A grenade, bomb or other type of explosive is live with mere seconds to go, leaving Alice in danger. Or perhaps the building is burning, and a rafter comes loose. Or a window or glass ceiling shatters, and Alice is right in the path of the deadly shards.
Just in time, Bob leaps between her and the danger. He might get on top of her to shield her from falling debris, or he might simply cradle her with his body blocking the danger. Often a Heroic Sacrifice, but it's just as often that Bob has Nigh-Invulnerability, or maybe the damage is made less by his actions.
Usually the Inversion of Jumping on a Grenade, which is when Bob jumps on a grenade to dampen the explosion. See also Taking the Bullet, for when Bob jumps in the way of a bullet meant for Alice, or Diving Save, for when Bob pushes Alice out of the way of something dangerous. Compare Load-Bearing Hero.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Done in Ushio and Tora — Tora uses his body to protect a household spirit from backlash from a powerful seal being broken.
- Buso Renkin: Captain Bravo shields the two leads, Kazuki and Tokiko from a massive flame-based attack using his... er... magical Badass Longcoat.
- In one episode of Darker than Black, the Contractor November 11 uses his ice powers while covering human co-worker Kirihara with his body, in order to shield her from another Contractor's explosive powers.
- Subverted cruelly twice in Mobile Suit Gundam 00 first season finale: Lichty tries shielding Christina from an explosion this way, but is fatally injured and dies in her arms, happily believing that he protected her. Then, it is revealed that he failed and she was fatally injured, too, dying just moments after him.
- Tsunade does this for Naruto when Orochimaru decides to kill him personally leading to her getting badly slashed, it's a huge Mama Bear moment which is more impressive considering she was scared of blood at the time but to her protecting Naruto and his dream was Worth It.
- Happens many times in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, without any lasting effects to both parties involved.
- Genji grabs Shannon when the fake Kanon leaps at her with a laser blade, and rolls out of the way in Umineko: When They Cry. This is one of the many reasons Genji is awesome.
- Shizuo does this to Akane in the sixth volume of Durarara!! when he realizes that a large load of combat knives that he knocked loose in a fight are about to fall on the girl.
- Fullmetal Alchemist
- In Fullmetal Alchemist, Alphonse Elric uses his Nigh-Invulnerable armor body to shield the flesh-and-blood May Chang from an explosion. It doesn't end well.
- Al also pulls this in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), instead protecting Ed with his armored body.
- Gunslinger Girl. The girls are "conditioned" to protect their handlers, though it could also be More than Mind Control.
- The titular character from Inuyasha protects Kagome this way on multiple occasions.
- In Fairy Tail, Simon jumps in the way of an extremely powerful destructive spell that Jellal was going to destroy Erza and Natsu with; he successfully shields them with his body, but dies shortly thereafter, leading to Natsu's Unstoppable Rage and subsequent victory.
- In the backstory of The Voynich Hotel Peace meets her end saving Leader from a landmine. Years later, Leader does the same to try to save Sexy from a landmine; when the smoke clears, it's revealed that Kikaida threw himself over Leader and took the brunt of the blast himself.
- When the space-shuttle soundstage collapses in Millennium Actress, Genya throws himself over Chiyoko to protect her from falling debris.
Comic Books
- Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four often does this to protect his colleagues.
- The Incredible Hulk's origins deal with Bruce Banner pushing Rick Jones into a trench, whereby Banner absorbed the brunt of the blast, which Rick is not affected by as a result.
- Watchmen features a futile example when NYC is attacked. The newsstand owner throws himself over the kid near him, trying to shield him from the blast. They are both killed instantly anyway, but the instinctive gesture of protection is a poignant moment of compassion in contrast to the horrific act of mass murder taking place.
- Superman frequently does this, since he can withstand a lot more than whoever he's protecting. Superman has also swallowed explosives on more than one occasion, in order to ensure the safety of surrounding citizens.
- Also common with Batman, who usually spreads his cape to form a sort of coccoon. The cape is fireproof and designed to spread impact force.
Fan Fiction
- Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger:
- While fleeing from an crashing airship at the end of "Nihilus", Qrow notices a nearby civilian trip and struggle to get back up. Believing his Semblance to be responsible for her tripping, Qrow abandons his own attempt to flee and stays behind to use his body to shield hers from the explosion cause by the airship crashing into Beacon's courtyard. This gets cruelly subverted two chapters later, where it turns out that the civilian still died the moment the blast impacted her body and all Qrow accomplishes is getting himself fatally wounded as well.
- Played straight in "Chaos", where Ren explains to Ruby and Pyrrha how he was able to survive the aforementioned airship's explosion. Right before the blast hit him, Nora used her body to shield Ren. While this protected him from serious injury, Nora took the brunt of the damage and is laid in critical condition as a result.
- The Ultimate Evil: The fight in Shendu's palace is briefly interrupted by Captain Black's men shooting rockets at the demon, with Valerie Payne (Shendu's Other and love interest) getting caught in the crossfire. Seemingly on instinct, Shendu uses his Super-Speed to rush to her and shields her with his body. Since he's Nigh-Invulnerable, the rockets do harm neither to him or Valerie.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction Prison Island Break, in an uncharacteristic moment of selflessness Shadow the Hedgehog wraps himself around Sonic's sister, Sonia to prevent injuries by a shrapnel grenade.
Film — Animated
- The Incredibles, Elastigirl protects her kids this way in an aircraft that was hit by missiles. It helps she can form her body into any shape and that earlier her super suit was specifically shown to be able to withstand direct missile impacts.
- Alpha and Omega: Almost towards the ending of the movie, Humphrey does this to Kate after the latter ends up being trampled by a stampede of caribou. Unfortunately, Kate is still unable to move, injured, until the entire pack of wolves start howling mournfully, including Tony (Garth's father), which Kate thankfully regains consciousness.
- Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure: In the climax, Miss Littletown shields her schoolchildren when Edgar Crook drops a lit stick of dynamite.
Film — Live Action
- X-Men: The Last Stand, Colossus shields Rogue this way in the Danger Room simulation, however this is also so that she can get his steel skin for further protection.
- Quantum of Solace, Bond huddles over Camille right before he shoots the fuel pod.
- Terminator
- Terminator Salvation, Marcus Wright shields Blair from the fire in the tunnel.
- In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, someone shields a child this way in Sarah's dream. Since it is against a nearby nuclear explosion, it has no effect.
- In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, John shields Kate several times, once by literally dragging her below him, to cover her, usually from debris.
- Done in The Incredible Hulk (2008) movie, with Hulk shielding Betty Ross from a fiery explosion.
- Highlander: Connor leaps on top of Rachel, using his immortality to protect her from Nazi gunfire. He explains, "it's a kind of magic."
- In Fantastic Four (2005), the Human Torch shielded a young girl from an explosion. Because of his fire abilities, the blast didn't harm him.
- The escaped slave does this for the little girl in The Fall.
- In Thor: The Dark World, Loki shields Jane from the explosion when Thor tries to destroy the Aether with Mjölnir.
- In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Clint does this to a little boy to selflessly protect him with his own body when Ultron starts to fire at Sokovia, but Quicksilver ends up taking the bullets for Hawkeye.
- In the third Harry Potter film, Harry shields Hermione from a potential werewolf attack.
- A slight variation in The Faculty: twice during the fight with Mr. Furlong, Stan catches more fragile characters who've been thrown or shoved and takes the impact of what they would have hit himself.
Literature
- Nolan of the Ashtown Burials series does this for Cyrus in the climactic battle at the end of Empire of Bones, covering for the sharp-edged debris from a gigantic exploding statue. Cyrus escapes with a few cuts from the high-speed shrapnel, while Nolan is shredded. Good Thing He Can Heal.
- An earlier plan of attack involves the Captain and Nolan, as the two immortal party members, doing this deliberately to cover the rest of the team as they advance. Nolan sulks because not dying doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.
- In the Discworld book Thud!, Sam Vimes throws himself to the ground while holding Young Sam after someone takes a pot-shot with a Fire-Breathing Weapon. When he gets back up, he is pissed.
- In the first of The Murderbot Diaries, Murderbot grabs Dr. Mensah just before a rocket is about to take off nearby and jumps over a cliff face, using its body to shield her from both the blast and then their hitting the ground.
Live-Action TV
- Aubrey throws himself on top of Hodgins when a bomb rigged into a corpse goes off on Bones. Aubrey is riddled with shrapnel and barely survived while Hodgins initially appears unharmed and has delayed damage effects. He’s left paralyzed.
- Smallville: As in the comics, Clark uses this method of rescue quite frequently.
- Done by the Mountain to protect Cersei in the final season of Game of Thrones as Daenerys is flying around and torching the city.
- Lucifer (2016): In "Expire Erect", Chloe does this to protect Lucifer when the LAPD blow one of the walls in the nightclub to end a hostage situation. He'd already been shot by the hostage-taker and his invulnerability doesn't work when Chloe is near him which means he was in serious danger from the explosion.
Video Games
- C14 Dating: If Melissa happens to be in the cave on the day a heat lamp gets accidentally toppled and falls in her digging square, she keeps Kyler from getting hurt via jumping on top of him to get him out of the way. The gesture is needed in part because Kyler is deaf and usually works with his cochlear implant turned off, making him oblivious to both noise from the lamp itself and verbal warnings.
- The end of the intro boss battle of Mega Man Zero 1. As the Golem gets ready to explode, Ciel got free from its grasp, but she's too weak to move away. Zero runs over to her and covers her from the ensuing blast. Ciel manages to remain relatively unhurt, even when the explosion was point-blank in range.
- Neverwinter Nights 2: In Mask of the Betrayer, the Player Character is informed by Ammon Jerro that their original campaign party member Grobnar Gnomehands was killed in the Big Bad's Collapsing Lair when he dove on top of the party's blade golem to protect it from a collapsing pillar—apparently not having considered that his squishy four-foot gnome body wasn't much protection for an eight-foot suit of animated armor.
- Either Leon or Claire do this for little Sherry in Resident Evil 2 (depending on what scenario you choose), when the Umbrella lab explodes and rocks the escape train; it's a Papa Bear-Mama Bear moment either way. It's no small wonder Sherry considers Leon and Claire her surrogate parents.
- Resident Evil 6: Leon protects Ada this way in a fight against a mutated Simmons. He cradles her under his own body, shielding her from a spray of rapid-fire bone fragments. His Bulletproof Vest absorbs most of the attack, Ada regains consciousness shortly after, and they fight Simmons together.
Webcomics
- Used by the Fed in A Girl and Her Fed here
, though it's unnecessary given the very sturdy table he's behind.
- Wilde Life: Oscar grabs Cliff and pushes him out of the way, shielding him with his body when a malevolent ghost attacks them.
Western Animation
- Ben 10 utilizes this trope in "Be Afraid Of The Dark", using the armadillo-esque "Cannonbolt" Ben is able to shield himself, Gwen and Grandpa so that they can re-enter Earth's atmosphere safely.
- Wolverine and the X-Men (2009): Wolverine covers a little girl from a train explosion in the first episode. He Gets Better.
- The Batman "A Dark Knight to Remember" Batman shields Batgirl from Penguin's flamethrower with his cape.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender gives us the falling-bits-of-stone-ceiling variant, with Zuko protecting Katara in this way in the episode "The Southern Raiders". Also served as Ship Tease.
- Also done in the episode "Sozin's Comet Part 3", when Sokka shields Toph from falling debris from a war balloon.
- DuckTales (1987): In "Hero for Hire", when the huckleberry hand grenade cake goes off, Launchpad shields Doofus with his own body. It turns out to be unnecessary, as the effect is more dazing than dangerous, and the Beagle Boys get the worst of it.
- Samurai Jack, in one of his final episodes, joins forces with a group of elite Spartan-style warriors to defeat an ancestral foe, a monster controlling a horde of minotaur-bots. In the climax, the monster is defeated by decisively throwing Jack's katana into his head, causing a catastrophic explosion. Jack defends his partner, the king, by leaping in the way of the explosion with two shields, saving his life. The king recalls that only Jack's shield was recovered, but the final scene shows Jack's silhouette walking away from the battle.
- In the Futurama episode "Rebirth," Fry somehow managed to successfully save Leela from a deadly spaceship crash this way, leaving her completely intact while he himself was blown to smithereens. He got better.
Fry: I'll protect you, Leela! My love is stronger than the vast majority of explosions!
- In the She-Ra and the Princesses of Power episode "Huntara", Hordak shields Entrapta from an explosion in this manner.
- In the The Owl House episode "Hollow Mind", Luz and Hunter have to make a mad dash past the Inner Belos as he tries to murder them. When Luz dives onto the ground to grab the walkie-talkie to tell Eda to pull them out, Hunter drops to his knees practically on top of her, and uses his arm to shield her.
- In the Superman Theatrical Cartoons short "The Mechanical Monsters", Superman spreads his Cape around Lois Lane◊ to protect her from the vat pouring Hot Lava. I guess his suit is also super.
