Pyrrhic Victory: Difference between revisions

Few victories come without cost, but the cost of a Pyrrhic Victory is ruinous to the victor. A Pyrrhic Victory will often involve a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] or people asking [[Was It Really Worth It?]]. If it happens at the end of a work, it will inevitably lead to a [[Bittersweet Ending]] or even a [[Downer Ending]] (and likely [[Inferred Holocaust]]). Often the implication of a [[Lonely at the Top]] situation, where someone gets everything he wanted, but lost everything and everyone that helped him get there. A clever enemy can use a [[Defensive Feint Trap]] to trick an opponent into "winning" such a victory.

 

 

Has nothing at all to do with the victories of Pyrrha Nikos from ''[[RWBY]]''.

* Twenty years before the main story in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', Ala Rubra stopped the war in the Magical World and saved the world. Unfortunately, this was only achievable through {{spoiler|the sealing of Asuna, which caused the floating capital to collapse and destroyed the cultural center of the world. The dynasty of the founders and kings of Ostia was also assumed to be wiped out when Arika was blamed for the disaster.}}

* Arguably, the end of ''[[Code Geass]]'' goes something like this- {{spoiler|Lelouch is dead, Suzaku's had to fake his death (and both of their reputations are in ruins), the entire populations of both Tokyo and the Britannian capital are dead and it's likely that Nunnally and several others are likely to need some kind of therapy. The world's at peace, but it's come at a heavy price.}}

* In ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'' a Phyrric Victory is achieved by an antagonist in a beauty pageant. By cheating the voting system, she manages to beat Tomoe in the pageant, but as she receives her reward, everyone in the audience boos her and claims to want Tomoe to be the winner.

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann|Gurren Lagann]]'': {{spoiler|The Anti-Spirals are defeated, but more than half of the Gurren Brigade are dead, including Kittan, and Nia dies soon after returning to earth, because her life force was tied to the Anti-Spiral. On her ''wedding day'' of all days.}}

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

{{quote|'''Snoopy:''' But I WON A TROPHY!!}}

 

== Sports ==

* '[[Red vs. Blue]]'' has the defeat of the Meta and dealing with Project Freelancer come at the price of {{spoiler|Alpha-Church and several other [[A Is]] being destroy in a EMP, Tex imprisoned in the capture unit that Epsilon-Church then joins her in (which is thrown into evidence and deemed useless) and Wash almost killed, then forced to masquerade as Church to avoid prison time. Oh, and Red Team lost Lopez}}.

* The [[Whateley Universe]] has the Halloween battle. What was originally intended as a cover so that the Goobers could kill Sara Waite turned into a full-on attack on Team Kimba, with many others getting caught in the cross-fire, and it ended badly for ''everyone''- while the Whateley crew won, they ended up with thousands of dollars of property damage, more than a few injured, a staff member dying and that triggering a rager attack by another staff member that turned him almost committing suicide because of the death of his girlfriend. It turned out worse for Englund, the instigator- almost everyone on the staff and more than a few students hated him even though they couldn't prove that he did it, the attack on Sara wasn't successful, and the staff member who went rager now wants to kill him with extreme prejudice. The Syndicate (the main evil attackers) lost hundreds of their soldiers, and the main general ended up nearly losing his boyfriend. In other words, nobody won and everybody lost.

 

== Western Animation ==

[[Category:Ending Tropes]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]