Fictional Combat Troop

Say hello to L'Empereur's wolf warriors.

Fiction writers generally like to use Real Life settings when writing about war stories or government procedurals, featuring real countries, militaries, paramilitary forces, law enforcement agencies, fire brigades, ambulance services, and so on, but would rather make sure that no actual discernable units or agencies be featured. Also, when dealing military units in particular, it is easy to make mistakes that professionals will sport - especially when dealing with the vast array of British army regiments.

The easiest way is to come up with their own units that are at best only loosely inspired by their real counterparts and bring along their very own set of customised skills.

Sub-Trope of No Communities Were Harmed.

Hollywood Cop Uniform, Hollywood Military Uniform and Elites Are More Glamorous are regularly in effect, as are Like Reality, Unless Noted and Alternate History. May be the result of Video Game Historical Revisionism in that medium.

Not to be confused with its smaller Sister Trope, Government Agency of Fiction, which specifically concerns itself with wholly fictional bureaucratic departments, intelligence agencies, and everything in-between (think the US Department of Mutant Affairs). Both tropes share a preference for Fun with Acronyms.

Also not to be confused with its other sisters, Fictional Province and Barsetshire, which focus on fictive geographical subdivisions of real places. Fictional Units whose only outstanding feature is being tied to an equally fictional place (such as, say, Midsomer Constabulary of County Midsomer) go there.

Compare with Interpol Special Agent, United Nations Is a Superpower, and Fantasy Counterpart Culture.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Hellsing: The Iscariot Organisation is a secret 13th part of the Roman Catholic Church. They fight vampires.

Comic Books

• Marvel Comics: SHIELD was initially introduced as a government spy agency, though it was rarely made clear under what Department it operated. When he was Director of SHIELD, Colonel Nick Fury would often receive his orders directly from the President of the United States. As time went on, SHIELD's function shifted from spying and counter-intelligence and more towards defense against superpowered threats that were beyond the capabilities of traditional law enforcement or military forces.
• The Transformers (Marvel): The Intelligence and Information Institute (I.I.I.) was formed under the auspices of the National Security Council in response to reports of strange gigantic robots appearing in Oregon. III organised the Rapid Anti-robot Assault Team (R.A.A.T.) in an attempt to contain this potential threat while III focused on spinning things to avoid panic. Both III and RAAT wind up being complete failures, as they stubbornly refused to believe there were two separate warring factions and one was friendly. At one point, the Autobots under Grimlock even completely abandon Earth and simply let the Decepticons run roughshod with RAAT unable to muster any sort of countermeasure, and to rub it in, the Decepticon leader Ratbat even thanks them for making the Decepticons' jobs easier by being so stubborn. Both III and RAAT were shortly disbanded following that debacle (which was televised live to boot).
• The Transformers Megaseries: Skywatch is a government organisation created to investigate alien activity. It received a huge boost in funding and government support when its operatives uncovered undeniable proof of alien presence: three inert giant robots and a full-sized extraterrestrial bunker they refurbished into a research facility. As time passes, despite all their preparation they prove woefully inadequate to stand against the Transformers once their cold war goes hot. In the aftermath of The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Skywatch comes under the auspices of the United Nations with a much wider range of powers to counter the Transformers, but eventually after a series of scandals and failures, it's disbanded and replaced with the Earth Defense Command.
• G.I. Joe In the Marvel Comics, G.I.Joe is identified as "Special Counter-Terrorist Unit Delta", a special forces unit under the US Department of Defense. It's because of this unusual position that the Joe team is able to draw members from every branch of the US military (e.g. Duke is from the Army, Ace from the Air Force, Shipwreck is a Navy man, Beachhead is a Ranger, Leatherneck a Marine, Wetsuit a Navy SEAL), in addition to a few international members like Flint. In an example of Early-Installment Weirdness, in the early stories, the Joes were a secret unit and had their base hidden under the motor pool of a military base, with the members of the Joe team being considered a disgrace to the uniform as a part of their cover. On one occasion, a Mossad agent observed that the Joes were "too scruffy to be Delta (Force), not crazy enough to be SOG". The "hidden unit" aspect was dropped after COBRA discovered their base and launched an attack, causing the Joe team to go public.
• In IDW Publishing's G.I.Joe comics, the Joes are a covert unit under the Department of Defense, with each member having to fake their deaths to preserve secrecy. It's later retconned that part of the reason they were formed was the events of The Transformers: All Hail Megatron demonstrated that conventional military forces were completely useless against the Decepticons.

Fan Works

• Project Powerpuff: Declassified: One of the main components of the generically-named "Organization" is a combat service unit known as the "Security Forces", which appears to follow the same ranking and procedures as the US Army, aside from its orientation towards the Organization's mission.

Films — Live Action

• The Patriot (2000) has the Green Dragoons, a British Army Loyalist cavalry brigade operating in South Carolina, led by Big Bad Colonel Tavington. Loosely based on Tarleton's Raiders.
• Battleground (1949): The unit featured in the film is the 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, I Company, 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. While the 101st Airborne and the 327th Regiment were real units, the regiment didn't have an I Company.
• Captain America: The First Avenger:
  • The Strategic Science Reserve, or SSR for short, was a top-secret Allied unit established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to combat HYDRA. They were the ones behind Project Rebirth, a program intent on mass producing Super Soldiers via a Super Serum concocted by Dr. Abraham Erskine, which led to Steve Rogers becoming Captain America. While initially thought a failure following Erskine's assassination and the destruction of the remaining vials of super soldier serum, once Rogers actually proves himself in combat, the unit's goals change to directly combating HYDRA. Following the end of the war, the SSR would serve as the basis for its successor, the government agency SHIELD.
  • HYDRA is a Waffen-SS unit that specializes in carrying out advanced scientific research for the Third Reich. Led by Johann Schmidt, the unit was originally tasked with developing advanced, war-winning wonderweapons for the Third Reich, before Schmidt secretly separated the unit from the Reich in 1943.
• Minority Report: The Washington, D.C. Police Dept's Pre-Crime Division uses three precognitive individuals to predict imminent murder. By the time the movie takes place, they have reduced the murder rate in the nation's capital to nearly zero. It does have a few flaws in the system, however, and the division's founder is able to use them to commit murder himself.
• Transformers Film Series:
  • Transformers (2007): Sector Seven is a secret government agency that operates under the Department of Defense, specialising in recovering and reverse-engineering alien technology. Their crown jewels are the AllSpark and the "Iceman", which they've been slowly researching for decades.
  • Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: Sector Seven is revealed to have been disbanded due to fallout from the climax of the first film where the Iceman (in truth, Decepticon leader Megatron) broke free and led an attack on a nearby city, causing massive damage and civilian casualties. Sector Seven was replaced by N.E.S.T. (Non-biological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty), a military unit specifically tasked with tracking down and combating hostile alien lifeforms, which mostly means the Decepticons. NEST operates under the authority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
  • Transformers: Age of Extinction: Cemetery Wind is a black ops unit organised by the CIA to hunt down, capture and destroy Decepticons... or at least it was. By the time of the film's events, the unit has outright gone rogue and murdered several US government-allied Autobots, though the government higher-ups were unaware of this. Optimus Prime slew their leader for his murder of the Autobots, and most of their personnel were slaughtered in the crossfire of the climax.
  • Transformers: The Last Knight: The Transformers Reaction Force is an international unit that similarly intends to track down, capture and/or kill Transformers, though unlike Cemetery Wind their actions are fully backed by the majority of Earth's governments (barring Cuba, which offered Transformers sanctuary). In an example of extreme short-sightedness, the TRF higher-ups agreed to ally briefly with Megatron in order to track down a group of human sympathisers and several remaining Autobots. Megatron naturally betrayed them and almost destroyed Earth in the process, until TRF field units took initiative and allied with the Autobots to stop him.
  • Bumblebee: Sector Seven appears, covertly conducting exercises with US military forces and recruiting several survivors of Blitzwing's initial assault on the US military personnel.
• Hot Fuzz: Sandford Constabulary, the miniscule (ten-person) police service for the fictional village of Sandford, Gloucestershire, is notable for being exceedingly tiny (and provincial) even by fictional British police standards. In Real Life, the whole of County Gloucestershire is policed by one agency, Gloucestershire Constabulary.

Literature

• A Certain Magical Index: Necessarius, aka The Church of Necessary Evil, is a subset of the Catholic Church specializing in dealing with magical threats and their containment.
• A staple of the Sharpe series of books:
  • The South Essex Regiment is a fictional line infantry regiment of the British Army, raised and originally commanded by the aristocrat Colonel Sir Henry Simmerson, partially as the front of a crimping scheme. It is later renamed to the Prince of Wales' Own Volunteers after Sharpe successfully curries the favour of Prince Regent George.
  • Brigadier General Guy Loup leads the Wolf Brigade, a light infantry unit in the Imperial French Army that completely embraces its wolf theme, down to the regimental colours, uniforms, and conduct on the battlefield.
  • The Real Compania Irlandesa, a Spanish line infantry company, is the Irish Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards (read: "toy soldiers") to the King of Spain, which falls under British command during the events of the book. It is loosely based on the Regimiento Hibernia.
  • The Scarsdale Yeomanry is a cavalry militia unit based in Yorkshire, commanded by the posh Captain George Wickham. Most of its day-to-day business consists of union-busting on behalf of the local landowners.
• The Temeraire series, taking place in an Alternate History Napoleonic Europe, features dragon-riding cavalry units such as the British Army Aerial Corps.
• Derek Robinson's novels of air combat are set in Royal Air Force squadrons that are drawn from life but never existed in reality. his WW1 formations Goshawk Squadron and Hornet Squadron, for instance, reflect First World War aviation realistically and graphically; but the RAF never used names to officially identify its units; they were always numbered. ^note Informal nicknames like "The Dambusters" existed and are still carried with honour, but officially they are always 617 Squadron. Similarly, while his WW2 squadrons carried numbers, these were very carefully chosen numbers never assigned to actual wartime units.
• The 266 and 287 Squadrons of the Biggles books: neither formation existed in Real Life.
• The Highland regiment in George Mc Donald Fraser's McAuslan novels never existed as such: it is deliberately written as a portmanteau incorporating elements of all six Scottish regiments in the British Army, with one predominating.
• Trinity Blood: The Vatican has a special operations group called the AX Agency, headed by the Ministry of Holy Affairs' director Cardinal Caterina Sforza. They're in charge of investigating issues related to vampires.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who features the UNIT or United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, a UN-affiliated special forces unit tasked with countering extraterrestrial threats (later retconned as the British Armed Forces-affiliated Unified Intelligence Taskforce).
• Stargate SG-1: The eponymous unit is part of the US Air Force's Stargate Command located beneath Cheyenne Mountain. The SGC is tasked with expeditions through the Stargate and defending Earth against extraterrestrial threats.
• Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders follows the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's fictional International Response Team as they seek to rescue Americans who are kidnapped or go missing in other countries. While the agents are armed, in most cases they request permission to carry and use their weapons while "in country" and are occasionally denied. The actual FBI has no such armed unit but does take part in the US's Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell along with other agencies such as the Department of State and Department of Defense. Among other things, the HRFC includes hostage negotiators and support for victims' families.
• Mission: Impossible centers on the IMF, a team of cherry-picked specialists conducting covert missions worldwide. Team leader Jim Phelps receives his assignments via a tape recorder that self-destructs. The penultimate line of these messages is: "If you or any of your I.M. Force is captured or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions." It's not specified whether this is the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State; in any case, the IMF gives the department Plausible Deniability.
• First mentioned in a deleted scene in Thor and properly introduced in Wandavision, SWORD is the American-based Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division ^note This is changed from the comics, where SWORD stood for Sentient World Observation and Response Department and was a subdivision of SHIELD , founded by Maria Rambeau in 1995. It originally focused on manned space missions and extraterrestrial operations, but after Rambeau's death in 2020, new director Tyler Hayward began to redirect the agency's resources to robotics, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence (in particular trying to reactivate or recreate the deceased Vision as a weapon, in spite of his last wishes ).
• Flashpoint: The SRU is a fictional tactical unit within the Toronto Police Department, specializing in tasks that are above the capabilities of patrol officers, such as hostage takings, bomb threats, and high-risk manhunts.
• Black Mirror:
  • Black Mirror: Smithereens: The Greater London Police serves as a fictionalised analogue to Metropolitan Police of London.
  • Black Mirror: Men Against Fire: The unnamed military force the protagonist serves in is decked out in US Army equipment and uniforms, strongly implying it to be a fictionalised 20 Minutes into the Future version of the same. This is all but confirmed in Black Mirror: Hated in the Nation, where it's revealed on TV that the "US military announces MASS project".
• Vera: The Northumberland and City Police serves as the fictional police force of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Northumberland, North Tyneside, and Tyne And Wear. Its closest Real Life counterpart is Northumbria Police.
• Annika has Scotland Police, a (thinly veiled) version of Police Scotland.
• Marcella: The Belfast Metropolitan Police Service serves as an independent city police. In Real Life, Belfast would also fall under the jurisdiction of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: The titular organization, established by the US government, is mainly tasked with providing Rescue services for the city of Mariner Bay during times of crisis and emergency. Its other task is to take down the threat of the Demons, and for that, they've established their own team of Power Rangers.
  • Power Rangers Time Force: The titular organization are Time Police tasked with apprehending Mutant criminals in the year 3000. When Ransik, the last Mutant Criminal leader, escapes with a vault of other criminals, four of the agency's best members are given the Time Morphers and must travel back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and stop Ransik's Evil Plan.

Other

• Fictional Police Forces UK is an online repository of various fictional police forces featured throughout works set in the British Isles.
  • Fictional Police Forces Canada does the same for Canada.
  • Fictional Police Forces USA does the same for the United States.

Video Games

• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series: The Global Defense Initiative (GDI) is originally created by the United Nations as a special task force to combat the terrorist threat of the Brotherhood of Nod in addition to dealing with the growing Tiberium crisis. It was formed out of an earlier unit known as Special Operations Group Echo, Black Ops 9, though little is known about that particular unit. Eventually, GDI outgrows its original mandate and, as national governments collapse due to the changes brought on by Tiberium, they step in to fill the role of a new world government.
• Company of Heroes: The game features the Panzer Elite faction and the Knight's Cross Holders squads. Both draw from individual historical Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Waffen-SS units but are otherwise completely fictional.
• Emergency!: The series features the Engineers, a technical disaster relief organisation with dark blue liveries that is essentially the German Bundesanstalt Technisches Hilfswerk (THW) with the serial numbers filed off.
• Half-Life: The Hazardous Environment Combat Unit (HECU) is a US military unit specialized in fighting in, well, hazardous environments such as the inside of buildings or in radioactive areas. Whilst their infantry and V-22 Osprey transports are all but stated to be from the United States Marine Corps, their Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and Apache attack helicopters are from the US Army, while their F-16 fighters are from the US Air Force. Because of this, it's heavily implied that they're a joint Special Forces unit like SOCOM.
  • Half-Life: Opposing Force: The Black Ops are introduced as a complete unit in this Expansion Pack. They are a secretive elite unit of government assassins with the mission of continuing the HECU's Fiery Cover-Up of the Black Mesa incident following the former suffering heavy casualties and ultimately pulling out of the facility. Unfortunately for the HECU units still stranded in Black Mesa, they're also among those targeted by the Black Ops, who by this point have made sure to Leave No Witnesses. They're equipped with the same small arms, transport trucks, and Apache Helicopters as their USMC counterparts, and come in both male and female variants. Due to their secretive nature, however, it's unknown which branch of the US military or government they're actually part of, not helped by the fact that all of them are Silent Antagonists, not even muttering any noises upon death.
  • Black Mesa: The Hazardous Environment Combat Unit in this Fan Remake is explicitly from the United States Marine Corps, with this incarnation's Armored Personnel Carrier being the LAV-25, and their main strike aircraft being the AV-8 Harrier II. Much like their original counterparts, their job is to enforce a Fiery Cover-Up of the facility, by attempting to halt the Alien Invasion as well as Leave No Witnesses, in this case the Black Mesa personnel.
• Max Payne 3: The Unidade de Forças Especiais (UFE), formally known as the 55º Batalhão Polícia da Cidade, is a special tactics police unit of the São Paolo State Military Police, which is very closely based on the various Real Life BOPE units.
• Overwatch: Reinhardt was recruited from the Crusaders, a unit of soldiers in large Powered Armor suits created by the German Army to combat the Omnics during the Omnic Crisis.
• Secret Weapons Over Normandy: Both the Royal Air Force (later the United States Army Air Forces as well once the US enters World War II) and the German Luftwaffe have their own respective units that fall under this trope.
  • The Battlehawks are an elite fighter squadron established under the supervision of the SOE. At first, they were an Eagle Squadron composed of pilots from different parts of Nazi-occupied Europe, the United Kingdom, and the then-neutral United States, their job was to carry out the SOE's mandate of "setting Europe ablaze". Once the United States and Japan enter the war, however, they reorganize themselves into a Multinational Team slash joint Allied venture dedicated to stopping their Arch-Enemy, the German Luftwaffe's Nemesis Squadron, from supplying weapons and resources to their Japanese allies, and later, the squadron's numerous wonderweapons projects.
  • Nemesis was initially established as an elite unit in the German Luftwaffe. Led by the enigmatic Oberst Krieger, the unit is composed entirely of the Luftwaffe's best-trained and most skilled Ace Pilots. Unlike most Luftwaffe units, Nemesis operates both fighters and bombers simultaneously. Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Nemesis makes further ventures, first by supplying the Japanese with German weapons designs and resources via U-boat, and later, leading the development of various wonderweapons projects.
• Silent Storm: The Player Character takes on the role of a leader for a commando squad during the final two years of World War II, i.e. 1943-45, and depending upon the players choice can side with either the Allies and be apart of the Special Operations-SE2 or Axis and be apart of Abwehr Section 2. Regardless of whichever side the player picks, however, they both still carry out operations behind the frontlines of whichever side the player did not chose before finding themselves investigating a third faction, known as Thor’s Hammer Organization/THO, who plan to Take Over the World once the world superpowers destroy each other. The two expansion packs that follow have the war end with the remnants of both sides merging together to form the Sentinels, which does not answer to one government and as such are forced to buy their own weapons and ammo, whose goal is to prevent the rise of more terrorists as well as dealing with the remnants of THO, who has infiltrated Sentinel as personnel in an effort to get revenge on those who killed their leader and ruined their plans.
• Sleeping Dogs (2012): The game has the Hong Kong Police Department as the law enforcement agency of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC. Its Real Life analogue would be the Hong Kong Police Force, with the "Force" being left over from its British colonial days.
• Sniper Elite:
  • Sniper Elite III: The "Save Churchill" Downloadable Content campaign packs feature the Schutzvollstrecker, a secretive and elite unit of the Wehrmacht. Already notable for their experimental weapons developments, the unit is deployed to North Africa with one goal: an Assassination Attempt on British Prime Minster Winston Churchill by any means necessary.
  • Sniper Elite 4: The Valkyrie Jager are an elite unit of German paratroopers deployed to both Northern Italy and Southern Germany. They mainly serve as a Praetorian Guard unit, accompanying high-ranking German officers and scientists, particularly those involved with the "Deathstorm" atomic weapons project. Compared to their peers, they're equipped with the latest weapons that Nazi Germany has to offer, including large numbers of automatic rifles and even experimental rocket launchers.
• Spec Ops: The Line: The game features the 33rd Infantry Battalion of the US Army, nicknamed the "Damned 33rd", a war-crime-prone unit recently rotated out of Afghanistan, led by the enigmatic Colonel John Conrad.
• Total War:
  • Rome: Total War:
    • Many of the "barbarian" faction rosters include ahistoric units meant to make them seem more classically barbaric to modern audiences. The Germans, primarily light infantry spear-users during that time period in real life, have "berserker" units who wear furs and wield giant battle axes. Similarly, the Britons have "head hurlers" who toss severed heads as an attack (it's not very powerful but is one of the biggest morale drains in the game). While there is some historical evidence of Britons from that time taking severed heads as trophies, there is none supporting the idea that they threw them at enemies.
    • The Roman factions include some units that get their names from real-life counterparts but do not function anything like them. Urban Cohorts are on the same level as the Praetorian Guard in-game, but in real life were more like a Town Watch police force and firefighters. Similarly, Arcani are treated as elite McNinja troops in-game but in real life were a small unit of Roman agents who definitely did not dress like ninjas.
  • Total War: Shogun 2: The "specialized" samurai units (ex. Katana Samurai, Yari Samurai, Bow Samurai, etc.) would not have existed as such. Part of the samurai bushido code was being proficient in all three weapon types, with the katana explicitly a secondary melee weapon if the yari (spear) was broken or discarded.

Western Animation

• What If…? (2021):
  • What If…? S1E1 "What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?": Much like its Sacred Timeline counterpart, HYDRA is a Waffen-SS unit led by Johann Schmidt, specializing mainly in supernatural sciences rather than conventional science. Unlike their Sacred Timeline counterparts, they never get to experiment with the Tesseract and are armed with conventional German weapons, uniforms, and vehicles all the way up to the end of the European War. Their reasons for separating from the Third Reich this time around are due to the Nazi regime coming close to collapsing by 1945, with Schmidt deciding that HYDRA would outlive and replace them.
  • Much like in the Sacred Timeline, the SSR was a top-secret Allied unit intent on combating the threat that HYDRA, Hitler's supernatural sciences division, posed. Initially, their version of Project Rebirth was also thought to be a failure thanks to Heinz Kruger's intervention, resulting in the loss of Erskine and the remaining vials of serum from Kruger's bomb. With Rogers, who was wounded by Kruger, becoming the Super-Soldier, Peggy Carter volunteers in his stead. She then proves herself by heading into Berlin alone and straight-up stealing the Tesseract and capturing Dr. Arnim Zola. Pretty soon, under the now-Captain Carter's leadership, the SSR's goals become the same as its Sacred Timeline counterpart, complete with the unit becoming a part of SHIELD following the end of the war.
• Roswell Conspiracies: The Alliance is an organization that monitors and controls extraterrestrials living on Earth. Its backstory is that it was created initially by the US Air Force, which also staged the Roswell incident as a distraction to keep the public focused on that instead of what was really going on. Since then it has become a seemingly autonomous entity that appears to have hidden its existence from the organizations that created it.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: G.I.Joe is described in the opening narration as "a special mission force" specifically formed to combat COBRA, "a ruthless terrorist organisation determined to rule the world". Throughout the series, they're shown working together with the Army, Navy, and Air Force as the need arises (e.g. in "Sink The Montana" they work with the Navy in trying to sink the titular battleship, Colonel Sharp of the US Army is a recurring supporting character).
• Transformers: While mostly about the war between the Autobots and Decepticons, there have been times when these sorts of units have been set up by humans in response to their arrival/conflict on Earth.
  • Transformers: Prime: Unit: E is a mysterious federal agency, represented in the series by Agent Fowler, the US government liaison to the Autobots. Throughout the series, Agent Fowler is able to call upon various resources to aid the Autobots, including US Army units, Skystrikers from G.I. Joe, and even an experimental vehicle from M.A.S.K..
  • Transformers: EarthSpark: G.H.O.S.T. (Global Hazard and Ordinance Strike Team) is a US government organisation founded thirty years prior to the beginning of the series. They were initially formed to combat the strange giant robots that had suddenly appeared, but by the time of the series, their purpose is to foster human-Autobot relationships (a flashback depicts some of their members leading units of the US Army in support of the Autobots). Despite this, most of their operations revolve around hunting down and capturing rogue Transformers, and it's also made clear that, despite their long-standing alliance, neither G.H.O.S.T. nor the Autobots fully trust each other (a major example being how Optimus Prime deliberately keeps the presence of Bumblebee a secret from them).

Real Life

• A standard practice of MILDEC (military deception) consists of creating phantom military units that only exist on paper, in order to both intimidate and misdirect an unsuspecting enemy. One famous such ploy was Operation Fortitude which, among other things, created the entirely fictional First United States Army Group, consisting of made-up units, units that hadn't existed since World War 1, and in some cases units that wouldn't become real until much later. One famous case of the latter variety was the Special Air Service, which started out as a phantom British paratrooper division stationed in North Africa.
• In the British Army, "The Loamshire Regiment" is used as a placeholder name when giving examples of Army procedures. As the other wiki points out, the regiment and the fictional county for which it is named have appeared in other works.
• As noted on the page for the New York City Cops, the city police department is so omnipresent in media (thanks in part to their own film and media units) that their fictional 12th Precinct has essentially become its own Sub-Trope.

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