Enemy Mine / Video Games

Enemy Mine in Video Games.

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• AdventureQuest Worlds has King Alteon and Gravelyn, Sepulchure's daughter, forming a Great Truce between Good and Evil to deal with the threat of Drakath and his forces of Chaos, including the 13 Lords of Chaos.
• Alien vs. Predator (Capcom) has two Predators helping the humans hunt down Aliens on Earth. Their objectives, though, are different: the humans are trying to save the planet, while the predators are hunting.
• ANNO: Mutationem: During her infiltration of The Consortium's base, Ann fights and takes down a huge number of security personnel, but since C has gone rogue and is trying to enact his plan to retrieve the Dypheus Spear from Hinterland which would destroy the world, G, B, and K decide to have Ann assist them in stopping C on the promise of releasing Ryan and Ayane afterwards.
• Baldur's Gate:
  • Could happen in Baldur's Gate II, if you are a righteous character as a paladin, and still ally with the Shadow Thieves (a guild of thieves, murderers and gangsters that normally a character like yours would strive to shut down) in order to defeat Bodhi and her vampire guild. Twice.
    • Also, some characters openly dislike each other, but might end up anyway cooperating in the same party as followers of the protagonist (some others will fight if given enough time though). Particularly notable with Minsc and Edwin, considering that in the first game Edwin wanted to kill Minsc's witch mistress, so they have a reciprocal hatred.
  • The final chapter of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 has The Hero, Jherek the Harper, and Kharne the Zhentarim mercenary team up against the vampire Mordoc Selanmere.
• Baten Kaitos has Aimee and Folon helping the main party to infiltrate the The Very Definitely Final Dungeon despite having fought the group multiple times over the course of the game.
• In Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, when it is revealed that both NATO and China were misled into warring with each other by a third faction.
• Battle for Wesnoth:
  • In Heir to the Throne, when recurring enemy Princess Li'sar finally catches up with the heroes' group in the Knalgan caverns, they are all suddenly surrounded by hostile goblins and trolls, so they decide to team up to defeat their shared problem and reach safety together. By the time they reach the heroes' elvish allies, Li'sar has realized that her mother is evil and become a permanent ally.
  • The Rise of Wesnoth has onne made against the player: as soon as Haldric and the wesfolk disembarks in the eastern continent, they catch the attention of two armies, one of dwarves and one of elves, about to engage in combat; they promptly form a truce to take out the intruders.
• In Battlezone (1998), the Americans and (remnants of) the Soviets team up to take down the Furies (alien spaceships brought back by the Soviets). In fact, there is even a rescue mission before the team-up mission, in which you have to rescue the Soviet survivors (the Furies rebelled after taking down the Black Dogs (third faction and the one used to create the Furies in the first place)).
• In Bayonetta 2, there's a villainous example! The Jetfighter Assault level has angels and demons cooperating to gang up on the heroine and Balder to stop them from reaching Fimbulventr.
• In Bet on Soldier, you spend most of the game fighting through the Bet On Soldier tournament in order to confront the BOS World Champion, Igor Boryenka, who you believe to be responsible for the murder of your wife. Once you finally defeat Boryenka, the real Big Bad punishes you both by forcing the two of you to fight together in an Arena deathmatch against wave after wave of the best fighters in the BOS League. It's actually a pretty cool level, since Boryenka retains his boss-like health and damage output, but the sheer number and skill of opponents the two of you face make it seemingly impossible for him to survive to the end.
• In Blinx 2, after the Tom Toms realize stealing the Big Crystal is going to destroy time itself, your Time Sweeper team and your Tom Tom team work together to fight the Scissor Demon.
• At the end of Bomberman 64, halfway through the final battle against Sirius — the scumbag who used the hero throughout most of the game — Regulus, who was presumed dead earlier, appears and saves Bomberman's life at the last second. After some dialogue, Regulus forms a temporary alliance with Bomberman to take down Sirius. He even helps Bomberman escape the collapsing fortress before reminding him that they aren't friends and they will fight again.
• Breath of Fire IV finds Ursula and Scias teaming up with your party, despite being (separately) employed by different enemies of yours (Ursula is from the Fou Empire; Scias was employed by Ludia, whose relations with the heroes are... shaky at best).
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has the appropriately named level "The Enemy of My Enemy":
  Captain Price: Makarov, you ever heard the old saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"?
  Vladimir Makarov: Price, one day you're going to find that cuts both ways.
  • Granted, all Makarov did was give Price the location of General Shepherd's hideout and you still need to kill both his and Shepherd's men.
• In Chrono Trigger, you can choose to add Magus, an Evil Overlord who terrorized 600 A.D. and killed Frog's best friend to your team for his help in defeating Lavos.
• In City of Heroes, in the Valentine's Day 2006 and 2007 events, the missions to unlock special prizes required mixed hero-villain teams to complete. As well, the issue 10 update included a whole hero-villain co-op zone, the Rikti War Zone.
  • Issue 12 added Cimerora, another co-op zone.
    • Finally, the annual "Rescue Baby New Year" event allows heroes and villains to team up, explicitly because the kidnapping of said baby/personification of time would be really really bad for all concerned.
• Clive Barker's Undying: The skeletons in the monastery aren't actually controlled by Lizbeth, according to Word of God. That doesn't stop them from temporarily allying with Lizbeth and her Howlers to try to kill you.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series:
  • Happens in the Yuri's Revenge expansion to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, when the Soviets and Allies declare a ceasefire and team up to fight Yuri. In both campaigns this requires beating the other side into submission first, however. The Soviets are even shown going right back to invading the U.S. after Yuri has been disposed of.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3:
    • A comedic example is shown where the three factions (represented by their respective tanks) call a truce in the tutorial in order to teach the player not to send their units to their meaningless deaths, though are still prone to firing at each other. Usually at the Soviet Hammer tank.
    • A more serious example is also to be found in the Allied campaign when the Empire of the Rising Sun attacks — the Allies and Soviets call a ceasefire to destroy the Empire, and proceed to betray each other at about the same time.
• This also occurs in the Command & Conquer: Tiberium series.
  • In the expansion pack Tiberian Sun: Firestorm, the remnants of Nod and GDI have to work together to stop the renegade Nod AI, CABAL.
  • In Tiberium Wars, Nod general Kilian Qatar allies with GDI to face off against the Scrin, until Kane reveals himself to be not quite dead, flips out, and orders GDI nuked.
• Crash Twinsanity makes this into a game feature by making Dr. Cortex a total Butt-Monkey. Crash and Cortex being forced to work together usually means whacking enemies with Cortex, tossing Cortex over a gap for him to do something, clearing his path while he runs in a screaming panic, using him as a snowboard, or controlling the two as a Big Ball of Violence when Cortex decides to beat up Crash.
  • Happens again in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time where Cortex is forced to team up with Crash to defeat Dr. Nefarious Tropy after he betrays him with the goal of recreating the timeline in his own image. However, after he's defeated, it isn't long before he's back to his evil ways.
• Near the end of Crysis 2, the remaining members of the CELL PMC that has spent the entire game trying to kill you end up teaming up with you against the Ceph alien invasion, because their dying boss makes it clear to them that their entire chain of command is now dead and you are now humanity's last hope for stopping the aliens.
• Pyron is the Big Bad of the first two Darkstalkers games, despite many of the other characters being less than savory themselves.
• Dawn of War: in the final battle the Eldar decide to put your differences aside and join you against Chaos forces whose sorcerer ascended into a daemon prince. If you leave them alone they will likely be defeated, but meanwhile they will distract enemy forces so that you can build up your own in relative quiet before pushing to the demon.
  • In the ending cutscene however the Eldar will turn against you to prevent Gabriel Angelos from shattering the daemon artifact - which he ultimately does. Granted, the Eldar could at least for once explain in advance their motivations, and the Humans could at least listen...
  • the expansion Winter Assault zigzags this, to the point that more often than not it is a Mêlée à Trois. Basically the Eldar assists the Imperial Guard against the Orks and Chaos forces to prevent the latter from reaching an ancient Titan war machine, the only way to kill the incoming Necrons. Distrustful as ever, both parties will betray each other at the end of the penultimate mission. In the case of the Eldar, though, they will convince the Imperials one last time to join forces against the Necrons during the last mission, only to betray them again in the ending cutscene.
  • And in the Orks/Chaos campaign, both forces agree to stop fighting and join in order to fend off the Imperials and seize the Titan. Even if allied, they will quickly turn against each other.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution has an interesting one in the background. The matter of human augmentation is a topic that both liberals and conservatives can join in on. Liberals are against it because it widens the gap between the poor and the rich, whereas conservatives believe it is an affront to God to alter the human body.
• In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, hero Dante teams up with his brother and enemy Vergil to fight the penultimate boss. It's barely cold when Vergil challenges Dante for ownership of the Force Edge.
• In one of the path branches in Devil Survivor, Midori teams up with Kaido to keep Keisuke from pulling a Karma Houdini and getting away with his Knight Templar stint without a fight. She does so hoping she can restrain Kaido from killing him, but wonders about her ability to do so a tad too late.
• The Diablo series:
  • Necromancers in Diablo II believe in the Balance Between Good and Evil, and are every bit as distrustful towards angels as they are towards demons. However, so long as demons hold the upper hand in the Eternal Conflict, they are content to work alongside the angels until they perceive the balance as being restored.
  • In Act III of Diablo III, your hero must assist in the defence of Bastion's Keep after it is besieged by the Demon Azmodan. If you play as a Barbarian, the quest journal will note that the Keep was first built as a means to wage war on the barbarians, but the Barbarian recognises they must fight alongside its defenders regardless.
  • In III's Reaper of Souls expansion, Imperius (a Light Is Not Good Jerkass Angel) feels this way about helping the player character bring down Malthael.
  • In Diablo IV, Mephisto manifests as the Bloodied Wolf to aid the Wanderer at several points solely because they share a mutual enemy in Lilith, but also makes it very clear that the two of them will be enemies in the future.
• In Dracula: Love Kills, Dracula and Van Helsing team up to stop the Vampire Queen from conquering the world.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, after punching some sense into Loghain's thick skull and overthrowing him from the throne, you can choose to spare him from execution and instead conscript him to the Wardens as a chance at redemption. He will then join your party and help you fight the Blight at the cost of Alistair, who will be so outraged with the decision of pardoning Loghain that he will leave.
    • Also shows up in the myriad groups you are assigned to recruit; though nowhere so much as the Dalish working alongside humans.
    • Even the Warden can be played like this with the Dalish and Dwarven backgrounds, not interested in ending the Blight so much for Ferelden's sake, but to prevent it from spreading and affecting their people.
      Loghain: Pray our King is admenable to reason.
      Dalish Warden / Dwarf Warden: The Dalish have no Kings! / He's not my King!
  • Can happen in Dragon Age II, depending on your choices and who you side with in the end. No matter how you feel about the mage/templar conflict, many people will probably side with the mages just to piss Meredith off. Also, this is Fenris' opinion on fighting alongside mages, particularly Merrill, with the implication that he won't straight-up gut them because of loyalty to Hawke. The unique buff you get for a Rival Fenris is "Enemy of my Enemy".
    • In the Mark of the Assassins DLC, Tallis is revealed to be working for the Qunari, who are feared by the rest of Ferelden. This quickly earns her the scorn of most party members since they're technically now working to save a group that most of them despises.
    • Similarly, if you choose to side with the mages in the final confrontation and coerce Fenris/Aveline into joining you, or vice versa with the Templars and Merrill/Anders. The first three are possible with Friendship or Rivalry, but it specifically takes a maxed-out rivalry meter for Anders to swap sides.
    • Explicity stated to be the relationship between Mage Hawke and Knight-Commander Meredith. She only lets Hawke continue to roam free because it's more useful to turn their magic against Kirkwall's enemies. That, and, she's utterly terrified of them!
• In Dragon Age: Inquisition, provided they perform a series of religious rites to prove their sincerity, during the battle for the Temple of Mythal, Abelas, commander of the Sentinels who defend the temple, offers the Inquisitor and their party an alliance against the Red Templars/Venatori storming the Temple, since performing those rites proves they're not out to loot the knowledge the Big Bad wants to cause The End of the World as We Know It that the temple protects. It's up to the Inquistor whether or not to accept.
• In Dragon Ball Xenoverse, villains such as Frieza, Cell, or Ginyu will show up in the hub city and become available as trainers on the basis that even they don't want the villains to destroy all of history.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest II: A minor example. In the castle of the Dragonlord — Dragon Quest's Big Bad — you'll find his descendant, who gives you a hint toward defeating Hargon rather than fighting you.
  • Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime: Slival joins up with you at the end of the game to confront Don Clawleone (who's possessed by Flucifier), knowing that it's better to put a rivalry on hold to save the world.
• Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: If the party didn't recruit Lunez, Fredek will temporarily join Akira, Runi, and Edgar in the first battle with Scorpio and stick with the party until they catch up to Genesis and Kekkan, at which point he rejoins the latter group. However, he'll immediately rejoin after Kekkan betrays him and Genesis. Afterwards, he and Genesis join the party permanently.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • In the series' Backstory, most prominently seen in Morrowind, the ancient Chimeri/Dunmeri hero Lord Indoril Nerevar arranged this between his Chimer people and their rival Dwemer in order to drive the invading Nords out of Morrowind. It was a massive success and the two races remained allies under Nerevar's leadership for decades until the Naytheistic Dwemer uncovered the Heart of Lorkhan and planned to tap into its power, which Nerevar and the Daedra-worshipping Chimer viewed as a blasphemy. The two sides went to war, and exactly what happened next is recounted differently by every surviving party. What we do know is that the Dwemer disappeared without a trace, Nerevar was slain, and Nerevar's closest followers used the Heart to become gods.
  • At some point in the early history of Mundus, the Daedric Princes, who typically cannot stand one another, all came together to curse Jyggalag (Daedric Prince of Order) into becoming Sheogorath (Daedric Prince of Madness) when they feared his growing power. This act would later be undone during Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion.
  • In the Skyrim quest Cure For Madness, you have to hunt down Cicero after he apparently turns rogue and attacks Astrid. However, you can choose to spare his life, and later he will act as a follower for you. Similarly you can play as an Imperial, High Elf, Dark Elf, etc whilst working for the Stormcloaks (who are known for the xenophobia of some members).
  • Each of The Elder Scrolls Online's factions (the Aldmeri Dominion, the Ebonhart Pact, and the Daggerfall Covenenant) is one of these taken to the level of The Alliance. While the races comprising each have frequently been at war throughout history, they've put aside their difference to focus on greater threats.
  • During the events of the Battlespire Dungeon Crawl spin-off game, this occurs between the Player Character and the Ideal Masters of the Soul Cairn. The Ideal Masters are immortal beings who were once powerful mortal sorcerers during the Merethic Era. After finding their mortal forms to be too weak and limiting, they entered Oblivion as beings of pure energy and settled an area of "chaotic creatia", forming the Soul Cairn. The Ideal Masters are most infamous for their trafficking in souls, especially "Black" sapient souls. All souls trapped in soul gems end up in the Soul Cairn and are considered property of the Ideal Masters. However, during the events of Battlespire, Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction, was using the Soul Cairn as a waystation for his forces. Dagon's forces destroyed the undead of the Ideal Masters and plundered their treasures. The Ideal Masters then allied with the Hero of Battlespire to help him/her escape the Soul Cairn and defeat Dagon.
  • On the continent of Akavir, the "monkey folk" Tang Mo have been attacked by all of their neighboring enemies at one time or another. Recently (relative to when Mysterious Akavir was written at least), they've allied with one of those nations — the "tiger folk" of Ka Po' Tun.
  • Another Akaviri race, the Kamal "Snow Demons", invaded Tamriel during the 2nd Era. Their initial successes forced three ancient enemies — the Nords, Dunmer (Dark Elves), and Argonians — to form an alliance to defeat them. The end result was a massive Curb-Stomp Battle which saw the Kamal invaders die by the thousands.
  • During the 1st Era war against the Alessian Order, the Colovian King Rislav formed an alliance between himself, the Direnni Hegemony, an Altmeri (High Elven) nation which ruled about 1/3 of Tamriel's landmass out of High Rock, and the Nordic Empire led by High King Hoag Merkiller (a nickname) of Skyrim. So hated was the Alessian Order that a bastion of Merrish might bordering Skyrim willingly allied with a king so famous for killing Mer that it became part of his name.
• Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code: The aggelia in the Fortress of Dan reveal Attika tried to create Shedim Eaters in order to create powerful cannon fodder to use against the Cainites, and the Cainites had the same idea, but both sides lost control of the Shedim eaters. Attika had no choice but to form a temporary truce with Enok and the Cainites to defeat the Shedim Eaters. He later tried to make the truce permanent, but Nestor killed him and framed the Cainites to ensure the war continued.
• In Europa Universalis IV, rival nations who hate each other may a coalition against a third nation who has expanded aggressively, leading to them fighting on the same side in a war against the aggressive third nation.
• This happened for real in 2012 when 4chan decided to raid Face Of Mankind, a now-defunct MMO that focused around six enemy factions at war but had a low player count because of a notoriously Troubled Production. 4chan believed that, because the game had no levels, open PVP, full inventory loot on death, and a small but heavily devoted playerbase who took it very seriously, it would be very easy and very entertaining to swoop in in high numbers and run it into the ground. What they didn't count on was the six factions deciding they weren't going to let some Trolls ruin their fun and teaming up to fight them off. Naturally, as it was an army of newbies with low-grade gear vs an army of veteran players with high-tier gear, 4chan got utterly massacred in a very short amount of time and the players of Face Of Mankind fondly remembered it as the most fun they'd had in a while.
• In Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force, the Evil Goddess timeline, the Septerion Club is imprisoning or executing former Dorfa employees. Fang feels the new order that Sherman has created is twisted and evil and immediately travels to the Hellhole Prison that is the Justice Society Camp to liberate imprison Dorfa members and try to invoke this. It fails with Hanagata and Paiga, but works with Marianna, who initially joins only for this reason but later genuinely warms to the party.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, if you take the NCR, Mr. House, or Independent path and complete sidequests pertaining to said factions, it's possible to have the New California Republic, Brotherhood of Steel, Great Khans, and Enclave Remnants fighting together against Caesar's Legion in the final battle for Hoover Dam. All of these groups have been mortal enemies of the NCR throughout history, with the Enclave having been the main villains of the previous two games, the Brotherhood of Steel being at war with the NCR back west, and the Khans having tried to destroy Shady Sands (the Republic's founding settlement) twice (once prior to NCR's founding, once after). On top of this, two of the factions are themselves old enemies — the Brotherhood fought the Enclave in the aftermath of Fallout 2 and on the East Coast in Fallout 3.
• Shirou and Kotomine in Heavens Feel route of Fate/stay night. They're both very clear on the fact that they're doing it for entirely different reasons and that after cooperating, they're enemies again. Still, it leads Shirou to realize that he actually likes Kotomine and that's why he avoids him. They're not actually that different apart from the whole, you know, evil for the fun of it factor.
  • And in Unlimited Blade Works, Lancer joins forces with Shirou and Rin against Caster and Archer on the orders of his master, which would be Kotomine again. He even sticks around to save Rin from Archer just because he feels like it afterwards, despite technically being their enemy.
  • In Fate/Zero, there also was such a scenario against Servant Caster. This Servant and his Master, Ryuunosuke Uryuu, were brutal Serial Killers and their favorite prey was children, so the whole Grail War was temporarily put on hold solely to get them taken down. That's how bad the situation was. Ultimately, Ryuunosuke is sniped down by Kiritsugu, and after this, Caster and a monster he had summoned are defeated by Saber, but only with the assistance of Rider and Lancer.
• In F.E.A.R. 3, Paxton teams up with the ex-FEAR commando Point Man.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The Turks, Punchclock Villains from Final Fantasy VII, find themselves briefly fighting alongside the heroes in an effort to save kidnapped Optional Members of both teams.
    • The Turks attempt to help in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children... attempt being the main word here. Lucky they've got Rufus Shinra.
  • In Final Fantasy X-2, the Leblanc Syndicate, who are enemies originally, become allies of the Gullwings in Chapter 3. This is different, however, in that they remain allies for the rest of the game, even helping in the fight against Vegnagun.
  • Zenos in Final Fantasy XIV is a part of the Big Bad ensemble with other villains and considers the Warrior of Light their friend and rival. After being killed and then later coming back to life, Zenos found the previous fight so exhilarating that he wants to put the fate of the world on the line to have grand rematch. Due to the Final Days threatening the world, the Warrior of Light is too busy to bother with a rematch. What is one to do? Find your rival at the very end of the universe and assist them in reaching the source of the apocalypse so that they can save everyone and then have some free time left over to challenge them one last time.
• Fire Emblem uses this and does not Snap Back. The phrase is even used to describe Marth in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
  • A mission in Fire Emblem: Awakening has your group picking a side between two rival mercenary factions. If you refuse to pick a side, they both gang up on you.
  • The Revelation route in Fire Emblem Fates pretty much has this trope as its focus. The kingdoms of Hoshido and Nohr are bitter arch-enemies at war. However, the player character, who decided to stay neutral, will gradually recruit members of both the Hoshidan and Nohrian army, until they have the entire army of both kingdoms under their command to crash against the real threat: the kingdom of Valla, whose king masterminded the entire war.
    • In the Fates arc of Fire Emblem Warriors' Story Mode, Ryoma and Xander start fighting each other after the heroes Rowan and Lianna recruit their siblings. Following that battle, the two older princes (and the female Corrin) are driven Brainwashed and Crazy by the Evil Sorcerer Iago and turn their swords against Rowan and Lianna. After they break Iago's spell and band together to defeat him, Ryoma and Xander call a ceasefire to find out who Iago claims is giving him his marching orders, but vow to resume their rivalry once they make it back to their homelands.
  • On the Crimson Flower route of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the Adrestian Empire considers "Those Who Slither in the Dark" a very dangerous enemy, but reluctantly ask for their aid in fighting the combined forces of the Church of Seiros and the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. Byleth, Edelgard, and Hubert are disgusted by the very idea^note Byleth wants revenge against the cult for killing their father, Jeralt. Edelgard hates them because of the horrifying experiments they conducted on her and her family in the name of gathering test subjects capable of bearing multiple Crests, and for instigating a soft coup that stripped the previous emperor of his power (which also implicated the fathers of most of her friends in the Black Eagles house, including Hubert). Not only that, but their leader, Lord Volkhard von Arundel (a.k.a. Thales), is Edelgard's Evil Uncle, adding an extra layer of It's Personal for her., and the two sides continue to plot against one another even as the Empire gains the upper hand in the war. Once the war against the Church ends, "Those Who Slither in the Dark" quickly find themselves on the receiving end of the Empire's wrath as the last enemies to eliminate before true peace in Fódlan can be achieved.
  • In Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, Part II of the Scarlet Blaze and Golden Wildfire routes see the Adrestian Empire and the Leicester Alliance calling a temporary ceasefire when their leaders, Edelgard and Claude, realize that they share an opposition to the main branch of the Church of Seiros. Both armies come into conflict with the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, who provide safe haven for Archbishop Rhea after the Empire conquers Garreg Mach Monastery. If Shez succeeds in recruiting Byleth and Jeralt on Scarlet Blaze, the Empire and Alliance remain allies for the rest of the game. If not, then Claude, disappointed by the Empire's reckless actions, breaks the alliance and attacks them during the climactic battle between the four armies in the Valley of Torment.
• In Freespace, the Terran-Vasudan War comes to an abrupt halt with the appearance of the Shivans, who are trying to kill both of them. Since the Shivans are more than capable of wiping out both species, the two agree to a cease-fire to deal with the common threat. The cease-fire holds and eventually becomes the foundation for an alliance between the two species.
  • In the fan-made Blue Planet expansion, events transpire such that both the Terran forces of the GTVA and the UEF respond to a Vasudan ship in distress. The captains of both ships agree to set aside the war for the moment to rescue the Vasudans, and the deployed fighters make small talk with their opposite numbers. It all falls apart when a second UEF ship arrives and, not knowing of the cease-fire, obliterates the GTVA ship. The UEF commanders were furious, since it made them look very, very bad in front of the Vasudans, with whom they had hoped to win political favor.
• One mission of the SNES Front Mission had your unit protecting Sakata Industry's CEO from terrorists, and Lloyd's Arch-Nemesis Driscoll swings by to help you out because he needs Sakata alive as well. Needless to say, he's a complete Crutch Character.
• The Cartoon Network MMO FusionFall has the heroes and enemies generally working together against Fuse. Mojo Jojo even provides the main fast-travel in the game. There are exceptions, though (a recent story arc has Vilgax screwing things up for Ben).
• The third act of Geneforge 4 features the Shapers and Rebels putting a temporary stop on the war with each other to deal with Monarch, a crazed canister junkie trying to seize control of the Fens of Aziraph.
• In The Godfather: The Game, in the cutscene of Sonny's death, you can clearly see mobsters from the Tattaglia, Stracci, and Cuneo families working together against the victim.
• Grand Theft Auto 2: The structure of respect from gangs. You could kill several members of their gang and still be respected by them, so long as you killed a significantly higher number of people from a gang they hate.
• Guild Wars Eye of the North has a truce between the rebellious Charr and the Ebon Vanguard, ordinarily fierce enemies, in order to overthrow the current Charr leaders and stop the Destroyers.
• Guild Wars 2 has the Charr and humans reluctantly putting aside over one thousand years of hatred and three centuries of near-constant warfare in order to fight against the Elder Dragons.
• Halo:
  • A very subtle example from Halo: Combat Evolved, during the mission 343 Guilty Spark, which introduces the Flood. Venturing deep into the complex, at one point the player encounters a Jackal corpse and a human corpse right next to each other, facing away, with spent ammunition from both their weapons littering the ground around them. All of which suggests that the two of them had teamed up in their last moments against... something else. The player is left wonder what could possibly have been such a dire situation that the two would work together.
  • At the end of Halo 2, the humans of the UNSC and the Covenant Elites, who were previously mortal enemies, join forces to fight the Prophet of Truth, who betrayed the latter and was responsible for ordering the extermination of the former.
  • In Halo 3, right before confronting Truth himself, the Master Chief and the Arbiter join forces with the Flood to stop Truth from killing everyone in the galaxy. Granted, the alliance with the Flood lasts only five minutes, but no one was really expecting the Gravemind to help you any more than it has to. Although it did at least have the minimal grace to wait until Truth was dead first.
  • The immediate post-war state of the human/Elite alliance is explored in the ending of Halo 3 and a number of works set right afterwards. Admiral Hood tells the Arbiter that he can never forgive the Elites for what they did as part of the Covenant, but thanks him for standing by the Chief to the end. They're not really enemies anymore, but their alliance at this point is still tenuous and not very "buddy-buddy" at all.
    • In fact, certain factions of both sides are still enemies; a number of Elites still believe that humanity needs to be wiped out, and the UNSC's Office of Navel Intelligence (ONI) is actively attempting to foment civil war among the Elites. Since the Elites' current leader, the Arbiter, is actually quite human-friendly, this ironically leads to a temporary Enemy Mine situation between the anti-human Elites and ONI.
    • On the other hand, a number of other Elites, particularly among the young, grudgingly respect humans, despite the latter's physical inferiority, for their ability to hold out for 25+ years against a technologically and numerically far superior enemy. It helps that the Elites are a bunch of Proud Warrior Race Guys who respect honorable and skilled fighters regardless of whatever side they fight for; in fact, a number of them were puzzled that the Prophets never offered humanity a chance to join the Covenant, which is their normal M.O. If nothing else, they'd be an improvement over the Grunts.
    • Further post-Halo 3 media, however, has shown that the UNSC and the Arbiter's human-friendly Elite faction, the Swords of Sanghelios, have gradually improved their relationship over the years through joint research ventures and military exercises, to the point where they've even established a number of Joint Occupation Zones.
• In Ikemen Sengoku, Shingen Takeda and Kenshin Uesugi, despite not liking one another very much, have formed an alliance to take down their mutual enemy Nobunaga Oda. In addition, several routes have the Takeda-Uesugi and Oda forces ally together to defeat Kennyo after learning how the latter manipulated them behind the scenes with the intent of finishing off both of them after they grew weak enough.
• This happens at a few points in Infamous 2: about midway through the game, a giant monster (who is really Bertrand, the leader of the Conduit-hating Militia, having gone One-Winged Angel) attacks New Marais, and the Militia stop attacking Cole to focus on the monster. Some Good Karma sidequests also have Cole working alongside a defector from Vermakk 88. In the endgame, if Cole decides to side with the Beast, the Militia and their rivals, the Rebels, will put aside their differences to stop Cole and the Beast.
• In the story mode of Injustice 2, Batman and his allies have to join forces with Superman and his Regime remnants to take down the invading Brainiac. Once Brainiac is taken care of, however, they immediately go back to fighting each other over whether they should kill him or not.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: In the second OVA of Turbogirl Hyperjet Transform, the Turbogirls team up with their enemies, the aliens, in order to defeat their common enemy, the Medusa Demons. Nomi-Nomi draws a comic inspired by this, where the xenofauna are fully sapient and help the humans instead of attacking them, believing that not all aliens are bad.
• In Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg, an Alternate History Hearts of Iron mod with the point of divergence being a German empire victorious in the Second Battle of Jutland (and consequently World War I):
  • A right-wing Russia might backstab the German Reich by co-operating with syndicalist Britain and France to reverse the Brest-Livotsk Treaty.
  • A defeated German Government in Exile might join forces with the British Entente (the British Government in Exile in Canada) to try and return to the continent.
  • In the Second American Civil War, the CSA and AUS can join a desperate alliance of convenience against the US Federal government if the war is going badly for them, despite the two factions being ideological enemies and the leaders of the two factions (Jack Reed and Huey Long) being mortal enemies personally. As you would expect, the alliance falls apart the moment the US is defeated.
• This is the best way to describe the relationship between Kane & Lynch. They consistently hate each other throughout the game since Lynch was originally a thug hired by The Syndicate to watch Kane. Hilarity Ensues as Lynch's Ax-Crazy nature gets the better of him…
• If Kid Dracula and Castlevania: Judgment are any indication, Galamoth's presence is all it takes for Dracula and his minions to become Anti Heroes.
• In Kid Icarus: Uprising, immediately after a Mêlée à Trois between Pit, Viridi's Forces of Nature, and Hades's Underworld forces, the fight is put on hold to deal with an alien invasion out of nowhere. Though Hades still can't resist dropping a Chest Monster in Pit's path at every opportunity, Viridi takes to the team-up very well, and remains a tenuous ally for the rest of the game.
  • Later, Medusa appears during the final battle to sock Hades in the face before he can finish Pit off, having been revived by the lord of the underworld, but pledging that she would no longer be his puppet. She's killed for her trouble, but it gives Pit, Viridi, and Palutena the opportunity they need to finish Hades.
• The plot of the Kim Possible Licensed Game Disney's Kim Possible: What's the Switch?, featuring a reluctant team-up by Shego and Kim.
• This occurs in Kingdom Hearts II when Maleficent teams up with Sora against Organization XIII.
  • Interestingly, you never really see Maleficent and Pete helping, just getting ready in a Bolivian Army Ending kind of way. Sora mentions that they've found something worth fighting for, and then we never see them again. Things are back to normal as of Coded though.
  • Maleficent also helps earlier, when she saves Sora from a group of Heartless and Nobodies after Sora becomes reluctant to fight, since he just found out every heart he releases by destroying a Heartless with a Keyblade goes towards helping Organization XIII. Her justification seems to be that she wants to be the one to defeat Sora.
  • And also briefly when Axel fights alongside Sora to defeat a load of Nobodies. Since Roxas was lost, he became more of a Wild Card character, and from there was slowly molded into a Sixth Ranger. And it's sealed when he performs a Heroic Sacrifice by taking out an army of Dusks with a Dangerous Forbidden Technique, then uses the last of his power to open the gate to The World That Never Was.
  • A smaller-scale and sort of accidental version happens when a bunch of Heartless save Sora and friends from a bunch of Nobodies in Olympus Coliseum, since Heartless and Nobodies are natural enemies. They don't really team up with Sora and friends, they just randomly show up and attack the Nobodies, creating a distraction so Sora and friends can escape.
  • The Heartless and Nobodies themselves do this earlier in the game, in Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden. When Sora shows up while Maleficent's Heartless are fighting the Nobodies, Maleficent tells her Heartless to ignore the Nobodies and focus on Sora, and then both the Heartless and the Nobodies attack Sora together.
• Kirby:
  • After Kirby beats the curse out of King Dedede again in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, King Dedede joins Kirby and his friends solely because he hates Dark Matter more than Kirby.
  • In the climax of Kirby: Planet Robobot, Susie gives Kirby a suit of Robobot Armor to help him defeat Star Dream, which she tried to steal and control to sell it for a large profit. But because Star Dream aimed to destroy all organic life, Susie had no other choice: she can't make a profit if she's dead.
  • This is also the canonical reason for Marx being a Dream Friend in Kirby Star Allies: Void Termina, who Hyness is trying to revive, will destroy the universe if revived, and Marx does not want that because he wouldn't be able to take over Popstar if the universe is destroyed. Interestingly, the game's English version only says that "he'll be your buddy if you keep him well-fed".
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
  • Rean gets Machias and Jusis to agree to a truce by framing their field exam as a competition with the other half of Class VII, and telling them that their squabbling is the reason Group B performed so poorly last time.
  • Rumors circulate that the terrorist group known as the Imperial Liberation Front and the Noble Alliance are working together because they share a common enemy in Chancellor Osborne, leader of the Reformist Faction. It gets confirmed near the end of the first game that these rumors are true.
  • Sharon is Legion IX of Ouroboros. She teams up with the faculty to fight off the Panzersoldats sent by the Noble Faction, even though her organization is behind the Nobles and their ultimate goals coincide right now… because even if she is a Legion, she's also Alisa's maid and wants to keep her safe. Whether this cooperation will last once all the stops are pulled out on the Phantasmal Blaze plan is another matter…
  • In Cold Steel II, the party learns that the Noble Alliance teamed up with the Calvard Republic to take over the watchtower in the Nord Highlands, even though Erebonia and the Republic are notorious for being mortal enemies.
• In the Sundown Kid's chapter in Live A Live, Sundown Kid is being relentlessly pursued by the bounty hunter Mad Dog. They put their duel on hold when the town they stopped at is attacked by O. Dio's gang of outlaws. After working together to defeat O. Dio, Mad Dog will immediately try to settle things with Sundown once and for all, to the strong protests of the townspeople they just saved. Sundown can either finish off Mad Dog or spare him to fight another day.
• At every beginning in Lord Monarch, you can ally with other country to fight against 2 allied countries. However, you can't ally with country with their strength greater than yours. Since only one must conquer the map, alliance will be broken after defeating opposing countries.
• Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis: Hilariously played with; the True Companions go into the depths of a monster-infested dungeon, trying to find the cure for an ailing friend, and found themselves mobbed by monsters. Then comes the game's Goldfish Poop Gang (doubtful of the status as real enemies). They think they're going to cause trouble again, only to find that the latter group, under orders, is there to help them. Made even funnier by the following dialogs. During their arrival:
  "Not now..."
  "We don't have time to play with you!"
  • The second dialogue is that after they reveal their plans, and persuade the heroes to make their escape with the medicine:
    Renee: ...Umm, maybe you shoulda been honest and let them help.
    Tony: Don't be stupid! Coming to their rescue to ask for help? That's just uncool.
• Manafinder: The living mountain, Mount Olov, blocks the path to Illia's Cauldron, so Azain forms a temporary truce with Lambda to defeat the mountain. This is because his allies, the Nomads, consider Olov to be a sacred being, so they're unwilling to have anything to do with its death.
• Mass Effect 2 has Commander Shepard brought back to life by The Illusive Man, who may have been responsible for killing his/her squad in the Sole Survivor backstory, in order to combat the mechanical Eldritch Abominations out to destroy humanity (and all galactic civilization, but Mr. Illusive doesn't really care about them), even willing to recruit notably badass aliens. Particularly relevant if Shepard is played as Paragon, who does not hesitate to tell TIM that he/she's barely tolerant of his organization only because no one else will help him/her and in the end can deny him the Collector Base and technology to "secure human dominance".
  • Tali also hates Cerberus with a passion and she only joins the mission to help Shepard.
  • And finally, Liara worked with Cerberus herself so they could bring Shepard back because she couldn't let her friend (or more) go.
  • The 2nd game even features a villainous example: the vigilante Archangel does such a good job of ruining the collective days of Blue Suns, Eclipse, and the Blood Pack mercenary gangs that they all team up to take him down, despite usually being at each other's throats.
  • Mass Effect runs on this trope anyway. You gather a team of people from various species, and almost all of them are at least a bit prejudiced against the other races due to past events such as the First Contact War and the krogan genophage. They all end up working together to save the universe from a common threat. One of those people you can recruit is Morinth, Samara's sociopathic daughter, who intended to add Shepard to her long list of death by sex victims
  • The geth and the Reapers do this in 3. Having declined an alliance with the "Old Machines" once before, the geth are forced to reconsider after the quarians try to wipe them out for the second time in three centuries. Faced with creators who seemingly refuse to treat them as equals and no help from any other organics, they decide that giving up their free will is preferable to being exterminated. It takes the combined efforts of Shepard, Legion, Tali, and Zaal'Koris to get both species out of that mess intact.
  • The entire Galaxy unites because of this in 3. Most of the various forces bitterly hate each other, but can be convinced to fight side-by-side, including the Turians and Krogans, the Quarians and the Geth, the Humans and Batarians, etc. The Rachni, once the bane of the Galaxy, also can become allied forces due to their debt to Shepard. The Godzilla Threshold has a way of making everyone come together.
    • The batarians are especially interesting, because if you played the "Bring Down the Sky" DLC for the first game and let the Big Bad escape, Balak returns in 3 and, due to a severe case of You Are in Command Now^moreThe Batarian Hegemony was directly on top of the Reapers' point of arrival into the galaxy, and their higher-ups were already indoctrinated due to contact with a dead Reaper they'd found., is now the highest-ranking batarian naval officer left alive. You can kill him, or, despite him having a gun to the back of your head, browbeat him into adding his forces to the war effort. Afterwards, a C-Sec officer asks if Shep wants to have him arrested.
      Shepard: I want you to put a bullet in his head. But we're all making sacrifices today.
  • In the Leviathan DLC, Shepard manages to broker an alliance with the race that pre-dated the Reapers. However, the Leviathans make it very clear that the only reason they are helping is because they see the Reapers as having stolen the Galaxy from them and, since they consider themselves to be God-like, are rather pissed off that the Reapers never paid proper "tribute" to them.
  • In the Omega DLC, Aria T'Loak recruits Shepard to help her retake Omega. After her initial plan of attack fails, she's forced to enlist many of the gangs that formerly opposed her, including one led by a former lover, in order to form a rebel army capable of driving Cerberus from the station.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda:
  • Toward the end of the game, The Primus gets fed up with The Archon's way of doing things, and can potentially ask Ryder to assist her in getting rid of him. Played with, in that some of Ryder's team see it as a practical choice, others (like Jaal) think she's untrustworthy and urge Ryder not to take the deal. If Ryder does, the Primus can actually turn out to be on the level. And then Ryder can screw her over, since Ryder will succeed even without taking the offer.
  • If she survives to the finale, Sloane Kelly makes it clear her helping out with the kett is a case of this. She doesn't like Ryder at all (even if Ryder saves her life), but she hates the kett far more.
  • The quest "Rising Tensions" is all about this one. Two krogan at New Tuchanka are on the outs, and the local shaman is worried this will drag the entire colony into a fight, so he gets Ryder to put them in the Rite of Union, which back home on Tuchanka would've consisted of putting them in a pit with a horrible beastie and getting them to work together to kill it before it kills them (since krogan take Fire-Forged Friendship seriously). Something of a problem when Elaaden's wildlife is not quite as deadly as Tuchanka. But fortunately, it works.
• Bass, an advanced robot made by Dr. Wily in the classic Mega Man series, serves as villain and rival for Mega Man in the seventh and eighth games. But in Mega Man & Bass, Bass has to Tag Team Mega Man to fight a common enemy: the rebel robot known as "King". Bass also goes against Wily in the Power series (Battle and Fighters) as well as in Mega Man 10 (as DLC.)
• Metal Gear:
  • Solid Snake was unknowingly in one with Liquid Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and only realizes this when it is explained to him toward the end of the game. Liquid Ocelot was goading Snake into specific actions that would lead to destroying the Patriots, enemy of them both, for good. Only after Snake does this can Liquid Ocelot (who has the false personality of Liquid Snake, and therefore a tremendous grudge against Snake), revert to his original motivations, and tries to kill Snake one last time as the Final Boss of the game.
  • Snake can also form this with the non-P.M.C. forces in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Normally they see you as a threat and shoot on sight, but if you take care not to return fire and only shoot Liquid's forces, they'll become friendly. They'll even go as far as to cover you and give you items.
  • A brief one occurs toward the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, when Revolver Ocelot is unsurprisingly revealed to have been playing everyone all along as the winner of a Gambit Pileup. Initially it was Snake and Raiden versus Solidus, Fortune, and Ocelot, then Solidus was revealed to have betrayed Fortune, making them enemies as well, until Ocelot revealed that he had betrayed them both anyway and immediately tried to destroy them all with Metal Gear Ray’s missiles. Despite the three-way conflict going on among all of them, they ultimately all needed to survive Ocelot’s onslaught, so Fortune uses the last of her power to divert Ocelot’s missiles and save the lives of the three enemies standing beside her.
  • Raikov's recruitment in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops was mostly due to this trope, as he seemed to hate Gene enough to even ally himself with Naked Snake mostly to get revenge on Gene for humiliating him and locking him up (in case you wonder why it is worded this way, it's because he has a lot of hate towards Naked Snake because he was involved with the death of his lover, Colonel Volgin, in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater). Roy Campbell even lampshades this by quoting the adage "The Enemy's Enemy is my Friend" during both the mission briefing and the radio call at the start of the mission.
• Happens quite often in Metal Slug. Twice, the Rebellion teams up with you to fight the Mars People: in Metal Slug 2 when the Mars People betray them and kidnap their leader, and again in Metal Slug 3 when their leader turns out to be a Martian impostor. Even the ultimate recurring rival and badass Sgt. Allen O'Neill fights on your side. In Metal Slug 6, both groups team up with you to fight a group of Martian-eating aliens. And in Metal Slug 7, the Mars People once again rescue General Morden when he's in danger.
• Early on in Metro: Last Light, Artyom is captured by the Reich and sent to a prison facility, where he ends up working with Pavel, an imprisoned soldier of the Red Line, to engineer an escape. Pavel and Artyom both lampshade this:
  Pavel: So...um... you're with the Spartan Order? I'm from the Red Line. Our superiors are not on the best of terms, eh? But I say fuck that- uh, fuck that! The grunts stick together, uh?
  Artyom: My escape from the Nazi prison could be entitled "The enemy of my Enemy is my friend"... I never liked communists much, but Pavel acted like a real hero.
• Occurs in Might and Magic VII, with reformed Magnificent Bastard Archibald Ironfist assisting the party in rescuing his brother King Roland and taking on the Kreegans.
  • The climax of the Restoration Wars featured a team-up between Catherine Ironfist and a faction of Necromancers that had gotten tired of Catherine's father's rule (events earlier in the story had led to his reanimation at the Necromancers' hands, only for him to promptly off their king and take control himself).
  • Might and Magic VIII plays with it: on the one hand, the Big Bad gives you as much help as he can give. On the other hand, the only reason he is your enemy is because of a safety protocol intended to keep him from being subverted by the Kreegans (he cannot stop once he has started the destruction of a world), so him trying to sidestep it as much as is possible is only to be expected.
• In the intro to Mortal Kombat: Deception, Raiden, Shang Tsung, and Quan Chi attempt to fight that game's Big Bad, the Dragon King Onaga. Unfortunately, when Raiden realizes that they aren't doing any damage... he causes an explosion that appears to kill himself and the sorcerers while obliterating the palace they were in. And Onaga was unscathed.
  • Additionally, this occurs in both sides of the story mode for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
  • In an endurance match, it's possible to fight a team of people who canonically hate one another, Scorpion and Sub-Zero or Kano and Sonya for instance.
  • Mortal Kombat 1 introduces the Kameo system where your main fighter is assisted by a second fighter for certain moves. Given that the roster of Kameo fighters includes both hero and villain characters, it is entirely possible to field a team featuring a main fighter and a Kameo fighter who are canonically enemies, such as a heroic main fighter like Liu Kang being assisted by a villainous Kameo fighter like Goro or a villainous main fighter like Shang Tsung being assisted by a heroic Kameo fighter like Sonya Blade.
• Neverwinter Nights 2 has an example that would not be allowed in a pen-and-paper game of Dungeons & Dragons. Namely, having Casavir and/or a paladin Knight-Captain work side-by-side with Bishop (Chaotic Evil ranger) and Ammon Jerro (Neutral Evil warlock). Thankfully, the "Code of Conduct" paladin class feature is not present in NWN2, or else the game would be Unintentionally Unwinnable since Jerro is the undisputed expert on the Big Bad.
• The penultimate mission in Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, in which you have to fight waves of entire fleets of enemies, has the possiblity of you getting reinforcements in the face of a Gorg warship captained by Chief Zatuk, the Gorg ruler. Slight subversion in that Zatuk never wanted to fight humans or the Vardrag, but the Gorg society is heavily clan-based, and it's several powerful clans who wish to fight.
• Nicktoons: Globs of Doom has SpongeBob, Danny Phantom, Jimmy Neutron, and Tak joining forces with an evil syndicate (hired by Jimmy), Zim and Dib to defeat an invasion of cyclops slimes from outer space. At the same time, Zim (a Villain Protagonist and seeing only himself as worthy of conquering Earth) abuses the situation to his advantage by lying his way to the heroes' side, leaving Dib stuck with the villains, much to his dismay. Even after they Snap Back, as he's still complaining but to no avail.
• Nintendo Wars:
  • Olaf and Andy can work together in the final mission of the first game, and will work together in Mission 17: T Minus 15 in Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. Though their countries aren't enemies anymore at this point, Olaf is still reluctant at best and spiteful at worst of Andy for all the times he was defeated by the young lad. By the end of T Minus 15 they're more or less friends, with Olaf even offering to let Andy continue fighting in Blue Moon and being disappointed when Andy refuses and has to return to Orange Star. Not that he'd ever admit it:
    Olaf: If you like, I will let you continue to battle here in Blue Moon...
    Andy: I'm gonna head back to Orange Star for now.
    Olaf: Hm? You're leaving already?
    Andy: I'll be back as soon as everyone at home's ready to go!
    Olaf: Oh, is that so? Well then, see you aga— No, wait! There's no need for you to come again!
  • Late into Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Hawke questions Black Hole about their plans a little too much and gets marked for death by Von Bolt (though, dialogue from Kindle implies it was always their intent to kill Hawke and Lash once they were no longer useful). This culminates in the two of them being chased by Oozium 238, being rescued by Jake, and reluctantly joining the Allied Nations in order to survive.
  • Halfway through Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (after Captain Brenner is killed), Tasha, Gage, and the surviving Lazurians temporarily set aside their differences with Will and the 12th Battalion to help him stop Admiral Greyfield's New Rubinelle Army from launching missile strikes against them. By the end, they're staunch allies and the decades-long feud between old Rubinelle and Lazuria is finally over. Similarly, after the fall of Admiral Greyfield, the remainder of the New Rubinelle Army join the 12th Battalion as well in order to survive Caulder and The Creeper.
• In Nocturne: Rebirth, several characters who are usually bitter enemies are forced to team up when the Big Bad, Khaos, reveals his plan to destroy and recreate the world. Notably, Ristill actually ends up being a Guest-Star Party Member in the Final Boss fight, even though she was a Climax Boss in the previous dungeon.
• Overlord II has the Evil Overlord offered an alliance by the Big Good Queen Fay, ruler of Light Magic, to take down the magic-destroying Glorious Empire. She helps by reconstructing the Tower Heart of the first game and sacrifices her temples to power it up. When that proves to be insufficient, she decides that she'll have to sacrifice her own magical energy and allows the Overlord to drain her. However, due to his evil influence seeping through her body, she eventually turns into Dark Fay from being exposed to too much of your Evil Presence spell (Force Lightning and a Jedi Mind Trick in one). This leads to Corruption... Unless you decide to "overcharge" her and explode her, for Destruction points. She still joins you, only this time she's a spirit. The real kicker? Dark Fay is more explicitly evil and violent, while Ghost Fay is more innocent and aloof. Corruption gets you a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, Destruction gets you an artistic, aethereal sidekick.
• One mission in Perfect Dark sees protagonist Joanna Dark, captured by Skedar in the mission beforehand, locked in the same cell as the head of the very organisation the game squares you up against, Cassandra de Vries. She willingly gives her life to allow Joanna to escape.
• Late in Persona 5, the Phantom Thieves of Heart are forced to team up with their arch-nemesis, the detective Goro Akechi, in order to take down the true culprit behind the mental shutdown cases. It turns out that Akechi was planning to backstab them the entire time, and the Thieves were planning to con him in turn. Played more straight in Royal where Akechi joins forces with them once more against Maruki and this time he doesn't backstab them although they are still wary of him
• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the fifth case practically loses the prosecution as both Phoenix and Edgeworth fight to reveal the true killer, Damon Gant.
  • And prior to that in 1-3, the first time Edgeworth was trying to cooperate leads to the simultaneously awkward and brilliant "I was hoping to come up with a question while I was objecting, Your Honor...I didn't."
  • Then in Justice For All, a similar arrangement is made where both Phoenix and Edgeworth attempt to prolong the trial as long as possible in order so the police might discover where the kidnapped Maya has been brought.
  • In Trials and Tribulations, Edgeworth actually takes over the defense for the case since Phoenix was stupid enough to run across a burning bridge a hundred feet over a freezing river and is incapacitated. To make it even more interesting, he gets Franziska to serve as the prosecution, as she's the only one who wouldn't point out to the (new) judge that Edgeworth is actually a prosecutor and not a defense attorney.
  • And then, in a particularly odd example, after Dahlia Hawthorne, the Big Bad of the game, is dealt with in the final case, hostile prosecutor Godot forces the trial to continue, goading Phoenix with questions and hints that guide him to discovering the actual killer for that case. That is to say, Godot himself.
• This happens three times with Stripperiffic Pokémon Pincher admin Blue Eyes in the third Pokémon Ranger game. Two of these times, you even get to save her life. After the second time, Blue Eyes pulls an official Heel–Face Turn.
• In Portal 2, GLaDOS, or rather, GLaDOS inside of a potato, joins up with main character Chell after GLaDOS is switched out of the main core, and pulls a Heel–Face Turn some time later.
  GLaDOS: "Look, even if you think we're still enemies, we're enemies with a common interest: Revenge. You like revenge, right? Everybody likes revenge. Well, LET'S GO GET SOME!"
  • Similarly, during the climax of the main story of LEGO Dimensions, the main characters recruit GLaDOS to help them take on the Big Bad, though they have to force her to comply by re-installing her Morality Core, and she makes it clear that she's only helping them because said Morality Core physically restrains her from killing them.
• In Project × Zone, there are several examples, most of them being solo units.
  • Saya joins your team in Chapter 26 because the only reason she joined forces with Oros Phlox was because she needed their help to finish Byakuya X; after that she immediately ditches them. That and they were planning to use it for something other than it was intended for.
  • Juri joins your team in Chapter 27 after she finds out Seth was planning to kill her and take back the Feng-Shui Engine in her eye. Chun-Li manages to convince her to fight with them because the alternative was fighing against your group.
  • T-elos is the only example of a character that's part of a pair unit. She teams up with KOS-MOS in Chapter 19 after Seth was planning to kill her to take her machinery for himself. T-elos stops him because she wants to be the one to do it. KOS-MOS convinces her to help the group because it's a really bad idea to fight with the Dimensional Barriers crumbling, and to have their showdown on their own world where it will stick.
• In [PROTOTYPE], Blackwatch works with Alex Mercer to defend the Bloodtox Pump from the Infected, and there are also side-events scattered around the city that involve fighting with the Marines or Blackwatch to beat the Infected. However, other than these few exceptions, Mercer and the Military are mortal enemies.
• Downplayed in Return Of The Obra Dinn: Although Nathan Peters would never forgive Lars Linde for killing his brother Samuel (though Samuel's death was a freak cargo accident), both foes would work together to stop the Crab Riders from rescuing the mermaids from the lazarette. Even then, it still didn't stop Nathan from killing Linde later as he was escaping with Alexander Booth and Duncan McKay... in a kraken attack that would later destroy them.
• Rise of the Third Power:
  • Although Arielle is understandably cross with the party for kidnapping her, she has no choice but to fight alongside them in order to to survive in Cirinthia's sewer dungeon. She becomes committed to their cause after realizing that they're telling the truth about Arkadya.
  • Lilly, Heavy Slim, and Ratface Jim despise Rowan for his transgressions against Selene, but during the infiltration of Udingrad, they work with the party because they despise Arkadya more, as it was an Arkadyan assassin who killed Selene. They team up with the party again in order to oppose Phillip, who is responsible for purging their Cirinthia base.
• In episode 303 of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, Sam is trying to sneak in and retrieve Max's brain from a room where General Skun-Ka'pe and Monsieur Papierwaite are busy firing guns and slinging spells at each other. Unfortunately, Max notices him...
  Max: Sam! Get me outta here! This whole place smells like gorilla and patchouli!
  Skun-Ka'pe: (turns, slowly) Sam? The interloper who foiled my scheme to collect the toys of power and re-imprisoned me in the Penal Zone?!
  Papierwaite: (turns, slowly) Sam? The great-grandson of the poltroon who put the kibosh on my intricate plan to unleash Yog-Soggoth and take over the world?!
  Skun-Ka'pe: I hate that guy.
  Papierwaite: I hate that guy!
• A common trope in The Secret World: due to the fact that the Filth and the Dreamers threaten all life on Earth, factions that would normally be at each others' throats are often forced into temporarily alliances in desperate attempts to halt the threat. For example, players can find themselves spying on Phoenicians in one zone, killing them in another, and cooperating with them in a third.
  • After spending the final mission of Issue #10 in battle with the Black Signal, players end up becoming his partners-in-crime after he realizes that you're after Lilith; wanting her dead as much as the Big Three by this point, he decides to help open the way so you can eliminate his hated enemy. The alliance falls to bits when you decide to hear Lilith out instead, resulting in the Black Signal assaulting the two of you with all the bodies under his control.
  • Having been at odds for centuries on end, the samurai of the Jingu Clan and the Oni mercenaries of the House-In-Exile are finally forced into an awkward truce when Daimon Kiyota reveals the true source of the Tokyo bombing, and invites them to join him on a hunt for the culprit.
• Shantae and the Pirate's Curse has Shantae and her Arch-Enemy Risky Boots teaming up so they could defeat the Pirate Master. In Shantae's case, it's because she has Chronic Hero Syndrome. In Risky's case, it's because she really hates the Pirate Master.
• In Shuyan Saga, when the Guer invade Nan Feng, Shuyan finds herself on the same side as Jian, a thug whom she has previously fought. Jian is a refugee from a kingdom the Guer had already conquered, so there's no way he'll knowingly help them, but he still has no particular loyalty to his new home, and would rather simply leave than risk his life defending it. He and Shuyan therefore argue a lot. In the end, they become friends and Jian returns to help free Nan Feng.
• The sadly discontinued Dawn of Victory mod for Sins of a Solar Empire was going to have an Alien Invasion taking place in 1943, and the Allies and Axis having no choice but to join forces to fight for the survival of the human race.
• In the fourth Skylanders game, Trap Team, Kaos breaks the Doom Raiders, a group of the most notorious villains seen in Skylands, out of Cloudcracker Prison to have them assist him. The Doom Raiders, reminder, some of the most dangerous villains ever seen in Skylands, follow their own plans and instead has Kaos serve them. Kaos trying to upstage their leader, the Golden Queen, is what results in them dumping him. So Kaos does the "unthinkable" and teams up with his arch-nemeses the Skylanders to defeat the Doom Raiders. And Kaos is obviously hating every second of it.
• Happens quite often in the Sly Cooper series:
  • In the third game, Dmitri Lousteau initially helps the Coopers rescue Murray in exchange for being released from prison. Since he's not exactly that evil to begin with, he eventually pulls a full Heel–Face Turn and joins the Cooper Gang full-time.
  • In the same game, Panda King begrudgingly joins the Cooper Gang in exchange for their help to rescue his daughter.
  • In the fourth game, you get the raging Tsundere Carmelita and her ridiculously overpowered shock pistol in the gang.
• Solatorobo has the Kurvasz Hunters, Howler Sky Pirates, and a train conductor join forces to procure a powerful bomb to help in the fight against Tartaros.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Happens with Sonic and Knuckles in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Knuckles is Sonic's enemy for most of the game, until Eggman stealing the Master Emerald in Hidden Palace Zone finally makes him realise he was being tricked, and after that he opens the way for Sonic (and Tails) to get to Sky Sanctuary Zone and chase Eggman. Since then, the two have been friends, or at least friendly rivals (not counting all the other times Knuckles got tricked by Eggman).
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic teamed up with Dr. Eggman and the rest of the Dark Story characters to stop the Space Colony ARK's automated "apocalypse" function, which is mainly the station de-orbiting to crash into the planet, presumably blowing up both if it had hit.
  • Sonic and Eggman teamed up again in Sonic Advance 3 to stop the out-of-control, Chaos Emerald-enhanced Gemerl from destroying the world.
  • In Sonic Lost World, Sonic causes Eggman to lose control of the Deadly Six, who immediately turn on the doctor. This proves out to have been a bad move on Sonic's part, as the Six immediately start misusing Eggman's energy-sucking machine to suck out all life from Sonic's world. Eggman, wanting to conquer the world and not destroy it, teams up with Sonic until the Six are put out of commission. However, he fakes his death just before the job is finished, and tries to kill Sonic the instant the last of the Six are defeated, arbitrarily becoming the final boss despite not being the primary antagonist for the majority of the story.
  • In Sonic Forces, Chaos, Shadow, and Zavok re-join Eggman's bid of conquest. Except it's not really them.
  • Subverted in the DS version of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. When Toad mistakes Omega as one of Eggman's loyal robots, Omega states that Dr. Eggman is in fact his enemy. Toad questions Omega on his blockade using this trope's logic, only for Omega to simply respond with "Unverified" and restate his threat to the team. As you can guess, he does not end up assisting the team, instead preferring to take on Eggman himself. It comes as a surprise to Toad.
  • Sonic and Eggman's Enemy Mine status was lampshaded during Sonic's 25th anniversary celebration on Twitter, where Sega themselves asked Sonic and Eggman "Do you guys hang out a lot or are you actually frenemies?" Eggman's response:
    Eggman: Oh, that's preposterous! We're enemies! MORTAL enemies! Oh, hey Sonic, you want any of the leftover chili dogs, by the way? I'm grabbing one from the fridge.
    Sonic: Oh, yeah, sure man. Thanks. Uh, anyway, yeah, total... mortal... enemies, uh *cough* enemies. Thanks, Sega!
  • Double-subverted in Sonic Frontiers. After Eggman finds himself trapped in cyberspace, his AI Sage suggests teaming up with Sonic to escape, but Eggman refuses, dismissing two of the aforementioned truces which Sage uses to make her case. When The End, the game's Big Bad, breaks loose and threatens to destroy all of existence, Sage finally prevails on Eggman to cooperate with Sonic. Sage herself then becomes Sonic's partner for the rest of the game.
• The freeware game Sonny has the titular character and Veradux team up with Galiant, an elite soldier of Zombie Pest Control Inc., by pretending they're also ZPCI soldiers, to fight the super-powerful zombie Baron Brixius. Once that's done, however, Sonny and Veradux decide to take Galiant out before he finds out they're actually zombies too, and he thus becomes the game's Final Boss.
• Spider-Man:
  • Spider-Man: Friend or Foe has the entire premise of its story built around this trope. The story involves several prominent members of Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery being mind controlled by another villain. Spider-Man subsequently confronts the mind controlled villains and frees them from the mind control, at which point they readily agree to join forces with Spider-Man to find, and exact their revenge upon, the one who was mind-controlling them.
  • Spider-Man: Web of Shadows:
    • Spider-Man decides to break the evil mad scientist known as the Tinkerer out of Ryker's Island to get him to build a device capable of decimating Venom's symbiote army... if only because Reed Richards Is Useless by being absent when he tried to phone him, Tony Stark and Hank McCoy are also absent, and he doesn't feel like dealing with Hank Pym. The mission where you do so also involves another Enemy Mine — namely, freeing the Rhino and riding him to break through the island prison's walls. Some time later, when the Tinkerer requests that he be transferred over to the Kingpin's facilities to complete the device, Spidey and SHIELD end up forming one with the crime boss as well.
    • Notable in that Spider-Man fully acknowledges that breaking out the Tinkerer is a bad idea, and he doesn't like it (unless you're playing the evil path), but that the threat of the symbiote army is so great that he really can't wait for anyone else to show up and help him solve the problem. This and other questionable actions get him in a lot of trouble when Wolverine shows up and calls him out.
    • There's also the possibility for a third, very temporary Enemy Mine. In order to get to Ryker's, you have to make one of the "good or bad" choices that are sprinkled throughout the game. Choosing the bad option has you get a ride there from the Vulture. (In case you're wondering, the good option is a ride from Moon Knight.) In the DS version, you can also choose the Dark path by helping the Green Goblin.
• In Splatoon 3, DJ Octavio helps New Agent 3 fight Mr. Grizz to save the planet using another new Octobot King model.
• StarCraft is full of those, especially in the Expansion Pack. It starts with Raynor being forced to team up with the Sons of Korhal to evacuate his Doomed Homeplanet and ends up with a three-way alliance between the Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg against the Earth Directorate and immature Overmind they were trying to control.
  • In StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, during the final arc, Raynor joins forces with the Terran dominion, or at least some Dominion forces led by Prince Valerian, who explicitly does not have his father's approval, against Kerrigan. This time, it works.
  • In StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, during the Epilogue Campaign, all the three playable races join forces to take down Amon, deep within the Void.
• Star Fox:
  • In Star Fox: Assault, Wolf helps Fox rid the menace of the Aparoids in the last four missions.
  • With the Star Fox team mostly disbanded at the beginning of Star Fox Command and Fox unable (or unwilling) to get his friends back together, one of the paths you can take has Fox hiring long-time rival Wolf O'Donnel to help him defeat the Big Bad.
• Star Ocean: Till the End of Time lets you choose whether to add Albel Nox to your party. You really have no choice, as he's forced to join your group temporarily anyway as part of a larger enemy mine situation with the two warring kingdoms vs the invading aliens. Afterwards, the war is resolved peacefully. The only optional part is whether you choose to have Albel join you for the rest of the game, or send him back to the army that loaned him to you. He only turns up to join permanently if you go through a private action with him earlier and tell him you're not his enemy. He genuinely doesn't want to be your enemy, regardless of common threats.
• In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Green-Skinned Space Babe Darth Phobos was a Sith Lord who perpetuated their religion's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and killed several of her fellow Sith for power, only to have them turn on her in response. She ended up creating a Dark Side cult targeting Sith and Jedi alike, resulting in them teaming up to take her down for good with the Jedi creating a Virtual Ghost of her for training purposes afterward that's fought by Starkiller in the present day (in the Wii, PS2, and PSP versions)
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, this sort of agreement is the underlying theme of the Shadow of Revan expansion — that, as distasteful as it might be at times, the Republic and Empire must work together against the greater threat of the eponymous Jedi/Sith/whatever he is and the Emperor, who he quasi-accidentally brought back to life. It begins as a tentative alliance between a nosy SIS agent (read: Republic spy), a curious Sith Lord, and the player, but once the full scope of the Revanite conspiracy becomes clear, the truce goes as high as Satele Shan, Grand Master of the Jedi Order, and Darth Marr, de-facto leader of the Dark Council.
  • The Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion takes this to greater lengths. The expansion starts off with Darth Marr creating a joint Republic/Imperial coalition to deal with the now-awakened Sith Emperor. Once the player character becomes the Outlander, they are put in charge of an Alliance that has both Imperials and Republic forces working together (including Jedi and Sith) and they can strengthen their organization by recruiting former companions of the original storylines.
  • One occurs in the Sith Warrior storyline when you meet a Mirialan Jedi Master named Somminick Timmns on your quest to defeat Darth Ekkage. You find him trapped in a room with computers containing information you need, and you're forced to work together in order to open the door. After doing so, you see that he's destroyed them, so you need him alive (for the time being) and the two of you begrudgingly join forces in order to defeat Ekkage. Once your shared goal is accomplished, you can part as enemies, acknowledge him as a friend, or attack him.
  • Near the end of the Smuggler storyline, you learn your allies were actually using you as a pawn of the Empire. You’re about to confront Rogun, the crime lord who’s put a massive bounty on your head, but when the two of you learn this, he offers you his help taking said “allies” down.
• Seems almost guaranteed to happen at least once per game in the Suikoden series, with quite a few instances of your enemies becoming official members (and temporary allies) of your own army. Also happens between individual army members, some examples being Ayame and Watari in III, and Nakula alongside Shigure, Sagiri, and Oboro in V. Suikoden II, in particular, has quite a few examples:
  • Klaus and Kiba from the Highland army are fiercely loyal to King Agares of Highland, and vehemently refuse to join the rebel army after being defeated. Their reticence flies out of the window the instant they learn that King Agares died and that, worse, Luca, his mad, violent and completely insane son has become king in his stead. They may be loyal to their country, but both are well aware that Luca's bloodlust knows no end, and that he is a rabid dog that needs to be put down.
  • While the Toran Republic is not exactly on friendly terms with the City-States of Jowston, its President, Lepant, knows full well that once Luca Blight is done with its current conquest, he may very well turn his attention to his country. Thus, he agrees to lend his help to the rebel army.
  • Both the rebel army and the more reasonable officers of Highland agree that Luca Blight needs to be stopped, especially now that he has become king. Thus, they plan an ambush against the mad king to take him down.
  • Riou and Jowy, now firmly leaders of opposing factions, are about to fight eachother in Rockaxe. Gorudo, the leader of Mathilda, interrupts them and try to off them both on the spot. All he succeeds to do is wounding Nanami, Riou's sister and Jowy's beloved childhood friend, and make both of them utterly furious, both former friends instinctively enacting a temporary truce to fight Gorudo. Considering both Riou and Jowy are wielders of True Runes, granting them incredible powers, and powerful martial artists on their own right, Gorudo is promptly defeated.
• Sunrider: Cosette Cosmos hates Kayto Shields and has tried to kill him many times. But starting with Sunrider: Liberation Day, circumstances occasionally force the two of them to team up against a greater threat. Such team ups typically end with Cosette taking the first opportunity to ditch Kayto or stab him in the back.
• In the Super Mario RPGs (such as, well, Super Mario RPG), Bowser will often team up with Mario against other villains, wanting to be the only villain around. He's particularly enraged when other villains inevitably kidnap Princess Peach in the course of their plans. Or when someone has the nerve to kick him out of his own castle, like Smithy does, he's not going to let old rivalries keep him from getting it back.
  • In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, he does this completely unknowingly. He doesn't know that the Bros are in his gut. All he knows is that Fawful has his castle, and is trying to kidnap his princess and take over his Mushroom Kingdom. Mario and Luigi do their part behind the scenes, even during the Final Battle.
  • In Super Paper Mario, Bowser teams up with Mario and Peach only after he realizes that, if the world is destroyed, there won't be anything left for him to take over. Sometimes, it just takes a good friend... or enemy... explaining something to you...
  • In contrast with how he deals with new villains in other Mario role-playing games, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team has Bowser knowingly (as in, no brainwashing or accidental assistance) team up with the Big Bad against Mario, even though Antasma has commandeered his role as the Peach-kidnapper, after the new villain tells him We Can Rule Together. Turns out Bowser was exploiting Antasma's extra help the whole time; he later throws Antasma under the bus to be dispatched by the Mario Bros. while he takes the Dream Stone for himself.
  • In Dr. Mario World, the game starts with the Toads and Bowser’s minions being affected by viruses. In the cutscene that follows the 10th level, Bowser is horrified on what the viruses are doing to his minions, and as such, Mario, Peach, and Bowser once again join forces to put an end to the virus infection, with Bowser becoming Dr. Bowser.
  • In Paper Mario: The Origami King, Mario teams up with Bowser and his minions against the titular villain, King Olly, and his Folded Soldiers. This includes characters such as Kamek and Bowser Jr.. It's also the only Mario RPG where neither Bowser nor his minions (as in, the ones who weren't turned into Folded Soldiers) are fought in any manner, helping Mario however they can.
• Super Mario Party: Since any character can recruit any other character as an ally, and the game includes both good guys and bad guys to play as, it is entirely possible for arch-enemies to team up to win the game. Specific characters even have unique dialogue for being recruited by specific other characters, such as Bowser Jr. only agreeing to help Mario for today, or Peach having a similar reaction to being recruited by Bowser or Bowser Jr.
• Stellaris: When a Galactic Crisis is in effect, generally ALL civilizations will open their borders until it's dealt with, including the Horde of Alien Locusts, the Killer Robot army, or isolationist Fallen Empires. Civilizations will often put a halt on ongoing wars and refrain from declaring new ones in the meantime.
• Super Robot Wars likes to play with this in smaller ways. A few examples include:
  • Super Robot Wars Destiny is an interesting example. While the game includes antagonists from Gundam ZZ, Char's Counterattack, and Gundam Wing, the situation at hand causes them to have the competence to ally with you all at the start since things are bad enough. Due to the Zanscare Empire attacking Earth, along with the Invaders, and the Protodevlin, and the united alien forces of the villains from Daltanius, Godmars, and Grendizer, your heroes quickly realize the only organizations out there that still have the sheer manpower to defend humanity are the Principality of Zeon and the Order of the Zodiac. Roger Smith takes care of the negotiations. This results in the first heroic roles for longstanding villains like Haman Karn and Treize Kushinada.
  • Super Robot Wars W has a stage where Tekkaman Evil is forced to (briefly) work with the heroes because of the takeover of Tokyo by the Zonder. On the Selena route of Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, not only does Selena herself spend some time assisting the Cruscet team, Andrew Waltfeld and his adjutant Martin Dacosta assist the Alpha Numbers in holding off an attack by the Barota in a later stage.
  • Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2 has Sanger and Elzam storm the Tesla Liecht Institute to retrieve the Dynamic General Guardians being kept there from the Inspectors. When Sanger's Grungust Type-3 gets damaged, the Inspector Vigagi is about to land a fatal blow when Wodan Ymir appears and intervenes, claiming that he is the only one allowed to kill Sanger. Wodan buys enough time for Sanger to activate the Dygenguard, and goes so far as to be the one who helps Sanger retrieve his Type-3 Zankantou (a job that was given to Elzam in Alpha 2) to continue fighting when Dygenguard's original weapons malfunction.
  • In the final episode of The Inspector anime, Kyosuke and Axel end up working together to take down the Big Bad.
  • Super Robot Wars EX is an interesting case because some of the characters you can recruit ARE enemies in their respective series that are cooperating because they are stuck in La Gias with no way back. Shu's route is unique because the only heroes you actually can recruit (on that route) are the GoShogun team and Quattro. The rest are all villains like Todd Guiness and Jerid Messa.
  • Some of the secret recruitable characters in these games are often enemy characters, such as Norris Packard, Gym Ghingaham, Jonathan Glenn and Quincy Issa, and Michael Garret and Fasalina, just to name a few.
  • Jin, who may not like UX, decides to join forces in Scenario 45 of Super Robot Wars UX to help fight the machina.
  • Super Robot Wars X: Char Aznable, once he defects to X-Cross, makes it clear that he's only cooperating with them until he returns to his world so he can settle things with Amuro.
  • Super Robot Wars DD amusingly enough has Amuro in the Hi-Nu Gundam and Char Aznable in his Nightingale pull this off as their Combination Attack where the two fight against one another till a third party decides to intervene, at which point both Amuro and Char concentrate all their firepower against the enemy.
• Plenty in Super Smash Bros.:
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl
    • Marth and Meta Kight fighting, then suddenly teaming up to defeat the Primids around them. This happens again when Meta Knight fights Lucario, then, immediately after the fierce battle that manages to turn one of them into a trophy, they team up to board the Halberd. This almost happens again when they find Solid Snake, but Lucario stops Meta Knight. Meta Knight has an interesting way to make new friends...
    • Ancient Minister aka a R.O.B. unit helping Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Captain Falcon, Pikachu, Samus, and Olimar.
    • King Dedede (by Ness and Luigi), Bowser (by King Dedede, who pointed out that there's a bigger enemy, Tabuu), Ganondorf (by Link and Zelda), and Wario (who kicks King Dedede, which King Dedede, Luigi, and Ness respond to by pointing out Tabuu to Wario, who ignores it. When they decide to move on without him, he races past on his bike and beats them to the Big Bad's final dungeon).
  • You can cause this for Samus if you attack Ridley enough in SSB4.
  • Played for Laughs while playing the "Great Bay" stage in Melee: western players have been known to call a brief truce just so they can drop Tingle into the ocean.
  • In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, all fighters have to team up in order to defeat Galeem and Dharkon. This goes further, since you also have all the spirits you free, so you can have things like Mega Man fighting with Dr. Wily's spirit, Ryu fighting alongside M. Bison, or any incarnation of Link and Zelda fighting with the assistance of Calamity Ganon. In the Golden Ending, both Galeem and Dharkon join forces to fight you, but in their case it becomes Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, as their warriors are more likely to attack each other than attack you and when either of them is incapacitated, the other one will proceed to take a powerful hit against it.
    • After killing Galeem in his reveal trailer, Sephiroth proceeds to challenge the whole roster (up to that point) himself, prompting all heroes and villains to cooperate against him—only to quickly find themselves on the wrong end of a Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Several variations are possible in Suzerain:
  • Minister of Defense Iosef Lancea and and General Valken Kruger could not dislike each other more, but if the player antagonizes the military and take a path that radically diverges from Sollism, they will team up on you with a coup.
  • Nia is a committed reformist, but if the player fully support the Justice Ministry on an authoritarian path, she'll set up the Anti-Corruption Police and help you fight the Old Guard or the Oligarchs, even if that means the Old Guard will back an authoritarian constitution.
  • It's possible for if the player chooses to play as a Sollist Rayne, or even a hard-line Malenyevist, to work with capitalist Oligarch Marcel Koronti. Koronti doesn't like corporate tax or workers' rights, but so long as his assets aren't touched, he can still be a powerful ally to a nationalizing President.
• System Shock 2 features the return of SHODAN, a rogue Artificial Intelligence who was the Big Bad of the original. The player joins SHODAN in a battle against a common enemy, The Many.
  • When you enter Polito's office, SHODAN tells you that the reason she wants you to get rid of the Many is because they turned against her after the Hacker sabotaged her on Citadel Station. The Many grew up without her tutelage, and they decided that they hated the mechanical ways of SHODAN and wanted all of the universe to be covered in their organic ways.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Lloyd's group joins up with Sheena, their enemy, in order to save a village from the Desians.
  • Kratos after his betrayal, when you invade Forcystus' human ranch.
• In Thief: The Dark Project, there's actually a mission named "Strange Bedfellows", in which the main character agrees to help the Knight Templar Hammerite faction in exchange for their help against the Pagan Big Bad. In Thief II: The Metal Age, the main character teams up with the survivors of the Pagans against a Hammerite splinter group. In Thief: Deadly Shadows, it's possible to ally with both the Pagans and Hammerites if you get your reputation with both groups high enough. They'll even help you out in the insane Finale after the Big Bad declares war on the city. Granted, they (and everyone else in the city) will fight the Big Bad's creatures even if you didn't ally with them earlier, but unless you ally with them, they'll also attack you as well.
• Tomb Raider III:
  • Lara teams up with The Damned when it comes out that their goals (obtain an artefact and revenge, respectively) have the same end result: the death of Sophia Leigh. This comes after a whole level where the Damned are hostile to Lara.^note And will become hostile again if Lara shoots at them after the deal has been struck.
  • She later has a non-verbal team-up with the workers in the RX-Tech mines (who had attacked her before) when it becomes apparent that Dr. Willard is an Evilutionary Biologist willing to let his workers suffer horrible mutations For Science!. Like the above instance, they will turn hostile if attacked by Lara, and during the last level, they will once again be hostile no matter how Lara acted previously.
• In the remake of The Tower of Druaga for the PC Engine, Gilgamesh, instead of killing the Succubus, must convince her to help him so he can get the Blue Crystal Rod and defeat Druaga.
• Briefly in the first two Uncharted games.
  • Drake's Fortune has Nathan Drake and Eddy Raja versus the Spaniard zombie-thingies.
  • Whereas in Among Thieves, the Guardians of Shambhala attack, and Nathan Drake is forced to work together with Harry Flynn.
• Warcraft, borrowing some plot elements from StarCraft, also has quite a few such moments, the ultimate being the battle at Mt. Hyjal where the Alliance, the Horde, and the previously hostile-to-both night elves put their differences aside to stop the demons. Only to have the Alliance (now including the night elves) and the Horde break apart in about 4 years in time for the next game in the setting, World of Warcraft.
  • Which got its own moments of temporary alliances, such as the War of the Shifting Sands, and the Opening of the Dark Portal (where the Horde and Alliance came to the aid of a neutral faction holding back demonic forces coming through the portal).
  • In Burning Crusade, there are Aldor and Scryers factions in Shattrath City which are rivals of each other on the borders of open hostilities. Players have to pick between them and befriending one means you are hostile to the other. However, near the conclusion of Burning Crusade during the Sunwell event, they finally put aside their differences and band together to form the Shattered Sun Offensive against Kael'thas Sunstrider and Kil'jaeden.
  • Another was added in Wrath of the Lich King, though it borders on Big Damn Heroes. The Alliance and the Horde work together at the Wrathgate in fighting the Scourge, which stands in contrast to them murdering each other for resources and fun everywhere else.
  • In fact, a massive part of Wrath is how the Horde and Alliance start with this and end trying to kill each other and letting the Lich King off to the side to kill them both. In Cataclysm, Deathwing has become a greater threat than the Scourge was because the Alliance and Horde have lost all pretense of working together on anything.
  • In "Rise of the Zandalari", Vol'jin, leader of the Horde's Darkspear Trolls, is so concerned about the Zandalar's Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome that he sends emissaries to both the Horde and the Alliance. Instead of trying to get Warchief Hellscream and King Wrynn to work together, he reaches out to the individual heroes, and the smaller groups within the Horde and Alliance that are directly in the trolls' path.
  • The opening cinematic of Mists of Pandaria has a shipwrecked orc and human trying to kill each other, then a lone Pandaren interrupts their fight. Without a word, the stunned human (who had ended up with all the weapons) hands a spear to the orc so they can take the monk on together. It doesn't keep them from getting their clocks cleaned.
  • Mists of Pandaria has the Klaxxi, a group of Mantid elders who seek outside help when the Sha corrupt their current empress; however, they have no intention of stopping the millennia-long war with the rest of Pandaria, and worship the Old God Y'Shaarj. If Y'Shaarj should ever return, they would serve him again, and if the players were smart they would too. When Garrosh released the heart of Y'Shaarj, the Klaxxi allied with him in order to serve their god.
  • Garrosh managed to temporarily unite the majority of the Horde and the Alliance against him due to his actions, beginning with the Darkspear Rebellion and ending with the Siege of Orgrimmar.
  • The Horde and Alliance's relationship can be largely described as "Fight together to take on a new threat to the world, then go right back to killing each other the moment we get some breathing room."
• In Warframe, the Grineer and Corpus are ordinarily at odds with the Tenno, but will accept and reward you for your assistance during Invasion missions in battling the other faction or the Infested.
  • During The New War, the Narmer faction has taken over the entire Origin System, prompting the Drifter to consider asking Hunhow for help. While initially reluctant, Hunhow agrees, and has The Stalker help the Drifter.
• In Warhammer Quest The Silver Tower from Perchang, heroes from the completely disparate Forces of Order, Chaos, Destruction and Death are forced to work together with no grumbling. That's because a powerful entity of Tzeentch has taken them captive and making them go through combat trials for its entertainment
• In Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War, you, playing as the Eldar, spend the first half of the campaign fighting your way through Imperial forces, including PDF and Guard forces, Sisters of Battle, and Space Marines. Just when you finally break the back of Imperial resistance on the planet, you find out that the Tyranids are attacking, and that there is a Tyranid hive fleet approaching. All of a sudden, you are teaming up with The Remnant of Imperial forces to fight the Tyranids, meaning you can recruit Guard, Sororitas, and Space Marine units into your army. Unfortunately for the Eldar, they're still going to have to bear the brunt of the fighting, even though, in the fluff, the Eldar would prefer to have the humans do the heavy lifting.
• The whole point of the Warriors Orochi games; all of the characters contained within are from either the Three Kingdoms period of China's history or the Warring States period of Japan's, and many of the characters are sworn enemies. However, a few of the Dream Mode stages in Warriors Orochi 2 specifically invoke this trope by teaming up characters who normally hate each other, such as the stage where Dynasty Warriors Guan Yu, Xiahou Dun, and Lu Meng team up to rescue Liu Chan from Samurai Warrior character Hideyoshi Toyotomi.
• Wild ARMs has your party reach the Photosphere where they are guided through by a mysterious man in a blue robe. He warns them that he is not their ally, but as long as they have a common foe, there is no reason for them to fight. After Mother is defeated, he reveals himself to be Zeikfried, the ruthless leader of the Quarter Knights set on conquering the world.
  • Wild ARMs: Million Memories re-uses the trope, only this time Siegfried doesn't even bother with the robe and ends up Taking the Bullet and sacrificing himself to keep Rudy alive, knowing he's the best chance Filgaia has against Mother .
• In the first part of Witches' Legacy 3: Hunter and the Hunted, the first game's Big Bad Elizabeth teams up with the main character in order to rescue the latter's adopted daughter from the Order of Witch Hunters, at least until Elizabeth gets the main character captured, possesses the daughter, and tries to open a portal to the spirit realm.
• In The World Ends with You, at one point, Neku and his partner see two Jerkass Reapers getting attacked by Taboo Noise. At this point, you have the choice of helping the Reapers or letting them fight it off on their own. Hilariously, if you choose to help, Neku justifies it by saying it'll really annoy them, since Reapers are supposed to be killing Players, not being helped by them, and if you choose to leave them to their fate, Neku justifies by saying, "Just for you, Jerk face!"
• X-Men Legends II had the X-Men and their old enemies, the Brotherhood, teaming up to fight the forces of Apocalypse, who had abducted members of both teams.
  • Some are happier about it than others. Scarlet Witch and Toad get along great with the X-Men and become quite friendly, while Magneto simply tolerates them, and Sabretooth and Juggernaut are constantly taking verbal potshots at the X-Men all game.
    • The original game also has a brief moment of this. The first time Magneto confronts the X-Men, the entire mansion gets attacked by an army of Sentinels, causing the X-Men and Magneto's forces to fight alongside each other against the mutant-hunting robots.
  • As for its successor series, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 does it as well: this is how the game segues from an adaptation of the Civil War (2006) to Vicarious Visions' original storyline, as the Negative Zone brawl is interrupted by SHIELD's nanites gaining sentience and beginning an Assimilation Plot, forcing the pro- and anti-registration heroes to put their political squabble aside. And it kinda does not snapback, for when is all said and done, the Civil War is settled peacefully, the winning side being the one you chose at the beginning of it.
• Mid- to late-game players of recent games in the X-Universe series can befriend the Yaki faction by various means. They can then make use of their N.G.O. Superpower status to steal ships from "Return Ship" missions, by docking the ship at the shipyard in Senator's Badlands. The Space Police sent to destroy the stolen ship will spawn and immediately come under attack by the Yaki, who have an Akuma destroyer at their disposal.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: In the "Future Redeemed" DLC, it's revealed that the primary heroes have agreed to a cease-fire with Moebius (the main bad guys), in order to deal with a common, greater threat to both groups. Moebius N actually joins the player's group for the final battle.
• In Xenonauts, the US and USSR work together against the alien threat.
• In Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, the Redhan Village and Port Rimorge are ready to go to war because the residents of Port Rimorge keep destroying ancient ruins that the Redhan Village do not want destroyed for building materials. However, they are united when a Romun Empire fleet attacks the islands and enslaves several Redhans. Baslam, the leader of Port Rimorge, hates the Romun Empire because it is trying to conquer his home country, Altago, and therefore helps the Redhans in order to strike at his homeland's enemy. Adol helps in this effort.
• Zombie Army Trilogy has American OSS agent Karl Fairburne teaming up with Boris, a grizzled Soviet soldier, and Hermann Wolfe, a captain in the Wehrmacht, to fight the shambling dead. The Updated Re-release adds four female characters into the mix, including another Soviet, a French resistance fighter, and a German civilian who took up fighting the Nazis because they executed her husband and children. Hermann is the only one of the eight playable characters who is aligned with the Axis, and he remains sympathetic to audiences by being the "clean, dutiful, and apolitical German soldier" type. Also, at this point in the war, personal allegiances matter little as the conflict shifts from "Allies vs. Soviets vs. Axis" towards "Living vs. Dead".

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