Load-Bearing Hero

"Beneath 150 billion tons, stands The Hulk — and he's not happy!"

"Don't worry, compared to your lives, this rock isn't so heavy. *Nuh!* Even if I run out of strength, I'll carry it with my spirit!"

— Shuh, Fist of the North Star

Rather than let their friends be squished like a bug by a Descending Ceiling, falling boulder, or one of those hero-seeking falling pillars, The Big Guy will step in, catch the falling object, and hold it up long enough for their friends to escape. Often utilizes the Atlas Pose.

Characters don't need to have Super-Strength or huge muscles to use this trope, so almost anyone can invoke it. However, weaker characters will likely face a Heroic Sacrifice as they are stuck holding up something that will crush them if/when they let go. That said, expect melodramatic characters intent on being a Martyr Without a Cause to be pulled to safety by their allies.

Not to be confused with Load-Bearing Boss (but that may very well lead to this trope). Barrier Warriors will frequently do this. Don't think too much about why the falling object doesn't break under its own weight and collapse all around the character, or how the ground underneath the character can support all that weight being channeled through the Load-Bearing Hero's feet.

Compare the more pragmatic Tuck and Cover. Distantly related to the Barrier Maiden, whose "load bearing" duty is more metaphorical and less literal.

Not to be confused with We Cannot Go On Without You, and actually having fairly little to do with the Load-Bearing Boss.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• TK does this in Angel Beats! to save the rest of the SSS from a Descending Ceiling. He gets crushed under it while the others escape, but it's Played for Laughs; they're in the afterlife, so "death" is only temporary.
• In Black Cat, Beluga did this to save Nizer and Janus when they're escaping from Creed's castle.
• Early on in Bleach, Chad stops an I-Beam from falling on a group of his friends (and a parakeet that holds the ghost of a young boy he's trying to protect). Keep in mind this is before he gains any of his powers.
• In Brave Police J-Decker, one episode features an underground mall. When it begins to collapse, J-Decker and Duke Fire support the ceilings while people evacuate. When it gets too much to bear, they combine - their strength when combined is greater than the sum when separated.
• In The Devil is a Part-Timer!, Maou uses his demonic telekinesis to hold up a collapsing bridge. Sort of subverted when he realizes he can just carefully place the smashed roadway on the ground instead of holding it in the air indefinitely.
• BanchoLeomon and then Craniamon hold up the Digital World in Digimon Data Squad.
• Domon does this in Flame of Recca when the gang is storming Kurei's mansion to rescue Yanagi. Kaoru (before his Heel–Face Turn) activates a giant stone wall that would permanently cut them off, and Domon jumps in at the last second to hold it up so Recca and Fuuko can continue on. Subverted, because they immediately try and help him hold it up instead of abandoning him. They become stuck under it until Mikagami shows up and destroys the wall completely.
• In Fushigi Yuugi, Tamahome does this to keep Miaka alive after a gazebo comes crashing down on her, after she insulted Hotohori's army. Unlike most examples, both survive, as Nuriko uses Super-Strength to dig them out of the rubble.
• Subverted in Gunslinger Girl. During the Final Battle in the Turin New Nuclear Power Plant, the terrorists blow down the roof of the reactor room on top of the Agency personnel attacking them. One of the cyborg girls is able to hold up a girder to stop it falling on herself and her injured handler, but a terrorist then blows off her leg with an anti-material rifle, causing her to drop the girder and get crushed.
• In Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior, an enormous glacier begins to move, destroying everything in its path. Fortunately, the commotion also awakens Regigigas, who, with a large group of Mamoswine, pushes the glacier back until Ash and friends can undo the damage that caused the disaster.
• Ranma ½:
  • Oneshot character Youhyou does this to protect Ranma when his room in his mansion collapsed. Not that she needed it in the slightest, but it proved that he was not the creep she thought and his intentions were noble.
  • Ranma himself also does this, with the Orochi's enormous maw, in the manga version of "Reawakening Memories." It was a last-ditch effort, and he and Akane are saved at the last second when her horned mongoose whistle finally puts the beast to sleep.
  • Ryouga forces the even Made of Iron-er, super-strong Lime into this position when the Kettle Of Liberation, which would free Ranma from being stuck in female form, falls down a collapsing chasm. Lime's partner, Mint, pulls the warrior out of the pit just as it slams shut, but Ryouga is still able to burst through the rock on his own.
• Shiryu in Saint Seiya did this with a "crushing ceiling" trap in the cavern maze beneath the Sagittarius House.
• A sinister version was used in the Saint Beasts arc of YuYu Hakusho — a falling ceiling trap designed to push down with exactly the amount of force that any three of the four heroes could hold up, meaning one of them would have the chance to either deactivate the trap or leave his "friends" to die. Hiei is chosen to go since he's the fastest. He ponders betrayal, but decides that being the Token Evil Teammate is not the same as being a Jerkass, saves his comrades, and skewers the crooning eyeball-bat that gave the above exposition. Also, it turns out the switch the deactivate the trap was also booby-trapped, but he found out about it and survived thanks to that hesitation.
• In Zatch Bell!, Gash holds up a wall of energy for everyone to pass through, which will eventually kill him. Bari then runs in and takes over in his stead, letting everyone else pass under him, before he has his book burnt so he doesn't die.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Blockbuster does it in a Batman story, holding up a collapsing mine prop long enough for Batman and the miners to escape.
  • Also from a Batman story, during the Cataclysm event: a condemned criminal on death-row (who continually proclaims his innocence throughout his arc) keeps rubble from falling on his lawyer and a nun who were there to witness his execution. Earlier in the arc, he'd helped defend them against several escaping inmates, helping add to the reader's sympathies to the character. Then he reveals that he really did commit the crime for which he was condemned, just before he finally passes out and dies when the rubble falls on top of him. Coincidentally right when he was scheduled to be put to death.
  • Load bearing villain in Red Robin when Tim dropped the roof of a cave on the Council of Spiders and "Goliath" protected the more human ones. Tim did give them enough warning and time to get out, he just wasn't feeling suicidal enough to stick his head back in and make sure the super-powered assassins that were trying to kill him and a civilian under his protection were out before blowing the thing.
• The Hulk in Secret Wars (1984). He held up a mountain range (said to be larger than the Rockies), creating an air pocket for several other heroes to survive. It wasn't easy, though: after a few minutes his stamina started to fail, and he warned the others that he couldn't support the weight much longer. Knowing the Hulk's strength magnifies with his rage level, Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards opted for the rather risky strategy of taunting and belittling Banner, making him angry enough to support the mountainous mass up long enough for Richards to devise a means of escape. Reed made a point to swiftly explain and apologize to the Gamma Goliath immediately upon escape.
  • It wasn't the first time the Hulk had done that, either. He held up another mountain long enough for The Defenders to get out, and then it caved in on him. The Valkyrie was actually starting to cry about how he'd given his life to save them, and then the side of the mountain blasted open...
  Hulk: Bah! Stupid rocks try to smash Hulk! Hulk smash back!
• Hercules, Prince of Power, virtually duplicated the Hulk's mountain bracing feat in one of the final issues of the original Champions (of Los Angeles) comic.
• Solomon Grundy in Starman (the DC Universe comic) held a blown-up building.
• Colossus, whenever something falls on X-Men.
• Bamse shows the limit of his strength in an early story with a variant: he holds back a volcanic eruption by ramming an enormous boulder down the opening, but notes that "Not even I can hold this back forever!"
• In a variant, Zhantee from Elfquest: Shards uses his shielding power to protect Cutter and others when the building they're in collapses. He doesn't have enough shield-power to save both his companions and himself, so makes a Heroic Sacrifice and leaves himself unprotected, dying from his injuries soon after they're dug out of the wreckage.
• Spider-Man:
  • This happens to Spidey a lot, likely due to his image as an underdog among superheroes.
  • In the earliest and most iconic case in If This Be My Destiny...!, Spider-Man remains pinned helplessly crushed under a hundred tons of metal. In Doc Ock's leaking underwater base. While his Aunt May lies dying, and the only cure for her disease lies 6 feet in front of where he is pinned to the ground. In a stunning show of willpower and self-hype, he manages to lift the structure and limp out before the entire base is flooded.
    • So memorable was this example that most of the subsequent ones can be considered homages to it.
  • He held up a corner of the Daily Bugle to keep it from collapsing in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #98 (the last issue before an attempted relaunch).
• Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Rift: Toph prevents a cave-in by metalbending the iron ore-rich dirt above them, while her metalbending students remove the load. With her father (who still saw her as the weak, fragile and helpless girl she'd (pretended to have) been) being trapped with them, it ends in a long-overdue attitude adjustment on his part.
• The Mighty Thor: Issue #391 saw the God of Thunder perform this feat. A new villain named Mongoose appears on the scene causing havoc on the site of a half-finished skyscraper under construction. Both Thor and Spider-Man intervene, and seeing the tide of battle turn, Mongoose retreats and distracts the heroes by taking out some support girders, causing the skyscraper to begin collapsing. Thor, despite Spidey's fervent pleading that he cut and run before he's crushed along with everyone else, holds up a structure as tall as 60 some-odd stories, at least long enough for the Web-Head to help shore up the structure with some well-placed (if unorthodox) emergency structural support. Spider-Man even lampshades the utter awesomeness of this feat by telling the Odinson "Your little stunt is gonna haunt me the next time I think I've done something spectacular! Just tell me what you eat for breakfast!"
• Red Robin: When Tim blows up the League of Assassins base that the Spiders are attacking he warns all the career killers what he's doing. The surviving League members flee, but the Spiders stick around and Goliath saved Sac by standing over him and keeping the ceiling from crushing him.
• Wonder Woman (1987): Silver Swan attacks Cassie's school and Cassie's secret identity goes out the door when she quickly flies overhead to grab and hold up a section of hallway wall and lockers that was falling on some of her classmates, giving them time to escape. Unfortunately some of the debris struck and killed her friend Tammy while she was saving the others.
• In the final battle of the De Rode Ridder episode De Barbaar, the eponymous barbarian Storkas holds up a collapsing dungeon long enough for Johan to free the prisoners so they could build a makeshift support.

Fan Works

• In the Terinu fanfic "Grace of God", Rufus' alternate universe twin blocks a closing airlock door with his arm to let the heroes escape. Then it closes...
• In Spider-Man: Finding Home, during a trip to Wakanda, Spider-Man has to hold up a building on the brink of collapse after a rampaging rhino damages a support pillar. He is ultimately forced to hold this position for several hours until Shuri can assemble a new support and Spidey's new partner Yelena Belova can retrieve the White Tiger amulet to help lift the building further at the last minute.
• Deconstructed with Fluttershy in the Pony POV Series who ends up taking all of the pain, prejudice, knowledge, hate and sin of Equestria upon herself. It ends badly, to say the least, causing her to turn into Nightmare Whisper, a Reality Warper that hides under the appearance of Princess Gaia. By the time her friends find out she has already died twice. Pinkie Diane ends up helping her share the burden because she couldn't stand to see Fluttershy suffer so much. Thankfully their friends are able to convince them that people need their pain in order for "the caterpillars to become butterflies."

Film - Animation

• WALL-E does this towards the end of WALL•E, holding up the holodetector long enough for EVE to throw in the plant. It crushes him and he "dies", but EVE managed to repair him back on Earth.
• In Antz, Weaver, being a really strong soldier ant, holds the bottom of a giant "ant pillar".
• Ginormica on Monsters vs. Aliens does this to save the others from the collapsing spaceship. Comes as a bit of a surprise, since just before she had been Brought Down to Normal and recovered her size and strength Just in Time.
• In The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible does this in the final battle to keep his kids from being crushed by the robot.
• In Disney's The Jungle Book, Louie and Baloo hold up part of Louie's collapsing ruins.
• Bolt has Rhino using his hamster ball to prop up the falling rubble of the studio so Bolt can get past, screaming "It is a good day to die!!!" as his ball starts to crack under the weight... Don't worry he lives.

Film - Live-Action

• Sloth does it in The Goonies to help his friends escape from the crumbling cavern. He survives.
• In Highlander II: The Quickening, Ramirez uses up his life force to hold up a giant spinning wind turbine.
• Krull has the cyclops do this to let the hero and his band enter the teleporting fortress. He dies. Made more badass because he knew, thanks to prescience, that he would die that way if he helped the heroes.
• Used in Murder by Death, where the Milo Perrier's manservant saves him from a Descending Ceiling. He survives with a hunched back.
• In National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, the main antagonist stays behind to hold the door open so that him and The Hero don't both get crushed/drowned in the flooding water. Naturally, he is killed in the flood.
• Superman does this a lot, but is almost never in any danger, considering he often can easily throw the load aside, crawl to safety or if necessary, dig or drill his way out if he's buried completely.
  • In Superman: The Movie, he becomes the load-bearing support for the entire Pacific tectonic plate. Holding up a passing train afterward is child's play by comparison.
  • In Superman Returns, he does this to lift a continental landmass that is mostly made of Kryptonite out of Earth's atmosphere and fling it into outer space. All the more impressive because the aforementioned Kryptonite rendered him very NOT Nigh-Invulnerable and he was in very grave danger.
• Spider-Man as well, but he tends to be in a lot more danger. One instance is near the end of Spider-Man 2 when Spidey does this to save Mary Jane from a falling wall. "This is really heavy," indeed.
• The T-850 in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines holds up a blast door for John and Kate, near the end.
• Zangief performs this feat in the Street Fighter movie shortly after making his Heel–Face Turn. Subverted in that Ken and Ryu step up immediately to share the load long enough for everyone else to pass safely.
• An unusual example is seen in X2: X-Men United, as Jean Grey telekinetically holds back a giant wave of water to allow the rest of the team time to escape from it, dying in the process. Overlaps with Martyr Without a Cause considering that there are at least three other team members present whose powers might have been useful (Storm, Iceman, and Nightcrawler), and with the four of them working together they might have been able to get everyone out alive. She never gives them the chance to try.
• Prince Caspian did this with a minotaur who tried to hold up Castle Telmar's portcullis to allow the Narnians to escape. He dies when only about half the army is through, so the rest are trapped inside and slaughtered.
• From the silent movie classic The Golem: When out-of-control magic threatens to destroy the Emperor's palace, the Golem in this way saves the court from being crushed by a Descending Ceiling.

Literature

• Porthos in The Vicomte de Bragelonne does this, resulting in Heroic Sacrifice and possibly the first time Aramis ever shed tears.
• Glurk did it in The Carpet People. "Gonna... be... a... hero..." He gets told not to be so stupid by Pismire ("Boneheaded, I call it") and this pisses him off so much that he climbs back up to his feet and even holds up the collapsing doorway with one hand so he can wave his finger under Pismire's nose before getting yanked to safety just as his strength gives out.
• In Les Misérables, Jean Valjean (at that point the wealthy mayor of a town) saves the life of a worker who was crushed under a heavy cart, by lifting up the cart. Unfortunately, this helps cement Inspector Javert's suspicions of his identity.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians, being based in Greek myth uses Atlas's burden in book 3.
  • In fact, four separate people take the load over the course of the book - the first is Luke, the second is Annabeth, the third is Artemis and the last is (unsurprisingly) Percy himself.
• Circle of Magic series: Daja does this in the first book to stop her and her True Companions being crushed when buried in an earthquake. In this case, the Fridge Logic doesn't apply as it's magic; that said, she's only bought them so much time as she's young and untrained.
• Happens to Detritus the troll in the Discworld novel Moving Pictures, albeit by accident rather than heroism. All the trolls in Holy Wood worked together to clear a passage into the underground theater, then headed in one by one, leaving Detritus stuck holding up the roof.
  • Detritus attempts to do this again in The Fifth Elephant, when a chandelier comes crashing down on the watchmen and the future Low King. Of course, it's a chandelier, so it comes crashing down anyway.
• Damon Runyon's "Earthquake" ends with 'Earthquake' holding up an orphanage door to allow the nuns, children — and the policeman chasing him for a cop-killing — to escape the collapsing building. Even Earthquake can't stand up to a second temblor, though. Listen to a radio dramatization here.
• Boundary: A cave-in in an ancient ice tunnel. Luckily, while Our Hero did not have super-strength, her spacesuit could become rigid on command, so the problem was merely replacing her with other bracing.
• The Rifter: In Gisa, people are digging tunnels to try to break accused witches out of prison. John, who as the Rifter has a deep connection to the earth, can feel that the tunnels are about to collapse, and he can also "persuade" rocks to grow as supports.
• Ciaphas Cain: Not done by the man himself, obviously, but when aboard an exploding spaceship two Catachans (think Rambo on steroids) hold back an airlock door to give other passengers time to get through. Unfortunately, the guy just in front of Cain and Jurgen bumps into them on the way, and the door slams shut, trapping the pair. They manage to find n escape pod in time.

Live-Action TV

• Clark does this all the time in Smallville. In "Onyx", he held up two large pieces of concrete to save Chloe, and did it again with two large electrical columns in a suspiciously similar scene from "Blank".
• Played for Laughs in an episode of The Brittas Empire: Colin Weatherby thinks that Gordon Brittas is supporting a collapsing ceiling on his shoulders, but what Colin Weatherby can't see is that the ceiling is in fact supported by a fallen steel girder down the back of Gordon Brittas' shirt. Colin Weatherby later comments that Gordon Brittas must have a backbone of steel.
• In the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, the Mountain protects Cersei from falling debris that crushes most of the other soldiers.
• Seen in Heroes when Niki holds up a collapsed pillar to let Monica escape from a burning building. Unfortunately, since she's been depowered by the Shanti virus, it doesn't end well.
• Subverted in Stargate SG-1. Teal'c tries this, but it doesn't really help. In another episode, a Russian commando tries to hold a door open, and is crushed before anyone could can through.
• The Tribe: Lex uses his body to hold open an airlock door while Bray, Amber, Dal, and the dog escape from a self-destructing virology lab on Hope Island.
• In the 50th anniversary episode of Coronation Street, after an explosion in the Bistro, Ashley Peacock holds up the collapsing ceiling of the Bistro long enough for the others to escape, ending up in a Heroic Sacrifice.
• J'onn is forced into this in series 2 of Supergirl (2015). This conveniently keeps him out of the fight, giving the bad guy a chance to fight the weaker heroes and escape.
• Bones had "The Patriot in Purgatory" where a homeless war vet helped people escape the Pentagon on Sept.11th 2001 by holding up debris weighing over 400lbs. He later died from his injuries.
• Used very effectively in season 4 of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Several members of the team had been trapped in analternate virtual Mirror Universe called The Framework, where Hydra is in charge. Agent Melinda May is working for Hydra, while Director Jeffrey Mace is leading La Résistance as The Patriot (with actual super powers in this world). When the good guys storm a Hydra Reeducation Center, May is sent to stop them. She orders an airstrike on the building- before she discovers there are children inside who were being brainwashed. Naturally, Hydra refuses to call off the strike, so May gets to witness the last thing necessary to trigger her Heel–Face Turn. Jeffrey dives under the collapsing structure and holds it up just long enough for the children to be taken to safety, sacrificing his life in the real world at the same time (The Framework operates on The Matrix rules).
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Isildur seemingly dies after the wooden ceiling he was holding in order to save the trapped villagers collapses over him.

Music

• John in the Jimmy Dean song "Big Bad John". Note that the other miners were about to go back in with equipment to save him before the mine completely collapsed.

Myths & Religion

• Inverted in The Bible with Samson, who destroys the pillars of the house he is in to crush the Philistines in it along with himself. It is still considered a Heroic Sacrifice, though.
• Krishna from Hindu Myth held up an entire mountain on one finger to shield his village from the torrential storm that Indra, the God of Thunder, was causing. Of course, it helps when you're an avatar of Vishnu.
• The Titan Atlas used to hold up the sky on his shoulders (preventing it from falling down and crushing the world), as a punishment for siding with Kronos in his war against the Olympian gods. He briefly tricked Heracles into taking his burden, but was eventually tricked back into holding it again. Then he met Perseus who turned him into stone, forming an entire mountain range.

Video Games

• In the MMORPG Mabinogi, at the end of the second mainstream storyline, the person you've been working with the whole time to uncover the Big Bad's plot is about to get stomped by a golem. You rush in and stop the golem's leg, holding it until you unlock your true potential and become a Paladin.
• In Breath of Fire II, Rand does this with a gradually closing pathway, holding it open for the rest of the party to escape. He is unable to escape without being crushed himself, but his super-strong mother arrives and knocks him out of the passageway, getting crushed, turning it into a Heroic Sacrifice for her.
• In Chrono Trigger, Robo briefly uses his body to brace a heavy door open to stop the other characters from being trapped on the wrong side of it.
• Quite a popular trope across the Final Fantasy games:
  • Josef from Final Fantasy II sacrifices himself holding back a rolling boulder trap, allowing the party to escape.
  • Palom and Porom from Final Fantasy IV go as far as petrifying themselves to stop crushing walls.
  • Tsuze the werewolf in Final Fantasy V holds off the power augmenter from the Fire Crystal. That wasn't directly in the way of the heroes, but it did give them more time to escape the place.
  • Sabin in Final Fantasy VI holds up the collapsing house in Tzen so that the party can save a child trapped inside.
    • And in the Collapsing Lair sequence after Kefka's defeat, he catches and tosses a large piece of junk that threatened to crush his brother.
  • In the finale of Final Fantasy XIII, Fang and Vanille summon a large crystalline pillar with themselves at the core to prevent Cocoon from crashing on Gran Pulse.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood, Gosetsu, a companion of the Warrior of Light through the duration of the Doma Arc, does this after Yotsuyu attempts to bring Doma Castle down around herself and the WOL's party, holding the crumbling room around him. Yotsuyu, during the rest of her Villainous Breakdown, manages to shoot hims several times but he manages to hold it up long enough for the WOL and allies to escape before collapsing and letting the castle crumble on him and Yotsuyu, leaving the party to mourn him. That said.... after the main story is cleared, the player is shown the two of them manage to escape, falling into the water flooding Doma Castle and being carried out to sea before ending up trapped on a small island, though no one else knows they're there... yet
• An ascending version of the trope takes place in God of War II, where a trap involves a rising floor that Kratos has to push against the ceiling to avoid being crushed, all while fighting feral hounds that try to get his strength to give out. Ironically he is the Load Bearing Hero for them, since the moment he escapes, the floor finally rises all the way and crushes the dogs.
• At the end of Mega Man 5, Mega Man does this to save Dr. Light and Wily from a collapsing castle.
  • In Mega Man X3, Zero has to hold a spiked ceiling at bay while X destroys the Mini-Boss. You can face the boss without his help (such as if he was destroyed prior) and the only difference is that the ceiling moves faster, but the effort and intent is still there.
• Neverwinter Nights 2: This is how Casavir dies, at least till Storm of Zehier retcons him into being alive but captured
  • Also from NWN2's Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies, Gnobar tries to save a 12 or so foot tall creature literally Made of Iron by throwing his frail 4 foot or so gnome body at a pillar about to crush it. Generally considered an example of Alas, Poor Scrappy.
    • Textual implications suggest that if Elanee was romanced she blocked falling rocks such that the hero might live.
  • In the Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide campaign, your mentor holds open a magical portal that the Big Bad used to escape, being trapped in the Collapsing Lair and unable to follow you, and died to allow you to go through it.
• Bowser and O'Chunks do this together in one of the final rooms in Super Paper Mario. Naturally, each tries to convince the other that they don't need their help, and that the other should leave, not wanting to share the Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Presea's Heroic Sacrifice in Tales of Symphonia takes on this form.
  • In Tales of Vesperia, Raven does this in the Baction Shrine after he is revealed to be Schwann and working for Alexei in order to save the party's lives. The party thinks that he's dead afterwards. He got better and rejoined the party not too long after.
• Played for Laughs in The Simpsons Game with a Morc (Moe as an Orc) holding up the collapsing game engine while Mr. Burns gathers his things. Just as Burns escapes, Moe's strength gives out and he's crushed.
• In X-Men Legends, Colossus is recruited in Russia attempting to hold breaking parts of a nuclear reactor over his head to prevent a second Chernobyl.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask the four giants have to hold up the freaking moon so that it doesn't crush Clock Town and they have to hold it long enough for Link to get inside, do four puzzles, and finally defeat Majora (who has multiple forms).
• Horizontal example: In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Raiden holds up a giant ship threatening to crush Snake.
• Subverted in Indiana Jones And The Fateof Atlantis, when the imprisoned heroine Sophia Hapgood won't crawl under a heavy iron gate with only Indy holding it up. (You have to go find a suitable piece of metal to brace the thing open instead. Sheesh.. some gratitude.)
• In Kingdom of Loathing, there is a non-combat adventure in Noob Cave in which the way is blocked by a collapsed boulder. You get out by picking up the boulder and crawling out underneath your own legs.
• Kyle Katarn does this twice in Jedi Academy during the mission to Vjun: first to keep a power coupling out of the water until the player character can drain it, and then again at the end to hold large chunks of the ceiling up while the player character carves an escape out of the floor with Kyle's lightsaber.

Web Animation

• In RWBY, during the battle at the Belladonna residence, Ghira jumps in to stop a balcony from crushing the freshly face-turned Ilia, with a pair of Sun's clones jumping in to help him. Fennec sees an opportunity to kill him, so he grabs a weapon and dives in, but Blake yanks Ghira to safety just before Fennec reaches him, resulting in Fennec getting squished.

Web Comics

• In the final battle of It's Walky!, two characters appear to have been crushed by a ship, but one of them manages to hold it up (yes, the ship) just long enough for the other to escape.
• In Guilded Age, Bjorn, Scipio and E-Merl (via barrier spell) play this after party is buried in a trap.

Western Animation

• Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender did this once when Wan Shi Tong's Library was sinking into the ground with the rest of the Gaang inside. It helped that the Library was made of stone and Toph was an Earthbender.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
  • In "Breakout", Graviton lifts the island of Manhattan over the sea with his powers. When he was briefly incapacitated, the island starts crashing back down, so Thor flies to the foundation to ease the impact.
  • Spider-Man is forced to hold up a collapsing sewer tunnel until the Avengers can rescue him and Cap.
• Dungeons & Dragons (1983): When a rockslide comes down on the gang, Eric uses his shield's forcefield ability to keep the rocks from crushing them.
• In the Legion of Super Heroes cartoon, Bouncing Boy holds up a ferris wheel so Superman can fix it.
• In an episode of Sonic Underground, Sonic and his siblings found themselves in a crushing chamber and being saved when ART, a powerful adaptive robot that the trio managed to befriend and turn earlier in the episode, sacrificed itself keeping the walls apart long enough for them to escape.
• Junko in Storm Hawks once caught a falling airship to save it from crashing into a mountain. Needless to say, he is strong, even though he's considered a runt in his species!
• Superman does this a lot. In Superman: The Animated Series, Bizarro does this, holding up a collapsing building to give Supes enough time to save Lois from a bomb, while staying behind himself. Don't worry, he gets better.
• In the Doom Patrol arc of Teen Titans, Elastigirl makes her Heroic Sacrifice holding up a collapsing section of cliff long enough for Beast Boy and Mento to escape.
• Thunderbirds Are Go: Happens twice in Grandma Tourismo: First, Gordon's "Jaws Of Life" power-suit holds up the roof of a flimsy shed that's being crushed by the building sand from a windstorm. Then, right as the suit nears its limit, Grandma arrives in the Mole, which simply sits there as if holding up not just the shed's roof but the untold tons of sand above it was trivial.
• Transformers: Prime sees Bulkhead forced to hold up the weight of a collapsing cave roof in the episode "Rock Bottom".

Real Life

• Truth in Television: When Tsar Alexander III's train crashed and the roof of the car he and his family was in started collapsing, he held it on his shoulders until his family got out and help arrived. It didn't end well, however, since he considerably overstrained his body and died from the disease really caused by trauma during the crash.
• These two strips about the rescue effort after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake give poignant real life examples.
• Lifeguards and rescue swimmers are specifically trained, if they're supporting an unconscious person and are about to get washed into rocks by the waves, to avert this trope and let the victim's body absorb the impact, rather than risk being stunned so both will drown. Faced with the choice, however, virtually everyone with the heroism to seek out such jobs instinctively plays this trope straight, shielding the rescued person from further harm.

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