Mainly an anime trope, in any given show where there is any form of global conflict, or speculative fiction of any kind for that matter, there will most often be only 2-4 countries involved, all of which could be described as superpowers, it is mostly seen in
Real Robot shows, though I'm sure there are other examples. Obviously this isn't exactly true to real life, as even during the cold war most of the world were not a part of the USA and the USSR (or even their alliances). If there are two factions they will fairly often be
The Empire and
The Alliance, though usually neither is portrayed as "good" in this setup (ala
Legend Of The Galactic Heroes, or even Gundam). Of course, these "superpowers" are frequently
Hufflepuff House.
See also
Space Filling Empire.
Examples:
- Most iterations of Gundam, sometimes there are smaller neutral powers involved, but even they tend to be a collection of neutral powers allied together like Orb in Gundam Seed.
- Code Geass has the world initially divided up between the EU, Chinese confederation and Holy Brittanian Empire.
- Legend Of The Galactic Heroes has the known galaxy divided between The Empire and The Alliance.
- Xam'd Lost Memories seems to have things divided up between the Northern Government and Free Colonies.
- Last Exile also has two Superpower factions.
- The Cold War- A lot of the non-NATO and Warsaw Pact countries did lean to one camp or the other. Cuba's membership of the Non-Aligned Movement meant that the term was meaningless...
- On the cold war, even many Nato countries would have hesitated in taking part in any direct US offensives, it certainly isn't a fully unified alliance, unlike that which is frequently shown, which are usually as unified as the USA would be today, which is to say that there are dissenting voices, and varying opinions throughout, but they are politically unified under a single leader. Take for instance Yugoslavia, they pretty much split from the soviets quite early, while staying nominally communists, most of the factions were quite superficial. The same occurred with the Chinese too.
- Romania's Warsaw Pact relationship too wasn't the strongest- they sent athletes to the 1984 Olympics when the others boycotted.
- The Netherlands declined to host Pershing II and Gryphon missiles, IIRC.
- Warcraft and World Of Warcraft. Of course, when all countries are run by either elves/humans or orcs, with the occasional Undead anarchy, it's more or less a given.
- In Stargate SG 1, only the most powerful countries are ever shown to know about the Stargate program (Most notably Russia, but also France, England.. Germany maybe too?)
- Not as much the case in Stargate Atlantis:
- Rodney is Canadian.
- Radek is Czech.
- There's a recurring extra with a Belgian Flag.
- Nuclear-war sim DEFCON does this with the world divided up into six equal powers. It works for game balance, but makes for frankly odd geopolitics: South America and Africa are united nuclear powers able to field bomber fleets, navies and ICBMs equal to North America or Russia. Then there's the rest-of-the-world Asian bloc, a unified empire of Japan, China, India, Pakistan, both Koreas, the entire Middle East and everything in between.
- India wasn't that non-aligned. It has more MiGs than anywhere else that isn't Russia.
- And Cuba wanted to be nonaligned, but redistribution of lands was a big no-no to the US, so they were forced into the clutches of the USSR. Who used them for their stupid missile base and then ABANDONED them wen things went hot. Since then, Cuba has mostly been on its own side.
- The weird thing about the Asian bloc in DEFCON is that it's a grab-bag of countries that don't play well together: Iran/Iraq/Israel, Japan/China, India/Pakistan and so on.
- Amusingly,Australia is neutral.Considering the game, probably a good idea.
- Averted in Final Fantasy XII. The entire plot revolves around how much it sucks for little country Dalmasca to be caught in-between the two big superpowers.
- I'd say FFXII is playing it straight, as it is mentioned that there is a neutral in between power, every so often.
- Since the two empires do not cover the whole world and unexplored regions still exists, it might be a subversion: the two empires (Archadia and Rozzaria) are so dominant in the region around Dalmasca that they seem to control the whole world, but in FFTADS, they are nothing more than countries outside of the region of Jyland were the story take place.
- A questionable call would be Planetes, where the notion of the third word nations is plot significant...except that there's really only one nation looked at, and in effect, it's superpower vs. third world as much as it would be in terms of superpower vs. superpower.
