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{{trope}}
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The [[La Résistance|Resistance]] is in peril. The forces of evil are knocking on their gate. They have no choice, they must use the [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique]] to [[Summoning Ritual|summon]] a hero from another world to assist them.
And they get [[The Everyman|Bob Smith]], from Normal, Arizona! An [[Ordinary High School Student|average American kid]] who just happens to be what they need for the job. The summoners may be [[Genre Savvy|unimpressed]], or be [[Genre Blind|totally blind]] that this guy is going to [[The Chosen Zero|need]] a lot of [[Training
A typical set up for [[Trapped in Another World]] stories. This is a ''very'', ''[[Seen It a Million Times|very]]'' popular trope in regards to getting [[The Everyman]] from the modern world into the [[Magical Land]].
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Sometimes, rather than [[The Everyman|An Everyman]], the spell summons someone who is exactly what's needed for a given situation. If no summoning is involved, he's an [[Action Survivor]]. Other times, the everyman really is very average and probably too squishy to last long enough to make a difference, but they will get summoned INTO the body of someone or something more physically impressive as part of the summoning or just by accident.
Named for the ''[[
See also [[Recruit Teenagers
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* The Digidestined from ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' could count as an example of this, since the summoners were "totally blind that [these guys are] going to need a lot of training to be useful."
** ''[[Digimon Frontier]]'' also did this, but with a twist; they summoned a bunch of kids but only kept around the handful that actually got some results.
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* Miaka and Yui, along with the past priestesses of Genbu and Byakko from ''[[Fushigi Yuugi]]''.
* ''[[Magic Knight Rayearth]]''. The Princess Emeraude, the Pillar of Cephiro, summons the Magic Knights at the moment they all meet (coincidentally) in Tokyo Tower. Everyone assumes their calling is to rescue the princess from the [[Spikes of Villainy|evil]] [[Troubled but Cute|Zagato]].
* While it wasn't on purpose, ''[[
** {{spoiler|It's later revealed that he isn't ''exactly'' an 'everyman'.}}
* The TV series ''[[MAR]]'' (Marchen Awakens Romance) starts this way, though the high school kid accidentally summoned to help [[La Résistance]] of another dimension doesn't stay "normal" for long. (It should be noted that the series is an intentional takeoff on this kind of stories, with plenty of fairy tale references.)
* The guys from [[Monster Rancher (
* [[Dog Days]], because [[The Hero]] is very athletic. At least they don't summon a random person into their world.
==
* ''[[A Kid in King
▲* ''[[A Kid in King Arthurs Court]]''. [[Lampshaded]] in the sequel, ''A Kid In Aladdin's Palace''.
* 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 Forbidden Kingdom]]'' did this, with the slight inversion that the normal kid accidentally summoned ''himself'' to the magical land. Of course, it was [[All Just a Dream]]. [[Or Was It a Dream?]]
* ''[[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 ''[[
== Gamebooks ==▼
* While Merlin doesn't summon the body of an everyman hero in ''[[Grail Quest Solo Fantasy]]'', he does summon their mind. Yours.▼
== Literature ==
* Jon-Tom from ''[[Spellsinger]]'' by [[Alan Dean Foster]]. A Sanitation Engineer (janitor) was summoned to the world where the story takes place by a wizard searching for a more technical type of engineer.
** That he turned out to be a magician after all, which is what Clothahump expected an "engineer" to be, suggests it's not just Jon-Tom whose magic brings what's needed rather than what's expected.
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** In ''[[Prince Caspian]]'', the Narnians were ''trying'' to summon the legendary kings and queen from the Golden Age (basically their King Arthur equivalent). They just didn't realize that the form they would come in was British schoolchildren.
** ''The Silver Chair'' starts with the kids praying to go to Narnia, and besides one of them already had, so he was already 'part of the story,' and Aslan seems to prefer some form of continuity when linking up the worlds. ''The Last Battle'' doesn't involve ''anyone'' new, and Jill especially has spent the whole time since her last visit practicing skills specifically useful to a quest in Narnia. Note that the entire history of Narnia occurs within the span of Diggory Kirke's life, so it may have been a setting specifically created and designed to enlighten British children.
* William "Wiz" Zumwalt from Rick Cook's ''[[Wiz Biz]]'' series. At first (in ''Wizard's Bane''), he appears to have no magical abilities, despite being summoned to fight against powerful evil wizards. {{spoiler|Turned out that the summoner ''did'' pick the right guy - a computer programmer was just what was needed. Once he learns that [[Powers
** And then improved on in the second book (''The Wizardry Compiled'') when {{spoiler|to improve Wiz's original code, they bring over ''an entire programming team'' recruited at a SCA war...two of which [[I Choose to Stay|join him in the magical world]] at the end of that book.}}
* ''Out of Time: Yanked!'' by Nancy Kress.
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** 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.
* Done in ''[[Keys to
** To be more specific, the villain, Mister Monday, wanted to avoid passing his [[MacGuffin|Key]] onto a mortal, although he was legally supposed to do so. Instead of outright ignoring his obligation, Monday decided to circumvent it by giving the Key to a critically ill mortal who would die shortly afterwards. He could then quite legally take back and keep the Key. Unfortunately for him, [[Batman Gambit|he was being manipulated by his enemy]], and the power of the Key saved the mortal's life. Whoops.
* [[Discworld]]. Rincewind, after being thrown out of the universe at the end of his previous appearance, is summoned by [[
* ''[[The Neverending Story (
* The ''Demon Tech'' series by David Sherman begins with an evil wizard and a good "philosopher" each performing magic to summon assistance for his respective country. The bad guys wanted knowledge, so they wind up with a batch of 20th-century military doctrinal manuals (which they eventually manage to translate and use). The good guys wanted leadership. They get a USMC Gunnery Sergeant (in full dress uniform). His first words to them: "Who's in charge of this circle jerk?" Well, from then on, '''he''' is.
* Grey Murphy, the titular "Man From Mundania", comes to the land of ''[[
* Subverted heavily in Mary Gently's 'Grunts'. Some odd piece of magic summons a U.S. Marine staff sergeant into the middle of a battle between a swarm of alien locusts and a battalion of trainee elf marines and their orc marine sergeants (yes you read that right). However, he panics at being sucked into a new dimension and flees screaming. Later on his logistics skills do help the Orcs defeat the aliens.
* [[The War Gods]] has the novella Sword Brother where a Wencit, in summoning help, ends up getting a gunnery sergeant and a corporal driving a Striker.
* Played with in the [[Magic Kingdom of Landover]] series where the everyman hero is summoned by the [[Genre Blind]] villain with the expectation of being useless as a hero, complete with a job interview designed to ensure uselessness. The hero is just the latest in a long line of summoned everymen who were until then as useless as expected.
* Somewhat subverted in two books of the [[Darkover]] series. The summoned characters are both [[
* In a duology within the ''[[Saga of Recluce]]'', a spaceship suffers from a [[Hyperspace]] malfunction which lands them in a universe where magic is real. In the second book the main character ends up aiding a [[The Lost Woods|magic forest]] against [[The Empire]], which wants to seal the forest away. The main character's companion speculates that the magic forest might have summoned them by causing the [[Hyperspace]] malfunction in the first place.
* ''Enchantment'', a lesser-known novel of [[Orson Scott Card]]: Ivan Smetski, college decathlete but otherwise normal grad student, saves a sleeping princess from a giant bear, and next thing he knows, he's in ninth-century Ukraine. Naked. It's never revealed who exactly summoned him.
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* Played with in the ''[[Myth Adventures]]'' series by [[Robert Asprin]] with Aahz (no relation). Anybody who travels to a different world, and many people have the ability, are called demons, a variant of dimension hoppers.
* Several stories in the ''[[Chicks In Chainmail]]'' anthologies
* In the first of [[John Brunner]]'s ''Traveller in Black'' stories, a 20th-century Englishman is summoned to a magical land to defend a besieged city against a demon-god its enemies had called up. He reacts to every strange thing he encounters with [[Unfazed Everyman|calm rationality]], something in notably short supply in that place at that time. At story's end, he's perfectly happy that the city's people no longer want to revere him, even though he '''did''' devise the plan that saved them.
== Tabletop Games ==
▲* While Merlin doesn't summon the body of an everyman hero in ''[[Grail Quest Solo Fantasy]]'', he does summon their mind. Yours.
=== Tabletop RPGs ===
* The ''[[Castle Falkenstein]]'' backstory tells of Tom Olam, computer game designer, who is summoned into a world of Victorian Steampunk Fantasy by a mighty spell. Although he proves to be of some value, the real prize is the book he brought with him - he picked it up at a used book shop cheap, and it holds the secret to [[Saving The Day]].
* ''Traveler'' is based on this- the players are sucked into a fantasy/cyberpunk/whatever-genre-the-GM-is-running world with the items within a 10' radius.
== Video Games ==
* Played with in ''[[Brave Fencer Musashi]]''. The summon spell summons Miyamoto Musashi, one of history's greatest swordsmen, instead of some average high schooler with no idea what he's doing. He's summoned as a kid, yes, but still one that obviously has some combat training.
** The sequel, ''[[Musashi: Samurai Legend]]'' (which takes place in a different setting and different characters) also kind of fits, except that once again he's actually the hero they were trying to summon.
* The Avatar/Stranger from ''[[Ultima]]'' (not to mention Lord British himself and his friends, perhaps a LITERAL [[Author Avatar]].)
* This is the basic plot for the Westwood game ''[[Nox]]'', though it also features a twist: it is actually the villainess who summons Jack to the Land of Nox. Moreover, it happens accidentally, as she is only after the [[MacGuffin|Orb]] that he unwittingly possesses.
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* ''[[Myst]]'' has you stumbling on a mysterious book and... [[Signature Sound Effect|VOIP!]]
* The Heroes are summoned this way via [[Gold Box]] game "Secret of the Silver Blades." Completely naked. Pity the summoners forgot to request [[Bag of Spilling|their equipment from the previous game.]]
* ''[[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories]]'' starts with the protagonist's mother trying to summon Lord Zenon, the evil overlord that took over the planet, so her son could defeat him. What they got instead was Rozalin, the overlord's [[Lonely Rich Kid|sheltered daughter,]] who they have to then protect as they take her back home. {{spoiler|The game's huge twist is that they actually did summon the right person -- ''Lady'' Zenon got tired with the constant battle of her previous existence and reincarnated herself as a baby girl.<ref>As in, complete with a mother's womb and a blank slate.</ref> A little later, an [[Unknown Rival]] tracks her down, murders her family (and most of the village) takes over the name and effectively imprisons her while playing the role of devoted (if distant) father.}}
* While he's not exactly an everyman, [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic]] gets this in ''[[Sonic and The Black Knight]]''. When Merlina cast the spell,<ref>"O brave knight, swift as the wind! Heed my call!"</ref> she likely wasn't expecting a blue hedgehog [[Deadpan Snarker|with an attitude]].
* The term for this in the ''[[Touhou]]'' universe is "spiriting away," and Yukari likes to do this with mortals she finds interesting.
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== Web Comics ==
* Captain N's spiritual successor, Alex Williams of ''[[Captain SNES]]''.
* Parson from ''[[
** One of the people who saw him disappear remarks that it's the first plan he's ever followed through on.
{{quote|
* A [[You Wouldn't Believe Me If I Told You|problem for the returning hero]] is pointed out by [http://xkcd.com/693/ this] ''[[
* Torg from ''[[
** He picks up some [[Badass Normal]] abilities along the way, too. {{spoiler|The magic demon-killing sword powered by the blood of the innocent certainly helps.}}
* ''[[Nedroid]]'' has played with this several times, perhaps most notably [http://nedroid.com/2011/03/at-least-i-have-a-great-story-to-tell-my-plant/ here].
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Captain N]]: The Game Master''.
* Done en masse in a cartoon series ''[[King Arthur and
* The ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (
* Inverted in the ''[[Darkwing Duck (
* ''[[
* In ''[[Teen Titans (
* ''[[Captain Planet and
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