Experienced Protagonist

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you."

— Bryan Mills, Taken

This character starts out experienced. They have finished training, have attained most of their power, and made a name for themselves. The audience may only learn of their Back Story in a prequel, short flashback, or a brief mention, if they learn any backstory at all.

On the low-experience end of comparisons for this trope, we have From Zero to Hero, Ordinary High-School Student and Farm Boy, who are complete novices, Rookie Red Ranger who is a novice compared to the others on his team, and Child Prodigy and Skilled, but Naive protagonists, who are young and inexperienced but are quick learners. A highly experienced supporting character would be The Mentor, who is experienced and skilled but only tasked in the story with teaching a protagonist, rather than being one themselves.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ryu Sasaskura, the protagonist of Bartender was already a renowned bartender with the title of "Glass of Gods" when the story starts.
• Berserk: The anime and manga begin with the Black Swordsman Arc when the protagonist Guts is already an expert demon-slayer and one of the greatest master swordsmen in the world. Even in the Golden Age film trilogy which introduces him as a 15-year-old mercenary, he has already been training since age six and fighting since age nine, and has gotten so strong that he is able to defeat a famous and dreaded opponent like Bazuso the Grey Knight. In all versions the Training from Hell that he went through as a kid in order to get that way is shown in flashback a good while after his introduction to the audience as a character.
• By the time the events of Black Lagoon start, the Lagoon Crew in Roanapur are experienced in handling cargo work in Southeast Asia, which sometimes does lead in to hijacking ships if needed to. Dutch and Revy are experienced fighters with either bare hands or small arms, while Benny is familiar with hacking and technology thanks to some of his years in university before he was forced to drop out. While Rock is new to the crew, he is familiar with the business world due to his former career as a Salaryman, along with being fluent in several languages, which causes him to be heavily involved in Lagoon business despite his lack of combat experience, though Hotel Moscow takes advantage of his language skills.
• Shinichi Kudo from Case Closed is already a famous Amateur Sleuth from the start and he has solved many crimes and mysteries before the beginning of the story.
• Chainsaw Man: While amateurish and unskilled, Denji has actually already been a Devil Hunter for the Yakuza since childhood by the time the story proper kicks off. By the end of Part 1, he's taken this to a whole new extreme when he finally reappears in Part 2, Denji has killed so many powerful Devils that no opponent he faces can even hold his attention.
• Coffin Princess Chaika: Toru and Akari Acura are experienced mercenaries who take on the job of protecting Chaika as she searches for her father's remains.
• Spike Spiegel and Jet Black from Cowboy Bebop are characters with skills and pasts from the very start. Spike was a head enforcer for a huge gang and Jet was a notorious police officer nicknamed "The Black Dog" for his tenacity.
• Decim from Death Parade has been an established arbiter for 5 years ^note it's implied that time doesn't move like normal in this world, so it may be longer in human years before the events of the series, in contrast to his assistant, who is a Naïve Newcomer and the Audience Surrogate.
• The main party in Delicious in Dungeon is a seasoned adventuring team who have already gone on many Dungeon Crawling expeditions, even the new member(s) they pick up. They wouldn't be able to delve as deep as they do, slowly unraveling the mystery of the dungeon, if they weren't already highly competent. They aren't superhuman, though, and they still get into plenty of misadventures. Dungeon crawling is a dangerous business!
• Rintaro in Dragons Rioting starts his journey into high school after ten years of rigorous martial arts training have turned him into an extraordinary badass, even by the standards of the Action Girl-packed school he's found himself enrolled in.
• Fairy Tail: While Lucy is relatively new to the world of guilds, Natsu on the other hand has already established his reputation as a destructive fire mage known as "Salamander". The same applies to his fellow guildmates, all of whom have become well versed in their respective magic powers.
• Both Kiritsugu Emiya and Saber in Fate/Zero. Kiritsugu is an expert magus killer who is returning to his old job after a ten-year hiatus. In Saber's case, being famous (or infamous) as a powerful warrior is a prerequisite for being summoned as a Heroic Spirit.
• Fist of the North Star: Kenshiro is already an accomplished martial artist who knows the techniques of Hokuto Shinken, and was designated to become the successor of the style before the story started.
• Souma Yukihira from Food Wars! has 12 years of cooking experience from working in his family restaurant before he enters the first high school years of Totsuki Culinary School.
• Frieren: Beyond Journey's End: The protagonist, Frieren, is a mage that has already studied magic for a thousand years and is one of the most well-respected mages in the world. Subverted with her new companions, Fern is a prodigal, but still learning mage that Freiren is teaching while Stalk is the apprentice of her old party member that is Unskilled, but Strong.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward and Alphonse Elric are already experienced alchemists who have been working for the Amestris military for three years when the story begins. The first anime adaptation in particular provides several episodes worth of flashbacks. Gleefully lampshaded by one of its earliest Omake strips.
• Sagara Sousuke of Full Metal Panic! is a Child Soldier who has several years of combat experience in Afghanistan. Kurz Weber was a mercenary who fought in many countries and Melissa Mao was an ex-American Marine before the three worked together in Mithril.
• The Getter Team of Ryoma, Hayato, and Benkei have already fought in one war with the Getter in Getter Robo Armageddon before the first episode. Becomes a plot point when they eventually pilot the Shin Getter Robo against Professor Saotome, Cohen, and Stinger in the Metal Beast Dragon^note Invader copy of the Getter Robo G towards the end of the series, as the initial phase of the battle is ultimately decided by which team can combine their Getter Robo the fastest.
• Gintoki at the start of Gintama is a war veteran and has already retired from fighting against the aliens.
• Miho Nishizumi of Girls und Panzer was a member of Kuromorimine's tankery team before she transferred to Ooarai high school. When the school needed to re-establish their tankery club, she was chosen as their new commander. Miho's experience in tankery goes beyond that of Kuromorimine, as she comes from a family of tankery practitioners known for its strictness and winning tradition.
• GTO: The Early Years: Ryuji and Eikichi are already well-known delinquents around Shonan, and don't really go through any training or gain new skills as the series progresses. Even in the Origins Episode Bad Company, they're experienced at fighting, they just aren't friends yet.
• Alucard from Hellsing is an insanely powerful vampire who personally commanded armies and fought in battles even as a mortal. The centuries since then have only made him stronger. This makes him markedly different from the antagonist vampires he encounters, who tend to be "young" and unused to calling on their abilities in combat.
• Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: Bard is a knight with 40 years of experience in his belt who just retired to have a quiet end to his life. Even with regular back pains, only a few can rival him in a fight.
• Ditto for Diablo in How Not to Summon a Demon Lord — max level with a set of powerful items, including a ring that reflects all magic back at the caster. Also, since his experience comes from a video game where Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, his practical combat experience is way beyond that of most adventurers in his new world.
• In Initial D, Takumi Fujiwara is already a professional racing-caliber driver when the series begins, with five years of experience driving his trusty AE86 Trueno; this is demonstrated at the end of the first episode when he easily beats Keisuke in an impromptu race and later in the same arc when he does it again in a proper race. His Character Development primarily comes from him having to adapt to a racing environment, rather than the tofu delivery runs that his father Bunta sends him on as part of secretly training his racing abilities.
• Tatsuya Shiba from The Irregular at Magic High School is acknowledged as one of the best magicians of his generation, being an expert in several fields of magic, an accomplished fighter and tactician and several high-ranking students at his school defer to him, if only out of respect. His most powerful attack has the equivalent strength of a tactical nuke.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Jotaro Kujo starts off with full usage of his Star Platinum and superabundant intelligence that he would later use to provide assistance to later protagonists.
• Koko's bodyguards in Jormungand (The majority) are veteran from various police and military forces. Jonah is an exception, although he had combat experience as a child soldier in West Asia.
• Tetsuya Kuroko and Taiga Kagami of Kuroko's Basketball are already experienced basketball players prior to the start of the story. Taiga got his experience from playing in America while Kuroko was part of The Generation of Miracles.
• Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit begins with Balsa being an experienced bodyguard. A flashback reveals her deceased master, Jiguro, began teaching her at age 12. By the time she was 16, Balsa could already fight better than the men in their area, and spent the next twelve years honing those skills.
• Downplayed with Monkey D. Luffy in One Piece; even before his intense two-year training, Luffy is already a skilled fighter when the story begins proper (after his brief childhood introduction) — having trained for 10 years on his home island.
• By the time the story begins, Momonga in Overlord (2012) is already a max level spellcaster, equipped with a plethora of extremely powerful items, and is the leader of one of the most powerful guilds in YGGDRASIL. When he's pulled into another dimension alongside with the headquarters of his guild (containing the accumulated wealth, equipment, and all of his guild's powerful created NPCs, who are now fanatically loyal to him), he is already all set to become, well, exactly what the name of the franchise implies.
• The Prince of Tennis: By the time the series begins, Ryoma Echizen has earned several titles in America as a skilled tennis player, at least for his age group.
• The eponymous warrior general in Rain is already an established Living Legend who is rumored to be invincible. As a child, he was helpless when his childhood friend and her grandmother were murdered by bandits. He then swore to become the strongest man in the world so that he would always be able to protect others. By the start of the series he's already become a Master Swordsman who wields an Infinity +1 Sword who also possesses Super-Strength and magic taken from a dragon he slew.
• Zigzagged in The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World. Red is a sentai hero who defeated the Big Bad before being transported to Idola's world. Because of this, he's already a One-Man Army with all of his Mid-Season Upgrades, but he's completely lost in the world he finds himself in and needs Idola to guide him through everything.
• Inverted in Rise Of The Outlaw Tamer as the main character, Lint, has the least adventuring experience of anyone in his party given that he starts the series as a D-Rank adventurer while his (eventual) companions were A-Rank or S-Rank at that time.
• The heroes from Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers, the chosen warriors must be among the best in the world.
• In Rurouni Kenshin, Himura Kenshin is a war veteran, has been an accomplished swordsman for over a decade, and is a strong contender for the best swordsman in Japan by the time the series starts.
• Shanon and Raquel Casull of Scrapped Princess are a powerful Sword and Sorcerer duo, right from the start, and tasked with safeguarding their adopted sister, Pacifica. They were genetically engineered that way to ensure Pacifica would be well protected.
• The eponymous heroine of Saki introduces herself as one who can play mahjong, but pales in comparison to fellow student Nodoka Haramura, a former junior high champion. It is later revealed that Saki has been playing mahjong since she was a little girl and her skills far outshine even Nodoka's; as the mahjong club president points out, breaking even in points three times against a full table is not something even professionals can do deliberately.
• The Seven Deadly Sins: The titular group are already established Living Legends within the setting at the start of the series.
• Slayers starts off with Lina Inverse as an already powerful sorceress.
• Among the freshmen joining Kitauji High School's band in Sound! Euphonium, Kumiko Oumae, Reina Kousaka and Sapphire Kawashima all have years of experience under their belts with their instruments and all readily make the cut for competitions. In the former two's cases, they handily beat (most) of their seniors in skill.
• In Spriggan, some of the protagonists who are Spriggan operatives such as Yu Ominae, Jean Jacquemonde and Tea Flatte are experienced in combat in their respective fields with Ominae being an ex-black ops child soldier commando for the US Army.
• Spy X Family: The fake married couple, Loid and Yor Forger aka Agent Twilight and Thorn Princess, already started off as an expert spy and assassin respectively. Agent Twilight is the best super spy in the entire country who has completed an innumerable number of missions while Thorn Princess is a renowned professional assassin with a success rate of 100%.
• Sword Art Online:
  • Kirito was a beta tester of the eponymous VRMMO. His knowledge of the game's mechanics give him an edge over other players at the game's launch, and allows him to adapt to other VR games fairly quickly.
  • By the time the "Fairy Dance" story arc begins, Suguha Kirigaya has been playing Alfheim Online for some time, allowing her to mentor Kirito when he joins.
  • Sinon has been playing Gun Gale Online for long enough by the start of the Phantom Bullet arc that she has made a name for herself as one of the deadliest sharpshooters in the game.
• Arawn of Tears to Tiara is a thousand-year-old recently awakened Fallen Angel who is virtually immortal, rather strong, in possession of holy magic, a skilled swordsman, and a war veteran who leads the good guys, serves as The Mentor to Deuteragonist Arthur, and is one of a few characters who know anything about what is really going on. Interestingly, he was awakened by a villain hoping to make use of his power, who failed to realize that Dark Is Not Evil and promptly paid for it with his life.
• The Testament of Sister New Devil: In most other animes of this genre, the moment Mio and Maria reveal their true nature as devils and attempt to brainwash Basara would be the moment the hapless protagonist is cowed by his decidedly not-normal new siblings: instead, Basara reveals that he's the strongest one in the room at that point. Whereas Mio can barely control her powers at will and Maria is an average-strength demon, Basara is already an experienced Hero who effortlessly blocks Maria's attack and terrifies the two of them into backing down.
• In Tokyo Shinobi Squad, the Narumi-kai is already one of the famous shinobi squads in Tokyo for their track record and refusal to take dirty jobs. Their leader, Jin Narumi, is especially famous and powerful to the point that he's gotten repeated offers for lucrative contracts with politicians and corporations that he's turned down in favor of freelance work for the downtrodden.
• The titular character of Toriko is one of the "Four Heavenly Kings", the four best Gourmet Hunters of their generation, having great strength, high skills and much knowledge end experience from the start. That's why there is Komatsu as the Audience Surrogate.
• In Trigun, Vash the Stampede is a Really 700 Years Old expert gunslinger with a tremendous bounty on his head.
• Trinity Blood has Abel Nightroad, who is an veteran Vatican agent and a centuries-old powerful vampire with a lot of experience under his belt.
• Lux Arcadia from Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle is the legendary Black Hero that once defeated the Arcadia Empire. By definition, that makes him the best warrior of his generation, but he keeps that under wraps to prevent political backlash.
• Kousei Arima from Your Lie in April is a former Child Prodigy who was Famed In-Story for his piano genius until he experienced a breakdown at a concert 2 years ago. Much of the story involves him regaining his ability to play, as well as the reaction of the music world and his Unknown Rivals to his return to the scene.
• Downplayed in Yu-Gi-Oh!. When Yugi Muto is introduced, he's already a fair and knowledgeable duelist, but he's still mostly a hobbyist who's never competed in a tournament. That quickly changes...
• In contrast to his predecessors except for Yusei, Yusaku Fujiki from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS was already active as Unknown and later, Playmaker for years before the series began. After his first public fight, he's already hailed by duelists as the number one hero and remains undefeated by the end of the anime.
• In Yuri!!! on Ice, the protagonist Yuri Katsuki has been figure skating since he was very young. He's now in the twilight years of his career without too much international success, but he is still Japan's top skater and is actually extremely talented when not crippled by his extreme performance anxiety.

Comic Books

• Unlike most other superheroes introduced during the Golden Age, Batman is already an experienced crime-fighter in his first story. It would take six more issues before Batman's tragic Superhero Origin was revealed.
• The Disney Ducks Comic Universe set in the Paperinik New Adventures continuity all have these:
  • Being a continuation of the "Classic" Paperinik stories, Paperinik New Adventures have Donald already experienced as a superhero, though mostly through fighting adversaries look common small-time crooks, petty theives, and the occasional street-level supervillain dressed in homemade costumes and wielding weapons put together in their garage, whose greatest villainous ambitions was either large-scale vandalism or robbing the local bank or jewellery store. The new enemies he faces come from the higher end of the Sorting Algorithm of Evil, and include stuff an invading alien empire and supervillains boosted by more powerful and sophisticated technology, and in some cases capable of time travel and dimension hopping, and at first they prove to be a little more than he's used to deal with, but his past experience allows him to adapt fast. This becomes a plot point in the first issue of PK2: his well of experience working for Scrooge is what allows Donald to land a job for Starcorp.
  • In Double Duck, Donald proves himself an amazing spy thanks to the immense experience at everything needed for it he acquired as Paperinik, dealing with his creditors (openly stated to be the source of his amazing lateral thinking, going adventuring with Scrooge, and actually having been a spy in the past (the PKNA crossover "Time Crime" mentions the PIA, Scrooge's Private Intelligence Agency that Donald works for from time to time).
  • In the most obscure part of the continuity, the Junior Woodchucks "Master Story", Duckburg's Junion Woodchuck troop already has experience dealing with the unexpected due many adventures going awry (and there's no recruit involved), with Huey, Dewey and Louie having more than everyone except possibly the troop leader due having gone on adventures with Scrooge. Hence them adapting remarkably quickly to the Alien Invasion.
• Judge Dredd started out with twenty years as a judge already under his belt on the streets of Mega City One. Four and a half decades later, he's still a judge due to the comic's aversion to Comic-Book Time. Given the over the top cases, supernatural events, and wars in the Big Meg, Dredd has Seen It All.
• Sonic the Comic: By the time of the first issue, Sonic is already an established hero who has thwarted Robotnik not once, but twice.
• Superman:
  • Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man: When Superman turns up, Spider-Man mentions he has heard of Supes all his life. His math is quite correct, since Pre-Crisis Clark started out his hero career when he was a teenager and he is over ten years older than Peter, who is a college student.
  • In A Mind-Switch in Time, adult Superman changes places with his teenager self. Young Lex Luthor cannot beat Superman because the adult hero knows all his tricks, including those Lex have not come up with yet. Likewise, Superboy does not know how to beat Euphor because he lacks experience to deal with emotion eaters who use innocent meat shields.
  • In Supergirl (1982), Kara flatly tells Blackstar to drop her threats and taunts because villains have been taunting her since she was fifteen, and she has heard all of them after zipping across the galaxy for over one decade.

Fan Works

• Amazing Fantasy:
  • Peter has been Spider-Man for more than 30 years by the events of the story. He's famous throughout New York and the world, approaching most of his problems with a Seen It All attitude.
  • In "The Tangled Web of Spider-Woman #9", Melissa has been Spider-Woman for at least several months by the events of the story. She has her own lab, her own Spider-Mobile, Transformation Sequence, among other things. She's also moved to New York to get an internship there.
  • In "Let the Devil In", Bakugou has been Venom for several months, becoming the town's most infamous vigilante as he wages a one-man war against Carnage and his followers.
• Ambience: A Fleet Symphony: Despite his youth, Damon is already a trained helicopter pilot, fought in various big battles and done a lot of things long before he gets Murakumo.
• Zigzagged in Arc Corp. Jaune is new to running his own Arc Corp office, has no combat training, and is terrible at coming up with lies on the spot to help hide the Masquerade. However, he's still someone who has dealt with anomalies for his entire life, meaning that while Blake often has to take the role of the muscle, he's insanely good at the investigative part of the job and figuring out how the duo should engage with any given anomaly.
• Batman A Better Class of Criminal stars an original Batman villain, nearly twenty years after he became one.
• Izuku in The Bloodstained Hero, is one of, if not the best prospective hero at UA because of his time fighting in the Dream. He is skilled enough to fight Mirio on even footing, having a large amount of experience in fights where he had to dodge fast, powerful attacks and gimmicks.
• In Cheshire (Miraculous Ladybug), Marinette has been a heroine for years by the time canon rolls around, having begun her crimefighting exploits as a young child. This is half of the reason the other heroes come across as so incompetent to both Marinette and the citizens of Paris, the other half being that most of them are just plain bad at the job.
• Child of the Storm:
  • The Avengers are all this by default by the start of the story, with experience varying from years to decades to centuries.
  • By the middle of Ghosts, Harry (who already had some experience thanks to his first two years at Hogwarts) and the younger cast qualify as this, thanks to a number of truly awful experiences and offscreen training, with the Mirror Image arc contrasting Harry's brisk professionalism and combat skill with Clark's more amateurish approach and excellent control but lack of precision. The contrast isn't entirely flattering for Harry, however, as it highlights his Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour.
• Darling in the FranXX: Homecoming: Code 059 and Kyu have been Parasites for over a year by the time they arrive at Squad 13, with 059 having been the leader of their previous squad. Their experience leads to Code 059 being promoted to Ichigo's Number Two.
• A Dovahkiin Spreads His Wings is about Jon Whitewolf coming back to his homeland of Westeros after singlehandly averting the Apocalypse in Tamriel. Twice.
• Frail Equilibrium: Dante is just sixteen years old but he's already got a fair share of demon-hunting and fighting experience under his belt to the point where very few things faze him. Tess doesn't have remotely as much combat experience as Dante, but she's very well-informed about demons and other supernatural creatures and has a good working knowledge of witchcraft.
• Hellsister Trilogy: Kara Zor-El has been Supergirl for nearly twenty years, during which she has gained experience enough to fight, during the course of the story, world-breaking villains, reality-warpers, nearly-omnipotent evil sorcerers, and eldritch abominations... and win ( or at least survive).
• In Shazam! Here There Be Monsters, Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr. have been heroes for a decade and a half and fought all kind of villains.
• "The Hero Melromarc Needs and Deserves" is a The Rising of the Shield Hero/Saint Seiya crossover that replaces the titular Shield Hero with Cancer Deathmask, who, in spite of his "issues", is not only a trained and experienced combatant, but, thanks to Athena wanting her warriors ready for anything, was actually trained for both being summoned as a hero in another world and dealing with the specific situation he finds himself in, proving himself extremely savvy (notably, he deduces the existence of other countries by being told that the local gold, silver and copper coins have a fixed exchange rate). This contrasts to the other Legendary Heroes, who think they're this thanks to their experience with video games detailing Melromarc's plight. A group of comedic omake shows all Gold Saints as this, with their reactions to the False Rape Accusation only depending on what each Gold Saint deems appropriate to do to those who break Sacred Hospitality, ranging from simple disintegration to whatever horror Aphrodite inflicted to Malty.
• Zigzagged in Imaginary Seas. As a Servant, Percy has already lived through all of his adventures, married Annabeth, settled down and had kids. He comes across as Older and Wiser as a result and is at his physical and mental peak as a demigod warrior in both might and skill. But this is also his first time fighting as a Servant and encountering Nasuverse mechanics, which leaves him woefully out of depth regarding the metaphysics of his situation and the secret history of the Greek gods.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail takes place right around the time of Book 3, so this means that Atticus, who is itching for another adventure, has already finished his first adventure with Tulip.
• Subverted in Kara of Rokyn. The main character has been a superhero for more than one decade, but she has no previous experience in wrestling, so she must be trained in order to fight in matches.
• Kazuma V Tanya: Both Kazuma and Tanya have already been through an whole adventure on different worlds before being reincarnated again.
• As explored in A Knight's Tale as Inquisitor, before ever arriving at Thedas, Arturia Pendragon has been training to be a knight until she was fifteen years old, which was then proceeded by her reigning as a king over her kingdom that lasted for about twenty years. It has reached the point that In-Universe the people around her notice the vast experiences of her past being worn on her sleeve for all to see despite her being so "young".
• The Young Justice (2010) story Life Ore Death inverts the usual self-insert tropes by bringing in an Original Character from another series. Ferris already survived a civil war and knows more about her powers than almost anyone else alive, but she knows nothing about Earth's laws, cultural norms, or heroic rules of engagement, so she reverses the usual learning arc.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Paradox: Akiza Izinski is the story's female protagonist with Psychic Powers and an experienced mobile suit pilot who comes from 77 years into the future.
• The Phantom Confidance: Sojiro Sakura here was an experienced Phantom Thief until his final job stealing Futaba's suicidal desires from her palace, before retiring so he can focus on raising his foster daughter. However, one year later, he finds out that the gym teacher at Futaba's school, Shuijin is a sexual predator that caused one student to commit suicide but is being protected by the principal, pulling the former thief out of retirement.
• Point Me at the Skyrim has Victoria Dallon awaken in Skyrim, when she's been a superhero for several years and fought various monsters prior to arriving in the Arena. She's not up to date on the culture of Tamriel nor on Magic versus Alien Superpowers, but she's quick to adapt to the situation as best she can.
• In Pokémon Story: Sinnoh Journey, Aaron has been through the same challenges as Ash with the Pokemon to show for it.
• Soul Eater: Troubled Souls: How long Maka Albarn's been on the job isn't exactly stated, but something can be inferred. She's known Claudia since the latter was a new student, which was before she met Caius, who has a two-year tenure under his belt already by the start. Add to the fact Maka has been on the canon adventures (the fic is Canon Welding so that includes anime events) up until the Baba Yaga Castle invasion, she's pretty experienced.
• In Splint, Cadoc and Rukhash are both experienced warriors; Cadoc is particular is a Ranger in his 40s with years' worth of combat experience. Rukhash is also a skilled healer, having been trained by Grazad during the War of the Ring.
• In the Fire Emblem: Three Houses fanfic You'll Get No Answers from the Blue Sea Star, the Jeralts are well-known, veteran mercenaries before the story starts, even Kid, the youngest. They're hired as teachers on this very basis.

Films — Animation

• The Incredibles starts with Mr. Incredible as a famous superhero. Much of the plot involves how he deals with being forced underground, then getting a chance to get back in the game.
• Zootopia: Technically an Experienced Deuteragonist, but Nick Wilde knows pretty much everything there is to know about the city of Zootopia and its criminal underbelly, having lived there making a living as a small-time con artist for about 20 years. This is contrasted with main protagonist Judy Hopps, a rookie cop who has lived in the city for less than a week.

Films — Live-Action

• Downplayed in Agent Cody Banks. The titular character is a Kid Hero who has already been recruited as a secret agent and received spy training, as shown when he effortlessly saves a kid in his Establishing Character Moment. However, the plot of the film is his first actual mission in the field.
• Every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie has him as a pro at kicking ass by the time the opening credits end.
• Blade Trilogy: By the time of the first film, Blade is already a skilled Vampire Hunter and The Dreaded to the vampire community.
• Michael McBain, the protagonist of Breaking Point (1976), is a marine turned judo instructor.
• Captain America: Civil War:
  • Peter Parker had been slinging web and fighting crime as the Spider-Man for long enough to pop up on various YouTube videos. He also built his own web-shooters and jury-rigged a costume to help focus his senses before Tony Stark gave him his iconic (and technologically enhanced) Spidey suit.
  • Prince T'Challa is already Black Panther, and according to later supplementals, has been for years.
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has two of the three protagonists as aging sword fighters.
• DC Extended Universe: Bruce Wayne/Batman started his crime-fighting career a good 20 years before the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which he is introduced. From certain dialogue and scenes we know he already defeated the Penguin, Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, KGBeast, and other members of his Rogues Gallery, and went through at least one Robin.
  • Played with in the case of Wonder Woman, who has thousands of years' worth of combat training, but nothing in the way of real-world experience, having spent her life on a paradise island. This is alternately Played for Laughs and Played for Drama.
• The Die Hard series starts off with John McClane as a seasoned New York cop.
• Dirty Harry: Callahan has already served long enough on the force to earn himself a reputation as an infamous Cowboy Cop before the film begins.
• This is especially true for action flicks that are vehicles for aging action stars. John Wayne went through this in later years and The Expendables series revolves around this idea.
• Newt Scamander of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, is introduced while he's on a worldwide journey to learn about various creatures so that he can write a book about them.
• Ken Miles in Ford v Ferrari already has around a decade of racing experience, having raced in his first 12 Hours of Sebring in 1957.
• Dom is already an accomplished dream thief at the beginning of Inception, the plot is about all the baggage he's accumulated over his years in the profession. He even serves as The Mentor to the Audience Surrogate.
• Ip Man is already a Wing Chun master of some renown who has been refusing requests to start a school at the start of the first film.
• Jack Frost (1997): Unusually for a slasher film, Sheriff Tiller already has experience dealing with the killer (albeit before Jack got powers), after capturing him and ending his murder spree well before the first act.
• The James Bond films, from Dr. No through Pierce Brosnan's Bond character, had 007 established as an ace agent who could do incredible feats and was at the top of his savvy and game. It was only the three Daniel Craig-as-Bond movies that showed a new 007 making rookie mistakes, paying a price, and learning from them. Even then, he still demonstrates an impressive set of skills and level of physical fitness that he already possessed, which — if it follows the rough canon of the series — he got from being Cambridge educated and spending time in the Navy (possibly as a commando), amongst other misadventures.
• In the John Wick films, it is established early on that John is already a legendary assassin and former military who retired years ago. Nearly every character he meets is defined by how much they respect John and his legend. One scene in the first film exists entirely for Viggo to explain to his son just how dangerous John Wick is and how much shit he's in for stealing John's car and killing his dog.
• Pacific Rim starts off with Raleigh already being a pilot who has to be The Mentor to a new partner.
• Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark is already an experienced and capable Adventurer Archaeologist who has survived the events we would later see in Temple of Doom.
• Subverted in R.I.P.D.. Protagonist Nick Walker boasts of being a 15-year veteran of the Boston Police Department. Then he's killed and conscripted into the titular undead police force, and it quickly becomes clear he's way, way out of his depth when he is faced with his first Deado, an undead abomination.
  Roy: Where's that 15 years now, frosty?
• The characters in the The Old Guard already have between 300 and 6000 years of combat experience before the film begins. Nile, who just gained her immortality, was already in the US military.
• Too Big to Fail is about a financial crisis, and the man who solves the crisis isn't some low level banker or bureaucrat, but the US Treasury Secretary himself. Hank Paulson's previous job as CEO of a major investment bank is mentioned multiple times in this movie ... just in case you forgot that!!
• By the start of Top Gun, Maverick already has a reputation for living up to his call-sign, and is infamous for his penchant for Buzzing the Deck.
• In all Underworld (2003) films but the prequel, Selene has already spent centuries hunting Lycans and is considered to be one of the best Death Dealers out there.
• Van Helsing has the eponymous character already an accomplished monster hunter whose reputation precedes him even in the distant and remote Transylvania.
• X-Men introduces Cyclops, Jean and Storm as already trained superheroes who have fight the movie's Big Bad Magneto before. Even Wolverine, who joins the team during the film, already is an experienced fighter. The only not-experienced main character of the movie is Rogue who serves as an Audience Surrogate.

Gamebooks

• The Fighting Fantasy books tend to have their protagonist already being famed enough to be hired for dangerous quests by some important person (mayor of Silverton, wizard's guild etc.). The strongest example of this is in Storm Slayer, where you're the Hero of Tannatown who's recovered a famed magic sword Wyrmbiter among his other many deeds.
• In the Herald of Oblivion Path of Victory book which has been also been adapted as for iOS and PC by Tin Man Games, features your character as a veteran Imperial Fist Terminator. So you're a centuries-old elite warrior who's deeds have been honored by being granted a Nigh-Invulnerable ancient Power Armor.
• In Wizards, Warriors and You, the two main characters are the finest of King Henry's champions and have served for years before even starting Book 1.

Literature

• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: As a veteran sea captain, Amina is an old hand at sailing, leading crew, planning highly unusual operations, following leads, and winning fights. She's brought into the events of the book because her expertise makes her the best qualified to undertake a very tricky job.
• Ayato Amagiri from The Asterisk War is already an expert swordsman at the start of the story, not to mention his natural magical energy is so huge his sister placed as seal on him to prevent his body from tearing itself apart. Very quickly he becomes the best fighter at school; and in the first tournament, he doesn't really become stronger, he just remembers techniques his sister taught him to win the current fight.
• The Bone Maker: The protagonist and her crew are the five Heroes of Vos — expert mages and warriors who became legendary for slaying the Sorcerous Overlord Eklor twenty-five years before the time of the book. Now, new signs of Eklor's Villainous Legacy draw them out of retirement and force them to reevaluate the people they've become.
• Pyanfar Chanur begins the Chanur Novels as a successful merchanter captain with decades of trading voyages under her belt. By the end she’s graduated to Living Legend.
• The first Ciaphas Cain novel "For The Emperor" has the title character already an experienced Commissar and renowned war hero, because the premise of the series is Cain’s struggle to maintain his public reputation in the face of (according to himself) his true nature as a self-serving coward who keeps winning glorious victories by accident. Though there are short stories set before it detailing things like his first command and how he lost those fingers.
• Conan the Barbarian is like this. Even in "The Tower of the Elephant", where he is about 17, he's already had considerable experience although Howard described him in a letter as "more daring than adroit at thievery, and has yet to earn a reputation among other followers of his profession." "At the age of 15, he received his baptism of blood at the siege of the border city of Venarium, between Gunderland and Cimmeria."
• Kelly and Amber, the point-of-view characters of The Crush, are professional soldiers who're considered some of the best in their trade. Other rangers and civilians are sometimes starstruck by them, but also disappointed and resentful that they've gone completely downhill in the last year.
• Cazaril in The Curse of Chalion is about 35 and has experience as a courier, a castle warden, courtier, and captain (also beggar, galley slave, and other non-conforming jobs). However, he entirely lacks experience as a tutor for a princess (though he does find it's somewhat akin to training a young officer), and even less as a saint.
• In Dirk Pitt Adventures and its spin-offs, the protagonists are already experts in their fields when we're introduced to them — Pitt himself has years of experience with diving and is a veteran of the Vietnam war, Juan Cabrillo is running his own, Black Lagoon-esque mercenary company when he's introduced, Isaac Bell is a renowned investigator, Kurt Austin is a leader of a NUMA special tasks team, and the Fargoes are professional treasure hunters.
• In The Divine Cities, Shara, Mulaghesh and Sigrud, who are the respective protagonists of the three volumes, are in their thirties, forties and fifties respectively and have already lived busy lives before the story starts — Shara as a spy and operative, Mulaghesh as a military leader, and Sigrud as Shara's longtime assistant and a royal exile.
• Dora Wilk Series and its spin-offs:
  • The eponymous protagonist of Dora Wilk Series is already an accomplished police officer and an occasional problem-solver for her city's supernatural community at the start of the first book, so switching to being an Occult Detective comes easily to her.
  • Nikita of The Girl from the Miracles District has been a professional assassin for several years before the story starts.
  • Like Dora, Witkacy of Shaman Blues is a veteran cop (he was even Dora's partner for years before she left the force), which is why he gets involved in the plot in the first place.
• The Elenium contrasts with David Eddings' previous series, The Belgariad, in this way. Sparhawk as he is introduced is already an embittered, world-weary Knight in Sour Armor returning to his corrupt capital after a decade of exile.
• Shai, protagonist of The Emperor's Soul is one of the best Forgers in existence — that's exactly the reason she's forced to attempt the Impossible Task.
• Eurico the Presbyter: The title character is a priest-turned-knight who is extremely talented and skilled in combat due to having fought in many battles before the start of the story and he only became a man of the cloth because of a broken heart and unfulfilled romantic reasons, but shows that he is still capable of fighting when pushed into action.
• Mack Bolan, The Executioner, was already an elite sniper and penetration specialist in Vietnam before being recalled to the US about his father's Pater Familicide that starts him off on his one-man war against The Mafia.
• Jason Grace of The Heroes of Olympus is already skilled with a sword and knows the (Roman) names for many of the Gods and monsters they encounter along the way, although he isn't sure why. It's eventually revealed that he's not the son of the Greek God Zeus, but his Roman counterpart Jupiter, and is from not Camp Half-Blood, but Camp Jupiter, the Roman camp on the West Coast.
• In Honor Harrington's first novel, On Basilisk Station, she has already commanded one vessel and is starting on her second. And has been out of the Academy for well over a decade. Still, her XO has some trouble taking orders from her as she looks like a teenager, despite being over forty.
• The three Price siblings of InCryptid are all introduced in their early twenties (though we get A Minor Kidroduction at the beginning of each book); Verity has several years of experience in the professional dance scene, and Alex already has a graduate degree in herpetology and a steady job. Antimony is the one who undergoes the most learning and Character Development, as she tries to figure out her sorcerer powers. All three of them come from a Badass Family that puts its kids through Training from Hell to make sure they can survive dangerous cryptids, the Covenant, and whatever else the world throws at them. Likewise with the prequel short stories featuring their great-grandfather Jonathan and his parents Alexander and Enid (Jonathan's wife Fran is an outsider to the cryptid world, but already a badass Action Girl). Averted with Jonathan's daughter Alice, whose life is covered from the moment of her birth.
• At the start of the Iron Druid Chronicles, Atticus is already over two thousand years old, has crafted a defensive amulet than makes most spells bounce off him, and can call in favors from everything from elementals to werewolves to goddesses.
• Generally speaking, this is common in action-adventure novel series, with characters such as Jack Reacher, John Rain and Mitch Rapp already possessing incredible skillsets and combat prowess in their first appearance. Often, their origins are explained in later novels.
• Ye Xiu in The King's Avatar is a veteran in the Glory game (having played it since the game's conception ten years prior to the start of the series) and is a three-time consecutive championship winner for Excellent Era in the pro gaming scene.
• In The Machineries of Empire:
  • Kel Cheris has the rank of a captain when she's introduced, although she's an infantry captain, which puts her in the position of a newcomer when she's tasked with leading a fleet.
  • Shuos Jedao is a more straightforward example, having won countless battles for the Hexarchate by the time him and Cheris cross paths.
• In Orconomics, Gorm Ingerson was once a well-known hero, now spending his time drinking his sorrows away and passed out in a ditch. The events of the book is his big chance at a comeback.
• Paladin of Shadows: Mike "Ghost" Harmon/Jenkins is already a former Navy SEAL infamous as a Stealth Expert in the community by the start of the first book.
• Tooi in The Reunion With Twelve Fascinating Goddesses already gained the power of the twelve goddesses and defeated the Demon King before the start of the story. He revoked his contracts with the goddesses and returned to his own world, only to be summoned back at the start of the series. While he initially lacks his incredible power, he still has the skills he built up, and once he regains his contract with one goddess (at the end of the first book) he immediately regains his One-Man Army status.
• The titular character of The Scarlet Pimpernel has already established a reputation on both sides of the Channel as a Hope Bringer (to the nobles of France), a national hero (to most of Britain), and The Dreaded (to the Republican government).
• Dag Redwing, as of the beginning of The Sharing Knife books, had already worked his way up to Company Captain on the harshest front of his people's war against the malices, lost everything that mattered to him on a battlefield in the far north, and spent about two decades dodging command responsibilities as he tried to kill as many malices as possible before being reunited with his wife.
• In Sid Stills' Blues (Three-Quarters in the Bag in Alphabet City), Sid is a famous musician who has been making music for more than thirty years, although he is basically retired at the start of the story and his fame has dimmed somewhat.
• Eddard "Ned" Stark in A Song of Ice and Fire has been a powerful lord of his keep for 15 years, a Master Swordsman, and a former war veteran. Then he dies at the end of the first book and the later ones focus more on his kids.
• William Laurence starts the first Temeraire book as a decorated thirty-something Royal Navy captain with his own warship as he leads a boarding action from the front, discovers a French vessel's unique cargo, and winds up stuck with the latter. Much of his subsequent Ensign Newbie status is due to a combination of what he must unlearn and Interservice Rivalry.
• Kyousuke in The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign is a veteran summoner, one of the most skilled in the entire world. He's been in the business ever since he was 10-years-old.
• In Villains' Code, the Experienced Deuteragonist is Ivan Gerhardt, a retired Supervillain once known as Fornax, now enjoying his regular day job as a middle manager. He's pulled back when he's asked to mentor the protagonist, the Unskilled, but Strong aspiring supervillainess Tori Rivas (who later starts going by the moniker Hephaestus).
• Vorkosigan Saga:
  • Cordelia is a bit over 30 and is The Captain of a ship in the Betan Astronomical Survey when we first meet her. Betans have very high standards of education, so it's actually more impressive than it sounds. Her experiences (especially herding a bunch of scientists) help her when she is put into the high political circles of Barrayar.
  • Her husband, Aral Vorkosigan, has already done what he is most famous for when we meet him: plan and execute the strategically flawless invasion of the planet Komarr as the youngest Admiral in Barrayaran history.
  • Conversely, Miles, the main character of the Vorkosigan Saga is introduced to the reader in-utero.
• This is one of the key character traits of Geralt, the eponymous protagonist of The Witcher series. As The Last Wish opens, he is already a highly-trained monster hunter with an unspecified number of decades of both professional and life experience behind him, and we never actually get to see him at any time (outside of a few sketchy flashbacks) when he wasn't a grizzled, grumpy Knight in Sour Armor.

Live-Action TV

• Jack Bauer in 24. When he's first introduced, he's a veteran of the military and the CIA who's already well-established at CTU and is the Director of its Los Angeles Bureau.
• Alphas: Except for Cameron (who is a military veteran), the team has been working together and fighting Red Flag for months, if not longer, when the pilot begins.
• Babylon 5:
  • Commander Jeffrey Sinclair was a decorated pilot and squadron commander, and should have made Admiral by the time the show takes place based on that and his pedigree. That said, he went missing during the final battle of the Earth Minbari War, and could not recall what happened. Under the circumstances, he was reassigned to Mars and his career stalled for years.
  • His replacement, Captain John Sheridan, is similarly a decorated officer and unlike Sinclair, had a solid reputation as a renowned war hero. References are made to his past assignments as a first officer aboard a heavy cruiser during the Earth Minbari War, a time spent stationed on Mars, and his time as a commander of a Destroyer patrolling the edges of human territory.
• The first few episodes of Black Lightning (2018) revolve around the titular superhero getting Back in the Saddle, after having been a Retired Badass for a while. When he comes back, it inspires a Mass "Oh, Crap!" amongst the bad guys.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer is already an established Slayer at the start of the TV series. Though we do see her starting out in the original film.
• Defiance has Joshua Nolan, a grizzled veteran of the Pale Wars with nickname (The Butcher of Yosemite) and enough of a reputation that other important individuals can identify him.
• The Doctor of Doctor Who has already been travelling time and space with Susan for a while when we first meet him. Later stories imply that he's already two or three hundred years old or so by this point.
• Hercules from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys is already a famous hero. Even during the prequel/spin-off series Young Hercules detailing his earliest adventures, he had his own share of heroic deeds. Likewise, his enemy-turned-ally Xena is also an skilled fighter in her own spin-off show. Justified since the show revolves around her attempts to atone for her crimes as an evil warlord.
• Jonathan Smith starts out Highway to Heaven after having already been an angel who's been Walking the Earth for a while — years, probably.
• Most of the detectives in Homicide: Life on the Street have years of experience under their belt, though it's downplayed by Bayliss, who was both part of a SWAT team and the mayor's security detail, but is quickly revealed to have very little field experience.
• Both leads of Intelligence (2014); Gabriel Vaughn is a former Delta Force operator with five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Riley Neal is a former Secret Service agent who was on the US President's detail.
• Iris has Kim Hyun-jun and Jin Sa-woo as veteran commandos with the South Korean Army's 707th Special Mission Battalion before being assigned to the National Security Service.
  • Athena: Goddess of War has ex-National Intelligence Service agent Lee Jung-woo, a veteran intelligence agent, assigned to the National Anti-Terror Service.
• Kamen Rider: A few main riders already have their power and experience in using them when their series begin.
  • Kamen Rider Blade: Kazuma gets assigned to be Blade and to hunt down Undead prior to the series.
  • Kamen Rider Hibiki: Hitoshi Hidaka has long trained to become the oni Hibiki and became Hibiki before the series started. Notably, he is the only Rider protagonist who is in his 30s when their series begin.
  • Kamen Rider Kiva: Wataru has been operating as Kiva for an unknown amount of time before his series even begun. In fact, he already has access to all of his base forms by the time we first see Wataru transform in the series proper.
  • Kamen Rider Wizard: Haruto is already Wizard at the start of his series.
  • Kamen Rider Build: Sento has spent a year fighting Smashes as Build by the time his series begin.
  • Kamen Rider Geats: Ace is introduced winning the main setting, Desire Grand Prix, and constantly outshines everybody else in the next DGP. He later mentions that he has already been doing this for centuries.
• Despite looking like they are in their late teens or early twenties, the Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger are all over 200-years-old and have had more than a century to master their powers and abilities before the beginning of the story.
• The main character of Kung Fu (1972) has already been a fully-trained Shaolin priest by the time of the pilot episode (though later episodes show some of his journey as a student).
• In Legends of Tomorrow, Rip Hunter is already a seasoned Time Master by the time he recruits the Legends. As for the Legends themselves, Sara Lance (White Canary) has years of combat experience as an assassin and a vigilante. Carter Hall (Hawkman) has millennia of combat experience thanks to his reincarnation with Kendra Saunders (Hawkgirl) not far behind. Ray Palmer (the Atom) has some experience fighting criminals and villains, as do Jefferson Jackson and Martin Stein (Firestorm). In Season 2, Amaya Jiwe (Vixen) joins the Legends, having already spent years on another Super Team (Justice Society of America) fighting Nazis.
• Similarly, the titular character of Macgyver 1985 is already an accomplished agent of the US government when we first see him in action.
• NCIS: Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs has been with the service for over a decade as of the pilot, and before that was a Marine Corps sniper. Similar things can be said of the spinoff protagonists, G. Callen and Dwayne Pride, who have extensive experience in covert ops and law enforcement respectively.
• Similar to the Star Trek shows it pays homage to, The Orville brings us Captain Ed Mercer, an officer described by one Admiral as "exemplary," despite his career hitting a speed bump due to his emotional state after a divorce a year previous.
• In Person of Interest, John Reese and Sameen Shaw have combat experience from serving in the US military and having participated in black ops operations in the past before Finch recruited them. Finch, for his part, has been an expert hacker when he started from his high school days. Fusco and Carter have been veteran officers with the NYPD, the latter having served in Iraq as an interrogator. Root has a mix of hacking experience and was a killer for hire for years before she joined up, getting her first indirect kill as a teenager.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Wild Force: Subverted with Cole, but the pilot establishes that his teammates got Ranger morphs and started fighting Orgs some time ago. They’re even introduced mid-battle and are already familiar with normal Org tactics.
  • Zayto, the Red Ranger from Power Rangers Dino Fury, was already trained as a Knight and had fought against the Sporix Beasts for a long time before becoming a Power Ranger — all of which is his backstory. He's fully trained by the time he's found in stasis by Ollie and Amelia in the premier.
• Gou Kazama starts out Seven Star Fighting God Guyferd an experienced martial arts master. Then he gets turned into a Mutant Cyborg. There are plenty of times though where he doesn't transform, and fights Mooks with purely his own natural strength.
• All of the captains in the Star Trek series count. All of them had to rise up through the ranks and have exemplary records before being given their ship or station. Kirk has multiple decorations for valor, Picard fell into command of the Stargazer and held onto it for quite some time, Sisko was XO of a ship and principal designer of the Defiant before commanding Deep Space 9, Janeway was an accomplished science officer and Archer was a respected warp test pilot (a 22nd century Chuck Yeager). While not a Captain, Commander Michael Burnham was a seasoned first officer due for her own command until she was stripped of rank and imprisoned for mutiny.
• Sam and Dean of Supernatural spent most of their childhood and adolescence learning to hunt monsters from their father (somewhat unwillingly on Sam's part). Even in the Pilot they're pretty casual when discussing the Monster of the Week.
• Switch (1975): Frank MacBride is a retired bunco cop who was one of the best in the department. Pete Ryan used to be a skilled con man.
• Senior Inspector Chin Hon-to in Tiger Cubs is an experienced police officer in the Hong Kong Police Force with the rank of Senior Inspector while being one of the most known officers in the force's elite anti-crime/terrorist unit, the Special Duties Unit.
• One of the three protagonists in Timeless, Wyatt Logan, is a member of Delta Force, having plenty of combat experience in hot spots around the world.
• Ultra Series: Some series star Ultras with actual battle experience rather than a full-on newbie.
  • Ultraman: The original Ultraman is already an experienced Space Garrison member whose arrival on Earth is due to chasing an fugitive Kaiju criminal, Bemular, into the planet. His Kaiju opponents for the most part end up beaten in a Curb-Stomp Battle to show that our hero's experienced enough.
  • Heisei Ultraseven: As an alternate continuity where Ultraseven was not just the only Ultra to ever visit Earth but was forced to remain there to recover from his many injuries and resurfaced years later; this Seven has all his battle experience which helps him against increasingly dangerous foes.
  • Ultraseven X: Turns out "Ultraseven X" is the original Seven himself, with all his developed powers and experience. Needless to say, there's a reason every opponent in the series goes down quickly when Seven fights.
  • Ultraman Nexus: Nexus turns out to be a depowered form of Ultraman Noa, who has had a lot of battles throughout the ages against both the Space Beasts and The Unknown Hand/Dark Zagi; it's only because of his de-evolution into Ultraman: The Next after his initial defeat of Dark Zagi detailed in prequel magazines that he's not as powerful as he could be.
• In Vikings Ragnar is an experienced warrior with enough of a reputation that he can easily recruit a crew of seasoned warriors for his new raiding venture in the west.

Roleplay

• Panopticon Quest: None of the party are outright rookies, but Jamelia is the most experienced of the lot, with decades of service as a NWO Operative already under her belt, being on personal speaking terms with the head of the entire NWO and plenty of renown or infamy in the eyes of the rest of the World of Darkness.
• In We Are All Pokémon Trainers, quite a few characters happened to have been experienced trainers long before joining the story proper. Tagg for instance had already been a trainer for about nine years.

Video Games

• In Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, if you start a New Game Plus, you get different dialogue in the first mission, where your Wingman mentions he "heard stories about you" and makes a comment based on your Karma Meter carried over from the previous playthrough.
• Alpha Protocol has an interesting use of the trope. On your first playthrough, Mike Thorton can have one of five backstories. Four of them have Mike already experienced in some way, whether it be decorated in the armed forces (Soldier), having years in covert operations (Field Agent), demonstrating remarkable field work (Tech Specialist), or being a globetrotting Freelancer. This experience is reflected in a higher number of base skill points. The fifth class is Rookie, which unlocks new dialogue options and certain bonuses, but gives Mike fewer skill points to start with. Only beating the game as a Rookie unlocks the Veteran background for a New Game Plus, which has Mike already a member of a similar agency to the eponymous one prior to his seeking them out; he has more skill points and unlocks more dialogue options from the beginning.
• ANNO: Mutationem: Ann has prior experience in knowing martial arts and handling weapons to make her a formidable fighter. This comes with having worked alongside Ayane at Raymond's agency for several years to handle even supernatural threats.
• This seems to be a pattern with the Assassin's Creed games:
  • Altair in the original Assassin's Creed is introduced as a star assassin, though his supposed experience helps him very little after he is demoted and stripped of all of his equipment a bit later in the game.
  • Assassin's Creed III: Decoy Protagonist Haytham is already a Master Assassin Or is he? at the start of the game. When you finally get to control Connor, he's already proficient enough in hunting that the Justified Tutorial is him teaching his friend and even without Assassin training he can still handle trained redcoats.
  • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag:
    • Edward Kenway is already a hardened privateer-turned-pirate even before he puts on the Assassin robes.
    • Ditto for Adéwalé in the Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry DLC, who has already been an Assassin for several years (and even longer as a pirate) before washing up on Saint-Domingue.
  • Shay Cormac from Assassin's Creed Rogue starts out the game already a star member of the Colonial branch of Assassins.
  • The one notable aversion would be Arno Dorian in Assassin's Creed: Unity. He was purposefully kept out of the secret war between Assassins and Templars and grew up in a nobleman's home. When someone realizes he has eagle vision, he's given a crash course in sword fighting and then thrown into action.
  • Twin protagonists Evie and Jacob in Assassin's Creed Syndicate were trained and studied to be Assassins from the moment they could hold a blade.
  • Bayek, Alexios/Kassandra, and Eivor are all well into adulthood and seasoned fighters by the time the game proper begins. Eivor in particular is The Dreaded in the Norse Viking lands, where they have a reputation for One-Man Army feats of martial prowess (one enemy soldier mentions Eivor having killed twenty men singlehandedly at some point). And this was before they were taught how to kill enemies in the style of the Hidden Ones. Hell, in Bayek's case he founded the Hidden Ones through his decades of experience as a soldier and spy.
• In Baldur's Gate III, with the exception of Lae'zel and Astarion all of the potential Player Characters have years to decades of experience, but start out Overrated and Underleveled for various reasons with the most central one being the Puppeteer Parasite they're all infected with.
• Bioshock Infinite:
  • Player Character Booker DeWitt is a hardened ex-Pinkerton Detective and US Army veteran.
  • Likewise, Jack, the Heroic Mime protagonist of BioShock, is very familiar with guns and plasmids as a result of having been a genetic experiment created and raised by the Big Bad Ensemble to take down Andrew Ryan.
• In BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, Ragna is by a longshot the most experienced and skilled of the four protagonist characters. By the time they have all been summoned to the Phantom Field in their respective canons, Hyde Kido has only been an In-Birth for a few weeks, Ruby Rose is still a first-year student at Beacon, and Yu Narukami has only been leader of the Investigation Team for a year or so. Ragna, on top of being a mid-twenty-something compared to the other high-schooler protagonists, has been a One-Man Army and the world's most wanted criminal for several years and has crossed swords with all manner of powerful people with different weapons and abilities.
• Cadence of Hyrule plays with this. Cadence is summoned from her home dimension to the land of Hyrule because needing to fight monsters and other enemies while enslaved to Magic Music is an Outside-Context Problem that she has ample experience in dealing with. However, the main Story Mode has her as a Decoy Protagonist, rescuing Link or Zelda before leaving to explore Hyrule and find her own way back home, upon which you play as the rescued character. She'll show up throughout the adventure as a recurring NPC, but if you don't trigger all her appearances, then you don't get to play as her again until the Final Boss fight. And even if you do make her playable for the remainder of of your Story Mode run, you'll need to swap over to Link or Zelda in order to do the Disc-One Final Dungeon.
• Alex Mason begins Call of Duty: Black Ops as an experienced Marine who's recruited by the CIA. In Call of Duty: Black Ops II, his son David "Section" Mason is already a US Navy Commander and a member of SEAL Team Six, leading his own squad, when his story starts.
• V from Cyberpunk 2077 is this after the six-month timeskip after the prologue, where they work as a mercenary with their friend Jackie. Even before that, V got experience as a smuggler (nomad lifepath), Corporate Samurai (corpo lifepath), or simply being an already established gun-for-hire (streetkid lifepath).
• Dead Rising
  • Frank West had experience in firearms before being thrown into the midst of the Willamette outbreak. He's covered wars, y'know. That said, he's never actually fired at a person before the story begins and had certainly never fought against hordes of zombies before.
  • Chuck Greene, from Dead Rising 2, has some experience slaughtering zombies under his belt, having survived an outbreak in Las Vegas that claimed the life of his wife and resulted in his daughter's infection.
• Sam from Death Stranding has been a porter for at least ten years. He's well recognised in-universe and known for his skills.
• Dante from Devil May Cry series, from the very start (the third game, that is), he had been a professional demon hunter (albeit with lots of debt). The very first scene of him has him fending off a minor demon invasion in his workplace without much effort.
• Whole most of the Deus Ex Universe games start you off as a fresh recruit, Adam Jensen of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is already an experienced soldier, and Head of Security for Sarif Industries, at the beginning of the game. He's even already familiar with the basics of his cybernetic enhancements after the opening sequence, which shows how he got them.
• Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten has Valvatorez, an ex-tyrant who willingly lost most of his power after a certain encounter with Artina. His Lancer (or Dragon, from a certain point of view) Fenrich may also qualify as this.
• A favorite of the Dishonored series. Corvo is already the Royal Protector of the Empress and easily fights off the first assassins sent to kill the Empress, despite their magical leg up. In the DLC, Daud is already an extremely experienced assassin and user of the Outsider's powers. In the sequel, Corvo has years of Royal Protector/Outsider's Mark experience and has likewise been training his daughter Emily in the same way (sans powers). The third game, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, has Meagan Foster/Billie Lurk, a powerful assassin and ex-protege of Daud.
• Dragon Age: In the games where you can pick your background, some options already present you as this:
  • Dragon Age: Origins: A Dwarf Noble/Commoner Warden are already experienced fighters and in the former's case, they are already a military leader at the start.
  • Dragon Age II : A Warrior/Rogue Hawkewas a member of the Fereldan army and a veteran from Ostagar.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition: A Qunari Inquisitor is said to have been one of the best sellswords of their company, while a Dwarf Inquisitor is an seasoned enforcer of the Carta.
• El Paso, Elsewhere: The Player Character, Occult Detective James Savage, has had several previous encounters with paranormal threats and the Void, and, of course, there is his long and complicated relationship with his vampire ex-girlfriend, Draculae, who is the Big Bad of the story. As the game progresses, James will share story of his experiences with the player, through several of his Private Eye Monologues.
• The End Times: Vermintide: At the start of the first game, the main characters are already elite soldiers with decades — centuries, in Bardin and Kerillian's cases — of combat experience, and appropriately look and sound noticeably weathered (except Kerillian). Many of their conversations involve Noodle Incidents from their pasts. Brief examples of their pre-Ubersreik adventures can be glimpsed by the party in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, where they're already presented as veteran soldiers (Kruber, the youngest, has even already risen to command his own platoon) despite the campaign involving them being set eleven years prior to the first game.
• Exponential Idle: Your character starts off as a talented undergraduate student with professors who see a promising future ahead of him. He is experienced enough in maths and programming to make a calculation program that converges an exponential recursive equation to a finite value.
• Fallout 4: The male protagonist differs from all the other protagonists of canon games in the Fallout franchise, in that he is already an accomplished soldier and veteran of the Alaska reclamation campaign against the People's Republic of Tyranny. His wife — not so much, as she is primarily a lawyer in private practice before the bombs fell. A military or government agency background is only implied due to her skills matching her husband's.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy IV, Cecil Harvey is already a knight in the service of the Kingdom of Baron and the captain of the Red Wings airship force, and his friend Kain is commander of the kingdom's Dragoons. This is reflected by the fact that they both start the game already at level 10 and equipped with a full set of armor.
  • Subverted in Final Fantasy VII, Cloud is a mercenary-for-hire at the start of the game, but is established as a former SOLDIER, Shinra's elite Super-Soldier program. The game integrates this into its tutorial systems, Cloud instructing inexperienced NPCs on gameplay concepts instead of them instructing him. The subversion is that Cloud's supposed experience doesn't fully carry over into gameplay where he is only a level or two stronger than the other characters - who, to be fair, are a pre-existing group of revolutionaries already that have simply hired his sword for their cause. It also turns out that Cloud never actually made SOLDIER, and all his memories as such are fake.
  • Final Fantasy IX has half of the cast with some kind of experience before the game begins. Zidane is a thief who is very good at stealing and sneaking around thanks to being taught by his mentor and father figure Baku. Steiner is a knight captain that is very skilled in swordplay, which helps him serve his nation of Alexandria. Amarant is a mercenary that took on many jobs for people before and thus he has quite a bit of combat experience. Freya is a Dragoon and has experience in combat with a spear and jumping, something she very likely picked up from her first love, Sir Fratley.
  • Most of the cast in Final Fantasy X have varying amounts and types of experience before the game begins. Wakka and Lulu had served as guardians to other summoners before Yuna came along. Auron was also a guardian to Yuna's father and is held in very high regard.
  • Subverted in Final Fantasy XIII, where Lightning, Sazh, and Snow are all differently experienced... as Badass Normals. Chapter 3 starts with them being branded l'Cie, which gives them an entirely new set of powers that they have no experience with. Vanille is experienced as a l'Cie, but she spent a fair period before the game trying and failing to Screw Destiny via Heroic Suicide, and her skills have atrophied as a result. Fang plays the trope straightest, but she's the Sixth Ranger who shows up just before the middle of the game.
• A number of Fire Emblem protagonists fall under this trope.
  • Sigurd of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War starts as an extremely strong unit in a promoted class (Knight Lord) in contrast to every other protagonist of the series, including his son and nephew.
  • Ephraim of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones also qualifies as he is an experienced soldier who is first seen leading an assault on an enemy fortress with only a handful of men, but is also infamous for his Leeroy Jenkins tendencies (he comes out on top, but the people don't particularly like him for it).
  • Ike is this in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, having established himself during the events of Path of Radiance as the legendary warrior who ended the reign of the tyrannical King Ashnard.
  • Chrom of Fire Emblem: Awakening has combat experience thanks to his vigilante work as leader of the Shepherds, an unofficial but well-recognized task force with the goal of routing bandits and evildoers within Ylisse's borders.
  • Byleth of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is already a hardened mercenary with a fearsome reputation at the start of the game as "The Ashen Demon". Similarly, Shez of Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is a merc with plenty of fighting experience at the start of the game, though they learn quickly they've got nothing on Byleth when their mercenary companies clash and it's a total wipe.
• In The Godfather II, Dominic is already established as Aldo's Underboss when the game starts.
• Kratos from God of War starts off as a seasoned Spartan warrior. By the time of God of War (PS4) and God of War Ragnarök he's taken this to absurd levels, having completely destroyed an entire pantheon of gods. This actually factors in to his fight with Heimdall - Kratos spends the initial part of the fight getting a feel for Heimdall's reflexes so that he can finally outmanoeuvre the latter's foresight and score a hit.
• Several Grand Theft Auto protagonists:
  • Claude from Grand Theft Auto III has been a criminal for years by the time the game starts, and is in the prisoner transport that he starts the game in exactly because he was caught and convicted for his crimes.
  • Tommy Vercetti from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is already a notorious murderer who is exiled to Vice City specifically because of his past misdeeds.
  • Carl "CJ" Johnson from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas used to be a member of the Grove Street Families and left for years before getting back into the life.
  • Niko Bellic from Grand Theft Auto IV is a veteran of the Yugoslav War and had already done gang work before reaching Liberty City.
  • All the three playable characters of Grand Theft Auto V are former or current criminals.
• Halo: The playable protagonists have all been elite veterans serving in the UNSC or Covenant militaries, even the youngest of the bunch like the Rookie and Noble Six. In particular, the Master Chief has spent nearly all of his 40+ years of life fighting for the UNSC, the Arbiter is a former Covenant Supreme Commander who's over 67 years old, and Jameson Locke used to be one of ONI's most elite agents.
• Hardcore Mecha: Tarethur is already shown as an experienced lieutenant and mecha pilot having been part of the Hardcore Defense Corps for awhile.
• Deadliar from Hellsinker is one of the oldest and most experienced Executors the Graveyard have under their employment. All his experience is really his most effective tool, as his other capabilities are middling compared to others. This in contrast with Fossil Maiden who is far younger and inexperienced.
• Knight Bewitched: Ruth is, already at the start of the story, the strongest and most well renowned knight in the Kingdom, who falls from grace when she refuses to kill a witch in one of her missions.
• Seems to be a trend in the latter half of The Legend of Heroes - Trails.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, Rean Schwarzer starts the game already a war veteran with at least three wars in his belt, compared to his previous self in the past two games where he was a newbie and who had to fight for his place. He is later joined by Estelle Bright and Lloyd Bannings in Cold Steel IV when three of the four protagonists finally meet up with one another. Kevin in The 3rd also fits this role and is the only one who starts off his game already experienced compared to the three.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie gives us a masked man named "C" who has lots of experience under his belt and is by far the oldest protagonist of the series. Makes sense since the person underneath the mask is Rufus Albarea, a major antagonist in the Cold Steel games.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak has Van Arkride who starts off the game already a renowned Spriggan^note A profession that delves into shady and sometimes questionable requests that the Bracer Guild won't handle. and is in the business for years.
• Certain Links from The Legend of Zelda are continuing their stories from a previous installment (usually in a new land), such as the one from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link being the same Link from the first game, but going on a new quest to awaken a (different) princess. The Link from Breath of the Wild is one of these despite not having starred in a previous game; before being caught up in the adventure, he was already a knight. Specifically, he was Princess Zelda's personal bodyguard, and had quite a good deal of practical experience in battle.
  • The straightest example so far is Four Swords Adventures, whose Link had already once before fought Vaati to rescue his Princess Zelda, before the events of "Hyrulean Adventure" had even begun. This battle, like many examples after it, has not been shown onscreen.
  • The spinoff/crossover game Cadence of Hyrule has the Triforce summon Cadence from Crypt Of The Necrodancer to assist Link and Zelda, specifically because she just spent a good chunk of time dealing with the same exact situation of being forced to fight monsters to the rhythm of a mysterious musical beat that's controlled by a man with a magical golden lute.
• Like a Dragon series:
  • The protagonist Kazuma Kiryu is already a soldier of the Yakuza and capable fighter of some notoriety known as the "Dragon of Dojima" at the start of the first game, though a 10-year prison stint after the prologue leaves him rusty enough as to have to start from square one statistically. Subsequent games contrive various flavours of Bag of Spilling to keep him starting off from scratch again and again.
  • Ichiban Kasuga, the protagonist of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, has served in the Arakawa Family of the Tojo Clan since his teens, albeit as a mere grunt in what is considered a low-tier family without any of the notoriety Kiryu has. Also like Kiryu, his time in prison leaves him a bit rusty by the time he is released.
• Commander Shepard is established as an experienced Special Forces officer at the start of Mass Effect: their Multiple-Choice Past establishes them either as a War Hero who repelled a slavery raid singlehandedly, the Sole Survivor of a thresher maw attack, or a Ruthless soldier who sacrificed most of their unit in a battle against batarians. They also have already gone through a Training from Hell to get their N7 credentials, establishing them as one of the most skilled human soldiers alive.
• In Medal of Honor: Vanguard, the protagonist, Corporal Frank Keegan, fought against Vichy France in North Africa, during Operation Torch, before the events of the game take place.
• Metal Gear:
  • Naked Snake (aka Big Boss) and Solid Snake are experienced special forces operatives who were subsequently involved in FOXHOUND after being assigned to the unit from the Green Berets. Played With in that new players still have to be guided through things, so in every game the protagonist has a support crew talking to him through comms and explaining incredibly basic facts that he'd either know about already or should have been able to quickly deduce (it gets pretty meta in that this is even incorporated into the plot).
  • Raiden, introduced in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, already has combat experience under his belt from his history as a Liberian Child Soldier.
  • In Big Boss's case, he starts out Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater as a Green Beret, and a veteran of both Vietnam and Korea.
  • Averted for Solid Snake in the original Metal Gear: the events of the game depict his very first mission.
• After being orphaned, Samus Aran of Metroid fame was trained by the Chozo race as a warrior, physically enhanced with their DNA. She was also trained as a soldier by the Galactic Federation. Donning the Power Suit created by the Chozo, Samus would later gain a reputation as a formidable Bounty Hunter, known far and wide throughout the galaxy. She accomplished all of this before the first game's plot took place. As further testament to Samus' combat prowess, said game's plot states that the Galactic Federation deployed forces from its Federation Police branch on a full-front assault against the Space Pirates on Planet Zebes. However, this backfires against the police as the pirates prove too powerful and the former were forced to retreat. As a last-ditch effort to prevent this galactic threat, the Federation enlists Samus to stop the pirates and destroy the Metroids they were replicating. They're so confident in her skill that they send her on the mission solo.
• In the original Mirror's Edge, protagonist Faith has been a Runner for practically her entire life. But after a vague incident puts her out of commission, the game starts with a Justified Tutorial where Faith is put through her paces to see if she's fully recovered.
• Monster Hunter: World: In a departure from the rest of the games, the player character in this game is an already established veteran hunter, not a newbie. This is justified as they are part of an expedition to a new, untamed continent filled with new monsters: there's no way rookie hunters would be sent on such a mission. The player still starts out with extremely basic equipment and needs to build their way up as usual though (their ship was wrecked on the way in; presumably any advanced, custom equipment they had was lost in the wreck).
• In Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, Marcus Cromwell has fought in the war between IASA and the mega-corporations prior to being hired by SpaceTech to command one of their corvettes.
• NieR: Automata has A2, a YoRHa veteran who deserted long before the story starts and is in fact a Super Prototype to the current generation of combat androids. She's killed everyone that's tried to hunt her down including previous iterations of 2B and 9S and cannot be said to be on the losing side of any fight and in fact only dies to 9S in Ending D due to her hesitating after remembering 2B's Dying Wish. Otherwise, she straight up beats him in Ending C, even when he pulls out his hacking tricks.
• Arnice of Nights of Azure is a Holy Knight of the Curia with several years worth of experience and had come from another assignment before she arrived in Ruswal at the start of the game.
• Hide from Nioh 2, is a Yokai Shifter who hunts other Yokai, and has been at it for an unspecified number of years before the start of the story. The only difference is that before meeting their partner and friend, Tokichiro, they hadn't been participating in the various battles and political intrigue going on throughout Japan.
• Most of the characters in Overwatch have some experience in combat. Many are former members of Overwatch (including Tracer, Winston, Soldier: 76, and others) while others got their combat experience elsewhere (D.Va is a South Korean mecha pilot, Doomfist is a high-ranking member of Talon, Zarya fought against the Omnics in Russia, Brigitte fought as Reinhardt's squire, etc.).
• The Nameless One of Planescape: Torment is at least level 20 in every single class^note except divine spell casters as the gods want nothing to do with him due to his countless lives. You still have to start from zero because of his reincarnation-induced memory loss, but his levelling up is characterized as removing his amnesia and recalling the expertise of his passed lives.
• Pokémon Colosseum: Wes isn't a novice Pokémon trainer like the usual main series protagonists. Rather than start the game by receiving his first Pokémon, he already owns two Level 25 mons. Specifically an Umbreon and Espeon, both of which evolve from Eevee via friendship, meaning that he's owned and trained the creatures for a good while. He's also a former member of Team Snagem, one of the villain teams of the region; as such, a number of characters already know him and have a grudge against him.
• Much of the cast of Rakenzarn Tales makes references to adventures akin to what happened in their original media and are working as their original professions or as heroes for hire by the time you run into them.
• Most of the protagonists in the Resident Evil series are this, coming from a military or law enforcement background (e.g. the first game's protagonist were S.T.A.R.S members). The main aversions being the Resident Evil: Outbreak spinoff series, (which focuses on the normal citizens of Raccoon City during the Zombie Apocalypse of the first three games), the second game (Leon being a rookie cop and Claire being a civilian, albeit the sister of one of the S.T.A.R.S team from the first game), and the seventh game (Ethan Winters is just a civilian with at best basic firearms experience, though his wife Mia is a trained mercenary and does fit this trope more). Jake Mueller is an experienced mercenary and Sherry is an experienced agent with the Division of Security Operations after years of being in custody of the American government before Resident Evil 6 begins. Piers was an ex-commando before he was recruited to be in the BSAA when the events of the tie-in manga "Biohazard: Marhawa Desire" start.
• The main character of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has at least 20 years of experience as a shinobi, trained from a young age as a war orphan. He is a master of stealth, assassination, swordplay, and even before getting his Shinobi Prosthetic is quite capable of acrobatic feats.
• Sonic the Hedgehog is implied to have been fighting Dr. Eggman since before the series begins with the original game.
• Spec Ops: The Line Martin Walker had served with the US Military in Afghanistan before he gets sent to Dubai. Not that his experience helps much.
• Spider-Man (PS4): By the time the game begins, Peter Parker is 23-years-old and has been Spider-Man for 8 years.
• Splinter Cell: Sam Fisher was already an experienced Navy SEAL before joining Third Echelon, and in the first game had been doing his job for some time before the plot.
• Hiryu from Strider is established as a Special A Rank assassin, and is the youngest to achieve it before beginning his story.
• In Sunrider, The Hero, Kayto Shields, is a trained Captain by the beginning of the story.
• Many installments of the Super Mario Bros. series establishes that Mario has saved the Mushroom Kingdom from Bowser and similar threats so many times that he's practically a celebrity. Heck, a few games show that he was even capable of kicking butt as a baby. By Luigi's Mansion 3, Luigi is evidently no stranger to the Poltergust and only needs a little practice from his Polterpup to get right back into the swing of things, though of course he's still easily frightened. He is also able to quickly recognize extensions of the Poltergust that appeared in the previous games.
• In Tachyon: The Fringe, Jake Logan is an experienced mercenary pilot, which is why the tutorial is framed to look like Jake testing a new training instructor.
• Tales Series:
  • In contrast to most protagonists in the series, Yuri Lowell has already joined, trained with, and left the Imperial Knights by the start of Tales of Vesperia. Stat-wise, he still begins from scratch, but he's at least established as a skilled fighter and got his Bodhi Blastia and Repede from the experience^note The Movie reveals he got both his bodhi blastia and Repede at the same time (when he left the knights), which can somewhat explain why he's somewhat low level. That said, he fully admits to not knowing much about how the world work and his Brilliant, but Lazy attitude (until Character Development kicks him out of it) makes him at first apathetic to improving himself further than dealing with the local Goldfish Poop Gang.
  • Tales of Symphonia: Lloyd Irving and Cless Alvein (Tales of Phantasia) are both established as trained swordsmen, Lloyd having taught himself to fight with two swords and Cless getting trained by his swordsman father in his school.
• In pre-reboot Tomb Raider, outside of a few flashbacks, Lara is implied to be a highly experienced adventurer right from the start of the series. The reboot averts this by being Lara's first adventure.
• Otto Baynes, the English protagonist of Uncharted Waters: New Horizons, starts the game at sailing and combat levels 10 and 12, respectively (where most other protagonists start at 1/1), and has a nobility rank from the start (where others have to work hard to even get an audience with a monarch). In-story, this is justified by him being chosen as an agent by King Henry VIII on a top-secret government mission — not something you would entrust to a newbie captain.
• Vagrant Story: Ashley Riot is 29 and already the best Riskbreaker that the VKP has, yet still has to acquire his abilities in the time honoured tradition. Or not. Due to suffering from Multiple-Choice Past, he's relearning them due to explicitly stated Repressed Memory. Or maybe not; no one really knows. That includes Ashley, for all he cares about the specifics.
• In Vampyr (2018), Jonathan Reid is a doctor who is no stranger to combat due to having served as Combat Medic during World War I.
• XenoGears: Citan, the deuteragonist, has been a capable fighter for years, knows his way of piloting a Gear, and is a well-informative doctor.

Web Original

• In Chrono Hustle Jack is new to time travel, but an experienced con artist. Melinda is an experienced TRD agent who knows her way around the time stream.

Web Comics

• The Dragon Doctors all start off the comic as possibly the world's best team of magical doctors: Goro's an ex-military combat surgeon who can chop anyone apart and sew them back together again, Sarin the Wizard is a supreme transformation specialist, Mori is a 170-year-old super-smart magical scientist, and Kili is the most sensitive shaman in the world. Their real journey is one of character development rather than skill development.
• Heroes Inc. is a sprite comic that features a team of protagonists from SNES games; within the comic, the games in which each character has been featured are considered canon to the comic as well, so when the team is formed at the beginning of the comic, the characters are already quite experienced from their own prior adventures.
• In Jupiter-Men, Nathan has been fighting starstruck creatures alongside Jupiter-Man for some time prior to the events of the story. As a result, he's the most informed and best trained member of the team, forcing him to take up the role of The Mentor to the others who have no monster-fighting experience.
• Commander Badass of Manly Guys Doing Manly Things is, at the start of the story, a long-time soldier with plenty of battles under his belt. He's also presumably been running the agency that the comic is centered on for a while.
• In Peter Parker: Foreign Exchange Student, Peter had already been operating as an infamous vigilante prior to getting his Secret Identity outed and heading off to Japan to officially go to hero school.
• The titular character of Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger often gives the impression that he's been a Ranger for a few decades, especially whenever he lectures his AI partner/cadet Omnibus. In sharp contrast to the ancestor he shares a name with as portrayed in his own comic. In one arc he discusses a mission he was on fifty years earlier, though due to his species' long natural lifespan and longevity treatments he's still in his prime.
• Allison/Mega Girl from Strong Female Protagonist has already served as, and retired from being, a Superhero. The series flips back and forth between her emotional struggles in trying to enjoy a "normal" life, and flashbacks detailing her time as a caped hero.

Western Animation

• Castlevania (2017): Trevor Belmont is already a trained monster hunter by the start of the series with years of battling under his belt.
• DC Super Hero Girls 2019: At the start Wonder Woman is already a seasoned superhero with hundreds of years worth of training and experience.
• DuckTales (2017): Both Scrooge and Donald have had decades of adventures under their belts (well, if they wore belts) and frequently show their adventuring and fighting chops to their nephews when trouble arises.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: Beckett Mariner is Older Than She Looks and a seasoned Starfleet officer, in contrast with Ensigns Boimler and Rutherford who have 1-2 years of service behind them and Naïve Newcomer Tendi. (As the show progresses Tendi is hinted with decreasing subtlety to have considerable experience outside Starfleet.)
• Much like the above example, Robin and Beast Boy in Teen Titans (2003) are veteran superheroes (albeit being recognized as sidekicks) by the chronological start of the series while the other members of the team only begin their superhero careers upon meeting the rest of the cast. By the time of the first episode, the others have become respected superheroes in their own right (seen when a kid with a prosthetic arm recognizes and idolizes Cyborg).
• Common to most Transformers series which begin with the Autobots and Decepticons already having spent several eons at war with one another. Beast Wars was the first notable exception in that it featured a team of explorers who were not veterans.
• In Young Justice (2010), several of the protagonists such as Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad are experienced superheroes who made their career as sidekicks with the official Justice League superheroes like Batman, Flash and Aquaman. Averted with others, like Superboy, Miss Martian and Artemis, who begin their superhero careers during the story.

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