Somewhere between Humans Are Bastards, Humans Are Special and Humanity Is Superior lies this trope, the polar opposite of Humans Are Diplomats. Compared to the other races of the galaxy, or at least the other 'good' races, humans are violent, warlike savages who revel in chaos and destruction. This is not, however, a bad thing; at worst, the more 'civilized' races may look down on us, but they acknowledge that we're not a plague to be wiped out. Or at least they acknowledge that it might be somewhat inadvisable to try.
The trope takes one of two forms:
In the first form, humans are helping themselves with their savagery; the technologically, physically, and/or mentally superior aliens would wipe us out or enslave us if not for our courage, tenacity, and willingness to pull crazy stunts in battle and the experience of thousands of years of conflict. Look for humanity to attempt to capture and reverse-engineer as much of the aliens' superior technology as possible, while aliens either keep the pressure on through sheer resource advantage or begin to learn some of our own tricks to turn against us. Other aliens, inspired by our example, may rise against their keepers or speak out on our behalf in the Galactic Senate, so we can eventually come to have claim to our space that we don't have to constantly fight to protect. This version is frequently related to Earth Is A Battlefield.
The second form of this trope makes humans useful to other aliens. Maybe the 'good' aliens have been fighting a losing war against the 'evil' aliens due to psychological limitations, numbers, or lack of training in the art of war. Maybe they are evenly matched or even winning against the enemy but want someone else to get shot at for a change. By working together with humans, they can actually put their advanced technology to use effectively; in turn, humans gain the peacetime benefits of the aliens' advanced technology. Other aliens may be less scrupulous about the relationship, considering us less 'valuable partners' and more 'battle thralls'. So long as they are able to enforce the relationship through their technology, this trope remains in the second form... but expect us to keep an eye out for a chance to break free of our insect overlords, no matter how benevolent they seem.
A variation on this trope might be called "Humans Are Soldiers." In this case, far from being pacifists, the aliens are a Proud Warrior Race- to the max. Problem is, they're so focused on honor duels and personal-scale violence, they can't bring together armies and fleets, or are simply ineffectual when they do because they won't or can't cooperate and establish a chain of command. Thus despite actually being less skilled at raw violence, humanity ends up being the ones able toband together and fight wars, and fulfill this trope.
Compare Heroic Spirit.
Examples of the first form of this trope include:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
Robo Tech: A series about an alien ship that crashes on earth giving humans access to advanced technology. Humanity weaponizes the tech and not long after finds itself embroiled in war with giant aggressive humanoid aliens over a powerful energy source.
Fan Works
Renegade The Command & Conquer/Mass Effect crossover. Humans are essentially this. The main strength of humanity is that they became tough, strong, resourceful, and resilient because they were surviving on a world where the very ground was trying to kill them. As a result, they developed a mentality of aggressive, conservative militancy and devised advanced technology to simply survive on their homeworld. Once they got off Earth in large numbers (thanks to mass effect technology) they turned the same Green Rocks ravaging their homeworld into the means to fund an aggressive expansion into the galaxy, which subsequently allowed them to form a political/military bloc independent of the Citadel. Between their tech, mindset, and economic power, GDI became a major player in galactic politics mere decades after making First Contact.
XSGCOM series, being a fusion of the Stargate series and the X-COM series, is a definite example of this. Being the spawn of two examples of this trope, the crazy insanity and massive explosions are only ramped up. P90's? Try elerium plasma weapons stolen from renegade Asgard. The Goa'uld bring in the staff weapons? We steal those, cut them up, and make Gatling Staffs and Gatling Staff ''Cannons.'' Loki unleashes psychic troops? We bring out our own. The Kull are a problem? Bring out the Power Armor with more weapons than a decent-sized army. Wraith attacking Atlantis? Hello, orbital Naquadria weapons! It turns out that the ancients manipulated our DNA a long, long time ago to make us really, really good at war. As of the second story, the Ancients are beginning to wonder if they succeeded ''too well.''
Film
Battle Beyond the Stars: Space Cowboy, who is a member of just one of the Proud Warrior Races needed for this job. He is also the only character in the whole movie who is actually from the planet Earth..
Literature
AnimorphsWhere various aliens (usually Andalites) note just how vicious a place Earth is and how addicted to fighting each other humans are, and wonder if the Yeerks knew what they were getting into.
Central Control stories by Andre Norton’s: Where upon making first contact with the rest of the galaxy, humanity was deemed too savage to be allowed free run of the place. Instead, humans are only allowed to go off world as sort of Space Hessians.
Death or Gloryby Vladimir Vasilyev: Humans are one of the weakest, technologically-backward races in the galaxy. While we have finally figured out FTL travel, it's extremely slow and costly. The major worlds (including Earth) are suffering from pollution and overpopulation. The outer colonies are, basically, Wild West IN SPACE!. The alien races, for the most part, avoid humanity, as they consider intelligent primates to be an evolutionary mistake (our bodies are too complex for our own good), and only pay a visit when they want to demand some resource or other. A chance discovery results in humans getting their hands on an extremely-powerful warship, capable of obliterating entire worlds and fleets. When the aliens arrive to the human colony, they send troops to capture all colonists... who promptly get their asses handed to them by the angry prospectors and the local garrison. Then the colonists capture the ship, blow up their colony, and leave. The aliens catch up to them and offer full membership in The Alliance, calling humanity a "latent" race. In books 2 and 3 of the series, a former slave race of one of the Alliance members rebels and proceeds to wipe the floor with most of the Alliance races with their massive armada, which no one somehow caught them building. Guess who's the only race to successfully resist the new empire? The other races are smart enough to realize this and try to work in tandem with humans.
In the third book, an enemy armada blockades a jungle world that contains a safari. The enemy sends in troops to capture any planetside humans. They get beaten by a bunch of tourists, (admittedly, their guide is pretty good, and one of them is actually a spy on vacation).
Empire From The Ashes: The Achuultani refer to the human chunk of the galaxy as the "Demon Sector" because their periodic genocidal waves always suffer huge losses there.
"The Gentle Vultures" a short story by Isaac Asimov, there is a group of aliens on the Moon waiting for World War III to start. They detected the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and thought a nuclear war would soon begin, but fifteen years later it hasn't happened at all. The alien in charge discovers that, even if we aren't at war, we are still way too good at it (making new, more powerful nukes, of course). We are so good that the we are developing war technology in peacetime even faster than we would have if war had broken out.
The High Crusade: The medieval English quickly show a bunch of downtrodden alien slave races how a real warrior race beats the snot out of their oppressors. Bonus points for actually being plausible about the way the Rock Beats Laser.
In A Good Cause... by Isaac Asimov: This comes up as a side note in story, where one character notes that the alien enemy has a larger and unified empire, as opposed to the human empires, which are smaller and fragmented. Earthlings beat them because humans are so very much better at fighting, both in terms of skill and experience, and in terms of technology, having been practicing on and competing with each other for a long time. Earth diplomacy has in fact been devoted to maintaining this edge by blocking all attempts at forming The Federation while ensuring that no human power allied with the aliens.
Known Space series by Larry Niven: Humanity was almost completely pacifist at first contact. As the blurb on the Man-Kzin Wars books says, "Man had decided to study war no more because they were very, very good at it". The Kzinti fight wars of conquest, Humans fight wars of extermination. The Kzinti could easily wipe out Earth's population early on with relativistic impactors, but they prize human slaves and want to take humanity's worlds for their own. Humans have no qualms about using such weapons on their own colonies under Kzinti occupation, however. The Kzinti are horrified to discover that even unarmed human vessels are a threat.
Liberty's Crusade” a Starcraft'' novel,' when Mike Liberty says that "We humans are the most ornery cusses in the galaxy" and says that the only reason humans are "getting their clocks cleaned" by the Protoss and Zerg is because we can't get along with each other. Just about every description of the Terrans in the Starcraft manuals and the official websites makes sure to point out how the Terrans' inventiveness and survivalist spirit helped them stand their ground against both the Protoss and the Zerg.
‘'Mind Pool duology by Charles Sheffield, humans are the only intelligent species that actually kills other intelligent beings. The other races consider intelligent life too sacred to harm, and are horrified nearly to the point of physical illness at the very thought'' of murder. This means that many of them fear humanity... but it also means that humanity is extremely useful on the occasions a hostile power makes itself known.
Orphanage series by Robert Buettner, the threat of nuclear war and the decaying ecology of planet Earth has focused most technological advances toward the environment, while things like space travel and warfare have absolutely zero priority. So when alien slugs start firing bullets the size of skyscrapers at highly populated areas, we're left with little more than Vietnam-era weapons and modified 747's to invade a settlement on Ganymede held by millions upon millions of hive-minded highly-advanced aliens. If you really need to ask how that turns out, you need to pay more attention to some of the other examples on this page.
Starship Troopers has basically no purpose other than to invoke this trope, as often and as hard as possible. They are, at least, fair about it; it's made clear that the Bugs are also warriors. There are other races in the galaxy too, but at least as far as narrator Juan Rico is concerned, they don't matter. The galaxy belongs to the race strong enough to claim it.
Technic History by Poul Anderson: "That race still bears the chromosomes of conquerors. There are still brave men in the Empire, devoted men, shrewd men ... with the experience of a history longer than ours to guide them. If they see doom before them, they'll fight like demons." — Brechdan Ironrede of Merseia
The Tripods : When The Masters come they decide that humans have so much dakka and so much fondness for using it that the only way to conquer humans is mind manipulation. That is a race capable of interstellar travel is afraid to fight humans face to face. However once that technique is used, Earth turns out to be fairly easily conquered, at first. Several generations later when the second wave of Masters arrives they find every Tripod city destroyed and the humans ready and waiting.
Troy Rising uses this trope, along with most of the other Humans Are Special subtropes. Not long after first contact, a top-flight alien AI spends several days crunching the numbers, and recommends that his builders - a huge, ancient, wide-spread empire of mostly-peaceful but technologically advanced traders - ally with humanity specifically for the purpose of a Type-2. The race's leaders are somewhat skeptical as to what a single, non-unified planet in the ass-end of the galaxy could possibly do, but in the end, trust in the judgment, and hands humanity some basic tools that they can use to pull a Type-1 on the Horvath that are already treating them as slaves. Sure enough, humanity soon bursts onto the galactic scene in a cloud of 'Crazy Enough to Work' and 'No Kill Like Overkill' utilization of both home-made tech and 'borrowed' Glatun technology. Even the highly-militarized Scary Dogmatic Aliens, the Rangor, are shocked at humanity's approach to warfare, with those few members of their research-groups who actually realize the threat of humanity being brushed off as doomsayers.
The War of the Worlds: The humans prove their warrior attitude, artillery takes out one of the tripods, and the HMS Thunderchild another two (out of a total of probably about 30). We'd probably have taken out more as well, but Mother Nature beat us to it.
Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove. While this involves an Alien Invasion, the aliens ("the Race") have been at peace on three unified worlds for thousands of years and have assembled their conquest force based on ancient plans: the recruitment of soldiers is a one-off event known as a "Soldiers' Time". They are horrified by humanity's dozens of countries and factions and the fact that, even though they are technologically more backward, they're also far better at fighting. Of course, the fact that they invaded in 1942 also helped. They spotted us during the crusades, and invaded 800 years later. To them, those centuries would have meant nothing. However to humans it was different story. Not only did we advance our technology as a whole we also changed our tactics and adapted faster. Our audacity also shocked them, such as an SS operative managing to steal a main battle tank right from under their noses and drive it into a German outpost so it could be delivered for study. Their fleet commander was a little bit miffed at that.
Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter Has this in spades, at least once the Interim Coalition of Governance takes over. The titular alien Xeelee outclass them in pretty much every sphere of technology, but the Fantastic Racism of mankind's "Third Expansion" doesn't let a little thing like that stand in the way of galactic conquest. A line in Exultant expresses humanity's fighting strategy; something like: "To the Xeelee, we were little more than rats - so that's what we became. Tenacious, relentless, swarming; fighting an interstellar war with teeth and nails".
One of the prevailing theories the Lizards came up with to explain our technological and social adaptability is that we're always beating the shit out of each other and always trying to find a bigger stick, while they are pretty peaceful and don't really have a reason to push their technology and society so quickly. In addition, things like poison gas, mutiny and torture are completely unknown to them because of this long-lasting peace.
Live-Action TV
On Stargate SG-1, many Goa'uld and Jaffa have learned that the Warriors of the Tau'ri epitomize the "Humans are Soldiers" variation of this trope. For all their advanced technology, the Goa'uld are the equivalent of a semi-competent Third World army: very capable when it comes to killing peasants and fighting each other, but ultimately hopeless against the modern, disciplined military organizations of Earth. Lampshaded in one episode where O'Neill compares human weapons to Jaffa weapons.
O'Neill: "This... (holds up a Jaffa staff weapon) is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimidate the enemy. This... (holds up the P90) is a weapon of war. It's made to kill your enemy."
Even more in XSGCOM fanfic, where already skilled SG teams get X-Com to assist them. Lots of dead Jaffa ensue.
"Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts... deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers... put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time... and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces, look at their eyes..."
Speaking of Klingons: while they sometimes mock and condescend to humans, they have always respected our battle prowess. We were one of the few species to give the entire Empire serious trouble for much of their recorded history - enough that they eventually found it better to ally with us. Later on, it's taken Up to Eleven: When the Klingon chancellor is murdered through dishonorable methods, the Klingon Empire puts the matter of their Rite of Succession in the hands of none other than Jean-Luc Picard, specifically because of humanity's honor and courage in battle.
Klingons only originally allied with the Federation out of desperation; their homeworld was dying (a major plot component of Star Trek VI). However, as shown in the TNG episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", the fact that a Federation Starship flew headfirst into battle outnumbered by Romulans to save a Klingon outpost strengthened this alliance, and, as the events of the alternate timeline indicate, indeed saved it.
In the backstory of Babylon 5, humanity explodes onto the galactic stage as a major power despite their youth and comparatively primitive technology when they enter the Dilgar war and are directly responsible for ending it within a year. Their later defeats in the Minbari war were primarily due to the technological disparity between the sides, as evidenced by Londo Mollari's quote:
"The War. The humans, I think, knew they were doomed. Where another race would surrender to despair, the humans fought back with greater strength. They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life, I have never seen anything like it; They would weep, they would pray, they would say goodbye to their loved ones, and then throw themselves without fear or hesitation at the very face of death itself, never surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help but be moved to tears by their courage. Their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships, they used guns, when they ran out guns they used knives and sticks and bare hands. They were magnificent. I only hope that when it is my time, I may die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes in the end. They did this for two years they never ran out of courage but in the end, they ran out of time."
The Minbari would be a variant on this trope really, being humanoid if not human. Both of them are being exploited as Cannon Fodder by the Vorlons and Shadows and both end up rebelling.
In Doctor Who, the Sontarans are genetically engineered super soldiers, supposedly the finest in the galaxy (and about 4' 10") with highly advanced technology. Once UNIT get around the thing that was jamming their guns (since it affected the bullets, they changed bullets), their speed and mobility as well as high rates of fire causing them to go through the Sontarans like a hot knife through melting butter. Given their tendency to be a Red Shirt Army, it was... cathartic.
"Your enemy is well trained and well-equipped. He believes the gods are on his side. Let him believe what he will. We have the tanks on ours."
"MORE MEN! MORE TANKS!"
Considering that humanity has collectively had only roughly fifty thousand years of practice at war— compared to the Eldar, Necrons, Orks, and so on who've had millions— Humans are completely dominating. If we survive to learn from another ten thousand years of war, we might even win.
The Space Marines, however, are noted to be among the most feared forces in the Galaxy. Entire Tyranid Hive Fleets, Necron Extinction Taskforces and Ork Waaaghs inspire roughly the same dread as a single Space Marine company.
An example of Story And Gameplay Segregation: If Space Marines were even half as tough as they are portrayed in the fluff, nobody else would be competitive.
Addressed in an issue of White Dwarf magazine, where a "Hollywood Space Marine" army list was printed, bringing in-game stats in line with the fluff. Obviously, it's not legal for tournament play; for the same point-cost of an army of 50+ Marines and several vehicles, you'll end up with a squad of 10, two smaller squads if you're lucky. Not only will they win, but the Random Number God will have to be on your opponent's side to inflict any casualties.
GurpsTraveller Interstellar Wars: this is more Terrans are Warriors. The "aliens" were the Vilani who were a Vestigial Empire of transplanted humans who were complacent Obstructive Bureaucrats and hadn't had a real war in ages.
Actually this is something of an example of the Humans are Soldiers variation. Terran armies and fleets are formidable but they aren't independently strong.
Terrans are the top predators of the Traveller universe and their skills build and destroy empires and are widely adopted until their traditions are the norm. Vilani depend to much on mass, Zhodani depend to much on psionics, Aslan are warriors and Vargr are Space Pirates. But none can really compare with humans from Earth as soldiers.
The "Solomani/Terran Way of War" in Traveller is (probably unintentionally, but recognizably) simply what the entertaining though jingoistic columnist Victor Davis Hanson called the "Western Way of War" after it has been Recycled In Space.
Though Solomani are the most skilled and are generally copied, most human ethnic groups seem to be at least reasonably competent at warfare and several are Proud Warrior Race s. Notable are the Azhanti who have a religion that says God commands them to "seek challenges". War is naturally a convenient way of doing so.
The backstory to Mekton's Invasion Terra setting has this with a few traces of type 2. The Human Alien invaders have all the edges: longer-established technology, the ability to clone armies in a month, FTL... But we have a few of our own, stuff like "Human Adaptability", "Stolen Mecha Technology", "Guerrilla Warfare" and a few of their friends. At one point, they're caught flat-footed by humanity switching over to AM radio because they can tap into our FM signals. The "Type 2" part also shows up: their obsession with honour means that they don't know what to make of guerilla warfare. Towards the end of the storyline, they have not only been thrown off Earth, but have to divert entire fleets to hunt Terran raiding ships. The take-home message? Do not fuck with planet Earth.
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is all about this, once the Scrin start their mining operations on the supposedly barren-of-intelligent-life planet, they discover to their horror that the signal to start the harvesting was actually fake and humans were still alive, aligned in two implacable factions, one of them coldly determinated to reverse the contamination the Scrin started, and the other one eager to steal their technology and use it to access other worlds. All of this just while humans keep fighting a world war between each other for the complete dominion of the planet and eradication of all the other factions, aliens included.
It's worth pointing out that GDI and Nod barely even pause in fighting each other when the Scrin arrive; Kane executes one of his top commanders for even suggesting that the omnicidal invaders might be a greater evil than GDI. The aliens' arrival basically just means that both human sides have an additional set of targets to eradicate.
Just to quote the own Scrin Intel Database: "... Indigenous population warlike to the extreme - once Threshold construction is complete and gateway is open, entire indigenous population must be cleansed from the surface of the planet."
Ah, and don't forget both factions got weapons specialized to take down those silly tiberium based cockroaches!
Mass Effect. Technically humans are of the average mold, with particular people filling in the special part, but this trope is regularly very important. Of the sentient races the Citadel Council have encountered in two and half thousand years, the geth and the rachni seemed to be Always Chaotic Evil (Turns out both were being manipulated by Sovereign), the quarians and the krogan had reduced themselves to refugees, and the volus and the hanar couldn't fight worth a damn, leaving just the asari, the salarians and the turians to keep civilization going - and then there's us naked apes, who can hold our own against the turians despite having been starfarers for less than a century and having the smallest military they know of.
Also entirely different military tactics. The backstory claims humans pretty much introduced the concept of a carrier to the galaxy. Also, most of the other species station a few ships at each inhabited planet to try and protect them all. The backstory says humanity leaves a large number of ships at a central place a few hours from all of the planets they control. You want to take our unprotected planet? Good luck keeping it, there'll be dozens of battleships there tomorrow!
However this makes them easy prey to Batarian Slavers and the Reapers who only want the people. Both Eden Prime and Horizon demonstrates that if the colony lacks Defence Turrets, or if they aren't operational, the colonists are thoroughly screwed until the cavalry arrives.
Its worth noting that when Mordin's team was doing their research and modeling for the effects of the krogan's adaptation to the genophage, they predicted (based on millions of data points and countless scenarios) the only outcome of the adaptation was war and galactic expansion - a galactic expansion that the models showed would have been stopped by the turians and the humans. The fact that the salarian models pretty much said that the humans would provide as much military effectiveness as the turians, the most militarily powerful species in Citadel space, is rather telling.
Humans Are Average is actually what gives us an advantage. The asari have the best individual fighters, but can't stand up in a firestorm. The vorcha and krogans are incredibly biologically suited and disposed to physical conflict, but have to get technology from other races, who they're no good at negotiating with. The turians and batarians have strong senses of duty and collectivism, but aren't very good at economics (being reliant on other species, and destitute, respectively). The salarians are masters of technology and information, but are short lived and relatively fragile. Lacking the rigidity of other species, humans can adapt on the fly to new situations, and employ new tactics and techniques quicker than anybody else.
There are three other factors not mentioned yet: first, humans have an unusually brutal pre-spaceflight history, second, we breed faster than turians, salarians, krogans (thanks to the genophage) and batarians, third, we found colonies outside Citadel Space, making human dominated space one of the biggest in the galaxy.
Its also worth noting that Humanity also brought the concept of a Stealth-Ship into the mix with the creation of the Normandy-class, allowing the Alliance to enter enemy systems to perform stealth-drops, long-ranged reconnaissance and hit-and-run operations, all the while being completely undetectable. While building it with the Turians, Humans co-opted several of their design features, technology and weaponry and intergrated it into the design, which despite its size, means it carries roughly the same firepower as the Turians and is effective in black-ops as the Salarian's elite Special Tasks Group.
In the Halo series, the humans' tendency toward courage, tenacity, and innovation is the only thing keeping them from falling to the technologically superior Covenant. It's also one of the main things that endear the populace of the Covenant to humanity enough for a later alliance.
After the war, the Sangheili are having an extremely difficult time adapting their society to complete jobs normally reserved for other species in the Covenant; since their whole populace is indoctrinated with the belief they are worthless if they are not warriors. One makes a comment in the Glasslands book that humans do not excel at anything, but are able to get by because they are simply good enough at everything.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that the Covenant don't use their technology to its full extent due to religious restrictions on reverse-engineering or improving on their inherited Forerunner technology. They must take their end-user license agreements really seriously...
In one of the books Cortana made the ship-to-ship weapons much more powerful than the Covenant standard by just changing the settings.
For which she immediately earned the wrath of a Covenant AI that was programmed with the same religious nonsense as the biological races of the Covenant. You usually don't hear computers scream "Blasphemy!" at each other.
Also, the Covenant completely rely on their stolen technology, for instance their ships rely on shields while the structure is fairly weak when compared to human ships that lack shields but were built to last. When shields are down, covenant ships don't last a minute against human projectile weapons.
In the new Forerunner series, it is revealed that there was a prehistoric human empire that managed to stand up to the Forerunners, which was the dominant power in the galaxy at the time. After taking over large parts of the Orion Arm, they then fought a war with the Flood, and actually managing to DEFEAT them (though only after being severely weakened). It was only then that the Forerunners were able to defeat them, and only after many centuries of war. When their capital world finally fell, they destroyed all their research on the Flood, so when the Flood came by again, the Forerunners were destroyed.
In the Sword Of The Stars' backstory humans are healthily respected, if not exactly feared, by both the Tarka and the Hivers for their ability to grow into a galactic power at record speed. We did this after our only planet was bombed near to rubble by a rogue Hiver clan and then expanded and colonized other worlds while at war with parts of both races (neither have an entirely unified government) who had a couple of millennia worth of head-start. Fortunately everyone managed to avoid similar conflicts with the Liir when they started reaching out to the stars, or things could have gotten very ugly for us indeed.
In Urban Assault, the planet has been invaded by Mykonians and Sulgogar. One of the briefings states that, if the humans had banded together instead of splintering into different factions, they'd have won already. Among the human factions, special mention goes to the Taerkasten, for having the most resilient units in the game despite using technology from WWII. And also to the Stoudson bomb, which levels the battlefield it detonates on. The entire thing.
There are a number of threads in the /tg/ section of 4chan dedicated to this trope, popularly referred to as "HUMANITY FUCK YEAH!" threads.
Pretty much the point of The Salvation War. The Demons and some of the angels start to fear humans as the "Lords of War" when their massive armies are slaughtered by advanced and merciless human warmaking. It is speculated that because of humanity's shorter lifespans, there's a greater tendency for thought to change and evolve, as old ideas die and new ones rise up with each generation. As a result, humans began to ask the question "why" - which both led to greater and greater scientific development and the questioning of the established order, including questioning established religions, which invariably pissed Yahweh off enough to make him declare war on mankind. Unfortunately for him, the eternal, unchanging power structures of Heaven and Hell stifled scientific development, resulting in armies of demons with bronze pitchforks running headlong into combined arms forces of tanks, aircraft, and artillery.
Western Animation
Some of column A and some of column B were implied in Galaxy Rangers - but mostly the latter, as the Andorians and Kiwi were actually pretty decent. The Andorians and Kiwi have fought off The Empire, led by The Queen of the Crowns. They "journeyed to Earth, seeking our help," but the Kiwi are more farmers than fighters (not that they can't if you push them), and the Andorians' hat is that of mathematicians and scientists - unless you jail them. Still, there's the genocidal meglomaniac who is none too pleased to have defections from her Empire and two species who need an ally who's good in a fight. Hence the reason they send Zozo, Waldo, and a hyperdrive design that's miles ahead of anything the Queen's got to essentially bribe Earth into an alliance. And while Kirwin defends itself with a planetary defense shield, Earth is shown to be just plain armed to the teeth. It's also worth noting that while the series had Loads And Loadsof Characters, virtually all the military were humans.
Examples of the second form of this trope include:
Comic Books
In the sadly underrated graphic novel Grease Monkey, humanity (along with uplifted gorillas) is recruited as the warriors to face an alien horde. May not count, due to the fact that no other planets seem to come into play.
Well, it's also that humans have technology just advanced enough to hurt the Transformers, numbers, and the fact that they're fighting on our home turf. Of course, the Transformers are far from pacifists, what with being locked in a civil war for millions of years. (according to the Transformers Wiki, they consider one upside of our short lifespans being that our wars are mercifully short)
To a lesser extent, pretty much every incarnation except Beast Wars/Machines did it as well. iirc, in Beast Wars it's implied humans are the primary reason the Autobots won the Great War in the original series (to the point BW Megatron attempts to alter history by killing humanity's hominid ancestors)
Which yielded the best episode in the entire franchise, mind you.
Also acknowledged in Reign of Starscream where the title character admits that, at least in the film continuity, humans are better at creating weapons than Transformers are & taking on the forms of human military vehicles made the Decepticons considerably stronger.
A very dark example shows up in the first The Prophecy movie, where rogue archangel Gabriel attempts to steal the soul of a utterly psychoticComplete Monster of an army officer to aid him in his battle against the angels who have stayed loyal to God. As Satan sums it up:
Gabriel has a plan. Humans, and how I love you talking monkeys for this, know more about war and treachery of the spirit than any angel. Gabriel is well aware of this, and has found a way to steal the blackest soul on Earth to fight for him.
In Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series, the Carmpan, being pacifists, were unable to confront the Berserker threat directly. Instead they found a weapon: Humans.
The Course of Empire by Eric Flint and K.D. Wentworth explores this concept
James P. Hogan's Ganymede series. The Giants evolved in an ecosystem completely devoid of predators and are instinctively pacifistic, to the point that they have no real concept of "war". They also recognize that humans' warrior abilities (and our understanding of violence and duplicity that comes from being warriors) is all that saved the Giants from being destroyed.
Alan Dean Foster's The Damned trilogy is a classic example, with a coalition of pacifistic aliens who have been fighting a centuries-long losing battle against a race of fanatical, mindwashing conquerors moved by a mysterious spiritual/religious principle. Problem is, every race is so civilized few can even conceive of hurting another sentient, and even those who aren't quite that civilized and try to do whatever fighting is necessary aren't really any good at it. And then the coalition finds humans, a race ripe with contradictions but whose fighting abilities are beyond anything anyone, friendly or enemy, has ever seen. In fact, humans can be so unpredictably and barbarically violent that the coalition would prefer to not use humanity at all, and only relents because if the enemy gets to them first the war is essentially over. A lot of curb-stomping ensues.
Foster uses something similar in his novelization of The Last Starfighter to explain why the Star League is so hard up for fighter pilots as to be recruiting them from pre-contact worlds. Most Starfighters are, by the League's standards, homicidal maniacs. Just hearing the battlecry "Victory or death!" made a visiting official physically ill.
It is also mentioned that the official giving the speech that ends with him starting the "Victory or death!" chant had to be almost out of his head on tranquilizers to go up and make use of such violent rhetoric, and even then he was only barely able to hold it together.
Foster again uses this trope in the Humanx Commonwealth series. Stingships are small, two-man fighters which have a human and a thranx in them. The thranx are given specialized drugs to turn them into living computers; the human drugs turn them into berserkers. They are then joined mentally, which gives them the benefits of both.
The pacifist aliens in John Ringo's Posleen War Series aren't quite that ridiculously pacifistic, but they still wouldn't survive long without humans to fight their battles for them. (They're also being manipulated by fake-pacifist aliens on their own side for devious and greedy ends...)
More specifically, each race has its own flavor of pacifism. The Indowy have no moral objection to violence, but as a race are too anxious to go into battle. The Himmitt evolved with chameleon-like body camouflage and thus are culturally biased to stealth over combat. The Darhel were genetically engineered to have violent desires, but also to become comatose if they ever indulge those desires.
The Darhel started out as an extremely warlike race of psychic obligate carnivores. The Aldenata forced them to submit to genetic manipulation, which included an ability to digest plant matter and an overdose of certain hormones that is triggered by intense emotional peaks.
The Aldenata are the big reason why. They Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence essentially by meditating and being calm pacifists. They lied to the other races and told them the only way they could join them was to do the same. The Indowy's entire culture is based on reaching that higher level of calm. Humans are finding out that with enough training, "rage" works too.
The Aldenata didn't lie about their method being the only way to ascend. They didn't know, or even consider, that anyone would try any other method.
In Tanya Huff's Valor series, a federation of hyper-pacifist aliens come under attack by another group of aliens. To counteract this they recruit less advanced, and therefore more warlike aliens to fight for them in exchange for technology. These include humans, of course. It is hinted that the attacking aliens are also being headed by pacifists.
The Pandora's Planet series: A very successful, if slightly dim, race of Outer Space Imperialists conquer the Earth - with considerable difficulty - then are quickly and hopelessly subverted by the joys of human civilization; food fads, rock and roll, planned obsolescence....
Their leaders are quite intelligent but the exceptional individuals are few and far between. The rank and file are capable of following instructions by rote but completely incapable of improvisation and have a tendency to believe anything they are told.
The first couple chapters are about the aliens discovering that humans are better at fighting and the rest describes various campaigns by human mercenaries on behalf of the aliens.
David Drake's Ranks Of Bronze: Unscrupulous alien merchants are required by galactic law to use contemporary technology to wage war on primitives, so they keep a Roman legion on hand to wipe out any pesky upstarts with bladed weapons.
In The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber, another alien picks up a medieval English army for use as, essentially, muscle for his extortion racket. The rules of galactic society allow trade with undeveloped planets, and even the use of coercion to get them to agree, but use of advanced weapons (gunpowder and up) is prohibited. One of the alien's competitors picked up a Roman legion a thousand years ago, and has been using them to "renegotiate" contracts ever since, so this one wanted to get in on the action.
In Animorphs, the Yeerks see humans as a powerful race because we're weak. However, despite the fact that Earth is a Death World to our species, we have emerged as the dominant species. This would make for great shock troops and since we reproduce in great numbers, the Yeerks couldn't resist. What they didn't count on was our ability to adapt and reliance on The Eternal Churchill.
We are assumed to be a "class 5" host species because we fit the criteria of being relatively physically able (good vision, hands, etc.), susceptible to infestation, and plentiful, but (apparently) not able to resist invasion. (Andalites are class 4 for toughness. The Gedds, catatonic monkey hosts of their homeworld, are nearly-useless hosts.) One Yeerk mentioned however that we're dangerous enough that their Masquerade plan is much easier than straight conquest... which turns out to be true when a straight conquest is attempted.
In The Silmarillion, humans start coming into elven territory fleeing from Morgoth. These humans have always had to fight to survive in Morgoth's territory where Everything Is Trying to Kill You. Thus the elves are glad to have them as allies and give them land to live on. In this variation, elves are perfectly good warriors, indeed very good ones. But humans breed quickly and thus are useful for that reason.
Take note of the Elven tendency to retreat behind walls of magic, or their human allies. Tolkien's Elves have a real problem with maintaining a state of aggressive warfare - which leads to the 'Siege' of Angband giving Morgoth plenty of time to regroup. Guess who doesn't have a problem with going for the jugular - and hanging on for generations if necessary?
The Janet Morris and David Drake book Target features an alien diplomat from a pacifist civilization who arrives on a Lunar Base fleeing more violent aliens who after the humans defeat several of the alien soldiers, decides to present humans as "their" warriors in order to negotiate a peace treaty.
In the Dave Weber novel Out Of The Dark, humans aren't the only fighters known, we're just the most brutal and dangerous. It also helps that we have vampires.
Religion and Mythology
Guess which race Odin wanted to guard his hall?
In The Bible it is said that "you shall bruise him on the heel and he shall bruise thee on the head" . In other words humans are destined to take on Satan. Which, according to Christians was fulfilled by Jesus.
Gods and demigods, usually. There are very few stories of monster-slayers who don't have either divine parentage or divine aid.
Live-Action TV
In the Doctor Who serial "The War Games", the Big Bad the Warlord is recruiting his warriors from conflicts in Earth's past because of humanity's talent for war.
The Taelons in Earth: Final Conflict say they've come to Earth to be our friends, but actually want us to fight their wars for them.
The Vorlons in Babylon 5 appear as religious figures to the various Alliance races in order to gain their cooperation and have been manipulating the evolution of the sentient races to produce telepaths for use as cannon fodder against the Shadows.
Tabletop Games
A creepy version of the second trope was in Gurps: Time Travel in the sample campaign Eternity's Rangers in which some mysterious Sufficiently Advanced Aliens acquire soldiers from all through history just before they were "supposed to" die and make a commando team to go throughout time on missions for unknown reasons.
Video Games
This is one of the things the Combine want with the human race for (they do this to others as well).
Also note that humans seem to be the only one of the races (at least out of those we've been introduced to) that manage to fight back against Combine control.
It's worth noting that the Combine occupation force consists almost entirely of humans who haven't been completely assimilated yet, and the real Combine military managed to crush the human race within seven hours.
The Vardrag from Nexus: The Jupiter Incident become patrons of the Noah colony, a lost human group. They trade technology and assistance for human warmaking skill, since they lack the "stomach" for war themselves.
In Super Robot Wars, the Balmarians want to conquer Earth to turn the population into soldiers.
While humanity's hat in Galactic Civilizations appears to be diplomacy, they have been killing each other for over nine thousand years, and they have gotten very good at this. The Drengin are the only aliens who realize this, and it scares the shit out of them.
Which is exactly how The Art of War says a nation should behave.
Not to forget how they completely wiped out the Xendar.
In fact, this is why the Drengin, the mightiest warrior race in the universe, fear humanity. They thought that humanity was weak, noting that they didn't even have a standing space fleet. Then the Xendar attacked a human colony - not even a major planet, just a minor colony. The humans mobilized immediately and within a year had completely eradicated the Xendar race. Not just defeated - wiped out. To quote: "There are no more Xendar. They're gone. Completely." Then humanity disbanded the fleet and went right back to being "peaceful". On seeing this, the Drengin promptly crapped themselves and raised mankind's threat level from "nonexistent" to "extreme".
According to the back-story of the Star Control games, humanity becomes pacifist after a "small" thermonuclear war in 2015 scares us straight. A century later, we are befriended by benevolent aliens caught in an interstellar war — who are delighted to learn that we still have a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons locked away in storage, apparently along with the skills to become competent and effective warriors once more. It is noted that Humanity makes a surprisingly useful contribution in the war against the evil Ur-Quan, considering our relative lack of technological advancement... though it still doesn't end well. (Afterwards, the Ur-Quan feel the need to not only encase Earth in an impenetrable shield, but also station an entire fleet on the Moon just to make sure we don't try anything "sneaky.")
Justified somewhat. Human warships are more agile than Ur-Quan Dreadnoughts (in SC1, at least) and fire HOMING nuclear missiles. To add up, Ur-Quan speciality, fighters, are useless againts human point defense weapons. Looking at that, the worst thing Ur-Quan fleet could meet was a human fleet.
By way of comparison, the Ur-Quan bottled up the two most technologically advanced Alliance races together on one planet, with no guards whatsoever.
The Yehat, a species of honor based warriors, who look like pterosaurs and have a feudal, clan-based society, actually respect the humans a lot because we have one important thing in common. Both of our civilizations developed many of their major technologies through conflict. So for them, we are a warrior race too.
The trailer for Tabula Rasa gives this as the reason why good aliens gave humans wormhole technology.
Other examples of this trope include:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
Type 2 in Guyver: humans were engineered as warriors by a race known as Uranus. Then they decided to see what would happen if they gave a human one of their standard-issue suits of Organic TechnologyPowered Armor - the result was the human becoming absurdly powerful and breaking free from their Mind Control. They eventually managed to kill him, but they were so terrified of it happening again that they aborted the experiment and fled the planet.
Guyver also has type 1 with the human villains, Chronos, who find Uranus technology, reverse-engineer it, make far more powerful versions of it, and plan to use it to find the Uranus and kill them.
Fanfic
Divine Blood Mithril, the JSDF and the US Armed Forces show the Humans are Soldiers variants with the loyalist Humans and Gods following their lead. Their plan also recognizes and makes use of the Demonic Proud Warrior Race attitudes by sending solitary or paired opponents to publicly challenge them and hold them in one place long enough for artillery, cruise missiles, the Arbalest or air support can obliterate the zone...with the chosen duelists being evaced by friendly Demons before the bomb hits. "I told Tessa where we were" became equivalent to "Cruise missiles incoming"
In the Poké Wars universe, Darkrai has this to say about humans:
Darkrai: Humans are conquerors; whether it with is Pokémon or with each other.
Film
In Predator, this is the reason why human is considered a goodsport.
In the comic canon, a woman manages to impress the Predators so much that she ultimately joins their tribe.
Literature
In Alan Dean Foster's With Friends Like These..., which is told from the alien point of view, humanity was sealed under a forcefield a long time ago because we scared them that badly. When they release the humans in exchange for helping them against a bigger menace, one of the aliens has the sense to worry "What happens when we run out of enemies?".
Hinted at in the last few lines of Arthur C. Clarke's The Rescue Party. Wherein the alien leader of the group points out that humans attempted interstellar travel without FTL, something no other race has ever done. This causes him to worry that humans might not like the current status quo, and that this could be a problem despite technological and numerical superiority on the side of the galactic community.
The ending in question:
"Something tells me they'll be very determined people...We had better be polite to them. After all, we only outnumber them about a thousand million to one." Rugon laughed at his captain's little joke. Twenty years afterward, the remark didn't seem funny.
In Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. fantasy series, it's mentioned that humans are the only race (out of its Loads and Loads of Races) to go in for large-scale protracted warfare. Other races, while they do fight, usually have one swift winner-take-all battle that resolves any internal disputes for a generation; mercenary non-humans make a living by hiring themselves out to one side or another in human wars.
A non-alien example in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel, Unseen Academicals, characters tell and learn that orcs, supposedly long-gone monsters, were made by The Lady out of goblins as weapons. At the end of the book, the main characters realize that The Lady made orcs out of humans—no other race was bloodthirsty enough.
Live-Action TV
The Humans are Soldiers variant shows up in the new Doctor Who, once UNIT figures out how the Sontarans are jamming their weapons and correct for it. The alien "Super Soldiers" are torn apart by overwhelming numbers.
In the backstory of Babylon 5 humans turned the tide of the Dilgar War, saving the League of Non-Aligned worlds from an early grave.
Major Spoilers: In the backstory of Farscape, Sebaceans, the Human Aliens who form the Peacekeeper Military, were originally humans taken from Earth thousands of years ago and genetically modified by a group of Precursors to be a race of soldiers who had no previous quarrel with any of the other dozens of well-armed alien races who wished to make the galaxy theirs. The Peacekeepers lived up to their name until unknown agents (possibly the Scarrans) sabotaged the armistice, causing the Precursors who controlled the Peacekeepers to disappear. With them gone, the Peacekeepers kept peace the only way they know how- with the threat of violence. What is notable about the Peacekeepers is the complexity of their characterization: individuals, especially higher-class officers and commanders, vary from Complete Monsters to Well Intentioned Extremists, but the rank-and-file Peacekeepers, aside from their ingrained xenophobia, are an example of a proud ''soldier'' race, and in the miniseries, while working with the heroes to fight the galaxy-conquering Scarrans, actually come off as heroic.
Tabletop Games
A "humans, or more specifically Inner Sphere troops, are soldiers" example can be found in BattleTech. There are no aliens, but when the Clans return to the Inner Sphere after centuries, the heavily stylized warrior culture they have developed in the meantime is one of the weaknesses that gives their Combat Pragmatist opponents a fighting chance despite the individual Clan warriors' edge in skill and technology.
The Clans have been fighting for 300 years... in limited, highly ritualized engagements designed to curb permanent losses and emphasize individual valor above all. The Inner Sphere spent the same 300 years fighting highly-destructive wars that emphasize hurting your enemy and not being hurt. The Clans have a "Warrior" mentality, while the Inner Sphere have a "Soldier" mentality. The soldiers eventually win.
