History FinalGirl / LiveActionFilms

* The RareMaleExample shows up in ''Hell High'', which plays out like a MookHorrorShow slasher with a group of despicables breaking into the house of an unbalanced teacher who goes nuts and starts killing them off. The survivor is Jon-Jon, a studious ex-football player who just happened to fall into the wrong crowd before the slashing takes place. He's the only survivor, but it's evident that he [[DeconstructedTrope inherited]] his teacher's trauma by the end.

* ''Franchise/FridayThe13th'' has a definite final girl in every installment. Check out the [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FinalGirl/LiveActionFilmsSubversionsAversionsAndParodies subversions/aversions/parodies]] section.

* Applies to most of the ''[[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Elm Street]]'' series. [[Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet1984 Nancy]], [[Film/ANightmareOnElmStreetPart2FreddysRevenge Lisa]], [[Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet3DreamWarriors Kristen]], [[Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet4TheDreamMaster Alice]], [[Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet5TheDreamChild Alice again]], [[Film/FreddysDeadTheFinalNightmare Maggie/Tracy]], [[Film/WesCravensNewNightmare Heather Langenkamp]] (the [[Creator/HeatherLangenkamp actual actress]] [[AsHerself who played Nancy]]), and Laurie. ''[[Film/ANightmareOnElmStreetPart2FreddysRevenge Part 2]]'' is a partial subversion. Jesse is the only male protagonist of the series, and the one Freddy targets throughout the movie, making Lisa's role as Final Girl very limited. Lisa doesn't so much kill Freddy as drive him out of his possessed victim Jessie, who also survives in a rare case of Final Boy.

* Double subverted (ultimately played straight) in ''Film/HappyBirthdayToMe'' with Ginny. At first, "Ginny" is revealed to be the murderer when she kills Alfred. Then, the birthday party from hell -- where "Ginny" is unmasked as the true killer, who [[MasterActor disguised herself]] to look exactly like Ginny to trick both her victims and the audience. The real Ginny manages to stab the killer to death. A police officer showing up at the end and asking Ginny what has she done suggests a deconstruction.

* Double subverted (ultimately played straight) in ''Film/HappyBirthdayToMe'' with Ginny. At first, "Ginny" is revealed to be the murderer when she kills Alfred. Then, the birthday party from hell -- where "Ginny" is unmasked as the true killer, who [[MasterActor disguised herself]] to like exactly like Ginny to trick both the victims and the audience. The real Ginny manages to stab the killer to death. A police officer showing up at the end and asking Ginny what has she done suggests a deconstruction.

* Subverted and then double subverted (ultimately played straight) in ''Film/HappyBirthdayToMe'' with Ginny. At first, "Ginny" confesses to committing the murders. Then, it turns up that the killer was an assailant disguised as Ginny, who then has to survive a birthday dinner from hell. A deconstruction is hinted at the end with a surviving Ginny, who is messed up and suspected by a detective of committing the crimes.

** The [[Film/ColdPrey2 second film]] serves as a [[DeconstructedTrope deconstruction]]. Jannicke grows quite savvy by this film and knows what will happen if the killer gets resuscitated. Despite her warnings, she ends up getting sedated as the killer wakes up and starts killing the hospital staff one by one, leaving only Camilla left as a Final Girl. Once Jannicke comes to, she becomes an ActionSurvivor and teams up with Camilla to stop the killer once and for all. And they both end up surviving.
** The third film pulls a switcheroo. Siri seems more innocent and reserved when compared to Hedda, who rips off her top and goes skinny dipping with boys. None of this stops Hedda from being the true Final Girl, though she herself doesn't make it out alive.

* ''Franchise/FridayThe13th'' has a definite final girl in every installment, but see below under subversions/aversions.

* ''Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre'' films tend to have a final girl who is forced to endure a hellish ordeal before escaping the psychotic family through any means necessary. This is especially true with the first two films with [[Film/TheTexasChainSawMassacre1974 Sally]], who manages to escape with a bit of luck after a grueling chase, and [[Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre2 Stretch]], who has to use a chainsaw to fight off one of her captors. It's upheld in later installments, as well -- [[Film/LeatherfaceTheTexasChainsawMassacreIII Michelle]], [[Film/TexasChainsawMassacreTheNextGeneration Jenny]], [[Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre2003 Erin]], and [[Film/TexasChainsaw3D Heather]].

* ''Film/{{Aftershock}}'' does this on the straight and narrow...until a last-minute subversion shows up in the form of a tsunami.

* In ''Film/ThePyramid'', the group falls victim to the traps and creatures in the pyramid until we get a sole surviving female archaeologist, who manages to escape the clutches of the final monster and ''almost'' escapes the pyramid. Though she survives to the final frame of the film, [[BolivianArmyEnding odds aren't great that she survives for that much longer]].
* ''Film/TheRedwoodMassacre'': The main cast gets picked off over the course of the movie by a SackheadSlasher until only Pamela remains.

* [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in the case of ''Film/{{Madman}}'', whose main female protagonist Betsy survives nearly to the end of the film, only to join the tally of the eponymous Madman Marz's victims at the end when trying to confront him, whereas Richie (the camper who set the events of the story in motion, but sat out most of the main plot) ends up the sole survivor instead.

* ''Film/SilentNightBloodyNight'', released two years before the original ''Film/BlackChristmas1974'' and filmed in 1970, sees narrator and Mayor's daughter Diane Adams filling the role of the final girl by surviving to the end of the film and shooting the killer without any outside intervention.

* In ''Film/GingerSnaps'', Ginger's quieter, plainer sister Brigitte is the last major character left alive after Ginger kills Sam, with Brigitte forced to kill the werewolf that was once her sister and best friend. The sequel ''Film/GingerSnaps2Unleashed'', however, [[HappyEndingOverride retroactively subverts this]] by revealing that the monkshood Brigitte injected herself with to stop her own infection and transformation only slowed the process, with her now relying on ever-greater doses of the stuff to stave it off. The film ends with Brigitte, without access to monkshood, fully turning into a werewolf and kept captive by the Ghost to unleash on her enemies.

* Crystal May Creasey in ''Film/TheHunt2020'' is a US Army veteran who, thanks to a case of MistakenIdentity, is among the people kidnapped by the villains for [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame the titular hunt]], and winds up as the SoleSurvivor who outsmarts them and picks them off one by one while her peers' paranoia and general idiocy get the better of them. Furthermore, in a film satirizing the hyper-partisan political culture of the US in the late 2010s, her apolitical, moderate views mark her as morally superior to both the [[BourgeoisBohemian elitist liberals]] who staged the hunt and the [[BourgeoisBumpkin bigoted reactionaries]] who were selected for it.

** Laurie Strode in ''Film/Halloween1978'' is the TropeCodifier, and her actress Creator/JamieLeeCurtis wound up typecast in Final Girl roles early in her career, such as in ''Film/PromNight1980'' and ''Film/TerrorTrain''. The film also introduced the DeathBySex trope that became a staple of the genre, which Creator/JohnCarpenter expressed [[CreatorBacklash some regret]] for, later saying "if I ended the sexual revolution, I apologize." Laurie remained a final girl in ''Film/HalloweenII1981'' and ''Film/HalloweenH20TwentyYearsLater''. Interestingly, the first film [[UnbuiltTrope put a bit of a spin on it]], portraying her as a CuteBookworm whose intelligence scares boys away and who ''tries'' to smoke marijuana only to choke on it, and according to Carpenter, her sexual repression was meant as a mirror to that of the killer Michael Myers.

!Straight Examples
!!Slashers

!!Others

* ''Film/{{Zombeavers}}'' memorably subverts audience expectations. Jen is the cautious, level-headed girl who doesn't have sex (during the movie), and dresses the most conservatively. She ends up the first to get zombified. It's actually Zoe, the one who has loud, enthusiastic sex on screen and gets her tits out at the start of the movie, who survives to the end.


!Subversions, aversions, and parodies
* In After Dark Horrorfest 4's movie ''Kill Theory'' subverts this trope when the expected final girl Jennifer stabs her boyfriend Michael in the stomach to save herself, breaking the rules and ends up being killed by the actual final girl Amber whom she had shot earlier.
* Subverted to hell and back in ''Film/AllTheBoysLoveMandyLane''. The innocent and pure Mandy appears to be this at first, but then comes TheReveal that, the whole time, she was working with the killer, with whom she had entered a SuicidePact. It's then given a DoubleSubversion when Mandy backs out of the pact at the last minute, allowing her to be the Final Girl after all.
* In ''Film/AprilFoolsDay'', the cast are whittled down to two and the killer is revealed to be the secret and crazy twin sister of one of the characters. The boy gets locked in a closet while the Final Girl is left to confront the crazy twin. She backs into a room, and there are all the "dead," people, behaving calmly and casually as though nothing had happened. After about thirty seconds of her freaking out, they start laughing and explain that that the whole thing was both a elaborate practical joke and a test for a "Murder Mystery," inn, there is no twin. Then they have a party. Even when you first think it's a slasher, the first female victim is the one most likely to be a Final Girl - the bookish ShrinkingViolet. The actual Final Girl is shown in bed with her boyfriend and they nearly have sex in the boathouse the next day.
* ''Film/AQuietPlace'' semi-uses it in a couple ways.
** The first film ends with most of the world, including the family's own father and the (formerly) youngest child, dead, and the remaining physically capable boy huddled in the corner desperately trying to keep the new youngest child quiet, leaving the mother and daughter as the two final girls of sorts. One to give the creature a seizure and expose its weakness, the other to finish it off with a shotgun.
** [[Film/AQuietPlacePartII The second film]] plays it a bit straighter with Regan and Emmett alone in the radio station, with Emmett incapacitated and the creature on the prowl, leaving Regan to play the seizure-inducing sound and kill the creature by herself. Also [[GenderFlip gender-flipped]], with Marcus having to protect his injured mother and baby brother from another creature at the same time his sister is facing down another one.
* Shows up in Joe D'Amato's early 80's horrors, though somewhat obscurely:
** When considering that the film involves a group of middle-aged adults getting killed off one by one rather than the usual group of teenagers, Julie fits the bill pretty well in ''Film/TheAnthropophagusBeast''. While she does smoke in one scene, Julie also turns down the advances of a fellow tourist who expressed a desire to be with her so she is sexually unavailable as well. The Final Girl notion is ultimately subverted in the final confrontation when a previous victim turns up to be alive and gives a deadly blow to the killer, saving Julie in the process.
** In ''Film/{{Absurd}}'', the last female to confront the killer is Katia, whose innocence may be justified by the fact that she was bedridden for most of the film. Katia's not really the typical leading protagonist for most of the film ''until'' the killer invades her home, when she fulfills Final Girl duties by taking up a decorative axe and chopping his head off.
* ''The Babysitter'' Netflix series:
** Bee in the first film, ''Film/TheBabysitter2017'' is a character who seems consciously designed to evoke the image of a badass modern horror heroine, an attractive blonde babysitter who serves as a CoolBigSis figure to the protagonist Cole...except she's actually the BigBad who wants to use his blood for a [[HollywoodSatanism Satanic ritual]]. Cole's friend Melanie, on the other hand, is a straight example, portrayed as a wholesome GirlNextDoor with hints of PuppyLove.
** In [[Film/TheBabysitterKillerQueen the sequel]], Melanie turns out to be EvilAllAlong and became the new leader of the cult, complete with a HotterAndSexier EvilMakeover now that SheIsAllGrownUp. The actual Final Girl this time, Phoebe, is not at all wholesome, being a NewTransferStudent who is initially presented as a "bad girl", but turns out to be a straightforward hero beneath her "alternative" fashion sense.
* ''Film/BloodWidow'': Laurie is the only one of the group who survives the longest against the killer. Sadly, she's beaten to death at the end.
* In ''Film/BloodyReunion'', Mi-Ja is only one of the students to survive the ReunionRevenge. Because she's the killer.
* ''Film/BodiesBodiesBodies'': Bee and Sophie play it straight at first glance, being the {{Token Good Teammate}}s within an otherwise extremely toxic friend circle that's comprised primarily of {{Alpha Bitch}}es and their asshole boyfriends, and who wind up being the only survivors of the bloodbath that goes down in the mansion (barring Max, who left early and [[TheBusCameBack came back at the very end]]).
** However, it turns out that [[WrongGenreSavvy they were never in]] a SlasherMovie. David's death, the inciting incident of the plot, wasn't a murder, but an accident caused by [[AlcoholInducedIdiocy his own drunken stupidity]]. When the rest of the cast discovered his body with a SlashedThroat and a blood-stained {{kukri|sAreKool}} nearby, they immediately suspected that he'd been murdered and that one of them was the killer, and all the death that followed was a result of them turning on each other. Nobody was in any danger, at least not before their paranoia got the better of them.
** Bee and Sophie are also a lesbian couple, and what's more, a lot of circumstantial evidence suggests that Sophie cheated on Bee with Jordan. By the end of the film, even though they both know that the other isn't the killer, their romance is likely toast. Sophie is also a recovering drug addict, and she relapses during the film.
* ''Boggy Creek'': A group of friends get terrorized by a [[BigfootSasquatchAndYeti Bigfoot]] creature while vacationing a remote cabin and its surrounding woods. When the rest of her group is either dead or captured, Jennifer almost manages to escape until she herself is captured right before the credits roll. While this may be seen as a simple subversion, the film might truly avert the trope. The creature seems to [[MenAreTheExpendableGender selectively kills the men]] in the group, while it is hinted that the women victims are kept alive for breeding. The killing of AlphaBitch Brooke leaves the line between subversion and aversion a bit murky, though.
* Buffy from ''Film/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' survives the whole movie, but is meant to be a subversion of the typical opening victim who dies before the title. While the good and wholesome activist girl we're meant to initially believe is the final girl turns out to be the first victim.
* In ''Film/CabinFever'', Karen is initially presented as Final Girl material, with [[HairOfGoldHeartOfGold blonde hair]], no nudity, and a relationship with the least debauched of the three guys in the group. Instead, she is the ''first'' to fall ill to the [[BodyHorror flesh-eating bacteria]]. The last survivor is Jeff, who decided to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere run away from the cabin]] rather than risk getting infected, and even he gets gunned down by the police at the end. What's more, the film inverts TheScourgeOfGod in one notable way: the main vector for infection is the cabin's drinking water, so it's actually ''safer'' to get drunk than stay sober, hence why Jeff (who took two cases of beer when he fled) is the only one who doesn't get infected.
* {{Invoked|Trope}} and {{subverted|Trope}} in ''Film/TheCabinInTheWoods''. When the monsters ritually slaughter the college kids, Dana, the victim labelled as "The Virgin", can't be killed unless all the others are killed first, and, as long as she's suffered a lot and is the last one left standing, she can be allowed to escape the monsters without ruining the ritual. However, it turns out that Marty, one of the earlier male victims, [[ChekhovMIA wasn't as dead as everyone thought]],[[labelnote:Explanation...]]His [[TheStoner routine smoking]] made him [[DisabilityImmunity immune to the mind-altering drugs laced in the air]] and the zombie that pulled him underground was [[LiteralDisarming dismembered and left growling on the ground as a limbless torso]], implying he [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass overpowered it.]][[/labelnote]] and comes back to save Dana and kick some monster ass...and [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt end the world]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero in the process by sabotaging the ritual.]] Further subverted by the fact that Dana, who the technicians had set up to become "The Virgin", was in fact screwing her professor in order to pass the class, while Jules, who had been picked as "The Whore", was the smarter and more wholesome of the two before she was drugged.
* Subverted in ''Film/{{Candyman}}''. The main character studying urban myths for graduate school discovers the legend of the titular Candyman, who can be summoned when his name is said in the mirror five times. Needless to say, Candyman is indeed summoned during Helen's investigation and shows himself, framing Helen for murder as well as killing her best friend and her therapist. Helen dies saving the life of a baby at the end, but she herself becomes immortalized and is just as vengeful as the Candyman in that she kills her cheating husband when he unknowingly summons her after her death.
** Played completely straight in the two sequels with Annie and Caroline, both of whom are descendants of the titular villain.
* ''Film/TheCave'' contrasts the slightly demure scientist Katheryn with the sexy blonde climber Charlie. Katheryn is indeed the only one of the two females to survive, but this is subverted at the end when she is revealed to be infected and out in the world to infect others.
* Tori in ''Christmas Bloody Christmas'' is an [[SirSwearsALot extremely foul-mouthed]] [[TheLadette lad-ette]] who loves PunkRock, HeavyMetal, and [[UnabashedBMovieFan bad horror sequels]] and brags that she can "out-drink, out-earn, and out-fuck" most of the men she meets. This "tough chick" attitude is exactly what allows her to beat the [[AIIsACrapshoot killer robot]] [[BadSanta Santa]] running amok through her town.
* Subverted in ''Film/TheCollector'' (2009). Arkin is an [[AntiHero anti-hero]] ex-con who breaks into a house at the wrong time to steal a valuable gem in order to pay off his wife's debts. While the innocent family he was stealing from is killed off one by one, Arkin survives, but is captured. Not to mention being a final ''boy''.
** Played significantly straighter in the 2012 sequel with Elena, who is more of a SupportingProtagonist while Arkin is still the lead.
* ''The Cottage'' saw the Final Girl turn out to be so unpleasant and obnoxious that the technically bad but not actually evil kidnappers who made up the other three heroes were much more sympathetic characters. Hilariously, she not only releases the monster but manages to get herself killed by said monster before any of the guys - it is probably not a good idea to mouth off to a psychotic 7-foot tall, deformed cannibal when he is about to brain someone with a shovel.
* In the film ''Crazy Eights'', the character Beth is built up to be the final girl, only to become the second victim when a horrible monster visits her and persuades her to rip out her own jaw to remove her guilt. The final girl is actually Jennifer, but she prepares to kill herself as the movie abruptly ends.
* Inverted big time in 2008 horror movie ''Credo''. It's all typical with our [[TheIngenue sweet and innocent]] main character being the last one out of our group to die...That is, until it's revealed most of the movie was [[AllJustADream all just a hallucination]] brought on by an evil demon [[EvilPlan to get her to hang herself]]. The other college twats are just fine, playing with a Ouija Board downstairs.
* Set up and subverted in "The Raft" segment of ''Film/Creepshow2'', in which the girl less concerned with boys and drugs at first ends up being the first victim of the monster after letting her guard down and trying pot. The story may serve as a cautionary tale for why the Final girl must avoid certain vices if she wants to survive a horror movie.
* Used one way or another in every ''Film/{{Cube}}'' movie:
** ''Cube'' features a cute, innocent girl in the cast of prisoners, but it's the the mentally retarded boy who survives, apparently by being even more innocent.
** ''Film/Cube2Hypercube'' [[SubvertedTrope appears to play it straight]], with a wholesome blonde surviving to the end but not much further -- she's revealed to be a government operative who, after her de-briefing, [[ShootTheShaggyDog is executed to keep the secrets secure]].
** ''Film/CubeZero'' plays it straight with Raines.
* Subverted in ''Film/{{Curtains}}'' (1983). After all actresses but one coveting the role of Audra are murdered, we're left with one plucky actress (Patti) who easily fits the final girl mold. A use of an ImpendingDoomPOV makes us think Samantha truly was the killer and not just a red herring. However, in the end, Samantha only killed the director and his mistress, but it was not-so-innocent Patti who killed her rivals for the role.
* The girl who looks most likely to be the Final Girl in ''Film/TheDeadlySpawn'' dies in the last 20 minutes and is replaced by another girl who arrived shortly before two-thirds of the way through the film. The monster ends up being killed by the precocious little boy who was hiding in the basement where he was cornered by the monster earlier, figured out its weaknesses by observing it, and had enough know-how to construct a home-made bomb when he finally got free.
* Set up in ''Film/{{Damnatus}}'', where Nira is the last of the party left alive (with {{the hero}} even commenting that if anyone's going to make it out alive, it will be her), but when the daemon catches up with her she dies just like the rest.
* Also subverted in ''Film/{{The Dark|2005}}'', where Creator/MariaBello's character Adèle fights through the Welsh interpretation of the afterlife to save her daughter, only to unintentionally kill herself and switch places with her. And depending on how you interpret the ending, she may not have even succeeded in saving her daughter.
* Irina in the Russian horror film ''Deadly Still'' initially looks like a typical final girl, only to be revealed to be working with the main villain of the film, who is her adoptive father. While she turns against him after discovering that he killed her birth parents (the creators of the deadly MagicalCamera at the center of the film, which kills anybody photographed with it), she simply proceeds to continue the experiments that both her birth parents and her adoptive father did with the camera, killing the other surviving main character and then the group of police officers dispatched to investigate the deaths.
* ''Film/DeathProof'': Quentin Tarantino himself noted during interviews about this film that he is a ''major'' fan of Carol Clover's writings on slasher films. As such, part of the thrill of the first half involves how he consciously [[PlayingWithATrope plays with]] this trope in particular: Arlene/Butterfly is set up from the beginning to be a played-straight Final Girl in a standard slasher--especially how she's portrayed as rather "apart" from her friends, and not as open in her sexuality. Alas, she ends up ''dying'' with the others--which, as Quentin anticipated, is a ''big'' shock to the audience. Not to mention that the first group of girls are slightly repressed with their sexuality, whereas the second are more open about it - and survive.
* Played straight in the original cut of ''Film/DeepBlueSea'', but averted in the finished cut, because test audiences found the female lead to be obnoxious and self-centered. The PluckyComicRelief survived in her place. It should be noted that in both a shark wrangler - halfway between ActionHero and ActionSurvivor - also lives.
* Averted in ''Film/TheDescent''. The cast of female spelunkers gets whittled down one by one, but ultimately the Final Girl crosses a MoralEventHorizon, losing audience sympathy. In the end, she seems to escape, but the scene cuts to reveal that it was just a fantasy and she's irrevocably trapped in the cave. Due to ExecutiveMeddling, the Final Girl trope is upheld in the American version, and she escapes.
* ZigZagged in ''Film/DontOpenTillChristmas''. It at first appears to be Kate, a chaste woman with a personal connection to the case, but she is randomly killed off, causing the title to shift to Sherry, a stripper who appeared to be just another victim. But then she [[HesJustHiding apparently]] gets killed, causing things to shift to Ian, a man... who also dies.
* ''Film/EscapeRoom2019'':
** Zoey is a by-the-book final girl: she is the younger of the two women who participate in the escape room, is socially awkward but immensely resourceful, being the one who contributes the most for the participants to survive. But she is seemingly killed in the fourth challenge, leaving two men to continue. The one who ultimately wins the challenge is Ben, a smoking addict who is initially unsympathetic and serves as TheLoad, but matures throughout the film. And then Zoey is revealed to have secretly survived and ends up rigging a game that was supposed to leave only one alive, so now there are ''two'' survivors.
** The sequel, ''[[Film/EscapeRoomTournamentOfChampions Tournament of Champions]]'', averts the SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome characteristic of final girls. All of the new characters, including two women, are killed off, and the ones who remain standing to the end are Zoey and Ben again. They are joined by Amanda, the other woman from the first film, whose death is revealed to have been faked, meaning not only there are three survivors, they are all characters from the previous film.
* In ''Film/{{Evidence}}'', there are two surviving girls...who then turn out to actually be the killers, who took turns taking on the role of the masked bad guy to throw everyone off.
* ''Film/TheEvilDead1981'' subverted the trope by having the sweet virginal girl raped by trees and then possessed. Her brother, Ashely J. Williams, becomes the Final Guy, though even he gets possessed at the end. In the sequels, he reverts back to humanity and becomes the boomstick-toting, [[ChainsawGood chainsaw-handed]] badass we know and love.
* In ''Film/{{Feast}}'' the character identified as "Heroine" (Occupation: ''Wear tank-tops, tote shotgun, save day'') is accidentally shot, knocked out a second-floor window and swarmed by monsters about halfway through the movie. We then get the ''real'' Final Girl, Tuffy, who is now credited as "Heroine #2".
* The ''Film/FinalDestination'' series:
** ''Film/FinalDestination3'', in which the makers explicitly went out of their way to kill the Final Girl. Whether the two people she saved live or die is left open in the theatrical version.
** ''Film/FinalDestination1'' follows this... until ''[[Film/FinalDestination2 2]]'', which subverts it [[JustForPun finally]] killing Clear.
* Completely Subverted in the ironically titled ''Film/FinalGirl''. Instead of the film being about a terrified girl being the last survivor of a psycho, it's about a girl [[BadassAdorable trained as an assassin]] who hunts, [[TheFakeCutie baits]], and kills a group of psychos.
* ''Film/TheFinalGirls'': The film, appropriately, features several examples, and thoroughly parodies the concept.
** Paula, the original final girl of the film ''[[ShowWithinAShow Camp Bloodbath]]''. Despite not fitting the traditional [[TheIngenue ingenue]] mold, instead being an ActionGirl who arrives on the scene in a Trans Am and wears a leather jacket and ripped jeans, she makes a point of mentioning that [[VirginPower she's a virgin and plans to stay that way]] as soon as she's introduced.
** Vicki nominates herself to be the final girl after Paula dies, but is not eligible because being a TechnicalVirgin doesn't cut it by the movie's rules.
** {{Enforced|Trope}} when Nancy and Max try to survive together. Max's mortal wound leads Nancy (who had sex earlier) to pull a HeroicSacrifice, making Max the ''final'' girl. As soon as this happens, Max's wound becomes JustAFleshWound, and she can suddenly fight Billy with [[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer slayer-level competence]].
* Played straight in ''Frayed'', where the virginal girl is the last left to confront her murderous brother in true Final Girl fashion...until it's revealed that she as well as the other victims only existed as they were presented in the killer's delusional fantasies. The real sister was a completely different person whom the brother had never seen after childhood, the 'killer' was actually framed for a murder he did not commit, and the slasher portion of the film [[AllJustADream never really took place]] at all.
* Film/{{Freaky}}: Millie has the makings of one, a [[HairOfGoldHeartOfGold blond]], heavily-bullied and shy highschooler who overcomes her insecurities and defeats the BigBad, but is technically not the Final Girl for most of the movie due to [[FreakyFridayFlip swapping bodies]] with The Blissfield Butcher. Thus, she spends the runtime as a hulking, wanted SerialKiller while the Butcher takes advantage of the situation by commencing his murder spree in her body, even giving Millie an EvilMakeover contrasting to how conservatively and rather frumpily she dresses. Further subverted in that Millie's best friends Nyla (A black woman and the only significant person of color) and Josh (A gay guy), who would definitely be the {{Token Minorit|y}}ies killed off early on in any other horror movie[[note]]Lampshaded and summed perfectly by Josh: "You're [[BlackDudeDiesFirst black]], I'm [[GayGuyDiesFirst gay]], we're ''so'' dead!"[[/note]], survives to the end unscathed whereas Millie's tormentors and the four rich kids from the opening scene, all white, privileged {{Jerkass}}es, were brutally slain in the Butcher's path.
* Though, as mentioned above, the ''Franchise/FridayThe13th'' film series usually plays it straight, special mention should be made for the character of Tommy Jarvis, who manages to make it safely through installments ''[[Film/FridayThe13thTheFinalChapter IV]], [[Film/FridayThe13thPartVANewBeginning V]]'' and ''[[Film/FridayThe13thPartVIJasonLives VI]]'' as the TagalongKid, TroubledButCute, and ZenSurvivor respectively.
** [[Film/FridayThe13th2009 The 2009 remake]] has a Final Girl, but also has a [[DecoyProtagonist decoy Final Girl]] in Jenna who is quite possibly on screen for more time than actual Final Girl Whitney until her sudden death near the end. Additionally, there is another [[ActionSurvivor survivor]] in Whitney's brother Clay.
** [[Film/FridayThe13th1980 Original Final Girl Alice]] was shown smoking marijuana in one scene, Ginny from ''[[Film/FridayThe13thPart2 Part 2]]'' has offscreen sex and kicks back a few beers, and Jessica of ''Film/JasonGoesToHellTheFinalFriday'' has a kid.
*** Speaking of ''Jason Goes to Hell'', its arguable Stephen is more the main protagonist than Jessica.
** The seventh and eighth installments, ''[[Film/FridayThe13thPartVIITheNewBlood The New Blood]]'' and ''[[Film/FridayThe13thPartVIIIJasonTakesManhattan Jason Takes Manhattan]]'' respectively, have the male love interest survive alongside the Final Girl character for the entire final act.
* ''Film/FromDuskTillDawn'' ends with two survivors. Kate Fuller, the virginal [[PreachersKid preacher's daughter]], is a straight example of this trope. Seth Gecko, on the other hand, is not only a VillainProtagonist, but arguably the most evil character in the film. Whereas his AxCrazy rapist brother Richard is implied to be legitimately insane, the bikers and truckers at the Titty Twister are [[GoodIsNotNice rough-hewn but otherwise not harming anybody]], and even most of the vampires are portrayed as [[NonMaliciousMonster animalistic and killing out of instinct]], Seth is a professional {{bank robber|y}} who coldly murders multiple people out of pure greed or anger and is entirely aware and in control of his actions. That said, [[EvenEvilHasStandards even he is shocked]] when Richard rapes and murders their hostage when he leaves to grab food near the start of the film, and he does [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold get a bit nicer]] as the story goes on, convincing the preacher Jacob to recover his faith in God to help them fight the vampires and feeling regretful when he has to [[StakingTheLovedOne kill Richard]]. As he puts it to Kate at the end, "I may be a bastard, but I'm not a fucking bastard."
* In ''Film/FromHell'', Mary Kelly is played pretty straight as a Final Girl as she escapes UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper and survives after all her friends have been picked off and despite the fact that the real-life Mary Kelly didn't. However, she's also a subversion in that she doesn't kill the Ripper, just manages to avoid him and, what with being a prostitute, isn't the traditionally wholesome girl either.
* While ''Film/{{Frontiers}}'' technically has ''two'' final girls, neither fit the wholesome image of the final girl (at least by association). Yasmine is pregnant member of a group of thieves, and Eva is a kind but obedient member of the cannibalistic family that's killed Yasmine's companions.
* ''Film/GetOut2017'''s Rose Armitage appears to have all the traits of the Final Girl at first, but it is later revealed that Rose is actually part of her family's plot to kidnap African Americans and insert the brains of family members or well-paying customers into their bodies. In fact, she plays a key role as the HoneyTrap who dates and lures the victims to her parents' isolated house under the guise of introducing them to her family.
* Jenny in ''Film/{{Ghostkeeper}}'' seemed destined for this: Brunette, insecure, and more reserved when compared to the other (blonde) girl in the group. The original intent was for her to have a chase with the monster when she was the last one left. However, production [[NoBudget ran out of money]] halfway through filming, so a new ending had to be made that completely subverted this altogether. Rather than confronting the monster, Jenny confronts the woman who runs the lodge and as a result becomes the new ghostkeeper.
* ''Film/GirlsNiteOut'' had Lynn, who looked and behaved every bit of the part as well as top billing for actress Julia Montgomery. However, this is subverted in the finale when the more seasoned actors in the cast are in final scene while our final girl isn't anywhere to be found. [[AntiClimax Roll credits.]]
* Since there are no women among the survivors (or even passengers) of the crashed plane in ''Film/TheGrey'', it's pretty obvious that there will not be a final ''girl''. Creator/LiamNeeson's character becomes the last survivor before meeting a BolivianArmyEnding (he does manage to [[TakingYouWithMe kill the alpha wolf before dying]], though).
* Subverted in ''Film/GrizzlyPark'', where Bebe, the ditzy, sweet girl, survives most of the movie, but it turns out it was all an act, and she is really a mean, spoiled bitch. Ranger Bob ends up sending the bear to kill her once he finds out.
* The slasher-satire ''Hack!'' puts the trope through the grinder. The girl so obviously the final girl ends up being an evil bitch involved in the killings, whereas the hunky leading male is revealed to be a virgin and ends up being a final boy.
* Theresa 'Tree' Gelbman, the protagonist of ''Film/HappyDeathDay'' would be one of the first victims in a traditional slasher as a snooty college AlphaBitch who is having sex with her married professor and drinks alot lot and in fact she is quickly murdered...only to wake up in bed that same morning. Tree is caught in a GroundhogDayLoop reliving the same day over and over until she manages to defeat the killer and along the way she becomes a nicer person. By the [[Film/HappyDeathDay2U sequel]] she's not only a better person but pretty badass, whose first response on hearing someone else is suffering the same fate is to pick up a baseball bat and go hunting the bad guy.
* In the gay slasher ''Hellbent'', there's a Final ''Guy'' and his LoveInterest.
* In ''Film/HighTension'', a lesbian spends most of the film trying to rescue the girl she likes from the hands of a slasher. It turns out that her alternate personality is actually the killer, having been [[LoveMakesYouEvil driven murderously insane by her secret crush]]. Both [[PsychoLesbian the killer]] and the final girl survive.
* Subverted in the British thriller ''Film/TheHole''. We open with a teenage girl, who is the lone survivor of a group of four teens locked in a bunker for ten days. When the girl gives her story to the police, she appears to follow the Final Girl archetype - a studious, responsible, intelligent and more level-headed than her peers. Of course, it turns out to be a complete lie - where she's a sociopath who locked her friends down in the bunker in the first place, because she was {{Yandere}} for one of the boys. She's shown to be just as promiscuous, drug-obsessed and prone to hysterics as the other teens.
* ''Hostel'' Trilogy:
** Subverted in ''Film/{{Hostel}}.'' The film's only surviving character is Paxton, who is not only male, but a heavy drinker and drug user who spends the first half of the film screwing anything with a pulse. By contrast, Josh, who dies earlier, is relatively innocent--although Josh's ambiguous sexuality may make him an example of BuryYourGays.
** Also subverted in ''Film/HostelPartII''. Beth, the Final Girl who we've come to see as innocent and virginal, turns out to be just as ruthless and bloodthirsty as her captors. She brutally castrates her "hunter" and strikes a deal with Sasha, the club's ringleader. In contrast Lorna, the untouched {{Cloudcuckoolander}}, is the first to die and was selected specifically ''because'' she was a virgin. Her "hunter" had a [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethBathory Countess Bathory]] fetish.
* Averted in ''Film/HouseOf1000Corpses'', where the final girl escapes the killer family, but the driver of the car that gives her a lift back to town is the MonsterClown Captain Spaulding, who turns out to be part of the killer family.
** Very cleverly subverted in the sequel ''Film/TheDevilsRejects''. By the end, Baby becomes a sort of final girl when Sheriff Wydell is chasing her. Very interesting seeing ''the villain'' become the final girl.
* ''Film/TheHunt2020'': Crystal is a badass, war-veteran ActionGirl who [[SpannerInTheWorks completely derails]] The Hunt the hunters dragged her into as they wrongfully kidnapped her on the presumption she's the backwards, drug-addicted hick of the same name. As such, she absolutely demolished them all including [[BigBad Athena]] due to not giving a damn about their flimsy political agenda and leaving herself the SoleSurvivor.
* ''Film/{{Identity}}'' subverts this in multiple ways: the character set up as the Final Girl was a prostitute, thus subverting the virgin-and-pure side of things. We then find out one of the other characters believed to have died was actually still alive. Said character, who was actually the killer, returns to finish the Final Girl off. Furthermore, the Final Girl, the character that killed her and all of the other characters who didn't make it were actually the multiple personalities of a serial killer, and the whole thing was being played out in his mind. The "killing" of the characters was his real-life attempt to integrate. So, when you get down to it, there's really no Final Girl at all, and no person at the motel ever really died.
* Subverted in ''Film/Inside2007''. Sarah starts out as a DamselInDistress, but she eventually graduates to ActionSurvivor status despite being pregnant and ''this close'' to giving birth. While she does a serious number on her attacker, it wasn't enough since Sarah still gets killed at the end.
* Erica Yang, the protagonist of ''Into The Dark: School Spirit'', is presented as a classic Final Girl: A sweet, virginal, rule-abiding, AsianAndNerdy teenager who tries to help her fellow students escape from a killer. After she takes the killer out, the trope is subverted: She reveals that she's had sex with her ex-boyfriend several times, has actively cheated on multiple occasions to boost her GPA, and really doesn't care about the other kids who died except as a means to make herself look good in the media.
* The characterization is subverted in ''Film/JustBeforeDawn''. Connie starts out as a normal tomboy variety, which would imply an inherent strength in the face of danger in the woods. However, she notices that the other female in the group -- pretty-girl Megan -- has a bit more tenacity and bravery in the face of danger than she herself does. Connie spends the rest of the film reinventing herself with the use of make-up and more-revealing clothes to be more like Megan. When danger does strike, Connie takes down the killer at the end not with a weapon but with her bare hands. As if that's not enough, the trope is also downplayed given that Connie's masculine boyfriend survives as well but is severely injured and cannot help while Connie is being attacked.
* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in ''Film/LastGirlStanding'', Camryn starts out as the only survivor of the Hunter in the ColdOpen, only to suffer PTSD hallucinations of the killer 4 years later, despite them clearly being long dead. Unfortunately, ThereAreNoTherapists since she couldn't afford one as she lives in a crappy apartment and has a dead-end job at a laundromat. She ultimately succumbs to her hallucinations and starts murdering her new friends at the climax under the assumption that she's protecting them from the "resurrected" Hunter, prompting the police to shoot her dead to save the last victim, Danielle. However, Danielle begins hallucinating Camryn herself not long after, [[HereWeGoAgain starting the cycle all over again]].
* Painfully averted in ''Film/TheLazarusEffect'' - Eva doesn't succeed in stopping Zoe's rampage, she just had a DyingDream that she did.
* Subverted via [[Main/GenreShift genre shift]] in ''Film/TheMajorettes''. The film starts out as a standard slasher, with both Vicky and Judy appearing to be the wholesome candidates for this trope to happen. Vicky lives with her invalid grandmother, whose caregiver -- Helga -- has evil intentions. Judy is the girlfriend of the true hero, Jeff. Judy ends up being the final victim of the serial killer, who gets snared in a plot by Helga when he's photographed killing her. Helga [[InvokedTrope invokes]] the trope by ordering that he kill Vicky once she turns 18 years old so that she can secure money from an irrevocable trust. After the killer has been incapacitated due to the Helga's blackmail, a local gang then kidnaps Jeff and Vicky for steering the police in their direction for potential involvement in an earlier murder. Vicky is then subsequently killed in a shoot out, resulting in a devastated Jeff going [[Main/VigilanteMan all vigilante]] on the gang and killing them one by one. The final shots of the film have the serial killer murdering Helga, pinning his murders on her perverted son, and then watching a new batch of majorettes who may serve as potential victims for him in the future.
* Margot Mills in ''Film/TheMenu'' wouldn't normally be seen as Final Girl material. She's a [[TheLadette lad-ette]] who smokes, curses, and wears [[HellBentForLeather a leather jacket]], Margot isn't her real name (it's Erin), and it's later revealed that she's a HighClassCallGirl who Richard had carried on an affair with and who Tyler hired to be his date for the dinner after his girlfriend broke up with him. However, by the standards of the film's EatTheRich morality, her status as a WorkingClassHero means that she's the most morally upright character in the film compared to the [[UpperClassTwit Upper-Class Twits]] around her. The EvilChef villain Julian recognizes this when he decides to spare her and let her leave the island, his breaking point coming when Margot, who learned that he started his career as a line cook at a burger joint before he climbed the ladder of success and lost his passion for the culinary arts, asks him to make her a cheeseburger. The film ends with Margot on a boat chowing down on that cheeseburger, which turned out to be Julian's final meal as he burned down his restaurant with everybody inside.
* ''{{Film/Midsommar}}'' is a FolkHorror rather than slasher movie, and Dani does survive until the end while being portrayed as nicer and more wholesome than her jerkass friends. However, she survives because she decides to get inducted into the cult -- and punishes her boyfriend by making him the final sacrifice!
* Subverted in the SciFiHorror film ''Film/{{Morgan}}''. Lee Weathers is the last girl standing, but only because she executes the other two survivors in order to LeaveNoWitnesses to Morgan's rampage. And her toughness, poise under pressure, and avoidance of sex aren't because she's a virginal ActionSurvivor, but because she's a hard-nosed, emotionless corporate suit -- ''and'' an ArtificialHuman just like Morgan.
* In "The Babysitter Murders", the final segment of ''Film/TheMortuaryCollection'' (originally released as a standalone short film), we learn that Sam, the AudienceSurrogate throughout the film's FramingDevice, had been one of these, surviving an attack on the home where she was [[BadlyBatteredBabysitter babysitting]] by a SerialKiller who'd just escaped from the asylum. Except she's actually the escaped killer herself, having killed the ''real'' babysitter and taken his place. When Montgomery Dark learns who she really is, he subjects her to a KarmicDeath before bringing her BackFromTheDead and condemning her to take his place as the mortician.
* PlayedWith in ''Film/MyLittleEye''. Technically, at the end of the film, the only person alive apart from Travis and the cop is Emma. However, unlike numerous instances where this trope is played straight or even subverted, by the time she's left as the lone survivor her eventual survival is virtually out of question.
* In ''Film/MySuperPsychoSweet16'', Skye Rotter is the daughter of a SerialKiller who has been haunted by her father Charlie's crimes ever since she caught him in the act. She spends the rest of the film as a more [[EmoTeen emo-tinged version]] of a classic final girl...until the very end, when the AlphaBitch Madison Penrose reveals herself to be a JerkWithAHeartOfJerk, causing Skye to [[AloneWithThePsycho lock her in the basement of the Roller Dome]] to be killed by Charlie without feeling a shred of remorse. She drives off in Madison's car, the epilogue revealing that she's been missing for several days. The LovableJock Brigg and the DoggedNiceGuy Derek also survive, albeit wounded, with Brigg having nightmares about Skye killing her. The kicker: the film is a horror parody of the notorious Creator/{{MTV}} RealityShow ''Series/MySuperSweetSixteen'', with Madison based on any number of the bratty teenagers featured on that show, meaning that Skye leaving Madison to die is portrayed as karma for an AssholeVictim -- complete with Skye's final scenes being set to the triumphant tune of [[Music/{{AFI}} "Miss Murder"]].
* Averted in ''Literature/{{Perfume}}'', where the killer saves the beautiful Laura Richis as his final victim to complete his perfect perfume. Laura's wealthy father uses all his power to protect her, but the killer walks right through all his defenses, right into Laura's bedroom, and kills her.
* In ''Film/PitchBlack'', the woman who seems most likely to be the final girl is killed off only a few minutes before the movie ends, though the fact that she tries to sacrifice the passengers of the ship she was piloting early in the film hints at her {{redempti|onEqualsDeath}}ve [[HeroicSacrifice death]]. The only characters to survive the movie are ironically the ones most likely to die in another slasher flick: the pacifist [[BlackDudeDiesFirst black man]]; the teenage [[SweetPollyOliver girl who pretended to be a ''boy'']] for the first half of the movie and has just reached [[DeathBySex sexual]] [[NoPeriodsPeriod maturity]]; and Riddick, the VillainProtagonist, who survives due to ExecutiveMeddling that turned out to be very profitable. This approach is arguably what sets the film apart and part of why the sequel fails to deliver the same emotional punch. ''Film/PitchBlack'' is a survival movie in space that subverts character expectations; ''Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick'' tries more to be straightforward ''Franchise/StarWars''.
* Subverted in the original ''Film/PromNight1980''. With Jamie Lee Curtis playing her, the protagonist practically had "Final Girl" written all over her. However, when the killer is revealed, we find out that she was not a target all along. It is also outright {{averted}} with the killer's actual victims: 3 girls and 1 guy. All three girls die, the guy survives.
** It's played pretty straight in ''Film/PromNightIVDeliverUsFromEvil'', until the virginal Final Girl takes down the killer and escapes. The ending suggests a subversion in that Meagan may now be possessed by the evil of the dying killer.
* Chelsea in ''The Ranger'' starts out as an aesthetic subversion, being a punk chick with pink hair and a leather jacket who is seen doing drugs in the first act. She plays it straighter in her characterization, at least at first, feeling like something of an odd duck amidst the [[TheQuincyPunk archetypal punk rockers]] she's friends with and [[NatureHero identifying more with nature]] -- a feeling that is reciprocated by their leader Garth, who regards her as an outsider to their group. However, her DarkAndTroubledPast involves her having killed her uncle in cold blood on a camping trip [[EnfantTerrible when she was a little girl]], with the titular villain, a park ranger who hates the protagonists for [[GreenAesop trashing his pristine wilderness]], knowing her secret (having been the one who rescued her and helped cover it up) and wanting to bring that side of her back to the surface.
* Seemingly subverted in the original ''Film/{{REC}}'' (2007) film (and its [[Film/{{Quarantine}} American remake]]), in that its heavily implied that Angela dies after being pulled into the darkness.
** The 2009 sequel to the Spanish film subverts it further - Angela actually survived the first film's events, but it's revealed that she's now possessed after killing the other survivors in the apartment complex.
** The 2014 sequel finally plays things straight, with Angela being one of the two only survivors when the virus outbreaks on a ship.
* Averted in ''Film/TheRuins''. Technically there ''is'' a Final Girl but she is not the main character, and is not the most intelligent or resourceful one amongst the victims. Her boyfriend is the wise and resourceful leader, but he sacrifices himself to save her. Ultimately, the end implies that she is doomed anyway.
* ''Franchise/{{Saw}}''
** Subverted the hell out of in ''Film/SawI'' and ''Film/SawII'' regarding the character Amanda Young. In the first film, Amanda is the only one of Jigsaw's victims to get free of his traps, but she's not the typically innocent Final Girl (she had been addicted to heroin) and she agrees with the man that tried to kill her. In the second movie, the sweet, innocent-like (at least by ''Saw'' standards) blonde girl dies fairly early on. The final girl? Amanda again -- and this time, she's revealed to be working with the killer.
** In ''Film/SawVI'', the only survivors of the Roulette Trap are, you guessed it, female. The film in general acts as a deconstruction, actually. The tests are designed to show who the main character, a manager at an insurance company, is more likely to save and he always deviates towards the women as would the audience in these kinds of scenarios, despite the men deserving it just as much or more than the women. This bias led to him denying insurance claims to men who were fitter and more likely to survive with the aid of medical care compared to women.
** As for ''Film/Saw3D: The Final Chapter'':
*** It has a Final Boy in Bobby Dagen.
*** Subverted with Jill Tuck. As the last female left alive after the death of Bobby Dagen's wife Joyce, Jill is ultimately dispatched by Detective Hoffman with the use of the reverse bear trap, and her death drives the film to its final twist reveal (see below).
*** Dr. Gordon is revealed to have escaped in the original ''Saw'' film and is now an accomplice to the late John Kramer, having put Detective Hoffman in the bathroom trap without a saw for killing Jill.
** ''Film/{{Jigsaw}}'' presents a subversion. Anna shows all the traits of a traditional final girl early on: she is a resourceful and intelligent ActionSurvivor who comes across as kind, compassionate, and level-headed in comparison to the other players. [[BitchInSheepsClothing But most of this is an act.]] Having murdered her infant child for purely selfish reasons and then framed her husband for it, which got him sent to an insane asylum where he [[DrivenToSuicide hanged himself]], she is one of the vilest characters in the entire franchise, and she eventually suffers a well-deserved KarmicDeath. This leaves Ryan, the JerkWithAHeartOfGold, as the last man standing... [[AndIMustScream trapped in a room with Anna's corpse]], where he too eventually dies. The film then reveals that Logan, the first victim of the Barn, both survived his "death" — making him the Final Boy and sole survivor of the Barn — and later became the new Jigsaw.
* Cindy Campbell from the ''Film/ScaryMovie'' films is pretty much a sustained spoof of Final Girls.
** The slasher film final girl spoof was done a few decades previously (and just as, if not more, effectively) in 1982's ''Pandemonium'', with the character of Candy, who was not only a comedic take on the Final Girl, but also on Film/{{Carrie}}.
* The ''Film/{{Scream}}'' series, with its exploration and parody of '80s slashers, doesn't take long to go after this trope.
** The main heroine, Sidney Prescott, evolves from a straight Final Girl into a {{deconstruct|edCharacterArchetype}}ion of such. Even in [[Film/Scream1996 the first film]], she snaps at reporters trying to exploit her trauma (there's a quick scene of a shameless tabloid journalist, [[TheCameo played by]] [[Film/TheExorcist Linda Blair]], asking her "[[IfItBleedsItLeads how does it feel to be almost brutally murdered?]]"), she [[DeadpanSnarker snarks]] at the [[TooDumbToLive stupid mistakes]] that SlasherMovie victims often make (though to be fair, this is a series where [[WorldOfSnark everybody does that]]), and she breaks the [[DeathBySex "virgins don't die"]] rule by having sex -- with the killer! -- and still surviving. In [[Film/Scream2 the second film]], her life has grown to be defined by her status as the survivor of a massacre, and while this has brought her fame, fortune, and [[RippedFromTheHeadlines movie deals]], it also means that she is constantly having to look over her shoulder for [[HereWeGoAgain the next wannabe Ghostface]]. And then she has to repeat the entire experience, watching her friends getting slaughtered all over again -- by [[MamaBear the pissed-off mother]] of [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes the last killer]], at that, looking for payback against Sidney for [[YouKilledMyFather killing her son]].
** By [[Film/Scream3 the third film]], she's [[ProperlyParanoid living in a self-imposed isolation]] bordering on CrazySurvivalist levels, working from home under a fake name. She suffers [[ShellShockedVeteran recurring nightmares]] about Ghostface killing her, and when she visits the set of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Stab 3]]'', a recreation of her old home in Woodsboro, [[HeroicBSOD she has a mental breakdown]] as her memories of the first movie come flooding back. The passage of time and the settling of [[BigScrewedUpFamily her family drama]] (and, presumably, years of therapy) mean that she's gotten better by [[Film/Scream4 the fourth film]], where she's written a bestselling autobiography about her life and having the inner strength to move on from the nightmares she's experienced. She even returns to Woodsboro as part of the healing process...and then her cousin Jill (see below) turns out to be a [[TheSociopath murderous sociopath]]. For a real Final Girl, the horror wouldn't end when the credits roll -- she'd have to live with the experience forever, and may God help her if she's cast in the sequels. No matter what she does, no matter how much time passes, [[IronWoobie poor Sidney Prescott]] will always be haunted by the most traumatic moment of her life.
** Gale Weathers is also a subversion. Unlike Sidney, she doesn't even have a facade of purity and kindness -- she's an abrasive, unscrupulous tabloid hack who's covering the killings simply to make money and promote her book. However, she too survives and even helps defeat the killer, and gets some major CharacterDevelopment in the sequels [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold revealing a much softer side to her personality]].
** Randy Meeks, the film's resident MetaGuy, discusses this trope when laying out his rules for surviving a horror movie. The first two points on his list are [[DeathBySex "never have sex"]] and [[TheScourgeOfGod "never drink or use drugs"]][[note]]The third one is [[TemptingFate "never say 'I'll be right back'."]][[/note]], citing Laurie Strode from ''Film/Halloween1978'' as an example of the sort of character who typically survives. He credits his own survival in the first film to him still being a virgin, and in the third film, he appears posthumously (having been killed off in the second film) in a {{Video Will|s}} he recorded shortly after he lost his virginity, claiming that, if anybody is watching the video, he's probably dead-on account of DeathBySex.
** In ''Film/Scream3'', Angelina Tyler appears to be this trope at first glance, as she's TheIngenue who's playing Sidney in ''Stab 3''. She turns out to be a BitchInSheepsClothing, however, revealing that she'd employed the CastingCouch to get the part -- and promptly suffers one of the fastest-acting examples of DeathBySex ever. [[WhatCouldHaveBeen An earlier version of the script]] also had her as the main killer's accomplice, a further subversion.
** ''Film/Scream4'' has a group of film junkies debating this trope, with one of them remarking about how the "rules" of horror have changed since TheNineties, such that old cliches (including this one) have been turned on their heads. Within the film itself, the character of Jill Roberts, initially presented as the Final Girl, takes this trope and puts it through the ringer. She was the killer all along, an AttentionWhore who planned to frame her boyfriend Trevor for the murders so that she could come out looking like the Final Girl and ride the publicity to [[IfItBleedsItLeads book deals and talk show appearances]], following in the footsteps of her older cousin Sidney.
** ''Film/Scream2022'' introduces the new heroines Sam and Tara Carpenter, who team up with Sidney and Gale at the end to take down the killers. Tara is a more conventional "classic" final girl; while she gets brutally attacked by Ghostface in the opening, she becomes the first "opening victim" to survive, and not even the fact that she's on crutches stops her from getting some licks in against Ghostface at the end. Sam, however, is a far darker version of the archetype. She's [[LegacyCharacter the daughter of the first film's killer]] Billy Loomis and has spent much of her adult life in and out of trouble with the law, and she exhibits [[InTheBlood some of Billy's brutality]] as she ruthlessly takes down one of the killers, complete with her [[SwipeYourBladeOff wiping her blade]] in characteristically Ghostface fashion afterwards.
* The movie ''Film/{{Shrooms}}'' gleefully takes aim at the whole concept of the Final Girl. At the end, the Final Girl discovers that she herself is the killer, having been driven insane by the titular ''Shrooms''.
* In ''Film/{{Slaxx}}'', Libby is framed as this almost from the get-go, the one employee at [[PeaceAndLoveIncorporated Canadian Cotton Clothiers]] who isn't either a cynic like Shruti or an asshole like everybody else. Of the main characters, she is the SoleSurvivor and almost makes it to the end of the film, but gets killed in the stampede of shoppers she desperately tried to stop from entering the store, where the ghost of Keerat was waiting to kill them all. The actual sole survivor, a stockboy named Camilo, spent the whole movie in a changing room completely unaware of what was happening outside.
* Famously toyed with in the twist ending of ''Film/SleepawayCamp'' during the early 80's when the trope was especially popular in slasher films. The character set up to be the final girl, Angela, is revealed not only as the killer but also as having been the young, seemingly male child who was thought to be dead the whole film, as it was actually her ''sister'' that had died.
** The sequels, however, play this straight this with [[Film/SleepawayCampIIUnhappyCampers Molly]] and [[Film/SleepawayCampIIITeenageWasteland Marcia]].
* Inverted with ''Film/StudentBodies'', in which everyone is suspicious that the obvious Final Girl is really the killer.
* ''Film/TalonFalls'': Lyndsey is the only one of the four main characters who manage to escape the park with her life and get help. Sadly, her helper was [[CruelTwistEnding working with the park, and brought her right back to be tortured to death for entertainment]].
* Jess from ''Film/{{Triangle}}'' averts this. She's technically the Final Girl, and she's also the killer. But it's [[StableTimeLoop much more complicated than that]].
* Thoroughly subverted in ''Film/TrickRTreat'' with Laurie, whose name is a reference to Creator/JamieLeeCurtis' Final Girl in the ''Franchise/{{Halloween}}'' films, a cute virgin [[LittleDeadRidingHood dressed as Little Red Riding Hood]] who is surrounded by loud, promiscuous friends who want to get her laid. However, none of them were in danger at all. It turns out that they're a pack of bloodthirsty werewolves, and that all along they were actually looking for a man so that Laurie could eat him. Though her eventual victim is actually a serial killer, and she does technically fight him off.
* The [[Creator/BlumhouseProductions Blumhouse-produced]] horror film ''Thriller'' includes a traditional final girl in Lisa, who embodies many wholesome girl stereotypes found in the trope. However, she subverts it because she isn't the only survivor of the film; her love interest Ty survives, as does (surprisingly) AlphaBitch Gina.
* In ''Film/{{Unfriended}}'', Blaire meets all the criteria at first glance -- virginal, less obnoxious than her female friends, and conventionally attractive but not quite gorgeous. However, it turns out that Laura's saving her for last not because she's the most innocent, but because she's the most guilty -- she's a BitchInSheepsClothing who filmed the humiliating video of Laura that caused her to [[DrivenToSuicide kill herself]], and she refuses to take responsibility for it, even throwing her boyfriend Mitch under the bus to save her own skin. She's also not a virgin, having cheated on Mitch with his best friend Adam. Furthermore, at the end of the film she's not the lone survivor, but rather, the final ''victim''.
* ''Film/{{Valentine}}'': Kate, the all-around NiceGirl and [[TokenGoodTeammate only good person]] of the cast, is [[DamselInDistress pretty pathetic]] when confronting the Cupid Killer and defending herself that her boyfriend Adam was the one to dispatch and unmasked them. Turns out she was never targeted in the first place since it was revealed to be Adam all this time, having tricked Kate by knocking out and dressing up her last surviving friend as The Cupid Killer.
* Deconstructed in the "Tuesday the 17th" segment from ''{{Film/VHS}}'', a homage to the slasher genre. The final girl turns out to be far more of a villain than the actual supernatural killer (who is more akin to a force of nature). She was the final girl of a previous group who witnessed her friends get slaughtered by the Glitch. When no one believed her about the Glitch she went insane from the trauma and desperation to be believed, eventually luring another group of teens to the stereotypical haunted forest to use them as ''bait'' for the Glitch so she could try to capture it. In the end her attempt fails miserably and the Glitch effortlessly mutilates her.
* The ''Film/{{Wishmaster}}'' series is prone to playing with this. While played completely straight in the original, the sequel's Final Girl was a {{goth}} burglar who actually kills a guy in the opening, during a heist gone wrong, though she later redeems herself, in order to beat the Djinn. The protagonist of ''Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled'' is also shown having sex at least twice, including ''with the Djinn''.
* Subverted in ''Film/TheWitch'', a period horror film about [[SalemIsWitchCountry a Puritan family in 1630s New England being stalked by a local witch]]. Thomasin, the family's eldest daughter, seems to check off nearly all of the classic markers of this trope: she's a beautiful, strong-willed, [[DeathBySex virginal]] teenage girl, and she ''is'' indeed the only member of her family to survive to the end. But she ends up as the Final Girl after personally killing her mother in self-defense, after her mother accuses ''her'' of being a witch. And almost immediately after, she ends up personally selling her soul to {{Satan}} and joining a witch's coven, ''becoming'' the very thing that she successfully survived. And though the details are left deliberately ambiguous, there are also some strong hints dropped that [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane there was never a witch at all]], and that Thomasin killed her entire family herself -- meaning that she could either be the Final Girl or the slasher. [[MindScrew Watch the movie and decide for yourself.]]
* Usually averted or subverted one way or another in the ''Film/WrongTurn'' films. Earlier in the franchise, the last girl left standing was usually accompanied by a guy who helped her in the final confrontation.
** The closest girl to upholding the shy-and-conservative standard would be Mara in the ''[[Film/WrongTurn2DeadEnd Dead End]]'', whose death halfway through into the film not only blows this trope out of the water but also holds up as an example of a [[DecoyProtagonist decoy protagonist]] done right.
** Averted in ''[[Film/WrongTurn4BloodyBeginnings Bloody Beginnings]]'', ''[[Film/WrongTurn5Bloodlines Bloodlines]]'', and ''[[Film/WrongTurn6LastResort Last Resort]]''. It was also not out of the ordinary for the last girl to be shown having sex, getting naked, or doing drugs/drinking beer along with her doomed peers.
*** ''Bloody Beginnings'' ends with the last two girls escaping on a snowmobile [[DiabolusExMachina only to have]] [[OffWithHisHead their heads lopped off]] by [[RazorFloss razor wire]].
*** ''Bloodlines'' has the shy, innocent girl of the main group die first, since [[DevelopingDoomedCharacters she already sealed her fate]] by [[DeathBySex having sex with her boyfriend]] in the beginning of the film, while the sexy, promiscuous girl gets kidnapped by the killers in the end.
*** ''Last Resort'' has the Final Girl having sex with her boyfriend, and said boyfriend ends up pulling a FaceHeelTurn after learning that he's one of the cannibals, further sealing her fate by having his new family finish her.
** The [[Film/WrongTurn2021 reboot]] has Jen Shaw subvert this as well. Despite being the only one to escape her captors with the help of her father, she had previously offered herself as a wife to the Foundation's leader in a futile attempt to spare her friends and returns to her life pregnant with his child. Not to mention that she had become just as bloodthirsty and ruthless as the hostile civilization.
* Maxine in ''Film/{{X|2022}}'' doesn't just violate every moral rule of slasher movie survival, she does so ''professionally''. She's a literal porn star who habitually uses cocaine, and she's the most scantily-clad female character in the film, spending most of it (when she isn't outright fully nude) wearing overalls with [[VaporWear nothing underneath]] that just ''[[TheissTitillationTheory barely]]'' [[{{Sideboob}} cover her breasts]]. The ending also reveals that the televangelist we see throughout the film railing against the sins of pornography [[PreachersKid is her father]]. She winds up the SoleSurvivor who departs the film with a triumphant snort of blow as she drives away, having no doubts or second thoughts about her line of work. Meanwhile, Lorraine, the virginal "church mouse" who does the audio on the porn film that the protagonists are making, is initially presented as Final Girl material, but later decides to star in the film herself (cheating on her boyfriend in the process, [[EmasculatedCuckold while he's filming it]]) -- and sure enough, she's the last of them to die.
* Discussed and invoked in ''Film/YouMightBeTheKiller'', where the last two girls get in an argument over who is the most pure, and end up fighting to the death over who gets to be the Final Girl. The winner then goes on to use the killer's EvilMask to become both the Final Girl AND the killer.
* Averted in ''Film/{{Zombeavers}}'', Zoe survives the zombie beaver attack, but she is not virgin and gets run over by a truck in the end of the film.
** Hell, the trope is Averted with both Jen and Mary. Jen got the most screen time of the other girls and had the standard setup of the trope (Like being the only one of the girls not to have sex with their boyfriends). But then it turns out that ''everyone'' found her very unpleasant and boring to be around and eventually got infected in the last 30 minutes, becoming the BigBad. Mary was a nerdy girl with a jock boyfriend, until we find out she's a BitchInSheepsClothing who cheated on her boyfriend with Jen's boyfriend and the rest of the film followed her until she too turns and is killed by Zoe in the last 5 minutes.

!!(Other)

!Straight examples

* Deconstructed and reconstructed in ''Film/AmericanGothic1988''. The meek and emotionally fragile Cynthia does indeed become the last girl left standing, but in her survival she ends up losing her sanity and does a FaceHeelTurn when she joins the murderous family as a full-fledged member. This doesn't stop her from going [[HeroicBSOD batshit crazy]] on the family and becoming a killer herself, reconstructing the trope as she in her madness takes out the family of killers one by one.
* This trope, and the extreme lampshade hanging thereof, is a central plot element in the slasher {{deconstruction}} ''Film/BehindTheMaskTheRiseOfLeslieVernon'', where the character is referred to as a "survivor girl." Vernon spends most of the movie setting one character up as the final girl, both to the viewer and the crew filming his exploits. However, it turns out that Vernon's final girl is a decoy, and sexually active at that. It is the female reporter in the film crew who is his real final girl all along, and she fulfills her role exactly according to the trope.

** Subverted in the [[Film/BlackChristmas2019 2019 remake]] with Riley, even though she survives, she lost her virginity being raped by TheDragon before the events of the movie. And Kris also survives, along with several other background sisters, and only one boy is with them.
* ''Film/BloodWidow'': Laurie is the one of the cast who survives the longest against the killer. Sadly, she's beaten to death at the end.

** The [[Film/ColdPrey2 second film]] serves as a [[DeconstructedTrope deconstruction]]. Jannicke grows quite savvy by this film and knows what will happen if the killer gets resuscitated. Despite her warnings, she ends up getting sedated as the killer wakes up and starts killing the hospital staff one by one, leaving only Camilla left as a Final Girl. Once Jannicke comes to, she becomes an {{action survivor}} and teams up with Camilla to stop the killer for once and for all. And they both end up surviving.

* ''The Cottage'' saw the Final Girl turn out to be so unpleasant and obnoxious that the technically-bad but not actually evil kidnappers who made up the other three heroes were much more sympathetic characters. Hilariously, she not only releases the monster but manages to get herself killed by said monster before any of the guys - it is probably not a good idea to mouth off to a psychotic 7-foot tall deformed cannibal when he is about to brain someone with a shovel.

** ''Film/FinalDestination1'' follows this...until ''[[Film/FinalDestination2 2]]'', which subverts it [[JustForPun finally]] killing Clear.

* In ''Film/FromHell'', Mary Kelly is played pretty straight as a Final Girl as she escapes UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper and survives after all her friends have been picked off and despite the fact that the real life Mary Kelly didn't. However, she's also a subversion in that she doesn't kill the Ripper, just manages to avoid him and, what with being a prostitute, isn't the traditionally wholesome girl either.