Times when someone decides to Take a Third Option to solve a problem in fan works.
Crossovers
- The Case of Ichabod Crane and Dr. Frankenstein
features Ichabod Crane (Sleepy Hollow (1999)) meeting the Frankenstein family and learning of the existence of the creature Victor Frankenstein created. When Victor admits his fears if he creates a mate for the creature that could go on to breed a new race of beings like themselves, rather than let Victor destroy the female creature he has created, Ichabod points out to Victor that there is an alternative; simply remove the female creature's reproductive organs so that she literally can't give birth. - Code Prime: Deconstructed with Suzaku and Dreadwing. Suzaku seeks to become an Internal Reformist for Britannia, while also secretly wishing to die as atonement for killing his father. Dreadwing is a Noble Demon who believes in the Decepticon cause even if he doesn’t agree with everything Megatron does. When it becomes increasingly clear that their side is committing immoral actions, Suzaku and Dreadwing attempt to circumvent having to choose between remaining with Britannia and the Decepticons or defecting to the Black Knights and Autobots by swearing loyalty to Princess Euphemia. However, when Euphemia announces the Special Administrative Zone, Megatron proceeds to demonstrate that he will accept no compromises, by having Euphemia kidnapped and replaced with a pretender to turn the Zone into a massacre, forcing Suzaku and Dreadwing to realize the folly of their decisions and defect to the Black Knights and Autobots.
- Consul of the Underworld: The Game Begins: When Dumbledore tries to blackmail Alkaid into helping him to drive Narcissa Malfoy from Hogwarts or he will reveal her existence to her uncles, Alkaid chooses to silence him before he gets the chance to blow the whistle on her.
- In the Dead or Alive/Devil May Cry crossover Dead or Alive 4: The Devil Factor, this is Dante's reaction to Kasumi's dilemma (be pursued by her former brethren in the Mugen Tenshin for the rest of her life, or enter into an Arranged Marriage and sever all ties to her clan for good, thus never being able to return home). He explicitly says that when someone only gives him an A-and-B choice, he'll choose C every time.
- Discussed in Doctor in the Underworld, as the Doctor tells Erika that he wishes he could find another way that doesn't involve anyone dying, but when Marcus has spent literally centuries planning to release William from his imprisonment and now has the means to turn his brother into a hybrid, he acknowledges that they don't have the time to try and talk to Marcus with his current power so killing him is their only option.
- In An Extraordinary Journey, when the Nox and the Tau’ri act as mediators to negotiate the Cylons’ surrender to the Colonials, one particular point of debate is the charges to be levied against Caprica Six for her role in the sabotage of the Colonial defence network. As the Nox refuse to agree to the Colonials’ desired death sentence and the Colonials naturally want her to be punished, both parties agree for Caprica Six to be exiled to another Tau’ri-affiliated world.
- In Halkegenia Online Zero Hour, Shino is confronted by the Laughing Coffin guild and is given the choice of joining them or being killed by them. Instead, she chooses to kill them all.
- A Hero's Wrath: While suffering through his transformation into his Vajra Vlitra Form, Izuku is given a series of choices by the Golden Spider; the Gohma Path (where he becomes the new Gohma Vlitra and leads the Gohma to destroy humanity), the Demigod Path (repeat the mistakes of his Demigod ancestors) or the Golden Spider's Path (do whatever the Spider tells him). Izuku answers by waking himself up, deciding he wasn't going to play his game.
- Justice League of Equestria: During the second arc of Mare of Steel, Brainiac sets up Rainbow Dash/Supermare with a Sadistic Choice: either save Cloudsdale from a bomb capable of destroying the whole city, or save Scootaloo from being electrocuted. Being a creature that runs on pure logic, Brainiac is unable to anticipate that Rainbow Dash would be unwilling to let either happen, and thus acting to prevent both.
- In Kyon: Big Damn Hero:
- Take A Third Option: Haruhi can't unbottle her feelings about the consequences of her powers because it will cause even more strain on others, and she can't ignore it either because she cares about the SOS Brigade. In order to prevent a Heroic BSoD she runs a Memory Gambit on herself so she doesn't destroy the world on an accidental whim.
- What do you do if you are part of a Harem but don't want anybody to lose? Marry Them All.
- The primary focus of Lost in Camelot is the relationship formed between Bo (Lost Girl), Merlin and Morgana (Merlin (2008)), but the fic features other examples of the characters taking an alternate choice when faced with unappealing alternatives. When Mordred returns to Camelot, while Merlin is concerned about the prophecy that Mordred will kill Arthur and Morgana protests that he's just a child, Bo suggests the compromise of getting Mordred away from Alvarr, his current guardian, in the hope that taking him to a more pacifist group of druids will help Mordred avoid his destiny.
- Discussed and defied in Lost in the Woods; as Q observes, Picard has always prided himself on being able to find an alternative to Q's initial ruthless suggestions, but in this case, Picard literally found himself with only the two options of killing the Reavers or letting them destroy the Alliance, and had to choose the option of killing them all.
- If Lord Brocktree and Aslan had to fight each other (they don't), who would win? Answer: food.The animals feasted for hours, occasionally singing folk songs and reciting poetry to entertain their guest.
- In the Digimon/Star Wars: The Clone Wars crossover A Sticky Situation, Aayla is kidnapped by Cad Banes and questioned for useful information before he intends to kill her on Darth Sideous's orders. The clear choices are for her to submit to the torture and share a secret that could alter the entire war if the Separatist find out (and die) or remain silent while suffering intense pain at the hands of the bounty hunter (and die). Instead, because she has learned to think outside of the box thanks to her time with the digimon and tamers, she decides to pay her captor more than Darth Sidious did and have him both release her, keep the digimon a secret, and start working for the Jedi.
- “A Spider’s Evolution” starts when the Brotherhood and the X-Men were each attempting to ‘recruit’ Rogue (X-Men: Evolution, “Rogue Recruit”), only for Spider-Man to show up during her attempt to escape both teams. After Rogue absorbs some of Spider-Man's memories in the process, she chooses to go to the Parker house and ask May to give her somewhere to stay, the absorbed memories assuring her that Peter could be trusted when she couldn't be comfortable with the other mutants.
- During the events of The Teacher of All Things, Tai and the other V-Tamers are left with a conundrum: When you can't get to Odaiba because the bridge has collapsed and the waters are too full of enemies to swim — not that Greymon are great swimmers anyway — and flying in would only get you noticed and mean you have to fight off an entire army at once... what do you do? Why, take the still-under-construction tunnel, of course!
- Top Secret is a triple crossover between Quantum Leap, The X-Files and Lois & Clark that sees Project Quantum Leap faced with a blackmail threat from a corrupt businessman who all evidence suggests will create the Evil Leaper Project based on salvaged material from past Leaps, such as a recording Sam made under interrogation or the handlink Al lost in 1945. Al obviously refuses to give in to blackmail, but one of the senators on the funding committee reveals that the committee is contemplating pulling funding from the Project given this threat and handing the technology over to private business... and Al and Donna realise that the blackmailer is the one responsible for the business. Fortunately, they are given an alternative when Scully receives instructions from herself to Leap back a few years and save Mulder's life, as Mulder's would-be killer was connected to the man currently trying to blackmail the Project; getting him arrested removed the man's interest in taking the Project for himself.
- Never Be Silent concludes with a confrontation between Laurel and Damien Darhk where he attacks her during a prison breakout, intending to put her in a position where Laurel can kill him with her abilities and condemn metahumans in the public eye or be forced to let Darhk kill her to avoid tarring others in that manner. Instead, Laurel forces them both off the catwalk where they were fighting, saving herself with her Canary Cry while Darhk is caught and handcuffed by the Flash before he lands, as Laurel had just seen Barry approaching.
- Sight has Ichigo's hollow try and fight for control. If Ichigo loses, the hollow takes over his body and if he wins, the hollow doesn't try anything for a while. To everyone's surprise, Ichigo vehemently refuses to fight at all, which results in a forced truce where the hollow can't fight him but still hangs around. It's also lampshaded."Where do ya get off choosin' a third option?"
- In this fanfiction, Ryuunosuke Akutagawa has the choice between going with Chuuya to do paperwork or go with Kouyou to do preparations for a birthday. Halfway, Dazai mixes in the choice panel, who wants him for training. At the end, he decides to go with none of them and go out for food with his sister. note
- In the fanfic Coffin for Two, when Darla traps Buffy and Angel in a coffin after breaking Buffy's right arm, Angel notes that Darla's plan is to force him to either watch Buffy suffocate or try and fail to dig her out himself (as it's currently daylight, even if he reached the surface in time he would then be destroyed by the sun and the collapsing earth once his body was dust would just leave Buffy to suffocate again). Fortunately, he realizes that the coffin is close enough to an underground utility line that they can dig a hole out that way, although Angel has to drink some of Buffy's blood to give himself the necessary strength to break the concrete wall of the tunnel.
- Calvin defies this in the original version of Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie.
- Tempus Fugit sees Paige manage to change history by saving Prue's life, but this sets off a chain of events where Phoebe has to take on Cole's powers as Belthazor to escape the Underworld, with the demonic influence of those powers nearly driving Phoebe to attack Paige. This threat is dealt with when the powers are returned to Cole, but he accidentally "takes" Phoebe's premonitions in the process. The Elders subsequently foresee a future where Phoebe's experience with Cole's powers will lead to her being possessed by the Source, and thus contaminate the Power of Three. Since Phoebe cannot take back her powers without putting her at risk from the Source, and she refuses to let Cole take the power-stripping potion himself until the Source is defeated so that he won't suffer the same fate he did in Paige's original history, Phoebe accepts the third option of passing her powers to Paige (who has acquired her own unique powers in the new timeline) until the Source is vanquished.
- The Wise Prince protagonist of Dragon Age: The Crown of Thorns actually started off by creating a third option for a certain situation that came to pass later, after his Zero-Approval Gambit.
- The Gender Bend Omake: Mama Aquarius: Aquarius, who in the story has become a Parental Substitute for Luca Heartfilia, finds herself in a Sadistic Choice when enemy Celestial Mage Angel summons her boyfriend Scorpio to fight them, forcing her to pick between hurting her lover or her "child. Thankfully, both Luca and Scorpio are able to make the choice for her: Luca uses a force to close her gate so she wouldn't forced to fight, while Scorpio also forces-closes his gate, deliberately defying Angel's orders, so he wouldn't hurt Aquarius's weilder.
- This fan comic has the servants Amakusa Shirou and Semiramis trapped in a room that won't let them leave unless they have sex. Embarrassed, Semiramis finds another way out by having two of her familiars do it instead.
- In the Peggy Sue fanfic Second Chances, Celes has unexpectedly mentally gone back in time to just before the Opera House boss battle, and tries to use her knowledge of the future to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, with mixed results. Toward the end, Celes and General Leo argue over which of them should be the one to assassinate Emperor Gestahl to end the war. They flip a coin for it, but Shadow intervenes before the coin can even land and offers his services.
- In Flying, Harry is required to either marry a sadistic man several decades older than him or be sent to Azkaban. He ends up jumping off the Astronomy Tower.
- In Harry Potter and the Chalice of the Moon the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, due to a centaur prophecy that death would take place on that day, is faced with either killing Harry's twin brother Mark or letting him kill her with the Sword of Gryffindor, costing Harry a mentor figure and important ally. At the last second, she decides to knock Mark out and kill the only one for whom death won't be permanent — Dumbledore's phoenix Fawkes.
- In Into Darkness Harry's late father tells him that, according to the Fates, if Harry doesn't break up with Hermione so she can go back to Ron then she'll never learn to control her dark side; while if Harry tries to teach her to control it she'll eventually decide it's a lost cause and end up destroying the world. Harry eventually decides to go dark right along with her.
- The SSHG fic The Occluded Soul is all about Snape's Third Choice.
- In primum mobile, or ten forgotten things, Draco Malfoy realizes he may have moved he and Harry Potter to a reality where the wizarding world does not exist as a subconscious example of Taking a Third Option:Draco: The Dark Lord gave me two choices: one bad, the other worse. I suppose this is door number three.
- Eventually, both Draco and Harry begin to forget the wizarding world altogether.
- Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: Should Italy choose Germany or should Italy choose Japan? He chose both.
- In the fanfic ''Heir and Pride, this defines Hiccup's situation; with Stoick insisting that he train the dragons to basically serve as weapons for the Vikings, and Valka willing to teach him the secrets she's learned about dragons but only if he abandons all human ties to the extent of leaving Astrid to be raped and murdered by the Outcasts, Hiccup rejects both of them and pursues his own path of trying to teach others about dragons.
- Intercom: In chapter 13, Riley admits about Tracey accusing her of being schizophrenic. When Bill probes on whether she's hearing voices, Riley mentally thinks that if she lies, she'll be found out. But if she tells the truth, they might send her off to a psychologist. So instead, she storms out on them, fuming that they'd never believe her if she told the truth.
- In the movie, Eggsy is presented with a Sadistic Choice: shoot his beloved dog JB or fail and lose any chance of becoming a Kingsman. In the fanfic Trials he takes a third option: he shoots Arthur. This puts him on the fast track to become the next Arthur, as a knight does what he's told, but a king does what is right. Predictably, Arthur is pissed at the current turn of events.
- In the fanfic Her Kingdom As Great, Sarah is the embodiment of the third option, and doesn't understand how one would not choose it:Sarah: That too. But no, I still think it's a false alternative. He made a choice between the two dreams, forsaking one to have the other, because you told him he could only have one and he believed you. When you told me the same thing, I believed you too, for a time. Then I decided I could have both, and so I can. But here he is sixty years later and he still thinks his ability to write poetry is lost.
- In Exoria, Leonore wants Zelda to stay in her safe room during the Valentine invasion and wait for rescue teams to arrive. Zelda wants to find her military and lead them as commander-in-chief, even if it means risking capture. They eventually reach a compromise; Zelda will go to Gerudo to cement an alliance with Ganondorf and command her forces from there.
- Shipping Wars has Dia and Kanan pulling their friends into a debate over whether Eli Awase should be with Nozomi Tojo or Umi Sonada. When Hanamaru is left as the tie-breaker, Ruby assures her to pick whichever ship she wants rather than be pressured by the older girls. Encouraged by this, Hanamaru happily proclaims that her favorite ship is... Rin and Hanayo, causing everyone else to face fault.
- In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, when faced with a Sadistic Choice, the President decides to stall Dr. Wily until help can arrive.
- Discussed in the Dad Villain AU. Gabriel's Wish rewrote reality so that the magical backlash from Emelie using the broken Peacock Pin is redirected onto other targets — namely the former Ladybug and her loved ones. When Viceroy figures out how to bounce that backlash back onto the user, Duusu suggests that Gabriel could simply repair the Pin, using his knowledge of how to do it from the original timeline. While Gabriel claims that information wasn't covered by his Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, he also asserts that he wouldn't do so even if he could — he hates the former superheroine so much that he wants her to suffer more than he wants to protect his wife.
- Lying on the Job sees Marinette faced with a dilemma: as the new Guardian, she's in charge of handing out Miraculi and knowing everyone's secret identities... except that it's dangerous for her to know the secret identities of her allies since she's out on the front lines and could face opponents with Mind Control powers. To get around this, Marinette asks her kwami Tikki to choose the next hero instead.
- In Squeakin', the class is throwing a Disney-themed costume party and both Chloé and Lila attempt to pressure Adrien into being the prince to the princess they are dressing as (Cinderella and Belle, respectively), which Adrien naturally doesn't want to do. His solution? Come dressed as Kuzco and go all out, banking on the movie's quotability (and his classmates' support) to keep both girls from getting sympathy from the class over it.
- Thanks, but no: Tired of Fu constantly sending Marinette new Miraculous in hopes that she'll accept, Wayzz convinces him to pass him to her instead. When the Turtle Kwami gets to Marinette, he tells her that if she doesn't pass his Miraculous to anyone else, then she won't have to worry about another Miraculous sent her way and he can get some peace of mind.
- This is Nino's idea for dealing with Lila in Turning Point. Rather than confronting her outright (which Alya did, and nearly had the class turned against her and Marinette by Lila) or keeping quiet (which Adrien initially suggested thanks to being conditioned to seeing lies as "harmless", until the others explained why this isn't a healthy mindset), Nino's plan is to speak to each of their classmates and advise them to be more cautious about Lila's statements while tracking all contradictions and evidence to eventually cornering her.
- This collaborative work explores a scenario where Lila convinced the whole class to side with Hawkmoth, helping him make his Wish to bring his wife back...at the cost of Marinette's life. Gabriel then attempts to Gaslight his son into believing that the only way to bring Marinette back is by sacrificing his mother, only for Adrien to pick another option in several different ways:
- In the first scenario, Adrien punches his father in the face, then uses Gabriel's life as fuel for the Wish to bring Marinette back.
- In the second, Adrien takes this even further, deciding that Gabriel alone couldn't possibly be enough payment for somebody as vibrant as Marinette...so he sacrifices Nino and the rest of his friends as further fuel. Including Lila, who spends her last moments desperately begging Adrien to hate her.Adrien: Despite everything, Lila. Even with how horrible and nasty of a person you were. I still saw you as a potential friend.
Lila: Adrien? Adrien... no... I never really... I was manipulating you! I just wanted to be popular! Please... please hate me!
Adrien: You are a good friend, Lila. How could I hate someone who is helping me out like this? Marinette will be happy to hear of your selflessness. - In the third scenario, Adrien realizes that Marinette would never accept somebody else being sacrificed to save her. So instead of making a Wish of his own, he sends evidence of his father and classmates' crimes to the police so that they can be arrested.
- Played With in this what-if scenario where Adrien rejects Marinette's Love Confession because he doesn't like her trying to expose Lila:
- Adrien attempts to do this after Felix verbally corners him, asking him point-blank whether Lila has been lying or not. He doesn't want to confirm or deny it, as he risks his Betrayal by Inaction being exposed either way, and attempts to side-step the inquiry by insisting he just wanted to protect Lila from Marinette without directly addressing the matter of her truthfulness. This backfires when Marinette repeats his past reassurance to her that he knew Lila was a liar, convincing Alya and the others that he was lying in order to manipulate her.
- This does, however, provide Lila with the third option she was looking for to get out of the confrontation unscathed, as she immediately turns on the Crocodile Tears and accuses Adrien of deliberately sabotaging her chances of befriending Marinette. Somehow, Adrien is dumbfounded that the girl he knew was a Manipulative Bitch would throw him under the bus to save herself.
- Wild Child AU is an alternate take on the source material where Godzilla essentially adopts Madison Russell after the battle against the MUTOs because he assumes that her parents died in the battle. When she and Godzilla learn that Mark and Andrew Russell are still alive, Maddie is uncomfortable at the idea of returning to human civilisation full-time even if she wants to spend time with the Russells again, and equally doesn't want to abandon Godzilla. Since "Madison Russell" is still legally dead, and Maddie has undergone various mutations due to spending so much time on Godzilla's home island, Doctor Serizawa suggests a compromise where Maddie is legally classified as a Titan herself, putting her under Monarch's jurisdiction and able to come and go as she pleases.
- Viridian: The Green Guide: In his first deliberate act as a Vigilante, Izuku comes across a mugger in an alleyway. Being unable to take on the mugger himself but unwilling to abandon the victim to the mugger's mercy, he instead heckles the pro-hero Amplifier into following him into the alleyway by throwing a rock at him, managing to slip away when Amplifier noticed the mugging and watching the battle from a safe distance.
- In Walk a Mile in Another's Shoes, All for One takes Inko hostage to threaten Izuku into spying for him. Izuku frequently tries to find ways around All for One's orders, with mixed results. At U.S.J., Izuku betrays the attack on the heroes but also helps Tomura escape to make it seem like he's still on the villains' side.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Sunset Shimmer is faced with a choice: Remove all magic from the human world, or allow Equestrian magic to transform all of humanity into ponies. She instead asks the personification of human magic what she wants; Magic chooses to meld human and Equestrian magic together. Thus starts the Oversaturated World...
- In Rainbooms and Royalty, after Rainbow rejects Nightmare Moon's temptation, the dark alicorn, after restraining Fluttershy's wings and preventing Twilight Sparkle and Rarity from using their magic, hurls the Mane Cast sans Rainbow to their deaths. Nightmare Moon then taunts Rainbow to choose who to save, because as fast as she is, she can't save all of them. Rainbow manages to pull off a Sonic Rainboom for the first time since her fillyhood, and does fly fast enough to save all of them.
- In Rise of Empress Midnight, Twilight gives Midnight the option to either stay in her destroyed world or join Twilight and reform herself. Midnight instead calls for a third option and attempts to kill Twilight and herself via the destroyed world.
- In Time Enough For Friendship, Star Swirl the Bearded must try to manipulate the timeline to allow the Bearers to become strong enough to defeat Tirek. The problem is that both ends of the timeline are fixed (the Bearers first gain their Elements when the Nightmare returns and not a moment before, and Tirek's escape cannot be altered by even Star Swirl's chronomancy). When Star Swirl tries to fit all the necessary challenges into the time he has to work with, they become overwhelming and break the Bearers instead of strengthening them. But if he gives the Bearers time to recover between adventures, Tirek comes for them before they are ready. Star Swirl's ultimate solution? With Discord's aid, he decoheres time for the Bearers, rendering it impossible to track or define what happens when. Effects still follow from causes, but unrelated causes cannot be placed in any kind of order. And so the Bearers may have as much time as they need to adventure, rest, and grow close.
- In The Witch of the Everfree, Sunset does this when cornered by guards on the train to Ponyville, teleporting off a bridge rather than either fighting them or talking to them.Guard: There isn't anywhere to run, so you can either listen peacefully or we can do things the hard way.
Sunset: There's always a choice, as long as you’re willing to accept the consequences.
- Obito-Sensei: During the first two tests of the Chunin Exam, Team 7 is able to complete their tests with some difficulties only to learn from Tenten that there was another (and sometimes easier) option.
- The first test was to solve a cipher and escape a room in under 30 minutes. Team 7 is able to pass it with seconds to spare, but they learn from Tenten that the test was about observation and that her team got most of the answers by peaking in the other room.
- The second test was the Forest of Death, with the rules that teams must arrive with both the Heaven and Earth scrolls, but can't come with 2 scrolls or they'll be disqualified. Team 7 takes it to mean they'll have to team up with another team that has the opposite scroll and does so with the team from Rain (Haku, Kabuto, and Suigetsu), who came to the same conclusion. While they pass, they learned that Team Gai and Team Baki both pass by bringing three scrolls each.
- Son of the Sannin: Hinata finds herself at a stalemate while she's fighting Toneri Otsutsuki, who's commanding a giant statue of Hamura Otsutsuki that she tries to match with her Avatar of Kalika (the Tenseigan's counterpart to the Mangekyo Sharingan's Susanoo). The statue won't stop fighting unless Toneri dies first, and it'll always regenerate no matter how many times she destroys it. But in order to kill Toneri, she needs to get past the statue first, as it'll keep fighting to protect its master no matter. So what does she do? Remove the statue from the fight altogether, by tossing it out of the Moon and leaving it drifting in space, giving her a clear shot to kill Toneri off.
- True Potential:
- During the fight between Shikamaru and Shino, Choji initially has a hard time deciding who he should be rooting for given that the Nara is his childhood best friend while the Aburame is one of his teammates. Ultimately, he decides to root for both of them to do well enough to earn their chūnin promotion.
- During the fight between Hinata and Neji, several Hyuga elders are watching it. One of them says that he wasn't expecting Hinata to be a match for Neji given that the latter is supposed to be the best of the best of this generation. Another says it's almost insulting that Hinata hasn't won already given that Neji is just a member of the branch house. Then, a third elder says that those comments are just a disservice to both Hinata and Neji as they "are proving to be extraordinary so far", with another elder agreeing with him.
- What You Knead: Played for Laughs when Kakashi asks his students to debate the merits of shuriken versus kunai. Naruto and Sasuke immediately take opposing viewpoints, expecting Sakura to serve as their tiebreaker, only for her to declare that senbon are the best projectile weapon. Kakashi concedes the point; her other teammates refuse to, and the ongoing debate becomes a Running Gag.
- Wolf and Cub: After the Kumo incident, Hiashi Hyuuga is faced with a Sadistic Choice. Either hand over his brother to be killed by Kumo in his place, or let Konoha be dragged into a war that they can't afford to fight. He instead invents a political fiction that Hizashi had a psychotic breakdown, kidnapped Hinata, went missing-nin, and killed the Kumo ambassador on his way out of Konoha. That allows everyone to keep face.
- Later on he has to choose if his nephew Neji is going to be branded, as the elders demand, or defy tradition. He instead emotionally blackmails Asuna into making Neji his apprentice and taking him to the Twelve Ninja Guardians.
- your move, instigator (draw your weapon and hold your tongue): In the climax, Kurama offers Sakura the chance to choose which of two candidates will become his next host: Minato or Danzo. Sakura responds that he should get to choose his own path; impressed, Kurama decides to seal himself into her instead.
- Advice and Trust: Due to her growing bond with Asuka and Shinji Rei considers neither Gendo's way nor SEELE's way are acceptable anymore, and she will find another way to protect her friends:Decision firmed in her chest. Her friends. Their love. The possibility of her own one day... They had to be protected. Rei no longer wanted to see a world where any of those things could not exist. The Commander's Scenario for Instrumentality was no longer acceptable. Nor was SEELE's. There had to be another way. And Rei would fight for that path, the path that ensured her friends would live to be happy.
- The overseers in Tower of Babel see only two options: sacrificing half of the world to save the other half or letting everyone die. Nier and his team are determined to find a third option that doesn’t require murder. They do: it’s a willing fusion between Gestalts and Replicants.
- A Blight on Bonesborough: When the case of Both Sides Have a Point dissolves into a massive argument, Hunter suggests the portal key be kept in the Human Realm with someone timing when and for how long the twins and Clara cross into the Demon Realm to see Amity; that way, the key never has to enter the latter realm again (or at least until Belos is overthrown). Although everyone agrees, it's subverted when Hunter admits he only suggested it to stall for time while the sleeping nettles knocked them out.
- In the game, the rank 9 of most of the female confidants ends with either the protagonist accepting their romantic feelings for him or coldly dismissing them. Confidential Confessions, A Tale of Third Choices is about the meta third option, where protagonist Akira reassures the girls that he'll be there to support them as a good friend.
- In lovers is plural, the Phantom Thieves are split between the theories that their teammate Ann is dating either her best friend Shiho or her model rival Mika. With the bet split 50-50, they consult Morgana and Akechi. Morgana, who has a crush on Ann, suggests that she's dating neither of them. Akechi, however, analyzes the "selfies" Ann took with each girl and deduced that she's dating Shiho and Mika together.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has a pretty big one in Chapter 34. Sabrina kidnaps Ash Ketchum using an Abra to teleport him to her gym and intends to force him to fight his way through her hordes of Psychic-type Pokémon. He could try and go to the top floor to get a Marsh Badge, or to the basement where she has Ash's Primeape captive. In the end, Ash's Pokédex uses a group of Exegguttor Ash caught in the Safari Zone to teleport all of Ash's Pokémon from Oak's ranch, and they break through the ceiling to join the fray and level the playing field. During the break-in, a few Marsh Badges fall from above, and Squirtle snatches one, while Ash sends the Raichu that used to belong to Paul to the basement to rescue Primeape.
- In RWBY: Second Generation, Verse is forced to make a Sadistic Choice. With his teammates held at gunpoint, he is given the option to either kill himself or watch them die in front of him. Instead, he shoots the people behind the gun, allowing them to escape.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
- Cat-Ra: The story's take on the scene in "No Princess Left Behind" where Catra lets Adora go with the sword instead has Adora giving Catra the choice to come back to the Horde or leave without the sword. Catra manipulates their friendship to give Adora a hug making her think she's coming back, only to steal the sword and run.
- Reimagined Enterprise: Meta-example. Many fans disliked the overly TNG-like aesthetic from the source material and most fan reimaginings give Enterprise a more TOS-like aesthetic instead. Rather than doing this, BlackWave instead created his own 22nd-century aesthetic that's halfway between contemporary spacecraft like the Space Shuttle or Dream Chaser and TOS, logically enough.
- A Good Compromise: Captain Tyria Sark puts herself in a bind in part one, which is lampshaded by her comms officer Azira Shelon. Her orders say she's supposed to abandon the Teplans if the Dominion makes an issue of the Federation putting them under their protection, but she promises the Teplan head of state that, "I'll do right by you." When the Dominion comes, a third option presents itself: turns out neither side wants to fire the first shot, and Tyria is able to convince the Vorta to resolve the situation diplomatically: the Teplans become independent but the Federation cannot arm them or use their planet as a base. There's also a third option within the third option, as Tyria notes that the agreement only prevents the Federation from arming the Teplans; other factions in the Alpha Quadrant aren't restricted by it.
- Starfall (Star vs. the Forces of Evil): An engagement challenge can only end in death or surrender. Knocking an opponent unconscious does not count as surrender; they have to actually say they yield. If the other fighter refuses to kill them, they will themselves be executed. During the challenge over Star's hand, Marco knocks Tom unconscious, then throws a spear at his heart from a fair distance away. Empress Ishtar, unable to let her son just die, saves him with magic. This is a clear case of outside interference, allowing Marco to win by default.
- In the Gensokyo 20XX series, earlier we have it where Ran, Chen, and Flandre encounter a starving Reimu. At first, Ran has the notion to take Reimu to a hospital but acknowledges that cannot really be done without either Reimu dying en route from the cold, as a hospital is a long way off from where they were, or having a risk of being captured for being youkai, something that could lead to all of their demises, so Ran decides to eliminate both possibilities by placing her under a hibernation spell (Think Sleeping Beauty) that wasn't to be broken until Yukari returns.
- In Deliverer, Aeon (Megatron's reincarnation) has to choose between leaving the former Decepticons to suffer unfair treatment from the Autobots or allowing another war to occur. He tries to invoke a third option by taking the Star Saber (believing that the Autobots will listen to him if he approaches them with the sword in hand) but only manages to summon the ghost of Optimus Prime, who, upon hearing his story, gives him the true third option by turning him into the new Prime.
- In this fan comic, Starscream and Thundercracker demand that Skywarp help them settle an argument about which is better — cats or dogs? Skywarp chooses bees.
