Line #34 Main/RetiredBadassRoundup


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5	The world has changed. Years have passed since these old heroes, villains, or neutral characters all were in their prime. In fact, most of them are now {{Retired Badass}}es. But the world needs them, one last time, for one last battle. Or they're just getting old and need to feel alive again before they're too old to do anything anymore.
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7	Compare to PuttingTheBandBackTogether, when it's any kind of group. Or to the MagnificentSevenSamurai, when it's about any group of people who are Badass. What makes this different from those tropes is that this trope is about those who are old and have had their turn coming back.
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9	For the singular version, look for BackInTheSaddle. See also OneLastJob.
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11	----
12	!!Examples:
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14	[[foldercontrol]]
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16	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
17	* In ''Anime/GunXSword'', there was that fan-favorite episode featuring the El Dorado Five - a bunch of former Hot Blooded Super Robot pilots, now octogenarians who do nothing but hang around the local bar chatting 'bout the glory-days. Until suddenly, a Monster of The Week appears, (as always happens when Van is around), only this time, the old coots decide to pull their Combining Mecha out of mothballs for one last fight... Van, out of respect for the pride of these old warriors, decides to sit out the fight, only providing a bit of timely aid from the sidelines. It was popular enough that the El Dorado team came back as the collective [[TheBigGuy Big Guy]] for Van's RagtagBunchOfMisfits in the second half of the series. And when ''Gun X Sword'' was finally featured in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsK'', the El Dorado V was a recruitable, permanent mecha for your team.
18	* ''Franchise/DragonBall'' sees this during the Buu Saga with Tenshinhan/Tien, who dedicated himself to a life of ascetism, but nevertheless is able to donate energy for Goku's Spirit Bomb.
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21	[[folder:Comic Books]]
22	* The {{Elseworlds}} mini-series ''ComicBook/KingdomCome'' may be the UrExample. Set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, it features ''dozens'' of retired heroes (or in some cases, brand new adoptions of old names) joining two factions, one led by Franchise/{{Batman}} and another by Franchise/{{Superman}}, to combat the superpowered "metahumans" such as Magog, who are causing just as much loss of life and destruction as the villains do. Sadly, while the two factions share a common goal, they oppose each other as well due to distrust and disagreement over methods, leaving them vulnerable to the true villains of the story.
23	* Guy Gardner decides to call in the "Mean Machine" in the second arc of the New 52 series.
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26	[[folder:Fan Works]]
27	* ''Fanfic/AhsokaANZREStarWarsStory'': All of the main characters were prominent freedom fighters in earlier media, but have since moved on due to the end of the Empire.
28	* ''Fanfic/StarTrekPhoenix'': After James Liang accepts the captaincy of the ''Phoenix'', he tracks down a number of his old shipmates, all of whom have since left Starfleet for other occupations or private life, to talk them out of retirement and into joining the fleet again.
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31	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
32	* The plot of ''Film/OnceUponATexasTrain''. A train robber is released after twenty years in prison and recruits his old gang to try and rob the same train that he was originally caught trying to rob. The man who caught him rounds up his band of retired Texas Rangers to go after him.
33	* This is also the entire plot of the movie ''Film/Red2010''.
34	* In ''Film/RevengeOfTheMusketeers'', [[Literature/TheThreeMusketeers Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan]] team up again to save D'Artagnan's daughter Héloïse and thwart a conspiracy against a young King UsefulNotes/LouisXIV after splitting up many years before.
35	* ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'' has all of them meeting for one last time. There was supposed to be a bunch of recruitment scenes of picking them all up from different places, but it was cut for budget reasons.
36	* ''Film/SpaceCowboys'': a movie in which a Russian satellite is falling to Earth and so four retired astronauts that never got into space go up because no one else is old enough to remember how to fix it.
37	* ''Film/TheManInTheIronMask'': The three Musketeers meet to try and replace the king with his twin brother.
38	* The ''[[Film/TheExpendables Expendables]]'' films run on this, what with them being teamups of many of the big {{action hero}}es of the '80s and early '90s (Creator/SylvesterStallone, Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger, Creator/DolphLundgren, Creator/BruceWillis, et cetera). They're both a cinematic example and (metafictionally) a RealLife example.
39	* The climax of ''Film/{{Battleship}}'' has [[spoiler:the former crewmen of the battleship ''USS Missouri'', some of whom are veterans of UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar, being called back into service to man the ''Missouri'' against the alien invaders]].
40	* ''Film/TheWildBunch'' focuses on a group of aging outlaws coming together for one last job during the TwilightOfTheOldWest.
41	* ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol2'' has in TheStinger [[spoiler:a group resembling the original ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'' team (namely: Starhawk, Lady Starhawk, Martinex, Krugarr, Mainframe and Charlie- 27) as senior Ravager captains, getting together after Yondu's death. They decide to do OneLastJob in his memory]].
42	* In ''Film/AvengersEndgame'', [[spoiler:five years pass after the successful but fruitless attack on Thanos, when Ant-Man arrives with a Time Heist solution based on his time stuck in the Quantum Realm. But since then, Iron Man has had a daughter he isn't willing to lose, and Thor has become an obese recluse over his failure to stop Thanos in ''[[Film/AvengersInfinityWar Infinity War]]'', so both require convincing to rejoin the team]].
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45	[[folder:Literature]]
46	* Happens at the end of the book ''Literature/CountBelisarius'' by Robert Graves (of ''Literature/IClaudius'' fame), when [[UsefulNotes/FlaviusBelisarius the titular character]] has to defend Constantinople with literally no army. So he gathers his former soldiers, now old bureaucrats and retired commanders. And they still win.
47	* Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels ''Literature/InterestingTimes'' and ''Literature/TheLastHero'' feature Cohen The Barbarian and the Silver Horde. Their entire schtick is this trope.
48	* In ''Literature/TwentyYearsAfter'', the first sequel to Creator/AlexandreDumas's ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers'', D'Artagnan tries to reunite his old friends on the orders of Cardinal Mazarino. Porthos, now a wealthy widower, accepts but Athos, who regained his title and estate as the ''Comte de la Fère'' and Aramis, now a priest, refuse. [[spoiler:Athos and Aramis are members of the ''Fronde'', the anti-Mazarin rebellion.]] After a few chapters, they are kicking ass together again.
49	* This is the plot of the fantasy novel ''Literature/KingsOfTheWyld'', where the members of Saga, one of the greatest mercenary bands in history, are taken off from retirement by Gabriel, their old leader, when his daughter gets caught in a siege on the other side of the world. Thing is, all of them have been out of any serious action for almost two decades, and the fact that the Heartwyld (a massive forest that spans the entire continent, infested with monsters, traps and diseases) is in their way certainly doesn't help. But they go, anyway.
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52	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
53	* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': the episode "Blood Oath" where Kang, Kor, and Koloth, all Klingons from ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' meet for one last quest to fight against the murderer of their children, the Albino.
54	* ''Series/BuckRogersInTheTwentyFifthCentury'' had a squad of old retired fighters led by Peter Graves come back for OneLastJob.
55	* Within the 1980 version of ''{{Franchise/Zorro}}'', a bandit troupe threatens the town and Don Diego's father calls in the badass crew he used to work with. Their skills have noticeably degraded in the time they've been retired, so Zorro has to do their job behind the scenes without letting them realize their failure.
56	* An episode of ''Series/{{Psych}}'' has Henry call in two RetiredBadass colleagues to solve a case; these men turn out to be strikingly similar to Shawn and Gus, which is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] multiple times.
57	* An episode of ''Series/KungFuTheLegendContinues'' has the Cains bring in Series/TheEqualizer and Series/TheManFromUncle to lend their particular skills to help rescue a kidnap victim.
58	* ''Series/DadsArmy'' is based on the Home Guard in [=WW2=], the desperation measure Britain employed in 1940 to bring back older men with previous military experience to do whatever was within their capabilities. The Walmington-On-Sea platoon is formed of men of average age sixty, veterans of older British wars, who all, while having retired from active service, ''wish'' they'd been Badasses. Corporal Jones, for instance, is over eighty and a veteran of ''four'' previous wars going back to 1881. The only real Badass among them is octogenarian Private Godfrey - a pacifist, and the platoon's medical orderly. Who as a CombatMedic won bravery medals in [=WW1=] for retrieving wounded men under enemy fire.
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61	[[folder:Myths & Religion]]
62	* The Argonauts, making this Trope OlderThanFeudalism.
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65	[[folder:Video Games]]
66	* ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'': In the optional quest "For Auld Lang Syne", you recruit five retired [[TheRemnant Enclave]] soldiers to fight on your side. In the epilogue, it's stated that they go down in legend for [[PoweredArmor how much ass they kick]], reminding people [[TheDreaded just how scary the Enclave can be]].
67	* ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'' revolves around the LastOfTheirKind PlayerCharacter's efforts to [[OrderReborn restore]] [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge or destroy]] the Jedi Order by seeking out the aging masters who served on the Council before they went into hiding following the [[FinalSolution First Jedi Purge]].
68	** The GameMod ''[[FanGame Knights of the Old Republic III]]: VideoGame/TheJediMasters'' has you do this ''again'' to stop the True Sith after TheRepublic got sick of the ForeverWar and tried to ban Jedi to prevent more conflict once they believed the Sith were extinct.
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71	[[folder:Western Animation]]
72	* ''WesternAnimation/ExtremeGhostbusters'': While Egon was leading the new team of Ghostbusters, the old gang came back for the series' finale.
73	* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'': In the episode "Past Tense", when both Brock and Dr. Venture are kidnapped, Hank and Dean recruit the original Team Venture to help rescue them. HilarityEnsues.
74	* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerPuffGirls'' parodies this in the episode "Fallen Arches": the leader of a legendary team of villains, the "Ministry of Pain" decides out of the blue to get his team back together and resume operations despite all of them having gotten ''really'' old. Blossom [[IdiotBall for whatever reason]] stops the other girls from doing something since they must "respect the elderly" so they trick the heroes who stopped them in the old days, Captain Righteous and his sidekick Lefty to fight them, despite them having had a falling out. The "battle" ends with all the elderly in intensive care and Blossom being chewed out by the news anchor about the fact that direct intervention would have stopped the problem before it started.
75	* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' had the Order of the White Lotus (including Uncle Iroh, King Bumi, Jeong Jeong, Pakku, and Piandao) and their battle to retake the Earth Capital of Ba Sing Se.
76	** Subverted in the sequel series ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', where of the remaining heroes ([[spoiler:Katara and Toph]]), only one shows up to save the day, claiming that they need to leave it up to the kids.
77	* ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries'' had UsefulNotes/WorldWarII superheroes come out of retirement to aid Comicbook/CaptainAmerica against a newly risen ComicBook/RedSkull and his son [[PsychoElectro Electro]] (alternate continuity) and their army of robots.
78	* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels'': Captain Rex and a few other old clone troopers take up the cause again. Ultimately, Rex is the only one who joins the Rebel network, though Wolffe and Gregor both cover his escape.
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