Senseless Sacrifice

""The history of the Astartes is filled with defiant last stands and suicidal actions, most of which were probably unnecessary.""

- Warhammer 40000

There's something inherently heroic, tragic, romantic, and triumphant about a Heroic Sacrifice. It speaks of a love, idealism, commitment and the titanium plated sheer cojones of anyone capable of doing such. It's not surprising then that many consider even a Complete Monster can win redemption with a well played Heroic Sacrifice.

Pity it was all in vain.

A Senseless Sacrifice is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It's a downer counterpart to a Heroic Sacrifice, because rather than kill the bad guy, fulfill the prophecy, or allow the other survivors to escape alive... it doesn't. The Big Bad survived the Self-Destructive Charge, the prophecy actually meant The End of the World as We Know It would start with a selfless sacrifice, and the raft the survivors are on has no gas.

This usually happens to anyone who isn't The Hero or The Messiah while attempting a Heroic Sacrifice, especially before the Season Finale, because 'only the hero can save the day'. It may serve as fuel for Heroic Resolve and/or an Unstoppable Rage later, not that it helps the dead martyr. Typically, the Redshirt Army charging like boars will have this happen to them, with the protagonists lamenting "What a Senseless Waste of Human Life".

If you really want to mess with the hero and audience, the villain will reveal that the martyr was tilting at windmills; it was all a plot of his designed to exploit his martyr complex.

For this trope to be subverted does not require that it have been a Heroic Sacrifice. What needs to happen is that the previously "senseless" sacrifice was actually either a Batman Gambit on the martyr's part to create an exploitable weakness for the hero to use later, or doing so by sheer dumb luck.

Borderline cases occur when the sacrifice accomplished nothing except to reveal that doing something can't be done, and so The Hero chooses a different course that will result in his success (and possibly even survival).

Sometimes explicitly invoked to inspire characters dispirited by the death: Remember Jack Sacrifice! If you do not do this, his Heroic Sacrifice will have been all in vain! (And sometimes the hope of ensuring it was not all in vain will inspire characters to make more and more Senseless Sacrifices, even a Stupid Sacrifice in hopes of redeeming the previous ones.)

If the character in question sacrificed himself to accomplish a goal, when he could have accomplished the same goal without dying, that's Stupid Sacrifice, not this trope. The two tropes can overlap if a Senseless Sacrifice is not the most logical option, but it is fairly rare.

Though Tropes Are Not Bad, this one is a Pet Peeve Trope for some.

Subtrope of Heroic Sacrifice. Contrast with Stupid Sacrifice. See also Shoot the Shaggy Dog. Hope Spot is generally the moment between the sacrifice and the reveal.

Since such sacrifices often happen at the end of the story, Spoilers Abound here.

Anime & Manga
"General 1: We sacrificed a whole city for nothing...
 * Fullmetal Alchemist:
 * In the anime, Dorochete and Law attempt to hold off Lust and Gluttony so that Greed can escape. Despite their valiant effort, they are struck down immediately and are subsequently eaten by Gluttony.
 * The manga double-subverts this with the death of Fu. After Wrath wounds him and he realizes that he cannot fight him for much longer, he rips off his shirt to reveal four explosives and lunges at Wrath to kill them both... but Wrath just slices the fuses off of the explosives with his sword, rendering them harmless and slicing open Fu's belly in the process. Buccaneer, who had already been fatally wounded, seizes the opportunity and stabs Wrath through Fu, taking advantage of the one blind spot in Wrath's otherwise perfect vision to seriously injure him.
 * Batist in Full Metal Panic dramatically sets his M9 for a ten second self destruct to take down Gauron, makes a heroic speech, and immediately charges and tries to grapple him... only for Gauron to shoot his AS in half at the last second and teleport away, well outside the blast radius.
 * in Starship Operators.
 * Happens all the time in Dragon Ball: Mutenroshi (Who later in the Saiyan arc openly admits that such losses are both senseless and tragic) and Chiaotzu against King Piccolo, Chiaotzu again and Tenshinhan against Nappa, and Vegeta against Majin Buu. Of course, it's Dragonball, so they all get better, but still.
 * Android 16 didn't, sadly. His plan to bear hug Cell and just blow the living daylights out of him And by the look on Cell's eyes, it might, might have worked had he pulled it off.
 * Subverted into a Heroic Sacrifice. When 16 was broken apart, he could still theoretically be repaired, but then he had Mr. Satan throw his head towards Gohan and Cell, and arranged for Cell to squash his head, to inspire Gohan to attain the next Super Saiyan level.
 * Goku pulled one off against Cell too, by teleporting to King Kai's planet with him shortly after Cell decided to self-destruct.
 * Which means that even if 16's original plan had worked, the outcome would've likely remained the same, except that 16 wouldn't have been around to inspire Gohan.
 * To be fair, Goku DID save Earth.
 * But if you count the movies, this also caused a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero by freeing a certain nasty space pirate.
 * Averted in Gall Force 2 where the latest Catty plans to get the team through a blast door by detonating her own internal power supply. At the last moment the leader of the team points out that there's another blast door beyond it. Fortunately, Luffy then shows up in a Big Damn Humongous Mecha.
 * Happens several times in Fist of the North Star, most notably when Rei attempts a Heroic Sacrifice against Raoh, only to have him counter it in a laughably easy way. Juza also tries to give his life to break Raoh's arm, only to have it completely fail. Raoh seems to enjoy evoking this trope.
 * Miyuki/Rapier in Tekkaman Blade self-destructed to try to take out Sword, Lance, and Axe. It didn't work, although she did force them to retreat, so it's only a partial example.
 * At the end of Chrono Crusade--the anime adaptation-- die peacefully from injuries they received in a . But they won the battle, so this is just a Heroic Sacrifice, right? Wrong. The series is infamous for its Downer Ending among those who have seen it.
 * He did fail, he was going after John Paul II, during the 80s, the old guy kept going until just a couple of years ago.
 * The death of BlackWarGreymon towards the end of Digimon Adventure 02 partially counts as this; sure he managed to protect Cody's grandfather, but then he attempted to use his body to stop Myotismon from entering the Digital World again. Too bad that's exactly what happened a few episodes later.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion. In the series, there's 's death, although . Aside from that, Senseless Sacrifice basically sums up the entire plot of End Of Evangelion:
 * At least Rei destroyed an Angel and saved Shinji. That has to count for something.
 * In the very first episode:
 * In the very first episode:

General 3: Damned monster!"

"Botan: "The kid would've survived without a scratch without your intervention, but thanks to your meddling, the kid gets scraped up, and you die. Haha, way to go, moron!""
 * death in Madlax was probably intended by her as a Heroic Sacrifice to protect Madlax. What she didn't know was that by that time, Madlax was already Nigh Invulnerable, Immune to Bullets, and so on, so she actually did more harm to her by dying (and sending her into clinical depression) than she could have possibly prevented.
 * Well, Madlax got out of her depression quick enough--by running off with the woman who killed . That's some Karma Houdini we're talking about here.
 * In Zeta Gundam, Henken uses the battleship Radish as a shield in an attempt to save Emma and the Gundam Mk-II from Yazan and his Hambrabi. Yazan kills him and later kills Emma.
 * In Victory Gundam there are a few examples but the most egregious by far is  who manages to destroy a V2 Gundam to deal negligible damage to the enemy, leaving behind a pregnant wife.
 * Gundam 00, season one., combines this with essentially his Crowning Moment of Awesome. It was tough to swallow, but forgivable... until returns in season two, with no preamble, and more sadistic than ever.
 * Even if it didn't finish him off, it did take him out for the rest of the season, which in turn allowed the rest of Celestial Being to survive the final battle. On the other hand if had saved himself he might have lived a few more days but with  help the UN forces would have exterminated Celestial Being and everyone would have died anyway.
 * A second example comes in the form of who dies trying to save . It's too bad
 * Fushigi Yuugi has a huge Tear Jerker in the form of the death of . Rather than simply wait for Mitsukake, who could have cleared up his injuries with a touch, he decides to use the last of his strength to move a huge boulder, and dies of the strain. The reason it's a Senseless Sacrifice? The boulder isn't actually blocking the cave entrance it's in front of. There's enough room to just walk around it. There are even skeletons already inside the cave when the rest of the Seishi finally get in!
 * Yu Yu Hakusho opens with a senseless sacrifice by the main character. It appears as though he saved a child from being run over, but the Grim Reaper later remarks that the car would have veered out of the way if not for the confusion of Yusuke jumping into the street to push the child out of the way.
 * To add insult to injury, the child actually took more damage from being pushed onto the ground than he would have taken otherwise. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.


 * Subverted however, in that while the sacrifice was useless in it's intended purpose, it ultimately allowed Yusuke to turn his life around (once he got it back, of course).
 * In the manga version of Elfen Lied, doomed clumsy girl Kisaragi is informed by Kurama that she must be sacrificed in order to kill Lucy, who has taken her hostage. She agrees to this readily, owing to her deep feelings for her boss. Arguably, the anime, wherein Lucy simply kills her ASAP, leaving a dumb look on the poor girl's floating severed head, owns the shock value. But when Lucy is able to use her hostage's death to confuse things just enough to help ensure her escape, she does not hesitate to taunt the hell out of Kurama, stating 'Her Death Was Useless!'.
 * Though Kisaragi's death does inspire Kurama not to try sacrifice anyone else to stop Lucy. This ends up saving Nana's life later.
 * in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. It's not entirely pointless, but it only reveals the strengths and weaknesses of so that  can make a proper heroic sacrifice.
 * The death of in Mobile Suit Gundam The 08th MS Team. He dies
 * A borderline case happens to in a Case Closed movie where her, Conan, the Shonen Tantei, and other kids are trapped in a virtual world in 19th century London. Any one who get mortally wounded in game are deleted and the only ones left are  . Ran has just been captured by the in game Big Bad and a showdown between him and Conan begins on top of a moving train that is going out of control.
 * In Transformers Armada, towards the end, Starscream finally decides to defy Galvatron and actually almost mamnages to beat him in a fight despite Galvatron having the Star Saber. In the end, however, Starscream is impaled, but with his last breath, gives Unicron an almighty blast. End result? Sideways gets the Star Saber, and Starscream's final attack dissipates ling before reaching Unicron.
 * In Legend of Galactic Heroes, die trying to protect . Despite their efforts,  is shot and bleeds out before help arrives.
 * In Fairy Tail, legendary ice mage Ur sacrifices her life (sort of) to seal the demon Deliora in unbreakable, unmeltable ice for eternity. Since Deliora was a rampaging beast of destruction, that seems awfully noble of her--until you recall that the reason she did this was to snap one of her two pupils out of his Revenge Before Reason obsession. It worked--only for the other pupil to head down a similarly destructive path after her sacrifice.
 * In One Piece this is performed by the elite guards of Arabasta who drank the hero water (a drink that makes you incredible powerful at cost of killing you in 5 minutes) just to save the princess from the Big Bad. He just stood on the rooftop of palace and waited until they died, unwilling to fight against them just because they did it.
 * A non-lethal, comical variant, where if Luffy fell into the water, Chopper, followed by Brook, would jump in to rescue him, forgetting that they are also Devil Fruit users and cannot swim either. Zoro or another crewmate usually saves them each time.
 * In the second episode of Code Geass R2, Urabe self-destructs his Knightmare Frame in order to defeat the seemingly-invincible opponent Knightmare (or, at the very least, to buy time for Zero and Kallen to get away from it). Unfortunately, Urabe had no way of knowing that his opponent possessed a power which lets him (subjectively) stop time, allowing him to avoid the brunt of the explosion.
 * Apocalymon from Digimon Adventure tries to pull a Taking You with Me to destroy both worlds with him but the Digivices manage to contain the explosion, meaning the only thing he accomplished was killing himself.
 * During the Eclipse in Berserk, both and  make Heroic Sacrifices to save Casca from getting killed and eaten by the ravening demons after Griffith marks them and everyone else with the Brand of Sacrifice. While Casca does escape a Cruel and Unusual Death at the hands of the demons, she  despite Guts' best efforts to save her.
 * Almost happened in the first episode of Bleach, where Ichigo tries to sacrifice himself to save his family from the Hollow. Rukia calls him an idiot, as the Hollow would have eaten everybody else after eating Ichigo.
 * Later, Yamamoto pulls one of these by using his zanpakuto's flames to basically nuke the Fake Karakura Town with Aizen in it, sacrificing his life (and the lives of all his subordinates) in the process. However, Aizen predicted this, and gave Wonderweiss the ability to nullify Yamamoto's flames, making his attack pointless.

Comic Books

 * In Transformers Last Stand of the Wreckers, Pyro decides to forgo his dreams of sacrificing his life for some epic cause to hold off some pursuing Decepticons.
 * There was an X-Men story somewhere, where a civilian scientist takes an energy blast meant for Bishop and dies, completely unaware of Bishop's Energy Absorption power. The action does help improve human/mutant relations, though.
 * One issue of Marvel's G.I. Joe series had Scrap Iron fire a missile at a wrecked car with people inside. The Soft Master (who was trying to save the trapped people) intercepts the missile and gets blown up himself. Unfortunately, Scrap Iron has a second missile which he uses.
 * In Star Wars, a group of Jedi lure Darth Vader into a trap and try to kill him, and he effortlessly annihilates them. When it finally gets down to the last three Jedi, they manage to cripple him, but just as they are moving in for the kill a squad of 501st clone soldiers arrives and rains fire down on them, killing one. Tsui Choi, one of the Jedi masters, selflessly lunges at the clones in order to buy the other Jedi time to escape...but Vader seizes him in midair with the Force, pinning him helplessly in the sights of the clones, and both Jedi die.
 * Transmetropolitan has Fred Christ, a Transient (humans spliced with alien DNA) cult leader, who has been portrayed as a corrupt Jerkass throughout the series. During the finale, however, he and some of his followers choose to rush some of the President Evil supporting police, believing that their Heroic Sacrifice will be shown on the news. The cops point out that there are no cameras filming at the moment. After a moment's hesitation, Fred decides to charge anyway. Whether or not this qualifies as his Crowning Moment of Awesome or not is debatable.
 * In The Secret History,

Fan Works

 * In the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha fanfic Material Days,, effectively shows that Heroic Sacrifice accomplished nothing, greatly upsetting those closest to her.

Film

 * The film Gallipoli is based entirely around this trope.
 * As is the entire theatre of battle, let alone the entire war this film is about. You could say the Senseless Sacrifice in the film is a microcosm of the whole.
 * The jihadists in Four Lions dream of making a grant Heroic Sacrifice (from their point of view, at least), but each one of them ends up throwing his life way in an utterly pointless fashion.
 * In the remake of Dawn of the Dead 2004, a good portion of the survivors does this in the film's finale. The survivors want to make it to the docks to enter one of the survivors' ship, and to sail to his private island off the mainland, where the zombies can't possibly reach them. After the said sacrificing, they may find themselves on the boat, but as they dock on the private island, they are greeted by dozens of dozens of other zombies. Even if they managed to get back onto the boat (we don't actually find out; it's a Bolivian Army Ending), they would not have had enough fuel to go anywhere else.
 * Defiance sees one of the non-combatant Jews rush a group of German soldiers with a live grenade, only to be shot a few yards into his charge and for his grenade to blow up by his body.
 * In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Will bets his soul for the key to the titular chest in a game of Liar's Dice against Davy Jones. When it looks like Will is going to lose, Will's father makes an absurdly high bet so that Jones calls him out instead (at the same cost). Though noble, this turns out to have been a bad idea for two reasons. One, Will didn't care whether he won or lost, the main goal of the game was to trick Jones into revealing where he hid the key. Two, though this is never addressed in the film itself, observant viewers will notice that Jones had five fives and Will had three. Will had bet eight fives, which means that if Bootstrap hadn't intervened and Jones had called him out instead, Will would have won.
 * OTOH, had he lost, Will would have been bound to Davy Jones's will, which could have buggered the plot anyway.

Literature

 * In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel His Last Command, Feygor and a company go to blow up a Chaos warp gate. Several of them die, and the gate isn't even harmed.
 * In Only In Death, Rawne orders his officers to tell the Ghosts that if they slip up, 's death will have been in vain.
 * In Necropolis, one of the Vervun infantry commanders grabs as many explosives as he can carry and charges towards a Chaos war machine. He makes most of the distance without the guns touching him, but is shot down - . Not to mention the entire book, from the first tankers to the fighting in the Spike, given that   because of the massive casualties.
 * I think that falls under a different trope. The point of the battle was largely to deny Chaos the world. But on a more personal level, it was a chance for the Ghosts of Tanith to fight the battle Gaunt denied them when he fled Tanith. And it is arguably the only thing that allowed the Ghosts to survive as a unit since a large portion of the Vervunhivers they fought with would later join the Ghosts.
 * Katniss volunteering for The Hunger Games to probably die in place of her sister Prim proves senseless because  It's also arguable whether Katniss actually did   any good as the mockingjay, since her participation was pretty limited.
 * Played straight in Animorphs. In a mission to capture the Pool Ship in order to use its communications systems, it's evident that a split faction, led by Tom, is planning to kill everyone involved and make their escape using the Blade Ship. Jake orders Rachel to infiltrate and disable the Blade ship, and though she knocks out the weapons systems before finally succumbing in a six-to-one fight. Unfortunately, Erek drains the Pool ship's weapons systems, so rather than having its engines knocked out, the Blade ship escapes anyways, though Tom is killed.
 * Subverted in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. In The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan (Who else?) agreed to give up his own life to Jadis in order to save Edmund. Before killing Aslan, Jadis tells him that she's still going to kill Edmund (and everyone else in the rebel camp). Later, Aslan resurrects himself (invoking a loophole in the Deep Magic) and proceeds to kick Jadis' butt.
 * Subverted in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn. challenges the Lord Ruler and is killed in what appears to be a Senseless Sacrifice. Later, it turns out that this was all part of the plan, and his sacrifice is what finally inspires the people to rise in rebellion.
 * In The Saga of Darren Shan,  Of course,
 * In Harry Harrison's novel The Daleth Effect, Denmark's space liner is invaded by US and USSR agents in an attempt to steal the piece of Applied Phlebotinum allowing the ship to fly. In response, the captain of the ship triumphantly tell both parties that all their efforts are in vain, as a fail-safe has been installed on board to prevent a takeover. The ship is destroyed seconds later. The captain's widow laments that all the crewmembers and passengers, including the inventor of the device, died in vain to protect a secret that was already made public days before. Even worse, since Denmark refused to patent the technology for fear of it being misused, they now have nothing.
 * It's even worse for the widow (who is American and has never applied for Danish citizenship), since she's partly responsible for the Americans being able to board the ship. Earlier, she is approached by an American agent, asking her help in obtaining the plans of the Anti Gravity device, threatening to revoke her American passport if she won't help. She refuses, but later discovers that her husband is cheating on her with a stewardess. In a fit of rage, she steals the inventor's notebook and gives it to the agent. He reveals that it's just the plans for a portable fusion reactor, which they have no interest in stealing (they'll just buy the patent and avoid legal trouble). However, he uses the notebook to blackmail her into spying for them.
 * Subverted example in Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. Dumbledore's expedition to retrieve a horcrux from Voldemort's trap-filled cave ends up getting him killed in the attack on Hogwarts, and it turns out the horcrux was already gone. Except it's later revealed he was already dying anyway, and it probably kept Harry from getting killed going in there alone, as well as providing a way for Snape to kill him.
 * RAB is a straight example. Actually, he made the horcrux harder for Harry to find and destroy . Can even be considered Stupid Sacrifice when you think what could have been if he told Dumbledore everything he knew instead.
 * In Neverwhere  allows himself to be killed by the resident Two Bad Guys, Croup and Vandemar in order that he may learn something of the nature of their employer and purpose. As it happens, he has his life hidden away somewhere else so that he can come back, so this is less a sacrifice than it might be; however, it is utterly unnecessary, as by the time he gets back to the other characters, they already know who the Big Bad is.
 * in Warrior Cats gives his life in Fading Echoes to save.......... a half-eaten mouse. And it doesn't get saved.

Live Action TV
"Vail: How very touching his meaningless death was! But this fight was never for mortals."
 * In Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, the Icarus space station is dropped out of orbit and set on a course for Volcania. Lord Dread commands the Biodread, Soaron, to intercept, by telling him that the station will destroy "the Home of the Machines: your home." Soaron goes, knowing very well that he has absolutely no chance to stop the impact of millions of tons of flaming steel. He still flies into its path and screams his name in defiance before being destroyed.
 * But Soaron always gets better courtesy of nanoregeneration. Of course, even the Master Computer Overmind admits it has no idea how long it would take for Soaron to regenerate from this.
 * He would have come back for sure though as he was being set up for a Heel Face Turn in the next season if it had gotten made.
 * Of course, for Charlie it makes sense: he clearly knows he's going to die and embraces it the entire episode.
 * Inverted, in a way, the Torchwood miniseries Children of Earth. . This was unnecessary not because he failed, but because, and he could have helped achieve this if he'd been willing to . Not a Stupid Sacrifice because his motivation makes sense. It seemed almost inevitable that even this would go terribly wrong, as not one good thing happens to him in the entire miniseries.
 * Also, seemed to pretty much come under this trope too.
 * Subverted in Doctor Who. For the first four seasons, we are led to believe that the conclusion of the Time War was a Senseless Sacrifice for the Time Lords; the Doctor sacrificed his own people to wipe out, but a handful of survived. However, in The End of Time, it turns out that.
 * Explicitly invoked for 's death on Angel:


 * His sacrifice did, however, . So perhaps not so meaningless after all.
 * Also, he had pretty explicitly stated before that he didn't much care to go on living after 's death.
 * The Supernatural episode "Abandon All Hope" includes a heartbreaking death for  in order to make possible an attempt to
 * In another episode foreshadowing these events, Dean is sent to the future by Zachariah to meet his future self after turning down Michael. Future-Dean turns out to have become such a
 * To be fair, did assure Sam and Dean's escape from there.
 * in the penultimate episode of Gekiranger thrusts himself into the Big Bad and pretty much self destructs. Though it's revealed not two minutes later that the villain survived it.
 * Happens at least twice in V|V: The Final Conflict.
 * In the scene where Donovan arranges to trade himself for his son, the rebels are set up to ambush the visitors, but they don't. Instead, they let Donovan get taken by the aliens.
 * In a scene where the rebels are sabotaging the water facility, one of the rebels is wounded. The rebel's girlfriend comes back for him and insists she will stay with him. Two (fit) mercenaries come back, too. They pick up the perfectly fit woman and haul her away, leaving the wounded man behind to be killed. If they'd grabbed the wounded man instead, they would have all made it out alive.
 * Power Rangers has a few of these early on:
 * In the finale of Power Rangers Turbo, T.J. decides to activate the Rescue Megazord's self destruct in a last resort to destroy the enemy (granted the Megazord was horrendously damaged and they didn't have time to repair it on the battlefield). The monster survives, requiring the Rangers to switch to the Turbo Megazord... which also gets defeated.
 * A similar thing happened in the source series Gekisou Sentai Carranger, in the exact same footage, the enemy survives VRV Robo's self-destruct, RV Robo gets badly damaged (but is later rebuilt) and the monster (who is the Big Bad, Demoted to Extra in Power Rangers), only dies after being shrunk by stale Make My Monster Grow food (changed to a weapon sacrifice in Power Rangers since the Make My Monster Grow method was changed).
 * In Power Rangers in Space former Big Bad Astronema turned traitor but is sent back to her old base in order to stop an asteroid from hitting Earth. It doesn't work. Overlaps with Stupid Sacrifice because the Rangers had Megazords they could have used. (Granted, Astronema did volunteer and the Megazords they had weren't enough anyway, they needed one more)
 * On Robin Hood, Marian prevents Guy of Gisborne from assassinating King Richard at the cost of her own life. However, if one knows their history, it's rather depressing to realize that Richard returns to England only to leave and then die soon after in Normandy.
 * Al on Flash Forward commits suicide because his flash forward has him receive news on the death of a woman. Afterwards, everyone takes to the fact that the flash forwards will not necessarily come true. In a later episode, the woman is hit by a car and dies anyway. Al was only receiving the news of her death and was not responsible for it.

Music
"''I would go through all this pain,
 * Bruno Mars' "Grenade" falls into this. The lyrics tell of a man who would give his life for someone who doesn't love him back.

Take a bullet straight through my brain,

Yes, I would die for you baby,

But you won't do the same.''"

Tabletop Games

 * Called a "phantom sacrifice" in Bridge. A team bids a contract expecting to go down (the sacrifice) to lose less than they would defending the opponents' contract. Unfortunately, the opponents' contract doesn't make.

Theater
"Peter Cook: Perkins, I want you to lay down your life. We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war."
 * at the end of Chess; he does it primarily so Florence, but afterwards Florence finds out that
 * Parodied, like every other WWII cliché, in the "Aftermyth of War" sketch from Beyond the Fringe.


 * In the opera Il trovatore, Leonora, desperate to do anything to save Manrico from execution, marries the Count di Luna and takes a poison that will allow her to live just long enough to break him out of dungeon. But Manrico is so shocked to discover his lover's infidelity that he refuses to make his escape. The Count watches Leonora die and has Manrico executed at once.
 * One could easily argue that the end of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has a potential double helping. Romeo, believing Juliet dead after her Fake Death, offs himself with a poison. While it wouldn't have accomplished anything, Juliet's is more fitting to it. Not only did her "Fake sacrifice" Fail senselessly, it causes her to make a real one that accomplishes nothing at all. The only reason this counts is because her fake sacrifice is what forces her to make her real one, and Senselessly End It All.

Video Games

 * Tellah from Final Fantasy IV using a Dangerous Forbidden Technique to kill Golbez... who survives.
 * This plays with the trope however, as while he fails to kill Golbez, he does weaken him enough to free your mind controlled ally Kain so he can join you again..
 * Even worse since
 * Not really sure it's that senseless, if he hadn't done that Golbez would have probably killed all the party right there. The second time the party encounters Golbez, it takes a Big Damn Heroes moment from for them to survive.
 * For that matter, everyone who "dies". The most jarring example would be  Another involves
 * The Shofixti in Star Control 2 blew up their own sun in order to deal a crippling blow to the Ur-Quan invaders... which not only nearly wiped out their entire race, but caused the Ur-Quan (who sought to enslave all life other than their own) to lose their battle against the Kohr-Ah (who sought to destroy all life other than their own). Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
 * Every time the monster Sin rears its ugly head in Final Fantasy X, a Summoner is sent on a quest for the Aeons in hopes of performing the Final Summoning that is said to be the only way to defeat Sin, a quest that invariably costs the Summoner his or her life. . Not surprisingly, Yuna in Final Fantasy X-2 rails against the entire idea of sacrificing one's life afterwards because of this, opposing a plan in which.
 * Subverted with regards to Cid: Every opportunity he has to suggest it, he suggests a suicide ramming run using the airship. Every time, he's shot down as there's far less suicidal means of success. Rikku even mocks him for it one time.
 * Subverted in Metroid Fusion; in a cutscene,
 * The engineer from Dead Space who cut off his limbs in an attempt to be unable to hurt anyone once he changed. Not only do you encounter a legless Necromorph that is apparently him, having died before finishing the task... but you later encounter necromorphs that hurt people just fine despite not having any of their original limbs, so even if he'd been entirely successful, it wouldn't have worked.
 * of Grim Grimoire turns all the sacrifices and convoluted planning in Phantom Brave to weaken the Big Bad and exile him through a dimensional portal into this when she It just takes some Level Grinding to kill him Deader Than Dead then. Although in their defense, they did think he would continue to live As Long as There Is Evil.
 * Runescape has a few sensless sacrifices. For an example, in one quest,
 * Sonic 2006's Silver quest ends with Blaze sacrificing herself to power the ritual to seal Cosmic Horror Iblis away. It works... except they are in the future. Back in the present, Iblis is still alive and well and begins its plans to become invincible, forcing Silver to travel back and defeat Iblis then. Good job, Blaze.
 * MS Saga, a Gundam spinoff RPG, has make a Senseless Sacrifice fairly early in the game by trying to hold off the Psyco Gundam on his own while the rest of the party escapes. The "senseless" part comes in when you realize that even the best MS you have available at the time wouldn't have been much more than a speed bump to Psyco Gundam. The situation is deliberately Gundam-Troperiffic, paying homage to the franchise's long and glorious history of similar sacrifices.
 * Tsukihime: Arcueid vs. Roa in her route. It motivates Shiki enough to give Roa a World of Cardboard Speech, kill the hallway and then kill him.
 * Another Nasuverse example in Fate/hollow ataraxia is the original life of Somewhat subverted, as the villages were quelled by the sacrifice, if only even as a placebo effect.
 * An odd example where this is part of the gameplay can be found in Pokémon. The moves Selfdestruct and Explosion do a lot of damage but render the user unconscious. This can be useful if you have other teammates, but if you have no other battle-ready Pokémon left on your team, it's an instant loss. Despite this, wild Pokémon will still use them for no apparently in-universe reason by spite (the real reason being that wild Pokémon have no AI and just choose attacks randomly).
 * That last bit may be at least somewhat justified. You would have to design believable AI for hundreds upon hundreds of creatures, each with any number of potential movesets.
 * Perhaps even worse is a recently added move, "Memento". It will sharply decrease the target's Attack and Special Attack stats, but the user of said move faints. If a wild Pokémon uses this, it ends the battle, but...stat decreases and increases reset immediately after a battle ends.
 * A new move, Final Gambit, causes the user to faint and forces the opponent to take damage equal to the user's HP. It would already qualify for a Senseless Sacrifice by itself, but then you learn that Shedinjma, a literal One-Hit-Point Wonder, can learn Final Gambit.
 * In Mass Effect, a victim of a sadistic sort of Puppeteer Parasite manages to resist his master's command to kill Commander Shepard long enough to take his own life instead in a cutscene. The problem? You just got done (potentially) fighting a bunch of people with the same parasitic infection, and/or managing to use nonlethal takedowns and Frisbee-like gas grenades to harmlessly render them unconscious. But, because this is a cutscene, you can't. Where's a good Paragon Interrupt when you need it?
 * In Mass Effect 3, Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib-Qwib's ship goes down over . When you get in contact with him to aid in a rescue, he insists that you rescue his crew instead..
 * Also in Mass Effect 3, if you choose the Destroy ending,
 * Call of Duty 4 has this in the "Shock And Awe" mission when your chopper crew stops to rescue a downed chopper pilot (in addition to the troops they were already rescuing.) The player shoots troops who have closed in on the chopper, drags the pilot out, carries her back to your chopper defenselessly...and then gets nuked. This is a point of debate between "If we had just completed our mission, we would have saved many more lives", and "No one gets left behind." That being said, even if they hadn't gone back for the pilot they still may have died in the nuclear explosion.
 * General Leo's attempt to kill Kefka in Final Fantasy VI achieves nothing at all besides his own demise. It's particularly jarring because he did it while all the main heroes were lying in the ground, knocked out, and yet they all survived.
 * Not such a huge waste - Kefka is called away by the Emperor immediately after killing Leo. He probably would have finished off the other heroes if Leo hadn't delayed him. Furthermore, Kefka obviously wants to kill Leo, with or without a fight. He even tells us the excuse he'll give the Emperor for doing it.
 * Defied and Lampshaded in Valkyria Chronicles;
 * But played straight with
 * And again with when he decides to take the already-soundly-defeated  with him, despite not being injured in the slightest.
 * That one was more, however.
 * And played totally straight with
 * In the characters ending, Soul Calibur does this in the fourth game, senselessly holding on to  What a Senseless Waste of Human Life...
 * Mortal Kombat: Deception starts out this way when a three-way showdown between  is interrupted by the resurrection of the game's Big Bad The Dragon King.
 * One of the main plot points in Tales of Symphonia revolves around this. To save the world of Sylvarant from rotting away and dying, the chosen of regeneration has to go beyond simply giving up his/her life, they give up aspects of their humanity one by one beforehand. They give up their sense of touch, taste and ability to speak before finally giving their lives. It later turns out to be pointless because.
 * About halfway through God of War III, Kratos' goals change from killing Zeus to opening Pandora's Box to find the one weapon that can destroy the Olympians. Unfortunately, the only way to open the box
 * Inverted when it turns out that
 * Halo: Reach.
 * That said
 * The most senseless sacrifice in the Haloverse must be of the whole Forerunner species. When the Flood came and consumed trillions of worlds and peoples, the Forerunners built the Halos and activated them to kill themselves and the Flood off. Their deaths would denied the Flood bodies to consume, but that failed hard, because they kept some of the Flood For Science!. 100,000 years later, the Flood samples get free and start consuming other species instead, making the Forerunners' sacrifice a complete failure. Even after the loose Flood get wiped out in the games, there remains 5 more Halos in the galaxy that presumably also contain Flood.
 * In the comic version of Left 4 Dead, Zoey's father is attacked by his ex-wife/Zoey's mother, who is a zombie/infected. He gets bitten and being Genre Savvy, he assumes that he will start to turn and asks Zoey to shoot him in the head so that he won't become a zombie. 2 weeks later, Zoey is told by a military doctor that she and the other survivors are carriers of the virus that are making people zombies, which makes them immune from changing and the carrier gene is passed down from the father. Zoey goes into shock, realizing that sacrificing her father was completely pointless.
 * In Metroid: Other M, Adam went on to Sector Zero to destroy the supposedly unfreezeable Metroids and promptly activated the damage-activated self-destruct. It seemed like a good idea at the time... then you meet the Queen Metroid.
 * In Metal Gear Solid 4 Snake thought that his strain of FOXDIE would kill entire populations indiscriminately if he didn't kill himself to prevent it from spreading, but Big Boss comes to tell him that a cure had been found that would prevent this from happening. The catch is that FOXDIE was going to kill randomly in a few months but at that time Big Boss himself was programmed on its hit list meaning that if Big Boss confronted Snake he would have to die. This could have been avoided if he had simply left a note there for Snake to find or contacted him via Codec radio, closure between father and son did not require the father to die.
 * Except Big Boss wanted to die. It was symbolic:
 * In Fallout: New Vegas we have the incredibly sad tale of
 * In the world of Warhammer 40000, it's well established that the Eldar are a thinly spread race, clinging to the barest semblance of galactic survival. They're known for instigating events that hurtle entire sub-sectors (groupings of a few to dozens of planets, each inhabited by billions of humans or more) to their doom in order to prolong the lives of a few hundred of their own. So, come Dawn of War, its expansions and sequels, it can pretty well be summed up that any Eldar force you take down is committing this trope, especially if they're working on an end result that would probably work out better in the end if they would just think about the fact that the "primitive humans" might actually win. To whit: the Farseer's entire plan in Dawn Of War 2.
 * With information gained from the Eldar campaign Retribution, the plan does make a little more sense.
 * In Eternal Darkness, most of the chapters apparently end with this. It seems like a bunch of Shoot the Shaggy Dog stories, even the ending. That is until . . So when the player !

Web Comics

 * in the webcomic Fans, captured by an enemy order, telekinetically prevents her automaton double from shooting by making it shoot itself instead. Her captor informs her that this was his plan all along, in order to.
 * Earlier in Fans, attempts a human bomb attack on  with a handheld phaser on overload, only to have the attempt fail because.
 * In The Order of the Stick prequel book Start of Darkness,.
 * This trope is important to the end of the story as well. Redcloak's brother Righteye is determined to destroy Xykon at all costs, but Redcloak believes he will be necessary to helping the goblin race. Righteye flies off to attack Xykon (who is distracted while fighting a powerful Archmage) with a magic knife that will allow him to Sneak Attack the lich for Massive Damage. Redcloak chooses to, and now Xykon knows that he will never betray him or it would make his loss even more pointless.
 * Problem Sleuth: It appears that a bust of Captain Snoop has accidentally wandered in range of a cannon controlled by a sniper rifle. Our hero, Problem Sleuth leaps in front of the rifle to prevent the bust from being shot. However, as is pointed out, the sniper had no intention of firing at all, and jumping in front of the rifle and not the cannon itself would be totally pointless. And then his finger slips.
 * Subverted in MS Paint Masterpieces, where the minor character Compass Man fights a powerful robot assassin with a Healing Factor. After a short fight proving his inferiority in combat, he attempts a self-destructive blast, which probably wouldn't have worked anyways. Luckily, Mega Man interrupts him before he can pull it off, so he gets bonus points for trying, and he gets to live.
 * Played hard in Goblins due to Kore's cunning. Chief attempted to delay him so the others could escape, but the paladin, recognizing the plan, incapacitated Chief before slowly and methodically torturing the poor goblin, using the screams of agony to lure the others back.
 * And once, we get another Senseless Sacrifice because . Moral victory?
 * A second example:
 * Wapsi Square Backstory: Jin's suicide did not derail the spell as she hoped it would. It did have a significant effect eventually, but much, much later than she wanted.
 * Played for comedy in Dr. McNinja when the mayor of Cumberland makes a deal with a demon samurai ghost thing: his soul in exchange for the demon abandoning a plan to raise an undead army. Immediately after the demon leaves, a man runs up to the mayor asking if he'd seen it, then saying that he was of a bloodline that could stop the demon and that it would have been ludicrously easy for him to banish it for another hundred years.

Web Original
"Louie: I'll miss Huey.
 * Almost happened in Sapphire Episode III. Even after killed  after promising Alec would be spared,
 * Parodied in the web animation Ducktalez 3 when Huey martyrs himself in an attempt to stop Vegeta, likely homaging Chiaotzu's death against Nappa in DBZ:

Dewey: If only he hadn't blown himself up when I had a perfectly good rocket launcher right here!"

"Jon: Alright, who's sacrificing their life?
 * The Runaway Guys converge on a Star Coin over a gap.

(Josh walks off the edge and misses completely.)

Josh: DAAAGGH!

(Laughter)

Jon: Okay, you can do it, Josh!"

Western Animation
"Phoebe: Did your own death save your son Luach from Canmore?
 * The page quote comes from Shadow Raiders, a rather grim kids show. By episode 20 the Beast had already eaten three inhabited planets on screen, two of them belonging to the protagonists! While the inhabitants of planet Fire managed to evacuate, the not evil at all vizier crashed the planet into the Beast to no effect. Planet Jungle chose to sacrifice itself since it could not escape, and again did no visible damage.
 * And then, in the Series Finale, the Beast is teleported away from Planet Rock at the last second by driving the Prison Planet into its maw and having its World Engine take them both to the far reaches of the galaxy. The last scene of the series, after all the triumphant cheering and congratulating, is of the Beast devouring another inhabited planet, with the heavy implication that it has assimilated the Prison Planet's teleportation technology.
 * Let's not forget Planet Water, which the entire planet was turned into one massive cannon putting everything it had in one shot (which killed everyone on it), doesn't even dent the Beast.
 * The death of Jet and implied deaths of Smellerbee and Longshot are this in Avatar: The Last Airbender, they never found Appa in the HQ which was what Jet's sacrifice was meant to do, buy them time. Not to mention the Dai Li aren't taken down either.
 * The Princess and the Frog has a rather big one, though caused by Fridge Logic.
 * In Gargoyles, Macbeth had a Senseless Sacrifice in his flashbacks; after he was officially killed by Canmore and his son Luach took his crown, he realized that Luach's only hope of defeating Canmore was if Macbeth himself remained officially dead. The end result:

Macbeth: No."