->'''Alvaro:''' You are a proper American hero.\\
'''Max:''' Well at least I fucking tried!\\
'''Alvaro:''' ''[SarcasticClapping]'' Well done with your effort. The whole city is grateful, the Great American Saviour of the Poor.\\
'''Max:''' That's right!
-->-- ''VideoGame/MaxPayne3'', set in Brazil, [[LampshadeHanging lampshading]] this trope

Authors most commonly write stories [[CreatorProvincialism set in their own native country]], but it's far from universal. Many works are set in foreign countries, [[FictionalCountry fictional ones]], or even [[TropesInSpace SPACE]].

However, there is one thing you can almost always count on: at least one ''main character'' will be from the author's homeland.
# Is there a US [[TheCaper Crime Caper]] about outfoxing a human trafficking ring in {{Ruritania}} and saving the poor locals from their corrupt grip? Expect the ActionGenreHeroGuy making it happen to be [[StrangeCopInAStrangeLand an ex-FBI agent from Los Angeles]], who came here on vacation but has now resolved to [[AmericaSavesTheDay enforce some freedom and hot dogs]].
# Is there a Japanese SpaceOpera show about some Earthlings on an adventurous romp through the galaxy? You can bet that TheLeader of the crew is gonna be a hotshot from Yokohama, alongside his senior officers from Tokyo, with maybe a few [[TokenMinority token non-Japanese lower officers thrown in for some spice]].
# Is there a British BasedOnATrueStory [[DuringTheWar war drama]] about an obscure Asian civil war? At best, you can expect at least one British freelance reporter to mournfully narrate it all from the sidelines --at worst, the ''entire'' story will focus on [[ForeignCorrespondent an aid worker from Essex]] getting tangled up in the struggle.
# Is there a Russian comedy about a FishOutOfTemporalWater sent back in time to [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing Ming Dynasty China]]? Almost certainly the time traveler's going to be a lazy modern-day St Petersburg schoolkid who ends up 'bettering' the highly advanced civilisation with his marginal knowledge [[ALittleSomethingWeCallRockAndRoll of recent Russian pop culture]] and a quick lesson in some modern Russian values, usually to either [[ButterflyEffect great positive]] or [[BurnTheWitch very negative]] effect.
# Is there a South African mystery novel set amid the Cyprus dispute ''and'' the detective is actually Cypriot? Well, guess who just fell in love with a tourist from Cape Town...

In short, these kinds of works always feature some important character who represents the work's domestic country or culture, even if there is no particular in-story reason for them to ''be'' there. Whether said character is a FishOutOfWater VanillaProtagonist following the CallToAdventure or just a [[MauveShirt mauve-shirted]] RightManInTheWrongPlace - the principle is identical.

The reason for this trope is so there'll be someone that the author - or the intended TargetAudience - can [[AudienceSurrogate quickly relate to and navigate by]]. Or, more cynically, the producers think the audience won't care about a cast full of foreigners. Alternately, this could be an effect of budget restraints - finding ''decent actor'' foreigners of a specific ethnicity can be long and expensive in some countries' entertainment industries.

This trope very often intersects with others of the same bent, such as the WhiteMaleLead, the TokenWhite, the WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant, the VanillaProtagonist, the StandardizedLeader, LeadYouCanRelateTo, ExoticBackdropSetting, AmericaWonWorldWarII and AmericaSavesTheDay, and ButNotTooForeign. (Whew!)

MightyWhitey, StrangeCopInAStrangeLand, and ForeignCorrespondent cover aspects of this trope but are ultimately subtropes to the Homegrown Hero. AudienceSurrogate and WriteWhatYouKnow, in return, are [[SuperTrope Supertropes]].

It should be noted that this often not only applies to the work's country of origin, but that of the primary expected audience, either because they are from that country/culture, or because it happens [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff to be very popular with them]].

Often crops up in both [[SequelGoesForeign Sequels Going Foreign]] and {{foreign remake}}s. Contrast TokenMinority, which does the exact opposite.
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!!Examples:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* [[DoubleSubversion Double-subverted]] in ''Literature/{{Gate}}'', where -- when an inter-dimensional portal leading to a [[StandardFantasySetting fantasy world]] appears in Ginza -- the Japanese state goes out of their way to keep the world's other nations (including allies such as the US) out.
* In ''Anime/{{Monster}}'', the main character Dr Tenma is a Japanese neurosurgeon living and working in [[UsefulNotes/TheSixteenLandsOfDeutschland Düsseldorf, North-Rhine Westphalia]]. This is mildly {{justified|Trope}} by the fact that Japan's medical science is very much influenced by Germany in RealLife (as well as the fact that Japan is a noticeably big exporter of neurosurgeons).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* In ''Fanfic/ChrysalisVisitsTheHague'', the protagonist lawyer is German-Swiss... And since the author himself is German, it's not difficult to see why that is.
* ''Fanfic/TheFinalSword'': The author is reportedly from Denmark, and the OC heroine who is touted as the only true savior of the Citadel and consistently outshines canon swords has very heavy European fantasy influences to her, even though the story is set in Japan and the fic's canon is exclusively about Japanese swords and Japanese history.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/AKidInKingArthursCourt'': The eponymous kid happens to be American, getting sent back to pre-medieval England.
* In ''Film/BeerFest'', an American RagtagBunchOfMisfits come to Germany to participate in an underground beer-drinking competition. They proceed to literally beat the Germans at their own game.
* ''Film/BigGame'': It's a story about a president whose plane gets shot down over Lapland. Which president? The US President, of course.
* ''Film/BloodDiamond'' is about a Rhodesian and a Sierra Leonese surviving the Sierra Leone Civil War... with the obligatory bystander/love interest being an American journalist.
* ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'': Set in the titular Moroccan city during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, where refugees from all of Europe gather to escape ThoseWackyNazis - and the main character is the American expatriate who runs the local nightclub.
* The bread and butter of ''Film/{{Eurotrip}}'', where a group of American tourists explore a landscape of [[NationalStereotypes European stereotypes]].
* ''Film/TheGhostAndTheDarkness'' is VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory about an Irish colonialist building a railway bridge in British East Africa when the site gets attacked by two ravenous lions... but then he is joined by a completely fictional secondary character, an American big-game hunter played by (first-billed) Creator/MichaelDouglas.
* Film/JamesBond usually departs on entirely international adventures and would not grow even a bit less British through any of it.
** ''Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun'' gives it a double whammy by including an American comic relief character from the previous film, Sheriff JW Pepper, as a tourist in Thailand.
* ''Film/TheDarkestHour'', where aliens attack and level Moscow. The leads are a bunch of American tourists (and [[SortingAlgorithmOfDeadness a Swede who quickly dies being stupid]]).
* ''[[Film/TheFastAndTheFurious Fast Five]]'', which is set entirely in Brazil, is almost exclusively a clash of American gangsters and American cops - both sides have exactly one important non-American character in their midst.
* ''Film/AGoodDayToDieHard'': Both protagonists are Americans battling TheMafiya in Moscow.
* In ''Film/TheGreatEscape'', a good portion of the leads are American, whereas in RealLife, there weren't even any American [=POWs=] in the camp at the time of the escape. It makes the July 4th celebration scene a lot more cringeworthy to watch.
* ''Film/TheKingdom'': There is a series of terror attacks in Saudi Arabia - and we follow a group of investigating US agents.
* In ''Film/HotelRwanda'', two of the most prominent characters are a Canadian UN officer and an American reporter, both of whom were at least semi-fictional.
* ''Film/TheLastKingOfScotland'': It's a movie based on the reign of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin - as told by a Scottish doctor.
* ''Film/TheLastSamurai'' is another prime example, where said last samurai happens to be joined by a disgraced US military man. This is VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory, namely that of Frenchman [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Brunet Jules Brunet]].
* ''Film/TheMummy1999'' and its sequels mostly take place in 1920s Egypt, which at the time was British-aligned. Though plenty of Egyptians and Britons figure in the story, the protagonist - a former FrenchForeignLegion soldier - is American.
* In ''Film/TheNinthGate'', an American bookseller travels around Europe to discover a [[AncientConspiracy Lucifer-raising cult]].
* ''Film/Severance2006'': A group of maddened, blood-thirsty ex-mercenaries roam the woods of Hungary... and the first victims to cross their path are office drones from an Anglo-American PMC on a company outing.
* ''Film/{{Taken}}'' is about a certain someone taking on a Parisian sex slave ring - that someone is Creator/LiamNeeson as a retired CIA agent.
* ''Film/TeamAmericaWorldPolice'' plays this [[PlayedForLaughs for laughs]], with Americans doing their part to stop a North Korean/Arabian conspiracy from Paris to Egypt.
* [[ZigZaggedTrope Zig-zagged]] in ''Film/TheThirdMan'' where the American protagonist being out of luck in post-war Vienna is very much a deconstruction of this trope. With the British deuteragonist, however, not nearly so much.
* ''Film/VantagePoint'': The US President is blown up during a visit to Salamanca, Spain [[spoiler: Well, his body double does.]]. The other leads are an American bodyguard, an American newscaster, an American ''tourist'', and some Spanish cop [[spoiler:who is the only one to die]].
* ''Film/{{Gojira}}'' had an all-Japanese cast. When it was dubbed and reedited as ''[[Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters1956 Godzilla: King of the Monsters!]]'' for American audiences, a subplot was added about an American journalist reporting on Godzilla's rampage.
* The later Showa-era ''Film/{{Gamera}}'' films had token American children shoehorned into stories set in Japan. Daiei did this specifically because their film distributor assured them the movies would be better received in the US if there were Americans in the cast.
* In the Mexican film ''Film/SantaClaus1959'', Santa allegedly delivers gifts to all the children of the world, but we only see a few stops in Mexico City. Santa also has children from every country helping at his workshop, and naturally one of the Mexican kids is Santa's right-hand helper and gets more screen time than the others.
* ''Film/TheThing2011'': In a polar research station filled to the brim with Norwegians, of course the Americans are the heroes.
* In ''Film/TheBridgeOnTheRiverKwai'', the secondary protagonist (who is the only one to escape ''and'' return to destroy the titular bridge) happens to be the only American soldier in the otherwise British-dominated POW camp. Needless to say, he used to be British in the original book.
* In ''Film/EdgeOfTomorrow'', time-traveling aliens invade and occupy central Europe. As an international coalition readies to beat them back, a US Army officer leading an American mecha platoon and a British ActionGirl more or less single-handedly beat them at their own game.
* ''Film/{{Leningrad}}'': It's a story about the Siege of Leningrad (with 3 Million dead generally considered the deadliest siege in recorded history), and the protagonist is a (fictional) trapped Anglo-American reporter.
* ''Film/TheGreatWall'' is about the Song-era Imperial Chinese army battling an alien menace at their eponymous great wall, and the protagonists are an English and a Spanish sellsword that somehow wound up in China.
* This is a staple of most ''Creator/StevenSeagal'' films, being the result of almost all recent Seagal movies getting shot on location in Eastern Europe (like UsefulNotes/{{Romania}} and the UsefulNotes/CzechRepublic) and all over the developing world (ie UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica) for [[UsefulNotes/HollywoodAccounting tax]] (and political) reasons, as well as Seagal's own auto-{{Typecasting}} as a hard-boiled American badass.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'': An American coal mining community gets transported back in time and plunged into [[UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar Thirty Years War-era]] [[UsefulNotes/TheSixteenLandsOfDeutschland Thuringia]], inadvertently injecting the war-stricken Europe with [[{{Eagleland}} some modern American values]].
* [[Creator/DanBrown Dan Brown's]] ''Robert'' ''Langdon'' ''Series'' can be summed up as 'an American scholar runs around Europe and uncovers [[AncientConspiracy Ancient Conspiracies]] left and right'.
* In ''Literature/{{Fatherland}}'', an SS officer from an AlternateTimeline 1960s Germany discovers the hush-up of [[spoiler:the Holocaust]]. But ultimately it's up to an American journalist to make the awful truth public.
* ''Literature/GorkyPark'' is about a Soviet cop investigating the death of an American and his friends in the heart of Moscow - and promptly receives unasked aid from the victim's brother, an NYPD detective.
* ''Literature/MichaelStrogoff'': Although the book is set in the Russian Empire, and the titular character is a Russian courier who must travel across a war torn region to deliver an important message, one of the main characters is French journalist Alcide Jolivet, who shares nationality with the author.
* ''Literature/PatriotGames'': A CIA agent goes to the UK [[BusmansHoliday in his spare time]], saves Prince Charles' life, and subsequently gets himself into a lot of [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles Troubles with the IRA]].
* ''Literature/AConnecticutYankeeInKingArthursCourt'': A man from 19th-century Connecticut ends up in King Arthur's court.
* ''Literature/TheWarThatCameEarly'': UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo breaks out over the Sudeten Crisis in [[AlternateHistory 1938]]. Viewpoints include an American socialite in a Czechoslovak resort, an American volunteer for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and an American soldier at the Shanghai International Settlement.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* In ''Series/BabylonFive'', practically all the human representatives are from the US or have US connections:
** Captain Sheridan is definitively American, a Midwesterner whose father (a diplomat) retired to a farm somewhere in corn country, and is apparently a descendant of the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Civil War]] general Philip Sheridan.
** Dr. Franklin's origin and ancestry are never made clear, but it's strongly suggested he's African American, and he speaks like an American.
** Garibaldi is basically American--he was born in New York and his grandmother was a cop in Boston--but he considers Mars his home.
** Ivanova is Russian but appears to have gone to school in the US.
** Despite his American accent, Commander Sinclair is a subversion: he is from Mars and actually considers himself ethnically British (his ancestors were [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships RAF]] pilots in the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Battle of Britain]]).
** The major aversion is Marcus Cole, who speaks with a British accent and is apparently from a British space colony.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': The Doctor sure seems to have a thing for British assistants on their galaxy-saving travels. Then again, the [[AliensInCardiff aliens love Cardiff]] too.
* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'': the main character is an astronaut from the US, blasted to a faraway region of space.
* ''Series/{{Outsourced}}'': A WorkCom set in India... and the protagonist is American.
* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' is one heavy offender, where six out of the ten regular cast in the "MultinationalTeam" are Americans.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' is a classic example: a multi-planetary FictionalUnitedNations ship is being commanded by the American Captain Kirk. His chief medical officer is also American.
** Of the other four captains, only Jean-Luc Picard of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' wasn't American. This is particularly notable for Sisko, an American from [[TheBigEasy Louisiana]] who turns out to be [[TheChosenOne the chosen emissary of the]] [[PhysicalGod Prophets]] and thus the messiah figure of the [[RubberForeheadAliens Bajoran]] religion.
** The overrepresentation of Americans in the main cast of ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' is a common fan complaint about the series.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* The ''VideoGame/{{ARMA}}'' series regularly casts you as an American soldier in NATO intervention and/or peacekeeping operations in fictional countries. Sometimes it's actually closely based on RealLife (like in ''II'''s [[UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars Yugoslavia-esque]] [[{{Ruritania}} Chernarus]] and [[UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror Afghanistan-esque]] [[{{Qurac}} Takistan]]) and thus [[DownplayedTrope downplayed]], but other times (as with Sahrani in ''I'' or Altis and Stratis in ''III'') not so much. The creators themselves [[SubvertedTrope are Czech]] (and even made a DLC for the second game adding the Czech armed forces), but the intended target market audience was [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff obvious]].
* The ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' series plays with this as, while the historical protagonists are Arab/Italian/British/Iroquois/French, the ''descendant'' characters of the FramingDevice are always American/North American.
* ''VideoGame/DualBlades'' and ''Slashers: The Power Battle'': In these Turkish made {{Fighting game}}s that can be described as an AlternateCompanyEquivalent of ''VideoGame/SamuraiShodown'' [[TransatlanticEquivalent set in]] [[CulturalTranslation Europe and the Middle-east]], the character on the roster who gets top billing of sorts is the Ottoman warrior Efe.
* This trope is a staple of the ''Franchise/FarCry'' series, as the vast majority of the protagonists are American citizens abroad. Some games have handled this differently, though: ''VideoGame/FarCry2'' allows a wide selection of protagonists, only one or two of which are Americans and the rest come from all over the world. ''VideoGame/FarCry4''[='=]s protagonist was actually born in the country it takes place in, moving away to America when very young and only coming back on his mother's dying wish. ''VideoGame/FarCryPrimal'' takes place long before there even ''was'' a United States, while ''VideoGame/FarCry5'' takes place entirely ''in'' America. The [[Film/FarCry film adaptation of the first game]] also does this, as protagonist Jack Carver is {{Race Lift}}ed from American to German, as per the nationality of its director and the actor playing Carver.
* Taken to a new extreme in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' in which, despite taking place in post-apocalyptic Bulgaria where any semblance of nationstates has been destroyed, 99% of the surviving humans still seem to be American (including Gordon Freeman himself, naturally). Though given how the Combine constantly relocates people across the world, it's not improbable for some Americans, including Gordon's old colleagues, to have found themselves in Eastern Europe, and WordOfGod has stated that if not for tech limitations there would have been more ethnic diversity implied by way of citizens who spoke in languages besides English (or whichever localization the player used) and Dr. Breen's broadcasts repeating in multiple languages to account for that diversity.
* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne3'' is about everyone's favourite [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCityCops New York cop]] moving his 'practices' to São Paulo, Brazil.
* ''[[VideoGame/MenOfWar Men Of War: Vietnam's]]'' leads of the South and North Vietnamese sides are American and ''Russian'' respectively.
* Subverted in the ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare'' trilogy. Despite CommonKnowledge about the trilogy being a jingoistic AmericaSavesTheDay power fantasy, only a few of several playable characters are American, and in ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2'', one of them is responsible for the incident that helps trigger World War III, while another's missions revolve entirely around defending American soil during said war. The two most recurring playable characters, meanwhile, are British SAS agents.
* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' lampshades the trope: The US President's daughter is kidnapped to a Spanish-speaking {{Ruritania}} and [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil2 Leon Kennedy]] (now a secret service agent) is sent to rescue her. The villains enjoy taunting him over how things won't turn out "like your American action movies".
* In the ''VideoGame/{{Resistance}}'' series, Russia, continental Europe and the British Isles are attacked by a deadly mutant virus - and you play, of course, as a soldier of an American intervention force, even ''before'' it reaches North America.
* ''VideoGame/SirenBloodCurse'' does this as a ShoutOut towards this tendency in American remakes of Japanese horror films; most of the new cast consists of American {{composite|Character}}s of the original all-Japanese cast.
* ''VideoGame/SleepingDogs2012'' is a Hong Kong crime drama... and the protagonist is an undercover San Francisco PD Sino-American.
* Subverted in ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine''. The protagonist, an American spec-ops soldier, heads into a post-sandstorm Dubai expecting to play this trope straight, but his attempts to help out end up making things worse for the locals.
* ''VideoGame/XCOM2'': Although you lead the global resistance against VichyEarth, 2/3 of your senior officers are American, and the [[TheWarJustBefore pre-conquest XCOM project]] was also headquartered in America.
[[/folder]]
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->...[[TheStinger And even though TV Tropes is allegedly an international site]], [[RunningGag this trope just happens to be American]].
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