Designated Girl Fight

Maybe it's because the others Wouldn't Hit a Girl?

"Hey, can someone explain to me why I'm always fighting skanky chicks who fly? I mean, Sabine, Samantha, Tsukiko... I bet even the druid's hawk was some sort of a bird-hussy. I should take a level of ranger so I can choose Favored Enemy (Airborne Tramp)."

— Haley Starshine, The Order of the Stick #518

An unspoken version of Wouldn't Hit a Girl; when there's a team with one Action Girl, and there's one female opponent among several men, the two will always take care of each other. She might take out one of the guys, too, but the men will keep to themselves so long as that option is there. It's not universal enough to list aversions, but it's definitely noticeable.

Essentially, when the Hero needs to fight a girl, another female character must take his spot — sometimes the Hero's girlfriend. Often the job of The Heart in the Five-Man Band is to smack the supervillainess around, essentially becoming the team's Designated Hitter for all female villains.

If one girl is the morality-reversed equivalent of the other (for example, the Action Girl and Dark Action Girl), the odds increase exponentially.

This tends to be the end result of a basically gendered aspect of many superheroes: male superheroes tend to have a generally male Rogues Gallery, while superheroines tend to have female villains. Thus, a Legion of Doom team-up tends to be fought along gender lines. Also, because female characters are rarely The Leader in a team ensemble, her fight against her evil female counterpart is often secondary, while the "real" fight is decided between men.

Of course, in the end, this is really about audience expectations. There is a deep-seated cultural aversion to depicting a man (supposedly the hero) laying the physical smackdown on a woman, even if she's clearly evil and dangerous. It's much easier to just sidestep the issue completely and avoid depicting it.

This is also the reason why there is much less of a problem with a female hero fighting a male villain; he's supposed to be evil, so there is no contradiction with him attacking a woman.

There are a few standard exceptions to the trope, even in works that use it; a Gonk usually doesn't count as female even if they are (and is thus a valid target for a male hero), and a Non-Human Sidekick or Funny Animal companion usually doesn't count as male, regardless of actual gender (and can thus attack female villains with impunity). Of course, a villainess could always change into a monstrous form to bypass the trope entirely.

It might lead to a Cat Fight, but more often the fight is otherwise played seriously. Compare Counterpart Combat Coordination.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach:
  • Orihime's first fight involved a female hollow who took control of male students from a desire to use them to abuse and kill female victims. It was Tatsuki falling prey to this hollow while trying to protect Orihime that forced Orihime to manifest her powers in defence of Tatsuki. It's the only time in the entire story that Orihime has been able to summon Killing Intent in battle.
  • During the Soul Society Arc, Yoruichi (female ex-captain of the Gotei 13) fought Soi Fon (one of two female captains in a group of Gotei 13). Both women are ninja-trained and incredibly brutal combatants. While it might still be relevant they're both female, it's in the context of explaining the shared history which was the actual reason that Soi Fon took the first opportunity to pursue Yoruichi (who let her catch up in the hope of eventual reconciliation). This is also a "designated girl fight" in another sense; while a lot of the confrontations around this point serve to invoke and exposit deep motivations and suppressed feelings in the parties, this may be the one with the most emotionally dramatic aftermath, complete with wild sobbing and a subsequent personality shift.
  • During the battle for Karakura Town, Harribel's all-female group did not confront the adult male captains; they took on Captain Hitsugaya and his female lieutenant. When Rangiku ran into trouble with Harribel's three fraccions, she was rescued by Hinamori - another female; Hitsugaya obtained reinforcements from the female Visoreds - Lisa and Hiyori. Rangiku and Hinamori were only rescued by male fighters when the fraccions created a male chimaera that was beyond the power of any lieutenant to fight.
  • In the Lost Agent Arc, Jackie and Riruka are the only female Fullbringers. Jackie has dominatrix overtones, so does get to fight a man - but only Renji, whose battle etiquette involves going easy on female fighters because they're female, and because she needs a lesson in battle morality from a sympathetic male. Riruka, however, is very girly, obsessed with cute and lovable things, and doesn't want to be Ichigo's enemy. She only fights Rukia, one of the major protagonists, who doesn't like hurting humans, and who shares Riruka's love of cute things.
  • Notably averted in the Thousand Year Blood War Arc, as all the female Sternritter take on male protagonists, and all the female protagonists that get a fight end up against male Sternritter. The only catfights we see are when the female Sternritter turn against each other.
• This is averted in Brave10, where Anastasia only gets paired with a female opponent once and it's not played like this trope at all. The tournament arc in the sequel, however, plays the trope straight. There Ana faces off against Komatsu, Yukimura's sister-in-law, where she has to throw the fight out of consideration, while Isanami goes up against Izumo no Okuni in a dance-off.
• Claymore plays with this trope, while most of the Yoma fought are male, there are plenty of Claymore on Claymore battles.
• This happens a few times during Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.
  • In the Asakusa Arc, Tanjiro faces off against the Arrow Demon Yahaba while his sister Nezuko, and Dr. Tamayo, fight against his female partner, the Temari Demon Susamaru.
  • In the Natagumo Mountain Arc, the Insect Hashira Shinobu would fight, and kill, the Older Sister Spider while Tanjiro, his friends, and Giyu, would face off against the abusive Rui and his male family members. And although Tanjiro does kill the Mother Spider Demon, she mainly fought him using the bodies and corpses of male Demon Slayer rookies that were trapped in her webs. He also uses a technique to kill her painlessly when he realizes that she’s surrendering.
  • In the Red Light District Arc, Nezuko’s first solo fight is against Upper Moon-6, Daki, who’s been acting as an oiran. Because both girls are demons, the fight ends up being very brutal.
• The climax of Doraemon: Nobita and The Space Heroes have Shizuka (who gains superpowers like the rest of the gang, but just in this one episode) fighting Meba, the sole female mercenary of the Space Partners corporation. With Shizuka winning at the end.
• Digimon:
  • Happens multiple times between Angewomon and LadyDevimon throughout the series.
    • In Digimon Adventure, LadyDevimon proves powerful enough to simultaneously take on three other Ultimates (including Angewomon), two Champions, and a Rookie over the course of a single fight. However, the battle scene soon zooms in on the brawl between Angewomon and LadyDevimon.
    • Further enforced when LadyDevimon begins overpowering Angewomon and has multiple opportunities to finish her off; however, LadyDevimon instead chooses to continue toying with Angewomon by kicking her and into nearby rocks or swinging Angewomon around By the Hair in a stereotypical catfighting move.
    • Zig Zagged when LadyDevimon's victory over Angewomon forces AtlurKabuterimon to intervene and save Angewomon. However, Angewomon angrily pushes him off and tells him not to interfere. She then shoots back towards LadyDevimon to Bitch Slap her, igniting a Cat Fight between the two.
    • Finally subverted when LadyDevimon defeats Angewomon in their Cat Fight with a brutal roundhouse kick. AtlurKabuterimon again saves Angewomon's life despite Angewomon's protestations. She does get to land the final blow, though.
    • The whole process repeats itself in Digimon Adventure 02.
    • Initially played straight when both Angewomon and Aquilamon arrives to face LadyDevimon, but LadyDevimon immediately knocks out Aquilamon with a single hit, after which Angewomon and LadyDevimon get into yet another slapping, hair-pulling Cat Fight.
    • Subverted when LadyDevimon once again defeats Angewomon, this time by twisting Angewomon's arms painfully against her sides. However, Angewomon's allies arrive on the scene, again saving Angewomon's life. Angewomon eventually has to swallow her pride and admit she can't defeat LadyDevimon on her own. She then jogress with the male-presenting Aquilamon to form the androgynous Silphymon in order to continue their fight against LadyDevimon.
  • In Digimon Frontier, Izumi has the most fights against Ranamon. Ranamon is the only enemy Izumi defeats all by herself and actually scans the data of.
  • Averted in Digimon Data Squad. Kurata assembles a team of Psycho Rangers to fight the main Power Trio, but the female members of each don't battle each other, at least not one on one. Instead, Nanami takes on fellow Teen Genius Touma and Yoshino faces her Stalker with a Crush Ivan. In fact, Nanami and Yoshino had almost no interaction at all during the series, unusual in that this was the Digimon iteration in which fanservice started being a thing that regularly happens.
  • Semi-played in Digimon Fusion: Mervamon was one of two Digimon present for the final fight against Lilithmon, but she was working together with Beelzebumon for the entire fight, and he's the one who takes Lilithmon out.
• In Fairy Tail, most of Lucy's 1vs1-opponents are females (Sherry, the Brainwashed and Crazy Juvia, Angel, Flare), but she has also defeated males (Bixlow and Byro). Erza however, fights usually against the strong ones (The Dragon guys), with a few of them being female (Ikaruga, Erza Knightwalker), but she too defeated some male opponents like Azuma and Aria. The Grand Magic Games plays this trope straight where almost every female fights another female (Lucy vs. Flare, Mirajane vs. Jenny, Kagura vs. Yukino, Wendy vs. Chelia). It becomes exaggerated during the Naval Battle where six of seven participants are females and fighting in swimsuits (the only reason there's a guy is because he's from the all-male guild). After that during the Battle Royale, there is Erza vs. Kagura vs. Minerva. Plus there's Juvia vs. Merudy in the Tenrou Island arc, and Erza's battle with Coordinator in The Movie.
  • Fairy Tail has a good number of aversions of the Designated Girl Fight tropes as well. While Lucy has a good number of Designated Girl Fights, even she has some male adversaries. In addition to Byro and Bixlow, she also fought Uosuke, one of the male Executioners (in the Grand Magic Games Arc of all arcs), and while she did have to fight the brainwashed Juvia, the real enemy was Vidaldus Taka. Erza, as mentioned before, usually fights the strong Dragon-type foes, and while some were women (like Minerva, Ikaruga, and her own Edolas counterpart), a good number of them were dudes as well. She defeated Aria with ease in the Phantom Lord Arc, battled Azuma in the Tenrou Island Arc, and her fight in the Oración Seis Arc was possibly the strangest aversion in the series: Midnight, a man who can be very easily mistaken for a woman. Plus, she battled Cobra in the anime-exclusive Key of the Starry Skies Arc. And during the Tenrou Island Arc, Ultear, the main female powerhouse of Grimoire Heart, had Gray as her opponent due to their connections to Ul, Gray's teacher/adopted mother and Ultear's actual mother. Indeed, Gray was the one who fought Juvia in the Phantom Lord arc and Angel in the anime-exclusive Key of the Starry Skies arc as well.
• In the Fatal Fury motion picture, Mai Shiranui finally kicks her bad fighting luck aside as she faces Panni, the local Dark Action Girl, to help solve a Hostage Situation. And totally curb-stomps her.
• Semi-averted in Fullmetal Alchemist. Riza Hawkeye is the only female member of Mustang's team and Lust is Father's only daughter, so naturally an altercation between the two occurs. However, this isn't really a fight so much as Hawkeye redundantly shooting Lust repeatedly until Mustang comes along to finish things.
• In Chapter 207 of GTO: The Early Years, Shinomi and Saya get into it over Eikichi, using knives and broken bottles. Nakajo shows up and tries to intervene, but one of them hits him with a 2xFore.
• In GUN×SWORD, the first time we see Fasalina in action Carmen is the only one around to fight her, this is turns into a challenge so that Carmen is always looking for Fasalina, conveniently pairing them in fights.
• In Hellsing: Seras Victoria kills Jessica, the female vampire in volume one, then she fights Zorin Blitz in a big battle. Gets averted later when she has a big fight against The Captain, although he gives her a way to defeat him, and she gets help from Pip as her familiar.
  • Averted with Alucard against Rip van Winkle (if you call that a fight.)
  • Averted with Integra as well, the few times she fights, she kills male vampires, The Major or is defending herself from a male attacker.
  • Father Anderson has no problem attacking women if they are monsters or heathens (Seras Victoria and Integra Hellsing respectively).
• Happens several times in Jujutsu Kaisen.
  • For the "Cursed Training Battle" Arc, the childish brute Todo picks a fight against Megumi. While Nobara tries to help her friend, she's forced to fight against Todo's girl classmate, Mai, a sadistic gun wielder.
  • In the "Kyoto Goodwill Event" Arc, Maki ends up fighting against Mai and Kasumi in separate battles while Nobara picks a fight against Momo. As you can imagine, their guy friends handled the male Kyoto rivals.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple:
  • Played straight, mostly because of Kenichi's Wouldn't Hit a Girl honor.
  • Shigure Kousaka has had several fights versus female opponents, including against Yami's Mikumo Kushinada.
  • Mostly subverted in "the protection of the swords" arc and "the American base" arc.
• Averted in My Hero Academia. The Sports Festival finals includes both males and females, but all of the girls fight against and ultimately lose to other guys.
  • Played straight during the "Forest Training Camp" Arc where Himiko Toga, the cast yandere and the only significant female villain in the show, faces off against Tsuyu and Ochako. Toga briefly encounters the two during the battle between the heroes and the Paranormal Liberation Front, and has one last battle with them in the final arc.
  • In the "Meta Liberation Army" Arc, Himiko is pitted against Curious who happens to be the only female member of Re-Destro's inner circle.
• Naruto:
  • Out of twenty competitors in the Chuunin exams(three teams of seven got through the second stage, but Kabuto dropped out), six are female. Sakura and Ino, past rivals, fight each other, as do Tenten and Temari. Averted with Hinata (who faces Neji) and Kin (who faces Shikamaru). Though it should be noted that in the absence of a female hero, Shikamaru will always ends up fighting the female villains. Also averted in Part II outside of fillers.
  • The Naruto movies seem to avert this, especially the early ones. In the first one, Sakura and Sasuke collaborate into blowing up a female-male duo, while in the second movie, Naruto, Sakura, Shikamaru, Kankuro, and Gaara face three female villains (whom they kill... quite gruesomely). Played straight in the third movie, where Sakura fights the only female villain in the film.
• One Piece:
  • Zig-zagged at Little Garden, where the crew is attacked by four Baroque Works agents, including Miss Valentine and Miss Goldenweek. Miss Goldenweek only plays a passive role in any fights, though, and Nami and Vivi are quickly incapacitated, leaving Valentine to hand Usopp his ass until they're freed and one-shot her.
  • Averted in Thriller Bark, where Perona ends up fighting Usopp and Nami defeats Absalom ^note  though Sanji had severely weakened Absalom by curb stomping him earlier so really he got softened up for Nami to finish him off .
  • Played also in the Baroque Works Saga —amongst the final team that fights the heroes, there are two girls. One of them, Miss Merry Christmas, is not exactly... ladylike. She, along with her partner, fights Chopper and Usopp. Miss Doublefinger, on the other hand, who is a typical Dark Action Girl, has a one-on-one fight with Nami.
  • Zig-zagged in the CP9 Saga: The CP9 have one female member, Kalifa. At first she fights Sanji - he is much stronger than her, but the fight still ends with obvious results, due to Sanji rather wanting to die rather than kicking a girl. A short while later she is pitted against Nami (who started off going up against Kumadori before fleeing,) and we get the straight example.
  • Bizarrely played with in Impel Down arc when Ivankov is breaking out of Impel Down he's confronted with one of the wardens, the only female among them. In order to fight her, Iva uses his Devil Fruit powers to physically turn himself into a woman.
  • Played with again in the Punk Hazard arc. Monet, the only female on Caesar's team, fights male Zoro and female Tashigi together, Tashigi has trouble and Zoro saves her and shows that he could've easily sliced Monet in two but lets Tashigi actually defeat her, so it still qualifies.
  • This trope shows up again during the raid on Onigashima, where the bad guys actually invoke and (try to) exploit this. Kaido's crew needs to capture Nico Robin for her Living MacGuffin qualities, so they send one of their Dark Action Girls, Black Maria, to capture and beat the snot out of Sanji, knowing he Wouldn't Hit a Girl, until he calls for Robin to come and save him. Once Robin arrives, she (with a little bit of help from Brook^note mostly putting out fires and holding off Black Maria's mooks) summarily kicks Black Maria's ass.
• During the "Monster Association" Arc of One-Punch Man, the sadistic villainess Do-S is pitted against the weather hero Blizzard; their fight is the only matchup that features women from both groups. And while there are male heroes who fight alongside Fubuki, they're easily taken out by Do-S's mind control whip leaving Blizzard to fight her alone. They meet each other again in the raid at the MA base, where Fubuki (though accompained this time by Bang and Bomb) does not waste the chance to avenge her cred.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon Adventures, this doesn't extend to sanctioned matches, such as gym battles, but against bad guys, yup, girls tend to match up with each other. If genders don't match up in those ultimate battles against good and evil, that's just because the gender ratio isn't evened out as many girls will paired up against each other, and whoever is left gets to fight a guy. Thankfully, this trend seemed to die out somewhere around the fourth and fifth generations, likely because the gender ratios were becoming too uneven and there wasn't any point in trying.
  • Justified in the Black & White anime with Pidove vs. Snivy. Snivy (female) had been stopping all of Ash's attempts to capture it by using Attract on all of his Pokémon. Then out comes Pidove, whose gender Ash was unaware of, and she proved immune to Attract due to also being female. It qualifies since Pidove was the only Pokémon able to fight Snivy.
  • Often times during Pokémon Contests, May or Dawn would end up battling a disguised Jessie, with Dawn also sometimes facing her female rivals, Zoey and Ursula.
• In the Kyoto Arc of Rurouni Kenshin:
  • The men are sent off to Shishio's lair, while the rest of the gang stays behind - and are subsequently attacked by the rest of the Ten Swords. Since the show lacks a variety of villainesses, Kaoru and Misao get their first and pretty much only real fight against Kamatari... a crossdresser.
  • Weirdly, the trope was almost not-followed-by-the-letter back then. Okina's division of enemies at first had Kaoru and Yahiko assigned to face Hen-ya, and Misao would face Kamatari alone. But then some insults from both parties reassembled them to what it ended up as. In fact, the original division would've made far more sense, as letting a novice swordsman such as Yahiko to fight by himself is not a good idea in any way...
• Saint Seiya:
  • Shaina with Marin in the anime with Shaina where she gets her butt kicked with soldiers watching. Strangely averted in the Manga.
  • In Poseidon Arc Thetis with Shaina. Though she does give Shaina quite a run for her money.
  • Averted in Saint Seiya Omega: There are fights between heroines and villainesses, but the battles are too often mixed-gender to really call them 'designated'. In particular, Yuna has more than a fair share of victories against male villains under her belt, whilst Souma's personal grudge against Sonia makes him her most frequent opponent. In the Gold Saint arc, Ryuho and Souma fight, respectively, the females Gemini and Scorpio, while Yuna fights the male Cancer.
• In Shaman King, it is noticeable that one of the two all-girl teams, Hao's Hanagumi (Team Flowers), fights two battles against three females- once against Anna, Tamao, and Jun, and another against the team "Magical Princess".
• Part of the new footage in the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Compilation Movie includes a fight between Yoko and Adiane outside of their Ganmen, most of which Yoko spends sporting Godiva Hair and culminating in Yoko somehow hiding a pistol in her hair scrunchie.
• Usually averted in Yu-Gi-Oh!, where most of the female duelists duel against males. In fact, Mai's only female opponent was Anzu.
  • Rebecca vs. Vivian in the Grand Championship arc.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Either averted or invoked in the anime. Asuka has never a Designated Girl Fight in the entire series, except that one Tag Duel Match against Rei and Kenzan, but Rei wasn't Asuka's main opponent, they even switched their partners during the duel, just because Asuka was irritated by Judai's cold behaviour.
  • On a side note, some fans invoke this trope, demanding that designated girl fights are supposed to exist in the anime. For example, we could have Yuka vs. Truewoman in the Darkness arc.
  • The female members of the Seven Stars Assassins, Camula and Tania, dueled against males. And they won (against Chronos, Kaiser and Misawa), but both of them were eventually defeated by Judai.
  • In the manga, Reggie Mackenzie faces Asuka in the preliminaries of the tournament, and later fights against Midori Hibiki outside the tournament. Averted in her duel against Judai.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
  • We have Aki vs. Misty in the Dark Signer arc. It's actually not a classic Action Girl vs Dark Action Girl battle, as Aki is a Dark Action Girl herself for half of this duel while Misty is an Anti-Villain who is focused on Revenge Before Reason, as Misty is under the mistaken belief that Aki is responsible for the death of her little brother. It's hard to decide which of them is crazier at that point.
  • However, Carly and Luca avert this trope in the Dark Signer arc. (Jack vs Carly. Luca & Lua vs Demack.)
  • Aki's duel against Sherry is another aversion, since Aki and Crow are dueling Sherry.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: Rio has her first on-screen duel with Aika Hanazoe.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V has Yuzu and Masumi in two occasions, both of them being the first female duelists introduced in this series. The rematch makes it even more obvious when Masumi uses a new, female ace monster during their rematch. Averted in the later episodes.
  • Averted with Yugo's duels with Serena and then Rin. While the plot forces him to duel them, and normally duels heavily feature a battle between ace monsters, Clear Wing Synchro Dragon's gender doesn't signify why she is destined to battle other female monsters. Even as The Smurfette Principle among the Four Heavenly Dragons, Clear Wing Synchro Dragon has no opponent that was specifically designed to be her female opponent. It just happens that all four Bracelet girls are using female ace monsters, and the other three Four Heavenly Dragons also fought them at certain points. Furthermore, Clear Wing's gender reveal doesn't happen within the story, but outside the animated medium, long after Clear Wing/Crystal Wing had fought Moonlight Lio Dancer and Wind Witch Crystal Bell.

Comic Books

• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) featured a mirror universe in which the Freedom Fighters were evil, and inevitably this led to a confrontation between them in one issue. Initially this fight seems to go this way, as Princess Sally fights her own Evil Counterpart, but the trope is quickly subverted when the heroes realize fighting a mirror image is difficult...so they switch partners. Cue Sonic punching the evil Princess Sally in the jaw.
• The Avengers: Lampshaded in The Avengers (Kurt Busiek) when the team fights the Squadron Supreme. Lady Lark (the team's Black Canary Expy) was paired up against Captain America, and mentioned that in the olden days, she was always stuck fighting one of the female Avengers like Scarlet Witch or Black Widow.
• Catwoman: When in Rome: Catwoman dances with the guys but only really fights Cheetah.
• Downplayed in the climactic bout in Championess. The fight is a paired boxing match featuring one man and one woman per team. Initially, the men and the women fight only each other, but when the score ends up in a tie, the remaining man and woman from the opposing teams box each other.
• Averted in Robert Rodi's Codename Knockout series. Angela and Go-Go are fighting their British counterparts and losing... so they switch "dance partners".
• Inverted in The Defenders, where Valkyrie's magical strength would fail if she tried to battle another woman (even female-looking robots were included in this consideration), forcing her teammates to take on most villainesses instead.
• Future Foundation: Rikki, on the good guys' side, fights evil Dr. Richards' lieutenant Al'ti, a female Winged Humanoid. Both are very skilled, with Rikki specifically challenging her so she won't kill Bentley-23.
• The Justice League comics have the Crime Syndicate of America, an evil version of the Justice League from a Mirror Universe. In their first (Pre-Crisis) battle in the comics, the authors mostly avoid the common cliche of having the characters fight the mirror versions of themselves. The one exception is Superwoman, the evil counterpart of Wonder Woman, who fights Wonder Woman because they didn't want to show a man and woman fighting.
• The Marvel Versus DC miniseries had Storm fighting Wonder Woman (the two most popular heroines in their respective universes) and Elektra fighting Catwoman (the two Femme Fatales). It's averted, however, when teen heroes Robin and Jubilee are paired off, though he does manage to defeat her without hitting her.
• Runaways is usually pretty aware of superhero tropes but does occasionally make use of this. Granted, girls tend to outnumber guys on this team, and one of the girls involved has a mind-controlled dinosaur.
• The Smurfs comic book story "The Smurf Menace" has Grey Smurfette make a single appearance in the story for the sake of starting a fight with Smurfette.
• Spider-Man: In the early issues of Maximum Carnage, Black Cat immediately went for Shriek when Team Venom found Team Carnage.
• Superman:
  • Many Supergirl villains -Lesla-Lar, Satan Girl, Nightflame, Starfire, Psi, Black Star, Superwoman, Reign- are female partially because of this trope.
  • When Superman and Supergirl battled Kryptonian criminals in New Krypton storyline, Kara engaged Ursa (female) as Kal fought Zod (male).
  • The Phantom Zone: Superman fights most of Phantom Zone inmates, except for the female ones. Faora Hu-Ul is defeated by Supergirl, and Nadira is killed off by accidental exposure to Kryptonite.
  • At least once Superman, who generally won't hit a woman, has stepped aside and let Wonder Woman take care of things. Wonder Woman generally tends to have a more feminine Rogues Gallery than most heroes, partially because of this trope.
  • "Those Emerald Eyes Are Shining": The final battle has Supergirl and Shrinking Violet engaging Emerald Empress as their male teammates take care of her male minions.
• X-Men:
  • When the X-Men first fought Alpha Flight, Storm and Snowbird went at it, even though Storm's powers were a better match for Shaman's^note In fact, the thing that ended the fight was Storm calming down a blizzard Shaman created that he couldn't control and Snowbird had more in common with Wolverine.
  • Also, during a battle between the X-Men and Magneto's first Brotherhood of Mutants, Jean Grey was more than eager to fight against the Scarlet Witch as the guys wouldn't fight her.

Fan Works

• Becoming a True Invader: Gaz is almost always the one who fights Tak, the two hating each other almost as much as Tak hates Zim.
• The Bridge zigzaggs this. The first kaiju fight is Mothra and Twilight Sparkle vs. Hyper Gyaos and her flock, but Godzilla Junior joins in on the second phase of the fight. Later fights are often group battles with a mixed composition on either side.
• In Hellsister Trilogy, Supergirl (female), her cousin's descendant Laurel Kent (female) and Dev-Em (male) engage Satan Girl (female), Ar-Ual (female) and Black Adam (male). Satan Girl automatically pounces on her template, Laurel rushes towards Ar, and Dev and Adam start to trade blows.
• Here There Be Monsters: When Dr. Sivana deploys his forces to deal with the two Marvels approaching his base, two female villains -called Black Beauty and Illyria- go after Mary Marvel for no particular reason whereas male villains Sabbac, Trug and Black Poet gang up on Captain Marvel, Jr.
• Lampshaded in Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami:
  Night started to slap samanther around cos they were girls and it is the law that when a bunch of movie dudes fight the girls have to fight each other alone i ncase they decide to start sexing.
• Naru-Hina Chronicles:
  • In Chapters 76 and 77, Sakura fights Karin in response to the latter stabbing the former and leaving her to die in Chapter 75, all while Sasuke is busy dealing with Evil Sasuke.
  • In Chapter 107, Sasuke is fighting his evil clone. Sakura is about to intervene and help her boyfriend, only for Karin to prevent her from doing so by fighting her.
• In Power Rangers Mythos, when the titular Mythos Rangers (Tommy Oliver (Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers), Z Delgado (Power Rangers S.P.D.) and Flynn (Power Rangers RPM)) fight their brainwashed enemies (Adam Park (MMPR) and Shelby Watkins (Power Rangers Dino Charge)), Z and Shelby invariably end up fighting each other when all fight are present.
• A justified example occurs near the end of Roman's Empire. In the climactic fight, Kincaid is fighting Neo and Dwight is fighting Roman. But considering that the girls are the two best fighters in the story, this combination ensures fair fights. The other combination of pairings would be extremely onesided. Neo would absolutely crush Dwight and Kincaid would likely beat Roman.
• In the Tamers Forever Series there is a brief battle between Rosemon and Sakuyamon. However this is actually justified as both these women are actually the most competent fighters in the area. (not including those who are borderline catatonic)
• In Ultimate Re-Imaginings, Emma and Natasha fight.
• With this Ring... (Green Lantern): When the battle begins, it's Katma Tui (female) who faces Star Sapphire (female) while their male companions square off with each other.

Films — Animated

• The big reveal flashback in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker has Batgirl stay behind to battle and then chase down a fleeing Harley Quinn, leaving a tortured and psychotically broken Tim Drake behind while she gives chase.
• Batman: Soul of the Dragon: During the final battle against the Kobra's cult, Lady Shiva takes on the sole female Kobra member, Lady Eve. Just because Eve looked at her funny.
  Shiva: I'll take the girl. Her look offends me.
• In Food Fight's final battle the male heroes are hesitant to beat up Lady X, so its up to until-then Damsel in Distress Sunshine to do something useful for once and beat the ugly out of her literally. Occasionally accused of being fetishistic, since both characters are shamelessly sexualised (and Sunshine is meant to be underage...), but the sheer stilted animation does make it hilarious to watch.
• Averted in The Guardians of the Lost Code, It is Freddy, not Atzi, who ends up fighting with Mutey and losing.
  Freddy: I was beaten by a little girl?!
• Incredibles 2:
  • During the skirmishes that take place aboard the Everjust, events align for Violet to have the definitive one-on-one fight with a hypnotized Voyd who loses and is knocked out.
  • The Final Battle between Elastigirl and Evelyn Deavor, where Elastigirl shoots a Flare Gun at Evelyn to send her flying out of the plane while suffering from hypoxia.
• Played with but averted in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths where Wonder Woman fights various villains from both genders, such as Super Woman and Owlman, although most of them are female. During the fight with her Evil Counterpart, Olympia, Wonder Woman flat out refuses assistance from Green Lantern. She even says through gritted teeth "She's mine" before running off to kick her ass.
• Superman/Batman: Apocalypse has Big Barda and Wonder Woman teamed up while they're invading Apokolips to get back Kara. Superman and Batman encounter assorted soldiers, monsters and robots. The pair end up fighting, of course, the Female Furies. Absolutely not a Cat Fight, though, despite most of them being in revealing costumes; it's actually one of the most brutal back-and-forth brawls of the film, right up to Barda's spear being put to good use on-screen.

Films — Live-Action

• In Batman & Robin, Poison Ivy was reserved for Batgirl. She takes out both Robin and Batman with astonishing ease in her lair — should Barbara not have butted in and become Batgirl all by herself, Poison Ivy would actually have won.
• Blade: Blade's ally Dr. Karen Jensen ends up having a quick duel with the vampire Mercury.
• BloodRayne: Near the end Rayne battles Katarin while the two of them are underwater, killing her. This is after Katarin pulled a Face–Heel Turn, betraying Brimstone, while Rayne is left the only women warrior with Vladimir and Sebastian.
• Bulletproof Monk has one where Action Girl Jade gets in a fight with The Dragon, who happens to be the Nazi villain's relative. It's Jaime King versus Victoria Smurfit; for a fight to the death, hotness ensues remarkably quickly.
• Subverted in Conan the Barbarian (1982). It looks like this is going to happen, as Valeria goes after the Princess while the boys are holding off an army of mooks — but Valeria is far too badass to get into a catfight, and promptly subdues the princess.
• Conan the Barbarian (2011): Tamara and Marique, the two female fighters in the film, take each other on at the end.
• In Cradle 2 the Grave, Gabrielle Union fights Kelly "Lady Deathstrike" Hu.
• In Dead Again in Tombstone, Alicia is the one who takes on Madame Du Vere during the final battle.
• Happens in Die Another Day when Jinx Johnson takes down Miranda Frost while Bond fights the main villain Gustav Graves. This is surprisingly the first film in the entire series where this trope is present. Most previous female villains in the series are killed in a manner that doesn't directly involve Bond or his leading lady. However, the James Bond series has featured occasions where Bond has fought and killed women.
• In Disturbing the Peace, Catie is the one to take on Amanda; the female biker left guarding the prisoners in the church.
• The relatively obscure Rex Allen film Down Laredo Way features a trio of villains: a murdered man's unfaithful wife, her lover, and an insane judge who knows them both from dirty dealings in the past. While Rex and his sidekick are able to take out the lover and judge, who will fight the woman—especially when she tries to flee justice? Why, the Spanish gypsy woman that the heroes met earlier, that's who! It's somewhat justified in that the gypsy woman had taken in the little girl who the bad guys were pursuing and thus had some involvement in the plot beforehand, but the whole arrangement still feels like this trope in action.
• In Dragonball Evolution: Goku fights Piccolo alone while Bulma and Yamcha run to safety. Then, Yamcha disappears inexplicably while Bulma fights Piccolo's female minion Mai. This may be because there's no way Bulma could help Goku fight Piccolo, but there's also no way she'd stand a chance against Mai either ... at least, not the way she's been portrayed.
• The older Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins averts this by having Pigsy shoot the henchwoman.
• The Family Plan: Jess and Gwen fight near the end. Though the former gets beaten handily at first as the latter is a trained assassin, she still turns the tables and wins in the end.
• The Fast and the Furious:
  • Fast & Furious 6: Features not one, but two Riley vs. Letty fights. Unsurprisingly not played for Fanservice, given the actresses' reputations.
  • Furious 7: Has a Letty vs. Kara (played by Ronda Rousey) fight in fancy dresses, after Letty beats up three female bodyguards at once.
• In G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra when Cobra invades G.I. Joe headquarters, redheaded Joe Scarlett has a brutal fight with The Baroness. This one gets justified because everyone else tried to take her out, but Scarlett was the only one with access to a camouflage suit that allows her to get close enough.
• In the final battle in Hot Fuzz, Skinner's attack secretary is taken out by Doris, the one female police officer. This does not go without lampshading.
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom has a Designated Kid Fight when Short Round takes on the Maharajah.
• Judge Dredd. While Dredd battles Rico, Dark Action Girl Dr. Ilsa Hayden, who seems to have been created just for this purpose, has a Cat Fight with Action Girl Judge Hershey.
• Kick-Ass 2 has Hit-Girl versus Mother Russia in the climax. Averted in the first film, where there isn't a female antagonist. Also downplayed as both Hit-Girl and Mother Russia are proven to be quite deadly against male opponents, and are probably the most dangerous ones on each side.
• Averted in Kingsman: The Secret Service. There is one woman on the good guy's team, and one woman on the bad guy's team. They never even see each other, much less fight, and it's Eggsy who takes on Gazelle in the climax.
• Lycan: The ending has Isabella fight her evil adopted mother, to let Blake escape. Isabella ends up killing them both.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: The fight between the female Guardian Gamora and Ronan's henchwoman Nebula, who are actually adoptive sisters (as in, Thanos raised them as Child Soldiers after invading their planets). The other Guardians are busy dealing with the rest of Ronan's Sakaaran mooks. Slightly downplayed as It's Personal, especially for Nebula, and the only other member of the team who would likely be able to put up a fight against her is Drax.
  • Avengers: Infinity War: Natasha, Wanda and Okoye team up against Dark Action Girl Proxima Midnight during the battle at Wakanda. Earlier in the film however, the male heroes had no issues with fighting Proxima Midnight in Scotland.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Wanda effortlessly kills both of the male Illuminati who confront her (Black Bolt and Mr. Fantastic) without them even being able to touch her while the two remaining ones, Captain Carter and Maria Rambeau/Captain Marvel (who are both female, obviously) put up way more of a fight against her.
• Mean Girls has the Matheletes sudden death round, Cady vs. Kraft. The opposing team picks Cady as Kraft's opponent solely because she's the only girl on the team.
• In The Medallion, Claire Forlani's character Nicole faces off against Snakehead's only female minion.
• The fight between Evy and Anck-Su-Namun near the end of The Mummy Returns. The first film has a subversion, with Jonathan fighting Anck-Su-Namun. Although Evy and Anck-Su-Namun have significant history that would make them want to fight for personal reasons, and Evy is far more capable than Jonathan. It's less about not wanting to hit a girl and more about not getting your ass kicked by a girl.
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, in which token heroine Jane Carter squares off with token sexy female assassin Sabine Moreau.
• In The Outlaws IS Coming!, Annie Oakley tells Ken that it wouldn't be right for him to be seen taking on a woman, so she takes on Belle Star. After they run out of ammo, their gunfight turns into a Catfight.
• Push. Cassie and the Triad girl fight. Double points since they had the same power as well.
• Resident Evil: Retribution features Alice facing off against a brainwashed Jill Valentine and an evil clone of Rain Ocampo from the first movie. There's also a mini-scuffle between her and Canon Immigrant Ada Wong early on.
• Parodied in Romeo Must Die. Han and Trish are pursued by an assassin on a motorcycle. Han prepares to fight yet again, but this one is revealed to be a woman when her helmet comes off. Despite this woman literally trying to kill him, Han is unwilling to strike a female. He instead holds Trish's arms and legs and directs her, so that she's technically doing the hitting.
  Trish: "I don't know how it is in China, but in America, if a girl's kicking your ass, you don't have to be a gentleman."
• Rush Hour 2: U.S.S. Agent Isabella Molina has a stand-off with Dragon Lady Hu Li. Subverted; Hu Li has a final battle with Carter, though it mainly consists of Carter trying to avoid being stabbed rather than actually fighting her.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World:
  • It has Knives vs. Ramona fighting for Scott's affection.
  • Because Scott Wouldn't Hit a Girl, his fight with Roxy involves Ramona fighting her using Scott as a People Puppet. (The equivalent scene in the comic has Scott spend most of the fight hiding inside Ramona's purse with his head peeking out, which would be cumbersome to reproduce for the film.)
• Shark Week: When Final Girl Reagan escapes the last shark and makes it to the shore, The Dragon Elena goes to the beach to deal with her personally without telling her boss. And she does not take a weapon with her so the two women have to fight hand-to-hand.
• Sky High (2005) has Layla vs Penny. Averted when Will is the one to fight Royal Pain.
• Superman II has the evil Kryptonian woman Ursa getting punched out by Lois Lane (and apparently falling to her death) after getting depowered. Superman himself never hits her, even when she's as strong as he is. Man of Steel averts it. As Faora is more than a match for Superman, he has no reservations about fighting her himself. And neither do the soldiers who attempt to stop her.
• In Team America: World Police, Sarah and Helen Hunt have a sword fight in the climax.
• Tekken (2010) has Nina and Christie face off in an intergender tournament. This is also averted when Nina and Anna try to assassinate Jin and Christy kicks plenty of ass against Kazuya's soldiers.
• Melina vs. Lori in the original Total Recall, though Quaid still gets to finish off Lori.
• Total Recall (2012) has Melina fighting Lori, as well.
• Undercover Brother. When Undercover Brother and Sista Girl square off against White She Devil and two male mooks, Sista Girl fights White She Devil and Undercover Brother deals with the mooks, but not before Undercover Brother and the mooks sit together on a sofa drinking beer while they watch the women rip each other's clothes off and fight in a shower.
• In Van Helsing, with Dracula's brides in this version becoming a trio of Dark Action Girls, you bet that the one with most screen time and significance is dispatched by the female lead. Downplayed in the sense that the first bride is killed by the hero himself, the second dies after being lured into a trap, and there's implied to be a history between Aleera and Anna that she doesn't appear to have with Marishka and Verona. Aleera is also fighting Anna not because she's a girl but because she's trying to get the werewolf cure to Van Helsing, and she had previously fought the Creature, who was trying to buy Anna more time.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X-Men averts this, with Storm and Jean Grey fighting Toad in the final fight, with Wolverine taking on Mystique. Both fights are quite close before the good guys win in both instances.
  • X-Men: The Last Stand: Storm gets a rivalry with Callisto, fighting her on two occasions. However, this has less to do with them both being female than a nod to their complex relationship in the comics.
  • Yukio fights Viper at the end of The Wolverine, though it's mostly because Logan is occupied with the Silver Samurai at the time.

Literature

• Ananda's Fall Averted when Ashley intervenes to prevent Izumi from beating up Laila for crushing on the same boy.
• The Faerie Queene, Book 5: The female knight Britomart fights the evil Amazon queen Radigund because her boyfriend Artegall had to learn the hard way that Wouldn't Hit a Girl should not apply when she's trying to kill you.
• Fox and O'Hare: In The Chase, Kate O'Hare engages in a midair She-Fu-laced fight with BlackRhino assassin Alexis Poulet as Nick Fox is cracking a safe nearby.
• Good Omens: When the Them confront the Horse-persons of the Apocalypse, the hot-headed tomboy Pepper is paired against the sole Horsewoman, War.
• Faye and Toshiko's battle in Hard Magic. Unlike most examples, it's the most impressive and spectacular throwdown in a novel chock-full of them.
• In the final battle of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
  • While Voldemort is fighting two teachers (one of them female) and an Auror, his Dragon Bellatrix Lestrange is fighting three schoolgirls...and she gets offed by the Mama Bear of one of them.
  • According to Word of God it's also Bellatrix who kills Tonks.
  • Earlier in the seventh book, Luna Lovegood stuns Alecto Carrow presumably so Harry wouldn't have to.
  • Also notable is the fifth book when Dumbledore uses his magic to bring the statues in the Ministry of Magic to life. The statue of the witch goes for Bellatrix.
• Older Than Feudalism: Happens in The Iliad, which is to be expected in an ancient Greek story. When the gods decide to stop fighting by supporting their favorites and fight directly, Hera picks a fight with Artemis and sends her home crying to Zeus in a Curb-Stomp Battle.
• In Last Sacrifice, during her prison escape, Rose faces three guardians. Dimitri takes on the two male ones, while Rose faces Meredith. Meredith being one of her few female classmates.
• Played with in The Wheel of Time. The hesitancy of the three male leads (especially Rand) to hurt women causes it to be played straight at first. Then it's deconstructed when Rand's inability to hurt women is explicitly brought up as a liability his enemies can exploit, and especially when Moiraine has to step up and take on the vastly more powerful Lanfear because Rand can't make himself fight her, leading to Moiraine's apparent death and a Heroic BSoD for Rand. The actual Last Battle averts the trope, featuring a mixture of same-sex confrontations and male vs. female ones.

Live-Action TV

• In one that crosses with another universe, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has Thor's friend Sif sent to chase evil sorceress Lorelei on Earth. Justified in this case as Lorelei can ensnare all men to do her bidding. When they avoid this trope by sending male SHIELD agents after her it's a massive Idiot Ball. That isn't the only case. There's also: May vs Akela Amador, May vs Petra, Skye vs Raina, May vs Agent 33, Skye vs Agent 33 and there was also an episode the almost set-up a Mockingbird vs Simmons but Mockingbird was revealed to be a mole. There are also some exceptions: Coulson vs Camilla, May vs Deathlok, Ward vs Sophia and May vs Carl Creel. There was also a gender inversion when May, Lance Hunter and Mockingbird fought a bunch of HYDRA mooks, with Hunter taking out the sole female mook while May and Mockingbird fought the guys.
• A fair number of episodes of Alias have this. Sydney's a trained spook, and always has a gun, but if a female enemy spook shows up, the gun will be kicked from her hand, and the two of them will throw down.
• Batgirl in most versions, especially the Lampshade Hanging-laden 1960s Camp Batman.
• A completely justified example occurs in the second season finale of The Boys. When Stormfront ambushes the Boys, the only characters even capable of fighting back are Starlight and Kimiko, so the male characters stand aside since there isn't much they can do. Stormfront has the upperhand until Queen Maeve shows up, essentially turning a standard superhero battle into a hilariously brutal Curb-Stomp Battle. Word of God is that this was intended as a Take That! towards the forced designated girl fight in Avengers: Endgame.
• In Chuck, any and all female spies will be taken care of by—you guessed it—Sarah. The traitor in the C.A.T. Squad? Check. La Ciudad? Check. The female spy at her high school reunion? Check. And that fight was wet. It was especially ridiculous in one episode where it was Casey and Sarah vs Two Female Assassins. Casey simply restrains one of them and shoves her over to Sarah for a beat-up when she's done with the other. Even brutally lampshaded, when Chuck once has to face a female opponent. Despite having just beat up a bunch of males, he puts his hands up and squeals, "I can't hit a girl!" Sarah then shoves him aside and says, "But I can!"
• As of the second season on Cobra Kai. When it gets down to the season finale, Tory and Sam (being in Rival Dojos) will inevitably get into it. Better justified than most, since Tory and Sam are part of the same increasingly intricate Love Dodecahedron and will actively seek out their romantic rival when the time comes to throw hands.
  • Justified in the season four finale as the final fights occur during the All Valley Tournament. The committee were concerned about male and female opponents fighting in the previous year so they created a separate female division. Of course, the final match came down to Sam vs Tory.
• Dark Winds: Bernadette Manuelito, the female police officer on the good side, goes to arrest Ada, the Wicked Witch with the bad guys. This results in a vicious fight between them and ends with Ada's death in a fire.
• Lampshaded, after a fashion, in an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard: when the group pairs off for the big brawl at the end of the episode, Cooter laments that the only person left for him to fight is a girl. Cue Daisy, who steps forward and says, "Oh, no, she's mine!"
• In Firefly, Inara heads off on her own to try to stop Saffron's plans twice. The first time, Inara loses a martial arts catfight to Saffron, who doesn't get away for long. The second time, Inara gets the upper hand by actually having set the whole thing up with Mal ahead of time as a Batman Gambit.
• In From the Cold: Jenny faces Gaia, her replacement in the SVR, during “Gideon”, for an epic fight on the ice at the skating rink.
• JAG: Meg Austin vs Angelique in "Déjà Vu", after Angelique drugged Harm and tried to murder him.
• Juukou B-Fighter averts this. In episode 18, when the three Jamahl army commanders are sent out to fight the B-Fighters, Dark Action Girl Jera fights The Leader, Blue Beet. Reddle, the sole female of the B-Fighters, fights the Evil Genius Schwartz.
• Kamen Rider Revice: Aguilera is only seen fighting Sakura Igarashi, even before they gained their super-powered forms. This is generally due to Aguilera becoming fixated on Sakura: it seems to start out as a kind of playful teasing out of respect and solidarity for "girl power"; but gets more serious as Aguilera loses everything she believed in and her self-esteem starts to plummet, and she starts picking fights to regain her pride by defeating the woman she considers her rival. Eventually it gets to a point where some of the characters speculate that Aguilera is trying to commit Suicide by Cop. (Sakura, for her part, averts this trope and is willing to fight any Monster of the Week regardless of gender.)
• Subverted in the season 3 finale of Merlin. Gwen goes for Morgana but, being untrained in sword fighting, is easily defeated leaving it to Merlin to take her on. Also it's Gaius who takes out Morgause.
• In Person of Interest "Search and Destroy," Root broke off from a shootout with Samaritan's forces to go after Martine, whom she has a vendetta against, personally. The next time Root and Martine meet, Root takes the time to kill Martine in an otherwise hopeless situation before surrendering.
• In Power Rangers, whenever both heroes and villains have combatants of both genders on the field, the guys tend to break off into one skirmish while the girls have their own fight. However, averted when at least one side is composed of only a single gender (or even a single person as is normal for villains; with either the Monster of the Week or The Dragon), as neither side will hold back due to gender.
  • Done very frustratingly when Power Rangers Ninja Storm and Power Rangers: Dino Thunder crossed over, where the mind controlled Ninja Rangers team squared off against the Dino Rangers; the show broke its unofficial color-coding rules to have the female Blue Ninja Ranger and Yellow Dino Ranger fight each other instead of their like-colored male counterparts.
  • This applies to crossovers whether or not they're fighting each other: when two teams fight side-by-side, they break up into Red Rangers, other guys, and girls, regardless of suit colour.
  • In the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, it was fairly common to see Jason, Zack and Billy fighting Goldar while Trini and Kimberly fought Scorpina. This was back before Goldar stopped being a threat to any of them and Scorpina was Put on a Bus, of course.
• In the BBC series of Robin Hood, whenever the outlaws fought the law, Kate would always make a beeline for Isabella, the Veronica to her Betty, and her rival for Robin's affection. It was only a matter of time before the catfight ensued.
• Used in the Sliders episode "Data World". A villain sends a male and a female Mook after the Sliders. When the male shows up, the three guys fight him while Maggie (the team's Action Girl) simply runs and hides. When the female arrives, then Maggie steps up and declares, "This one is mine!"
• Star Trek: The Original Series
  • In "Mirror, Mirror", it's Uhura who steps in to disarm Marlena Moreau when the latter pulls a knife.
  • In "The Gamesters of Triskelion", Kirk, Chekov, and Uhura face two male and two female gladiators. Kirk and Chekov take one male each, while Uhura has to fight both women.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In the episode "Code of Honor", Tasha has to fight a chick to the death for the amusement of their hosts. Dead girl gets better.
• Star Trek: Picard: Considering the small number of Action Girls among the cast with the Super-Strength to rival a Romulan's, plus the fact that Soji despises violence and probably doesn't even know Narissa exists, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Seven of Nine is the one to face off against Narissa in a one-on-one combat in "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2." Elnor, a Romulan man, nearly killed Narissa with her own knife in "Nepenthe", but she was saved by a Teleportation Rescue, so her survival allowed for this trope to occur.
• Also used a lot in Rangers' source material Super Sentai, in which The Heart fights the Dark Action Girl.
  • Kagaku Sentai Dynaman has Zenobia against DynaPink in... a battle that had them end up stripping.
  • Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger has Lamie (who'd become Scorpina above) against Mei/PteraRanger
  • Denji Sentai Megaranger has Shibolena against MegaYellow. Evidence? If you watch the show carefully whenever Shibolena fight she always fight her. Likewise, the Nejiranger females always fought against their good counterparts, though it's justified by the way of the Nejiranger being made to take out their specific counterparts.
  • Seijuu Sentai Gingaman actually averted this for the most part, Illiess had no rivalry with Saya/GingaPink and Shelinda's rivalry was had with Hayate/GingaGreen for the whole series. The crossover film with Megaranger, however, did have Saya and Illiess fight one another separately.
  • Kyu Kyu Sentai Go Go V has Denus against GoPink. Also singing battle in ep 45 to snap her brothers out of the mind-control trance Denus' song put them in.
  • Mirai Sentai Timeranger has Lila against TimePink. Not too seriously that is.
  • Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger: Mirroring Yabaiba's rivalry with GaoYellow is Tsuetsue's rivalry with GaoWhite.
  • Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger has Furabijo against Nanami/HurricaneBlue, Wendinu at times joined her in as well.
  • Samurai Sentai Shinkenger has Dayu Usuwaka against ShinkenPink.
  • Downplayed in Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, where Escape choses the Super Strong Blue Buster as her Worthy Opponent, drawn in by his Superpowered Evil Side. She does, however, notably come to blows with Yellow Buster in #37, the Wedding Episode which sees them dressed as brides in black and white respectively.
• Tidelands (Netflix): Cal, the heroine who is an Action Girl, fights and kills Leandra, her enemy who's a Dark Action Girl, in the season 1 finale.
• Unnatural History: Maggie and the female scientist in "Thor's Slammer".
• Walker, Texas Ranger: In episodes where the lead villain is a woman and a final fight is demanded, there invariably will be a female guest star— whether a civilian, a Ranger (especially Sydney after she joins the main cast) or any other law enforcement officer— who will be tasked with taking out the female villain. This is because Walker and Trivette Wouldn't Hit a Girl (unlike the male villains, who freely beat up women).
• The Walking Dead (2010) has Carol fighting against Mary in the beginning of the fifth season while Rick, Daryl, Glenn, and Bob fight against the mostly male Terminus group while escaping.
• Inverted by WandaVision, where the fight between Wanda Maximoff and Agatha Harkness in the finale is the main event that forces S.W.O.R.D. to get involved and Monica Rambeau and even Darcy Lewis to jump in, while the fight between The Vision and White Vision/Catalyst happens off to the side and is ultimately resolved peacefully.
• Wanted: Dead or Alive: In "Fatal Memory", the female villain of the week is tackled by the daughter of the man she was attempting to frame, while Josh fights the villainess' brother outside.
• Literally Once per Episode for Waterloo Road.
• Willow (2022): Jade, the best woman warrior in the heroes' party fights Scorpia, leader of the Bone Reavers, who's a good fighter herself. This ends when Scorpia realizes Jade's her long-lost younger sister.
• Wizards of Waverly Place: Alex vs... Dark Alex, and Mason vs Dominic. Slightly justified in that Evil Alex was Alex's clone. It's weird in that the same actor played them.

Magazines

• MAD Magazine had this in their spoof of Judge Dredd. When Hershey and Hayden have their fight as detailed above, Hershey declares that this proves the movie supports gender equality, while Hayden reminds her that "we're fighting to show off some boobs and buns".

Manhua

• Subverted in Cyber Weapon Z. When Anling fights Soti, she has no idea that Soti is female since she's wearing a male uniform and a rather impersonal helmet.

Professional Wrestling

• The Mixed Tag Team Match has these exact rules – when the male half of a tag team tags to his female partner, the female opponent also must tag in. Other than the time required for the female to make her tag and leave the ring, it is illegal for the male wrestler to be in the ring with his female opponent, and is a disqualifying offense if he lands an offensive move. Of course, it is not unheard of in these matches for a heel male wrestler to hit his female opponent while his female tag team partner keeps the referee distracted, or for the female face to land a finishing move on the male heel wrestler that leads to the pinfall. The announcers will stress the rules and if necessary, the difference between an intergender and mixed tag team match, the former where men and women are allowed to fight each other.
  
  In more family friendly settings typically a male heel in order to still get the crowd against him won't attack the face female but does go for the pinfall in one of two scenarios. The first when the face girl takes the finisher of the heel female or sustains an injury that doesn't allow her to kick out in time. In the other the face girl usually still has stamina to fight back but is temporarily dazed by a normal attack or sometimes even standing when the male heel will pin her, if she is standing he will bring her down. In this instance the male heel will use his upper body strength and higher body weight to prevent the face girl from kicking out and she will visibly be kicking her legs trying to escape until the three count is completed. There is a third less family friendly option similar to the second scenario where the male heel will do the pinfall on the female face when the male face is either distracted or taken out but the pin position is rather sexual in nature. Similar to the second scenario the female face will rarely, if ever, kick out through her own strength.
• To deal with Brandi Wine, the manager of the Mavericks in 1995, Denny Cooley and Ricky Morton enlisted a woman Wine had brought to a previous show in her search for a training partner, Lexie Fyfe.
• Ivory was basically called out of retirement when it was deemed D'Lo Brown and Mark Henry couldn't take direct revenge against Jacqueline and Terri for turning them against each other.
• Since its brand extension era, the WWE gradually reached this point where it only has men fighting men and women fighting women in intergender matches. In Mixed Tag Team matches, it is rare that the males actually fight the females; as such, invariably when a male heel has been tagged in to finish off a female face that had been dominated by her female opponent for several minutes, she will recover enough to tag in her male partner before he can land a blow (often by having the male attempt an elbow drop or other mat attack but having her roll out of the way at the last second, or having the male wrestler taunt the fans and/or male opponent and stalk the fallen female wrestler before she gains her second wind and rolls to tag in her partner). Part of the lack of actual male-on-female fighting is attributed to concerns by women's groups concerned about male-initiated violence on women, or increased regulations by the networks or the companies themselves – those wanting to push a family friendly product that discourages males being the aggressor on females (keep in mind there was a time when PG rated Smackdown was well ahead of TV 14 Raw in ratings, albeit a brief one). However, this is twisted in that women are allowed to defend themselves against men or have all the offense in a match against a male wrestler, with the man not being allowed to even defend himself with a counter move ... not even so much as ducking out of the way of the female wrestler's flying cross body block to cause her to land outside the ring.
• Deconstructed in Ring of Honor, where Alexis Laree cut ties with Julio Dinero for not helping her against Allison Danger of the Christopher Street Connection. By contrast, even the always strung out Special K stable ran to aid Becky Bayless when she was obviously outmatched against opponents such as Laree. Exploited later when Laree joined up with Amazing Red and AJ Styles to stand against the Prophecy Stable, whose membership included Arch-Enemy Simply Luscious. Stable leader Christopher Daniels challenged Laree to face Luscious one on one, then jumped her from behind before she ever got to Luscious.
• Enforced in TNA after Bitchslap, a stable demanding equal rights for men and women, were repeatedly injured in matches against Ron Killings and America's Most Wanted. No further male on female matches were booked and Jim Cornette would personally prevent any man from attacking a woman, regardless of how justified fans thought it was, forcing the baby faces to find female body guards.
• Invoked by Jillian Hall, who joined Paul London and Brian Kendrick to get revenge on Melina, who managed London and Kendrick's rivals MNM. Jillian stuck around long enough to fight Michelle McCool too, who led another rival team the, Teacher's Pets (KC James and Aaron "the Idon" Stevens). Later Ashley Massaro handled McCool for them. Averted in London and Kendrick's feuds with Deuce N' Domino, whose valet was a nice lady and The World's Greatest Tag Team, as Charlie Haas would attack London and Kendrick's valets to protect his wife.
• Inverted: In Deep South Wrestling, where Krissy Vaine brought in Matt Striker during her feud with Tracy Taylor to fight her husband Mike.
• In Professional Championship Wrestling "Angel Of Mercy" Claudia feuded with two evil counterparts "Angel Of Wrath" Mace Malone and "Angel Of Misery" James Johnson. But since they were men and she was woman Athena was usually fighting Claudia on Johnson or Malone's orders, to the point Athena became more famous for using Johnson's O-Face Finishing Move than he did.
• Inverted: In TNA when Cute Kip joined The Beautiful People and ended up fighting Rhino.
• Downplayed when The Olsen Twins teamed with Portia Perez, The Briscoe Brothers teamed with Amazing Kong and Mike Quackenbush teamed with Manami Toyota when facing the Kings Of Wrestling in 2CW, ROH and Chikara respectively. While they chose women to even the numbers, the history with Del Rey was just as, if not more important than them being women.
• Defied by Maria Kanellis in Ring of Honor after she attacked Sara Del Rey and ended up starting a feud she couldn't win. Since then she made sure to wait until husband Mike Bennett, stable leader Adam Cole and or any other members of The Kingdom were available before jumping other women wrestlers like MsChif and ODB (though Bennett couldn't save her from Del Rey due having Eddie Edwards at his throat).
• Justified in TNA's World Cup, where every team is made up of representatives for each of TNA's active title divisions. Heavyweight, X (which ranges from "no limits" to "cruiser weights" only), Tag Team, etc., with "Knockout" being a woman's title. Realizing they had no women capable of beating Mickie James, Aces & Eights appropriated Ivelisse Vélez from team international, which also led to a subversion (Aces & Eights ran out and attacked Mickie, surprising right?) and an aversion, Team USA still tied with Aces & Eights, leading to a tag match tie breaker involving all team members.
• Subverted at the 2013 Magnificent Championship Wrestling Rags to Riches Rumble, where Cassie Cool was eliminated right when Miss Beaa entered. There was a chant of "Cat Fight" when Holly Madison entered but she got illegally eliminated before she could reach Beaa.
• Completely averted in Lucha Underground where the girls are expected to fight against the guys all the time, with no concessions made for the gender. Basically unavoidable as, for most of the first season at least, there were only 2 female wrestlers on the roster (Sexy Star and Ivelisse), who faced each other in a mixed doubles match (partnered with Chavo Guerrero Jr. and Son of Havoc respectively) in the second episode,^note and that match was actually a rematch between Sexy and Havoc who'd fought (with Havoc winning) in the first episode then consequently went on to fight the men on the roster for the rest of the series rather than feuding with each other.
• Reconstruction after ROH branded its "Women of Honor" as a competitive division. BJ Whitmer doesn't have a moral issue with hitting women, as Lucy can attest, nor much fear of how the company may penalize him, evidenced by his membership in both The Prophecy and Decade. He started having Kelly Klein assault them in his place because in Whitmer's mind he'd be depriving Klein of chances to establish herself in the new division and he's very dedicated to her success. However, when Candice LeRae revealed Klein might not be as unstoppable as Whitmer advertised he was quick to return to his woman beating ways to keep Klein's record unblemished.
• Inverted and subverted at the sixth RISE show where Andrew Everette and his long established tormentor Jimmy Jacobs were the only men wrestling on the card and were on opposite sides of a multiperson Tag Team match. Jacobs ended up getting beaten up by the true star of Everette's team, Taya Valkyrie.

Sports

• Just about all sports are separated into male and female competitions to eliminate the differences between the sexes as a factor in athletic achievement. In the Olympics, the only exceptions are equestrian and some yachting events.
  • This is averted in most non-professional and non-interscholastic instances. Most pre-Little League teams – that is, mostly those for children yet to reach 10 years old or so – will allow mixed teams. Men and women can be seen on mixed teams, sometimes with mixed teams playing each other, in open gyms, just-for-fun outings, etc. In gym class, including intramurals, there's often mixed teams. Non-professional softball often has mixed teams, with rules stating where women and men are in the batting order, etc.
  • Outside of the Olympics there's mixed doubles tennis. Teams of one male player, one female player. Used to be a good example of the trope since it was considered unsporting for the male player to target the woman on the opposite team but his partner probably would as the weaker player. Now largely averted since woman's tennis has become more athletic and the best male players don't play doubles while the top female players do.
  • There are also a small but growing number of professional female jockeys and race car drivers who compete in the same competitions as their male counterparts.
  • The rules of muggle quidditch avert this trope by not only allowing males and females to play on the same teams, but specifically requiring that each team have no more than five (of seven) players of the same gender on the field at any time.

Toys

• BIONICLE had a lot of these on the rare occasion that a female antagonist turned up - Helryx vs Tuyet and Gali vs Gorast come to mind.

Video Games

• Dissidia Final Fantasy:
  • Subverted in the opening cinematic: It at first appears that FF6's Terra and FF8's Ultimecia are having a magic duel, but it's actually a trick: Ultimecia is working with FF2's Emperor, hanging back on the sidelines, to make Terra fall into one of his traps.
  • It is averted in cinematics for Dissidia Duodecim—from what we've seen thusfar, Lightning faces Garland and Laguna and Ultimecia fight each other, as do Tifa and Sephiroth, Shantotto, Prishe, and Terra haven't been depicted fighting any particular opponent, and we've yet to see the Cloud of Darkness at all.
  • ...And now it's evident that, of the three female protagonists who were prominent in the 12th cycle, only Tifa adhered to this trope and ended up facing off against another woman (Ultimecia); Yuna was pitted against the Emperor (for what he did to Tidus and Jecht), and Lightning remained against Garland. And, in another aversion (...sort of?) though the Cloud of Darkness isn't technically female (on account of being an Anthropomorphic Personification), its opponent ended up being Laguna (whose leg cramps promptly started acting up).
• In Dynasty Warriors 6, when Yue Ying and Zhen Ji encounter each other at the battle of Han Zhong, they exchange insults about each other's husbands. Depending on which side of the battle you're playing, the dialogue will change slightly, but whichever one is on your side will land the final zinger, and the other will become enraged and go into hyper mode.
• The slap fight between Tifa and Scarlet near the end of the second disc of Final Fantasy VII.
• In Heroes of the Storm's first cinematic introduction, this is subverted. At first, we are shown two teams with Two Guys and a Girl, with the guys facing off against guys (Jim Raynor vs Diablo and Tyrael vs Arthas) and the girl against girl (Nova vs Kerrigan). As soon as they start fighting, however, Kerrigan and Tyrael take to the skies, leaving Nova dealing with Arthas and helping Raynor against Diablo.
• Averted in The King of Fighters '97. The New Faces team is more or less an evil counterpart to Japan's Hero Team, but the resident lightning user (Shermie) is female. Although considering that she's Benimaru's counterpart, perhaps it's being played straight...
  • Also averted in the Treasures of God path. You can make Chizuru fight Shermie, but this is completely optional.
  • In general, fighting games tend to zig-zag the trope to Hell and back. You can have a Designated Girl Fight if you choose an Action Girl as your chara and have her face a female enemy, but there are more than one ways to avert this unless said fight is pre-determined by plot and/or paths.
• Persona 3: Near the end of The Answer section of FES, SEES splits into factions and fights each other over what to do with the Keys of Time. Even though the Yukari-Mitsuru duo, which wants to use the keys to undo the protagonist's death, is most opposed to the Akihiko-Ken duo, who are adamant about returning to the present, they ultimately end up fighting the initially neutral and entirely female trio of Aigis, Metis and Fuuka.
• In Pokémon Conquest, the majority of the female Warriors' special episodes center around a contest to determine "Ransei's Greatest Beauty", where the only available Warriors (generics included) are females. And Ranmaru.
• Resident Evil 5:
  • Used to a degree, during the two-on-two boss battle with Wesker and Jill. If Chris keeps Wesker's attention on him, Sheva will engage and attempt to restrain Jill to keep her out of the fight.
  • Averted if you play as Sheva, where Chris will offer to take care of Jill while she deals with Wesker.
• In Samurai Warriors 2, Oichi and Nohime's Gaiden battles are literal Designated Girl Fights, as they challenge each other (and all of the female characters, plus Ranmaru Mori) to see who the fairest in the land is. At the beginning of said battles, an absolutely delighted Oda Nobunaga eggs them on.
• Originally averted by the old Smackdown vs. Raw games, which allowed male on female matches and even had an 'undetermined' gender to allow characters to win both male and female titles. One entry in the series actually had a challenge mission that tasked the player with using Candice Michelle to defeat The Great Khali. Unfortunately the series has succumbed to political correctness in recent years and the only match type that can feature both males and females is the mixed tag match. If you are controlling a male character then the game makes it almost impossible for you to strike a female competitor and you are forced to tag out. If you do somehow manage to land a blow then you automatically lose the match by DQ.
• Averted in Sonic Riders, in which Tails's rival, Wave, is female. Also averted in Sonic Adventure 2. Knuckles is Rouge's rival.
• Usually averted in the SoulCalibur series, where everyone fights everyone. The opening of Soul Calibur 2 does have a fanservice-heavy fight between Ivy and Taki (possibly to show off their new assets), but they have no in-game connection, and by the third game's cinematic they're fighting Cervantes and Voldo, respectively.
• Enforced in Stardew Valley, in Leah's 10-heart event. In this event you have the option to punch Leah's ex, who will always be the same gender as the player. This was probably done to avoid any Unfortunate Implications that would come from a male player punching a girl.
• Basically averted in Street Fighter IV, where rival fights have a pretty balanced gender mix. The only real instance of this trope is Cammy, who has three rival fights (most characters only have one or two), all against other women.
  • In the box art cover of Arcade Edition the only female representation consist of Chun-Li and Ibuki while the rest are males representing bosses, newcomers, or the old guard of the game. Chun-Li being on the left side and Ibuki being on the right both look ready to fight each other.
• Inverted in Summoner, when Jekhar and Rosalind fight Sornehan and Galienne, the player might be tempted pair them up in this fashion, but Sornehan is invulnerable to physical damage, while Galienne is invulnerable to magic, which makes such a match-up Unwinnable since Jekhar is The Big Guy and Rosalind is a White Mage.
• Super Paper Mario, where Peach and Mimi face off one on one at the end. The game also has a Designated Big Guy Fight between Bowser and O'Chunks.

Visual Novels

• Subverted in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, as while the first four chapters featured cases where the killers were the same sex as their victims, the fifth chapter has Chiaki, a girl, killing Nagito, a boy (though Nagito was the one who set it up, tricking Chiaki into unknowingly killing him as part of a complex plan to out her as the traitor).

Webcomics

• Kid Radd lampshades this when the main characters have a little sparring match with a group of fighting game characters, and the only two females present wind up fighting each other.
  Sheena: Oh look, I'm up against a girl. Hooray for typecasting.
• Mostly averted in The Order of the Stick as males in the comic are willing (and in some cases, more than willing) to take on female opponents (Belkar vs Hag, Roy vs Sabine, Roy vs Miko, Belkar vs Miko, Hinjo vs Miko, Redcloak vs Miko, everyone vs Miko, notice a pattern here?). However, Haley has noted that she has a tendency to end up fighting flying, murderous skanks. She even cracks a line that Leeky's Animal Companion was likely some sort of bird-hussy. Justified in Haley's case, since other than their spellcasters (one of which is male, and the other is of indeterminable gender), Haley is the party's only ranged attacker. Since their enemies tend to neutralize their spellcasters often, it's often up to Haley to attack any flying enemies.
• Problem Sleuth: Hysterical Dame and Nervous Broad are the ones who fight and defeat Madame Murel; all three are the Distaff Counterparts of Problem Sleuth, Pickle Inspector and Mobster Kingpin.
• Red Hood: Outlaws: Defied in the punnily titled "End of the Trope". The group is being attacked by a Carnival of Killers, and Artemis (the lone female Outlaw) winds up against Lady Shiva (one of two female assassins who turned up, alongside Cheshire). Artemis complains that the only two women in a group facing off is so played out, and is satisfied when male killers Assassin and Constantine Drakon show up alongside Shiva.
• Sonic: The G.U.N. Project: The first issue has Sally and Rouge against one another when the latter attacks the former as her team is trying to deal with Metal Sonic.
• Played with in Station Square: when Brin, Sven, and Dahlia are going after Graves, Dillinger and Ridley, they initially plan for Dahlia (female) to fight Graves (male), Brin (male) to fight Dillinger (female), and Sven to fight Ridley (both male). However their plans are thrown awry, and instead Dahlia ends up fighting Dillinger alone.

Web Original

• DEATH BATTLE! often pits two female combatants against each other:
  • Rogue vs. Wonder Woman, battle of two of some of the most recognisable women in comics. The winner is Rogue. Wonder Woman's Stripperiffic outfit exposes a lot of skin, allowing Rogue to easily touch her and steal her power.
  • Felicia vs. Taokaka, a Cat Fight taken literally. The winner is Taokaka. Taokaka is much faster and more agile, and has long razor claws.
  • Chun-Li vs Mai Shiranui, battle of two of gaming's top female martial artists. Mai Shiranui wins, as even though Chun-Li outmatches her in strength and hand-to-hand skill, Mai has her steel fans and energy-based attacks.
  • Zelda vs. Princess Peach, battle of Nintendo's top two damsels in distress. Princess Peach wins. In terms of magical firepower, the two are evenly matched, but Peach has a more varied arsenal of weapons, is more athletic, and has a kick that can decapitate an opponent.
  • Ivy Valentine vs. Black Orchid, battle of the video game Femme Fatales. Black Orchid wins. Ivy has better ability to strike at range, but Orchid's ability to turn into a flaming panther and phase through attacks brought the fight into close quarters, where she has the advantage over Ivy. Also, Ivy has no ability to counter Orchid's magic. Finally, Orchid's victory over a millennia-old warlord where even the greatest warriors of the past failed highlights superior fighting skill, whereas Ivy's win/loss record within the Soul canon is spotty, with 3 wins in 7 battles with two of those being rematches.
  • Yang Xiao Long vs. Tifa Lockheart, battle of the boxing brawlers. Yang wins. Tifa's Premium Heart boosts her strength by a lot, but crucially it resets after Tifa uses a Limit Break, while Yang's own ability to increase her strength through her Semblence is Soul Power and hence cannot be disabled or removed. Coupled with Yang's superior durability (as opposed to Tifa's Glass Cannon tendencies), Yang is able to withstand the worst of Tifa's hits and get the killing move in.
  • Cammy White vs. Sonya Blade, two of gaming's most famous female tournament fighters. Sonya wins. Sonya has a decade's worth of fighting experience over Cammy, and has more than once prevailed over supernatural foes back-to-back. She has crushed a steel anvil with a single punch, a feat that surpasses any durability feat of Cammy's, and she has exclusive access to ranged weaponry and a willingness to use it in a street fight, while Cammy does not.
  • Android 18 vs. Captain Marvel, blonde-haired action girls with powers of flight and energy blasts that were obtained from an experiment. Android 18 wins, eclipsing most of Captain Marvel's abilities in strength speed, and durability. While Captain Marvel could use Energy Absorption against 18's energy attacks to power herself up, 18's experience with fighting energy absorbers made her genre savvy enough to use physical blows.
• Epic Rap Battles of History played this straight for the first 3 seasons. The only boy vs. girl battle they did (Adam vs. Eve) was designed as a battle of the sexes. The only other three battles with females were girl-on-girl (Palin vs. Lady Gaga, Cleopatra vs. Marilyn Monroe, and Miley Cyrus vs. Joan of Arc). They seem to be playing with this more in Season 4, with Ghostbusters vs. Mythbusters having one woman on an otherwise all-male team going up against an all-male team, and Romeo & Juliet vs. Bonnie & Clyde being a battle between 2 couples, each with one man and one woman. However, there were still no single woman versus single man battles apart from Adam vs. Eve, the only battle in Season 4 so far to feature a woman rapping on her own being woman-on-woman (Oprah vs. Ellen). This trend was fully broken in Season 5, which had Gordon Ramsey vs. Julia Child and Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton.
• In The Gamer's Alliance, Ax battles Varalia in the Ruined Kingdom.
• In the TGWTG Year One Brawl Spoony made The Nostalgia Chick fight That Chick with the Goggles while he would take Bennet the Sage. As Nostalgia Chick and That Chick with the Goggles fight Spoony and Bennet simply grabbed their cellphones and started taking pictures.

Western Animation

• Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers managed to be an aversion most of the time, despite having a female Big Bad and several Action Girl characters among the guest cast and Rogues Gallery. The notable exception was in "Scarecrow's Revenge" where the titular villain turned Maya Brainwashed and Crazy and sent her against Niko. The scene's almost a punchline in the fandom, as Maya had been hitting on Goose earlier.
• In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, at least half of the named female Skrulls met defeat at the hands of female crimefighters — Skrull-Viper by Mockingbird^note The only woman who helped Hawkeye take down HYDRA Island. However, HYDRA had one other female agent in that episode in addition to Skrull-Viper: Black Widow, who fought Hawkeye instead of Mockingbird., and Queen Veranke/Skrull-Mockingbird by Ms. Marvel. Averted for Skrull-Wasp, who met her death by Hawkeye while the real Wasp and Ms. Marvel fought some of the male Skrull-Avengers. Skrull-Invisible Woman's fate seems unknown, making it hard to tell whether or not this trope applies to her.
• The Batman made its version of Poison Ivy significantly younger than her comics counterpart so that she would be the same age as Batgirl. Her first appearance was in Batgirl's introductory episode and any time she shows up as the villain of the week, it is typically a spotlight episode for Batgirl.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • "Two-Face: Part 2" has Two-Face's fiancée step out of her Neutral Female role to attack the mob boss's one female minion, who is about to underhandedly enter the battle with the guys herself. In a similar fight before that, she's treated as an onlooker and completely ignored by both Batman and Two-Face.
  • In "Harley and Ivy", Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn team up and start a successful crime spree across Gotham. Batman arrives to apprehend them, but never actually physically attacks either; similarly, when the Joker shows up to try to steal their loot for himself, he sprays Ivy with poison (which she's immune to) but doesn't touch her. Ultimately, it's Renee Montoya, the only named female cop on the GCPD, that gets to take Harley and Ivy down.
  • "Trial" has Gotham's new district attorney, Janet van Dorn, criticize Batman's methods and claim that his actions have increased crime in the city. Batman's Rogues Gallery decides to put this idea to the test by kidnapping both her and the Dark Night, bringing them to Arkham, and having a trial, with Two-Face as the prosecution and van Dorn as the defense. Though van Dorn locks horns with nearly all of the villains on the witness stand, the only one she physically fights is Poison Ivy, who tackles her and exchanges a few blows before the other bad guys pull her off.
• Duck Dodgers had the two-parter "Of Course You Know, This Means War and Peace" which had one of these. General Z-9's top henchman was a feminine robot, Counsellor Dish, who was shown to be a capable combatant as she easily defeated several of Commander X-2's Instant Martians. In the episode's climax, while Dodgers deals with Z-9 and the other men present try to sort out the crashing spaceship, it's the Martian Queen who delivers an ass kicking to the evil henchbot.
• Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats had an episode featuring a female opponent for Heathcliff, Terrible Tammy, who tried to take over Heathcliff's territory. He couldn't hit her, but his otherwise ladylike girlfriend Sonja didn't mind beating her up.
• In Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., whenever they are confronted by a group of villains (most notably the Leader's "Agents of C.R.A.S.H."), there will be at least one female villain among them for She-Hulk to fight.
• Justice League:
  • In the episode "Secret Society: Part II", The JL and Gorilla Grodd's Secret Society battle in a football stadium. Superman is about to punch Giganta (who in this version is more girly than the Superfriends version) but hesitates when she pulls the "You wouldn't hit a woman, would ya?" line. Behind Superman, Wonder Woman answers "I would!" flying in and knocking Giganta out.
  • Invoked in the later episode "Grudge Match", in which the villainess Roulette is having difficulty attracting spectators for her underground superhuman fight club. She gets the idea to abduct superheroines and brainwash them into fighting each other in order to draw the crowds. The episode culminates in Hawkgirl, Black Canary, Vixen and Huntress all trying (and failing) to pacify the still-brainwashed Wonder Woman.
• One episode of Mega Man (Ruby-Spears) has Roll attacked by a female cosmetics robot who gives her a bad facial. Mega Man gives the robot an equally bad facial with a tube of makeup, and offers to fight her, but Roll insists that she handle this.
• Pac-Man had Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man as the good guys, and four male ghosts and one female ghost as the bad guys. Guess who fought whom?
• Because Popeye won't hit a woman, he's always a bit helpless against a female antagonist. Olive is perfectly willing to step in and clobber them, though, with a little spinach boost.
• Some of the older Marvel superhero cartoons like Spider-Man: The Animated Series used this trope from time to time as well. One episode had a federal agent named Susan Choi work with the Kingpin's son to frame Peter Parker for treason, and they even managed to capture Parker and Mary Jane. When the police Department arrive, it's their sole female Terri Lee who ends up fighting Susan Choi. Terri Lee Wins.
• Inverted and then defied in Steven Universe. Gems as a species are entirely female-coded, and since the cast is composed of the Crystal Gems, warrior rebels sworn to defend the Earth, and their Homeworld enemies (who so far have included a ruthless super soldier built for DPS attacks, a hostile hydrokinetic "water witch" with terraforming capacity, and an exceptionally cranky sysadmin with a host of robot servants and magi-tek prosthetics), every serious, titanic battle in the series is girl-versus-girl. When Steven comes into the picture, all of his enemies and the people he has to fight are girls and monsters who used to be girls as well. In fact, except for Steven's matches as Tiger Millionaire, there are no male-on-male fights in the series at all, and half the time, Steven is the one who leaps in to stop the senior Crystal Gems from just whaling on their opponent until they pop.
• Superman: The Animated Series: Harley Quinn gets into a particularly brutal fight with Mercy Graves, Lex Luthor's female bodyguard, during the crossover episode "World's Finest". She later tapes up and gags Mercy as a bit of payback, but in the end, it's Mercy who has the last laugh. Literally, since she laughs her butt off while watching Harley getting hauled to jail.
• Teen Titans:
  • Generally averted, but in one of the earliest episodes, the only girl of the hive (Jinx) fights one of the two girls of the team (Raven). Even though there were two girls, Starfire was helping Cyborg at the time. Possible Lampshade Hanging from this quote from Jinx: "You fight like a boy!" Jinx is Raven's Shadow Archetype, so they end up fighting whenever the groups battle anyway.
  • When Trigon makes Evil Counterparts to three of the Titans (including Starfire) this looks to be the case as they fight their own mirrors, but then they do an Opponent Switch.
• The Japanese opening for Transformers: Animated shows Arcee trading blows with Blackarachnia, the only two major female Cybertronian characters in the show, despite the fact that the two have never met.
• Transformers: Prime: Arcee, the sole fembot of Team Prime, would usually duke it out with the only female villain in the show, Airachnid. This is a Justified Trope since the two were bitter enemies with a historic rivalry from before the point of time when the show started.
• Basically any Merchandise-Driven animated cartoon from the 1980's that had a female team member on the good guys' side had a counterpart on the opposing team. This was particularly apparent in the show Visionaries which had people who could temporarily turn into magical animals. Galadria of the heroic Spectral Knights turned into a dolphin, and thus the only villain she could fight was Virulina of the evil Darkling Lords, who turned into a shark.
• Zorro: The Chronicles: In the series finale, Ines and Dona Verdugo scuffle over a notebook containing proof of Dona Verdugo's misdeeds. Despite the fact that Bernardo is right there and his intervention would prove a decisive advantage, for some reason he doesn't join in.

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