Badass Bystander / Live-Action Films

Badass Bystanders in Live-Action Films.

---

• Anna and the Apocalypse: A pair of teenage girls (neither of whom have any dialogue or are even named) swat at a pack of zombies with their backpacks for several seconds while trying vainly to get the Distracted from Death Anna's attention and warn her to get to safety.
• The Avenging Disco Godfather has the Godfather yell to a random jogger while fighting drug pushers, "Howard, these men are angel dust dealers!" The jogger replies, "Okay, Godfather," and joins the fray. "Howard" was actually Rudy Ray Moore's martial arts instructor in real life.
• Baby Driver: When Baby and his crew flee the scene of the money truck heist, a witness to the robbery begins relentlessly pursuing them, proving himself to be nearly as much a Badass Driver as Baby himself while spraying their vehicle with submachinegun fire. He's implied to be some sort of crazed war veteran and is far more dangerous than the actual police.
• In Battle: Los Angeles, one of the civilians being evacuated by the Marines, Mr. Rincon, is doing his best to help the troops as they escape. During the freeway battle scene, he spots an alien flanking the Marines. Despite his lack of training, he grabs a fallen rifle and sprays the alien from the hip, taking it out, but taking a shot to the gut in the process. He eventually dies a few hours later.
• Best Seller. A criminal tries to hijack a car, brandishing his .38. The black man in the driver's seat turns round with a .45 and tells him he can't oblige as he's on his lunch break. The criminal gets an Oh, Crap! look and flees.
• In Black Sunday, Kabakov and Corey use a Flashed-Badge Hijack to commandeer a helicopter to chase the blimp. Despite being shot at, and in danger of being blown up, the pilot does an excellent job of holding his nerve and is vital in saving the day.
• Blind Fury: When Lyle and Tector carjack an elderly couple, the wife pulls a gun out of her purse and shoots after them as they speed away.
• The priest from BrainDead, who just ran into some zombies by complete accident: "I kick arse for the Lord!"
• The Car: The rodeo cowboys at the parade rehearsal who ride in to distract the murderous Car long enough for the teachers to lead the kids away.
• There are several movies where the character Jackie Chan plays is just some random guy that happens to know martial arts — however, his characters could also be considered to be Right Man in the Wrong Place.
• Matheson in Cliffhanger. The villains are conducting a daring plane-to-plane hijacking in midair, and Matheson is one of the doomed Redshirt FBI agents on board. He's shot multiple times in the chest, but gets back up while they're transferring the money cases over to their plane by cable, grabs an Uzi, shoots one of the hijackers, then riddles the bad guys' plane with bullets, mortally wounding another one of them and making them lose the money cases and crash their plane because his bullets hit the hydraulic system. Long story short: this one random guy manages to screw over the villains singlehandedly!
• The old Mexican lady in Cloud Atlas whose dog Mr. Smoke shoots, only for her to beat him to death with a wrench before he can shoot the protagonists of that particular subplot.
• The Dark Knight: At the beginning of the film, a bank gets robbed by a gang of masked goons. The nameless bank manager, played by William Fichtner, is in his office in the middle of the bank, and isn't seen by the robbers because of how the office is arranged and where he's sitting. He watches them start to assault the customers and tellers, then pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and blows one of the goons away. He then goes on an irate rampage, shooting at the goons while screaming about how the bank is owned by the mob. Unfortunately, he runs out of ammo and is shot by Bozo (actually the Joker), although he survives at least until the Joker leaves with the money.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Wonder Woman: One of the completely random German soldier Mooks during the village fight manages to dodge the bullet Diana deflects at him, runs in and tries to shoot her at point blank range, and even manages to duck one swing from her before hitting her with his knife. Diana picks him up and chucks him out a window for his trouble, but hey, points for effort.
  • SHAZAM!: The first time Billy attempts to be a superhero (instead of just messing around with his powers) is when he hears someone screaming and finds a mugging in process. When he goes to intervene, it turns out that it's the mugger screaming. The "victim" pepper sprayed him before he got a chance to take her purse. She keeps her composure until Billy demonstrates his powers and she realizes she's out of her depth (not that Billy was trying to mug her, of course, but when you're alone in an alley with an invulnerable guy you don't know, it's best not to take chances).
  • Zack Snyder's Justice League: In the Final Battle, one of the Parademons manning the defense cannons of Steppenwolf's base manages to stop the Flash mid-race with an incredibly well-timed shot.
• Destroyer (2018): When Petra is attempting to stomp Erin to death in the ice cream parlour, one of the customers grabs her and pulls her off.
• Diary of the Dead has the dynamite and scythe wielding, deaf, Amish zombie killer Samuel who introduces himself amidst blowing up the undead. Likewise the female paramedic who karate-kicks a standing zombie in the head.
• In Disturbing the Peace, a local hiding in the tray of his pickup truck with a rifle manages to take down several of the biker gang after they take over the bank.
• When a gang of Yakuza pull swords on Bae-dal in Fighter in the Wind, some guy in a hat (later revealed to be an old friend) leaps out of the crowd and fights them to a standstill, despite only having one hand.
• The Fastest Gun Alive: When it becomes clear that George isn't a real gunfighter and is afraid to fight Harold, his neighbor, Lou Glover, decides that he'll claim to be the fast gun Harold is after and face the gunman. This would-be Heroic Sacrifice shames George into action.
• There's the black guy in From Dusk Till Dawn, a random guy who can punch a vampire's chest and pull out his still-beating heart on the first try. It turns out that this badass grandpa is Fred Williamson of '70s exploitation movie infamy. His war story about how he chopped up an enemy platoon with a bayonet after getting his face blown off by a land mine probably sheds a bit of light on how he could rip fat vampire's heart out, bare-handed and throw vampire Tom Savini through an oak door. Meanwhile, the named characters still needed to use weapons to slay their vamps.
• In the Jim Jarmusch film, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, there's a short scene where the title character witnesses a mugger getting ready to attack an old man from behind. Just as it seems like Ghost Dog's about to intervene (presumably to help the old man), the old man begins slowly putting down his groceries with almost arthritic movements...and then effortlessly floors the young mugger with a pair of martial arts kicks. After that the old man picks his groceries up again and merrily goes about his business. We never see him again.
• Nigel James in G.I. Joe: Retaliation. For a jerkass minor character, he proves himself surprisingly capable at handling supervillains. When Storm Shadow breaks out his water containment, James manages to stun him by electrocuting the leaking water. He then attempt to get things back under control by rallying his guards, but another Cobra crashes the party and kills everyone. Now heavily wounded, James still manages to pull off one last act of defiance by destroying a fuel tank and wounding Storm Shadow, thus depriving the Cobras of their best assassin.
• Subverted in Food of the Gods 2. During the giant rats' attack on the synchronized swimming competition, an audience member grabs a gun from a policeman and begins shooting, except that all he succeeds in doing is shooting other people. Lt. Weizel has to grab the weapon away from him before he can do any further damage.
• The Gods Must Be Crazy: One of the guerrillas who attacks the president is knocked unconscious by a potted plant a female office worker throws at him.
• The Grey Fox: Miner's first train robbery attempt fails when a trembling baggage clerk opens fire on him and his accomplices with a pistol, wounding one of them and making Miner and the other man flee.
• Gunless: The local blacksmith that Sean thought was a good idea to try an intimidate. Also the entire town shows they are not afraid to stand up to the ruthless bounty hunters.
• In Haywire, during the diner fight, a male bystander wrestles Aaron away from Mallory, and seconds later the waitress smashes a coffee pot over Aaron's head.
• At the end of The Hideous Sun Demon, an anonymous policeman tenaciously pursues the Sun Demon to the top of a gasometer, where they fight. Although the Sun Demon nearly kills the cop, he survives, resumes his pursuit, and ultimately succeeds in sending the monster toppling to his death on the street.
• In the original Highlander film, a Crazy Survivalist/Vietnam War veteran comes across the Kurgan decapitating another Immortal, and empties a magazine from a submachinegun into him. The Kurgan recovers and impales him, but in an additional badass move, the vet survives.
• Subverted in Hobo with a Shotgun by a random doctor, who flips out and opens fire on the Plague when they first burst into his hospital. While he does get killed in the end, he still at least had the guts to face (and attack) The Dreaded head on.
• In the Korean film The Host (2006), when the monster first rampages through a public area, an American man takes it upon himself to mount a valiant attack on the monster before getting mauled. A news report later reveals that he's a soldier. This is probably done to compensate for the otherwise anti-American slant of the film.
• In The Island (1980), one of the sailors on the schooner turns out to be a martial artist and takes down several of the pirates, before one of them gets sick of his antics and guts him with a cutlass.
• James Bond:
  • In The Living Daylights, The Dragon Necros, a dangerous assassin, infiltrates an MI6 safehouse, quietly murders his way through numerous guards...and is discovered by a random security officer known only by his radio callsign (Green 4), a One-Scene Wonder who immediately gets in a fight with him and manages to give Necros a very serious challenge, and is only defeated when Necros knocks him out with a frying pan. Green 4 not only held off the man who gives Bond himself trouble for several minutes, but also (probably) survives the attack.
  • In Licence to Kill, a nameless, seemingly-ordinary truck driver manages to hold his against Bond himself when Bond attempts a High-Speed Hijack on his truck. He survives, and is thrown from his truck.
• The badass waitress Vicki from Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Who valiantly tried to defend the patrons of the dinner from Jason, by whooping his ass with a barbecue skewer and a shotgun!
  Vicki: (after being impaled on the skewer and right before getting her head crushed) Go to hell!
• The bathroom brawl scene in Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter involves one of the vampires being killed by some random guy on the toilet. Using a plunger.
• Kimi: When Angela is trying to reach law enforcement, she walks through a crowd of protestors opposing the city's draconian anti-homelessness policies. This allows Rivas and his goons to grab her and drag her into their van. Luckily, a group of protestors notice, pry her out, and give her time to escape.
• An example of this is seen in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. After 'Mr. Frying Pan' accidentally drives into a food stall in the park, he leaves his car and attempts to shoot at Gay Perry, only to be shot in the back by the angry stall owner.
• In Kung Fu Hustle, low-life crook Sing discovers too late that everyone in Pig Sty Ally could kick his ass all goddamn day. Then the shy, effeminate tailor turns out to be the most badass martial artist of the lot. Later on, Sing and his accomplice harass a salaryman on a trolley until he grabs both of them by the collar and starts pounding their heads into the seats.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: When Quatermain's attacked at his club, one of the other hunters there gets out his own rifle, getting a shot at the assassins which lightly injures one of them. After being forced to dive for cover, he still yells out a warning to Quatermain when another killer comes at him from behind.
• The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires:
  • Vanessa's two attendants valiantly deploy knives and martial arts skills when a large group of Tong thugs attack her, although neither of them lasts for more than thirty seconds.
  • When the vampires raid the village for Human Sacrifice victims, many men of the village fight back with gardening tools (most of them in a crowd, and one who attacks a vampire single-handedly) or try to pull back women the vampires are dragging away. They don't accomplish much besides adding to the vampires' body count and demonstrating that the locals haven't yet given up.
  • Several villagers who survive the raid join Van Helsing and his allies in fighting off a second attack, again at great costs, and they kill one of the golden vampires.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man 2, when the Hammeroids go haywire and start attacking people, everyone immediately starts running away in a full-on panic — well, everyone except for one little kid wearing toy replicas of Iron Man's mask and repulsor. The kid stands up to one of the Hammeroids at the Stark Expo and manages to distract it long enough for the real Iron Man to show up and defeat it (Iron Man also thanks the kid before the leaving). When you really think about it, that kid likely prevented massive collateral damage and saved the lives of numerous people.^note What makes this even better is that Word of God has confirmed that the kid was in fact Peter Parker, who must've been around only 7 or 8 when this happened.
    Iron Man: Nice work, kid!
  • In Thor, Jeremy Renner plays one of these in a cameo as Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, a member of The Avengers.
  • In Captain America: The First Avenger a kid gets grabbed by Heinz Kruger^note the HYDRA-agent who assassinated Dr. Abraham Erskine, the scientist who created the original super soldier serum and used as a hostage/human shield during the chase scene after Steve's transformation. Kruger eventually chucks the kids into a nearby river to keep Steve from chasing after him — but when Steve goes over to the kid (presumably to help him out), said kid yells up to Steve, "Go get him! I can swim!", which ultimately helps Steve in catching up to Kruger.^note Another way that this is awesome is if you take into consideration how, during that particular time period, not many people in general actually knew how to swim. And you can see the boy swimming away as Steve returns to chasing Kruger after checking to see if the kid's okay.
  • The Avengers has a minor character (credited simply as "Old German Man") who decides that he'd rather be Defiant to the End against Loki instead of kneeling before him. Taking several things into consideration,^note The movie's time period, the man's age, the man's dialogue and the fact that the man is supposed to be German that guy was probably old enough to remember when this same situation happened before in Germany — and he'll be damned if he just sits around and lets it happen again.
    Loki: You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.
    Old German: [slowly stands up] Not to men like you.
    Loki: There are no men like me.
    Old German: There are always men like you.
  • In the third act of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Brock Rumlow goes up to a random nerdy-looking S.H.I.E.L.D. IT guy and orders him to launch Project Insight. He refuses, even though the expression on his face makes it abundantly clear that he fully expects Rumlow to shoot him for refusing.
    S.H.I.E.L.D. Tech: Sorry. Captain's orders.
  • Played for Laughs in Captain Marvel. After the titular heroine arrives on Earth, she follows a Shapeshifting criminal onto the Los Angeles subway, where the opponent takes the shape of an old woman. Captain Marvel pulls no punches, and the Wrong Genre Savvy passengers immediately try to restrain her and protect the old lady.
  • In Spider-Man: Far From Home, the two Coldstream Guards at the Tower of London launch into action and take on the high-end Attack Drones with ordinary assault rifles destroying one and heavily damaging another.
• The prison break by Luke Santee's gang in More Dead Than Alive is foiled by one of the prison guards who does not go down as easily as expected. He instead kills several of the gang and buys the rest of the guards time to rally and repel the assault. This character has no lines and is not named.
• Mother: The mother spies two teen boys threatening a girl with a knife, so she drops a bottle to get the attention of a cook who happens to be walking by. He sees what's happening and immediately rushes to the rescue, driving off the teens and saving the girl. He's never seen again.
• In the early '90s Cyberpunk film Nemesis, protagonist Alex Rain is fleeing some heavily-built, cyborg assassins on the streets of Shang Loo, "a low-tech Asian shithole". After he ducks around a corner, one of his pursuers runs into an old lady crossing the street and tries to muscle her out of the way. She mutters, "goddamned cyborg!", produces a large pistol from her handbag, and shoots the assassin three times in the back, then shoots him five times while he's on the ground.
  Alex Rain: [chuckling] Shang Loo takes no shit. I love this town.
• A New Hope: The Y-Wing pilot, who was one of the few to survive the assault on the Death Star.
• The Richard Linklater biopic The Newton Boys has quite a bit of interference from heroic citizens when the gang tries to simultaneously rob three different pairs of Canadian bank couriers as they leave a money exchange.
  • When Willis Newton's shotgun briefly jams, the two middle-aged bank couriers he's holding at gunpoint manage to wrestle his shotgun away just as he fixes the problem, forcing him to shoot one man in the shoulder with his sidearm.
  • Willis's eldest brother Dock is forced to pistol-whip both of the couriers he's fighting, and one of them pulls a gun on him. Then a young doorman watching from a nearby doorway jumps onto his back and tries to choke him. By the time Dock overpowers the doorman, the armed courier has recovered enough to shoot after him, and a well-dressed bystander tackles Dock to keep him from shooting back at the courier.
  • Another Newton, Jess, ends up with one of the couriers he held up grabbing onto his leg. Even after being pistol-whipped multiple times, the man refuses to let go until another courier runs over to take up the struggle with Jess. That man puts Jess in a headlock before Joe, the final Newton brother, races up to knock him out.
  • Several people throw glass and ceramic objects from second and third-story windows at the brothers' accomplice, Brent Glasscock, causing him to retreat.
  • When a police car arrives on the scene, the fleeing Newtons disable it with a gunshot, and a cop standing on the running board is sent roughly tumbling onto the street. He fires a shot from the ground that hits their car. The Newtons return fire, injuring the man in the side, but he is mostly unaffected and keeps shooting at them until they make it out of range.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge: One of the guests at Lisa's party tries talking Freddy down while he is on a killing rampage.
• Patriot Games:
  • Although he's the main character, Jack Ryan is effectively an example, being an ex-CIA, ex-Marine who happens to be standing right beside an IRA assassination attempt in London. He leaps to the rescue, foiling the assassination. The bulk of the film is taken up by the terrorists' attempts to kill him in retaliation, which gets the weight of the American government dropped on them.
  • The IRA's attempt to murder Jack Ryan in Annapolis would have succeeded if not for the intervention of a Naval Academy guard who makes a split-second assessment of the situation and shoots the would-be assassin in the chest. Ryan doesn't even thank the young man or explain what just happened, and we never see or hear from the hero again.
  • A random motorist in a black Pontiac sees Sean Miller pointing a submachine gun at another car and rushes to the rescue, honking his horn and blocking the line of fire with his own car. We never see his face, and he's never mentioned in dialogue.
• Justified, then subverted in Predator 2. Los Angeles is hit by a crime wave so intense that Everyone Is Armed in the name of self-defense, and a subway mugging turns into an enormous standoff when half the car's passengers (including two cops) pull guns on the would-be muggers. Unfortunately for them, this is a Predator movie, so they're simply more targets.
• The scientists in the first chapter of the Commando Cody serial Radar Men from the Moon are surprisingly good fighters. They hold their own for a while against a pair of hired thugs as seen and commented on in this MST3K episode.
• Early on in the cheap RoboCop rip-off R.O.T.O.R., the female hostage in a convenience store robbery unexpectedly busts out some martial arts moves and beats the last robber into submission.
• RocknRolla: Three road-workers nervously brandish their tools like weapons and confront One-Two and his companions during the second heist. They back off after One-Two pulls out a gun.
• In Shaolin Soccer the main character envisions a world where everyone uses kung fu in their day to day lives. In the end, we see a bunch of random people in the street performing amazing feats of Wire Fu.
• In Sharknado 2: The Second One, all of New York's citizens pitch in and help kill the sharks.
• In Shotgun (1955), Ed and Al, the two guys manning the stage station, put up quite a fight against Thompson's henchmen Perez and Greybar. They very nearly win, but Thompson arrives and tips the odds.
• The lady at the bookies in Snatch., who deftly makes a fool of Sol and Vinnie when they try to rob the place. Not that that takes a lot of effort, mind you, but her complete nonchalance at being robbed by two men with a military shotgun takes some minerals.
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • In the first film, Spidey is about to be finished off by the Green Goblin when he is saved by... a crowd of New Yorkers on the Queensboro Bridge throwing bricks, pipes, etc. at the bad guy.
  • Subverted in the second film when Spider-Man nearly kills himself stopping a train from driving off the end of the tracks. After he's pulled back inside the tram by the passengers, Doctor Octopus shows up to finish him off, at which point everyone in the car stands up and proclaims that he'll have to get through them first. He casually knocks them all aside. At least they tried...
• In Starkweather, Charlie holds a shotgun on a mechanic and forces him to fix the jammed emergency brake on the car he is trying to steal. When Charlie is distracted by a passing police car, the mechanic grabs the gun and starts trying to wrench it out of Charlie's hands. He eventually succeeds and Charlie is forced to flee.
• At the end of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, a merry-go-round is careening wildly out of control, endangering the lives of dozens of people. The hero who volunteers to crawl under the rapidly spinning death trap, reach the mechanism at the center, and switch it off is...some random old guy who was never seen before and who is never mentioned again. We don't even find out if he survives.
• The main character of Taxi Driver becomes one of these when he confronts and shoots a would-be robber at a convenience store.
• Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision: The second of Chan's ancestors who Miller tries to kill works as a hostess at a Chinese restaurant her boyfriend owns. Said boyfriend, the waitress, and the cook all fight Miller with martial arts moves (and some cleavers in the cook's case), driving him away and saving his target without any help from Chan.
• When Sam in TRON: Legacy is cornered in the bar by four black guards, he's clearly outmatched, even with Quorra helping him. Bartik and several resistance members take on the guards, but are swiftly derrezed. As the fight plays out, bar patrons and resistance members get involved, one guard is derrezed by a patron stabbing him in the back, and two more are overpowered and killed by other bystanders.
• Two blood suckers assault an ambulance in The Twins Effect that holds the heroine. Thinking the vampires are hurt, the driver stops and gets out to help them, not understanding what the heroine means by "undead". Despite his ignorance, the super humanly strong duo with the power of flight prove to be no match for the ambulance driver. At least not until they decide to attack together, then they manage a stalemate. The ambulance driver was played by the film's producer, Jackie Chan.
• In Unknown, Gina's a mere taxi driver and waitress, but she ends up killing three assassins (the first by sneaking up on him while he's strangling the hero and then injecting him with his own poison, the next two with Car Fu). The hero, on the other hand, only manages to kill one.
• Vigilante: Vickie is a house wife uninvolved in the vigilante movement, but she intervenes to stop Prago and his thugs when they viciously assault a gas station attendant over a slight. They take it poorly, follow her home, and shoot her eight-year-old son (the latter fatally). This leaves Vickie bitterly regretful about her earlier heroics and triggers her husband's Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Werewolf (1996) (featured in Mystery Science Theater 3000) includes a random citizen that can kick a werewolf's ass.
• In X2: X-Men United, one of the random kids at the school turns out to be Siren. When the spooks invade the school, she starts screaming, nearly paralyzing everyone in the entire building.
• The two hunters in Zoltan, Hound of Dracula, who first save Linda from the pack of vampire dogs, and then later reappear to help Michael and Branco destroy the pack. Unlike Drake and Branco they have no connection to Dracula, and no idea about vampires. They just happen to be in the area and step in to do the right thing when they see someone in trouble.

---