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The heroes may have the plan, but they just don't have the manpower. So against hope, they have to call on the sorts of people who may not want to help or even like them.
Then they help. Whether or not it's successful, it's a good show of the ultimate community spirit. It's also a nice Continuity Nod if it features characters the heroes have helped in the past.
Named after the end of the The Lord Of The Rings, wherein the nations of the West are called together to battle the armies of Sauron. Ironically, even in this desperate time, most of Gondor's armies are hanging around in the South, waiting for the Corsair raids.
Compare/contrast with the last resort version Enemy Mine, and the mandatory version Hero Secret Service.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer's "Graduation" episode. Also "Chosen," but on a more epic scale.
- Farscape: past one-shot enemies were called upon to help the main characters rob a bank.
- One season finale for Stargate SG-1 had the Tau'ri, Free Jaffa Nation, Asgard, and Lucian Alliance band together to stop the Ori from gaining a foothold in their galaxy. In a rather shocking case of The Worf Effect, the Ori outright effectively slaughter the Milky Way alliance.
- A more successful alliance recently happened in Stargate Atlantis, where the Atlanteans, their enemies the Wraith, and a group of nomadic space-faring humans successfully destroy the Replicator homeworld.
- The Three Part Ending of Ultraman Mebius both subverts it wonderfully and plays is sickeningly straight. When the alien Empera-seijin sends his army down to earth to wear down the heroes, eventually rendering the hero near comatos and destroying most of their weapons and super-vehicles, the heroes get the aid of their various allies they've made over the season. Only to have it amount to nothing as Empera arrives and kicks the crap out of them with a few flicks of his wrist—eventually killing The Lancer and Ensemble Darkhorse before killing the hero in a single blow. A few of them get better, and get a true Gondor Calls For Aid from the Ultra-Brothers and a few of the slain are Not Quite Dead, and the world is saved.
- My Name Is Earl, "Camdenites": Earl rounds up just about everyone he's ever helped with his list to help him right Joy and Darnell's trailer.
- In the revised series of Doctor Who, the Series 3 and Series 4 finales have both utilised this. In series 3, Martha Jones, The Doctor and Captain Jack find they cannot defeat The Master on their own, so the Doctor sends Martha down to walk the Earth for a year to enlist the assistance of every single human. In Series 4, Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister, finds she needs to call on The Doctor, despite the fact he's the one responsible for deposing her, so she calls up all his previous New Series companions (excepting Rose, who doesn't have a webcam) to use the power of Torchwood's rift, Sarah Jane Smith's super computer (and by extention, the worlds phone exchanges), and Martha's intergalactic phone and her knowlege of the Doctor's number in order to get a phone call out to the Doctor, allowing him to track it back to Earth's hiding spot. Harriet even sacrifices her own life to serve as a distraction for the Daleks so the call for aid can get through.
Anime
- The Dark Masters arc of Digimon Adventure, and the last episodes of Digimon Adventure 02 and Digimon Savers, although it's kind of an accident.
- The final Gokujou Seitokai arc, where nearly every minor character who showed up once and got named returned to help the titular student council.
- Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch always brought in the secondary trio, Kaito, and that season's orange princess in the end, even though throughout the series, they were either useless, unawakened, incapacitated or unwilling to do the job.
- Sort of done in the climactic battle with Kid Buu in Dragon Ball Z: Goku continuously asks the people of Earth to lend some of their energy to his Spirit Bomb, but none of them want to because they can't see Goku, don't know who he is, and the few people who do lend their energy end up really exhausted afterwards. It takes Hercule, the Fake Ultimate Hero of the DBZ world, to convince the population to lend their strength.
- While not exactly calling for direct aid, Eyeshield21 has Every ace from every important team in Kantou show up to help the Devil Bats train for the Christmas Bowl finals.
- When it comes down to the final battle in the Violinist of Hameln (pictured
 ◊), a truly ridiculous amount of reinforcements show up (including just about every minor character capable of taking to the field).
- Inverted in The Law of Ueki. Friendly Enemy Smart Guy Kilnorton calculates the odds of defeating Big Bad Anon to be suicidal and thus refuses to participate in the Final Battle. For the sake of his Nakama, however, he convinces Ai to make him fall in love with glasses in order to bring him to the arena despite what his better judgment says. She succeeds and Kilnorton joins in on the action. Subverted when Anon knocks him out before he can actually do anything to help.
- The final battle of Vandread brings back every character and civilization that ever displayed the ability to pilot a spaceship.
- The last episode of the hentai title Meiking, every group Cain helped (or spared) along the way showed up to assist in the final showdown with Cain's evil rival, Francis.
- In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann episode seven, a number of characters (such as Kittan and Dayakka, amongst a bunch of newly introduced folks like the twins) arrive to help the Gurren-Dan capture what will become the Dai-Gurren. They stay around afterwards, however, and permanently expand the Gurren-Dan.
- Towards the ending of Mai-Otome, BOTH sides in the final battle call upon reinforcements in the form of Otome from other nations, all seen briefly way back in episode three. And once the final battle breaks out, the teachers and entire student body of Garderobe comes to help the heroes.
Comic Books
- In the comics, the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom, although they are bitter enemies, have had occasions where one party has called on the other for help in emergencies.
- Similarly, when X-Men Kitty Pryde's intangibility power ran amok, her teammates called on Doctor Doom (among others) to find a cure for her.
- Actually, Doctor Doom called them to offer his services... the opportunity for succeeding on a task where Reed Richards had just failed was irresistible. The X-Men still leaped to say yes, however.
- In the comic book series Elf Quest, when two elf tribes — the Wolfriders and the newly-introduced Go-Backs — join forces to wage war against the trolls of King Guttlekraw, the elves form a grudging alliance with the trolls formerly led by the late King Greymung, who have been enslaved by Guttlekraw, even though Greymung's trolls have been the hated enemies of the Wolfriders, ever since betraying them back at the start of the storyline. The Go-Backs, meanwhile, would never have thought of teaming up with trolls of any kind, period... But it's probably only because of this uneasy alliance that Guttlekraw's trolls are defeated.
- Tom Strong spent nearly a dozen issues befriending and helping various entities and past enemies. The Gondor Calls For Aid scenario used them all.... to deal with a ludicrous, never before/ never again seen, dead-in-one-issue meanace. This may or may not have been a parody, though.
- The climax of the Lucifer comic involves the invasion of Heaven by a vast army, Lucifer himself forced to gather together a truly motley group of allies from past stories to defend it. Unfortunately at least one of them wouldn't mind killing him, and none of them particularly like him (or heaven for that matter).
- Grant Morrison's run on JLA ended with the entirety of Earth gaining superpowers and joining with the Justice League to fight a potentially galaxy-destroying menace.
- Nearly everyone the newest Blue Beetle had befriended (and a few of the previous Beetle's old friends, but oddly not the team he's currently affiliated with) came to the aid of either Beetle himself or his family and closest friends as he fought off The Reach during the most recent arc.
- Issue #125 of the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic had just about every hero and villain still alive teaming up to fend off an alien invasion.
Literature
- Another fantasy fiction example comes at the end of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart, in which the heroine journeys to Alba (a fantasy version of Great Britain) to convince the Albans to bring their army to the aid of Terre d'Ange (France) which has been invaded by Skaldia (Germany/Scandinavia).
- Harry Potter - the climax of The Deathly Hallows.
- In one of the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels Big Bad Warlord Zsinj, with his ship's hyperdrive crippled and believing the good guys know where he is, calls upon every pirate and mercenary group he's ever worked with before to come and bail him out. This includes the good guys, who had successfully disguised themselves as pirates in the past. This in turn lets them know that their information about his whereabouts is indeed genuine, not a trap, and they proceed to go there and kick his ass.
Western Animation
- Winx Club: In the fourth episode of season two, Amentia tries to force one of the major characters into marrying her. Brandon effectively lucks out of it, and in the 24th episode of the season, Brandon and Sky decide to get Amentia's help in allowing the Specialists' ship to get inside the Underrealm to rescue Bloom. Also, in season one, a few nymphs from one of the Filler episodes warned Alfea of the arrival of the villains during the final battle.
- In the Justice League Unlimited episode "Destroyer", after the Legion of Doom inadvertently revive Darkseid and manage to return to Earth, they insist on allying with the Justice League to stop the New God's pending attack. Although Superman is less than enthused, the League agrees.
- The opening credits for Unlimited do a fine showing of this trope. Starting off with the members of the previous incarnation, it pulls away to show several dozen heroes in a really long line-up.
- There was also an episode, before it became Unlimited, where Darkseid came to the Watchtower to ask the JL for help in fending off Brainiac. Partly subverted in a couple ways, first in that Superman outright attacks Darkseid before he can even begin to ask for help, and secondly in that Darkseid was planning to betray the Justice League anyway.
- The episodes of Unlimited "Dark Heart," "The Return," and "Panic in the Sky" play this pretty straight. The first uses most of the expanded league to beat alien robots, the next features the League teamed up with a (rather pissed off) Green Lantern Corps, and the final has the League face off against clones of the Superfriends Expys.
- Although Magneto was theoretically considered the Arch-Villain in the X-Men animated series, every one of his appearances (except the first one) ends with him working with the X-Men to defeat some greater evil.
- The fifth season finale of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon involved the turtles calling on pretty much everyone they'd ever worked with, and a few they'd fought against, to help stop the threat.
- In Avatar The Last Airbender, during the Day of Black Sun, various allies of the Gaang from the Earth Nation show up to help out.
- Likewise, in the series finale, other characters such as Iroh, Jeong, Bumi, Pakku, to name a few show up to help fight the Fire Nation.
- The series ender of Danny Phantom and the episode "Reign Storm".
Video Games
- The ending of Skies Of Arcadia, of course.
- In Freelancer, the first half of the game is about finding someone who can identify the artifact that fell into Trent's hand. Near the end of the game, the Order calls the Outcasts and the Blood Dragons to help them against the Nomads.
- The climax of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
- Chapter 3 of Neverwinter Nights 2.
- Used in both Heroes Of Might And Magic III and its expansion Armageddon's Blade.
- In the first, it's played straight, on both sides—the nations of Bracada, AvLee, and Erathia coming together to face Nighon and Eeofol (who later drop out of the war). Later, the necromancers of Deyja make an alliance with Erathia to stop the necromancers' own king, who has grown far too powerful for their liking.
- In Armageddon's Blade, the witch Adrienne asks Erathia for aid against an invasion of undead that threatens both their borders. Erathia, too caught up in its other problems, declines. Meanwhile, AvLee and Erathia are allied briefly against Eeofol, and then Erathia finds new allies in the Conflux towns, before the queen of Erathia abdicates in order to pursue the war with more vigor, Erathia having grown tired of war. Finally, the last mission of that campaign has to be completed within two months—or Eeofol's call for aid from Nighon will be answered.
- In going against Bodhi's guild towards the end of Baldurs Gate II, the player character can form an alliance with a paladin order, the thieves' guild, and the Companions of the Hall (Drizzt Do'Urden and friends) against them. Doing so naturally makes the battle much easier.
- In .hack//G.U. Redemption, Haseo and Zelkova use their influence to get help from all the players of "The World" to assist them in stopping Cubia.
- In Earthbound, beating the BigBad requires the combined prayers of almost every named character in the game, including the player.
- Final Fantasy IV: When the villains summon the giant world-ending monster, just about everyone you've ever helped, including all your ex-party members except the one that really died, shows up in tanks and airships and starts blasting away.
- In Okami, the prayers from all the people of Nippon, inspired by Issun, are what revives Amaterasu and restores her full divine glory. Cue the Theme Music Power Up and the final boss fight.
Real Life
- The international volunteers that came to help Republican Spain against the fascists.
- During Israel's war of independence, volunteers from all over the world (many of them WW 2 veterans) clamored to aid the Israeli side. Quite a few of the American volunteers were later jailed for doing so.
- Similarly thousands of people from all over Europe went to Greece to join up with the Greek bid for independence from the Ottoman Empire, including famed crazy Byron.
Webcomics
- Oasis and Dr. Schlock play this role during the "Dangerous Days" arc of Sluggy Freelance (though with shades of Enemy Mine). The same can be said of just about any time Bun-Bun agrees to help anyone.
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