Took a Level in Badass/Live-Action TV

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Examples of Took a Level in Badass in Live-Action TV include:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel

  • Wesley on Angel is one of the more long-term, visibly executed cases, marked with actual Character Development. It wasn't just the writers' decision to make him suddenly "cool" -- it was the character's decision to.
  • Before his actual level-up, Wesley is a subversion of Took a Level in Badass. When first seen on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wes was a weak, weaselly wimp. When he first appears in Angel, he seems to be leveled. He rides a motorcycle, dresses in badass chic, and claims to be a "rogue demon hunter". Turns out he's still a bit pitiful; though he has improved quite a lot, he's hardly badass. Then he nearly dies...
    • What's a rogue demon?
  • And in Buffy the Vampire Slayer itself Willow starts as geek and a bookworm, helpful only as research type. Her powers increase with time until by the end of Season 7, she is a super-powerful witch (and fully in control of her abilities).
  • Whenever Angel turns evil or Willow sets out for vengeance, they take approximately infinity levels in badass, not to mention coolness.
  • Angel and Buffy themselves are an example of this trope - in Season One of Buffy the two of them have trouble with three respected vampires, but by the end of the show one suspects the reason they never have them fighting together against something is that the sheer force of awesome could explode the universe.
  • Giles is retroactively given levels in badass in Season 2, when it turns out he used to be a badass before putting his skills on hold when he joined the Watchers, but occasionally trots them out when the need is great. Best examples: unexpectedly beating the crap out of Ethan and later attacking Angelus with a flaming piece of wood and, momentarily at least, gaining the upper hand. Also: end of season 6, anyone? Giles full of magic = crowning moment of awesome.
    • Don't forget the end of Season 5, with Ben!
    • Early Season 2 also has this gem:

Snyder: I'm not convinced.
Giles: (Jams Snyder against a filing cabinet.) Would you like me to convince you?

  • The Scoobies seem to accumulate levels of badass over the course of the show, particularly over the summers of 1998 (between season 2 and 3) and 2001 (between season 5 and 6), to compensate for the Slayer's absence.
  • The entire graduating class of 1999 gains a level in badass when they take off their graduation robes to reveal their arsenal of medieval weapons.
  • Dawn is a relatively mild (or at least non-flashy) but still striking example, being a fairly normal high school kid who manage to pick up reasonably fluent Turkish and Sumerian, apparently in her spare time.
    • To be fair, what else do you have during summer when you're still under 18? Still she learned two languages, not easy ones either, in a few months and her actions in Conversations With Dead People are also a good example. From late in Season 7, one word, Tazer.
    • Not to mention scaring the crap out of Spike in Season 7.
    • Heck, just being the slayer's little sister is enough to give you a level in badass; just look at her fighting alongside Buffy, sans training, at the end of season 6.
  • Spike does this over the course of his vampiric career, albeit shown mostly during the flashbacks. His first fight with a Slayer is won partially through luck: he puts up a strong fight, but gets in his killing blow (and her killing blow is lost) when she is stunned by an unrelated explosion. His second fight? He's visibly more confident, his fighting shows more control that new vampires often lack, and he wins the fight without any outside intervention. The second fight cements his status: while most vampires are lucky to survive a brush with a Slayer, he tracked one down and killed her in a fair fight.
  • Ultimately, it can be argued that any character who interacts with the main cast in the Buffy/Angelverse for a reasonable stretch of time ends up gaining levels in Badass, to the point where you have half a dozen "normal" human characters taking down beasts and monstrosities that previously were considered unkillable by anything but a supernatural hero like the Slayer.
    • Because the only choices for people around The Slayer and The Champion are: run far, far away; get horribly killed; or level up.
  • Xander during Halloween is turned into a soldier and later retains memories and skills (plot dependent) from his transformation.
    • Also in the season eight comics Xander has become a high tech battle watcher for Slayer Inc. He also wants people to call him Sgt. Fury
  • Lilah Morgan spent the first two seasons of Angel as a totally ineffective Smug Snake. Then in season 3 she grew a spine and gained a lot of badly needed IQ points, turning her into a proper Magnificent Bastard.
  • Cordelia has gained a very noticeable level in badass at the beginning of Season 2 of Angel, jumping into the fray during fights, and when she saves Gunn's friend's life in "First Impressions."

Burn Notice

  • Madeline Westen might need to be the new poster woman for this trope. We've lost count of the actual levels she's taken, but she starts out a nagging, hypochondriac chain smoker in the pilot and over three seasons, has become virtually equivalent to a spy herself.
    • Best demonstrated in "The Hunter", where Sam and Fiona are interrogating a pilot to find out where Michael has been taken. Sam gives up the questioning when the pilot makes it clear he's not afraid of anything, and goes to think through new options with Fiona. Madeline calmly walks out to the garage where he's being kept, lights a cigarette, and comes back 4 minutes later with the coordinates, having not even had to touch the pilot.
    • There's an excellent moment in the season 3.5 opener, "A Dark Road", when she outright blackmails a woman she's become friends with because the woman possesses information that Michael needs to save lives. She hates it, but she stonewalls the woman and gets the files.
    • She shows off her Mama Bear status in the season three finale when she stalls and misdirects a set of government agents who only very slowly come to realize that she's not an innocent old woman. She tips Michael off that the FBI is at the house, then sends the feds on a wild goose chase. This whole time she is interrogated in her own home, given photographs of bad stuff Michael has supposedly done and she doesn't even flinch, but she pretends to crack to keep the agents fooled. When they finally threaten to arrest her for aiding and abetting, she practically puts the handcuffs on herself, and oh, yes - slaps a federal agent.
      • To show her new badassery, when Michael tells Sam and Fiona that she's trying to hold them off, Sam says "She's good, but she's not that good." When a former Navy SEAL thinks you're tough, that's saying something.
      • Of course, this isn't the first time said Navy SEAL acknowledges her badassery - from "The Hunter":

Madeline: Sam, let me remind you you're sleeping in my guestroom. You call me or God as my witness I will smother you in your sleep.
Sam: Okay, we'll call!

Doctor Who and Torchwood

  • Mickey Smith does this twice. Or maybe it took two stages. At first a cowering if sweet natured nerd, he moves up a level during the year he's falsely suspected of his girlfriend's murder. He becomes a lot braver, even willing to die to protect his girlfriend's mother, as well as developing some impressive hacking skills. He goes up another level offscreen after several years of fighting Cybermen in an alternate universe. Last time we saw him as a full Badass complete with deeper voice and BFG.
  • Rose becomes equally badass by the end of seroes 4.
  • Captain Jack. OMG Captain Jack. He goes from charming coward, albeit one who is willing to fight when he has to, to immortal charming wisecracking badass.
  • And of course Rory Williams becomes awesome over the course of two thousand years protecting the Pandorica. Also his hand was briefly a gun. He even has a badass title: The Last Centurion.
    • Rory's other half Amy Pond goes from a flirtatious Fiery Redhead to a full on Action Girl in her two series as companion. She even saved Rory from the Silence with two machine guns, and kills Kovarian in cold blood!
  • We can't forget Rose's mum Jackie, who got to carry a BFG and shoot a Dalek to smithereens alongside Mickey.
  • They're not the only ones to do it. Martha did this either when she protected "John Smith" from the Family of Blood or when she Walked the Earth for an entire year.
  • Anyone who watches Doctor Who knows the Doctor has the tendency to turn his companions into badasses. It could be argued that it's part of the reason why he takes companions in the first place. Davros, one of the Doctor's oldest enemies, accuses him of this specifically, saying that while he may have created the monstrous Dalek killing machines, the Doctor has transformed innumerable innocent normal people into weapons himself.
  • Any Torchwood member. None of the primary characters (except for Jack, and if you count flashbacks, perhaps Ianto) started off as badasses. Owen was a doctor, Toshiko was a mild-mannered scientist, and Gwen was a police constable, whose job mostly consisted of making coffee, cordoning off crime scenes, and breaking up bar fights. As a PC, she wasn't even issued a gun. By series 3, Gwen is firing at government agents and, in series 4, takes out a helicopter with a rocket launcher.

Heroes

  • Peter Petrelli takes a level of badass from Season One to Season Two. Unfortunately, his intellect fails to keep up.
  • In the Dystopian future of the 1st season episode "Five Years Gone", Future Peter, Hiro, Matt, and Sylar have all taken multiple levels.
    • After having met future!Hiro, Ando even comments to present!Hiro that he "looked badass". Hiro rejoiced.
  • The season 3 premiere is full of characters taking a level: Suresh by injecting himself, and future Ando (yet to be explained)
    • Ando previously Took a Level in Badass when he challenged Sylar with nothing but a sword in the finale of season 1.
  • In all honesty, Hiro started taking several levels of Badass from the first three episodes. He flirted with full Badass status in the last episode of season 1.
  • Matt Parkman and Mohinder Suresh have taken up several levels of Badass in season 2. Micah Sanders has potential to do the same in season 3.
  • In the dystopian future revealed in Season 3, Claire has clearly taken a level in badass.
  • Apparently, all the villains Claire defeated over the course of volume 3 were enough XP for her to gain a level in Badass by the volume finale, culminating in her defeat of Sylar.

Stargate Verse

  • Daniel Jackson started Stargate SG-1 as the team's Smart Guy, and was at most armed with a Beretta, tasked mainly with translations and exposition on Earth's various pantheons. A couple seasons later, and he's upgraded to whatever automatic weapon the rest of the team's using, and holding his own as much as the career military characters.
    • Someone (possibly Jackson himself) handwaved this by mentioning that Jackson had received some form of combat training since joining SG-1. Which is rather understandable, given the kinds of situations SG-1 found itself caught up in on a regular basis.
    • This is also a big level up from how he was in Stargate.
      • In a less spectacular form, when Daniel and Chaka have failed at diplomactic relations with the local Unas on a planet rich with Naquadah, and the human dig team were surrounded by hundreds of Unas lead by Iron-Shirt, Daniel suggests that they get down on the ground to avoid conflict. When the military man in charge of the dig team starts to refuse at this, Daniel gives him a glance, shouting that they have to drop down, and 'that is all' that they had to do. Made even more Badass due to the military man in question had yet to listen to Daniel in the first place.
  • In Stargate Atlantis, Rodney followed in Daniel's footsteps. In a first season episode he's terrified of the idea that he might actually have to use a gun to defend himself. Not too long later, he's laying down covering fire with a P90 and using cover like a trained soldier. Probably justified in both cases, as it wasn't an immediate change, and it seems like a matter of necessity given the situations they find themselves in. Rodney himself may be a partial subversion, as he still freaks out while killing Wraith, even though he seems good at it. This is also possibly due to his internal Chance of Imminent Doom meter; when it redlines, he gets Awesome.
    • Which was nicely Lampshaded in the second season episode "Inferno" where Rodney yells at Sheppard for putting pressure on him and Sheppard points out this fact to him.
  • More recently,[when?] Dr. Keller is seen fighting off a Wraith with a stick long enough for McKay to shoot it. He asks where she learned to fight, and she mentions she's been taking sparring lessons.
  • Teyla had a hand-waved level in flying the ship single-handedly badass. Apparently a short lesson with the weapons officer is enough to run the entire ship.
    • Since most ships in the gateverse seem to be partly flown by psychic powers -- including the Goa'uld's motherships, that isn't particularly surprising.
  • Rush in Stargate Universe qualifies too, being even more of an Insufferable Genius than McKay (the insufferable part). When his lover is killed by a former Lucian Alliance member, he hunts down the trained soldier on an uninhabited world and kills him by causing a stampede of the local wildlife and finishing off with a close-range shot.

Other works

  • On Caprica, Tamara-A does this within the space of one episode.
  • Appears on Community, most notably in the paintball episodes where Greendale devolves into a chaotic paint-splattered warzone. Annie, who starts off as an often naive and innocent young woman, died rapidly and fruitlessly in the Season 1 paintball episode "Modern Warfare". By the time Season 2's western-themed "A Fistful of Paintballs" rolls around she's become a one-woman killing machine, dropping no less than ten opponents single-handedly; a higher kill total than the rest of the group combined.
    • Additionally, in the Season 3 episode "Remedial Chaos Theory", we discover that sweet, innocent Annie now owns and carries a revolver. She does, after all, live in a bad neighborhood. Awesomely enough, this may also explain why Annie became a crack shot with paintball guns; she's been practicing with real ones.
  • Joel Fleischman, in his final season on Northern Exposure, went from a clean-cut, irritable Fish Out of Water to a grizzled Zen master survivalist.
  • A long-term-development example: in Xena: Warrior Princess, Gabrielle starts the series off as a young, plucky, story teller, farm girl. Over the course of six seasons, she takes multiple levels, and develops her fighting skills until she's almost on a par with Xena, effectivley going from this [dead link]. To this.
    • Culminating in the Season Six finale, when she becomes one of three people other than Xena to catch the Chakram and, in the last ever scene of the show, appears to be taking up Xena's legacy as a full blown hero.
  • Quinn Mallory from Sliders apparently took a level of badass during the Channel Hop from Fox to Sci-Fi. This was mostly a result of Jerry O'Connell's increasing creative control over the show, and, like pretty much the rest of the show by this point, came off as contrived and meaningless.
  • In Smallville, Lana Lang traded in Wangst for her own secret organization and a willingness to kill if necessary - though she never actually did. And that was before she gained superpowers so she could hold her own against alien/mutant threats.
    • Clark himself finally became a decent fighter in the sixth season when he dealt with a Phantom Zone thug in an illegal TNA-like match. Most other times when he dealt with an enemy of a comparable power level, he would get thrown around like a rag doll before a Deus Ex Machina ended the fight. With this match, Clark was in a really bad mood and legitimately traded blows with the guy, winning through skill and strength rather than dumb luck. Ever since, he has done markedly better with these throw-downs.
    • It's easier to tell who didn't take a level in badass in that show. Chloe got turned not only into a hacker and Mission Control, but also into an Action Girl and Green Arrow's Battle Spouse. Martha became not only a senator, but also The Chessmaster. Even Jimmy "Henry James" Olsen got to play James Bond rather convincingly.
  • John Connor takes a long-anticipated level of badass in the first episode of the second season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles when he violently stops a rape attempt on his mother and in doing so throws his old standard of Thou Shalt Not Kill out the window.
    • And in "The Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter", John shows he's continued leveling up in badass when he confronts Jesse and tells her he figured out who and what Riley really was, casually takes her pistol from her, lays out why he is and will be the future leader of mankind, and tells her that her plan to make Cameron kill Riley never would have worked to break them apart. Thoroughly awesome.
      • Well, he knows she won't shoot humanity's only chance against the machines.
    • Cameron herself levels up in the second season, though more subtly. For most of the first season and the first half of the second, she at best can draw even with other Terminators; being smaller than other Terminators makes her lighter and less physically powerful. She makes up for it, however, by fighting smarter and apparently doing research into various martial arts and weapons, until she's able to regularly tackle other Terminators and take them apart single-handedly.
      • Up to a point where a Dangerously Genre Savvy Mook who knows about her weakness to electricity takes her down with a pool of water and a well-placed electrical cable. He then gets ready to cut open her skull while she's disabled, knowing precisely where her chip is and knowing he's got two minutes before she reboots....only to discover to his dismay that she's upgraded, right before his neck is pulverized.
  • 24 is full of characters who have taken up multiple levels of Badass. These include Teri Bauer, Kim Bauer, Chloe O'Brien in season 4 (see also Crowning Moment of Awesome), George Mason (see also Heroic Sacrifice), Wayne Palmer, and even Milo Pressman (total geek in season 1; to taking bullets in season 6). Some of the bad guys pull this off as well (Behrooz Araz and his trusty shovel in season 4 is the premier example)
    • Don't forget Charles Logan: from hand-wringing, indecisive pussy to ringleader of massive conspiracy
    • And Jack Bauer himself, who starts off as an (admittedly capable) secret agent-slash-family man who can eventually shrug off all forms of torture and even come back from the dead. Also of note is Nina Meyers, who starts off, again, a capable agent, who's a mole, but a pretty plausible one, and ends up becoming an unstoppable force of pure evil.
  • John Crichton from Farscape takes multiple levels of badass over four seasons: he starts out as a clueless nerd, and by series end is so badass he manages to intimidate two entire galactic empires into leaving him the frell alone by threatening to wipe out the universe. THE ENTIRE FREAKING UNIVERSE! And what makes it Badass is he can pull it off.
    • There's also the interesting moment in the Peacekeeper Wars where he explains to a priestess that he and his friends aren't soldiers. To be fair, he really isn't, but with all the fighting they've all done over the course of the series, it's understandable one might make that mistake.
    • Of course, a big part of it is that he's gone so insane that he's come out the other side.
    • The follow-up comic reveals that Scorpius is far from being done with Crichton. The same comic also shows Rygel becoming a true warrior and leader instead of a lazy monarch expecting things to be done for him. It's this that finally convinces his subjects to back him instead of his corrupt cousin. The Hynerian Empire is powerful enough as it is. Now imagine it with the new-and-improved Dominar Rygel XVI at the helm, commanding his subject's loyalty not because of his ancestry but because of who he is.
      • Rygel's level up was foreshadowed by a spirit painting Zahan did of him early in the series. Such a painting depicts the spiritual self, rather than the physical, and this painting looks like Rygel the First, who commanded the Hynerean Empire because he was exerything Rygel XVI would eventually become because of his exile.
      • Rygel also leveled up when he fought off repeated assaults by Charrids. This showed the other side of Hynereans: While they will prefer to run, hide, or bargain their way out of trouble, if you back them into a corner and give them no option but to fight you, they'll take you off at the knees to get the rest of you down where they can get at it.
  • In Babylon 5 Lennier is introduced as a mild-mannered, monk-like Minbari religious caste-member with a zen-like philosophy who is surprisingly shown a few episodes later to be able to defend himself with martial arts and take out a whole room full of drunk people, which is fair enough. However, by Season 4 he is fully capable of taking out multiple opponents belonging to the Minbari warrior caste trained almost from birth in the art of unarmed combat. This is before he joins the thousand-year-old organisation of elite badasses from beyond badassery in the final season who train up his badass skills to something on the other side of preposterousness.
    • Lyta Alexander starts off as a fairly mild-mannered woman. After telepathically scanning the injured Ambassador Kosh, she is Put on a Bus for two years before coming back as a much tougher, more skilled and more enigmatic character. Her increased telepathic (and beyond) powers are only revealed little by little, while at the same time she starts to show more vulnerability -- until the fifth season, when the death of Byron causes her to stop playing it safe and show just how powerful she's become.
    • Also Vir Cotto, who starts off as an ineffectual, bumbling, yet thoroughly nice and sweet guy... yet slowly starts showing intelligence, confidence and even deviousness to the point where he ends up succeeding Londo as Ambassador and later as Emperor, while throughout still remaining a thoroughly nice and sweet guy.
      • When Vir takes a level in Badass by borrowing Londo's ceremonial sword and taking care of a Drazi spy, the result is so awesome they have to lampshade the lampshade.

Sheridan: What did Londo have to say about it?
Zack: He was like a proud father. "Now he is a man..."

  • Sayid on Lost is a badass to begin with, but in the post-island flashforwards, he's graduated to international hitman. Sun is also seen in "There's No Place Like Home" to take a level (or two).
    • Claire's turn to Rousseau clone in season 6.
  • Hoshi Sato, the nervous alien language specialist in Star Trek: Enterprise, is given retroactive martial arts skills which she uses during Dr Phlox's kidnapping. While it's likely Hoshi would have become more assertive after her experiences during the Xindi conflict, it would have made more sense for her to have used the more simple takedowns taught to the crew by Major Hayes during this time. But less cool, I'm sure.
    • And she even levels up in the Mirror Universe, too. Empress Sato, anyone?
    • Another Star Trek example. Like the Millenium Falcon, the USS Enterprise NX-01 is another spaceship that takes multiple levels in badass. But this was a logical progression, when the ship first left Earth, Starfleet had no clue of the kinds of dangers out there. As the ship encounters various threats, the crew upgrades the ship's ass-kicking abilities on the go, Trip and his team build phaser cannons from scratch, Reed creates the proto-type force field and comes up with the Red Alert system, and T'Pol routinely improves the ship's sensors. Of course, after the Xindi invasion, the ship is literally retrofitted into a war-ship, complete with the introduction of the famous photon torpedoes.
      • In the pilot episode, the ship is only armed with plasma cannons, which can't hit the broad side of a barn. They promptly forget about them and refit the ship to fire spacial torpedoes.
  • Interestingly, the civilian characters of Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica have been immune to this (with the exception of those revealed to be Cylons), although Laura Roslin becomes a political Badass. Considering military officers like Adama and Cain, the badass market of Battlestar is pretty much cornered.
    • However, the TV movie Razor is all about Kendra Shaw being molded into a badass by Cain.
    • Also: Saul Tigh. In the first two seasons he's basically an alcoholic Commander Contrarian, but in the first five episode of Season Three alone he loses an eye, sends men on suicide missions against the Cylons, shuts up Laura Roslin, poisons his wife, and executes collaborators by airlocking them. He has remained awesome ever since.
    • In fact, he seems to take another level in badass after he finds out he's a cylon. One of his plans involves going and standing in an airlock threatening to space himself unless he gets what he wants (it makes more sense in context).
  • In the X-Files, Skinner took a level up in badass when he beat up Mr. X in the elevator. Don't mess with 'Nam vets.
    • Then there was his complete and utter owning of Cancer Man:

CSM: Listen to me--
Skinner: No, you listen to me, you son of a bitch! This is the part where you pucker up and kiss my ass!

  • To a certain extent, Jadzia Dax in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. She starts off as a reserved, quiet young woman, but (especially after her experience meeting an incarnation of her high-living former host Curzon) abruptly metamorphoses into a blood wine-chugging, bat'leth-swinging, Samoan-fire-dancing, blood-oath-honouring, Worf-marrying-and-rough-Klingon-sex-having Badass. Interestingly, Dax's next host Ezri went through an abbreviated version of this after she was introduced at the beginning of the seventh season, starting as a bewildered Fish Out of Water and going on to do such things as hunting a serial killer and confronting her gangster-involved family (particularly after Garak reads her beads in "Afterimage").
  • Both played magnificently and deconstructed a bit in Power Rangers RPM. Ranger Yellow was initially a Rich Bitch who took a level in badass to survive the razing of the planet, but she runs into problems when her new Action Girl career is interrupted by pre-badass commitments.
    • Ziggy, Ranger Green, first gets his powers without any kind of training whatsoever. And it is made very clear in his first battle. However, as the season is progressing, he, while still the least skilled fighter of the team, is undeniably improving, as he is no doubt receiving training off screen.
  • In the original Power Rangers series, Adam is an example of this. While he was overshadowed by his other teammates and some unfortunate dialogue (power of kissing, anyone?) during his run as a Ranger (only second to Tommy Oliver in the entire series history), he returns twice having taken quite a few levels in badass after he stopped being a Ranger. First is in In Space where he saves Carlos, the guy who replaced him, by jumping out of no where and attacking the Monster of the Week UNMORPHED. Later in the same episode when surrounded by said monster and a ton of mooks, he risks being destroyed when he uses his original damaged Mighty Morphin morpher to save the day. He then shows up again for the 15th anniversary episode to lead a team of veteran rangers. Not only he is a muscular martial artist who runs a dojo, but when the team is attacked by an ocean of mooks unmorphed, all the younger rangers use their super powers to beat them. Adam, however, just proceeds to dispatch the most mooks by using nothing but his martial arts skills. Finally at the end of the special he takes on the Big Bad (Rita and Zedd's son no less) single handedly. Levels in badass indeed.
    • Works for villains, too. Elsa of Power Rangers Dino Thunder was once hurt by a single unexpected strike from an unmorphed Kira, and another time she and Zeltrax had to retreat from a battle because again being hit once was enough to take her out of the fight. She had a decent Sword Beam move, but only used it once. Then Zeltrax is removed from the picture ( appears to die, later returns crazy, and rebels against boss) leaving Elsa the only Dragon. She rises to the challenge by returning with a new, longer haircut, and being able to match even a Sixth Ranger on her own. And that once-used attack returns with a vengeance. Is she powered by the hair like Samson or something?
  • Chuck‍'‍s second season finale. "Guys, I know kung-fu," indeed.
    • Chuck also shows this trope can apply to inanimate objects too - in Season 1, Sarah's "workplace" had nothing but a gun hidden in the mayonnaise. Then in Season 2, the stock room turns out to be a fully decked-out underground base.
      • The same applies to Buy More. After it burns to the ground, the NSA rebuilds it and turns it into a high-tech command center with the customers completely oblivious.
    • Chuck's friend, Morgan Grimes, also gets to take a level of bad-assery during the course of the show, with his Crazy Awesome stunts impressing John Casey, the Operation Bartowski team's resident Badass. This comes to a head in Season 5. As Morgan becomes the Intersect. It didn't stick, however.
  • Subverted in the "Marriage Guidance Counsellor" sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus, in which mild Arthur Pewtey finds his wife stolen from under his nose by the title character. A cowboy gives Pewtey a level-up in badass -- "you gotta turn, and you gotta fight, and you gotta hold your head up high" -- which lasts for as long as it takes the marriage guidance counsellor to tell Pewtey to go away. So much for pathos.
  • To a lesser extent, JJ from Criminal Minds. She is almost always portrayed as the perky blonde. Cops always assume that she's just the media liaison, and most of the time she's displayed as such. It changes slightly when she takes out three dogs with three shots in Season Two's Revelations. And then she becomes one of the coolest people, ever, when she gets a headshot on a criminal holding a hostage at gunpoint. If this doesn't sound particularly awesome, consider the fact that she shoots through the FBI seal on a solid glass door.
    • Not so lesser: in early seasons she's rarely seen with a weapon and rarely on the scene during the capture/arrest/takedown. Lately she's just as likely as Prentiss to be busting into a building packing heat. If her family ends up threatened by a killer has have almost all the other members, one suspects a full blown Mama Bear incident and local police cleaning up what's left of the threat in Aisle 5.
  • Annie in Being Human (UK) definitely takes a level after refusing to pass to the other side although one could argue that it began after she breaks her emotional bond to her boyfriend/killer.
    • The biggest part of her level up occurred when she went from being a ghost to being a poltergeist.
  • Jeeves and Wooster: Gussie Fink-Nottle seems to magically develop the ability to stand up for himself to a certain degree by his last episode. This may be a reference to the P. G. Wodehouse novels, where Bertie comments on his sudden ability to speak in public. Turns out he got some help from Jeeves.
  • In True Blood Jason Stackhouse is a weaselly Butt Monkey for the first season and a half. But then the Fellowship of the Sun turns on him and he fights back, then spends the rest of the season constantly topping himself in badassery.
    • In season 4, Jason is now a full-fledged cop and is shown to be a lot more competent than the sheriff. All because his sister disappeared for over a year.
    • A villainous example with Marnie, who was a self-described doormat, giving people psychic readings. After taking up necromancy, she summons the spirit of a pissed-off witch and later starts running the show. It doesn't end well for her.
  • In Kamen Rider Double, Shotaro, despite already being quite a tough character normally, takes several levels in Badass after the Utopia Dopant attacks his friends. This results in him finally taking up his mentor's hat, storming the Utopia Dopant's lair, outwitting and disabling one of the most powerful Dopants in the show, rescuing Wakana, and carrying her out of the base as it explodes, all without transforming. He also crosses over into Badass Abnormal when he becomes Kamen Rider Joker.
    • Kamen Rider OOO, Shintaro Goto has already being shown a few times as a very tough character without having to transform, but then in episode 38 he finally transformed into Kamen Rider Birth and proceed to pull a Big Damn Heroes saving Eiji/OOO and epically curbstomping Kazari, Mezool and Gamel
  • Firefly: Wash may be a great pilot, but until "War Stories" he's not much of a fighter. Then Niska tortures him.

"Bastard isn't gonna get days."

    • Also, Inara, starting in Serenity when she sets of the incense flash bomb to allow her and Mal to escape the Operative, and later in the last stand when she has the crossbow-thing. She fires with as much accuracy and deadly calm as Jayne and Zoe.
      • Although we are told in "Shindig" that Inara can fence.
  • CSI: New York: In episode 2 of the seventh season, lab tech Adam Ross goes from shy geek to bad ass when the killer of the episode tries to run him over with his car. Adam starts off with a flying tackle and manages to get in his share of punches then,when the killer turns his gun on Mac and Flack riding to the rescue, takes the guy down with a fluorescent light bulb to the back of the neck.
    • It helps that he's taking the murder of the week rather personally, having been talking to the victim on a video chat site just before the killing and therefore witnessed it.
  • In The Vampire Diaries Caroline takes one at the beginning of the second season. This is a pretty natural reaction to becoming a vampire, but she manages to become a really awesome vampire with remarkable speed.
  • Sean has been gradually taking one throughout the first season of The Event. Leyla isn't quite there but she's catching up.
  • Walter White, from Breaking Bad. Too many examples to mention, he takes several levels. At least a level 5 badass, at the moment.
    • Jessie takes one in season four when he starts accompanying Mike.
  • Timothy "Probie" Mcgee in NCIS began his NCIS career as a nervous, yes-man like team sidekick/chew toy who's primary contribution to the team was his tech savvy. While that is still his most prominent skill, he's developed his confidence and physical skills and has become a true team member--able to give as good as he gets as far as his partner Dinozo is concerned, make impressive pitches to the head of the entire place without blinking, and being the most quietly unnerving man in interrogation.
  • Captain Sharon Raydor of The Closer used to be an Obstructive Bureaucrat who made life hard for Brenda and her team; now she's helping them gun bad guys down in the streets. With a rifle.
  • While they had already been improving during the show's first three seasons, Connor Temple and Abby Maitland of Primeval both took a major level in badass when they were stranded in the Cretaceous.
  • Michael from The Wire gets trained as a "soldier" (a hitman) for Marlo Stanfield's gang. Unlike most examples of this trope, this one is played tragically, and is meant to show how children in ghettos can be coerced into lives of violence.
  • Andrea in The Walking Dead starts out as nothing more than a lucky survivor with no combat skills, and by the end of the first season is outright suicidal. Over the course of the second season she trains hard and refuses to join the other women in the kitchen. By the midpoint of the season, she's wading in to kill zombies with agricultural tools. By the finale, when she gets abandoned in the middle of a horde of walkers, she is able to keep running and scoring headshots all night, and even after she runs out of ammunition is still killing them hand-to-hand.
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