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Run the Gauntlet

A Superhero has to face their entire Rogues Gallery one by one in rapid succession, leaving no time to rest. The hero has to Run the Gauntlet: race to stop this villain from blowing up the bridge, then dash to the other side of town to free the mayor from another villain... and the villains are almost always fought in order by the Sorting Algorithm of Evil, weakest first, strongest last. In the climax, the hero has to face the toughest villain, who is quite refreshed, while the hero is exhausted.

While it makes sense in theory, the scheme raises the question of why the villains don't just attack all at once. The most common reason is that they didn't plan it—the Big Bad has manipulated them into doing it. That way, the hero and villains can weaken each other for the Big Bad to step in and win (Let's You and Him Fight).

Heroes with especially awesome Rogues Galleries will run into this more often; Batman does it all the time. Made possible by Villain Decay—the guy who almost killed you last time is taken out with a flick of your wrist while you move on to the next one.

Incidentally, the "Gauntlet" that appears in the name of this trope doesn't refer to an armored glove, or even to the notion of "throwing down the gauntlet." It comes independently from the archaic word gantelope, meaning a double-file of men facing each other and armed with clubs (or other weapons) with which to strike at an individual who is made to run between them. (It was commonly practiced in the British Army; you can see how speakers with different accents would get those two words confused.) So, yes, it should be spelled "run the gantlet", but the pun's too obvious.

Boss Rush is the video game equivalent.

Compare Rogues Gallery Showcase. For when a character runs a physical gauntlet, see Death Course.

Examples of Run the Gauntlet include:

Anime and Manga

  • A heroic version occurs in the Pokémon animé when Ash is facing Drake, the Orange Islands champion. Through most of their match, Ash has knocked out five of Drake's pokemon, while Drake has taken out only two of his. Drake sends out his trump card, a very powerful Dragonite, but Ash eventually manages to beat it by rotating his remaining pokemon and forcing Dragonite to take them down one by one. Dragonite defeats Charizard, Squirtle and Tauros one after another, but they all do enough damage that the Dragonite is exhausted by the time Pikachu is sent out.
  • In an anime where singing is the (pretty much) only method of battle, Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch had a gauntlet run. And it was Played for Laughs. Why? In the first level of the tower the bad guys made as part of some ridiculous plan or other, the first 'boss', Alala, was merely bypassed and ignored. In the second level was Lanhua, who was Bowled Over by a bowling ball (don't ask how it go there, they don't know either). The third was Lady Bat was 'repelled' when his (yes, his) breath reeked of curry. The fourth level had the 'planner' Napoleon, who let them by after the heroines threatened them with a beating (he was rather short). It was at the fifth and final level where the singing ensued. But not before a Crowning Music of Funny from the hostage the heroines were trying to rescue.
  • In Bleach, after Ichigo defeats Grimmjow, he is immediately pitted against Nnoitra Jilga, who was a full rank above Grimmjow. This trope gets inverted on Nnoitra when Nel is revealed to be the former third Espada, who then proceeds to mercilessly beat the crap out of Nnoitra. However, Nel's release deactivates at the worst possible time. After Nnoitra's Kick the Dog moment, he sends his Fraccion Tesla to finish off Ichigo, but Kenpachi appears to not only defeat Tesla, but almost immediately goes to fight Nnoitra.
  • This has happened to Ranma ½. Needless to say it took a while.

Comic Books

  • Spider-Man's first fight with the Sinister Six.
    • This has been explained as being so each villain would have a chance to get the 'honor' of killing Spidey himself. Spidey has since called this a "bone-headed method of teaming up" and in all subsequent fights, the Six attack en masse. Gently parodied in Spider-Girl's fight with the Savage Six—the entire issue was one big homage to the entire first Sinister Six issue, the leader of the Savage Six employed the same method of attack, and his brother, also a super-villain, called him an idiot.
    • In another instance in Spider-Girl, the final fight (between the exhausted hero and fresh villain) is thoroughly subverted when Spider-Girl calls in a few favors, and the last villain is confronted by just about every hero in the Marvel Comics 2 'verse. He wisely surrenders at that point.
    • Norman Osborn once claimed that only a gauntlet would work against Spider-Man since the webhead is "good with groups," using the opponents' powers against them and cause infighting.
    • After a period where the classic villains were put aside to focus on new faces, there was an arc titled "The Gauntlet," where the Kravenoff family set up Spidey's classic Rogues Gallery to fight him one after another and wear him down. The cover for the first collected volume encapsulates the trope almost perfectly - Spider-Man lies battered atop his fallen enemies.
  • The X-Men frequently faced this, with a Plot Tailored to the Party to go with it.
  • Pretty much every arc Batman has been in lately, from Knightfall to Hush—and also pretty much every non-canon miniseries he's ever been in, from Child of Dreams to The Long Halloween to Dark Victory. Child of Dreams is an interesting case - none of the villains he faces are the real deal. They're crazies who think they're his iconic arch enemies.
    • Batman the Animated Series' and The Batman both had The Bat fight all of his villains one after the other. Deadly threats from previous episodes were reduced to petty Mooks, Elite Mooks at best.
      • In fact, the last level of the video game (which was based on the animated series) is a boss rush, called 'The Gauntlet'.
    • Justified in Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. Batman faces all of his opponents in the titular Asylum, as part of a twisted game of hide and seek. They don't all just fall on him at once because they've spread out to look for him. Many of the confrontations are also purely psychological. Of course, then there's the wheelchair-bound Doctor Destiny- Him, Batman just kicks down the stairs.
  • Alan Moore's Superman story, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow??" is one part parody, one part Deconstruction, and one part Lampshade Hanging.
  • Teen Titans did this for an entire arc in the fifth and final season, culminating in an ultimate battle royale with every single hero facing off against every single villain ever to appear over the course of the series (yet surprisingly successfully).
    • Then they follow it up with every single hero fighting Dr. Light, which is the inverse of this trope. We don't learn the actual result, but we can safely assume Dr. Light won.
  • It's subverted in The Flash because the Rogues are rarely known to pull a caper alone. They firmly believe in strength in numbers.
    • Of course, in the case of The Flash, most of his enemies are either underpowered or ridiculously unsuited for facing a guy who can move and react at near light speed. Even all together it's no surprise they get their asses kicked every time.
      • Actually they are very well suited to fighting a Speedster, they just don't want to kill him. When there's someone coming at you at near the speed of light or even the speed of sound the best tactic is to slow him down enough to get away or land a hit that will knock him out.
  • Freedom Force has you fight your entire Rogues Gallery before taking on Time Master.
  • Typhoid Mary recruits a number of Daredevil's enemies to put the horn-headed hero through this trope. It's also a variant in that the villains win, beating Daredevil to within an inch of his life and leaving him for dead.

Fan Works

  • In the Fairly Oddparents fanfic Discovery, Timmy Turner Runs the Gauntlet of all his magical enemies and his Imaginary Friend.
  • Issue #50 of Ultimate Sleepwalker: The New Dreams forces Sleepwalker to take on all six of the Nasty Boys by himself. A few issues later, he goes through this trope again when the Green Goblin puts a $1 million prize on his head. He's forced to fight several villains trying to claim the prize one after another, and they each do a number on him. By the time he fights the last villain, Sleepwalker is so exhausted that he would have been killed without the help of a Heroic Bystander.

Film

Literature

  • The final book of the Spy High series, Agent Orange, has this. The heroes fight through virtual recreations of every major villain (and some minor ones) from the previous 11 books in order to finally reach the Big Bad's lair.

Live-Action TV

  • Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: the episode Hexuba's Graveyard, a sorceress named Hexuba brings back several former monsters of the week to fight the rangers before fighting them herself. This example include the Villain Decay, in that a monster that the rangers previously couldn't defeat without their group power-up, Lights of Orion, is taken down by the Red Ranger alone.
    • An earlier season featured Lord Zedd doing this with several monsters as well. It also provided a very rare case of a Monster of the Week Taking A Level In Badass, as Pumpkin Rapper put up a good fight a more powerful Megazord by himself when he'd previously been destroyed by an older one.

Professional Wrestling

  • Among the many types of gimmick matches devised in recent years, there's the "Gauntlet" match, where one wrestler has to fight three or more opponents one after another, without a break. When one opponent is pinned, the next one comes out, and the match ends either when the lone wrestler is pinned or he defeats all his opponents. One notable example was when Chris Benoit took on and defeated on his fellow Radicalz (Dean Malenko, Perry Saturn, and Eddie Guerrero).

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Inverted in Transformers Cybertron, when Starscream decides he's getting the Omega Lock, dammit, and fights his way through eleven Autobots in a row, successfully distracts Optimus Prime, and gets away with the Lock, free and clear.
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