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Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
A character does something incredibly brave and dies, is maimed, or is otherwise irrevocably harmed doing it.
A bad character who was once good (especially corrupt police) can redeem himself in the last act by taking the bullet (etc) that was meant for the hero. Thus expunging all his previous evil, avoiding forcing the hero to arrest/confront him, and avoiding any real life penalties like disgrace, jail, etc. Note this is separate from Redemption Equals Death in that, in this case, the death and redemption come in a single act.
For some reason, the hero involved will inevitably be compared to Jesus.
There are essentially three kinds of Heroic Sacrifice:
- The one at the beginning of the series, which sets the tone for the rest of the series. Often, in Anime at least, the earlier a Heroic Sacrifice happens, the higher energy and cool a series will be. (Example: Busou Renkin)
- The one in the middle of the series, wherein the Heroic Sacrifice leads to new heights of Bad Ass, or new depths of depression, depending on the series. Sometimes both. (Example: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Trigun)
- The one at the end of a series, which serves as a Grand Finale, an example of "This character is Too Cool To Live", or the kernel of a Downer Ending or Bittersweet Ending. The "Too Cool To Live" Heroic Sacrifice is the most common type in American movies.
Note that with the above definitions, "the beginning" is the first three episodes, and "the end" is the last three episodes, of a standard 26 episode season. Increase or decrease these counts as the series requires.
If the hero, The Lancer, or someone who never "fell" wants to do this to enable the team's success ( or takes it upon himself/herself to do this), it's often justified by their being otherwise mortally wounded or trying to avoid becoming a Zombie Infectee. Because a "normal" heroic sacrifice is a wee bit too close to suicide otherwise, just ask the Martyr Without A Cause.
It also happens if the sidekick of some other party member wants to get the hero out of The Sadistic Choice. Usually followed by a How Dare You Die On Me scene.
See Taking The Bullet, Self-Destructive Charge, You Shall Not Pass, and Someone Has To Die for specific types of Heroic Sacrifice. The Doomed Moral Victor fights a battle where the outcome is clear from the beginning. Contrast My Death Is Just The Beginning. Contrast Senseless Sacrifice.
This is a Death Trope so you should know the drill by now. Spoilers ahead, you've been warned.
Examples:
Film
- Two words. Darth. Vader.
- Subversion: In Constantine, the main character, John Constantine, commits suicide so Satan will personally turn up to collect his soul (he's got a bit of a grudge), and John can point him over to their shared supernatural enemy in the next room. When Satan gets back, John is being assumed into heaven, so Satan snatches his body up, heals it, and cures it of its lung cancer, so that John will live long enough that he can sin enough to bring him back to a damned state.
- Spider-Man 3: Venom grabs Harry's glider and tries to kill Spiderman, but Harry intercepts and is stabbed instead, in the same manner his father was.
- Spock's death in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is another heroic sacrifice where he fixes the Enterprise's warp core and enables the ship to escape the impending blast of the Genesis Device, but dies from radiation poisoning.
- Course in the next movie he has what might be called a Disney Jesus...
- The original Godzilla has Doctor Serizawa using his Oxygen Destroyer to kill the titular monster, but, fearing that it will become weaponized by governments, destroys all his notes and allows himself to be killed by it as well, destroying the knowledge of its creation forever.
- In Mothra vs. Godzilla, Mothra goes into battle against Godzilla knowing full well that she will die.
- And in Godzilla and Mothra - The Battle for Earth Battra sacrifices himself to help Mothra trap Godzilla at the bottom of the sea.
- Topping that, in Godzilla: Final Wars, Mothra, mortally wounded, kamikazies into Gigan's head, blowing both of them up
- Then there's Godzilla: Tokyo SOS in which Kiryu (A cyborg version of The ORIGINAL 1954 Godzilla) [[spoiler:Carries Godzilla over the ocean and both of them sink to the bottom of a trench.)
- Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack gets three of these with Baragon, Mothra (Who Gives her life-force to Ghidorah to revive him and make him stronger) and King Ghidorah.
- Although he's already badly wounded, Brendan Gleeson's character in In Bruges.
- The wizard Ulrich, who sacrificed himself twice in the movie Dragonslayer (1981). His first death placed part of his life force into a gem and his 2nd death when the gem was crushed killed the dragon, as he exploded while being carried by it.
- Perhaps include here also ANY war movie where the flawed character with the shady past calls in an air strike (or artillery barrage, etc) on his own position to save his partner or teammates and redeem himself and his reputation although it means certain death.
- Flight of the Intruder is the definitive example.
- Subverted in Serenity, where River pretty much declares You Shall Not Pass to the Reavers and locks herself in a room filled with them to save her friends and family. Five minutes later, after everyone pretty much believes that she's been raped, killed, eaten, and possibly worn like clothing by the horde, the doors slide back open....to reveal her standing completely uninjured and knee deep in enemy corpses.
- Independence Day, the bit where the often drunk, semi-washed up crop duster flies his plane into the alien superweapon just before it fires, and blows the whole ship to pieces.
- Kenny in the South Park movie, earning a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming in the process.
- The Iron Giant in the movie of the same name.
- Enemy At The Gates. In the middle of a sniper stalemate inbetween main protagonist Vasily and the German Cold Sniper, Vasily's friend-slash-sentimental-rival, quite jealous that the Love Interest (now presumed dead) has chosen Vasily over him and disillusioned with the communist cause, exposes himself to the enemy's field of fire as a final act of friendship and gets a bullet in the head as a result; this allows Vasily to pinpoint the bad guy's position and kill him.
- The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is rife with heroic sacrifice and attempts at same, including the fate of James Norrington.
- In the movie Volcano, a train supervisor is going in with the rest of the men to save passengers and the train operator, who have been trapped in a rail car that is being engulfed by lava. He chases the others out before they succumb to fumes or heat and goes to get last person left, the operator, dragging him out "fireman's carry" on his shoulders, and we can see the train has already gotten so hot from the approaching lava that his shoes are melting, as he starts reciting a Catholic death chant ("Our father, who art in heaven...") As he reaches the front of the train, lava has already gotten around in front of the train. The other railroad employees, who have escaped into the clear and can't reach him, implore him to jump and save himself. With only seconds to spare, holding the man on his shoulders, he jumps, landing in the pool of lava, then, with the last of his strength, throws the other man clear.
Live Action TV
- Obligatory Joss Whedon examples:
- Doyle in Angel's first season.
- Spike's ultimate sacrifice in the Buffy series finale.
- Buffy in the season 5 finale. Bit of an Ass Pull, but hey, she saved the world.
- In the third season finale of Lost, Charlie accepts his prophesized death and decides to go out doing something helpful. He manages to undo the jamming signal, but his real contibution is alerting Desmond to the fact that the people who have arrived at the island claiming to be rescue aren't who they seem.
- In the fourth season finale, the helicopter flying from the island to a ship waiting offshore is rapidly leaking fuel. To reach the boat, it has to lose a lot of weight. Sawyer jumps out and swims back to the island.
- Londo Mollari, one of the most complex characters in the cult SF show Babylon 5, saves his people from complete annihilation by allowing himself to be implanted with a mind-controlling alien symbiote.
- Years later, in the future of the Time Travel sequence, Londo, under the control of the symbiote, has the heroes at his mercy. In a moment of lucidity, he lets them go, then asks G'Kar — either his sworn enemy, his best friend, or both — to kill him so the symbiote won't alert anybody to the escape. This, G'Kar does, in a manner which London had foreseen decades earlier in a prophetic dream — which at the time he took to mean G'Kar would eventually murder him in cold blood. Londo is therefore an example of the Heroic Sacrifice, Redemption Equals Death and the Prophecy Twist.
- The symbiote then wakes up, kills G'kar, and fulfills the rest of the prophecy.
- Kosh deserves a mention. By getting the Vorlons to strike at the Shadows, he opened himself up to be assassinated by them.
- The Fifth Doctor at the end of "The Caves of Androzani", which is seen as one of the best Doctor Who stories. Both he and Peri (a Kimberly if there ever was one) were suffering from fatal poisoning, and the Doctor gives the antidote to her. He then collapsed, and willed on by his past companions, regenerated into a new body in the best such sequence in the series.
- The Ninth Doctor performed a similar feat in "The Parting of the Ways", when he absorbed the energies of the spacetime vortex from his companion, Rose Tyler, so that they would not kill her. Instead, they killed him, forcing him to regenerate. (Actually, this episode has lots of Heroic Sacrifices, including the one made by the Doctor's other companion, Jack Harkness. (Jack gets Brought Back To Life, though.)
- Adric's death in the Doctor Who episode "Earthshock". Ultimately, he failed in his goal (and achieving it would have been impossible without a major paradox being created), but he was trying to be heroic.
- In "The Family of Blood", John Smith - a fake personality created by the Doctor while hiding from some villains - sacrifices himself and dies so that the Doctor can save the day.
- Gleefully subverted, however, in a Doctor Who comic strip; the Eighth Doctor is about to make a heroic sacrifice by crashing a military helicopter filled with canisters of gas into a slime creature, and makes a moving farewell speech to his friends. One of them - the spymaster whose helicopter it happens to be - sardonically points out that, whilst he appreciates the nobility of the gesture, if the Doctor just looks up he'll see a button that will allow him to eject to safety, thus negating the need for said sacrifice.
- Doctor Who has developed a very specific sub-trope of its own in which a (often unwilling) agent of the Daleks betrays them and tells them off, only to get exterminated, of course.
- Luke Rattigan in the New Season 4 episode 'Poison Sky'.
- The new series of Doctor Who has used this trope a ridiculous amount, in all honesty. I'm pretty sure there's more episodes without it than with.
- Davros actually calls the Doctor out on this in the NS 4 finale.
- The writers may get rid of The Scrappy in this way, in an attempt to change him from annoying pest to fondly remembered hero:
- In Doctor Who Adric, as mentioned above.
- Also, Luke Rattigan in The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky, to an extent.
- Eden, of Heroes, who kills herself to prevent Sylar from gaining her influencing abilities.
- Then subverted. D.L. takes a bullet from Linderman to save Niki. Enter season two, he is dead, and we are lead to assume that is how he died. But then a flashback to four months ago has him make a full recovery from the hospital, and is indeed well enough to go fight fires and stuff...only to get shot by some random crackhead with the hots for Niki.
- Done rather problematically in a recent episode of Battlestar Galactica; after having her criminally shady past revealed, the pilot Kat voluntarily exposes herself to lethal levels of radiation while guiding a passenger ship through a star cluster. The episode was well-written and actually made sense, as well as providing an unexpected degree of depth to a heretofore slightly two-dimensional character, but... given that Kat had not only served quite adequately as CAG for the last year, but was one of maybe two or three pilots who'd never actually committed mutiny during the run of the series (and that one of the others was a Cylon), would anyone other than Starbuck actually have cared that much?
- On 24, George Mason (the former director of CTU) is accidentally exposed to radiation early in the second season, and slowly begins to die. He secretly stows away on a plane that contains a nuclear bomb, and is being piloted into the Mojave Desert by Jack Bauer. He ends up convincing Jack to let him fly the plane on a suicide run, letting Jack parachute out and live, as well as saving millions of innocent people.
- Farscape, two words: Talyn, Starburst
- Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future: In the series finale, Corporal Jennifer "Pilot" Chase sacrifices herself to manually activate the Power Base's self-destruct mechanism, taking The Dragon and its invading horde down with her.
- In Stargate SG-1, Dr. Jackson exposes himself to a fatal dose of radiation to deactivate a nuclear device and dies. Of course, dying has never actually stopped anyone in the Stargate universe (and most especially not Daniel Jackson), so two seasons later, he was Back From The Dead.
- Supernatural: In the second season, John did this for his comatose son, Dean (who was surely about to die, or at least never wake up), causing the fandom to actually like him for once. Dean also did this for Sam, who died (and got better) in the finale, but the fanbase are torn between this being a true Heroic Sacrifice or something to do with being Driven To Suicide. In a subversion, the show treats these as destructive, selfish acts instead of noble sacrifices.
- In lonelygirl15, Bree Avery does the Ceremony to stop the Order chasing her friends, and Gina Hart takes a bullet to save Jonas.
Anime
- Subverted in the most mean-spirited manner possible in Neon Genesis Evangelion, where Kaji rescues Fuyutsuki, and is later shot, and in End of Evangelion, where Ritsuko tries to blow up the Geofront in front of Rei and Gendo, but fails, and she is then shot by Gendo. Then Misato escorts Shinji to EVA-01, but shortly dies from a fatal wound and an explosion. Finally, Asuka makes a superhuman effort to defeat the Mass Production Evas, but is apparently killed in a brutal fashion after running out of power, while Shinji is stuck inside the EVA-01 launching bay, it having been filled with an adhesive bakelite as a security measure attempting to stop the military from fully infiltrating the base. All of this is in vain as the Human Instrumentality Project and Third Impact occur anyway.
- This one gets a bit of a workout in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. By the end of the series, we had several significant Heroic Sacrifices that saved other people, most memorably Kittan, who destroyed a space ocean with his dying laugh, and Lord Genome, who stopped and absorbed the shot from a Wave Motion Gun powered by a Big Bang. Additional materials and the creators have also confirmed that Nia knowingly went to her death rather than ask Simon to save her, in order to avert the Spiral Nemesis, although it wasn't entirely clear in the anime itself.
- Sedi, fansubbed as Cedric, and his successor Carrisford, in Soukou No Strain. One could argue for Ralph, too.
- Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind.
- In One Piece, during a life-or-death (well, life-or-exile) game of dodgeball, Chopper takes a ball to the face to prevent Luffy from being knocked out of the game. The opposing team is so impressed by his Heroic Sacrifice that they demand that the referee not declare him out, because "the face is safe". The ref is reluctant at first, because Chopper is in a spherical form at the time, and it's difficult to tell where his face begins and ends, but eventually succumbs to the pressure. And then declares Chopper out anyway, because he was knocked out-of-bounds.
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED's Mu La Flaga pushes this to a near limit when he flies the Strike Gundam into the path of a positron cannon blast aimed at the bridge of the Archangel and blocks it with his shield, despite the beam being nearly as big as the Gundam. The Strike is destroyed in the process, and Mu's helmet is seen amongst the rubble. Ironically, the Special Edition of the series would edit that detail out, in a Ret Con to prepare for Mu's eventual return as the brainwashed Neo Roanoke, though he eventually got his memory back by the end of the series.
- Subverted in Gundam SEED Destiny, when Mu La Flaga, finally remembering who he is, performs an identical act to his prior sacrifice with a superior mobile suit, and survives unscathed.
- In the manga Konjiki no Gash!!, the former badass Vincent Bari puts himself in a mortal situation to allow the protagonists to enter Big Bad Faudo's innards. To avoid killing him, Umagon burns his book to send him back to the demon world.
- This is just one instance among way too many to count.
- Subverted by Ryoko in Tenchi Universe, albeit with a particularly sadistic flare on the part of the writers. Having failed to convince Tenchi to abandon Ayeka to her fate and run away with her instead of heading into a seemingly hopeless battle with Kagato, Ryoko dedicates herself to making sure Tenchi arrives there alive. An elaborate space battle follows as the space pirate does anything and everything in her power to accomplish this. Only she's still grievously injured from her previous attack on Kagato, and the strain for her to just stand upright is noted by at least three characters (neither of whom tell Tenchi, naturally). After dropping Tenchi off at the palace, Ryoko reminisces about how the previous events have been really fun, even if it's just her and Ryo-Ohki again. She then closes her eyes, her arm slips off the armrest limply (complete with blood flowing down along it), and her head slumps forward with a small smile on her face. Ryo-Ohki presumably tries to wake her with her yowling, and the scene fades to black with one particularly mournful sounding howl. This continues into the wrap up episode, where Tenchi notes that no one had seen or heard from Ryoko since that battle, and includes an Antagonist In Mourning moment with Ryoko's rival, Nagi to boot. All this culminates with Ryoko popping up, none the worse for wear, in the last ten minutes of the series, ready to try again to win Tenchi's heart. No explanation as to how she survived is given.
- Occurs in the Death Note live-action movies (but not the original manga or anime). Like in the anime/manga, Light gets Rem to write L's name in the Death Note. When L is apparently dying due to that, Light admits that he's Kira to him... but then it's revealed that L outwitted Light by writing his own name in the Death Note before Rem did, setting himself to die in 23 days and overriding Rem's attempt to kill him. L thus proves Light is Kira, but still dies less than a month later due to writing his own name in the Death Note.
- In Planetes, Tanabe carries a wounded former associate across the lunar surface after crash-landing in an escape pod several miles from the nearest place with air. She runs out of oxygen before reaching their destination; however, her associate has plenty of oxygen left as a result of her being carried while nearly unconscious. Frenzied, Tanabe almost decides to take the oxygen tank from her colleague, but changes her mind at the last second, unwilling to kill at any cost. She begins to convulse in a painful Break The Cutie moment, and the viewer is left to wonder what happened to her until halfway through the next episode. She suffers terrible nerve damage and is wheelchair-bound, gradually recovering with physiotherapy.
- In the second to last episode of Tokyo Mew Mew when Kisshu turns on Deep Blue for Ichigo's sake he gets killed by him. A few moments later when Kisshu is dying in her arms he tells her that he really does love her then dies trying to kiss her one last time.
- In the same episode, Pai is killed while protecting the rest of the Mew Mews from the energy blast unleashed by Deep Blue when the latter starts to lose control over Aoyama's body and the Mew Aqua inside him.
- And then there are Masaya and Mew Ichigo in the last episode. Masaya basically allows himself to be killed in order to get rid of Deep Blue for good, and Ichigo later revives him at the cost of her own life, requiring a True Loves Kiss to bring her back. Of note, in the manga version, Masaya disposed of the evil alien personally, by stabbing himself with his sword.
- It's also somewhat subverted in Yu Yu Hakusho. Yusuke saves a small boy from a moving vehicle and dies. However, it turns out that not only was the boy going to survive being hit, but he actually would have been less injured than had Yusuke intervened.
- Subverted on multiple occasions in Dragonball Z, most notably when Chaozu and Vegeta both blew themselves up to try and take Nappa and Buu with them, respectively. Neither attempt worked. Heroic Sacrifice
almost never works in Dragonball.
- And is mostly meaningless anyway, since the afterlife practically has a revolving door...
- Actually, it did work once, at the very beginning of DBZ, when Goku and Piccolo were fighting Raditz. Goku grabbed him from behind and told Piccolo to shoot. The attack went straight through Raditz and Goku, killing them both, and Raditz stayed dead for the entire series.
- Another successful Heroic Sacrifice from the series, and in this troper's opinion, one of the most touching in any anime he's seen, is Piccolo putting himself between Gohan and Nappa's giant blast of death. Considering Gohan lives to the end of the fight, which was Piccolo's hope when he took the attack, I'd say that counts as a success.
- Vegeta pulls one of these in the final arc by blowing himself to kill the villain (at this point a Psycho For Hire). It doesn't pan out.
- Also in that arc, in another subversion, Krillin, to protect his family and friends (almost the entire supporting cast), himself at the villain (who upgraded to Big Bad), in order to give the others enough time to get away. He's killed while they run for safety. Then they all die anyway. In a big of cruelty, the people he was mainly trying to protect, his wife and daughter, were the first ones killed after his sacrifice.
- Unusual example occurs in the final episode of Fullmetal Alchemist, when Alphonse sacrifices himself to bring Edward back to life... and then Edward promptly sacrifices himself to bring Alphonse back.
- Subverted in the Naruto: Shippuden movie when Shion almost succeeds in sacrificing herself to destroy the demon, though Naruto pulls her out of it at, literally, the last second, and destroys it through a different method.
- Also in Naruto, Sandaime and his son Asuma Sarutobi die a heroic death, the first when fighting Orochimaru and nearly killing him, the second fighting two Akatsuki members and reavealing his strategies/weak points, so Shikamaru can figure out a strategy. Also Chiyo gives her life when resurrecting Gaara.
- And in the most recent chapter, Choiji's father takes a fatal blow from Pein in order to protect his son so that he can tell Tsunade about Pein's power.
- In Angel Sanctuary there are many heroic deaths, though some are more 'I'll die as a hero' by characters which'd die anyway but want to show off a little. e.g:
- Zaphikel after getting cut his wings off - which is like the most cruel torture and death sentence to an angel - uses the last of his strength to kill the warden endangering a big part of the main cast and his then-revealed son Raziel.
- In front of heaven's gate Kato Yue gives his life when stopping the nearly closed gate to the highest sphere, so Setsuna can slip through, leaving himself to be vaporized by a giant meteor he himself has summoned to kill Lucifer minutes ago. Anyway, he was about to die anyway, because his 'biomechanical' body was about to decease. Anyway, he did this twice before when saving Setsuna, and both times he had to be resurrected from the brink of near-afterlife existence.
- Lockon Stratos in Gundam 00.
- Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex's Tachikomas have a penchant for Heroic Sacrifice. In the first series three of them get in a fight with an armored suit to save their friend Batou; one is destroyed by the suit, and the remaining two cheerfully perform a suicide attack on it, smashing a dud grenade inbetween them and the suit and blowing the whole group apart. In the second series they go one further; as a nuclear warhead is about to fall on the island the heroes are on, the Tachikomas decide the best way to stop it is to intercept it with a satellite. Too bad the only one close to the missile's trajectory is the one that's holding their own electronic brains. You can guess what happens next...
- Fortunately, after the first sacrifice, the Tachikomas were Genre Savvy enough to leave behind backups of their memories on the internet. The Major eventually finds them and they make a return in Solid State Society where they were thankfully not asked to lay down their lives for the third consecutive time.
- The entire cast of Gao Gai Gar (or at least the mecha cast members. The robots make up at least half the cast!) do this at least once. Possibly the most memorable is during a turning point in the original series, where Choryujin grabs a meteor that was hurtling towards Earth, and gets sent back in time, where he is rendered inoperable for millions of years. (Although this one was later reversed when the mech in question is eventually brought back online.) Even more tend to happen in FINAL during the final episode in order to defeat their Evil Counterparts. As a matter of fact, even the EVIL CLONES of the characters sacrifice themselves to stop GaoFighGar from killing J. To list each one here would be to ruin some great examples of Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- The anime version of Pretear has the protagonist overloading an evil tree with her own Life Energy until it disintegrates, bringing back characters who died in the battle (including the one who died protecting her), all at the cost of her own life. She doesn't stay dead for long, though.
- Cosmo does this in the last two episodes of Sonic X by undergoing what in her species seems to equate to puberty and growing into adulthood - she turns into a tree. Her entire species does this, apparently, and her own development was merely sped up by a Magical Amulet because it was her destiny to save the galaxy from the beginning. She attaches herself to the giant evil seed which is about to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy, therefore weakening it, requiring our heroes to shoot her, killing her and the Big Bad at the same time.
- The real TearJerker of the scene is the fact that Tails was falling in love with her at the time and he was the one who had to fire the gun. This troper cannot watch the original non-dubbed scene of his reaction to this both before and after the fact without breaking down in tears herself.
- The first Reinforce of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Knowing full well that her corrupted self-defense program will come Back From The Dead since her recovery system is already working hard to repair it, and that it has become impossible for her to restore it to its normal state, she willingly destroys herself to prevent any chance of it going on an omnicidal rampage again.
- In Code Geass, The Scrappy Rolo Lamperouge (who gathered the fandom's hate by Raping The Dog more than once) redeems himself by overloading his Evil Eye to carry Lelouch to safety, fully aware that the strain from using it for so long with so much range would be too much for his heart to endure.
- Also, earlier in the season, one of Toudou's lieutenants, Urabe, sacrifices himself to distract Rolo and buy Zero time to escape.
- Also, Gilbert G.P. Guilford.
- Actually a sad subversion in this case. Guilford believed he was sacrificing his life to save his princess, Cornelia, but he was actually saving Zero, his mortal enemy, who had hypnotized Guilford into thinking Zero was Cornelia.
- Later, it turns out he's Not Quite Dead.
- All these are nothing compared to Lelouch, who, as part of Zero Requiem, took over the entire world and convinced everyone he was a Complete Monster so that all the world's hatred would be focused onto him, allowing Suzaku (disguised as Zero) to publicly assassinate him, thus ending the international conflicts plaguing the series.
- In Macross Frontier, Micheal sacrifices himself to save Klan's life during a Vajra attack on the Frontier. What this even more painful was that was one of the more popular pairings in the series.
- This troper is disgusted that the manliest example of this trope
 has since been ignored.
- Second Manliest, you mean. Musashiiiii!!!
Comic Books
- Comic book example: Vibe, one of the most maligned members of the Justice League Of America, sacrificed himself to save his teammates from killer robots built by a Mad Scientist.
- In a classic Thor storyline, Skurge The Executioner sacrificed himself to buy Thor and his companions time to escape from Hel (the Norse underworld). Also qualifies as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome due to his beating a demon to death with an empty machine gun.
- The Heroic Sacrifice is a longstanding tradition of DC's Legion of Super-Heroes:
- In a particularly convoluted example, Lightning Lad sacrifices himself in battle with Zaryan the Conqueror, and every member of the pre-Crisis Legion participates in what amounts to a lottery to determine who will sacrifice their own life to bring him back. Saturn Girl, his Love Interest, cheats to make sure hers is the life sacrificed - but she is in turn replaced by Chameleon Boy's shapeshifting pet Proty, which sacrifices itself in her place.
- Ferro Lad sacrifices himself to destroy the Sun-Eater.
- Chemical King dies preventing the start of World War VII.
- Karate Kid sacrifices himself to save his wife's home planet.
- Magnetic Kid dies to unlock Sorceror's World during the "Magic Wars" storyline, in an effort to prove himself to his older brother Cosmic Boy.
- Leviathan, thanks to a Literal Genie granting his "heart's desire" to die a hero, sacrifices himself to stop Dr. Regulus in the post-Zero Hour reboot.
- Live Wire (the post-Zero Hour version of Lightning Lad) resigns from the Legion and sacrifices himself to save his friends and Love Interest from former-teammate-turned-Omnicidal Maniac Element Lad in the limited series Legion Lost.
- Heroic sacrifices seem to be a sort of pattern for Lightning Lad; don't be surprised if it happens again in the Threeboot.
- Two Words: Dark. Phoenix. That is all.
- Easily the most famous Heroic Sacrifices in the
superhero genre DC universe are the deaths of The Flash and Supergirl in Crisis On Infinite Earths.
- In the first issue of the current series of Justice Society Of America, we meet Mister America, a patriotically-themed super-detective... who has no problem beating up suspects. His family is killed by a villain, to destroy his legacy. He shows up to beat the tar out of the villain... and then he gets mortally wounded. His response is to run from the Boston dockyards to New York's Battery Park (using Le Parkour), jump through the Justice Society's skylight, and hit the table in the main meeting hall, dying on impact. In response, the Justice Society tracks down his family's killer.
- In Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty Pryde phases a giant bullet through the earth...and then is stuck out there. If it had been less of an Idiot Plot, it would've been horrifying and touching, but all it did was make a lot of fans mad.
- Also, there was Colossus infecting himself with the Legacy Virus a few years earlier, thereby releasing the cure into the air deleting Legacy from existence. Of course, that got retconned in Astonishing...
- In Astro City, the Confessor sacrificed his "life" and reputation to stop an alien invasion — the reputation because the sacrifice revealed that he was a vampire, and made him appear to be a serial killer.
Literature
- Jesus is the archetype of this character, of course.
- At the end of Bionicle's 2007 story arc, Toa Matoro sacrifices himself by wearing the Mask of Life, which converts him into energy used to revive Mata Nui.
- The title character in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (He Got Better).
- Belbo in Foucaults Pendulum. Also Redemption Equals Death.
- Eponine in Les Miserables kind of, she only gets shot to save him becuase she wanted to die first, she still wanted him to die though.
- Cazaril in The Curse of Chalion by Lois Mc Master Bujold. Three times. He still ends up alive.
- In Lloyd Alexander's Black Cauldron, the titular cauldron can only be destroyed when someone willing enters the cauldron, fully aware that he will die. At the end, the Jerk Ass of the story redeems himself by jumping in.
- Diane Duane's Young Wizards series takes it as a given that defeating the Lone Power will require someone making a Heroic Sacrifice. In particular, Deep Wizardry concerns one of the protagonists unintentionally signing away her life in payment for a previous act. Played even straighter when Ed, the Eldest Shark, willingly substitutes himself.
- Also in Young Wizards, the avatar of a Power is taunted with the fact that to fully embody, his passenger would have to kill the host and "he would never do that". The avatar promptly responds with "But I would", and throws a spear intended to be deflected so that it veers back around and hits him in the chest. He doesn't die, but the intention of a heroic sacrifice was there, and he comes close enough that the Power is released.
- Played straight in the Ea Cycle with the Heroic Sacrifice of Alphanderry. Subverted in the case of Bemossad whose death turns out to be pointless and counter-effective for the most part and the benefit to the heroes, such as it is, comes in a way he didn't intend.
- Sturm Brightblade, a Knight In Shining Armor in deed, even if he wasn't one officially through most of his life, performed one in the second Dragonlance novel, giving the other heroes a chance to activate the Lost Superweapon and giving the Knighthood an example to strive for, pulling them from their slide into corruption.
- In the Stuart Slade-authored novel The Salvation War: Armageddon, in the last chapter before the epilogue a number of (dead) Romans who were enslaved by the demons of Hell are rescued by U.S. Marines in 2008 — but when the Marines' sergeant is about to walk into a tripwire for a rock trap, the dead Simplicus without thinking pushes him backward, inadvertently hits the tripwire himself, is crushed and dies a second time. Despite being dead to begin with, it's a Heroic Sacrifice because nobody knows if humans get another extra life.
- Mildly subverts the trope in that the heroic sacrifice is not intentional, and in the original thread where this story was posted there was actually a discussion before the chapter about such.
- Sydney Carton from A Tale Of Two Cities is an enduring, classic and saddening version; he looks exactly like the man whom the woman he loves loves, so Sidney saves the other man from execution by replacing the other man during a visit to his cell. The last words of the book are the page quote, illustrating his possible Last Words, though more of an expression of his last thoughts than anything said out loud.
- Jangotat, of The Cestus Deception, a Star Wars Expanded Universe novel, is a clone who has just been given the knowledge that his life has meaning- he's an individual person, he can love...then calls down an orbital strike on his own position to save millions, leaving a final loving message recorded for the woman who taught him he could be more.
Western Animation
- Kids Next Door: In what is possibly the only existing example without any possibility of physical injury, Tommy Gilligan (Numbuh 2's brother) has just been assigned to Sector V. He saves the sector, and the whole organization, from being turned into animals by the Big Bad. However, it turns out that by removing his boogers from the registry (don't ask), he is not allowed to be part of the organization, even though the others (who had never liked him) now believe he should be.
- As in the comics example mentioned above, Ferro Lad of the Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon sacrifices himself to stop the Sun-Eater in the season 1 finale.
- Dinobot, in the Transformers: Beast Wars episode "Code of Hero", fights the entire Predacon force on his own to prevent them from altering history. He drives them off, but is mortally wounded in the process.
- Luckily for him though, he got to die as he lived — quoting Shakespeare.
- In the Transformers Armada episode "Crisis", Optimus Prime sacrifices himself to shield Earth from the Hydra Cannon. He comes Back From The Dead three episodes later.
- In 'Transformers Animated, Optimus Prime does this in "Transform and Roll Out", defending the Allspark from Starscream. He comes Back From The Dead about a minute later, though.
- There's also Omega Supreme, much to Ratchet's dismay. He sacrifices himself heroically twice, once offscreen, in the Great War, and the second time in the same episode he's resurrected in, this time to protect the Autobots from the blast of the malfunctioning space bridge. The mech's the embodiment of this trope - he's literally made to sacrifice himself if need be!
- Arguably, Bumblebee in "Autoboot Camp" might qualify, although it is non-fatal. He does, after all, take the blame for a tower falling on his Drill Sergeant, Sentinel Minor, to protect Bulkhead from being drummed out, since Bulkhead saved his life when the spy in the camp replaced the paint in the weapons used for a training exercise with live ammo. After he's (supposedly) caught the spy, and Sentinel has told him that he's Elite Guard material, Bumblebee gets drummed out instead. Sentinel is a real Jerk Ass.
- In Superman: Doomsday, an internally-injured Superman, seeing Doomsday about to murder a child for the fun of it, flies him up past the atmosphere and then gives him the biggest bodyslam in history. The impact kills Supes, too.
- In Reboot, Hexadecimal, after her Heel Face Turn, in order to destroy Daemon, fragmented herself in order to administer a cure to the Net.
- In Code Lyoko, Aelita is sometimes a bit too eager to make some Heroic Sacrifice, despite the very strong disapproval of her friends (especially Jérémie). She actually went through it in Season 1 episode "Just in Time", but Jérémie managed to bring her back to the virtual world. Another close call was in Season 2 final "The Key".
- In the end, it was her father, Franz Hopper, who did the Heroic Sacrifice to destroy XANA, his creation, once for all.
Video Games
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