You Shall Not Pass / Western Animation

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• Parodied in The Amazing World of Gumball. When Darwin & Gumball are being chased by a crowd of living toast, Darwin decides to stay behind to buy Gumball some time. When the slices of toast catch up to Darwin, he slaps down everyone who tries to pounce on him until he realizes they're harmless and starts to feel bad so just leaves them there.
• In American Dad!, Debbie and her Goth clique does this for Steve as he and his friends flee from the other school cliques (in a random homage to The Warriors). Their strategy is to block the enemy's progress through dancing to Joy Division. It works.
• Angel Wars: A sick boy in a hospital is apparently the intended recipient of a divine message that Eli and Kira have spent the whole episode trying to get delivered, but before they can deliver the message, ripwings start to ghost through the walls of his hospital room. Without a trace of his usual ambition, bloodthirst, showboating, or self-centeredness, Eli draws his sword, puts himself between the human and the demons, and flatly tells them in a dead-serious tone, "You won't touch him." Subverted in that he never has to fight the demons: they suddenly find themselves unable to ghost through the walls, which is implied to be because the boy's sister came next to his bed and prayed for him. Then the message is delivered, triggering a World-Healing Wave that kills the ripwings.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender did this several times.
  • Iroh broke out of his restraints and fought off Azula, Zuko, and more than a dozen Dai Li so that Katara and Aang could escape in the second season finale.
  • Mai and Ty Lee hold off prison guards and finally Azula to allow Zuko to escape The Boiling Rock.
• Invoked in the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Ali Baba Bunny":
  Caliph: Guard well this treasure, Hassan, or the jackals will grow fat off thy carcass.
  Hassan: No one will pass Hassan!
• Parodied on Chowder, when Mung and Shnitzel are guarding the fridge to keep Chowder from sleep-eating the entire kitchen. Mung even yells out "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" before Chowder (now a hairy, hulking thing) chews the two of them up and spits them out.
• Happens every episode in the first season of Code Lyoko, as the usual plot involves the gang evenly matching (or being overwhelmed by) XANA's programs while Aelita gets to the Reset Button.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: Monty Uno, the legendary numbah zero with a restored memory, faces his father, a meglomaniacal super evil who wants the world to be like the good old days and almost completely has done so, and holds him from reaching the last shred of the world he hasn't turned Victorian, his brother's mansion.
  Monty Uno (Numbuh 0): I am not moving from this spot!
• In The Dragon Prince you see Queen Sarai, as well as Annika and Neha, who stay behind and fight a dragon so that other people with a magical artifact can escape to prevent a famine. Statues are later erected to honor them.
• During the DuckTales (1987) episode "A DuckTales Valentine", the group encounters a shark while on a treasure hunt. Launchpad plans to hold it off, telling Scrooge to get himself and the kids to safety.
• Exosquad: Has a number of examples, this being an animated war drama. One throw away background character named Zandowski attacks a an entire enemy squad to buy time for his escaping comrades. He's repeatedly hit, and told to pull out but instead screams "No can do Admiral! You'll have to Court Martial MEEEE!" and self destructs, taking some mooks with himself. The more spotlighted character have even more dramatic deaths and heroic last stands.
• Parodied within a parody on Family Guy: in the "Petergeist" episode, Herbert the pedophiliac neighbor defends Chris from the carnivorous tree, "Hey skinny-britches! That there's my man! Why don'tcha pick on someone your own size!" He then declares, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" striking the earth with his walker and splitting open the ground beneath the tree - and himself. They plummet together toward the bottom of the chasm with Herbert battling the tree with his walker the entire way down.
• The situation is grim in Green Lantern: The Animated Series. The Big Bad is on his way to massacre the Guardians with his armada about to enter Guardian-controlled space. Hal and Razer race to stop him while Kilowog stays behind to hold back the armada.
  Kilowog: ''It may only be a matter of time, but I'm not gonna make it easy for you poozers!"
  • He's joined by Saint Walker and Mogo.
• In the Dr. Seuss short Halloween Is Grinch Night, main character Ukariah tries to stop the Grinch from tormenting Whoville with his strange device, the Paraphernalia Wagon. Although the Grinch regards him as not a threat, he eventually decides to test the abilities of the Wagon on Ukariah. He survives, miraculously.
• Jonny Quest TOS episode "The Dragons of Ashida": Race Bannon volunteers to stay behind and distract the title dragons (sort of like huge monitor lizards) so the Quests can escape. He manages to take out both dragons through clever actions and escapes.
• Kim Possible: Performed by Monkey Fist in his debut episode while in disguise as an ordinary ninja (as part of a ploy to keep Kim from suspecting he stole the artifact "the ninja" absconds with). At one point during his martial-arts duel with Kim, -still not speaking- he draws a line in the dirt between them with his toe, glaring at her with slitted eyes as if to say, "Bring it on."
• The Legend of Korra with Lin Beifong taking out an airship and causing another to retreat in order to give Tenzin and family the chance to escape.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Shining Armor pulls this in "The Crystal Empire, Part 1" to delay King Sombra. He survives, but he ends up with magic-blocking dark crystals stuck in his horn.
• The Guardian from Samurai Jack is meant to guard a sacred portal to the past from potential unworthy passers. Including Jack himself.
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: In "The Midnight Zone", Cassidy stays behind in the undersea base to keep the doors open long enough for the Moby Dick to escape and hold off the killer robots.
• Parodied in "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers" episode of South Park; Jimmy, who has a speech impediment, stays behind to hold back a horde of bicycle-riding Sixth Graders, but due to his stammer, he can't quite get the line out;
  Jimmy: You shall not p-puh... You shall not puh-puh-p-p... You shall not puh-pah-paaa—
  (a dozen sixth-graders run him over)
  Jimmy: ... Pass.
• In Star Wars: Clone Wars, Shaak Ti stays behind to fight off thirty-something Magnaguards, to give the other Jedi and the Chancellor time to escape. It's then subverted when the robots stop fighting and leave, and Shaak Ti realizes too late that they were a diversion.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: During the climax of "Supply Lines", Master Ima-Gun Di, Captain Keeli, and what remains of their men mount a final stand in a canyon chokepoint to buy time for Cham Syndulla, his freedom fighters, and some refugees to escape the area. This results in the complete eradication of the Republic troops, but their sacrifice gives Cham and the Twi'leks enough time to flee and receive supplies from the Republic.
• The title characters of Teen Titans (2003) try this in the Season 4 finale against Slade and his army of fire demons. Cyborg even shouts "No one's getting in here!" Unfortunately, against an immortal foe with an infinite supply of reinforcements, their defeat was pretty much inevitable.
• In the Thomas & Friends episode "A Close Shave", Duck holds off a Runaway Train to keep it from crashing into a passenger train.
• In the ThunderCats (2011) episode "Omens Part Two", during The Siege of their Doomed Hometown, a wounded Jaga, announcing that "I Will Only Slow You Down", buys time for Lion-O, Tygra, Cheetara and Snarf to escape Mumm-Ra's invading forces. Played straight by Cheetara and Wilykat in "Between Brothers" to allow Lion-O and Tygra time to accomplish the mission. Cheetara shouts to the lizard army: "NO ONE gets near that hut!" Saved from death by elephants to the rescue.
• Tigerhawk's sacrifice to slow down the warship Nemesis in the Grand Finale of Transformers: Beast Wars.
  Optimus Primal: You can't stop that thing alone!
  Tigerhawk: Perhaps... but it is my destiny to try. I will hold the line here. Go!
  • Then again in the Grand Finale of Beast Machines. All of the other Maximals have been defeated, leaving only Cheetor (who is surrounded by destroyed Veichons) preventing the Veichon Generals from entering the ship. Subverted in that they all just open fire on him, forcing him back into the ship. Double Subverted, as he then (somehow) hurls two of them into outer space, and takes on the last one, before removing its spark.
  Cheetor: Three or 300, you're not getting in.
• In Transformers: Prime, Ratchet, Bumblebee and Bulkhead pull this on Megatron to prevent him from getting through the space bridge while Arcee and Jack are retrieving Optimus' memories from Vector Sigma.
• Parodied in the Comedy Central series Ugly Americans with Gandalf the receptionist of the wizard's guild. You're free to pass, if you sign in first.
• In X-Men: The Animated Series, in the first season finale, Wolverine and Gambit are infiltrating a Sentinel production facility. Wolverine smells some, and so he herds Gambit to relative safety—then locks the door behind him and runs back to face them. Subverted in that Gambit blows the door open and comes to Logan's rescue. Near the end of the episode, Cyclops finds the two of them standing on a pile of destroyed Sentinels, Wolverine's shirt in tatters.
  Wolverine: Next time I try ta save yer life, have sense enough ta let me do it.
  Gambit: What make you t'ink dere gon' be another time?

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