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Cornered Rattlesnake

 Cornered Rattlesnake
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 Cornered Rattlesnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
 Cornered Rattlesnake
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 Cornered Rattlesnake
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The Cornered Rattlesnake is a character or a faction that is pressured to the breaking point. Another entity, usually a villain, will bully or threaten the weaker rattlesnake until the snake fights back. Sometimes the "weaker" group is actually surprisingly powerful, but the bully underestimated their abilities. Having the rattlesnake bite back is something the villain normally didn't intend or anticipate, and often throws a wrench into his plans when he has a sudden realization that the weakling he's been tormenting isn't that weak. So the villain will face the consequences.
Sometimes a Cornered Rattlesnake will be given assistance from the enemies of the villains, and so will begin to be able to defend itself. The villain's cruel actions could actually make their allies turn towards the rattlesnake's side.
The trope name comes from the real-life behavior of a rattlesnake when cornered. The human can easily choose to retreat but instead tries to kill the rattlesnake. Cornered, the rattlesnake would attempt to ward off the attacker by rattling its tail. If that doesn't work, it defends itself with a Desperation Attack. This trope doesn't require the rattlesnake to win, as it is possible to kill the snake, but being bitten is highly likely, meaning it's at least a Mutual Kill as the snake goes down with its attacker.
Sometimes this is a response to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, Hopeless Boss Fight, or Curb-Stomp Battle. See also Beware the Nice Ones and Neutral No Longer for many heroic or pacifistic examples, with Not-So-Harmless Villain and Villainous Breakdown often serving for antagonist examples (especially ones that are more commonly Dirty Cowards).
This is also one of the major themes of Japanese Spirit, the proverbial Japanese expression being kyūso neko o kamu, "the cornered rat will bite a cat."
This isn't Bullying a Dragon, as the cornered rattlesnake appears, at first, to be physically weaker or a huge coward and only reacts in self-defense. However, it's a defining trait of a Paper Tiger. Compare Mugging the Monster and Traumatic Superpower Awakening, where the would-be victim shows no outward sign of the threat they pose (in the latter case, they didn't pose a threat until they were attacked). Also compare Burning the Ships, which is intentionally putting your own side in this position. If the 'rattlesnake' knows they will die for retaliating and doesn't care, that's Do Not Go Gentle.
When this a mechanic in a game, when a character's weakened state can counterintuitively be a Power-Up, compare Desperation Attack. If the rattlesnake is a town, it may be the Undefeatable Little Village. If there is a species or several generations of cornered rattlesnakes whose strength is defined by their survival and experience, they Had to Be Sharp.
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In Pact, Blake Thorburn averts this — he has a tendency to lash out violently and without thinking, regardless of whether he has a realistic escape route or not. Hence, his enemies have no issues cornering him. The problem arises when Rose, his Distaff Counterpart, is cornered. Being the calmer and more educated member of the pair, she's more learned in the family trade — specifically, diabolism, and once she's backed into a corner, she rapidly loses any moral qualms she has about sending things like Bloody Mary after her enemies.
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In Worm, the PRT decide that they've had enough of Skitter, so once they find her secret identity, they dispatch Dragon and Defiant to apprehend her immediately. The location? In the middle of a high school cafeteria filled to bursting. More disturbingly, the PRT actually wants Skitter to take hostages so they can justify going to such extremes to take her down.
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Heralds of Valdemar:
Valdemar doesn't have much of an army or any desire for one. What they do have is fate literally on their side, fate which manifests in the form of magically Gifted children who're typically born at just the right time to fend off opportunistic invaders — often in spectacular fashion. Quality beats quantity, here. Of course, every few generations, a Karsite or Hardornen monarch gets greedy and has to be reminded that Valdemar is too tough a nut to crack — however idyllic it is.
In Brightly Burning, Lavan's Traumatic Superpower Awakening comes after school bullies decide to punish him for finding ways to avoid them. Consequently he burns the school down and kills several people. The experience horrifies the gentle boy and he's very unwilling to kill again, but he's still pressed into the war with Karse. After an attacker blinds his mentor while Lan dithers, he decides he will never hesitate again and starts killing enemy soldiers by the hundreds; It Gets Easier and this is not good for him, or anyone else. The result is he incinerates an entire Karsite army along with himself, which ends the war in a day as the horrific shock and terror convinces their masters to retreat from a victory they were so certain they would get, and Valdemar is again left alone.
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Killa in John Wick: Chapter 4 doesn't seem like a physical threat, being girthy and asthmatic. Indeed, he spends a lot of time running from John and ordering his mooks to defend him after the card game. When John has him cornered, however, he turns out to be more than a physical match for the Baba Yaga, actually getting the better of him and even nearly killing him.
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In Sluggy Freelance, Dr. Shlock is a quivering coward who will pretty much do what you want if you point a gun in his face. But as his Heroic Bastard son, Agent Rammer puts it, when he's backed into a corner, he always pulls through. Dr. Schlock eventually makes his way into becoming one of the world's biggest threats when he runs out of places to hide.
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Tom and Jerry: In "Mouse Trouble", Tom bought a book titled "How to Catch a Mouse". At some point, Jerry was cornered and Tom read from a chapter that "a cornered mouse never fights". The book was proven wrong.
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Implied with this line from William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, said by Romeo when the whole city police is surrounding him at the entrance to Juliet's grave:
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DC Animated Universe:
In the first episode of Batman Beyond, Bruce's Batman is too old to fight against the goons. One of them is about to beat Batman with a pipe, forcing Batman to use a gun to win. Batman, who hates guns, decides he needs to retire in his old age so he wouldn't be in this situation again.
In the early series Batman: The Animated Series, the episode "Joker's Favor" climaxes with this, when Charlie Collins, driven over the edge by the realization that Joker will keep tormenting him and his family forever simply because he finds it that fun, feigns Sanity Slippage and threatens the Joker with a Mutual Kill via one of Joker's own bombs and delighting in pointing out he'll be found "blown to bits in an alley alongside a "miserable little nobody" rather than dead at Batman's hands; this easily terrorizes the Joker into giving up all his information on the Collins family.
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Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio: Spazzatura is abused by Count Volpe, but never fights back. When Count Volpe tries to burn Pinocchio, Spazzatura defies Volpe to save him. Volpe becomes furious, and draws his sword against Spazzatura, backing him and Pinocchio up against a cliff edge and declaring, "You will betray me no more!" Driven to a point where it's come to either standing up against Volpe or dying, Spazzatura stops cowering, his expression shifts to one of hostility, and he launches himself at Volpe, attacking and overpowering him.
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In No Evil, Quetzecoatl is a cowardly albino rattlesnake. He typically flees from danger, but when feeling cornered, will sometimes suddenly lash out and bite.
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Harry Potter: Peter Pettigrew, aka Wormtail, is usually underestimated by everyone due to cowardly nature but shows to be surprisingly cunning when backed into a corner. Case in point, when Sirius caught up to him to avenge James and Lily's deaths, he started screaming so everyone around would think Sirius was the one who betrayed his friends, cut off his own finger to leave a trail, and blasted a wall to escape into the sewers in his rat form.
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The Dark Knight Rises:
Bruce is trapped in prison while the city of Gotham is in danger of being blown up, but even his anger and sense of responsibility aren't enough to give him the willpower to escape. Finally, when time is about to run out for Gotham, Bruce becomes so desperate that he throws all safety to the wind and escapes the prison in a life-or-death attempt without wearing a rope.
As Gotham's crime rate has gone down, the police have become complacent and lazy in their victory, with high-ranking officers being far more concerned about their careers than doing the right thing or catching criminals. Then Bane traps most of the police underground for months, turns their city into a mini tin-pot dictatorship, cuts it off from the rest of the country, and plans to eventually blow it up via a nuclear explosion, with the months before the explosion goes off being nothing other than a cruel Hope Spot. When Batman and Gordon finally free the cops, they're finally willing to go all out and take action despite the dangers, when before they were content to sit back and rest on their laurels.
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In Attack on Titan, when Marley's rulers declare their intent to slaughter the fragile backwater of Paradis, most of the latter's inhabitants are terrified. But a fraction gets so primally desperate, faced with this certain annihilation, that they dedicate their lives to taking out Marley with the same extreme prejudice that was shown them. And as it turns out, one cell of crazy people can accomplish a lot.
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In Dora and the Lost City of Gold, Sammy tries to warn Dora off by telling her there's nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. Dora seems not to understand the point, commenting that a healthy one is more dangerous.
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Don Quixote and the Knight of the Grove are going to fight, and the squire of the Knight of the Grove bullies Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s squire, into a fight. Sancho continuously denies this, until the squire of the Knight of the Grove menaces to give Sancho some buffets, so Sancho invokes this trope trying to defy it:
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Aberration (Naruto): Rae's martial arts are meant to be used by somebody who doesn't have a lot of physical strength, and focus on disabling and/or escaping threats... or turning their own attacks against the assailant.
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Django Unchained: After Calvin Candie manages to outwit Django and Schultz (i.e., his Hyper-Competent Sidekick outwitted them and told Calvin their plan), he still gives Django’s wife to them, but forces them to pay him an exorbitant amount of money. Candie lets the victory go to his head and just keeps pushing on the already-beaten heroes, gloating obnoxiously and bullying them until Schultz loses his cool and shoots Calvin dead in a blind rage, not caring that he'll die as well.
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Neon Genesis Evangelion has its main character Shinji Ikari. Usually weak, spineless, and far too kind for his own good, he's still capable of enough berserk rage to slaughter Shamshel and Zeruel on his own. Or cause a world-ending apocalypse with a little help from Mom.
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Discworld:
In Witches Abroad, two snakes that were transformed into humans are threatening Magrat, who is usually an utter wimp and tends to shrink from conflict. Then they back her into a corner, and she punches one of them so hard that it flies through air and then clubs the other on the head.
While Colon and Nobby will not fight if given any choice, if they are forced to fight they will do so with the ferocity of desperation and the skill of two men who have spent their whole lives on the mean streets of Ankh-Morpork.
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In All Mixed Up!, Mariana Mag spills her backstory to Otto and backs him up against the railing on the platform he's standing on as she does so. A thought forms in his head of how the keyboard on her belt might help in defeating her, but he then tosses that idea and decides to go full Leeroy Jenkins instead, charging at her with all he's got.
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A rare villainous version in Beast Tamer. The extremely entitled Edgar Fromage has spent his whole life accustomed to getting what he wants when he wants and being able to inflict violence on those who don't comply with immunity until he gets it. Then he runs into protagonist Rein Shroud and demands the two girls Sora and Runa, who look like pre-teen children, with no on-screen indication that he knows they aren't, and this is the first time in his life violence fails. This puts him on Rein's radar and the protagonist retaliates with extreme prejudice, taking apart Edgar's entire corrupt knight order and coming for him in force. Trapped in his own mansion, Edgar grabs a magic ring with a powerful curse on it and hurls an instant death attack at Rein. When that fails, he turns himself into a demon to try and even the odds.
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The hero known as The Naturalist in Sentinels of the Multiverse represents this state with his "Cornered Beast" Ongoing card, right down to the flavour text. Mechanically, it does two things: it lets him insta-kill weak enemies, and, if he's got the Crocodile symbol online, it increases his damage when outnumbered.
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Invoked by Willis "Diamondback" Stryker in Luke Cage (2016) when he's confronted at gunpoint by Domingo Colon.
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Sauron in Tolkien's Legendarium is this. While generally preferring to remain behind the lines and strategize or scheme in the shadows, when the chips are down and he is backed into a corner, he comes out with full strength. The Numenoreans underestimated him, and he managed to ensnare them into his service. And in The war of the Last Alliance, he came down from Barad-Dur to fight and killed both Elendil and Gil-Galad (although he also temporarily died in the duel).
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In The Dark Knight, as Batman and the police are beginning to overwhelm the gangs of Gotham, their kingpins are forced to turn to the Joker to deal with "the Bat problem". This was a fatal mistake for everyone involved, as hiring and empowering Joker led to him blowing up many buildings and threatening or massacring dozens of people according to his own agenda.
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Exalted: Ebon Dragon has this theme as one of his (very few) admirable qualities. The harder you gang up on him (or one of his chosen), the harder he/they fight back — usually in a way that is completely unexpected. For example, Cornered Titan Desperation charm allows you to use ranged attack charm in point-blank range if you're, well, cornered. Screw momentum, he has to survive!
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The Last Jedi: What the Raddus becomes after its desperate situation becomes more desperate as the First Order starts shooting down lifeboats. Holdo's desperate measure in response (i.e., light speed ramming with their shields down) doesn't bode well for the much stronger Supremacy and the rest of the fleet.
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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The Dark Knight Trilogy:
In The Dark Knight, as Batman and the police are beginning to overwhelm the gangs of Gotham, their kingpins are forced to turn to the Joker to deal with "the Bat problem". This was a fatal mistake for everyone involved, as hiring and empowering Joker led to him blowing up many buildings and threatening or massacring dozens of people according to his own agenda.
The Dark Knight Rises:
Bruce is trapped in prison while the city of Gotham is in danger of being blown up, but even his anger and sense of responsibility aren't enough to give him the willpower to escape. Finally, when time is about to run out for Gotham, Bruce becomes so desperate that he throws all safety to the wind and escapes the prison in a life-or-death attempt without wearing a rope.
As Gotham's crime rate has gone down, the police have become complacent and lazy in their victory, with high-ranking officers being far more concerned about their careers than doing the right thing or catching criminals. Then Bane traps most of the police underground for months, turns their city into a mini tin-pot dictatorship, cuts it off from the rest of the country, and plans to eventually blow it up via a nuclear explosion, with the months before the explosion goes off being nothing other than a cruel Hope Spot. When Batman and Gordon finally free the cops, they're finally willing to go all out and take action despite the dangers, when before they were content to sit back and rest on their laurels.
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 The Dark Knight Trilogy
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Slacker: Whenever Chuck gets cornered by enemies in a videogame, he desperately lashes out against his attackers in a way that either quickly gets him killed or somehow makes him a One-Man Army capable of wiping out all his enemies.
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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In Pathfinder, one racial ability that ratfolk can take is effectively this — if they are under half health and have no conscious allies within 30 feet of them, they get bonuses to both attack and defense.
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 Pathfinder (Tabletop Game)
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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In the first episode of Batman Beyond, Bruce's Batman is too old to fight against the goons. One of them is about to beat Batman with a pipe, forcing Batman to use a gun to win. Batman, who hates guns, decides he needs to retire in his old age so he wouldn't be in this situation again.
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 Batman Beyond
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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In A Brother's Price, Captain Raven Tern is genre-savvy enough to avert this. When she stands in front of the Whistler farm, and the question is presented to her why she doesn't just force them to let her in, she points out that the adults are away on business, and the house is full of toddlers and girls in their early teens, who are armed up to the teeth.
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 A Brother's Price
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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The Transformers: Robots in Disguise: When Starscream's ploys fail, he goes into shock, being unable to do anything. Then, if someone comes along and taunts him further, Starscream goes berserk. Spotlight: Megatron has Megatron actually plan this, attacking a broken Starscream in order to make him fight back.
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 The Transformers: Robots in Disguise (Comic Book)
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Berserk: Griffith's strategy to take the fortress of Doldrey revolves around this, placing the Band of the Hawk with their backs to a river in order to force his men to win, or die. The ferocity that the Band fights with, along with Guts killing the enemy's greatest general and a small force led by Casca taking the fortress while its entire garrison was out on the battlefield (another part of Griffith's strategy as the ephebophilic commander was obsessed with him) causes the Band to accomplish what the generals of Midland had thought impossible and let Midland win the Hundred-Year War.
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 Berserk (Manga)
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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In Witches Abroad, two snakes that were transformed into humans are threatening Magrat, who is usually an utter wimp and tends to shrink from conflict. Then they back her into a corner, and she punches one of them so hard that it flies through air and then clubs the other on the head.
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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In Rebuild World, Akira is (in his own words) a coward. He can't rest well until everything threatening him has a bullet in its head. Because of this, he's extremely trigger-happy when threatened, taking life with a frightening level of ease. Even when backed into a corner, he's so determined to survive that he'll never give up so long as his chance of winning isn't zero.
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In A History of Violence, Jack repeatedly gets harassed by bullies at school, but always manages to Turn the Other Cheek and walk away. Jack presumes that fighting back will just lead to trouble, and his dad Tom always made sure to instill a non-violent approach in Jack. However, once two of the bullies physically prevent Jack from leaving school by shoving him, Jack snaps and beats the hell out of them in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, sending both of the bullies to the hospital with severe injuries. Jack also turns out to be right about the fight leading to trouble when Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs: he gets suspended from school for fighting, and the parents of the bullies are considering criminal charges. It's part of the movie's Central Theme about the realistic consequences of violent behavior.
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In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016), Zant has become so reliant on Ganondorf’s power that he breaks down in fear whenever a sufficiently powerful foe approaches, such as the Hero's Shade or Link. In the end, he manages to pull off a Curb Stomp Cushion against Link.
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 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016) (Manga)
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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In Purple Days, experience has taught Joff that he must deal with Baelish and Slynt ASAP the moment the loop resets. On the other hand, killing both will push Renly to desperation to the point he'll try to murder all Stark and Lannister presence in the Red Keep the moment Robert dies — something Joff can't change either. He limits himself to killing Baelish to stop this.
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 Purple Days (Fanfic)
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In Total War: Warhammer, armies typically have the option of retreating if attacked, but if pursued and attacked again in the same turn, they must fight and will be completely wiped out if defeated. Under these circumstances, the Skaven lord Tretch Craventail grants his army a hefty bonus to their melee attack to represent their viciousness in desperation. It also provides a gameplay incentive to do what's in character for Tretch when faced with a strong opponent - run away.
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 Total War: Warhammer (Video Game)
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Rome:
The army of Pompey the Great has cornered what remains of Julius Caesar's forces in Greece, and are waiting for them to fade away from starvation, disease, and desertion. However, the senators allied to Pompey urge him to attack and finish off Caesar with a military victory, which will look better for propaganda. It turns out to be a mistake as when faced with a straight-up fight Caesar wins, turning the tide in the Civil War.
The trope is lampshaded earlier when Pompey thinks that Caesar's call for terms is a bluff because he's holed up with a single legion. However, Caesar crosses the Rubicon and steals a march on Pompey before his forces are ready, forcing him to retreat from Rome.
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 Rome
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Scar from The Lion King prefers to scheme, let his hyena minions do the dirty work, beg, and snivel his way out of fights. When he realizes he's about to lose the throne he's desired all his life to his nephew Simba and be banished into exile forever in ridicule, that reluctance is thrown completely out the window as he attacks Simba with every trick he has and nearly wins. Even as he's being attacked and eaten by his own hyenas en masse, watching the shadows closely reveals that he goes down fighting.
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 The Lion King (1994)
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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In the early series Batman: The Animated Series, the episode "Joker's Favor" climaxes with this, when Charlie Collins, driven over the edge by the realization that Joker will keep tormenting him and his family forever simply because he finds it that fun, feigns Sanity Slippage and threatens the Joker with a Mutual Kill via one of Joker's own bombs and delighting in pointing out he'll be found "blown to bits in an alley alongside a "miserable little nobody" rather than dead at Batman's hands; this easily terrorizes the Joker into giving up all his information on the Collins family.
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 Batman: The Animated Series
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Animorphs:
David is this both figuratively and literally. In The Solution, he actually morphs a rattlesnake, and as for the figurative part? The end-of-book blurb for The Solution speaks for itself:
Visser One thinks of the whole human race this way, which is why she pushes for a secret invasion — she knows enough about human history and psychology to realize that they'll fight to the last man, and sometimes even win, no matter how much stronger their foes might be.
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 Animorphs
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Following Sun Tzu's advice, Mat deliberately averts this when making battle plans in the fifth book of The Wheel of Time, explaining to Lan that you never want to see what your opposition can do when they don't have any option other than to fight as hard as they can.
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 The Wheel of Time
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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In The Shining, the terrified Wendy only hits Jack with the baseball bat when he gets too close and after multiple warnings.
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 The Shining
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Dominoes: Hakuba eventually realizes, much to his horror, that he helped push Shinichi into this position by helping Yuusaku try and trap Shinichi in a Gilded Cage.
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In Toy Story, Sid's toys have been brutalized by Sid, who sadistically enjoys destroying, damaging, and disfiguring his toys. The toys risk being exposed as living creatures but are able to scare Sid into respecting his toys.
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 Toy Story
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Holyland uses this for both Yuu and Masaki:
Early on, when approached by a thug, Yuu would beg them to just leave him alone, only for said thug to push him and try to attack... At which point he'd fight back with surprising power. He eventually outgrows this after his rampage following Shin's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown… Mostly, as when Yagi threatens Mai he starts feeling again in this situation... And goes on a new rampage. This is the whole reason Yuu became strong: in middle school, he was bullied to the point he quit school, and even came very close to killing himself, and unable to live with himself, he taught himself basic boxing and started training.
As shown in the flashback of how Masaki became a delinquent, his sempai at the boxing club, jealous of his talent, allied with some delinquents to beat him up and make him beg for forgiveness... And Masaki, who couldn't stand anyone calling him a coward, let alone being forced to feel like one, found them one by one to beat them up and take back the begging. His later rampage that made him the strongest street fighter in the area was caused by the school finding out about his assaults and expelling him from the boxing club, putting him in this place again.
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 Holyland (Manga)
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Fate/Grand Order:
Medea Lily admits and Jason himself shows in Solomon that it's only when the chips are down and he's under pressure with his life on the line do his traits as a master commander and strategist come out. His Inspiration at Death's Door skill means that he will get flashes of inspiration when in a life-threatening situation. He hates that skill since he can only get these flashes of inspiration when acting like he is throwing his life away.
Director Goredolf is the type to become more competent the more pressure he's under. As he gets used to what is everyday life for Chaldea, the more of his skills and positive qualities come to light. Compare his Prologue to the Lostbelts self where he's begging for anyone to help him to the Tokugawa Labyrinth event where he punches Beast III/L.
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 Fate/Grand Order (Video Game)
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Some of the flavor text for white, red, and green cards from Magic: The Gathering reference this trope, such as Alara Reborn's Colossal Might.
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 Magic: The Gathering (Tabletop Game)
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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The protagonist of Killing Bites isn't a therianthrope. He isn't especially strong or brave, either, and he knows it. So for all his life, he's just followed the orders of other people. Then he's roped into serving the Obviously Evil zaibatsu. He does his job perfectly, careful to never offend or overstep or question. They assassinate him anyway. Just because it's convenient for them. When he survives due to a twist of fate, he is mad, and very, very committed to taking out the zaibatsu. They threw away the only incentive he had to comply with people like them.
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Produce: This is how Sayaka works in-game: it's only if she's on the verge of death that she actively begins striking back against monsters, which can potentially disable them for the rest of the playthrough.
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In Ender's Game, Ender prefers to win his battles through wits and finesse rather than brute force. However, when pushed too far, despite his physical weakness, he becomes a surprisingly hard-hitting Combat Pragmatist with a brutality that scares even himself. The military commanders recognize this trait early on and secretly encourage such tough situations to recur in Ender's Battle School career.
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 Ender's Game
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Game of Thrones: If Cersei's back is to the wall, she will do things that — while not safe for her in the long run — will make her enemies regret pushing her, as shown in the season 6 finale. Cersei is facing judgement for her crimes and all of her plans to escape that justice are thwarted by the Faith Militant. Left with no other option, she uses the fantasy equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction to bomb the court where she would have been tried with all her enemies inside it, despite the fact that this victory will almost certainly be short-lived once the full ramifications kick in.
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 Game of Thrones
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Knowingly defied by the Leaping Death, a Tyranid special character from Warhammer 40,000: Sent to infiltrate an Imperial world, it figured out that killing the Cardinal leading the planet would only make him a martyr and make the planet's population fight back harder. So instead of killing the Cardinal, it went after his bodyguards instead — appearing out of nowhere to brutally murder them one at a time and leaving the poor bastard spattered in their blood. The Cardinal's sanity didn't last long, and the planet's demoralized population became easy pickings for the hive fleet.
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 Warhammer 40,000 (Tabletop Game)
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At the end of Chernobyl, KGB head Charkov cuts Valery Legasov from his friends and his life's work, ensuring that everything good he did and does will be credited to others, and confidently says that Legasov doesn't have the courage to try blowing the whistle on the RBMK reactors again. But at that point, Legasov is already dying, so nothing the KGB could do frightens him more than a repeat of Chernobyl. So, he commits his memoirs to cassette tape and hangs himself so that the shock of his death will force his warning into the public sphere.
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 Chernobyl
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Cheat Powers: A previous Demon King pushed humans very far and they developed a powerful spell that seals the malicium circulation system in demons. The knowledge is largely lost in the present but Gholl cites this as why demon kings should be more careful in wars.
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 Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Cheat Powers
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Total War:
This is a part of many entries' Morale Mechanic. On an open battlefield, a unit that takes casualties or has scary things happen to it like Flaming Arrows, War Elephants, charges from Dreaded enemy generals, etc. will turn and leg it rather than fight a losing battle. But if a unit is completely surrounded by enemies, or is making a Last Stand during The Siege, that unit will enter "fighting to the death" mode, and will not only hold its ground, the soldiers will gain some combat bonuses from the sheer desperation of their circumstances, potentially letting them fend off their opponents. The moral of the story is that it's better to leave enemies with an out and run them down while they flee, rather than prevent them from fleeing in the first place.
In Total War: Warhammer, armies typically have the option of retreating if attacked, but if pursued and attacked again in the same turn, they must fight and will be completely wiped out if defeated. Under these circumstances, the Skaven lord Tretch Craventail grants his army a hefty bonus to their melee attack to represent their viciousness in desperation. It also provides a gameplay incentive to do what's in character for Tretch when faced with a strong opponent - run away.
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Living in a Frog World: Frank Ramirez has no combat experience whatsoever, yet in the first chapter, he manages to bring down the giant mantis creature threatening to kill him through sheer adrenaline, much to his own astonishment.
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Blackadder: Edmund Blackadder becomes this in "Money" when his enormous debt to the Black Bank comes due. With the Baby-Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells breathing down his neck and the Queen stealing what little cash he's able to scrape together Edmund slumps on the floor and asks Baldrick if people will miss him when he's gone. Baldrick replies that everyone hates him so much, they'll be glad to see the back of him. This enrages Edmund so much that he leaps to his feet and comes up with a plan to blackmail the Bishop just to show people not to mess with him.
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Subverted in Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse; in one of the first chapters, when a corrupt Marine officer tries to rape Nabiki Tendo, all she can do is scream and ineffectually slap him. She's saved by Ryoga Hibiki pulling a Big Damn Heroes.
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My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
Fluttershy protects her friends by staring down a cockatrice and defends them from a giant dragon, which normally she is terrified of.
A similar thing happens with a dragon in another episode. Back Fluttershy against a wall and her courage will shine through.
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Espers in Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution are extremely dangerous when pushed too far.
Rose in Captured. After being detained, put on constant P.P.I.C.s, and subjected to cruel experiments and indoctrination attempts by the Shop for at least six weeks, an agent tells her that her friends were killed in an escape attempt. She snaps and mangles the agent in question. Details are left out, but she notes that the agent isn't pretty anymore and may not ever walk again. She doesn't even know what she did or how she did it.
Harry in Broken Things. Kept in a position similar, although seemingly even crueler, to Rose, he eventually gains enough power to overcome his captors and goes on a rampage throughout the facility. When his rescuers show up, they find him killing the nurses and doctors who tortured him.
Ian TK Pushes Chad after being assaulted by him and his bully friends, yet again.
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In Disney's Aladdin, Jafar hires Aladdin to take the lamp out of the Cave of Wonders, and once Jafar has the lamp, he immediately tries to kill Aladdin. Aladdin survives, and Abu steals the lamp back from Jafar. Which he probably wouldn't have done if Jafar hadn't revealed himself to be a treacherous enemy.
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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba plays this straight with Hantengu, Upper Moon Four and one of the most powerful demons in the setting. Hantengu himself was a frail, old thief and treacherous murderer before he was turned into a demon, and despite his great power he is shown to retain his snivelling, cowardly disposition well after transformation. His Blood Demon Art evolved specifically to counteract this - when faced with danger, Hantengu creates multiple, progressively younger clones of himself, based around the primary emotions - Anger, Joy, Pleasure, and Sorrow, while his primary body (now representing his Fear) shrinks and hides as far away from the fighting as it can. If the four initial clones are fought off, Fear can combine them into Hatred, who has access to all their powers combined. As a last resort, Fear can create a final, massive body representing Resentment, which is only used in cases of emergency due to protect Fear directly.
This occurs in the previous arc with the Demon Slayers. Almost defeated by the sibling Upper Six duo of Daki and Gyutaro, Uzui, Zenitsu, Inosuke, and Tanjiro are all badly beaten by the siblings and are all about to be killed when Gyutaro misjudges Tanjiro's desire to retain his humanity and his care for Nezuko, at which he accidentally gives them all an opening, leading to Uzui and Tanjiro fighting Gyutaro and Zenitsu and Inosuke overwhelming Daki, all in a desperate effort to use this last chance to kill the Demons. They barely succeed with Zenitsu developing his new form and Tanjiro unlocking his Demon Slayer Mark.
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In Mahabharata, the young warrior prince Abhimanyu ends up alone, encircled, and cut off completely from reinforcements. He puts up such a ferocious Last Stand that the opposition has to break the agreed-upon rules of war by ganging up on him before he decimates them utterly.
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Star Control: This is the hat of the Spathi race, who are mostly cowardly comic relief. They're terrified of everything and will take great pains to make themselves as safe as possible while avoiding conflict in any way they can. But if they have no other choice but to fight, they fight with a ferocity that tends to stun everyone else. Their ships are among the most useful and versatile in the game, with decent speed, maneuverability, and very high health totals, and their primary weapon is a fairly powerful homing missile (albeit one aimed backwards... the Spathi fight best when running away from their opponent). The Starbase Commander at the beginning of the game describes them as "cowardly, mobile clams... armed with howitzers".
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In The Art of War, Sun Tzu warns the reader from putting an opposing army in this position: Always leave your opponent an escape route or you'll unnecessarily lose men to the ensuing Last Stand, no matter how much stronger your army is.
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By the time of Revenge of the Sith, General Grievous of the Star Wars series is a famed coward, and retreats as soon as things fall out of favour. When Obi-Wan sabotages his escape, however, he continues to fend him off, actually leaving the Jedi on the defence for a while as he begins knocking and throwing him around like a rag doll.
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Breaking Bad: After getting marked for death by his former boss, Walt is about to flee with his family when he finds out his wife, not knowing the trouble they are in, gave the money they needed to flee to Ted Beneke. With no option left but to fight, Walt resorts to an utterly ruthless assassination plan that involves (non-fatally) poisoning a child and using a crippled man as a (willing) suicide bomber. The plan works. Gus might have survived if he had left Walt a way out.
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In Babylon 5, during the Earth Civil War arc, Sheridan is trying to get Earthforce troops fighting for President Clark to defect or at least stand down from fighting, and is surprised that instead they're determinedly fighting to the death. It turns out that Clark had been telling them that Earthforce crews who surrendered to Sheridan were being executed and replaced by aliens, so they believe they're as good as dead anyway. Some of the actual defectors who had already sided with Sheridan manage to contact them and prove that Clark was lying, and the troops stand down.
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Blackkat's Reverse: While Kurama doesn't want to kill anyone on Kakashi's 'Freak Squad', when he's outnumbered by their group, he does everything he can to escape.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

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Hidden Badass
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Stupidity Tropes
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The Bully
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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 CorneredRattleSnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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Cornered Rattlesnake
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 Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution (Tabletop Game) / int_e9e28b1f
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Cornered Rattlesnake
 King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (Video Game) / int_eba57b3f
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 Mother 3 (Video Game) / int_eba57b3f
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 Rome: Total War (Video Game) / int_eba57b3f
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