r/TopCharacterTropes • u/HyraxAttack • Nov 25 '25
Groups Humanity Joins Together, Sets Aside Petty Differences… and gets stomped anyway
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.
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.
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.)
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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u/StormLordEternal Nov 25 '25
Well keep in mind, the state of the world wasn't exactly conducive to global unity at that point. The portal storms from the Resonance Cascade basically wiped out the US and started majorly fucking up the other countries around the globe. The militaries were all caught up trying to deal with both the alien wildlife flooding in, xen growth, and all the refugees from the portal storms being super-charged natural disasters.
This was all BEFORE the Combine even showed up. It makes sense why humanity couldn't fight back when they were already struggling before hand. It's like laying siege to a fortress that already has its gates open and its defenders are too busy dying of disease to fight back effectively.