History Main / PendulumWar

** The Battle of Canary Wharf. See the page quote. Dalek Sec is not exaggerating; he really could destroy all five million Cybermen on his own.

* ''[[{{Homer}} The Iliad]]'': The Trojans beat the snot out of the Greeks (when [[AchillesInHisTent Achilles isn't around]]), the Greeks annihilating the Trojans (when Achilles ''is'' around). Making this OlderThanDirt.
* In the ''TheLordOfTheRings'' books and movies, Gondor is getting badly clobbered 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 ''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.

* There's a high-numbers war in the ''Mahabaratha'', 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.
* Arthuriana 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.

* ''[[{{Homer}} The Iliad]]'': The Trojans beat the snot out of the Greeks (when [[AchillesInHisTent Achilles isn't around]]), the Greeks annihilating the Trojans (when Achilles ''is'' around). making this OlderThanDirt.

* SavingPrivateRyan averts this: the opening Omaha Beach sequence is one of the most realistic and unglamorous portrayals of war, ''ever'', in a Hollywood film. The winning side [[{{understatement}} suffers great casualties]] almost from the start, and Captain Miller, the film's "hero", is just another insignificant soldier. Same with the final battle: long and hard, with the winning side suffering great casualties, and the victory is due to the collective efforts of the EnsembleCast.

* In ''DoctorWho'', the first Dalek to appear in the revived series single-handedly kills nearly the entire population of the bunker he was imprisoned in.

* ''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.

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 -- 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.

[[AC:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* A similar effect is present in the recent movie ''{{Troy}}''. The movie 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 also present in ''[[{{Homer}} The Iliad]]'', making this OlderThanDirt; it's more realistic, however, simply due to the sheer number of named characters and the protraction of their battles.

[[AC:{{Music}}]]

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

** Gondor is not badly clobbered in the books. Gondor is beaten back by huge hordes of orcs (and managed to rack up awesome kill ratios - 10 dead orcs for every dad man), but is hardly clobbered.
*** A siege that breaks through the outer walls of their capital city seems pretty clobbered. One character even remarks that they're like a child trying to threaten a knight. If Sauron had known that they didn't really have the One Ring, they would have been as good as dead.

[[AC:LiveActionTelevision]]

[[AC:{{Mythology}}]]

* TheBible: God led Joshua to defeat every countries' army. Even one 'as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore'.
** God even kept the army small on purpose so it'd be obvious they had supernatural help and didn't win it on their own.

[[AC:TabletopGames]]
* A variation in ''{{Warhammer}}'' and ''{{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.

[[AC:VideoGames]]

* ParasiteEve :During the second game 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. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1-1PL2e2E&feature=related It's so one sided.]]

[[AC: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).
** Of course, the same person ''is'' in charge of both sides, and is specifically trying to massacre both.
* Used in "Titans Together", the penultimate episode of ''TeenTitans''. 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.

[[AC:RealLife]]
* The Korean War. First the North Koreans pushed the South Koreans all the way back to Pusan. Then the South and their allies push the Northern forces back to the Yalu River. ''Then'' the North and their allies pushed back...

* Starting in February 2011, the Libyan Civil War is very much this.
----
<<|ActionAdventureTropes|>>
<<|MilitaryAndWarfareTropes|>>

-->'''Cyberman''': Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Cybermen.\\
'''Dalek Sec''': [[NoExceptYes This is not war. This is pest control!]]\\
'''Cyberman''': We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?\\
'''Dalek Sec''': Four.\\
'''Cyberman''': You would destroy the Cybermen with ''four'' Daleks?\\
'''Dalek Sec''': We would destroy the Cybermen with ''one'' Dalek! You are superior in only one respect!\\
'''Cyberman''': What is that?\\
'''Dalek Sec''': You are better at dying!\\
-DoctorWho, "Doomsday"

* The final battle in ''GundamSEEDDestiny'', [[CurbStompBattle takes it to the extreme]], in a huge battle no one important on the Three Ship Alliance is killed and three members: Kira Yamato, Athrun Zala and Mu La Flaga, don't even suffer any noticeable damage. The Battle of Heaven's base is just as bad, having ZAFT decimate the [[TheFederation Earth Alliance]] even though several ZAFT characters ''specifically said'' that it would be impossible to win without reinforcements. It's worth noting that while ''GundamSEED'' was guilty of this in its first half, they at least gave a reason (the Earth Alliance didn't have [[HumongousMecha mobile suits]] until the second half of the series). Once both sides had MS, the battles became pretty much even, with carnage on both sides. ''Destiny'' just has the EA being incompetent losers.
** Note that the ''{{Gundam}}'' franchise in general averts this quite often. One of the central themes of the franchise is "War is Hell", and no better way to show it than carnage on both sides, no matter who's winning.

* Averted in ''{{Legend of The Galactic Heroes}}'', 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 {{AuthorTract}}s bemoaning the futility and hypocrisy of jingoism and violence.

** The Minbari suffered only one capital ship loss in the process of grinding EarthForce into dust during the Earth-Minbari war.

<<|MilitaryAndWarfareTropes|>>ge.

** It seems Daleks only suffer from ConservationOfNinjutsu issues when the Doctor himself is involved).

** It seems Daleks don't suffer from ConservationOfNinjutsu issues. Unless The Doctor himself is involved.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_storm Operation Desert Storm]]. Coalition combat deaths amounted to 190 KIA and 790 wounded. Iraqi deaths are estimated at between twenty and two hundred thousand, with an additional 80,000 taken prisoner and 75,000 wounded.
* Battle of Matapan, March 1941. British aircraft torpedo the Italian cruiser ''Pola'' and force her to stop. Unaware of trailing British naval forces, the cruisers ''Zara'' and ''Fiume'' and destroyers turn back to help. Bad move. With no radar, they don't see three British battleships crawling up to 3500m range. Then the searchlights go on, and three minutes later the ''Zara'' and ''Fiume'' are blown out of the water, their gun turrets literally leaping into the air as the magazines detonate. British Admiral Cunningham wins a CrowningMomentOfAwesome when, forced to withdraw under German air attack, he radios the Italians on an open channel to tell them where the remaining survivors can be found.
* The maneuver warfare component of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) against the Iraqi army.
* The 1939 German invasion of Poland, which marked the start of WWII. The Poles were reduced to using horse cavalry in a valiant but futile attempt to defend themselves against German blitzkrieg.
** Where they performed surprisingly well in quite a few cases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mokra, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland_(1939)#Myths). Fall Weiss was not the pushover that many people make it out to be. Fall Gelb, on the other hand...
**** Was also not nearly as badly a curbstomp as most make it out to be. Tactically (as in "people actually shot in battle") the losses were nearly even, and Western Allied armor defeated the famed German spearheads more times than you would think, often in rather onesided battles. The main problem was that the Western Allies suffered catastrophic collapses in morale and organization, which paved the way for the Germans to drive them off the continent.
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Philippine_Sea Battle of the Philippine Sea]]--otherwise known as The Marianas Turkey Shoot--between the United States and Imperial Japan. In the battle, American forces lost 123 aircraft while the Imperial Japanese lost three aircraft carriers and 600 aircraft.
** It was worse than that. Over 100 of those American losses were simply planes that ran out of fuel on the way back from sinking an aircraft carrier at the extreme end of their range, and who had a hard time finding their own carrier to land on in the dark of night.
* The Battle of Omdurman, where an Anglo-British force led by Lord Kitchener (armed with modern artillery and Maxim machine-guns, and supported by river gunboats) defeated Abdullah al-Taashi's army of 50, 000. Kitchener's force lost 48 dead, the other side an estimated 10,000. Ironically the battle would have ended quite differently had Abdullah al-Taashi not had a vision that he should [[GeneralFailure attack in daylight across exposed desert]], instead of at night while Kitchener's forces were advancing through more close terrain.
* Operation Hump, where 173rd Airbourne Brigade (Americans, naturally) fought off 1200 North Vietnamese, with 48 Americans KIA with many more WIA, 2 Australians went MIA, and 403 Borth Vietnamese KIA. Big & Rich wrote a song about it, mentioned in above Music.
* The Battle of Agincourt, 1415. Up to ten thousand French were killed, but only about one hundred English.
** History channel did an investigation into this battle. It turns out the terrian was what killed most of the French. It had rained, and the soil at Agincourt is soft. The heavily armoured French knights literally got stuck in the mud. At the time, after the battle most French deaths were due to drowning as once the knight fell many times he couldn't get his face outta the mud.
*** It's also theorised that quite a few French knights that got stuck but didn't drown would have been easily hacked apart by the more mobile English longbowmen wielding hand axes...
*** The English chose the battlefield and used it their advantage, so the trope still applies.
*** The History Channel's take on the battle ignores the historical fact that, regardless of how much mud there may have been, the English still won.
* The Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Battle Off Samar, consisting of the tiny Taffy 3 vs. the Japanese Center Force was one of these, ending in favor of Taffy 3, instead of the much larger Center Force.
* The Anglo-Zanzibar war lasted only 38 minutes. The Zanzibar's lost 500 soldiers while the British only had 1 injured sailor.
* The battle of Narva (in modern Estonia) in 1700. A Swedish force of 8,000 men attacks a Russian force of more than 30,000 in a raging blizzard and wins a crushing victory.
* The Battle of Marathon where 9,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans fought some 100,000 Persians on even ground defeating the Persians and losing only 203 men.
** Well, not quite even. Much of the Persian army, including the elite cavalry divisions, were embarked in ships when the Athenians attacked, and so could not participate. Still a crushing victory, though.
* A rare, possibly even unique example of a ''literal'' one sided battle: the American invasion of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiska Kiska island]] during WW2. 35,000 American and Canadian grunts land on this impregnable fortress defended by... zero Japanese. Allied losses: 122, mostly through friendly fire. Good job, lads.
** Actually, over 70 of the losses came about when the Destroyer 'USS Abner Read' struck a mine.
* The US Invasion of Panama there the Americans had no trouble getting in the country what so ever. The casualty results 23 US dead against 205 Panama on Noriegas side.
* The Battle of Sinai the Isarelis lost only 50 tanks while Eygpt lost 250 tanks and 1000 troops.

One-sided encounters are perfectly reasonable have radically disparate technology levels, resources, and/or training.

** [[spoilers: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.]]

* The ''StarWars'' films largely avert this, as named characters are usually essential for victory but random soldiers on both sides score most of the kills. That said, the battle of Naboo in ''ThePhantomMeance'' is completely a One Sided Battle. The good guys are getting creamed, and then [[spoiler: Anakin blows up the Trade Federation mothership, disabling all the droid soldiers, wiping out the evil army in one swoop.]]

* In ''OnePiece'', during the battle of the Whitebeard Pirates and their allies against the Marines at Marineford, it didn't seem like the pirates were not taking ''any'' casualties except for the ones that were pivotal to the battle, [[spoiler:Oars Jr. (who might not be dead, just disabled), Ace (who wasn't in most of the battle), and Whitebeard,]] yet [[spoiler:they were still forced to retreat.]]

* When the titular guild of ''FairyTail'' breaks into the Phantom guild they completely decimate all of the [[{{Mooks}} opponents forces]], and it's seems that despite being a ''magic'' guild none of the members of Phantom but the highest are actually using any magic. Then, Master Makarov gets his magic drained (which is stated to mean "[[WeAreTeamCannonFodder their battle strength is reduced by half]]"), and the Phantom guild-members--who are ''still'' not using any magic--somehow start fighting off the Fairy Tail members and Erza decides they need to retreat.