Senseless Sacrifice: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

There's something inherently heroic, [[Tragedy|tragic]], romantic, and ''triumphant'' about a [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. It speaks of a love, idealism, commitment and the titanium plated ''sheer cojones'' of anyone capable of doing such. It's not surprising then that many consider even a [[Complete Monster]] can win [[Redemption Equals Death|redemption]] with a well played Heroic Sacrifice.

** 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 the second episode of ''[[Code Geass]] R2'', Urabe [[Self-Destruct Mechanism|self-destructs]] his [[Humongous Mecha|Knightmare Frame]] in order to defeat the seemingly-invincible opponent Knightmare (or, at the very least, to buy time for Zero and Kallen to get away from it). Unfortunately, Urabe had no way of knowing that his opponent possessed a power which lets him (subjectively) [[Time Stands Still|stop time]], allowing him to avoid the brunt of the explosion.

* [[Big Bad|Apocalymon]] from ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' ''tries'' to pull a [[Taking You with Me]] to destroy both worlds with him but the Digivices manage to contain the explosion, meaning the only thing he accomplished was killing himself.

* Almost happened in the first episode of ''[[Bleach]]'', where Ichigo tries to sacrifice himself to save his family from the Hollow. Rukia calls him an idiot, as the Hollow would have eaten everybody else after eating Ichigo.

** Later, Yamamoto pulls one of these by using his zanpakuto's flames to basically nuke the Fake Karakura Town with Aizen in it, sacrificing his life (and the lives of all his subordinates) in the process. However, Aizen predicted this, and gave Wonderweiss the ability to nullify Yamamoto's flames, making his attack pointless.

== Film ==

* The film ''[[Gallipoli]]'' is based entirely around this trope.

* The jihadists in ''[[Four Lions]]'' dream of making a grant [[Heroic Sacrifice]] (from their point of view, at least), but each one of them ends up throwing his life way in an utterly pointless fashion.

* ''[[Defiance]]'' sees one of the non-combatant Jews rush a group of German soldiers with a live grenade, only to be shot a few yards into his charge and for his grenade to blow up by his body.

* In ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: Dead Man's Chest'', Will bets his soul for the key to the titular chest in a game of Liar's Dice against Davy Jones. When it looks like Will is going to lose, Will's father makes an absurdly high bet so that Jones calls him out instead (at the same cost). Though noble, this turns out to have been a bad idea for two reasons. One, Will didn't care whether he won or lost, the main goal of the game was to trick Jones into revealing where he hid the key. Two, though this is never addressed in the film itself, observant viewers will notice that Jones had five fives and Will had three. Will had bet eight fives, which means that if Bootstrap hadn't intervened and Jones had called him out instead, Will would have won.

** To be fair, {{spoiler|Ellen and Jo}} did assure Sam and Dean's escape from there. {{spoiler|On the other hand, if they did die (and they did a lot), they'd just be brought back.}}

* {{spoiler|Rio}} in the penultimate episode of ''[[Juken Sentai Gekiranger|Gekiranger]]'' thrusts himself into the [[Big Bad]] and pretty much self destructs. Though it's revealed not two minutes later that the villain survived it.

** In the scene where Donovan arranges to trade himself for his son, the rebels are set up to ambush the visitors, but they don't. Instead, they let Donovan get taken by the aliens.

** In a scene where the rebels are sabotaging the water facility, one of the rebels is wounded. The rebel's girlfriend comes back for him and insists she will stay with him. Two (fit) mercenaries come back, too. They pick up the perfectly fit woman and haul her away, leaving the wounded man behind to be killed. If they'd grabbed the wounded man instead, they would have all made it out alive.

** In ''[[Power Rangers in Space]]'' former [[Big Bad]] Astronema [[Heel Face Turn|turned traitor]] but is sent back to her old base in order to stop an asteroid from hitting Earth. It doesn't work. Overlaps with [[Stupid Sacrifice]] because the Rangers had [[Humongous Mecha|Megazords]] they could have used. (Granted, Astronema did volunteer and the Megazords they had weren't enough anyway, they needed one more)

* On ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'', Marian prevents Guy of Gisborne from assassinating King Richard at the cost of her own life. However, if one knows their history, it's rather depressing to realize that Richard returns to England only to leave and then die soon after in Normandy.

 

 

{{quote|''I would go through all this pain,

Take a bullet straight through my brain,

But you won't do the same.'' }}

 

* The engineer from ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'' who cut off his limbs in an attempt to be unable to hurt anyone once he changed. Not only do you encounter a legless Necromorph that is apparently him, having died before finishing the task... but you later encounter necromorphs that hurt people just fine despite not having ''any'' of their original limbs, so even if he'd been entirely successful, it wouldn't have worked.

* {{spoiler|Lujei Piche}} of ''[[Grim Grimoire]]'' turns all the sacrifices and convoluted planning in ''[[Phantom Brave]]'' to weaken the [[Big Bad]] and exile him through a dimensional portal into this when she {{spoiler|sent Sulfur back to Ivoire as a [[Bonus Boss]].}} It just takes some [[Level Grinding]] to kill him [[Deader Than Dead]] then. Although in their defense, they did think he would continue to live [[As Long as There Is Evil]].

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic 2006]]'s'' Silver quest ends with Blaze sacrificing herself to power the ritual to seal [[Cosmic Horror]] Iblis away. It works... except they are in the [[Time Travel|future]]. Back in the present, Iblis is still alive and well and begins its plans to become invincible, forcing Silver to travel back and defeat Iblis then. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Good job, Blaze.]]

* ''[[MS Saga]]'', a ''[[Gundam]]'' spinoff RPG, has {{spoiler|Gavanger}} make a Senseless Sacrifice fairly early in the game by trying to hold off the Psyco Gundam on his own while the rest of the party escapes. The "senseless" part comes in when you realize that even the best MS you have available at the time wouldn't have been much more than a speed bump to Psyco Gundam. The situation is deliberately [[Gundam]]-[[Troperiffic]], paying homage to the franchise's long and glorious history of similar sacrifices.

** Except Big Boss ''wanted'' to die. It was symbolic: {{spoiler|with Big Boss and Zero dead, the Patriots are finally gone for good.}}

* In ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' we have the incredibly sad tale of {{spoiler|Vault 11: after being locked inside the Vault, the residents are immediately informed that every so often, one of the residents must enter a chamber in the Vault to be killed otherwise the computer will kill ''everyone'' in the Vault. After a long and terrible history (including things like sexual blackmail, coercion and armed insurrection) the five remaining residents of the vault (of the original ''one thousand'') finally decide to end this and refuse to sacrifice anyone else...prompting the computer to congratulate them in being "fine examples of humanity" and unlock the Vault door (the Vault, like every other except for a few control Vaults, was a sick social experiment). Out of those five people, four committed suicide, with the fate of the remaining survivor unknown.}}

** 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}}!

{{quote|'''Louie:''' I'll miss Huey.

'''Dewey:''' If only he hadn't blown himself up when I had a perfectly good rocket launcher right here! }}

'''Jon:''' Okay, you can do it, Josh! }}

 

[[Category:Cynicism Tropes]]

[[Category:Heroic Sacrifice Tropes]]

[[Category:Depressing Tropes]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]