Multinational Team/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A team of heroes has members from different countries, and this fact is important.

  • Straight: The Trope Team has an American Hero, an Italian Lancer, a Japanese Big Guy, a Russian Smart Guy, and a French Chick. Their nationalities are plot important.
  • Exaggerated: The Trope Team includes members from every country on earth, including obscure ones like San Marino and Djibouti, and even sub-national entities, such as Québec and Hong Kong.
  • Downplayed: Only two or three countries are represented.
  • Justified: The fight against evil is universal, so nations pool their resources and fight together.
  • Inverted: Equal Opportunity Evil
  • Subverted: The Trope Team has a Japanese Hero, a Japanese-American Lancer, a Japanese-German Big Guy, a Japanese-Peruvian Smart Guy, a Japanese-Australian Chick, and a Japanese-Canadian Sixth Ranger...
  • Double Subverted: ...but the Sixth Ranger is a quarter Cree, the Hero is a Burakumin, etc.
  • Parodied: They're not only multinational, but every last one is a Captain Ethnic.
  • Deconstruction: To represent the trouble between countries, the wars between the the member nations are carried over into the Trope Team as squabbles between the members. Manipulative Bitch Alice naturally takes advantage of this by tricking some members into succumbing to Face Heel Turns.
  • Reconstruction: Those members realize they've been tricked, and join together to fight against Alice.
  • Zig Zagged: Originally, there's only members from five countries, but as the series progresses, more and more nations join, until finally every nation and sub-national entity is a member of the Trope Team. However, a Curb Stomp Battle with the villains kills off most of the members. The nations whose members got killed in the battle replace them.
  • Averted: The Trope Team are all from one nationality.
  • Enforced: The producer thinks audiences identify more with characters of their own ethnicity.
  • Lampshaded: "Now all we need is Antarctica..."
  • Invoked: The leaders want an international team, for diplomatic reasons.
  • Exploited: Emperor Evulz uses Alice, Roberto, Karl, and Dawud's ethnic diversity against them.
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: "Ever notice how the main guy's always white, the guy who's his total opposite is black, an Asian guy's either a genius or a fifth-degree blackbelt, and the token girl is white? They might add an Indian later on in the series."
  • Conversed: ???

And a special case:


Back to Multinational Team, amigos! Schnell!