Impalement is pretty much guaranteed to kill the victim, but occasionally someone will demonstrate their toughness, imperviousness to pain, or sheer Determination by pulling themself down whatever's stuck in them to get to their attacker.
Can be Truth in Television, as being impaled through the belly would mean a slow death from sepsis if blood loss and shock didn't do the job, and the impaled person could be running on enough adrenaline to have the strength to pull this off, provided the weapon wasn't designed to prevent this.
This trope can also apply to someone stabbed in their extremities, such an as Impaled Palm, who could possibly even survive their injury.
Subtrope of Impaled with Extreme Prejudice. Compare Deliberate Injury Gambit. One of the ways to make an opponent Left Stuck After Attack.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In episode 6 of Bastard!! (1988), a one-eyed monster captures Arshes Nei and impales Gara using Combat Tentacles that harden into stone, but Gara pulls himself down the length of the spike in his gut to free her.
- In Last Order: Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth skewers Cloud with his nodachi, after which Cloud proceeds to slowly crawl his way down said nodachi to attack him with his own (considerably shorter) sword.
- Sakamoto Days: Dump shoots expendable spears out of her body. When she pins Osaragi to the wall by the hand, Osaragi pulls herself up it to grapple Dump to the ground.
- In The Seven Deadly Sins, at one point the immortal Ban was impaled by an enemy tentacle and pulled himself closer so he could get in hitting distance.
Comedy
- Eddie Izzard has a long segment in her "Stripped" tour about a soldier trying this to defeat the enemy's extra-long spears.
Fan Works
- The Mountain and the Wolf: During their first open battle, the Wolf's men are noted to do this even when impaled on two or three spears at once.
Films — Live-Action
- Excalibur inverts the classic depiction of King Arthur's death. Mordred spears Arthur, who pulls himself down the shaft and returns the favor with Excalibur.
Mordred: Come, father. Let us embrace at last.
- In Star Trek: Nemesis, Shinzon is impaled on a piece of pipe but pulls himself down it to confront Picard one last time.
- In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, when Aragorn stabs Lurtz in the stomach, the Uruk-hai responds by pulling the sword inwards, snarling at Aragorn, possibly to get close enough to hurt him. Aragorn pulls the sword out and chops off Lurtz's head.
- Van Helsing: In the distant prologue, Dr. Victor tried impaling Dracula with a sword, but Dracula just pulled himself down the sword to get closer to Victor and bite him.
- In 300, the Captain is impaled by a Persian spearman and a couple of sword-wielding Immortals, but he hacks at the Immortals then pulls himself up the spear to finish off its (at this point terrified) wielder.
- In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice this is how Superman dies while killing Doomsday with Batman's kryptonite spear.
- The Warlords: Near the end of the film's penultimate desert battle, Pang Qing-yun has already massacred a large chunk of the rebel army when a lucky rebel managed to skewer his spear into Pang's shoulder. Rather than going down easily, Pang instead allows the spear to go clean through his shoulder so that he can kill the rebel from up close.
- A comedic version occurs in Ghostbusters: Afterlife; when a horde of mini Staypuft Marshmallow Men start playing around in a Walmart, one skewers two others and lifts them over a fire. As none of them feel any pain, one of the impaled ones starts pulling itself down the skewer in amusement.
- In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Namor impales Shuri with his spear before leaving to get water. She cuts it in half with the Panther suit's claws, enabling her to pull herself through a shorter shaft and run towards him (the suit also sealing the wound after she goes through).
Literature
- In Le Morte D Arthur, Arthur spears Mordred, but Mordred drags himself along the spear and stabs Arthur through the head.
- The Saga of the Faroe Islanders: Brestir is defending himself on higher ground when Hafgrim, attacking from below, thrusts him through with a spear. Brestir pulls himself down on the spear and kills Hafgrim with a sword blow.
- In the Ciaphas Cain novel The Last Ditch, Cain impales an Ork on his chainsword, but the Ork starts to push the sword through itself to keep attacking him, so he shoves it in deeper and hits the Ork's spine, which takes it out of the fight (he has to shoot it in the head later to actually kill it).
Video Games
- In Legacy of Kain Moebius is already in reach of Kain after being impaled on his sword, but he grabs Kain's arm to pull himself closer and gloat about the futility of killing him.
- Played with in the Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X prequel OVA. X walks down Sigma's sword after getting stabbed, but finds he still can't strike Sigma even when he's nearly on the sword's hilt (as Sigma is a lot taller than he is), so he kicks himself off the sword and then pounces on Sigma's eyes.
- Done multiple times in Tales of Berseria, though with little success. Rokurou, for example, tries it on his brother, Shigure, and it almost works, but Shigure catches on and gets over his shock at the last second, beating Rokurou back. As a bit of consolation, he fully admits that, had he been a second slower, it would have worked.
- In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud did this in his first battle with Sephiroth; Sephiroth impaled him with the Masamune, but Cloud dragged himself down the blade and used it as leverage to chuck Sephiroth into the Lifestream.
- In the original Devil May Cry, Dante is impaled to the floor by Alastor (in what would become the first instance of many). After a moment of shock, he frees himself by shoving his body up the length of the sword (hilt and all), and claims it for his own.
Web Animation
- DEATH BATTLE!: Dragonzord vs. Mechagodzilla (Kiryu): At the end of the fight, the Dragonzord Battle Mode uses its drill lance to impale Mechagodzilla clean through its torso, but not only does Mechagodzilla survive, it pulls itself closer to the Dragonzord in order to charge and fire a point-blank shot with its Absolute Zero Cannon, lethally freezing and shattering the Dragonzord.
Web Comics
- This
Awkward Zombie strip parodies an element from early Fire Emblem games - they didn't have animations for units reacting to enemies hitting them, which made units look like they Feel No Pain that the comic takes to a logical extreme.
Western Animation
- In the Stakes miniseries of Adventure Time, the Vampire King does this as Marceline kills him in order to reach her neck and turn her into a vampire.
Real Life
- Wild boars and bears can be hunted with special spears that feature "wings" on the shaft behind the head◊ to keep the enraged animal from possibly pushing itself along the spear to attack the hunter. Many types of medieval polearms featured heads with similar designs to keep impaled combatants from doing this - these wings or protrusions had other potential advantages, like parrying enemy strikes or pulling horsemen from their saddles.
