History Main / PendulumWar

* OlderThanFeudalism: In Creator/{{Homer}}'s ''Literature/TheIliad'' the Trojans beat the snot out of the Greeks (when [[AchillesInHisTent Achilles isn't around]]), the Greeks annihilating the Trojans (when Achilles ''is'' around).
** Some historians place this as differences between when the events supposedly transpired and when Homer wrote the piece; in that time, armies went from a few dozen professional warriors to hundreds or thousands of levied infantry, which his audience would expect in a battle. This is also why the mass of both armies is just standing around and watching in many of the key confrontations, and fighters ride battle chariots into combat only to immediately dismount before fighting.

** They ''usually'' have the advantage of terrain, as well. For the Redwall sieges, anyway.

* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', during the battle of the Whitebeard Pirates and their allies against the Marines and 5 of the 7 Warlords of the Sea at Marineford, the pirates just charged forward only being slowed down and anything important was being done by the high-ranked pirates and officers; but the deaths of a small number of many of their forces [[spoiler:Oars Jr. (who might not be dead, just disabled), Ace (who wasn't in most of the battle), and Whitebeard still forced them to retreat.]]
** [[spoiler:Well, the only reason they retreated was because [[JustifiedTrope they were trying to save Ace, not destroy the Marines. One Ace died, the pirates had no more reason to be there]].]]

* Pretty much a given in most two-party Democratic systems, and to a lesser extent in multi-party systems in which two parties dominate overall. One will gain power, govern for a period, and then be replaced by the other main party. Which is then in government for a period before being itself replaced by the other main party. This is particularly true of countries like the USA and the UK in which there really are only two realistic parties of government, but does also occur in countries like Germany, where even though it is easier for smaller parties to gain representation in the national legislature, true ''power'' is still the reserve of two large, established parties.

* When the titular guild of ''Manga/FairyTail'' breaks into the Phantom guild they completely decimate all the members present (which was just {{mooks}} at that time) without any visible resistance--even ''[[TeamPet Happy]]'' was beating on then ten-at-a-time. Once [[BigGood Master Makarov]] [[DeusExitMachina gets his magic drained]] those same mooks somehow start fighting off the Fairy Tail members and Erza decides they need to retreat.
* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', during the battle of the Whitebeard Pirates and their allies against the Marines and 5 of the 7 Warlords of the Sea at Marineford, the pirates just charged forward only being slowed down and anything important was being done by the high-ranked pirates and officers, but the deaths of a small number of many of their forces [[spoiler:Oars Jr. (who might not be dead, just disabled), Ace (who wasn't in most of the battle), and Whitebeard, still forced them to retreat.]]
** [[spoiler:Well the only reason they retreated was because [[JustifiedTrope they were trying to save Ace, not destroy the Marines. One Ace died, the pirates had no more reason to be there]].]]

* The entire {{MOBA}} sub-genre can be summed up as this: if one army isn't steamrolling the other towards their base, it's because they've just been destroyed by that base's defenses and the accumulated defenders are racing headlong towards their enemy's base, which... A variation on this kind of map (without heroes, just units) is called TugOfWar on ''VideoGame/StarcraftII''.

* Averted in ''Anime/LegendOfGalacticHeroes'', where many of the larger pitched battles are brutal stalemates with millions of casualties on each side, no matter who wins in the end. The camera frequently switches to the gory deaths of {{mooks}} from both sides to highlight the horrific human suffering caused by war. These scenes tend to be filler for the narrator's {{Author Tract}}s bemoaning the futility and hypocrisy of jingoism and violence.

* ''VideoGame/AceCombatZeroTheBelkanWar'' had Operation: Battleaxe (the 10th mission, Mayhem), where the allied air forces fought against the Belkan Air Force over the Round Table. Initially it became one sided in favor of the Belkans with almost the allies shot down. Then the Galm Team (consisting of ''two'' fighters) comes and turned the tide of battle. It was actually because of this battle that the Belkans knew they were going to [[HopelessWar lose]].
* ''VisualNovel/PrincessWaltz'' is the [[OneManArmy One Girl Army]] variant of this trope, constantly [[CurbStompBattle curp-stomping one another]] until one side is OutGambited

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsCloneWars'' seems to have a pattern: First the big huge armies are fighting and the good guys are winning, next some character working for the Sith comes in and is able to completely turn the tide of the battle with just his/her presence, then a Jedi character comes in and flips it over again (unless the Federation's side has Grievous, then he'll beat the Jedi and it remains one-sided). [[spoiler:Of course, the same person ''is'' in charge of both sides, and is specifically trying to massacre both.]]

* Largely averted in ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross''/''{{Anime/Robotech}}''. Even the winning side in the battles takes heavy losses, and Earth manages to do ''some'' damage even when using a few early space weapons against the massive and technologically superior Zentraedi fleet.

* The [[NonLethalWarfare Battle of Mahora]] in ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'' was fairly even between the students and robots...until the [[HumongousMecha giant demon mechs]] and robots with [[GatlingGood gatling guns]] that fire [[OneHitKill time displacement bullets]] showed up. Things quickly went downhill from there.

* ''Film/{{Troy}}'' oscillates wildly between Trojans beating the snot out of the Greeks (when [[AchillesInHisTent Achilles isn't around]]) and Greeks annihilating the Trojans (when Achilles ''is'' around). This is actually a case of TruthInTelevision since the source material overestimates the effectiveness of heroes during the battle (see the [[Literature/TheIliad entry on the Iliad]]).
** It's more dramatic in the movie simply because it compresses a ten year siege into a few days.

During TheWarSequence, well, there's a ''war'' going on. This means that a lot of people are eagerly going at it at once -- something that is extraordinarily difficult to film in any satisfactory manner. There's just so much going on at any given moment, and the reader or viewer or player can only see a small part of the action. There's also the fact that many stories with such a sequence are essentially heroic stories -- the dehumanization and intermittent back-and-forth of a battle doesn't really fit so well into the theme of such a tale.

Because of this, many battle sequences in works of fiction seem to go in one of two directions with the AdvantageBall being passed around -- either the RedshirtArmy is getting clobbered, or the EvilMinions are. It almost seems like armies in television, movies, or games can only be in one of these two extremes -- there are never intermittent stalemates or indecisive exchanges.

The actions of the heroes, furthermore, are often disproportionate to their actual effect in the battle. No random extra achieves anything in the battle; [[TheMainCharactersDoEverything only named characters can be militarily useful]]. Of course, given the power of many heroic or villainous characters, this is somewhat more believable -- especially if the series is Fantasy or Science Fiction, where a single individual may just have the power to destroy entire cities with a thought.

This trope has some basis in fact -- many real-life battles are decided on morale and momentum -- but it still sometimes feels vaguely manipulative to base the fates of so many on the actions of so few, in such a literal sense.

!!Examples

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder:Music]]
* "8th Of November" by Music/BigAndRich. Features the battle fought on 11/08/1965 called "Operation Hump", referred to in the Real Life folder.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mythology]]
* There's a high-numbers war in the ''Literature/{{Mahabharata}}'', but all the interesting stories about the main characters (on both sides) singlehandedly or in small groups breaking through formations made of hundreds of random soldiers. In fact, there's even a "hero" ranking reserved for warriors who can singlehandedly kill a thousand or so "normal" soldiers. Needless to say, main characters on both sides (and their near family) tend to do that.
* Arthurian legend does this often, although just as often there aren't any armies, just little clumps of knights. Check out Malory for good examples of the trope actually in action. Geoffrey of Monmouth, despite his habit of making history up, was actually fairly reasonable about battles.
* Remember ''[[Literature/TheSongOfRoland Chanson de Roland]]'': In Roland's final battle, he slays thousands of enemies before perishing from blowing his horn too hard.

[[folder:Roleplay]]
* ''Roleplay/DestroyTheGodmodder'': The first game had a very bad case of this. The only periods of time this wasn't the case was when the godmodder was in the middle of a CurbStompBattle.

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]
* A variation in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' and ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''. Any given army is unstoppable, if not invincible, in its own {{Sourcebook}}. Consequently, if it appears in any other Codex, it's getting stomped.
** This can be justified to a degree: how many people do you know of who brag about their losses?
*** Inverted by the imperial guard 3.5 codex. The only fight in there is guard on guard. And it's inconclusive.
** This is, fluff-wise at the very least, the Tau's entire battle strategy. Being an entire race of dedicated long-range specialists with minimal melee ability, their typical strategy is to open fire with absolutely everything they have, annihilating the enemy; should the enemy weather the storm and inflict too many casualties, or just close to melee, the Tau fall back, up to and including abandoning entire cities, until they can regroup and press forward again. Justified in that they consider any ground gained or lost while both forces remain intact completely meaningless, and they lack the manpower for wars of attrition. The only time this is averted is if the resident Ethereal is killed, which either completely breaks Tau morale or turns them into TheDeterminator.
** A common complaint leveled at some of the newer campaign books, along with [[TheMainCharactersDoEverything lacking a proper sense of perspective]]. For instance, in the Fall of Cadia book, the battle went from a Chaos one-sided stomp to a rout as soon as Trayzyn arrived with a few dozen reinforcements, to another last stand when Abbadon arrived with his bodyguards, to Loyalist victory as Belisarius Cawl activates the warp-denying Pylons, to Imperial total loss and evacuation when Abbadon strikes down Saint Celestine due to her losing her powers as well as Chaos, despite the fact that this is a battle for an entire city-sized fortification and Chaos just lost all their summoned Daemons and a significant chunk of firepower for the remaining Chaos Marines and Cultists. All while the action never leaves the perspective of one of a handful of characters, all important generals save Celestine, dueling in one cave during the fall of the most heavily defended world in the Imperium, with billions of soldiers and a significant Navy complement under their command doing nest to nothing.
* Prevalent in ''TabletopGame/BattleTech''. The best example is probably the [[ChurchMilitant Word of Blake]] Jihad. The Word of Blake started a war with the rest of the Inner Sphere and their initial attacks led to the conquest of numerous worlds, some of which hadn't been subject to hostile invasion for centuries. Eventually, however, Inner Sphere forces began to rally and with began taking worlds back. Under the leadership of a man named Devlin Stone, the coalition succeeded in routing Word of Blake forces all the way to Terra and ultimately wiped out the last (known) members of the Word of Blake.

[[folder: Video Games ]]
* The ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors'' games take this trope to its logical extreme -- only the player's characters can actually score military victories. The various Redshirts on the field are just there to rack up your kill count; they mostly just mill around and certainly have no chance on their own against you.
** Except on "Chaos Mode" in some games, where it's inverted. All it takes to kill the player is (for example, in Warriors Orochi) 3~5 arrows... And let's not get started about how "enraged" (an in-game boss status, where the boss is juiced up with red BattleAura. You ''don't'' wanna take a hit from it, trust me.) can do horrible things to you.
** The Empires revision of 6 now allows allies to finish battles.
* ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve2'': Aya Brea finds herself witness to one of these when surrounded by dozens of ANMC Golems, armored monsters equipped with energy swords. Suddenlly TheCavalry arrives in the form of United States Marines, who proceed to utterly annihilate the entire horde of monsters in under a minute with liberal application of explosives and machine gun fire. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1-1PL2e2E&feature=related It's so one sided.]]
** This is explained pretty thoroughly in the game. The creator of the Golems found them to be quite difficult to control and reasoned that it would be best to only arm them with swords (the ones with grenade launchers that you meet in game made an unauthorized trip to the armory after everything went to hell). The reason he gave them swords is discussed near the end: If they ever revolted a small band of people armed with automatic weapons could easily suppress them. The fact that The Marines slaughter them with M249s is pretty reasonable.
* In ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles'', most of the battles between [[TheGoodKingdom Gallia's]] and TheEmpire's ends with the Gallian army getting their asses handed to them. This goes in the other direction once [[TheSquad Squad 7]] arrives on the scene.
* ''VideoGame/AceCombatZeroTheBelkanWar'' had Operation: Battleaxe (the 10th mission, Mayhem), where the allied air forces fought against the Belkan Air Force over the Round Table. Initially it became one sided in favor of the Belkans with almost the allies shot down. Then the Galm Team (consisting of ''two'' fighters) comes and turned the tide of battle. It was actually because of this battle that the Belkans knew they were going to [[HopelessWar lose]].
* ''VisualNovel/PrincessWaltz'' is the [[OneManArmy One Girl Army]] variant of this trope, constantly [[CurbStompBattle curp-stomping one another]] until one side is OutGambited
* The final battle against the Sith Fleet in ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' turns out this way if you redeem or kill [[spoiler: Bastila]] - but if you choose the Dark Side path, it rapidly goes from "[[CurbStompBattle Sith victory in progress]]" to "[[TheBadGuyWins complete annihilation of the Republic fleet]]". This is due to [[spoiler: her Battle Meditation; generally whoever she's supporting, if anyone, has the upper hand]].
* The entire {{MOBA}} sub-genre can be summed up as this: if one army isn't steamrolling the other towards their base, it's because they've just been destroyed by that base's defenses and the accumulated defenders are racing headlong towards their enemy's base, which... A variation on this kind of map (without heroes, just units) is called TugOfWar on ''VideoGame/StarcraftII''.

[[folder: Western Animation ]]
* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsCloneWars'' seems to have a pattern: First the big huge armies are fighting and the good guys are winning, next some character working for the Sith comes in and is able to completely turn the tide of the battle with just his/her presence, then a Jedi character comes in and flips it over again (unless the Federation's side has Grievous, then he'll beat the Jedi and it remains one-sided). [[spoiler:Of course, the same person ''is'' in charge of both sides, and is specifically trying to massacre both.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'': In the penultimate episode "Titans Together", the final battle starts with a ragtag group of heroes who have escaped the Brotherhood's grasp putting up a surprisingly good fight, becomes one-sided when reinforcements show up, and (broken up by two brief scenes of the QuirkyMinibossSquad trying to turn the tide) becomes even ''more'' one-sided when the Titans captured in the previous episode are unfrozen, in spite of the fact that this should only bring their numbers up to about equal.

[[folder: Real Life ]]
* The Korean War. First the North Koreans pushed the South Koreans all the way back to Pusan. Then America and her allies intervened and pushed the Northern forces back to the Yalu River. ''Then'' China [[ZergRush intervened]] [[WeHaveReserves and pushed back]]. Then the Allied forces pushed the Chinese back to about where the border had been in the first place, causing both sides to fight there until they decided to call a draw.
* The Iran-Iraq War. Both sides push the other back and forth inflicting heavy casualties on both of their troops while doing so.
* The 1973 October War on the Egyptian front at least. Egyptian success in Operation Badr followed by the successful Israeli counteroffensive across the Suez.
* A recognizable theme in warfare among Europeans and European-inspired military cultures. One side will find some technical advantage and roll over its opponents for a time. However, all occidental armies were formed in an environment so similar that it is impossible to find a technique that is incomprehensible; for instance {{Horse Archer}}s needed a culture that was BornInTheSaddle, but Panzers were made by a culture similar enough to Britain, US, and Russia that they could be countered or copied sooner or later. As a result, at some time there comes a point where the advantage of experience added to technical knowledge in the superior side does not make up for losses in officers, while their victims have gained enough experience to compete. Furthermore, the originally successful power frightens others into taking the side of the loser to preserve the BalanceOfPower. Examples of this are UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, UsefulNotes/TheGreatNorthernWar, and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

* In ''OnePiece'', during the battle of the Whitebeard Pirates and their allies against the Marines at Marineford, the pirates just charged forward only being slowed down and anything important was being done by the high-ranked pirates and officers, but the deaths of a small number of many of their forces [[spoiler:Oars Jr. (who might not be dead, just disabled), Ace (who wasn't in most of the battle), and Whitebeard, still forced them to retreat.]]
** [[spoiler:Well the only reason they retreated was because they were trying to save Ace, not destroy the Marines. One Ace died, the pirates had no more reason to be there.]]

* In the ''Literature/LordOfTheRings'' books (and [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings movies]]), Gondor is getting badly clobbered -- despite the huge death toll, Mordor's army breaks through the outer, strongest wall -- until Rohan's cavalry arrives. In the movies, the conflict is presented by scenes of desperate struggle within the city walls and civilians fleeing screaming in terror -- with emotive music playing in the background, of course.\\\
This also occurs in ''Literature/TheHobbit''; the Battle of Five Armies swings back and forth, back and forth, from extreme to extreme. However, the latter example is also a subversion, in that Bilbo, the viewpoint character of the book, is knocked out early in the battle and only comes to once it's all over.

* A variation in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. Any given army is unstoppable, if not invincible, in its own {{Sourcebook}}. Consequently, if it appears in any other Codex, it's getting stomped.

* Prevalent in ''TabletopGame/BattleTech''. During the Clan Invasion the Clans were successful in their first drive into the Inner Sphere and would have made it to Terra, but were hampered with infighting amongst themselves, and their resources stretched thin, and the death of their ilKhan forces them to put their invasion on hold. By then the Successor States took this opportunity to band together and formed the Second Star League, their first order of business is annihilating Clan Smoke Jaguar, and later sending a strike force to the Clan homeworlds to force them to cease their invasion.

* The [[NonLethalWarfare Battle of Mahora]] in ''MahouSenseiNegima'' was fairly even between the students and robots...until the [[HumongousMecha giant demon mechs]] and robots with [[GatlingGood gatling guns]] that fire [[OneHitKill time displacement bullets]] showed up. Things quickly went downhill from there.

Because of this, many battle sequences in works of fiction seem to go in one of two directions -- either the RedshirtArmy is getting clobbered, or the EvilMinions are. It almost seems like armies in television, movies, or games can only be in one of these two extremes -- there are never intermittent stalemates or indecisive exchanges.

* "8th Of November" by Big & Rich. Features the battle fought on 11/08/1965 called "Operation Hump", referred to in the Real Life folder.

* In ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles'', most of the battles between [[TheKingdom Gallia's]] and TheEmpire's ends with the Gallian army getting their asses handed to them. This goes in the other direction once [[TheSquad Squad 7]] arrives on the scene.

* OlderThanFeudalism: In {{Homer}}'s ''Literature/TheIliad'' the Trojans beat the snot out of the Greeks (when [[AchillesInHisTent Achilles isn't around]]), the Greeks annihilating the Trojans (when Achilles ''is'' around).

* The entire {{MOBA}} sub-genre can be summed up as this: if one army isn't steamrolling the other towards their base, it's because they've just been destroyed by that base's defenses and the accumulated defenders are racing headlong towards their enemy's base, which... A variation on this kind of map (without heroes, just units) is called TugOfWar on ''StarcraftII''.