I Should Have Been Better: Difference between revisions

'''Peter:''' Her mother died. I should have gotten there sooner.

'''EMT:''' Should have...Peter, you got there faster than is ''[[Super Speed|humanly possible]]''.

 

It's an old standby: The hero has done his absolute best, saved everyone he possibly could...but not everyone. Someone died, nearly always in a way completely outside the hero's control. He went above and beyond the call of duty, but it wasn't enough.

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{{examples}}

* Negi Springfield of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' gets like this should one of his students suffer so much as a ''scratch''. His response is [[Training from Hell]]. Of course, his response to ''everything'' is [[Training from Hell]] ([[Memetic Sex God|or kissing]]).

* [[Hurting Hero|Edward Elric]] from ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' invokes this trope at the end of the series. After looking back on everything, it is revealed that he still feels guilt about {{spoiler|Nina's and Hughes's}} deaths.

* The hero of the ''Cybernarc'' novels goes through this twice in the first book, once when his squad is ambushed by drug smugglers and again when the same smugglers attack his family. Both times he does everything he could have done, but still feels guilty that he didn't save everybody.

 

* Peter Petrelli of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', as the page quote indicates, falls into this a lot.

* [[The X-Files|Fox Mulder]] expresses this sentiment in the first-season episode "Young at Heart": on his first field assignment for the FBI, he hesitated to shoot a criminal, who killed the hostage and an FBI agent. Although subsequent investigation proved that he did everything right, he could never forgive himself.

* A ''sort of'' example that does involve wanting to be better, but not for heroic reasons: [[Angel]] and [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Spike]], being the only two vampires with souls, have a deep rivalry when Spike makes the switch from the show ''Buffy'' to ''Angel'' in the fifth season. At one point, they fight over what they believe to be a cup of extreme suffering, destined to be drunk only by the true champion of the world. It turns out to just be a fake chalice filled with Mountain Dew. After Spike beats Angel, even after the drink is revealed to be a fake, Angel expresses this, feeling he should have wanted it enough to beat Spike.

* One episode of ''[[Seven Days]]'' involves Frank on a time-critical mission to save his boss from capture (and from taking a [[Suicide Pill]] to avoid interrogation). Along the way, Frank witnesses a shootout between gangsters, where an innocent civilian dies in the crossfire. Problem is, if he saves the civilian, he doesn't reach his boss in time. If he focuses on his primary mission, he sees the civilian die. Frank is eventually able to voluntarily invoke enough [[Groundhog Day Loop]]s to [[The Good Guys Always Win|save both]].

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Digger]]'', after killing He-Is, berates herself for being unable to prevent Ed's death.

* In ''[[Our Little Adventure]]'', [http://danielscreations.com/ola/comics/ep0190.html speculated as the motive for Julie's anguish over Pauline's death].

 

{{reflist}}