One Riot, One Ranger: Difference between revisions
Updated Wikilink
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (Fix multiple "then/than" confusions in most recent new example) |
(Updated Wikilink) |
||
| (One intermediate revision by one other user not shown) | |||
Line 101:
* In general, any FPS game will have this situation, either by design ("We're sending in Joe the [[Badass]]"), or by happenstance ("We're sending in a squad of marines, but they'll [[Redshirt Army|all be killed]] except for Joe the [[Badass]]").
* In many games, the player can respawn at the beginning of the level when they die. When the player is also a [[Featureless Protagonist|generic soldier]], this allows for the interpretation that they're not really a One Man Army at all - just an endless ''series'' of expendable grunts. This is explicitly the case in the side-scroller ''[[Prinny]]''.
* Mobius One from ''[[Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies]]'' had well proven his [[One-Man Army|One Man Air Force]] credentials, so in the Operation Katina of ''[[Ace Combat 5 The Unsung War]]'', when a resurgent Erusean military tries to attack, he alone (and AWACS SkyEye, but he never fires a shot and so doesn't count) is sent to fight them off.
* Lampshaded in ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' when Breen notes Gordon Freeman's tendency to plow through enemy forces like a weedwhacker. At the moment of his apparent defeat, he reveals he's aware that ''somebody'' wanted Gordon to be there, and to do what he did.
** Whether this trope actually applies is still an open question. Yes, the G-Man sent Gordon in alone to take down the Combine (presumably), but his perspective and resources are, well... ''unusual'', to say the least.
Line 140:
** Makes a bit more sense when you think about the fact that the Texas Rangers are more like a state-level FBI rather than a state-wide police department (in Texas, that'd be the Highway Patrol). They're not supposed to send in a whole big force. They do the investigating and coordinating with different police departments, and when they need a whole bunch of manpower, they get it from the Highway Patrol or local police and sheriff's departments.
** Interestingly though, as the other wiki's article details, in the actual trope-naming incident it was pretty well averted, with other Texas Ranger captains '''and''' the Adjutant General present, though many of them may have come originally with the intention of being spectators at the bout, not keeping the peace when it was stopped.
**It was subverted often enough. The original Rangers were conceived as a backstop to the militia in a state where militia was not enough [[Everything Is Big in Texas|for geographical reasons.]] They were in fact in conception not unlike [[Badass Israeli|the Palmach]] during the Mandate days in the Middle East. They remained on constant patrols and conducted retaliatory strikes that were far more brutal than folklore likes to remember. They had
* The Mounties (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) have a similar reputation. Their original name was the Northwest Mounted Police, and they were given responsibility of just about everything north and west of Ontario. When the Yukon gold rush occurred, the NWMP made sure is was the most orderly and civilized gold rush ever seen, especially when contrasted against the California gold rush a few decades before. The Mounties today service as the federal police investigation branch (similar to the FBI), and are considered polite, professional, elite, dedicated, and ''fearsome if crossed''.
* Commando raids were conceived with this trope in mind (although they usually involve a team rather than literally using one "ranger"); send in a small force to go in quietly, carry out a specific objective (e.g. sabotage, assassination, rescue a person of importance, gather intelligence, etc) and then leave ([[Suicide Mission|optional]]).
| |||