A girl got cornered by the villain, he is about to kill her, and there is no escape. Suddenly she catches him off-guard and smacks him in the head with a heavy object. He will collapse to the ground and she will run to the door. Somehow, despite the fact that realistically he should have at least a minor concussion, he will recover quickly enough to catch her just before she reaches the door.
Of course, it would never occur to her to continue hitting him while he is down to make sure he would not recover.
Similar to Once is Not Enough except that the villain is only unstoppable to women. To men, he might be just a Mook.
Examples:
Anime & Manga
- Fushigi Yuugi: When it dawns on Miaka that she's in another world —away from any legal consequences for hooliganism—, she proceeds to singlehandedly mop the floor with an entire street gang and nearly run away. Unfortunately, reality catches up with her when she's nabbed and needs an assist from Tamahome.
Comic Books
- Grimm Fairy Tales: In Return to Wonderland #3, Calie Liddell does much the same thing to the Mad Hatter, though her beating goes much farther. She even lampshades it.
- Mickey Mouse Comic Universe: Minnie is very prone to end up in hairy situations and be the Damsel in Distress for Mickey and co. to save. In a few of those instances, she fights back and then runs the hell away.
- Spider-Man: Mary Jane does this to the Chameleon in one issue, but subverted in that she does keep hitting him.
Comic Strips
- Popeye: When Olive Oyl is held captive by a gang of cowboys, she manages to hit the leader on the head... and then keeps hitting him while hysterically crying for Popeye. When Popeye finishes beating up the rest of the gang and comes for her, he has to tell Olive to calm down or she'll end up killing the boss.
Fan Works
- Emancipation: When Daria goes to buy her sister a chicken dinner, a guy attempts to mug her right in front of the restaurant. Before anyone inside can do anything —not to mention the mugger— Daria goes momentarily Ax-Crazy as she takes her Doc Martens to each of his knees and then kicks him in the face... leaving a perfect print of her boot's sole on his forehead.
- Hilariously parodied in How The Chainsaw Massacre Should Have Ended
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- Even more directly parodied in the Scream version.
Films — Live-Action
- Death Proof: During the ending, as the girls go back to finish the job.
- First Knight: Though she's captured eventually both times, Lady Guinevere puts up a hell of a fight both times she's kidnapped, even leaving something for her rescuers to find and track her.
- House of 9: The Final Girl, a good Christian girl, stabs the villain in the leg and runs away instead of stabbing him repeatedly. Despite the villain having already killed several others and showing no hesitation. Of course, he comes after her.
- House of Wax (2005): The heroine gets a hold of a baseball bat and smacks one of the killers down. It's set up to look like she'll run off like pretty much every other horror movie. But after a pause, she continues to hit him until he dies. And then some.
- Last Action Hero: While invading Jack Slater's house, one of the bad guys takes Slater's daughter Whitney into another room to rough her up. Unfortunately for them, she's daddy's little ass-kicker, and proceeds to brutalize the poor Mook all while still screaming at the top of her lungs to fool the others into thinking she was on the receiving end of the sounds of violence.
- Misery: A Gender Flip happens in The Film of the Book.
- Runaway Jury: Marlee hits the guy twice and, when he still catches her before she manages to escape, she stabs his leg with a piece of wood.
- Rush Hour: During the kidnapping scene, the girl manages to frustrate and bruise much of the abduction team before they finally subdue her and stuff her into a van.
- Scream: A staple of the series. Ghostface is regularly knocked down by the female victims he is chasing, but they never capitalize on it and he almost always ends up catching/killing them.
- The Watcher: The only person who bothered to fight back against David Allen Griffin (the Serial Killer and Keanu Reeves' character) was the homeless girl, who smacked him hard in the head with her boombox and runs. Unfortunately, just as according to this trope, it hardly fazes him much, and he's after her, managing to chase her down and kill her.
Live-Action TV
- Criminal Minds:
- "Open Season": Damsel in Distress decides to fight back against a pair of Siblings in Crime when she gets ahold of a knife. She manages to stab one repeatedly, then after a little baiting, waits for the other one in a tree, pouncing on him when he gets close, stabbing him twice in the back. She then gets off of him and runs away, not remembering taking his bow away and leaving him very pissed off. Lucky for her the FBI arrived Just in Time.
- "Reflection of Desire": The victim breaks the UnSub's nose and immediately flees for a door only to discover it's locked. Later, in a second escape attempt, she finds out she wouldn't have wanted to go in there anyway.
- Sadakatsiz: Derin is wandering on the streets at night when she stumbles on İpek's father, whom she sued for fraud. She runs and even discards her high heels. He catches up to her and is about to assault her when she hits him with her purse. Whatever was inside that thing must have been hard because he's left momentarily disoriented. Even then, his thirst for revenge keeps him going after her. Fortunately, she convinces a random stranger to shield her from her pursuer.
- Smallville: Happened to Lex's girlfriend in season 2.
- True Blood: Sookie does this to Rene in the first season. She tries to shoot him with a shotgun, only to find he's preemptively removed the ammo. She clubs him once, then runs away instead of loading, tossing her only weapon into the bushes as she runs.
Webcomics
- Homestesque: The Damsels are picked at random from the group when the game starts, and can be of either gender. They are supposed to sit out the game until rescued and are passed over for getting character classes and powers, but the Resistance isn't willing to just sit idly by and wait. Lastly, the Big Bad, the Mistress, is just another Damsel who was corrupted by a set of artifacts she found.
- Homestuck: Played for Drama and subverted. Doc Scratch imprisons a Handmaid who attempts this trope but fails to stun the villain.
Western Animation
- George of the Jungle: In the pilot episode, the 300-pound pearl that the villains steal gets stuck in a crate and is revealed to actually be a Big Beautiful Woman named Pearl who quickly starts beating up the villains for kidnapping her.
Pearl: Is that any way to treat a lady? A refined, gentle, defenseless woman?
- Looney Tunes: In the short "The Dover Boys", Damsel in Distress Dora beats Dan Backslide to a pulp while banging on the door and calling for the Dover Boys to save her. Before long, both of them are begging to be saved from each other. It's also worth noting that the door she's banging on is locked from the inside.
- Popeye: In the short "Blow Me Down!" Bluto goes after Olive in her dressing room, and we hear a large ruckus coming from behind the closed door. After Popeye deals with Bluto's Mooks, he charges in... to find Olive's floored Bluto with a club and is continuing to bash him while screaming for help.
