Women?
Whutabout the main character from Ghost in the Shell? Bad. Ass. When she goes invisible and damn near kills that guy in the middle of a huge puddle? Cool.
Another female anime contender would be the girl from Kite. What made her REALLY bad was that she was not a cyborg or an elite government agent, but just a teenage girl. Yet she ran around causing all sorts of bloody situations.
I’m not sure what you mean by this but I’ll take it as a compliment! 
Bridget from The Last Seduction
Any woman who says “You’re my designated fuck” is a badass. Not to mention the other things she does - no spoilers, go watch it.
I have to agree with the majority’s pick of Jules from Pulp Fiction played by Samuel L. Jackson.
But I feel that an honorable mention for most badass personality goes to Val Kilmer’s portrayal of Doc Holliday in Tombstone. He is so calm and witty in the face of danger, all the while being torn apart on the inside by consumption. Cool in my book.
“Harmonica” played by Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West.
Close second: Bruce Willis as “Joe Hallenbeck” in The Last Boy Scout.
Darth Vader’s badass resume includes destroying an entire thriving and prosperous PLANET, with BILLIONS of inhabitants, none of whom pose ANY real threat to him, after his prisoner has ALREADY talked, for NO apparent reason other than just to show off how EVIL he is!
Can we include TV shows? How about The Dowd, from a TNG episode whose name I forget. He took a human wife, and when she was killed by alien raiders, he wiped out their entire species. EVERY LAST ONE… EVERYWHERE.
And to top it off… he recreated his dead wife!
Well, hell, if we’re bringing books into it, it’s hard to beat ASoIaF for sheer volume of quality badasses. The women you mentioned are all awesome badasses, no doubt, and the men are just as great: Jon, Jaime, Jaqen, Sandor, Oberyn, even Tyrion (“In the end, Tywin Lannister did not shit gold”… hee hee! :p)
Another female badass from a movie is Mace from Strange Days who believably f*cks up everyone in her path. And we shouldn’t forget Charlie from A Long Kiss Goodnight who breaks bones, necks and hearts with abandon (“Die screaming!”).
.:Nichol:.
Can we add television? If so, I’ll have to nominate Keifer Sutherland’s Jack, from 24. This guy is tortured literally to death, has his heart started with a defibrillator, and then about five minutes later kills three bad guys. Within a couple of hours, he’s on a roof with a sniper rifle, killing badguys like it’s a turkey shoot. Then he breaks one of the bad-guys necks in the only realistic way I’ve ever seen it done (holding the guy’s head, he climbs a wall with his legs, then twists and drops his entire body weight behind the guy while twisting).
In the opening scene of the season, he shoots an unarmed-and-chained-to-a-chair bad guy in the chest, then cuts his head off with a hacksaw and puts it in a bag to use as leverage with a criminal syndicate.
And, he uttered these immortal lines:
Daughter on phone: “Oh, God Dad, he’s waking up! What should I do???”
Jack: “Shoot him. Shoot him in the chest.”
<BANG>
Daughter (sobbing and crying): “I…I did it! I shot him! Now what do I do?”
Jack: “Shoot him again.”
I’d say the baddest ass was Don Vito Corleone. Not only would he have you killed without a second thought, but he’d talk really nicely to you while doing it. Then, he’d go home and play with his kids. Yeek.
Oh, and Hannibal Lecter can only count in The Silence of the Lambs. He just wasn’t scary in those other movies. And sorry about the double post, my finger slipped.
Depending on your defination, if you mean “evil”, then I’d say that Micheal beats his father out cold. He goes from this Optimistic young guy who just wants to be with his girl after the war, to this hollowed out, rotting-from-the-inside Crime Lord who has either killed or alienated almost his entire family. It’s hard to have much, if any sympathy for him at the end of 2. The closest thing that can be managed is a bit of pity.
Funnily enough, both Walker and Porter (Gibson’s character) are the same: they’re both the splendidly amoral Parker from author Donald Westlake’s long-running series of novels.
I’m not sure he’s the absolute badest bad-ass in movies, but I think you’ve got to at least consider Terry Tsurugi (played by Sonny Chiba) in The Street Figher.
As Clarence Worley pointed out in True Romance, “He ain’t so much a good guy as he is just a bad mother fucker. I mean, he gets paid by people to fuck guys up.”
Malcolm McDowell as Alex in A Clockwork Orange.
*Milk plus vellocet, or synthemesc, or drencrom, which was what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence. *
Well, if you include TV, how could you forget Xena?
However, I want to second Eric Drahven from the Crow, and always Clint Eastwood in any movie.
Honorable mention to Peter Falk’s character in the recent Undisputed, an old mafia boss locked up in prison. Elderly, arthritic, stooped over, and a little guy to begin with, but also somebody who would never back down, to anybody, ever.
Shaft, John Shaft
IIRC that was Kevin Uxbridge and the species he destroyed were the Hussnocks. No, really, I am not a Trek Geek.
How about Sgt. Plumley from We Were Soldiers. The DVD has a cool deleted scene describing how badass he is considered by the soldiers in his unit. And the portrayal by Sam Elliot was great.
“How do you know what kind of God Damned day it is?!!”
John
Aeryn Sun of FarScape?
Jules was definitely bad-ass, I’m not gonna say he wasn’t- but I think Winston “the Wolf” Wolfe from the same movie was badder. Wore a tux, never broke a sweat at the sight of brains in the back seat of a car, appreciated good coffee, and I really can’t imagine him ever getting raped by hillbillies due to a vendetta.