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Determinator
aka: The Determinator

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Broly: Why don't you just give up?
Goku: [laughing weakly] I... never really learned how to...

A character — good or evil, male or female, young or old — who never gives up. Ever. No matter what.

There is no stopping the Determinator. They do not understand tact. They do not Know When to Fold 'Em, and it's a waste of time to tell them the odds. No one can reason with them. They'll do whatever they have to without question. No price is too great to pay for success, up to and including their own life. Do not expect them to realize they might be better off letting it go, even if they can barely stand. If you're ever kidnapped or lost with no hope of rescue, they'll be the one who will find you. Their adversaries will shout, in exasperated rage, "Why Won't You Die?!". And they'll always move forward to their goals, no matter if their (many) wounds will make them drag or limp. For them, there is no line between "perseverance" and "insanity."

The nobility of their goal is not necessarily proportionate to their persistence. This is just as often an obsessive rival with a grudge as it is a hero on a chivalrous quest, and where their willpower ultimately leads them will depend both on their role and on where the work stands on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. Heroes — especially Badass Normals with a Screw Destiny attitude — will defeat villains by virtue of being too stubborn to stay down. Anti Heroes will Jump Off The Slippery Slope, forsake The Powers of Love and Friendship, become like that which they fight, and walk the thin line between victory and tragedy. Villains will refuse to admit defeat, resist seemingly fatal punishment, hunt their prey tirelessly and relentlessly, and let the heroes know that We Will Meet Again. And mailmen will always get your mail to you. More inhuman beings such as monsters or an Eldritch Abomination may just also be The Juggernaut, and this will present a serious problem for the heroes who may have to find some MacGuffin just to survive as it endlessly plows through everything and refuses to take a break.

Shōnen anime and manga love this trope, such that it is quite rare to find a protagonist of these works who isn't a Determinator and is guaranteed where super-heated blood is involved.

Compare and contrast with Implacable Man (or woman)— while a Determinator pursues their goal through sheer willpower, the Implacable Man is driven by artificial, unnatural, or magical means, and often suffers no apparent damage at all.

Compare Suicidal Overconfidence, a common feature of many Video Game genres where enemies will always, blindly, and relentlessly be at your throat with no regard for how horribly you are massacring them (though this is more due to genre requirements than characterization). Compare Tragic Dream and Detrimental Determination, where becoming a Determinator can only end in tears. Can be identified by their trademark Determined Expression.

See also Heroic Resolve, Heroic Spirit, Plucky Girl, Non-Giving-Up School Guy, The Unfettered, The Fettered, Unconscious Objector, and Stiff Upper Lip.


Example subpages:

Other examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • The Duracell/Energizer bunny. It keeps going and going and going...
  • The Trix rabbit, and many other mascots for kids' cereal.
  • A monster breaks into a car and raids the ice box until it finds a can of Chef Boyardee, which it proceeds to tear the lid off of with its bare hands, then pour the contents into its gaping jaws before a husband, who had been following the monster, comes out, then finds the monster has transformed into a boy.
  • In Brasil there was once a series of advertisements of people getting better in life that always ended with the sentence "...porque (ele/a) é brasileiro/a e não desiste nunca.", or, in English, "...because (he/she) is Brazilian and never gives up.". It became a Memetic Mutation. In other words, the Brazilian government made the citizenry consider themselves Memetic Determinators.
  • John Jameson, according to this ad for Jameson's Whiskey, here. The man battled a massive octopus just to get back a barrel of his beloved whiskey.

    Asian Animation 
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Wolffy has come up with 2,000+ plans to catch the goats over the course of the series, none of which have ever succeeded. He still hasn't given up.

    Comic Strips 
  • As The Comics Curmudgeon is fond of pointing out, once Mary Worth has her hooks in you, she will stop at nothing to meddle in your affairs until you are either "fixed" or dead. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE SHE IS RELENTLESS.
  • No matter how many times the entire universe goes out of its way to make him fail, Peanuts' Charlie Brown will just get up and try again out of sheer optimism. He'll whine, but he'll never surrender. Charles Schulz is quoted as saying, "Someone once referred to Charlie Brown as a loser. That never occurred to me. A real loser would have stopped trying."
  • No matter how many times his business plans backfire, Sam in Sam's Strip never gives up. He just switches to a new plan.

    Fairy Tales 
  • The Death of Koschei the Deathless: When his wife is kidnapped by Koschei, Prince Ivan proves he will stop at nothing to get her back. He remains determined to save her even after failing three times and getting killed by Koschei. After being brought back to life by his sorcerous brothers-in-law he discovers a way to defeat Koschei... but he needs to walk through nine lands, cross a river of fire and trick the witch Baba Yaga. And he does all of it.

    Manhwa 
  • The Breaker has protagonist Shi Woon. He starts off as the weakest fighter in the series, but because of his Determinator nature he becomes one of the most powerful. It's what allowed him to succeed in his Training from Hell and hold his own against overpowered opponents.
  • Tasha Godspell, protagonist of Witch Hunter is fine example: he's defeated by far superior opponent, his beloved familiar is taken from him, his arm, holding healing artifact, is severed, and yet he manages to stand straight and insult his foe. It helps, that such a stress unlocks his inner source of mana.

    Music 
  • Perhaps one of the most famous songs for kids about a Determinator, "The Cat Came Back". Many versions have the song having the human race being wiped out by a nuclear holocaust, BUT...
    But the cat came back the very next day,
    The cat came back. They thought he was a goner,
    But the cat came back; it just couldn't stay away.
  • Looking For You In The Sky and its sequel, Paradise of Light and Shadow, by vocaloid Len and subsequently Rin Kagamine.
  • "500 Miles" by the Proclaimers
  • And its Spanish similar of sorts, Dúo Dinámico's "Resistiré".
  • "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor
  • "Roar" by Katy Perry, which namechecks "Eye of the Tiger"
  • Bon Jovi's "It's My Life" and "Livin' On a Prayer."
  • "Stay Hungry" by Twisted Sister
  • The deaf, dumb and blind kid in The Who song "Pinball Wizard".
  • Pick a song by DragonForce. Any song.
  • "No Surrender", and "Unstoppable" (among others) by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.
  • "Stand" by Motörhead
  • "Indestructible" by Disturbed.
  • Queen's "The Show Must Go On" not only fits this trope in lyrics, but also in purpose; it was intended as Freddie Mercury's last defiant stab at death. It was released shortly before he died of AIDS.
    Inside, my heart is breaking
    My make-up may be flaking
    But my smile still stays on
    • Céline Dion released a cover of the song after the death of her husband and longtime manager, Rene Angelil, recasting it as a declaration to persevere after losing a life partner.
  • Pat Benatar's "Invincible'.
  • "Until the End" by Breaking Benjamin. Also, "I Will Not Bow."
  • "Back for More" by Five Finger Death Punch is pretty much the theme song for this trope.
  • "Curse of Fëanor" by Blind Guardian - it is about Fëanor, after all.
  • Stand by Rascal Flatts.
  • Like a Rock by Bob Seager.
  • Most anything by HammerFall, especially "Hearts on Fire" and "Heeding the Call".
  • "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty
    You can stand me up at the gates of hell
    But I won't back down
  • "Spirit Never Dies" by Masterplan:
    "Never give up / Never give in / Won't stop believing / 'Cause I'm gonna win [...] There is no limit to what can be done! / Climbing the mountain with power so strong"
  • "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba:
    I get knocked down
    But I get back up again
    You're never going to keep me down
  • mc Chris's "Never Give Up."
  • You only realize this if you listen to the lyrics but Welcome To The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance. The chorus is basically "We'll Carry On" over and over again to insane levels, with lines about not giving up and stuff of that type.
    • Even more so with Famous Last Words, from the same album. I am not afraid to keep on living/I am not afraid to walk this world alone/Honey if you stay I'll be forgiven/Nothing you can say can stop me going home.
  • Eminem's "'Till I Collapse" and "Lose Yourself".
  • Martine McBride's "Concrete Angel"
    "Through the wind and the rain she stands hard as a stone
    In a world that she can't rise above"
  • "The Distance" by Cake. The guy's already lost the race. He's just trying to finish.
  • Styx's "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)" is about an desperate unemployed man who is willing to work as long and as hard as he can to hold a steady job.
  • I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.
  • "Don't Stop Believin'" by Olivia Newton-John.
    But on those days when nobody wants to know you
    And all your smiles keep falling on stony ground
    Don't stop believin', don't stop believin'
    Don't stop believin', you'll get by
    Bad days, bad days will hurry by
  • Both "you" and Shia Lebouf in Shia Lebouf Live.
  • "Vandraren" (The Wanderer) by Nordman.
  • Don't Give Up by Eagle Eye Cherry
  • Christian Metal is full of these.
    • "When Everything Falls" by Haste The Day, from the album of the same name.
      I will stand, I will stand
      When everything falls away
      I will fight this war forever
      Or until I die
    • Almost anything by For Today.
    • "Tonight My Son" and "No Rival" by Wolves At The Gate.
    • "Absence of Fear" by War Of Ages.
    • "The Internal Cannon" by August Burns Red.
  • At least 66.6% of songs by Manowar
  • "Live to Win" by Paul Stanley.
  • Crush 40's songs have some very determined lyrics. Of particular note is Open Your Heart's "I can't hold on much longer/But I will never let go".
  • "On Your Mark" by J-Rock duo Chage & Aska, more known for receiving an Animated Music Video by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.
    "On Your Mark! So long there's a dream,
    We never give up,
    And we'll reach it over steep slopes.
    I believe we shall make it there."
  • The Megas' new album History Repeating includes a song called "Continue," based on the password theme of Megaman 3.
    Footprints as far as you can see
    This is who you are, you'll always be
    The one, the one to fare the storm...
    If it was up to you, and you knew that you would lose
    If it was up to you, I know, you'd always choose...to continue.
  • "Lullaby" by Nickelback is basically telling the listener "Yes things are bad, but don't give up." Also doubles as You Are Not Alone.
  • "Never Give Up" by Sunstorm
  • "Eagleheart" by Stratovarius
  • "Try" by P!nk.
  • The Boy from the KISS album Music from "The Elder", emphasized in the song "I".
  • "Never Surrender" from Corey Hart.
  • "Stand in the Rain" by Superchic[k]
  • "Hound of Heaven" by Daniel Amos (from Horrendous Disc) is about being on the receiving end. God is the Hound of Heaven, and he's relentlessly pursuing the listener.
    You can’t run
    You can’t hide
    From the Hound of Heaven
    You’re free to choose
    Can you refuse
    The seeker of souls?
  • Yehoram Gaon's song about Sir Moses Montefiore. When he's 80, angels come and tell him "God says it's time for you to go". He answers "Can't go, too busy", and goes about his business. They repeat it ten years later, with the same result. Ten years later, he's tired enough to go... but finds there are still too many matters to attend. Finally, at the age of 101, he dies... yet there are people who swear they still see him going about his business.
  • The Hamilton Mixtape: One of the reasons Lin-Manuel Miranda pins for others rejecting him in "Wrote My Way Out" is his endless drive and refusal to calm down.
    "Damn, you got no chill."
    "Fuckin' right I'm relentless!"
  • Nautilus Pompilius:
    • In the song "The Last Human on Earth", a man had defended his house from myriads of foes until the very last moment.
    • In the song "Ivan Humanov", a man was so determined to follow his destiny, that the destiny run away from him.
    • In the song "Air", a man, surrounded by enemies, walked straight through the air.
  • Great Big Sea's "Ordinary Day":
    Janie sings on the corner, what keeps her from dyin'?
    Let 'em say what they want, she won't stop tryin', oh you know
    She might stumble if they push her 'round
    She might fall, but she'll never lie down, it's not so bad
  • This pops up quite a bit with Streetlight Manifesto. "The Hands that Thieve" is a good example:
    I felt no pain till I was down and I was told that I was bleeding
    And even then I knew I wasn't done
    'Cause the wounds I get, they will just collect
    Ensuring that I don't forget
    Reminders of the battles that I've lost and that I've won
  • Noah: The singer of "Tetap Berdiri (2DSD)" is one, continuing to stand up and face the challenges of the world and unwilling to die from whatever wound that he has.

Musicians that are Determinators

  • Beyoncé
  • Any metal drummer. Pick one. Their parts are usually incredibly active and some play at blistering speeds, even given the genre.
  • Metal band Anvil — this is a band that has been active for over thirty years, but had probably the worst luck you'll ever see, but did this stop them? No! They kept pressing on until they finally got a break in 2008 when their documentary was able to help bring them the success they deserve. At least they got their documentary, although mainstream media downplayed it as an example of Giftedly Bad.
  • Riot have had even worse luck than Anvil: they had to sue their record label to get an album released, and then were dropped. Fire Down Under was delayed for a year by lawsuits: it wasn't exactly a hit, but is often mentioned as the first Speed Metal album, and is to this day considered a classic. Then singer Guy Speranza quit music entirely. After recording one album with Rhett Forrester on vocals, they got dropped by their record label again. It was discovered later that the record labels weren't even their biggest problem: their own management team acted in a way that scared off anybody who wanted to give Riot higher-level promotion, because their management was more interested in having a "pet" band than having a successful one. Among the promoters chased off were Aerosmith's management team, who were looking to expand their roster at a time that Aerosmith were semi-disbanded. They eventually found another label, but in the meantime, the similarly-named Los Angeles band Quiet Riot had gone platinum, causing an identity problem for the New York City-based Riot. Riot broke up, and resurfaced in Texas several years later with only guitarist Mark Reale remaining from their "classic" lineup. They continue to this day to be a well-respected band, but are mainly able to keep going because they are Big In Japan. Also, continuing the blues refrain, no hopes of reunions of their early lineups, as Speranza and Forrester have both since passed.
  • Ludwig van Beethoven. Even though he was born into the lower class and suffered from an abusive childhood at the hands of an alcoholic father, was socially isolated because of his class and intelligence, was physically ill most of his life and even went deaf (leading him to contemplate suicide) - he just went right on living and composing until the end, even after his nephew shot himself. Not to mention, he was a revolutionary and an uncompromising artist - he could have made a lot of money writing comic operas, but was determined to spend his life creating serious art.
    "I shall seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely" - Ludwig van Beethoven
    • The 3rd Symphony: revolutionary, defying all rules and stylistic conventions of the time. The composer named the work "Sinfonia Eroica", which is Italian for "Heroic Symphony".
    • The 5th Symphony: Famous for it's subject of triumph over adversity, particularly the "darkness to light" transition during the final section.
    • The 9th Symphony: A philanthropic, humanistic hymn in response to the Napoleonic Wars. Also, his first public appearance in 12 years as a musician was at the premierre, which makes this one of the great comebacks off all time since most critics had thought him washed up.
    • The Hammerklavier Sonata: begins energetically, becomes heartbreakingly still and melancholy midway but eventually truimphs in in a blaze of complex intellectual activity.
    • The Late String Quartets: the last six major works of his career, life-affirming and full of humanity although composed as he was sick and nearing death.
  • Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. Getting two fingertips cut off was only the beginning of his career. Since then he's soldiered through cheating managers, constant lineup changes, fading nearly into obscurity in The '80s, losing bandmate Ronnie James Dio to cancer and going through cancer himself. He's let absolutely none of that slow him down.
  • Chris Squire of Yes, as he wanted the band to go on despite the lineup changes and departures of Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson, and wishing that the band should go on without him after his death.
  • Emilie Autumn lives this trope
  • Britney Spears shows element of this trope.

    Mythology 
  • Paul in the New Testament practically exhorts all Christians to be determinators, especially in the face of persecution and/or death.
    • Paul was quite the Determinator himself: in response to critics claiming he wasn't a "good enough servant of Christ," he once listed off his own sufferings: "far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one [the maximum punishment the Jews were allowed to hand out under Roman law]. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure." Yet he kept on going. The man just could not be stopped.
    • The widow in the Parable of the Unjust Judge.
    In a certain town there was a judge who feared neither God nor man. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, "Grant me justice against my adversary." For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, "Even though I fear neither God nor man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually come and attack me!"
    • The Old Testament had plenty of determinators too.
    • Jesus took on the guilt for every sin in cosmic history to redeem humanity. In the Garden of Gesthemane, there was a moment where He struggled (because He was still human)—after that He faced death with so much dignity that even the soldiers who came to arrest Him balked twice.
      • And while nailed on the cross, after the assembled crowd chose to free a murderer instead of Him, He said "Father forgive them."
  • Odysseus and his wife Penelope, sticking through twenty years of painful separation...well, mostly Penelope. Odysseus...well, at least he did keep trying to get home through impossible odds.
    • When an Immortal wants to go to bed with you(and when your trap on an island and that immortal can turn your men into animals), it's neither easy nor safe to say no. It's also a cultural thing; it was fine for Greek men to sleep with other women. Women, not so much.
  • Rostam in the The Shahnameh undertakes seven labors to liberate his king and the Persian army, namely:
    • Travels two days distance in one and his horse kills a lion.
    • Endures extended dehydration and desert heat.
    • Slices a dragon in two, with some help from his horse.
    • Slices a seductive witch in two. More of a moral test than a physical one.
    • Kills multiple warriors and captures their chieftain.
    • Tears off a demon's head with his bare hands.
    • Kills a cave-dwelling albino demon in a long and bloody fight.
  • Heracles: Hera made his life was a living hell because of something that was never his fault (she took her anger out on him because he was the son of her philandering husband) and while some of his heroic deeds were easy (he was able to use his brains to clean the Augean stables in only a day) some of them required Nerves of Steel. When he collected the cattle of Geryon, Hera sent a gadfly to sting them, causing them to scatter; it took him a whole year to find them all and finish the task. Not to mention, the curses set upon him killed almost all his loved ones, some via his own hands through cursed rage. Still, never once did he consider giving up and when his time to die came, it was by his clothes (smeared with centaur blood) burning his skin, which he only noticed when pointed out to him, at which point he left the temple he was in, built his own funeral pyre, gave his bow to his friend Philoctetes and with orders to shoot him when he gets to the top and climbed it himself. No wonder he ascended to godhood.
  • A staple of Norse Mythology. Odin dedicates his entire life to preventing or postphoning, through any means necessary, the apocalyptic events that will transpire come Ragnarok for as long as possble, even through he knows for a fact that all his efforts will ultimately amount to naught. Thor went to extreme lengths to get back his hammer when it was stolen, and Loki was chained to a rock being tortured by a snake for generations until he broke free to start Ragnarok. Everyone who dies in Ragnarok, dies in battle and make sure that when they're dead, they can have their grave stone say "You should've seen the other guy" with an arrow pointing to the other guy's tomb stone next to them.
  • Xingtian, a diety from Chinese Mythology, was beheaded after an attempt to overthrow the Supreme Divinity. The Tr guy still kept at it with his rebellion, using his nipples and belly-button as eyes and mouths respectively, and running around with his axe and shield as if nothing happened.
  • Jingwei / Nuwa, also from Chinese Mythology. After she drowned when playing in the Eastern Sea, she metamorphosed into a bird called Jingwei. Her goal? To fill up the sea by carrying a pebble or twig in her mouth and drops it into the Eastern Sea so others won't die like she did. The Chinese idiom "Jingwei Tries to Fill the Sea" is an allusion to her determination.
  • In the Nart Sagas, nothing will stop Warzameg from rescuing Psatina, be it his family's worries, an old sorceress who threatens to eat him, or a scaly giant who rides a monstrous horse.

    Pinball 
  • The police officer (identified only as "Car 504") from The Getaway: High Speed II. In the prequel he's simply the guy on patrol when the player blows by at 140+ MPH, but in High Speed II he becomes completely driven to bust the speeder, bringing backup patrol cars and a helicopter into the chase.
    Car 504: "This time I'm gonna nail that dirtbag."
  • In Red & Ted's Road Show, the taxi driver whose cab gets smashed in New York City follows the duo across the country, reappearing to challenge Ted in two more cities- Dallas and Salt Lake City.
    Cabbie: "I have returned for you, mister bulldozer man!"

    Podcasts 
  • Lucretia from The Adventure Zone is the anti-hero variety of this trope. She worked unrelentingly for a decade to almost single-handedly reverse the damage of the Grand Relics, protect her friends, and keep the Hunger away, although her methods were certainly questionable. This attitude and behavior are explained in the Stolen Century arc as being the result of a year she spent on the run from the Judges while they rest of her crew was imprisoned.
  • The long haul trucker Character Narrator of Alice Isn't Dead is stubbornly persistent in her quest to find her wife Alice, to get an in-person explanation for the mysterious, Conspiracy-laden circumstances around Alice's disappearance, even though this search draws her into unwitting, unwilling encounters with the paranormal.
    Narrator: I'll keep driving this truck. I'll keep wandering this country. I'm going to find you. I will.
  • Starlee, host of Mystery Show, sticks with her cases until the very end. One of them even needs a Time-Passes Montage in the middle, and her client teases her about it:
    David: Maybe this is just your update where it's like, "I have no idea who Jake Gyllenhaal is, or how to measure human height. Just wanted to let you know I'm still plugging away!"
  • Cassidy from Pokemon: Adventures in the Millennium. She's Belle's Eevee from her original Team Rocket team. After discovering that her trainer had left her at a Pokemon Centre due to feeling like she wasn't good enough to keep them, she tried to follow her across the world to the Sinnoh Region—and succeeded.

    Poetry 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • Fans may know the Harley Race who voices the decisions of the Global Honored Crown to be barely mobile, but it took him a long time to get there. Not long after becoming a professional wrestler he was involved in a car crash that killed his wife and nearly tore off his leg, but he survived and returned to the ring with all of his limbs. He was taken out of the ring again when a table leg ruptured his abdomen after a splash through it, but he returned again after surgery. He nearly drowned after a boat crash but made his way from the water and continued to wrestle. After a shoulder injury he was outright told to retire and did for a short bit, becoming a manager in WCW, but eventually the lure of the ring became too strong. Ultimately his career was ended by yet another car crash that required hip surgery.
  • In 1975, back when Ric Flair was still a three hundred pound super heavyweight, he, David Crockett, "Mr. Wrestling" Tim Woods, Bob Bruggers, and Johnny Valentine were involved in a plane crash. Among the injuries, Mr. Wrestling suffered broken ribs and a concussion, but since he was a baby face, he couldn't let word get out that he had been traveling with a group of heels and had to immediately return to the ring and wrestle while the rest spent the rest of the year recovering from their injuries before making their in ring returns. The reslilence shown by Woods helped preserve kayfabe with the casual audience for another decade.
  • NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion Danny Hodge was in a car accident that broke his neck and flung him from the road into a bayou. He swam to shore with one hand while holding his head stable with the other and then walked to the nearest settlement while continuing to hold his neck steady until he could get medical treatment.
  • Pretty much every main event Face in Professional Wrestling since Hulk Hogan, and half the Heels too. Incidentally, being a Determinator is one of the things that can make a heel a Draco in Leather Pants. It worked for "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, after all. In fact, wrestling actually has so many Determinators running around, that it actually has a contest to see who the biggest Determinator actually is: the I Quit Match, a special Gimmick Match in which the only way for the match to end is for one of the participants to say "I Quit" into a live mic in front of the thousands of fans in the arena and the millions watching at home. Naturally, I Quit matches tend to be among the most brutal affairs one can see in wrestling.
    • Austin lost his "I Quit" match vs. Bret Hart by passing out while in Hart's "Sharpshooter" hold, rather than submit. He'd rather deal with enough pain to make him lose consciousness than give up. That was just about the turning point...
    • Later, when Austin made his Face–Heel Turn at WrestleMania X-Seven by selling out to Vince McMahon four years later, he was put in a cage match with the Rock the next night. At one point, The Rock put him in the Sharpshooter just like Hart had. This time, Austin started tapping out almost immediately and would have lost the match had Vince not distracted the referee. Symbolically taking away the thing that made him famous in the first place, this pretty much locked in Stone Cold's status as the new heel (as well as him beating up on announcer Jim Ross).
    • Applies in real life as well. Austin's neck was infamously broken in a ring accident when Owen Hart botched a Tombstone Piledriver on him. Despite being temporarily paralyzed and in agony he still pinned Hart to win the match.
  • Terry Funk, both in Kayfabe and Real Life. During a tag team match in All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1977, Abdullah the Butcher and the Sheik (Ed Farhat) cut up Funk's arms to the point that his brother Dory Funk Jr. had to take over against both foreign madmen. Funk rolled out of the ring, got his arms taped up while in the crowd, and came back in the ring to continue the match, which the Funks won by DQ. After spending years in gruelling matches around the world, most wrestlers adopt a safer style to protect their mobility and avoid serious injury. Funk decided instead to start taking part in gruesome Japanese Deathmatches involving barbed wire, fire and broken glass. He also spent much of the 1990s in ECW, where he was severely burned by a flaming chair shot and badly lacerated and almost garroted in the Born To Be Wired match mentioned above, among other pleasantries. He also had the bright idea as he approached his 50s, to start incorporating Moonsaults into his moveset, which almost invariably led to him landing on the concrete floor, the steel barricade or piles of foreign objects. In Beyond the Mat, Funk's doctor examines him and tells him that his knees are so badly damaged that he shouldn't even be able to walk, let alone wrestle. Heeding this advice, Funk only continued to wrestle in hardcore matches for another ten years or so.
  • Kenta fucking Kobashi. This defined him. He lost over 60 matches in a row in AJPW, was constantly pinned in tag matches, and overall was made to look like he just barely lost for quite some time. This even worked its way into his finisher, the Burning Hammer, where he was so determined to beat rival/friend Mitsuharu Misawa he had to invent a move that no has kicked out of yet.
  • Jacqueline once separated her shoulder in a match with Candi Devine in Kansas early in her career and finished the match.
  • All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling had this enshrined in their motto, "Victory Through Guts".
  • Madusa was named the most inspirational wrestler of 1990 in Zenjo after her nose was broken for the fourth time.
  • Davey Boy Smith went into the main event at SummerSlam 92 with a raging staph infection in his knee that had taken him out of action for two months. Nobody was sure if he could carry his part of the match, but he did and he won the Intercontinental Title from his brother-in-law Bret Hart in front of over eighty thousand fans in his homeland.
  • The Sheik and Bobo Brazil are often cited as two professional wrestlers who went too long and should have retired years beforehand. During his sixties in May of 1992, The Sheik teamed up with Sabu against Atsushi Onita and Tarzan Goto in a No Ropes Barbed Wire Fire Death Match which went to a No-Contest when the wrestlers refused to stay in the ring after it started melting. The Sheik was the last wrestler to leave the ring and suffered third degree burns as a result. Once he was out of the ring Sabu threw water on The Sheik and the Sheik berated Sabu because that prevented him from throwing a fireball at the fleeing Onita and Goto! Only after the match was officially called off did The Sheik agree to go to the hospital and have his burns treated.
  • MATT. FUCKING. HARDY. JEFF. FUCKING. HARDY. Both of them proved to be a determinator during any time they were baby faces, in fact, in Matt's latest Face–Heel Turn a significant change was he gave up in a match as a way to prove he was no longer the good ol' Matt we all loved to watch. Before that his Nickname was 'the man who will not die'. After his girlfriend cheated on him with Adam "Edge" Copeland and his contract expired at the same time, they waited a while before re-signing him so they could have the storyline of him taking them both on in a super Roaring Rampage of Revenge that only ended when in a Ladder match, Edge knocked him onto the ropes & tied him down while evil Ex Lita put him in a crucifix hold, literally meaning you have to hold him down & tie him to something to make him stop.
  • The Great Sasuke was taking on Último Dragón in the finals of a J Cup Tournament for all eight belts. Early on in the match, Sasuke takes a diving kick to the head. Aside from being a bit loopy for a moment, he went on to win the match. It was later revealed that he had wrestled the entire match with his skull fractured and nearly broken and he kept on fighting despite it, either enduring or ignoring the pain that had to be going through him.
  • Kurt Angle won a gold medal in the 1996 Olympics "with a broken freakin' neck!" He's only gotten more unstoppable since.
  • ECW's Sabu LIVES this trope. He has been cut up in barbed-wire matches, wrestled with broken bones, had some of his TEETH knocked out when he missed a table spot and only took TWO nights off, despite doctors telling him he would have needed to have his jaw wired. In his infamous ECW Born To Be Wired barbed-wire match with Terry Funk, Sabu tore his bicep completely open on the barbed wire and continued to take punishment from Funk while repairing the wound with masking tape, before finishing the match (which only ended when both men were so tangled up together in barbed wire that they had to be cut apart by ring technicians armed with pliers).
  • Triple H is also an example. In what was probably the greatest tag team match in Raw history, which also had "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit involved, he tore his quad muscles about right before he was supposed to be put in a Walls of Jericho (Jericho's signature submission hold) on the announcer table. Jericho asked him if he should think of something else to do, and Triple H told him to carry on with the spot. This probably hurt like something that would have hurt like hell, but Chris Jericho, who throughout his autobiography is not too fond of Triple H, put it best- "That right there is a tough mofo."
    • This Troper remembers that match fondly and, after knowing happened to Trips during that match, made me swear to never question the man's loyalty to the business nor his will to see those things through to the end. The WWE fanbase apparently was in this mindset as well, given the return MSG gave The Game when he returned.
  • Who can forget Mick Foley's Hell in a Cell Match against The Undertaker. Mick's a determinator to begin with.
    • Ironically, Mick's had two high-profile "I quit" matches and lost both of them. However, neither was because of the pain being too much. In the first match, the Rock cheated by playing a recording of Mick yelling "I quit! I quit!! I QUIT!!!" (from a pre-match taunt) while Foley was on his face unconscious. The second match was a loss because Ric Flair threatened to harm Melina Perez if he didn't quit. Caring more about Melina's safety than his own reputation, Mick obliged. (Melina promptly pulled a Face–Heel Turn.)
  • During a Unified Triple Crown match in January of 1999, Toshiaki Kawada hit Mitsuharu Misawa with a back fist so hard that he broke his own wrist and forearm. He proceeded to not only wrestle for another fifteen minutes in this state but won the match by inventing a new move, which was dubbed the "original power bomb" or "ganso bomb" when his broken bones made a regular power bomb impossible.
  • On that note, Mitsuharu Misawa himself, given two of pro wrestling's biggest stars had to invent the two top contenders for the most dangerous move in pro wrestling just to defeat him. His never say die attitude applied in the ring and out of it, on camera and off, and it ultimately proved to be Misawa's end. Fans liked Misawa, but they didn't like his hand picked successor Go Shiozaki, so Misawa literally worked himself to death in Pro Wrestling NOAH trying to get Shiozaki over.
  • During the road to becoming Ring of Honor's first pure wrestling champion, it seemed everyone had conspired to target AJ Styles's knee, but in spite of every opponent in every round going after it, including CM Punk dropping it on concrete in the finals, he still won the belt.
  • This is how Austin Aries usually beat Bryan Danielson. Danielson usually proved to be the superior wrestler, especially during the early ROH days of Aries and Generation Next, but even during their Testing The Limit match where Aries really only had the advantage once during a forty five minute time span that he spent the majority of being dominated as Danielson worked to break Aries down from the neck all the way down to his toes, he still couldn't beat Aries simply because he wouldn't quit, leading Danielson to make a mistake during a tope in his over zealousness to finally put Aries away.
  • Bryan Danielson, both on and off the clock. He continued defending the Ring of Honor World Championship belt for three months with a separated shoulder, just so that his Story Arc could play out properly; this included an epic 45-minute match with KENTA (who is coincidentally Kenta Kobashi's protege) in which KENTA spent most of the match kicking Danielson in the shoulder, only for Danielson to power through the pain and become the first ROH wrestler to defeat KENTA.
    • It's how he went from scrawny nobody to World Champion beloved by entire stadiums. WrestleMania XXX was the crowning indicator of this, as Danielson went 50 minutes (on a 4-hour card) with an injured shoulder, against Triple H, Batista, and Randy Orton, the latter two in a triple-threat match, all three of whom outweigh him by a few dozen pounds, to win the grand prize on the biggest stage of them all.
  • This is how John Cena has been presented since 2005: As a man who may not be the strongest or biggest, but will never ever give up even when the odds are stacked against him. He even has "Never Give Up" appear on his shirts as a slogan of sorts. This also implies real life: if he's been injured and taken surgery, expect him coming back into the ring within at least half the amount of time it takes normal people.
    • It's the sole reason he won't lose any "I Quit" matches.
  • Nigel McGuinness proves that Bryan Danielson isn't the only determinator to hold the ROH World Championship belt. This man, whose signature maneuvers are a wide array of lariats, tore both his biceps towards the end of his title reign. Rather than drop the belt, McGuinness changed his wrestling style to show that even without use of his biggest weapons, or his arms in general, he was still willing to defend his title in any way possible. Much like Danielson, he also defeated KENTA, also while being kicked mercilessly in his arms throughout the match. Two years later, it's still difficult to watch him crumple in pain clutching his biceps while trying to put on a memorable show for the fans.
  • As CM Punk once noted about The Undertaker, "I know what it takes to put him down; I don't know what it takes to keep him down".
    • The Undertaker's embodiment of this trope is even more evident when he wrestles at WrestleMania. For reasons unknown (in kayfabe), The Undertaker cannot be defeated at WrestleMania. Period. It got to the point that, at WrestleMania XVII against Triple H, Undertaker had been beaten so badly that Jerry Lawler (on commentary) remarked that the way Undertaker was struggling to do his signature sit-up indicated that his nervous system was basically all but destroyed by the physical damage he'd taken. Once again... Triple H kicked The Undertaker's ass so badly that Undertaker's nervous system was on the verge of being irreparably destroyed. And Undertaker won the match. It's like Implacable Man and Determinator all in one.
  • Chris Jericho wrestles with one ACL note . Independent wrestler MsChif wrestles with none.
    • Earlier in his career, Jericho wrestled with a forearm bone broken earlier that day from a failed attempt to learn the shooting star press. It wound up being the bloodiest match in the history of SMW, achieving the fabled ranking of 1 on the Muta Scale.
  • Ivelisse Vélez is unfortunately known for losing two opportunities with WWE to injury, but less known is the nine years she wrestled with a torn rotatory cuffnote . In an interview in which it was brought up, she ensured it had steadily been getting better over time.
  • If you watched WWE in the summer of 2011, these annoying words should sound familiar too: Just One More Match
  • Zack Ryder is slowly working his way up: from nobody to "Internet Champion" to WWE United States Heavyweight Champion, he worked his ass off to get far. And in the month of January 2012, he's been battered, bruised, beaten and broken at the hands of Kane and yet it took the Big Red Monster the whole month to get that guy down to the ground.
  • One year after leaving it all behind, 911 Wrestling's magazine put La Rosa Negra on the top of a list of the toughest women wrestlers in the fifty states. Toward the start of the year she received a concussion in a match with Su Yung that left her unable to stand for more than a minute before collapsing and still finished the match with a frog splash before stumbling her way out of the arena. Later she would be told she required reconstructive surgery on both her ACLs following a match with Datura in World Wonder Ring STARDOM, a match where she defeated Datura with a death valley bomb and frog splash in spite barely being able to stand and in tears due to her knees, but ended up back in wrestling shape through self rehab when insurance wouldn't pay for the operation soon enough for her liking. This effort got her nemesis Malia Hosaka to break kayfabe and start a go fund me campaign to get La Rosa surgery.
  • This is a major element of Dolph Ziggler's character- the guy just will not stay down, despite being on the lighter side of the roster (and using a number of high-risk, self-destructive moves). More in-depth details can be found on his Awesome page, but for now we only need to mention one: 2014 Survivor Series, where he took savage beatings from Rusev, Kane, Luke Harper and Seth Rollins (making him the designated Ricky Morton in the 5-on-5 tag match between Team Cena and Team Authority) and yet managed to single-handedly take out all four of them himself (Rusev by count-out after dodging a table-to-table splash outside the ring, Harper by roll-up and Kane and Rollins with the Zig Zag) to be the last man standing and win it for his team.
  • One of the biggest talking points of 2022's Hell in a Cell was Cody Rhodes facing Seth Rollins inside the cell with his shoulder legitimately injured after too much strain during training, and unlike other times where injuries aren't apparent, this time the purple made it clear there was something wrong. Despite this, Cody still went out and wrestled, and while some feel like WWE should have prevented him from getting even more hurt, most will agree it made his win over Seth even more cathartic and cemented him as his father's son in terms of grit and fighting spirit.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Donkey Hodie of the show by the same name. She's not about to let some problem get in the way of something she wants or something she/she and her friends are doing, at least not for long. It's pretty much the whole point of the show, being an Edutainment Show with stated goals of teaching resilience and perseverance.

    Theatre 
  • John Adams in 1776. At the start of the play, he's proposed independence twenty-three times despite the fact that it's always shut down even before debate. He wavers after the Southern walkout, but Abby's reminder of his beliefs and her timely gift of saltpeter gets him back downstairs and badgering his stricken colleagues to whip some votes. And the Eleven O'Clock Number number he sings right after has him reaffirming that he will not give up on independence.
    For I have crossed the Rubicon
    Let the bridge be burn'd behind me!
    Come what may, come what may...
    COMMITMENT!
  • Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman is a deconstruction of this mindset. He'll never give up his Tragic Dream of being a successful salesman. But that also leaves his family perpetually sad and broke, and causes Willy no small amount of undue stress. Several times, it's commented that Willy should see that he needs to quit, but he won't; the inability to Know When to Fold 'Em is his Fatal Flaw. His complete lack of passion for what he does is ultimately self-destructive.
  • Hamlet : Laertes is dead set on avenging his father's death. Even when it involves conspiring with the King of Denmark to kill the Prince. Even when the Prince apologizes and Laertes' own plot starts to prick at his conscience.
  • Henrik Ibsen had more than one determinator in his plays. The most awesome example is Solveig. When she decided that Peer Gynt was worth it, she gave up her former life, went to find him in the mountains, where he had to live the life of an outlaw. When he suddenly bailed out of her life, she decided to wait until he came back. He did so after more than forty years, only to collapse in her arms, presumably dying. The sheer awesomeness of it is underlined by the fact that she states he gave her life meaning.
    • And then, of course: Determination, thy name is Brand!
  • Les Misérables has several.
    • Inspector Javert is the most obvious. He will not stop attempting to quash any kind of potentially illegal behaviour, to the point that when confronted with the idea that The Law and justice might not be as black or white as he'd previously thought, his solution is to kill himself rather than live in this new reality. He pursues Valjean for nearly two decades.
    • Enjolras who is so determined to help the poor that he leads a rebellion to overthrow the corrupt and careless French government, utterly confident that people will follow him- which many of his friends and several unnamed citizens do. Even when it becomes clear that the students are on their own, he refuses to leave the barricade and makes one last stand, calling for the world to finish the job for him before getting his Dying Moment of Awesome.
    • After the Bishop saves him from a return to prison, Jean Valjean will not give up on his own soul's redemption or (later on) his daughter's happiness, and he will not abandon a person in need. Even when it would make his life a lot less dangerous and difficult.
    • Fantine will do anything, and sacrifice anything, in order to provide for her beloved daughter. This dedication carries her to the end of her life, in more ways than one.
  • In Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote's Determinator frame of mind is expressed in "The Impossible Dream":
    This is my quest, to follow that star
    No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
    To fight for the right, without question or pause
    To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause...
    And the world will be better for this:
    That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
    Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
    To reach the unreachable star.
  • A staple Sophoclean Tragic Hero type:
    • Ajax features Ajax as a man who is determined to follow his will, no matter what, without the help of the gods. This is very dangerous.
    • Oedipus' determined thirst for knowledge, even when the truth is utterly horrible, is his most important character trait. Even when he blinds himself and is forced to live as a beggar, he still operates by sheer force of will in both Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus.
    • In Electra, the main character will not give up mourning her father until he's avenged, will not act like a woman and accept her place, and will not submit to her stepfather Aegisthus' and Clytemnestra's abuse. When she loses all hope of salvation (thinking Orestes is dead) and has been told of her parents plans to seal her in a cave to die, she decides to try and kill Aegisthus herself, in spite of being a woman.
  • Sweeney Todd, in his Sondheim incarnation. Survives fifteen years in a penal colony, escapes, flees to the coast, builds himself a fucking raft and tries to sail to London from Australia. Of course, he gets picked up by Anthony and the good ship Bountiful en route, but still...
    • Just to underline the above: Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years' hard labour, and was told that he'd be lucky if he survived eighteen months. Sweeney must have been a terminator in human form to survive fifteen years, and have enough strength to escape successfully.
  • In Villains Tonight!, after briefly considering giving up, Hades remembers Captain Hook and his relentless pursuit of Peter Pan and vows never to throw in the towel.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
    • The protagonist in every game. No matter how much the odds are stacked against them, they refuse to give up, and if they're on the verge of doing so, someone will convince them to keep going. On the same token, except for Winston Payne, almost every prosecutor and witness refuses to give in easily, no matter how much evidence and logic is thrown their way.
    • The villain you confront in the final case of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. Quercus Alba, an ambassador, is the kingpin of a smuggling ring and has ties with the KG-8 incident and its second occurance (case 4). Edgeworth tries to prove that Alba was the one who killed Manny Coachen, but no matter how much logic and evidence Edgeworth throws his way, Alba never gives in and keeps demanding more proof. The entire last half of the case is devoted to just cross examining Alba until he finally cracks.
    • Phoenix Wright himself is a notable case in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. Despite no longer being a lawyer and being accused of murder in the first case, he still does everything he can to prove who the true killer is. The MASON segment of the game that has you looking for clues in the past and present also shows how Phoenix was so determined to find out who cost him his career that he spent seven years trying to solve the mystery. He eventually does find the answer with a bit of help from Apollo.
    • The final case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice has a very big example for Apollo, with his team also getting credit for standing by his side through it all. Even after finding out his adoptive father, the defendant, is already dead, getting threatened with execution on the spot, and offered a full acquittal for the defendant if he only accepts the trial ending, Apollo refuses to stop seeking justice, and manages to dethrone the queen, the true culprit, right then and there in the courtroom.
  • Takeshi in Ever17 comes down with Tief Blau, hasn't eaten in over a day, has been running around constantly when not passed out, is coughing up blood and suffers some really nasty decompression sickness right after being slammed into a wall. Then he swims through frigid, lightless water to rescue his love interest, swims back still without having rested and finally escapes. Then he's jettisoned out of a submarine to save his love interest again and sits on the ocean floor for a while, having drowned. And then a disembodied time traveler wakes him up, at which point he swims through the bottom of the ocean back into IBF, saves Coco and still lives to the story's True End. Oh, and he was dead/frozen on the ocean floor for at least long enough for a small robotic dog to swim down and recover the disc he was carrying. Three hundred feet down.
  • Fate/stay night:
    • Shirou Emiya takes this to an unhealthy extreme. Not only does he refuse to give up on his goal of becoming a Hero of Justice in the face of undeniable proof of exactly where that path takes him, he even lives this in seemingly small things in his day-to-day life that the vast majority of people can't even comprehend persisting at, like practicing the small bit of magic he knows every single night, which causes a feeling that is described as a hot iron poker being shoved down his spine. This is taken up a notch when you understand the nature of his Reality Marble: a Mental World shaped by his desire to be a hero and his own very determination for accomplish it. When he is using a diferent incantantion that Archer is almost a symbol of how his determination had overcome the Servant's. Say some when you're just capable to be more determinated that your own future self!
    • All the above was just from the first route. The game has three, and the the third is far worse for Shirou. By the Normal End, he's a walking corpse powered only by his determination to destroy the Holy Grail.
    • So he doesn't die when he is killed?
    • Another example of this would be his (according to Merlin) quite-literally-endless pursuit of the golden-haired girl, eternally waiting for him on the fields of gold. Shirou likely followed the same path as Archer; however, unlike Archer, he did not regret his life, nor did he make a deal with the World to become a Counter Guardian, as he had to keep moving towards Saber. After an eternity of searching, and an eternity of waiting, Shirou dies and reunites with Saber on the endless fields of Avalon. Putting up with an eternity of solitude (in Saber's case) and an eternity of endless searching (for Shirou) without ever once losing hope (which would break the prophecy and stop their reunion) that they'll meet again qualifies them both.
    • Lancer actually has this as one of his skills; his ability Marshall increases his strength when he is in greater danger and makes it that so long as he has a body he will be able to fight. More to the point you can't Cherry Tap him to death because of his level with this skill. It would take a Noble Phantasm level attack to do him in. A shining example of this would be his death in the Unlimited Blade Works route.
    • Shirou isn't alone in this regard in the franchise. Fate/Grand Order gives us three especially noteworthy cases of Determinators in Rama, Bedivere, and Gilgamesh.
      • During the E Pluribus Unum Singularity, Rama has his heart pierced by Cu Chulainn Alter's Gae Bolg, and the lance's curse prevents any healing from affecting it. Despite this, Rama absolutely refuses to die until he can see his wife, Sita, one last time.
      • Then, in the Camelot singularity, Bedivere takes the trope and cranks it up. At the very end, the player learns from Dr. Roman that Bedivere was still a living human. In the world of Fate/Grand Order, Bedivere had failed to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, as per Artoria's final order. To remedy his mistake, Bedivere spent fifteen hundred years trying to find Artoria to return the holy sword to her. This quest took a severe toll on his soul, to the point that it would eventually cease to exist altogether if he pressed onward. He still did so, and at the end of the Singularity, after having Excalibur molded into a silver arm that drained his soul with each use and having to fight his fellow Knights of the Round Table, he succeeded. His degree of determination in doing this and the heroic acts he performed in the process ultimately earned him a place within the Throne of Heroes, thus averting cessation of existence by allowing him to live on as a Heroic Spirit. Not only that, he was given the Star Attribute, only given to heroes who changed the course of human history. By sheer determination Bedivere was only heroic spirit recognized for helping stop the end of human history.
      • Lastly, we have Gilgamesh in the Babylonia Singularity. Make no mistake, he will defend Uruk and its people from any threat, no matter what. Not even Tiamat, the Mesopotamian goddess of creation and one of the Beasts of Humanity, an immortal and unstoppable foe, could keep Gilgamesh from protecting the last bastion of humanity; when she mortally wounded him, he responded by using his own body to summon his Archer self to fight Tiamat. The ensuing battle is one of the few instances where Gilgamesh brought the full brunt of his power to bear against his foe.
  • The Fruit of Grisaia: When protagonist Kazami Yuuji decides to protect someone there is no stopping him: Getting beaten, stabbed, multiple gunshot wounds, he even shrugs off shotgun blasts. In an added touch of reality though, he doesn't just walk off some of these.
  • Katawa Shoujo has not only Hisao Nakai, but Emi Ibarazaki, the star of Yamaku High's track team, despite her lack of legs below the knee. If Emi's route is chosen, she attempts to push Hisao away (because she's scared she'll lose him), but his own drive refuses to let her. If you get Emi's Good Ending via speaking to her at her house, Hisao discusses both this trope and How We Got Here by comparing her determination to push him away with his own determination to get closer to her.
  • Little Busters! has Kyousuke. He reset the world countless times searching for the one way to make Riki and Rin strong enough to survive without him, and even when one of his plans turned out disastrously and he sunk into guilt and despair, he still never gave up. On top of that, every night while he slept he would replay the scene of the crash, crawling on his stomach through darkness in an attempt to reach the oil leak before it catches fire and explodes. When he finally reaches it and realises that when he wakes up he'll be reset back to his starting position? Well, he just needs to change his starting position. How? Well, his starting position is based on when he died, so naturally he has to kill himself. So he does so without hesitation. It works. Also, Kyousuke's plan was to turn Riki into one of these. It also works, and by the end of Refrain, Riki will do anything necessary to help his friends.
  • Snake becomes this in the "Safe Ending" of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. Despite taking six bullets to the chest, he is still strong enough to take down Ace, the guy who killed his little sister Clover on that route.
  • Apparently, in Princess Waltz, badass and Determinator go hand in hand. This is even lampshaded.
  • The novella for Spirit Hunter: NG expands on the moment where the midwife made off with the Urashima Woman's baby. After giving birth, having her placenta fall out, and being assaulted and drugged by the midwife, she still manages to get to her feet and track her upstairs. Afterwards she falls down the stairs, but is still alive even then. It's only getting locked in a suitcase and dumped into a lake that finally puts her down - and even then, she comes back as a spirit and gets her revenge on the midwife.
  • Battler from Umineko: When They Cry. He steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the existence of witches (or at least refuses to admit that they're causing the murders) in a universe that is not shy in its attempts to break him. As a When They Cry protagonist, being a Determinator is a requirement. The universe REALLY pushes it, though.

    Webcomics 
  • The canadian lumberjack in Antihero for Hire certainly adheres to the trope strongly, as seen here. Some of MANTIS's agents, especially the elites, qualify.
  • Fern from Awful Hospital, fighting her way through incomprehensible weirdness to get her kid back.
  • Jozk of Charby the Vampirate refuses to fail his mission, fighting someone he knows is an immortal teleporter, managing to actually delay her even after she gives him fatal injuries, and continuing on his way until his body literally cannot move anymore.
  • Ludwig in A Day With Bowser Jr. He is so hell-bent on murdering Bowser Jr and claiming back the Koopa throne, that literally all of his dialogue revolves around his desire for the throne. He's even thinking about killing Bowser Jr while bedridden and severely injured!
  • Denma the Quanx: Edel. In his pursuit of his goal, which is to live freely with his True Love Nell he: spends time in prison, loses over 100 pounds, becomes a guard, leaves the church, sells his body as a prostitute, kills a dozen people, escapes prison (twice), walks directly into a war zone, and steals a spaceship.
  • Dominic Deegan has The Infernomancer. No matter if he's devastated by holy magic, blasted by chaos infused black magic, banished to an alternate dimension full of eldritch abominations, or sent directly to hell, he just... Doesn't... Die...
  • Dragon Ball Multiverse:
  • Dabura manages to survive a giant fucking hole in his chest far longer than should be possible.
  • The same can be said of U13 Kakarot who survived a sucking puncture wound long enough to wake up and call for medical attention, when everyone fully expected him to be dead after U18 Vegeta was through with him.
  • Dumbing of Age: This praise from Sarah
    You will do it. It might work, it might not, but you will do it. And you will keep doing it, for her. Because you are relentless. You will never stop doing whatever you can for her, ever. And because of that, ultimately, she will be fine.
  • El Goonish Shive: Nanase was the only one able to protect Ellen from the Knight Templar trying to kill her, but the only thing she could do was summon a doll-sized version of herself at Ellen's position, though she could still throw full-powered punches in that form. She would get a few hits in, and then the Knight Templar would destroy the doll, which would make her experience the pain of death. So she'd summon another one... and another... and another...
  • Girl Genius:
    • "Let me tell you about Airman Higgs." Airman Higgs got Baron Wulfenbach out of a burning airship and to safety. During which, he had to deal with a bunch of monsters, an irate Captain Dupree, and a goose, breaking three out of four limbs in the process and getting an infected bite. He managed to get to a town despite his injuries, where he got shot in his last undamaged limb. He informed the local garrison of Wulfenbach's predicament, then passed out. He then shows up here and here fighting off a Muse that is possessed/occupied by the Heterodyne Castle's AI. Then he comes back again - even getting run though by a sword didn't slow him down for long...
      "You cannot kill Mr. Higgs. You cannot stop Mr. Higgs. You cannot even run from Mr. Higgs."
    • Gil has his Determinator moments as well, especially when Agatha is in danger:
      "I am Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, little man - and there is nothing I couldn't do, had I cause! And now... now I have one!"
  • Homestuck:
    • Sollux Captor manages to get Feferi Peixes into the Medium while he and the rest of the troll species were being mind raped to death by the cry of an Eldritch Abomination. Feferi later returns the favor. Sollux does it again when he telekinetically flies the troll's asteroid toward the beacon of the Green Sun, their only hope of survival, at the rapid speed necessary to get there before the beacon's path fades. The strain is so great that he bleeds from every orifice before ultimately dying permanently of it.
    • Terezi Pyrope also deserves mention, having raised herself almost completely alone from infancy on Alternia, a freaking Death World. This would be amazing already without the fact that she is blind for a good portion of this time, thanks to Vriska. This gets brought to even further extremes before, during, and after "Game Over". She takes an absolutely merciless beating from an Ax-Crazy Gamzee that should have already been enough to kill her, with him slamming her face multiple times into concrete and piledriving her into the ground as well. She is still able to attack Aranea in an attempt to stop her, but Aranea uses telekinesis to first cause Terezi to run herself through with her own sword, then throws her into a mountain. Terezi still survives this, flies down to another planet where John is located, headbutts him, and later uses her powers to come up with a plan to fix the timeline and makes a whole long list for John before finally succumbing to her wounds, on her own terms.
    • Kanaya, after getting fatally shot by Eridan, manages to pick herself up and escape offscreen. During Nepeta's time wandering around, she finds a trail of Jade blood and a destroyed transportalizer. When Kanaya confronts the three who've gone rogue, she's wearing Eridan's cape around her wound as a sash, which has since soaked through with her blood, and she still takes them down.
    • Gamzee Makara has recently taken things to a new level with the revelation that he has managed to survive through will alone, throughout every timeline, including ones in which a psychic shriek was emitted that is fatal to his entire species. He's also still moving in the alpha timeline, despite taking 5 minutes worth of automatic fire from Caliborn's Machine Gun.
    • Vriska is obsessed with being the most important character of the plot, essentially orchestrating (Or at least so she thinks) every major event of the Alpha timeline. Even after she died, she's still hell bent in being the one to defeat lord English by rallying up an army of ghosts in the void between universes. Taking this trope to its logical extent, she will even directly challenge the narrator/writer of the comic psychically in order to get back in the spotlight and finish her Story Arc properly. Perhaps more impressive are her actions during the revenge cycle. After Terezi causes the cueball to blow up in her face (removing her right arm and eye) she regains consciousness and immediately performs a double psychic reacharound (mindcontrolling Tavros to use his powers to control a dragon to use its connection to Terezi to mind control her into blinding herself) to get her revenge, and is still mad enough to taunt Terezi over a chat client before passing out due to bloodloss.
    • Karkat might qualify as well, because on Alternia, being (as previously stated) is a Death World, where just surviving is a feat, not only does he survive, he does so living in a world where his ENTIRE EXISTENCE is a crime punishable by death because of his blood colour, but he does so while living in close proximity to other trolls. Which means, because of troll biology, he would never be able to cry, blush, bleed or have sex. EVER. The last of which, in troll society, also means death. Terezi teases him about it mercilessly.
    • Caliborn. It is impossible to win a session with just one player. Caliborn does it anyway. He is a Time player, which means he can go back in time and redo things until he gets them right. Out of sheer stubborness, he achieves all of the levels, by himself, just by level grinding for years and years, solves all of the puzzles despite his learning disability, and eventually becomes the most powerful villain in the universe. On a lesser level, Caliborn's art is absolutely terrible. Everyone who sees it tells him that it is, and that he should stop drawing, but he draws anyway, confident that he will become a great artist. His art has improved immensely from the start of the story, from "incomprehensible" to "bad" to merely "poor", so that just goes to show he was right not to listen to the haters.
  • The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: Fructose Riboflavin, who has been trying to take over the Nemesite Empire for the better part of two thousand years. He's now very old and tired. He's pretty good at knowing when he's lost a battle, he can even be gracious about it, but he never concedes the war, and he's virtually impossible to keep locked up even briefly. Although his sheer frenzied desire for his goal can lead to occasional Villainous Breakdowns.
  • Jupiter-Men: When Quintin gets an idea in his head, he won't stop until he sees it through. Even when he's melting from extreme heat, he manages to pull himself together and lob acid at the Magitte's flower, banishing the invader back to Magi. But this is not always portrayed as a good thing. He has a tendency to get tunnel vision from being single-mindedly focused on achieving a goal, disregarding obvious pitfalls and how his actions affect others. Quintin gets into a lot of trouble precisely because he doesn't know when to quit and often disregards well-intentioned advice.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons: The Determinator is a character archetype in the internal mythology of the universe, and held to be one of the highest things to strive for. In-universe, the goddess Aesma is the archetypal determinator, always striving to be more than she is and never wavering in her path: For that, was given the title of Master of Want by The Creator YISUN. Quite a lot of the main character cast are also determinators to one degree or another, some (like Incubus) crossing the line into Fearless Fool by refusing to relent even when there is wisdom in it.
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • The side character O-Chul, whom Big Bad Xykon is speaking of in the Quotes Wiki. Just see for yourself.
      "It's Xykon's spell list. Or most of it, anyway."
      "Are you kidding?!? How did you get this??"
      "One saving throw at a time."
    • Roy himself sometimes displays Determinator qualities, especially right before Xykon kills him.
  • Jacob's persona of Target Man in Precocious, with the power to absorb all hits and keep getting up.
  • When Sammy arrives at the eponymous show in The Sanity Circus to find Attley, he will not let anything stop him. Not having to tear down the circus, not even being thrown head-first into a brick wall by magic. It takes a Safeguarde to stop him, and even that's because he was close to being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent:
    • Ever since his My Greatest Failure, Lalli would rather repair a mistake he did in a task while half asleep rather than leave it hanging. As one can guess, this tends to make him blind any new mistakes he may be making in the process until their consequences actually halt his progress.
    • The quality is greatly associated with Swedes, both by themselves and other nations. This ranges from maintaining a railway system in a country that consists of various settlements separated by Death World areas to Emil's own persistence at befriending a No Social Skills mage who speaks a language completely different from his own.
  • Anne from Sunstone puts a startlingly large amount of time and effort into getting Alan to cross dress. This infliction was caught by the fans when Sejic hinted this would actually happen after an outrageous amount of page views.
  • Lots of characters in Tower of God are more or less like this, since it's so largely concerned with people undertaking the long and almost impossible task of climbing the Tower.
    • The Hero Bam won't stop at anything when pursuing the things he cares about. It starts out with his determination to reunite with Rachel — he undertakes The Quest to climb the Tower just for that. He gains other goals later on, including saving practically everyone in trouble he comes across. He's unstoppable because he fears death less than things like losing his friends — and because he has Plot Armor, of course.
    • Wangnan never stops trying to climb the Tower, even though he's been stuck in the same place for ages and has (seemingly) no special abilities to compete with all the other Regulars. It becomes a bit of a Deconstructed Trope when it's revealed that numerous companions have died alongside him while trying, and the only reason he's not joined their fate long ago is probably that he's secretly unkillable.
    • Also deconstructed with Rachel. Reaching the top of the Tower is everything to her, but she has no special powers or destiny to help her, and she's not crazy like Bam to go charging in where she'd just get killed. So, unwilling as she is to give up, what's she going to do? Absolutely anything that works, no matter how dirty, starting with betrayal.
  • Vampire Girl:
    • Vampire Hunter and Goofy Idiot Sidekick will stop at nothing to rid society of vampires, of which Levana is no exception.
    • Laura will stop at nothing to figure out what has caused Levana's sudden and unexplained disappearances, even when other characters don't seem to feel any sort of urgency regarding the matter.
  • Weak Hero:
    • Ben is very difficult to take down in a fight, not only because of his impressive strength, but because he just never gives up. After fighting Jimmy Bae, Donald Na, four of their mooks, and protecting Alex from falling construction with his own body, Ben is still able to stand through the power of his instinct alone.
    • Once he becomes friends with Gray, there's nothing Eugene won't do to help him out. Teddy tries to steal his bag? Eugene clings to it until Teddy beats him down. Hyeongshin students gang up on the two of them? Eugene offers himself up to be beaten instead of Gray. Wolf starts to brutally beat up Gray? Eugene gets up from his own severe beating and clings to Wolf, begging him to stop. What Eugene lacks in muscle, he more than makes up for in spirit.
    • It's ultimately Changhui's tenacity that allowed him to take on the role of Cheongang's leader, even though Juwon was the candidate with better fighting skills. Even when faced with overwhelming odds, he still finds a way to come out top via pure grit.

    Web Animation 
  • AstroLOLogy: It's the main character trait of Capricorn that he has a very strict sense of commitment, meaning that if he wants something done, it's gonna get done no matter what. His strict sense of commitment often makes him a Butt-Monkey, the least well-treated of the cast.
  • DSBT InsaniT: Seth. In his own words; "Its gonna take more than an ass-kicking to kick my ass!"
  • Dreamscape: Dylan keeps going even against nigh-unstoppable villains trying to bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
    • Keela can be sent to an almost literal Hell, and she'll still stay strong.
  • If you aren't a mook in the Madness Combat universe, you are automatically this trope. And while most of them are dead, they died hard. Some of them multiple times!
  • Minilife TV: Abel is inspired by one of his role models, a manga hero known as the Tremendous Toriyama, to not give up so easily.
  • Over The Hills: The human and vehicle crews of the Penwyth Valley Railway are trying to keep their local heritage railway running so the people of the towns they serve won't have to face another hard winter without a railway to use if the roads ice up and become unusable again. They are determined to keep the trains running through any difficulties they face, be it mechanical, financial, or even PR.
  • Power Star gives us Luigi, depicted here as a valiant warrior who spends the majority of the series in pursuit of his hypnotized brother Mario and stopping him in his rampage. Even when the enemy far outnumbers him in power during the finale, Luigi still doesn't surrender and puts up one last duel with Devil Mario. Saying that he's a far cry from the cowardly video game character is a giant understatement, to put it lightly.
  • Tifa Lockheart in the fan film series Dead Fantasy is an insanely awesome representation of this trope. Throughout five shorts, she has been slapped with an axe capable of downing a skyscraper, beaten to a bleeding pulp, which involved literally having the Materia knocked out of her, jumped onto a train, been slashed quite a few times, filled with arrows like it was target practice, stabbed through the arm, and chained up by kusarigama. It takes Hayate's intervention to finally stop her.
  • Church of Red vs. Blue is basically this. He acts like he doesn't care and isn't very good at being The Hero, but if there's something he thinks has to be done, he never gives up until he accomplishes it. This goes as far as to him facing Wash and the Meta at the same time, after being shot, with just a pistol and Doc to help, after Tex is trapped in the memory unit in season 8. It doesn't work, but he still tried.
  • RWBY:
    • Ruby Rose believes in becoming a Huntress to protect people like a fairy tale hero. Yang reveals she's had this dream from a young age, so trained exceptionally hard to achieve it. Roman is so frustrated with her determination to thwart him that he beats her into the ground while yelling at her to give up and die like every other Huntsman in history. Ozpin tells Oscar that she's one of the rare people who have a spark inside them that can inspire others even in the darkest times, but also warns that it's a great burden few others will ever comprehend.
    • Ozpin has been fighting Salem for thousands of years with no hope of victory or end. He refuses to give up, constantly putting his hope in humanity no matter how often they fail; even his most loyal supporter Qrow criticises his perpetual optimism. Jinn reveals that Oz always returns to his divine mission, no matter how events may break him — and Salem has made it her mission to permanently break him. As he and Salem are both immortal, they cannot end their war by killing the other. By sowing division and chaos, Salem makes it impossible for Ozpin to fulfill his mission to prove to the gods that humanity is redeemable; meanwhile, Ozpin's refusal to give up helping humanity achieve harmony makes it impossible for Salem to achieve her own goal of convincing the gods that humanity is irredeemable. The fate of the world therefore rests on Ozpin's determination to keep going whatever the odds.
    • Summer Rose is discussed between Ruby and Qrow. As the heroes struggle to make decisions in the wake of learning about Salem's Complete Immortality, Ruby asks Qrow how he thinks her mother would have handled it. Qrow considers that for a moment, then says Summer would do exactly what Ruby is doing: even if she knew that there seems to be no way to defeat Salem, Summer would still have pressed on regardless.
    • For good or ill, General James Ironwood never abandons his vision of protecting others, alienating his own allies in the process. After failing to convince Ozpin to do things his way, he uses the Atlesian and Vale councils to override Ozpin's authority and gain control of Vytal Festival security. When he tries to single-handedly regain control of his flagship from the villains, he fights his drones on foot even after the ship crashes. In Atlas, he sacrifices his reputation by using Draconian measures to protect the kingdom, and his biological arm to defeat Watts in battle, vowing to do whatever it takes to stop Salem. Even when saving Atlas at everything else's expense turns everyone against him, he pursues his chosen path to the bitter end.
    • Hazel Rainart's Aura recharge rate is something special. While his Semblance allows him to Feel No Pain and shrug off blows that would normally be crippling, he's still vulnerable to damage, whether it be getting thrown like a ragdoll and pummeled through the entrance of a building courtesy of Nora, or being impaled courtesy of Weiss' Queen Lancer summon. However, Hazel amazes the heroes by still being able to fight afterwards; Nora notes that the former can recharge his Aura faster than she's ever seen and Qrow comments that it seems to be sheer force of willpower. While Ozpin says that "all" they need to do is get him to his limit, it's something none of them achieve by the end of the encounter, despite Hazel being vastly outnumbered. When Salem came to recruit him, Hazel killed her over and over until he couldn't lift his arms anymore. She then redirected his rage at Ozpin instead; Oscar later redirects his rage back at Salem; in the end, neither the Big Bad nor the Big Good can stop him, they can only manipulate or negotiate with him; in the end, he's willing to set himself on fire to stop Salem just long enough to buy the heroes a few precious hours to save an entire kingdom.
    • Neo is hellbent on vengeance, no matter the cost. She crosses two continents, endures working with Cinder, steals the Relic of Knowledge twice, blackmails the Fall Maiden for a shot at revenge, and while falling through a seemingly endless void, she attacks Ruby with the intent to kill in a last-ditch attempt at accomplishing her goal. In Volume 9, she successfully drives Ruby to suicidal despair, becoming the architect of her own defeat upon learning that Vengeance Feels Empty, which enables the Arc Villain to possess her Empty Shell. Once she escapes, she helps the heroes defeat the villain before choosing to Ascend so that she can take charge of her own destiny.
  • TP focuses on a toilet paper roll who's determined not to end up like his predecessors in the Disgusting Public Toilet he has found himself in. He spends a day and a night trying to escape from the hanger, and when Earl is about to rip some of his paper off, he finally manages to escape to the outside world, losing only a single square in the process.

    Web Original 
  • Out of the many badasses inhabiting AJCO, the Shrinking Violet with a stammer is the most determined. Egg has been kicked down and beaten up — physically, mentally and emotionally — more times than is possible to count but just keeps going. No matter how many times her attempts to help have gone sour, she will not stop trying to help. She gets just that little bit stronger every time she picks herself up — she'll probably be a Badass Pacifist when she's older.
  • Can You Spare a Quarter?: "Nothing short of wild animals" is going to stop Graham from going back to Jamie after their second encounter.
  • By 2011, CardGamesFTW' — the YouTube account of LittleKuriboh — was up to five bans.
  • Deviant: Several characters are this, including the main character, who literally has a power that gets stronger the more willpower she's running on. Tsunami is notorious for this, too, something aided by her incredible endurance.
  • Fantendo's user Cloverfield Monster. Despite being lynched and told to leave, he never gives up on making games.
  • In The Gamer's Alliance, Leopold and Orestes stop at nothing to get the job done.
  • Jesse Cox ran into a Game-Breaking Bug during the final battle of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance which caused him to lose the final boss battle repeatedly. Follows of his social media know he was attempting it for several hours and was on the verge of giving up. And then...
    I give up on giving up. I am a gamer. I CANNOT walk away from this stupid ass boss. BUG OR NO BUG. I will win.
    • He then works out how to do it by changing resolutions during the fight.
  • The girlfriend of the Kaizo Trap music video, after 61 on-screen deaths (and many more off-screen, judging by the bloodstains) hits a game over on the penultimate bossthe boyfriend she's been seeking the whole time, who killed her because she dropped her guard after seeing his silhouette. On the Continue screen, she's given the option to either return to the beginning of the very first level, or leave the game and return to the safety of the real world - without her prize, and with no guarantee that she can return. The game she's trapped in is a Platform Hell, and she has no tools or cheats she can use to make the playthrough easier. She weeps as she looks between the two options for several seconds. And then she chooses Yes. And she's been trapped in that video game for months. At least, if the state of the house in the ending is anything to go by.
  • Levelengine plays Super Mario World ROM Hacks savestateless, only using savestates on Kaizo hacks. Even then, Game Genie is never used unless absolutely necessary.
  • LordKaT is the brain behind the Until We Win videos, where he plays obscenely difficult video games and does not stop until he does in fact beat it.
  • In a Meta sense, see the page picture up there? It went through the third biggest Image Pickin Forum with the crowner with the most number of images EVER. It was open for months (IIRC) without any examples with above zero points. But guess what, we made it, and there's the picture. The people who participated in the forum are all Determinators.
  • Wilbur Soot is this while participating in the 'Minecraft Championship, where he has made a point of participating in every iteration of the tournament in the first two seasons. This included MCC3, where, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic leading various governments to impose travel restrictions, Wilbur was stuck in Germany''. He wound up going to Nihachu's house to borrow her computer (keep in mind she wasn't even a contestant at this point), and used her setup to play while she sat next to him. During MCCPride 2021, his fire alarm went off mid-tournament, and while Philza had to sub in for the mini-game Battle Box while the fire brigade surveyed the building, Wilbur proceeded to play the entire rest of the tournament with the fire alarm blaring in the background.
  • The Museum:
    • Galka Kinddrummed started out as a slave toiling in an underground mine; having accidentally murdered his friend during a quarrel and escaped with severe wounds, he drags himself out of the tunnels and into the light. On the surface, he ends up finding out the overseers lied to them all and the Realm of Silver was a monster-infested wasteland, rather than a prosperous kingdom who their toil served well, before being chucked into battle against murderous hordes of Blighted Thralls. He gets turned into a vampire, forcing him to drink blood to survive and watch his companions wither away due to old age. Despite all that, he flatly refuses to give up and keeps fighting the good fight, even inspiring the Band of Wax to take up arms when their morale is at rock bottom.
    • Moldath Mournsaints has been been to Hell and back (both literally and otherwise), is cursed by various afflictions , to the point where he's little more than an ambulatory corpse in perpetual physical pain. He was going strong by the 850s; the only thing that forced him into retirement was his body becoming too rotten for him to fight without risking immediate death.
  • Movie Rehab: Sag does this show since 2013 with only few episodes and even less viewers, yet it doesn't stop him from working on his reviews.
    Sag: I may be a nobody amongst thousands of internet reviewers, but that won't stop me from doing what I love to do.
  • The Nostalgia Chick lives in either LA or New York City. She will run from either of these places to Virginia and Chicago to stalk and fight (and chloroform), respectively.
  • On that note, The Nostalgia Critic had run from Chicago to Pennsylvania for a brawl with the Nerd. More personally, the Scooby-Doo review had Rob reveal he's been trying for five years to get Critic to stop wallowing and play a poker game with him.
  • In some Pokémon playthroughs, Pikasprey'll set some utterly brutal challenges for himself, but won't stop trying until he either succeeds or can no longer continue.
  • The Protectors of the Plot Continuum. They have been led for a time by the Big Bad, faced a never-ending deluge of badfic, and been driven out of their headquarters by The Plague; however, they never stop the fight.
  • Roadkill's hosts, David Freiburger and Mike Finnegan, are this to an absurd degree. Design flaw in the crazy car build that they're attempting to put together holding up the project? Use hackery and jury rigging to make it work. Project car breaks down? Do whatever it takes to get it back on the road. Show up late to the event that they're participating in, or miss it altogether? Do gratuitous burnouts and donuts in the project car anyway. Do it all again the next episode. You can't keep these two down.
  • In The Salvation War, the First-Death humans (those who have died and are now in hell) that become main characters are basically this. Extra points because they mostly are members of the US Army. As one of its characters puts it:
    Lieutenant Jade "Broomstick" Kim: Okay, guys. We don’t have to eat. We don’t have to sleep. We heal ten times faster than ordinary humans. We’re the United States military. Let’s go blow up some baldricks.
  • In Savage Divinity Rain has gained the title of "The Undying Savage" partly because he refuses to die and give up in combat. He also train's to ridiculous lengths and expects his retinue to do the same.
  • "A Simple Walk (Into Mordor)", a set of videos featuring Chris and Kerry of Rooster Teeth setting out to walk the distance between (the shooting locations of) Hobbiton to Mordor. Despite the conditions they walked across, the blisters they busted, how incredibly poor their hygiene was and how many laws they had to break to get there, they did it in six days and buried the One Ring in the site of Mordor.
  • After Connor loses all his items in SMPLive, he gives a big inspirational speech to his chat about how "gamers never give up".
  • From Touhou: a Glimmer of an Outside World, there's Shujiko, who becomes one of these as soon as she draws upon her ability.
  • The Voices of Twitch Plays Pokémon do not stop until they have defeated the Champion. No matter how many Pokemon are released, no matter how many times they lose, and no matter how powerful the enemies in front of them become, they just won't stop. As a side-effect, their hosts come across as this in-universe - Red spent days in Team Rocket HQ, AJ spent three and a half hours to get out of the first route in the game, and Napoleon spent eight hours in the Great Marsh trying to avoid disaster. Camilla A Slash gets the prize, however, for fighting the Elite Four over one hundred times.
  • Worm has several, including the protagonist, but a few stand out even among these:
    • Chevalier, who at one point takes a laser to to gut, wakes up an hour later having had major battlefield surgery to stitch him back up, and promptly grabs his sword and armor before heading out to challenge Behemoth, one of the deadliest entities in existence, to a swordfight.
    • Taylor, who in spite of being cut in half first controls her landing so as to merely break her remaining limbs hitting the water, then invoke an Emergency Transformation device to return to the fight, and then continue fighting even as (late in the battle) the transformation is wearing off and her core organs are falling out of her abdominal cavity.
  • Zerosaga1 is known for having this attribute, even when playing extremely difficult games.

Alternative Title(s): The Determinator

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The Crest of Courage

Tai unlocks the power of his partner's Ultimate form by refusing to give up or run away even when the battle seems lost.

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