Tired of Running

"My will is not so easily broken, Amon. The Firstborn shall fear you NO LONGER!"

— Artanis, StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

Sometimes it's easier to run. Especially if there are people chasing you who want to capture or hurt or kill you. And especially if these people are stronger or greatly outnumber you and to face them is to give up your life or freedom. In these cases, it's a lot easier to run.

But taking the easy way out is not always the best solution. Living a life on the run can be stressful and demeaning. There comes a time when a character grows tired of running. They decide to stand their ground and fight (or surrender in some circumstances) even though the odds of winning are slim. This can be portrayed as very brave, very stupid, or both. Still there is no denying that there is something admirable about a person choosing to face their fears. Notably, it works a lot of the time... but not always.

Sometimes it may not be the enemy that the person is fleeing, but destiny itself.

See also Do Not Go Gentle, Rousing Speech.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Given that the Central Theme of Cowboy Bebop is the inevitability of the past catching up to you, this trope's inclusion is just as inevitable.
  • Spike does it in the final episode after running away with Julia is no longer an option due to Julia being gunned down. He launches a one-man assault on the Red Dragon headquarters, blasting his way through his old comrades, facing down his rival Vicious and ending it in a Mutual Kill.
    Spike Spiegel: I'm not going there to die. I'm going to find out if I'm really alive.
  • Jet, meanwhile, inverts the trope: he bought the Bebop and became a bounty hunter because people in his past ran away from him. Whenever he's given the chance to confront his past during the course of the series, he actively goes out of his way to do so.
• In one scene of Fullmetal Alchemist, Alex Louis Armstrong says about his conviction to stay with Mustang.
  Alex: The military's methods were unconscionable, of that I was certain. But I deserted. I turned my back on my soldiers. I should have remained on the battlefield and fought this wrong!! Ever since I fled from the Ishvalan front, not a day has gone by that I felt ashamed of straying from my values and giving up. And now that I am on the battlefield once again, how can I put my tail between my legs and flee!?
• In the first episode of Martian Successor Nadesico, Akito goes out to distract the Jovians while the Nadesico launches. He spends a lot of time just running before he says, "The hell with this!", turns around and starts beating on them with his Rocket Punch.
• One Piece:
  • Usopp, Nami, and Chopper all have moments like this in their solo battles (Usopp vs. Choo, Nami vs. Miss Doublefinger, Chopper vs. Gedatsu). Though the exact circumstances differ, the main point is that they're tired of being The Load in combat, and are going to kick ass, which they do.
  • Lola had her shadow stolen by Gecko Moria and spent years hiding in Thriller Bark's forest as direct exposure to sunlight would kill her. During the climax of the battle with Moria, Lola declares she's done hiding in the shadows and will stay until the battle is over, even if that means dying to the rising sun.
  • Throughout the series, there have been times when the Straw Hats have been forced to flee from powerful Marines, specifically, the ones with incredibly broken Devil Fruit powers. Near the end of the Dressrosa arc, with the Straw Hats and allies having to flee from an Admiral, Luffy decides to attack the Admiral, declaring that the reason he spent a Time Skip training was so he wouldn't have to run anymore.

Comic Books

• Surge of New X-Men: Academy X: "No. This has to end. We have to end it. Forty-seven of us are dead. Jay is dead. Max is dead. Laurie is dead. Brian is dead. John went insane, and who knows where Kevin is. The X-Men can't save us. The O*N*E and their Sentinels are a sick joke. They'll probably be coming after us next. And the Avengers don't care. It's up to us. The X-Men are half a world away. We can't wait for them. Forge could still be alive, and if he's not, then Nimrod is coming for us next. This thing was involved with Stryker. It helped him kill our friends. So we'll save Forge. And we'll take this thing down." They then go out and beat Nimrod by forcing it into a temporal paradox by overloading the time device.
• Happens in Dynamite's The Shadow #17, though it's the villain who says she's "through running".

Comic Strips

• One The Far Side cartoon depicts a gazelle with a nifty hat standing his ground against some incoming lions. According to the caption, he too was a herd animal... but he was through running.
• Garfield: While being chased by a dog, Garfield wonders what exactly dogs actually do to cats if they catch them, so he stops running and asks the dog what happens next. The dog blissfully starts a waltz with Garfield. An irritated Garfield asks that he be the one to lead next time.

Fan Works

• Played for comedic effect in Bob and George. Yellow Demon chases Mega Man and Proto Man around for a few comics, until Mega Man decides to stand and fight, and throw in some movie quotes while he's at it.
• Fauna in DC Nation makes "no more running" part of her superheroing motive. She may be too much of a Granola Girl to ever be entirely comfortable with vigilante work, but the alternative of being afraid of her shapeshifting and looking over her shoulder all the time for Luthor is even less appealing.
• Empathy: Seeing his friends willing to fight the Gorg even though they must be terrified inspires Oh to fight despite his fears as well, starting with fighting back against Smek.
• In The Empty Turnabout, after 6 months of angst, Apollo finally realizes in chapter 2 that he can no longer ignore or run away from a taunting, murderous Athena, and instead fights her in court "like a man", quoting her.
• In the My Hero Academia fic Every Step of the Way, Aizawa is left blind by a villain. Two of the attackers get caught and the third tries to avenge his friends. Aizawa is still recovering and unsure of his abilities, so he runs from the guy at first. Then, he gets tired of running and feeling weak and fights back, taking the guy down, even learning he can see vague shapes if he activates his Quirk.
• Friendship Is Magic: The Adventures of Spike: At the end of the "Spike: 20% Cooler" arc, Spike is being chased by some Diamond Dogs when he comes to this conclusion — he's sick of always running from danger and needing others to save him, so he decides to stand and fight.
• In Hunter (UnwelcomeStorm), Taylor only fights Father Gascoigne because she couldn't run anymore. He'd chased and killed her dozens of times (she revives upon death), and she realized that the only way to end things was to fight back.
• One Fictional Document in Kyon: Big Damn Hero details what to do if you're Tired of Running.
• In Origins, Admiral Nimitz almost quotes this ("sick and tired of running") once she sees that new starships meant to deal with the Alien Invasion actually stand a chance.
• Rise of the Galeforces: "My name is UltraViolet... and I am THROUGH running!"
• Risk It All: Between lingering PTSD from staring down the barrel of a gun twice and being a 16-year-old in over his head in superheroing, Ren freezes up when he's mugged in an alleyway by a guy with a gun despite having superpowers. He learns to get over it through his desire to change his circumstances and anger at himself for being so helpless, breaking the man's arm and taking his money back. From then on, he's able to jump into firefights with much less hesitation, though he's still careful to not get shot.
• This Bites!:
  • After having his country yanked around through the machinations of a Warlord and the negligence of the World Government, Vivi's persecution and bounty is the last straw for Cobra, and through a Rousing Speech, declares Alabasta's secession from the World Government.
  • Watching her mistress be oppressed by a cruel God for several long years, as well as watching her be forced to send innocent people off to be smited, once she gets the chance to talk without any chance of Eneru hearing her, Conis's pet fox Su lets out everything she wants to say, declares Eneru a tyrant, and begs the Straw Hats to defeat him.
• In Zero 2: A Revision, Kari, sick of being a Damsel in Distress needing to be protected, decides to stand down and personally confront Davis's evil half Darkheart despite knowing full well he has already absorbed all of the other Digidestined and their Digimon and will likely get beaten down by him.

Film — Animation

• In One Stormy Night, Gabu gets tired of his old pack pursuing him and Mei because of their forbidden friendship. Toward the end of the movie, Gabu finally fights them, when he understands that they won't leave them alone, no matter what.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Puss is hunted by Death the entire movie, frightened and fleeing every time because he feels overpowered after getting cut for the first time. However, on the Wishing Star, with nowhere left to run except to get more lives, Puss finally accepts Death's challenge to pick up his sword and fight for his life.
• Parodied in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, where near the climax, SpongeBob and Patrick are confronted by Dennis, a bounty hunter that's been pursuing them for most of the film and had already nearly taken them out in a previous encounter. While SpongeBob tries to run, Patrick, after enduring a ton of hardship and character development that would normally signal for them to get serious:
  Patrick: No... I'm tired of running. If we run now, we'll never stop—
  [Dennis punches him in the face and sends him flying]
  Patrick: RUN, SPONGEBOB!

Film — Live Action

• In The 13th Warrior, Helfdane the Fat, one of the older warriors, has been wounded while fighting deep into a cave system with no apparent way out except for through the horde of neanderthal-like 'wendol' chasing them. He staggers at one point, then gets back up and says to the protagonist: "I've run about as far as I care to. Run along now, little brother. Today was a good day." He then holds the thin passageway for as long as he can before he dies.
• Parodied in American Pie with the four main dudes making "The Pact" to not graduate high school virgins.
• In Apocalypto, once Jaguar Paw reaches the forest while running from the bad guy Mayans, it's Took a Level in Badass time: "I am Jaguar Paw. This is my forest. And I am not afraid."
• In Centurion, before climax skirmish with the Picts. Dias even says "I don't know about you, but I'm tired of running" just before Lock-and-Load Montage.
• The Eiger Sanction: Professional Killer protagonist Jonathan Hemlock's Arch-Enemy Miles Mellough, a former colleague who betrayed him, unexpectedly turns up halfway through the movie, saying he's tired of looking over his shoulder for Hemlock. He offers to reveal the identity of The Mole in exchange for Hemlock giving up his vendetta, and when that fails tries to have Hemlock killed.
• Enough: Slim spends most of the movie running away from and trying to escape from her abusive Implacable Man of an ex-husband Mitch, but finally gets sick of running and decides to fight back.
• Ash seems to get tired of running at the end of each Evil Dead film, but by the beginning of the next, he becomes a witless coward again.
• The Fencer: Endel has been hiding out from the Soviet Secret Police, changing his name and living in a podunk little town. But he's grown so weary of looking over his shoulder he decides to end it by taking his kids to a very public fencing tournament in Leningrad, resulting in him getting sent to the Gulag.
• At the climax of The Fugitive, Inspector Gerard (who is by now fully aware that Kimble is innocent), calls out to him, "Give it up! It's time to stop running!", implying that Kimble must be feeling like an example of this trope. The novelization also cites his increasing exhaustion as the story progresses, causing Gerard to tell him with sincere concern that he can't hang on much longer and will eventually get to this point.
• Independence Day: After spending two days escaping the city destroyers, July 4th is the day humanity gets sick and tired of running across their nations and launches a global coordinated attack against the alien forces.
• Alan spends most of Jumanji running from manhunter Van Pelt. Towards the end of the film, Alan is held at gunpoint by Van Pelt. When asked why he doesn't run when given the chance, Alan replies that his father always told him to face his fears. Aptly, Alan's father and Van Pelt are played by the same actor.
• A Knight's Tale: "I will not run! I am a knight!" ...said William Thatcher, after his True Companions and noble-born love interest urge him to flee when it is discovered that he is a mere peasant masquerading as a knight to joust in tournaments.
• In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Aragorn gives this speech to Sauron through the Palantír, setting himself up as bait in the hope that Sauron's distraction will allow Frodo to complete his mission.
  Aragorn: Long have you hunted me. And long have I eluded you. No more. Behold! The Sword of Elendil!
• Throughout The Matrix, Neo is repeatedly told that anyone who has fought an Agent has been killed, and that he should run away from them. He follows this trope (without actually saying anything) in the subway station when he decides to stop running from Smith, turning and fighting him instead. He actually manages to defeat Smith, but defeating an Agent is meaningless, as Smith simply body-hops to another person, so Neo ends up running away anyway.
• Before the final battle in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Lane, having escaped custody earlier, tells Walker that his running days are over and that he plans on dying in the blast when the nuclear weapons go off.
• Towards the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Davy Jones is dead, and the Dutchman seems to have been destroyed, but the Armada's still waiting. When Gibbs argues that it's time to embrace "that oldest and noblest of pirate traditions", Jack of all people declares that he's "never one for tradition." It probably helps that he knew that the Dutchman had a different captain by now.
• Right before the final battle sequence of Serenity (2005), Malcolm Reynolds makes a Rousing Speech to his crew, telling them that he's finished fleeing from the Alliance and is ready to stand and fight, so that there can be justice for everyone the Alliance has hurt while trying to "make people better".
• The Shawshank Redemption: "...I'm so tired of being afraid all the time..."
• In Small Soldiers, the Gorgonites are programmed to lose in a direct fight against the Commando Elite and so hide from them whenever they can. At the climax of the film, Archer convinces his fellow Gorgonites that they have to fight back to protect their human friends. The Gorgonites prove that they Grew Beyond Their Programming by taking to the field and decimating the Commando Elite.
• Sonic spends most of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) on the run from Robotnik, planning to use his rings to flee Earth. During the climax, he decides this, going all out and eventually banishing Robotnik himself from Earth.
  Sonic: This is my power, and I'm not using it to run away anymore. I'm using it to protect. My. Friends!
• Star Trek: First Contact:
  • After the Borg invade the Enterprise, Picard refuses to engage the self-destruct and evacuate the ship.
    Picard: We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn HERE! This far, no further!
  • It turns out to be a subversion: Instead of a rousing fight and the destruction of the Borg, Lily openly compares Picard to Captain Ahab, convincing him that he's obsessed with gaining revenge on the Borg for assimilating him earlier, and he decides to evacuate the Enterprise and blow it up after all.
• The Warriors: Cowboy and Ajax are being chased through an NYC park by the Baseball Furies, who outnumber them. When Cowboy gasps out that he can't run anymore, Ajax snarls, "Well, good! I'm sick of running from these wimps!" They stop and stand their ground, proving that the Warriors are each worth more than a few Furies.

Literature

• The Animorphs book The Message has the Animorphs tire of running (swimming, actually) from Visser Three and opt to go down fighting instead of being picked off one by one. It's only due to a last-second save by a whale that they don't all get killed.
• In the Bardic Voices novel A Cast of Corbies, Free Bard Magpie says this about the Church. In her case this means staying for her part in a play not a fight.
• Cal Leandros and his brother decide to stop running from his Auphe relatives and settle down in NYC at the beginning of the series. As it turns out, running did them no good anyway, as the Auphe could track Cal anywhere, anytime.
• Catching Fire:
  Katniss: Life in District 12 isn't really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.
• In Child of the Hive, Sophie builds mental shields to prevent the Hive getting into her brain. Eventually she decides that the only way to be free is to confront the Hive, turning their mental connection into her greatest weapon.
• Discussed, to some extent, in Clear and Present Danger. The situation: an American special forces squad is being pursued by a 200-man army of druglord enforcers, who are well-armed but of questionable fighting quality. At one point during the pursuit Chavez, the POV soldier, wonders to himself why they don't stage an ambush or two on the pursuing soldiers, when the pursuers were still operating in small groups. A few well-placed ambushes could've broken the mercenaries' morale, whereas continuing to run could only bring in more reinforcements on the mercenaries' side. Later on, they do stage counterattacks, but by that point it's too late to heavily affect the mercs.
• In one of the Dinotopia books, an entire crew of pirates becomes instant pacifists during a Heel–Face Turn because of this. The Professor of the crew even gives a short speech to this effect.
• In both movie and book of Howl's Moving Castle, Howl admits to Sophie that he feels this way. In the movie, it works out well for him. In the book, it doesn't at first, as he goes completely in the opposite direction and becomes a bit too aggressive for his own good.
• Rather surprisingly (not least to himself), Rincewind does this in Interesting Times:
  Rincewind had always relied on running away. But sometimes, perhaps, you had to stand and fight if only because there was nowhere left to run.
• In the Legacy of the Aldenata book Gust Front, this is one of the reasons given for why The Six Hundred defended Washington, DC, after a horrific rout, compounded by Darhel interference and loads of General Failures, shredded US forces.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: After spending most of The Lightning Thief being told by Annabeth to run, Percy hits this point and decides to confront the god of war himself instead of running. The ensuing fight is suitably awesome, though the consequences do come to bite Percy in the behind later on.
• In Saikyou Juzoku Tensei, The Protagonist leaves his village to explore the outside world and to escape his own marriage to his sister. Before the story climax, he's about to leave to another country along with his love interest when he runs into his sister, who proceeds to chase after them. While running away from the sister, the love interest suggests that they should confront her instead, so that she sees him let his sister down once and for all, even turning around to confront her herself, forcing him to join her at facing her off. Things take an ugly turn when said sister refuse to listen to reason, and decides on disposing of the love interest and taking her brother by force.
• Star Trek Expanded Universe: In the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel The Devil's Heart, the Due or Die bar owner Camenae got tired of having her homes shot out from under her, first her homeworld of El-Auria and then Starbase 193. If it had not been for Commander Estrella Miyakawa not wanting to run from the Romulans and the two finding each other on the abandoned Starbase, both women would have died when the Romulans destroyed the base.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • In The Cestus Deception, one of the guerrillas sums it up as "Resta sick to death of backin up. Resta not backin up no more."
  • In Galaxy of Fear, Hoole and the Arrandas decide it is time to quit running at the end of "The Hunger". They'd been looking into joining the Rebels off and on for a while, but this is also the book where they really get a chance to do so.
• At the beginning of 20 Years After, Porthos and D'Artagnan are assigned the task of recapturing the Duke of Beaufort who escaped from the Bastille. After a long chase, the Duke decides to stop and fight back.

Live-Action TV

• In the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "Making Friends and Influencing People", Donnie Gill is being hunted by HYDRA, who want to use his powers for their own ends. Finally, after being sold out and murdering two HYDRA agents, he decides to stop running and take the fight to HYDRA. It doesn't go well, as HYDRA are able to reactivate Donnie's brainwashing and take control of him, forcing Skye to shoot him, probably killing him.
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: Rian has enough of running away by the end of Season 1 (though he didn't have much choice in the situations where he had to run, skekSil the Chamberlain just played with his survivors guilt).
• There's lots of running in the new Doctor Who. When the Doctor stops running, bad guys start worrying.
• The Exorcist: In the first season finale, Angela Rance (a.k.a. Regan McNeil) decides that after forty years of living in fear and looking over her shoulder, she's tired of running from the demon that's been tormenting her and her family. Backed by her family's love and Father Tomas' prayers, she proceeds to beat the shit out of him.
  "You want me? Come and get me!"
• Between the first two seasons of Fringe, Peter boasts that they're done tracking bad guys after they killed and will be on offensive from now on. They proceed in the second season to basically follow the trails of deaths again, culminating with Peter's kidnapping. Hey, they get him back, but that's still acting in defending with your self-designated king lost to you for a while... and losing your queen in the process.
• In Lexx, after they've ran away half a season from an unstoppable end of the Universe, Stanley and the crew finally decide to stop running to an obvious coward's death and make a stand. Unfortunately, it was a tad too late by then. For that Universe, at least.
• In the second season of Prison Break, in what's either a Moment of Awesome or Jumping the Shark (maybe both):
  Michael: Are you ready for this?
  Lincoln: Been waiting years.
  Michael: Good to hear it. Because today's the day we stop running.
• Rome: After the disastrous Battle of Pharsalus, Cicero and Brutus abandon the other Optimates to surrender themselves to Caesar instead of fleeing to Egypt (Pompey) or Africa (Cato and Scipio). They fully expect Caesar to kill them, but they say they're simply tired of running. Caesar welcomes them into his camp with open arms, especially Brutus.
• Stargate SG-1: Although we haven't really seen her much while she was on the run, and she didn't seem to have one specific enemy she was fleeing, Vala Mal Doran does this. Daniel later explains this choice to her when she has amnesia:
  Daniel Jackson: If I let you go, I know you're going to make yourself disappear. You've been running so long, it's almost second nature to you. You don't remember it, but you made a decision to stop running. It's over. Now it's time to come home.
• A skit from The State plays with this. A man escapes from prison (through a wide-open gate) and then returns years later, but finds that they gave up looking for him.
• In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John advocates this strategy when dealing with Cromartie, saying he's tired of constantly running from him and wants to turn the tables on the Terminator.

Music

• The song "Easier to Run" by Linkin Park talks about how it is a lot easier to run from your problems instead of choosing to face them head on.
• In "Faster than Light" by Unleash the Archers, the Immortal realizes he'll never escape the Matriarch no matter how far or fast he runs (even by Faster-Than-Light Travel), so in the next song, "The Wind that Shapes the Land", he stops running and fights her for his freedom.
• The song "My Wife" by The Who, although he is not so darn tired of running that he'll face his wife, instead he'll lay down on the floor to get some rest so he can get up and run some more.
• The song "Runnin'" by The Pharcyde deals with this issue. The chorus repeats, "Can't keep running away... (Run Run)".

Theatre

• In Arms and the Man, Bluntschli has been on his feet for three days straight without sleep, low on food and morale, has been running for his life the past day or more, and finally makes it to "shelter" in Raina's bedroom, where he holds her at gunpoint, hoping he can hide here from the soldiers who pursue him. Halfway through the scene he caves, points out that his gun doesn't even have any ammo... and then they hear soldiers entering the house. Bluntschli tells Raina to hide her eyes, as it'll all be over in a minute — but of course she has a wild bout of heroism and finds a way to hide him.

Theme Parks

• In Transformers: The Ride at Universal Studios, just before Evac dives in to finish off Megatron, he exclaims, "No more running, recruits!"

Video Games

• Brain Dead 13: In the final confrontation with Dr. Neurosis, Lance is faced by Fritz, who wants to unleash Trigger-Happy terror upon him by unloading every weapon he's got. Of course, Lance can have a choice of running away again by pressing right first or by pressing left twice, but that would only waste more time in endless chasing. The solution? Lance has to move left once, and then right, in order to show Fritz and Neurosis that our hero is tired of running away, then makes a Badass Arm-Fold and a "Take That!" Kiss to show that he is not afraid and is ready for one more challenge that awaits him.
• Defied in Dawn of War II: Retribution. After learning the nature of the traitor within the Blood Ravens and being forced to flee from his former brothers, Diomedes Apollo orders his followers to make a Last Stand, citing this trope as a reason. However, his followers realize that Diomedes is trying to commit Suicide by Cop in order to not have to face his actions in said traitor's service, and convince him to seek redemption in other ways.
• As revealed over the course of Destiny and its sequel, the Fatal Flaw of the Traveler is cowardice — whenever the Darkness found whichever world the Traveler was staying on, it would flee, abandoning its current chosen race to the mercy of its foe. This is what happened with the Fallen, and is why they oppose the Last City — they want to reclaim the Traveler. Earth is where the Traveler finally decided to stop running and make its stand against the Darkness. This trope ends up being deconstructed as the story progresses, though: a major reason that the Traveler ran from the Darkness — or rather, the Witness — is that the Traveler's powers were not meant for fighting. While Guardians can use the Light offensively to manipulate fire, electricity, or gravity and dark energy, the Traveler primarily uses the Light for terraforming. When the Traveler finally faces the Witness again at the beginning of Lightfall, the Witness shrugs off everything the Traveler throws at it, though one of the Pyramids of the Black Fleet ends up disabled after the Traveler subjects it to HostileTerrraforming. All this shows that there is one reason why someone would want to continuously run from an opponent: namely, that said opponent cannot be stopped, hindered, or negotiated with.
• Happens in the end of the Demon Hunter's trailer for Diablo III: After witnessing the Hunter at work and being offered a chance to join her, the nameless survivor of a demon attack resolves to stop running from the monsters and start hunting them.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy:
  • The Onion Knight finally decides to stop running away from his fights...and then kicks the Cloud of Darkness' ass.
  • Terra starts her EX Burst with "No more running".
• Sazh and Vanille have spent the entire first half of Final Fantasy XIII running away from the Sanctum. Then they both attempt to run from life itself; Sazh attempts suicide when his son falls into (what he thinks is) an eternal crystal sleep, and Vanille offers her own life to Sazh out of guilt for inadvertently causing that tragedy and much more trying to avoid her own destructive mission. They both decide it's time to stop running; Sazh lives in the hope that his son will wake up eventually, and Vanille decides to face her own and her friends' fate.
  Sazh: Alright, time to split. Not run. There's a difference.
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect 2, Shepard visits the Migrant Fleet, the traveling home of the quarians. The quarians are a people who lost a Robot War to their own creations, and have spent the last three hundred years wandering, nomadic. Admiral Shala'Raan reveals that there's a growing movement among the fleet to return to the homeworld and fight — even though as things stand that would be suicide. Depending on the order you played in, this may come across as unnecessary after Legion explains that the geth would be happy to let the quarians return... if they'd stop attacking them.
    Raan: We grow tired of wandering the stars, Shepard. We want our world back. We have paid enough for our mistake.
  • Mass Effect 3:
    • Repeatedly invoked by Shepard. Despite being forced to bug-out of Earth, Shepard spends the entire game determined to raise the greatest armada the Galaxy has ever seen, in order to give the Reapers hell.
    • S/he explicitly says this when they are trying to escape from a Reaper Destroyer on Rannoch, also reasoning that leaving it alive would keep the geth under Reaper control. S/he then proceeds to face the 160m tall Reaper on foot.
    • During the Sanctuary mission in the third game, Miranda reveals that everything she'd been doing in the past few months was a result of this feeling. Her words after killing her father? "It's finally over, for both of us. We can stop running."
• Resident Evil 6:
  • This trope gets zigzagged. At the end of Jake's Campaign, upon facing the Ustanak for the fifth time, Jake decides he's tired of being stalked by it and gives a speech to the subject:
    Jake: Enough of this cat and mouse bullshit. Come get some, you ugly son of a bitch.
  • Later, too, when he loses all his weapons and is forced to fight the Ustanak hand to hand:
    Jake: This is more like it. Let's settle this mano a mano.
  • Problem is that Jake and Sherry had already faced it 4 times before during their campaign, and they weren't exactly escaping from it during a great portion of it. They even apparently killed it the fourth time when a tower falls upon it and blew up the plane in which he was standing (when they fought it with the help of Leon and Helena). Unfortunately, the Ustanak doesn't even die after this fight, (despite falling into the Lava and machinery falling upon him), it takes another series of quicktime events when they are escaping the underwater base to kill him for good.
• Shadowrun Returns: Gaichu from Hong Kong has been on the run from his fellow Red Samurai for years, but can be convinced to stand and face them by the player character, resulting in his Loyalty Mission. Raiding a Renraku facility to catch his old team's attention and ambushing them when they respond. The player ultimately determining whether Gaichu turns his old friend and teacher into a ghoul as payback, or gives him a dignified death.
• The true ending of Sin and Punishment: Star Successor has Isa vowing to Kachi that he's fed up with running and decides to forge ahead now.
• Artanis and his people spends the entire first half of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void aboard an Arkship fleeing their Abusive Precursor, Amon, who have mind-controlled a good portion of their people. This eventually comes to a head when their flight leads them to Ulnar, a place between universes where the same species as Amon reside, and they hope they're willing to aid them in their plight. Upon actually reaching Ulnar, however, it turns out that Amon's forces have already arrived and slain them all. After a Breaking Speech from Amon, Artanis decides it's time to stop running and at the very least die fighting, setting in motion the second half of the game.
• In the Bounty Hunter storyline of Star Wars: The Old Republic, upon finally cornering Tyresius Lokai after chasing him around Tatooine, he realizes that he'll never get away from you and is sick of dodging bounty hunters. As such, he asks you to give him a spot on your crew. Luckily for the both of you, he has a duplicate frozen in carbonite that you can turn in. Regardless of your actual feelings on the matter, Tyresius joins your party as Gault Rennow.
• In World of Warcraft, the draenei have spent the last few millennia being chased across the cosmos by the Burning Legion for refusing to join them, going from planet to planet only for the Legion to chase them off again. When they crash their spaceship on Azeroth prior to the events of The Burning Crusade, they collectively decide that they're done running for their lives and join the Alliance to help destroy the Legion once and for all.

Web Animation

• RWBY:
  • After the events of Volume 3, when Adam cuts off Yang's arm and swears to personally destroy everything she loves, Blake goes on the run to protect them. In "Taking Control", Sun lectures her on how friends stay by each other's side and how shutting out a friend hurts them far more than it helps. Boosted by this, Blake announces that they're going to stop Adam from assassinating Sienna Khan, take back the White Fang from his militant faction, and save Haven Academy from falling. When Ilia later asks her why Blake isn't taking her advice to leave before it's too late, Blake retorts as follows:
    Ilia: Why couldn't you just leave?!
    Blake: Because I run away too much.
  • In Volume 8, Hazel buys everyone else time to escape from Salem, but Oscar decides to stand his ground because she’ll just resume the chase after his inevitable loss. Cue Oscar using Ozpin’s emergency weapon to temporarily disintegrate her, mostly destroy the Monstero, and kill almost every Grimm assaulting Atlas.

Western Animation

• In American Dad!, Steven and his friends succeed in running away from almost the entire school trying to take them down because Steve had pulled nasty pranks of revenge against the popular girls in retaliation for fat jokes directed at Debby... which his friends had done in reality because they were sick of Steve spending so much time with Debby. However, they make the mistake of having closure before reaching Francine's SUV and are trapped in the bus by the angry students, so Steve rallies them to accept their gruesome ends and take some of the angry students down with them. They get their asses handed to them and utterly fail to take some down with them.
• In the Season 2 finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender, "The Crossroads of Destiny", Zuko and Iroh find themselves surrounded by Azula and her guards. After Iroh explains how he got the nickname "The Dragon of the West", he manages to blow the wall and escape. Urging Zuko to jump also, Zuko replies, "No! It's time I faced Azula!" and challenges her to an Agni Kai (duel). She has the guards captured him without lifting a finger herself. It was probably a mistake to expect Azula to play fair.
• In an episode of Codename: Kids Next Door that parodies Star Trek (in a rather bizarre episode set in a giant bathtub, heavily implied to be All Just a Dream Tommy is having after being forced to take a bath), Tommy meets up with a pirate crew trying to avoid a giant rubber duck trying to dump them into the bath water they sail. Eventually, Tommy suggests they fight back, much to the crew's shock, until the captain agrees with the plan. For added fun, when Tommy tells the crew not to run, one replies "Well, walking won't help us either". The giant duck turns out to be a machine operated by the captain's mother who's been trying to force her son to take his bath for over 20 years.
• In the Drawn Together episode parodying Terminator, Wooldoor Sockbat makes a Black Comedy version of this trope:
  Wooldoor: Like Paul McCartney's ex-wife... we're not running anymore!
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Prehibernation Week", SpongeBob promises his friend Sandy that he'll play with her every day until she has to go into hibernation. Her ideas of "playing" turn out to be a series of painful activities such as a game of "Find the Hay in the Needlestack". He eventually decides to run away from her for the rest of the episode and go into hiding, but at the very end, he confronts her rather than running from her and lets her know that her idea of "playing" together just isn't his cup of tea. However, in the middle of his explanation, she falls asleep and starts hibernating.
  • In "No Free Rides", Mrs. Puff becomes horrified at the consequences of her giving SpongeBob an undeserved driver's license, imagining him ruining the town and decides she'll have to change her identity and start fresh somewhere else... then she resolves "...no. Not again!"
• The Transformers:
  • In "Call of the Primitives", the Predacons versus Unicron's little brother. Tornedron sucks the life out of anything on contact, and grows to ever larger and more terrible monster forms... unnecessarily, since it doesn't need to fight to kill anything in its path. The assembled good guys and bad guys have just been trying to survive, when:
    Headstrong: I detest fleeing. I would rather die fighting!
    Razorclaw: He is right! Predacons, unite!
    [The Predacons combine into Predaking]
    Predaking: Tornedron, face Predaking! To the end!
  • As for how it turns out, they totally die — but they get better because Grimlock saves the day. No, really.

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