Fire Forged Friends / Live-Action TV

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• On Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., May and Ward both are affected by an Asgardian berserker staff; the kind that brings up the worst memory of your life and turns it into Berserker Rage power. The power leaves after the fight is over, but the memories fade in time, approximately a decade. Since they are the only ones who can deal with it, they become FFF with benefits. Later, May thinks Ward is protecting her during a fight when he really knew she could take out the bad guy if he took the hit. He corrects her attitude by saying he isn't the kind of guy who "can't separate church and state."
• Andromeda. Tyr and Seamus, complete with a Give Me a Sword moment during their Last Stand against the Magog.
• Altered Carbon. As an Envoy, Takeshi Kovacs was taught to recruit locals and make them loyal to him so they can be used as a Redshirt Army. By the time he admits this manipulation and gives them a chance to leave, they've become True Companions for real, so they refuse.
• Babylon 5:
  • The show provides an excellent example in the shape of Ambassador Londo Mollari of the Centauri Republic and G'Kar of the Narn Regime. Hating one another at first for reasons political (the Centauri had previously ruled Narn with an iron fist) and personal, the Centauri invasion of Narn space led at first to a bizarre convergence of interest and eventually a truly Odd Friendship as the series progressed. In the end, a prophecy Mollari had of G'Kar killing him came true in the oddest way imaginable: Londo, by now Emperor, trapped by a Drakh Keeper, has his trusted friend G'Kar kill him as part of a Thanatos Gambit to set the Centauri people to freedom and a bright future under Emperor Vir Cotto.
  • The Minbari and the humans culminating in an actual marriage between a Satai who voted for the Earth-Minbari war and Starkiller. Not to mention a human going back in time and becoming Valen, and the implication that the humans and Minbari would eventually take the place of the Shadows and Vorlons in guarding the still-younger races — although they would presumably cooperate, seeing how bad of a job the Shadows and Vorlons did.
• The original Battlestar Galactica: Sheba doesn't seem to very much like Cassiopeia, who was dating the former's father at the time. The two women then developed a newfound respect and friendship for one another after the attack on Gamoray that left Bojay wounded.
• The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon and Leonard became friends when Sheldon saved Leonard from being blown up by rocket fuel that the latter had mixed incorrectly when trying to convert it to use in Howard's model rocket.
• Defines Blake's 7 (not that any of them would ever admit it).
  Dorian: That's why I came for you. You care for each other. After what you've been through together, you couldn't fail to care for each other. Even you, Avon.
• Buffyverse:
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this is how the Scoobies became friends. It is also the most common solution to any major strife among the Scoobies. A notable example is Xander and Spike in the final season. Despite openly hating each other until this point, they manage to work together to save the girls from the influence of RJ's magic jacket in "Him". After Spike goes back to save Xander from Caleb in "Dirty Girls" their previous animosity is almost completely set aside. Perhaps the most prominent example is in "Dead Man's Party" during Season 3. After just about everyone spends most of the episode trashing Buffy for running away to the point that she nearly runs away again, all is forgiven and they're all best buds again right after they stop a magic mask-induced Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Pretty standard for the heroes in Angel but Wesley and Gunn deserve special mention.
    Gunn: Come on, English! You know you my man!
    Angel: So, ah, I see you guys have bonded.
    Gunn: Happens when you fight shoulder to shoulder.
    Wesley: Or rather hip to shoulder these days.
    Gunn: This man took a bullet for me!
    Wesley: Ah, it was nothing!
• In Burn Notice, 2x13, Michael and Bly are dancing toward mutual destruction, when they end up caught in the midst of a bank heist. A few hijinks and a bullet wound later, they decide instead to do each other some favors and leave each other alone.
• On Chuck, the members of Team Bartowski started out suspicious and paranoid of each other, but have grown into fast friends, saved each others' lives multiple times, and committed treason (and the occasional thoughtful felony) for each others' sakes.
• Cobra Kai has a slow-burning one between Daniel and Johnny. They start off still holding onto their grudge from 1984, but they call a truce to form an uneasy alliance against Kreese and Silver. They start to realize that they're similar and develop a grudging respect for each other which, after some further Character Development, begins to grow into genuine friendship. The same could be said of their students, many of whom are defectors from Cobra Kai and have to band together against their former classmates.
• In The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Brea calls Deet a true friend after the other Gelfling suggests they hold their own funeral for the All-Maudra since they couldn't be by her body.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "An Unearthly Child", the Doctor doesn't really seem to like Ian and Barbara very much (the feeling is quite obviously mutual), but he's forced to work with them when the three of them (along with the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan) are captured by cavemen. They manage to win their freedom by showing the cavemen how to make fire. They go on to become very close friends. Their friendship was therefore, quite literally, forged by fire.
  • When Jo Grant enters the Doctor's life, he's not pleased that this clumsy, inexperienced rookie is his new assistant. Over the course of many adventures, they become close friends and he develops a paternal bond with her. When she leaves, he's devastated.
  • While it's hard to pin down a specific incident that flipped the switch, the Doctor and The Brigadier started with a fair amount of hostility and Snark-to-Snark Combat, and eventually reached the point where despite the continued presence of verbal sparring, the two would plainly trust each other to the end of the Earth, because between them they'd prevented it often enough. After his resurrection as a Cyberman and subsequent refusal to take orders from the Cyber-programming, the Twelfth Doctor - who had spent most of that season being nothing but hostile to soldiers and the military - salutes the Cyber-Brig, muttering that if he'd wanted a salute back in the day, he should have just asked.
  • "Aliens of London"/"World War Three": The strained relationship between Rose Tyler's mother Jackie and Rose's ex Mickey Smith, which became so due to Rose going missing for a year because she'd been travelling with the Doctor, leading Jackie to hate Mickey because she thought he'd murdered her daughter, doesn't start to get repaired until Mickey saves Jackie from a Slitheen trying to kill her and the two help Rose and the Doctor save the world.
  • "The Next Doctor": As lampshaded in the Confidential, the quickest way to get the Doctor and "the Next Doctor" cooperating in-story was to have them both recklessly tackle a monster and almost die, together, then laugh about it afterwards.
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: In their earliest interactions in the Captain America movies, Falcon and Bucky despised each other. But over the course of their miniseries, the two men fight global terrorists and come to terms with their shared love for Steve Rogers and the legacy he left behind. The series ends with them not only being comrades in arms, but actually becoming friends in their downtime too.
• Farscape — John Crichton and Ka D'argo. In the first season, D'argo tries to kill Crichton several times, and in Episode 11 Crichton even says, "We're never going to be friends... We can be allies." After fighting side by side for a couple seasons, they end up being each other's BFF. To a lesser extent this became true of the rest of the crew on Moya over the years. Literally forced together through circumstance and picking up strays along the way, the group started out barely tolerating one another and seeking to advance themselves at the cost of the others. By the end, with the things they had suffered through together, even the most selfish like Rygel had gone through fire and blood for their friends.
• In Fi, Özge and Furkan become this over the course of the first season. She initially views him as a nuisance and treats him poorly, but he grows into her most trustworthy ally. His death and the circumstances surrounding it lead to her breakdown at the start of Season 2.
• Firefly
  • Mal and Zoe, to a Platonic Life-Partners level. We don't see the exact moment of forging; rather, the war they were in together seems to have been a protracted forging process.
  • Mal and Simon. They rubbed each other the wrong way because of culture clash, suspicion, and the clash of their highly evolved Papa Wolf and Big Brother Instincts. But they learned to respect each other as the show progressed.
  • Jayne is a tougher nut to crack, but he and Simon also seem to have reached this point by the end of Serenity.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Jaime and Brienne after their ordeal in the Riverlands, when they are both captured by enemies and find that they are each other's only allies.
  • Jon, Pyp, and Grenn had a very rough start, but they eventually become True Companions along with Sam.
  • Arya with Hot Pie and Gendry, as their shared experiences being hunted by Lannisters, imprisoned at Harrenhal and travelling through the wartorn countryside together for months quickly bond them.
  • Deconstructed with Arya and Sandor Clegane in Season 4, as she fights alongside him and even binds up his wounds indicating they're heading toward this trope. However, Arya claims his name is still on her death list and she's is still technically his prisoner so, despite a temporary alliance, their relationship remains uneasy and lacks the genuine trust of this trope. Notably when it comes down to it, Sandor doesn't trust her to Mercy Kill him instead trying to goad her into doing it out of anger and Arya leaves him to die alone despite his pleading.
  • Brienne with Sansa, who becomes friendly with Brienne after she rescues her.
  • Maester Luwin bonds with Osha — who was introduced threatening the life of Bran Stark — during the Sack of Winterfell while both are trying to keep Bran and Rickon alive. Before granting him a Mercy Kill, she promises him that she will keep the boys safe.
  • House Umber became close with the Starks thanks to fighting Wildlings together for centuries. Unfortunately this friendship is permanently destroyed by Smalljon Umber who betrays Rickon and gives him to Ramsay Bolton. Even though he is dead, the rest of his family will most likely be viewed as traitors.
• The "seven stranded castaways" on Gilligan's Island. If one of them is in danger, the other 6 will rush forward to rescue them. If one of them is (always wrongly) believed to be dead, the other 6 will be beside themselves with grief. And while they may not be able to get off the island, they are adept at working together to survive whatever life-threatening obstacles are thrown their way. In the end, the answer to the often-repeated question, "Why don't they Just Eat Gilligan?" is obvious. Because they love him.
• In Hell on Wheels Cullen and Elam have, as might be expected between an ex-slave and a former slave owner, a rocky relationship at the best of times. After Cullen saves Elam from a lynch mob and later on they fight and kill said mob when it pursues them they seem headed towards this.
• Heroes: Peter and Sylar have some sort of bond in the realm of friendishness, after having spent five years together in an otherwise empty replica of New York City. Matt protests profusely, going as far as pushing a thought in Sylar's head to prevent him from leaving. Peter proceeds to defend him, although whether this was because he wanted to help Sylar or so that Sylar could save his friend Emma from helping destroy half of New York City (or maybe just Central Park — it was never very clear just how much of the city would be destroyed).
• Imposters: Over the course of their many travails, Ezra, Richard and Jules intensely bond, becoming very close friends with each other.
• Intergalactic:
  • Though Verona hates her at first, Ash slowly becomes friends with her after going through many dangers together. Later it turns out she's attracted to Ash, who reciprocates.
  • The same applies to their former guard Drew and Genevieve, a convict-they get romantically involved.
• Kingdom (2019): Surprisingly enough, Beom-pal and Yeong-shin become friends after being lumped together during the final battle of Season 2, sustaining a decently warm camaraderie seven years later.
• Considering the core team of Leverage is made up of loner consummate criminals (except Nate), none of them exactly trust each other even when brought together by an Enemy Mine situation. But after that first addictive job and discovering that Good Feels Good, they decide to stay a team, trusting and relying on each other to balance out their own flaws. It takes a lot of fire and explosions, but through their work they grow as close as family.
• The Librarians: Flynn didn't want anyone involved last first and none of the L.I.Ts could really see eye to eye. Slowly they became a strong team and learned how to take care of each other's weaknesses.
  Eve: You're not liabilities, you're not soldiers I can order around. I don't know what you are.
  Jake: I believe the term you are looking for is partners.
  Eve: Fair enough.
• Lost: The plane crash survivors don't always get along, but thanks to their circumstances (and hostility from the Others,) they realize they're in it together. The background characters are wholly apathetic, but the regulars are always going off to rescue each other despite the many dangers. Jack and Sawyer, in particular, hate each other, but still look out for each other against common threats. This is exemplified by their Survival Mantra; "Live together. Die alone." The Grand Finale really makes it explicit how the group had came to relate to each other as true companions, to the extent that none of them would "move on" from the flash-sideways universe until all of them were ready.
  Christian: [to Jack] The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people. [...] You needed all of them and they needed you.
• A very straight-forward example occurs in Marco Polo. When Marco first arrived in Cambulak he managed to accidentally piss off Prince Jingim, by telling the Khan exactly what actually happened which just happens to make Jingim look bad. Later on though, Marco saves the Prince's life: and they become almost inseparable friends. This sets up Marco to take the place of Jingim's erstwhile BFF Ahmad, who turns out to actually be a traitor (though not without good reason). They end up so close that Jingim trusts Marco to be alone with his wife (and even though Marco is actually attracted to the girl in question, he doesn't break Jingim's trust). Putting this here even though these are technically historical figures, since it's highly likely that Marco Polo was massively exaggerating his relationship with the Prince.
• The Mandalorian:
  • Din Djarin travels to Tatooine in search of others of his kind. He seemingly finds one in a small mining town, wearing a very familiar looking set of armor. When it's revealed that this is really a local sheriff named Cobb Vanth, he immediately demands the armor be handed over (as his creed dictates those who aren't of "The Way" cannot wear such an armor) and almost gets in a shoot-out with him. The arrival of a massive Krayt Dragon leads him to instead bargain for the suit in exchange for helping Vanth kill said dragon. The two eventually come to respect each other, and bid farewell upon the dragon's death.
  • When his journeys take him to a watery world, he's rescued by a squad of Mandalorians after he and his young charge are betrayed by a group of greedy Quarren. He's grateful for the rescue until they take off their helmets (as, again, "The Way" prohibits such), at which point he loses it. Their leader, Bo-Katan further upsets him when she basically confirms his sect was nothing more than a highly-overzealous cult, and he storms off. It takes her and the rest of the squad saving him and the Child again to at least get his cooperation into helping them take an Imperial freighter, in exchange for giving him the whereabouts of a Jedi. Even when Bo changes the deal midway through, and in spite of him staunchly disagreeing with her about aspects of their people, they nevertheless part ways with some level of respect, and she even lives up to her end of the bargain and tells him the Jedi's name: Ahsoka Tano.
• Mayday: The passengers and crew of British Airways Flight 9 started their own club after their strange and nightmarish ordeal.
• Misfits is pretty much made of this trope. Although you could argue that even after being lumped together on community service, getting caught in a freak electrical storm and imbued with godawful superpowers, and then accidentally killing their probation worker and having to dispose of the body, the gang still don't particularly like each other, despite having formed a strange kind of bond.
• NCIS saw Ziva's relationship with Team Gibbs unfold this way. Especially with Tony.
• NCIS: Los Angeles Since Deeks was introduced Sam has at best tolerated his presence and Deeks doesn't like him much better. After the events of "Descent" in which both Deeks and Sam were tortured over stolen nukes, Sam has a much higher opinion of Deeks, given that Deeks didn't crack and give up Sam's wife as the undercover operative the Big Bad was seeking.
• Once Upon a Time: Red Riding Hood and Snow White become friends while hunting for The Big Bad Wolf. Snow finds out from Granny that Red herself is the wolf, and helps her stop Red before she unintentionally killed more people. In the fairy tale timeline, the next time we see them Red knows Snow's actual name (after Snow had given her an alias until she knew Red could be trusted) and is clearly helping Snow stay in hiding from the Queen. While we have yet to see what happened after Snow drags a confused, human Red away to protect her from hunters, they end up good enough friends that, during Snow's fight to save Prince Charming, Red (along with Grumpy) seems like she's practically Snow's Number Two.
• In Person of Interest Root and Reese start off as enemies, as a result of the fact that Root had played him and kidnapped Finch. On her part she thought of Reese as Dumb Muscle and wanted to replace him as Finch's partner. After she joins the team, as an agent of The Machine they become allies. The friendship part doesn't happen until Shaw apparently dies while they are saving the Stock exchange. The two of them go on a crusade across five states, even picking a fight with government operatives just on a hunch that they could save her.
• Power Rangers:
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Subverted. The main 5 rangers hadn't met prior to becoming rangers and wouldn't have met if they weren't, but all of them become friends because of it.
  • Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: The three main rangers, high school seniors Kira, Ethan, and Connor are not friends to begin with. The three end up in detention together then become Dino Rangers becoming friends in the process. Cassidy Cornell mentions how weird it is that they are suddenly friends.
  • Power Rangers Megaforce has Gia and Emma who are best friends, Jake and Noah too, and then there's the new kid Troy. Them becoming rangers makes the five of them friends.
• Friendships that transcend all social classes, between people who would do anything for each other, who share hardship as well as happiness and would be ready to die for each other is one of the major themes of Princess Returning Pearl.
• Rome: Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo start out as enemies, but their various adventures together quickly turn them into the best of friends. The characters were based on two real life Roman centurions noted in Julius Caesar's journal for sharing a bitter rivalry and yet each saving the other's life in a single battle, making this trope Older Than Feudalism.
• RuPaul's Drag Race: For all the talk of sisterhood, there's actually no guarantee that a season's cast of contestants will actually stay in contact after their season concludes. But Season 6's cast became exceptionally close and continue to work together long after their season aired. For instance, the top four queens—Adore Delano, season winner Bianca Del Rio, Courtney Act, and Darienne Lake—have toured as the supergroup ABCD. During the season, rivalry between contestants was minimal and producers worked overtime to manipulate footage to suggest otherwise. When Darienne was given the "Bitch Edit" and drew the ire of fans, the other queens leapt to her defense and said that she's actually a wonderful person (the fandom has long since warmed up to her).
• Secret Diary of a Call Girl: Belle curses out Bambi when she finds out Bambi was stealing clients (and had found her generally annoying besides). After rescuing each other from punters who turned out to be psychopaths, they become good friends; Belle writes Bambi into her book, and later acts as her maid of honor.
• In Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson's relationship develops gradually over the first episode, and the familiar Holmesian friendship dynamic is fully established when John shoots the serial killer to save Sherlock's life.
• Smallville: Pretty much all of Clark's friends and loved ones (with the obvious exception of Lex, who goes dark) become this as the seasons go along. Pete becomes Clark's first Secret-Keeper besides his parents, Chloe becomes Mission Control and an even bigger confidant than Pete, Lois goes from being Vitriolic Best Buds with Clark to being an integral member of Team Clark and the other half of a Battle Couple with Clark himself by the end, and Clark's superhero friends all end up interacting with Clark's non-powered friends and becoming their friends as well (even one-off character Andrea becomes Fire-Forged Friends with Chloe during the web/DVD extra "The Vengeance Chronicles"). It's no surprise that by Season 10, Team Clark basically feels like one big happy (though still occasionally dysfunctional) family.
• Stargate Universe starts out far from this, with expedition members distrusting, framing, marooning and betraying each other (okay, so that's mostly two of them), and gradually develops into this. Young finally states this explicitly in the last episode, referring to the crew as a family.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • From "Darmok", this trope has an in-universe name: Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra which, by the end of the episode, becomes Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.
    • When the Universal Translator can't make sense of their language, an alien leader (Dathon) has himself and Picard forcibly beamed to the planet El-Adrel where they are forced to work together against a vicious beast to survive despite the Translator not working. Picard learns that the alien communicates entirely through analogy and metaphor and Dathon teaches Picard the story of how Darmok and Jalad became friends by battling a shared enemy at a place called Tanagra. Picard then shares The Epic of Gilgamesh with him.
    • The events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country left the the Federation and the Klingon Empire as vaguely-hostile allies. The episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" showed that the two powers only truly became friends after a Federation starship, the USS Enterprise-C, flew headlong into battle against four Romulan warships to defend a Klingon outpost.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • Worf and Martok become very close friends after being held captive by the Dominion, with Worf later joining the House of Martok as a brother.
    • After seven years of mutual mistrust (and with good reason), at the end of the show, Kira, Damar and Garak have to put aside their differences and work together to create a rebellion that will overthrow Dominion control of Cardassia. Without it, the Federation can't win the war. By the end of the show, it's strongly indicated that the experience led to the beginning of this trope for Kira and Garak. Damar dies.
    • Damar shares some moments of this with them before the end, including one in the hangar right before the final battle.
    • For the first season and a half, Chief O'Brien actively disliked Dr. Bashir. But halfway through the second season, the two of them end up having to work together in order to survive after a mission goes wrong. This trope is Invoked by Bashir once they're rescued; O'Brien doesn't react enthusiastically to the suggestion in the moment, but the pair become inseparable friends from that point on.
• Stranger Things:
  • After spending the entirety of the first season having a complicated, often strained relationship with one another, Jonathan, Nancy and Steve unite in taking down an extra-dimensional monster together, culminating in literally setting it on fire.
  • Steve and Robin begin Season 3 as reluctant co-workers who can barely stand each other and who only tolerate their enforced time together through mean snark. One adventure involving dimensional shenanigans, infiltrating Russians, truth serum, an Eldritch Abomination and a Coming-Out Story on Robin's part later, they're practically best friends.
• Supernatural: Dean and Benny become this after fighting their way through Purgatory together. Originally starts off as Teeth-Clenched Teamwork on Dean's end, since he's not too happy about having to accept a vampire's help. It's only after Benny saves Castiel that Dean genuinely begins to like him.
• True Blood: Sookie did not like Eric Northman at all in the early seasons. While Sookie was generally accepting of vampires, Eric kidnapped and used her friend Lafayette as a personal bloodbank (which he didn’t need to because he had the option to drink manufactured blood instead), and also made creepy advances on Sookie herself. As the seasons progress and they deal with more and more supernatural threats together, Sookie gradually warms up to him and they’re friends by the end of the series.
• The Vampire Diaries starts off with Damon and Stefan hating each others' guts, Elena's ex-boyfriend Matt disliking both of them, ... By the end of the second season they are one tight knit group, even the ones that should be mortal enemies like the werewolves and vampires. Each time they get closer, it is because of a stronger enemy. Even Season 3's Big Bad seemed like this.
• The West Wing:
  • While the main cast were already like family before the assassination attempt at Rosslyn, the crisis, and the vigil over Josh can be seen as the moment where any loose ends locked into place.
  • In the fifth season, Leo's commitment to this trope is put to the test when an old war buddy who saved Leo's life is brought up on corruption charges and Leo is faced with either standing by his friend or doing the right thing.
• At the start of Whitechapel (TV Series), the detectives are a team but almost universally hate their new boss, DI Chandler, who thinks they're unprofessional slobs. Over the course of several stressful but revealing days together, he grows to respect them as real detectives and they decide he's not such an asshole after all. That doesn't stop the insults, especially between Chandler and Miles.
• Young Hercules:
  • the Pilot Movie shows that Hercules and Iolaus were initially at odds with each other, largely due to Iolaus being a thief in a local gang. They never hesitated to mess with each other, but the quest for the Golden Fleece and foiling Ares's takeover of Corinth make them the tight friends they are in the original series.
  • Immediately upon his introduction, Theseus rubs Hercules the wrong way and delights in antagonizing him. Facing a man-eating ogre and Theseus opening up about his Dark and Troubled Past cause the two young heroes to become friends.
• Zero (2021): Omar is at first at odds (violently) toward Sharif and his friends. However, once they discover he's not behind the criminal acts which have hit the Barrio and he can turn invisible, he becomes fast friends with them while they fight the true culprits.

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