So let's keep going with this third one. "No matter what she's accused of doing or how mysterious her origins are, the hero will always be ready to fight to the death for any girl he met three seconds ago."
This is a cliche that actually makes me hate cliches in general because really, not only is it not as common as it should be, it's also somehow a reason why people tend to hate RPGs, or any other game with the "save the princess" mantra which this cliche actually stems from. Not every RPG female is a mysterious sort of character, and not every male lead is energetic enough to gut-bust his way through opposition just to either save her at some point, or to prove how strong he is.
This rule is also apparently called the Hiro rule, after Lunar 2's Hiro, who of course would do this for Lucia. It's not TOO obvious, especially in the beginning since Lucia is clearly stronger than Hiro while being just as mysterious. Luna and Alex from Lunar 1 are actually better examples of this, as Alex's determination is in all honesty much better than Hiro's.
There's not a whole lot of other examples outside Lunar I can think of with mysterious girls and steadfast heroes. Langrisser II has one with Erwin and Liana, while Growlanser II has one with Wein and Arieta, although in that case it seems like the two knew each other before hand and the circumstances involving the latter actually end up being a lot more dire. Dart and Shana in The Legend of Dragoon is probably a direct case of this rule too, as is the titular Lufia in her game given the main hero's desire to do what he can for her. Not to forget Wain and Seena in Lufia 3.
An even harder case to pull out is Final Fantasy VIII, which again, I'm still playing as of this writing, but Squall sure as hell didn't feel super-heroic when Rinoa was in trouble in the first disc. Yet somehow, it's at the third disc where his inward personality reveals he is in fact fighting for her, which honestly just sort of came out of the blue. This is a case of the girl being mysterious (I think, haven't really played enough of this game to fully see if its true) but the hero not really feeling like fighting for her.
But in most cases, there's not much in the way of a mysterious girl most of the time that the hero actually fights for. It's usually a girl who's a commonplace female character without any mysterious backgrounds to speak of. Feena in Grandia sure is adventurous and popular, but not necessarily as mysterious. You can say the same for Elena in Grandia II as well, as she's a commonplace priest. Can't say the same for Millenia naturally, but she's a completely different character altogether. And Tia and Selan in Lufia II don't strike as mysterious. Iris does, but you don't see Maxim fighting for that character. Cecilia and Lilka in the first two Wild Arms games are sorceresses, but neither are mysterious, while Kanon and Marivel in Wild Arms 2 are significantly more mysterious but neither are characters Ashley fights for. In Romancing SaGa 3, Sara's the only really mysterious one out of the main females, but nobody really fights for her all the time until probably the very end of the game anyways. Sharl and Muse are examples of this though, although Sharl's not a main character so it doesn't apply to the cliche fully. A gender-inverted version is in Rhapsody, where Cornet, the would-be princess, fights to reclaim Prince Ferdinand, yet neither character is mysterious in the slightest. Even Thousand Arms, which manages to imply Sodina as the main female lead, just pulls the "hero" part of the cliche, since Meis decides (and fails hilariously) to fight to prove his worth to her. Nobody would know that Sodina is mysterious until later though.
So yeah, I don't like this rule. Who does? It's basically "save the princess" except said princess is usually someone moreso tied in with your average JRPG plot than just being a static princess/love interest/whatever. And only a few games, and even fewer franchises, pull it often.
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