Follow TV Tropes

Following

Heroic Suicide

Go To

Suicide is generally considered a bad thing. Even when the person doing it feels he has no other choice, it's still deemed far from heroic. In contrast, Heroic Sacrifices are almost always regarded as noble, and those who perform them are held in high regard. Despite the similarities, these two things rarely overlap.

But sometimes they do.

This trope is about situations where suicide becomes heroic. Say a character discovers that he is a Person of Mass Destruction, a crucial part of an Evil Plan, or the Big Bad's Soul Jar. In such situations killing oneself may be the only way to save the day.

This is a specific sub-trope of Heroic Sacrifice. The difference is that in most Heroic Sacrifices dying is merely an unfortunate by-product of a heroic act. In a Heroic Suicide, dying is necessary to perform the heroic act. Or, to put it another way, a Heroic Sacrifice engages in heroic activity even though it can get them killed. A Heroic Suicide engages in heroic activity knowing that it will get them killed.

The clearest examples are when a character personally will become the threat that endangers others, and they have to kill themselves to prevent it. Any such situation definitely counts as a Heroic Suicide. Another scenario is if someone is giving a Suicidal Sadistic Choice, which may overlap with this if the suicide option leads to a better conclusion (such as, say, saving hostages). Otherwise, it might count, but be careful.

A good rule of thumb is that in most Heroic Suicides, the character's death is both necessary and sufficient to accomplishing their immediate goal. That is to say, they can't accomplish their goal without dying, but how they die doesn't matter much. To elaborate:

  • Necessity: Ask yourself if there's even a theoretical possibility, no matter how unlikely, that the character could accomplish their goal without dying. If there is, it's probably a regular Heroic Sacrifice. For example, say you drink poison intended for someone else, trade places with a man on death row, or turn your spaceship into a guided missile. None of those qualify, because in each case your death is only a side-effect of what you are doing. The point is to prevent the other person from drinking the poison, buy time for the man to escape, or disable the enemy ship. You would still accomplish these goals even if you discovered you were miraculously immune to poison, received a last-minute pardon, or were beamed off your ship at the moment of impact. This trope only comes into play if the character has to die to accomplish their goal. Though that isn't to say their death will always be permanent.
  • Sufficiency: Ask yourself how important the circumstances are under which the person dies. Do they accomplish their goal just by dying, or does it matter what they were doing when they died? For example, say you get yourself killed defusing a bomb. In that situation, it's stopping the bomb that makes your actions heroic, not the dying. You couldn't achieve the same goal just by, say, shooting yourself in the head. On the other hand, say you are the bomb. In that case, it doesn't matter how you die, as long as you do it quickly. Shooting yourself in the head is fine. So is getting poisoned, stabbed, or decapitated.

Compare Thanatos Gambit, My Death Is Just the Beginning, Seppuku, and Better to Die than Be Killed. See also I Cannot Self-Terminate, which can be a heroic suicide by proxy. Often overlaps with Cyanide Pill which could be considered a sub-trope (examples go there, not here).

Contrast Spiteful Suicide, the malicious counterpart of this trope that involves committing suicide solely to hurt or screw over another person, or even out of sheer pride, instead of doing so for a righteous cause.

No Real Life Examples, Please!

As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Cruelly weaponized by Big Bad Duumvirate Dino and Yau-Si in Banana Fish. Yau-Si hands Ash a pistol and says if he blows his brains out right there, they'll leave Eiji, Ash's innocent young friend, alone for the rest of his life. Ash immediately takes the pistol, puts it to his head, and pulls the trigger. It's empty. He asks for a bullet.
  • In Bokurano:
    • In the manga, during Komo's battle, her opponent, touched by her performance, allows Komo's father to kill him to prevent a tie that would destroy both universes, and allow Komo's universe to survive
    • In the manga, Misumi Tanaka finds herself taken hostage during Kana's battle. After all but emptying her sidearm in a futile attempt to free herself, Misumi fires the last round into her own head so that Kana will not hesitate to defeat the enemy.
  • Buso Renkin: In the second half of the series, Kazuki Muto was willing to kill himself if he was unable to find a way to reverse his transformation into a Walking Wasteland. He doesn't have to go through with it in the end.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Invel uses his magic to force Gray and Juvia to fight to the death, with Grey being the obvious victor. Seeing no other way out, as Invel outright states the only way they'll be free is when one dies and they can't attack him, they simultaneously muster the last of their resistance to kill themselves, Juvia in order to spare Gray from living with the sin of killing her, and Gray in order to save Juvia's life. However, both of them survive; Gray because Juvia gave him an emergency blood transfusion before collapsing, and Juvia because her and Gray's guildmate Wendy managed to heal her in time.
  • Sulia Gaudeamus does this in the Fatal Fury motion picture, stabbing herself in the chest to use her Psychic Link with her older brother and current Big Bad, Laocorn, to the group's advantage so they can de-brainwash him.
  • In From the New World, a character tells the story of Izumi Kutegawa, a sweet and kind young girl whose Cantus goes out of control and causes fatal mutations in everything around her. The village leaders give her a batch of pills, telling her they will cure her condition. However, she soon realizes they are actually poison - but takes them anyway, since she is too dangerous to remain alive. Shun ultimately faces the same fate, except he develops an immunity to poison and apparently kills himself using his Cantus.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016), after Ganondorf pulls a Grand Theft Me on Zelda and tries to force her to kill Link, she instead tries to move her sword towards her own neck. Midna comes in just in time to drive Ganondorf out.
  • In the finale of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, Reinforce has Nanoha and Fate seal her away in order to ensure the permanent death of her Enemy Without. Made more tragic by Hayate showing up at the last second and trying in vain to convince her not to go through with it.
  • In Naruto:
    • Rin Nohara. The Three-Tailed Beast had been sealed inside her by agents of Kirigakure and intended for Rin to return to Konoha, where the beast would break out and rampage, destroying the village. Instead, when Kakashi tried to kill one of the Mist-nin pursuing them, Rin chose to save her village from this fate by putting herself in the way of his attack, which resulted in both she and the Sanbi (temporarily, in the Sanbi's case - Tailed Beasts cannot truly die, being living chakra, though they take some time to reform after their host dies with the beast still sealed in them) dying and thwarting Mist's plan. Cue Obito undergoing a Face–Heel Turn out of grief over her death, and the rest is history.
    • Shisui Uchiha, in a roundabout way. He originally intended to use his mangekyou sharingan to prevent the Uchiha Clan's coup via genjutsu. However, Danzo stole one of his eyes, ruining his plan. With that no longer a viable option, Shisui gave his other eye to Itachi and committed suicide so Itachi could gain the mangekyou sharingan and prevent the coup himself.
    • Because of the nature of the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, which allows its user to seal any soul at the cost of their own, both the Third and Fourth Hokage pull this off.
  • Invoked and then defied in Orphen Revenge. Licorice is a girl whose life and death can determine how a massive gambit from an Eldritch Abomination will develop or not, and both her Anti Villainous family and her True Companions are fighting it out. She then takes a piece of a broken sword and says that since they're fighting for her, she will cut her own throat and keep them from fighting to the death because of her. Right when she's about to kill herself, however, Cleao's magical pet Lucky uses his powers to vanish the weapon away and undo Licorice's desperate gambit.
  • In Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, Homura realizes she's the Witch whose barrier the cast is all trapped in, unable to be taken away by the Law of the Cycle (a.k.a., Madoka) because of the Incubators' machinations trapping her inside her own Soul Gem. The Incubators intended to use Homura as bait in order to draw out Madoka so that they could observe, then affect, and eventually control her powers for a more efficient approach to combating universal entropy. Homura refuses to play along and instead aims to intentionally become a Witch so that she'll be defeated and killed by Mami and Kyoko like how it was in the previous Magical Girl system, choosing total annihilation rather than let the Incubators get their grubby furry paws on Madoka
  • In Rakuin No Monshou the sorcerer Garda captures Emperor Guhl with the goal of possessing him in order to ruin Mephius. Rather than allow his empire's destruction, Guhl chooses to commit suicide before his will is broken.
  • In RG Veda, Ashura's Enemy Within took control of the body to destroy everything but to do that it needed to kill Yasha, Ashura's most important person. So in the last moment, their bond of love give Ashura enough willpower to re-take control and kill himself, not only saving Yasha but their whole world.
  • Ryo Urawa (Greg in the DiC dub) of the '90s Sailor Moon anime, forewarned by his precognitive visions that the Dark Kingdom is coming to extract the Yellow Rainbow Crystal from him and transform him into one of the Seven Great Youma, plans to die to keep the Dark Kingdom from obtaining the Yellow Crystal and unleashing the youma (which his visions show will also cause the death of Sailor Mercury, the girl he likes). When Ami finds out about his plan, she's very displeased, and ultimately manages to talk him out of his plan.
  • In Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, this appears to have been Shirayuki's intention when she attempted to kill herself after having been recaptured, as the Big Bad's plans would fail without her, the Living Macguffin / Apocalypse Maiden / etc., around and she likely felt she was running out of options. She's stopped, however, and told not to give up on Takeru, who could still pull through.
  • Near the end of the second season of To Your Eternity, Bon ends up killing himself in order to give Fushi - who had been nearly killed by Kahaku's Nokker during the Siege of Renril - a new physical form to revive himself in. Not only does his gambit work, but in inheriting his body Fushi gains his ability to see the spirits of the dead, which allows Fushi to revive some of his dead allies to help him drive the Nokkers out of Renril.
  • Basically, what Hokuto Sumeragi did at the end of Tokyo Babylon. Knowing that Seishirou would come to kill her twin brother Subaru, she dressed up as him and went to face "Sei-chan", both to get killed in Subaru's place and, as she lay dying, execute a Thanatos Gambit to try helping the two. Subverted in that Seishirou was perfectly aware of what she wanted to do, but went along with it anyway and used this in his own Thanatos Gambit.

    Audio Plays 
  • Big Finish Doctor Who: "The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure" anthology's last story sees the Doctor facing off against the Valeyard as he tries to pull off an Assimilation Plot on every Time Lord that has ever existed, by using the Doctor's mind as a conduit to manipulate the Matrix. When the Doctor discovers the Valeyard's intentions, he arranges to send his past self a misdirecting message that leads him to get fatally injured. To add more to it, the Doctor is even in doubt whether or not he'll be able to regenerate his way out of that situation, but he goes ahead and does it anyway, as he knows that the Valeyard's plan is rendered void once he is either dead or has regenerated into a new incarnation, as his unique mind will either cease to exist or become brand new, both meaning that the Valeyard can no longer use him as a conduit into the Matrix. Fortunately, though, the Doctor does end up regenerating into his seventh incarnation.
    • "The Stones of Venice": Duchess Estella reveals at the end that her "magic" (actually Sufficiently Advanced Alien Technology) runs on the principle of Equivalent Exchange; that the extended lifespans of herself and her husband Duke Orsino have come about at the expense of the accelerated decay of the city of Venice itself. Thus, the only way that they can save the city is to kill themselves.

    Comic Books 
  • The Dark Phoenix Saga: Jean Grey kills herself to prevent becoming Dark Phoenix again, and to stop the Shiar from destroying the world (it depends on the interpretation of the story — retcons make this a mess).
  • To defeat Shuma-Gorath, Doctor Strange absorbs a portion of his power. Once Shuma-Gorath is dead, Strange knows he will become Shuma in turn, so he kills himself. (He survives, devoid of any memory or sense of self — his ally Kaluu manages to bring him back to reality).
  • In the Iron Man storyline "Execute Program", a villain remotely hijacks several of Tony's Iron Man suits, causing them to go on a rampage all over the world. Tony takes down four of the five but is unable to defeat the last one, which is about to crush Captain America. Because the suit is controlled through software that's plugged directly into Tony's brain (long story), he realizes that he can deactivate it by killing himself. Which he does, by using his suit's power source to give himself a massive electric shock (don't worry, he gets better).
  • At the end of Journey into Mystery (Gillen), the all-powerful Fear Crown falls into Mephisto's hands and he's poised to bring all the Nine Realms under his rule in Hell. Because the Fear Crown was created from Kid Loki's worst fears, if he stops existing it will, too. Even though Kid Loki's certain there must be another way to stop Mephisto, he knows that it would take too long to figure out and billions of people would suffer and die in the meantime, so he completely annihilates himself and lets his older self return.
  • John Hartigan from Sin City kills himself so that no one will hurt Nancy to get at him.
  • Star Wars: Kanan: Commander Grey's death combines this with Heroic Sacrifice. He sabotages his ship's shields, allowing Kasmir and Kleeve to destroy them and escape with Caleb, and he knows that whatever twisted his mind into attacking his friend and general Depa without question following Order 66 is still intact even if he managed to fight it off in order to save Caleb.
  • At the end of Superior Spider Man, Doc Ock comes to realize that, despite his incredible genius, his arrogance and overcompensation of it was why he was failing. He comes to realize that the true Superior Spider-Man was Peter Parker all along and, after begging him to rescue the kidnapped Anna Maria, erases his own memory, and thus taking the last bit of his life out, so Peter can go in without any distractions.
  • RoboCop Versus The Terminator had Faxx saying that Alex Murphy didn't kill himself in part due to his upbringing and being Catholic in RoboCop 2 become Harsher in Hindsight when in the comic, Murphy learns that the very same technology that made him RoboCop would also result in SkyNet's creation, it becoming self-aware, and it ultimately wiping out half of Earth's population—and decides to kill himself to prevent it. Sadly for Murphy, said comic also resulted in the scene of Cain's men stripping him in 2 also becoming harsher by having SkyNet send two Terminators back to stop him, reducing Murphy to just a head, keeping him alive, and having him help usher Judgment Day in.
  • Web of Evil #14 features the story "Lighthouse of the Dead" wherein Captain Pearly, the lighthouse keeper for the coastal town of Searock has been dutifully rowing himself out to the old lighthouse each full moon for over a decade, in spite of the fact that passenger liners stopped coming in ages ago. However, the city fathers have elected to widen the harbor, tearing the lighthouse down in the process. Upon learning about this, the horrified Pearly tries to stop them, only to be thrown into the village madhouse, pleading with them to keep the lighthouse running as it keeps Searock safe from the ghosts of the dead and helpless to watch as the next full moon rises...and the dead rise from the ocean to walk the town once more. It turns out that each full moon, Pearly had been using the incredibly bright beam of the lighthouse to fend off the fishermen and sailors of Searock who'd been lost at sea and trying to return to town even after their deaths. The revenants, believing themselves to still be alive but stuck on a long fishing trip, are outraged at the changes that have occurred in Searock in their absence, and wreak havoc, heedless of their victims' cries that they've been dead and gone for decades. Some of the citizens let Pearly out of his cell and plead with him to save them. Although he admonishes them for not listening to his warnings, he has an idea of how to return the dead to the ocean, but only if they promise to rebuild the lighthouse so this doesn't happen again. He calls out to the dead people to follow him and they break off their rampages to walk in line behind him. The horrified townsfolk realize they they're listening to Pearly because he's decided to make himself a fellow dead man by leading them all into the ocean—a one way trip. He calls out to the people of Searock to remember his warnings as waves crash over his head, and they do indeed build a new lighthouse.
  • X-Men: A vaccine for the deadly Legacy Virus is created by Henry McCoy. If an unaffected mutant were to inject himself with this vaccine he would die, but an anti-virus would be created and spread throughout the world, curing mutants infected with the virus, and make the rest immune. Colossus (Piotr Rasputin) makes this sacrifice. And then he got better. It should be noted that Colossus is very prone to depression - maybe even bipolar.

    Fan Works 
  • Better Bones AU: After Rowanstar's daughter and deputy Tigerheart dies, Rowanstar knows that if she could succeed him as leader she would be brought Back from the Dead to get nine lives from StarClan, but the leader position and lives are permanent and he's not allowed to retire and remove them. So, taking Tigerheart's body with him, he dives into the Moonpool and drowns himself as many times as it takes to lose all of his lives so that Tigerheart will be revived.
  • Dangerverse: After his wife suffers Death by Childbirth, Peter Pettigrew quickly realizes that without her moral support he can no longer maintain the "perfect Death Eater" act. He proceeds to destroy Voldemort's archive of magical texts, specifically in order to make Voldemort so blindingly furious that he kills Peter on the spot rather than interrogating him and uncovering the secrets Peter is keeping.
  • Mad World (Invader Zim) has a few examples:
    • In ancient times, Irkens chosen as Wastelocks would eventually kill themselves after a time in order to ensure the residue they'd absorbed would be safely dispersed.
    • A young girl whom Dib and Nny discover was a Wastelock did the same thing, hanging herself before she could release her Thing from its Wall.
    • Dib tries to do this after he becomes the new Wastelock, but Zim's PAK saves his life.
  • The Rigel Black Chronicles: When she doesn't see any other way to stop Voldemort's Diary from possessing her and using her body to pursue its agenda of violent segregation and oppression, Harry deliberately stabs herself with a basilisk fang. (Subverted when Fawkes arrives Just in Time to heal her, after the Diary-construct has fled.)
    Rigel: Good luck...possessing...me now.
  • The Secret Return of Alex Mack: When Shar's body is infected with Grey Goo, she can feel that they're going to take over her mind and body and make use of her powers to help them spread — so she uses her Compelling Voice to keep Alex away, then flies off and unleashes her full firepower, incinerating herself and the nanobots. Later analysis suggests that she managed to set off a nuclear fusion reaction in ordinary air.
  • Chara in someone else's fire is suicidal anyway, but they frame poisoning themself as a heroic act, enabling Asriel to gather the power necessary to break the Barrier, so that he doesn't try to stop them despite knowing full well what's going on. Subverted in that their primary motivation really is ending their own life, the Barrier breaking is just a nice bonus, and also in that Asriel eventually can't bear seeing them dying anymore and gets his parents to intervene.
  • Dean does this in the fic Reverse Crypt Scene (1-0) to prevent the demon possessing his body from getting out.
    Dean's eyes meet his. There's an apology there, and a terrible finality. There's so, so much more.
    Dean turns the blade toward himself.
    Cas isn't strong enough to stop him.
  • In Star Trek Something Wicked This Way Comes, a starship crew is trapped in an Alternate Universe, and the price for their escape, as demanded by one of that Universe's denizens, is a human sacrifice, carried out in a pretty gruesome fashion. The Captain naturally refuses to do that to any of his crew, but as their situation gets increasingly desperate, he opts to kill himself as the required sacrifice. The remaining members of his crew try their best to talk him out of it, most of them offering to do it themselves. He refuses, but a yeoman sneaks off and completes the sacrifice with herself as the victim while the others are arguing. This actually helps, since the creature had no intention of helping and merely intended to use the psychic energy of the nasty murder as a powerup, but as the girl, who had nothing to do with the decision to enter the dimension in the first place and as such was completely innocent, releases a purer sort of psychic energy that weakens the creature, contributing to its later defeat.
  • What You Already Know: Death Knell begins with Anubis mind-probing Mel'roc, a member of the Jaffa rebellion. While Mel'roc cannot stop Anubis learning the location of the Alpha Site, he summons the strength to escape when Anubis starts to ask for information about Dan’yar (the alias of Daniel Jackson, who has acquired powerful psychic powers). Refusing to betray Dan'yar, Mel'roc jumps off a balcony, ensuring that he can’t be interrogated any further as there would be no way for the sarcophagus to repair the damage he suffered even if his body could be found.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Alien³, Ripley falls backward into a smelter to stop the Queen Alien gestating in her from birthing and starting the whole ordeal all over again. To emphasize that she did this just in time, it actually bursts through her chest in mid-fall, but Ripley holds on to it all the way down.
  • Allied: Marianne turns out to be an enemy spy after all, but Max is unwilling to carry out the order to execute her. When they're caught trying to escape, Marianne shoots herself to make sure their daughter Anna doesn't grow up an orphan and Max isn't executed along with her.
  • In America America, Stavros has been barred from America after Mr. Kebabian caught him doing the horizontal mambo with Mrs. Kebabian. Hohannes has a free pass to America due to his Indentured Servitude opportunity, but he remembers the kindnesses Stavros did for him, like giving him his shoes. He also knows that His Days Are Numbered due to that Incurable Cough of Death he has. So Hohannes jumps off the ship to his death, within sight of Ellis Island, while leaving behind Stavros's shoes—with his ID papers inside. Stavros makes it past immigration and into America by using Hohannes's name.
  • American Assassin: Annika shoots themselves in the head to deprive Ghost of his hostage, allowing Rapp to take him out. The circumstances quickly turn it into a Senseless Sacrifice as far as the mission is concerned, but since the person is also heavily implied to be a Death Seeker by that point, at least they got what they wanted.
  • The old martial arts film, The Assassin (1967), ends with the titular character's Suicide Mission to kill the corrupt Emperor, knowing full well he's not likely to survive the mission. After killing the Emperor and fighting off dozens and dozens of guards, surrounded by his enemies, the assassin then chose to Seppuku himself on the spot, so he won't be captured alive and interrogated on the La Résistance's whereabouts.
  • Avengers: Infinity War:
    • Vision tells Wanda to shatter the Mind Stone embedded in his forehead so Thanos can't get to it, knowing full well that this would destroy him in the process. It ends up being All for Nothing, as Thanos uses the Time Stone to reverse Vision's death, then kills him again by ripping the Mind Stone out of his skull.
    • Earlier in the film Gamora tried this twice. First, she wanted Star-Lord to shoot her if Thanos ever captured her so her knowledge of the location of the Soul Stone would die with her so Thanos couldn't find it. When that moment inevitably happens, Star-Lord pulls the trigger, but Thanos turns the shot into bubbles. Then, when Thanos and Gamora are on the planet where the Soul Stone is, Thanos learns he has to sacrifice someone he loves to get the stone: Gamora. When Gamora realizes this, she tries stabbing herself but Thanos once again transforms the attack into bubbles.
    • Avengers: Endgame features this trope in an inverted situation to Gamora's, in which both Hawkeye and Black Widow attempt to sacrifice themselves so that the other can obtain the Soul Stone. Black Widow's sacrifice is "successful", and Clint is able to leave with the Soul Stone and massive guilt.
      Natasha: Let me go. It's okay.
  • Bataan: Late in the film, the mortally-wounded Lt. Bentley loads up his plane with dynamite and flies it into the bridge the Japanese army is trying to cross, destroying it.
  • Circle: A few characters volunteer to be killed to buy the others more time.
  • Conan the Barbarian (2011): Conan's father kills himself by pouring molten metal on his head so that Conan will survive.
  • Constantine (2005):
    • Angela Dodson's identical twin sister Isobel kills herself when she realizes that the Big Bad plans to use her as part of a ritual to release Hell on Earth. She sends a psychic message to Angela from beyond the grave to tell her to find Constantine and leaves a message for them so that they can stop the Big Bad from performing the ritual on Angela. Isobel gets extra points for not just dying, but voluntarily damning herself (a highly devout Catholic who had never done anything wrong to anyone) to an eternity of pain and suffering in the process.
    • Then Constantine kills himself at the climax because he knows that the only being with both the power and the motivation to stop the ritual, Satan himself, will personally come up to claim him. After Mammon is stopped, Satan admits that he owes John a favor, which John uses not to extend his own life but instead to let Isobel get into heaven. However, because of his self-sacrifice, John's own soul is now redeemed as well. So with this one act, he is able to save both of them.
  • Crooked House: Lady Edith learns that she is dying of cancer, and decides to kill herself by driving her car off a cliff. She takes Josephine with her because she knows that Josephine has committed two murders and, if not stopped, will commit more. If she is caught, Edith knows Josephine will spend her entire life in an institution. Edith leaves behind a note confessing to the murders so that Josephine will go to her grave with her name unbesmirched.
  • Cruel and Unusual: Edgar takes Doris' place, which spars not only her but Maylon from condemnation in the afterlife.
  • Death Note Series: Once your name is written in a Death Note, the first occurrence takes precedence and any later instance is invalidated. L takes advantage of this by writing his own name in the Death Note while giving himself the maximum amount of time to live, dying when the moment comes but preventing anyone else from killing him with a Death Note in the meantime. This allowed him to fake his death when Rem writes his name in the Death Note, and prove once and for all that Light was Kira when Light gloated about his victory on camera. He considers the sacrifice mostly worth it, but regrets that Watari became collateral damage in the process.
  • The Devil's Advocate: Kevin kills himself rather than become the father of The Antichrist. Later it's revealed to be just a dream, or possibly Satan turning back time to try another way. Or, it could be that God turned back time in order to give Kevin another chance to make the right decision.
  • Don't Kill It: The only way to stall the Demon is to ensure your own death (i.e. poisoning yourself), then killing its host; since the Demon possesses whoever killed its last host, it has nowhere to go and can be trapped.
  • Doom has a character called Goat, who is bitten by a demon, which dooms him to be turned into a mindless demonic mook. Realising that he only has seconds before he turns, Goat heroically bashes his head against a wall until he dies. The heroism of this gruesome self-termination becomes more apparent later when we discover that the virus has differential effects depending on whether someone is genetically predisposed to Good or Evil; bad people become demons, while good people become Super Soldiers. Goat knew that he was genetically predisposed to be a bad person, but acted against this to sacrifice himself for the greater good.
  • Dragonheart: At the climax of the film, Draco lifts up his chest scale, so that Bowen can kill him with an axe, killing Einon in the process.
  • In End of Days, when Jericho is possessed by Satan, he gets enough willpower to impale himself. Satan doesn't have enough time to go to another host before he is forced to return to Hell.
  • Enemy at the Gates: "I want to help you, Vasily. Let me do one last thing, something useful for a change. [takes off his helmet] Let me show you where the Major is."
  • The Exorcist: Father Karras kills himself to save Regan and get rid of Pazuzu, after getting the demon to go into him.
  • Fallen: Realizing that Azazel will never stop tormenting him and that the demon will target Gretta and Sam next, Hobbes plots to lure Azazel to the remote cabin Milano killed himself at, then poison himself and trick Azazel into his dying body so that the demon will die, too, without any other host in the area. Although he does succeed in setting all aspects of his plan into motion and dies thinking it worked, Azazel manages to survive by finding a cat to possess. He speculates this was what Milano wanted to do too.
  • Female Agents: Pierre slits his throat, preventing Heindrich from taking him to Rommel for proof that the invasion will be in Normandy.
  • Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Egon kills himself by inducing a heart attack with the PKE meter's new taser function when Zuul tries to possess him to undo his successful capture of Vinz Clortho, after his follow-up with a field of buried traps failed due to power issues. But death won't stop him from completing his business...
  • Godzilla (1954): When Dr. Serizawa is forced to use his dreaded secret invention, the Oxygen Destroyer, to kill Godzilla, he burns all his notes and destroys his lab to ensure such a terrible weapon can never be replicated. However, the information of how to create the Oxygen Destroyer still exists in his head, so he kills himself along with Godzilla so that the knowledge will die with him.
  • In Gran Torino, after his previous attempts to stop a gang from harassing his neighbors failed, Walt Kowalski taunts them so that they will kill him. Thinking he was grabbing a weapon, they gun down an unarmed old man in front of an entire block worth of witnesses and are sent to prison.
  • The Grey Zone: A female prisoner runs into an electrified fence to keep the guards from shooting more of her friends unless she gives them the information they want. Her friend shoots herself after grabbing a guard's gun to do the same thing after this.
  • Happy Death Day: Protagonist Tree is stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop where she is killed on her birthday by a masked figure and comes back to life that morning; at a point when she has recently learned that she has accumulated damage from her previous loops, suggesting that she may eventually 'run out' of second chances, she manages to get the drop on her apparent killer. However, because he just killed Carter, a boy she only met the night before the loops began, because Carter tried to save her life, Tree, despite not knowing if this will be the loop where she takes too much damage, kills herself so that she can reset the day and bring Carter back.
  • In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the elf princess kills herself to save Hellboy from her brother, since given their psychic link this kills him as well via synchronization.
  • Hong Kong 1941 does this in the ending when the Hong Kong refugees, led by the resistance leader Yip (played by Chow Yun-fat) leaves the country and is on its way to South-East Asia, only to be detained by a boat full of Japanese soldiers. Yip, acting as a representative, offers to go on board the Japanese boat to negotiate, but he had a potato masher grenade tucked in his shirt, and as soon as he's in the ship's deck he deliberately pulled the cord and blew up himself with all the Japanese soldiers.
  • It: Chapter Two reimagines Stan's suicide as this instead of being a Dirty Coward, recognizing that he's too scared to face Pennywise, but knows that the Losers Club might lose if one of them is missing, so he removes himself from the board with the hopes that his friends will keep him in spirit when they confront It.
  • King Arthur: Legend of the Sword: Uther throws Excalibur up and impales himself, turning to stone in the process, so Vortigern can't have the sword.
  • The Ledge: It turns out this is Gavin's motivation be up on the eponymous ledge. He's been blackmailed by Joe into killing himself, in return for Shana living. In the end, he does.
  • Logan: Caliban gets a hold of some grenades to kill himself and his captors with at the first opportunity, which prevents him from being coerced into helping them track down the last mutants any more (it doubles as a suicide attack).
  • Looper: At the end, Joe realizes that his older self's attempts to prevent the rise of the Rainmaker will instead lead to his Start of Darkness. With only seconds to stop Old!Joe and his only weapon too short-range to hit him, Young!Joe shoots himself, thus retgoning Old!Joe out of existence and presumably changing the future.
    Young Joe: [voiceover] Then I saw it. I saw a Mom who would die for her son; a man who would kill for his wife; a boy, angry and alone, laid out in front of him the bad path. I saw it. And the path was a circle, round and round. So I changed it.
  • Maggie: Maggie kills herself in part to prevent the possibility she would be unwilling to infect her father or anyone else if she attacked them after becoming a zombie.
  • Briefly occurs during the infamous page 250 sequence from the film adaptation of Maze Runner: The Death Cure, when Newt, succumbing to the effects of the Flare, briefly regains control to find himself in the middle of strangling his friend, Thomas, after which Newt tearfully apologizes, before grabbing Thomas' pistol and attempting to shoot himself in the head, an act which Thomas narrowly prevents.
  • Mission to Mars: Woody, an astronaut, is blown off his spaceship too far out for retrieval. His wife tries desperately to save him, endangering herself doing so. At last he kills himself by taking off his helmet, rather than watch her make pointless attempts to save him, and possibly doom herself at the same time.
  • Mythica:
    • In The Necromancer, Teela tells Marek to take her life energy so that Marek will have the strength to save the others from certain death.
    • The Hammer of Tek is needed for them to destroy the Darkspore. However, it's now in the underworld. The only way to enter the underworld is to die. Dagen and Marek thus kill themselves to go retrieve it.
  • In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the T-800 ally must kill himself at the end to destroy the last possible source of Terminator technology that could let people reverse-engineer Terminators and Skynet.
  • In Scanner Cop II, Sam Staziak's real mother kills herself by jumping off a balcony, to prevent Volkin from absorbing her power so he can use it against her son.
  • Self/Less: Damien eventually stops taking his medicine and lets himself fade away so Mark can come back and be with his family.
  • Seven Pounds: Tim killed himself to give the woman he loves his heart (and his other organs to different worthy people). Fridge Logic sets in, however, when you realize that his chosen method (jellyfish venom) would leave them unusable.
  • Space Battleship Yamato: In the live-action version of the anime (known in the US as Starblazers), the acting ship's Captain Kodai, unable to stop the Gamilas from destroying Earth because their wave motion gun is plugged - which would cause it to blow up the ship if fired - decides to do just that. He evacuates the surviving crew and flies the damaged Yamato into the center of the Gamilas super missile (while seeing visions of the other crew members who gave their lives on the mission.)
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Khan implants alien creatures in Chekhov and Captain Terrell's brains that allow him to Mind Control them. When Khan orders Captain Terrell to kill Captain Kirk with a phaser, Terrell manages to overcome the Mind Control, vaporizing himself with it to save Kirk's life.
  • Tamara: Bill kills himself in order to break Tamara's curse and kill her again.
  • The Thing (1982): Implied with Fuchs, who is found as a charred corpse. There was no reason for the Thing to kill him off instead of assimilating him, so it's safe to assume that he did it to himself in order to avoid being assimilated and thus being used to assimilate the rest. MacReady, Nauls and Garry later decide to destroy the camp and themselves with it to prevent the alien infection from spreading to the rest of the world.
    "Whether we make it or not, we can't let that thing freeze again. Maybe we'll just warm things up around here. We're not getting out of here alive... but neither is that thing."
  • The Wolfman (2010): Discussed when Lawrence asks his father why he didn't kill himself to prevent anyone else's death when he became a werewolf. However, he couldn't do it even knowing what would happen. In the climatic battle it's revealed that he even removed the powder years ago from the silver bullets his manservant was supposed to use if he escaped his confinement.

    Literature 
  • Arc of Fire: Myrren unlocks the full power of the Dark Heart to banish the senkata once and for all, knowing this will kill her in the process. She gets better thanks to Raine and Kail.
  • The Callista Trilogy: Cray and Nichos, blowing up the Eye.
  • Numerous priestesses in Chanters of Tremaris poison themselves so their bodies can be sealed into the wall of ice in an attempt to stop the spread of the illness killing magicians. However, they were forced by the High Priestess. It's unclear whether they would have sacrificed themselves given any actual choice in the matter.
  • The Dark Elf Trilogy: Pulled off by Zaknafein in order to spare Drizzt's life in Homeland, and again in Exile when Matron Malice tries to possess him by removing his soul from his dead body.
  • Dark Places: Horrifyingly subverted. Patty intends to do this by arranging her own murder, knowing that the money will be able to provide Ben with a competent defense after he's railroaded for child abuse. However, it's interrupted by her daughter Debby, who is violently killed in front of her by the hitman.
  • Dragon Bones has an I Cannot Self-Terminate variation with Oreg, the enslaved Genius Loci of Hurog Keep. The villains have invaded the keep and are closing in on the titular dragon bones, which will grant them immense power, and the heroes aren't close enough to fight back...but the spell binding Oreg to the building has a trade-off in that if he is killed, the Keep collapses. He can only be killed by his "owner", and so Ward stabs him to death at his own request, bringing the keep down on their enemies' heads. It helps that Oreg very much wants to die. Eventually subverted, as it turns out that the death doesn't stick.
  • The Expanse has a somewhat different one in Cibola Burn. The Investigator connects himself to Ilus's planetary network while pulling along every mind trapped in the Protomolecule. He then dives into a "bullet" left by the Precursor Killers to "kill" the Protomolecule and everyone that's been trapped in it at the cost of his own existence. He's not saving their lives, but he's instead ending their suffering.
  • Gods Of Jade And Shadow: Casiopea cuts her own throat and dedicates her death to the dying Physical God of The Underworld, whom she was representing in a contest that she was about to lose. The primal forces of the Underworld itself declare her the winner in respect for her sacrifice; the god is restored; and he brings her Back from the Dead in gratitude.
  • Guardians of the Flame: Chak performs a suicide attack to detonate the enemy's powder store during a battle.
  • In the Halo: Evolutions short story Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian, Michael Baird and the AI Mo Ye need to activate the self-destruct of their ship, but can't because Mo Ye is restricted from harming a human. (As a warship AI, she can usually just ignore the Three Laws, but currently, she's damaged.) Thus, Baird lets an alien invader kill him so that Mo Ye is no longer restricted.
  • The Han Solo Trilogy: Bria and Red Hand Squadron take suicide pills to prevent the vital information they have being tortured out of them by the Imperials if they're captured.
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry lets Voldemort kill him after discovering that he is one of the Horcruxes, and that Voldemort cannot be killed as long as he survives. In this case, how he dies matters a great deal and has consequences reaching far beyond the immediate aim. Since he died for others despite having a choice to flee, the magic that shielded him because of his mother's sacrifice returns and effectively renders every single Hogwarts defender invulnerable to Voldemort. Whether Harry realizes this at the time is uncertain, but at least it keeps them safe from the one enemy they themselves can't kill.
  • In the Heralds of Valdemar novel Oathbreakers, Jadrek drugs himself asleep with the intention of dying quietly of cold rather than continue to be The Load to Kethry and Tarma if they're unable to find shelter from the bitter mountain winter weather they're lost in. Fortunately, they do find shelter and he sleeps the medication off without further complications, although Tarma at least suspects what he was trying to do.
  • Inheritance Cycle: Elven Dragon Rider Thuriel set off the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb by releasing the energy of his body, which required him to die in the process, saving dragon eggs from Galbatorix on Vroengard.
  • Journey to Chaos: A necro priest can kill themselves to absolve another of their Death Violations. This is part of Lord Death's mercy.
  • In the finale of Kraken, Billy realizes that the only way to stop a world-wiping catastrophe is if he confronts the true villain at the natural history museum right freaking now. With no other way to get there fast enough, he demands that a Trekkie street-wizard "transport" him there immediately, even knowing that the man's knack actually works via Destructive Teleportation and the perfect copy that appears at the destination won't be himself.
  • In the Kris Longknife series, upon learning of the existence and coming into conflict with the omnicidal aliens, the crews of the human warships have a policy of blowing up their own vessels if disabled, ensuring the aliens learn as little of human technology as possible and, more importantly, cannot discover the way to human space.
  • The Locked Tomb: At the end of Gideon the Ninth, both Palamedes and Gideon end up killing themselves to try to stop Cytherea. Palamedes detonates his thanergy reserves in a Fantastic Nuke, and Gideon skewers herself in the heart so Harrow can extract her soul and become a Lyctor powerful enough to kill Cytherea and save both Harrow and Camilla.
  • A Memory Called Empire: Faced with a civil war from a pending Succession Crisis, a looming Alien Invasion, and his own failing health, the Teixcalaanli Emperor publicly performs an ancient rite of self-sacrifice, blessing his chosen successor and the war against the aliens with his death. It ends the civil war on the spot.
  • At the climax of Mistborn: The Original Trilogy, most of the kandra pull out their Blessings, turning themselves back into the non-sapient mistwraiths from which they were made, but stopping Ruin from taking them over.
  • At the climax of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Luke has been irreversibly possessed by Kronos, and manages to stop fighting in order to let himself be killed.
  • Schooled in Magic: Sergeant Harkin willingly offers himself up for death when Shadye forces Emily to choose one of the prisoners to kill to take his mana. Except he had none, since he's not a sorcerer, and this surprise distracts Shadye long enough for Emily to get the vial of her blood that he's using to control her from him, and save the school. It also doubles as a Batman Gambit.
  • The Silerian Trilogy: Tashinar kills herself to stop Kiloran torturing vital information from her that would endanger the rebels.
  • In the Star Trek Online novel The Needs of the Many, Geordi la Forge and the Soong Foundation are able to unlock the "Data Matrix" hidden inside his "brother" B-4 and bring Data back within B-4's body. However, Data refuses to let him replace B-4 and proceeds to write a program that would erase himself and the matrix. This is a bad thing as there's an Undine threat that needs Data and, despite Geordi giving B-4 information about what's going on, Data refuses to stop. However, B-4 realizes that the lives of millions are at stake, and Data is needed more than he is. He takes over the program to delete himself so that Data can live and save the day. Data isn't happy with this.
  • The Sword of Truth: Wizard's Life Fire can be this, when done to protect another person. It requires that a wizard put all of his life force into a spell that consumes everything surrounding them in a last act that also kills him. In the first book, Kahlan's former wizard does this to ensure that Darken Rahl cannot use magic to learn who has made off with a Box of Orden. Zedd tastes the ashes left on the wall and notes that they are sweet, the sign that it was done to protect another person. This is also the first indication they have that he was acting on some greater plan, rather than just abandoning Kahlan for the money and power of his new post. Zedd later attempts it to stop the chimes, but survives and is revived by Richard. In the prequel book Warheart, Barracus uses Subtractive Magic to insure a war wizard will be born when a dream walker is and counter it, then kills himself to keep the secret. In The Pillars of Creation Althea poisons herself to prevent not only her husband's suicide out of grief if he found her brutally murdered instead, but chose death to begin with rather than living when this would mean the Keeper winning.
  • In Villains by Necessity, the Dark Gate requires a death to open it. Sir Pryse thus kills himself by jumping in, saving the world from destruction.
  • In Warbreaker, the Returned can magically heal one person at the expense of their own life, and Lightsong does so at the climax to restore Susebron's tongue, which allows him to use a Functional Magic awakening.
  • In The Wheel of Time:
    • Lord Ingtar faces an enemy army alone in The Great Hunt, in part to give the protagonists time to escape and in part to atone for becoming a Darkfriend and betraying his country.
    • Verin has to do this. A member of the Black Ajah, she wants to become The Mole, but is held by a binding oath that she "not betray the Great Lord until the hour of my death". Recognizing the loophole, she takes poison and spends her last hour giving details of the Black Ajah's membership and weaknesses.
  • In "The Word of Unbinding", a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin which became part of the foundation for her Earthsea series, the good wizard Festin is entombed by the evil Voll, and after trying every means he can to escape but failing, ends his life with the titular word. This sends him into the afterlife, in which he can find Voll's corpse and seal him to it, which prevents him from harming any more of the living.
  • A major plot point in the second book of Young Wizards, Deep Wizardry. The Lone Power once approached the ten greatest wizards of the sea, offering them gifts in exchange for allegiance to him. Three accepted it, three rejected it, and three made no decision. Rather than break the tie, the tenth threw herself to the Master Shark, binding the Lone Power. The story is known as the Song Of The Twelve, and due to recent events ten whale wizards, the Master Shark, and the Lone Power must repeat it, with Nita taking the role of the Silent Lord who sacrifices herself. It goes south, however, when the Song breaks, but the Master Shark allows himself to be killed in order to bind the Lone Power anew.

    Live-Action TV 
  • American Horror Story: Apocalypse: During the finale, Cordelia stabs herself in the heart, knowing that her death will allow the more powerful Mallory to fully become the next Supreme, and thereby be strong enough to defeat Michael by going back in time and killing him before he could fully develop.
  • On Angel Darla's vampire body had been able to sustain the Mystical Pregnancy because A Wizard Did It but was incapable of actually giving birth. When she realizes her fully human son will die as a result, she stakes herself, leaving behind only the infant, covered in his mother's ashes.
  • Babylon 5 has many examples:
    • 2.17 "Knives": Urza Jaddo, Londo's old friend, deliberately lost a duel with Londo to save his family from disgrace, as cultural expectations required that the victor absorb his opponent's house into his own after the duel.
    • 4.20 "Endgame": Marcus Cole gave his life to save Ivanova using an alien machine that moves life force from one person to another.
    • 5.18 "The Fall of Centauri Prime": Londo told G'Kar to kill him so Sheridan could escape Centauri Prime. Bonus points for having foreseen this decades before in a prophetic dream.
  • The Barrier: A man on thin ice with the Police State wants to leave Madrid, but won't do so without his mother. His mother, who is already old and invalid, has an I Will Only Slow You Down attitude about the situation, but he's having none of it. His mother's response is to create the only situation in which he'll accept to leave her behind by letting herself fall out a window.
  • Dawn tries to pull one of these in the fifth season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when she realizes that a gateway to hell can only be closed if her blood stops flowing. She is saved when Buffy realises she can achieve the same effect by killing herself in Dawn's place. Buffy's death is thus also an example.
  • In the episode of Criminal Minds, "Ashes and Dust", Evan Abby is the head of an environmental activist group who learns one of the members of his group is a sociopathic arsonist who only joined the group to find potential victims. Horrified by what has happened and dying of leukaemia, he lures the arsonist into a trap, locking them both in a room and setting it ablaze.
    Vincent Stiles: Seriously? How do you plan on getting out of here?
    Evan Abby:I don't.
  • In The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, skekMal the Hunter proves to be virtually unstoppable in a straight fight, and is only defeated when his Mystic counterpart leaps off a cliff to his death so that their Synchronization will kill them both.
  • Dark Matter (2015): Milo kills himself rather than be used again by the Seers to further their aims.
  • Defiance: Irisa shoots herself to stop Irzu from making her kill. Unfortunately, the nanites Irzu placed inside her heal this.
  • Frequently done on Doctor Who, often in order to avert (or trigger) a Time Crash:
    • In "Father's Day", despite Rose's attempts to keep him in the dark and the Doctor even sacrificing himself to the Reapers trying to find another solution, Pete Tyler eventually realizes that the time paradox that's destroying the world began when Rose saved him from being run over, which never happened in the original history. In the end, Pete decides to step in front of the car that was supposed to hit him, sacrificing himself to restore history to normal and bring back everyone that had been consumed.
    • In "The Waters of Mars", the Doctor changes history to rescue someone doomed to die, which causes him to go totally A God Am I with megalomania. The woman he rescued kills herself in order to stop him, after which he snaps out of it.
    • The Doctor's death in "The Wedding of River Song" fulfills the necessity condition, if not the sufficiency one. Far from avoiding his fate, he literally has to talk his assassin into killing him (in part by marrying her) in order to prevent time-breaking paradoxes. It turns out he actually just fakes his death, but for a minute or two it looks like he might actually be gone for good.
    • In "The Angels Take Manhattan", when Rory learns that his future is fixed and that he will be sent back in time by an Angel and live out his life in one of the Winter Quay rooms, he decide to jump off the building (joined by Amy, who refuses to live without him), creating a paradox that should kill all the Angels.
      Amy: You think you'll come back?!
      Rory: When don't I?!
  • Dollhouse: Mellie goes Manchurian Agent on Ballard, courtesy of Boyd, but then manages to restrain herself long enough to put the gun to her own head and pull the trigger.
  • In the season 1 finale of The Flash (2014), Eddie shoots himself, which negates the existence of Eobard Thawne, his multiple-times great-grandson and the Reverse-Flash, who was in the process of killing Barry and promised to then kill all of Barry's family and loved ones.
    • In an earlier episode, Martin Stein, still in control of Ronnie Raymond's body, attempts this by going to a remote location planning to shoot him/themselves in the head before they went nuclear (due to their unstable fusion). Thankfully, the quantum splicer successfully separates them both before they have to go through with it.
  • Al Gough in FlashForward (2009) learns that in the future an innocent woman will die due to his actions, so he jumps off a building so as to Screw Destiny so it can never happen.
  • A French Village: A French resistance fighter kills himself, since otherwise he'd be tortured into giving up people who would be killed later themselves.
  • Future Man: Dr. Kronish willingly kills himself to prevent his invention being used for evil.
  • The Good Place: The Soul Squad willingly teleport themselves to Janet's void, killing them on Earth, to allow Michael and Janet to examine anomalies in the points system, rather than be captured by demons.
  • In one episode of Haven, an OCD suffering Troubled is keeping the town trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop in an attempt to prevent a car crash, but forgets about it every time the day is reset. Once Audrey explains the situation to him, he steps in front of the car himself in order to end it.
  • Heroes
    • Like Dawn, Peter Petrelli considers killing himself to keep from blowing up New York. Also like Dawn, he is saved by the last-minute intervention of his elder sibling, though that's not an example of this trope.
    • Eden also performs one when she blows her brains out to prevent Sylar from getting at them (and thus her mind control powers).
  • Heroes Reborn (2015): Molly Walker shoots herself to prevent Erica Kravid from committing genocide with her (unwilling) help.
  • Ice Fantasy: When Lian Ji, who plotted against Ka Suo for much of the series in her pursuit of putting her son Ying Kong Shi in power, learns that Yuan Ji, Shi's true biological father, never intended on reviving their son, she kills herself to stop his use of her body in the ongoing fight against the heroes.
  • ''Jeremiah:
    • In "And the Ground, Sown with Salt", Julie blows herself up to take out a Wasteland Warlord’s arsenal of missiles, and the warlord and his goons.
    • In flashback scenes in "Firewall", Markus's father deliberately exposes himself to the Big Death while going to be with his dying wife so that she can die with a sense of comfort and security.
    • Meaghan (in "Letters from the Other Side Part 2" and Ezekiel's father (in a flashback scene in "Rites of Passage") both take their own lives in an effort to keep the Big Death virus from resurfacing and killing the next generation. The former is a carrier of the virus and the latter is one of its unwilling creators who is being forced to help continue developing it as a bio-weapon.
  • Jessica Jones (2015): Hope punctures her own throat to stop herself being used as a hostage so Jessica can kill Kilgrave.
  • The Leftovers: Virgil shoots himself to enter the afterlife and be Kevin's guide there.
  • Legend of the Seeker:
    • The Calabrans killed themselves rather than reveal their great secret- where their three Boxes of Orden were.
    • Amfortas persuaded the Confessor Viviane to kill herself so Kieran, her Seeker and lover whom she Confessed by having sex with him, would be freed so he could continue his mission in the backstory of "Revenant". This completely backfired, however, as Kieran then went off the deep end and started killing innocent people in a rage over her death. Amfortas had to kill him in the end.
    • The king in "Cursed" tried to kill himself in many different ways so the beast he turns into wouldn't attack his people anymore, but it doesn't work since he's immune to ordinary harm.
    • Richard planned to do this after he used the power of Orden in "Fever" to make Rahl give up the cure for a plague so that using it wouldn't turn him into a Knight Templar. Thankfully he didn't have to though, since Jennsen showed up with the cure instead. She'd tried to do this herself earlier with a poisonous stone after hiding the cure, to prevent herself being taken captive and forced to tell them its location. However, it was knocked from her grasp and the D'Harans beat her severely enough to temporarily cause memory loss, so Darken Rahl almost managed to trick her into delivering it.
    • Thaddicus throws himself on Cara's knife as she's become a baneling (and has to kill every day) so they'll have time to find shadow water, the cure, in "Hunger".
    • An example of a villainous inversion in "Princess". Sister Portia, a Sister of the Dark, willingly gives her own life in a ritual in order to bring Nicci Back from the Dead. For the rest of the show, Nicci is using Portia's body as her own, and the appearance now matches hers in the book.
    • In "Desecrated" Cara tries to kill herself so Kahlan will have more time when they are trapped in a tomb with the air running out. Kahlan stops her though.
  • Let the Right One In: This is essentially what happened with Elizabeth. Seeing no other way, she cut her wrist and let Eleanor drain her blood entirely for Eleanor's survival.
  • Locke & Key (2020): The first scene of the series is Mark Cho immolating himself with the Matchstick Key. As we find out in Episode 9, this was because he knew Dodge would be coming for him, as he was the only one to know where all the keys were hidden, and this would deny her that knowledge.
  • The Magicians (2016):
    • John compels Julia to kill him so she can collect his divine essence and use it against Reynard.
    • The fairy queen later permits her dissection in a deal which will protect her people forever.
  • The Mandalorian: IG-11 chooses to self-destruct and take out a whole squad of Stormtroopers so that Mando and his friends can escape.
  • Misfits. Three examples:
    • Seth attempted this in the Nazi timeline, trying to hang himself in his cell so he couldn't give any more superpowers to Nazis.
    • Curtis killed himself after becoming a zombie, to prevent himself from infecting others.
    • Jess does so as part of a Batman Gambit that will undo a Bad Future and save the lives of her friends. She was only temporarily dead because of this.
  • The Nevers: This is seemingly attempted by Amalia to escape a sadistic choice of Maladie's. Rather than either kill Penance or another captive, Amalia shoots herself. However, it's non-lethal, and she's quickly healed after. It's left ambiguous if she just missed or aimed this way on purpose.
  • In Once Upon a Time when Henry realizes that Regina's parting gift to Emma was an apple turnover, he grabs it and takes a bite out of it before she can, knowing full-well that the turnover is poisoned and he may never wake up.
  • Orphan Black: In Season 4, it's revealed that Beth's suicide was this rather than despair or pressure. She got closer to the true masterminds than anyone, but they threatened her with the lives of everyone she cared about if she didn't take her own life.
  • The Outer Limits (1995):
    • "Summit" has an almost literal example when the sole survivors of a peace summit offer to kill themselves to prove their sincerity and ensure that the peace treaty they negotiated before terrorists murdered the other representative party was accepted. All but one shoot themselves, but one refuses to die by a weapon of war and electrocutes himself instead.
    • In "Better Luck Next Time", the two protagonists defeat two evil Body Surfing aliens by killing the host bodies and then themselves. Too far away from any other people, the aliens die.
    • In "The Vessel", a writer goes on a shuttle flight into space, but something causes the shuttle to crash on re-entry, with the writer walking away without a scratch. He later finds out that an alien Energy Being is living inside his body, having entered him in orbit, as the alien's own ship suffered damage near Earth (the alien's actions also unintentionally caused the crash). When the authorities figure it out, they capture the writer and perform tests on him. They eventually determine that his body can't handle the stress of two beings living in it for too long. From what the viewers are shown, the alien appears to give the writer the means to kill it, so that he can live. The writer explains the procedure to the scientists, who perform it, and let him go. Later, one of the scientists wonders if they really destroyed the alien instead of the writer. This is confirmed by the "writer" himself, as a flashback reveals that it was the writer who wanted to allow himself to die so that the alien could live.
  • The Outpost: After determining his death is necessary to stop the other Masters, Aster lets Talon kill him willingly.
  • Paper Girls: Larry and the adult Erin both make suicide attacks on the enemy combat robot to stop it, devastating young Erin along with the rest of the girls.
  • Person of Interest: In the simulation, Shaw shoots herself rather than murder Root due to Samaritan's brainwashing.
  • Preacher (2016): In "On The Road", Father Mike kills himself rather than let the Saint of Killers force him to reveal where Jesse is.
  • Sense8: Angelica shot herself to prevent Whispers from getting other sensates through her. Later Riley almost does this as well.
  • In Sherlock Moriarty invokes this by setting up Sherlock to be "exposed" as a fraud and telling him that if he doesn't kill himself by jumping off a building, a group of assassins he's hired will kill his friends (Sherlock appears to jump, but he's revealed to still be alive at the very end). Also an inversion in that Moriarty shoots himself to prevent Sherlock from foiling his Evil Plan by forcing him to call the assassins off.
  • Star Trek:
    • Commodore Matthew Decker purposely flies an Enterprise shuttlecraft into the maw of a planet killer in The Original Series episode "The Doomsday Machine." Even though he is unsuccessful Decker's death gives Spock and Kirk the vital clue needed to destroy the planet killer by flying the disabled USS Constellation down the planet killer's maw, causing enough of an explosion to wreck the machine's internal mechanism. Kirk enters into his log that Decker died in the line of duty.
    • The Next Generation: In The Child, Ian wills himself to death in short order once he realizes that he is the source of the danger to the Enterprise.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Vedak Yassim in "Rocks and Shoals", denied the right to protest the Dominion occupation of the station, instead hangs herself in public. Her willingness to die in protest of the occupation causes Kira (who refused to let her lead a less drastic protest) to realize she's becoming a collaborator.
    • Attempted by Hoshi Sato in Enterprise when the Reptilian Xindi have captured her and pumped her full of mind-control parasites so she can crack the codes of the superweapon. When they let their guard down, she breaks free and tries to throw herself to her death. The Reptilians grab her before she can succeed, but they are impressed by her willpower.
    • In Strange New Worlds, Chief Engineer Hemmer realizes he's infected with Gorn eggs and can feel them growing inside him. Knowing there's nothing that can be done for him away from the Enterprise and that Gorn are extremely dangerous even as hatchlings, he locks the doors to prevent the others from stopping him, gives a final piece of advice to Uhura, and steps out through the shuttle bay force field to the winter storm outside. He once more compares it to Andoria before turning to look back and letting himself fall off a cliff.
  • In Supernatural's fifth season finale, Sam's plan to defeat The Devil is to allow Lucifer to possess him and then wrest back control of his body long enough to jump into Hell and take Lucifer with him before the gates seal behind them. He initially fails, but after Lucifer kills two of Sam's close friends and starts to beat Sam's brother Dean to death, he manages to take control long enough to make the jump.
  • Travelers: Gleason attempts what seems like one from his perspective, trying to shoot himself so he is not taken over and forced to set a bomb off. It's actually powering a device which will save the world from disaster, but he does not know that. He's out of bullets though, so this fails.
  • Troy: Fall of a City: Paris throws himself off a cliff to avert a prophecy which says he'll doom Troy (he's also very distraught at his adopted father's death, which helps). The Amazons revived him though, but Aphrodite says it still counts since he was temporarily in the underworld. Obviously not, given the ending.
  • The Tunnel: Elise triggers the bomb collar around her neck, killing herself, rather than have 11 innocent people be killed by gas.
  • The Twilight Zone (2019): In "The Comedian", this is essentially what Samir does to himself at the end, undoing his erasing other people earlier.
  • Unsere Mutter Unsere Vater: The final episode includes Friedhelm leading an inexperienced group of Hitler Youth child soldiers who are all gung-ho about dying for the Führer. In order to make them fear death and not throw their lives away, he charges headlong into a Soviet position, prompting the kids to surrender after they see him cut down.
  • Vagrant Queen: Nim chooses to kill himself rather than let Lazaro torture him into betraying Elida.
  • The Walking Dead (2010):
    • Andrea shoots herself at the end of Season 3 after she's infected with the zombie virus rather than be a risk to others.
    • In late season 7, Sasha first makes an almost certainly suicidal run on the Sanctuary in an attempt to kill Negan. She somehow survives that but doesn't get to Negan, so later she takes Eugene's cyanide pill so Negan can't use her against her friends. She attacks Negan and kills at least one Savior after turning, and the shock allows Rick's group to briefly fight back against the Saviors and the Scavengers.

    Manhwa 
  • In Shin Angyo Onshi Kye Wol Hyang was a victim of a vicious sadistic choice by resident Big Bad Aji Tae, either she got to live as a zombie and serve him while he committed untold horrors, or she killed her beloved Munsu, and Aji Tae restored her to normal. She took a third option and killed herself in front of Munsu a second time, pulling Munsu out of the Heroic BSoD he was in, causing a massive failure in the curse that Munsu was suffering, making him invincible against Aji Tae, and ensuring that in the long run, the former would bring down the latter.

    Music 
  • Gloryhammer: During the final battle against the evil wizard Zargothrax in "The Fires of Ancient Cosmic Destiny", Angus McFife XIII is impaled on the Knife of Evil, which will soon corrupt him into a villain. To prevent this, he kills himself by jumping into a volcano.

    Tabletop Games 

    Theatre 
  • In Death of a Salesman, the titular salesman Willy resolves to do this by intentionally crashing his car so that his family can receive the life insurance on himself as his last-ditch means to provide for them, as he has proven to be a not-very-good salesman and hasn't been earning enough in his actual sales to keep his family afloat financially. The play Subverts this by showing two problems with his plan:
    • First, he's shown to be actually miserable as a salesman and his family's tight money situation is because he steadfast refused to change jobs to something that he most likely would have been much happier with like carpentry (the emphasis in sales on appearing well-off means the Lomans have bought several appliances that are flashy but also high-maintenance that keep breaking down).
    • Second, when the insurance company figures out it was intentional suicide the policy will be nullified and the family won't get the death benefits anyway.
  • In Frozen, Elsa contemplates suicide as a way of ending the blizzard that she accidentally created. This is subverted as she doesn't go through with it.

    Video Games 
  • Borderlands 2 has Handsome Jack's daughter, the siren Angel. After spending much of the game forced to aid her tyrannical father, she defects to the side of the Vault Hunters and when finally meeting them face-to-face, asks them to kill her so that Jack can no longer abuse her powers for his own gain. Unfortunately, her death drives Jack to an even deeper level of insanity now that he admits that he has nothing left to lose.
    • Tales from the Borderlands: Episode five has one during its climax. Fiona and Sasha are inside the vault monster that the rest of the team is fighting while the two of them plant an explosive inside of it to finish it off. Fiona is at the wheel of their caravan, driving at breakneck speed, but when she tries to pull the detonator's trigger, she realizes it's out of range and that they'll have to get closer to the bomb itself to make it go off. Her and Rhys try to figure out how to get to the bomb, and you can see Sasha slowly look at Fiona, and then the detonator. Fiona tells Rhys they'll have to turn back but the camera slowly pans over to Sasha, standing in the open doorway, detonator in hand, and before Fiona can stop her, she tells her it's okay and jumps out, flying backwards towards the bomb. It works, and she's on death's door after the monster dies, but the regenerative device Felix gave Fiona for safekeeping brings her back to full health.
  • In Darkest Dungeon, during the final boss fight, the Heart of Darkness will kill two of your heroes at preset points when its health gets low. When this happens, you have to choose who takes the hit. While some of your heroes will balk at being chosen, a couple will welcome death as a relief, other heroes - particularly the Leper - will willingly let themselves die to protect their allies.
  • Dragon Age: Origins has a somewhat less heroic, but still important, example. Alistair reveals to the Warden early on that a Grey Warden, as a result of drinking darkspawn blood, modified or no, will eventually succumb to the taint of it. This doesn't necessarily kill the Warden, but it will cause them to lose their free will to the Darkspawn - or even worse, the Archdemon leader, if one is active at the time. This gets worse if your Warden is female, and you've played through the Deep Roads section: If your character were to lose her will to the Darkspawn, they'd bring her down to the depths, mutating and raping her until she became a Broodmother, which is what gives birth to new Darkspawn in the first place. The final burden of being a Grey Warden is kind of a mix of Heroic Suicide and Heroic Sacrifice - a Grey Warden must be closer to the current Archdemon as it's slain than any Darkspawn (usually meaning the Grey Warden has to do the slaying themselves) otherwise the Archdemon's soul will jump into the Darkspawn, and it'll regenerate in its original form - a massive freaking dragon. The soul will then instead jump to the Warden - which kills them both.
  • The Player Character ultimately does this in the true ending of Dragon's Dogma. It turns out there is a cycle going on in the gameworld. It basically is that the Seneschal (this game's equivalent to God) wants to quit with his job and needs to find a successor. To find someone worthy of such a position, the Seneschal sends down a huge dragon to terrorize the land. The one who manages to slay it is worthy to become the new Seneschal. It turns out that the previous Seneschals were all humans once, who walked the same path. After the Player Character becomes the new Seneschal, he kills himself, breaking the cycle and freeing humanity from the dragons.
  • Dragon's Crown has the revelation that the Phantom Knight (who is actually the late King of Hydeland) did this to prevent the Morneon cult from capturing him and fulfilling the requirement of a sacrificed king for releasing the Ancient Dragon.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: V has lived his life pursued by the demonic minions of Malice, who seek to use the power of his ore heart for their evil goals. He has already lost the life of his sister in the struggle. V thus seeks out Magma-O to offer his heart to him, to plunge into the lava of Magarda Volcano. V knows this will kill him, but will permanently destroy the heart and keep it out of the reach of demons. Magma-O refuses him, citing the doubt remaining in V's eyes, and Zophy later convinces him to continue his life to help others.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, the primal Alexander, summoned to create a perfect world, looks at all possible timelines and determines that anything it could possibly do to improve the world would be more than undone by the massive aether drain it causes just by existing — all primals are Magic Eaters, but Alexander is far bigger and more powerful than most, and drains an accordingly excessive amount of aether. For this reason, they manipulate events to ensure that the Warrior of Light not only destroys them but makes sure they can't come back.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • Radiant Dawn has Pelleas, who, partway through the story, was crowned king of Daein, decides that he must commit suicide by proxy to save the country. He unwittingly signed a Blood Pact, a curse which, if invoked, will slowly kill a leader's subjects. The one at the reins of this curse is Lekain, who is using it to strongarm Pelleas into fighting a war. It is explained that a Blood Pact can only be broken if a signatory is killed by a third party, thus Pelleas cannot simply kill himself and needs either Micaiah or Tauroneo to do the deed. The trope is, however subverted - the death of one of the signatories by a third party is only one condition to end the pact. In addition to the death of one or both original signatories, the document itself must be destroyed to break the pact. On a New Game Plus, Micaiah may Take a Third Option by pointing out that breaking the pact requires the death of a signatory, but it doesn't say it has to be the party bound by the pact and thus neither she nor Tauroneo should kill the young king, essentially proposing that they instead break the pact by finding and killing Lekain, which does indeed happen over the course of the story, along with global events conspiring to make the terms of the pact irrelevant shortly after the discussion is held.
    • Awakening has Emmeryn, the ruler of Ylisse and Chrom's older sister, who is captured on the edge of a cliff to force Chrom to make a Sadistic Choice: either give up the Fire Emblem aka Ylisse's treasure, without which the world will surely come to ruin, or let her die. To save him the pain of the choice, she gives a rousing speech and jumps from the cliff herself. Notably, her actions and final words touch even the enemy army, to the point where most of their troops decide to go Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
      • This can be subverted if the player chooses to unlock the Spotpass chapter where you recruit her. Somehow she manages to survive the fall and ends up on a distant island, albeit with amnesia. You can recruit her in the Spotpass chapter that you meet her, if she doesn't die during the battle.
      • In the Sacrifice ending of the game, this happens again. Because the Avatar is the perfected vessel of Grima, if s/he is the one who lays the final blow to him instead of Chrom (who can only seal the Dark Dragon for a millenia before it raises again), Grima will be banished forever... but the Avatar will be erased from existence in exchange. Subverted again: The Stinger reveals that s/he turns out to have survived too. (Or more exactly, s/he was erased, but ultimately returned to life out of his/her unbreakable will.)
    • Fates plays this completely straight twice in the Conquest/Nohr path:
  • In the ending of God of War III, Kratos realizes that his quest for vengeance against the gods has seriously messed up the world. To make things right, he stabs himself with the Blade of Olympus to release hope back into the world. Subverted with The Stinger, which suggests that Kratos survived; this was finally confirmed with the release of the fourth game.
  • The destruction of the Bentusi upon encountering the Beast in Homeworld Cataclysm. Although considering the Beast is some kind of nanotech Grey Goo with a side of weapons-grade Body Horror, there's a strong element of Better to Die than Be Killed in there too.
  • Horizon Zero Dawn: GAIA, the Artificial Intelligence in charge of terraforming the planet, had to do this twenty years before the start of the story. She was designed with everything she would need to restart the planet after the Faro Plague ate all life—including a subfunction called HADES that would undo the terraforming if she made a mistake since she's too much of an All-Loving Hero to give up on even an obvious failure. She did in fact get it right on the first try, and everything was mostly going fine for a thousand years, until an outside signal caused HADES to activate unnecessarily. Since she had no way to actually stop him from taking control of the terraforming system and resetting everything (which would, in addition to killing millions of people, have been the final end of life since all the genetic stocks were depleted), she detonated her primary facility, leaving nothing for him to control. She also had a different facility begin making a clone of her creator, who would be able to bypass genetic locks and eventually reboot GAIA. That, of course, is Aloy, the protagonist.
  • In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, the default ending has Rean forced to go outside of the world into space and to destroy himself and Valimar to save the world since Ishmelga is already corroding his mind and making him give in to temptation especially since Rean has completed the Great One and Ishmelga wants the power of the combination of both Fire Sept-Terrion and Earth Sept-Terrion. He's joined by both Crow and Millium whose lives are also tied to the Great One.
  • Land of War - The Beginning ends with Kowalski's entire platoon reduced to a handful of resistance fighters, as dozens upon dozens of Germans surrounds them. Kowalski then hits a Plunger Detonator to blow up the entire base to wipe out the rest of the invaders.
  • Mother 3 has an utterly heartbreaking example. Your main character, Lucas, has a twin brother named Claus. The two of them were the best of friends, until, shortly after the game starts, he goes missing in an attempt to avenge the death of their mother. It's these events that kick off the game's plot. Three years later, Lucas starts on his adventure to pull seven "needles" scattered all over his home island in order to save the world. Porky, the Big Bad happens to be after them as well, in order to ''destroy'' the world, and is using the mysterious, masked commander of his army to do so. Many, many hours of gameplay later, after the Big Bad has been sealed away for all eternity, Lucas and the Masked Man face each other in front of the final needle. The Masked Man is revealed to actually be Claus, with no memories or sense of identity, under the command of Porky. After one of the most painful "I Know You're In There Somewhere" Fights in all of fiction, Claus slowly remembers who he is and electrocutes himself. The worst part is that we don't know for sure if this was a Heroic Suicide or not. While it's very possible he did it to free himself from Porky's control, it's also equally possible he simply did it because he realized all the wrong he's done against his will.
  • In Persona 3, Shinjiro Aragaki's Heroic Sacrifice bleeds into this; while he did shield Ken from being shot by Takaya, he was also, for a long period of time, taking Persona-suppressing drugs that have degraded his immune system, combined with an Incurable Cough of Death, to the point that even had he not been shot, he likely would have died not long after. The suicide portion, aside from the suppressants, also draws from the fact that the date of his death (October 4) is the same day that he accidentally murdered Ken's mother via losing control of his Persona, and he wanted to atone for it.
    • It even extends to gameplay: He won't join you for the October Full Moon Operation, and after his funeral, you can find his equipment in his room.
  • Planescape: Torment ends with its immortal protagonist killing himself permanently because every time he "dies" and comes back to life, someone else dies in his place (and the spirits of the people who've died for him stalk and torment him).
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers brings this up without flat out saying it. After the world is saved from time freezing to a stand-still which created a Bad Future thanks to the protagonists, Azuril goes through a nightmare that he can't wake up from which Cresselia states is caused by the space-time distortions that are created by the heroes who dabbled with time to save the world. She says that they must "disappear" to stop the distortions which would end up destroying the world; the partner character was beginning to wonder if they should do as she said, but the player character convinces them to think of another way out. It eventually turns out that "Cresselia" was actually a disguised Darkrai who was lying to them about the distortions and planned on the heroes dying to get themselves out of the way of its plan to puts the world's inhabitants into an eternal nightmare.
  • At the end of RefleX, the ZODIAC Ophiuchus takes the cores of the other 12 ZODIAC units and activates its seal program, shutting itself down in order to bring about a peaceful future safe from ZODIAC harm.
  • In Sands of Destruction, Kyrie is a Person of Mass Destruction with some pretty bad Power Incontinence. Naturally, this makes it dangerous for others to be around him, and when he both accepts that he's the one who's caused the death of everyone in his hometown and that he can't be rid of these powers, he asks Naja to kill him. It doesn't work, though: as the Destruct, even if he's killed, he can be resurrected. Morte sets out to do just that, and happens to unlock the key to controlling his powers in the process.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV's Law ending, you and Merkabah reach the Yamato Perpetual Reactor one last time and activate it to have Tokyo obliterated once and for all, as the citizens of Tokyo, known as "Unclean Ones", are deemed unworthy of existence. Merkabah points out that you and him also must die because they have been affected by the "Filth" of Tokyo. Indeed, you both perish in order to secure the utopian future of the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado: a kingdom where Filth and sin are not known and the peace lasts for all of eternity.
  • Tree of Savior: In Kalejimas Prison, you find that Zanas willingly killed himself so he can continue to protect the Revelation as a spirit.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: When the gang encounter M and N while trying to escape prison, M switches bodies with Mio during their battle, knowing very well that her body has only has about a month left before it disappears. When the gang are imprisoned for a month and Mio’s old body vanishes, M dies along with it so that Mio can continue to fight alongside her friends. She also did it in an attempt to show N the error of his ways and that he needs to start charging.

    Visual Novels 
  • Danganronpa:
    • This is how Sakura Ogami from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc died. She chose to commit suicide over murdering other students (which would emotionally wreck her as she's very lawful and honorable and one of the students is her best friend Aoi) or letting her beloved dojo be destroyed (since Monokuma is forcing her to be The Mole by threatening said dojo).
    • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has Kokichi Oma, who lets Kaito Momota crush him with a hydraulic press in chapter 5 to create an unsolvable murder by faking evidence to make it seem equally as likely that Kaito is the victim, and making it impossible to tell if the poison killed the victim or the hydraulic press did, where the killer would be either Maki or Kaito/Kokichi, depending on who the actual victim is. If not even the mastermind knows who the true killer and victim are, then the killing game could be unable to continue. However, the "Heroic" part is heavily downplayed by Kokichi not doing it for others and just trying to win the game (which he hates to be forced into playing), his objective simply aligning with the rest of the class' desires and the whole trope is eventually subverted by Shuichi solving the case anyways.
  • In Hatoful Boyfriend, Nageki's death turns out to have been this. He was carrying a unique mutated strain of flu, which was harmless to birds like himself but very lethal to primates, and Dr. Shuu planned to use this virus to wipe out humanity. To prevent this, he burned himself alive... but part of his liver didn't burn and was still infected with the virus, meaning that his sacrifice only delayed that plan until a new suitable host for the virus could be found rather than completely stopping it.
  • In Little Busters!, Kyousuke pulls off a successful non-permanent one in order to help Riki and Rin save the victims of the bus crash. In the fake world he created to build up Riki and Rin's strength, whenever he sleeps he finds himself at the moment of the crash and desperately tries to drag himself over to the oil leak so he can block it with his body before it catches fire and explodes, killing everyone. However, whenever he wakes up his position is reset. The day he finally reaches the leak, he realises what he has to do: reset his starting position. Since that is based on the moment he died, he needs to kill himself here so when he wakes up the next time he'll start there and be able to block it, saving everyone. He does it without hesitating, and it works.
  • Defied in Zero Time Dilemma. When Phi gets infected with Radical-6 she demands to be killed and her body burned to make sure the virus won't get out. Diana then tazes her and gets her and Sigma out which leads to the events of Virtue's Last Reward.

    Webcomics 
  • In The Beast Legion Njora sacrifices himself to his serpent transformed daughter so that Xeus can concentrate on saving Fyre.
  • In Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell, Darwin lets himself be killed to prevent The End of the World as We Know It. Even though it would result in himself being sent to hell. The huge boost in Karma from this action makes it so he gets into Heaven anyway.
  • In Homestuck this is one way of reaching God Tier, which is the highest level a player can reach. For a player to achieve God Tier, they must die on their quest bed. Obviously, a player usually chooses to reach god tier in pursuit of a heroic goal, and since this is one of the ways to go about it, it counts as a Heroic Suicide. It's implied that it's meant to test the player by challenging them to accept and overcome the fear of their own demise. So far, the only character we've seen knowingly attempt this is Dave Strider. However, he finds himself unable to go through with it.
  • In Kill Six Billion Demons, a heroic suicide makes up its Creation Myth. YISUN, The Creator, committed Holy Suicide to bring existence into being, as everything They would create while still existing would simply be another aspect of themselves and ultimately unable to change and grow. The gods that sprung from YISUN's death would, in turn, do the same to create the 777,777 universes and hand creation over to their own creations. Things get somewhat more complex by said Creation Myth being outright stated to be a lie.
    Let there be no Genesis, for beginnings are false and I am a Consummate Liar.

    Western Animation 
  • The season four finale of Archer sees Archer, Lana, Cyril, and Ray trapped in a room at the bottom of the ocean that's quickly filling with water and only three sets of submarine suits available to swim out and to the surface. The dying station captain they're with tells them that one of them will have to drown and die, hopefully temporarily, while the other three get themselves to safety and try to resuscitate the volunteer. Archer immediately volunteers when Lana reveals she's pregnant.
  • The majority of Kenny's Heroic Sacrifices from South Park qualify as this. He's aware of his reoccurring deaths, and would rather earn himself another round of it than leaving others to die. The best example is his death (as Mysterion) in R'lyeh, where he impales himself on a set of spikes so he could revive back in the real world to go get help for his friends, who were also trapped there.


 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Samurai's Duty

Realizing Corrin was telling the truth about saving what lives they could in Hoshido from the inside of Nohr's invasion, when confronted with Garon and Iago forcing Corrin to cut down his own brother, Ryoma instead chooses to commit seppuku to spare Corrin that fate. With his last words, he entrusts Corrin with stopping the invasion and Garon's madness.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (16 votes)

Example of:

Main / HeroicSuicide

Media sources:

Report