Determinator/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"A stubborn enough person can survive just about anything. Rage is a hell of a anesthetic."
—Zaeed Massani, Mass Effect 2
"But instead of scurrying away like any creature with a basic instinct to survive, you just kept coming back. Again...and again...and again."
—Ghirahim, The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword
  • Pretty much every video game protagonist or antagonist will wind up being a determinator, if you really think about it. In-universe, no-one sees the thousands of deaths, extra lives and continues; just Mario relentlessly, mercilessly crushing everything in his path.
    • Depending on the difficulty of the game, the players themselves will end up as determinators if they beat it.
  • Gordon Freeman of the Half Life series. He's teleported to another dimension as the test chamber he's in is destroyed, then he climbs all the way to the surface past hordes of monsters to get help, finds out the government is cleaning up the mess by killing everyone involved, and he keeps moving forward without a clear purpose in mind until he's told about the Lambda team and eventually goes into another dimension to kill a gigantic telepathic creature called the Nihilanth. Then in the first sequel, he finds out that many years have passed since that and he goes up against a group of oppressors who have conquered countless worlds and dimensions and have already pretty much conquered Earth after a brief 7 hour war—yeah, just 7 hours to conquer Earth—and he gets a messianic reputation from both the events at Black Mesa and the major bulldozing he gives the Combine. Doctor Breen has to give little speeches to Combine soldiers where he berates them and points out that Gordon Freeman is just one man, but it doesn't do any good.
  • In the Wii version of Punch-Out!!, it's an actual GAME MECHANIC for Little Mac to occasionally come back from sure defeat with one final burst of strength if you're doing reasonably well in the fight. Really cool when it happens, and even cooler to come back and WIN when it happens.
    • In the more traditional sense, Super Punch-Out!! has Gabby Jay! (YAY!) His all-time fight record is one win and ninety-nine losses, he's been demoted to a jobber judging by his being the very first fight of the Minor Circuit, and he happens to be one of the oldest fighters in the entire game at 56 years old. Despite all of this, he insists that he's got it in him to win just one more fight, and won't even think about retiring until he does.
    • Glass Joe is similar, and it pays off in the Wii game's Title Defense mode.
    • No More Heroes 2 has this as a game mechanic as well: After your HP is reduced to zero, you get a window of opportunity to furiously shake the wiimote until Travis recovers and gets back a couple units of health. This can even be done a few times per section (which you'll definitely need against certain bosses, and even moreso on Bitter Mode.)
  • Apparently, in Princess Waltz, Badass and Determinator go hand in hand. This is even Lampshaded.
  • Kratos of the God of War series. He's literally climbed out of Hell... four times. As he puts it: "If all of Olympus would deny me my vengeance, then all of Olympus must die!" The fact that his only clear motivation is the desire to kick the ass of anyone who screws with him just solidifies his status as an undiluted Badass.
    • By the end of the third game, there is only one thing that has been sucessful at killing him: Himself.
  • Betrayal at Krondor gives us Gorath, a moredhel (dark elf) chieftain who seeks to save his race from further destruction in another war they would start and ultimately shape them into "more than savages". And he flinches at nothing in his quest to do so. Surrender himself as a messenger to the humans his people have waged bloody war against for centuries, with his own kind branding him traitor and no reason to expect anything better than torture and execution at the hands of those he seeks help from? No problem. Go to Elvandar, the home of the eledhel, where a moredhel could expect to be killed on sight, or, as one of the Returning ones, cease to be moredhel and instead be enlisted into the eledhel ranks, when even travelling there causes him physical agony? Sure. Let himself be teleported blindly to the location of the most powerful magician on two worlds currently in need of a rescue? Go ahead. Touch a powerful relic of the Valheru - the force he fears most for the madness it has caused his people - in an effort to stop the Valheru spirits from escaping, ultimately at the cost of his own life? A Determinator to the end.
  • The space marine from Doom utterly refuses to go down without a fight, despite the fact that all hell has literally broken loose, and he is the only non zombified person in millions of miles. He proceeds to blow up all the demons and zombified people that are attacking him. He then fights his way into Hell, kills everything there, and fights his way back out. And that's just the first game. In Doom 2, he indirectly destroys Hell. Talk about a Badass Normal.
    • He gets even more badass. In the Nintendo 64 exclusive Doom 64 (the last game in the Doom franchise before it was rebooted with Doom 3) one powerful "mother" demon resurrects everything Doomguy had killed in his previous fights. His response? Eradicate anything between him and the Mother, kill her, and then stay in Hell to make sure the demons don't try anything like that ever again.
  • Axel Almer from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2 is absolutely obsessed with defeating Kyosuke Nanbu. The part that makes him a Determinator is that his actual beef is with the Kyosuke Nanbu from Axel's original dimension (he is part of an invasion from another dimension), this Kyosuke is known as "Beowulf" and repeatedly humiliated Axel in battle. The fact that this dimension's Kyosuke has no idea who Axel is or why he is so determined to defeat him doesn't seem to matter to Axel.
    • Original Generations mellows Axel's Determinator personality a little, but he's still intent on stopping Kyosuke. Though he just uses another reason. And when he's Back from the Dead in OG Gaiden and had a Heel Face Turn, he seems to completely lose his Determinator status...
    • And speaking of Kyosuke Nanbu, whenever something happens to his partner and lover Excellen Browning, he himself becomes a Determinator, plowing through anything in his path to get her back.
    • And, of course, Zengar Zombolt, despite being easily one of the most competent of the heroes and in a powerful machine to boot often finds himself outmatched, outgunned, and even out and out disabled. His response? "Shut up! And listen! I am Zengar Zombolt! The sword that cleaves evil!"
  • Luca Blight, the main villain of Suikoden II is the embodiment of this trope. Despite being the prince (and later king) of a massive country, he is the single most powerful human warrior on his side of the field (and arguably, the entire Suikoden universe), turning the tides of entire wide scale battles simply by appearing and punishing/killing any of his men for so much as hesitating in battle. If more proof is needed, his death scene should make this trope obvious. This trait, combined with the fact that he is a sadistic Omnicidal Maniac and a Nietzsche Wannabe, makes him a very intimidating and frightening villain.
  • Deconstructed in Tales of Symphonia: Part of what made the Knight Templar main villain what he is was that he could not, in any way, manage to give up on his ideals as they became more and more warped and admit that there might be a better way to do it - even as he lies dying, he is unrepentant and claims he would do the same things over again if given the chance to redo his life. This puts the villain in sharp contrast with Lloyd, whose ideals also clash with the way the world works - Lloyd, however, knows to yield and learn from his mistakes when it is obvious that he has done wrong, which is an integral part of the Character Development that turns him into The Messiah.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • The "Unsent" from Final Fantasy X are people who've died but still cling to existence through sheer willpower.
    • Special mention must go to two Unsents Shuyin and Meachem who have done this for the last 1000 years before the party finally put them to rest.
    • Final Fantasy VIII has Seifer, who refuses to back down no matter how many times he gets his ass handed to him, even after it's been made clear to him that he's being manipulated and used by the Big Bad.
    • To balance his determination, there's Squall, who develops into an immense Determinator in the third disc of the game. When faced with the only possibility of saving Rinoa after she goes comatose being crossing an ocean-spanning bridge on foot, he doesn't even hesitate, and carries her on his back, on foot, all the way across. Empty, monster-filled wasteland stretching on for tens of miles ahead of him? He just keeps walking. Finding himself inside a technologically advanced and potentially hostile country? Keeps moving forward. Finds out the only way to save her is to go into space? No hesitation to go up there. When she gets hurled out into the voids of space and all he's got is a quarter of an hour's worth of oxygen in his suit, and no real guarantee he's going to save her if he can get to her, Squall hurls himself right out after her. Nothing, and we mean nothing is going to stop him from saving her.
    • Squall's status as a Determinator is taken even higher in Dissidia Final Fantasy, where his stubborness and determination are what keeps him going the most, forging his own path to end the conflict. He stubbornly refuses to work with anyone else, but also refuses to say why. Ultimecia believes it's because he can't trust people, but when he reveals that he trusts his friends completely, but would rather endanger himself to draw more enemies to him and save them the effort required, he quickly adds Badass to the mix: he's trying to appear weak so he can destroy the enemies who think he's an easy target, so they won't go after his friends.
    • Galuf from Final Fantasy V does it too. Exdeath has the party held down with the Crystals, and when Galuf's granddaughter Krile swoops in and interrupts Exdeath yet again, he traps her in a burning ring of fire and slams her across the room a few times. All seems lost... until Galuf gets up, powers through the Crystal's force beam despite the fact that he'll make it shatter in doing so, goes into the ring of flame to rescue Krile, then, while aflame in more ways than one, charges at Exdeath and starts to go out fighting. Galuf's HP slowly decreases throughout the battle, but he won't stop kicking even at 0 - not even after being hit with successive use of the universe's three most powerful spells. Once Exdeath is defeated, though, Galuf finally collapses, and all the items and magic in the world won't bring him back.
    • Terra, from Final Fantasy VI. With the defeat of Kefka, the source of magic is gone and all Espers are vanishing from the world. This includes the Half-Esper Terra. Even knowing this, Terra chooses to enter her Trance form and lead the party out of the collapsing Tower. In the final stages of the ending, after the last shard of Magicite has vanished, Terra is still flying in order to lead the airship out, even as her power wanes and she begins to fall. In the end, The Falcon catches Terra, who has reverted to a human form. Not only does she manage to outlive every other Esper on sheer determination, she manages to completely survive, albeit as a human.
    • Along the same lines, Locke has his girlfriend put in to suspended animation until he can revive her with something he didn't even know existed at the time. He spends most of the game looking for it, up to and including the end of the world. Of course, when he does find it his girlfriend decides to die and fix the Esper so that the party can use it. Deciding who you are and what your purpose is for yourself is kind of a recurring theme in that game.
    • Cloud, from Final Fantasy VII, especially shown in his pre-game fight with Sephiroth. Sixteen years old, relatively untrained, no super powers or super strength, 5'7" tops (assuming he didn't grow between ages sixteen and twenty-one) and maybe 100 pounds soaking wet and fighting against The General - half a foot taller, probably at least twice his weight, genetically manipulated, trained from birth, insanely strong (and just insane). Cloud is knocked out while his town burns, but gives chase, eventually fighting Sephiroth, getting impaled by Sephiroth, and while still impaled on the man's blade and hoisted several feet in the air, somehow manages to get the upper hand and send Sephiroth flying into a pit of Mako. Not half bad!
    • And even dying multiple times won't stop Sephiroth from trying to get even with him for that, so he counts, too.
    • The comparatively squishy lesser villain and corporate dictator Rufus might also count, given his unending pursuit of Sephiroth, only temporarily halted by explosions?
    • Zack Fair, in the Final Fantasy VII prequel Crisis Core, who escapes with Cloud after four years of horrible experimentation by the Mad Scientist and Complete Monster Hojo. Zack steadfastly refuses to give up hope on or abandon the comatose Cloud, taking care of him for nearly a year, then has an epic Last Stand in which he battles a massive force from the Shinra army and manages to whittle them down to three troopers, in order to protect Cloud. And then, after being absolutely riddled with bullets, Zack still manages to give Cloud a Take Up My Sword speech before going out with a smile.
  • Caim, the protagonist of Drakengard, has it in for every single Empire soldier and civilian. All of them. He will kill them all. No one will escape. Even his dragon mount, who detests all of humanity, says to him, "Must you slaughter so many?" Not even The End of the World as We Know It keeps him from fulfilling his vengeance.
  • Adell from Disgaea takes this to the point where it actually grants him in-game bonuses: he deals extra damage against enemies with a higher level than himself.
    • Valvatorez once tried to get a mute robot Prinny to use his proper Verbal Tic for ten straight hours. This is completely normal behavior for him.
  • Vyse from Skies of Arcadia. In fact, his Infinity Plus One Title can only be achieved by (among other things) never running from a single battle. At all. Vyse retains this trait in his cameo apperance in Valkyria Chronicles in the form of his unlockable potential "Challenge Lover"
  • About everyone who has or once was supposed to have a Snake in his name from the Metal Gear Solid series.
    • Liquid Snake. Pretty determined to kill his brother. Being awesome after falling off a Metal Gear is the very least he can do.
    • Naked Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3 is a straighter example in that he keeps on going even though his mentor completely whoops him every time they meet.
    • Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 4 is equaled in his stubborn desire to get himself killed only by his inability to give up under any circumstances. A vampire is stabbing you repeatedly in the chest? Just fight harder! A building falls on you? You don't need your limbs! Someone drops a battle ship on your head? Bring it on.
    • Raiden's predecessor, the Cyborg Ninja Grey Fox is almost the total embodiment of this trope. After all, he gets brought back from being killed by a land mine and takes on a walking assault tank armed with lasers, railguns, rockets etc. And even then only begins to slow down after having a third of his body sliced off.
    • Not to mention Solid Snake himself, who spends most of the time between later missions coughing up his lungs and trying to put himself back together with sticky tape. It doesn't stop him for a moment.
      • There's a point where he crawled through what's essentially a giant microwaved hallway, even if you lost all your health/psyche points, he will still crawl out... by his fingertips!
    • Ocelot - the only character to appear in all the MGS games - is stubborn enough to implant another personality into himself to carry on the plans his idol had for the world.
    • Volgin. Beat him up with your fists, grenades, shotgun, and whatever else you may have, and then blow up the weapons hangar with him in it? He blasts his way out with the Shagohod and chases after you, trampling everything and everyone who would get in his way, including flipping over a jet on the runway. Blow up the bridge he's crossing? He launches the Shagohod out of the wreckage and keeps coming. Pepper the Shagohod with RPGs until it finally breaks down? He punches his way out of the cockpit, uses his electrical powers to reanimate the blasted husk of a tank, and keeps on coming while you fire more RPGs and sniper bullets at his exposed body. And he STILL DOESN'T DIE until being struck by a lightning causes the bullets he wears all over his body to explode. Liquid would be proud.
    • The Boss. The woman was the strongest of a team that single handedly WON WORLD WAR TWO. She fought on Normandy, while PREGNANT! She had to have a C-section, and got shot during it! Then she got up and kept fighting. In MGS 3, even though she knows she's going to die, she's almost suicidal from the loss of The Sorrow, and she still beats the shit out of BIG BOSS three times, and gives him one hell of a fight in the end. That's a determinator if I ever saw one.
  • From Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,
    • Captain Price. "The healthy human mind doesn't wake up in the morning thinking this is its last day on Earth. But I think that's a luxury. Not a curse. To know you're close to the end is a kind of freedom. Good time to take...inventory. Outgunned. Outnumbered. Out of our minds. On a suicide mission. But the sand and the rocks here, stained with thousands of years of warfare...They will remember us. For this. Because out of all our vast array of nightmares, this is the one we choose for ourselves. We go forward like a breath exhaled from the Earth. With vigor in our hearts and one goal in sight: We. Will. Kill him."
    • Soap qualifies as well. What do you do when you just went over a waterfall in an inflatable raft after holding it still so Captain Price could shoot the pilot of a helicopter? You drag yourself out of the water to check if Shepherd's dead. What do you do when you've been stabbed in the chest and Captain Price is apparently beating the tar out of Shepherd? Go crawl towards the gun Shepherd dropped. And finally, when you're laying on the ground, bleeding out from the knife wound and watching Shepherd beating Price into submission, what do you do? You pull the knife out of your chest and throw it at Shepherd, finally killing him.
    • Why don't we just say that all the main characters of Call of Duty series are an entire army of Determinators, ready to defend freedom and democracy against everything from Germans, Italians, French Nazis and Japanese to Islamic terrorists and Russian ultranationalists. Doyle, the playable British character from United Offensive and Call of Duty 3, was probably the Determinator of COD, until Soap took over.
  • Vhailor from Planescape: Torment, a Knight Templar so unstoppably dedicated to his cause that 'being dead' is a minor inconvenience to him, and also a really paltry excuse for trying to take a rest off from his duty of punishing the guilty.
  • Doctors Robotnik and Wily from the Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man series share more than just a PhD in robotics: no matter how many times the heroes stop their plans to take over the world, they keep coming back. Heck, toss Bowser from Super Mario Bros. in and you have a triumvirate.
    • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story turns Bowser's determination into full-on Heroic Resolve. When put in the role of a protagonist he'll let nothing will stop him from trying to beat up Fawful and getting Peach, not even an Eldritch Abomination taking his form.
    • Beautifully shown with one of Dark Bowser's attacks where he conjures shadowy versions of just about every type of creature in Bowser's army and sics them on the Koopa King. How do you combat this onslaught? By simply trudging forward, stopping every few seconds to block an attack or swat another minion out of your way, because nobody's going to stop you!

"Listen up! You're saying the kingdom will vanish? NOT TODAY! THIS KINGDOM IS ALL MINE! SO YOU VANISH!

  • Sonic the Hedgehog himself is a pretty fair example. Although it's often obscured by his eternal optimism and devil-may-care attitude, it's clear to see that he will never say die. The most notable example of his determination is Sonic and the Black Knight, where it's his will and determination that gives him the strength to hold his ground against the Dark Queen, even after she's beaten him to within an inch of his life.
  • Mario himself while we're at it. No matter what the setting, the genre or whether he's alone or with allies, the only real personality traits he has are kindness and simply not stopping.
  • In the Mario & Luigi series, arguably Fawful. Lost in the first game, got blasted out the castle floating in mid air, apparently survived to run a shop in the sewers, conquered the world a few games later and got destroyed AGAIN to the point he's some kind of dark insect creature. THAT thing then gets destroyed in the final battle, and... it still tries to take Mario and Luigi out in a final attack. Summed up quite nicely in the ending:

Starlow: What? You're still at it? Look, give up already. Seriously, get over it. You're done with evil.
Fawful (partly): Fawful will disappear with no troubles. Forever disappearing... WITH YOU!

  • Luigi himself qualifies. While he's become the Lovable Coward in recent games, he never lets that fear stop him from taking on anyone and everyone to save his brother or the Princess. Basically, he goes through the same things Mario does, only he's actually afraid—you know, like a normal person would be.
  • Emiya Shiro from Fate/stay night simply refuses to die (or stop) when someone he cares about is in danger, or someone is about to create danger for others, even when his opponent's power is several levels of magnitude higher than his. Slashed from shoulder to waist, overloaded nerves in half the body, broken arms and legs, cuts and slashes, loss of sight, flung into the air from wind pressure, thrown out third-floor windows, et cetera... he'll still keep trying.
  • Both the Master Chief and the Arbiter in Halo fit this pretty well. The Chief in particular literally does not believe in losing and will continue fighting against any odds.

Cortana: Just one question: what if you miss?
Master Chief: I won't.

    • The Chief kind of has a thing where he won't die. The Arbiter's first and one of his last lines in Halo3 Lampshade just how difficult it is to kill John.

The Arbiter: Were it so easy.

  • There is a saying about the Silencers of the Crusader series: "Silencers get the job done." They might not survive, but they will get the job done.
  • Every single character in the Thing Thing series.
  • Ryu Hayabusa of Ninja Gaiden. Within the first hour of the game, he is quite literally killed, but that doesn't stop him. Later, he is transformed into one of the demonic fiends he's been fighting against, and he doesn't miss a beat.
  • Gruntilda from Banjo-Kazooie. She gets pecked and shot with eggs several times, gets slammed by a high-powered jinjo around twenty times, falls off her tower making a hole in the ground, gets hit again when a huge rock slams down on the hole...and still struggles to get the boulder off. In the sequel, she's freed after having spent two years in the hole, having been reduced to a skeleton, but immediately blows up the protagonist's house. And that's just at the beginning of the second game. At the end of Banjo-Tooie, she is reduced to a skull. And proceeded to spend the next eight years rolling and hopping across the country solely to take revenge on Banjo and Kazooie. She's prepared to fight them even without any discernible means of doing so before L.O.G. turns up.
  • After Sparkster destroys most of its body, the final boss of Rocket Knight Adventures follows him off the exploding Pig Star and keeps fighting him as they re-enter Elhorn's atmosphere. It doesn't stop trying to kill him until it is vaporized by the heat.
  • In the Wing Commander series, the Kilrathi embody this trope. In fact, it's established in Wing Commander III that they literally don't know the meaning of the word "surrender" (even those few who are truly well-studied in Terran languages and culture seem to have trouble grasping the concept of it).
  • Wander from Shadow of the Colossus. As the game progresses, Wander's body is clearly deteriorating from all of his battles. Not even something as petty as dying could stop him. He must really have loved her.
  • Link of The Legend of Zelda will do freakin' anything to stop the Big Bad, including setting off volcanoes, turning back country-sized shrouds of twilight, killing monsters across multiple worlds as a kid, and generally making the timestream his plaything. Fear? Please. It's called the Triforce of Courage for a reason. And if he has some fairies with him...
    • Link is matched only by his greatest nemesis, Ganon. Turn Ganon to stone, lock him in a void, or just SLAY him, Ganon will rise again. It just doesn't stick. Of course, it helps that the Triforce bearers have some kind of mutual reanimation clause going on. In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, when Link defeats him, he coughs up blood and stops breathing. Then, after Link and Zelda escape, he somehow comes back to life and turns into Ganon. After Link kills him for the second time by stabbing him through the head, he shows up again in the very next cutscene having apparently sustained no physical injuries and is just trapped in the Sacred Realm.
  • Zagi from Tales of Vesperia. After running into the protagonist Yuri in Zaphias Castle, he mistakes him for Flynn- whom he's trying to kill- and attacks him. After losing, Zagi continues trying to kill Yuri, even though he knows he's not the man he was looking for, because he was "the first man to ever make him bleed". You proceed to fight him 4 more times before the end of the game.
    • Notable catchphrase that he uses during his very first fight with Yuri: "I'll carve your name into my blood!"
  • K.Rool, antagonist of the Donkey Kong series. Each boss fight with him requires him to take a massive amount of punishment before going down, and in the second game he survives being eaten by sharks.
  • Max Payne. Both games take place in a timespan of about 24 hours, during which Max hardly ever rests, is beaten up repeatedly, falls from serious heights, is shot and drugged on a regular basis and only really remains standing by virtue of dozens of dozens of painkillers. Of course, none of this stops him from going on a (mostly) solo Roaring Rampage of Revenge across town, until he's found and killed whoever mistakenly believed that killing a maverick cop with a deathwish was going to be easy.

Nicole Horne: What do you mean, "he's unstoppable"? You are superior to him in every way that counts. You are better trained, better equipped, and you outnumber him at least twenty-to-one. Do. Your. Job.
Vladimir Lem: What the fuck is wrong with you, Max? Why don't you just die? You hate life, you're miserable all the time, afraid to enjoy yourself even a little! Face it, you might as well be dead already. Do yourself a favor, give up!

  • Isaac Clarke from Dead Space. He has fought an entire Planet Cracker vessel's worth of space zombies (and their Hive Mind) while doing more than the repairs he was originally sent for, as well as being roped into a Gambit Pileup between The Mole and an artificial Artifact of Doom, coming out on top of it all, while being supposedly insane, all because he wanted to find his girlfriend. And during the scene where his girlfriend turns out to have been Dead All Along, Isaac's Heroic BSOD lasts all of five seconds, then he gets back to work. And by work I mean taking out giant freaking monsters with mining tools.
    • Even more so in the sequel. After surviving the first game Isaac gets to spend a few years in an insane asylum. Then after being woken up to the sound of screams and blaring alarms, has his supposed rescuer killed and turned into a necromorph right in front of him. What does Isaac do? He HEADBUTTS that necromorph without hesitation and escapes, all while IN A STRAIGHT-JACKET.
  • Shepard and the gang from Mass Effect. They face incredible odds to say the least, and Failure Is Not An Option. In addition, most of the alien races seem to thunk humans are like this on a species level, largely because human first contact with an alien race was a short war with the main galactic superpower which was fought to a stalemate (it ended before the Turian's resource advantage could be brought to bear).
    • Captain Kirrahe. He will hold the line.
    • The entire crew of the Normandy in Mass Effect 2.
    • Death itself couldn't stop Commander Shepard from killing Reapers.
    • Garrus notes in Mass Effect 2 that the Collectors actually did succeed in killing Shepard, and that it only seems to have pissed [him/her] off.
    • Shepard, after being sedated for two days, manages to wake up to the shock of the people keeping him/her sedated. What does s/he then do? S/he punches out both guards in the room and then proceeds to tear through an entire facility of elite assault troopers by him/herself.
    • Zaeed survived getting shot in the head. "Rage is a hell of an anesthetic."
    • Tela Vasir of the "Shadow Broker" DLC is this in spades, She takes on Shepard tackling her out of a 4+ story building, survives massive car crash, loses tons of blood, and still has enough in her to be one of the toughest (if not the toughest) boss fights in the series. Badass.
    • Kai Leng. In Mass Effect: Retribution, he escapes Anderson despite having TWO BLOWN OUT KNEECAPS by climbing a ladder with his arms and jumping onto his shuttle with said blown out kneecaps. In the most recent trailer for Mass Effect 3, he is literally climbing on top of a speeding flying car in order to take down Shepard.
    • Shepard deserves special mention for the ending of Mass Effect 3. S/He's been shot by Harbinger (who can destroy DREADNOUGHTS), most of his/her armor burned away by the blast, and s/he gets back up and keeps on limping towards the Catalyst while blasting his/her way through Husks and Marauders.
    • Krogans are this by nature. Mass Effect 3 features one of their shotguns which is designed for hunting Tresher Maws, tower high beasts who normaly require armored vehicles to be killed. Said shotgun has special blades build in, which are meant to allow a Krogan swallowed by a Maw to either cut his way out or at least cause internal bleedings.
  • Dark Souls: Pretty much the whole game is an example of this trope, you will get crushed, hacked, beaten, roasted, poisoned, dropped down bottomless pits, eaten by hungry treasure chests and wanted dead by every single living thing in the game, it's strongly implied that even your friends will eventually turn insane and try to kill you. (Most of them do). Despite this, your character will keep pushing on and eventually kill every single badass in the game; some of which are essential gods, all in an attempt to try and remove the curse that has everybody going feral in the first place:. By the end of it all, it's not only the character that's a determinator, it's the player as well.
  • Prince of Persia: Warrior Within has the Dahaka, an embodiment of fate and guardian of the timeline, who hunts the Prince after he attracted its attention by his liberal use of time-altering powers that allowed him to cheat death many times over in the first game. And in the other corner the Prince himself, who is just as determined to find a way to get rid of the monster as the Dahaka is to kill him. A secondary character lampshades this:

Kaileena: I had hoped the Dahaka would kill you. I had hoped that Shahdee would keep you from the Island. I even cursed the sword I gave you, AND YET YOU DID NOT DIE!

  • Jon Irenicus of Shadows of Amn has one thing on his mind: the power he was denied when the Seldarine prevented him from becoming a god. If he has to rip the souls from living men and women, temporarily surrender to the authorities just so their guard is down and he can break out, work with thieves and vampires, make pacts with sworn foes of his people, pretend to be a humble servant, slaughter his kin or destroy entire cities to attain it, he will. You have to fight him no less than three times in the game, killing him twice. And after all that, after following him to Hell and kicking his astral butt there, the ending Cutscene shows his soul incarnating again and attempting to fight off a horde of gibbering demons with his bare hands.
    • Sarevok, the Big Bad from the first game. He appears in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon in Shadows of Amn, and after dying there he appears to the player in Throne Of Bhaal, the final installment, having pulled himself back into a ghostly existence through sheer willpower in order to bargain his (vital) knowledge for the piece of the player's soul he needs to resurrect himself.

Sarevok;"Hahahahaaaa! I Live! Flesh and blood and bone! I swore I would scratch and crawl my way back into the world of the living... and I have done it!"

  • Crono of Chrono Trigger is pretty determined to protect his friends. "What's that, ancient evil? You've kicked my ass without even blinking and now you think you've won? Well, I'm not done yet!" (Then he's done.)
    • Magus is also a very good example. He survived in a (to him) post apocalyptic world, showering warfare on the world, all to find a way to kill the Cosmic Horror that ruined his life. His most famous quote embodies this trope:

Magus: If history is to change, let it change! If the world is to be destroyed, so be it! If my fate is to be destroyed... I must simply laugh!!
I'm coming, Lavos!

    • Ayla is this trope to a T, in fact it's her whole life's philosophy and probably why there's a human race at all in the game world. Her most famous quote says it all:

Ayla: Ayla alive, Ayla fight! Win, live. Lose, die. That rule. No can change rule.

  • Alwan in the Geneforge series. After surviving an attack on his school, his dedication to the Shapers results in him becoming the General in charge of defeating the Rebellion, personally leading a stealth attack on the Rebellion stronghold, somehow surviving massive injuries after the attack goes awry, and becoming the leader of a faction despite ending up like this.
  • F.E.A.R.'s Alma is one of these, to a point where her sheer force of will allowed her to survive six days of being drowned with no life support (with one character commenting that she "simply refused to die") and her psychic presence continued to survive well after she finally died.
    • Unfortunately for Beckett, he found out that the only thing Alma wanted in the second game was to make him her man and have his baby.
    • The Replica troops are another variation on this, in that they will carry out whatever mission is given to them by their psychic commanders, immediately, without question, and without stopping until it has been completed, with no regard for their own lives. They'll go as far as suicidal frontal assaults to simply wound or slow down an opponent, to the point where they'll attack an enemy in a Humongous Mecha with rifles just to distract and delay it for a couple seconds.
  • Asagi from various Nippon Ichi games. Five games, five years, as many defeats by actual main characters, playing second banana to a freakin' Prinny, and all of it still has not extinguished her desire to, finally, one day, become a main character.
  • The main character from Persona 3, during the real Final Battle. He's receiving an attack that performs instant 9999 damage (in a game with a 999 HP cap) and still stands up. At first he's Weak to them and gets knocked off his feet, but The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love keep pulling him to his feet, until they coalesce into the mother of all Combined Energy Attacks that he uses to seal off the enemy... albeit at the cost of his own life.
    • Not only that, but the protagonist also hangs onto life for two months after that, continuing on nothing but willpower in order to keep the promise the main characters made to meet on the roof of the school on graduation day as proof of everything they went through together.
  • All of the protagonists of Lunar 2 fits this to some degree, except for Lucia. In fact, one of the key points of the game is the "power of humanity" to never give up even in the face of impossible odds. The best example is when the entire party is struck down by Ghaleon... and then, through sheer willpower, all five stand back up on their own and fight him a second time.
  • The Willpower defense powerset in City of Heroes is described as nothing supernatural, unlike Invulnerability, Regeneration, Fire/Ice/Stone Armor, and the like; the character's defenses stem entirely from the fact that even though "bullets don't bounce off of you, and if you are cut, you bleed," the character is "tough, grizzled and strong willed. It takes more than a little cut to keep you down!" Some examples of powers within this set are High Pain Tolerance, Mind Over Body, and Indomitable Will; the Eleventh-Hour Superpower is called Strength of Will. Ironically, this is considered one of the better defense sets in the game, and is a favorite of Natural-origin Badass Normals.
  • Takeshi in Ever 17 comes down with Tief Blau, hasn't eaten in over a day, has been running around constantly when not passed out, is coughing up blood and suffers some really nasty decompression sickness right after being slammed into a wall. Then he swims through frigid, lightless water to rescue his love interest, swims back still without having rested and finally escapes. Then he's jettisoned out of a submarine to save his love interest again and sits on the ocean floor for a while, having drowned. And then a disembodied time traveler wakes him up, at which point he swims through the bottom of the ocean back into IBF, saves Coco and still lives to the story's True End. Oh, and he was dead/frozen on the ocean floor for at least long enough for a small robotic dog to swim down and recover the disc he was carrying. Three hundred feet down.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic 2, this was Atton Rand's special ability. Unless he was the last man in the party standing, he literally got back up and kept fighting, his saving throws getting better the more damage was dished out on him!
    • Darth Sion, who has been shot, stabbed and blown up so many times that his sheer hatred and determination are literally all that's holding his body together. The only way to kill him is to convince him to give up.

Darth Sion: You seek to erode my will. You will not succeed.
Gameplay message: {{[[[Gameplay and Story Segregation]] You have eroded Sion's will, reducing his Will saves, Constitution, and Wisdom.}}]

  • Prototype: "NOTHING CAN PROTECT YOU FROM ME! NOT MEN! NOT WEAPONS! NOT ARMOR!"
  • If Rhythm-based games count, anyone who forces themselves through In The Groove's Determinator is certainly this.
  • In the Chzo Mythos, Trilby qualifies for this trope, to the point where he is lying mortally injured, waiting for himself to be sacrificed to summon the avatar of a godly being and he Still. Won't. Die. Even when he acknowledges that it was only "his own stubbornness keeping him alive" and knowing that, should the Tall Man have no living sacrifice he would not answer the summons, you (the player) actually have to give Trilby the command to die. But then the ceremony still goes on, it just turns out that the Tall Man isn't picky with who he takes, instead absconding with the would-be sacrificer.
    • Subverted in 6 Days A Sacrifice, wherein we find clones of Trilby who are close enough to qualify as the real deal as far as Chzo / DeFoe / The Tall Man cares. Said clones are easily brainwashed, to the point where they serve as antagonists for half of the game. At the end Trilby (clone?) is seen quivering in terror inside of Chzo, cursed to the kind of immortal suffering that made the Tall Man into the Tall Man in the first place. Patently un-Determinator-like behavior all around.
  • The entire Ur-Quan race in Star Control II. After being forced to conquer the known universe and kill their only friends by their telepathic masters, an Ur-Quan scientist discovered that intense pain causes the telepathic link to shut down, supposedly to prevent their enslavers from experiencing discomfort. He (it?) proceeds to drink enough caustic acid to ensure its own agonizing death and takes the few seconds it bought with its life to broadcast its findings to all the Ur-Quan in range. The self-mutilation that followed bought the Ur-Quan time to develop a device that provided its user with constant border-line unbearable pain without inflicting physical damage. They proceeded to fight an entire interstellar war, constantly in throes of agony. No wonder they want to enslave/destroy the universe.
  • Metroid's Samus Aran. Certain logbook entries written by the space pirates in the Prime series mentions that no matter what they do, nothing has been able to stop the "hunter clad in metal".
    • Among the things they have tried are elite Commandos and Commanders trained specifically to kill her and only her, Elite Pirates with her common tactics programmed directly into their brains, turning her weapons against her, blowing up the planet she is on, and throwing Dark Samus at her, who herself has tried corrupting Samus with radioactive physics breaking phazon, collapsing a dimension on her, and blowing up yet another planet in an attempt to kill Samus. By this point, the Space Pirates truly believe that "The Hunter" is an Eldritch Abomination that has cursed them for eternity. And then, there's the sheer number of other random bosses and waves and waves of mooks. And then there's Dark Aether, where even the planet's AIR is trying to kill you.
    • Her arch nemesis, Ridley, counts as well. He was blown up before the series began, but recovered, then he was beaten in the original. He was turned into the cyborg Meta Ridley. The fact that this cyborg form looks entirely mechanical is a testament both to Samus' fury to inflict that much damage, and Ridley's tenacity to survive. This form is fought in Prime, culminating in him taking several lasers to the chest from Chozo statues, falling off a cliff, and exploding. He comes back in Corruption, first on Norion, where Samus sends him plummeting into a reactor core, then in a Phazon-corrupted form on the Pirate Homeworld, where she blows him up with a Phazon overload. He still returns, fully organic, in Super Metroid, where not only is he beaten, but the planet he's on blows up. In Other M, he's basically ressurected as a baby, escapes from his cage by killing the scientists who saw him as a pet, tricks a clueless Samus into helping him to eat and evolve, and as soon as he matured enough he proceeds to attack Samus. Said attack lead her to have a PTSD reaction, since she thought he was gone for good since Super Metroid. After regaining her senses, she manages to harm him enough to make him flee. While healing his wounds, Ridley notices an ennemy lurking in the shadows, and starts to panic when he realizes that his opponent is a massive Metroid Queen. She kills him by sucking all his life energy, leaving only his dried-out carcass behind. In Fusion, said carcass is preserved in a cold room, but is infected with X-Parasites before Samus arrived, and later shattered without her intervention, the X-parasites having assimilated his DNA. Later, Samus ends up fighting a X-parasite copy of a fully regenerated Ridley, who is once again defeated. After that, nobody knows how he's going to come back, but one thing is sure : Ridley just won't stay dead.
    • Crocomire. Anything that keeps trying to kill you even after being reduced to a skeleton should certainly qualify, even if it does just fall over dead without doing anything.
  • Left 4 Dead: The Tank, the hyper-steroid zombie juggernaut. He will take several shotgun shots to the head, get burned, or even scale a building to try to kill those survivors.
    • The Witch, who can do the same things as the Tank (except the scale a building part), all the while being more difficult to get rid of.
      • And now, Bill. The latest comic goes out of its way to prove this. He gets punched by a tank after dashing off to save his friends. The next panel shows him sat by a turbine, preparing to fight 3 tanks. And in "The Passing" DLC, you find him... sat in the EXACT same spot. Dead from blood-loss, but still in the exact same position.
      • Nick also counts, as shown by one of his more awesome lines:

"I have NOT come this far, to die now!

  • Hakumen from BlazBlue spent ninety years of utter isolation in the Boundary - the same place that drove Lotte Carmine mad and turned him into the Eldritch Abomination we know as Arakune - and retained his sanity through sheer force of will.
    • In a similar vein, Makoto was able to go through the Boundary twice and emerged with no physical or psychological damage both times, all through Heroic Willpower and her loyalty to Noel and Tsubaki.
    • Jin Kisaragi in his Story Mode is a definite example, where he fights several ludicrously powerful people and holds his own despite being badly injured.
  • Shu from Blue Dragon is this, through a combination of youthful exuberance and steadfast...um...determination to protect those he cares about.
  • The Hashashin from Assassin's Creed. With all of the conspiracy theories and rewritten history strewn throughout the two games, only one thing is left absolutely certain: if Al-Mualim sends Altaïr after you, there is a 100% probability that you are going to die.
    • Altaïr may very well go straight to Implacable Man status.
    • You also do not want to kill most of Ezio's family, if you don't want your entire conspiracy to be ground to dust by a single man, whose Roaring Rampage of Revenge ends with administering a Curb Stomp Battle to the Pope.
    • Note that Ezio begins his Roaring Rampage of Revenge at age seventeen.
    • Revelations just turns this Up to Eleven: Ezio is 55 years old, has been fighting and training most of his life, and is the Mentor of the Assassin Brotherhood. One would think that he would be slowing down in his old age. But as the intro movie shows, he not only hasn't slowed down, he literally hasn't missed a beat. The only reason he's defeated by the Templar soldiers is because he catches a glimpse of Altair in the melee, which distracts him just long enough. And then, after he's been defeated and is about to be hung...well, let's just say that all he's doing is waiting for the right moment to make his move, which is just as the noose is tightened around his neck.
  • One of the bosses in World of Warcraft (Golemagg, in Molten Core) involves two giant dogs which are pets of the main boss. If you try to kill them while Golemagg is still alive, the game prints a message saying "Core Rager refuses to die while its master is in trouble!" and they heal back to full health.
    • Holy priests and protection paladins can both become these. Ardent Defender reduces the amount of damage the paladin tales when at low health, and when causes a blow that would otherwise kill them to instead heal them again (this part has a cooldown period). The priest talent Spirit of Redemption allows them to stay on as a ghost after death for a short while. Though they can only cast healing spells in this period, meaning that they're staying on long enough to see other people kill their enemy.
    • Two Words (and one article): The Black Knight. You kill him when he's a mortal man. He returns as a zombie. You kill the zombie, he gets back up as a skeleton. You smash the skeleton, and he's still trying to kill you, with nothing but a ghost remaining. His existence is a tribute to his counterpart from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, of course.
    • Kael'thas Sunstrider. "Tempest Keep was merely a setback!"
  • A properly built high level tanker in City of Heroes is pretty much unstoppable unless you do something very stupid. Only giant monsters and archvillains should really be a challenge.
  • Phoenix Wright in the Ace Attorney series. No matter how much the odds are stacked against him, Phoenix refuses to give up and if he is on the verge of doing so, he'll meet someone who will convince him otherwise. On the same token, except for Winston Payne, almost every prosectuor and witness refuses to give in, no matter how much evidence and logic the defense throws at them.
    • One could arguably give this title to Dahlia Hawthorne, given that she won't even let death stop her from seeking her revenge on Mia Fey.
    • The villian you confront in the final case of Miles Edgeworth: AAI. Quercus Alba, an ambassador, is the kingpin of a smuggling ring and has ties with the KG-8 incident and its second occurance (case 4). Edgeworth tries to prove that Alba was the one who killed Manny Coechan, but no matter how much logic and evidence Edgeworth throws his way, Alba never gives in and keeps demanding more proof. The entire last half of the case is devoted to just cross examining Alba until he finally cracks.
    • Manfred von Karma needs more recognition than that. He took a bullet wound to the shoulder, and left it. He was afraid that if a doctor got to it, that doctor would one day testify against him. All of this so he could get his revenge on the Edgeworth family. And also, he retrained a parrot. Just in case someone would be daring enough to have it testify.
  • Boomerang from the first Wild ARMs. He betrayed and hunted his own race simply for the thrill of the hunt, killed one of his (possible) brothers when he saw the humans were more satisfying prey, is betrayed, attacked, and killed by another brother (even though Zeikfried is, at the time, possessed by Mother), and then, simply because his thirst for the hunt hasn't been satisfied (because Zeikfried/Mother interrupted his climactic battle against Rudy, Jack, and Cecilia), he fights his way out of Hell itself so he can finally fight the heroes and have his perfect, final battle.

Boomerang: Miracles, the humans' belief system that makes the impossible possible. The power that protects Filgaia. Looks like this is the end. Did I lose? No, I did not, I lived the life of a Demon Warrior! I fought and lost my life, I was not defeated, I lived a life of my own dreams. I have lived, I have no regrets, I am a winner. My death is glorious.

  • The guards from The Elder Scrolls Four fit this trope perfectly. Because they are always ten levels higher then the player, they can take a beating that would slaughter an entire family of bears. They will chase you across the entire country, through rivers and over mountains, passing bandit camps and hell gates swarming with demons, until they finally manage to corner you and perforate every one of your internal organs, because you touched a loaf of bread. Not stole, touched.
    • As shown in this video, never, EVER sit in Janus Hassildor's throne!
  • Try playing a round or two in Team Fortress 2 against a competent and well supported Heavy. Between ungodly amounts of health and a minigun the size of a refrigerator, a good Heavy can just keep plowing through enemies as long as he's got the ammo, and sometimes not even that's necessary. There's even an achievement for the Heavy where he has to absorb every discreet type of damage the game has to offer (bullets, explosives, melee attacks, fire) and still keep going. Another requires the Heavy to survive a crit rocket, one of the most devastating types of Critical Hit in the game that would turn every other class into a confetti of body parts. Yet another demands tanking 1000 points of damage in a single life, or 333% the Heavy's normal HP stock. Definitely a class where pure dogged relentlessness is rewarded.
    • The Soldier's Equalizer allows him to qualify. The less health he has, the faster he runs with it out and the more damage he does - at less than 25% health, he can kill a Heavy in a few non-critical hits. Of course, that requires not charging into the Cone of Death.
  • Terra from Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. Master Xehanort sets innumerable Unversed on him, has him attacked by Braig, manipulates him into distrusting and ultimately killing his mentor and father figure Eraqus, and attempts to kill his best friends, all so he can awaken Terra's inner darkness enough to possess him and make off with his body. Does this stop Terra? No. His mind inhabits his armour , which stands up again and proceeds to beat the everliving daylights out of his own possessed body.
    • Ven from the same game is one. He's not quite up to Terra's level, but anybody who can unfreeze themselves from a block of ice based on nothing more than willpower deserves mentioning.
    • Beast, in the first game. He was able to follow Belle to an entirely different world without any portals or ships. He tore through reality through sheer force of will.
  • Cobra from the Silent Scope series. "I am immortal! Even if my body collapses, I will not die until I defeat you!"
  • Time Crisis: Wild Dog is either this or an Implacable Man.
  • The main character of Zettai Hero Project is a shining example. Cheerfully called "the weakest main character", he was just an ordinary bystander on the way to some errands when the mantle of The Absolute Victory Unlosing Ranger, the world's most popular super hero was passed on to him. He then proceeds to the Final Boss. Naturally he gets nearly killed. After a bit of training, he does it again. He fails. Repeatedly. He gets mocked, he gets jeered, and nobody believes in him. They call him a loser underdog, they say he looks stupid, and they accuse him of being a fake. But in the face of insurmountable odds, in the face of staggering disbelief, in spite of intense pain and injuries, in spite of the fact that this was forced on to him, he keeps on getting up. He keeps on fighting, getting stronger bit by bit, inch by by painful inch, until he can finally save the world from Darkdeath Evilman. The crushing responsibility of saving 6 billion people rests on his shoulders and he keeps on carrying that weight forward. Too stupid to give up, too stubborn to lose, The Absolute Victory Unlosing Ranger.
  • The titular Super Meat Boy. Razor-sharp saws, piles of needles, rivers of salt, and molten lava will not stop the guy from rushing in to stop Dr. Fetus and save Bandage Girl, who is always right before his eyes before Dr. Fetus comes and kicks her away to the next level. There is absolutely no stopping Meat Boy.
  • Poppy from League of Legends as a child witnessed her father (a blacksmith) being assassinated as his caravan was delivering a "glorious helm" to a famous general. She escaped with the helm and delivered it on foot and alone. In game, her intrinsic effect is to reduce all damage over 10% of her current health by half, making her harder and harder to hurt the more damage she's taken. One of her abilities is to gain damage and armour each time she attacks or is attacked and another renders her completely invulnerable to all enemies except for one of her choosing for 6–8 seconds. Her role in a team fight is generally to make it through the melee and take down the most dangerous enemy champion.
  • Alcatraz in Crysis 2. He essentially became a corpse at the start of the game (and you'll get a more comprehensive explanation why a bit into the game), only kept alive by the Nanosuit Prophet puts on him. And even after that, he goes through a lot more punishment that should have put him down even if that suit was on Maximum Armor. One of the more significant injuries he sustains is, after escaping the Nexus, he gets knocked out when a car falls on his head, and then he drifts down river until he wakes up to Gould and Tara Strickland and just gets into an IFV and soldiers on.
  • A tie-in comic to Portal 2 reveals that Chell, the player character, was actually to be rejected from testing for her off-the-scale, nearly pathological tenacity.[1] A psychotic researcher arranged for her file to be transferred to the testing area because she had the right stuff to take on GLaDOS, and the rest is history. This trait is Lampshaded by the Big Bad after she's survived a Booby Trap that, by all rights, should have killed her.

"What, are you still alive? You are joking. You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!!"

    • Said researcher himself counts as well. The sole surviving scientist of Aperture Science and GLaDOS' wrath, he managed to elude her for years and scribble maniacal ravings within hidden chambers with no portal device, only the "help" of the Companion Cube and his own schizophrenia. Upon seeing Chell being dragged back into Aperture Science, rather than escaping he goes back to save her and ensure that she survives until Portal 2.
    • Cave Johnson also counts, refusing to let government investigations, years of failure, bankruptcy, and his own staggering incompetence stop him from doing science!
  • The Courier in Fallout: New Vegas. You take two bullets to the head and get buried alive in the opening cutscene, and revenge is the MacGuffin for the first part of the game. One quest has you confront the goons of the guy who shot you (however, you can actually help them get out of the mess they've made for themselves), and another has you confront the guy who pulled the trigger. Meanwhile, as you're doing this, you're bound to incur the wrath of at least one ill-tempered fighting force at some point in the game. Caesar even comments on your tenacity when you first meet him.
    • Similarly, in an unmarked quest in the game, a woman asks you to recover the body of her soldier husband from Fiends. If you go past the soldiers holding the line a ways away from the body, then come back with little health left, the soldiers comment on how you're barely holding together and wonder aloud why you did this for someone you don't even know. One of the possible responses is, "I made a promise to Private Morales." The soldier states that he'd hate to be between you and your goals.
    • Another case of Determinator is Joshua Graham. Formerly the Legate of Caesar's Legion, he ended losing a battle and was sentenced to be killed for his failure. His sentence? Getting set on fire and thrown into the Grand Canyon. He not only survives, but crawls all the back to Northern Utah to his former home. That gets destroyed and he still survives. Even before that he was known for being unkillable, having been reported killed by snipers five times.This is also reflected in his stats, as he possesses a Damage Threshold of 50 while wearing only a suit of kevlar: Basically, this means that you need anti-tank weapons to even scratch him. The highest the Courier can get is 53; a process that involves implanting armour into your skin, replacing several body parts with robotics, and wearing Power Armour. Graham is hands down the best companion in the game and can complete his mission by himself.
  • In Chaos Rings Omega, Olgar/Dante arrives in time to rescue his son-in-law Vieg (soon to become Olgar) from Yorath. He immediately gets hit by what should be an instant-kill, but then continues in a scripted battle where Olgar can never lose his last hit point. And then, when all reason suggests that Olgar, who just defeated someone who could defeat the Qualia, should be deader than dead, saves Vahti and her child Ohm by jumping into LAVA. He walks through it for what seems like hours, telling Vieg to take over protecting the family from him. Finally, when he carefully lays his daughter and grandson next to the still nearly conscious Vieg, he finally sinks into the lava. Apparently willpower keeps your legs from being burned off.
  • Asura from Asura's Wrath is possibly the most over the top of the examples shown so far. The trailers and gameply demo have seen him get impailed by alot of spears and shrugging them off as if they were nothing, knockoff a demi god that grew in size to about Five stories tall even after being bashed into the ground, then said demi god grows to size where he dwarfs the fucking planet and send his finger (which alone makes every boss from every game ever look absolutely puny in comperison) down to crash him. Asura STOPS the finger with his bare FUCKING hands! (All six off them, yes he grew another two pairs of arms, roll with it), THEN he destroys the demigod by doing what basicly amounts to punching it's finger alot.
    • The newest trailer then shows Asura, his arms destroyed after punching the demigod's finger, being confronted with a figure named Yasha. We know nothing of Yasha besides the fact that he knew Asura once upon a time, and he pissed Asura off at one point. Asura, who I must remind you has no arms, attacks Yaksha with kicks and headbuts even though they apear to be of no effect. Yasha throws him to the ground boasting that Asura's attacks can't harm him. Asura isn't done yet. He charges forward, shouting out Yasha's name in rage, and headbuts straight in the face! Asura brings a whole new meaning to the word 'Determinator'.
  • Nathan Drake of Uncharted fame. The very first scene of the second game is Nate hanging from the end of a train car that's dangling over a freezing cliff in clothes that can not possibly be warm and a bullet in his stomach. He climbs all the way back up despite nearly every part of the train either falling on him or breaking when he tries to use it as a handhold, presumably because every piece really wants to be the one that finally kills the resident Chew Toy. He even notes that it would be easier to let go, but instead he gets all the way back up just so he can trek through miles of freezing snow while hopefully not bleeding to death.
    • Uncharted 3 almost makes this the centerpiece of Nate's character. After he's captured and tortured, he breaks out of captivity, beats the crap out of his captors, and, rather than run away, fights through the rest of them to save Sully. When he finds out that Sully isn't even there, he (accidentally) sinks the ship that he's only, barely making it out before dying. He then drifts to shore, barely alive, and manages to find Elena, who tells him that there's a plane getting ready to leave and meet the convoy where he'll find Sully. Despite barely being coherent, he turns around to go find that plane.
      • And to top it all off, Nate then survives for three days in the Rub 'Al Khali desert, despite no supplies, no water and no idea of where he's going, topping it off with a gunfight. The man literally cannot be stopped.
  • The Kid from I Wanna Be the Guy. Also, anybody who manages to play through I Wanna Be The Guy.
  • Cruiser Tetron, the Big Bad from Hero Core. Get him down to a sliver of his health and he'll collapse in the corner, unable to even stand, and only able to briefly lift his gun to fire at you. But he still keeps trying to fight.
  • Red from Solatorobo. A recurring characteristic of his is his willingness to see things through to the end, no matter what.
  • Many RPGs have an ability or statistic called "guts" that allows heroes who should by rights be dead/unconscious to stay up on 1HP through sheer willpower. See Last Chance Hit Point for examples.
  • Billotte's Medal in World of Tanks can only be earned by a determinator whose given his enemy a streak of Why Won't You Die? To get it, you have to survive 5 Critical Hits, have, at most, 20% of your health left, get one kill, and survive.
  • Duke Barradin from Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2.
    • In Guild Wars, The Duke of Ascalon survives the apocalyptic events of the Searing, which utterly destroys Ascalon. But he doesn't stop there. He takes his army of soldiers and elite guards, and pushes into Charr territory, the creatures who unleashed the Searing on him in the first place. Then, he captures and secures the ruins of Piken Square, and creates a small TOWN there. THEN, he has to deal with the death of his daughter, the lovely Lady Althea, the Prince of Ascalon's girlfriend and fiancee. It only strengthens his resolve.
      • Guild Wars 2 takes place hundreds of years after Guild Wars. When playing from the Charr perspective, your first enemies are—of all people -- the Duke's elite guards in ghost form. And their boss? Duke Barradin's ghost. It takes a sizable force of NPCs and players to take him down. Even after you destroy his ghost, he possesses a giant statue, and then it's ROUND TWO. And when you manage to destroy that, IT'S ONLY TEMPORARY. The Charr leaders say he'll just reform in a few weeks and attack again. He's long dead and hundreds of years have passed, but he clearly won't let minor details like that stand in the way of him defending his homeland from invaders. The man is a Badass Determinator in every sense of the word.
  • James Earl Cash and Daniel Lamb from Manhunt and Manhunt 2 respectively. Not even being faced against armed gangs of sexual deviants, racists, psychopaths, mercenaries, and CorruptCops will stop them from reaching their respective goal.
  • There are several in StarCraft and Starcraft 2. Jim Raynor is the most obvious one who refuses to give up on saving Kerrigan and bringing down the Dominion even when logic and good sense says there's no way for him to win.
  1. ↑ It may also count as a bit of a meta-joke on her being the Player Character and therefore unstoppable in the face of infinite reloads.
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