History Main / InjuredSelfDrag

* ''TabletopGame/BladesInTheDark'' (and most UsefulNotes/ForgedInTheDark games): Taking harm of the highest order (level 3 a.k.a. "severe"), such as having one leg shattered, typically incapacitates a player character, so that they, though still conscious, are incapable of doing anything useful on their own except slowly and painfully crawling to safety. Gameplay-wise, level 3 harm bars the corresponding player from using action rolls (the core mechanic of the game) unless another character helps theirs or they spend stress points for each action attempted.

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

* In the ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' series:

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'': The Warrior of Light is badly wounded by a magitek explosion [[spoiler:after being kidnapped by Fandaniel and stuffed into a Garlean body]]. They still have enough left in them to drag themselves back to Camp Broken Glass and to tackle [[spoiler:Zenos, who [[GrandTheftMe is wearing their body]]]] to the floor.

* ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged'': The adaptation of the ''History of Trunks'' special has Future Gohan trying to drag himself over to Future Trunks, though laments that the loss of his arm makes the process much more difficult.

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* ''Anime/DeathNote'': The anime ends with [[spoiler:Light staggering to an abandoned building riddled with bullets before collapsing on a set of stairs as Ryuk writes his name down in his notebook]].

** In the ''History of Trunks'' TV special, Future Gohan is forced to hide from Androids 17 and 18, with neither one being able to find him or Future Trunks. The duo then decide to just destroy the entire area, with both Gohan and Trunks being caught in the crossfire, Gohan losing an arm in the process. With only one senzu bean left, Gohan drags himself over to an unconscious Trunks in order to feed it to him.

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* ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'': The climactic fight between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi ends with Obi-wan severing Anakin's legs and left arm and Anakin being horribly burned after sliding down a rocky slope and almost ending up in a river of lava. After Obi-wan abandons him, he feebly pulls himself up the slope with his mechanical arm, which gets him far enough away from the lava flow for him to stay alive until Palpatine finds him.

* [[Literature/MyHeartIsAChainsaw The Indian Lake Trilogy]]: ''Don't Fear the Reaper'' has a section written from the POV of Abby Grandlin, one of the killer's victims. After having half her face smashed in and [[EyeScream an eye knocked out of its socket]], Abby, a former athlete, manages to drag herself across the gym floor to a rack of basketballs, which she uses to wheel herself the rest of the way to her phone to call the authorities. She [[{{Determinator}} keeps herself going]] by imagining the stands full of people cheering her on.

** [[Recap/BabylonFiveS03E21ShadowDancing "Shadow Dancing"]]: Stephen Franklin's JourneyToFindOneself ends when he tries to intervene in a mugging and gets stabbed in the stomach. After lying in pain for a while, he starts seeing a HelpfulHallucination of himself that starts outlining all his flaws, especially running away from all his problems. Stephen eventually gets so irritated he starts dragging himself to where someone can find him, his alternate self egging him on.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In the Season 35 episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E11HeavenSent "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.

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* ''Franchise/MonsterVerse'': After angering Godzilla for getting the best of him in their third fight, King Kong takes painful damage by getting forcefully thrown into the side of a building and dislodged one of his shoulders. The result of this physical trauma was so severe that it even hindered his mobility, that as soon as Godzilla approached Kong in a vulnerable state, he was basically forced to quickly drag himself away from his oncoming wrath, who's inching his way closer to the overwhelmed primate with nothing but unbridled fury on all fours. All of that dragging to safety got him nowhere when Godzilla continued to assault him until he immobilized Kong with only a stomp to keep him still.
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* ''VideoGame/TheHenryStickminCollection'': In the "Revenged" ending of ''Completing The Mission'', [[spoiler:Henry is unable to escape the doomed Toppat airship before it hits the ground and is mortally injured in the crash. All he can do at that point is pull himself out of the wreckage and slowly limp over to a nearby rock, upon which he collapses and dies.]]

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* ''Webcomic/BobAndGeorge'': After getting beaten up by the Cossack Bots, Mega Man crawls [[http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/030720c eighty miles to Dr. Cossack's lair]] with a hole in his chest and stumps for arms; one of his legs fell off along the way. He's incredibly annoyed when he discovers that it was all for nothing; not only did Proto Man basically lie that Cossack was behind everything, Proto Man and the Cossack Bots saved the day without him. Being a robot, though, he gets better.
* ''Webcomic/{{Goblins}}'' has a sequence where a lot of freed prisoners are trying to flee a city. One has a bloody stump for a foot and can only hobble along using a stick. He encounters setbacks: first getting knocked down in the rush, then slipping and falling with the stick landing just out of reach. He's very visibly struggling and desperate, each step leaving a bloody footprint, and the framing emphasizes just how far he has to go.
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* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'': In the animated adaptation of ''ComicBook/ForTheManWhoHasEverything'', Wonder Woman tries to fight Mongul, but is outmatched and mercilessly pummeled by him. Though Superman arrives just in time to save her from the killing blow, she is too injured to walk or fly, leading her to crawl her way to safety.

Also a SuperTrope to WhoNeedsTheirWholeBody The person dragging themselves may be an AlmostDeadGuy.

* ''Film/ThereWillBeBlood'' begins with Daniel Plainview discovering silver in his mine, and after using Dynamite to reveal the vein, he starts climbing down the shaft when a ladder step breaks. He falls down and is paralyzed from his legs, but manages to pull himself out and then drag himself to a nearby blacksmith.

** In the episode [[Recap/HTFWaterYouWadingFor Water You Wading For]], after getting mangled by piranhas, sea lions, and an alligator, Cuddles, now missing his entire lower body among other things, manages to escape the lake and pulls himself away from it. Unfortunately, it does little to save him, as he's promptly body slammed and crushed by a whale.

* ''Film/ThereWillBeBlood'' begins with Daniel Plainview discovering silver in his mine, and after using Dynamite to reveal the vein, he starts climbing down the shaft when a ladder step breaks. He falls down and is paralyzed from his legs, but manages to pull himself out and the drag himself to a nearby blacksmith.

The person dragging themselves may be an AlmostDeadGuy.

* While Sniffles is exiting his shrinking submarine in the ''WebAnimation/HappyTreeFriends'' episode "[[Recap/HTFIveGotYouUnderMySkin I've Got You Under My Skin]]", he accidentally steps on the shrinking knob, causing it to start shrinking with him halfway out and thus cutting him in half horizontally. Having lost his entire lower body, he tries to drag himself towards a first aid kit on a table. Unfortunately, he fails to notice Lumpy's silly straw falling on his intestine and pinning it to the floor, meaning that his organs get pulled out one by one as he drags himself closer to the table. To add insult to injury, when he finally reaches the table, he accidentally tips it over, causing it to fall on his head and split it in half moments before the first aid kit falls into his hand.

* ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged'''s adaptation of the above mentioned ''History of Trunks'' special has Future Gohan trying to drag himself over to Future Trunks, though laments that the loss of his arm makes the process much more difficult.

* ''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 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 him about the Namekian Dragon Balls.

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': In "[[Recap/GravityFallsS2E18Weirdmageddon Weirdmageddon Part 1]]", we get a [[Film/MadMax Mad Max-style]] car chase with [[{{Yandere}} Gideon]] (who, [[HeelFaceTurn at least at this point in time]], is working for [[BigBad Bill]]) and his jail gang on hot pursuit of Dipper and Wendy as the former try to stop Mabel from being rescued via Gideon's not-so-successful meddling. Wendy openly admits that she's a less-than-amateur driver, but they manage to get pretty far...until they have to jump a gorge, at which the car flips over multiple times and crashes, knocking Wendy out for a few minutes. Cue Dipper ''immediately getting out of the car, wasting no time to prepare for the effects of sidling on the intensely hot, fragile, decaying ground'' and quite literally (as you may imagine) ''pulling his weight towards Mabel's bubble without showing any signs of slowing down''.

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': In "[[Recap/GravityFallsS2E18Weirdmageddon Weirdmageddon Part 1]], we get a [[Film/MadMax Mad Max-style]] car chase with [[{{Yandere}} Gideon]] (who, [[HeelFaceTurn at least at this point in time]], is working for [[BigBad Bill]]) and his jail gang on hot pursuit of Dipper and Wendy as the former try to stop Mabel from being rescued via Gideon's not-so-successful meddling. Wendy openly admits that she's a less-than-amateur driver, but they manage to get pretty far...until they have to jump a gorge, at which the car flips over multiple times and crashes, knocking Wendy out for a few minutes. Cue Dipper ''immediately getting out of the car, wasting no time to prepare for the effects of sidling on the intensely hot, fragile, decaying ground'' and quite literally (as you may imagine) ''pulling his weight towards Mabel's bubble without showing any signs of slowing down''.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout76'': A ghoul will drag if the player's character cripples their legs. The game goes so far as to make ghoul leg crippling an occasional daily challenge.

* Done twice in ''VideoGame/ReturnOfTheObraDinn'':

* ''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."