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[[File:satisfy2.jpg|link=Half-Life|frame|"Gordon, the whole world has been taken over by a race of malevolent aliens. All of humanity is depending on you. Here's a [http://www.cracked.com/article_16196_the-7-commandments-all-video-games-should-obey_p4.html goddamned crowbar]."]]
{{quote|''"You must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest... [[Trope Namer|wiiiiith... a herring!]]"'' ([[Scare Chord]])
|'''The Knights Who Say Ni'''|''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]''}}
So, you're a hero of destiny, summoned before [[Royal Blood|the mighty king]] of [[Medieval European Fantasy|this pastiche Tolkienesque fantasy kingdom]] and charged with saving the world from the terrible evil that has befallen it before it's [[The End of the World as We Know It]], we know you can pull it off. [[Because Destiny Says So]].
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Oh, did we mention that you've got five bucks and a butter knife to your name?
Strange though it may seem, the king has sent you on the most important [[
Nor are you bringing much to the situation; Warriors of Destiny don't have trust funds. Or savings accounts. Or bus fare, for that matter. You'd think that just to ''qualify'' as a Warrior of ''Anything'', you'd at least have a sword, maybe a suit of well-worn armor from all that warrioring you did to build up your reputation, but no. In fact, you're a Level 1 warrior, so you don't even have any experience to speak of—though the king is hardly going to suggest sending you off to boot camp with his personal guard for a week.
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{{examples}}
== Anime
* Lampshaded in the second episode (the RPG parody) of ''[[
* Lampshaded even more brutally in full-on RPG parody series ''[[Mahoujin Guru Guru]]'' when the king loudly disavows himself of all responsibility for the child heroes after giving them a small amount of gold.
== Comic Books ==
* ''[[Stanley and His Monster]]'': Played with in the [[Phil Foglio]] mini-series. Ambrose Bierce tells Stanley to pack 'whatever he thinks he will need' for an expedition to Hell, while casting a spell that ensures that whatever he
* One issue of ''[[Hsu and Chan]]'' has Arnie as a parody of Master Chief from ''[[Halo]]'' save the world from the covenant with a plastic
== Films -- Live-Action ==
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* A few of the weapons randomly distributed at the beginning of ''[[Battle Royale]]'' (for which the point is to be the last one alive on the island) include a pot lid, binoculars, a paper fan, a megaphone and boxing gloves.
* Two of the characters facing down bloodthirsty aliens with future tech in ''[[Predators]]'' are armed with a scalpel and a knife.
== Literature ==
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* The title character of the European folk tale "[[The Brave Little Tailor]]" is dragooned into setting out to save the kingdom from giants, with no special equipment or training. It was collected by such 19th-century folklorists as [[The Brothers Grimm (creator)|The Brothers Grimm]], making this [[Older Than Radio]]. To be fair, [[Idiot Plot|one word of explanation might have gotten him out of it]].
* Subverted in [[Philip K. Dick]]'s ''Paycheck''. The hero has just had his memory of the last two years of working on a top secret project erased, and when he picks up his paycheck he discovers that, for some reason during those two years he decided to ask to be paid not in money but several weird and almost worthless items like a small piece of wire and a bus token. However, it soon turns out that the project was a window into the future, and he picked each of these items for some specific purpose to help him survive the dangerous situations he will shortly find himself in.
== Live-Action TV ==
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* ''[[Reaper]]'': The Devil provides Sam with an object capable of retrieving the escaped souls, such as a dust buster or a tennis ball. Funnily enough these are sometimes quite effective. The bad ones are when he gets given seemingly useful ones like a spear—to fight a Mongol warrior with. Or a boxing glove when facing a champion prizefighter.
** He also sometimes gets strange powers to catch a particular soul. Of course, these usually end up completely useless and only serve as obstacles. Try catching a soul when anything you try to eat (even toothpaste) turns into an insect.
== Tabletop Games ==
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* Also Justified in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]] II: The Sith Lords''. The Exile begins the game waking up inside the medical bay of a now-derelict mining facility, thus explaining the lack of equipment. The Exile then goes on to wage a shadow war against the Sith, making it plausible that nobody would have heard of her mission (hence the lack of store discounts). And while the premise of the game explains your lack of starting force powers, it's still a little non-specific about why all the other abilities (combat skills, tactics, diplomacy etc). of a legendary hero of the Mandalorian Wars would have evaporated so absolutely. [[Hand Wave|Hand waved]] a couple of times by Kreia.
** The Exile was a legendary ''leader'', due to the weird Force bond thing that makes people want to follow her. She was actually a rather mediocre Jedi, as noted several times during the game.
* ''[[Resident Evil]]'':
** In ''[[Resident Evil]] 4'', Leon Kennedy is sent to rescue the president's daughter with little more than a knife and a simple 9mm handgun. Needless to say, Uncle Sam probably should have sprung for an assault rifle for Leon. Even if they didn't know the town had been infected by a [[The Virus|mind-controlling parasite]], this ''is'' [[The President's Daughter]] we're talking about. (Admittedly, he may have had the heavier hardware back in the car and not wanted to spook people by having an American walk into town brandishing an assault rifle. Or he expected to be able to call in backup in case anything came up.)
** In ''[[Resident Evil]] 5'', however, this is actually justified. {{spoiler|1=One of the CEOs of the companies you work for is setting you up.}}
** In the original ''[[Resident Evil 2]]'', you can find a picture of the team in which one unidentified member is packing a '''mortar''', suggesting that S.T.A.R.S. was ''over''-supplied, if anything. But tragically, neither he nor the mortar appears in the game, and he is deleted from the photo in remakes.
** The original ''[[Resident Evil 3: Nemesis]]'' starts with Jill dramatically somersaulting out of her apartment, making a perfect landing on the street below and ready to kick zombie ass. The remake, however, decided to make it harder for her. The game starts with Nemesis making his first assault on poor Jill, breaking into her apartment (an in the tradition of hulking monstrous abominations, [[There Was a Door| not using the door]]) leading to a ''[[Early Game Hell| five minute sequence]]'' requiring the player to guide the terrified heroine in fleeing the building, using [[Press X to Not Die|quick-time events]] to survive, until finally ending up on street level, unarmed, half her life bar depleted, and surrounded by hungry zombies, plus a new control scheme the player has to learn to use ''quickly'' due to the sudden change to 3rd-person gameplay. The only edge she has is that Brad shows up to help but, well... [[The Load| you know]].
* Lampshaded at the start of ''[[Prince of Persia]]: The Two Thrones/Rival Swords'', where the Prince laments early in the first level "why is it whenever disaster strikes, I find myself without a worthy blade?"
* ''[[Wolfenstein 3D]]''. In most ports, it would seem that you are sent by no less than President Roosevelt himself into the bowels of Castle Germansomething to defeat [[No Swastikas|Master D and his Badds]]. For this special mission, Franky equips you with... a knife. To be fair, the earliest versions say you're a POW breaking ''out'' of Castle Germansomething, and taking on Hitler of, apparently, your own damned volition. But you find out about 3 times that "Your Fuhrer is in another castle."
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** Played painfully, unjustifiably straight ''Doom 3'''s [[Expansion Pack]], ''Resurrection of Evil''. Aside from the unmitigated, [[Genre Blind]] stupidity required to head back to Mars after the events of ''Doom 3'', the company still doesn't equip the marines tasked with exploring ancient ruins with anything deadlier than a pistol. At least they've taped a flashlight to the gun.
** Played straight in ''Doom'' clone ''Fortress of Dr. Radiaki'', in which you start as a top-notch agent sent to investigate mysterious island... with a pistol and a ''goddamn baseball bat'' (no, not [[Goddamn Bats|that]] kind). Underfinancing, indeed.
** of ''[[Doom (2016)|The 2016 relaunch]]'' starts with the unnamed hero naked and [[Strapped to An Operating Table]] (well, sacrificial altar, but same idea); not that this is much of a problem for [[Badass| a guy like him]], as he breaks free, grabs a laser pistol, [[Full-Frontal Assault| and kills a few demons and cultists]] before finding the [[Powered Armor]] he uses for the rest of the game.
* In dozens of games spanning two decades, ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' blows up robots from here to eternity, absorbing their weaponry, gaining new armor, and yet at the start of each new game, [[Bag of Spilling|you start out with the Mega Buster and your basic blue armor]]. However, this is explained at least in ''[[Mega Man Legends]] 2'' when Roll tells you in the very beginning of the game, "I'm sorry Mega Man--I had to sell all your old equipment to pay for the new engine!!" including the Shining <s>Finger!!!</s> Laser, the weapon so powerful it scared the extremely short pants off of her.
** In ''[[Bob and George]]'' it's said that he drops them all off a cliff.
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*** UFO components and alien weapons can be easily sold in large quantities, but only after researchers have determined just what the heck they are. Your soldiers can't even throw alien artifacts before they're researched.
*** This was [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in the books based on the game where you found out that anything you sold was on the black market to compensate for the lack of funding and alien technology was DNA coded and it was a case of putting 'human' on the accepted user list.
*** Fixed in a mod — "[//openxcom.mod.io/purchase-lasers Purchase Lasers]" for OpenXcom.
** Hence, [[Alternative Character Interpretation]] like [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/7043149/#7043774 this]
** The worst With This Herring abuse in the ''[[X-COM (Video Game)|X-COM]]'' series is not your equipment, which is miserable, or your funding, which is miserly, but your soldiers. Rather than give you the elite special-ops Delta/SAS/Spetznaz/GSG-9 types you would expect, you get a bunch of folks who have inhumanly bad reflexes and apparently didn't even go through basic training; some of them would almost certainly have failed the physical to boot.
***
** At least your starting weapons are pretty good by human standards... in ''Terror From The Deep'' though, they're quite pathetic. [[Justified Trope]] in that current underwater firearms are few in between, relatively weak and little-used.
** Then, naturally, a modder decided to make the next step down this road: [https://web.archive.org/web/20151230001556/http://www.openxcom.com/mod/privateer-saving-the-world-at-a-profit "Privateer - Saving The World At A Profit" OpenXCom Mod]. Start in debt and funding $0 from everywhere, become [[NGO Superpower]]. You still get a pass into airspaces,
{{quote|[[Skewed Priorities|Too busy]] fighting [[
Thanks to a successful [[Kickstarter|kick starter campaign]], you were able to scrape together enough funds to pay for your first base -- barely. }}
** ''X-COM: Apocalypse'' at least has an excuse of being limited to one city, and even then you can hire athletes (recruitments of normal soldiers is tied to relations with Grav Ball League) and capable specialists (androids and hybrids).
* ''[[UFO: After Blank|UFO Aftermath]]'', although [[Justified Trope|justified]] in that you start out just [[After the End|after aliens rain deadly spores from space and turn the planet into a mutant-encrusted wasteland]]. Essentially you get Uzis, grenades and shotguns, and have to loot the P90s, Super Striker grenade launchers, and [[BFG|extraterrestrial railguns]] as you go.
* ''[[Phantom Brave]]'' justifies the weak starting weapons by having Marona [[All of the Other Reindeer|be ostracized for her powers]], but everything you can pick up and use to attack has the potential to become the [[Infinity+1 Sword]], including, of course, fish.
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* Neither of the two ''[[Captain Comic]]'' games give you a weapon at the start. In the first game, there's one right in front of you at the beginning, but you have to search for it in the sequel.
* Pretty much every Scenario in ''[[Treasure of the Rudra]]''.
* Tends to occur often in ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'':
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'', Link is summoned by the Deku Tree, but to even see him the kid needs to have a sword and shield. You have to buy the shield at full price, even though you're about to attempt to save the Deku Tree and your only source of income is from [[Twenty Bear Asses|cutting grass and smashing rocks]]. Partly justified in that Mido is just a douche who doesn't think you're good enough to even meet the Deku Tree and thus sends you out to blow your entire savings on a shield (which isn't justified) and find a well hidden sword guarded by a perpetually rolling boulder. What the Deku Tree expected you to do about the giant spider-thing living in his bowels when you didn't have a sword is the real use of this trope.▼
**
***
▲** In ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** Justified in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening|Link's Awakening]]'' as well; his belongings were lost in the shipwreck.
** Also justified in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass|Phantom Hourglass]]'': Link was just dozing off on the deck when Tetra suddenly decided to enter the
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda CDI Games|The Faces of Evil]]'' tries to justify it, and the sentence suffers a [[Memetic Mutation]] like everything else in these games: "-Great! I'll grab my stuff! -There is no time, your sword is enough!"
** Thankfully averted in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask|Majora's Mask]]'', where Link has both a sword and shield at the beginning. Unfortunately, he ends up getting turned into a Deku, so he can't use them for a short
* This ''can'' easily happen in ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'', if you fail to properly prepare your seven-dwarf expedition with the needed skills and material before setting out for the selected fortress site. Some people [[Self-Imposed Challenge|deliberately take it on as a challenge]], trying to build a fortress with a bunch of soapmakers and animal dissectors (you normally don't get those until later) instead of miners and woodcutters. In Adventure Mode, having the highest skill in swords, maces, hammers, axes, spears, or whips gives you a shield and a bunch of leather armor, having the highest in pikes, crossbows, or bows gives you leather armor, and wrestlers are lucky to get much more than some sandals and a loincloth. Good luck killing dozens of bandits and night creatures!
* A commercial for the video game version of ''[[The Jungle Book]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] this trope. A guide tells the viewer (or an unseen listener) about the dangers of the jungle and then says, "But you ain't getting nothing; you're just getting bananas and underwear. Ever get to level 10 in your underwear, boy?!"
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* Averted in ''[[Advent Rising]]''; you're given a [[BFG|fifty-caliber handgun]] just minutes in, and it goes up from there. On the way to Aurelia you get the [[Magic and Powers]], and though the [[BFG]]s are still available, you probably wont be using them anymore.
* Played realistically straight twice in the original ''[[Call of Duty]]''. First, as an [[Yanks With Tanks|American paratrooper]], you land having lost your weapon in the jump. Second, as a [[Reds with Rockets|Soviet infantryman]], you get off the riverboat at the Stalingrad docks with nothing more than 5 rounds of ammunition and a cheerful suggestion of picking up a rifle if you see one of your better equipped comrades die.
** Then it gets... more stretched ([https://web.archive.org/web/20130815195844/http://www.virtualshackles.com/211 as illustrated] by ''[[Virtual Shackles]]'') .
* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]''
** Justified in ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]''. At the start, Ezio is just an ordinary Italian youth and understandably does not have a reason to be packing real heat, so all he has are his fists.
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* The recent [[Sam and Max]] games play with this a bit... you retain some key items between chapters, and the boys always have their guns with infinite ammo... it's just the game has a serious case of [[Soup Cans]], [[Rule of Funny]], and [[Rule of Fun]]. It gets to a ridiculous extreme when Max literally becomes {{spoiler|''the freakin' President of the United States''}}, but his authority is so caught up in beauracracy that he's pretty much in the same position he would be otherwise.
* Nearly every ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' game has Lara Croft start her adventure with nothing but a pair of pistols and some small health kits, despite the fact that nearly every artifact she hunts down usually has bad things happen to her from various people and animals. Averted in ''Tomb Raider II'' where Lara learns her lesson from last year's grueling adventure and she carries a shotgun as well.
* Matt's starting weapon in ''[[Epic Battle Fantasy]] 5'' is a hockey stick. Granted, he didn't really expect to embark on a long adventure, he just wanted to fix the power outage affecting his house, but it's still weird considering he always had his [[Cool Sword|Heaven's Gate]] as a starting weapon in previous games.
== Web Comics ==
* ''[[8-
** Being based on the first ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' game, the
** Speaking of, after Sarda depowered them and later imploded from [[Phlebotinum Overload]], the gang has to face up to taking Chaos out. They have to do this in twenty-four hours to avert Chaos' plot to destroy the world (which likely involves a [[Time Crash]]); needless to say, they're having a bit of trouble getting their act together after faffing about and ruining civilization up to this point.
* Averted in ''[[Tales of the Questor]]''. Although the organization forcing Quentyn, the titular Questor, to go on his virtually impossible mission give him literally nothing at all, his fellow villagers (who he is going on his mission FOR) equip him to their level best ability—food, clothing, equipment, weapons, even an airship. Furthermore, a team of engineering students, sent by a school intrigued by Quentyn's expedition, come to make improvements to the airship and his other equipment.
* ''[[Goblin Hollow]]'' averts it for an in-comic RPG session, because [https://web.archive.org/web/20101208072905/http://www.rhjunior.com/GH/00067.html the GM thinks it makes more sense that way].
{{quote|"The ''Darned Good Reason'' rule. As in 'nobody becomes an adventurer without a darned good reason to think they'll survive it'."}}
* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', the ''Years of Yarncraft'' [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]] uses this trope full-stop: Torg's warrior character starts out with [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/080731 just a stick for a weapon], and no armor except for some ratty clothing ([http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/080801 he doesn't even get underwear]); Gennaro's wizard character starts out with [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20080917 just a small piece of string].
== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[The Fairly OddParents]]'' "Wishology" trilogy, Timmy is told he has to fight [[Big Bad|The Darkness]] and sent on his way... with nothing, not even his fairies, to help him. He also loses everything at the beginning of the next two parts, forcing him to start over.
== Real Life ==
* In Iraq, American troops have had to resort to "hillbilly armor". For the uninformed, that's putting sheet metal and other scraps on your Humvee as armour kits. These kinds of kludges are not uncommon in most militaries; the greatest problem affecting almost any armed force history has logistics and supplies. For example, ''[[Generation Kill]]'' points out that when the United States Marine Corps was invading Iraq in '03, they were issued MOPPs in forest green camouflage.
** Justified in that Iraq is not all desert, it is Mesopotamia after all, and the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is green and verdant.
** So was the [[Canucks With Chinooks|Canadian Army]] in Afghanistan, but then, that's because ''the Canadian Army didn't have desert fatigues''.
*** WWI was another example for Canada, since they were forced to use equipment, such as rifles that got easily jammed with mud, disassembled when fired, and also wore boots with such poor stitching that they fell apart with the slightest wear.
** The US Military really had no excuses, given that the Middle East is and has been the likeliest place for them to be deployed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Of course, the military is infamously wasteful, and even more so since they outsourced a lot to contractors.
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* Similar to the Iraq example, Sherman crews in WWII strapped just about anything they could find to their tanks to try and counter superior Axis armor and antitank weaponry. Sandbags were particularly common.
** Infantry have a tendency to hop aboard passing Armored Fighting Vehicles that're going their way. Tank crews have upon occasion referred to such infantry as "applique armor".
* In [[World War
** The .45 ACP round it used made it effective enough in terms of stopping power, and as weapons historian Ian Hogg pointed out, it ''had'' to be, since if that one shot (through a very short, smooth-bore barrel) missed, you were [[Oh Crap|twelve different kinds of screwed]].
** Its successor the [[wikipedia:Deer gun|Deer gun]], a similarly crappy weapon chambered in 9mm, was to be used the same way in Vietnam.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Older Than Radio]]
[[Category:Video Game Items and Inventory]]
[[Category:This Index Is Not an Example]]
▲[[Category:With This Herring]]
[[Category:Example as a Thesis]]
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