Thistrope is heavily relied on in Professional Wrestling. Hulk Hogan in particular carried the WWF for approximately eight years doing this, to the point where the moment a hero starts shrugging off his opponent's offense is still called "Hulking up" (not to be confused with "Hulking out").
Contrast Hope Spot (when this is subverted). Compare and contrast I Am Not Left-Handed, for when the hero does this before being beaten too severely or is faking the severity of the beating they have taken. If you are looking for the original (but unrelated) name of this trope, see My Name is Inigo Montoya. In works where there is a Tragic Villain or Anti-Villain, it is possible for this trope to flip, albeit said villain will likely still fail for any number of reasons and the hero will still be justified in fighting them (with said villain likely taking themself out). If it's the villain who pulls one of these off when the heroes have them on the ropes, it's a Last-Second Villain Recovery.
Literature Bazil Broketail: Inverted. During first part of Nesessitas' duel with Puxdool the troll, she is actually at an advantage, mainly because she is stronger. However, when her opponent cripples her knee via a lucky shot, things quickly go downhill from there. Happens several times throughout The Count of Monte Cristo. When in The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King, Eddie Dean realizes with gradually mounting grim satisfaction what he has to do to beat Blaine in the riddle contest and destroy it, saving all their lives, and the despondent others, having lost their hope, look over at him (he has been apparently nigh catatonic and useless for hours) and see that he's trying as hard as he can not burst into laughter as he says, "Blaine?...* I* have a couple of riddles..." Happens repeatedly in The Dresden Files. This could be due to Harry being ridiculously stubborn and very powerful. Though they tend to be more drawing on hidden reserves than anything else. The Empirium Trilogy: In Furyborn, Eliana gets one during the fight with the Empire's crawlers. Exhausted, hungry, and distraught, she starts a raging storm without even realizing that that's what she's doing. The storm takes down most of Empire's fleet and it confirms to Simon that she's the Sun Queen that he's been searching for. Subverted in The Half-Blood Prince, where Harry, facing Snape, gets up once, twice, but the third time he's too late for stopping their escape. In Return of the King, Frodo is literally half-dead and dragging his body up Mount Doom when he almost hears someone calling "Now, now, or it will be too late!". He drags himself to his feet and walks up the rest of the way. In The Pilgrim's Progress, Christian has one in his battle with Apollyon, suddenly recovering his weapon and the upper hand when the demon lord is about to deal him a killing blow."Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! When I fall I shall arise."note Micah 7:8 Subverted rather cruelly by the ending of the original book, The Princess Bride: all of the instances listed above still happen, sure, but moments after that "perfect kiss", Westley relapses into a "mostly dead" coma, igo passes out from blood loss, and Fezzik spots a platoon of Humperdinck's men pursuing them from the castle. Everybody scatters, and their actual fate is left up in the air. The movie didn't change the ending, really, the Grandfather just didn't read that far. Saint George and the Dragon: Twice the knight is gravely wounded. Both times he's looked after and prayed for by Una, recovering to fight again. The Stormlight Archive: This happens every time Kaladin speaks a new Oath. In the first book he is in shock from overusing Stormlight, but manages to run across a bridge, jump a chasm, land in the middle of an enemy army, and take their Stormlight. In the second book, he has a bum leg, multiple internal injuries, and a stab in the side. He is facing two men wearing Shardplate and bearing Shardblades. Speaking the Words draws in enough Stormlight to heal his wounds, and Sylphrena is revived as a Shardblade. At the climax of Tea with the Black Dragon, Mayland Long is bound hand and foot, tired, hungry, and has a bullet wound in his shoulder and possibly a concussion. But after Martha tells him she loves him, he easily breaks free from his bonds and defeats the villains single-handed. Happens several times in the Urban Dragon series. Occurs during the climax of the Warrior Cats first series of books, when Firestar fought Scourge. Scourge actually kills him once, and assumes he's gone forever, but since Firestar has nine lives, he comes back later. Firestar's triumphant return is somewhat of a shock to Scourge, and he comes back apparently fighting with the power of StarClan. However, Firestar's I Surrender, Suckers is the actual deciding factor in the battle.
Pinballs Gottlieb's Rocky pinball machine has "On the Ropes", a kickback chute in the middle of the table that can take a ball that's about to drain and immediately shoot it back into the game. Likewise, The Champion Pub has a kickback chute labeled "Second Wind".
Pro Wrestling Hulk Hogan, who would always call upon the power of all the Hulkamaniacs watching when it looked like he was going to lose a match. You could tell when he was drawing on their power because he would start shaking and the opponent's strikes wouldn't hurt him anymore. Because Hulking Up almost always led straight into Hulk Hogan's Five Moves of Doom, he might as well have been invincible. Others who used a similar gimmick include... Carlos Colon's comeback sequence would usually be preceded by a cartwheel, which his son Eddie and daughter Stacy also took up, but not Carly, who rarely cartwheeled and was a heel when he did. The Ultimate Warrior defeated Hulk Hogan after he Hulked Up by Hulking Up himself and drawing on the power of all his fans in the audience. The Ultimate Warrior's cue would be slowly using the ropes to stand back up while ignoring any offense the opponent threw at him then violently shaking the ropes before cutting into his five moves of doom. Sebastion Rose on the American Indy circuit emulates the Ultimate Warrior's sequences. Dragon Gate's BXB Hulk has his own Hulking sequences, naturally but his usually wears off long before the match is over. Alundra Blayze/Madusa would seemingly be exhausted and crushed, the opponent would lackadaisically do a lateral press only for Madusa to impressively kip out of it and roar into a flurry of offense. It was understandable the first time but wrestlers really should have hooked her leg after seeing it twice. Most times The Undertaker simply no sells or sells the bare minimum because he's a zombie and mortal attacks shouldn't be hurting very much. When he was with Paul Bearer though, Undertaker wouldn't really start no selling until Paul demanded him to with his urn. At one point, Undertaker substituted the urn for the energy of the audience, blatantly copying Hulk Hogan. Eugene was mostly a good sport and timid by professional wrestling standards but sometimes he would go into an unstoppable rage and seemingly become immune to pain. This was most commonly triggered by bashing his head into a turnbuckle, which he seemed to hate and would signal it by repeatedly bashing himself in the head while staring angrily at the offender. The Eugene example is based on the Missing Link. Someone would drive the Link's head into a turnbuckle, Link would No-Sell and just to prove how hard his head is he'd grab the back of his own hair and ram himself into the turnbuckle a few times. (Eugene was a Wrestling Savant who took random portions of gimmicks from older wrestlers - a kind of one-man Call-Back.) Parodied by Santino Marella, who has a shoulder raising, heavy breathing, super-powered comeback born of rage...that almost always wears off before he can hit the cobra. Also parodied on Sunday Night Heat by Charlie Haas, who would turn invincible after he put on a mask but the mask couldn't cure his fear of heights so he still lost after he climbed to the top rope. MagnumTA occasionally had an unstoppable rage variant, best seen in his United States Championship defense against Kamala, after he got sick of the Ugandan hitting him in the head the strikes stopped staggering him, even as he bled. Kamala himself had a variant, he wasn't as big as many other giants or as monstrous as other monsters but try to hurt his friends and he would become one of the most dangerous men on the roster, as a face anyway. Father Time, the oldest rookie in the history of professional wrestling, has a Hogan like comeback but it isn't explicitly drawing from the audience. You can't powerbomb Billy Kidman. Every time somebody tries he reverses it and almost always goes into a sitout facebuster and/or Shooting Star Press for the win. A strange example is Curryman, who usually started off his comebacks by force-feeding his opponents curry. Tatanka would sometimes do a second wind routine by starting to do a Native war dance in the ring, (mostly) ignoring his opponent's offense. The word is mostly; at least once Bam Bam Bigelow was able to stop the 'wind dance' cold by enzigiri-kicking Tatanka in the back of the head. Inverted in Fighting Opera Hustle, where Himalayan could get a villainous second wind by being dosed in ice cubes. Not completely inverted though as Big Foot was more of a misguided pawn than "evil". Daffney Unger discovered she could trigger a second wind in Solo Darling by having her sip some punch. John Cena, after he became a Face on Smackdown would usually get kicked around the ring in a manner reminiscent of child abuse for the majority of the match, then start to No-Sell and hit his opponent with his finisher and win the match. Unlike those listed above, there is no kayfabe explanation or audience cue to show when it will happen. Roman Reigns manages to turn seemingly unwinnable matches into decisive victories. For example, after being thrashed around by Samoa Joe at Backlash 2018 for the whole match, Roman goes full Hogan and nails Joe with a spear to win. Like with Cena, nothing indicates when he starts a comeback. Sting would be battered pillar to post before suddenly no-selling his opponent's offense, followed by a "most muscular" pose and beating his chest, signaling his comeback. Like Cena and Roman, there is no explanation for it.
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