History Main / SenselessSacrifice

* In ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanDeadMansChest'', 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.

** Historians of the late 20th/early 21st Century revisionist school have taken this movie (and many other First World War films) to task for its shallowness, unreality, and overt Brit-bashing; the makers were politically motivated Australians with an ideological axe to grind, and it shows.

* Subverted in C. S. Lewis' ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia''. In ''The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe'', Aslan [[MessianicArchetype (Who else?)]] agreed to give up his own life to Jadis in order to save Edmund. Before killing Aslan, Jadis tells him that she's still going to kill Edmund (and everyone else in the rebel camp). Later, Aslan resurrects himself (invoking a loophole in the Deep Magic) and proceeds to [[KungFuJesus kick Jadis' butt]].

* In the [[Manga/TheLegendOfZeldaAkiraHimekawa manga adaptation]] of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames'', the body-hopping Veran mocks Ralph's SuicideMission plan, pointing out that killing his ancestor, Ambi, won't actually kill her. Ralph counters that, while Ambi's death won't end Veran, it will at least put a major spanner in her plans, and that's what he's hoping for.

** This is performed by the elite guards of Arabasta who drank the ''hero water'' (a drink that makes you incredibly powerful at cost of killing you in 5 minutes) to save the princess from [[BigBad Crocodile]]. He just stood on the rooftop of the palace and waited until they died, [[KickTheDog unwilling to fight against them just because they did it]].

** This is performed by the elite guards of Arabasta who drank the ''hero water'' (a drink that makes you incredibly powerful at cost of killing you in 5 minutes) just to save the princess from [[BigBad Crocodile]]. He just stood on the rooftop of the palace and waited until they died, [[KickTheDog unwilling to fight against them just because they did it]].

** This is performed by the elite guards of Arabasta who drank the ''hero water'' (a drink that makes you incredibly powerful at cost of killing you in 5 minutes) just to save the princess from the BigBad. He just stood on the rooftop of the palace and waited until they died, [[KickTheDog unwilling to fight against them just because they did it]].

** In her titular arc, [[spoiler: Star and Stripe allows herself to be hit by All For One's (who is [[SharingABody possessing Shigaraki]] at this point) [[MakeThemRot Decay Quirk]] rather than let her teammates die, and is about to have her own Quirk, [[RealityWarper New Order]], stolen for good measure. Before she dies, S&S gives New Order one final command – rebel against ''every other Quirk'' AFO has stored in him. New Order proceeds to completely ravage AFO's body from the inside and eliminates a good chunk of his Quirks in the process.]] However, in the final arc, [[spoiler: All For One takes a sample of Eri's blood (who's Quirk can [[DevolutionDevice "rewind" things]]), undoing the damage done to him by S&S and regaining his former strength and Quirks, at the cost of [[MerlinSickness slowly de-aging until he disappears]], but he does considerable damage to the heroes long before that becomes an issue for him, and on top of that, Shigaraiki, his main vessel, is ''still'' nearly unstoppable. S&S's final actions ultimately ended up being a minor setback for AFO at best.]]

** This is performed by the elite guards of Arabasta who drank the ''hero water'' (a drink that makes you incredibly powerful at cost of killing you in 5 minutes) just to save the princess from the BigBad. He just stood on the rooftop of the palace and waited until they died, unwilling to fight against them just because they did it.

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar'':
** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'' tasks you with saving a girl named Tiem, daughter of Darum, a man who robs anybody who [[TrollBridge tries to cross the North Bridge]] to pay her ransom. When she is returned to him, she remains veiled and confronts his behavior, and he kills her in response; finally understanding what just happened, he [[DrivenToSuicide commits suicide]]. All of this pointless tragedy could have been avoided with just some dialog, something the later Platform/PlayStation2 remake doesn't change.
** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIII'' contains an example if your final character is Sean, son of Ayn and Thea. [[spoiler:Both of his parents choose to stay on Azura as it blows up, for no reason other then sentimentality, since the escape shuttle could have easily held all of the family plus Mieu and Wren, and neither Ayn nor Thea were in infirm health.]]

** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'' tasks you with saving a girl named Tiem, daughter of Darum, a man who robs anybody who [[TrollBridge tries to cross the North Bridge]] to pay her ransom. When she is returned to him, she remains veiled and confronts his behavior, and he kills her in response; finally understanding what just happened, he [[DrivenToSuicide commits suicide]]. All of this pointless tragedy could have been avoided with just some dialog, something the later UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 remake doesn't change.

*** Mako, in the finale, came this close to making one. He and Bolin were tasked with destroying Kuvira's HumongousMecha power core while Lin and Suin went after the weapon. Mako knew that the exploding core would likely kill him. And barely survived due to a lot of luck. However, by that time, Lin had already thoroughly demolished walker's WaveMotionGun, rendering it harmless.

* In the Elseworld ''ComicBook/BatmanVampire'' trilogy, the concluding novel ''Crimson Mist'' has Alfred let Batman drain him so his now-vampiric master, wounded by a crossbow bolt that grazed his heart, can be strong enough to save James Gordon from Two-Face and Killer Croc. However, Gordon winds up getting killed almost immediately after the villains have been defeated anyway, crushed by falling rubble when he triggers the explosives in the Batcave roof to stop the monster that Batman has become.
** This arguably also applies to Catwoman's sacrifice in ''Bloodstorm'', the second book in the trilogy; ''Crimson Mist'' revealed that staking on its own just immobilises the vampire unless they're decapitated, so there was no need for Selina to sacrifice herself to save Batman from the Joker's crossbow arrow, as she could have just let the bolt hit him, taken out the Joker, and then pulled the bolt out of Batman's chest.
* In ''ComicBook/ADeathInTheFamily'', Batman finds Sheila terribly injured from the bomb blast, and she tells him that her son Jason tried shielding her from the full force of the blast and ended up dying. However, his sacrifice is in vain all too soon, as she [[DiedInYourArmsTonight dies in Batman's arms]] shortly afterward.
* One issue of ''ComicBook/GIJoeARealAmericanHeroMarvel'' series had Scrap Iron fire a missile at a wrecked car with people inside, in order to get the Soft Master[[note]]Storm Shadow's uncle, who was attempting to escape the Cobra-controlled town of Springfield after having learned the truth about the murder of his brother the Hard Master years earlier[[/note]], who had stopped to attempt to save the trapped people. Having eliminated his primary target, Scrap Iron fired his second missile on the car anyway, after Firefly confirmed there should be no witnesses.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Nova}}'' volume 4, a monstrous Technarch comes to Kvch to find and kill [[ComicBook/NewMutants Warlock]]'s adopted son Tyro. Warlock, knowing that Tyro is no match for such a beast, sacrifices his own life to cure Nova of the transmode virus so that Nova can face the Technarch at full strength and buy time for Tyro to escape. But Tyro, rather than honouring his father's wishes and fleeing, comes back to fight the Technarch himself. He is quickly seized, torn apart, and devoured... and in a subversion, this allows Tyro's strain of the transmode virus to infect the Technarch and [[HijackingCthulhu overwrite its personality with his own]]. He then uses the vast powers of his new form to revive Warlock.
* In ''ComicBook/TheSecretHistory'' Aker tries to destroy William de Lecce but only succeeds in killing herself. She's the first Archon to die, so we don't know if she'll actually stay dead or not. Erlin certainly thinks she's dead.
* In ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'', Tobor, a former Guardian who was replaced by a member of the Dark Legion, finally reemerges from the zone he and former DL leader Kragog were trapped in and find Angel Island is ready to be fired on by a massive ship. Tobor decides the only way to solve things is to take Kragog and slam both of them into the cannon, destroying it. Pity he had no idea that the weapon was being used to ''restore'' other trapped Echidnas on Knuckles' orders, forcing the powered up Guardian to become a RealityWarper.
* Spider-Man Noir [[PineappleSurprise blows himself up]] in ''ComicBook/SpiderGeddon'' in an attempt at TakingYouWithMe when captured by Morlun. Morlun completely {{No Sell}}s the attack.
* Crossing over into StupidGood territory, in one ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' story, Spidey's friend (more or less) Flash Thompson was working as an emergency paramedic when the hero and the EmpoweredBadassNormal crook Tombstone were duking it out, and when the cops started to arrive, Flash stood up to the villain to try to prevent him from using the ambulance as a getaway car. That's right, Tombstone didn't care about anyone who was injured, he just wanted the ''ambulance'', and Flash tried to stop him. Flash was ''very'' lucky Tombstone was in a hurry, but even so, the poor guy wound up in the hospital in traction for several weeks, and his girlfriend Felicia (the Black Cat) almost got ''herself'' killed going after Tombstone when she heard about it.
* In ''Franchise/{{Star Wars|Expanded Universe}}'', a group of Jedi lure Darth Vader into a trap and try to kill him, and he [[CurbStompBattle effortlessly annihilates them]]. When it finally gets down to the last three Jedi, they manage to cripple him, but just as they are moving in for the kill a squad of [[EliteMooks 501st clone soldiers]] arrives and rains fire down on them, killing one. Tsui Choi, one of the Jedi masters, selflessly lunges at the clones in order to buy the other Jedi time to escape...but Vader seizes him in midair with the Force, pinning him helplessly in the sights of the clones, and both Jedi die.
* ''Franchise/XMen'':

** The Sentinels were first invented ''way'' back in 1964 in ''Uncanny X-Men #14'' by a man named Bolivar Trask, one of the first humans to believe mutants were a threat to humanity - at least, he did at first. A HeelRealization after reading Beast's mind and discovering the X-Men's heroic intentions led him to destroy the Sentinels' base, at the cost of his own life. Sadly, his death was for nothing, as his son would continue his research, and in the years that followed up to the present, the Sentinels would practically become symbolic for anti-mutant hate. Even worse, Trask was resurrected relatively recently by Bastion, who hoped to make him part of a new anti-mutant team, and learned, to his horror, that his creations had since caused the deaths of ''16 million'' mutants, a revelation that drove him to suicide.

** In her titular arc, [[spoiler: Star and Stripe allows herself to be hit by All For One’s (who is [[SharingABody possessing Shigaraki]] at this point) [[MakeThemRot Decay Quirk]] rather than let her teammates die, and is about to have her own Quirk, [[RealityWarper New Order]], stolen for good measure. Before she dies, S&S gives New Order one final command – rebel against ''every other Quirk'' AFO has stored in him. New Order proceeds to completely ravage AFO's body from the inside and eliminates a good chunk of his Quirks in the process.]] However, in the final arc, [[spoiler: All For One takes a sample of Eri’s blood (who’s Quirk can [[DevolutionDevice “rewind” things]]), undoing the damage done to him by S&S and regaining his former strength and Quirks, at the cost of [[MerlinSickness slowly de-aging until he disappears]], but he does considerable damage to the heroes long before that becomes an issue for him. S&S’s final actions ultimately ended up being a minor setback for AFO at best.]]

* ''Film/GodzillaMinusOne'' discusses this trope in the opening sequence; Kōichi Shikishima fakes engine trouble to get out of his intended kamikaze run, which the mechanics at Odo Island quickly catch onto. Nonetheless, they sympathize with his decision, with Tachibana noting that Shikishima's death would have been pointless, as Japan had no chance of winning the war by that point. Between the desertion and a subsequent attack by Godzilla that kills all of the military personnel except Tachibana and himself, Shikishima spends most of the film dealing with SurvivorGuilt over his actions (not helped by his discovery that his parents were killed in the bombing of Tokyo while he was away - it's implied that their letter imploring him to "come back alive" was the reason why he shirked his duty), and eventually comes to the conclusion that he has to sacrifice himself to take Godzilla down permanently. [[spoiler:However, the CoolPlane that he uses to take down Godzilla has an ejector seat, and Tachibana implores him to use it for the sake of his adoptive daughter Akiko. Shikishima ends up ejecting just in time, allowing him to [[EarnYourHappyEnding earn a]] SurprisinglyHappyEnding.]]

* ''VideoGame/FatalFrame1'''s canon ending gives one to Mafuyu Hinasaki, who chooses to remain at the Hell Gate with Kirie, who will spend eternity keeping said gate closed and suffering pain for it so that she at least won't suffer alone. As noble as the idea may appear, and make a wonderful TearJerker moment, the action changes nothing. It doesn't alter Kirie's fate or actions, nor does it do anyone ''any'' good. All it does is cause Miku to lose her beloved brother and spend the third game [[DeathSeeker wanting to die]] because she feels guilty for not insisting on him to leave the Himuro mansion with her.