Interrupted Suicide

"But on this night, no one was forgotten...least of all by those who had promised to save others from despair."

"The living are not done with you yet."

— T'Challa/Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War

A character is about to commit suicide and is stopped by somebody else Just in Time, sometimes thanks to the suicide note. Especially with bridges and building ledges. You can expect the Interrupter to be Talking Down the Suicidal, but not always.

Regularly subverted: Any character standing on a ledge is mistaken for a jumper. Another subversion, rather more cruel, is when somebody else shows up Just in Time...but fails to prevent the suicide, and has to witness it instead.

Compare Bungled Suicide, where the suicidee succeeds in carrying out the deed... but doesn't die. Compare Happily Failed Suicide, where the suicidee is happy that they failed or were interrupted. Contrast with Mistaken for Suicidal, where a character believes they're saving someone but in reality, the "suicidee" wasn't actually suicidal.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• 7 Seeds: Arashi threw himself into the ocean and was willing to drown, believing that Hana had died during the catastrophe and he had lost her. Aramaki orders his dogs to drag him out of the water, which they do. It isn't until Arashi finds substantial proof that Hana is in the post-apocalyptic world that he's happy about not having died.
• Afterschool Charisma: Mr. Kuroe states that the reason Mozart survived is because Shiro and Hitler showed up on time.
• In the series finale of the 2003 Astro Boy, Dr. Tenma tries to blow himself up after a combination of a Heel Realization and hitting his Despair Event Horizon. Astro braves the fires around them, gives him a Cooldown Hug, and pleads with him not to die. It works.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Early on in the series, Armin volunteers to be left behind so Mikasa and Connie can escape with their limited gas and asks that they just leave him a broken piece of a sword to take care of things. Mikasa immediately snatches the blade away and throws it off the roof, refusing to let him kill himself.
  • Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Reiner Braun loads a rifle and prepares to shoot himself. He's only stopped when he hears Falco outside the room, causing him to reconsider and realize he needs to go on living for the sake of his subordinates.
• In Black Jack, one story has a woman staying at a hotel preparing to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. She's in the process of writing a farewell note to her parents (explaining that she embezzled money for her lover, who abandoned her and left her penniless) when a little boy in the next room runs in, shouting how his father is incredibly sick and he needs someone to help. For the rest of the story, she forgets about her planned suicide in favor of helping the boy and his father. The story concludes with Black Jack operating on the father and telling the woman that he "bought" the pills off of her, conveniently paying the exact amount that she embezzled and had thought herself unable to pay back.
• Bungo Stray Dogs: Dazai loves suicide, and so his gimmick was to do this (normally getting interrupted by Kunikida or Atsushi) but later he changed his mind - now he wants a lovers' suicide with a beautiful woman, except of course he lacks a woman who's willing to go through with it.
• In Candy♡Candy, Candy finds Susanna about to throw herself off a rooftop after crossing the Despair Event Horizon. She first tries to talk her down, and when it doesn't work she tackles her to the roof's ground which is covered in snow.
• One of these becomes a HUGE plot point in the original Captain Tsubasa series. When Tsubasa's boat captain father was working in Brazil, he spotted a young man who had just thrown himself into the sea and rescued him. After a pep talk, the young man pretty much brought himself back from a months-long drunken depression brought by a severe Break the Cutie process, and decided to help his savior; Tsubasa's dad told him that he could travel to Japan and help his son, who lived alone with his mother and needed a Parental Substitute. That man, obviously, is Roberto Hongo, Tsubasa's Big Brother Mentor.
• Code Geass:
  • This happens on more than a few occasions with Suzaku. Especially when Lelouch uses Geass to command him to live, thus eternally preventing Suzaku from allowing himself to die. Which is something he desperately wants to do.
  • Following the Black Knights' betrayal, Lelouch tries to off himself by sealing himself with his father inside the Sword of Akasha. Said attempt is interrupted when C. C. and Marianne show up, prompting the activation of the Ragnarok connection. This, being too much for him to stomach, compels Lelouch to disrupt said plan and have his parents erased from existence. The aftermath leaves everyone, Lelouch included, back outside the now inactive Sword of Akasha, and forcing Lelouch to continue on for the time being.
• Dear Brother:
  • In the anime, Aya Misaki, after her swift and brutal Break the Haughty process. Until then, she was the Alpha Bitch who tormented Mariko and Nanako because she didn't get her place at the Sorority. But then she was attacked by Mariko in public after repeatedly pressing her Berserk Button, went Taking the Heat for her friends Miyuki and Megumi, and once this was done she decided to walk into the sea and let herself drown. But Nanako and Tomoko stopped her by dragging her back to the shore, then Mariko put the cherry on top by giving her a You Are Not Alone speech, and this culminates in Aya's Heel–Face Turn.
  • Also happens to Mariko herself, who did it twice, but was interrupted by first Takashi (via a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man) and then by her mother Hisako (with a Cooldown Hug).
• Misa Amane in Death Note tries to bite her tongue off because Rem won't kill her, but Watari gags her just before she can do it. She eventually kills herself - in the anime, via throwing herself off a building at the end of the series.
• In Digimon Tamers Jeri, after sustaining weeks of Mind Rape by the D-Reaper, tries to use her puppet to strangle herself to just make the pain stop. Thankfully Calumon shows up and reminds her that she is not alone. You know, for kids!
• Nanette in the second season of Emma: A Victorian Romance: after being discovered to have stolen a fan from the mistress of the house and being fired as a result, she dashes out to drink something lethal and is stopped by Emma. Later in the same season, there is a slight subversion, Emma is contemplating the sea and walking toward it leading Hans to assume that she is about to kill herself which was not the case.
• Fairy Tail has several examples, though they are all of the Heroic Sacrifice variation:
  • First, Gray tries to defeat Lyon in order to prevent Deliora's unsealing by using Iced Shell - an attack that turns the user into ice which then freezes the opponent eternally. Natsu stops him, saying that some things are not worth dying for.
  • In another arc, the Tower of Heaven is collapsing and about to explode, and Erza sees no other way to save her friends (in order to make them have a "bright future", as she says) than trying to fuse herself with the so-called Etherion mass. Natsu distraughtly saves her in the last moment, shouting that if she wants to grant her friends a bright future, she should be with them, not die for them.
  • Jellal, the man behind the Tower of Heaven and (unbeknownst to the heroes) Brainwashed and Crazy, is eventually revived with amnesia back to his kinder self but is horrified to learn from Erza what he did to his friends and how he killed one of them. In an attempt to atone, he decides to blow himself up with an ancient superweapon the current Arc Villain wanted him to unseal. Erza stops him by yelling he can't atone if he's dead (and the villain taught him the very spell he was going to use anyways (again, memory loss) and knew how to cancel it, so it wouldn't have done much good regardless).
• Flame of Recca has a flashback in which an orphaned Kaoru tries to off himself, but is stopped by Kurei, which explains why he's a member of the Uruha.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), after killing Winry's parents, Colonel Mustang, in shock, put his gun under his chin. Tim Marcoh talked him down from it.
• In Fushigi Yuugi, Yui goes back into the book to search for Miaka and ends up being attacked by a bunch of thugs who attempt to rape her. During the attack, she falls unconscious, and Nakago kills the would-be rapists before they actually get to do anything. When Yui wakes up, she believes she has been raped and tries to commit suicide by cutting her wrists, but Nakago stops her. He then tricks her into believing that Miaka had simply abandoned her to her fate and only returned for Tamahome (and does not tell Yui that she was ''not'' actually raped), causing Yui to take up the role of Priestess of Seiryuu.
• In a flashback of the anime version of Gate Keepers, the then-Commander of A.E.G.I.S., who used to be an Imperial Japanese Navy officer, tries to shoot himself after his suicide mission failed near the end of World War II. The American sailor, who rescued him, slaps the gun out of his hand and urges him to live.
• Gintama: Happens to Hasegawa almost everytime he's on screen.
• The final episode of Gravitation the anime Shuichi arrives just in time to keep Yuki from committing suicide. Keeping up with the spirit of Mood Whiplash of the series, Shuichi is wearing a dog suit as he bursts through the wall just as Yuki is about to shoot himself
• Uigher has been stopped from suicide in Haré+Guu. It is played for laughs, partly due to his Attention Whore nature.
• In Heat Guy J, Clair plays a game of Russian Roulette with Boma. Boma warns him that he's picked up the one real bullet, but Clair shrugs off the warning. Giovanni rushes in and moves Clair's arm out of the way so that he just ends up shooting the bullet into the air. The spectators who were betting on this event were not happy, to say the least!
• Happens twice on the same day in Ilegenes - Kokuyou no Kiseki: The first time, Fon is alone in his room and attempts to strangle himself with his necktie. His roommate Jacques hears him in the middle of it and goes into the room to see if he's okay, whereupon he quickly pretends he's having one of his usual coughing fits. However, Jacques sees the marks on his neck and finishes work early that day out of worry. He eventually finds Fon standing on the roof, about to jump, and stops him Just in Time before proceeding to talk him out of it.
• In Jiraishin, the protagonist interrupted a girl named Azusa as she was about to jump off a roof and told her that if she was going to commit suicide, jumping was rude and she should starve herself. She was going to jump anyway, but he grabbed her and stopped her. Later, she went to prison and starved herself to death.
• King of Thorn:
  • Twin sisters Kasumi and Shizuku contracted the deadly disease Medusa. Kasumi was selected by lottery to be turned into a Human Popsicle until a cure was found; Shizuku was not. Kasumi attempted to kill herself so that Shizuku could take her place, but Shizuku interrupted her and demanded that she lives on.
  • Later on, Kasumi tries to throw herself off a high ledge when she sees what Shizuku has become due to Medusa, thinking that she'll be with Marco and her suicide will help Shizuku. She's stopped by Zeus physically restraining her with his wire... hand.... thing.
• Life (2002):
  • The protagonist has to jump in front of a train to save her friend from killing herself after her boyfriend tried to kill himself. However since later that "friend" is shown to be an extremely Manipulative Bitch Jerkass who loves to toy with her and hates her boyfriend, it's possible she was toying with her... Though it's also implied she didn't become that way until she started hanging around with the wrong crowd.
  • Ayumu herself tries to jump in front of a bus due to being bullied. Miki grabs her before she can, and that's when they really start to become friends.
• Mazinger Z: Episode 46 features an example where a villain accidentally interrupts a suicide. A woman was about to jump off a cliff when she overhead Baron Ashura telling that they had planted nukes on the Institute (where she had left her baby shortly after). She got so worried about her son that she forgot about her suicide to try and warn the heroes about the bombs.
• Monster:
  • At one point, Tenma desperately tries to talk Nina out of shooting herself.
  • There was another time when Dieter found out that the local children had been talked by Johan into playing a certain game. The "game" involves two children walking toward each other along the edge of a roof until one of them falls. The boy challenging Dieter had already lost at least once, but keeps playing after surviving the fall.
  • A young orphan boy, Milos, tries to jump off a bridge after failing to find his mother in the red-light district and concluding that he's unwanted. He's rescued in the nick of time by Grimmer and Tenma.
• Happens to Nanaka in Myself ; Yourself. There's no suicide note or any other message, but Sana figures out what's going on just in time because he tried to do the same thing several years earlier.
• In Naruto, Gaara attempted to slash his own wrists as a young child but was blocked by his own sand barrier. This is after a classic example of a Dark and Troubled Past since while he had never actually been injured due to said sand barrier and was only half-halfheartedly trying out of curiosity, the fact that a child would casually try something like that is still rather indicative of Gaara's state of mind.
• Now and Then, Here and There: Main character Shu attempts to stop depressed Sarah from drowning herself, but he only makes her hurry up, forcing him to dive in and save her himself.
• One Piece:
  • Robin resigned herself to her fate as the Royal Tomb crumbles around her. However, Luffy unexpectedly rescues both King Cobra and Robin. When she protests that she wants to die, Luffy tells her he's going to rescue her anyways and if she still feels that way after, then she can do it after he rescues her. Luffy's action gave Robin the will to live and to perform a Heel–Face Turn as she joins the Straw Hats.
  • Another one occurs later, in the CP9 saga. Fearing her friends would eventually betray her, as did all of the people who took her in as a child, Robin sacrificed herself by surrendering to the CP9. She preferred to die right there and then rather than live to eventually be betrayed and thrown away, and made clear that she didn't want to be rescued. Fortunately, the Power of Friendship makes her realize that her crewmates would never betray her, and were ready to go to hell and back to save her. This gives her the will to live again, making this a Happily Failed Suicide.
• Persona 4: The Animation has Adachi attempt this, only to have the shadows knock the gun out of his hand just in time. Then he gets possessed by them. He's found to be alive after the final confrontation, though.
• The Promised Neverland: Yugo had fully prepared to shoot himself after spending years alone and was convinced all his friends he escaped with were dead until he heard Emma and her group arriving at the underground shelter.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • Happens in episode 2, where Mami saves a woman brainwashed by a Witch from jumping off the building.
  • There's another example in episode 4 when Madoka comes across an entire group of brainwashed people, including her friend Hitomi. She throws away the implements Hitomi tried to use to kill herself and saves her, but then she's captured by the daily Witch...
• Unknown to the people who only watch the anime of Reborn! (2004), Yamamoto, Mr. Nice Guy, almost commits suicide. This was due to some bad advice that he broke his arm over, and he in suit thought that his career as a baseball player was over. So he moseyed on over to the edge of the school rooftop and prepared to jump, and he was dead serious about it. With an audience of students trying to cajole him out of it, the only voice he listened to was Tsuna's. He ended up falling due to bad construction of a gate. Don't worry, Tsuna Saved Him.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: In episode 37 Anthy tries to kill herself by jumping off of a building but Utena saves her.
• This happens several times in Rurouni Kenshin:
  • Most notably, when Megumi is first introduced and wants to kill herself to make up for all the lives she took with her opium of death.
  • Sano does this a few times but usually he's saying, "If you're going to kill yourself, do it when I'm not around!"
  • Subverted in one of the first episodes, when Kaoru is bathing and lost in her own thoughts. When she doesn't respond to Kenshin, he rushes in to save her from drowning herself... Oops.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei:
  • Kafuka tries to stop Nozumu every time but does something to make it worse (e.g. trying to pull him down as he hangs himself, or accidentally pushing him over as he tries to jump in front of a train). Nozomu quickly recovers and screams "What if I died!?"
  • At the end of episode 11, Nozomu takes out a noose to attempt to hang himself, but is hit by a runaway trolley before he can do so. This is never mentioned again.
  • Also in the third episode, Nozomu saves Kaede from jumping off the roof just in the nick of time. Not because he's particularly worried for her safety, but because he's already pinned the roof for his suicide spot and doesn't want anyone stealing his thunder.
• Shouko from A Silent Voice tried to jump off a balcony, however, was stopped by Shouya. He ended up falling by accident and slipped into a coma due to the series averting the Soft Water trope.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, naturally, does this in an extreme way, with Simon and Kinon becoming the first humans to jump through hyperspace to arrive in the nick of time to stop Rossiu from committing suicide (with a flying punch to the face).
• Welcome to the NHK:
  • Played for some combination of laughs and drama twice: first, Misaki tries jumping off a cliff where her mom killed herself years ago but Satou catches her in a rather humiliating way. Then, he jumps off the same cliff himself, realizing how pathetic his life is, only to fall onto a protective grid below that was installed because Misaki's mom died there. Can it get any more humiliating than that?
  • An earlier episode also has Satou get caught up in an online suicide pact with his upperclassman Hitomi. Her boyfriend, Misaki, and Yamazaki all rush into the meeting place to save him.
• You're Under Arrest!: The team use their unique skills to talk down a jumper, then to save both her and their team-mate as the rescue equipment fails... all while under the eyes of an inspector who was on the verge of giving the entire station a dreadful write-up for inefficiency and sloppy behaviour.
• Yui Kamio Lets Loose: In Chapter 9, Yui Kamio (Yui in Black disguised as Yui in White) stops a would-be suicide in the train station and beats him up for it.
• In Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Heroes cannot die. If a Hero tries to kill themselves their Fairy Companion will always stop them. Togo learned this first hand after seeing if she could die over ten different ways, all unsuccessful.
• In the backstory of Sherry Belmont in Zatch Bell!, she couldn't take any more of her mother's abuse and attempted to drown herself in a river, but was saved by Koko.
• In the manga/light novel version of No. 6, Nezumi tackles Shion when he tries to kill himself after shooting a man. It's Nezumi's subsequent breakdown that snaps him out of it.
• Moriarty the Patriot: William expecting a friend to come watch his death really didn't work out for him.

Comedy

• A classic Emo Phillips joke: He meets a guy about to jump off a bridge, and tries to talk him down by bringing up how much they have in common. Turns out they both believe in God... and they're both Protestants... and they both go to Fundamentalist Baptist churches... Eventually, they get into the nitty-gritty and realize that Emo follows the Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1896, while the other guy follows the Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912. And at that point, Emo shouts "Burn in Hell, heretic!" and shoves the guy off the bridge.
  • Father Maxwell doesn't get it.
• Subverted by Improv Everywhere as seen in this youtube video where the jumper is about two feet off of the ground but treated as a classic jumper.

Comic Books

• The Sin City story Hell and Back kicks off with hero Wallace coming across a woman named Esther about to commit suicide and saving her just in time. Not that he stops her attempt, she does go off the cliff, but he manages to pull her out of the water and revive her. When Esther is kidnapped, Wallace goes through hell and high water to get her back. In what was possibly the greatest heartrending moment in a surprisingly deep and touching series ("Sin" City or no, these stories each have an Aesop to put any Edutainment show to shame), when he asks her why she jumped, she replies that "I was lonely."
• In an issue of Batgirl, Cassandra Cain is contemplating her own depression and death wish from on top of a building when she encounters a man who is also looking depressedly out at the city. Apropos of seemingly nothing, Cass declares "Don't do it. Not worth it." Not being aware of her near-superhuman ability to read body language, he is startled enough to leave the rooftop without attempting to jump.
  • This incident was likely a Call-Back to Cassandra's debut story where she attempted to commit suicide by the same method out of guilt for killing a man at her father's behest, only to be saved by Batman.
• The Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner's tried to kill himself a few times in the past; Hulk will always force a transformation to prevent it, however. Even when Banner finally manages to arrange a successful mercy kill in Civil War II, he still gets brought back again and again... and then discovers he'll always come back.
• In All Fall Down, Portia's short walk off a skyscraper is successfully averted.
• Superman does this a lot when he's not Talking Down the Suicidal.
  • In a very early Golden Age Superman comic, Superman saved the life of a man who jumped off a bridge. He turned out to be a former champion boxer whose career had fallen apart when his crooked agent drugged him so that he would lose a title bout. Superman then spent the rest of the issue helping the man win back his title (And getting Clark Kent a promotion for his articles predicting the boxer's comeback).
  • In All-Star Superman, Superman goes to help a desperate teenage girl who's about to throw herself off a building. He hugs her and convinces her not to do so:
    "You're much stronger than you think you are."
  • Superman: Secret Origin: Subverted; After a nasty moment with Luthor, Superman comes up to the Daily Planet roof and finds Jimmy Olsen standing on the edge, his head down. Supes flies toward him, shouting, "Don't jump!" — but then finds out that Jimmy wasn't planning on jumping; he was just saying a final, depressed goodbye to Metropolis before his planned departure.
  • In The Man of Steel Bizarro saves Lucy Lane's life when she decides she can't stand being blind anymore. This is before Bizarro's Clone Degeneration fully set in.
  • In Justice Society of America the Superman from Kingdom Come saves a girl (who looks an awful lot like the All-Star Superman girl) after she deliberately walks off a roof.
    "Giving up never helped anyone, miss. Trust me on that."
• In the second volume of Resident Alien, Harry arrives Just in Time to save Karen's life after she attempted suicide out of grief and desperation.
• Due to overwhelming guilt and generally being unable to cope with being a living vampire, Michael Morbius has attempted suicide several times but laments that each time someone has stopped him or brought him back.
• Volume 2 of Young Avengers had two of these. Both were Loki interrupting Wiccan (who thought, thanks to Loki, that if he died the monster he summoned would go away), first with "Plan A before plan B, Billy", second time with "I Lied" (he did not, but meanwhile found his conscience).
• Somewhat Subverted in Avengers Annual issue 10 when Spider-Woman saves a woman who jumped off the golden gate bridge, only to find out later that it was a Psychic-Assisted Suicide.
• In The Eternals (1985), Dave Chatterton jumps from a skyscraper. Sersi sees him falling, telekinetically stops him, and explains that she’ll only drop him if he can provide a sufficiently good reason. He doesn’t.
• Whirl's Establishing Character Moment in The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye comes when Cyclonus unknowingly walks in on him covering a room full of mutilated Sweeps corpses (and himself) in Energon and readying a lit match. Whirl takes this impromptu meeting as an opportunity and starts a fight with Cyclonus instead.
• In The Walking Dead Maggie hangs herself after her father and brother die, Glenn gets her down before she dies but that doesn't stop Abraham from trying to shoot her when he thinks she's dead. Luckily Rick stops him and she recovers
• In Truth: Red, White & Black, Sgt. Luke Evans is about to shoot himself when he hears someone yelling that Pearl Harbor was bombed and the US is in the war.
• In The Unstoppable Wasp, Priya chases after Nadia after her first manic episode causes the latter to kick G.I.R.L.'s collective asses and stops her before she jumped off the roof of her lab in depression and regret.
• Deadpool, of all people, managed to pull this off in "Don't Jump", in which he talked to a blonde woman about to jump from his building and arranged for them both to see Hamilton, after which he took her to the E.R.
  Deadpool: I'm smart enough to know I'm dumb enough that I can't help you. But they can.
  Blonde Woman: What if I don't want to go inside? Are you going to make me?
  Deadpool: I — I dunno. I don't think I'll have to because... I think you want to walk in. Will you walk in with me? Plus, maybe we can visit all the elderly people I accidentally beat up.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Sensation Comics: Diana overhears a young man at a club desperately asking his girlfriend for money. The despair in his voice convinces her to follow him, which allows her to get there just in time to grab the gun he's about to shoot himself in the temple with. He racked up debts he couldn't possibly afford to pay gambling that night and had thought killing himself was the best solution to his problems.
  • The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): Ares abducts Tomas Byde when the man jumps off a cliff to kill himself and talks Tom into becoming his new champion, allowing Ares to have someone in WWII representing his interests who dislikes both sides. Of course, Ares drove him to suicide in the first place by messing with his perception and ensuring he received a letter falsely informing him that his little brother had been killed in an allied air raid.
• Barracuda: In "Scars", a drunken Raffy attempts to commit Suicide by Sea, but is pulled from the water by Maria's servants after he passes out.
• In the first issue of Scream: Curse of Carnage, Andi throws herself off a bridge since she's lost hope after everyone she ever cared about in her life has died. However, the Scream symbiote has already bonded to her and refuses to let her die.
• Subverted in the Marvel Knights run of The Punisher: Soap has finally had enough of the crap life keeps dumping on him, and has his gun in his mouth in the bathroom of his usual bar when he's interrupted by Kevin the barman... who angrily tells him to go commit suicide somewhere else so he doesn't have to clean up the blood and brain matter Soap is so inconsiderately going to splatter everywhere. This causes Soap to snap and finally grow a spine and arrest Frank... for all of maybe two pages, after which Frank instantly disarms him and gives him important advice on knowing when to give up. Soap does as he says and becomes a successful porn star on the West Coast.
• Two separate issues of Cosmo Cat have the titular hero intervene and save someone from jumping to their death. The second time he does it, Cosmo is shown to have a "Suicide Detector" that he specifically uses to find and stop them.
• Black Hammer: The Henshin Hero Gail Gibbons, already worn down from ten years of being stuck in the form of a child, decides to end it all after her best friend Mark Markz rejects her romantic advances due to her apparent age and Incompatible Orientation. She writes a brief Suicide Note and prepares to walk into the invisible death wall surrounding the farm, only for Mark—who found the note—to swoop in and stop her in the nick of time. Mark then convinces Gail to keep on living by pointing out that, even though he doesn't love her the way she wants, she's still his best friend and he can't imagine life without her.

Eastern Animation

• In the Soviet short Once Upon a Dog, the titular Dog was kicked out of his house by his owners for being too old to protect them, and so he was left to fend for himself in the woods. He spent his first day trying and failing to chase after animals to eat, so by night, he grabbed a makeshift rope and was about to tie it to a tree when he was interrupted by the old Wolf he used to chase around. Wolf asked him if he's a tree climber, to which Dog replied that he was trying to catch a bird. From there, Dog and Wolf befriend each other, and Wolf later helps Dog ingratiate himself to his owners again.

Fan Works

• Apprentice and Pregnant: Ivypaw's mother Applefur suffers from mental illness. If she doesn't eat her medicine daily, she starts hallucinating. When she was pregnant with her daughter she tried to drown herself and was narrowly helped by Swallow Star.
• An Arm and a Leg: Elsa didn't move out of the way of Hans' sword because she felt that she deserved to die. She's saved by Anna's attempt at a Heroic Sacrifice.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Asylum (Daemon of Decay) Fluttershy has crippling social anxiety and is in an asylum. During Show And Tell one day, she was convinced to bring one of her birds. The bird was startled and a pony hit it in panic, causing the bird to die of its injuries. Fluttershy felt so terrible over the incident that she tried to kill herself, though she was caught before she bled out.
• Subverted in the Worm × Dishonored crossover fanfic A Change of Pace. Glory Girl thought Taylor was throwing herself off a building to kill herself because she wasn't in costume, but in truth, she was testing her teleportation powers. They decide to team up afterwards and fight crime.
• The Child of Love: In Chapter 5, Asuka tried to kill herself with a bottle of sleeping pills. Shinji found her and called Misato, and Asuka was hospitalized. As the meds were keeping her alive, her daughter telepathically talked to her to ensure that she did not Go into the Light.
• In Cinders and Ashes: the Chronicles of Kamen Rider Dante, it's revealed that Hoshi attempted to do this and the only reason he didn't go through with it was that he was saved by a stranger.
• In Dæmorphing: The Presence of Justice, Ax drags Estrid kicking and screaming out of the Ralek River after witnessing her attempting to commit an honour suicide.
• In A Dark House Inadequate, Lincoln's second suicide attempt falls under this as his father is able to get him to the hospital in time, though it's stated to have been a near thing.
• The Frozen (2013) fanfic Darkness Burning takes place in an Alternate Universe where Elsa and Anna's parents didn't die. After reaching adulthood, Anna ended up married and moved to another kingdom, while Elsa stayed stuck in the same depressed state she was prior to her "I Am Becoming" Song. Elsa attempted suicide but was found by her parents. Afterwards, Anna came back to see her, and Elsa wasn't allowed to be alone for weeks. After learning the reason for her sister's depression, Anna calls out her parents for causing it.
• In Destiny, After Juri's father, stepmother, and half-brother all die in a car accident, her heavy depression from the deaths of Leomon and her biological mother returns in full force and she once again attempts to end her own suffering. Takato and Rika come to her rescue and bring her to the hospital just in time.
• Eleutherophobia:
  • Played for Drama in City of Lost Children. Tom regains control of his body for about a second and clenches his hand around a steak knife, but his Yeerk stops him from stabbing himself through the eye and killing them both.
  • In How I Live Now, just before Tom can shoot himself with a dracon beam, Eva bursts into his room and forces it out of his hands.
• At the end of fernwithy's The Hunger Games story The End of the World, after the Capitol kills his girlfriend (on the heels of killing his mother and brother), between that, all the death he saw in the 2nd Quarter Quell and the life of mentoring ahead of him, Haymitch is prepared to hang himself from an old tree that was once used as a gallows, when he hears screaming and sees a friend being whipped in the distance, in the town square. This snaps him out of it, and he sets the tree on fire instead, to make sure he isn't tempted again and to distract the peacekeepers from their whipping.
• Evangelion 303: In Chapter 12, Asuka tried to commit suicide. However, Shinji found her Just in Time and managed to stop her. Subverted since, even though she had decided to kill herself, she had spent the last five hours unable to go through with it. In fact, her choice of words in her suicide note (specifically, ending it with "auf wiedersehen", which means "until we meet again") suggested that she wanted him to stop her. But she might have eventually shot herself if he had not shown up or if he left.
• Fallout: Equestria:
  • Fallout: Equestria - Occupational Hazards: Twintails has a moment where, following the evacuation of his Stable and the death of his motherly figure Gamma Ray, he very nearly empties a full clip of .303 rounds into his head. Minty is able to intervene mere moments before the trigger is pulled, and the automatic rifle discharges harmlessly into the air.
  • Fallout: Equestria - Empty Quiver: Crash Dive admits to being ready to throw herself off of a seaside cliff in her full heavy armor to end it all after her decade of suffering. Thankfully for her sake, the Valkyrie crash-lands just then.
• Ghosts of Evangelion: Asuka wanted to kill herself after getting raped, but Misato found her and stopped her before she carried it out.
• In Gensokyo 20XXIV, we have this occur at a couple of instances. The first time is when Yukari is holding a razor blade, crying as she is contemplating ending her life (to, in her mind, appease the ghosts of those who've passed away) when Satori takes notice of this and convinces her otherwise. The second time Chen attempts to drown herself and she would have died otherwise if Yukari hadn't pulled her out and the others resuscitated her.
• Grey Skies Over London: Near the end of the fic, following George Washington's execution, Alfred tries to throw himself out his bedroom window three stories up the moment the window's opened and Arthur's back is turned. Arthur drags him down.
• HERZ: Seven years before the beginning of the story Shinji attempted to kill himself by slitting his wrists. Fortunately Kurumi found his suicide note to Asuka, and found him just in time to save him.
• Letting Go Of Hate starts with Zira's death scene. She doesn't want to die, however, she refuses to take Kiara's paw. Zira ponders over her situation and wonders if she should just fall, now that her family has betrayed her and her only loyal child has died. Before Zira can lose her grip, Kiara helps her.
• Lost:
  • After her son seemingly dies in a shipwreck, Delia loses her will to live. Luckily, Professor Oak notices where her mind is going and takes away her bottle of tranquilizers.
  • Professor Oak himself once tried to kill himself after his son and daughter-in-law both died in a car crash. He was saved by his assistant Spencer Hale.
• In Chapter 10 of Lotus Jewel, Queen Zelda ran away from the castle and attempted suicide. She cut herself with her sword but was saved when Impa found her before she could bleed out.
• In Mistake (Sherlock Holmes), a lookout Holmes forgot to check for scores a lucky shot, ending with Watson hitting the pavement and ending up in critical condition. After Lestrade arrives to take away the criminal, he turns to go, despite his misgivings about leaving Holmes alone. However, he sees Holmes eyeing the doctor's revolver and fortunately puts two and two together before he can leave. He storms back in, yelling at the detective not even to think about it. Luckily, Holmes listens.
• In My Immortal, Ebony is in the process of slitting her wrists over Draco's death when "Snap" and "Loopin" peep on her.
• Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic My Time Of Dying starts with Scourge's attempted suicide, and Sonic stops him. Scourge behaves suicidally several times during the fanfic.
• At the beginning of Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, Asuka was in a coma after having attempted to kill herself. She was found naked and severely malnourished in a bathtub full of filth by Section-2 agents. Her doctor said that she'd been starving and they had to put her under to keep her from hurting herself.
• Edmure Tully in The North Remembers is on the brink of doing this during his first chapter while at Casterly Rock, after feeling that he had done enough for Jeyne and his uncle the Blackfish. He hesitates at first for his wife's sake but is only interrupted when he receives a message from Addam Marbrand about the fake Jeyne that Jaime saw at Riverrun.
• After hitting her Despair Event Horizon in Now That You're Bleeding, Elsa tries to jump to her death. Marshmallow won't allow it and holds her back.
• In Pokemon fanfic Olivine Romance Jasmine's life is thrown into chaos and despair. She's lost her Pokemon and her job, her love life lies in tatters, she's betrayed by everyone she trusted, is rejected by her own mother, and mentally breaks down after realizing her own monstrous fantasies. She goes to the bay bridge to throw herself off. There is no help coming. She finds Ethan about to throw himself into the waves. The chance meeting saves them both.
• The One I Love Is...: After running away, Asuka lay down on a tube and slit her wrists. However, several Section-2 agents found her in time to save her life.
• In the third Pokemon Light AU story, Leon's brother Hop stops him from stabbing himself.
• Pony POV Series: Filthy Rich started to become depressed because his wife Golden Tiara is in the insane asylum and he's slowly growing apart from his daughter Diamond Tiara. The last straw came when during the Day of Discord, he lost control and raped several copies of his wife. Overcome with guilt and shame, he attempted suicide repeatedly with various methods like hanging and overdosing. Every time, his servants (especially his maid Shiny Star, who was in love with him) stopped him, until he stopped trying and learned to appreciate his life.
• The Powerpuff Girls Re Imagined: Professor Utonium is stopped from shooting himself after shooting his pet Jojo when the Powerpuff Girls are born.
• Robin has hanged himself after having a Heroic BSoD for failing to save Emmeryn before Frederick intervenes and cuts the noose in Pretender when the latter stumbles on him.
• In Renegades, while trying to restore Sara's soul Laurel is attacked by astral parasites who prey on her greatest insecurities/regrets. One of them reminds her of the (until now unknown) night she contemplated suicide and encourages her to finish the job. Oliver and Nyssa manage to reach her and convince her what she's seeing isn't real. Laurel later confirms it was a real memory and when she was contemplating it, she got a (very fortuitous) call from Thea, who missed her and wanted to have dinner together. This was enough to stop her, and the unsaid implication is that Thea has no idea what she was considering when she called.
• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness:
  • In Act II, Mizore is extorted for sex by Miyabi in exchange for her parents' lives (Miyabi never intended to honor the deal either way, but Tsukune and co. save them). Devastated that Miyabi was her first time when she wanted it to be Dark, and believing herself to be Defiled Forever, Mizore jumps off of a high balcony in despair, only to be saved by Kurumu, who is quick to talk some sense into her.
  • In Act III Chapter 1, upon discovering that Tsukune's inner ghoul had exploited her newfound feelings for Tsukune to dupe her into completing the transfusion and giving it enough power to take over Tsukune's body completely, Kokoa is so devastated by and ashamed of her mistake and letting her feelings for Tsukune blind her to the ghoul's manipulations that she tries to jump into the ocean, only to be saved by Gin, who talks some sense into her. After the ghoul is suppressed by the Holy Lock, Kokoa swears fealty to Tsukune in penance.
• RWBY: Scars: Weiss stabbed herself in the stomach but survived because her normally-distant mother decided to check up on her for once.
• The Seven Misfortunes of Lady Fortune: Adrien almost slits his own throat after learning that Marinette, who was shot to death a few months ago, was actually Ladybug. Fortunately, Plagg tells him she's actually alive before he can.
• Shattered Soul is a Pokémon one-shot where James tries to kill himself but is stopped by Jessie.
• Split Second (My Little Pony): The sequel, An Eternity Divided has Sparkle, the resident Death Goddess, able to feel the approaching death of a soul, including suicides. She scared a mare who was about to jump off a bridge out of killing herself.
• In Tales of the Undiscovered Swords, after hitting his Despair Event Horizon from witnessing his tragic past on his kiwame training and being reminded of it again by his Innocently Insensitive brother, Sasanoyuki attempts to slit his throat with his own sword form until his other brother Kasen unknowingly interrupts him.
• In Touhou Ibunshu, after landing in Gensokyo and losing the last Lunarian child to Remilia, Reisen is so full of hate and guilt that she tries to eat her gun. Tewi, of all people, barely manages to hold her off until she's convinced not to go through with it. In the same series, when Youmu realizes she's been cruelly tricked by Yukari to almost destroy Gensokyo on the pretense of helping Yuyuko, she almost kills herself until talked out of it by her master.
• (Un)Natural is an Alternate Universe Fic of The Children's Hour that starts with Karen stopping Martha from killing herself.
• This is unintentionally done in Chapter 14 of The Utonium Trials. Mojo Jojo (who is also suffering from dementia) lives homeless in a junkyard after his lab is destroyed by a monster. After being defeated by the Powerpuff Girls and realizing that he's just a shadow of his former self, he tries to shoot himself. Buttercup mistakingly thinks Mojo's going to shoot her and so she attacks him first, inadvertently saving his life.
• In Veritas Dolor, Shadow tells his psychiatrist that he recently tried to overdose on benzos. Rouge took him to the hospital to get his stomach drained.
• In 'A Vicious, Vengeful Sea'', Theon tries to kill himself on a livestream after Ramsay's trial, since he doesn't think he'll ever recover. Thankfully, Jeyne finds him unconscious and calls the hospital.
• In Chapter 8 of When One Becomes Many, after being forced to remember her sexual abuse by her childhood friend, Yuu (with Lanzhu's provocation) attempts to jump in front of a train but is stopped by Sarah.

Films — Animation

• In The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible saves the suicidal Oliver Sansweet from jumping to his death — and in gratitude, he unleashes a storm of legal suits.^note In Real Life, such a lawsuit would be disallowed. Nobody's permitted to sue someone for preventing the commission of an illegal act (which suicide is) and in addition, "Good Samaritan" laws protect people from being sued for acts while saving a life or attempting to, but this universe doesn't seem to have those laws.
  Sansweet: You didn't save my life, you ruined my death!
• In Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, Raven tried to kill herself after the Titans were massacred, but Superman showed up just in time to stop her.
• In Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Gloria interrupts Melman's attempted sacrifice in the volcano because she returns his feelings. Of course, he was never truly "suicidal," he believed he was suffering from a deathly illness and so was willing to act as the necessary sacrifice.
• Used in Tokyo Godfathers. As Hana and Miyuki are walking over a bridge, and Hana is actually contemplating suicide — dramatically opining about how she'll "take off my shoes, climb onto the railing, and be at peace"... we see a woman taking off her shoes and clambering onto the railing. Fortunately, they do a rapid-fire double-take and stop her in time. And the plot thickens.

Films — Live-Action

• The Air I Breathe: Sorrow is about to jump off the hospital roof after Fingers tries to force her to abort her baby. She is rescued in time by Love, who was looking for Sorrow because of her rare blood type.
• A comedic version appears in Airplane!; Ted Striker drives two people to suicide with his stories about his ex-girlfriend, and a third is only saved at the last second when Striker gets called away mid-story. The third, who has covered himself in gasoline and is holding a lit match, is saved when Striker is called away; he sighs in relief, blows out the match and drops it. Unfortunately, it is still hot enough to ignite the gasoline.
• In Angel A, a female angel saves the protagonist from taking his life.
• In The Apartment, the protagonist, C.C. "Bud" Baxter, is an office worker who lets his superiors use his apartment for their extramarital affairs in exchange for promotions. When one of them breaks up with his mistress in Bud's apartment, she tries to kill herself with sleeping pills. Bud arrives home just in time to save her life, with the help of one of his neighbors, a doctor.
• In The Artist, George Valentin returns to his burnt-out house in order to put a pistol in his mouth. Cue the title card, "BANG!" The BANG! turns out to be Peppy driving her car into a tree outside, which sufficiently distracts him from following through.
• In Bachelor Party, Tom Hanks' character interrupts one of his friends' attempts at suicide by cutting his wrist with an electric razor.
• In The Baker's Wife, the baker decides to hang himself after his wife runs off with another man, but the villagers stop him.
• At the beginning of Bedazzled (1967), perpetual failure Stanley tries to hang himself in his apartment - and fails at it. A moment later George Spiggot (aka the devil) enters, cheerfully saying "Good evening, I couldn't help noticing you were making an unsuccessful suicide bid!" then proceeds to offer seven wishes for Stanley's soul.
• Even the title of the 1985 movie Better Off Dead gives you an idea of what the protagonist is thinking. He tries to commit suicide on several different occasions but is generally interrupted in a comedic way.
• Buddha's Palm: Early in this fantasy-wuxia film, Long Jian-fei, the protagonist, throws himself off a cliff after becoming a wanted fugitive, only to be grabbed in mid-air by a winged Kirin, his new companion pet, who then carries him back up. Long, being an Ungrateful Bastard at this point of the film, chides the Kirin and prepares to jump again, only for the Kirin to bite his sash and pull him back.
• In Captain America: Civil War, Zemo is prepared to shoot himself after succeeding in driving the Avengers apart and getting revenge for his dead family. T'Challa manages to subdue him and ensures that he will still have to answer for his crimes.
  T'Challa: The living are not done with you yet.
• In Catwoman (2004), the title character chases her cat on a ledge and is mistaken for a jumper, almost falling to her death in the process.
• In City Lights, The Tramp convinces a man not to drown himself. They become friends afterwards. Apparently, the man gets suicidal often when drunk.
• The French film The Closet starts like this: the main character is divorced, estranged from his wife and son, picked on and ignored at work...and has just learned that he's about to be laid off. He contemplates jumping out of his apartment window, but the guy next door spots him. He first talks him down by saying that his car is directly below them, then comes over to discuss it for real.
• In Cold Pursuit, Nels has his rifle in his mouth and is about to pull the trigger when he is interrupted by Dante's presence in the garage. When he learns the truth of Kyle's death from Dante, he abandons his suicide plans and instead embarks on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• The erotic thriller Color of Night ends with Rose trying to kill herself after she kills her deranged brother Dale who had forced her to play the part of their dead brother Richie. Capa saves her just in time, which has the effect of restoring his vision back to full after the suicide that opened the movie.
• In "Crocodile" Dundee II Dundee's first day at work as a stationery delivery man starts with him saving a clerk trying to jump off the ledge.
• In Cube 2: Hypercube, Colonel Maguire tries to kill himself by hanging himself with his own belt but is saved when the others run into him and get him down. He succeeds in killing himself through other means not much later.
• Cyberbu//y (2011): After spending a large chunk of the film being, well, cyberbullied, Taylor tries to overdose on Tylenol. However, Taylor can't get the cap off, so her friend Samantha is able to arrive in time to stop her.
• In Death to Smoochy, Randolph dumps a can of gasoline all over himself in front of a bunch of people and is about to light himself on fire when a little girl comes up to him and blows out his match, saying it's okay and nearly driving Randolph to tears. It's a pretty heartwarming/tear-jerker moment for all of ten seconds. And then Sheldon (the guy who plays Smoochy) shows up on the other side of the street and everyone runs over to him for autographs, the girl's father practically yanking her off her feet.
• In Dirty Harry, Harry Callahan disgusts a jumper by saying how much blood and guts are going to be on the floor and how he doesn't want to go down with him, eventually Harry tricks him onto a fire truck.
• In Don Juan DeMarco, this is John and Dr. Mickler's way of 'meeting cute'.
• In The Double, Simon is just about to jump out the window when he sees Hannah committing suicide in the building across, which he goes to stop, resulting in two failed suicides.
• There's a version of this in the film The Dreamers, although it's more of an accidentally interrupted murder/suicide. The film is set during the 1968 Paris student riots, though the lead characters, Isabelle, Theo, and Michael are more interested in experimenting with free love than protesting. When Isabelle discovers to her shame that her parents have found out about their threesome, she attempts suicide by connecting a rubber hose from the gas pipe to the bedroom, hoping to take the sleeping Michael and Theo with her. Just as they are about to succumb a brick crashes through the window from a riot outside, waking them up and letting air into the room. Isabelle pretends that the smell is tear gas, and surreptitiously puts away the hose and turns the gas off.
• Dust Devil: Villainous example. Wendy is preparing to take her own life when she hears the Dust Devil close in on the bathroom, and she seems to change her mind.
• In Elizabethtown, the protagonist's suicide is interrupted by a phone call... telling him that his father has just died.
• Endless: Riley nearly drowns herself in the lake, wanting to join Chris after he cuts her off. He stops this, and she's revived by paramedics.
• In End of Days, Jericho Caine tries to shoot himself in the opening after his wife and daughter were murdered by a bunch of thugs who invaded his home when he wasn't there. As he's about to pull the trigger, his partner Bobby walks into his apartment to pick him up for the protection assignment they have to do that day. Bobby notices the gun on the table but doesn't bring the issue up again.
• In The Escapist, Lacey tries to kill himself following his Prison Rape by Tony, but is stopped by his cellmate; The Old Convict Frank.
• In the Polish comedy Ewa Wants To Sleep (Ewa chce spać) the eponymous student Ewa arrived in the city late at night, but a day before her school opened, couldn't sign into a dorm and ended up spending the night on the street. When she was standing on a bridge, a policeman mistook her actions as her contemplating suicide and brought her to the station. It was an honest mistake — she took off her shoes (too tight) and was holding a very large brick (long story^note A young robber was "selling" the brick to passers-by, but instantly liked her, decided to help her and ran to find her a place to stay, leaving her with his brick.). When Ewa told him she's got nowhere to go, she only confirmed his suspicion that she contemplated suicide.
  • Later she locked herself in the station armory^note Because an old prostitute mistook Ewa for a colleague and gave her a lot of advice, seriously scaring her. The quartermaster's first reaction was "I've got enough grenades there for a whole regiment of suicides!" The station chief started trying to persuade her that life is good. By reading some newspaper article about freaks, mutants, and radiation. He quickly realized his mistake, though. His fears weren't quite baseless: while not a suicide, Ewa tried to hammer a sticking-out shoe nail with a grenade.
• Max in Exit Plan tries to kill himself twice, but someone interrupts him each time. He tries hang himself with a noose, only to hear someone leave their car. Thinking his beloved wife has come home, he pulls himself out, but it turns out it's actually a neighbor. Then he tries to fling himself off a dock, but he gets a call on his cell phone (which he left on-shore) while he's underwater and swims back to the surface. It's implied these failed attempts are why Max is so interested in the Aurora, a luxury hotel specializing in assisted suicide.
• In the first Fantastic Four (2005) film, the newly transformed Ben Grimm stops a man from jumping off a bridge:
  Ben: Hey! You think you got problems, you take a good look, pal.
• Robin Williams' character in Fathers' Day (1997) almost Ate His Gun before he got a call about the boy who could be his son.
• Frieda: Frieda, fearing that she has lost Robert, attempts suicide, but, just in time, Robert reaches her and the shock brings him to a realisation of what he risked losing.
• Played for laughs in The Full Monty: Lomper is trying to gas himself in his car, Dave comes along and pulls him out. Lomper calls him a bastard and Dave throws him back into the fume-filled car.
• Girl On The Bridge, if you couldn't tell from the title, uses this trope to launch the protagonists' friendship.
• In Heat, Hanna intervenes when he finds out his stepdaughter slit her wrists and rushes her to the ER. After several emergency surgeries, he and his wife are told that she's gonna make it.
• In Identity, John Cusack's character describes how he failed to stop a suicide, and it caused him to crack up and leave the LAPD. As he describes it, the man planning to kill himself gave Cusack's character the perfect opportunity to save him: He asked him for something worth living for. Cusack's character froze for just a moment, unable to think of anything, and the man jumped.
• I Not Stupid has Kwok Pin, one of the three elementary-school-age main leads, deciding to jump off an apartment building the night after learning he failed his exam, but just as he's removing his shoes and about to climb over a balcony, a bunch of policemen pursuing some teen drug addicts hiding in the same floor accidentally run into Kwok Pin, and he gets arrested alongside all the druggies, leading to this rather awkward exchange between Kwok Pin and one of the policemen.
  Kwok Pin: Sir, I swear I'm not with the drug dealers!
  Policeman: Then what are you doing alone at this time of the night, kid?
  Kwok Pin: ...Trying to kill myself, sir.
• Subverted and played for comedy in In Bruges when Ken shows up to murder Raymond on Harry's orders, only to see Raymond put a gun to his own temple. As Ken confronts him, Raymond sees Ken's gun, which Ken stows guiltily behind his back. Cue the comedy. Then it moves rapidly to a fantastic dramatic exchange.
• Interceptor: A flashback scene shows the heroine reported her commanding officer for sexual harassment and became the subject of a sustained hate campaign. After finding her house had been vandalised and sexist threats painted all over the walls, she tries to drown herself in the bath only to be rescued by her retired veteran father who encourages her to keep fighting. This scene shows her affection for her father right before the Big Bad reveals that he's sent men to take her father hostage.
• In the Fade: Katja cuts her wrists in the bathtub while depressed over the deaths of her husband and son. She binds them up after hearing a phone message her lawyer Danilo left telling her their murderers were arrested, however.
• In Your Afterglow: After Joshua is killed in the Civil War, his girlfriend Erin cuts her wrists. She is found by her employers' children, who press on her wounds with cloth, saving her.
• One classic example is It's a Wonderful Life. George contemplates suicide by jumping off a bridge but is interrupted when his guardian angel, Clarence, jumps in first. George, reverting to his true nature, jumps into the river not to kill himself, but instead to save Clarence's life.
• Killer/saurus: When Kayleigh and Jed show up at the research facility, Professor Peterson has put a Handgun under his chin and is getting ready to blow his brains out, only to be stopped by Jed calling out to him from the front door intercom.
• In Lethal Weapon, Sergeant Riggs pretends to be sympathetic in order to get close to a possible suicide. However, instead of grabbing the man and pulling him to safety, Riggs handcuffs himself to the guy and jumps off the building with him... into a large airbag on the ground below, which was apparently deployed by firefighters without the jumper noticing.
• Limelight opens with Calvero smelling gas coming from a room in the building and goes on to save Terry Just in Time before the sleeping pills and gas could do their work on her.
• The pre-title sequence of Lou (2022) has the title character preparing to commit suicide. As she's sitting with a rifle under her chin, we flashback a few hours showing the kidnapping of her neighbour's daughter that interrupts her suicide attempt when the mother bursts in on her wanting to use the phone to call the sheriff.
• Unbelievably, The Love Bug Herbie the Volkswagen tries to leap off the Golden Gate Bridge in despair and is hampered by the fact that his wheels just don't let him climb up very well.
• The female lead Mädchen in Uniform is heartbroken over forbidden love and tries to commit suicide, but her classmates find her in time before she can throw herself from the top of the school's staircase.
• Happens in Magnolia. Jimmy Gator attempts to shoot himself, only to be stopped by the plague of frogs. One lands on his gun, making him misfire.
• It becomes a running gag in A Man Called Otto. Otto tries to kill himself four times, but some random event interrupts him each time.
• The film The Miracle Woman has John Carson almost jumping out a window. What stops him is hearing Florence Fallon's sermon over the radio about not being a quitter.
• Mon oncle d'Amérique: Rene tries to hang himself but is saved when his landlady enters his room to tell him that his wife called.
• The 2013 movie Night Train to Lisbon is about Gregorius, a bookish professor who interrupts a woman as she is attempting to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. Their chance encounter leads Gregorius to an unusual book.
• In Office Space, the recently laid-off Tom Smikowski tries to kill himself by sitting in a running car in his garage. His wife walks in, and he "finds the will to live" (as explained by another character, although he may have been just too embarrassed at being caught), so he pretends he was on his way to the store and backs out onto the street. Where he is promptly T-boned by a fast-moving car, which lands him with multiple broken bones and with a "huge settlement," which makes him far happier than he ever was before.
• James Bond meets his wife Tracy Di Vincenzo like this in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, by stopping her from walking into the sea and drowning after the death of her child.
• Another bridge jumper is found in Pay It Forward, where the drug addict that the little boy helped out walks over the Golden Gate Bridge to see a woman about to commit suicide. He talks her out of it, offering to get a cup of coffee, anything. He asks her, "Save my life."
• In Priest (1994), Father Greg just got Forced Out of the Closet and has to face the reactions of his parish while his Crisis of Faith is also fueled by him harming someone due to inaction. When his priest colleague Father Matthew catches on, he tries to encourage Greg not to give up, on which Greg informs him placidly that he has just taken an overdose of Paracetamol pills. Father Matthew has him brought to the hospital for a gastric lavage Just in Time.
• In Sabrina, the title character turns on all the cars in her father's garage and attempts to asphyxiate herself after being rejected yet again by the man she loves, but his brother interrupts her. She gets with him in the end. Some time in between, said brother confides in Sabrina that he nearly jumped off of his office balcony after a woman broke his heart, but decided against it, after noticing children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk.
• Used in Serenity, where the scientist narrating the creation of the Reavers is attempting to commit suicide in favor of being tortured to death, but the Reavers get to her before she can pull the trigger.
• In The Shop Around the Corner, Mr. Matuaschek tries to shoot himself (offscreen) after discovering his wife's infidelity but is stopped by Pepi.
• In Shortbus, James' suicide in a public pool is interrupted by his and his boyfriend's stalker.
• Showdown in Little Tokyo. When Kenner and Murata notice that the kidnapped Minako is about to commit suicide in the bad guy's mansion, Kenner bursts into the place shooting up mooks and stops her in time.
• The entire film The Slender Thread is about a crisis phone volunteer keeping a woman talking who took an overdose of pills while others try to trace her. That was 1965, so that took some time.
• Spanking the Monkey: Ray attempts to hang himself to get out of the abusive sexual relationship with his mother. She interrupts his attempt when she notices the belt sticking out of the other side of the door.
• Still Alice has another odd version. The main character records a video when she's still lucid explaining how to kill herself, to be watched by herself when her Alzheimer's has progressed. The method of suicide is way too complex to be carried out by her at that stage of the disease. She ends up knocking the glass of pills over when her caregiver arrives.
• The Sunset Limited opens in the aftermath of White's attempted suicide where Black tackled him and stopped him from jumping in front of a subway train.
• In the opening minutes of Surviving the Game, Mason's dog and best friend die within the same day. Mason tries to kill himself by standing in the way of an oncoming truck, but a charity worker pushes him out of the way. Unfortunately, said charity worker only did that to lure Mason into a different deadly scenario...
• When Jack meets Rose in Titanic (1997), he talks her out of jumping off the ship.
  • Spoofed on The Adam and Joe Show: "You won't jump, you're the narrator!" "What if I slip off and dangle a bit?"
• Umberto D: Umberto wants to kill himself, but he has a dog, Flike. Failing to find anyone to take care of Flike, Umberto elects to step in front of a train with the dog in his arms. But the dog squeals in terror and wriggles out of Umberto's grip, distracting him and stopping him from stepping on the tracks.
• In Vertigo, Scotty saves Madeline when she tries to kill herself by jumping into San Francisco Bay. Or at least he thinks he does.
• Played for laughs in What's New Pussycat? - Dr. Fassbender (Peter Sellers), despondent over a case of unrequited lust, prepares for a Viking funeral-style suicide at the riverfront with a rowboat, two swords, kerosene, road flares, and a Norwegian flag, when Victor (Woody Allen) strolls down, sets up a table, and sits down to dinner. Striking up a conversation, he finds the doctor is a psychiatrist.
  Victor: I have some terrible emotional problems. Can you help me?
  Fassbender: You certainly picked an odd time to ask me, just in the middle of a suicide!
• With his ability to hear women's thoughts, the protagonist of What Women Want discovers that an employee is suicidal. When she doesn't show up to work one day he races to track her down, finding her home and a suicide note inside. He thinks he's too late until she walks in, very confused as to why an executive broke into her home to offer her a promotion.
• The premise of White Noise The Light is that some people who die and are resuscitated continue to interact with the dead. The protagonist's best friend gets him to the hospital in time to prevent his attempted suicide, setting off these incredibly shitty superpowers.
• Whitewash: Bruce and Paul meet when Bruce finds Paul sitting in his car, with a hose leading from the exhaust pipe to the window. Bruce pulls the hose out and tries to strike up a conversation with Paul, who is angry and wants to be left alone.
• This is a bit of running gag in Wilby Wonderful, where the citizens of Wilby continuously walk in on Dan Jarvis right as he is about to attempt suicide. In the end, Dan nearly accidentally hangs himself after he had decided not to kill himself after all — a Happily Failed Suicide.
• In The Wolverine, Wolverine stopped Yashida when, as the other generals, preferred to die with honor with his own sword instead of in the atomic explosion that was coming. Wolverine took his blade out and brought him to the pit.
• In Women on the Run, this is how the two female leads first meet each other - the protagonist is an idealistic young girl and a wushu champion from a rural village who tries making it big in the city, only to fail in her entertainment career and end up being pimped as a whore. After beating up a client for pissing in her wushu trophy, she loses her only source of income as a prostitute and was about to jump off a building when her lancer, a female cop, catches her and talks her out of it.
• Wonderwall: Oscar breaks into Penny's apartment and hides in her wardrobe. While he's there, Penny turns on the gas stove, swallows a number of pills, and lies down in her bed, waiting for death. Oscar turns off the gas, gives her CPR, and runs off to summon help. Penny is taken to the hospital, where she decides to move because her life needs a change. Freed from his obsession with her, Oscar puts on a new suit and goes back to work at the lab, where he sees Penny through the microscope.
• Used in Yes-Man, where Jim Carrey's character plays the song "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind to a guy on a ledge to stop him from killing himself.
• Casey from Mad Love (1995) ends up in a psychiatric hospital after she overdoses on sleeping pills and her parents find her unconscious in the bathroom. Her parents, who don't yet realize she's mentally ill, think she's doing it to get back at them for setting rules.
• In Too Soon to Love, Cathy attempts suicide by running into the ocean. Jim runs after her, holds her head above water, and drags her ashore.

Folklore

• There's an Urban Legend about a pastor at the Almighty God Tabernacle who dials a wrong number from the church. Later he discovers the number belonged to a man who was about to kill himself when the phone rang, with the caller ID reading "ALMIGHTY GOD".
• Another urban legend (one that's ridiculous since it's the type that no one could possibly know about if it really had happened): A man's business is about to go under or something, and his last hope is a phone call that's supposed to come by five o'clock and will tell him he's not bankrupt after all. Five o'clock comes and goes, and no phone call, so he goes up to the roof and jumps off... and as he passes his own window, the phone is ringing.

Literature

• Fox Demon Cultivation Manual: Before the novel starts, Rong Bai got sick of immortality and dispersed his soul, meaning he's Secretly Dying. When Song Ci finds out he goes back in time to prevent Rong Bai dying.
• In Dragon Bones, Tosten's attempt to commit suicide is interrupted by his brother Ward, who bandages his arms, puts him on a horse, and rides off to a different city, where he gets Tosten a safe place to stay. As he was Driven to Suicide by their abusive father, Tosten lives in relative happiness once he's away from the man.
• In Durarara!!, Rio Kamichika makes a suicide pact with Izaya Orihara, who gives her a Breaking Speech for having second thoughts (not that he ever intended to kill himself, either way). This drives Rio to actually jump off the building in an attempt to spite Izaya, only to be saved at the last second by Celty, who gives her encouraging words before taking her leave.
• The protagonist of Piers Anthony's On a Pale Horse is about to commit suicide when he's interrupted by The Grim Reaper, showing up in time to collect his soul. Face to face with mortality, he turns the gun upon and shoots Death, and then Fate shows up and tells him "Congratulations, you're the new Death."
• The Princess Bride includes a scene in which the heroine, believing her love interest to be dead, is about to plunge a dagger into her heart... until said love interest appears and rebukes her for trying to ruin a perfectly good pair of breasts.
  "There's a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a shame to ruin yours."
• Subverted in a Gothic novel titled The Sorrows of Satan (1895), in which one character comes out as a villain by coming across another clearly about to commit suicide, and responding "Pardon me! I had no idea you were busy! I will go away. I would not disturb you for the world!"
• In The Doll, when Wokulski decides to kill himself by standing in a way of an oncoming train, he's pulled to safety at the last second by a man he helped once, to his sorrow. Later, he tells the man to never save any suicidal person again - even though it seems that he didn't try to kill himself again. Or maybe he did.
• The very first Raffles story, "The Ides of March", starts with the narrator, Bunny Manders, on the verge of financial ruin and disgrace; he asks his old friend Raffles for money; when Raffles explains he has none, Bunny attempts to kill himself in front of the other man, at which point Raffles stops him and offers him a job.
• One of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct crime novels begins with Detective Carella trying to dissuade a woman from committing suicide by jumping off a building. Unfortunately, he fails and she jumps anyway.
• The short story The Horsedealer's Daughter has a doctor save the titular character from drowning herself and ends up more or less trapped into marrying her due to the circumstances — It Makes Sense in Context.
• In the In Death book Innocent in Death, the au pair walks in to find that her employer has consumed sleeping pills. Her daughter was the one who slipped her the pills and framed it to look like a suicide.
• Played extremely darkly in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: every time the characters try to commit suicide, AM forcefully intervenes. Because he wants to keep torturing them for eternity.
• The main characters of Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down meet when they all plan to jump from the same building on the same night.
• Discworld:
  • Parodied in The Truth; the main character climbs up to talk down a man who, as it turns out, is "really more into the 'cry for help' aspect" and ends up having to save him when he faints from vertigo.
  • Also subverted in The Science of Discworld, when Rincewind finds a fish crawling onto the beach. Not realizing it's another evolutionary breakthrough in progress, he assumes it's committing suicide and repeatedly puts it back in the water.
• In The Great Brain, Andy Anderson decides he's useless after losing his leg and, with John's help, decides to kill himself. Tom walks in on their unsuccessful attempt at hanging and assumes at first that they're only playing. Tom ends up offering to teach Andy how to play and do his chores with his peg leg. For a price, of course.
• Bouvard And Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert sees the title characters attempt to commit suicide, only to interrupt each other when they realise that they haven't yet written their wills. Overlaps slightly with Bungled Suicide.
• In "Simon's Papa'', Simon goes to the river intending to drown himself, but he gets distracted by various creatures. However, the thought recurs, and he tries to say a prayer beforehand. However, he can't finish for sobbing. Luckily, his grief attracts the attention of the local blacksmith, Phillip Remy, who takes him home to his mother.
• Edward Cullen of The Twilight Saga attempts this in New Moon when he thinks his beloved Bella Swan is dead. He is saved by Bella herself.
• The third Night Huntress book has a straight example, during the scene where Cat thinks Bones is dead and is considering jumping off a cliff, only to have Vlad show up to talk her down and resolve her continuing identity crisis all in one.
• Vorkosigan Saga:
  • In Barrayar, Cordelia interrupts Kou, when he is about to slit his throat with the sword she had acquired for him. He tries to pretend that he wasn't serious about it.
  • Part of Miles' backstory is an attempted suicide when he was fifteen, which was interrupted by Sergeant Bothari.
• In Havana Bay, one of the sequels to Gorky Park, Inspector Arkady Renko decides to commit suicide with a stolen syringe in Cuba after confirming that a body found in the harbor was an old friend of his^note This being basically the end of a string of particularly tragic misfortune for him. However, it seems that his arrival in Cuba led some conspirators to believe that he was onto them, so they sent an assassin after him. Who he reflexively kills with the stolen syringe, distracting him from his death wish as he tries to find out why someone wanted to kill him.
  All you had to do was wait.
• Arto Paasilinna's novel Hurmaava joukkoitsemurha ("The Amazing Group Suicide", more or less) starts with one of the protagonists about to hang himself in an out-of-the-way abandoned barn when he's interrupted by the other main character... who's come there to shoot himself. While telling each other their stories, they come up with the idea of starting a society for people who want to kill themselves, hiring a bus, and going on a road trip first. Hilarity Ensues, literally: it's one of the funniest works in Finnish literature. (Ending spoiler: Everybody Lives.)
• A lot of the stories in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series deal with this. Given what the series is like overall, these tend to be of the happily interrupted sort.
• Buy Mitsui, in Jennifer Government. He calls the titular character for help after he first pulled the trigger because he does not know how to work the safety on the gun. They wind up in a relationship that pretty thoroughly removes any of his suicidal inclinations.
• In Enchantress from the Stars, Elana, the main protagonist, is captured by imperials should be subjected to mind-probing. Not wanting to divulge anything, she runs toward the imperial rock-chewer, intent to be crushed by the debris. However, Georyn rescues her by stopping the whole load of rocks in mid-air using telekinesis. This also scares the imperials into running.
• In The Merry Muse, a Scottish poet attempts to jump off a bridge but is saved by the (rather forcible) intervention of an English tourist. The poet then files charges for assault against the tourist... and the charges are upheld because under Scots law suicide isn't a criminal act; therefore the "rescuer" was actually committing a criminal assault!
• In Before I Fall, after dying, Sam is forced to relive her last day on earth in a "Groundhog Day" Loop. In one loop, she sees Juliet about to jump in front of a car and temporarily stalls her, only for Juliet to jump in the road when Sam isn't looking. In the final loop, Sam jumps in front of Juliet and dies instead.
• Five Weeks in a Balloon: When the heroes are stranded in the desert without anything to drink, Dick eventually goes insane and tries to shoot himself. Joe manages to wrestle the rifle away from him.
• Robert Sheckley's The Minimum Man starts with Anton's suicide preparations being interrupted by an acceptance letter from a prospective employer. Turns out, it's their way of hiring people for a high-risk job — watching the candidates and making an offer at just the right moment. Later Anton is frequently reminded that he chose the job of an explorer/guinea pig/canary over suicide. The survivors are well-rewarded, though.
• In Another Note, Beyond Birthday (under the pseudonym Rue Ryuuzaki) immolates himself. Naomi Misora blasts him with the fire extinguisher in the condo where it happened, and gets a neighbor to call 911 before placing BB under arrest for the murders of three people, including a 13-year-old girl.
• In the first chapter of Fat Kid Rules the World Troy is contemplating jumping in front of a subway train. He imagines how "humorous" the scene would be considering his size. Curt stops him from doing so when he makes small talk with him, though Troy insists he wasn't going to do it.
• In Cherry Wilder's short story "Point of Departure", a side story to the Torin series, a group of people make a suicide pact in despair over and protest against the direction their society is going. Just as they're about to carry it out, a friend arrives with news of the events in the main plotline of the series, and they realize there's still hope for the future and a role for them in it. One member of the pact, who is old and in ill health, dies anyway.
• The Way of Kings (2010): When Kaladin is made a bridgeman, he keeps getting more and more depressed as he realizes there is no escape. Syl, his Spirit Adviser, leaves him to try and find something to cheer him up, which of course just makes him more depressed. He goes to Honor Chasm to kill himself and is stepping out into the void when Syl returns... carrying a few leaves of the deadliest poisons in the world. She has no idea what it is, just that he seemed to get more depressed when he lost the leaves. Kaladin throws away the poison but steps away from the chasm a new man.
• Star Wars: Lost Stars: Ciena tries to kill herself by flying her Star Destroyer into Jakku. Thane prevents her from doing it.
• In An Unkindness of Ghosts, Giselle attempts suicide by burning down Aster's arboretum with herself in it. She's rescued by Theo, who thought she was Aster. If he'd known who she was, he would have let her die quickly, knowing she's scheduled for a Public Execution.
• Russ from Asperger Sunset impulsively cut his wrist three months ago because of his grief over his parents' deaths. Misty found him in the garage and took him to the Meadow View Mental Health Facility, where he recovered.
• The Han Solo Trilogy: Bria briefly contemplates suicide looking over the edge of a turbolift on Coruscant and realizing how easy it would be to fall off, then she'd no longer have to suffer from her addiction, before Han pulled her back.
• Air Awakens: In his Back Story young prince Aldrik tried to kill himself by cutting his veins but his servants burst into his room just in time.
• Pilgrennon's Children: When Gamma was a child in an abusive mental hospital, she broke out of her room at night, went into the bathroom, and attempted suicide by cutting her wrists with a disposable razor. She was found by a staff member before she lost consciousness.
• The Roosevelt: In Carry the Ocean, Jeremey's parents prevent him from seeing his boyfriend Emmet for days. Eventually he becomes convinced that Emmet never really liked him and only continues to text him out of pity, so he decides to commit suicide via car exhaust. He texts Emmet goodbye, then smashes his phone so Emmet won't be able to text back. Emmet shows the texts to his mom, who calls 911. The paramedics arrive just as Jeremey is losing consciousness.
• In Sanctuary, Holly stays awake for days, partly because of her huge amounts of homework and partly because of the ghost eater's attacks. When she's too exhausted to study for a biology exam, she's convinced that she'll fail, and because she sees her academic ability as her only redeeming quality, she attempts suicide by overdosing on pills. Theo sees her bent over the toilet surrounded by empty pill packets and runs to fetch the adults. Morgan gives her glasses of warm salt water to make her throw up all the pills. Vinnie decides to keep her at home and put her on Suicide Watch instead of taking her to the hospital for fear that the doctors will return her to her Abusive Parents.
• The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War: Not long after the war begins, Yasmine tries to overdose on pills. Adam finds her half-conscious and vomiting. Their father takes her to the hospital, which hasn't yet become severely overcrowded.
• Sword Art Online: At the very climax of Alicization, Kirito lost his will to live during his Journey to the Center of the Mind moment and attempted to commit suicide, but Eugeo's memory fragment snapped him out of it and convinced him to wake up and fight back.
• Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World has an odd example. After the death of her aunt Isabelle, Karen decides to commit suicide by diving to the bottom of the ocean and waiting for her oxygen tank to run out. She passes out, then suddenly wakes up, suffering from Mid-Suicide Regret. Her tank is almost empty now, and she doesn't have the strength to swim to the surface. Then she sees a beautiful angel swimming towards her, and when she touches it, her whole body feels electrified. The angel takes her hand and lifts her to safety. As she rises, she realizes what actually happened: she was shocked by a jellyfish, which her hypoxic brain saw as an angel, and which is now trying to flee from her as she holds onto it. She lets the jellyfish go and swims the rest of the way to the surface with the last of her strength.
• The Mermaid of Black Conch: When Aycayia starts to transform back into a mermaid, she decides to commit suicide by hanging herself with a vine rather than return to the loneliness of the sea. David finds her and cuts her down. When Aycayia wakes up, she asks David to let her die. He doesn't, but he wonders if he made the right decision by saving her.
• Rubbernecker: After Patrick solves the murder, he comes home to find a note from his mother Sarah that says that things have been 'very difficult' for her, tells him where to find her will, asks for his forgiveness, and tells him to take care of her cat Ollie. Confused, Patrick shows the note to Weird Nick, who tells him it's a suicide note. Sarah has told Patrick that she once considered jumping off of Penyfan, so Patrick and Weird Nick drive there. When they arrive, Weird Nick realises that he's still wearing slippers, so Patrick climbs the mountain by himself. He finds Sarah sitting near the summit. She couldn't bring herself to jump, so she decided to sit there until she died of hypothermia. Patrick talks her into letting him help her hike back instead. Halfway down the mountain they're met by a rescue team called by Weird Nick.
• In Small Persons with Wings, Mellie's parents drink the moonstone elixir, which reveals every Awful Truth about themselves. The effects of the elixir combined with Fidius's encouragement cause them to decide to jump off the roof of the inn. Hundreds of Parvi Pennati fly up with a pink blanket to catch them, then lift them back onto the roof. Luckily, the elixir wears off a minute later, preventing any further attempts.
• Attempted in Dolphin Song. The dolphin Shara beaches herself so she can guide her son Speckle, who was killed by a fishing net, to the great ocean beyond the waves. The human Melody finds her half-dead on the beach and uses her towel to keep her wet. Then John finds them and helps Melody carry Shara back into the water. But by that point it's too late, and Shara dies soon after.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Part of Tim Linton's backstory includes a little-described incident where he gassed the dining hall. In volume 10, we get the full story: He came to Kimberly Magic Academy in a really bad headspace due to his Abusive Parents, and when Kimberly seemed just as screwed-up as what he'd escaped from, he gassed the Fellowship as an attempted Murder-Suicide. Alvin Godfrey waded into the gas, pulled him out, and got his head straightened out, and he's been in love with the man ever since.

Live-Action TV

• The Glamorous Imperial Concubine: Su Yao attempts suicide after being revealed as a spy. Mo Chou grabs the knife before she can stab herself.
• The Devil Judge: Ga-on tries to kill himself and Professor Min. Yo-han arrives and defuses the bomb just in time.
• The Eternal Love: Jing Xin walks in while Tan Er is preparing to kill herself.
• Mouse (2021): Ba-reum is about to jump off a bridge when he's interrupted by his phone ringing.
• Psychopath Diary: A variant. Dong-sik plans to commit suicide but is too scared to do it. So when he sees a car arrive at the building he uses the possibility of being caught to convince himself to go home.
• General and I: Yang Feng tries to hang herself. Bai Ping Ting arrives just in time to stop her.
• In season 5 of 24, Jack shoots the gun out of the hand of a terrorist who was about to shoot himself, only for the terrorist to crawl over to the body of one of his men and use his explosive-wired vest to do the job. Later that season, Charles Logan is about to commit suicide with his own personal firearm after he thinks that his part in the grand conspiracy is about to be exposed. Cue a call from a mysterious benefactor...
• Game of Thrones: Tywin breaking the door in "Blackwater" stops Cersei from proceeding in suicide with her son Tommen, because she was convinced the city would fall to the unflappable Stannis.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • In "Need", Daniel Jackson did this to Shyla and ended up addicted to the sarcophagus.
  • And in "The Light", Daniel is the character trying to jump after becoming addicted to an alien light show. Jack O'Neill talks him off the apartment balcony, in a touching scene in an otherwise one-off episode.
• In an episode of Once Upon a Time, Ruby uses her werewolf speed/strength to physically catch Dr. Whale/Dr. Frankenstein right after he jumps, and then talks him out of trying again.
• Psych: Shawn's father stops a woman from jumping out a window to her death. However, Shawn and Gus (who don't actually see what happened) think she succeeded in killing herself and end up starting an urban legend that persists for the next twenty years.
• The Torchwood episode "A Day in the Death" features Dr. Owen Harper telling the story of the past few days to a young woman while trying to talk her out of killing herself. "The past few days" happen to include Owen coming to terms with his undeath.
• Battlestar Galactica:
  • Subverted: Boomer is about to shoot herself because she suspects she's a Cylon. She's interrupted by Baltar, who knows she's a Cylon, and subtly encourages her suicide.
  • Subverted again in the fourth season. Cally discovers that her husband, Tyrol, is a Cylon, and is so distraught that she takes her baby son and is about to space herself. She is then interrupted by Tory, who talks her down, takes her baby, and then beats her unconscious before spacing Cally herself.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • One episode has Worf attempting to perform a ritualistic form of assisted suicide on his disgraced brother to restore his honor, only to be stopped just after the dagger is plunged into his brother's heart by Dax, who learned he had accosted Quark for trying to sell him replicated versions of an incense necessary for the ritual. Near the end of the same episode, Worf interrupts his brother, who is prepared to kill himself with a disruptor (claiming that while it would be a dishonorable death, he would still be with other Klingons in Gre'thor).
    • In "Hard Time", O'Brien nearly kills himself after being given false memories of a twenty-year prison sentence in which he killed his imaginary cellmate. Bashir intervenes, convincing him that he is still a good man.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Back when Worf was still chief of security on the Enterprise, he tried to commit ritual suicide with a Klingon dagger in his quarters, as he was afraid he was losing his mind and preferred death to dishonor. Luckily, Troi had noticed Worf suddenly leaving the Bridge and followed him to his quarters where she talked him out of it. ("Night Terrors").
    • Yet another time on Worf (AGAIN!). In "Ethics" he has been injured in an accident that leaves him paralyzed and wants Riker's help in committing ritual suicide as Klingons consider it dishonorable to live crippled. (One wonders whether word of this conversation ever got back to Geordi LaForge, the ship's blind chief engineer.) Riker refuses to help, reminding Worf of all of the friends they watched die and how they fought all the way, and that Klingon tradition demands that Worf's son Alexander strike the fatal blow. Worf agrees to try a risky surgery instead. He got better.
• Lost:
  • In the episode "Through the Looking Glass" Jack is stopped from jumping off a bridge when a car crashes, forcing him to come to the rescue. The events of season 4 strongly suggest that the island itself has arranged this, as Michael's suicide attempts in "Meet Kevin Johnson" are repeatedly thwarted. In an ironic twist, Jack finds out that the only reason the car crashed is that the driver was distracted by seeing Jack on the bridge.
  • In a much darker twist in season 5, Locke attempts to hang himself but is interrupted by Ben, who talks him out of it. This is all fine and good until something Locke says causes Ben to snap, and he suddenly strangles Locke to death and makes it look like suicide.
  • In season 3, Desmond, alone in the Swan station and stranded on the island for six years, was shown to have been about to commit suicide when he was interrupted by Locke banging on the hatch.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In "Earshot" Buffy arrives just in time to stop Jonathan from killing himself, even though that wasn't exactly why she was there.
  • In "Doomed", Spike is about to fling himself onto a stake in Xander's basement when Xander and Willow stop him, leading to some very pithy Whedon dialogue. Specifically, Spike was wearing a shirt he borrowed from Xander, and Xander didn't want Spike to ruin it by dusting himself.
  • In "Amends" Buffy talks Angel out of killing himself (with some help from a Deus ex Machina).
  • In Angel. After coming out of his own fit of depression (due to trying to lose his soul and failing), Angel stops Kate from killing herself with pills.
  • Subverted and Played for Laughs when Cordelia and Doyle see Angel in his office holding a stake and rush in to stop what they assume is his imminent suicide. It turns out he was using it to level his desk.
  • At the end of series 4, Connor proves that he hasn't completely snapped by talking a cop suffering from Jasmine withdrawal out of shooting himself. Then he learns that the cop has a wife and kids, and "didn't think" about what his death would do to them. That does the trick - Connor beats him to a pulp and has a complete breakdown.
• Desperate Housewives: Edie tries to set this up, waiting until right as Carlos got back to the house to hang herself so that he'd be able to save her. Then the "Just in Time" arrival gets interrupted, and she has to scramble to get herself to safety, as she never really intended to die.
  • Then in season eight, Bree checks into a motel with the intention of shooting herself. She is inadvertently saved by Renee, who followed her under the assumption that Bree was having an affair with her boyfriend.
• It's a recurring gag in Scrubs, where depressed hospital attorney Ted is constantly seen attempting suicide. Most times he lacks the will to carry through, but there are occasions when he is interrupted by outside interference. Subverted in the times when Dr. Kelso (aware of Ted's weakness) openly mocks Ted by explicitly encouraging Ted to kill himself. In one instance, he manages to slip over the edge. His joy is squashed when he lands in soft, soft trash.
  Ted: Is this heaven?
  Janitor: No, it's garbage.
• Burn Notice, "Do No Harm": Michael stops a man from throwing himself into traffic. It turns out the man wanted the insurance money for his terminally ill son.
• Heroes:
  • In a flashback in the episode "Villains," Elle arrives just in time to keep Gabriel from hanging himself out of guilt.
  • In a later episode, Hiro spends the better part of the episode going back in time to prevent a fired co-worker from making the mistake that sends his life downhill, thus driving him to suicide. After 47 attempts in which the man still repeats the mistake (getting drunk and photocopying his butt) every time, Hiro just talks him out of it.
• Subverted in a highly emotional scene in Cracker when Panhandle talks to Jimmy Beck when he's on the roof. Given that he raped her, the whole confrontation is rather shocking. He goes through with it.
  Beck: I raped you. I'm so sorry. [Beat, then he jumps]
• This has happened a few times in House. In the 3rd season episode "Informed Consent," the suicidal elderly patient falls out of bed with his nasal cannula wrapped around his neck but is saved by an unsuspecting nurse.
• In the new show Flash Forward, Bryce was about to commit suicide when he (and the rest of the world) blacked out. He considers the visions of the future he got a gift that stops him from trying again.
• CSI: Miami has a tearful episode where a boy is stopped from hanging himself after being horribly bullied at school.
• In the Remington Steele episode "Steele in Circulation", Steele starts the episode pulling a guy down off a bridge... and then has to spend most of the rest of it averting his attempts to walk into traffic and fling himself off roofs until an attempt on the man's life gets him indignant enough to stop.
• In the first episode of Uncle, Andy is about to commit suicide when he gets a telephone call from his sister Sam, asking him to pick up her son Errol from football practice.
• In the season 1 finale of Veronica Mars, Logan is standing on a bridge, obviously considering jumping, when Weevil and his gang show up. Since he is in the later seasons, the interruption seems to have saved him. They beat the snot out of him, though.
• The Wire Guilt-ridden over the death of Sherrod, Bubbles tries to hang himself in the BPD Homicide interrogation room. Norris and Landsman return in time to cut him down.
• On an episode of NCIS, Gibbs has just managed to talk a would-be jumper into coming off the roof he was on... when he's shot and killed by a sniper. Of course, this was in the opening scene, they needed the guy to die for the sake of having a story.
• Played for Laughs in an episode of Coupling: Jane announces to Susan and Sally that she's taken an overdose of painkillers, and they desperately try to get her to vomit. Then it turns out that she only took two painkillers. And then it turns out they probably weren't painkillers...
  Susan: That's not an overdose. That's a dose!
  Jane: It says you should only take two every eight hours. I don't know how people have the time to commit suicide.
• Happened on the first episode of (the original) Life On Mars. In despair over finding himself stuck in 1973 Manchester and wanting desperately to return to the present day (2006), Sam Tyler climbs onto the roof of the police headquarters, fully intending to jump. Annie Cartwright, the WPC with a degree in psychology, tries to talk him down and her words do reach him, but what ultimately convinces him to quit is noticing some grains of sand on Annie's hand (from when she was climbing up to save him). Thinking that amount of detail could never be conceived in his own mind, he takes her words to heart and climbs down with her.
• Happened in Beverly Hills, 90210 Episode 1.18: "April Is the Cruelest Month". Roger Azarian writes a screenplay that leads Brandon Walsh to believe he wants to kill his father. As Roger points the gun to his face, this is clearly not the case and he talks him out of it. In hindsight, on two occasions Roger had mentioned "not being there anymore". The episode ends with Brandon visiting Roger in the Psych ward and incredibly cheesy friendship music playing.
• Subversion on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: A half-naked Will and Carlton find themselves standing on a window ledge on one of the top floors of an apartment building (it's a long story) and almost immediately after, someone on the street below calls attention to them. Soon there's a huge crowd gathered below, including police, and a man in a cherry-picker who tells them not to jump because they have so much to live for. Will irritably tries to explain they're not jumpers, but his explanation falls on deaf ears.
• Glee had Dave Karofsky's father interrupt his suicide after he hanged himself but before he died. There was a very devastating scene of him cradling his son crying after getting him down. Karofsky did survive and, in the end, had a Heel–Face Turn.
• The Class (2006)
  • The series opens with Richie standing at the sink with a handful of sleeping pills and a glass of water. The phone rings, and it's played for comedy as he decides whether to answer or not. He does and is invited to a party with his entire second grade class from 25 years ago.
  • Happens to the same guy in the next episode. He'd be a lovely young lady at the party, they had coffee, fell in love, and he backed over her in the parking lot, breaking her legs. The episode opens with him at the sink again, only this time, he swallows the pills before the phone rings. She's out of surgery and wants to see him, so he goes to the hospital but gets his stomach pumped before he goes to her room.
• An episode of the Russian medical sitcom Interns has the American intern Phil Richards come to work only to see a guy about to jump from the ward window with everybody just looking at him. Phil attempts to talk to him and ends up grabbing him. Everybody cheers for a second and goes about their business. As the episode continues, he gets more frustrated with everybody treating this as anything from uneventful to bad press (the hospital administrator specifically tells him to keep it to himself in order to avoid putting the hospital in a bad light). As usual, Phil loudly laments that back in the States he would be treated as a hero for saving a life and that Russia is a screwed-up country where people don't care about one another. In fact, his fellow interns tell him he should've let the guy jump. After all, it's only a second-story window. At worst, the guy would've broken a leg and would be transferred to another department.
• This sort of happens in "Rendevous With Yesterday", the pilot of The Time Tunnel. Tony finds Althea Hall just sitting, waiting to go down with the Titanic because she feels she isn't worthy to take a place on a lifeboat due to the fact that she has a brain tumor and will die soon anyway. Tony is luckily able to talk her out of this before the ship goes down and he also manages to put her on a lifeboat.
  Tony: Althea, what are you doing? The ship is sinking!
  Althea: It doesn't matter for me.
• A fugitive in Justified jumps out of Raylan's car and kneels in front of a truck, but Raylan tackles him at the last second.
• In an Alternate Timeline episode of Misfits, a bungled attempt to time travel and kill Hitler leads to the Nazis taking over Europe, including the UK. However, the storm that gave all of them their powers still happens. Seth's Super-Empowering abilities are being used to empower high-ranking Nazi officials. Kelly walks in on him hanging himself and ends up saving his life. This ends up being a problem because Kelly is part of La Résistance and was supposed to poison him.
• Babylon 5: Implied in "The Geometry of Shadows". Garibaldi has been recently brought out of a coma, three months after he nearly died trying (and failing) to prevent the assassination of President Santiago. The new commander, Captain Sheridan, enters Garibaldi's quarters and finds him repeatedly loading and unloading his pistol. Garibaldi puts the gun down when Sheridan wants to talk with him, and at the end of the conversation, Sheridan picks up the gun and places it back in its holster.
  Sheridan: The universe doesn't give us points for doing the easy things.
• Flashpoint: Potential suicide is one of the types of emergencies the SRU is trained to handle. They're pretty good at it.
• In the Korean Drama Boys Before Flowers, the action is kicked off by this trope. The protagonist Geum Jan-Di (the Korean "Tsukushi Makino") tries to convince a rich boy to not drive his car off a cliff after he breaks from being bullied into insanity at school, and that's what gets her a scholarship at that same school.
• In Healer, the first half of the plot kicks off when reporter heroine Chae Young Shin talks a woman down from a rooftop. The woman in question is a small-time actress who was being forced into prostitution by her company superiors.
• Near the end of the first episode of The Last Man on Earth, Phil tries to crash his truck into a rock face out of loneliness. Just before he's about to impact the rock, he spots the smoke from a campfire and stops.
• One episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit had Olivia saving a pregnant rape victim who was trying to jump off a ledge. However, it turns out she wasn't really raped, and the suicide "attempt" was actually her way of trying to get the police's attention so she'd have leverage to shake down her baby's father.
• In Season 6 of Downton Abbey, Thomas tries to kill himself by cutting his wrists. Luckily, he's found in time by Baxter.
• Played with in the Enemy at the Door episode "Steel Hand From the Sea". A disillusioned German officer goes to a remote beach and ponders committing suicide by throwing himself down onto the wave-washed rocks. He's interrupted by the arrival of two locals who have chosen the same remote location for a secret meeting — one of whom promptly knocks him off onto the rocks to prevent him from reporting them to the authorities.
• Total Recall 2070:
  • When Detectives Hume and Farve are walking the streets, they get into an emergency involving a woman threatening to jump off a building. She commits suicide right in front of Hume, who fails to talk her down.
  • Later in the series, David Hume's wife Olivia is driven to suicide by people who want to stop her from testifying for a murder that she saw someone else commit. David catches her in time and gets her to throw up the pills she swallowed.
• Midnight Caller: In "The Loneliest Number," Jack's sister Katie tries to swallow a fistful of pills after her relationship with Deacon fails since she thinks she'll never be able to be in a relationship without immediately screwing it up. Jack and Deacon find her at the last minute and knock the pills out of her hand.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Falling Star", Melissa McCammon's suicide attempt was interrupted - thus altering history - when the consciousness of Rachel Connors, an avid fan of hers from the future, entered her body.
• The Twilight Zone:
  • The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Printer's Devil", depressed by the impending closure of The Dansburg Courier, Douglas Winter is about to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge until he unwittingly summons the Devil, who offers his services as a reporter and linotype operator under the name Mr. Smith.
  • The Twilight Zone (1985):
    • In "Tooth and Consequences", the severely depressed dentist Dr. Myron Mandel is about to hang himself from the light fixture in his office when an attractive patient named Lydia Bixby enters looking for her lost hairbrush. Feeling as if he has nothing to lose, Myron asks Lydia out but she turns him down as she usually dates lawyers and pilots. After she leaves, Myron tries to hang himself again but the light fixture breaks. He falls into the arms of the Tooth Fairy.
    • In "A Saucer of Loneliness", Margaret is extremely depressed, as she is being continually harassed to reveal the contents of the message given to her by the Flying Saucer so she tries to drown herself in the sea. However, she is stopped by a man who had been looking for her as he had found the copy of the message that she placed in a bottle.
• In the Emergency! "Understanding," a woman calls Rampart from her home, saying she swallowed some downers and turned on the gas, and just wants someone to talk to while she dies. The doctors rush to find her address, complete with a Phone-Trace Race, so paramedics and a fire truck can be dispatched to her house to save her and deal with a possible gas explosion.
• Control Z: Gerry is clearly contemplating shooting himself when he's interrupted by a text telling him the hacker's identity.
• Riverdale: In "The Sweet Hereafter", Cheryl Blossom attempts to kill herself by standing on thin ice and hammering at it under she falls through. Archie manages to pull her out and resuscitate her.
• A French Village: Jean comes home and finds Eliane tried to hang herself in guilt at Josephine's death. He saves her though before it's too late.
• Pandora: Pilar is just barely stopped when she's about to jump off the roof after being driven into depression through an abusive simulation Sarika trapped her in.
• Farscape: In "Promises", Aeryn holds a blaster pistol to her temple and tells the Villain of the Week (who wants to kill her for assassinating one of their own) that she'll kill herself if they let the rest of the crew go. Before she can pull the trigger, Rygel rams into her from behind on his hover-throne and knocks the blaster out of her hand.
• Probe's "Quit-It": Ten minutes into the episode, Austin sees a pair of kids tell off their fathers. Mr Strawn is told to suck an egg and Mr Baxton is told to shoot himself. He doesn't pay much attention at first, but then he notices Strawn sucking a raw egg and runs to find Baxton before it's too late.
• Death in Paradise: A very dark version occurs in "Pirates of the Murder Scene". A woman is Driven to Suicide by her abusive husband. As she plans to throw herself off the local lighthouse. Her husband arrives to stop her from jumping. In the subsequent struggles, she pushes him over the railing to his death.
• Misfits: Abbie tries to kill herself by overdosing with pills when Laura rejects her, while Jess stops it.
• The Outpost: After breaking his conditioning by the Prime Order, Garret was overridden with guilt that even led to him becoming suicidal for a brief moment before Gwynn stopped him.
• Intergalactic: Ash is stopped right before killing herself via airlock evacuation by Candy.
• In the season sixth premiere of The Shield, upon learning that he killed his friend Lem over a misunderstanding, Shane is so guilt-ridden that he plans to stick his gun in his mouth, only to be interrupted by the arrival of his fiancee and their child. Unfortunately, this ends up leading to more tragedies.
• Two Sentence Horror Stories: In "Teeth", heartbroken by Cara's rejection, Olivia tries to commit suicide by stepping into the sunlight, but Cara, having had a change of heart, pulls her back before she's burned alive.
• Wild Bill: In "Piano Man" Bill arrives just in time to find Si's hanged himself inside his cell and save him.
• Accused (2023): In "Jack's Story", Jack stops Clara just as she tries to hang herself, coming Just in Time.
• The Power (2023): Eve stops Savannah, another young woman who she meets at the convent, from jumping to her death.
• Totally Completely Fine: The plot of this series consists of a woman named Vivian inheriting a house from her grandfather. It turns out that the house is by a cliff which is a common suicide site, and thus, Vivian needs to regularly talk people out of jumping to their deaths.
• Yellowjackets:
  • In the first season finale Natalie is about to shoot herself, when Lottie's cult followers abduct her in the nick of time.
  • In "Burial", Coach Ben tries to end things by walking off a ledge. The Sociopath Misty, of all people, manages to talk that person out of their plans.

Manhwa

• The Breaker. Protagonist Shiwoon goes to the school roof to jump off, which is also where two of his teachers have decided to— ahem.

Music

• Rammstein:
  • Inverted in "Spring," which tells the story of a man who climbs onto a bridge to admire the view, and is mistaken for a suicide jumper. A crowd forms and starts demanding that he jump from the bridge until at the climax the singer sneaks up behind the man and kicks him off the bridge, "redeeming" him from the shame of losing his courage to jump.
  • Subverted in their video for "Benzin." In it, the keyboardist, Flake, plays a jumper, and the other band members, who are playing firemen, pull out a trampoline to catch Flake and stop him from killing himself. Except just as the video was ending, the trampoline tarp tore apart. And Flake had already jumped.
• Subverted in the video for John Waite's "Change," in which a reporter tries to talk a woman down off the ledge of a high building. He fails, and she jumps, but the last shots reveal that she's fine: they're just filming a movie scene.
• They Might Be Giants' "Memo To Human Resources" takes place after one of these, from the point-of-view of the interrupted.
  Then the people came to talk me down
  And I got some advice
  Then the people came to talk me down
  But I don't need advice, I'm down
• The protagonist of Collective Soul's "The World I Know" video climbs up to a rooftop to jump. Just before he can jump, a pigeon lands in his hand and he changes his mind.
• The video for "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" by Billy Joel begins with a depressed young man about to jump off a bridge when he is stopped by a gust of wind and an angel, played by Billy, playing a bit of "Piano Man" on the harmonica to get his attention. Billy successfully saves the man in the end
• "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind is about the singer trying to stop a friend from killing themself. Depending on how the song is interpreted, the other person might literally be on a ledge, making it also an example of Talking Down the Suicidal:
  I wish you would step up off that ledge, my friend
  You could cut ties with all the lies that you've been living in
  And if you do not want to see me again, I would understand

Tabletop Games

• Pathfinder: Iconic paladin Seelah was living on the streets as an orphan when she stole a paladin's helmet to pay for food, only to see the paladin suffer a mortal head injury defending the city from a gnoll raid. Seelah tried to climb onto the paladin's funeral pyre but was stopped by her comrades, who took her in and led her to join the fallen Acemi's paladin order herself.

Theater

• An unnamed Avenue Q character is stopped from jumping by the main characters shouting "Don't do it!"
• The climax of the Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music has seminary student/Emo Teen Henrick almost hanging himself before being interrupted by his stepmother Anne... who is so moved by his desperation that she starts making out with him and they run off together. This isn't as Squick-y as it sounds: Anne is eighteen years old (Henrick is twenty), still a virgin, and married to a fortysomething man who clearly has feelings for someone else. Okay, it's squicky, but not for the usual reasons.
• Subverted in Spring Awakening when Ilse unknowingly interrupts Moritz's suicide attempt — only to have him go ahead with it as soon as she leaves
• Older Than Radio: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Die Zauberflöte uses it twice, with Pamina and then Papageno on the verge of killing themselves.
• Played for Comedy in Georg Büchner's play Leonce And Lena - with a direct Shout-Out and/or Take That! to The Sorrows of Young Werther.
• Taken to its extreme in the Morris Panych play 7 Stories, where the nameless protagonist is consistently interrupted by the residents of the 7th-story building he is about to jump from. The entire play revolves around his attempts to jump before being interrupted by yet another resident, too caught up in their own lives to question his being there.
• In Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular, Eva spends the entirety of the second act attempting to kill herself in various ways, only to get interrupted each time. Hilarity Ensues.
• In the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado, the protagonist Nanki-Poo is persuaded not to commit suicide by instead volunteering to be executed in a month.
• The basis of Anthony Pezzula's one-act play Room 12. A young adult, Erik, checks himself into a hotel room with the idea of committing suicide by shooting himself. A maid does her best to talk him out of it and by the end of the play, gets Erik to give her the bullets and leaves him for the night. However, he has more stashed under his pillow. The play ends before we know if Erik decided ultimately to shoot himself or not.
• In Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust attempts suicide by poison in the first act but is stopped by the bells ringing outside, celebrating Easter.
• In The Good Person of Szechwan, the protagonist Shen Te meets a destitute young man who is planning to hang himself. She falls in love with him and persuades him to keep living (though as it turns out she might have been much better off if she'd just left him to it).
• In Madame Butterfly, just as the title character is about to commit suicide, her maid Suzuki pushes her young son into the room in hope that the sight of him will stop her. In the original novella by John Luther Long, this works, and in a Bittersweet Ending the two women take the child and leave the house before Mrs. Pinkerton can come to take him away. But in David Belasco's play adaptation and in the opera, it only delays her slightly: she bids the boy a heartbreaking farewell, then goes through with her suicide
• At the end of Hamlet — at the far end of what will be called "accidental judgments, casual slaughters... deaths put on by cunning and forced cause" and with the title character dying of poison — the last character in the scene standing picks up the poisoned wine, meaning to follow them, and with the last of his strength, the prince wrestles it away from him, telling him at least someone has to live to tell the story.
• In Orfeo ed Euridice, Orpheus is prepared to end it all after losing Eurydice again, but Cupid shows mercy, brings Eurydice back, and stops him.
• In Heathers, after Heather M receives an unjustified "Reason You Suck" Speech from the entire school for simply having suicidal thoughts in "Shine A Light (Reprise)", she very nearly offs herself via pills. However, Veronica thankfully saves her at the last minute and convinces her that it's not worth ending her life over. They share a much-needed hug at the end.

Video Games

• Super Robot Wars:
  • Happens twice on the same character; Lamia Loveless, after completing her role in Original Generation 2 and Advance, is prompted to blow herself up because she thinks that beings like her should not exist... of course the heroes make it just in time before she blows herself up. The next time, she is Brainwashed and Crazy, and the manipulator says that if she fails her mission, she should blow herself up. She is about to until Axel Almar overrides the order to self-detonate and bails her out completely.
  • Axel was about to do the same in his scenario in Advance. No blowing up, just trying to let himself run out of air while floating in space.
• Disgaea:
  • Happens in the Good Ending of the 1st game, when Vyers/Mid-Boss stops Laharl from trading up his life to revive Flonne.
  • Parodied in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories; after losing against the heroes, Highly-Visible Ninja Yukimaru decides to perform suicide to atone for her failure...and just freezes up. It takes the gang time to realize that deep down, she doesn't really want to die, and Adell resigns himself to talking her out of it. This becomes a Running Gag.
  • Likewise, in Disgaea 4, Fenrich was about to self-terminate for reasons unknown when Valvatorez came across him. Believing the werewolf to be a powerful potential ally, Valvatorez chose to enslave him instead of letting him go through with his death wish as a means of putting that power to use.
• Amazingly enough, God of War gives us a variation where the interruption is seen as a bad thing. After everything Kratos has been through, anyone could see what drove him to jump in the opening scene. However, Athena is not done with him yet, and a new God of War is needed...
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where Big Boss comes back from the dead for the sole purpose of explaining the plot and convincing Solid Snake not to shoot himself. Then he dies again. Subverted, however: Snake chickened out and decided not to shoot himself before Big Boss reveals he was there.
• It's implied that Angela was going to do this in Silent Hill 2, but James talks her into giving him the knife. She later asks for it back.
• In the Gingerbread House chapter of Rule of Rose Jennifer walks in on Gregory with a gun on his temple. Considering all that happens later on, it might have been a good idea to leave him be, though whether he would have gone through with it anyway is hard to say.
• In the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas mission "Madd Dogg", CJ has to save the namesake rapper from jumping to his death by parking a truck filled with boxes underneath him.
• In Corpse Party: Blood Covered, Naomi finds Seiko hanging from a rafter; the player chooses how they try and save them. Regardless of your choice, it fails. Given the setting, it's unclear at first whether this was an honest suicide attempt or something else is to blame... And the truth, when it comes out, is simply horrible.
• At the very beginning of Baldur's Gate, you encounter a man about to jump into a gorge. He decides not to jump no matter what you say to him.
• In Dead or Alive Dimensions, Ayane is about to kill herself by plunging a kunai into her throat, when her mother Ayame walks in on her.
• Mass Effect 3:
  • Shepard can stop Samara from shooting herself in the head when her code compels her to kill her last living non-evil daughter for being an Ardat-Yakshi outside of the temple. Doing so will allow both Shepard and Falere to convince her to agree to another option.
  • If Tali is Driven to Suicide by the extinction of just about her entire species in combat with the geth, Shepard can pull a Paragon interrupt to try to catch her. It fails.
• In episode 2 of The Way, the main character comes across a guy about to jump off a cliff. Depending on dialogue choices, you can talk the guy out of it, encourage him to go through with it, or push him off yourself.
• In Black Knight Sword, the player character is about to hang himself when he is drawn into the story and becomes the Black Knight. In the True Ending, he returns to finish it.
• In Life Is Strange, one pivotal moment revolves around Max arriving just in time to witness Kate's suicide. Fortunately, her time-rewinding powers end up freezing time at the right moment, allowing her to get close enough to try to talk them down. Unfortunately, Max's powers fail completely just as the conversation begins, giving her only one chance to persuade Kate not to go through with her suicide. It's very difficult to succeed, requiring a deep knowledge of Kate that can only be gleaned from a thorough examination of her belongings, though it certainly helps if Max was compassionate enough towards her in several earlier scenes.
• Subverted in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If you try to jump off a bridge while an NPC is nearby, they'll think Link is trying to kill himself and stop him.
  Hey! Don't be rash! You won't change the world by jumping carelessly to your doom, don't ya know!
• Hiroyuki from Loopmancer, when fought as a boss for the first time. When you manage to survive his attacks for a whole minute, he realize he lost his challenge and prepares to commit seppuku, but his grandmother Shizue arrives and stops him.
• Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water plays with this trope:
  • A dark subversion of this is shown in a flashback, in which Hisoka is tasked with finding a girl, whom Hisoka finds at a cliff but isn't able to stop from falling off of it to her death in time. Hisoka regards this as her greatest failure.
  • An example of this trope being played straight is shown in a flashback where Yuuri, one of the main playable characters of the game, was about to jump off a cliff, but Hisoka stopped her in time and took her in. Whether she stays alive at the end of the game depends on which ending the player gets.
• Theia - The Crimson Eclipse: Rudra recently regained his memories that he slaughtered his own clan, the Maruts, due to a rival clan driving him into a frenzy with Orihalcon. The last surviving member of that clan, Asura, challenges him to a duel on Garm's Summit. Once Asura is dead, Rudra tries to throw himself off the mountain out of guilt, but Ferion and Nion talk him out of it since the world still needs to be saved from Mishra.
• RealityMinds: Kvena uses positive essences to enhance Silvana's desire to die, but Astrake intentionally thinks negatively in order to generate negative essences, allowing him to cancel out the positive essences and stop Silvana from killing herself.
• In Undertale, when you're on the True Pacifist route and have befriended Undyne, she may relate a story to you over the phone of how she and Alphys became friends: She talks about how she found Alphys down in the trash dump one day, staring into the abyss below, when Undyne asked her what she thought might be down there. It's implied that Undyne inadvertently talked Alphys down from jumping into the abyss herself.
• In one of the new scenes added to the remake of Yakuza, Nishiki appears to be contemplating suicide following his sister's death, only to be interrupted by his jerkass underling Matsushige...who he ends up killing instead.
• Not for Broadcast: You can stop Jeremy Donaldson from shooting himself or committing Suicide by Cop at the end of Day 296 if you cut to the ads before he does so.
• drowning, drowning begins with Maia diving into the sea with the expectation of drowning, but the fish girl Amphithoe is there to give her a magical kiss that lets her breathe underwater. Am only does it because she thinks Maia wants to play with her, and has no idea she is saving Maia's life.
• SOS: If Luke Haines escapes with Captain Ismay Carl Townsend and at least 25 points of survivors, the captain congratulates him on a successful escape, but tells him that he won't live with the shame. When the captain attempts to shoot himself in the head, Luke knocks the pistol out of his hand and slaps some sense into him before telling him that he has to move on and live to tell the story.
• Heavy Rain has Susan Bowles, the mother of the Origami Killer's latest victim. Scott arrives at her home just in time to foil her attempt at a Bath Suicide.
• Red Dead Redemption II: In a side mission Arthur can take on behalf of his Love Interest Mary, he's tasked with retrieving her brother Jamie from the Chelonian cult. Jamie initially attempts to flee from Arthur but eventually produces a gun and tries to shoot himself in the head, at which point Arthur shoots the gun out of his hand and brings him back to his sister.
• Done tragically in the prologue of Death Stranding. Igor, Sam's new acquaintance in BRIDGES Corpse Disposal, tries to shoot himself in the head when the two of them are overwhelmed by BTs, knowing full well that a living human who is devoured by a BT will cause a devastating "voidout". He's yanked upwards by an invisible force at the last moment, however, and gets dragged into the maw of the nearby Catcher BT, which causes a voidout that levels Central Knot City.

Visual Novels

• Implied offhand and very quickly during V's route in Mystic Messenger; Yoosung is having an immensely difficult time dealing with the fact that not only Rika has been secretly alive during the six months he's been agonizingly mourning her, but that V lied and told everyone that she had killed herself so he could keep secret the fact that she had run off to seclude herself in the mountains and start her cult with the goal of making everyone happy, so Zen is keeping him at his place to watch over him (making sure he eats something, doesn't drink himself blind, etc.) At one point you're on the phone with Zen, asking how the two of them are holding up, but he has to abruptly hang up to stop Yoosung from running up to the building's rooftop.
• An unfortunate example in The Shell occurs during a bad end when Reiji successfully stops Orihime from killing herself, but then they're both attacked by the serial killer and killed. The suicidal person is killed quite gruesomely and you can't help but feel it probably would have been better if she had succeeded.
• In Tsukihime, Kohaku attempts to kill herself at the end of Hisui's route. While she succeeds in the True Ending, in the Good Ending, Shiki manages to use his Magical Eye to kill the poison inside her body, saving her life.
• In Little Busters!, from the second playthrough onwards, halfway through the common route Kengo manages to save his depressed friend from committing suicide by leaping off the building wall as well and grabbing her so he takes the fall instead. Or so happened in this world - in the real world, she wasn't interrupted.
• Higurashi: When They Cry:
  • In every world, Rena attempted to slit her throat (wrists in the anime) after her parents' stressful divorce, an Attempted Rape on her, and her subsequent rampage in her school. She does inflict mortal wounds however her father (nurses in the manga) caught her before she bled out. This is a part of her backstory.
  • Rika tries to bite off her tongue to escape being killed by Takano in the Final Arc, only to be gagged from behind before she can do it.

Webcomics

• Happens in Bridges, starting here.
• In Doc Rat, Flopsy Jaegermond tried to jump off a cliff during a weekend getaway with Ben and some friends out of guilt for having hunted and eaten his wife Jazmyn's previous husband. Ben stopped him, and the two ended up tumbling down the sloped side of the mountain, fighting the whole way down. Ben was ultimately able to talk him down.
• Happens twice in Dominic Deegan. Luna, the first attempted suicide, later becomes the one to stop someone else from jumping off a bridge.
• In General Protection Fault, Akhilesh finds Trudy attempting to slit her wrists, having suffered from guilt-induced nightmares. However, the way she made the cuts indicates she mainly wasn't able to bring herself to do it.
• A Heartfelt Andante: Da-ul tracks down Yeonjo and arrives at her piano academy just as she attempts suicide. He breaks in and manages to save her.
• In Honeydew Syndrome, Josh mistakes Metis's effort to retrieve a Frisbee for a suicide attempt in a scene that starts here. May plays along with it for the lulz.
  Josh: Don't do it, Metis! Don't do anything you'll regret! I mean, won't regret! Or, won't live to forget! I know you're emo, and you probably have no friends, except for maybe your creepy friend Charles... And you probably write shitty, I mean dark poetry, but you shouldn't try to commit suicide over it! Don't do it! Don't do something stupid!
  Metis: Lies! All lies! Nobody understands me! I shall go join the Dark Lord and his legion of death-eaters in the underworld! Goodbye, cruel world!
• The now-defunct NSFW webcomic Sexy Losers has a recurring suicide girl character, that has her attempts of suicide fail when Shiunji reminds her of his intentions to do stuff to her corpse. She decides to kill him first but accidentally kills herself before she has a chance. He does said stuff. And teaches himself taxidermy.
• The Silver Eye: Not just once, but thrice. After being Driven to Suicide, Apen tried to jump off a bridge and later hanged himself, but the Alverados managed to rescue him both times. In a following scene, he was starting to slit his wrists before Velvare showed up.
• Done accidentally in this Sluggy Freelance strip.
• In Think Before You Think, starting here, Brian (the mind-reader) overhears a girl's thought of intending to kill herself and then intervenes to dissuade her. The girl later calls Brian at the time when she is preparing to do it, and he comes to talk her out of it. Whether she would have gone through with it is uncertain.
• Unsounded: Bastion dragged Cara away from the pyres her family was burning on when she tried to join them, telling her she had to live. Her life was not much longer despite his intervention, and her final months were horrifically cruel to the young girl. Cope noted that if he'd realized what had been done to her, and by whom, Bastion would have broken and Lady Ilganyag would have "put him down".
• In Wapsi Square, after Jin regains her mortality, she attempts suicide by means of flintlock pistol in the mouth. Bud stops her just in time.
• In Monsieur Charlatan, his initial attempt.
• In the superhero arc of Arthur, King of Time and Space, Arthur/Kingman tries to talk down a jumper by reminding him of how much there is to live for. The jumper agrees to come down as long as he doesn't have to hear any more of "that Pollyanna crap".
• Mare Internum starts off with the attempted suicide of the protagonist. Fortunately for the comic, there's an urgent call before he's quite done.
• Sadly Subverted in Eight Cicadas, when Annette walks in on her husband holding a gun to his head and tries talking him out of it, but to no avail.
• In Lifted Spirits from Loading Artist.
• K.A.'s first heroic act in We Are The Wyrecats is to stop a jumper and later befriend her.

Web Original

• Archipelago Exodus' Emotionless Girl Rie Nepas tries to kill herself after the death of her Heterosexual Life Partner. She rigs his ashes to a rocket and quietly stands inside the blast radius, only to be rescued by her on-again-off-again friend Natalie.
• A rather heartwarming example, Doki interrupts Bunny's suicide attempt to tell her she'll get her help if she needs it and that she is loved.
• The Nostalgia Critic has pulled a couple these himself. He nearly slit his wrists, shot himself, and poisoned himself because of something bad he was watching. Of course, these "attempts" were Played for Laughs.
• Dreamscape: Melissa's very first heroic action, as seen in the flashback in "The Mystery of Melinda", is stopping someone from committing suicide by performing a Heroic Sacrifice. Thanks to her Resurrective Immortality, she can afford to be Taking the Bullet.
• Whateley Universe: Firing Range Instructor Erik Mahren investigates an alarm at the range weapons locker, only to find that it's a despondent student who is trying to kill herself.[1] He manages to stop her - by knocking the gun out of her hand and knocking her on her ass. ^note he is aware that she has invulnerability and enhanced strength, so he's mostly just trying to distract her from trying to grab the gun again He then has to spend the next several minutes fighting to keep her from killing him until security arrives. She eventually gets removed to the school hospital for psychiatric treatment. Tragically, this doesn't help; she kills herself at home two weeks into that year's summer vacation.

Western Animation

• On the kid's show Adventure Time, Finn thinks that his best friend-slash-adoptive brother Jake and his adoptive father Joshua are betraying him. This results in him wanting to eat a cursed apple, knowing that it's cursed. At the last second Jake knocks the apple out of Finn's hand and feeds it to a witch, who begins to have vines grow out of her mouth and eye sockets, and then turns into an apple to be eaten by two other witches (with blood and bones, of course). While Finn and Jake watch this, Jake knocks another apple that Finn had picked up out of his hand.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In "Video Ouija", Meatwad gets a new video game that allows him to talk to the dead, and Master Shake tries to hang himself so he can die and haunt the video game. Frylock walks in just in time to cut the rope before Shake dies. Subverted in that Shake kills himself at night while Frylock sleeps.
• Arcane: Jayce was prepared to jump off the ledge of his destroyed lab after his Trauma Conga Line, but Viktor talks him out of it, literally asking if he was interrupting him. Jayce unknowingly returns the favor to a despondent Viktor years later.
• Aelita is stopped from making her Driven to Suicide Heroic Sacrifice by Jérémie in Code Lyoko, Season 2 finale "The Key". You know, for kids!
• In the pilot episode of The Critic, after Jay is told by his girlfriend Valerie that she loves him, and she comments that she never heard him say it, he grabs a megaphone from a nearby cop and shouts, "I LOVE YOU!" The camera then pans to a guy standing on the ledge of a building that the cop was apparently trying to talk out of jumping, who then happily sniffles and says "That's all I wanted to hear." And he climbs back in the window.
• The Crumpets: In the episode "Going Viral", while being suicidal, one of Caprice's chances to end her life was to hold on to a rocket that is seconds away from ignition, until Bother stops the spark he lit earlier by stomping and spitting it. Her final suicide attempt (by being buried in a dug plot) gets interrupted when she grabs a hook rope that was lowered from a blimp as a result of her new internet fame she didn't intend to build from her past suicide attempts.
• Subverted in DuckTales (1987) when Launchpad tried to be a "Hero for Hire" at one point he rushed to save a suicide jumper. The guy was a window washer and was not appreciative of Launchpad's efforts to talk him down.
• Futurama:
  • Bender is seen trying to use a suicide booth in the first episode, and in the second movie. The first time Fry ends up in there with him (and Fry isn't quite ready to die) when he mistakes it for a phone booth. The second it turns out that it's actually a secret entrance to a robot society.
  • Bender also tried to use a suicide booth in "Bender's Big Score". But he was time-travelling, so he really stepped into a phone booth.
  • In "Ghost in the Machines", Bender dated a suicide booth and dumped her off-screen, so when he attempts to commit suicide, it turns out he walks into her. So instead of suicide, she decided to kill him.
• Implicitly in Infinity Train: The train appears to people who are at a crossroads, where the decision they're about to make will change their life... and it appeared to Amelia when, inconsolable with grief after the death of her husband, she snuck onto the roof of their university.
• One episode of Jem has Minx falling into a depression after her friends abandon her due to her taking a Heel–Face Turn. She tries to jump off a building, but Rio stops her. Throughout the episode, she tries to repay him however that annoys him and eventually Minx returns to her old personality.
• Kaeloo: In one episode, Stumpy thinks he's not going to be able to impress a girl he likes and tries to hang himself. Before he can do it, his friends talk him down and offer him advice on how to impress the girl.
• In an episode of King of the Hill, Cotton attempts suicide because he feels he can no longer provide for his family. Just as he's pointed the barrel at his temple and is about to pull the trigger his wife Didi interrupts him by telling him he needs to take care of their baby too; he sets the gun on the floor and realizes that G.H. needs him so he can provide for him. We then see him pick up the gun; at this point, Hank arrives and tries to talk him out of it and hears a shot. He bursts through the door and finds Cotton slumped over seemingly dead but as it turns out he put the gun in G.H.'s hands and pulled the trigger to shoot a mattress.
• A 1940s Popeye cartoon, "Happy Birthdaze", has Popeye meeting Shorty, a friendless nebbish who is about to shoot himself — in a Paramount Pictures in-joke, Popeye tries to compliment him by saying he looks like Bob Hope, and a horrified Shorty puts a bigger gun to his head! By the end of the cartoon Shorty has messed things up for Popeye so bad that Popeye shoots the little shnook!
• In the Rick and Morty episode "Something Ricked This Way Comes" after Rick exposes the Devil's ironically cursed items and begins making a profit from un-cursing them, the Devil himself is driven to suicide via hanging in the backroom in his shop. Summer ends up saving him by wasting a monkey paw's wishes to move a table under him, untie the noose, and learn CPR.
• The Simpsons:
  • This happens to Homer in the first season episode "Homer's Odyssey".
  • This happens to Moe more than once, and it is often that his suicide attempts are accidentally interrupted.
    • After being fired from the Kwik-E Mart in "Homer and Apu", he tries to kill himself by eating a sausage only to be stopped by his boss.
    • In "Treehouse of Horror XIV", he does manage to successfully do it, but since Homer killed the Grim Reaper, no one can die.
  • There's also a background character in one episode who throws himself off a building with obligatory "Goodbye, Cruel World!". At that exact moment, the entire town rolls past, he gets caught up in the ball of bodies, and says "Hello, ironic twist!"
  • In another segment of "Treehouse of Horror XIV", Bart uses a watch that stops and restarts time to play pranks, including making each one of Homer's doughnuts seemingly vanish just as he's about to take the first bite. Homer bursts into tears and tries to stab himself in the chest, only to find the knife replaced with a peeled banana mushed against his suddenly naked body.
• South Park:
  • In "Cartman Sucks", camper Bradley is ready to throw himself off a bridge when Butters shows up. Rather than begging him not to jump, Butters confronts the councillors, telling them he's sick of being told he's confused because it's only making him feel more confused, that he thinks they might be confused too, and that if God made him bi-curious, then it must be okay to be bi-curious. These confident words encourage Bradley to come down.
  • In "Tweek vs. Craig", Mr. Adler, the shop teacher, is unable to get over the death of his fiancée. He decides to kill himself by laying on a saw belt. Just inches away from the saw, he gets interrupted when Tweek and Craig are fighting and tells them to quit screwing around, resulting in Kenny getting thrown into a box of rusty nails. Adler picks up Kenny and sees his fiancée through Kenny's face. She tells him to move on and be happy with his life.
• In the What A Cartoon! Show short "Malcolm and Melvin", Melvin prepares to commit suicide by jumping off his window ledge, but he decides life is worth living when he hears Malcolm playing his trumpet.

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