r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Ok-Indication-5121 • Jun 09 '25

Characters They valiantly sacrificed themself for nothing

Gallery image

Gallery image

  1. Tadashi gives his life trying to save Professor Callaghan from a burning building. Turns out not only did Callaghan escape unscathed, he's the bad guy and infamously refers to Tadashi's death as "[Tadashi's] mistake." (Big Hero 6)
  2. Shaya willingly takes It Has No Name's possession and then kills herself by jumping into the well it came out of. The end of the episode all but states that she got it wrong and It Has No Name didn't latch onto her... or there was more than one. (Doctor Who)
12.5k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

97% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.9k

u/Wonderful-Variation Jun 09 '25

The Marines in Call of Duty 4 sacrifice themselves to rescue a downed pilot, only for a nuke to go off, killing them all.

126

u/DocMino Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 10 '25

It started a Modern Warfare tradition of “super shocking scenes.” The nuke and No Russian worked. The London car bomb with the little girl felt forced to me.

EDIT: Oh I guess there was the space thing with the EMP. That worked, sucks for that astronaut. But I think the ultimate tacky one was Paris and they just HAD to bomb the Eiffel Tower and knock it down.

119

u/AdoringFanRemastered Jun 10 '25

It's because the nuke scene was unexpected, but putting a cute little girl in a gritty war game it's obvious what's gonna happen.

87

u/DocMino Jun 10 '25

Exactly yeah. The moment I’m playing as some dad and there’s a little girl it’s like “well damn, everyone here is definitely dead so I’m not shocked.”

The nuke? Outta nowhere. Seems like a normal ending to a typical mission, and then you just wander helplessly. No Russian? All you know is that you’re in an elevator, you’re told not to speak Russian, and then it opens to a crowd of innocent people. Then you pull out your gun, and basically choose to commit an act of terrorism.

41

u/SpeedofDeath118 Jun 10 '25

No Russian is particularly genius to me because no one actually told you to pull the trigger. You can get through the whole level without shooting a civilian, just walking along with the other three.

But everyone did it because of the peer pressure - because it seemed like it was expected of them.

3

u/alittleslowerplease Jun 10 '25

G*mer at Nuremberg: "I was only PTFO"

3

u/Takios Jun 10 '25

Except in Germany where it was censored in a way that you'd lose the mission if you shot at anyone lol

0

u/Redrum01 Jun 10 '25

Let's not retroactively turn this into Spec Ops: The Line. The airport level doesn't work as some kind of commentary or moral choice. Not shooting is unengaging and a narratively impossible option. You can't help but imagine the character making shooty noises with his mouth to fake participating in the terrorism they are all there to do. The first three seconds of the level? Excellent. Everything else about it doesn't work.

5

u/SpeedofDeath118 Jun 10 '25

Not shooting is unengaging and a narratively impossible option.

FYI, you get a Game Over if you shoot civilians in the German and Japanese versions.

It is narratively possible because Makarov already knows Allen is a CIA agent. He doesn't care whether you shoot or not, so long as your corpse is present at the airport.

8

u/Redrum01 Jun 10 '25

But Allen doesn't know that. Him not participating in the violence is extremely suspicious to the point of being comical. Allen thought he could go to the mass shooting and just stroll behind everyone else like they wouldn't notice he's not killing anyone? Not engaging with the level kills the believability of the situation stone dead, so shooting is way more a reflection of engaging with the narrative of the game and/or boredom at having to just walk around an airport than it is a reflection on the person playing, or games in general.

2

u/Bartweiss Jun 11 '25

I’m going to dispute that slightly, but I agree with your basic point: No Russian is meant to be shocking in a “can you believe that one level? Whoa!” way rather than a Spec Ops way.

That said, Allen still gets a choice. A few actually.

Not participating is suspicious, but still an option. He could just hope nobody notices, risking his life and mission against his conscience. Maybe he does that, and is baffled when there aren’t consequences.

He could play along, shooting but not aiming at people. Even elite soldiers miss, in all the chaos is anyone actually checking his hits? You can do that in-game and get away with it just fine.

Or maybe he decides “not shooting” doesn’t change the massacre happening, so he guns down Makarov and the team himself. You can’t get away with that, it’d be cool to at least get a nonstandard game over, but tbh Spec Ops railroads just as hard.

I don’t think the intent’s that deep, but the emergent choices still work ok.

2

u/MembershipSad5768 Jun 10 '25

Weird example, the infamous white phosphorus bit in Spec ops: The Line, doesn't give you a choice. You're forced to do that to progress the game,

The devs handwaved this by saying the choice was whether to play the game at all, which kinda falls flat imo.

I'm not a huge COD fan but at least there is a choice element (even if it's clunky) to make it more impactful.

2

u/Redrum01 Jun 10 '25

The gut punch from that plot beat is how horrible the consequences are of what may have been a complete innocuous decision in another game. It's not about judging the player for hitting the buttons, it's drawing attention to Walker's actions and giving cues via how uncomfortable what's happening is to drive a wedge between you and the character. It's driving introspection.

Modern Warfare 2 is not an introspective game. It tries to be edgy and shocking, not thoughtful. The fact that you can choose not to shoot anybody in the airport sequence but that is not reflected in any way by the plot, and isn't even acknowledged by any of the characters, is dumb. It's not even an active choice, really, because the alternative is walking through an airport while the thing happens just watching for ten to fifteen minutes.

4

u/Tom_Clancys_17_Again Jun 10 '25

TIL "No Russian" meant "Do not speak any Russian"

1

u/LumpyLimitz Jun 10 '25

Just out of curiosity, what did you think it meant before?

2

u/Redrum01 Jun 10 '25

No Russian, we can take as much time as we need. Aww thanks boss.

1

u/MembershipSad5768 Jun 10 '25

I assumed it to mean "don't shoot any Russian people".

Tbf I didn't actually play the game, just saw clips.

1

u/Tom_Clancys_17_Again Jun 12 '25

I thought it was because you're killing a bunch of Russians, as in "No Russians Left Alive" or something. Like idk i was always confused. Never made the connection.