Pauline (Japanese: ポリーン, Hepburn: Porīn) is a character from the Mario and Donkey Kong video game franchises by Nintendo. She was created by the Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and debuted as the Lady, the damsel in distress of the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong. In the game, she is kidnapped by Donkey Kong and must be rescued by her love interest, Mario.

She is one of the earliest examples of the damsel in distress archetype in video games, a trope that persisted in the following decades. Pauline was replaced by Princess Peach as Mario's love interest in the Super Mario series, though she continued to appear as Mario's friend in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series. In 2017, she reappeared as a supporting character in Super Mario Odyssey with a new role as the mayor of New Donk City. She has since appeared as a player character in various Mario spin-off games, such as Mario Tennis Aces, Mario Kart Tour, Mario Golf: Super Rush, Mario Strikers: Battle League, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Mario Party Jamboree, Mario Kart World, and Mario Tennis Fever. In 2025, a teenage Pauline appeared in Donkey Kong Bananza, where she was portrayed as Donkey Kong's sidekick.

Pauline was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and other developers for the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong. She is the first female character in a video game with a speaking role and is cited as an example of a damsel in distress in fiction.

Miyamoto initially planned to use the characters Popeye, Bluto and Olive Oyl from the Popeye franchise, but when he failed to obtain the license, he created them as Jumpman (Mario), Donkey Kong and Pauline. Originally, Pauline was known as Lady and the game introduced her as Mario's girlfriend. The name Pauline was given after the then-girlfriend of Nintendo of America's warehouse manager, Don James. It was then used in licensed products after the game's release including a collection of figures by Coleco and was eventually used for the NES version of the game, although print ads for the Game & Watch version of the game refer to her as Louise.

Captured by Donkey Kong atop a New York City construction site, the official artwork depicted her disheveled like King Kong's Ann Darrow during that film's climax. Cartoonist Leslie Cabarga was hired to create the two-page Donkey Kong advertisement for print publications. His art style was influenced by the golden-age cartoons made by Fleischer Studios. Despite not having prior knowledge of the game, he took inspiration for Pauline from Betty Boop and drew her in a similar style.

The sounds in Donkey Kong were produced by Hirokazu Tanaka, who attempted to use a voice synthesizer to create Pauline's voice with unsatisfactory results. Miyamoto said that although she initially had English voice lines, they were replaced by sound effects. She originally cried "Help, help!" and said "Nice!" when Mario jumped. Miyamoto explained that an English teacher was asked to listen to the voice lines due to pronunciation concerns and said that it sounded like she was saying "Kelp!", so voices were abandoned.

Super Mario Odyssey producer Yoshiaki Koizumi said that Pauline was chosen as the mayor of New Donk City because the development team wanted the setting to resonate with players and knew that Pauline was a familiar character. He said that she sang the game's theme song, "Jump Up, Super Star!" as she was being developed more as a character and was going to be interested in jazz. Kate Higgins provided the English voice for Pauline for both the song and the game.

Pauline debuted as Mario's love interest in Donkey Kong (1981), which was remade for Game Boy, where she was again a typical damsel in distress. She was planned to appear in the Famicom educational game, titled Donkey Kong no Ongaku Asobi (Donkey Kong's Music Play), in which she would be a singer and frontwoman of a band. However, the game was cancelled due to gameplay and music licensing issues.