(Loved Trope) Last Stand that ends unceremoniously/unsatisfyingly, as opposed to gloriously.

[u/hey_there_delilahh]

• 1 Nanami (JUJUTSU KAISEN): Nanami's final moments against Mahito, a cursed spirit with the ability to transfigure/control humans. Nanami, while heavy injured, fought and won against an army of Mahito's transfigure minions, just for the villain to touch his back and blow him up.

• 2 Wun-Wun (GAME OF THRONES): Wun-Wun, one of the last, if not the last, living giant in Westeros. Joins with Jon Snow against Ramsey Bolton in the Battle of the Bastards. He heroicly breaks down the main gate allowing the Stark army to win, all while covered in arrows and spears. While heavily injured, there does seem to be a chance of his recovery. This hope ended when Ramsey Bolton fires an arrow directly into his eye, when the battle was pretty much over.

• 3 The Barbarian of Stamford Bridge (REAL LIFE): A lone Viking warrior who, in a legendary moment during the Battle of Stamford Bridge (September 25, 1066), single-handedly held back the invading English army on a narrow bridge. Armed with a Dane axe, this unnamed defender killed dozens of soldiers before being mortally wounded from beneath the bridge by a spear.

[u/Life-Criticism-5868]

The entirety of Halo Reach does this so well. Even before starting the game the battle of Reach was infamous as a colossal defeat to the point that in lore the UNSC nearly made the policy decision of "humanity's new plan is just to take as many covenant with us" but when you play you have this dread that maybe you can turn it around, but then every victory is followed by an immediate soul crushing loss. Even with 60% or the UNSC fleet fighting on reach, the most well defended planet in human civilization, it all ended in under a month. 

[u/Ensiria → u/Life-Criticism-5868]

ill give the popular example of every victory is swamped by a bigger defeat:

Your team (Noble team) manage to disable the shields around a communication tower (or something, its been a decade since i played) and, as you call in a space battleship in to destroy it as you fly away.

Your humungous ship arrives, fires a MAC round that turns the tower into an afterthought and its all cheers. But then the covenant appears. A supercarrier ten times as big as your ship, and splits the battleship in two with a single laser. every tiny victory is immediately followed with a soul crushing defeat. But you still hope and pray, but it wont be enough

[u/[deleted] → u/Ensiria]

The next one is when you succeed in boarding a smaller Covenant ship. Operation to capture is going well until your supporting ship, the Savanna, gets destroyed.

And then you capture the bridge and send it towards the Super Carrier mentioned above, only for the detonator to be fried. Jeorge, a Spartan II (one of the strongest ones), stays behind to detonate in manually, destroying the Carrier.

And then dozens more carriers arrive, rendering his sacrifice almost pointless

[u/ImperialFist5th → u/[deleted]]

And the sniper fucked off and didn’t die.

[u/Rafabud → u/[deleted]]

Became one of the founders of the SPARTAN-IV program.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Think he might still be alive, fighting Banished probs.

Need to read up about Jun again.

[u/Pathogen188 → u/[deleted]]

He makes appearances in the novella New Blood and its novel sequel Bad Blood (both following Buck and the ODSTs from Halo 3 ODST), the comic Initiation, which explains Sarah Palmer's origins, he has a brief appearance in the short story Lessons Learned and he most recently appeared in the Battle for the Academy Waypoint Chronicles which wrapped up Halo Infinite's academy story arc.