"He shouldn't be allowed to be that cute and that strong. It's not fair."
— Mei Sakura (on Negi Springfield), Negima! Magister Negi Magi
A catch-all term for characters who, while being absolutely adorable, are also extremely capable at kicking ass. As said on a certain website, they make you break down and go "Aww, who's a widdle asskicker? Who's a widdle asskicker?"
Significant overlap with Cute Bruiser and Little Miss Badass can occur. What distinguishes Badass Adorable characters 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 why not, leveling an entire country. Perhaps you've threatened their loved ones. Maybe you've offended their inviolate sense of justice. No matter what shape the grievance against you takes, they will give you an entirely new set of benchmarks to define hurt. Their destructiveness is directly proportional to their cuteness. Thus, Beware the Nice Ones.
Compare and Contrast with Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, who may not even be cognizant of their own badassery. Often exists as a subversion of the typical Tag Along Kid and Team Pet. 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. When the cute character is not only badass but also malevolent, then Cute Is Evil.
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Advertising
- The banana in this Wrigley Gum commercial
. Forget James Bond, this cute little fruit should be the next 007!
- The little girl from this Haribo advert. The other guy should have given up as soon as the door opened.
Asian Animation
- The Supermen from Happy Heroes are all cute little Robot Kids, but don't let that fool you - they are very capable of combat and regularly give the designated Monster of the Week a good beating in most episodes.
Comic Strips
- Peanuts: Linus van Pelt is an adorable, shy little boy who carries a baby blue security blanket with him wherever he goes. He is also highly intelligent, well-read, and philosophical (religious texts being his forte), preferring passive-aggression and wit to deal with people who are being jerks to him. However, he is proficient in using his blanket as a whip, a skill that carries over into the animated adaptations and which he won't hesitate to use if you insult his blanket habit or bully a girl in his presence. His most extreme example is the Very Special Episode Why, Charlie Brown, Why?, where, devoid of his blanket for the whole episode (to stress the seriousness of the subject), nearly clobbers a kid who was bullying his cancer-stricken friend/crush for her chemo-induced baldness.
- Baby Blues: Wren MacPherson is a very cute, little toddler and is always like this. And when her brother teases her, she always hits him with a ball they were playing off-panel.
- In Dennisthe Menace(UK), Dennis, Gnasher, Curly and Pie-Face are very cute and very badass, especially in the tv series.
Fan Works
- Kagura Mikazuchi in Alternate Tail Series is now 13 years old and greatly adores Mira, seeing her as an older sister figure. That doesn't stop her from being a girl able to control gravity and wield a sword that can cause calamities and was even able to hold off against Azuma for a few minutes before being ultimately defeated.
- The Mario/Pokémon fancomic Bad Things Will Happen has the baby ghost types (Flame the Gastly, Lyly the Shuppet, and Skull the Duskull). They're only babies, are very sweet and polite...and they managed to stand up to the Boolossus.
- If Ugly Cute counts, then Tug of Calvin & Hobbes: The Series is this, given his extreme agility. To wit:
Tug hit the wall straight on, somehow rebounded into a tuck roll, let his back right paw touched the ground for one-eighth of a second, launched twenty feet from that one push, and managed to hit Hobbes at roughly seven thousand miles per hour.
- A Growing Affection has a number, mostly connected to Hinata; her familiars Sol and Lune, her 'pet' Ni-ne a.k.a. the Two-Tails Cat. Also the Goddess of Death appears as a cute little girl.
- Mariko Aratani from the Lucky Star fanfics Holiday Vacation and Lucky Star: After Story definitely qualifies. She is a cute tomboyish girl with a badass streak. In Chapter 11 of After Story for instance, during an earthquake, she saved her best friend Chiyoko's life by jumping on top of her when part of the building came down on top of them. Did we mention that said earthquake was the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake?
- Emily Hawthorne from Pokemon: Johto Quest gradually becomes this as the series progresses.
- In the semi-genderbent Sword Art Online fanfiction story The Kirita Chronicles, Kirigaya Kazuta is capable of being badass both in the real world due to taking karate classes and in the virtual world.
- Megami no Hanabira: The main characters are all highschool girls, and quite adorable. They’re also VERY good at handling demons.
- Mortality has this with Watson.. Like his (BBC counterpart) you do NOT want to mess with John Watson or his friend. Oh, and good luck if you gloat over a dying Sherlock-the end result is.....well, unpleasant.
- Smith found this one out the hard way.
- Oh, and don't beg Watson for mercy if you've played a part in Holmes's long-term imprisonment. You'll wind up dead. As in, murdered.
- The captured criminal found that one out the hard way.
- Jack in Cave Story Versus I.M. Meen, without a doubt. Starting out as a simply adorkable little woobie, Jack becomes progressively more and more badass over the course of the story, from defeating a giant mold monster based off of the Great Mighty Poo, narrowly escaping complete mental breakdown, literally breaking the fourth wall, and tearing the skin off of Meen's face with his bare hands and pushing him off a cliff...
- ...to powering his way through a giant tower maze of death with a little help from his friends, utterly destroying Meen through sheer brainpower alone even after being shrunken down to microscopic size, going through fanfiction hell itself...
- and finally, last but not least, TOTALLY ANNIHILATING THE PERSONIFICATION OF DEVIANTART ITSELF.
- Using ZA WARUDO, no less. And to think he was actually one of the freaking Mimigas in Cave Story?
- ...to powering his way through a giant tower maze of death with a little help from his friends, utterly destroying Meen through sheer brainpower alone even after being shrunken down to microscopic size, going through fanfiction hell itself...
- Agent Bucky Bear in Agent Barnes and Agent Bear is a robotic teddy bear with a self-aware AI based on Bucky Barnes. He's more of a stealth and infiltration specialist than a physical powerhouse, given his size, but a combat-capable intelligent stuffed toy is still pretty impressive.
- A World of Bloody Evolution is a crossover fic where Yang Xiao Long, the adorable teenage Cute Bruiser of Team RWBY, carves through whole ranks of Ork Boyz and Chaos Space Marines with ease, thanks to her Battle Aura letting her No-Sell bolter rounds and melee blows, and her Super-Strength letting her pulverise Astartes power armour. Between all this and her ability to Flash Step on top, Weiss Schnee is arguably even deadlier. Probably the only Warhammer 40000 crossover fic you'll ever read where the notoriously overpowered denizens of the grimdark far future are clearly outmatched.
- This is how Wonder Woman is depicted in Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts. She's a centuries-old magical warrior who is charmingly conscientious about learning the ins and outs of the world of men, unironically enthusiastic about cute baby animals, and genuinely considers panda-themed hoodie pyjamas the best Christmas gift ever.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has several, but chief among them is Cynthia during her oneshot. At 10 years old she was raiding tombs on her own and winning fights with older children.
- Despite generally being a pretty serious setting, it's considered pretty amusing when Ume the protagonist of Sugar Plums defeats, intimidates or outclasses older opponents. Why? Because Ume is a 4'2" (128 cm) tall twelve year old girl, who wears bright pink and purple clothing and looks like a porcelain doll. This is lamp shaded once or twice since in the Naruto world you never judge a person solely from their looks.
- In Forum of Thrones, Kersea has a petite physique and is usually described as cute by others, which does not mean that she can't kick plenty of ass. Her best friend Raenna is similarly slim and small and no less of a badass.
- Sherry Birkin of Resident Project is a ten-year-old girl (who looks younger than she is), in pink shoes and floofy socks. She's also a shinigami.
- Jean Grey in Child of the Storm appears to be a lovely, sweet-tempered (unless you mess with her family) young lady. She is, in fact, a lovely, sweet-tempered young lady. She's also on track to be the most powerful psychic in the history of the Earth, and is already more powerful than most. Oh, and more or less only psychic who might (for now) be more powerful than her? That's her teacher, Charles Xavier. And by the sequel, she's firmly got the upper-hand, power-wise.
- Diana is a kind, cute, and friendly preteen girl. She's also a future Wonder Woman, the daughter of Hercules and Hippolyta, and a Little Miss Badass who's already capable of doing very scary things when angered, like ripping giant werewolves in half.
- feralAncient, oceanRising, flintlockEnthusiast, familyFun for starters from Adult Stuck. Given most of the cast starts out at 11, this is probably to be expected.
- 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..
- Yuki from The Return loves pink, glitter, colouring books, looks about 13-14ish, and she will fuck you up.
- Chloe Cerise in Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail is a girly girl in a white dress who loves chocolate, Alice in Wonderland and has such lovely flowing hair. Oh and she's also capable of knocking you out with her donut holer Cheshire.
- The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Shar is an eight-year-old girl who loves watching The Iron Giant and becomes very attached to her adoptive big sister. Aaand she's also a pyrokinetic who boiled off an entire lake with power to spare when escaping from government experimentation; her upper limit is suspected to be "nuclear explosion".
- Ruby Pair: Minimoose is basically a living plushie, and is one of the most dangerous characters in the story.
- In the 101 Dalmatian Street the fanfic I AM A DE VIL Cruella's new son Dylan/Dyrant is very cute and also a badass pup.
Films - Animation
- Fievel Mousekewitz from An American Tail is an adorable, naïve little mouse kid who still manages to repeatedly escape, outwit and defeat the various enemy cats, mice and dogs that come his way.
- The Bad Guys (2022) has multiple due to its cartoonish art style and appealing animal characters who are, nevertheless, feared criminals:
- Mr. Wolf has come up with multiple strategies to rob museums and banks blind and, with his Badass Driver skills, constantly runs circles around the police. He's also an occasionally Adorkable anthropomorphic wolf who starts wagging uncontrollably whenever you call him a good boy.
- Ms. Tarantula/Webs is as cute as you can make a spider, being small, covered in fluffy fur and with huge buck teeth. She's also a clever hacker who's able to down a police chopper as an afterthought.
- Mr. Piranha is the second smallest member behind Webs, an easily excitable oaf, has adorable stubby hands and feet and is also a Pint-Sized Powerhouse that the gang uses whenever they need large groups of trained officers to be taken care of.
- Mr. Shark is Badass because he's a huge, well, shark capable of turning a car into a convertible. He's adorable, however, because he's very sensitive and basically a big baby weighing metric tons.
- The biggest example is Diane Foxington aka the infamous Crimson Paw. She's a cute vixen with a pretty face and an endearing personality, and also a martial artist armed with countless gadgets who went down in criminal history before reforming and becoming a governor. Even after years of no training, she single-handedly takes down all the guards in a high-security prison with her bare hands and suffers no damage aside from a single, small tear in her suit.
- The Book of Life:
- Even as a child, Manolo was able to effortlessly perform amazing feats of bullfighting.
- Since she was a child, Maria has always been upbeat and adorable. Ten years later, and she became a certified badass.
- Both Flint and Samantha from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs can qualify, both having cute innocent faces but still being able to fight or get really mad at someone without looking too scary. They're more like this in the second part, though.
- The eponymous character of Coraline. A look that invokes Big Brother Instinct? Check. Underfed? Check. Having more balls than most healthy adult males? Um... check.
- 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.
- Margo, Edith, and Agnes from Despicable Me. Three absolutely adorable and adopted girls who are also intelligent and ACT tough as hell. Gru, the minions, and Lucy also apply, but for Lucy it's more in a dorky way.
- The EQUESTRIA GIRLS movies essentially translate the Badass Adorable tendencies of MLP:FIM characters into their human counterparts, leading to moments like the motocross.
- Happy Feet Two has Boadicea pulling off Le Parkour moves and Erik standing up against some freaking Elephant Seals.
- Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon, who takes cues from Stitch, is 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.
- 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...
- Kung Fu Panda has at least a few of these.
- First there's Protagonist Title-guy, 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 too. Plus, she's voiced by Lucy Liu.
- Uni-Kitty from The LEGO Movie is, as her name implies, a half-kitten, half-unicorn. She's pink and has a very sweet personality. If provoked far enough, however, she is capable of effortlessly defeating micromanagers unarmed, the only character to demonstrate this trait.
- The protagonist of Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants is a ladybug. A small, friendly, adorable ladybug who breaks out of The Siege in an Ant War to get her friends, the besieged ants, the weapon they need. Also, outwits the flies.
- Susan Murphy/Ginormica from Monsters vs. Aliens is a nearly 50 foot tall woman who managed to help stop a genocidal alien from destroying humanity and her big blue eyes make her look very cute.
- The title character in NIMONA (2023) is a shape-shifter whose most used form is basically a little girl with salmon pink hair, salmon pink eyes and an outfit reminiscent of what a metalhead would've looked like in medieval time. She can also shape-shift into anything from a rhino to a bear and from a dragon to a dancing shark (all of these, of course, will don a reddish pink coloration) and take down armies of knights on her own with even too much eagerness.
- Her "boss" Ballister Braveheart is a rugged knight who built himself a mechanical arm, and also a dork with the biggest Puppy-Dog Eyes a bearded adult could ever don.
- San in Princess Mononoke. Granted she is pretty badass but she does have her moments of being adorable whenever Ashitaka catches her off guard.
- Maruti from The Return of Hanuman is adorable yet badass. Once he avoided bullets Neo-style. You could see his badassery here.
- The Sandman from Rise of the Guardians, because you do not want to get on his bad side.
- Robots features Rodney's creation, the small, Ugly Cute robot Wonderbot who ends up saving the day by defeating the Big Bad Madame Gasket in a swordfight (well, a metal-pipes-fight) and ending her reign of terror for good.
- Gidget in The Secret Life of Pets. She's a big-eyed white Pomeranian who is generally pretty upbeat and friendly. She also kicks the tails of a small army of the Flushed Pets in short order to protect Max, including taking down a sewer alligator by herself.
- Mrs. Brisby from The Secret of NIMH is a kind, meek little she-mouse equipped with nothing but a torn cape and her own strong will. In a movie where the message is that courage is being afraid, but overcoming it, the fraidy Brisby manages to achieve great things, go where few have gone before (such as surviving an encounter with the Great Owl) and even ends up saving a civilization from destruction all for the sake of saving her sick son Timmy. She further becomes badass (and no less adorable) when, in the end, the Stone recognizes the courage in her heart and grants her immense magical powers.
- In the Shrek movies Puss-in-Boots takes serious advantage of this, weaponizing Puppy-Dog Eyes to catch opponents off guard.
- 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. And a literal "cat burglar."
- From Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse:
- Miles Morales is a dorky high school student able to stand against villains twice his size as well as an horde of other Spider-People, and even has badass electric powers.
- Peni Parker is a cutesy young anime girl piloting SP//dr, a spider-based mech psychically controlled by an actual spider. SP//dr itself is pretty much an orb with limbs and adorable digital faces, but still a mecha which basically turns into an EVA by the time of the sequel.
- The silly pig Spider-Ham is a Funny Animal version of Spiderman who uses Toon Physics to fight and easily takes down Scorpion.
- Gwen herself dons one of the more awesome Spider-suits and her first on-screen feat as a Spider-Person in the film is effortlessly saving Miles and Peter B. from Dock Ock. As for the adorable part, she's a girl with a tooth gap and much more Adorkability than meets the eye.
- The sequel, Across the Spider-Verse introduces us to the daughter Peter B. and his Mary Jane ended up having: Mayday. She's a baby, she's got fluffy red hair and blue eyes, she's absolutely adorable every second she's onscreen and, thanks to Superpowerful Genetics from daddy, she too does whatever a spider can!
- The same film introduces Pavitr, the Indian Spider-Man from Earth-50101B. He's a Spider-Man at the top of his game with a kickass weaponized diabolo and he's bound to come off as cute with just how cheerful he is, being a Naïve Newcomer who's yet to experience what life as Spider-Man entails.
- The Spider-Society brings us some examples, such as Spider-Cat, a plushie version of Spider-Man and Charlotte Webber/Sun-Spider, an Handicapped Badass Spider-Girl who shares some good-natured quips with Miles even as she chases him down.
Music
- The Jethro Tull song "Hunt by Numbers" is a driving prog-metal piece that sounds like it should herald the arrival of a badass. Paying attention to the lyrics quickly reveals that it's about kitties and how lethal, uncanny, and downright cute they are.
Hey little buddies
Soft and silky night walkers
Dangerous species
Tiptoe menace, long grass stalkers...
Podcasts
- Ne-on in the Cool Kids Table game Star War is an Ewok Jedi whose chest is covered in battle scars (but his head and limbs are still fluffy) and wields lightsaber nun-chucks.
- The first star the Sequinox girls face, Antares, is cute, small, pink, and also almost destroys them.
- Flotsam the adorable bomb filly from Fallout Is Dragons. She serves as the team's moral core... and has no qualms about throwing grenades at her enemies, bowling for undead with explosives, or mining an entire dune to wipe out a raider encampment. Her best friend is a necromancer and together they pioneered the concept of Bombies, zombies loaded with explosives and sent after their foes.
- Tannikin the Pinglet in Hello, from the Magic Tavern is a tiny flying piglet who nobody can meet without discussing at considerable length how adorable she is. When she gets trapped in the mirror universe, she corrals a rebellion which turns the tide on the Dark Lord after just a couple of years, and was about to force the podcast crew to surrender when Usidore the Black returned her to her own universe.
Pro Wrestling
- Jacqueline, despite being five foot four at most, quickly became an unpopular target when several larger wrestlers, men included, found she could easily toss those much larger than herself.
- 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.
- Bryan Danielson's role in the swarm, where he would seem lost, trying to keep a straight face in the face of Paul London's inanity. Also, his re branding into "Daniel Bryan", who Bella Twins "competed" over, assuming he must be virgin. All the same, Danielson was never lost or underestimated once he was in the ring and the bell rang. He nearly caused the breakup over Team Hell No over getting the idea someone thought he might be the weak link of the team, even though everyone but Jerkass Seth Rollins told him it was not the case.
- Since there was no women's championship for a stretch of The Attitude Era women for the first time in a long time found themselves liable to compete with men in the WWF. Chyna quickly disproved that this may have been problematic by repeatedly beating up Bret Hart and winning the intercontinental championship from Jeff Jarrett and feuding with Chris Jericho.
- People are prone to worrying about Daizee Haze on the account she really isn't that big, a fact she knowingly took advantage of in Chikara, screaming and cowering before anyone who might try to attack her, and then beating them relentlessly if they should flinch. Hardly anyone in NWA Wildside condoned Sal Rinauro's harassment of her, but after seeing her wrestle, no one was especially worried, as Haze demonstrated she could take care of herself.
- At a mere nine years old, Haruka wrestled Kenny Omega to a time limit draw at Stardom x Stardom 2011. In fact, that was just her "summer vacation".
- Candice LeRae loves all things Disney, is extremely pretty, and has an adorable smile. She's also regarded as one of the best women wrestlers on the planet.
Roleplay
- Let's take My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, give it a grimdark spin, and make it into a Play-by-Post forum. Equestria Chronicles is what you get.
- Just like their respective games, Paula, Viridi and Tails are this in Super Smash Brothers Life Itself. The Pokémon characters are also this... Along with Pac-Man and Amaterasu.
Tabletop Games
- While the predominantly teenage default characters of Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine qualify more often than not (Chuubo, for example, is a geeky kid with a thing for ice cream who occasionally turns into a giant monster and, in the later stages of his arc, gets actually pretty good at that), the real standouts are the rats of Fortitude, whose entire culture is founded on the spiritual ideal of Reepicheep from The Chronicles of Narnia, and who, without ever not being wide-eyed and friendly rodents, still ultimately consider doing cosmic raid dungeons against Eldritch Abominations to be an important cultural trait.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- For a given value of cute, kobold player characters may qualify.
- A wizard's familiar or a ranger or druid's animal companion might be this, since they look like normal animals but have enhanced abilities due to being linked to the magic user.
- Dragon wyrmlings have a puppy or kitten's proportions - big eyes in an oversized head, large feet on short limbs - and some are even Tiny-sized. They're still dragons though, and can take out a novice adventuring party by themselves.
- Many Scrappy Kids in Feng Shui definitely qualify as this.
- Rook Catchfly in Nobilis is a spunky kid who's going to be a spunky kid indefinitely due to being "stuck" at around nine years of age...and has Aspect 4, which is about enough to beat up the entire US Marine Corps for their lunch money.
- Pathfinder:
- Lini the iconic druid, to an extent. She's a tiny, quirky, big-eyed gnome woman who travels the world with a giant fluffy kitty (okay, a snow leopard) bigger than she is.
- Yoon the pre-teen iconic kineticist as well. Her two best friends are her stuffed owlbear and fire.
- Vine leshy player characters can be as formidable as any other adventurer, while looking like baby Groot.
- Pathfinder goblins are pretty cute in an Ugly Cute Plucky Comic Relief sort of way, and goblins who live long enough to earn a few character levels can be surprisingly formidable.
- Pathfinder Second Edition has the Ant Gnolls◊, who are based on aardwolves instead of full-size hyenas. They're big-eyed, big-eared, and the size of halflings, but they have all the physical prowess (and sharp teeth) of their larger cousins.
- Starfinder has skittermanders, who are six-armed fuzzballs explicitly compared to a friendlier take on goblins. Even if we discount specific individuals such as Pint-Sized Powerhouse Nako and Shell-Shocked Veteran Starfinder Society agent Eshki: they take no penalty to Strength despite being the size of toddlers (likely thanks to being downplayed Heavy Worlders), and their children (who otherwise look rather like eight-legged kittens) are basically Crites and are born with bitey umbilical cords.
- In the German game Plüsch, Power & Plunder (about living plushies), every Player Character and many NPCs are this, essentially. And is there a better example?
- The Guardians of Strike Legion are a species of cat-like Gens who were intentionally engineered by their creators to be adorable. Being Gens, they're targets for the human-supremacist Imperium. Or at least they would be, but every single Imperial invasion fleet sent to wipe out the Guardians... hasn't come back. Current Imperial policy on the Guardians is that exterminating them is a lost cause.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! has a number of cute monsters that are quite dangerous in the right deck. The Madolche archetype, for example, consists of candy-and-dessert themed Living Toys with the common ability of getting shuffled back into the deck if they're destroyed in battle or by an opponent's card effect. This means they just keep coming, especially if you have the Madolche Chateau spell card in play, which lets your destroyed Madolche monsters go back to your hand instead of into your deck.
Theatre
- In Les Misérables, Gavorche, who joins the revolutionaries, even when they don't want him to get hurt.
Visual Novels
- 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.
- From the same series, Kyou Fujibayashi also qualifies as this.
- Ace Attorney:
- Pearl Fey is a powerful candidate, since she's saved the day quite a few times by channeling Mia.
- 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.
- Athena Cykes is a Cute Bruiser, being super cheery but also strong enough to judo toss an adult male from behind her.
- 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 other country’s ambassador, Quercus Alba, into staying put with thinly veiled threats. And he keeps smiling while doing it.
- Echo:
- Jenna is not only a cute short girl, but an anthropomorphic kit fox to boot. Not only is she academically brilliant and often the cast's voice of reason, but she accomplishes some very impressive stuff despite her petite stature, such as beating The Big Guy Leo at a carnival high striker (mainly because she knows how they function), handling high stress situations better than most of the cast such as when they're kidnapped by Brian, and even saving all of Echo by talking the absolutely hysterical Heather out of destroying the whole town by sabotaging the dam. It also helps her badassery that she seems to have a special connection with her monstrous childhood friend, the Socket Man, who teleports and can turn anyone into mincemeat with one touch. Less adorable is her badassery in the Bad Ending to her route, where she talks Flynn into sniping Heather dead and then steals her father's dam blueprints and successfully destroys the town of Echo like Heather attempted.
- In Leo's route, Kudzu is a small raccoon who, nevertheless, lives in a sick trailer house and rescues both Chase and Leo from the delusional and armed Duke and Brian, the latter being easily the largest character in the cast.
- In Jenna's route, Micha is a diminutive Twink who's also a fluffy bat. He is also a juvenile delinquent who has been fending for himself on the rough streets since he was basically a kid, and shows his experience by saving Leo and Chase from the huge bear Brian by beating the bastard in the face with a metal pipe. He is also easily the character who navigates the supernatural happenings around Echo the best, recognizing them as the work of "The Hum" his late friend Keith told him about.
- Most characters in Far Beyond the World are humanoid wolves each standing at around 7ft of height, but, out of them, the she-wolf Cora manages to come off as truly adorable. She has fluffy fur, a pretty smile and a nice figure, and personality-wise she's kind, helpful, funny and a Friend to All Children. However, when Aldris and Dran threaten the frail human Caelan, Cora shows off the Badass part by pulling a knife on them to defend him, fearless towards the two people who got her own mother executed and, in general, are The Dreaded due to being cunning and good at getting rid of undesirables. To reiterate, Cora pulled a blade on the two people Mother.Fuckin'.Vulgor. is afraid of.
- Higurashi: When They Cry: Most of the cast counts, really. (Mion and Shion fall into Cute Bruiser territory.)
- Rena, whose primary prerogative on a normal day is to find cute things to take home. When pushed to protect herself or her friends, she can (non-fatally) swing around a cleaver like no one else.
- Satoko, appropriately dubbed 'The Trap Master' by the rest of the cast, is somewhere between 9 and 12 years old and very frequently The Woobie, yet she can trap, confuse or outright take out trained, fully grown men with minimal effort on her part.
- Rika, whose very presence in early arcs was basically to say something cute for Rena to Squee over, proves herself to be this when she goes it alone and tries to take out Shion with mace and a syringe. She failed, but it was still Badass. She's also Really 700 Years Old and eventually becomes determined to Screw Destiny.
- Hanyuu, a little girl around Rika's age, cute enough to be kidnapped by Rena three times in two minutes, who is also Oyashiro-sama, a Physical God who is promoted from The Voice and The Scapegoat to a full cast member during the final arc.
- The entire point of Koihime†Musou, but especially Kan'u. Even more so in the first game.
- The Nasuverse is peppered with this trope.
- 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 Fate/stay night girls all have their moments.
- Ilya is probably the most prominent there. Of course, she also happens to be a complete (but intensely sympathetic) psychopath loli who isn't as young as she looks.
- Some would even regard Shiki Ryougi as one.
- Rosemary from Rose of Winter is this in spades. She's a hopeless romantic, flusters easily, thinks "this is a bit of a pickle" is coarse language, and wants to be a knight not for the thrill of battle, but because she sees it as a way to help people. Which she does by swinging a sword that would make Cloud Strife jealous at any and all gigantic wild animals that try to harm the prince she's sworn to protect.
- Shall We Date?: Ninja Shadow has the Player Character Saori Shishido, a doll-like bifauxnen who arrives to Nagasaki as an Action Survivor who needs to hone her ninja skills fast so she can avenge her brother's death, but at the end of each route has grown into as a full-fledged Action Girl whose boyfriends LOVE how strong she has become AND how adorable she is.
- Veridadia from Yumina the Ethereal, who can turn herself into a BFS capable of destroying anything in a single strike.
Web Animation
- Many of the GoAnimate troublemaking characters are kids, so there are bound to be many of these. They can destroy entire buildings on a whim, are strong enough to carry 1000 pound objects in videos where the troublemakers cause earthquakes (and in some videos, one jump they make is enough to start one), and are willing to kill anyone who dares to go against them. However, whenever an authority figure shows up and demands an explanation, their badassery vanishes and they surrender themselves to any punishment that may be given to them.
- Flippy from Happy Tree Friends. A cute, pastel-green bear with a heart-shaped nose who, much like the other characters in the cast, wouldn't look out of place in a show like Care Bears. Also, a war veteran with a bad case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Whenever he hears a trigger like balloons popping he's sent back to the jungle and his psychotic Split Personality starts rampaging. Played even straighter with his good side, who is as kind and gentle as the evil side is sadistic and bloodthirsty, and who also proves able to fight him to a standstill and even defeat him in "Autopsy-Turvy".
- Helluva Boss has Millie. She’s a small, cute, bubbly and cheerful imp woman who is usually quite sweet when off the clock. Her job? Assassin - On the clock, she shows her Axe-Crazy Blood Knight side and the Wrath imp propensity for melee weapons and her bare hands. She’s capable of taking on a sea monster that positively dwarfs her by herself, and she’s made mincemeat out of a room full of trained agents while wielding a battle axe twice her size without breaking a sweat, all while having a casual conversation with her boss. And God help you if you insult, threaten or hurt her husband.
- Speaking of which, her husband Moxxie is no slouch in this department, either. He lacks the energetic personality to be a straight example, being moreso the Only Sane Employee. Nevertheless, he’s a well-meaning, slightly neurotic, tad clumsy, Endearingly Dorky theatre geek who is utterly, adorably devoted to his wife. And appearance-wise, he’s just as cute as her, being around her height and having Youthful Freckles. But while he may be the physically weakest employee at I.M.P, he more than makes up for it as the resident weapons expert who specialises in firearms. And he’s able to go Guns Akimbo with a pair of sub-machine guns.
- Pom Pom from Homestar Runner. Despite his appearance◊, not only has he been crowned the strongest man in the world, he's been voted 'most likely to beat everyone in an all-out death match' ever since he pummeled Strong Bad for trying to pop him with a pin. He's also a martial arts master and has an itchy trigger finger when it comes to firearms, so watch out. Also he's a successful indie film director, and a hip, tech-savvy ladies' man.
- The Shimmers from Inanimate Insanity are a group of aliens who are all floating lights inhabiting egg shells, which can emote and show images. Despite their cute appearances however, they are perfectly willing to spear anyone who dares to threaten them, as shown in a flashback where they destroy two MePhones who tried to take their babies by force after a failed negotiation.
- Kid LeBron from The LeBrons.
- In Dave Madson's Looney Tunes Intro Bloopers, Microsoft Anna is portrayed as a beautiful 25-ish year old woman with laser eye powers that are often used to defeat logos that scare Microsoft Sam.
- RWBY:
- Ruby Rose is a deadly fighter who can effortlessly slaughter her way through hordes of monsters using Crescent Rose, a sniper rifle/scythe hybrid that is known as one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed. That said, whenever she opens her mouth, especially when she's frustrated or excited, she's a massive dork who's as adorable as a box of kittens.
- Every female character in RWBY could be said to be this trope. Jaune as well. It could be said that RWBY is not just a World of Badass, but a World of Badass Adorable.
- Nora Valkyrie. She's bright, peppy and cheerful with just about everything she does, including pounding Grimm to death with a grenade launcher-hammer hybrid.
- Penny Polendina is an odd-but-sweet girl eager to make friends with Team RWBY. She can also out-badass all of them at once; the Season 1 finale has her curbstomp an entire horde of mooks, a giant robot, and an airship all on her lonesome, and she's a one-girl team who only really struggles with fighting The Ace Pyrrha (who's also a Man of Kryptonite to her, since she's a robot and Pyrrha can manipulate metal). When the heroes meet her again in Volume 7, she's been defending the entire city of Mantle by herself.
Penny: I'm combat ready!
- The absolute king of this trope in RWBY, however? Zwei, Ruby and Yang's pet corgi. In the finale of Volume 2, he participates in the battle on the train and holds the line with Oobleck against the White Fang Paladins, even allowing the teacher to use him in a fiery Fastball Special. After the train crashes, Zwei makes a grand entrance by headbutting a Beowolf◊.
- Velvet Scarlatina. A rabbit-eared girl shown to be very timid and shy who also cares deeply about the safety and wellbeing of others. But then she reveals her abilities.... or rather, everyone else's. By photographing people with her camera, she can create hard light copies of other people's weapons and use them with the exact same level of skill as the original wielders. Case in point? She takes down a huge paladin all by herself.
- If RWBY is a World of Badass Adorable, its Super-Deformed counterpart RWBY Chibi is a World of Badass Adorable TIMES ELEVEN! Every single character in this series is a lot cuter than in the main show, and they're every single bit as badass too, if not even more. Just to name a few examples:
- Zwei can take on multiple enemies at once, being basically the dog equivalent of Perry the Platypus.
- Neo is a Moe mute girl with a giant Death Laser.
- Nora can tame Grimms till THEY are the ones afraid of her!
- Penny is as adorable as she is a lethal dodgeball player.
- Jaune is a dorky little guy who can use other weapons in a very cool way (especially when in disguise).
- The main cast in general, from pillow fights to soccer matches can make you go "WOW!" as much as they can make you go "DAWWW!"
- And, heck, even the grimms are this! They're dangerous beasts with the Face of a Thug and the disposition of a puppy.
- Bee from Bee and Puppycat. It's a rare Magical Girl that will immediately lunge at a monster and then start attacking it with her teeth. And win.
- Puppycat also qualifies, thanks to his ability to incinerate that same monster, but might take issue with being called adorable.
- Caleb, a Cute Kitten, and Melody, a Righteous Rabbit from True Tail, who are both training to be heroes.
Web Original
- Whateley Universe: Several, which shouldn't be too surprising given that it is set in Elaborate University Superhero High School, with some students as young as nine.
- Of these, the most notable is probably Jade Sinclair (Generator), one of the original main character. 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, really.
- Team Wondercute, an entire team of Adorable Badasses dedicated to 'defending cuteness' and are the terror of the combat simulation exercises. Not surprisingly, Jade is pretty much their de facto leader.
- Ribbon, a Cute Bruiser with high end regeneration, Nigh-Invulnerability, a 5 ton deadlift, and the ability to create cloth out of nothing.
- Diz Aster, a junior high student with dramatic Super-Strength and a Force Field, but suffers from Power Incontinence which she is only just starting to overcome in Fall 2007.
- The Lambsbridge Gang in Twig, a team of TykeBombs who act as the enforcers for an Academy of Evil, yet who remain childlike and playful with one another.
- Mirror World: Wiggy is a young bat-like beast creature known as a day-vamp and is a very optimistic, all-loving girl. She also helps Vita on her journey to try and stop an all-out war, and violently mauls a giant monster known as a Brood by herself, with no weapons aside from her claws.
Web Videos
- Rosanna Pansino in Season 3, Episode 4 of Escape the Night. Deemed the sweet cinnamon roll by the fandom even before Season 3 began, she evolved to Badass Adorable in episode 4 after finding out the name of the Man With No Name in the elimination challenge she was sent into and being able to retrieve the blood stone, beating out arguably another The Cutie Teala Dunn. Her persistence and capacity for badassery surpassed the fandom's expectations, as cinnamon rolls in ETN usually don't become Badass Adorable.
- Rebecca Stone from Demo Reel. Sweet and pretty, but will slam your head into something hard if you're sexist to her or just outright beat you to death if you hurt her friends.
- The Angry Video Game Nerd's pet cat, Death Kitty (real name: Boo) chased away the Atari Jaguar logo when it invaded the Nerd's room and proved impervious to his light guns. As the Nerd himself puts it, Death Kitty is "the real Jaguar".
- Nips from "The Casebook of Nips & Porkington". While not as badass as the other examples, he's pretty intelligent and smart for a detective.
- Campaign 2 of Critical Role introduces the adorable Tiefling Cleric Jester. She's a sweet Cloud Cuckoo Lander with a massive Sweet Tooth who likes pretty clothes and pastries. She also has a Lollipop as her Spiritual Weapon...and it's actually quite effective. Also, she has the second highest strength in her party, and as a Cleric she has access to some pretty potent spells. She even managed to land the final blow on a few tough enemies, including the campaign's endboss, the Nonagon.
- Nurse Worse from Dr. Crafty. She's quite a Cute Monster Girl with a cheerful disposition and a sweet voice (courtesy of Megami33 from Team Four Star). However, she's quite strong when she needs to put up a fight, often clobbering her opponents with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure-style.
