Follow TV Tropes

Following

Everyone Meets Everyone

Go To

Tony Stark: It’s good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collissions is unparalleled. And I’m a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into a green rage monster.
Bruce Banner: ... Thanks.

A type of Premiere where the cast of characters are collected together one by one. Some of them may already know each other (occasionally all of them) but this is the story of how they get together to be an identifiable unit of people. Hopefully, the episode won't end with someone saying "And I'm sure we'll have many great adventures together!"

Common in reality shows, when new people arrive in a season premiere.

Everyone Meets Everyone episodes can also come later in the series, often told through Flashback scenes. If Everyone Went to School Together, then a Flashback to the characters' adolescence reveals their first meeting. It is also a common Fan Fic premise.

Debut Queue is Everyone Meets Everyone drawn out over several episodes.

Compare Welcome Episode, In Medias Res. You All Meet in an Inn is an equivalent trope common (to the point of being a Dead Horse Trope) in Tabletop RPGs. For a sequel, or where the characters already have a shared Backstory, see Putting the Band Back Together.


Examples

    open/close all folders 
    Animation 
  • Agent Ali: In the 2nd episode of Season 2, aptly named "Mission: Orientation", Ali joins MATA Academy, and the senior teacher agents and young student agents introduce themselves to him one by one. Each of them state their name, get a Freeze-Frame Introduction, and demonstrate their special skill or gadget as an agent (except for Zass, who Moon says the name of and that he doesn't talk). Last of all is Rudy... who huffs and coldly says "Just call me Rudy." and walks off.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs (at least in the dub version). Saber Rider and April already know each other, professionally. Fireball and Colt know each other by reputation.
  • Lupin III has two examples so far.
  • Chapter 116 of Wagnaria!! not only showed how the main cast members got employed in the restaurant Wagnaria note , but also how their individual quirks actually got them the jobs in the first place!

    Comic Books 
  • An unusual case in Runaways, which opens with the main characters hanging out during what we are told is their parents' annual meeting. So while it's not the first time that they meet, not only can one assume their original meeting was somewhat similar, it is also when they first become a "team", making it their Avengers Assemble moment.
  • Used frequently in Super Hero comics where a new superhero team in complete. In fact, one of the easiest ways to decompress the origin story is to introduce the characters one per issue over a multi issue premiere arc.
  • All of Marvel Comics' heroes met for the first time in Contest of Champions #1. Most of them had already met, but this was the first time that every single superhero was in the same place at the same time (courtesy of the Cosmic Entity The Grandmaster, who needed to choose heroes for the contest). Note that only a handful of heroes participated in the actual contest, including some brand-new ones.
  • In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mina (the head of the League) is introduced to Nemo, then the two of them are sent to dredge Quatermain out of an opium den. They then go on to apprehend Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde in Paris, then catch Hawley Griffin molesting schoolgirls in a boarding school.
  • This is how Transformers: More than Meets the Eye begins, with most of the cast gradually making their way on-board the Lost Light throughout the first issue. The command trio are already on-board, Red Alert is checking newcomers at the front door (meeting Brainstorm, Rung and Swerve while there). Meanwhile, Ratchet, Chromedome and Rewind are making their way to the ship on foot (Rewind only being able to turn into a memory stick). They're interrupted by Whirl and Cyclonus trying to kill one another, only being interrupted when Tailgate manages to get free from a hole he'd been in for over four million years, before passing out.
    • According to the writer, there was supposed to be another character (Skids) introduced in the first issue, but with no space he gets moved to the second issue instead.

    Fan Fic 

    Film 

    Literature 
  • The New Testament begins this way with Jesus collecting his disciples one by one, making this one at least Older Than Feudalism.
  • In the first Animorphs book, the heroes meet at the local mall and decide to walk part of the way home together by taking a shortcut through an abandoned construction site. This is before any of them get involved with aliens or Voluntary Shapeshifting, and though they all already knew each other to some extent, they were not a collective group until this moment. Previous to this meeting their various relationships were one-to-one between the various members; Jake/Marco and Rachel/Cassie were best friends, Jake/Rachel were cousins, Jake/Tobias were minor friends after Jake saved Tobias from bullies at school, and Jake/Cassie had mutual crushes on each other. After this night they became a solitary group of friends committed to the fight against the Yeerks, but they had to maintain the cover that nothing had changed to avoid being discovered, so whenever they were in public they had to make it look like they were not "a group."
  • In the first Harry Potter book, Harry meets Ron, most of the Weasleys, Hermione, Neville, Crabbe, Goyle, Dumbledore, McGonagall etc. for the first time all on the same day. (His only previous contact with wizards was with Malfoy, Hagrid and Ollivander.) Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville and McGonagall are all meeting each other for the first time. Completely justified, as it's the first day of school and they're all either students or teachers.
  • Otherland does this for what seems to be most of the main characters by the end of the first book. However, it's subverted—not only do they get separated, a whole slew of new main characters appear.
  • The main cast are all gathered together as old friends at the beginning of Dragons Of Autumn Twilight, first book in the Dragonlance series.
  • The novel The Alienist gathers the team members for dinner at Delmonico's.
  • The entire first half of The Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo sets out with Sam, then adds Merry and Pippin, Aragorn joins up in Bree, and then the rest of the Fellowship gets assembled in Rivendell.
  • Water Margin has an entire chapter dedicated to this, but because there are 108 main characters - some of whom have noteable back stories - it's not until about seven-tenths into the novel that all the heroes are finally gathered at Liangshan Marsh.

    Live-Action Television 
  • In the pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy comes to Sunnydale. Giles reveals he is her Watcher. Later, Xander overhears them talking about vampires. Buffy saves Willow from a vampire attack. From this point on, Buffy, Giles, Xander and Willow are a team.
  • The Real World is a particularly notable Reality Show example.
  • Although two of the characters and part of the premise had been established in the film Stargate, the premiere of Stargate SG-1 was largely an Everyone Meets Everyone episode. Much the same can be said of the premiere of Stargate Atlantis.
  • Aversion: Heroes didn't do this till the very last episode of the first season, and even then some characters ended up being left out, simply because the series has a huge cast, with more on the way. An example: Hiro, a main character, did not meet the Haitian (a recurring character from season one) until season three IN THE PRESENT. They meet in the future and Hiro assumes present Haitian is just as bad as future Haitian. This was Lampshaded in season 2, when Hiro Nakamura encounters Matt Parkman and Nathan Petrelli. Hiro immediately shouts his (second) catchphrase: "Flying man!". Parkman's reaction is: "And who's this?" This was Lampshaded when a couple of comic geeks start arguing about whether or not Hiro and Claire had ever met.
    Sam: Kirby Plaza doesn't count. They never actually even talked.
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation starts with Picard taking command of his new ship, the Enterprise, and him and the crew getting acquainted. It turns out that some of the officers have past connections with each other, but for the most part, they're all strangers to each other.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine starts with the various Starfleet crew members arriving at the station and causing friction with the Bajoran Militia personnel who had been running it. Once again, a few cast members are old friends (or enemies).
    • In Star Trek: Voyager's pilot, about half of the ship's officers and skilled staffers were killed, forcing the captain to accept various Maquis rebels, area aliens, and even computer programs as replacements.
    • Star Trek: Enterprise starts with the titular ship's command crew being assembled for her launch.
  • As an Affectionate Parody of the above Star Trek franchise, The Orville also starts with Captain Mercer meeting his officers when he takes command of the titular Cool Starship.
  • Scrubs begins on the interns' first day at the hospital, as does Grey's Anatomy.
  • Firefly:
    • The pilot, "Serenity", added a number of characters to the existing crew (Book, Simon and River) with their first meeting as part of the plot. However, because the pilot was not shown as the first episode, the characters had to be (re)introduced to the audience without retconning the first episode out of continuity (although the film later retconned a number of aspects of the unaired pilot anyway).
    • There were also echoes of Everyone Meets Everyone in a second episode, "Out of Gas", which showed how the original crew met through flashbacks, and Mal's purchase of Serenity.
  • In a precise inversion of the Firefly example, Crusade was intended to start In Medias Res, but Executive Meddling demanded an Everyone Meets Everyone episode, which was severely rushed through production and is very unpopular with fans.
  • Although starting off with a Welcome Episode for Gwen Cooper, Torchwood used flashbacks to show how the rest of the team were recruited in the second season's episode "Fragments".
  • Lost goes for realism by averting this. While there are many introductions in the pilot, they're mostly done in small separate groups rather than with the entire cast, and not everyone meets everyone else. Multiple episodes in, some characters are still shown to only be vaguely acquainted with others; it takes about half a season before everyone is on a first name basis with everyone else.
  • In That '70s Show episode "Class Picture", the main characters, in search of a quote for their yearbook, start remembering how they first met.
  • How I Met Your Mother has "How I Met Everyone Else", where they tell Ted's new girlfriend the story about how Ted & Marshall, Lily & Marshall, Ted & Lily, Ted & Barney, and Ted & Robin (but not Barney & Robin! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just no.) met.
  • Power Rangers:
    • This happens in most seasons - the main cast all meet each other via coincidence, fate, or being gathered by the mentor.
    • Downplayed in the multi-season "Zordon era", which occasionally replaced individual Rangers (or small groups of them) mid-season, leading to more of a gradual shift.
    • Averted in Power Rangers Ninja Storm where most of the core cast already knew each other through the super-secret-Ninja School they attended. The core trio were already good friends, and their Mission Control was the sensei's son.
  • Averted big time in Solitary. The contestants never see or communicate with each other, save special occasions, and then only through a third party.
  • Maid Marian and Her Merry Men. The first episode is even called "How The Gang Got Together".
  • Community's Pilot Episode is one of these involving the formation of a Spanish study group.
  • The first episode of Leverage has Nate called in by Victor Dubinich to lead a con with Parker, Hardison, and Eliot. Sophie (an old friend/foe of Nate's) is called in later when the team is double-crossed and they need to take Dubinich down. By the end of the second episode, they decide to stay together as a team and pull more cons on deserving marks.
  • Made in Chelsea the first episode has many of the main characters meeting for the first time.
  • Game of Thrones starts out this way: Pretty much all of the principal cast (save the Targaryens, who are in exile) get to meet during a royal visit to Winterfell castle (even though not for the first time), under the guise of at least nominally civil coexistence. Needless to say, from that moment forward, they learn to properly detest each other, and things begin to fall apart almost immediately.
  • The first episode of Stargirl has Courtney go to a new school and sit down at the table of losers during lunch. Courtney and the other three students will eventually become the new Justice Society of America (specifically, Stargirl, Wildcat, Doctor Mid-Nite, and Hourman), although it'll take several episodes for them to actually become superheroes. And, of course, she already knows her step-father Pat, although she learns that he has a suit of Powered Armor in episode 2 and comes up with the name S.T.R.I.P.E. for him (he used to be called Stripesey back when he was the sidekick to the original Starman). In addition, many of the villains will show up in the first two episodes, even though they aren't introduced as villains.
  • The Brittas Empire: The first episode ("Laying The Foundations") is about Gordon Brittas' first day on the job. Whilst there, he (and the majority of the rest of the employees) meet each other for the very first time.

    Pinball 
  • Done in Avatar for "Na'vi Multiball", which requires the player to first gather up all six Na'vi.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Some tabletop RPGs encourage the GMs to make the players stage this, if their characters are to play in extended chronicles. Or maybe it's just to avert the You All Meet in an Inn scenario and its "you were drunk enough to risk your life with a bunch of shady strangers" implication. An example of this is The World of Darkness and Exalted

    Theater 
  • The second song in Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Sir has Alexander Hamilton meet Aaron Burr, Marquis de Lafayette, John Laurens, and Hercules Mulligan on the same day, in the same bar. The preceding song Alexander Hamilton throws in Thomas Jefferson, Phillip Hamilton, Eliza, Angelica, and Peggy Schuyler, George Washington, and James Madison, although the characters there are acting more as a Greek Chorus than actually meeting Hamilton.
  • Wicked can be considered this for The Wizard of Oz, as it introduces the Wicked Witches of the West and East, Glinda the Good Witch, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man as all having gone to college together, even going so far as to make Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and G(a)linda college roommates.
  • Bandstand 's third song, "I Know A Guy," connects all six guys in the Donny Nova Band- Donny meets Jimmy, an old acquaintance of his late army buddy, and then Jimmy introduces him to Davy, and so on.

    Webcomics 
  • Electric Wonderland began with a story in which Trawn meets and hires NJ, Shroomy, and Aerynn for her new independently-published newspaper, The Nettropolis Free Press.
  • A major component of the first storyline of The Fuzzy Five.

    Web Original 
  • In the first part of Flicker, the cast wakes up in an apartment and gets introduced one after another in the order of Charlie, Veronica, Liza, Annie, Vinny, Trey, Elaina, Kees, and Chlorine who doesn't show up until the end of the first episode. The only two who know each other are Charlie and Annie, as they are siblings.
  • Welcome to Poe, one of the first Whateley Universe stories, where six kids start their freshman year at Whateley Academy and find out they have something unusual in common. It's what makes such a diverse group into a team.

    Western Animation 
  • In every season of Total Drama that introduces a new cast (Island (2007), Revenge of the Island, Pahkitew Island, and Island (2023)), the first episode has all the campers meeting each other for the first time (with the exceptions of Katie and Sadie & Wayne and Raj who were already best friends before the show, Amy and Samey who are twins, and Emma and Chase who are exes). It takes up about the first 11 minutes of the very first episode of the series for this to get done, seeing how it's 22 contestants.
  • Futurama: Fry gets unfrozen, meets Leela (his career placement officer), runs away from her and meets Bender in a suicide booth. And together they meet the Professor, who is Fry's great-great-great (and so on) nephew, who hires the three of them (including Leela, who turned her back on her own career rather than force Fry into his designated role) as his new delivery crew. The second episode introduces the trio to the rest of the cast already employed at the Professor's delivery company: Hermes Conrad, the company's bureaucrat; Zoidberg, the doctor; and Amy, the college intern. A much later episode tells how the Professor and Dr. Zoidberg met.
  • Justice League:
  • Drawn Together, largely because of its premise as a reality show parody.
  • The Teen Titans animated series started off with the whole team already assembled, and the Everyone Meets Everyone episode was done as a flashback in season 5.
  • Code Lyoko started with everyone knowing each other and showed a Whole Episode Flashback episode, the two-parter "Xana Awakens", in a later season.
  • Meet the Robinsons is almost all about this. The children's book it is based on IS all about this.
  • Rugrats reveals how they met in the original final episode as a flashback.
  • In W.I.T.C.H. Irma, Taranee, Cornelia and Hay Lin were already friends prior to the start of the series. Will moves in and is taken into their circle (mostly because Hay Lin's grandmother is ready to set them up to be a team). Then Caleb shows up (and gets captured soon after) and when Will gets captured, the other girls meet Blunk in the process of saving both Will and Caleb.
  • The first episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, in which Twilight Sparkle meets the rest of the mane cast for the first time, and their quest to defeat Nightmare Moon helps them bond as a group of friends. (In subsequent episodes, it's also implied that some of the other ponies knew each other but are only now becoming proper friends.)
  • Prior to The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Iron Man had built Ultron robots with Ant-Man, and partied with Ant-Man's companion, The Wasp, a few times. Since Iron Man owns a suit of Hulkbuster armor, some could assume that he also already met the Hulk. The first episode that aired on Disney XD, "Breakout", marks the first time they fight crime together. It also marks the first time any of them meet and team up with The Mighty Thor.
  • Aaahh!!! Real Monsters made this the series finale, with a How We Got Here setup showing Ickis, Oblina and Krumm's arrival at the Academy.
  • The first episode of Dinotrux features an unusually friendly T-Trux named Ty moving into a new area after his old home was destroyed by a volcano were he makes an unlikely friend and realizes Dinotrux work much better together than alone, and subsequently recruits the group of friends that features in the rest of the series.
  • Defenders of the Earth: Most of "Escape from Mongo", the first episode in the series, is spent bringing the Defenders together, a process which is helped somewhat by the fact that the team consists of three parent/child duos and one adoptive parent/adopted child duo. In addition, Mandrake and Lothar are Heterosexual Life-Partners, so, with the addition of LJ and Kshin, half the team is already assembled at the start of the series, which opens with Flash's spaceship crash-landing in the grounds of Mandrake's mansion. Rick joins when Flash, Mandrake and Lothar rescue him from Mongo; the Phantom and Jedda are recruited shortly after. It's also indicated that Mandrake knew Flash and the Phantom, at least by reputation, prior to his first onscreen meetings with the two characters.
  • Time Squad: The first episode has the two main adult characters, Buck Tuddrussel and Larry 3000, partners in a time police organization from the far future, accidentally zap into the bedroom of an orphaned child named Otto Osworth in the year 2001. Otto convinces Tuddrussel to take him with them, as he knows more about history than they do. Thus, the incompetent duo becomes a successful trio and eventually a makeshift family where they admittedly call Otto's "kidnapping" an "adoption" instead.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

MATA Academy Orientation

The newly added cast of Season 2 are those in MATA Academy. Ali is the newest student, so the others introduce themselves to him. The episode gives a lot of freeze-frame shots that state their names as a result.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (1 votes)

Example of:

Main / EveryoneMeetsEveryone

Media sources:

Report