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"I've lived my life by those sentiments.
They're well worth dying for."

When you fall, my friend,
Another friend will emerge
From the shadows
To take your place.
French Resistance Song

Our Hero and the Big Bad have finally come to blows. A titanic battle erupts, and when the smoke clears... well, the Big Bad has won. Instead of killing Our Hero, though, the Big Bad takes them hostage, and drags their broken body out for all the regular people to see. The villain assumes, of course, that seeing their champion broken will lead all the non-heroic civilians to automatically surrender. And for a second, it seems like it will.

... but there is one person who refuses to lie down and accept defeat, even with the hero down for the count. They'll step forward, even if they're no match for the villain, and say something to the effect of "As long as one person is left to oppose you, you'll never win." The other civilians, inspired by this person's bravery, also rise up in defiance of the villain. Usually in the process of the revolt, the hero recovers, and once again rises to challenge the villain.

Usually a hero's chances of this happening increase when they've trained the peaceful villagers.

This is often the result of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good. The villain underestimated the effect the hero had on the people around him and it ultimately comes back to bite him when they don't.

See also: I Am Spartacus, Hope Springs Eternal, You Cannot Kill An Idea, Right Makes Might, and Doomed Moral Victor. Compare Sedgwick Speech, Inspirational Martyr and Muggle Power. Contrast and compare As Long as There Is Evil, Evil Will Fail and Evil Only Has to Win Once.

Not to be confused with the literal scenario in Y: The Last Man — see Gendercide for that.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, that is the basis for the ideal held by Kagaya Ubuyashiki, lord of the Demon Slayer Corps, and accepted by all of those who respect his wishes within the Corps. Humans are frail against the mighty demons, but we are determined beings as Kagaya puts it, no matter how many slayers fall in battle the combined will of their hope for demonkind's downfall has endured for centuries, strengthening the following generation of slayers to pick up from where the previous one left off. Said verbatim by Kagaya in his only and final meeting with Muzan Kibutsuji, the demon king, as the sickly leader of the demon slayer corps lured him to be entrapped by a massive explosion, a suicide attack by Kagaya and most of his family.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • In Dragon Ball, Master Roshi fails to seal Demon King Piccolo with the Evil Containment Wave, costing his life. However, with his last breath, Roshi swears someday someone will defeat Piccolo.
      Master Roshi: But don't... think... you're safe yet, Piccolo. Someday... someone will take my place... and be strong enough... to rid the world of you. This, I truly believe- (collapses, and dies)
    • In the English dub of the Dragon Ball Z special, History of Trunks, Future Gohan says this about Trunks to the Androids:
      Future Gohan: "You know you can't win! You can't destroy what I really am! Even if you manage to kill this body, someone even stronger would surface and take my place! Not one death will go unaccounted for, not one!"
  • Notably subverted but also Played for Laughs in Kirby: Right Back at Ya!. In the episode Escar-Gone, a demon beast that Dedede ordered named Erasum goes inside anyone and forces everyone to forget their existence. The monster goes inside Escargoon and everyone in Cappy Town immediately starts to forget him. The snail grows more and more desperate to try and find at least one guy who remembers him until he bumps into Kirby. And him constantly saying 'poyo' makes Escargoon think that he does remember him. But it's possible that even Kirby has forgotten who he is and it's because he is just in his nature by being nice to anyone who gets in his way.
  • In One Piece, after Boa Hancock petrifies Vice Admiral Momonga's crew (except for Momonga who avoids that fate by stabbing himself to distract himself from her beauty), she mockingly remarks that his crew is now down to one. He replies that "one" is not the same as none. Of course, as a Vice Admiral, he's easily stronger than his entire crew.
    • During the Egghead arc, it's revealed that Luffy's fruit, the Gum-Gum Fruit - or rather, the Human-Human Fruit Model: Nika, is effectively this. Devil Fruits are "made" from people's dreams, according to Vegapunk's theory - and as Nika is the god of Slave Liberation and freedom, among other things, Vegapunk claims that the Fruit, and thus Nika, will never stop returning as long as life dreams of freedom and liberation.
  • This trope appears by implication in the anime ending of Soul Eater. Maka defeats the Kishin (the embodiment of fear-induced madness) with courage. When the villain screams about how something as common as courage is worthless, the hero claims that's the point—it's not special. Which means everybody has it.
    The Kishin: Everybody, huh? So it's just like madness, then.
  • Something like this happens in Transformers: Super-God Masterforce. Mega tries to crush Ginrai between an asteroid and a tower, but then a little girl who Ginrai saved throws a rock at her. This inspires all the other kids to throw rocks, which pretty much defeats her.
  • In Yuma's epic battle with III in the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, Yuma invokes a variation of this trope at one point of the duel, after recovering from the Despair Event Horizon that III's curse had inflicted on him. He's taking a serious beating, Astral is apparently dead, and he's down to 400 Life Points... And he responds to III's Evil Gloating by telling him that even if he had just one Life Point left, he'd keep fighting him. And despite the fact that the situation got even worse from that point, his attitude paid off.

    Comic Books 
  • Captain America does this to Galactic Conqueror Thanos during The Infinity Gauntlet crossover. Subverted in that the hero's defiant stand, along with his defeated team's futile assault, were unknowingly all part of an elaborate plan by Adam Warlock to elicit the villain's true defeat by exploiting his Achilles' Heel.
    • Captain America had a habit of doing these speeches only to get stomped into the ground. He also did it in Avengers: Under Siege and the original Korvac Saga, possibly a few other times.
    • A straighter example happened with him sometime later after Korvac got hold of the Cosmic Cube. Korvac could have put the Captain under his power too, but left him free to demonstrate the impossibility of opposition. Cap repeatedly proves him wrong before the Reset Button each time, occasionally with things as small as protest t-shirts.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Dangerverse, Remus uses this trope to tell Voldemort why it is pointless to kill Remus and his wife:
    Remus: And we can never truly die, she and I. You see, we have four children. The ones they love make eight. The ones they've trained make dozens. And the ones they'll teach make hundreds, thousands, even millions. As long as any one of them lives, so will we. And you can kill, and kill, and kill, but you will never kill us all.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In the climax of OOO, Den-O, All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Riders, the film celebrating 40 years of the Kamen Rider metaseries, OOO, Ankh and New Den-O are captured by Shocker and are planning to execute them in front of a large live audience. The Rider Scouts, with the help of the Double Riders, arrive to rally the people into rebelling against Shocker and help in freeing the captive Riders. But even having four Riders aren't enough to match against Shocker's forces. Cue Big Damn Heroes when all the Riders appear, heralded by the Owner of the DenLiner, who states that, even if Shocker has changed history, the Riders will never be gone as long the sense of justice remains in the people's hearts.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • In The Avengers, when Loki attacks Stuttgart, Germany, and orders the people to bow to him, one elderly German (old enough to have either lived through World War II or been born soon after) refuses and proclaims that there will always be people who will stand up to petty tyrants like him. Loki gets ready to fry the old man when Captain America arrives.
    • This is one of the meanings behind HYDRA's Badass Creed, "Cut off one head, two more shall take its place!" Captain America: The Winter Soldier proves this true when Zola, the last member of HYDRA, rebuilds the organization within S.H.I.E.L.D. itself.
    • Discussed in the same movie as a sentiment expressed in the past by Nick Fury, which was misinterpreted by a treacherous former ally as a call to bring the world under the totalitarian control of one man.
    • In a massive case of Show, Don't Tell, Avengers: Endgame visually homages this by the Trope Namer himself, Captain America, buckling up his (then-freshly broken) vibranium shield, alone out of all the Avengers currently out of commission, to face the oncoming hordes of Thanos. At least until a familiar portal pops up...
  • Michael Collins This trope is repeatedly mentioned. When you're doing a movie about a revolution, you want to do this.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Will Turner says (with a nod to Jack Sparrow) that, "No cause is lost as long as there is one fool left to fight for it."
  • In The Postman, General Bethlehem is about to execute two of the Postal Carriers when he realizes their example will just make things go on:
    Ford: Who are you?
    Californian Carrier: Name's Clark. Postal Carrier of the restored Republic of California. Who are you?
    Ford: Postmaster Ford Lincoln Mercury.
    Californian Carrier: [takes off his cap, shake hands] It's an honor, Sir.
    Bethlehem: Wait a minute... wait a minute! You don't know each other? This will never be over. It'll go on except I'll be fighting a goddamn ghost.
  • The Spider-Man Trilogy movies:
    • The first Spider-Man plays it straight. Green Goblin is attacking Spidey while he's trying to save Mary Jane and a tram full of schoolkids from falling into the East River. Just when it looks like Goblin is about to go in for a killing blow, he starts getting pelted with random objects by angry New Yorkers standing on the Queensboro Bridge. The New Yorkers scream profanities at the villain, one says "C'mon, you're gonna attack a guy who's trying to save a bunch of kids?!", and then one New Yorker declares to Goblin: "You mess wit' one of us, you mess wit' ALL of us!" This was reportedly placed in specifically in the aftermath of September 11th as a Shout-Out to the similar sentiment that real-world New Yorkers had taken after the attacks.
    • It was then subverted in Spider-Man 2: Peter is greatly exhausted after stopping a speeding train form careening off its tracks to certain doom, and he is too weakened to defend himself when Doc Ock appears to capture him. The passengers of the train all step forward, stating that he'll have to go through every one of them to get to Spider-Man. Ock gives a snide "Very well" and knocks all of the passengers aside with one fell swoop and captures Spider-Man anyway.
  • Training Day: The final showdown scene between Jake and Alonzo is somewhat similar to this.

    Literature 
  • Subverted in 1984. "If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man."
    • These may or may not have been lies designed to demoralize Winston and facilitate his brainwashing but still relevant even if they were, since the bad guys think it's important members of the resistance feel alone, isolated and the last of their kind.
  • Animorphs Visser One notes that unlike Yeerks, humans will continue fighting even when it's completely illogical. This is her main argument for continuing her secret invasion of the planet as opposed to Visser Three's plan for all-out war. (Although she has other reasons.) She turns out to be totally right, the eventual full assault is a disaster.
  • The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: In Lord Foul's Bane this is the Lords' comfort in the final battle. As long as there is one soul who remembers the beauty of the Land evil has not triumphed. Considering the nature of the books this is pervasive throughout the series.
  • Discworld:
    • The Light Fantastic: Parodied when Cohen the Barbarian is surrounded by some of the rioting city men. One explains that although Cohen might defeat him, someone else will continue the fight until Cohen is dead. Cohen replies, "Yes, but that isn't the point, is it? The point is, you'll be dead." Suddenly they all decide not to mess with Cohen after all.
    • Parodied in Guards! Guards!. One brave man stands up to the dragon and is immediately turned into a small pile of charcoal. This, unsurprisingly, does not inspire anyone. Later, The Hero (Lance-Constable Carrot) has to prevent the mob from kicking the dragon while it's down.
  • The Dresden Files: While such a moment hasn't happened directly in the story, this is discussed in the tenth book Small Favor with Nicodemus Archleon. Nicodemus is nearly two thousand years old and has been partners with a Fallen Angel in his head thanks to finding one of thirty silver denarii which house a Fallen. He has been trying to destroy the world but is stopped regularly by the Knights of the Crossnote  and other good people who stand up to him. In Small Favor Nicodemus is at the closest he's been to bringing forth an Apocalypse by having captured the Archive, a 10-year old girl and receptacle of all human knowledge ever transcribed, and plans to turn her into a Denarian. Harry acknowledges things are bad, but as he notes to one person, Heaven won't stop if they lose this battle. Heaven will keep fighting within the rules. If the Knights fall, others will take up their Swords and continue the fight. Even if there is just one of them, they will keep fighting Nicodemus, as countless others have done for over a thousand years. After all, Nicodemus has never truly won before. There is always at least one more man to rise up. The person Harry is speaking to is Nicodemus himself and is able to use his fear this plot will fail too in order to agree to a trade for Ivy and the crime boss Marcone in exchange for the Sword of Faith and all the Coins of the Denarians the heroes collected in the book.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Voldemort has apparently killed Harry (who's faking it, but that's not what's important here), and drags his body out for all the people in Hogwarts still fighting the Death Eaters to see. The fighters seem pretty cowed, until one person steps forward... Neville Longbottom, who's spent the entire series getting mocked, cursed, beaten, battered, and having his parents' misfortune thrown in his face. Voldemort offers to let Neville join his army, and Neville responds, "I'll join you when hell freezes over," followed by a battle cry. Voldemort isn't too impressed, though, and he puts Neville in a Body-Bind Curse and places the Sorting Hat on his head, then sets it on fire. Neville isn't burned by the fire, breaks free of the curse, pulls out Gryffindor's Sword from the hat, and uses it to kill Voldemort's pet snake and final Horcrux, thus rendering him mortal. Then reinforcements come, and it's kick Death Eater ass time. His "No More Holding Back" Speech in the movie is equally awesome:
    Neville Longbottom: It doesn't matter that Harry's gone.
    Seamus Finnigan: Stand down, Neville!
    Neville Longbottom: People die every day! Friends... Family... Yeah. We lost Harry tonight. But he's still with us! [points to his heart] In here! So is Fred... Remus... Tonks. All of them. They didn't die in vain! [turns towards Voldemort] But you will! Because you're wrong! Harry's heart did beat for us — For all of us! [pulls Gryffindor's Sword out of the Sorting Hat] It's not over!
  • The Stand by Stephen King, looks like it's going this way, but then subverts it. Near the end, when Flagg is preparing to crucify our heroes, one of his minions stands up and says "This isn't right! We used to be Americans!" We expect a revolt of sorts, but Flagg promptly kills the man, and no one else stands up. Then they're all killed by an unrelated nuclear bomb.
    • Well, sort of. the little ball of lightning Flagg conjures up to kill his minion doesn't go away once the man is dead. Instead, it grows and appears to form what another character sees as the Hand of God, which triggers the bomb. The man Flagg kills doesn't start a revolution, but he does contribute to Flagg's downfall, albeit in a very roundabout way.
    • Depending on your interpretation, this was Batman Gambit on the part of God. The whole point of His sending our heroes to confront Flagg was to inspire people like this man to stand up to him as well. Sure, he died right after, but from a cosmic standpoint that's irrelevant: he reclaimed his soul before he died.
  • If the impression that Messianic Archetype Rand gleans in the finale of The Wheel of Time is correct, this is prevalent in the cosmological conflict that underpins the series. The Dark One's effort to conquer and remake the world is only feasible if he can not only defeat the aforementioned messiah, but also convince all humans to give up in the face of evil's onslaught (or, failing that, exterminate them), lest one of them take his place. Since resistance to destruction and oppression is endemic to human nature, this makes the Dark One's bid to take over reality essentially futile.
  • Wind on Fire: Villainious version in The Wind Singer. The Zars are infinite, mindless, and can only be permanently be killed by activating the titular Wind Singer. Seriously, the have enough to fill a practically bottomless gorge with their own dead and form a single line from Amaranth on the far side of the map all the way through the gigantic plains and everything all the way from the cave !!!

    Live-Action TV 
  • Andromeda is all about this trope. A person emerges from 300 years of stasis, only to learn that the civilization he served has fallen. So, he decides that As Long as There Is One Man, and goes out to restore it.
  • Babylon 5:
    • The episode "Into the Fire" , where the Shadows and Vorlons attempt to break the coalition against them by simply destroying the protagonists' ship: "They will not follow you if you are dead." Two other ships take incoming missiles for them, with the rest ready to follow suit.
    • More openly in "Comes the Inquisitor". The questioning of Delenn by the Inquisitor results in him giving both Delenn and Sheridan a Sadistic Choice: to die or to let the other one die. Both are ready to sacrifice themselves and Delenn is so kind to elaborate: "If I fall, another will take my place!"
    • Also invoked by one of the Shadows' human agents, towards Sheridan. They would rather convert him to their side than kill him:
      Sheridan: Why don't you just kill me?
      Justin: Doesn't work. Someone will just come around and replace you.
    • Sheridan later cites this trope when he's captured by President Clark's tyrannical government and thrown into a dungeon where they attempt to break him. The interrogator insists that there is no way to fight the system, that it is impossible for individuals or small pockets of people to win against the government. Sheridan responds that as long as one person somewhere is wiling to resist, then maybe it is possible.
  • Doctor Who: At the end of "The Pyramid at the End of the World", the Doctor's companion Bill has this trope in mind when she accepts the Monks' offer, which will let them take over Earth, in order to save the Doctor's life. She asks him to save Earth from the Monks.
  • House: The Season 1 Arc Villain Edward Vogler uses this as his justification for antagonizing the titular doctor, as he thinks House's flagrant disregard of medical protocol and ethics may lead others to resist Vogler's takeover of the hospital. In a slight bit of Irony, Vogler's actions to fire House end up inspiring the resistance he feared House himself would inspire.
  • An episode of Psych had Shawn screw up an investigation against a deadly Russian mobster when he was recorded illegally searching the office of the mobster for evidence. He spends the whole episode trying to correct his error (and having weird It's a Wonderful Life dreams), but eventually is stymied when he can't come up with a new source of evidence or a witness against the mobster. He and Gus then give a Rousing Speech to the citizens who've been terrorized, stating that though they can't prove it, they'll testify that the mobster is a bad guy. This convinces one guynote  to tell the citizens that he'll testify as well, and he is a witness. When the mobster states that he can take care of one witness, everyone else says they'll testify against the mobster, and he can't kill them all.
  • Mentioned during the breather moment of "The Best of Both Worlds" on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Picard questions Guinan about the fate of humanity in the face of the Borg threat. Guinan, whose race was nearly wiped out by the Borg, assures Picard that as long as there are survivors, "humanity will prevail."

    Music 
  • The War of the Worlds Rock Opera. "The Spirit of Man": 'If one man can stand tall, there must be some hope for us all, somewhere in the spirit of man...'
  • Similarly, this trope is invoked tragically by The Protomen.
    • In their first album, Protoman, who became The Dragon because he saw that the humans won't stand up for themselves against Wily's tyranny, nevertheless still holds out hope that just one person will stand and fight. They don't, and Wily has the assembled crowd slaughtered anyway.
    • In the second half of the prequel album, the viewpoint character is Joe, a brave and rebellious young man who sees what the city is becoming under Wily's superficially benevolent rule. He ends up dying in the process of destroying the tower from which Wily spews constant propaganda, but his sacrifice becomes meaningless because Wily has backups and uses the attack as an excuse to unleash an army of robots to crush any further resistance before it can begin.
  • The U.S. Air Force, which happens to be the official song of the U.S. Air Force, invokes this trope in the fourth verse:
    Flying men, guarding the nation's border,
    We'll be there, followed by more!
  • Invoked in the Chant des partisans
    Ami, si tu tombes, un ami sort de l'ombre à ta place.
    Translation: Mate, if you go down, a mate out of the shadows takes your place.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • In the backstory, when the Emperor and Horus are having their final battle of a great galactic civil war, the Emperor is beaten and horrifically wounded, due to his refusal to kill Horus (who was his beloved son before being corrupted by Chaos). A lone warrior (sources are very unclear and keep changing but either an Ultramarine, a member of the Emperor's elite guard, or a lowly Imperial Guardsman ) then sees the Emperor's broken body and stands up to the Warmaster of Chaos, whose power is at this moment at least that of the Emperor himself. Horus simply flays him with a glance. Which then causes the Emperor (who sees that Horus is irredeemable) to completely annihilate Horus' soul. The below quote is attributed to Ollanius Pius, the lone Guardsman in that depiction of the moment.
      "Where I fall, ten more shall take my place! And one hundred more each of them! So strike me down! I am the harbinger!"
    • Ragnar Blackmane sums the concept up quite nicely.
      "We may be few, and our enemies many, yet so long as there remains one of us still fighting, one who still rages in the name of justice and truth, then by the Allfather, the galaxy shall yet know hope."

    Video Games 
  • The Crusader games. The backstory and other universe materials included indicates that the Global Resistance is quite aware it might fail in toppling the WEC. However, the propaganda they distribute to their own people cites this trope, and also states the (technical truth) that nothing can last forever, so that eventually, the WEC will be overthrown, even if the Resistance is long dead by that point.
  • Elite Beat Agents: At the end of the next-to-last mission, the music-hating Rhombulans zap the Agents with a petrification ray, turning them into statues. As all the people whom the Agents helped during the course of the game mourn, one of them, Lucy (the little girl who was the focus of the "sad" mission), starts clapping her hands and chanting. The other people join in, reviving the Agents to the tune of "Jumpin' Jack Flash".
  • In Live A Live, this is deconstructed horribly. Branded a traitor, his king and his mentor dead, his life ruined by his former best friend, Oersted continuously tells himself that as long as one person believes in him, he can continue to fight. Then it turns out that even she (Alethea) lost faith in him. He doesn't take it well.
  • Mass Effect:
    • Throughout the trilogy, Commander Shepard has always been of this mindset; even if they, personally, are brought down, someone, somewhere will know and will take up arms against the threat of the Reapers.
      Shepard: We will fight, we will sacrifice, we will find a way to stop you!
    • The ending bears out this faith, too. Even if Task Force Hammer is shredded, Shepard will continue to struggle. Even if Shepard dies, this sacrifice will destroy or pacify the Reapers. Even if the entirety of galactic civilization is crushed — another species, 50,000 years from now, will discover who Shepard was and what they knew and did, learn from it, and continue the fight. Inevitably, the cycle will be broken. Ironically, the Catalyst knows and anticipates this, but being a rather single-minded AI, can't and doesn't want to change that.
  • A similar scenario shows up at the end of Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Tamashii: Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2. Just as it looks like the original "Evening City" Ouendan have been crushed by an icy meteor and the Earth is doomed to slowly freeze to death as the Sun goes out, a young boy stands up and starts cheering on the Ouendan. The rest of the crowd of people the Ouendan have helped, as well as the new "Morning City" Ouendan, joins in, and the original Ouendan break free of their icy prison. The Evening City and Morning City squads then proceed to team up in leading the world in cheering to the tune of "Sekai wa Sore wo Ai to Yobundaze" ("That's What the World Calls Love", the closing theme to Densha Otoko).
  • In Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon, The Tree of Life is destroyed, and Dark Matter seems indestructible. However, everyone keeps standing up to him, and the protagonist gives a speech to this effect, then defeats Dark Matter in their weak, unevolved form
  • In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Palpatine seems to believe in this trope when he notes that Marek's Heroic Sacrifice in the Light side ending has given the Rebel Alliance a martyr.
    Palpatine: You must be relentless, Vader. For if even one Rebel survives, this Alliance that we have unwittingly created will be our undoing.
  • The trope has an Anthropomorphic Personification in Persona 2's Philemon, who empowers the protagonists and sets them in the path to fight against the darkness. Mind, he's no saint himself...

    Web Comics 
  • Domain Tnemrot. Dae is one of the last living soldiers in a resistance war and has essentially become the leader by default.

    Western Animation 
  • Happens in Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "The Last Patrol!". The villain manages to defeat a team of heroes and forces them to make a Heroic Sacrifice. He thinks this will crush the world's faith in them. Cue the entire world chanting their name, having more belief in their heroes than ever. This causes the villain to shut down and have a Villainous Breakdown, making no attempt to resist as Batman arrests him.
  • DC Animated Universe:
    • Superman: The Animated Series:
      • After Superman has been decisively defeated by Darkseid and presented as a trophy to the citizens of Metropolis, Dan Turpin (a police officer who had previously balked at Superman's crimestopping capers, feeling they made the police obsolete) walks forward and tells Darkseid that it'll take more than that to get them to surrender. He takes action to free Superman in the resulting chaos, leading to Darkseid killing him when he is forced to withdraw by Superman and the forces of New Genesis.
      • Resulting in what is possibly the most touching line in the series. "In the end, the world didn't really need a Super man... Just a brave one."
      • Turned around in the finale of the same series. Superman goes to Apokolips and decisively defeats Darkseid. He presents Darkseid's battered and broken body to the people of Apokolips, declaring them free... And they start carrying their master back to his palace to tend to his wounds.
    • Batman shows himself to be one, as Superman points out in the battle against Darkseid in Justice League. While Darkseid is invading the planet, Batman, a mere mortal, jumps on his back and becomes the first person to ever dodge his Omega Beam, prompting Superman to tell Darkseid that neither Batman, or any of the League, will quit as long as they can draw breath. He follows up with a "No More Holding Back" Speech.
  • Parodied in The Simpsons. During a standoff between Homer, head of "Springshield", and Fat Tony:
    Homer: You can kill me, but someone will take my place. And if you kill him, then someone will take his place. And if you kill him... well, that's pretty much the end of it; the town will be yours.
  • This trope kicks off the four-parter "Beyond Good And Evil" in X-Men: The Animated Series, when Apocalypse defeats Cable in the year 3999, and steals his time-travelling device. As Apocalypse is about to rid himself of his mortal enemy, Cable cries that more like him will continue opposing him, and "the world can't stomach his evil forever". Apocalypse scoffs at his outburst, considering himself to be above his moral sensibilities... but then briefly muses on the prospect of having to face guys like Cable, as he had previously done many times in his extremely long lifetime to be a Fate Worse than Death. After refusing to accept this to be true, a time-travelling mishap brings him to the "Axis of Time", and he attempts to remake the universe in his own image. Interestingly, it turns out that Apocalypse himself is also indestructible as an avatar of evil — he can only be sealed away temporarily.

    Real Life 
  • While not exactly needing one man, when it comes to the Scottish...
    ...for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself. Declaration of Arbroath, April 6th, 1320
    • And modern Scots will happily point out that despite appearances, they never were "brought under English rule" as such: The Act of Union was an alliance the Scots entered into voluntarily, if reluctantly, after the Scottish monarchy took control of the English throne, and when the balance of power began to shift to their disadvantage in The '80s the end result was a nationalist movement popular enough to lobby for and eventually receive some significant concessions.
  • This video denouncing Islamic terrorism in Iraq.
  • During the early months of the Spanish Civil War, when Madrid was under siege by Franco's fascist-backed rebels, the embattled Republican militiamen defending the city against all odds, outgunned and outmatched, made up a little song to immortalize their fierce resistance in the face of a militarily superior foe.
    los moros que trajo Franco — The moors that Franco brought over (referring to his feared Moroccan 'moorish' troops)
    en Madrid quieren entrar — want to enter in Madrid
    mientras quede un miliciano — but while one militiaman remains
    los moros no pasarán — the moors will not pass!
  • The national anthem of Poland has overtones of this. Composed in the 18th century, when Poland was not on the map, it asserts that so long as Poles remain alive, Poland continues to exist.
  • Mexican Drug War: It took a lot of death and a lot of suffering, but the people of Mexico are beginning to fight back against el Narco. People like the Militsiya and the Matamoros 9 were exterminated to a man, but their sacrifice proved that el Narcoso can be el beateno.
  • Jesus says in Matthew 18:20 that "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." In other words, as long as even a single Christian remains The Church shall not die.
    • Interesting side note: according to the rules worked out by the Roman Catholic Church, only three bishops are required to ordain another bishop (and only bishops can appoint priests). This was a minor plot point in A Canticle for Leibowitz, when Earth is about to be devastated by nuclear war (again) but as a contingency plan the Church sends out an interstellar colony ship to preserve the human race. As part of the plan, they explicitly point out that they have included three bishops among the passengers, the bare minimum needed to ensure that the Church, as an unbroken apostolic institution, will survive.
    • On a related note, Judaism has the minyan: the bare minimum number of adult Jews required to form a synagogue/community. A minyan consists of only ten adult Jews - ten adult men for Orthodox Jews, but ten men or women in other denominations (what matters is if you've completed a bar/bat mitzvah). This practice is based on the story of Sodom, when Abraham begged God not to destroy the city and He agreed he wouldn't if only as few as ten righteous men could be found in it. Thus despite all of the mass persecutions that the Jews have faced over the centuries, if as few as ten adult practicing Jews survive, "Judaism" will endure.


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