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Taking You with Me

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If you're going out, make it count.

Picard: What shall it be, Tomalak?
Tomalak: You will still not survive our assault!
Picard: And you will not survive ours. Shall we die together?

You're really in trouble now. You've been defeated, captured or otherwise humiliated by your enemies, and are now at their mercy. But you've got one last ace up your sleeve. The only problem is, this final attack is going to spell death for you as well as your enemies. But hey, you're going to die anyway! Might as well try to take some of them down with you.

Cue Earth-Shattering Kaboom via a Superpower Meltdown by using a Dangerous Forbidden Technique involving a Painful Transformation into a One-Winged Angel, or anything that suits your tastes, really. Don't forget, however, to growl in a menacing tone: "If I'm going to die, I'm taking you with me," or perhaps "See You in Hell."

When this trope is invoked, the hero usually survives, and the villain nearly always dies, regardless of who is trying to take whom with them. If it's the villain trying to take the hero, the attempt inevitably fails. If it's the hero trying to take the villain, the attempt inevitably succeeds, and it's likely (but not certain) that the hero will find a way to come out of it alive. (Exception: If the hero is a redeemed bad guy, the attempt inevitably succeeds and kills both of them.)

One form of Taking You with Me is when a villain deliberately sets up a Load-Bearing Boss situation, hoping to collapse his lair on the victorious heroes (over cries of "You'll kill us both\all!"). Alternatively, the threat of taking an attacker down with you can allow you to achieve a Victory Through Intimidation. If this action is taken by a usually stoic villain, may have been preceded by a Villainous Breakdown. May also occur after crossing the Godzilla Threshold.

Also related to:

See also Sealed Evil in a Duel, Self-Destructive Charge, Mutual Kill, Suicide Attack, and Heroic Sacrifice. Compare Last Ditch Move for (not necessarily lethal or even offensive) scripted final actions. Contrast Villain's Dying Grace.

Not to be confused with Taking Them Home With Me. It also should not be confused with Backstab Backfire, where the death of the person trying to do a last ditch effort in killing his enemy did not plan the possibility of death when attempting to backstab them after being defeated.

As a Death Trope, all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.


Examples

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    Card Games 
  • Doomtown has a card called Take Ya With Me. Which was part of a cheesy strategy dubbed "lose to win" (use it with a mook to give your opponent a Pyrrhic Victory, maybe healing the mook afterward to add insult to injury) until it received errata that you can only target someone who's more of a mook than one of your dudes getting killed.
  • In Duel Masters, creatures with the "Slayer" ability (exclusive to Dark creatures) are able to destroy other creatures regardless of power level, at the price of destroying themselves in the process.
  • In Magic: The Gathering any spell that deals damage to both you and an opponent such as Earthquake or Pestilence can be used for this.
    • There are also creatures that can kill themselves to take out other creatures, or which hurl damage or direct creature killing around when they die.
    • Sums up the Deathtouch keyword quite well. Creatures with this abilitynote  will always deal enough damage to kill any creature they battle regardless of how much damage they actually did, provided of course they do not have the Indestructible keyword. And considering that most creatures with this keyword have low power and toughness values, this can very easily result in a Suicide Attack.
  • Nuclear War has the "Retaliatory Strike" rule where a player who has lost the last of his population may immediately launch all of his missiles and warheads at whomever he likes. If one of his targets is eliminated in the process, then that nation may make a retaliatory strike of his own. It's possible to launch the unique 100 Megaton warhead in the hopes of getting a lucky roll and destroying the world in the process.
  • Poo: the card game (a game based around monkeys throwing you-can-guess-what at each other) contains two copies of a card called Blaze of Glory, which allows a player, when eliminated, to fling all the poop he currently has at whoever he chooses. This tends to be hoarded along with all the really good poop, and has been known to produce a game which nobody wins thanks to chain reactions.
  • We Didn't Playtest This At All features one card that reads that everyone loses by the end of the turn.
  • There are several cards that invoke this in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. An obvious one is Self Destruct Button, which kills both players if there is a 7000 Life Point difference between players. A couple more would be Ring of Destruction (a card which dealt damage to both players equal to the targeted monster's attack, now amended specifically to prevent this) and Morphing Jar (if a player flips it when both players have less than five cards in their deck.) On a smaller scale, there are some Monster Cards that can either destroy the card that destroyed them or a completely different card depending on their effect; the best example is Man Eater Bug, best-played face-down to trick someone to attack with their own monster and then use the otherwise pathetic Man Eater Bug to destroy their biggest monster and there’s (usually) nothing that the opponent can do about it.

    Comic Books 
  • 2000 AD:
    • Shakara: After Shakara sabotages the Apocalypse core on the Succubi starship, sending them crashing down onto the planet they were in the process of harvesting, their commander orders the creature responsible found. He knows that they're already doomed because the planet is about to explode anyway, he just wants the consolation of killing him first.
    • Button Man: After Harry fatally wounds another Button Man, he tries to kill them both with a grenade, but Harry jumps out of the way in time.
  • In Batman: Damned, it is revealed that the Joker died when Batman had the opportunity to give him his hand, only to retract his hand after realizing that the Joker (supposedly) mortally wounded him.
  • Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp's Black Summer has Tom Noir use his old girlfriend's gun to blow up a cemetery, taking both John Horus and Frank Blacksmith with him, thus taking out the main people behind the whole situation.
  • Convergence:
    • In Convergence #3, Earth 2 Thomas Wayne blowing himself up for killing several pre-Flashpoint Gotham's villains.
    • Happens twice in Convergence: Suicide Squad #2. First Star Sapphire to Cyborg Superman to avenge the destruction of Coast City. At the end Amanda Waller blows herself up to destroy New Oa with Alan Scott and take out Captain Boomerang, who'd turned traitor.
  • The end of Crisis on Infinite Earths has the Anti-Monitor coming after Superman of Earth-2 one last time, with the words "Superman... I will not die... unless you die with me!"
  • From The Darkness:
    Jackie: I don't suppose you'd let me have One Last Smoke... Say, do you smell gasoline?
  • In the prologue to DC: The New Frontier, John Cloud jumps into the mouth of the Tyrannosaurus rex that killed the rest of his unit while holding two live grenades. It's currently the Page Image for Dying Moment of Awesome. King Faraday takes his place in the Animated Adaptation.
  • In Final Crisis, Batman, about to be hit with Darkseid's Omega Sanction, shoots the literal God of Evil with a radion bullet, killing his physical body, starting the process of his final defeat.
    • The actual story of Final Crisis is Darkseid attempting to do this to all of reality.
  • In Gotham City Garage, Jason Todd sets off a bomb when Clayface is about to kill him. However, Kara Gordon stops Jason from killing himself and saves him from Clayface.
  • In the final issue of Gambit (1993), Gambit's villainous brother-in-law Julien starts making this threat when his plans fail. He's immediately shot In the Back by the archers of the Assassin's Guild, who are acting on his father's orders. Not only does he not take Gambit with him, he doesn't even get to finish his speech.
  • Green Lantern:
    • In Blackest Night, this is how Kyle Rayner takes out the Black Lanterns assaulting the Green Lantern Central Power Battery — he traps them in a forcefield with him and an Alpha Lantern Battery on the verge of Going Critical.
    • And in the Adventure Comics tie-in, Superboy-Prime decides that if he's going to be killed by Black Lanterns, he's going to kill everybody at DC Comics first.
    • In the following saga Brightest Day, Martian Manhunter does this to evil green Martian D'Kay. Fortunately, the white battery makes him get better.
  • From Infinite Crisis, Brother Eye, after being attacked and its stabilizing unit sent hurling down to earth, activated its defense systems on the satellite to bring down its creator Batman with it as well.
  • The Joker is often so Axe-Crazy that he's willing to include himself among his victims if that will get his point across. In the Spider-Man/Batman crossover, for example, he couldn't bear the thought of Carnage killing Batman, and threatened to spring a lethal virus that would have likely killed everyone in the city - himself included — unless Carnage backed off. (And neither Batman nor Spider-Man thought for a second that he was bluffing.)
  • In the original Men in Black comics, Agent Jay was set to be disintegrated by the Arbiter Doran. At the last second, Jay pulled Jerkass Agent Kay in with him. They both die, and are subsequently reformed as clones. Kay is led to believe he was talked into willingly dying alongside Jay, and wipes his partner's memory of the event.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): In issue #20, Princess Celestia tries to kill her mirror-world Evil Counterpart (which, due to synchronization, would have meant her death, as well) after the latter hurts both versions of Luna. She doesn't manage to do so only because of mirror-King Sombra putting up a magical barrier.
  • The Punisher:
    • In The Punisher: Suicide Run storyline, the Punisher has just finished killing all the heads of the big Mafia families from around the world (again). He is helped by the fact he's carrying a dead man's trigger in his left hand, connected to a huge bomb in the otherwise empty building. But wait... there's one guy left. A jerk-ass nobody who runs some gangs out of New York. The punk points out it's just him and the Punisher and maybe both could walk away. Nope. No deal. BOOM.
    • In the MAX series arc "Six Hours to Kill", Punisher is poisoned and told to kill someone to get the antidote. Instead, he kills the person who poisoned him and pulls out his list of scumbags, going through the methodically before the poison kills him. He actually runs out of targets before he runs out of time.
  • Sherlock Holmes and the Horror of Frankenstein: When Dr. Pretorious suffers his Villainous Breakdown he sets the electrical equipment in his lab to overload and blows up his castle in an attempt to take Holmes, Watson and the monsters with him.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): In the side-sides starring Knuckles the Echidna, Tobor (a former Guardian who was unknowingly replaced by a member of the Dark Legion thanks to an accident during battle) emerged from the Legion's former prison with Kragog back into the real world and proceeded to slam themselves into an energy cannon being used by the Legion. This turns into a Stupid Sacrifice when you realize that the energy cannon was being used to rescue the trapped citizens of Echindaopolis on Knuckles' orders.
  • In the Spider-Man storyline, Ends of the Earth, the Rhino, unable to live on after the new Rhino murdered his wife, ends up pinning Silver Sable to the floor of a flooding floor, the two seemingly drowning as Spidey makes the tough decision to face down Doctor Octopus. (He may not have been successful, however. The seer Madame Webb later told Spider-Man that Sable survived. She may have been lying — she has deceived Spider-Man to manipulate him before — but if it was the truth and Sable did escape, then it is possible that the Rhino did too.)
    • Speaking of Doc Ock, this was his plan all along — he plotted to flash fry the Earth with the exception of a VERY small fraction of the human race left alive to rebuild and remember him as the greatest monster to have ever lived. However, Spidey throws a wrench in that when he reveals that, even if those people lived, they'd be brain dead. Ock doesn't take that well.
    • Another storyline, Morlun's introduction, had Spidey inject himself with radioactive material so that if he died from Morlun's feeding, Morlun would suffer a lethal dose of radiation.
  • Star Wars: Kanan: In issue 11 Coburn Sear sets himself on fire attempting to kill Caleb. He fails and Caleb decapitates him.
  • Supergirl:
    • Red Daughter of Krypton: After her plan to destroy Worldkiller-1 — a body-snatching, genocidal alien abomination — fails, Supergirl decides that the only way to kill it is killing herself while it is trying to steal her body, so she removes her Red Ring, which usually results in instant death of the bearer.
    • Demon Spawn: Once her plan fails, villain Nightflame's world starts dying. And she is dying together with it. So Nightflame attempts to destroy Supergirl to kill them both.
      Nightflame: I have failed to gain your powers, my world is at an end! There, I do not wish to live! By destroying you... I destroy myself!
    • At the end of New Krypton, Reactron attempts to do this to Supergirl. He fails, but he takes her mother, her race and her planet with him.
    • In The Death of Luthor, it is told an ancient Atlantean warrior saved Atlantis from a sea monster by tying a bomb to himself and crashing into the monster.
  • Superman:
    • Kryptonite Nevermore: Before Superman arrests him, a terrorist releases a hydrogen bomb, hoping that the explosive hits a magma pocket and destroys the world.
    • In All-Star Superman, Lex Luthor isn't dying any time soon, but the realization that he's aging normally and his Arch-Enemy isn't is what drives him to finally "get serious about killing Superman."
    • In Superman #700, Lex Luthor, his crimes exposed to the world and his body dying, triggered explosives throughout Metropolis, vowing to destroy the city he once controlled rather than lose it to Superman.
    • The Death of Superman ends this way. The entire JLA has thrown everything they have at Doomsday, who has even brushed Superman aside in its attempt to obliterate Metropolis. At the very last, Superman realises that the only way to stop the creature is to plant himself directly in its path and beat it to death with his bare hands, knowing that he's going to take incredible (ultimately, fatal) damage in return.
  • Superman: Space Age: Bruce Wayne tries to get the Joker to let the children he's holding hostage go, but the Joker makes the demand that Bruce distract the police snipers wearing a clown mask while he makes a clean getaway wearing a Bruce Wayne mask. Bruce instead decides to make it so that both he and the Joker are shot dead.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-the original Eastman and Laird series is far more brutal than the cartoons or movies made in its name. In its climactic Turtles vs Foot Clan scene, the Foot Clan is slashed to pieces (with blood and severed limbs all about) and Shredder beaten to a gasping pulp. Leonardo offers him a dagger with which to perform seppuku, so he could go out like the samurai he dresses like. Instead, Shredder pulls out a grenade and attempts to perform this trope.
  • In the Teen Titans storyline The Judas Contract, when Terra believes she's been betrayed by Deathstroke, she flips out and begins trying to kill everyone — Deathstroke, the Titans, even H.I.V.E. — in her rage and taking them with her. All she ends up doing is killing herself.
  • Ultimate Vision: Gah Lak Tus seems to be about to destroy itself to cause a massive destruction. Or is that the plan?
  • In X-Men, at the end of the Inferno arc, Madelyne Pryor tries to trap Jean Grey in her dying mind and thus take her with her, recreating the incident that awakened Jean's powers in the first place (Jean nearly died inside the mind of her friend Annie, who was run over — Madelyne was given this memory by Sinister). Madelyne would succeed if it weren't for the Phoenix Force offering Jean the opportunity to live if she absorbs both Phoenix and Madelyne's personalities.

    Comic Strips 
  • One Dilbert Sunday strip had Dilbert outline his plan for a project that would end with Dilbert committing suicide via leaping off the building. His hope was to crush his boss when he landed.

    Fan Works 
  • A Crown of Stars: In chapter 57 a character explains Shinji and Asuka that the first time troops of the Avalon army were cut off a whole regiment performed a kamikaze raid and sacrificed themselves to destroy to the enemy and save the people they were protecting.
  • Advice and Trust: Invoked. In chapter 7 Zeruel is ignoring, destroying and obliterating all Nerv's defenses and the Evas seem useless against him. It has already invaded the Geofront and Misato is running out of options. She remembers there were self-destruct charges placed throughout the Geofront for the ultimate contingency and she orders they are armed and she gets ready to call in a nuke strike on the city in case they can not stop Zeruel and need blowing themselves up to destroy it.
  • A Hollow in Equestria: It's never stated outright, but heavily implied that Ulquiorra intends to invoke this trope to defeat Nightmare Moon once and for all.
  • Batman Beyond Revisited: The cause of Bruce Wayne’s death in a successful effort to put an end to his nemesis’ Joker Immunity.
  • Soul the Haunter in Bad Things Will Happen can use Destiny Bond to threaten this. He uses it to stop the battle with Miray the Banette, who, not wanting to die again, has to let them escape while she waits for its effects to wear off.
  • Becoming a True Invader: During the climax, the Employer attempts to drag Zim down with him when he's being sucked into a portal leading to an interdimensional void, but Gaz kicks him free and he's trapped alone.
  • Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: With both of them fighting over a lake of molten lava in an alternate dimension, Calvin and Holographic Retro manage to do this to each other as they both go over the edge, ending the season on a cliffhanger.
  • The Child of Love: In chapter 3 after being defeated by the three Evas, an Angel explodes trying to destroy them before dying. It does not work.
  • A Diplomatic Visit: In chapter 7 of the sequel Diplomat at Large, Pharynx tells Thorax that if he dies, he'll make sure he does this to the one responsible.
  • Equestria: A History Revealed: Luna's entire reasoning behind the Battle of the Everfree Fields. After learning that her war was practically lost, she gathered all her remaining forces for one last stand; to wipe out as many Celestia's forces as she could. The only main difference between this and most of the other examples on this page was that Luna chose to sit this battle out, waiting for Celestia to confront her herself.
  • Evangelion 303: In chapter 15 Asuka resorted to this tactic to win her and Mari's "friendly" duel. Asuka's plane was about to fall down and she decided she only needed to survive long enough to shoot Mari's down, so she performed a suicidal attack to take Mari with her.
  • Getting Back on Your Hooves: After Checker Monarch is tricked into an Engineered Public Confession that will result in her going to jail, she has a Villainous Breakdown and knocks out Trixie and the Mane Six before using a highly-illegal dream infiltration spell to enter their minds in an attempt to kill them all with their worst nightmares, regardless of what happens to her afterwards. She fails completely.
  • In A Growing Affection, the last fight between Gai and Kisame has this. After Kisame breaks out his Tailed Beast cloak, Gai opens the Eighth gate to counter, allowing him to kill Kisame at the cost of his own life.
  • In I Did Not Want To Die, the protagonist reaches for the last grenade at the very end.
  • The plot of Heroes of the New World is kicked off when All For One activates a Deadmans Switch after his defeat, sucking Izuku Midorya into a black hole. A Heroic Sacrifice from Bakugo sees that Izuku is not killed, but he is instead transported to the world of One Piece where he washes up on the shores of Onigaishima, leading to his discovery by Yamato.
  • Justice League of Equestria:
    • Mare of Steel: During the final fight between Supermare and General Zod, Zod ultimately realizes that he can't beat her, so he decides to overload his magic and blow both of them — and Canterlot — to kingdom come. She responds by flying him into space and letting him detonate harmlessly, although she gets caught in the blast and badly injured.
    • The Princess of Themyscira: During the Final Battle, Diana destroys the Alicorn Amulet, thus closing the portal that Ares was using to unleash the demons of Tartarus on Equestria. When Ares' desperate attempts to keep it open result in him starting to be dragged into it himself, he grabs Diana and tries to drag her in with him, only to be stopped by Soarin's timely intervention.
  • Last Child of Krypton: Sachiel blew itself up to try to destroy Shinji and Unit 01. It did not work. Shinji lifted it off the ground and it detonated high above the city, harming nobody, not even Shinji, since he endured the explosion.
  • The Mission Stays the Same: The Eldar do this at the end of their Last Stand against the Reapers; they pour their psychic energy into their homeworld's star, causing it to go nova and vaporize most of the invading fleet, along with all remaining traces of the Eldar race.
  • Tamers Forever Series: Gallantmon Crimson Mode uses up his remaining life to unleash a massive explosion that wipes out Daemon.
  • In Mega Man Recut, Ice Man tries this to both Wily and Mega Man, though he fails. It gets him killed.
  • In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, Metal Man tries to do this to ProtoMan in episode 9.
    • Splash Woman blows up her underwater hideout after losing, saying that if she can't have Mega Man no one will.
  • The Lion King Adventures:
    • At the climax of Friends to the End, Simba and Hago end up dangling off of Pride Rock, hanging over the burning inferno below, with Hago trying to drag Simba down with him. He nearly succeeds, but the pain from the heat below causes him to let go and fall in.
    • In The End, Simba ends his Final Battle with The Writer by grabbing him and jumping off of Pride Rock, mortally wounding them both. Fortunately, the Writer dies first, and his death reboots the universe, restoring Simba along with his friends.
  • The Mayor plans on this in Xendra after the Scoobies successfully destroy the Box of Gavrok and prevent him from getting another one in time. As a result, he knows he won't survive his transformation into an Old One and instead intends to kill them with the resulting explosion.
  • In The Second Try:
    • Just as in canon, Rei attempts to do this when the 16th Angel is fusing with her... only for Armisael to reveal that he had discovered her intent in Asuka's mind when he briefly tried to unify with her as well and has reacted accordingly by disabling Unit-00's self-destruct mechanism. As a last resort, Rei uses a watered-down version of the forbidden union of Adam and Lilith to merge with her EVA, triggering a mini-Impact which causes as much damage to Tokyo-3 as the original self-destruction.
    • EVA-02's self-destruction against the MP-EVAs. However it is not Asuka who sacrifices herself. It's Kyoko who, after bidding her daughter goodbye, ejects her before blowing herself up.
  • The Secret Return of Alex Mack: When Gojira's attack douses Tsurara in chemicals and makes her An Ice Person, she realises that she's going to freeze the whole area and die, so she decides to take him down first. Happily, Pyre arrives on the scene, churning out ridiculous amounts of heat and giving her new hope for survival.
  • Ages of Shadow: During the Final Battle, when Jade is being permanently sealed away by Trace, she grabs Mildred and threatens to drag her into the Netherworld with her if the spell isn't stopped. Fortunately, Cheherezad swoops in to save her, allowing Jade to be safely sealed.
  • letmetellyouaboutmyfeels' MCU Rewrites: In Avengers: Civil War, Zemo plans on blowing both himself and the Avengers up with pressure-sensitive explosives so that the Avengers will be killed and two of their own members: Wanda Maximoff and Bucky Barnes (whom Zemo had framed for an attack on the United Nations Complex) will be held responsible, thus ruining the Avengers' legacy. Fortunately, everyone escapes and Wanda manages to contain the explosion and T'Challa takes Zemo into custody for his crimes (one of which was killing his father in the UN Complex explosion).
  • In The Bridge, Grand King Ghidorah is mortally wounded by Godzilla Junior impaling him through his core (the organ that serves as both his heart and brain) while Xenilla has him distracted, liberating the countless souls he'd devoured that begin tearing his body apart during their escape. Grand King Ghidorah's response is to attempt this trope by channeling all of his power into a super charged Gravity beam capable of leveling a continent in an attempt to take the brothers and all of Equestria down with him. With some help from Rarity, Harmony, and Godzilla Senior, they manage to win the resulting Beam-O-War and Grand King Ghidorah is the only one that dies.
  • Some examples in the sidestories of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines:
    • In the Twenty Gyarados Bill Gaiden, the titular criminal faces his first Gyarados against an Elite Four member named Denki Tekina and his Ampharos, both of them using Mega Evolution. Their clash ends with a Hyper Beam collision, and the resulting explosion kills them all.
    • A non-lethal example occurs in the Lorelei Interlude. During some exhibition battles, one of the trainers has his Electrode use Self-Destruct to try and take down Lorelei's Dewgong, but fails.
    • Another non-lethal example in the Hiker Interlude. The title character loses half his team to Paul's Torterra, and sacrifices his Golem using Explosion to take him down. Unfortunately, that only leaves him with two Pokémon to face against Paul's four, and ultimately loses the battle.
  • Aska: During her freak out Ayra decides this after realising she can't beat Nico without dying herself. Fortunately for her it doesn't come to this.
  • Invoked at the climax of Hellsister Trilogy's second arc, when Supergirl faces up to Darkseid, aware that he will most likely kill her, but determined to try and to take him with her.
    Kara struggled to bring herself up, to land a last blow that would take Darkseid’s life. She hated herself for doing it, but if she was to die, she would take the Dark Lord down with her.
  • Several examples in Beast Wars Fan Series:
    • Cheetor TRIES to invoke this during his final battle with Spittor; Spittor dies, Cheetor lives.
    • Depth Charge DOES invoke this during his final fight with Rampage. Early on in Season Three, Depth Charge says that the fight would claim both their lives.
    • Galvatron tries to drag Optimus into the time rift with him, but is stopped by the other Maximals pulling Optimus out and Victoria shooting him in the face.
  • In Pokémon Master, Brock has his Pokemon self-destruct as attempting to take Ash out. Shortly later, he blows himself and Lance up.
  • In the Marvel Universe fanfiction FIRE! (DarkMark), Red Skull devises a ploy to kill himself and Captain America simultaneously, reasoning that their conflict will only end when both of them are dead.
Red Skull: Then let me show you a bit of the world below, my friend. Or, perhaps, only tell you about it. Within this cathedral, at its lowest level, is an incendiary device.
Captain America: A fire bomb!
Red Skull: Do not worry yourself. Less time remains than you would need to reach it. No man remains alive in this structure, other than ourselves. Within seconds, no man will be alive in it at all. I have taken the opportunity to retire us both from battle, Captain. The conflict is ended. Farewell.
  • Near the end of Illuminated, Jane's abusive exe Thrax finds her. He kills her girlfriend and threatens Jane. Cornered, Jane shoots the boxes of nearby TNT, blowing up both her and Thrax.
  • Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters: When the Guardians and Jade attack Cavigor to rescue Elyon's parents, Drago uses the resulting distraction to break out of his cell. When the heroes and Warden Callisto then team up to stop him, he reveals that he's triggered a prepared spell to cause the prison to collapse; when it's pointed out that he'd die if that happened, he responds that he's perfectly happy with that if he manages to kill them all too. The others decide to flee and warn their respective allies rather than fight him, and Drago gleefully escapes in the chaos as the prison collapses.
  • Code Prime: During the Black Rebellion, Cliffjumper is mortally wounded by Luciano Bradley. But using the last of his strength, he then drags the Knight of Ten's Knightmare onto a generator, frying the bastard.
  • A Moon and World Apart: Chapter 25 reveals that Flash's predecessor as Captain of the Royal Guards, Captain Hackpole, died at the hooves of some pony who wanted to do this to he and the other Guards, setting the building they were in on fire. They succeeded with Captain Hackpole, when he and the criminal died in the blaze after he'd made sure everypony else got out.
  • Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo: When Sidious realizes he's going to lose his fight with Vader and the Jedi, and that even if he escapes he'll soon lose his Force connection because of Plagueis' poison, he spitefully uses what strength he has left to unleash a Force Storm. While this will inevitably overwhelm and kill him, he's still happy to use it to kill his enemies and destroy as much of Coruscant as possible. Thanks to Vader's sheer hatred of Sidious making him strong enough to power through it, the storm is stopped and Sidious dies alone.
  • Khaos Omega pulls off a very unusual inversion during 'Angels of Fodlan' of the Amethyst Evolution saga: A mortally-wounded Solon fires a vicious curse at Edelgard in an attempt to take her with him, only for the XQ immortality-enforcing failsafe, which she had only just obtained unknowingly less than an hour prior, to kick in. To make matters worse for Anise, who had woken up to Edelgard right in her face, the Adrestian heiress' use of an "S-Bond" technique (which until then Anise didn't know she had access to) is upgraded into making her a true member of Anise's subdivision, completing Edelgard's goal of officially joining said subdivision by working her way into Anise's heart regardless of their differing ranks.
  • In The Awakening of a Magus, Peter, upon realizing the potion he drank to protect himself from the Veritaserum was actually intended to stop interrogations in a more thorough manner, starts rattling out as many Death Eater names as he can, including Malfoy, who sent the potion.
  • Vow of Nudity: When the harpies have the Jackal at their mercy, she taunts them into surrounding her and then detonates a hidden bundle of dynamite to take them with her.
  • Shadows over Meridian: As Frost's army is about to breach Cavigor, the Warden, convinced all of his prisoners are as vile as Phobos, orders his men to murder them before they can be freed and join Phobos' army. When Vathek and Drake catch up with the Warden's lieutenant Jax in the prison's third level just as Frost's army enters the prison through the forgotten maintenance tunnel leading to that very level, Jax has a Villainous Breakdown under the belief that none of this would be happening if Phobos, his minions and Kage had all been killed in the first place, and decides to kill Vathek and Drake (whom he sees as responsible due to not sharing his radical beliefs) before going down himself. He gets killed by Frost before he can kill either.
  • The Weaver Option: In the Battle of the Death Star, Colonel Larkine is mortally injured by a squad of Eldar led by a High Farseer. Larkine answers by pulling the pin on a grenade.
  • Nonlethal and Played for Laughs example in Shared Strength: When Sinon refused to get out of bed one morning, Kazuto, after persuasion failed, resorted to Friendly Tickle Torture to get her out. As Sinon's flailing moved her to the edge, and gravity reared its ugly head, she grabbed Kazuto's hand, resolving that if she was going down, she'd take him with her.
  • In the Star Wars Rebels story A Sword to Pass, as the saboteur bleeds out, he decides in his final moments to shoot open a vent unleashing hot gas to try and kill Tristan and Alrich.

    Film — Animated 
  • Batman: Mask of the Phantasm: Batman has reached his Despair Event Horizon and grabs on to the Joker's escape jetpack as an abandoned amusement park is exploding.
    Joker: I'm your only chance to get out of here! Let me go or we'll both die!
    Batman: Whatever it takes!
  • In The Book of Life, Chakal tries to use his bombs in order to destroy the entire town. Manolo however ends up trapping the both of them inside a bell, containing the explosion to just the two of them. However, Joaquin secretly gave Manolo the Medal of Everlasting Life, which let him survive unscathed.
  • Sitka's method of dispatching the bear that was attacking Kenai (after Kenai went after said bear alone for reasons explained earlier) in Brother Bear; they're on top of a glacier, and Sitka drives his spear into the ice, causing a huge block of the glacier to break off and fall into the river below, taking the bear with him. Sitka dies but the bear survives, motivating Kenai to once again track the bear down and slay it in an act of revenge, which in turn invokes the wrath of the Great Spirits and kicks off the rest of the plot.
  • In the DC: The New Frontier DVD, Agent Faraday has just enough strength to grab and unpin two grenades before the monster swallows him. The Martian Manhunter is moved by his Heroic Sacrifice and subsequently goes on a nice little rampage. In the comic the film is based on, the action was done by John Cloud instead. While it was insanely awesome, the subplot had little to do with the plot, so it was cut, and the moment was integrated into Faraday's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • At the end of Dinosaur, as the Carnotaurus is about to fall into the ravine, he immediately bites onto Aladar's tail, but the Iguanodon manages to shake him off before climbing back up.
  • Subject of a gag in The Emperor's New Groove, after Kuzco saves Pacha from falling:
    Kuzco: "Oooh, I'm a crumbly canyon wall and I'm taking you with me." Well, not today pal! A-huh! [llama strut] A-huh a-huh a-huh!
  • In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, this happens when Loz and Yazoo shoot Cloud through the back whilst he's having a Redemption in the Rain moment, before making a huge explosion. It partly works, killing themselves, but only sending Cloud to The Lifestream for a couple of minutes.
    • Having been somehow formed almost exclusively by Jenova, they were actively dissolving in the purifying rain — explosion unrelated. Still, the were avenging Sephiroth, Jenova, and Kadaj by killing Cloud even as they went down, so it still counts. Only Cloud had a Get Out of Death Free card for world-saving, apparently.
  • In the climax of The Great Mouse Detective, Basil manages to defeat Ratigan by activating the chimes on the Big Ben clock tower; the resulting shockwave sends Ratigan falling from the tower to his doom. In a last-ditch effort to defeat his arch nemesis, he grabs ahold of Basil and takes him with him as he falls, but Basil manages to survive by grabbing a part of the blimp he was hanging onto and using it like a propeller.
  • Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths: In the opening scene, the Jester (alternate universe good counterpart to the Joker) is cornered by two of the Crime Syndicate:
    Jester: Okay! I'm down to my last joke anyway...
    (he pulls out and triggers a grenade)
    Jester: ...but this one'll kill ya!
  • Justice League Dark: Apokolips War sees a crapton of this:
    • Shazam! calls out his namesake word to take out the Paradooms attacking him.
    • Likewise, the last members of the Suicide Squad and Lois Lane blow up Lexcorp Tower to stop the Paradooms from getting to Superman's team.
    • Raven wants John Constantine to kill her if she can't control Trigon to ensue Trigon can't escape. However, Constantine simply knocks the gem off and lets Trigon out to take on Darkseid.
    • Trigon himself grabs Darkseid to ensue both get sucked into the Boom Tube Cyborg opened to suck in Apokolips. Might count for Cyborg himself as he can't leave thanks to Darkseid fusing him to the planet's systems.
  • In Kung Fu Panda 3, when Po discovers that the Wuxi Finger Hold won't work on the immortal Kai, Po grabs Kai in a bear hug and uses the hold on himself, taking them both into the Spirit Realm.
  • In The Land Before Time, Sharptooth grabs Petrie as they plummet into the pond below, though the flyer survives.
  • In Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole, Kludd tries to do this with Soren by dragging him down into a fire in the forest. However, while he's holding onto a branch, he lets go of Soren for a bit...grabs onto the branch he was holding to (thanks to a broken wing) and falls into the fire below. Sorry it didn't work out for you, Kludd.
  • The secondary antagonist, Dumbella Richard, pulls this trick in the third Madeline film My Fair Madeline following her defeat. She twists the details of the story when she is confronted and Madeline winds up arrested alongside her and the Big Bad, Maximo Richard. This invokes a Downer Ending for the penultimate act, which in turn causes the final act to have a Downer Beginning. In fact, this could have cause a Downer Ending for the entire film... hadn't Emma atoned for her actions.
  • The Rugrats Movie has Spike dangling from the end of a bridge while fighting a Savage Wolf. Once the wolf is distracted by Angelica blowing a raspberry at it, Spike grabs the wolf's tail and hurls himself and the wolf off of the bridge. Spike lives, the wolf doesn't.
  • In the Direct to Video Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost, when Thorn traps the ghost of Sarah Ravencroft back inside her (Sarah's) own spellbook, she takes her great-great-great-grandson Ben with her.
    "I WON'T GO BACK ALONE!!!"
  • Heavily implied in Sleeping Beauty; after Prince Philip has thrown his sword at Maleficent, piercing her heart, she makes one final lunge at him before falling to her death.
  • Storks: Hunter tries to pull this as he is falling by using the giant robot claw to grab the ledge that Junior, Tulip, and the baby are standing on, but Junior flies himself and the girls back to safety.
  • In Tangled, after being lethally stabbed by Gothel, Eugene decides to cut Rapunzel's hair, the only thing keeping Gothel young, rather than allow Rapunzel to use her hair to heal him — effectively ending Gothel's life.
  • In Thumbelina (1994), Grundel grabs Cornelius as they tumble into the tunnel bridge abyss below.
  • Just before the end of Toy Story 3, Lotso, after Big Baby throws him into a dumpster, grabs Woody by the leg and pulls him into said dumpster, just as the garbage truck comes to take them to the dump. Subverted afterward as after Woody and Buzz save Lotso from being shredded to bits, he leaves the other toys to be incinerated rather than push the emergency stop button to save them. They do get saved by the Squeeze Toy Aliens at the last second.

    Music 
  • Rob Dougan's Left Me For Dead features this as the last line before the final refrain.
    I wanted to say
    To say that your shot proved the death of me
    'Cause now I've reached a dead end
    And I can't go back
    But if I'm going down you'll come with me
  • Sabaton's "Attack of the Dead Men" tells the story of the Russians doing essentially this to the Germans during World War I. After being hit with poisonous chlorine gas and knowing they were dead either way, the Russians charged the Germans who outnumbered them nearly 70:1 to take as many with them as they could.
  • Twista's Kill Us All
  • Averted by Emilie Autumn in her song 'Let The Record Show'
    "If I'm going down, then I'm going down good"
  • Similar in spirit, but lacking an actual enemy, in Voltaire's "The Ship's Going Down". The ship is utterly destroyed, and the captain takes a small bit of solace in the fact that his crew is going down with him and he's not dying alone. Then he spots the guy no one likes trying to make a getaway on a raft; not having that, he lances a fish-gig into Seaman Shaft's eye.
  • The Dixie Chicks song "If I Fall You're Going down with me" is an inversion of this trope since the song is actually about falling in love as opposed to dying.

    We're hanging right on the edge now baby
    The wind is getting stronger
    We're hanging on by a thread now honey
    We can't hold on much longer
    It's a long way down but it's too late

    If I fall you're going down with me
    You're going down with me baby if I fall
    You can't take back every little chill you give me
    You're going down with me baby heart and all ooh yeah
  • Five Finger Death Punch's If I Fall. Especially the ending.
    If I fall,
    Fuck You All.
    I'm taking everybody out.
    If I fall I will take everybody down.
    If I fall I will.
  • The Marilyn Manson song The Minute Of Decay has this refrain:
    I'm on my way down now, I'd like to take you with me...
  • In the full video for The Decemberists' "O Valencia!", Colin Meloy's character meets at a diner with the man who betrayed him and poisons his drink. The man stabs him in the neck just before he dies.
  • Second Chances by d.notive. Basically, the whole album is about a police detective who accidentally travelled 30 years back in time and is going to use the opportunity to hunt down and prevent the maniac from murdering his younger sister this time. And this song clearly states his intentions regarding the man he's after, literally qouting the trope.
    I'm not promised a way back,
    And if I die, I'm taking you with me.
  • Trickywi's song "Destiny Bond" is a tribute to the Pokémon move of the same name, so naturally it has this trope as a major theme.
    Make a move on me
    I'll be your last memory
    Take me down, the trick's on you
    Because you're coming with me
  • The opening lines of Iron Maiden's "The Trooper":
    You'll take my life, but I'll take yours too!
    You fire your musket but I'll run you through!
  • From "Halliburton Boardroom Massacre" by David Rovics:
    I thought of Halliburton and the military brass
    And the things they get away with
    All for their ruling class
    But I'm not a pawn and I can't let it be
    And if I'm gonna die I'm gonna take some of them fuckers with me
  • Eminem's album Encore ends with a skit where Slim Shady screams "you're coming with me!", massacres his audience, then kills himself.
  • According to her backstory, the main character of "Perfectly Sweet", Sarai, died when her bakery was set on fire by its new owner. Seeing the owner trying to get away, Sarai pulled him into the flames with her, killing them both.
  • “No Children” by the Mountain Goats famously has this as its final chorus, detailing a married couple that hates each other. The song’s cathartic nature has made it a staple of their live sets, with the audience often joining in to sing along.
    I am drowning
    There is no sign of land
    You are coming down with me
    Hand in unlovable hand
    And I hope you die
    I hope we both die

    Mythology and Religion 
  • Russian bylina tales tell of the Chud people, who, when losing a war, would dig a tunnel system, go there with their women, children and treasure, make a Last Stand and then collapse the tunnels, killing themselves with their enemies. Several such sites have actually been found.
  • In some denominations of Christianity (e.g. Orthodoxy), this is why Satan and his demons continue to fight against God even though as former angels, they already know that God will eventually win and send them to the lake of fire. Satan just wants to bring as many people to Hell as he can before this happens. Talk about Evil Is Petty! (In some other Christian teachings, Satan actually believes he can win and so this trope doesn't apply.)
  • The Bible also tells that this is how Samson died. After he was tempted by Delilah into revealing the secret of his Super-Strength, she, at the behest of his enemies, the Philistees, had him drugged so they could shave his head while he was unconscious. When Samson came to his senses again, he was powerless and captured by the Philistees, who blinded him and made him a slave. After some time of forced labors however, his head's hair grew back, and with it, unknown to the Philistees, his strength returned. Then many of the Philistees had a feast in the temple of their god Dagon to celebrate capturing Samson, so some of them had the great idea to bring Samson into the temple, just to mock and ridicule him. Samson prayed to God one last time and, laying his hands on two of the temple's columns, he brought them down, causing the whole temple to collapse over all who were in it, including Samson himself. The Bible notes that the Philistees who died at the temple's destruction were more numerous than all the ones Samson had fought before being captured.

    Podcasts 
  • In The Adventure Zone: Balance, following Edward's destruction by Magnus, Lydia retaliates by destroying Magnus's body before she turns to ash. He's left inhabiting a mannequin body.
  • In The Magnus Archives
    Tim: You know, I hear the Great Grimaldis' in town. You should go see him, cheer yourself up.
    Nikola: THAT'S. NOT. FUNNY.
    Tim: I know.
    [Explosion as Tim activates the detonator, killing them both]
  • The Silt Verses: Followers of Paige's god, The Many Below, can do this as a last resort.
  • In the Red Panda Adventures episode "The Gadget", the Red Ensign has at his mercy the man he holds responsible for much of the pain he's endured in his life, fugitive Nazi scientist Friedrich von Schlitz. The Ensign carries him to the atom bomb testing site in Trinity, New Mexico so that they can both die together. The act merits Silent Credits at the end of the episode.
    von Schlitz: Please! Please! I will give you anything you want!
    Red Ensign: This is what I want.

    Stand Up Comedy 
  • Denis Leary, in one of his '90s routines, had a bit (here, starting around 3:00) that could at best be described as "offensively sacrilegious". If the audience's net reaction is even somewhat positive, he adds a denouement, the implication that taking them with him will soften the sting a bit:
    "—I'm goin' to Hell for that bit. And you're all comin' with me! 'We didn't laugh at that bit Jesus, pleeeaase!' 'Shut up! Get on the bus with Leary and Scorsese; you're goin' right to fuckin' Hell!' "
  • George Carlin: On wrathful gods: "If there is a God, IF there is... may he strike this audience dead. See? Nothing happened. Okay, if there is a God, may he strike ME dead. Still nothing." On terrorism: "I think just the concept that a man can blow up a bomb in a crowded market and kill a couple hundred people is exciting and stimulating and I see it as a form of entertainment. I have always been willing to put myself at great personal risk for the sake of entertainment. I'm also willing to put YOU at great personal risk for the same reason."

    Tabletop Games 
  • Battletech: At the start of the Clan Invasion, a fighter pilot named Tyra Mirborg suffered terminal damage to her craft. Knowing she was dead, she drove her ship directly into the bridge of a nearby Clan ship. Fate smiled on her; this was the command vessel for the invasion, and her impact caused Smoke Jaguar ilKhan (and commander of the invasion) Leo Showers to be sucked out the broken windows into space. This delayed the Clan invasion for a year as they argued over who should replace Showers, giving the Inner Sphere time to rearm and prepare.
  • Call of Cthulhu:
    • The famous player character Old Man Henderson, upon finally being targeted personally by the Hastur cultists with a siege of zombies and shoggoths, holed up with his allies in a skating rink and rigged it with "enough explosives to make Michael Bay blush", taking the cultists, monsters, allies, and the Yellow King himself with him in a literal blaze of glory.
    • Arkham Horror has an item called a time bomb. You place up to 3 clue tokens on it, and when it detonates, everything in that neighborhood dies, including players. This is why you can put no clue tokens on it and just have it detonate immediately in your hands, killing your character but taking everything nearby out. This can be incredibly taxing on your efforts and a worse idea the further into the game you get, but early-on if you're facing a situation where the Terror Track will rise or some other awful thing will happen, just blow the monsters up.
  • Chronopia allows mages to perform such a manoeuvre. By expending all their remaining Wisdom points (the mana of the game), which is instant death by itself, they get to spend half their maximum Wisdom points as well, using it all to power a single spell without the usual skill penalties for using high-level magic. While it's still possible to fumble the skill throw and not all spells are suitable for a suicide casting like this, a spell like Explosion is sure to cause some severe damage to the topography and anyone unlucky enough to be caught within the blast radius...
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The staves of power, minor artifacts that are a great boon for any spellcaster wielding one of them. In dire straits, their wielder can also break the staff they have... resulting in a retributive strike, which does vast amounts of damage to almost anything capable of threatening them. There's a possible side-effect of a retributive strike that subverts the trope: A 50% chance of the strike opening a rift and casting you into the astral plane (or a random plane, depending on the edition).
    • The Draconians in the old Dragonlance setting were evil creatures magically created by evil clerics from the eggs of metallic (good) dragons to fight in the War of the Lance. When mortally wounded, depending on the type, they tended to go up in flames, emit poisonous gas, trap the killing weapon by turning to stone, explode, go berserk and then explode...
    • A Lich is not killed permanently until someone destroys its phylactery, at which point it explodes immediately. A campaign run by Shamus Young had a lich's phylactery cursed and trapped so while it might be possible to destroy it with ordinary means, it would kill everyone within a 100-mile radius.
    • When a Balor dies, at least in the 3.5 edition, it explodes in a ball of fire that deals 100 points of damage to everyone within 100 feet. Even better, it happens instantaneously, as soon as they drop to "dead" (-10 hit points). So if you don't kill the sucker from afar, you are faced with a Total Party Kill anyway (if everybody's still clear of 100 HP after a fight with a Balor, you've probably passed the level at which Balors are meant to be a challenge).
    • The balor is topped by the nuclear elemental from d20 Modern, which exploded for 400 points of untyped damage in a 400 feet radius, and 100 points of untyped damage to those farther than 400 feet away but within a one-mile radius. (Reflex save for half). That, and it also makes a highly radioactive crater.
      • Barring special rules, the Reflex Save for half allows anyone with Evasion to dodge the blast entirely.
      • The 3rd edition third party splatbook "The Slayers Guide to Dragons" gives us the new age category "Dracos Invictus". When dying, these dragons have death throes that cause 10D6 crush damage, variable explosive damage from 8D6 (white) to 14D10 (red/gold), and can enact a curse so powerful on the PCs that the DM is encouraged to alter the course of the campaign to see that it's fulfilled. There is no save against the curse.
    • Forgotten Realms:
      • Dragonmagic includes "death matrix". It needs to be cast only once to ensure that the dragon's body will explode upon death unless disintegrated or something similar. As an implanted magic ability, it can't be detected or dispelled like normal enchantments.
      • The Red Wizards of Thay have the "spell lash". It's a spell that kills the caster and makes their body explode. It was invented during Red Wizards' independence war with the Mulhorand theocracy (the experimental variant "mark of Gur", naturally, was castable on another guy).
      • Long before this was "blood dragon", a spell castable only by an elf (not even half-elf). The caster cuts themself down, and then the eponymous magical construct rises from the spilled blood and attacks the target. If it as much as touches its victim it dissolves their flesh. They were a rather vengeful bunch, those elves.
    • 3.5 edition's Complete Scoundrel has the "fatal flame" spell which, should its target die before the spell expires, explodes their body in a fireball of power proportional to the target's level. Naturally, it can be used on ally or foe alike.
    • In 4th Edition, there is the low-level Boneshard Skeleton that has an absolutely brutal blast for its level that goes off either when bloodied or when reduced to 0 hit points. Worse, if you have a group of them, it's possible that their blast can cause chain reactions with other Boneshard Skeletons caught in the area, with one blast triggering possibly all of them.
    • In almost any edition, it's become a Running Gag for a person's dying words to be "Hastur, Hastur, Hastur". Canonically, Hastur will then pay a quick visit that results in a good-sized crater where the PC, their party, and whatever they were fighting used to be.
  • Earthdawn: An optional rule allows players to do a "dying act". The character is allowed to spend all of their karma dice on a single roll, after which he or she is dead beyond the reach of any resurrection magic. If the roll in question is a damage roll, it becomes this trope.
  • Exalted: Dragon-Bloods have access to a series of Charms with the Martyr keyword, which becomes significantly more terrifying when they're used by a dying man, many of which are combat effects. The most notorious is the Essence 7 elemental nuke called As In The Beginning, so a dying DB gets to take entire battlefields with him.
  • This is how equal pieces fight in Game of the Generals. Unless they're flags, in which case the aggressor wins.
  • Mafia: More complex versions of the game (as well as its variations, like Werewolf) will often include a "killing role" character, such as Hunter or Rambo. Rules for these characters vary, but their usual role is to take a set number of other players down with them when they're killed.
  • Mage: The Ascension: Being a game of supremely high stakes, often high-energy magic, and doomed romanticism, Mage and its spin-offs maybe encourage this sort of mindset. Notably, the Renaissance-period version, Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade featured references to High Artisan Magistrate Roland Hoffmann, whose artillery was crucial to the defeat of Infernal powers at the Battle of Harz. And when the enemy got through to his guns, Hoffmann and his crews detonated their gunpowder stores, taking down everything on that side of the battlefield.
  • Monopoly presents this unlikely, but possible, scenario. Should one player become bankrupt by being unable to afford the rent to an opponent, that opponent takes possession of the bankrupted player's assets. The opponent then must pay 10% interest on all acquired mortgaged properties immediately. The opponent could theoretically get knocked out of the game as well by not being able to pay off the interest. For this to happen, the bankrupted player must have lots of mortgaged properties and little other assets while the opponent must be on the verge of becoming bankrupt.
  • Nuclear War: When a player is eliminated, they may immediately launch any missiles and warheads in their arsenal at targets of their choice, most likely the player who just took them out. This can trigger a chain reaction if it eliminates another player, potentially leaving no survivors.
  • Paranoia encourages this, even above and beyond survival (because clones mean Death is Cheap anyway): "What's more important — that you survive, or that your enemy gets his?" Especially if you're on your last clone anyway, and thus (at least personally) have nothing left to lose: "Friend Computer, I wish to make a full confession. All the charges leveled against me are true. And all the other charges that Suck-R knows about and hasn't mentioned yet are true. And all the vidtape footage that Gone-R collected and hid in his locker is accurate..." Of course, there are no such charges and no such footage, but how would the Computer know that? If you're lucky and/or amuse the GM enough, It may even forgive or forget about you as It focuses on these other traitors.
  • Pathfinder: If a bastion archon is killed by an evil creature, it explodes in a powerful burst of holy light that consecrates an area of forty feet around it, quite possibly killing whatever entity managed to slay it while simultaneously healing any surviving allies.
  • Princess: The Hopeful: Under normal circumstances, a Dethroned cannot be permanently killed, they reincarnate after death just as Princesses do. However, the Court of Storms has a special Charm that lets a Princess of Storms latch onto the Dethroned's soul and drag it with her into the presence of the Queen of Storms, annihilating both souls. Many Furies consider this a worthy sacrifice for taking one of the Darkness's most potent champions out of play.
  • Warhammer:
    • Anyone who kills a Tomb King is attacked by voracious beetles.
    • Dwarfs have the option to put self-destruct runes on their war machines.
    • The Doom Diver, an orc and goblins war machine, specifically fires goblins at the enemy. Goblins line up for the chance to go out in a blaze of glory as living ammunition. Night goblins also have fanatics; joining them is almost certainly a death sentence, but nothing is more inspiring and magnificent than a tiny goblin whirling a huge ball and chain around its head.
    • Caradryan is the Captain of the Phoenix Guard and the champion of the Elven creator god, Asuryan. Whoever kills Caradryan before his appointed time (easier said than done, as Caradryan is quite a badass), Asuryan gets pissed at them and hurls a fireball inflicting wounds that cannot be saved against.
    • The Heart of Woe is a magic amulet that explodes when the bearer dies. Orcs are fond of giving these to goblins, whose default reaction is "Dat wuz nice o' da boss ter give me dis shiny fing, but why's 'e sendin' me orf alone on dis wolf?"
    • Wyverns, monstrous mounts available to orc heroes, have a poisonous tail-stinger attack that is resolved at the end of a round of melee combat. Their entry explicitly states that wyverns can make this final tail attack even if they died in the preceding round of combat — indeed, Skullmuncha, the steed of the legendary orc warlord Azhag the Slaughterer, was nearly decapitated in its final battle, and its tail still reflexively stabbed forward to impale the hero who killed it.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Quite a lot of beings tend to follow this trope.
    • The prime culprit in the tabletop game itself is possibly the Eversor assassin, whose gene-boosted body explodes upon suffering sufficient physical trauma, usually taking with him whatever he was fighting at the time.
    • The super-heavy units in the mass-combat expansion Apocalypse. They'll often take out entire squads if they explode, even if the squad(s) in question wasn't even in close combat with it. Titans have a special rule called "reactor meltdown" which causes them to explode with an even bigger blast that's also strength D (auto wound or penetrating hit on anything in range). An exploding Titan can take every unit on the board with it!
    • The Brass Scorpion, a Chaos superheavy walker gets +2 on the table that determines the size of the explosion as the daemon controlling it is driven to spill as much blood as possible, even in death.
    • There's an ability for the Imperial Guard in the Apocalypse books called "Fire on my coordinates!" Any Imperial Guard soldier with a radio can roll for a leadership test. If he succeeds, an orbital bombardment is dropped right on top of his own position — assuredly killing himself (and his squad) along with any nearby enemies in the process.
  • Werewolf (1997) features the Bomb, which kills anyone that aims to kill it at night.
  • Battlefleet Gothic: The larger ships have a chance of opening a portal to hell when their reactors blow, sucking everything nearby in along with it. Tyranids are so horrifically terrifying that ships can attempt to do this on purpose if the get boarded by them.
    • A few Tau leaders are given a bomb that detonates if the Tau leader is removed as a casualty. This is viewed as "the greatest expression of the Greater Good one can make" as (depending on the edition) it allowed their squad to escape close combat (which Tau dread) or might tip the close combat their way (current 7th edition, 2016). The Tau otherwise have no suicide attackers and consider suicidal stands to be foolish, favoring feigned retreats and delaying tactics until they can amass massive fire superiority and punch through.
    • After losing one of his two hearts, the Space Wolf character Lukas the Trickster had it replaced with a stasis bomb. If he's ever killed in combat, there's a chance his opponent will be trapped in a stasis field with him for eternity. Lukas's stasis bomb can one-shot an Imperator Titan!
    • This tends to be averted by the Eldar, who see this tactic as an act of barbaric cowardice. They also dislike it because they're already on the verge of extinction themselves, even though they believe that their racial demise will awaken the death god Ynnead, who will destroy Chaos forever and play this trope straight.
    • The Grey Knight codex has the Brotherhood Champion, an exemplary swordsman of the Chapter capable of going toe to toe with the best fighters of chaos and standing a decent chance of winning. But even when killed, he draws upon all his psychic might and delivers a mutual deathstroke to his foe. This has a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding, and it kills anything, even Eternal Warriors and Physical Gods.
    • The 9th Vostroyan Firstborn regiment of the Imperial Guard was destroyed during the battle for Karak Prime against a splinter of Hive Fleet Moloch. The regiment had been driven back to a single hive, but the Tyranids were themselves racing against time to consume the planet and move on before its winter season set in, as the falling temperatures would weaken them too much to properly process the world and avoid starvation. The Vostroyans didn't have the manpower and munitions needed to hold out that long, however, and in order to avoid being overrun they resorted to opening the hive doors, waiting for the larger part of the Tyranids to swarm in, and detonating the hive's power plant, incinerating it, themselves, and about 85% of the horde. The remaining Tyranids starved to death over the coming months, killing off the splinter fleet.
    • As of 9th Edition, several factions have access to stratagems that allow them to automatically detonate vehicles that have been destroyed to allow the player to follow this trope, such as the Chaos Knight strategem "Spiteful Demise".

    Theatre 
  • Defied by the eponymous protagonist of Hamilton at the play's climax. In his final solo, seeing his friend-turned-rival Aaron Burr's gunshot coming towards him and knowing he is about to die, he deliberates over whether his final action should be to shoot his soon-to-be-murderer in retaliation. He chooses to spare his life.
  • In Hamlet, the titular character, already dying from poison, stabs King Claudius with the poisoned foil then forces him to drink the equally poisonous goblet, making sure he dies before he passes on.
  • In Heathers, Veronica is completely willing to die if it's going to prevent all of the students of Westerberg from being blown to smithereens by JD, but she's taking him down along with her.
    "And there's your final bell!"
    "It's one more dance and then farewell!"
    "Cheek to cheek in hell with a dead girl walking!"
  • Jekyll & Hyde: During "Confrontation", Jekyll threatens Hyde with this and follows through at the end of the show.
    Jekyll: If I die, you die too.
  • Directly invoked by Enjolras and the other revolutionaries in Les Misérables; when they realize that no one is coming to help them and that they are going to die, they promise to "make them bleed while we can". Given how quickly they go down, they likely weren't too successful.
  • In Pokémon Live!, MechaMew2 tries to do this to Giovanni; sadly, the Rocket boss escapes before it blows up.
  • Camille Saint-Saëns' opera Samson et Dalila ends the same way as the Biblical legend, with Samson bringing down the temple on himself and the entire Philistine cast.

    Theme Parks 
  • At the Universal Studios parks:
    • In Transformers: The Ride, when Megatron is about to fall off a building to his doom, he pulls the riders down them with him, though Bumblebee saves them at the last second.
    • During the climax of Waterworld: A Live Sea War Spectacular, after which the Deacon is set on fire, he attempts to knock the Mariner over the edge of the Atoll with him, but hilariously misses and plunges to his doom. Sometimes, he'll even say the trope word-for-word.

    Toys 

    Visual Novels 
  • Fate/stay night:
    • The final choice you make in Unlimited Blade Works route is as follows: After beating the Big Bad up, a sphere of nothingness begins to swallow him up. He throws out a chain and grabs Shirou; the choices are "try and break free" or "take him down with me". Picking the second one leads to a Bad End. This choice is so obviously dumb that once the Tiger Dojo starts up, it begins with Taiga beating a Super-Deformed Shirou. They then use it to hint towards a way to get the Good End of the route, due to them likely assuming that since the right decision is so obvious that the only reasons someone would do the wrong is is curiosity after beating the route.
      • Just before this moment, there's a subversion when Gilgamesh grabs Shirou with his chain. Shirou assumes that Gilgamesh is trying to pull this trope on him, but Gil is quick to tell him to stay right where he is so that he can pull himself out of the aforementioned sphere of nothingness.
    • Also in Unlimited Blade Works, Lancer kills Kotomine, stabs Shinji, frees Rin and sets fire to the castle even after being stabbed by Gae Bolg. Justified because one of his abilities is called Battle Continuation; it allows the user to continue fighting even at the verge of death.
    • Heavens Feel has one too in Shirou's fight with Saber Alter if you don't bring Rider along. Shirou kills himself to stop her, to let Tohsaka proceed without interference. Taiga and Ilya in the Dojo are a bit troubled because they can't really call it a bad end due to beating Saber in a one on one fight, which is pretty damn badass.
    • And in the manual on The Dead Apostle Ancestors, El Nahat seems to have this as his shtick. Blowing himself up to kill an enemy. The Church has captured him and turned his stomach into a weapon.
  • Majikoi! Love Me Seriously! has Cookie, the robot, who gets ensnared in several ropes against class S in the Kawakami War. As a last-ditch move, he releases his remaining energy to shock the students holding the ropes, then shuts down.
  • The Safe Ending in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors features Snake taking SIX bullets from Ace while the incinerator they are trapped in is about to burn them all to death. He STILL has enough strength to keep Ace inside while the others get away...
  • In one ending of War: 13th Day, the two surviving Valkyrie try to take down as many of the Vi before ultimately meeting their demise. Their deaths inspire the other clans to unite against the tyrants and overthrow them. However, this is revealed to be a false ending by your Unreliable Narrator.

    Web Animation 
  • Gaming All-Stars: Andross utters his “If I go down, I’m taking you with me!” line from Star Fox 64 in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered when Mario, Sonic, and Crash prepare their combined Final Smash attacks against him just before the moon explodes.
  • Power Star: During the ending, after he is puppeteered by the boos to kill everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario is given a short amount of time to examine the damage that was done while he was under their possession. Suffice to say, this gives the mustachioed plumber an opportunity to commit suicide, knowing that doing so will deprive the boos of a physical vessel and therefore destroying the demons themselves in the process.
  • This is attempted a couple of times in DEATH BATTLE!, where one fighter, knowing they're done for, try to bring down their opponent (or one of their opponents in one instance) with them. So far, none of these have fully worked.
    • The first real attempt at this is made in Terminator vs. RoboCop, when RoboCop inadvertently ruptures the Terminator's fuel cells, the Terminator attempts to use this to essentially self-destruct to kill RoboCop. However, Murphy straps the Terminator to his jetpack and launches it off, making enough distance between the two combatants so that Murphy does not get caught in the blast.
    • In Godzilla vs. Gamera, Gamera attempts to self-destruct in an attempt to take Godzilla down. However, Godzilla pushes Gamera skywards with its Red Spiral Breath, which also breaks through Gamera's shell and kills the turtle kaiju.
    • In the Mega Man Battle Royale, the classic Mega Man attempts to do this to Mega Man X, dragging him into the black hole they and two other combatants made. He does succeed in dragging X into the black hole along with him, though while Classic dies to this, X's core survives and he regenerates, albeit with his Ultimate Armor destroyed.
    • The latest attempt at this was made in Genos vs. War Machine. As War Machine blasts him through the chest with his Unibeam, Genos attempts to self-destruct to kill War Machine, even saying this trope verbatim. War Machine comes out unscathed, however, and promptly crushes the only thing remaining of Genos- his head.
      Genos: Not yet! I'm taking you with me!!
  • In ModnarYug's "Sylveon use explosion-mist" animation, a female Sylveon uses the titular move against a Gardevoir. This consists of Sylveon swelling up like an overinflated pool toy until she explodes in a cloud of mist. She's left unscathed (albeit exhausted) and the Gardevoir's fainted.

    Webcomics 
  • Played for laughs in Dubious Company. Tiren, the heroes' only fighter, is being beaten by Marty. Walter grabs him and jumps off the airship. Tiren and Sue both jump after their respective definitely not boyfriend. Tiren forgot Walter can fly, he grabs her. Sue's sister ends up saving the other two. The rest of the cast are stunned by the stupidity, except Sal.
  • The Crap Golems of Erfworld seem to be designed for this kind of tactic, accompanied by what can only be described as a Moment of Awesome in Unsound Effects.
    • In this strip, Bogroll succeeds so amazingly that he levels. Twice. Before being killed so hard that even Wanda and an Arkentool can't bring him back.
  • Damien from El Goonish Shive tries to do one of these to Grace when he realizes he might not be a god. It doesn't work though, partly because Grace is fireproof, but mostly due to some good ol' Deus ex machina.
    • Later on, Pandora violates immortal law by killing an aberration to save one of her descendants. When an immortal violates immortal law, every other immortal automagically links to the offender and sends energy to force the offender to "reset". Pandora can't prevent that (she's powerful, but not that powerful), but before she is reset she is able to briefly reverse the link and send her own energies down it, forcing every single immortal to manifest on the physical plane and cast a massively powerful aberration-destroying spell. Better than 99% of the planet's aberrations are wiped from the world in a single blast.
  • The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: Wonderella is planning to do this to everyone, by arranging to have sarin gas pumped into the room where her Video Will is viewed, as seen in this strip. (Fortunately, at least Rita, who records it, now knows not to show up.)
  • Sepulchritude, Problem Sleuth's ultimate attack, which is deployed to take out the Demonhead Mobster Kingpin. Problem Sleuth lives.
  • Sleepless Domain: When Cassidy realizes Goops has distracted her and gotten her killed her last act is to scream and put her last bit of energy into stabbing Goops through the eye, and kill the monster that ultimately killed her. This doesn't actually kill Goops, but she tried.
  • In the "Oceans Unmoving" arc of Sluggy Freelance, Bun-bun pulls this against his nemesis Blacksoul (who's trying to capture him for an unknown purpose), detonating a grenade that launches them both into the timeless waters below into what everyone knows means certain doom. "You're not taking me with you, I'm taking you with me."
  • Ren from Tower of God sent the "Bull" after Bam after Yuri has him beaten to death.

    Web Original 
  • The Evil Overlord List advises against doing this.
  • KateModern: Precious Blood: "If it's the end for me, I hope you realise I'm the kind of vindictive bastard that's gonna take as many people with him as I can."
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd at the end of his "Crazy Castle" review. Woody Woodpecker intends to blow the Nerd up with a bomb, but the Nerd grabs him and holds him in place.
    "I don't give a fuck, I'm taking you with me! So you like to play with bombs, huh? Well, BOMBS AWAY, YOU WOODY BUNNY FUCKING PECKER PIECE OF SHIT!"
  • Premier Jacade in Darwin's Soldiers: Card of Ten blows up Planet Gaman and everyone on it (including himself) to stop the rebels from taking power from him.
  • Lord Slug tells Goku this in Lord Slug Abridged.
  • At the very end of Dream's Minecraft Manhunt grand finale, Sapnap tries to kill Dream as a last-ditch effort by exploding a bed next to him. Sapnap thought blowing up the bed would either blow up the dragon (killing it before Dream could), or kill Dream himself. Both possibilities would result in the hunters winning. What happened instead was that the game gave the "Free the End" achievement to Dream (meaning that no matter what really happened the proof was in Dream's favor), and the bed only blew up Sapnap.
  • The Fire Never Dies: This was the White strategy at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay after their fleet was detected by the Reds. With no serious hope of escape or survival, they used suicidal tactics against the Reds, hoping to at least take as many ships with them as they could, succeeding in sinking the battleships Texas and New York.
  • The character Riot Breaker in The Guildhall D&D podcast. Notably, he's used this strategy twice, somehow managing to survive both attempts. The first time was against a robotic dragon that, if not for his (attempted) Heroic Sacrifice would have killed the party almost definitely. The second time, a dawning realization of just how badly he'd messed up pushed him beyond the Despair Event Horizon, and as a result, he intended to drag the villain into the murky depths with him.
  • Parodied in Kickassia, when The Nostalgia Critic makes clear early on that if the others try to overthrow him, he'll blow up Kickassia and everyone in it (including himself) with twenty tons of dynamite, then later on tries to do just that. Pity that The Cinema Snob disconnected the dynamite when he got exiled.
  • Party Crashers:
    • At one point during their game on Mario Party 2's Mystery Land, Vernias decides to obtain the Bowser Bomb from the item minigame to summon Bowser, knowing that him, Brent, and Nick were all directly in his line of fire, causing the three of them to lose all of their coins in the process.
    • At one point in "I Made a Mario Party Challenge for my Birthday...", Sophist decides to pay Mr. I to travel across the board while Nick was directly in his line of fire, screwing him out of getting the Star.
  • In Spoony's review of the failed 70s Captain America pilot, he sent a copy to The Nostalgia Critic (who hanged himself) and invited Linkara on the show just to waste his time.
    "If I have to suffer, I'm taking every one of you bastards with me."
  • In the finale of Red vs. Blue: Revelation, as the Meta is being dragged to his death by a Warthog jeep over a cliff, he grabs Grif along the way down. Sarge starts delivering a eulogy even after Tucker suggests that maybe Grif caught a branch on the way down. He did... in the form of embedding the Meta's Brute Shot's blade into the side of the cliff and "dangling on the job again I see" as Sarge puts it.
  • The Ruins of an American Party System has a purely unintentional example. When Huey Long votes for the Civil Rights Act as a final political act before killing himself to avoid jail time for corruption, the shock causes his ideological rival Governor Eugene Talmadge to drop dead of a heart attack.
  • Melina Frost from Survival of the Fittest kills Beth Vanallen this way. After the latter stabbed another almost fatally and left her to die in quicksand, the former grabbed hold of her hair in her last act and dragged Beth under with her, killing them both.
  • Whateley Universe: This is the reason for the Star Stalker's creation, on a cosmic scale: if the invading Elder Gods couldn't be stopped, the Destroyer's mission was to destroy everything, in all dimensions, everywhere. Sara has refrained from explaining this to Billie for the sake of her sanity.

    Western Animation 
  • Used in the Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers episode "Smuggler's Gauntlet." The antagonist of the episode stole some high-end Psycho Serum, and the Rangers are sent out to retrieve it. They break into the antagonist's hideout and are surrounded by mooks. Queue Zachary activating a neuron bomb capable of wiping out all life in a city block's radius and threatening to detonate it unless the antagonist backs down. Goose may have the Cowboy Cop reputation, but push Zach, and he proves to be crazier.
  • The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In the climax of "The Trouble With Clones" after Jimmy stops Earth from fading into oblivion, Evil Jimmy breaks the Dark Matter Power Chip used to create the Evil Earth which sucks everyone and everything on it into the dark matter dimension, wanting to trap Jimmy with them. Fortunately, Jimmy manages to escape.
  • Amphibia: In "Anne-sterminator", the Cloak-bot has only a few seconds winding down on its self-destruct and is about to blow up, which will not only kill Anne, but also her parents and the Plantars. The resulting explosion is so strong that Anne had to tap into her Super Mode and kick the assassin into Earth's orbit so it can blow up safely.
    • This is also the Core's final gambit after the invasion is thwarted. After ending up trapped in Darcy's helmet, it flies to the moon with the intention of ramming it into Amphibia in a final desperate attempt to get the stones, and if it means destroying itself in the process, so be it. Sasha summarizes this as it being a giant Sore Loser.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • At least some of the Technical Pacifist Air Nomads fought back against the super-powered firebenders before the genocide was completed. Aang finds the skeleton of his mentor Gyatso next to a pile of enemy corpses.
    • "The Boiling Rock, Part 2" has the warden telling the guards to cut the gondola our heroes are using to escape, with him still in it. It seems he's really that obsessed with keeping a no-escape record. (On top of that, what's below the gondola? Boiling water. The episode is named after The Alcatraz of the setting, and it got its name by being in the crater of a volcano, dormant but with magma near enough to the surface to make sure the water that surrounds the facility is boiling. Which means to be sure he gets the heroes, he is willing to suffer one of the most horrifically agonizing deaths imaginable.)
  • In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Harlequinade", the Joker plots to level Gotham City with a nuclear bomb. When it's clear that his plan is going to fail due to Batman's interference, he aims the gun turret of the plane he planned to escape with on the bomb, vowing that, "That bomb's going to go off even if I go with it!" Fortunately, he doesn't succeed.
  • This was the main goal of the Highbreed in Ben 10: Alien Force, but on a universal scale. They believed themselves to be superior to all other lifeforms, and after they rendered themselves sterile through generations of inbreeding, they couldn't stand the thought of being outlived by "lesser" races and decided that they wouldn't die alone.
  • Big City Greens: In the climax of "Chipocalypse Now", when Chip Whistler has been banned from Big City, he furiously tries to kill Cricket and his family (and by extension, everyone who stuck up for them) with his chopper. Also in the same episode, when Gloria is fired from her job at the Wholesome Foods Mega-Store, she drags the bouncer who fired her down the garbage chute with her.
  • A less direct version in Castlevania. The Judge of Lindenfeld tricks his killer into falling into a spike pit by telling him that it's an escape route being given as a sort of villain's dying grace.
  • Exo Squad:
    • Captain Marcus tries to do this in episode 11 of Exo Squad, after his attempt to liberate Earth just results in catastrophic defeat. Subverted in that he fails: the Resolute is destroyed before it can ram Phaeton's flagship.
    • When it looks like Phaeton is going to lose the war he builds a doomsday weapon that will blow up Earth and take the invading ExoFleet with it. Due to the fact that he was dying from Automutation Syndrome, he wanted to ensure that no one outlived him.
  • In the straight-to-DVD Futurama movie Bender's Big Score, Lars, knowing that he's doomed to die eventually, presses Nudar and himself to the duplicate Bender, which was about to self-destruct. His video will reveals that he was actually a duplicate Fry, and wanted to die doing something useful (neatly wrapping up all the movie's loose ends) instead of causing Leela the pain of dying unexpectedly.
  • Gargoyles: Demona and Macbeth had a curse placed on them that made them both immortal. The only way either one can die is through the use of this trope, i.e. one must kill the other, which will result in both of their deaths.
  • Infinity Train: After he's sheared in two by a passing train car, Agent Mace realizes he's as good as dead and spends his last moments trying to drag MT with him into a set of train wheels because he's just that obsessed with completing his mission. Unfortunately for him, his injuries make it easy for MT to overpower him and shove him into the wheels alone, shredding him to pieces.
  • Justice League:
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Lin Beifong attempts this in "Turning The Tides" when she orders Tenzin to go on without her as she attacks the airships, leaving her to go down with them. In a Double Subversion, she fails to take down the second one, although she manages to stop their pursuit of Tenzin and his family.
    • Bumi the 2nd tries this with a dark spirit, hurling both himself and the spirit off a Sky Bison. Bumi lives.
    • In "Venom of the Red Lotus", Ghazan chooses this over going back to prison — and collapses a cave on himself, Bolin and Mako. They make it out, he doesn't.
    • In "The Battle of Zaofu", Varrick, of all people, tries to do this to the people holding him captive. He manages to blow up the train, preventing Kuvira from getting the spirit vine technology, and only lives because Bolin saved them both.
  • In March of the Dinosaurs, the Albertosaurus tackles the old bull Edmontosaurus, biting down on his neck. During their fight, both dinosaurs come towards a cliff, about to fall off to their deaths. Similar to both Sharptooth and the carnotaur, except that while both of the above failed to take their prey (Petrie and Aladar) down with them, the Albertosaurus SUCCEEDED.
  • ReBoot played with this trope and subverted it and eventually pretended it never happened. Big Bad Megabyte is trapped in a Room101 by Bob in an early episode (though Bob later becomes retconned into a Technical Pacifist), and so Megs uses the last of his strength to self destruct himself using a panel on his forearm that appears to be a Shout-Out to Predator. His chamber of doom is ejected into orbit to keep him from destroying everything. Even though Bob would never do something like this later in the series, and Megabyte turned a sickly black blotch as he prepared to kaboom, the chamber lands on the outskirts of Mainframe and we see Megabyte's fist punch through the chamber door in a Finger-Twitching Revival (well, by his standards).
    • The supervirus Daemon has this as her entire purpose. She infects the entire Net and once her personal clock runs out she self-destructs and in sixty seconds everything infected by her gets destroyed as well.
  • Regular Show ends with Pops using his recently mastered positive energy powers to suppress the negative powers of his Evil Twin, Anti-Pops, and hurl both of them into a nearby star, killing them both and ending an until-then infinitely recurring cycle of the two destroying the universe with their conflicts.
  • Sealab 2021: In "The Policy", Murphy pulled this off when Sparks tried electrocuting him for the insurance money: he got close enough to Sparks to electrocute him as well. There seems to be no hard feelings between the two, as they both sit in hell casually comparing punishments.
  • Shadow Raiders: Planets Fire's engines begin to fail, making it unable to outrun the Beast Planet. The Grand Vizier then turns the planet around and crashes it into the Beast Planet, hoping to take out the Beast in a suicide attack. The Beast Planet survives unharmed.
  • Spider-Man: The Animated Series: In "The Alien Costume, Part 3," Spider-Man tries to defeat Venom by luring him to the launch site of a NASA rocket. He intends to use the roar of the rocket to force the symbiote off Eddie Brock and then to web the symbiote to the rocket. The plan works perfectly, but Spidey was prepared to go this way if it didn't.
    "Hope this launch doesn't fry my molecules, but if I'm gonna go, at least I'll take him with me."
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks:
    • "Crisis Point": The holographic Mariner allows Vindicta to beat her up as a distraction until the ship's self-destruct kills them both.
    • "No Small Parts": When Badgey is uploaded onto the Pakled ship, he activates the self-destruct so he can kill Rutherford too, even at the cost of his own existence.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
    • "Rookies": A seriously injured rookie clone trooper sets off explosives that destroy himself, the battle droids cornering him and the installation they were on.
      Battle Droid: Do we take prisoners?
      Hevy: I... don't. [detonates explosives]
    • "A Test of Strength": A non-lethal example occurs at the end. Just as Ahsoka manages to close off the boarding bridge between the Jedi corvette Crucible and the pirate ship Acushnet, a pirate being sucked back into the latter ends up crashing into her and sending her tumbling with him back to his ship, where she is promptly captured by Hondo.
  • Star Wars Rebels: In the finale, "Family Reunion and Finale", with no other way to defeat Grand Admiral Thrawn, and having left his lightsaber at ground level with the other rebels, Ezra Bridger, having just broken free aboard Thrawn's Chimaera, resorts to cornering him at the Chimaera's bridge and using the Force to summon large purgill to capture the ship and whisk it away into hyperspace, into an unknown, distant region of the galaxy. This ensures that Thrawn's Imperial forces will never threaten Lothal again, but also sacrifices Ezra's chance to live a free life on his home planet or continue his time with the Spectres during their fight against the Empire.
  • Steven Universe: In "Jail Break", Jasper tries to convince Lapis Lazuli to fuse with her to destroy the Crystal Gems by reminding her of the way they mistreated her. Lapis goes through with it and they form Malachite, but Lapis, fed up with being a prisoner (first in a mirror, then on Jasper and Peridot's ship), uses her powers to shackle them together and drag them both down to the bottom of the sea.
    Lapis: I'm done being everyone's prisoner. Now you're MY prisoner. And I'm never letting you go! Let's stay on this miserable planet TOGETHER!
  • An episode of TaleSpin has Rebecca tell Baloo, "I'm going insane! And I'm taking you with me!".
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): The turtles' Triceraton ally Zog does this to the Shredder by keeping him immobile inside an exploding ship. While he succeeds in his intention of giving the turtles enough time to escape, the Shredder survives, while he himself...doesn't.
    • Villainous example: 2K3 Shredder in Turtles Forever made up his mind to end it this way by ending all of existence if only so he could destroy the TMNTs from Turtle Prime/the original Mirage comic.
  • In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) episode "Metalhead Rewired", Metalhead does this. After holding a portal open in order to allow all the mutants to escape (turtles included), Metalhead lets the Kraang all pile onto him and then self-destructs by exploding. Also earlier in the series, in the episode "The Gauntlet", when the Turtles have Xever and Bradford surrounded, Bradford mentions this trope just before stabbing the Mutagen bomb, spilling mutagen on himself and Xever and washing them off the balcony.
  • Transformers:
    • Done interestingly in Transformers: Armada. Megatron knows that if he and Optimus Prime both live, the war will restart and Unicron will be revived. He ends their final battle by allowing himself to be sucked into the space vortex, even shiving Optimus' hand when he tries to stop his fall.
    • He does it again at the end of the next season, Transformers: Energon. The fledgling new universe is powered by a 'sun' made of Super Energon and the head of Unicron. Unicron's spark has entered him, but when he realizes he's being used, he enters the Super Energon sun, apparently vaporizing himself, so that Unicron won't return; if Unicron really is alive, there'll be no escaping its gravity. Interestingly, Megatron returns for Transformers: Cybertron, with spiffy new Unicron based armor but not that of Noble Demon-ness that makes him the kind of guy who'd sacrifice himself for the universe.
    • In Cybertron, Unicron does this in a way. The balance of good and evil is disrupted with Unicron gone, so a giant black hole that could consume The Multiverse has formed. If it's not stopped, Unicron will basically have taken all reality with him.
    • The two-part premiere of Transformers: Beast Wars had Megatron transforming to robot mode and risking fatal Energon exposure, in order to blow up Optimus Primal. Neither character dies.
    For if I must die, I shall take you with me.
    • Depth Charge goes out this way, taking Rampage with him by stabbing the crab with a spike of raw energon.
    • However, in the Grand Finale of Beast Machines, Optimus grabs Megatron and jumps into a device that turns all of Cybertron into a technorganic paradise, reviving all the sparks Megatron took. Both die, although Optimus's spark appears once to pass the torch to Cheetor before joining the Matrix.
    • In what seems to be a reoccurring trend, in the Grand Finale of Transformers: Animated, Megatron once again attempts this with Optimus Prime, intending to vanquish his spark in the ensuing Starscream Supreme explosion. Notable in that Megatron did not fully acknowledge Optimus until this episode — it really goes to show how Optimus dug under him and had the show continued, the event is what would fully kick start their legendary rivalry.


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The Death of Batman

Cornered in the Batcave by one of his deadliest opponents, Batman faces his end head on.

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Main / DyingMomentOfAwesome

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