Friend or Idol Decisions made in Literature.
- Book 41 of Animorphs, titled The Familiar, takes place in a Bad Future and ends with Jake having to choose between saving Cassie or the world. He chooses to save "what must be valued above all else". We're not told explicitly which that is; all we're told is that a Mysterious Watcher found his decision "interesting".
- In The Big Wave, Jiya, orphaned by a tsunami, is given the choice to live in poverty with his best friend Kino's family, or to live in luxury, raised by the wealthy Old Gentleman. He chooses the former.
- In A Brother's Price, Eldest Moorland is confronted with the option to marry her brother Cullen to a woman (or rather, set of sisters) he loves, and get little in way of a "brother's price", as the family is poor, or sell him to the highest bidder, so to speak. She chooses Cullen's happiness over the money.
- The Dark Tower:
- The Gunslinger: The Man in Black forces Roland to either save Jake from certain death, and never again catch up to him, or let Jake die, and gain the information he needs to continue his quest for the Dark Tower. Roland chooses to let Jake fall, establishing his character for the rest of the series.
- The same scenario is anviliciously repeated again in the third book, this time with Jake, who has come Back from the Dead (sort of), and his pet billy-bumbler (Mix-and-Match Critters), Oy. He chooses to go back and save Oy, but this time he manages to succeed anyway.
- Discworld's Thief of Time: Lu-Tze, after injuring himself, yells at his apprentice Lobsang to choose the Idol (stopping the "perfect clock" that will cause all of time to come to a halt) over the Friend (the injured Lu-Tze). The fact he even hesitates in saving the world for Lu-Tze's sake prompts Susan Sto Helit to call him a "hero"... in a tone that implies it's synonymous with "idiot".
- An extreme example with The Faerie Queene's Malbecco. When given a choice between saving his treasures from a fire or protecting his wife from a rapist, he chooses to save his money. He suffers dearly for this.
- In the Hurog duology, Ward is presented with the opportunity to protect his castle from invaders. This, however, comes at the cost of killing a friend, who wants to make a Heroic Sacrifice. As there is more at stake than just his property, he chooses to enable his friend's Heroic Sacrifice.
- David C Poyer's "If You Can Fill The Unforgiving Minute": A teenage human is representing the Earth in a marathon race against an alien teen. When the alien is injured during the race, the human must make a choice: continue running and win the race, or help the alien and lose. He decides to help the alien and loses. Afterwards, he is told that the aliens consider honor to be more important than winning and that as far as they're concerned, he won the race.
- In Robert E. Howard's Jewels Of Gwahlur, Conan the Barbarian faces it and quite awesomely subverts it (as given the choice, the barbarian mercenary not even for a split-second considers the idol, and chooses the Girl of the Week instead):Either was within arm's length; for the fraction of a split second the chest teetered on the edge of the bridge, and Muriela clung by one arm, her face turned desperately toward Conan, her eyes dilated with the fear of death and her lips parted in a haunting cry of despair.
Conan did not hesitate, nor did he even glance toward the chest that held the wealth of an epoch. - Journey to Chaos: Ataidar's royal sentinel, Fairtheora, defies this trope. His 42nd emergency procedure involves turning control of his armor over to an AI so it can act independently; it can go after the idol while he himself goes after the friend.
- The Kane Chronicles: In The Red Pyramid, Sadie Kane's father has been magically bound to the Egyptian god Osiris and captured in a coffin by the god Set (It Makes Sense in Context). When she finally discovers the coffin, it is inside a magic pyramid created by Set. She learns that if she breaks open the coffin, she can probably save her father, but the power of Osiris will be consumed by Set, allowing him to reduce North America to a desert wasteland. On the other hand, if she uses the Scroll of Banishing Set (Egyptian magic scrolls have very descriptive names), she can banish Set and save the country, but the destruction of Set's pyramid will kill her father. Very unusually, she choses to use the scroll.
- Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid: The mermaid is depressed when the prince she loves marries the girl at the temple who met him following the mermaid rescuing him from a storm. Her sisters come to help her and she is faced with a choice: use her father's knife to stab the prince to death and return to her mermaid form, sparing her life, or spare his, but die herself once the sun comes up. She is unable to kill him because she loves him, so she chooses the latter. In some versions, she dies, in others, her honorable choice causes her to be turned into a Daughter of the Air, where she will go to Heaven after 300 years of good deeds.
- Orson Scott Card's "The Originist": Leyel Forska is given a downplayed example when Hari Seldon says that if Leyel tries to join the Foundation on Terminus, he must leave his wife on Trantor. Leyel is angry with Hari, because now he blames his wife, Deet, for making him unable to work on Hari Seldon's greatest scientific project.
- A.L. Phillips's The Quest of the Unaligned: Alaric is trapped in a cave with an extremely powerful villain, and must choose between grabbing the Prince's Crown and accepting its incalculable power, or trusting his guide and friend, Laeshana, to use it.
- During The Shadow Rising, the fourth book of The Wheel of Time, Moraine tires of competing for the position of the protagonist's political mentor, and offers Thom Merrilin a ledger containing the names of the mages who "gentled" his beloved nephew if he'll escort two of the cast members to a faraway and dangerous city. Ostensibly, so he can protect them with his expertise, but it's really to get him out of the way so she can manipulate the Dragon Reborn easier. Thom is thus faced with a choice between refusing the list to continue aiding Rand or gaining information to avenge his dead family. He chooses revenge.
- In Hunted, the second book of the Spirit Animals series, a villain offers Connor his family's freedom in exchange for the Iron Boar talisman that both sides had been chasing. As fits his spirit animal (a wolf), Connor accepts the bargain.
- Kathi Peterson's Stone Traveler: Tag is trapped in the past (34 AD Meso America, to be exact), and his only way home is to use a blessed stone which was stolen by the bad guys. When he is about to retrieve it, during a huge natural disaster explosion (storms, quakes, volcanoes, you name it) one of his friends, Rasha, falls through the ground. He only has time to save the stone or the girl (who isn't his love interest). He chooses to save her, meets Jesus, and gets a free ride home (turns out there was more than one magic stone).
- The Waterstone: Tad, the Chosen One, is in the lair of the evil queen, and needs to defeat her and take back the waterstone, or very bad things will happen. Then she reveals that she has captured his presumed dead father, Pondleweed. Tad can either save his father or take back the stone. Surprisingly for a children's book, he knows his father would not agree with his choice to save him over the world, but before he can say either way, Pondleweed Takes a Third Option and sacrifices himself. Notably, he does not get better.
