Heroic Sacrifice/Video Games

"Kain: Why is everyone so ready to die?"
 * Trinity Souls of Zill Oll: Areus during the Final Boss Battle.
 * Fable II. Taking a page from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, you can choose the needs of the many, the needs of the few, or the needs of the one (which is no sacrifice at all). The Needs of the Many is a particularly sacrificial in that
 * Gunstar Heroes, and its pseudo-sequel/remake, Gunstar Super Heroes.
 * Super Paper Mario feature not one, not two, but three heroic sacrifices of the other characters just before the final boss, leaving Mario all alone, temporarily anyway. They are revealed to have survived their sacrifices (saving the villains at the same time), though at least one was saved by the Xanatos Roulette-employing villainous Chessmaster, Dimentio.
 * In World in Conflict,.
 * After to seal away Dracula in Castlevania Order of Ecclesia,  gives up his soul to save Shanoa,
 * Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, Ace stays behind to let the others access the other two rooms.
 * in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors in the  ending, in a combination of this and revenge for.
 * Galuf of Final Fantasy V.
 * And Gilgamesh. Just read Crowning Moment of Awesome and Leitmotif.
 * Final Fantasy IV has so many of these it gets ridiculous (two of them are literally within five minutes of each other), even if all but one are Disney Deaths.
 * Five, to be precise.
 * It even gets Lampshaded.
 * It even gets Lampshaded.

"Balthier: Vaan. A word. If something untoward should happen to me, you're taking the Strahl.
 * Deliberately avoided in Final Fantasy VII. Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase, the game's character designer and director respectively, found the idea of "heroic sacrifice" repellently artificial and gave Aerith an abrupt death which achieved nothing for the good guys (arguably the game would have ended with them victorious if she had survived at this point) to show how awful death actually is. Although they were highly successful, a certain subset of the fanbase was having none of it, with Japanese gamers going so far as to organise a petition, and one notable Internet hoax claiming her comeback was programmed in as a secret plot branch but not activated in certain versions of the game. It is noteworthy that the three original members of AVALANCHE (Biggs, Jessie and Wedge) all died because they were left behind on the pillar as the Plate fell and crushed them. However, they went into battle defending the Pillar knowing they would probably die.
 * A less debatable example is the warrior Seto, Red XIII's father, who raced off alone to ward off the Gi Tribe. The spirits within the cave are the multitudes of warriors he bested while slowly turning to poisoned stone after being pierced by several petrifying spears. That Seto's statue sheds tears implies he was still alive and would eternally guard Cosmo Canyon.
 * In Crisis Core, Zack fights against a moderately sized army of Shinra Grunts knowing that he is most likely going to die.
 * In Final Fantasy X, it quite soon becomes pretty obvious to the player that
 * The above case is ultimately avoided when However,
 * At the end of Final Fantasy XIII,
 * In Jade Empire, pulls a spectacular one to give the PC enough time to escape the Lotus Assassins' fortress. He gets Death's Hand to attack him, and dodges all of his attacks in such a way that they hit the pillar they are fighting around, and lets himself get hit finally and hits the pillar, collapsing the cave on himself and the bad guy.
 * BioWare loves this one. See the Dragon Age and Knights of the Old Republic examples below...and then there's Virmire. Dear, God, Virmire. Was Drew Karpyshyn taking lessons from Joss Whedon?
 * A similar scenario happens with  in Gabriel Knight 1. If his sacrifice actually did what he thought it would, the heroes would have won right there and then. Unfortunately, the Big Bad is too Genre Savvy for that to happen.
 * Played straight in the same game with.
 * In the Xbox remake of Ninja Gaiden, formerly villainous Alma does a Heel Face Turn and puts herself in the way of a blade to save her twin sister Rachel.
 * Inverted in an interesting way in God of War II...at the end of
 * Played straight in God of War III.
 * And I say to thee: IT SHALL NOT COME TO PASS THAT TASSADAR'S SACRIFICE SHALL BE FORGOTTEN!
 * EN TARO TASSADAR!
 * Raynor and Fenix pull one in Brood War, or would have done if Kerrigan hadn't been so intent on capturing them alive.
 * Grom Hellscream in Warcraft 3. He redeems himself for allowing his tribe to become corrupted by demons again by fighting (and killing) the very demon whose blood corrupted them. And in an interesting variation, the Night Elves sacrifice the World Tree in order to trap and defeat the demon general Archimonde. And with it, their immortality. Okay, the tree itself wasn't evil, but the Night Elves were responsible for bringing the demons to the world the first time.
 * It mustn't be forgotten that Grom Hellscream inflicted the blood curse on his people in the first place, just like how the Night Elves' ancestors were corrupted and tricked into bringing the demons to their own world. Corruption is a big thing in the Warcraft storyline, doubly so for Orcs and Night Elves.
 * World of Warcraft has one
 * There's also Hand Of Sacrifice, a Paladin spell that transfers 30% of all damage taken by a target to the paladin, and the same class had a now-removed spell that killed the caster while putting a three minutes long shield on the target, leaving him invulnerable but unable to do anything unless he removed the shield. It also nullified the threat level of any creature attacking the target, ending the fight. You'd generally use it on a healer or someone with a resurrection spell when the fight became clearly impossible to win, to avoid lengthy corpse-runs, or for the lulz.
 * Questing in post-Cataclysm Badlands revolves around the red dragon Rheastrasza attempting to free the Black Dragonflight of the Old Gods' influence. She eventually succeeds, creating a purified egg that will hatch into the first untainted black dragon born since the flight's corruption.
 * At the end of The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker,
 * The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - In the final battle against Ganondorf,
 * And earlier in the same game, Midna is near death after Zant exposes her to intense light. Link, trapped in wolf form, brings her to Zelda, who performs magic to save Midna's life while fading into nothingness herself.  Fan theory is divided as to whether she passed her life essence into Midna, or the Triforce of Wisdom, or did something else entirely. Whatever she did, it worked.
 * It's also a good way to build up dramatic deaths in Super Robot Wars. Ouka Nagisa did this to kill Agilla Setme for good. Later in Original Generation Gaiden, Altis Tarl covered Folka from a deadly shot that would otherwise kill him. And thus he's killed for good. Heroic BSOD occurs for Folka for several minutes, until Sanger snaps him out.
 * Subverted, however, early on in the first Original Generation. In an attempt to prove to the heroes that his Face Heel Turn is for real, Sanger attacks your mothership with enough force to destroy it. An otherwise normal mechanic with an interest in gambling manages to get a larger-sized mech working just in time to intercept Sanger and takes the hit instead. Thankfully, said mech is a Mighty Glacier and ends up crippled but salvageable, not to mention it breaks Sanger's sword taking the attack, forcing Zonvolt to call it a day.
 * Also done by Sanger's evil undead cyborg clone from another dimension, Wodan Ymir. After his climactic battle with Sanger, he decides to stop blindly following orders and fight to protect the woman (/supercomputer) that they both love. He proceeds to annihilate no less than thirteen cyborg supersoldiers in a single blow, causing his mech to explode from the overload and previous injuries.
 * In Super Robot Wars Destiny,  sacrifices himself to stop the Ruina.
 * The existence of this trope is lampshaded in Final Fantasy XII by Balthier, prior to the late-game Pharos dungeon.
 * The existence of this trope is lampshaded in Final Fantasy XII by Balthier, prior to the late-game Pharos dungeon.

Vaan: Untoward? What's this about?

Balthier: I am the leading man. Might need to do something heroic."


 * "I, Judge Magister, Condemn you to OBLIVION"
 * In Tales of Symphonia, Botta and a couple of nameless Renegades sacrifice themselves to let the heroes escape a flooding dungeon. Later on,
 * Honourable mentions include Colette,, Sheena, who attempts one in the 'Otherwordly Gate' scene,   Also.
 * Also seemingly done at the very end of the game by
 * In Final Fantasy VI,  shows up at the last second to buy the party enough time to escape the Floating Continent. If you wait for him at the airship, he'll show up and escape with you right before the whole place is destroyed, but if you leave before that point, he gets Killed Off for Real, making it a true Heroic Sacrifice.
 * If Shadow survives and is in the ending of the game, it is also implied that he commits a similar heroic sacrifice.
 * In Soul Nomad and The World Eaters, performs a Heroic Sacrifice in the "good" ending by going critical and destroying three gods with his full power, saving the world in the process.
 * Alys Brangwyn from Phantasy Star IV took a meant for Chaz. Interestingly, she doesn't die immediately. Even more interestingly, the group's White Mage specifically mentions the game's healing spell doesn't work on her.
 * Super Metroid: In what is still considered one of the defining video game examples of this trope, the Metroid larva sacrifices its life during the final battle with Mother Brain. Exhausted and near-death due to being continually pummeled by MB's beams, Samus has nowhere to run. Mother Brain charges up for her final blow...and the larva swoops in, sucking the life out of the bigger creature before restoring Samus' health and weapons. Mother Brain comes back to life and attacks the duo, but not before the larva charges at it. The larva sacrifices itself to give Samus a fighting chance (not to mention her Infinity+1 Sword in the Hyper Beam).
 * Subverted in Metroid Fusion.
 * In Metroid: Other M,
 * Possible subversion in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain: at the start of the game, Kain is resurrected as a vampire to avenge his killers, and after the deed is done he must find a way to rid himself of his vampyric curse. It is heavily implied to him that by murdering the nine Pillar guardians of Nosgoth he might be able to restore balance to the land and rid himself of his vampyric unlife. Yet, in the end Kain pieces together the puzzles and figures out that he himself is the last pillar guardian, and that his aides meant for him to sacrifice himself so that the pillars may be healed and he be released from his curse -- in death.
 * That's because
 * Played straight in Defiance with
 * Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.
 * And don't forget
 * And don't forget

"Ashley: We don't need a "hero"! There's no value in a world protected by such things. If everyone's hearts become one, then we can rise and stand together. We can support the world without sacrificing a "hero". Miracles can happen!"
 * Kingdom Hearts: Sora sacrifices himself in order to restore Kairi's heart. Saving her also means unlocking The Very Definitely Final Dungeon and brings The End of the World as We Know It that much closer, but hey, it got better.
 * Then in Kingdom Hearts II, a villain...no, two villains sacrifice themselves to save Sora. One of them dies, and the other doesn't.
 * To be fair, Axel is not really a villain to begin with. In fact, it is debatable if most of the Organization XIII members are true villains or not. A few of them are, obviously, like Xemnas, but some, like Axel, and, hello, Roxas, are not really.
 * Also, Axel technically died to save Sora, but really, he was doing it to save Roxas.
 * may also qualify. True she doesn't technically "die" but
 * In the back-story for Icewind Dale, the hero sacrificed himself to close an open gate to hell, his blood somehow locking the gate.
 * Turns out in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed that this trope is the impetus for
 * In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn,
 * In Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon,.
 * Subverted as of FE12,
 * Abused to the point of incurring head banging in Tales of the Abyss, where first . And then there's  . Lastly, there's  . Geeze.
 * The World Ends With You has these out the wazoo. Before the game even happens,, and just thereafter,  Then, in the second week,  Even a few Reapers get one:  And finally,   Yeesh.
 * At least two cases of it in Fallout 3.
 * Alternatively,.
 * Broken Steel makes a third option possible if you have one the right followers.
 * in Persona 3. Doesn't get much more sacrifice-y than
 * Also, ... though given that she was her motives might have been slightly less than heroic. Or maybe she's just crazy.
 * And of course,, in a completely badass fashion.
 * In The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion,
 * Also, at the end of the Mage's Guild questline,, the archmage,.
 * In Chrono Trigger,
 * In Suikoden,  in order to save the hero and the rest of the party from  . Can also be considered a You Shall Not Pass as he prevents them from reaching the party.
 * Also  dies protecting a child, and begs the hero that her death remain a secret to keep the morale of the rebel army up.
 * There's potentially another Heroic Sacrifice after that when  The hero, Mathiu, Pahn, and Cleo are fleeing when   However, this sacrifice can be avoided if you've
 * The secret to keeping Pahn alive is
 * Later on  does this to save the hero from   and to keep the hero's rune away from evil's hands.
 * And in the end  dies, after abandoning his desired life of pacifism and solitude to help the army save the kingdom.
 * In Suikoden V,  Most players will never see it, as the game beats you over the head to keep you from taking the action leading to this, but it's still the character's Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * Subverted in the Soul Series, where Siegfried
 * And again, in Soul Calibur 4. In his own ending, but in Hilde's ending,
 * Seems to happen all the time in Metal Gear Solid.
 * This was probably the worst as
 * in Portable Ops.
 * Super Mario Galaxy..
 * In Dragon Quest Monsters 2, there's actually a spell that does this: Farewell. When the monster uses it, it instantly dies in exchange for fully reviving any other fallen allies. However, sometimes the user gets lucky and survives, albeit with only 2 hp.
 * The final mission of Hostile Waters consists simply of escorting the Cool Ship, turned into a walking (well, floating) bomb, into the heart of the enemy installation. It seems to work, too.
 * Zero of Mega Man X and Zero makes a lot of Heroic Sacrifices throughout his life/lives (he's got a tendency to return Back from the Dead one too many times...):
 * X (first game):
 * Sometime between X and Zero: sealing himself, and surrendering his body to
 * Zero 4: (a real big one, and arguably the best of all his efforts):
 * Mega Man ZX Advent: as Model Z,
 * Other characters in the Mega Man series have made Heroic Sacrifices, although most of them are also cases of Redemption Equals Death:
 * Dr. Doppler of Mega Man X3, if Zero is incapacitated.
 * General of X4.
 * of Mega Man IV on the Gameboy, during the ending.
 * Ferham of Mega Man X Command Mission.
 * Mega Man Zero: Hidden Phantom, one of X's Four Guardians in his rematch with Zero. Unable to stand defeat, he becomes a martyr and self-destructs, trying to kill Zero in the resulting suicidal detonation. Not only does it fail (given you avoid the final attack in-game), it's for the wrong cause: The X he follows orders from is a corrupt copy of the original. Somehow, his spirit returns in the third game, all the more wiser to Zero's background after snooping around Cyberspace's enormous database.
 * Mega Man Zero 3: The three other Guardians, Sage Harpuia, Fairy Leviathan, and Fighting Fefnir, deliver lethal attacks to weaken the almighty Omega Zero, but when Zero unleashes the killing blow, Omega Zero does indeed die- with the force of a thermo-nuclear bomb, incinerating the Reploids- though this can be seen as Laser-Guided Karma for their glaring wrongdoings. And yes, artwork in the collection handbook shows they live on in spirit with Phantom.
 * Mega Man X's final fate, as hinted in Mega Man Zero. X used his body as a living conduit to seal off and contain the power of the Dark Elf. He somehow separates his core conciousness from his body as a Cyber-Elf, presumably using some of the Dark Elf's power to appear before Zero several times. In Zero 2, it's cemented: An ego-blinded Elpizo strikes down X's body and destroys it- take into consideration he never knew the original, but the deranged Copy X. Elpizo believes it to be poetic justice, seeing him as the source of all his misery after X's twisted copy laid waste to thousands of Reploids. Without a body to return to, X no longer has the energy of the now-freed Dark Elf to maintain his Cyber-Elf form, and loses what little was left by the end of Mega Man Zero 3, fading away altogether. Given the existence of an afterlife for Reploids, it's implied he lives on in spirit.
 * Girouette, Zero's Expy, from Mega Man ZX.
 * at the end of Mega Man Battle Network 3.
 * in Battle Network 6.
 * Even in one of  cutscenes in Mega Man 10.
 * In Fate/stay night, Heaven's Feel route, either (for True End) or  (for Normal End) have to do this. The first is a Bittersweet Ending as, but otherwise good. The second is a real Downer Ending.
 * The second one may be a, but it's very impressive, as actually dies before  can complete it... only to complete it after 's died.
 * attempts to do one at the end of Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis..
 * Two in Wild ARMs 1.
 * First,
 * Then, at the end of game,
 * In Overlord II, during an Enemy Mine between the Elven Sanctuary and the Overlord to defeat The Glorious Empire, This doesn't kill her however, instead corrupting her and making her a Fallen Hero who serves the Overlord..
 * At the end of Ikaruga, after the Hopeless Boss Fight, the pilot uses a final attack on the Stone-Like that also kills him.
 * Midway through Cave Story, the protagonist and the Guest Star Party Member Curly Brace are trapped in a flooded room. Curly gives up her air tank, drowning in the protagonist's place.
 * In the endgame of Dragon Age Origins, the PCs learn that . An alternative is offered by one of the other party members, but may or may not be worse than the other options.
 * Sometimes there are still only two options,
 * Also, in the Redcliffe story, you discover that Redcliffe's problems are being caused by the demon-possessed son of the arl. Rather than let her son be killed or let the demon continue to prey on the town while you get proper magical aid, the arl's wife offers to be the sacrifice in a blood magic ritual that can send someone into the Fade to kill the demon without harming the boy.
 * In the human noble origin, Ser Gilmore, high ranking knight in the employment of your family, stays behind the hold the castle gates against, even though he knows that it won't keep them out forever and that staying behind means certain death. He willingly goes to this fate to buy his lords time to escape.
 * The suboptimal ending of Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer has your character stay in the City of Judgement for the rest of your life to make sure the spirit eater curse is destroyed.
 * And releasing all of Ammon Jerro's demons in the main campaign definitely qualifies as well.
 * A deleted ending of Knights of the Old Republic for a female who completed the romance sidequest with Carth and then turned to the Dark Side has the PC kill her apprentice  and die on board the Star Forge with Carth.
 * In the second game, it is possible to In the cut content,  In addition,
 * In the end of Xenosaga Episode III, it's implied Whether or not this is actually the case we'll probably never know because the series has been cancelled. However, before this, it's played more by the book when
 * In Breath of Fire III, Garr opts to stay behind on the crumbling Station Myria while the rest of the team escape.
 * Note that this is less of a Heroic Sacrifice, and more of a And Now I Must Go: Garr receives his power and long life from the Goddess the party just defeated. He could follow them out of the station, but he wouldn't last long. Having achieved the quest he set out on, he decides that it's time for his life to end.
 * An unintended parody occurs in Guild Wars. In the mission 'Ice Caves of Sorrow', rushes at the incoming Mursaat to delay them and give the party and  time to escape. However, the cutscene where she says she will do so, prepares for it, and the 'Let her sacrifice not be in vain'-speech takes roughly 1 minute. Only after all this can the player's party start running, while you can see  attack and die in under 10 seconds. It takes some imagination to see this as a dramatic moment.
 * pulls one of these at the end of Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, with a few sprinklings of Narm. At least it avoided being a Deus Ex Machina by having a pretty hard fight beforehand, and you finish it off afterwards.
 * Leonard does one in one of the alternate routes of Drakengard. Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Awesome for him because his pact partner, that god-damned annoying fairy that has been psychologically torturing him the whole damn game, is totally against this (she'll die too), so he grabs her out of the air and takes her with him!
 * The upcoming DLC for Left 4 Dead does this.
 * Although the one who dies was supposed to be picked randomly by the game, due to problems regarding the voice actor for the character, the character who dies in the campaign is always.
 * The next upcoming DLC, appropriately named
 * Happens a lot in Infinite Space. To name a few:
 * dies after . And shortly afterwards...
 * . pulls the same act ten years later while trying to buy some time for Yuri to reach SMC.
 * In Spirit Tracks,
 * In X-COM: Terror from the Deep, anyone who joins the mission to infiltrate and destroy T'leth will die when the colony ship explodes.
 * of The Legend of Spyro does this at the end of the game to
 * Deconstructed in Wild ARMs 2, where a major theme is that heroes have to perform sacrifices. They're apparently not heroes unless they give up everything so that other people don't have to fight. The Sword Magess made that sacrifice in the backstory, and, ultimately, do the same. The protagonist defies this trope moments later, and the final battle consists of spamming a Combined Energy Attack while he and all of humanity deliver a World of Cardboard Speech on the subject.
 * The upcoming DLC for Left 4 Dead does this.
 * Although the one who dies was supposed to be picked randomly by the game, due to problems regarding the voice actor for the character, the character who dies in the campaign is always.
 * The next upcoming DLC, appropriately named
 * Happens a lot in Infinite Space. To name a few:
 * dies after . And shortly afterwards...
 * . pulls the same act ten years later while trying to buy some time for Yuri to reach SMC.
 * In Spirit Tracks,
 * In X-COM: Terror from the Deep, anyone who joins the mission to infiltrate and destroy T'leth will die when the colony ship explodes.
 * of The Legend of Spyro does this at the end of the game to
 * Deconstructed in Wild ARMs 2, where a major theme is that heroes have to perform sacrifices. They're apparently not heroes unless they give up everything so that other people don't have to fight. The Sword Magess made that sacrifice in the backstory, and, ultimately, do the same. The protagonist defies this trope moments later, and the final battle consists of spamming a Combined Energy Attack while he and all of humanity deliver a World of Cardboard Speech on the subject.
 * Deconstructed in Wild ARMs 2, where a major theme is that heroes have to perform sacrifices. They're apparently not heroes unless they give up everything so that other people don't have to fight. The Sword Magess made that sacrifice in the backstory, and, ultimately, do the same. The protagonist defies this trope moments later, and the final battle consists of spamming a Combined Energy Attack while he and all of humanity deliver a World of Cardboard Speech on the subject.

"At least if I don't have any limbs...I won't be able to kill anyone when I'm infected...(Gun charging in the background)"
 * Gabriel Knight: The sins of the fathers features this in a BIG way, when  rips out his own heart to give the hero access to the Plot Device.
 * Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse features TWO in its final episode.  Then, later,
 * Neverwinter Nights 2 has several:
 * First,
 * Second,
 * In Red Dead Redemption, in what is also his Crowning Moment of Awesome,.
 * Ultimately
 * Fai Dan, the colony leader from Mass Effect, is under the control of the Thorian, a plant creature that infects other organisms with spores and causes intense pain when its orders are disobeyed. As Dan approaches Shepard, who's trying to reach the Thorian, he draws his pistol and says that you can't imagine the pain. He tells you that the Thorian is forcing him to stop you, but in a burst of willpower, shouts "I won't!" puts the gun against his head, and pulls the trigger. Also a rather senseless sacrifice since the colonists guns have shown to be rather inefficient at killing Shepard and squad and Shepard most likely still has a few knock out gas grenades at this point.
 * Later in Mass Effect, we get a sacrifice on Virmire that has a much greater impact on the game. Either
 * Mass Effect 2 begins with the SR-1 Normandy coming under attack from an unidentified but vastly superior warship. It isn't long before the crew is abandoning ship, but Shepard stays behind to force Joker to come with them. S/He gets Joker in an escape pod, but.
 * Also, the Kill'Em All Downer Ending of the game, Joker is wounded and fails to pull Shepard up into the Normandy hatch, so Shepard voluntarily lets go and plummets to his/her death, so that Normandy can escape the imminent explosion of the.
 * At the end of livetweeting the Reaper invasion of Earth,.
 * Manly Tears. Just...ManlyTears.
 * Similarly,
 * Either or  has one of these in the third game. If  was loyal, he'll live, but  can't be saved.
 * Every ending in Mass Effect 3, and yes, we said EVERY ending, involves
 * In Ace Combat 5,.
 * of Nie R has one of the most heartrending one in all of gaming, with his last words being how he wants to see his friends again and how truly afraid of dying he really is. Depending on what ending you choose,.
 * Deconstructed in Date Warp - in many paths, a Heroic Sacrifice will appear to resolve the immediate problem, but at far too high a cost, and the True Ending requires looking past this sort of thing to find another solution.
 * A certain supervisor A. Dallas in Dead Space has a particularly nasty variant of this. He leaves an audio recording saying that he knows what the necromorphs do to corpses, how they turn them into weapons...
 * Deconstructed in Date Warp - in many paths, a Heroic Sacrifice will appear to resolve the immediate problem, but at far too high a cost, and the True Ending requires looking past this sort of thing to find another solution.
 * A certain supervisor A. Dallas in Dead Space has a particularly nasty variant of this. He leaves an audio recording saying that he knows what the necromorphs do to corpses, how they turn them into weapons...


 * from Halo Wars. The UNSC officers devise a plan to destabilize the miniature star within the Dyson sphere world by converting their ship's faster-than-light drive into a bomb. The troops transport it to the elevator that would place it nearest to the star, but a group of Elites led by the Arbiter attack, and in the battle the bomb is damaged. The option of remotely detonating it gone, volunteers to stay behind with it, knowing that the UNSC will need all of the Spartans they can get.
 * Depending on your judgment of the character's "personhood", the Neutral ending to Strange Journey has one.
 * In Okamiden:
 * In Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, after you defeat the final boss,.
 * In Alan Wake,
 * In the final Legend Of Spyro game,
 * In the True Ending of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, Lambda.
 * In Rosenkreuzstilette, Freudia freezes Graf Sepperin's throne room to save Spiritia when attempts to kill her for having outlived her usefulness. Her area-freezing attack freezes  attack with it to  surprise, and  leaves for her palace to let the organization of RKS prepare itself for a final showdown. After she leaves, it is revealed that Freu had overdone the attack a little and used up some of her power to use the attack, but hey, it's a non-fatal sacrifice she made, so she's definitely alright, she's just shaken up a little bit.


 * Kyle tries this when he realises it's lose his memories, powers, and his relationship with Alex, or leave his sister to die from the lack of medicine. Alex manages to think of a third option.
 * Homefront, "You see my flare? Drop the biggest fucking bomb you got on it!"
 * Septerra Core..
 * Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has several notable examples. Briggs, the legendary pirate risks sailing to a city where his son is to be boiled alive that is also under the effects of a Class Zero Apocalypse How just to provide the party with a way to escape the city being slowly destroyed from the inside out. For his trouble, the party finds him dying on his boat after being attacked by the shadow monsters.
 * At the end of the game, it is revealed that in order to fire the Apollo Lens to end the Grave Eclipse that has been killing off the population of most of the world, one of your party must die to activating it because of the excessive light on the firing platform. When the beastmen Princess in your party realizes that she must do it because she is the only one that can wear the Umbra Gear, her transformed-into-a-monster brother regains his memory and knocks her away from it before he fires it himself, ending the Eclipse.
 * Honorable mention goes to Matthew, since he lends his power to Sveta so she has the strength to walk and make her own Heroic Sacrifice.
 * inFamous 2,
 * In Gears of War 3, during the chapter "Brothers To The End," Marcus, Dom, and their friends are trapped between an endless horde of Locust and an ever-expanding mass of Lambent.
 * in Mother 3 seems to have actually pulled a Heroic.
 * In Baten Kaitos Origins,
 * In the final cutscene,
 * In Knights Contract, Minukelsus chose to stay behind to open the portal for both Gretchen and Heinrich to escape the villain's crumpling portal. What Gretchen and Heinrich didn't know is that the sword "Paracelsus" that Minukelsus wields absorbs its wielder's life force and eventually Minukelsus succumbed to it.
 * Shadow the Hedgehog in Sonic Adventure 2. He goes beyond his limit of power to prevent the Space Colony ARK from crashing into the Earth. Out of respect for his dearly-departed friend Maria, he does what she would have wanted him to do and protects the innocent people below, leaving no trace but one of his power-supressing cuff links. The characters take a few moments to mourn his loss in the ending cutscene of the game. Eventually, Shadow comes Back from the Dead in his own appropriately-named sequel, Shadow the Hedgehog.
 * Synonymous in the respective anime, Sonic X, though plot lines and characters present differ slightly regarding his apparent death and return.
 * Katawa Shoujo
 * In Demon's Souls, the Good Ending has the hero rejecting the Old One's offer of power and replacing the deceased Monumental as a living sacrifice to keep the Old One in check.
 * In Dark Souls, the "Linking the Fire" ending has the Chosen Undead rekindle the Flames to prolong the Age of Fire while burning for the rest of his/her existence.
 * Maji De Watashi Ni Koi Shinasai has a couple.  for Chika,   for Moro, etc.
 * A good way to tell who has played Radiant Historia is to see who starts crying whe you mention  The music that plays during this scene does not help.
 * In Modern Warfare 3,
 * Lust Grimm has three cases of people blowing themselves up to defeat the enemy: Emilyn to clear the path for you to reach Back Cover, Herman to wipe out the succubus army in Back Cover, and Primary in a failed attempt to defeat Little Red Riding Hood.