I Can Still Fight



"Bobby Heenan: "Well that's all fine but wait till you're healthy, wait till you're 100%!"

David McLane: "Well... you're right."

Bobby Heenan: "Of course I'm right, I'm the brain!""

- W.O.W. Unleashed

An injured character refuses to stay in bed, despite medical advice. And though he says it's Only a Flesh Wound, we know better. Sometimes the injured party might go to great lengths to hide his injuries from the other characters, knowing that he will get taken off the field. Other times, the character is mortally wounded and fights on regardless.

In military situations, often indicates strong esprit de corps or desperate danger, or both. Frustration with his ignorance -- he doesn't know what is happening on the field, to his comrades, or what danger he is in -- may come into play. It may also indicate that the character has been taunted by another and is desperate to prove himself.

Packing off the injured to safety may have to override this impulse, and doesn't always work. On the other hand, despite the danger, this can be survived, sometimes -- but the very fact that the story shows real injuries shows also that they can lead to the logical denouement. Particularly likely if the character is trying to prove something. Even in milder cases, Post Dramatic Stress Disorder is likely to result.

He may use Bottled Heroic Resolve to keep going. This attitude is one way to become an Annoying Patient.

Anime and Manga

 * Negi Springfield of Mahou Sensei Negima seems to fit this trope pretty well, much to the pain of his friends and family. Sure, he's only ten years old but that doesn't mean few injuries will stop him. Impale him on a stone spear? He'll just use it to bash you in the head with. Cut off his right arm? In his own words "I still have my left!". And you manage to leave a massive hole in his gut, doing so much damage to the rest of the body that it causes blood to pour from his eye sockets and causes him to vomit a pint or two of blood? Eh, you're still not gonna win.
 * In Gundam 0083, Lt Burning uses his cane to shatter the cast on his leg so he can be a Big Damn Hero and save the Gundam in battle.
 * Naruto does this a lot. Rock Lee, too, from the same show.
 * Naruto is justified in doing it most of the time though, considering he heals from injuries far faster then anyone else, and the doctors are holding him back just to be safe, which is usually just an excuse to have him Put On a Bus for a few episodes.
 * Used twice by Hinata in the Three-Tails filler arc. The first time, she gets injured fighting Nurari, and after she tells Kakashi she can still move, Kakashi says the mission is still in effect. Two episodes later, after surviving being crystallized by Guren, Sakura suggests that she shouldn't force herself just yet, and has her stay behind until she recovers.
 * Special credit has to go to Onoki, who gets hit by and still insists on fighting.
 * Ryu in the original Mobile Suit Gundam.
 * Likewise Lockon Stratos in Gundam 00 refuses treatment which will take three weeks instead going out to fight despite being blind in his right eye,.
 * Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist absolutely refuses to stay in the refugee camp for Ishbalans, despite the fact that he might not even be able to walk properly at any one point he's there. In his defense, he's also trying to protect them from being punished for harboring him.
 * Also, Edward Elric insists on automail surgery so that he can join the state military only days after losing two of his limbs.
 * There's also Izumi, who is missing nearly half her internal organs and frequently coughs up blood due to that fact, and continues to fight despite it. A couple of characters, including Winry Rockbell have commented on this, Winry in particular stressing the need for her to go to a hospital that could take better care of her. Of course, a hospital can't do much for the fact that she's downright missing several of her organs.
 * Then there's Ran Fan, who, despite not having a left arm anymore and severely weakened, still wants to go back and "protect young master." The Doctor manages to talk her out of it, though.
 * Said word by word by Captain Buccaneer even after he got one of his arms scrapped the hell out of him.
 * Last, but definitely not least...
 * Faust VIII from Shaman King regularly does excruciatingly painful things to himself that no sane doctor would do. Then again, Love Makes You Crazy... It might also be justified in that he's implied to be a morphine addict. From The Other Wiki: "When Yoh broke his leg during their fight. Faust tore the broken bone right out of his leg and had Eliza bring him another similar in size, reasoning that replacing the broken bone was faster than letting it heal."
 * When he and the other candidates are dropped from a great height, it is assumed they will use their powers to land safely. Faust? He does nothing. He reasons the morphine he is constantly hopped up on will leave him conscious after landing, and then he can use Eliza (who is a trained nurse) as his hands to stitch himself together afterwards. Basically, Faust VIII treats his own body as We Have Reserves.
 * Bleach has this a lot, especially with, Ichigo, who just never seems to sit still when injured.
 * Ganju's fist says "No, no you can't."
 * Nanoha and Vita's injuries at the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Strikers were revealed in supplementary materials to both be serious enough that the doctors told them to take things easy from now on and that they'll need to go through some rehabilitation, especially Nanoha, whose overuse of Blaster System had taken enough of a toll on her that her Magic Levels had gone down by 10%. Naturally, the both of them were the first ones to return to service on the aftermath of the incident, filling their schedules with many strenuous tasks like nothing happened.
 * Also before the final battle of the third season, Zafira and Vice. Especially Zafira, who fights despite being covered in bandages, with Shamal, finally turning the tide of the battle against the Numbers.
 * And before either of these, in the second episode of A's, Raising Heart, badly damaged, assures Nanoha it can be fired. "It's alright."
 * I Can Be Shot
 * Although a football game isn't as life-or-death as some of the other examples, Hiruma in Eyeshield 21 returns to the game (over Mamori's objections) after Gaoh breaks his throwing arm. He makes his re-entrance more dramatic by using ketchup to make his face look like a bloody mess.
 * The titular character also chooses to stay in the game after hitting 40 yards in 4.2 seconds in the Bando match, not wanting to miss out on their victory (or failure, as it had been last time after hitting 4.2.).
 * During the Team Masho fight during the Dark Tournament arc of Yu Yu Hakusho, Team Urameshi only has three usable fighters: Kurama, Yusuke, and a brutally-injured Kuwabara. (One of the corrupt rules board members has tricked their other two fighters into being unavailable.) The first two are taken out (Kurama with grievous injuries and Yusuke by a rules loophole). Masho has one fighter left... so Kuwabara forces himself into the ring to avoid the team being disqualified, even though he can't use his spirit energy due to his injuries. He wins thanks to some timely encouragement from his love interest tripping a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * One Piece has had this tons of times with just about every seriously-taken character. Zoro is famous for this, though more or less because of Only a Flesh Wound as Zoro has been sliced and diced and is able to fight later. In one instance, Zoro had been severely cut down the chest and had very little medical help. Despite this, he was able to fight an octopus-man using six swords.
 * Brook, having already been heavily injured from his fight with Ryuuma, is sent away due to his injuries, and is absent from much of the early battle with Oz. He returns with salt to help the Straw Hats, claiming to have recovered by drinking milk. However, as he doubles over in pain, it's clear that he hasn't fully healed yet.
 * Wiper continues to fight in the Survival Game despite severe injuries, and manages to somehow survive using the extremely powerful Reject Dial three times in one day.
 * Luffy is defined by this trope. He Talk about never surrender.
 * Toudou during Code Geass's finale insists this, but Chiba stops him.
 * Actually, he was pushing past her to get to his mech when he suddenly collapsed from his injuries, proving her correct.
 * In Death Note, Soichiro Yagami sneaks out of his hospital room, where he was recovering from a (normal) heart attack in order to break into Sakura TV and recover the Second Kira's tapes. At one point, he claims he's never felt more alive.
 * Incidentally, he 'broke in' by driving an armored truck through the front wall. Because the second Kira was killing aybody she saw try to enter from her vantage point outside the building.
 * Done somewhat humorously with Vegeta in Dragonball Z who always wants to fight, even death only slows him down slightly.
 * Van Fanel in Vision of Escaflowne: neither the near-complete destruction of his mech nor his own dangerously serious injuries are enough to dissuade him from trying to rush straight to the battlefield on foot (or rather ) while screaming that he can still fight.
 * In the Sengoku Basara anime, Date Masamune, recovering from a gunshot wound and significant blood loss, gets up and starts to go after his men who were taken hostage. Kojuurou knows he's in no shape to be going anywhere and eventually has to challenge his master to a fight, which he wins by only attacking from his blind side, (gently) punching him in his injury and then (carefully) knocking him out with a blow to the head. Masamune later has another episode of I Can Still Fight (due to the same injury) against Nobunaga.
 * In episode 49 of the first season of Beyblade Ray is directly attacked by Bryan's bit-beast Falborg's wind attacks. After winning the second match and tying the score, Ray blacks out. His teammates worry about him and try to talk him out of going back out there for the third match, but Ray doesn't listen. Ray is almost killed during the third match, but his bit-beast Driger saves him and Ray manages to win the battle.
 * Cruely subverted AND played straight in Neon Genesis Evangelion in the battle with Asuka and the Mass Production Evas. While the Mass Production Evas get their limbs ripped off, get ripped in half, have spikes launched through their skulls, and have their brains bashed out, they still come back to life every single time. On the other hand,  This also counts as a Crowning Moment of Awesome, debatably.
 * Done nicely in Gintama in the Benizakura storyline. Otae is in charge of keeping the heavily injured Gintoki from returning to the fight against Benizakura. She breaks his sword and threatens even more bodily harm to him until he finally agrees to stay put.
 * Tsuna from Katekyo Hitman Reborn essentially "powers up" based on this trope...as well as only being able to win because of it most of the time...in fact he  this is almost the basis of the "dying will" concept itself.
 * Crow Hogan takes on this trope in the World Racing Grand Prix Arc of Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds. After his replacement team member Akiza also gets attacked, Crow decides to duel against the nasty Team Catastrophe that injured them both.
 * After being beaten into a coma in the twelfth episode of Tiger and Bunny, wakes up the next day and insists on joining in on the mission to take Sternbild back from Ouroboros, despite the debilitating pain he experiences from just trying to get out of the bed. While Blue Rose manages to talk him out of it,.
 * Joe Asakura, in the last episodes of the first Science Ninja Team Gatchaman series: he suffers headaches, numbness in one hand, and is rattled by blinding flashes of light. He refuses to tell anyone what is happening to him, and then goes off to find Galactor headquarters. Once there, he gets bent, folded, spindled, and shot up -- even while killing goons.
 * Inuyasha: Even after getting stabbed, blown up, poisoned, turned human and/or smacked by his own signature attack, Inuyasha will not stay down. Nor can his friends make him.
 * Likewise, his one-armed brother will not let others protect him battle or move him off the battlefield even when that sole arm is ripped to shreds technically leaving him unable to fight.
 * Nobody in Fairy Tail ever stays down; when the person really is too injured/suicidal to fight, Natsu knocks them out and takes their place.

Film
"Leonidas: I trust that scratch hasn't made you useless.
 * In an alternate ending of Walt Disney's Robin Hood film, Robin is in bed with an injury suffered rescuing Maid Marian from the sheriff. A rider is coming and Robin insists on dressing and getting up.
 * Happens to the main character in the movie Click, so he could tell his son that "family comes first" and make up for never being at home thanks to the fast-forward on the remote. He dies, but.
 * The entire second half of The Wrestler is based on this trope.
 * Best of the Best. Eric Roberts gets his shoulder severely injured, and should on all normal accounts be taken out of the karate tournament, but persuades the coach to finish his match for the good of the team.
 * Literal scene in Black Hawk Down, but it takes some conditioning from officer in charge to have severely wounded soldier eek out "I'm still in the fight". Repeated in the aftermath scenes with the same soldier telling the same officer "Don't go back out there without me. I can still do my job". In the epitaph, we'll learn said soldier actually died from his wounds.
 * Lo there do I see my father. Lo there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers...
 * In Three Hundred, this seems to be more or less expected of the soldiers. Of course, This Is Sparta.

Dilios: It's only an eye, my lord. The gods saw fit to grace me with a spare."


 * Humorously by the Black Knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail as his limbs get hacked off insists he can still fight.
 * Time and time again in Zulu.

Literature
""You had to tie him to his horse to get him this far!" "But I'm really well tied.""
 * Near the end of the Star Wars EU novel Shatterpoint, Depa Billaba (suffering from a combination of mental and Force breakdown) invokes this trope verbatim: "I can fight. I can always fight." She eventually goes on to defeat Mace Windu in single combat.
 * Another Star Wars EU story has the ARC Trooper Alpha, pretty much the Badass among badasses of the clone troopers, get crippled from the waist down when General Grievous impales his spine on a pair of lightsabers. When Obi-Wan Kenobi calls for medics, Alpha instead insists that he just give him a blaster. After all, his arms and eyes are still fully functional, so he can still shoot.
 * In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novel Duty Calls, Cain refuses to stay in bed longer than three days despite his concussion (and he does not have a Hard Head). Of course, he was afraid that the enemy were too close and he might die in his bed.
 * In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Honour Guard, Corbec and other injured Ghosts, order to evacuate, instead desert to join the Ghosts in their honour guard duties.
 * In Ghostmaker, when Dorden and other Ghosts were trying to protect injured soldiers in a field hospital, Culcis, one of the wounded men, led several of them out to help: they were capable of shooting, though not all of them could stand.
 * In Only In Death, Tona Criid, suffering a concussion, had to be argued with -- and finally given a flat order -- to get on the plane for evacuation.
 * In Straight Silver, Rawne and Barda leave their beds -- though frustration with ignorance had more to do with it than desire to fight.
 * In the ''Discworld novels, Sam Vimes does this all the time.
 * Merric from Lady Knight:

"As long as a Death Guard draws breath, he's in a condition to fight!"
 * Urthstripe the badger in the Redwall novel Salamandastron. In this case, he's delirious as well as severely injured. The hares tried to keep him down by tying him into bed. He gets up to fight anyway.
 * Starting in about the third book and continuing from there, Harry Dresden tends to be beat to hell and back before the final showdown, and heads into battle when in any other circumstances he'd be in too much pain to go on.
 * Used now and again in the X Wing Series, when pilots in their snubfighters are badly damaged and have to keep flying. Lara Notsil is fully aware that "No, I'm good to fly" is the pilot's "automatic response, whether Imperial or New Republic, whether truth or self-delusion".
 * In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40000 Horus Heresy novel Legion, Mu checks this with Soneka: should he really be up? He assures her that the medical papers were just to convince the authorities that his erratic behavior had been combat fatigue.
 * In James Swallow's The Flight of the Eisenstein, after Garro loses his leg, he still hobbles into the fight, with help from another Death Guard, who tells him he's in no condition to fight.

""I don't want to stay in bed. I want to find McClaggen and kill him."
 * In Lee Lightner's Warhammer 40000 Space Wolf novel Sons of Fenris, when Jeremiah revives his fellow Dark Angels, he asks Nathaniel how his wounds are; Nathaniel answers, "I can fight."
 * This is the climax to Ivanhoe. Nobody will fight for Rebecca, but Ivanhoe, still suffering from the side wound that has kept him unconscious for most of the book, shows up to defend her, still barely able to keep on his horse. In the book,  , while the movies play it much more straight.
 * In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 novel Faith & Fire, Isabel is dragging one leg, but in answer to "Can you fight?" says "Need you ask?"
 * Made all the more impressive because this is a well trained normal rather then a super soldier.
 * Eowyn tries to pull this in JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. They drag in Faramir to stop her; he points out that the army has gone too far and she can't catch up, and if the battle does come to them, she would be better able to fight if she rested now.
 * Much of the cast of the Harry Potter series have done this at some point or another... Harry especially, obviously, because the kid was practically marked at birth. A humorous example from HBP was when Harry had been arguing with an annoying Quidditch teammate (Cormac McClaggen) during a match, who was trying to show another player how to do their job during a match. When Harry tells Cormac to get back to his own position, Cormac accidentally knocks Harry unconscious and, for the umpteenth time, he finds himself in a hospital bed, remarking furiously to Madame Pomfrey,

"I'm afraid that would be considered overexertion.""

"Honor: Your Grace, I have only one question."
 * Every single character in the Wheel of Time has pulled this at least once. Every main male character except for Mat has pulled this at least five times. The record probably goes to Rand, especially as he has another character with an empathic bond with him nearby at almost all times shocked at how he endures the pain of his unhealed wounds.
 * Honor Harrington at the end of Flag In Exile. Honor has: been called a whore for most of the book,


 * She goes on to design a strategy to allow the Grayson navy to fight After coming up with the battle plan, she delegates the actual execution to her flag captain. He hadn't been blown up recently, had had a good night's sleep, and generally in better condition to judge when the best time to start each stage of the plan was.
 * Practically anytime one of the competent admirals, captains, or X Os is injured, they are going back to their bridge as soon as they regain consciousness regardless of what the doctor thinks unless they are physically unable to move themselves there or there's someone above them to order them back to bed.
 * In the Everworld book Enter the Enchanted, Galahad managed to get out of his tent and stand to provide moral support, after he was wounded in a way that would have fatal in his time, but he managed to pull through after stitches and a blood transfusion.

Live Action TV

 * Star Trek the Original Series.
 * "The Deadly Years". While suffering from a disease that causes accelerated aging, Captain Kirk wants to go to the bridge and take command to fight the Romulans even though he's in no condition to do so.
 * Lost, "There's No Place Like Home, Part 1": Jack rushes off after the mercenaries' helicopter hours after an appendectomy.
 * Janeway in Star Trek Voyager does this several times, as does Tuvok (he continues performing his duties after being blinded by a Krenim torpedo in "Year of Hell").
 * Tony on NCIS returns to work a week early after having the plague, looking peaky and pale. He still manages to outrun an exploding car, albeit not as quickly as he might have if healthy. Of course, all is forgotten during the next episode (the third season premiere) even though the timeline has only advanced a few hours.
 * Band of Brothers has a few instances of soldiers returning to the frontline before being released as fit by the military hospital, to the extent that one soldier gets scorned by Easy Company for not returning to the field as soon as he was able.
 * This is a common phenomenon with soldiers in any war. They would rather be with their troops and fight than leave them. Whether their doctors allow them to do so is another matter.
 * Frequently, the soldier has to escape from the hospital.
 * Power Rangers, every time anyone has ever gotten hurt, it seems.
 * Kamen Rider Dragon Knight: Chris, frequently..
 * Reid's drug problem in Season Two of Criminal Minds is the result of a lot of factors coming together, but this trope is definitely one of them. Being kidnapped and tortured left him traumatized and in no shape to spend all day looking at photos of bloody crime scenes. However, by the very next episode, he's back at work doing exactly that, and overreacting to the point of paranoia at any tiny suggestion on his coworker's parts that he might not be ready to do so yet. Instead of taking the time to cope with his issues in a healthy way, he starts using Dilaudid, which, if it doesn't make his trauma go away, at least lets him forget about it long enough to kind-of-sort-of do his job.
 * Sheppard in Stargate Atlantis is crushed when a booby-trapped building collapses and a metal rod pierces his side. When he is saved Dr. Keller tells him he needs a transfusion and surgery immediately, but he insists on a quick patch job so he can lead the mission to rescue Teyla. Ridiculously, both the doctor and the expedition leader decide to allow this.
 * Booth on Bones in the episode "Two Bodies in the Lab". He got blown up by a bomb, was barely able to stay on his feet, and still signed himself out of the hospital to go with Hodgins, then insisted on going in to save Brennan.

Myth And Legend

 * A commonplace version of the legend of Robin Hood is that he sat up in his sickbed to shoot off an arrow and directed Little John to bury him where it hit. Then he died.
 * There is a joke, stating that, because of this, Robin Hood was buried in his wardrobe.
 * Referenced in the erotic webcomic Oglaf -- the arrow lands in a man's butt. The not-quite-dead man's response? "What, again!?"

Video Games
"Ramsus: Don't do anything rash, Miang! I still have one arm left!"
 * This happens to no less than three characters in Final Fantasy IV. First is Edward, who was squishy to start with (and not much good in a fight anyway, come to that), who remained bedridden for a good chunk of the game after a shipwreck. Then there's Cid, whose injury was, who ignores the medical advice and fixes your airship before passing out again. Finally is Yang, who , and after you revive him via Frying Pan of Doom was told by the Sylphs to stay in bed.
 * Galuf, from Final Fantasy V would kindly like to remind you that he can still fight. On 0 hp. Simultaniously theBest and theSaddest moment of the entire game.
 * In Disgaea, Thursday tanks an attack from the ghost of Don Joaquin that was meant to strike down a recently disgraced Gordon. It isn't until the battle afterwards that it is discovered his memory circuit took gratuitous damage and could trigger complete memory loss. He chooses to go on fighting anyway, and starts breaking down once Laharl defeats Don Joaquin in combat. Moved by the concern Gordon and Jennifer have for Thursday, he restores Thursday to functionality, his last act as Defender of Earth.
 * In Star Ocean 3, Fayt Leingod will invoke this trope verbatim (quite doggedly to boot) if his hp is knocked into the redzone from taking massive damage.
 * In Blaz Blue: Continuum Shift, Ragna says this word-for-word, albeit with pauses between, after you beat him in Hakumen's Arcade Mode path. Tager also says this verbatim as one of his Quick Tech quotes.
 * After a vicious fight with Rance in Target Earth, Rance's Assault Suit is badly damaged, and Rance himself is bloodied and burned. Rex (the hero), says "It's over," to which Rance shouts, "Not while I live! I can still--" Cue Assault Suit explosion.
 * In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, you rescue an informant named Nikolai from a brutal imprisonment. Nikolai is handed a weapon and quotes this trope word-for-word.
 * Villainous example: In Xenogears, Ramsus tries for this after getting the crap beaten out of him by, only for his partner Miang to fly him out of the battle. Technically, it was only his Gear that was damaged, not him, but the way that battle was going, he still wouldn't have lasted much longer.


 * Subverted in Inazuma Eleven 2, a large number of Raimon soccer club members gets hurt, sent to hospital, and is never used again during the main game.  is injured during one point, and the first thing Coach Hitomiko does is sacking him off the team.
 * In Dwarf Fortress, Dwarves have been known to keep fighting until they pass out from pain. Then again, so does everything else.
 * Inverted on occasion, too--sometimes, cuts or fevers can send them to the hospital, unable to fight, work, spar, or feed themselves until the chief medical dwarf checks them over and fixes their boo-boo if possible. This may be justified, however; small cuts often lead to deadly infections, and fevers may come from forgotten beast or similar syndromes which may also cause such effects as massive bleeding or necrosis of the skin or Armok knows what.
 * In Mass Effect 2's "Overlord" DLC, there's a minor example of this: a security mech tries to shoot Shepard and gets shot. Acting like nothing happened, it tries to shoot him again and gets its arm blown off. Undeterred, it tries to shoot him with its remaining arm, and gets that shot off. At that point, it gives up and runs.
 * In Sengoku Basara, several characters have dying animations that consist of them struggling to stand up or acting like nothing happened to them before collapsing on the ground.

Visual Novels

 * Shiki from Tsukihime and Shirou from Fate Stay Night are both grade-A perpetrators of this trope, refusing to stay in bed even when crippled, sick, recovering (or suffering) from Demonic Possession, energy drained or recently come Back From the Dead. Also in the Fate route, Saber gives this line when severe exhaustion leaves her unable to even arm herself. She tries to pull a Heroic Sacrifice, distracting Berserker while Shirou and Tohsaka escape, but that little honor goes to Archer.

Webcomics

 * Baron Wulfenbach of Girl Genius constructs a Humongous Mecha so he could walk around without technically leaving his bed.
 * And his son toughs out a bullet wound long enough to give the impression that he's Nigh Invulnerable.
 * Twice.
 * And then Tarvek convinces his Ninja Maid to drug him with enough stimulants that he can escape from his hospital prison bed and charge into a maze of death traps. Of course, the drugs wear off pretty quickly after he goes for a rodeo ride on a devil dog, and he's in worse shape than ever.
 * Agent Ben Preston from A Miracle of Science gets shot in the shoulder and hospitalized. Both his boss and his doctor insist that he needs rest. Preston then successfully talks his boss into letting him resume the case.
 * Antimony from Gunnerkrigg Court gets a knock on the head, blacks out, and wakes up in the infirmary. She's told to stay in bed, but she sneaks off to find Reynardine.
 * In The Beast Legion after Xeus gets a thrashing from Ginta.

Web Original

 * Dawson in Greek Ninja.

Western Animation

 * I can breathe . . . I CAN FIGHT!
 * Part of a Running Gag. It Makes Sense in Context, suffice to say he was a skeleton a moment before.
 * Exosquad featured a battle between a human and "alien" fleet. The Jerkass captain of the human flagship, with his ship crippled, says, "If she can fly, she can fight!" He then performs a Heroic Sacrifice, resulting in Alas Poor Scrappy.
 * Suberted in a Teen Titans episode. After Robin has his arm broken, back at the Tower, the Titans are prepared to force him to relax instead of going after the criminal, knowing full well his obsessive personality. So Robin...just goes and watches TV. Huh.

Real Life

 * Jim Bowie (of Bowie Knife fame) at the Alamo, fighting literally from his sickbed, first with a multi-barrel musket, then with a pair of guns, then throwing his eponymous knives, until finally overwhelmed by the sheer number of Mexican soldiers coming into his bedroom after him. Might as well be the Trope Namer.
 * Note that since no Texaians or Tejanos survived the battle of the Alamo, there are many conflicting accounts of Bowie's death. Some even say that he died of tubercleosis before the Mexican's even got to him.
 * Alexander the Great once had to ride around in front of his army with a punctured lung to show the troops that he wasn't that badly hurt.
 * Richard Lionheart (of Robin Hood fame) got various forms of diarrheal diseases while on crusade, and had the butt cut off his suit of armor so he could relieve himself in the middle of battle without having to take off the whole armor.
 * An Australian soldier in the battle of the Kokoda Trail was wounded in the chest with three machine gun rounds. Unable to be evacuated to the rear, he fought on for nearly a month from his stretcher, continuing to man a heavy machine gun, despite pink froth coming out of his three sucking chest wounds the entire time and no painkillers available.
 * Major Robert Cain got blinded, deafened and all-round mauled by German tanks in WW 2. Bastard still kept on hunting tanks. In a three-day period he destroyed six goddamned tanks.
 * Several American pilots during the Battle of Guadalcanal continued to fly missions despite bad malarial fevers.
 * The American general who commanded forces in the Philippines after MacArthur escaped, and who spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp, was so weakened by malnutrition and disease that he could barely stand, but he stood proud to sign the Japanese surrender documents on behalf of the Americans at the end of the war. Admiral John Simpson McCain also was at that ceremony, despite being so sick that he died only a few days later.
 * An American sailor on one of the destroyers at the Battle Off Samar was split open crotch to throat by a Japanese shell splinter, but still lay on the deck next to his gun mount, shouting encouragement to his fellow crewmen and begging someone to keep firing the gun.
 * That sailor was Paul Carr, crew chief of his gun.
 * Ronald Reagan famously refused to stay in his wheelchair when released from the hospital following the 1981 assassination attempt, as he felt it necessary to show America that he had not been incapacitated.
 * And then there was this one guy from India...
 * Jack Cornwell, a sixteen-year-old sailor in World War One, fought in the Battle of Jutland aboard the HMS Chester. Even though huge pieces of steel shrapnel were embedded in his chest, he remained at his gun sight and waited for orders. He died two days later.
 * Cervantes (the author of Don Quixote) was in bed with a high fever when the Holy League's navy shipped out for the Battle of Lepanto, but insisted on coming along. He was wounded three times, including losing a hand.
 * Gustavus II Adolphus, King of Sweden and one of the major players in the early Thirty Years War had a musket ball lodged in his neck that prevented him from wearing armour, since a cuirass pressing on the ball caused excruciating pain. He led cavalry charges wearing a leather jacket instead.
 * Nusaybah bint Kaab was a female warrior who fought in the armies of the Prophet Muhammad in the early days of Islam's expansion. During the battle of Uhud in the 7th century, she was nearly killed defending Muhammad. Lying near death the day after the battle, she heard the Prophet call for reinforcements and got up to answer to call, at which point she keeled over from blood loss. She eventually recovered.
 * The sports world is full of this; especially American Football, where the ability to play through pain is considered to be a job requirement. One particularly famous example is when San Francisco 49ers safety Ronnie Lott, a player noted for hitting opponents so hard that he sometimes knocked himself out, was to be held inactive for the Super Bowl due to a broken finger; he instead asked doctors to amputate it so that he could compete.
 * Another typical example: in one of the early Arena Football League championship games, a quarterback suffered a knee injury, and could be heard to say, "I heard it pop". Torn ligaments typically require surgery, and as much as a year and a half of rehabilitation, and many players report that the most difficult part of rehabilitation is the psychological aspect of learning to put trust in that damaged knee again. This player demanded to return to the game, and was effective, despite reinjuring the knee.
 * In the boxing world, Smoking Joe Frazier EMBODIES this trope. The man would quite literally never stop coming forward giving him his nickname as he resembled a continuous train on it's tracks. All of his loses either came from a decision or otherwise the fight was stopped. Hell, after being knocked down at lest seven times in two rounds, he STILL kept coming forward against Foreman and would have got up against Ali in the thriller in Manilla had it not been for his manager. Plus he had a cataract in one of his eyes meaning he fought many fights of his career partially blind. The man always could carrying on fighting and most likely would keep on doing so until he keeled over and died. Demonstrated here: http://youtu.be/x9l_RrjjTMc
 * Gary Gordan and Randy Shughart, two Delta Operators who fought and died during the Battle of Mogadishu, if anyone know's who I'm talking about, these TWO men single handedly heald of hordes of Somalis, killing 24 before they were over run themselves... And to make it even more interesting, there's unofficially 1000 of equally well trained men like these two. Just Sayin'...
 * Also see Black Hawk Down movie entry above.
 * In Easy Company, of the 101st Airborne during World War II, if you didn't duck out of hospital as soon as you were able, the rest of the squad wouldn't be all that happy about having you back, figuring that you would rather spend time laid up than fighting alongside your fellow troopers. This was actually relatively common in World War II among injured troops, who would sneak out of the hospital in an attempt to get back to their units, as official Army policy was to assign them to the nearest shorthanded unit rather than their former group.