No marketing ploy
William Gibson - inventer of the terms "cyberspace" and "cyberpunk". Wrote classic SF novels that I loved, including the trilogy starting with the novel Neuromancer. Wrote the novella that became the (largely forgetable) movie Johnnie Mnemonic.
In fact the "hard-bodied ninja-girl" was a character in that movie. I can't remember her name, but she was also a character in Neuromancer and at least one short story.