Asskicking Leads To Leadership / Live-Action TV

• The 100:
  • This is how leadership works amongst the grounder tribes. When the previous "Heda" dies a Conclave (essentially a battle royal) takes place between various Nightbloods to decide who will rule over the clans. The winner of the conclave then becomes Heda and is renowned as the World's Best Warrior.
  • Near the end of season 4 with the approach of Praimfaya threatening to destroy all life on the planet the various clans decide to hold one final Conclave in order to determine what to do with a sustainable bunker beneath the capital of Polis. Octavia ends up winning the Conclave and, after deciding to share the bunker with every major tribe, is pronounced the leader of Wonkru. It doesn't go smoothly at first, though, and she must win their respect by violently enforcing conformity to the idea of a single clan, rather than warring tribes. She takes out about 10 of them that try to depose her before they give up and bow to her superiority. It does, unfortunately, cause her to Jump Off The Slippery Slope, proving this trope isn't always sunshine and roses.
• The Nietzscheans of Andromeda, on account of being a genetically engineered race of Social Darwinist Nietzsche Wannabes, base their society on this principle. The males compete with one another to gain the females' attention and the strongest male in the Pride is the Alpha. In one episode, Tyr tries to teach a would-be king the importance of thinking like a warrior and a general. When the young prince questions the necessity of learning to fight, Tyr references Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Heados of Thonia as examples.
• Babylon 5:
  • The Narn evidently follow this trope to some degree; if a Narn is really pissed off at a higher-up, said Narn can challenge him to single combat for the position. G'Kar was challenged by a young hothead leading attacks on Centauri on the station; despite the underhanded tactics (e.g. having one of his lieutenants try to get G'Kar with a poisoned dart), G'Kar wins and manages to get something of a handle on B5's Narn population.
  • Drazi "elections" work this way. Every so often, the population is randomly split evenly into the purple and green factions. These factions, whose only difference is which colour they're wearing (they literally draw different colored sashes from a barrel at random), then fight. The side with the most victories forms the ruling body until the next election.
• In the episode "Wipe-Out" of the American TV series Raven, the titular character Jonathan Raven (who is secretly a ninja) decides to infiltrate a gang of surfers. The final test to join the gang is to fight every member, one by one. He defeats every single one except the boss. After losing this fight, he innocently remarks that he must've failed the test, but the boss replies that no, he's now the second in command. Later on, however, Raven (who is actually a ninja) admits to his pal that he lost the fight to the boss on purpose, because if he had defeated the boss he would have undermined his authority, and been unable to infiltrate the gang. The gang are playing the trope straight, and Raven uses smartness to take advantage of them.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the seventh season, when the group temporarily turns away from Buffy as their leader, they place Faith, who as the other Slayer is the team's second strongest member, in that role instead. This is in spite of the fact that Faith has no leadership experience whatsoever, and virtually every other character has a better claim to the leadership. Willow and Giles are smarter, Kennedy had been gearing up for this role all season, and Xander is the only member of the group with actual management experience. Buffy later regains leadership upon slaying a Turok-Han in front of them.
• In Dinosaur Planet, Pod is a Pyroraptor who washes up on an island inhabited by dwarf versions of dinosaurs (their versions of The Dreaded Tarascosaurus are only roughly the same size as him instead of giants). Pod realizes he's the most powerful predator on the island and eventually establishes himself as the apex predator, with the other predators forced to give up shares of their meat to him.
• Doctor Who: The villain of "The Woman Who Fell to Earth" turns out to be going about a Hunting the Most Dangerous Game ritual which (he boasts) will make him the leader, where the Doctor figures out that even by his own culture's standards, he's cheating.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Each Dothraki khalassar is led by the most badass warrior present. Leadership can pass from father to son (Drogo's father Bharbo was khal before him), but it is not an inherited title and each khal must fight constantly to defeat his rivals and appease his supporters with victory.
  • Robert Baratheon won the Iron Throne this way, but proves to be a very ineffectual ruler who hates the job.
  • This becomes a Discussed Trope when King Robert fears the Dothraki might invade under the command of Prince Viserys. Although they lack the knowledge and equipment for siege warfare, Robert points out that if they hide in their castles while the Dothraki lay waste to the country, the smallfolk will view them as cowardly and hail Viserys as king instead.
  • Wildlings value charisma, bravery, and martial skill far above lineage and rank. Becoming a chieftain and especially a King-Beyond-the-Wall like Mance Rayder means subduing every other contender in some way. For instance, nobody has a problem with Tormund bludgeoning the Lord of Bones to death when challenged.
  • Even in the Seven Kingdoms where people do respect lineage and rank, Jaime Lannister fears what will happen to his authority if people realize he can barely fight after losing his sword hand.
  • Since the Unsullied are said to know nothing but combat, it's implied they would only elect their best fighter as leader and Grey Worm certainly proves his prowess.
  • Jon Snow is elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch for his leadership in the battle for Castle Black and his fighting prowess, rather than his seniority. Likewise, it's partly his battle prowess that led the Northerners to proclaim him king, despite his being an illegitimate son, alongside his capabilities to lead them through the true war to come based on his direct knowledge, experience and recognition of the true threat.
  • Daenerys takes control of the entire Dothraki nation by gathering all the different khals inside a tent and then burning them to a crisp, knowing herself to be immune to the flames. She's immediately hailed as the Great Khaleesi. Then she rides Drogon into battle. Now remember that this is a culture that equates leadership to being able to ride on horseback. Someone who rides a giant flying reptile is basically a living god to them.
  • Daario Naharis. This is the only way you rise to the top of the Second Sons.
  • That's Euron's thesis. His primary claim is that while Balon was sitting on his ass, Euron was out there, reaving. Which he further solidifies by stating how he killed Balon: If he's the strongest man, why shouldn't he rule?
• In Kamen Rider Kuuga, the Gurongi's Gegeru game revolves around killing humans, each rank taking their turn and getting progressively stronger with rank. The winner of each tribe gets promoted to the next level, the winner of the Gegeru earns the privilege to fight the Gurongi King for control of the tribe. To add to it, the king himself kills off 152 Gurongi he decides are too weak to engage in the Gegeru.
• Miami Medical has, unsurprisingly, a medical example in Dr Matt Proctor, who gets to come in on his first day (actually, before his first day; he was in signing paperwork for a lesser position on a different team when the position suddely became vacant) and take over Miami Trauma Alpha Team due entirely to being a bloody amazing doctor. A veteran of Desert Storm with years of experience as a front-line, military trauma surgeon, he not only outranks all three remaining members of the team by seniority but by knowledge, experience, and leadership ability as well (and they are no slouches themselves). In every crisis he proves himself not only a superb trauma surgeon but also an incredible leader able to pull his team together in the crunch, and after just a few cases with him, his team trusts him implicitly and follows his lead without hesitation.
• In The Sopranos episode "Mr. & Mrs. Sacrimoni Request", while recovering from a severe gunshot wound, Tony notices that his old lieutenants don't follow his orders as readily as they used to, and he suspects that they now see him as weak. Tony responds by goading his hotheaded, musclebound bodyguard into fighting him. He kicks the everloving shit out of the much younger man in front of his entire crew, to their visible shock, then calmly walks into the bathroom and coughs up blood into the sink. No one questions his orders after that.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • The Goa'uld play it deadly straight, since the only way to become Supreme System Lord is to amass enough power to tell all the others to sit down and shut up. Since O'Neil(l) dealt Ra a nuclear sucker punch back in Stargate the other System Lords have been squabbling over who gets to fill his gold-plated shoes; whenever one seems to be getting close it's generally regarded as a bad thing. And when one System Lord kills another (either directly, or more commonly by blowing up his spaceship), the defeated System Lord's armies and territories are merged into those of the victor.
  • When SG-1 get imprisoned on a prison world for unintentionally breaking a law, O'Neill quickly realizes the prisoners operate on this principle and gives his teammates advice on how to avoid getting beaten, killed, or worse (apparently he'd spent time in some extremely unpleasant prisons on Earth in his past). Curiously, all of the prisoners, including the biggest, baddest men among them, treat one elderly lady there with utmost respect and fear, and O'Neill is wary of her, regardless of how kindly she seems to be. Turns out that little old lady was imprisoned for the crime of genocide (and is known to the galaxy at large as "the Destroyer of Worlds"), having unleashed plagues of her own creation and wiped out entire nations. The other prisoners are aware of her past and are too terrified of her releasing a plague on them to dare harm her.
• Star Trek:
  • In an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, "Mirror Mirror", Kirk and a few of his bridge crew swap places with their counterparts in an alternate dimension where promotions are earned by killing your commanding officer. It's a wonder they managed to keep their Enterprise crewed by anything but a huge pile of corpses. The Klingons would've been right at home in that universe, as they actually want their worthy successors to prove their mettle by killing them to take their place.
  • In Star Trek: Voyager, this trope is Starfleet policy when resolving command disputes, as per Regulation 191, Article 14 — in a combat situation where there are two or more ships and captains of equal rank, command authority goes to the captain with the more powerful ship. This also explains why, in Star Trek: First Contact, Captain Picard took command of a Starfleet armada after the admiral's flagship was destroyed by the Borg — he was commanding the Enterprise-E, Starfleet's newest battlecruiser.
  • No mention of Klingons in general? It's a part of their promotion system. It's actually stated in DS9 that you can't just go for the head. Only your immediate superior can be challenged for a position. In the case of the Chancellor, it's decided by who has the most kick-ass war record and Picard flat out refuses to consider a child's claim as he doesn't have any record. The initiation ceremony even contains a passage about how the presumptive new Chancellor has defeated all his enemies and none but him survive.
• Typically in Super Sentai, the Evil Overlord who leads the villain group of each season will also be its most powerful member with some exceptions.

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