"Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart."
Heroic Sacrifices in Animated Films.
- 9:
- 9 attempts to do this in order for 7 to take the talisman from the Fabrication Machine and therefore destroy it, but 1 pushes him out of the way at the last second and is killed in his place.
- "Sometimes, 1 must be sacrificed for the good of many."
- Defied in The Bad Guys (2022). At the film's climax, the gang had reformed and stopped Marmalade's heist, but are still accused of stealing the meteorite and are about to be arrested. Diane, the Governor and secretly a Reformed Criminal, tries to stop the arrest, even if it means confessing her criminal past and admitting to conspiring with them. Realizing she's about to ruin her life for their sake, Mr. Wolf interrupts her and the gang turns themselves in.
- In Bambi II, Mena gets trapped in a hunting snare as vicious hounds close in. She begs Bambi to run and save himself, though she accidentally chooses the same words his mother gave before her death in the first film, triggering Bambi and leading him to lead the dogs away from her. Obviously, due to the Foregone Conclusion from being an Interquel, Bambi suffers only a Disney Death.
- In Barnyard, Ben protects the hens from Dag and his gang of coyotes, but said coyotes dogpile on him and maul him to death.
- Big Hero 6:
- Baymax saves Hiro and Callahan's daughter from the worm hole by propelling his rocket-powered right handed glove out of the hole's collapsing opening, but in doing so he condemns himself to remain in the worm hole until his battery runs out. Luckily however, the closed fist also contained his personality chip, allowing Hiro to restore him by building a new body.
- Happens to Tadashi in the beginning of the movie, where he attempts to save Callahan, who didn't need saving, and died in an explosion in the fire. This sets up the plot of the entire movie.
- The Book of Life:
- Carlos Sanchez sacrifices himself to buy some time so the children can run to warn General Posada that Chakal is coming for San Angel.
- After being resurrected, Manolo traps himself and Chakal under a church bell with a lit pack of dynamite to save San Angel from the subsequent explosion.
- Just before this, Joaquin secretly gives Manolo the Medal of Everlasting Life so he can survive the battle and marry Maria. Without protection, he loses an eye in the explosion. He expected to perform a real heroic sacrifice, too - he clearly didn't expect Manolo to shove him out of the danger zone.
- The Brave Little Toaster:
- In the original movie, during a thunderstorm, Lampy uses himself as a lightning rod to recharge the battery the appliances are using to keep them alive. He survives, but is left singed and with a broken bulb until Elmo St. Peters finds and repairs him.
- Near the end, Toaster jumps inside an industrial conveyor belt to save his friends and their master from being crushed. Although he gets crushed to pieces, he is repaired by the master a few minutes later.
- In The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue, Wittgenstein burns out his WFC-11-12-55 vacuum tube trying to recover the master's thesis. Radio and Ratso find a new tube, but end up breaking it after a struggle to see who should get the honor of putting it into Wittgenstein. Radio then physically removes the tube powering him to save Wittgenstein, but Chris manages to find a new tube for Radio at the end of the movie.
- In Brother Bear, Sitka dislodges a glacier to save his brothers while fighting against Koda's mother. He dies and is given a funeral pyre, but she survives, prompting Kenai to avenge Sitka by killing her, which in turn prompts his ghost by turning Kenai into a bear as punishment.
- In Coraline, Other Wybie and Other Father are created for the sole purpose of adoring Coraline. And they do, enough to defy the Other Mother. Other Wybie is killed for helping Coraline escape back to her own world the first time, and Other Father is drowned and then destroyed entirely when the mechanical giant mantis that was forcing him to fight Coraline falls through the garden bridge, but not before he succeeds in giving her something she needs to win against the Other Mother.
- In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Gromit lets go of the rope that kept him in the air while riding a plane from a dogfight ride and starts plummeting downwards. The were-rabbit (Wallace), holding on to the flagpole on top of a building, sees this and jumps down to catch him, cushioning his fall. The drop is seemingly fatal, but he gets better.
- In Frozen, Anna forgoes a kiss from Kristoff to thaw her frozen heart and allows herself to freeze to death to prevent Hans from murdering her sister Elsa. This is the "Act of True Love" that saves her, several seconds later.
- The Flight of Dragons: Smurgle, who wasn't even supposed to be a part of the quest, does battle with the Ogre of Gormley Keep when Peter makes a tactical error that nearly ends up getting him killed. While he is able to slay the Ogre, even mocking him, the effort is too much for his elderly body and he dies of heart failure soon after.
- Goat Story - Old Prague Legends: Goat dresses as Katy and allows herself to be hung in Katy's place after Katy was falsely blamed for sabotaging the clock tower and sentenced to death. She gets better, though.
- Hercules:
- After Herc gives up his superhuman strength for 24 hours to a duplicitous Hades to free Megara and he defeats a giant, a large pillar unknowingly falls into his path only for Meg to spot the danger, push him out of the way and get crushed by it herself. As the horrified hero goes to lift it off of her, his strength returns since a stipulation of the deal was to ensure she wouldn't get hurt. He ends up saving the lives of the gods being enslaved by Hades and the Titans, but Meg ultimately dies from her injuries.
- Hercules later travels to the bowels of the Underworld and demands that Hades release Meg's soul, offering his own life in exchange. Hades agrees to let Hercules try to get her out of the River Styx, confident that he will die before he can even reach her, but Herc's very willingness to selflessly throw his life away for Meg's sake undeniably proves that he is a true hero, which in turn restores his godhood and makes him immortal, and therefore immune to the River Styx, allowing him to calmly climb his way out with Meg's soul in tow while a horrified Hades can only watch. Zeus puts it best:Zeus: A true hero isn't measured by the size of his strength, but by the size of his heart.
- In Home (2015), this is attempted by Oh, to save the Gorg pod when he was about to be crushed by the mothership. He throws the pod to Tip since he wouldn't be able to escape it.
- In How to Train Your Dragon Stoick and Gobber plan to distract the Red Death to give the rest of the Vikings time to get away. They're only saved by Hiccup and Toothless taking over the fight for them, leading to Hiccup himself making the sacrifice as he loses his lower left leg (and very nearly his life) to win the battle.
- How to Train Your Dragon 2, Drago uses the Alpha to mind-control Toothless into killing Hiccup by blasting him with one of his fireballs. Stoick sees this and pushes Hiccup out of the way to take the blow.
- Averted at the last moment in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which has Hiccup throwing himself and Grimmel off the Light Fury to give her time to save Toothless, who has been poisoned and is plummeting out of the sky. Once Toothless is safe, she goes back to save Hiccup. Grimmel, not so much.
- Inside Out: Joy & Bing Bong wind up getting trapped inside the memory dump, the part of Riley's mind that forgets and erases old memories. They try using Bing Bong's rocket to escape, but there just isn't enough power to get the two of them out. Bing Bong bails during the last attempt and lightens the load enough for Joy to escape. Bing Bong is erased because of this and is ultimately forgotten by Riley.
- The Iron Giant: When the military accidentally fire an atomic bomb at a populated village, the titular character flies off into space to intercept the bomb. He gets better, though.
- In The Jungle Book (1967), Baloo ends up facing the wrath of Shere Khan by grabbing his tail, to protect Mowgli and give him time to get away. Shere Khan mauls him, and after the tiger is defeated, it looks like that Baloo had been killed during the scuffle. Bagheera even gives a eulogy about the courage Baloo had shown...and it turns out that Baloo is alive and relishing the eulogy.
- In Kung Fu Panda 2, a large part of the plot is about Po trying to find out what happened to his real parents. Near the end, he finally remembers that his mother hid him in a basket of radishes, then sacrificed herself to draw away the wolves that had destroyed their village.
- In Kung Fu Panda 3, Po tries to send Kai back to the Spirit Realm by doing the Wuxi finger hold on him, but it doesn't work because it only works on mortals. What does he do? He holds onto Kai and does the hold on himself so that they'll both be sent to the realm.
- Near the end of Lady and the Tramp, Aunt Sarah sends Tramp to the dog pound to have him executed for trying to attack Jim Dear and Darling's infant son (he was really attacking a rat that had snuck into the baby's bedroom). When Aunt Sarah finds out the truth, Jock and Trusty track down the dogcatcher's wagon to stop it and save Tramp. When they frighten the wagon's horses by barking at it, the wagon tips over and falls on Trusty. Jock is seen howling mournfully, but in the next scene, it is revealed that Trusty survived and the only injury he received from the accident was a broken leg.note
- The Last Unicorn with Lir.
- Used twice in Leafie, a Hen into the Wild:
- The first happens when Wanderer dies protecting his unhatched son from the one-eyed weasel.
- The second happens at the end when Leafie allows herself to be eaten by the one-eyed weasel so she can produce enough milk to feed her kits.
- In The LEGO Movie, Emmet, realizing that he is attached to the Think Tank's Self-Destruct Mechanism's power source, hurls himself into the Infinite Abyss of Nothingness to save Wyldstyle and the Master Builders. After a brief voyage into the Real World, he comes back swinging.
- In the 2004 film Mulan II, Shang does this. The princesses can also be seen as performing this, as they risk their happiness for political alliance.
- In My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), Derpy Hooves sees Tempest Shadow about to petrify Twilight and she tries to rescue the Princess even as Rainbow Dash does. Derpy ends up Taken for Granite and the resulting distraction gives the Mane Six their chance to escape. She gets better, natch.
- Pinocchio gave up his life to save Geppetto from Monstro when he began to sink into the sea despite Geppetto's plea to swim to shore and save himself. It was this act of bravery and unselfishness that allowed Pinocchio to become a real boy.
- The finale of The Plague Dogs has Rowf and Snitter on the run from the troops, who believe that the two dogs were carrying bubonic plague. That's when the Tod comes back to warn them and even leads the enemy dogs away from them as best as he can, ultimately leading to the troops and their dogs killing him.
- At the end of Planetata na Sakrovishtata, thanks to the final actions of Supersilver, who kills nearly everyone and sets the ship on fire, Philip is forced to choose between using the only escape pod to either save himself or send the treasure, which is a device that contains the last remnants of Earth's natural life, back to Earth. Philip chooses to stay, forced to remain in a black hole for eternity, so that the treasure can replenish the planet that had been rendered barren.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Super Adventure has Weslie saving Wilie while inside a Collapsing Lair, and seemingly letting himself be trapped inside the bacteria cave of Mr. Slowy's snail forever. Thankfully, he turns out fine after everyone else is out of the snail.
- Ratatouille: A non-fatal version. Ego's glowing review of Gusteau's at the climax is also his last - Ego's reputation and credibility as a critic are destroyed the instant Skinner and the health inspector reveal the "rat infestation". He's able to bounce back by becoming a small-business investor, fortunately enough.
- This forms part of Jack's backstory in Rise of the Guardians. Back when Jack was human, he and his little sister were out on a frozen lake when the ice began to crack beneath her feet. Jack then used his staff to swap their positions, getting his sister out of danger, and falling through the ice himself. The selfless act was witnessed by the Moon King who resurrected Jack as a Guardian Spirit with ice powers.
- Ron's Gone Wrong concludes with the titular Ron basically performing one. Barney, Ron's owner, and Mike, the CEO of the company that created Ron, have realised that Ron's glitches and the personality he developed with Barney have allowed him to form a new 'algorithm' for friendship that would transform all other bots like Ron to give them actual personalities able to truly interact with their owners, where they are presently just copying their registered owner's interests. However, Ron's personal glitches mean that he is unable to simply copy his code for upload and has to essentially download himself into all other bots, essentially sacrificing his own personality so that he can be copied onto the network and let his fellow bots achieve a similar level of sentience.
- Near the end of The Rugrats Movie, Spike charges in and fights a wolf three times his size to protect the babies. Once the wolf is distracted by Angelica blowing a raspberry at it, Spike grabs the wolf's tail, hurling himself and the wolf off the bridge. The babies are distraught at first, but it is soon revealed that while the wolf plunged into the river, Spike survived by landing at the bottom of the bridge.
- Towards the end of Shrek 2, Harold, who has by the majority of the movie shunned Shrek, jumps in front of him just as the Fairy Godmother tries to blast him with her wand. He doesn't end up dying, but the magic from her wand broke the spell that made him human, turning him back into a toad. However, in a novel of Shrek the Third, it is mentioned that turning him back into a frog messed with his lifespan, causing him to die in the next film.
- During the final assault on Ecoban at the climax of Sky Blue, Goliath jams a bomb onto Locke's tank and detonates it, destroying the tank and killing himself in the process. Unfortunately, Locke survives.
- The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water:
- SpongeBob offers himself for sacrifice to the Sandwich Gods.
- Karen uses up all her processing power to help Spongebob and Plankton go back in time to set things right.
- Strange Magic: The Bog King sacrifices himself by holding up a falling building long enough for everyone else to get away. He survives.
- In Tangled, Flynn is mortally wounded by Mother Gothel. Rapunzel offers a heroic sacrifice (of the non-fatal variety) by promising to stay with Mother Gothel forever if Gothel will only let Rapunzel heal Flynn with her magic hair. Unwilling to allow Rapunzel to be imprisoned forever because of him (since he knows that she will never break her word), and because telling her not to doesn't work, Flynn performs a heroic sacrifice of his own by cutting Rapunzel's hair with a shard of glass before the healing incantation can be sung. Yes, he got better, but he didn't know that he would at the time.
- In Tarzan, Kerchak rushes to Tarzan to protect him from Clayton after he shoots Tarzan in the arm.
- The Tigger Movie: Tigger gets caught in the avalanche after making sure every last one of his friends was safe up on his family tree. He gets better.
- In Turning Red this is Downplayed. Abby, Miriam, and Priya decide that if Mei can't see 4*Town, then they won't go to the concert either, as their friendship with Mei is more important.
- In Wreck-It Ralph, Ralph pulls this off to set off a volcano of Mentos and Diet Cola to act as a beacon to lure away the Cy-Bugs invading the Sugar Rush game, also taking out King Candy/Turbo in the process. Of course, he didn't expect Vanellope to quickly master her glitching to use it as a Teleport Spam to rescue the big guy in the end.
