Action Pet
When a pet can be just as much of an action character as any person.
Even in Real Life, pets aren't always timid. They can be dangerous, or helpful (say if people take in attack dogs or rescue dogs as pets). But this takes that even further, where the pet is made of Pure Awesomeness.
These pets don't stop at going for help when people are trapped behind a landslide. They push boulders out of the way, fetch dynamite to toss at those rocks, or even just will the rocks to move by staring them down.
And the kind of pet doesn't matter. A parakeet, to an alligator, could count, as long as it does stuff that even amazes people that know what the species can do.
A Sub-Trope of Action Hero.
Can overlap with Cool Pet, Badass Adorable, Killer Rabbit, Living a Double Life (if the owner is not aware of the pet's action nature), Heroic Pet Story, Heroic Dog, Team Pet.
Advertising
- A Memetic Badass variation happened in a Nickelodeon promo for Lassie had a kid making his own dog feel bad by trumpeting up what Lassie could do, including bombing Godzilla.
Anime and Manga
- Panther Lily from Fairy Tail is this to Gajeel. While the other Dragon Slayers have talking, winged cat as pets, Gajeel has one that turn in a gigantic humanoid panther who wield a BFS.
Film
- Bolt, but only in the Show Within a Show. In "real life", he's just an ordinary dog.
Literature
- Disney used to have a magazine where they had super-powered pets named the Jet Pets who attacked villains, while also being adorable pets.
- In the Dresden Files series, Harry acquires a very large dog named Mouse which is really a Foo Dog. Said dog is explicitly smarter than a human, very resistant to damage, has a bark that can wake everyone in an apartment and innately detects evil.
- Pongo and Perdita in 101 Dalmatians.
Video Games
- Pokémon is about making creatures into action pets through defeating wild ones.
- The dog companions in the Fallout series (Dogmeat in Fallout 1, 2 (special event), K-9 and Robodog in Fallout 2, the other Dogmeat in Fallout 3 and Rex in Fallout New Vegas
- The Team Pet in Koromaru in Persona 3 fought off a shadow with his bare teeth and joined SEES to continue the fight fighting with a knife in his mouth, and also saves the team from Ikutsushi
Web Original
- This article about 5 soldier dogs in Cracked shows this trope can be Truth in Television.
Western Animation
- Phineas and Ferb have Perry the Platypus, who is a Badass Secret Agent in an agency where virtually all of the field agents are action pets, and have a Fedora of Asskicking as their uniform.
- Rainbow Dash Invoked Trope this in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, by insisting her pet had to be awesome. It turned out the pet she got, Tank the tortoise, was like this, as he can lift large rocks with his head.
- Monkey in Dexter's Laboratory is secretly a superhero.
- Appa, from Avatar: The Last Airbender has several Big Damn Heroes moments, and thats before he gets plate armor.
- Naga in Sequel Series The Legend of Korra is more directly so, even saving Korra and Mako when they almost get captured by chi blockers.
- Brain of Inspector Gadget is the Hypercompetent Sidekick of the bumbling detective, and arguably even Penny as well.
- Albert of The Dreamstone who is usually more competent and knowledgeable in stopping the Urpneys than the Dream Maker or his assistants.
- The old WB show Road Rovers, about the pets of several world leaders who were secretly a superhero team.