Badass Santa

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus
To bring his Santa Claus pain!^note Artwork by Matataku

Christmas needs saving; who's up to the task?
Why Santa, of course! There's just no need to ask!

If you stop and think about it, Santa Claus isn't that much different from Superman. Both have amazing powers that defy the laws of physics as we humans know them. Both can fly around the world with no problem. They both like the color red, they both have their headquarters hidden in the Arctic Circle, and they both starred in movies that involved producer Ilya Salkind. The two characters even met once!

So it is not surprising, really, that there are so many instances in fiction where Santa is a Big Damn Hero, defending the Spirit of Christmas from Humbugs. This kind of Santa Claus doesn't really need help Saving Christmas, though there may be trouble if an Evil Twin Bad Santa shows up.

Action Santa is a common variation: he's merely playing Nice Guy for the sake of the kids, but when it's time to fight, boy, does he know how! Action Santa usually reveals that his bag of toys holds whatever weapon he needs, his sled comes equipped with heat naughty-seeking missiles, and he himself is a Genius Bruiser underneath the red coat.

Often overlaps with An Ass-Kicking Christmas. By necessity, comes with Acrofatic if he pulls any kung fu stunts.

Not to Be Confused with, but similar in style to, Kung-Fu Jesus. When they team up... run.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Santa says you must play Sega Saturn.

Anime & Manga

• In Haruhi-chan, we find that the eponymous character's mental image of Santa is of a secret clan of ninja who have near perfect stealth and are trying to shut down the SOS Brigade. That's not a good thing, considering she's a reality-warping god of a fairly Lovecraftian bent.

Comic Books

• The Badger: A Christmas episode featuring a huge biker-like "Klaus" in his rocket sled. He delivers weapons to the Lebanese Christian militias and machie guns ivory poachers as well as his normal stuff. Oh and beats up a troll who tries to take over the workshop.
• Disney Mouse and Duck Comics:
  • So Many Santas has Santa (along with some elves) beat the crap out of The Beagle Boys using sports equipment, bare fists and badass one-liners.
  • In one particularly ridiculous occasion police detectives Casey and Rock Sassi arrested Santa (to be fair, they had seen him trying to enter a home with a chimney), and O'Hara, after hearing that Santa had decided to quit, had him locked in a cell with Pete... Five minutes later, Santa and Pete are at the latter's home enjoying Trudy's cooking.
  • In "Zio Paperone e il Segreto di Babbo Natale" (Uncle Scrooge and Santa's Secret) Magica finds out the secret, namely that if you write to Santa for seven years in a row asking the same gift he has to grant it, and uses it to brainwash Santa and have him go after the Number One Dime. He literally walks through the Money Bin's defenses to grab the Dime and give it to Magica, turning every obstacle into sweets (in particular, he turns into turron the whole Money Bin). He also keeps a few armies of fighting teddy bears and snowmen for security in his workshop.
    • This is also used to establish just how terrifying Magica is when her magical reserves are full and how easily she'd take the Number One Dime without the array of defenses made specifically to keep her out: to deliver the final letter and have Santa, Magica had to fight through the teddy bears and snowmen right after her powers had been recharged by the elves (they had found her frozen solid and decided to save her, having no idea who she was or why she was there) and defeated them all, and after going back to the Vesuvius she had to fight Santa in the crater, and won.
• Howard the Duck: The Howard the Duck Holiday Special evokes high-tech combat elves with Santa as their leader, after a little talk with Howard first.
• The Incredible Hulk: Issue #378 features the supervillain Rhino dressing up as Santa, implying a Bad Santa scenario... but as it turns out, Rhino was volunteering to hand out toys to kids.
• Justice League of America: Plastic Man tells his kid a bedtime story where Santa Claus has heat vision for some reason.
• Klaus (Grant Morrison): The comic retells the origin of Santa Claus, drawing heavily on the myth's wider roots in Viking and Siberian legend. The future Santa Claus is depicted as a skilled hunter and fighter, who sets out to protect the children of a local village from a cruel tyrant.
• Last Christmas: The comic features Santa Claus in a post apocalyptic world fighting zombies.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Santa Claus is an elderly shaman who lives alone in a little hut at the North Pole, dresses in freshly-flayed reindeer skins,^note  His clothes look red because he wears the skins inside-out when they're still bloody. and uses astral projection to travel around the world every year on Christmas. He also controls an army of mischievous imps (his "little helpers") as his familiars, and they apparently killed a few representatives of the Coca-Cola company when they approached him in his trance so that they could try to buy the rights to his image. Santa felt really sorry about that last one.
• Lobo: Lobo's Paramilitary Christmas Special features Lobo being hired by the Easter Bunny to whack Santa Claus, and a Badass Santa getting into a machete fight with the alien bounty hunter. Santa loses, but Lobo decides to take up the mantle... in his own way.
• The Punisher: There have been several Christmas Specials where the Punisher dresses up in a Santa costume to gun down mafiosi.
• Santa The Barbarian: The 90s comic features Santa as a Barbarian.
• Santa Versus Dracula: He's the same jolly fellow you know, but more then willing to fight for the North Pole when Dracula and his monsters try to take it over.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: The British comics continuity has Santa leading Dr. Robotnik to realize on his own just how alone he is and how little he actually has despite ruling Mobius. On the other hand, Sonic the Comic's Father Christmas' badassery stems simply from his ultimate pacifism. He won't involve himself in the fighting, but by the same token it proves utterly impossible to even touch him in anything but good will. Swipes and weapons go straight through him and automated defences just quietly stop working while he's around.
• Superman:
  • One DC Comics Holiday Special features a strip in which Santa Claus breaks through the formidable defenses of the Polluted Wasteland Apokalips in order to deliver to its ruler, the evil god Darkseid, a lump of coal for being naughty. It's implied he does this every year. And then he escapes to do it again next year. And what makes this especially badass is that the Santa who does this is just the traditionally jolly, friendly old man version. Knowing Darkseid, that coal was very well deserved.

    "He's made it past our atmospheric defenses! He's here..."
    "On the planet's surface?"
    "In this room!"

  • The Dec. 2008 one begins with what seems like a retelling of Superman's origin story... only son, sent from a dying world, raised by good, honest people, goes off to decide how best to use his power, sets up a Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole... only the Fortress of Solitude is a workshop, and he decides to bring peace to the world by delivering presents to everyone, one day a year. X-Ray Vision explains how he knows if you've been bad or good... he's always watching...
• X-Men: As for Saint Nick himself, according to the X-Men, he's "the most powerful mutant ever registered" by Cerebro.

Fan Works

• The Night Santa Claus saved Iron Man is about Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Pony POV Series: In the Dark World timeline, Santa Hooves breaks into Discord's fortress yearly, reads off a large list of his naughty deeds right to his face (in a jolly voice, an angry one would just please Discord) while effortlessly shrugging off every attack sent his way, then hoof-delivers lumps of coal and socks and underwear to Discord and his minions. Then leaves to spread Hearth's Warming Eve cheer.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: Santa Claus is a benevolent human abomination who has always existed and will always exist, and who gets presents for every good man and woman and mindwipes the world to think they were all gotten by someone else. He's immune to and aware of time paradoxes and routinely battles Missingno, a character that is pretty much invulnerable to every other being in story.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged goes down this route in "The Plan to Eradicate Christmas", adapting Dr. Lychee (the Saiyan-hating villain from the "lost OVA" The Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans) into a Santa who's so bitter over Earth's continual naughtiness that he tries to kill all of humanity with machines that spew clouds of coal dust. When the heroes confront him he evolves into a stronger form (Lychee's creation Hatchiyak), who's powerful enough to lay a severe beating on Goku, Vegeta, Teen Gohan, Future Trunks, and Piccolo all while dropping tons of Christmas-related puns and is only defeated when they perform a five-man Combination Attack.
• Adopted Displaced: In Three More Things, Santa is the living pole of Elemental Good magic, which means that when he's at the height of his power on Christmas Eve, he can bend the rules of magic to his will and is the most powerful being around short of the Creator. Also, he packs a shotgun in case of emergencies and is all but outright stated to be Old Man Henderson.
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Santa battles All For One every Christmas Eve as the latter tries to wrest Lazarus Pit water from him. Santa fights back with an assortment of holiday-themed items, including a teddy bear, a shield made of chocolate, a giant jingle bell, and a huge candy cane. Each and every time, All For One fails to capture Santa, who happens to be Just Toying with Them.
• Astral Journey: It's Complicated has a fourth century cardinal coming to help out Emma and Melanie while being a Cool Old Guy. The latter sometimes calls him Father Christmas, British verison of Santa Claus.
• J-WITCH Series: Saint Nicholas in the Christmas Episode is considerably more skilled a fighter than the canon Jackie Chan Adventures version of Santa, combining physical attacks with his elfin magic against Wong and Cedric. The latter needs to summon Hak Foo to give them an edge, and even after his magic is stolen he's still strong enough to fight Krampus with pure physical force.

Films — Animation

• Arthur Christmas:
  • Has Steve, Santa's eldest son, controlling the massive Christmas operation involving thousands of elves aboard a giant spaceship-like sleigh while walking around wearing military fatigues and sipping coffee. No matter the snag, he calmly guides the elves through the task of delivering presents without anyone knowing. The start of the film makes it seem like Santa himself is one, wearing something that is more akin to a red uniform than Santa's clothes with a red beret appearing more like a general than Santa. Then it turns out he's just a figurehead with Steve running the entire operation. Also, unlike his family members who are either portly (Santa, Grandsanta, Mrs. Santa) or scrawny (Arthur), Steve is in excellent shape.
  • Grandsanta, his grandfather the previous Santa, also counts. He's been doing Christmas runs until 1941, and took twelve shots during World War II. It's important to note that it wasn't necessarily the Axis powers that shot him. The Germans and Italians were Christian, too. That he performed his run with "six reindeer and a drunken elf" (in other words, he had none of the advanced technology that his grandchildren do, and he still pulled it off!) earns him extra points in the badass department.
  • Arthur is only Santa's youngest son and only becomes the newest Santa until the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue but he gets points in this trope by becoming an Unstoppable Mailman to deliver a gift to the one kid on Earth that Santa's operation overlooked because of a clerical error. The plot's shenanigans force Arthur to deal with lions, try to row his way to England from Cuba, almost being shot down by the militaries of the world thinking he is an alien, family drama (a lot more problematic than the aforementioned military) and pedaling through the snow with the bike the girl asked to get there on time.
• In the movie Rise of the Guardians, Santa (referred to by his last name, North) dual-wields sabres, associates with yetis, has Naughty and Nice tattooed on his forearms, and by his accent is probably a Husky Russkie. (The movie depicts the Easter Bunny as badass too, along with many similar characters.)
  Santa: Buckle up!
  Easter Bunny: Where are the bloody seatbelts?
  Santa: Ha! That was just expression.

If his origins from the original book series still holds true for the movie, Santa's also a former outlaw capable of using Atlantean magic.

Films — Live-Action

• One of the best examples is a film by none other than the producers of the Superman films: Santa Claus: The Movie (1985). In it, Santa defends Christmas against a ruthless corporation that seeks to "cash in" on Christmas's commercial potential via the inventions of a defecting, clueless elf (who just wants to prove his worth to Santa after his ill-made toys put the safety of children at risk the previous year).
• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a peculiar example. Despite the aggressive title, Santa Claus merely gets kidnapped by Martians, and teaches the kidnappers how not to be emotionless Straw Vulcans. However, Houdini would be proud of how easily Santa shrugs off, laughs at, and escapes deadly peril in an extremely badass fashion.
• In the So Bad, It's Good Mexican kids' movie Santa Claus (1959), he defeats Satan's chief devil, Pitch, with the help of his pal Merlin. He's also an alien, and thanks to Merlin's magic, can teleport, put people to sleep and make people remember what they love the most with a magic cocktail.
• In Disney's The Santa Clause trilogy, each of the three films has an aspect of this.
  • The first The Santa Clause has Tim Allen locked in a You Kill It, You Bought It scenario when he accidentally causes Santa to fall off the roof; he spends the night in orientation at the North Pole and the next 364 days trying his hardest to shrug it all off as one crazy dream, even in the face of his slow metamorphosis into Saint Nick (down to having "the list" delivered to his house via several trucks). In the end, having accepted his role as Santa Claus, he's mistakenly arrested as a kidnapper, which is where the movie hews closest to this trope as a squad of high-tech combat elves is sent in to break him out; in the end, everyone's faith in Christmas (and his hold on sanity) is restored, and everybody lives Happily Ever After.
  • Until the sequel, where the new Santa discovers he has to go back to civilization and get himself a Mrs. Claus. He puts a toy double of himself in charge while he's gone, which promptly goes mad with power; the finale, true to the trope, has Santa having to deal with his evil robot duplicate in order to save Christmas.
  • The third has it the least, but when Jack Frost and Santa go back in time twice, the second time has Santa beating down Jack Frost with a shovel to prevent a change to the space/time continuum. Unknown if that actually counts though, as in that scene Scott isn't really Santa. Unfortunately Jack Frost isn't defeated this way, and instead gets his due with a...hug.
  • Scott's quote at the top of this page comes from the first movie, in a scene in which the corporation he works for tries to revamp the Santa image by putting him in a tank instead of a sleigh. Scott tweaks on them all and tells them that Santa isn't going anywhere without his sleigh.
• Santa's Slay: Santa, played by WWE wrestler Bill Goldberg, is a butt kicking, take no names king of carnage. Although he is mostly an example of Bad Santa, he is also very proficient in hand to hand combat.
• Scrooged has the Film Within a Film The Night the Reindeer Died containing a brief version of this. Terrorists attack the workshop at the North Pole, and the Clauses and the elves apparently have well-established emergency procedures and lots of guns. They also have Lee Majors on their side.
  Lee Majors: "Santa! Is there a back way out of this place?"
  Santa: "Of course there is, Lee - but this is one Santa that's goin' out the front door!"
• Santa with Muscles features Hulk Hogan as a man who, after getting amnesia, thinks he is Santa Claus and then proceeds to beat up bad guys in order to save an orphanage.
• Despite being the namer for another trope, Billy Bob Thornton's character in Bad Santa ends up being more Badass Santa, at one point teaching Thurman to stand up for himself.
• The French Connection features a brief scene in which the main character, Detective Popeye Doyle, is dressed as a mall santa while on the job. While making a drug bust, he pursues the dealer, then proceeds to kick the absolute shit out of him.
• In the movie Two Front Teeth, Santa battles Vampire Santa with martial arts. And it is AWESOME.
• Fatman, which is about Santa Claus, played by Mel Gibson, fighting off an assassin hired by a naughty boy to kill him in retaliation for delivering him coal for Christmas. Cemented even further with Santa's Badass Boast to Billy: “The Fatman’s got his eye on you, kid.”
• Violent Night is a Christmas-themed action-comedy that is basically Die Hard in a Big Fancy House with St. Nick as John McClane. Santa, who in this film is a reformed former Viking berserker, finds himself in the middle of a Christmas Eve home invasion and must help free the family. Violently.

Literature

• In C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series, the White Witch's curse traps Narnia in a state of "Always winter and never Christmas", and the first sign of reversal is Father Christmas showing up. Father Christmas is presented as an archetypal opposite of the White Witch, providing gifts and encouragement (in contrast with the Queen's message of sameness and hopelessness). His gifts consist largely of weapons.
• The Hogfather in Discworld is that world's equivalent of Santa Claus, and like our Santa is partly derived from old pagan gods... just a little more literally. As they say, You'd better watch out....
  • And when Death fills in for the Hogfather, you know he's badass then. And heartwarming.
• J. R. R. Tolkien's The Father Christmas Letters (originally written to his children) depict a version who leads armies of Elves to war against Goblins at the North Pole. Also a case of Really 700 Years Old, as Tolkien depicts him as being literally as old as Christmas itself (about 1,930, at the time).
• In the All Myths Are True universe of The Dresden Files, a lot of creatures not normally considered 'fairies' are part of the local version of The Fair Folk. In the first book, Storm Front, just after introducing and explaining the concept of using a magic circle to summon and trap a faery, Harry makes an offhand remark indicating that this also includes Santa, but that he doesn't know anyone crazy enough to try summoning him that way.
  • Bonus points for Harry himself being crazy and desperate enough to summon the Erlking, who's the closest thing to the Summer equivalent of Santa and thus equally powerful, in Dead Beat.
  • Santa (going by "Kringle") finally appears in person in Cold Days. He stands taller than Harry, who is 6'9", with bear-like proportions. And he is quite knowledgeable about Time Magic. He's a Winter fae lord on par with Summer fae lord Erlking and leads The Wild Hunt alongside him at the climax of the novel; the ending implies he's an aspect of Odin. Unlike others in Winter, he is a far more kind soul.
• "Santa Claus Vs S.P.I.D.E.R.", a short story by Harlan Ellison, reimagining Santa as a secret agent. He's got rocket-assisted boots, machine-guns and flamethrowers up his sleeves, that red nose is a grenade, the beard is an incendiary plastic explosive, and the fat belly is really a life raft. "Ho, ho, ho...."
• The Guardians of Childhood has Nicholas St. North, a swordsman and outlaw who becomes one of the early members of the titular group when he has his first encounter with the Nightmare King Pitch.
• Kyouran Kazoku Nikki has a Santa with a six-pack who survives a direct hit from a missile and can shoot ki blasts. And what does he say, in place of oh, kamehameha? What else "Meerrrrryyyyy CHRISTMASS!!!!" He still loses the fight against a small catgirl, though — but in his defense, Kyouka is as powerful as she is intelligent.
• In Legacies, Repairman Jack dresses up as Santa to kick the living shit out of a sleazebag who'd stolen a bunch of Christmas presents from a children's AIDS clinic.
• In the Star Trek: New Frontier novel Gods Above, it's revealed that when Odin retired from godhood, he took the identity of Santa Claus.
• The artwork for Krampus: The Yule Lord depicts Santa as big, burly, and shirtless, with lots of Norse tattoos. The image is subverted when we learn Santa was the Norse god Baldur, who surrendered a thousand years ago after the Christian angels killed the rest of the Aesir and Vanir, and allowed them to repurpose the Yule as their own holiday, and delivers toys to stay on Jehovah's good side. Krampus is the son of Hel (and by extension, the grandson of Loki) who despises Baldur for this perceived betrayal.

Live-Action TV

• The Father of Ultra in Ultraman Ace takes the form of a Street Santa when he returns to Earth to help Ace. He even briefly increases his disguise's size to a giant Santa to help Ace fight Snowgiran! It's not revealed whether or not he always does this, but this is the guy that once led the Ultras to overthrow a monster army that once took over the Land of Light.
• Santa fighting a grizzly bear to the death armed with only a knife, cutting Elvis Costello out of the godless beast's stomach? Has to be Stephen Colbert's Christmas Special. According to the special, Santa Claus is also Stephen Colbert.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • In the Santa Claus (1959) episode, Santa shows up in Deep 13 and challenges Pitch to a fistfight. Notably, he also invokes Chew Bubblegum when he shouts "I'm here to eat candy canes and kick ass, and I'm all outta candy canes!"
  • In the episode featuring the above-mentioned Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Joel and the bots make several jokes implying that Santa fought in the war in Vietnam, and may in fact be concealing weapons during his stay on Mars.
• The Good Eats cookie recipes episode had one that could qualify. He wears a bandanna under the cap and manipulates the the time stream and the episode begins with him saying in a bad ass manner, "Here's Santa." On a cooking show! But this is the same cooking show that had both an Igor and the lady of the refrigerator.
• Earlier episodes of Dai Sentai Goggle Five features a Santa who used to be a Heel wrestler, thus he is formidable on his own. Too bad this being an earlier Super Sentai series, he can only take down maybe two mooks before he is taken down by himself. But at least, he did participate in a Fastball Special attack with Goggle Black...
• In The Librarians 2014, the Big Guy is played by Bruce Campbell, and he gets into a barfight because he is the reincarnation of Odin.
• In an episode of Amen, Frye defends an assault suspect who turns out to be Santa, who punched a guy who was ridiculing him. Later, when he encounters the street-wise Clarence, he assures him, "I'm down with all the speak, dude.", then proceeds to address him in perfect hip-hop lingo.

Music

• The Arrogant Worms have the song "Santa's Gonna Kick Your Ass" after having a really crappy year. The reindeer and elves are in an equally bad mood.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic made a song called "The Night Santa Went Crazy" you can find an animated version here. Santa destroys his factory, kills most of his reindeer and holds his elves hostage.
• The pill-popping, rent-a-cop fighting Mall Santa from the music video for Skillex's Ruffneck- Full Flex.
• The Badass Santa theme song: I am Santa Claus
• "Robert the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by Greg Champion is about Rudolph's delinquent cousin, who straightens up after Santa kicks his arse.
• Sabadu (an Affectionate Parody of Sabaton) has "A Very Polish Christmas", a joke of a song about Polish Santa giving Hitler a gift of a boxing glove that punches Hitler in the face.

Myths & Religion

• In parts of Germany and Austria, St. Nicholas (Santa Claus) is accompanied by a Knecht Ruprecht / Krampus, a demon who was tamed by the saint and now helps him punishing naughty kids. Hm, if Santa can take on a demon, that'd definitely make him this trope.

Tabletop Games

• Inverted in the table-top game Santa's Soldiers. Santa is quite formidable, but really naive. Therefore, it's your crew's job to protect the big guy from his many enemies, but also from realizing he has them. The paramilitary elves are headed by Mrs. Claus, whose stats make Chuck Norris look like a wimp.
• Spirit of the Season, a holiday-themed spinoff of Spirit of the Century, has Nick Saint, the current incarnation of the Spirit of Giving, who fights evil with his rocket-powered sleigh and cadre of highly skilled Reindeer Men.
• This Nobilis campaign featured Santa looking like this◊ and greeting visitors to the North Pole with cruise missiles.
• 'Genius: The Transgression: Of all Manes, Anthropomorphic Personifications of widely believed then disproven ideas, it's explicitly stated Santa Claus is the most powerful of them all, probably because he's believed and then eventually disproved for nearly every child in the West. He's no Bad Santa by any means, and sticks to the abilities he's widely believed to have, but they are seriously powerful to the point they can make even the wildest genius sit down quietly and write thorough apologies for having been so naughty. Geniuses continue to challenge him to this day despite this, because his workshop is also a marvel of mad engineering and holds some of the greatest secrets of mass production, and more importantly because everything he makes is a ridiculous Havoc risk if a regular child gets their hands on it (not that he realizes it).

Urban Legends

• There's a story a Mall Santa who hears that a child's wish is for her stepfather to stop touching her at night, and, upon hearing it, said Santa, and the elves, proceeded to beat the everloving crap out of the guy.

Video Games

• Parodied in Kingdom of Loathing. Uncle Crimbo is a lazy-ass, alcoholic Bad Santa who is nonetheless great at making toys. His brother, Father Crimbo, was a badass and made good toys, but that's not such a good thing when robots have reanimated his corpse.
  • Also, there's one point where the Penguin Mafia takes over Crimbo (as Uncle Crimbo failed to pay them the money he owes them). At one point that year, you fight Don Crimbo, who now wears the magical Crimbo hat. It is impossible to beat him, no matter what level you are.
  • Played straight in Crimbo 2015. After meditating for a full year after last year's disaster, Uncle Crimbo achieves enlightenment and becomes the "Crimbuddha", using his new-found cosmic oneness to effortlessly banish both the Earth Mother and the Crimborg.
• Santa-Fu. As the name suggests, Santa knows kung-fu, enemies include gingerbread men, elves, and naughty children, and bosses include Turbo Man, Rudolph, and Jesus himself.
• Killing Floor has Bill "Baddest Santa" Weeks.
  Bill Weeks didn't think he could stoop any lower than a part-time job as the Mall Santa. But the little girl weeing on him screaming "He's the Baddest Santa Evuh!", followed by being fired, took it down yet another notch, so Bill went down the pub to drown his sorrows. Coming out to the next morning he had no job, a filthy headache and a truly evil temper. And the world was full of monsters. Bill picked up a handy shottie and waded in. "I'll show you the Baddest Santa, you BEEEEEEEEP"
  • Killing Floor 2 also introduced THE actual Santa as a playable character during the 2018 Twisted Christmas event. After The Krampus invaded his workshop with an army of Zeds the previous year, Santa dedicated himself to revenge. He lost the fat, bulked up, and loaded up on weapons to take his workshop back. With the help of the Horzine mercs, he plans to send a holly-jolly nuke straight up Krampus's portal and take the abomination out for good. To top it all off, he's voiced by Gary Busey.
• In Secret of Mana, Santa Claus is the true form of the boss Frost Gigas. See, Santa was frustrated by children no longer believing in the true meaning of Christmas, so he tried to create an amazing Christmas tree by planting the Mana Seed of Fire. This doesn't exactly work out, and the Seed's power turns the jolly old elf into an insane hulking giant with amazing snow and ice magic. Yes. This is a thing that actually happens.
• In a Team Fortress 2 update's backstory, they explain the origin of Australian Christmas being started by Nicholas "Old Nick" Crowder. He was sailing to Australia, got disgusted at the sight of it, and sailed away on a personal mission to conquer the South Pole instead. Every December he comes to Australia to judge if children have been naughty or nice. The nice ones get the greatest gift of all: not being kidnapped and enslaved by Old Nick and being forced to build hats for him. He sells the duplicate hats online "practically giving them away."
• Hyper Princess Pitch gives us Mecha-santa. On the harder difficulty setting his attacks become Bullet Hell level, of particular note is Death Metal Disaster Zone, anyone that can pull off an attack with such a name is automatically badass.
• Ghouls vs. Humans used to have Santa Claus as one of the classes for the human team. You have to admit, Santa vs. a bunch of giant floating carnivorous killer heads is quite badass. The class was removed, however.
• The premise of the Doom Game Mod H2H-Xmas. Santa takes on the role of a gun-toting demon slayer to rescue Mrs. Claus from The Legions of Hell.
• One of the playable fighters in ClayFighter is Sumo Santa.
• Santa is a member of The Wonderful 101, as "Wonder-Santa". His weapon is a hammer made from present boxes called "The Big Present". Amusingly, his civilian name and occupation are both given as "Santa Claus".
• Bayonetta 2 has Rodin, an unspeakably powerful Fallen Angel who manifests as a Scary Black Man, dress up in a Santa costume to deliver presents as a favor to a friend. You will believe in Santa.◊
• In the Final Mix version of Kingdom Hearts II, Sora, who's otherwise a pseudo-vampire in this world, wears a black Santa hat and jumper over his clothes and eyepatch whenever he is in the Christmas Town sections of Halloween Town, making him a pseudo-version of this trope. The real Santa does appear in the game, but is not really a badass himself.
• Gender Flipped in the Saints Row IV DLC How The Saints Save Christmas. Santa's not a slouch by any means, but Mrs. Claus is the true badass at the North Pole.
  The Boss: Wow...respect, Mrs. Claws.
• In the online strategy game League of Angels, Santa is a recruitable Enigma Hero (a group of very powerful NPCs that can only be recruited with crests obtained at events; that status can change, occasionally). His class is Mage, and his designation is Striker - support.
• League of Legends 2016 Christmas skins gave a long-awaited Santa Skin to Braum, the Heart of the Freljord. Additionally, one of the prevailing theories on Braum's immortality is that he's a manifestation of the people's ideas and general hope in the Freljord. Thus on some level making Braum immortal so long as people continued to listen and believe in the stories of him. The latter theory essentially makes him Runterra's Santa Claus.
• In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Santa fights alongside you wielding a baseball bat as a Guest-Star Party Member during the boss battle against the Woodland Critters late in the game.
• In Fate/Grand Order, the special welfare Servants of the Christmas events are servants acting in the role of Santa, regardless of how ill-fitting they are for the role. This ranges from Artoria Alter (an evil gender-bent version of King Arthur) as Santa Alter, to Jeanne D'Arc Alter Santa Lily (a de-aged version of an evil Jeanne D'Arc) to the Aztec Deity Quetzalcoatl as "Samba Santa".
• In Cookie Clicker, Santa Claus starts as an embryo in a test tube, and you can raise him up to be the same jolly elf we all know and love. However, things start getting weird once you ascend him into Elder Claus, and later True and Final Claus.
  ''I am Claus, king of kings; Look on my toys, ye Mighty, and despair!"
• A substory in Yakuza 5, "Santa Hunters," has Saejima come upon a beaten up Santa in an alley who was the victim of a gang of punks known as the Santa Hunters. The old yakuza dons the red suit so he can have a "talk" with the gang, though he ends up getting swarmed by kids he has to outrun first. Luckily he ends up running into the gang he wanted to in the first place. After beating the gang up, the same kids end up taking their weapons as Santa's "presents."
• The obscure game Daze Before Christmas has you playing as Santa to stop an evil snowman, mouse, and other villains, and save the North Pole.
• Santa is a playable character in Fight of Gods, going up against the likes of Zeus, Anubis, and even Jesus.

Webcomics

• There's this strip of Full Frontal Nerdity.
• In d20monkey, Brett is secretly the Son of Santa. All the Kringles (Santa, Brett, and his uncle Klaus) are pretty bad ass when they need to be.
• This arc of PvP.
  • Which is nothing compared to how badass he looks in this later strip.
• The Santa v. Bun-Bun fights in Sluggy Freelance. Santa here is particularly powerful because he can use his ability to slow down time (in order to deliver all the presents in one night) to fight in Bullet Time. He's also becomes an alien overlord, which does give him an edge. He was pretty badass even before he became an alien, though not as tough as Mrs. Claus.
• O in Commissioned believes Santa is actually the Jolly Red Roof-lurker, a violent supernatural psychopath that steals cookies.
• In League of Super Redundant Heroes, Shitopolis has dozens of super-heroes, but someone makes sure they can all take Christmas off...
• This◊ Killroy And Tina Guest Strip shows Santa as a retired evil alien warlord who dosn't appreciate active evil alien warlords ruining his season.
• This VG Cats strip contains a bit different version...
• In this Beaver and Steve strip (plus the following one), Santa saves Steve from no other than Count Dracula.
• Virtual Shackles plays with this, and makes the Skyrim version of Santa an ancient magician, capable of speaking Dragon tongue.

Web Original

• 5 Second Films: Can Santa destroy the sun?
  • Also this.
• Santaman. That is all.
• This.◊
• Ask a Ninja had, as their first Christmas special, a telling of the story of "Red Death, the On Fire Paindeer". Part of the plot is that Santa, his elves, and his "Paindeer" are all ninja.
• Vendetta: A Christmas Story
• Of course, the Finnish people know where Father Christmases really come from and also, you really, really want to be nice around them. (And the prequel will hit the movies soon.)
• Two words. Santa. Christ.
• Eddsworld has Zanta Claws, a fake zombie santa who is eventually taken down by the real Santa and the boys. Though in the end, he decides to just stay dead.
• When TomSka tries to cancel Christmas, you know it's serious.
• Anytime Let's Player Markiplier voices him, it's either this or Bad Santa.
• Defied in 20 Haunting Halloween Facts by Matt Santoro. Matt says that the Headless Horseman could kick Santa's ass, because he couldn't get punched in the face. He adds that Santa is fat, and so would probably be bad at fighting.
• We Are Our Adventuring Avatars: Santa Karn is based on the combination of Santa Claus and Karn the Silver Golem. With the power of Glistmas Cheer, he can fully power Urabrask's Revenge, a tank given to them by Urabrask.
• In The Late December by Greg van Eekhout portrays Santa as the last bastion of hope against Big Empty, a reality-consuming Eldritch Abomination.
• This is why you never see Santa.
• Matataku, the Japanese artist who drew the current image, draws an artwork of badass Santa every year. In his 2010 artwork, it showed there's an entire legion of Badass Santa in his world.
• In 2016, Thug Life Videos published a hoax article claiming that a child told a Mall Santa in Wisconsin that she wished her stepfather would stop molesting her, so he and his four elves beat the crap out of him.

Western Animation

• There is no Santa Claus who is more of a badass than Santa from South Park. He gets into a huge fight with Jesus in the South Park debut short The Spirit of Christmas, goes totally Rambo in "Red Sleigh Down", brutally slaughters the demonic Woodland Critters with a shotgun in "Woodland Critter Christmas", and wields a huge axe against the forces of Evil Imagination in "Imaginationland".
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective: Santa Claus mentions having taken self-defense lessons to traverse rough neighborhoods after saving Ace.
• In an episode of American Dad!, Steve accidentally kills a mall Santa (In reality, the real Santa). His elves heal him and, in retaliation, Santa goes to kill the Smith family using a huge array of snowmen, elves and reindeer.
• In the Christmas episode of Earthworm Jim, after recovering from a mind-control chip implanted by Queen Pulsating Bloated Festering Sweaty Pus-filled Malformed Slug-for-a-Butt, Santa tears open his red suit and reveals that in his previous job he was "Woden, Norse god of judgment!" In the ensuing Battle Discretion Shot, Jim remarks, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And he kicks butt!"
• ¡Mucha Lucha! had a fight between Santo Claus and the evil Rudo Claus.
• Codename: Kids Next Door has a Santa Claus as a parody of Professor X from the X-Men who with his X-Men parody elves, helped defeat the Delightful Children from down the Lane.
• Parodied in Pucca, where Santa once was a badass ninja thief but then pulled a Heel–Face Turn and became Santa... and the Butt-Monkey.
• The Fairly OddParents! - Santa was like this at the end of Christmas Every Day and Have a Merry Wishmas. He was fighting the other holidays in CED and in Wishmas, he used it on Jorgen Von Strangle because Jorgen Von Strangle tried to replace Christmas with Wishmas. He was using Christmas magic.
• In the Rugrats special "Chanukah", there was mention of a Christmas movie called Santa Vs the Alien, which features Santa taking on aliens with a bazooka shaped like a chimney, and firing Christmas tree-themed missiles.
• Futurama has an evil robotic bazooka-wielding Santa. Not nice, but definitely badass.
  • Heck one song they sing about him is called "Santa Claus Is Gunning You Down."
• My Life as a Teenage Robot "A Robot For All Seasons", Santa defends the North Pole using his skills as an ex-ninja, complete with cookie shuriken.
• One of Nickelodeon's Oh Yeah! Cartoons was Super Santa, which showed what Santa Claus does for the rest of the year: he fights crime with his Emma Peel-inspired wife.
• Robotboy features a Santa who seems pretty standard at first, but when the Christmas of one child is threatened, he ties his hair in a ponytail, takes off his red suit to reveal a six-pack and a Rambo-esque outfit, switches to his rocket sled, and goes on a rampage with a variety of insanely destructive weapons.
• The Simpsons episode "Marge Be Not Proud" featured a video game commercial around Christmas time: Two children are bored playing a bloodless knock-off of Mortal Kombat (1992), when Santa's sleigh (pulled by two snarling reindeer) bursts through their living room wall. Santa is bulging with muscles and is heavily armed. "YOU WANT EXCITEMENT?!?! STICK THIS UP YOUR STOCKING!!!" He fires a video game cartridge via RPG into their port. It is an incredibly bloody Beat 'em Up and the children (and Bart) are instantly enthralled. He closes the commercial saying "TELL YOUR PARENTS TO BUY YOU BONESTORM, OR GO TO HELL!!!"
• Robot Chicken has the Full-Assed Christmas Special, opening with Santa going on a Casino Royale-like assassination against a particularly naughty child. The kid even plays the part of the big bad perfectly (periodically flashing back to Santa's fight with The Dragon, his mom), right up to pulling a handgun from his bedside table, only for Santa to have already unloaded it.
  • "Co-Opting Santa" has Santa angrily delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on a bunch of executives who have stolen his image.
• Santa Claus from "The Fight Before Christmas" The Powerpuff Girls (1998) Christmas special. We might not see him fight any baddies, but the verbal beat down and Cool and Unusual Punishment he gave Princess was made of win. Note, he does this to Princess who he gifted her with superpowers and then take them away via press of his nose.
  "I DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' LIST TO TELL ME WHO'S NAUGHTY OR WHO'S NICE! WHY?! CAUSE IIII'M SANTA CLAUS! CHECK IT!"
• Regular Show's rendition of Santa. A no-nonsense and serious Santa ensures everything safely and nevertheless loves his job and role in Christmas. He doesn't hesitate to shut down his head researcher's project involving a gift with dark magic (and hunting him down himself when he escapes with the gift.) In fact, he reveals that he has a six-pack (hidden away with a bullet-proof vest and thick layers of clothing.)
• Santa makes an appearance in the Avengers Assemble special Marvel Super Hero Adventures: Frost Fight. In the film he's a Light Elf/Frost Giant hybrid with the power to manipulate the fabric of space and time. He's also willing to fight Loki alongside the Avengers.
• The Super Duper Sumos episode "Santa's A Big Fat Sumo" reveals Santa to possess similar sumo powers to the titular trio.
• The version of the character in The Cuphead Show! is powerful enough to magically force the Devil himself to take his place, as a punishment for all the years of naughtiness. Complete with Ominous Latin Chanting (or, strictly speaking, Ominous Dog Latin Chanting).

Real Life

• St. Nicholas, upon whom Santa is based and greatly resembled him physically◊, was actually fully capable of being badass. Examples include an incident of Nicholas whacking Arius at the Council of Nicaea, or when he raised three brutally murdered children from death, or when he rescued three men sentenced to death and scared the Prefect who had sentenced them into confessing to taking a bribe.
  • A recent examination of his relics disclosed a healed fracture in his cheekbone, close to his nose; at some point, this guy took a roundhouse punch in the face, but given the evidence, no doubt he could give it back in spades.
    • He could also have received it while a prisoner of the Roman empire. Bishops were not treated very nicely.
    • He was a child during the final pagan Roman persecution; by the time he was a Bishop, the Roman Empire was Christian in all but name.
    • You knew Cracked would have something to say about it eventually.
    • Whether or not this is factual is uncertain, but apparently there is little to support outside of legend. None of the records of the council even directly mention Nicholas' presence, despite almost certainly being present as Bishop of Myra. This page isn't the best, but links to useful pages: http://rosecreekvillage.com/shammah/archives/814
• Downplayed example in this news article where a Santa costume is used by Italian police to catch a mafioso.
• This Reddit link features a video of a French man on a motorcycle dressed as Santa chasing down a reckless driver who knocked over a biker while speeding through an intersection.
• This viral video of a Russian man dressed as Santa saving a man in a Spider-Man costume from a rogue man in a Batman costume.

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