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"Tell me, Drummknott, are you a betting man at all?"
"I have been known to have the occasional 'little flutter,' sir."
"Given, then, a contest between an invisible and very powerful quasidemonic thing of pure vengeance on the one hand, and the commander on the other, where would you wager, say... one dollar?"
"I wouldn't, sir. That looks like one that would go to the judges."
"Yes," said Vetinari, staring thoughtfully at the closed door. "Yes, indeed."
Havelock Vetinari and Drumknott, on Commander Samuel Vimes vs. the Summoning Dark, Thud!
The worst has happened; The Hero has not only been infected by the Big Bad with the soul eating virus, but their determined resistance looks like it's about to finally peter out. Just as his friends, family, and significant other look on in growing horror as he becomes a monster and turns to eat them... he doesn't. Even though The Virus has their body and maybe even their mind, it doesn't have their heart or soul. Through sheer grit, or to protect a loved one, they manage to not only resist the lure of The Dark Side, but use Evil Is Cool against itself. They may become far stronger than a typical Virus-afflicted, especially if young vampires/werewolves/monsters of that kind are weaker than old ones like the Big Bad and under their control.
The hero who manages to reverse the curse uses their newfound powers to fight the Big Bad and their Dragon, and beat them at their own game as a Vampire Refugee. Usually, doing so manages to break whatever curse they're under thanks to No Ontological Inertia — except when it doesn't. If so, or if they choose to stay infected to fight other monsters (as borderline Zombie Infectees) they end up Cursed With Awesome or become a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire.
The power up gained with Heroic Willpower sometimes manifests by becoming a One Winged Angel or with a move up the Bishonen Line, visually distinguishing them from rank and file infected.
The internal struggle is often verbally indicated by the character gaining the Voice Of The Legion, paired with physical and verbal tics like biting off each word in a loud (or even shouting) voice in a This Is SPARTA manner. When Played For Laughs the character will Lampshade this by saying something along the lines of "Must. Speak. Like. William. Shatner!"
A Sub Trope of Heroic Spirit.
Compare Heroic Resolve, Determinator (when the character is almost nothing but resolve and willpower), Good Is Dumb, Deadly Upgrade, I Know You Are In There Somewhere Fight.
Contrast with Fight Off The Kryptonite.
See also Cursed With Awesome, The Dark Side, Evil Is Cool, No Ontological Inertia, The Virus.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- This is the ability of one of the main characters in Claymore. She can go "past the point of no return" in accessing youma powers, but still come back. She can also use this ability on others.
- In Tokyo Mew Mew, Deep Blue has told a sobbing Mew Ichigo that her precious Aoyama-kun is no more. Out of nowhere, Masaya's spirit manifests, taking control of the body again, and begins a cycle of Heroic Sacrifice suicides and resurrections by True Loves Kiss. They eventually sorta cancel each other out, leaving them both alive.
- Devilman is about a timid teenager with a pure heart who allows himself to be possessed by a powerful demon, so he can use that demon's power to fight and kill its comrades (thus, preventing an oncoming demonic invasion.) The boy's personality gets altered after merging with the demon, making him more aggressive.
- One OVA involves him undergoing enough psychological stress he loses his Heroic Willpower and spends the finale battling inside of his own mind to regain control.
- In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann main love interest Nia fights against her newly discovered Anti-Spiral purpose and allows Simon save humanity from the enemy's Extermination System.
- Subverted in Dragon Ball Z by the reformed Vegeta, who gets possessed by an evil wizard, then though sheer willpower refuses to obey the wizard's commands to kill a god... and then attacks Goku anyway, revealing he chose to be possessed in order to get the power needed to crush his old rival.
- The Vizard from Bleach. Either they can control the raw power of their darker desires given form or they turn into psychotic soul devouring monsters that must be put down for their own good.
- Hayate in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, who reasserted her role as master and administrator of the Book of Darkness after it had taken full control of her body, leading to her ascension as the Queen of the Night Sky.
Comic Books
- In Thirty Days Of Night, sheriff Eben Olemaun allows himself to be infected with vampire blood in order to become strong enough to defend his town. It works, and even though he’s ravenous for human blood he manages to control his urges and fight and kill several vampires, including their leader. He doesn’t turn human again afterwards though, and allows himself to die when the sun finally rises.
- In Batman Hush, Superman is controlled by Poison Ivy's special Kryptonite blend of mind-control lipstick, leading to a big fight with Batman, who frantically stacks the deck by playing Superman's innate boy-scout tendencies against him-those base-level urges are so innate to Superman that Poison Ivy couldn't make him ignore them. The control is finally broken by a supreme burst of Heroic Willpower caused by Catwoman shoving Lois Lane off of a building.
- Midnighter gets a moment like this when he (along with Jack Hawksmoor, Jeroen, and most of the planet) is infected with an evil cult virus. Though the virus has made him obedient to the cult's will (so much so that they've got him flogging himself), he manages to hold out until Swift rescues him. Why? Well, the fact that they wanted him to publically break up with his husband Apollo and denounce his former lifestyle might have had something to do with it.
- Leia Organa Solo provokes this in her mind-controlled brother in the first Dark Empire graphic novel, despite the Emperor's assurances that his personality had been completely annihilated.
- During the Marvel Zombies/Army of Darkness crossover, Doctor Doom reveals that he's been infected with The Virus. The reason he doesn't attack the heroes is because he's so incredibly Bad Ass that he's just holding it off because no goddamn virus is going to mouth off to Victor Von Muthafuckin' Doom.
- Deadpool while temporarily infected by a T-O Virus (in a reality hopping storyline), complete with the obligatory “Must… speak… like… William… Shatner!” line.
- In the Spider-man comics there’s the good symbiote Toxin (the host is a cop, and new father who decides to use this power to do good). Also the lesser known character Hybrid (though he/they are something of an inversion with the symbiote(s) being more placid and the human host more prone to Unstoppable Rage.)
Film
- In Underworld, Michael is bitten by a werewolf and slowly starts turning into one. He later has the curse reversed for him when Selene, a vampire, gives him some of her blood, allowing him to become a hybrid Werewolf/Vampire with enough raw strength and speed to stand toe to toe with the vampire elder Victor.
- In The Lost Boys, the older brother, Mike, is given blood that’s slowly making him a vampire. After a climactic battle where he, his brother and friends defend their home from the vampire gang that was turning him, he manages to beat the strongest vampire in the gang. When he doesn’t turn human again and the real vampire lord show up, he beats him too and finally regains his humanity. (To be fair, though, Michael gets beat down hard; the day is won by their senile grandfather backing through the wall.
- Doom (the film) revolves around a chromosome which, when injected to people with an "evil" gene, turns them into murderous monsters. When Reaper is injected with it, he becomes superhuman, since he doesn't have the evil gene.
- Evil Dead II had our hero Ashley Williams corrupted and turned into a Deadite. He couldn't actually fight it off when it mattered, beating the hell out of the only other survivor and approaching her unconscious body to finish her off. Then he came across the bit of jewelry that he'd given his girlfriend earlier in the film, lets out a howl of pain, and successfully fights off possession.
Literature
- In Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum, Granny Weatherwax pulls this one off with vampiric infection. An interesting twist is that she uses the blood connection to make the vampires weaker, rendering them unable to drink blood or harm humans and giving them an unnatural addiction to tea and cookies. One ends up wondering who infected whom. It's not entirely made clear if getting bitten was a masterful Xanatos Gambit, or if she was just more stubborn that even she realised.
- She also actually says something along the lines of "I haven't been vampired, you've been Weatherwaxed." to them, suggesting that she at least understood what had happened.
- Then there's Sam Vimes in Thud!, as discussed above.
- In Second Apocalypse Kellhus displays Heroic Willpower in shrugging off mind control.
- In The Tommyknockers, by Stephen King, Bobbi Anderson's sister (forget her name) is a lifelong bully and control freak who makes everybody around her frightened and/or miserable. She has "heroic willpower" in exactly the sense Hitler claimed to have "fanatical will power." But when she is turned into a living battery for the Havenites, her ultradominant personality at least enables her to rebel and subvert the machinery.
- Occurs in Good Omens: Adam is a 11-year-old boy who also happens to be the Antichrist destined to end the world. As the Apocalypse draws closer, he gradually becomes less like his playful kid self and more like a ruthless Creepy Child Reality Warper. When his friends make him realize that he's Not Himself, he visibly struggles against another presence within himself (presumably some hellish influence) and manages to regain control of himself to enact a Screw Destiny mission.
- Let's just say that Terry Pratchett is REALLY good at writing this, and end there.
- Edward Cullen in Twilight is a poster boy for this. Even though Bella is his singer, the one human whose blood is absolutely irresistible to him, he painfully prevents himself from killing her, since he "doesn't want to be a monster" and because he eventually falls in love with her. Of course, his blood lust is a metaphor for real lust, which he's also experiencing, and which he also has to demonstrate incredible willpower to resist, since he's sure sex would kill Bella.
- Until he infects her with vampirism, THEN proceeds to brutally sex her up with massive amounts of broken bones with a vamp-child who... No, I'm just going to leave it there.
Live Action TV
- Zhaan in Farscape had a variation of this happen to her. Tahleen, an evil member of her race, telepathically tore from her mind the knowledge she used to overcome a wasting insanity she suffered by telepathically murdering her former lover for being a traitor. The result was that she became borderline-sociopathic with red eyes. She managed to Snap Back thanks to sharing minds with Crichton, showing her that the kindness she was capable of was inherent and couldn't just be ripped out. As a result, she also became more spiritually powerful, and destroyed the evil priestesses' chance to grow stronger.
- In the short-lived show Odyssey Five, Chuck Taggart is infected with Nanomachines that are slowly turning him into a "Synthetic", or cyborg servant to an Evil AI. As the process is about to complete and he links with the AI, he resists becoming it's servant and instead steals the knowledge needed to reprogram the nanites to turn him human again.
- In the Doctor Who episode "Doomsday" Torchwood leader Yvonne, who helped cause an invasion of Cybermen by interfering with the Doctor, is captured by the Cybermen and undergoes Cyber-conversion. She manages to maintain her free will through her love of "Queen and Country"(or the fact that she was already robotic enough that the Cyberman procedure had no effect), and holds off several of the Cybermen, at the cost of what was left of her own life, while the Doctor saves the day.
- In one episode of Knight Rider, Michael gets poisoned and becomes steadily weaker as he searches for the antidote. Towards the end, as KITT monitors Michael's vitals, he actually says "You're now operating on sheer willpower!"
- Inverted in Stargate: Atlantis, where the Wraith Michael manages to overcome the effects of a virus that turns Wraiths into submissive humans (on two separate occasions) through a sort of "Villainous Willpower".
- Inverted in Heroes Sylar resists Doyle's People Puppets trick through "Villainous Willpower."
Music
Tabletop Games
- Inverted in Warhammer and Warhammer 40000, where Villainous Willpower determines which of the two possible One Winged Angel routes a follower of Chaos goes down - becoming a mindless Chaos Spawn or a Daemon Prince who retains sentience and control over his powers.
- Dungeonsand Dragons 3.5 had Iron Heart Surge, which, due to poor clarification, can end anything from raving insanity to being pregnant.
Video Games
- Tales of Symphonia's Applied Phlebotinum has the nasty side affect of turning people into monsters if they're not correctly protected. Marble sacrifices herself by exploding (!) into the resident bad guy. However, Lloyd and Genis had just beat the shit out of her after she attacked them, so maybe it doesn't count.
- Happens to The Hero in Tales of Hearts. The possessor ends up stabbing his host body and leaving. Shing gets better.
- In Grandia II, Ryudo gets a piece of the devil stuck in him. Through an extended dream sequence, he fights off the devil and comes out of the coma. Later when he tries to become a god (being the only person qualified in the room with a piece of the devil in him) he becomes a monster; later, through the power of song and friendship, he pulls through and becomes human again.
- The second Mega Man Star Force game briefly has the hero taken over by an ancient Upgrade Artifact, but this doesn't last long once a friend of his tells him to Get A Hold Of Yourself Man. The third game has a different character use The Corruption within them in order to pull off a Heroic Sacrifice.
- This is, in fact, simply a continuation of a recurring theme in the prequel series. Most notably, in Batle Networks 5 and 6. In 5, he is poisones by Dark Chips and can learn to use them more effectively. In 6, he gets posessed by a Cybeast (based on your version), and uses the Cybeast power to boost his own. It's reasonable to assume that the Cybeast instance is the inspiration for the OOPart posessing Geo in Star Force 2, by seeing all the similarities between the two.
- Sergeant Nathan Hale in Resistance: Fall Of Man is an example of this trope, as even when he is infected with the Chimera Virus, he just turns into a lean mean bug-busting machine.
- Steve Burnside from Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Despite being turned into an axe-wielding ogre by Alexia, he regains his humanity once he sees his one true love Claire in danger, having been ensnared by vicious tentacles. Sadly, he pays the ultimate price in rescuing her, leading to a suprising tear jerker of a death scene.
- In City of Heroes a character can actually have this as their super-power.
- Subverted in Sonic Rivals 2; In the last mission of the stories of Sonic/Tails and Knuckles/Rouge, Ifrit, the monster of the game, will possess the partner to attack you throughout the boss. It has the same full effectiveness on all of them - even Sonic, the main hero. Of course, it's only very temporary.
- In World of Warcraft, undead player characters have a racial ability called Will of the Forsaken, which allows the player to escape from fear or mind-control effects.
- In fact, the Forsaken are all this trope. They've all got The Virus, but tey keep themselves free of the Lich King's normal dominance over the Scourge.
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