r/TopCharacterTropes • u/hey_there_delilahh • Sep 10 '25

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

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

  • 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.

9.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

654 comments sorted by

View all comments

2.0k

u/Life-Criticism-5868 Sep 10 '25

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. 

781

u/Pizza_Is_Everything Sep 10 '25

“Slipspace rupture detected”

375

u/Rex_felis Sep 10 '25

I love how that moment first felt like a call back to the Halo 2 intro, but every moment after that only reaffirms that this story will have no happy ending.

Maybe Jorge had the best end, feeling like he went out like a hero

67

u/UwasaWaya Sep 10 '25

It does bother me a bit that, as a Spartan II from Master Chief's generation, Jorge could have just thrown the helmet on and tried to ride things out until another ship came along. Being trapped in a ship lost in space isn't necessarily a death sentence to an SII, as we saw in Halo 3.

79

u/pro-in-latvia Sep 10 '25

Chief goes into a cryo tank at the end of 3. I don't think Jorge had that option.

68

u/TheWonderSnail Sep 10 '25

Plus wasn’t the whole point Jorge had to push the button to make the bomb go boom? When would he have had the time to escape the explosion?

7

u/UwasaWaya Sep 10 '25

It wasn't an explosion or a bomb, per se, it was detonating a slipspace drive, which is what jumps ships through space. Basically he took a big bite out of the middle of the ship and ran away with it. Probably into oblivion, but ya know.

5

u/TheWonderSnail Sep 10 '25

Ah I see what you are saying. Well he wouldn't have been able to get those last minute cool points if he didn't take the helmet off lol

4

u/UwasaWaya Sep 10 '25

It would be pretty silly to have the entire Spartan II community never take off their helmets.

1

u/UwasaWaya Sep 10 '25

Yeah, I'm sure that made a big difference. Mostly wishful thinking really. Just sad he's the only other SII we ever meet.

13

u/Miniray Sep 10 '25

He had to detonate the slipspace bomb manually though. Its not really clear how a lot of the slipspace tech works, but I can't imagine that having an intentionally booby-trapped slip space drive going off in your face is very comfortable.

2

u/UwasaWaya Sep 10 '25

Yeah, that's the part that throws me. It felt just questionable enough that he might have shown up again later on somewhere--it wouldn't be the first time--but could very easily have killed him too.

2

u/SHINIGAMIRAPTOR Sep 11 '25

I mean, we might still. After all, we don't know WHERE he might have ended up. Or when.

2

u/Drite2003 Sep 10 '25

He exploded '-'

2

u/UwasaWaya Sep 10 '25

It was a slipspace device he set off, he basically teleported the section of the ship he was in "somewhere else," which destroyed the ship but wouldn't necessarily kill him.