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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"It's conceivable, you miserable, vomitous mass, that I'm only lying here because I lack the strength to stand. But, then again... perhaps I have the strength after all."'' |'''Westley''', ''[[The Princess Bride (Filmfilm)|The Princess Bride]]''}}
 
{{quote|'''Lt. Boomer''': Colonel, Blue Squadron reporting for duty, sir.<br />
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== Anime ==
* In ''[[Berserk]]'', after the fight with Rosine, Guts is a complete mess. That also happens to be when he runs into the Holy Iron Chain Knights. He still puts up a hell of a fight, but gets captured at the end of it. In any other condition he would have killed them all.
* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (Mangamanga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', [[Colonel Badass|Roy Mustang]] takes down a {{spoiler|deadly, deadly Lust}} after being stabbed in the stomach and [[Playing Withwith Fire|cauterizing the wounds himself]]. [[Fullmetal Alchemist (Mangamanga)/Awesome|It was awesome]].
** In the final battle, Greed tells everyone who's been injured to get off the "elevator", including Roy {{spoiler|whose eyesight was removed as a toll for seeing the Truth}}. He still chooses to fight.
** In [[Fullmetal Alchemist (Animeanime)|the 2003 anime version]], Roy kills Pride after being sliced, impaled, and altogether getting the crap kicked out of him. {{spoiler|And immediately after that, he's [[Eye Scream|shot in the eye!]]}}
* In ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro Nini]]'', Rika has one of these during her [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] when she {{spoiler|stands up against Shion and kills herself rather than die by torture}}.
* This trope is so overused in ''[[Saint Seiya]]'', the heroes are brought down to this level in pretty much every story arc after facing a few mooks. This trope needs to be renamed "You Can't Even Stand" to refer to the more serious instances.
** In the Sanctuary arc, Hyoga was entombed by Camus using his Freezing Coffin technique and left for dead. Shiryu broke him free with the libra sword. This left him in a semi-comatose state (but he could Barely Stand). After lampshading this trope, Camus intended to finish him off with an Aurora Excusion. Hyoga {{spoiler|learns Camus's Aurora Excusion technique and defeats him in a [[Beam-O-War|Power Struggle]]}} while barely conscious.
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*** Every ''Bleach'' reader already knows that everything in ''Bleach'' depends entirely on [[Rule of Cool]]. Usually this means Ichigo takes a ton of injuries and then [[Shonen Upgrade|pulls something super crazy awesome]] out of nowhere and defeats his opponent. Then again, that's just about every shonen ever.
*** Uryu, on the other hand, has a technique that ''overcomes'' "structural impossibility" by turning his own body into what amounts to a telekinetically-controlled puppet. This allows him to keep fighting even after his body is paralyzed by a poison that shuts down all voluntary muscle movement.
* In ''[[WolfsWolf's Rain]]'', Toboe tries to bite Darcia's arm off despite being seriously wounded {{spoiler|and dying from it shortly afterward}}.
* The {{spoiler|"Bang" scene}} that concludes ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]''.
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'': Jounouchi/Joey is worn out from his duel with Varon, but doesn't hesitate to duel his [[Psycho Ex-Girlfriend]] Mai as soon as it's over. He collapses at just the right time to give Mai a teary [[My God, What Have I Done?]] scene.
* In ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'', the final battle between Kenshin and Shishio is like this, and Kenshin actually ''does'' collapse during the fight before getting back up.
** Also in the anime when he fights Shura {{spoiler|Kenshin is hit by a poisoned dart and can't exactly see properly or stand up straight}}.
* Happens a lot to Allen Walker in ''[[D .Gray Man-man]]''. Sometimes it works (For example, when he ''literally'' can't stand during the {{spoiler|Level 4 attack and keeps fighting it anyway by dragging himself around with Crown Clown}}) and sometimes it... doesn't (Like after the whole mess with Suman Dark, when {{spoiler|Tyki effortlessly dissolves his arm and puts a hole in his heart}}).
* [[Gintama (Manga)|Gintama]] has its main character Gintoki have several moments like this when there's serious arc and he's so badly beaten he can barely stand. Yet somehow, he always gets up from the ground. Never mind the countless broken bones and him throwing up blood...
* The cast of ''[[Inuyasha]]'' get this a ''lot''. One example is when Inyasha is human and must fight the Peach Man. During that time, he is shrunk, eaten, thrown back up, bled, tossed around, and fell from a cliff. Not even Sesshoumaru is [[Not So Invincible After All|immune]]. He finally comes up against an enemy that [[The Strategist|knows how to fight]] a [[Handicapped Badass|one-armed man]] {{spoiler|- by [[Badass in Distress|tearing that arm to shreds]], then entwining him in tentacles to [[Shoot the Hostage|prevent Inuyasha from using his sword]], before finally [[No One Could Survive That|stabbing him through the heart]].}}
{{quote| '''Inuyasha (to Sesshoumaru):''' 'You just stay back! This isn't the place for an injured person!'}}
* The various Egrigori experiments in ''[[Project ARMS]]'' get this bad. Ryo has especially bad luck. His ARMS - the Jabberwock - will only come out if he is in serious danger. The result of this is that almost every enemy sent to kill the Jaberwock will try to make it come out by beating the stuffing out of Ryo. And since he hates the Jabberwock, he always puts in a great deal of effort to just let himself get pummeled and not release the ARMS.
* [[Sword of the Stranger]] invokes this during its famed final fight sequence. Nanashi, after already being completely spent fighting the other soldiers and sustaining a few fairly series injuries, not only stands up to Luo-Lang, but refuses his offer of performance-enhancing drugs that would dull his pain and {{spoiler|still ends up the victor in the end.}}
* [[Fate/stay Stay Nightnight]] Unlimited Bladeworks. Lancer's [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] is basically him taking out a major villain and a minor one, both non-heroic spirits, while suffering one such wound. That wound is being stabbed through the heart with his own magic spear. His response? [[Badass Boast|"As if I would die from a wound like this."]] We must emphasize this wound is through the heart. With a spear that causes wounds that cannot be healed.
** And appropriately enough in the scene happening parallel to that one, we have Shirou. During the course of his fight he's broken his fingers, gotten covered in cuts, has various other broken appendages, and is all but dead due to being outmatched. Quite literally the only thing keeping him swinging is a full on [[Determinator]] mode.
*** [[Always Save the Girl|Shirou]] in HF too. [[Punctuated for Emphasis|He. Will. Save. Sakura.]]
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== Comics ==
* [[Superman]] gets to do this a lot, including fighting weakened by a red sun and having just come out of a coma, or just having been stabbed with Kryptonite.
** Done with somewhat different implications in the [[Superman: theThe Animated Series|animated series]] finale "Legacy," where a depowered Superman lets out his anger on Lex Luthor, shattering the latter's jaw in one punch.
*** Reminding us all that even without superpowers, Clark Kent is still a big man who gets ''very'' intense workouts on a regular basis.
*** Really more of an inversion. He can cut loose because he doesn't have to worry about accidentally killing Lex. This happened in Smallville too.
** Subverted in one instance in the comics (fighting a makeshift squad of villains). He's very ill, but still very strong. The conflict is that, as he says to the villains, he is so sick he has no idea if his punches will remove heads from necks.
* ''[[Spider -Man]]'' fought The Black Widow in one issue. ''He'' had a case of pneumonia that would have put an ordinary man into the hospital, but it just slowed and weakened him down enough that the Black Widow thought he been toying with her when he broke free of her swing line at the end of the fight.
* In ''[[Elf Quest]]'', Cutter refuses to be healed during the first battle with the Northern Trolls because it would take him out of the fighting for too long, and his tribe needed every fighter they had.
 
 
== Fanfiction ==
* In the ''[[Firefly]]'' fanfic ''[[Forward (Fanfic)|Forward]]'' story "Business," River and Jayne are in this state when they fight the {{spoiler|Hands of Blue}} at the climax. This is because they had been {{spoiler|captured and tortured by Niska}} previously, and had only just escaped that. In this case, Jayne actually proves to be the better fighter, if only because, being larger, stronger, and tougher, {{spoiler|he was able to withstand the torture better than the much physically weaker River, who was reduced to a gibbering wreck following the ordeal and was so battered that she needed Jayne to carry her on his back.}} River is only able to fight because Jayne injects her with a syringe of synthetic adrenaline.
 
 
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** In the book, Frodo also defies all of the Nine Nazgul at the River, despite being severely weakened, stabbed, and almost completely under the Witch-king's power. (Unfortunately cut from the film-version).
* In the ''[[Daredevil]]'' film, Daredevil goes to the climactic fight with Kingpin while still seriously injured from his fight with Kingpin's [[The Dragon|Dragon]], Bullseye. Kingpin proceeds to own him in seconds, and even gloats about wishing he could fight Daredevil "in his prime".
* Both [[My Name Is Inigo Montoya|Inigo]] and Westley do this in the climax of ''[[The Princess Bride (Filmfilm)|The Princess Bride]]'' (see page quote).
* In ''[[Gladiator (Filmfilm)|Gladiator]]'', Commodus stabs Maximus in the lung just before their climactic battle in the colosseum. Maximus, a seasoned general mind you, proves to be able to defeat the reasonably skilled but nonetheless inferior Commodus, {{spoiler|but dies from the wound afterwards.}}
* ''[[District 9]]'' does this rather well.
* ''[[Sin City]]'' gives us a gem, when Detective Hartigan, an aging cop with a heart condition, staggers over to confront the [[Big Bad]] of his arc.
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* In the fourth book of [[The Sword of Truth]], Richard defeats his evil brother, despite being barely able to stand due to a disease, and the brother wielding the titular sword. A couple minutes later, that brother tries to kill Richard, despite having his spine ripped out.
* In Robert A. Heinlein's short story ''The Long Watch'', the hero Lieutenant John Dahlquist barricades himself in an Interplanetary Patrol nuclear weapons bay on the Moon, while dying from the radiation dose he's getting from impromptu hammer-sabotage of a bunch of nuclear warheads sought by Colonel Towers, the leader of an attempted coup. It's sort of a ''You Can Barely Stand''-off.
* Vimes in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Thud|Thud]]'' fights off a small army of dwarfs while badly beaten from a fall, cold and wet, and highly disorientated. However this is (probably) because of {{spoiler|the Summoning Dark trying to control him}}. Where he ''really'' shows his [[Heroic Resolve]] is that, once he's run out of armed opponents, he ''stops''.
* [[The Dresden Files|Harry Dresden]]. In nearly every book. In ''Fool Moon'' he basically ''uses up his magic''-- and that's ''before'' he even has a chance to confront the pack of werewolves he came to fight.
** Played with in ''Turn Coat'': While it's really obvious that he can barely stand (numerous bandages, about to fall over from lack of sleep, and what have you) and he's hopelessly outnumbered, none of the {{spoiler|other Wardens}} want to attack him because [[Shrouded in Myth|they've all heard about]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|the crazy crap he's pulled]] when he's running on nothing but sheer bloodymindedness.
** Subverted in ''Changes'', {{spoiler|where the traditional early book injury is his back being broken, leaving him completely unable to fight or even move his legs. He accepts [[Deal Withwith the Devil|Mab's offer to be the Winter Night]], and for once goes into the fight not just fresh but stronger than he was when the book started.}}
** The [[The Dresden Files (Tabletop Gamegame)|RPG rulebook]] lampshades it. Harry asks why all the pictures of him show him beat to crap. Billy says it's because they're pictures of him on the case, and when he's on a case he's usually beat to crap. A little later on, Harry singles out one picture from a case file where he's not all beat up--only for Billy to point out it's from early in the case, and there's already a visible bruise on Harry's face.
* Old literary example: In ''[[Ivanhoe]],'' the title character Wilfred of Ivanhoe meets Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert as challenger in a trial by combat despite barely being able to maintain his seat in the saddle due to severe wounds from a tournament earlier. {{spoiler|Then Bois-Guilbert has a stroke and falls dead despite not even being touched by Ivanhoe's lance. This is of course taken as a sign from God.}}
* In ''[[Harry Potter]] and the Half-blood Prince'', {{spoiler|Death-eaters are able to attack Hogwarts only because Dumbledore is severely weakened-- likewise he is also able to be killed by Snape for this reason}}
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* In the Star Wars novel ''Shatterpoint,'' Mace Windhu has operated with little sleep for several days, gone through at least three separate battles that day, and been stabbed in the stomach with a lightsaber, and finds himself wobbling on his feet as he faces a man twice his size and much more powerful in the Force, who already beat him senseless once. {{spoiler|it turns out the enemy's vibroblade weapons cut straight through each other, and a dead elite mook happened to leave one where Mace could force-throw it. The fight lasts maybe two seconds.}}
* In the [[Dale Brown]] novel ''Flight of the Old Dog'', the titular [[Airstrike Impossible]] ''starts'' with the titular [[Cool Plane]] already damaged from a takeoff under enemy fire, with its operators not at 100% due to needs must, and gets into steadily worse straits along the way, including damaged/malfunctioning engines, compromised fuel tanks and failing sensors.
* [[Honor Harrington (Literature)|Honor Harrington]] does this in ''Flag in Exile'' where after the best part of three days of awake activity, being shot out of the sky, having a bomb go off next to her, and being in a life-or death duel, she still has to fight her ship. Good thing she sits in her command chair.
* In the [[Dragonlance]] series, Raistlin Majere is a rare case of [[Inverted Trope|the villain]] suffering from this. Suffering from the most severe [[Incurable Cough of Death]] in all of fiction because of his Test, Raistlin is almost constantly on the verge of keeling over or being blown away by a stiff breeze. Even Crysania, when she opposed him at first, sees him as a pitiable figure. And when Caramon confronts him in the Abyss, Raistlin had been burnt, stabbed, frozen, sheared and skewered to within an inch of his life, and yet Caramon still holds back. Not only because of lingering brotherly concern, but because ''even then'' Raistlin is still dangerous. 98% of his magic had been expended, but that last 2% was still enough to be worried about, not to mention his dagger of last resort that he had no compunctions to using.
 
 
== Live Action TV ==
* When ''[[Angel]]'' loses his soul for the umpteenth time, his sidekick calls in [[The Atoner|fallen Slayer]] Faith to hunt him down. This might have been a short fight, since Angel has a long record of getting soundly beaten every time he fights a Slayer (Faith herself managed to bounce him ''off the ceiling'' while attempting [[Suicide Byby Cop]]) so before the big fight she gets beaten to a bloody pulp by [[The Juggernaut]]. Oh, and {{spoiler|gives herself a massive dose of magical opiates}}. She still nearly beats him, because Slayers are just that [[Badass]].
* On ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]],'' Buffy gets a rather cool line in the season four opener:
{{quote| '''[[Monster of the Week|Sunday]]:''' What about breaking your arm, (''grabs at Buffy's left arm'') how'd that feel.<br />
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== Video Games ==
* Link gets a moment like this near the end of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: theThe Wind Waker (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker]]''. After Link {{spoiler|meets up with Ganondorf for his last battle, the Gerudo rushes over and beats the stuffing out of Link. Thankfully, Zelda awakes, and the fight soon commences.}} Then, at the end of his {{spoiler|sword-to-swordfight with Ganondorf and some assistance from Zelda}}, Link {{spoiler|sends the Master Sword through Ganondorf's head, jumps back, and proceeds to bend over and collapse into the approaching Zelda's arms.}} But after a fight like that, who wouldn't be tired?
* ''Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare'' ends with your character taking multiple air-to-surface missiles to the face, leaving you in a half-unconscious state as the [[Big Bad]] walks over and starts gunning down your squadmates one by one. Your dying captain tosses you his sidearm, and the game's final action is a blurry slow-motion sequence where you shoot down the [[Big Bad]] and his two bodyguards before they can react and kill you.
** ''Modern Warfare 2'''s climax has you falling off a few hundred foot high waterfall after shooting down the [[Big Bad|Big Bad's]] helicopter. You recover, limping and badly injured, just in time for a hand-to-hand CQC fight with the Big Bad who is in much better condition following the crash.
* The final mission in ''Project Snowblind'' disables all the cool nanotech powers your character spent the game building up... but you're still left with standard FPS character [[Made of Iron]] durability, and there aren't many enemies in the last level anyway.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'': {{spoiler|after dealing with a bad heart/rebellious nanomachines, crawling through a hallway full of microwave radiation, and barely surviving a final assault by a bunch of mini-bots, Snake is captured by Liquid Ocelot, who challenges him to one last fight to the death. To ensure that it will be a fair match, Liquid injects Snake with some awesome drug, then, as they [[Cutscene Power to Thethe Max]], they continue to inject themselves with more and more of the drug, until despite their advanced ages, they are able to fight as if they were in their prime. This ''quickly'' devolves, however, to a [[You Can Barely Stand]] battle, as, at the end, the drug wears out, and it goes from two accomplished hand-to-hand combatants duking it out to two old men savagely slugging each other with whatever power they can muster. Note that Ocelot has a good 4 life bars, one for each game in the solid series, in different styles!}}
* Amusingly used in ''[[Disgaea (Video Game)|Disgaea]]''. A villain springs one of Larharl's weaknesses, forcing you to go into a fight with his stats halved. That weakness? {{spoiler|''Giant breasts''.}}
* Inverted in ''[[Golden Sun (Video Game)|Golden Sun]]''. 4 teenagers face the powerful villain Saturos in Mercury Lighthouse. Normally they would be no match for him, but the Mercury (Water) [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors|energy]] drastically weakens Saturos's Mars (Fire) [[Psychic Powers|Psynergy]] and gives [[The Medic|Mia]], who is a Mercury Adept, Psy Point regeneration. Still a somewhat challenging boss fight.
** Later in the game, at Venus Lighthouse, you fight Saturos and his partner Menardi to prevent them from lighting the lighthouse. Due to your massive increase in strength since the previous fight at Mercury, you defeat them with (relative) ease. After the fight, Mia actually says outright, "You can barely stand," in response to a comment from the injured Saturos. [[Fusion Dance|Cue Mia eating her words, dragon style.]] This trope, but with the roles reversed.
** The sequel ''Lost Age'' also has two incidents of this trope After the fight with replacement baddies Agatio and Karst atop the Jupiter Lighthouse. Regardless of how the fight goes, they're forced to make a hasty retreat because the fight with Felix and Co. took to much out of them, and the heroes from the last game are on their way up. Once the villains leave, Issac and co. arrive a tense standoff ensues between the two teams (long story). Ivan defuses the situation by suggesting they return to the local village to resolve things, as both teams are too tired to fight.
* By the time the last fight in video game ''[[Def Jam Series|Def Jam: Fight for New York]]'' comes around, your character has done the [[Charles Atlas Superpower]] power-ups for so long he has become a virtually [[Made of Iron]] fighting machine, so fighting the cowardly [[Manipulative Bastard]] [[Bad Boss]] who has never shown any sign of having any fighting ability seems like it should be pretty anti-climactic... except that he stabs you in the back with a cane sword before the bout begins, significantly lowering your health.
** And Crow isn't exactly a lightweight in the ring, either. (figuratively speaking; It ''is'' still Snoop Dog.)
* This happens in the fight with Incarose in ''[[Tales of Hearts (Video Game)|Tales of Hearts]]'', when other characters tell Shing to step down because of his recent state of being stabbed through the stomach. The weird thing is, you can't even put him in your party that fight. The lines are only known about because of the Sound Museum, although hacking him in does trigger the lines and even the victory animation.
 
 
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Beast Wars (Animation)|Beast Wars]]''. Specifically Dinobot's [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] where Megatron speaks these lines verbatim when Dinobot, after a long battle with several other Predacons is reduced to a large stick against an upgraded Megatron. Of course, Dinobot "improvises" and [[Took a Level In Badass|Takes A Level In Badass]].
* In the very-first episode of ''Thundercats'', the Mutants invade the Thundarian flagship, seeking to steal the Sword of Omens, and particularly the Eye Of Thundara set in its hilt. When they find it, it lies in the hands of a young Lion-O, and when he tries to threaten them, they laughingly reply that "You can barely hold that sword, much less lift it." Which is, of course, the sword's cue to [[Power Glows|start glowing]]. Moments later, Lion-O is swinging the full-sized sword around despite his young age, and the Mutants are running scared.
 
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