Post-Victory Collapse

A character, despite long odds does something awesomely cool. Either a Heroic Second Wind, or a To the Pain that gets the bad guy to leave or give up without a fight, or maybe he jumps into the fray and beats The Dragon down with his bare hands.

But, after he's sure the bad guys have left, he promptly collapses, whether from the stress of dealing with someone who completely terrified him, or the guy he just talked down could have broken him in half without a sweat, or just because he got hurt too badly in the fight. If it was really bad, they may even die, making this a Heroic Sacrifice (albeit an awesome one).

This one is frequently used with the Doomed Moral Victor, Heroic Safe Mode or with I Can Still Fight. See also similar tropes Heroic RROD and Power Strain Blackout.

Commonly used so the author doesn't have to write about all the boring clean-up after the battle climax. The hero may last just long enough for The Cavalry Arrives Late, so they can do the clean-up. For more minor injuries, After-Action Patchup may suffice to let him out of the work.

May result when the Bottled Heroic Resolve or Deadly Upgrade wears off. Often produces Deep Sleep.

Truth in Television, to an extent: Adrenaline and other stress hormones can enable people to go for a long time, despite injuries, only to collapse once the danger is passed and the stress wears off.

Anime and Manga

 * Naruto collapses after hitting Kabuto in the stomach with a Rasengan. Unfortunately for him, Kabuto is not actually unconscious even though he was smashed into a boulder, which shattered.
 * ''Dragon Ball:
 * Goku was unable to move after overusing the Kaio Ken technique during his first bout with Vegeta. Being Goku, he didn't collapse or anything, but a congratulatory pat on the back hurt like HFIL.
 * Happened to Gohan at the end of the Cell saga and in one of the Dragonball Z'' movies.
 * Mahou Sensei Negima has Setsuna pass out shortly after enduring (and ignoring) an intense force field to save Konoka. It's implied that Setsuna would have died were it not for Konoka's swift actions.
 * Kenshin has this happen to him several times in Rurouni Kenshin, especially after fighting Shishio and being barely able to stand up and even collapsing once before. Needless to say, after that Kenshin's out of action for quite some time and apparently never fully recovers.
 * Cowboy Bebop's Spike Spiegel ended a few fights like this, including.
 * Uber-Determinator Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann takes a fatal shot from Thymilph,, then gets up anyway to help Simon finish him off..
 * At the end of the Alabasta Arc in One Piece, following several epic battles strung together, the entire Straw Hat crew suffers this simultaneously.
 * Happens again after Luffy beats Rob Lucci in a battle that required every bit of his strength. He's so badly exhausted that even being a Determinator isn't enough to help him get off the floor, and he has to be rescued by his crew.
 * Happens for a third time after the fight with Gekko Moriah in Thriller Bark. Luffy was actually unconscious by the time the battle was over, which makes sense given all the damage he took, not to mention downing 100 shadows when the max is usually 2-3.
 * Happens in Ranma 1/2. After taking the full force of several perfected Shishi Hokodans and defeating Ryoga, Ranma manages to carry Ryoga's body out of the crater and deliver a dramatic quip about the pointlessness of said attack, before comically collapsing in an exhausted heap.
 * Happens occasionally to Kazuma in Kaze no Stigma, though he's too Badass to pass out entirely, he tends to spend a while lying flat on the floor. Usually making snarky comments. Or possibly looking up skirts. It's explained that his 'Contractor' state is rather exhausting to use, leaving him severely weakened after it runs out, thus handily explaining why he doesn't use it all the time.
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist (manga and Brotherhood) Roy incinerates, despite having just been stabbed twice through the side. He cauterizes his and his dying subordinates' wounds, comes back into the fray with all his badassery intact, and finally defeats  . Then, of course, he falls to the floor, asking only some help for  , his wounded subordinate.
 * Both Orihime and Chad's first battles against Hollows in Bleach end with them passing out from exhaustion having used their newly awakened powers to defeat them.
 * Ichigo also does this a few times. In one instance, after his fight with Byakuya in the Soul Society arc, he shouts out a victorious "I won!" and then collapses.
 * In Eyeshield 21, Hiruma holds together impressively throughout the entire Death March, showing barely a trace of fatigue, until they finally reach the hotel and everyone else has dragged themselves to bed, at which point he stumbles into his room and collapses face-first into the mattress without bothering to take his shoes off or let go of his gun.
 * And at the end of the Bando Spiders game, Sena makes it all the way off the field and halfway to the locker rooms before collapsing into Suzuna's arms.
 * Also after Hiruma's arm is broken, he puts on an impressive front throughout the whole game and even onto the celebrations afterwards with his arm on a sling. But Musashi reveals to Sena that Hiruma has been going to an oxygen capsule to recover from his injuries and he also left the party early to rest.
 * In Baccano!, Luck Gandor manages to keep from passing out until after he's not only torn open throat with his own severed arm, but also delivered an appropriately pithy Bond One-Liner and made sure The Ingenue is okay. Then he falls over.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji Ikari gets this almost constantly.
 * Rolo from Code Geass applies Explosive Overclocking to his Geass and.
 * Kallen also has one during her Final Battle against, she passes out cold within seconds of winning.
 * Date Masamune pulls one of these in the Sengoku Basara anime so well that his men didn't even realize he was even shot until he fell off his horse miles away from the battlefield. On top of that, it's heavily implied that he was riding the horse unconscious at least half of the ride back home.
 * Daisuke in D.N.Angel has a moment where he stops a fight with Krad by using The Power of Friendship to turn him back into Satoshi. After the battle he leans against a rock wall and admits sheepishly that he couldn't stand otherwise, before promptly collapsing.
 * In the finale of the first season of Princess Tutu, drags himself up to his feet after nearly being killed and dramatically takes away the villain's trump card...then faints backwards into a pool of water and apparently drowning.
 * In the manga version of Chrono Crusade Rosette collapses after she manages to shoot Chrono's horns off Joshua's head.
 * In Until Death Do Us Part, Mamoru waits until to collapse. This is after he's lost his sight, been hounded across the wilderness, and won an apparently-hopeless fight; the man is badass. Also noted by another character.
 * Whenever a pilot of a Bokurano Robot wins, they collapse and die due to the fact that the robots drain life force.
 * This happened to Sailor Moon a few times after she'd unleashed new powers or defeated someone particularly nasty.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Judai goes through this early on in the Seven Stars arc after his duel with Darkness, and stayed that way for a while, until.
 * Seems to happen several times in To Aru Majutsu no Index...granted in one, Touma the rest is generally since he took a massive beating before the good 'ol punch in the face.
 * In episode 13 of Tiger and Bunny Kotetsu makes a show of using his Hundred Power to accelerate his natural healing before leaving to help Barnaby fight Jake Martinez. As soon as he leaves the room he collapses against the door since only his superficial surface injuries were healed -- he still has severe internal injuries.

Comic Books

 * In Hellblazer, John Constantine visits the powerful voodoo magician 'Papa Midnite' to ask for help, and mocking him for good measure, he collapses shaking in the elevator on his way out, because he's secretly terrified of the guy.
 * An issue of Young Justice had Arrowette defending the continued existence of the group of teenage superheroes to the Justice League, primarily, Batman. Once she was successful in convincing them to allow the group to exist, she breathed very rapidly into a paper bag, because she had just faced down Batman.
 * Teen Titans. For a while, Changeling/Beast Boy's particular method of shapeshifting could physically exhaust him very quickly, particularly when growing to massive proportions or rapid-fire shapeshifting.
 * Happens to Ultimate Spider-Man quite a few times, at least at the beginning of the series. After he, he seems to suffer from it far less, however.
 * Hellion of the New X Men, desperate to save  by rushing   to Elixir (a mutant with the power to manipulate biology which lets him heal anything short of actual death), begs Emma Frost to help him. Emma does so by temporarily removing Hellion's subconscious limits. He flew several times the speed of sound, took out a Sentinel with an armored wagon, and managed to get   to Elixir just in time. He immediately passed out afterwards and slept for several days.
 * In Elf Quest: The Rebels one of the titular rebels has a very surprising chat with the (then on leave) officer in charge of hunting them down, and convinces him he's not one of the wanted, but rather his cousin. And has a minor breakdown as soon as the officer's left.
 * Doctor Strange more often than not after a major magical feat, with effects ranging from 'minor dizzy spell' to 'full blackout.' Ruefully Lampshaded once: "I never used to collapse... Now, it seems it's all I do..."

Fan Works

 * In Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, this happens to Harry in chapter 6, when he and Professor McGonagall have a showdown.
 * In Ace Combat: The Equestrian War, Fluttershy defeats Night Raven. Despite being very exhausted and feeling immense pain, Fluttershy doesn't collapse, but remains semi-conscious. She passes out after Firefly congratulates her.

Film

 * The Lord of the Rings--or the films, at least--have Sam and Frodo, er, chilling on a big rock after they destroy the One Ring.
 * In the Gary Cooper movie Meet John Doe, romantic interest Ann convinces the title character not to commit suicide. Once he is safe, she promptly faints in his arms.
 * How to Train Your Dragon. In the very beginning of the movie when Hiccup frees Toothless instead of killing him (knowing there's a very high risk of him being killed himself), the very angry dragon pins him to a rock, roars only inches away from his face, and bounds away. Hiccup starts to turn around to head back home and, instead, immediately crumples to the ground and faints out of fear and exhaustion.
 * The Princess Bride: "Why does Westley need helping?" "Because he has no strength." "I knew you were bluffing! I knew he was bluffing!"
 * Napoleon. The eponymous Napoleon collapses after rescuing a wild dog pup from a desert flash flood.

Literature
"The Cimmerian stood upright, trailing his sword, a sudden sick weariness assailing him. The glare of the sun on the snow cut his eyes like a knife and the sky seemed shrunken and strangely apart. He turned away from the trampled expanse where yellow-bearded warriors lay locked with red-haired slayers in the embrace of death. A few steps he took, and the glare of the snow fields was suddenly dimmed. A rushing wave of blindness engulfed him and he sank down into the snow, supporting himself on one mailed arm, seeking to shake the blindness out of his eyes as a lion might shake his mane."
 * Harry Potter, all the time.
 * The final face-off at the end of book one culminates with the agony in his head reaching such high levels that he loses his sight and all rational function before falling into a three-day coma.
 * In book three, after a chase, a fight, a series of mind-blowing revelations, another fight, and almost getting his soul sucked out through his mouth, he faints and gets shipped off to the hospital wing before the second mini-climax.
 * In book four, he is forced to watch a friend die,  gets tortured, and duel both physically and psychologically. He is semi-conscious when he gets back, gets even more danger and revelatory crap dumped on him, and is mercifully put out with sleeping potion afterwards.
 * In book five it's notably averted in contrast to book four. He goes on an extended rescue mission, gets into a huge melee chase, which later becomes an all-out brawl, with the Death Eaters, watches a loved one die, and gets possessed. However, this has traumatized him so badly he breaks down and goes into Rage Against the Mentor mode.
 * In the final battle, he is temporarily refreshed, plucking him up enough to save the day, after which he stumbles off to bed on his own power for a sandwich and some sleep.
 * The Dresden Files. Harry Dresden, most of the time. Especially at the end of Dead Beat, when Murphy gets back from vacation to find him bedridden and on an IV, and as such he does not get chewed out for trashing her house. But then, he wouldn't have been able to move at all
 * Vimes in Discworld novels is exceptionally fond of this.
 * In Jingo, Vimes convinces his arch-rival Lord Rust that he's some sort of Badass by handling hot coals (emulating a story about Lawrence of Arabia). Then he waits until Rust leaves to clutch his hand in pain. ("Are you quite sure he can't see me?" "Not unless he can see through camels, sir.")
 * The Fifth Elephant: In only his underwear, Vimes Carrot and Angua rescue him just in time for him to pass out.
 * Night Watch: "I'll teach him to walk! I'm good at teaching people to walk!" *falls over*
 * Snuff: After, Vimes has just enough time to send someone to make him several bacon sandwitches with some good old Ankh-Morpork sauce before he drops where he stands.
 * Granny Weatherwax gets a similar event once. She had to catch the villain's sword with her bare palm to make him surrender - and afterwards there wasn't any cut. However, a long time after, when she had finally travelled back through half a continent to her home (and prepared bandages and water), she allows the cut to finally happen.
 * I think there's an example in Everworld #7...can't recall much except that it's during a Hetwan-Olympus battle, and April babbles something incoherent before falling over.
 * Kahlan, from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, always collapses from exhaustion after using her Confessor power.
 * In the Worlds of Power book based on Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, the kid from our world accompanying Simon Belmont taunts and beats up Death, believing that the worst thing that could happen would be that he would be sent back home. After the battle, when Simon tells him that, unlike all the other monsters they've encountered, Death really was capable of killing him, he faints.
 * The Power of Five: Happens to Matt at the end of book two. Even put him in a Convenient Coma, to show off Pedro's power.
 * Tavi in the Codex Alera passes out hard at least once from pushing himself way, way too far. When breaking Varg out of jail in the fourth book, by the time he got to a point where he could collapse, his arms and legs were about to stop working.
 * Sherlock Holmes, of all people, at the end of the pastiche The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Thoroughly justified, for reasons that are too badass to repeat here in their entirety.
 * In The Glass Inferno (one of the two books that became the movie The Towering Inferno), when everyone is rescued and they're no longer in danger, the junkie resumes having withdrawal symptoms which were suppressed while he and everyone else were trying to avoid burning to death.
 * In the novelization of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics", an entire subplot involved Riker taking a team down to the surface of the Dyson Sphere. Needless to say, complications arise and the team has to scramble to get out with their lives. After being beamed up, one of the Red Shirts asks if he's off-duty. When Riker says yes, the ensign promptly passes out on the transporter pad.
 * In Robert E. Howard's "Gods of the North", Conan the Barbarian suffers a touch of this after the fight.


 * In Lord of the Rings:
 * Meridoc and Eowyn collapse, after defeating the Witch King.
 * Sam collapses, after stabbing and driving off Shelob.
 * In Gene Stratton Porter's Freckles, Freckles fights Wessner and then argues with McLean about finishing his round, before he collapses.

Live Action TV
"May: [pulling Clarkson upright and holding a beer to his mouth] Jeremy. Speak to me."
 * In the Firefly episode "Out of Gas," Mal gets shot in the stomach, and then proceeds to run off his attackers, stumble to the infirmary, shoot himself in the heart with a tube of liquid adrenaline, stumble up into the engine room, repair the ship's core, and then stumble all the way to the bridge to activate the recall beacon to bring the rest of the crew back....and collapses, after showing just how hardcore he really is.
 * And the fact that he collapses JUST short of reaching the recall button does nothing to diminish his badassery in that episode. However, it may not fit this trope, as he passes out before completing the task, not after.
 * A meta-example of this occurs in Red Dwarf. Lister is threatening a particularly arrogant hologram, and for emphasis, he eats his cigarette. Once the hologram has left the area and the take has been completed, Craig Charles spits out the chewed remains of the cigarette and mutters "I don't know why I (beep) did that."
 * The presenters on Top Gear occasionally do mild versions of this at the conclusion of their long-distance races. Most recently, Clarkson fell over after the Season 13 London-Edinburgh race after spending eight hours stoking a steam engine and then running a short distance to the finish line.


 * In The A-Team, B.A. once beat a very strong opponent, and collapsed when Hannibal gave him a hearty slap on the back.
 * In the Sherlock season one finale,
 * Played for laughs in an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun where Dick injures his foot and believes he has become impervious to pain. Too bad the adrenaline wears off immediately after he punctures his skin several times with staples.
 * In an early episode of Farscape D'Argo ends up getting shot in the back while escaping from an enemy fortress, but manages to keep on running the next few hundred metres to safety. As soon as he stops moving, he promptly keels over, revealing that he is seriously injured.
 * In the same episode, Crichton has to rescue Rygel from a gang of kidnappers while wearing a gauntlet weapon that doses him with a powerful stimulant: under the influence of this drug, he runs several miles in the space of a few minutes, fights off two enemy soldiers, and duels their leader to a standstill before the already-overused gauntlet finally runs out of juice. He manages to convince them that Rygel isn't worth keeping, and then carries Rygel back all the way through the jungle to the campsite... then, he finally collapses. For good measure, Crichton is not seen in the epilogue of the episode, being presumably fast asleep.

Tabletop RPG

 * In Warhammer 40000, during the Second War for Armageddon, Commissar Yarrick loses an arm in combat with the Ork Warlord Ugulhard, but still manages to cut off the xenos's head. He does not 'allow himself the luxury of passing out' until the Orks are finally driven from Hades Hive. Oh, and he now uses the Ork's Power Klaw as a prosthetic arm. And this was just the first assault on the hive.
 * A number of stories about Space Marine Standard bearers like Ancient Helveticus of the Ultramarines, feature them standing in the midst of an enemy assault, holding their banner high despite grievous wounds, and only after the battle has been won allowing themselves the luxury of dying.
 * Dungeons and Dragons has a spell that gives temporary extra HP and can cause the lethal version of this when it wears off.
 * The barbarian's rage ability gives temporary extra HP, as well, leading to the same possibility.
 * From a game mechanics standpoint, the extra HP the Barbarian gets during a rage are distinct from actual "temporary HP". Temporary HP are lost first, so if the character has any left when they go away, he's no worse off than before he got them. The extra HP from a Barbarian's rage come off the bottom, so as early as level 6 a Barbarian could actually drop dead from calming down.
 * GURPS has the same mechanic for the Advantage called Blessed: Heroic Feats.

Video Games

 * In Suikoden IV, every time the main character used the Cutscene Power to the Max of the Rune of Punishment, he'd collapse immediately afterwards due to the rune's soul-draining side-effects.
 * Galuf's Deader Than Dead scene in Final Fantasy V: He keeps on fighting well after his HP hit 0, untill finally collapsing after the bad-guy's been beaten.
 * Issac in Golden Sun collapses after winning the final battle in the Colosso. Strange, given that if Issac is a decent level (and is spamming the right move), he wipes the floor with his opponent.
 * Happens to Dr. Derek Stiles in Trauma Center: Under the Knife and its Wii remake Second Opinion after he uses his Healing Touch power for the second time.
 * He successfully (and accidentally) uses it the first on the car-crash victim. As said victim fibrillates, Derek's concentration and "don't die on me!" determination kicks the Touch in. After he REFINES the touch in Power of Asclepius he complains of headache. After squandering it in the very NEXT surgery, he collapses and spends the next few days asleep in a ward.
 * This can happen to your soldiers in Dawn of War after using the "Will of the Emperor" ability. It makes surrounding soldiers immune to death, but not damage, which means that they will die easily once the skill wears off.
 * Takeshi in Ever 17 actually gets two of these. The first and more minor is The second comes just a little later when
 * Tsukihime. Immediately after defeat Nero Chaos, Shiki collapses and returns to bleeding to death. By his own earlier admission, his entire body is basically one giant wound by this point, so it's hardly surprising. He only lives because Arcueid knows how to heal him with Chaos' remnants. Or Ciel saves him in her route.
 * Link almost collapsed after killing Ganondorf in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker. (Even if you were at full hearts at the end of the battle.) Luckily, Tetra was there to catch him, before he hit the ground.
 * In Wild Arms 2, a variant of this is the best explanation for the final boss that otherwise sort of comes out of nowhere. After finally saving the world at a very high cost (specifically, ), the heroes silently mope their way out of the final dungeon. On the way, the protagonist's depression eats away at him so much that
 * In the ending of Persona 3, an extreme version occurs to
 * Non-violent example: Chris, your character in Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches, passes out each time one of the elemental orbs is successfully completed. Overexcited by the special effects, perhaps?
 * Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty collapses in exhaustion at the end of his battle against the 30 Metal Gear Rays. Understandable, but the bad news is that there are still 3 Rays left.

Web Comics

 * Inspired by this Girl Genius comic.
 * There's one scene in The Last Days of Foxhound where Raven has to stare down, who has possessed Liquid's body. has already been shot with a tranq, but it doesn't seem to be having any effect. Despite this, and despite Raven knowing that he would get his ass handed to him in a fight, Raven calmly stands there, eye to eye in a staredown, and even Trash Talking his enemy until the tranq finally kicks in. He immediately turns afterwards, lets out a sigh of relief, and says "That took waaaaaaay too damn long".
 * Antihero for Hire: Dechs does this after infiltrating TeraCorp and nearly dying several times, and also after having to fight during the daytime.
 * In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Doc learns a secret technique that will let him jump off of the Moon to escape Dracula's moon base (it makes sense in context). Safely back on earth, he has just enough time for a brief victory strut before the consequences of making such a leap catch up with him.
 * Tales of the Questor: Quentyn delivers a truly epic To the Pain speech to the leader of a gang of street punks in the jail ... and delivers a Vomit Discretion Shot outside fifteen seconds later. He is barely over the age of majority, after all, with all the battle experience that implies.
 * In Sluggy Freelance Riff's Mark-1 robot is able to kill the Easter Bunny, rob a bank, and take down the U.S. military. However, once they get it back home, it promptly breaks into a hundred tiny pieces.
 * This gut-wrenching final panel of the "That Which Redeems" arc, as Torg finally arrives home from weeks or months of fighting demons, taking a level in badass,.
 * Straha on this page of WTF Comics.
 * In this strip of Wapsi Square, Tina breaks down crying after a terrifying encounter with a sphinx.
 * In Impure Blood, Roan escapes to collapse and sleep like the dead.
 * In Endstone, Cole collapses after her escape.
 * In And Shine Heaven Now, Timothy keels over after a particularly dramatic battle.

Western Animation

 * Has been happening to Danny Phantom ever since the first episode.
 * Subverted in The Movie: Danny's Ghostly Wail knocks Dan into a building, and as it crumbles on him, Danny turns back to his human form, falling on his knees...only for Dan to emerge from the rubble, leading to Danny whipping out the Fenton Thermos for the win.
 * And again with Vlad who didn't even flinch let alone collapse from the Ghostly Wail. Danny's friends and Opposite Sex Clone were the ones who finished him off.
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender. Happens to Aang every single time he comes out of the Avatar State. But he is only twelve, and under a great deal of pressure.
 * Not quite. The first time he swoons, but there's notably less effect with each successive use. By the first season finale he can stay on his feet, and as of the grand finale he seems to have overcome the problem entirely.
 * Spider-man does this pretty often. In one episode of the Spider-Man: The Animated Series cartoon, after a grueling battle, he went home, collapsed into his bed, and slept for a day straight.
 * An episode of Justice League Unlimited had Superman raiding Cadmus headquarters to rescue a missing comrade, only to find his old friend Professor Hamilton working there. He confronts the good doc about his betrayal, only to get a verbal bitchslapping over his own betrayal of Earth at the hand of Darkseid and subsequent rage at him to save Supergirl's life last year. Big Blue looks like he's about to crush Hamilton's head between his fingers, but backs down, and after he leaves, Hamilton collapses in relief, having just stood up to a living god of a man and survived.
 * In an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob collapses after facing off against the Patty Machine.
 * Mild version in the Teen Titans episode "Haunted"; Robin manages to pull himself off the floor and to his feet for his final confrontation with a hallucinatory Slade, and stays on his feet just long enough to dissolve the illusion with the light switch and tell Starfire that he's okay. He then promptly collapses into her arms.
 * A straighter version in "Fear Itself"--Raven admits her fear, regains her powers and sends out a huge blast of dark energy that demolishes all the evil creatures in the Tower, and then falls to the ground exhausted when she's finished.
 * Happens to Ben quite often in Ben 10 Alien Force; his record is 3 times in one episode.
 * The worst case was when he would pass out just before every commercial break...in the middle of the final battle with the Highbreed.
 * In the Galaxy Rangers episode "Scarecrow," the titular Cosmic Horror had injured Niko severely, then crashed into her sickroom. She tried to fight him off, only for a royally-pissed Goose to bust in and start fighting the thing. The thing managed to stun Goose and was about to kill him when Niko recovered enough to distract him and let off a few rounds from her BFG. As soon as the Scarecrow ran off, she passed out cold from the strain.

Real Life

 * Truth in television: When in literal "Life or death" situations, adrenaline and other endorphins are more than capable of pushing the human body beyond normal limits. Once the danger is over and the body stops producing these drugs, people will obviously crash.
 * It's one of the reasons why, if you're in an accident, the authorities will often want a doctor to look you over even if you think you're fine. Once the adrenaline wears off, you may find that you're not in such good shape after all.