History Main / InjuredSelfDrag

* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'': After losing to Zarbon and being on death's doorstep after getting thrown into a lake, Vegeta tries to weakly crawl and drag himself out of the lake he was in and then escape somewhere safe to recover, succeeding at moving somewhat far from the shore before finally collapsing from exhaustion; the only reason he lives afterwards is that Frieza orders Zarbon to retrieve his body and heal him so they can interrogate Vegeta about the Namekian Dragon Balls.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''Literature/LesMiserables'': After [[spoiler: Éponine [[TakingTheBullet takes a bullet]] for Marius]], she drags herself out of the fray of battle and lies alone until Marius come near her, then drags herself over to him.

--->''' Hallucination''': Then get up off the damn floor! I don't care how much it hurts. Don't you go passing out on me, because that's just another kind of running away. Now you take some responsibility! Show me that you want it! Get up off the damn floor!

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'': In "The Sock," Principal Brown misunderstands Gumball and Darwin's silent request for help as them saying [[TimmyInAWell Miss Simian is trapped in a well]], so he jumps out a window to save her. Badly injured, he drags himself forward by the elbows, saying, "Elbows, don't fail me now." When they approach Miss Simian, she somehow also thinks she's trapped in a well and jumps out a window in the same way, dragging herself by her chin and saying, "Come on chin, don't fail me now."
* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': [[ParodiedTrope Parodied]] in the Season 7 episode [[Recap/AmericanDadS7E2SonOfStan "Son Of Stan"]], where Stan clones Steve and raises the clone (named Stevearino) in a highly disciplined manner to prove his way is the best way to bring Steve up. This backfires, causing Stevearino to become a psychopath who kills animals and intends to murder Steve to replace him. At the end of the episode, Stevearino is seemingly killed by an explosion and left for dead by the Smith family. However, it's shown that he's still alive, though injured. He spots one of the cats he tortured and a gun that's between them. The two try to crawl to it, with the cat getting there first and shooting Stevearino.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'': In the episode [[Recap/RenAndStimpy1x04FireDogsTheLittlestGiant Fire Dogs]], Mr. Horse falls from a very tall building and lands feet-first on Ren and Stimpy, breaking both of his hind legs in the process. He then drags himself away by the front legs, groaning and sobbing from the pain.

* ''Literature/LesMiserables'': After [[spoiler: Éponine [[TakingTheBullet takes a bullet]] for Marius]], she drags herself out of the fray of battle and lies alone until Marius come near her, then drags herself over to him.

* VideoGame/BenAndEd: If Ed’s legs get cut off, he normally starts walking on his hands. But if an additional arm is cut off, Ed starts slowly dragging himself forward with one hand. This leaves him more vulnerable to getting the rest of his body cut off.

** In "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS3E17 The Camping Episode]]", Squidward gets attacked by a seabear and tries to limp away, only for the sea bear to attack him again because it hates limping. Squidward then tries to crawl away offscreen, but gets attacked again because, apparently, the sea bear hates crawling, too (or just doesn't like Squidward).

** In "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS3E17 The Camping Episode]]," Squidward gets attacked by a seabear and tries to limp away, only for the sea bear to attack him again because it hates limping. Squidward then tries to crawl away offscreen, but gets attacked again because, apparently, the sea bear hates crawling, too (or just doesn't like Squidward).

** In "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS3E17 The Camping Episode]]," Squidward gets attacked by a seabear and tries to limp away, only for the seabear to attack him again because it hates limping. Squidward then tries to crawl away offscreen, but gets attacked again because apparently the seabear hates crawling too (or just doesn't like Squidward).

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': In "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS2E7PrehibernationWeekLifeOfCrime Prehibernation Week]]", [=SpongeBob=]'s legs get incredibly sore from sandboarding, and when he tries to go home, he has to lift each leg off the ground with his hands in order to take a single step.

* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': [[ParodiedTrope Parodied]] in the episode "Son Of Stan", where Stan clones Steve and raises the clone (named Stevearino) in a highly disciplined manner to prove his way is the best way to bring Steve up. This backfires, causing Stevearino to become a psychopath who kills animals and intends to murder Steve to replace him. At the end of the episode, Stevearino is seemingly killed by an explosion and left for dead by the Smith family. However, it's shown that he's still alive, though injured. He spots one of the cats he tortured and a gun that's between them. The two try to crawl to it, with the cat getting there first and shooting Stevearino.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'': In the Season 3 episode "Dino Goes to Hollyhock", Sassie has to pretend she has three broken legs for a scene. She drags herself to deliver the money to the bank. Then Dino comes along to deliver the money for Sassie and creates an igloo to make her feel at home.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'': In the episode Fire Dogs, Mr. Horse falls from a very tall building and lands feet-first on Ren and Stimpy, breaking both of his hind legs in the process. He then drags himself away by the front legs, groaning and sobbing from the pain.

* ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay'': T-800 is repeatedly hit by a crusher landed forward on him by a ruthless T-1000. The former drags across the floor in an attempt to grab a shotgun, but T-1000 stabs him downward with a steel tube to keep him immobile and go back to look for John Connor. After a brief self-repair command, T-800 reactivates, removes the tube from his body, grabs the shotgun, and drags to a conveyor belt while aiming with the gun to shoot T-1000 and (with the projectile's impact) push him to the lava container below, finally killing him.

Video game scenarios may make this trope into a form of ControllableHelplessness, or even a whole InjuredPlayerCharacterStage (making this a SuperTrope). In any case, both tropes involve desperate struggling in a situation that's impossible or near impossible to actually win, making them related concepts.

* Most video games that allow targeting specific body parts will invoke this trope if you cripple the legs of a foe, especially undead or robotic ones.
** ''VideoGame/Fallout76'' goes so far as to make ghoul leg crippling an occasional daily challenge.

!!As this trope covers serious injury and sometimes death, it's Administrivia/SpoilersOff.

As this trope covers serious injury and sometimes death, it's Administrivia/SpoilersOff.

Video game scenarios may make this trope into a form of ControllableHelplessness. In any case, both tropes involve desperate struggling in a situation that's impossible or near impossible to actually win, making them related concepts.

* ''Series/{{Firefly}}'': "[[Recap/FireflyE08OutOfGas Out of Gas]]" is NestedStory which starts with Mal gravely wounded and dragging himself through ''Serenity'' to the engine room to replace a critical part, with cuts back to the events [[HowWeGotHere leading up to how he got injured in the first place]].

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In "Heaven Sent", Twelve finds himself in a strange, moving castle with a monster who keeps almost killing him unless he confesses to various things. At the end, he refuses to keep confessing and instead desperately smashes his fists against a glass wall until the monster catches up and kills him, but, being a Time Lord, he has at least a day to survive. He uses this time to drag himself all the way out of the castle with his bleeding hands, leaving clues [[GroundhogDayLoop that he then follows when he revives, repeating the same behaviors for billions of years until the glass breaks]]. This means that Twelve dragged his dying body through the castle billions of times over, and had he been unable to do it, he never would've been able to eventually free himself for real.

This trope serves to do a lot of things very quickly. For one, it makes the character come off as a {{determinator}} who won't give up even as they're dying. If they're dragging themselves to a weapon, it means that they're still trying to fight even if they're dying, while dragging themselves to a safe place means they're just trying to survive. Either way, this act takes a lot of willpower and courage, pulling through in such a dire scenario to achieve one last goal and claim some sort of victory.

It also serves to put the character in even greater agony, all while making them very pitiable to the audience. Their wounds, broken bones, and internal bleeding won't get better as they force themselves to move forward. They'll just be in even more pain, using up the last of their blood and energy. The camera may show them from above, making it clear just how far they have to go and to show the TrailOfBlood behind them.

This trope can be downplayed in cases where the character isn't at death's door, but is still severely injured and barely mobile. Even if they don't end up having to drag themselves around, there will be emphasis on their efforts to keep moving, and on the pain it puts them in, all the same. For instance, they may still be able to stand upright, but will need to find a makeshift crutch or cane to actually move, or they may be walking away with broken legs and bleeding feet. All that matters is that the injury is debilitating to the point of making it so that the character would be expected to just collapse and surrender, and manifests in such a way that moving at all is even more painful.

* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'': After losing to Zarbon and being on death's doorstep after getting thrown into a lake, Vegeta tries to weakly crawl and drag himself out of the lake he was in and then escape somewhere safe to recover, succeeding at moving somewhat far from the shore before finally collapsing from exhaustion; the only reason he lives afterwards is because Frieza orders Zarbon to retrieve his body and heal him so they can interrogate Vegeta about the Namekian Dragon Balls.

** In the non-canon film ''Saint Seiya: Legend of Crimson Youth'', set after the original "12 Houses" Arc, Athena's divine brother, Phoebus Abel, comes to inform her that the gods decided to destroy mankind, and he is to take her to his own personal temple, while his subordinates, the three Solar Corona Saints and the resurrected Gold Saints (Gemini Saga, Cancer Deathmask, Capricorn Shura, Aquarius Camus and Pisces Aphrodite), deal with Athena's Bronze Saints. The larger part of the film is the Bronze Saints fighting against Abel's lackeys, then Corona Atlas doing a surprise attack on them. At the climax of the movie, each of them drag themselves from whatever place of their previous battles and limp toward Abel's temple.

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanUnderTheRedHood'': At the start of the film, the Joker kidnaps Jason Todd, beats him to an inch of his life with a crowbar, and abandons him in a remote warehouse. After the villain takes off, the boy tries to stand up and walk, but falls down and begins desperately crawling towards the exit. The next scene focuses on the bloody trail Jason left behind as he finally reaches the door. Unfortunately, he is unable to unlock it and, realizing that the Joker had left a time bomb in the building, calmly [[FaceDeathWithDignity accepts he is doomed]].

* ''Film/UneditedFootageOfABear'': After Donna gets runover by her evil doppelganger, she's in horrible pain, bleeding in the street. For the duration of the short, we see her painfully dragging herself to her house, where the doppelganger is now tormenting her kids. She makes it to the front steps [[FromBadToWorse before the cops show up]] and arrest her, seemingly for something that happened to her kids in the meantime.

-->''' Hallucination''': Then get up off the damn floor! I don?t care how much it hurts. Don?t you go passing out on me, because that?s just another kind of running away. Now you take some responsibility! Show me that you want it! Get up off the damn floor!

* ''VideoGame/AnotherWorld'': In the final level, Lester is seized by one of the alien men who are looking for him right after falling off a building's roof, and is badly beaten by him. Buddy reaches just in time and fights against the enemy to give Lester time to escape, but Lester himself is too weak to walk or run. He has to drag with a great amount of effort to reach a spot where he can activate a powerful laser from the ceiling to kill the alien man. This requires a serious input from the player, not only because Lester is having a difficult time dragging himself but also because, if he doesn't make it to the spot in time, the alien will come at him and finish the job right after incapacitating Buddy. Even after succeeding, the still-weakened Lester has to keep dragging until warping back to the building's roof and escaping with Buddy.
* ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'': After being gravely injured by a falling stake from a burning ship while chasing Charles Lee in Sequence 12, Connor struggles to make his way in a very crippled state to the bar where Charles (who in turn dragged to get there after having received a gunshot in the belly by Connor himself) is hiding, in order to finally kill him. Connor survives, but suffers from occasional pain as a result of the wound.