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Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and no town or house divided against itself will stand. And if Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself; how, then, will his kingdom stand?
Matthew 25
The opposite of Locked In A Room: the ensemble of diverse characters starts to argue and turn against each other during intense situations. E.g. being boarded up in a house/building/store when there are rampaging viruses/ zombies/ aliens/ vampires/ Werewolves/ Jehovah's witnesses or what have you looming outside ( or inside) trying to get to you. Which leads to paranoia, frustration, and disagreement among the group when it comes to fixing the dilemma.
When this occurs against something threatening to wipe out humanity as a whole (such as the ever-popular Zombie Apocalypse) this usually leads to An Aesop for the survivors (or the audience) about how we need to look beyond our differences and focus on the big picture, or a scathing indictment of humanity's self-destructiveness and how we can sometimes be even worse than the monsters we're fighting.
This trope is named for a famous Biblical quote that Lincoln later borrowed about how "a house divided against itself cannot stand," though it is also referred to in writing circles as "Scorpions in a Box."
This is not infrequently combined with an Ontological Mystery.
Subtrope of Hanging Separately.
Occasionally, a villain will try to set this up deliberately. This never works. See also: We ARE Struggling Together
Typical Character types that are found in this trope are:
Examples
Anime
- Infinite Ryvius. After the adults die, it takes all of two episodes for the children to start turning on one another. The vicious infighting continues even in the middle of battles.
- In Naruto, there's a hardlined military faction that works against members of Konoha that follow the teachings of the 3rd Hokage, which includes, among others, the main character and the 5th Hokage. There are also other factions in the Land of Fire who want the fifth gone. None of these groups particularly liked the third Hokage either.
- This came out particularly strongly in the first arc of Umineko No Naku Koro Ni because the characters are stuck in a Closed Circle where Everyone Is A Suspect.
- In the RS arc of Pokemon Special, the Gym leaders realize that there's a terrorist group out there planning to screw over Hoenn. Since Aqua and Magma work against each other, the Gym Leaders argue about which group are the real bad guys, not realizing that though the two teams have opposing goals, both groups are terrorists. The Gym Leaders probably would have duked it out between themselves if not for the fact that Groudon and Kyogre start destroying the region.
- Though, in all fairness, Tate and Liza weren't entangled due to their duty to guard the Red and Blue Orbs, and Norman knew better and refused to take sides. Shame Sapphire wasn't at this particular meeting, or she could have vouched against them both, being a witness to the heinous deeds of both groups.
Comic Books
- Marvel's Civil War arc has caused this among its heroes.
- Happens to the girls holed up in the lighthouse in the Battle Royale manga.
- And they all wind up dead, especially the instigator. Oh so much.
- So far the group in The Walking Dead comic manages to avoid this...for the most part.
Film
Literature
- The story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, which provided the inspiration for the movie The Thing. A shape-shifting alien is thawed out, and proceeds to start killing people in an isolated Antarctic research station. Everybody is understandably paranoid and scared to death. Besides being eaten to death of course.
- Much of Tanya Huff's Smoke and Mirrors—in which a television crew gets locked in a Haunted House—consists of this trope; they don't descend to killing each other, but...not by much.
- In the Stephen King short story The Mist, this happens to around 80 people stuck in a supermarket. The main threat is a deeply religious woman who urges the others to make a blood sacrifice to stop the monsters outside.
- Will Navidson and his significant other Karen move into the house because they are trying to avert this trope, but the strange happenings in House Of Leaves don't allow for that sort of healing.
- In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, wizards have a weird, formalized version of this. Wizards get along about as well as a sackful of soggy cats, something apparently programmed into them at a genetic level (or at least the level that passes for genetics on the Disc). Unseen University was created to redirect that murderous energy into a strict hierarchy where a cutting note could do nearly as much damage to one's opponent as a hurled fireball, but with a much smaller risk of bystanders being turned into charcoal (or possibly haddocks). They still cheerfully murder one another with creative booby traps, but things have settled somewhat now, since the current head of the University has proven himself more or less unkillable (and he sleeps with loaded crossbows, although he's a kind man, and probably won't shoot you in both ears).
Live Action TV
- In Babylon 5, the alliance against the Shadows turned in against itself when it was left leaderless by Sheridan's death. Order was only restored when The Messiah returned from the dead.
- Happens from time to time on Lost. Often a main character will stop the fighting and remind everyone that there are other threats to their survival without them turning on each other. Jack, Locke, and Hurley have delivered such speeches, beginning with Jack's "live together, die alone" speech in an early episode.
- One interesting example, from season two: Sawyer and Michael, essentially Locked In A Room on the wreckage of their raft, start bickering about whose fault it was that Walt was kidnapped by the Others. This becomes the issue that their being Locked In A Room allows them to overcome.
- Pretty much the entire episode of Midnight from Doctor Who is an extended Scorpion Box.
- The Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street".
- The Outer Limits episode "Abduction", An alien kidnaps five high school students, and tells them that one must be killed. They must decide which of them it will be. And of course they're from completely different social groups. Ray, a typical jock, Danielle, the hottest girl in school, Jason, a stereotypical geek, Brianna, a devout religious girl, and Cody, a social outcast. So needless to say they don't get along. But then again it was a test. And the ensemble was picked for that very reason.
Professional Wrestling
- This was offered as the main reason the nWo was so successful against WCW; the WCW wrestlers were a bunch of gloryhounds with a ton of unsettled issues against each other and a desire for the spotlight, while the nWo operated like a well-oiled machine.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000's Imperium intentionally invokes this trope with every institution, organization and military unit mistrusting everyone else. This does leave them with a bureaucratic nightmare where military or humanitary aid for worlds may arrive a century after it was needed, but it also keeps the human race comparably safe from the danger of a high-ranking defector. This lesson was learned after two bloody civil wars, one of them tearing humanity out of its beginning golden age.
Web Original
- A subversion of the villainous version happens in Survival Of The Fittest - Burton Harris/Ken Lawson plays off the paranoia and reservations of a group of students hanging out in a cottage in order to get the entire uneasy alliance to dissolve. Burton/Ken wasn't exactly a villain though, just a dick who thought that the place was too crowded.
Western Animation
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