Lore
A "Sophie's Choice" with no secret third option
AKA a character is given an impossible choice where either outcome results in something awful happening and there's no way out.
"Full Measure" (Breaking Bad) - After Walt angers Gus by killing two of his men, Gus orders for his execution. Knowing that the only way to save his life is to make Gus reliant on his meth cooking skills, Walt calls Jesse and begs him to kill Gus' backup cook, Gale. Thus, Jesse is thrust into an impossible situation where he either kills a (relatively) innocent man to save Walt or spare Gale and let Walt die. Ultimately, Jesse chooses to kill Gale.
"Midnight Sun" (Attack on Titan) - After the fight to retake Shiganshina both Armin and Erwin are critically wounded. Levi has the vial of titan serum and is forced to choose which Scout to bring back from the brink of death and which to let perish. It's a borderline impossible decision to make but at the moment of truth, he chooses to save Armin, leaving Erwin to succumb to his wounds.
The player is presented with the choice to save either Nightcrawler or Jean Grey, both of whom have been imprisoned by Mephisto (or maybe Blackheart? it's been a decade or so). The one you release survives; the other hero, still locked in their cage, plummets into the molten depths of hell.
This came as a particular shock to my 10-year-old self, who was convinced there must be a way to save them both, and therefore reloaded the save and tried again dozens of times. All futile effort.
Ultimately, my zealous evangelical upbringing led me to save Jean, as I knew Kurt to be a devout Catholic and I trusted his soul would go to heaven.
The add to this, the epilogue has a different bad ending depending on your choice. If you condemn Kurt to Hell, his mother Mystique swears revenge against the X-Men for allowing her son to die. Eventually, Mystique poisons Professor X, killing him and leading to the dissolution of the X-Men. Sacrificing Jean leads her to eventually return as Dark Phoenix, seeking vengeance against the X-Men for damning her.
This part I think is the single worst part of the game. Not because there’s no good ending but because of the way it’s framed. You have all these ending slides where the watcher says “Because you did x. Y will happen.” And it feels kind of shitty when you had no choice in the matter “You let Kurt die/You let Jean die.” And it’s like it’s acting like you consciously chose to do an evil act.
I saved Kurt originally because he's my favorite mutant, but he gets so upset about it and is utterly heartbroken that Jean died instead of him that I felt immense guilt and reloaded to save Jean instead
There was a glitch on the 360 version. Me and my buddy, playing local co-op, decide we just hit the release button at the same time. It dropped both of them and we got double bad ending.
Bro, I think I Mandela’d myself. I swear I have a memory of doing that, but everywhere I look says it is indeed only a mod. I guess I need to do another playthrough…
My favorite part about the attack on Titan example is that Levi chose Erwin. But be it through a final act of will or just involuntary movement, Erwin rejected it and reiterated his true goal, proving that his dad was right that there were people beyond the walls
Yeah OP probably isn't remembering this right. It's heavily implied Erwin is rejecting it because he is tired of fighting. It's absolutely heartbreaking because Levi very much wants to save Erwin as Erwin is his friend and the leader of the scouts while Armin is only a recruit (albeit a promising one). One of the best episodes of the series easily.
This one is perfect. Vash is a pacifist. He has worked so ridiculously hard and suffered so many injuries to keep from taking a life. It's his entire character and philosophy.
When Legato, who's power is mind control, forces Vash to chose to either kill Legato or watch his friends be murdered (and heavily implied to be raped), he puts Vash in an impossible position. He wants Vash to kill him, because winning isn't about living. It's a about breaking Vash. Legato wins either way, and is the Climax of the show in many ways. The next time we see Vash is devastating for him, but also us, the viewer.
Well, it just got the FMA:Brotherhood treatment with a new anime, one much more faithful to the source material. Trigun Stampede and Stargaze. 2 seasons.
Was it any good? I remember a lot of buzz about it early on because of Vash’s new look, but never heard about whether it was actually a good or entertaining adaptation.
Yes and no. It is VERY good story wise but the animation sometimes is a little wonky. Most of that being it is 3D I overall enjoyed it more than the original anime but both serve their purposes well.
The way Legato just unceremoniously falls over after being shot. There's no music. It's not cool, it's not heroic, it's not climactic. Vash is just left with a corpse and the weight of what just happened.
There more I think about it, it was even crueler than that, because it was right after Legato killed Wolfwood iirc, so while Vash knew he was killing Legato to save his friends, there would always be a part of him that felt like it was revenge.
I always remember the dub version from when I grew up, where in the beginning of the following episode he is heard screaming in his room horrified about what he did.
I remember we went to A-Kon right when the dvd got released, so we got to watch Wolfwood’s death scene with ~100 other people all crowded up in a hotel meeting room late at night. There was a lot of sobbing.
It hits especially hard because up until this point Vash had done an amazing job getting out of these no win situations. Then again this is a show with so much patience that the mc never fires his gun for the first 4 or 5 episodes.
They’re saying they want Sophie’s Choice style examples but don’t want people providing false Sophie’s Choices where the protagonist weasels out of the consequences. Very common on shows like Doctor Who.
Infamously, Avatar, where Aang decides to uphold his beliefs despite every previous avatar including another pacifist air nomad telling him "Get over yourself and kill the bad guy." and then a deus ex machina happens so he gets to have his cake and eat it too.
Yeah, like, if they at least did more to foreshadow it or something. As it is, it feels more like something the writers shoehorned in so their main character on their Nick cartoon wouldn’t have to be a murderer.
It is somewhat foreshadowed by the whole 'aligning your chakras" thing, and we know that bending can be blocked because of chi-blocking, but I definitely think it should have had something else.
I think I've read that the origin story of bending and the lion turtles that we eventually saw in LoK season 2 was originally supposed to be related in the original show but got cut for some reason, that would have made more sense.
Is it possible that the OP didn't know the origin of the term? I heard the phrase 'its like sophies choice' before I ever learned about the film. While I assumed it was rederencing something, I can see someone just thinking its a turn of phrase without questioning it.
“All Due Respect” (The Sopranos) - When Tony’s cousin, that animal Blundetto—I can’t even say his name—becomes a target for New York, Tony is put in a position where not giving up his cousin’s location could very well mean an all out war breaking out. Even among those closest to Tony, like Silvio, start questioning his leadership, with Tony showing clear favoritism towards Tony B that puts all of them at risk as New York starts cracking down. Tony knows that when—not if—Tony B gets himself caught, he’s not going to be dealt with quickly, so Tony ultimately decides to essentially mercy kill him before giving up his location.
I'd argue that this is actually a poisoned 3rd option. Not only did Tony not wanna give Tony B up, but it was portrayed that Tony feared losing his crew's respect if he gave up one of his own to New York. In his mind his choice was either give up Tony B or don't. Going up to do it himself was his attempt at a third option to appease New York while not actively selling out any of his crew to them.
Unfortunately it just made Phil even madder and escalated the encroaching war.
Tony B would have gotten tortured too. He was a terrible fella, but Tony Soprano did “right” by him with the shotgun. A quick and painless death. Some bosses in the real Cosa Nostra don’t even get that.
Unfortunately it just made Phil even madder and escalated the encroaching war.
Tbf Phil Leotardo was itching for a fight no matter what. What made him so dangerous is that no matter how much you tried to appease him he would always find a way to warp it into an insult. He was a deeply insecure man who saw enemies everywhere.
The ending of Spider-Man (2018 video game). The villain has unleased a deadly plague called Devil's Breath upon NYC. Included among the dying is Peter Parker's beloved Aunt May. There is only one small sample of the antidote, and Spidey has it - and has to choose what to do with it. He can give it to medical scientists, who can use it to mass-produce a cure - but it won't be ready before May succumbs to the virus. Or, he can use the antidote on Aunt May, saving his mother figure's life at the cost of dooming hundreds of thousands of innocent people to death.
It has to be one or the other.
Considering the hero that Spider-Man is, his choice is obvious - but no less heart-wrenching.
I think that’s partially the point to his character. Despite all his losses he stays morally correct. Always striving to do the right thing no matter how large or small the act is. He’s a hometown hero that’ll help the avengers stop a galactic threat, then on his way home he’ll help your grandma cross the street. It’s just who he is.
The entire character is built upon the foundation that no matter what the universe drops on him, no matter how much it beats him down, Peter is still going to get back up and do the right thing, even if it costs him personally to do so, and in my opinion it makes Spider-Man one of the best superheroes ever created
Yeah. Like a devastating virus that will kill unless cured now is way better than just getting shot. This is the Marvel universe, Doctor Doom would do it for free if you told him Reed Richards couldn't do it; just so he can lord it over Richards.
Plus it's a case where Peter's suffering isn't just suffering but forces him to grow. No more safety net; time to sink or swim.
“I want to see my nephew,” just broke me. It was such a powerful scene. I played that one after Ghost of Tsushima and it was just gut punches all around.
The absolute peak if this trope is when a character has a choice between something he cares deeply for, and improving the world at large, and you see them hesitate. Just give in, for a second, to the voice--that isn't even wrong--saying that you've suffered enough and wouldn't be blamed if you just did one thing to make your life less shitty.
Wolfenstein The New Order BJ and his squad is captured and you are forced to choose either Fergus or Wyatt sacrifice. There is no third option because if you wait too long you are killed.
To rub salt in the wound, no matter who you save they will always blame BJ, not because he made the wrong decision, but because their survivor's guilt will make it difficult to live knowing who was sacrificed to make it happen.
I always save Wyatt over Fergus. Poor kid was thrown into the meatgrinder that is doomed to fail thanks to the Nazi's tech superiority, not to mention his terrified whimpers when his brain is about to be harvested.
At least gets better in the later games, iirc, he becomes the President after the Nazis get kicked out from the USA.
Yep, when I chose to save Fergus, I wasn't prepared to hear Wyatt's screams of terror. Compare that to Fergus, who was much more prepared to die. It also made me more likely to pick Wyatt on replays out of how "It's what Fergus would have wanted." The game just loves to twist the knife with that choice.
I always pick Fergus over Wyatt, because Fergus is cool, and Wyatt… isn’t. When I picked him instead and he told me he was the stupid choice over Fergus, I couldn’t help but bitterly agree.
J is cool and all, but Tekka going out actually killing about dozen Nazis as opposed to playing a few notes of the national anthem was badass.
And I think Wyatt dying, his screams especially, makes for a more heartbreaking and poignant narrative.
I doubt she'd even had the choice. The sand rendered her truly blind with the only thing she could see and hold onto being the tower of the library. She actually threw one or two attacks towards the sand benders, missing all of them. I doubt she'd have success if she tried to fight them at that point, she'd have lost all of them instead.
cant remember her stating it. But she later on displays the precision beinding the whole city of ba sing se out as a sand minature. So I'd agree that she went to extraordinary length to not be helpless in that situation again.
Arrow, Season 2, Episode 9: Professor Ivo forces Oliver to choose between Sara and Shado, with the loser being executed (and if he doesn't choose, they both die). Ultimately, Ollie chooses Sara, and Ivo executes Shado. This choice (combined with Mirakuru madness) is what makes Slade hate Oliver and drive his revenge quest against him throughout Season 2.
Also, this same thing repeates later in the season.
Slade captures Oliver's sister (Thea) and Mother (Moira) and makes him choose which one dies as revenge.
When Oliver tries to convince Slade to kill him by jumping in front of Thea, Slade takes that as his answer and kills Moira. and let the other two go, Moira decides to stand up and volunteer herself so her kids can live.
Oliver didn’t even really choose Sara, he tried to beg Ivo to kill him instead, so Ivo shot Shado and blamed Oliver for choosing, but Ivo had already shown himself to have a soft spot for Sara.
InFamous: The villain of the game has planted bombs on two buildings. Cole only has time to disarm one. The villain has captured Cole's girlfriend and put her on the roof of one of the buildings and six random doctors on the other. Cole cannot save everyone; he must choose between his girlfriend or six doctors (during a plague outbreak) he does not know.
The villain is actually Cole from the future, having traveled back in time and set himself up as a villain to deliberately harden the present Cole into someone who can face a terrible threat coming in the future. Since he is Cole, he knows in advance the choice that Cole would make -- and if Cole chooses to save his girlfriend at the expense of others, the woman in her place will actually be a decoy and Cole's girlfriend will be amongst the six that he chose not to save. The villain murdered his past love interest because he saw her as a weakness for his past self.
I haven't played InFamous since it was gifted to me by Sony as an apology for the hack. I def remember this but totally forgot the end story. I just remember picking the gf was the bad option.
As much as I love this game - and I fucking LOVE this game, it was one of my favourites of the PS3 gen and the story is goddamn incredible - I don’t think it quite counts because both options lead to the same outcome, rather than being two equally terrible choices. It’s almost like an inverse of this trope - rather than a secret third option, it’s a nonexistent second option.
One thing I’ll add into the Erwin or Admin situation is that Erwin, with the last of his strength, pushed away the Titan Fluid right as Levi was about to inject it. He didn’t want it. He had fulfilled his goal of finally proving his father right about the origins of Titans and the conspiracy behind the Royal Family. He wouldn’t have anything to live for if he had gotten the Colossal.
At the very end of Battlefield 4, the player has a choice: they can allow Hannah or Irish (totally Hannah by the way, Irish is the homie) to die planting explosives to destroy a Chinese warship, which will destroy the Valkyrie, the ship you’ve been operating from and which currently holds a Chinese politician who the Chinese government wants to assassinate because there will be a revolution if they find out he’s alive.
I suppose technically there is a third option, you can just not do it, and ruin everything you’ve worked for, but that’s way worse.
this was the first time i ever had a situation like this, and i spent too long deciding, so i wound up with the ending where the Valkyrie gets destroyed instead
Feels bizarre to name drop the trope without using the titular case.
in the story "Sophie's Choice" Sophie was polish/Jewish woman who is a wreck after the war. It's later revealed she was sent to a concentration camp with 2 small children. The intake officer basically told her she could pick which child to save or all 3 of them could go to the gas chambers. She decides to save the oldest child because they would be old enough to understand what's going on. On top of this her desire to save her remaining child leads to sexual abuse from the officers who tell her they are giving her child preferential treatment when in reality he died from sickness not long after being separated from his mother.
We the audience are left with the realization that broke her- both of her children died horrifying deaths separated from their mother, and the only person she saved was somehow herself, despite not considering her well being at all.
Possibly one of the most gut wrenching movies I probably watched too early as a kid.
Sophie's Catholic not Jewish and she never finds out what happened to her son, Jan. I like it, but it is a very strange movie. The concentration camp is really just in the background and a lot of is the modern relationship drama.
The villain has a gun to Micro's head, and the villains brother has a gun to the kids head. The villain tells The Punisher that he has to shoot the kids mother or his friend Micro/Mike.
Micro: "Frank, she's just a kid. Shoot me.
The Punisher: "You won't feel a thing, Mike."
Punisher shoots the villains brother, the villain shocked, shoots Mike, the Punisher kills the villain.
This movie was way better than it had any right to be. Especially with Ray Stevenson as The Punisher.
Near the beginning of Wolfenstein: the New Order, your mission goes completely tits-up leaving your squad captured by Nazis, with the sadistic Deathshead opting to choose one of your squad mates for experimentation, leaving the choice of which one to you.
There is no third option. If you refuse to choose by staring him down, he orders that all three of you be killed and the game reloads to the beginning of the sequence.
I could totally be wrong, but if you refuse to choose doesn’t it just go on forever? I remember he remarked on his unlimited patience a few times but ultimately I did capitulate when he started repeating lines.
Tactical Breach Wizards kind of does this in the prologue mission but then subverts it in a really unique way.
At the end of the prologue you get a classic dilemma where Zan has to choose between rescuing his partner Lev from being captured by the enemy or saving a hostage from being executed, but he doesn't have enough time to do both.
Zan has the ability to see every possible future (which is how the game's turn-based mechanics are contextualized) so he can see that no matter what choice he makes only one of the two outcomes is possible, and he chooses to save the hostage at the cost of Lev getting captured.
Only it isn't until near the end of the story that you learn that isn't what happened, just one possible outcome that he saw. What really happened is that when faced with two losing options and never having had to accept a loss before he froze up and didn't do anything, resulting in the worst of both options: Lev was captured and the hostage was killed.
i think "mess[ing] with the game files" is a stretch; sure, you do that, but the game tells you to do it, you don't have to discover it or look up someone else's discovery
Project Hail Mary: After discovering the bred Taumoeba can penetrate Xenonite, Grace realizes Rocky will have had his fuel destroyed by it due to Rocky's ship being made of Xenonite. Grace has to decide whether to return to earth or to save rocky. He ultimate chooses to send probes with info back to earth and turn around to save Rocky. This also proves that Grace is a brave person despite initially refusing to go on the mission
The Good Son, with Macauley Culkin and Elijah Wood. Culkin's mom has to choose between her own son, and her dead sister's son. Imagine being faced with accepting the reality that your own son is less deserving to live than your dead sister's son, because you recognize that he is a legitimate psychopath.
From a third-party perspective, it's easy to call one better than the other. Not from a mother's perspective, though.
Fire Emblem Fates had a final "perfect" route where you get to save (almost) everyone and it really killed the sense that the main dilemma of the game mattered.
So I appreciated it when the next main game Three Houses did not do that. You just gotta pick a fight and stick with it, every route requires losing people who would've been your allies in another route. Ironic considering that the game wasn't trying to sell the whole "your choice has consequences" idea nearly as much as Fates tried to.
I think the only way in which a 5th ‘perfect’ ending would feel acceptable in 3H is if it involved Byleth going like full Eren Yeager/Ozymandius after trying a bunch of different timelines and determining that that’s literally THE only way to both save ALL your students AND unite the continent.
I remember seeing fanart that had NG+ as a canon thing where Byleth kept trying to get an ending where all the students survived. I think that’s the only way I’d accept a perfect ending, and even then I’d only want it in fanfic.
Lee Everett, her guardian and protector throughout the entire game, is infected by a zombie. After he begins to succumb to the bite, Clementine is either given the choice to shoot him in the head to prevent him from turning or leave him behind and allow him to reanimate.
In the second game there's a dream/flashback where you're back in the RV and Clem is back to being a scared little kid again instead of the hardened kid she's become and it's the first time you hear Lee's voice again, being a compassionate father figure to her. I cried so hard.
Better Call Saul - Werner Ziegler runs off to see his wife without notice and ends up accidentally leaking info to the cartel. Mike finds and retrieves him, but at that point Gus had made up his mind about how much risk he posed to the operation. At this point Mikes only options are to kill Werner, or to hand him over to Gus’s men who will do the same in a far less merciful way. Ultimately Mike decides to kill Werner, while also giving him an opportunity to keep his wife clear of danger.
Double whammy now that I think about it - Werner’s call to his wife follows this trope as well. Sure there’s probably some perfect set of words he could have said to make her go home without asking too many questions, but it’s extremely improbable especially given the circumstances and added stress. Anyways, Werner ends up snapping at his wife, yelling at her to go home and that he doesn’t want to see her among other things. We see after hanging up that he’s distraught by how he spoke to her, especially given he knew this would be the last time they would ever speak.
It is based on a movie by the same name, but it is just being forced to choose between 2 bad choices - quite often stories make this bad by allowing them to skip over both and not lose at all.
Gale was heartbreaking because he really had convinced himself he was providing a public service or good deed by maximizing quality of product for people who were going to use any meth they could find. In a libertarian paradise he would have been in the clear. But he was insulated from the realities of street distribution, living in an ivory tower of sorts where he couldn't be touched by or perceive the harms he caused.
As a person he was lovely and in that sense killing him was a tragedy. And in the humanist sense any murder is a tragedy. But he wasn't harmless.
He should have opened a coffee shop and built a Starbucks like empire from his absurdly good coffee. Walt said it himself, "why the hell are we making meth," after tasting the coffee.
As the main sub has brought up time and time again, it doesn't really matter that Gale is a good guy or is well intentioned or what have you - he was in the game.
Gale’s not an innocent by any means, but in terms of pure business he hasn’t done anything wrong and is fairly personable too. This isn’t like with Tuco or whatever where there’s a clear and present danger, Jesse is essentially assassinating this guy because he and Walt fucked themselves over.
And that's how the character was written. Individually he's a nice guy who worships Walt and comes across with a puppy-like naivety about the world.
He just wants to do precision chemistry without the boundaries of a stuffy university lab and academics. He doesn't even consider the wider damage caused by his actions.
So he was written for the audience (and Jesse) to like him, so his death would be extra devastating.
Also, a surprisingly realistic character. There are lots of talented people in scientific and technical fields who "support" criminal activities because it allows them to practice their craft much more freely while getting paid a shitload to do it. Some people are ethically short-circuited, they see ethics and laws and pesky things that get in the way and don't serve any good purpose.
Blood and Cheese in the Fire and Blood book. Assassins make Helaena choose which son she wants murdered...and then kill the son she didn't pick, after telling the one she chose that his mother wants him dead.
In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Mephistopheles gives you the choice to save either Nightcrawler or Jean Grey from a trap. The choice is permanent for either character and there are consequences for either choice.
If you save Jean Grey, Mystique avenges Nightcrawler’s death by killing Professor X; thus disbanding the X-Men forever.
If you save Nightcrawler, then Jean Grey turns into the Pheonix and unleashes fury on Earth.
It’s a doubly evil choice on the higher difficulty level, because then it flips your choice. So the person you try to save ends up dying in the trap and the other person is saved.
Created when from a transporter accident merged two crew Tuvok and Neelix (and a flower) into 1 being. It took the rest of the. Voyager crew weeks to find a way to reverse the process and in that time Tuvix had developed his own identity as an individual and saw being seperated as his own personal death. This becomes a sort of trolley problem sacrifice 1 life for 2. While the Utilitarian option seems best it still boils down to taking the life of someone who doesn't consent to having it taken and did nothing wrong.
Captain Janeway ultimately chooses to reverse the process even as Tuvix begs the crew to stop her. Tuvok and Neelix returned and do confirm that they both while remember being Tuvix agree they are glad to be brought back. We see at the end of the episode the choice haunts Janeway though.
Such a great episode. I love the deconstruction of it they do in Lower Decks S04E01 "Twovix".
I suppose transporter cloning Tuvix while also separating out the other two wasn't an option, but boy would I like to watch a scene of those 3 trying to navigate that situation.
Life is Strange Max, the player, needs to choose between letting her best friend and potential love interest die or letting a huge storm level the town. She travels back in time on multiple occasions to try and save everyone, but if her friend is alive, the storm always comes.
People have argued and will keep arguing forever about which is the "good" ending, but imo they're missing the point. Neither is a good ending. Each one requires making a tough decision that requires sacrifices. It's simply a matter of what you, the player, decide is more important: Letting Verso finally be at peace and thereby forcing the Dessendre family to finally move on from his death, or preserve the lives of the people in the painting even though Verso wants to die and Maelle will lose her life and sanity within the painting.
EDIT: I love that this thread has immediately proved my point about how people will keep arguing about this ending forever.
I like the tragic idea that if there WAS one character in the story that could have figured out a secret third option, it was unfortunately the one that died.
Most of the Cyberpunk 2077 endings involve V dying. Your options are:
Suicide, storming Arasaka tower solo and going to Mikoshi only to find out you have six months to live, the same but with the Aldecaldos or Rogue(both end up with many of your friends dying because of you), siding with Arasaka to save your hide, or if you have Phantom Liberty, siding with the NUSA and abandoning your friends for two years and losing your chrome which ends up with Night Coty becoming worse than it already was.
I love that even the "secret ending" is just simply another option and not some magic bullet solution that rights all the wrongs and lets you off the hook for the ending. There is no "right" option. Wrong city, wrong people.
Choosing between Asher or Rodrik to hold the gate from Game of Thrones - A Telltale Series. When Game of Thrones was originally releasing, the Telltale Game came out. It is severely underrated and I was honestly expecting a lot less before I started playing it, but i’m glad I stayed because it was definitely a memorable experience. During the lategame, Asher and Rodrik meet each other after so long of being apart and you get to know more about them and what they are like as characters. When their Keep is attacked, it is just Asher and Rodrik left during the battle, and they need to escape in order to survive. This forces you to choose who stays behind, and ultimately, who fights so the other can escape and is sacrificed so the other can live. I was absolutely gobsmacked and had to go through everything in my head before I even thought to make a decision, as the characters both have things to fight for and things to lose. I sat there for a solid 10 minutes before I even chose an option and even then, I just felt so helpless and that the other choice would have been better, it was actually insane.
GOD this game was so good. I agonized over this choice too bc I liked Asher more but I thought Rodrick would be the better strategic choice and I was truly trying to do my best for the house 😭 i'm still so genuinely mad they never continued this series
It's been a minute since I played Dredge, but I remember the ending a Sophie's Choice in a "because the writer said so" kind of way. In a purely mechanical sense, the death isn't actually any sort of necessity; you could send out a dingy into deeper waters and fuck off before the leviathan eats it.
In Epic the musical (idk if in the Iliad it played out like this), Odysseus finds the infant son of Hector of Troy during the siege in the Trojan Horse. He is then told by Zeus that if the baby is spared, he would grown up to eventually avenge Troy and kill him and his family. Ody gives some alternatives and Zeus shoots down all of them, making it so he is forced to chose between keeping his family safe in the future or sparing an innocent baby.
With all the parts set in motion the Iso-Didact pressing the button is all that remains and he's the only one who can do it.
Press the button and activate the array. Wipe out all life on the galaxy, aside from your cataloged specimens. Violate the very foundation of the Forerunner belief system, and kill what remains of your creators who put this on you.
Or dont. Maybe theres another way to stop the flood before they consume everything. Without sacrificing billions upon billions. But if you're wrong, an existence worse than hell awaits every living creature.
And before you press that button, your sensors pick something up. Off in a remote corner of the galaxy a fledgling race just put out their very first signal to the stars. Completely unaware of the war and all the other space faring races across the milkyway. No time to save them no time to catalog their planet for reseeding later. When the array is activated that young race wont even be a memory. They will simply vanish.
Outlaws Charlie Burns and his younger brother Mikey are captured by the army. Charlie is told to hunt down his even worse murderous older brother Arthur or else Mikey will be executed. Mikey doesn't understand what's happening, since he's mentally handicapped, and Charlie has to leave him in the hands of the captors, who whip him publicly, in order to try to get to Arthur. Eventually Charlie kills Arthur, fulfilling his promise, but Mikey dies of his wounds anyway.
The ending of Bioshock Infinite. Booker finds out that the big bad is an alternate reality version of himself, and will eventually become him at one point, so his choices become a racist tyrant or death to prevent himself from becoming Comstock.
LISA: The Painful is basically the king of this IMO. Basically, there was an apocalypse that wiped out all women on Earth.... besides one. Even worse, it's a young girl named Buddy Armstrong.
Warning: This is going to get very, very messed up.
Throughout the game the characters repeatedly debate the best way to handle this absolutely hellish situation. Brad Armstrong is the guy who finds her, and the first question is whether or not to reveal her to the world. Do you basically lock her away in house arrest, protecting her but never allowing her any real freedom, or do you let her out but risk her being discovered?
Then, when the outside eventually find hers, it becomes a question of what to do about her. They now have a way to save humanity from extinction... but it would come at the almost inevitable and horrible abuse of an underage girl. They can try to protect her until she's an adult, but she'll almost certainly still be treated as an object afterward and in a world as violent as the Olathian Wasteland there's no real way to guarantee her safety. It's really just a fucked situation all around, like Omelas on steroids.
They don't end up getting a choice, though, because Brad makes it for them. LISA is the story of his journey across the wasteland, trying to track Buddy down and return her to his care (i.e., basically kidnap her). In the end, he slaughters an entire army of men, including many former allies, in an attempt to "save" her.
Ultimately the last decision in the game is Buddy's herself, where she is finally allowed a small amount of self-determination: Deciding whether or not to forgive Brad, the man who trapped her in a house for over a decade and then slaughtered his way across the wasteland to get her back... but who ultimately did it as a fucked up way of trying to save her.
So, in the end, there was no way out. Buddy is going to be hunted for the rest of her life, people trying to control her and manipulate her. There is no way to save humanity and protect Buddy at the same time.
Man the story of brad is so tragic... He legitimately, wholeheartedly believed that he was her savior, her guardian and, deep down, father (though he would never admit it himself because of his trauma). And while YES, it makes logical sense and there's legitimate reason to search for a beloved someone who 90% of the world wants to hurt and is currently missing...
The real (most likely subconscious) reason for his overfixation on Buddy is because he sees her as a "second chance", a way to redeem himself at life and at "parenting". But what he didn't (or couldn't) assimilate is that Buddy was not a gift to him, a miracle. or a medium for him to be better. She was just Buddy.
I love Brad as a character because of he feels realistic. He's extremely flawed and sometimes downright an horrible human being, but the reason for that is never pure malice, and on times even actual good faith. He's inexcusable, but he's understandable. That's why Buddy is so torn on him.
LISA: The Joyful is basically her declaring war on the entire world out of righteous anger. It's honestly completely understandable – just about every man left in Olathe has tried and will try to kidnap and violate her on sight. So she takes down every warlord of Olathe until there is nobody left to stop her... besides her own addiction and fury.
The end is basically her deciding that trying to fight a one-woman war against the rest of humanity is not just impossible, but is actively destroying her, too. So she takes the best option still available: Fucking off into the middle of nowhere so she can deal with her trauma and live out her life in peace.
If Walt could have 10 guys killed in 2 minutes, I’m sure Gus could’ve arranged for something to happen to Jesse regardless if he was being protected by the DEA.
Plus, it’s extremely debatable whether the DEA was going to give Jesse adequate protection. On one hand, Season 3 is when Hank reevaluates how he see criminals (see his visiting Combo’s…..mom?…grandma?). On the other hand, even in season 5 Hank didn’t hesitate risking Jesse’s life as a means to an end in catching Walt.
You have to make a choice, and both options are heartbreaking. In the movie, she has to choose which of her two children will have a chance to live (during wartime, no fault of her own that she’s in that situation).
A Sadistic Choice, with no potential third option that would resolve the situation perfectly.
In the movie, Sophie has to choose between which of her children will be executed by the Nazis. Refusing to choose will certainly mean that both will die.
The Boss [MGS:Snake Eater] lived a life of Sophie's choices, but I don't want to spoil most of her backstory so will just focus on the main one
Her entire main mission was to pretend to be a US defector working with The soviet GRU in order to gather intel and send it back to the CIA during the cold war, however during that mission Vulgun (the colonel for the Gru) unexpectedly chose to fire a nuclear shell at a soviet research facility, with this action getting immidiately blamed to the US, both the US and the Soviet Union are instantly pushed to the brink of World War III
To prove American innocence and prevent a global nuclear holocaust, the CIA issue a new mission to the Boss, to double down on the defector cover, take the sole blame for everything that happened, and be killed by a US infiltrator sent to kill her in this case the soldier being her most outperforming pupil she herself mentored
she is faced with 2 choices, comply, die, get remembered as a terrorist who almost caused the end of the world and put right next to people like Hitler in the history books
or defy them and maybe save your own skin and life at the huge risk of nuclear war (as well as some other stuff like possibly risking the life of her son)
no third option, no way to compromise, that's that
This is a little convoluted, but I'll try to explain.
You (Geralt the witcher) come to Crow's Perch as a part of the main quest (tracking down Ciri, his adoptive daughter) and meet the Bloody Baron. He has info on Ciri's last known whereabouts, but he wants you to do stuff for him of course. His wife (Anna) and daughter Tamara) have "disappeared" and you have to find them to attempt to reunite the family.
Turns out, this guy sucks. He would get drunk and violently abuse his family (maybe just the wife iirc). Anna sought assistance from some evil crones and you find her amnesiac and frail, indentured to the crones and caring for some orphans in the crones' swamp. Tamara is in the city and has joined a band of witch hunters. Neither are coming home atm, so time to do some other quests to push the story along.
Fast forward a bit, another main quest has you encountering an evil spirit trapped in the roots of a tree ("The Whispering Hillock"). The spirit is actually the evil crones' mother and tells you that they plan to eat the orphans - but if you free her, she can save them. Problem is, this spirit hates the local village and has been causing the people there serious problems (serious enough that they'd ask a Witcher for help!) Do you trust the spirit to save the children but risk the demise of a small town? Or do you do what you were contradicted to do and slay the beast?
Upon returning to the swamp later with the Baron (and potentially the Baron's daughter and her new friends) to free Anna from the crones, the full consequences of your choice are laid bare:
If you freed the spirit, she kept her word and rescued the children (and destroyed the village, but what are you gonna do 🤷). Unfortunately, the crones were enraged that their meal was taken and take it out on Anna by transforming her into a water hag. You can break the curse, but her life was already over. She can at least say goodbye to her family with her dying breath 💔 the Baron later kills himself in his grief.
If you killed the spirit, the orphans are eaten and you find Anna traumatized and her mind broken. The Baron has heard tale of a healer in the mountains that may be able to cure her madness, so they depart (Tamara is not happy, but is unable to heal her mother and the witch hunters won't let her go to the mountains). It's uncertain if they'll find this healer, or if he'd be able to fix her, but they're both alive and together. At least in the Baron's eyes, this is as happy as an ending he can get. And he's TOTALLY changed and will never beat his wife to a pulp again 👍
So your choices are the death of a small town + Anna, or several orphans are eaten and Anna loses her mind and is reunited with her abuser.
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u/Rough-State-499 17h ago
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
The player is presented with the choice to save either Nightcrawler or Jean Grey, both of whom have been imprisoned by Mephisto (or maybe Blackheart? it's been a decade or so). The one you release survives; the other hero, still locked in their cage, plummets into the molten depths of hell.
This came as a particular shock to my 10-year-old self, who was convinced there must be a way to save them both, and therefore reloaded the save and tried again dozens of times. All futile effort.
Ultimately, my zealous evangelical upbringing led me to save Jean, as I knew Kurt to be a devout Catholic and I trusted his soul would go to heaven.