No One Gets Left Behind / Video Games

• Zero Escape:
  • Given how the Nonary Game is played out, it's only natural for it to occur in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors:
    • Ace defies this trope, offering to stay behind to let the group continue. When the group refuses, he injects himself with anesthetic to force everyone to leave him behind. Down the road, it turns out he had less than altruistic reasons for doing so, as staying behind kept the group from going through the number 3 door without leaving more people behind, as Ace had shoved Snake (or at least someone he thought was Snake, through the door when no one else was looking in order to kill him.
    • Lotus offers to stay behind in the incinerator. They refuse, specifically Seven.
    • Seven and Snake both do this (with the same reactions as the above) in the Chapel. Snake is forced to stay behind, but has a trump card anyway.
  • Subverted in Virtue's Last Reward. In this variant of the Nonary Game, it's established that anyone who accumulates nine points is free to leave and the group unanimously agrees that even if they get nine points they'll stick around to help the others do so as well. However, every single route where someone gets the nine points ahead of the others ends in them ditching and a bad end.
  • This is viciously deconstructed in the second sequel, Zero Time Dilemma: Diana's refusal to kill a radical-6 infected Phi (despite Phi's own insistence on her doing so) causes a pandemic that kills 75% of the human population, setting the events of the second game into motion.
• Betrayal at Krondor's narrative-like style of storytelling lends itself well to this trope. All party members are important to the plot; if one suffers a Non-Lethal K.O. in battle, the game will not allow you to flee and leave them to the bad guys.
• Double H's motto in Beyond Good & Evil: "D.B.U.T.T.: Don't Break Up The Team!" and "W.W.T.A.O.: We Work Together As One!" On the surface, it doesn't seem to mean much, but he shouts it while dramatically saving Jade from plummeting to her doom, showing his dedication to her.
• Call of Duty 4
  • Lt. Vasquez's squad (to which the player character Sgt. Jackson belongs) takes a detour to save a grounded Super Cobra pilot from a hostile city for this reason. They do not make it out of the city in time before a Russian warhead goes off, killing them (almost) instantly. The pilot can be found dead outside the helicopter wreck after the detonation, which just rubbed salt in the wound with the futility of it all. In fairness, considering the blast radius as shown in both the immediate detonation and the subsequent loading screen, it's questionable whether any of the Marines ever had a chance even had they not taken the detour.
  • Later, in the mission "One Shot, One Kill," then-Lieutenant Price has to carry Captain MacMillian out of Pripyat, Ukraine after a helicopter falls on him. Fortunately, Lt. Price can put Capt. MacMillian down whenever he needs to fight, and while MacMillian cannot move independently, he's no slouch as a stationary shooter. Once he's put behind the Ferris wheel and assuming that both survive the resultant shootout (in effect "hold the line" until a helicopter arrives), he only has to be picked up again for the final dash to the evacuation helicopter by which time the danger should be passed.
  • The next mission 'Heat', Gaz will yell that you're going to be left behind if you Take Your Time to reach the farm. He's just trying to motivate you, however. It's played straight for Mac, however, who is shot and dies off-screen two minutes into the mission (though there were some Dummied Out dialogue files suggesting the player would have had the option of rescuing him).
  • Another mission has the SAS rescue mission a captured informant. Fortunately, when the group is forced to continue on foot, the informant has the same Gameplay Ally Immortality as the other important NPCs and is both armed and competent, making him not a liability but a one-time asset (pun intended).
• Deep Rock Galactic: Zig-zagged. "Leave No Dwarf Behind" is one of the titular company's mottos, and gameplay encourages this, as you get a minor payout bonus for each surviving dwarf, and since enemy swarms scale based on how many players are on a mission, your best bet for survival is to get your downed teammates back on their feet ASAP so they can contribute against the alien hordes. On the other hand, Deep Rock Galactic unapologetically informs you that your ride home is leaving with or without you if you can't get aboard before the minutes-long countdown ends, and in general the company prioritizes retrieving loads of valuable minerals over the lives of its employees. Players also understand that, during extraction from a tough mission, sometimes it's more important that someone gets to the Drop Pod so the mission is a success than it is to risk failure with a near-suicidal rescue attempt — "No One Left Behind" is a good sentiment, but sometimes "Three Dwarves Left Behind" is acceptable.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
  • Guess who shows up to repay the favor and save the SAS from militia when your team is stranded in Brazil? This shows that it is a good idea to take care of your friends.
  • Subverted in the mission entitled "Of Their Own Accord". Radio chatter repeatedly makes it clear that there are not enough transports to evacuate everyone, and that people are being left behind. At one point - right after the player boards the evac chopper - a fellow soldier will shoot down an attacking enemy helicopter and saves the player's life. But the evac chopper immediately departs afterward, leaving the lone soldier behind to face the onrushing Russian troops. You can, however, use the minigun you take control of to waste the first wave of Russian troops that make it onto the roof before you leave, though.
• Subverted on Virmire in Mass Effect. Kaidan and Ashley are stranded at opposite ends of a research facility where a nuke is about to go off. At first, it looks like the question is whom to evacuate first... but then geth attack en masse, and you realize with a sinking feeling that you can only save ONE of them now because the precious time you had for saving the other will now be wasted on fighting the enemy.
• Wholly embraced in Mass Effect 2.
  • In the intro, Shepard saves Joker at the expense of his/her own life when everyone else is either already dead or evacuated.
  • It's entirely possible (but by no means guaranteed) to ensure that your entire party survives the Suicide Mission in the end. The achievement you get for this accomplishment is practically the trope name: No One Left Behind.
  • If Shepard goes after his/her crew immediately after they're abducted, when you rescue them, if you choose the neutral dialogue option ("I'd never abandon my crew"), Shepard quotes the trope word-for-word.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda:
  • In the mission to a kett facility, Ryder can either destroy the facility, killing all the innocents held there, or leave it standing, allowing at least some of them to get out before the kett re-take it. Teammate Jaal argues in favour of the latter.
  • Later in the game there's an aversion, on the asari Ark. A datapad can be found telling evacuees not to wait for friends and family. If Jaal's in the party, he's horrified at the notion that anyone would suggest such a thing.
• In Metal Gear Solid, Meryl foreshadows what will happen when she blithely comment that Snake can simply shoot her if she became The Millstone, with Snake sharply telling her he 'doesn't waste ammo'. Meryl gets shot by Sniper Wolf, she begged for Snake to ditch her, but he flat out refuses to and ends up eventually getting captured for his troubles, uncertain if she was still alive at this point.
• The same happens in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater with EVA: she gets skewered on a tree branch after a motorcycle crash and begs Snake to go on and give her a gun, but Snake ignores all of this, because "[he] can't fly the WiG by [himself]."
• A declaration of Aric Jorgan in Star Wars: The Old Republic after he and the Republic Trooper figure out that SIS agent Zane got Jorgans old squad involved in a dangerous mission to supposedly figure out where the Sith Empire ships their POW's, while it is really a bid to locate the Imperial legendary Prison Dusk 9, which is only rumored to exist, but left them to their own devices in Imperial labor camps when the end result was not what he wanted and the Republic Trooper announces that if Zane had held up his end of the deal, things wouldn't have come this far.
• Averted in Tales of Symphonia: upon entering the Tower of Salvation, Lloyd swears that no-one will be left behind, however, due to the rule of More Expendable Than You, every single member of the group ends up performing a Heroic Sacrifice to let him go on. They all get better.
  Lloyd: You don't want to sacrifice anyone, huh? What do you call this?! Dammit! Guys...I'm sorry...
• Played straight with Tales of Destiny, in a pretty memorable scene. After fighting Mary's brainwashed ex-husband, mooks can be heard getting closer; Stahn and co. have to run away, but Mary wants to stay with her semi-dead man. Rutee then tells Mary that that's out of the question, because no one gets left behind... including her husband. Rutee then piggybacks him.
• Subverted in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. During the last part of the prologue, Marth is told by his advisor that he has to sacrifice one of his soldiers as a decoy to allow him to escape. Marth insists that everyone sticks together, but if you decide not to send a unit to the southern fort, you'll soon be overrun by an army of Knights who are capable of killing any and all of your party members with one hit (two or three, in Jagen's case). Leaving a unit behind is the only way you can proceed to the end of the chapter, as the second gate won't open unless you do. The exception is if you kill Gordin instead of talking to him - the commander of the enemy forces laughs at how he's tricked Marth into murdering a civilian (Gordin was Bound and Gagged and dressed in an enemy uniform) before ordering his men to open the second gate so he can kill Marth personally.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VI
    • With the Floating Continent crumbling away from beneath their feet, and Shadow holding Kefka back with the Three Statues, the party must make it to the airship and escape before it's too late. Typically, one would jump onto the airship at the first opportunity, but by waiting until the last possible second, Shadow will catch up and join the party. The game helpfully gives a countdown so the rest of the party knows when "the last possible second" is, but only if you actively choose to wait around the first time since the options then are "Jump!" and "Wait!". The second time, the options are "Jump to the airship!" and "Gotta wait for Shadow...".
    • Strago also tries to get Relm to go on without him during the final escape from Kefka's Tower, but she will have none of it. Good thing too, because, later on, she wouldn't have reached the airship without his help.
  • Played straight in Final Fantasy X: while fleeing from Bevelle, the party is beset by Seymour. Kimahri urges them to run on ahead while he holds Seymour back, and they do —right up to the moment when they decide it's not right, and run right back to help him.
• Left 4 Dead
  • You could do this at the end of a campaign if one of your teammates gets critically injured, but then you might miss your ride.
  • If a survivor is incapacitated outside the safe room at the end of a level, the other survivors will usually say that they can't leave anyone behind. Though on occasion Francis will say he's fine with leaving a teammate behind if everyone else is. Similarly, if Louis is down outside the safe room, Bill may joke "How well do you know Louis?" and then admitting he was just joking. There's an achievement that you can earn if you leave the safe room to rescue a downed survivor outside and the two of you make it back.
• This is Brenner's motto in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. It's even the in-game justification for how his CO Power heals his units:
  Brenner: Initiate search-and-rescue operations! No one gets left behind!
• Played straight in Star Wars: Republic Commando in the Prosecutor mission, and then viciously averted with Sev at the end of the game. The gunship arrives, and you aren't going back.
• Played with in the initial quest in Dragon Age II, where Aveline's husband Ser Wesley is injured and begins to succumb to the darkspawn taint. Aveline promises that she will get her husband out any way possible, but in the end either she or Hawke is forced to kill him.
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has a particularly cool example: escaping an ancient temple into a rainy evening only to find out that Elena's cameraman Jeff has been shot and that they're surrounded, Nathan Drake grabs him and carries him through the streets, covered by Elena and Chloe. Then you get to a building, where you take a moment to sit Jeff down, only for Lazarevich to come in and perform his ultimate Kick the Dog moment - executing Jeff on the spot.
• In the final playable sequence of Bastion, the Kid can either abandon the wounded Zulf and continue fighting the Ura, or drop his weapons and carry Zulf to safety. If you choose the latter, the Ura will persist in attacking you... but the Kid keeps going, and they respect his determination so much that an Ura soldier who takes another potshot at the Kid ends up skewered by his own commander.
• A slogan of Battlefield: Bad Company series. And in the multiplayer, "Medic Train" hard enough and it really is possible to keep an entire team alive.
• In Battlefield 4, this is Staff Sergeant Kimble Graves'/Irish's mindset throughout the game; He strongly protests Dunn's order that they leave him behind and swim to safety, he disobeys orders from his squad's CIA liaison to abandon drowning sailors, and disregards an oncoming tidal wave to free Recker who has been pinned behind a sliding car.
  Irish: We are not leaving you behind! No one gets left behind!
• In Kerbal Space Program, getting your explorers stuck in space or on other planets is a fact of life. But using the same skills that probably stranded them in the first place, you can create and launch rescue missions. Just remember to leave extra seats.
• Joe Dever's Lone Wolf: One can bring this up when refusing to go in the elevator without Leandra.
• In The Walking Dead: Season One, this is Lee's reason for keeping Ben, if you choose to save him rather than letting him fall down the Crawford bell tower in Episode 4.
• Wolfenstein: The New Order had a Bittersweet Ending as B.J. lay crippled after Deathshead tried to kill them both with a grenade, giving the order to fire a nuclear missile on his own position. The sound of a helicopter during the end credits teased that they came back for him before it happened, with the sequel outright confirming it.
• Possible to pull off in XCOM 2 where you can order your troops to carry knocked out (or dead) soldiers; but with the downside of slowing you down and making that carrying soldier unable to fire. From a game-player point of view, it's encouraged because experienced troops are precious commodities and fallen troopers left behind will take all their special gear with them, but successfully evacing a near-dead soldier while being under heavy fire can sure make the player feel heroic. Troopers who are left behind (but not killed, only knocked unconscious) are listed as "Captured" though. There is a chance that they can be rescued in a future mission with their skills and equipment all intact, but that is a chance, not a guarantee.

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