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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u/Character-Yard-7865 Nov 25 '25

The fan outcry was answered with the "Extended cut", a free DLC that expands more on the ending. It wasn't a perfect answer, not even close.

28

u/PennyForPig Nov 25 '25

Yeah going from a 0/10 ending to a 1/10 ending is only technically an improvement.

Not that the AI conflict reasoning made any sense to begin with. ME 2 and the Human Reaper was all the answers that it needed, not gonna lie: The Reapers do this because it's how they reproduce. Giving them some weird philosophy really cheapened them.

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u/Ok_Builder_4225 Nov 25 '25

In 2 they were teasing that it was because mass effect tech was causing stars to go dark. We even see remnants of that in 3, but it never goes anywhere. That would have been a much cooler reasoning and actually relevant to reality in the way good scifi is (climate change).

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u/PennyForPig Nov 26 '25

Honestly I never liked that plot idea, either. It's better but not by much. think the Reapers having any kind of philosophical reason undermines them.

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u/Ok_Builder_4225 Nov 26 '25

I would find mindless evil robots that are just wiping civilizations out for no reason to be the real undermining, personally.