The Notable Numeral
If you have a group of people banding together to fight evil, or to cause it, then it's good to have a good team name that people will remember. If you can't think of anything else, then why not name yourself after the number of members you have, plus a nice adjective that describes you? Maybe try to tie it together in a pun or something.
"Wait, if you're the H.I.V.E. Five, why are there six of you?"
—Kid Flash, Teen Titans
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In the end, what do you have? Why, The Notable Numeral, of course!
This naming convention is popular in Real Life to describe people who make the news as a group, usually as either the victims of a crime or as the people arrested for a crime (often in historic/sensational cases of people who are believed to be wrongly accused, whose case seems to represent a broader issue or who grab the public's attention in some other way), such as the Buffalo Six and the West Memphis Three. The Other Wiki calls these "Enumerated defendants." Describing a single such defendant, usually fictional, as the something-or-other One is a Stock Parody.
Beware, if excess alliteration disturbs you, then it might be best to look elsewhere.
See also The Adjectival Superhero, where the adjective describes a person or team instead of a number. Can cross with Superhero Sobriquets if it's a nickname and not the team's proper name.
- My Hero Zero
- The Chosen One
- The Dynamic Duo
- The Dynamite Duo from "Dynamite Magazine"
- The Ambiguously Gay Duo.
- The Gruesome Twosome
- The Dirty Pair
- The Odd Couple
- The Onibaku Duo
- The Amazing Three
- Kishou Sentai Weather Three
- The Power Trio
- The Freudian Trio
- The Terrible Trio, and namesake trope
- The "Untouchable Trio" (plus one) of the Knights of the Dinner Table.
- The Three Musketeers
- The Big Four
- The Elite Four (a.k.a. The Shitennō, which translates to Four Heavenly Kings.)
- The Fab Four
- "The Fearsome Foursome!"
- The Fantastic Four
- The Frightful Four, a group of Fantastic Four villains.
- The Four, the Alternate Company Equivalent and Evil Counterpart Fantastic Four from Planetary.
- Genius 4
- The Pre-Fab Four
- The Civic-Minded Five
- In sports, Michigan basketball's Fab Five.
- The Famous Five. Who were a bunch of Canadian feminist icons; sadly, they aren't that famous.
- The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, child detectives in two series by Enid Blyton.
- The Fatal Five.
- The Fearsome Five
- The Femme Five, of which there are seven. ("Traditional counting is an oppressive patriarchal tool.")
- The Other Fearsome Five
- The Fearless Five
- The "Final Five" and "Significant Seven" Cylons.
- Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
- The Other Furious Five
- The Jackson Five (or 5ive?)
- Dynamo 5
- Dai Sentai Goggle Five, Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman and Rescue Sentai Go Go Five.
- Is there another team of five we should know about? Say, one that blends these series' Sentai sensibilities with the Magical Girl genre?
- Fox Force Five - "Fox as in we're a bunch of foxy chicks. Force as in we're a force to be reckoned with. Five as there's one, two, three, four, five of us."
- The Runaway Five (which apparently actually contains six people)
- The Bionic Six.
- The Oceanic Six
- The Secret Six from DC Comics.
- The Sinister Six
- Blakes Seven.
- The Sinister Seven from the NES game. Subverted, since it's never said who they really are.
- The eponymous Killer7.
- Koi Koi 7 (though there are only six of them)
- The Magnificent Seven.
- The 8 Gang.
- The Great Ten, a China-based team of DC super heroes.
- The Terrible Ten, a series of short films in the 1940's and 50's
- Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen.
- The Dirty Dozen.
- Organization XIII
- For an example of the trope applied to victims of crime, Being Human (UK) has the "Box Tunnel 20"
- The Crazy 88. Probably a subversion, since there aren't 88 of them. They just thought it sounded cool.
- 108 Righteous Bandits, a Chinese gang in Deadlands. There isn't exactly 108 of them, they chose the name because it features heavily in Buddhist mysticism.