Summon Everyman Hero: Difference between revisions

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See also [[Recruit Teenagers With Attitude]]. For some reason, the Everyman will be [[Inconvenient Summons|summoned while doing something embarrassing]].

 

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* In ''[[The Flight of Dragons]]'', modern-day scientist and fantasy enthusiast Peter Dickinson is summoned as a champion in a conflict between wizards (his mind gets put in a dragon body, which helps). Nobody is particularly impressed, although his summoner is prepared to trust that 'antiquity' had a purpose in choosing this guy.

** Justified in the book that the movie was (loosely) based on. Jim Eckert and Angie are transported into the past/alternate dimension using an astral projection machine invented by a colleague, not summoned. And Jim isn't exactly an 'everyman', he's a medieval scholar, which puts him in the perfect position to understand the culture around him but work outside it using modern sensibilities and knowledge.

* ''[[The Last Starfighter]]'' did a non-magic version. A con man looking for recruitment bounties wants to recruit the most talented pilot he can find in order to get paid by the Star League. He does this by seeding planets with a testing booth disguised as an arcade game called Starfighter; the one person who beats the game turns out to be a human teenager living in a desert trailerpark.

* In the second ''[[Veggie Tales (Animation)|Veggie Tales]]'' movie, a princess sends a magic ball to summon heroes to help her kingdom. Instead, they get [[The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything]].

* The five protagonists of ''[[The Fionavar Tapestry]]''.

* Also, this is the basic premise of ''[[Un Lun Dun]]'' by [[China Mieville]].

* In the ''Spellsong Cycle'' by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., magic is done by a combination of song and music. The fact that music has magical effects leads to the paradoxical situation where musical ''theory'' is stunted, since the musical experimentation required to advance theory is dangerous. The summoned heroine is a professor of music whose trained singing voice, advanced knowledge of musical theory and [[The Everyman|Every(wo)man]] knowledge of science allows her to do things with magic that no one who born in the world could possibly match.

* The first time [[Michael Moorcock]]'s Eternal Champion is summoned goes like this; although it's only the mind that he's [[The Everyman]], the body he gets stuck in is significantly more formidable.

** Interestingly, although recalling his Everyman hero identy staves off a [[Heroic BSOD]] near the end of that incarnation, on the instances when the Champion recalls previous incarnations he tends to adopt the identity of his first summoning, as opposed to Mr. Everyman, claiming 'it was the only time I experiened true happiness'. An odd instance of [[Becoming the Mask]], since he's innumerable masks to choose from.

** And anyone who has been reading this Wiki for long enough will not be surprised that {{spoiler|Terisa turns out to be just the champion they needed after all. Though the guy with the rayguns helps eventually , even if he originally panics and blasts a hole in the castle.}}

* Christopher Stasheff's ''[[A Wizard in Rhyme]]'' series has a couple of these.

* The ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (Animation)|Dungeons and Dragons]]'' cartoon.

* Inverted in the ''[[Darkwing Duck (Animation)|Darkwing Duck]]'' episode "Planet of the Capes", where a planet full of superheroes has lost its only powerless ordinary guy. They fetch Darkwing Duck to replace him since, though he's a [[Badass Normal|"superhero"]] in his own world, they know he has no actual superpowers and thus should make a perfect ordinary guy. {{spoiler|Turns out the last ordinary guy got sick of the job and became a technology-powered [[Super Villain]], whom Darkwing ends defeating while all the supers are useless.}}

* In ''[[Teen Titans (Animation)|Teen Titans]],'' this happens to Cyborg when he is pulled back in time to the Bronze Age by a witch to help save her people from monsters. Subverted twice in that Cyborg is not an "everyday" hero (he does begin to lose his powers, from lack of electricity, though) and in that {{spoiler|the summoning was part of an evil scheme all along}}. It does otherwise fit the trope, however, including the part about falling in love with someone you cannot stay with.

* ''[[Captain Planet and The Planeteers]]'' begins with [[Mother Nature|Gaia]] magically casting the five rings to the corners of the Earth, where they apparently homed in on just the right people to bring to her.

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