Heroic Suicide: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
Suicide is generally considered a bad thing. Even when the person committing it [[Driven to Suicide|feels he has no other choice]], it's still far from heroic. In contrast, [[Heroic Sacrifice
But sometimes they do.
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This trope is about situations where suicide becomes heroic. Say a character discovers that he is a [[Person of Mass Destruction]], a crucial part of an [[Evil Plan]], or the [[Big Bad]]'s [[Soul Jar]]. In such situations killing oneself may be the only way to save the day.
This is a specific sub-trope of [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. The difference is that in most [[Heroic Sacrifice
The clearest examples are when a character personally ''will become'' the threat that endangers others, and they have to kill themselves to prevent it. Any such situation ''definitely'' counts as a Heroic Suicide. Otherwise, it ''might'' count, but be careful.
A good rule of thumb is that in most Heroic Suicides, the character's death is both ''necessary'' and ''sufficient'' to acomplising their immediate goal. That is to say, they can't accomplish their goal ''without'' dying, but ''how'' they die doesn't matter much. To elaborate:
* '''Necessity:''' Ask yourself if there's even a theoretical possibility that the character could accomplish their goal ''without'' dying. If there is, it's probably a regular [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. For example, say you [[Peter Pan|drink poison intended for someone else]], [[A Tale of Two Cities|trade places with a man on death row]], or [[Star Trek (
* '''Sufficiency:''' Ask yourself how important the ''circumstances'' are under which the person dies. Do they accomplish their goal just by dying, or does it matter what they were doing when they died? For example, say you get yourself killed diffusing a bomb. In that situation, it's stopping the bomb that makes your actions heroic, not the dying. You couldn't achieve the same goal just by, say, shooting yourself in the head. On the other hand, say you
Compare [[Thanatos Gambit]], [[My Death Is Just the Beginning]], [[Seppuku]], and [[Better to Die Than Be Killed]]. Often overlaps with [[Cyanide Pill]] which could be considered a sub-trope (examples go there, not here).
{{deathtrope}}
{{examples|Examples:}}▼
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Hartigan from ''[[Sin City]]'' kills himself so that no one will hurt Nancy to get at him.
* At the end of ''[[Watchmen (
== [[Film]] ==
* In ''[[Terminator]] 2: Judgment Day'', the T-800 ally must kill himself at the end to destroy the last possible source of Terminator technology that could let people reverse-engineer Terminators and Skynet.
* ''[[
* Ripley falls backward into a smelter to stop the Alien gestating in her from birthing and starting the whole ordeal all over again in ''[[Alien (
* In ''[[Gran Torino]]'', after his previous attempts to stop a gang from harrassing his neighbours failed, Walt Kowalski taunts them so that they will kill him. Thinking he was grabbing a weapon, they gun down an unarmed old man in front of an entire block worth of witnesses and are sent to prison.
== [[Literature]] ==
* In ''[[Harry Potter and
== [[Live
* Dawn tries to pull one of these in the fifth season finale of ''[[
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]''
** Like Dawn, Peter Petrelli considers killing himself to [[Person of Mass Destruction|keep from blowing up New York]]. Also like Dawn, he is saved by the last-minute intervention of his elder sibling, though that's ''not'' an example of this trope.
** Eden also performs one when she blows her brains out to prevent Sylar from getting at them.
* On ''[[Angel]]'' Darla (a vampire) stakes herself so that her and Angel's 100% human son can be born.
* In the ''[[
*
* In ''[[
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In [[DuckTales (2017)|the 2017 reboot of ''DuckTales'']], a bunch of L'il Bulbs were acting like radios. One of them was captured and the message continued to come out of it. It struggled to escape, and when that failed, it killed itself before any sensitive information was heard by its captor.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* In the ''[[Soul Series]]'', this is Ivy Valentine's end game. Her goal is to eradicate any and all traces of Soul Edge's evil influence, which means hunting down and slaying everyone with its taint - this means she herself will have to die eventually. Canon-wise, she's not yet close enough to her goal worry about it, and has not said how she plans to do so, although one can assume she'll save it for last.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Heroic
[[Category:Dying Moment of Awesome]]
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