Bobby Hobbes: All right. Let's review our options: Quicksilver madness — dead. Unchecked infection — dead. Escape the building — dead. Stay in the building until Protocol Thirty-Four elapses — dead.
Darien Fawkes: Oh, you left out being struck by a giant meteor.
Darien Fawkes: Oh, you left out being struck by a giant meteor.
The direct opposite of Nothing Can Stop Us Now!: A character says something rather negative with some pessimism. One can assume that the opposite will happen. The most typical example is of the "Nothing can save us now" type, which always leads to the Big Damn Heroes moment.
Another style is that a character gives up on something, then it just happens.
Compare She Won't Come For Me. Not to be confused with Only the Author Can Save Them Now, when the heroes' predicament is so bad that their survival can only be a Deus ex Machina.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The titular character of Hell Teacher Nube has died, halfway through his own series, even. Then his students get attacked by a Reality Warper —the fearsome Agyou-san, a monster that can negate anything you say. Oh, wait, the demon isn't here! It's suddenly standing right behind you. It's just a harmless-looking, goofy thing! Agyou-san is now an Eldritch Abomination-type mass of flesh and tentacles. But wait, Yukime and Tamamo are here, they can beat him! They're immediately impaled and nearly killed. If only Nube were here, but he's dead...!
- During the sisters arc of A Certain Scientific Railgun Mikoto after trying many different methods of stopping the level 6 shift experiment, finally gives up after finding out the last method she could use (tampering with the supercomputer Tree Diagram) can't be used since said computer was destroyed. She resigns herself to die, saying "Even if I cry and shout, there's no hero who will hear that and come to my rescue." Cue Touma.
Films — Animation
- Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget: When the chickens end up landing at the bottom of a corn silo, Bunty tells Ginger that it would take a miracle for them to escape. Then Rocky tracks them down; Bunty tells Ginger with a grin not to tell him that he's the miracle lest he get too proud to endure.
Films — Live-Action
- Flash Gordon: "I'm lost, Aura, nothing can save me now." Cue Queen..."FLASH! Ah-Ahhhhh!"
- Batman Begins: The police commissioner responds to Lt. Gordon's pleas for reinforcements by saying there are no more reserves to send and no help is coming. However, just at that moment, Batman in the Batmobile roars into the crisis to save the day.
- In Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I, a character in the Roman Empire segment cries out "Only a miracle could save us now!" Cue Miracle the race-horse. In the French Revolution segment another character does the same. Cue Miracle and one of the Romans, who has chosen to ignore the story's internal logic.
- "Internal logic?" This is Mel Brooks we're talking about. Besides, Rule of Funny applies.
- In film version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, an orc is about to kill Merry and Pippin, giggling how nothing can save them now. At that exact moment, the heroic Riders of Rohan attack and skewer that orc in particular.
- Plus the Elves arriving to aid the Rohirrim at the battle of Helm's Deep, and Éomer's arrival during their last stand, and in King when the Rohirrim, then later the Army of the Dead saving Minas Tirith. And their reaction when they think Frodo's dead in the extended cut.
- This, though, is kind of a hybrid of this trope and a Nothing Can Stop Us Now only from the villains' perspective.
- Aliens, when they realize the atmosphere processor is going to explode (killing them all): "That's it! Game over, man! Game over!"
- Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, when Jetfire reveals that only a Prime can defeat The Fallen in combat, Sam mentions Optimus Prime (who just happened to be Last of His Kind) and Jetfire inquires as to whether he is alive and on the planet. Sam them breaks in saying that Optimus fell trying to protect him. A disgruntled Jetfire then has this reaction: "So, he's dead. Without a Prime it's impossible." But then they get the idea of trying to bring him Back from the Dead, so it works out in the end.
Live Action TV
- In The Invisible Man, A mutated bacterium that excretes Psycho Serum that also causes invisibility has infected most of the cast, giving the Page Quote. The Sixth Ranger of the group comes in from her bus trip carrying the cure when things start looking really bleak.
- This is part of an extended catchphrase from El Chapulín Colorado:
¿Y ahora quien podrá salvarnos? (lit.: "And who can save us now?")note¡Yo! ([It is] I!)¡El Chapulín Colorado!¡No contaban con mi astucia! (lit.: "They didn't count on my cleverness!")
Video Games
- Invoked almost word for word in Dead Rising: " The helicopter crashed... Nobody's coming to save us now..."
Web Animation
- In Arfenhouse Teh Movie Too, after Housemaster blows up the grocery store where they thought they could buy a new Arfenhouse, Joseph turns to him and says, "Now you'll never get another Arfenhouse... not that I care..." A moment later, the Arfenhouse reappears (HOUSE GET!) and Joseph gives up on logic.
Web Comics
- Lampshaded in Sluggy Freelance, during the Storm Breaker arc. Before Torg and Zoe pick up the book of Gud, Torg proclaims loudly that the situation is hopeless in an attempt to summon help. Zoe asks why he did that, and Torg explains this trope to her. When she acknowledges its relation to Nothing Can Stop Us Now!, the Big Bad shows up without warning.
Western Animation
- Parodied in The Simpsons "Radioactive Man" where the actor blurts this out right before sidekick Fallout Boy rescues him from the wave of acid. Fallout Boy doesn't arrive on cue, so Radioactive Man repeats. Nope. "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"
- Spoofed on Family Guy when exterminators act like they're in the middle of a Bug War and when cornered by fleas note the only thing left to do is pray.
- Rattrap from Beast Wars uses a version of this as a catch phrase: "We're all gonna die...". One of the other characters usually responds with "Shut up, Rattrap." One subversion of this happens in the episode "Coming of the Fuzors Part 2", with Rhinox calmly responding: "It happens..." before adding the more hopeful, "...but miracles happen too."
- This is Zigzagged in the beginning of the Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: U.N.D.E.R.C.O.V.E.R." Numbuh One shouts, "Okay team, let's not give up hope now!" to which Numbuh Five replies, "No problem! Cause Numbuh Five gave up hope a long time ago!" The camera then pans to show that the situation IS rather grim; all five members of Sector V are chained to an iceberg with the Delightful Children closing in on a high-tech craft armed with giant, spiked hammers. (The heroes are saved when one of the Delightful Children - Lenny - apparently makes a mistake that causes the craft to rocket away. Later, it turns out that this was Lenny's way of getting them to trust them for a plan where he acted as The Mole.)
