Senseless Sacrifice: Difference between revisions

** To add insult to injury, the child actually took more damage from being pushed onto the ground than he would have taken otherwise. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]].

{{quote|'''Botan:''' "The kid would've survived without a scratch without your intervention, but thanks to your meddling, the kid gets scraped up, and you ''die.'' Haha, way to go, moron!"}}

* In the manga version of ''[[Elfen Lied]]'', doomed clumsy girl Kisaragi is informed by Kurama that she must be sacrificed in order to kill Lucy, who has taken her hostage. She agrees to this readily, owing to her deep feelings for her boss. Arguably, the anime, wherein Lucy simply kills her ASAP, leaving a dumb look on the poor girl's floating severed head, owns the shock value. But when Lucy is able to use her hostage's death to confuse things just enough to help ensure her escape, she does not hesitate to taunt the hell out of Kurama, stating 'Her Death Was Useless!'.

** Though Kisaragi's death ''does'' inspire Kurama not to try sacrifice anyone else to stop Lucy. This ends up saving Nana's life later.

* In [[Harry Harrison]]'s novel ''[[The Daleth Effect]]'', Denmark's space liner is invaded by US and USSR agents in an attempt to steal the piece of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] allowing the ship to fly. In response, the captain of the ship triumphantly tell both parties that all their efforts are in vain, as a fail-safe has been installed on board to prevent a takeover. The ship is destroyed seconds later. The captain's widow laments that all the crewmembers and passengers, including the inventor of the device, died in vain to protect a secret that was already made public days before. Even worse, since Denmark refused to patent the technology for fear of it being misused, they now have nothing.

** It's even worse for the widow (who is American and has never applied for Danish citizenship), since she's partly responsible for the Americans being able to board the ship. Earlier, she is approached by an American agent, asking her help in obtaining the plans of the [[Anti Gravity]] device, threatening to revoke her American passport if she won't help. She refuses, but later discovers that her husband is cheating on her with a stewardess. In a fit of rage, she steals the inventor's notebook and gives it to the agent. He reveals that it's just the plans for a portable fusion reactor, which they have no interest in stealing (they'll just buy the patent and avoid legal trouble). However, he uses the notebook to blackmail her into spying for them.

** RAB is a straight example. Actually, he made the horcrux ''harder'' for Harry to find and destroy ({{spoiler|because he handed it to Kreacher hopping he would be able to destroy it}}). Can even be considered [[Stupid Sacrifice]] when you think what could have been if he told Dumbledore everything he knew instead.

* In ''[[Neverwhere]]'' {{spoiler|the Marquis de Carabas}} allows himself to be killed by the resident [[Those Two Bad Guys|Two Bad Guys]], Croup and Vandemar in order that he may learn something of the nature of their employer and purpose. As it happens, he has [[Soul Jar|his life hidden away]] somewhere else so that he can come back, so this is less a sacrifice than it might be; however, it is utterly unnecessary, as by the time he gets back to the other characters, they already know who the [[Big Bad]] is.

** With information gained from the Eldar campaign ''Retribution'', the plan does make a little more sense. {{spoiler|The Eldar's objective in the sector is the retrieval a soulstones within a craftworld that crashed on Typhon aeons ago. The Eldar don't give a damn about saving the sector, simply stalling the Tyranids long enough for the recovery, and the [[Melee a Trois]] they start was a good way of doing this. Without a prophecy telling them so, the idea of the Blood Raven actually defeating the Hive Fleet was acceptably unrealistic.}}

* In ''[[Eternal Darkness]],'' most of the chapters apparently end with this. It seems like a bunch of [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] stories, even the [[Downer Ending|ending]]. That is until {{spoiler|the third playthough}}. {{spoiler|Mantorok the corpse god set up a 2000 year [[Xanatos Gambit]] to defeat the other 3 gods, but it had to be done in three [[Parallel Reality|parallel realities]]}}. So when the player {{spoiler|beats the game for the third time, it is revealed that with each god weakened in one timeline, it's rival can kill it, but because all 3 are weakened, they kill each other simultaneously}}!

 

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