History HeroicSacrifice / LiveACtionTV

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': "In Praise of Pip" is about Max Phillips, a bookie who learns his son, Pip, was seriously wounded in Vietnam and is possibly dying. After getting in a serious argument with his boss, Max ends up getting shot and stumbles into a darkened amusement park. There he finds Pip as a ten year old, hugging him, apologizing for not being a better father or role model, and begging for him not to die. Knowing it may be too late for both of them, Max pleads with God to take his life in exchange for Pip's. God obliges.
** "The Changing of the Guard": A teacher forced into early retirement questions if he's made any impact on the world. He's visited by the ghosts of some of his former students who all gave their lives to save others. One was killed at Iwo Jima, another died as a result of experiments into X-ray treatment for cancer, yet another saved twelve men on the USS Arizona during the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and all alongside so many others. They were inspired by lessons they taught him.

* ''{{Series/Bones}}'': Brennan’s dad Max fought a squad of hired guns [[PapaWolf to save his grandkids.]] The guys were working for the son of a warlord Booth killed during his sniper days. Max took out a couple of the guys while being shot himself. He died at the hospital because it was too much for his weak heart.

* ''{{Series/Bones}}'': Brennan’s dad Max fought a squad of hired guns [[PapaWolf to save his grandkids.]] The guys were working for the son of a warlord Booth killed during his sniper days. Max took out a couple of the guys while being shot himself. He died at the hospital because it was too much for his weak heart.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E3ATownCalledMercy "A Town Called Mercy"]]: [[spoiler:The sheriff of Mercy, Isaac]] shoves Kahler Jex out of the way when he is about to be shot by the Gunslinger and is killed himself. [[spoiler:Granted, Jex deserved it, but Isaac had noble intentions attempting to save him and thus this still qualifies.]]

** [[spoiler:Rory]], who [[TakingTheBullet takes a shot]] meant for the Doctor in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E9ColdBlood "Cold Blood"]]. It goes FromBadToWorse though, because [[spoiler:his body is very near one of the Cracks in time, and it starts to erase him from existence]]. Even worse, [[spoiler:Amy]] forgets all about him.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks "Victory of the Daleks"]]: A group of Daleks successfully enact a plan to resurrect stronger, pure Daleks. The new Daleks' feelings toward their predecessors? "YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness." The old Daleks' response: "We are ready." Those Daleks took a course of action to save their race knowing full well it would end in their deaths.

* In the finale of ''Series/BreakingBad'', Walt pays a visit to Jack Welker and his crew and accuses him of reneging on their deal to kill Jesse Pinkman by partnering up with him to produce his brand of meth instead. Walt's initial intention was [[spoiler:[[TakingYouWithMe to kill everyone with a rigged machine gun, including Jesse and himself]]]], but upon discovering that Jesse has been [[spoiler:[[MadeASlave chained up and forced to cook for them]], he modifies his plan by tackling him to the ground before activating his contraption, [[TuckAndCover shielding him from the ricocheting bullets with his body]], [[TakingTheBullet one of which hits him instead]]]].

*** There's also Harriet Jones, [[RunningGag Former Prime Minister]], (WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE!) whose personal timeline and career are destroyed by the Doctor and [[spoiler:still sacrifices herself to allow the Companions the time to summon the Doctor.]]

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E11TurnLeft "Turn Left"]] treats us to a whole conga line of these, as the episode occurs in an alternate universe where [[spoiler:the 10th Doctor never met Donna, and died defeating the Racnoss]]. One by one, the various alien invasions of Earth since then occur, and without the Doctor around to stop them, things go wrong extremely quickly. First, the Judoon abduct the Royal Hope Hospital, and [[spoiler: Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Maria have to intervene instead]]. They are less successful than the Doctor was and the Hospital is returned with only one survivor, who was saved by [[spoiler:Martha Jones]], who gave him the very last oxygen mask before dying. Later on, [[spoiler:Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones]] are killed defeating the Sontaran plot to gas the planet with the ATMOS devices, and [[spoiler:Captain Jack is captured and imprisoned on Sontar]]. Finally, after the stars themselves start going out, Donna decides she has had enough and seeks out [[spoiler:Rose]], who sends her back in time to the moment she made a decision that prevented her meeting the Doctor, to prevent herself from making the same mistake and causing the bad timeline. Unfortunately, Donna lands in the past a significant distance away from her past self and isn't able to catch up in time to talk to her personally. To stop her past self, the future Donna [[spoiler:throws herself in front of a car, killing her]] and causing a traffic holdup that forces the past Donna to make the correct decision. Luckily, since it was an alternate universe, the events are undone and all the characters who perished survive.

* ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'': In "One Wrong Move", Lew steps on a landmine during a call and Spike proposes an incredibly risky plan to save him. When Lew realizes that Spike might well be killed trying to save him, he gets Spike out of the blast zone on a pretext and intentionally triggers the mine, giving up his chance of survival to keep Spike safe.

** Theon assures Robb that the two thousand men he sent to their death on the Green Fork was this, but Robb is still uncomfortable with it.

* ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'': Luke tries to hold off the soldiers while June and Hannah run, with just a revolver. He's quickly shot, but manages to survive and escape into Canada.

* Parodied on ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'', when Dewey and Hal accidently throw a spider out the front door and straight into Lois' face.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan "The Daleks' Master Plan"]], [[spoiler:a desperate convict is holding Katarina hostage to hijack the ship to Kembel; he's [[TooDumbToLive so ignorant]] of [[http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Stolen_Earth Earth's]] [[http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dalek_Invasion_of_Earth history]] that he actually thinks the Daleks will help him. Rather than risk the Doctor risking all their necks and their chance to get word to Earth, Katarina blows the hatch.]]
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E4TheKrotons "The Krotons"]], Serlis charges into the machine to bring the Doctor the acid he asked for. He gets it to him, but the Krotons kill him.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E4ColonyInSpace "Colony in Space"]], the Colony leader Ashe does this by piloting the doomed spacecraft alone, thereby tricking the mining corporation into believing all of the colonists have died. This allows the group to mount a successful surprise raid against the corporation later, and to regain control of the planet.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E5RevengeOfTheCybermen "Revenge of the Cybermen"]], one of the men carrying a booby-trapped bomb deliberately sets it off as a weapon against the Cybermen. This frees the other victims.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E6TheKingsDemons "The King's Demons"]], Hugh insists on taking up the king's champion's gauntlet, to protect his father from having to fight the DuelToTheDeath. (He is quite offended when the Doctor intervenes to save his life after he fails.)
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E2TheEndOfTheWorld "The End of the World"]], the [[PlantAliens Plant Alien]] Jabe sacrifices herself to hold down a switch that slows a gauntlet of fan blades just enough to allow the Ninth Doctor to escape to safety. She then burns to death, on-screen at that, from the extreme heat vented in shortly afterwards.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E3TheUnquietDead "The Unquiet Dead"]], a clairvoyant maid named Gwyneth becomes the voice for a race of ghost-like aliens named the Gelth, who claim to wish to pass through a rift to Earth using her as a gateway in order to possess human corpses to regain physical form. The Ninth Doctor and Gwyneth agree, [[spoiler:only for the Gelth to pour through the rift and reveal their true intentions of taking Earth by force.]] Gwyneth promptly [[spoiler:traps the Gelth within the house,]] has the others flee, and lights a match, igniting the gaseous [[spoiler:Gelth]] and destroying the house with her inside.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E8FathersDay "Father's Day"]], after Rose destroys the timeline by saving his life, Pete Tyler [[spoiler:allows himself to be run over by the car that was meant to kill him]] to restore it.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E12BadWolf "Bad Wolf"]], the Controller, a human woman hooked up to Satellite Five since her childhood [[spoiler:as part of the machinations of the Daleks to destroy the human race]], takes advantage of a brief solar flare that disrupts the communications between her and [[spoiler:the Daleks]]. At that point, she transmits the coordinates of the kidnapped Rose [[spoiler:(and the Dalek fleet)]] to the Ninth Doctor, knowing full well [[spoiler:the Daleks]] will discover her betrayal after the flare passes [[spoiler:and exterminate her.]] They do just that moments after she finishes.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E2ToothAndClaw "Tooth and Claw"]]: Captain Reynolds and Sir Robert [=MacLeish=] are both killed holding off the alien werewolf, knowing they don't stand a chance but doing it to buy time for the Queen and her protectors time to escape.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E3SchoolReunion "School Reunion"]], [[spoiler:K9 MK III]] blows up a room full of Krillitanes pursuing the Doctor and co. by shooting a cluster of explosive barrels while he's still in the room. [[spoiler:Fortunately, he gets rebuilt later as the MK IV model.]]
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E10LoveAndMonsters "Love & Monsters"]], the still-conscious members of LINDA absorbed by the Absorbaloff (Ursula, Colin, Bridget and Bliss) immobilize the monster long enough for Elton to destroy it, killing the 4 victims in the process. Ursula gets brought back, however. Sort of.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E9TheSatanPit "The Satan Pit"]], Mr. Jefferson is trapped in a maintenance shaft slowly draining of oxygen while busy fighting off possessed Ood, in order to buy time for Rose and the other workers to escape.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E3Gridlock "Gridlock"]], [[spoiler:the Face of Boe]] sacrifices himself to provide enough energy to open up the motorway in which the [[spoiler:last surviving]] citizens of New New York are trapped, releasing them from both the doomed fate of driving on the motorway forever [[spoiler:and from being preyed on by the Macra below.]] Specifically, this saves the life of Martha and numerous other minor characters met throughout the episode who are stuck in cars on the motorway with no escape.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E5EvolutionOfTheDaleks "Evolution of the Daleks"]], [[spoiler:Dalek Sec, after becoming a Human-Dalek hybrid and gaining emotions,]] takes a shot from another Dalek to save the life of the Tenth Doctor.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E9TheFamilyOfBlood "The Family of Blood"]], [[spoiler:John Smith — a fake personality created by the Doctor while hiding from some villains — sacrifices himself and dies]] so that the Doctor can save the day.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E7TheUnicornAndTheWasp "The Unicorn and the Wasp"]] this is attempted by Agatha Christie by using herself to lure off the attacking Vespiform towards the end of the episode. She gets all the way to a lakeside where she is prepared to sacrifice her life, which is connected to the Vespiform's, in order to destroy it. Fortunately it's ultimately subverted when Donna intervenes and chucks the Firestone (the object linking Agatha and the Vespiform) into the lake, with the Vespiform diving in after it to its demise.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E11TurnLeft "Turn Left"]] we get treated to a whole conga line of these, as the episode occurs in an alternate universe where [[spoiler:the 10th Doctor never met Donna, and died defeating the Racnoss]]. One by one, the various alien invasions of Earth since then occur, and without the Doctor around to stop them, things go wrong extremely quickly. First, the Judoon abduct the Royal Hope Hospital, and [[spoiler: Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Maria have to intervene instead]]. They are less successful than the Doctor was and the Hospital is returned with only one survivor, who was saved by [[spoiler:Martha Jones]], who gave him the very last oxygen mask before dying. Later on, [[spoiler:Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones]] are killed defeating the Sontaran plot to gas the planet with the ATMOS devices, and [[spoiler:Captain Jack is captured and imprisoned on Sontar]]. Finally, after the stars themselves start going out, Donna decides she has had enough and seeks out [[spoiler:Rose]], who sends her back in time to the moment she made a decision that prevented her meeting the Doctor, to prevent herself from making the same mistake and causing the bad timeline. Unfortunately, Donna lands in the past a significant distance away from her past self and isn't able to catch up in time to talk to her personally. To stop her past self, the future Donna [[spoiler:throws herself in front of a car, killing her]] and causing a traffic holdup that forces the past Donna to make the correct decision. Luckily, since it was an alternate universe, the events are undone and all the characters who perished survive.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersOfMars "The Waters of Mars"]], Ed Gold blows up the rocket ship, the only escape for the survivors on the Mars base, with himself inside when he gets infected by the Flood to prevent the virus from using it to reach Earth and destroy it.
** In the Eleventh Doctor episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks "Victory of the Daleks"]], a group of Daleks successfully enact a plan to resurrect stronger, pure Daleks. The new Daleks' feelings toward their predecessors? "YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness." The old Daleks' response: "We are ready." Those Daleks took a course of action to save their race knowing full well it would end in their deaths.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E6TheVampiresOfVenice "The Vampires of Venice"]], the 11th Doctor and Rory enlist the aide of a boat constructor named Guido, whose daughter (and Amy) was taken by the titular alien vampires. Eventually the vampires come after them in force, and Guido lures them away from the 11th Doctor, Amy and Rory into a building full of gunpowder barrels, which he promptly ignites, blowing up the building and killing himself and all the female vampires.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E6TheAlmostPeople "The Almost People"]], the human worker Dicken sacrifices himself to hold off the crazed Ganger of Jennifer Lucas to buy the remaining human workers, the good Gangers, 11, Amy and Rory a chance to get away. Later, the Gangers of Miranda Cleaves and [[spoiler:the 11th Doctor]] dissolve themselves willingly to defeat Jennifer's monstrous Ganger once and for all.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar "A Good Man Goes to War"]], the soldier Lorna Bucket defects to the side of the Doctor's allies and participates in the final showdown with the Headless Monks to defend Amy and her baby. Unfortunately during the skirmish she takes an energy blast to the chest and is killed. Strax is seemingly killed too, but gets better later in a short.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E1AsylumOfTheDaleks "Asylum of the Daleks"]], [[spoiler:the Dalek]] Oswin Oswald wipes the memory of the Doctor from [[spoiler:ALL of]] the Daleks and lowers the defenses of the Asylum, allowing it to be destroyed with her still on it to prevent the insane Daleks within from escaping and invading the universe.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E3ATownCalledMercy "A Town Called Mercy"]], [[spoiler:the sheriff of Mercy, Isaac]] shoves Kahler Jex out of the way when he is about to be shot by the Gunslinger and is killed himself. [[spoiler:Granted, Jex deserved it, but Isaac had noble intentions attempting to save him and thus this still qualifies.]]

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E2IntoTheDalek "Into the Dalek"]], the soldier Gretchen gives her life holding off the Dalek antibodies so that Clara and Journey Blue can escape. [[spoiler:She ends up in Heaven, seemingly fine, with Missy. However, the events of the season finale confirm that she is dead]].
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E5TimeHeist "Time Heist"]], Psi deliberately overloads his mind with the criminal records of hundreds of infamous bank robbers to lure the Teller away from Clara, figuring her ties to her loved ones make her life more valuable than his. [[spoiler:Subverted when the "Shredder" he uses to avoid becoming lunch teleports him to safety instead of killing him.]]
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E9Flatline "Flatline"]], Rigsy attempts this by getting onto a train and attempting to drive it into the oncoming Boneless in order to defeat them and save Clara and the others. Fortunately, its subverted when Clara also gets on the train and wedges the wheel in place, allowing Rigsy to get off with her. [[spoiler:Good thing too, since the Boneless end up just flattening the train into the wall]].

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E9EmpressOfMars "Empress of Mars"]], the awakened Ice Warriors are [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomping]] the Victorian soldiers, but then one of them manages to sneak up on Queen Iraxxa and puts a blade to her throat to get her warriors to stop shooting. He then plans to have her pilot the Ice Warrior ship back to Earth, leaving his men behind. However, his superior sneaks up on ''him'' and shoots him for treason and cowardice. He then begs the Queen to take his life both to spare his men and to allow him to die honorably (having been dishonored previously by abandoning his post). She agrees to give him an honorable death, making the guy almost cry with relief, but then decides not to kill him right away, as he has earned her respect and deserves a warrior's death in battle. He immediately drops to his knee and swears fealty to his new Queen.

[[folder;P]]

* On ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'', George Mason (the former director of CTU) is accidentally exposed to radiation early in the second season, and slowly begins to die. He secretly stows away on a plane that contains a nuclear bomb, and is being piloted into the Mojave Desert by Jack Bauer. He ends up convincing Jack to let him fly the plane on a suicide run, letting Jack parachute out and live, as well as saving millions of innocent people.

* Writers must love writing this trope for ChronicallyKilledActor Creator/JamieBamber. Aside from Archie Kennedy, Tony Dewhurst (the very first of his characters to be killed off) was shot and killed trying to protect Series/TheScarletPimpernel from being gunned down (adding insult to injury is that Dewhurst ''lived'' throughout the series of books the miniseries is based on), and the most recent one, DS Matt Devlin of ''Series/LawAndOrderUK'' was shot protecting his friend Alesha Philips (along with the young witness in their case) from a hail of gunfire.

** The Doctor in general tends to go out with a bang: most of his regenerations were heroic sacrifices of some kind or another. Honourable mentions go to Three (walks into a radiation-drenched cave to confront the Great One), Four (unplugs a cable with an effort that throws him off a tower and incidentally saves the Universe) and possibly Eight ([[spoiler:purposefully abandoning his identity to create a regeneration capable of ending the Time War]]).

** The show has developed a very specific sub-trope of its own in which an (often unwilling) agent of the Daleks betrays them and tells them off, only to get exterminated, of course.

* ''Series/{{JAG}}'': [[spoiler: Gunnery Sergeant Granger]] dies during the street ambush in "War Cries".

--> [[spoiler:'''Leonard Snart''']]: There are no strings on me.

** In "Feasibility Study," [[spoiler: an entire Earth neighborhood is transported to a world ruled by powerful but lazy aliens who want a race of servants; if the people from the neighborhood prove able to survive on their world, all of humanity will be enslaved. When a teenage girl inadvertently contracts a fatal disease from another alien race, her father, and eventually everyone who was taken, decide to deliberately infect themselves to trick the kidnappers into thinking that humanity is a bad fit for their experiment.]]

** Season 5, [[spoiler:[[GoOutWithASmile Opie]]]]
** [[spoiler: "I got this," to [[ForcedtoWatch Jax]]]]
* In ''Series/StargateSG1'', [[AdventurerArchaeologist Dr. Jackson]] exposes himself to a fatal dose of radiation to deactivate a nuclear device and dies. Dying has never actually stopped anyone in the ''Stargate'' universe (and most especially not Daniel Jackson, to the extent that other characters joke about it while he's alive and wait expectantly for his return when he's not), so one year later, he was BackFromTheDead.
** This isn't the only time Daniel's sacrificed himself by far. He [[TakingTheBullet took a staff blast]] for Jack in the original film, pulled a YouShallNotPass at the end of the first season (but managed to make it back), entered the virtual reality where he keeps getting "killed" to save Teal'c in ''Avatar'', got killed by [=RepliCarter=] after stopping the Replicators long enough for the rest of the team to kill them all, prepares to send himself to the Ori galaxy with the Sangraal in order to destroy the Ori (although his friends intervene and beam him off the ship before it goes through the supergate, leaving the Sangraal onboard to activate after it gets through), and so on. This guy really likes his heroic sacrifices.
** Gerak, who chose to [[RedemptionEqualsDeath heal the Prior plage from Earth]] despite having been made a Prior himself, also qualifies. Especially when you consider that his last words were, "If I do this, I will die. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis But I... will die... free!]]". "I die free!" was practically the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy rebel Jaffa's]] CatchPhrase.
** The entire team pulls this in ''2010'' in an alternate future. In ''Moebius'', they all sacrifice themselves in an alternate past. Both times, they fixed it.
** Sam''antha'' Carter in the alternate universe in ''There But for the Grace of God'' has a particularly awesome sacrifice, which allowed Daniel to get to the gate and back into the normal universe and stop the Goa'uld there.
--> '''Samantha''': Oh, yeah. ''(Holds up grenade.)'' And I also wish to blow us all to hell.
** Dr. Janet Fraser in the series 7 episode "Heroes". She absolutely will not leave the side of a badly injured soldier on a battlefield. It saves his life, but she loses hers in the process. The soldier she saved named his newborn daughter Janet after her.
** During Apophis's attack on Earth in the early seasons, Bra'tac's plan was for him and a chosen few to pilot their Death Gliders and attack Apophis's ship. They hoped that Apophis would, naturally, assume that his son Klorel was trying to usurp power (a common practice among the Goa'uld) and withdraw, saving Earth, while fully expecting to be blown out of space for their trouble. When SG-1 shows up and comes up with an alternative plan, he still plans to die.
--->'''Col. O'Neill:''' I think what the Captain's asking is, "What now?"\\

* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'':
** In the AlternateRealityEpisode "Vegas", Sheppard takes the [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Wraith]]'s cash, quits his job, and leaves to live the life of a rich man (or lose it all in the nearest casino). However, on the way, he has a change of heart and manages to find the Wraith and radio his location in time for the alien to be destroyed by an airstrike before he can call in the others. Unfortunately, he himself is shot in the process and is shown bleeding severely in the middle of nowhere.
** The episode The Last Man presents an alternate timeline wherein Sheppard was transported several thousand years into the future. Things quickly went south without him. The UN's IOA pulled support out of the Pegasus galaxy when the wraith/human hybrid Lastlight (Michael Kenmore to the humans) became a challenger on the galactic stage. With the Tau'ri pulling out support, and the wraith hives defeated or assimilated by Lastlight, la resistance was left to a few humans. Colonel Samantha Carter took the USS Phoenix to lead a guriljea war against Lastlight, relying on her superior technology to match Lastlight's vast numbers. Eventually they managed to lure her into a trap by attacking a densely populated planet. With no chance left, she beamed her crew down on the planet, and piloted the Phoenix on a suicide attack against one of the hive ships, using the resulting explosion to destroy two others.
** Meanwhile, Ronon Dex led his own guriljea war against Lastlight, using what little means Stargate Command were willing to provide, and a force of volunteer pegasus humans. During a mission to destroy one of Lastlight's cloning facilities, he encountered an old friend: Guide/Todd the Wraith, an unreliable ally of the Atlantis expedition. While Ronon's forces escaped, the two held the wraith off, until they detonated the explosives while inside the facilities.
** In the GrandFinale, Sheppard is fully prepared to do this, strapping a nuke to his F-302 and flying it into the Super-Hive in order to detonate it inside, as the ship is too damn tough for any weapon to penetrate it from the outside (even the vaunted Asgard beams). Luckily for him, the rest of his team ends up aboard the ship on a similar mission and he uses a timer to detonate the nuke instead. Ronon does die heroically during the mission... but the Wraith [[HealingHands bring him back to life]] in order to interrogate him.
* In the pilot of ''Series/StargateUniverse'' [[spoiler:the senator]] seals a damaged shuttle through which they were losing oxygen, though doing so means being trapped inside and asphyxiating. His daughter got to watch. [[spoiler:He was going to die anyway from either internal bleeding or a heart condition, so he was just [[TakeAThirdOption choosing a third option]]]].

* Joss Whedon examples:
** Merrick in the original ''Film/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' film.
** Buffy in the season 5 finale of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. [[FirstLawOfResurrection She comes back.]] [[DeathIsCheap Again.]]
** Spike in the GrandFinale of ''Buffy''. Once again, it doesn't stick.
** Doyle in ''Series/{{Angel}}'''s first season.
** Darla on ''Angel'' as well, in order to allow her son to be born.
** [[spoiler: Wesley]] sacrifices himself in the grand finale of ''Angel'', but comes back as a ghost in ''[[ComicBook/AngelIDW Angel: After the Fall]]''.
** In the ''ComicBook/AngelIDW'' oneshot "Lorne: The Music of the Spheres", Lorne sacrifices his corporeal body by leaping into the Music of the Spheres, thereby restoring balance to the universe. This one has [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim real-world subtext as well]], as his actor Creator/AndyHallett had just died.
** [[spoiler:Ethan Rayne]] in ''ComicBook/BuffyTheVampireSlayer Season 8''. He knew he was going to die when he helped Buffy.
** [[spoiler:Giles]] also sacrifices himself in Season 8. He got between a Twilight possessed Angel and Buffy as they fought near the Seed of Wonder, wielding the Scythe to try and destroy the Seed himself and end Twilight's invasion of Earth, or get killed by Twilight and give Buffy the motivation she needed to take the Scythe and end things herself.
** In the final issues of ''Buffy'' Season 9, [[spoiler:Severin]] sacrifices himself to help create a new Seed of Wonder and restore magic to Earth.
** Simon Tam in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' was a very good one. He does not just die quickly as in most Heroic Sacrifices. He gives up his life, fortune and safety and lives the life of an outlaw just to be able to save his little sister from being tortured by the Alliance.
** Topher has stepped up to join the ranks by going out with a very literal bang to save the world in ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}''.
* ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'': In "Night at the Lazerama", Justin goes to the museum to tries to hunt a mummy, whose gaze puts one under his control, with Juliet tagging along to help him. The museum soon closes, trapping them inside with the mummy, and Justin suggests they try to avoid the it until morning. But because Juliet, a vampire, will die in the sunlight, she decides to stare at the mummy and allow herself to be taken to save herself and her boyfriend.