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It's the end of the movie, the climactic battle royale between The Hero and the Big Bad... and the Big Bad is kicking The Hero's ass. After a good while of getting beat to a pulp, the Big Bad finally manages to get through the hero's defenses and score what looks like a decisive hit.
The hero crumples, looking to be in a dire strait indeed; usually at this point the villain takes the opportunity to gloat a bit, believing the hero to be his to dispatch at convenience. In more violent examples, the hero will have wounds that really ought to be fatal.
Then, sometimes due to a Deus Ex Machina, imperiled love interest, or more commonly sheer grit and force of will, the hero rises, often presaged or accompanied by a Dramatic Gun Cock, ready to rejoin the battle — and, this time, despite the apparently crippling injury just sustained, there's no question at all that the hero's going to end up standing over the villain's smoking corpse — or, more generally, triumph in whatever way is appropriate for the genre.
This can overlap with a World Of Cardboard Speech, especially if the hero is losing because of some sort of mental block.
This trope is heavily relied on in Professional Wrestling. Hulk Hogan in particular carried wrestling for approximately eight years doing this, to the point where the moment a hero starts shrugging off his opponent's offense is still called " Hulking up" (not to be confused with "Hulking out").
This is almost always accompanied by the Theme Music Power Up. Very frequently a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
This is more often than not combined (and indeed, is a subtrope of) I Am X Son Of Y, as one would usually want the subject of his renvenge to quake in terror at knowing just who he has wronged and is about to take his life.
A Sub Trope of Heroic Spirit.
Compare Determinator (who stays up because he never went down to begin with), And Your Little Dog Too, Lets Get Dangerous.
Contrast Hope Spot (when this is subverted).
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Examples
Anime & Manga
Comics
- Depending on the author, Spider-Man's greatest power is not wall-crawling, web-slinging, or even fighting like a cow. It's taking a Class A butt-kicking for 10 pages (complete with torn and shattered mask) before coming back to defeat the villain. The movies followed this pretty accurately.
- Parody example: An official ability of The Tick is Drama Power. This means that his strength actually increases the longer he is attacked, because a comeback victory is more dramatic. Clearly seen in The Tick vs. The Tick.
- Played so straight it became the ultimate example in Marvel Two in One Annual #7. A Cosmically-powered warrior called simply "The Champion" beams the strongest heroes of earth up to his ship to Box with him. The fate of the Earth is at stake naturally. The Thing is the last hero into the ring (the others being mopped-up in short order by a bored champion or not really understanding Boxing, and thus being "disqualified" and punted back to wherever they were yanked from — there's an absolutely classic moment where Thor pops up, thoroughly confused, wearing boxing gloves and trunks... and his winged helmet and cape. Of course, since Norse gods don't box much, he proceeds to wing Mjolnir at the Champion and get kicked out). The Thing gives a good account of himself before being savagely beaten down. He gets back up and attacks again, managing to injure the Champion before being beaten to an utter pulp. He gets up and manages to land a few more blows before being beaten through the floor. As the Champion goes into his spiel about the fate of the Earth, the Thing drags himself up and grabs him by the ankles (weakly). At which point the Champion declares "I could break your body, but I could never destroy your spirit" and leaves for other planets and other challenges. The story is based on a story in which Daredevil takes on the Hulk, which is itself based on a much earlier story involving Daredevil against the Sub-mariner.
Fan Works
Films
- The scene from The Princess Bride for which the trope is named, in which Íñigo finally catches up with the six-fingered man who killed his father. Of course, the whole point of his speech is supposed to make fun of this very trope. Like the rest of the movie, inexpressibly good.
- Westley pulls a minor version of the same trick in the scene more famous for To The Pain. As Humperdinck loudly proclaims he's won because Westley can't even stand up, Wesley does just that. This, plus a "Drop. Your. Sword." command, is all it takes to win the final battle.
- Made even better by the fact that, the instant Humperdinck was safely tied up, Westley promptly collapsed, having been bluffing the entire time.
- The fist fight at the end of Commando.
- The climactic battle between Neo and Agent Smith at the end of The Matrix, in which Neo rises to conquer despite having had an entire magazine of ammo emptied into his chest. To a lesser extent, "My name is Neo!" in the subway is another example.
- And once more in The Matrix Revolutions — after Smith delivers a truly exemplary Nietzsche Wannabe speech, he asks the beaten Neo why the hell he even bothers to keep fighting. Neo stands and says, "Because I choose to." Cue asskicking, trope subversion as Smith rejuvenates and beats Neo to a pulp again, double subversion as Neo gets up again, triple subversion as Smith manages to infect Neo, and finally quadruple subversion as Neo uses his defeat to provide a link between Smith and the computer that created him, allowing it to simply delete him.
- Subverted (sort of) in Wild Hogs. Ray Liotta and his bikers beat the heroes to a pulp, do it again when they get up and are shocked when the Hogs try and get up for a third time. In the end they are shamed off.
- Although Spider-Man is famous for doing this in general (see above), the climax of the first movie provides a particularly good example of this.
- The Chinese film The Warlords has a particularly powerful example (albiet, slightly subverted). Wu Yang, the Íñigo Montoya, is attempting to take revenge his adopted brother Qing Yun for killing his other brother Er Hu. Even while Qing Yun beats his ass down with repeated blows and breaking his arm and leg, Wu Yang continues the fight, declaring that "The brother who kills the other brother must be killed by me!". However, at the most dramatic moment, when Wu Yang makes his final attack, Qing Yun is shot in the back by an assassin hired by his corrupt superiors. This allows Wu Yang to get past Qing Yun's defenses and make the final killing blow.
- Though he never actually goes down, Sin City sees Hartigan dispose of an entire unit of elite guards but take some serious damage himself in the bargain, to the extent that when he appears at the barn the Yellow Bastard is holed up in, he can barely stand or lift his gun. The Yellow Bastard gleefully points this out, and gets shot for it, although that's the least Hartigan does to him.
- Luke Skywalker's big counter-offensive in Return of the Jedi.
- Obi-Wan gets one of these moments before Luke (or is it after?) in his fight against Darth Maul, coupled with Heroic Resolve, after his Unstoppable Rage doesn't work too well.
- Averted in Gladiator. Oh, the speech is there in full glory, but not at the same as the final fight.
- Sort of subverted in The Fall: although the final fight is a genuinely beautiful and tear-jerking moment, Odious is knocked out with a single blow as soon as the Masked Bandit finds the strength to fight back. And subsequently randomly falls onto a spike, because these kind of occasions call for blood. And proceeds to drown, messily, because... well, why not?
- Justified in ''Terminator 2: Judgment Day". After the T-800 is incapacitated by a metal bar through its power source, he uses a secondary power source to gain a second wind. However, he is noticeably still weak, and only uses his energy to reach the T-1000 to blast it.
- The first and last Rocky films had this as the central theme in the big fight.
- It's also very much used in the way Rocky beat Clubber Lang in Rocky III.
- Averted in Fellowship of the Ring. Boromir takes an arrow, goes down... gets back up and keeps fighting, takes a second arrow, goes down... gets back up and and keeps fighting, takes a third arrow, goes down... and doesn't get back up.
- Played and subverted in the ending of Hot Fuzz, when Skinner, fist-fighting Nicholas, pulls the lead out on his strength and takes the advantage with "Get... out... of my... village!" only to have Nicholas counter with one of his own: "It's not your village anymore!"
- In Kill Bill Vol. 1 the Bride manages to kill wave after wave of goons, only to be bested in her final duel with O-Ren Ishii. The hero seemingly fallen, O-Ren makes a few victory quips... but not so fast! The triumphant music swells, the Bride rises to her feet, pretty much everything short of actually saying "My name is
Inigo Montoya Beatrix Kiddo *beep*."
- At the end of The Karate Kid Part II when the battered Daniel finally realizes the answer to the riddle of that little "sercet of karate" knickernack, rises slowly into a new stance with cold determination now in his eyes, and removes any doubt as to Chozen having any remote semblance of a chance from that point on. A similar moment happens at the end of Part III, in a weird way.
- Happens when He-Man finally extricates his sword of power in the film Masters of the Universe and the radiance makes Skeletor cringe away and shield his eyes. Not that anything about the moment is consistent with what's supposed to be going on, but whatever.
Literature
- When in The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King, Eddie Dean realizes with gradually mounting grim satisfaction what he has to do to beat Blaine in the riddle contest and destroy it, saving all their lives, and the despondent others, having lost their hope, look over at him (he has been apparently nigh catatonic and useless for hours) and see that he's trying as hard as he can not to burst into laughter as he says, "Blaine?...*I* have couple of riddles..."
- Subverted and inverted in A Song of Ice and Fire during the duel between Oberyn Martell and Gregor Clegane. Oberyn faces the monstrous Giant Mook Gregor Clegane, murderer of his sister and her children, only lightly armored and with a spear, repeating "You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children." And despite the imbalance of forces it looks like he's going to win... until Gregor catches him, crushes his skull and wins the fight, but not before being fatally poisoned. He does take the time to tell Oberyn that he killed his sister's children (well, one of them) first, in front of her before he did the deed.
- Subverted rather cruelly by the ending of the original book, The Princess Bride: all of the instances listed above still happen, sure, but moments after that "perfect kiss", Westley relapses into a "mostly dead" coma, Íñigo passes out from blood loss, and Fezzik spots a platoon of Humperdinck's men pursuing them from the castle. Everybody scatters, and their actual fate is left up in the air. The movie didn't change the ending, really, the Grandfather just didn't read that far. I mean, the Kid was already sick, and pretty involved in the story; it only would've made him feel worse, y'know?
- Used to great effect in the Codex Alera book Captain's Fury when Tavi reveals that he is Princeps Gaius Octavian. Happens to be punctuated by a purely coincidental, plot relevant, volcanic eruption hundreds of miles away.
- In 1634: The Galileo Affair, by Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis, there's a line something like "My name is Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz. Prepare to die." Our friendly neighborhood old fart then proceeds to slaughter and get cut up, while his much-younger girlfriend-from-the-future thinks something along the lines of "He's Inigo Montoya's prototype."
- In Warrior Cats when Firestar fought Scourge. Scourge actually kills him once, and assumes he's gone forever, but since Firestar has nine lives, he comes back later. Firestar's triumphant return is somewhat of a shock to Scourge, and he comes back apparantly fighting with the power of StarClan. Although, Firestar's I Surrender Suckers is the actual deciding factor in the battle.
- Done constantly in Harry Potter. Seriously, pick any book. It almost always happens in the fights. Each ending up with Harry going to the nurse's office unconscious. How he doesn't have brain damage by now is beyond me.
- Happens several times throughout The Count Of Monte Cristro.
- Hamlet
 , Act V, Scene II: "Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane!" spoken while a) stabbed (twice!), b) dying of poison, c) emotionally distraught at the deaths of ... well, everyone. And he still finds the strength afterwards to drink poison to avoid being killed (further) by the invading forces of Fortinbras.
Live Action TV
- A scene from the Firefly episode "Out of Gas", in which Mal Reynolds announces his My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment with a classic dramatic gun cock as he gets the drop on the ship thieves who've just gut-shot him.
- Mal has another moment like this in Serenity as well. He's good at them.
- The climactic battle in the Buffy episode "Becoming, Part 2". Angelus has Buffy cornered and disarmed and takes his moment to gloat (Spike even comments that Angelus is going to kill her), at which point Buffy kicks his ass.
Angelus: Now that's everything, huh? No weapons... No friends... No hope. Take all that away... and what's left? (thrusts)
Buffy: (catches his sword) Me.
- Buffy has another one in the series finale. She's stabbed by a random ubervamp, but after some taunting from the Big Bad, dramatically rises to her feet and carries on kicking ass.
- Angel does this a lot. It's really just a matter of him getting mad enough to vamp out, at which point, you're kinda screwed.
- Worf made a fine showing of this trope on an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Detained in a Dominion prison camp, the Klingon was forced to fight a near continual series of one-on-one fights with progressively more skilled Jem'hadar. Finally, he reaches the lead Jem'hadar, who beats the unholy hell out of him. However, Worf refuses to admit defeat, and rises to go another round. In a subversion, it's clear that the Jem'hadar could easily finish and kill him at this point, but instead...
Ikat'ika: I yield. I cannot defeat this Klingon. All I can do is kill him. And that no longer holds my interest.
- The Doctor gets in one of these every so often:
The Doctor: I'm going to save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I'm going to save the Earth, and then, just to finish off, I'm going to wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!
Dalek: "But you have no weapons! No defenses! No plan!
The Doctor: Yeah. And doesn't that scare you to death?
- In the Season 2 finale of Supernatural, Dean Winchester engages in a fight with the Yellow-Eyed Demon while the gates to Hell are open and spirits and demons are escaping. YED telekinetically tosses Dean into the air and he hits his head on a headstone (and his bloody forehead indicates that he has sustained a concussion at the very least). His dad's spirit breaks out of Hell, wrestles with YED, and then Dean aims the Colt (the magical Kill Anything Gun) at the Yellow-Eyed-Demon and shoots. It hits YED in the chest and he dies. When the rest of the battle is over, Dean walks over to the corpse of the Yellow-Eyed-Demon's host.
Dean: That was for our mom, you son of a bitch.
- Then at the end of the Season 4 premiere, "Lazarus Rising":
- Scrubs did this in the recent Season Finale, where Dr. Cox is telling a Bedtime story to his son. Cox, as a brave knight, says to a monster (in reality an illness affecting a patient):
Cox: My name is Percival Cox. You're killing my friend. Prepare to die.
Music
- Johnny Cash as the title character singing A Boy Named Sue when he meets his father, who gave him that name that caused guys to beat him to a pulp: "My name is Sue. How do you do? Now you're gonna die!"
Tabletop Games
- The "Heroic Comeback" Signature Move from the Hong Kong Action Theatre! supplement To Live and Die in HK is made for those characters who make miraculous comebacks to turn the tables on the bad guy and come out on top just when it looks like they're down for the count. In order to use it, the character must have been either beaten to shit in an earlier scene by the guy he's using it on, or been reduced to half his Form and Focus by damage. When the character uses this signature (often during the movie's climax), he gains a complete replenishment of his Chi pool or a +5 bonus to hit the guy who kicked his ass for the rest of the movie.
Video Games
- Any Desperation Attack, and most Limit Breaks.
- Super Metroid's Final Battle, which comes complete with Deus Ex Machina, Theme Music Power Up... the works.
- Repeated at the end of Metroid Fusion
- In a flashback of Final Fantasy VII, this happens THREE FREAKING TIMES between both the hero and villain within a single BFS-happy cutscene. First, Sephiroth fatally wounds Zack and confidently returns to Jenova, only to be impaled width-wise by Cloud's BFS. Then Sephiroth, who clearly should be dead, stumbles back into the room and impales Cloud through the chest with his own BFS. This leads to the third Inigo Montoya moment, where Cloud uses the power of leverage on the katana impaled through his chest to toss Sephiroth into the reactor.
- The protagonists in the Nasuverse tend to have trump-card-like abilities, which when combined with the fact that they tend to fight superhuman enemies, makes for many, many moments of this.
- Tohno Shiki, the protagonist of Tsukihime, has something like a split personality; whenever he is on the verge of death, his Superpowered Blood Knight side ("Nanaya") takes over. And he really likes killing.
- The best example of this would probably be where he is being eaten alive by Nero Chaos before killing around one hundred animals while lying down, then killing a unicorn, a dragon and three giant crab monsters effortlessly. And then Nero himself.
- Fate Stay Night's protagonist, Emiya Shirou, seems to have it in his contract that he has to have at least one My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment before things will start to go his way; often, he will have several, enticing the reader with learning new and exciting ways for his body and mind to strain itself Beyond The Impossible before he's allowed to win or get saved by a Deus Ex Machina.
- In the climax of Okami, after the Hope Spot against Yami and the Spirit Bomb that restores Amaterasu to her full, ultimate divine glory, casting "Sunrise" (Ammy's own Celestial Brush skill, but rarely used in the game) destroys Yami's so-called "eternal darkness" and makes it vulnerable to attack. But by that point, powered by the faith of all the people of Nippon, Ammy is so incredibly and awesomely ass-kicking Bad Ass that Yami isn't so much beaten as thoroughly trounced. Even the soundtrack agrees, as the ominous Final Boss music makes way for Ammy's theme.
- In the second fight with Vile in Mega Man X, after both X and Zero lose to him in his invincible war mech, Zero breaks out of his cage, jumps on Vile's back, and self-destructs, destroying the mech. However, Vile survives the explosion unscathed, and comments on how much of a waste Zero's sacrifice was, at which point X suddenly stands back up and his health refills to full.
- Subversion and played straight: In Super Robot Wars, one way to build up Will, which increases stats, activates tide-turning special abilities and unlocks new attacks, is to take damage and watch your allies get blown up. This also happens quite often in plot sequences, but usually when the good guy gets up and attacks the villain again, the villain uses their rage and adrenaline against them, allowing them to finish the job or escape without harm.
- This is an explicit ability of the heroes in the Freedom Force series. Particularly heroic characters get to do it more often. In the sequel they also shout catchphrases, like "The spirit of freedom fills me!"
- Can be pulled off in the Wii Punch Out title: When you're being KOed, quickly mash the 1 and 2 buttons or shake the Wiimote and Nunchuk like mad; if you're lucky, Little Mac will stop himself from passing out and immediately rejoin the fight with 1/4 of his health
- Here comes the Beat wagon!
- Dissidia has this done by Firion, and then he gives his World Of Cardboard Speech, fulfilling his Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- Fei-Yen in Virtual On has a hyper mode that activates when she is reduced to half her health.
- Several Pokemon, including all the main starters except Pikachu, have abilities that power up either a type of attack or one of their stats when their hit points get down to a certain point. There are also some moves, such as Flail, that have their strength increase in inverse proportion to the user's hit points. The anime Played For Drama the fact that Chimchar uses Blaze in this manner, by having Paul purposely get Chimchar beat up just so its Blaze will activate.
- Chrono Trigger had Frogs' heroic speech. "My name is Glenn! Long have I carried Cyrus's hopes and dreams, and now I bear the Masamune as well! Henceforth, I claim them as my own! I shall slay the Fiendlord Magus and restore our honor!"
- Mario And Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has Bowser himself do a minor one against the endboss: Barely resisting being blown away, Bowser is given a You Are Not Alone speech by Starlow, who tells him that Mario & Luigi are cheering him on from inside his body. Of course he doesn't hear it and regains footing by himself, complimenting Dark Bowser on the use of the Amazing Technicolor Battlefield and declares:
Web Comics
- Used in a particularly psychological variant at the end of A Miracle of Science, when the hero, with a decidedly unpleasant hole through his liver, faces down the Mad Scientist. All he actually manages to do is stand on his own, but that's also all he NEEDS to do...
- Used straight in the fan webcomic The Last Days of Foxhound where Liquid is impaled through his chest with a katana. As he bleeds to death, he is taunted in his mind by the voices of his team mates, the ninja that impaled him, and his dead father about how much he sucks. He then proceeds to stop the bullet-evading ninja singlehandedly.
- Of course, Liquid's ability as a FOXHOUND member is that of the Determinator. Much like in the game, he just simply refuses to die.
- Played with straight in this [1] page of Last Resort.
Web Original
- Linkara did it in his fight with Countdown To Final Crisis turned alive. He even made one of the most stupid sentences in a history of comics sound badass while doing it.
Western Animation
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