Friend Or Idol Decision - Television Tropes & Idioms

Something the hero has quested for intently is now within his grasp.

It could be a valuable treasure, personal knowledge about his unknown past, a chance to avenge an old wrong, or maybe the very thing needed to finally get off the island and negate Failure Is The Only Option.

But at the same time, a friend or ally who has helped him is lying unconscious on the floor, about to be crushed by a collapsing ceiling, eaten by monsters, or murdered by the Big Bad and his minions.

There's only enough time to save one — which one is it going to be?

Of course, a true hero will choose to save his friend over taking the treasure every single time. (Besides, it wouldn't be wise to resolve a whole major ongoing plotline right in the middle of the season, now would it? Or to lose any of the regulars, either.) It's very rare that the hero manages to Take A Third Option and do both; that's usually reserved for situations where a villain forces a hero to make a sadistic choice.

Whether villains know this and deliberately set up such situations to prevent their own capture (or to ensure that they can get the heroes later) is left as an exercise to the reader.

An Aesop with usually Anvilicious "My friends are more important to me than anything else" overtones almost always follows.

If employed too often, can start to try the audience's patience and make them wonder why they don't Just Eat Gilligan. They won't, of course. Who knew being good could suck so much?

See also Hostage For Mc Guffin. A specific form of The Sadistic Choice and a classic Moral Dilemma.

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