Battle Butler

Don't worry, he'll polish the silverware spotless after he kills you with it.

"There were only two men on the planet better educated in the various martial arts than Butler, and he was related to one of them. The other lived on an island in the South China Sea, and spent his days meditating and beating up palm trees. You really had to feel sorry for those goblins."

— Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident

A household or personal servant ^note Often either a high-ranking one, as most actual butlers are, or the only one employed by their master who acts as a "combat effective" despite their official position having nothing to do with combat. May overlap with Almighty Janitor if said butler/servant is the only one hired in the household, but if said butler/household servant is the head servant of the household, then this trope will also overlap with Asskicking Leads to Leadership, because they are granted the position to command the other servants because they can personally protect the master of the manor.

If a Battle Butler is female she will probably wear a suit, even if she is called a maid. If she does wear an appropriate maid outfit, she is a Ninja Maid. If a Battle Butler is also referred to as a bodyguard, you can expect full blown samurai-level abilities; this type of Battle Butler tends to overlap with The Dragon if their master is the Big Bad. They might also act as a Professional Killer.

If they come from a long line of Battle Butlers serving that family, they're in a Legacy of Service.

Not to Be Confused with Hayate the Combat Butler, although the eponymous character is definitely an example.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Though neither a butler nor a skilled fighter, Nike in Appleseed fits this trope quite well. It's easy to underestimate her as Prime Minister Athena's loyal secretary. But even for a Chief of Staff, she seems to be holding enormous executive powers on her own and having Athena's full confidence. The fact that she's The Stoic and could pass as a Bifauxnen without problems certainly helps her appearing as The Dragon.
• Munsarat from Avesta of Black and White is the butler of Archdemon Frederica, being second in command of the Man Murdering Demons, and possessing the power to back it up.
• Roger Smith's manservant Norman in The Big O. In addition to making soup and cleaning the house, he's quite handy with a machine gun and drives a motorcycle with a rocket launcher in the side car. To stress how badass Norman is, one need only look to the Christmas episode. Roger, mid-fight, asks Norman to get his dry-cleaning. Norman accomplishes this by taking his motorcycle and driving it through the building without slowing down. Not only did he grab the laundry, he got a date on the way out. And then there's this one time in the second season when the Smith house is under attack, Norman responds with heavy artillery and exquisitely delivered profanity.
  Norman: "Sons of bitches!"
• Nirasawa is this to Kabu in Bi no Kyoujin, being at the same time his second in command and his assistant in all things domestic.
• Black Butler:
  • Sebastian Michaelis is this trope. He could have written this trope all on his own, and made you tea and a five-star nine-course banquet in the meantime. After all, he's simply one hell of a butler.
  • Grell Sutcliff was a temporary one for Madame Red.
  • Yet another is Agni, super-powered servant to a very spoiled Indian prince.
  • And then there's Ash, the queen's butler. In the manga, she has two butlers; Charles Grey and Charles Phillips, AKA "Double Charles".
  • Ran-Mao could be considered a female example, in her service to local opium-dealer and criminal mastermind Lao.
  • While non-canon, Claude serves as one to Alois Trancy, as do the Canterbury triplets, to a lesser extent.
  • The Phantomhive servants, though quite behind Sebastian, are still very lethal. We have Mey-Rin, who is an excellent case of Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass in that her extreme farsightedness usually makes her very clumsy but also makes her such a good sniper that she can do it with PISTOLS while leaping from rooftop to rooftop; Finnian was rescued from some nasty experiments, as has Super-Strength as a result, to the point where he can easily uproot and carry a massive tree; Tanaka, who effortlessly manages to kill an enemy right outside of Elizabeth's room without a drop of blood on his clothes (he says that he knows Baritsu in a later chapter); and Bard, who, though weakest in physical strength, makes up for it with expert tactical knowledge gained from his time in battle. When Ciel warns not to look down upon the Phantomhives' servants, he means it.
• Black Lagoon:
  • Ginji Matsuzaki could count, serving Yukio Washimine completely, faithfully, and frighteningly. He's known as "Manslayer Ginji" for damn good reason.
  • And if not Ginji then certainly Roberta! A literal Maid Of Iron who will never retreat and never stop hunting you until she makes one hundred percent sure you're dead. Oh yeah, and the small army's worth of firearms and explosives she carries with her at all times is probably worth a mention too. Don't screw around with the Lovelace family.
• Sayoko Shinozaki from Code Geass, though her case is something of a subversion. Though she exhibits an understandable protective streak towards Nunnally, she aids the terrorist Zero without realizing that he's actually Nunnally's older brother Lelouch. In addition, she has yet to exhibit it, but the writing staff has repeatedly hinted that she may turn out to be as impressive a fighter as the beyond-human Suzaku. And all this due to her runaway popularity with the audience.
  • Stopped being an Informed Ability in episodes 12 and 13 of the second season, where the notion that she was a ninja went from Fanon to Canon.
• Watari, L's butler of Death Note fame. Can prepare delicious sweets for L, while capable of maintaining the facade that he is the aloof detective, and can take you down with a single shot from a sniper rifle while dangling from the legs of a flying helicopter. He's also revealed to have raised L from very early childhood in his orphanage, which explains his personal devotion.
• Maizuru of Delicious in Dungeon is Shuro's retainer who raised him from childhood, as well as head of his Amazon Brigade of guards.
• Digimon:
  • In Digimon Adventure 02, Wormmon acts as a (not especially useful) Battle Butler for Ken, getting nothing but insults and whippings in return. Ken comes to regret abusing Wormmon, though, after he performs his Heel–Face Turn.
  • Gaomon from Digimon Data Squad. He is not only Toma's partner on the battlefield, he is also Toma's butler in his manor, often seen serving him tea. Hell, his catchphrase is "Yes, Master.". You'd be lying if that doesn't remind you to Sebastian's "Yes, My Lord".
• Otose, the battle maid in Domina no Do!. Her character design can be summarized as "Female Big Boss."
• Space Butler from Excel♡Saga, who serves the Puchuus mainly because he cannot resist their illusory cuteness.
• In Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA, the resident Ojou Luvia has August, who, in addition to his formidable battle butlering skills, has enough Hammerspace on his person to pack two SMG's, two pistols, a bunch of throwing knives, and a couple other surprises to boot. It's foreshadowed during a Furo Scene that shows his numerous scars. Bazett makes quick work of him, though.
• Juubei from Get Backers has a brief angst fit because his duty in life was basically to be Kazuki's Battle Doctor, but Kazuki left, and he's since sworn himself to Makubex, who previously ordered him to kill Kazuki in what he admitted was a test of loyalty. In the end, he balances his dual loyalties nicely.
• Hayate the Combat Butler:
  • The eponymous Hayate is a unique look into a newly-minted Battle Butler; his loyalty initiated by a massive debt. He's had more experience in the area than that would lead one would think, however. He was trained in butlering as a small child by someone who is either a very powerful mage or a goddess. Despite the series name, Hayate himself seems less of a Battle Butler than the others.
  • Also, Segawa Kotetsu of the Segawa household, Machina (Athena's servant), Kaede Nonohara of the Azumamiya household, Himuro Saeki of the Ookouchi household as well as Ichijou as Mikoto's butler. Almost makes you think the series runs off of this trope, doesn't it?
• Walter C. Dornez from Hellsing is a rather literal example. Not only is he incredibly badass and able to kill armies of vampires with his Razor Floss since he was 14 years old, but his devotion to Integra and the British crown is unquestioned. Until his still questioned Face–Heel Turn, making him some kind of Blood Knight or so..
• The Zoldyck Family in Hunter × Hunter are wealthy assassins, and their estate is staffed by a bunch of these. The only ones featured prominently are Gotoh, Canary, Amane, and Tsubone, but it's suggested that plenty more of them live on the premises. It's implied that they undergo pretty brutal training and must have Undying Loyalty to their employers to the point where pursuing romantic relationships is punishable by death for them. Some butlers are loyal to different family members, creating further drama when the family experiences conflict among itself.
• Half the cast in Inu × Boku SS: Miketsukami, Yukinokouji, Karuta, Natsume. Interestingly, for the most part, their masters (except Watanuki) are even more battle-capable.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Battle Tendency: Esidisi is a longtime supporter of Kars's cause, he is the second-in-command of The Pillar Men.
  • Stardust Crusaders:
    • Vanilla Ice. He's so faithful to Dio that when Dio asks him to slice off his own head, he proceeds to do so with no hesitation. He got better.
    • A lesser example can be found in Rozas, Miss Holly's Butler. When a musclebound thug threatens his mistress, Rozas springs into action, sending him sailing with a single kick - this in spite of the fact that the guy is twice his size and probably less than half his age.
• Kogarashi, the title Maid Guy in Kamen no Maid Guy. He's a large, musclebound masked man, and the fact that he's wearing a dress only makes him that much more terrifying to any who meets him.
• Tomoe from Kamisama Kiss is Nanami's familiar; which pretty much means his main job is to look after her basic needs. He cooks her meals, does the laundry, and maintains the shrine they live in. He is also a Kitsune, implied to be one of the most powerful demons around, and he makes sure that anybody who threatens Nanami never does so again.
• Escargoon, Dedede's butler/servant/secretary from the Kirby anime is often described as a Battle Butler. While he doesn't engage in close combat with any effectiveness (even Dedede can best him in that department), he's often seen leading the troops and managing the combat machines.
• Last Exile presents Dio of the Noble House of Eraclea, whose friend and combat butler Luciola acts as his loyal bodyguard up to the point of giving himself up to Dio's sister, Maestro Delphine, so she allows Dio to escape. He has no regrets as he calmly accepts a ring that immediately kills him.
• Jodo from Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro diligently serves the Count, even serving as one of his ninjas and taking down Zenigata's stolen autogyro and Lupin himself with a rooftop-mounted machine gun. At the end, he asks Goemon to kill him, since he has no purpose but to serve the (now-dead) Count.
• Garyu from Lyrical Nanoha is this to Lutecia. He's her personal and silent bodyguard, a strong and fast melee fighter, but also a very creepy example because he is a tall, humanoid, black and four-eyed insect with a Scarf of Asskicking. He's the most loyal of Lutecia's summoned insects, he pulls a Heel–Face Turn before her, so he can save her from her own rampage. The butler part is later seen in ViVid, as he gathers food and serves drinks to the girls in the hot spring. Yes, this creepy guy has seen several naked girls bathing in a hot spring and none of them cares at all, while Erio is demoted to the kitchen. Do we need to mention that some of the girls are 10 to 12 years old? However, Garyu is stoic as well.
• Tachibana, from Mahoraba, is instantly recognizable as a member of this trope. She also qualifies as a Ninja Maid due to her ability to suddenly materialize in rooms, though.
• The Dark Lovers from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch; as their name implies, they represent different types of false love, and are all obsessed with their Master, Gackto (or Gaito in the anime). Of course, he turns out to have just as intense loyalty to Sara with the exact same reason, which is the whole reason he wanted to destroy the world in the first place.
• Miami Guns parodies this trope with Jii, faithful servant to Yao's father and exaggerated badass.
• Mobile Suit Gundam:
  • Raymond Bishop, butler to Neo France's George de Sands, has a Moment of Awesome as a Battle Butler in Mobile Fighter G Gundam.
  • Hong Long, Wang Liu Mei's butler/brother in Mobile Suit Gundam 00.
• Roberto of Monster has an undying loyalty to Übermensch Johan Liebert practically bordering on Ho Yay.
• Big Blue from the Monster Rancher anime. Big Blue is fiercely loyal to Pixie, protects her without a second thought, and near the end of the series he fuses his own life force (sacrificing himself) with hers to prevent her from becoming a lost disk.
• Not a butler, per se, but Mikoto Minagi from My-HiME plays Battle Butler to two different characters. First, she's Mai's faithful sidekick (whom she likes very much), and later she becomes one for her brother, who has the soul of the series' Big Bad living inside him. Despite her conflicting loyalties, she swears to protect them from anything that gets in her way...and boy, can she ever.
• Moriarty the Patriot has Jack Renfield, the Moriarty brothers' butler who was known as Jack the Ripper when he was in the military and is eager to assist with the brothers' life of crime. He even taught them how to kill.
• Haku from Naruto, who sees himself as little more than a tool for The Demon Zabuza. Although Haku is far gentler than his boss and doesn't really like fighting, he's still willing to do anything for him, no matter how drastic, to the extent where he sacrifices himself by taking an attack right through the chest from Kakashi in order to protect Zabuza.
• Delia Ketchum of Pokémon: The Series has a powerful Mr. Mime as a housekeeper of sorts that helps her with household chores. The team of Delia and Mr. Mime had, on at least one occasion, helped protect the nearby Pokémon Lab from a Team Rocket attack. In Pokémon Adventures, the Berlitz family's old butler, Sebastian, shows a reasonable amount of battling skill when he thinks Dia is an intruder on the estate. You really can't blame him for being a bit paranoid after what recently happened to his masters.
• PandoraHearts gives us Gilbert, Oz's servant and best friend, who is very efficient at protecting his master. Then there's Sharon's servant Break, who was also a knight serving a noble family in the past. We also have Echo to Vincent, the Baskervilles to Glen, and the Nightray servants to their respective masters.
• Princess Resurrection features Hiro, who fits this trope to a T. Also Flandere the robo-maid, who fits this trope closer than Ninja Maid due to her complete lack of stealth or subtlety. She tends towards uprooted trees as a weapon of choice and had to be told not to use Molotov cocktails for home defense.
• Ranma ½:
  • Canon Foreigner Sasuke Sarugakure is the Kunō Family's devoted, albeit grossly inept, ninja butler in the anime. He was conceived as a filler character, who was given most arcs involving Gosunkugi. All of them except the magic paper dolls, if memory serves. However, he became his own unique character pretty quickly.
  • The very first filler in the anime also has an elderly, childless rich couple try to adopt P-chan/Ryōga, and when Ranma (reluctantly) tries to retrieve him, the three butlers/servants chasing him promptly pull off their bowties and reveal martial artist weapons, much to Ranma's shock. The Abridged Chronicles lampshades this trope. It was also probably the most well-animated and choreographed fight of the whole season, despite how short it was.
• Ukyo's... whatever he is... Tessai in Samurai 7.
• Paul Moriyama in Sgt. Frog is Momoka's butler, seemingly charged with caring and protecting her. He is also alluded to be massively powerful, and in the manga, it's hinted he's a veteran of World War II. See this video at around 0:16. Paul has a very impressive musculature.
• Shamanic Princess: Leon and Japoro are sort-of Battle Butlers to the summoners Lena and Tiara, respectively.
• Mr Tanaka, butler to the Thorndyke family in Sonic X, though he's not always entirely effective when it comes to defending his employers' honour, you have to give him points for effort (and self judgement when he thinks he's failed).
• In Soul Eater, Noah has Gopher, a young (may or may not be an artificial creation) minion who serves Noah unquestioningly. So far unsuccessfully, but he's determined, at least. Mosquito is a clearer example, being Arachne's Battle Butler. And he's a far more effective one beating Kid rather brutally before getting owned by his Defence Mechanism Superpower. Both are devoted to their respective masters.
• In Speed Racer X, Racer X is assisted by a man named Old Joe, who dresses as a butler. At various points he is shown to a be a competent hand-to-hand fighter and a marksman with a rifle.
• In Tokyo Ghoul, the wealthy Tsukiyama family employs quite a few of these to handle domestic duties and anything else they may require. Matsumae and Kanae, in particular, divide their time between standard domestic duties and killing people to feed or protect the household.
• In Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun, Opera, Sullivan's household servant, is easily one of the most powerful demons in the series, able to assist in taking down the massive magical beasts attacking Walter Park largely barehanded, among others. They're even strong enough that Kalego, a rank 8 demon, seems to fear and defer to them, although this could also be because they picked on him in high school (and never really stopped). Perhaps the only demon we've seen definitively stronger than Opera is Sullivan himself.
• Sherry's manservant Mizoguchi from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. He's no slouch at martial arts, a powerful duelist, and can even drive a D-Wheel.

Comic Books

• 100 Bullets: Crete, Agustus Medici's hulking butler.
• The Avengers: Jarvis, the butler of Tony Stark and the Avengers. He's not anywhere near Alfred-level badass but he's got some military background of his own.
• Batman: Alfred Pennyworth, essentially Batman's batman. Not exactly a battle butler, but his skill at espionage and disguise rivals Batman's, and as a retired secret agent he knows his way around a shotgun. A former combat medic, he's also a skilled surgeon, and has served as Batman's private physician over the years (just think how tough that job must be...)
  • Alfred, being a loyal Battle Butler, accompanied Bruce Wayne as he tracked Bane and his thugs during the events of Knightfall — and then, when Bruce refused to obey his Doctor's Orders (or risk being completely paralyzed), he resigned from Wayne's service entirely.
  • He seems to know his way around a golf club too...
  • From the same movie series, it's also stated that he's seen combat experience in Burma with the SAS. Battle Butler indeed.
    • On the pages of Batman Eternal Alfred mentions being former British SAS in the comics also.
  • From the Elseworlds story "Dark Allegiances" by Howard Chaykin comes this magnificent exchange:
    Wayne: Do I want to know how you found this out — and should I be concerned about any jealous husbands?
    Alfred: You insult me, sir. Her husband was out of town.
  • In Batman: The Cult, Gotham City is overrun by homeless cultists. Batman and Robin are picked up from their hiding place by Alfred in the Bentley. When Batman asks whether Alfred had any trouble getting to them, Alfred replies "None sir." and holds up a pistol. To put it another way, Alfred is Battle Butler incarnate.
  • Note also that if any other member of his team were to carry a gun, Batman would most likely fire them on the spot. But Alfred is the exception. Why? Because Bruce needs him more than any of the others. (Also possibly because Alfred's so much older.)
    • Probably the latter. Modern portrayals of Alfred generally show him as an ex-military badass, but he's old and doesn't have the physical combat skills the rest of the Bat-family do.
    • The above point gets very much proven when Alfred renders a younger, highly-skilled intruder that was able to enter Wayne Manor despite its extensive security measures unconscious with non-lethal bullets and defends himself to Bruce thusly
    Bruce: You Killed him?
    Alfred: Of course Not. I'd never get that out of the Carpet. Frangible Plastic bullets
    Bruce: But. Alfred. Guns.
    Alfred: I Know. But, as I've said to you many times before, guns are tools. I respect your choice not to use them, but guns did not kill my friends Martha and Thomas Wayne. A Man like this did. He walked through your bloody clever security measures like they weren't there. And whilst you might be a big strapping hulk covered in armour, I am a frail and defenceless old man.
    Bruce: And you're keeping firearms in my house.
    Alfred: Indeed. And you'll never find them all.
  • In a flashback sequence in the House of Hush storyline in Streets of Gotham, Alfred is shown singlehandedly stopping an attempted hit on Leslie Thompkins.
  • In the Booster Gold series, Booster goes back in time to the early days of Batman; when he goes to the Batcave he's repelled by Alfred using a rifle.
  • And in Public Enemies (2004), he guarded the cave with a shotgun.
  • In the Injustice: Gods Among Us prequel comic, Alfred delivers a beating to Superman himself, courtesy of a stolen strength-enhancing pill.
    Alfred: I am so disappointed in you.
  • Alfred is a Retired Badass in Batman: The Animated Series, having once been an officer for Interpol. Even Robin is surprised at this revelation.
  • And in one episode of The Batman, he's able to knock out the Penguin by throwing a serving tray; seems he learned a few things from watching Bruce use a batarang.
  • In the No Man's Land arc he defended Wayne Manor from a group of armed looters single-handed using stealth and his military training to prevent them from discovering the Batcave.
  • In the crossover between the Predator and Batman. Bruce has had to make a custom made suit to combat the Predator and with the long drawn out fight leading to the Batcave. As the Predator is about to land a killing blow to Bruce, Alfred gains the Predator's attention and proceeds to unloads a whole blast from a blunderbuss straight into the Predator's chest and even tries to load the weapon to continue the fight. And all this when Batman told him to stay away from the fight. Truly a loyal butler, no matter what.
  • In Batman: Earth One, Alfred is technically head of security at Wayne Manor at the request of Thomas Wayne, but calls himself a butler when he becomes Bruce's legal guardian. This Alfred is freshly discharged from active service in the armed forces (due to the loss of his leg), acts a little rougher around the edges than his usual depictions, and doesn't hesitate to blow away Mayor Oswald Cobblepot with a shotgun in order to save Batman's life.
• Birds of Prey: Zinda Blake, Lady Blackhawk, was hired by Oracle as the pilot and general mission support for the Birds of Prey. However, being a superhero in her own right, she never just stays with the vehicles. In the 2010 relaunch of the series, when she winds up stuck in another life-or-death situation, she points out that she was just supposed to be the pilot.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: One of the many duties of Quackmore, Scrooge's extremely skilled butler, is to maintain and, if necessary, operate the defenses of the Money Bin-including the artillery.
• Doctor Strange: Wong, mystical martial artist and servant to Doctor Strange. He's skilled in the martial arts of Kamar-Taj, and also has rudimentary knowledge of magic.
  • In the mini-series Doctor Strange: The Oath, Strange reveals that Wong has been his tutor in the martial arts over the years:
    Doctor Strange: Yes, in some respects, [Wong] is my servant... but in others, Wong is my master.
  • At a time when the Hood was The Dreaded, Hood and his gang attacked Dr. Strange and the New Avengers while Strange was an invalid. Wong didn't take too kindly to this and fought Hood one-on-one. The Hood didn't stand a chance.
• Largo Winch: Tyler, Largo Winch's butler during the Venise arc of the young millionaire's adventures. Ten pages or so after his introduction, he impales a mafioso sent after Largo with a parasol. Largo notes that despite being an uptight Englishman in his sixties, Tyler can save his life twice, shoot four men, and quote Chateaubriand in a single day of work. Tyler's martial prowess comes from the fact that he is a retired British soldier hired by Robert Cotton to spy on and manipulate Largo.
• Lucky Luke: The titular character in The Tenderfoot brings his valet with him to the Wild West. By the end of the album, the valet has gone native just as impressively as his master, and helps fend off cattle rustlers, rifle in hand.
• Ms. Tree: Bryan Hand. Mr Hand was officially employed as Mike, Jr.'s tutor. However, Mr Hand is also a former SAS trooper and ex-mercenary. Michael hired him because he could double as Mike, Jr.'s bodyguard; a function he performed frequently throughout the series.
• The not-very-useful British comic hero Red Star Robinson only really cut it as a hero because of his robot bodyguard Mr. Syrius Thrice who was much more powerful. Thrice was dressed as a gentleman's gentleman and had proper Jeeves/Crichton manners but had powers Batman would envy.
• Richie Rich: Cadbury, butler to Richie Rich and the Rich Family, has a skill set large enough to qualify him for the mask and cape crowd.
  • And did as Crashman, partner to Rippy (Richie) in the 1970s comic, Super Richie.
• Sin City: Manute fills this role for Ava Lord in "A Dame to Kill For" and for mob boss Wallenquist in "The Big Fat Kill."
• Star Wars (Marvel 1977): One issue had Darth Vader himself traveling with three servants, all highly-trained assassins. One wonders if there's an agency somewhere in the Galaxy. That said, they all die attempting to inhume Princess Leia over the course of the issue.
• XIII: One briefly shows up in Irina's employ sporting a big gun and a bigger scar, yet maintaining perfect courtesy towards XIII, even when telling not to do anything funny.
  Butler (showing his holstered gun under his livery): I would advise sir not to come any closer. I have been apprised of sir's aggressive tendencies. Here is sir's smoking jacket, tailored to sir's measurements. Sir is expected at dinner in half an hour.
• Upton from IDW Publishing's Clue (2017). Not only does he cater to every guest's request no matter how outrageously elaborate (in the middle of a murder, no less!), but he also led a military raid in Afghanistan and kill the creators of the comic all on his employer's orders.

Fan Works

• Facing the Future Series: Played with in the second story, where Tucker's chauffeur attempted to come to Danny's aid during a ghost attack, only to be beaten in an instant.
• Hyperemesis Gravidarum: Assassin Johanna Smith-Rhodes gets a battle-butler. Her wily uncle drafted him into a group of servants employed to staff her post-marital household, selecting a man with previous form and a loyalty to the Smith-Rhodes family. While Willikins recognises this instantly and nurtures a talent in the making via the Guild of Butlers, Johanna herself doesn't find out itll later in the story.
  "Indeed, madam. He felt that given the life you live, you required a special sort of domestic servant. One who would be prepared, and trained, to provide loyal service in every way you could require. When Lady Friejda insisted on sending you a staff of servants, he saw the opportunity to insert me among their number. Mr van der Graaf knew of my service history with the Army and of my rank as Sergeant. He also knew I am from Smith-Rhodesia, and I took a vow of loyalty to the Smith-Rhodes family. As my father and grandfather did before me."
  
  Claude regarded her without fear or servility.
  
  "You would be within your rights to dismiss me, or to send me back to the Embassy, madam. Mr van der Graaf asked me not to disclose this to you, as he feared what he termed "a streak of bloody-minded independence" would assert itself, and you would display resentment at what you would consider to be interference and meddling."
• I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!: Orochimaru's butler, named Jeeves, is fully capable of sneaking up on and getting rid of Obito.
  Obito: Note to self. Watch the HELL out for butlers in the future.
• Loved and Lost has Vivian, the personal assistant of Prince Jewelius. While Jewelius is a cowardly Non-Action Big Bad, the obedient and extremely composed Vivian knows impressive karate moves and is talented enough with her magic to give Rainbow Dash a tough fight.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim: Season 2 introduces the SIR unit Ying, who serves as this to Nyx. He has all the attitude and mannerisms of a stereotypical British butler, as well as a Battle Mode wherein he transforms into a seven-foot-tall robotic knight who is shown worfing the heroes in his first outing.
• Nobledark Imperium: Ciaphas Cain's assistant during his stay as the Imperium's ambassador to Biel-Tan is a prim, stuffy graduate of the Schola Progenium named Edmond Aldsworth (his usual aide Jurgen is traveling with Inquisitor Vail, since you'd have to be crazy to take a blank to a Craftworld full of psykers). Unknown to both Cain and the majority of Biel-Tan's population, Edmond did not train as a diplomat at the Schola, but as a stormtrooper, and spent most of his career afterwards doing things like performing counterraids on Dark Eldar slavers in the bowels of hive cities and hunting Ork kommandoz. He still has a necklace of Ork trigger finger bones stashed away that's worn more like a bandolier.
  To everyone that works with him man and xeno he is just a neat man with grey hair and a fussy little moustache.
• Queen of All Oni has Jade's two bodyguard Shadowkhan, Left and Right, who do everything for her and are her chief minions.
• The Royal Protector (sniperct): Cassandra is hired as both Queen Elsa's Lady In Waiting and her bodyguard.

Films — Animation

• Cats Don't Dance has Max, the brutish giant butler of spoiled child star Darla Dimple. A combination of Max from Sunset Boulevard... and the Terminator. Not only is he a good servant, he is a talented piano player and the perfect muscle to take out competition for Darla.

Films — Live-Action

• Random Task in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, a parody of Oddjob, who throws his shoe instead of a hat.
• A Better Tomorrow II: The servant - hitman Chong is given a pile of cash by his terrified employer, but completely ignores it, indicating that his only concern is finding a Worthy Opponent, which he ultimately finds in Ken Gor.
• Paul "Dibbs" Plutzker of 1995 film: Casper. He acts as Carrigan Crittenden's personal bodyguard. "Don't come near me, you spiteful spook, or I'll knock you into the next world".
• In Confessions of a Psycho Cat, Virginia's butler Bye aids her in Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, including stabbing Rocco in the back with a pair of picador's swords before shoving him out onto the rooftop garden to face Virginia.
• Alfred, naturally, in The Dark Knight Trilogy. He's a former soldier and once burned a whole forest down to catch a bandit. While he mostly sticks to giving Bruce advice, he does take out a ninja in the burning mansion in Batman Begins,
• The DC Extended Universe depicts Alfred as the Wayne family's former bodyguard, who nowadays acts as both Mission Control and Mr. Fixit, maintaining Bruce's armor and the Batmobile. He can also pilot the Batwing by remote control.
• In Dressed to Kill (1946), Mrs. Courtney's chauffeur Hamid doubles as her personal enforcer. And he sometimes takes it upon himself to dispose of men he thinks are getting too close to his mistress.
• Both the Great Leslie and Professor Fate have one in The Great Race: Hezekiah Sturdy for Leslie and Max Meen for Fate.
• Alfred in Hudson Hawk, who serves the villainous Mayflowers.
• Stonewall Jackson's personal slave in Gods and Generals. Sadly Jackson feels so dependent on him that he can't quite bring himself to free him. In a way, he seems almost enslaved to his slave.
• Common in James Bond films.
  • Oddjob in Goldfinger. He's a dutiful butler, and he kills people. Lots of them. With his hat.
  • Nick Nack in The Man with the Golden Gun. When not cooking, serving drinks, or hiring killers to off his boss as a training exercise, he personally goes to the field on Scaramanga's orders.
  • The extreme end of this trope is seen in The Living Daylights. At a British Intelligence safehouse where a KGB defector is being held, everyone from gardeners to butlers is a hidden guard. One of them (callsign "Green 4") actually puts up a serious fight against Necros.
• John Wick has Charon, the concierge of the New York Continental Hotel. The place serves as a safe haven and neutral ground for assassins (which nearly everyone in the city seems to be), and while he's content to stand his post at the front desk and offer any and all services required by his patrons with impeccable professionalism, he's more than capable of handling a variety of weapons should the need arise.
• An actual battling butler appears in the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movies, dutifully putting on an armoured vest and loading a shotgun before calmly blowing away stooges invading Lara's manor.
• In The Man Who Turned to Stone, Eric is Dr. Murdock's personal servant and the one who is sent to abduct the girls for the life-draining procedure, and do any other dirty work that needs doing.
• McLintock!: GW's foreman and butler Drago is a skilled brawler and former Indian fighter.
• In The Monster Maker, Steve, Dr, Markoff's hulking orderly, fills this role for Dr. Markoff; doing all of the physical dirty work that needs to be done.
• Inverted in The Pink Panther films by Cato, Clouseau's manservant. An expert in martial arts, Cato spends nearly all his time launching sneak attacks on his master, in order to keep him prepared for a real attack.
• Falkon in Red Sonja is a meek servant to the young Prince, but also a stalwart warrior, when the need arises.
• Repo! The Genetic Opera has Rotti Largo's shotgun-sporting henchgirls, as well as Gene Co's Repo Men.
• Cadbury from Richie Rich. Cadbury spends the first half of the film being a typical stuffy butler. Then things go to hell, and he is sent to prison, suspected of having murdered his employers. He spends most of his time on the inside hustling his fellow inmates at cards. When the villains send an assassin to make it look like he committed suicide, Cadbury ends up making quick work out of the assassin and breaks out of prison.
• By the end of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the butler Riff Raff has snapped and shot his master and various other people with a Death Ray. A script for the unmade sequel Revenge of the Old Queen refers to him as "General Riff Raff", implying him to be a soldier on his home planet.
• In Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, Moriarty's chauffeur is a hulking brute named Charles who acts as Moriarty's enforcer.
• In Sunset, Alfie's chauffer Arthur doubles as his enforcer: being used to intimidate and rough up those Alfie finds annoying. Unfortunately for Arthur, over the course of the movie, he repeatedly attempts this on people who are much tougher than they look; like Wyatt Earp.
• In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Simmons gets one with Dutch, who while usually somewhat neurotic and effeminate proves to be quite dangerous if pushed.
• Igor in Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, who serves the former one of the eponymous girls.
• In The Wolfman (2010), Sir John's butler, Singh, is armed to the teeth with silver bullets and other monster-killing devices. It didn't do him much good in the end though, and he loses points for not realizing the silver bullets are sabotaged.
• Bevan the butler in Would You Rather. He's a former MI5 operative, skilled in torture techniques, and has absolutely no qualms about shooting people dead.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • The Wolverine: Yukio performs certain tasks for Master Yashida (like tracking down Wolverine), and is very deadly with a samurai sword.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past: Hank essentially fulfills this role for Charles. In addition to looking after his ex-mentor's needs and maintaining the mansion, McCoy also serves as Xavier's bodyguard.

Literature

• Gargarey, the Peabody-Emerson's butler is a mean hand with a blackjack. The footmen are also useful in scrap and even the housemaids have learned not to scream or faint at the sight of blood.
• The Butler family, full stop. In Artemis Fowl, Butler acts as Artemis' bodyguard much more than a butler and demonstrates both professional and personal devotion to his charge. Unusual because Artemis is one of the series' protagonists... of course, it doesn't hurt that Artemis displays a number of the prerequisite "evil mastermind" characteristics. In a (failed) attempt to maintain a level of professional distance, Butler never tells Artemis his first name, though in The Eternity Code it's revealed to be Domovoi, the name of a Slavic guardian spirit.
  • It should be noted that the series begins by exploring the possibility that the word "butler" is derived from the Fowl family's line of manservants, going as far back as the Norman conquest of England in 1066.
  • It is also mentioned that a prerequisite for being a bodyguard to the Fowl family, among combat experience, is "Cordon Bleu cooking skills". And in The Lost Colony, he uses them.
• Baccano! has three of them, played with varying levels of straightness: Christopher Shouldered is the most simple and straightforward example, serving as Ricard Russo's bodyguard out of gratitude for saving his life. Chane Laforet is a little more complicated, as she was an almost disturbingly loyal servant of her manipulative father up until her run-in with Claire Stanfield, after which she finds herself fretting the inevitable Friend-or-Idol Decision. Ennis is a subversion — she initially fits all of the characteristics of a typical Battle Butler for Big Bad Szilard Quates (up to and including wearing suits and serving as his driver), until she gets the opportunity to voice her thoughts: she serves him only because he can kill her with a single thought if she doesn't, and hates him more than anyone else does for the things he makes her do.
• Belisarius Series: Rao was private tutor to Shakuntala: there is something awesome about having one of the greatest warriors in India as your Battle Butler.
• Although Gunner Ferik Jurgen of the Ciaphas Cain series isn't a butler in the conventional sense, he certainly fits this trope as Commissar Ciaphas Cain's aide. He even carries out some of the typical duties of a valet when there isn't any shooting going on, such as finding accommodations, food, and entertainment suitable for a HERO OF THE IMPERIUM and keeping unwelcome visitors from disturbing the Commissar's peace.
  • A running joke in the series is that Jurgen has as much, or more of a claim to being a real hero than Cain himself. Cain acknowledges this and is constantly annoyed that no one else ever does.
• In Cross and Poppy, the Duke of Taunton's butler, Viney, who's the other churchwarden (with the Duke), Vice-Captain (with the Duke) of the Woolfonts Combined XI, the overall XO for everything, and runs rings around the local constabulary for intel and investigation (with the other servants in support, admittedly). As the Duke says, 'I haven't a network of informers, really, I've a staff' – and the Duke was an Intelligence Corps officer at the sharp end in Iraq and Afghanistan. Viney's less a Battle Butler than a Battle Bunter.
• Roman in the The Crown Jewels and Rock of Ages. While he'd prefer his master Maijstral be a bit more concerned with his status and honor, he is still utterly faithful and eager to pound his master's enemies into a pulp.
  • And do not mess with him when he's molting.
• Willikins, Commander Vimes' butler from Discworld, has quite a lot of violent capacity when his employer or city are threatened. It's explained he used to be a member of a rather vicious youth gang, whom even Vimes (famous as one of the Disc's dirtiest fighters) considers hard bastards and is rather happy his own gang never had reason to rumble with. He's also a member of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch "Specials", a group of would-be watchmen who, due to whatever reason, are not able to devote their full time to the job. Willikins is notable for politely downplaying in conversation his combat abilities, or even getting excessively specific when explaining why he, for example, happened to be holding a fifteen-inch ice knife^note imagine, if you will, a breadknife, only a foot-and-a-half long, with half-inch, razor-sharp serrations. That poor Dwarf. when a hit squad attacks the house. Willikins favored weapons are a peaked cap lined with sharpened pennies (a nod either to Oddjob or the real life Peaky Blinders) or a pair of spiked knuckledusters that make his boss wince. Not to mention the time when Willikins left Vimes' service to fight in Klatch — biting a D'Reg's nose off at one point, and generally being Sergeant Badass.
  • Just to reiterate: Four dwarfs came through the basement wall, catching Willikins completely off guard. He killed one and captured a second (by the expedient of hanging him on a hook the dwarf couldn't free himself from) before properly registering what was happening. He managed to take down half a commando squad, handpicked for the mission, heavily armed and armored, while he was in his normal butlering suit, before thinking about it.
  • In Snuff, Vimes himself comments that Willikins would have made an excellent copper, if only he wouldn't have made a just-as-good, if not better, assassin. The only reason why he didn't was the social class difference. That, and assassins have rules.
• The Archive from The Dresden Files is a young girl who holds the sum of all human knowledge. She depends on the mercenary "Kincaid" to be her Chauffeur, Butler, and Bodyguard in one person.
• The various personal servants in Duumvirate often fit this trope, especially if they're genetically engineered. Subverted in that the master might be even more physically dangerous.
• Sarah Stevens in Dying to Please is a covert bodyguard as well as butler for her elderly boss.
• Erast Fandorin's personal servant Masahiro "Masa" Shibata is a former Yakuza, whose life and dignity Fandorin almost accidentally saved, not yet knowing that he is in for one Disproportionate Reward...
• Mack Bolan (The Executioner series by Don Pendelton) would occasionally run into loyal Mafiosi who fit this description when he tried infiltration instead of his usual One-Man Army approach, which didn't make his task any easier.
• Many servants in Fortune De France are also competent fighters and happen to defend their masters. Miroul in particular (the protagonist's servant) is a very skilled one.
• Both Kirishima Shinobu and Hosaka Mitsuru of Good Luck! Ninomiya-kun are Battle Butlers to their ojou-sama Houjou Reika. Both demonstrate extreme devoutness, top-notch martial skills, and protective behavior towards Reika.
• Yuki Nagato from Haruhi Suzumiya acts like this for Kyon, more or less placing him above anything else. Her loyalty ultimately lies with him, even above that of her boss and Haruhi. Sometimes it seems like she will only do something when Kyon tells her to. And boy, don't you dare to threaten Kyon, or she'll kick your ass hard. Then again, Kyon doesn't really play the role of her "master." In fact, he tries to avoid relying on her help, feeling it unfair to let her do all the dirty work, just because she won the Superpower Lottery.
• In Honor Harrington, the personal armsmen of Grayson steadholders cover this trope quite nicely, and under Grayson law, a Steadholder can have up to 50 of them. See also Cathy Montaigne's butler, a former combat-bred slave.
• In the Horatio Hornblower novel Flying Colours, Hornblower decides to bring his burly coxswain Brown on the road to his and Bush's would-be execution as a "servant" because he'd be a useful man in an escape attempt. Afterwards, Hornblower employs him as an actual butler.
• In Hurog, Ward inherits not only one, but two of those when his father dies. Axiel is more the standard variety, a valet who is also a good fighter, while Oreg is not only trained as an assassin, he's also a powerful mage and a kind of ghost who is magically bound to a ring.
• Of the classic "Rich Idiot with No Day Job" variety, you have P. G. Wodehouse's concoction: Jeeves — the valet to end all valets. He doesn't physically manhandle anyone, but he looks after his mental featherweight of an employer, Bertram Wooster. One can only imagine Jeeves does it simply for amusement, and there have been several fan theories on the matter.
  • He does get physical on one occasion when Bertie, being pursued by a policeman, ends up literally up a tree. The TV series included that scene, but inexplicably cut the line "I took the liberty of coshing the officer, sir." It is also mentioned, albeit in throwaway lines, that Jeeves is a veteran of World War One, and that several of Bertie's acquaintances who have hunted their entire lives are impressed by Jeeves' shotgun skills.
• The In Death series has Summerset. He is normally quite reserved but has been shown to kick a little ass. Especially in flashback.
• Arthurian Legend: Sir Lucan is probably one of the oldest examples. He actually had the title of "Royal Butler", served his king diligently, and was loyal to the end. He was also a solid and reliable knight who even nearly always survives the Battle of Camlann alongside Bedivere, living at least long enough to help Arthur off the battlefield. In one version of the legend, he even takes the role of the knight who throws Excalibur into the lake.
• In Kris Longknife: Deserter, Kris's mother hires her Abby Nightingale, a ladies' maid who keeps her employer well-supplied with such feminine necessities as bulletproof lingerie, exploding falsies, and color-shifting body paint. She's also a good shot herself and holds a reserve commission in Wardhaven military intelligence.
• Samwise Gamgee starts out as Frodo's personal servant (and gardener) in The Lord of the Rings. Every biographer of J. R. R. Tolkien says he's modeled after the batman (the servant of a commissioned officer) that served under an inexperienced high-born WWI officer that Tolkien knew. Which makes Sam Frodo's bodyguard.
• In the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy Sayers, Wimsey's butler Bunter was his batman in World War I and saved Lord Peter's life on the battlefield.
• In Lout of Count's Family, being an Almighty Janitor is a requirement for working in the Henituse household. The two butlers we see are Ron and Hans. Although we don't see much of Hans' abilities, Ron is one of the best fighters in the series.
• Bugg from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. He is the understated yet absolutely loyal manservant to Impoverished Patrician Tehol Beddict. Though unassuming, it becomes quickly obvious that the criminal underbelly of Letheras doesn't want the attention of this friendly old man and he is not afraid to face ancient, long-buried, and forgotten gods. As it turns out, in addition to being a suitably quirky sidekick to Tehol, Bugg is Mael, the Elder God of the Seas, in disguise.
• Fritz in the Nero Wolfe stories; although Archie is generally the muscle, Fritz has shown more than once that he is not precisely helpless when things get physical.
• Hideo, the Tessier-Ashpools' deadly but devoted servant in William Gibson's Neuromancer, is an example of this trope.
• Paradise Rot: Kampo, Jackson Farraday's manservant. He's the most physically imposing of the zombies and manhandles Kyle a few times.
• Rebuild World: Since the Lion Steel MegaCorp is known for their Ninja Maid servants and agents for hire, eventually they’re shown to have just as many male servants, such as Chloe’s chief butler Lattis, who’s a Noble Demon Evil Counterpart to Reina’s maid themed bodyguard Shiori. All the maids and butlers in the company wear advanced Powered Armor under those styling (and the more advanced the armor, the less it looks like that). Reina also ends up getting Togami such a butler outfit.
• RCN by David Drake:
  • Daniel Leary's manservant Hogg practically raised him (his father, a powerful politician, wasn't much of a dad) in addition to keeping his clothes repaired and bodyguarding him with an impeller rifle, a large folding knife, and a weighted length of deep-sea fishing line he uses as a bullwhip or garrote.
  • At the end of the first book, Adele Mundy adopts (for want of a better term) Tovera, an Alliance Fifth Bureau assassin who was left marooned on Kostroma when Daniel and Adele blew up the Alliance forces there.
• In The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, the villain has a hulking, oddly deformed battle chauffeur who is eventually revealed to be a yeti passing as human.
• Wilhelmina Carmel from Shakugan no Shana, guardian and maid of Shana, the title character. Hecate (the girl with the hat) also has her own literal demonic battle butler.
• Slayers: Jilas is Gravos's Battle Butler. Interestingly, he outlives his master.
• Thomas hires one to protect Kate in The Grand Tour. Unfortunately, he's rubbish as a butler, but he's an excellent bodyguard.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: As First Steward, Marsh supervises the Night's Watch members who provide food, clothing, animal care, and indoor maintenance to the rest of the group, making him like a butler with an unusually large staff. He leads a contingent of men to defend the Bridge of Skulls from Mance's army.
• Spartan: Talos is Brithos'steward in battle. He chose him because he knows he is very skilled in combat. All thanks to the training of his adoptive grandfather.
• Ephant Mon from Star Wars Legends. Despite (or because of) his lack of criminal ruthlessness or selfishness, he was a loyal servant to Jabba the Hutt, and almost certainly the gangster's only actual friend. Ends up reluctantly leaving Jabba's service after trying (and failing) to get him to release Luke Skywalker.
  • There's also the Tac-Spec FIII Footman Droid, programmed for such roles as chef, waiter, chauffeur, and valet and equipped with such tools as the ability to make a head-shot from 10 km away, a high-power railgun in their arm, and the strength to drive their fist through a tank. Of course, they were built in secret on a "you ask, we sell" basis for nobles and Corrupt Corporate Executives by a front company for an assassin's guild...
• Mr Grin, the knife-throwing butler/pilot of Darius Sayle in Stormbreaker.
• Howard Whitehouse's The Strictest School in the World and sequels include Lal Singh, "a mysterious and heroic butler."
• The domicis from The Sun Sword try to function somewhere between butler and Hyper-Competent Sidekick. For many, that means being able to kick ass. Morretz is at least a bit capable of pulling this off for The Terafin, and Avandar Gallais is this to the nth degree, to the point where many have trouble understanding what the hell he's doing serving Jewel. Including Jewel, often.
• Worthington in The Three Investigators is a brave, resourceful and occasionally quick-fisted chauffeur.
• In Tsumiko and the Enslaved Fox, Argent is Tsumiko's proper butler—until he's an enormous predator guarding her from any and all attacks.
• Adolphus Kreiger of Vampireslayer employs the powerful Roche as his manservant and leader of his minions. Kreiger hardly needs him in a fight, but he can operate during the day and is unquestionably loyal to Kreiger, as were his father and grandfather. Unfortunately, he runs afoul of his master's "mother" and gets his head ripped off
• Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga:
  • Sgt. Bothari, who's taken into the Vorkosigan household as a sworn retainer after being discharged from the military on grounds of being totally bugfrak insane; he's large, paranoid-schizophrenic, sexually odd, profoundly devoted to his Lord and Lady (especially the latter), and — by the end — heartbreaking.
  • Pym, who (kind of) replaces Bothari, also counts. He's former ImpSec. We never see him using those skills, but I would bet good money that he hasn't lost his edge.
  • Also Roic, who gets to butler through battle behind Miles in Diplomatic Immunity, and has a... memorable... fight at the tail end of A Civil Campaign. We also see him in action in Cryoburn.
  • You could argue that Battle Butler is basically the job description for a Count's liege-sworn Armsman — most of the ones who are actual characters, rather than part of the background action, certainly qualify.
  • Also mentioned in The Vor Game is Sergeant Overholt, an ImpSec Non-Com that, when it's suggested that he be the batman for an AWOL Emperor Gregor of Barrayar he bemoans the fact that he hadn't gone through Illyan's "special courses", and thus, was unqualified to do so.
• Moving to Lois McMaster Bujold's World of the Five Gods, Lady Tanar's albino eunuch secretary/bodyguard Surakos Bosha from the Penric series (who appears in The Prisoner of Limnos and The Assassins of Thasalon) certainly qualifies. He's an excellent secretary and personal attendant, and also a skilled assassin.
• Reynold, a [Butler] in The Wandering Inn, carries magical items and is said to be able to fight off most attackers.
• Glorfindel in The Lord of the Rings. Granted, his specific position is never stated: but his normal role doesn't seem to be combat related, since he doesn't dress in armor or carry weapons most of the time. He certainly speaks to Elrond the way that a butler might be expected to. However, he has led Rivendell's military in the past and to great effect: notably at the Battle of the Last Alliance, and during the wars with Angmar. In the book it is revealed that the Ringwraiths are terrified of him, and for good reason: he's as powerful as a Maia, possibly even close to Sauron's power level. He is an example of an otherwise normal (well, normal for a Noldor elf) character Taking a Level in Badass. He's actually a reincarnated hero of the First Age, a Lord of Gondolin famous for killing a balrog (the name for evil Maiar of lesser power than Sauron). The reason he's serving Elrond is presumably because Elrond is the great-grandson of his previous lord, Turgon. However it should be noted that this would be Glorfindel's choice: as his oath of fealty to Turgon wouldn't require him to serve Turgon's heirs. Elves, being immortal, swear their oaths to individuals rather than families. Since the inhabitants of Gondolin were primarily Turgon's household servants and/or distant relatives (Glorfindel seems to have been both), he could qualify for this trope in relation to Turgon as well. Given that his house was named "The Golden Flower", it's a pretty safe bet that their primary duties weren't related to combat: but Glorfindel himself was evidently a badass even back then.
• Overlord (2012) has Sebas Tian. During the time of YGGDRASIL, he was created to serve as one of the last lines of defense in the Great Tomb of Nazarick, though no raid party ever made it to him. In the New World, he serves as one of Ains' elite minions, carrying out various tasks with simple efficiency. Whenever he needs to fight, the fact that he is level 100 in a world where the mid 30's are considered superhuman means that he tends to deliver a Curbstomp Battle.

Live-Action TV

• Lurch from The Addams Family, his look alone could easily scare any enemy, but if that wasn't enough, he also has superhuman strength and durability.
• Edwin Jarvis becomes this by the end of the 2nd season of Agent Carter. He knows ju-jitsu!
• In the Angel episode "Just Rewards", Angel was paying a visit to the mansion inhabited by the Monster of the Week, and the butler attacked him on orders from his necromancer master. Angel killed him with a spoon before he could do anything but brandish some meat cleavers menacingly.
• In Arrow, John Diggle is officially the driver and bodyguard of Oliver Queen and served three tours of duty with the US Army's Special Forces. He's rarely ever had to defend Oliver, who is a badass vigilante all on his own, but that doesn't stop him from kicking plenty of ass on his own.
• Babylon 5: Lennier is this to Delenn, and Na'Toth to G'Kar.
• On the Batman (1966) TV series, Alfred Pennyworth goes into action against Penguin (with his fists) and the Joker (fencing) on separate episodes.
  • In the final episode of Birds of Prey (2002), Alfred becomes one.
  Alfred: Mistress Harley! *Pumps shotgun* Buttle this!
  • He's hinted at being ex-Special Air Service in Gotham, fencing and boxing with young Bruce Wayne and then fending off home invaders at Wayne Manor. He even calls himself Bruce's bodyguard at one point.
• Eddie Kessler in Boardwalk Empire is, at first sight, just Nucky Thompson's Funny Foreigner Beleaguered Assistant, whose loyalty in the face of constant belittlement is striking in a show full of backstabbing and personal ambition. He has a chance to shine in the climax of the third season, however, as an attempt is made on Nucky's life and he shows impressive skill as a getaway driver and bodyguard. After that, Nucky starts to realise how much he relies on Eddie and tries to show him more respect. In a subversion of the trope, though, once he's shown his abilities as a soldier Eddie is unsatisfied going back to a life of fetching his boss's meals and packing his suitcases, and asks for a more active role in the organisation.
• Doctor Who:
  • Hermann in the classic serial City of Death.
    Fourth Doctor: I say, what a wonderful butler, he's so violent!
  • Former Sontaran warrior Strax acts as butler for Madame Vastra, which is usually Played for Laughs. He will threaten you with obliteration and then offer to hang up your coat for you. There's Ninja Maid Jenny in the house too, altogether making the Paternoster Gang not to be messed with, even without the Doctor.
  • Spin-Off Torchwood has Ianto Jones, the snazzily-dressed, occasionally-asskicking (or -tasering) teaboy. His job description according to his boss/eventual boyfriend is "cleans up after us, gets us everywhere on time...and looks good in a suit." This does not stop him doing just as much, if not more, field work than the rest of the team (which, Torchwood being Torchwood, involves lots of shooting things). In "Fragments", there's a flashback to when he begged Jack for a job at Torchwood, and he explicitly says, "A butler! I could be a butler!"
• in What We Do in the Shadows (2019) following the end of season two and the start of season three Guillermo follows the trope in becoming the bodyguard for the vampire roommates while still having some of his old familiar duties.
• Mr Bates in Downton Abbey in the backstory: he was batman (military valet; see Real Life section below) to Lord Grantham during The Second Boer War. His (extremely important) leg injury was received in that war. Bates has not had any need to physically defend Lord Grantham since then, but he has not been afraid to use his considerable physical strength on extremely rare occasions in the interests of justice.
  • Footman William Mason ends up in France during World War I as Matthew Crawley's batman, and dies from injuries sustained saving Matthew during the last push at Amiens.
• Game of Thrones: Sam consoles Jon about his appointment as a steward rather than a ranger in part by pointing out one of his duties would be to squire for the Lord Commander in battle. Circumstances also conspire to give Jon plenty of opportunity to get in more than his share of ass-kicking.
• Kato, the chauffeur and sidekick of The Green Hornet. As played by Bruce Lee, Kato was substantially more impressive in a fight than the Hornet himself, yet remained in the humble role of a servant.
• Deneb from Kamen Rider Den-O, who's a comedic foil/caretaker to his broody partner and master, Yuto Sakurai.
  • Later we meet Ryotaro's Future Badass grandson Kotaro and his partner Imagin Teddy, who serves a much straighter version of this role. Episode Blue of the Chou Den-O Trilogy reveals that Teddy is even working hard to protect Kotaro from the bad luck he inherited from his grandfather.
• Higgins, Robin Masters' major domo in Magnum, P.I., is a former sergeant in the British Army with a complex and colorful past (though not as complex and colorful as his father's past!). However, he may not qualify since there is a very good chance that he is the real Robin Masters.
• Merlin (2008): Prince, and later King, Arthur has a clumsy, dorky, yet surprisingly wise and insightful manservant. His name? Merlin. Yes, that Merlin He's obviously not as nearly as helpless as he seems, though almost no one realizes. Given that he serves Arthur, it doubles as a case of Bodyguarding a Badass (though Merlin is actually more dangerous than his master).
• Queen of Swords: While not quite Alfred levels of badass, Marta is a pretty good fighter for "just" a servant. In "The Witness", she singlehandedly fights off Mary Rose's Mooks until their boss personally steps in.
• Star Trek: Picard. Jean-Luc Picard has retired to his family chateau in France where he has Romulan refugees Laris and Zhaban working for him as servants. Both are former members of the feared Romulan Tal Shiar, and when Picard is attacked at the chateau by a Romulan death squad, they're more than capable of defending him.
• Succession: Although he is never shown in action, Logan Roy's loyal, mostly silent bodyguard, Colin, comes off as more than capable of getting physical in defense of his employer if it comes to that.
• Aloysius "Nosey" Parker, servant and chauffeur to Lady Penelope from Thunderbirds, also qualifies, m'Lady.
  • Justified in that Parker was originally a career criminal, who first met Lady Penelope whilst he was in the middle of robbing her home. She was so impressed with his handiwork, she decided to hire him instead.
• In Ugly Betty, Marc is Wilhelmina's Battle Butler. Disposing of the Battle Butler when it's convenient was played with when Wilhelmina "traded" Marc for something she needed for her latest scheme, but later gave it up to get Marc back. Being a Card-Carrying Villain and all, Wilhelmina refused to admit that she did this because she missed Marc, but it was still played as a Pet the Dog moment.

Pinballs

• Butler from WHO dunnit is a slightly subdued example, in that he's willing to commit murder if he feels his client Victoria is threatened. Justified in that he's secretly her father, and gets into full Papa Wolf mode around her.

Pro Wrestling

• Spoofed with Ralphus, Chris Jericho's "personal security ninja" during his time in WCW.
  • Early on in WWE, Jericho had Mr. Hughes, who was a straight example.
• Virgil, the valet to The Million Dollar Man, Ted DiBiase.
  • DiBiase's son recently went through the process of trying to recruit such a lackey, he even lampshades it by calling the position "his Virgil". After R-Truth and John Morrison turned him down, he eventually found his man... Virgil. Though their relationship only lasted a couple of months before Virgil got canned.
• And, of course, later in the WWF, Triple H had Chyna, who was the rare female example that was not in Mad Love. (At least, in front of the camera...)

Roleplay

• Kosviel from Fate/Nuovo Guerra has her Servant, Attila the Hun, who for some reason does household chores. She also has a straighter Battle Butler in her butler Klaus.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost (1st edition) divides Changelings into seemings (general 'character classes' as determined by appearance and magic affinities) and kiths (specialized classes determined by the nature of the character's Durance). The Wizened seeming has the "Chatelaine" kith, for preternaturally skilled manservants and house-managers. Combine this with a fighting style (such as Kung Fu or Boxing), and BAM, instant Battle Butler.
• A rather macabre version of this appears in the Dungeon Magazine module "Horror's Havest", an adventure set in the Ravenloft setting. The Player Characters have to deal with a madman living in a mansion, where the servants (including a butler and a seemingly-harmless maid) are juju zombies, that they have to fight. (It is implied that he murdered his servants and cursed them with this condition). And dealing with this villain is only done to gain a clue about the real villain.
• Maid RPG has a specific set of optional rules for these: Butlers have stats superior to those that maid characters do, but have a number of restrictions as well. As battle is far from uncommon in many Maid RPG sessions, butlers have their times to shine in fulfillment of this trope, especially in defense of their respective Master characters.
  • A great deal of a typical game session consists of the maid characters conflicting with each other (not normally at a PvP-ish level) due to personality clashes, outside loyalties (none of them technically being against the Master's side in no way means they need to be on the same side, or that of society or sanity), domestic squabbles and general random weirdness going on at the same time. This also tends to repeatedly put maids into situations they're individually very badly suited for. While the role of a butler isn't absolutely necessary, a butler explicitly being required to be above it all makes one useful to have around both to keep the other players at least working together whenever the plot demands it and to give to a player who isn't comfortable mixed up in the competitive elements.
• Pathfinder supplement Gonzo has a literal Battle Butler class, with the hit dice and attack rolls of a fighter, "Tricks of the Trade" that combine stereotypical butler abilities with combat effectiveness, and the ability to go into a frenzy if their "master" is harmed. The class description clarifies that "battle butler" is just a slang term, and characters in this class can have the title of butler, maid, majordomo, housekeeper, manservant, valet, or steward, among others.
• Warhammer 40,000
  • Jurgen is battle butler to Ciaphas Cain. Asides from carrying a BFG of a fusion weapon, being Cain's driver and general aide, Jurgen makes sure that Cain always has a cup of Tanna tea at hand. Jurgen is also, due to an incredibly rare gene, a psychic null. He has no connection to the Warp whatsoever and makes even demons uncomfortable. Of course that could just be his body odour.
  • The Seneschal player class in Rogue Trader is described to be half-this, half-The Spymaster on its Flavor Text, dealing with the minutiae of running an interstellar trading empire so his Intrepid Merchant master can focus on more important stuff... and this "minutiae" including such things as handling vast intelligence networks and "handling" threats to his master.

Video Games

• Oscar from AFK Arena is a genteel butler to a noblewoman, sporting a dapper suit and monocle. He's also a retired assassin who carries multiple dining knives on his person and can absolutely kick ass with them.
• ANNO: Mutationem: Yuko Yada is Ayane's family butler, who not only wears a traditional kimono, official art design shows she's skilled in katana wielding.
• Fiona Mayfield from Arcana Heart is the Battle Butler to Mildred Avalon, the first game's angelic Big Bad. She also comes equipped with a maid outfit and a Cloud Strife-style zweihander.
• Klungo from Banjo-Kazooie fits this trope perfectly; he is fiercely loyal despite being beaten (constantly) for his (constant) failures to Gruntilda the Witch. This is lampshaded late in the sequel when Klungo, after being beaten up by both his mistress and the player at least three times each, is convinced by the main characters that it's in his best interests to call it quits (and he goes off to pursue a job making "stuupid gamess," no less).
• BlazBlue:
  • Rachel Alucard's butler Valkenhyn R. Hellsing brews a mean cup of tea and is always deferential to "Madame Rachel" — and he's a werewolf. Oh, and he was also one of the Six Heroes who kicked the Black Beast's ass a century ago.
  • There's also Kagura Mutsuki's assistant, Hibiki Kohaku although not at first. It took until the fourth game to really show off his skills. He's an assassin/ninja, and looks strikingly like Captain Levi.
• Castle Cainhurst in Bloodborne is host to many tough enemies. Aside from the gargoyles, ghosts, and such, you will encounter still living people inside that will slay you with near-Master Swordsman efficiency if you're not prepared. These are the castle's cleaning staff.
• Rick Arrowsmith from Bullet Butlers, by Ocelot. A bishonen gun-wielding butler with Scary Shiny Glasses, he's unquestionably loyal to his master, Selma Fortenmayer (Which may have something to do with her role as the potential savior of the world). Interestingly enough, he's the protagonist of the game, not a side-character.
• Death himself serves as a Battle Butler for Dracula in the Castlevania games. He's also said to be the closest thing the Dark Lord has to a friend.
• Wynnfield from Demonbane. He doesn't look like much, but his fight scene features him boxing a four-armed samurai.
• Disgaea 4 has Fenrich who serves as this for Valvatorez, and is so loyal to him that he's a Psycho Supporter.
• Since Dragalia Lost is a Gacha game about a prince recruiting a bunch of people into his castle as they continuously fight monsters (or fiends, as they’re called) and an evil empire, it should be no surprise that the Halidom has quite a few people who are like this. Examples include Melody and Edward. However, the one that stands out the most is Cleo, one of the game’s main characters. She has taken care of the Halidom day in and day out for over 300 years, yet is just as capable in a fight as Euden and friends. In battle, Cleo proves to be in incredibly helpful asset to the gang, as she is the main healer.
• Every Jarl in the province of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has a Housecarl in charge of his or her protection. By becoming the Thane of a city, you can get a Housecarl of your own, who is charged with guarding you and all you own with his or her life and is a very able ally in your adventures. In addition, the Hearthfire DLC also allows you to designate a Steward for your home.
• EXTRAPOWER: Daitoku Igor, the loyal butler of the Forcestar family. He was also an ace pilot for the military prior to entering Forcestar's service and puts his expertise to use piloting various mecha during Attack of Darkforce. In Star Resistance, he chases off Mensouma at the end of his first boss battle (with soap) for Sharkungo or Forcestar and shields them from the Dark Force attack ship bombardment at the start of Stage 3 so they can escape.
• Fallout:
  • In Fallout 3, the Mister Handy Bot is designed for domestic tasks but does have a large saw, which has countless misfortunes laid at its feet, like your ruined birthday cake. There was actually a military version made, "Mr Gutsy", who has a flamethrower and spouts phrases that sound disturbingly like parodies of classic "Soldier Hero" talk.
    • Also in Fallout 3, the local radio host did a series about Herbert "Daring" Dashwood and his "stalwart Ghoul manservant" Argyle. It's made clear in the series that Argyle, a master of hand-to-hand combat that could kill a Mirelurk with his bare hands, did most of the work when things got messy (which was quite often as Dashwood's mix of chivalry and womanizing got him in a lot of trouble). In their final adventure, Dashwood is seduced by a female slaver into revealing the location of an underground city that they were supposed to keep secret, and Argyle saves Dashwood by ripping out her heart before she could kill him. Unfortunately, they were unable to stop the slavers from destroying the city, enslaving everyone, and killing Argyle after he and Dashwood were separated.
    • You can meet the real Dashwood; while he insists that his character flaws were grossly exaggerated in the show, he'll readily admit that the real Argyle was every bit as badass as his show counterpart and got him out of countless tight spots. He believes that Argyle's still out there and it's possible to inform him of Argyle's death after finding his corpse, causing Dashwood to retire from adventuring and reward the player with the contents of his safe.
    • This is actually a Shout-Out to the original Green Hornet radio plays, which would've been popular in the era before The Great War.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, you have Yes-Man, a semi-immortal robot who is loyal only to you (because only you can get into the building where he lives) and he commands an army of highly advanced kill bots with Wolverine-like healing factors.
  • In Fallout 4, your Robot Butler Codsworth (who waited for 210 years for you to come home) can become one of your followers. He's pretty handy with his buzzsaw, and his blowtorch makes a decent flamethrower. With the Automaton DLC, he can be modded out with bigger guns and tougher armor, making him much more dangerous.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Babus from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. He looks like just another Nu Mou, who is serving under Prince Mewt, until you face him in battle, that is. He is quite strong, magically and physically, and is 10x more dangerous when you have to fight him alone at one point.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, you can hire retainers, who can be assigned a class by the player. These include gardening and fishing, but can also include a majority of the combat classes as well, such as Maurader or Lancer. If you assign them a combat class, you can send them on missions to hunt and explore for you, and their level can go as high as your own in that particular class.
    • Also notable is the Machinist questline character Joye of the Nine Faces, the cute assistant to Stephanivien who goes from demure and timid to a hard-firin' foul-mouthed bombshell when she lets her hair down.
  • Final Fantasy XV's Ignis Scientia is one of the personal bodyguards to Prince Noctis, fighting off threats to the prince's safety with a pair of daggers and a spear. He also serves as the chauffeur of the Regalia, the prince's custom sports car, and cooks for the prince and his friends during their excursions into the wilderness. Later on, Ignis both risks his life and sacrifices his eyesight to protect the prince from not one but two assailants!
    • He was also assigned and raised to be Noctis' adviser at the age of six. In the short anime adaptation, Brotherhood, Ignis cooks and cleans for Noctis while the two are in high school, the latter of which is living in an apartment by himself. As in the game, Ignis chauffeurs for Noctis albeit in a different car. He also attends meetings and takes down notes for him. Essentially, Ignis is a butler to Prince Noctis in all but name. And indeed, he is quite the capable fighter, acting as the group strategist and filling a mainly supportive role with spells to enhance the others' attacks and using potions and later a special move to heal them.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Frederick in Fire Emblem: Awakening objects to being called a steward, but he more or less fills the role to a T. Those who look closely will see that he wears a suit under his armor.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has Butler and Maid as a promotion of the Troubadour class (complete with the requisite outfits), with Jakob starting off as this to a female main character and Felicia to a male one (though they both eventually join the party regardless of the protagonist's gender); there's also Felicia's sister Flora. They can use staves to heal and Hidden Weapons (namely, Daggers or Shuriken) to attack. It's also possible to class or re-class a good majority of the playable characters as a butler or maid, depending on whether they have Troubadour as an assigned solo reclass unlockable with a Heart Seal or marry either Jakob or Felicia, then use a Partner Seal.
  • Felicia, Flora, and Jakob reappear as these in Fire Emblem Heroes, and an alt for Kagero has her in a maid outfit as well.
• Thoma from Genshin Impact is the housekeeper and chief retainer of the powerful Kamisato Clan, at least on paper. But besides household chores, he is also an exceptionally well-connected Fixer that can handle just about any task that is necessary in service of the Yashiro Commission. He's also a skilled warrior in his own right, with a Pyro Vision and the courage necessary to throw a spear at the Raiden Shogun's face.
• Mizoguchi from Hadaka Shitsuji definitely counts. He's essentially a bodybuilder with experience in martial arts in a suit. One event has him literally kick a metal door off the hinges and run after a speeding taxi.
• Albert, Sakuya's butler in Hatoful Boyfriend, is actually an assassin posing as a butler. Sakuya knows this and has him just where he wants him — poised to kill Sakuya if Sakuya gave the signal, and defending him with his life against other assassins who might steal his kill.
• Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni Kai: Kasai, with his occasionally Yandere client Shion and Doctor Irie, he breaks into a hospital filled with secret conspirators. He then gets to show off his skills with a shotgun including smacking some guy in the face with one after interrogating him. He is later shown shooting out the tires of a van with a sniper rifle.
• The Legend of Heroes - Trails:
  • Trails in the Sky: Philip Runall is long-suffering butler of Duke Dunan. His duties generally involve running errands for the Duke, cleaning up after him, dealing with everyone Dunan crosses paths with as a master swordsman.
  • Trails of Cold Steel: The party can battle Celestin on a few occasions, such as when taking back Trista in Cold Steel II. Towards the end of Cold Steel III, he goes head on using martial arts against a Magic Knight.
• In the Simulation Game Max Gentlemen Sexy Business!, one of the player's sidekicks is a dapper, muscular gent actually called "Battle Butler" who delivers tea to his coworkers and pain to their enemies.
• Amaki in Morenatsu is implied to be one of these many times, with such quotes as "how did he get behind me so silently" If you do a certain action to one of the love interests he calls you out to the park the next day and warns you "anything that hurts or confuses" his charge "should be removed".
• In the Neverwinter Nights mod series The Aielund Saga, the evil aristocrat who serves as the primary adversary in the second chapter has a capable butler who dual-wields bastard swords and attacks upon being told you are on an official investigation.
• In Ōkami, a scrap of paper infused with a demon of sorts serves as "gatekeeper" to one of the game's bosses. While his only means of halting Amaterasu involve racing past her to shut gates, he has the full personality of a Battle Butler. To the point that a literal piece of paper is considered the Worthy Opponent of a Physical God.
• There is an actual class of Pokémon trainer called "Castle Valet" (Castle Butler in the Japanese version) in Pokémon, however it refers to Darach. Darach is implied to be the actual battler, while Caitlin just sits down watching the battle. There is also a class of trainer named "Maid".
  • What about Waiters and Waitresses?
    • In Pokémon X and Y, there's a trainer class titled Butler, though its only member is Butler Chalmers.
    • Siebold of the Kalos Elite Four also qualifies. Although not a butler, he is a famous chef.
    • In Pokémon Sword and Shield, there's an odd variation in Indeedee. They are butlers... but only the male variants, while the females are babysitters. No matter the gender, however, they can tango with the other Pokemon just fine.
• Princess Evangile has Masaya in the ending of Ruriko's route become the family butler for the Kamiyagi family, in order to prove himself worthy of being with her following his expulsion from Vincennes. On the side, he also acts as Ruriko's personal bodyguard, having already proven himself to be able to fight back during the common route.
• Alfred from Princess Lover!. When Princess Charlotte's carriage is attacked by a group of thugs in a jeep, despite appearing elderly he leaps into their vehicle and starts beating the crap out of them. The leader pulls a pistol on him and he removes its slide (ala Jet Li in Lethal Weapon 4) before the thug can even think about pulling the trigger. If not for Charlotte's carriage crashing in the process, main character Teppei's own attempted rescue would've been completely superfluous in the face of Alfred's badassery.
• Kogoro is this to Mii in Project × Zone, in addition to being her tutor.
• Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure gives us Elisabeth's butler / bodyguard Alfred, who Phantom R must fight and defeat to obtain the Queen's Pendant. He's actually very competent in fighting assuming the Chevaliers Diabolique aren't involved.
• Rune Factory 4 has three butlers: Vishnal, Clorica, and Volkanon. Since literally anyone in town can be asked to accompany you into the dungeons to fight monsters, they're also quite effective in battle.
  • Special mention goes to Volkanon, who smashes down a HUGE felled tree in your way by screaming to announce his presence and charges straight through it.
• Lenny from Shadow Hearts: From The New World. He used to be a member of the Terrible Trio in Covenant, but in this game, he serves as Johnny's butler after, while tired and thirsty in the streets, being given water by Johnny many years ago. With just a phone call, he can punch an energy bomb from his fist at the enemy. From halfway across the world. Mainly because he has a contract with a demon called Godhand.
• Ramirez from Skies of Arcadia. This one showed some very insane tendencies, however; when his first Master betrayed him, Ramirez killed him and nearly everyone on his staff. When his second Master, the game's main Big Bad, is killed by the player characters late in the game, he goes into a psychotic rampage and tries to kill everything on the planet.
• While normally a Non-Action Guy and Straight Man to his master Kaos, Glumshanks is temporarily turned into this in Skylanders: SWAP Force game via Petrified Darkness. However, Evil Glumshanks, as he is then known, is a more mystic version of this trope, using his ability to control machinery and telekinesis to rain down missiles and form a tank to fight his opponents, serving as the first boss of the game.
• Dapang from the John Woo game Stranglehold is Wong's most loyal servant, who distinguished himself by taking some bullets for Wong during one of his death matches, crushing the would-be assassin to death with his towering strength, and then going on to kill the opponent who he was fighting while still wounded. Wong was so impressed by Dapang's loyalty that he hired him on the spot as his bodyguard.
• Just about every main character in the Suikoden series has some form of bodyguard, but in the original Suikoden, the hero McDohl has Gremio, a manservant who's deft with a soup spoon and has a mean ax. And he also dies in one of the games' many emotional moments.
• The Ebony and Ivory butlers of Count Lee in Sword of Mana, who are actually werewolves.
• Rowen J. Ilbert from Tales of Xillia. He served as a soldier in his younger years and is talented with magic, swords, and throwing knives. When his master is abducted, he doesn't take it sitting down and following the rescue, joins the party for the sake of addressing the culprits.
• Taijir from They Are My Noble Masters is a loyal butler, and a retired mercenary. A flick from his finger has enough force to send Ren into solid rock. He can also do Ki attacks.
• Bark in Tick! Tack! is the head butler and, supposedly, an expert fighter. This never comes up.
• Subverted in Tomb Raider III, as your butler at Lara's Estate acts as more of a battle dummy butler. After acquiring the twin pistols, he is decked out in bulletproof padding (with his silver tray as a shield), allowing you to shoot him to your heart's content. This is most likely a reaction to people being bothered by him following you everywhere in Tomb Raider II, which led to the discovery of the "lock the butler in the freezer" exploit. The developers probably decided to throw us a bone, and go mad on him with bullets.
• Touhou Project:
  • Sakuya Izayoi from Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil serves as both Remilia Scarlet's head maid and Battle Butler. In a similar fashion, Youmu Konpaku from Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom is the battle butler for the undead princess Yuyuko, although Youmu is Yuyuko's gardener, rather than her butler.
  • Many Stage 5 bosses are the Battle Butlers of the stage 6 ones. There is Sakuya in EoSD, Youmu in PCB, Reisen in IN, Sanae in MoF, Shou in UFO, Futo in TD... and then Subterranean Animism totally inverts it: the Stage 5 and 6 are the pets of the Stage 4 boss^*Although some could said that Rin, the Stage 5 boss of the game is an old friend of Utsuho, the final boss of the game, so she definitely fits the archetype.. Similarly, the stage 5 boss Seija from Double Dealing Character is the actual perpetrator, with the stage 6 boss Shinmyoumaru being someone she tricked. In Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, on the other hand, the stage 5 boss Clownpiece is the subordinate of the Optional Boss Hecatia and has been empowered by stage 6 boss Junko. Hidden Star in Four Seasons brings back the tradition with the introduction of not only one, but two battle butlers named Satono Nishida and Mai Teireida as penultimate bosses.
    • Side note: Imperishable Night kind of has two battle butlers, somehow predating Mai and Satono from Hidden Star in Four Seasons above. Reisen, as mentioned, follows Eirin's orders in stage 5, and Eirin becomes the final boss... if you take Final A. Because, as revealed at the end of Final A and throughout Final B, Eirin is also a battle butler, to Kaguya Houraisan.
    • Yumeko in Mystic Square was the one who started this trend. Although, on a more general level, one could say it was actually Marisa herself who started the tradition way back in her debut in the first Touhou shooter, Story of Eastern Wonderland, being the assistant of the final boss Mima.
• Trauma Team: Tomoe Tachibana's head butler Hanzou. Skilled with a naginata, masters the katana to such a degree he can make a surgically-precise cut to make an airway for an operation, and can (almost) dodge arrows.
• Kanon, Ronove and Genji from Umineko: When They Cry. Kanon and Genji are both human servants of the Ushiromiya family, but in the fantasy-themed scenes, they display potent magical power and can hold their own against magical creatures. Ronove is a demon who is usually employed as a servant (he apparently makes amazing cookies), but is also a powerful combatant. It's more apparent for Kanon and Ronove in their appearances in Umineko: Golden Fantasia.
• Wild ARMs:
  • Wild ARMs 3 has Todd Dukakis, who serves as the butler of The Rival of the protagonists to the point of accompanying her and her family on treasure-hunting expeditions. He is also quite good with a sword and shows his loyalty by briefly aiding the protagonists in the rescue of his master when she is abducted by another group of villains.
  • Todd himself is a Shout-Out to Macdullen/Magdalen from the first Wild ARMs. He's literally a combat butler; he's always by Jane Maxwell's side, and while he doesn't do much battle-worthy in the original game, in the remake he uses a sword quite effectively (and will even join your party at points).

Web Animation

• The Emperor's Caretaker in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device is one by default, because the job is taken from members of the Adeptus Custodes. Kitten is a Super-Soldier who sponges down the immobile Emperor, brings the news, washes dishes, serves tea, feeds his nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine brothers, and executes his lord's enemies.

Web Comics

• Argent takes this role for Khrima in Adventurers!.
• And Shine Heaven Now turns Jeeves (of Jeeves and Wooster fame) into a full-blown vampire hunting Battle Butler. In fact, he was the one that taught Walter everything he knew, in both the butlering and battling fronts.
• The seranith from Archipelago are implied to have been engineered as a race of Battle Butlers. Even Tin-Can Turtle, an old, blind seranith employed by Willium Drake (THE Drake), can hold his own in a fight against pirates, thanks to his Eye Beams.
• In Bob and George, Protoman and Megaman invert this: they were intended to do household work, and ended up having to fight.
• Long before the plot of Chitra kicked off, Radelk was a famous warrior who defeated the feared Demon King — until he retired to become a butler because it seemed like a more comfortable position. When Chitra Serekino summons him from an RPG Mechanics Verse-style gacha, he steps right into the role of butler to the Serekino household. Though Radelk dresses in a well-tailored suit and serves a perfectly brewed cup of tea, he retains his incredible combat prowess and magic casting abilities, serving as Chitra's first and most trusted enforcer.
• Thaddeus, Hazel Green's lovestruck majordomo in College Roomies from Hell!!!.
• Cosmic Dash: Ms Mayden is Drakkar Vadis's personal secretary and bodyguard.
• Cursed Princess Club: Princess Calpernia's butler, Curtis. He's able to use his martial arts skills to fight off Calpernia's attacks when she turns into a giant, mindless spider (and rescue Gwen in the process). He was also the one who trained Calpernia after her banishment.
• Dr. Nonami: Robutler, a robotic battle butler.
• Fighter from 8-Bit Theater acts something like this for Black Mage, seeing himself as a devoted protector of his best friend, though Black Mage still suffers horrendously due to the universe hating him as stated by Word of God. However, if his other teammates openly consider killing Black Mage within earshot, he will not-so-subtly hint at killing them himself.
• Cello from Fruit Incest doesn't do much battling, but despite being the butler he was still the Companion Cube's right-hand man and later became the leader of his division.
• Girl Genius. A list to date:
  • Ardsley Wooster? Gil's manservant and pretty much the Verse's James Bond analogue
    • Airman Higgs later takes over Wooster's role.
  • Wooster's counterpart, on the other side of the Wulfenbach/Sturmvarous rivalry, is Violetta, who seems to be a much purer example of this trope. She's a Smoke Knight and Tarvek's cousin, who serves him as a joint bodyguard/trainer/butler.
  • Von Pinn. She's basically a nanny. A Mad Science Super-Soldier nanny. Because child care is Serious Business.
  • Boris Dolokhov is Baron Wulfenbach's aide/secretary/administrative assistant because of his organizing skills and eidetic memory. He is also gifted with perfect balance, enhanced reflexes, flawless hand-eye coordination, and two extra arms due to some augmentation work done by his previous employer. He manages to go one-on-one with a Jägermonster and come out on top.
  • Also on Castle Wulfenbach there are the Lackya, "super-engineered squirrels" in pink coats who serve as footmen. Most of the time they seem to have (relatively) normal duties, but when the castle is under attack by slaver wasps, they join the clanks and Jägers to fight them off. Jägers look down on "nancy-boy feetsmen", but even they punch through rather tough constructs with bare hands.
  • ...In fact, just about everyone who works for Klaus in a non-military capacity seems to be some version of this trope.
• The Yoon family of Girls of the Wild's employs personal butlers for every member of their family. All of these butlers are highly trained ex-military and carry around firearms at all times and will not hesitate to threaten anyone who so much as bothers their charges.
• Geeves, valet to the royal family in the webcomic Lint, is pretty handy with a quarterstaff.
• Gin from Minion. Kinda comes with the territory of being minion for a dark-witch-for-hire.
• Noblesse Frankenstein is Raizel's self-appointed butler/bodyguard/caretaker. While Raizel's fighting technique is to hit the enemy with a single swift finishing move, Frankenstein likes long, drawn-out, property damaging battles that bring out his bloodlust.
• Nosfera features Grimsworth, who is basically the Grim Reaper in butler form.
• PvP has Butler the butler, a Jeeves style character who moonlights as LOLBAT a memetic Batman style superhero.
• In Rebirth it's more like battle maid. Li is the best character shown thus far at killing zombies. She's even killed one by merely stabbing it in the head.

Web Original

• Englishman`s Butler, Butler, who is also the secret identity of the mysterious supervillain The Butler (though Englishman has never figured this out).
• The Evil Empress Guide promotes this:
  38. My personal servants will be professional bodyguards and assassins but will dress and behave as eunuchs and maidservants. Even if I dismiss my regular guards for a "private audience" with the Hero, these personal servants (just so much furniture after all, right?) will remain in my chambers.
• SCP Foundation gives us SCP-662, a silver bell that when rang summons a butler named Mr. Deeds. Mr. Deeds will perform any (reasonable) task the ringer asks of him. He wouldn't kill Osama Bin Laden (saying he was too well guarded), but when instructed he does kill a D-class personnel-by throwing knife to the throat no less. He's also basically immortal, as when he's killed his body will disappear and he'll reappear the next time the bell is rung. Also notable is when he was asked to kill or incapacitate SCP-682, a lizard creature with a hatred for all life and a Healing Factor, he said he could hold it off for a while, even suggesting that his body could be booby-trapped with bombs or toxins.

Web Videos

• Much like the source material, Team Four Star's Hellsing Ultimate Abridged has Walter C. Dornez, the butler to the Hellsing Organization. There's this quote from the second episode that sums up this trope nicely to boot.
  Walter: Hello, my name is Walter C. Dornez, ex-vampire hunter and butler to the Hellsing Organization. I answer the door, I clean up the estate, and I take out the trash. And I also kill self-entitled little twats like yourself.
• Mite Ashdrake from TFS at the Table is butler and personal attendant to the Ashdrake family of monster hunters. He often accompanies them on their missions — not for the comforts, but because he's a seven-foot orc that can punch through walls (and yet speaks with a dignified upper-class accent). Some testing from the players discovered that his Armour Class is 35.

Western Animation

• Archer's long-suffering valet, Sir Arthur Henry Woodhouse. When the fighter pilot he batted for in World War I was killed by a German sniper, Woodhouse stormed and single-handedly cleared the enemy trench with a combat knife. Before he was discharged, he killed--and scalped --50 Germans, earning the Victoria Cross. Even in his extreme old age, he kept twin double-barreled sawed-off shotguns—which Archer occasionally "borrowed"—as his personal sidearms. When he believed that an officer he had clashed with during the war was coming to kill him, he and an old war buddy completely fortified Archer's apartment; complete with machine gun nests! His gravestone revealed that he had been awarded some of the United Kingdom's highest military honors, listing him as "Arthur Henry Woodhouse VC, GBC, DSO, DSC, MC."
• Rigodon (Passepartout in the French dub) in Around the World with Willy Fog is Mr Fog's servant, and he's one of the best fighters in the series. He often demonstrates his abilities when he defends his employer or friends. He can fight with Psycho for Hire Transfer and overcome him. He single-handedly saves Princess Romy from the suttee when he's massively outnumbered.
• Batman: The Animated Series
  • Alfred Pennyworth, of course, steps up as the situation arises.
  • Maven, the administrative assistant of Selina Kyle/Catwoman.
  • Baby Dahl also had a Battle Butler/Nanny in her first appearance.
• Alfred is tamer in The Batman, but he does have his moments, usually in episodes involving the Penguin. A backstory on the show says that Alfred's (presumably deceased) grandfather was a butler for the Cobblepots (who he described as "obnoxious snobs") who treated him like dirt and then fired him. (It doesn't help that the Penguin is pretty rude himself, calling Alfred "Jeeves", even more so after he recognizes the name Pennyworth.) Naturally, Alfred does not like the Penguin at all, and tends to do anything he thinks can help Batman when the villain shows up.
• He's portrayed as a much more active character in Beware the Batman, and actually helps Batman in his war on crime in a more physical capacity. The writers of the show specifically drew the comparison to a retired James Bond. Viewers have designated him the Jason Statham version of Alfred.
  Simon Stagg: Hold on, just who exactly are you?
  Alfred: Didn't they tell you? I'm the butler.
• The M-G-M Tex Avery cartoon "Droopy's Double Trouble" has Droopy as an assistant butler of a mansion. The head butler, about to embark on a trip with the mansion's master, orders him to find an extra to help out, so Droopy calls his powerhouse twin cousin Drippy. Hilarity Ensues when Spike shows up for a handout and has to deal with Droopy and Drippy (whom Spike is not yet aware of).
• DuckTales (2017):
  • Mrs. Beakley is Uncle Scrooge's housekeeper^note , not maid. The housekeeper is the person who oversees the maids, just as the butler oversees the footmen, and is second in command of the household servants. She's also a former secret agent and probably the most formidable member of an extended family that includes alien commandos and superheroes.
  • Duckworth is a ghostly spirit who dwells in the mansion after being accidentally called back by an evil wizard. While in life he seems to have been merely a skilled domestic servant, in death, he's a walking murder machine. Unfortunately, his only actual fight in the series is against probably the only villain in the series who can defeat ghosts with ease.
• Owen Burnett and Preston Vogel from Gargoyles. In a subversion, Owen was revealed to be the powerful fey Puck, who created the Owen persona as a deliberate dig at Vogel. Demona briefly hired her own female Battle Butler, which promptly derailed as both secretly had their own opposing agendas. In the Slave Labor comics of Gargoyles, Thailog has Shari as his battle butler. Subverted in that she actually outranks him in the Illuminati and she has been known to lie to Thailog from time to time.
• The Legend of Korra; Varrick describes his personal assistant Zhu-Li as a "cold, heartless war machine". She lives up to the description in Season 4 when she pilots a Mini-Mecha and holds her own against two highly trained Earth Empire soldiers and Baatar Jr. (who are in similar mechas).
• Charles Foster Ofdensen, the manager for Dethklok in Metalocalypse. While the band thinks he's merely there to handle business and talk them out of bad ideas, he really controls everything behind the scenes, acting as an enforcer, silencer, and bodyguard if need be. When the band members were in trouble, he nearly kills the assassin in a hand-to-hand fight. He also has no qualms about having undesirable people killed (Eric Jomfru) or tortured (Dr. Rockzo). When another person was considered as his replacement, Ofdensen states that he'd have to kill him to get the job. He tried. He failed. Then Ofdenson metaphorically spits on his grave by posthumously making him a pedophile.
  • In one episode, Skwisgaar calls him "... the best butler we've ever had..."
    Ofdensen: I'm not a butler. Never mind.
  • The show did a good job of playing up Ofdensen as being a secret badass, but he really shines as a Battle Butler when you don't see him acting. When Pickles tells him that their amazingly bad movie can't be released to the public after its first screening, Ofdensen just nods, and walks away, with no attention paid to it. A few minutes later, everyone who has laid eyes on the film (and can confirm that it sucked) is dead. Sure, it "looks" like an accident (the helicopter rotor hits the pipeline on the oil platform used for the screening as it's leaving), but you know it wasn't.
• It's unclear if the Miraculous Ladybug character Nathalie was hired for her combat skills, but they come in useful several times. Especially when she needs to hold off three brainwashed magically empowered mooks on her own. She also has no compunction about murdering innocent people for her master. The paycheck must be incredible.
• The Secret Saturdays: While Munya takes a different form to fight in, he's normally dressed as Argost's butler, complete with High-Class Glass.
• Though he usually functions as a Yes-Man towards the series' villain Hordak, the character Imp in She-Ra: Princess of Power also displays tendencies to function as a battle butler, most notably in the episode "Of Shadows and Skulls" wherein he attempted to force the other members of the Horde to oust Skeletor from Hordak's position. Also of note is the fact that he and Hordak tend to share a closer relationship than Hordak displays towards any of his other minions, a relationship that seems on par with the one he held for Adora and is hinted he held for Skeletor before the betrayal of the latter.
• To a certain extent, Mr. Smithers from The Simpsons.
  • In an alternate scene from "Burns' Heir", he wields a shotgun against a robotic Richard Simmons. In the original, Burns simply closes the door on Homer. It was cut from the episode because "it often did not get a good reaction during table reads."
  • He was also surprisingly good at cheerfully kidnapping Tom Jones at gunpoint.
  • Smithers only goes Battle Butler when he has to (read: when Burns is in danger). Most of the time he's just a Yes-Man.
• While not technically a butler, Hammerhead's driver in The Spectacular Spider-Man didn't have any problems busting out a gun and opening fire on superpowered people that went up against her boss, or using Car Fu to fight off Rhino. She is one of the coolest characters in the show and doesn't even have a name.
• Pearl in Steven Universe is an interesting case: as a Pearl, she was expected to be Rose Quartz's personal retainer. However, Pearl loved Rose Quartz so much that she started learning swordsmanship and how to apply her natural powers to battle, so she could protect her liege better. This made Pearl a rarity amongst the gems, a Pearl that was a skilled fighter.
• Mercy Graves, Lex Luthor's aide-de-camp in Superman: The Animated Series (and later the comics) and Young Justice (2010). More than capable of holding her own in a fight against other non-powered characters.
• Transformers (or more specifically, Megatron) has a ton of these.
  • Transformers: Generation 1 has Shockwave and Soundwave, both logical, level-headed, and more than willing to kick aft in Megatron's name. Soundwave even saved Megatron's life once in The Movie, though his loyalty apparently wasn't great enough to stop The Starscream and the other Decepticons from tossing him out Astrotrain's airlock five minutes later. A deleted scene after the battle for Megatron's position as leader would have pointed out that Soundwave was fighting in order to make Astrotrain turn around and rescue Megatron. And Shockwave even has a British accent!
  • Beast Wars has Inferno, combined with a dash of Sociopathic Soldier, who has a glitch in his programming causing him to think he really is a fire ant, with Megatron as his "Queen." The fact that Megatron is male doesn't seem to bother him.
  Megatron: Blast that scheming spider! Again he defies me!
  Inferno: Say the word, my queen, and he shall burn!
  Megatron: Not just yet. And for the last time, STOP CALLING ME THAT!
  Inferno: As you command, my qu...
  [Megatron starts to strangle Inferno]
  • From Transformers: Armada, Demolisher could qualify, but the real winner was Starscream of all mechs, who lost his memory in the sequel Transformers: Energon. For one glorious season Megatron had the most loyal Decepticon he could ever ask for, and one who eventually followed Megatron into the Energon sun, to their mutual deaths.
  • Finally, Transformers: Animated crosses the Battle Butler with the Yes-Man in the character Lugnut. His only apparent motivation for fighting (or doing anything, really) is his undying loyalty to Megatron. Naturally, he hates Starscream, and will use his Punch of Kill Everything to pound you into the dirt for even the slightest hint of disrespect or treason.
    • Lugnut has two driving forces in his programming: The compulsion to serve the grand and glorious Megatron, and the utter destruction of Autobots (in the name of his glorious master).
  • The Transformers: Prime version of Soundwave is also this. While he usually just hovers ominously in the background, his presence alone keeps Starscream from pulling the plug on a half-dead Megatron. Airachnid learned this the hard way.

Real Life

• Sicinnus was the slave of the Athenian politician Themistocles. Officially, he was the schoolteacher of Themistocles' children. Less officially, he was the private spy.
• Battle Butlers—or more accurately Battle Valets—are a cliché of British military tradition. A British officer in The Good Old Days would have a soldier assigned to him, called a batman. The batman would essentially serve as the officer's servant—performing most of the same functions as a civilian valet—and bodyguard. It was also customary that the batman would stay with "his" officer after said officer retired—often as a valet, sometimes as a butler or other servant, depending on the gentleman’s household—meaning that almost all personal servants of retired officers had a LOT of military experience and pretty solid badass credentials, and would be as close to "their" officers as master and servant can be, especially if they'd been in combat. (THE Batman is unrelated to this trope, but Alfred would certainly qualify as a Battle Butler.)
  • During an intensive bombing attack on British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious in 1941, the commanding Admiral, mad with frustration that the ship was under her captain's operational command and he was only a powerless passenger, was up on an exposed position on the command tower screaming defiance and rage at the attacking German bombers. His sailor-servant, a very lowly Able Seaman, was unable to put up with this, and forcibly grabbed the Admiral by his collar and belt, hauling him to safety behind an armoured bulkhead and demanding Will you get into cover NOW, you stupid old bastard?. The fact he belatedly remembered to add a ...sir! made it acceptable. The Admiral grinned and calmed down. And got into cover.
• The Russian military tradition also includes ones. The Tsarist version was called denschik (usually translated as batman), the Soviet version with a thin veneer of egalitarianism was called an ordinarets (orderly).
• Generally, when a man of honour rode into battle on horseback back in the 17th century, he was usually armed with a pair of pistols and accompanied by his servant or a subordinate, who would reload one pistol at a time when he was shooting.
• Court officers and bailiffs are to be afforded far more respect and fear if they are old. Mainly because the primary source of bailiffs until they started to diversify was retired soldiers.
• Ted Maher was more of a caretaker/nurse for the ailing Monaco billionaire Edmond Safra, but the guy was an ex-Green Beret, hence his $600-a-day pay as a bodyguard. His sanity, however, didn't quite match his badassitude.

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