History Main / ConservationofNinjutsu

* One more plausible scenario for this trope is if a smaller group of people is simply better coordinated than an larger group of opponents, and tries to stack the odds in their favour, however they can--cutting off paths for reinforcements, luring enemies into ambushes or traps, or disrupting their communications. This relies heavily on the element of surprise, as well as considerable planning and ability to adapt to situations on the fly, and would be considerably more effective if the group had some of the previously-mentioned advantages. In any case, if the element of surprise is lost or if the plan starts to fall apart, you can expect things to get very bad.

NOTE: This obviously does not apply when the hero had some superior advantage against a big group (like, say, a gun or magic powers) and then lost it and had to go hand-to-hand for the last few guys. Let's not get carried away.

A specific form of PlotArmor, this trope is very common due to the numerous [[DoylistVersusWatsonian storytelling]] considerations fueling it. [[RuleOfDrama Drama thrives on conflict]], and having the few put up a fight against the many is basically a free conflict coupon that's automatically viable during any few vs. many confrontation. Why have the superhero team [[CurbStompBattle curb stomp]] the villain if you can make him powerful enough to force them into TeethClenchedTeamwork? Why have the dozens of {{Mooks}} club TheHero unconscious three seconds into an encounter if you can let him take down seven or eight of them before he collapses, to show how much of a [[Badass]] he is? That would be letting some perfectly good [[EmotionalTorque dramatic tension]] go to waste.

A specific form of PlotArmor, this trope is very common due to the numerous [[DoylistVersusWatsonian storytelling]] considerations fueling it. [[RuleOfDrama Drama thrives on conflict]], and having the few put up a fight against the many is basically a free conflict coupon that's automatically viable during any few vs. many confrontation. Why have the superhero team [[CurbStompBattle curb stomp]] the villain if you can make him powerful enough to force them into TeethClenchedTeamwork? Why have the dozens of {{Mooks}} club TheHero unconscious three seconds into an encounter if you can let him take down seven or eight of them before he collapses, to show how much of a {[Badass}} he is? That would be letting some perfectly good [[EmotionalTorque dramatic tension]] go to waste.

A specific form of PlotArmor, this trope is very common due to the numerous [[DoylistVersusWatsonian storytelling]] considerations fueling it. [[RuleOfDrama Drama thrives on conflict]], and having the few put up a fight against the many is basically a free conflict coupon that's automatically viable during any few vs. many confrontation. Why have the superhero team [[CurbStompBattle curb stomp]] the villain if you can make him powerful enough to force them into TeethClenchedTeamwork? Why have the dozens of {{Mooks}} club TheHero unconscious three seconds into an encounter if you can let him take down seven or eight of them before he collapses, to show how much of a BadAss he is? That would be letting some perfectly good [[EmotionalTorque dramatic tension]] go to waste.

This trope is very common due to the numerous [[DoylistVersusWatsonian storytelling]] considerations fueling it. [[RuleOfDrama Drama thrives on conflict]], and having the few put up a fight against the many is basically a free conflict coupon that's automatically viable during any few vs. many confrontation. Why have the superhero team [[CurbStompBattle curb stomp]] the villain if you can make him powerful enough to force them into TeethClenchedTeamwork? Why have the dozens of {{Mooks}} club TheHero unconscious three seconds into an encounter if you can let him take down seven or eight of them before he collapses, to show how much of a BadAss he is? That would be letting some perfectly good [[EmotionalTorque dramatic tension]] go to waste.

* ConservationOfNinjutsu/Roleplay

This trope is very common due to the numerous [[DoylistVersusWatsonian storytelling]] considerations fueling it. [[RuleOfDrama Drama thrives off of conflict]], and having the few put up a fight against the many is basically a free conflict coupon that's automatically viable during any few vs. many confrontation. Why have the superhero team [[CurbStompBattle curb stomp]] the villain if you can make him powerful enough to force them into TeethClenchedTeamwork? Why have the dozens of {{Mooks}} club TheHero unconscious three seconds into an encounter if you can let him take down seven or eight of them before he collapses, to show how much of a BadAss he is? That would be letting some perfectly good [[EmotionalTorque dramatic tension]] go to waste.

See also TooManyCooksSpoilTheSoup, StrongAsTheyNeedToBe, DistributionOfNinjutsu and TheWorfEffect. Compare ConservationOfCompetence and KillOneOthersGetStronger. This trope is a reason the ZergRush may fail. Beware, however, in case RealityEnsues, and this trope ''[[WrongGenreSavvy doesn't]]'' apply. If the system ''doesn't'' use this, TheMinionMaster will capitalize on it, as will the WolfpackBoss. Contrast EliteArmy ("in the that one {{Ninja}} is a deadly threat", while an army of them are [[BadassArmy almost invincible]].) and OneManArmy (for characters who are strong enough to take on large numbers of enemies). An aversion may result in a BolivianArmyEnding.

[[quoteright:350:[[Webcomic/SamAndFuzzy http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/motivator867335ey5.jpg]]]]

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[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]
* ''{{Naruto}}'' takes this trope to new heights. Not only do minions and other extras actively exhibit the trope, but Naruto himself possesses the ability to make a good 1000+ clones of himself. To that point, if he creates 1-5, they're usually the key to his victory, but almost any time he goes over 10 or so (which turns out to be his most common [[IdiotHero strategy]]), they turn into cannon fodder, as their main weakness is that they usually go poof with just one hit.
** The "Uzumaki Barrage" attack used against Gaara seems to avoid this trope since it relies more on the simple physical weight of the clones rather than their martial arts skill. It still fails more often than not, though. (Also because [[ThemeMusicPowerUp the theme song was playing at the time]] so it was to be expected that he was about to kick a lot of ass.)
** There are two instances where the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu fails to apply to Naruto. His "Shuriken from A Thousand Directions" technique utilizes mass numbers of clones to bombard a single target with shuriken. Also, in the beginning of the anime, his assault of Mizuki is conducted with hundreds of clones, which end up beating up the supposedly more skilled opponent into a pile of mush.
** Post-TimeSkip, after his CharacterDevelopment frees him from being an IdiotHero (to a certain extent), this blind multi-clone rush becomes a viable strategy, as [[spoiler: Naruto realizes that he learns everything his clones learn. So, he charges an enemy with five or so clones, learns their strategies, and formulates his own plan.]]
** This is played spectacularly when (in the fight between Kakashi, Naruto and Sakura) Kakashi takes down the aforementioned 1000+ Naruto clones ''using only tai-jutsu''.
** Ironically, the Shadow Clone jutsu itself seems to be a skill possessed by only a few, extremely badass ninja (everyone else uses non-physical clones or element based clones). Thus, the most effective way to personally apply the Law of Ninjitsu Conservation is itself conserved.
** [[ZigZaggingTrope Shadow Clones are all over the board on this one]]. Officially, the user has to divide his power evenly between each clone, so all the clones are collectively as powerful as the user. Naruto bypasses this by having massive amounts of chakra, so he can make clones that are every bit as capable as he is. But most of the time they get taken out casually by a single opponent.
** The show makes note of this trope: The standard squad is made up of four ninja. Kakashi says that any more and the team starts getting slow, clunky, and disorganized. A bigger team is worse at completing missions than a smaller one. Plus, any ninja that stands alone is pretty much BadAss enough to beat an entire squad.
** Akatsuki has apparently gotten wise to this; in a nice show of GenreSavvy, [[OddlySmallOrganization they only work]] [[EvilDuo in two man teams]]. To give you an idea of how effective this is, each team is usually on equal standing with an ARMY.
** During the fight of Sakura and Chiyo vs. Sasori, Sasori summons about a hundred puppets at once, most of them where taken apart easily by Sakura and Chiyo's Ten Puppet of Collection Chikamatsu. Though later in the fight, the ten puppets quickly lose advantage as Chiyo pointed out that Sasori controlled his puppets better as their numbers dwindled.
* ''NinjaScroll'': Jubei eliminates ninja after ninja flunky with prototypical displays of gushing HighPressureBlood. Only the Eight Devils of Kimon can give him a challenge; all others die with pathetic ease.
** The same goes for ''Manga/{{Basilisk}}''.
* Played with in ''NininGaShinobuden'', where Shinobu's fellow ninjas are faceless mooks who can't do anything right. Miyabi can defeat the whole clan easily, and she's about twelve.
* ''{{Dragonball}}'' is a frequent offender, especially in plots involving the Red Ribbon Army or Frieza's men, but the most blatant usage is in the Bardock TV Special. As he races to attack Frieza in the climax, he has to fly through an army of {{mooks}}, which cause him so little trouble that, in some cases, they look like they're [[BugSplat splattering on his face]].
** Anyone in ''{{Dragonball}}'' who possessed the ability to duplicate themselves usually followed a similar rule, because the person using the technique actually does divide his power up evenly amongst his clones. So a fighter with a power level of 2400 becomes two fighters with power levels of 1200 or three fighters with power levels of 800 and so on. The creator of the Division technique actually gets criticized by his rival for creating a move with such a debilitating flaw.
*** But subverted by Metal Cooler in one of the movies. After one copy is defeated, hundreds more show up... each of whom are just as strong as the original.
*** The movies in general are better about this. Sansho, Ginger, and Nicky manage to take down Piccolo with a CombinedEnergyBlast, despite being individually weaker than him, Bido, Zangya, and Bujin are able to take down the powerful Super Saiyan Gohan with teamwork, and in the above Metal Cooler example, Goku and Vegeta managed to defeat the original Metal Cooler by combining their energies. Generic {{mook}}s also manage to take down Gohan and Krillin in the Lord Slug and Metal Cooler movies, again by ganging up on them, despite sustaining heavy losses.
* ''{{Hellsing}}'' does use this. The Hellsing Organisation's operatives mop the floor with masses of enemy ghouls but find more trouble in dealing with lone strong vampires. However, there is also a lot of subversion. Seras assisted Alucard against the lone Tubalcain Alhambra and helped her side win instead of making the odds worse, as the Inverse Ninja Law would have. Similarly, when Alexander makes his one-man charge towards Alucard and a newly-summoned army of familiars in a later part of the story, he finds that the numbers actually are to Alucard's advantage and it takes reinforcements to save him.
** Made more explicit in OVA 8, where a count of how many members of each warring faction remain by the time Alucard, Anderson and the Captain meet is done before the climax. Guess which side gets wiped out first and who comes out victorious:
---> Army of the Roman Catholic Church's 9th Crusade: 2875 men.
---> Members of the Last Nazi Battalion "Millennium": 527 vampires.
---> English Protestant Knights "Hellsing": [[spoiler:2 vampires and 1 human.]].
* Played with a lot in Franchise/{{Digimon}}. Anime/DigimonAdventure, [[Anime/DigimonAdventure02 02]], and [[Anime/DigimonTamers Tamers]] subvert it (divide and conquer is a common and effective strategy on heroes and villains alike, anyone can be overwhelmed by enough numbers, etc). ''Anime/DigimonXEvolution'' both plays it straight (the original is vastly superior to the copy) and subverts this, by the Digimon defending their lives being worn down gradually to their destruction. Surprising, for a shonen (or is it kids? ) anime.
** Digimon TheMovie plays this very straight for both the heroes and [[BigBad Diaboromon]], whoever has greater numbers tends to be on the losing side. Wargreymon and Metalgarurumon can barely get a hit in on Diaboromon in between all the asskicking that he's giving them, but when he multiplies into several thousand copies and they [[FusionDance become]] [[{{Badass}} Omnimon]], the army is mowed down within seconds. When he gets to the last Diaboramon, the fight is now one-on-one and is more evenly matched (if only because he's too fast to hit).
* [[spoiler:Subverted]] in ''[[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion End of Evangelion.]]'' Asuka fights nine mass-produced [[HumongousMecha Eva]] units, each with weapons that can cleave straight through her nigh-impenetrable [[BeehiveBarrier AT Field]]. Asuka's Eva, meanwhile, has only a Progressive Knife and three minutes of battery power. In that timespan, Asuka disables or destroys ''every last one''. [[spoiler:Only to find out that they were OnlyMostlyDead, and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bpx66Ld-TI promptly get her]] [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown ass kicked horrifically]]. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bpx66Ld-TI Whoops.]]]]
* ''MahouSenseiNegima'':
** Two resident [[HighlyVisibleNinja Obvious Ninjas]], one plays this straight the other subverts it slightly. Inugami Kotaro can't create Shadow Clones of equal power to himself (and his cap was seven in the Tournament sub-arc). However Kaede with her Sixteen Shadow Clones CAN... but not at full count. When she has four shadow clones they are all equal to her alone. Proving with Training at least in Negima you can bypass this trope.
** Later in the series [[spoiler: the main lead's father Nagi and his team the Ala Rubra were fighting in TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon against the absolute BigBad. A single sneak attack from him was enough to wipe out the entire party. Then, after being [[HealingHands healed]], Nagi managed to single-handedly take out the BlackCloak wearing UltimateEvil. Hammering the point home, each individual member of the Ala Rubra were more than capable on their own against their [[PlotTailoredToTheParty stylized]] [[PsychoRangers PsychoRanger]] opponents they'd faced previous]].
** A textbook example occurs in chapter 254. Negi takes down a small army of Governor Godel's elite [[BlatantLies "private bodyguards"]] in a matter of seconds, but when [[spoiler: he fights Godel one-on-one, the Governor takes his legs out before he can react, then nails him with a barrier piercing attack whilst he was unable to dodge.]] Negi was on the floor before he knew what hit him.
** An even more textbook example occurs in 314 and beyond. [[spoiler:While Fate Averruncus is a massive threat capable of taking out Negi and characters beyond his level like Rakan, the three Averruncuses mentioned to be every bit his equal get laughably curb-stomped and one-shotted in back-to-back chapters the moment they try to go against the people at Negi's power level, complete with notes from Fate about how soft their attacks were]].
* In ''{{Berserk}}'', Apostles were a major threat early in the series, with Guts needing to fight with everything he had to kill one, and Guts probably would have died fighting the Count if the Count's daughter hadn't conveniently burst into the room for Guts to use as a hostage. Now that all the Apostles in the world are serving Griffith, they've been demoted to [[EliteMook Elite Mooks]]. Justified, since Guts has the [[DeadlyUpgrade Berserker's Armor]], which makes him much stronger and brings out his SuperpoweredEvilSide.
* ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'' sometimes shows a character (usually Manjoume/Chazz) defeat several duelists at once offscreen. In Manjoume's case, apparently it's his coattails of doom that makes him elite enough to do this.
* The Type-3 [[MechaMooks Gadget Drones]] in ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikerS'', which slapped Elio around for most of the fight when there was only one of them during the first mission, but gets taken out by the Forwards in seconds when they come in groups in later missions. {{Justified|Trope}} since said Forwards were going through Nanoha's TrainingFromHell every single day.
** And in the original series, Prescia Testarosssa took out a platoon of magical enforcers in a single attack, while Nanoha and crew ripped through her automatons with ease.
** This trope is subverted with Ginga, who was defeated by three Combat Cyborgs despite being a better fighter than all of the Riot Force 6 recruits. Also by Teana, the weakest among the Riot Force 6 recruits in terms of magical power, but defeated the most number of Combat Cyborgs [[AwesomenessByAnalysis by outsmarting them.]]
* ''Manga/OnePiece'': The Straw Hats are attacked by a horde of [[SuperpoweredMooks Captain-ranked Marines]]. Each one displays unique powers, fighting skills, or weapons. Each one a few chapters ago would have been a boss, or at least a major enemy. Now, they were dangerous only because of their sheer numbers.
** Morgan was also a captain, and Luffy defeated him without taking a single hit. T-Bone was an EliteMook, and while he presented a threat to the Rocketman, Zoro defeated him in one hit, so the strength of Captain-ranked Marines is not that significant at this point in the story.
** ''Manga/OnePiece'' does this to the point of ridiculousness. During the Assault on Enies Lobby, Luffy single-handedly defeats an army of 2000 Marines without receiving even a scratch. Immediately afterwards, he fights one-on-one against Blueno, who gives him significantly more trouble. However, given that Blueno was an elite agent and the Marines were just foot soldiers, it's somewhat justified.
** The Enies Lobby assault in general was a massive invocation of this trope. The Frankie Family and Straw Hats numbered about 60 and in total there were about 10,000 soldiers on the island. That's right--taking down one of the World Government's strongholds housing the [=CP9=] ''and'' a garrison of 10,000 strong took ''only 60 people''.
** The start of the Whitebeard War seemed to be pretty even too, even though Whitebeard's men totaled only those on his four ships plus about 40 other crews from the New World. The Navy, on the other hand, had 100,000 soldiers. To be fair, most of those were still further down in the plaza, but it's still a pretty massive example.
** An army of fishmen numbering 100,000 fights against the Straw Hats and Jimbe. The opening move in their battle consists of Luffy knocking 50,000 of the enemies unconscious simultaneously.
*** [[PureAwesomeness By STARING at them]]. Although it is kind of justified as this is an ability that you have to be born with and only a really small portion of the people in the world have it and is one of the most powerful abilities in the world. Also they were all {{Redshirt}}s by this point in the story.
* ''Anime/AfroSamurai'' is ''made'' of this trope. Afro will triumph over any number of foes attacking in numbers, but have trouble one-on-one.
* ''YakitateJapan!'' inverts this by having Kageto Kinoshita's only endearing trait be his ability to clone himself. He is full of so much suck that his power alone is zero anyway, so making clones can't hurt.
* One of the manga of ''Manga/AhMyGoddess'', shows Urd demonstrating her copying ability, in an omake, and explaining, as she gets into the hundreds or so of copies, they start to become, well... jelly...
* ''RoninWarriors'' is almost absurdly blatant about this:
** In the first episode, they face a single one of Talpa's samurai {{Mooks}}. It takes the entire episode and the Hero summoning his armor and using his FinishingMove to take him out. Any subsequent attacks by them can generally be handled ''without'' transforming, and in the second arc, ''two'' of the heroes can take on hundreds of them.
** The first episode itself could be a subversion. That mook was using Anubis's weapon.
** [[HandWave Or the weapon was just an imitation of Anubis,]] but the series got even [[UpToEleven more]] blatant when [[AmplifierArtifact The Jewel Of Life]] held by [[TheScrappy Yuli]] was taking them out by the ''dozens.'' By that point, the Mooks were less a threat and more a hindrance like a field of tall, groaning grass.
* Watch an episode of ''SailorMoon'' and you'll have the basic formula: Sailor Senshi weaken monster, Sailor Moon finishes it off. Now watch one of the movies, where there can be dozens to hundreds of monsters at once, and EVERYONE will be able to pick them off with an attack or two.
** Somehow averted considering said Sailor Senshi don't have much trouble defeating the lone monster even though they outnumber it.
* All throughout ''{{Claymore}}'', Awakened Beings are shown to be extremely formidable, requiring several Claymores banding together to outnumber them in order to defeat them, and even then only barely and requiring multiple episodes dedicated to the fight. In the final arc of the anime when the Awakened Beings attack en masse, they don't take near as much effort to kill as previously. Though this is only as a result of the anime's GeckoEnding. In the manga, despite gathering half of the Organization's warriors, they only manage to kill eight Awakened Beings before being wiped out. The Awakened Ones' field commander actually notes that this was an exemplary result for the Warriors.
* In ''Anime/{{Noir}}'', any time the two assassin protagonists are badly outnumbered, every bullet of theirs seems to kill two enemies, while every enemy bullet misses its mark. When they face Chloe however, they meet their match.
* Any nameless mook in ''{{Utawarerumono}}'' is canon fodder and will die in the dozens per sword slash from a general or important character. The large scale battles are really battles between named characters. The mooks on either side are just window dressing and will not get any kills in.
* ''Manga/KatekyoHitmanReborn'':
** Hibari taking on an entire army of Millefiore soldiers and coming out fine [[spoiler:only to get beaten when he goes one on one against Genkishi]].
** Most recently with Hibari again [[spoiler: during his match with Adelheid. In their one-on-one before they were about even, but now it seems that 500 Ice Clones of Adelheid, who have her same strength by her measure, can't even scratch Hibari.]]
** And Hibari goes for a hat-trick, taking out [[spoiler: three of [[QuirkyMinibossSquad the Varia]] in a single hit.]] It seems like his entire strategy in this arc revolves around this, as his entire team consists of nobody but himself.
* ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSeedDestiny Gundam SEED Destiny]]'' plays this to high levels, with highly possible ([[{{Fanon}} but unconfirmed]]) Justification. A single Destroy Gundam helps the Earth Alliance to stomp over much of Europe, takes multiple episodes to go down and the repercussions of its destruction linger for several episodes afterward. When the EA field three, they go down in the same episode without too much trouble. When they field five at the same time, it's almost a non-event. The Justification is: 1. Stellar, a TykeBomb piloting it, while these mass-produced unit are issued to Mooks, also 2. the one she rides is shown having MORE feature than the mass-deployed (although STILL unconfirmed), in short, SuperPrototype.
* In the first series of ''Lightnovel/FullMetalPanic'', most major arcs end with a showdown between the protagonist Sousuke who fights the BigBad Gauron, who fights using an Arm Slave equipped with a Lambda Driver, which makes it nigh invincible for all intents and purposes. In each encounter, Sousuke is pushed to the brink of his physical limits just trying to take down one of these things. At the end of Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid, he has an encounter with five enemies who are using the same invincibility device he struggled against in season one, and dispatches all five of them with relative ease.
** Somewhat justified in that in the fights with Gauron, Sousuke either had trouble with or failed to use his own Lamda Driver. In the fight at the end of TSR, his Driver is functioning perfectly, allowing him to fight on an even level as his enemies and beat them with his skill and their reliance on their Lamda Drivers saving them.
* Saito from LightNovel/ZeroNoTsukaima took on about a couple thousand soldiers alone at the end of the second season and took down most of them before falling and being revived by a wood elf?
** Significantly subverted in that the light novel tells us that he managed to take down only about 250 of them before falling, which isn't a large amount - numerically - given that he was fighting against 70,000 of them. Admittedly, he did manage to stop them from pursuing Tristain's fleeing army, though, so it still certainly serves as an example of the trope.
* Played straight a few times in ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' but the best example is probably [[spoiler:the captain/vizards vs [[VillainSue Aizen]]. They attack en masse and he curb stomps them easily.]] There's also an early example with the match between Uryu and Ichigo. Just an episode or so prior, Ichigo definitely had the advantage against hollows but it was still a struggle to win. When the contest is running, he and Uryu are taking them down easily when fighting multiple opponents at the same time. They only really function to slow Ichigo down in these numbers.
** Yoruichi does this when fighting Soi Fon's ninja squad.
*** Neither of these is an example of this trope as the result of those fights is justified by in-universe combat mechanics. In each case, the winner of the fight won by having ridiculous amounts of power to begin with instead of his/her opponents suffering from narrative power cap required by this trope.
* Averted in ''{{Holyland}}''. Yuu can win one-on-one duels, but usually does poorly in a target-rich environment.
* ''RosarioToVampire'' gives a nice example when [[BashBrothers Gin and Haiji]] take down an entire branch of [[AntiHumanAlliance by themselves]].
** Generally, the main characters only ever struggle against very powerful single opponents. Being outnumbered has never caused them problems (especially for Inner Moka). She and Tsukune alone manage to wreak havoc on the athletics festival.
* Highly present in ''RurouniKenshin'' - somewhat justified in that Kenshin's Hiten Mitsurugi style is specifically mentioned as an exceptionally rare and deadly style (no more than two people are masters of it at any given time, and Kenshin chooses to let it die with him) that specializes in combat against multiple opponents.
* ''LightNovel/{{Inukami}}'': Sendan's group, even as a whole, is less powerful than Youko is by herself. Subverting the trope, they're even worse off when fighting individually.
* Featured in this page of [[http://www.mangamagazine.net/read-manga/SIN-Chapter-5-War/1/4/7 Sin Manga]].
--> Nameless Mook: C'mon, he's just...
--> Crack!!
--> Kaden: One guy?
* The ''{{Mazinkaiser}}'' OVA bounces around with this. The Mazinger Team goes off to fight Dr. Hell's {{Mechanical Monster}}s and lose badly, only for the monsters to get trounced when the titular Super Robot finally appears. It's played much more straighter at the end when Great Mazinger takes on ''all'' of Hell's monsters and wins.
* ''GetterRobo Armageddon''. On one end, an entire army of GetterRoboG, the second of the Getter Robo line. On the other, a singular classic Getter Robo, piloted by Ryouma Nagare. Ryouma owns them easily.
** Conversely, in ''Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter Robo'', Shou and Gai are overwhelmed in the Neo Getter Robo when dozens of prototype Getters piloted by members of the Dinosaur Empire attack them. In this case, though, it's not a matter of Conservation of Ninjutsu, but the fact that, despite being prototypes, the dozens of Getters were using Getter Energy, thus are much stronger than the plasma energy-using Neo Getter.
* Two legendary ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' scenes are made up of this trope. In the original ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'', Amuro's awakening Newtype powers are revealed when he pushes the RX-78 Gundam to take out 12 Rick Doms, then Zeon's newest and strongest {{Mook}} unit, in three minutes. 20-some years later, Kira uses the Strike Freedom Gundam to defeat 12 [=GOUFs=] in 2 minutes in ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSeedDestiny Gundam SEED Destiny]]''.
** This is a pretty common trope in Gundam media, 1 ace pilot will take out dozens of mooks on either side of the war regardless of whether they're fighting for or against the good guys without taking a scratch, only when it's ace vs ace do they end up losing. Possibly justified as the aces are not only the best pilots on their side, they usually in some of the best mobile suits their side has to offer.
** Subverted in at least once instance when [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing Heero]] ended up fighting in one of the the mass produced Leo mooks he was quickly curbstombed along with his similarly equipped allies by the much better Taurus mobile dolls.
** This trope is [[PlayingWithATrope played with]] in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00''. At the start of the first series, the SuperPrototype Gundams steamroller all non-[[AppliedPhlebotinum GN]]-powered suits... Until one episode, where the world's 3 main superpowers team-up to defeat them, and it almost works, if not for [[spoiler: TheCavalry showing up]]. Then, when {{Mook}} tech levels catch up, the Gundams are on the back foot again... Until the second series, where it [[ZigZaggedTrope zig-zags it]]. [[Anime/Gundam00AWakeningOfTheTrailblazer The movie]], on the other hand, averts this trope nicely. The ELS, which number in the '' '''TRILLIONS''' '', trounce the mere hundreds of thousands of Earth forces, [[spoiler: Gundams included]], with barely any effort, and would easily win, if not for [[spoiler: Setsuna]].
* Akane of RanmaHalf vs [[AllMenArePerverts half the guys]] in the school. Multiple times in multiple episodes, and presumably tens of times offscreen. [[SarcasmMode Sounds like a fair fight...]] {{Justified|Trope}} in that she practices martial arts extensively, whereas most of her opponents train fighting as a hobby if at all. However, some few of her opponents are judoists and a very noticeable sumo wrestler...
* An episode of ''Anime/HeartcatchPrettyCure'' had Cobraja create an army of Desertians through children's unwillingness to do their homework over summer break. For the most part, these tiny MonsterOfTheWeek are just annoyances. It's when they become a full-fledged monster that the girls are given trouble.
** Also happens in ''PrettyCureAllStars DX 3''. Two of the teams of Cures (the leader group of Cures Black, Bloom, Dream, Peach, Blossom and Melody and the bright colored group of Shiny Luminous, Milky Rose, and Cures Rouge, Lemonade, Pine, Passion, Sunshine and Moonlight) deal with groups of Monsters of the Week with ease, but the remaining team (soft colored group comprised of Cures White, Egret, Aqua, Mint, Berry, Marine and Rhythm) are put through the ringer with only a small group of monsters.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]
* TheHulk personifies this trope; he can spend an entire comic battling one superhero or villain, but when faced with the entire army of them then he takes them out like flies.
** This has consistency, because the Hulk's powers increase proportionately according to his anger, which will match the numbers against him.
*** Conversely if Hulk is on a team, he never seems to pull out quite the same levels of power/rage.
** SpiderMan also has this habit to a lesser extent. He has fought the ComicBook/FantasticFour and ComicBook/{{X-Men}} more than once and holds his own rather well despite the fact that individual members can and have done well against the wall-crawler in one-on-one fights.
* The Hand, a group of elite ninja in MarvelComics, is almost nothing but cannon fodder. The willingness to die seems to be more important in membership consideration than skill, considering how many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of these guys characters like {{Wolverine}} and {{Elektra}} have waded through. These were, at least in part, the inspiration for the Foot Clan, below.
* {{Justified|Trope}} by the {{Wolverine}} comic "...[the {{mooks}}] have to be careful they don't chop one of their own by mistake. While I can hit anyone I please."
* One ''{{Flash}}'' storyline had a Speed Force enhanced bunch of Ninja going up against various Flashes and other speedsters. They realized almost too late that the more ninja they took out of the action, the faster the others were getting...
* [[{{Shazam}} The Marvel Family's]] powers work like this; The more that are active, the more their powers are divided amongst them.
** It goes back and forth for them. Sometimes they're splitting the same power source, sometimes they each have their own.
* Played with in a recent ''ComicBook/{{Runaways}}'' comic where Kingpin faces the heroes with an army of ninjas (more Ninjas then usual, according to one kid). During the fight, Molly (a superstrong girl who was very upset about punching Punisher, who had no powers to protect him, and had sworn off fighting anyone without powers) asks if ninjas had powers so she could fight them. She is given the answer, that, because they were ninjas, they counted as double, the implication being that heroes in the Marvel universe cut loose when fighting ninjas.
* There's a Comicbook/GhostRider storyline that justifies this. Basically [[{{Satan}} Lucifer]] splits himself into 666 different bodies; when one body dies, the remaining ones gain more power, until only one remains with all of the Devil's hellish force.
* In ''TheNegation'' #11, Obregon Kaine reminisces on a lesson from his training days as he watches hundreds of superpowered Australians thoroughly fail to defeat General Murquade: "It doesn't matter if you're fighting ten enemies or a hundred...just worry about the one you're killing now!"
* Some supervillains have discovered, to their misfortune, that this cuts both ways. Juggernaut vs an entire team of Comicbook/{{X-Men}}? A city-wrecking battle in which the individual X-Men are injured, trains are derailed and buildings fall down. Juggernaut '''and''' Black Tom vs Cyclops? Cyclops runs rings around them while his internal monologue digresses about military history. Total property damage: One exploding pickup truck.
* The Wrecking Crew embody this trope since their leader the Wrecker splits the power of his magical crowbar among the Crew. The Wrecker by himself is usually a serious threat. He has given a (weakened) Thor the fight of his life and later held his own against the New Avengers. The Wrecking Crew, DependingOnTheWriter, are either serious threats or joke villains. They can go anywhere from being able to beat down [[IncredibleHercules Hercules]] to struggling with the [[ThePunisher Punisher]] to getting [[CurbStompBattle curb stomped]] by the ComicBook/{{Runaways}}. The Wrecker is [[GenreSavvy actually aware]] of this trope, but [[ContractualGenreBlindness willingly splits his power anyway]] since the Crew, [[TheStarscream occasional treachery]] from the team's EvilGenius aside, is like family to the Wrecker.
* {{Justified|Trope}} when {{Superman}}, Franchise/{{Batman}}, and [[WonderWoman The Amazons]] faced an army of Doomsday clones. Doomsday's clones don't inherit his invulnerability, nor his regeneration, reducing them to [[OneHitPointWonder one hit point wonders]]. The army is taken out with heat vision and exploding batarangs.
** Which creates quite a bit of FridgeLogic - why bother to clone Doomsday in the first place if the clones are weak enough to be taken out by a non-powered human with an axe? Ordinary Parademons - of which Darkseid seems to have a limitless supply - would have done a better job.
*** Cause they're stronger and have claws? As long as they're attacking they'd have an advantage
* On the subject of Doomsday, this trope tends to work in his favor as well, especially with those who uses him right - he's trashed two iterations of the JusticeLeague, an iteration of the SuicideSquad and, in his early days, mowed through an army of Green Lanterns. He's practically ground to a halt when Superman steps in.
* Subverted in an early issue of ''Comicbook/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|Mirage}}''. Leonardo does battle with practically the entire Foot Clan and gets his ass kicked. Although, he [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome did manage to put up quite a fight]]. This is actually an example of the Law breaking down as noted above, as Leonardo was increasingly worn down by one wave of Foot ninjas after another, while each successive group of ninjas was fresh.
* [[InfiniteCrisis The O.M.A.C. Project]] does this with the {{OMAC}} units; a single OMAC is a formidable enemy for {{Superman}}, two OMACS were formidable enemies against Franchise/{{Batman}} and [[BadassNormal Sasha]] [[ActionGirl Bordeaux]], three were completely obliterated by Rocket Red [[TakingYouWithMe detonating himself]], and nearly a million OMACS were taken out by an ElectroMagneticPulse.
* {{Daredevil}}:
** #57: 100 armed Yakuza soldiers hopped up on [[SuperSerum MGH]] against an unarmed, civilian clothed Matt Murdock. Even the FBI agents who have the situation under surveillance know they'd just be in his way.
** Ninja Army vs. Bullseye.
* In full effect on James Robinsons' ''[[ComicBook/NewKrypton World of New Krypton]]'' arc in {{Superman}}. One Kryptonian? One of the most powerful characters in the DCU. 80,000 Kryptonians? So much canon fodder.
** Inversely, how do they show off their power? They all go off and beat Doomsday into the ground.
* Repeatedly invoked by multiple superheroes when they face a large gang of {{Mooks}}. {{Spider-Man}}, Franchise/{{Batman}}, CaptainAmerica and ThePunisher have all been surrounded by assorted groups of street thugs, ninjas, terrorists, convicts, etc., and almost always come out on top. Another variation on this trope was used in an early Spider-Man comic where three police officers burst in to help Spider-Man against a large gang of thugs. The cops are almost as effective against the overwhelming number of hoods as Spider-Man himself.
* The [[BatFamilyCrossover X-books X-over]] "Second Coming" was made of this trope and BadassDecay. One Nimrod class sentinel nearly wipes out the combined X-men and Hellfire Club. [[spoiler: An army of them is nearly cannon fodder.]] Not to mention a combined force of [[spoiler: Bastion, Stephen Lang, Bolivar Trask, William Stryker, Graydon Creed and Cameron Hodge]] getting taken out.
* ''GIJoe'' often uses this trope, especially when dealing with the feuds between various Ninja-clans associated with either the team or the Cobra. Good example from America's Elite #26, where Snake-Eyes and Scarlett battle several ''dozens of mook-ninja's'' with great success. When nasty bad guy Firefly tries to escape, Scarlett tells Snake-Eyes to "Go, I'll take care of these losers", even though there are still at least a dozen left. Of course, the battle between Snake-Eyes and Firefly is epic in every regard. During the original Marvel run, issue #91, when Larry Hama was still writing the script, there was a slightly more plausible version, where Snake-Eyes, Scarlett, Jinx and Timber face-off about twenty Red Ninja's. First sixteen go down easily, whereas the last four manage to cause grievous wounds to both Scarlett and Jinx and even cut up Snakes a bit, before going down.
* In ''ComicBook/RisingStars'', [[spoiler:this is literally true, in that whenever a special dies, his power is divided among all the surviving specials, making them stronger. As the body count racks up over the course of the series, it goes from where, at the start, a few non-powered mooks could easily gun down dozens of low-powered specials to the point where, near the end, any one special can take out entire armies.]]
* In the fourth issue of the third [[ComicBook/TheAvengers Avengers]] series, the team had become massive due to all the reserves being called in to fight Morgan Le Fay three issues prior. The team, which by then consisted of over forty superheroes, was called out to face the [[GoldfishPoopGang low-level supervillain]] called Whirlwind. Whirlwind basically danced rings around the Avengers, who kept tripping over each other and accidentally hitting their teammates instead, and got away laughing. By contrast, when Whirlwind later faced Justice and Firestar by themselves, they were able to defeat him easily.
* Guile in a BarBrawl with all the rowdy drunks inside in the [[ComicBook/MalibuComicsStreetFighter Malibu Street Fighter comic]].
* Played straight during ''InfiniteCrisis'' with Superboy-Prime: he tears through the gathered teams of Doom Patrol, the Teen Titans and the Justice Society with ease, but is easily spirited away by the Flashes save for the Golden Age one. Later on, he battles an army of Green Lanterns, killing nearly 50 of them, only to be stopped and put down by the Golden Age and Modern Age Superman.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Fan Works]]
* Discussed and averted in ''FanFic/AnEntryWithABang[=!=]''. It takes a lot of Clancy-Earth planes working together to bring down one ''{{Battletech}}'' aerospace fighter, and that's only because they were fighting separately. The analysts realise that against a proper House or Comstar ASF unit trained to fight together, C-Earth will be in big trouble.
* Played and lampshaded over and over again in ''FanFic/UninvitedGuests'', not only with actual ninjas, but with the Espada.
* ''FanFic/ToyHammer'' refers to this as the inverse daemon effect--daemons that attempt a BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind call upon a single reservoir of warp-essence, and as they fall in battle, each survivor has more to draw from. They ''could'' attack one at a time, but that's [[AttackAttackAttack rather more strategy than their ruined minds can comprehend]].
* [[http://wharu.deviantart.com/art/Alucard-39083021 This]] FanArt of {{Hellsing}}'s Alucard.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/ResidentEvilAfterlife''. Numerous clones of Alice are used almost as cannon fodder whereas one is the epitome of ''BadAss''.
* ''SpiesLikeUs''. Subverted then played straight.
-->'''Fitzhume:''' ''(to an army of ninjas)'' This is my sister. You can all have her!
** The Rhombus' rating of Fitzhume and Millbarge after the encounter: "Pussies". He then ''takes them all out singlehandedly.''
* Played with and lampshaded in ''Film/SpyKids'', when two good guys are easily overpowered by two robots... then later in the film, four good guys come up with a plan ''under the assumption'' they can hold their own against 500 of those same robots. [[spoiler:Luckily. Floop ends up reprogramming them to render them harmless just in time.]]
-->'''Gregorio''': I'll take the hundred on the right... Ingrid, you take the hundred on the left. Carmen, hundred center-left, Junie, center-right. [[TemptingFate It'll work. It'll work.]]
-->'''Juni''': There's five hundred, Dad. We need one more person. [[spoiler:(''Cue [[DannyTrejo Machete]] [[DynamicEntry bursting through a window]] to join them.'')]]
* ''Film/StarTrek'' movie:
** Any time a group of ships appear, be it Klingon or Federation, count on them getting wrecked. A single ship, especially if it's named ''Enterprise'', is going to kick ass. This is hilariously evident in the series even moreso (see TV examples). Of course, in the film, the one and only time that happened was when everyone was showing up without a clue that there was an enemy, and the same ship could have wrecked the single ship too at that time, even with warning.
** Inverted in a deleted scene from the same movie; right after we see the ''Narada'' destroy the ''Kelvin'', a large number of Klingon ships decloak and are able to capture it. (Granted, the ship had been somewhat damaged already.) Later, it's flipped again, Uhura picks up the Klingon transmission that a Romulan vessel wiped out over 40 Klingon ships during their escape.
* ''Film/BatmanBegins'' skirts the edge of this trope. Bruce Wayne only fights one member of the League of Shadows during his escape (all the others were too busy dodging explosions); still, [[FridgeLogic one might wonder]] how Bruce was the only ninja to escape the exploding dojo. (The answer: [[spoiler:he wasn't]]). When he takes up the Batman mantle officially, he is able hold his own against four ninjas at once. This is {{Lampshaded}} to a certain degree with Batman's training as its designed to teaching him how to face vastly superior numbers and Ducard even declares Bruce his greatest student.
* ''Film/TheMatrix'' trilogy: In the famous Burly Brawl scene from ''Matrix: Reloaded'', Neo is able to manhandle (though not without some difficulty) dozens, if not [[TheAssimilator hundreds]], of Smith copies, yet in ''Matrix: Revolutions'', which takes place chronologically perhaps a day or so later, he is completely beaten by just a single Smith. Some theories argue that it's to be the one Smith with the power of the Oracle, which is why he can apparently see the future. And this little segment of dialogue, taken in the context of this trope, shows Smith to be quite GenreSavvy when the need calls for it.
-->'''Neo:''' It ends tonight.\\
'''Smith:''' I know it does; I've seen it. I know how it ends. That's why the rest of me are gonna sit back and enjoy the show, because we already know that [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou I'm the one that beats you.]]
* In ''Film/ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld'' Scott has little trouble mopping the floor with Lucas Lee's(The second evil ex's)stunt team, while only being able to defeat Lee by goading him into doing an insanely dangerous stunt on his skateboard.
* The list just wouldn't be complete without robots. In ''Film/IRobot'', Creator/WillSmith's character Spooner is able to survive and utterly destroy two massive truckloads worth of corrupted robots during the highway sequence, but the scene gets really serious when he realizes that there is one (albeit handicapped) robot leftover. Partially justified in that he defeats the two truckloads worth of robots with CarFu and his gun and the single robot he faces unarmed.
** There's a scene in the film where the older model [=NS4=]s try to protect Spooner from the new [=NS5=]s and just get the crap kicked out of them, regardless of number. They do manage to slow them down, though.
* In ''Film/ThePrincessBride'', Fezzik admits to falling prey to this trope when he starts having trouble fighting the Man in Black.
-->'''Fezzik:''' I just figured out why you would give me so much trouble.\\
'''Man in Black:''' Why is that, do you think?\\
'''Fezzik:''' Well, I haven't fought just one person for so long... I've been specializing in groups, fighting gangs for local charities... that kind of thing.\\
'''Man in Black:''' Why should that make such a difference?\\
'''Fezzik:''' You see, you use different moves when you're fighting half a dozen people than when you only have to worry about one.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** Probably the only time in that the Imperial Stormtroopers were at all capable was when fighting a [[RedshirtArmy large number of rebel troops]] -- both in the opening scene of ''Film/ANewHope'', and in the invasion of Hoth in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack''. After that, when they were just fighting Luke, Han, Chewie, and Leia, they became the [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy infamously poor marksmen]] they are remembered as. Ewoks count as heroes in this example.
** Related, the Trade Federation Droids only kill Jedi when there's a whole army of Jedi, as ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' shows. ([[Film/ThePhantomMenace the Gungan army]] [[RedshirtArmy is a whole different matter]].)
** Take the scene in ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' where Mace Windu and three other Jedi are attempting to arrest Palpatine. Palpatine instantly kills the first Jedi, then kills the second right after. The third Jedi survives for maybe five more seconds before also getting killed. Now that there is one more Jedi left, Mace manages to overpower Palpatine after a epic battle ([[TheChessmaster though he may have let him]]). [[Creator/SamuelLJackson Mace Windu is]], after all, {{Badass}} Incarnate.
** There's also [=TIE=] Fighters, though this is more easily justified. The ExpandedUniverse explicitly references one of the common justifications on this page--that a large number of starfighters have to be more careful when fighting a smaller number of starfighters--and then justifies it further by Rebel X-wings having shields and [=TIEs=] ''not'' (which itself tends to lead to higher survivability for the Rebel pilots, who thereby learn from their mistakes).
** Another ExpandedUniverse example: After the Brotherhood of Darkness imploded magnificently after Ruusan, Bane was left to rebuild the Sith. Instead of building a large army of Dark Side wielders, and dealing with the ChronicBackstabbingDisorder that came with it, he chose to take just ''one'' apprentice. Once the apprentice learned all they needed, they were to slay their master, take a new apprentice, and the cycle begins anew. Arguably, since the Sith lasted 1000 years under this idea, and it was the Sith dynasty that spawned Palpatine, it was the most successful. It's implied in the books that he got the idea from [[KnightsOfTheOldRepublic Revan's holocron]]. Not surprisingly, one of BioWare's writers was behind the Bane books.
--> "Only two shall there be, a master and an apprentice: one to embody power and the other to crave it."
** The above could also be applied to the end of ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', wherein Luke is the last living user of the Light Side of TheForce, thus the only person channeling its power in concentrate, enabling him to defeat two Sith whose purposes are divided (it helps that Darth Vader is having a HeroicBSOD of the ConflictingLoyalty variety).
* In ''Film/KillBill Volume 1'', the Bride is able to slice through the numerous Crazy 88 members like butter with her superior katana, only having trouble when she faced the General and Gogo Yubari one-on-one. Of course, they weren't technically Crazy 88's but rather [[TheDragon co-dragons]] but there's nothing to distinguish them from O-Ren's other {{Mooks}} aside from the fact that they had names and fought the Bride one-on-one.
* In ''Film/StarshipTroopers'' the bugs are incredibly strong when there's just one or two of them in the screen. When the troopers are defending the fortress, they can just spray down hordes of the same bugs with the same rifles that didn't work before.
* In ''Film/TheOne'', it is quite literally a law of the multiverse that "power" is spread between the different incarnations of a person across universes, and criminal abuse of this has naturally ensued. The BigBad and sort-of EvilTwin to the hero partakes in killing off their "other selves", such that by the final fight both are superhumanly capable.
* Very averted in the first ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' movie. Raphael fights a horde of mooks alone... and is ''savagely'' beaten, thrown through a skylight (which itself averts SoftGlass), and spends the next quarter of the movie recovering. However, the aversion is fairly justified by the fact that TMNT has, is, and most likely will always be a show about ThePowerOfFriendship and teamwork. His brothers weren't there, and he was emotionally unstable. Hence, the turtle with a cracked shell.\\
\\
Then played straight at the end: twice. The Turtles kick butt against the horde of Foot soldiers, but then get their butts kicked by Shredder... who is then defeated when he angrily charges at Splinter (who at the time, seemed to be unarmed). But then, that was [[RetiredBadass Splinter]].
* In ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'', Indy fairly easily takes out half a dozen Nazis on the truck transporting the Ark. But he nearly gets killed when there's just one Nazi left.
* When Indy faces multiple mooks in ''Film/TempleOfDoom'', he knocks each of them out in quick succession, but when a single mook tries to garrote him earlier in the film, it leads to a not-so-quick struggle.
* Both played straight and averted in ''IpMan'', where both the title hero and General Miura can throw down with multiple opponents with ease but Master Liu, who had been winning at the one-on-one Japanese-staged matches, tries to take on three at once and gets his ass handed to him. However, it should be noted that only heroes (and possibly sidekicks, girlfriends, scrappys, etc.) benefit from this trope. Liu was essentially a RedShirt.
* The formula is played straight ''and'' averted in ''{{Equilibrium}}''. In the final fight scenes, Preston is surrounded by six elite mooks and takes them down in about five seconds flat. There follows a duel with TheDragon ... well, kind of, since, averting the trope, TheDragon, who fought Preston to a draw in a sparring match earlier in the movie, [[spoiler:is taken down with three invisibly fast swipes, the last one of which ends with TheDragon's ''face getting sliced off''. And then comes the BigBad, who has more ninjutsu than any of his men combined, and who matches him gun for gun in the movie's final duel.]]
* The trope is played straight in any of ''TheKarateKid'' movies whenever Mr Miyagi gets involved in a fight. Three, four guys, one big Caucasian guy ... doesn't matter. Old guy always wins.
* Aragorn in the ''LordOfTheRings'' films faces dozens of orcs at a time throughout his adventures. The only time he seems to be having any difficulty is fighting one-on-one with the Uruk-hai leader and the troll.
** A single troll was giving the entire group of heroes a hard fight in ''The Fellowship Of The Ring'' in a rare heroes vs. villain example.
** Subverted, in the major battles at the end of the last two movies, the heroes were eventually getting [[DeathOfAThousandCuts overrun]] by [[ZergRush orcs]], despite seemingly being able to kill dozens at a time. It is only with [[BigDamnHeroes the arrival of allies]] that the tide of the battles turn.
* When Optimus Prime fights Megatron in Mission City during ''Film/{{Transformers}}'', he gets his ass beat. When he fights the upgraded Megatron, Starscream and Grindor at the same time in a forest during ''Revenge of the Fallen'', he holds up pretty well and even manages to kill Grindor, and take off Starscream's arm in the process. It's implied that Optimus held back in the first since there were bystanders, whereas he could cut loose in the sequel, proven in the forest battle where Optimus revealed he has ''two'' swords. In a real world justification, ILM wasn't too sure about the CG effects in the first film, so they kept the robots in the background. They went into the sequel knowing the CG was viable. Also, [[spoiler:Optimus ''lost'' the second fight, fatally, when [[BackStab Megatron snuck up on him while he was finishing off Grindor]].]]
* Ash only fights one deadite at a time in the first two ''Franchise/EvilDead'' films. He ends up getting thrown into a lot of shelves when facing a single one. But once he has to fight a whole army of deadites in ''Army of Darkness'', he conveniently gets a sword and starts slashing them up left and right.
** He also took a serious [[TookALevelInBadass level in badass]] near the end of ''Evil Dead 2''. As can be seen in the theatrical ending to ''Army of Darkness'', single deadites aren't much a problem for him anymore either.
** Averted in the comics. Ash can easily beat one deadite and only has problems when there are several.
* In ''Film/{{Commando}}'', when [[Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger Ahnold]] comes across Arius after mowing down countless soldiers simply by [[MoreDakka pointing his gun in their general direction and firing]], his aim suddenly deteriorates into [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy that of the countless soldiers]] he just killed. Luckily for him, Arius's aim is just as bad, and after a few moments of the two firing at each other and missing while ''twenty feet from each other'', Arnie kills Arius.
* In ''Film/DawnOfTheDead'', Roger and Peter frequently punch out and knock back zombies with ease when facing them all at once. And then a lone zombie "disguised" as a mannequin catches Roger off guard and has to be dispatched without any ease at all.
* In ''Film/FaceOff'' it seems that all FBI agents, cops, security staff, and special agents are inept at facing off against Castor Troy. Troy kills them by the dozens single handedly in the beginning until Sean Archer has a chance to face him one on one (for some reason the dozens of other agents stay out of the action). Troy reduces these agents to mere [[RedShirtArmy red shirts]] all throughout the film, when in reality they would be much better trained.
* In ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean: At World's End'', toward the end when [[spoiler:the pirates find themselves outnumbered and outgunned and standing off against the East India Company's hundreds strong fleet it turns out that the EIC only bothered to send one ship into combat -- Davy Jones's ship. The rest stood back and didn't bother joining in the battle. Of course, it kinda makes sense to send an extremely powerful and essentially immortal ship to do battle with a single pirate ship, especially if you can take the other ships alive when they surrender. saves lives, saves money, and it's just good business.]]
* Any Creator/BruceLee movie, where he's outnumbered 80:1; and when they use weapons, he whips out his nunchucks to do things the ''lazy'' way.
** By lazy, we mean [[CombatPragmatist "smart,"]] of course. Funnily, in real life Lee noted he would have used guns if available, [[BoringButPractical but that doesn't look as cool]].
* ''NinjaAssassin'' plays with this trope a bit. Raizo needs about 2 minutes work to down the lone ninja sent to kill Mika, but when faced with dozens later, he mows through them as though they were blades of grass.
* ''ThirteenAssassins'' both justifiably invokes and averts this trope. The thirteen are almost all skilled samurai, who have either participated in real duels and battles or have been trained by those who have, whereas 99% of the small army they must face have no real experience. The outcome - [[spoiler: [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome they kill everyone,]] but nearly [[BittersweetEnding all of the group dies.]]]]
* In the Film/MegaMan film, the Blue Bomber gets into a confrontation with all six robot masters at once before the individual fights begin. Fighting the whole gang is no problem, but alone we get real fights. Especially noteworthy is [[ThatOneBoss Elec Man]] who [[spoiler: nearly kills Mega Man, until he gets [[BigDamnHeroes saved by Blues/Proto Man]].]]
* The ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' franchise invokes this trope. The [[Film/{{Alien}} first movie]] has a single xenomorph terrorizing a ship of miners and [[Film/{{Alien 3}} the third]] has one xenomorph menacing a prison colony. The [[Film/{{Aliens}} second movie]] and [[Film/AlienResurrection fourth movie]] have entire swarms of them that seem easier to kill (Justified somewhat by the fact that there weren't any guns or otherwise effective weaponry in the first and third films).
* ''Film/{{Predator}}'', the sister franchise to ''Aliens'', plays with this trope. The first movie has a single Predator take down an entire platoon of BadAss soldiers. Even Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger himself barely escapes with his life. [[{{Predator 2}} The second]] likewise has a Predator take down drug lords, cops, and federal agents before getting killed by Danny Glover's character. He then finds himself [[OhCrap surrounded by Predators]] but seems confident about his chances against them. They don't attack so we don't see if this trope would have been averted or invoked. [[Film/{{Predators}} The third movie]] has three Predators hunting a group of various killers, soldiers, and criminals. [[KillEmAll Almost everyone in that movie gets killed]], whether they are human or Predator. Only one Predator is shown to be killed in one-on-one combat (a sword fight) and that results in the human dying as well.
* As expected, the ''Film/AlienVsPredator'' movies are all over the place. In the first one, a single xenomorph kills two Predators in the span of a few minutes. The final Predator survives almost the entire movie, killing many xenomorphs along the way. The second movie only features one Predator who kills several xenomorphs.
* This trope is averted in basically every ZombieApocalypse movie ever made. A single zombie is usually slow, mostly mindless, and can be killed instantly with a swift blow to the head. They don't turn into a real threat unless there are hundreds of them roaming the streets. [[RuleOfDrama The part where they turn from a few single zombies to hordes usually happens offscreen]]. Works that actually try to portray the buildup, such as ''WorldWarZ'', usually have to resort to questionable plot devices. Such as the US military, of all people, not having enough MoreDakka and being completely demoralized by a single defeat.
* At various points in the ManWithNoNameTrilogy, ClintEastwood effortlessly guns down three or more men with his trusty pistol. The only times where there is any doubt of him being successful is when he's only facing one or two opponents.
* Averted in ''Film/TheAvengers''. The team can easily beat 2 or 3 aliens but as more and more of them pass through a portal leading to our dimension, the Avengers gradually get overrun by sheer numbers until they find a way to close it.
* Happens in every ''Zatoichi'' film. The smaller the group is, the bigger threat they are. Also in the group of useless mooks, there is one skilled samurai/ronin, who is the biggest challenge and poses the greatest threat.
* In a rare example of this trope being used against the good guys, the titular characters of "Ninja Cheerleaders" go through large groups of big mean men like it was clearance day at Macy's, but are completely overmatched by a single Dark Ninja during the climactic battle of the film.
* ''Film/YouOnlyLiveTwice''. The massive army of ninja is slaughtered when it initially attacks Blofeld's lair. They become incredibly effective after Bond and Tiger Tanaka takes a hand and help out.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* Handled fairly well in Creator/JRRTolkien's work, undoubtedly due to Tolkien's familiarity with real war.
** While the orcs were massively inferior to humans, their fighting-ability did not diminish with increased numbers; and thus while Isildur's army was able to be overcome via superior numbers of orcs, Boromir was able to drive off any number of orcs, until Ugluk ordered about a hundred Uruk-hai to stick to shooting him with arrows, and so he died trying to save the hobbits. Still, he was able to kill more than 20 of them before that.
** Played as straight as possible in Melkor/Morgoth himself. He was originally too powerful for even all the Valar together to defeat him, but by spreading his power through his slaves and the Earth itself, he was diminished so severely that Tulkas alone could best him.
* Justified in one of the ''DresdenFiles'' novels. GenreSavvy Harry notes the White Council, when they find powerful rituals, deliberately get the ritual published far and wide. The reason, as given by Harry, is "A ritual is like a supernatural vending machine. If many people are drawing from it, the ritual gives each person a tiny bit. But if only a few people draw from it, it's very powerful."
* ''Literature/GoodOmens'' sees [[NobleDemon Crow]][[OneManArmy ley]] take on [[RedShirtArmy a jeep full of soldiers]] at the Lower Tadfield airbase. [[NoodleIncident By the next paragraph...]] It's Crowley's jeep.
* Used a lot in the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' books, thanks to the TheoryOfNarrativeCausality. LampshadeHanging in ''Discworld/TheLastHero'', when Carrot Ironfoundersson confronts the Silver Horde by himself. The Silver Horde, all experienced, GenreSavvy barbarian heroes, start to worry a bit when they realize that, this time, they're facing a righteous hero while he's outnumbered:
--> "The Code was quite clear. One brave man against seven ... won. They knew it was true. In the past, they'd all relied on it. The higher the odds, the greater the victory. That was the Code."
** Also played with a lot in ''Discworld/InterestingTimes'' (with the Silver Horde on the opposite side of the equation), where Rincewind thinks "If it was seven against seventy everyone would ''know'' who would lose. Just because it's seven against seven hundred thousand, everyone's not so sure." Cohen, meanwhile, comes up with a [[JustifiedTrope logical reason]] why being outnumbered actually favours them (it boils down to "Always choose a bigger enemy, 'cause it makes him easier to hit"). (Although in the end, they're saved by an army of {{Magitek}} MechaMooks.)
** Cohen also offers a rather original justification. It is pointed out to him that even if he and his horde manage to kill a couple thousand soldiers, they will be tired and the enemy will have fresh troops. Cohen explains that the soldiers will be tired as well because by that point ''[[AtopAMountainOfCorpses they will be running uphill.]]''
** And then there's ''Discworld/ThiefOfTime'''s Rule One: "Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men". Lu-Tze is even momentarily surprised at one point that a group of bandits would try to mug him. Paraphrasing: "You're a group of armed thugs attacking a lone, wizened old man who's ''smiling'', and don't run for your lives?!"
** Their guides, who DO know Rule One, were already hauling ass.
** Lu-Tze plays this all over the map. Early on, his opponents know Rule One and voluntarily stand down. Later, when faced with enemies who don't know Rule One, he cheats. Eventually, when he's in a situation when he can't cheat, he proves that he personally really can provide a practical demonstration of why Rule One is a good rule to live by.
** ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'' is dedicated to the men who make this trope possible. And completely averts it when [[spoiler:Vimes is arrested]]. The guards look at him suspiciously, ask if he's going to pull a one-man can of whoopass out on them, and when he admits, "Wouldn't know where to start," they take him into custody without a fight. [[CharacterizationMarchesOn Quite in contrast to his]] [[TookALevelInBadass later persona]], but there you go. Later on, though, he was: [[spoiler:a) not an alcoholic any more; b) Commander of the Watch, instead of Captain of the Night Watch; c) a Duke; and d) totally sure of himself because of a, b, and c. When he was arrested he was still a hardarse, but much less self-assured.]]
* In the ''SwordOfTruth'' series, Richard gains the ability to face off against innumerable foes by being forced into a battle to the death with thirty highly trained warriors. The whole purpose of the fight was to force him to use the Sword of Truth in a manner that communicated its past wielders' experience to him. It's a skill that saves his life many times on in the series.
* Matthew Stover's ''{{Shatterpoint}}'', a ''StarWars'' [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse EU]] novel, has this used quite literally. Five or six Force-users shared from the same pool of energy, since they were bonded to their leader Kar Vastor. [[spoiler:As they were killed off in the climactic battle, their shares of the power flowed back into the communal pool, and the last one standing, Vastor himself, ended up enormously superpowered. It didn't help.]]
* In the ''ChroniclesOfPrydain'' novels by LloydAlexander, the Huntsmen of Annuvin (Annuvin is the area the huntsmen come from, their leader is the Big Bad, Arawn) explicitly have this as their special power, each individual member of a group growing stronger as their numbers are decreased. The power is so feared that the usual answer is to run, and curse oneself if forced to kill one; as this made your chances of survival less. To the point where one character says that he's more afraid of them as he is the [[ImplacableMan unkillable Cauldron-born]].
* Inverted in the ''ChroniclesOfThomasCovenant'' where ur-viles and related creatures have magic to combine their individual power into one, making their danger level scale with the number of them in a group.
* DoubleSubversion in Robert Jordan's ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' {{Prequel}} novel ''New Spring'', Lan is surrounded by seven men, [[LampshadeHanging noting glumly to himself]] that only in stories do men fight seven armed skilled opponents and win. Then he wins.
* Deconstructed the occasion it most obviously happens in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}: GauntsGhosts'', where the tacticians going over the reports have the battle in question written out of the archives, because they simply couldn't comprehend how so few could beat so many. Other times, the Ghosts work in coordination with other Imperial Guard units and rarely take out superior numbers on their own. Played straight with the Blood Pact, though, as they die en masse with little effect when they attack in large groups, but small kill-teams such as [[spoiler: the one sent to Balhaut in ''Blood Pact'']] appear much more effective.
** Although the effectiveness of the Blood Pact team sent to Balhaut can be attributed to that platoon essentially being Urlock Gaur's equivalent to the Gereon Team, at least in the sense they were the cream of the Pact as the Ghost's are in the Guard.
* SandyMitchell's ''CiaphasCain'', '''Hero of the Imperium''', has an inverse example in ''Caves of Ice'': The stormtrooper squad has literally grown up together in one of the [[TheSpartanWay Imperium's orphanages]]. They've been trained to fight together up to the point where the intuitive rapport of the squad borders on telepathy. The downside is that they don't play too well with others and rotating in new soldiers for casualties makes no sense as they'd remain outsiders to the team. Thus, with more and more members dying, the squad becomes irrevocably weaker. The team accompanying Cain is almost at the point where they'll fall below the efficiency of a normal squad. [[spoiler: It's kind of a moot point - the Necrons kill them all.]]
* Used in ''MalazanBookOfTheFallen''. Any time Kalam goes up against other assassins, they seem to fall victim to this trope. Slightly justified by Kalam being a match for the man who would become the patron god of assassins.
* Indirectly used in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' by Creator/RogerZelazny during the war with the Courts of Chaos. There are, at max, only 15 Princes and Princesses of Amber, versus countless hordes of nobles from the Courts that are not only the same age or older than the Amberites, but theoretically almost as powerful. Not only do the Courts get thrashed defending their home turf, but they really only managed to kill one Amberite during the entire war - and the evidence actually points to the fact that he actually died of causes other than his wounds. All other Amberite deaths were actually caused by infighting. Oh, and this ''also'' doesn't include the fact that the two most powerful members of Amber, Oberon and Dworkin, didn't participate in the battle at all.
** This defeat causes an underground semi-religion venerating individual Amberites to spring up at the Courts after the war.
** Likely due, at least in part, to a literal conservation of power effect: on some level the forces of Amber and the Courts are acting as proxies for, and drawing their magical powers from, the Pattern and the Logrus, which are generally balanced in strength.
* In the ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' novelizations, when the Dominion and Cardassians are attacking the station, Dukat notes that Sisko works much better when he has fewer ships. It certainly seems to be true, as the station and two ships account for dozens of attackers during the battle.
* This trope was invoked in ''HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', when Hermione, Luna and Ginny were trying to kill Bellatrix Lestrange together and only drawing. Then in comes Molly Weasley, refusing help, and curses Lestrange down. Justified in that Mrs. Weasley was exceedingly pissed off, as Bellatrix had not only [[spoiler: just [[BerserkButton shot a killing curse towards her only daughter]], but was now also [[TooDumbToLive taunting her about the death of her son (Fred)]].]]
* Creator/RobertEHoward's ConanTheBarbarian regularly slaughters scores of opponents. That is, when he's not up against giant snakes, ape-man, and {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, who can actually give him problems. In "Literature/ThePhoenixOnTheSword" we are told that his foes actually hampered each other.
* OlderThanFeudalism: At the end of ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', Telemachus and his father face down (and kill, very gorily) over a hundred (unarmed) people.
* Deconstructed in the first novel of the ''XWingSeries'', where Rogue Squadron is attacked by three squadrons of TIE fighters. They don't take a single casualty while only two [=TIEs=] get away, and Wedge thinks later about how combat statistics have shown that the more fighters are in a battle, the lower each pilot's kill count is. The Imperials also had to watch their fire, as while the Rogues had shields, [=TIEs=] don't, and therefore they had to be careful picking their targets, something the Rogues weren't limited by.
* [[FeatheredFiend Gore Crows]] in the ''Literature/OldKingdom'' trilogy has this fact lampshaded and justified. Gore Crows come in swarms of hundreds, and generally kill by [[ZergRush sheer numbers]]. The kicker is that they're a KeystoneArmy, and every single crow is the keystone. This is because [[HiveMind the whole swarm is powered by one Dead spirit]], and destroying one Gore Crow will banish the entire spirit, and all connected crows drop like stones.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' is all over this trope. In fact this could be the very basis of their famous {{Redshirt}}s. You see groups of {{Redshirt}}s get vaporized, but Scotty survives into the 24th century! Even in the future, multiple Starfleet personnel get wasted during the course of TNG, but Worf makes it, despite TheWorfEffect. Likewise, while whole armadas of ships get pummeled, single starships win the day. This even applies to the bad guys. A single Borg cube can cause so much havoc, yet every time we seen a bunch of Borg cubes, they're usually destroyed immediately after.
** In ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Best of Both Worlds, Part II," the Borg blows away an entire Federation taskforce, without even a fight. However the Enterprise-D is able to go it alone against the Borg cube, and escape with only minor damage.
** Somewhat lampshaded in the TNG episode "Contagion" where Riker says "fate protects fools, little children, and ships named ''Enterprise''."
** Speaking of a single Borg-cube wiping out all of the attacking Starships, Conservation of Ninjitsu earns its Magnum Opus when the lone ship Voyager enters the Borg home-turf of the Delta Quadrant, turning the tables completely as it takes on ''the entire collective--'' apparently destroying it when Admiral Janeway kills the Borg Queen.
*** In that case, though, the ''Voyager'' was equipped with weapons and armor ''from the future.''
** Against Species 8472, the Borg send legions of Borg cubes, all of which are taken down in seconds. CurbStompBattle indeed.
** Also seen in ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' during the Dominion war arc. The Dominion have powerful Jem-Hadar fighters/destroyers that attack in [[GoddamnedBats large fleets]] to overwhelm big slow clumsy ships. The [[CoolShip Defiant]] is the first Federation ship built along these tactical lines, and its first combat against the Dominion sees it nearly destroyed by only two or three Jem-Hadar fighters. Later in the series, the Defiant and other Federation and Klingon ships are seen swatting fleets of them like flies.
* [[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer Buffyverse]] [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampires]] were particularly subject to this trope. Individual [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampires]] could be fairly respectable opponents, though they still had a bad track record of getting one-stab killed after Season 1. Whenever [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampires]] gathered in groups, they were cannon fodder. One just hopes they don't have problems with splinters.
** The final season mixed this trope with a good dose of, ahem, VillainDecay. The first Turok-Han 'uber-vamp' was a nearly unstoppable force very narrowly beaten by the Slayer after several victories. In the finale, however, the Scoobies went up against an army of them, and Xander, Anya, and the slayers-still-in-training were taking hundreds of them down easily. In the DVD commentary, Joss Whedon points out that this was a conscious decision, claiming that "they couldn't all be as hard to beat as the first one," since that would make the last fight unwinnable. No in-universe explanation is given, simply the remark that storytelling is more important than an internally-consistent canon. Nothing else left to do but recite [[MST3KMantra the Mantra]] and shrug it off.
** Applies to Slayers too: Buffy on her own can take any number of vampires, but whenever she's fighting with Faith or Kendra, at least one of the Slayers gets into a position where they need the other's help.
* In ''Series/DoctorWho'', the amount of danger presented by the Daleks seems to always be inversely proportional to the number of Daleks present. When the Doctor and company are only facing one, as in "Dalek", it's a potential end-of-the-world scenario. When he faces ''millions'' as in "The Parting of the Ways" and "Doomsday", all it takes is a quick DeusExMachina to save the day. When he's back to three in "Evolution of the Daleks," [[spoiler:it takes a betrayal of their enslaved army to take them down, and one still gets away. You can be sure that last one is once again going to be a serious threat when it reappears.]]
** Referenced in "Doomsday", when Daleks and Cybermen declared hostilities:
---> '''Cyberman''': We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?\\
'''Dalek''': Four!\\
'''Cyberman''': You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?\\
'''Dalek''': We would destroy the Cybermen with ''one'' Dalek!
** To be fair, the Daleks do seem capable of making good on this threat - they are so much more advanced that during the ensuing fire fight they are seen to take out dozens of Cybermen, but not one of the four Daleks takes damage.
** The Doctor himself makes heavy use of this trope. As Rose says in "Doomsday", "Five million Cybermen? Easy. One Doctor? ''Now'' you're scared." And in previous episodes, even in the old series, the Daleks eventually started a policy of dropping whatever they were doing and fixating entirely on the Doctor once they knew he was present.
** The Series 4 Finale "Journey's End" and the Series 5 Finale "The Big Bang" seem to indicate that Millions of Daleks < One Doctor < 5 or Less Daleks <[[spoiler: one ''very'' pissed-off River Song]]
** In "Forest of the Dead", as the carnivorous shadow creatures approach, take pause, and then flee after this one line.
---> '''The Doctor''': I'm the Doctor, and you're in the biggest library in the universe. (Beat) Look me up.
* In ''SuperSentai'' and ''PowerRangers'' there are many instances of a monster beating up an entire team of Rangers, only to be defeated by a single Ranger in a [[ThisIsSomethingHesGotToDoHimself sufficiently climactic battle]].
** The [[{{Mooks}} enemy grunts]] are an exception, though. They are pushovers in small or moderate numbers, but huge hordes of them occasionally manage to overpower the Rangers (happens especially in season finales).
** Also, early seasons would sometimes feature battles with multiple resurrected monsters, who would usually go down with just one or two hits. Eventually subverted in the third season premiere where a villain and four resurrected monsters, all giant sized, tear the Megazord to pieces.
** Funny you should mention the Megazord, since they're victims of this as well. A single combined one from every machine available can destroy practically anything, but two or three fighting together usually get knocked around like ragdolls.
** KaizokuSentaiGokaiger subverts this. In an early episode The Gokaigers face off against 6th ranger key clones they are able to defeat them but the 5 of them are overpowered by the other 10 keys. In The 199 heroes movie The Gokiagers and Goseigers are able to easily take on a couple of dozen ranger clones at a time in pairs of 2 and Gosei Knight easily takes out the 6th ranger clones.
* In ''KamenRiderDragonKnight'', the {{Mooks}} suffer from an ''extreme'' case of this. A group of them are nothing but cannon fodder for an ''unmorphed'' Len to kick around. ''One'', on the other hand, once required ''two'' Riders to use some of their strongest attacks.
** This is actually due to the source footage. In ''KamenRiderRyuki'', we have a MonsterOfTheWeek called Gelnewt which was of standard monster strength and was fought over the course of a two-part episode. For ''Dragon Knight'', the producers decided to turn the Gelnewt into the series' {{Mook}}, meaning this trope suddenly applies. Ironically, this filtered back to Japanese, where Gelnewts are the {{Mooks}} in the ''[[{{KamenRiderDen-O}} Den-O]] and [[KamenRiderDecade Decade]]'' {{Crossover}} movie '''entirely because''' there was a surplus of the suits left over from the filming of ''Dragon Knight''.
** Kamen Riders, to some extent. When Kit fought alone against Axe, Spear and Strike all at the same time, he manages to defeat the three of them [[spoiler: and even finish Spear]]. But when he fights Axe solo, he loses both times and has to be bailed out by Wing Knight.
** In ''Decade's'' first movie: two Riders vs. all of [[LegionOfDoom Dai-Shocker]]? The Riders were easily trounced. Even when the rest of the Riders arrive, they are still heavily outnumbered, but it was enough to turn the tides.
** In KamenRiderKabuto, how hard it is to kill [[{{Mooks}} Salisworms]] depends on how many there are; just one or two may require a FinishingMove, in a larger group they can be killed with a few swipes of a weapon, and in a very large group just a hard punch can destroy them.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'' presents a rare good-guy example of this: when there's only one White Star, it's unstoppable. Once there's a fleet, they start getting taken down by mid-level enemies, often with no Vorlon or Shadow support.
** This is especially bad since the White Stars are meant to be able to learn from each hit it takes, so that the armour gets stronger after every battle. Even as late as the fourth series, the White Stars continued to get weaker: in Series 3, it takes 3 White Stars to destroy a Shadow warship([[spoiler: after a telepath has jammed it]]), but by the battle of Proxima 3, 4 White Stars are needed to deal with a single Earth destroyer, an incredibly simpler ship with far less firepower (albeit with the ability to manoeuvre ), which Sheridan stated was weaker than The White Star.
** WordOfGod [[http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/081.html says]] that the White Star fleet was deliberately pulling its punches to avoid slaughtering the Earth Forces. Sheridan wanted the EA ships to stand down or defect. (It ''was'' a civil war.)
*** The evidence for this exists in the episodes themselves. In the battle in "No Surrender, No Retreat", Sheridan shows concern for the crew of the ''Pollux'' when that ship is destroyed--a ship whose captain and crew had ''[[KickTheDog openly fired on innocent civilians]]''. After the battle, he considers his task force to have "achieved the mission objective", but because an Earth Alliance vessel had been destroyed in the process, it's ''not'' a victory to him. The only time the White Stars are ''not'' pulling their punches in this conflict are when they face the "special force" of Earth ships (which have been heavily enhanced), and when they're scrambling to destroy [[spoiler:the Earth's defensive grid before it starts firing on the planet below.]]
** This also seems to apply to the Shadows and Vorlons - Shadow battlecrabs were notoriously difficult to kill and Vorlons were pretty much invincible. Until the Battle of Coriana, when they started blowing up left and right. (Though in fairness, the coalition force arrayed against them was pretty huge too.) The casualties were massively slanted against the allied fleet.
** Also at Coriana VI, the Vorlons and Shadows were up against other First Ones, who presumably had weapons at least equal to them, and superior to what the Younger Races had on their ships.
** Marcus Cole explained to a group of thugs why they should tell him what he wanted to know: "Because if you don't, then in five minutes I'll be the only person at this table still standing. Five minutes after that, I'll be the only person in this room still standing. So, who's in?" After he makes good on this threat, he laments that, "Now I have to wait for someone to wake up."
* ''{{Kamen Rider Den-O}}'': The hordes of ninja in the movie ''Ore Tanjou'' suffer so badly from this that even the [[ThisLoserIsYou ridiculously inept protagonist]] Ryoutarou can hold his own against one.
* Hilariously lampshaded in an Creator/AdamSandler-era ''[[Series/SaturdayNightLive SNL]]'' skit, where the group of ninjas do a review of what went wrong after another failed attack. "How did we say we were going to attack the guy?" "All at once..." "And how ''did'' we attack?" "One at a time..." Sandler's hooded ninja speaks up about the use of throwing stars, noting that they are not a good idea in a large group, then pulling back his hood to reveal one stuck in his forehead. The gang ends up deciding to get their confidence back by beating up the next person they meet in the lobby - who of course turns out to be Bruce Lee.
* A justification for the trope is given in the Russian [[PeriodPiece period]] miniseries ''Satisfaction''. A fencing instructor makes his student fight three of his servants at once. After the student loses the first round the instructor asks him why he lost. The student says that he was outnumbered. The instructor tells him that he is wrong, because their greater number is actually their weakness: none of them wants to get injured, each would prefer one of the other guys to be in harm's way, and hence none of them is willing to show some initiative and do something really daring. With that knowledge the student naturally proceeds to kick their asses.
* ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' had this in the fantasy scene where over a dozen asian interns attackers (wearing surgical masks much like ninja masks) are handled with ease by Turk and Todd. Admittedly it's a fantasy scene so no justification is neccesary but it still fits the rule.
* You see this near the end of ''[[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined Battlestar Galactica]]''. Where initially a few Cylon Centurions were nigh-unstoppable juggernauts that needed to have their heads blown up before they stopped, in a suitably dramatic StormTheCastle situation the dangerously outnumbered Battlestar crew can bring them down in droves with a few sporadically-fired 9mm rounds. [[spoiler:Admittedly, they had the help of other Cylons by this point, which ''could'' mean better bullets.]] Plus the fact that the Colonials in the start of the series were armed for the last Cylon war, and the new units were massive upgrades, while at the end of the series they'd been fighting Cylons for years on end, and had plenty of time to improve.
* Regularly seen in the StargateVerse. ''Series/StargateSG1'' has the justification that Tau'ri ships like the F-302 Mongoose and ''Daedalus''-class battlecruiser are simply better-engineered than their opponents', which tend to be AwesomeButImpractical. Same goes for ground engagements: Numerically smaller Tau'ri forces mow through dozens, even hundreds of {{mook}}s at a time due in part to [[BoringYetPractical better]] [[RockBeatsLaser equipment]] and tactics.
** This goes both ways, of course. The battle at the Ori supergate had four Ori ships {{curbstomp|Battle}} an entire fleet of Jaffa, Asgard, and Tau'ri ships.
* ''Series/{{Leverage}}'' sees a lesser degree of this. Eliot can drop a crowd of mooks just by breathing hard (especially in a season premiere as an EstablishingCharacterMoment for new viewers, even moreso if they have guns), but a one-on-one fight takes him a while and effort.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Professional Wrestling ]]
* The Wrestling/{{WWE}} has taken advantage of this trope on several occasions. The most ludicrous, perhaps, was JohnCena and RandyOrton vs. the entire Raw roster, in 2008. Cena and Orton generally win their matches, or put on a good showing, but they generally take 15-25 minutes against one, maybe two opponents. This match took seven minutes. Their opponents? Snitsky, Santino Marella, Trevor Murdoch, Lance Cade, Umaga, Super Crazy, [[JohnBradshawLayfield JBL]] (who has been involved in several of those 15-25 minute matches with Cena and Orton, as has Umaga), Hacksaw Jim Duggan, CodyRhodes, Paul Burchill, Val Venis, BobHolly, Carlito, DH Smith, Brian Kendrick, Robbie and Rory [=McAllister=], Charlie Haas, and possibly a couple others. Then, after that was over, TripleH stole the lack of numbers advantage from the two of them, beating them both down.
** Not to mention at least two of their PPV's (Survivor Series, Royal Rumble) are built around this trope.
** Particularly egregious is the Survivor Series, where the best chance of one team to win is when they only have one wrestler left, particularly if they are the Face team.
** In the Royal Rumble, each successive elimination takes longer and is much more difficult than the previous one, and the final two wrestlers might be fighting for as long or longer than the previous 30+ combined.
*** It can be considered someone subverted by the Royal Rumble matches, as it's a free-for-all with no teams, and many wrestlers are usually eliminated by a group of others forming a very temporary truce to force them over the ropes and out of the ring.
* Also supported in tag teams by the RickyMorton Rule, where after one partner gets beaten, the fresh partner jumps in and takes on both of the other two wrestlers.
* Often shown in cases with giant or powerhouse wrestlers, like MarkHenry or Ryback, where they'll have said giant or powerhouse face off against two or three jobbers at once and completely destroy them. In one notable instance, Big Daddy V faced off against ''four'' jobbers and still crushed them. Of course, the majority of the time, facing a single non-jobber will generally give these guys a tougher time.
** Interestingly, Wrestling/TheShield, a three-man group consisting of Dean Ambrose, Roman Reigns, and Seth Rollins, have been able to give Ryback a tough time, even beating him down on numerous occasions together as a cohesive unit.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games]]
* ''Brickwars'' invokes this trope for its [[http://www.brikwars.com/downloads/cards/ninja_scum.jpg Ninja Scum]] card, resulting in a unit that gets lower rolls the more there are (and you must have at least three). The flavor text says it all.
* ''DontRestYourHead'' has a Ninja madness power that lets you summon endless numbers of ninja mooks from every impossible hiding place. Their only ability is a reckless Zerg Rush. OR you call an elite Ninja, ColourCodedForYourConvenience. Don't mess with him. He's badass.
* ''DungeonsAndDragons'' uses "minion" class enemies to invoke this trope in 4th Edition. They each have one hit point and are designed to fall in droves. Then there are elite and solo enemies, equal to two and five normal monsters respectively. If you see a group of 20 orcs, they are probably mostly minions, and one fireball will leave you with a target or two left; if you see two orcs, they are probably elite brutes, each of which has 194 hit points, a much nastier fight.
** The 3rd edition of D&D shows a different form of this trope, in that the Encounter Level (difficulty) of a fight is calculated not by counting the enemies, but by adding 2 to the Encounter Level for each ''doubling'' of the number of enemies. Thusly, one gnoll is EL 1, but sixteen gnolls are only EL 9. By the time you get up to 32, it's not even worth raising the EL, as characters above 9th level have enough mass-effect spells to easily handle that many weak enemies.
** In the original editions, fighters had the ability to attack a number of enemies in one round based on their general level, provided that the enemies were 1 HD or less each.
** Even more so in the Battlesystem rules, where a unit of 10 or so mooks had what effectively amounted to 2 HP, and could be easily killed by a moderate level "Hero" (read: PC or leveled NPC) in a single round. A unit who succeeded in dealing a Hero a "wound", though, actually took off multiple HP ... 4, if I remember properly, though it's been a while.
** One edition had constructs called Shardsoul Slayers, basically fragmented elementals which traveled in groups. Killing one united its shard of elemental soul with another one close by, making it stronger.
* The ''NinjaBurger'' Employee's Handbook specifically recommends against this trope.
* A particularly nasty version of this occurs in ''{{Runequest}}''; due to the [[CriticalFailure Critical Fumble]] rules, armies take the most damage from ''their own side''. Thus, a larger army is actually less of a threat.
* ''SeventhSea'' has three types of enemies, mooks, henchmen, and villains, with increasing toughness.
* Warhammer 5th edition got the nickname ''Herohammer'' because of this: individual heroes tended to be much stronger and potent than entire units of soldiers.
** The game's rules have often tried to subvert this. Currently, the rules favor huge blocks of infantry, with the faction that can field the largest numbers, the Skaven, often regarded as a Gamebreaker due to the sheer numbers they can put out for their cost.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'s'' fluff shows space marines as near invincible in small numbers, but die in droves when it comes to large scale engagements.
** Admitedly, in the 41st millenium EVERYTHING dies in droves in large battles. Also, a Space Marine force barely a hundred strong (a company) is fully capable of taking out a whole planet or even a small star system [[BadassArmy all on its own]].
** On the tabletop, each side has a finite number of 'points' to spend on models for their army. {{Mooks}} range from four to twenty points, commanders are at least a hundred.
** This is pretty common place in tabletop strategy games, the more expensive a unit, the fewer of it you'll end up fielding.
* The roleplaying game Pirates Vs. Ninjas has the universal law called the Kurosawa Corollary, by which members of a much larger group of combatants take penalties to become less powerful than a smaller group of adversaries.
* ''{{Exalted}}'' models this by presenting any sufficiently large number of disposable enemies as 'Extras', with drastically low health and stats, that exist mostly as a minor obstacle to the players, window dressing for the antagonists, or [[RuleOfCool stunt]] fodder.
* ''MagicTheGathering'' has both played this trope straight and subverted it. Not taking instants and sorceries into consideration, some creatures have either strong enough or have abilities that mean even if an opponent has a greater number of creatures, they can still be at a disadvantage. That said, there are also creatures that can give large hordes an advantage with abilities like battle cry (which boosts attacking creatures, and multiple battle cries stack), and some creature types, like slivers and elves, [[MagikarpPower while pretty harmless individually, have abilities that make them devastating if there's a lot of them.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games]]
* A MagicAIsMagicA example is the {{Halo}} series. In the face of a horde of aliens that are both physically and technologically superior to anything Humanity has to offer, the Master Chief (and other SPARTAN-IIs) are the only humans that are physically strong, technologically augmented and technically skilled enough to take down thousands of 7-foot tall alien killing machines. JustifiedTrope in that he was trained to be a soldier from being a very small child, was physically (and very painfully) augmented by such procedures as having his bones coated in carbon fibre, and possesses a suit of powered armour outfitted with the best shielding and enhancement technology humanity has.
** The legendary status of the Spartans is such that the military refuses to officially acknowledge their deaths, instead listing them as Missing In Action.
** A dramatic moment at the end of the campaign of HaloReach sees Noble Six's final moments from the perspective of his suit's helmet camera, which he had just dropped on the ground; as a company of Elites closes in, he manages to take down no less than 7 of them in an all-out brawl before he bites the dust.
* This can happen in online multiplayer FPS games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield when small teams are outnumbered by large contingents of players from the other team. While objective based game modes can be easily thwarted by numerical superiority, Team Death Matches tend to play out the opposite way. In, for example, a 1v12 Battlefield 3 TDM, the severely outnumbered player may well take down two or more players before he/she is spotted by the other team and eliminated - at which point he/she spawns randomly somewhere else on the map. This results in the lone ninja gaining substantially more kills in the target rich environment than the team of regular ninjas can simply fighting one player.
* Played with in the ''VideoGame/DoubleDragon'' series, most notably in the NES ''Double Dragon 3'' and the SNES ''Super Double Dragon''. Noteworthy in that one '''normal''' {{Mook}} can fuck you up real bad if you're not careful. A bunch of mooks, on the other hand... well, they can still fuck you up real bad, but the gameplay provides several ways in which you can use their numbers against them, especially in Super Double Dragon - such as grabbing one mook and throwing him at another, [[DeadlyDodging tricking them into throwing their weapons at each other]], crowding two or more mooks into a corner, thus limiting their attacks and enabling you to beat 'em all up at ONCE (a trick that works '''really''' nice when one of the baddies is a Level Boss), etc.
* ''BadDudes Versus Dragon Ninja''. Armies of brightly dressed HighlyVisibleNinja rush at the one (or two) good guys in broad daylight then each one falls down (and vanishes) after being struck a single blow (in fact in the case of the chi punch several ninja can be killed by the same blow).
* Dragonest has the Priest class which is exceptional when dealing with multiple enemies due to the large area of his spells (some actually hit more times if there are more enemies, especially Inquisitors) but utterly horrible when faced in single combat.
* A noted problem with ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2'': fighting thirty Metal Gears is significantly ''less'' dramatic than the usual finale of fighting ''one'', because of the greatly reduced significance of each foe; in fact, Metal Gear RAY's require only a handful of missiles to destroy, while their REX predecessor (Which they were designed specifically to be able to defeat) required some 20-30 of those missiles [[spoiler: and a lone ninja (himself taking full advantage of this very trope) to perform a HeroicSacrifice. This may be {{justified|Trope}}, as it was well established that the Metal Gears involved in that fight were designed to be cheap, mass-produced, and be piloted by an AI.]]
* No ninjas or robots either and applying to main characters, but still: In ''DevilMayCry 3'', Dante or Vergil alone can use their full powers in the first phase of the fight against Arkham. When the second phase rolls in, bringing Vergil or Dante (respectively according to character used) with it, the player loses his Style-based moves and Devil Trigger transformation, while the interloper also cannot fight at full power.
** The Agni and Rudra boss fight from the same game pits Dante/Vergil against a pair of demons armed with enchanted swords. If you defeat one of them and don't finish the other off quickly enough, the survivor grabs the other demon's sword and starts DualWielding, unlocking some nasty combo attacks and becoming a much bigger pain to defeat.
* In the ''{{Terminator}} Salvation'' video game the player kills tons of terminator robots with grenades, M16, shotguns, pistols and even by punching them. This is in contrast to the movies where bullets/{{RPG}}s/exploding gas tankers/ firetrucks did almost nothing to the lone pursuing robot.
** Then again, these are model T-600s, not the 800s and higher seen in the movies. Further, each T-600 you face takes a ''lot'' of punishment to bring down, even if every round hits their weakpoint, and if you don't have cover, you ''will'' be shredded by their miniguns. The first few encounters you just don't have enough firepower to bring them down, and you're forced to run the hell away.
* In ''Comicbook/{{Spider-Man}}: The Game of TheMovie'', one level relies heavily on stealth, and if you are spotted or trip an alarm it brings out a couple Super Soldiers, giant robots that are extremely formidable opponents. Even one is a handful, and if you run into more than one, your only hope is to run and hide. A couple levels later you have to fight your way through dozens of Super Soldiers, which are notably easier to get past.
* In ''VideoGame/MegaMan'', the mass-produced Joes are basically ArmCannon fodder. Only the unique Robot Masters are a challenge. Gemini Man from ''3'' himself follows this trope. He starts the battle by doubling himself, and only attacks with a weak blaster (in response to your fire) and by CollisionDamage. Only when you destroy the clone does he break out the [[SignatureMove Gemini Laser]].
* Played very straight in ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros. '' and sequels. Any level with "Team [==]" or the Fighting Alloys lets you fling them off the screen with one solid hit. Even heavy characters like Bowser [[ATwinkleInTheSky blast off]] when part of a team. Meanwhile, some stages can give you hell with just 1-3 opponents and even with the very occasional ally. But subverted in the well-named ''Cruel Melee''/''Cruel Brawl''.
* A mission in the single player ''StarWarsBattlefront 2'' has your clone trooper attack force and one Sith going up against a horde of Jedi, who unlike the Jedi hero characters, die in a couple shots ([[GlassCannon though their lightsabers hurt just as much]]). This is some kind of cosmic and cruel irony.
* Another ''StarWars'' example, in Republic Commando, when Delta Squad (essentially the ninjas of the ''Clone Wars'') splits up to take down the Core Ship on Geonosis, Delta-38 (the player's character) [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] this trope, [[strike:almost]] making it into a CrowningMomentOfAwesome:
---> '''Delta 38''': Alone against all these droids? Heh, ''they'' don't stand a chance.
* Slightly older ''Star Wars'' example is ''[[VideoGame/DarkForcesSaga Jedi Knight]]: Jedi Outcast'', in which the player's initial skirmishes with the Reborn darksiders are virtually mini-boss battles, but as the game progresses and Kyle Katarn is pit against 3 or 4 at a time, the fights become easier.
* Lampshaded with dark hilarity at the end of ''VideoGame/MaxPayne''. As he continues to gun down the Big Bad's Killer Suits in her penthouse suite, the PA system crackles to life:
--> '''Big Bad''': What do you mean 'he's unstoppable'? You are superior to him in every way that counts. You are better trained, better equipped, and you outnumber him at least twenty-to-one. Do. Your. Job.
* ''{{Half-Life}} 2'' has a similar scene, where the BigBad expresses his shock to his FacelessGoons that they, "the best humanity has to offer", are unable to stop or apprehend Gordon Freeman, a [[BadassBookworm theoretical physicist]].
* In the multiplayer shooter ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' the Spy, one of the nine character classes, has the potential to singlehandedly wreak havoc across the entire enemy team. A lone Spy can cripple defenses, take out high priority targets and even ninja-capture objectives when no-one's looking, all while causing paranoia among enemy teammates. Multiple Spies, on the other hand, don't work so well: if one Spy messes up, the enemy team will be alerted and will plan accordingly, making life much more difficult for the other Spies. They also tend to interfere with each other's plans, particularly when trying to take down the same target or Sentry Gun nest. When a team has three Spies or more, chances are high none of them is doing well at all, which in turn hampers the others' effectiveness, especially as Spies aren't cut out for head-on combat.
* In ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamAsylum'' and ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'', large armies of mooks present little more challenge than a single mook, except that they take more hits. But dodging/countering works the same. Just beware guys with [[NeverBringAKnifeToAFistFight knives and guns]], while pummeling one to twenty men with baseball bats or their own fists for protection. On the other hand, when only one guy shows up in a room, you can bet it's either a BossBattle or a BossInMookClothing.
* ''NinjaGaiden'': Ryu, a lone ninja, can take on a seemingly endless horde of ninjas, demons, and fiends of all sizes and colors - and the endless hordes of ninja that come after him can barely touch him. Granted, higher difficulties on the Xbox game require that the player [[NintendoHard EARN]] every iota of their ninjutsu.
* ''CityOfHeroes'' actually has this as a player's power. The more enemies that are nearby (Capped at 10 to balance things a little), the stronger a character possessing such a power will be in battle against all of the enemies. Also carries over to a few of the optional powers accessible to anyone, which can improve offense, defense or other stats across a whole team.
** One such power, ''Rise to the Challenge'' in the Willpower set, not only boosts your health regeneration rate higher as more foes surround you, but it also gives those foes a medium to-hit debuff.
* The second PSP installment of the ''RatchetAndClank'' series, ''Secret Agent Clank'', has a skill point challenge that references this trope. Titled "Inverse Ninja Law", it requires you to defeat 99 ninja mooks during a boss fight where they spawn endlessly, far, ''far'' more than you need to defeat to beat the level.
* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' small groups of Heartless or Nobodies can usually pose a significant threat to Sora and his party, but during the aptly-named ''[[TheWarSequence Battle of the 1000 Heartless]]'', Sora is able to [[OneManArmy steamroll right over a group of 1000 Armored Knights and Surveillance Robots without any support from Donald and Goofy]]. Helped along by the [[ActionCommands reaction commands]] for said enemies, both of which are wide-area attacks capable of hitting large numbers of targets at once.
* An early mission in ''VideoGame/CrisisCore: VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' boiled down to "Storm the enemy base alone. Have fun." Of course, it should be noted that your character is explicitly a SuperSoldier.
** And then of course you have [[spoiler: Zack's final stand]] against practically the entire [[spoiler: Shinra army.]] Despite [[spoiler: eventually dying in the end, Zack]] canonically takes out all but three or four of them before finally reaching his limit. Based on what you see in the scene just prior, we're talking about [[BadAss single-handedly destroying a good 100-200 rifleman, backed up with missile-shooting battle copters]], all using [[BigFuckingSword a single sword]].
* One of the stages in ''{{Disgaea}}'' has you fighting a giant enemy (who is so big all you see of him is his foot) who divides himself into ten separate enemies. LoveFreak Flonne [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] this by saying its [[PowerofLove love is divided by ten.]] However, as noted by the Prinny commentary on the DS version after you lose, [[HopelessBossFight love is not a battle stat.]] Even though all of these divided enemies are a presumed to be a a tenth the strength of the original, they are still the highest level enemy in the story line next to the FinalBoss. In other words, you're screwed.
* '' VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' includes one zone, Lake Wintergrasp, dedicated to world (i.e. not instanced) PvP. In an effort to make it more fun on servers where one faction or the other is underpopulated, it features a mechanic called Tenacity that buffs whichever side has fewer people - the greater the disparity, the stronger the buff.
** Notably, the Tenacity buff, was hilariously weak as it did nothing against CC effects, so if 3 or 4 people with 20 stacks of tenacity (full power, 500% EVERYTHING) encountered the other faction's main group... they got obliterated very easily, averting this trope.
** And in other cases of World PvP, the side that brought 80 people destroys the organized group of 5 or 6, because players are all fairly equal, so WoW actually averts this trope pretty hard... until you go into PvE, where it's in full effect.
** Played hilariously and probably accidentally post-Cataclysm, where mobs and {{Non Player Character}}s will be found fighting each other in perpetual battle. It's entirely possible to find and especially to set up scenarios where one NPC or mob is fighting ''dozens'' of mobs or [=NPCs=], with that one person fighting on equal footing to the entire small army that's descended upon them.
* Justified in ''Videogame/TheWitcher'', where one of the three fighting styles Geralt is trained in has been specifically tailored to allow him to engage a horde of up to nine enemies at once. If you invest an equal amount of points in all fighting styles, it is possible that some enemies, such as cemetaurs, will be more of a challenge to bring down on their own with the 'Strong' style than a group of them would be if engaged with the Group style.
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'', Raven [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on this trope in one of his battle quotes: "The bigger the bunch, the weaker the monster!"
* The fight against the first boss in ''VideoGame/DukeNukem3D'' was well... a boss fight. And then those same exact bosses show up as EliteMooks to be killed like EliteMooks.
* In ''{{VideoGame/Diablo}} 2'', this works against the players. The more players are playing in the same game at the same time, the more powerful the monsters become -- thereby making each player proportionately weaker than if he was playing on his own.
** With a good team setup, synergy means the players still come out ahead in that race.
* In ''Shogun: TotalWar'', default unit sizes are subject to this rule, the extreme being the sword master that's just [[BadAss one guy]] that can take on dozens of lesser men. On the other hand during actual battle this trope is averted. The most blatant example is that 96 ninjas (yes actual ninjas, this is feudal Japan so [[JustifiedTrope maybe?]]) can and will wipe the floor with 1 ninja.
* ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}} 2'' has an interesting variation where it's the heroes that have the disadvantage in numbers. When the Hiigarans show up to claim an ancient Precursor artifact, they come across a guardian boss known as a Keeper. The Keeper is a strange looking medium-sized warship which sets off to engage the entire Hiigaran fleet solo. You know you're in serious trouble when you're commanding a massive armada to fight a single enemy unit.
* Applies to ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' as well. Trainers with a five or six-member party are usually Bug Catchers or Fishermen, and will use lots of lower-leveled Pokémon, or weaker Pokémon in general (like Caterpie and Magikarp). A trainer with only one Pokémon will be substantially higher-leveled.
** Subverted with late game champions, who have six pokemon that are very high levels.
* In ''VideoGame/AdventureQuest'', there is an enemy which is composed of 100 (previously 1000) ninjas. There is also a ninja enemy named Shadow Mistress Elizabeth. Guess which is the tougher to beat.
* In ''Rome TotalWar'', bringing large numbers of poorly-trained, poorly-equipped and unmotivated soldiers to a battle, with the intention of crushing the enemy through sheer weight of numbers, was not always wise. If these men were attacked and routed by the enemy, their fleeing would have a highly deleterious effect on the morale of your remaining troops, rendering them much more susceptible to breaking under pressure.
** In all the Total War series a large army can be hard to properly control. Most notable in Medival 2 when a single unit of properly micromanaged heavy cav can devistate thousands of pesants. It is just too hard for a human opponent to reorganise their line to take the charge properly.
* Cranked up to ridiculous levels in DynastyWarriors and it's kin. ''Anything'' that comes on screen is going down effortlessly if they're not a) Lu Bu, b) the enemy commander, or c) a named officer in Hyper Mode.
** Hard and Hardest/Extreme difficulties, however, try to counter this trope with even more ridiculous ArtificialDifficulty - Koei's "solution" was to give even random soldiers higher stats than a ''maxed-out'' player character is able to achieve.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} 5'', the Japanese are given the ability "Bushido," which lets their military units continue fighting at full strength even after taking damage. While not making them ''stronger'', per se, it does mean that a single, wounded samurai is just as deadly as an entire group of them. Although there is a civic that makes wounded units do more damage.
* The GrandFinale of ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' has the capital city of Ferelden attacked by Darkspawn. When you get inside the city, you'll find that you're vastly outnumbered, but are only fighting against grunt versions of the normal darkspawn, meaning that they go down in one or two hits to balance things out.
** Although there ''are'' EliteMooks, mixed in with them. If you're trying to kill the Darkspawn General based in the alienage, you will have to fight through a ZergRush of EliteMooks, at least on higher difficulties.
* ''{{Vindictus}}'' probably has the most realistic use of this trope. Enemies use a variety of tactics, including mass mob attack, and single flanking and circling attacks. When enemies do attack in mobs, they predictably cause a lot of [[FriendlyFireIndex collateral damage]], getting in each other's way as one would normally expect. This is even true for [[DualBoss multiple boss missions]]. In fact, on the Gnoll Chieftain mission, the standard tactic is to keep running from the boss for the first few minutes of the fight, to allow his wild attacks to take out all his mooks before fighting him.
* Can happen to the ''enemies'' in the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series. Certain regular enemies will resort to ''much'' more dangerous attacks if they are alone, which means that you should take them out first if they're in a group.
* In the ''Videogame/FireEmblem'' games, your army is traditionally outnumbered 2:1 most of the time, though sometimes as bad as 5:1, or more. However, most of these enemies, if the [[ElementalRockPaperScissors weapon triangles]] are utilized, are hilarious pushovers. But if you get into a room in a castle mission with only one guy sitting on a throne, perhaps with a [[TheDragon Swordmaster, General, or Bishop]] at his side, get ready for a hell of a fight.
** Not always, due to HardLevelsEasyBosses.
* Due to the limitations of the hardware, as the number of SpaceInvaders left in the game decreases their speed of attack increases.
* Parodied in ''LeagueOfLegends'', where the four ninjas (Kennen, Shen, Akali, and Zed) all have a hidden passive which reduces their maximum hp by 1 point for every other ninja, resulting in a possible reduction of -3 hp. The effect is unnoticeable upon gameplay, and acts as an homage to the trope.
* In ''Franchise/StarWars: TheForceUnleashed II'', Darth Vader sends an army of Starkiller clones against Starkiller himself, who destroys them all. Justified in that they were imperfect versions, had less battle experience, and were mindless berserkers.
-->'''Excerpt from the novelization''': It quickly became apparent that the first to rush in were the wildest and weakest both. In their eagerness to do battle, they didn't stop to plan their strategies. What they possessed in speed, they lacked in forethought. He was armed and they were not, so for being headstrong beyond all reason these brutish beings paid the ultimate price.
* In ''CompanyOfHeroes'' the MG-42 gets bonuses to accuracy and suppression when facing larger number of troops.
* In ''Videogame/SpiralKnights'', the more members there are in your squad, the harder enemies and bosses become. It's a well-implemented method of balancing the co-op with the soloing, but it can also mean that sometimes soloing is easier than playing in a group. Sometimes.
* ''Videogame/KingdomOfLoathing'''s Ragamuffin Imp familiar is a variation; it grows progressively weaker the more players are using it as their active familiar at any given time.
* Averted in ''Demon Souls'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' '''[[NintendoHard HARD]]''', making encounters of two or more mooks aggravating.
* GuildWars invokes this with a [=PvP=] effect called "Inverse Ninja Law." A player does less damage for each nearby ally, and more for each nearby enemy.
* Simulating this effect in an MMORPG was a major design goal in ''StarWarsTheOldRepublic''. In order to get the most out of being one of the universe's signature badasses the game tends to pit you against mobs of three to five enemies who die quickly, making you feel as strong as a jedi/sith should. When it's down to two or one enemies though, it usually means you're fighting an elite or boss mob, making the fight much harder.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/BattlestarGalacticaOnline'', where swarms of [[TacticalRockPaperScissors "rocks" can beat a "paper"]], and a bunch of low-level players defending their own can force a {{Griefer}} who would {{Curb Stomp| Battle}} any one of them if caught alone to retreat or die.
* The Naga faction in ''[[HeroesOfMightAndMagic Might and Magic: Heroes VI]]'' has a racial ability called honor which gives them a defensive boost. The honor gauge charges whenever an enemy stack is attacked that hasn't been attacked yet that turn; if you want to use the honor ability efficiently, you need to attack enemies one-on-one instead of sending all your troops to gang up on a single stack.
* One form Asura has in ''VideoGame/AsurasWrath'' is his Mantra form. This form starts off by having Asura Grow over 1000 regular Golden Vajra arms. They then fuse back together into big Metal Gauntlets for other battles after the initial campaigns final battle. Somewhat justified, as it would be hard to control Asura in the 1000 arms state in Game mechanics. When uses the form later, while still as powerful as before, the amount of arms that sprout is reduced considerably, proof that Asura can use the form at will instead of help from his daughters mantra charge.
** The same applies to his [[spoiler: Destructor form]]. In this form, he gains four more massive Mantra form arms, butwhen they eventually break in the final battle against [[spoiler: Chakravartin]], he eventually starts using the power obtained from the form with much more precision, and defeats the first form of [[spoiler: Chakravartin]] after said character breaks off the arms in a fist fight with ease.
** Asura's Wrath is a huge example of this trope. Whole Shinkoku and Ghoma armies? Harmless. Asura even takes an army of Ghoma after losing his arms and using a broken sword. Single bosses like the Seven Deities or Vlitra? That's trouble.
* ''NoMoreHeroes'' is a case of this with BossDissonance. The game's generic enemies don't pose much danger, the main challenge comes from the game's bosses.
* ''DynastyWarriors'' is probably the most (in)famous example in gaming of this trope. Players will be attacked with hordes of enemies that so pathetic they might as well not even attack while the player chops them down.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'' plays this trope straight by the end of the game. To slow Link down, [[BigBad Ghirahim]] summons his whole army of minions, most of whom die in one hit by this point in the game. Ghirahim himself, and the BiggerBad that serves as the FinalBoss, are a different story.
* A memorable moment from the original ''VideoGame/{{Shenmue}}'' has Ryo and a partner fighting off seventy attackers and succeeding.
* The iOS game ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyAllTheBravest'' inverts this - you have an army of up to 40 warriors of varying classes (and heroes from different games) up against a handful of monsters per round. The monsters and bosses have a load of HP, your characters are {{One Hit Point Wonder}}s.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* Lampshaded in ''[[WebAnimation/AwesomeSeries Metal Gear Awesome]]'': Snake is detected and surrounded by innumerable enemy guards, and Colonel performs his classic "Snake? Snake? Snaaake!" line...only to reveal that Snake not only killed all of them but "didn't even break a sweat".
** Snake then killed a dog by sweating.
* An overwhelming majority of [[StickFigureAnimation Stick Figure Animations]] that involve fighting. To give you an example, check out [[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/15849 Xiao Xiao No. 3]]. The main stickman kicks everyone's behind fairly easily with only one or two attacks. Only if there are 3 or less mooks on screen does he actually get hit. Also notable is the entirety of Terkoiz' '''amazing''' work like [[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/348947 Unbalanced]] or [[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/404228 The]] [[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/404229 Shock]] [[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/550330 Trilogy]].
** Worthy of note in Terkoiz's Shock series, is that this trope is played straight in the first two and subverted in the final part [[spoiler:where Dark Green's ability to clone himself is actually what allows him to win.]]
* An episode of Dick Figures plays this perfectly straight in an epic battle for chow mien.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'' has applied this trope to every fight the title character's been in (except for the Raptor Banditos, who turned out not to be villains), even going so far as to [[http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=18&issue=8 explicitly reference]] it on several occasions.
** The trope is also {{Invoked|Trope}} by a villain [[http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/17p70 later on]] who arranged for Dr. [=McNinja=] to be cloned hundreds of times, so instead of the Doc being one man fighting his army of mooks, said villain would be one man fighting an army of [=McNinjas=], thereby making the latter almost powerless.
** Which Dr. [=McNinja=] then counters with a dose of DangerouslyGenreSavvy: He uses EnemyMine and BuddyCopShow cliches and joins up with Rayner against the clones, thereby making them both strong. Rayner doesn't want to team up with his enemy of course, but since rejecting help means rejecting ThePowerOfFriendship, [[IneffectualLoner he becomes powerless against the clones when he doesn't allow McNinja to help him]]. Thus they both defeat all the clones, which means [=McNinja=] is at full power again.
* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' does this as well, coincidentally [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0453.html on the same day]] as the first Dr. [=McNinja=] strip referenced above.
-->You wanna fight? There's only one ninja left, and that means I'm death incarnate!
* The page image comes from a scene from ''SamAndFuzzy'', where Mr. Blank takes on the [[FacelessGoons mook legions]] of Mr. Black. Blank and Black are both [[BadAss blankfaces]], elite ninja assassins, while the mooks are... well, they're mooks. As Mister Blank puts it about two minutes later: "Looks like I might have to change my name to Mr. Red!"
* Justified in ''Webcomic/{{Fans}}'' when Team Alpha faces the golems of the Order of the Dragon. The larger the summoned army, the more the Order members have to spread their power among the individual units, resulting in a frightening number of mooks that all drop with one hit.
* ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'': In "The Sci-fi Adventure", the spaceship Torg and Riff are on is attacked by a group of xenomorph-style aliens in space. The crewmen shoot them easily in zero gravity outside the ship (when there are a lot of them), but one of them manages to infect one of the humans, causing one more alien to burst out of him inside the ship and go on a rampage. She starts killing crew members effortlessly by herself, until only Riff and Torg are left, at which point they find some big guns and shoot her down.
* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' used it in all ways.
** Dr. Beetle tried to pull this as he "put all his eggs in one basket" with one [[HumongousMecha huge clank]] Mr. Tock and didn't even call for reinforcements immediately. This didn't work for very long.
** Gil goes out alone, [[GenreSavvy likely in full knowledge of this trope]], to face off against an army of invading clanks. Naturally, he destroys some and forces surrender from the rest. The most hilarious portion of this sequence is that the invading army's general [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20071121 realizes what's going on]] and attempts to have Gil shot before he can do anything.
*** He did have a really powerful weapon. It is elsewhere established that most of the crazy inventors who try to face off against armies with their lone death ray tend to meet a predictable end.
** Later two airships full of Wulfenbach Stealth Fighters were chasing the [[TheHunter Vespiary Squad]]. They even managed to kill or wound most of this crack team, but ran into a few [[SuperSoldier Jäger]] generals and a [[McNinja Smoke Knight]] who in turn massacred them and made it look insultingly easy.
* It's one of [[http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web05/2011/5/17/17/enhanced-buzz-23827-1305669365-5.jpg 14 Things That Never Happen in Real Life]].
* Lampshaded in [[http://www.captainsnes.com/2011/12/27/guest-comic-heaven-and-hell-3/ Captain Snes]] in a guest comic showing various characters respective ideas of heaven and hell. In Edge's heaven, he is surrounded by 9 obviously lovestruck Rydias. Edge acknowledges the readers knowledge that this would probobly be too much for one person, before stating "I have 3 words for you. Inverse. Ninja. Law."
* In ''DragonMango'', [[http://dragon-mango.com/comic/chapter07/dm07-46.htm Peaches comments on how much easier it was to fight a bunch, and Bleu Berry explains as a scientific principle]]. They call it the "Snow Dancer Syndrome."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* Episode 2 of ''GIJoeResolute'' features [[WolverinePublicity Snake Eyes]] vs. 20 or so Cobra troopers. You can probably guess how this ends. Later on, Snake Eyes fights [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou Storm Shadow]] by himself. The fight is much tougher.
* While ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' would make use of this trope when it needed to, it was also averted a fair number of times as well in the most recent series--while the turtles could defeat almost any individual ninja, their most definitive defeats came at times when they were overpowered by sheer numbers. Conversely, the Shredder, proved considerably easier to defeat when he was alone, and did not have his mooks to cover his flanks.
* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' made active use of the trope in its early seasons. The first instance was against the robotic Manhunters and goes as follows: [[spoiler: Three Manhunters vs. Justice League. Ends in a tie, but the Manhunters were winning. One of them was not damaged a bit after being hit directly with Hawkgirl's [[DeusExMachina mace]]. Second encounter: One Thousand Manhunters vs. Justice League. The Justice League tear them apart. Hawkgirl's mace tore through them, as did a green lantern ring. Third Encounter: One Manhunter vs. Green Lantern. The Manhunter overpowered the lantern ring and won.]]
** This trope even occurred in the movie pilot with the Imperium mooks, when first encountered 3 of them go up against Batman and Superman, and they not only hold their own they are barely affected by either heroes attempts to defeat them, but by the end of the movie the entire League is taking out dozens of them, though to be fair at the end the league was taking advantage of their WeaksauceWeakness.
** This was solved to a point when the series switched over to ''Unlimited'' and the League was given its own personal army. The new team then proceeded to take on fearsome tasks that required multiple individuals, such as when they faced the Dark Heart, a [[{{Nanomachines}} nanotechnology]] being that could multiply itself exponentially.
** This trope is all but referred to by name at one point during the Thanagarian invasion. When she, {{Superman}} and GreenLantern are outnumbered by a margin of several hundred, WonderWoman notes that the final battle features "Pretty bad odds." Superman's reply? "Yeah, they don't stand a chance."
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' is possibly the crowned king of this trope, providing an on point illustration of it about every other episode using a wide variety of monsters and MechaMooks. Standard example: the villain of the week summons a monster or robot or something. With much struggle and an elongated fight sequence, the Titans are either just barely able to defeat the adversary or make their retreat. Later on in the episode, the villain tries the same trick again, but decides to spice it up a bit by either making the goon 20 times larger or replicating it to form a small army. Despite the blatantly increased odds, the Titans are still able to defeat the both the goons and the VillainOfTheWeek with half the sweat.
** Averted by Billy Numerous and Trigon's fire demons. Billy's a formidable opponent (for a VillainOfTheWeek anyway) ''because'' of his ability to make hundreds of copies that also have surprisingly good coordination. When Slade leads an army of fire demons to retrieve Raven from Titans Tower, her teammates, despite holding ''nothing'' back (Cyborg going so far as to ''hook himself up to the Tower defense systems to fire dual Sonic {{BFG}}s''), are overwhelmed by their foes' sheer numbers and Slade's own formidable powers.
** Quite possibly the best show of this trope comes from the movie ''TeenTitansTroubleInTokyo''. In the intro, the Titans are seen fighting a single colorful villain, who beats them all back with ease and escapes once captured. Mid way through the film they are all attack by one of these while they are separated. At the first part of the final battle, the BigBad summons a room full of these minions, which the Titans blaze through with little difficulty. Then in the next part of the final battle he summons an army of them, who might as well not even be there at this point as each Titan destroys 3-4 of theme per camera pan. The big difference, of course, is that [[spoiler:the Titans has learned that the mooks aren't real or sentient, meaning they're not holding back like they would to capture actual living beings, as Cyborg notes. In fact, if you watch the opening closely, you can see them gradually stepping up the force used. And even with them not holding back, and the BigBad's imperfect control, they are still overwhelmed.]]
*** Actually, the best example of this trope would be the episode "Titans Together", with the victims being the 95% of the Titan's rogues gallery. At first it seemed to be averted when Beast Boy's small team is overpowered by the sheer numbers of the villains. Then this trope was played straight when the other Titans who weren't captured by the Brotherhood reinforce his team (only half of the Titans are in the fight at this point). They then begin picking apart their foes (who had been difficult to beat alone versus the main team) with relative ease despite being outnumbered. Raven even lampshades it.

* On ''WesternAnimation/GreenLanternTheAnimatedSeries'', The GreenLantern Corps tends to suffer from this. One Green Lantern is power-wise on par with Superman, but when the whole corps are present they deteriorate into cannon fodder.
* In an episode of ''LiloAndStitchTheSeries'', the MonsterOfTheWeek was able to duplicate anything. However, the qualities of anything it duplicated were divided accordingly (i.e. it could duplicate a 100-watt lightbulb to produce 2 50-watt bulbs). Near the end of the episode, Lilo tricks Gantu into making 100 of each of his combat experiments, making them so weak they're easily defeated.
* ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfSonicTheHedgehog'' has an episode, "Robo Ninjas", in which Dr Robotnik kidnaps a ninja master and brain drains him to teach Scratch And Grounder to be Ninja. After several failures the Nincombots actually beat Sonic and Tails easily. Later Robotnik builds more ninja mooks to defeat the duo and their new ally, but the more Robots he makes the less competent they are.
* In ''WesternAnimation/XiaolinShowdown'', one of the Shen Gong Wu, the Ring of Nine Dragons, can make duplicates of the user, but the duplicates get less competent the more are made.
** Also subverted to great amusement in that Jack Spicer, universal ButtMonkey and self proclaimed 'boy genius,' is actually able to use the ring to great effect, not because he is strong enough that even when divided into nine pieces he is still a formidable opponent, but rather because he's so bad already that the clones couldn't possibly get any worse.
** Played straight in the "Time After Time" with [[spoiler: Wuya, Chase Young, hannibal and Master Monk Guan vs Raimundo.]]
** Mala Mala Jong is also able to use it effectively. Considering that he is a demonic living suit of armor where all the part are legendary powerful magical artifacts, it make sense that it can only be worse for the heroes with four of them. They are only able to beat them because they get them into a Xiaolin Showdown where their superior strength provides minimal advantage, and with it won a Wu that forces their obedience.
* On ''WesternAnimation/JackieChanAdventures'', whether Jackie had to fight five of the Shadowkhan or five hundred, they would always take exactly the same amount of effort to dispatch.
* In the CGI cartoon ''WesternAnimation/RoughnecksStarshipTroopersChronicles'', after establishing a base on the jungle world of Tesca Nemerosa, the Roughnecks encounter a 'prototype' Spider Bug that proceeds to kidnap the entire squad one by one with consummate ease, until eventually only two remain uncaptured. When they finally confront it in a suitably epic battle, it takes a barrage of automatic rifle fire and a plummet onto stalagmites to defeat it. Next episode, they're fighting Spider Bugs by the dozens, in combination with the more conventional Bugs, and having little trouble holding their own.
* Parodied somewhat in ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' movie "Wishology", in which baby fairy Poof dresses as a ninja and takes out a gang of Eliminators.
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/Ben10UltimateAlien'' had the hero splitting himself into three. The result was superficially successful, but in combat they couldn't coordinate. The hero reversed the duplication, causing the villian to question the wisdom of effectivly reducing his numbers. The single hero, though, easily defeated him.
** Even before the combat scene, the duplicates caused problems from their incomplete personalities, though this might have been just poor choices in which personality type to accommodate each task.
** Ben10Omniverse has a much more ridiculous exemple in episode ''Special Delivery''. Said episode involves one of the biggest VillainTeamUp in the franchise since the [[{{Ben10}} Negatve 10]]. Some of the villains involved include [[WarElephants Trumbipulor]], who was TheJuggernaut in his previous appearance and could give a hard time to Ben even when he was supported by [[HypercompetentSidekick Rook]] and an entire team of [[SpacePolice Plumbers]], Fisttrick, who could be a relatively good match to Ben in his two previous episodes, and Sunder, who had previously been a match to ''Ultimate Spider-Monkey'', to list only a few. When they all confront Ben ''alone'' at the end of the episode, he effortlessly delivers them a CurbStompBattle. Special mention for Trumbipulor, who gets defeated by a form he had previously be shown to be a match to, with a move that originally had no effect on him.
* In ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'' episode 38 there is a textbook picture of the Emperor surrounded by hundreds of Aku mooks.
* In a recent episode of ''TheBoondocks'' Bushido Brown is fighting a group of 3 super skilled old people [[ItMakesSenseInContext (It's a long story)]]. At first he's kicking all three of their asses; however when he knocks one of them out he starts getting hit and performs poorly.
* Averted then played straight on CodeMonkeys when [[BadBoss Mr. Larrity]] is jumped by ninjas after [[BrattyHalfPint Benny,]] who succeed (at the expense of a few getting killed, but [[WeHaveReserves hey]]) then played straight when the ninjas, revealed as salarymen try to jump him a second time only for him to dodge/kill his way out of the crowd.
* Pretty much personified in ''HotWheelsBattleForce5''. The show had two [[BigBadEnsemble Big Bads]] in the first season, Captain Kalus and Zemerik. Zemerik and his Zurk prefered a ZergRush with a massive amount of Sark and his {{Dragon}} Zug. On the other hand, Kalus normally went into battle with three other Vandals. The Sark besides Zemerik himself and Zug normally got torn to pieces with ease while the Vandals took a good deal more effort to defeat individually. Then in season two, the new BigBad Krytus takes control of the Zurk from Zemerik, but has his own group of Red Sentients who are generally far more difficult to defeat than the Zurk are. This comes back to bite Krytus when [[EvilVsEvil he faces Kalus' Vandals on their homeworld]]. Even though there are a lot more Vandals involved, the number wise superor Zurk are ultimately shredded by the Vandals in battle. This is probably justified as the Zurk are mass produced robots with only Zemerik and Zug having any sentient intelligence.
* In an early episode of MaxSteel, the titular character sneaks in to an enemy base and fights off a couple of mooks, including this scene:
-->'''Max:''' Quality beats quantity. (Five mooks appear in front of him.) I hope.
** Naturally, he pummels the mooks and wins the fight...until his arch-nemesis Psycho sneaks up and uses a stun-stick on him.
* ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'': One Insecticon vs. Arcee: Trashed Arcee, Insecticon undamaged. One Insecticon vs. Megatron: Victory by inches to Megatron. Several thousand Insecticons at once, and both of them are one-shotting Insecticons out of the sky. In both one-on-one fights, however, the Insecticon had a home-ground advantage, as well as the advantage of close quarters where guns would be ineffective. Arcee was attempting to distract it so Jack could get to the objective, and Airachnid specifically gummed up Megatron's cannon so he couldn't use it in the fight.
** When Arcee fights another Insecticon in "Tunnel Vision" in a subway tunnel, she manages to hold it off by using her greater agility. Yet suddenly even her full barrage can barely scratch its paint. Perhaps it was some sort of close-quarters up-armored variant because of the tunnels.
** The same applies to Vehicons. One Vehicon can be a match for [[LightningBruiser Bulkhead]], but a squad of them is cannon fodder. In the pilot, two Vehicons hold their own against Bumblebee and Arcee, only fleeing when Bulkhead arrived. They take no serious damage. Later in the same 5 parter, Team Prime attacks a whole group of them, Arcee is seen effortlessly tearing through them, ripping them apart (literally) effortlessly.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other]]
* By themselves, individual people may be quite intelligent and capable of making rational, informed decisions. A group of people can be surprisingly easy to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria fool]] or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_psychology manipulate]] by comparison. And when we scale up to "the public" ...This may be one of the most extreme cases of Conservation of Ninjutsu.
* This trope is completely averted in the RealLife conflicts by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws Lanchester's laws]]. It basically states that when all other things equal, numerically inferior side will suffer both numerically and proportionally greater losses than the numerically superior side.
[[/folder]]

* ''GundamSeedDestiny'' plays this to high levels, with highly possible ([[{{Fanon}} but unconfirmed]]) Justification. A single Destroy Gundam helps the Earth Alliance to stomp over much of Europe, takes multiple episodes to go down and the repercussions of its destruction linger for several episodes afterward. When the EA field three, they go down in the same episode without too much trouble. When they field five at the same time, it's almost a non-event. The Justification is: 1. Stellar, a TykeBomb piloting it, while these mass-produced unit are issued to Mooks, also 2. the one she rides is shown having MORE feature than the mass-deployed (although STILL unconfirmed), in short, SuperPrototype.

* Two legendary ''{{Gundam}}'' scenes are made up of this trope. In the original ''MobileSuitGundam'', Amuro's awakening Newtype powers are revealed when he pushes the RX-78 Gundam to take out 12 Rick Doms, then Zeon's newest and strongest {{Mook}} unit, in three minutes. 20-some years later, Kira uses the Strike Freedom Gundam to defeat 12 [=GOUFs=] in 2 minutes in ''GundamSEEDDestiny''.

** Subverted in at least once instance when [[GundamWing Heero]] ended up fighting in one of the the mass produced Leo mooks he was quickly curbstombed along with his similarly equipped allies by the much better Taurus mobile dolls.
** This trope is [[PlayingWithATrope played with]] in MobileSuitGundam00. At the start of the first series, the SuperPrototype Gundams steamroller all non-[[AppliedPhlebotinum GN]]-powered suits... Until one episode, where the world's 3 main superpowers team-up to defeat them, and it almost works, if not for [[spoiler: TheCavalry showing up]]. Then, when {{Mook}} tech levels catch up, the Gundams are on the back foot again... Until the second series, where it [[ZigZaggedTrope zig-zags it]]. [[Gundam00AWakeningOfTheTrailblazer The movie]], on the other hand, averts this trope nicely. The ELS, which number in the '' '''TRILLIONS''' '', trounce the mere hundreds of thousands of Earth forces, [[spoiler: Gundams included]], with barely any effort, and would easily win, if not for [[spoiler: Setsuna]].

* Ash only fights one deadite at a time in the first two ''EvilDead'' films. He ends up getting thrown into a lot of shelves when facing a single one. But once he has to fight a whole army of deadites in ''Army of Darkness'', he conveniently gets a sword and starts slashing them up left and right.

* [[spoiler:Subverted]] in ''[[NeonGenesisEvangelion End of Evangelion.]]'' Asuka fights nine mass-produced [[HumongousMecha Eva]] units, each with weapons that can cleave straight through her nigh-impenetrable [[BeehiveBarrier AT Field]]. Asuka's Eva, meanwhile, has only a Progressive Knife and three minutes of battery power. In that timespan, Asuka disables or destroys ''every last one''. [[spoiler:Only to find out that they were OnlyMostlyDead, and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bpx66Ld-TI promptly get her]] [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown ass kicked horrifically]]. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bpx66Ld-TI Whoops.]]]]

* One more plausible scenario for this trope is if a smaller group of people is simply better coordinated than an larger group of opponents, and tries to stack the odds in their favour, however they can--cutting off paths for reinforcements, luring enemies into ambushes or traps, or disrupting their communications. This relies heavily on the element of surprise, as well as considerable planning and ability to adapt to situations on the fly, and would be considerably more effective if the group had some of the previously-mentioned advantages. If the element of surprise is lost or if things fail to go according to plan however, you can expect things to quickly get very bad.

* Can happen to the ''enemies'' in the ''FinalFantasy'' series. Certain regular enemies will resort to ''much'' more dangerous attacks if they are alone, which means that you should take them out first if they're in a group.

* Use early in ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' to introduce the character Aylee. Also used when Bun-Bun's army is about to attack Santa.

* Probably the only time in ''Franchise/StarWars'' that the Imperial Stormtroopers were at all capable was when fighting a [[RedshirtArmy large number of rebel troops]] - both in the opening scene of ''Film/ANewHope'', and in the invasion of Hoth in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack''. After that, when they were just fighting Luke, Han, Chewie, and Leia, they became the [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy infamously poor marksmen]] they are remembered as. Ewoks count as heroes in this example.
** Related, the Trade Federation Droids only kill Jedi when there's a whole army of them, as ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' shows. ([[Film/ThePhantomMenace the Gungan army]] [[RedshirtArmy is a whole different matter]])
** Take the scene in ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' where Mace Windu and 3 other Jedi are attempting to arrest Palpatine. Palpatine instantly kills the first Jedi, then kills the second right after. The third Jedi survives for maybe 5 more seconds before also getting killed. Now that there is one more Jedi left, Mace manages to overpower Palpatine after a epic battle. [[Creator/SamuelLJackson Mace Windu is]], after all, {{Badass}} Incarnate.
*** Except Palpatine, being the ultimate {{Chessmaster}}, let Mace have the upper hand as part of his plan to seduce Anakin to the dark side.
** The lone Jango Fett proves an even match for Obi-wan Kenobi in ''Attack of the Clones,'' but unlimited ''copies'' of him can't defeat Obi-wan in ''Revenge of the Sith,'' despite their being armed with blaster-rifles (which Jango didn't have).
*** Actually an aversion in this case. Despite being genetically identical to Jango the clones still had much less experience and training. Since the Clone Troopers had to be quickly mass produced in time for the Clone Wars they had only gotten at most 10 years of simulated combat training. This is compared to Jango who spent most of his life fighting for the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Mandalorians]], often specifically against Jedi.

* An early mission in ''CrisisCore: FinalFantasyVII'' boiled down to "Storm the enemy base alone. Have fun." Of course, it should be noted that your character is explicitly a SuperSoldier.

** Also happens in ''PrettyCureAllStars DX 3''. Two of the teams of Cures (the leader group of Cures Black, Bloom, Dream, Peach, Blossom and Melody and the bright colored group of Shiny Luminous, and Cures Rouge, Lemonade, Pine, Passion, Sunshine and Moonlight) deal with groups of Monsters of the Week with ease, but the remaining team (soft colored group comprised of Cures White, Egret, Aqua, Mint, Berry, Marine and Rhythm) are put through the ringer with only a small group of monsters.

* Another is to introduce some superior technology or art, available to the small group but not the larger group, that evens the odds (think the armies of Saladin vs. an M1 Abrams Tank). If stealth specialists are forced to fight head-on heavy hitters who excel exactly at this job—-which is usually the case with the "ninja" form of the trope—-it's a bad strategy, and heavy losses are expectable, too.

* One more plausible scenario for this trope is if a smaller group of people is simply better coordinated than an larger group of opponents, and tries to stack the odds in their favour, however they can--cutting off paths for reinforcements, luring enemies into ambushes or traps, or disrupting their communications. This relies heavily on the element of surprise, as well as considerable planning and ability to adapt to situations on the fly, and would be considerably more effective if the group had some of the previously-mentioned advantages. If the element of surprise is lost or if things fail to go according to plan however, you can expect things to get bad.

There are a few conceivable ways in which this trope can be {{Justified|Trope}}. The most obvious one is adhering to MagicAIsMagicA—if you consistently portray someone as powerful enough to take on a large number of people by their own and put an explicit limit on what they can and can't do, the WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief will not suffer nearly as much. ''How'' to establish the superiority of small numbers in concrete terms is another issue. One way to do it is to emphasize how small groups fare better in sneaking around and putting up an ambush. Another is to introduce some superior technology or art, available to the small group but not the larger group, that evens the odds (think the armies of Saladin vs. an M1 Abrams Tank). If stealth specialists are forced to fight head-on heavy hitters who excel exactly at this job—which is usually the case with the "ninja" form of the trope—it's a bad strategy, and heavy losses are expectable, too. One more plausible scenario for this trope is if the small force takes on the large force in a physically confined space (a tunnel, for example, or a room with only one doorway). If only one or a few members of the large force can come at the small force at once, it becomes a series of fair or nearly-fair fights, at least until the small force becomes exhausted and succumbs.

Despite all of those possible justifications, this trope is clearly a result of the TheoryOfNarrativeCausality more than anything else—fights are won one way or the other because the plot says they should and not because of any relevant InUniverse factors. In RealLife, there is strength in numbers more often than not; large groups of fighters have probably been ''trained'' to fight as a group and take advantage of their superior numbers if they ever manage to corner a single foe, and in some creations of mother nature this is a natural-born instinct (as a pack of wolves would be happy to demonstrate on any unfortunate prey). Quality over Quantity has lost a great many more fights in reality than it has in fiction.

** Played straight in the "Time After Time" with [[spoiler: Wuya, Chase young, hannibal and Master Monk guan vs Raimundo.]]

*** When Arcee fights another Insecticon in "Tunnel Vision" in a subway tunnel, she manages to hold it off by using her greater agility. Yet suddenly even her full barrage can barely scratch its paint. Perhaps it was some sort of close-quarters up-armored variant because of the tunnels.

*** By STARING at them. Although it is kind of justified as this is an ability that you have to be born with and only a really small portion of the people in the world have it and is one of the most powerful abilities in the world. Also they were all Redshirts by this point in the story.

** Quite possibly the best show of this trope comes from the movie ''TeenTitansTroubleInTokyo''. In the intro, the Titans are seen fighting a single colorful villain, who beats them all back with ease and escapes once captured. Mid way through the film they are all attack by one of these while they are separated. At the first part of the final battle, the BigBad summons a room full of these minions, which the Titans blaze through with little difficulty. Then in the next part of the final battle he summons an army of them, who might as well not even be there at this point as each Titan destroys 3-4 of theme per camera pan.