Vasquez Always Dies

Anime and Manga

Played with inGodannar, where the rather tomboyish action girl Shadow is almost killedbecause she's not feminine.

Jane Proudfoot (Peri Gilpin), the tough femaleSpace Marine inFinal Fantasy the Spirits Within dies; the scientist wearing the skintight jumpsuit lives.

Then again, Jane's entire character is a blatantShout-Out to Vasquez - even some of her lines are paraphrases fromAliens.

Vexille has twoAction Girl leads and the more badass one is the one invokingDiabolus Ex Machina in the end.

Let's not count the times when theGundam protagonists fell in love with femaleAce Pilots only to invoke theLove Hurts trope to Earth-shattering levels. This is not always the case, of course.

InGundam Seed we have thematernal, long-haired, Murrue Ramius and her stern and short-hairedXO Natarle Badguriel. Later on, when Natarle getsher own ship, she and her former commander face off. Guess which one didn't make it tothe sequel.

Invoked in the second season ofVandread, where Gascogne (seriously, even BC is hotter than her, what with being aguy in woman's body)rams the enemy mothership, allowing the rest of the crew to escape. She survives and returns for theGrand Finale.

Another example would be how many chances the writers missed to kill off Meia.

Giant Robo: The Day The Earth Stood Still - out of the two female members of Experts of Justice, Yoshi, the blue-skinned, muscular one dies halfway through the series, while the very feminine Ginrei survives to the last episodeOnly to die as well, subverting this trope.

In theHalo Legends mini movies, the survival rate of female Spartans is...0%.

Comic Books

In thePunisher: MAX arc "Man of Stone," the ex-CIA killer O'Brien. She's hot, smart, and highly skilled at violence and mayhem, and her panties get wet whenever Frank is murdering the fuck out of people who deserve it. They have a brutal, joyless whirlwind romance. So of course she steps on a mine at the end of the story. Then again, if you don't want dying to be on the agenda, you shouldn't be in aPunisher: MAX arc.

Film

TheTrope Namer is fromAliens, in which the chinup-pulling,smartgun-wielding Colonial Marine Vasquez dies, while the maternal, civilian Ripley lives. Several other female marines also die, but are given less characterization and attention. James Cameron likes hisAction Girls, but they apparently need to beacting on maternal instincts.

That is actually the only film in the series to play the trope straight since in the first film, the less competent Lambert gets killed by the Alien while Ripley survives and of course there are no other women in the third film.

Alien is a special case, and viewing the film in 1979 is impossible to duplicate for viewers, now that Sigourney Weaver is both more famous than anyone else in the film, and known for kicking ass.^[1]
Also,Alien is a horror film with science fiction trappings, rather than an action film with science fiction trappings like its sequel. Viewed that way, Ripley's survival makes more sense - she is the most moral member of the crew.
Alien Resurrection deconstructs it by having three Action Girls with varying degrees of femininity and the two more likely to fill the Vasquez role survive. Hillard on the other hand, while shown to be competent in a fight, starts to lose it once her boyfriend is killed and ultimately panics when up against the Aliens, leading to her death.

May Day in theJames Bond movieA View to a Kill.

InResident Evil the fatigue-wearing, aggressive Rain Ocampo (Michelle Rodriguez) becomes aZombie Infectee; while blonde, minidress-wearing Alice (Milla Jovovich) becomes theFinal Girl.

InThe Matrix, the gruff, spikey-headed Switch is killed, but Trinity, the love-interest, lives.

InThe Matrix Revolutions, a female character named Charra with a crew-cut, a tanktop, and big ol' biceps is introduced right before the battle against the machines to help out Zee, who is just trying to hold the line until her husband Link shows up. Guess what happens.
Trinity dies

In the firstStarship Troopers, Dizzy Flores, the QB of the football team and tough marine dies while the feminine starship pilot survives. Interestingly, Dizzy was a man in the novel, but died in the first chapter, so at least she lasted longer than her book counterpart.

Does the fact that Dina Meyer is immeasurably more attractive than Denise Richards (although YMMV) make this a subversion?
"Fleet do the flying, MI do the dying"
Also applies to the Roughnecks' original Corporal, who gets fried by the gigantic lava-spewing bug before Rico grenades it.
The only person inStarship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation to get off the planet alive is a pregnant woman. Must be all those maternal instincts keeping the bugs away.
Averted inStarship Troopers 3: Marauder, whereThe Squad (more like aRagtag Bunch of Misfits, actually, but play along with us for a moment) is marooned on a bug planet. Out of four guys, one tough female trooper, and oneidealistic young flight attendant, only the latter AND the Vasquez survive until the end of the film.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors has Taryn, whose dream powers are having a ridiculously large mohawk and a gang outfit. She doesn't fare as well as the notably more feminine Kristen.

Holly fromThe Descent is a curious example. While she fits the "least feminine" part of the description, she was an impulsive and reckless amateur who obviously saw herself as anAction Girl but ended up getting herself injured through her carelessness which led to her getting killed off first. In the sequel, which has four Action Girls,Cath the trained cave diver is killed first while Juno and Sarah being average outdoor enthusiasts die last and the cop Rios is left alive.

Carnosaur 2, admittedly a film that blatantly rips offAliens, features a tough female clearly modeled on Vasquez who is killed pretty gruesomely during the finale.

InAvatar, Michelle Rodriguez is the gruff pilot who doesn't make it to the end. TheBlue-Skinned Space Babe Nubile Savage love interest lives. There is a middle-ground female character, an older, maternal but no-nonsense scientist (played by Sigourney Weaver, a.k.a.Ripley). Yet strangely enough, shealso dies.

This trope could just as easily be called "Michelle Rodriguez", since she frequently plays characters like this who usually get killed off at some point.
- Rodriguez admitted that she deliberately choosesAction Girl roles of the non-Waif Fu variety, knowing perfectly well that her character will most likely die. A price to pay for refusing to go along with a Hollywood-accepted female character.

Subverted inMachete: we're meant to think Michelle Rodriguez's character dies when she's shot through the eye, but she reappears at the climax of the movie with anEyepatch of Power (yes, we all knowthere's a brain directly behind your eyeballs, butjust roll with it).

Another example of Michelle Rodriguez, this time inBattle: Los Angeles. Averted in that she survives, for once.

Played straight inLake Placid 3, where Yancy Butler's character takes downtwo giant crocodiles with ahunting knife after being bothbitten and shot, and then just... lies down and dies.

InTwenty Eight Weeks Later, Scarlet is killed by Dom, and that leaves Tammy to take Doyle's rifle and become the newAction Girl.

TheHot Amazon is the first contestant killed inSlashers, just after she had killed one the eponymous psychos.

Costello inLeprechaun 4: In Space.

Averted in the filmBattleship. Rihanna plays the only strong, tough, female soldier - but she ends up surviving.

Literature

Matthew Stover'sHeroes Die features two prominent female characters, bothAction Girls. Shanna/Pallas Ril is the protagonist's love interest andThe Messiah, and despite her being anAction Girl, the whole plot basically revolves around Caine's attempts torescue her from theBig Bad. Talaan, on the other hand, is aBadass warrior woman who might even be a better fighter thanCaine. You guesswhich one dies halfway through the book. Go on, guess.

Of course, they'reboth dead by the end of book 2. Matthew Stover's problem isn't that he can't write strong female characters. He justcan't let them live.
- You think they got it bad? Look at what Olga went through inCaine Black Knife. Sure, she survived that book, but the backstory reveals that she ran intoBerne shortly before the events ofHeroes Die. Daaaaamn.
  - It may be worth noting that all these strong, likable female characters inThe Acts of Caine have one thing in common:Berne wastes all of them. Even after he's dead.
Any complaints you have about the lifespans of likable female characters inThe Acts of Caine series should be addressed to Stover's other, less popular novels,Iron Dawn andJericho Moon. Baara willfuck you up.

Camilla inThe Aeneid, making this tropeOlder Than Feudalism.

The two mainAction Girl characters in the South Seas Treasure Game (Dream Park) are the sexy Acacia and the indefatiguable Mary-Martha. Both acquit themselves well, but only one of them makes it to the end of the Game, and it's not the middle-aged, 4'1" veteran with the battleax.

Inverted in the second sequel,The California Voodoo Game. Mary-Em makes it out alive and with a massive experience boost, while Acacia's character isKilled Off for Real, causing her to go through aHeroic BSOD.

Dayna Jurgens inThe Stand pretty much is Vasquez. Never send this character alone into a high riskinfiltration; they're pretty much guaranteed to go out in ablaze of glory.

Played with in the short storyAssumption (scroll down) by Desmond Warzel. Belasco proves to be more effective in combat than the men or the unnamed female narrator, and, although she isn't killed, she's the only one seriously injured.

In theShane Schofield series of novels by Matthew Reilly, there are arguably two women who fit the Vasquez model. First there's Mother (short for motherfucker) who is over six-feet tall, shaven headed and has a bionic leg. Also the ability to kill several men with her bare hands. Then there's Elizabeth 'Fox' Gant, who is slightly more ladylike, but has the short hair and the ass kicking ability. This trope is mostly averted, up until the bookScarecrow, where Gant is beheaded by the asshole of the novel.

InThe Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine, tomboyish older sister Meryl is the one who becomes ill with the Gray Death, while delicate younger sister Addie survives and must carry on Meryl's mission.

While the heroines ofSpy High are allAction Girls, it'sJennifer who gets killed off in the third book, with Lori (the most stereotypically feminine) and Cally (the least focused and devoted to her training) surviving. Despite this, Jen'sreplacement Bex is a biggerAction Girl than any of them.

Live-Action TV

Ana Lucia and Juliet onLost. Kate's only true competition for Alpha Female of the island or the affections of Jack and Sawyer.

InXena: Warrior Princess, Xena dies in the final episode but Gabrielle lives on.

Although Gabrielle was essentially a "Vasquez" type character herself by then.
- Maybe compared to other women, but definitely not compared to Xena, making this a straight example.

Robin Hood had twoAction Girls, oneDark Action Girl and oneFaux Action Girl. OneAction Girl ismurdered, the second isPut on a Bus (after undergoingChickification), theDark Action Girl is blown up, and theToo Dumb to Live Faux Action Girl is the only one who makes it to the end of the series, mainly thanks to the fact that the male cast has allbut carried her through on their backs. Sigh.

Power Rangers RPM arguably features this, as the trigger happySilver Ranger gets "deleted" in the finale, while the girlierYellow Ranger does not. However, the series also has a characternamed Vasquez who doesn't appear to die.

A similar occasion occurred in an earlier season,Lost Galaxy. The geeky, military trained Pink Ranger got killed off mid-season as part ofReal Life Writes the Plot, while theMs. Fanservice Yellow Ranger was joined by anotherfan service girl to finish the season. Kendrix was resurrected in the finale though.

Played straight inStar Trek: The Next Generation withNatasha Yar. Notably, the character was originally designed as a VasquezExpy.

Although in this case it wasn't the writer's idea to kill off the character, but the actor's.

InChoudenshi Bioman, Mika, the more tomboyish and aggressive of the two female Rangers, is killed off in episode 10 (necessary, because her actress had quit) whileThe Chick, Hikaru, survives. However, Mika's replacement on the team was very much anAction Girl and did many of her own stunts.

If any female character shows signs of being anAction Girl on24, then you'd better not get too attached to her. In fact, the only recurring female characters to survive to the end of the series were theVoice with an Internet Connection, thepresident andThe Scrappy.

In the fourth series finale ofMerlin, Arthur has two women on his team: Guinevere and Isolde. Though their skill in combat varied wildly from episode to episode, Gwen was definitely the more passive and feminine of the two, whilst Isolde was tougher and had a more difficult lifestyle. Gwen makes it through the battle, Isolde is killed.

Inverted inPrimeval where tomboy Abby has survived the series while the incredibly more feminineClaudia Brown andSarah Page get killed off.

Video Games

InRed Faction 2, the team's sexual-innuendo-dropping stealth operative in aSpy Catsuit not only survives the game, but is your main ally for the 2nd half. The tough redhead sniper with an Amazonian build and butch haircut diesBecause you kill her, after she and the rest of your squad do aFace Heel Turn.

Actually, Tangier's survival depends on your behavior throughout the game. If you've been killing or failing to save civilians/allies, she will die.

Played straight in theNeverwinter Nights mod "The Bastard of Kosigan", in which (as far as the story has been written, at least) the only female character who doesn't disappear after theOptional Sexual Encounter or die automatically is Ernie, who is much more feminine than Alex, whosePlotline Death was very frustrating.

In the firstClock Tower game, playable character Jennifer's friends Ann and Laura have a chance of surviving to the end, depending on your actions. Her best friend, the tomboyish Lotte, has no such chance.

Though canonically, all three of them are dead.

Played with in theDragon Age Awakening expansion.Mhairi will always die, and of the two female companions who can make it to the end,both the tough Sigrun and the feminine Velanna can die...but Sigrun is killed in a decisive way, while in Velanna's case, theyNever Found the Body.

Played straight inThe Orion Conspiracy. Brooks, who is definitely the Vasquez in this game, gets killed off trying to stop Ward after he had gone berserk. LaPaz, who is easily more feminine compared to Brooks, survives.

Averted inFallout 3. Reilly's Rangers features twoaction girls: Reilly, the leader, who is more traditionally feminine, and Brick, who is pretty much anExpy of Vasquez, being quite butch and toting around a Gatling Gunshe calls Eugene. While it is possible for them to be killed by enemies, neither one suffers a mandatoryPlotline Death.

Inverted inFinal Fantasy VII, withYou Know Who's death.

Western Animation

Exo Squad almost does this in episode "Martian Luck" where the tough-female-trooper Torres is believed to be KIA while the other two morechick-ish female members ofThe Squad survive.

Take a look at allthe characters onTotal Drama Island. Guess which girl is the first to be eliminated.

↑in the original film, actors from a variety of backgrounds were cast. John Hurt, the first to die, was probably the most generally familiar, as he was very famous in his native England, and had been for a long time, and was hugely popular in the US at the time, asI, Claudius had recently aired on public television, and been a massive hit in the US. His death early in the film was a shock much like the surprise of Janet Leigh's death inPsycho. Tom Skerritt was also very well known, and probably the most widely regarded as a tough guy, and the one audiences expected to be alive at the end. When he died, audiences pretty much gave up hope that anyone would survive. Veronica Cartwright (Lambert) was not as big a name as Hurt or Skerritt, but she had already had a long career. She had been a child actress, who had been a semi-regular onLeave It to Beaver, and had worked with director Alfred Hitchcock inThe Birds, as well as with actresses like Audrey Hepburn. There was a bit of a joke, too, that younger audiences may not get, in that her sister was Angela Cartwright, a regular cast member onLost in Space. Sigourney Weaver was the only unknown in the film, and should have been the "red shirt." But, essentially, the characters died in the reverse order of how famous the actors playing them were. It gave the film a downward spiraling, and sort of hopeless feeling. It's impossible to recreate that. Someone who has not seen the movie in the present day, and doesn't know the ending, is still unlikely not to know who Sigourney Weaver is, or what kind of character she usually plays. Moreover, a younger person, someone born since the film came out, may not recognize any of the other actors. So, Weaver being alive at the end makes perfect sense from a typical Hollywood "way it's done" perspective, where the star is the last one standing.

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