No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Difference between revisions

** Though {{spoiler|Anzu conveniently turns up, making this somewhat of a [[What the Hell, Hero?]] moment instead.}}

** In Yami's defense, {{spoiler|Weevil had just made it appear that Yugi's soul had been ''utterly destroyed''}}, so this could really count more as {{spoiler|a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]].}}

* At the beginning of ''[[Tenjho Tenge]]'', Nagi Souichirou picks a fight with Takayanagi Masataka, biting off far more than he can chew when Masataka blocks his cheap shot with a ''chopstick'', then proceeds to [[Kamehame Hadoken|Kamehameha]] the punk across the room. Masataka decides to play the role of villain for a bit and swiftly proceeds to rearrange Souichirou's face with an unending flurry of kicks. Masataka eventually falls victim to another cheapshot from Souichirou, which, most unfortunately for our main protagonist, prompts Masataka to descend into a berserker rage, massacring Souichirou in one of the most brutal beatdowns in the series. The "fight" ends with Masataka intentionally missing his final wall-shattering punch (floor-shattering in the manga) as Souichirou passes out. Watch it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TCEY7GK8Sc here.]

** Also in Tenjho, when Aya faces off against Shiro (the staff guy) during the bowling alley fight. After Shiro inadvertently awakens her Dragon Eyes, Aya proceeds to beat the poor guy within an inch of his life, with his own weapon, laughing all the while. (Granted, she did feel pretty bad afterwards.)

* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' has Ed's beating of [[Complete Monster|Shou Tucker]]. In order to keep his job, {{spoiler|[[Moral Event Horizon|Tucker uses alchemy on his adorable daughter Nina and fuses her with the family dog, making her into a chimera]]}}. When Ed sees what happened, he begins pummeling Tucker, and completely loses it when Tucker claims they are [[Not So Different]]. Al stops Ed, telling him that if he doesn't stop, Tucker will die (Al then tells Tucker that if he doesn't shut up, ''he'll'' start killing him).

** {{spoiler|Roy Mustang confronts Envy and learns that Envy killed Hughes. Cue the [[Curb Stomp Battle]], with Mustang repeatedly mutilating and incinerating Envy in the worst way imaginable, Ed and Hawkeye are barely able to talk Roy down from literally crushing Envy's [[This Was His True Form|True Form]] like a worm under his boot… Whereupon Ed instead [[Talking the Monster to Death|Talks The Monster To Death]]}}.

{{quote|{{spoiler|Bradley}}: So {{spoiler|Greed}} old boy.....How many times would you like to die?"}}

** During the final battle, {{spoiler|1=just after Al sacrifices his soul to get Ed's arm restored, [[Big Brother Instinct|Ed]] proceeds to brutally beat the remaining Philosopher's Stones out of Truth!Father ''one punch at a time'' with his bare hands}}.

* ''[[Inuyasha]]'': After having once [[Badass Boast|boasted]] early in the manga that he had never been cornered into a desperate situation, [[Handicapped Badass|Sesshoumaru]]'s words finally catch up with him towards the end of the manga when {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Naraku]] finally decides to send the [[Complete Monster|Dark Will]] of the [[Ultimate Evil|Shikon no Tama]] itself after him. He gets his single arm nearly ripped off, he has to be [[Badass in Distress|saved by his brother]], his [[Canis Major|true form]] is negated by being bound in tentacles and eventually he's [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice|stabbed through the chest twice]]. [[No One Could Survive That|Once through the heart]]. He [[Came Back Strong]].}}

* In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]],'' [[Complete Monster|Precia Testarossa]] makes her debut in Episode 7, where she [[Whip It Good|severely whips her "daughter" to the point where she could barely get up]]. This was brought on when she failed to collect all of the Jewels.

* Satellizer from ''[[Freezing]]'' dishes these out and receives them from her many fights in this series. Due to their super [[Healing Factor]], and quite a bit of blood gets spilled, limbs get severed, and bones get broken quite often from these fights.

* In ''[[Akira]]'' Tetsuo delivers one of these to a Clown gangmember for a) beating up him and Kaori, and b) trying to burn Kaneda's bike. Though comparatively short, it's quite brutal; when Kaneda actually tries to intervene, the once-shy Tetsuo actually snarls that he wants to see the gangmember's head split open. And this is ''before'' he develops psychic powers.

* An unusual circumstance in ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'': In the Heavens Arena, where people fight for sport, one of Killua's opponents was Zetsu, a little boy with beginner-level hand-to-hand combat and little else. What Killua thought would be a [[Curb Stomp Battle]] went on far longer than it should have, because no matter how many times Killua punched Zetsu and knocked him down, Zetsu kept getting up. This kept going until Zetsu's martial arts master, who was sitting nearby watching, had to yell at him to stop. (Killua had already pulled off a TKO early on, and by this point, Killua was feeling guilty about beating up a little boy.) It turns out that Zetsu had been using his nen, or life force, as a barrier against the punch and to cushion himself when knocked down, [[Stone Wall|but didn't know how to do much else]].

 

== Comic Books ==

** He ''does'' deliver one to the [[Captain Ersatz|not-]][[The Authority|Authority]] in ''What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, And The American Way?'' {{spoiler|and he was ''still'' holding back.}}

** Thor gives as good as he gets when it comes to Superman, and both beat the stuffing out of each other once, implying that they are about even.

** In ''Nextwave'' #6, Aaron gets one of these from Monica Rambeau, Elsa Bloodstone, and Tabitha for wearing a woman's bra and refusing to take it off. [[Played for Laughs]].

** Finally, in ''Nextwave'' #8, The Captain delivers one (offscreen) to Dread Rorkannu, which included doing something unpleasant to him with a toilet brush. We never get to know what (thankfully). Unsurprisingly, this too is [[Played for Laughs]].

 

== [[Eastern Animation]] ==

== Fairy Tales ==

* In ''[http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/009.htm The Blue Mountains]'', the hero must suffer a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown for three nights to free the heroine.

 

 

* ''[[A Dark Knight Over Sin City]]'' has Killer Croc and Marv exchanging them with one another. Croc starts off by beating him to a pulp before throwing him out a window. Once Marv survives and does a little prep work he comes back, runs over Croc with a car, smashes him over the head with a fire extinguisher, blinds him with the contents, and then gets ready to send a bullet through his head at point-blank range. {{spoiler|Luckily for Croc, Batman stops Marv before killing him.}}

* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh (anime)|Yu-Gi-Oh]]'' fanfic [[Skin (fanfic)|Skin]] has a few of these, most of them during the {{spoiler|Virtual World}} arc thanks to the sudden use of [[Who Wants to Live Forever?]]. Even worse for the one exception to the temporary rule, {{spoiler|a battle between Yami Malik and Ryuzaki using the Millennium Rod against a duel disk in 'sword combat'}}; while the 'bad guy' lost in a way, the 'winner' wound up comatose for a month to contrast the single hour of sleep it took for the other to recover.

* In ''[[Ace Combat: The Equestrian War]]'', this is what happened to Firefly when she was younger. Later, in chapter 11, Rainbow Dash is a victim of this trope, courtesy of {{spoiler|Gilda}}. Then, in chapter 17, Fluttershy also suffers one brutal beating from [[The Brute|Night Raven]], even though she ultimately [[Heroic Second Wind|wins]].

 

== Film ==

* Near the end of the film ''The Ninth Configuration'', Stacy Keach's character is having the stuffing beat out of him by a motorcycle gang. This is the moment that he remembers that {{spoiler|he is not an army psychologist, but a deranged marine known as Killer Kane. Kane gets up and proceeds to deliver an epic, murderous unarmed beatdown to all the biker scum present. Makes one guy scream like a little girl. He grabs a biker chick's hair and rams her head against a wall, breaking her neck. Ouch}}.

* In ''[[The Dark Knight Saga]]'', while we know he won't ever actually ''kill'' Batman, the Joker makes clear in their final confrontation he's also not going to hold back until Batman is down for good ([[Nothing Up My Sleeve|or so he thinks]]). The growls from the Joker while he [[Spam Attack|beats the crap out of Batman with a crow bar]] are chilling.

* The baseball bat scene from ''[[Inglourious Basterds]]''.

** Buch from ''[[Pulp Fiction]]'' kills an opponent in an off-screen boxing match.

* ''[[The Killer Inside Me]]'': Lou gives one of these to both Joyce and Amy in graphic, prolonged, horrific scenes. And they both die. {{spoiler|Except not really, because Joyce is revealed to be [[Faking the Dead|alive at the end]], although disfigured--and then he [[Killed Off for Real|immediately kills her for real.]]}}

* In ''[[The Punisher (film)|Punisher: Warzone]]'', Frank Castle does this to {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Jigsaw]]}} after the latter kills {{spoiler|his sidekick, Micro}}. Justified because he had only one bullet left which he spend on {{spoiler|[[The Dragon|Loonie Bin Jim]]}}. It involves him beating the guy with a bottle, kicking him while he's down and, finally, [[Rasputinian Death|impaling him with a steel pipe and burning him]].

* In one of the final scenes in ''[[Casino]]'', Nicky Santoro ([[Joe Pesci]]) and his brother Dominick set up a meeting in a cornfield after things have calmed down with the Mafia. Unfortunately, the bosses are still upset about the role Nicky played in the collapse of their Vegas operation; so, Nicky and Dom are met by a gang of thugs who proceed to beat Dominick to a bloody pulp while making Nicky watch, and toss him into a freshly-dug grave. They then proceed to do the same thing (and worse - at one point, it looks like they cave Nicky's skull in) before tossing him into the same grave ''[[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|and burying them alive]]''.

* ''[[Brick]]'' reaches its climax with the forces of Tug and the Pin shooting it out (and with the cops, when they arrive), and Tug violating the truce that they'd met under by savagely beating the Pin to death with his bare hands. [[Gory Discretion Shot|All that is actually seen]] is Tug's fist flying in the dark, and Pin's screams and pleas for help. The Pin is frail and physically disabled in some way, and Tug is a heavily muscled bruiser, making this a horribly one-sided fight.

* ''[[Drive (film)|Drive]]. [[Ryan Gosling]]. {{spoiler|The elevator.}}

* ''100 Feet'' contains a fatal beatdown of the protagonist's [[Love Interest]] by her husband's ghost. Towards the end, the ghost's face becomes visible because it's been headbutting the guy so hard that it's gotten drenched in his blood.

 

 

== Literature ==

** The trio disarm Snape so hard that he flies several feet and loses consciousness.

* In [[Dan Abnett]]'s ''[[Gaunt's Ghosts|Gaunts Ghosts]]'' novel ''First & Only'', Jantine Patricians attack some Ghosts with this, including [[Kick Them While They Are Down]]; they kill three and render a fourth Ghost critical, and a fifth Ghost escapes only because they take him alive.

* About halfway through [[The Pendragon Adventure]], in ''The Rivers of Zadaa'', Saint Dane amuses himself by taking the form of a [[Giant Mook]] among the local military and effortlessly knocking Bobby around. [[It Got Worse|This isn't it.]] Bobby, strapped for any physical response, gets under Saint Dane's skin with an impromptu [[Hannibal Lecture]] about how this is only a diversion from all the times he has failed, and how, in the end, he is destined to lose. In response to this, Saint Dane loses his cool the first time in the series, goes ''completely berserk'', and beats Bobby within an inch of his life.

** Just to drive home how bad it is, Bobby spends a great portion of the book recovering from said Beatdown. His doctor and Loor specifically point out that normally it would take months for him to recover, and he'd never get full functionality from his body again, but beats the odds and somehow recovers fully. At first the only thing he could move without extreme pain was his [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|toes.]]

* In ''Turn Coat'', book 11 of ''[[The Dresden Files]]'', {{spoiler|Wizard Listens-To-Wind delivers one of these to a Skinwalker, which is a nigh immortal, semidivine shapeshifter that feeds on magic. He does so in a Shapeshifting duel, eventually making the Skinwalker turn into a minor [[Eldritch Abomination]] and fly away screaming.}}

** {{spoiler|The only person we know of who was able to kill one was Morgan, who did so by leading it on a chase that ended in Nevada, where he went into the Nevernever and stranded the Skinwalker there. The Skinwalker was then hit by a Nuclear bomb test.}}

 

 

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' seemed to get this a lot the first time she fought a Big Bad:

** Buffy's and Glory's first fight; Buffy only got away because Glory was careless about the architecture.

** Faith whaling on Buffy in "Who Are You?"

** Caleb whaling on the entire Scooby gang and potential slayers in "Dirty Girls".

*** She also dished one out to Damar.

** Sisko gives them out often enough that [[SF Debris]] theorizes that he solves all his problems by punching them.

* An example that led many people to guess he was the [[Big Bad]] for season 1 of ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' was when {{spoiler|Aaron Echolls}} beat the hell out of his daughter's abusive boyfriend. To the soundtrack's strains of "That's Amore." It was awesome, and yet hard to watch.

* Two words: [[24|Jack Bauer]]. Every time a villain gets his hands on Jack, you know it's not gonna be pretty.

*** The Beast also punishes Angel and his pals when they face him on top of a building. {{spoiler|This fight ends with Angel being stabbed through the neck and then thrown off a very tall building.}}

* In ''[[Babylon 5]]'', Sheridan gets one of these in "The Face of the Enemy" after {{spoiler|[[Manchurian Agent|Garibaldi]] sells him out to the Clarke regime.}} The sequence, one of the most elaborately shot in the series, is powerful and disturbing in the way it contrasts Sheridan's messianic, larger than life image with the objective hopelessness of his situation, using multiple [[Hope Spot]]s and Sheridan's refusal to give in. ''[[The Passion of the Christ]]'' goes to the same well. Marcus's fight with Neroon in "Gray 17 is Missing" also comes close to this trope, though Marcus does get a few good hits in before being pounded into the deck.

*** An element of perverse comedy is added to the scene because {{spoiler|Refa's death is accompanied by a ''gospel song'' about Judgment Day called "The Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place"}}

* In ''[[Rescue Me]],'' Tommy delivers one of these (with several people [[Unstoppable Rage|trying]] to hold him back) to {{spoiler|his brother Johnny}} when he discovers the latter {{spoiler|has been sleeping with his wife.}} At one point he puts his head through a ''car window.''

== Professional Wrestling ==

* This is a common practice in [[Professional Wrestling]], especially in high-profile Heel Vs Face matches. Of course, the [[Heroic Second Wind]] moment ''is'' coming... however, sometimes it might take a [[Squash Match]] or two for that moment to come.

** Another inverted example had a cage match between [[Vince McMahon]] and [[Stone Cold Steve Austin]]. Austin beat Vince so bad and so bloody the match had to be stopped and McMahon had to be wheeled out on a stretcher, but then Austin jumped on the stretcher to continue punishing his boss.

** General example: Any match involving one of the members of [[D Generation X|DX]] eventually devolved into this. For a while, this happened EVERY SINGLE SHOW.

* [[The Nexus]] are infamous for giving these.

** Notable, as it's an ''[[Power Stable|entire group]]'' of eight people delivering these to an unfortunate victim. To say it's like watching a pack of wolves devouring their prey is, quite frankly, an understatement.

** However Big Show [[Don't Make Me Destroy You|did try to warn Mark Henry.]]

** And since then [[Mark Henry]] has been doing this to everyone who crosses him.

*** Then Big Show came promptly returned the favor.

* [[Randy Orton]]

* The Two Man Power Trip ([[Triple H]] and Stone Cold) delivered an absolutely hellacious beating to the Hardy Boys and Lita. It's pretty uncomfortable to watch, especially as they humiliate and [[Would Hit a Girl|destroy Lita]] with a chair...not that they needed the chair.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TPtM5nvNtc\]

** He gave a lot of these over the course of his career.

* [[Brock Lesnar]] especially his match with [[John Cena]] at Extreme Rules 2012.

** At the end of ''Modern Warfare 3'', {{spoiler|Price delivers one to Makarov}} culminating in his death. It's immensely satisfying.

* {{spoiler|Jack to Andrew Ryan}} in ''[[BioShock (series)]]''. {{spoiler|Andrew uses a posthypnotic command word to compel Jack to beat him to death with a golf club, to demonstrate that Jack has no free will.}} It might also be a form of {{spoiler|[[Suicide by Cop]]}}, however.

*** Since pulling a gun on Wesker worked so well the first time.

** Wesker also did it to Claire.

* ''[[The Secret of Monkey Island]]'' ends with LeChuck literally [[Megaton Punch|punching Guybrush from one end of Melee Island to the other]] as Guybrush tries to come up with a way to beat him. This happens again in the final episode of ''[[Tales of Monkey Island]]'', with Guybrush getting pummeled around LeChuck's ship.

** The second game features a variation: instead of beating on Guybrush, LeChuck instead {{spoiler|repeatedly stabs a voodoo doll of our hero}}.

** And then there are the Astral Heats. Ragna, Taokaka, Hakumen, Litchi, and Valkenhayn's are all long combos that leave their victims extremely dead.

* In ''[[Dungeon Keeper]]'', you can ''slap'' your creatures (or captured enemies) to death.

* Johnny Gat of ''[[Saints Row|Saint's Row]]'' delivers one in the game's sequel. After Shogo, the so-called leader of the Ronin, shows up at {{spoiler|Aisha's funeral}} demanding a fight, the player character chases him down and drags him to a VERY pissed off Gat. Gat then delivers a smackdown on the punk, breaking his leg and {{spoiler|punching his head through a tombstone.}} He then buries him alive. The lesson here? Do not screw with Johnny Gat.

* Virgo delivers this to the Phoenix in the middle of stage 7 in ''[[RefleX]]''.

* In the prequel to ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'', ''Duodecim'', this is pretty much {{spoiler|Feral Chaos's}} [[Limit Break|EX Burst]]. Most everyone else gets a flashy standard attack for theirs... but {{spoiler|Chaos}} i

 

[[Category:A Tortured Index]]

[[Category:Combat Tropes]]

[[Category:No-Holds-Barred Beatdown]]