Combat Pragmatist/Video Games

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  • Tournament fighters, are quite prone to this.
  • Spawn camping in online shooters is based on this. Due to the reluctance of many servers to kick or ban a player for their first offense of breaking server rules, players may camp until the server gives them a warning. Even if the server specifically forbids it, the player can always feign ignorance and claim not to have known or can camp again but just a little bit further away from where they were before.

"It's a legitimate strategy!"

  • Ryuji Yamazaki from Fatal Fury stomps people when they are on the ground and kicks dirt in their faces.
  • A big part of Altair's fighting style in Assassin's Creed is his willingness to be a brutal combatant. Included in his many nasty killing animations is punching a mook in the face to spin him around and then stabbing him in the lower back, through the hip, and out his crotch. Another involves breaking an opponent's leg by kicking out a knee, and another has him kick them in the crotch, and as they drop to their knees, stabbing them in the top of their head with his short blade.
    • Let's not forget his gruesome hidden blade counterattacks, which are so underhanded many players don't even realize they exist.
    • This seems to be something passed down from generation to generation. Ezio of the Renaissance fights even dirtier than Altair, aided by new weapons of the time period and some new skills (lacking his ancestor's Super Drowning Skills for one, allowing him to pull enemies into the water). He even learns to toss sand in enemies' eyes.
      • Unfortunately for him, by Brotherhood the polearm-wielding Seeker guards (and possibly other guards) will sometimes throw sand at Ezio's eyes or at your allies, while any guard is capable of grabbing Ezio -- leaving him unable to block or counter any enemy attack unless he escapes first -- and armored Regular guards will sometimes mount horses so as to charge and swing at Ezio, the only melee attack in the game that Ezio can not Counter with the Hidden Blade. Papal Guards will sometimes use a pistol, which like other projectile attacks can not be blocked or countered.
      • Although the guards get pragmatic-er, Ezio still wins the fighting dirty award for calling in henchmen to shank people.
    • And now Connor is carrying on the legacy, adding a tomahawk and a bow to his already long list of weapons. Not to mention the things he can do with a musket...
  • Kratos of God of War is pretty damned brutal, willing to stab Cyclops' in the eye, slashing their knees to open them up for attack, slam and throw enemies around and even rip enemies apart with his bare hands. The final battle of the second game has him pulling off an I Surrender, Suckers on Zeus, asking to be executed which he takes as an opportunity to give Zeus a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. By the third game he's able to use enemies as battering rams.
    • Theseus breaks off direct combat to snipe Kratos and calls up minotaurs to aid him. Perseus reflects light with his shield into Kratos' eyes. Hercules calls up troops to aid him and throws chunks of the battlefield at Kratos.
  • The introductory cinematic of Fire Emblem Tellius: Radiant Dawn has Sothe - resident Badass Normal, devoted Bodyguard Crush and famed Perpetual Frowner - appearing on the scene by cutting down an enemy soldier from the back, allowing Micaiah to blind the dozen or so enemies surrounding them with a spell so they can skedaddle. It's a lot cooler than it sounds.
    • Micaiah gets another one later in the game, where she shows she is quite willing to resort to dirty tactics like pouring oil on her enemies and lighting them on fire when the situation calls for it. Granted, this little ploy doesn't work so well when the Hawk King decides to retaliate with his own dirty strategy.
  • The Amazon from the Nintendo game Pro Wrestling is notorious for this. Some of the moves he uses to fight the other wrestlers include biting them, choking them and stabbing them with a fork.
  • In what might be a Take That against protagonists such as Leon from Resident Evil 4, Isaac from Dead Space wouldn't know "finesse" if it tried to claw his face off. Everything from frenzied curb stomping to strangulation while beating his victim around the head with a gun, the man can and WILL take any advantage offered in melee. Of course, when fighting a bunch of zombies, the idea of 'rules of combat' go out the window, but Isaac still qualifies by virtue of the sheer brutality he gets up to.
    • Isaac is less about brutality than panic-flailing. He is understandably freaked out by what's going on, and when attacked, he flails, panics, then gets a temporary advantage and freaks out, killing his opponent. Isaac is an engineer in a bad situation, he doesn't have any techniques or experience in that would help him; in essence, he fights dirty because he has no reasonable alternative.
    • Isaac's animations for getting out of grapples usually consist of pushing the necromorph back, punching it in the face and yelling till it ends up on the ground and then stamping on its spine. One particularly brutal example involves him stomping on a crawling enemy, and using the leverage to rip off its stinger-tipped tail with his bare hands. A more humorous example features him punting necromorph babies.
    • The Necromorphs, amusingly, are actually not this. A couple of cutscenes feature the necromorphs engaging in tactics that seem more sadistic than actually effective (Not that they aren't effective). Enemies with sharp talons just bludgeoning Isaac, or the death scene where an enemy slowly chops up Isaac hacking him up rather badly before actually finishing Isaac off by going for the head. Whereas Isaac grappling cutscenes feature him doing whatever it takes to survive and kill his attackers, the Necromorph kill scenes seem to be more about looking as painful as possible, rather than being quickly lethal.
  • Pokémon is filled with some seriously dirty attacks. One of the first attacks you encountered in Red/Blue was Sand Attack, which is kicking/blowing sand in the opponent's face to reduce their accuracy. The second game adds Mud Slap, which uses mud (and actually does damage, too), and Pursuit, which strikes a Pokemon as it's being switched out. In fact, the "Dark" type combines not only obviously Darkness Elemental attacks, but also a lot of "dirty trick" attacks which invariably involve underhanded tactics or maneuvers, like Fake Tears, Bite, Torment, and Faint Attack.
    • The dirtiest Dark-type attack of them all is Beat Up, which works by having all the other Pokémon in the party gang up on the opponent. It's not called the Aku ("evil") type in Japanese for nothing.
    • The two types of Pokemon who take double damage from Dark-type moves are Ghosts (who are ironically rather timid) and Psychics (whose minds are broken by the sheer malice). But Fighting-types are trained combatants, and don't fall for such crap.
      • As mentioned in the Pokémon page, Croagunk and Toxicroak are like this, and learn a lot of dark attacks. However, it's for survival, and some of those species are said to be laid back and perhaps good. That may come from being Fighting-type though, most of them are honourable.
  • The Punisher game has this as a feature. If the player runs into an enemy, there are many choices. Hold him hostage, interrogate him, knock him out, shoot him in the head or just outright drive a k-bar into his brain. One of the many twists is the Punisher distracts the enemy by handing over his own gun, then it's knife-face time.
  • There's not a lot in Dead Rising that can't be picked up and used to bash/slice/(appropriate destructive verb here) zombie heads in. Even CD cases, squeaky hammers, and entire mannequins.
  • If you have inhuman strength in most games, it means you will use some kind of sword or other weapon. Of course, if you don't think about using a massive Gatling gun meant to be used in combat planes, like Vulcan Raven in Metal Gear Solid.
    • Considering who he's fighting, he might have handicapped himself by bringing only one tank to that earlier fight in the minefield.
    • More importantly, Solid Snake and Big Boss themselves. The whole gameplay in the series is based around fighting dirty, from holding an enemy hostage in a firefight, knocking them out with sleeping gas to distracting them by leaving porn mags lying around. This how ever does not stop Big Boss from claiming:

I'm no assassin. Shooting a soldier with their guard down isn't my style.

  • Perfect World's Assassin class. They can turn invisible at will (Shadow Walk or Shadow Escape), teleport to you from longer than the range of a bow (Shadow Jump), do the same thing while stunning you for 3 seconds (Shadow Teleport), immobilize, seal, sleep, or stun you while doing probably illegal amounts of damage (Tackling Slash, Throatcut, Deep Sting, and Headhunt respectively - especially Headhunt), increase their already ridiculously high crit rate by a huge amount while doing damage (Power Dash), dodge 1/4 of all your skills (Focused Mind), and are not fun to fight in PK unless you're a really good barbarian. At least the fight is fast. Unless you're a really good Barbarian.
  • Sword of the Stars has the Tarka, whose concept of "honor in battle" involves walking away with as few casualties as possible while leaving their enemies dead. Consequently they can and will employ almost any dirty trick in the book for an advantage; their favourite techs in-game are mines and torpedoes, and the game's novel has a Tarka commander betraying her own allies during a fight so that the telepaths they're fighting will be unable to learn her real battleplan from them -- a battleplan that involves basically gift-wrapping the main character and handing him over to them on a silver platter so she can sneak up and stab them in their backs while they're preoccupied with... "processing" him.
  • In many RTS games, it is pretty much expected that players will fight dirty, and such games are designed accordingly.
    • Star Craft 2 is a prime case. Throughout a match's early- to mid- game, players typically target their opponent's workers or key structures with hit-and-run tactics, trying to gain an upper hand.
      • While all three races have some ability to do this, the Terran seem largely geared specifically for it, as is fitting for the Crapsack World they live in. They have several units designed specifically for early game harassment and are easily able to deploy large armies in fast flying dropships, all of which can do immeasurable damage and retreat before you've had a chance to fight back.
  • In games that are played competitively or offer environment for competitive play, playing dirty and using mechanics that are considered overpowered by a large number of players is usually the norm. The game usually has a way of dealing with it or they are just things harder to counter than to employ, so they are 'overpowered' in lower levels of skill.
  • The Elites in Halo come off as a rather brutal example. They are proud warrior-race guys who have no problem with turning invisible in the middle of a fight. They may take pride in combat, but that doesn't mean they're stupid when it comes to that combat.
    • Humanity are huge on combat pragmatism, mostly because they absolutely have to. Since they're facing such a bad technology gap, they have to come up with devious and unusual strategies to make up for it. But even when they don't, they use particularly brutal methods. The human military kidnaps hundreds of children, replaces them with short lived clones, training those children to be soldiers, then subjecting them to drug enhancement therapies which may kill them or leave them seriously crippled. To make the ultimate soldier. And that was before they made contact with the Covenant.
  • While most of the boxers of Punch-Out!! have rather unconventional movesets, to put it mildly there are characters who use Martial Arts alongside boxing (Dragon Chan) as well as weapons (Hoy Quarlow). Aran Ryan in the Wii version however is the biggest example, using elbow strikes, head butts, putting horseshoes inside his gloves and later on using a boxing glove whip against you that lets him get a free hit in upon knocking him out.
  • It's hard to get more pragmatic than Prototype's Alex Mercer. Anything that isn't nailed down or on fire can be thrown at enemies, any civilians unlucky enough to be within range of his wild flailing get torn to shreds, and he heals himself by eating anyone still standing. He is also a shapeshifter, and not even slightly above becoming a soldier and accusing another soldier of being him to get them shot, or taking the shape of a commanding officer and ordering "his" troops to bomb each other, or playing dead to escape when cornered.
  • In World of Warcraft Rogues are one of the dirtiest fighters in the game. They can become invisible in combat (Vanish), they have several abilities that incapacitate opponents, such as Blind, Kidney Shot, Backstab, Ambush, Cheap Shot, Garrote, and poisons on their weapons.
    • It doesn't help that players behind the class are fond of attacking you while you're low on health or already engaged in combat, further capitalising on their advantage.
      • In fairness, players of every class will do that.
    • Really, many classes fight dirty when their spells are taken literally. Priests can use psychic-magic based abilities to mentally torment enemies to death, not to mention the ability to infect enemies with a literal Devouring Plague.
    • Okay World of Warcraft PvP players, raise your hand if you've come across someone of the opposite faction battling with something, waited until their health was low, then attacked for the honor points. Rogues need not reply, assuming you haven't already stealthed and snuck up behind me.
      • Many attack for the lulz or factional pride, but it's much the same.
    • Players with the Engineering profession can take this to new heights, being able to use flamethrowers and rocket launchers in a high fantasy setting. This is taken to the fullest heights with the Big Daddy bomb, the highest ranked bomb in the profession to date, which does massively increased damage if the enemy is out of combat, meaning that a level 70ish character can creep near an enemy respawn point, let everyone respawn, then hit the whole area with up to 15,000 damage, which is enough to one-shot most characters at that level.
  • Dampierre from Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny loves to fight dirty. Along with his pair of hidden-below-the-forearm blades, he will also throw sucker punches during throws, and even fake injury right before springing up and attacking again.
  • In Spelunky, one of the protagonist's main abilities is the ability to pick up and throw anything. Priceless golden idols, enemy corpses, Distressed Damsels, you name it, he can throw it. Damsels can also be used for a host of things besides the reward you get for rescuing them, including the infamous "damsel bomb" trick. Other pragmatic tricks include getting a Ballistic Discount at a shop, and luring enemies into the vicious Death Traps meant for you.
  • Some of Batman's moves in Batman: Arkham Asylum easily qualify for this trope. One of his delicate ways of saying 'stay down' is to wrench someone's lower leg by ninety degrees to the sound of breaking bones. That's gotta hurt.
    • Aside from Batman's vow to never take a life, most of Arkham Asylum's combat is like this. In freeflow combat he routinely breaks bones, dislocates joints, turns enemy weapons against them and generally does whatever most expediently neutralizes the threat. When facing thugs with guns? Use stealth, environmental traps, misdirection and psychological warfare to whittle them down one by one without a shot being fired (if you're good).
  • The salarians in Mass Effect always start their wars with no warning, either hitting an enemy pre-emptively or assaulting their targets out of the blue. The Codex entry for their military doctrine even explicitly states that they view the concept of warning your enemy you're about to attack by declaring war is insane and stupid.
    • The same codex entry states explicitly that Salarians believe that a war should be won before it begins.
    • Shepard him/herself - a Renegade can sometimes punch/shoot potential problems through dialogue options. The Renegade Action Commands in the second game more or less consist of attacking or threatening suddenly. And punching that reporter.
    • And now, in the sequel, there are optional Quick Time interrupts in which Shepard can cut people off by shooting them, punching them in the face, throwing them out skyscraper windows, etc. This has the bonus of making certain scenes a lot shorter, not to mention easier. In one case, doing this will take out a half dozen opponents, leaving you to face only one. And all without taking damage, thanks to the magic of cutscenes.
    • Humans in Mass Effect have an equally pragmatic doctrine - they go after enemy supply lines and the like, leaving their forces to "wither on the vine".
    • Humans are also said to be fond of Disproportionate Retribution. They don't have the manpower to guard each of their colonies, so they make sure that whoever attacks one is in for a world of hurt. Word travels around, so the human colonies are usually left alone...
    • Humanity's tactic of keeping fleets of warships in arms reach of their colonies is said to have caught the Turians off-guard during the First Contact War. They thought that the vessels in orbit around Shanxi represented the bulk of Human military strength, only to have a collective Oh Crap when they noticed an entire Fleet of angry Human Warships pouring through the Relay and establishing enough weapon-locks to blast them out of the stars.
    • Inverted with the Geth (minus the Heretics), at least when fighting other geth. Due to their nature they tell each other everything, even plans for attack. Legion finding out that the Heretics have been spying on the other geth horrifies them.
    • The Cerberus Daily News goes into detail on just how vicious the turians are in combat, particularly when dealing with a rebellious province in one of their colonies. Since every turian is a soldier, turian military doctrine does not distinguish between civilian and soldier, and in a turian vs. turian war, they bomb their own cities indiscriminately. A common practice in these types of engagements is to establish "safe camps" near a combat zone, where enemy adult turians who do not wish to fight can surrender and move to to remain out of combat. Any able-bodied enemy turian who isn't in the safe camp when combat commences is a legitimate target. This tendency was also shown when the humans were fighting the turians at Shanxi; the turians were not particularly concerned about civilian casualties and were consistently bombing human squads from orbit, destroying entire city blocks to kill individual fireteams.
      • And then there's their handling of Tuchanka.

Joker: You gotta love the turians. After they beat you down and sterilize you, they strap a big old bomb to your planet. Y'know, just in case you get uppity again some day.

    • Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3 is not above calling in a gunship to provide cover-fire while he recharges his shields or calling in reinforcements in boss battles.
    • The Renegade interrupt has Shepard kill Kai-Leng by breaking his sword (his only weapon), unfurl their own omniblade and stab him in the gut.
    • This is basically the plan driving the plot of The Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2. The Alliance plans on blowing up a mass relay, which would temporarily stop the Reapers. Mass relays are pretty much nearly impossible to destroy through conventional means, and an Alliance Fleet showing up in batarian space would spark a war. So the Alliance team covertly straps engines to a small planetoid to fire it at the relay at near-light speed.
      • Ironically, strapping rockets to a small moon to perform a Colony Drop was the same trick the Batarians used in the Bring Down the Sky DLC from the first game, which was narrowly averted by Shepard. Clearly humans learnt from the incident.
  • Miguel from Tekken is a pretty dirty fighter, even having one move that starts off with you laughing at the opponent unguarded and then just punching them in the face for a one-hit KO.
    • King is pretty pragmatic himself, with those crazy grapple combos, even grappling opponents while they're in mid-air.
    • Also, pretty much any character that isn't human or that has superhuman capabilities can be considered a combat pragmatist.
  • Gene from God Hand frequently stomps on downed enemies, knees people in the face repeatedly, dishes out Groin Attacks and throws everything he can get at them, including Exploding Barrels and the occasional rocket launcher. You will need every advantage you can get.
    • Apparently stomping on enemies is a divine move, as is attacking enemies in the crotch as both are in his Roulette Wheel (which has moves such as God Charge and Divine Smash). The latter is useless against women and Camp Gays though.

End Credits: "Don't act like you don't like the Ball Buster!"

  • The MMO Dungeon Fighter Online epitomises this trope with the "Brawler" subclass. The Brawler throws sand in the opponents eyes, uses bladed fist weapons (though any fighter class can equip them, the Brawler specializes with them), poisons said weapons, throws nets at opponents, and more.
  • The bosses in Dawn of War II will always call reinforcements when you fight them. Particularly nasty is the Avatar of Khaine, which likes to call in lots of tanks.
    • Kind of justified considering that you can Deep Strike.
  • Wrestling skill in Dwarf Fortress, aside from the obvious locks, throws and chokeholds, lets you do such interesting things as gouging out eyes, twisting your weapon in the wound, and tearing off parts of the other guy's face. Sadly, the AI doesn't make very efficient use of it.
    • This being Dwarf Fortress, ways to set up elaborate and extremely brutal deathtraps for your fortress abound, and the instructions for any one of them can be found on the forums or wiki, often with diagrams. One of the easiest "traps" to develop is the "Dwarven Atom Smasher": Build a drawbridge over solid ground, trick enemies into walking beneath it, and lower the drawbridge onto your foe. The main drawback to this method is that the enemy's belongings are also crushed, so you don't get any loot for your dwarves, and extremely large or strong enemies won't be crushed. In order of increasing complexity from there are pitfalls, drowning traps, magma traps, "Goblin Grinders" forcing your enemies (or cats or other undesirables) to walk in circles endlessly across repeating spike traps, and the "Dwarven Checkerboard", which isolates demons and then covers them in magma and water to encase them in obsidian.
    • A rather humorous example in Adventure Mode: werebeasts are extremely difficult to defeat in beast form unless you have weapons of the right material, but since they're only monster one night per lunar cycle and you know where they are anyway you can just attack them while they're a naked peasant.
  • In Street Fighter IV, Balrog and Cody both qualify. Granted, the rules of the tournament are shaky at best, but in Cody's case it's probably safe to say pulling a knife or hitting people in the spine with a pipe are probably against it. In Balrog's case, one of his Ultra combos involves him stepping on the opponent's toes to hold them in place before he beats them about the face. It ends with a hilarious "Who, me?" shrug towards an unseen ref, who may exist only in his head.
    • As well as C. Viper, who hides various gadgets in her clothes.
  • In the MMO EVE Online, all the most successful players who fight other players will do anything to win, such as using ridiculously superior numbers to ensure a kill. Many will even engage in metagaming where they will infiltrate enemy alliances to find out where enemy players are, what ships why're flying and how they're fitted out, what tactics they use and how to counter them. Some will even infiltrate in order to pretend to be on the enemy's side, stabbing them in the back when a fight commences. All of these are considered acceptable tactics by not only the PvP playerbase, but also the game developers who actively encourage it. The common response from PvPers in EVE Online to anyone who complains about these unfair tactics is that a kill is still a kill, and there is no such thing as "Space-Bushido".
    • There's a rumour that some players physically went to a foe's house and made noise so that he couldn't sleep, which greatly reduced his combat effectiveness.
    • There is another rumor that during a war between two ingame alliances, members of one alliance were planning to cut the power to the house of the fleet leader of the other alliance during a battle.
      • Of course it seems like both of the above mentioned tactics were in fact criminal in nature, trespassing and vandalism, and could have gotten the players arrested.
      • Intelligence and resourcefulness are the most respected traits one can demonstrate in EVE Online combat. A player will gain far more recognition for using unconventional (often called "dirty" by newbies) tactics to achieve victory.
  • In Freedom Force, you can smack down thugs with lamp posts and trafic lights, use cars as improvised hand grenades, as well as demolish buildings with thugs on top of them.
  • In Fallout 3 it might seem cool to use melee weapons against other melee attackers or even fight unarmed like a ninja with the right skills and perks, but often all this is relatively impractical when you will have a much easier time throwing a grenade into a room full of Mooks.
    • Also the VATS targetting system makes getting a kill painfully easy as it is a turn-based system that allows you to target body parts and score better critical hits. The only thing limiting it is the number of action points you have available, meaning you're forced to fight in the conventional fps style from time to time. And even THIS limitation can be overcome by a high level perk that instantly refills your action points upon just one successful kill in VATS, which essentially means almost infinite use since enemies that can't be killed in a single VATS barrage are practically nonexistant past the first few player levels.
    • Even more so in Fallout 1 and 2 were you could aim at the eyes or groin, with a gattlin gauss rifle.
    • Ulysses of the Lonesome Road DLC will not only use Stealth Boys and Flash Bangs on the player should you choose to fight him, he'll also have the aid of a swarm of Eyebots and sic the Marked Men of the Divide on you.
  • In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, you, CJ, comes up against the head of the local Triad. In the final showdown, he tosses you a Katana and you do duke it out with him using Katana swords. Sounds fun right? But this is Grand Theft Auto. Most players will more than likely have a couple guns on them. Why bother fighting the guy when you can just pump him full of lead right?
  • Kingdom of Loathing gives you the option of playing as a Disco Bandit, who specialises in enemy-weakening attacks. These include a suckerpunch, an eye-poke, a face-stab, breaking your opponent's knees with a spinning kick, and pretending to run away then attacking while your opponent's guard is down.
  • In the second Fable game, you are sent to find the Hero of Skill and get them to join your group of Heroes. Reaver turns out to be...not as nice as the other Heroes on your team. His combat pragmatism becomes apparent when one finds out why his signature pistol is called the 'Dragonstomper .48', as discovered in the description of the pistol the 'Red Dragon'.
    • The description of the 'Red Dragon' is: This unique an exotic pistol once belonged to Wicker, the finest shot Albion had ever seen. Until Reaver appeared. Wicker visited Reaver and challenged him to an honourable shooting challenge to decide who had the greatest skill. Reaver's reply was to shoot him in the head.
  • In The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks, most of the fights involving both Link and Zelda consist in one character distracting the enemy for the other to strike its back.
  • In Diver Down Drek fights like this in the cutscenes. No action is too underhanded or dishonorable when his survival is at stake. In gameplay, not so much.
  • Team Fortress 2' - it's said that if you're not winning, you're clearly not fighting dirty enough.
  • Bayonetta simultaneously subverts and plays this trope straight. Since the game puts a lot of value in stringing together combos and generally killing your opponents quickly, there are a lot of ways to make her fight very pragmatically from using her enemy's own weapon against them to shooting them while they are speaking. The subversion comes from the fact that while she plays unfairly in nearly all of her fights, she has a habit of being incredibly over the top to the point where whatever benefit she gained from dirty fighting is negated by her showy nature. Thankfully, her explosive power makes her make the best out of this situation without much of a problem.
  • We get this Crowning Moment of Awesome from the protagonist of Saints Row 2:

Akuji: Did you really think you could match my skill [with a katana]?

Protagonist: No. [shoots him in the chest] I'm gonna cheat.

  • Shadow from Sonic the Hedgehog is this. Despite having Super Strength, Super Speed , and a slew of other powers, he is quite able and willing to wield any sort of weapon, be it guns, explosives, vehicles or improvise with debris. He doesn't naturally hold back against opponents, and also has no qualms against using lethal force against weaker or defeated foes in gameplay and several of the games. This goes against the Does Not Like Guns (Sonic) or Bare-Fisted Monk (Knuckles) mentality of other characters.
  • Rangers from Guild Wars. They have Throw Dirt which can blind enemies for a period, making melee attacks useless, can target enemies' legs and cripple them and slow movement, an assortment of landmine-like traps, and when the going gets tough, they even have a skill called Escape that lets them run faster while having a high chance to block any attack aimed their way. Fighting dirty indeed.
    • Assassins also fit this trope. Aside from being the only class in the game that can teleport, their attacks also feature liberal use of poison, knockdowns, crippling, and disabling enemies in various ways. They also have their Dark Escape skill, which halves their damage intake and gives them a speed boost, making them very tough to kill when fleeing.
      • And let's not forget the Assassin's infamous Shadow Form skill, which in PvP, makes them IMMUNE TO ALL ATTACKS AND SPELLS, while the Assassin is free to cause whatever damage he sees fit. There's a reason Assassins are feared in PvP.
    • Mesmers are practically the personification of this trope. Among their bag of nasty tricks, they can steal spells off your skill bar, cancel nearly any skill you begin casting, give you huge damage penalties for either attacking or casting spells, completely drain your magic meter, and even send your skills into cooldown mode for absurdly long periods of time. Mesmers are also feared in PvP for this very reason.
  • Rogues in Dragon Age are built around this, with a focus on backstabbing (especially the Assassin specialty), and such abilities as "Dirty Fighting," which appears to throw sand in an enemy's eyes to stun, and "Below the Belt," which is described as a "swift and unsportsmanlike kick".
  • Army Men Sarge's Heroes In the cut scene before the final level, General Plastro has Sergeant Hawk at gunpoint.

Sarge: Plastro! Why don't you drop that gun and face me like a man?

Plastro: Because I'm the bad guy. That's why.

  • From "Hey, You!" Haymakers to shoving a blade through someone's spine to crushing people beneath thrown vending machines, Adam Jensen of Deus Ex Human Revolution does not know how to play fair.
  • The Smuggler class in Star Wars the Old Republic uses abilities such as Dirty Kick, Fake Surrender and, of course, Shoot First. One of their specializations is even called 'Dirty Fighting', and true to form, it can be used to greatly boost the potential of all the dirty tricks in your arsenal.
    • Similarly, the Imperial Agent specializes in assassination, with poison, sniping and backstabbing as their specialties. Considering that both classes are Badass Normals going up against Jedi/Sith, they're going to need some tricks to even the odds a bit.
      • Also, if Kaliyo Djannis is around when the Imperial Agent confronts Darth Jadus in the finale of the first act, she'll eventually decide to shoot him while he's gloating. Unfortunately for her, Jadus simply teleports away and responds with a Force Choke.
  • Several characters in the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, especially Starkiller, who throws in punches, kicks, and grapples during lightsaber duels and can turn nearly anything into an Improvised Weapon with the Force. Special mention is his incarnation in the non-canon Ultimate Sith Edition, where he throws Luke Skywalker in the path of a snow speeder!
  • Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat with his Groin attack fits this trope, He also uses Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do.
  • In The Godfather 2, Dominic can use vicious moves such as neck punches and arm breaks.
  • Fallen Earth has a whole skill tree devoted to this tactic known as "Dirty Tricks". The skills include moves like "Dirty Steel", "Kneecap" and "Sabotage". The icon for the Dirty Tricks skill set is a man getting kicked in the junk.
  • You can be one in Dark Souls. As a Black Phantom, you can use environmental traps, back stabs, and cliff ledges to ruin your target's day.
  • Any player character in The Elder Scrolls who has a high sneak skill probably fights in the most unfair way possible. Sneak up behind a foe and stab them with a dagger or fire a poisoned arrow at their face before they know you're there are common tactics for a pragmatic character. Pragmatism is the name of the game with a thief-type character, especially, because they're basically Glass Cannons.
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