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alternative title(s): Big Damn Hero
Big Damn Heroes
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Any time the heroes get to save the day in a big, awesome manner.
Say that the poor Damsel In Distress is looking her fate dead in the face, and is resigned to it, because she knows that Nothing Can Save Us Now...and then, boom! The heroes kick down the door and proceed to stomp the bad guys into the ground.
A Ragtag Bunch of Misfits will often have a Misfit Mobilization Moment before becoming the Big Damn Heroes. If they were busy with something else, but saw the crisis and dropped whatever they were doing in order to save the day, it's a case of Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help.
But note that a Big Damn Heroes moment doesn't have to succeed. The villain may declare You Are Too Late. Or sometimes the heroes' actions end up making things worse.
Often this can involve Gunship Rescue, I Got You Covered, Horseback Heroism, Roaring Rampage of Rescue, Just in Time, or even Changed My Mind, Kid.
Compare The Cavalry (it's the heroes saved in the nick of time), Contrived Coincidence, Bad Guys Do The Dirty Work, Villainous Rescue (when the villains are like this trope).
If this is done in an anticlimactic way, then it's a Deus ex Machina, and dooms it bad, of course. When done right, it is a sure-fire way to get a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
If the heroes just finished a training arc and show off new powers, it's Look What I Can Do Now.
Supertrope of Roaring Rampage of Rescue. Often leads to a "Hell Yes" Moment.
Examples
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Comic Books
- In the climax of Watchmen, this is subverted. The big bad saw the Big Damn Heroes coming and activated his plan as he did. Consequently, they arrive thirty minutes too late.
- ElfQuest: in part 15 of the original series, just as the Wolfriders and Leetah are about to be slaughtered by Guttlekraw's trolls, they are rescued by the Go-Backs and (big spoiler): Rayek. All except One-Eye, who's killed before they arrive. Here's the scene
 , if all the spoiler tags haven't put you off.
- In the climatic battle at the end of the book, Rayek and the Holt Trolls charge in just as the Wolfriders and the Go-Backs were about to be beaten. It is lampshaded with Rayek complaining to Cutter that if he had sent Petalwing the Preserver back to guide them, they could have arrived much sooner.
- Y: The Last Man. Natalya and Ciba arrive just in time to stop one of Alter's mooks from kidnapping Beth Junior. Genre Savvy Hero even quips: "Natalya; always with the last minute Han Solo."
- Grant Morrison is particularly fond of this trope, beginning his obsession in Zenith (see this article) and taking it to its logical conclusion in Seven Soldiers, which is literally just a bunch (conspicuously more than seven) of those moments strung together, from the badass ("Gloriana! There is one!") to the farcical (Bulleteer accidentally running over the Queen of Darkness in a cartoony art style to boot) encompassing romantic, metafictional and slightly creepy along the way even finding room for an ambiguous aversion, with Klarion merrily fulfilling his own personal character arc at the expense of the rest of the "team"
- Subverted in his JLA run when The Key devises a plan that actually depends on the Justice League's last minute heroic victory.
- Played straight moments later when Green Arrow Jr. shuts him down with a boxing glove arrow to the face.
- "Ultron. We would have words with thee."
- "And yet, through the smoke, Xavier sensed a coming...of hope...of heroes...of Marvels."
- There are some instances in the X-Wing Series comics that count. In Requiem for a Rogue, Wedge is captured by a Sithling who wants to use him as bait for the other Rogues. The other Rogues come on foot to rescue him, and he slips away while the Sithling is directing his forces. Just as three Rogues are about to get killed, Wedge appears with two stolen blasters, shouting "Everybody down!◊" "Wedge! You're alive!" "Yeah, and you can keep me that way by moving your behinds!"
- This is essentially the Great Red Dragon's main schtick.
- The final battle in Kingdom Come is getting out of control. It looks like the apocalypse is only seconds away, and "their only hope for salvation rests with a force from on high." Cue Batman and his army of super heroes.
- And then immediately subverted as all it really accomplishes is making the giant superwar that much bigger.
- Subverted in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, during the Foot's attack at April's building; despite Casey Jones' Big Damn Heroes entrance, the Shredder's forces still manage to overrun the heroes, and they are eventually forced to retreat. The scene is eventually adapted into the first movie and the second cartoon.
- In the Sinestro Corps War arc of Green Lantern, Hal Jordan is fighting a losing battle against Parallax in the anti-matter universe when the rest of the Corps shows up just in time.
Parallax: [to Hal Jordan] You've been despised and abandoned by your corps.
Green Lantern: [from offpanel] Despised is one thing. But abandoned? That the Green Lantern Corps don't do.
(cut to a two page spread of the Corps appearing in the middle of the battlefield)
- Subverted in Preacher, with the truly epic failure of Cassidy's attempt at rescuing Jesse and Tulip from the Saint of Killers via pick-up truck.
- This◊ absolutely awesome moment from The Flash: Rebirth #4.
- Spider-Man has been on both ends of this trope, pulling off truly epic rescues one issue and then getting bailed out by his superhero buddies in the next.
- Subverted in Spidey's match with Firelord (Amazing Spider-Man 269-270 and a brief moment in Avengers 258). The Avengers charge in to rescue underdog Spidey from cosmic-powered Firelord; instead they haul Spidey off of Firelord after he's punched him into unconsciousness.
- Subverted and played straight in Ultimate X-Men. Cyclops has just spent four weeks lying half-dead in a cave, when suddenly a rescue team arrives. Unfortunately, they turn out to be members of the Brotherhood of Mutants and take him directly to Magneto's secret headquarters. Cyclops manages to break out of the medical bay and confront Magneto. When the latter reminds him that he's alone against a whole army, Cyclops just holds up his communicator and says he isn't alone, upon which the X-Men bust in with their jet.
- In Justice League: Generation Lost #8, the League has been caught breaking into Checkmate headquarters, and are on the verge of being overwhelmed by Checkmate forces. Then the wall blows in, with Captain Atom coming to the rescue:
Ice: Thank God.
Fire: He's not God. He's just our ride.
- Justice has a scene where Superman has been dog-piled by four supervillains. Blindsided and beaten on by Bizarro and Solomon Grundy, weakened by Metallo's Kryptonite heart, his powers drained by the Parasite, Superman is pretty much helpless. And the whole while, he's left wondering why none of the JLA are responding to his distress call, and finally, in a rather chilling scene, Superman cries out for help. Cue Big Damn Hero moment as a lightning bolt flashes across the sky, all of the villains get an "oh shit" look on their faces as a red and gold blur comes down and proceeds to take them apart. Bizarro? Punched into orbit. Metallo? Kryptonite yanked out of his chest. Parasite? Had said Kryptonite jammed in his chest, and since he had stolen Superman's powers and weaknesses, was instantly defeated by it. Solomon Grundy? Beaten unconscious into a crater. In the space of a page, these four powerful villains are handily and decisively dealt with. The blur finally slows down enough to reveal who it is, offering a hand to help Superman up.
Captain Marvel: "It's okay Superman. I got your signal. It's going to be okay."
- In the Thanos Imperative: Devastation one-shot (a Poorly Disguised Pilot for the next cosmic Marvel mini-series, Annihilators) features one of these when Blaastar pulled a Face Heel Turn:
Quasar: Shall we take this outside?
- Sin City: The Big Fat Kill had the girls of Old Town showing up just in time to fight the mob. Of course, the hero planned for all of this to happen.
- JLA: In the World War III arc, Superman has been captured by Mageddon, an ancient living weapon which will destroy the Earth. The JLA gives everybody on Earth temporary super powers to fight Mageddon. Cue a two-page spread of Big Damn Heroes heading off to save the Man of Steel.
- The Spider-Woman miniseries has Jessica fighting a Super-Skrull who tells her that the reason they chose her to be replaced by the Skrull Queen is that she was the one super-hero no-one really cared about. "And for all our mistakes, that was one thing we were right about." Cue The Avengers:
Ms Marvel: Well, that makes you wrong about damn near everything.
- In Mega Man, Mega Man has fought his Clone to a stand still and is wondering how to beat him. Cue the Robot Masters arriving, though fulfilling their programming to destroy Mega Man...by destroying the Clone.
- Journey Into Mystery 626 has a great one. Dark Asgard, which the Big Bad the Serpent will use to attack the real Asgard, as risen. Cue Kid!Loki grinning, and announcing that he and his current team are going to destroy it. While sitting on the shoulder of The Destroyer Armor!
- Here. [1]◊
- Also, this is only the second time that armor's ever been used for a good purpose, instead of a villain stealing it to attack Thor (Loki's old self did it a lot), and the first time didn't work. This is just a "Hell Yes" Moment.
- In Transformers: Timelines "The Stunticon Job" when Sideswipe and Cheetor are cornered by the Stunticons, Optimus Prime disguised as Toxitron comes in, and causes a ramp to crash on the cons.
Fan Fic
- Ichigo sure thinks he's one when he arrives moments before Orihime's kidnapping is completed . Then Nell shuts him down, hard. Makes sense, she is the Primera, after all.
- "I hate playing the Big Damn Hero." (Emphasis and Capitalisation Academia Nut's)
- Forward uses this extensively, but being a Firefly fanfic, that's no surprise, and its lampshaded and subverted as often as it is played straight.
- Enemy of My Enemy has two good ones: Vtan & Zerat saving Perry from the desperate Outlander Elites, and later the Hunter pair busting in to save a group of children from a Brute pack.
- Raccoon City Mosh Pit invokes this trope for a Awesome Moment. Matt, who has not been seen for the whole story up until now appears out of nowhere to save Kate from Nemesis at the Clock Tower. The best part? They even say the dialogue, with Matt as Mal and Kate as Zoe. Plus the chapter is titled 'Written by Joss Whedon'.
- In The Sun Soul, there are more than a few moments when the heroes swoop in to save the day at the last possible second. Although the author seems to like making them pay for their constant heroics.
- The beginning of the "Big Damn Heroes" moment in chapter 20 of Warhammer40000 fanfic ToyHammer starts off with the main character running over a Daemonhost (an Eldritch Abomination that has been summoned from a Negative Space Wedgie to possess an already unlikeable Complete Monster) with a battered pickup truck. Then offloading the elite of the Warhammer40000 universe's armies (who have been miniaturized).
- Semi-subverted in that he still gets his ass handed to him about five minutes later, giving way to a second Big Damn Heroes moment in the same chapter by a 10 year old girl (who has the unmodifiable psychic 'fingerprint' of The God Emperor of Mankind.).
- With a name like Kyon: Big Damn Hero you'd expect Kyon pulls this trope often. You'd be right: saving Tsuruya from a some Yakuza twice, Kanae from an upperclassman a few days later or to Sasaki when she was being kidnapped he can certainly do the titular trope.
- Respawn Of The Dead gives us Scout rushing in whacking the traitorous RED Spy over the head with his bat, when the latter had the Engineer and Sniper at both gun and knifepoint, and had just before been suggesting that he and the Engineer gang-rape Sniper.
- The Man with No Name crosses over Firefly and Doctor Who. It would be weird if Big Damn Heroes didn't apply.
- In Dragon Age The Crown Of Thorns, Sten gets one and it overlaps with a Journey to the Center of the Mind and even Battle in the Center of the Mind, since he is helped inside the mind of the resident Guile Hero / Magnificent Bastard dwarven prince Warden Commander, by a spell of the elven mage. Once inside, he helps him fight off a psychic attack on the Archdemon's part that would have lobotomized the Warden otherwise, if not killed him.
- A more recent chapter has not just Sten, but also Alim Surana (the elven mage Warden) and Leliana doing something quite similar, although, in this case, they have to save him from his mind breaking down since the Archdemon's psychic attack is already over.
- In the Pony POV Series, The Final Battle with Fluttershy's Superpowered Evil Side, Princess Gaia/Nightmare Whisper, is going badly. The group are battered, beaten, and bloody, Rarity's pretty much completely out of it with broken legs and no energy left to use magic, and the only way to stop Nightmare Whisper seems to be Rainbow Dash performing a Mercy Kill. Thankfully, Fluttercruel fights her way out of the Jury Of The Damned she was being tried by and manifests in the physical world. Not only does she give the others the motivation to summon the Elements, she fills in for Fluttershy as the Element Of Kindness, allowing them to defeat Nightmare Whisper with them.
Film
- Pretty much every single time Batman smashes through a window involves a Big Damn Hero entrance.
- The classic example is the scene in the 1989 Batman movie where Bats smashes through a skylight to save Vicki Vale who is being menaced by the Joker in the museum.
- Batman Begins: After the Scarecrow's fear toxin has engulfed the Narrows, Gordon is the only unaffected man left on the island. The Commissioner, by radio on the outside, breaks it to him that all the reinforcements he's asking for are already on the island there with him, just as helpless as everyone else and he's on his own.
Commissioner: Gordon...there's nobody left to send in.
The Batmobile roars past him, flies over the raised bridge and to the rescue.
- The Dark Knight: Batman has crashed the Bat-pod, the Joker is standing over him, ready to kill, when suddenly an offscreen figure sticks a shotgun in his back.
Jim Gordon: We've got you, you son of a bitch.
- People in the theater actually burst into applause.
- Also, earlier, when the Joker's thugs spring a trap on the police truck carrying Harvey Dent. Just as Dent and the cops are worried that the Joker may actually kill them all, Batman enters with the Batmobile and evens the odds against the Joker.
- The First Superman movie has one for Superman when he flies to rescue Lois Lane from the helicopter which got caught on the roof.
- Spider-Man 3 has a great Big Damn Heroes scene from Harry Osborn.
- Subversion: In El Mariachi, the prequel to Desperado, the titular character (played by Carlos Gallardo instead of Antonio Banderas) arrives too late to prevent bad guy Moco from gunning down Domino, his love interest, in a fit of jealousy.
- This trope could very well have also been called "The Han Solo Moment," after the scene at the end of the first Star Wars movie when he shows up to save Luke from Darth Vader during the Death Star battle.
Han: You're all clear, kid! Now let's blow this thing and go home!
- A classic version of this occurs in Iron Man where an Afghan village is being terrorized. Just as the head thug is about to execute an innocent villager as his wife and children scream for them to stop, everyone hears something falling out the sky....Iron Man! Who then proceeds to lay the smackdown on all the terrorists in short order.
- Kung Fu Hustle. In a scene lasting about three to four minutes, there are three Big Damn Heroes moments, one from each of the Three Heroes. The first is easily the most impressive, involving a lighter being caught by a coolie in a scene that would make the aforementioned Firefly crew green with envy, and the hero facing off against something on the order of a hundred gangsters. The others are less impressive, but only by comparison, involving a gay tailor sending a man through and beating the crap out of the gangsters swarming the first man, and a donut-making baker taking on three men armed with thompson machine guns with a pair of blunt sticks meant to roll out dough. Ain't they just Three Big Damn Heroes?
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Most of the characters besides Kirk, Spock and McCoy had been given relatively simple (but meaningful) roles to play. That made this moment even more special as Captain Sulu and the Excelsior crew came to help the Enterprise against the cloaked Klingon ship. When they finally get the upper hand, "Target that explosion and fire!" it is especially satisfying. George Takei affectionately calls the movie 'Captain Sulu to the Rescue.'
- Remember the buildup to this moment too? Sulu orders his helmsman to fly faster to which he replies "She'll fly apart!" With satisfying, angry determination "FLY HER APART, THEN!"
- Minutes later, when they beam down to the Khitomer Conference. Kirk shoves the blind president out of the assassin's line of fire. Mc Coy grabs the Romulan ambassador at gunpoint. Spock shouts down Admiral Cartwright after showing Valeris was found out. Scotty sneaks in behind the sniper and knocks him through a window. And Sulu and his crew beam into the exits just as Cartwright's about to book it.
- In Star Trek: First Contact, the Borg are back and are slaughtering the Federation starships standing between it and Earth, including the Defiant, being commanded by Worf. The Borg lock on and begin crippling the ship...
Worf: "Report!"
Worf: "Perhaps today IS a good day to die. Prepare for ramming speed!"
Helsman: "Sir, there's another ship coming in... it's the Enterprise!" Cue two torpedoes destroying the Borg cutting beam as the massive Enterprise swoops between the two ships ( while the TNG theme pounds away in the background), drawing the cube's fire and suffering no damage! Picard then tops this by taking command of the fleet and ordering them to concentrate their fire on a single, non-vital spot, which opens up its secondary power relay to a direct assault from the Enterprise's quantum torpedoes. The formerly "invincible" Borg cube was destroyed within seconds.
- This was arguably cockblocking Worf from trying to prove that Ramming Always Works, but it's still an awesome moment.
- The novelisation explains Picard's actions better. He can still hear Borg communications in his head and he hears them order a repair team to a damaged area. Knowing that section has been weakened he orders all ships to fire at it.
- Which is hinted at in the movie itself. For a moment just before he orders the attack, Picard (and to some extent, the audience) hears what seems to be the voice of the Collective. After the attack, he's hearing the voices again, and Troi, noticing that the captain is preoccupied with something, gets his attention. Says Picard, "I can hear them."
- The new Star Trek film has a great moment near the end, after Nero orders a "FIRE EVERYTHING!" at Spock's ship...and the Enterprise drops out of warp with all guns firing furiously and shoots down all of the Romulan torpedoes.
- Chekov, of all people, also sort of gets one of these by managing to beam Sulu and Kirk out of a free-fall and onto the Enterprise just before they hit the surface of Vulcan.
- Everyone on the crew seems to have gotten their own Moment of Awesome in the film, from Uhura ('No. I'm assigned to the Enterprise.' Spock:..Yes, I believe you are.') to Christopher Pike firing at a Romulan when Kirk is unprotected. After having been tortured. The alternative title could have been 'New Star Trek Movie, Everyone Is Incredible'.
- Speedy things go in, speedy things...apparently do not come out so speedy.
- You're thinking of Portal. Transporters are not supposed to keep your speed relative to the ship. Otherwise in transwarp transporting, as soon as you would appear inside the ship you would be catapulted to the nearest wall at warp speed. The transporter just destroys your previous self, and creates a new one on the place you want to appear atom by atom, keeping the inter-atom relations (distance of relative movement), but as a whole the object is created at rest in the ships frame of reference.
- And Spock Prime saving Kirk from an ice monster on Delta Vega.
- The first Pirates of the Caribbean had one of these at the very end where Jack is about to be hanged and Will saves him just in the nick of time.
- The third also has one at the very end when Will, now the new captain of the Flying Dutchman, erupts from the sea to help the Black Pearl drive off the East India Trading Co.'s fleet.
- The Lion King: Mufasa rescuing Simba from the hyenas.
- The Archdeacon at the beginning of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when he stops Frollo from drowning baby Quasi in a well, and then proceeds to verbally bitchslap him through song. Awesome.
- In The Lord of the Rings, this happens twice in the same battle. At the siege of Minas Tirith, the Witch-King has broken the gates and is facing down Gandalf, about to ride into the city, when the Rohirrim arrive and charge onto the field. Then, when the impact of the Rohirrim charge has dissipated and the armies of Mordor are once more gaining the upper hand, the wicked Corsairs of Umbar turn up...only it's actually an allied army that has commandeered the Corsair ships. Both of these would normally fall under The Cavalry, but Merry and Eowyn are with the Rohirrim, and Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are on the Corsair ships; which means they qualify as Big Damn Heroes moments as well.
- Did you forget Gandalf and Eomer's moment at Helm's Deep?
- Sam when he saves Frodo from Shelob (even if he doesn't know at the time).
- "Eagles! THE EAGLES ARE COMING!" Even a moth manages to be a hero in that moment.
- Another moment is when the Witch-king and his fell-beast are about to kill an incapacitated King Theoden, and then Eowyn jumps in the way, hacked the beast's head off in merely a few strikes.
- And a Chekhov's Gunman. Or possibly a Brick Joke. No, seriously, who ever thought that the moth bringing Gwaihir to rescue Gandalf in the first half of the first movie would be brought back by the moth bringing six eagles exactly where they are needed to rescue the Army of the West in the last half of the last movie?
- Aragorn also has this moment in the first film. The Ringwraith stabs Frodo, and just as he is reaching out (likely to get the Ring that Frodo still wears), Aragorn jumps in, torch and sword at hand and battles the five Ringwraiths, setting most of them on fire. One of many Awesome Moments.
- Did you also forget the unintentional rescue of Merry and Pippin by the Riders of Rohan in The Two Towers?
- In Rambo IV, the Burmese soldiers have captured both the missionaries and their mercenary rescuers, and are lining them up for execution. They ready their weapons, prepare to fire...and then John Rambo rises up into view behind the soldier manning the Burmese troops' .50cal machinegun.
- Don't forget when Rambo has been abandoned by the other mercs, and is about to be gunned down in the road when the Burmese soldier is suddenly blown away by the sniper who stayed behind.
- Ip Man: Training the Peaceful Villagers has been subverted, the factory workers are still getting their asses handed to them by the bandits - until Ip Man shows up and gives them the old what-for.
- Brother Bear 2: Rutt and Tuke pull off a truly awesome BDH moment near the end when they help Kenai and Nita stave Edka off.
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Gambit saves Wolverine from the collapsing nuclear reactor by cutting it apart with his staff.
- In Armageddon, right when everything seems lost, seeing as though the first giant drilling machine was lost, AJ shows up with the (previously thought lost) second giant drilling machine to save the day.
- Lampshaded in Road to Rio, where Jerry Colonna leads a cavalry charge to save the day, to be still riding there long after everything is settled. "Exciting though, wasn't it?"
- Anastasia: When it seems that Anya is about to fall into the icy river (Rasputin even says "No one can save you!"), Dimitri swoops in to save the day * by punching Rasputin in the face. Subverted in that he very quickly gets the living crap beaten out of him, though it leads to Anya's Awesome Moments.
- Double Subversion in Independence Day: Russel Case gives the line "Sorry I'm late, Mr. President!" ...and then his missile jams. ...and then he makes a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the alien ship anyway.
- In the Transformers Film Series, these are somewhat plentiful and frequently awesome. Film 1 has Bumblebee saving Sam from a pack of angry guard dogs, Bumblebee saving Sam & Mikaela from Barricade, Optimus saving Sam & Mikaela from corrupt government officials (though this one doesn't work out so well), and Bumblebee & Mikaela saving the soldiers from Brawl. Film 2 has Bumblebee saving Sam & his parents from the kitchen appliances brought to life by the Allspark shard, Optimus & Bumblebee saving Sam & Mikaela from the revived Megatron, Jetfire showing up in the final battle to kill Mixmaster and Scorponok, and Bumblebee saving Sam & co. from Rampage & Ravage. ...Bumblebee gets to do a lot of these, doesn't he?
- The warehouse one is the best, especially if you don't see it coming. Sam is pinned down, the last several minutes have been very dark, culminating in a sadistic little bot centimeters away from cutting Sam's head open, with no apparent hope...and CRASH! Optimus busts through the ceiling, the heroic music instantly starting at full swing, immediately followed by Bumblebee making an entryway through a wall, and what was 15 seconds ago a quiet and disturbing scene is now a scene full of roaring weapons fire, shots flying everywhere, and hectic action. Oh, and Optimus kicking ass; can't forget that.
- This is basically Optimus's job at NEST. While the human soldiers and smaller Autobots hit the field first, Optimus hangs out in the main NEST cargo plane. If the ground troops aren't cutting it, he's airdropped directly into the thick of things to start kicking ass.
- Plunkett and Macleane: The former of the two protagonists saves the latter from the gallows in a truly awesome scene with a truly awesome score to go with it.
- Subverted in the short film Pyrates. Just as a pirate is about to be hanged, his captain and crew arrive to effect a daring rescue, only to find out at the end of the film that they just wanted his part of the treasure map.
- In District 9 it looks like Wikus, in his Power Armor, is going to run off and abandon Christopher to certain death. Just as Chris is about to be shot, Wikus has a change of heart and charges back in, using the alien weapons to kill the soldiers in a shower of Ludicrous Gibs.
- Neo shows up to save Morpheus and the Keymaker toward the end of the freeway scene in The Matrix Reloaded.
- A indirect version of this trope example happens in The Matrix Revolutions. Just as the humans in Zion are about to make their last stand, the encroaching Sentinels suddenly stand down thanks to Neo, who fought his way to the Machine city to negotiate peace in exchange for him killing Smith.
- A Fistful of Dynamite's John Mallory shows up at the last minute to save his friend Juan Miranda, from a firing squad, in typical explosive fashion.
- SmokeyAndTheBandit 2: Bandit accepts Buford T Justice's challenge of a showdown in the desert, only to find himself chased by a literal army of Texas state troopers and, um, Canadian Mounties. With even Bandit admitting this is more than he can handle and about to go out fighting, he spots Snowman's truck coming in the opposite direction. Then at Snowman's cue, a convoy of trucks spread out from behind him and face down the troopers and mounties in an epic (not to mention hilarious) Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Blade has about a million Big Damn Hero moments. One of the best being when Whistler shows up at the vampire archives just as Blade is about to be done in. He blows a wall down and in the fashion of all Big Damn Heroes delivers the Pre Ass Kicking One Liner, "Catch you fuckers at a bad time?"
- Brutally subverted in Land of the Dead as the heroes rush to join the final battle against the zombie horde, it appears this will be played straight and they will arrive just in time to save the terrified people trapped between the electric fence and the zombies. They actually arrive just in time to watch as the zombies feast on the people and all they can do is give those still alive a somewhat quicker death.
- Tom Cruise's return to the scene of the final aerial battle in Top Gun.
- Iron Eagle is entirely about a kid pilot and his Cool Old Guy mentor playing this trope to rescue the kid's shot down father from an anonymous Middle Eastern dictatorship.
- In The Goonies, Sloth's Shout Out/Entrance at the climax: "Hey, you guys!" Cue heroic theme music and happy ending ahoy!
- In Big Jake, the title character's grandson is kidnapped, and Big Jake and two of his sons set out to ransom him from his kidnappers...or so they want the kidnappers to believe. In actual fact, they have no intention of paying the ransom, and when the time comes for the exchange, they simply kill all of the kidnappers and take the boy back.
- Toy Story 3: Watch as your childhood gets incinerated along with those toys you loved watching 15 years ago - wait, what's that light? IT'S THE CLAW! (Controlled by the Little Green Men, incidentally.)
- Princess Protection Program: Rosie has surrendered herself to General Kane to prevent Carter from sacrificing herself to protect her. Just when it looks like the General is going to get away with taking over Costa Luna and putting Rosie in jail for the rest of her life, the doors of the helicopter open, revealing General Mason, the director, and a bunch of agents from the PPP, who arrest Kane and his soldiers.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas: "Hello, Oogie!" Badass. Of course, it's unusual that you have a BDH moment where the bad situation is the hero's fault in the first place, but even so.
- GoldenEye: Three words: Big Damn TANK.
- Avatar: Just as things seem to be going badly, the marines get crushed by hammerheads and sturmbeest and the ones that manage to run away get hunted down by a group of viperwolves, all while a huge group of ikran destroy the remaining helicopters. Arguably, Jake himself then taking out the shuttle and Quaritch's gunship. Complete with Crowning Music of Awesome.
- Dogma serves us up a good one. Our heroine, Bethany, is about to be beaten to death by some wicked teenage hockey playing demons. Just as they're about to strike, Jay and Silent Bob leap into action to save the day by beating the crap out of them. "Snooch to the muthafuckin' Noooooooch!"
- Occurs in Cars 2 when the regulars of Radiator Springs suddenly appear on the streets of London to save Mater and Lightning McQueen from a gang of Lemons.
- In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, after crashing a helicopter into a hanger, the T-X advances on John Conner and Kate Brewster, who are powerless to stop it. Then, an even bigger helicopter slams into the hanger, grinding the T-X into dust, and setting the hanger on fire. Guess who pops out?
Terminator: I'm back.
- A rather weird example in A Bronx Tale, since Calogero isn't really trapped by anything more than a body and a car door on either side, and his own unwillingness to lose face in front of his friends by asking to get out of the car... but when Sonny arrives and demands that "C" get out of the car, and that his friends let him out, it had most of the trappings of a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- In The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, the main character has a strange moment of this after he is attacked by pirates.
- Played with in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Ron attempts this, utterly failing ("I immediately regret this decision!"), the rest of the news team does pretty well, but it's Baxter who saves the day.
Literature
- Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does this enough that in And Another Thing it's Lampshaded by Ford Prefect who comments on Zaphod's unfailing ability to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
- I'm giving one to Harry Dresden for his Dinosaur Rescue, even if he didn't know his people needed rescue.
- In Changes, Lea summoning the Grey Council to the final confrontation with the Red Court. Said Grey Council brings an army of kenku along as backup, and apparently includes a certain one-eyed Norse god in its ranks.
- A less major, but still awesome moment is Sanya showing up exactly after an old women says "Oh God in Heaven, help us!". Bearer of Hope indeed...
- Also, in Small Favor, Michael arrives in the nick of time to save a rain station from an army of dark faeries. And Miss Gard saving the team's asses by riding a helicopter to Ride of the Valkyries, with Hendricks on the minigun.
- And Meryl going full-troll (no, not that kind) and saving Harry in Summer Knight.
- And Marcone arriving through the Nevernever with a mercenary army to fight off the uberghouls at the end of White Night.
- And many more. Really, Jim Butcher likes this trope.
- As stated in film, in The Lord of the Rings there are plenty of these, though played a little differently in the book. At Helm's Deep Gandalf comes with Erkenbrand and an army to turn the battle at Helm's Deep. Later, in the Return of the King, King Theoden, Eomer, and secretly Eowyn and Merry come with a huge army to help turn the tide at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, however they don't have enough men to turn the tide and it looks like they're about to be overwhelmed then the Black Ships of the Corsairs of Umbar turn up. It looks like the villains are getting even more reinforcements and Eomer is on the verge of a Heroic BSOD, but suddenly, the royal standard of Gondor appears on the lead ship; Aragorn has come with an army of men from the Southern fiefs of Gondor that couldn't reach the city in time and routes the the entire opposing army, proving that in Middle Earth, Authority Equals Asskicking and saving his kingdom before he's even crowned.
- Tom Bombadil saving the hobbits the first time. Subverted by the fact that he's just singing happily, and then proceeds to sing the tree to sleep.
- The Hobbit has a few of these as well, with the eagles rescuing Gandalf, Bilbo, and the dwarves quite literally in the nick of time, Bilbo rescuing the dwarves from the spiders, Gandalf rescuing the dwarves and Bilbo from the goblins, and the eagles and Beorn helping turn the tide of the Battle of the Five Armies.
- Happens in The Silmarillion too, Luthien saving Beren from Tol-in-Gaurhoth just one of many examples. Tolkien was really fond of this trope.
- In the Fairy Tale "Bluebeard", the heroine asks her murderous husband for a chance to pray as a last request, and her brothers arrive to save her just as her time is up.
- In the Star Trek novel My Enemy, My Ally, the Enterprise and renegade Romulan vessel Bloodwing are fleeing from a Romulan research station with the Vulcan-crewed starship Intrepid II, having just freed the latter and her crew from being experimented upon. With Romulan forces overtaking them, they're saved in the nick of time as Starfleet reinforcements charge in across the Neutral Zone. Turns out to be a subversion, as Kirk had actually ordered them to do so several days previously, pre-emptively calculating that if he hadn't made it back by then, he'd probably need backup at that exact time.
- In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novel For the Emperor, Jurgen and Sorel get one of these moments when they arrive just in time to save Cain and Amberley from a Genestealer Broodlord.
- John Moore's Slay and Rescue opens with Genre Savvy hero Prince Charming (that's actually his name) carefully timing the rescue of a princess to achieve this effect. It's part of the job.
- In Dan Abnett's Brothers of the Snake, a Space Marine arrives on planet to deal with an attack of Dark Eldar when it has wreaked havoc.
- Used a couple times in the Harry Potter series. In Goblet of Fire, Harry is seconds away from being killed by Mad-Eye Moody, who in reality is a disguised Barty Crouch Jr., when Dumbledore and a few other teachers blast their way through his door and knock him out. It's then used twice in a row in The Order of the Phoenix, when Harry and his friends are saved from the Death Eaters, first by multiple members of the order (Sirius, Lupin, Tonks, Kingsly, and the real Mad-Eye Moody), then after the Death Eaters appear to gain the upper hand, Dumbledore again saves the day, single-handedly rounding up most of the Death Eaters within a matter of seconds.
- The title of that last chapter? "The only one he ever feared."
- OK, while the book is good, Cornelia Funke really overuses this in Inkdeath.
- In City of Glass Jace saves Clary from being killed by the big bad. The big bad then proceeds to kill Jace seconds after he gives his World Of Cardboard Speech.
- In The Thrawn Trilogy, Luke's team heads into an old ship lost in deep space, covered by Rogue Squadron. Fey'lya's ship and two escorting squadrons show up to place Luke's team and the Rogues under arrest for leaving without acting with the Council's permission (it's a complicated plot). While the two New Republic forces argue, an Imperial Star Destroyer jumps in, sends troops into the old ship, and begins the attack. Fey'lya and his squadrons turn to flee while the Rogues fly cover and Luke's team fights boarders. Fey'lya is lured into an Engineered Public Confession, and his ship and squadrons turn to help the Rogues, but things still look bad. Then Talon Karrde's backup force of miscellaneous ships shows up but still, an Imperial Star Destroyer is more than they can handle. Finally, Garm Bel Iblis shows up with his six heavy Dreadnaughts, and they finally start winning. And then a second Imperial Star Destroyer comes out of hyperspace. It sounds complicated, but it's pretty awesome. And has all sorts of Stuff Blowing Up.
- Vision of the Future: Garm Bel Iblis and his people grimly realize that they've fallen into a trap and plan to ram the nearest capital ship, hoping that the snubfighters at least can escape. The three rogue Imperials who are impersonating Thrawn gloat and start talking some Mistryl shadow warriors into pitching in with them. Then Supreme Commander Pellaeon arrives in-system, bullies his way onto their ship, exposes the plot, orders Imperial ships to stop firing and pull back, and finally gets to pitch peace to Garm Bel Iblis.
- At a few points in the X-Wing Series, Y-Wing squadrons appear just in time to save Rogue Squadron. X-Wing jockeys don't have the best opinion of Y-Wings, and one Y-Wing pilot remarks that the Rogues always sound so pained when thanking them.
- The bad opinion is justified: in-universe, the Y-Wings are obsolete, and best pilots get the X-Wings. So the Y-Wings pilots were really attacking ennemies way stronger than them to rescue the Rogues, who are the best but were outnumbered 4 to 1.
- In the fifth Young Wizards book, this happens when the Lone Power is giving Nita Its Evil Gloating speech. She's just about ready to give in...when her wizard partner Kit bursts in in the nick of time. "Fairest and Fallen, one more time...greetings and defiance." You can practically hear the epic music.
- In Bill Baldwin's Helmsman series, the final battle of the first book is the protagonist having to hold off three ships. He actually thinks about this trope, about how the BDH only arrive on time in books. Of course, since this is a book, a few cruisers do arrive - when half his crew is dead and the ship is good for nothing but scrap (and only half an enemy ship remains).
- Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie do it all the time in Journey to the West.
- Malik ibn Ibrahim does this from out of nowhere in the second story in the anthology Wandering Djinn.
- Sandor Clegane, of all people, gets a moment of this in A Song of Ice and Fire when he cuts through a mob just in time to rescue Sansa from being gang-raped by the rioters. This, naturally, sets up a Bodyguard Crush on Sansa's part and a great deal of Squeeing among the fans, as rescues are wont to do. How heroic he is the rest of the time is up for debate. Arguably, his first Big Damn Heroic moment is actually in the prior book, when his big brother Gregor is about to hack a stunned and helpless Loras Tyrell in two...only for the Hound to show up just in time to divert the killing blow and defend Loras till Gregor cools down. More humorous considering he's, you know, rescuing the Ambiguously Gay Loras Tyrell.
- Nothing ambiguous about that - George R. R. Martin has confirmed that yeah, Loras was knocking boots with Renly Baratheon.
- Sandor's not the only Big Damn Hero in the series. Who can forget Jaime Lannister, completely unarmed, leaping into a bear pit to distract said bear from Brienne? Of course, Jaime doesn't manage to do much about the bear on his own, but the archers he brought back with him do. Made even better by Jaime's quip, after he asks if Brienne is still a maiden: "Oh, good. I only rescue maidens."
- In the Dale Brown novel Air Battle Force, the Taliban deputy Turabi is about to be killed by an usurper when Chris Wohl in a Tin Man Powered Armor suit shows up and evens the odds in preparation for an Enemy Mine. In Plan of Attack the same chap gets saved again, this time from Russians.
- In the Malazan Book of the Fallen the Barghast and the Bridgeburners get this when they save Capustan from the Pannonians.
- At the end of the first Kingdom Keepers book, several Imagineers show up to subdue Maleficent.
- In the second Empire From The Ashes book, Colin appears just as humanity, after a long, hard-fought struggle, is about to be obliterated by Achuultani scouts, with the resurrected ships of the Emperor's personal guard in tow. Curb-stomping ensues.
- While Chip was not in direct physical danger during his trial in The Rats, the Bats, and the Ugly, the rape charge based on a (falsified) deposition was both the strongest and most likely to have him hung. Then the supposed victim unlocked the courtroom doors with a chainsaw and kicked them open before declaring Chip's innocence.
- Odd example in Chronicles of Amber that stradles the line between this trope and Villainous Rescue: Corwin, the hero, is the one doing the rescuing—and he only decides to pitch in the moment he gets there. Prior to that, he intended to attack Amber himself.
- Near the end of Terry Pratchett's Discword novel ''Monstrous Regiment" when the Ins and Outs are about to be packed off and safely out of the officers hair. Sgt Jackram bursts through the door to defend his "little lads". What with him being larger than life (some think literally) and having about 40 years of blackmail material in his head, he begins an epic verbal beat down of the entire general staff to free his troops.
- The Secrets of Droon - So, our kids are trapped in a room with rising water filled with poisonous serpents. They're all resigned to their fate. And then, Young Galen appears literally out of nowhere and magics the serpents out of existence.
- In Robert E. Howard's "A Witch Shall Be Born", Conan the Barbarian arrives just as a fight between the usurper's forces and the loyal subjects who just learned of the Fake King is breaking out.
- In the fifth book of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, the demigods are fighting a massive army of monsters led by the Titans in New York City, and things are looking desperate, then Chiron shows up with an army of centaur frat boys shows up and saves the day, but only temporarily.It gets worse later on when the titan army is on the verge of wiping out the heroes and their allies. And then Nico Di Angelo shows up with his dad Hades and an absolutely MASSIVE army of zombie soldiers to turn the tide and fight off the monsters.
- Nico loves this trope. In addition to the above-mentioned arrival in New York with three gods and an undead army to fight Kronos with, he also attempted this once Minos tricked him into thinking Percy and the others were in trouble. Later on, he succeeds at another, taking the title of the Ghost King from Minos, thereby keeping Percy and the others from falling to Minos' hand. Afterwards, he returned to Camp Half-Blood with the others to help stave off the invasion of Kronos' army, including singlehandedly preventing a unit of monsters from breaking away from the fight to burn the camp down. Dark is Not Evil indeed.
- Earlier, in the second book, The Sea of Monsters, Percy, Annabeth and Tyson are fighting the Hydra, and it's not going well...enter Clarisse and her fully-armed warship, which blows the monster to bits.
- Somewhat subverted in the Honor Harrington novel "The Honor Of The Queen" in that the titular character of the series is leading her (heavily damaged) starship in a suicidal defence of their not-yet-allies when reinforcements from her side show up and send a message saying "We're here! Let us deal with it!" Due to the damage her ship has taken, though, she doesn't get the message leading to the realisation, "Dear god, she doesn't know we're here!".
- And then tremendously re-asserted not long thereafter when, just before the enemy units are about to open fire, the missiles fired by the rescuing force at the absolute limit of their range arrive.
- Someone is rescued by Big Damn Spiders near the end of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.
- The Landreich forces in Fleet Action, during the Battle of Terra, jump in at the last minute to save Earth from being made uninhabitable by "dirty" nukes.
- In the In Death series, Eve frequently has such moments at the climax of a novel's storyline. Roarke has also done it a few times.
- The Time Scout series loves these:
- In Time Scout, Kit and Malcolm come to 16th century Darkest Africa to rescue Margo and Kynan from Portuguese soldiers.
- Subverted in Wagers of Sin when Skeeter crashes the Porta Romae just in time to rescue Marcus after a mad dash across La La Land. Also present is Lupus Mortiferus, who brutally clubs Skeeter down.
- Played straight a few weeks later when Skeeter finally rescues Marcus and takes him home.
- In Ripping Time, Armstrong shows up just in time to save Jenna from Jack the Ripper.
- In The House That Jack Built, Kit and Skeeter catch up to Paula Booker and some guides being pinned down by native bandits outside Denver.
- Also in The House That Jack Built, Skeeter tracks down his new adopted family after many weeks of searching so that he can help rescue them from The Syndicate.
Live Action TV
- The trope name (and the quote) comes from Firefly, wherein Mal and the rest of the crew save Simon and River from being burned at the stake in the episode "Safe".
- Ace Rimmer (What a guy!) in Red Dwarf is usually introduced in a Big Damn Heroes scene. In his first appearance, he flies in, saves the crew, then performs emergency surgery on the Cat while nursing a broken arm. The second time, he literally sweeps in, rescues a Distressed Damsel from a Nazi firing squad, surfs from a plane on an alligator, takes a bullet to the holodrive and still manages to have sex before seeking aid — what a guy.
- In an episode of the 2004 reimagining of Battlestar Galactica, called "Exodus", the titular ship is attacked by three Cylon Basestars while attempting to help colonists on the planet New Caprica escape. The ship is severely damaged, and somber music plays while the camera zooms out as the basestars pummel the Galactica to death in the cold darkness of space...until a missile, then more missiles, fire off the edge of the screen, and the Battlestar Pegasus hurtles to the rescue, just in the nick of time. Of course, this is just the high point to heroic events which kicked off with a deadpan "Prepare for turbulence."
- In season 4, episode 13, Lee is captured by members of Zarek's rebellion against the human-Cylon alliance. It looks as though he's about to be shot, and there's a gunshot...and you see Lee's face, spattered with blood, and Starbuck standing there, pistol in one hand. Another of the rebels moves, and she draws another pistol, shooting him. "I can do this all day." It escalates the situation later on, but it's awesome at the time.
- Stargate SG-1 did pretty much the same thing as Battlestar Galactica, above, in a battle against Anubis fleet above Antarctica, in the two-parter Grand Finale (well, it was a finale at the time), "Lost City", at the end of season seven. Dozens of ships are descending towards the heroes' defenseless cargo ship. Cue rockets blowing up Goa'uld fighters, as General Hammond leads the Prometheus against the incoming enemies.
- Raven pulls one of thee at the ending of The Secret Temple. About bloody time too.
- Both of those situations share several stylistic similarities: main characters convinced that they are doomed, and the sudden appearance of rockets, instantly followed by the use of a Theme Music Power-Up: Galactica with fast-paced drums and Stargate with the main theme of the series. The resemblance is probably just a coincidence, unless a Galactica writer did a Homage to SG-1.
- Another example is in Stargate Atlantis at the beginning of season 2 when Atlantis is under imminent attack, the self-destruct is armed and counting...then Earth responds to their earlier distress call with a small army of marines and an intergalactic battlecruiser.
- That's nothing compared to the series' grand finale. One of the best GunshipRescues ever.
- Russia never being heros and then in Contiunium "We have been expecting you. Good luck"
- Also shows up in the Babylon 5 episode "Walkabout". Just as Sheridan's White Star is about to be destroyed by a Shadow ship, the Narn cruiser G'Tok arrives and thoroughly fries the Shadow battlecrab. A small army of reinforcements arrive immediately thereafter.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: At the closing moments of Season Six's penultimate episode, Willow, on a black-eyed bender of murderous, bad-magic-is-bad fury, is mopping the Magic Box floor with the Slayer, the only one who might have been strong enough to stop Willow's skin-flaying rampage. With Buffy down, Willow crows her triumph, informing all present (at least those still conscious) that there is no one on earth who is powerful enough to stop her. Cue Big Damn Hero entrance in the form of Rupert Giles, hepped up on some serious magic of his own, to test Willow's theory.
- Doctor Who: Mickey and Jackie showing up to save Sarah Jane in "Journey's End".
- In Torchwood, Ianto Jones is about to have his throat slit by a cannibal with a meat cleaver, when good ol' Captain Jack breaks through the wall "in a ruddy great tractor" and starts shooting people. Cue theme music.
- Lost, third season finale "Through the Looking Glass:" Three of the Others are holding Sayid, Jin, and Bernard at gunpoint. Sawyer and Juliet are hiding in the bushes, wondering how they can possibly rescue them unarmed. All of a sudden Hurley comes barreling onto the beach and runs over one of them with a Volkswagen Bus.
- The best was in the series finale when Jack and Locke are having their final confrontation. All seems lost as Locke lowers his knife toward Jack's throat, then BAM! Kate puts a bullet in him.
- Ace Lightning tends to end its series' with Big Damn Heroes moments, usually in the form of a Power Trio.
- In the series finale of Roswell, Michael is on his way out of town when he sees a fleet of black cars heading the other way. Rightly guessing this means trouble, he turns back...just in time to burst through the school auditorium doors on a motorbike, ride up the aisle and onto the stage, where Max gets on behind him and everyone gets away.
- Happens fairly often in the 60s spy series The Man From UNCLE. Usually Solo is in James Bondage (often with the Girl of the Week beside him) when Kuryakin will swoop in at the nick of time; occasionally it happens with the roles reversed. One example: The second season episode "The King of Diamonds Affair", when Kuryakin arrives to save Solo, the innocent of the week, and a villain-turned-hero who are strapped to cannons with lit fuses which are about to fire:
Napoleon Solo: Next time, try not waiting til the last minute.
Illya Kuryakin: Next time try not to go that far up the Amazon.
- Occurs all the time in Supernatural.
- But defied in the Season 4 finale, "Lucifer Rising": when Ruby prevents Dean from getting into the room in time to tell Sam that Lilith is the final seal and killing her will release Lucifer.
- Done to a hideously Narm-ish degree in the Season 5 finale when Dean shows up to interrupt the impending smackdown between Michael and Lucifer.
- And then hilariously subverted a few minutes later when Castiel appears and hits Michael with a Holy Hand Grenade (aka, a Molotov of anti-angel holy oil) only to get blown up a second later by Lucifer.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, episode "Shattered Mirror". When Mirror Bashir and Mirror Dax swoop in to save the day, we've almost forgotten that they were a part of the plan all along.
- It happens again in "Sacrifice of Angels", when the Klingons arrive late (better than never) to the fight.
- The Klingons like doing this. See "Call to Arms" where the Defiant, shields down and flying straight to deploy mines is under attack by 3 Jem'hadar fighters. The Rotarran decloaks, blows one attacker away and the other 2 scatter. "You may continue your work Commander, *I* will handle the Jem'hadar". But then Martok is the Four Star Badass.
- They always do it with style, though—for proof, look no further than Star Trek: The Next Generation's The Defector. The Romulans lure the Enterprise into the Neutral Zone to investigate possible Romulan invasion plans. Enterprise finds itself surrounded by two massive Romulan Warbirds. This looks like a hopeless situation, until three Klingon Birds-of-Prey de-cloak and reveal that they have out flanked the Romulan vessels and win the day without firing a shot.
- Sharpe's Challenge sees Richard Sharpe, unarmed and being charged by mooks, saved by the timely arrival of a horseman who blasts the baddies with a seven-barrel Nock gun. So it's a Big Damn Heroes moment, The Reveal and an Awesome Moment all in the one short sequence.
- In the Season 2 finale of Chuck, the day is saved in the form of John Casey and his unit parachuting into the Church, to the tune of Mr. Roboto.
- True Blood: Jason Stackhouse confronts a mob of Maryann's crazed revelers armed with only a chainsaw and a nailgun in order to save Sam from being sacrificed. Thanks to a rare moment of cleverness on his part, it works. Took a Level in Badass, indeed.
- Bones averted this in a recent episode, with the FBI showing up to save the day only to find that the "bad guys" had already departed, and the day was no longer in need of saving
- Dai Sentai Goggle V opens with Akama Ken'ichi AKA Goggle Red saving Dr. Hongou from Deathdark in the nick of time, while just passing by, even before he knew he's going to be Goggle Red.
- Kamen Rider Decade: All Riders Vs. Great Shocker features
all most* of the protagonist Riders in the franchise's 38-year history coming to the aid of Decade and Diend after the two were overwhelmed by Shocker's massive numbers.
- Happens again in Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider: Let's Go!! Kamen Riders, when every Rider (main or not) arrive to take down Great Leader.
- Truth be told, this was something of a big deal with the Showa Riders after ''V3.
- In the first season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, this always happened concerning Sixth Ranger Tommy - Rangers would get their asses handed to them, Zordon calls in Tommy, Tommy cleans up shop. One epic moment is Tommy's I'm Back moment in "Return of the Green Ranger Part 2" when Tommy jumps in, repowered, and saves the Rangers with his Dragon Shield glowing brightly, sending the bad guy scattering. As one YouTube viewer put it, "He saved everyone with the power of his awesome!"
- On Veronica Mars, this seemed to be Logan's main function whenever Veronica got into over her head. Out of every one of them, his biggest BDH moment has to be in 2x08, when Logan points a gun at a bar full of Fitzpatricks, orders them to let Veronica go, and walks out with her. Made all the more awesome by the fact that the gun wasn't loaded.
Logan: Stop! I've had a very bad year.
- In Robin Hood the titular character is trying to negotiate an exchange of prisoners for some valuable McGuffin or other, finding himself hopelessly outnumbered what with all the guards and henchmen milling around. Then as the crowds flee in panic, the rest of the outlaws emerge, with their bows drawn and directed straight at the Sheriff. Robin just turns back to the Sheriff...and smiles.
- And then Marian steps up and puts a knife to the back of the Sheriff's henchman. Awesomeness all round.
- In Merlin during the third season finale Gaius saves Merlin from Morgause, using his magic for the first time in years.
- In Primeval Nick and Cutter are being chased by a Raptor. Connor, who's been ridiculed all episode for his lack of gun skills, barrels in from behind Nick, yells him out of the way and takes a fully grown Raptor down with one shot.
- In another episode, a swarm of Megopterans and a pack of future predators are catching up to the team and all seems lost...cue Becker, thought to be dead already, blasting away from his hiding place inside a car. Damn, that guy is badass.
- Horatio Hornblower: In Retribution, Lieutenant Bush and crew are about to be captured by the Spaniards. Convinced that Horatio has abandoned them, Bush angrily remarks, "If you see Mr. Hornblower, tell him he'll hang from the yardarm." What happens barely half a second later?
- KA-BOOM!! "Glad to see you safe, Mr. Bush!"
- Not to mention, this is the Indefatigable's job in Series One. It could practically be a drinking game to take a shot every time the Indy appears over the horizon to save the day.
- John Watson pulls this off in the first episode of Sherlock in his first Crowning Moment of Awesome by shooting the serial killer right before Sherlock takes one of the pills. From the next building. Through two windows. Over Sherlock's shoulder.
- In Community episode "Epidemiology" when Greendale is overrun by zombies, at the last moment Troy saves the day by cooling everyone down until the military arrived.
- In the third episode of Band Of Brothers, the Germans are assaulting positions held by the 101st Airborne outside of the French town of Carentan. While Easy Company is holding their own, several other companies have been forced back by the German attack. Cue the arrival of 2nd Armored. The Germans, caught off guard, are forced into a panicked retreat.
Music
- This is the core theme of the Coasters' novelty song "Along Came Jones" (written by Lieber and Stoller).
- The free-runner in the "It's Not My Time" video cuts his Big Damn Heroes moment extremely close.
- Skillet - Hero - "A Hero's gonna save me just in time...."
- And that Hero... Jesus Christ himself. Doesn't get any better than that!
- Nate Dogg rolls up and shoots Warren G's would-be robbers just in time in "Regulate".
- My Chemical Romance's video for their hit singles, Na Na Na and SING both held such moments. Unfortunately, neither of them turned out well for the good guys.
- In the Story of Evil fan song "Daughter of Vengeance," Meiko is ambushed by one of Rin's soldiers. Luckily, Kaito, who is leading The Cavalry, arrives just in time to slay him with an arrow.
Professional Wrestling
- This is called the run-in, and can be done by both heels and faces alike — but there's nothing like the crowd's pop when a face runs in to save an overmatched friend.
- Many tag team matches contain a variant of the Big Damn Heroes called the Ricky Morton, where in one member of a tag team is beaten down, and after a period, tags in his fresh partner to the cheers of the crowd. The person giving the tag is the Ricky Morton, the one receiving the tag is going to get a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- An example of a pro-wrestling Big Damn Hero moment would be Stone Cold Steve Austin saving Stephanie McMahon from The Undertaker's black wedding on Monday Night RAW.
- Subverted at WCW Fall Brawl 1996, in which Team WCW was to fight the nWo in a WarGames match. Sting was originally supposed to be part of Team WCW, but then the nWo announced Sting had joined them (while running around with a fake Sting), and would be part of their team instead. Team WCW believed that Sting had actually betrayed them, and went in a man down, and thus were getting their clock cleaned by the nWo. But who should arrive as WCW's fourth man but the real Sting! Sting beat up the entire nWo team all by himself — and then walked out of the match, angry because the WCW guys (including his own best friend Lex Luger) distrusted him enough to believe he'd actually join the nWo. WCW lost the match when Luger submitted to the fake Sting's Scorpion Deathlock.
- At ROH Death Before Dishonor IV, Ring Of Honor was looking at a surefire loss to CZW in Cage of Death after Bryan Danielson clipped Samoa Joe's knee, taking both out of the match, leaving a TWO man advantage for Combat Zone Wrestling. Then, in comes Homicide as the unofficial sixth ROH member. Still down a man, Homicide pinned Nate Webb to win Cage of Death for ROH.
Tabletop Games
- Most RPGs have you appear in the villain's lair just in time, after fighting your way past all his henchmen. This occurs even if you Take Your Time getting there.
- It could be said that Exalted takes this to an extreme, as not only do you show up in the nick of time, but you are all but guaranteed a flashy, even gaudy entrance that defies all logic.
- The ridiculously extensive battle history of Warhammer 40,000 has hundreds of these moments on every side, to the point where in the latest Space Marine codex, Vanguard Veteran Squads have a 'Heroic Intervention' ability exclusively to pull off these moments...though it doesn't always work.
- Though if you have them show up to help a Scout squad (the second wimpiest unit in the Codex) equipped with a teleport homer, it does always work.
- Nobilis has a fairly basic power available to starting characters which ensures they always show up in the nick of time. The more powerful version ensures they ALWAYS show up in the nick of time...even if the bad guys did it 35 minutes ago, or sacrificed the princess last week.
- In Magic: The Gathering, the aptly-named instant Dramatic Entrance lets you turn any given massive creature into your very own Big Damn Hero.
- There's also Avatar of Hope, which can block anything. What's so big damn heroic about it? It costs only two mana to play when you have three life or less.
- Some cards from the Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game have effects that emulate this trope.
- For example, Gorz - Emissary Of Darkness is special summoned when you take damage while having nothing on your field.
- Starlight Road negates the destruction of two or more cards and special summons a Stardust Dragon from you extra deck.
- Not surprisingly, both cards are part of the Meta Game for that exact reason.
Toys
- BIONICLE loves this trope. It's used as a Running Gag in Onua's case, and was used three times in a row in the serial Reign of Shadows.
Video Games
- The beginning of Star Fox 64 features a Big Damn Heroes moment. The Star Fox team flies in and save Corneria from the invading forces of Andross' army.
- Falco gets one in Star Fox Adventures, during the final battle against Andross.
- Wolf O' Donnell gets one in Star Fox Assault when he saves Fox McCloud from a group of Aparoids.
- Peppy sort of gets one during the cutscene before the final mission of Star Fox Assault when he crashes the heavily damaged Great Fox through the barrier blocking the team from entering the lair of the Aparoid Queen.
- Actually, Slippy is about the only really important character who never got one of these moments individually in the series, which is kind of fitting when you consider that Slippy is probably the least popular Star Fox team member with the fanbase by a sizeable margin.
- Red Dead Redemption has this happen as a gameplay mechanic. A man is being held up by roadside banditos? BANGBANGBANG! A scarred, grizzled man on horseback just took out three of them shooting from the hip. A man's wife is being lynched for being black? Thwip! The rope just got shot out. BLAM! All the racists got their brains shot out by a man in a poncho, walking calmly over to help the poor woman, holstering his shotgun. Being attacked by wolves in the middle of the desert? 4 rifle shots later, they lie dead on the ground, the poor man free to go home. Be it rapists, cattle thieves or stage coach robbers, John Marston will show up in the nick of time to stop them and save your life, before bidding you good day and going off on his next advanture. Best Rockstar hero ever? Survey says, yes.
- Unless you're a bad shot. Then the trope plays out a little differently.
- The player can also choose to ignore these and, in some cases, even decide to help out the bad guys instead.
- Story-wise, there's John saving rebel leader Abraham Reyes from execution and later Reyes returning the favor when the Mexican Army decides to betray him.
- Subverted and lampshaded in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, when
Demon Lord Beauty Queen Etna, arrives just in time to save the heroes from being overrun by a neverending flood of zombies. She's actually downright annoyed that she's wound up arriving just in the nick of time, "like one of those 'heroes of justice' losers", and considers just letting the zombies finish you off before taking on the Big Bad - fortunately for you, the Big Bad is carrying the Villain Ball, and sics the Mooks on her instead of letting them finish you. Cue the explosions.
- Happens several times in Skies of Arcadia.
- In Tales of Symphonia, before facing Yggdrasill in Welgaia, all of the members of the party besides Lloyd apparently sacrifice their lives (via being caught in various traps) so that Lloyd may continue onward to face Yggdrasill. Finally, Lloyd enters the chamber in which Yggdrasill is waiting for the completion of the transfer of Martel's soul to Colette's body. Yggdrasill is shocked and extremely angry that Lloyd managed to reach him, and moves to kill him — but then a fireball from above stops Yggdrasill in his tracks. What do you know, the rest of the party didn't die after all, and appeared just in time to save Lloyd! (This scene also counts as a Battle Royale With Cheese.)
- Can happen, largely depending on how you yourself play, in Fallout 1 and 2 - taking on the Regulators in LA towards the end of the first game is a pretty BDH moment; and in the second, there's a sequence where you rescue a girl from a pair of rapist/kidnappers which even features the suitably badass pre-rescue quip "You're one sick puppy. I think it's time somebody put you down". Being Fallout, of course, the moment is kind of subverted when the rescuee threatens to turn your bawsack into a bowtie, but hey.
- Final Fantasy VIII pretty much lives off this trope. Half the game seems to be centered around Big Damn Heroes moments; the best is arguably during the Great Escape sequence at the beginning of disc 2, when Squall does a gunblade-first Dynamic Entry across a seven-story drop to save Zell from being shot in the head.
- There's one in Final Fantasy IV, too! After smiting the Calcobrina dolls, the group is confronted by Golbez, who promptly douses them with a paralyzing agent before summoning a Shadow Dragon to start killing them. Kain gets off lucky if he's in the air before the gas goes off and when the killing begins; Rosa and Yang are still screwed. Golbez happened to be hiding the Villain Ball in his robe at the time, as he takes a moment to bid Cecil farewell...a moment too long, as that's when a Mist Dragon erases Golbez' Shadow Dragon and Cecil's paralysis is lifted via Unicorn Horn before the real boss battle begins. Name the mystery benefactor, folks.
- Final Fantasy IX has one during a cutscene in Disc 3. Eiko and Dagger (Garnet) are praying to summon Alexander and save Alexandria. The Big Bad decides this a bad idea, however, and proceeds to destroy Alexander, with Dagger and Eiko still on him. Cut to Zidane swooping in to save Dagger at the last second, and Dagger with tears in here eyes as she hugs him for being there. Aww..
- And viciously subverted in Final Fantasy X: Yuna is gettin' hitched to the Big Bad, Seymour, so the party comes charging in on an airship to crash the wedding, guns blazing, kicking physics to the curb—and all they do is get overwhelmed by the amount of guards there and ruin Yuna's plan to Send Seymour by giving him material to threaten her with—kill him and they die too. And then they all wind up arrested and imprisoned anyhow, though were it not for Yuna thinking on her feet, they'd be dead. Yuna herself manages to escape and then has to go into the dungeon and rescue them alone. So this is a vicious subversion of the Distressed Damsel too.
- Final Fantasy XIII has a pretty awesome one in the city of Palumpolum. Lightning and Hope are surrounded by hundreds of PSICOM soldiers, with their commander reminding the soldiers how "l'Cie are not human." Just as Lightning's telling Hope to run for his life so she can pull a Heroic Sacrifice/You Shall Not Pass...a section of the nearby building explodes and Snow comes out swinging, punching out several soldiers near him, tossing a gun to new comrade Fang, and summoning Shiva to glaze the whole damn plaza over with ice which he proceeds to ride the Shiva-bike on as Fang rides shotgun. Badass.
- Snow gets quite a few Big Damn Heroes moments in the game, fitting considering he keeps referring to himself specifically as a "Hero".
- During the second trip through the Forsaken Fortress in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Tetra pulls this twice - once to distract the Helmarock King and buy time to rescue the captives and again when Link is in Ganondorf's grasp...only for this attempt to fail and require another dramatic rescue.
- A pretty ironic example, considering that she's the damsel and he's the hero. Well, she's an Action Girl after all.
- It also happens in Twilight Princess, as Link gets confronted by a hoard of enemies in Hyrule castle, and suddenly BAM. Cavalry. Well, infantry, but same effect.
- Fridge Logic sets in as you realize Link has survived much more than the single arrow which was headed for him, and he regularly beats down all sorts of monsters (especially the kind he was up against in this case) without any trouble.
- Standard logic also tells you that it makes the whole Big Damn Heroes scene unneccesary, and not a bad case of logic.
- Especially since nothing about the scene suggests Link couldn't handle it. He was revving up to fight when they stepped in. Their intereference just allowed him to get to the throne room that much faster - which is where the real fight was.
- Pretty much happens in every case of the Ace Attorney series at some point. The prosecution appears to have won and Phoenix is ready to give up but then...OBJECTION! Someone comes in with new evidence to save the day. The last case in the second game ends up boiling down to stalling until the big damn hero arrives.
- Also of note is the third case of the first and third games where Detective Gumshoe pulls this outside of court.
- Not to mention Gumshoe's failed attempt at this in the fourth case of second game, and Franziska's pick up save off of this at the very last second.
- This happens four times during the final showdown of Ace Attorney Investigations, and three◊ of◊ them◊ get dramatic full-screen shots. (Spoilers on the links)
- We go this far and Larry Butz's big save in game 1, case 4 is left out? That one is one of the more epic ones.
- Gumshoe ends up saving Phoenix and Maya's lives just as much as the cases.
- Neverwinter Nights subverts this at the end of Luskan, letting you get to the top of the Host Tower just in time to watch Aribeth signing away her soul from the other side of an unbreakable fence .
- This trope occurs in Halo games several times, with Master Chief rescuing marines, or Johnson rescuing the chief. The third game directly references the Trope Namer, as a character called Sergeant Reynolds, played by Nathan Fillion, states, "Looks like we got here just in the nick of time. What's that make us?" Gamers everywhere immediately replied "Big Damn Heroes, sir!"
- In fact, part of the ad campaign for Halo 3 was based around the beneficiaries of such moments reminiscing about the hero who saved them. You can see a couple of these ads here and here.
- The announcement trailer for Halo 2 is a standout example:
Cortana: "Admiral, tell your men to hold their positions. Reinforcements are on the spoke."
Admiral: "The entire fleet is engaged Cortana. With respect, what the hell sort of reinforcements have you got?"
Mission Log: "STOP DESTRUCTION OF HUMAN RACE...IN PROGRESS"
The Master Chief then proceeds to throw himself out of a rapidly decompressing launch bay on a space station into a pitched space battle in Earth orbit to directly assault a Covenant cruiser... alone
- The Subspace Emissary of Super Smash Bros. Brawl has Sonic showing up just in time to prevent the final boss Tabuu from releasing a superattack on everyone. Also Ness and Falco get their Big Damn Heroes moment.
- Meta Knight manages to save Lucas and Red/Pokemon Trainer from falling to their deaths (or rather falling to their trophycation).
- Link, Mario, Pit, Kirby, and Yoshi get one as well, leaping off a cliff to come to the aid of some of the other heroes who're fighting off the
Heartless Primids.
- Pretty much every character gets one of these at one point or another. Fox bursting out of the wreckage of his Arwing to save Diddy Kong, Captain Falcon using his signature move to take out a ROB who's just annihilated Cpt. Olimar's pikmin team, Ike destroying a Subspace Bomb being carried by the Ancient Minister, this list could earn its own separate page.
- Don't forget The Big Damn Heroes moment of King Dedede, Luigi, and Ness. This might be overlooked because it's mostly in the gameplay.
- Fire Emblem does this in every game out in the US (probably every game, period), generally as reinforcement to the stories Lord showing when they are in a really serious bind. However on easier difficulties this often leads to the reinforcements needing AMAZING projection as they aren't as leveled.
- The first example of the Lord getting to be the "Big Damn Hero" is in Fire Emblem 7 (released in the states as Fire Emblem). Florina (a supporter to the tutorial chapter's lord, Lyn) arrives to the main team of heroes to tell how her Lyn and the castle are under attack, naturally the main team of the game go to save them.
- Second example is in Fire Emblem 10, right when Lucia is going to be executed by the rebellion, The Greil Mercenaries in PERFECT Big Damn Heroes form all show up. What's great is that in the cutscene for their arrival, each one arrives saving another member of the party from being attacked. So any time the villains attempt a counter strike, they are instantly taken down. Making it a string of Big Damn Hero moments. One of the best--if not the best--cutscenes in the game.
- In Mega Man Battle Network 6 (6 being the last game) in the 3rd to last (the last 2 being past the point of no return) cutscreen in the game, the villans realize it is a better idea to take on the Kid Hero in the real world then in cyberspace, only one of these moments save Lan.
- To be broader, Battle Network loves this trope such much that it has a Leit Motif for it.
- Special mention goes to Protoman, who gets these moments all the time.
- Laker from Super Robot Wars Original Generation actually plans this, he lets Elzam keep the Kurogane, and occasionally gives him mechs so he can have moments like these, and aid the Hagane, and Hiryuu Custom from the shadows. In Original Generation 02 the Hagane did this a lot in the early levels pissing off the Shirogane's captain Lee Injun, who was jealous of the Hagane.
- Sanger Zonvolt seems incapable of entering a scene in any other method. These include, saving his former subordinate from Sanger's Evil Knockoff, using his signature move to kill an enemy outright in his first appearance in battle, and when fighting his Evil Knockoff, falling through the ceiling of a shelter designed to survive the end of the world, just in time to save the party.
- Axel Almer and Alfimi both did this in OG Gaiden to play part in the Super Robot Wars MX prologue. When the Jetzt wrecked the Cry Wolves, and it got Foglia killed, Hugo fatally wounded and Albero is sure in to be their next victim, suddenly both of them arrive and attracted the Jetzt, giving Albero time to escape with Hugo.
- An official Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 manga features a rather epic version of this. After the Big Bad is defeated, Son Ganlong appears to take advantage of the Alpha Numbers' weakened state and finish them once and for all. At that point all the Alphas who didn't return in 3 show up to support their friends and dispense an almighty smackdown.
- In Super Robot Wars Compact, Londo Bell comes to the rescue of Judau and Seabook in "A New Strength" and "Inside the Winds of Light". Judau in the former mission and Seabook in the latter mission
- In Super Robot Wars L, believe it or not, in Stage 27, based on the 2nd battle at ORB Kira Yamato is getting the crap beaten out of him by an original villain, only to get his butt saved by...Shinn Asuka, of all people! Also note that this is the 1st stage where Kira has the Strike Freedom.
- Super Robot Wars Z 2: Hakai-Hen had this in a moment when Amuro scares Asakim away from Crowe and warns Crowe on how Asakim was a backstabber.
- In a PSP exclusive mission for Super Robot Wars MX, Aqua pilots a Dragoon for the second time and together with the Dragonars, have to take on a large force of Martian Successors. More enemies show up and wreck Aqua's Dragoon. As a result, the Dragonar team and Aqua are outnumbered. Hugo shows up with an upgraded robot and shows how powerful it is. This instance was supposed to show that Hugo will never let his teammates down in their direst hour.
- In Call of Duty 4 you both play as the Big Damn Heroes in several missions and are blown up by a nuke because of it in one outstanding, totally badass instance and are saved by the Big Damn Russians in the very last mission, though Gaz and Griggs would probably have preferred it if they could have arrived a few moments earlier....
- In Modern Warfare 2, General Sheperd does this to the horribly outnumbered and wounded 141 squad led by Ghost and Roach, personally wielding a .44 magnum to fend off the Russian hordes.
- "Reinforcements? I am the reinforcements."
- The same line occurs in Mass Effect on Virmire, when you ride in to rescue the Salarian recon squad. They are less than impressed with your Bad Ass selves, wondering why the Council didn't send the army they asked for.
- And speaking of Mass Effect, what about "It's the Alliance! Thank the Goddess!" One of the possible endings has the Alliance fleet arrive just in time to save the Council and its flagship, the Destiny Ascension.
- There's also the moment when you have to save the quarian (Tali) from being assassinated.
- Highlighted in Mass Effect 2, when Zaeed says of his loyalty mission "Get it out of the way so we can concentrate on being big goddamn heroes."
- It's really all over the place in both games: Feros with the geth attack, Noveria with the breakout of the rachni, the Citadel itself with Saren's attack, the first time you encounter Tali in both games and her recruitment mission in the second, the Archangel recruitment mission, the assault on the Collector base (if you do it soon enough), saving the hostages from terrorists...there's a reason by the second game paragon Shepard is considered by everyone, including the bad guys, the Biggest Damn Hero in the galaxy.
- In Metal Gear Solid 4, Johnny Sasaki, the resident Butt Monkey of the series, saves both Solid "Old" Snake and Meryl in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and then saves Meryl near the end of the game. Johnny and Meryl then proceed to kick a lot of ass, becoming a Battle Couple in the process. Also Raiden, who would save Snake's life at least twice...the first time cutting off an arm to do so, then the second time appearing without his arms, his sword (Rule Of Cool) first clutched in his teeth and then in his left foot.
- Shinobu during the final boss fight of No More Heroes.
- Subverted multiple times in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, wherein the bounty hunters show up just in time to reactivate a dead orbital cannon and nuke the Space Pirates' asteroid weapon - and then just before they can hit the Big Red Button, Dark Samus shows up and blows them all away, achieving a Big Damn Villain moment of her own.
- And then subverted yet again, as Samus turns out to be Only Mostly Dead, hauling herself to the control panel and activating the cannon before lapsing into a month-long Convenient Coma.
- This is perhaps the only recorded case where this trope is well and truly inverted.
- Samus pulls this off herself in Echoes, if you look at things from the point of view of the Luminoth. The Ing were literally two rooms away from accomplishing their dominations. Two rooms. Then Samus turns up.
- The World Ends with You has Neku and Shiki, in the third day, almost out of time. Then at the last second, Beat and Rhyme show up and finish off the "master of A-East." Since only one player needs to complete the mission to spare everyone from the threat of erasure that comes with running out of time, their action not only spared them, but also Neku, Shiki, and all the other players currently in the game.
- Near the end of their week, Neku and Josh get a few chances to do this during a Taboo Noise rampage, two out of three of which you can skip over and the third one, oddly enough, forces you to save someone who is as good as dead even if you save him from the things.
- At the beginning of the third week, Neku is the only player in the game after all the other players have been taken as his entry fee, meaning that he can't partner up with anybody and is completely defenseless. Just as he's about to get erased, Reaper Beat comes out of nowhere to form a pact with Neku.
- In Mega Man X 2, if X succeeds in retrieving all of Zero's parts from the X-Hunters, Zero will break into the Central Computer's core just before Sigma unleashes his Copy-Zero on X, then proceed to destroy the Copy himself and punch a hole in the floor for X to pursue Sigma, all accompanied by kick-ass heroic music.
- Zero's introduction in the original Mega Man X is another Big Damn Heroes moment that establishes him as a serious Bad Ass.
- At the end of X3 either Zero or Dr. Doppler will arrive just in time to save X from the invincible Viral Sigma.
- X8 allows players to make a team of two characters to take on every level. In the last level in Hard Mode, however, one of them will be incapacitated by Vile going kamikaze. Later in the level, during the confrontation against Sigma, he gets the upper hand, and has the player in a choke hold (in a cutscene). Cue the other character swooping in to save his partner, and the battle resumes.
- X returns the favor at the end of Mega Man Zero 3 when he and the three Guardians help Zero in defeating Omega once and for all.
- But subverted in both Zero 2 and 4. In 2 you arrive to confront Elpizo, and he hasn't destroyed X yet. But as Zero dashes in, he's caught in a capture field and can only watch as X is destroyed. And in 4 Craft fires Ragnarok just as you reach the boss door.
- At the beginning of Zero 4, the Caravan of humans that are fleeing from Neo Arcadia are being chased by Weil's forces, and just as the mooks descend on the Caravan, Zero arrives to save the day.
- "Looks like we are the support, huh, Colonel?"
- Earlier than that, when Marcus, Dom, and Rook- I mean Carmine are exploring the ruins of Ilima City and get pinned down by a squad of Locust, Cole pulls off a superb Big Damn Heroes by showing up and taking out the entire enemy squad by himself. "Nobody plays this game like me!", indeed.
- Early on in Suikoden II, Flik and Victor show up just in time to stop the executions of the main character and Jowy. On your way out, you discover the main character's sister has broken out of jail on her own, and was on her way to attempt the same.
- A variation in War Craft III. Arthas and the village have held the line as best they can, but finally the undead are proving unstoppable...and then Uther, with The Cavalry at his back, charges into battle. But despite his initial joy:
Arthas: Uther! Your timing couldn't have been better!
- ...he becomes defensive later, when he misinterprets Uther's admiration as disbelief that he was good enough to hold out so long.
- In Half-Life 2: Episode 2, you try to protect a defenseless vortigaunt with two mooks and two busted turrets. By the last wave, it's the three of you and one working turret against dozens of Antlions. Then the last turret breaks down. You figure this is going to get unpleasant. Then, three Vortigaunts, who have been nothing but background filler until now, wander into the scene. Moments later, it's you, two mooks, and three Vortigaunts, against HUNDREDS of Antlions, all coming at once. And you know what? The Antlions never stood a chance. I really never expected the Vorts would get a "Big Damn Hero" moment, but there it was.
- I believe it was Griggs who said it best:
Griggs: Jesus! I've never seen the Vorts this PISSED!
- Alyx gets a fine moment of her own in Half-Life 2 when she saves Gordon from the Metrocops early in the game. Then there's Gordon himself, who only hesitates to fling himself into alien dimensions and unstable fusion reactors if you, the player, make him.
- It's made even more awesome when you hear snapping and the high-pitched whine from dead Metrocops.
- And it decisively shifted the Vortigaunt's personality from fugly alien Magic Negros to definite badasses.
- Tales of Phantasia offers a rather interesting example, wherein one character performs a Big Damn Heroes moment for the player characters...who immediately perform one back. Near the beginning of the game, the Big Bad Dhaos is unsealed, and Morrison casts a spell to send Cless and Mint 100 years into the past in order to save them from Dhaos. The two of them go on a journey (collecting two other allies in the process), and eventually activate another time warp to appear between Morrison and Dhaos, mere seconds after Morrison had sent them away. To the player, it took 30 or so hours of gameplay, but to the mentor and the bad guy, they appeared to have warped right back...until they proceed to kick Dhaos's ass, something they certainly couldn't have done when Dhaos first appeared.
- All of a sudden, some guys rushed into the room!
- And in the endgame, you, the player fill this role.
- What, no mention of Lucas showing up to rescue Kumatora, Wess, and Salsa when they were surrounded by a bunch of pigmasks and Fassad? He showed up with a baby drago(dinosaur like thing). The baddies laughed at him. The baby dragon made a noise. MOTHER drago showed up. Awesomeness ensued.
- City of Heroes: Most of the missions involve you arriving just in time to save someone, keep something from being from being destroyed, or stop a villain's plan.
- The Trope Namer is actually referenced in one Task Force. The badge you get for defending the city's dam from three different groups of enemies? Big Dam Hero
- There's two in fairly close succession at the beginning of Valkyria Chronicles, the first where Welkin saves his adopted sisters life by clubbing an imperial soldier about to shoot her with a fence-post, the second moments later when the siblings get their dad's old tank up and running and perform a proper rescue of the town watch in Bruhl. Alicia even mentions 'Now you're my hero' to Welkin afterwards.
- Lancer of Fate/stay night is king of this trope in the UBW path. Has his heart impaled, and then he kills the Big Bad of the last route in one attack. That's cool right? Heroic determination and stuff, nice from a guy who was basically just a minion. Only then Shinji shows up, and gets big damn heroed out as well, though not fatally. Still walking around and chatting sans heart, he lets Tohsaka go and burns the entire castle down.
- Gilgamesh subverts it by turning into the next baddie. Archer zigzags on the 'hero' bit.
- Rider does an unexpected one in Heaven's Feel, showing she's not as weak as she was in other routes.
- Tragically subverted in Cave Story, wherein the BDH arrives moments too late to save the victim from being force fed a red flower, and is killed moments later when he tries to attack the villains in a rage. And then you have to Shoot the Dog.
- Later played straight in the final, good ending, where you and Curly Brace are nearly crushed to death by a set of moving walls before Balrog the flying toaster, of all people, swoops in to save you.
- In the last mission of Battalion Wars 2, Pierce has no fewer than 3 Big Damn Heroes moments: providing 3 Fighters to combat the air force; shooting down Kaiser Vlad's escape transport, rendering his obtaining the staff useless, at least until the next game; and giving Betty a ride on his personal Fighter to rescue her from being nuked by Vlad's usage of the staff used to call the satellite weapon.
- Mech Warrior 3, you have picked up two of your 3 available npc allies and are traveling across country to try and rendezvous with mechwarrior Keith Andrew, who you have been in contact with for much of the game. On the way, in dire need of repairs, you come across an enemy fortress and secure it for supplies. The enemy responds by sending a massive force, and another from the other way, and there's an assault mech closing from the west, wait isn't that...
Alan Matilla: Can you read me, Damocles Command? Looks like you need a hand.
- Turns out you're also his best chance of survival since he can't even reload without assistance, but credit for the entrance. Keith Andrew never joins you and eventually meets with a rescue ship that you can't reach.
- There's a great one of these in World of Warcraft, during the Northrend quest Tirion's Gambit. At the end of a long (and excellent) quest chain, you enlist the help of Tirion Fordring to get a shot at destroying an artifact important to the Lich King. You, Tirion and a small band of Argent Crusade paladins sneak incognito into the Cathedral of Darkness, but the Lich King appears and exposes you all. Surrounded by elite Cultists, you and the Crusaders prepare for a hopeless battle, when...
Koltira Deathweaver: Take courage, crusaders. You do not fight alone!
- Highlord Darion Mograine and the Knights of the Ebon Blade rush in to save the day.
- And now there is a new one with the Halls of Reflection instance. You attempt to confront the Lich King, but your group can't last, so you flee down a secret exit trying to hold off the hordes of approaching undead.
Trapped on the edge of a cliff outside the tunnel, Lich King closes in, and then your factions airship rises up the cliff behind you and seals the enemies in the tunnel with a few well aimed cannon blasts.
- Horde players starting off in the Borean Tundra Northrend get their butts saved from the Scourge—or more directly, becoming a part of it—by none other than Varok Saurfang himself.
- Alliance players have something similar happen during their version of the quest chain leading up to Wrathgate in Dragonblight. As the player is confronting the lich who is commanding the Scourge ground forces in the area, the lich simply casts a spell that paralyzes the player and all of the NPC Alliance soldiers who are present. As the lich is gloating about his seemingly easy victory, Bolvar Fordragon shows up and instantly frees everybody from the paralysis spell. Although the player can help in the ensuing battle, their contributions don't really amount to much as Bolvar more or less solos the aforementioned lich by himself.
- Icecrown Citadel makes Tirion Fordring one. You think you're doing just fine, beating Arthas to pulp, but then, he just wipes the raid in an instant. Cue Fordring getting out of his ice block saving the day.
- In the post-Cataclysm Eastern Plaguelands, there's a quest chain where you travel the Plaguelands with a caravan consisting of a merchant, two would-be Paladins, and others. When one of the would-be Paladins runs off and gets himself captured, it becomes your job to track him down and, upon doing so, you see a cutscene where everyone you recruited into the Caravan at that point will show up for the rescue.
- In Resident Evil 3, If Nicholai gets away with the helicopter (or you destroy it), Barry shows up with a helicopter and saves Jill and Carlos just before the nuke hits.
- Later on, in Resident Evil 5, Chris and Sheva are being attacked by Ganados on dirt-bikes, and are just abrely holding them off - until Captain Stone and Delta Squad arrive to save the day in a thoroughly badass instance.
- Subverted all the time in Final Fantasy Tactics: Ramza tries to storm the castle he thinks Princess Ovelia is held in, except he runs into Agrias, who managed to escape by herself; a subsequent rescue attempt turns out to be a trap. Throughout the plot, Ramza pretty much either stumbles into rescue missions by accident or arrives too late to do anything.
- Depending on how much Level Grinding you did prior to fighting Wiegraf, the moment when your allies show up to reinforce you in the second stage of the battle, followed by Weigraf summoning his own monsters to even the score can be either a "awesome, cue the overkill" or Oh Crap moment.
- Ace Combat 6, Mission 12: The Player Character and his Wingman saved their hometown from a WMD attack, and must now make it back to base. However, the Estovakians start to send in entire fighter squadrons (including a jammer and 2 AWACS in) to kill you. Just when you think you're about to die, cue every friend you ever helped to come and save your rear.
- In Golden Sun 2, at the top of Jupiter lighthouse. Felix is initially ordered to move to the top of the lighthouse alone while the other party members try to help rescue the previous game's lead party. Piers insists on accompanying him, and the two are attacked by the 2 antagonists, Agatio and Karst, who had set the trap which detained the other characters. One by one the battle is interrupted as your party members return, and (just too late) eventually the entire cast of protagonists arrive, causing Agatio and Karst to retreat due to being outnumbered.
- Damas from Jak 3 drives ''through a wall'' and into a bunch of Dark Maker satellites, making them explode nicely.
- In Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, Sora is alone facing Larxene (having angrily told Donald and Goofy to stay behind after they started questioning his trust in his memories), badly wounded after his fight with the Riku Replica. Just as she is about to attack him, Goofy's shield comes flying at her face, a spell heals Sora, and Goofy and Donald place themselves between Sora and Larxene, reminding Sora that they had promised to protect him and that they would always stick together. Cue asskicking.
- King Mickey does this so often through the series, if there was ever a need for seperate pages of this trope's examples, he could be the image for Video Games, with the caption of "Yes, really."
- Towards the end of Lufia II, an army of monsters appears to prevent your Global Airship from taking off for the Very Definitely Final Dungeon. In comes the Badass Normal Dekar, who had supposedly died in a Heroic Sacrifice much earlier in the game, riding a whale for no other reason than to make for a more epic entrance.
- In Mario Party DS, after the shrunken heroes have a few rounds of "fun" in Bowser's pinball machine, he decides to use his rod to shrink them even further. Cue Donkey Kong bursting into the castle, disarming Bowser, and stomping on the rod, restoring everyone to normal. By accident.
- At the end of the first Bioshock, at the end of the fight against Fontaine, the spliced-up musclehead slams Jack across the room, stalks over, and is about to pound him/you into mush, when a Little Sister jumps on Fontaine from behind and stabs him with the ADAM-collecting syringe. After he throws her off, a small horde of Little Sisters jumps him and stab him to death.
- At the end of Descent 3, the Material Defender is in the clutches of a robot who is infected with a computer virus, while the head of his former employer laughs and taunts him. Cut to the cute little Guidebot wandering in, realizing that his friend is in trouble, proceeds to spam low-level flares at the robot, distracting the it long enough for the Material Defender to destroy it. You think ol' Guidebot just saved the life of his friend, but no: those flares just speared the bad guy to the wall as well.
- In Justice League Heroes, Superman is completely focused on breaking into Darkseid's fortress while Wonder Woman defends him from attacking parademons. Just as she's about to be overwhelmed, the rest of the League shows up and cleans house.
- Dragon Age: Origins. City Elf origin has one where the hero is too late to the rescue. However the victim still describes the Warden-to-be like this afterwards if you still took revenge.
- Happens in The Lord of the Rings Online in a quest where you go into the Barrow-Downs, not long after Frodo and the hobbits passed through there. At the end of a dungeon, you run inte a powerful wight that you can't beat, because he restores his health to full everytime it gets too low. Enter Tom Bombadil, who collapses the roof on top of him, allowing you to escape. You can later return to that dungeon to destroy the wight for good.
- A rare inversion - "All hail the Prince of Persia! A greater hero the land has never known! You have saved the people of this city, and we have come to repay the favor!" It's not often the crowd comes to rescue the hero.
- In Tales of the Abyss, Guy turns a hostage situation around by skydiving off the Tartarus, using the gun-wielding Legretta to break his fall, and rescuing the hostage in a matter of seconds. As if that were not impressive enough, Legretta immediately attempts to shoot Guy while his back is turned, only to have the latter casually block the bullet with his sword.
- The arrival of the line piece in Tetris is usually this.
- In Starcraft II, Jim Raynor pulls an epic one by saving General Warfield and wiping a Zerg attack wave on Char. When thanked by Warfield, with a gunship silhouetting him from behind and sniper rifle of doom in hand, Raynor replies "All in a day's work General!"
- In Mega Man Legends when you release Mega Man Juno he is about to initiate the carbon reinitialization program and kill everyone on the island you crash landed on. In order to make sure Mega Man Volnutt/Trigger doesn't interfere he traps him in an electrical field. He would've been stuck there if Tron and Tiesal Bonne hadn't showed up.
- In Assassins Creed you get to save citizens from guards harassing them and they return the favour by forming vigilante packs who help Altaďr fight guards or catch fleeing targets. Although this was absent in Assassins Creed 2, it returns in Brotherhood. This time, the citizens become novice Assassins under Ezio.
- Plot-wise, there was the time Altaďr was overwhelmed by enemies at Masyaf but they are scattered by a swarm of throwing knifes from Malik and three other assassins. Also of note, Ezio's first mission with the hidden gun. The thief says to stay back or he'll kill the courtesan because he mistakenly believes that a Master Assassin has to be near you to kill you.
- In Star Wars Bounty Hunter, Jango Fett and Zam Wessel meet for the first time and partner up, only to part ways later over a misunderstanding. Near the end of the game, Fett is shackled to a table and being tortured by the Dark Jedi Big Bad, only for Zam to arrive in an attempt to kill her. Her shot is deflected back into her, but before Zam can be finished off she fires a shot into one of Fett's cuffs, allowing him to drive off the villain and save both their lives.
- At the end of the first level in Singularity, the Big Bad has the player at gunpoint, just killed his partner, and things are looking grim. Then the British agent Kathryn Only-One-Name sends him and his men ducking under a hail of gunfire and directs the player along the path to safety as soldiers fire at his back. Later in the game, the player repays the favor by kicking open a door and shooting the two soldiers that have Kathryn at gunpoint.
- At the end of Dead Space 2, Isaac has won the day yet again, defeated the apparition of Nicole, killed the Marker and excised the tainted sections of his own mind. Badly injured and with the remnants of the Sprawl undergoing a cataclysmic reactor meltdown, he sits down and waits for the end. Then Ellie flies a fucking gunship through the ceiling to haul Isaac's ass out of there.
- EP7 of Umineko No Naku Koro Ni has Willard H. Wright saving Lion from being shot by Kyrie by freezing time and slicing apart the screen.
- In the last dungeon of Nier, The Masked People show up just in time to save the heroes from being killed by a giant boar. They also have a Heroic Sacrifice when they hold off the Boar so the party can continue.
- Pokemon Black And White: Bianca calls for the Unova gym leaders to come and fight versus Team Plasma at N's Castle, after the Elite Four challenge. They arrive just in time to avoid a serious confrontation.
- Pokemon Diamond And Pearl (and Platinum) Just when it looks like you'll have to deal with Commander Mars and Commander Jupiter at the same time while Cyrus destroys the universe, your rival shows up and helps you defeat them both.
- Probably every one in three missions in Vanguard Bandits has one of these.
- Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal: Captain Qwark shows up to help during the final boss fight.
- In the 2010 remake of Splatterhouse as Dr. West is about to sacrifice Jennifer to the Corrupted, he hear a nasty ripping noise. He turns around just in time to see an enraged Rick holding West's severed arm and using it to pummel him away from his girlfriend.
- In The Reconstruction, this is brutally subverted. After the world is destroyed in chapter 6 and the Big Bad kills or enslaves everyone, Dehl's guild is the people's only hope...but they aren't able to come until it's far too late.
- Near the end of Leisure Suit Larry 5, Larry's home flight starts plummeting from the sky due to the pilot's contract expiring, but being a former flight simulator salesman, he takes control and safely lands the plane.
- In Xenoblade Chronicles after re-locating Metal Face he summons multiple copies of the Mechon you just busted your ass trying to beat, it looks hopeless... until your bailed out by Dunban and Dickson. The rescue however fails until your bailed out by another Big Damn Heroes by an unidentified man.
Web Comics
- Antimony from Gunnerkrigg Court finds herself on the receiving end of this three separate times (some less successful than others).
- Zeetha from Girl Genius pulls this off with characteristic flair...and a bit of fortunate coverage.
- And again in the very next strip with just about everyone else — this time featuring a heaping helping of "What did I miss?"
- Gwynn (of all people) actually pulls one of these off in this Sluggy Freelance strip.
- There's a much bigger one in the Vampires storyline, when Riff, Bun-bun, Aylee and Kiki head to save Torg and Zoë from vampires. Delays caused by Bun-bun and the others cause them to arrive in the nick of time too, though they had several days to start with. Played only partly straight in the end, as Torg and Zoë end up killing the most important vampires themselves, albeit only enabled to do so by the help.
- No Rest for the Wicked: just as the Witch is about to shove November into the oven, Red arrives.
- Pulled twice by different characters in this The Order of the Stick strip, plus lampshaded:
Bozzok: Damn it!!! How do the good guys keep DOING that????
Belkar: Trade secret.
- Belkar has one moment when he is cured from the curse that left him half-comatose for several weeks of comics.
Belkar: Back me up and I'll cut a path through these guys. Wait, did I say "path"? I mean a five-lane blacktop highway with a two-lane service road - and I'm packin' a fist full of tokens and a radar detector."
- Tedd in El Goonish Shive pulls a non-violent one.
- Not to mention a more violent one at the end of the Sister II arc from Nanase
- "Rejoice, for very bad things are about to happen."
- In Ctrl+Alt+Del, Rory does this for Ethan by means of a Dynamic Entry.
- Also here, when Ethan saves Lilah from the Xbot. Slightly subverted in that the Xbot then attacks him.
- 8-bit Theater has the following:
- Black Mage returning as Hellking and banishing Lich to Hell.
- Red Mage slaying Ur from the inside right before the apocalypse started.
- Dragoon killing Muffin as she had Thief in her hand.
- And finally...White Mage and 3 other white mages killing Chaos.
- Invoked in Buttlord GT, where Buttlord gets to the battle on time, but refuses to interfere until his allies are half-dead.
- Just when it looked like Sixx was lost to Butterfly and Trina, Ginger and Laura break into subspace, which should have been impossible for the latter. Ginger takes out Trina, and Laura gives Sixx a Cooldown Hug, giving her the strength to withstand Butterfly's assault.
- Several of these in The Water Phoenix King have been subverted or ambiguous (everyone chasing around in the tunnels in Chapter 1, the anticlimactic fight in the clearing in Chapter 2) but when Gilgam and the Commander finally arrive at the inn just in time to give the magic-users cover enough to repair their defenses at the conclusion of "Pride of the North" it's classic, and Book 4 takes it up to 11 when Anthem and Vish are the only ones left to go try to rescue all the real warriors from the Temple...CMOA, bringing a lot of themes full-circle there.
- Yo-Jin-Bo has its own moment of the heroes saving the other half of the heroes. Sayori trips and falls as she and Muneshige are running to first escape the castle. The ninjas have her surrounded and are about to kill her. Enter five wise-cracking heroes. Those poor ninjas never regain their competence.
- In the "Armadeaddon" story-arc in Penny Arcade, it looks like Gabe and Tycho are about to be overrun by the zombie horde when they are saved by Fruit Fucker! Fruit Fucker: Make Fruit Your Bitch.
FRUIT FUCKER has joined the party!
- In All Manner Of Bad the hideout was attacked while half the group was away retrieving family and loved ones. One of those characters made an end of the world plan with his wife that included zombies. Upon their return he and his wife open fire on the huge horde of zombies attacking their hideout (and former workplace). Partially subverted in the last panel as their self-proclaimed bad assitude is wittily rebutted.
- Occurs in Far Out There when Sophia and Claire finally respond to Ichabod's call for help.
- Seen again when Tabitha saves Bridget and Alphonse from Santa.
- In Endstone, Kyri intervenes to prevent slaughtering higher animals (Little Bit Beastly humans).
- In Zokusho Comics just as a goblin sorcerer is about blow up a ten year old, Jin comes out of nowhere and twists the goblin's head around 180 degrees.
- Cube (twice) and Madeline in Rusty and Co..
- Lewie in Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic had to leave the Mountain on rather bad terms with everyone. He returned when they kissed their butts goodbye, apparently from under their current problem, with a blazing mushroom cloud and the comment "Hah! Gotcha!". Just a reminder: Lewie can be a badly messed-up goofball, but he's also a very old, overpowered and Nigh Invulnerable spellhurler.
Web Original
- In Red vs Blue, when Church, Tex and Tucker are about to be overrun by cloned Wyoming's, The Red's make an epic entrance complete with music, proceeding to blow away all the clones.
- Not to mention the final Episode/Chapter of Revelation when Wash tries, and fails, to face Meta by himself...cue the Reds and Tucker rushing in to...actually save the day!
- There are a few instances of this in Survival of the Fittest. A notable example is that of Seth Mattlock rescuing Bryan Calvert and Tory Johnson from a player - pulling it off in the true spirit of the trope: just in the nick of time. Amusingly, this is because he waited before pulling off the save, although he was, admittedly, trying to get the best possible shot on the bad guy. It also turns into an unintentional Heroic Sacrifice.
- Also in v4, counter-terrorist group STAR show up, take Danya's HQ hostage, and rescue a large number of the students from the island.
- A somewhat common climax for the Bunny Kill series is for the hero to be outmatched by the Big Bad and get saved by another major character...only for that character to get effortlessly one-shotted by the Big Bad.
- One of the Cheat Commados, from Homestar Runner, is aptly named Reinforcements, for often being , well, reinforcements.
- Andrew Hazel, who saves Alec from Boris's firing squad in Sapphire Episode III.
- Team Four Star's Dragonball Z AbridgedLampshades this upon Goku's entrance into the fight versus Nappa and Vegeta. "Hey guys, what'd I miss? Oh. Are they all..."
- When the main characters are cornered in There Will Be Brawl, Captain Falcon comes out of the alley, gives a speech about only he gets to bruise Pit's face, and Falcon Punches Saki and Issac to dust.
- Almost every time a new character is introduced in Dead Fantasy, said character is intervening to aid someone else in a fight. In fact, very few fights have had a clear winner, since every time someone's on the verge of defeat, someone else has come to save them. So far, Rikku, Hitomi, Tifa, Rinoa, Cloud, and Ryu Hayabusa have pulled Big Damn Heroes moments.
- In Darwin's Soldiers, when terrorists are attacking the control room, Shelton is saved by Cobalt Squad busting through a window.
- The end of Paw's Top Nine Modern Video Game Themes. That Chick with the Goggles, Angry Joe, and The Spoony One all come in to save the day against Dark Paw . And it is AWESOME.
- This trope pretty much makes up the beginning of the Anniversary battle, first by The Nostalgia Chick and then everyone coming in after her.
- In Yukari is Free, the RED Pyro gets quite an impressive one when he saves Fuuka from the BLU Spy.
- Since they were all about superheroic action, most campaigns in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe featured this sort of scene all the freaking time.
- In the second episode of The Fantastic Favio Bros, LeTony tries to convince Tony to take ecstasy as part of his goal of Everybody Must Get Stoned. Right as Tony is about to take it, Favio arrives to punch it out of his hand and provide a motivational speech.
- Subverted in Atop the Fourth Wall at the end of the Mechakara arc. 90's Kid, Ninja-Style Dancer, and Harvey Finevoice show up to save Linkara from Mechakara...but then run away when they realize that their attacks aren't doing anything to him.
- Happens occasionally in Marvels RPG, which comes with the Superhero setting. A recent example is Black Knight appearing from out of nowhere and cutting off the Hulk's arm to save Aura.
- Ivan comes to Arthur's rescue in The Quest For Geekdom's season 1 finale.
Western Animation
- In Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension, this happens a few times. The first is Candace-2 saving Phineas, Ferb, Perry, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, and Candace from a lava pit after they were being sent to their doom. She rides a giant lawn gnome, smashing into the Mecha-Mooks and throwing the Other Dimensioninator remote to Phineas, which he catches.
- She then gets apprehended by Doof-2, and is sent to jail. But, Jeremy-2, Phineas-2 and Ferb-2 bust her out.
- Next, in the film's climax, Perry comes to the aid of his fellow animal agents fighting off Doof-2's Mecha-Mooks. Phineas rescues Perry afterward. Finally, the kids come to their aid, using almost all of Phineas and Ferb's previous inventions.
- Transformers: Beast Wars has too many of these to list, generally set up by cutting to the good guys headed towards where they're needed, then cutting back to their destination and letting a scene play out until it's a good time for it to be interrupted by weapons fire. The best example of the trope occurred in "Coming Of The Fuzors, Part 2", when the Maximals are outgunned and literally surrounded. When it looks like they're done for (Megatron says, "Finish it."), the wall of the Maximal baseship blows open to reveal the new-and-improved Optimus Primal, Back from the Dead and ready for a fight.
- Transformers: Full of moments like these, mostly when a character is either first introduced, or appeared to be at death's door previously. One of the best examples has to be the episode "Key to Vector Sigma" where Menasor has Superion pinned and is about to impale him on a large spike - only for Omega Supreme, nearly destroyed earlier in that episode, to show up and KO him.
- In fact, Optimus Prime's entire fight scene against the Decepticons and Megatron from the 1986 Animated Movie is a Big Damn Heroes moment. This is acknowledged when Kup says "Optimus did it. He turned the tide".
- Avatar The Last Airbender: "The Boiling Rock" has Mai saving the group from having the gondola they're in dropped into the boiling lake.
- Also, in "Sozin's Comet": Sokka and Toph are about to fall off an airship, and are surrounded by Fire Nation soldiers...in comes Suki, riding on top of another airship, giving them someplace to jump down to and destroying the first airship at the same time.
- If Appa is not with the group in a battle scene, then when he shows up it is pretty much guaranteed to be a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- Zuko saves Iroh from being crippled by Earthbenders early in Book 1. They then proceed to mop the floor with them.
- Happens here and there in Danny Phantom.
Pariah: *holding Danny and Vlad in his hand, both knocked out* Ghosts and humans! Is there no end to this day's surprises?
Valerie: Hey, stoneface! Surprise! *shoots him in the face*
- Also comes up in The Fairly OddParents a few times. In fact, it's the first thing we see Crash Nebula doing.
- The second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon has two such moments: the first occurs in "City at War", when Raphael, who had abandoned the turtles after offered to join forces with The Foot, returns for the final battle with Splinter in tow. The second occurs in "The Day of Awakening", when Cody, who had been left behind on Earth, burst into Moonbase Bishop to save the turtles from Sh'Okanabo.
- Splinter gets one of his own in the first battle with the Shredder, though given it was Shredder who killed his master and was now trying to kill his sons, it makes sense he'd want a piece of the guy.
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command episode "The Return of XL" hangs a lampshade on this practice.
Booster: I just hope we're in time!
Buzz: It wouldn't be a real rescue if we were too early.
- The opening title sequence of the animated G.I. Joe movie definitely counts. So awesome that it overshadowed the rest of the film.
- From Futurama: "How Hermes Requisitioned his Groove Back"
Morgan: Bender's brain lost in the master in pile, and it would take some sort of giant, mechanical, atomic-powered sorting machine to find him.
Hermes: You rang?
- In The Simpsons, when Bart is being mauled by a wolf (on school grounds, why not) when in steps Groundskeeper Willie, shirtless and ready to kick ass.
- In the season 3 premiere of Metalocalypse, a Corrupt Corporate Executive was trying to force Dethklok to sign a new contract advantageous to him. Nathan was just about to put his signature on it when Charles Ofdensen, their thought dead manager, shows up in the doorway to stop them.
- Later that season, when most of the band is captured by an evil sentient robot with a bomb inside it, and Ofdensen is powerless to help (possibly), Pickles pulls this trope off after resolving to Take a Third Option to fall off the wagon and save the band at the same time.
"I AM BACK MOTHERFUCKER!"
- In an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle Bullwinkle refuses to put out the fuse of a bomb until the last moment because "Heroes always arrive in the TA-DA! nick of time."
- Bunnies get to be Big Damn Heroes in Watership Down, when Hazel and his runners lure a Big Damn Dog to the warren, just in time to save Bigwig's life by decimating Woundwort's troops.
- Invoked in Justice League. Batman is falling without a parachute after ejecting from the Batplane, and is saved by Superman at the last moment.
Batman: Batman to all points. I could use some air support. Since I can't fly. At all...Now would be good.
- This happens a lot in Jonny Quest. One example would be in Manhattan Maneater, when an amoral hunter is about to shoot a white tiger. Just before he pulls the trigger, a gangster steps in the way and refuses to back down. And another happens not a minute later, when the tiger leaps to attack - only to be shot by a tranquilizer, thanks to Race and Dr. Quest who just made it to the scene.
- Subverted on Jimmy Two-Shoes, when Beezy is being forced to marry the Weavil Princess. First, Heloise bursts in, demanding the wedding stop...only for her to realize it wasn't the McPherson wedding and dismiss herself. Then Jimmy comes in to try and stop it, only for the wedding cake to distract him. The marriage goes through, though the Princess runs off anyway.
- In the 1982 animated film Heidi's Song, Peter the goatherd and his animal friends crash their way into the basement as Heidi is fighting off the rats. Complete with the "That's What Friends Are For" melody playing in the background, no less.
- Bob in ReBoot gets to do one of these right when the Web Riders are about to slaughter everyone on the Saucy Mare. But instead of fighting the Web Riders he orders them to stop, having gained their trust offscreen.
- Teen Titans: Way, way too many to list, considering it's a show about heroes. There are a few notable moments, however:
- Red X, of all people, has one of these when he shows up out of nowhere just in time to prevent Robin from falling to his death by snatching Robin out of thin air and tossing him to safety on a catwalk.
- Believe it or not, Scooby-Doo gets one in episode 10 of Mystery Inc. He rescues Velma and Shaggy from a demonic robot dog by beating it senseless with a forklift. Think about that for a second. Scooby Doo beats a robot dog that would make the terminator proud to a pulp with a forklift. Words cannot describe how awesome it is. Watch it here, starting at 2:55
- Possibly a nod to Shaggy and Scooby's Big Damn Heroes moment in Scooby Doo and the Alien Invaders.
- Ben 10: Grandpa Max has seven words for you:
"Get your claws off my grandson, Vilgax!"
- Green Lantern: Emerald Knights: The entire Corps is collectively moving a planet toward their enemy using all their willpower, but it's not enough. And then, who shows up via portal but the Green Lantern who "doesn't socialize": Mogo who is a Green Lantern but who is also himself a planet.
- Frequently in Thundercats 2011 but most notably:
- Deconstructed in "Omens Part One" when Lion-O, Tygra and Cheetara attempt to save some stockaded Lizard prisoners from abuse, only to turn the Powderkeg Crowd of Thunderian Cats into an Angry Mob in the mood for a Vigilante Execution, triggering a brawl which Lion-O's father Claudus has to stop. He is none too pleased that his son's been protecting Lizards.
- Played straight in "Omens Part 2" during the siege of Thundera with Claudus and Tygra saved by the Super Speed Speed Blitz of the Clerics, then by Lion-O toting Sticky Bombs, when the pair are twice-surrounded by turncoat General Grune and his Lizard-manned Walking Tanks.
- And again in "The Song of the Petalars", when the cats look hopelessly outnumbered and about to die, who should arrive to say them but Panthro in the Thundertank. Made even more awesome by the fact that he was declared as a dead hero is the opening episode.
- Code Lyoko is the epitome of this. They're five teenagers fighting against an evil AI who wants to rule the world and can virtual monsters into the real world.
- A special shout out goes to Franz Hopper, who sacrifices himself to power a program to shut down XANA.
Real Life
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