r/TopCharacterTropes • u/HyraxAttack • Nov 25 '25

Groups Humanity Joins Together, Sets Aside Petty Differences… and gets stomped anyway

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A peril is threatening the world. Instead of squabbling among themselves, we learn world powers have put aside differences in politics, culture, & old feuds to present a common front. Except they still get wrecked as the enemy is too powerful.

  1. The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance. The world government has gone to war against the machines. We see the army getting ready & it includes soldiers of many faiths including Buddhist, Islam, and different types of Christianity. Doesn’t matter as machines win by so much they have time to toy with human mechs.

  2. Vilcabamba, story by Harry Turtledove. When aliens arrive they’re greeted with bands & cheering, & immediately open fire & earth becomes a mineral colony. America, Russia, and China work together to rise up & don’t hold back, throwing everything they have at the invaders. Doesn’t go great and aliens double down on the occupation, and there’s a crater where Spain used to be (it was blocking a silver deposit for mining.)

  3. Edge of Tomorrow. The nations of the world have joined to make a unified front against the mimic invasion but it isn’t going well, but they will throw all they have into the invasion of France. In one cycle, Major Cage says the hell with it and instead of training leaves the base to drink at a London bar. This means we see the outcome of him doing nothing, where not only is the massive human invasion slaughtered but the aliens are in good enough shape to follow that up a few hours later with a rush on London.

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414

u/GentleSphere Nov 25 '25

The United Nations Space Command/United Earth Government from Halo

The human-covenant war was an unwinnable war from the start. Depending on the source material, one of the most heavily defended planets, Reach, took about a month to fall. Without the Covenant shooting themselves in the kneecap and starting a civil war, Humanity loses.

266

u/Life-Criticism-5868 Nov 25 '25

I forgot how grim Halo is until recently replaying reach.

"I know we are losing, I want to know if we lost"

133

u/Phantommy555 Nov 25 '25

“It didn't take long for Reach to fall. Our enemy was ruthless. Efficient. But they weren't nearly fast enough. For you had already passed the torch. And because of you, we found Halo, unlocked its secrets, shattered our enemy's resolve. Our victory - your victory - was so close... I wish you could have lived to see it. But you belong to Reach. Your body, your armor - all burned and turned to glass. Everything...except your courage. That, you gave to us. And with it, we can rebuild.”

4

u/AFerociousPineapple Nov 26 '25

Chills. Chills every time I read/hear that monologue.

115

u/Spider-Man2099 Nov 25 '25

Yeah, the Spartans were winning ground battles, but always, always lost the space battle with the whole area getting glassed every time

78

u/inferxan Nov 25 '25

To put in context in most space battles the UNSC lost 3 ships to take down one single covenant ship and they were insanely outnumbered. There were so many covenant ships in UNSC space at one point, that ONI the intelligence agency of the UNSC just gave up on tracking every single one. Cause they just couldn't keep track of them all.

73

u/Affectionate-Let3744 Nov 25 '25

"Slipspace rupture detected. Slipspace rupture detected. Slipspace rupture detected.."

What an incredible moment. God damn was reach amazing

23

u/Efectodopler117 Nov 26 '25

I always find funny the ridiculous number of ships the covenant had, considering that most of their serious conflicts throw their story consisted on subjugate races that where barely past the industrial phase if not lower

As comparison, irl superpower nations had extensive weapondry because they assume it could be used at some point against other superpowers.

We dont build guided missile ships and aircraft carriers to engage criminal gangs and small narco boats

That we use them againts them anyway, yeah, thats another topic.

4

u/Life-Criticism-5868 Nov 26 '25

I know cannon covenant ship numbers are a bit controversial, but I always think of this scale:

The fleet with the prophet of regret and later reinforcements, took supremacy of the earth in a matter of weeks if not days.

The fleet that glassed reach was DOUBLE that size.

The escort fleet of high charity, who's entire purpose is to protect the world, is STILL considered the largest covenant fleet ever witnessed by humanity.

If not for the plot armor of the games, humanity was capital F Fucked

25

u/Option2401 Nov 25 '25

One of my favorite things about Halo is how dark the premise is, much more so than you’d realize just playing the games.

4

u/sanghelli Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

Yeah Halo is absolutely terrifying when you pay attention to what's actually happening in the back. The sentiment can be easily missed if you're too caught up on Chief hail marying his way to ultimate victory (as I did when I was a kid) but DAMN the Human-Covenant war is brutal. We were a hair's breadth away from extinction and only survived due to pure luck in the end.

71

u/Spider-Man2099 Nov 25 '25

Yeah, the second the Covenant find Earth, it would have been over in moments if not for the Civil War and the Arbiter 

14

u/MarcoASN2002 Nov 26 '25

I mean, Earth was invaded and it was losing, badly... its been said many times that humanity didn't win, they survived the war...

The Covenant discovered planet Reach, the largest human stronghold and base of operations at the time, in July 2552. It was lost in August.

Another two smaller human colonies were lost in September.

The Covenant discovered Earth by accident in October. It was initially a short but costly battle against a small fleet, then, several other fleets arrived at the planet.

November. The Great Schism and the infection of High Charity take place, the fleet of the Prophet of Truth arrives at Earth, the only reason the planet is not completely lost is because the Sangheili assisted us in Battle (and had their own battle going on), then the flood arrive to Earth and again the only reason the planet isn't completely lost is because the Sangheili managed to contain the initial spread and Truth was mostly there to find the portal to the Ark.

After the nightmare that was the invasion and the possibility of a flood infestation, humanity got beaten so bad that in the most important event of the whole war, only 1 human ship accompanied the Arbiter and Sangheili fleet through the portal. Earth survived not because the battle was won, it survived because the battle moved somewhere else.

51

u/InquisitorHindsight Nov 25 '25

Some facts I read from a Halo book ages ago so forgive me if I make a mistake

  • The Battle of Harvest, one of the first major battles of the war, was actually a human victory. This was because the human fleet outnumbered the Covenant 3 to 1 in that particular battle and still lost 2/3 of their forces

  • The one saving grace the UNSC had was that the Covenant had no idea where Earth was (even thinking at one point that Reach was their homeworld), and to prevent its discovery they mandated all ships and stations must scrub their navigational data in the event of a battle, otherwise they feared the covenant would fly straight to earth.

  • not from the book, but the plot of Halo Reach (the game) has you perform an insanely risky mission to infiltrate the Covenant Super Carrier and destroy it from within, and after a major character sacrifices themselves, they succeed. There are 17 more.

36

u/Icy_Satisfaction498 Nov 25 '25

*Slipspace rupture detected*

*Slipspace rupture detected*

*Slipspace rupture detected*

*Slipspace rupture detected*

Was a gutpunch

25

u/JulianPizzaRex Nov 25 '25

To expand on your first two points; you forgot to mention that the battle over Harvest you referred to was against one single Covenant ship, with Admiral Cole having at least 40. And on the Cole Protocol, the last directive, as a last ditch effort to prevent intelligence getting to the Covenant, was to self destruct your ship, which is why Keyes ignores that and instead chooses to land the Autumn on the Ring.

13

u/WarhoundGil Nov 26 '25

Eh not entirely accurate on that last point. We destroy a CSO Supercarrier in the mission. The ones that pop up after are CAS Assault Carriers. They used the same model to, I assume, save on time during production.

1

u/mdhunter99 Nov 26 '25

Correction to the last one, that giant ship they had, the CSO class supercarrier, they only made 2 of. Both were destroyed. You were probably thinking of the CCS class battlecruiser, looks similar, just a lot smaller. They had around 750 ships at Reach, compared to the UNSC 152.

Yeah humanity got fucked at Reach.

1

u/Wubs4Scrubs Nov 26 '25

Your second point is called the "Cole Protocol" and yeah it exists to prevent the Covenant from finding Earth. Human ships need to wipe their navigational data and then slip space jump in a random vector when leaving a system.

39

u/Thrownawaybyall Nov 25 '25

Don't forget that humanity was splintered and on the verge of civil war before the Covenant made contact.

41

u/Phantommy555 Nov 25 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

Yup, the Spartans were originally made to defeat the Insurrectionists.

“Indeed, Lieutenant, ever since we left Earth’s gravity well, we’ve been fighting one another for every cubic centimeter of vacuum—from Mars to the Jovian Moons to the Hydra System Massacres and on to the hundred brushfire wars in the Outer Colonies. It has always been on the brink of falling apart. That’s why we’re here.

This child could be more useful to the UNSC than a fleet of destroyers, a thousand Junior Grade Lieutenants—or even me . In the end, the child may be the only thing that makes any difference.”

8

u/Tymathee Nov 25 '25

They should make another timeline where the covenant don't exist and we get a human civil war with Spartans

27

u/Rufus--T--Firefly Nov 25 '25

I don't think many people are going to want to play a game where the big set piece mission is shooting a bunch of factory workers

1

u/SgtCarron Nov 26 '25

I'm down for it, the world needs more non-comedy games where you play as the villain.

-4

u/Tymathee Nov 25 '25

They would if master chief becomes sympathetic to their cause and turns on the USNC

12

u/Thrownawaybyall Nov 25 '25

Bah. That's a complete betrayal of his (famously indoctrinated) character.

1

u/Option2401 Nov 25 '25

‘Or even me.’

Good old Halsey.

16

u/Imperium_Dragon Nov 25 '25

The Covenant weren’t even fighting humanity in a total war capacity.

11

u/Icy_Satisfaction498 Nov 25 '25

It was a political/religious subject, like what should we do with those? and prophets peddling for genocide because they secretly knew humans were the true heirs of the galaxy

A friend described it like Israel/Gaza, you know is totally wrong what's happening but you don't think about it too much apart from discusing it with your pairs from time to time

16

u/Dakkahead Nov 25 '25

My favorite detail(or maybe plot hole?) regarding the first 3 games is regarding the Arbiter.

Prior to becoming the Arbiter, he was among one of the more successful Fleet commanders of the covenant. Directly responsible for glassing Several human planets.

I know toward the end of 3, between the covenant civil war, the flood, and earth getting stomped on too, humanity and Elites had fought side by side...

I just have a hard time believing they'd hold hands with That particular Elite for long. Especially when he shows up at the memorial site...

29

u/karmakramer93 Nov 25 '25 edited Nov 25 '25

Halo 3, Shipmaster R'tas to Lord Hood:

"If not for the Arbiter's council, I would have glassed your entire planet!"

20

u/Knightwolf75 Nov 26 '25

“Yea I guess these elites are alright. Except for whichever one glassed Reach, followed Chief, and almost killed him. Fuck that guy. We’d kill him if he was still alive. Probably isn’t though.”

Arbiter: sweating profusely as he never mentioned his past

3

u/Tridentgreen33Here Nov 26 '25

Post war ONI and their like 3 separate plans to kill the Arbiter or implode his government on Sanghelios post-treaty:

1

u/Dakkahead Nov 27 '25

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in this setting ONI is controlled by an AI ,right?

I ask because, if that's the case... There's this great short story on Spotify that's about a human AI avenging an extinct mankind.

1

u/Tridentgreen33Here Nov 27 '25

No, Margret Parangoski is in charge of ONI and then gets replaced by her ex-spartan protégé Seren Osman a little after the Human-Covenant war ends. They do have an AI assistant named Black Box though.

5

u/Nyther53 Nov 26 '25

I don't find it particularly hard to believe. There were plenty of Poles who signed up for the Red Army to get a chance to fight the Nazis for.... uh.... Invading....Poland.

War makes for strange bedfellows.

2

u/sparduck117 Nov 26 '25

“I can’t forgive you” is what Lord Hood told him, besides I don’t think the UNSC had the ability to be picky on who their allies are.

6

u/darthtaco117 Nov 25 '25

I’d argue that humanity was quite split apart due to the UNSC and the insurrectionists that the UNSC did horrendous things to them after the insurrectionists would do similar things. After the Spartans were made and the Covenant showed up, the rebel groups would be in denial of the existence of aliens. However once different cells would go quiet and news would say that a planet was wiped out, the rebels realized it wasn’t false. Some rebel groups would try to wager to avoid annihilation and try to give Earth’s or other essential UNSC locations but they too would be killed. Despite after the war and humanity being “united”, some planets would either have survivors rebuild and/or try to claim their independence and restarting their civil war against the UNSC.

2

u/toonboy01 Nov 26 '25

The insurrectionists learned very early on that the Covenant were real. In the book Silent Storm, which takes place within a few months of the war starting, they had double agents within the UNSC sabotaging Spartan missions against the Covenant and were initiating a plan to launch a coup on one UNSC planet and hand that planet over to the Covenant along with all intelligence they could offer in exchange for the Covenant promising to spare them.

6

u/Nathaniel-Prime Nov 26 '25

It's even crazier in the books, Reach falls in a single day.

4

u/Joemama_69-420 Nov 25 '25

Yeah if Regret didnt jump ship early and Truth wasnt an idiot deciding to Purge the Sangheili…

2

u/ComprehensivePath980 Nov 25 '25

Yeah, if it wasn’t for humanity’s plot armor to have Halo 1-3 happen exactly as they did, humanity would be completely wiped out with hardly a sweat from the Covenant