Career-Ending Injury

Even in victory, he was still de-feeted.

"I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee."

— City Guards (yes, inexplicably, most of them), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

A Career-Ending Injury is a sudden and unexpected injury or illness that causes disability to a person and forces them to give up their occupation and/or dreams.

Usually, this trope involves an athlete getting an injury, but the career can be anything that requires physical and/or mental ability. Likewise, what causes the disability can be something other than an injury (for example, a disease) — the important point is that it prevents the character from achieving their goals by reducing their body's capability.

A variation is where a previously known condition or illness worsens unexpectedly to a point where the character is no longer fit for his/her career. With a character known for being injury-prone or just too stubborn to know when to quit, this injury may represent the writing on the wall. See Elite Athlete's Aging Angst when aging compounds this variation.

Sometimes the injury is part of the backstory, but if it happens during the course of the main story, expect Angst.

Very much Truth in Television. In circles such as the police or the military, this is sometimes sardonically called "earning a desk job". With sports where knee collisions are a regular occurrence, the injury might be so bad that standing up (after it healed) without a cane is impossible.

The injury may have started as a Game-Breaking Injury or Ill-Timed Infirmity. Compare White-Dwarf Starlet, I Coulda Been a Contender!, and Disability Distress, common results of this trope; Dream-Crushing Handicap, where the character is disabled to start with instead of becoming so during their career; and Crippling the Competition, where this trope is invoked. If the character overcomes the injury, either temporarily or permanently, then they're Back in the Saddle. If the injury isn't just career-ending but life-ending, then it's an example of Fatal Method Acting. May result in the character taking on a Post-Injury Desk Job. May be the result of Climactic Maiming from a previous installment.

Conversely, the Ironically Disabled Artist doesn't let a little thing like being physically unable to practice their career stop them from doing it.

This is sometimes set up as a twist or reveal, so beware of spoilers.

Examples:

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Budweiser Frogs: In 1999, Louie the chameleon's attempt to electrocute the frogs to death fails, but Weis is injured enough to be unable to perform, allowing Louie to replace him. A UK-exclusive revival of the campaign in 2017 reenacts the original 1995 ad but with a blue CGI tree frog in Weis's place, seemingly as a Continuity Nod to confirm that he never recovered.

Anime & Manga

In The Animatrix short "World Record", a sprint runner almost exits the Matrix during the record-breaking sprint but is pulled back inside, where his mind decides he has run past his body capacities and breaks said body. He is left in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But because he knows the truth, with enough effort he can push himself past those limitations. It's left ambiguous how much he can really do.
In Banana Fish, Eiji was a talented pole vaulter until he suffered an ankle injury.
In Battle Angel Alita, Alita's motorball trainer used to be a racer but had to retire after overuse of reflex-boosting drugs damaged his nervous system. Subverted for Jasugun who knows his brain is dying from being tampered with too much but chooses to die on the track as a champion.
Berserk:
- Guts' (horribly abusive) foster father has to retire as an active mercenary after a messy leg injury.
- Averted for Guts himself — one would think that losing a hand would end the career of a fighter who specialises in two-handed weapons, but he is stubborn enough to learn to handle the sword using a prosthetic hand. (A magnet in the hand helps him maintain the grip.)
Gerd in Blassreiter was a racing champion who got half-paralyzed. And then ditched by his girlfriend. And then agreed to try "experimental healing".
In Captain Tsubasa, this is the reason why Roberto Hongo left soccer. During one of his best matches, he was accidentally elbowed to the head and near his eyes; the brain and optical nerve damage he sustained severely limited his eyesight, so he had to retire from soccer. He was this close to crossing the Despair Event Horizon and be Driven to Suicide, but Tsubasa and his family helped him through and, in a few years, he built a new and very successful career as a soccer coach.
Case Closed:
- In the second Non-Serial Movie Detective Conan Film 02: The Fourteeth Target, the murderer is revealed to be Kohei Sawaki, a sommelier whose taste buds were destroyed in an accident, taking revenge on the people who in one way or another, ended his career.
- Similarly, in the fourth Non-Serial Movie Detective Conan Film 04: Captured In Her Eyes, the culprit is Kyosuke Kazato, a surgeon who had the tendons of his right hand intentionally severed by a jealous colleague during a surgery. He switched to become a therapist, but later killed the one who ruined his career... and others who either were involved or found out... and then Ran became his target since she witnessed what was supposed to be his last kill.
- In the canon case "Kobayashi-sensei's Love", the culprit turns out to be a former baseball prodigy who got two of these. His abusive sponsor started to demand that he paid her the money she invested in his career, and when she crossed the line and tried to force him to sign a life insurance so she'd kill him and then cash on it, he stabbed her to death Additionally, said culprit attempted to use what was left of his baseball skills to try killing the woman who had witnessed his kill... the aforementioned Kobayashi-sensei.
- Subverted in a filler case: an actor and former acrobat was supposed to have one, but somehow the pain went away some time ago. This allowed him to re-start using his acrobatic skills... to become a thief and later a killer, including a rather spectacular Super Window Jump to escape from the police when he's Out-Gambitted by them.
- In a manga case, a former basketball player was accidentally elbowed in the eye by a teammate and, as a result, he cannot play any longer. It wasn't an accident: a jealous teammate asked the culprit to do it so he could get in the titular line-up. When the injury definitely took the first player out of the sport, the culprit started blackmailing the jealous guy about it... and ended up dead for it.
- In one case, the Jerkass father of a rich girl not only forbids his daughter from marrying her pianist boyfriend but stomps on the pianist's hand and breaks it, deliberately ruining the boyfriend's career. The poor piano man commits suicide and the Broken Bird daughter runs away; the father winds up the story's murder victim at the hands of the boyfriend's father.
Shuu in Castle Town Dandelion. Back in his childhood, he wanted to be a soccer player — a dream forever denied to him after he broke his right leg trying to save Akane from Kanade's crumbling castle 12 years ago. He's not exactly a cripple, but in the anime, he apparently can't run for any distance and has to rely on his Royalty Superpower, Transporter.
Chiyuki, the amnesiac protagonist, from Death Parade was a young professional ice-skater, however, a knee injury left her unable to skate anymore. This caused her to fall into a depression that ended in her Driven to Suicide.
In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, several cases are shown in order to portray the heavy toll the mere mortal demon slayers pay to fight and win against supernatural, quasi-immortal demons:
- Entertainment District: the loss of Tengen's left hand and eye greatly impede his ability to serve as a Hashira, so he chooses to retire and take a supporting role on the sidelines, still assisting the Demon Slayer Corps in any way he can.
- Sunrise Cool down / Epilogue: Tanjiro's final battle against Muzan ended with him losing his right eye and left arm, immediately after Muzan turned Tanjiro into his demonic successor, which healed both eye and arm, but when Tanjiro is brought back to normal as a human that healing process was broken, not to the state where Tanjiro completely lost them but one where they are almost useless, Tanjiro remarks his sight on the right eye is very dim and he can barely move his left arm; the Demon Slayer Corps disbanding after Muzan's fall and all demons born from him dying is a good thing for Tanjiro since he would be quite limited in a fight now.
In Detective School Q, an Elegant Classical Musician lost her fingers to frostbite when she was caught in a cruel trap coming from her fellow classmates. (They all trained under the same violin teacher and former classical music star.) With her career in tatters, the woman died of suicide out of despair — and her boyfriend killed the others, both as revenge and to make sure that their master's prized Stradivarius violin would not go to the ones who caused his beloved's death.
In Dinosaur Sanctuary, Masaru, a Triceratops, was a popular zoo attraction for years, until he got one of his horns stuck in his enclosure wall and broke it off. Though the injury was entirely superficial, the popularity of his exhibit plummeted, and he was relocated to a much smaller zoo and replaced by another Triceratops whose horns were intact. Even there, he was relatively unpopular until his keepers decided to play into the idea of his broken horn by putting it on display as part of the exhibit (even challenging guests to try to lift it), which turned out to be a good enough gimmick to save him from being sold again.
Dragon Ball:
- Dragon Ball Z: When Nappa goes after Gohan and Krillin, Goku uses the Kaio-ken to intercept him, striking him in the back and breaking his spine, leaving him paralyzed. Being no longer able to fight, he is killed shortly thereafter by Vegeta.
- Dragon Ball Super: Renso was forced to retire from being a Captain of Planet Sadal's Defense Squad when he injured his leg.
Future GPX Cyber Formula:
- Almost happens to Hayato and Randoll in the ZERO arc when they suffered serious injuries in a crash at the British GP. They got better and they return to racing (although Randoll takes longer to come back than Hayato).
- In Bootsvorz's backstory, a nasty crash at a test drive resulted in losing his left eye and arm, but he returned to racing after gaining a new arm and eye.
- During the German GP, racer Johji Ohtomo crashed, suffering serious injuries. Prior to the crash, Johji and Hayato's Super Asruada had a minor collision, leading Hayato to believe Johji's crash was a result of that incident. In reality, Johji turned off his car's computer because he was overwhelmed by the large amounts of data fed into it, hoping instead to race on his instincts. He crashed soon afterwards.
- A racer named John Cleab has his racing career ended in a car accident, but it happened outside the race track. And to make it worse, he didn’t disclose his accident to the press because he was worried about a young girl’s future. (He crashed trying to avoid her as she ran into the street playing with her ball.)
In the original Gaiking series, the main hero Sanshiro Tsuwabuki was a baseball star until his hands were injured, forcing him out of the game. It turns out his wounds came from a murder attempt by the enemy forces, who were taking out all the prospective candidates to be Gaiking's pilot one by one; as the Sole Survivor of the group, he got lucky enough to be recruited by Gaiking's creator.
In Getter Robo Go, Hayato Jin received a number of near-fatal injuries fighting Dr. Lando. He survived, but his wounds were so severe that he can no longer safely pilot a Getter Robo.
Gintama: Sakamoto was once a swordsman as skillful as his comrades in the Joui War but has switched to guns in the present. That's because he was busy carrying an injured enemy to safety during the war when somebody —who turns out to be eventual antagonist Batou — attacked him from behind and cut right through his dominant hand, leaving it unfit to ever wield a sword again.
Glass Mask has this as Chigusa Tsukikage's background, plus a flashback to it is the starting point of the OAV'. Twenty-odd years ago, Tsukikage was performing her prized Crimson Goddess play but a stage spotlight snapped and fell on her midway through it. It resulted in badly burning/injuring half of her face, to the point that she stopped stage-acting and switched to teaching; it also kickstarted her obsession to find the perfect actress to give her the Crimson Goddess role, which was specifically written for her by her long-lost lover Ichiren Osaki.
Gunsmith Cats Burst: In the final arc of the series, Rally Vincent receives severe damage to her hands and torso in battle that makes her unable to use a firearm accurately anymore, forcing her to quit being a bounty hunter.
When the manga H2 begins, baseball players Hiro & Noda both believe they've suffered such injuries. Hiro to his arm, Noda to his back. They soon discover, though, that their supposedly great doctor was unlicensed and they are, in fact, perfectly healthy.
Hajime no Ippo:
- Nekota was forced to give up boxing after an illegal punch from his opponent resulted in permanent mid-brain damage and punch-drunk syndrome, although he experienced the symptoms of the latter before the fight (it was from a fight with his friendly rival Kamogawa).
- Kamogawa himself ended up going through this as well, after subjecting himself to Training from Hell that went far beyond his physical capabilities.
- Happens more than once in the case of fighters with "glass jaws", like Miyata's father, Nekota and Kamogawa's friend Dankichi Hama, and Ryuuichi Hayami. It's also a potential problem for Miyata, who's implied to have inherited his father's "glass jaw".
HIGHSPEED Étoile: Rin Rindo's decision to take up NEX Racing comes from suffering an injury that left her unable to do ballet.
Imaizumi Brings All the Gals to His House: Yukina had to give up on the basketball championship because of her injured heel. If not for Reina, she would have quit sports entirely.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Steel Ball Run: Johnny Joestar started as a renowned horse racing prodigy and received recognition from many. Then, after having a man forcibly dragged away from a line so he could gain early entry into a theater, the man retaliated by immediately shooting him in the spine, becoming wheelchair-bound afterwards.
- JoJolion: In a Whole Episode Flashback, Josefumi and Kira discover a baseball player called Atsunori Iwakiri was about to enter the major leagues until his right shoulder was dislocated in an accident, preventing him from continuing until he purchased a Locacaca Fruit to heal himself, then the Equivalent Exchange ended up causing his mouth to break apart.
Lady!!: Baron Gruffald was a skilled horse rider until he fell off his horse, broke his leg, and ruined his reputation. Nevertheless, he comes out of retirement to train Lynn for the Olympics.
Love Live! Sunshine!!: Mari sprained her ankle trying to perform an incredibly difficult maneuver (that Chika attempts to perfect in Season 2), then proceeded to attempt performing in the Tokyo live with the original Aqours in spite of her handicap. While the injury itself didn't knock Mari out of the race, it's Kanan's concern for her friend's injured leg and fear that she and Dia were holding Mari back (combined with Poor Communication Kills) that ultimately forces the original Aqours to disband.
Magical Doremi:
- Doremi and Poppu's mother Haruka was a prospective piano player, but got a severe hand injury and had to give it up.
- Onpu's mother Miho once was a promising Idol Singer in training but during an audition, she took a severe Staircase Tumble and the wounds she sustained forced her to retire. This is why she's a borderline Stage Mom to Onpu: her kid is naturally talented and likes the spotlight, but in practice, Miho is reliving her tragically lost dreams through her.
Megalo Box:
- Subverted by Aragaki: His ring name is "Stayin' Alive" because he was able to return to boxing despite having lost his legs after having them replaced by prosthetics. Double subverted as it's revealed actively boxing is too demanding on his legs and he has to retire before he's left permanently unable to move: His match with Joe was The Last Dance for him and he retires afterwards.
- Yuri is shown after the Time Skip to be wheelchair-bound and retired as a result of his final match.
My Hero Academia:
- The First-Episode Twist is that All Might suffered a major injury fighting a certain villain in the past, leaving him severely weakened. He chooses the main character, Izuku, as the recipient of his Bequeathed Power, though he remains active in order to help train him. He's finally forced to retire after another fight with the villain in question, All For One, leaves him unable to use his powers for more than a few seconds at a time.
- Also happens to Iida's brother Tensei, who's left paralyzed from the waist down after an encounter with Stain the Hero Killer. It's noted that many other Pro Heroes suffered the same fate.
- Almost happens to Izuku Midoriya: being unused to One For All's full power, attempting to use 100% of his quirk causes serious injuries to his limbs. On one occasion when fighting Muscular, he uses 100% power on one of his already broken arms. He is warned that if he continues to use his power so recklessly, he could potentially completely lose the use of his arms, thus forcing Izuku to rethink his fighting style.
- Another hero plays with the trope: after Ragdoll of the Wild Wild Pussycats team got her Quirk stolen, her career as an active hero went up in smoke. However, when the team made their return, Ragdoll became a Mission Control a la Oracle, still helping her teammates as much as she can.
- Multiple heroes suffer these kind of injuries during the Paranormal Liberation Front War. One of the most important was Aizawa, who lost both an eye to Shigaraki and a leg voluntarily. This kept the character out of the remaining fights for the series.
- In the final arc, Endeavor, the #1 ranked Pro Hero, loses an arm and is confined to a wheelchair, forcing him to retire.
Naruto: Near the end of the series, Might Guy retires as a ninja after he becomes wheelchair-bound.
One Piece: Chef Zeff used to be a notorious pirate nicknamed "Red Leg Zeff" due to his kick-based fighting style until he was shipwrecked and forced to eat his own leg to survive. His Seadog Peg Leg would cripple his fighting style, so Zeff chose to retire and become a restaurateur in the East Blue.
Patlabor EZY: Akihiko Kazama is a 4th dan in kendo and hoped to join the TMPD's Special Technical Training unit—full-time martial arts trainers for the police—but an injury in an accident nixed that.
Pretty Cure:
- HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!: In The Movie, Tsumugi Orihara is a classically trained dancer. However, whatever aspirations she may have had were crushed when she lost the use of her legs.
- HuGtto! Pretty Cure:
  - Homare used to be an up-and-coming figure skater with a lot of potential, but a failed jump resulted in an injury that ended her career. Her injury has since healed, but she's still traumatized by it and has distanced herself from anything to do with figure skating. After becoming Cure Étoile, she returns to skating and eventually gets a gold medal in her comeback performance.
  - Henri's leg condition is foreshadowed to end his career as an ice skater. Ultimately Zig-Zagged when his leg is broken due to an unrelated car accident. Then he gets a Disability-Negating Superpower and performs one final skating performance. However the superpower doesn't last and he is seen in a wheelchair after that.
Shinobu in Princess Army suffers from this after receiving a spinal injury that prevented him from practicing judo.
In Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, one of the competitors is a famous British football player who fears that his recent injury will become one of these, which is why he's after the secret to eternal life.
In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Sayaka's childhood friend Kyosuke is a violin prodigy, until a hand injury rendered him unable to play. His intense depression (up to an Interrupted Suicide in the portable game) prompts Sayaka's contract to heal him.
RideBack: Rin gives up being a ballerina due to physical (and mental) injuries caused by a fall.
Rurouni Kenshin, being a series about sword-fighting, has several examples, as well as aversions:
- Discussed with Yuutaro, the second student of the revived Kamiya Kasshin School, who ends up in the way of one of Raijuta's air-slicing attacks that severs the tendons in his sword-arm. While Kaoru and Yahiko mourn the loss of their promising junior, Yuutaro himself declares that if he can't use his right hand anymore, he'll use his left instead...and his rich dad is willing to send him to doctors in Germany to try and repair his right arm anyway. A brief glance at the dojo's wall in the Distant Finale shows Yuutaro listed as a junior instructor.
- The Meiji government tried to invoke this on Makoto Shishio, Kenshin's successor as Manslayer because they feared his ambition. They jumped him at night, knocked him out, and burned him alive. That certainly ended his old career. Unfortunately for the government, it just made Shishio angry…
- At the beginning of the "Jinchuu" arc, a flashback shows that near the end of the civil war, Kenshin fought a massive samurai working for the Shogunate and cut off his sword hand. When the samurai demanded Kenshin kill him because of this, Kenshin refused. The samurai did not take the mercy well, and carried a grudge for years.
- In the finale, Kenshin's career as a swordsman is brought to an end because his fragile build couldn't keep up with the demands of his sword style, resulting in irreparable damage to his muscle tissue. He's just fine with this, however, since he's brought closure to his past and wishes to settle down with Kaoru.
- Anime-only example: In the first episode, Gohei Hiruma was a former student at the Kamiya Kasshin dojo who harassed and was overly violent towards the other students. In retaliation, Kaoru's father shattered Gohei's right thumb, specifically mentioning this trope as the reason. It doesn't take, as Gohei learns to fight left-handed – which is what clues Kenshin into having Kaoru check her father's old records. During their fight, Kenshin shatters the knuckles on Gohei's left hand, ensuring that he can never hold a sword again.
Before he became Yakumo the 8th, Bon of Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu had an injury that caused him to limp and use a cane from a young age. His mother, a Geisha, handed him over to Yakumo the 7th, a rakugo master, as a result of this injury since said injury caused him to be unable to dance. However, since Geisha are exclusively women, Bon would have had to look for a different career anyway.
ST☆R: Strike it Rich: Just as Nozomi’s career in public MMA started to pick up steam, she discovered she had a detached retina, instantly stopping it in its track.
Tiger & Bunny: Superpowers in this series are like muscles; practice using them and you gain stronger powers, but overtax them and they'll burn themselves out faster, or even permanently break.
In Tokyo Ghoul, losing a limb in battle is pretty much the end of an Investigator's career. It's mentioned that the veterans' old commander Iba was forced to retire after losing his arm in battle with the Owl. A decade later, Kuroiwa suffers the same fate. However, the sequel reveals that this was averted by Juuzou — though he lost his right leg in the final battle, he's still going strong thanks to a fancy prosthetic leg.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby, being tied closely to real life horse racing, sees a number of these across the series:
- Season 1 of the anime recreates the infamous "Sunday of Silence", when Silence Suzuka overclocks on the track and breaks her leg while coming into the final stretch of her race. Unlike her real life counterpart, Suzuka does recover and makes a comeback, though she is largely sidelined for the remainder of the series.
- Season 2 focuses on Tokai Teio struggling to keep her Game-Breaking Injury from becoming this, only to suffer more injuries and fractures that force her into an early retirement (though she is able to get one last moment of glory by winning the Arima Kinen after a year off the track, meaning she retires on her own terms). Her Friendly Rival, Mejiro McQueen, is diagnosed with chronic ligament desmitis that quickly ends her career, denying both girls a proper rematch to resolve their competition.
- Umamusume: Cinderella Gray; Dicta Striker hits her head on the starting gate during her face off with Oguri Cap at the Arima Kinen, leaving her drenched in blood and short a tooth by the time she finishes. While she does recover in time, her career is effectively over and she never challenges Oguri in an official race afterwards.
- Umamusume: Star Blossom; A sudden flare up of tendonitis ends Biwa Hayahide's career after the Autumn Tenno Sho, ruining the plans of her and her sister Narita Brian to race against one another in the Arima Kinen. Hayahide tries to move on as best she can, but Brian crashes out hard and loses almost all motivation to keep racing.
ViVid Strike!: It's mentioned in passing that Jill's career as a competitive fighter ended because of an unspecified injury she suffered in training.
Itsuki from Yuki Yuna is a Hero wanted to become a singer however halfway through the series she becomes mute. Subverted eventually, as she is cured in the final episode.

Comic Books

Batgirl: Barbara Gordon was shot by the Joker and paralyzed in The Killing Joke. Her paralysis ended her career as Batgirl until her solo series Batgirl (2011), 23 years later.
Batman: Gordon of Gotham: Detective Soong faces possible mandatory retirement when he loses a kidney after Taking the Bullet for Bullock.
Batman Incorporated (2022): Dusty Bronco's career as a rodeo clown was ruined after Man-of-Bats beat him so badly that he was laid up for six months.
Jason Bard received a knee injury that ended his career as either a Marine or Gotham City police officer, depending on the version, and renders him permanently dependent on a cane to walk. He remains a Handicapped Badass and built a successful practice as a Private Detective, even earning the Batman himself as a frequent client.
Cyberforce: Ballistic was the ace pitcher of her state champion high school baseball team (yes, playing with and against boys). She was likely bound for the big leagues until an abusive boyfriend left her with a paralyzed throwing arm.
Doctor Strange: Stephen Strange was a gifted surgeon who lost the dexterity in his hands in a car accident. His quest for a cure eventually led him to the Ancient One, who taught him the mystic arts.
The Flash:
- Hunter Zolomon was an up and coming FBI agent until a bad call in the field caused him to be shot in the knee by a supervillain and his father-in-law to be killed by the same villain. Losing his ability to walk, he was promptly discharged, and his life and mental state fell apart between the derailment of his career and his wife leaving him. When he learns that Wally West is the Flash, he proceeds to beg Wally to use the Cosmic Treadmill to time travel back and prevent the incident that crippled him, but Wally refuses on the basis of time travel being extraordinarily dangerous and unpredictable… so an increasingly unhinged Hunter tries to use the Treadmill himself to do it and accidentally causes a chronal explosion that transforms him into the new Professor Zoom and breaks what remains of his mind.
- Flashpoint (1999) centers around Flash taking the bullet for JFK, an act that causes him to be paralyzed from the neck down. This, of course, ends his career as the Scarlet Speedster.
Subverted with Pizzazz from Jem and the Holograms (IDW). She is the lead singer of a metal band. In one issue she gets into a car accident, which breaks her larynx. She's left out of work for several issues and the band gets up temporarily replacing her. Ultimately, however, Pizazz recovers. Their replacement, Blaze, ends up permanently joining the band.
Justice Society of America: Citizen Steel had hoped to become a professional football player but suffered a severe leg injury that caused his leg to be amputated below the knee. Eventually, comic-book stuff enabled him to grow a new, unbreakable leg (and nearly unbreakable body), although it still doesn't help him go back to playing football since he's now too heavy to run.
Legion of Super-Heroes: In The Adult Legion, adult Cosmic Boy quit the Legion when a non-specified injury took his size-growing power away. Nonetheless, he used his experience as a Legionnaire to become Director of the Intergalactic Guard.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): "Tempest's Tale (Issues 67 and 68)" expands on Tempest's backstory from the 2017 movie which introduced her. It has her set to go to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns with her childhood friends before losing her horn to an Ursa Minor (and thus being rendered unable to cast spells normally).^note
NFL SuperPro: Phil Grayfield dreamed of becoming a professional football player before wrecking his knee in an accident.
The Order (2007): Several of the Order's members lost their previous careers to injuries.
- "Calamity" James Wa was a track and baseball star throughout high school and into his college years, due to his phenomenal running speed. He was even on the cover of Sports Illustrated, referred to as "the boy most likely to succeed." Not long after, he lost his legs in a car accident.
- Milo Fields was a former soldier who was shot through the spine after becoming an anti-war protester.
- Dennis Michael Murray was a warrant officer who was critically wounded and paralyzed during the incident that led to Tony Stark becoming Iron Man.
Punisher Noir: Mobster Dutch Schultz punishes his underlings for their failures by chopping off one of their fingers. One of these is eventually relegated to serving drinks since he no longer has trigger fingers, and when it's pointed out missing fingers also make him less than skillful at pouring, Schultz just shoots him.
Robin (1993): Johnny Warren flips out yelling that he's ruined and can't continue his work anymore when his refusal to listen to Robin's warning about what he just did to Johnny's gun causes him to blow his own hand up. Since his work is torturing and killing people Robin's not too upset, and unfortunately, Johnny doesn't stay out of work for long since he gains superpowers soon after.
Roy of the Rovers: The titular character was forced to end his playing career after a helicopter crash that cost him his left foot.
Silverblade: In 1939, Vincent Vermillion was a 10-year-old child extra on the set of The Silver Blade who dreamed of being the next Fred Astaire. He agreed to stunt double for child star Bobby Milestone to earn extra money for dance lessons. However, the safety net snapped and he plunged 40 ft into a 2 ft deep moat, shattering his pelvis and breaking both his legs. As a result, he could never dance again.
Spider-Man:
- Curt Connors was a battlefield surgeon with the US Army before losing his right arm to an explosion, which led to him becoming a scientist trying to regenerate his arm and eventually turning into the Lizard.
- In the Marvel Comics 2 imprint, Spidey himself lost a leg during his final battle against the Norman Osborn Green Goblin, leading to him putting up the webs for years.
Teen Titans: Double Subverted in the case of one Victor Stone after the promising young athlete walked into his parents' laboratory when an experiment went disastrously wrong. While his father saved his life and more-or-less put him back together, the replacements for all four of his limbs were far more powerful than he could have hoped to achieve through his own effort and he never competed again.
A Town Called Dragon: Cooper Runyon was a starred football quarterback and had signed up for the University of Florida and becoming a Gator. Tragically, Cooper became the victim of a drunk driving accident which killed all three of his friends, and suffering a messed up knee, losing most of his vision in one eye, and permanently deaf in his right ear, making him unable to play football again. Though this didn't stop him from trying javelin throwing in which he was able to tie the university's record.
Über: Maria "Katyusha" Andreevna was a fearsome Soviet sniper until she lost her right hand in action and for a time, lamented that she was completely done. When she was augmented into a Halo Battleship, she regrew her hand as a side effect, even though she didn't need it to be a sniper anymore.
The Ultimates (2024): As part of The Maker's Twilight of the Supers plan, the Hank Pym of Earth-6160 was involved in an "accident" (courtesy of Nick Fury) that gave him brain damage, robbing him of his Super-Intelligence and bringing him down to the level of a normal person. His career in science was cut short before he could discover Pym particles, and he's ironically working as an exterminator when he gets the Call to Adventure from Tony Stark.

Comic Strips

Downplayed in Safe Havens: after multiple injuries to it over the years, the ligaments of Dave's left knee completely snapped during his final college game (while scoring the championship-winning point, no less). While he was still able to play basketball, that knee injury basically killed any chance he had of playing in the NBA, thanks to the demanding schedule being too strenuous on his knee. He eventually made a career playing for an Italian basketball team (with a much less demanding schedule), leading them to several championships and winning gold in the 2016 Summer Olympics on Team USA's men's basketball team.
The Far Side: One cartoon features the caption: "Unbeknownst to most historians, Einstein started down the road of professional basketball before an ankle injury diverted him to science."
Striker: Nick Jarvis was forced to end his career when a shark bit his leg. He just barely avoided amputation.

Fan Works

Discussed in Anyone. The last time Izuku and Bakugou meet (on the last day of middle school), they get into a fight which ends with Izuku stepping on Bakugou's wrists, with the clear implication that he could easily break them if he wanted to and end Bakugou's hero career before it even started. The moment haunts Bakugou for the rest of the fic.
Rainbow Dash in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Asylum (Daemon of Decay) wanted to be a Wonderbolt, like in the main canon, however, a childhood brain injury left her a weak flier. Her career ended before it even began.
In the Frozen (2013) fanfic Becoming Free, Freya ends up Taking the Bullet for Elsa, which causes her to have to quit her job working with horses. In order to keep her around, Elsa ends up making Freya into her personal guard.
Bluefur's Choice: Lionheart retired very early due to a shoulder injury he received in battle.
After Octavia develops arthritis in her hooves in Claro de Luna, she's forced to switch from being a cellist to being a composer.
An interesting inversion in The Candygirl, where the first chapter has Cree Lincoln AKA Numbuh 11 losing her left arm after a fiery explosion while on a mission alongside Sector Z. The KND has a policy for those who are permanently injured to either retire with grace if they feel they can no longer serve or continue on if they feel they are able, with both options having the privilege of not losing their memories as KND operatives when they turn 13, with Cree opting for the second option. This means that not only does Cree continue serving the KND and never joins the Teen Ninjas like in the cartoon, but that she also becomes a member of the Teen Next Door to help aid her younger colleagues from the shadows.
Discussed in Combating Unfairness: Izuku brings this up as one of the reasons why Aizawa's habit of temporarily expelling students in an attempt to Scare 'Em Straight is a huge problem — even after being re-enrolled, the black marks remain on their records. So if any of them were ever injured on the job and had to stop being Pro Heroes, those black marks would make it extremely difficult for them to find other lines of work, due to their society's unforgiving attitude towards high school expulsions.
Danganronpa: Corrupted Hope: Haruto attempts to escape at one point, but he ends up falling and breaking his leg in such a way that he can no longer play basketball, devastating since his talent was as the Ultimate Basketball Player, though is still able to at least walk.
Subverted in Endings. Itsuki wanted to be a singer prior to becoming mute. She still ends up making music thanks to programs such as Vocaloid.
In Equestria Girls: Dinosapien, Maia Search's gymnastics career ended when she broke her leg. Although it healed, she still walks with a limp, so she becomes a camp counselor instead.
In EVA Sessions: Someplace Vast and Dry, Misato is critically wounded while serving in a JSSDF anti-Other and peacekeeping operation in Indonesia, and because she now requires artificial organs to live, she is no longer fit for front-line duty. Gendo arranges for her to instead transfer to NERV as Operations Director, her canonical role in the original series.
Everything she deserved: Sasha used to be an award-winning cheerleader before her back (and ankle) were slashed open; now she is a social pariah that can barely score a C in PE.
Double-subverted with Cinderpelt in The Fire Has Burnt Out. She's capable of being a warrior even with her twisted leg, but she chooses the path of a medicine cat due to bonding with Yellowfang.
In Henceforward, Ruby is stabbed by Blake. She survives but is unable to achieve her dreams of becoming a Huntress due to trauma from the injury.
A Hunter or Something: Although team RWBY managed to save Kalie, she ended up severely scarred and lost her right eye, which prevented her from ever using a bow again and ended her hunter career. When Yang went to see her after recovering, her friend Debbie was teaching her to sew as an alternative.
I am not Done (MHA):
- Near the start of the story, Izuku gets a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Katsuki that leads to his right arm being amputated. While everyone expects this to put an end to his Tragic Dreams of proving that his life has value despite his Quirklessness, Izuku ultimately refuses to let this stop him.
- In Book 2, Tenya's kneecap injury is treated this way.
Invaders of Irk: Sizz-Lorr is mentioned to have suffered damage to his PAK's regeneration factor and as a result, was forcibly retired from military service, which is implied to be standard practice, with a rebel former Birken general on Breakerius having a similar backstory.
Jack O'Lantern: At 14, Sarada is blinded on a mission. She couldn't be a ninja anymore so she was forced to live as a civilian. She ends up getting a job as an evening DJ for a radio station.
Lightning Dust gets one in chapter 3 of A Kingdom Divided, after she gets shot by an AA gun and goes through a life-saving Meatgrinder Surgery in a field hospital.
The Legend of Genji: Lin Beifong stubbornly held off on retiring from the Republic City police force for as long as she could, but was eventually left with no choice after receiving a bad injury during a case that left her wheelchair-bound.
Tornface from Little Fires received his re-name after he fell out of a tree and tore half of his face. Eventually, the injury came back to haunt him when he began going blind early. He had to retire from being a warrior because of his blindness.
Logtail (formerly Logfur) from Moonlit Path: Disloyal Hearts was forced to retire to the elder's den early after his tail was run over by a car.
Never Say Never: While Sayaka survives being stabbed, the scar left behind on their stomach makes it unlikely they'll be able to continue their career, as they can't sing anymore like they used to. While trying to comfort them, Junko points out that her modeling career is likely over, given how her hand was injured.
In the Crossover Ship Fanvid Our Tapes, Mio from K-On! gets hit by a bus. The injury leaves her wheelchair-bound. After seeing that she's been replaced in her band, Mio breaks down and is Driven to Suicide, however, her boyfriend (Oreki from Hyouka) saves her. The credits show her picking up the guitar again, meaning it might not be the end of her career.
In the My Hero Academia fanfic Peace's Apprentice, Shinsou gets his throat burned by a villain during the USJ attack, leaving him unable to speak and functionally Quirkless (as speaking is necessary to use his Quirk Brainwashing). He then drops out of the Hero course.
In Prophecy of the end, near the end Laurel is stabbed through the stomach and put in a coma. When wakes up from it, she's in a wheelchair and laments that it'll be months before she even starts physical therapy, and if she can ever walk again at all, she'll never fully recover. Meaning she'll never be the Black Canary again.
A key incident in Project Riribirth is when Riri Williams is so badly injured by a powerful villain that she has to give up being a superhero.
Invoked in Risk It All by Ren's Soul-Crushing Strike skill, a punch with explosive force that bypasses attempts to guard against it. Its name is apparently derived from how it crushed the dreams of many a martial artist by ruining them. When going out as a vigilante, this attack leaves multiple members of the mob crippled for life, something that makes Ren uncomfortable.
Run at the Cup:
- Averted for Vi after Landsman attacks her. She'll be out of commission for months, but she should be able to return to hockey.
- Played straight for Landsman herself when Mylo retaliates for her attack on Vi. It also ends Mylo's career, as he is expelled from the league afterwards.
In The Scars That Make You Whole, the Magic Barrier Particles that Laxus absorbed during the battle with Tartarus are causing his magic to fade away, which leads him to join to Blue Pegasus (which acts as both a wizard guild and a host club) after Fairy Tail's disbandment so he can change career without too many questions.
In The Silence Ends, Tyria Sark is offered the first officer slot on the USS Warsaw after her predecessor Commander Azevedo received a medical discharge due to a traumatic brain injury. He apparently recommended her to his captain during a lucid moment.
Space to Breathe (Naruto): Sakura's father suffered one of these during the Third Shinobi War; his chakra coils were badly damaged, severely reducing his ability to produce and store chakra. While he can still use jutsu, he opted to retire from active duty, working in administration and as an archivist instead.
In With Pearl and Ruby Glowing, some characters receive injuries that put an end to their careers, which are usually a direct result of being assaulted.
- Korra was an athlete, but God's Will First assaulted her for being in a relationship with Asami and broke her spine, resulting in paralysis from the waist down.
- Danny was framed for raping Darla and this caused him to get raped in prison so many times that he became injured and can't dance anymore. Surgery is an option, but he can't afford it, and even if he could, it might not work.
- Louis and Odette both received injuries that ended their ballet careers in different ways. Louis was gang-raped and he worsened the damage by going on stage anyway, and Odette injured her leg in a fire.
- Hercules was raped by Hades, who is his uncle here. He took up wrestling and found that getting pinned down reminded him of his abuse, so he started taking steroids to keep winning. Hercules eventually took too much and suffered a heart attack bad enough that he can't wrestle anymore.
- Mercury practised capoeira alone at home and wanted to compete, but he tried to use his skills to fight back against his abusive father, who smashed his legs and refused to get him medical help. Both his legs eventually had to be amputated due to gangrene.
- Ryan, Klaus and Nooshy are all dancers at the start of their chapter. Then, Jimmy Crystal mutilates them to perform in his ero-guro rendition of The Carnival of the Animals — Ryan and Klaus by nailing horseshoes into their feet, Nooshy by driving a steel rod into her ankles to hold them together so she'll hop like a kangaroo. When they're rescued, the doctors have to break the news to them that all their dancing careers are over.
- Inverted in the case of Crushed Ice Chilla; he was originally inspired to become an ice dancer because he saw ice dancing on TV in the hospital where he had his feet amputated. He got good prosthetics and has now been selected for the Olympics.
In A Woman In Uniform, Sumire is forced to retire from gymnastics after injuring herself during a performance.
Downplayed and double subverted in You Were My Best Friend. Bloom bumps her head on a recently-bought baby piano while performing her usual dancing routine at Madame Morgana's studio. The accident knocks her out for a whole day but it's not really threatening to her ability to dance. However, her overprotective dad freaks out and forbids Bloom from ever dancing again, effectively ending her career.

Films — Animation

Cars:
- In the first Cars 1 movie, Lightning McQueen discovers that Doc Hudson was actually the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, a legendary racecar. Doc ultimately reveals that the only reason he "quit" racing was that he suffered a major crash during a race. By the time he could race again, the industry merely brushed him off without a second thought; now resenting the racing scene, Doc pursued a medical degree and moved to Radiator Springs, away from media attention.
  Doc: They quit on me. When I finally got put together, I went back expecting a big welcome. Y'know what they said? "You're history." Moved right on to the next rookie standing in line. There was a lot left in me. I never got a chance to show 'em. I keep that [newspaper article] to remind me never to go back. I just never expected that that world would... would find me here.
- McQueen himself ends up in a similar crash in Cars 3, forcing him out of the sport for some time. However, while he does end up out of commission and contemplates retirement, he ultimately vows to keep racing... after he spends the rest of the season acting as a crew chief for Cruz first.
Eva from the Memories segment "Magnetic Rose" was an opera star who lost her voice at the peak of her career. This left her a Broken Bird and ultimately a White-Dwarf Starlet.
Professor Hayao Sato, Kenji’s father and the previous Ultraman in Ultraman: Rising had to retire after he received a permanent leg injury during a fight with a kaiju, which rendered him incapable of continuing his duties as Ultraman.

Films — Live-Action

The Air Up There: Jimmy Dolan (Kevin Bacon) blew out his knee, costing him a pro career. He becomes a college coach, instead. He still wears his championship ring from 1981 everywhere.
Danny Glover's Jaded Washout character in Angels in the Outfield (1994) had his career cut short because the villainous sportscaster character deliberately slid into home with his spikes up when they were playing each other years before.
The unnamed lead character in the 2018 Canadian short film Attainment (which contains no dialogue) is so obsessed with becoming the best competitive figure skater in the world that he over-trains to the point where he suffers from a complete mental and physical breakdown. His dream is thus shattered and it becomes unattainable.
In the initial timeline of Back to the Future Part II, a car accident (during a drag race with his "friend" Needles) ends Marty's rock career before it even took off the ground, and to add insult to injury, the driver of the car Marty crashed into sued him and ruined him even further. The injury is erased from the timeline during the ending of Back to the Future Part III, when Marty, having learned and matured from his adventures, doesn't let Needles bait him into the race, and the accident never happens.
Joe's knee injury in Bend It Like Beckham, which was caused by his father pushing him too hard.
In Bet Your Life, Sonny was an up-and-coming footballer until he suffered a knee injury that destroyed his career.
Marvelous Mervo from Blood Harvest was a trapeze artist until he became brain-damaged in an accident.
In Bloody Reunion, Dal-Bong used to be the most athletic boy in school. After he came last in a relay, Ms. Park slapped him and made him spend a day doing squats, which later caused him to permanently injure his knee when playing soccer the next day.
In the Eye segment of John Carpenter's anthology film Body Bags (1993), Brent is a baseball relief hitter who loses his right eye in a car accident. With no depth perception, he can no longer bat at a professional level. He agrees to the experimental eye transplant surgery in an attempt to save his career.
In The Breakfast Club, Andy wishes this would happen to him, as he only joined the high school's wrestling team because his dad pushed him into it and he's sick of having to live up to his father's expectations.
Challengers (2024): Tashi is introduced as a teenage tennis phenom. However, when playing at Stanford, she blows out her knee on the court, an injury from which her career never recovers; she has to pivot to coaching instead.
Doug Dorsey from The Cutting Edge used to be an Olympic level ice hockey player until he sustained an eye injury. This causes him to make an interesting career shift.
In Diggstown, Caine finds out that the once-great boxer Charles Macom Diggs (for whom the titular town is named), was poisoned by Gillon when Diggs refused to throw a fight. The poison and the resulting injuries from the fight give Diggs brain damage and leave him largely catatonic. He becomes lucid enough to give a supportive look to Roy during the climactic fight, giving Roy the strength to continue.
The titular character of Doctor Strange (2016) crashed his car at the beginning of the film, leading to nerve damage that caused his hands to shake uncontrollably, and ending his previous career in neurosurgery. It is pointed out that he could still have a long and fulfilling career as a doctor and would be an invaluable resource as a consultant for other neurosurgeons. However, for Strange, medicine holds no interest if he cannot be a surgeon so he wrecks his life looking for a cure for his condition.
In A Dog's Purpose, Ethan has to end his football career after his leg is broken.
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors: In the "Disembodied Hand" segment, Eric Landor is run over by critic Franklyn Marsh. His injuries result in the amputation of his right hand, destroying his career as an artist. Falling into a deep despair, Landor is eventually Driven to Suicide.
The beginning of F1 has Sonny Hayes suffer severe injuries during the 1993 Spanish Grand Prix after a career-ending crash when he tries to overtake Ayrton Senna. This would get Subverted when he reluctanly comes out of retirement after 3 decades, as he rejoins the sport once more.
Dominic's back story in The Fast and the Furious (2001) is that he was given a lifetime ban from racing after savagely beating the driver responsible for killing his father in a wreck. When relating the incident to Brian, he laments that the other driver's injuries were so severe that he wasn't just forced to retire from racing, but couldn't drive a normal car anymore.
In Firestorm (1998), Wynt has his legs badly broken when a trailer flips on him during a Heroic Fire Rescue. The breaks mean he can no longer parachute jump, which forces him to retire as a smokejumper.
In the start of Ford v Ferrari, Carroll Shelby's heart condition has forced him to stop racing, and he now works as a car designer.
In Forrest Gump, Lieutenant Dan has to leave the army after losing his legs in Vietnam. He had an ancestor die in "every single American war" and believed the same was supposed to happen to him, so being left alive but unable to fight turns him into an alcoholic mess for a long time. He gets better by the end of the movie, complete with prosthetic legs.
In Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Baron Frankenstein has suffered burns to his hands which render him incapable of performing delicate surgery. When a talented young surgeon (and fan of the Baron's work) is committed to asylum alongside him, Frankenstein recruits him as a protege and uses him as a proxy set of hands for surgery.
Gattaca: the guy whose DNA the protagonist is using used to be an athlete until an undisclosed incident confined him to a wheelchair. The incident was that he was bred (DNA-wise) as a champion athlete and only achieved a silver medal in the Olympics. He tried to commit suicide and only succeeded in paralyzing himself.
Sebastian in The Greatest Show on Earth ends his career as a trapeze artist from performing a dangerous trick.
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. Cadet Thomas Lasky is something of a reluctant soldier and gets a chance to leave the Academy without losing face when it turns out he's allergic to an important fluid needed for the cryosleep process. He's given a medical discharge paper and is told to think over whether he wants to sign it. That night the Covenant attacks. Thirty years later he's an officer on the UNSC Infinity, and his body is shown to be Covered in Scars from the allergic reaction before he zips up his uniform and climbs into a cryosleep tube.
In The Hand, cartoonist Jon Lansdale loses his right hand in a freak car accident. Although all he wants to do is draw, his doctor tells him the prosthetic will never have the fine control to allow him to do that.
In The Hands of Orlac, concert pianist Paul Orlac's hands are irreparably damaged in a train wreck. This leads to him receiving a hand transplant from an executed murderer, and to him gradually coming to believe that he possesses Evil Hands.
In Happy Gilmore, "Chubbs" Peterson was a pro league golfer before a crocodile bit his hand off.
In Henry & Verlin, Mabel was a prostitute until she lost her leg, after which most of her clients lost interest in her.
Invitation to a Gunfighter: According to Ruth, Crane Adams was a talented harpsichord player before he lost an arm in The American Civil War.
Johnny Be Good: When high school football star Johnny is visiting colleges, he meets a middle-aged gas station employee whose football career was destroyed by a leg injury.
The Judge: Hank's older brother Glen used to play baseball before a car crash ended his career.
Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna: Dev's dream of becoming a professional soccer player is cut short when he gets hit by a car, which leaves him with a permanent limp. The stress of this causes him to distance himself from his wife and son, seeking solace with the similarly-unhappy Maya, whose dream of starting a family is crushed when she learns that she is infertile.
Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own has his record-setting baseball career cut short when he wrecks his knee. The bitterness is sharpened by the fact that the injury wasn't even in-game, but rather happened when he was falling down drunk and set fire to his own hotel room, hurting himself in the escape:
Jimmy: I gave away five years at the end of my career to drinking. Five years. There isn't anything I wouldn't give to get back any one day of it.
Logan Lucky: Jim Logan was a high school football star on his way to a pro career when he blew his knee out during the biggest game of his senior year: another example of the so-called 'Logan Curse'. At the start of the film, he is working as a bobcat driver for a mining company.
In The Man Who Could Cheat Death, surgeon Professor Weiss has suffered a stroke that paralyzes his right hand. The infirmity means that he cannot perform the operation that Bonnet requires, and he attempts to press Dr. Gerard into operating instead.
In Max (2002), the titular art dealer was an artist until he lost his right arm in the Third Battle of Ypres during World War I.
D2: The Mighty Ducks has Gordon Bombay take a knee injury during a minor-league game, ending his NHL career before it begins. Later in the movie, during a pickup game of three-bar, Wolf "The Dentist" Stansson hits him in the same knee.
Million Dollar Baby has a very heart-wrenching one of these near the end of the movie. A nasty cheap shot from behind results in Maggie's neck being broken when she lands on a corner stool, resulting in her being paralyzed from the neck down. As boxing was her passion and her life and she will never be able to fight again, Maggie wants to die, and her mentor ultimately makes the decision to give her an assisted suicide.
In Molly's Game, Molly's promising career as an Olympic-level skier is cut short when a freak accident on the mount renders her unable to ever compete again.
No Name on the Bullet: At the end of the film, Luke breaks Gant's shoulder with a thrown hammer; leaving him unable to draw a gun. Although Luke offers to treat the injury, Gant just rides off, saying "A lot of men want to kill John Gant. It took a healer with a hammer to make it easy for them."
Outlaw Women: During the climatic shootout, Peyote Bill is shot in the same shoulder he'd been shot at the beginning of the movie, and is later told that this time the injury will slow down his arm and make it impossible for him to go on as a gunslinger.
Point Break (1991): Johnny Utah is forced out of college football by a knee injury, instead joining the FBI as an undercover agent. This becomes plot-relevant as his target, Bodhi, is a huge college football fan and the two bond over it. The re-make ditches this angle and has Johnny retire from extreme sports after witnessing a friend's death.
Red Sparrow: Dominika is let go from the Bolshoi Ballet after breaking her leg on stage, and turns to her uncle in the SVR to keep the state paying for her apartment and her mother's medical care. Her uncle also informs her that the danseur she was paired with in the performance caused the injury deliberately because he's sleeping with Dominika's understudy; Dominika breaks into the ballet during practice, catches them together in the ladies' shower, and beats them both senseless with her cane.
In Red Tails, Deacon is badly burned in a crash, and is sent home. Junior is half-blinded and should have been grounded, but talks Lightning into putting him back on flying status. He gets shot down soon afterward.
Remember the Titans has the automobile accident that ends the football career of star linebacker Gerry Bertier.
Walter Cochran in The Replacements (2000). As he explains to Shane, he played one game in the pros, blew out his knee, and then he was done. Now he's a man of God and wants nothing more than to score a touchdown before retiring for good.
Lily Stevens in Road House was training to be an opera singer, but her voice gave out and she lost most of the power in it. She now sings in a low, almost whisper-like way.
Discussed and subverted in Rocky II. Rocky having his eye cut in the previous film has caused problems for his vision in his right eye, which his trainer Mickey points out makes him unable to defend from that side. Despite this, he still manages to work around it in training and give Apollo Creed a run for his money.
The Rookie (2002) (which is Based on a True Story) is about a baseball player trying to come back after a supposed one of these. He made it to the major leagues... then suffered the same injury again, over ten years after the initial injury.
The Scavengers: As a slave, Polie was a heavyweight boxing champion until his lung was punctured by a broken rib. After that, he was transferred to the far more brutal life of a field slave.
School for Love: Eric's wife Marie Koukawska is an opera star whose career grinds to a halt when she learns she has tuberculosis. Even with treatment, her voice will never be the same again. This causes Eric to break up with Sophie, as he wants to support his wife in her time of grief.
See for Me: Sophie's career as a professional skier ends when an illness takes her eyesight.
The Set-Up: Stoker wins the fight, but his punching hand has been permanently broken.
In Seven Murders for Scotland Yard, Pedro's career as an acrobat came to an end when he injured his knee in a bad fall off the net.
Shaolin Soccer: At the beginning of the movie's story, the man who will become the coach to our heroes is a Jerkass soccer superstar until the teammate he's been lording it over hires people to cripple the star.
Slashers: Devon sustained a concussion during his military service that meant he could never box again. This is what drives him to enter the Slashers programme.
Howard Payne from Speed used to be on the SWAT's bomb squad and he was forced to retire when an explosion injured him, resulting in the loss of one of his fingers. Howard's compensation was just a tiny pension and a cheap gold watch, which pissed him off royally since he felt he deserved a lot more for his service. This motivates him to become a terrorist and kicks off the plot of the film where he holds people hostage with his bombs and demands millions of dollars in exchange for their safety.
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Casey Jones mentions at one point that he played a sport (presumably Ice Hockey) professionally, but his career lasted less than a year before he got injured.
In Thanksgiving (2023), Bobby is the town's star baseball pitcher with a promising career ahead of him until the deadly Black Friday riot leaves him with a broken wrist and smashed hand. A year later, he returns to town after having lost everything, just in time for the killings to start...
In Tiger House, Kelly's promising career as a gymnast is ended when her boyfriend Mark accidentally shoots her in the leg with a crossbow.
In the 1960 Disney film “Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus”, Monsieur Ajax, the vain and arrogant bareback rider, falls off his horse during practice and sprains his leg rendering him unable to continue the circus’ top act. This gives the title character the opportunity to replace him, and become the new star of the circus.
Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie: Rocky breaks his back while practicing for a martial arts tournament, forcing him to pick Justin as his replacement on the team.
The titular sled dog in Togo is not only getting old, but has an injured paw and is in particularly bad shape after he and the rest of Seppala's sled dogs finishing their run. While he recovers, Seppala rotates him out from being a sled dog into a house pet and stud dog.
Bobby Hollerman from Tyson's Run used to be a star college quarterback and Heisman Trophy hopeful, until his shoulder and knee were injured in a game. Now he coaches high schoolers.
In Unbreakable, the titular character had an injury in college that made it impossible for him to continue playing football, which he brings up to refute the claims that he is somehow invulnerable to harm or has superpowers. As the movie goes on, he remembers that he actually faked the injury, since he knew that college athletes often burn out or can't make it in the pros, and he wanted an excuse to get out anyway, since his burgeoning romantic interest (and future wife) was studying to be a nurse and put off by the violence of his sport. He told the lie so often that he had forgotten the truth himself.
The main plot of Varsity Blues kicks off with one of these, with the star Quarterback suffering a knee injury in this form. It's later revealed that he's sustained a lot of knee injuries, but Coach Klimer had talked him out of getting it treated by a doctor and instead gave him shots of painkillers so that he could continue playing.
We Too Together: Rob's childhood martial arts teacher used to be a professional fighter until someone broke his legs. At first he was in despair, but he eventually grew to love teaching.

Literature

Mystery writer Dick Francis, a real-life example of this trope (see the "Real Life" folder), did a couple of stories with Sid Halley, a former jockey who became a detective after a horse crushed his hand in a fall.
Apprentice Adept: Stile is a skilled jockey until his knees are shot with lasers during a race. The damage doesn't cripple him, but it restricts his range of movement and prevents him from riding competitively. This is a dual-purpose trap for his enemies, as he'll either be deported if he loses employment while corrective surgery leaves him open to assassination.
Arcane Sniper kicks off the story with one and serves as the main motivation. Friendly Sniper Ha Leeha gets into an accident when a box of ammunition explodes while he was handling it, damaging his legs' nerves, which gets him discharged and wheelchair bound, nuking his career and dreams from orbit. There is a surgery that will give him the ability to walk again, but the price for it is ridculous. He falls into depression and is only knocked out of it when his cousin gifts him a VR capsule to play the viral MMO Middle Earth, while revealing he can make money through playing it. So, Leeha logs in to make enough bank to pay for the surgery.
"C-Chute": Stuart's prosthetics are too weak for him to keep piloting, so he was transferred to paperwork.
The Color of Distance: Late in Through Alien Eyes, Ukatonen takes a horrible blow to the head. Even when he's healed, the centuries of skill he's gained in healing and transformation are badly damaged and he can no longer control and soothe those he's linking with, or keep them out.
The Cowboy and the Cossack: Link takes a break from cowboying to visit his family home in the epilogue due to a bad shoulder wound not fully healing and ultimately never does come back to the ranch.
In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Daisy is forced to retire as a ballet dancer after a hit by a cab breaks her leg.
A Dog's Purpose:
- Ethan had to retire from his promising football career after an injury caused by jumping out of his bedroom window during a fire.
- Ellie was a search-and-rescue dog. During one rescue, she got acid on her nose which killed her sense of smell. She couldn't smell more than a few feet in front of her and thus she was retired.
- Jakob was Ellie's first handler. He retired after he was hit with a gunshot during a rescue.
Dragonriders of Pern:
- Subverted by Menolly, who injures her hand cleaning fish, and her own mother deliberately stitches her palm up wrong, crippling her hand so she can barely perform routine household tasks (making her even more despised), let alone play any instrument. Her voice and ability to compose are unharmed, however, and after being taken to the Harperhall, she goes through a great deal of physical therapy to help recover from her injury. She eventually reaches the rank of Master in her Craft.
- Played straight in The Skies of Pern when F'lessan and bronze Golanth are badly injured by wildcats, which puts an end to their life of fighting Thread, but they find new meaning in studying astronomy and helping the other dragons and riders discover a new purpose in protecting the skies from other interstellar debris.
The Dresden Files: Michael Carpenter, Knight of the Cross, is terribly injured in the climax of Small Favor, spends a couple of years recovering, and ends up crippled, forcing him to stop fighting evil. Interestingly, this is viewed as the best ending of his career, as Knights that dedicated usually retire in coffins, while Michael can spend the rest of his life with his loving family who won't now be worried for him every time he goes on a mission.
Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte: Endo used to be on the baseball team, but an injury to his shoulder put an end to any dreams of going pro (which were unlikely to begin with, seeing that he was "barely average" in his own words). Shortly after, he met Kobayashi who encouraged him to join the broadcasting club, suggesting that maybe he could become a sports commentator instead.
The Essex Serpent: Luke Garrett is a talented doctor and surgeon (one-in-a-generation talented), with dreams and big plans for heart surgeries. He's attacked by a guy who previously stabbed his patient, and his hand gets injured. He will never be able to operate again. He actually manages to work in medicine; he's the brain behind many new treatments and surgeries while his close friend George Spencer operates.
Maddy from Even If We Break was a high school lacrosse player who expected to get a sports scholarship, until her ligaments were damaged in a car crash. Afterwards she became a Functional Addict, taking increasing amounts of painkillers she didn't need, partly to cope with the loss of an activity that gave her life meaning.
The Fairy Rebel: Jan, in her youth, was a brilliant singer and dancer. She performed on the stage, on films, and in television, until a heavy lamp in a TV studio fell on her. When she finally got out of the hospital, she had a bad — and permanent — limp. She decided not to perform anymore, since she couldn't stand having people seeing her limp and feeling sorry for her. This was what led to her moving into a small house with Charlie after they fell in love and married.
Fire & Blood: Orys Baratheon, Hand of King Aegon I, quit after losing his hand in Dorne. He could still do the job, but he decided to do so rather than let his king have to listen to taunts about "the King's Stump".
The First Law: Less a single injury and more a collection of them, Sand dan Glokta, colonel of the King's Own, victor of the Contest, and renowned swordsman, saw a harsh end to his military career when he was captured during a heroic charge against the Gurkish. After two years of constant torture, he was released in a prisoner exchange but reduced to a broken cripple. He joined the Inquisition soon after that.
In The Flight Engineer trilogy Commander Peter Raeder, a fighter pilot, had to be retrained as an engineering duty officer (chief fighter mechanic, specifically) after losing a hand in battle. Later in the series, an improved prosthesis gives him the dexterity to fly Speeds again and he's cleared to fly in emergencies.
The Four Horsemen Universe: The Winged Hussars have a Tortantula-Flatar pair, Oort and Jeejee, among their Space Marines. Jeejee explains to Hussars Commander Alexis Cromwell that Oort lost part of a leg on a contract. It's not crippling (they have eight of them) but no Tortantula merc unit will hire a maimed one (probably because Tortantulas are Explosive Breeders and there's, therefore, no market pressure). Jeejee ran across her on a station afterward and kept her from getting into the wrong prize-fighting ring; they joined the Hussars later.
Narrowly averted in Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen! As pitcher VJ Capello describes in a letter to Vivy, he suffered from a soldier labrum tear while he was in the lower leagues, ruining his fastball. For some time he thought his baseball career was over, until he took up the knuckleball, allowing him to become a famous pitcher anyway.
Kagura, in Girls Kingdom, was a golfing prodigy from the age of five. However, when she was seven, a golf ball she hit bounced off several tree branches and hit her in her left eye, almost completely destroying her vision in said eye and wrecking her depth perception. Ten years later, she doesn't seem too broken up about it, and is planning to start her own sports equipment manufacturer.
George "Ginger" Stott from The Hampdenshire Wonder was a cricket player who enjoyed two years of incredible success before he cut his finger on the seam of a ball. The cut became infected, and Ginger didn't see a doctor until it was too late and the finger had to be amputated. Ginger decided to get married as quickly as possible in order to have a son he could raise into a great cricket player, although once Victor was born it quickly became apparent that that wouldn't happen.
In Harmonic Feedback, Naomi's dad used to work in construction until he fell and injured his back. With no way of getting another job, he took to drinking and started neglecting his kids.
Hover Car Racer: Scott Syracuse, Jason's mentor at the International Race School, used to be a champion racer until his neurotransmitters got busted in a crash. Brain damage is the only kind of injury that can't be cured by modern medicine.
If the Shoe Fits: Henry's mother Lucy, the woman behind the innovative fashion line LuMac, was recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis — a death knell for a fashion designer's career as they can no longer use their hands reliably. It's part of the reason they're teaming up with Before Midnight, as they hope it will give them enough exposure and clout to save the business.
Into the Drowning Deep: Ray's career as a world-class MMA fighter was cut short by an injury that destroyed both his knees and his savings were exhausted by top-of-the-line reconstructive surgery. Fortunately for him, when he went looking for other work, he ended up speaking to Theo, who had been a sailor until he suffered a major spinal injury and was sympathetic to Ray's situation.
In I've Got You Under My Skin, Rod Kimball was a talented football player in college and had signed a lucrative contract with the New York Giants. Unfortunately, after playing just one season, he was the victim of a hit-and-run that left him permanently disabled. His injury even affected his new wife's career; Alison had been planning to attend medical school, but put those plans aside to help Rod's rehabilitation, then took night classes to become a pharmacist to support them financially after the money Rod got from his brief football career ran out.
Jesse Stone was drafted by the Dodgers and sent to their AAA team (one step below Major League), but hurt his shoulder during a play, and went to work for the police instead, as his strength in the game was throwing. Even when just playing in the local softball game, it still aches years later, and he can tell he has nowhere near the velocity he used to have.
John Putnam Thatcher: In Right on the Money, Doug Ecker was raised as the heir to his father's business for twenty-five years before two heart attacks forced him to take early retirement.
Johnny Tremain: The title character burns his hand early in the story, meaning he can't be a silversmith.
Early on in The Man Who Brought the Dodgers Back to Brooklyn, Daniel "Squat" Malone is poised for a promising career with the LA Dodgers' farm team in Montreal in 1958 and is predicted to become the aging Roy Campanella's replacement as catcher. That comes to an end one icy evening in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while visiting his best friend Bobby Hanes in college; while playing catch with Bobby in the street, a car hits Squat and mangles his legs, requiring one to be amputated, and effectively ends his life as a baseball player.
Lilia from Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation has one of these in her backstory. Once a royal guardsmaid, she was stabbed with a poison dagger while trying to thwart an attempt on the newborn princess of Asura's life. The poison was so terrible that she barely survived, and it permanently damaged her leg. After that, she was fired. The narration notes that since Lilia knew the layout of the palace she was assigned to guard, she was lucky to have merely been fired — others in her position had been executed.
This almost happens to Selena in My Dearest Darkest. The day before her ballet recital, she falls while practicing and badly injures her ankle, which would've likely ended her shot at getting into the Boston Conservatory and, with it, her dreams of becoming a ballerina right then and there. "Would have," because her fear of losing that chance is what causes her to finally crack and make a deal with Nerosi to heal her ankle.
In November 9, Fallon's severe burn injuries put the brakes on her once promising acting career; due to Hollywood Beauty Standards, she struggles to get roles because of her obvious, difficult-to-cover burn scars. Fallon is pretty despondent about it, given she had dreamt of being an actor since childhood and worked hard at developing her acting skills, only to be rejected for something completely out of her control and unrelated to her acting ability. At the beginning of the novel, she's moving to New York partly because she thinks she might have better luck getting roles on Broadway. From what we can tell, Fallon's acting career never really pans out, though she does find success and contentment as an acting coach.
On the Spectrum: Ballerina Catherine Malcolm falls down during a performance. It isn't a heavy fall, but Catherine has osteoporosis due to orthorexia, and her hip breaks. She will never perform again. The accident causes both her and her daughter Clara to realize how serious their eating disorder is, and how much they both need to change.
In Run with the Wind, the skilled runner Haiji is still suffering a knee injury that he got in high school (implied to have been caused by intense training and improper maintenance). The injury is frequently in the way of his activities with the Kansei University track team, who are working hard in hopes of running at the prestigious Hakone Ekiden. The team successfully qualifies and Haiji is able to run there thanks to painkillers and sheer will—however, the physical strains are too much for his leg, and after completing his race at Hakone he's no longer able to run. In the epilogue he's noted to have a slight limp on his injured leg, suggesting not even walking normally is something he can do anymore.
The Schizogenic Man: Heron and his first wife Teofila worked for six months on a space station, which was Heron's dream. But then he broke his foot, and by the time he recovered, the program he worked in had ended.
In the Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet, Watson has returned to England after having been shot in Afghanistan. This sets him up to meet the world's only consulting detective... and the rest is history.
In The Ship Who... Searched, Dr. Kenny reflects that when he became a paraplegic in his youth he felt like he'd have to give up on training to become a surgeon, though his mentor came through for him in a big way and enabled him to continue in his course of study.
Social Queue: Zoe's dad was in a heavy-machinery accident five years ago, leaving her mom, a nurse, as the sole breadwinner. For a long time, her dad was depressed about not being able to contribute, complete with a Beard of Sorrow, but his mental health improved once he got into cooking.
A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Bran gets pushed out of a window and is paralyzed from the waist down, destroying any possibility of his ever being a knight which was his dream and a very suitable calling for a younger son of a feudal lord.
- Willas Tyrell, the heir to Highgarden, was a promising knight until his leg got crushed in a tournament.
- Jaime Lannister, also known as the best swordsman in Westeros loses his sword-hand, and so far has made little progress at learning to fight left-handed.
Star Trek: The Captain's Oath: Rhen, Kirk's first officer on the Sacagawea, badly damages her leg shoving an alien out of the way of a falling rock. Even with 23rd-century tech, she still requires a cane to walk afterwards, though some of it is for show, she admits she'll never be quite at the top of her game ever again, and resigns from Starfleet.
In Still Alice, Alice has to retire early from her job as a linguistics professor because she develops early-onset Alzheimer's Disease.
In Sweet Diamond Dust's short story, “The Strange Death of Captain Candelario”, Pedro's athletic aspirations end when the Missionaries, the local police force, raid Villa Cañona (the slum where he lives) and beat him so roughly he is left with a limp. Irónica, he ends up joining them.
Tortall: A Spy's Guide: When a bizarre bones-and-blades construct Powered by a Forsaken Child came across a patrol of thirteen Tortallan soldiers it came out on top in a Curb-Stomp Battle that killed all but four and badly hurt those four. The squad leader dictating a report on the encounter says he'll never be able to go on the march again.
Vigilauntie Justice: Baz is forced to retire from her job as a civilian consultant to the police after she fractures her patella and tears a meniscus in her knee.
In Virtuosity by Jessica Martinez, Diana was a former opera singer who developed vocal cord nodules at the height of her career, forcing her to quit singing. This causes her to become a Stage Mom to her daughter, the protagonist, who is a violin prodigy.
Walker's Crossing: Lon Walker can't be a cowboy anymore because he hurt his leg when a horse bucked him off.
In the Vorkosigan Saga Miles Vorkosigan's career as a covert agent for the Barrayaran Empire is (seemingly temporarily) de-railed in Mirror Dance by a (temporary) case of death, courtesy of "a well-aimed needle grenade" to the chest. But in the next book of the series, Memory, it turns out that the complications of that needle grenade really did kill off Miles' cover identity, the dashing space mercenary Admiral Naismith: Miles is (forcibly) medically retired, and his life goes in a new and different direction for the rest of the saga.
Happens several times in Warrior Cats. For the most part, the cat is already considerably old when it happens:
- Stonepelt retires early due to a shoulder injury that didn't heal properly.
- Longtail retires early when he goes blind from infected scratched eyes he received while rabbit hunting.
- The most notable example in the series, though, is Cinderpelt, whose hind leg was permanently damaged when she was hit by a car when she was only an apprentice. She dreamed of being a warrior but decided to serve her Clan as a medicine cat after it became clear her leg would never heal. She is later reincarnated and is able to become a warrior as Cinderheart.
- Briarlight, whose spine was broken when a tree fell on her just before she was about to receive her warrior name. Though she survived, her paralyzed hind legs made her unable to fight or even move around much, so she just helped out around the camp, especially in the medicine cat's den.
- Subverted with Brightheart. She was mauled by a dog, leaving her missing one eye. Others try to get her to retire. Brightheart, however, ends up becoming a warrior despite her partial blindness.
- Petalfall had to retire from being a deputy due to epilepsy.
- Lilywhisker was forced to retire to the elder's den after a tunnel collapse broke her spine and left her unable to use her back legs.
- Halftail retired early because he couldn't keep balance after most of his tail was lost to a badger.
In While My Pretty One Sleeps, Myles was forced to retire from his job as Police Commissioner a year ago, after having a major heart attack. He's taking it hard, especially as his job gave him something to focus on besides his grief for his murdered wife, and he hasn't got much of a life outside of hanging out with - and worrying about - his adult daughter. Things start to improve for him when he looks into taking a job with the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington and becomes acquainted with an attractive widow named Kitty.
Wolves, Boys, and Other Things That Might Kill Me: Will Martin is a ranch kid who got a basketball scholarship, lost it when he hurt his knee, and has a lot of inner demons after having to move back in with his parents.

Live-Action TV

In the World War 2 series The Attackers, one of the female pilots is shot down but manages to crash land her plane. However, in addition to a bullet wound to the shoulder, she also suffers a nasty head injury. The doctors tell her that the brain injury will make her incapable of flying in combat again. She is reassigned to a flight school as an instructor but subverts this trope by tricking another doctor into giving her a clean bill of health and is sent back to her squadron where she continues to fly combat missions. However, in the last episode of the series, this trope is double subverted and becomes life-ending when the injury catches up to her, she blacks out in the cockpit and is killed.
In The Big Leap, Monica shattered her kneecap during rehearsals for Swan Lake, and has been taking steroids in order to continue dancing on point. Eventually it does give out, but she finds that she's able to continue dancing in a small capacity.
In Blind Justice, the protagonist is a police officer who is blinded due to an injury he sustains in the line of duty. This would normally end his career but he manages to subvert the trope by suing the police department to get his job back.
Bones:
- There was an episode where the Victim of the Week is a professional motorcycle racer, one of the suspects is a paraplegic former racer whom the victim had "accidentally" caused to crash in a previous race.
- Booth talks in another episode about wanting to play pro football before hurting his shoulder and opting for the military instead.
Bookie: Whenever people ask Ray why he stopped playing in the NFL, he reminds him that he was badly injured on the field. His leg was broken in three places and they used a helicopter to medevec him from the field. You do not keep playing professional football after that.
Les Boys: Méo introduces a talented whistler named Manon to Bob, which leads her to whistle "O Canada" before a hockey game that the Boys participate. However, after she's done with her performance, she slips on the ice and injures her face, screwing up her whistling talent.
Cheers established this as the reason Sam left baseball... with a twist.
Diane: So, why aren't you playing anymore?
Sam: I developed an elbow problem.
Diane: An elbow problem?
Sam: Yeah. Bent it too much.
[mimes drinking from a bottle]
CSI: Miami: In "Payback", Dr. Kessler is in the early stages of Parkinson's disease, and is using ecstasy to keep the tremors under control. He tells Alexx he's still saving lives and that he's not ready to stop operating, but Alexx shows him the autopsy photo of Kelly and tells him the time to stop has come.
CSI: NY:
- A plot point of Danny Messer's backstory. He was an aspiring baseball player, but an arm injury forced him to quit (a storyline that was incidentally drawn from the actor's real-life background). This is touched upon in "The Closer", which has a baseball-related case, and further elaborated upon in "The Box" when Danny is telling someone his life story.
- Adam's abusive father, who suffers from Alzheimer's, has a fairly lucid moment in "The Real McCoy" and reveals that his own father had broken his arm as punishment when he was a teenager, thus ruining his dream of playing the sport he was good at, although the exact one isn't specified.
Cobra Kai: The climax of Season 2, a bloodbath between Rival Dojos in the halls of West Valley High, sees Robby kicking Miguel over the top balcony and sending him onto the staircase two floors down. Season 3 sees Miguel having to learn how to walk and how to throw punches and kicks again.
Lily Flagler from the Decoy episode "High Swing" was a trapeze artist until she fell and broke her back. Her husband quit working as an acrobat to take care of her and started mugging people to feed her opioid addiction.
Degrassi: The Next Generation
- Katie injures her knee right before a university soccer tryout and despite being a star player, has to drop her dreams of being an athlete.
- Jimmy Brooks was shot in the lower back and paralyzed in a school shooting, forcing him to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life and ending any chances of a basketball career. One Degrassi mini showed that had Jimmy never been shot, he would have received a scholarship for playing basketball.
An arc in Elementary revolves around Sherlock attempting to avert this. After being diagnosed with Post-concussion syndrome, his health starts taking a turn for the worse. He worries that he'll lose his ability to be a detective, which would subsequently leave him losing his reason for sobriety. The rest of the arc deals with his health issues and his attempts to avoid his illness becoming this trope.
The short-lived sitcom Encore! Encore! starred Nathan Lane as an opera singer who retires to the family winery after a throat injury ruins his singing voice.
An episode of the revived Fantasy Island had a former high school nerd express his desire to trade places with a football jock from his school, hoping for a glorious career in pro football and ending up with a popular girl. Mr. Roarke obliges. He then does a Time Skip to a high school reunion, where the guys find out that his new life didn't turn out this way. During one of his first games, he receives an injury that permanently ends his career. He does end up with the girl, but they live in a trailer. He works at a department store and, apparently had trouble performing in bed. In the end, he opts to go back to his life, and he then makes it his personal mission to send the jock to college.
Father Brown: In "The Laws of Motion", Walter MacMurray's football career ended prematurely after he suffered from a knee injury, making him very amenable to marrying the very wealthy Audrey.
Kiira in Flesh and Bone is forced to end her ballet career because of a stress fracture to the ankle.
One episode of Forever (2014) has Henry trying to determine who kidnapped a prima ballerina and cut off her foot ending her career. He ultimately determines that she arranged for herself to be kidnapped and mutilated, having learned that she had a disease that would have forced her to retire in a year or two anyway; by ending her career this way, she avoids the ignominy of fading out as her condition gets worse and gets to establish a tragic reputation as the prima ballerina who never got the chance to shine.
Frasier's dad Martin's bullet to the hip ended his police career.
In the pilot for Friday Night Lights Jason is paralyzed in an injury ending his planned career as a football player.
Double Subverted in an episode of Grey's Anatomy. A Patient of the Week is a high school hockey player who badly dislocated his finger in multiple places during practice. Torres determines that the finger just needs a splint and will eventually heal on its own, but not in time for the Big Game that night where college scouts will be in the crowd. The player asks Torres to amputate the finger so he can play but his mother (obviously) refuses and, as he's still seventeen, she gets final say. In order to play, the kid cuts off his own finger with a knife, puts it on ice, plays the full game and returns to Grey-Sloan expecting that Torres can just reattach it. Horrified, she tells him that by having an open amputation exposed for hours inside a dirty hockey mitt, he's given himself a severe infection which will destroy the muscles in his hand, ending his career when he would have been fine if he had just waited a few months.
In Hawaii Five-0, Kono was on track to a professional surfing career before she injured her knee and had to switch to police work.
Joe Dawson in Highlander was a high school football star who got drafted to Vietnam and had his legs blown off.
Incredible Story Studio: In "Shattered Dreams" (from "The Incredible Movie of the Week"), Isabelle has just been accepted into the National Academy of Ballet when she gets into a car accident that leaves her paralyzed from the waist down.
JAG:
- The series is centered on a Naval Aviator named Harmon Rabb, Jr. He was a carrier fighter pilot, following in his father's footsteps until he crashed his plane in a night landing on an aircraft carrier due to an undiagnosed vision problem. In order to stay in the Navy, he went to law school and became a judge advocate (military lawyer).
- In Rabb's case, this gets subverted by the beginning of Season 5, where surgery to correct his problem allowed him to resume a career as a fighter pilot. However, he leaves once again for the judge advocate branch because he is going to continually get passed over for squadron command by other aviators who've had longer uninterrupted careers.
- Also at the end of season 7, Bud Roberts steps on a landmine in Afghanistan and has to struggle throughout the next two seasons to remain in the Navy.
Law & Order:
- "Subterranean Homeboy Blues": DiBiasi was beaten and raped by a gang of teenagers a few years previously, with her injuries forcing her to quit her ballet career.
- "Star Struck": Lucy testifies that she believes the gruesome injuries she suffered will end her career as an actress.
- "Skare or Die": Jonah was a record-breaking pole vaulter in college. He broke his arm during a car accident and that ended his athletic career. He believed that Russian spies were responsible.
In Lodge 49, Dud's hopes of becoming a professional surfer came to a screeching halt after a snake bit him on the foot. The wound never healed properly, and now he can't surf anymore.
MacGyver (1985): Mac had been a champion hockey player in high school, but an injury in college dashed his hopes for a pro career.
It happens a few times on M*A*S*H:
- In one episode, a football player has to have his leg amputated. Feeling angry and bitter about it, he contemplates suicide, thinking that playing football was the only thing that he was any good at. But as he and Radar reminisce about a tough game he played, he remembers the importance of not giving up, so he leaves with the resolve to at least try.
- In another episode, a concert pianist loses dexterity in his hand. Unlike the football player, he doesn't hold it against his doctor but is still left with a lot of self-loathing and the belief that his gift of music is gone. Major Winchester helps him through it by giving him some sheet music for the left hand only. The man claims that he can't make a career out of those pieces and Winchester is aware of it, but he does this act to show him that, regardless of his physical ability, he still has his gift and encourages him to find other ways to share it with the world. "You and the piano will always be as one."
- In another episode, an army helicopter pilot is revealed to have diabetes. He kept it a secret for this long by scrounging his own insulin and watching what he consumes. He doesn't want to lose his career as an army pilot, but since it's inevitable when his disease is exposed, he accepts this graciously by the end of the episode and, from what he says, appears at least willing to accept a desk job.^note
In Mayday:
- Several pilots survive with permanent injuries which make them permanently unfit to fly.
- "Football Tragedy": Jakson Follmann, a football player, had his leg amputated as a result of the crash; this would imply (although not explicitly stated in the episode) that this ended his career as a player. Further implied when stated that the other two survivors from the team continued their careers in the game, while he was learning to walk with his prosthetic leg. Truth in Television, this accident did end his sports career.
In Miami Vice, Crockett played football in college but had to stop after fracturing his knee.
Hank from the Midnight Caller episode "Twelve Gauge" used to work in construction. After becoming paralyzed from the waist down in an accident, he feels he has nothing left to live for.
Midsomer Murders: In "The Lions of Causton", Bill Viner's professional rugby career was ended when someone dove cleats first in the scrum and broke his ankle. It is later revealed that the person responsible was the Victim of the Week Mark Adler; giving Viner a motive for the crime.
In the Mission: Impossible two-parter "The Contender", Barney impersonates an up-and-coming boxer who had to give up fighting after being sent to Vietnam and wrecking his hands rescuing a man from a burning plane, claiming that he had recovered from said injury and was ready to return to boxing. At the end of the second episode, Barney wins the championship and then switches places with the man he impersonated, who tells the press that he suffered another major injury to his hands during the match and would have to retire again.
Monk was able to manage his OCD until his wife's death caused a breakdown that made the condition much worse. This ends his career as a police officer.
Murdoch Mysteries: In "Hot Wheels of Thunder", prior to the roller races, a Crippling the Competition assault on Miss Palmer ends her skating career.
The Outer Limits (1995):
- In "Abduction", Ray was the star running back of the Eden Park High School football team until he injured his knee, bringing his football career to a swift end.
- In "Lion's Den", Peter Shotwell was one of the stars of the hugely successful Lewisborough High School wrestling team from 1976 to 1979 but he tore up his left knee, ending his chances of a professional career.
Subverted on Raines. Charlie is Raines' former partner on the police force whose career ended when he was hit in a shootout. Afterward, he discusses the cases Raines works and his tendency to converse with hallucinations of the murder victims. At the end of the first episode, it's revealed that Charlie actually died in the shootout and is now another of Raines' hallucinations.
The Ranch: Colt hasn't quite given up on football, but three concussions, a bad shoulder, and possibly a bad knee have killed his shot at the NFL.
The Rookie (2018): In season 7, Seth Ridley, who returned to Mid-Wilshire after being kicked out for refusing a lawful order, ends up having his leg blasted by a shotgun blast saving John Nolan from a shooter. The damage is so severe that his leg is amputated below the knee.
Scream Queens (2015)'s second season has Dr. Brock Holt, who was a brilliant surgeon until he lost a hand in a horrifying garbage disposal accident. After the world's first successful hand transplant, he's back to performing surgery, but reduced to working at the serial-killer-stalked C.U.R.E. Institute (formerly Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering Hospital).
On SEAL Team this is a highly likely possibility for all the SEAL characters. They perform extremely dangerous missions and put their bodies through extreme stress.
- Danny had to retire after barely surviving a bomb blast and is still in a lot of pain.
- Ray injured his shoulder and lied about going to see a doctor because it could get him pulled from a mission and cost him his combat hazard pay. When someone dies because of the lie, Ray is horribly guilt-ridden but fears that if he comes clean, it will end his career in the Navy.
- Jason sustains a nasty hit on the head which has him disoriented and hallucinating. He lies about the symptoms to his doctor because he does not want to be taken off the team. When he returns home, the injury flares up again and he has a nasty episode in a restaurant that puts his future as team leader and SEAL in question.
- A major storyline in late season 2 involves Clay surviving an IED blast but suffering severe shrapnel wounds that leave him with nerve damage in his right leg. He initially shuts down and refuses to even talk to his very worried team after doctors tell him his career may be over. At season's end, it's still up in the air whether Clay will ever be able to return to being a SEAL.
John Watson in Sherlock has been invalided home from Afghanistan due to an injury he sustained there, which left him with a limp. Pychosomatic, it turns out, as the injury was actually to his shoulder. His return to England and subsequent need for a flatshare kicks off his first meeting with Sherlock and the rest of the series.
Space: Above and Beyond has Lieutenant Colonel T.C. McQueen, who was an elite fighter pilot before he suffered a debilitating head injury in combat. He has enough experience to warrant making him a squadron commander, acting in the role of Mission Control for his young pilots.
In Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Agron gets captured by the Romans and crucified. He survives and is rescued, but the damage to his arms prevents him from gripping a sword ever again. He manages to participate in the final battle by having blades strapped to his arm and shield, but he retires from being a warrior afterward.
Star Trek: The Original Series: The episode "The Menagerie" (largely conceived as a way to use the footage from the unaired original pilot) begins with Spock learning that his former Captain, Christopher Pike, has been severely injured by a radiation leak. While no one could bring themselves to formally revoke his commission, he's clearly not capable of actually performing his duties (or doing much of anything else, for that matter).
St. Elsewhere: In "Brand New Bag", Warren Coolidge mentions that his chances of playing basketball in the NBA ended when he hurt his knee. He subsequently dropped out of Carver High School, which he attended in The White Shadow, and became an orderly.
Ted Lasso has the "old athlete" variation. AFC Richmond captain Roy Kent has had a great career, but he's now old and slow, and everyone knows his days of pro soccer are coming to an end. In the first season finale, he busts his knee during a tackle and has to limp off the field, with the commentators noting that it's an injury he probably won't recover from. They're right, as he retires in between seasons, with his arc in season 2 concerning his attempts to find a new career. After a frustrating stint as a sports pundit he comes back to AFC Richmond as an assistant coach, becoming manager after Ted returns to the States in the finale.
Trigonometry: Ray was a synchronized swimmer and Olympian whose career ended due to her being severely injured during a routine. She's left depressed and adrift, unsure what she should do after this as it's been her whole life.
The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Extra Innings", Ed Hamner was a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers until he severely injured his left knee during a game, giving him a permanent limp.
Blues singer Lester Grimes in Vinyl. Mob thugs beat him up and permanently damaged his windpipe, depriving him of his powerful and iconic singing voice.
White Collar's Peter Burke was a professional baseball player when he tore his rotator cuff. The injury healed just fine and he was able to play baseball again, though a doctor advised him he could re-injure. Rather than risk losing both his baseball career and the possibility of joining the FBI, Peter opted to quit baseball and simply join the FBI.
Tony Micelli of Who's the Boss? was a professional baseball player before a shoulder injury.
In The Right Stuff this is a constant fear of the astronauts.
- Alan Shepard has an undiagnosed condition inner ear condition that causes him to temporarily lose balance and hearing. It should disqualify him from the astronaut program and probably from flying at all. However, it is intermittent and he is able to hide it from NASA till after his historic mission as the first American in space.
- Chris Kraft badly burned his hand as a child. When he applied for flight training, the damage was deemed too extensive and he was rejected.
- Subverted with Deke Slayton who lost a ring finger in a farm accident as a child. That finger is deemed non-essential for a pilot and he was accepted for pilot training. He was later diagnosed with heart arrhythmia but it was not deemed serious to ground him. It was then double-subverted when NASA changes its mind and grounds him due to the arrhythmia after all.^note
- John Glenn is about to be retired from test flying because he is getting too old and his reflexes are not as good as they used to be.
Ultra Series:
- Ultraseven: At the end of the series, Seven's many injuries sustained during all his fights leave him hurt enough that he has to leave Earth lest he dies, leaving his friends and life he made in his human form behind.
- Ultraman Leo: Seven returns in the first episode to confront Alien Magma and the Giras Brothers, but the trio overwhelm him and break his leg, forcing Leo to rescue him. His leg remains injured even when he takes human form, and the damage sustained through both that and the beatdown given to him by the villains leave him unable to do much fighting, instead becoming a supporting mentor to Leo.
- Heisei Ultraseven: Ran further with it, showing that Seven was out of commission while recovering on Earth after failing to leave the planet, within the series it took more than 20 years for him to recover.

Music

"Knee Reconstruction" by Greg Champion (to the tune of "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire) is about a footballer who injures his knee, is forced to sit on the sidelines for a year while undergoing reconstructive surgery, and then returns, only to injure his knee again.
The music video for The Killers' "The Man" depicts one of the characters portrayed by Brandon Flowers as a washed-up stunt biker, who wistfully watches a video of the performance where his bike crashed, and with it his career.

Mythology & Religion

The Bible lists several types of injuries that disqualify kohenim (Jewish priests) from performing the sacrificial service. Some are temporary, though, and even those under the ban can eat the holy sacrifices.
Subverted in Celtic Mythology. Nuada loses his hand in battle against the Fomorians, and since the law says that the king has to be "perfect," he's replaced with Eochu Bres. After Eochu Bres spends seven years letting his Fomorian relatives rule the country, Nuada takes the throne again. Depending on the version, he either a.) used a silver prosthetic, earning him the name "Argetlam" ("silver hand"), or b.) used said silver hand during the seven years Eochu Bres ruled, then got a normal hand thanks to the healing god Miach.

Pro Wrestling

Such real-life injuries happen often in Professional Wrestling: "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, who continued wrestling for several years after having his neck broken, but the injury limited his moveset, and he was forced to retire or risk (at best) permanent paralysis by the end of his run in 2003, Ted DiBiase, Hayabusa, and Yoshihiro Takayama are just some, and then there are the injuries that weren't only career-ending, but life-ending.
An infamous plane crash in 1975 killed its pilot, a man named Joseph Farkas, and also ended the careers of professional wrestlers Johnny Valentine and Bob Bruggers. Future legend Ric Flair was also badly injured in the crash but was able to continue his career after fixing his broken back. Bruggers could have made a comeback but decided to simply retire instead. "Mr. Wrestling" Tim Woods was injured as well but made a comeback, and actually returned to the ring two weeks after the crash despite being in horrible pain, just to dispel the rumors that he had been on the plane, as he was a Face and Flair, Valentine and Bruggers were heels, and it would have hurt kayfabe for them to have travelled together.
Nobutaka Araya used to be a crazy talent and was even being groomed by Genichiro Tenryu of all people to be his successor in WAR. Then it came 1998, when Araya suffered a dangerous neck injury. Although he managed to return to the ring, he would never be able to wrestle at the same pace as before, and became a low carder until his retirement in 2009.
Daniel Bryan was forced to retire from the ring in February 2016 due to concussion issues. However, he would be medically cleared to compete in 2018.
Corey Graves's in-ring career was cut short due to concussions. By no means, however, was he done with wrestling, as he would later make his debut at NXT Takeover: R-Evolution as a ringside commentator.
Mick Foley whose major injuries and surgeries over the span of his career have effectively retired him from active competition.
William Regal has had accumulated injuries and has had major surgeries and eventually had to retire from the ring.
Paige had to retire from in-ring competition at only 25 because of neck injuries. That, on top of the wear and tear of wrestling as young as 13. However, she returned to the ring as Saraya (her real first name) in September 2022, nearly 5 years later.
Bret Hart suffered a concussion so severe that any significant blow to the head would give him another concussion. Two years after he retired due to this injury, he suffered a stroke as a consequence of that injury. The cumulative damage from all of these cranial ailments means he cannot safely lift weights or board airplanes, let alone perform in a professional wrestling ring. He made a comeback of sorts in 2010, defeating Vince McMahon at WrestleMania and even winning the U.S. Title from The Miz in "matches" that were mostly smoke and mirrors.
Darren "Droz" Drozdov was rendered quadriplegic in 1999 after an incident during a recording of WWE SmackDown, where D'Lo Brown botched a powerbomb and accidentally broke his neck (it's been widely agreed to have been a tragic accident out of D'Lo's control, and Droz held no animosity towards him for the incident). Droz would later become a writer and columnist and regained some control of his upper body and arms before passing away in 2023.
Tyson Kidd suffered a severe neck/spinal injury as a result of a Musclebuster from Samoa Joe. An injury of the sort Kidd suffered usually has a 95% fatality rate, and of the one in twenty who survive almost all are rendered quadriplegic for life. Miraculously, Kidd not only lived but also suffered no paralysis or long-term harm following his hospitalisation and recovery. However because any other injury could be catastrophic he obviously decided not to push his luck and retired from competition, becoming an agent for NXT. As in the example above this was a tragic accident as Joe had delivered the move safely hundreds of times in his career, and Kidd bears him no ill will.
FMW star Hayabusa's career came to a sudden end in 2001 when he slipped on a springboard moonsault and broke his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.^note The injury may have also been the Creator Killer for FMW, as without their biggest name the promotion folded a short time later. Hayabusa would later regain some use of his legs. Unfortunately, he passed away from a brain hemorrhage in 2016 at the age of 47.
Big E. Langston broke his neck as the result of a botched suplex in March 2022, and while he soon recovered and hasn't suffered any apparent nerve or strength damage (he didn't even require surgery after the injury), he's remained out of the action on advice from several doctors who informed him that his neck bones did not properly heal and that another, similar injury could kill him on the spot. He remains a part of WWE and periodically makes non-wrestling appearances as a panelist, but as of 2024, he has yet to return to in-ring, with Big E. remaining understandably ambivalent over such a decision. This ended up being acknowledged as part of an angle started in December 2024 — the 10-year anniversary of The New Day — where Big E. would finally make a big TV appearance to celebrate, only his former stablemates, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, to reveal their resentment of how much he weighed them down because of his injury, cruelly stating that he "abandoned" them and booting him from the group on the grounds that he will never be cleared to wrestle again. Big E. also seems to think so, as in 2025, he said that his wrestling career is "kind of behind me."
Matt Cappotelli, winner of season 3 of WWE Tough Enough, had his career postponed indefinitely due to a brain tumor that eventually claimed his life.

Roleplay

Doubt Academy: White uses the threat of this as its second motive. Monobear tells the students that unless a murder occurs within a week, he'll randomly select one of the students and cripple them in a way that'll ruin their SHSL Talent.
In The Dao of the Awakened, Hua Yin's Cultivation talent Awakens after his hands are deliberately broken, preventing him from taking on the administration job he's been preparing for his entire life. In an ironic twist, that heals his hands, but as a Cultivator, he is banned from administration work anyway. Later, he learns a rival of his is responsible. His family arranges a long Humiliation Conga for the guy as revenge, ending up with his hands being broken the same way. He is Driven to Suicide as a result.

Tabletop Games

Played for Laughs (and then played seriously) in Sentinels of the Multiverse. It's established in the backstory that Ambuscade was a former high-profile actor who left his career after suffering an injury to his face. The release of the Villains of the Multiverse set finally showed his face, revealing... it was a tiny scratch on his cheek. Ambuscade is such an egomaniac that a nearly invisible scar made him quit acting. Played seriously in the fight against OblivAeon, where he sacrifices himself to save his friends from the exploding Borr the Unstable. He survives, but is left with hideous scars across most of his body, permanently destroying any hopes he may have had of returning to the screen.
Traveller: During character creation, you may suffer a crippling injury in the line of duty, and have the option to undergo a risky medical procedure (which may restore you completely, or kill you - and yes, this is still during character creation). Refusing gives you some stat penalties and forces you to muster out immediately, as you're no longer deemed fit to serve. (You can still be an adventurer.)
Warhammer 40,000: Thanks to the prevalence of crude biomechanical limbs, many soldiers can continue serving the Imperium even with lost limbs.
- However, it's heavily implied that some such soldiers are lobotomized and given cybernetics to function as servitors.
- Space Marines too heavily wounded even for cybernetics or the Apothecary's skill can be interred in a Dreadnought, a Mini-Mecha that functions as a life-support system and heavy weapons platform at the cot of putting the Marine into centuries-long sleep between battles. Interestingly, Traitor Marines do this as well... except they see it as punishment: Chaos Dreadnoughts have their legs and weapons removed outside of combat, but they don't get to sleep between battles and are instead chained to a wall, left in total sensory deprivation all the while. Nearly all of them are eventually driven violently insane in the process. That's before constant exposure to the malevolent energies of the Warp inevitably and painfully mutate them into Helbrutes: near-mindless demonic cyborg monsters physically merged with their dreadnoughts that exist in perpetual agony-driven rage. It's little wonder why Chaos Marines consider death preferable to internment.

Video Games

Absented Age 2: Ghostbound: Mika reveals that as the original Karen, her immune system weakened to the point where even breathing caused coughing fits, ending her career as a trumpeter, and her condition only got worse after Prim partially petrified her, causing her organs to fail. Mika realized that even if she managed to recover her Heart Fragments, she would never be able to achieve her dreams, which is why she wants Satsuki, the Gänger imitating her, to achieve these goals for her.
In Battleborn, El Dragón's arms being ripped off were speculated to be one according to his audio lore challenge. Due to the CWF's prohibition on cybernetically-augmented organics in competition, he was forced into retirement against his will immediately after his match with ISIC, while his injuries were still fresh and being interviewed by a reporter indifferent to the actual seriousness of the matter instead of being treated. Fortunately, though, he was able to eventually squeeze back to the top.
In Blue Reflection, Hinako was a promising ballet dancer, but she got into a car accident that injured her knee badly enough that she cannot perform jumps well anymore. When Yuzu and Lime want Hinako to become a Reflector, she only agrees once they tell her that a wish of hers will be fulfilled in return.
Ciel Fledge: The loss of Juno's legs is eventually spelled out to be the reason he had to quit the military. His prosthetics are noted to benefit from him living in the far future, but two different characters find out about them after they cause him to seemingly fall down out of nowhere, indicating that they aren't quite advanced enough to allow him to continue his old job as if the injury had never happened. A later event has him question the validity of the decision, as he's still perfectly able to fire a gun, and some positions in which the skill can be used don't require to move much. The feeling gets even worse when the war effort results in drafting children as young as 13 as scouts in all but name, while he's listed among people who can't be drafted, but have the option to volunteer. Which he takes and uses on tasks that help him keep his restaurant stocked with ingredients. At least one ending has him rehired as a shooting instructor whose students can expect a good meal once a week.
Crusader Kings II :
- There's a chance in that a character leading troops into battle may suffer a particularly bad blow to the head that renders them incapable, meaning they'll need a regent if they happen to be the ruler. Either way, they'll be of no use whatsoever for the rest of their (often mercifully short) days.
- Characters in the Byzantine culture group cannot inherit titles if they are blind, ending their careers as rulers.
Cyberpunk 2077: In "The Tower" ending, the protagonist suffers nervous system damage that prevents them from using almost any cyberware. This forces them to retire from being a mercenary, since fighting without cyberware in 2077 is akin to fighting with two broken arms.
Dead Island: The back story for Logan, an ex-football star, involves an injury that was career-ending in more ways than one. He was in a street-racing accident that not only badly injured his leg, but caused a massive scandal.
In Dispatch, Player Character Robert Robertson was a superhero called Mecha Man, but is forced into retirement after his Arch-Enemy destroys his Mini-Mecha. The plot revolves around him accepting a Post-Injury Desk Job acting as Mission Control for a Super Team in exchange for the resources to get back in the field. The Mentor Chase is in a similar position, as he has Super-Speed powers that inflicted Rapid Aging and would kill him if he used them again.
In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, all guards share a pool of random sentences, which any of them can say. One of those is the page quote, making it sound like this is the backstory for every single guard. An alternate line spoken by a Stormcloak soldier is that he took a sword to the chest which forced an end to his adventuring career. Parodied in the Dragonborn DLC, where a Khajiit NPC will mention he also used to be an adventurer...until he found a ball of yarn.
Endless Ocean: Jean-Eric's career as a scuba diver was cut short after a nasty encounter with decompression sickness.
One of the possible responses from the mess officer on board the Brotherhood of Steel airship Prydwen in Fallout 4 is that he used to be a field scribe until a Deathclaw broke his femur. Averted with Proctor Ingram, who lost her legs, but continues to serve as chief engineer with the assistance of a modified power armor frame.
This happens to anyone in later Fire Emblem games that has their HP reduced to 0 but is too critical to the plot (read: must appear in cutscenes) to be removed (and doesn't cause a Game Over when defeated, as happens to the main characters.) Everyone else is subject to Permadeath (unless the player is on Casual Mode instead). Some games that adhere to this idea go a step further and subject such characters to a Deadly Distant Finale; the characters can still appear in cutscenes despite being unavailable for use, but their epilogues state that they die soon after the resolution of the conflict because of their wounds.
In The Flower Collectors, Jorge's backstory is that he was a police officer who got drunk one night and was attacked by a couple of teens Jorge previously assaulted. They beat him up and push him off a quay, where he fell onto jagged rocks and became paralyzed from the waist-down. Needless to say, he was forced into retirement.
Jagged Alliance 2 has an Alumni page on the AIM (Association of International Mercenaries) website, where among the retired, KIA, and dishonorably discharged, there are also those who suffered injury or had failing health.
Coach in Left 4 Dead 2 used to be a pro in football and was well on his way in joining the big leagues. He suffered a knee injury that forced him to retire from the sport and became a high school health education teacher instead. Even with the injury, the Zombie Apocalypse doesn't slow him down from kicking some zombie ass.
Lonely Wolf Treat: The rabbit Mango used to work as a farmer on Mount Sorbet, until he was caught in an avalanche and broke his leg. After Cotton rescued him and brought him to his wolf pack to recover, Mango never ended up returning home after that, partly because he was ashamed of how he initially treated the wolf, and partly because his leg never ended up fully healing, so he wouldn't have been able to work at the farm anymore anyway.
In Mass Effect 3, Thane Krios's terminal illness known as Kepral's Syndrome finally reaches a point where Thane can no longer reliably perform his job as an assassin. However, this doesn't stop him from intervening to save the salarian Councilor when Kai Leng and Cerberus attack, though the disease does slow him down to the point that Kai Leng is able to mortally wound him.
In Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops this is given as the backstory for Lieutenant Cunningham of FOX, a CIA-sponsored black ops organization, as he used to be a soldier during Vietnam but suffered an injury to his leg that required it to be amputated thus ending his career. During the story, he expresses resentment towards the CIA for giving him a desk job after his injury when he used to be a distinguished warrior. A common theme in the overall story of the Metal Gear games is that soldiers are mistreated by their governments, Cunningham being downsized is viewed as another example of this ideal.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: Kaz is mutilated after an ambush from the Skull unit, ending his career as a soldier; even if he accepted cybernetic limbs after the events of the game, cybernetic eyes wouldn't be developed until after his death.
Monster Hunter: A number of supporting characters are revealed to have been famed hunters, but had to retire due to grave incidents that occured to them while hunting certain monsters. The Legendary Gunner who lives in Kokoto Village in Monster Hunter (2004) was forced to retire due to a leg injury (though he doesn't specify what caused it). The Shipwright from Jumbo in Monster Hunter 2 (dos) lost his right leg and earned a wicked scar along his left arm in a Plesioth hunt gone wrong. The Village Chief of Moga in Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) reveals in the expansion 3 Ultimate that an Ivory Lagiacrus he needed to hunt put an end to his career, and he tells this to the protagonist when they're asked to hunt a specimen of that monster. The Ace Commander whom you meet in Monster Hunter 4 reveals in the expanded story for 4 Ultimate that his carelessness while hunting a Rathian led to an intruding Elder Dragon (Kushala Daora) cause a permanent injury to his mentor, the Master of Defense. Finally, High Rank Hunter Ayame from Kamura Village in Monster Hunter: Rise saw her leg become badly injured on a hunt and she has been unable to fight since, though it's subverted as she realizes that, while her body might never again be what it was before, that doesn't mean she can't fight anymore, and takes on various rehabilitation measures in Kamura. None of this is possible against the Player Character, who is free to be mauled by these big scary monsters as much as they want and the worst that happens is they fail the quest and return to town with no lasting injuries.
In Mordheim: City of the Damned, much like the Mordheim tabletop game, troops can suffer permanent debilitating injuries and it's usually best to retire your gravely-injured fighters and replace them with "intact" raw recruits unless they're highly experienced or you're just really attached to them. Having a grizzled old Handicapped Badass Sister Superior with a peg leg, gouged eye, mutilated hand, and a permanently crazed look on her face from that skull fracture, beating Skaven to death with a giant flail is certainly cool, but her multiple wounds will affect her combat performance considerably, plus she won't be able to climb walls.
From the Persona series:
- Anna Yoshizaka of Persona 2 was a star track athlete before being injured in a hit and run. She's depressed as a result, and in Innocent Sin, makes a wish to Joker to heal her legs. She subsequently joins the Masked Circle as an executive.
- Persona 3's Kazuchi Miyamoto is a sports team member who is seriously risking losing the ability to walk in order to train and win a competition so that he can convince his nephew, who was crippled in an accident, to undergo rehab. Eventually, he quits the team to recuperate.
- Ryuji Sakamoto, one of the party members from Persona 5, has this as his backstory. He was forced to quit the track team after an Evil Teacher subjected him to Training from Hell, goaded him into attacking him, and broke one of his legs so that the track team could receive less funding than the volleyball team; while he can still walk and run it's not on the same level as he used to. This is one of the reasons he becomes a party member - to get revenge on the teacher.
In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the eighth Gym Leader Grusha suffered a serious injury that ended his snowboarding career, leaving him a jaded cynic. However, meeting the Player Character in battle reignited his passion for life.
In Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, in addition to deaths being final like in previous games, characters who are Incapacitated are also permanently out of action.
RealityMinds: In Episode 0, a soldier, later revealed to be Silvana's father Deak, gets his eye slashed out by a monster. As a result, he has retired from combat and taken up a clerical position.
This is revealed as the back story reason for why Jack Krauser faked his death and defected to Wesker's side in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. Krauser used to be a special ops soldier who worked alongside Leon but during the course of the mission, a viral entity crippled his arm. Krauser eventually sought out Wesker, who provided a way to heal his arm; out of gratitude, Krauser turned to serve Wesker as his special agent and even got a shapeshifting arm blade/shield out of the deal.
Rhythm Doctor: Max "Lucky" Jonronero, the focus of Act 5, is a famous baseball player who had to be hospitalized after injuring his rotator cuff, which happened right at the peak of his career. It's a downplayed case as a full recovery is possible, but it will take months of physical therapy for him to return to full capacity, and being off the field for so long would kill his career's momentum. This makes Lucky desperate for a miracle cure, but he changes his mind after training the other hospital patients, turning them into a respectable amateur baseball team, and realizing that coaching is just as satisfying as being the star player.
RimWorld:
- Characters can survive a headshot, but if they take damage to the brain, that usually spells the end of their time as a useful member of the colony, as brain damage both severely affects their ability to do anything and is impossible to heal. Only Luciferium can get them back in order, and even then due to lethal addiction issues and limited availability they'll be Living on Borrowed Time.
- Later patches and expansions added healer mech serum and biosculptor pods, which are difficult to obtain but are the only things capable of fixing brain damage with no drawbacks.
Downplayed in Roots of Pacha. Sayra used to play ball (foosball) but quit when she chipped a nail, and she hopes Fayra won't do the same.
K, the Mikado bartender in Shin Megami Tensei IV, was a Samurai himself until he lost his hand battling demons. He has a scissor-like replacement which doesn't appear to harm his bartending any.
After befriending George in Stardew Valley he eventually admits he lost the use of his legs in a mining accident and has been living on disability pay, and out of a wheelchair, since then. He's also bitter about his age, but insists that he'd be a Cool Old Guy if not for the accident.
Sunless Sea: The Genial Magician's career as an illusionist ended abruptly when a Fingerking bit his hand off during a show, so he went to zee with a wealth of engineering knowledge, a Hook Hand, and a burning desire for Revenge. His Loyalty Mission has you help him settle the score.
Magician: It makes card-tricks difficult.
Shotglass, the bartender from the first Wing Commander game, used to be a pilot before he got shot up so bad he couldn't fly. Serving drinks is his way of continuing to do his bit.

Visual Novels

CLANNAD:
- One of the major reasons for the rift between Tomoya and his father is the fact that after an argument between them turned physical, Tomoya suffered an injury that leaves him unable to lift his right arm higher than his shoulder. This left him unable to play basketball effectively, one of his greatest hobbies. Tomoya's father appears to be deeply remorseful about this, but has no clue how to try to approach his son afterward.
- Kappei is introduced as a guy that loves running. Though he isn't on an actual team, running brings him the greatest enjoyment out of life. Late in his route, however, he learns that he has cancer in his leg and it has to be amputated. This leaves him in a deep depression, bad enough that he looks to be contemplating suicide, and trying to find a way to snap him out of it forms the crux of the route's climax.
Averted with the protagonist of Double Homework. Someone playing for the first time might initially conclude that this is what happened to him after the incident on Barbarossa. Instead, 12 other people died.
In his route of In Your Arms Tonight, promising ceramics artist Soji Higayashima has his right hand severely injured in a car accident. The damage is bad enough to impair the mobility of his hand, making him unable to continue in his art. His epilogue suggests that with physical therapy he will recover enough to resume his work.
Though he didn't make a career out of it, the protagonist of Missing Stars used to love being active and hiking. However, an accident left him unable to use one of his legs. There's no physical problem with it. Erik's post-traumatic stress causes psychosomatic numbness and pain in his leg. He transferred to a boarding school for teens with mental illnesses in order to improve his mental health.

Webcomics

The protagonist of Can't See Can't Hear But Love is a webtoon artist who is forced to quit after he becomes blind due to exertion.
Part of why Cookie is Hated by All in Furry Fight Chronicles is that she indirectly caused Freydar, the most popular Combagal at the time, to suffer an injury that ended her career during a match because she overworked her, which was caused by Freydar having a painkiller addiction that led to her injury.
Ikon (2019): Aleksandr's dad, Abram, has gone recently blind due to a hemhorrage brought on by complications from diabetes. It has degraded his vision to the point that he can no longer work at the print shop he once owned.
My New Girlfriend is Not Human?: Before he became a salaryman, Haru Ikeda was once an up-and-coming stuntman who dreamed of becoming a big action star. However, at the time of his big break, his friend and fellow stuntman Rui Haneda tried to warn Haru about the bad weather during the shoot, which will increase the risk of injury, but he dismissed his concerns as jealousy. Soon enough, Haru ended up getting severely hurt and, despite eventually regaining the ability to walk, his doctors told him he could never be a stuntman again.
In NEXT!!! Sound of the Future, the protagonist, Shine, is an android who has a bug that steadily worsened her singing ability. Eventually, she became almost completely unable to sing, effectively ending any chance she had of achieving her dream of becoming an Idol Singer.
This is part of the background detail explanation for the reappearance of Dillon's Old Friend Ray in Sticky Dilly Buns; he was pursuing a career in hockey (presumably ice hockey, given that this is set in Canada, but he's now suffered a knee injury and decided to switch to acting.
In Weak Hero, Kenny tries to leave the Manwol Gang so that he can protect his brother and also focus entirely on soccer. Though he expects that they won't let him off easy, he doesn't expect them to permanently cripple his leg, ruining his dream of being a soccer player. This incident is what sets his brother down the path of revenge.

Web Original

ACTUALLY HAPPENED: In My Mom Entered My Room Without Knocking. Sorry, Mom..., the gymnast falls off a roof and hurts her spine. She's forced to quit gymnastics and turns to curling instead.
The Onion: Parodied in the article "Travis Kelce Suffers Film-Career-Beginning Injury".
RWBY: Maria Calavera was a famously skilled Huntress in her youth, but retired after losing both her eyes in a fight. The thing is, it wasn't the loss of her eyes itself that made her retire (Remnant has pretty advanced cybernetics), but the emotional trauma she went through, especially fear that someone would realize she was a Silver Eyed warrior again, and finish the job this time. In her old age, she considers herself a coward and failure for giving up on the Huntress life instead of fulfilling her responsibilities.
In Worm, the Director of the local PRT, Piggot, used to be a field agent before she lost her kidneys in a particularly nasty Charlie Foxtrot of an operation.
The plot of "no expectation of returns" from You Could Make a Life is about an NHL player trying to help his best friend cope after a wrist injury ends his hockey career.

Western Animation

Bruce from Batman Beyond gives up crime-fighting due to a heart condition. On its own, it probably wouldn't mean much, but the circumstances caused him to point a gun at someone.
This trope is used in The Fairly OddParents! The Bronze Kneecap explains that tripping over the Crimson Chin's titular facial feature was what caused him to injure his knee and ended his career as a regional Jai Alai athlete who always got in 3rd Place. He subsequently smelts all of his bronze trophies and makes them into his villain costume. Timmy views this as a major overreaction and the Bronze Kneecap responds that the Crimson Chin never even said he was sorry.
- It should also be noted that Timmy unwittingly did the same thing to Mr. Bickles during the episode and manages to evade such extreme repercussions by apologizing and effectively Talking the Monster to Death. (Although Timmy didn't actually injure Mr. Bickles. He just put on a better magic act and consequently drove him out of business.) It's hard to feel sorry for him given that he's basically a spoof of the Wide-Eyed Idealist who has a new "Dream" every single solitary episode. The fact that Timmy ruined one out of countless and merely by being better at it makes Mr. Bickles seem like a stupid selfish baby.
- This trope is played with for yet another episode. In this one, Timmy cannot sing his part in Mr. Bickles' play because he needs his tonsils taken out. That doesn't stop him from trying to sing anyway. Unfortunately, Mr. Bickles doesn't take it well when Timmy fails due to his aching throat, causing him to drop to his knees and whine about his so-called dream being ruined. This time someone else's career is "ended" by someone else's illness.
In Hercules: The Animated Series Achilles survived that arrow to the heel but became a washed-up has-been hero afterward.
Kick Buttowski's mother Honey Splash ended her career as a speedboat stuntster because she tore her tendencious ligamental flexor. Kick encourages her to try again years later, but the injury flares up at a plot-appropriate moment.
Littlest Pet Shop (2012): In "Lotsa Luck" Mrs. Twombly ended her career in "kung-fu quilting" when she pulled a tendon in her foot after winning a tournament.
Ōban Star-Racers: Rick Thunderbolt, the original Earth team pilot, is seriously injured in his first race, leaving him with a nervous system that freezes up at inopportune moments. After some episodes moping about it, he eventually agrees to help train Molly as his replacement.
This plays a major role in Eda's backstory in The Owl House. Her father used to be the greatest palisman carver on the Boiling Isles, but one night during a family party she slashed out one of his eyes and mangled one of his hands bad enough to cause nerve damage when he accidentally triggered her owl beast curse with a party popper. She felt so guilt-ridden over this that she ran away from home soon afterwards and did everything she could to avoid seeing him for the next 30 years.
Played for Laughs in the Pinky and the Brain episode "Brain's Song" where a movie created by the Brain (meant to be so much of a tearjerker that everyone would be too inconsolable to stop Brain from taking over the world after watching it) depicts Brain as an optimistic young man whose dreams of becoming an all-star football player are crushed when he suffers from "career-ending stomach cramps" in the middle of the big game and can never play football again. Brain's plan nearly succeeds, but Brain suffering from the aftershocks of the rickety make-shift football field his movie was filmed on as he tries to announce his plans to the weeping masses just causes everyone in the world to just start laughing at him instead.
The Simpsons:
- In "Faith Off" (which provides the current Page Image), Homer accidentally injures the new star quarterback of Springfield U, Anton Lubchenko, during the homecoming game after running him over with a parade float, giving him a badly broken leg. While this was already enough to put an end to Lubchenko's career, Fat Tony threatens to have Homer killed since he bet a great deal of money on the game, leading to Bart using his "healing powers" (part of the plot involved Bart becoming a revival healer) to get Lubchenko back on the field. He does, and Lubchenko miraculously scores the winning goal... at the cost of his leg detaching entirely, leaving him even worse off than before. But on the plus side, he won a mostly meaningless college game.
- In "Jazzy And the Pussycats" Bart discovers he has a talent for the drums (he's imagining he's hitting Homer in the face). Lisa, jealous of him finding the one thing he's good at, starts hoarding stray animals (she was originally only going to get one pet from a shelter, but the lunatic running the place outright admitted she was planning on putting them all down for kicks), which includes a tiger that ends up biting Bart's hand, preventing him from playing. They manage to raise enough money for a surgery to fix it, but this coincides with Lisa's animals being in danger of euthanasia, even the ones who had nothing to do with Barts injury, and Marge half-guilts Bart into using the money for an animal habitat instead.
Played for Laughs in the VeggieTales story "Sumo of the Opera", where Mikey used to be in wrestling until he injured his knee. He's a grape.

Real Life — Sports

American Football:
- In one of the most well-known examples from the NFL, Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann was forced to retire after a Monday Night Football game in 1985. On a failed attempt to trick the New York Giants' defense, Theismann was sacked by all-pro linebacker Lawrence Taylor. As Taylor forced Theismann to the ground, his knee came down on Theisman's leg and snapped the tibia and fibula. While this incident helped cement Taylor's fearsome reputation, Taylor himself was clearly horrified and immediately leaped up and called for medical assistance for Theismann as soon as the play ended. Sadly, some fans mistook his frantic motions for help as Taylor celebrating the crippling hit and thought him a dirty player for a while.
- History would repeat itself when quarterback Alex Smith suffered the same injury as Theismann after a sack by Houston Texans defensive end JJ Watt. In an eerie coincidence, it happened 33 years to the date of Theismann's injury. With Theismann himself in attendance, no less. Smith returned to the team as a starter two years and multiple surgeries later, even picking up the Comeback Player of the Year award, but lasting pain forced him to retire for good at the end of the season.
- For most of the history of American Football, rotator cuff injuries to the throwing arm have been a death sentence for quarterbacks. Probably the most tragic case was Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Greg Cook, who after a rookie season in 1969 that left many excited about his NFL future, tore his rotator cuff and was out of football with only that rookie season under his belt.
- Chicago Bears player Gale Sayers had to retire after injuring first one knee (the one depicted in the film Brian's Song) and then the other, both injuries requiring surgery and extensive rehab. He worked with a group that raises funds for injured players and their families until his death in 2020.
- Green Bay Packers receiver Sterling Sharpe played for years with an undiagnosed condition affecting the vertebrae in his neck, making him more susceptible to neck injuries. By the time the condition was discovered at the end of the 1994 season, he had already had two significant neck-related incidents in two consecutive games and was told by doctors that he would have to undergo major cervical spine surgery to stabilize his neck or he would be at risk for complications later in life (whether or not he continued to play professional sports). Sharpe initially did not rule out the possibility of resuming his career following the surgery and lengthy recovery, but ultimately retired without ever playing another game.
- Over a decade later, Packers safety Nick Collins, coming off a huge 2010 season, suffered a herniated disc in an early 2011 game when a routine tackle went horribly wrong and had to have the same kind of surgery as Sharpe. Collins didn't officially announce his retirement until 2014, but he stopped training for a comeback in 2012 after a doctor told him it would be extremely inadvisable for him to play again.
- There might have been three Manning brothers in the NFL in the 21st century if eldest son Cooper, who was an all-state wide receiver during his high school days in New Orleans and was considered a hot prospect recruit for Ole Miss, hadn't been diagnosed with spinal stenosis and forced to retire from the sport before he could play a single college game. Not that Cooper seems to mind too much, as he found success as an investment banker and TV broadcaster later on, and has a son currently playing football for the Texas Longhorns.
- Detroit Lions guard Mike Utley saw his career end suddenly when an on-field injury to his cervical vertebrae resulted in paralysis. He was immediately left a quadriplegic, though he regained nearly full use of his arms.^note
- New England Patriots wide receiver Darryl Stingley's football career ended immediately after a devastating hit from Oakland Raiders safety Jack Tatum broke his upper spine in a preseason game. He was left a quadriplegic and ultimately died (albeit 30 years later) from heart problems related to his paralysis. (Incredibly, this injury didn't turn his family off of football, as both his son Derek and grandson Derek Jr. played college ball and the latter went to the NFL in 2022.)
- One of few players to have a significant professional career in two sports, Los Angeles Raiders running back Bo Jackson, suffered a sudden career-ending football injury when he dislocated a hip (with subsequent hip bone fracturing and bone tissue death in the joint) after being tackled on-field. He never played football again, and his baseball career ceased a few years later.
- Hall of Fame Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin retired suddenly after being tackled hard by Philadelphia Eagles safety Tim Hauck. Irvin suffered a non-life-threatening spinal cord injury on the play.
- Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett suffered a broken neck and a dislocated cervical spine while covering a kickoff during the team's opening game of the 2007 season against the Denver Broncos. To the shock of everyone Everett was able to walk again a few months after the injury (largely credited to the experimental hypothermic treatment he was administered immediately after the injury), but he never attempted to return to football. The Bills would keep the 2005 draftee on the roster for the rest of the season, allowing him to fulfill the three-season requirement to collect a NFLPA pension.
- Los Angeles Raiders running back Napoleon McCallum suffered a gruesome leg injury in a 1994 game against the San Francisco 49ers. He completely hyperextended his left knee to almost a 90-degree angle, tore three ligaments, tore the calf and hamstring muscles from the bone, and suffered nerve damage. He recovered, but his career was over as he was never going to be medically cleared to play football again.
- Pretty much the same thing happened to Marcus Lattimore, a superstar running back for the University of South Carolina. He showed tremendous promise as a freshman in 2010, with reports indicating that he would have been a first-round pick had he been eligible for the 2011 draft. Unfortunately, he tore an ACL in the middle of the 2011 season, followed by an injury similar to that of McCallum in 2012. While he declared for the 2013 draft and was picked in the fourth round, he never played a snap professionally.
- Heartwarmingly averted a few years later by UCF quarterback McKenzie Milton, who led the Knights to their breakout 2017 season that set the stage for their 2023 move to the Big 12 Conference. The next season, the Knights were unbeaten going into their regular-season finale against archrival South Florida. UCF won, but lost Milton to an injury pretty much identical to that of McCallum and Lattimore (the Knights lost their ensuing bowl game). Milton had to undergo emergency surgery to save the leg and nearly lost it a second time. After nearly three years of rehab, and a transfer to Florida State, Milton saw the field again. While he decided not to risk trying a pro playing career, simply playing again was remarkable.
- Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier had his spine destabilized in a 2017 game against the Cincinnati Bengals. He would never play another down again and announced his retirement three years later. Many fans consider it a miracle that he is able to walk again.
Basketball:
- New York Liberty star Kym Hampton had to retire from the WNBA after injuring her knee.
- Boban Janković, a Serbian basketball star who played in the Greek league in the early 1990s, was permanently paralyzed in 1993 after he damaged his spinal cord by headbutting the padded concrete basket post in response to the referee calling an offensive foul on him with 8 minutes to go in a playoff match. He used a wheelchair for the final 13 years of his life and died of a heart attack at the age of 42. His injury resulted in FIBA directing that all basket posts must be covered with a sponge base to prevent another injury
- Magic Johnson was forced into premature retirement in 1991 after discovering that he had HIV/AIDS. He briefly returned in 1996 but eventually decided to retire for good. As of 2026, he is very much alive, and may very well break the world record for the longest lifespan after being diagnosed with AIDS, if he continues to manage.
Baseball:
- New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig had to retire from baseball due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (which became known in North America as Lou Gehrig's disease).
- Sandy Koufax of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, arguably the most dominating pitcher in MLB since the "Dead Ball Era", was forced to retire at age 30 after developing arthritis in his pitching arm.
- Roy Campanella spent ten seasons as a catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers but never got to play in Los Angeles. In the offseason of the team's move, he was paralyzed when his rented 1957 Chevrolet sedan hit a patch of ice, skidded into a telephone pole, and overturned. His neck was broken, the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae in his back were fractured and his spinal cord was compressed. While he was paralyzed from the shoulders down at first (and ended up needing a wheelchair for the rest of his life), extensive physical therapy eventually allowed him to regain the use of his arms and hands.
- Houston Astros pitcher J.R. Richard's major league career came to an abrupt end after suffering a stroke at age 30. He made a few short-lived attempts to restart his career in the minors afterwards but was unsuccessful.
- Dave Dravecky, a pitcher for the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants, developed a cancerous tumor in his pitching arm at age 32; he first had surgery to remove the growth and then underwent a year's rehabilitation. His comeback attempt lasted all of two games, when the humerus bone in his pitching arm suddenly snapped in mid-pitch, ending his career for good. Cancer returned to his pitching arm later that year, forcing its amputation.
- On May 26, 1999, Tony Saunders, who was pitching for the then-Tampa Bay Devil Rays, also suffered a humerus fracture (as well as torn ligaments) in his pitching arm after throwing a 3-2 pitch during a game. It would be the very last pitch Saunders would throw as a Major League pitcher: The following year, while he was making a rehab start in the Minor Leagues, Saunders suffered the exact same injury, and was forced to retire at the age of 26.
- Several players had their careers ruined after getting hit in the head while up to bat. A few examples resulted in their immediate retirement.
  - Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane's career with the Detroit Tigers ended immediately after he was severely beaned by pitcher Bump Hadley. Cochrane was knocked unconscious and hospitalized in a coma for ten days afterward.
  - Kirby Puckett, Hall of Fame center fielder for the Minnesota Twins, had his playing career end in 1996 after being hit in the face by a pitch from Dennis Martínez and subsequently developing glaucoma. He never played again.
  - In 2005, Adam Greenberg was playing his first major league game for the Chicago Cubs and, the first time he came to the plate, was hit in the head and suffered a fractured skull, ending his season, and he spent the next few years struggling with vertigo and other issues from the injury, and never returned to his previous level of play. Following a petition from fans to try to get him into a game again, he did end up making one more appearance in the majors in 2012, when the Marlins had him pinch-hit in the second-to-last game of their season — he struck out on three pitches, but completed the at-bat without injury this time.
- Cleveland Indians^notenow known as Guardians ace pitcher Herb Score was hit in the face by a line drive, and forced to retire. He went on to a long career as the team's radio announcer.
- Perennial all-star third baseman David Wright was the Mets' answer to the Yankees' Derek Jeter in the 2000s and 2010s, being the face of their franchise and looking like he was going to be a surefire hall of famer as he entered his 30s. However at just 32 years old, Wright would be diagnosed with spinal stenosis, after which he would only play 77 more games for the rest of his career despite several comeback attempts, and he would ultimately retire at 35 years old, with his prospects of making the Hall of Fame looking grim.
Motorsports:
- Alessandro "Alex" Zanardi, former Formula One and IndyCar racing driver, lost both of his legs in a horrific crash that nearly killed him. He made the best of it and started two new careers. He proved competitive in his first in touring car racing, using a car fitted with hand controls. His second post-injury career as a Paralympic athlete in handcycling was even more successful than either of his auto racing careers. He won three medals, two of them gold, in the 2012 London Paralympics, and did the same in Rio in 2016.
  - However, in a sad postscript, Zanardi suffered another career-ending injury in 2020 during a race when he lost control of his handbike and crashed into an oncoming truck, suffering facial and brain injuries. He was unable to speak for more than six months after the crash and remained hospitalized for nearly a year after that.
- Didier Pironi was leading the 1982 Formula One World Championship when he crashed into Alain Prost during qualifying for the German Grand Prix and suffered leg injuries severe enough to end his racing career. He ultimately lost the championship to Keke Rosberg by five points.
- In the second race of the IndyCar doubleheader at Houston in 2013, Takuma Sato got loose and slid into Dario Franchitti's car, sending him twirling into the catch fence. Franchitti suffered a broken back and ankle in the crash, as well as a concussion so severe that he later stated he doesn't remember anything from two weeks before the crash to three weeks after. On the advice of his doctors, he retired from racing a month later. ^note
- Racing driver Tetsuya Ota was forced to quit racing due to losing function in his right arm and leg after a fiery accident in 1998, where his Ferrari spun out and hit an already spun-out Porsche, creating a fantastic fireball and sending him rolling across the track. The first one on scene was another racer with a fire extinguisher to put out his flaming car. Safety marshals arrived over ten seconds later to extract him and take him to a waiting track van (not an ambulance) to go to the medical center. For reference, he spent 90 seconds from impact in his flaming car, long enough that his visor melted and caused facial scarring when he was laid on his back that required plastic surgery to repair.
- By the end of the 2010 Formula One season, Robert Kubica was widely regarded as a rising star and had a contract in place to drive for Ferrari in 2012. Then, in February 2011, he was involved in a rally crash in which the guardrail penetrated the bodywork and nearly severed his arm. The damage left his arm permanently atrophied and, while he was able to resume his rallying career, it was generally agreed that his F1 career was over. He did manage to make it back into the sport in 2019, but it was clear that he wasn't the same driver anymore, and his comeback lasted only one very disappointing season with Williams ^note. Kubica has since made a name for himself in endurance racing, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2025 with the AF Corse team.
- Dennis Anderson, the original creator and driver of Monster Jam's Grave Digger, would end up getting injured and hospitalized after attempting and failing to do a backflip with the truck during a show in Tampa, Florida in early 2017. While he thankfully didn't get paralyzed from the injuries and was able to recover, the incident would cause him to retire from monster truck driving after a 35-year career.
- In the late 2000s, Brazilian driver Felipe Massa was touted as a favorite to become a Formula One world champion. After a strong campaign with Ferrari in 2008 in which he won six races only to lose the title to Lewis Hamilton by a single point, the team would struggle to adapt to regulation changes in 2009. Massa eventually got to grips with their new car, finishing third at the German GP - but come qualifying for the next round in Hungary, he would be hit in the head with debris from another driver's crash, knocking him out and causing him to slam head-on into a wall, fracturing his skull. He survived but was out of commission for the remainder of 2009 and come his return to the grid in 2010, no longer seemed capable of the results he achieved beforehand - only scoring a few more podiums for the rest of his time with Ferrari, and having a rather mediocre stint at Williams before calling it quits in 2017.
- In a more extreme example, Tom Meents, driver of Monster Jam's Maximum Destruction, was already in the middle of his final season when he was injured after a rough landing at a Indianapolis show in 2024, dislocating his neck, effectively making sure his retirement would stick. His son Colton Eichelberger replaced him for the rest of the season.
- Monster Jam driver Rob Knell, cousin of the aforementioned Tom Meents, was nearly burned alive at a 2004 independent show in Red Bluff, California after the converter in the truck he was driving (El Toro Loco on the former Taurus 4 chassis) failed, sending debris into fuel lines and causing the transmission to explode violently. Knell suffered 2nd degree burns over his body, a broken elbow and several broken fingers. After a handful of appearances in 2005-06, he never drove again until his 2024 death.
- NASCAR:
  - Ernie Irvan ended up double subverting this with his near-fatal crash at Michigan in 1994.^note While he did get back into the car by 1996, and even won in 1997 at the same track that almost killed him, the simple fact of the matter was that he just wasn't a championship-level driver after the wreck (he had been in the midst of challenging Dale Earnhardt for the 1994 title before the injury), and several more head injuries after his comeback drove him to retire in 1999.
  - Bobby Allison's near-fatal wreck at Pocono in 1988 was a more immediate instance of this, since, as soon as he recovered enough to set up a press conference, he announced his retirement from NASCAR. The fact that he was 50 years old probably helped with that decision.
  - Jerry Nadeau suffered a traumatic brain injury after striking the turn three wall head-on with a hung throttle at Richmond in 2003. Due in part to the lack of understanding about Nadeau's injury at the time, he ended up with permanent brain damage from the resulting swelling, and given that another head injury would likely kill him, he's certain not to be cleared to race ever again.
  - Dale Earnhardt Jr. was sidelined for the back half of the 2016 season due to lingering concussion-like symptoms from earlier crashes. He had previously been sidelined for two races in the fall of 2012 after taking a concussion in a last-lap crash at Talladega. Although he came back for the 2017 season, he chose to retire from Cup racing at the end of that season for the sake of his health, though continues to be a contributor to the sport as the team owner of JR Motorsports and as a lap-by-lap commentator for NBC.
  - Sterling Marlin suffered a terrible crash at Kansas in 2002, which resulted in him missing the rest of the season because he suffered a cracked vertebra in his neck. Although he returned to continue racing, he wasn't the same driver as he was before the injury.
  - 2004 Cup Series Champion Kurt Busch suffered what looked like a small hit during qualifying for the 2022 Pocono race, but was diagnosed with concussion-like symptoms that never seemed to go away. He was replaced by Ty Gibbs for the rest of the season. At the Vegas playoff race, he announced he would be stepping away from full-time competition. Ultimately, it was decided that there were too many obstacles to get back to 100%, and he announced his retirement at the 2023 Coke Zero Sugar 400.
Cycling:
- Colombian cyclist Mauricio Soler crashed on the 6th stage of the 2011 Tour de Suisse. At the time, he was in second and had won the second stage, as well as generally looking to be at the top of his form. He crashed going downhill at 80 km/h, and suffered a fractured skull, cerebral edema, other fractures, and hematomas, to the point where he had to be put in a medically induced coma. Over a year later, he announced that he wouldn't try to return to the sport.
- Kristina Vogel had a serious cycling accident in June 2018, rendering her paraplegic. This is especially tragic since she was a world-class cyclist who had won several cycling races in her career, including the Olympic Games.
Figure skating:
- Skaters in general are very susceptible to this trope, both because they're participating in a sport that involves moving at a fast speed on a sheet of ice using razor-thin blades, not to mention jumping and spinning very fast in the air, and painful falls when things go wrong. Men's singles skaters are considered old in their late twenties, and ladies' skaters can be forced to retire from injury even sooner. Some coaches' beliefs that athletes must be overworked to reach their full potential do not help matters, either.
- Evgeni Plushenko developed a back/spinal problem, aggravated by his work on quadruple Lutzes and Salchows. It would eventually get bad enough that he had to withdraw after the short program warmup for the 2014 Olympics and retire completely from the sport afterwards.
- Averted repeatedly with Yuzuru Hanyu. The horrific crash into Yan Han during the free skate warm-up to the 2014 Cup of China sent him to surgery for the extensive injuries sustained, as well as the aftereffects, but it did not end his career. The recurring injury to his right ankle (forcing him to withdraw from competition in 2017 and 2021) was believed to be career-ending, but he has recovered from it multiple times, despite having to accept his 2018 Rostelecom Cup gold on crutches and skating at the 2018 Olympics, 2021 Japanese Championship, and his final competition the 2022 Olympics on painkillers for said ankle (which became massively swollen and required icing down in Beijing 2022). He remains on track for his goal to land the quadruple axel, a move previously considered physically impossible.
Gymnastics:
- Elena Mukhina was left paralysed from the neck down in 1980 while practising the extremely difficult and hazardous Thomas salto; rollout skills^note were subsequently banned for women in 1993 and, eventually, for men as well in 2017.
- Julissa Gomez was paralysed from the neck down in 1988 after smashing head-first into a vaulting horse. A further non-sporting accident in a hospital killed her a short time later. This incident led to major reforms in vaulting in general.
- Sang Lan was paralysed from the chest down in 1998 after a simple warm-up move went freakishly wrong because she was distracted by a coach.
- Sabina Cojocar was an up-and-coming star for Romania in the early 2000s but was forced to retire a year before the 2004 Olympics due to a hereditary liver condition that made it too difficult for her to train and condition to the extent necessary for elite gymnastics.
- Kerri Strug's famous vault during the 1996 Summer Olympics would end up becoming her last-ever gymnastics performance, with the ankle injury she sustained forcing her to retire shortly thereafter.
- Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson, best known for competing in the 2008 Beijing games, had to retire from gymnastics for good just before the 2012 London games due to a knee injury.
- In a variation, 2012 Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney sustained numerous separate injuries over the course of several years; she might have overcome any one of them individually, but the cumulative nature of them, as well as the fact that her coaches pressured her to keep training through them, would ultimately prove too much for her body to handle. Maroney, who had at one time professed a desire to be on the 2016 Olympic team, retired in early 2016.
Hockey:
- Toronto Maple Leafs winger Ace Bailey's NHL career came to an abrupt end during the December 13, 1933, Leafs-Bruins game when Eddie Shore, aiming for Red Horner, checked him to the ice and fractured his skull.
- In a game against the Chicago Black Hawks on January 28, 1937 Montreal centre Howie Morenz lost his balance near the boards and fell, with his skate caught. Chicago defenseman Earl Seibert tried to avoid hitting Morenz, but he was unable stop in time, falling on Morenz, breaking his leg in four places. There was severe doubt about whether he could recover enough to play again, but on March 8, still in hospital, Morenz died of a coronary embolism, caused by blood clots in his injured leg.
- On January 13, 1968, in a game between the Minnesota North Stars and the Oakland Seals, North Stars forward, Bill Masterton was carrying the puck up the ice at full speed. He passed it just as two Seals defencemen, Larry Cahan and Ron Harris, checked him. He was knocked backward and his head struck the ice hard. Very few NHL players at that time wore helmets; Masterton was not one of the few. The hit was ruled clean, but the force knocked him out before he hit the ice. Masterton bled from his nose, ears, and mouth. He was treated on the ice and in the dressing room before being rushed to the hospital. Surgeons ruled surgery was not viable due to the severity of his injuries. On January 15, Masterton died. He never regained consciousness. While his injuries and death led to more players wearing helmets, it was a slow process. The NHL did not make helmets mandatory until the 1979-80 season, and older players were exempted. Later in 1968 the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy was created to recognize the "National Hockey League player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey".
- Two incidents in particular are credited with accelerating the shift for hockey goaltenders away from the old Jason Voorhees-style fiberglass masks and towards modern cage-and-helmet masks. In 1977, Buffalo Sabres goaltender Gerry Desjardins's career ended after he was struck in the eye by a puck. Two years later in 1979, an errant stick penetrated the eyehole of Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Bernie Parent's mask. Parent was temporarily blinded in his right eye for two weeks and suffered permanent retinal damage that ended his career.
- In 1995, hockey player Travis Roy crashed head-first into the boards and severed his spine, becoming a quadriplegic, just 11 seconds into his first shift as a member of the Boston University hockey team, his boyhood dream.
- In one of the most infamous cases of Unnecessary Roughness in NHL history, Colorado Avalanche forward Steve Moore's career was cut short in 2004 when he was sucker-punched from behind by Vancouver Canucks forward Todd Bertuzzi during a game, knocking him unconscious. Bertuzzi then fell on top of Moore, driving him face-first into the ice, and two of Bertuzzi's teammates piled on. All of this broke three vertebrae in Moore's neck (though, fortunately, he was not paralyzed as a result), left him with a serious concussion, and caused him to suffer several other injuries during the fight that broke out when his teammates rushed to his defense. Despite attempts to stage a comeback the following year, he continued to suffer concussion-like symptoms and was never medically cleared to play again.
Other competitions:
- Bill McLaren was on the verge of playing his first game for Scotland's national rugby union team when he contracted a near-fatal case of TB and was forced to give up playing. He went on to become a renowned commentator, earning him the nickname "the voice of rugby".
- It was strictly speaking a hobby rather than his career, but Henry VIII of England was very fond of the sport of jousting until a serious accident in the lists stopped him at the age of 44. This was very significant because he seemed likely to die for a while, the shock may have caused his then-pregnant wife to miscarry, and modern historians theorize that he may have suffered brain damage that turned him from a tough but sane and competent king into a dangerous tyrant.
- Maureen Connolly, one of the greatest women's tennis players of the 1950s, had her career end suddenly when her right leg was crushed in a horse-riding accident at age 19.^note
- Dick Francis was a prominent jockey in National Hunt horse racing in the post-WWII era, even winning one British season riding title. However, after a 1957 racing injury, his employer, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, urged him to retire for his long-term health. He acquiesced and started an even more successful second career as an author of crime fiction.
- Competitors in mind sports suffer career-ending injuries too. Chess grandmaster Milko Bobotsov was a world-class player until he suffered a near-fatal stroke in 1972 after a tournament. He survived but was never the same again.
- Brenna Bean was a talented pole vaulter in high school and was recruited to compete in college; however, a spinal cord injury sustained in a car accident shortly after finishing high school ended this dream, since it left her completely paralyzed from the chest down.
- Horses have notoriously delicate legs which not only bear proportionally much more weight than humans', but have very little flesh and veins on them, slowing down the body's healing processes. This means that any racehorse which suffers a serious leg injury will have to retire at best or be euthanized at worst. Some older media will say that any leg injury spells death for a horse, but thanks to modern veterinary science, this isn't quite true. Two famous racehorses that were euthanized for leg injuries were Silence Suzuka and Rice Shower— in fact, both had to be put down right on the track because they were unable to be humanely moved. Both horses are featured in Umamusume: Pretty Derby (2018), albeit with the former's namesake being Spared by the Adaptation and simply unable to race following her injury, while the latter's injury isn't portrayed, but the game does have special commentary for the namesake character winning the Takarazuka Kinen, referencing the commentary of that race.
Athletes who became famous as performers:
- Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson was a basketball center in his native Iceland before it was discovered he'd been playing with a broken bone in his ankle. After toughing it out for a few years, he finally called it quits in 2008—but resurfaced in 2011 as the bodybuilder, strongman, and actor he's known as today.
- Matt Smith originally wanted to be a professional association footballer and was a rising star as the striker and captain of Leicester City's youth team. However, a back injury put an end to his early career. Considering he's now a world-famous actor and the Eleventh Doctor (and got to show off his still impressive football skills in the latter), we're going to go out on a limb and presume he's not too bitter about it.
- Dean Cain's college football career was ended by a shoulder injury.
- Bill Fagerbakke's college football career was ended by a knee injury.
- Michael Landon was a javelin thrower at USC before he tore his shoulder ligaments.
- Country Music singer Jake Owen originally wanted to be a professional golfer, but a serious accident while wakeboarding resulted in reconstructive surgery that left him unable to continue.
- Latin pop legend Julio Iglesias was a goalkeeper for Real Madrid Castilla, the reserve team of the legendary Spanish football club, until injuries suffered in an auto accident left him unable to walk for two years. While he was hospitalized, a nurse gave him a guitar to keep his hands occupied, and he discovered a gift for music.
- Country star Chad Brownlee was a first-round NHL draft pick until he messed up his knee in a game.
- Rammstein vocalist Till Lindemann had been a competitive swimmer in his youth and even qualified to participate in the 1980 Olympics. An abdominal muscle injury (and a falling out with the coaches) had put the brakes on that. It's entirely possible that if his swimming career hadn't been cut short, Rammstein may not have formed at all.
- A lot of dancers tend to become actors or similar performers later on due to accidents. Summer Glau, for instance, got her start as an actress after a broken toe forced her to put her career as a ballerina on hold.
- Similarly, Michael DeLorenzo was to pursue a career as a professional ballet dancer, had been accepted to the prestigious American Ballet Theatre and trained alongside fellow student Mikhail Baryshnikov, but a dance injury he suffered ended his plans.
- Costas Mandylor was a professional soccer player for both Australia and Greece, but stress fractures to his shins eventually forced him to give up the sport.
- Matt Smith isn't the only former Doctor Who actor to have been a footballer: Bradley Walsh originally started life as a footballer for several non-league teams, until ankle injuries caused him to retire at 22. He then turned to, amongst other things, a performer at a holiday camp when he was spotted, and recruited, by ITV.
- French-Algerian actor Dali Benssalah (No Time to Die) started off as a Muay Thai practitioner. He became champion of France in the discipline in 2011, but a serious injury forced him to quit the sport.
- Gordon Ramsay was originally tipped for a professional football career with top-ranking Scottish side Rangers, but a succession of serious leg and knee injuries in his late teens forced him to give up this dream. He turned instead to professional cooking.
- South Park animator Ryan Quincy's surfing career was ended by an unknown injury.

Real Life — Other

Acting and performing:
- Actor Christopher Reeve, best known for his role as Superman in the 1978 film series, was forced to quit acting in 1995 when a cervical spinal injury from a horse-riding accident paralyzed him. However, he would return a few times, in an updated version of Rear Window, and a guest-starring role on Smallville until his death in 2004.
- Dudley Moore's final years saw him slowly succumb to progressive supranuclear palsy, which ended his dual careers as an actor and pianist — he lost a role in The Mirror Has Two Faces due to losing the ability to remember lines (as this happened before the fatal diagnosis; he was regarded as merely unprofessional at best), and the illness slowly robbed him of the dexterity he needed to play piano.
- Roy Horn, of the stage magician duo Siegfried and Roy, got infamously mauled by a white tiger during a show on October 3, 2003. Their show, until then one of the most successful in Las Vegas history, came to an immediate halt, and the incident was one of the contributing factors (along with protests by animal rights groups and the success of Cirque du Soleil) in ending the use of exotic animals in magic acts.
- Illusionist Wayne Dobson was a big star in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He's still very active as a devisor of magic tricks and is well-known and respected in the industry, but hasn't been in the public eye since mobility issues caused by multiple sclerosis led him to step back from performing in the mid-1990s.
- Akira Kamiya was one of the biggest names of Japanese voice acting in the 1980s and 1990s, best known for voicing characters like Kenshiro, Ryo Saeba, and many, many Hot-Blooded Super Robot Genre protagonists that required him to yell a lot of attack names (chief amongst them is Ryouma Nagare). Not to mention, he tended to reprise his mecha series roles if characters appeared in Super Robot Wars, resulting in him recording a lot more yelling. Eventually, his lungs gave out and he has stated that he could no longer do the constant shouting his characters was known for anymore, forcing him to stick to roles that don't require him to yell a lot (for example, the aforementioned Ryo Saeba). This is also why Super Robot Wars slowly phased out the usage of series that starred Kamiya in concern for his lung health (only bringing them back if archival audio could be used instead of requiring him to do new voice work).
- Kenji Shibata, who played Daimon Tatsumi in Kyūkyū Sentai GoGoV was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor near the end of the series's filming, forcing him to undertake five different surgeries. Although he appeared healthy in return performances as Daimon following the end of GoGoV, Shibata's condition steadily deteriorated, which heavily affected his motor skills and ability to perform. He retired from show business in 2007 due to ill health, now requiring a cane to walk.
- Chris Ayres suffered from end-stage COPD in 2017 which left him hospitalized and necessitated surgery. In the years following, he would take on fewer voice acting roles, with his most famous role, Frieza, being passed on to his understudy Daman Mills (save for Dragon Ball Super: Broly, for which he would reprise his role one final time, while being ready to leave the recording booth immediately should a lung transplant be made available). He died in late 2021 from complications from the disease.
- Tom Kane is a well-known name among Western animation fans, famous for his near pitch-perfect impersonations of Ian McKellen as Gandalf and Magneto, not to mention his roles as Yoda in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Professor Utonium and Him in The Powerpuff Girls. However, his career was drastically cut short after he had a stroke affecting his speech functions. While Kane recovered, in September 2021 his daughter posted on his Facebook page that he chose to retire early due to long-term apraxia (difficulty in being able to smoothly transition syllables) as a result of the stroke, leading to the role of Yoda being passed on to Piotr Michael for further Star Wars animated projects.
- Toshiko Fujita was a well-known Japanese voice actress with many famous roles, including Mamiya in Fist of the North Star, Rui Kisugi in Cat's Eye, and Taichi Yagami in Digimon Adventure. In the 2010s, however she developed breast cancer which left her ill and unable to work after 2012. Her final role would be a Role Reprise of Dai from Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai for the video game Jump Force, released in 2019 — the year following her death.
- The '50s Mr. Fanservice Steve Reeves, best known for the 1958 Hercules film, saw the beginning of the end of his career thanks to an on-set injury while shooting the 1959 Sergio Leone Sword and Sandal film The Last Days of Pompeii. Reeves dislocated his shoulder while doing a chariot stunt and re-injured it while shooting an underwater scene, and with each subsequent film, the chronic pain caused by the injury made it increasingly difficult for him to do his own stunts. He made his last movie, the Spaghetti Western A Long Ride from Hell, in 1968 (after a four-year hiatus) and then retired from film, spending the rest of his life as a horse breeder and a natural bodybuilder.
- Two things are generally held to have killed Rose McGowan's career. The first was the infamous studio mogul Harvey Weinstein having her blacklisted from his productions after she attempted to go public about him raping her. The second, and the one that ensured that her Career Resurrection from Charmed and Grindhouse would be stillborn, was a car accident in 2007 that left her face badly mangled, forcing her to get substantial reconstructive surgery that didn't quite fix all the damage. Since McGowan had been known as a sex symbol before then, an accident like that was especially damaging for her career, and she's mostly been in little-seen indie films since.
- Japanese stuntman Masato Akada, best known for his work on the Super Sentai series, suffered a severe spinal cord injury in 1992 while filming in Hokkaido (possibly for Tokusou Exceedraft, in which he was one of the suit actors for DraftRedder), leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.
- Karen Sue Trent, a child actress from the 1950s and 1960s best known for her recurring role as Penny Woods on Leave It to Beaver, suffered an unspecified injury during a scene in the final episode of The Rifleman where her character was sinking in quicksand; with the injury ultimately causing her to quit acting immediately afterwards.
- Most of Bruce Willis's infamous Money, Dear Boy roles from the mid-2010s onward were revealed upon his retirement in 2022 to be the result of a diagnosis of aphasia, a cognitive disorder that makes it difficult to comprehend written or spoken words. Knowing that he wouldn't be able to keep working for much longer as his condition got worse, especially with him having fallen off the A-list since his '90s heyday, he began taking well-paying Advertised Extra roles in Direct-to-Video films in order to ensure that he'd be able to comfortably retire. Sadly, in 2023, it was announced that his condition had evolved into frontotemporal dementia.
- In 1991 while shooting Doc Hollywood, Michael J. Fox started showing symptoms of early-onset Parkinson's disease when he was just 29 years old and would be properly diagnosed with the illness soon after. By 1998, the year he went public with his diagnosis, the disease had left him debilitated and stalled his career, forcing him to leave his starring role on Spin City, with most of his roles since being either in voice acting (most notably the voices of Stuart Little and Milo Thatch in Atlantis: The Lost Empire) or characters with Written-In Infirmities.
- Ironically, Kill Bill, the film that gave Uma Thurman her short-lived Career Resurrection, also prevented her from having the long-term career as an Action Hero that seemed to await her after its success. During production, she suffered a bad neck injury while performing a stunt that director Quentin Tarantino pressured her to do herself with No Stunt Double, despite having voiced her reservations beforehand about the unsafe conditions. Not only did the incident do lasting damage to the working relationship between Thurman and Tarantino (it would be over a decade before they reconciled), but the injury gave her chronic neck pain that she has struggled with ever since, preventing her from taking on the kind of action-heavy roles that Kill Bill demonstrated she was gifted at.
- This trope is the reason why Danny Trejo does not do his own stunts even though he started his career in the entertainment industry as a stuntman and fight coordinator himself. He believes that it's little more than glory-chasing and that it can derail an entire production if something goes wrong.
- Curly Howard of The Three Stooges was forced to retire from comedy after suffering a debilitating stroke in 1946 while making the short Half-Wits Holiday. His brother Shemp Howard would take his place as the third Stooge until his own death in 1955.
- Veteran comic actor Vernon Dent (best known for his work with The Three Stooges and Harry Langdon) was forced to retire from acting in the mid 1950s when he went blind due to diabetes.
- Tim Curry suffered a stroke in 2012 and has been using a wheelchair ever since. Like Michael J. Fox above, he adapted by taking voice roles, with his live-action characters having a Written-In Infirmity.
- Famous voice actor Don Messick, who was best known for voicing Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters such as Boo-Boo Bear and Scooby-Doo, saw his career come to an end in 1996 after suffering a stroke during a recording session, which caused him to retire from voice acting. The following year, he suffered another stroke and died.
- Meghan Black, best known for voicing Rogue in X-Men: Evolution, retired from acting in 2005 after having a third of her tongue surgically removed to treat cancer. Since then her only onscreen work has been a minor role in an episode of The Haunting Hour.
Music:
- Immortal guitarist and lyricist Demonaz Doom Occulta was forced to abandon the former role because of severe tendinitis in his arms, though he is still considered an active member by the band. Demonaz eventually was able to return to playing guitar with the band and took over lead vocals from Abbath after his departure.
- Former Suffocation guitarist Doug Cerrito will almost certainly never be involved in music again due to crippling arthritis.
- In 2008, Deftones bassist Chi Cheng was seriously injured in a car accident, leaving him in a semi-conscious state and ending his career. He died five years later from a heart attack.
- Unearth drummer Nick Pierce narrowly subverted this after sustaining a back injury sometime after joining the band. He left the injury, a slipped disc, only partially treated for several years, and the disc began to calcify and push up against his spine, eventually piercing it and causing it to leak fluid. This led to his leg atrophying to the point that it was beginning to noticeably wither, which eventually forced him to pull off the band's 2016 Fury Tour after playing with excruciating back and leg pain for the first three and a half weeks of the tour. Back surgery to more fully correct the injury wasn't initially as effective as hoped, and he spent the rest of the year on the sidelines working to recover while the band toured with a fill-in.^note He was ultimately able to recover and rejoined the band for a mini-tour at the beginning of 2017.
- Megadeth broke up from 2002-04 because of Dave Mustaine's subversion due to nerve damage (caused by him falling asleep with his left arm draped over a chair back). Mustaine also became a born-again Christian during his recovery.
- Ultimately subverted by Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. On his last day of work in a sheet metal shop, he accidentally cut off the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his right hand. He thought his music career was over until his supervisor played him a record by jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who only had two fingers on his fret hand. This inspired Tony to continue in music. He made prosthetic tips for the two fingers he lost, then down-tuned his guitar a full step to make it easier to bend the strings. This gave Black Sabbath their signature sound.
- Subverted by Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen. Despite losing his left arm in a car accident, the band developed a one-armed drumkit for Allen.
- Shred guitarist Jason Becker was put out of commission due to Lou Gehrig's disease. He can still compose music using a computer, though, so the trope is ultimately subverted.
- Drake Bell injured his wrist in a way that he supposedly could never play guitar again. It later turned out that he could still play.
- Blues rock legend Dr. John started out as a guitarist and only switched to the piano (with which he became famous) after he was shot in the hand during a bar fight, suffering a permanent loss of movement in one finger that left it too stiff to play guitar but capable of pressing a key.
- After suffering a brain aneurysm in 1995, R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry left the group in 1997 and became a farmer, but has occasionally returned to one-off performances, like R.E.M.'s 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
- AC/DC:
  - Lead singer Brian Johnson retired from touring in 2016, with the official reason for his departure being hearing problems that made it unsafe for him to continue performing with the band. Johnson himself, however, claims that his hearing problems were not caused by performing but from neglecting to wear ear protection during a car race and that the other members of the band blew his injuries out of proportion to justify forcing him out. Ultimately, Johnson would return to both the band in 2020 and the stage in 2023, subverting the trope.
  - Co-founder Malcolm Young was forced to retire in 2014 when he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. He died in 2017.
- Jeff Becerra, frontman of Possessed, was shot and left paralyzed in a botched robbery in 1989. Ultimately subverted in that while he can no longer play the bass, he still performs lead vocals.
- Ex-Morning Musume member Aika Mitsui had to graduate from the group earlier than she wanted due to a particularly bad foot injury. After spending a few years in New Zealand to study English, she now mainly works under Hello! Project as a reporter and middleman for overseas promotion.
- Averted by Marc Almond. In 2004, he was involved in a motorbike crash that nearly left him dead and might easily have ended his singing career. However, within a few years, he had recovered sufficiently to start singing again.
- Indie rockers The Long Blondes disbanded in 2008 after guitarist and lyricist Dorian Cox suffered a stroke. While he survived, Cox was unable to play guitar for several years and the band decided not to continue without him.
- Quincy Jones was forced to quit playing the trumpet after suffering an aneurysm. The doctors had to implant a steel plate which they feared could come loose if he were to play again. He subsequently turned to producing music.
- Cellist Jacqueline du Pré was forced to retire from performing in 1973 at the age of 28 due to multiple sclerosis. The disease would eventually claim her life 14 years later.
- Conductor Seiji Ozawa had originally trained to be a concert pianist but moved to conducting after injuring two of his fingers in a rugby match.
- In early 2019, when he was 70, Ozzy Osbourne suffered a bad fall during his final tour that necessitated surgical repair, which was unfortunately botched. Over the next five years, he underwent six more surgeries to correct what the first guy messed up, and the fall "activated" his particular rare, early-onset form of Parkinson's Disease, complicating his recovery and putting an end to his touring career. He would record two albums and did three live performances with great difficulty during this period to the point that he became wheelchair bound in early 2025, and passed away only seventeen days after this final performance from a heart attack complicated by his Parkinson's.
- Two members of The Dillinger Escape Plan suffered career-ending injuries. Bassist Adam Doll was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident, while guitarist Brian Benoit suffered nerve damage in his hand.
- Subverted by guitarist Les Paul, who shattered his right arm and elbow in a car accident, and while doctors were able to save the arm, the elbow could not be repaired, which would normally mark the end of one's instrument-playing days since the arm would have to be set in a fixed position. However, Paul's music was so important to him that rather than give it up, he had the doctors permanently set his arm to the angle he needed it to be at to play the guitar.
- Somewhat subverted by Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton. In 2008, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. While he was able to continue playing for Judas Priest full-time for about a decade, in 2018 his condition worsened, leading the band to hire Andy Sneap to take his place in live shows. However, Tipton still writes music for the band and plays on the albums, and if he feels well enough to, he joins his bandmates on stage for a few songs.
- Narrowly averted by Yngwie Malmsteen after he managed to crash his car into a tree, resulting in him spending almost a week in a coma and doctors believing that he would lose all feeling in his right arm. While the latter fortunately didn't end up happening, the experience combined with his mother dying from cancer around the same time almost made him give up on music. And his following album (Odyssey) had a much more somber tone than his prior works.
- Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill fame had to put her band Le Tigre on hiatus in 2005 due to illness, which turned out to be Lyme disease. After five years in semi-retirement, she tried to come back in 2010 with the band The Julie Ruin, but that too got derailed in 2014 when her disease worsened, forcing her to cancel a tour and go into treatment. She was finally declared Lyme-free in 2015 and started touring and recording new music again.
- Joe Bonsall of The Oak Ridge Boys was one of four members of the old-school country/rock band to make it to fifty years as a member. However, over the last few years, he was dealing with the slow onset of a neuromuscular condition that affected his legs, limiting his mobility and making it hard to perform live. While he was part of the band when it announced its American Made Farewell Tour in 2023, he retired from touring several months into the tour and handed the baton over to young tenor Ben James. Bonsall would ultimately pass away less than six months after his retirement, with it being revealed that he had been battling ALS for several years.
- Yuki, the drummer for Versailles, retired from performing at the end of 2023 due to musician's dystonia in his right leg; the nerve disorder severely affected his ability to play the bass drums.
- British rapper Louise "Lady Sovereign" Harman has not released any music since 2009. Though she had brought up the topic in interviews, she only revealed in 2022 that her inactivity was the result of her being diagnosed with cyclic vomiting syndrome, a rare illness, leaving it unlikely that she'll have a comeback anytime soon.
- At some point during his solo career, Indio Solari started developing Parkinson, something he revealed during a gig in the city of Tandil (Argentina) in 2016. By that time, Parkinson was doing no favors to his career; this coupled with the incidents during a gig in Olavarría in 2017 all but ensured that Indio won't return to a stage to perform in front of a live audience. He recorded another album after that gig and, afterwards, declared his Indio persona "expired"^note. He still does songwriting (retiring from singing at some point during The New '20s) and Los Fundamentalistas del Aire Acondicionado still do live shows without him, though.
Dance:
- Soloist Kathryn Morgan of the New York City Ballet was five years into a very promising career (she was on the fast track to becoming a principal ballerina with the company) when she was hit by Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which unfortunately put an end to her time with the company. She has since made a name for herself as a YouTube dance guru, and after seven years away, subverted the trope when she joined the incredibly well-respected Miami City Ballet as a soloist in 2019. As of 2023, she is married to former Ballet West soloist Chris Sellars, with whom she has opened a dance school in southern California, and still dances as a guest artist with ballet companies around the country.
- Just barely averted by world-famous ballerina Alicia Alonso, whose struggle with a detached retina and subsequent blindness nearly ended her career. After a third and final surgery, she was put on complete bed rest for a full year. She went on to become one of the greatest prima ballerinas in history.
  Alonso: I danced in my mind. Blind, motionless, flat on my back, I taught myself to dance Giselle.
Art:
- Manga author Daisuke Ashihara succumbed to a form of juvenile arthritis that rendered it incredibly painful for him to draw, such that his series, World Trigger, had to be put on indefinite hiatus in November 2016. This overlaps with a subverted but also downplayed example of Dream-Crushing Handicap, as he had this arthritis from the moment he started his career, and it did hurt for him to draw right from the start, but it didn't become debilitating until later. In late October 2018, he managed to avert this trope, with him recovering enough to continue drawing World Trigger, and with the series moving to a monthly magazine so as not to stress his bones so much.
Military:
- Saint Ignatius of Loyola became a major reformer of the Catholic Church after a cannonball injury to the leg forced him to give up battle.
- Subverted with General Lefebvre. He was severely wounded in the arm while fighting the Austrians in 1798, which left him unable to exercise command, and he began a career as a Senator instead; indeed, when Napoleon created his eighteen original Marshals in 1804, he was one of the four generals who received the baton as a reward for past service to the Republic and was not meant to see the battlefields again. However, it turned out that the wound was not as crippling as was initially thought, and Lefebvre went on to fight in most campaigns of the Empire, including the invasion of Russia.
- Played straight in a sense by the infamous turncoat Benedict Arnold. The knee injury sustained at the Battle of Saratoga caused him to be given the military governorship of Philadelphia to recuperate. It was during this time that all the initial charges of using his position to profit were made against him, causing him to seek out the British. He would serve as a general in the British Army, but for all intents and purposes, this was the end of his career in the American Continental Army.
- Aaron Burr had to resign his commission and leave the Continental Army after a heat stroke during the Battle of Monmouth severe enough to leave him comatose for several days. It became apparent after he woke up that he wasn't going to be in any shape to do much of anything, let alone fight. He did eventually end up mostly recovering, and even rejoining the war effort (unofficially), but his health was permanently damaged and he showed symptoms of brain damage for the rest of his life.
Politics:
- Representative Gabrielle "Gabby" Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head by a crazed gunman while meeting with her constituents on January 8, 2011. Miraculously she survived, but the extensive recovery and her impaired cognitive and motor skills killed her once-promising political career, and she resigned from her post one year later. She would make a small comeback as a gun control activist, and would later help her husband Mark Kelly get elected to the Senate in 2020.
- Former White House Press Secretary James Brady, who served under Ronald Reagan, had his career abruptly ended at the age of 40 when he was shot in the head during the attempted assassination of Reagan on March 30, 1981. The injuries caused slurred speech, memory problems, and permanent paralysis from the waist down for the rest of his life until his death in 2014. Despite this, he remained in office until Reagan's term ended, with his replacements, Larry Speakes and Marlin Fitzwater both serving as "Acting White House Press Secretary" during Reagan's term (though Fitzwater became official Press Secretary under Reagan's successor George H. W. Bush), meaning that his career didn't officially end until January 20, 1989, when he was 48.
- Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) originally planned to leave in 2027 only to make an early retirement in 2023. Inhofe later revealed that he retired early because of his ongoing symptoms of long COVID, which had severely limited his ability to perform day-to-day activities, and he would succumb to it in 2024.
Defied by Chelsie Hill, an aspiring dancer who became a paraplegic after a car accident during her senior year in high school. Rather than giving up on dance, she simply moved to promote adaptive dancing for people in wheelchairs and started an organization called the Rollettes to inspire other women who use wheelchairs to do the same.
A possibly-apocryphal story claims that, during The Hundred Years War, whenever the French captured an English longbowman, they would cut off his middle finger so that, even in the event of his being rescued, he would never be able to draw a bow again. You can probably guess how still-serving bowmen would act in response.
Apparently, the shield fracture Éowyn suffers in The Lord of the Rings is Truth in Television for knights and other melée warriors. While her arm heals, this sort of injury would realistically put a shield maiden off the field for the rest of her life.
While Dave Sanders, James Tucker, and Andy Peterson, the crew of FedEx Flight 705, were successful in their attempt to fight off the would-be hijacker Auburn R. Calloway, the injuries they sustained in the fight were severe enough to prevent all three of them from ever being medically cleared to fly commercially again.

Career-Ending Injury
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Career-Ending Injury 12 Following

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Career-Ending Injury
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