"You can attack me, you can send assassins after me — that's fine. But nobody messes with my boyfriend!"
— Buffy Anne Summers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Seems harming that guy was a really bad idea. His girlfriend is gonna kick your ass.
A violently protective girlfriend essentially acts like a much younger Mama Bear, except her trigger is any harm to her mate rather than to the kids; note that this inverts the usual expectation that the boyfriend is violently protective of the girlfriend (which may still be the case).
This is common with an Action Girl, Amazonian Beauty, Cute Bruiser, or Lady of War. Sometimes a Butch Lesbian will act this way about her girlfriend due to the stereotype of being stronger and more "dominant", though a Lipstick Lesbian shouldn't be underestimated either. Personalities associated with it include Plucky Girl (who may or may not fight but is likely to be protective anyway), Tsundere (who is apt to go into rage mode when said lover is threatened despite not being able to stand them half the time) and Yandere (who is likely to bring out the Ax-Crazy in response to anyone threatening what they feel is theirs). A Non-Action Guy or dudes otherwise incompetent in combat seem to attract these women. Most types of The Woobie (except a Jerkass Woobie who hasn't revealed his woobie side and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds) also draw the attention of these types of women out of an instinct to ease their suffering.
Sometimes, if she herself doesn't treat her boyfriend exceptionally well, there can be a variant that can be summed up as, "Hey, nobody picks on him but me."
Compare to Understanding Boyfriend for the inverted variant. See also More Deadly Than the Male, Action Girlfriend, and Bodyguard Crush. Can overlap with Beware the Nice Ones if she seems harmless until her mate is in danger. If the male lover is more than capable of protecting himself, she's Bodyguarding a Badass. A mutually violently protective couple is a Battle Couple. An Amazon Chaser may look for one of these. A group of these focused on the same Protectorate is a Battle Harem.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: Rentarou is a gender-inverted version. Violence is his very first response if anyone threatens or hurts any of his girlfriends, usually having to be held back to keep from beating up the perpetrator. One time, he even terrified a god into surrendering.
- Don't threaten (or even speak ill of) Keiichi from Ah! My Goddess lest you incur the wrath of his Goddess girlfriend. Several characters comment that Belldandy is terrifying when something threatens (or demeans) her boyfriend and the art work depicts her as looking unusually threatening (for her) when this happens. This was seen as early as in Urd's introductory episode, where Bell was pissed at her older sister for meddling with their relationship.
- Threatening or physically assaulting Eren from Attack on Titan is a sure-fire way to anger Mikasa. Not a good idea considering she's likely the second most powerful human in the world and, much more, she's perfectly willing to face down everything from a squad of cannon-armed soldiers to entire hordes of Titans to the world's strongest man himself just to keep Eren safe.
- Miyako from Bamboo Blade is overly protective of Dan... although it's at least in part because she just likes having a reason to hurt people.
- Hotarubi from Basilisk. Hurt her beloved Yashamaru and you're dead!
- In Berserk Action Girl Casca has few moments of this towards her lover Guts in the Golden Age, like having his back multiple times during battle. In the fight with Wyald, she even tries to protect Guts while he’s unconscious before getting overpowered.
- Elizabeth "Lizzie" Middleford in the Black Butler manga decides to stop hiding her Lady of War side when she and her fiance Ciel were surrounded by zombies and he was unable to protect her. When this took place, the girl tearfully and fearlessly jumped to the guy's defense with two rapiers in hand...
(paraphrased) "I will become the wife of The Queen's Watchdog! BACK OFF HIM!"
- Black Lagoon: As far as Revy is concerned, harming Rock in any manner is punishable by a disproportionate beat down for a first offense, and a bullet for a second (or even for a first if it's severe enough). When Chaka wants to goad her into a gunfight, he does so by wantonly beating Rock — and, later on, he gets what he had coming for it, as Revy trashes him for a bit and then leaves him at the mercy of his other victim's bodyguard: Ginji Matsuzaki, who is quick to give him a particularly horrible Cruel and Unusual Death for the shit he pulled on his charge, Yakuza Princess Yukio. Revy doesn't even hesitate to take on Balalaika to protect Rock.
- Anyone who wants to do something to Ryouta in Brynhildr in the Darkness has to fight several angry girls who are magicians.
- Call of the Night:
- When Seri is about to bite Yamori's neck, Nazuna flies in and rips off her arm before anyone even knows she's there.
Nazuna: Hey, you... You think you can just take someone else's prey, you turbo slut?
- Seri finds herself on the giving end after Anko tries to murder Akiyama.
- When Seri is about to bite Yamori's neck, Nazuna flies in and rips off her arm before anyone even knows she's there.
- Case Closed:
- NO ONE shall harm/beat up/capture/put inside a Death Trap/etc. Wataru Takagi. Because his Action Girlfriend and police partner just happens to be Miwako Sato, one of the most powerful Action Girls in the cast and who once lost her First Love/former work partner Matsuda to terrorists, so she will not tolerate anyone putting her Takagi in danger. She has been on the verge of losing her Second Love at least thrice, and obviously was very unhappy about that.
- Subverted with Ran Mōri, who has protected her "not-boyfriend" Shinichi Kudo many times from many dangers... but she doesn't know it because he was shrunk into the titular Conan and she's completely Locked Out of the Loop in these regards. So Ran believes herself to be a Mama Bear regarding the kid, but she's actually protecting her love interest...
- In Claymore, you can see Clare protecting Raki several times. Raki is totally defenseless as a human being in the fight against the man-eating monsters (or warriornesses like Ophelia). On the other hand, Raki screams at anyone who does not treat Clare well. His love has in the anime twice prevented that Clare has turned into a man-eating monster.
- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners tragically deconstructs this. After becoming an Official Couple with David, Lucy develops the tendency to become this whenever David is in danger. Lucy deliberately botches the job with Tanaka Sr. once she finds information concerning Arasaka's plans for David to become their lab rat, which unfortunately leads to a Trauma Team being called to the gang's hideout and directly leads to Maine and Dorio's deaths. Consequently, David has to step up as leader of the group unbeknownst to him about her hand in it, all while she goes on a whole murderous rampage through any Arasaka's netrunners who try to decipher the info she deliberately destroyed. This crusade gets the full attention of Arasaka, leading to her being captured. Her behavior in the long term spells the death she was trying to avoid all along as David ends up installing the cyberskeleton and ultimately sacrificing himself to save Lucy from Arasaka's clutches.
- Darwin's Game has The Hero Kaname's girlfriend Shuka, a borderline Ax-Crazy Blood Knight whose first interaction with him was trying to kill him before going a step beyond Defeat Means Friendship. Ordinarily killing people in the Deadly Game is just fun for her, but when her man is involved it gets personal.
- In one of the constant cases of insanity and sexual arousal in DEAD Tube, when Betsuki-sensei tries to continue her sex craze with Machiya, Mashiro calmly states "that" [Machiya's dick] is hers and Betsuki can't have it. Mashiro blows her brains out with an automatic pistol to show she means it, and to protect Machiya since that's how Betsuki initiates a murder: fuck then kill under the pretence they couldn't satisfy her.
- Misa Amane of Death Note is a particularly dark example, but killing for her beloved Serial-Killer Killer boyfriend is far from beneath her.
- Rule #1 when you are a character in Destiny of the Shrine Maiden and particularly Zettai Shoujo Seiiki Amnesian: don't lay a finger on Himeko. Otherwise, Chikane will (albeit gracefully) kick your sorry ass from here to Orion. Of course, if you have an evil super power, then you might be able to bat Chikane away and continue to attempt to lay a finger on Himeko. Until she gets said evil super power for herself, then you can start panicking before she turns you to stone with it.
- In Dragon Ball most female fighters are overshadowed by their male partners... except for Android 18, who is much, much stronger than her husband Krillin, and is fiercely protective of him. This was best shown in Dragon Ball GT when her Brainwashed and Crazy brother 17 killed Krillin (again) right in front of her, 18's tears of grief turn to Berserker Tears as she delivers a glorious Extreme Melee Revenge to her brother. Later on 18 even joins Goku in destroying Super 17 to avenge Krillin.
Android 18: He was my husband and you killed him... YOU KILLED HIM! (She punches 17 in the face, then roundhouse kicks his arm.) I'll KILL YOU!!! (She punches 17 in the gut so hard, he crashes into a building.)
- Fairy Tail:
- While not in a relationship with Grey, threatening his well-being is a bad idea. When Meredy proclaims she's gonna kill him (due to mistakenly believing he killed Ultear's mother), Juvia became absolutely '''scary'''
◊. Note that she's so pissed that Erza Scarlet is visibly frightened by it.
- Erza herself became an example of this trope while trying to defend Jellal from both Midnight and Kagura.
- While not in a relationship with Grey, threatening his well-being is a bad idea. When Meredy proclaims she's gonna kill him (due to mistakenly believing he killed Ultear's mother), Juvia became absolutely '''scary'''
- Fullmetal Alchemist has Hawkeye and Lan Fan, who are quite protective of both Mustang and Ling respectively. Note that while Hawkeye and Mustang are confirmed to have marriage-worthy feelings for each other (though their ranks and positions don't let them fully act on such feels) and Ling and Lanfan mean a lot to each other, both girls also have professional duties as bodyguards.
- Yuno Gasai of Future Diary is devilishly sweet and quirkily insane, and the poster girl of the Yandere archetype. Anyone who she even thinks is getting in the way of her and Yukiteru will receive a bloody, violent death.
- Great Teacher Onizuka features this relationship with Tsundere Anko Uehara and Noboru Yoshikawa (who plays the role of Understanding Boyfriend). You never mess with Noboru in Anko's presence unless you want a thorough beating. Kinda ironic when you consider the fact Uehara actually started out as a Loving Bully to Noboru.
- Seras Victoria from Hellsing and Hellsing Ultimate OVA is most of time much more cheerful and human than her Mentor Alucard and slightly unwilling to accept that she is a vampire. When her Love Interest Pip Bernadotte is murdered in a very unpleasant and terrible way in front of her, however, the result was enough to scare the crap out of vampire Nazis. Let's not even talk about what she did with Pip's murderer...
- Hetalia: Axis Powers:
- "Seize vital regions, seize vital regions... CRUSH PRUSSIA, CRUSH PRUSSIA!!" Really, people, don't mess with Austria unless you want his girlfriend/wife Hungary to pound you.
- Ho Yay version: in the Christmas/New Years 2010 Special, Finland snapped when his partner Sweden (who refers to him as "his wife") was hit with The Worf Effect and managed to put up quite a fight against his attacker. Too bad he got caught too.
- Hori from Horimiya has a violent temper, so when some of Miyamura's former bullies start insulting him in front of her (when she was already in a bad mood), well... let's just say that they never tried messing with him again.
- Inuyasha:
- Kagome blasts Naraku apart just because he made fun of Inuyasha. She threatens the Peachman so much so that even Miroku and Shippou are amazed. Plus she blasts Kikyou's souls out of her twice for trying to kill him while she was in her Yandere days. She even shoots at Sesshoumaru and threatens him twice. Where would Inuyasha be without his girlfriend to protect him?
- Once Inuyasha's revived ex-girlfriend Kikyou loses a part of her rage at the world and sets into Anti Heroine territory, she also threatens the evil priestess Tsubaki and openly warns her not to kill him. To put it on perspective: post-Yandere-phase Kikyou is a very serious Dark Magical Girl who almost always keeps what remains of her muddled emotions in check and rarely if ever shows open anger... but the moment her old Rival Turned Evil tells her that she's gonna kill Inuyasha, she fires two arrows at Tsubaki (pining her robe sleeve to the wooden door), walks up to her and pulls on her hair while delivering her warning about Inuyasha. Seriously, don't mess with Kikyou.
- Deconstructed with Lisa Lisa of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Yes, she killed her husband's killer, but because she charged in without thinking, she was spotted by someone who thought she was burning the body (when it was actually disintegrating because zombies are weak to Hamon), and the fact that the killer in question was a high ranking military leader, she had to go into hiding, leaving behind her son, Joseph.
- Jormungand: Valmet will put a foot up your ass when you as much as look at Koko in a funny way (Koko doesn't reciprocate Valmet's romantic feelings towards her, but it still counts).
- Kaguya from Kaguya-sama: Love Is War was very protective of Shirogane even before they started dating. Anyone stupid enough to insult him while she is within earshot will quickly discover why her two black belts are actually the least dangerous thing about her. Just ask Betsy or Hayato.
- Do not threaten Kenichi of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple in the presence of his semi-pseudo-girlfriend Miu. Many have mistaken his attempts to talk them down as trying to protect Miu from them; none realize until it's too late that he's protecting them from her.
- In Kitsune no Yomeiri Ousuke, an unlucky everyman, ends up getting married to the kitsune princess Kyouka. Now, while she is a prankster and loves tricking her husband, with such things like drawing on his face as he sleeps, she does deeply care for him and his hard work ethic. When some thugs ruined all the potatoes he just finished peeling, she unleashed her fox fire on them.
- Magi: Labyrinth of Magic:
- While they're not a couple, Morgiana is this to Alibaba. She is incredibly loyal to him and harming or insulting him is an easy way to get her angry... and Morgiana is not someone you would want as an enemy.
- Kougyoku is much the same way with Alibaba even before they got engaged and Kouen. Upon seeing them hurt by the Medium in chapter 191, she becomes enraged, unleashing an attack that knocks the seemingly-invulnerable monster clean off its feet.
- The anime version of Magic Knight Rayearth depicted Hikaru and Fuu as these. In episode 7 of the anime, Fuu single-handedly killed a giant monster that was about to eat Ferio alive, and in episode 15, she was ready to fight Innouva to save Ferio instead of submitting to his will. Meanwhile, Hikaru battled Nova to protect Lantis from her.
- The Mazinger saga:
- Mazinger Z: Really it is not a good idea hurting Kouji Kabuto in front of prototypical Tsundere Action Girl and Battle Couple Sayaka Yumi. Although her Fem Bot is a constant victim of The Worf Effect, she still has TONS of righteous wrath to back her. Secondary character Saijyo found out about it the hard way in episode 26: shortly after beating up Kouji he found himself in the grip of a Humongous Mecha while Sayaka gave him a furious "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
- In Shin Mazinger Zero Sayaka tears apart three Mechanical Beasts that were threatening Kouji in a matter of seconds, roaring the whole time. Even Kouji was frightened.
- My-HiME: Threatening Natsuki will not end well for you if Shizuru finds out. Ask District One. Or Nao.
- Naruto:
- Even though she was only fulfilling her duty as an ally, Temari shows shades of this when saving Shikamaru from Tayuya.
- Hinata stands in front of Pain and bravely fights him in order to protect Naruto.
- Naruto himself is a gender-inverted example, becoming very protective to Hinata after he reciprocates her love in The Last. He refuses to let Toneri get more than a few words in before going on the offensive, later telling him that "Hinata has nothing to say to [him]" when the latter comes to talk to her.
- In Naruto Gaiden, Sakura smashes Shin Uchiha Sr. very hard because he harmed her husband Sasuke (and their daughter Sarada).
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi has a Les Yay version: Setsuna, Konoka's childhood friend and personal bodyguard. Although as her bodyguard it's her duty to protect her, Setsuna is shown to be fiercely protective of Konoka and her feelings are clearly beyond a bodyguard's for her charge. After entering a Pactio with Konoka, she's even more of the real deal, and they become a Battle Couple.
- Jyubee in Nejimaki Kagyu is sorta like this. She's a childhood friend to her teacher, Kamo, and wants to be his girlfriend once she finishes high school. But since Kamo is an unwitting Chick Magnet and the female student body at his school are literally crazy for him. She opts to protect him with the training she received while abroad in China. This is usually the result of anyone who threatens him or tries to separate the two.
- An extremely rare gay case is Shion from No. 6. His boyfriend Nezumi is completely off-limits. This is rather interesting because Shion is a overwhelmingly pleasant and friendly person and is the more passive, non-violent, and less physically threatening of the couple, while Nezumi is pretty much an experienced assassin and cold killer. These are also the only scenarios where he shows his Yandere side and even simple insults towards Nezumi can get him violent. This hits an extreme when Nezumi is non-fatally shot, causing Shion to coldly shoot the attacker in the leg, slowly approach him while creepily muttering how dare you hurt him and blast his brains out point-blank. Nezumi is understandably horrified by this and begs Shion to stop. When Nezumi finally asks him why, Shion responds it was punishment for hurting him. This so out of the blue for Shion that he has a small breakdown when he comes to his senses.
- Omamori Himari: The title character Himari is a love interest of Amakawa Yuuto, and his bodyguard. The first time he gets seriously injured protecting her, she falls into a murderous rage, slices of the arm of a skyscraper-sized giant, and would have killed the enemy who injured Yuuto — it takes Yuuto himself invoking a Pillar of Light to stop her. The second time he is injured is only in the manga. Yuuto is injured by the Big Bad... prompting Himari to start eating said Big Bad. Not only does she fall into a murderous rage, she also absorbs the hate and anger of the Big Bad, and the last few chapters are about how to calm her down again.
- One Piece: Although she's not his girlfriend anywhere but in her own mind (where she believes they are engaged), Boa Hancock gets very upset when someone threatens Luffy. When Smoker attacks Luffy, she threatens to rip him to pieces and feed him to wild dogs. Take into consideration that this woman is most likely one of the most powerful Action Girl(s) in the whole One Piece universe, as a Kick Chick Lady of War who also has Taken for Granite powers and more.
- Ranma ½:
- Akane becomes this whenever Ranma fails to properly defend himself against any real threat. If he's losing in a fight, she'll either help him kick your ass or she'll do it herself... or at least, she'll try to do it herself. It's not easy to defend your fiancé when everyone else is better than you. Thankfully, her temper has made up for her lack of skills more than once. One time, she easily broke through thick bonds out of pure rage over someone threatening Ranma.
Akane: Let me go! If you hurt him, I swear that I'll...
- Shampoo exhibits traits especially in the anime. She was quick to defend Ranma from Mousse when he tried to curse him with Jusenkyo water and was willing to go against her sister amazons when they tried to threaten Ranma. When the Jusenkyo Enforcers were torturing Ranma and Genma, Shampoo jumps in and attacks them despite being in cat form at the time. In the movie, Shampoo saves Ranma and Lychee from Monlon, telling them to go on ahead and leave Monlon to her.
- Akane becomes this whenever Ranma fails to properly defend himself against any real threat. If he's losing in a fight, she'll either help him kick your ass or she'll do it herself... or at least, she'll try to do it herself. It's not easy to defend your fiancé when everyone else is better than you. Thankfully, her temper has made up for her lack of skills more than once. One time, she easily broke through thick bonds out of pure rage over someone threatening Ranma.
- Red River (1995): Yuri Suzuki. When the concubines who are butthurt because Kail is going the Ladykiller in Love way for her put scorpions in Yuri's bed in the same night that Kail was about to sleep in her bedroom, Yuri gets so absolutely pissed off that she storms into the room the girls are in and shouts that they can treat her as badly as they want, but they better not endanger Kail. She then correctly identifies the one who came up with that shit and throws the now-dead scorpions on her. This isn't including the times she has ridden into battle to save him. She even gave up a final chance to return back to her home time in Japan to ride to Kail's rescue.
- Rokudou's Bad Girls: Rokudou used to be a perpetual bullying victim until he accidentally used his grandfather's ancestral demon-binding scroll... which made him a Chick Magnet for, specifically, female delinquents. First among them is Himawari Ranna, a classical ''sukeban'' who can and will crush a dozen men without breaking a sweat if they threaten her man. She's not the last...
- Rosario + Vampire: If you ever hurt Tsukune, Moka will make sure you know your place. Unless Kurumu or Mizore beat her to it — if Tsukune himself doesn't kill you first, that is. Unusually for this trope, the one Tsukune truly wants as a girlfriend, Outer Moka, isn't really much use until her Rosary is removed and she becomes Inner Moka, who will fight just as viciously as the others but does it for herself rather than for Tsukune (at least at first).
- The Rose of Versailles: While they're not an item yet, Oscar François de Jarjayes completely flips her shit out when André Grandier is subjected to Eye Scream by Bernard aka the Black Knight, and very nearly kills the culprit.
- Sailor Moon:
- Both Usagi Tsukino (Sailor Moon) and Michiru/Neptune have put themselves at great risk to save their respective love interests, Mamoru/Tuxedo Kamen and Haruka/Uranus.
- Cruelly subverted twice in the finale of Codename: Sailor V: Minako becomes Sailor V and prepares to open a goddess-sized can of whoop-ass on the youma apparently threatening her love interest Ace... Except the youma informs her that she works for Ace and thinks that she is this trope... At which point Ace wounds her, giving Sailor V the opening she needed to kill her. Ace then dies at Sailor V's hands.
- The titular Human Aliens of Sekirei are this by default, being fiercely protective of their human partners. It's entirely justified, since killing the Ashikabi will terminate all their Sekirei and most Ashikabi are simply Puny Earthlings caught up in battles between superhuman Action Girls. The notable exception is Yukari Sahashi, who responds violently to anyone that dares to threaten her beloved Bishōnen, Shiina. Her tendency to hospitalize rival Ashikabi results in her becoming The Dreaded, while Shiina winces in the background.
- Diane from the series The Seven Deadly Sins might not be Meliodas' girlfriend but she will beat the living hell out of you if you try to hurt him.
- A humorous example in Sgt. Frog: Messing with Fuyuki is a great way to get Momoka to kick your ass, even though she isn't technically his girlfriend. Yet.
- In episode 10 of Sword Art Online, a gloating Kuradeel kills one of his guildmates, then starts to torture Kirito, who soundly defeated him in an earlier duel. Were it not for the timely arrival of Asuna who had been following them, it's likely Kuradeel would have also killed Kirito, then made up some random excuse as to why the two guildmates were dead to their guild leader Heathcliff.
- If you find yourself in one of the Tenchi Muyo! universes, it doesn't matter which one; don't threaten Tenchi while Ryoko is around. Just don't. For that matter, Princess Ayeka will also be pretty pissed off at you. The rest of his Battle Harem won't be happy either...
- Momo in To Love Ru Darkness. The most protective among Rito's love interests. When she thought Yami was trying to kill Rito and decided to interfere with their conversation, Yami commented that she could sense Momo's bloodlust. On another occasion, when her fan club tried to "save" her from Rito (by shooting him with Nerf Guns)... she was not amused.
- Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase: Once upon a time, a group of thugs roughed up Kohei Morioka, the favorite servant/blood donor/toy of vampire princess Hazuki. They were never seen again.
- Urusei Yatsura: Downplayed, because it's not a very action-focused series, but in general if a person tries to harm Ataru Moroboshi and his girlfriend Lum doesn't think he's earned it by being a Jerkass? She will fry whoever is responsible to a crisp. Slightly more prevalent in the 1981 Animated Adaptation.
- Vampire Princess Miyu: While Larva is more of Miyu's Battle Butler than boyfriend, NO ONE should think of harming him. Miyu will, in her own words, "turn [you] into ashes" for hurting her faithful and devoted companion.
- Similarly, her fellow "Vampire Princess" Yui was most pissed when the first Shinma she fought impaled her own companion Nagi with a spear. Notice that at such a particular point, Yui had just become a vampire and had next to no idea of how to use her newfound vampire skills — she fought anyway and used both guile and raw power to win.
- Vermeil in Gold: While she's not his girlfriend at first, Vermeil is very protective of Alto. She coldly told off Professor Obsidian for using his dark magic and threatened that if he ever touched Alto, she would rip his body and soul to shreds. After briefly killing Alto in her demon form thanks to Obsidian injecting her with a serum to force her into a berserker state, she keeps on her promise and violently brutalizes him and only refrains from killing him due to knowing Alto would not want that. Later, upon seeing another demon near Alto, Vermeil scares the girl half to death out of the belief the little demon means Alto harm.
- When The Voynich Hotel's Elena learns that two Serial Killers have been tasked with killing her Understanding Boyfriend Taizou Kuzuki, she confronts one of them. Said serial killer ends up with her head impaled at the top of the building. The other is chopped in several pieces by someone else, escaping with her life only because Elena's fellow maid Beluna finds her dying body and stitches her back out of pity.
- Towards the end, when Elena isn't around, the guy is targeted again and subjected to massive doses of Cold-Blooded Torture, this time by yakuza from his Dark and Troubled Past. When she comes back, walks into the bloody scene and sees him more dead than alive... eh, the attackers don't live for too long either.
- Saori from Wandering Son acts this way toward Shuuichi, however they aren't dating and Shu doesn't even have romantic feelings toward Saori.
- Witchcraft Works: If you dare attempt to hurt Takamiya Honoka, you better have your affairs in order - because Kagari Ayaka killing you quickly may be the best outcome you can look out for.
- Yandere Kanojo: Reina Ryuuzaki already has a violent temper, being a delinquent and all (though she mellows out somewhat), but anybody threatening her boyfriend (aside from her) is in for a world of hurt. That trait comes from her mom. Anyone trying to bother Kouichiro might as well call their undertaker to save time.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- In the original series, Anzu was very protective of Yugi ever since they were kids. While she's not an Action Girl or a big duelist, she is a determined Plucky Girl who does what she can to support him, and will stand up for Yugi's sake if he needs it.
- High Priest Akhenadin noticed that Kisara either wouldn't or couldn't summon her powerful Blue-Eyes White Dragon ka to protect herself, but when it comes to protecting Priest Seto...
- Mana and her ka, the Black/Dark Magician Girl, are this to Yami Yugi/Pharaoh Atem and Mahaad/Black/Dark Magician.
- Yubel from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX started as one of these but got a lot worse with time.
- Aki Izayoi reminds Jack Atlas of this trope when Yusei Fudo is kidnapped on Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's.
Comedy
- Pablo Francisco has speculated that this is the best part of having a Mexican girlfriend because if you get in a fight, she will jump in and wipe the floor with the other guy.
- Near the end of Mitch Benn's 2019 show "10 Songs to Save the World", he describes automatically making a comment in reaction to reading a political opinon he strongly disagreed with, and then realising that he was reading it on a placard in a London street and not on the internet, and the large man holding the sign had heard him. Luckily, his then-girlfriend was with him. "Oh, yes. I will see your six-foot Australian and raise you a tiny Scottish woman!"
Comic Books
- In American Vampire, Henry can usually take care of himself... but when he's outmatched, Pearl is more than willing to step up to the plate and deal with things. As Skinner Sweet, among others, found out the hard way.
- The Avengers: Scarlet Witch towards The Vision. Wanda could, would and has taken on powerful supervillains, demons and gods who have hurt her synthetic-man and being a Reality Warper, attacking Viz in her presence is something most come to regret.
- Normally, Black Widow and Bucky Barnes are a Battle Couple of equal standing. But if you even dare to imply that Natasha would betray him, don't say you didn't deserve that lunging knife at your throat.
- Early on in Empowered, Thugboy has been captured by some of his associates, who are displeased that since meeting Empowered, he's no longer loyal to them. They are just about to kill him when Empowered kicks down the door and Hilarity Ensues. Afterward, Emp is showing a classic case of Anger Born of Worry.
- Fantastic Four: Susan Richards for Reed Richards, after she Took a Level in Badass and became the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four. (In fact, word to the wise: Don't threaten her children, her little brother, or any of her friends if you value your life.)
- The Incredible Hulk: Betty Ross was protective of her Love Interest and future husband Bruce Banner when she was a normal sweet girl. When she became Red She-Hulk, she takes this up a notch and will go into a particularly extreme Unstoppable Rage at seeing Bruce get hurt whether in human form or when he's Hulked out. In Incredible Hulks (2010) #23, she attacks the sorceress Umar with a massive piece of rubble◊ when the latter ensnares Hulk with a demonic tongue.
Red She-Hulk: Get your damn tongue off him. You PIECE OF TRASH!
- In The Immortal Hulk, Betty as Red Harpy actually takes on the whole goddamn Avengers when they once again decide to be antagonistic jerks to her big green husband.
- Invincible: Atom Eve is this towards Mark. Despite him being far stronger than her, Eve simply won't tolerate Mark getting hurt in any way when she has the power to stop it. She's even unleashed her 11th-Hour Superpower when Conquest was about to kill Mark, frying Conquest's skin off in the process. There's also the time Anissa the Viltrumite woman who raped Mark came uninvited to their house looking for Mark, and Eve tried to crush Anissa on the spot before Mark stopped her to which Eve protest mentioning what Anissa did to him, which caused Mark's father, Nolan to almost kill Anissa before Mark calmed them down.
- Justice League: Dream Girls: After finding out that Galaxy is in a coma on the Watchtower, her girlfriend Kat badgers Jon Kent into taking her up there and almost gets in a fight with Midnighter when the latter tries to bar her from the station. Extrano has to intervene to keep the peace.
- Last of the Sandwalkers: Professor Bombardier takes down a creepy firefly trying to eat Raef by spraying her with searing hot acid. Although Raef doesn't know it at the time, Bombardier is actually his wife.
Bombardier: Take that, you HUSSY!
- New Gods: Big Barda will destroy anyone who even looks at her husband Mister Miracle funny. That, or she'll teleport you to another galaxy... in the middle of space. To be fair, that's less her being a Violently Protective Girlfriend and more her being violent, period. Barda seems to believe all problems will go away if you beat them to an unrecognizable pulp... which admittedly is accurate most of the time.
- Nightwing: Dick Grayson gets this from both Barbara Gordon and Starfire which is to be expected from two Fiery Redheads.
- She-Hulk: Titania may be a Dark Action Girl and quite The Brute, but she genuinely loves and adores her hubby Crusher Creel the Absorbing Man. Seeing him get hurt despite the fact he’s got Nigh-Invulnerability most of time, or even threatened, makes her (as several Marvel heroes like Spidey and She-Hulk discovered) incredibly angry.
- The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis: When a xenomorph is attacking Homer, Marge uses the same mech Ellen Ripley used at the end of Aliens to fight it:
Marge: Get away from my Homie, you $#@%*!!
- In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), if you try attacking Knuckles, you're going to end up in a world of pain anyway. Attack him in front of Julie-Su and that's only going to be doubled. Good luck trying to weasel out of that one...
- Spider-Man:
- Gwen Stacy is this to her best friend/boyfriend, Peter Parker, in most mediums and even timelines. This is best displayed in one issue of Spider-Gwen, where she intervenes when two bullies are attacking him on a football field (though they weren't together in this universe):
Gwen: Touch him again and you won't like how I touch you.
- Her Ultimate Marvel version even pulls a knife on his bullies.
- Mary Jane Watson herself. Yeah, Peter being Spider-Man means he usually doesn’t need to be protected but when he does need help, MJ will literally crawl through rubble and take on supervillains to save him. This is played even straighter during the times where Mary Jane gets her own Spider-Powers such as in Spider-Island.
- Black Cat definitely counts as well. In Marvel Knights: Spider-Man she attacks The Vulture for not only attacking Spider-Man but also trying to kill him while he's in recovery. She then later threatens to kill him next time should he ever pull a stunt like that again.
- Gwen Stacy is this to her best friend/boyfriend, Peter Parker, in most mediums and even timelines. This is best displayed in one issue of Spider-Gwen, where she intervenes when two bullies are attacking him on a football field (though they weren't together in this universe):
- Star Trek (IDW): Uhura, to the point that she performs a Gunship Rescue to save Spock, Scotty and a group of other officers stranded on a hostile planet at the end of the "Galileo Seven" arc.
- Superman:
- Lois Lane becomes this each time Superman is depowered. For instance, there was the time after her wedding to Clark, when he was kidnapped after temporarily losing his powers. Lois took her army brat background to extremes, becoming a G.I. Jane in order to come to the rescue.
- In What If? story Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #57 "Jimmy Olsen Marries Supergirl!", the titular characters fell in love and got married while Kara/Linda was depowered and amnesiac for her superheroine identity. When she begins to regain her powers, Supergirl readily uses them to safeguard her husband. She even asks him to let her protect him always.
- Teen Titans: Cassie Sandsmark is this for Tim Drake in the New 52. Cassie is fiercely loyal to Tim, and he's one of the few people that can break through her tough, short-tempered nature. In Teen Titans #2, Tim is about to be attacked by an animalistic Skitter, until a furious Cassie intervenes in order to protect him.
Cassie: [punches the living daylights out of Skitter] BACK OFF, ROACH!
Tim: [to himself] If I'm not careful, I could fall in love with that girl!- In Teen Titans #7, Tim attempts to convince the Teen Titans to rescue Conner, despite their understandable reluctance to go on a mission to save someone who just attempted to kill them. However, when Tim makes an off-handed comment that he may not survive saving Superboy on his own, Cassie immediately decides to go with him, which causes the rest of the team to follow.
- In Teen Titans #21, the Teen Titans are facing off against the Brain, a recurring foe of the Doom Patrol. When the Brain fires a painful laser blast at Tim, Cassie is beyond enraged and attempts to murder the Brain in response.
Cassie: [grabbing onto the Brain] I will KILL you for that!
The Brain: So at the end of the day, you are just like me.
Cassie: At the end of the day, you'll be a stain on the sidewalk!
- Wonder Woman: Diana does not like it when people mess with Steve Trevor, and villains whose first appearance has them threatening, poisoning, or attempting to brainwash him are tracked down and beaten by her with a bit more vigor than normal, especially those that mess with his mind like Hypnota.
- X-Men:
- No X-Lady plays this trope better than Rogue, the physically strongest female X-Men member, in regards to her boyfriend-now husband Gambit whom she is very protective of, probably because he isn't a Flying Brick like her. Dialed Up to Eleven in Avengers vs. X-Men when Iron Man blasts Gambit and Rogue goes berserk◊, having absorbed She-Hulk's Super-Strength and temperament.
Hulk Rogue: HE HURT REMY. MAKE HIM PAY.
- In the 2019 Excalibur comic, Rogue upon waking from a coma gloriously curb◊ stomped◊ and killed Apocalypse (one of the most powerful mutants ever) when the latter severely hurt Gambit. Apocalypse soon got better though, thanks to Hope Summers.
- In the 2019 Excalibur comic, Rogue upon waking from a coma gloriously curb
- Jean Grey typically is violently protective of Cyclops inducing brutal fights with Psylocke, Emma Frost, and villains over Scott.
- Storm is already very protective of most of her allies, but when violent moves or insults are made towards a certain king of Wakanda T'Challa (whom Ororo still cares deeply about even though their marriage ended), she tends to break out the hurricanes and lightning bolts more readily. Back in the 90s, she was similarly protective of her boyfriend Forge.
- Polaris is often like this towards Havok (whom she has a regular off-and-on again relationship with). She's the daughter of Magneto and can kick a staggering amount of ass when Alex is in danger. One time, she absorbed the Malice entity rather than let Havok get possessed by it.
- X-23 too, as Lady Deathstryke found out the hard way:
X-23: You were dead the second you touched Julian Keller.
- No X-Lady plays this trope better than Rogue, the physically strongest female X-Men member, in regards to her boyfriend-now husband Gambit whom she is very protective of, probably because he isn't a Flying Brick like her. Dialed Up to Eleven in Avengers vs. X-Men when Iron Man blasts Gambit and Rogue goes berserk
- Young Avengers: Hulkling and Wiccan are a same-sex variant for each other. While generally sticking to Thou Shalt Not Kill, they both make it clear they’re willing to kill to protect each other.
Films — Animation
- It's best to leave Aladdin alone unless you want to face the wrath of his fiancée (later wife), Jasmine.
- The Incredibles 1: Helen, a.k.a. Elastigirl to her husband Bob, a.k.a. Mr. Incredible. Even though he's stronger than her and can usually look after himself, she'll still break into an Elaborate Underground Base and take on an army of armed goons as a One-Woman Army to save him. In the sequel, when a Brawn Hilda starts overpowering him, Elastigirl immediately wraps around her from behind, allowing Bob to get the upper hand.
- Justice League Dark: Apokolips War: Whenever Damian gets hurt, Raven will unleash her demonic side to save him. When Luthor threw Damian against a pillar, she easily ripped apart Luthor's mech suit and would have crushed him to death had Superman not stopped her.
- The Little Mermaid: Hurting Prince Eric in front of Ariel is not a good idea, as Ursula soon discovered. Bonus points for being the first Disney Princess to save her male love interest in the history of Disney animation (more than once, to top it all).
- Sausage Party The very instant an enraged woman being high off bath salts tries to strangle Frank, his girlfriend Brenda leaps to his defense by fatally smashing the woman’s head onto the ground.
Brenda: Stay away from my sausage, you skank!
- The Secret Life of Pets: Pomeranian Gidget trashes through an army of evil pets to save her crush, Max, from getting harmed. This is what finally makes him see her as a romantic interest.
- The Sword in the Stone: The cute, amorous, and normally sweet little she-squirrel won't hesitate to attack a predator ten times her size to protect Arthur.
- Tangled: Rapunzel eventually becomes this to Eugene, she uses her trademark long magical hair to pull him out of danger and even before falling in love with Eugene, was willing to save him from a group barroom bandits armed only with a frying pan. It's taken even further in the climax as when Gothel stabs Eugene, Rapunzel despite being Bound and Gagged goes nuts and fights tooth and nail to break free of Gothel and reach him much to her kidnapper's fury. Rapunzel even declares, she will never stop fighting her unless Gothel lets her heal Eugene meaning she's willing to give up freedom so long as her love lives. Eugene vetoes this though by cutting Rapunzel's hair which turns Gothel (who had been living off it) to dust.
Films — Live-Action
- The Abyss (1989): Coffey, in the throes of High Pressure Nervous Syndrome, uses a mini-sub to try to kill Bud Brigman before he can get back to the diving rig. Out of the darkness comes Bud's ex-wife Lindsey, in her own mini-sub, with an expression of absolute murder on her face, ramming into Coffey's mini-sub until the engine shorts out and sending him plummeting into the trench, where the increasing water pressure eventually crushes his sub with him in it.
- Avatar: Neytiri is vividly protective of Jake, crouching over him with knife drawn and teeth bared, hissing, in two scenes where he is unconscious and under threat. When Quaritch is about to kill Jake, she puts two arrows into his chest.
- Beauty and the Beast (2017) adds a Canon Foreigner to the transformed castle servants — Maestro Cadenza, a composer and pianist who was turned into a harpsichord. He's married to Madame de Garderobe, an opera diva who became a wardrobe; the two are separated by the curse and too physically large to travel, so they spend their decades under the spell apart. They finally see each other again when the villagers invade the castle and battle the enchanted objects — specifically, when a nasty woman named Clothilde is about to lead an attack on Cadenza. Madame de Garderobe wastes no time in climbing onto a banister (reminder — she's a six-foot-tall wardrobe at this point), leaping down, and pile-driving Clothilde and any other villager stupid enough to go near her husband.
- Critters: April's reaction to Steve being attacked by a monster during their Roll in the Hay is to scream for a few seconds and then attempt to save Steve by pitchforking his attacker (who, regrettably, just bites the pitchfork in half and sends her running).
- Forrest Gump: Gender-inverted between Forrest and Jenny as adults, although she spends many years unwilling to consider him as a boyfriend.
- In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Godzilla and Mothra share an ancient, symbiotic relationship and Mothra is a Pint-Sized Powerhouse more than capable of fighting other Kaiju alongside Godzilla. When Ghidorah bears down on a badly injured Godzilla, Mothra, despite being heavily injured herself, stands between Ghidorah and Godzilla and charges onward, fully prepared to give her life to protect Godzilla.
- Katniss for Peeta in The Hunger Games franchise, increasingly so with each installment.
- Indiana Jones:
- Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indy’s Old Flame Marion racks up quite the body count shooting anyone who hurts Indiana, her future husband. Marion is especially notable since neither Willie nor Elsa is badass enough to invoke this in the following movies.
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Indy tells Mutt to punch a college student wearing a letterman jacket to escape two armed KGB agents at a malt shop. His girlfriend yells "Hey! That's my boyfriend!" and punches Mutt, causing a big fight between jocks and greasers.note
- Averted in Let Me In at first because Abby asks Owen to fight himself and to defend himself against the bullies. However, she promises him that she will help him if he is too weak. Later, however, it is played straight, because when the bullies want to mutilate or drown him, Abby kills them in the most brutal way.
- A Little Bit Zombie: Tina charges at Max or steps between him and her fiancé as he waves around his gun a few times, although this is portrayed more selfishly than usual since at least part of her motivation is more to keep her fiancé alive long enough for the wedding she is in Bridezilla mode about.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- The Iron Man franchise has Pepper Potts, Tony Stark's secretary who eventually becomes his girlfriend. She's sweet, she's professional, she gets things done, and most of the time she's what keeps Tony from doing stupid things. In the third movie, she ends up injected with the Extremis virus by the main villain, who hopes to keep her as a trophy to get back at Tony. As you can imagine, this ends badly for the villain when he threatens Tony and ends up being taken down by an angry, super-powered Pepper with a combination of her new powers and Tony's armour. Let's just say the villain won't be bothering anyone again.
- The Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner's girlfriend Betty has a moment of this when she gets angry at a taxi driver for almost causing Bruce to Hulk out. She's not exactly pleasant when Bruce tells her to calm down.
Betty: [kicks taxi door shut, causing the driver to put his foot down pretty fast] ASSHOLE!
Bruce: You know, I know a few techniques that can help you manage that anger very effectively...
Betty: You zip it. We're walking. - Thor and Thor: The Dark World: Frigga not only takes care of Odin in the Odinsleep but guards him as well. She takes pride in this, as witnessed by her interaction with Odin while they prepare for Malekith's invasion:
Odin: Despite all I have survived, my queen still worries for me.
Frigga: It is only because I worry for you that you have survived. - Avengers: Infinity War:
- Wanda for The Vision when they're attacked by Proxima and Corvus. She repeatedly blasts them away from Vision when they try to take the Mind Stone from him, refuses to leave when he asks her (for her own safety) to do so, and prepares to take them both on by herself until Cap and his team show up. Which just makes it all the more tragic when she's forced to kill him by destroying the Mind Stone despite all her efforts to protect him. When she sees Thanos about to kill Vision again, she furiously lunges at him, only to be blown back.
- Proxima Midnight is really protective of her husband, Corvus Glaive. When Black Widow injures him, Proxima attacks her while practically roaring with fury and spends the remainder of the fight defending him. She later threatens to savagely murder Widow in retaliation (and nearly succeeds in doing so).
- By Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne are in a committed relationship, and she is this to him. After she and the rest of her family have escaped back to Earth from the Quantum Realm while Scott stayed behind to fight Kang, Hope goes back through the portal—despite knowing that it risks trapping her there and not being a match for Kang—and furiously blasts Kang relentlessly for beating up and trying to kill Scott.
- Trinity from The Matrix will not hesitate to end you if you hurt Neo.
- Mickey 17: Nasha is a member of the ship's security team and a skilled martial artist. Bullying or insulting her boyfriend Mickey is a good way to get your ass kicked. In a flashback to the early days of their relationship, she starts a full-on brawl in the cafeteria when a couple of jerkasses won't stop bothering Mickey, using her lunch tray as a weapon.
- A New York Christmas Wedding: Jenni punches Vinni out when he insults Gabby, who's her fiancée.
- A homosexual version in The Old Guard. In the climatic battle, The Dragon sticks a pistol in Nicky's mouth and pulls the trigger. His Healing Factor enables his survival, but his comrade-in-arms and boyfriend Joe makes a point of breaking The Dragon's neck shortly afterwards.
- Piranhaconda: Jamie spends most of the movie just lounging on the beach, and eventually wondering where her boyfriend disappeared to. Once she gets it through her head that it was killed by the titular monster, and has stumbled across its nesting area she starts furiously smashing the creature's eggs, regardless of the Bullying a Dragon risk.
- Prom Night (1980): In the climax of the film, Kim Hammond does everything in her power to defend her boyfriend Nick when the killer comes for him (she actually does most of the legwork since Nick is nursing an injured ankle) and winds up dealing the killer a fatal blow.
- Rio Lobo: Shasta doesn't hesitate to help Cardona in the climax and Maria tries to stop Hendricks and his men from arresting Tuscarora on trumped-up charges.
- Riot Girls: Scratch shoots three boys to protect her girlfriend Nat with no hesitation.
- In Salt, the reason why Evelyn Salt abandoned her mission and faked the Russian Prime Minister's death was so she could save her husband. But once Orlov had her husband killed, she decides to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to hunt down every other Russian agent who was involved.
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Ramona to Roxy when she knocks her down for attacking Scott: "Do that again, and I will END you!" Cue the catfight.
- Shanghai Noon:
- Falling Leaves rescues her husband Chon and crush Roy from one jail and one gallows.
- The saloon girl Roy is flirting with right before his first team-up with Chon defends Roy from several saloon toughs with her fist and a bottle, and a prostitute who flirts with Chon smashes Van Cleef over the head as he is strangling Chon.
- Spiders II: Breeding Ground: Alexandra goes through hell and back to rescue her fiancé Jason after the bad guys have him implanted with a spider egg.
- Star Trek:
- Uhura in Star Trek Into Darkness. When Spock is about to be killed by John Harrison, she immediately beams into the fight and blasts Harrison with her phaser multiple times, buying enough time for Spock to regain the upper hand.
- She also has no qualms thrashing several robotic mooks in Star Trek Beyond when she sees said mooks approaching a badly injured Spock beaming into Krall's prison camp where she and the rest of the crew were held captive.
- Underworld: Hurting or killing Michael will result in Selene decapitating you or having your body ripped to shreds.
- Vicki Vallencourt proves to be this for Bobby in The Waterboy when opposing linebacker Greg Meaney gets in his face. Vicki ends up putting a knife to Meaney's neck. Later on, during the championship game, Meaney taunts Bobby about Vicki saving him, so Bobby emphatically powerbombs him to prove he doesn't need Vicki to protect him.
Literature
- Rachel in Animorphs. When Tobias is tortured by Taylor, Rachel is ready to literally rip her to pieces in grizzly morph, and it's only Tobias's pleading that stops her.
- Ixchel is this whenever Caspian is overwhelmed in Adam R. Brown's Astral Dawn. She saves his life on multiple occasions, starting with taking on an angry Tyr while keeping him hidden away in her dream realm.
- Jacuzzi Splot of Baccano!, being the timid and all-forgiving Martyr Without a Cause he is, puts absolutely no thought into fighting those intent on harming him. Thus, Nice Hollystone sees to the job herself, always through the liberal application of explosives to the problem.
- Senjougahara of Bakemonogatari swore that if Araragi was killed she would do everything in her power to destroy his killer. Arguably she did this because Senjougahara becoming a murderer is something that will get Araragi of all people to not just be a doormat when it comes to certain foes. At the same time, she's serious.
- The Princess Ren and her sisters in A Brother's Price when their husband Jerin is kidnapped, though it's seen as rather normal in that world - men are rare, protected, seen as more tender, and commonly abducted and raped by women despite that being illegal. Entire families of sisters, mothers, or wives are expected to be violently protective in order to protect their menfolk (aunts and female cousins are also quick to join in the mayhem given a chance), and the princesses think that wiping out the entire family of Jerin's abductor(s) is a totally reasonable response to this offense.
- Arguably Katniss for Peeta in Catching Fire. She is more than ready to kill anyone who tries to harm him. Still arguable though since their relationship is mostly for show. Emphasis on "mostly".
- Chillin' in My 30s After Getting Fired from the Demon King's Army: Malika quickly falls for Dariel after their first meeting, and it doesn't take her long to show that she won't take kindly to anyone disrespecting him.
Malika: What does that mean, Gashita?
Gashita: I told you already! That adventurer named Fittbitan was talking trash about my big bro!
Malika: (puts down her tray and pulls out a dagger) I shall end him. [...] Anyone who dares act discourteously towards Dariel-san shall pay for it with their life. - Codex Alera:
- Kitai for normal badass hero Tavi. Kitai is from a humanoid race of Marat who fight with loyal animal companions. She was a capable fighter in her own right, but after Tavi saves her life and inadvertently becomes bonded with her she spends much of the series watching Tavi or at his side helping him personally fight in many battles. Her biggest fear in the series isn't that they could die in battle, but rather he could die and she would be left without him.
- Tavi's Aunt Isana seems like a young-looking woman who is only capable of performing water magic in a world where the ruling classes will use six element-based magics. After the events of the third book when she discovers a long-time confident has loved her for years, it helps her open up after losing the first great love in her life many many years ago. She isn't going to lose him easily now. In the final book, when they are captured by the Big Bad and her Dragon, Isana to draw in Tavi and her second love being held imprisoned to keep Isana from killing herself to remove that weight, she is able to drive a wedge between the two antagonists and when six metal-covered monsters whom her second-love, a master swordsman in his own right, cannot cut through easily, attack her she uses her water magic to make a high-pressure water attack that cuts the monsters into bits.
- Dancing Aztecs : After Corella’s goon Earl hits her boyfriend Eddie, Jenny kicks him so hard he quits on the spot.
- Even though she gave him immortality, Saitohimea of A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives still couldn't bear to see Taito get hurt for her sake, or when he undergoes Training from Hell under a Drill Sergeant Nasty.
- In Deltora Quest Jasmine acts this likes around Lief, including slitting a giant snake’s throat when it tried to eat him.
- Denpa Teki na Kanojo: Ame Oshibana is very devoted to Juu Yuzawa and so protective of him it borders on Yandere. Making use of a Metal Bat or a Stun Gun are all viable options to protect him. Considering that their entourage happen to be full of cute psychos and the like, this comes in handy on more than one occasion.
- Discworld:
- While Carrot is no weakling, being over six feet tall and extremely strong, his girlfriend Angua (a werewolf) is very protective of him nonetheless, sensing on an instinctual level when he is injured or in danger.
- From Unseen Academicals, we also have Glenda being very protective of Mr. Nutt.
- This is a classic Pratchett gambit: the weakly ineffectual male who acquires a tough and protective girlfriend. Nerdy Nijel, the would-be hero, ends up with killer hairdresser Conina fighting for his life.
- Rincewind, who at one point had Conina's favor, is similarly bodyguarded by the ninja-trained Pretty Butterfly.
- Even functioning males such as Moist von Lipwig benefit: Adora Belle Dearheart wins a fight for him in the Mended Drum, sending a bully away whimpering by driving her high heel's point into the man's foot - clearly telling him how easy it would be to push it all the way through his foot. As the bully would otherwise have ripped Moist's head off, and Adora Belle knew this, Moist is only too thankful but takes note of what he has just witnessed.
- Tonker of Monstrous Regiment is a lesbian example, almost gutting a man who goes after her girlfriend Lofty.
- Lord Byron's explanation in his Don Juan for why a Woman Scorned is more dangerous than a Mama Bear could also apply to a Violently Protective Girlfriend:
For what is stealing young ones, few or many,
To cutting short their hopes of having any? - The Dresden Files:
- Karrin Murphy may not necessarily be Harry's girlfriend (yet), but the lengths she will go to to protect him are unbelievable. Standing over his incapacitated form and shooting MacGuffin .22 calibre bullets at a half-ton of demon werewolf is only one of the many instances of this. In another, a chainsaw is involved. In Cold Days, Karrin says specifically "If you're going to Hell and back, I'll be there by your side the entire way." In this book, this violence was taken into a gambit because Mab knew of Karrin's feelings and knew she likely had backup weapons on her. So when Maeve was about to kill Harry in front of Karrin, the woman didn't think. Karrin just reacted on instinct and shot Maeve in the head with a small back-up from her ankle holster.
- In Skin Game this leads to tragedy when Nicodemus manipulates her into a Sadistic Choice of attacking him with the Sword of Faith (thereby unmaking it) or watching Harry die right in front of her. Though it gets better later, it's still an absolutely awful choice.
- The full extent of Lily and Fix's relationship isn't said, but with this Lady and Knight pair, harm him and she will send waves of fire at perpetrator, or even just a tiny star-like attack that melted a Sidhe-made blade.
- Celty of Durarara!! develops this for Shinra after volume 8, after he is tortured almost to the point of death.
- Earth's Children: In The Plains of Passage, Yorga is this towards Guban. When her would-be rapists attack her mate for defending her, she starts trying to fight them off to protect him, which greatly surprises both Guban and the gang of delinquents (especially as Clan women aren't trained or expected to fight).
- Sally Kimball of Encyclopedia Brown fame. Not quite played straight, however; Encyclopedia pays Sally to be his bodyguard. To what extent her affections eventually become engaged is less clear, and there is at least one mystery in which she defends another guy against Encyclopedia's (correct) accusations, although not physically.
- Expecting to Fall into Ruin, I Aim to Become a Blacksmith: Eliza struggles between being a Tsundere and a Proper Lady while with Kururi, but when someone threatens him, she is quick to use her political influence as the Prime Minister’s daughter to remove the offending party, like when the son of a noble who tried to extort Kururi’s father beats Kururi up. Often downplayed with her using things like a Death Glare instead.
- Una and Britomart of The Faerie Queene won't let anyone harm their fiancés, the Knight of the Red Cross and Artegall.
- The Familiar of Zero: Louise is often violent to Saito but is protective of him as well.
- Considering that Nice Guy Kokuto Mikiya from The Garden of Sinners is the Love Interest and Morality Pet to Tsundere Cute and Psycho Psycho Knife Nut Reality Warper with-eyes-capable-of-seeing-how-to-kill-even-Cthulhu Ryougi Shiki, harming him is generally NOT a good idea. In the final film, Lio Shirazumi was under the impression that if he got rid of him, she'd revert to her innate murderous nature and be just as crazy as he was. He was only right insofar as she would resolve to kill him after severing all his limbs.
- Gnome Man's Land: In Harpy High, the prom dates most of the mythological hero spirits secure (the pep squad and Trekkie "Crazy" Nadine Dunlop) are more for convenience to get into the prom and stop Bambi Yaga's evil plan than out of serious or preexisting romantic passion. Still, they get along alright and once the fight begins, Tim notes that no self-respecting girl at his school wouldn't stand by her date in a fight. Sure enough, the cheerleaders make a pyramid to attack the flying harpies, and Nadine goes at a trio of goblins with her artificial nails and a punch bowl.
- In The Goblin Emperor, Csethiro does not take any action, but she does write a letter asserting that she would duel the person who wronged her fiancé if that person knew how to fight a duel.
- Harry Potter:
- Ron is a gender-inverted version. Normally a pretty easygoing guy, Ron tends to go nuclear when Hermione is taunted for being a "Mudblood" or otherwise mocked by Draco or Snape. There's also this line he gives in the eighth movie after Goyle attempts to kill Hermione with a Killing Curse when she and Ron come to Harry's aid:
"That's my girlfriend, you numpties!"
- Ginny Weasley is this towards Harry Potter. She deeply loves him and will stand up to anyone who tries to hurt him. In the Deathly Hallows Part 2 film, when Resident Alpha Bitch Pansy Parkinson tries to give Harry up to Voldermort, Ginny goes straight to Harry and stands in front of him to shield him.
- Subverted with Bellatrix Lestrange who only WISHES she were this to Voldemort.
- Ron is a gender-inverted version. Normally a pretty easygoing guy, Ron tends to go nuclear when Hermione is taunted for being a "Mudblood" or otherwise mocked by Draco or Snape. There's also this line he gives in the eighth movie after Goyle attempts to kill Hermione with a Killing Curse when she and Ron come to Harry's aid:
- The Heroes of Olympus: Annabeth towards Percy. She enters the series wielding a dagger, demanding to know who's kidnapped him and is scary enough that Jason thinks she might actually kill someone. Crosses into the Hypocritical Humor type, as when she finds Percy again, she responds by judo-flipping him for leaving her. Naturally, Percy laughs and says he missed her too. Being a badass of his own, they also double as a Battle Couple.
- High School D×D: Most of the members of Issei's harem are Action Girls by default, but the ones who fit this trope the best are with no doubt Rias and Akeno, as they're usually the first ones to fly into a rage whenever Issei gets hurt to vaporize/electocute to death the one responsible.
- Honor Harrington is an experienced starship captain and black-belt in coup de vitesse, so is an active participant in all of the combat that occurs throughout the series. When her lover, Paul Tankerseley, was murdered as part of a revenge plot to torment her, she dueled and killed both the paid assassin who performed the killing and the villain who hired him. A later lover of hers, Earl White Haven, offers the Genre Savvy observation that if they were ever attacked, he would hold her coat while she dealt with the problem.
- Princess Elvia from I Fell Into a Reverse Harem Game! is extremely protective of her multiple concubines. When she finds out that one of them is a frequent target of sexual assault, she has the perpetrators tied up, threatens to kill them, banishes a lot of them, and cuts off a hand from the worst of them. She also punches a foreign prince when she sees him abusing his brother, and that was for a guy she wasn't even with yet.
- In the third book of The Immortals, Daine believes Numair has been executed by the Carthakis and proceeds to go on a rampage, reanimating a bunch of dinosaur skeletons, and razing the entire Imperial Palace. When confronted later, she says "I thought you were dead. I lost my temper." To be fair, they weren't technically dating back then, but that's the first major reveal on DAINE'S side of their feelings for each other.
- Journey to Chaos:
- Several people comment on how quick Tiza is to jump to Nolien's defense, be it combat or a more social situation. Her response is always something like, "I don't like him! I'm just doing my job!" until she officially becomes his girlfriend.
- Annala's boyfriend may be a Magic Knight but even he would have trouble fighting a Grim Reaper by himself. Nature spirits that attack him face a quick smiting.
- Ai in Life Reversal, with vast resources at her disposal, she intends to make her boyfriend's tormentors suffer the exact way they did to him.
- Lisbeth Salander of the Millennium Series is more of a Violently Protective Sexbuddy, but all the same, do not harm Mikael Blomkvist when she's nearby.
- Vin from the Mistborn Trilogy, at least in the second book. Elend even complains about her being obsessive about keeping him safe, but he is worried more about her killing herself by not sleeping for months. After the second book, Elend Took a Level in Badass and they become a Battle Couple.
- Monster Girl Doctor has Saphentite Neikes, an albino Lamia who works as a doctor alongside her human love interest, Glenn Litbeit. While she appears relatively harmless, Sapphee and much of her family have trained as assassins as well as pharmacists, which she doesn't like to show, but should anyone try to hurt Glenn the Lamia drops all hesitation to use any of the many killing techniques she knows against the offender.
- In The Mortal Instruments it is at times between Simon and Isabelle. Shortly after getting to know each other, he is turned into a vampire. They fight side by side, and he does not need their protection because vampires are as strong as the shadowhunters (or even stronger). But later he is transformed back into a human, and Isabelle is playing this trope straight. She protects him several times from attacking demons, and once in front of a vampire, and she makes it clear to every girl around him that they should keep his hands off him. Towards the end of Tales of the Shadowhunter Academy, Simon also becomes a shadowhunter and is again as strong as Isabelle, so it is unclear whether she will continue to protect him. But Isabelle is still braver and more aggressive than Simon.
- Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!: If you mess with her "Mahiro-san", Nyarko will turn you into a greasy stain on the pavement. In this case it's pretty well justified, since it's literally her job to protect Mahiro and most of the things coming after him are horrible Eldritch Abominations from space that either want to kill him or do things like selling him into slavery.
- The One Who Eats Monsters: There is a supernatural hit out on protagonist Ryn's love interest, Naomi, and she is very much willing to kill to protect her. Naomi, meanwhile, is less than jazzed about someone killing people to protect her.
- Overlord: While they're not, strictly speaking, in any kind of official relationship beyond master and servant, attacking Ainz is a very good way to incur Albedo's wrath, even if he is a nigh-invulnerable Physical God.
- The poor Sunlight Scripture mook who tried to attack Ainz with a slingshot found his head turned into fine red mist with the very pebble he tried to shoot Ainz with after Albedo deflected the shot, and that was because Albedo considered such an attack to be beneath being used against someone of Ainz's level.
- When Dominion Authority uses Holy Smite to attack Ainz and manages to inflict actual damage (not much, but still...), Albedo goes ballistic with rage, screaming and ranting at the "lower lifeforms" for daring to make "her beloved Ainz" feel pain.
- After returning to Ainz's side as he's fighting "Riku Aganeia", Albedo punches the suit of armor with enough force to send it into orbit.
- Strangely enough, Christine from The Phantom of the Opera invokes this towards Raoul several times in the book. Despite her fragile build and gentle nature Christine literally drags Raoul out of danger (i.e away from Erik) multiple times and she's even described as the "strong one" in the relationship.
- Princess of the Void: During their early-days escape from a secret government blacksite, space alien detainee "Batty" does her best Predator impression and slaughters everyone in the facility after one of them threatens to shoot her jailer-turned-liberator-turned-trophy husband Grant.
- Near the beginning of Ravelling Wrath, Rinn cheerfully offers to beat up anyone who looks at Yali funny. Of course, Yali, being much more reserved and cautious, asks her not to. But by the end, Yali is also this trope for Rinn – when Morrow uses his mind powers nonconsensually on Rinn, Yali beats him so badly that Rinn specifically comments:
Rinn: Yali had seriously fucked him up. Like, I'd beaten up plenty of assholes myself – and I had gotten beat up plenty of times too when I picked fights with people bigger than me – but I had never seen someone messed up this bad.
- Re:Zero: Rem is polite, nice and calm. But if someone poses a serious threat to Subaru, she immediately beats the shit out of them, and will even kill them unless told not to do so by Subaru. As a superhumanly strong oni, you shouldn't underestimate her.
- Roll Over and Die: Whenever Milkit is in danger or kidnapped, Flum will not rest until she is safe. She will not hesitate to use Cold-Blooded Torture to find her or deliver a Karmic Death to those that do Milkit harm. Likewise, while Milkit lacks any combat experience, she will put herself in danger to save Flum.
- Explicitly used in the The Shield, Sword, and Crown series, where Arisa declares herself both Weasel's and Edoran's bodyguard at various points in the book. Slightly subverted in that she isn't interested in them romantically at all, and thinks of them as best friends.
- Spice and Wolf: Hurting Lawrence is the best way to get Holo mad. As she's a Physical God whose true form is that of a wolf large enough to devour a man in a single bite, and making her really mad brings out her predatory side... Not a bright move. Especially given the implications she's eaten humans in the past.
- In the Swedish fantasy novel Spiran och staven (The Sceptre and the Quarterstaff) Fox's overweight girlfriend Livneth turns out to be a cold-blooded and very skilled knife-wielder when Fox is threatened by a gang of hoods. The fact that Livneth originally belonged to a tribe of forest barbarians might have something to do with it.
- Angelina, in Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat series: began as somewhat yandere for Slippery Jim di Griz, her personality integrated more after marrying him. But let anyone dare approach Jim with violence in mind when Angelina is nearby...
- Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves: Emerald Stoker brains Roderick Spode with a china basin after the latter (once again) begins manhandling Gussie Fink-Nottle.
- Star Wars Legends: Mara Jade becomes this after she marries Luke Skywalker. She's always there to protect them and the same loyalty transferred to their son.
- Throne of Glass:
- Celaena, who cuts down a room full of men who made the mistake of kidnapping Chaol. Her vendetta against the people who killed her boyfriend Sam was a bloodbath that led to her capture and enslavement in Endovier prior to the start of Throne of Glass.
- The cadre are a male example. Male fae tend to be "territorial bastards" as Aelin refers to them. This may or may not extend to other fae. While this is most prominently seen with the cadre's love interests, they can also be seen being rather overprotective and territorial about any female they feel loyal to in some way (friends, family, their leader, etc.).
- Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: In the Alternate Timeline Marie Route, Marie gets really angry over people insulting Leon, at one point going into an Unstoppable Rage when Leon being called ugly for his Dueling Scar pushes Marie past her Rage Breaking Point into delivering Extreme Melee Revenge to the offending Alpha Bitch and Girl Posse.
Live-Action TV
- Lexa exemplifies this trope perfectly on The 100 whenever anybody threatens Clarke, it's their funeral. Such as when the Ice Nation threatens Clarke's life offering to kill her; Lexa, invites him out onto the balcony and violently kicks him off the tower.
- Arrow. Sara Lance even before she joined the League of Assassins. In the flashback scenes in Lian Yu, Slade Wilson is holding Sara's ex-boyfriend Oliver Queen hostage and torturing him. However Slade needs an engineer to repair his ship, so he offers to make an exchange. The engineer is naturally reluctant to work for a psycho like Slade, so Sara knocks him unconscious and straps a bomb to his body in the hope of blowing Slade up after they make the exchange.
- Babylon 5: Ambassador Delenn doesn't get involved in dust-ups most of the time to keep John Sheridan safe. She doesn't have to. She's got an entire space navy of Cool Starships at her command, and she is not afraid to use them. However, when she does get into more personal fighting, that willowy, ladylike Minbari can proceed to kick ass with the rest of them. Don't hurt her boyfriend. Ever. When he was about to lose the station to forces loyal to the dictator of Earth, she arrives with four of her peoples ships and makes a declaration of protection. When the enemy tries to claim they have sovereign rights here, Delenn maintains her tranquil fury as she says:
"Why not? Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else."
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): Don't kill Bill Adama. Laura Roslin WILL COME FOR ALL OF YOU.
- Harming Gaius Baltar is generally a bad idea considering two Cylon women are madly in love with him and he has his own hot guardian angel (who is also in love with him).
- Temperance Brennan on Bones. Though Booth usually stands up for her, even though she can handle herself, she will fight to save him if necessary.
- Three occasions confirm this. In "The Wannabe in the Weeds", when a psycho stalker aims a gun at Brennan, Booth takes the bullet for her. Brennan's response is to, in one fluid motion, grab Booth's gun and shoot the stalker dead. In "The Hero in the Hold", when they confirm that Heather Taffet is the Gravedigger, a serial killer who had trapped Booth on a Naval vessel slated for demolition, before rushing to Booth's rescue, Brennan whacks her upside the head with a metal briefcase, hard enough to knock over her and the chair to which she is handcuffed. Then in "The Recluse in the Recliner", Brennan had been told by Booth to leave so he wouldn't worry about her when the Delta Force agents showed up. But after they open fire and wound Booth, Brennan returns and wounds one of the agents with her gun before he can kill Booth, giving Booth the opportunity he needs to take them out.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Willow Rosenberg, with regards to Tara. When Glory drove Tara insane, she only survived her battle with Willow because she was a Physical God. When Warren killed Tara, Willow flayed him alive. Also doubles as a violently protective BFF. She threatens death on anyone who hurts Buffy.
- Tara gets her moment too. Even though her skills are on the research and magic side, so she otherwise never gets physically involved in battles, when Willow is threatened? Lack of weapons training is irrelevant, she's getting a one-blow instant kill with an axe.
- Buffy herself was like this with regard to Angel. For example, the page quote comes from when Spike and Drusilla had captured Angel with the intention of killing him. In the same episode, she nearly rips Kendra's head off when she finds out she left him for dead. Later, when Faith poisons Angel and the only cure is for him to drain a slayer, she doesn't even hesitate in hunting her down so she can feed her to him. Even her friends are worried she's going too far with that last one.
- In "Hush", a rioter is about to attack Riley from behind with a lead pipe. Buffy coldly breaks the man's wrist without even looking at him. A darker, perhaps even Yandere-esque example happens in "Into the Woods" once she finds out that Riley had been going to what amounts to a vampire prostitution den to get his blood sucked. She burns the place to the ground and impales the vampire who'd drank from him.
- While not technically dating at the time, she was pretty pissed off to find out that Robin Wood and Giles had conspired to kill Spike behind her back. While she never has to get violent, as Spike manages to subdue Robin non-fatally before she gets there, she does warn Robin that she would not stop Spike from killing him in self-defense if he ever tried anything again. Considering Buffy has always held a very firm stance against both herself and her friends killing humans even when they're hostile, note it's rather significant that one of the only times she rolls back on that stance was because one of her boyfriends was the target of said human.
- In season 10, when Buffy and Spike are looking for a portal to a particular hell dimension, they end up having a lovers' spat in front of a sadism demoness they were interrogating. The argument gets heated when Buffy says something particularly below-the-belt, which she immediately regrets but nonetheless causes Spike to storm away. The sadism demoness asks slyly that he be brought back so she could watch his emotional pain some more, but this time, for him to do it shirtless. Buffy's response is to kick her in the face so hard she falls unconscious.
- Fiona from Burn Notice. She's a Trigger-Happy former IRA, so when she gets pissed off, things explode. This comes back to bite her, when a psychiatrist uses that knowledge to frame her for murder by causing her to explode Michael's ex-mentor while he is inside a British consulate.
- As seen on Castle, do not attempt to harm Castle, because Beckett will hurt you.
- In "Til Death Do Us Part," Colette attacks several men who are kidnapping her boyfriend and breaks one of their noses. Sadly for her, it turns out that he staged the whole thing to avoid the drama of a breakup.
- Sarah from Chuck. While she isn't exactly Chuck's girlfriend ("it's complicated"), at least not in the first two seasons, she tends to get displeased when someone threatens or actually tries to hurt him.
- Just ask Michael Clarke Duncan. After he dropped Chuck off the roof of a high-rise, Sarah got understandably pissed, and the only reason he survived is that he's built like a tank.
- She actually murders a man in cold blood after disarming him, after he made the mistake of taunting her that he knows that Chuck is the Intersect and will tell his bosses. Chuck witnesses the murder, which doesn't make things better between them.
- She becomes all the more dangerous (and this is saying a lot) after she and Chuck became the Official Couple. The writers turned this Up to Eleven in Chuck vs. Phase Three when Sarah tears apart Thailand looking for a kidnapped Chuck. Everyone from the lowest mook to the episode's Big Bad was scared shitless of the "Giant Blonde She-Male."
- Cobra Kai: Samantha LaRusso cements herself as one when she steps in to defend Miguel from a pissed-off Robby in Season 3.
- On Cold Case, after the Victim of the Week is punched out by his older brother, who had caught him dancing and was taunting him about being "queer", a lovely young woman rushed out of the dance studio, shoved the brother and demanded that he stay away from her boyfriend. It turns out the two didn't even know each other, she was just angry at the bullying she was witnessing—but they did hook up afterwards, no doubt because of the incident.
- Lindsay Messer on CSI: NY fits into this — it was both her husband and child being threatened by Shane Casey, but she did shoot him. Probably would get physical again if she had to, considering the verbal confrontation with the rookie cop who lied and tried to get Danny in trouble to protect herself. No blows were exchanged, but it's obvious she'd go there again if it came to it.
- Daredevil (2015): Elektra is not above threatening Matt's witnesses in attempts to help him or killing anyone who attacks him.
- The Dick Van Dyke Show:
- In an episode, Rob and Laura go to a bar where a drunk tries to hit on Laura. Rob steps in to defend her only to get his ass kicked. Cue Laura stepping up and knocking out the drunk. She later reveals that she received self defense training during her USO days for just such an occasion.
- Doctor Who:
- Amy Pond. Any time someone hurts her boyfriend Rory, she will end them. In one, she incinerates an alien fish disguised as a vampire. In another (which was all a dream), when Rory is hurt by a bunch of aliens disguised as old people, it creates the surreal image of Amy (at the end of a very large pregnancy) mowing down a group of elderly citizens in a van.
- The other way around is also true. The normally timid Rory can go berserk if something happens to Amy. Of course, he's had 2000 years of experience as an Auton/Roman legionnaire.
- It's also not a good idea to injure the Doctor while River's around, even if you happen to be a Dalek.
"Mercy?"
"Say that again."
"Mercy!"
"One. More. Time." - She also once destroyed time to stop him from dying.
- Rose. Hurt the Doctor (or Jack) and she will ascend to being a Physical God and obliterate you with the raw power of time itself.
- This once leads to an amusing situation where he allowed himself to be possessed by a body surfing villainess so she'd let Rose go, only for Rose to start threatening her into releasing him.
- Leela tops the list for Violently Protective Companion, being originally a member of a primitive warrior tribe. The Doctor had to routinely keep her from killing everything that got in their way.
- Barbara Wright from the very beginning ended up marrying her fellow travel companion Ian. Before that, she held a higher headcount than the other protagonists combined and at one point mowed down a group of Daleks with a lorry. Note that Barbara was a history teacher.
- Clara Oswald split herself into an untold number of echoes spread throughout the Doctor's timestream in which she fought the Great Intelligence (in various ways, most not seen on screen) to prevent him from destroying the Doctor's life.
- Everybody Loves Raymond: Debra intervenes when Ray is getting the worst of it from Peggy The Cookie Nazi. The scary Peggy backs down quickly, recognizing an even more powerful force of nature, while a floored Ray looks on admiringly.
- Aeryn to John on Farscape. Once he takes his badass levels he's perfectly capable of fending for himself (and saves her ass plenty of times), but you do not mess with John and get away with it, at any stage of their relationship.
Aeryn: (while holding two women by their necks up against a mirror) Now listen to me closely so that there's no misunderstanding. I don't know what game's being played on this little planet of yours, and I don't really care. What I care about is that a good friend of mine is not hurt — in any sense of the word. And if he is, I will personally take revenge on both of your overly made-up faces.
- Firefly:
- Do not ever harm, or threaten to harm Wash in front of Zoe. Not if you want to live.
- More of a violently protective little sister, but basically the same thing goes for River and Simon. River will end you. Just ask the Reavers.
- Iris West-Allen on The Flash is a kind and loving person, but if Barry is in danger she will not hesitate to use her extensive knowledge and dead aim with guns, as well as her Badass Normal combat prowesses that her father had taught her to defend him, and in Savitar's case kill for him.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had this. Will starts dating a girl and brings her to a bowling alley, where they're harassed by some meathead trying to woo her away. He knocks out Will with one punch but then gets BODY-SLAMMED by the petite woman. When Will gets up and realizes what happened...
Girl: I'm sorry, Will. I meant to tell you, I... I'm a—Will: A what, a Power Ranger?!
- Friends:
- Monica has shades of this concerning Chandler. Notable in this exchange when they're having photos taken.
Monica: "Chandler, what is wrong with your face? It's meant to say Geller and Bing to be married, not local woman saves drowning moron!"
Photographer: *Laughs*
Monica: "DON'T LAUGH AT HIM! He's my drowning moron!" - On another occasion she and Chandler were arguing with their neighbour Janine; things were pretty aggressive before but it's when Janine insults Chandler that Monica cracks and gets physically violent.
Janine: [to Chandler] "You know, I know you’re talking, but all I hear is, "Blah. Blah. Blah-blah-blah."
Monica: "All right, you and me! Let’s go! Right now!"
- Monica has shades of this concerning Chandler. Notable in this exchange when they're having photos taken.
- Though their relationship is...complicated at best, Selina Kyle in Gotham is fiercely protective of Bruce Wayne, willing to do anything to protect him even if they're arguing - just ask Jerome Valeska.
- In Hotel del Luna, Man-wol is this for Chan-sung, even before they officially became a couple, and for good reason, as Chan-sung is a normal human and naturally defenseless against supernatural attacks. When a ghost, who happened to be Chan-sung's old university classmate and a serial killer, threatens to hurt Chan-sung, Man-wol attacks the ghost first and would have destroyed him if not the ghost receiving strength from his online followers.
- Lily is like this towards Marshall in How I Met Your Mother, once even delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to a woman who forcibly kissed Marshall when she was drunk. It's rather hilarious though, because Marshall is burly, 6'4'', and a practiced fighter, while Lily is about a third of his size, small-boned, and very girly.
- Iron Fist (2017): Colleen Wing is worried that Danny's chi will be corrupted if he kills Harold Meachum in revenge, so she says that she will do it for him. In a more benign form, she's often seen standing up for Danny in conversations when they turn into a "The Reason You Suck" Speech at his expense and often is the one to spew threats at enemies in his defense.
Madame Gao: (to Danny) Why should I help you?
Colleen: Because if you don't, I'll cut off your head and feed it to the rats.
Madame Gao: That sounds unpleasant. - Aricella Santos in part two of the two-part season finale of Law & Order season 9. When NYPD Detectives Leonard Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Reynaldo Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) try to arrest Santos' boyfriend Leo Zamora for the murders of Tony Ricci and another woman, as well as the attempted murder of the second woman's ten-year-old son, after a visitor to the building where Miss Ricci was murdered identifies Zamora, Zamora takes off with Briscoe and Curtis chasing him on foot. Zamora runs into a building where Briscoe and Curtis finally catch Zamora, but not before Zamora calls out for Santos. As Briscoe is cuffing Zamora, he sees Santos charging down the stairs at Curtis with a knife in her hand and warns him. Curtis knocks the knife from her hand and pulls his Glock semi-automatic pistol, which makes that hammer-cocking sound despite not even having a hammer to cock in the first place, and Curtis threatens Santos with death if she moves. It turns out that Zamora and Santos are wanted for a murder in Florida and that the Russian mobsters hired Zamora and Santos to kill the ten-year-old because he was a witness the ruthless mobsters didn't know about until trial.
- Parker on Leverage occasionally gets this way with Hardison. In the Grave Danger Job she draws fire from an Uzi and during the Experimental Job she delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown against the members of the secret society that had captured Hardison.
- Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: Sirena is visibly restraining herself from throttling Nixie after the latter takes advantage of a brainwashed David and has him buy her an expensive lobster dinner. The only reason she doesn't is because she was the one who accidentally brainwashed David in the first place. When David is returned to normal, Nixie at least has the decency to look guilty while Sirena stares her down.
- Married... with Children. No matter how much Peggy needles Al, she doesn't tolerate anyone else doing it—when a woman calls Al a "moron", Peggy smacks her and starts beating her up.
- Although not really dating, Ziva fits this for her partner Tony in NCIS. The most obvious example comes in season 6's "Cloak" when Tony and Ziva break into a secure facility. When they are found out, they're approached by military security, but ordered (by Gibbs) not to engage. On a reflex, Ziva throws the first punch, while Tony rapidly tries to defuse the situation so neither of them gets shot. It doesn't work, and Tony gets a rifle butt to the head for his trouble. As soon as Tony goes down, Ziva loses it. She plows her way through the soldiers like paper, and it takes three of them to take her down. As soon as she awakens, the first words out of her mouth are: "Where's Tony?"
- In New Tricks, Brian's middle-aged wife Esther normally has a calm demeanour, but when he's being strangled by a suspect, she whacks the suspect over the head with a shovel.
Esther: You BITCH!
Esther: I'd stay exactly where you are if I were you.
- You might think that a crime lord would be immune from this trope, but no. Season I of NYPD Blue had Janice Licalsi, a corrupt New York Cop who just happened to fall in love with honest cop John Kelly. When mafia boss Angelo Marino (whose pad she's on) demands that she kill Kelly, Licalsi cold-bloodedly murders Marino and his driver.
- Emma from Once Upon a Time (2011) spent most of Seasons 3 and 4 having trouble with her magic, but as soon as the Snow Queen tried to kill her boyfriend Hook, she immediately started busting it out left and right with perfect control. Considering her past, she definitely has a good reason to be this way.
- Juliet from Psych. If Shawn is in danger, Juliet will not let anyone stand in her way to save her boyfriend. Bad guys beware.
- Emily from Revenge serves as this for both Daniel and Jack. After getting the identity of the man that attacked Jack and beat Daniel unconscious, she seduces and then unleashes a world of hurt upon the thug.
Emily: (seductively in his ear) This is for Jack... (Beats the ever-loving shit out of him, then kicks him repeatedly in the stomach with full force) And that was for Daniel!
- Deconstructed in an episode of Saved by the Bell. Zack dates a female wrestler who saves him from an attack. He views this as a huge blow to his ego because he can't comprehend the girl saving the guy.
- Amanita from Sense8, towards her girlfriend Nomi. One flashback shows her threatening to lay a smackdown on the TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) who insulted and made transphobic remarks at Nomi. She also states that she would burn an entire hospital to the ground in order to rescue Nomi from being forcibly lobotomized. She did in fact set fire to a room on the floor Nomi was in to delay the operation.
Amanita: You say one more thing about my girlfriend and I'll "colonize" your face with my fist.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Attempt to harm Odo, and Kira Nerys will visit untold amounts of pain and whoop-ass upon your unsuspecting self. She will use every possible tactic weapon to do it. The most outstanding example is probably the final arc of the series, where Kira is ready to compromise a mission and throw hands with a bunch of Cardassians just for insulting her boyfriend.
- In a later episode of Step by Step, JT is feeling inferior to his girlfriend Sam because she is physically stronger and wins more often. When a jerk tries to steal her away and pushes him around, Sam punches the guy out.
- Stranger Things:
- You do not want to mess with Mike while Eleven is within earshot, as she is perfectly willing to use her telekinetic powers to kill anyone or anything who places him or any of her friends for that matter in danger. Though murder is not usually her first option, she is willing to break bones as a warning.
- Mike fully returns the sentiment in Season 3: when the Mind Flayer possesses Max's stepbrother Billy, the Party tries to drive it out of him, only for Flayed Billy to grab Eleven by the throat. Mike's response? Grab a lead pipe and hit Flayed Billy over the head. After that, Flayed Billy throws Mike into the wall, causing Eleven, who is still gasping for breath, to use the last of her strength to throw Flayed Billy through a brick wall.
- Nancy has shades of this towards Jonathan but she doesn’t fully play it straight until Season 3, where she protects him from their Flayed Boss Tom by stabbing him in the back with a pair of scissors just as Tom was going to kill Jonathan.
- Veronica Mars: Logan Echolls is a gender-inverted version; in the season 3 episode "Spit and Eggs", even after he and Veronica have (temporarily) broken up, when he finds out Mercer is the campus rapist - even though Logan had tried telling Veronica Mercer couldn't have been responsible for the rapes - Logan deliberately breaks the windshield of a deputy sheriff's car so he can get thrown into jail after Mercer and Moe (his partner) get arrested, and from the look on Logan's face, you know he's going to inflict pain on both of them.
- In The Walking Dead (2010), Michonne becomes this to Rick in the second half of season 6. After he killed Ethan at Hilltop and was punched in the face by Marsha for it, Michonne immediately slammed her to the ground and warned her not to get back up.
- WandaVision: Wanda Maximoff is this for her husband Vision, carrying over from their film appearances. Even though their sitcom world doesn't have any combat situations, she is still incredibly protective of Vis; when Dottie is making her suspicions of Wanda clear, Wanda doesn't seem too affected... but after Dottie casts aspersions on Vis, Wanda, possibly without even meaning to, makes a glass explode in Dottie's hand (though this may have also been partially in response to hearing Jimmy Woo trying to contact her through the radio set nearby). Later on, when Ralph Bohner, who's pretending to be Wanda's late brother, makes an insensitive crack about Vision, she doesn't hesitate to send them flying with a bolt of energy in full view of a crowd, despite previously trying to hide her abilities. She blows up at Monica when Monica brings up Hayward since Hayward is using Vision's body for the purposes of weaponizing it.
- Wizards of Waverly Place:
- Juliet is very much protective of Justin, as evidenced in "Wizards vs. Werewolves" when she fights Mason in his full werewolf form, bites him, and turns him into a wolf after he attacked Justin.
- Mason himself is a male version of this trope. Don't threaten Alex, and especially don't take advantage of her! An unfortunate Dominic finds this out the hard way in Alex vs. Alex.
- Wonder Woman: Especially true during Season 1 when Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor were making googly eyes at each other regularly. Mess with Steve and Wonder Woman will break your spy ring ("The New Original Wonder Woman"), snap your elephant-proof chains while exposing your mole ("Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther"), chase your team of divers back into the sea ("Formula 407"), or worse. In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman", Fausta specifically kidnaps Steve just to lure Wonder Woman and test her abilities. She passes.
- Word of Honor: Wen Kexing is a male variant. Don't ever try to harm his crush Zhou Zisiu in front of him. He'll end you.
- The X-Files:
- Dana Scully does not take kindly to anyone hurting her partner. She may be petite, but she's smart as a whip and has great aim. In "Beyond the Sea", after Mulder is shot:
Scully: This was a trap for Mulder because he helped put you away. Well, I came here to tell you that if he dies because of what you've done, four days from now, no one will be able to stop me from being the one that will throw the switch and gas you out of this life for good, you son of a bitch!
- The episode "Biogenesis" and the entire "Sixth Extinction" arc was pretty much Scully kicking ass because the Cigarette Smoking Man and Diana Fowley had caused Mulder's fatally unusual brain activity. The same happens in Season 8, despite the fact that she's pregnant at the time. This totally works in reverse, as well.
- The second movie has her bashing bad guys over the head with firewood to get to Mulder.
- Dana Scully does not take kindly to anyone hurting her partner. She may be petite, but she's smart as a whip and has great aim. In "Beyond the Sea", after Mulder is shot:
Music
- In the version of the folk song Stagger Lee recorded by The Grateful Dead, Stagger Lee murders Billy DeLion, and the police are too afraid of him to do anything about it. Then, along comes Billy's girlfriend Delia, who shoots Stagger Lee herself. In the balls.
- Tijuana Sweetheart's single "Seven" (from back when they were called Vagiant) is about a violently protective ex-girlfriend who lets her previous partner know that she'll beat up anyone who messes with them.
I got your back until I die
I don't care if you don't want me sticking by
I'll keep ten feet behind just to walk you home
And I'm gonna protect you till I die
I won't let nobody hurt you again
I'll rough up your next girlfriend if she breaks your heart - Within Temptation's "The Promise" is about a woman who copes with her lover's death by hunting down and murdering the ones who killed him.
- Ashlyne Huff's "Run to You" treats this behavior as more romantic than anything else, as the singer describes herself as Supergirl and will "protect you from the world" at a moment's notice.
- April Smith and the Great Picture Show's "Dixie Boy" is about a woman who will fist-fight any lady who tries to flirt with her boyfriend:
Like a soldier defends his land
Well I stand up, I get up, I defend my man
So don't make me ask you twice
'Cause I asked you once and I asked you nice
Keep your damn hands off my Dixie boy
Myths & Religion
- Classical Mythology provides us with a dark example with Medea, who, after the gods made her fall in love with Jason, became the oldest recorded Yandere and solved many of his problems with sadism and violence. Her own brother giving chase to Jason and the Argonauts to recover the Golden Fleece? She cut him into pieces and threw them overboard the ship. An immortal bronze giant trying to sink the Argo? She tortured him into suicide by looking him in the eyes. Jason's uncle Pelias refusing to give up the throne of Iolcus as promised? She tricked his own daughters into cutting him to pieces. Then, after a while, the Corinthians, fully knowing who she was, told Jason they'd make him the heir to their throne if he married the king's daughter and dumped Medea, and he accepted... and when Medea was finished, Corinth was burning and suffering from a plague and Jason was suffering a Fate Worse than Death, one she made him live with.
- There’s a Roman addition to the myth of Hades and Persephone where a former lover of Hades, a nymph named Minthe, tried to get Hades to cheat on his wife. But Hades is a faithful husband, unlike his brothers Zeus and Poseidon, so it didn’t work. However, when Persephone found out that Minthe was trying to seduce her beloved husband, she literally stomped that nymph into a plant.
- The Old Testament prescribes a severe punishment for female intervention in male combat. Deuteronomy 25:11–12 says if a woman intervenes in a men's fight and grabs her husband's opponent by his private parts, her hand shall be cut off.
Pro Wrestling
- Daffney Unger, the Loony Fan and eventual girlfriend of David Flair, was not afraid of jumping into the ring during WCW matches for his sake.
- Luna Vachon at Pro Xcitement Wrestling's June 23, 2002 event was a Violently Protective Wife, as a subtrope of Big Damn Heroes. The main event was Gangrel vs. The Hungarian Barbarian. At one point, Gangrel accidentally knocked out the referee, with him clearly thinking My God, What Have I Done?. Darren Wyse, The Hungarian Barbarian's manager, was on commentary and decided to attack Gangrel, leading to Luna running in and fighting off Wyse. For the record, Gangrel won.
- The Lovely Lacey initially treated Jimmy Jacobs very poorly, only keeping him around because she wanted someone to take out BJ Whitmer and Jimmy was so eager to please. After a long campaign, Jacobs succeeded but received an injury from Whitmer in the process, causing Lacey to constantly check on his recovery process and rush to protect him from the many enemies he made serving her in Ring of Honor.
- River City Wrestling Champion Joey Spector had Mercedes Martinez, who helped him retain his title and tried to help him regain it when he lost it to Allissa Flash. When that did not work she tried to win back the belt herself.
- Miss Beaa didn't tolerate anyone on the Magnificent Championship Wrestling roster beating up Robbie Reckless.
- Despite not being a trained wrestler, The Undertaker's then-wife Sara wasn't afraid to defend him when she wanted to, such as when she struck Shane McMahon with a kendo cane to stop him and Diamond Dallas Page from assaulting him. Ultimately, she gets a Diamond Cutter from DDP for it.
- AJ Lee was content to stay out of wrestling and remain retired, until she saw Becky Lynch meddling in the feud between AJ's husband CM Punk and her own husband Seth Rollins. After Lynch unleashed a barrage of slaps on Punk for a second time, knowing very well that he Wouldn't Hit a Girl, AJ showed up after ten years of absence and thoroughly kicked her ass. She also took Lynch's intercontinental belt as a souvenir.
Puppet Shows
- The Muppets: Miss Piggy.
- In The Muppet Movie, when criminals threaten "her Frog", she flies into an Unstoppable Rage. HIIIII-YAHHHHH! (Also cracking a bacon joke didn't help their cause.)
- The Muppet Christmas Carol sees Kermit and Miss Piggy cast as Bob and Emily Cratchit. When Scrooge arrives at the Cratchit house, apparently to berate Bob for not coming to work on Christmas Day, "Emily" responds by threatening to punch him "right off the pavement".
- On the Zero Mostel episode of The Muppet Show, Kermit ends up in a lady wrestling match with an old woman (long story), and she proceeds to wipe the floor with him, which in turn invokes Miss Piggy's wrath as she jumps in to defend Kermit despite initially refusing to be a part of the match in the first place.
- Fozzie spends Candice Bergen's episode playing a Running Joke on Kermit making pun-based "deliveries" to annoy him. The final joke sees Fozzie emptying a bag of flour over Kermit's head. Miss Piggy is walking past when it happens and pummels the bear for messing with Kermit.
Theater
- In Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, Plucky Girl Leonore disguises herself as a boy named Fidelio to release her unjustly jailed husband Florestan from prison. At some point, she threatens Big Bad Pizarro to protect him.
- In Hamlet, Gertrude is generally an Extreme Doormat par excellence but the one thing that will make her spontaneously grow a spine and become furiously angry is if someone insults or threatens Claudius.
Gertrude: O this is counter you false, Danish dogs.
Tabletop Games
- Expatriette in Sentinels of the Multiverse does most things violently, so it's not surprising that she's aggressive in the defence of her near-terminally hapless boyfriend Setback. In one card in Champion Studios, which portrays the heroes being forced into a baseball game for some reason, she's in the stands holding Guise at gunpoint to remind him that he's supposed to be rooting for the team Setback is on.
Video Games
- Baldur's Gate II: A nobleman you meet in the Copper Coronet's 'escort section' is a regular who spends most his evenings there in order to avoid his Awful Wedded Life. If you snitch on his location to his wife she'll storm into the back rooms demanding he come home, whereupon the escort he's a regular with will pull a knife and fight the wife to the death to protect him.
- Bobcat in City of Heroes. In Issue 19, there's a task force that finishes with a battle between your team, and her and her boyfriend Neuron. If you manage to defeat Neuron first, Bobcat gets an *enormous buff* that makes her incredibly lethal. Defeating her in this state grants you a badge. The badge says "You saw Bobcat do something no one else has seen; fight with all her effort. Despite her best efforts, you still managed to put her down."
- Marble in the erotic game Corruption of Champions does not like it when others mess with the PC after she has been romanced.
- Disgaea:
- This is why Rozalin in Disgaea 2 willingly lets her Superpowered Evil Side out at the end of the game. How this turns out depends on the ending you get.
- In Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, causing harm (direct or indirect) to Almaz is the fastest way to piss Princess Sapphire off. Many of her Ax-Crazy thoughts are motivated by this trope.
- The basic plot of Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! is Dixie Kong fighting through the Kremling army to rescue her missing boyfriend Diddy Kong.
- Dragon Age:
- Dragon Age II:
- The character Aveline is introduced as her husband Wesley is disarmed by Darkspawn, upon which she blindsides it, punches it silly, and cuts its head off, all the while proclaiming, "You will not have him! They will not have you, not while I breathe."
- Female!Hawke has a moment like this if you're romancing Anders: you can tell him that, if the Templars come for him, they'll have to go through you first.
- Alternately, if female Hawke is romancing Fenris, she can get an entire fight scene like this when his old slave master, Danarius, comes to take him back by any means necessary.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition:
- If the Inquisitor is female and romances Josephine, she can take this route when Josephine's parents put her in an Arranged Marriage situation by challenging the man to a duel. It's less violent than it is just a demonstration of how far she's willing to go for her girlfriend, but it still counts and it gains the tremendous respect of Josephine's betrothed (who is actually a perfectly nice guy).
- Dragon Age II:
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: You can get married to anyone you want regardless of your sex, so if you're a female Dragonborn and your husband gets taken, the bandits responsible had best pray to the Nine Divines for mercy, because you certainly won't show any.
- The Mother Yeti in E.V.O.: Search for Eden attacks you because you killed her mate.
- Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII to Cloud Strife her childhood sweetheart. Even though he’s a badass 1st Class SOLDIER wielding a BFS, she’ll look after him as an Action Girlfriend with her own Super-Strength. It’s especially shown in the remake where after fighting Rufus, Cloud is dangling from a girder and about to fall but Tifa runs in, pulls off a badass slide and catches Cloud with one arm just in time. In the Final Battle Tifa can protect Cloud from Big Bad Sephiroth, destroying a massive chunk of building telekinetically thrown at him with one flip kick. Or if she’s after Aerith, Tifa rescues Cloud from Sephiroth (who’s bound his rival to the ground and about to stab him), by straight up kicking Sephiroth into the air.
- Fire Emblem Fates:
- One of the potential "Bond" quotes when a male Avatar is married to the Cute Bruiser Hana:
Hana: I love it when you hold me tight. It's much easier to keep you safe!
Hana: (in a somewhat guttural growl) Nobody's going to hurt my husband. - Ophelia is strongly implied to have a Bodyguard Crush on Prince Forrest, and even when pairing them up is optional, their overall supports still have her threatening some local merchants when she mistakenly believes they've hurt him.
- One of the potential "Bond" quotes when a male Avatar is married to the Cute Bruiser Hana:
- The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-: In the Killing Game route, Tsubasa slits the sponsor's throat, who happens to be Eito, for tormenting Takumi for the the deaths he caused, telling Eito that anybody who dared to harm her boyfriend they would have to deal with her.
- In Kingdom Hearts II, Kairi's first fight scene in the series was in response to seeing Sora get ambushed by Heartless, drawing them to her so that they'll leave Sora alone.
- Mass Effect:
- Liara apparently subscribes to this trope. After Shepard was killed at the start of the second game and spent two years in a coma, she went on a one-woman crusade to recover the Commander's body from both the Shadow Broker and even the Collectors. She then went on a two-year quest for revenge on the Shadow Broker (one of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy) for even THINKING about causing harm to him/her.
- Ashley Williams also skirts this line during the first game, if you're unable to prevent Wrex from his Face–Heel Turn, she will kill him to prevent him from harming Shepard. Play your cards right in dialogue and this will be invoked by Ash herself.
I have a feeling things will come to a head soon. But don't worry, Shepard, I'll protect you.- A female Shepard can become this depending on the player.
- Even more so if you romanced Thane back in Mass Effect 2. Watching her gut his killer, Kai Leng, like a fish with her omniblade is very, very satisfying.
Shepard: That was for Thane, you son of a bitch!
- If a female Shepard is romancing Liara, when she's talking to her "father", she echoes an earlier line when the possibility of an assassination on Liara comes up.
Shepard: Nobody messes with my girl!
- Even more so if you romanced Thane back in Mass Effect 2. Watching her gut his killer, Kai Leng, like a fish with her omniblade is very, very satisfying.
- Tali also gets hints of this in the third game. When you find clips of the Illusive Man casually discussing the best ways to emotionally manipulate Shepard, what is her very calm response?
Tali: He needs to die.
- Another hint of this from Tali shows up at the conclusion of the Rannoch arc, if Shepard is unable to broker peace and chooses the quarians over the geth. Legion goes berserk, performs a Neck Lift on Shepard, and holds him over the edge of a cliff while threatening to toss him off. Before Legion can make good on that threat, Tali pulls a knife out of her boot and violently stabs Legion to death. Tali still potentially does this if Shepard's not romancing her, but in that case, it doesn't qualify as this trope.
- A more disturbing example shows up in a sidequest in the first game. Shepard is called to investigate an abandoned ship. It turns out that one of the crew members, a female biotic, flipped out and killed the crew when they attempted to shut off her comatose boyfriend's life support after determining he was brain-dead.
- A male example in Garrus Vakarian if romanced by a female Shepard. While downplayed on the violence angle, he does upgrade Shepard's apartment via explosive gas, a weaponized coffee machine, cyanide-filled kitchen sinks, and a hot tub heated to solar temperatures. Admittedly, this also happens in playthroughs where you don't romance him - Garrus is apparently itching, deep-down, to overhaul an apartment into a trap-encrusted no-man's-land - but if there is a romance taking place, you get variant dialogue where Garrus begs you to indulge your crazy boyfriend and let him continue attaching microfilament explosives to your decor.
Garrus: Nobody better hurt you, is all I'm saying.
- This is how the Elder Dragon Lunastra is introduced in Monster Hunter: World. The player is tracking down a wounded Teostra which has flown into the Astera Special Arena to feed on the gunpowder stock and recover. A Nergigante appears to prey on him, shortly followed by the very angry Lunastra; not wishing to fight the pair together, the Nergigante bails and the wounded Teostra also takes the chance to run, leaving you alone with the giant draconic lioness, who considers YOU one of the threats to defend Teostra from.
- Mortal Kombat X: Jacqui Briggs for Takahashi Takeda and Sonya Blade for Johnny Cage.
- Odin Sphere: Although she didn't like Oswald at first, Princess Gwendolyn shows that she is capable of wreaking all sorts of havoc when he's in danger. One of the game's major Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! incidents revolves around this trope: Gwendolyn rescues her husband from Odette, the Queen of the Dead... and by killing her, she inadvertently sets free an insane, nearly-unstoppable undead monster to take control of the Underworld and attack the world of the living.
- Louisa in Red Dead Redemption attempts this by charging a line of soldiers with a knife. It goes about as well as expected.
- Red Dead Redemption 2: Abigail Roberts looked about ready to murder Dutch van der Linde for berating John after Arthur and Sadie break him out of prison.
- Jill Valentine from Resident Evil for her "partner" Chris Redfield; in Resident Evil 5 Jill even tackles the superhuman Big Bad Albert Wesker out of a window when he tries to kill Chris.
- Kyoko and Misako in River City Girls decide to beat up the whole of River City after receiving a text message that their boyfriends Riki and Kunio were kidnapped by a gang. Nobody knew where their boys were, and to make matters worse they aren’t even dating. The girls turn out to be violently protective stalkers.
- Senran Kagura plays this for laughs as the normally-quiet Yagyū shows no hesitation in uttering death threats at Katsuragi when the latter tries to grope Hibari (Kat being the type of person for whom saying "hello" includes a Skinship Grope). Katsuragi sees no reason to believe that she isn't being serious and quickly backs off.
- In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, Penelope comes to Bentley's rescue when he's about to be killed by Captain LeFwee by dueling the latter in a sword fight. It ends with LeFwee being thrown into the sea and eaten by sharks. Unfortunately, it's deconstructed in the next game, as Penelope turned out to be a sociopathic yandere who's too protective of Bentley, and ends up as a Psycho Ex-Girlfriend.
- A one-sided example occurs in Sonic the Hedgehog with Amy Rose, exemplified when Silver tried to kill Sonic. A pic of her Death Glare during this scene is a good page image candidate.
- South Park: The Fractured but Whole: She was already quite the Yandere in the series, but Wendy will not take kindly to Stan being attacked if she's not snarking him about it.
- Sarah Kerrigan in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. She may not be the bitch she used to be anymore, but never, ever, ever try to harm Jim Raynor, if you don't want her and her Swarm to go after you.
Kerrigan: "If Jim is alive, no force in the Universe is gonna stop me from saving him."
- In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, hurting or threatening Juno Eclipse will get Starkiller really mad, but it works in reverse as well. When Darth Vader tries to turn Starkiller to the Dark Side, Juno grabs one of Starkiller's lightsabers and attacks Vader herself!
- In Transistor, the mere presence of the Spine enemy causes the Man in the Transistor to go all giggly and crazy, and not in a good way. Red, his maybe/maybe not girlfriend, goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to save him.
Red: I'm going to find the thing that's doing this to you and break its heart.
- Note: This is Not Hyperbole; she is quite capable of backing up that threat literally.
- Uncharted 4: A Thief's End: Elena Fisher is not a trained thief and experienced "archaeologist" like her husband, Nathan Drake. She still manages to track him down to an uncharted island in Madagascar, make her way through it in spite of it being crawling with armed mercenaries, steal a vehicle from said mercenaries, and save Nate's life. Shoreline had no idea what they were in for when they were in for.
- In The Walking Dead, Clementine is shown to be protective of her love interests, as seen with Gabe, Louis, or Violet. She does not hesitate to jump to their aid when they're in any sort of danger. Considering all the losses she lived, it's understandable.
Visual Novels
- Gender-inverted with Mikado in Café Enchanté as he becomes furious when he discovers that his girlfriend Rindo's younger sister was forcibly transformed into a non-human by the upper management of GPM to keep her silent and he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against those responsible.
- In Collar × Malice, the normally kind and pacifistic Ichika can become fiercely protective of the love interests.
- In Okazaki's route, she would push him out of the way and take the bullet for him.
- In Sasazuka's route, when an unstable Souda points a gun at him with the intent to hurt or kill, Ichika immediately takes out her gun and shoots at him to protect Sasazuka.
- In one Bad Ending for Enomoto, when Ogata attacks and injuries Enomoto, Ichika shoots him in the chest and kills him.
- When Zero/Saeki starts hurting Shiraishi via his mind-controlling device, Ichika proceeds to kill Zero.
- When confronting Zero/Saeki after discovering who he is, the former casually threatens to kill Ichika's loved ones to make a point, starting with Yanagi. She nearly loses her composure and one of the possible actions is take out her gun to shoot them.
- Danganronpa likes to Deconstruct this trope:
- Peko Pekoyama in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, who will do anything to protect Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu. This includes murder, but he is horrified when she actually goes through it because he never wanted her to kill on his behalf, and she goes to her death knowing she murdered a classmate pointlessly and failed to get Fuyuhiko out of the killing game. Monokuma even allows Fuyuhiko to attempt to intercept her execution, just so Peko ends up accidentally injuring the person she swore to protect just before she is stabbed to death.
- In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, we have Maki, who starts out the game aloof and rude towards her classmates, but thanks to the efforts of Kaito and Shuichi, she becomes a Defrosting Ice Queen and begins opening up more. When Kaito is kidnapped in Chapter Five, Maki immediately goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge… which forces Kaito to kill Kokichi, who Maki shot with a poisoned arrow, in order to stop her being executed as the blackened. Then Maki discovers that Kaito was Secretly Dying the entire time and all her efforts to protect him were pointless. Then the knife is even further twisted when Tsumugi reveals Maki was deliberately implanted to grow feelings for Kaito to boost the show's ratings, and that she gave Kaito the terminal disease that killed him to make the show "more interesting". Ouch.
- Tenko Chabashira from the same game is played somewhat more straight, despite being Ambiguously Bi. Her Does Not Like Men attitude is played for laughs for the most part, but when she finds out people start accusing Himiko of murder in Case 2, she's quick to lash out at anyone who even dares to accuse Himiko and often suggests beating up all the boys who look at the girls funny. It comes full circle in Chapter 3 when Tenko is murdered by Korekiyo, and all Himiko can think of is "Who did it?" even calling Kiyo "disgusting". While the romance was fairly one-sided at the start, Himiko is willing to go through hell and back if it means avenging Tenko and Angie's deaths since they seemed to share a sort of love triangle. Then Himiko learns Tenko's love for her and hate for men was apparently implanted by Tsumugi and other writers of Team Danganronpa to boost ratings just like Kaito and Maki above.
- Two Ho Yay versions come from the BL Visual Novel DRAMAtical Murder.
- On one hand, if Koujaku is the chosen Love Interest for Aoba Seragaki not only he will be the Victorious Childhood Friend, but he'll become this to him and no one should ever threaten his boyfriend.
- On the other, Clear is a huge Cloud Cuckoo Lander and even Aoba can barely keep up with him, but if his "Master" is in danger he will show the culprit/s that Beware the Silly Ones fits him like a glove.
- Akane Kurashiki did not have much chance to show this particular side of her in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors but she makes up in Zero Time Dilemma. Whenever Carlos kills Junpei or she thinks he did, she'll proceed to attack him with whatever she can get hold of, ranging from fire extinguisher to chainsaw.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations:
- Mia Fey is a rather unusual example in that she's Badass Pacifist rather than Action Girl. Nevertheless, Dahlia learned the hard way that poisoning her boyfriend Diego Armando is very bad idea when Mia got Dahlia's death sentence for it.
- Implied for Iris who, while never had a chance to actually violently protect her boyfriend, claims that if she knew about her sister Dahlia's plan to poison him she'd do anything to stop her, including killing her. Considering that Iris is generally described as being incapable of violence, it says a lot about how much she cares about him.
- All the potential boyfriends in Shall We Date?: Ninja Shadow are excellent fighters, but that won't stop the Action Survivor protagonist Saori Shishido from doing her best to protect them if they need it - even from before the official Relationship Upgrade. i.e., when Sakamoto is attacked by Hijikata in his own route, she refuses to leave him alone even when their opponent is a Master Swordsman and Sakamoto explicitly tells him to get away since he's looking for him and not for her.
- Arcueid to Shiki Tohno from Tsukihime. The natural result when your love interest happens to be pretty much the most powerful thing on the whole freaking planet. Given how insanely scary and unstable Arc can be at times, it's a real good thing that Shiki is more than capable of taking care of himself.
Web Animation
- Helluva Boss:
- Millie is a Cute Monster Girl who is cheerful all the time...unless you mess with her husband Moxxie. When that happens, she becomes an angel of death.
Blitzo: It would take a roided-up hippo to take down that woman when she's upset.
- In the pilot, she insulted Loona and almost launched into a fight with her after she hinted that Moxxie is a coward, easy prey, and has a small penis. Later she again leapt to Moxxie's defense when Eddie calls him a heartless coward.
- In "Spring Broken", she literally launched into attacking a sea monster and slaughtered it from the inside after it ate Moxxie.
- In "The Harvest Moon Festival", when she sees Striker trying to kill Moxxie, she launches into a violent berserker rage (complete with bloodshot eyes) and immediately tries to stab him to death.
- "Truth Seekers" sees her leading a two-woman Roaring Rampage of Rescue on the D.H.O.R.K.S. after they kidnap Moxxie and Blitzo.
- "Exes and Oohs" sees her going on another Roaring Rampage of Rescue after Moxxie's asshole father tries to get him married to their con artist ex, and proceeds to tear through the guy's men in a badass display that would make the Doom Slayer proud.
"You want my husband?! You're gonna have to fucking kill me."
- Earlier than that, Millie becomes absolutely furious upon learning that said ex once abandoned Moxxie in the middle of a bank heist, which landed Moxxie in prison.
- For a non-Millie example, look no further than Ozzie (a.k.a. Asmodeus). Being one of the Seven Deadly Sins and one of the most powerful demons in Hell, he is fiercely protective of his lover Fizzarolli and is not afraid of bringing violent retribution to anyone foolish enough to target him. Ozzie is willing to stand up even to a fellow Sin like Mammon for Fizzarolli's sake, and if Mammon hadn't decided to stand down, things would've gotten ugly.
- Millie is a Cute Monster Girl who is cheerful all the time...unless you mess with her husband Moxxie. When that happens, she becomes an angel of death.
- Journey to the Quest: The only time Rayne ever gets physically violent with someone is when the druid from the rival party upsets her girlfriend Mara by implying that the dress she wants to wear is ugly, at which point she ends up giving him an offscreen Groin Attack. While the druid had already been provoking her since she got into town, it was making Mara sad that proved to be the final straw.
- Karekore of Mixed Blood: Hibiki defended her boyfriend Kage from bullies. The bullies are even scared of her.
- Paranormal High School: Noriko, Hikaru's former girlfriend, was this while they were together, being very quick to take care of anyone who was seeming to make fun or mess with him, as a few members of the main cast found out.
- RWBY: Nora Valkyrie demonstrates this trope in spades whenever someone makes the mistake of hurting Ren. She sends Hazel flying through a window when he electrocutes Ren to the point of causing him to scream in agony, and in a later episode pelts a giant mecha that's carried him off with grenades while shouting at it in fury.
Nora: You get back here with MY MAN!
- Xing Youye: Lioness is the gentlest person in the entire cast, but that doesn't mean she will tolerate some punks verbally or physically attacking her Lion, as the cinema episode proved. It's one of rare instances when trope doesn't emasculate the protectee: Lion would have sent his offender straight to hospital, if he didn't think about consequencesnote and cancel the punch when it almost connected. Fortunately for Lion (and unfortunately for that jerk of a pigeon), Lioness didn't have such qualms, and her Indignant Slap is nothing to sneeze at.
Webcomics
- Most of the women in Dominic Deegan fall into this territory, and they tend to be either powerful magic-users or muscular orcs. Pissing any of them off is not a good idea. Writer Micheal Terraciano even brings up this trope in his Writing Unique Heroes and Memorable Villains panel, claiming it preferable over the Neutral Female.
- In El Goonish Shive Sarah is one peaceful Straight Girl in the cast of martial artists and casual shapeshifters. An attempt to kidnap her boyfriend, however, provoked her to act in a way very unpleasant for the offender.
- Ellen and Nanase are this to each other, as Vlad and Abraham can attest. Grace probably counts for Tedd as well.
- Erma: Erma's mother Emiko is as protective of her husband Sam as she is of her daughter, particularly where her relatives are concerned. Justified since she and they are Yōkai of various types, with an assortment of supernatural powers, while he is a normal human.
- She calmly asks her sister Rin to let go of Sam with a glare that promises Rin would very much regret not doing so. Considering her opinions on her family over what happened in the past, you can hardly blame her for being cautious.
- A picture released on Father's Day 2018 has Emiko take a protective stance in front of Sam with Osamu in front of them.
- She calmly asks her sister Rin to let go of Sam with a glare that promises Rin would very much regret not doing so.
- Fans!: Ally is this way to Rikk, and later with Rumy when the three of them enter a triad marriage. Witness her encounter with Fitz when he tried to forcibly body-swap with Rumy:
Ally: Listen hard, you cradle-rapin' fuck! Hit "Undo" or I'm shovin' bone splinters from y'r nose straight into y'r precious brain!
Fitz: Technically it's not my nose.
Ally: Y'think this is open-mike night, corpse? This ain't a bluff! You are not fighting an idealist now! She moves or I end you!" - Girl Genius: While the men in her life can usually take care of themselves, if things get to be too much for them, Agatha Heterodyne will. Take. Steps. Whatever was threatening her men will soon be very, very sorry...
- In Homestuck, this seems to be a trend. Terezi, Latula, and Vriska have all at some point defended their boyfriends by telling another girl 'if you touch him, I will fucking kill you!' As troll society considers gender largely irrelevant and considering how aggressive trolls are in general, this would probably be seen as normal.
- I'm the Grim Reaper: Even though Scarlet isn't dating Chase, she does exhibit some of these traits, such as when upon meeting Liam he starts shaking Chase, she bodyslams him to the floor and tells him not to touch him. In general, try to hurt Chase, and it likely won't end well. This trait only grows more after she was stuck in the 9th Circle for 25 years. She will not tolerate any potential threat to Chase's safety and nearly kills a man who threatened him with her demon coming out. Only Brook and his demon could stop her.
- Kira from Panthera embodies this trope, as one does when they work on a covert operations team with said boyfriend and can transform into a tiger at the drop of a hat.
- Shortpacked! - NEVER threaten Leslie while Robin is around - even if you're functionally immortal. She'll just cut you up and throw your remains into over a dozen dead universes before you can regenerate.
- Sinfest:
- This Super Stupor strip, proving that emotional harm is enough to induce this sort of rage.
Web Videos
- Carmilla the Series:
- The titular Carmilla, a badass Lesbian Vampire who normally is brooding and has earned the Fan Nickname "useless lesbian vampire", will punch you out or even dive into an underwater cavern to retrieve a very dangerous sword to save her girlfriend Laura.
- During the Christmas Episode, in approximately five to ten seconds, Carmilla goes from sarcastic and dismissive to effortlessly disemboweling a horrifyingly cannibalistic Mrs. Claus.
Laura: Murder her for Christmas! Murder HER for Christmas!
- Sword Art Online Abridged:
- Asuna's canonical example from Episode 9 is amplified when she not only intervenes to save Kirito from Kuradeel, she doesn't fall victim to the latter's I Surrender, Suckers! ploy.
- Throughout the second season, Asuna is "merely" a Defiant Captive who spends her time mocking Sugou and repeatedly escaping her birdcage so she can terrorize his minions. But when Sugou makes the mistake of threatening Kirito, Asuna delivers such a vicious threat that he suffers a minor Villainous Breakdown, despite the fact that his GM powers mean Asuna is incapable of harming him.
Western Animation
- Flame Princess in Adventure Time as demonstrated in "Vault of Bones" when a giant Goo Skull made the mistake of capturing Finn.
- Gumball Watterson from The Amazing World of Gumball is a male version of this trope. Hurting or insulting his girlfriend, Penny, will get the same reaction to the point that he scathingly calls out her father for calling her a monster after she breaks out of her shell and he actually agrees with Gumball that he was wrong. Later in the show, he goes back to being his brutally blunt self after seeing another character who took over the show get close to his girlfriend and even unleashes his tirades on him in the form of an acid attack which burns his face off! Nicole can also be seen as this as she crushes a guy's hand for hitting her husband Richard, despite helping them.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- The original series:
- Katara is extremely protective of Aang. She normally just tries to show compassion and support to him, but she is not shy to threaten anyone who might even harm him.
- Part of Mai's motivation for her Heel–Face Turn in "The Boiling Rock" was her love for Zuko, and she openly admits this when confronting the enemy.
"You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you."
- The Legend of Korra:
- The series gave us Korra (the Avatar herself, well trained in physical martial arts as well as three schools of bending normally and basically a Physical God when at full potential). She has a thing for Mako and tends to save his butt as often as he saves hers. She even unlocks her airbending in order to protect Mako's bending from Amon.
- In Book 3, we have the Red Lotus flagship that is Zaheer and P'Li. Heaven help anyone who threatens a combustionbender's boyfriend.
- It seems that Korra & Asami have become each other's Violently Protective Girlfriends, as pointed out by a fan.
- The original series:
- Harley Quinn is a villainous example on Batman: The Animated Series. See also Catwoman in the episode "Almost Got 'Im".
- In Ben 10: Alien Force, Gwen takes this Up to Eleven. When a Highbreed threatens Kevin in "War of the Worlds", Gwen yells "LEAVE HIM ALONE!!!", goes One-Winged Angel and blasts the Highbreed into oblivion. She even nearly loses her humanity doing so.
- While not explicitly a girlfriend because they're 9 years old (though a mutual crush has been confirmed), Bob's Burgers' Louise Belcher is shaping up to be one of these for Regular-Sized Rudy. She is his self-appointed Knight in Shining Armor on several occasions; when she discovers that his crush (who causes her Green-Eyed Epiphany) is only playing with his emotions for quiz answers and has no plans of stopping, Louise physically attacks the girl.
- Castlevania: Downplayed but Sypha Belnades still torched Dracula's face when he tried to kill her Love Interest Trevor Belmont.
- In Central Park, Paige hates the fact that Bitsy and Mayor Whitebottom are targeting her husband, Owen, so Bitsy can buy Central Park by slandering Owen's reputation as the park manager so he can get replaced. In Season 1 "A Fish Called Snakehead", when Bitsy starts slandering Owen in front the media to make herself look more favorable to take care of the park, Paige gets mad at her and wants to hurt Bitsy, or at least trip her.
- Cybersix is generally a calm person, but she still will kick ass five different ways if Lucas is in danger.
- Although Callum and Rayla only become true lovers in the third season of The Dragon Prince, she has already protected him on various occasions. Anyone who becomes dangerous for Callum quickly gets into trouble with Rayla. The opposite can happen as well, just ask Finnegrin.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy:
- The Kanker sisters towards the Eds. Especially prominent in The Movie when they hear that the neighbourhood kids are out for their blood due to their latest scam, and proceed to take down each and every one of the kids before presenting them to the Eds. Also, when Eddy's brother is beating him up, you can see Lee trying to clobber him, but her sisters are holding her back.
- A more platonic example with Sarah. She is very overprotective of Jimmy and would take physical action against anyone who harms or otherwise harasses him in her eyes.
- In the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes episode "Out of Time", Susan attacks Doctor Doom when he wipes Reed out of existence. Technically, they aren't a couple in this series, but they're drifting that way.
- Leela in Futurama. You may be able to sell Schmuck Bait to Fry with ease, but not with her around.
- Gargoyles:
- Elisa is already an Action Girl in her own right. So when Puck changes Elisa into a gargoyle and the Manhattan clan into humans, Elisa jumped into the fray to punch Demona for attempting to shoot Goliath.
- Gender-inverted with Goliath. When Elisa was shot in her apartment (accidentally by Broadway), Goliath tore through the city to get the gangster he believed did this. When he did find the gangster Tony Dracon, he was willing to kill the guy right then and there for what he supposedly did to Elisa.
- Hazbin Hotel
- Although Charlie Morningstar is usually hard to anger and it's Vaggie who's mainly protective of Charlie, "The Show Must Go On" shows that Charlie can be just as protective towards Vaggie if the latter's being threatened herself. Throughout the battle with the Exorcists, Charlie is constantly following Vaggie around, being close by to help fend off any danger to her girlfriend. Charlie initially keeps saying "sorry" every time she blocks or attacks any Exorcists that come for her, only to suddenly use her powers at an Exorcist squad heading towards Vaggie and scream "Die, motherfuckers!" at them. Later when she sees her girlfriend being injured by Lute, at two different times, Charlie immediately tries to go and rescue Vaggie, only being stopped both times by Adam pulling her back to him in response. Once the battle ends, Charlie gives a terrifying glare to an injured and distraught Lute while protectively holding Vaggie with one arm, transforming into her demonic form and coldly telling Lute, "It's over."
- Vaggie doesn't take kindly to anyone who potentially wants to mess with her girlfriend, Charlie. She punches a camera demon in the face for calling her a "stupid bitch", threatens Alastor with a spear when he shows up at the hotel, and immediately brandishes the weapon again after Niffty lifts up Charlie to look around for men. She attacks Sir Pentious in episode 2.
- Although Charlie Morningstar is usually hard to anger and it's Vaggie who's mainly protective of Charlie, "The Show Must Go On" shows that Charlie can be just as protective towards Vaggie if the latter's being threatened herself. Throughout the battle with the Exorcists, Charlie is constantly following
- Invincible (2021): The titular character is a Gender-Inverted example, as he makes it very clear to never try to hurt Atom Eve. Just watch the season 3 finale and you'll see why. Even before they got together, "Here Goes Nothing" shows that the mere sight of Eve being nearly executed by Commander Slash was enough to turn him into The Berserker.
- Justice League Unlimited: Huntress is this for Question. If he's working at a console, you can expect her brutally beating guards into unconsciousness in his defense. When the Question was tortured by Cadmus, she nearly outright murdered his torturer until she was recalled by Superman.
- Kaeloo: Quack Quack's girlfriend, Eugly. She's normally extremely kind, but if you hurt him...
- Kim Possible:
- Kim does this for her best friend and later boyfriend Ron as a matter of course.
Kim: (after kicking aside the Mathter's calcu-laser) That's right math freak, nobody messes with my boyfriend!
- Gender-inverted with Ron. Don't ever threaten to hurt Kim in front of him. Warhok and Warmonga found out the hard way in the finale.
- Kim does this for her best friend and later boyfriend Ron as a matter of course.
- Miraculous Ladybug: Gender-inverted with Adrien Agreste/Cat Noir in the Season Five episode "Derision". After hearing about Kim's prank on Marinette, Adrien is furious and takes the opportunity as Cat Noir to give Kim's akumatized form Dark Humor the most brutal beatdown we've seen inflicted on an akuma before attempting to murder him with Cataclysm. Kim should consider himself lucky that Ladybug was around to intervene.
- Mission Odyssey: Even though their relationship is entirely one-sided, Calypso is aiming to become Ulysses’ One True Love and won’t hesitate to tell off Poseidon when he offers to hire her to kill Ulysses. Bizarrely enough, Calypso came to love Ulysses before she even met him in person, since she crushed hard on him after taking only one look at him through her crystal prism. When Poseidon comes back at the climax to finish the job himself, Calypso doesn’t hesitate to team up with Ulysses and his allies to take down their common enemy. Ultimately, Calypso is forced to acknowledge she shouldn’t force Ulysses to be her husband since he’s already a Family Man and sets him free.
- The Owl House: Amity Blight will not tolerate her crush and eventual girlfriend, Luz Noceda, getting threatened or hurt either way. Luz even returns the sentiment if the role is reversed.
- While they weren't dating at the time, "Escaping Expulsion" has Amity coming to Luz's rescue (with some help from Gus and Willow, and even Amity's siblings, Edric and Emira) when the latter is forced to represent Abomination-based weaponry for her parents', Odalia and Alador's, company, Blight Industries, after they got the human girl and their friends unfairly expelled from Hexside. Amity's crush on Luz even made her stand up to Odalia and threatens to give Blight Industries a bad name by destroying the Abomaton 2.0 in front of their investors if she doesn't let her friends back into school.
- In "Eclipse Lake", Amity is forced to fight Hunter/The Golden Guard when he tries to steal the portal key, which contains Titan's Blood. They only stopped when Hunter threatened to hurt Luz, leaving Amity no other choice but to give him the key, but not before telling him to stay away from her girlfriend, and secretly breaking the key to get the Titan's Blood.
- In "Clouds on the Horizon", when Odalia accuses Amity of deliberately trying to make the Blight family look bad and goes as far as calling Luz a "brat" when the latter stands up for her, Amity outright snaps at her mother for how she spoke to her girlfriend. Odalia was disgusted when she heard this and tells her daughter that she'll find Amity a "more suitable girlfriend" once Luz is arrested, believing that dating a criminal will tarnish the Blights' reputation. Amity becomes furious at such words and was even prepared to attack Odalia if needed to.
- Samurai Jack: Ashi manages to effortlessly slaughter an entire army to protect Jack while he's meditating in an attempt to get back his sword.
- Solar Opposites: Gender-inverted. Korvo is very protective of his husband Terry and will not react kindly if anyone dares hurt him. He even did not take kindly when the Grand Brown Gravy slammed Terry to the wall.
Korvo: ( to the Grand Brown Gravy after he attacks Terry) Hey! Get your nasty-ass gravy off of my man!
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Deconstructed in S4 E14 "A Friend in Need". Lux is arrested by the Separatists for accusing Dooku of murder, and Ahsoka asks Padmé for permission to rescue him. Padmé tells Ahsoka to be discreet. Ahsoka is anything but discreet, causing the extremely important diplomatic meeting to fail.
- Since Steven Universe is full of Battle Couple and strong female characters, the show has plenty of characters that are this.
- When Rose and Greg were together, it would be a very bad idea to hurt him, as a Ferris wheel in "Greg, the Babysitter" had to experience.
- Hurt Sapphire and Ruby will end you.
- Pearl will go ballistic for Rose. Pearl was deeply in love with Rose and thus still fiercely protective of her love interest.
- Connie is so obsessed with Steven that she not only masters sword fighting in the blink of an eye, she even at one point almost goes to the point of believing that dying in a fight for him would be the only reasonable way to go. She overcame that though and is now part of a Battle Couple with him.
- Lars might be an Jerkass but if you hurt him, then Sadie will hurt you. In fact, she once defeated what would equal a grown gorilla to protect him.
- On Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, while Sprx and Nova never officially hook up until the very end of the series, they're clearly in love, and if he's ever hurt or endangered, she's the first to step up and protect him.
- Starfire of Teen Titans. See the prom episode "Date with Destiny" with Killer Moth and Kitten, though it was Fang who felt the brunt of Starfire's protective wrath.
Starfire: Keep your legs off my boy!
- Sierra from Total Drama World Tour, except that her romance with Cody is pretty much confined to her own fantasy world.
Sierra: En garde! That's French for "leave my boyfriend alone!"
- In The Venture Bros., although Brock and Warianna's relationship starts off a bit rocky, the two do genuinely start a connection, which comes in handy when Think Tank crashes in to attack Brock and Rusty.
Warriana: Sorry if I was weird this morning.
Brock: It's cool. I think this makes us even.
Alexis: I'm just not one for pillow talk, you know? I-I've got a lot going on right now, what, with my career, my alter ego, my alter ego's career.
Brock: Yeah, I kind of got a lot going on myself right now. That Think Tank guy just—
Warriana: Whoa, whoa, Think Tank? Oh, do not even tell me that pompous son of a gorgon is messing with my man. - A common trait among the girls in W.I.T.C.H. (2004).
- Cornelia's boyfriend is Badass Normal Caleb, but he's the only non-superhero among the entire main cast, making her justifiably protective when they're facing off against equally magical foes.
Cornelia: You so don't want to be messing with my boyfriend.
- Will, whose boyfriend is actually captured and held hostage by the enemy.
Will: Matt? Did you hurt him?!
Shagon: How much would you hate me if I did?
Will: You're about to find out!
- Cornelia's boyfriend is Badass Normal Caleb, but he's the only non-superhero among the entire main cast, making her justifiably protective when they're facing off against equally magical foes.
- Jean Grey in X-Men: Evolution. When Scott is kidnapped by Mystique and dumped in Mexico without his protective glasses, Jean pulls off a Big Damn Heroes moment just as Mystique moves in for the kill.
Mystique: How sweet, girlfriend to the rescue.
Jean: You got that right, lady! - Young Justice
- Miss Martian is a friendly, compassionate Nice Girl, but she's also fiercely protective of her boyfriend, and later husband, Superboy. In "Death and Rebirth", she furiously intervenes when Lor-Zod attempts to kill Conner, and delivers a painful psychic attack upon him.
M'gann: Stop trying to KILL MY MAN!
- Devastation after she hooks up with Psimon between Invasion and Outsiders. Hurting Psimon will guarantee she will smash through everything between her and him, then take him to safety. Fortunately it doesn't automatically trigger a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Miss Martian is a friendly, compassionate Nice Girl, but she's also fiercely protective of her boyfriend, and later husband, Superboy. In "Death and Rebirth", she furiously intervenes when Lor-Zod attempts to kill Conner, and delivers a painful psychic attack upon him.
Real Life
- George Harrison's wife Olivia saved him from being murdered by an insane intruder in 1999. When said intruder broke into their home, George initially went out to confront him in the hopes of diverting attention away from his wife. He was stabbed repeatedly in the process, at which point Olivia came out and beat the hell out of the fifteen-years-younger intruder with a fireplace poker, successfully disabling him. Afterwards, Tom Petty sent George a "get well soon" card which added "Aren't you glad you married a Mexican girl?".
- During the assassination of King Carlos I of Portugal in 1908, Queen Amelia beat one of the rifle-armed assassins over the head with her bouquet of flowers while crying "Infamous bastard!".
- Watch an episode of COPS sometime. Even if the woman is calling to report her boyfriend/husband is abusing her, if they attempt to arrest the boyfriend, often the woman will turn her rage against the cop.
- Henriette Caillaux: In pre-World War I France, a big feud erupted between her husband Joseph — then the left-leaning minister of Finance and a proponent of progressive taxation — and the conservative newspaper Le Figaro. In order to destroy Joseph Caillaux's reputation, Gaston Calmette, the Figaro's director, bribed the Caillauxs' maid to steal embarrassing letters Joseph had written (get your minds out of the gutter; the letters indicated he had secretly sunk a Senate bill on taxation he publicly supported as a political tactic). Henriette did not approve: she made an appointment with Calmette, and once in his office, simply said, "You know why I am here," before shooting him five times in the chest. Then, because simply killing someone who attacked her husband's reputation was not enough, she and her lawyer took advantage of the existing stereotypes, pleaded the unpremeditated crime of passion despite the fact that premeditation was glaringly obvious, and eventually was acquitted a mere four months after the murder, before starting a career as an art historian, while her husband stayed in politics until 1940.
- During the Leveson Inquiry, a man broke into Parliament's chambers to throw a plate of shaving cream in Rupert Murdoch's face. His wife Wendi (a competitive volleyball player in high school) responded by lunging for the attacker and slamming him in the face with her palm.
- It's awesome when wives/girlfriends fend off other men. It's even more awesome when a woman fights off a tiger. Another similar story: an elderly couple were walking in the woods when the husband was attacked by a cougar. His wife beat the hell out of this mountain lion with a branch about as big as she was and stabbed it in the eye with a pen, causing it to leave her husband alone and flee. Investigators later found the cougar's battered carcass.
- The Ukrainian woman Mariya Oktyabrskaya. When the Nazis killed her husband she sold everything she owned, bought a tank with the money, and then spent the next two years blowing up any Nazi she could find.
- Professional boxer Adam Little got into a confrontation in a bar toilet during New Year's Eve in 2015, which culminated in one of the men being ejected by door staff. Little went to explain the man had nothing to do with the dispute, but before he could get to the door, the ejected man's girlfriend, 22-year-old Kiah Kuzan confronted him, thinking he was somehow responsible for her boyfriend being expelled, and then punched him in the mouth, knocking him to the ground and breaking three of his front teeth which required £800 dental repair, which Kuzan was sentenced to pay him in compensation along with an eight-week jail term suspended for a year.
- Sharon Osbourne. Messing with her husband Ozzy isn't a good idea when she's around (Louis Walsh has a glass of water thrown over him when he let slip a casual insult). Once, when Ozzy's former band members kept bothering him over claims of past due royalties, she responded by having their contributions in the songs wiped out and re-recorded by different musicians. As Ozzy put it: "She just snapped." During one season of America's Got Talent, a performer fired back at the judges for rejecting his act. At one point he tells Sharon that she's "got a contact high from belittling Ozzy too long." Her expression could melt glass, and after a moment to compose herself, she "calmly" told him to fuck off. Were it not for the massive studio audience, she probably would've stormed the stage and kicked his ass.
- In 2001, a 16-year-old boy threw a strawberry tart in King Carl XVI Gustaf's face during a visit to a bird sanctuary in Varberg, Sweden. Queen Silvia helped wrestle the boy to the ground and he was arrested on suspicion of treason.