All The Tropes

We ARE Struggling Together!

Revision as of 20:16, 14 June 2015 by Gethbot (talk | contribs) (clean up)

The government is evil, decadent, corrupt or all three and it's time for a revolution. Only one thing stands in the way: your fellow revolutionaries. All of you can agree on only one thing: The government must go. Beyond that, you and your fellow revolutionaries couldn't decide on pizza toppings, let alone the shape of the world to come (or how to get it there). This can lead to squabbling that prevents any coordinated action from taking place...or it can escalate to the point where the different revolutionary factions are spending as much time and energy shooting at each other as they are shooting at the ones in power.

This trope in Index Card form!
"A heretic is someone who shares ALMOST all your beliefs. Kill him."
—Illuminati: New World Order, "Cast Out False Prophets" card

Such factionalism is very common in the real world, and is usually very depressing, even deadly. Crank it up a notch, and it's comedy gold.

This is the 'before' picture of the obsessive bureaucracy. The definitive case where being right is more important than doing right (or doing much of anything).

Subtrope of Divided We Fall, specifically when the separate factions are not just ignoring each other or working in isolation but are actively engaged in conflict with each other. Contrast Enemy Mine, where two groups of people work together due to one common goal despite other differences in beliefs.

See also A House Divided, With Us or Against Us, and Misfit Mobilization Moment. And expect both (if not more) parties to subject each other to Poser Hating. Also compare Jurisdiction Friction for when two factions are bickering over a common goal from within one or more government agencies. Compare Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering.

When it's two heroes of the same cause fighting because they mistake each other for the villain, it's Let's You and Him Fight. When the heroes are directly manipulated into fighting each other by a villain, it's Divide and Conquer and/or a False-Flag Operation.

The many, many Real Life examples are listed here

Examples of We ARE Struggling Together! include:


Anime & Manga

  • The Patlabor OAV 'Seven Days of Fire' starts off with a rebellion against the maintenance chief over privileges (basically, fishing and girly magazines). Within days, there are literally dozens of splinter groups, each with its own agenda (some pro-chief), soon resorting to violence (with paper fans—this is Japan). Director Mamoru Oshii hung around a lot of radical student groups during his college days; one gets the impression that he wasn't left with a very high opinion of radicalism.
  • The Allied Powers in Axis Powers Hetalia seem only moments from tearing each other's throats out, even the ones that should have a lot in common (like America and England). As described here, this is Truth In Web Manga. Other historical examples are also mentioned, including the political fracturing of Italy and the decline of the (neither)Holy (nor)Roman (nor)Empire.
    • United Nations Star, preformed by all five of the Allies, is basicically We ARE Struggling Together!: The Song.
    • In The Movie Paint It White! China has this brilliant line.
 

China: We're too busy fighting together to figure out if we should be fighting together anyway.

 
  • The Japanese resistance in Code Geass is like this in the beginning, until resident Magnificent Bastard Lelouch and his Black Knights wipe out or take over all the other groups.
    • It's even mentioned as being part of the Kyoto Group (the main benefactor for all the Japanese rebellion factions) main motivation for funding so many groups. Lelouch forces them to pledge their complete allegiance to him, by which anything other than minor resistance factions have been rolled into the Black Knights.
  • In the world of Freezing, the world is being invaded by Eldritch Abominations, and yet most of mankind's hopes are more interested in rankings and beating the crap out of each other. Well, that's what you get when the fate of the world is in the hand of temperamental teenage girls.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, there are several important factions. One, Negi's group. Two, Cosmo Entelechia. Three, Megalomesembria politicians led by Kurt Godel. Mahora academy seems to be involved to some extent. The goal: save everyone possible when the magic world collapses. Negi and Fate are archenemies, Negi thinks Kurt is too practical (and Kurt thinks Negi is foolishly idealistic) and Fate's group just wiped out most of the military as part of their plan to "help". And it's not clear what Mahora is doing, but they definitely disapprove of Fate's destruction of the gates. It's getting to the point that Negi and Fate are only fighting about who can do a better job of saving the world.
  • Early episodes of Transformers Headmasters had elements of this trope between the Trainbots and Headmasters, until they had to team up to save Japan from Sixshot.
  • All of the military factions (Mustang, Grumman and General Armstrong at least) in Fullmetal Alchemist agree that King Bradley needs to be 'dethroned' and seem to understand that part of each other- yet when it all comes down to it the cooperation starts to disintegrate into 'who-will-get-the-big-seat-afterward' plotting rather than standing as a more united front.
  • In Vandread, the various factions/groups that the crew of the Nirvana come to assist them in the final episodes of Season 2, when the Big Bad's fleet shows up. Prior to this, they were either being harvested by the Big Bad, or were at odds with each other.


Comics

  • Superheroes in the Marvel Universe since the Marvel Civil War have spent about as much time fighting each other as they have fighting super villains.
  • In The Dark Knight Strikes Again, The Question and Green Arrow come to blows over whether the new world order should be a Marxist Socialist Utopia, or a Randian Objectivist Utopia.
  • In the revival of The Punisher that made him famous again, Welcome Back, Frank, three copycat vigilantes appear in the wake of the Punisher's return. One's Payback, a guy who targets corrupt rich folks. One's his polar opposite, a well-dressed man called "Elite" who's obsessed with killing people who "dirty" his neighborhood, starting mostly with some minor drug-peddlers moving in but working his way down to hot dog vendors and dogs that make a mess on the sidewalk. Between them is a literally Axe Crazy priest who tends to chop up gang members who confess their crimes in his church. When all three meet up, none of them can decide on how to cooperate. And then when they finally just about figure out how to get along, the Punisher -- who doesn't look kindly on copycats -- kills them all anyway, much to their surprise.
  • In most versions of Flash Gordon, Ming the Merciless maintains his grip on power despite being a complete psycho who's universally despised by everybody because all his subjects hate each other more than they hate him.
  • The Defenders, in almost all incarnations, are comprised of people who have almost nothing in common but will still unite to face major threats, often of a magical or supernormal nature. Typical Defenders dialogue consists of a lot of backbiting—sometimes affectionate, sometimes not.


Fan Fiction

  • In When There Was a Tomorrow, Almost no one in the UNSC trusts Shepard's crew at first, in addition to Halsey's pre-existing rivalry with Colonel Ackerson from canon.
    • Emile really doesn't like Garrus, for that matter.


Film

  • The trope takes its name from this scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian. When the People's Front of Judea runs into the rival Campaign for a Free Galilee in Pilate's mansion and they start fighting, Brian pleads "Brothers, we should be struggling together!" One of the revolutionaries immediately responds, "We are!" Then, when Brian attempts to remind them that they should be fighting "their real enemy", the revolutionaries initially think of another rival movement, the Judean People's Front. The various factions were modeled by the Pythons on British left-wing political groups of the 1970s (the year the movie was released, the left was represented by no less than 15 separate parties, plus more sub-factions within both Labour and the smaller splinter groups).
  • Happens with the chickens in Chicken Run.
  • This is a major part of The Avengers, exacerbated by Loki's manipulations. It takes the death of a Sacrificial Lion for the team to get down to business.


Literature

  • In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings books, the elves, dwarves, and men are constantly squabbling with each other when they should be joining forces to fight the Evil Overlord. The Lothlorien's elves distrusts Gimli the dwarf, and so all the Fellowship must go blind into the path to Lorien:
 

Alas for the folly of these days! said Legolas. Here all are enemies of the one Enemy, and yet I must walk blind, while the sun is merry in the woodland under leaves of gold!
Folly it may seem, said Haldir. Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.

 
  • The Wheel of Time series may as well be called Fighting The Wrong People. While everyone agrees that everyone needs to work together in order to win the imminent Last Battle, most factions are also of the opinion that this needs to happen by them conquering the world. For instance, the Seanchan follow mostly the same prophecy everyone follows - but their version disagrees with everyone else's, so they believe they need to subdue the Dragon Reborn in order to have a chance of winning. The Dragon Reborn controls about half the continent, which required forcibly overcoming many struggling factions, embodying this trope right there. The outcome is predictable. Others such as various Aes Sedai factions see the need to cooperate, but only so long as they control everything behind the scenes (even if it means they have to kidnap and abuse the Chosen One.)
  • In Discworld novels Lord Vetinari has secretly set up several of the organisations dedicated to his overthrow, in order to keep the real ones busy with infighting. In The Discworld Companion, Vetinari's rule is credited to realising that even revolutionary anarchists want stability so they can fight their real enemies; people with a slightly different definition of revolutionary anarchy.
    • Vetinari doesn't just deal with potential rebellion this way: it's practically his whole political philosophy. "If there are two sides to an issue, see that they quickly become two hundred."
    • Further used in Night Watch, when the People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road can't even agree on what they're fighting for beyond "Truth, Justice and Freedom" (those are free, you see). They settle on "Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably-Priced Love and a Hard-Boiled Egg!"
      • But subverted in that they still manage to be an effective fighting force and outright zig zagged because it dosn't actually make any difference if they have a decisive victory or a crushing defeat. The real changes are made far away by The Chessmaster.
  • In the Strugatsky Brothers' novel Prisoners of Power, the mind-controlling totalitarian oligarchy is opposed by what may initially seem to be an unified rebel "Underground". However, to quote the novel itself, "the Underground wasn't a political party. What's more, it wasn't even a front of political parties". Its members couldn't even agree as to whether or not the mind control has to go. Factions range from blatant fascists (who want to overthrow the government and keep the mind control towers) to "biologists" (who just want to destroy the towers, but don't mind keeping the government - so they can't even agree about that), and there are factions within factions as well. It is explicitly pointed out that many prominent Underground leaders are either agents or secret allies of the government. The protagonist ultimately doesn't even bother trying to rally them, instead striking a deal with one of the less secure government leaders for inside information, recruiting a few of the more sensible Underground members and blowing up the mind control center without consulting anybody else. It is implied in later Noonverse novels that he and his allies then had to put down rebellions by some of the other groups, even though the country was already a terrible mess by then due to mind control withdrawal and such.
  • The Thrawn Trilogy, being the earliest-written look at the New Republic after the Emperor died, shows an unfortunate amount of political jockeying. Most of this can be blamed on Borsk Fey'lya and his attempts to gain power, but he's not alone. Garm Bel Iblis, after Bail Organa's death, had actually split off and formed his own rebellion against the Empire, since he thought Mon Mothma was becoming too authoritarian. One of the many plot points in the trilogy is his realizing that a great deal of her reasoning was due to The Chains of Commanding, and they could work together again.
  • In Harry Potter, years of Fantastic Racism have caused various magical creatures to be suspicious of wizards and avoid them at all costs (at the same time, wizards are equally suspicious or determined to avoid said magical creatures). Almost all of them are threatened by Voldemort, but aren't really willing to work together until they see that Harry "died" at the end of Deathly Hallows, at which point virtually every living being against Voldemort takes up arms to fight against the Death Eaters. All are later seen gathered peacefully in the Great Hall together.
  • To some extent, the Last International in The Star Fraction, which seems to be mainly an umbrella label for all the forces fighting USUN. "...the ultimate conspiracy-- nothing BUT front organizations. The fronts are real, the conspiracy isn't."
  • The forces of good in the original Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy are hampered in their opposition to the Dragonarmies because their leaders are bickering over political matters that are petty by comparison. It takes drastic action, including Tasslehoff's destruction of the MacGuffin the leaders were fighting over and a "The Reason You Suck" Speech from the leader of the gods of good to get them to smarten up and unite.
    • This trope is later inverted after the Dark Queen's defeat, as her subordinates' fear of her kept them in line. Without her uniting presence, the Highlords begin fighting among themselves for control of the Dragonarmies, and become splintered into five mutually hostile factions.
  • The situation that prevailed on Barrayar at the beginning of the Vorkosigan Saga:
 

Aral Vorkosigan: I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.

 
  • In The Stormlight Archive while the Alethi Highprinces are not actively fighting against each other except when Sadeas decides to betray Dalinar, they are much more focused on outdoing each other and getting wealth and glory then they are on actually winning the war they came to fight.
  • In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway shows us the ragtag coalition of liberals, anarchists and communists that make up the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, and he hints at the pathological purge-mania of the Stalinists. This is a case of Truth in Television.
  • The Republican-SJC coalition in Bug Jack Barron.
  • The underground in William Rotsler's To The Land Of The Electric Angel, which comprises everyone from the Pope to free-love hedonists. They actually pull off a successful revolution under the protagonist (who gets elected Pope so he can lead the uprising, and thereafter has to answer "Is the Pope Catholic?" with "No".
  • In The Left Hand of Darkness, Estraven cites the "old proverb" (which Genly suspects he made up himself) that "Karhide is not a nation but a family quarrel." Ironically, the main villain is the one trying to do something about this.

Live Action TV

  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine mentions that after the Cardassian occupation ended, Bajoran factions that had fought in unity against them began struggling for power.
  • In an episode of The West Wing, Toby is assigned to show up at a townhall meeting for anti-globalization protesters, who are depicted as people being more in love with the sound of their own loudly expressed self-righteous outrage than the actual issues at hand. Within seconds of Toby introducing himself and being asked the first question, the audience start shouting over the top of each other, before the entire gathering degenerates into chaos and splinter groups in-fighting with each other. Toby, for his part, watches with amusement until he gets bored and leaves, everyone having forgotten he was there. Of course, this being The West Wing, he later goes back in and blows them out of the water with a speech we only get to hear about from Josh.
    • Season 6 of the show focuses on the build up to the party primary elections to decide who each party's next candidate for President will be. A key running theme is the fractured bickering between the various factions of the Democratic party, represented by three major candidates for President, versus the Republicans unifying relatively quickly behind their candidate. It culminates in a chaotic primary wherein no candidate can get a clear majority over the others and then one of the state governors tries to get themselves nominated from the floor, thus splintering things even further. Eventually provides a subversion in that the Democratic candidate who eventually manages to knock enough heads together to get themselves nominates ends up rallying and winning the election, albeit narrowly.
  • Several episodes of Allo Allo are based on the (historically based—see the WW 2 entry below for more information) rivalry between De Gaulle's Resistance and the Communist Resistance.
  • A few episodes of Stargate SG-1 deal with the attempts at a Tok'ra/Jaffa alliance. Essentially, what it boiled down to was the Jaffa couldn't see the differences between Tok'ra and Goa'uld, and the Tok'ra couldn't see the differences between a Jaffa serving a Goa'uld and a Free Jaffa. This caused problems.
    • This was the basic history behind the Wraith civil war:
      • Atlantis appears? Blast it.
      • Not enough food? Blast each other so that there IS enough for those left.
      • Replicators killing our food? Blast them then resume blasting each other per point 2.
      • We have some Atlantean buddies? Recruit them to help us with point 2.
  • On Entourage, Ari Gold's marriage is about as turbulent as any given war and yet they've remained together. "When we got married we agreed to suffer this monogamy together baby!"
  • In Yes Minister, Sir Humphrey argues that this trope is essentially how Britain managed the liberation of it's former colonies through partition—in dividing the territories (such as Northern Ireland and Eire, or India and Pakistan), the idea was that they'd spend more time bickering with each other and less time taking shots at Britain.


Tabletop Games

  • The wildly assorted powers of Chaos in Warhammer 40000 regard the destruction of the Imperium of Man as one of their main goals, especially the Night Lords and Iron Warriors legions, but as one might expect of Chaos, they are, well, chaotic, and spend as much time fighting each other and anyone who happens to be nearby as working against the Imperium.
    • The Imperium, meanwhile, considers the destruction of everything that is not the Imperium to be its main goal. Precisely how this should be achieved is a matter of dispute between the Astartes, the Imperial Guard, the Sororitas, the Inquisition, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Ecclesiarchy, and so on - and that's before you get to the divides in individual factions.
      • Fotunately (for them) most of the Imperium don't think these divides take precedence over killing the nearest alien/heretic/mutant.
      • Mix in divides within the divides within those factions. i.e. the Inquisition is split into multiple branches and each of those branches ends up arguing both with each other; and individual Inquisitors within those branches tend to argue with each other as well (along such lines as radicalism vs orthodoxy and so on). All in all it gets rather messy.
    • Also the defining quality of the Orks; they like to talk about Da Orks iz gonna tak ova', but are constantly infighting.
      • Taken to a quite hillarious extreme with the Orks in fact. The generally accepted view is that if the Orks were ever to stop in-fighting and actually unite they'd probably easily defeat everyone else. However all that is required to stop any Ork force of any size is to take out the Ork in charge of it; the inevitable fight for dominance between subordinate Orks being all but guaranteed to cause the whole enterprise to fall apart.
    • The Tyrannids subvert this. While different hive fleets will attack and eat each other if they meet on the same planet it doesn't diminish the overall strength of the Tyrannids one bit. The winner simply consume the loser's biomass and uses it to become much stronger.
      • Arguably the Tyranids are heavily involved in this trope with regard to the other species as well. Given that the Tyranids are believed to be flat out on their way to consume the entire galaxy and everything in it then you'd perhaps expect that at the very least the likes of the Eldar, Tau and the Imperium could see their way clear to putting aside their differences and uniting against the common foe. But this being 40k they tend to be too busy trying to get one over on each other to worry about diversions such as galaxy-devouring swarms.
    • The Craftworld Eldar mostly avert this. Anything less than full unity would mean their quick and horrible deaths. The Dark Eldar play it pretty straight though.
      • Dark Eldar play it very straight indeed. Most Dark Eldar exist in Kabals which are perhaps most simply described as a cross between tribe-like social constructs and paramilitary organisations. Given that the way of advancing in Dark Eldar society is (in most cases) to murder the person above you and take their place the leaders of the Dark Eldar literally can't trust any of their subordinates (who may be plotting against them) and the subordinates can't trust their leaders (as the leaders might kill them off out of fear of a plot). This results in senior Kabal members having to hire independent mercenaries known as Incubi to act as bodyguards against their enemies (i.e. basically everyone else). Dark Eldar society, and life on Commorragh generally, is effectively one long struggle for power and survival where the weak are subjugated and enslaved by the strong and the strong are constantly having to fight to stay at the top. One wonders how they manage to cooperate long enough to successfully pull off any raids at all or, indeed, where they find the energy to do so after all that in-fighting.
  • A big part of the idea behind Mage: The Ascension. The Traditions can agree on exactly one thing - they all hate the Technocracy and want it gone. The fact that just about every one of the nine Traditions loathe and despise the other eight may just be a large part of the reason why the Technocracy (which is all about working together for the greater good - well, for a given value of "good," anyway) has been kicking their butt for the last six hundred years...
    • however, by the time of the books, the traditions have been better at cooperation for quite some time. apparently, differences in outlook seem smaller when you are on the brink of destruction(they still don't like each other, but they are working together).
    • also, in their own books, it is shown that the technocracy isn't half as unified as it looks. the five main groups are constantly politicking, both internally and against the others.
    • In the spiritual sequel, Mage: The Awakening, the Orders are continually at loggerheads. Their war with the Seers of the Throne is only kept from being one-sided because the Seers are themselves suffering continual inner strife - far too many of their factions are too interested in gaining advantages over the others for them to focus and take out the Atlanteans.
  • In Exalted, the Scarlet Empress actually encouraged this infighting among her subordinate governing and administrating organizations, so that they would be unable to effectively overthrow her and have the less-than-instant decision-making process of a multi-person body give the enemies of Creation time to re-invade. Which was all well and good, until she disappeared...
    • Which is the smallest cast on the trope in the setting. On a grander scale, Creation, the normal world that is, has at least three whole groups of mortal enemies roughly as strong as itself, bent on it's destruction; that is, Old Unseated Gods, Old Dead Gods (who, being dead but unable to cease to exist, just wish for everything to cease to exist so they too can) and Mutating Energies Of Aether. Creation would be surely doomed if only those three forces wouldn't hate each other with roughly the same passion and fight on every opportunity, because their image of what should be are so different. Only two times in history have two of those forces seriously joined an effort against Creation, and both times they did landed a mighty blow. Ironically, the first attempt still in many parts failed because of poor coordination. (Mutating Energies attacked lands struck with super-Plague engineered by Dead Gods; they really should have made sure all of Creation's defenses were down...)
  • Another White Wolf game, Werewolf: The Apocalypse also suffers from this trope big time. There are thirteen tribes that struggle against each other; they have a combined set of rules called the Litany but all have different ideas on which rules are important; there's also a lot of struggle within most tribes; and the fact that all werewolves are prone to berserk frenzy if mildly provoked doesn't help. As a result, the werewolves have all but annihilated all non-wolf shapeshifters, and completely wiped out one of their own tribes, the Bunyip.
  • The Blood War in Dungeons and Dragons contains a fair bit of this. The Chaotic Evil Demons would be a much greater threat to the Lawful Evil Devils if they weren't so keen on fighting that they turned on each other at the drop of the proverbial hat. For the Devils' part there's a fair bit of resentment simmering between many of the Archdevils, which Asmodeus, Magnificent Bastard that he is, subtly encourages so that none of them ever decide to ally together and overthrow him. The Celestials also try to ensure the blood war continues, reasoning that as long as the evils are fighting each other, they're not trying to destroy the heavens.
    • More generally, the forces of good and evil in many D&D settings are also like this. The good guys, such as they are, can easily bicker and snipe with each other over their own personal or political interests, allowing the villains to gain in strength. This tends to be balanced by the fact that the bad guys can just as easily be at each other's throats, whether through an Enemy Civil War or just plain Evil Versus Evil.
  • Legend of the Five Rings: The Clans are extremely guilty for this. They are supposed to do what their hats tell them to do all the while protecting the Rokugani from Shadowlands threat, but they are too busy getting at each others' throat. About the only clan that averts this is the Crab: no one wants to invade their land for they are right next to the Shadowlands and are tasked with manning the Kaiu Wall, and the Crab don't have the resources to invade anyone else. But even they have a fair bit of bad blood with the Crane...
  • In Paranoia, the Humanists want the Computer to be subordinate to human governance, and might actually get somewhere with it if they weren't constantly bogged down by infighting and red tape.
  • The Revolutionary League from Planescape. Best summarized by asking a cell of them "How many Anarchists does it take to change a torch?"
    • "Just one. Why sacrifice more effort when it could be spent on other causes?"
      • "All of them! Only by a concerted effort can the Revolutionary League..."
        • "Affairs such as torch-changing should be handled by the elite (namely us) while the others concentrate on ensuring a supply of torches for the future..."
          • "If we get in, we won't need them. Infravision will be compulsory..."
            • "Torches are tools of corruption! Extinguish them all! We don't need them!" **Extinguishes torch, bangs head on wall** "Ouch!"


Theater

  • 1776 is another case of Truth In Fiction, at least in its full, unexpurgated form. The only thing the members of the Continental Congress can agree on is that the status quo is untenable. Everything else, from declaring independence from Britain to slavery to deep-sea fishing rights, is contentious and even getting a simple majority is difficult. (Watching the film makes it clear that, ante 1783, the "original 13" were a semi-random subset of a much larger and more diverse jumble of British North American possessions.) What drives most of the plot is the requirement that independence be approved by all 13 state delegations, and it takes a LOT of dirty, dirty politicking to get enough votes. And what was going on in Congress was the bloodless part of the Whig ascendancy—see the entry below on the American Revolution for more information.


Video Games

  • The hatred between the human and servile rebels in Geneforge is matched by the hatred between the drayks and drakons, but each pair is held together by a greater hatred for the other pair, and all of them are forced to work together against the Shapers. In the fifth game, the four allies finally split off, with the humans and serviles allying with the Trakovites and the drayks and drakons forming the Ghaldring faction.
  • Command & Conquer's Brotherhood of Nod is unified in that they need to defeat GDI. That is the only thing they are unified on, and usually when Kane isn't around, they voice their disagreements with laser beams and fire. And when Kane is around, they still formally lodge their complaints with laser beams and fire...in the back. As for humanity as a whole, the war between GDI and Nod is so bitter that an alien invasion doesn't do much more than make them pause....for a couple of hours. Then they go back to blasting each other.
  • In Wrath of the Lich King, the Horde and Alliance agree on one thing: We need to destroy the Lich King. That doesn't stop them from insulting each other, stealing supplies from each other, and it certainly doesn't stop the war that they have been fighting. Actually, they manage to restart their own war while The Scourge is still up there trying to wipe them out. If not for the Ashen Verdict, which is comprised of Death Knights and the Argent Crusade, you would be dead. That's right, you're killing your allies, while the Ashen Verdict is saving the world and actually doing what you guys came up here to do in the first place.
    • And the moment the Lich King bites it the war becomes more prevalent. Even the giant dragon ripping out from the core of Azeroth while setting half of the land on fire isn't going to stop them.
  • Fridge Logic has this being the only plausible outcome after the end of Red Faction: Guerrilla. The Marauders and Red Faction unified in the name of defeating the Earth Defense Forces and shoving a gigantic torpedo with a Nanite Disassembler Swarm warhead down the throat of a huge warship capable of annihilating all life on Mars (and Earth, for that matter,) but what comes afterwards? The Marauders are the xenophobic, murderous descendants of Ultor scientists who survived after the EDF came down like a ton of bricks on Ultor and restored order to Mars (the first time around.) Red Faction are the spiritual successors of the original Red Faction, the miners who revolted against Ultor's brutal conditions. The Marauders have been for the last fifty years or so killing anyone they see, whether EDF or civilian. It can't end well.
    • Bonus suck is awarded for the fact that the only primary character other than the player who survives from start to finish, Samanya, the Wrench Wench Sledgehammer Ninja (as revealed in the DLC bonus campaign, Demons of Mariner Valley,) is a Marauder by birth, but wound up joining Red Faction when she risked life and alienation from her people to rescue Kepler and Hugo Davies (better known as RF Commander) from an EDF internment camp before a gigantic Marauder offensive wiped the captive civilians out along with their captors. She's going to be caught between both sides of the coming war.
    • Red Faction: Armageddon seems to show the two sides ended up agreeing to leave each other alone for the most part. There are definite tensions between the two camps, but they band together once again fairly quickly once the aliens show up to threaten the human populace.
  • The Hua Lian Rebels in the People's Republic of Da Han Zhong in Front Mission 3 suffered from this, especially after they were about to win the revolution, leading to a crushing defeat of the whole rebellion.
  • In the Mass Effect 'verse, several factions are vehemently still locked in some kind of conflict despite the looming Reaper threat. Partially justified by the fact that many people don't believe Shepard's Cassandra Truth about the Reapers. Most notable is the quarian Migrant Fleet, whose Admiralty Board is considering an almost-suicidal attack on the geth.
    • In Mass Effect 3, getting the races to co-operate is the main objective, with even those who are not actually at war with each other proving to be very unhelpful. In the most extreme case, the quarians have launched their attack on the geth, despite the Reapers actually starting their invasion in other parts of the galaxy. Unless Shepard has done literally everything right with regards to both species, the genocide of one of them is inevitable, despite the geth having actually wanted peace for the past several centuries.
      • This trope is also very much in evidence with the Illusive Man, who spends a lot of effort and resources openly opposing the Alliance and Council rather than joining them, partially explained by his being indoctrinated, (the DLC Prothean character, Javik, says that this happened during his cycle too, suggesting that divide and conquer is one of the Reapers main tactics). In fact, one of the few powerful characters who does recognise that personal goals need to be put on hold for now is the ruthless crime lord Aria T'Loak, who gives Shepard genuinely useful advice and prioritises the overall war effort above her own short-term gains.
  • In World of Warcraft, earlier examples of Enemy Mine between the Horde and Alliance worked out rather well, but this all changed in Wrath of the Lich King. Soon after a Cavalry Betrayal, the two factions went to war while in the middle of dealing with the undead Scourge; the Horde even attacked the Alliance from behind a one point, trapping them between its own army and an army of zombies. As of Cataclysm, they're still going at it even when the world is falling apart, a giant dragon made of lava and metal is flying around, and the Old Gods are about to break free.


Web Original

  • Subverted in Reds!; the socialist revolution in the United States in the 1930s proves to have sufficient ideological flexibility to enable opposing points of view to be heard (both among competing left-wing ideologies and more conservative voices that nevertheless oppose the military junta they're all fighting against) while still ensuring an overall socialist victory, and ultimately proves more successful in this regard than the rigid ideological inflexibility of the Soviet Union. The relationship between the Soviet Union and America following this, however, plays the trope straight, since they ultimately split due to ideological differences and spend as much time plotting against each other as their capitalist enemies.


Webcomics

  • This Order of the Stick strip. A later strip reveals there are also three rival resistances, distinguished (somewhat) by their views on who is to blame for the invasion and who should take over once the revolution succeeds.
    • They were united, eventually, by their common loyalty to the deceased former Lord of the city.
  • A very nice, if debatable, social commentary in a recent Digger comic sums it up nicely.
 

Murai: He's not an evil man. Not really.
Digger: There really aren't that many evil men out there. It's mostly just good men working at cross purposes.

 
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/We_ARE_Struggling_Together!?oldid=1288728"