De Terminator - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): The Determinator

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

Every character needs a certain amount of Heroic Willpower, but there are some who take it just too far. The personification of raw perseverance, this is the character - good guy or bad, and usually male (but not always) - who never gives up. Ever. No matter what. Whatever other attributes he may possess, his persistence stands out.

There is no stopping the Determinator. He does not understand tact. He does not Know When To Fold Em, and it's a waste of time to tell him the odds. No one can reason with him. He'll do whatever he has to without question. No price is too great to pay for success, up to and including his own life (and others'). Do not expect him to realize he might be better off letting it go, even if he can barely stand, for he is the one who will not give up until death. If you're ever kidnapped or lost with no hope of rescue, he'll be the one who will find you.

Whether his super willpower ultimately leads to his victory or destruction tends to depend on his place in the story. For heroes, "hit the villain until he drops" is a virtue that will be rewarded in a My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment, especially if he's the Badass Normal with a Screw Destiny attitude. The villain loses simply because the hero is too stubborn to stay down.

For anti heroes, it's a sign of why they're too insane to be heroes. Anti heroestend to lack genre blindness in this role, often looking down on their heroic counterparts for whom victory/success comes more easily. This makes the Determinator hard to fit on the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism - at times he seems to stand off to one side of the Scale and reach for both ends at once.

As for villains, especially those heavily influenced by comic book/cartoon cliches, this tendency will often manifest via We Will Meet Again. They tend to be polarized as either an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who keeps trying despite having no chance of winning, or a terrifying Implacable Man / Super Persistent Predator who keeps coming after the hero despite things that by all rights they shouldn't have survived, and frequently elicit cries of "Why won't you die?!"

The nobility of his goal is not necessarily proportionate to his persistence. This is just as often an obsessive rival with a grudge as it is a hero on a chivalrous quest. In any case, you admire his dogged persistence even in the same breath that you might have to say, "What an idiot!". There is no line for him between "perseverance" and "insanity."

In shonen anime, it's comparatively rare to find a main character who isn't one of these. Likewise, practically every scrolling shooter boss ever won't give up, even when it's had huge holes blown in it, is trailing smoke and flames, or has mostly fallen apart. In fact, it may actually get more powerful as a result.