No One Gets Left Behind: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Two characters are escaping from something. One of them falls down, breaks a leg and says "Leave me, [[I Will Only Slow You Down]]". The other one says, "[[More Hero Than Thou|Never]]!" and takes his wounded friend with him. Possibly even requiring, as soon as they reach some degree of safety, that [[Greater Need Than Mine|the wounded character gets evacuated first]].

 

Has nothing to do with [[George W. Bush|No Child Left Behind.]]

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', people do extreme things to take their comrades off the field with them. Ling carries his wounded servant Ran Fan out of a battle, and has a fight while carrying her - allowing a pretty heinous villain to mock him relentlessly. Roy cauterizes (his own as well as) Havoc's wounds to help Havoc get safely out of the battle and to enable himself to go and rescue Al and Hawkeye.

* Lampshaded and Played with in ''[[Vandread]]''. Dita tries pulling one of these when Gascogne gets stuck. Gasconge is more [[Genre Savvy]].

{{quote|Gasconge: "This isn't a third rate soap opera! You go and you come back with help and get me!"}}

 

== Comic Books ==

* During the Marvel Comics run of ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' there was a particularly tragic example where Dusty flashes back to meeting a fellow Joe's family and promising to keep an eye on him. He ends up carrying his friend's dead body for miles through a desert because "he promised."

 

== Film ==

* The firefighters in ''[[Backdraft]]'' have this as part of their code of honor. "You go, we go."

* In ''[[Aliens]]'', after the Colonial Marines learn that some of the ones left behind in the escape are still alive, Vasquez says "Then we go back in there and get them. We don't leave our people behind." They end up not trying to do so after Corporal Hicks points out "You can't help them! You can't. Right now they're being cocooned just like the others."

 

== Literature ==

* Subverted in the [[Dale Brown]] novel ''Warrior Class'', where Patrick McLanahan decides to go against orders to rescue two of his downed crewmen, and while he succeeds, gets into serious trouble with the high command for it.

* [[Lois McMaster Bujold]]'s [[Vorkosigan Saga]] novel ''Diplomatic Immunity''. Admiral Vorpatril has this attitude, which was one of the factors leading to the escalation of the diplomatic incident that Miles has to sort out, after having been left behind himself by Miles' father when Vorpatril was a junior officer during the failed Escobar invasion.

* Subverted in ''[[Night]]''. During the march from Birkenau to Auschwitz, anyone who moves too slowly is shot. Rabbi Eliahou can no longer manage to run, and loses his son in the crowd, but is determined to find him. Eliezer declines to tell him that said son abandoned him after seeing him limping, and prays to God for the spiritual strength never to abandon his own father. {{spoiler|He doesn't get it, and is ultimately too cowardly to help his dying father.}}

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "The Devil in Iron", Octavia starts to explain not leaving Conan as this, and then switches to she had nowhere to go.

* In [[Jasper Fforde]]'s ''[[Thursday Next|The Eyre Affair]]'', Thursday went back to get the wounded against orders. If the press hadn't gotten wind of it, she would have been courtmartialed.

* The [[Left Behind]] book series averts this trope with the Rapture of faithful Christians at the beginning of the series. However, those who are left behind to face the Tribulation and become Christians do get supernatural help from God. Also, by the end of the seven-year Tribulation period, the raptured Christians come back with Jesus Christ in time for the [[Curb Stomp Battle]] of Him versus Nicolae Carpathia and the Global Community army.

* In the Loic Henry's [[Military Science Fiction]] book ''Loar'', this his how [[City of Spies|planet Bihan]] keeps or buys the loyalty of its spies: If one spy's cover is blown, they'll order as many spies as necessary to blow their own cover and escape with the first spy (they'll still have a few dozen spies left in the place afterwards anyway).

 

== Live Action TV ==

* In season 3 of ''[[Lost]]'', Kate insists on going back to the Barracks for Jack after escaping the Others with his help. In something of a [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]], her efforts seemingly destroy Jack's opportunity to leave the island.

** Then in season 5, Robert says this to Jin when going into the smoke monster's lair after Montand. This does not turn out well, either.

* Adam Savage has joked about ''[[MythBusters]]'' having a "No Crash Test Dummy Left Behind" code at least twice. Of course, since the original Buster was theoretically a loaner ....

* Parodied in the ''[[Seinfeld]]'' episode "The Puerto Rican Day", where a parade is obstructing the traffic, and Elaine tries to go through underneath a viewing stand, leading a group of people. An elderly priest can't keep up:

** In "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S6/E01 The Dominators|The Dominators]]", Jamie opts for this when Cully says [[I Will Only Slow You Down]] to Jamie after the Quark shots him.

 

* Thoroughly averted, and possibly subverted, in ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]''. The Tau and Eldar are about the only ones who ever try, and the Eldar consider recovering the waystones of the dead good enough consolation for being unable to save the bodies of the living (the fact that Eldar wear them to prevent their souls [[Fate Worse Than Death|from being devoured]] by [[Cosmic Horror|evil Chaos God of lust]] may also have something to it).

** Similarly, although the Marines consider it the highest honour to die in battle, they'll fight hard to recover the two progenoid glands from the still-cooling bodies of their battle brothers, as they are necessary to convert new Space Marines. (The way the Chaos forces can use them lends a certain amount of urgency to this.)

*** Actually they also collect the biomass from most of the survivors too. The greater part of their assault troops are creatures that have no digestive system: they are MEANT to die, should they survive the invasion, and they'll be reprocessed into biomass for later use.

* Thoroughly justified in ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' by [[Death Is Cheap|resurrection magic]].

 

== Video Games ==

* [[Uncharted]] has a particularly cool example: escaping an ancient temple into a rainy evening only to find out that Elena's cameraman Jeff has been shot and that they're surrounded, Nathan Drake grabs him and carries him through the streets, covered by Elena and Chloe. {{spoiler|Then you get to a building, where you take a moment to sit Jeff down, only for Lazarevich to come in and perform his ultimate [[Kick the Dog]] moment - executing Jeff on the spot.}}

* In the final playable sequence of [[Bastion]], the Kid can either {{spoiler|abandon the wounded Zulf and continue fighting the Ura, or drop his weapons and carry Zulf to safety.}} If you choose the latter, the Ura will persist in attacking you... {{spoiler|but the Kid keeps going, and they respect his determination so much that an Ura soldier who takes another potshot at the Kid ends up skewered by his own commander.}}

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[Girl Genius]]'': [[Super Soldier|Jagerkin]] do NOT leave their own, or those they consider as good as, behind.

* In ''[[No Rest for The Wicked (webcomic)|No Rest for The Wicked]]'', [http://www.forthewicked.net/archive/04-33.html Red realized that something had gotten to her grandmother, but could not leave and abandon her grandmother.]

 

== Web Original ==

* Played with in ''[[Open Blue]]'''s [[Backstory]], where [[Four-Star Badass|Executor Altara]] refuses her Empress' offer to allow her and the rest of the [[Praetorian Guard]] to retreat while the latter and the regular army [[You Shall Not Pass|held off]] [[The Horde]] that was [[One Sided Battle|slowly defeating their troops]]. The Empress gets killed, and they end up defeated and having to retreat anyway.

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Star Trek: The Animated Series]]'' episode "The Jihad". While escaping a lava flow Spock is thrown from the vehicle and Captain Kirk goes back to save him. Spock tells him to leave him behind and Kirk says "Not without you."

* Notably in one episode of ''[[The Smurfs]]'', Lazy and a bunch of other Smurfs get trapped in a volcano and work to rebuild a windmill into a helicopter so they could escape. Lazy feels entirely at fault for letting the Smurfs down and trapping them in the volcano, but Smurfette refuses to let him stay behind to perish.

 

== Real Life ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]

[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]

[[Category:Index to The Rescue]]