miscellaneous
[loved trope] the hero pathetically begs the villain for their life
The examples are:
The Wicker Man: In the end, the protagonist begs for his life while being burned alive inside the titular object
Ibitsu: This manga is about an unknown supernatural entity that chooses people to force them to become its “older siblings,” obviously isolating them from their loved ones and killing anyone who gets in the way. When the protagonist is about to be killed by it, he gets down on his knees and begs for mercy.
Wouldn't necessarily call him the "hero", but he is the main character.
At the end of Shakespeare's Richard III, the titular man is attempting to delay his defeat, and is trying to keep fighting in the battle. He desperately calls out the famous final line "My kingdom for a horse!"
Which, by the way, was just propaganda by Shakespeare. Understandable, since he fell out of the monarchy's favor with some of his previous historical plays. For reference, Richard III was York, and the reigning monarchs (Elizabeth I and, later, James I) were Tudor.
Real life Richard III was far more a honorable dude, for how honorable a monarch during various internal turmoils can be. Or just a monarch in general.
During that battle, he actually led a chivalry charge, won a duel against a renowned swordsman, and was likely surrounded and killed less than a meter away from killing Henry VII.
I loved reading and studying the play, I love Shakespeare, but every time I see that quote brought up, I need to contestualize that it was actually just propaganda and that there was never a honorable fight between Richard and Henry.
When you get into history and learn that some scribes were sometimes just randomly dissing enemies to their monarchs, stretching or outright making up shit as to smear them it makes me wonder how things change yet stay the same.
If we're talking about Edward V (12) and Richard of York (9), he's the most likely culprit, but neither their deaths nor how much he was involved in them was ever clarified
But, again, I'm not trying to claim he was a saint or anything. I'm talking more about a time period where massacres of innocents were not that common among monarchs, and how Shakespeare invented a lot of events to throw shade against various monarchs
Sergeant Howie didn't beg for his life. He swore loyalty to the Life Eternal promised by Jesus Christ, and Lord Summerisle just said good, that means you'll probably end up a Saint.
Yep, the way he kept screaming "oh lord, oh jesus christ!" as he died in agony was definitely haunting... but he was also expressing his devotion to christianity and defying the old religion of the islanders as well as expressing pain
Ironically, this was actually good news for the island people... since they specifically wanted someone devout to sacrifice - so he was actually reinforcing their belief that he was a good sacrifice
What I like about Wickerman is how many outs the villagers give Howie, and at every turn his values and scruples make him refuse these outs, thus making him the perfect sacrifice. He gets to die with his principles, the villagers get their sacrifice. Everyone wins?
Some of those outs were loaded games, though. Of course he's going to be put off by a church in ruins. I've seen churches thriving in terrible neighborhoods. Of course he's going to refuse sex from the lady next door. You don't have to be devout or religious to be monogamous.
I always think that the crops will fail again and his prediction is right about the lord being burned as a sacrifice it would be poetic to have him murdered by his own cult
Also his argument for why Lord Summerisle shouldn't kill him and critique of the cult is actually pretty accurate, and despite Summerisle protest you can see it clearly unerves him.
Howie doesn't 'win' but when he dies he knows the cult aren't truley 'winning' either
I guess re zero is a metamodern twist on this very postmodernist trope. There are multiple routes in which subaru begs for mercy and is a crying mess, but in the end he always gets up. I think it fits even if it’s a twist on this idea because, well, he does end up dying every time after such display
Fair, but I do think it’s at the very least worth mentioning here. It’s very much written in an explicit discussion with this trope (though obviously not just this one)
Also, if you include Unthinkable Present variation on RBD it becomes much more morbid, though existence of subaru’s books od the dead kinda disprove this possibility
Return by Death. Main character has the ability to die and come back to life at an early "checkpoint" in his timeline that randomly changes seemingly out of his control. Nobody but him remembers it and if he tells anyone the entity that gave him the power will kill the one he told.
I'd question the "hero" element of it, or "begging for their life", but yeah — very good choice of a protagonist pleading for mercy from the antagonist.
Edit: I missed the word "pathetically" in your og post, so my mistake
I wouldn't say a loved trope, but In Brand New Day, after a long day of cat and mouse, Jean Grey finally takes over MJ's body, tricks Peter into kissing her, and then taunting him by mocking him and throwing MJ off a building, Peter saves her and is so distraught that MJ almost died, when he sees another person that Jean has taken over, he literally begs for her to stop. "Okay, okay, stop, fine, you win, you win, just don't hurt her!"
Opinions may vary. To me she is, but based on castings for future movies, they're gonna put her on a Wanda arc (villain to hero). She's one of those "tragic sympathetic backstories doesn't excuse their present actions". She puts many innocent people in danger, tries to throw 2 people off a building in separate occasions, and even murders a guy and probably would've went on a full on rampage had Spider-Man not tried to "reason" with her.
If you ask me, as someone who only has knowledge of the X-men via their movies and tv shows, this was a terrible choice of debut for one of the most popular x-men characters.
Marvel (the writers, directors, Kevin Feige) were all struggling to find a character who could emulate "body-hopping abilities". I would've preferred an OC rather than a known name 😂At least you're not bound by comic book accuracy rules
Sentiment has been in place for years that “all mind readers are assholes” by sheer proxy of not really asking for ‘permission’ to make any use of their power on others, so that gave them carte blanche to have it be one we would know.
If it were literally anyone less entrenched in the lore, they wouldn’t have been able to let them get away with living through the ending, let alone Peter risking his life to keep her alive.
It's kind of a shame since I think there's a lot you can do with telepaths if you acknowledge the moral minefield and then have generally good characters try to navigate it. Like generally it's wrong to read someone's mind without consent. Is it wrong to read the mind of an unhinged supervillain who hid bombs all over the city, or would we all agree a hero who refused to read their mind in this situation was being self-righteous at the cost of lives? What if the telepath is only pretty sure this is the guy who planted the bombs? What if the telepath is trying to preserve their secret identity thinks someone figured them out and is going to out them? Is it acceptable to violate that person's mind to protect their own self, and only their own self?
Weirdly enough, I think Dispatch did something really similar with Invisigal. She acknowledges that invisibility is a "villain" power and they have an interesting discussion about it. It's not telepathy, but it raises a similar line of thinking.
Right he just shoots and..asks questions never. Captain America calls him a murderous piece of shit, which he functionally is. Some villains (like the Red Skull and co) do 100% deserve it, but Castle doesn't do nuance.
Collateral damage has been very inconsistent across the MCU...
You mean the dude hit by the car? He shows up at the end at the hospital, in the background. Although I am sure some people died when the bubble thing happened and they lost control of their cars.
it's sorta mixed!
if the later projects acknowledge that she did bad stuff and work on her redemption then she's a hero!
but if they ignore all that and move on like nothing happened and make her like wanda's character...then yeah she's a villain(due to shit writing)
She is bad guy. Probably mutliple people died because of her selfish actions. And she and her sister were rapists. Like the "bad guy corporation or agency" werent really bad because her and her sister started to fuck around with abusing their powers before them entered picture.
her and her sister started to fuck around with abusing their powers
We literally see none of that or hear any of that sort of thing mentioned though.
The earliest we see of the sisters, they're on a park bench, talking about wanting a better life as "other people" because their current circumstances as abandoned foster kids sucks.
Sarah suddenly gets arrested and abducted in the middle of trying to buy an ice cream.
Jean then understandably goes off the deep end because her only safe person was seemingly abducted over nothing, and taken away somewhere to be experimented on.
The scene in the park is literally Jean and her sister taking over innocent people's bodies for fun. That's a huge abuse of their power and horrible invasion of people's privacy and robbing them of their agency. By definition it's not rape but in the way it completely invades a person's mind and body and robs them of their agency, there are similarities.
Both Jean and her sister should never have been harmed by Damage Control, but they ABSOLUTELY needed to be detained. That girl needs Professor Xavier to straighten her out ASAP.
The corporation that tortured a teenage girl to death wasn't really bad because she mind controlled people for like a second without causing any serious harm.
Slight reversal, but in Trigun (1998) Legato Bluesummers (left) kidnaps an entire town and controls them with psychic powers to attempt to kill Vash's friends. The only way to stop this is for Vash to break his one rule, and kill. Vash is literally begging for LEGATOS life TO LEGATO. It's a wonderful scene and it breaks Vash mentally.
This isn’t what happened btw. These panels are from 2 different pages. The context to the second is that Spider-Man is trying to stop Tombstone from killing civilians.
Oh no, I'm not disgusted by this panel. I'm looking at Peter getting dogged by the Vulture to the point that he has to beg Norman to save him. I'm looking at Wells forcefully separating Peter from everyone else in his life, including the other Spider-People, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four. I'm looking at Wells killing Kamala Khan in a book that's not even her own, away from the Spider-Man who actually has a relationship with her. I'm looking at Wells then deciding it'd be a good idea to show Peter clinging onto and sleeping with her (a teenager) mask. I'm looking at Wells doing another "Evil" Spider-Man arc after the sins of Norman Osborn went into Peter, and yet nothing of note happens other than him burying Kraven. I'm looking at Wells introducing fucking Paul, whose only reason for existing is to separate MJ and Peter. I'm looking at Wells writing MJ so out of character that people no longer want her in the Spider-Man sphere.
So many characters are written HEAVILY out of character, from Spider-Man, to MJ, to the Fantastic Four. This also comes after Nick Spencer's run, which ended with a tease that MJ and Peter will get back together. The totality of everything is why Zeb Wells should never touch the character again.
But he isn't alone in the blame. The Spider-Man office and the main editor, Nick Lowe, shares just as much blame.
Ey ey ey! those panels are taken out of context. He's not begging for his life here, he's begging for the lives of the people Tombstone is about to kill.
And further, it turns out Lonnie isn't even that much of a scumbag. The people he claims are his men upstairs are actually those of a rival. Lonnie works him up and leaves him to 'die' only for a seemingly sympathetic person to release him. Spider-Man goes on a rampage to save a bunch of people who don't even exist, and Tombstone wins.
to be entirely fair, i'll give a pass any day of the week for a hero begging on behalf of innocent lives. This isn't that bad to me in the same way that one off comic where dr octopus makes tony beg him not to activate a (nonexistent) nuke isn't that bad. You can't really call them heroes if they can't swallow their pride for another person's life. Doesn't mean it feels good to see it though... (also it's not like peter gave up or was helpless, in the next page when they get ready to shoot him he's getting ready to escape before another way out interrupts it)
What are these fucking comments dude. People not knowing the difference between protagonist and hero (literal top comment), people posting villains/antagonists begging for their lives as if every other story doesn’t have that, and people saying this isn’t a loved trope as if that part isn’t OP’s personal opinion. Is genuinely everyone in this sub illiterate or 12?
Dont you know people just use this sub to talk about their favorite things even if they only fit 10% of the prompt, and people will still upvote just bc they reckognize thing
I have not watched the classic The Wicker Man, but I remember reading about it being compared to the remake (which I hated)
I read about the protagonist in the classic trying to show some semblance of dignity by praying fiercely till the end. Nick Cage version just died agonizingly
i expect some will believe you think protagonist is the same as ‘hero’ rather than you correcting the comment you replied to’s use of protagonist when the post said hero
The op post didn't give examples where the "hero" is actually the villain of the story, that's simply to be out of subject to take Light Yagami (and Ryuu who is also not the villain of the story) as an example.
Lmao why are you getting downvoted literally the title itself says "the hero begs the villain" I swear half the comments on this sub Reddit have no literacy capabilities
Literacy is in such a decline in this country. Yes, they said hero/villain, but the context they gave clearly expresses they meant protagonist. How exactly do OPs examples fit the hero/villain model any better than Light Yagami?
This is why being able to understand the meaning from context is so important. It’s like people are incapable of understanding a concept through its context and rely strictly on the literal meaning of the words.
I didn't know people still thought about the garbage Nicholas Cage Wicker Man. The frame OP gave is from the original 1973 movie, where Howie is actually a good guy, just, well, a bit of a fool.
Tenth Doctor surrendering to the Cybermen - Doctor Who (Rise of the Cybermen)
The Doctor was trying to win time desperately, so when he and the others got surrounded by Cybermen, he tried to surrender to them, so that they would be captured instead of getting killed right there... the Cybermen were not really interested at that point, though, because in their eyes, they had already proven that they were incompatible and too inferior to be turned into Cybermen, so they ignore the Doctor's pleas.
During Joseph Joestar's second battle against the Pillarman Wammu, he is hit in the chest by a steel ball and knocked off his chariot. With the steel ball also knocking all the wind out of him, preventing him from properly generating the energy necessary to stop Wammu from just killing him. With only one option, Joseph fearfully shoots his own steel ball towards Wammu and misses; After that he starts to slink away from Wammu and throw rocks at him begging for mercy. This was actually course a ruse so Joseph could use the same principle that Wammu used to hit Joseph with to ventilate him with his own, but Joseph was genuinely dead if he did not beg like a coward.
Yeah, this trope taught me one thing: it’s useless to plead with bad people. Gather all your willpower into a fist and spit in their faces as a final gesture—you’re going to die anyway.
Idk if this counts but in jujutsu kaisen after yuji's friend is transfigured by mahito, he begs the demon inside him sukuna to save him, but he and mahito just laugh in his face.
Negan had just killed not one but two of his group, and spent the entirety of the Morning Psychologically Toying with Rick before setting his Son Carl in front of him, demanding he chops Carl’s arm off.
It’s by this point the usually composed Rick completely shatters into a babbling mess and pleading for him to not
As someone who's still on S7, it was hard watching this scene as a Rick fan. Yet, at the same time, I loved it. It displayed just how much of a threat Negan was.
At the end of oldboy(2003), the mc, oh dae su learns the truth about his daughter and the reason he's in prison for 15 years. He then begs to the villain, lee woo jin to not tell his daughter about it. He even goes to the extreme where he licks his shoe theb cuts of his own tongue. Seriously fucked up movie y'all should definitely watch
Not really a villain, but I think demon slayer does this really well with Tanjiro begging Giyu to not kill his sister.
This actually angers Giyu and he goes on tirade about how that kind of groveling will never allow Tanjiro to complete his goals. It sounds like he is simply admonishing him, but its a reality check that wakes Tanjiro up to the truth that he can only save his sister if he raises his head and fights back.
In 'My Name is Earl', Earl's old friend from his criminal days, Ralph, gets back in touch with him. Ralph learns that Earl slept with Ralph's mother a few years before that. Ralph's gets angry and leaves. He returns later and gets Earl alone, and puts a gun to his head, saying the only way to preserve his mother's honor is by killing Earl.
Earl cries, begs and pleads, saying how wonderful of a woman Ralph's mother is, and then says, "I'd marry her if I could!" Ralph takes the pistol away, thinks for a moment, then says, "Yeah, that'll work. You'll marry her."
Up until this point, the people Hobin has fought have all been massive pieces of shit, but none of them were killers. When Seongjun shows up and nearly kills his entire crew after Hobin helped expose his past, he suddenly has the realization that hes not dealing with a simple athlete or martial artist, he’s dealing with someone who can and will kill all of them even despite the fact that they’re kids, so he gets on his knees and begs, one of the most defining moments for his character.
Hmmm... Maybe they mean because heroes aren't expected to beg for their lives so it's interesting to see one that does? Though it would be better wording if the OP said protagonist instead of hero, because for me, one of the core traits for a hero is lack of self preservation in the face of evil.
I like the twist of the all powerful hero realising that it's better to suck up their pride in order to live another day and grow stronger to potentially beat the villain. Works especially well if by the end of whatever it is the villain begs in the same way
Wing Commander 3: If you get forced down the losing path, which dooms earth to conquest by a race of omnicidal space tigers.
If you eject in the final stand, you are captured and have a choice of either getting one final "screw you" in to the big-bad's face or admitting defeat and pleading for your life. The result is either being skewered by claws for the former or 'shameful disintegration' for the latter.
that was the first to come to mind, but i chose not to comment it because of the inevitable pushback, but that one is the epitome of this trope, especially with the callback in the after story.
not spoiler tagging because OOC it isnt a spoiler, and if you only know what the begging scene is, it's still pretty vague. filtered out the names to help
A: "You're saying that you're willing to give up your life to protect her?"
B: "Yeah... That's right!"
A: "Challenge an opponent you have no hope of defeating, then die. Did you ever consider the feelings that you would leave behind?"
B: ".... But what can I do?"
A: "[MC] would have begged."
B, thinking: What she said so bluntly caused me to freeze up.
A: "He once challenged [Strongest Character], losing both his armor and cannon in the process. On the edge of defeat, he begged for protection of his family on his hands and knees. That's what he did before [Strongest Character]."
In Trigun (manga and anime), Vash the Stampede is someone who really dislikes violence, for reasons that are explained later. In episode 18 of the anime he faces a bandit that demands he barks like a dog so that the bandit doesn't kill the townspeople, and Vash procedes to get naked and do it.
Vash of course is much stronger than most people in the setting, and if some villain doesn't listen to reason tries to kill anybody else he can kick his ass and avoid it. But he really doesn't like violence and at this point in the story he's trying the most to be nonviolent. So losing his pride or being humiliated is still a win in Vash'sPOV so long as no human gets hurt.
In the Doctor Who episode, the Witch's Familiar: The Doctor gets on his knees and begs the creator of the Daleks and his long time enemy, Davros, to spare his companion Clara. Davros laughs and points out that the Daleks aren't his servants but his children, and thus he has no control over their actions
Mushoku Tensei - Rudeus Greyrat vs Dragon God Orsted (rematch) sort of fits? Except it's not his life that he is begging for
After Rudeus from the future warns present day Rudy about Man-God's scheme to kill his family, Rudy confronts him. As a result of this confrontation, Man-God not only admits to the scheme, but doubles down and says that he's not going to stop until he succeeds, unless Rudy does something for him — kills Dragon God Orsted, the strongest being in the world that supposedly wants to destroy said world, which is a direct threat to Man-God existence
With no way to fight back, Rudeus agrees and prepares for the fight. After successfully ambushing Orsted and fighting with an advantage, he still loses after Dragon God gets serious. Lying in a pool of his blood, having lost another arm and spending all of his mana, left without options, Rudeus crawls to Orsted's feet and starts crying and begging him not to destroy the world, in one last desperate attempt to save his family from Man-God's relentless pursuit.Orsted declines, and Rudy bites his leg, gathering what little mana he has left for a weak counter attack before getting blasted (the context of the illustration)
Neither version of The Wicker Man protagonist begs for their life while burning alive, though. The Edward Woodward one prays to God, first defiantly and then in hopes of being delivered to heaven, and the Nic Cage one attempts to convince the kid not to light the thing up, then just screams in agony.
In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Sentinel Prime has the upper hand for a time and Optimus says "No, please" while getting dismantled before Megatron interferes.
I like it under some circumstances; say if they wanna emphasize how much the hero wants to survive maybe for the sake of someone else or at least to help or even see a love one, or hell simply because he feels genuine happiness in being alive, then I think its badass if they throw away their pride for it.
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u/emily-ermiler 5h ago
Wouldn't necessarily call him the "hero", but he is the main character.
At the end of Shakespeare's Richard III, the titular man is attempting to delay his defeat, and is trying to keep fighting in the battle. He desperately calls out the famous final line "My kingdom for a horse!"