Achilles In His Tent - Television Tropes & Idioms

Handy the hand puppet: Even now, he sulks in his tree house like Achilles in his tent!
Everyone else: (blank stares)
Handy the hand puppet: ...Achilles?... The Iliad?... It's Homer?... READ A BOOK!

The Human Ton: Your Tick won't come. He's sulking in his tent like a guy from Chile!
Arthur: ...Don't you mean 'Achilles'?
Handy the hand puppet: *To the Human Ton* You're making us look like jerks! I told you already, READ A BOOK!

— The Tick — "The Tick vs. Arthur's Bank Account"

A member of a team (often The Lancer) gets into a fight with everybody else and quits, vowing to never, ever return to the people whom they now hate so much. A threat then comes that is precisely suited to the missing member's talents. The other team members beg the quitter to come back, but with no success. The team head out without their ex-member, and are about to all be killed horribly.

Then the ex-member, seeing them about to die, realizes that he still cares about them after all. He leaps in with a Foe Tossing Charge, saves everybody, and all are reconciled. An Aesop about friendship and teamwork ensues.

When done well, this is tied directly into the Story Arc. The bad guys know about the quitter, and send a specialized threat precisely because the quitter is missing. When done badly, the Monster Of The Week just happens, by an amazing coincidence, to match the quitter's talents — and next episode, everybody will forget that the whole thing ever happened.

Sometimes, the quitter is a character who doesn't seem necessary or even desirable. The episode is thus about giving them some character development and showing both the audience and the characters why this person was on the team. Common with What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway characters, but has the danger of falling into an Eigen Plot.

This goes all the way back to Achilles sulking in his tent in Homer's Iliad (whence the trope name), making it Older Than Dirt. Although notably, he wouldn't come out until his best friend was actually killed trying to take his place.

Contrast Ten Minute Retirement, We Want Our Jerk Back. Often followed by a He's Back moment.

Compare with Just Fine Without You and Holding Out For A Hero.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Samurai Pizza Cats had an episode like this (No Talent Guido). Speedy and Polly get contracts for a singing career, leaving Guido feeling left out. The Monster Of The Week attacks Little Tokyo while Speedy and Polly are recording a song. Guido refuses to fight, saying that maybe he had better things to do, too. Francine sends the rescue team to fight the monster. They do well until the Rude Noise engage them. Guido finally snaps out of it, when he sees the rescue team get blown away. Just as Speedy gets his ass kicked and Polly is reduced to Damsel In Distress Guido makes his grand entrance, dispatches the ninja crows in a cooly excecuted Foe Tossing Charge and finishes off the monster in what is considered to be his Crowning Moment Of Awesome. This also served to give Guido some actual Character Development, showing him grow from simply a Handsome Lech to a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold.
This happened between Agumon and Masaru/Marcus in Digimon Savers. After they fell out, Masaru tried to fight alone. He managed to beat up some jerk ass baseball hooligans, but when the Monster Of The Week shows up (a Black Garurumon) that's when he runs into trouble. Kutamon even lampshades this by saying how Geogreymon would have been perfect to battle him.
Shinji does this in Neon Genesis Evangelion, after his Eva is forced to try to kill one of his best friends. His return in the following episode becomes his Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- Subverted, as with damned near everything else in Evangelion, when Shinji gets his ass kicked anyways, and mommy has to come to the rescue again, in a scene which is oddly mirrored in reverse in the movie with Asuka.
  - It's not stated outright but based on Shinji's Sync Ratio shooting up to an 'impossible' 400%, plus the next episode revealing that Shinji's body has vanished and his soul has been absorbed by the Eva in essentially the same way as his mother's was, it seems it really was Shinji's will driving the Eva this time.
Ken (also known as Mark) of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman / Battle Of The Planets fame made a positive habit of quitting in a snit or going awol for his own reasons at the worst possible times.
An inversion of this trope happens in a sports shounen manga, Fight no Akatsuki (Akatsuki's Fight), in that the leave-taking is actually an admirable and sensible thing. Two best friends, Akatsuki and Kiyo, are on opposite teams. The coach of the Opposing Sports Team orders his players to injure Akatsuki so bad that he can't play anymore. Kiyo hurls a basketball at the jerk's head, says nuts to that, and sits the game out rather than be a part of that. After they fail to stop Akatsuki, Kiyo returns to the game to play against his best friend fairly.
Wu Fei spends an entire episode of Gundam Wing doing this after failing to kill Treize; it takes words of encouragement from future Team Mom Sally, and the deaths of her mercenary friends, to snap him out of his funk.
One Piece had a somewhat subverted version of this trope play out over an entire two-year long story arc. Usopp protests when the crew decide to junk their broken-down old ship in favor of a shiny new one. Told to get over it by Luffy (in a rare scene where he actually issues an order as captain) Usopp chooses to leave the crew instead. Later, our heroes find themselves in huge trouble, so Usopp returns to help out, but, unwilling to face his former comrades, he shows up in an incredibly obvious disguise (which still manages to fool two of the more gullible crewmembers.) Despite helping save the day, he is still not asked back on the crew, (even though everyone really wanted him back) since he went against a direct order from his captain. Only when he apologizes without provocation (and, as it happened, does so very loudly) do our heroes welcome him back. Moral: Friendship is awesome, but respect the chain of command!
- I think he was also apologizing for doubting his friends. His other reason for leaving the crew was because he was afraid he was useless, and thought they might ditch him like they ditched the ship.
In Code Geass, Lelouch has a few moments like this after his various Trauma Congo Lines. The most unfortunately timed one is in R2 episode 19, where because he's in his chambers and not responding to calls, Schneizel is able to completely demolish Lelouch's already-tenuous credibility as Zero and reveal his secret identity and mind control power.
Sailor Mercury is prone to the more benevolent versions of the standard plot: Mercury, the mostly-useless Senshi who has no offensive abilities, is too nice to storm off. Instead, she's offered a chance to study abroad and further her goals of becoming a doctor, which will remove her from the Senshi. She returns in time to get her mid-season power upgrade and rescue the rest of the team from a monster only weak to ice, and she returns to the fold. Later in the season, she's attacked by a monster that causes paranoia and self doubt, and she hallucinates that everything everyone says to her is derisive and mean. Eventually, her faith that her friends would never say such horrible things allows her to break the spell and come back to everyone.
In Yu Yu Hakusho's Chapter Black Saga, Hiei, whose helping the heroes had until this point been reluctant, refuses to help them after hearing about the plan to open a portal to the Demon World, which would enable him, a B+ class demon to return there. He returns to help Yusuke against Kaname "Sniper" Hagiri, and is persuaded to help after being offered the Chapter Black tape.

ComicBooks

In Watchmen, the godlike Dr. Manhattan teleports to Mars when he "finds out" (though he already knew due to his prescience) that many of the people he was close to and/or came into contact with (including his ex-girlfriend) have contracted cancer. With the U.S.'s walking arsenal on another planet, the Soviets launch an invasion of Afghanistan, bringing the world on the brink of nuclear war. It turns out it was actually Ozymandias who gave them all cancer in order to get him to leave, allowing him to bring his plan to save the world into action.
- Well, not really, as Dr. Manhattan IS the whole team, not just one member.
The Fantastic Four was notorious for this happening, particularly with the Thing.

Film

"You're all clear, kid! Let's blow this thing and go home!"
- Then he does it again at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. However, he barely gets to spend two minutes in his tent this time before he discovers that Luke has gone missing and he pops back out again.
  - Well, he didn't so much sulk in is tent the second time as have a desire to keep bounty hunters from killing him. As the rest of Empire shows, that probably would've been a good idea.
Parodied somewhat in Team America World Police, where Gary is accused of this despite the fact that his abilities would have been obviously useless. He still plays the end of the trope straight, though.
- They were attacked, and without an actor they were dead in the water.

Literature

Named for the famous incident in The Iliad, which fits the formula almost perfectly, with an added touch. Agammemnon tries to coax Achilles back by meeting the demands he originally made before the new threat, but Achilles now refuses them, making it a Pound Of Flesh. Also, in stark contrast to modern TV examples, Achilles does not learn An Aesop about teamwork or friendship. He re-enters battle out of pure blood rage, after his best friend Patroclus kicks the bucket, and winds up forming an Odd Friendship with the enemy king instead of with Agammemnon.
- Although, he kind of had it coming when he went crying to his mother to convince the rest of the gods to let the Trojans start winning.
The Achilles situation is exactly mirrored in the final book of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series: Clarisse, daughter of Ares, refuses to let any of her siblings join the fight because they won a prize in battle that got taken away. Even after they get it back, she won't fight in the war. Eventually Clarisse's new best friend, Silena, daughter of Aphrodite, steals her armor, leads the rest of Ares's children into battle, and gets killed in the fight. Clarisse then rejoins the war, just like Achilles.
And I don't think any Harry Potter-savvy Troper could forget Ron's storming out in the seventh book.
This trope is played with in Tad Williams' Otherland series. In a memorable sequence, the protagonists find themselves in a computer simulated version of the actual Trojan War, filling the shoes of many of that story's heroes. Orlando is Achilles, but in a subversion, the reason he can't come out to fight is because he's genuinely too ill. The NPCs still treat him according to the story line, though, forcing Sam (as Patroclus) to don Achilles' armor and confront Hector. In trying to rescue him, the protagonists inadvertently trigger the same sequence of events as in the story.

Live Action TV

A rare non-combat example: the 1980s children's puppet show Letter People. In an early episode, Miss A gets into a fight with the other letters and quits. Since Miss A was the only vowel in the cast at this point, nobody can form a word without her and they have to beg her to come back. (Since she was also the only female letter introduced at this point, this may have been a sly way to teach feminism to the target audience.)
In Angel, Wesley left after Season 3 and his mistake with Connor, followed by about a season of intermittent contact with the team, during which they sometimes sorely missed his talent. He just sort of drifted back in about mid-season 4 with the whole Cordy crisis.
Also happened in an episode of Parker Lewis Cant Lose, involving Larry Kubiac and the football team.
This trope pretty much defines Sting's character in WCW through the entire year of 1997. Hell, we might as well call this trope Sting In The Rafters.
Not quite an example, but certainly an honorable mention: In Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Peak Performance", Data loses a game of strategy that he expected to win. Because of it, he loses confidence in his abilities and stays in his quarters, trying to determine what is wrong with his programming. Several crewmembers try to get him out of it and back on the bridge, one comparing his behavior to "sulking like Achilles In His Tent". He's convinced that he's not unreliable and takes his place on the bridge in time to assist in a sudden crisis and formulate the plan to save the crew.

Video Games

Happens in the Pandemonium segment of Final Fantasy IX, where Zidane Tribal, the main character, becomes depressed and alienated upon realizing himself to be a Genome and not "normal." Zidane goes off on his own, the party follows him, and eventually arrives in battle to rescue him.

Western Animation

Kim Possible: Ron quits when he thinks Kim is jealous of his new success at Bueno Nacho. Kim thinks she can do without the goofy sidekick, but it turns out he's vital. Him or his naked mole rat?.
Teen Titans: Cyborg quits after a fight with Robin, returns just in time to save everybody with the Foe Tossing Charge.
- This Troper seems to recall a similar incident in another episode, specifically set up so that Cyborg could betray the Big Bad when he revealed that he hadn't switched allegiances at all...
W.I.T.C.H.: Cornelia quits when the team fails to protect her best friend, Elyon Brown, from the bad guys. Without the full team, everybody else's powers are weakened (which strangely didn't happen the last time the girls had to send a partial team), and new monsters attack who Cornelia's powers would have been perfect for. She inevitably snaps out of her funk in time to save everybody. This turned out to be a turning point, giving Cornelia real Character Development for the first time.
A variation of this is show in Transformers: Beast Wars, where Tigatron does this after he accidentally kills a (non-Transformer) tiger friend in a firefight, and only returns after he realizes the bad guys aren't going to stop destroying if he does nothing. Somewhat unique in the fact that the teammate that attempts to coerce him back into the fray is a battle-hungry warrior who attempts to strongarm him under threat of death, which certainly didn't help matters any.
About What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway... Uh, yeah, Captain Planet had at least two episodes with Ma-Ti angsting, trying to quit the team and having to come back to save the day.
- Hell, Kwami, whose power was Earth, tried to quit once in the middle of an Heroic BSOD, and he was the de facto leader of the team.
  - Considering the fact that they were all inevitably useless, it's a wonder they didn't just call up the Cap any time something even minorly eco-unfriendly occurred. Or set their rings to automatic. Or something that would not require their actual involvement.
As the page quote reveals, this happened in The Tick to the titular character.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I think more than once, maybe even with more than one turtle. I would add details if I could remember them.

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