Stupid Sacrifice



"Alright, it's time to redeem myself. Through one final act of redemption [Stands between Gohan and a fairly slow Beam], I'll save Gohan an- wait a second, why didn't I just grab him? I can probably still do that now, actually. Yeah, that's it, I'll grab him, and throw him out of the wa-AAAARRRRRGH!"

- Piccolo, Dragon Ball Abridged

We all know the trope. Everyone's caught in a life-or-death situation. One of the characters hedges their bets, steps forward so the others survive, and ends up on the "death" side of the equation. Pathos is obtained, tears are shed, etc., etc.

Except... well, did he/she really need to do that? Couldn't he have gotten out of the way of the death trap once it was smashed and about to explode? Couldn't she have just held out for a few seconds longer until help arrived? Couldn't he have just talked them all out of that? What can we say, it's pathos—logic must be left by the wayside. The Plot Reaper has spoken.

A Stupid Sacrifice is what happens when a Heroic Sacrifice has a head-on collision with Fridge Logic. It is not a Senseless Sacrifice, where someone offers themselves up as a sacrifice only for outside factors to make it useless; this is when a sacrifice occurs when anyone in command of all their logical faculties could've seen that it didn't have to end that way. Surprisingly little overlap with Martyr Without a Cause, but sometimes the result of Chronic Hero Syndrome: The Knight Templar or Well-Intentioned Extremist may make them—and lament them as Dirty Business—because they can't be bothered to notice that they were unnecessary. If a proposed sacrifice is nixed on the grounds it would be stupid, see Who Will Bell the Cat?.

Often a case of Writer on Board. They want this character to die, for whatever reason. There are no other alternatives, period. This situation makes it similar to Dropped a Bridge on Him; the "sacrifice" part making it "honorable", but they weren't going to make enough effort to make it the only logical way.

If the sacrifice is stupid because it didn't accomplish what it was supposed to but was still the logical choice, that's Senseless Sacrifice, not this trope. The two tropes can overlap when a Stupid Sacrifice doesn't accomplish its goal, but it is rare.

Counter Trope to Negate Your Own Sacrifice. Subtrope of Heroic Sacrifice. Compare Shaggy Dog Story. No Real Life Examples, Please.

Anime and Manga

 * In the beginning of Code Geass R2 Urabe impales his own Knightmare with his Katana to land a surprise attack on the Vincent which nobody can hit, blowing himself up. Not only does it only leave just a tiny scratch on the thing, but 10 seconds later, proves completely pointless. ''Especially' considering his ejection system wasn't even damaged.
 * Moses death in Blood Plus. Heck, it barely even counts as a sacrifice. One wonders why he effectively committed suicide and left Lulu to fend for herself as the last of the Schiff.
 * In Appleseed, Kudoh manages to overturn a bad situation by kicking a villain's weapon and threatening the others with his own. The good guys grab their guns as well, point it at the baddies and quickly run out of the room. But Kudoh, for some reason, doesn't follow them. He stays there pointing his gun at the baddies, who outnumber him ten to one, and is shot to death as soon as the others are gone.
 * Tereus in Appleseed Ex Machina tries to have a Stupid Sacrifice, but gets kicked out of it by other protagonists.
 * Gantz. An alien throws a highly corrosive acid at Katou. Instead of, say, pushing him out of the way, Kishimoto runs around him, blocks him with her body, and takes the blast.
 * Heroic Sacrifices rarely work in Dragon Ball. The truly pointless sacrifice in the series, however, has got to be Piccolo's in Dragon Ball GT, in which he decides to die so that the Black Star Dragon Balls wouldn't be used ever again. Despite the fact that the series had already established that they could destroy the Dragon Balls, or hell, just outright kill the dragon.

Piccolo wanted to share the Earth's destiny. However, that means he should've been revived along with the Earth. Thanks to the sheer distance between the balls, the fact that it's all but impossible to find one without very specialized equipment, and the fact that absolutely everybody crazy/powerful enough to want the things was dead, he could have just done nothing and still had the same effect.

Never mind the fact that Dende had to recreate the regular dragon balls because Kami wasn't around anymore, which means that the black dragon balls shouldn't be active either.
 * Lampshaded in Yu Yu Hakusho. Yusuke tries to prevent Kurama from sacrificing his life to save his mother's life, saying it doesn't make logical sense because Kurama's mother would be condemned to a life of grief. So in turn, Yusuke offers up his life instead. Eventually they both live and the wish is granted anyway, but only then does the Fridge Logic kick in for Yusuke: if he'd done that, his own mother would've been condemned to a life of grief. He prevents this (in some translations and adaptations) by suggesting that the mirror take part of his life, so Kurama won't have to die and his mother will be saved. Then again, the act is reckless enough to impress the Forlorn Hope into not taking either of their lives.


 * Averted in Gall Force: Destruction, where a Catty android is about to sacrifice her existence to get the team past a door only to have another character point out that there's more than one such door and they only have one Catty.
 * In the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist, Scar jumps in front of Lust to protect her from a hail of bullets. She's a homunculus who can't be killed that easily, and Scar knows this, but he takes the bullets anyway. And there's an emotional element as well: the body Lust was made from was the woman Scar's brother loved - and Scar as well, as he later confesses.
 * In One Piece, four Alabasta warriors in the Kicking Claw Squad drink a potion known as the "Fatal Fuel", which apparently increases their physical strength but kills them in minutes. Unfortunately, Crocodile can turn into sand and avoid their attacks, an ability he seems to have displayed in front of many people on at least one occasion that they should have known about.

This is made all the more tragic\hilarious when Crocodile decides to just fly off to an out of reach ledge and watch them die instead of letting them even attempt to futilely try to kill him. Crocodile has also flown in front of the villagers countless times before, so clearly this wasn't a well thought out plan.
 * Fist of the North Star is almost one very long string of these. Probably the most egregious example is Rei, who after spouting some nonsense about his debt to Kenshiro, decides to attack Raoh despite knowing that he cannot possibly win, since he had seen the Death Omen Star and Raoh had not, and despite the fact that Raoh wasn't doing anything other than hanging out and waiting for Kenshiro to show up. Raoh for his part even tries to warn him off until he realizes that Rei's Death Omen Star meant that Raoh was probably meant to kill him. Ironically Raoh actually ends up saving Rei's life in a way, by interrupting his kamikaze final attack with a strike that will slowly kill him over the course of three days. It does end up killing Rei eventually but he gets a lot more time to actually accomplish some things than if he had been allowed to go through with his plan to ineffectually blow himself up.
 * Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin loves this trope. No one is happy unless they're about to die. There are at least three separate occasions of a character killing themselves (or trying to) in order to kill an enemy, without even trying to survive. If you have a spike pit, you can just toss the other guy in, fellas. No need to jump in with him.
 * Blue Drop does this at the ending. It conveniently takes away any means of plot exposition and therefore ironically covers up a severe lack of justification for the situation in general. Creates a downer ending, except for Hagino who is, along with her entire race a firm believer of Warrior Heaven.
 * Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has at least one example of a self-admitted stupid sacrifice:  towards the end of season 1. He is very much aware he is stupid and selfish and should NOT do what he does but does it anyways, quite ready to die in the process. In season 2
 * A non-fatal example from Zero no Tsukaima where Tabitha's mother realised that the glass of wine that had been handed to her daughter was poisoned with a poison that would make her insane, so she snatched it out of Tabitha's hands in the nick of time- and drank it!
 * Early on in Shinkon Gattai Godannar, Lou's father stays behind in his robot to fight a Memesis Beast who invaded their space station. According to him, it's his duty to protect the crew, who were almost certainly all dead or evacuated by then, and the station itself, which ends up crashing to Earth later on in the episode anyway. This later on inspires Lou to start a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against all of the species, putting herself into constant danger as a result. Great parenting, dude.
 * Nuriko, unfortunately, did this in Fushigi Yuugi. After getting seriously injured in his fight with Ashitare, Nuriko decided to move the boulder that had fallen over the entrance to where the Shentso-Pao was. Doing so, however, worsened his injuries and caused him to die...right as all his friends, including one who has healing powers, arrive to see what happened. Miaka even laments "If only he'd have waited for Mitsukake to get here!". It obviously wasn't intended to be an example, but it was, in that he could have waited for his friends to get there before moving the boulder.

It's also stupid for another reason: the boulder wasn't blocking the entrance. When the boulder is actually shown, there's clearly enough room for someone to walk around it. When the Seishi get inside, there are skeletons of dead thieves who were killed who presumably did exactly that!
 * , the Fourth Hokage does this in Naruto. even if he didn't give up his life. Hell, she even calls him out on it, and his excuse basically is . Naruto probably would have preferred, though: Naruto punches him for it later on.
 * The real reason is that the Nine-Tailed Fox would take a while to resurrect, and by then, the village would be without a tailed beast as a deterrent, making it easier to attack from its enemies, and of course the Nine-Tails may just be controlled again, or threaten the village again. The Fourth Hokage felt his idea was better, since the village would still have a jinchuriki and.
 * When Jiraiya sacrifices himself to take another look at the Pains. Couldn't he have just made a shadow clone or two to do the job? Or meditated about what he saw?
 * He also used the sacrifice to buy time for the toads to escape with said vital information, and he didn't really have a way out himself. So he was pretty much dead anyway, he just choose to go out fighting.
 * The movie version of X 1999 presents quite a few: the heroes, the Dragons of Heaven, protect a set of Cosmic Keystones located around the city of Tokyo, and the goal of the Dragons of Earth is to destroy the keystones and wipe out humanity. The Dragons of Heaven, nearly to a man, sacrifice themselves to kill the Dragons of Earth... unfortunately, the death of a Dragon of Heaven results in the catastrophic collapse of the keystone they protected, meaning that the heroes end mostly doing the villains' work for them.
 * Averted and lampshaded in Fairy Tail. Gray tries to use a spell that would turn his entire body into ice to freeze an opponent, said ice being unable to melt under ordinary circumstances. However, Natsu punches him and talks him out of it, after which he realizes that said opponent knows of a method to thaw the nigh unmeltable ice.
 * A particularly tragic example in episode 19 of Hell Girl.
 * In a way, Hell Girl often embodies this trope.
 * In Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Captain Henken throws his battleship, the Radish in front of Emma Sheen's Gundam Mk-II to protect it from Yazan Gable and his Hambrabi and is killed when the battleship is destroyed. A few minutes later, Emma is killed when Yazan destroys the Pallas Athena after she took it out.

Comic Books

 * Batman villain the KGBeast, while trying to escape a pursuing Dark Knight, continually foiled his attempts to bind him with rope by cutting it with his axe. Then when his left arm is caught in the rope... he cuts off his hand, even though it's been established that he could've just cut the rope.
 * Ultimate Quicksilver is killed in the events leading up to Ultimatum when he jumps in the way of a shot meant to kill Magneto. Why he didn't just catch the dart, or knock it out of the air is anyone's guess.
 * Superman seems to lampshade this about his original battle with Doomsday commenting during the rematch that he spent too much effort going toe to toe with Doomsday when he could have tried using his maneuverability and ranged attacks to soften the beast up.

Film

 * In the prologue of Twister, the man sacrificed himself trying to hold the cellar door shut to protect his family from the tornado, getting sucked into the storm when the doors gave way. But even after the twister forced the cellar open, his family remained unharmed. So was it really necessary?
 * In Star Trek: Nemesis, was Data's Heroic Sacrifice even necessary? Did he have to fire the phaser himself, instead of setting the phaser to overload and beaming out? Brent Spiner felt that he could no longer convincingly play an ageless character and demanded that Data "die" in Nemesis. Curiously, they still introduced an identical twin, who is left alive. And gets all of Data's memories.

To add an extra layer of stupidity, this was the last TNG film and so the problem of Spiner being too old to play Data any more was not exactly germane. The series actually did address the issue of Data being ageless, while Spiner obviously wasn't. Data once Handwaved it by saying he developed a means to appear as if he was aging (making it apart of his quest to understand humanity). May not have been airtight, but most fans were likely not to nitpick this particular issue all things considered. "Data: The transporters conveniently failed after sending Picard, so I'm going to leap across space to get to Shinzon's ship. Geordi: What about the transporters in the shuttles? Data: Shut up. Geordi: What about the Captain's Yacht? Data: Shut up. Geordi: Why didn't we just send a bomb instead of Picard? Data: Shut up. Geordi: What about the transporters in the cargo bays? They're independent units, remember? Data: What part of "shut the fuck up" do you not understand? This is my big heroic exit, asshole. Don't fuck it up."
 * Awesomely skewered here:


 * As revealed in this interview, a fifth TNG movie was still on the table while Nemesis was being made, so Spiner writing himself out isn't quite as senseless as it seems in retrospect.
 * In Spider-Man 3 Harry jumps in front of the glider Venom is about to use to kill Peter, but given that he died facing Peter, he must have either spun in midair as he jumped, or ran past him between Venom and Peter to get impaled. Couldn't he have tried to grab the glider? Or just given Venom a shove? This is particularly bad when Peter breaks out of Venom's restraints a few seconds later, so if he'd tried fighting Venom instead of sacrificing himself he'd have had Peter helping him too.
 * It's a curse inherited from his family. They are compelled to be impaled on their own Glider for reasons that are inconceivable except to Stan Lee. Hell, their chests might be magnetically attracted to their Gliders for all we know.
 * In X Men the Last Stand, why did Magneto sacrifice his troops against soldiers he knew were armed with the serum, rather than have Phoenix just nuke the island from afar?
 * In a deleted scene he asked her to, but she refused. However, why did he need anyone to begin with? If he was powerful enough to pick up the Golden Gate Bridge off its struts, and bring it to Alcatraz, couldn't he have just crushed the entire island and everyone on it with the bridge or at least form the metal of the bridge and cars into a swarm of lethal shrapnel and eviscerate all the guards?
 * It was supposed to be a Curb Stomp Battle showing the strength of Mutant-kind as a "whole". Magneto fully expected to be able to stop the darts and guns being used... Except they were made out of very not-magnetic plastic. He wasn't entirely unprepared for such an eventuality, however, notable due to his comment to the Juggernaut "allow the pawns to move first".
 * The same thing as the KGBeast example above happens in The Film of the Book of Hannibal. Hannibal Lecter, supergenius, who once got out of restraints using part of a ballpoint pen, cuts off his own hand to escape from normal handcuffs. As Roger Ebert put it, "I'm disappointed he didn't take it with as a snack."
 * Some people theorize he DID cut the handcuffs and was wearing the cast to conceal it on the plane. He probably got it through the metal detector using the rest of the pen.
 * In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer's Stone, Ron sacrifices himself as a chess piece so that they can win the magical game of chess and reach the stone. Noted by Hermione and Harry in the book, where he himself is the knight, so he has to stand still and let the queen 'take' him. In the film he's sitting atop a massive stone horse, and many people have asked themselves why he just sat on that horse and watched as the queen approached, rather than jumping off... Granted, he doesn't die, but he could have. It's likely that Ron jumping off of the horse could have screwed up the game (that is, he only counts as the knight as long as he remains on the horse).
 * Also Harry himself. Although he realises that he has little to no chances against the thief, be it Voldemort or Snape, he doesn't consider simply sending an owl to the absent Dumbledore until well into the "obstacle course". Neither does he heed McGonagall's assurances that the Stone was perfectly safe, which, big shock, it actually was.
 * The 2007-version of I Am Legend has a particularly bad example of this, when the main character spontaneously decides to blow himself and all the vampires up while a perfectly fine escape route was available. Some times you can rewrite the script's ending at last minute without any ill effects. Other times, not so much.
 * He could have pulled the pin, thrown the grenade, then ducked into the hole and closed the doors behind him? Why did he have to die in the explosion? Was he Driven to Suicide by the Executive Meddling that removed the entire reason the movie was called I Am Legend? Basically, yes. Once the original ending was nixed, they had to have some reason to Title Drop. The girl even explicitly stated that there was "room for him".
 * In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the elven princess stabs herself in the heart to kill her linked villain-brother as he rises to kill Hellboy behind his back. However, if she saw it happening, why didn't she simply shout and saved Abe from Heartache? Or, if shouting is too risky, just stab her own hand and get him to drop the dagger???
 * In the same movie, why didn't they just break the piece of the Crown that controlled the Golden Army earlier since that was all it took to stop it, and they apparently knew that?
 * Or just, y'know, have his twin raise the whole "the army won't act if an alternate legitimate heir/commander makes a challenge" thing? The same link that killed the poor kitten would prevent him from dueling her and render the army useless.
 * Of course, Abe could have just not given him the piece in the first place, considering that the Prince's threat of killing his sister was about as empty as they come. Well, unless the Prince was suicidal enough to do it... But then he couldn't use the crown either...
 * In Frozen, Dan, one of three people (two guys and a Damsel in Distress) stuck on a skilift for five days with no hopes of rescue due to Idiot Plot decides to jump down said skilift on his feet, this earns him broken legs, bleeding wounds and an off-screen death by wolves who he knew were down there. It is treated as a dramatic scene, some people even calling the character 'heroic', but his death basically serves no purpose. The idiot got himself killed for nothing. His death didn't help either his friend or his girlfriend get away from the wolves. His friend later also died killed by the wolves in a Shocking Swerve that only served to have the Damsel Scrappy survive, so Dan, you were a complete idiot who got himself killed for 'nothing at all.
 * The whole point of Lars von Trier's heroines existence. And the major point of Eight Deadly Words on the part of the audience.
 * In the big battle sequence of Avatar, pilot Trudy Chacon has the Big Bad's massive gunship in perfect alignment to shoot it down—from above and behind—yet after a couple pot shots she maneuvers right into the front of the gunship, where all the big guns are, for no clear reason other than she wanted to die or something.
 * She had been counting on the floating rocks to help her stay hidden. She underestimated the amount of sheer firepower that the gunship could bring to bear. Once her little ship was damaged, it was Game Over.
 * While using the terrain to survive was part of her strategy, she was also presenting herself as the most dangerous target, being the only one with missiles. If she was just slipping in and out of cover, the gunship would have had time to take out other targets. She was, in essence, drawing its fire away from the Na'vi (read: Jake) so he could do his job.
 * A mild and non-lethal case happens to Kevin's mom in Home Alone. She goes to a lot of trouble and extra expenses to get home to her abandoned son as soon as possible, but only gains a few minutes ahead of the rest of the family who arrive by plane she refused to wait for. Not to mention that Kevin was perfectly fine, and there was no need to hurry at all. Justified Trope, because reason doesn't apply to mothers when it comes to care for their children.

Literature

 * In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Honour Guard, Baffels led his company into battle and they had to retreat. Baffels, unsure of himself in command, did not, and died. Gaunt later said that Baffels had done all that could have been done.
 * Invoked in Traitor General. When the hounds find their scent, Landerson sees that his fall had torn off his bandage, and tells Gaunt that it's his blood, and he will try to draw them off. Gaunt refuses to let him because they would still be chased "no matter how heroic and stupid you decide to be."
 * Likewise invoked in Guns Of Tanith. After being shot down while inserting the Larisel teams, Jagdea has to be rescued by the same teams from a Blood Pact patrol looking for downed pilots. She volunteers to stay behind and let the next patrol capture her (after a suitable fight). Mkvenner and Domor shoot this plan down on the grounds that a) the bad guys are very good at torture and b) the only way to make it vaguely plausible that Jagdea'd killed the patrol would be to leave the kind of weapons that would cause those wounds, and a 'downed pilot' toting a sniper rifle and the signature combat knife of a different regiment just raises more questions. Not to mention that they'd need those weapons themselves.
 * In the final climax of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Green-Sky Trilogy, protagonist Raamo is about to throw a deadly ray-gun (encased in a heavy lead-lined urn) into a deep watery chasm. Does he simply throw it in? No, because he's telepathic and is picking up confusing thoughts/feelings from onlookers who think the weapon should be kept just in case (it's literally the only weapon on the planet). So he slips and falls in, the urn still in his hands, literally dying for the sins of his people. Obviously meant as a Heroic Sacrifice, it came off as an Esoteric Happy Ending at best—the kind that Snyder has all but trademarked in the endings of her novels. After being called on this by roughly 90% of her readers, she made a computer game sequel to the series where you can save him, as an Author's Saving Throw.
 * Twilight is horrible about this. Whenever a hostile vampire appears, Bella immediately decides to try to get herself killed in order to "save" her Nigh Invulnerable boyfriend.
 * She only needed to save Edward once and she was the only one that could do it. However she did this when trying to save her mother because James told her he kidnapped her and she decided to go alone, when it was more logical to tell her powerful vampire family James's plans, and it was unnecessary either since James was using an old video with her mother on it.
 * Although one could argue that the sacrifice for the climax of New Moon was unnecessary as well. Given that Aro was old friends with Carlisle (Alice even says that Aro wouldn't immediately kill Edward because he wouldn't want to offend him), why not just have Carlisle pass along a message, telling Aro what's up and could he please keep Edward restrained until Bella could show up? Surely something could have been managed in the time it would have taken Edward to travel from South America to Italy.
 * In Eclipse, we are told the story of a werewolf chief who had to fight a vampire. The chief's wife stabbed herself, so the vampire would be distracted by her blood and the chief could kill it...except, she really could have done that just by cutting her hand, as Bella herself does at the climax of the book.
 * Karen Traviss' Star Wars novel Order 66 has one of her characters (Etain) sacrificing herself to save a clone trooper from Jedi after Order 66 is issued.
 * Many readers have come up with ways to save the life of the stowaway girl who dies at the end of the short story The Cold Equations. In fact, author Don Saker wrote a solution story which incidentally swapped the genders of the protagonists. It was published in Analog science fiction magazine over thirty years after the original story ran in that publication. It turned out that Analog editor John W. Campbell had insisted the story end with the death of the girl and had sent the story back three times because the author kept finding ways to save her.
 * In Alma Alexander's The Secrets of Jin-shei, Nhia knows someone is trying to poison the Empress, and so when a servant appears with a goblet of wine, she's suspicious. Her solution? Taste it to find out. It never occurs to her to simply pour out the wine rather than drinking it herself to protect her friend. Given the Kill'Em All ending, it's clear the author just needed to get rid of her.
 * A big part of the plot of Return From the Stars. The protagonist, along with his colleagues, has dedicated years of his life (and 127 years of Earth time) and risked his life for a deep-space research mission, which he considers to have been a worthy achievement. In contrast, the Earthlings in the meanwhile have decided that sending people on such missions is a staggeringly useless waste of human life and resources, and that space exploration in general was but one of the many blind alleys in human history. (Though it's mostly due to the fact that the obligatory anti-aggression treatment and the permanent safety and convenience offered by future technology also renders everyone in the future incapable of taking risks, or even comprehending the idea of heroism.) This does not make the protagonist happy.
 * A particularly sad case from the post-Apocalypse novel Malevil. The castle awakens one morning to their wheat fields being devoured by twenty rag-wearing, half-dead refugees. The sight stuns Malevil's defenders, they know what must be done but the sight is so pitiful they can't bring themselves to open fire. Unfortunately, Momo, the group's Man Child, flies into a desperate rage and tackles one of the wretches only to be stabbed with a pitchfork. His death forces his friends into action, but he didn't have to die to force his friends to Shoot the Dog, their fingers were already on the trigger and working up the courage to squeeze it.
 * Polish romanticism used to love this trope, but one of the most annoying examples comes from late XIX century novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Fire in the Steppe, where the protagonist blows himself up, so as not to let the enemy into the stronghold he defends. He does so after the stronghold has been given up by the Polish king as one of the armistice's conditions. The author expects full sympathy and admiration for this step on the part of readers.
 * Russian literature tends to do this, too. In Ivan Yefremov's Hour Of Ox the head chief of an astronaut expedition kills herself to avoid torture, despite the fact that she was tough enough to bear the hardest torment, and her comrades would've been able to rescue her in practically no time at all. Blast, they were strong enough to demolish all that planet!
 * In one sci-fi novel, the crew of a relativistic starship needs lots of Antimatter to power the relativistic drive. They travel to a planet made out of anti-matter that just happens to pass through the Solar System. Half of them go down in a lander specially equipped with a shield designed to keep anti-matter from interacting with matter for about 10 minutes. They use the lander to grab a large chunk of rock and are on their way back to the ship, when they're surrounded by locals, primitive Human Aliens. They assume the lander to be some sort of god, surround it, and start praying to it. With the timer running out on the shield, the lander crew decides to let it run out rather than drive over the natives. Once the shield fails, the lander explodes, killing every native in the vicinity and nearly destroying the starship. Then one of the remaining crewmembers on the ship figures out an even easier way to get the fuel: grab a small asteroid that orbits the planet. So the sacrifice was senseless for two whole reasons.
 * In Harry Harrison's The Daleth Effect, and Israeli scientist figures out the secret to Anti Gravity. Fearful of others using this knowledge for war, he flees his wartorn country to Denmark of all places, believing this peaceful country will protect the knowledge and use it for good. Mind you, this is in the middle of the Cold War. Why neither super-power tries anything earlier is a mystery. In the end, they build the first interplanetary cruise liner and launch it. While en route, the ship is attacked by two separate teams: one American, one Soviet, both seeking the device. The Captain gleefully reveals that the ship is equipped with bombs set to go off in the event of just such an attack to keep the secret. The bombs go off, killing most of the named characters, including the inventor, and hundreds of innocent passengers. The widow of the captain (who was partly responsible for the Americans sneaking onboard) then finds out that 4 countries (including US and USSR) have already figured out Anti Gravity but kept it a secret out of national security concerns. Furthermore, they have already filed for patents, while Denmark has never done that. Bittersweet Ending indeed (the "sweet" part comes from humans getting the means to go into space).
 * In Nikolai Gudanets's Supreme Commander (which is loosely based on X-COM), the final mission of the international task force involves the raid of the aliens' base on Earth. A four-man squad enters the central area, where the Big Bad is swimming in his pool (he's a squid). Using his immense Psychic Powers, he takes control over one of the soldiers, who primes and drops a grenade. Another team member (and a possible Love Interest of the protagonist) decides that the best course of action is to fall on top of the grenade instead of kicking it into the pool with the Big Bad. The water would contain most of the blast, and the Big Bad wouldn't have used the distraction to escape. Although,.

The worst part is that the soldiers knew the alien had some sort of mind powers, yet all they came up with was a detector that blinked whenever someone in the vicinity was not "himself". They also knew that the only living things on this base were aliens. So why not just throw a grenade or two before entering any room? Or just blow the base to hell from the outside. It wasn't alien-built, after all (a secret Nazi submarine pen in the far North).

Live Action TV

 * Star Trek Enterprise, the Series Finale. Three space pirates hold the Enterprise hostage; Trip sacrifices himself to get rid of the pirates. This despite the fact that there are armed soldiers on the ship, looking for the pirates. Later retconned when it turns out the series finale was a "historical recreation" on the Holodeck, and the Federation's black ops wing altered records surrounding the event.
 * The X-Files episode "Jump the Shark". The Lone Gunmen, who for the run of the series had been Mulder's well-meaning conspiracy theory sidekicks, charge into a room filling with poison to stop the evil plot from going off... when the police could've shown up in a matter of minutes and taken care of everything. They also clearly had enough time to run out of the room once the blast doors started coming down.
 * Charlie's death in the third season finale of Lost has elements of this. If he could swim down into the Looking Glass station, why couldn't he swim back up? There is no reason he couldn't have simply closed the door from the outside. Or just used the scuba gear to escape before the (rather large) looking glass was filled with water.

Of course, And in the end, this trope is subverted since "O'Neill: Now what? Bra'tac: Now, we die. O'Neill: Well, that's a bad plan. Where's the glider bay?"
 * On the other hand,
 * The first episode of the Tek War series has the robot girlfriend of the hero spy another robot approaching them, recognizes it as filled with explosives somehow, says some dramatic last words, then runs over a block away towards the killer robot so that she can throw herself at it and cause it to explode. This is done solely to give the hero something to be really mad about to power his revenge moment against the Big Bad. The distance between the hero and evil-bot presents hundreds of alternatives to her throwing her life away. It's not like they haven't been dodging deadly attacks for the whole of the episode so far.
 * Doctor Who has had a few.
 * The Doctor made a Stupid Sacrifice of his 10th life in "The End of Time". To summarize, Wilf is trapped in a man-sized box which will flood with radiation. The box will only unlock safely if the Doctor hits the unlock button in an identical box right next to it, letting Wilf out but exposing himself to the radiation instead. The box is too small for the TARDIS to fit, the sonic screwdriver is ruled out because it would set the whole thing off, and using the TARDIS to get help from someone else is ruled out because San Dimas Time rules apply in this setting. (Usually.) Even so, the Doctor spends enough time angsting about it that he could probably have rigged up a crude method of hitting the button without being in the box.
 * Even if the Doctor lacked the resources to release Wilf from the machine without setting it off, he had ample time after being dosed to go around and visit each of his former companions, time he could have easily used to visit one of the many, many civilizations capable of treating radiation poisoning, such as the Vinvocci he had just met.
 * In this case, though, the sacrifice was arguably justified by the fact that the Doctor is horrified by his own hubris, and realizes that he must die and regenerate in order to avoid becoming a menace to the universe.
 * Astrid Peth's ridiculous self sacrifice in "Voyage of the Damned": she uses a forklift to shove the villain off a cliff, and then just keeps going. Granted, it was chiefly a plot device to make sure the Doctor was left alone again, and the writers do establish the brake line had been cut, but that forklift moved so painfully slowly she had plenty of time to throw herself off.
 * Foon's is even less necessary, but at least there you can make a case that she didn't want to live without her husband. Still, given Bannakaffalatta's (legitimate) Heroic Sacrifice, they began to pile up in that episode.
 * Adric in Earthshock. He tries to pull a Heroic Sacrifice, never realizing that the Earth had already been saved.
 * Also, "Midnight". The hostess opens the airlock and then...just stands there for a few seconds with the creature before both being sucked out, rather than, you know, pushing the thing and getting the hell away.
 * The end of "The Almost People" too. There was no need to let their anti-Ganger weapon be used by Gangers when there were the originals around too. Plus, the creature was not really that speedy and there was no real need to hold the door down when it's just five meters running to the TARDIS.
 * Stargate SG-1 lampshades then averts this, thanks to the Genre Savvy O'Neill. After successfully destroying the shield system on an invading Goa'uld motherships, they ponder their next move. The following dialogue occurs:

"Jayne: Don't make no gorram sense. Those mudders knew what I was. Why'd that kid have to jump? Don't make no sense! Mal: Nope. But I reckon that every man what had a statue of himself was a som'bitch one way or another. It ain't about you, Jayne, it's about them, and what they needed. Janye: ... don't make no sense."
 * Subverted with Topher's sacrifice in the series finale of Dollhouse. It is quite obvious that Topher could simply set a timer on the pulse-bomb. It is just as obvious that he wants this to be his final act.
 * Kat's death in Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. No real reason that she had to keep flying through the radiation when there were so many other pilots who could take more of it than she could. Possibly an actual suicide, since she was desperate to get away from Starbuck and motivated by guilt: for her shady past that may have contributed to the destruction of the colonies and for losing that previous ship in the crossing. She felt she had nothing to live for except being a Viper pilot (and that was about to be taken away from her) and that she had some massive karmic debt to make up. She had something to prove to herself. That said, her suicidal sacrifice, although understandable and sympathetic, was still pretty stupid and cost the fleet a talented pilot.
 * The death of the Senator in the Stargate Universe pilot was rather senseless. Air is slowly leaking out a damaged porthole on a shuttle attached to the main ship and the control panel to close the door is in the shuttle. The Senator sacrifices himself to save the rest of the crew, but given an hour or two (which they had) any decent engineer could have built something to press the button remotely. A lever on a string for instance. Or a flying remote-controlled camera drone, available from a vending machine aboard the Destiny.
 * The Senator was already bleeding internally without proper medical facilities to treat his injuries and his own daughter was one of the lives he was able to save with his sacrifice. Solving the leaking air problem also let them focus on the next immediate crisis of actually purifying the air to keep it breathable.
 * Marian's death in Robin Hood involves her throwing herself between Guy of Gisborne and King Richard in order to prevent the former from killing the latter. How does she do this? By loudly proclaiming her love for Robin Hood, which causes Guy to stab her to death. There are a dozen ways she could have stopped Guy—heck, she only needed to stall him for a few seconds until the other outlaws showed up. Doubles as a Senseless Sacrifice since King Richard dies in France the following year (and in the show's continuity, is still being held hostage in Austria when the show ends).
 * Deliberately invoked on the Canadian series of Todd and the Book of Pure Evil. A Fat Girl who uses the eponymous Artifact of Doom to become skinny accidentally creates a "fat monster," which rampages through the high school. Eventually, she sacrifices herself to stop the monster by pushing it and herself into a vat of boiling grease. The characters comment on her bravery and say they'll never forget what she's done ... until a few seconds later when the creature emerges from the grease, now a boiling hot fat monster. Todd and his friends quickly switch to cursing her for making the situation worse.
 * Power Rangers had a couple of these:
 * In Power Rangers in Space they send Karone on a high risk mission to infiltrate the enemy base to stop an asteroid from hitting earth, immediately after she was exposed as a traitor and before they try to stop it with their Megazords. This is a rare-overlap with Senseless Sacrifice, because they end up using them anyway.
 * In Power Rangers Dino Thunder Tommy orders all the Zords to be sacrificed even though they still had two Super-Megazords that had not been used on the final Monster of the Week. It's worse when you watch the episode and realize it was a case of Executive Meddling creating a case of Only the Author Can Save Them Now.
 * This trope is scrutinized in an episode of Firefly where Jayne becomes a folk hero. Years ago, Jayne and his partner in crime stole money from a corrupt governor. Their ship took a hit and they were losing altitude. Jayne proceeds to throw everything out of the ship, including the money and his partner (not in that order), in order to maintain altitude to escape. The money lands in a poor town and the townsfolk believe that Jayne was pulling a Robin Hood for them. Circumstances contrive to bring Jayne back to that planet and he discovers that there's a statue of him (with a song and everything!). His old partner shows up and tells everyone the truth, breaking down the illusion of his heroics. Jane denies nothing and just taunts his ex-partner to shut up and fight already. The partner is about to shoot Jayne when a kid, who had just heard the truth and knew Jayne was a liar, jumps in front of him and takes the bullet. Jayne flips out on the townsfolk, berating them for making a Stupid Sacrifice on his behalf. The episode ends with him trying to come to terms with it.


 * In one episode of Xena: Warrior Princess "The Lost Mariner", this is played for drama and lampshaded. One of the immortal cursed captain Cecrops' crewmen, a former pirate and now good friend, pushes Cecrops out of the way of debris and is mortally wounded. Cecrops tearfully calls him a fool, reminding him that Cecrops is immortal and would have survived if he had been hit. The dying man answers that he just wanted to help a friend.

Tabletop Games

 * The Red Shirt in Star Munchkin can be sacrificed to allow you to run away successfully. In the event you fight a monster and win (meaning you don't have to run away), there's still a 1/6 chance "the redshirt got overexcited and sacrificed himself anyway".

Theater

 * Death of a Salesman: Most policies still pay out if, but the play explicitly states that his wasn't one of them.

Video Games

 * Combat-oriented players are surprised by  sacrifice on the Leviathan in Knights of the Old Republic, since they will be doing quite well against Darth Malak when it happens. It's even possible to get an early cutscene if you defeat him.
 * The sequel has this as an option in the battle against Darth Nihilus, halfway though you can kill a party member to make it easier. However they grossly underestimated the power of the player and party, even without paying much attention to optimization it can take under three minutes to defeat him. This generally results in lots of Narm when the other characters yell about how "he's too strong!" the first thirty seconds in, and the cutscene takes longer than the actual fight. Of course you can stop the Stupid Sacrifice so it may be an Averted Trope.
 * Dead Space 2's DLC Story, Severed, has a bad example. Gabe could of just pushed Victor out of the way to avoid the blast from the grenade he set off. However, he was holding the Idiot Ball at the time and decides to slam Victor's face into the ground before the grenade went off. Sealing Gabe's fate.
 * Dirge of Cerberus proves guilty of this on one occasion. When Implacable Man Azul is attacking the party, Shalua holds the hydraulic door open for Vincent and Shelke to escape through. This wouldn't be so bad... except that Shelke had literally just finished demonstrating her ability to paralyze Azul indefinitely with a barrier materia. Even disregarding this, there was no need whatsoever for Shalua to stay behind to hold the door open, considering that it had an adjacent button to open it. Was it really too much trouble to just push the button again and open the door a second time?
 * Parodied in this Let's Play
 * Gorath's Heroic Sacrifice in Betrayal at Krondor has shades of this. His death is only necessary because his two powerful magician companions (who have dozens of spells suitable for immobilising or disintegrating someone on the spot) are just too tired to do anything but blink at the enemy who makes a run for the Artifact of Doom, prompting Gorath to try and stop him at the cost of getting corrupted by it and needing to be killed along with his enemy.
 * Fallout 3:
 * By the end of the game, you (or a teammate) are asked to step into a chamber to complete the project your father started to bring clean water to the wasteland. Thing is, the chamber is bathed in radiation. You can't send in the rad-resistant Super Mutant, the Ghoul who is healed by radiation, the robot that is completely unaffected by radiation, or a slave with an explosive collar around her neck that is completely subservient to your whim in every other way, and no reason is given in any case bar "no, fuck you." Your rad-resistant armor fails, your anti-rad meds do crap. You (or the likewise unprotected team mate) have to go in and die horribly of radiation poisoning.

And in an even worse implementation of Gameplay and Story Segregation, the "fatal" rad poisoning doesn't do jack until you press the button and turn Project Purity on, at which point you instantly dissolve into goo. With enough Rad-X and RadAway, you could stay in the chamber indefinitely. In story, Colonel Autumn even demonstrated earlier that it's possible to spend an extended time in that chamber without ill effects. Thankfully, the devs retconned the ending with the Broken Steel expansion: Not only can you survive the radiation, you have the option of sending in your radiation immune companion in instead.

Even with the Broken Steel expansion, if you get someone else to go in your stead (who can survive the radiation), the cuscene that plays out still calls you a coward. Since when does being smart and non-suicidal signify cowardice? Likely, they just didn't feel like creating a whole new cutscene and bringing Ron Perlman back to record a new voice-over.
 * Lone Wanderer's dad's Heroic Sacrifice could also be this, as he lets out radiation into said chamber to keep the Encave from using it and buy his son/daughter and the rest of the science team time to escape, when, by that time, the Lone Wanderer may have enough skill, weapons, and decent armor that he could wipe out the Enclave so his dad wouldn't have to do it.
 * In Age of Mythology, Chiron offers to slow down the oncoming horde of bad guys, by standing under a precarious pile of stones and kicking them. Never mind that he could have easily, you know, kicked them over from the other side, or even gotten out of the way of the path blocking the rockslide. And for that matter, there wasn't even that many bad guys. They could have fought their way out!
 * In Fable II, the dog dies when he tries to attack Lucien, and unfortunately, Lucien was preparing to fire his weapon at the time. Sure, Lucien probably would have taken care of the dog later anyway, but the dog jumped into a bullet for no real reason. It didn't attack until then either, even though Lucien gave you a huge speech about how wrong you are. Of course, it's a dog. He's only trying to protect his master.
 * Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn has is a particularly sad case. King Pelleas has made a deal with the devil—or in this case, the Begnion Senate. If he does not follow their orders, his subjects will start dropping like flies. Eventually he finds a solution - the signer must be killed to nullify the contract. Thus he asks the player to kill him (or the loyal general if the player refuses.) As it turns out, the country is still bound by the pact. You must kill a signer and destroy the contract to break the curse. And the other signer is someone you end up killing regardless of whether or not Pelleas is alive, which means the contract would have been broken either way. Pelleas essentially kills himself for nothing. Notable in that a New Game+ allows you to ignore Stupidity Is the Only Option and talk him out of it instead, making him a playable character.
 * Do you know how Beat died in The World Ends With You? When Rhyme was about to be hit by a car, he put himself in the way of the car. Both of them died. Even he admits it was a stupid idea afterward.
 * And later Rhyme does a similar thing, only substituting a Shark Noise instead of a car. Although she succeeds in saving Beat, Rhyme also dooms him, seeing as people who've formed a 'pact' can't survive for more than a few minutes if their partner gets erased. Although Beat survives, this leads to his Start of Darkness. In the end,
 * Amidst all of the sacrifice in Final Fantasy IV, Palom and Porom turn themselves into statues to hold a pair of advancing walls of doom in place. In the party, however, was a mighty sage who probably could have brought the castle down around them if he had thought of doing so. This mostly served as a gimmick to remove the characters from the party, as the number would otherwise have exceeded the Arbitrary Headcount Limit.
 * There's also the fact that Porom usually knows Teleport by the time this occurs, and there was absolutely no given reason for this slightly more logical way to escape not to work.
 * Speaking of Tellah, the pointlessness of his own sacrifice was part of the plot - if he'd waited for everyone to wear Golbez down before using his Combined Energy Attack, his sacrifice might have done a bit more than knock the Big Bad back (though it did free Kain from his control  After all, anger makes you stupid and reckless.
 * All of the game's fake-out deaths are like this.
 * Corinne's sacrifice seems somewhat pointless in Tales of Symphonia, especially since Lloyd blocks the same attack by Volt moments later. Genis, despite being able to escape the forcefield trap with Lloyd, stays behind for some reason, even though there's no proof that the trap would reset and seal them in again if he tried to escape with him. Averted with Sheena's plan to give herself to Kuchinawa (who worked with the Pope in order to get revenge on her) to save the group from the Papal Knights; Zelos drags her through the Otherworldly Gate after it opens, and tells her that the Pope is after the rest of the group anyway.
 * In Genis' case it refers more to the fact that after casting a spell, mages have to stand in casting position for a few seconds, added to the fact that mages have a much slower running speed than physical attackers like Lloyd.
 * In Tales of the Abyss, Asch runs into Luke performing the ritual to destroy the miasma, with the intent of giving his life instead, as he had intended before Luke decided to sacrifice himself. Both of them survive for the moment, but this seemed somewhat poorly thought out, since he'd been warned he would likely be consumed, too.
 * The reasons become a bit more sensical if you a) consider that Asch is dying as a result of complications from the replication process and repeated strain from using his hyperresonance and b) by this point, Luke has given him severe self-esteem issues by having done far more to save the world than he could.
 * He thought that he was dying. The implication from the optional Contamination sidequest seemed to be that it was
 * To say nothing of
 * One chapter in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin would be a hell of a lot easier if you actually had control over Brenner's unit rather then it being forced in place as a fighting retreat would have been possible.
 * Several of the people who were killed/seriously injured in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots:
 * Raiden, who, upon seeing that Snake is in danger of being crushed by a giant warship heading directly towards the pier he's laying on, decides to hold back the warship. Instead of the alternative, picking up Snake and running as fast as he can away from the pier. Raiden loses both arms for his trouble.
 * Naomi, who commits suicide by destroying the nanomachines that were keeping her cancer in check. Aside from the fact that the explanation for this is wholly unsatisfactory (she never forgave herself for creating Vamp, but she wasn't even the one who made him, not to mention she'd finally helped stop him for good), but she left behind a newfound love interest and a girl who looked up to her. There was a spare seat for her in Metal Gear Rex, but she decides to stay behind and say her final words - to no one in particular. Good going.
 * Big Boss. He decided to go out one day and place flowers on the Boss' gravestone, and took Major Zero with him. Then, he waited until Snake showed up (and almost killed himself). Only then did he decide to make his grand entrance. He spends twenty minutes tying up all the loose ends and plot holes seen throughout the series, performs the symbolic gesture of euthanizing Zero and then dies himself, knowing that Snake was carrying the mutated FOXDIE in him. Couldn't all of this just been solved by...a letter? A phone call? He shows up for the first time in four games, spouts expository dialogue and then knows it's time to die?
 * Big Boss's whole point in letting himself die was that the legacy of the Patriot's, which he himself was a part of, needed to die. Presumably, he watched Snake try to off himself to see whether or not he could actually do it, but quietly convinced that he wouldn't be able to. He lets himself die because he wants to die, to finally end the corruption and control, the plots and machinations that stretched all the way back to the Virtuous Mission.
 * Snake, walking down a corridor that is basically a giant microwave, sure it looks badass, but when you reach the room at the end of the corridor, Snake doesn't do anything. Otacon, by way of his robot, just uploads the virus and they get out of there.
 * Good job sticking a soulstone into your head, warrior from Diablo. Wrestling against the lord of Terror, yeah right. Take the damn soulstone to the Horadric mage, who can send you back down to destroy the thing. Admittedly, he was kinda messed up by this point and it's pointed out that this was a very very bad idea. Still, why would you think your willpower can stand up to the devil, who also happens to be immortal so he'll win anyway?
 * Good job sticking a soulstone into your head, warrior from Diablo. Wrestling against the lord of Terror, yeah right. Take the damn soulstone to the Horadric mage, who can send you back down to destroy the thing. Admittedly, he was kinda messed up by this point and it's pointed out that this was a very very bad idea. Still, why would you think your willpower can stand up to the devil, who also happens to be immortal so he'll win anyway?

It is now known that random warrior is actually the other son of the skeleton king and the older brother of the prince that Diablo took over for a body. Basically the entire game Diablo was whispering to the warrior to make him think that was the only way to seal him and prevent him from ever being released into the world again. "Wayne: Basil, come with me in my better-than-anything-the-enemies-have Humongous Mecha and let's blow this joint. Basil: No, I'd rather stay here for no discernible reason whatsoever and fight the vastly overpowering enemy forces until they shoot me to within an inch of my life, leaving me with just barely enough energy to activate the detonator for the explosives I've been planting around the place. Wayne: Yeah, I won't even think about making you abandon such an obviously pointless and masochistic plan. See ya!"
 * Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. Paraphrasing lightly:


 * At the end of X2: The Threat, your wingman flies his fighter into the enemy doomsday weapon to destroy it. All well and good, except that X2 is not the sort of game where you are limited to a single fighter yourself. His kamikaze run doesn't seem quite as noble when you've got three capital ships, laden with multiple Wave Motion Guns and entire squadrons of fighter spacecraft, sitting in firing range.
 * Or, y'know, if it wasn't actually possible to remotely control any ship you own even while extra-vehicular. Sure, by all means send your ship to its destruction, but there's nothing in the rules that states you have to be in the damn thing, y'know.
 * In Mega Man X Command Mission, Aile rips a key device out of his own chest, hands it to X, and then shoves him out the door, seals it behind him, and proceeds to blow himself up to destroy a small group of incoming minor, pathetically weak Mooks that wouldn't really have stood much of a chance against X.
 * Later on, Spider sacrifices both himself and the level boss to create a big enough explosion to blast the door open before the base self-destructed. Except that at that point in the game, the team have more than enough firepower between them to create more damage than just two reploids exploding. Or even blow open their own door through the walls.
 * In the original Mega Man X Zero blows himself up to destroy Vile's Ride Armor and give X a chance. Except...Zero was clinging to the back of the mech, where there were no weapons, no way for the arms to reach him, and Vile's exposed head is in front of him. Maybe just blast him? Then again, he may have tried that. It's a little hard to tell with 16-bit sprites, but still, the point stands.
 * As demonstrated earlier in the game, when X uses the Ride Armor, it fully protected the rider (X does not take damage until the armor is destroyed). In addition, when the armor explodes, it can damage the pilot. What Zero did was unleash a strong enough dose of firepower to the Ride Armor to destroy it instantly, thereby (hopefully) destroying Vile. It didn't destroy Vile, but it did give X the chance to do so. Not entirely senseless, as he presumably could've done that from a distance, but still kind of stupid.
 * In Digital Devil Saga, Cielo conveniently forgot his mouthlaser against a few Mooks (not to mention his lightning spells, booster spells and whatever other non-cutscene skills you've learned by then), as he himself
 * Or Argilla going after Roland despite knowing what the guy is buying them time, it's strongly implied it's a an emotionally-charged decision.
 * Valkyria Chronicles. Because it's an aversion, it could be a lot of things, but when you consider that the whole point was to save her friends and the capital, there's the matter of how close they are to said capital when she tries it. The blast radius is huge on that attack. If she'd managed to do it, Squad 7, and possibly Randgriz, would have been vaporized in the process.
 * It also bears mentioning that
 * Also It's especially jarring that the sacrifice is made to kill an enemy who's already been defeated, had his power source disconnected, and too weighed down by equipment he can't properly lift to be much of a threat anymore.
 * Saidra sacrifices herself in a mission of the original campaign in Guild Wars, by attacking a group of Mursaat that are pursuing you. Now, since the Mursaat were pretty much unkillable for the player at this stage thanks to their Spectral agony, it might make sense. Unfortunately, the cutscene where she announces her sacrifice and says farewells and what not takes about a minute. The players party, nor the npcs, move during this time. Once the cutscene ends and you can finally start running, you can see Saidra dying within 10 seconds, after which the (slow moving) Mursaat continue chasing you. Without Talking Is a Free Action, this means she gave her life so you could be delayed by 50 seconds.
 * Subverted actually, as no matter when you end the cutscene, another group spawns ahead of the player group, and you really have to take off to get through the cave before they cover the other entrance. Saidra may have died after ten seconds, but it's actually ten seconds that you can't afford to waste.
 * In House of the Dead 4, James blows himself up at the end to seal Pandora's Box. Why didn't he just throw the PDA (or a grenade) in it?
 * In Silver the Hero and his grandfather are pursued by Fudge and are about to leave the room through a magical door Fudge cannot enter, when he catches up with them. Instead of, well, going through the door, the grandfather tells the Hero to run, engages in a hopeless fight with Fudge (he has to actually run away from the door to do that) and is promptly killed. Then it gets weird. Instead of obliging and bailing the Hero just stands and watches his grandfather getting killed. But after the cutscene ends, Fudge... just stands there and does nothing as well. You can even attack him (and get killed) or you can just go through the door.
 * It is mainly caused by Gameplay and Story Segregation, but Tassadar's sacrifice in the end of Starcraft I came about rather unexpected and, well, not exactly called for. Once you destroy the outer shell of the Overmind, Tassadar proclaims that he has to collide into the creature itself, because "we have sustained severe damage ourselves". No, we did not. There's a huge Terran/Protoss army sitting right next to the Overmind, and Tassadar's ship is perfectly fine.
 * Well, since Zerg Cerebrates and the Overmind are perfectly capable of regenerating if they are killed by normal means, a protoss using the powers of the void is required to kill one off for good. Still makes no sense for Tassadar to sacrifice himself, however. He could have just stabbed the Overmind with the technique of those Dark Templar.
 * Justified visually in the ending FMV. The Overmind opens up a wormhole to escape, so any approach slower than a spaceship moving at ramming speed would've let it escape and rendered the heroes' effort null and void.
 * Lampshaded in Epic Mickey, when Oswald got appalled at Mickey giving away his heart.
 * Orsino in Dragon Age II, when the player's Hawke pursues siding with the mages near the end of the game, becomes so desperate after Meredith and the templars storm the Circle that he ends up turning to blood magic and transforming himself into a Harvester, merging the bodies of dead mages with himself. As the Harvester is basically a mindless creature that simply feeds on blood and attacks both the templars and Hawke's companions, this means that the player ends up wasting time having to kill Orsino.
 * In Space Quest 6, Lieutenant Santiago teleports in to help Roger escape from a room filling with deadly gas, throwing him into the elevator as the piston keeping it open collapses and traps her in an exploding room . Ignoring the question on why they didn't just teleport Roger out, if she hadn't appeared, they wouldn't have wasted precious seconds talking to each other about how they need to escape the room he was already trying to escape.
 * According to Ammon Jerro in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, the previous campaign's Spoony Bard Grobnar Gnomehands threw himself in front of a falling stone pillar to save the Construct. The Construct happens to be an eight-foot-tall metal golem. Anything big enough to smash it would turn Grobnar into jelly. And it did.
 * According to Ammon Jerro in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, the previous campaign's Spoony Bard Grobnar Gnomehands threw himself in front of a falling stone pillar to save the Construct. The Construct happens to be an eight-foot-tall metal golem. Anything big enough to smash it would turn Grobnar into jelly. And it did.

Web Comics

 * Miko from The Order of the Stick, when she destroys Soon's Gate. It also doubles as a Diabolus Ex Machina.
 * In Darths and Droids, Qui-Gon's death becomes one of these. The character playing Qui-Gon has an ability that likely would have kept the character alive, but argues with the GM that it should not be used. Strip here: http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0196.html
 * In Girl Genius, when Gil goes to get Tarvek off Castle Wulfenbach and stay himself, Tarvek accuses him of this, and that the notion was inspired by penny dreadfuls.

Western Animation

 * Played for Laughs in the Slurm factory episode of Futurama, the Slurm mascot does a You Shall Not Pass with his boombox, bringing the tunnel down to cover the Planet Express crew's escape. But what made the tunnel go down was the vibrations from his boombox. Instead of standing next to it, continuously "rocking out" until the rocks crush him when he simply could have left the box and ran. Though at the time he mentioned he was tired of life...
 * Another episode, "Lrrreconcilabe Ndndifferences", has Fry jump in the way of what he assumes to be a disintegrater ray, saving Leela's life, however he turns out to be just fine as it was a teleporter ray, making the jump nothing more than a good gesture, but otherwise totally pointless. When they find him alive and okay, he's writing his third revision to his comic "Delivery Boy Man". The ending he comes up with is to have Delivery Boy Man to dive in front of a death laser to save the heroine, however he jumps too early before the alien even fires. Luckily the alien is hit by a convenient meteor killing himself, and Delivery Boy Man saves the heroine, as she puts it, "By random chance".
 * The TV special Garfield in Paradise ends with Odie and a mechanic Monkey driving a Cool Car into a volcano to prevent it from erupting. The tribal chief lampshades the foolishness of the sacrifice by pointing out that they could have just pushed the car in. This is subverted, though, as Monkey and Odie climb out of the volcano alive.
 * Further subversion: Monkey states after climbing out of the volcano, "We've gotta fix those brakes." Apparently, the plan was to just push the car in, but they were driving the car up the volcano as fast as they could, and apparently, the brakes didn't work, so the car went over the edge.
 * In the last episode of Frisky Dingo as the Antbaby is attacking everyone, Taqu'il decides to leap into the maw of the Antbaby with a bomb. He does so, gets eaten, and nothing happens. Xander's response, "What do you think his overall plan was?"
 * In the second episode of X-Men, Morph, a scrawny puny shapeshifter pushes the Nigh Invulnerable Wolverine out the way of a Sentinel laser beam.