Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help

Now helping someone out is better than winning!

J. Jonah Jameson: Parker! Where were you fifteen minutes ago? There's a Latverian diplomat landing in the city by helicopter, and I need a photo! Now get over there like your job depended on it!
Peter Parker: Got it, Mr. Jameson.
Bystander: Help! Martians are robbing the Speedee Mart!
Spider-Man: Alien invaders holding up a convenience store... This I have to see.

— Spider-Man 2

A character is on the run. Very likely, he's been part of a Stern Chase from the word go. The logical course of action would be to do whatever he has to do while drawing the least amount of attention to himself he possibly can.

He won't consider it for a moment. That random stranger over there needs help, and he won't stand idly by for the sake of anonymity.

Often leads to detection by the people he's been evading all this time, but not as often as you'd think. This trope is why a Good Aligned character will always blow his cover when infiltrating a Wretched Hive. Depending on what the outcome is, it may result in a Big Damn Heroes moment. If done during a race, then he will usually end up in Last Place as a result. A villain might take advantage of the hero having this trait and try force them into a Sadistic Choice.

Named after Dudley Do-Right, of course. Helping Granny Cross the Street is the definitive, cliché example of this trope.

Closely related to Honor Before Reason and Good Samaritan. See also Samaritan Syndrome and Reed Richards Is Useless. A subtrope of The Drifter and Chronic Hero Syndrome, and supertrope of Inconvenient Hippocratic Oath. When done wrong, can be a form of Hero Ball or Stupid Good. Compare Knight Errant and We Help the Helpless. Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat is the villainous version.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• A recurring theme in Black★★Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall is Empress' desire to save everyone, no matter the cost. Even though she's on a race against time to destroy Artemis' Orbital Elevator before its completion, she constantly stops to assist others in need; on multiple occasions this leads to herself or Black Trike getting damaged, which results in further detours while they track down the materials needed for repairs. As a result, they fail to reach the Orbital Elevator in time and Lunatic is able to begin an Orbital Bombardment that kills many of the people she spent all that time saving in the first place.
• In the second episode of Code Geass, Suzaku abandons his pursuit of the terrorist commander (which, unbeknownst to him, is Lelouch) in order to save a mother and child that had fallen out of a damaged building. This allows Lelouch to proceed to Clovis' apartment, Geass him into stopping the conflict, and then kill him.
• Fate/stay night: Good god, Shirou. Helping people is one thing. Helping little girls out is even better. Helping little girls who were just stabbed in the chest by what is damn near a physical god, at least compared to YOU, is not an advisable course of action. But you HAVE to do it or you get a bad end.
• Kagurabachi: Even though Chihiro's sole goal is to hunt down those who murdered his father and reclaim said father's swords. He puts that quest aside in order to protect Char. A little girl who is a target of criminal organizations due to her healing factor.
• In Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Iino runs against Shirogane during the latter's campaign for re-election as Student Council President. In the debate with Iino, Shirogane is already at a massive advantage, and when Iino's turn to give a speech comes, she's frozen with stage fright due to the hostile crowd. This would have been the final nail in her coffin, but Shirogane gets on stage and insults her policies. Iino snaps out of her Heroic BSoD and debates with Shirogane, doing well enough that she almost wins the election. The more pragmatic Kaguya is rather annoyed with Shirogane, having hoped that Iino would have "self-destructed" without his intervention. However, she also loves that part of him as evidenced by the hearts in her eyes.
• Kenzo Tenma from Monster will never let an injury go ignored. Ever. At one point, an unscrupulous character wanted to recruit him as an underground physician, but really, that's a good part of what he was doing already. It actually turned out very poorly... because he convinced the patient to turn himself in and didn't even charge him.
• In Muhyo and Roji, Roji fails a test that would allow him to officially advance to First Clerk and stay as Muhyo's assistant, when he takes too long to help carry out an injured fellow student.

Comic Books

• Iron Fist (1975): Danny and Misty begin the series proper (following on from Marvel Premiere) going to rescue a kidnapped Colleen Wing. Danny gets a little distracted by fighting the supervillain Radion, and then saving another man from the I.R.A., which gives Colleen's abductors juuuust enough time to successfully brainwash her into a killing frenzy. Whoops.
• The Powerpuff Girls: In "The Trouble With Bubbles" (DC issue #18), Bubbles misses her role with her sisters in a routine during a battle with a monster lucha libre caterpillar. Why? She was protecting a butterfly from getting its wings wet from the water of a busted fire hydrant. Bubbles is dressed down for it which hurts her feelings so much that she runs away from home.
• Sin City:
  • Dwight does a lot of good for the girls of Old Town despite being wanted for murder.
  • Another example would be Marv protecting people while on parole. This often means lots and lots of violent things happening.
• In the Star Wars Expanded Universe comic Nomad, ex-mercenary Darca Nyl's son was killed by a Dark Jedi, and a dying Jedi handed over his lightsaber and told Darca to kill Lycan. Darca went in pursuit but found that almost everywhere he went, there were people who saw that lightsaber, thought he was a Jedi, and needed his help. And he gave it. Even at the cost of pursuit time, he gave himself. And it was the first good thing he'd felt in a long time. Eventually he did catch up to Lycan and was able to kill him. Lycan told him that men were not driven by altruism. Darca swore to prove him wrong... though a later-written comic shows us that Darca failed, bottled himself up in a hut, and became a hermit who obsessively carved statues of his dead wife and son.
• Jubilee of the X-Men broke off her escape from "Operation: Zero Tolerance" to give first aid to a villain she had accidentally injured. This lead directly to her being recaptured for another round of torture.
• As the text at the head of the trope page shows, this is a near-constant issue for Spider-Man, and (of course) causes him no end of both professional and personal problems. Entirely justified, as the reason Spider-Man is in the superhero business in the first place is because of the time he didn't stop to help; the outcome of that choice haunts him to this day, leaving him incapable of not trying to help when he can.

Fan Works

• Chaotic Harmony: Despite being pursued by pretty much everypony who's seen him, Sonic still helps Rarity out with her latest design.
• In Dragon Age: The Crown of Thorns, it is played perfectly straight by the dwarven noble protagonist, of all people. You'd think that a politician that spawns one plan after another and who has the whole world on his shoulders would be a bit less eager to go into potentially deadly situations with just his dog as help. Turns out that he doesn't think too hard on whether or not to totally go out of his way in the opposite direction (about a day's journey too) and check on Honnleath and if anyone was still alive there, even though [[spoiler:he'd finally seen the first human after roaming the Korcari Wilds for weeks, during which time he almost got killed several times, nearly dyed of starvation and refused a deal with Flemeth that she would not outline until agreed upon. And his armor was so rusted and worn that it didn't even survive the trip to the golem village, although, true enough, the demon shattered most of it. Raonar does reason that it's important to assess whether the horde really reached so far west in such a short time or if it's just a group of stragglers. One would think this is just him looking for justification, but that wouldn't fit with his Brutal Honesty policy that he uses on everyone, including himself, meaning that he manages to play this trope AND avert Honor Before Reason altogether (after all, he had gained some nifty magical abilities to tip the scales).
• Life on Thedas: Outside Lothering, the narrator sees Bodhan Feddic and his son being attacked by darkspawn and intervenes. Thankfully, the party catches up and saves them before he's overwhelmed.
• The Many Dates of Danny Fenton: One of the snippets based on alternate endings shows Violet Parr stopping to help people while on her way to a date with Danny.
• At the beginning of Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Makoto finds Aika Kiryuu critically injured in a forest and heals her, which ends up revealing his secret identity as an angel to the fallen angels who attacked her, which he himself does not even know. He is, shortly after, saved by Rias Gremory and, after he figures out his true identity, defeats and kills Kalawarner; one of the attacking fallen angels. Because of this, Raynare is then sent to hunt him down and assassinate him and she and the rest of the remaining fallen angels attempt to take over Kuoh Town.
• This trope is the catalyst for the entire Peter Parker Needs A Hug series. Peter, immediately after No Way Home, was wandering New York when he saw a random portal and heard someone calling for help on the other side. He goes through and ends up in Gotham, where he sees an old man being beaten by a thug. Peter gets between the two and keeps the thug at bay until Red Hood arrives, saving the man's life and earning the vigilante's respect.
• Near the end of Professor Arc, Jaune knows that he should heed Neo's warning to run, but still stops to comfort one of his distressed students. As a result, Ironwood and Winter catch up and arrest him.

Films — Animated

• Cars: In the final tiebreaker race, Lightning McQueen gives up winning in order to help Strip Weathers, who had just suffered a serious crash. Lightning comes in last place but scores the sponsorship he wanted, while Chick Hicks, the racecar that caused the crash wins but gets booed and is known as a cheater.
• The Incredibles: The entire first act is one long string of Mr Incredible, who is on a schedule, stopping to perform heroics: first he takes a detour to intercept a police chase while also getting a cat from a tree; then he goes on to apprehend a purse snatcher, save a man jumping off a building, interrupt a supervillain robbing a bank, saving a kid from a bomb attached to his clothing, and stop a train from crashing. He constantly checks his watch proclaiming "I got time" until he runs out of time and it is revealed that he is now late for his own wedding.
• Planes: In the second leg of the race, Dusty saves Bulldog (while blinded) from a fatal crash by guiding him to the end of the leg, ending up in last place again.
• In Turning Red, Mei slows down in her run to get home despite being late in order to pick up a pear off the ground that a store worker had accidentally dropped and throw it back to him which he thanks her for.

Films — Live-Action

• Lampooned at the end of Cannonball Run, as Captain Chaos turns aside and forfeits his team's victory when a woman screams that her baby is drowning. Said "baby" turns out to be a dog, but his teammate still forgives him for losing the race.
• Subverted in Captain America: The First Avenger - during a chase with a HYDRA agent who assassinates Dr. Erskine and then runs away, Steve Rogers (after receiving the Super Soldier Serum) chases down the agent. The agent tries to distract him by throwing a child into the river, but the child, as it turns out, can swim, and tells Steve to continue going after the agent whilst the child saves himself.
• In The Fugitive, the hero is on the run but stops by hospitals several times in pursuit of Clearing His Name, and on each occasion he feels compelled to help someone, even saving a child's life at one point.
• In The Gumball Rally, the car disguised as a police cruiser (driven by a pair of L.A. policemen) loses the race when it stops to help a pregnant lady giving birth while stuck on an L.A. freeway.
  Kandinsky: Oh, no. Avila, no way. I don't wanna hear it, Avila.
  Avila: "To serve and to protect", huh?
• Man of Steel:
  • Essentially how we're introduced to Clark. He's forced to Walk the Earth because he's afraid of what people will do when they discover his abilities, but he can't blend in for long because of his Samaritan Syndrome. Lois flat-out tells him that the only way he'll stay completely hidden is to stop saving people.
  • He's hampered in his fight against the Kryptonians by the fact that he's trying to protect human bystanders at the same time.
• In Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Pee-wee is on the run after stealing his bicycle back from Warner Brothers Studio. He makes a grand escape, lands a big jump, and is in the clear. Until he sees a fire in a pet store. He even saves a handful of snakes before collapsing outside and being picked up by the police.
• In RoboCop 3, Robo veers off pursuing some insurgents to come to the aid of a squad of cops locked in a firefight with a gang of thugs.
• When the crew of the Enterprise has to go to a hospital to rescue Chekov in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, McCoy is horrified by what he sees the 20th-century doctors doing ("The Spanish Inquisition of medicine") and stops to help patients. Admittedly, the "stop to help" part doesn't take much time (he deals with a woman's kidney failure by giving her a couple of pills) but it still (a) potentially draws attention to what's supposed to be a covert mission and (b) has the possibility of changing history.
  • Later, when Kirk, McCoy, and Chekhov are trying the escape the hospital (with the SFPD in hot pursuit), Kirk runs into a patient on crutches, McCoy can be briefly seen in the background abandoning the chase to make sure the guy's okay.
• Attempted by Jack and Rose in Titanic as they hide in the lower decks from Cal and Lovejoy. With the water closing in, they try bringing a child to safety only to be stopped by his immigrant father. Jack and Rose are forced to abandon the rescue when the child and his father get swept away.
• At the climax of Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Orville was winning in the final stretch when he veered off to rescue the Italian in 3rd place, who was about to crash. This gave the race to Richard, who decides to split the prize money with his rival because he knew exactly why Orville did it.
• In Tumbleweed, Jim could have got away free and clear when Sheriff Murchoree collapses from thirst at Coyote Springs. Instead, he returns to save the sheriff's life, which ultimately results in him being captured again.

Literature

• Discworld examples:
  • In Thief of Time, Lobsang Ludd and Lu Tze are trying to outrun a lightning bolt, knowing that if they fail, the entire world and all of history will be destroyed. Lu Tze falters. Lobsang turns back to help!. As a result, the entire world gets frozen in time. Susan sto Helit lampshades this hard when she finds out.
  • Subverted in Lords and Ladies. While competing in a Staring Contest for recognition as a true witch, Granny Weatherwax stops to help a little boy who hurt himself on the protection wards. However, despite technically losing, the audience declares her a winner because only a true witch would sacrifice her pride to help an injured child.
• Harry Potter, Harry James Potter, the boy with the "saving people thing", is of course prone to this.
  • In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the second task of the Triwizard Tournament is rescuing a hostage from some mermaids. Harry gets there first but ends up coming up last because he waits to make sure all the hostages are saved. It's then pointed out to him that it was all part of the contest and nobody was actually in danger, but he gets extra points from the judges for heroism.
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the Trio enacted an impromptu mass breakout of Muggle-borns in the middle of an undercover mission to pick up a MacGuffin from one of the densest centers of Death Eater activity.
  • His need to save people is exploited by Voldemort not once, but twice:
    • In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort uses the connection between him and Harry to make Harry believe that Sirius is in danger. Harry storming the Ministry of Magic to save him is what gets Sirius killed in the end.
    • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort lays siege to Hogwarts and threatens to kill everyone unless Harry gives himself up willingly. Harry does so, destroying the Horcrux within him and protecting the people in Hogwarts the same way his mother's death protected him—in other words, Harry did exactly what Voldemort expected, but for completely different reasons than Voldemort had expected.
• In the Honor Harrington novel Honor Among Enemies, the Havenite light cruiser Vaubon is in the Silesian Confederacy to raid Manticoran shipping when they stumble on the aftermath of a vicious pirate attack on a Manticoran vessel. Although the pirates are in effect assisting them in their mission, they are so repulsed and outraged by the barbarity they find that they launch a hunt for them, ultimately stumbling across another Manticoran freighter that's under attack, and coming in to the rescue even while being outnumbered by the raiders and breaking their orders by assisting an enemy vessel. They drive the raiders off but then discover they are facing Harrington herself in a Q-ship that massively outguns them and are forced to surrender. After they still assist her in tracking down the pirates, Harrington arranges for their release back to Haven. As repayment for their honorable behavior, she fakes a report that the Q-Ship was pretending to be a ship from a different star-nation (that the Vaubon would have been free to assist) so the Vaubon's crew can claim they weren't knowingly coming to the aid of a Manticoran ship.
• Jean Valjean from Les Misérables. More often than not, his Moments involved throwing himself directly in Inspector Javert's path, rather than merely risking the same.
• The O. Henry story, "A Retrieved Reformation", is all about this trope; a safecracker escapes from jail, adopts an alias, heads west, and gets a job as a shoe salesman, and gets engaged to a bank manager's daughter. Just as a police detective shows up in town looking for someone like him, a young child gets locked in the safe. He quickly starts work cracking the safe open, knowing it'll give him away to the cops. At the end of the stories, the detective knows damn well that he's the safecracker he's looking for, but pretends to not recognize him because he's obviously reformed.

Live-Action TV

• Alias Smith and Jones: As outlaws trying to earn a "secret amnesty", it's often Dudley Do-Right Stops To Help: The Series.
• The A-Team: The team is always on the run from the military, but never seems to find a reason to flee the country. Instead they travel the country helping people everywhere, sometimes escaping in the nick of time. (This was actually explained in The Pilot. They stay in the U.S. because they are Americans and it's their country.)
  • One particular example is in "Black Day at Bad Rock." The team has successfully gotten B.A. treated and locked the sheriff and his deputy in their own jail, ensuring they will not be able to catch them. They are heading out of town to avoid Lynch when Hannibal realizes that an outlaw motorcycle gang, the Barbarians, will be coming against the town to get their leader back. They turn the van around.
• In the '60s Batman, it's parodied and Lampshaded where Batman and Robin are pursuing King Tut and find a woman tied by the villain in a way that will suffocate her. Batman proceeds to lecture Robin on why the hero must always stop to save the innocent while the woman is still suffering.
• Burn Notice: This is a key element of Michael Weston's personality. No matter how much trouble he is in personally he will still take the time to help someone who needs his brand of help. His friends and family frequently lampshade this but at the same time, they are the ones usually bringing these cases to him. At one point Michael has just survived a bomb going off right in front of him and he is still in shock but he realizes that a man is about to step in front of a bus so he saves him. He then finds out that the man is trying to kill himself because some conmen stole the money he needed for his son's medical treatment. Despite the fact that a Mad Bomber is after him Michael does not hesitate to help the man get his money back.
• Due South: Creates what may be the ultimate example of this in which a uniformed mountie running through Chicago to rescue a character trapped in a safe filling with water (don't ask!) stops many times on the way to perform minor acts of politeness.
• Farscape: While the team does try to lay low most (well, some) of the time, they do have a tendency to take detours whenever a distress beacon is sent out or they see someone being mistreated. More often than not, said interference tends to bite them in the ass...hard.
• Firefly: Simon Tam, while breaking into an Alliance hospital to steal medicine, stopped to save a man's life from his doctor's incompetence.
• First Wave: The protagonist Cade Foster is on the run from aliens that will one day destroy the world. It doesn't stop him from helping every person with problems that crosses his path.
• Frontier Circus: In "The Race", Ben stops to help an injured rider, slowing himself down, much to Tony's disgust. Later Ben stages a fall, forcing Tony to choose between winning the race or helping his friend. The Power of Friendship wins out.
• The Fugitive: Happened semi-regularly to Dr Richard Kimble. Despite being on the run for murder, he would go to the aid of anyone in medical need. (Of course, The Fugitive was inspired by Les Misérables.)
• Game of Thrones: Sam's reason for wanting to help Gilly at Craster's Keep is that he sees it as an injustice that needs to be righted.
• The Incredible Hulk (1977): Happened from time to time in this TV show (which was loosely based on The Fugitive which was in turn based partially on Les Miserables).
• LazyTown: Had a similar story where Robbie Rotten disguised himself as Sportacus and the two of them entered a race to show who's the real one. Sportacus was the fastest of the two but stopped to save someone, allowing Robbie to win. Stephanie called Robbie out for not doing the rescuing.
• Merlin: Merlin lives in a world where magic is a crime punishable by death, but he is continually using it to save Arthur's life in pretty much episode, as well as save Camelot almost single-handedly more than once. By some miracle, he's managed to keep it hidden thus far.
• Pointedly averted in Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Inquisitors explain that it's so easy to hunt Jedi because Jedi can't help getting involved and helping people. This leads to stories, which leads the Inquisitors to them. The oft repeated phrase for this is "Jedi hunt themselves". Kenobi manages to live longer than most because even though it pains him, he avoids stepping in when he sees injustice.
• Revolution: Most episodes focus on helping the Victim of the Week rather than the overall goal of rescuing Danny. That changed due to Danny being rescued in episode 10 and then Danny getting killed off at the end of "The Stand".
• Who Wants to Be a Superhero?: Stan Lee acknowledged this trope and punished people who didn't in a Secret Test of Character. In a test to change into your superhero outfit and race to the finish line the fastest, there was a little girl crying for her mother mere yards from the goal line. Anybody who stopped to track down the girl's mother or take the girl to the nearby park station automatically got a pass, but anybody who ignored her was a front-runner for the chopping block.
• Yellowjackets: While running from the other Yellowjackets who intend to kill her, Natalie is accompanied by Javi, who falls through the ice into the water below. Natalie stops to try to rescue Javi even though this allows the others to catch up to her.

Myth and Legend

• In Arthurian Legend, Bohort is faced with the Sadistic Choice of rescuing his brother Lionel from torture or a maiden from rape. He goes for the maiden praying for his brother's safety and rescues her. Lionel manages to escape on his own but thinks he was betrayed by Bohort and sets out for revenge. A fellow knight and a hermit are killed by Lionel before God himself has to send down a pillar of fire to get Lionel to hear his brother out (who'd made no effort to defend himself).
• In an Irish fairy tale, a girl finds a stolen bag of gold that rightfully belongs to her family and runs off with it, and the witch who stole it naturally gives chase. The girl stops to help several animals and a mill, and they in turn gratefully slow down the witch for her.
• The story of the Chinese Zodiac involves the 12 animals racing for the positions on the calendar. In many versions of the story, the dragon stops to provide assistance to various people and animals in need, thus coming in fifth place when he could have easily made first.
• In "The Just Assassins", Camus recounts a legend of Saint George, who on his way to meet God, sees a peasant with a broken cart in a ditch. Ultimately Saint George decides to help the humble peasant and in doing so misses his appointment with God.

Tabletop Games

• Savage Worlds: PCs can take the Heroic hindrance during character creation, which rewards players with Bennies when they go out of their way to help people.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: This trope was mentioned in a Gagaga Academia Tospedia issue. Over the course of his journey, "Bujin - Yamato" witnessed people on the surface suffering from the tyranny of the gods and acted on it, strengthening the suspicions of the Kami dwelling in Takama-ga-hara, including the Supreme Kami.

Video Games

• The main character of DmC: Devil May Cry, while undercover, knocks a can of evil soda of doom out of a little girl's hands, leading to his detection. Of course, to those unaware of the soda being evil this is a vile thing to do, and her parents would just buy her another can leading to twice the profits for the demons...
• Stopping to help is a full-time job for a heroic Grey Warden in Dragon Age: Origins. Just remember that before you agree to help out that village girl find her missing brother that Morrigan disapproves.
• Fahrenheit: Protagonist Lucas Kane is on the run from the police due to a murder he committed while being possessed by a thousand-year-old Mayan Voodoo priest. While meeting his brother in a park in the middle of winter, a child playing on the frozen lake nearby suddenly breaks through the ice and falls into the freezing water. Yet, at the same time, a pair of beat cops are patrolling the park, and one cop happens to be the same man who witnessed Lucas commit the murder from before. Lucas feels compelled to rescue the child, but can't let the cop see him! Dilemma! There are two valid choices here: You can choose to walk away at the cost of a big chunk of Sanity Meter, or pull the kid out of the water and resuscitate him. Anything else results in the cop arresting Lucas and causing a game over. If you save the kid, this is referenced later when the cop admits to Carla that he could have made an arrest, but couldn't bring himself to do it right after witnessing such a selfless act. Carla says she probably would have felt the same way in the other cop's shoes.
• In Mass Effect: A full Paragon Shepard, oh so much. No one is forcing you to pick every paragon option, whether it's played straight or averted depends on the player. But, then again... One of your squadmates in the second game, Samara, went through a situation like this when chasing down Nihlus, a Spectre you worked with in the previous game. As he killed a civilian, Samara was dedicated to killing him, due to her Justicar Code. Nihlus escaped by offering the choice of killing him, while an innocent dies, or saving the innocent and letting Nihlus escape. The Justicar Code explicitly states that the protection of the innocent outweighs all else, so she saved the individual while letting Nihlus evade her. She considered Nihlus a Worthy Opponent for thinking that up.
• In Quest for Glory III, your character (if you're a Fighter or The Paladin) has to become a member of the local tribe in order to advance the plot. However, your friend Yesufu is also participating in the Initiation Ceremony, and there's only room for one. At a pre-scripted point in the race, Yesufu is hurt and the proper response is to help him up. As it's later revealed that the entire point of the ceremony is to teach a lesson about supporting your friends and tribe, not stopping to help just gets you chewed out and a Non-Standard Game Over.
• The hero of Stella Glow is like this. His adoptive sister says that his tendency to fall into this is what she both likes and hates most about him.
• Defied in Tales of Berseria. Velvet has one goal - kill the Big Bad - and anything else is wasted time. She will consider doing jobs for tangible progress towards this goal, but since she's the main character, these become main quest objectives. Sidequests? The rest of the party has to drag her into them kicking and screaming. It's not until right before the final dungeon that the right combination of Character Development and lack of time pressure coincide to persuade Velvet to take the blinkers off and let her companions resolve some of their personal quests.
• As a result of her upbringing as a Summoner, this is an explicit character trait of Yuna in Final Fantasty X-2. Freed from her obligations at the end of the first game, she cannot help herself to offer help to literally everyone she meets, to the point her companions frequently point out her doormat tendencies when she's within 30 feet of a sob story.

Web Animation

• Mashed: Betty from "Betty Help?" is a robot built to help others. While on a journey to find water for a dehydrating human, she finds many others in need of help and brings it upon herself to help them all, stopping in the middle of her journey to do so. By the time she has finally gotten water to the human, they have already died. Betty chooses to stay by their remains until her own battery dies.

Western Animation

• Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: In "The Big Wave", Ickis and Krumm compete against each other in the annual riding of the Great Wave. Near the end of the episode, Krumm falls off his board and is in danger of drowning. Ickis wastes no time in rescuing Krumm, finding their friendship to be more valuable than winning a trophy. Vloreena ends up winning the race, but Ickis is praised as a hero for saving Krumm.
• Arthur:
  • In the episode "You Are Arthur," Arthur tries his hardest to outrun Brain but falls behind after he stops to help Muffy after she trips and hits the roadblocks. He doesn't win but does get featured in the newspaper, which he considers a better reward thus.
  • In "D.W. Swims with the Fishes," D.W. goes back to help James during a swim race when his fin gets stuck on a lane marker. This costs her the win to Emily, but she apparently considered helping James to be its own reward.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, despite being on a Race Against the Clock to take advantage of the eclipse over the Fire Nation, Katara holds up the gang to help a fishing town brought into desolation thanks to water pollution.
• Batman: The Animated Series: In one episode, Batman's on his way to Crime Alley to meet Leslie Thompkins for the annual meet-up over the site where the Waynes were killed. As he's driving, a tram suffering brake problems passes by, and naturally Batman has to stop that, much to his irritation.
• Ben 10
  • Ben Tennyson
    • Ben 10: Vilgax exploits this trope and Ben's Chronic Hero Syndrome in the episode "Secrets" by destroying a city to lure the hero there.
    • Ben 10: Alien Force: In "Inside Man", Ben chooses to save a rebelling Slave Mook over preventing the Dna-liens from getting away with an object they plan to use to destroy Earth. Kevin, Gwen, and even said Mook disapproved, the latter stating Earth is doomed and he's stuck as this abomination. Luckily, Ben has a say in both matters.
• Bob the Builder: In the special "A Christmas To Remember", Bob's twin brother, Tom, is on his way to catch a boat to the mainland only to find a lost baby deer and decides to help find her father despite Scoot's protest that they don't have much time. They manage to find the father deer and pull him out of a hole he fell in, but the boat leaves by the time they barely reach the harbor.
• The Trope Namer is Dudley Do-Right, a Canadian mountie who would always stop to help someone in need, even if he was on his way to help someone else. Often times, Snidely Whiplash would exploit this to further his plans. Not that it ever worked out for Snidely.
• Anytime the cast from the Dungeons & Dragons (1983) cartoon show actually found a portal home, it was guaranteed that they'd have to turn around to save the character of the week while the portal closed.
• Wilt from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends often stops whatever he's doing to help someone in need. This often causes him to miss things he wants to do. In "Where There's a Wilt, There's a Way", he ends up missing a basketball game due to having spent the whole day helping his friends with their needs, and in "Good Wilt Hunting", he ends up taking a few detours in his quest to find his creator, Jordan Michaels, as a result of helping those in need, and the rest of his friends from Foster's keep losing track of him when they follow him.
• The heroes of G.I. Joe: Renegades get this with varying intensity. On one extreme is Scarlett, who is only concerned with clearing the team's good name and resists helping; on the other end is Duke who has to right every wrong he sees. The others fall somewhere between these two ends.
• Scatterbrained would-be do-gooder that he is, Inspector Gadget is all too happy to help any civilian (or, more frequently, unrecognized MAD agent) he sees with any minor problem he even believes he perceives them having, usually completely derailing whatever he was doing before then.
• KaBlam!: In the Race Rabbit shorts, the eponymous character always stops to help someone put in peril by the Boolies.
  "He's a burning rubber bunny with the need for speed,
  but he's always got time for anybody in need!"
• In the Saturday-Morning Cartoon version of Mother Goose and Grimm, the title character of the show-within-a-show Karl the Wonder Poodle is temporarily diverted from saving the person who made the original call for help (a kid who fell in the river and is floating toward a waterfall) by the need to deal with a dozen or so other events in need of a superhero.
• A good deal of the episodes of Samurai Jack involve Jack finding a way to travel back to his own time, but passing it up to help a bystander. Indeed, Jack probably wouldn't be Jack without this trope. A particularly egregious example as the Grand Finale confirms he would have retroactively prevented the danger in the first place if he'd just taken the opportunity to get back to the past.
• Played for Laughs in The Simpsons, in which Jose Canséco misses the big softball game because he stops to save a woman's belongings from her burning home. The baby and cat are understandable, but the last we see of him has him rearranging her furniture at her request.
• Many Transformers shows regularly use this trope.
  • In the G1 episode "Make Tracks", the Autobots are in New York City investigating recent Decepticon sightings. While there, they help the police to break up a carjacking racket and help clear up traffic accidents.
  • Several episodes of Transformers: Animated started with the Autobots helping the city of Detroit by catching criminals, doing construction work, and saving the city from the (surprisingly common) super villains that keep popping up.
  • Later series (like Transformers: Prime) use this trope less, as the 'bots are forced to hide their robot modes from the general public to stay on the U.S. government's good side. Still, that doesn't stop them from helping out the government when they can (such as helping them take down the terrorist organization MECH).
• Uncle Grandpa: In "The Vacation", Uncle Grandpa decides to take a break on a tropical island paradise, where a lot of things bear a strong resemblance to Uncle Grandpa, who they believe is the chosen one. He spends most of his time trying to relax while waterskiing, zip-lining, scuba diving, and eating hot dogs, all while the island is in danger of being destroyed, and after persistent insistence from the villagers, U.G. reluctantly decides to jump in the volcano and save the island.
• Wacky Races:
  • Peter Perfect often stops to do a good deed or help someone in need in almost every episode. This cost him the race at least once, as he screeched to a halt just before the finish line to avoid running over a cat that had wandered onto the track. It did earn him a new cat, though.
  • Professor Pat Pending also frequently stops and uses his car's inventions to help the other racers, typically to deal with whatever trap Dastardly has set up this time.
• In the Wander over Yonder episode "The Fugitives", Wander and Sylvia have to escape a planet before the Watchdogs catch them, but their escape attempts keep being derailed by Wander's need to help anyone in need. Eventually, everyone who Wander helped returned the favor by aiding their escape.
• All the time in The Zeta Project. Zeta does this so constantly that it rubs off on Ro because no one in her life had ever displayed this kind of behavior before.

Real Life

• John Landy at the 1956 Australian National Championships in athletics. He was leading in the 1500 metres final. Fellow runner Ron Clarke tripped and fell, and Landy doubled back to help him up. He went on to win the race.
• During a yacht race in the 1988 Olympic Games where Canadian sailor Lawrence Lemieux was in second place and all but guaranteed to advance to the medal round, he noticed that the Singapore team had capsized, were injured, and in serious danger of drowning. Deciding that winning an Olympic medal was not worth letting people die, Lemieux turned back to save the Singapore team, which cost him the race. However, since the world saw this Heroic Sacrifice, things worked out—the International Yacht Racing Union unanimously voted to officially award Lemieux with second place anyways. In the end, Lemieux was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin Medal, the ultimate prize and rarest of all Olympic medals, for exemplifying the spirit of the Olympic Games at its finest.

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