Combat Pragmatist/Western Animation

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• Terry McGinnis in Batman Beyond is quite fond of fighting dirty. In Terry's case, it actually gets noted in The Movie, where the Joker points out that the real Batman would never fight that way. To which Terry's response is that he's not the same Batman, which he then uses to make a couple other points in an epic verbal beatdown. It was even an Ironic Echo because Joker had made it a point to let Terry know he didn't consider Terry the real Batman.
  • Of course, it just led to the Joker introducing HAND GRENADES to their fight. And then Terry uses the Joker's own joybuzzer on him to short out the microchip, so it all balances out.
• In one of their encounters in the G.I. Joe CG movies, Snake Eyes defeated Storm Shadow by pulling the pins off the grenades he was wearing across his chest.
  • He also dispatched a Red Ninja in the comic by tossing a grenade at him; Larry Hama did the scene as a homage to the Indiana Jones Cairo swordsman scene.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • the Season 3 episode, "Sokka's Master" has Sokka learn sword fighting from a Master Swordsman. He's be praised by the teacher for his resourcefulness (e.g. taking advantage of his greater agility compared to someone who is older, attacking from higher ground, pulling bamboo shoots so they'll fly back and distract his opponent, throwing sand in his eyes).
  • Princess Azula gleefully pulls false surrenders on, ambushes, interrupts, and gangs up on her enemies. Because of this, she's the only person who fought the Avatar in Avatar State and won, hitting Aang with a lightning bolt in the back as he completed the power up.
  • The Equalists use whips, grenades, bolas, tripwires, and chi-blocking. Because the Elemental Powers benders use give them a significant range advantage, they also rely a lot on sneak attacks and group ambushes.
    • A specific example, when Korra challenges Amon to a fight, she expects him to come alone as she did. Instead, he waits for her to start to leave when it appears that he's not coming and than has a few dozen of his chi-blockers ambush her from the darkness with bola whips and subdue her in seconds. The only reason he doesn't just beat her right there is that he doesn't want to turn her into a martyr.
• Rattrap from Transformers: Beast Wars.

Rattrap: You fight with a rat... (kicks sand into Waspinator's eyes) ...you better fight dirty.

• • He also knees Waspinator square in the gearbox.
• Starscream from Transformers Prime also qualifies, lacking Megatron's insistence on defeating his enemies personally and single-handedly or Airachnid's need to let her prey run around or suffer before she goes for the kill. When he is handcuffed and at Arcee's mercy when she learns he was the one who killed Cliffjumper, Starscream immediately resorts to Ain't Too Proud to Beg and seems too terrified to even free himself. When Arcee, in contempt for his cowardice, goes to free him herself (and then kill him), Starscream immediately impales her in the side, frees himself, and proceeds to beat the crap out of her until she gets her Heroic Second Wind.
  • Soundwave also qualifies. Though he isn't as underhanded as Starscream (as far as we know,) he is Genre Savvy and very pragmatic, always looking for the simplest and most effective solution to a problem. He has no problems with sending Laserbeak to attack a weakened Airachnid.
• Of the three main characters in The Boondocks, Riley is much more resourceful than his brother and granddad. Sure he lacks his brother's kung fu or his granddad's belt proficiency, but he will use every tool at his disposal to win a fight.Chances are he learned this from Huey, which would essentially make him a more melee type version of his brother.
• An early episode of The Simpsons has Bart trying to do this to Nelson, throwing mud in his face before attacking him. It doesn't work.
• Sasha of Titan Maximum has basically one attack in her arsenal: the Groin Attack. It's not so effective against the giant monsters the titular robot fights, but it's very effective against the mostly male members of Titan's Engineering Core. Palmer also goes for the groin a lot, but uses other attacks, too. Finally, even Jodi, normally quite the fair fighter, gets in on the action in the season finale when having trouble beating the superhuman assassin Claire.
• The karate instructor in this Robot Chicken sketch
• The Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) series. Even though he has his villainous ego, in virtually every fight in the series he also brings his underlings with him no matter who he's fighting, though he never brings out a gun, but maybe because he realizes that nobody with guns ever hit anything.
• In the Season 1 episode of Justice League that introduces Grodd, the Flash deliberately uses this against him. Flash is wearing a special headband to protect against Grodd's brainwashing. He jumps on Grodd and then jumps back and takes off the headband and suggests to Grodd that they just have a fair fight. Grodd replies, "You're a bigger fool than I thought" and attempts to use his brainwashing helmet only for it to malfunction and knock him out because Flash had sabotaged it super speed when he's jumped on Grodd.
  • The Question in Justice League Unlimited is this, on top of being Crazy Awesome. He does everything from smashing computer monitors over people's heads, to running over Darkseid's minions with HIS FRIKKIN' CAR.
• Jonny Quest the Real Adventures The Season 2 episode, "Digital Doublecross", has Jonny and Jesse trapped in a Quest World game that Surd has placed a virus in which creates evil clones of the two of them. At the end of the episode, after defeating the clones, an image of Surd appears to blow them up anyway saying, "You know I never play by the rules" (though this isn't exactly true; Surd fall victim to Bond Villain Stupidity throughout the series.)
  • In the Season 2 episode, "Thoughtscape", Lorenzo and some of Surd's mooks break into the Quest compound and capture Race and Hadji while Jonny, Jesse, and Benton are trapped in Quest World. While tied up, Race says to Lorenzo, "Too bad you don't have the guts to face me man to man", however, Lorenzo knows better and doesn't let it bruise his ego, instead just firing back an insult of his own.
• Many of the villains in Teen Titans are fond of fighting dirty, but they're not necessarily smart about it. Of course, they're balanced out by Slade and Red X, both of whom are skilled, intelligent, and very well-versed in ignoring the rules of combat etiquette. Slade is a top contender for the title of the most outright dangerous enemy the Titans have ever fought, and Red X flat-out curbstomped the Titans in his first (real) fight against them; on top of that, they never did defeat or catch him. Robin is usually a combat pragmatist, which makes sense considering who trained him.
• Batman the Brave And The Bold gives us Wong Fei's most important lesson: "When outmatched...cheat." Batman proved an...adept pupil, to say the least.
• In The Lion King, while supposedly obeying Simba's command to leave the Pride Lands, Scar abruptly flings hot ashes into Simba's eyes and then tries to tackle him off the edge of the top of Pride Rock.