The Last Dance: Difference between revisions
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Of course, if you've led an exceptionally adventurous or questionable life, it may be time to throw out all the rules and go on that last run, complete that final mission, settle that one score. When you literally have nothing left to lose, that's when you can truly give everything you've got.
This trope gives a writer a lot of flexibility in writing for a character. Heroes can become villains, villains can try for redemption, utterly minor characters can [[A Death in the Limelight|step into the spotlight]], sane characters can go [[Ax Crazy]] or turn into [[The Unfettered]], [[Power Limiter]]s are removed, [[Thanatos Gambit]]s are prepared, characters are [[I Am Not Left-Handed|suddenly not left handed]], and no one is [[Holding Back the Phlebotinum]]. Dancing [[The Last Dance]] can have lasting repercussions for a show, changing the dynamic.
For the dying character, The Last Dance can blend with [[Do Not Go Gentle]] or the [[Bolivian Army Ending]], but it is more personal; the rest of the world goes on. A common twist is for the character in question to find out that [[Mistaken for Dying|they're going to live]], and have to deal with the consequences of their actions after all.
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* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', knowing full and well that he was on his final leg, {{spoiler|Wrath, aka Fuhrer King Bradley, still charges into battle with Scar. Despite being on death's door, Bradley was still on the verge of actually winning the fight, and only lost due to intervention from Ran Fan.}} Perhaps most telling about the character was his simple comment that he had never felt as alive as he did in that battle.
* ''[[The End of Evangelion]]'', with the song "Komm, Susser Tod": "So with sadness in my heart, I feel the best thing I could do, is end it all and leave forever..."
* ''[[Your Lie in April]]'': In Kaori's final words to Kousei, as delivered in a letter to him after her death, she reveals that she's been on one of these the whole time she was onscreen. After witnessing her parents cry over her condition, she decided to live in a way that she wouldn't bring any regrets to Heaven.
== Comic Books ==
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== Live Action TV ==
* After {{spoiler|George Mason inhales lethal amounts of powdered plutonium}} in the second season of ''[[24]]'', he returns to work despite the danger of a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles, and eventually {{spoiler|pilots a plane on a kamikaze course to keep the bomb from going off in populated areas}}.
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''
** In
** Also, Buffy's childhood friend Ford, who was setting up a group of vampire mystics as an all-you-can-suck buffet for Spike's gang. Turns out he had a brain tumor. Buffy was not impressed.
** Spike at the end of Season 7 has a hefty dose of this in his [[Heroic Sacrifice]].
** In Season Three, the episode "Graduation Day", Giles is upset that the Scoobies are showing [[Skewed Priorities]] by focusing so much on the prom when the Ascension is so close. Buffy points out that's the idea - should they fail to stop the Mayor's plan, this will be the last party they will ever have.
* The TV series ''[[Breaking Bad]]'' is entirely based on this trope: A struggling high school chemistry teacher with a teenage son who has cerebral palsy and a pregnant wife. When he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he breaks down and turns to a life of crime, and starts producing and selling methamphetamine.
* Slight variation in ''[[Lost]]'': Desmond's visions foretell Charlie's death. Charlie spends the latter half of season 3 trying to avoid various accidents, until a vision reveals a chance to save Claire and Aaron, at which point Charlie accepts his fate and dies a heroic death.
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== Web Original ==
* ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' features this prominently due to the nature of characters death being announced, letting the player choose exactly how they want their character's last dance to be played.
* In ''[[SCP Foundation]]'' lore, this is the case with the Pandora Force, the name chosen by the D-class employees who guard [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2439 SCP-2439], overlapping with a sharp Subversion of [[What Measure Is a Mook?]]. To anyone other than D-classes, there is no SCP-2439 (most researchers believe there is no SCP assigned to that number yet), but these lowly mooks know better. SCP-2439 is a Keter class SCP (the D-classes don’t know much about the SCP class system, but they know “Keter” means “very, ''very'' dangerous” so they gave it that designation) which is a being of living thought spawned by the [[God of Evil| Scarlet King]] itself. Anyone who gets close to SCP-2439 will be possessed by this fiend and slowly turned into a vessel for the Scarlet King. It is unavoidable, inevitable, and incurable; get too close and you ''will'' be enslaved by it, and it will try to use you as a pawn to cause [[The End of the World as We Know It]], giving all of humanity a fiery, horrid death. But the transformation takes just over a month to complete, and a D-class never lives that long, as all D-classes are executed by the Foundation (assuming they aren't killed when used as guinea pigs for research experiments or used as monster chow first) after a month of service. D-classes who have accepted this fate guard SCP-2439 diligently and make sure nobody in the Foundation of a higher rank even knows of SCP-2439’s existence, going so far as to kill ''anyone'' in the Foundation suspected of knowing about it. After all, when you’re the lowliest of the low, might as well die knowing you kept the worst of the worst locked up.
== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[Tale Spin]]'', an erroneous diagnosis tells Baloo he's going to die soon. He decides to go out with a bang by braving the Bermuda Trapezoid.
* In ''[[Gargoyles]]'', Halcyon Renard, otherwise a man who had been defined by his insistence on personal accountability, justifies questionable actions in the episode "Golem" with his failing health. [[What the Hell, Hero?|Goliath was not pleased.]]
* In an episode of ''[[The Smurfs]]'', the Smurfs overhear Papa Smurf say what they think is him mourning over Lazy's illness and doubt of him surviving. (He's actually talking about Vanity's houseplant.) When Lazy finds out that they think this, he starts to think so too, and decides to do everything he had been too lazy to do his whole life, like climb mountains and tame wild beasts. Unfortunately, all this is rather dangerous and [[Hilarity Ensues]] as the other Smurfs try to stop him from getting into more trouble.
* ''[[The Jetsons]]''; in one episode, George thinks he's dying after a doctor's erroneous diagnosis, so he eagerly accepts Mr. Spacely's offer to test a high-tech safety jacket that can protect the wearer from anything. He's put through a lot of tests with potentially deadly situations (like a room with crushing walls and a large rotary saw) and thankfully, the jacket holds. The cruelest part comes right before the final test (where he is to be propelled into the air with anti-aircraft missiles shot at him) and the doctor shows up to give him the ''right'' diagnosis. Thankfully, the jacket again holds up.
* In ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 series)|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'', Donatello invents a device that can give a medical physical in less than a minute. While he, Mikey, and Leo are shown to be in perfect health, it gives Raphael a really bad diagnosis, which is not helped when he overhears Mikey and Don lamenting about what might happen to him. (In truth, they're talking about a ruined pizza.) Raph decides to go buy a superhero costume and do very public and dangerous heroics, including recovering a defoliant that a [[Mad Scientist]] throws into a volcano in an act of eco-terrorism. Of course, Don's machine was defective, and they have to help him before he ''really'' gets killed.
== Real Life ==
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