And here I was thinking that if they had one guy with a name, it would have been a reaver. River Tam kicks ass, but she’s on the side of good, not evil.
BrainGlutton:
Not a thing…the Bond I know works for “Universal Exports”.
Seriously, though, one thing he’s TERRIBLE about is fake names. In “A View To A Kill”, he actually pretends to be called “James Stock” at one point. WTF???
I keep trying to think of a more menacing Bad Ass and none can surpass Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan. Even as diminutive as his stature is, he towered over his prey.
For films exclusively I’ve got to go with Angeleyes (Lee Van Cleef) from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
If we were counting TV shows, it would be Brock Sampson from the Venture Bros. He’s intended to be a caricature of badass, but it really just ends up looking awesome.
Honorable mention:
O-ren Ishii from Kill Bill, for this (bloody)
This doesn’t make him a badass. It just makes him a psycho.
What? Since when does James Bond even take a fake name? I don’t remember that at all.
Aw - you gonna make me re-watch all of the Connery Bonds? There was one where I am sure he deliberately introduces himself with a fake name.
Yep, gotta agree.
Arnold:
Definitely on a few occasions. There was the time he pretended to be some sort of family crest researcher in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In Diamonds Are Forever he pretended to be a criminal named Franks. Twice in A View to a Kill - the aforementioned “James Stock” (pathetic, they paid someone to write that in a script?) and also as Something Sinjin St. James when he was pretending to want to buy one of Zorin’s horses. And at the beginning of Die Another Day he was using an alias when he pretended to be a Dutch (or South African) diamond smuggler.
And Rutger Hauer as John Ryder in “The Hitcher.” That presentation was pretty goosebumpy.
I am getting old! I don’t remember the movies to that level of detail, to be honest. But I checked in the books at home. You’re right! He’s Sir Hilary Bray in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Franks in Diamonds Are Forever, and Mark Hazard in The Man with the Golden Gun.
After grilling my memory… Peter Franks.
Quite true. Badassery requires combat. Killing a helpeless person doesn’t qualify. Also it’s largely a mental quality–the refusal to back down regardless of odds. The more physical power a person has, the more is required of her or him to qualify as a badass.
Sam Gamgee fighting Shelob to defend Frodo is a bigger act of badassery than Aragorn fighting the Uruk to save Boromir; likewise, Eowyn against the Nazgul, or Theoden leading the Riders of Rohan against the hordes of Orcs at Minas Tirith are both badasser than anything Legolas ever did. (Which is not to say that Legolas is not a badass.) And Aragorn’s beheading the Mouth of Sauron isn’t badass at all; it’s just murder.
That’s right, though you wonder why he bothers. In the book, James Bond meets Tiffany Case to convince her to use him in the diamond smuggling ring. He introduces himself with the name Peter Franks. At some point in the conversation, she asks him “Do you have a passport?” and he replies “Yes, but it’s in my real name, James Bond.” Nice cover there! :dubious:
Danny Trejo’s character from the upcoming “Machete” is probably going to make this thread obsolete.
Denzel Washington’s Creasy from
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James St. John Smythe, pronounced “sinjin.” 
This. Aliens, robots, androids, mutants, monsters and cartoons shouldn’t even be on this list. For pure terror and absolute badassery from a human being, nothing beats The Hitcher.
I think Tarantino’s character would not have respected (or feared) anybody except his brother (played by Clooney).
They get into a bar fight, IIRC, and I think he takes a wound (to the hand?) that would have a lot of people running away from the fight.