Badass Bystanders in Literature.
- All-American Girl (Meg Cabot) examines this from the point of view of the bystander. She just happens to be present at the scene of an attempted presidential assassination, and tackles the assassin, injuring herself in the process. She does nothing else heroic or extraordinary over the course of the book, and does not view herself as a hero, but the resultant fame changes her life in a variety of ways, good and bad.
- Parodied in The Clone, by Theodore L. Thomas. In a mall, a guy never seen before finds himself face to face with Blob Monster that is terrorizing Chicago, and he figures out in minutes more of the monster's weaknesses than the protagonist has since the beginning of the book. He dies moments later — before he's had the chance to communicate his findings to anybody — because he was too busy getting a suit to stay away from the monster.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In Doomsday Deck, Buffy gets diverted from stopping the Big Bad by a vampire attack on a convenience store where her frenemy Cordelia is taking a critic writing about the art show Buffy's mother is hosting. Most of the would-be victims (the critic being a notable exception) are fighting back when Buffy arrives, although they need her to turn the tide. One teenage customer is throwing cans at one vampire, two other customers and a young cashier are wrestling with another vampire. Cordelia whacks a third vampire over the head with a broom and then stakes him with the broken broom after he snaps it in half.
- In the John Putnam Thatcher novel Death Shall Overcome, the exposed murderer flees through the halls of the New York Stock Exchange and is overpowered by an unnamed U.S. Steel specialist who takes in how he's running from the cops.U.S. Steel Specialist: My boy, I don't know why they want you, but...
With that, he pivoted and landed a competent rabbit punch. He followed this up with a short, powerful jab. The murderer folded. He did not slump to the ground since he was held erect by the crushed tangle surrounding him. The U.S. Steel specialist might be sixty and overweight, but he had not boxed at Dartmouth for nothing. - The Dreamside Road: Orson is initially frustrated by the presence of the Wintertide Festival guests trying to join in the brawl against the Liberty Corps. However, they ultimately prove essential in his efforts to get close enough to Master Nine to battle the Shaper one-on-one.
- The Dresden Files: In Battle Ground the Fomor decide to take their magical army and slaughter the entire population of Chicago. They do not expect the normal muggle humans who live there to do much but roll over and die. Instead the locals take up arms pretty much instantly and become one of the major contributing factors to the Fomor's defeat despite how many of them are killed in the fighting.
- In Executive Orders, Terrorists storm the day care where the presidents' pre-school aged daughter is being held. The only man there to pick up his kids that day is an armed FBI agent in plainclothes, who manages to kill both of them.
- In Gardens of the Moon, the major point-of-view character Adjunct Lorn, who is the Empress's personal mage killer with her Anti-Magic longsword, faces off against a random soldier named Corporal Blues who is guarding her real target. He quickly overwhelms her with his remarkable swordsmanship, forcing her to flee. Blues remains a fairly minor character through the rest of the series.
- The Fortress of the Black Cauldron has several instances of this trope:
- If you free the two farmers, they calmly rip out the jaws of the giant wolverines who gave the P.B. a hard time.
- The emprisonned women will kill the guards and strangle the trolless with their chains if the P.B. distracts her.
- The Ink Black Heart: In the climax, two unnamed neighbors of the Upcotts respond to the noises of the struggle during Gus Upcott's Villainous Breakdown rampage and help Robin overpower the villain.
- Journey to Chaos: Eric Watley lives in the Warrior Town district of Roalt and so every single one of his neighbors is capable of beating down monsters. This becomes most relevant in Transcending Limitations where they trounce the assassins sent after Basilard and Zettai.
- Junior Jedi Knights: In Lyric's World, several young Melodies help Anakin and Tahiri fight back against a snake monster by throwing rocks at it. Given how they've grown up on a Death World, they have quite a bit of practice.
- Used a few times in the badass-saturated Malazan Book of the Fallen, sometime to introduce a character that will become important a few books down the line.
- Traveller first shows up in House of Chains accompanying a group of nameless soldiers, defeats a hundred Elite Mooks off-screen, and leaves the narrative by the end of the chapter that introduced him.
- The Paladin of Shadows book A Deeper Blue has Will Carter, a former National Guardsman who helps Mike load his LMG and punches out a terrorist.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
- Percy's mom and stepdad are surprisingly badass when faced with a horde of monsters. This despite the fact that neither has any kind of supernatural fighting skills, and Percy's stepdad can't even see the monsters thanks to the Weirdness Censor.
- Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who covers for Percy (who at the time was a perfect stranger) and puts the pursuing monsters on a false trail.
- Richard Cole from The Power of Five. He rescues Matt from a bog and sets an Eldritch Abomination on fire.
- Klaus Rosenthal and Francis De la Cruz from Rainbow Six (the novel, not the game). One's a seventy-something Holocaust survivor, the other a theme park employee and former Spanish soldier. Klaus, while being taken hostage, hides a paring knife up his sleeve, and when the Rainbow troops set up their ambush, he spot them lying in ambush (something the highly-trained terrorists failed to do, mostly because he was intimately familiar with his lawn). When the Rainbow troops pull the ambush, he stabs one of the terrorists with his knife, giving them a clean shot. Francis De la Cruz, meanwhile, is dressed up as a Roman centurion when the terrorists start taking hostages, and he goes after them with his sword. This is not a prop blade, either; this sword is made from genuine Toledo steel, and he cuts up one of the terrorists pretty well before another shoots him in the leg. (Seriously, the last thing anyone expects while a terrorist plot is unfolding is for a freaking Roman centurion to flip out and start chopping the bad guys up) In both cases, the Rainbow troops, themselves just about the most badass people on the planet at the time, honestly consider both of their actions to be pretty badass.
- Robin Hood ran afoul of one of these men in the course of his adventures; when waylaying a beggar with a large bag because he was curious what was in the bag, Robin got pissed off by the beggar's insolence and nocked an arrow to threaten him. The beggar proceeded to take his staff and, in rapid succession, break Robin's bow, numb his sword arm, and knock him senseless before proceeding on his way. When Little John and George-A-Green attempt to avenge Robin's injury, the beggar pretends to surrender, offering them the money in his bag; instead it turns out to be full of meal, which the beggar throws at their faces before beating the crap out of both of them. The nameless beggar, who never appears again, remains one of the few to soundly thrash the outlaws and walk away unscathed.
- Teen Power Inc.: When a kidnapper pulls a knife on Sunny in the climax of The Missing Millionaire, a motel guest with a Face of a Thug incapacitates the villain with a wrestling hold and punches their knife out of their hands when the criminal tries to fight back.
- Victoria has several examples, but the most iconic is an old woman who beats down an armed gangster with her umbrella.
- Invoked in The Wheel of Time, in which the world's most famous swordsman is said to have only been defeated by a random farmer with a staff. This is used as a lesson not to underestimate your opponents.
- Wildfire: A firefighting crew digging a trench to slow the eponymous blaze run into a pair of rapists pursuing their victim and her husband. One of the firefighters nearly kills one of the rapists with a single blow of her shovel, causing the second criminal to flee and later stumble of a cliff while trying to navigate through the smoke because he is too scared of that firefighter (who is still nearby) to turn himself in to her and her crew.
