Battle-Halting Duel
It's the Final Battle, and chaos is reigning supreme all around the Big Bad and the Hero, who are leading their respective armies to battle. The audience gets to see all sorts of little pieces of the surrounding climatic battle, but then suddenly the first blow is struck between the Big Bad and the Hero (usually the Big Bad first).
All around the chaotic fighting grinds to a sudden halt as the main event between our hero and the Big Bad gears up. All the fighters stop fighting and come into a circle surrounding the battle as the two main characters start circling, ready at any moment to strike. This moment when everything stops because of the Strike Heard Around the World is the Battle Halting Battle. Everyone stops and puts aside their differences to watch the fight between their leaders.
Related to Combat by Champion. May be caused by Leave Him to Me. Possibly a more willing version of Locked Out of the Fight.
Anime
- Fullmetal Alchemist
- King of Hell: Right as The War between the Black and White Sects starts, Majeh steps in the middle and challenges EVERYONE to a one-on-one duel, and proceeds to curbstomp the people that step up.
Film
- In Lion King 2: Simba's Pride, the start of the final battle fits the description of this trope to a T.
- In Troy, the big battle between Achilles look-alike and Hector causes the battle to halt around them, especially when Achilles look-alike dies a painful death.
Literature
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final battle with Voldemort effectively starts this way, though the "strike" seen by all is Harry revealing himself from under his cloak.
- Right before Harry reveals himself everyone in the room is silently watching Voldemort duel Kingsley, McGonagall and Slughorn and Bellatrix duel Hermione, Luna and Ginny. Mrs. Weasley jumps in to fight Bellatrix and the rest is history...
- In the novelization World of Warcraft: Tides of Darkness, the next-to-last battle between The Alliance and The Horde takes place near Blackrock Spire, the orc stronghold. The Alliance besieges the stronghold, when the orc warchief Orgrim Doomhammer leads a counter-attack. During the battle, he encounters the Alliance supreme commander Lord Anduin Lothar. After Lothar's death, his lieutenant Turalyon picks up his broken sword and knocks out Doomhammer. The defeat of their warchief sends the the Horde into a full retreat.
Video Games
- Flavor Text for the Auroran Firebird in EV Nova notes that battles between Federation and Auroran forces sometimes come to a halt to watch Viper/Firebird dogfights between renowned pilots.