Heroic RROD: Difference between revisions

When a hero has pushed him/herself too hard physically and abruptly starts a physical breakdown. That one of these is coming may or may not be clear in advance, but when it starts, it will hit all at once.

 

 

Injuries sustained during '''Heroic RRODs''' should range between serious and fatal if left untreated (although rarely crippling), possibly leading to a case of [[You Are Already Dead]]. Also a common cause of [[You Can Barely Stand]]. This is the Heroic Red Ring Of Death.

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* In ''[[Armitage III|Armitage III: Dual-Matrix]]'', Armitage has a [[Super Mode]], complete with a glowing red circle on her back, that would have killed her if she [[Tim Taylor Technology|used it too much]]. Her daughter managed to stop her with the movie's [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]].

* This happens to Ciel in ''[[Black Butler]]''. Already a pampered, but somewhat frail boy he joins Noah's Circus to find out the whereabouts of children that have recently been disappearing. He's only there a day before the mix of the cold weather and the new strain being put on his weak body takes its toll and he ends up vomiting violently. As it turns out he has {{spoiler|asthma and although its symptoms haven't turned up in the three years Sebastian has been with him the sudden stress on his body on top of a cold he caught takes him out with a high fever and he's forced to rest, despite his retaliation.}} Keep in mind the series takes place in the 1880's and that such a condition would be much more life threatening than it is today.

** {{spoiler|[[Nigh Invulnerable|Sebastian]]}} gets one in chapter 65, nearly collapsing after {{spoiler|being [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice]] by the Undertaker, getting Ciel off a ship that's been ''chopped in half'', and eradicating the zombie horde, while on a rowboat in the middle of the Atlantic.}}

** Gon, too, undergoes major setback after essentially {{spoiler|using every ounce of his potential growth in nen all at once to demolish Neferpitou, resulting in turning the tables of the [[Curb Stomp Battle]] in exchange for his future inability to use nen.}} While it's not yet known exactly how permanent and thorough the damage is, but needless to say, {{spoiler|he's now missing an arm on top of all of that...}}

* The "Codes" (super-powered humans) of ''[[Code Breaker]]'' suffer from this if they use their powers too much: Okami loses consciousness; Toki becomes a child; Yuuki and a villainous [[Little Miss Badass]] become tiny animals (a cat and a turtle, respectively); Sakura and The President shrink. The Codes can recover, but "Rare Kinds" Sakura and the President require a special liquid made from the President's blood.

* Mahoro in ''[[Mahoromatic]]'' has this as the principle reason for her leaving military service and becoming a super powered maid. However, {{spoiler|she is coerced into resuming 'full combat mode' at the end of the series, which if used will drain all her remaining power and end her life immediately.}}

* In ''[[Change 123]]'' the described risks of fighting as Zero are scarily similar to the real life example below. Zero doesn't seem to have the mental block everyone else has and could easily rip her body apart by fighting all-out. Luckily she usually over-exerts herself and passes out before anything like that can happen.

* In ''[[Holyland]]'', this occurs following Yuu's [[Heroic BSOD]]. Although the cause is more psychological than physical, the result is that Yuu loses his form, and with it, most of his fighting ability. The local thugs, many of whom were afraid of him until that point, take advantage of this.

* In ''[[Heroic Age]]'', the Heroic Tribe members, which are insanely powerful, can fall in a state of "mental chaos", in which they get even '''more''' powerful, but may kill themselves if they snap out of it.

* Whoever uses the power of "Eye of Aeon" in ''11eyes'' will end up causing great pain and strain on the user. Protagonist Kakeru at one point have his entire body nerve cords severed because of it. With each use means danger to the user as it sucks the soul of its user.

* In [[GetBackers]]'', it is hinted that if Ban Mido uses his "Evil Eye" 4 times within 24 hours of the first usage will result in his death.

** Tsuchimikaido does this as well, though his esper ability (level 0 auto-regenerate) allows him to live through more spells than most.

* Chapter 46 of ''[[Rosario + Vampire]]'' Season II reveals a new technique for Ruby-- A magical iron maiden themed armor that greatly boosts all her capabilities in exchange for putting massive strain on her body, to the point that it could potentially kill her.

** This trope is a regular thing for Tony, especially pre-[[Nanomachines|Extremis]].

 

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[Godzilla vs. Destoroyah]]'' the Big G practically embodies this trope.

 

 

== Literature ==

** In ''[[The Long Watch]]'', Ezra Dahlquist, a young nuclear weapons officer, foils a military coup by disassembling the nuclear weapons and smashing the warheads. In doing so {{spoiler|he suffers a lethal dose of radiation. He is given a lead casket and a Geiger counter [[Tear Jerker|"that never was quiet]]."}}

** In Heinlein's ''[[The Green Hills of Earth]]'', the poet Rhysling makes critical repairs to a nuclear core, but sustains fatal radiation poisoning. He composes {{spoiler|the title song as he dies}}.

* One of [[Fritz Leiber]]'s "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser" stories the villain fights the lightning-quick Mouser to a standstill for a while. When defeated the tremendous overstrain caused the villain's corpse to go into immediate rigor mortis.

* In the [[New Jedi Order]] book ''Star By Star'', Anakin Solo dies of this.

 

== Tabletop RPG ==

** The proliferation of 3.5 sourcebooks brings quite a few of these. There's the Frenzied Berserker, who is capable of ignoring any amount of negative hit points while raging - but the full effects are applied immediately when the rage ends. The Corrupt and Sanctified spells, which are extremely evil and good respectively, take a toll on the caster; the most powerful ones cost the caster's life, in more or less painful ways - generally "more" for the evil ones. Then there are the Epic spells; creating one is a fairly involved process that includes determining the difficulty for the spell. The difficulty can be lowered significantly by including a "backlash" that hurts the caster.

* In ''[[Talislanta]]'', this is almost guaranteed to happen to a [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same|Vajra]] who [[Unstoppable Rage|unleashes the Dark Fire]].

* In the backstory of ''[[Magic: The Gathering|Magic the Gathering]]'' this seems to happen with some regularity, especially with the Planeswalkers. One of the most prominent examples is {{spoiler|1=Barrin, who during the Phyrexian invasion loses the last of his family, his daughter Hanna. Grief-stricken, he draws in enough magical power to completely destroys the Phyrexian-infested island of Tolaria, killing himself in the process. See http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=23098}}.

** Now that Planeswalker is a card type, you can witness this yourself. Unlike creatures, which have power and toughness, planeswalkers only have a loyalty stat, which can be increased or decreased by using printed abilities. They can also be attacked, directly, like players. Now, most planeswalkers have an ability that uses up a large amount of loyalty for one big effect, but leaves them open to being [[Cherry Tapping|cherry-tapped]] by a lowly 1/1 goblin. [http://magiccards.info/zen/en/120.html Here] [http://magiccards.info/ddf/en/1.html are] [http://magiccards.info/m11/en/102.html a] [http://magiccards.info/zen/en/170.html few] [http://magiccards.info/m11/en/58.html examples].

** Yriel, Grand Admiral of Craftworld Iyanden, defeated the Tyranid horde that was ravaging his Craftworld by grabbing a cursed spear out of stasis and using it to drop the Norn Queen at the heart of the swarm. Unfortunately, the spear is now slowly killing him.

* In ''[[Exalted]]'' one of the Charms for the Air Aspect Immaculate Monks is Hurricane Combat Method, which gives you a boost to attack power, but chews up your health.

** This happens a lot to Shirou in ''[[Fate/stay night|Fate Stay Night]]'' as well, due to his affinity for a certain kind of magic and his tendency to push his body beyond the limits of what any normal human body should take, usually causing him to collapse from [[Post Dramatic Stress Disorder]] and requiring magical healing to get back up again. It reaches its natural conclusion {{spoiler|in the endings of Heaven's Feel, where Shirou's over-dependence on a [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique]] for projection magic causes his body to be gradually converted into swords -- without Ilya to bail him out [[Multiple Endings|in the Normal Ending]], this [[Killed Off for Real|kills him]]. Well, technically, he dies anyway, but...}}

* [[White Knight Chronicles]]: Done in a particularly slow and [[Tear Jerker|heart-wrenching]] fashion in the second game. [[The Hero]], Leonard, finds himself gradually weakened by the use of the titular [[Humongous Mecha|White Knight.]] Eventually, it gets so bad that {{spoiler|he collapses in the middle of a major battle and needs to be carried back to Balandor. The next time he's seen, he's in bed, grunting from the sheer pain caused by his Heroic RROD.}} After that, he's either shown unconscious, ''intensely'' struggling with his condition, or laying around, too weak to move and completely out of it. {{spoiler|[[Serious Business|We're not kidding!]] He's gone for about a fourth of the game!}}

* Aigis of ''[[Persona 3]]'' can activate her Orgia mode during a battle, which makes her attacks stronger for a few turns, but you better hope the current battle ends before she has to cool down for a few turns making her totally vulnerable. {{spoiler|One cut scene shows what happens if she doesn't cool down.}}

* In ''[[Shadow Hearts]] II'', this is the insult to injury of the Mistletoe Curse. The harder Yuri fights against it, the faster it develops {{spoiler|and kills his memories}}. But if doesn't resist at all, it'll gradually overtake him anyway. Fortunately {{spoiler|nothing. There's no cure. There's a happy ending anyway, though. Kinda.}}

* Tellah's [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique|Meteo]] from ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]''.

** Ceodore's Awaken in ''[[Final Fantasy IV: The After Years]]''. Heals him completely and doubles his stats for three rounds, which translates into him temporarily becoming a ''powerhouse'', but drops him to single digit HP afterwards.

* Batman comes dangerously close to this by the end of ''[[Batman: Arkham Asylum]]''. As the game progresses, his suit slowly becomes more and more tattered (tears on his suit and cape, scratches on his face and cowl, five-o'clock shadow, bloodshot eyes), culminating in Batman intentionally {{spoiler|[[Megaton Punch|punching out a Titan-infused Joker with a fist covered in explosive gel]], mangling his gauntlet}}.

* The villainous example happens to Genesis in ''[[Crisis Core]]'', who proceeds to hijack the plot. Also happens to {{spoiler|Angelo's clone and Zack}}

* In one of the bad endings in ''[[Odin Sphere]]'', Oswald overuses his dark power while fighting Onyx and turns into a Revenant. The game indicates that this is the usual fate of wielders of Oswald's sword Belderiver.

* ''[[Ikaruga]]'': {{spoiler|After absorbing a minute's worth of projectiles from the Stone-Like, the Ikaruga releases the restraining device on the craft to unleash all the energy back at him, destroying them both in a [[Heroic Sacrifice]].}}

* In ''[[SaGa Frontier 2]]'', once your characters run out of [[Mana Points|WeaponPoints (WP) or SpellPoints (SP)]], they'll lose their Life points (which are different from regular [[Hit Points]]) if they try to use a Technique or a Spell, which can result in a permanent death once they run out of Life points. However, the lower WP or SP they get, the stronger their attacks become, hence the RROD.

* Happens in ''[[Pokémon]]'' with the moves Selfdestruct and Explosion, though due to the [[Never Say "Die"]] nature of the series, your [[Mons]] merely faint.

* In ''[[Star Wars]]: [[The Force Unleashed]]'', this is how {{spoiler|Starkiller}} dies in the Light Side Ending. {{spoiler|Being shocked by Emperor Palpatine's lightning, Starkiller marches forward and bearhugs him, shocking the Emperor. Seeing his friends about to be shot by stormtroopers, Starkiller opens his body to [[The Force]], creating an enormous Force Repulse that wipes out the stormtroopers and knocks Darth Vader and Palpatine out cold, allowing his friends to escape. The strain ends the Jedi's life.}}

** {{spoiler|Asura's [[Clipped-Wing Angel|Wrath form]] is a dangerous form Asura enters after his [[One-Winged Angel|Berserker Form]] which is so dangerous to him that if he is not stopped his own power would tear his body apart.}}

* In ''[[Heavenly Sword]]'' the opening scene depicts Nariko's death at the hands of a sword so powerful it kills the user. Throughout the course of the game it is revealed that the sword slowly drains the life of anybody who uses it for extended periods of time.

* Torque's monster form in ''[[The Suffering]]'' depletes a special "Insanity" bar. However, he will only return to human form when the player explicitly switches back—if the bar empties completely, the monster simply starts to drain his [[Life Meter]] instead, and this ''will'' kill him if not manually disengaged.

* Hisao from ''[[Katawa Shoujo]]'' suffers more than one of these, due to [[Heart Trauma|having severe heart arrhytmia]]. The majority of these are relatively light, but some specially severe ones happen in: the Prologue (setting the plot), in Act 1 (if he has very high points with {{spoiler|Emi}}) and in {{spoiler|Lilly}}'s route (one comes up when {{spoiler|he's having sex with her}} and the other when {{spoiler|he's trying to catch her and Akira in the airport}}).

* In ''[[Kid Icarus: Uprising|Kid Icarus Uprising]]'', {{spoiler|Pit decides to fly beyond the five-minute limit to save Dark Pit from Chaos Kin. In the process, his wings burn up, leaving the bones behind.}}

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

 

== Web Original ==

* In an event in an ORPG(think about it) called ''Dragonfable'', which is advertising on this site, your mentor/mission control-ish character Warlic is revealed to have one. After a long "war" in which players have to collectively whittle down the huge number of enemies(standard practice), the generals confront his spoiled apprentice, who killed him and stole his power, and a fight occurs with the player controlling said apprentice. Now, normally the fight screen has a list of all your abilities with the mana cost, like "15", on the corner. In this fight, you start out with zero mana, and all the mana costs say things like "-350." When your mana meter fills, you DIE. After said apprentice realizes that Warlic was right in that she can't control his power, she resurrects him and apologizes. He forgives her, and uses his power to scare off said generals, who happen to be GODS.

* ''[[DC Nation]]'''s universe has a few. One [[Original Character]] is a 9-11 firefighter who used up the last of his oxygen evacuating survivors from the first Tower. [[The Sandman|Death]] was impressed enough to recruit him as an agent. Another OC can absorb and use ambient magic, and always runs the risk of burning himself out by absorbing (or using) too much power for his mostly-human body to withstand. A third OC has "[[Unstoppable Rage|freak outs]]" or "[[New Age Retro Hippie|bad trips]]" if pushed to a [[Heroic BSOD]]. It makes her a VERY impressive combatant, but burns her out afterward.

*** It actually makes perfect sense, yes it would have given him an extremely healthy heart, but constantly pushing himself beyond that heart's limit is what finished his superhero career. As an old man, he was pushing himself the same way he did when he was in his prime, which was an absurd task. Even the strongest heart is only as strong as it's limit. Without people such as Alfred around to keep an eye on him, he went beyond them.

*** A key missed point is that he explains, in the episode "Disappearing Inque", that it was an experimental [[Power Armor|exosuit]] he had designed, which increases the amount of force one's effort puts out and increases stamina, that put the strain on his heart to begin with. This leads to an [[Oh Crap]] moment for Terry when Bruce arrives to bail him out in a fight with Inque while wearing the aforementioned exosuit.

** [[Crosses the Line Twice|And then the crowd goes wild.]]

* This is how we lost Bunny, the fourth member of ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]''. She was [[Flawed Prototype|unstable]] to begin with, then pushed herself too far too fast in defense of her sisters, making it a [[Heroic Sacrifice]].

* In the 2002 reboot of ''[[He-Man and the Masters of the Universe|He Man and The Masters of The Universe]]'', in the origin of the power of Grayskull, King Grayskull, the original wielder of He-Man's sword, fought with everything he had to save his kingdom from the evil Hordak, at the cost of his own life.

** What makes it really bittersweet was the fact that he was told by an oracle this would happen. Despite knowing his fate, all that Grayskull cared about was that his kingdom would be free. That just shows how much a guy will lay down for his people.

* In the ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Margaritaville", Kyle uses a credit card with no spending limit to pay off the town's debts. This task turned out to be so exhaustive that when he collapsed, everyone begins to fear that he had died.

* Happens to Applejack in the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S1/E04 Applebuck Season|"Applebuck Season"]]. She tries to harvest her family's entire apple farm by herself, and refuses to rest or accept help. As the episode progresses, she gets more and more exhausted, her vision and hearing become blurred, and she slowly goes insane from sleep deprivation (and this is after a whole ''week'' of non-stop work). She finally accepts help when she assumes she was finished, but finds that she only harvested about half the orchard.

[[Category:Magic and Powers]]

[[Category:Dying Moment of Awesome]]