Heroic Sacrifices in webcomics.
- Venusaur
does this in 151 Hidden Depths. - The Adventures Of Dr Mcninja. In the "Futures Trading" story arc, Chuck Goodrich was protected from far by the NASAGhast, which killed any of the dinosaurs that tried to harm him. But the battle was being lost due to the dinosaurs' ultimate weapon, the Horrorsaurus. In a moment of honor and courage, Chuck provoked the Horrorsaurus into attacking him so the NASAGhast would kill it, but the spirit didn't act quickly enough to prevent his gruesome death.
- American Barbarian ends with the titular hero sacrificing himself to finally defeat Two-Tank Omen and therefore end his tyranny.
- Angel Moxie: Multiple times. Grant does this early on to defeat Shugari's demon minion. Later, at the end of the story, Alex does this to defeat Yzin, and Miya does this to save Alex.
- In the What If? story in Attack of the Super Wizards, Big Red Mc Lane sacrifices himself after blowing up the universe to create a New Eden.
- The Beast Legion: Xeus pushes Master Grotto out of the way from Fyres sudden Attack putting himself in the way instead.
- Bird Boy: Mali Mani never returned from bringing light back to the world.
- In Blue Yonder, Maiden Flight goes to hold off the attackers because they can not get her younger brother.
- Bob and George:
- Played with when the heroes, in desperation, decide to kill the Card-Carrying Villain Bob by dropping an asteroid on his fortress even though the impact will also kill the heroes and the many, many innocent people who happen to be to be within the range. Bob decides that, since he's going to die anyway, he might as be the only one who does, so he blows himself up to stop the asteroid. Of course, they Never Found the Body...
- Presented as one.
- Done by MOUSE, of all computers in Commander Kitty, when he fries most of his units trying to keep Zenith from taking over the ship.
- At the beginning of Crimson Knights Judoch and Wilburg's father Culwech holds off the werewolves while his children escape.
- Later on Geron, Huldric and other knights hold off the Cralesian forces just long enough that most of their forces can escape through the catacombs.
- Dominic Deegan:
- Karnak, the Demon Lord of Wounds, is an odd candidate for this. Especially since his sacrifice was what lead to him physically entering hell and becoming a Demon Lord.
- A less odd candidate is Klo Tark, who switches places with Dominic when the latter is about to be annihilated in a foreign plane.
- Karnak, the Demon Lord of Wounds, is an odd candidate for this. Especially since his sacrifice was what lead to him physically entering hell and becoming a Demon Lord.
- Dracula Everlasting: After Jill helps free Nicholas from the control of Dracula, he kills himself with the stake so that he cannot be controlled again.
- Dragon Ball Multiverse: According to the South Kaioshin, the Grand Kaioshin did this in most universes to tame Majin Buu.
- In Dragon Mango, the priestess sees the future clearly, realizes her death leads to the best possibility, and so dies willingly.
- Dregs: Subverted three times in a row when saving the sewer and the town above from the Baron's bomb. Chub almost goes down with the bomb, failing to jump off in time while sailing it into a cistern, and then Coney leaps off the ledge to save Chub without any real survival plan for himself, but the nudist is able to catch them at the last moment. Then the nudist herself briefly appears to have died from being caught in the explosion's shockwave, but it turns out she was just unconscious.
- In El Goonish Shive:
- Nanase experiences the pain of death repeatedly (through the repeated destruction of her fairy-doll avatar) during her fight with Abraham for Ellen's life. She has to be hospitalized afterward due to the extreme expenditure of magic and loses her magic completely for over 8 months.
- When a vampire nearly shoots Raven, Pandora causes his gun to explode in his face, then vaporizes him and the other two surviving vampires in the building, knowing that such direct action will lead to her immediate execution (the method of which she exploits to all but wipe out Earth's vampires).
- In Endstone, Kyri had handed over her daughter to a friend whom she knew would look after her; neither of them had to say that she wasn't coming back.
- Erfworld: Bogroll taking down Lord Ansom himself. There's no possible greater glory for the lovable oaf.
- Evelyne and the Occult:
- Leo's grandfather gets stabbed through by a demon to protect Leo.
- Evelyne's grandfather was murdered by LucÃa while trying to hold her off to give his daughter a chance to escape.
- Fake News Rumble: Yonatan leaps in front of Stephanos, shielding him from Cheney's attack. He got better.
- Fleep. After discovering a very nasty truth about his past actions, Jimmy gives up his chance of being rescued in order to assure that another civilian would survive. Jimmy's own internal monologue downplays the heroism of the sacrifice—he just wants to see his wife, and now that she's dead, redemption is the only shot he has at ever seeing her again.
- Girl Genius: Lars shoves Agatha out of the way of an enraged Baron Wulfenbach's downswing, putting himself in the way instead, and pays dearly. As a result, "Agatha Flips Out". It also earns him incredible respect from the Jagermonsters. Maxim even gives up his hat (the one thing Jagers prize above all else) to be buried with Lars, because he's made himself as good as a Jager with his act, and no Jager should be buried without a hat. Maxim walks hatless from that point on, until he acquires the replacement in a suitably epic mini-arc.
- Goblins:
- During the Escape from Brassmoon story arc, a group of monsters is holding off guards by the gate while waiting for it to open. It finally does, to their relief and joy, only for a group of guards to charge towards them. The ogre in the group pushes the others towards the exit, grabs a spear and goes to meet the guards. Two pages later, you see two of the guards stabbing him repeatedly.
- Subverted in the same arc a few pages later. Complains tells Big Ears that he's badly injured and can't move, so Big Ears will have to—and Big Ears cuts him off, furiously telling him he won't leave him behind. Complains stares at him for a moment, then:Are you high?! I was going to say you should find a board or something to put me on, and you could maybe drag me out of here! Damn right you're not leaving me behind!
- Played with in the case of Chief, who stayed behind to fight Kore to allow the rest of his group a chance to escape and hide in a dungeon crawl. The other goblins decide to go back to save him after they hear his screams of pain, but they utterly fail to do so.
- The Great Wizard Transcendent: The remaining Hero group threw themselves at the Devil at the beginning of the webcomic to give Mikhail time to summon a meteor strike.
- Guilded Age: A badly injured Rachel pushes Frigg out of the path of the reality-destroying monster the cultists summoned rather than trying to escape.
- Homestuck: There are a number of these throughout the comic, somewhat mitigated by the fact that every player starts out alternating between two bodies so that they can be resurrected into the other if one dies, all players go to an afterlife from which they cans till interact with living people and each other, and there are a number of ways to cheat death beyond that. In that regard, these sacrifices are more similar to sacrificing an extra life or body in a video game than actually sacrificing one's life in real life or other works. This is not to say that characters actually know that this is the case when they sacrifice themselves, mind.
- At the end of Act 4, Jade sacrifices her Dream Self to push John out of the way of an oncoming meteor.
- In Act 5, "Hivebent", Sollux withstands the Mind Rape of the cry of Eldritch Abomination that was killing of every troll on the planet just long enough to get Feferi into the Medium.
- Feferi allows her dream self to get killed so she can prove the Horrorterrors of the Furthest Ring aren't at all something to be feared, so that she can interact with Jade on a more personal level.
- Sollux has another go at it when he overexerts his powers to propel the asteroid to the green sun before their window of opportunity passes.
- This is one of the only two ways that a player who has ascended to the god tiers can die a permanent death, the other being a Karmic Death.
- In Kevin & Kell, during the Rabbits' Rampage storyline, Danielle Kindlenote threw herself in the way of a sharpened carrot stake aimed at George Fennec, taking it in the heart. They had seconds to complete their plan, which was to kiss so that their Electric Love connection could fry their mainframe.
- Kid Radd: Bogey lets the titular character kill him in the final chapter, dropping a power-up that saves his life from an imminent, apocalyptic blast. He gets better though.
- Magick Chicks: Faith has put herself on the line for her fellow students on two occasions:
- The first was when she opted to stay behind to hold off Svletvana and Veroniquenote , despite having been stripped of her powers and left physically weakened, to buy Tiffany time to get the wand. She was subsequently beaten unconscious.
- Chapter 15 concludes with Faith expending all her power to launch Melissa and Sandi free of Cerise's spell circle, so they could escape and save the school after it'd been taken over. Her fate, along with the rest of the student council's has remained unknown.
- The first was when she opted to stay behind to hold off Svletvana and Veroniquenote , despite having been stripped of her powers and left physically weakened, to buy Tiffany time to get the wand.
- Mob Ties: Mika was very nearly killed by Bengal, but for Kyoko, the Love Freak Genki Girl, leaping in front of the knife that would have killed her.Mika: "You idiot! Why did you hurt yourself to protect me?"
Kyoko: "Because it's your wedding day, silly! You should be happy on your wedding d..."
Mika: "Kyoko? KYOKOOOO!!!" - At the end of Nan Quest, a Sadistic Choice is revealed: either Pablo or Santiago must die. Pablo sacrifices themselves to spare Nan from having to choose.
- The Order of the Stick:
- In strip 827, Thanh attempts to singlehandedly take on Redcloak's forces during the fall of the Resistance, in order to buy time for Niu to escape and get word to Hinjo.
- Belkar has to be the Bearer of Bad News, during which he explains the sacrifice for the party that Durkon made.
- Durkon's father died in this manner before he was born, having caused a cave-in to save the rest of his squad from a troll with dragon blood. This is also the reason why he was never resurrected, since having died a hero's death meant that he had earned his place in Valhalla. His wife couldn't bear to tear him away from paradise, even if it meant raising their son by herself.
- In strip 827
- In Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi, Atomic Betty was about to get crushed by a giant robot claw (they never showed the robot), then Sparky runs and pushes her out of the way so he could get crushed to death instead. Leaving Betty with a big Say My Name.
- In Ruby Quest, Tom prepares to do this after sharing a kiss with Ruby to allow time for her and Jay to escape the Metal Glen by fighting Ace. However, before he can fight Ace, Stitches lunges at Ace and tackles him, allowing Tom to escape with Ruby and Jay, in which this trope is then played straight for Stitches.note
- Roommates:
- In the Zombie Apocalypse arc, James Norrington sacrifices himself to save a little girl and gets bitten by a zombie. Later gets subverted because being canonically dead gives him Plot Armor.
- Later he does it again in Such Stuff... to save Sarah from Jareth and Jareth from himself and this time he actually dies. But this one was All Just a Dream combined with Your Soul Is Mine! by Jareth's father. So he got better.
- In Roomies, Ruth dies stopping a drunken Danny from driving into a truck.
- Parodied in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal 1535:Dinosaur: "Save yourself, mammal! We will fend off the asteroids!"
Caption: Paleontology texts have changed a lot since dinosaurs took over the school board. - Schlock Mercenary:
- This strip.
- This one too, also shows that Anyone Can Die.
- General Tagon (Captain Tagon's father) comes at this from a strategic angle. If you're going to sacrifice someone, it should be someone you care for—if it's someone you hate, it's not a sacrifice, it's murder. This ends about as you'd expect.Captain Kevyn: You have many friends, general?
General Tagon: Alive? No, not really. - Played for Laughs here. Does it count as a heroic sacrifice if you clone yourself first?
- Maxim 20: If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.
- Maxim 70: Failure is not an option. It is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do.
- This
- Xenol in Second Empire develops an extremely ingenious plan to cripple the pursuing enemy ship following their disastrous escape from Skaro. However, he needs explosives, and the closest thing he has is the Self-Destruct Mechanism in his warriors' travel machines. Fully knowing just how important Xenol will be to the Daleks, all present warriors immediately volunteer. Xenol proceeds to show his awesomeness by ensuring the two chosen ones survive the Self-Destructive Charge.
- Sidekicks: In the season 1 finale, Metheos recovers during his fight with Darkslug and fires a Beam Burster at Dream Girl. Darkslug puts his body in the way of the attack (mirroring an event that occurred in Dream Girl's youth) and takes grievous damage as a result. But Metheos charges up another full body Beam Burster to finally destroy Darkslug for good. Before he can, Darkslug tells Dream Girl why he picked her as his sidekick, transfers all his powers and the First Prana into her and then shields her from Metheos' explosive blast with his hero cape.
- Buwaro the Fire Demon from Slightly Damned takes a bolt of divine lightning for the woman he loves, who happens to be an angel.
- Sweet Home (2017):
- Jayhun goes down trying to stop the security guard from killing anyone else.
- Seop Ahn pushes Hyun out of the way of one of Beefcake’s punches and gets crushed in his place.
- Jisu stops Hyun from pulling her away from the flying monster to stop him from being dragged along with her, even telling him to finish her song lyrics for her, but he manages to grab her again and drive the monster away before she's out of his reach.
- Dusik blows himself up while taking multiple monsters with him.
- Tales Of Gnosis College: Moira makes one in hopes of preserving friendly relations between humanity and Howard the Tentacle Beast's species. Nanetta makes one for Moira at the same time.
- In chapter 11 of Unsounded, Elan throws himself in front of the enemy forces to ensure Elka makes it to safety; he doesn't last long before the enemy wrights crush him between pillars of earth. The villain scores some Irony points by calling him a coward as he does so. It's implied that he did it because he was going to die soon anyway, as he had a heart condition and had gone several days without his treatment.
- In Weak Hero, while protecting the downed Ben, Alex is kicked into a pile of wooden planks by Donald. The pile begins to collapse on top of him and Ben uses his last ounce of energy to run forward and protect Alex. This is what caused his arm injury that has persisted through into high school.
- In Widdershins Thackerey runs back into a burning building to properly desummon a spirit. O'Malley follows to save him.
