You Shall Not Pass/Literature: Difference between revisions

** Not to forget Zhuge Liang, who single-handedly held off Sima Yi's army with an empty city and his own reputation.

* Bigwig in ''[[Watership Down]]'' has [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|one of the best Shall Not Pass moments]] in literature.

** This doubles as a [[Badass Boast]] by proxy; the attacking rabbits, accustomed to a hierarchy of physical force, conclude that Bigwig's Chief Rabbit must be even bigger and badder than he is. They are appropriately shaken, although Bigwig is quite unaware of it.

** A [[Thanatos Gambit]] as well: Bigwig figures that even after they kill him, they'll have to dig around his corpse.

* In ''[[World War Z]]'', a man relates the story of how the zombie war went down in Paris, including how his brother's unit attempted to contain the inmates of an insane asylum that had been zombified:

* In [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]'s ''[[John Carter of Mars|A Princess of Mars]]'', John Carter insists that Dejah Thoris and Sola flee while he holds off the Green Martians.

* Kurt's death in ''[[Halo|Ghosts of Onyx]]'' counts as this. He holds off Covenant forces long enough for the Slipspace portal on Onyx to close thus saving the other Spartans and Dr. Halsey. This also leads to his [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]]:

'''Kurt Ambrose:''' Die? Didn't you know? Spartans never die. ''(detonates FENRIS nuclear warhead)'' }}

* In Henry Zhou's [[Warhammer 40000]] novel ''The Emperor's Mercy'', Imperial Guardsmen are surrounded by Chaos forces and [[Last Stand|are fighting on, despite dying of hunger and disease]]. Roth tells Celemine that they had no choice but to stay with them. The commander hears and instantly wants to fight a last charge: they can get them to their ship and hold off the enemy -- and that way, they can [[Famed in Story|be remembered]]. (They are. In fact, their eighteen minutes defense of the ship is immortalized in a mural ''on Terra''.)