Basic Trope: A person who has disabilities, but can still fight.
- Straight: Alice is in a wheelchair, but can still fight competently.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is in a wheelchair, but is also the greatest warrior in history.
- Alice is paralyzed from the neck below, but she can defeat every god in the world.
- Downplayed:
- Alice has a sprained ankle but can still fight competently.
- Alice is the best fighter of the bunch, and has a non-physical handicap, such as being on the autism spectrum.
- Alice walks with a limp, but is still a great fighter.
- Justified:
- Alice trained harder to compensate for her disability.
- Her wheelchair is WHY she's badass.
- Alice lives in a World of Badass, and just happens to be disabled.
- Alice has magic, or Psychic Powers; there's no reason she shouldn't be able to still use them.
- The area in which Alice is badass has nothing to do with her disability. For example, being in a wheelchair doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being The Smart Guy of the team, who uses genius technology to defeat the Big Bad.
- Alice has a gun.
- Alice is an Idiot Savant (who became an "idiot" through an accident causing her brain damage) and the "savant" part is combat skills.
- Alice underwent a "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome procedure and her newfound skills allow her to compensate for what the procedure could not remove.
- Inverted: Alice is not disabled, but is unable to fight.
- Subverted:
- Alice had faked her disability.
- Alice is a pacifist and can barely hurt a fly.
- Alice tries to continue fighting after being disabled but can't.
- Alice is a Paper Tiger, and the reason she is a paper tiger is because she is disabled.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice had faked her previous disability, but some time later, she really needs the wheelchair. And she can still kick ass.
- That's because her skills are located elsewhere.
- After some time training, Alice regained the skills she once had despite still being disabled.
- Parodied:
- Alice has no arms or legs and a raft of chronic illnesses, but is still better than any fighter on The Team.
- Non-ambulatory wheelchair user Alice manages to cleave her way through an army of Elite Mooks, The Brute, the Evil Genius, the Dark Action Girl, and The Dragon… only to be stopped by a set of stairs.note
- Alice's wheelchair has tank treads.
- Alice becomes a better fighter after she gets paralyzed.
- A bully comes for Alice because she is disabled, thinking she is easy pickings. One short Time Skip later, the bully is being chased by Alice in a Humongous Mecha/with her carrying a BFG/by herself (with how the heck she managed to terrorize the bully so badly conveniently left a mystery), whatever is funnier Depending on the Writer.
- Zig-Zagged: Whether Alice's disability makes her the team badass or the team damsel depends on the Monster of the Week.
- Averted:
- Alice's disability prevents her from fighting.
- Alice has no disability.
- Alice does not fight.
- Enforced:
- The writers want to show that disabled doesn't equal weak.
- "How do we make Alice even more badass? Make her a paraplegic, and still be able to kick ass!"
- Lampshaded: "We're getting beat by the cripple?"
- Invoked: Alice tears out her own eye to win the respect of her peers.
- Exploited: Hiro poses as a mafia boss and mentions that their next target, Alice, is crippled to ensure the hitmen come unarmed, and at her mercy.
- Defied:
- The Leader, Bob, tells Alice, "I can't let you fight."
- When Evulz encounters Alice in the first act and gets his chance to break her spine, he decides to go further and make damn sure Alice will never be of use to anyone ever again in any fashion other than being a martyr.
- Discussed: "Just because someone is disabled doesn't mean they're defenseless."
- Conversed: "Alice is in a wheelchair, but she can fight like that? Hard to believe."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice may be badass, but her disability still holds her back in some areas.
- Eventually, her disability takes its toll on her and makes her unable to fight altogether.
- Alice ends up fighting a Combat Pragmatist who's willing to use her disability against her.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice avoids or becomes better at her weak points.
- She's undiminished intellectually, choosing to contribute to the team effort through strategy, tactics, and logistics instead.
- Alice is Crazy-Prepared for what to do in case she encounters such an adversary.
- Played for Laughs:
- The pirates in the show gain strength proportional to the amount of body parts they lose. When Hiro and company find a pirate with a patch on both eyes, two peg legs, and two hook hands, they elect to leave him alone.
- If her own teammates didn't keep swiping her wheelchair out from out under her, Alice would probably kill every villain the first opportunity she got.
- Played for Drama: Alice loses her wheelchair in the final fight with the Big Bad, and must drag herself over to him (literally) to fight him.
- Played for Horror: Alice is a Person of Mass Destruction and every single enemy she faces takes one look at the fact she's in a wheelchair and starts to laugh, even the ones who are pragmatic. The ones who don't become bloody smears on the walls a nanosecond later Alice plays with, because she doesn't like it when they make fun of her disability.
- Implied: Alice wheels herself into a conversation and her teammates refer to an Offscreen Moment of Awesome (and likely more) that she had.
Back to Handicapped Badass.
