One-Man Army/Playing With

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Basic Trope: A character who pulls far more than his own weight in combat.

  • Straight: Bob blasts through Mooks by the hundreds.
  • Exaggerated: Bob depopulates entire worlds on a regular basis.
    • Bob is fighting against the whole world going against him, and doing a pretty good job at winning.
  • Justified: Bob is a god.
    • He's that good.
    • He specializes in attacks that affect a huge area, maybe to the point of being a Person of Mass Destruction, and most of his battles are in wide-open areas where the enemy can Zerg Rush.
    • Bob is a trained warrior, while mooks are an unprepared bunch of peasants wielding blades on sticks.
  • Inverted: Bob and his allies are the ones getting blasted apart.
  • Subverted: The mooks had been ordered not to put up a fight.
  • Double Subverted: The mooks had been ordered not to put up a fight, but they did anyway.
    • ...Until his superpowered side kicks in.
    • Alternately, they were ordered not to put up a fight, but Bob still has no trouble fighting off the wave of ones that weren't.
  • Parodied: Everybody, including the bad guys, treats Bob as a One-Man Army, even though he really isn't and makes no secret of this.
  • Deconstructed: Everybody Bob knows lives in fear of him, and the government has prepared deadly countermeasures in case he ever switches sides.
    • Alternatively, killing hundreds of people has devastating effects on Bob's psyche.
    • When Bob gets somehow killed or dies, perhaps of old age, the government realizes how screwed it is because its Redshirt Army has nowhere near similar fighting ability. Easily-Conquered World ensues.
    • Bob may kill hordes of mooks with ease, but he's ultimately Just One Man and can't be everywhere at once. The Enemy adopts a strategy of attacking on multiple fronts simultaneously, which Bob can't defend against.
  • Reconstructed: The government, due to incompetency, never uses said countermeasures, allowing Bob to wipe out armies anyway.
    • All of his friends have been killed while trying to be this trope, so Awesome Bob goes into Tranquil Fury on all of his enemies and murders the lot of them.
    • Bob breaks down for a while, but recovers and comes back even deadlier.
    • Bob is a loner who works alone and doesn't care for or need others' concern. If people fear him, all the better, as long as they don't hate him.
    • The allies build up strong defensive garrisons and advanced transportation so that they can Hold the Line while Bob zooms from fight to fight.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob racks up massive amounts of kills, and then it was discovered he had help...but only on the last of the 1,000 battalions...which were ordered not to put up a fight...but did anyway...even though they had no weapons or training....
    • Bob has Me's a Crowd as a superpower, and uses Doppelganger Attacks to take down a great number of the enemy. Technically, he fought them off by himself, but at the same time, he was not alone.
  • Averted: Bob's combat abilities are on par with the rest of the cast.
  • Enforced: "We need to show the audience how awesome our hero is, so let's have a scene of him taking on a few hundred mooks by himself."
    • This is a video game.
  • Lampshaded: "Help! He's unstoppable!"
  • Invoked: "Normally I'd assign backup, but since it's you..."
  • Defied: Bob calls for backup rather than attempting to take on the enemy base by himself.
    • Alternatively, Emperor Evulz orders some of his mooks to join Bob.
  • Discussed: "Legends say the Mountain Warrior slew ten thousand foes in a single day."
  • Conversed: "Exactly how many kills have you racked up over the course of this game?"

Sir! If you keep going back to One-Man Army, you'll make the rest of us look bad, sir!