This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Darmok: This phenomenon happens in movies too. I first thought of Where Eagles Dare, in which Clint Eastwood takes on (and kills) a large part of the German Secret Service, but half of Arnold Schwarzenegger's films would also count.
Seven Seals: The canonical movie example might be First Blood and sequels, where John Rambo totes around enough weaponry to make the army of a small nation proud, and single-handedly dispatches everyone in sight.
The difference between movies and games is that movies do this purely for dramatic reasons, while in games a good dose of technical restrictions apply as well. It's much easier to make the player the lone wolf who has to do everything than to implement a real army that the player must credibly interact with. (Of course, some dramatic reasons apply to games as well: playing the hero is more satisfying than being a realistically small part of a much bigger operation.)
Gentlemens Dame 883: Hi Kain Lupus, I see you don't know your Over Nine Thousand. OhShi-
Firebert: What is the source of the page picture? Thank you.
Gentlemens Dame 883: I cropped it from Warhammer 40000: Dawn Of War, which actually isn't an example, but taken out of context like this it fits.
Vampire Buddha: Removed these on account of the source not being named.
* No mention of Wolverine yet? During the Dark Phoenix Saga, he got separated from the rest of the team while in the Hellfire Club. Logan then spent an entire issue using stealth and surprise tactics to kill dozens, if not hundreds, of armed and trained Hellfire Club guards. Not to mention the other half-dozen times the guy's gone up against hundreds or thousands of foes and walked out alive.
** Later, the next-gen team had an encounter with the hellfire mooks. One of the team at the time had the power to summon an image of her opponent's greatest fear. She used it on the mooks: enter illusionary Wolverine.
