As a Death Trope, Spoilers naturally abound. Be cautious.
Times where somebody decides they're More Expendable Than You in Literature.
- In ½ Prince, when preparing to compete in a melee battle, the members choose the person most likely to survive and decide to protect Doll at all costs so they can win. When they later decide to split into groups of two to escape more easily, they're divided so one of them can sacrifice the other if they have to.
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Played straight by Conseil and Ned Land when they give Aronnax some precious oxygen in the Almost Out of Oxygen situation, then conversed:"Good lord, Professor," Ned Land answered me, "don't mention it! What did we do that's so praiseworthy? Not a thing. It was a question of simple arithmetic. Your life is worth more than ours. So we had to save it."
- Various Animorphs do this for Jake at various points, with or without his consent - especially toward the end of the series, when things are getting critical and losing him really would mean the end of the world.
- Bernard Samson Series. Bernard is sent to break into a safe, but the safecracker convinces him to stand guard because if a British intelligence officer is caught breaking-and-entering on British soil there'll be questions in the House of Parliament, whereas as if he's caught the reporters won't even bother to ask his name. As a result, Bernard is the only one not killed when the booby-trapped safe explodes.
- In Ciaphas Cain's first adventure, when his attempt to escape ran into a Tyranid horde, he explained that he had guessed it and scouted; when his commander said he could have sent someone else, Cain says that he's the most expendable officer in the company.
- In Cold Snap, the hero, Richard Jeperson, agrees to an Enemy Mine situation with the Diabolical Mastermind Derek Leech to deal with an inhuman prehistoric intelligence threatening the world. When they figure out how to communicate with it, Leech attempts to give Richard the slip so he can talk to it alone; when Richard catches up with him, Leech claims he did it because the procedure is risky but he's willing to give up his life to save humanity. Richard immediately and accurately calls this out as a lie.
- In the The Dresden Files book Death Masks, Shiro faces Nicodemus and the Denarians at the airport while Harry goes to his duel with Ortega. When Harry returns with the other Knights of the Cross, they find Shiro severely tortured, and he soon dies of his wounds. Later on, Harry gets a letter that reveals that Shiro was Secretly Dying of cancer and intended to sacrifice himself all along.
- Harry Potter:
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry offers to make a blood offering instead of Dumbledore, only to be told "Your blood is is worth more than mine." For the same reason Dumbledore drinks the poison instead of Harry, and the last spell Dumbledore casts is an immobilization charm to keep Harry still under his invisibility cloak, and thus, unnoticed by the Death Eaters who were coming to kill Dumbledore, which made him unable to defend himself from them.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Ron sacrifices himself in the chess game because he knows that Harry is the one who needs to confront Snape and Voldemort. "Not me, not Hermione, you!"
- Honor Harrington gets assigned a Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards who have great trouble convincing her of this.
- Subverted in the Judge Dee sequel story Panic on the Great Wall, where the judge is facing a Tartar horde in a well-fortified but isolated frontier city where the only official help is a useless bureaucrat with the title of "Imperial Pacifier" who's more concerned with getting out with his life and career intact than saving the city. The judge says he's going to negotiate with the Tartars despite the very strong chance that he'll be executed as soon as the negotiations go wrong, but both of his lieutenants jump up and protest that he's needed in the city:"Your Honor cannot sacrifice himself! We need you to save us and the city! Let's send them the honorable Imperial Pacifier!"
- In Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Luke willingly and gladly risks his life for a stranger, who as it turns out knew Anakin Skywalker, being mind-controlled by the villain. A couple chapters on, that character, no longer controlled, is about to kill thirty other mind-controlled characters to save Luke when he realizes that Luke won't shrug it off like Anakin would have. He would be disappointed and sad. Luke would sacrifice himself to save thirty innocents. He'd sacrifice himself to save one innocent. He'd just almost sacrificed himself to save one not-so-innocent. Luke isn't expendable, but he doesn't seem to realize that at all. So this character has to take out the mind-controlled characters the hard, risky way.
- In M.Y.T.H. Inc in Action, all of Skeeve's gang have reasons why they should be the one to kill the Queen. Big Julie cuts through it all by saying that as an old man he's the most expendable; the fact nobody would survive an assassination attempt on the Queen being the one thing that was going unmentioned, although it was the real reason none of them wanted to let someone else do it. As it turns out everyone sneaks off to do it in order to spare everyone else, but Skeeve turns up and resolves things without bloodshed.
- This happens to Thalia Ng in The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds. She's trapped with a bunch of civilians in an orbital habitat that's been taken over by rogue robots; she comes up with an escape scheme that begins by blowing up a bunch of structural supports, and then discovers that the timer on her explosives isn't long enough to make it away safely. The civilian she's been confiding in knocks her out, drags her away from the supports and sets the explosives himself.
- Magnificent Bastard Cao Cao is saved by Cao Hong's Heroic Sacrifice in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story. Cao Hong's final words to Cao Cao roughly translate to, "The world can do without me, but not without you!"
- In London, Peter and Thomas drug their brother-in-law in his prison cell so that Peter can take his place before he can be burned for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as the new head of the Church. Notable in that, for Peter to be free to visit the prison, he had to first swear that he accepted the king's decree, which means he's fairly certain that he'll be going to Hell when he agrees to lay down his life. No "far better resting place" expected, in this case, yet he does it anyway so their sister's family won't be left without a husband and father. Subverted in that Peter, who's been ill for a while, has a heart attack and dies of natural causes before Thomas can smother him as they'd planned.
- In Serpent Mage, when some women find out that they need to go alone in a submarine to an unknown destination to save their people, the boyfriend of one of them knocks her out and takes her place, managing not to get discovered until the ship has left. His reasoning was that he thought she would die and couldn't bear the thought of living without her. Everyone who goes in the sub ends up surviving the trip (though not necessarily the whole story), the girl left behind kills herself, believing her beloved to be dead and their people doomed.
- Played With in The Siege of Mount Nevermind where in a cruel joke, some gnome soldiers tell the gully dwarves under their command that "expendable" means "brave". Later, when one of the gully dwarves with the protagonists gets sucked up an aqueduct, his brother prepares to rescue him, claiming he's the most expendable. The gnomes try to tell him that no one is expendable, but he simply shouts "Ragg as expendable as a lion!" and jumps in the aqueduct.
- The Sword of Saint Ferdinand: Fortún and the Brothers Vargas are looking for a way to sneak into Melgarejo Castle when they find a bedsheet rope dangling from a window. Unaware that it was used by a fugitive prisoner, and fearing a trap, Fortún insists on climbing up first, since his life is worth less than the Vargas'. However, Diego argues that he must run the risk, being the party leader. Then García argues he will go first because he is Diego's big brother and a higher ranking officer.
- A Tale of Two Cities: Sydney Carton takes the place of his look-alike Charles Darnay to be executed on the guillotine. He did this because he loved Darnay's wife and because he'd never before done anything he considered truly worthwhile. The origin of the "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done..." quote.
- Warbreaker: Dozens of Hallandren priests attack a squad of Lifeless unarmed to protect Susebron for a few more seconds.
