Deliberate Injury Gambit

"Let an opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let an opponent smash into your flesh and you fracture his bone; let an opponent fracture your bone and you take his life! Do not be concerned with your escaping safely; lay your life before him!"

- Bruce Lee

Things don't look good for The Hero. The Villain he's fighting is a Badass who's turned out to be a lot stronger than he is, and try as he might, the hero can't quite get through his defenses.

Oh no! The villain just put his fist right through the hero's chest! No One Could Survive That!

Not so fast. The hero let himself get impaled on purpose. And now that he's got the villain's hand restrained, the hero has him right where he wants him.

This trope occurs when a character deliberately allows himself to be injured, or takes advantage of the fact that he's just been injured, in order to gain an advantage against an opponent.

Sometimes it's a form of Heroic Sacrifice or Mutual Kill, but it's surprisingly common for the hero to survive pulling this maneuver... although it tends to invoke Normally I Would Be Dead Now as opposed to Only a Flesh Wound. Frequently exploits Good Thing You Can Heal. Compare Taking You with Me.

Typical in cases of Bizarre Alien Biology.

Anime and Manga

 * In Weiss Kreuz Gluhen, Hidaka Ken remarks, "It's okay, I have two kidneys," after doing a Kill Us Both variant and letting Aya impale him to make sure of getting the villain too.
 * The title character of Inuyasha allows his Aloof Big Brother Sesshoumaru to put his hand all the way through his chest.
 * A supporting character in Claymore does this to trap a yoma's hands, giving Clare the opportunity to kill it.
 * Don't forget much earlier in the series, when an unarmed Clare lets a yoma punch her through the stomach, only to throw herself and said yoma down a cliff to grab her sword and regain the upper hand.
 * This happens with disturbing regularity. Of particular note is Deneve, who can regenerate her body from almost any wound at a ridiculously rapid rate; her fighting style is best described as "suicidal", because hey, when you can grow back your arm and regenerate the intestines that were just ripped out of you, why not let an enemy mutilate you if it gets you close enough to kill him? Most recently done by, who cut off her own arm in order to lodge the sword it was holding into her opponent's chest. While she can't grow back her limbs, she can reattach them.
 * Bleach:
 * In a fight where Kenpachi lost all his senses except touch he realised the only way he could tell where his opponent was would be by trapping the sword and grabbing the person holding onto it. The only way he could trap the sword was by letting himself be run through with it. He didn't mind.
 * Zommari had the power to control limbs he tagged with his ability. Immediately and without hesitation, Byakuya deliberately severed the tendons in both his left leg and his left arm to free his body from Zommari's control. Even though he only had one leg and one arm left, he still made defeating Zommari look easy.
 * Yamamoto deliberately tanks  sword to the gut in the same tactic Kenpachi used   Unfortunately, Aizen manages to escape but he's so shaken he leaves himself wide open to attack by Ichigo who previously couldn't even hit him.
 * Naruto allows Kabuto to stab him through the hand with a kunai, so that he can hold him while he forms a Rasengan with his other hand to hit Kabuto with.
 * Kabuto, himself, kinda pulled this off a little earlier in the same battle. Twice none the less. ("Kinda" because the injury was self-inflicted.) First time was when he fought Tsunade and he slit his own wrist in order to splash her with the blood and exploit her severe blood phobia for a quick victory. The second time was when Naruto used his Me's a Crowd technique and he splashed some blood in the eyes of one clone, effectively blinding it.
 * When Hayate finds out about the Sand and Sound Village invading, he tries to cut Baki with his sword. Baki just lets him, grabs the sword after it was lodged into his shoulder, and uses his other hand to kill Hayate with Razor Wind.
 * Neji lets Kidomaru hit him with an arrow - but directing it away from his heart - to send a chakra burst through the thread to stun him, leaving him defenseless against a killing blow.
 * About the same time, less straight: Kiba stabs himself to force his opponent out of his body.
 * When Taka is fighting Killer Bee, Suigetsu takes a punch from Killer Bee, turns into water, and then has Sasuke electrocute them both leaving Bee open to a Power Fist attack from Jugo.
 * Happens in a very odd way when the Raikage chooses to attack, perfectly willing to lose his arm to get in the finishing blow, though.
 * Deidara pulls this on Gaara: when Gaara rips Deidara's arm off with his sand, Deidara put some explosive clay in it and set if off after forcing Gaara to defend himself with it.
 * In the fight between them in the Chunin Exam preliminaries, Neji takes a Jyuuken blow from Hinata in order to set himself up to use a more advanced technique to stop off her chakra. He doesn't seem to be affected by the normally-severely-injurious strike at all, though, so it may or may not count.
 * In the Street Fighter III manga adaptation, Ryu Final, . Somehow,.
 * Black Cat: Train lets one of his hands get cut off by Creed so that he can shoot away the invisible sword, then shoot Creed himself.
 * In One Piece, during the fights with CP9, Sanji's opponent Jabura attacked Sanji with a two-handed attack. Sanji kicked away one hand but not the other, taking half the hit. Jabura gloats that had Sanji used both legs, he would have stopped the whole thing. Sanji's reply: "No, I had to do it...!! The other kick... is to finish you off!"
 * To avoid being petrified by Hancock's abilities, one must be either preoccupied with another emotion or do this, as Vice-Admiral Momonga demonstrates.
 * From Death Note, in an unlikely non-fighting anime variation, He knows Capoeira.
 * Not straight, but kind of Gundam examples:
 * In Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team Zeon elite pilot Shiro Amada rips off his suit's arm to use it as a weapon.
 * Used fairly often in Mobile Suit Gundam 00, e.g. Sergei Smirnov allowing Gundam Exia to cut off his arm only to get the upper hand this way.
 * In one episode of G Gundam, Domon is wrapped up by Cobra Gundam. In order to escape, he dislocates his Gundam's shoulder to give him room to move. Keep in mind that in G Gundam, the Gundam's movements mirror the pilot's, so he had to dislocate his own shoulder in order to do this.
 * Early in the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, Yami Yugi goes to rescue Joey from his torturers. He allows one of the men to hit him in order to get them in the correct position to spring a trap.
 * Guts, in the Berserk manga, does this in his fight against the Apostle Rosine, where it appears that he has been impaled through the head by her probiscus and killed - only for it to be revealed he turned his head at the last moment and was only impaled through the cheeks, then gripping the weapon between his teeth to prevent Roshinu from dodging away from his final sword blow.
 * He did it earlier in the same fight in intentionally allowing her to impale his arm, just so he could get a good shot off with his Arm Cannon.
 * He also did a weird version with a giant Kushan monster which he let hit him so he could get on a building to attack from.
 * Hunter X Hunter: Gon versus Genthru during the Greed Island Arc. Gon gets one of his hands blown off and the other near-destroyed in order to kick Genthru in the jaw.
 * Jin does this near the end of Samurai Champloo. In fact, this is the final, crowning technique of his kenjutsu style (which is very closely based on a real school whose philosophy emphasizes moving beyond the binary win/lose mentality).
 * Specifically, he remembers part of his teaching that he'd never quite understood before: If you ever face an opponent who is too skilled for you to dodge their attacks, then don't.
 * In Saiyuki, the only way Sanzo gets a clear shot at Kami-sama is when Hakkai engages him in close combat, then stands back and lets Sanzo shoot through him—although, when Goku asks, Sanzo is quick to point out that he aimed around him, and Hakkai adds he's only been grazed.
 * Blood+ variation: Saya impales herself and Karl together on her own sword in order to kill him. (She heals; he doesn't.)
 * Dragon Shiryu does this in the Capricorn house in Saint Seiya. Letting Shura stab him in the chest with his hand and then breaking it off. He does it again in the Lucifer movie, and one of the Asgard warriors did it to Sorrento Siren in the last Asgard battle.
 * In the second episode of the Read or Die OVA, Nancy tricks Genjo Sanzo into stabbing her with his bo, which then allows Yomiko to attack and defeat him.
 * Palparepa flies out of his Humongous Mecha to stab Guy for the final strike in Gao Gai Gar FINAL. Guy takes the opportunity to give Doctor God some G-Stone to the face
 * In part 3 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Jotaro uses his body weight as leverage to snap a cursed sword in half, as touching the hilt would have had him become possessed by it.
 * Performed by Kazuki in Busou Renkin, who turns his lance back into its (nigh-indestructible) kakugane form in order to stop himself being cut clean in half by his opponent's apparently unstoppable gyakudou technique.
 * To elaborate: When he's not using his lance, it replaces his heart. So he only got cut partly in half.
 * A variation of this occurred in episode 4 of Gunbuster involving a giant robot and an alien mothership. Noriko allowed the Lightning Bruiser mothership to impale Gunbuster, leaving her in perfect position to hit (and destroy) it with her weapons.
 * Occasionally used in Gantz since finishing a mission enables you to return unharmed some characters take the danger of getting injured to finish an opponent.
 * An injured and outmatched Captain Buccaneer from Fullmetal Alchemist attempts to attack and gets a sword in the stomach for his troubles... and then he flexes his abs so that  can't pull the sword back out, leaving him temporarily disarmed. A bit later,
 * During the assault on Tokyo in Code Geass R2, when the Ax Crazy Knight of Rounds Luciano Bradley attacks a Black Knight battleship by throwing a disabled, friendly ship into it, Xingke tries to shoot it down, only to have Knight of One Bismarck Waldstein slash him with a BFS.
 * Happens in Dragonball Z when Captain Ginyu punches his own chest, crippling himself just before using his hitherto-unknown Grand Theft Me attack on Goku, thereby crippling Goku instead.
 * Juuza of the Clouds from Fist of the North Star does this in the second part of his duel with Ken-Oh, in which he intentionally drops all of his guard just so Ken-Oh would hit him straight in the chest. This gives Juuza the leverage needed to perform an armbar and attempt to destroy Ken-Oh's arm.
 * Ayumu from Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? is a zombie who cannot die or be re-killed, presumably without some necromantic prompting from Eucliwood. He often uses his nigh invulnerability to his advantage in fights, very noticeable during the group's fight with the serial killer
 * In one fight in Lone Wolf and Cub, one of the ninjas does a Barehanded Blade Block, intentionally delaying the clap until after the blade had penetrated his skull so that it would be trapped to allow the others to swarm Ittō.
 * Ash in Pokémon has his Gligar do this in a battle against a Marowak. The former's wings had been frozen by the latter's Ice Beam, rendering it unable to fly. When the Marowak attacks with a Bone Club, Gligar literally takes it head-on... then retaliates with a finishing blow.
 * Vash uses this in Trigun to beat a hypnotist who paralyzes her opponents to create the illusion of a Flash Step ability. He breaks his own finger and twists it, in order to be so focused on the pain that her hypnotism won't work and she'll lose her only attack that makes her dangerous.
 * Gally's solution to dealing with an opponent with a polearm who is fast enough for the reach advantage to be of use? Let her arm get severed at the shoulder and beat the other girl down with the thick end. Not the first time she pulled such a stunt nor the last.

Comics
"Maul: What could you hate enough to destroy me? Vader: Myself."
 * Shatterstar from Marvel Comics, not being exactly human, pulls this trick a few times in order to skewer people bear-hugging him. He's able to do this multiple times rather than as a Taking You with Me gambit in part because he heals faster than humans, and partly because his organs are arranged differently.
 * Gambit did this once—he let the bad guy stab him in the leg with a dagger, and fell to the ground howling in pain. Said bad guy assumed he was out of the fight, and turned his attention elsewhere. Big mistake on bad guy's part...
 * In a similar incident, Gambit mouthed off to the Big Bad while all the X-Men were taken prisoner and got himself stabbed in the leg. It turned out that mouthing off was a Batman Gambit; after the captor tied them up and left them with minimal guards, he was able to take the flechette out with his mouth and use it to pick the lock.
 * Used in an Expanded Universe Star Wars story pitting Darth Vader against a resurrected Darth Maul; Vader stabs himself through the chest to kill Maul.


 * Spawn tries this against his evil/good/whatever counterpart the Redeemer. He lets the Redeemer blast a hole in his torso so that he could act disabled and surprise him. Unfortunately, the Redeemer just teleports away afterwards. Fortunately, he got better.
 * Rather than expend energy healing that hole in his torso, he left it and allowed his living suit to cover it. In a later issue, he deliberately took a blast to the chest, knowing that most of the damage would blow harmlessly through the preexisting hole, while counting on his opponent to assume it would be a mortal (or at least debilitating) wound.
 * Yama does this to Points in Bad Guys, a spinoff of Gargoyles. Yama reminds Points that he will heal at sunrise, but Points won't.
 * As easily repairable robots, the Metal Men have this as their trademark. They'll take any risk, and even sacrifice their "lives," because so long as the necessary parts aren't damaged they'll be back in the next issue, no worse for wear.

Fanfic

 * In the Sherlock Holmes fic The Ghost Map, Holmes shoots himself in the shoulder to frame a Serial Killer/Deadly Doctor and get him convicted in court.

Film

 * The movie Excalibur has King Arthur himself doing this after getting speared by his bastard son Mordred, sliding on the spear and then giving Mordred what for with the titular sword. This is an inversion of the scene in Le Morte Darthur.
 * In 300, Captain does this during the final last stand after . The Director's Commentary on the DVD edition suggests this may be a deliberate homage to Excalibur.
 * John McClane in Die Hard 4 :
 * In a villainous version, the Uruk-Hai leader in the first Lord of the Rings movie is impaled on Aragorn's sword, and pulls himself up the blade to get up in his face and snarl. Aragorn promptly yanks the sword back out and lops off his head.
 * Osmosis Jones subverts this (the main character is a white blood cell and he splits his entire body to escape).
 * Pirates of the Caribbean 3, during the Jack v. Jones fight. Jones of course is immortal, so it wasn't much of an injury.
 * In Rob Roy, the Fragile Speedster Archie Cunningham has Rob at his mercy in a duel to the death. As Archie pauses to gloat, Rob grabs his sword, cutting his hand badly, but tying Archie up in the process. Rob uses the opportunity to hack Archie almost in two. Ironically, Rob had previously cut his own hand on an opponent's sword to avoid a fight.
 * At the climax of Serenity, Mal takes a sword to the gut from the Operative. It is unintentional for sure, but he takes advantage of it through headbutt-right cross-screwdriver to the foot combo, pulls the sword from the wound and proceeds to stab downed Operative with his own weapon. It doesn't quite work for him but hey, it's the thought that counts.
 * Does another one in the same fight when
 * The most recent Star Trek film has something similar (allowing ), though I'm sure that the victim would rather have done without the prior strangling.
 * An extreme example from Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. A member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad cuts open his stomach and then attempts to use his own intestines to strangle Ricky.
 * Done as a counter by the T-1000 in Terminator 2 - he gets punched through the face by the T-800, then morphs so that what was his head is now his hands gripping his opponent's wrist.
 * In Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins,.
 * In X-Men, due to his Healing Factor, Wolverine does this on occasion. In the first movie, he has to pierce his claws through his body to cut the restraints Magneto has him in.
 * In Lethal Weapon 2, Riggs uses his Chekhov's Skill of dislocating his shoulder to escape his bonds.

Literature

 * In The Wheel of Time series, this is called "Sheathing the Sword" - you're not expected to survive it, but you get to take your enemy with you.
 * In the Kate Daniels novel Magic Strikes, Kate realizes that the enemy is wielding a magic sword capable of destroying Kate and all her allies in a matter of seconds. So she deliberately impales herself on the sword and presses forward until the entire length of the blade is smeared with her blood. Then she invokes the magic of her blood to unmake the sword, saving the lives of her companions with her own sacrifice.
 * In Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber our hero finds himself in a sword fight with a demon of some sort. At length, he impales it. The demon laughs at him, says "I do not keep my heart where men do" and (now that his sword is stuck in its chest) nearly manages to kill him in the continued fight.
 * The Baroque Cycle has a character stabbed in the liver in a sword-fight. He grabs the sword and pushes it in deeper in a desperate attempt to keep his enemy from pulling it out and finishing him off.
 * In Sharpes Gold, Richard Sharpe is fighting a superior swordsman, El Catolico, who is armed with a rapier. Sharpe is struggling to defend against the lightning-fast rapier with his rather clumsy heavy cavalry saber, so he allows El Catolico to stab him in the thigh. He traps the blade there and slays El Catolico. Every single one of his allies tells him during his convalescence what a stupid move it was.
 * A less destructive version is seen in the early Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Han Solo's Revenge: Han is facing the one man he's ever met who's a quicker draw than him, so avoids a duel by shocking both their right arms into useless paralysis; the gunman is forced to retreat, because Han is ambidextrous.
 * In The Shadowof the Lion, an alternate history / fantasy set in Renaissance-era Venice, Marco wins a knife fight against a much better fighter by impaling his own left hand on the other man's knife, then striking the killing blow before the other man can free his knife. An observer of the fight had known about this gambit (and how to counter it) in theory, but the shock of seeing someone actually do it caused him to deeply respect the boy.
 * Honor Harrington's swordmaster notes that this is something she instinctively knows in a fight - she will take an opportunity to defeat her opponent even if it means injury or death to herself. He notes this after a match that by fencing rules he won, since he touched first, but in a real duel he would be dead while she would "only" be missing an arm (in a society with cybernetics and regeneration, this is less of a problem than it seems). This style is especially evident in her space battles, where on one occasion she turtled up and allowed the enemy to batter her ship just to lure it in close enough to use her grav lance on it.
 * In The Dresden Files novel Dead Beat, a villain does this to one of the heroes at the climax.  Fortunately,
 * In The Bones Of Haven, the leader of an urban-fantasy Special Wizardry And Tactics team throws herself on the sword of a terrorist fanatic to give her squad the chance to take the man down. Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Awesome, as she sneers in his shocked face and asks him: "You didn't think you were the only one willing to die for your beliefs, did you?"
 * Modesty Blaise uses this in the novel A Taste For Death. For various plot reasons, she engineers a fight with a sword master, and realises that the only way she can win is to trap his sword in the shoulder of her sword arm. At which point she drops her sword into the other hand and kills him, because she's just that good.
 * At the end of Mercedes Lackey's A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, the Big Bad Perenor runs elflord Terenil through with his sword... and Terenil pulls himself along the blade to get close enough to stab Perenor.
 * Older Than Print: In Le Morte Darthur, Arthur spears Mordred, who impales himself further to strike Arthur.

Live Action TV

 * Used multiple times in Highlander, with one immortal impaling himself on his opponent's sword, in order to immobilize it, and get in close enough for a decapitation.
 * In fact, this was toted as a gameplay mechanic for a video game adaptation that seems to have fallen into Development Hell.
 * On Warehouse 13, Artie goads MacPherson, who is holding a samurai sword, into stabbing him in the chest, and then holds on to it so that MacPherson will have to run and abandon the sword, a valuable Artifact. He survives, but is injured for several episodes.
 * In the Doctor Who episode "Smith and Jones," the Doctor mimics a human and allows a plasmavore to drink his blood, nearly killing him. The plasmavore is trying to use his blood to disguise herself as a human; since the Doctor isn't human, her disguise fails and she is executed.
 * In Torchwood, Jack Harkness sometimes uses his ability to come back from the dead to get one over on his opponents.
 * Ziva allows a foreign operative to beat the crap out of her for a few minutes in one episode of NCIS. Once the other woman gains enough confidence to reveal her plan, Ziva laughs and dispatches her easily.
 * In Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, Takeru allows his rival to stab him so he can get in a (seemingly) fatal hit. During the finale, the team allows the Big Bad to impale Shinken-Oh, leaving him open to a finishing slash from the Mecha.

Stand Up Comedy

 * Eddie Izzard has a mime routine in which he pulls himself along an eighteen-foot spear.

Tabletop Games

 * Common in Warhammer 40,000 in the cases of Tyranids, Orks, and Space Marines.
 * With Space Marines it is partly because they have two hearts and three lungs, and three kidneys too. Tyranids do it because they are disposable drones while Orks have decent regenerative abilities and live to fight.

Video Games

 * Metal Gear Solid 4: Raiden impales Vamp with his sword, driving it through his own gut.
 * Throwing the trope right back, Vamp twists the sword (now through both of them) to increase the internal damage.
 * Final Fantasy VII. Cloud vs. Sephiroth.
 * Explicitly shown on the anime 'Last Order'
 * Yoshimitsu of the Soul Calibur series of 3D fighters has a number of "seppuku" moves, where he stabs himself in the gut, and hopefully his opponent. The moves are very short range and do the same damage to Yoshimitsu that they do to his opponent, but have very high damage and are unblockable. Similarly, his descendant in the Tekken series can pull off the same maneuver. What's more, Yoshimitsu is about the only character who has healing moves.
 * Done (unintentionally) by Travis in the 1st rank battle of No More Heroes:
 * In the opening cinematic for Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi, Piccolo lets Cell punch him in the stomach so that he can grab Cell's arms and hold him in place while Gohan fires a Kamehameha at him.
 * In one section of Knights of the Old Republic, a secondary character of the player's choosing must avoid capture and free the player character and the rest of the party. If Canderous Ordo volunteers, he severely injures himself with a plasma grenade—knowing his special healing implant will revive him once the Mooks have left him for dead.
 * In Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, there is the skills Wrath, which boosts critical hits, and Resolve, increasing by half speed, skill and strengh. Both only work when the one using them lost at least half his HP. Guess some players order their soldiers to pull these off for devastating effect on the battleield.
 * You can do this in Team Fortress 2 as the Soldier. The Equalizer is a weapon which increases your speed and attack power when held and your HP is low. At 1 hp, you go nearly as fast as a Scout and can almost 1 hit kill the lighter classes. People lower their health in two ways: either Rocket Jump into the low 20s, or just throw yourself in an all out attack. The enemy will most likely get a few shots in, when you can whip out the Equilizer and smack em about while they reload.

Webcomics

 * Von Pinn in Girl Genius traps Bangladesh's sword by impaling her hand on it here.
 * In Shadownova, when Fury is blinded by a flashbang Jacob decides to punch him as he escapes, which only results in Fury calculating where he is from the punch and stabbing him.
 * Jordi in Cuanta Vida protects himself from a Back Stab and disarms the red spy by impaling his own hand on the knife.

Web Original

 * Anti-Hero Badass Heroic Sociopath Belphanior from The Adventuresis quite prone to that tactic, thanks for his Evil Weapon which eats souls of slain enemies and heals wounds of wielder at the same time.
 * In Whateley Universe, Phase pulls this on Chaka while sparring, since Phase can change the density of parts of her body. The weapon goes right through her intangible chest to nail Chaka. Lancer lampshades this immediately afterward.
 * Penny Arcade Dungeons And Dragons Podcast: Binwin falls victim to this several times, surrounding himself with enemies so Jim can unleash a fireball on the lot of them.

Western Animation

 * Heroic ninja Snake Eyes pulls one off in his duel against rival ninja Storm Shadow in G.I. Joe: Resolute: pinned down and about to be struck down, he allows his enemy's katana to pierce through his left palm, redirecting the blow to hit the ground rather than his head. He then uses his right hand to break the sword in a Crowning Moment of Awesome.

Real Life

 * American President Andrew Jackson famously performed this trope in a duel. He wanted to kill his adversary so much that he deliberately waited until after his opponent had fired (and hit him) so that he could take his time and aim for a killshot; combatants only loaded one bullet per round. It worked, and he survived.
 * This occasionally appears in self-defense courses which recommend such tactics as redirecting the knife into your shoulder to get rid of the weapon. For obvious reasons, this is very bad advice.
 * There is an old fencing tactic for duelling with smallswords where you allow your left palm to be impaled by the enemy sword, thus preventing the enemy from parrying your deadly blow. You need to be pretty desperate to try this though, and there is a better alternative where you have a piece of fabric (cloak, piece of linen, etc.) hanging from your arm, and you let the enemy to pierce that instead.
 * This trope is why boar-spears have crosspieces: they prevent an impaled boar from running up the spear to gore the hunter.