band on the planet. He's also capable of seriously messing up someone who wears past his usual cheerful demeanor.

Real Life

• Far, far too many individual examples to list, but chances are that a good percentage of mammalian, reptilian, and avian predators (in their infancy, at least) are strong candidates. Realize that, cuteness aside, any animal that hasn't lived a completely domesticated life has to survive in nature, fighting for food and having to kill it, protecting its young, and every once in a while, beating the hell out of something that wants to eat it.
  • Cracked.com presents the six cutest animals that can (and will) destroy you.
• Cats, especially according to ancient Egypt.
  • Humans just notice the adorable part more often than the badass part.
  • Some articles have described cats as not being truly domesticated. This makes sense. If your cat leaves home, he or she has a great chance of being able to survive in the wild hunting things like a furry little Rambo. Your chihuahua, not so much.
  • Speaking of Cracked articles, there's also their article about six cats more badass than you and most superheroes.
  • Also, the page quotation refers to sand cats, a particular variety of small cats found in the desert, and one that looks much like domestic cats. Just look at them! How could that not give off both a "badass" vibe and an "adorable" vibe at the same time?
  • There is a Eurasian species of "small" wildcat known as the fishing cat. This famous news article about a Russian family who owns one as a pet shouldn't leave any question as to why it qualifies as Badass Adorable: WARNING: Some images might upset you. Others you will want to hug.
  • There's a YouTube video of a cat playing with a kid when suddenly an alligator shows up... and the cat scares him off. What does the gator do? He comes back with a buddy. What does the cat do? He swipes at both of them.
• Alexis Goggins. This is a six-year-old girl who saved her mother's life from a gunman--by stopping bullets.
• A lot of recent boot camp graduates can qualify as this. A lot of them are only 17, 18, or 19 years old at the time, so they can look just as adorable as any other young adult. And they fight wars.
• Zhenya Tabakov.
• Water Bears. Cute little kinda-arthropods-but-not-really that can survive anything from freezing solid to nuclear explosions to the vacuum of space.
• Meerkats: When they band together, they can scare off the biggest and most dangerous predators.
• Bumblebees. A lot of people erroneously believe them to be stingless, but the truth is they're just more easy going then their more dangerous cousins. But piss them off, and they are just as capable of fucking you up as any other species of bee.
  • Honeybees have barbed stingers that cause the stinger and several organs to be torn out when the bee stings, killing the bee. However, bumblebees, like wasps, have smooth stingers and can sting you as many times as they like.
• Zoe Bell. Described in the script for Death Proof as "cute as a bug's ear Kiwi stuntwoman". Has doubled for such actresses as Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and Lucy Lawless on Xena: Warrior Princess. In Death Proof, she rides the hood of a speeding car, and roundhouses Stuntman Mike in the face, knocking him on his ass.
• Kyra Gracie is as cute as a button and could take anyone of us in a grappling contest and walk away still looking perfect.
• Dogs. They are adorable with their big eyes, ears, droopy/smiling faces and wagging tails aren't they? Well, some have been bred for herding livestock, hunting, rodent control, guarding, helping fishermen with nets, and pulling loads, in addition to their roles as companions. They can also serve as service dogs such as guide dogs, utility dogs, assistance dogs, hearing dogs, rescue dogs, and psychological therapy dogs provide assistance to individuals with physical or mental disabilities. There are some pretty capable police dogs out there who sniff for bombs/drugs, chase after suspects, and can sniff out decomposing corpses.
  • They are the descendants of wolves, who are known to have incredibly powerful, bone-crushing jaws, ridiculous amounts of stamina, and hearing and sense of smell beyond human comprehension, and enough intelligence to work together and use surprisingly complex strategies to take down prey several times more powerful than themselves. Almost all dogs have at least some of these traits left over. Suffice it to say that most domestic dogs, including the smaller ones, (barring such intense human manipulation as is seen in the chihuahua) are almost as tough as their wolf ancestors- and a few are even tougher.
  • See also these articles from Cracked.com.
• Ishikawa Rika once broke 12 concrete tiles with one blow from her bare hands, sure it turned out they were especially designed to break, but when Takahashi Ai tried to do the same thing on another show she failed miserably until she resorted to stamping on the stack instead.
• Hummingbirds. Tiny little balls of feathers and hyperactivity that live off sugar water and look like digital camera ads. They're also stupidly aggressive, and will chase birds ten times their size out of their territory. There's a reason why the Aztecs believed hummingbirds to be the reincarnations of their own warriors.
• Chimpanzees and other apes can be pretty cute at times. They are also possess bone-crushing strength and incredible ferocity when threatened.
• Otters will fuck you up.
• Skunks are quite adorable if left alone. However, they tend to walk around rather boldly and have been known to stand up to bears and mountain lions, normally ending by sending the predator running with a face full of musk, and if they're smart they don't come back. If their spray fails, they can resort to tooth and claw fighting, and can seriously mess you up. And mother skunks are quite protective of their children, making them even more Badass.
• Soldiers in The Vietnam War were warned about young girls selling items such as cold sodas in the street, who wore concealed explosives that they would detonate once enough U.S. soldiers got within range.
  • Also the real purpose of most of the prostitutes.
• Squirrels.
• This swordswoman. Calm, collected, precise... and she jumps for joy when she masters a sword stroke.
• Painted wolves base their pack hierarchies around submission, resulting in puppy-like antics from just about the entire pack. What makes them noteworthy separate from other canines? 90% of their hunts end in kills - even lions only manage a measly 30%.
• Cheerleaders. Seriously. Studies have found that cheerleading can be more dangerous than even American football. Little to no padding, intense gymnastics, and intense competition cause there to be a higher risk for catastrophic damage than many sports. Plus they have to look good doing it.
• Grasshopper mice.
• Leopard geckos, more well-known for their easygoing nature as a pet, have a secret talent: they can kill scorpions larger than themselves.
• Gina Carano. Cute, beautiful, seems to be on the verge of a giggle most of the time, and is a professional kick-boxer and mixed martial artist.
• Mongooses are known for being able to kill venomous snakes. The Indian gray mongoose in particular can hunt and kill a King Cobra, one of the most dangerous snakes in the world.
• Velvet worms. Probably another Ugly Cute example, but they're soft and squishy things that crawl slowly over the forest floor on stubby legs. And are predators. That can kill prey the size of tarantulas. (They do it by spraying a sticky slime that quickly hardens into a net to trap their prey. And then they close in and eat the helpless prey alive.)
• Tasmanian devils. They're pudgy, fuzzy little black critters with a perma-scowl who are infamous for their frenzied screeching and the sheer ferocity that they display when eating. They also have the strongest proportional bite of any living mammal.
• Bears in general, but especially polar bears.
• Birds of prey, like falcons and eagles, are so adorably feathery and big-eyed... ^{[dead link]} now here's a video of eagles killing foxes and wolves.
• Sea turtles are often thought of as the adorable, harmless Iron Woobie of the ocean that perseveres against all odds. They're also known for being immune to the Box Jellyfish, the most venomous creature in the world, which they regularly eat.
• Badgers in general. They have cute little stripey-faces, stocky bodies, and also have razor-sharp claws and teeth which they can use to defend themselves (Though, normally, they will just try to burrow away. Those claws are mainly for digging, after all). Special mention goes to the Honey Badger, which has become a Memetic Badass due to its fearless nature.
• Audie Murphy: just click through and look at the cute, apparently-teenaged boy wearing what appears to be his dad's, granddad's and uncle's medals, and then scroll down to learn that he earned them all himself, and the crazy things he did in the process.
• Female velvet ants are fuzzy, cuddly-looking flightless wasps that squeak when distressed and have mellow, easy-going temperaments. However, they're incredibly durable and hard to kill, and those that try will likely be on the receiving end of one of the most agonizingly painful stings in the animal kingdom.
• Dolphins seem to smile all the time but that doesn't always equate to being a friendly, peace-loving creature. Indeed their "smile" is a mere consequence of their anatomy completely unrelated to their temperament. Groups of dolphins have been witnessed hunting down sharks, for example. And there have been a couple of tragic accidents involving humans as well.