Heroic Sacrifice / Western Animation

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Heroic Sacrifices in Western Animation.

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• The Adventures of Puss in Boots: In the Season 4 finale, an Ancient Evil is let loose upon the world and The Chosen One is given the means to defeat it, but it involves banishing the two of them together to a Phantom Zone where they will be trapped for all eternity.
• Adventure Time:
  • In "All Your Fault", Finn and Jake activate Lemonjon's heart, allowing him to feel empathy and caring for the first time. He comes to the realization that if he goes through with his orders to attack the Candy Kingdom for food, the people there will suffer. If he doesn't, the Lemon People will die of starvation. Lemonjon decides to turn himself into a million tiny pieces of lemon candy, protecting the Candy Kingdom and giving his family a food source in the process.
  • "Sons of Mars" has Abraham Lincoln, God-Emperor of Mars sacrifice his immortality to revive Jake, who was wrongfully executed.
  • The Alternate Universe shown in the fifth season was not devastated by the Mushroom War, as Simon Petrikov, before he could become the Ice King, stopped the mutagenic bomb that would have created The Lich, dying in the process.
• In the opening episode to All Hail King Julien, the entire lemur kingdom is taken by fossa, and the newly crowned King Julien sets out to try and rescue them, fully expecting to die in the process. For the second season finale, he accidentally activates a self destruct mechanism and seemingly dies taking it with him to a safe distance away from the kingdom, but he ends up being Saved by Canon and surviving.
• Amphibia:
  • In "Reunion", Sasha falls off a crumbling Toad Tower only for Anne to grab her hand and the Plantars to grab Anne. Unfortunately, as the Plantars are trying to pull Anne and Sasha back to safety, Sasha sees that cracks are appearing where they're standing. Realizing she's been a terrible friend to Anne and unwilling to endanger her anymore, she lets go of Anne's hand, willing to fall to her own death to save her. Fortunately, Grime saves her at the last minute. Unfortunately, she's unconscious by then and Grime takes her with his army when he leaves.
  • In the series finale "The Hardest Thing", when it becomes clear that the power of each girl's Super Mode individually isn't enough to stop The Core from throwing the moon at Amphibia out of spite, and that both Sasha and Marcy are getting tired due to not having developed the same stamina as Anne had, the latter decides to absorb and use the power of all the three stones at once to deliver one last blow. While she manages to destroy the moon and the Core with it for good, her body ends up disintegrated by the overwhelming power in the process. She would have stayed dead if not for the entity behind the creation of the stones "backing her up" by saving her soul and putting it in a new body at the last moment.
• In Annabelle's Wish, when the titular character learns that Billy will be taken away from the farm unless he regains his voice by Christmas, she gives up her own ability to talk forever so he can. She later regains her ability to speak again after Santa turns Annabelle into a reindeer after performing a selfless act.
• In Aqua Teen Hunger Force of all shows, Master Shake earns a Redemption Equals Death by sacrificing his life to buy Meatwad time to steal the sacred crystal for Frylock and escape the monster clams unharmed.
  Aqua Teen Hunger Force Forever!
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • In "The Siege of the North, Part 2", Princess Yue sacrifices herself to revive the Moon Spirit, which had been killed by Admiral Zhao. She then becomes the new Moon Spirit. Though in this case she had been living on borrowed time her entire life, as the Moon Spirit had shared some of its life energy to prevent her from being stillborn, and she simply gave it back.
  • In "The Crossroads of Destiny", Iroh stays behind in the caverns fighting Zuko, Azula, and all of the Dai Li to buy time to allow Aang and Katara to escape to safety, even though he knew he couldn't escape himself.
  • In Season 3, it's revealed through flashbacks that Katara's mother Kya lied about her daughter being a water bender, instead saying it was her. Her last words to Katara were "Everything will be all right." She was lying. However, she was expecting to be taken captive instead of killed, though it's no less admirable.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes:
  • Wonder Man pulls one of these to stop Enchantress from using the Norn Stones. Unfortunately, his death ends up being for nothing since Enchantress is restored by Surtur and transformed into his personal attack dog.
  • Black Panther does another one in order to help the team stop the Kree Empire, complete with a somber speech to his comrades. He's revealed alive in the next episode, apparently having been accidentally teleported out of his space ship seconds before it exploded.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold: "I have an idea. Just not sure it's a good one." — Blue Beetle II (Ted Kord)
  • B'wana Beast destroys himself at the end of Starro's invasion to save the planet.
  • At the end of one episode, the Doom Patrol sacrifice themselves to save an island of people.
  • In "Long Arm of the Law!" Plastic Man lets himself get turned into stone when promised that it will keep his family safe. Kite Man releases the hostages... into the open, stormy sky, stuck to a kite. However, Plastic Man's sacrifice is ultimately reversed in time for him to save them.
• Dinobot, in the Beast Wars episode "Code of Hero", fights the entire Predacon force on his own to prevent them from altering history. He drives them off, but is mortally wounded in the process.
  • Luckily for him though, he got to die as he lived — quoting Shakespeare.
• In the second episode of Ben 10: Alien Force, the Plumber agent Magister Labrid saves Kevin's life and is mortally wounded in the process. This is considered part of the reason Kevin agrees to help Ben for the rest of the series.
  • In the sixth episode "Max Out", Grandpa Max destroys his Null Void Projector in order to use it as an explosive to take out the Highbreed and DNAliens before they could use their Xenocytes to take over the world. However a season later it's revealed that the Projector trapped him in the Null Void before the explosion could kill him.
  • Kevin's father, Devin Levin, jumped in front of a lethal blast to save Max Tennyson from Ragnarok. However, Ben 10: Omniverse later retconned this by revealing that this was a false memory implanted in Max and Mrs. Levin's minds and that Devin never existed.
• In "Turf Wars", the final episode of the 2006 revival of Biker Mice from Mars, Harley, who until then had betrayed the Martian mice to side with the Nomad Rats and intended to use Stoker's regenerator to make Olympus Mons erupt, comes to her senses and takes it upon herself to deactivate the regenerator before it goes critical. Even though the Biker Mice do everything they can to keep the lava from Olympus Mons from doing any critical damage, Harley supposedly gets killed, though Modo and Charley do raise the possibility of Harley's survival.
• In The Brave Little Toaster, Lampy, Kirby, and Toaster all pull this off. Respectively by allowing himself to be struck by lightning, jumping off a waterfall, and jumping into the gears of a trash compactor to jam the machine. They all get better, but the "deaths" of Lampy and Toaster were traumatizing, as the viewer probably believed they actually were dead for a few minutes.
  • Radio also did this in the sequel by giving up his function tube in order to save their obsolete super computer friend, and seeing as how they needed him to save their animal friends, it counts double. Considering that it was because of him that the only other tube broke, it was the least he could do.
• In the Captain Planet episode "Future Shock", the future eco-villains try to kill a little girl to ensure their timeline's existence. Ma-Ti prevents this by shielding her with his body. He does survive, though.
• Chaotic, Tangath Toborn. Twice. Granted, if you're going to go, the way he did so was incredibly awe-inspiring, and he'd be the one brave and heroic enough to do it. But for a show where they Never Say "Die" and Death Is Cheap...and his final moments and the memorial and monument he received...
• In Code Lyoko, Aelita is sometimes a bit too eager to make a Heroic Sacrifice, despite the very strong disapproval of her friends (especially Jérémie). She actually went through it in Season 1 episode "Just in Time", but Jérémie managed to bring her back to the virtual world. Another close call was in Season 2 finale "The Key".
  • In the end, her father, Franz Hopper, made the Heroic Sacrifice to destroy XANA, his creation, once and for all.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: in what is possibly the only existing example without any possibility of physical injury, Tommy Gilligan (Numbuh 2's brother) has just been assigned to Sector V. He saves the sector, and the whole organization, from being turned into animals by the Big Bad. However, by removing his DNA from the registry he’s not allowed to be part of the organization, even though the others (who had never liked him) now believe he should be.
• In The Crumpets episode "Amnesia", the amnesiac King pushes his brother Lil-One from getting slapped by an insulted Ms. McBrisk. King gets hit by his neighboring adoptive mother and rolls to hit the TV, reversing his amnesia and discovering his true self afterwards.
• The Dragon Prince: Viren decides to switch his spirit with King Harrow to save him from the Moonshadow Elves' assassination. But it looks like things didn't go according to plan.
  • Then in season 5 after he recognizes his faults and that Claudia has became a sociopathic copy of himself, Viren accepts he deserve to die for all his lies and betrayals, and the terrible things that resulted from them, and he goes off to die alone in the forest in the hope that Claudia doesn't find him and repeats his mistakes.
• DuckTales (2017): In "The Duck Knight Returns!", Jim Starling pushes Launchpad and his replacement out of the way of an exploding generator and gets caught in the blast in the process. Played with, as he doesn't die, but it ends up being the last heroic thing he ever does; the next time we see him, his mind has been warped completely, turning him into the villainous Negaduck.
• The Fairly OddParents!
  • In one episode where Timmy, Chester, and AJ are trapped in The Most Dangerous Video Game, Timmy sacrifices himself to save Chester and AJ from the Final Boss. Luckily, he earned enough points for an extra life.
  • In Wishology: Jorgen Von Strangle and Timmy Turner. Jorgen, in the first part of the trilogy, magically transforms himself into Timmy so the Eliminators and the Darkness do not take Timmy. Timmy at the end of the second part when he throws himself up into the Darkness so the group of people he is with are not hurt or captured. This is especially significant because in addition to his family and friends being in the group, three are his mortal enemies and four are magical fairies who are almost impossible to kill.
• Family Guy:
  • In "Family Cat", Quagmire gives himself up to become a Crazy Cat Lady for the rest of his life to save Meg.
  • In "New Kidney In Town", Brian agrees to give up both of his kidneys to save Peter, even though this will obviously kill him.
  • In "Christmas Guy", Stewie goes back in time to save Brian from his death in "Life Of Brian", despite knowing it will erase his timeline's, and by extension his own, existence.
• In one episode of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Fat Albert befriends a boy named Fernando whose older brother is involved in a gang. Later on Fernando sees a rival gang member aim a gun at his brother and dives in front of him, dying instantly. When his brother tries to swear revenge, Fat Albert lectures him on how he'll just end up getting killed and ensuring Fernando's sacrifice was for nothing.
• Final Space:
  • In the sixth episode, Avocato dies absorbing the blast from an explosive that was intended to kill Little Cato. He's eventually brought back to life in "The Remembered" through time travel shenanigans, but without his memories.
  • The episode "The Sixth Key" ends with Nightfall sacrificing herself to free Bolo from his prison and let Gary and the rest of the team enter Final Space to find Quinn, her present-day self.
• Fry does this a lot in Futurama.
  • Near the end of "Love and Rocket", he realizes that Leela's oxygen tank is empty, and that she is too busy fixing the ship in order to save the lives of the crew to listen to his warnings. He then plugs her tube into his own full tank and nearly suffocates, saving her life in the process.
  Leela: *reading off a candy heart* "U leave me breath-less!"
  • Subverted and results in a bit of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero in "The Sting": Fry throws himself in front of Leela so a giant bee would sting him instead of her. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way as the bee stinger ends up passing through his body entirely and Leela is actually the one who gets injected with the venom as only the tip reaches her. Fry manages to survive completely intact with some emergency surgery but Leela falls into a deep coma because of the venom. If Fry hadn't jumped in the way, she would have just been impaled like he was and not fallen into the coma.
  • "The Why of Fry" involves Fry infiltrating a Death Star-like Brain Spawn station with the almighty Nibblonian's vehicle of choice -— a "Scooty Puff Jr." —- gambling on being condemned to an eternity in oblivion than risk Leela's safety in the end. Good thing Nibbler remembered Fry's little bit of advice: "That Scooty Puff Jr. sucks!"
  • Fry did this yet again in Bender's Big Score. Well, not quite him. Lars, his time clone, broke up with Leela when he realized it would cause a Temporal Paradox, killing him in the process. Upon the original Fry's attempt at reconciling them, Nudar holds Leela hostage. Knowing his life is going to end one way or the other, he kills himself blowing Nudar up with a self-destructing Bender clone.
  • Also, in "Into the Wild Green Yonder", Fry realizes that he is "the Dark One" who he has been pursuing and must kill in order to save the galaxy. Fortunately, his logic was flawed (as per usual) and he survives and also kills the real Dark One.
  • Cannon robot Big Bertha in "The Prisoner of Benda," sacrificing herself to help the Professor save Emperor Nikolai by compromising the last of her structural integrity with one last Human Cannonball.
  Professor Farnsworth: (in Bender's body): But you could get a new body. You could have a rich, full life!
  Big Bertha: I am trying to have a rich, full life!
  • In "Fry and the Slurm Factory", the crew is fleeing from the Wormulans, when Slurms McKenzie - who hates his life anyway, because his job of forty years has required him to party all night, every night - offers to help them escape this way. After a touching goodbye to his two groupies, he tells them all to run, then turns on the music and parties harder than ever before, causing the hall to collapse, crushing him, and blocking it off. The crew escapes.
  • Fry does it yet again when the Earth is going to be destroyed by a solar flare and only 30,000 people max can fit on the escape ship: he sticks Leela's photo over his on the ticket and gives it to her, so she can get on the ship instead.
  • Fry's tendency to do this is Lampshaded in "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences" when, after leaping in front of a disintegrator ray intended for Leela that turns out to be a teleporter gun, he finally comes up with an ending for a comic he's been writing about an superhero Author Avatar, who was overpowered to the point of ridiculousness and underpowered to the point of ineffectualness in his first two attempted endings. In the new ending, the character sacrifices himself for his Love Interest and is saved through the power of "random chance."
• In Gargoyles, the Magus Casts From Hit Points to defeat the Weird Sisters and save Avalon.
  • The tie-in comic had a nameless female gargoyle (called "Sacrifice" in the script) who took a barrage of arrows meant for her mate.
• Offscreen in Godzilla: The Series, Godzilla himself performs one, saving millions of lives against a horde of genetically engineered monsters called the Dragmas in an alternate Bad Future. He took several of the creatures down with him. He's given a memorial statue before the timeline itself is averted.
• In the Gravity Falls finale, Stan and Ford change clothes and trick Bill Cipher to make a deal with Stan. While Bill is stuck in Stan's mindscape, Ford uses the Memory Gun on him to destroy all of his memories, including Bill himself. When he wakes up he can't remember anything, but fortunately gains his memories back slowly with the help of his family. It's still a very tragic moment and if this wasn't Disney he might have never gotten his memory back.
  • To a lesser extent, Gideon in the finale, when he lets Dipper, Wendy, and Soos rescue Mabel.
• Shyir Rev does this in the pilot episode of Green Lantern: The Animated Series.
  • Ghia'ta does this as well.
  • As does Aya, twice actually.
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures does this a few times.
  • The first is when Arthur Parks, a former super-villain named the Living Laser sacrifices himself to save Tony in "Designed Only for Chaos" after joining the hero's side.
  • Later attempted in the season one finale when Gene pushes Pepper out of the way of Fin Fang Foom's attack and is apparently killed. Ironically, his heroic sacrifice is what allowed him to acquire the fifth Makluan Ring and then betray the very friends he was helping.
• Justice League:
  • In "Legends", a few members of the Justice League get transported to a bizarre Golden Age/Silver Age-style alternate universe where various cornball heroes and villains battle over Seaboard City. After The Reveal that the whole city, heroes/villains and all, was a Lotus-Eater Machine, the Justice League attempts to fight the true villain, but they lose badly. They're saved by the local heroes, the Justice Guild, who charge into battle despite knowing the villain's defeat will result in a Dream Apocalypse that will take them along with it.
    "We sacrificed ourselves once to save this world. We can do it again."
  • In "Hereafter", Toyman has created a device that seemingly obliterates any target. When he aims it at Wonder Woman and Batman, Superman throws himself in front of the blast and appears to be wiped from existence. It turns out that he was actually sent thousands of years into the future.
  • Batman attempts this in "Starcrossed". To prevent the Thanagarians' hyperspace bypass generator from destroying Earth, he sets the Watchtower space station on a collision course with the generator, then insists on staying in the Watchtower to ensure that it doesn't drift off-course. Once Superman learns what Batman is doing, and he flies in to pull Bats out just in time.
  • The Flash in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Divided We Fall". It's the league's Darkest Hour, and the founding members are down. The Flash builds up energy by running circles around the planet and culminates with using the energy to defeat Luthor in an explosion. Because of this, he sort of phases out of reality. He gets better very quickly.
  • In the Unlimited Series Finale "Destroyer", in order to stop Darkseid from destroying the Earth, Lex Luthor of all people manages to breach the Source Wall and stop him from killing Superman by gifting him with the Anti-Life Equation, which then imprisons them both within the Wall. Although it was more out of revenge than altruism, as they're being engulfed by it, Darkseid remarks that it's beautiful while Luthor looks back at Metropolis for the final time and replies "Yes. Yes, it is."
• Kaeloo: In Episode 77, the planet is about to explode, and the characters are trying to escape in a spaceship. Unfortunately, it won't lift off the ground, and Kaeloo, whose fault it was that the world was ending, Hulks Out and throws the spaceship into space. Subverted though, as Stumpy wishes he could take her place, and somehow does, and he actually survives the whole thing.
• In King of the Hill, Bobby becomes covered in a swarm of angry, venomous fire ants that cover their victims and kill them by all biting at the same time. However, Dale grabs his hand, allowing the ants to swarm onto him instead (Dale is an exterminator, and the ants have a grudge), whereupon they proceed to all bite him at the same time, nearly killing him. He gets better, though Hank first has the opportunity to cradle him in his arms and thank him for saving his son.
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Scarlemagne ends up crashing his Cool Car into Dr. Emilia to save Kipo. This ends up killing him, though not instantly.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • A non-fatal example in "Turning the Tides" when Lin allows Tenzin and his family to escape the Equalists by taking down the airships, only to be de-bent.
  • In "Enter the Void", Korra gives herself up in exchange for the release of the new Air Nation though the Red Lotus double-cross her. This leads to her being beaten, poisoned, and nearly killed. She does survive, but is heavily traumatized for the next 3 years.
  • In "Day of the Colossus", Asami's dad sacrifices himself by staying behind in order to open a hole in Kuvira's giant robot, redeeming himself from working with the bad guy in Season 1.
  • In "The Last Stand", Tarrlok blowing up the boat he and Amon are on. Doubles as Redemption Equals Death, possibly for both of the bloodbending brothers if one interprets Amon's Single Tear as a sign that he knew what Tarrlok was about to do and didn't try to stop him.
  • The same episode also heavily implies that Korra was contemplating suicide after losing access to three of her four elements so the world could have a proper Avatar again in another 20 years or so. Fortunately, she doesn't go through with it and experience helps her finally make a spiritual connection with Aang, who restores her bending.
• In Legion of Super Heroes (2006), Ferro Lad sacrifices himself to stop the Sun-Eater in the first Season Finale.
• In Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron, AMI, Riri's AI and technological friend who was brainwashed into serving Hala, tells her to shut down the Iron Man suit so as to stop the Anti Plasma wave that would destroy the city, destroying her in the process. Riri is distraught, but ultimately does what she asks.
• In the Season 2 finale of Marvel's Spider-Man , Otto Octavius, who has become a genuine ally to Spiderman, connects himself to the Neuro Cortex in order to defeat Adrian Toomes, sacrificing his own life in the process.
• In Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series first episode, Canard throws himself into dimensional limbo to save the rest of the team and allow them to pursue Dragaunus to Earth.
  • Also, in the episode "The Final Face Off", Wildwing destroy Dragaunus' dimensional gateway generator to prevent the Earth from being invaded and conquered by the Saurian army, even though he knows that the dimensional gateway was the only way he and his friends could return home to Puckworld, and as a result they are now permanently trapped on Earth.
• In one episode of Mighty Max "The Magnificent Seven", Max and company gather a band of legendary heroes to assault Skullmaster's lair and destroy the Crystal of Souls. One of them, Hanuman the Monkey King, spends the entire episode complaining that he doesn't want to be a hero again and derides Virgil's claims that being a hero is his destiny. In the end, he sacrifices himself to save Max from Skullmaster, his final words being "It is...my destiny." The other heroes eventually follow suit, buying Max and his friends enough time to escape.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "The Crystal Empire, Part 1", Shining Armor stops to fight King Sombra to buy the Mane Six (including his sister) enough time to get to safety. Sombra doesn't kill him, but does seal Shining Armor's magic by planting dark crystals in his horn, leaving the normally powerful Magic Knight next to helpless for the remainder of the episode.
  • In "The Cutie Map, Part 2", Party Favor admits to telling the Mane Six about his desire to have his cutie mark back, claiming that he was the only one to do so to protect his two co-conspirators and friends, Sugar Belle and Night Glider. As per usual for the show, he isn't killed, but is locked away to endure a soul-crushing process of re-education and brainwashing.
  • In "The Cutie Re-Mark, Part 2", Twilight finds herself in a Bad Future where Chrysalis won due to Starlight Glimmer's Make Wrong What Once Went Right revenge plot going out of even her own control thanks to the butterfly effect. The alternate Zecora, the Rebel Leader of La Résistance against Chrysalis, becomes aware of the fact she lives in a Bad Future and performs a You Shall Not Pass! on Queen Chrysalis (with implication Chrysalis would kill her) to give Twilight a chance to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Adding to this, she knew if Twilight succeeded she'd cease to exist and was completely okay with it if it meant the Bad Future never happened.
• Over the Garden Wall:
  • In episode 6, Beatrice attempts to trade her own freedom to Adelaide to keep the witch from enslaving Wirt and Greg.
  • At the end of Episode 8, Greg gives himself up to the Beast in order to secure the freedom of his older brother, Wirt, who had already begun to be turned into a tree by the Beast.
• Phineas and Ferb: In the two-part "Where's Perry?" special, after one of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's inators turns Carl evil, he creates Evil Knockoffs of the Flynn-Fletcher family and several supporting characters. In an inversion of A.I. Is a Crapshoot, Robot Candace feels sympathy for her organic counterpart, who at the time was having a Heroic BSoD because she thought Jeremy broke up with her, as the former doesn't have her own Jeremy and convinces the latter to get out of her fugue. Robot Phineas then attempts to kill Candace, only for Robot Candace to tank his laser blast before retaliating and destroying him.
  Robot Candace: You're... busted.
• Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja: in one episode Randy grabs the Sorceress, who was about to attack everyone at a party, and he drags both of them to the Land of Shadow, then it's subverted when Howard grabs Randy's hand and pulls him out.
• In ReBoot, Hexadecimal, after her Heel–Face Turn, in order to destroy Daemon, fragmented herself in order to administer a cure to the Net.
  • And just before doing that, gives little Enzo a parting gift that alters his icon so that when he touches Nibbles again, its mind is restored and Wellman Matrix returns to Mainframe... well, as a null, anyway.
• Non-lethally in Recess. In "Mikey's Pants", Mikey rips his pants open and has to personally go to the despicable old teacher Ms. Finster to get them resown. The rest of the boys in the group all intentionally rip their own pants to ensure that Mikey doesn't face his humiliation alone (apparently the girls doing it too was too much for the censors). King Bob takes a single open-mouthed look at the boys walking to Finster's office, turns to the jeering kids and shames them all into shutting up.
  King Bob: ENOUGH! That was the single most courageous act this playground has ever seen! We won't jeer! We will show respect.
• Surprisingly, Regular Show has had some truly heroic ones. In "Benson Begone", Benson prepares to perform one to save everyone from the demonic Susan by running her down with a limo, only for Leon, a character from earlier in the episode, to jump into the limo. He then pushes Benson to safety and takes out Susan's heels, causing her to fall back into Hell while he spirals out of control and crashes into a wall, the limo exploding on impact. A second one happens in "Go Viral" where the episode's Big Bad, the Warden of the Internet, tries to kill Mordecai, Rigby, and Pops to stop them from escaping her cyberspace prison. Suddenly, one of the other viral videos she captured, the Wedgie Ninja, grabs her and gives her a wedgie, telling the others to run. After they escape, he keeps it up and eventually causes the Warden to explode, killing himself in the process but making the Internet safe for viral videos once more.
  • Parodied in "K.I.L.I.T. Radio" when it looks like Donny G was killed in the destruction of the radio station, only to appear at the end next to Mordecai and Rigby. Coincidentally, it's the second time he survives a fatal incident in the episode, as before the station blew up, he had a laser go through his chest.
  • Skips' girlfriend Mona pushed him out of Klorgbane's way, only for the ceiling to fall on her.
  • "A Regular Epic Final Battle" has a major one: Pops. At the end, he finally realizes how to end the endless cycle of fighting between him and Anti-Pops: by not fighting. Instead, he goes to his brother and hugs him while flying them both into a star. As Mordecai and Rigby watch helplessly, Pops reassures them that this is a happy ending before he incinerates himself and Anti-Pops, saving the entire universe.
• Samurai Jack does it twice in the Grand Finale:
  • After Aku decides to broadcast Jack's execution in an attempt to cower the world into submission, conveniently giving an explanation of Jack's mission in the process, it backfires, bringing an army of his allies down upon him, which is clearly a suicide mission and a Morton's Fork. (Possibility One, they get crushed by Aku; Possibility Two, they succeed, rescue Jack, but will end with many of them dead after Jack slays Aku in the present; Possibility Three, they succeed in rescuing Jack and are potentially erased from existence when he succeeds in the past. Clearly, the latter two are considered better than the alternative.)
  • Ashi does so too, aiding Jack in returning home by harnessing her father's powers, and as a result, undoes her birth and causes herself to be Ret-Gone. Choosing this option would save more lives than slaying Aku in the present.
  • Also done earlier in the season by the Scotsman, he led his family against Aku's fortress in a joint attack with Spartans in Tanks and Knights on Rhinos but after their allies were crushed he declared "this was a bad idea" and ordered his daughters to run for it while he delayed Aku. Getting Stripped to the Bone in the process.
• Angel Dynamite — a.k.a. Cassidy Williams of the original Mystery Inc. — had a hot/cold relationship with Scooby Doo and the current Mystery Inc. due to her hidden ties with the old group and keeping it a secret. In episode 37, she has an uneasy alliance with the gang in tracking down Germanic robots that destroyed her radio station, leading them to an undersea fortress that was Crystal Cove's original settlement. Cassidy stays behind to ensure the gang escapes safely as the Big Bad, the evil parrot Professor Pericles, sets off bombs. Cassidy did not survive.
  • In Episode 51, Pericles holds Marcie "Hot Dog Water" Fleach (Velma's one-time rival) hostage if the gang doesn't cooperate in opening the gateway to the hidden treasure. Marcie escapes and takes Pericles hostage so the gang can go in first and destroy the Nibiru curse. But after Marcie is sneak-attacked, Pericles turns his Kriegstaffelbots on her. As the gang have entered the gateway and are crossing a bridge, Velma and Scooby-Doo hear gunshots. Scooby turns and whimpers, as Velma sadly tells him to move on.
    • Both instances are subverted at the end of the Grand Finale (episode 52) as the Nibiru Entity's curse and influence are erased when Scooby destroys its power core. Cassidy and Marcie are alive and well.
• Van Rook of The Secret Saturdays jumps in front of an energy beam intended for Drew. It was the first (and sadly last) truely heroic thing he ever did.
  • Zak himself later in that same episode: he lets Argost suck the Kur power out of him, knowing the process will kill him, like it killed Zak Monday, because he figured out "matter and antimatter don't play well together". He even gives a lengthy speech explaining this, knowing Argost is inside a sound-proof barrier and can't hear him. He's "gone" for a couple of minutes, but luckily gets better.
• The Vizier from Shadow Raiders gets a good one.
• The Simpsons:
  • One episode revealed that Waylon Smithers Senior went into a nuclear reactor core unprotected and turned it off, in the process giving his life to save Springfield, everybody at the plant and Waylon Smithers Junior. One of the few times Mr. Burns shows any respect for any character in the series.
  • Another had Homer and Marge falsely accused of murder and facing the death penalty for it. Homer ultimately confesses to committing the murder by himself, knowing it will doom him to execution, knowing it will spare Marge.
  • When Homer and Bart were surrounded by a group of angry reindeer, Homer lifted Bart above his head so only Homer would be hit by their charges.
• South Park: Oh my god, Kenny. The bastard!
  • Happens in "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut" when he uses his body to route the Hell's Pass Hospital backup generator, electrocuting himself to death in the process.
  • Does this in order to save his friends in "Coon vs. Coon & Friends" by impaling himself on a pit of spikes in order to escape the Eldritch Location Cthulu banished them to, knowing he'll wake up in his bedroom so he can find help from the Goths.
  • And in the episode "Jewbilee" after various attempts at freeing Moses from the conch shell failed while Garth who had betrayed the rest of the Jew scout masters was going to release the evil spirit Haman, Kenny then smashed his skull over the conch breaking and freeing Moses, he dies from the impact in the process
  • Also enforced by the Anit-Smoking group in "Butt Out" when they have Cartman shoot a commercial where he says he was stage 4 lung cancer, and then they plan to kill him to make people think smoking was the cause of his death. It's very-nearly name-dropped by Rob Reiner during his "Do you know what a hero is?" speech to Cartman.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "SpongeBob SquarePants vs. The Big One", Jack Kahuna Laguna warns SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward that the titular "Big One" wave always demands a sacrifice of whoever rides it to stay alive. JKL himself eventually jumps into the Big One wave to save Mr. Krabs's cashier machine and becomes the sacrifice that the wave wants. Subverted when he shows up in the ending perfectly fine without explanation.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • In "No Small Parts", Lieutenant Shaxs ends up tearing off Rutherford's implant and tossing him into the shuttle they used to break into the Pakleds' ship when the psychopathic hologram Badgey decides to initiate the ship's self-destruct to try and kill Rutherford. Shaxs pushes the shuttle back out and stays behind, happily fighting other Pakleds as the entire ship goes up. He's given an Unexplained Recovery the next season, but it's shown that it's affected him just a tad.
  • In "In The Cradle Of Vexilon", Lieutenant (jg) Brad Boimler stays behind to turn off the power relay powering Vexilon, but before he can, it explodes in his face, killing him in front of the Ensigns he was with. Thankfully T'Ana revives him.
• Star Wars: The Bad Batch: In the season two finale, Tech is caught on a falling cable car that is about to drag another car its coupled to with the rest of the Bad Batch onboard into the abyss. Recognizing he can't be saved, he enacts "Plan 99" (a call back to 99's death in Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and severs the cable car coupling himself with a well placed blaster shot, causing him to fall to his death.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • "Rookies": The clone trooper Hevy blows himself up along with the Rishi moon outpost to prevent the Separatist army from getting to Kamino, where clones are created.
  • "Ghosts of Mortis": When The Son of Mortis was basically curb-stomping Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka, The Father of Mortis Force-grabbed the Dagger of Mortis from the Son and stabbed himself with it to take away his power, making the Son vulnerable to being stabbed in the back (literally) by Anakin Skywalker.
  • "Plan of Dissent": During a mission to take down a key Separatist ship, with the generators protected by ray shields and his ship damaged, Hardcase removes a weapons pod and manually drags it into the generator room, even though he knows this won't allow him enough time to escape the resulting explosion.
• Star Wars Rebels: Kanan sacrifices himself to save the rest of the Ghost crew twice, and while they're able to save him the first time the second time instead of being caught, captured and transported for his execution his death is immediate and fiery as he used the force to hold back a massive explosion just long enough for his friends to escape.
• Steven Universe
  • After alerting them of their arrival and being imprisoned again, Lapis Lazuli is coaxed by Jasper to fuse with her in order to get revenge on the Crystal Gems (the former for being imprisoned for possibly millennia, the latter out of anger for being defeated by a fusion). To prevent Steven from being hurt again, Lapis takes control of the fusion and drags them both into the ocean for (possibly) eternity.
  • Around the middle of the first season, the Centipeetle returned after her defeat in the first episode and Steven tried taming her. Her Heel–Face Turn was only cemented, sadly, by her shoving Steven out of the way of a falling stalactite and taking the fatal blow herself.
  • According to Greg, Rose Quartz sacrificed "her physical form to bring Steven into the world".
  • When Steven and Lars end up on Homeworld, they are suddenly attacked by shattering robonoids. Steven and the Off Colors are in severe danger, but since Lars doesn't have a gem, he's invisible to the robonoids. He uses this to his advantage as he starts beating them up. When there's only one left, he leaps on top of it and starts beating it with a pointed rock as it tries to throw him off. He jams the sharp end of the rock into its "eye", causing it to explode in mid-air. Lars gets shrapnel launched straight through his eye into his head, is thrown into a wall and falls thirty feet to the ground. Needless to say, he doesn't survive (at least not until Steven revives him).
• In the first season finale of SuperMansion, Brad sacrifices himself to pilot a subterranean vehicle under the mansion and flood the supercomputer's mainframe with lava to foil Dr. Devizo's plan to nuke the world. A bronze statue of him is erected in his memory.
• In Superman: Doomsday, an internally-injured Superman, seeing Doomsday about to murder a child for the fun of it, flies him up past the atmosphere and then gives him the biggest bodyslam in history. The impact kills Supes, too. If only for a little while.
• In Superman: The Animated Series episode "Identity Crisis", Bizarro sacrifices himself by holding up the roof so Superman can rescue Lois from Luthor's exploding lab.
• Octus from Sym-Bionic Titan pulled one of these in order to save Lance.
• Tangled: The Series: In the climax of "Queen For a Day", Pascal pulls a big sacrifice on his part, jumping into the Demanitus Device to remove a stone jamming the gears to reactivate it and end Zhan Tiri's Endless Winter, seemingly disappearing forever into the nothingness below. Fortunately he survives, but comes out severely injured.
• Teen Titans (2003) character Terra does this. Her power is manipulation with the earth (hence her name). In Season 2 finale a volcanic eruption is set in place under the city. Terra uses her power to stop, and seal it, but the price for doing so is her turning to stone.
• Thomas & Friends:
  • In Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure, Skiff tries to invoke this during the special's climax, telling Thomas it'd be okay if he smashed him if it meant stopping his Bad Boss, Sailor John, from stealing the treasure. When the two reach water, Skiff deliberately takes it on and capsizes. Luckily, he survives.
  • Near the end of Journey Beyond Sodor, Hurricane pushes Thomas out of the way of molten metal, and gets stuck in it himself, causing his wheels to melt. Fortunately, Merlin pushes Hurricane out of the way before the molten metal can do any further damage to him.
• In the Transformers: Armada episode "Crisis", Optimus Prime sacrifices himself to shield Earth from the Hydra Cannon. He comes Back from the Dead three episodes later.
  • In the season finale, Megatron sacrifices himself to prevent Unicron from reviving.
• In Transformers: Animated, Optimus Prime does this in "Transform and Roll Out", defending the Allspark from Starscream. He comes Back from the Dead about a minute later, though.
  • There's also Omega Supreme, much to Ratchet's dismay. He sacrifices himself heroically twice, once offscreen, in the Great War, and the second time in the same episode he's resurrected in, this time to protect the Autobots from the blast of the malfunctioning space bridge. The mech's the embodiment of this trope - he's made to sacrifice himself if need be!
  • Arguably, Bumblebee in "Autoboot Camp" might qualify, although it is non-fatal. He does, after all, take the blame for a tower falling on his Drill Sergeant, Sentinel Minor, to protect Bulkhead from being drummed out, since Bulkhead saved his life when the spy in the camp replaced the paint in the weapons used for a training exercise with live ammo. After he's (supposedly) caught the spy, and Sentinel has told him that he's Elite Guard material, Bumblebee gets drummed out instead. Sentinel is a real Jerkass.
    • Earlier, Bee took a hit for Bulkhead when he was about to get hit by Meltdown.
  • And now there's Prowl letting himself be absorbed by the Allspark to give it enough strength to stop the Omega Supreme clones, which are rigged with bombs, from destroying everything in a hundred-mile radius, drawing tears from every fan watching.
  • In the Japanese Transformers: ★Headmasters, Optimus sacrifices himself to stabilize Vector Sigma at the beginning of the season. This is his last death of the series, at least in animated form (there was later a toy line and manga called Battlestars: The Return Of Convoy, where he was brought Back from the Dead).
• Aaarrrgghh!!! from Trollhunters protected Toby from Angor Rot's Creeper Sun knife, getting turned into stone in the process. This comes off as even more of gut-puncher, because Aaarrrgghh was already suffering from an ever growing wound made by a nick from said knife earlier. His days were already numbered, but everyone, cast and audience alike, assumed that there'd be more time for him, only for that bit of "security" to get yanked away. This sacrifice is also the catalyst that convinces Jim to head to the Darklands alone.
• Winx Club
  • Near the end of the fourth season, Nabu decides to try to close the shadow abyss in order to save the Earth fairies. He succeeds, but uses up all of his energy and dies as a result.
  • This is generally how Enchantix is earned in the third season. To earn it, one must protect someone from their planet^note  Or in one case the entire universe , usually at great risk to themselves. The one exception, Bloom, did it through sheer force of will, and it turns out it's incomplete because it wasn't gained through a sacrifice. This lasts until she revives her planet at the end of The Secret of the Lost Kingdom.
• Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) gave one to a Sentinel named "Rover." Best friend to Marrow and only able to say the word 'destroy' with varying degrees of emotion. To get the information to stop the Bad End Rover gets into a fight with five evil Sentinels. Buying time for Professor X and the others to get the information needed and escape. He's being destroyed by a bunch of tiny wolf-like sentinels, his last word is to his friend Marrow, "Run."
• Xiaolin Showdown:
  • In "Finding Omi," Good Jack allows himself to be turned evil again to save the monks. He returns to the Yin-Yang World to find the bottles with the monks' lost chi despite knowing well that exiting the world with only one of the Yin-Yang Yo-Yos (he only had the Yang Yoyo) will turn a good person evil (and vice versa). In the Yin-Yang World, Good Jack uses the Ring Of the Nine Dragons to split himself up into two, and when one of them is attacked by the Chi Creature, the other Jack throws himself at the creature to hold it back, allowing the other to retrieve the chi and leave.
  • In the first part of the series finale, in the Bad Future ruled by Jack Spicer, the elder monks get killed by Jack's robots when they sacrifice their lives to give Omi and Dojo enough time to use the Sands of Time and escape to past.
  • In the warped timeline where Guan has become evil and Chase Young is good, Chase agrees to drink the Lao Mang Soup that will turn him evil (and give him the ability to turn into a reptile creature) to help the Monks escape their prison and find the frozen Omi to revert the world to normalcy.
  • Good Jack again in the series finale, drawing away tigers so that the Monks can escape.
• X-Men: The Animated Series: In the episode "Bloodlines", Mystique does the ONLY UNSELFISH THING IN HER ENTIRE LIFE; she pushes Nightcrawler aside and takes the bullet meant for him when her other son Graydon Creed tries to shoot them both.
• Red Torpedo and Red Inferno do this in Young Justice (2010), sacrificing themselves to destroy their crazed "sibling" Red Volcano.
  • In the Season 2 Finale, Kid Flash sacrifices himself to help the Flash and Impulse stop the Reach's endgame, as his slower speed made him vulnerable to fatal discharges of energy from the explosion they were trying to prevent and caused him to disappear, or "cease".

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