Embarrassing Rescue

"Dammit, Sasuke! Now they'll never stop writing porn about us!"

"If anyone asks, I rescued you."

—Seto Kaiba, Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series

A cross between Unwanted Rescue and Save the Villain centering around The Rival or Worthy Opponent being bailed out of a surefire death by the hero.

Does the rival or opponent thank the hero for saving them when he didn't have to? Rarely. They instead say that they could have escaped by themselves, and would have, if he hadn't swooped in and tried to play The Messiah. Admitting that they owe him one would be a great blow to their ego. At the very best, a patently insincere gratitude may be expressed.

If the hero's a true Messiah, he'll shrug it off. If he's not, expect a "why did I even bother to save you" rant to ensue. Or at least, a bitter Think Nothing of It.

Contrast Grudging Thank You, where however much he resents it, he does know that gratitude is due.

See Enemy Mine for the reasoning behind the Embarrassing Rescue. Not to be confused with Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like.

Examples of Embarrassing Rescue include:

Anime and Manga

• On Dragon Ball Z, this trope is one of the reasons why Frieza's defeat at the hands of the hero, Goku, was so humiliating. Vegeta being rescued by Mr. Satan during the Buu arc counts as well.
• Inverted in the 2003 anime version of Fullmetal Alchemist. At the end of the Lab 5 mini-arc, when Ed is forced to make a Sadistic Choice between getting his brother back to the way he was before their human transmutation attempt which would require killing several convicts (who happened to be watching) to do it, and allowing the homunculus Lust to kill his little brother by destroying his blood seal, Scar shows up in a Big Damn Heroes moment and blows up the cylinders of red water needed to perform the transmutation. Ed's reaction? "Shut up! I don't need your help!"
• Inuyasha: When Kagome risks her life to save Kikyo (or at least prolong her stay in the living world, as she's technically dead) despite being her rival for Inuyasha's affections, Kikyo says that she's not going to thank Kagome after Kagome makes it clear that it never occurred to her that there was any other option.
• In Naruto, one of the primary reasons behind Sasuke's defection from Konoha.
  • And even after Part 1, part of the Sasuke haters want Sasuke to go through another one, mostly for the "embarrassing" part, the rest want him to die.
  • Worth noting that in the beginning, it was frequently the other way around. Sasuke viewed Naruto as The Load and had to save him about Once an Episode. Because Naruto typically had to be rescued while in the midst of attempting to impress Sakura, he was generally quite embarrassed. The only time he showed any sort of gratitude at all was when he thought that Sasuke had actually died for him. And when the arc was over, he went right back to resenting Sasuke for rescuing him. Naturally, when Naruto started rescuing Sasuke, Sasuke didn't take it well.
  • A more straight example happens with Shikamaru and Temari.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: After Rei saves her life in battle, Asuka emphatically declares that she'd rather be dead.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Seto Kaiba was never happy about being rescued by Yugi, whether it was from being held captive in his own virtual reality RPG or turned to stone by a Virtual Ghost. Eventually, someone (usually Jyonouchi) would question why Yugi kept bailing him out when he clearly didn't want it. Of course, he did once thank him for saving Mokuba. Every rescue of wasnt needed because he won the duel vs Noah and got out of the virtual world prison himself.
• In Bleach, Nnoitra has a flashback for one time when Neliel saved his life to prevent the Espada from losing a member, partly because he was weaker than she was. Nnoitra, who hates being pitied more than anything, finds this extremely humiliating.
• Kasuga from Sengoku Basara (picture above) becomes so flustered when rival Ninja Sasuke comes to her rescue that she falls out of a tree trying to get away from him!
• In Tiger and Bunny, part of the reason Kotetsu is so antagonistic towards Barnaby at the start of their partnership is because of the humiliating rescue he had to endure upon their first meeting (though episode 22 shows that he's much less disapproving of it in hindsight). The second time it happens he's noticeably less embarrassed...until Barnaby decides to comment on the situation.

Barnaby: It's been a while since I carried you like this. Have you gained weight?
Kotetsu: Shut up. Put me down.

• Ranma ½: Ranma has been rescued by Akane a few times in the manga. He's never been too happy about it, either.

Ranma: So, why'd you come, anyway? I could've gotten out by myself.
Akane: What?! You ungrateful, little...

Comic Books

• The Elf Quest comics [includes links to relevant online pages, which may contain spoilers]: Cutter saves his rival Rayek's life, which makes Rayek so mad he mentally lashes out at Cutter and knocks him out. Ten years and a lot of Character Development later, he returns the favor, and is sure to tell Cutter he owes him nothing now. Later, he rescues Cutter from a troll trap (after being blackmailed by Suntop), but deliberately puts him down on the wrong side, so Cutter has to fight the enemy Trolls.
• Young Avengers - Patriot / Eli receives one from Kate Bishop in the first issue. The abridged version: criminals hold everyone at Kate's sister's wedding hostage, the Young Avengers show up to help, things don't go according to plan, Kate disarms lead bad guy with one of Eli's own throwing stars. Eli is even more mortified when he learns it made the news.

"I didn't need a rescue! Especially not from a-"
"You will if you finish that sentence."

Film

• In the horror parody Slither, Nathan Fillion's character is saved from a parasite deer by the whiny teen he's been carrying around, and tells her that if anyone asks, he saved her.

Bill Pardy: Hey Kylie, why don't you tell Ms. Grant that story 'bout how I saved you from that deer?
Kylie Strutemyer: (unconvincinvly) Oh yeah. Bill saved me from a deer.

• Pulp Fiction : Bruce Willis' character saves his adversary from unmentionable gimp rape. The adversary does thank him, but demands the event be kept an absolute secret.

Literature

• In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel Ghostmaker, Major Rawne attacks Gaunt on the battlefield, intending to kill him. Gaunt knocks him unconscious and, despite his own wounds, carries him back to safety. His fellow Ghosts are surprised that the rescue did not alleviate Rawne's resentment of Gaunt, but then, they don't know about the attack.
• Les Misérables: Jean Valjean allows Inspector Javert to escape from the revolutionaries. The unexpected act of mercy is apparently so damaging to Javert's philosophy that he later commits suicide.
• Inverted in The Pendragon Adventure: The Merchant of Death. Bobby sees a Bedoowan knight approaching Loor, who is standing by the river. Bobby grabs Loor and leaps with her into the river to escape the knight. Loor tells him she can't swim, so Bobby bravely keeps her afloat until it is safe to go on land again. Once safely on land, Loor chews Bobby out and says the knight is their ally. So the rescuer is embarrassed, instead of the rescuee.
• In book four of The Wheel of Time, Mat rescues Elayne, Egwene, and Nynaeve from prison. They chew him out about it and tell him that they had everything under control and would have gotten out of it by themselves. It takes a few more books and prompting from other characters for them to finally apologize and properly thank Mat for saving them.
• In Harry Potter, when Snape was a student, he was on the receiving end of one by James Potter. He had been trying to find out what James and his friends did every month at the full moon, and had nearly come face-to-face with Remus Lupin in his werewolf state. James dragged him out of there.
• A variant occurs early in By the Sword when teenaged Kerowyn sets out to rescue her brother's kidnapped fiancee because her brother is near death and there's not a single able-bodied man available for the job. Dierna, the Damsel in Distress in question, is grateful enough to be rescued but very uncomfortable around Kerowyn afterwards, and it's a source of acute embarassment for Kero's brother that his sister had to rescue his fiancee for him.

Live Action TV

• Inverted in Babylon 5; Londo is saved from poison by a blood transfusion from one of his wives, who's spent the whole episode showing her absolute contempt for him and her two co-wives. She asks the doctor not to tell Londo who saved him, as "Neither of us could stand the embarrassment."
  • It's implied Londo actually knows, seeing how she's the one of the three he actually kept after being permitted a divorce from the other two.
    • Londo flat out told Timov that he knew that she was the donor in the novel trilogy about his reign as Emperor.

Professional Wrestling

• Often serves as the impetus for a Face vs. face feud or a Face Heel Turn.

Video Games

• In the first Vanguard arc of City of Heroes, you're sent to rescue missing operatives from rival organization Longbow. The nameless guy and Sefu Tendaji are grateful for the rescue, but Captain Dietrich insists that she didn't need help, and goes on to complain about you ruining her operation.
  • And then she naturally charges into the next group of foes without any plans and gets killed.
    • Well, maybe. Being a game anything can happen, and all the assisting character A Is seem to suffer from having been based on Leeroy Jenkins.
• In Dragon Quest VIII, one the main characters, Angelo, saves his brother, who holds a very strong hatred towards him (and made his life miserable), from certain doom. His brother, grievously injured, responds by telling that the next time they meet, he will not hesitate to kill him, and trudges away.
  • This was also an example of Cruel Mercy, as Marcello had just witnessed his entire life's ambition fall to pieces, and his reputation reduced to less than mud. Angelo was completely aware of all this; after saving Marcello, he says: "Now we're even."
• After going through all sorts of trouble to locate Bastilla Shan and rescue her from a Tarisian swoop bike gang in Knights of the Old Republic, she chooses the moment you're about to liberate her to suddenly break free during a huge fight, using this event as justification in stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that you did anything for her pretty much the entire rest of the game.
  • In a later conversation on Taris, she takes back some of her harsher statements, as she was at the time concerned about the implications of your rescuing her.
    • Of course, there's another reason for her behavior...
• In the Joshua week of The World Ends With You, you (as Neku) have the choice to save Uzuki and Kariya from a Taboo Noise. Uzuki plays this trope straight, but Kariya actually does try to thank you for the rescue and claims that he wasn't entirely sure if the pair of them could erase it alone. This troper isn't entirely sure if he's sincere about it.
  • The best part is that Neku does this on purpose. "Let's do it. They'll hate it."

Web Comics

• In Impure Blood, after their attackers have mostly been fought off by Roan, a Half-Human Hybrid, the Watchers, sworn against the Ancient, claim they would have managed without him. Persistantly.
• In The Class Menagerie, young Biff asked not to be rescued from a fire by a Nerd, because he'd Never Live It Down.
• In Yehuda Moon and The Kickstand Cyclery, Joe is hired by Rival Cycles after The Kickstand burns down, letting him support himself while the shop is rebuilt.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Zhao was humiliated once by losing to Zuko in an Agni Kai, and having Iroh call him disgraceful for his lack of honor. So when a Take My Hand moment comes, instead of accepting Zuko's help, Zhao chooses to drown at the hands of the vengeful Ocean Spirit.
  • Happens again with Zuko in Southern Raiders. Zuko leaps across a room to rescue Katara from falling rocks (ignoring at least three people between them), and she yells at him because she doesn't believe in his Heel Face Turn yet.
• The Lion King 2: Kiara, who was thrilled about finally being able to prove herself on her first hunt, is none too happy that Kovu had to save her from a fire.

Kiara: Why'd you bring me here? Who do you think you are?!
Kovu: I think I'm the one who just saved your life!
Kiara: Look, I had everything under control!
Kovu: Not from where I'm standing.

Real Life

• Ancient Rome had a decoration for people who would save a comrade about to be killed by the enemy. Around the time of Julius Cesar they stopped awarding it, because none of the rescuees would admit to having been in any serious danger.