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H.P. Lovecraft's writing
- "The Call of Cthulhu": Johansen hitting Great Cthulhu's head using the ship. It doesn't kill Cthulhu, but still awesomely badass, and eats up enough time for Cthulhu to be forced back into his slumber.
- Professor Armitage in The Dunwich Horror inspired generations of Call of Cthulhu fans by being the first one to save the world for a time by defeating Yog-Sothoth's son.
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: Marinus Bicknell Willett does something almost as impressive by killing Joseph Curwen through the practice of modern magic.
- Randolph Carter's final leap into the void in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
- Robert Olmstead managing to escape the Deep Ones in The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Followed by the government raiding Innsmouth, arresting all the Deep One hybrids and torpedoing the city, setting their plans back several years.
- Walter Gilman in The Dreams in the Witch House successfully kills Keziah Mason and temporarily defeats Brown Jenkin.
- The Thing on the Doorstep: Daniel Upton imprisons Ephraim Waite by having Derby committed, then when that fails and Ephraim's release is imminent he kills him permanently with a headshot.
- "The Shunned House" has the protagonist destroy the vampiric threat by burning it to death with acid.
- The narrator of "From Beyond" foiling Tillinghast's plan to kill him by shooting his machine.
Brian Lumley's writing
- The Elder Gods beat the Great Old Ones for a second (perhaps millioneth) time by brain-wiping them.
Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu
- More or less the point of the game. Virtually every module has the players up against the Old Ones with a "win" condition for delaying the end of the world for a little while longer.
- Old Man Henderson killed Hastur. No, seriously.
Ramsey Campbell's writing
- Parry of "The Room in the Tower" sets the Great Old One Byatis on fire, destroying its physical form and possibly killing it.
- "The Horror from the Bridge": A shining example of Lovecraft Lite, this story has Chesterton's ritual sealing away most of the creatures before they can be released, an ordinary hunting party killing Phipps and two of the creatures and the third and final creature being defeated and entombed beneath Clotton for the foreseeable future.
- "The Inhabitant of the Lake": Cartwright's Heroic Sacrifice, dying cutting off one of Gla'aki's spines and forcing it to retreat back into the lake.
- The heroes of "The Plain of Sound" drive the denizens of S'glhuo back to the gulf from whence they came, albeit at great personal cost.
- Gladys Shorrock, the titular witch of "The Return of the Witch", is returned to the dead when the pentagram used for her ritual is destroyed. Whatever horrible thing was in her chest is found and burned in the garden.
- While it's downplayed in return for the And I Must Scream, Fate Worse than Death and Driven to Suicide elements of the ending, the implication that the protagonist of "The Moon-Lens" was able to imprison Shub-Niggurath's cult with it beneath the hill.
