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- Dragon Ball and its incarnations have Senzu Beans, which can restore a person to full health and power in an instant.
- At one point in Excel Saga, Excel and Hyatt find a recently murdered girl. Hyatt (who is prone to sudden death) pulls out a bottle of medication she keeps in case of emergency and pours it down the girl's throat. The girl rockets to her feet, screaming "ENERGY!" at the top of her lungs, and proceeds to run across an ocean before recovering normality.
- Klaus of Maiden Rose invokes this trope when he goes on the raid. Less effective than expected, probably because it wasn't the first time he used drugs.
- Chouji from Naruto has his family's extra-strong soldier pills. The green and yellow ones require increasing recovery time, and the red one is only to be used if you're quite sure the fight is worth dying for.
- In One Piece, Chopper will occasionally use a Rumble Ball to increase his strength. If he takes three of these within a six hour time limit, though, he will turn into a monstrous form with incredible strength but little to no control. It causes his body to tear itself apart, and afterwords he will find it impossible to move. There's a reason he's only resorted to this twice thus far.
- Also, Emporio Ivanakov, whose Devil Fruit power allows him/her to generate hormones and inject them into people, can pull this off with "Vigor Hormones" which cause instant Heroic Resolve, though it should be noted that it's still very dangerous to go beyond one's physical limits while under the influence. He/she has used this twice on Luffy so far.
- Averted in Sword of the Stranger, where the protagonist Nanashi has gone through fights with multiple mooks, getting injured several times and in very cold weather trying to save a boy. Nanashi is exhausted and all cut up, while his last enemy standing, Luo-Lang, is in perfect shape and a highly skilled swordsman who sees Nanashi as his only true opponent. He offers Nanashi an anesthetic to dull his pains and to make their upcoming duel a fair one. Nanashi turns the offer down and decides to fight him in his current condition. The fight ends in what would have certainly been (and still might have been) a Mutual Kill, if not for Nanashi's Pocket Protector that he received from Kotaro earlier.
- In the Trigun manga, Wolfwood uses something in between this and Super Serum in his fight against Livo/Razlo and Chapel.
- In A Cruel God Reigns , Jeremy uses various painkillers, LSD, and heroin type drugs to help him deal with the pain of being beaten and raped by his step-father, and later in the series, to forget the haunting memories.
- In Astérix in Britain, tea is used as a substitute for the magic potion. Asterix does present it to the Britons as the real deal, but their chieftain acknowledges it gave them courage enough to defeat the Romans.
- Also, the Normans use calva.
- In The Adventures of Tintin, Captain Haddock could often be re-energized by alcohol while tired or depressed, which Tintin uses at several points to rally him, even carrying around a spare bottle for emergencies.
- Strongly averted in Iron Man issue 169. After having a couple of drinks, Tony battled Magma but is beaten. So, he retreated and went to get fortified by drinking some more. He ended up passing out.
- A not-quite-heroic example: Nod fanatics in Tiberium Wars tend to employ a very potent drug that can, among other things, keep their blood oxygenated for at least a full minute after their heart has stopped and they're clinically dead. The drug and its use are based on real-life accounts from US military personnel who fought militia and insurgents using similar drugs (primarily epinephrine).
- An almost certainly tongue-in-cheek example is Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), in which the lead characters stay up for the remainder of the film after popping an entire handful of PCP caplets or something.
- The Max Payne film's climax begins with Max taking a dosage of Valkyr to keep himself from freezing to death. He then goes on a mook-slaughtering acid trip.
- The Dragon in Ong Bak injected himself with some kind of drug in order to keep fighting the hero during the climactic fight scene, for all the good that did him in the end.
- Invoked in The Rock, though this particular "bottle" contains the antidote for the killer poison he's trying to secure, and it must be injected directly into the heart. And he still has to Epic Hail away the last-ditch airstrike.
- In Universal Soldier, Van Damme is only able to defeat Dolph Lungren after he takes a dose of supersoldier serum.
- In A Nightmare on Elm Street movies, several teenagers try to postpone a confrontation with the deadly dream demon Freddy by taking coffee, as he kills people when they go to sleep.
- In William King's Warhammer 40,000 novel Space Wolf, when Ragnar and Strybjorn are escaping the caves, Ragnar gives Strybjorn a shot to keep him going despite his injuries, and then a second dose when he starts to hallucinate. In another fight, Strybjorn is able to act, some, but after, Ragnar has to carry him to get him out.
- Robert A. Heinlein:
- Short story "Coventry". The hero and a companion take a powerful stimulant called a "pepper pill" ("improbable offspring of common coal tar") in order to complete a long hike and deliver a vital message. The drug can cause heart attacks and burns the body's tissues to provide energy after normal reserves are gone, requiring days to recover from its use.
- Have Space Suit – Will Travel. While trudging across the surface of the Moon in a life and death situation, Kip takes dexedrine tablets when he gets exhausted.
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel His Last Command, when Mkoll is unconscious after falling through a Chaos warp gate and managing to get himself and another scout back despite the enemies, the impossible landscape, and the cold behind it, Gaunt has to speak with him. He has Dorden revive him long enough to speak with a shot; Dorden refuses to give him another dose, after.
- In Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth books there are several stimulants that can be used to push beyond normal limits on endurance.
- Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire the Mule uses his mental powers on Ebling Mis, pushing him beyond normal endurance in his search for the whereabouts of the Second Foundation. It's not a physical stimulant, but it has the same effect, including physical deterioration to the point of causing Mis's death.
- Andre Norton's Lord of Thunder, sequel to The Beastmaster.
- A number of Stainless Steel Rat stories include Bottled Heroic Resolve. In The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World, Slippery Jim's nerve fails him outside the Big Bad's base. No sane man would walk in there, not to certain death. So he pops a pill that kills sanity stone dead: grinning sociopathy in a capsule, live wire applied directly to the Id.
- In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000 Ultramarines novel Nightbringer, the rescued Inquisitor limps into conference, clearly showing the heavy stim use that got him there.
- The doctors in the Medstar Duology, a bit of the Star Wars Expanded Universe which serves as medical drama, do all kinds of things to keep themselves going when they get endless waves of patients. A device is mentioned that stimulates certain kinds of brainwaves, allowing the equivalent of eight hours of sleep in ten minutes, but it's not actually as good as real sleep, and they start making mistakes anyway. When there aren't any patients, they tend to get drunk.
- In James Swallow's Warhammer 40,000 Blood Angels novel Deus Sanguinius, after Rafen won the duel with Arkio, Mephiston offers him a shot that will give him the strength of lords, because of the severity of his wounds.
- In Red Fury, also by James Swallow, Rafen knows of such drugs, though the Blood Angels prefer not to use them — but his foes are injecting themselves and getting results far beyond them.
- In James Swallow's Warhammer 40,000 novel Faith & Fire, Verity revives Miriya with an injection.
- In Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor, Aral takes a "little blue pill'' from his first aid kit to keep him on his feet while recapturing his ship from the mutineers who had tried to kill him, and seized control of it.
- The entire point of the nationalistic poem "Döbeln at Jutas", by J L Runeberg. Severely wounded officer Döbeln begs his doctor for a medicine that will let him out of bed for just one day, so he can lead his troops in the battle at Jutas.
- In The Dresden Files, Harry takes a recharge potion, but feeling like you have an inexhaustible power supply and actually having one are two different things. While he doesn't fall on his face, he runs out of juice and has no powers at a time you really don't want to have that happen.
- Also, in "Cold Days", Harry finds the Winter Knight's Mantle is like this. Sure, you can keep going like the Energizer Bunny, but in reality, you are just oblivious to the pain and damage your body is taking. Harry comments this is both efficient and cruel and hence totally appropriate for the donor of this item.
- Played straight in the Sector General novel Star Surgeon. The Sector General staff dose themselves repeatedly with stimulant injections to stay on duty through the waves of casualties brought in as a result of the Etlan
- The Black Jewels book Queen of the Darkness makes mention of a powerful stimulant that will keep someone on their feet with no food and no rest, as long as it's taken a couple times a day. Once it wears off, the user cannot be flogged awake by anything.
- In Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess, Lucrezia, back in a body that needs sleep, resorts to drugs to keep going. Lots and lots of drugs.
- In Michael Flynn's In the Lion's Mouth, a Good Samaritan gives Dominic Tight "booster" after the ambush injured him.
- In Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, the SPARTAN-IIIs' bioaugmentations include the drug 009762-OO, which greatly enhances the aggressive response, allowing them to function long after a normal human would have died. However, two other drugs are needed to counter its effects and prevent the onset of Unstoppable Rage.
- The Elenium: Sephrenia knows a spell that acts just like this trope, making the recipients feel like they're fully rested. But they aren't, and trying to substitute spell for sleep for too long will kill the recipients, which is why she refuses to teach this spell to the Church Knights.
- The kelda's "brose" in Carpe Jugulum. In addition to curing Verence of a vampire attack, it also puts the normally mild-mannered king in a state of mind where attacking said vampire's castle with a sword seems like a good idea. (The actual plot has already been sorted out by this point, but no-one told him that.)
- The Uberwaldian concoction Splot in Making Money, which gives Moist von Lipwig extra energy when he needs it. Made from all natural herbs (belladonna) and minerals (arsenic), and definitely not alcoholic because alcohol wouldn't survive.
- In Raising Steam, Moist drinks a goblin drink that has much the same effect as brose, and heroically saves a clacks tower from deep-downer dwarfs.
Live Action TV
- Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Immunity Syndrome". While opposing a monster that drains life force, the crew starts to collapse and is given stimulants to keep them on their feet. At one point Kirk asks McCoy for another shot and Bones warns him that if he keeps on taking it it will blow him apart.
- Subverted in the classic Star Trek episode "Amok Time". Kirk becomes exhausted while duelling the deranged Spock, and McCoy calls a time-out to inject him with something that will give him a fighting chance. A Techno Babble explanation is provided — it'll help Kirk use the oxygen in his blood more efficiently, since the atmosphere on Vulcan is thin by Earth standards. Of course, McCoy has actually slipped him a mickey, giving him a sedative that will simulate sudden death and make it appear that Spock has won the battle.
- Captain Janeway orders the Doctor to dose her up under similar circumstances in the two-parter "Year of Hell." He agrees, but not before threatening to remove her from command if she doesn't schedule herself a rest interval.
- Firefly: Malcolm Reynolds injects adrenalin directly into his heart to keep himself going long enough to repair the ship in "Out Of Gas".
- In an episode of Smallville called Rage, Green Arrow took a drug to give him a Healing Factor. Unfortunately, it had the side effect of giving him RAGE.
- In Stargate SG-1 episode "Morpheus," the team (plus some Red Shirts) are infected with a parasite that makes them want to sleep. Once they are asleep, it then eats their brains to death. Naturally, nobody wants to have that happen, so they have to stay awake for a few days while trying to find a cure. At one point they resort to caffeine pills and other chemical stimulants, but have to stop when the drugs cause one Red Shirt to have a heart attack and die.
- In the Battlestar Galactica episode "33" the Cylons are attacking every 33 minutes, giving Galactica's understaffed fighter pilots no time to rest. They're given an unnamed drug that's probably Amphetamine to keep flying.
- Like the medical example in Real Life, Dr. Franklin of Babylon 5 develops a stims habit to cope with the demands of his job, which seems to be a common pitfall among doctors in the B5 universe. In "The Quality of Mercy," it's mentioned that Dr. Rosen lost her medical license over stims use, and in "Hunter, Prey," Dr. Jacobs uses stims to keep himself awake while he runs from the law. Granted, the second example isn't a sign of an addiction to the drugs, but doctors seem to reach for them whenever they're in a tight spot.
- Not so much heroic, but there is an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit where a 10-year-old girl at an exclusive private school has to keep using stimulants to stay awake and study so she can keep up with everyone else. She ends up going a little psycho as a result of the meds and killing her roommate.
- In The Deep, Vincent is dying of radiation poisoning, but is given morphine and amphetamines to keep him on his feet long enough to help save the day.
- Eclipse Phase features a number of nootropic drugs, including ones intended for combat. Kick makes one more alert, Phlo enhances reflexes and dexterity, and BringIt causes one to emit pheromones that incite others to attack them.
- Tomorrow's War has rules for combat drugs that can enhance speed, alertness, or morale. There's also rules for irregular units hopped up on recreational drugs so that they're fearless, but harder to command than normal irregulars.
- Rifts has the Juicer: a character class based on this concept.
- The various iterations of Warhammer40K have all kinds of combat drugs. A few of them are straight performance enhancers with little to no side-effects. Most of them are not. However, particularly in the RP Gs, drugging your party can be very helpful against otherworldly horrors.
- Starcraft: features Terran marines and firebat / marauder class infantry using stimpacks to boost combat efficiency from "cannon fodder" to "tactically superior to everything that they can hit". Usually used at the start of engagement and actually deplete health reserves for the combat boost.
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Snake injects himself with nanomachines several times to keep himself on his feet throughout the second half of the story.
- In the game Battlefield: Bad Company, Private Marlowe is given a hypodermic needle (full of adrenaline, presumably) that he can use to keep himself alive near the start of the story.
- Earthbound had a "sudden guts pill" item, which double the user's "guts" stat for the duration of the battle. This is particularly fitting since a high "Guts" stat raises the probability that a character will survive a fatal hit with one hit point. (besides, it raises the Critical Hit ratio of the user).
- Hitman: Blood Money has two healing items: A syringe full of adrenaline, and a bottle of painkillers whose flavor text states they're currently being tested for use on horses.
- While the potions in The Legend of Zelda are explicitly magical, the food items in the more recent games are not. Link can come back from the brink of death just by drinking half a bottle of milk or soup. Goddamn.
- You gotta admit, it's really good soup.
- Bottled fairies are an even straighter example: they will appear when you run out of health and give you a smallish health boost so you can keep fighting for a bit longer.
- In the Fallout universe all kinds of chems can fall into this trope at some point. Includes the Buffout (Strength, Agility and Endurance), Jet (increased reflexes/speed), Psycho (damage resistance and agility, in Fallout 3 increased damage) and Med-X (damage resistance). They have aftereffects and are addictive, of course.
- Psycho is based on a drug cocktail the German army used in WWII, and Med-X is Brand X morphine.
- In Fallout 3 Buffout helps during one Escort Mission when an escortee stops moving.
- "Fallout 4" has the Refreshing Beverage. It heals a huge amount of damage over a short period of time, Fully removes radiation, and cures addiction to boot. One dose can bring you from near death to full power in an instant.
- The HEV suit in the Half-Life series apparently comes equipped with Self-Dispensing Bottled Heroic Resolve, as it will automatically inject you with morphine if you become injured.
- In Alter A.I.L.A., stimulants (in three different colors) are used in place of healing potions, as befits the After the End science-fiction setting.
- Edward Roivas has bottles of Liquid Courage in his Inventory. Three guesses as to what they hold...
- In Avernum, there's the Heroic Brew. It tastes incomprehensibly foul, but turns even wimpy mages into unstoppable juggernaughts for a few rounds, nevermind the actual frontliners, who become godlike.
- This appears to be standard procedure for Witchers, who will imbibe potions before going off into battle.
- Syndicate Wars had this as one of the main ways to control your soldiers. Red makes them more aggressive. Blue makes them more passive.
- Used as a plot point only in Advance Wars Days of Ruin. Caulder gives The Beast, who had been shot and was suffering an infection, some form of medicine to keep him fighting. However, the medicine also turns him batshit crazy and, in the end, ultimately kills him.
- In the Portal 2 tie in comic Lab Rat, the schizophrenic Doug Rattman only has one dose of anti-psychotic medicine left, so he saves it for an emergency, surviving thanks to his Companion Cube acting as a hallucinatory Spirit Advisor. When the power to the Enrichment Center shuts off, endangering the lives of everyone in stasis (including the series' main protagonist Chell) he takes his meds so he can focus and turn the power back on. Notably, this is subverted: though he does restore the power, without the Companion Cube giving him survival tips, he gets shot by a turret and almost dies.
- The 'Red Hot Shot' from the Bayonetta series is a slurry of demonic medicine in a syringe that Bayonetta can use when she's about to be killed and Dragged Off to Hell, staving off mortality and giving her a second chance.
- In Blue Yonder, they use this on Jared to keep him going when they have to escape capture.
- Girl Genius: When Tarvek collapses, Violetta reveals that this was the only reason he was standing in the first place.
- Also, when The Other was possessing Agatha. She kept taking various stimulants in order to keep working otherwise Agatha would be able to reassert control if she dozed off.
- The folks in Girl Genius seem to have ongoing issues with stimulants, perhaps befitting their MAD SCIENCE!!1! modus. Other incidents include Agatha's first taste of coffee, Gil's quick recovery due to Jager battledraught, the "post-revivification rush" from recent experiments in the Castle Heterodyne basement, and the bottles of Movit #6 and #11 used by Tarvek and Zola (respectively).
- In Schlock Mercenary the use (and abuse) of this is covered in Elf's arc regarding her combat stim addiction.
- Far later, she's about to pass out. When someone mentions that her combat stims should prevent this, she reveals that she flushed her suit's reservoir, leading to the observation that being too afraid of drugs is another kind of drug problem.
- Popeye was actually very unimpressive, until he ate spinach (he always kept a can with him). The spinach had an effect not unlike Caffeine Bullet Time, enabling him to win the fight, save the girl, etc. Either an Anvilicious way of getting kids to eat their vegetables...or a case of Getting Crap Past the Radar.
- Give Popeye SOME credit. He could crush a tin can so hard that spinach goes flying into the air.
- The relationship between Popeye and spinach tends to shift around depending on the author, when it was originally introduced in the strip it was just a partial explanation for his strength, a lifetime of physical exercise and good nutrition. Later in the strips and earliest shorts spinach would give him a burst of energy when tired out enabling him to finish a fight, but not necessarily make him stronger. Later Popeye would still be super strong without it but transform into a being who could literally warp reality through sheer physical strength after eating it. Some later shows toning down the violence would have him as a normal guy who only became strong after eating spinach and generally one punching a glass jawed Bluto/Brutus. In general, though, it is the third portrayal - strong man without spinach, reality warping strength on spinach - that gets used the most often.
- Give Popeye SOME credit. He could crush a tin can so hard that spinach goes flying into the air.
- Scooby Snacks have this effect on Scooby-Doo. And oft times, Shaggy.
- Invoked and inverted in The Simpsons episode "Poppa's Got a Brand New Badge", when Barney mentions that, since he's a recovering alcoholic, he's just as much a coward as everyone else.
- Who hasn't pulled an all-nighter (or got through the day after one) by loading themselves up with coffee and energy drinks?
- So very true in health care, and especially before the 80-hour resident workweek reforms, when 36-hour shifts were a common rite of passage. Trainee physicians and nurses have long been known to joke that they have too much blood in their caffeine streams...
- Caffeine itself acts by suppressing the brain's normal ability to sense fatigue.
- Unfortunately, if you have hyperactivity, such as with ADHD, or you've been on prescription stimulants for a long time, you can become effectively immune to caffeine.
- Militaries have used amphetamines to promote aggressiveness and keep troops awake for long periods of time since 1939 in Germany and 1942 in Britain and the USA. Objective studies showed that they were no better than caffeine for combating fatigue and actually had significant drawbacks including (nigh-suicidal) recklessness, addiction, and hallucinations. However, they considered the boost to aggressiveness and the potential to reduce psychological casualties from 'depression' caused by "combat exhaustion" Worth It. This was especially important for Assault Troops attempting to break through well prepared defensive positions, such as during Zitadelle in July '43.
- More specifically US forces consumed 100,000 5mg doses per month in early 1942 (between fewer than 500,000 personnel) and at an unknown but much increased rate following the mobilisation of the USA's pharmaceutical industry for total war production. The Royal Air Force formally endorsed the usage of two 5mg tablets per man per 'strategic bombing' (of urban centres) mission in 1942, and in the same year Field Marshall Montgomery's Middle East Command recommended no more than 20mg per day over a five day period, or half that dosage for officers not in combat.
- Amphetamines are now much stronger and have the potential to keep people awake for days at a time. Military pilots now call them "go pills" and they also have "stop pills" for when the need to stay alert has passed. The latter being basically sedatives. Both are passed out by doctors if requested. An over-reliance on these drugs is somewhat controversial though, since they may also have negative effects on things like alertness, situational awareness, judgment, etc.
- Drug-addled personnel have been implicated in numerous War Crimes and friendly fire incidents caused by hyperaggression and reduced ability to concentrate, respectively. One notable recent incident was when a US pilot dropped a 500-lb bomb on a Canadian infantry platoon in Afghanistan in 2002.
- Alcoholic drink has been used to encourage soldiers to think less about saving their own skin and more about fighting. Of course, alcohol has been called "liquid courage" and such for ages, but nowadays we can test this with brain scans, too.
- The Red Army during WWII famously used shots of vodka (called "the Peoples' Commissar's 100 grams") to bolster morale.
- In a somewhat disturbing blog post, Peter Watts suggested a version: "Isolate the neurochemical factors that come into play when a mother sees her children being threatened; synthesise them; dose every female soldier with an aerosol of the stuff before you send her into the field. If any of the boys complain about women in the military after that, it’ll only be because they keep getting their asses kicked on performance reviews. Either that, or because they’re scared shitless."
- Painkillers and cortisone shots administered to injured professional athletes to allow them to return to games.